the aids issue is is a bit of a problem i guess the first thing that comes to my mind not having any immediate friends with that problem is is the financial end and how can a country stand to uh spend as much or much more than they already are on such a problem uh but then that kind of thinking is also [tempered] with the the knowledge or at least the the rumor i'm not really sure if it's true or not that uh we're not spending as much per let's say [afflicted] person on cancer uh there's some uh take breast cancer for instance it seems to be doing much more damage and affecting much more many more people than aids and yet uh more people die of it and yet the funding has already uh exceeded aids has more money than uh breast cancer so uh i mean if it's true i i've i've always heard these things i've never bothered to dig it out and make sure but uh i've heard it on more than one documentary that uh they were complaining that whoever's sitting up there making these decisions or whatever institutions raise the money and uh it's just one big p r campaign that yeah we think that's the world's worst thing so let's give money to aids and yet we've had breast cancer problems for years and it's just one of those uh course one of the shows i saw was taking it from the angle that since it doesn't effect men it's not going to get funded and uh having thought about that for a while well i i kind of i thought well that that might be possible since there are a lot of men in control of that kind of thing but then i got i got to thinking the the number one killer of men seems to be the [prostate] and there's only one test that just recently got developed uh a blood [antigen] uh [antibody] test for the [antigen] in the blood and that's fairly recent and yet men have been dying from [prostate] cancer for years so it's not really cured yeah it's not uh not that heavily funded either and then that seems to be one of the the major uh problems that men have in the realm of cancer so i don't know i i guess there's just some strange public opinion as to who they want to give to uh be it through different organizations march of [dimes] type uh [telethons] or or bicycle rides or whatever how they fund whatever uh illness they wish it's kind of hard to to get an even keel on that i mean it's really hard to say well there's you know a hundred thousand per year affected by this one so let's give it this amount and then this other one's only a tenth of that so give it a tenth of that and and just keep [doling] it out that way or right right that's true you know the the other thought that i had uh i've had several minutes to think about this after i uh while i was finding people i uh i could think about the topic longer that the person that receives it so it's kind of a a unfair advantage as it were but the other thing that i thought of on this is i wonder if there isn't enough money uh in our economy or in our system uh it seems like there's so much that goes to things that don't really do a whole lot of good i mean yeah they're kind of nice but we have such an affluent society society that i wonder if if we took a little from here and there and the other if we might wind up with a a cure for just about everything of course then we wouldn't have any room to put people but that's yeah you know you hear these ridiculous figures for pizza or you hear these these phenomenal amounts of dollars spent for this that or the other and then you have all the arts that that are nice and [aesthetic] but are they that [enhancing] for the for the masses you know they certainly do well for those who go to the symphony orchestra and all that but uh had all that [donation] and time and labor and effort gone toward something else than well that's interesting isn't it yeah right what did you think about that idea they've not really given it attention either yeah right well i'm i'm glad i'm not the one that's that's in charge of of making those decisions they uh you wish that there could just be money for all these problems because they're all so serious you know i mean it's not so serious i guess until it affects your family and then all of a sudden it's the most important thing so i i would hate to have that responsibility just personally but but then again we really we really do have it as a society to decide which things we need to address i uh i guess i it it frightens me to think of so many people with with aids and with cancer and many of those things uh if they're not able to to be insured then the country's going to pay for it one way or the other whether it's through prevention or or treatment or you know just uh just helping the people when they are not able to take care of themselves it seems like one way or the other we're going to end up paying for it but just change our right just change our priorities a little bit right well aids is a nasty terrible disease and you die from it so i think that uh they need to look into it and it's kind of like cancer i don't you know how many years have we tried to find a cure for cancer i think it'll probably be as difficult uh how about yourself yeah they say a million people are [infected] with the h i v virus and uh yeah i think uh in the country america yeah and they have millions i don't know i've just heard it on the radio sometimes you hear things that on the radio that you know could be true or couldn't be uh do you feel like this is i i guess they're spending a billion or so a year on this aids research do you think they should spend more what do you think doug of mister johnson magic do you think he's the hero that he's being called by a bunch of other a bunch of the media you know i took advantage of the opportunity when you know he came out i talked to my kids about it you know it's something that i hadn't hadn't done before uh i'm glad that mister johnson's changed his tune on uh safe sex to abstinence or i was glad he did that for young kids because a lot of kids would have ended up dying because of what he was promoting uh let's see what are some of the other questions uh you don't uh let's see i don't have any friends that have the disease i guess you might might not is it pretty nasty yeah it sounds awful is it just that the immune system [ceases] to function properly and and oh really you think about aids research uh_huh um well i'm certainly in favor of aids research and i think probably the government could spend a bit more money on it than it does i think that because besides the fact that it's a deadly disease that it's a contagious disease so that it's um although it is not killing that many people now it still has the opportunity to get out of control and become a huge problem uh_huh that's in the world or in america you oh really um that's whose figure is that okay uh_huh uh_huh uh i i think they should actually although perhaps not a an incredible amount more than what they're doing and i don't necessarily think that they should uh fund aids research and in the process neglect cancer research or whatever i think that it would be a good thing for the government to increase funding for medical research in general um well i well i am sorry that he has the virus i um i don't know i don't i think it's very strange that the media hasn't um questioned him more strongly to about gay sex or [intravenous] drugs or anything like that as they probably would for a lot of other people um well not not really though i mean i think he's probably doing the right thing for a man in his position but i don't think it's anything exceptional that he's doing it's what many people have done already who were just less famous uh_huh uh_huh well that's good uh_huh uh_huh um yeah i do my cousin does for instance and um yeah yeah it is he's actually um he had aids related complex for a while and he is now in full blown aids really not doing very well and has a brain [tumor] or that sort of thing yeah it's it's a very nasty thing um yeah that's that's basically it that um the immune system can at first slow down and the white blood cell count goes down which is that's aids related complex but then when things get completely out of control and it basically hits bottom that's aids and in that case you know people are prone to getting any kind of you know weird cancer that only animals got before and yeah that sort of thing well michael what do you think about uh funding for aids research do you uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh well i guess i'm not too aware of how much they're spending right now you know yeah uh_huh yeah i mean i go ahead uh_huh yeah yeah yeah i mean i i can see that research is needed and you know definitely i mean it's becoming a major problem but uh i guess the area that i think more about is i would like to see them focus on uh preventing it uh in more you know right and i i feel like just saying uh safe sex is not the answer it's it's uh abstinence in certain cases and yeah and knowing you know uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah yeah i think for a lot of people it has so so uh_huh drug addicts uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh well yeah boy that's a hard issue it really is yeah i mean i i definitely think that it's the drug problem that needs to be addressed but as you say uh people i mean in the meantime well someone who's not ready to give up drugs uh you know if they're [perpetrating] the aids problem passing that on to each other then you know yeah yeah uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah yeah i haven't either i've heard you know uh different voices speaking up and saying we're not spending enough and mostly that's what i've heard so i don't know and yet i know it's uh it sounds like big money to me but it probably takes a lot so uh_huh yeah did you have any fear working in the hospital with that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well uh uh that's something i've thought a lot about uh i i work in a hospital and i've worked in the hospital for fifteen years and i've taken care of a few aids patients uh when they asked us did did we want to uh keep it the same or uh spend more spend less i think uh i think right now what they're spending is adequate uh my for my personal opinion uh because i think it's something that's going to take them a while to come up with a uh [vaccine] for i don't think it's going to be that easy to come up with or i think they already would have by now you know and uh so i don't know if if spending a lot more money would really make any difference right now i think they're doing the is as much research as they can possibly do you know and uh what about you i'm not either i'm definitely not aware of how much uh that's something i've never really kept up with at all uh i don't i'm not sure uh i know uh i've always thought more about the disease rather than the research you know what i mean and uh that sort of thing uh if if we were talking about the money uh i'd just have to say what they're spending is probably enough simply because i don't know that much about it you know oh yeah i think so i think so yeah yeah yeah well that's true that's true because uh it's a such an easily preventable disease uh no it's definitely not that's true that's true uh myself uh uh i'm just recently or about to get a divorce and uh course i'm not all ready to just run out there and start dating everybody i can or anything but it's sort of scary to find yourself single again you know and uh because you never know what's going to happen you don't know who you're going to come across you know course it's it's not that i'm wanting to i'm not going to want to go and have sex with everybody i see but it's something you got to think about these days a single person you know and uh i mean it certainly changed my attitude about that in a hurry and uh certainly yeah but uh uh i know that uh in some of these larger cities they're passing out free [syringes] and all of that sort of thing to prevent you know so that uh the drug addicts won't be getting dirty needles and everything and uh i don't know i don't think that's a bad idea i know it uh sort of doesn't address the problem of drug addiction it just sort of keeps that going but uh i don't know at least drug addiction can be treated whereas aids so far cannot be you know so i don't know that i think that's i'm not too much against the the passing out of the free [syringes] myself i don't know what do you think about that it it really is it really is they gave us a hard topic uh_huh that's true that's true yeah you know i guess if you consider the two problems drug addiction and aids aids would have to come first i guess as far as something to to do about it so so i don't know uh course there's so many things in the world where if you solve one problem you may be creating another you know and uh so i guess you just have to take the two problems and see which is worse which is the most important to solve at the time and i don't know but uh but i've never looked into how much money they're spending i have i have no idea and i know a lot of our tax money goes to that but uh i really have never looked into it i have no idea yeah yeah right sure yeah yeah i think it is i think it is yeah it does every it seems to take more than uh for any little thing they do it seems to take a lot more money that you would think it would you know but uh that's one thing i've never really [feared] uh uh i a lot of the my family you know they fear me working like that and under some some of those conditions but uh uh i don't fear it at all uh i work in in the operating room a lot and uh and of course when so julie how do you feel about aids research i'd agree too but i mean it seems like it just makes economic sense in that you know uh you know it would have made even better economic sense to to to have had a lot more research than a longer ago you know because you know because uh the country's going to wind up paying for the treatment of patients uh_huh i think they cover aids but what they do is uh if you know you apply for for to get a a insurance policy they'll uh check to see if you're h i v positive and if you are not only will they not give you uh a policy but they'll uh they have like there's like you know a [database] of people that have tested positive so you'll never be able to get insurance ever again yeah i think a lot of it was was just that you know because of of the you know because because the majority of the high risk groups were people no one really cared about that uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh yeah one one one one humorous [retort] i heard heard someone you know who claimed that you know aids was you know god's punishment was that then [lesbians] must be god's chosen people but uh so uh uh do you think you mean do you actually think we're doing enough right now to private organizations uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i mean it seems that you know it's just you know of it's just going to reach a steady a steady state a let a lot lot higher point than it will if we you know we'd [nip] it in the bud to quote barney [fife] uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i would probably agree with that uh so do do you think it's more important to spend money on research or for support of uh people uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i think it's i think it stands a really interesting question of uh i think we need we definitely need more of it definitely oh yeah yeah for certain exactly exactly does does like do health insurance policies like for companies and things do they cover diseases like that uh_huh um well that's but that's why they should have started doing stuff before i mean still you know since it's [dormant] for such a long time there's still probably a lot of people you know before the tests ever really came out who are who are [draining] a lot of money right now you know right right right and all these god [fearing] people were like well you know god is trying to kill off all the et cetera et cetera uh yeah boy that's a good one yes no i really don't i did i did like a research kind of thing on aids research and stuff and uh really we're not doing much at all i mean most of what gets raised i mean it's not really federal movement most of what gets raised gets raised by uh uh you know conscious yeah communities and things like that you know like uh san francisco has a a real uh strong aids support group and all that kind of stuff and and uh get they get donations from the community you know they're real and from corporations around the around the city you know for aids research and that kind of thing and uh i think there needs to be more of that sort of on a federal level you know rather than just in the places where it's you know where it's [predominated] so far because it's you know it's bound to spread right yeah i don't know i don't know i i i don't know what the likelihood of that is but i mean you know people really waking up especially with the ultra [conservatives] move our our political system sort of seems to be taking yeah so god that's a good question fish i don't know uh i think i think one of the main things that's really important to spend money on is education not support or or research per se but but education because a lot of people sort of get [drummed] out of the work place and out of society you know kind of like [lepers] would you know and it's really it's really not necessary uh until until the disease reaches its final stage you know becomes really [infectious] and uh i think that would be the most effective support they could get is for other people to understand you know try to understand what they're going through and everything and try to understand that they're not you know they don't they don't have to be just completely cut off from from the community and that and uh i don't know i guess i think that that uh research is i guess the most important just because i you know it it really needs to come to an end you know i don't know i don't know fish what do you think about that subject well [charlie] what do you think should we spend more on aids research or stay the same why do you think we don't spend enough well i agree with you i think we have a lot of talk but not dollars and you know we we our situation where we're faced with people that you know choose a lifestyle that may cause aids but then at the same token there are a lot of people like the children in florida who didn't choose a lifestyle but there was no help for them and i think one of the things we can do as far as the government goes is just to [dispel] some of the myths you know drinking from a water [fountain] will give you aids using a restroom will give you aids but at the same token i feel like heart disease cancer multiple [sclerosis] where do we put those in perspective to aids no i don't and you know i'm like you i do not know what the government is spending on aids yes right yeah well i'm in texas and we have a teacher that died from aids yeah well not my school district but it was in the state of texas and it was because of a transfusion and i think that got a lot more publicity because again it wasn't a minority group and you know we're looking at a situation that hopefully can be controlled it is frightening you know because it could be you or i and then what would we do we'd want help that's true yeah well my mother had a blood transfusion about four years ago and i i was scared to even mention to her that there was an emergency situation we couldn't give she couldn't give her blood and we couldn't go down to give our blood for her and you know there's always the possibility no but the i agree with you uh okay i'll start uh funding i think that in light of the seriousness of it of the fact that that by what uh i think they said by the year two thousand there will be at least five is it five thousand a year or more uh yeah we'll be dying from it and i know uh what is it uh over in africa it's just already in horrendous uh yeah it really is so in light of that i think that that we're probably going to have to increase the funding for research i think that uh i don't know if they have it but it looks like to me that all the countries could go together and have like a joint aids research program i don't know if they already have one of those where everybody could put in their input i don't know i don't know i don't i don't hear about research that much except in the terms of what the united states is doing and the celebrities that's you know the benefits and things that they put on for aids research i do i did hear about uh africa and uh how rampant it is over there and i know uh in talking to i have a relative that works for uh state welfare in oklahoma the aids children that are coming in with it uh it i mean it it's it's tragic it's just absolutely horrible and it's you know it's not just [homosexuals] it's you know [heterosexuals] it's you know the drug users it's innocent people that you know go in for blood transfusions so i mean it's starting to affect everyone i think that probably partly is it i think that it is has received so much more publicity since we have had well known actors athletes everything come down with it i think that uh i do agree with someone when uh magic johnson announced uh there was a uh [spokesperson] for the gay community that came out and said that you know it would not be receiving this much publicity if it wasn't for someone like magic johnson and it would be you know very interesting to see that's right that's right and i think it it i think it makes people more aware that it hits other than just the gay community and uh but i do think that that in light of the in fact that it's going to hit all of us i think what are they saying by the year two thousand i think it's one in three is supposed to have it you know it it because it it is it's spreading so rapidly oh i didn't realize that well it is i know that i i heard another conversation regarding aids the fact that that you know cancer is not receiving this and yet is is cancer growing at such a rapid rate you know it's it's you know and i think that's what is scaring people is that it is reaching such epidemic [proportions] you know where is is cancer on the is it rising as rapidly you know as for instance aids you know uh i don't i don't know either you know it it's just uh and granted i i do think that because of the publicity and because of the people you know getting it and everything i think that that people are more aware of it than you know say if you know someone just dies with cancer which is it's a tragic way i mean you know yes yeah well i don't know i really am not sure what they're spending on aids aids research i get the impression it's a pretty sizeable chunk of money i was always uh uh i'm trying to remember where it was but recently uh somebody on the news said that one of the problems with uh aids research was that each time they find somebody with you know about every fourth or fifth person they've diagnosed with aids has got a new strain they seem to be [mutating] just like about about like the common cold finding a cure for something like that could be several hundred years in the making well yeah the general yeah general human yeah that might help to it might help the awareness part but uh yeah yeah i don't know it you know the uh funding situation seems to be the same for so many of the major diseases so to speak the uh bulk of the money goes to administrative costs which usually means high salaries for people running the show and a major name researcher is involved with it but you know who knows what actually gets done as far as true research yeah it seems everywhere you turn somebody's coming up with it wild part about it nobody seems to want to suggest the idea that doing without is the only safe way of keeping from getting it they figured well you know we all want to be [promiscuous] so they're just running all over the place and yeah no there are people who don't get it from [promiscuity] there's the sorts who get it through blood transfusions yeah that's the [saddest] cases of all of or that woman who died just recently the one who died just recently got it uh from her dentist something like twenty two twenty three years old died of aids she got it because her dentist had it and didn't use any precaution i don't know those are the sad cases southern mississippi yeah um right now as far as the state budget concerning aids awareness i'm not even sure that there is i know there isn't any on the city level or on the county level i'm not sure if the state's got much of anything on the aids awareness i think most of the aids awareness information is more or less coming through private sector um yeah well uh actually i'm i kind of uh well that's like between saying yes and no it uh i think that we're uh spending about what we should but i'm not exactly sure if we're spending it in the right right uh uh location yes right right uh but i think that a lot of people have the attitude that the more money you throw at something the uh better chance you have of [curing] it and that's just not true right i think uh you know that that money needs to be spent on on research but i i think uh you know it should be a a wide spectrum of research and not just uh research on a cure and not not on a research on how to [prolong] life or or uh make the disease any any less traumatic you know i think money i think one once somebody has contracted the disease that's that's uh you know that's unfortunate but let's try to concentrate on on you know let's put resources on making sure nobody else gets it uh right right well i think uh you know there's there's my opinion is there's there's a there is a limited number of resources medical resources available and i think it is foolish to to uh spend most of those uh a a large majority of those resources on people who have aids uh simply because they they uh they need attention right away or or need more attention than somebody who has heart disease or or slow cancer or something i think i don't know i think uh too much money is being spent on on a on sophisticated medical treatment for for people for people who need to be in a hospice program yes well that i mean that fits the country we live in the people oh okay yeah the i mean the people with the [loudest] voice get the money it's not necessarily the people who uh who deserve it the most right although that sounds [heartless] that's that's right well i know just something local to you i i used to live in dallas and so i have some friends there and i know for example uh parkland hospital is spending or at least was when i was there spending a large portion of their their budget on on on basically warehousing aids victims and you know that's you know i i you know my heart goes out to those people who who have the disease but i don't think that we should be spending uh you know that that a majority of the hospitals resources should not go for for uh indigent aids patients have you any thoughts okay well uh i'll tell you i am uh uh impressed with the uh uh amount of spending that's occurred so far as far as aids research and i think that uh proportionately maybe uh so far it's been enough it seems like it seems like uh there's not uh been any money taken away from other necessary medical research uh uh subjects uh you know in in allocated towards the aids research i think that aids research has been a a lot of the funding has not been done by the government a lot of it has been done by private endowment uh but i think the government is doing a good job so far of keeping the uh their portion of the funding up uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh exactly uh it although i was uh i i was shocked at the public uh uh outrage uh that occurred after after i think it was dan quayle who said uh you know who suggested that maybe maybe we you know maybe that is a a possible and and uh uh likely most effective solution is you know abstinence and and yet the a large portion of the community said well that's stupid you know that just shows that you have no interest in in in spending any money on the on the problem and i thought that's not that's not the point at all uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right okay that makes a little bit of sense uh i i hadn't i was not aware that that was uh such a a within the n i h that uh that was much uh start us yeah right because it's just getting worse and worse and worse and worse yeah it already has right although they're doing a whole more than they were five years ago you know they're living longer and and their medicines are a whole lot better so they're not having to go through as many of the as of the other diseases or so it sounds anyway as you know when when all of this first started out they they came down with every single disease that came down the pipes because they had no immune system and they suffered so much worse so you know at at least they're making progress but they've got to get it stopped they've got to find a cure so have i yeah well yeah well especially with you know surgeries all the time it's so scary uh_huh right right yeah and you know well with the time factor it could be up to ten years you know so that's what's so bad and and you may test negative this time but you may test positive you know two weeks down the road so the test is relevant for that very day but not necessarily forever yeah yeah yeah and and like when i went in the hospital you have to sign a paper saying that that you'll allow them to give blood if they if you need it otherwise they won't do the surgery so what do you do i mean yeah you're given the option of signing or not signing but if you say no i don't want the blood then they they may say well then i'm not going to do the surgery right right what what can they do well that's right and they've got to do something about it they can't put it on the back burner and just say well you know the research is going on and doing good enough because it's not there's no cure yet you got it yeah of course i don't have that problem i probably will never have to worry about that oh gosh what a shame slight chance you think ugh oh it is it's like okay show me your papers then we'll talk yeah well they're doing a lot over in europe with it and i know when randy was so sick he was having medications flown in from europe because he couldn't get his hands on it over here and uh uh_huh yeah so he was he had a lot of medication coming in from europe and then he finally was able to get the what is the a z t over here only because he had connections that was not open to the public at that time so i don't know but they've got to do it because it's it's everywhere to everybody of course that's right there's nothing to lose so you may as well do whatever you got to do yeah or if it was one of my kids right no problem yeah yeah a little over two years a little over two years and at that point he was the fifth fifth longest [survivor] but see that was almost four years ago and now they're living a whole lot longer so but he i mean jeez he had everything under the sun he had hepatitis he had [meningitis] he got throat cancer and he never smoked even a grapevine much less a cigarette you know um just you name it he he just oh it was horrible it was horrible yeah and then i had another very dear friend of mine die four months after randy did and uh he didn't know he was sick he'd just you know had a cold that he couldn't shake all winter and kept getting [sicker] and [sicker] and finally went in the hospital and uh he had pneumonia and both lungs were full and he died within about sixteen hours of going to the hospital yeah yeah yeah and his friend had died the year before and they swore it wasn't aids but i know darn good and well it was you know so ooh it's just that that's close to home you're kidding um my gosh all righty uh i guess our topic today is air pollution and we are to just discuss what substances do you think that contribute most to air pollution as well as what society can do to improve the air quality of the atmosphere around us um does your work [entitle] uh anything of environmental along these lines uh_huh right yeah it's uh uh uh well i work in i work in [environmentals] uh projects right now and so the sherman deal is um uh lost a lot of hair over that project uh what we run into um is we have the texas air control board t a c b that send out uh jurisdictions under which we have to uh uh [reply] to and a lot of their rules and regulation aren't real clear so we have our manager of environmental who [assist] the t a c b which is located in austin in writing and hey look what we've done here at t i and uh we are presently uh in receipt of a site permit which will allow us to um uh this is our side allow to have certain emissions up to a certain [tonnage] it's in in in tons per year um and so you know what we do to make contributions so that basically we go and do things like put in high tech [scrubber] systems uh that uh scrub out the n o x and uh v o c's and and [ammonia] [compounds] uh like all the acids to a certain level we are very um aware of the [opacity] which is the [thickness] of a stack emissions so if you don't see anything coming out of a stack the [opacity] is zero or twenty or [thereabouts] and so what we go through is uh if you see it smoking there's a problem and having worked with some of the legal folks very closely uh it becomes a real issue especially when it's smoking and you have to get it fixed el [pronto] as you know they they're allowed to come on site the [federaldes] anytime they want drive through and see and inspect so it's a full time uh everybody has their home phone number type of job um the sherman facility we are still in the closer too but still have a little bit of um [finalization] to do right it's been pitched to the sherman city council with um open arms as well as the public we had open [forum] and and uh uh tom jones our environmental corporate environmental guys handle the project and uh its real uh going real well i think it's matter just a matter of fund funds right now as i understand it uh but it's uh it's something else yeah they're they're they're in the same issue we were hoping on burning a lot of the [effluent] up there uh because the the system is setup where it won't have any emissions you're correct it will have something coming out of the [stackhouse] it was it was human nature but it won't have can any uh any bad stuff so uh i think t i we spend of all the major semiconductor firms we probably put safety and environmental on the [utmost] foremost uh uh first thing we always look at and we probably put more money into the systems and engineering behind the system of any other firm i know of we eat and sleep the stuff everything we do over here and uh it's an interesting job but um possibly uh_huh yeah i'm familiar with that one we have we have stuff that's very interesting uh we have hoods we have [duckwork] and all those type of interesting pieces of equipment where um they have um that we sample and it may have over uh a certain emission levels this is on the solid side and so we take it and uh we can't deep well [inject] something like that because it's a solid and we mix it with concrete and actually um [potash] per se and concrete and then actually put it in the ground but not so not in a hazardous waste location because it's basically a concrete slab it was totally legal but the cost of doing this is astronomical they actually show you what [duckwork] and things and so we were uh very very uh [cognizance] of and aware of all these types of uh expenditures because it could get very expensive but i think we uh you know we do all kinds of things to make the the world a better place to live you know i think some of the folks that aren't aware of it will be surprised at how much effort and energy is put into doing that i really would um i've enjoyed speaking with you this has been an interesting topic uh i was one of the i was responsible for all the planning and engineering over the corporate or in the north building yeah so uh i hope you like your office yeah yeah glad to see y'all taken care of well the uh i think what changed everything and uh is uh y'all were y'all were the only ones that make any money for t i here in the last ten years exactly and that's um when when you start when you start paying your way uh you know jerry takes a different outlook towards you guys i was just exactly i've enjoyed speaking with you see you later bye bye right me i'm in the legal department and um we do have uh a group of attorneys who handle our environmental issues and i don't know too much about the air pollution thing i do know for other types of pollution like the toxic waste and such that t i has to [dispose] of that we normally put in the ground you know we're coming up with a uh a new solution we have been finding a lot of toxic places to dump and we just transport to these places but after awhile it always seems that the um oh the site starts to leak and then you have to clean it up and such but the new idea is to take everything up to sherman and we're going have that you know incineration place up there and dump everything there and supposedly that facility will not generate air pollutants from what i've heard that everything would be in in you know a confined kind of incinerator and just burn it all up and that we won't be polluting the air i'm sure we have to have uh permits you know for that place and that there's you know limits as to what we can uh let you know go into the air oh okay oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh okay uh_huh um um now is that place built or you're still on the [makings] of it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right well i know from some of the sites that we've had uh quite a list of [cites] that have gone bad and you have to clean up and you know the law now is the super fund and anybody who's contributed toxic waste no matter if you were somebody that eventually you know uh damaged the ground or not uh everybody has to contribute and it's been a lot of big bucks when we've gotten uh gotten pulled into these super fund deals to clean it up and you know mega bucks to uh you know take everything out and redo it and you know fill in some other area and um certainly it would to have a better solution like the sherman facility than um just letting it go in the ground because eventually you know it it seems that no matter what they do if they put it in oil drums and then seal it in some kind of cement lined uh dump area it still only in time starts to leak out yeah there there was one site that they cleaned up and then the new place leaked again uh_huh uh_huh um um yeah oh you were oh okay yes yes it's a heck of a lot different and we used to be really embarrassed about the gray metal desk we were about the only place in you know t i that had the gray metal desk people used to come and laugh and go gee i hadn't seen one of those ten fifteen years we finally got a little respect nobody thought of us as a profit center before right right not just overhead you too bye uh robert what do you uh think what substances do you think are the most uh likely causes of air pollution right do you uh do you think that those are bigger contributors than things like acid rain and some of the pollutants that come from uh industrial areas factories and so on i was going to say and and you so you understand smog uh_huh wow my word and that was a few years ago i i wonder if it's any better now because they uh california has such strict rules um about emissions and so on um i i don't know if you heard about the uh recent legislation in uh colorado uh against a power company uh that's actually on indian land i believe but uh it has been ruled against uh regarding air pollution because they think that it's causing terrible smog over the grand canyon and um particularly in the winter months so they it was uh a landmark case because it's unusual to um i can they they were talking about [shutting] it down or if it didn't comply and so on i don't know that the information is one of those wire services kind of news pieces of news you know so it's hard i never did see the full story so i don't know but they said that that it really caused so much smog over uh the grand canyon in the winter months that they couldn't do the uh [piloting] uh you know the [helicopter] trips and that sort of thing which would be horrible because the there's nothing i mean that's such a [spectacle] it would be a shame to ruin it uh what do you think individuals could do or society could do to alleviate this problem right uh_huh you think it's more more to society well i guess i kind of agree there i uh on an individual basis there isn't a lot we can do about a lot of things but if we are concerned about it then we certainly can uh force uh government uh that we elect to deal more seriously with it and i do think that we have a responsibility there i must admit i'm not always real politically active but i do think that um congress has backed down much too much on some of the air pollution standards and it's brought the they uh really listen to the the uh [lobbyist] and uh the car manufacturing companies have uh you know have really pushed they all those restrictions are really too hard we can't we can't quite make that go and they don't and then we still live with air pollution um so i suspect that that's one thing that that as individuals we can do make our voices known perhaps to our legislators but um as a society i think we can do more and that's probably how we ought to do it uh being individually responsible as uh in order to be group responsible right uh_huh i suspect that the that there's going to have to be a lot of pressure uh come to bear on the companies that deal with it and probably the only way that can happen is for um governments to realize that they have to pay if companies don't and uh i don't know how long that that will take sure exactly yeah right right well it's just the same thing with the car uh uh the gasoline now is a wonderful time to smack a fifty cent a gallon tax on gasoline so that we don't uh run into the kind of problems we recently had and yet the government is not going to do that because people are too dependent and they don't want they don't want to pay for it so instead we spend billions of dollars going to war uh you know however it might have had other causes certainly oil was a big factor um and i think that's probably going to happen with with such things as air pollution when we when we get serious about cleaning about our motors in our automobiles then uh then maybe you know we'll have a little bit of help um uh do you have any air pollution in your area oh no your talking about from from the uh the middle middle states that that have more factories and so on yeah we really don't have that either although i think i can tell a difference in i lived in this area for about twenty five years and i think i can tell a difference in the comfort level uh particularly in the summer uh you know when it gets hot and you have the that kind of a pressure from the pockets of air uh usually they say caused by exhaust it seems to me that i'm more uncomfortable and you know my eyes sting more and so on and so on so i suspect that it's it's an ever growing problem well i suspect that we've probably covered everything that we need to here it was nice talking to you so did i bye bye um gee i don't i mean i i guess it's the stuff that comes out of automobile exhaust you know they say in the paper [nitrous] oxides and ozone and all that so i believe them but i'm not a chemist i don't really know um i grew up in los angeles and have felt like i was victimized by air pollution i understand it very well and in fact i was a private pilot there and i can remember very etched etched clearly in my mind uh flying and coming up above the smog layer at about three thousand feet and looking back down and and really being [unbelieving] at what looked like a uh it just looked liked peanut butter thick and brown and so on this was quite a few years ago this was in the nineteen sixties people say that it is somewhat better right um so did it burn coal yeah um yeah yeah uh i don't uh i don't know whether we could do a whole lot as individuals uh maybe just take good care of our cars and make sure we keep our pollution devices clean and all that sort of thing um apart from that i i don't know what we can do as individuals what do you think we can do yeah yeah yeah yeah i guess i'm i'm to the point where i'm cynical enough that i really don't believe anything will happen unless unless there's something economically [justifiable] about it and in the case of air pollution it simply might turn out at some point down the road to be so costly to have to live with air pollution in terms of health problems and everything else that we'll spend the money that's necessary to uh to get rid of the source of it yeah people also have to realize they can't have their cake and eat it so if you don't want to burn coal for power how about nuclear energy well we don't want that either how about investing in the sun well nobody wants to pay twenty five cents a [kilowatt] hour i don't think uh i probably wouldn't mind if it really came down to it oh yes yes yes yes oh certainly yes yeah there's not really a lot here in raleigh uh once in a while we'll get some uh i think it kind of [washes] down from uh from your area linda that's what they that's what they yeah yeah yeah that's what they say but it's it's not it's not very usual and certainly we don't have the eye [stinging] variety that you get in the big cities uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah right i think we've given them about seven minutes according to my watch and i enjoyed the conversation bye oh go ahead i i am glad to talk to an expert i always wanted to know who an expert was uh well there there's two things uh the one i'm interested the most i guess myself uh would be the the freons i mean for air the one i guess that's the one i'm most curious about is how they're going to replace the freons in air conditioning that seemed to be the biggest surprise to me and whether when they replace it you know they're going to really come up with something that is not just as bad yeah i uh was uh you know where they were all concerned about that but that that it seems to be no i heard about it though was that before i didn't see it was that before they actually did that or it was because of that you know right are you you didn't work at t i oh okay where do you work in research or oh okay oh okay yeah yeah uh well i'm kind of a car buff myself i was going to ask you another question but uh i'll do that in a minute i i think that the changing you know from leaded fuel was a tremendous advantage you know not using no no no really oh i'm a car buff too we ought to talk about that one day uh uh i think you can use the you can use high you know the ninety two percent uh ninety two [octane] i don't think you'll have any trouble oh yeah yeah no i i think uh i uh work on my own cars and uh i don't think that's a problem i thought i'm saying i was glad to get rid of leaded gasoline and uh-oh the same thing about the war uh or related to the war on i was watching c n n and i cannot remember what station it was what did you see the advertisements uh where they talked about nuclear war what that would have been like in changing the atmosphere it is so scary that i hope that every one of the government officials saw that because it was just total disaster you know did you see any of those uh i it was it must have been channel thirteen i don't recall although i thought it was on c n n oh i it was a somewhat of a commercial because it i saw it regularly and it showed that and it was really devastating and it would uh how much ash would fall and and how it would essentially literally destroy the world you know oh really yeah there there's probably a lot of natural things uh yeah uh it i guess it's got to be really i don't know i don't know if it's air pollution it's uh it's dust pollution whether it's natural or not i don't know yeah oh yeah well i live in arlington and there there there are no buses i mean there there is the only school bus the only buses you see are school buses so well i know it it's uh you know the car is we have this big romance with the car but uh i think people are would be interested if you had one i mean yeah yeah yeah yeah well you said you were car buff uh i think that uh all of us could use one electric car right now i mean today because i think uh you said people drive forty miles and fifty whatever yeah when you go to trips and all you can have one gasoline car but i think we all could in a family say have an electric car where my one of my daughters or my wife my wife she could use one now if they had one you know because they she don't even she doesn't put fifty miles a day on the car no no you're right i i have seen them but uh they have a battery car uh i went to the auto show this past week and they did not [endorse] now that i think of it and i was so interested in the auto show i didn't think to ask anybody there were no electric cars i was surprised but now that you just mentioned that yeah i i think uh there could be a lot of i people close this is really we're we're nine years away or less i guess from the next century and i think yeah they've got a they've got a area over in the s m building too which is uh but it's a solar uh it's for uh [gots] some money from a power company and it's probably more [generating] power for you know uh electricity a hundred and twenty [volt] or whatever no i'm actually in the south building but uh i was uh i'm the facility so i've been in all most of the buildings anyway oh yeah well the the solar area is right right around from the auditorium now and it they've got several different uh areas where they're called solar lab it's right there on the first floor you look walk by there yeah but the solar project you know t i's been into it for years and i guess it's just not uh economical yet because of the other fuels yeah i've seen some i think then again i'm surprised now i didn't think they'd asked anybody when i was in the auto show there was nothing uh and there was no place for air pollution or companies or anyone there it was just pure automobiles there huh i didn't see did you go oh uh i was uh quite impressed with all the cars you know the engines are so much smaller now and everything and they're they all have brand new engines even general motors uh very few only the [caprice] and them and the cadillac had eight uh the old v eights they're all brand new engines uh of course they're burning gasoline of course yeah and uh whether you know that's one way you know uh uh on air pollution i i i don't know if the automobiles are the biggest contributor or not really they've got catalytic converters everyone seem to have gone to that whether they last uh and do a good job and now that they the inspection systems are analyzing that uh well what do you think if you're in that you know if you're concerned about that i mean if you're you're you're knowledgeable on that oh well i'm not an expert i just had a little i've i've seen a little pollution in my time it's uh the the chemicals we were dealing with were uh a [raid] [repellent] and uh that was really quite dangerous i'm not certain that that was that that's really a pollution issue i think pollution issue is is uh is is the argument over over people catching uh things like uh respiratory disease well the you know that that's another [arguable] issue and i i've seen the uh uh uh assuming you can buy into global warming i well did you see carl [sagan] on sixty minutes on uh when he was talking about when if if the if the war started in in kuwait and they'd set those uh all uh it was it was it was interesting but uh i'm just curious what he has to say now that they've got them all lit yes and his argument was uh was that that you would see a uh a year with no summer which actually happened and it it yes it actually happened uh it was a [volcano] [erupted] and it was high enough up but uh they had some people from the national [meteorological] center i think it was which is the national anyway research people and they said that the uh that the pollution would not go high enough and it's going to be interesting to see if carl [sagan] and his billions and billions of stars may have once made a mistake but the the the general the opinion among among the uh [meteorologists] at uh i'm uh member of the american [meteorological] society and yeah i do but i'm uh i i did that in my no i'm a planner a production planner but i i i'm in the active reserves as a [weatherman] so uh i i keep up from time to time but what the the argument is that uh that uh maybe there isn't global warming and maybe there is but um if there is uh we probably could do something about it now and if there isn't if there isn't and we do some the right things i think how do you feel about about all this smog and stuff on cars well do you have an older car i i have been working on an older car but it yeah well i'm restoring one i'm not having any problem it's a seventy and the but did you have another you said you had another uh no i didn't see that that i know that the uh that's well that they called nuclear winner and and i suppose that's that's the ultimate uh pollution problem well it well the [chernobyl] accident uh actually um because the circulation budget as high as it went uh covered uh a fairly remarkable amount they did some [tracers] and they i i think it's drawn in uh i think gets in there i can't think of the other trace but i saw a a presentation on on that and they it went quite a long ways but i i i guess i can be a little sympathetic but you know there's some argument that in in in the blue grass of kentucky that the [smoky] mountains that that's the uh the pine trees giving off pollution and but the but when you when you get up in the morning in in dallas and and see all that haze from west texas is that is that pollution well it that's the thing is that i think i think dallas really does have a problem in this the idea if we could get some cleaner fuel burning fuel the problem is is it's like los angeles people don't people don't want to use mass transit so but who wants to who wants to um ride a bus well my boss drives forty miles one way each day and one of the guys that works with me drives forty five miles and and they don't think it well i guess they do think something of it but um not even to you know you consider how much um but then you get into all these issues of of whether it it's the types of pollution and what it's doing to your lungs and are we going to die of of respiratory so we all move out of the out of downtown so we get away from the the smog my my wife grew up in southern california and they moved out to the valley before los angeles uh when the valley was clean and now the valley is not and so people move out one more valley and yes yes well do general motors apparently has one that they're they're testing i think it's no it's alcohol vehicles that they're testing but they suppose huh well the road and track was talking about that this apparently general motors has some uh they apparently think they're close well there's still a lot of research i was over in in the research lab a couple i guess it's been about a month ago and saw this research it was a little light that says solar solar powered research yeah well do you work in that c building oh i'm at oh well i'm in i'm in the c building been there for all my life huh well that's been a i know the focal plain [array] is they were taking space to a long time well the problem is that gas at a dollar a gallon you know who wants to yeah i mean we want to not pollute but uh at a dollar a gallon uh it's hard to beat the amount of energy you get from uh well i thought i saw an ad for volkswagen that had an alcohol they had one with spots on it and something i didn't go but it was showing they i mean uh an article no i didn't i didn't go so i they've done a lot well well they uh it's interesting though because my cars are older and so i didn't have to if you live in dallas county you have to have your have to have it checked and it's i had a friend with a [fiero] that uh they tried and tried and tried and had all kinds of terrible getting that [pinned] and so apparently well i um i haven't really lived in a lot of big cities i mean i'm living in dallas now plano is outside of dallas but um so i don't really have a lot of experience with air pollution but i know when i lived down in houston on the outskirts of houston there were some towns like pasadena that had oil refineries and um if you would drive by there like on your way to the beach or something there would just be dumping this huge amounts of smoke into the air and it always smelled really bad we know that that was really really really bad for the atmosphere what have you got up there huh_uh huh_uh oh no sure yeah it's just i mean it's just so bad that there is just so much going into the air and and the little bit you say that there putting in here and there and everywhere it all adds up plus all the problems in the middle east with all that smoke and yeah so it's just um why are we doing this to ourselves i just don't know but um i you know what really amazes me about like that pasadena area and the oil refineries is that there would be houses and people living just really close to it i mean between the freeway and the oil [refinery] you would see a neighborhood and you just thought well it's obvious that there's a lot going up in the air there and what comes up must come down yes and and how if they have all of those um [toxicity] i mean it there's signs around saying how dangerous it is and here you are living that just doesn't make too much sense huh_uh huh_uh huh_uh huh_uh huh_uh well um individual companies and things are so selfish and their desires to save a few dollars and and that they don't care about the environmental impact that they make yes huh_uh well have you ever visited um like los angeles or any place that's ever it's kind of known that it has uh pollution in it's air huh_uh huh_uh huh_uh huh_uh huh_uh that's so awful well what about in new york i guess you've gone that way maybe pretty funny well i've been to new york i have relatives that direction we have it's um where you are is it close to [phoenixville] pennsylvania because i have family there and oh huh_uh it's pretty neat that's beautiful country up that way i know it's um very lush and pretty up in the back in the east it's really well i'm thirty one seems kind of old to me huh_uh huh_uh yes that's really true and we all you know need to be willing to help pay a little bit like i've heard some people uh [grumble] about their uh cars passing their emission tests and things and how they've had to how it's more expensive and things and i thought well it's so much better huh_uh oh you don't huh_uh huh_uh well i really think it must i think every i mean well think about how many automobiles there are and each is putting out like we have a car an older one of our cars is an older car and every time you start it from the tail pipe it makes a black spot on the cement and you know that that is a sign yeah and that's all cars are doing that and it's really polluting the air huh_uh and it's also it's causing of lot of the real terrible suffering like cancer and things we sure wouldn't want so much more people suffering from that huh_uh huh_uh huh_uh pretty sad oh no huh_uh huh_uh no no it's scary it's scary huh_uh it's really awful well i've really enjoyed the conversation it's helped me to think more about some issues that i need to be thinking more about huh_uh and it's instead of waiting until it directly affects me like you say it's important to be involved ahead of time well you have a good day thank you bye bye huh_uh huh_uh huh_uh huh_uh well i i live out in the country so that part is good uh we're maybe one hundred miles from pittsburgh which has a lot of pollution from their plants and right now in our area were fighting against a toxic waste incinerator and uh it won't be too for from where we live and everybody really has been you know fighting against it because we we do not want it well we don't want one any place we would like the uh industry to do more to take care of the waste products before they turn to incineration because we feel that uh the small percentage that they're going to be putting into the air is too much you know huh_uh huh_uh oh that has to be terrible over there huh_uh huh_uh yeah huh_uh yeah yeah breathing it we're breathing it all the time huh_uh no and i figure we're paying to take care of this toxic waste no matter who does it so and they have shown some of the industries have been real good at uh uh doing their part in uh reducing the amount that they have uh they've reused some of it uh it can be recycled a lot of their things and that they've shown that it uh to begin with apparently it does cost more but once they get started it's really it saves them money in the end and it cuts down on the end product that has to be dealt with some other way and if they would all that's what that's what we want done is we want industry to take you know more responsibility in taking care of it huh_uh huh_uh they're greedy it's money is what is it's it's the money they're making fantastic amounts on these things and uh even the incinerator the money and the income that they're going to make off this is you know just astronomical we've never been we went as far as as uh like las vegas and yellow stone park we did go we should have gone the whole way over but we didn't but i understand that we have an aunt that lives out there and when she was visiting here she would look up at the stars and she said how wonderful it was to be able to look into the sky and see some of the things that she saw she said they couldn't see those things out there because of the smog and everything no never been in new york i don't want to go there have you been there oh um no i never heard of that one we're near pittsburgh clarion university it's it's kind of northwest part of pennsylvania huh_uh you sound very young are you a young person thirty one you're you're young no you're young you have a lot of life yet and and these we have some people who say well this isn't going to affect me this air pollution uh older people or they think they're far enough away from something that it's and they don't realize these things are going to affect everybody and if you're older it's not going to affect you that way you have grandchildren you have children uh nieces nephews whatever friends uh everybody is going to be affected by it huh_uh huh_uh they say it has really made a difference though now see we don't have that here yet no we don't have that testing in that down here yet but they i have read that that that it has really helped where the problem is greater where the population is greater and that it has made a difference huh_uh huh_uh huh_uh huh_uh huh_uh something is coming out yeah yeah yeah if you have to put a price on it which is more valuable life or paying a little more huh_uh huh_uh huh_uh yeah and like i said i think you have to pay for it no matter what you do you with it because it's industry we're paying industry to make the products and we're helping pay for there making these end products that are toxic waste then we have to pay for them to pay somebody to carry it away someplace then they put it in the dump some place and they find out well this dump doesn't work so we have to clean this up and move it someplace else we end up paying for it again now we're going to end up paying for it again by having it burned in these large [incinerators] and we're paying to have our air polluted and our water streams polluted or the where they want to put the one area they want to put the incinerator is right in the middle of the clarion the two water sheds that feed clarion river and you know it just boggles our mind that they can consider even putting it there because if that water gets contaminated it will go on down to pittsburgh it will you know it affects so many people and it's just hard to think that they could allow them to do things like this huh_uh it really is it is really a concern so huh_uh well you too huh_uh bye okay uh_huh uh i don't know there's a lot of air pollution um i think industries and companies provide a lot of it and with uh i guess with the oil burning over in kuwait and stuff that would have a lot of air pollution in it um i'm north of pittsburgh so yeah yeah um we have a couple we have like a steel mill and a couple refineries and stuff and i know there's a lot of air pollution going in there and like they they get fined whenever they do the air pollution but the fine is nothing you know it's like nothing to them yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh my god uh_huh uh yeah but i don't know what they can do to really prevent it you know like how what can they do about the oil burning over in kuwait what you know i mean they fine the industries but you know that doesn't seem to stop them there i don't know what else they can do uh_huh yeah i i yeah i just don't understand you know what else anyone can do about it i don't think it's something that people really think about either you know it's i mean it it should probably be a big issue you know because it's it's doing a lot of damage but i it's something you know i don't think many people really think about it because it's nothing they i don't think we really have too much control over it uh_huh uh_huh yeah exactly well i really don't know too much else about it uh_huh yeah yeah we have tried i mean you know and um i i know where you know where a couple of the mills that have i know they put things on their stacks you know to filter the smoke and do all kinds of things but i mean every now and then it breaks you know and and you just have smoke going out into the air for a day or two until you can get it fixed and so so you know it's something we we have tried to help yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah okay well uh_huh it's been nice talking to you okay bye bye well discussing air pollution today i guess um uh well give me your first [impressions] yeah uh_huh uh puts a whole yeah gets a whole new picture to what real air pollution can be but uh that stuff going on over there what what uh what part of pennsylvania are you in okay okay so it's it's amazing too you know with that with the oil wells burning over there that's the exact same stuff that's coming out of cars every day just in uh just in a little different grade i guess but uh in dallas we've got we've just uh brought in a whole new set of requirements on inspections and things like that for cars because uh people just don't use mass transit and stuff in dallas everybody loves their car and you see an awful lot of uh one person vehicles on the road on during rush hours that seems to be our biggest problem down here um you know there's uh there's a lot of industry around but uh it's not it's any pollution that industry's dumping around here is not going into the air it's typically water type situation uh_huh yeah it's it's like like two hours of output or something like that that's true that's true yeah i a uh i grew up in south dakota so i was never i was never exposed to anything of of the of the sort um there were always e p a people and what not were always telling us that uh farm chemicals and what not were destroying our water system and all that but we just we just never saw the results there was there was dust in the air during planting seasons and what not but that that was all we ever saw and then five years ago i moved to dallas and i suddenly started to understand what burning eyes and all that stuff is about that i'd always heard about it uh it's it gets it's real depressing in the morning sometime you can tell if it's a good day or a bad day by uh how far out from downtown uh you can be on the road and still not see it and uh yeah i mean it's not i don't think dallas is considered uh a real bad place for air pollution but you you can tell you can tell the differences in the days when it's when the haze is kind of [yellowish] gray instead of just being a a foggy [misty] color and uh it it's a little it's a little disappointing sometimes you start to realize what you're breathing right right it it's that there really isn't a whole lot it's one of those uh it's one of those things that if they do a little bit and uh and you know every little bit does help i do believe that um but i also believe that the earth is a kind of a self regulating system and uh it will clean itself up eventually it the whole idea is not to not to push the limit too hard i guess let the you know let the natural natural systems take care of the problem as much as possible uh_huh right and it's one of those things it it's so hard to measure what what the damage is it's kind of like oh i guess it's kind of like kind of like cigarette smoking you know it it could go on for years and years until they start to see some results and people can actually actually say yeah it's it's it's doing doing some damage and something's got to be done um there's you know there's a lot of things like that it you can uh you can pound on something for a long time before it finally breaks but until it breaks you don't really know that there you were doing anything to it but uh yeah well that's that's i think we both agree it's it's one of those deals that uh i just think there's a lot of other problems right now and uh we've done a lot to take care of it and uh oh sure sure oh there's no doubt about it i don't know if you ever happened to see some of the like twenty twenty and what not about [rumania] and east germany when they first got pictures out of there about how some of their systems had been running for twenty and thirty years and uh you know they had absolutely no regulations no controls whatsoever and they had destroyed entire forests and what not just because the air was so polluted that's that's the kind of things that uh you don't see in this country and that's that's why i think that you know it's i don't know if you can ever do enough but uh i think it's all relative to the to the time and place and i think right now it's it's pretty much under control all righty well you bet bye so well this is an appropriate topic the day after earth day so um well what do you think is uh the pollutants the main pollutants in the air yeah well that's me too after um on channel thirteen uh they had some some programs the day before and i'm not sure that about yesterday we didn't really watch it too much yesterday but the day before they had a lot of programs about the environment and you know how we're affecting the earth and things by what we do as the people and and they mentioned sulfur and carbon dioxide a lot and that actually um as our population increases and you know our of course our our cars you know our number of cars increase per the population that's the problem but also like you said the industry pollution and you know they're they're regulation that's placed on them is i mean it's better than it used to be but it's incredible that they still don't have you know they don't they're not made to regulate the amount of pollutants that they put into the air you know i i just i can't stand that and i know for a fact that they get away with a lot that you know they're supposed to be regulated because we have a we have a plant i don't know about t i but we have a plant uh a pillsbury plant in in a town [adjacent] to ours and i know people that work there that of course you wouldn't think pillsbury would put out certain chemicals but they put out toxic chemicals there just in some of the um what they do uh to uh make their dough and to clean out the flour and stuff like that yeah i mean it's incredible and um they said that they're you know they have a little creek that runs by them and some of the people that work there have told me that when they have [inspectors] coming they you know shut down everything and they clean up their act but on a normal basis that they're that they're dumping things that they're not supposed to be dumping and i'm like if they're getting away with it can you imagine that's a that's a pillsbury plant i can't imagine plants yeah they have chemicals that they use to [refine] their [flours] with and stuff you know to to break the [flours] down and then they they also do testing there and i don't you know when you consider you know it's probably not radioactive but toxic can be can be anything that's uh classified that can damage the earth so there could be a lot of things that they could put you know that chemical wise that they use to uh that they are testing with that they're dumping yeah yeah i don't think they do the packaging at this plant but they do they do a lot of research and they do um they do do a lot of the [refining] up there or i'm not really what's it called when you do flour i'm not yeah yeah uh_huh yeah but i mean you think about it it you know it's probably a lot easier to detect things that go into the ground than it is maybe to just i'm not really sure but i would think it would be easier to detect those things because you could detect them down or stream or such or you can you can you know do uh testing on the ground itself at that point but when they pollute into the air and you've got you know and you've got movement through the air it's going to move a lot of that off so i don't see you know how they can do some of the unless it just hangs there like in places where it's a lot of pollution you know like in los angeles or or the bigger cities where it it tends to get stuck there you know that you have a lot more particles in the air you know per per uh per particles in the surrounding community because it's not moved away but um uh_huh yeah well i know out in some i'm not sure i can't remember the name of the county it's it's where [stillwater] is or sweet no i'm not sure i know it i think it's uh i know we have a piece property there it's called [dublin] it's in [dublin] texas i'm not really sure what the county it's stephen no [stephenville] okay where [stephenville's] at they've had a lot of problems because they've um introduced a lot of [dairies] there so they have a lot of cattle in the area i mean they've got like per per uh per lot you know they've got like a lot of head of cattle because [dairies] they don't it's not like it was a big ranch where they let the cow roam around free they've got to have them there to be able to milk them and they and i read in this article i couldn't believe it where you know like one cow produces like a day produces like a hundred or so pounds of manure one cow i was like my god and they and this thing says that that you know people think well cow manure is good for fertilizer but when you get that much manure it says it becomes a real problem because it's not it's not when you know you buy cow manure at the store they've added stuff to it and they've added [humus] and stuff that breaks it down and and this and this article said that they've got a real problem that um you've got toxins and and uh bacteria in the manure that is what it's doing is it's going through uh they don't have a very deep um you know they're water they're natural water uh i forget what that's called with you know it's like a spring spring water but it's below the surface it's not very far down and all this stuff is [seeping] through to the water and they're like they're afraid that you know within a certain amount of years that it's they're they're water in that town will be totally polluted and they won't be able to have any drinking water because they will have um polluted completely polluted so that they're you know there's too many toxins and [bacterial] growth and i'm like my god you know just from that one you know just from them introducing dairy farms in that one county no not when you figure i didn't realize a cow one cow produces that much manure and they were talking like thousands of cows you know they were talking thousands cows in one little tiny area you well they are evidently but um i mean evidently a normal cow produces that much too but they're just so spread out on ranches and stuff that it's not you know a problem but when they get them in these tiny little areas you know and they've got a real big problem and they they said that that what they were doing was scraping it with [bulldozers] and stuff and taking it to uh these like ponds that they had to filter it with but the ponds because they've had so much rain in the past few years they just overflow and they overflow into the the creeks and stuff in the area so that just creates you know there there's and oh it was just disgusting it said the creeks will foam people people stand outside their houses and their watch the creeks foam brown and all and i'm just like oh my gosh and the smell is really bad they yeah but i i don't know it really frightens me though as far as the when you think about the you know thinking of just air pollution itself and then and channel thirteen they're really um [emphasizing] the problem with acid rain you know if we if we keep putting that stuff into the air and and you know if we keep creating the problem and not doing anything about it that it's really going to be a problem for um just the the earth you know what the earth is receiving back you know because how can you tell where it's going to come down at yeah the rain forest and all yeah well they do because what is it carbon dioxide they use that where we can't [synthesize] it and they're [synthesizing] it for us yeah yeah i think we just have to i don't know personally you know i suppose you know if you just make sure your car is is working properly and you know they're nowadays they have the emission controls on them but uh i think the only the main thing is just keep on the your legislators back you know as far as seems like they've only just really started as far as the environment saying okay we're really going to get involved it it's really becoming a problem by the year two thousand there will what what are we going to have what kind of results are we going to have for the environment and and what will we right i have trouble with the chemical plants and things like that i just uh i think they put off so much and they're not regulated enough uh_huh yeah right uh_huh no really huh oh right i wouldn't have thought that pillsbury could would the i mean or even had you know well those chemicals would not yeah right yeah right you know like in in packaging and uh you know just goodness yeah yeah uh only thing i can think is [bleaching] but i mean i i don't know what's how they do the flour but um we we're on the southwest side of houston we don't have that much as far as uh [aiming] in the plants over on this uh the east side does we've got [imperial] sugar but uh and they're you know they're right there on the creek also and uh they've been there for years and uh yeah uh_huh uh_huh right yeah uh_huh i know that i worry every now and then we're still on a well water we're not on city water and i think well what if somebody's dumped something back there in the and no one knows about it and you know it [sinked] in through the ground and all that yeah uh_huh oh okay okay uh_huh yeah right uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh oh it will uh_huh yeah and the right right yeah and the the ground will filter some of it but not all of it these are well fed these are good grief these are well fed cows uh uh_huh right uh_huh yeah oh oh now that's bad oh i was going to say the air pollution alone there just from a hundred pounds of cow manure was going to be bad uh_huh yeah right right and then cutting the trees you know that bothers me as far as you know the yes uh we've been wanting to well not me but uh it's been or suggested that we cut a few of the trees down here i'm like no you know for what's cut down here you know more will be cut down someplace else and it will just take that longer to grow back and trees help so that uh i don't uh_huh right right believe me it's just so much better so uh yeah i knew i think there's lots that be that could be done to to improve how things are done now uh_huh uh_huh right all right do you have a bunch of factories and stuff out there the uh oh you mean for like smog and stuff huh uh_huh huh what do you think of that uh the greenhouse effect that's going on yeah that's causing the hole in the ozone uh_huh it it is scary though isn't it right well all right north carolina that's up there by kentucky isn't it uh_huh okay okay well kentucky's next to virginia i'm pretty sure well i'm from kentucky i should know but i don't i'm sorry but kentucky we use to have severe i mean just real cold cold winters and we'd have three and four feet of snow course here in texas they don't have snow they don't know what snow is they freak out when there's snow on the ground oh amarillo well that's close to here how long have you been in raleigh well how old are you okay well we're the same age yeah i forget my age all the time so that's okay it's i think it's just something that goes with the territory but to me texas see and kentucky we had to have ice on the ground for them to close school okay in texas i'm serious if it gets cold and it looks like it's going to rain i i swear they close everything down i just laugh i mean i do they get i mean and traffic [slows] down to nothing oh well no i'm from the north that's why i said we in kentucky we i don't know you just get used to the weather and of course the people down in south they they're not used to cold weather and stuff and uh it just i don't know i just laugh every time they have a every time they have snow on the ground everything's closed up and you know you can have snow on the ground and not be slick on the road but uh no not really i mean not to see it now of course there's you know t i is here oscar mayer and there is a few factories but i don't see much pollution going on uh_huh well see they have that um what is it a test or something like that they call it and uh that's supposed to cut down on it yeah school buses and the commercial buses yeah well they're burning that diesel fuel is what it is and uh it it gets bad uh_huh well that's a good idea well uh the you know pregnant women aren't supposed to walk along a highway because of that smoke fumes when i was pregnant with my first little boy i had read it because back then because i was walking back and forth well not back and forth i was walking home from uh the college i was going to in kentucky and i was having to walk along the highway it was just one day a week but it was in i i have no sense of smell so i couldn't smell this but it would make me sick and i'd be real tired anyway just from walking along the highway but yeah it's yeah all the exhaust uh well that was four years ago too it's probably a lot worse now yeah uh_huh do you uh smoke yeah it's kind of yeah because you do smoke one a day um uh for the air pollution huh but they i don't hear much about it down here course texas we don't have a bunch of pollution but too we've got that air coming in off the coast and you know it'd blow it up north so maybe that's part of the reason it's not so bad down here but no it would seem like it would be the same way in on the california coastline wouldn't it uh_huh uh_huh but they usually have that everywhere because of the humidity especially i think they do that for most everybody especially it's usually for the young children and the older the old people older old people it is oh oh well this is pretty wooded area down here so in a lot of parts yeah i know texas is supposed to be flat but they've got you know down by the denison dam there's a lot of uh they do they live close then in durant oklahoma you go where uh you go to visit them oh yeah well down by lake texoma there's a bunch of wooded area this but but kentucky's beautiful they've got trees and trees are supposed to you know [purify] you know what the best indoor [purifying] plant is for smoke and stuff it's a [philodendron] it's supposed to filter the air for you in your home i had one my husband bought it for me when my daughter was born three months four months ago yeah i do yeah i do yeah i did i couldn't make myself quit i did cut down a lot i got i i've got one vice and smoke is smoking is it i don't i don't drink and i try not to [cuss] and i do i do very little and smoking i just i got in the habit of it when i was about thirteen yeah we're down here at the bible belt aren't we uh i wasn't saved until i got down here and people down here are just there's so many christians and it's so different from kentucky but um i worked at t i for a while but then my brother in law works there and he got me into it how'd you get into it well it's fun i like talking to new people and i half the time well a couple of times i've been interrupted by my little girl i've had to hang up and stuff but i enjoy it i talked to people from well what carolina now up in uh boston and new york well boston is new york isn't it no boston massachusetts but i've talked to people in new york but i've talked to a lot of people in texas because i guess it's because t i down here with boston i love their accent i do i love the boston accent i met a girl from boston one time my husband was in the service so we went from kentucky to louisiana down here to texas and his family's down here we're out of the service now yeah he got out of it his unit right after panama we went to he went to panama when noriega was doing all that and uh he um we've got quite a few actually what we're more concerned with is the inner pollution in the city um we've actually had some warnings in uh raleigh uh on air pollution uh_huh because of there so many cars and we have a belt line around raleigh where we're trying to [divert] traffic and um you know it's still it's just surrounding the city and you can actually see it there's a couple of uh tall buildings in raleigh and and you can actually you know they're [blurred] they're even dark and what it is is the pollution well i guess that's the [fluorocarbons] and uh uh_huh yeah that's very serious i mean we can we're even feeling the effects of the weather from uh uh the shift in the jet stream oh yeah i mean uh the last two uh years our winters have been absolutely nothing i mean maybe one snow kentucky uh north carolina is all the way on the east coast it's further west than georgia it's uh right below virginia uh_huh uh_huh originally i'm from texas so i mean amarillo so uh uh_huh yeah real close um i've been out of texas about ten years oh twenty uh seven i almost forgot my age oh really um uh_huh actually they've been doing the same thing here it's you know it's kind of funny they um i guess [northerners] are different but even uh north [carolinians] they don't know how to handle cold weather uh_huh that's true do you all have much pollution there uh_huh well you know what irks me is these cars that are driving down the road and you have that black smoke coming from their tail pipe uh_huh well supposedly that's supposed to catch it but i'll tell you what and even these buses oh lord it real bad these buses in raleigh oh yeah i mean school buses are notorious oh yeah yeah well you know what they've started doing is is instead of the tail pipes being at the bottom of those buses they've started putting them up at the top and that way it gets above um other cars on the road and uh it really does make a difference although it it settles you know even if it's at the top and it's a lot of black smoke coming out it still settles and and you know if you're going to be jogging on the side of the road that's that's even more miserable i would i'd have to go out to the country to jog no i didn't know that uh_huh um uh_huh golly that's that's bad oh i'm sure well they um you can really feel it you know in your breathing even normal people and if you're older um i mean you can really deplete your [oxygen] and it'll you know pass out and it's you know it's killed several people um actually i'm a very i just smoke one in the evening if that so i'm a very very light smoker it was kind of funny they were doing some uh ozone testing and uh the e p a and they were just screening some candidates and i don't think i'd ever you know do that but they uh asked me if i was a smoker and i didn't fit into the [smoker's] category and i didn't fit into the [nonsmoker's] category um it was you know i was just one of those yeah in between people so that kind of threw them off but they're doing a lot of research here uh the e p a for ozone and oh yeah all that they're they're real big into it they've got research triangle park here and they're you know they're just doing a lot of uh lot of stuff huh_uh oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh gosh i think i would hate to live in california the smog there i mean i can't believe they have warnings here which it it's mainly just when it gets real real hot really well that's kind of good to know because i thought lord i thought i lived in a halfway decent area um uh_huh well you ought to come to north carolina it's a big change yeah there was no trees where i was from in amarillo and here they've got the mountains the beach the trees you know it's they've got streams rivers ponds it's really pretty here is it uh_huh sherman and denison do you know my grandparents live in durant yeah yeah real close i go there yeah oh uh_huh yeah we used to go fishing in lake texoma huh_uh oh really well i'm going to have to get some uh_huh do you smoke do you did you smoke when you when you were pregnant well i mean i can understand that actually well yeah well one thing i miss is uh is the people from texas are are you know i miss their morals their values and everything it's uh uh_huh how'd you get involved in this research oh i see huh um i i was taking a voice i o class and um and actually doing some research and so they told me about this project uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh no boston's above uh_huh yeah i've talked to a lot of people in texas i had one call actually from charlotte north carolina and virginia and um i can't remember where all from up north like you said i think one was from boston uh_huh uh_huh oh i bet you're glad uh_huh oh gosh um what do you think the major cause of air pollution or at least in the boston areas uh_huh yeah yeah um that isn't the same in the washington area because we don't have any major um industry except for uh government and services and the the transportation situation is such that uh all the car pollution is is absolutely awful um also the worth of the [hub] of three [airports] in this general area there is uh national dulles and then uh baltimore washington and it interestingly some of the information i've been reading [indicates] that the amount of air pollution from uh uh airplanes is extraordinary yeah and that's always something that you know you just don't real you don't think about but the uh apparently the air pollution and the fact that it's delivered right up in high [altitudes] is a very significant factor yeah yeah uh_huh society has especially recently i mean you know what it's like here yeah yeah yeah we just had the that's right so solutions to this would be i i you know improved well i guess the the to me the first thing is i wish society would get as upset about this as you do get getting people upset about animal rights i mean this is so so basic it's human rights in the sense but uh in terms of demanding it's just not caused but demanding that uh we can spend so much money on certain things but that research really be directed toward um improvement of polluting vehicles and not just cars but also buses um planes that something can be done i i can't imagine that well if we can't send people to the moon that we can't improve these things converter yeah uh_huh uh_huh and that for buses that's right well and also to make it economically feasible uh and also in buses i don't know if you ever got caught in a traffic jam behind a bus that you know uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah but even of course in the longer term just to get away from fossil fuels i mean i'm i'm thinking of research in that direction rather than we we've taken the intermediate step but i don't think fossil fuels are the answer uh_huh yes i yeah yeah you don't throw the baby out with the bath water and condemning nuclear use yeah yeah but with the pollution issue uh fossil fuel is not the way to go anyway uh so you've to you've got to look elsewhere so uh but it is something that's a little frightening and in fact well i within our family we have said my husband i have two sons uh well one is already in college in new england and the other will be going in september and we just feel that when we leave uh this area we're going north not south uh i like the mentality north and i also like the [fresher] air up there so i mean that's the way we will be going but um so i i'd be interested in having spoken with somebody also from the far west on this issue to see how they their attitudes are uh_huh uh_huh the smog and yeah uh_huh yeah i mean even california was notorious for its smog years ago before it even was an issue out here well that that's that's that's personal air pollution yes yes yeah well i i definitely advance that well listen i enjoyed speaking with you and let's hope some there are other people that feel the same way you're welcome bye bye well the the the major cause it seems up here is i live right on the ocean so it's kind of hard for me to tell what would happen if i lived in some of the valleys inland but the major cause here and we always seem to and it seems to be [validated] by the press is the car pollution we don't have too much industrial pollution uh car pollution seems to be the one and only thing that that i can really put my finger on here is that so i didn't know that well most people talk about the noise pollution from airplanes rather than the air pollution yeah i would think so you know uh i guess it talked about all types of pollution i happen to just read something the other day at least in the boston paper there were three things that that come to note one is that the carbon [fluorides] that are uh being released into the atmosphere are causing even a larger hole in the southern hemisphere in the ozone layer and again and now they've located another one or rather an expanding one in the northern hemisphere so so i'm quite concerned i don't think it's involved any longer with with uh hair sprays or those no i think it's now is what uh from what i understand it's air conditioning units and and we certainly turned into an air conditioned society yeah i know in florida there's no place you go that isn't air conditioned and i do quite a bit of business in washington and oh yeah it's quite is is the it's really out of the norm not to find something that isn't air conditioned and and i guess refrigerators are the same way they release that yeah well yeah well i i yeah no i think that it can be done simply because uh uh we've we've every car now in america that's been produced for the past fifteen years has what they call a catalytic converter and no lead gas was came to the pumps and and that's been done there's the lead pollution has that problem essentially i guess because it was at crisis [proportions] was was [licked] and i think that there are there are solutions certainly we don't even need a need a research anymore it's just a matter of passing the law and passing the law depends on how heavy the car industry the automobile lobby is that's right that's right oh yeah well that that the the smell is awful and but you know i was reading the other day not to go on with this but that diesel fumes actually have less pollutants in them than gasoline fumes so i guess you're better off sitting behind a bus than a car although i can never i could never uh really rationalize that while i was sitting there yeah well we you know up here in new england uh where i've right close to where i live is the [seabrook] nucleus site which is practically a you know [guerilla] war up here went on for years uh my daughters [marched] in the uh uh against the [seabrook] and i kind of uh my feelings were that we needed this bridge to to uh to jump from whatever it was going to be from fossil fuel to whatever it was going to be yeah unfortunately though i think the oil companies have [lied] to us for years so we really don't know whether there's enough fossil fuel left or there isn't and uh and uh no yeah yeah yes that's right yeah well since since texas and louisiana and uh california that in that [ranking] order the worst pollutants in america i mean i read that the other day i mean louisiana for a small state it was amazing but it's the industrial pollution i should imagine and california seems to be taking steps i mean you you read about the the fairly fairly stiff laws they put in on cars now they're they're enforcing but uh again uh that didn't occur without a crisis nothing will occur i guess without a crisis yeah exactly exactly well the greatest thing that happened to pollution in the last couple of years as far as i'm concerned is the no smoking rules on airplanes and in restaurants and it it really is a pleasure for me although i guess smokers don't think that but that to me was pollution that was its most personal personal uh pollution that i can think of surely something happen right on thank you bye bye uh we are to discuss air pollution and uh what we think the causes are and i probably would uh target uh industry as being number one [polluter] well vehicles and and yes right because uh there's a lot of commercial vehicles out there especially those the big rigs like the [busses] and um the big uh eighteen [wheelers] and so forth i think they would generate probably uh one of them would probably generate enough for three cars but that's not and i think it can be resolved if uh if they really let go with the technology that they have at uh at their hand and they haven't released it yet i think there's a lot of hold back uh because of uh-oh priorities that they have you know and uh it's you have some children oh okay do you have do you watch children or do you uh_huh well that's interesting um is there anything well temporarily they do then we get out of that phase soon enough oh yes uh_huh uh_huh sure uh_huh well i know uh uh in michigan uh the way they used to take care of the trash is they would [incinerate] it and the fumes from the incineration was a terrible [pollutant] to the air and um of course now no and when they and you bury it and it's not gone either because it has [untold] ramifications and uh and it gets into into people you know which is uh the the most important um resource that we have is people and they're and they're destroying us they really are so i think the [cockroach] will evolve uh safely so they say yes but there's not enough and we need expert cooperation yeah education of the education of the people is primary i would think and uh and we're hard to teach we are hard to teach absolutely yeah uh_huh absolutely yes uh of course uh we would like to see it [accelerated] because uh of the critical nature of it the the learning of it and the just to um think that way we have to be in that thought pattern and able to um motivate ourselves to um uh do what is right for the atmosphere um i think we're all contributors i mean every human being that lives is a contributor to pollution so we just um uh_huh well hopefully it can be resolved within a shorter time frame than we have seen it done in the past that the time frame for cleaning up our air and our and our um land you know which uh we get our [nutrients] from you know i mean everything goes back to the land so um it's just um very critical i think at this point to uh get that through to the people and get us educated uh_huh i i don't know if they offer classes in uh the uh in the grade school uh uh [subjecting] in science okay what grade level would that be would that be um perhaps the first grade level which would be well i mean are they starting though at at with the children that are so their little minds are like [sponges] and they can really uh relate to that target stores oh okay okay oh i see uh_huh help fight the pollution oh that's wonderful well i'm sure that uh perhaps they're the leaders you know and other will others will pick up on their example and carry it uh further you know because uh thoughts are uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's probably a major one i think uh individually uh just by the vast number of people there are there's i think cars are also a major contributor to it yeah vehicles huh uh_huh uh_huh just a minute i'm on the phone uh_huh yeah well it yes i have i have five in the kitchen at the moment you need to shut the door please shut the door right now we have the air conditioner running what do you need hurry i'm on the phone yes you may and they keep turning the tape recorder up besides um i have three of my own and i have uh two that i'm tending for the summer off and on so they cause more noise pollution than air pollution that's right that's right yeah but um i think another you can tell when you go around cities you can smell specific things from from specific industries i remember being i i grew up in new jersey and uh i can remember the smell of [newark] [vividly] and it's the type of industry you know which obviously if you can smell it it's in the air yeah well people think you burn it it's gone but it's not gone uh_huh then it just gets into the soil and into the water yeah yeah we really have to do more i think we've got to do more with the recycling that's i'm i'm really glad to see that there's more of that happening yeah well it's a we're getting at least they're starting you know so at least they're moving that direction yeah uh_huh well it's going to it's probably going to be a generation or two before before it's really going very well because now the adults are more aware of it and the children are being taught in the schools more it'll be you know on down the road this is going to be passed on which is good uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah i think you're right education is a big thing you know and as we educate them individually what they can do people become more aware of the things in industry too that that are causing problems and and i think that they'll they'll work towards solving those problems more too um uh_huh yeah just a minute and i'll turn it up i'll turn it up in a minute honey when i'm done uh_huh yeah well i think science has come a long way to making it so that it's possible to find ways to solve the problem um i think they teach it a lot in science yeah i would think that that's where it would come through i i think they're kind of getting it in all different grades yeah i think they are starting probably in the first grade they're you know they're hearing somewhat about it um i know uh target has their program to make kids more aware of it and yeah they've got if you go in the [entrance] they've got uh stands usually where they have um little uh kind of a little newspaper thing that the kids can read and and they can form a a group to um yeah yeah so yeah well i i know it's it's a hard problem to solve because you you know like mcdonald's has changed back and forth between paper and foam and that kind of thing and they do all these studies on which ones pollute more and then there's the paper and plastic bag question okay um in plano yes where do you live oh okay huh um i was trying to think uh something we were watching the other day and they were doing an [overview] of los angeles uh from an area that was up higher and you literally could see the band of smog that uh i've never been out there but it was it was quite evident that it was a real brown area and yeah yes yeah yes well i know uh that's been the concern in europe they hadn't uh we have friends in germany and uh have family that live near the black forest area and large areas of the forest are being hurt from the cars because when we uh switched to the unleaded gas and and had the emission control advice uh devices required on the cars uh that's something that europe didn't do right away and now they're doing that and i guess it started in the last few years because they have found that in that particular part of the country that's the only pollution that's been there it's not an area that is industry but they were losing a lot of uh trees and a lot of um i guess from from something that the car was uh was giving yes and yes yeah yes yes yeah i i get that sometimes um my line gets some static i don't know why well i know it's um we did have a solar water heater when we lived in houston and uh oddly enough i thought our part of the country was ideal oh i don't know what to usually it's the other phone i have trouble with it must just be on the line can you hear me okay i don't know what uh i i don't know what the problem is but uh when we lived in houston we had a solar water heater and we had thought this part of the country would be ideal for solar homes and solar energy and we have enough clouds that uh there are other areas that would be better suited that surprised me because i think we have a tremendous amount of um sunny days and and it yes it can be used and it can help but uh that was a problem that they were still working on but well i yes yes uh i hope so well i do think um i mean you've already mentioned several things i think uh just the change in attitude and the fact that more people are aware there is a problem and more people are interested in uh yes yes well and and for the future generations too uh yes where do you live in plano in dallas uh the air pollution isn't too bad in our area so we're very fortunate but i know in some areas it's really it it really is bad i haven't either uh_huh well i think it would be terrible to live in an area like that and unfortunately i think there are a lot of areas that are that that bad particularly in the areas where there are industries uh where they are burning a lot of coal and oil up more up north i guess uh i think it's a bigger problem with the car pollution anti pollution devices i think uh air isn't as bad it once was from the cars because we certainly have plenty of cars in our area from acid rain i think it gives off uh in the emissions it gives off [gases] which combine up in the atmosphere uh and form a a weak acid it just makes the rain fall on the acid side and after a period of time i think that [accumulates] in uh trees because they take it up through their roots as well as it landing on the leaves on [surfaces] like you've seen what it's done to buildings even where it's really bad what's interesting several years ago i took a course uh on uh well it was actually it was put on by the power companies and about the various sources of energy and how much pollution there was and there wasn't from various kinds of of energy and uh at that point in time one person that was a speaker brought up the topic of acid rain and it was kind of pooh [poohed] you know oh you're making a mountain out of a [molehill] kind of thing and it's turned out that that's been very true what he was [forecasting] about the [accumulation] of of the pollutants in the air and the acid rain and what it would do to [foliage] so it's kind of interesting the change in perspective from when i took that course now a lot of people are really afraid of nuclear uh i'm not afraid of nuclear having had that course because of how the nuclear that uh they use is not bomb quality and we're so strict with all our controls in the united states the chances of of an accident are slight and it doesn't pollute the air at all it's safer to be around a nuclear plant then it is to be around a coal plant many more deaths have occurred in and dealing with coal plants then ever around nuclear plants it's kind of funny because people are just [petrified] at least some are at the thought of nuclear so i don't know in europe there's a lot of dependency on nuclear power and they recycle the fuel and then instead of of some people are really afraid to recycle the fuel because they're afraid it could become uh bomb quality but that's the only sensible thing to do is recycle and reuse the fuel and not store it down in the ground as far as i'm concerned where it could eventually perhaps there's some problem uh pollute the [groundwater] so i don't know what the answer is the best answer of course would be solar or uh fusion or something clean well we've got a problem on the line don't we uh_huh but uh solar of course would be the clean the [cleanest] i can't hear you at all for all this static now i can again uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah it it's still got a long way to go it's just you know a possible solution in the future i think maybe to help in some ways it may not in all ways maybe they'll come up with fusion you know be able to control it i don't know how long that'll take but one of these days because that's perfectly clean it's just we can't control it right now it takes more energy to cause fusion to occur then you get out so it isn't not at all and you can't control it unless you gotten a huge [electromagnetic] field so that's not going to work at least not now but uh who knows what the future will hold uh as far as energy goes i i think with solving some of the energy future energy problems we'll probably solve some of the pollution problems as well i do to i like to be [optimistic] i don't like to be [pessimistic] about these things we have one earth to live on and we got to take care of it uh_huh i've noticed students are are much more you know young young people are much more receptive to ideas about the environment and protecting the earth and so if we can raise it uh you know generations with those concerns we'll solve a lot of our problems i'm afraid i know i was part of the me generation where they didn't so many of them didn't people didn't care you know it's whatever you know recycle well if it's a problem forget that uh not throw the trash out the car window and leave it in the car and then throw it away how horrible you know now i've always done those kinds of things because i just didn't like messes and okay and i'm up in wisconsin uh my name is terry and uh in the small town we don't but uh we're not that far from the city where there's tons of pollution okay i'll go ahead and start recording that okay um just in particular here in the twin cities we have a lot of big corporations and um i'm sure there's a lot of pollution we uh before moving to wisconsin lived across from where they were um [gravel] pits and also where they were making tar and so we would occasionally if the wind was blowing the right direction would get the smell of tar and it would uh smell the continuous you knew that you were also breathing that into your lungs so and it was like miles away but just the idea of having that come across the way it did in the wind kind of made you know that there was a lot of pollution and that was just one small corporation that was doing the pollution of that but also um where we also lived too it was very close to a highway so got a lot of fumes from uh trucks and cars and you would literally see the pollution on your furniture i mean it was on your tables you would dust every day and it was dirty um type of dust i mean it wasn't the typical dust that you get way out in the country um for i live in a small um town now quite a ways from the twin cities about an hour away and i may dust once a week and that's all it needs versus every day when i lived in the city so oh yeah it it comes right on through through the screens the only way that you could actually live in the in the city is to close your windows and have an air cleaner system right in your home that would take the air from the outside and clean the air before it would get into the house and so it was quite a dirty city um if you were well protected by trees which catch a lot of the pollution then you're fine but most of the time in the city you have lots of high [rises] you have lots of other things that are not catching the pollution and it's just going for miles and miles and miles and it's landing somewhere with the wind but sure sure yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh oh sure sure yeah it's i mean our air quality um in the twin cities is a lot better than what we've heard about california and maybe in the other areas but um they were always talking about the air quality of today is this you know the ozone or whatever and it's kind of scary because the air is something we take for granted and many people are too busy getting to work not thinking about okay i could have [carpooled] with a friend even my husband was uh talking to some of the guys at work now he's uh fifteen miles away from work but he was talking wouldn't it be nice to carpool and the guy says well it's too close it wouldn't pay and so yeah and exactly and so my husband says well that's fine you know it would save quite a bit on the wear and tear on cars and you know the gas and no everybody has their preference to drive by themselves or if they do they they drive with one little buddy uh at least it's with one person but most of the time people are saying forget it i don't want to carpool it's too much of a hassle it's too much involvement but yet yes we are and i think of my daughter and i'm sure you think of your children and you kind of say to yourself what kind of future will they have when they think back and say well my parents did have the choice to kind of make a difference and maybe people are trying but they have to change attitudes uh_huh sure sure sure well they my name's mary [dell] and i live in the dallas texas area where there's a lot of pollution oh uh_huh yes okay oh uh_huh ooh right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh gosh uh_huh uh_huh huh i'd never thought about that being a cause i have to dust a lot as well yeah uh_huh my goodness uh_huh uh_huh that's kind of the way dallas is we're so flat and open and i live in a suburb that doesn't have much vegetation trees it was all cotton fields so we don't have that advantage and ours i think is primarily cars where we don't carpool like we should an airport i work in a building i'm nineteen floors up and i look out toward d f w international and there's just an awful brown haze all the time and i can imagine it's even worse for people living over near the airport uh_huh yes uh_huh uh_huh want to meet my own schedule those are the arguments we hear uh_huh uh_huh but we're paying for it uh_huh and it seems to me that it's already so evident with our children having a lot more respiratory infections than we had growing up you can really see it i i had a chance to go to [bolivia] a couple years ago and of course there's no industry very little trash they they don't even have that much that they burn because they consume everything down to the thread and it amazed me i i just had totally forgotten how okay for as far as um i would think the probably the uh worst substance that's probably um or started to say the uh what causes the most air pollution is probably the car and uh whether or not um they'll ever get into like huge transit systems into big cities where people would all travel on a high speed uh train or or something like that or yeah that's exactly it and that's what we're finding um here where we're at in minneapolis area is that people don't want to carpool that there are [inconveniences] to that or maybe you don't like the person you have to you would want to carpool with that kind of thing so it's it's kind of a thing where uh i think the majority of the people do not carpool uh_huh yeah exactly uh_huh or if somebody gets sick yeah or if somebody gets sick and it's not the other person and they want to go home and that one person's got the car then they're they're stuck you're definitely right so yes uh_huh sure sure that happens quite a bit yes yeah that's very true uh other than that uh i don't know okay oh okay we'll try to be real quick here the other thing then is because i don't know how long they want us to talk five minutes oh okay minneapolis area uh actually no we have uh quite a bit uh the only problem that we have and that's all over the whole world is ozone and of course hay fever season you get some pollutants such as those but those are natural um but there is starting to in minneapolis itself because of so many people on the highway there is becoming a problem of pollution and they just put in a strict law that as of every year when you get your license tabs you have to have your car inspected to see if it's releasing any uh lead into the air or other pollutants and if that's the case then you have to get your car fixed at least where you sure yeah yeah it's not a bad idea uh_huh sure sure exactly uh_huh sure uh_huh uh_huh sure uh_huh sure uh_huh yeah sure uh the other thing when you're talking about freon with cars uh air conditioning i'm sure over there it's a necessity versus something up here we can live without it but it's uncomfortable but uh this year my husband [recharged] our freon because it was needed to be done and one of the cans released entire amount of freon into the uh into the air because he opened it and i don't know if there was something wrong with it or it his directions weren't quite fully instructed onto that and i was thinking how many other people oh sure because if you take it into a service station they want to charge you forty dollars just for uh freon which only costs you about three dollars so i have this feeling that freon probably will increase in price because it is something that people will have to take into consideration and say hey that's that's right there i think it's like three or four dollars a a can and it takes about four to five cans to fill up a air conditioning unit in a car and i i thought about that and my husband even was kind of [woozy] after that because i'm sure he [breathed] it but uh you think about that all the people that are using freon and things like that and uh_huh exactly pump yeah probably so yeah it'll be hard to get people to give up their mobility uh_huh i think so too i'm in texas and very few people carpool uh the people that i know don't want to because uh they never know for sure what time they're going to leave their job they never know when they want to run out and do an [errand] at noon you know they just feel they need their car uh_huh uh_huh that's right and people don't want to give it up but now i think we've made great strides in changing a lot of that by going to the unleaded gasoline and and to change the car itself but uh you know i i don't guess we can get away from it a hundred percent but yeah well my other line is ringing but we're going to ignore it i'm sorry for these [beeps] oh close to five minutes i believe and you're in minneapolis well is the pollution really bad up there uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well that's the way it has gotten here we have just had that law i think about a year maybe a year and a half here in texas but uh i think it's a good idea because a lot of people still want to drive the older cars which you can't blame them for that and uh but if they are polluting the air they need do need to have them fixed and you know there's a big move especially in the industrial part in texas right now of controlling the c f c that the big manufacturing companies are producing into the air they're having to change the type of products they use uh they can't use like i have a friend that's in the air conditioning heating business and they have to pay a penalty for every ounce or pound of this certain type of freon that they use in the air conditioning systems therefore the individual every time they have a service call if they have an old unit that's still using this twenty two freon or whatever it is it costs them three times as much to get it fixed and uh if you have a new high efficiency system that uses the new type of freons that do not release as many c f c into the atmosphere it doesn't cost as much so eventually people are going to have to go to newer systems you know but uh_huh right uh_huh um uh_huh it's probably happened to millions of people uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah [inhaled] so much of it uh_huh yeah well of course in the uh i think you probably noticed in the discount stores and places in the hair sprays we're not seeing as many aerosol cans down here nearly everything is in the pump [squirt] so what do you uh think is the uh the worst [culprit] for air pollution uh_huh yeah i uh i it's hard to put the finger on uh what's worse you know the acid rain situation or the ozone [depletion] um with uh your hydrocarbons uh causing the damage in which well i notice on one of these uh home shopping networks they were selling these uh [halogen] uh fire [extinguishers] and the [halogen] is uh an ozone [depleter] and it got hydrocarbons in there it's a very clean uh fire [extinguisher] but it's you know really bad on the environment yeah yeah i know uh in the twin cities area i just moved out of there and was kind of happy i [timed] it just right but they had a new policy where in order to get your uh your license uh your car license uh renewed you had to meet the pollution standards and uh yeah yeah uh yeah i guess that was just mainly in the cities there and as far as where i live i don't have to do that but i have an old car which i doubt would uh would uh pass the inspection a seventy six and uh you know there's no way i would put in a lot of money to to repair it to meet standards yeah so although i do what i can to to cut down pollution but uh yeah yeah uh_huh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah well well around here i we get uh well it depends you know either in the in the winter time it it blows it your way and in the summer time we probably get yours yeah yeah well it uh that's a big thing too i know it has nothing to do with air pollution but i kind of look at the way people treat our okay well i think it's it's probably a combination of things um factories that that burn coal as a an energy source with sulfur and nitrogen [contaminants] you know and you get sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides uh those are the ones i think primarily contribute to acid rain and i think that's that's probably hurting us a little bit it's hurting you know it's hurting germany for example too and some other parts of europe where they where they have high industry so we're not the lone ranger here yeah hopefully we're backing off from that a little bit but i know we haven't cured it yet by a long shot yeah yeah huh yeah i guess i missed that one uh automobiles of course are contributing too and you know how how we are with our love affair with the auto kind of hard to do anything about that i guess yeah we have that here too but it's part of the inspection sticker you know they put a [probe] in your exhaust pipe and and the computer reads whatever the [ionization] is coming out and so that's you know that's the way they're dealing with it here yeah yeah it'd probably be difficult anyway i was just reading an article in uh mother earth news mother earth news magazine and uh they've got a new uh you know a lot of places are burning wood a lot a lot of people are burning wood those of us who have i've got a place in the country you know and uh they've had catalytic you know catalytic converters on those on uh i think they're required in california and oregon and and washington but they've had up those for quite a while and somebody's come up with a new one that uh sort of it's a it's a catalytic converter it's it's a plate that fits in you know into the smoke pipe and uh apparently it sort of feeds itself the more smoke is produced you know after you get to like five hundred degrees the higher it gets the more complete the [combustion] is and it sounds real neat i haven't seen them priced anywhere yet but that that sounds like that might help solve that problem even on you know old old uh older stoves that don't have any kind of e p a requirements on them that might help a little bit especially in some places we're really lucky here we have a [prevailing] [southerly] wind that blows just about everything out now sometimes we get a kind of a especially in in uh autumn it seem like we get kind of a brown haze sitting on us but most of the time it's blowing out pretty well probably blowing up there to you guys yeah it comes back yeah i really think uh you know we're doing some some important things education raising consciousness awareness uh i know school kids i work for the school district here and uh you know this is one of the big things with kids kids are writing letters to the newspapers about you know telling adults to clean up their act and it's uh you know i hope we're not too late with it we're we're uh we're having all kinds of recycling up up there maybe maybe you guys don't have as uh big a problem with air pollution as many do you do you really uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's horrible uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh right right well uh in dallas i i haven't seen air pollution quite on a quite on a level that we had in denver i grew up in denver and and i've lived there most of my life and we used to have those uh you know the posted warning days uh however in colorado now they have the emissions control law which has really cut down probably only once every couple of years do we ever have pollution so bad that they have to post warnings now you know as far as health concerns uh due to that the the emissions uh uh control on the vehicles seems that all of our all of our uh smog was caused by vehicles rather than industry uh_huh um uh_huh uh_huh oh really uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh yeah yeah it it becomes uh maybe to you and i who have grown up in some in uh uh some more beautiful parts of the country uh i think that that uh we become a little more aware uh rather quickly of of what's happening with air pollution and how uh how horrible it really is um i i notice people in in dallas seem to say well sure there's air pollution but you know really how bad is how bad could this problem really be oh really uh_huh uh_huh right right do you find that um or or do you [hypothesize] that that most of the uh smog or or air pollution comes from vehicles or does it come mostly from industry up there yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i had talked with my parents i i grew up uh i was born in uh [muncie] indiana and and grew up a little bit in [terre] [haute] and i had asked them before uh i went back to visit recently about a year ago and i asked them i said did you ever realize the air pollution that was we we we have a terrible air pollution problem our summers are extremely uh hazardous and during uh certain wind directions because we get the uh gary indiana chicago pollution and we can look out on the lake and just see the brown haze uh coming up along the lake and they do post uh uh warnings for people who have uh heart diseases or respiratory problems during that summer season in the winter it's not as severe but uh if the wind comes basically from the south it can be really bad uh the state of wisconsin as a matter of fact uh started some litigation against illinois because of the air pollution we were getting uh i don't think it's going to go very far but it it was uh a way of uh [triggering] uh awareness so what's the conditions like in dallas um wisconsin has a a law in which we need to take our cars in every year when we apply for a new license tag and they are tested for uh their pollution control equipment and if they don't qualify then they have to take it to a mechanic and have it gone over and then verify that it it is [drivable] so they've they've tried to do a lot of that and i you know there seem to be at least in certain little pockets and we were talking earlier about madison madison has one of the nicest uh bike uh road uh sharing programs of of any city in wisconsin and all wisconsin has probably the most extensive number of uh bike trails for recreational use of any of the states and there is a a real promotion of of biking but um there are still a lot of people who insist on on driving their own automobiles uh to go everywhere i find that a little irritating because i don't think it's always so necessary send send them to wisconsin and we'll let them try to drink out of some of the lakes and try to fish in some of the lakes that have been suffering from uh the uh acid rain and they'll they'll they may wake up you know how'd you like to own a piece of property where your lake is going sour because of acid rain it's uh really a serious issue for those of us up in this uh sector up up here i think it's mostly vehicles although it does come from some of the industry of of the gary area and uh i don't know exactly where it [emerges] from when it it's up in the uh northern sectors of wisconsin that causes the acid rain that i'm a little [uncertain] of but i do know that uh it is a problem okay first off speaking of air pollution i'm coughing um i'm not sure what contributes to air pollution exactly i find it hard to believe that a lot of the hair sprays and things that we use cause the air pollution it doesn't seem like but i guess when you think of it everybody has some sort of aerosol in their home you know and it's kind of dangerous uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah but you think the mountains and the are kind of a barrier oh that's an interesting thought uh_huh here in texas i know a lot of the pretty much every place here is relatively flat and so i would think that that would probably contribute to us not having that big of a like a smog problem or something like that um uh_huh i i yeah i guess i've never really uh thought about the fact like in california they they have a lot of smog problems and it's real hilly there so that is probably something that plays a big factor i think probably just uh a lot of factories um you know they have the smoke stacks i guess you call them and different things like that uh_huh aren't they supposed to be coming out with some sort of uh special gas or something that doesn't [emit] certain chemicals or something um oh okay uh_huh uh_huh the diesel oh yeah i know a lot of people with diesels truck you know but um no i don't i i work in waco at a t v station my mother works at t i that's why yeah yeah you work at t i oh okay okay oh okay that's interesting what else causes air pollution um noise noise causes air pollution yeah that's why i thought of it oh yeah landfills we just yeah we just had a big uh thing here in waco they're needing to open a new landfill or to expand onto the old landfill and uh it's it's really been a big fight because a lot of the people that live by the landfill don't want it expanded because they're thinking that they're water is going to be contaminated somehow and so they yeah uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh one one of the big concerns is they have a there's a school right across the highway from the landfill yeah so the parents were really really upset yeah they they've been fighting over it for the last year and they just now approved it so they're going to try an appeal or something yes yeah it it yeah yeah that's true uh i don't know we live um well i'm close to salt lake and there's mountains uh you know all around but sometimes i think tend to hold a little bit of it in you know really it's it's fairly clean um i think it's a fairly clean city compared to some but you know how quite a yeah i think sometimes it seems to be but but uh anyway i don't know i know there's a lot of plants here when i drive down you know along the just along the freeway there's a lot of plants that they're burning things and oh uh_huh yeah we we have a real fog problem um the last few years just in through december and january it it really is foggy and and seems to just um it's kind of like it it just stays for a month quite foggy but uh gee i don't i don't know what else i know cars uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah that's that's what i see burning a lot i'm not exactly sure what they're burning i know uh_huh there are some oil companies and i'm sure that that contributes a lot just the burning of the oh i don't know i haven't i haven't heard that i know uh i don't know how your emissions test is on your cars or anything but i know i think they they differ from state to state but um you know that's been a new thing in the last few years and i guess some cars are a lot worse than others i think those uh what are they the i know a [rabbit's] one diesel the diesel cars yeah they seem to put out quite a bit huh oh well do you um are you working for t i oh okay oh oh uh_huh and that's how you got involved yeah no we we have um my husband's sister lives in dallas actually and they kind of got it us involved that way yeah but well i don't i don't know yeah noise i've got speaking of noise you can probably hear my little yeah he is quite noisy yes gee i don't know i know that um don't dumps you know where you dump all your trash in the uh yeah i'm sure that does i know they're always [churning] that up and i i think they burn a lot there too oh well i don't think i'd i'd like that you know we um when we've taken things to the dump just the dump uh that is uh you know closest to us there's some houses around there and i know that on windy days you know they're always moving the the trash over to different spots and they've got those big [bulldozers] and you can see the dust flying and and i'm sure that their homes are really quite dusty and oh is there worried about their their kids getting huh how you doing howard this is a a subject that i'm not real well versed on but okay no okay i'm from the uh i'm from dallas i'm in richardson what do you think as far as air pollution in the dallas area right right oh really sure well you are you are well versed on the subject i tell you this is not one of my better ones i guess i guess i notice it the most just uh in driving around dallas with all the the highway equipment that's working on the on six thirty five and seventy five just the cars in general that's where i see most of it right oh i don't know i've lived here since seventy four howard and i i think i think they been working on the highways around here since i've been here and i think i think they'll be working on them long after my wife and i are gone right i understand i sure hope so i tell you you know you get out on the uh interstate highways versus i travel quite a bit and traveling from like dallas to austin to san antonio it's the same thing as far as the pollution created by the automobiles in the in the [stalled] traffic and the busy highways you you you're at your best and i guess when you're out on the interstate heading north or south and you're just [cruising] right along and there's no build up of cars and yes i tell you what i i don't think i really have but i'm going that way tuesday and i'm going to make it a point to sure oh i know i know going to uh uh i [detest] going to houston because it's such a i guess we're ready to talk well let's talk about air pollution what do you think causes air pollution in dallas or where are you from maybe you're not in dallas okay uh well i have some small experience in this area the brown haze that you see if you look down central towards downtown a lot of that is uh tied up with the oxides or nitrogen although some of the kind of [bluish] gray stuff we see sometimes is tied up with particulates but uh the one of the major problems that dallas has is oxides and nitrogen that's because of all the equipment that's being operated but at the same time uh because we don't have we don't burn a lot of coal and solid materials we don't get a lot of particulates now particulates would come from trash burning or incineration or something like that here in dallas uh power plants since many of our local power plants uh are natural gas most of the time uh the things that come off of those plants are carbon dioxide and n o x there's no particulates in natural gas of course and we pick up a little bit of sulphur off some of these products we're burning fuel oil and a few other things but gasoline of course now the [lead's] out at least theoretically uh i guess you could say we're picking up some sulphur because a lot of the fuels does have sulphur that's why we get that rotten egg smell sometime off the catalytic converter the sulphur yes and that's uh course [hydrogen] [sulfide] which is when you burn gasoline you also produce some water [vapor] and that goes back in with your sulphur and under the right condition you get h two s but anyway uh well i don't know uh_huh uh ron a lot of this is caused by the fact that cars sitting in traffic tend to run rich because the way the pollution is and when they run rich they they spit out a lot of hydrocarbons and that's another part of the problem the gas is not being burned completely but uh hopefully if we ever get our road system fixed up this will get a lot better well i guess i not trying to top you but i grew up in dallas county and i can remember when they built the north part of north central which was built after the south part of central and uh i can remember coming over the hill down there long about uh i don't know little bit north of mockingbird on up in over those hills and i said i wonder if they'll ever need this road course it was designed for most of us to go about forty five miles an hour because the short on ramps and are off ramps but gosh seems like uh those ramps might kill us yet i hopefully the new ones will be a lot better yeah ron have you noticed when you're driving south on thirty five i guess towards waxahachie [hillsborough] on down to austin you hit a point down there about i think where they call bear creek exit on just this side of the county line right along in there somewhere suddenly the air feels cleaner have you noticed that well sometimes it depends on which way the winds blowing but uh i also travel a little bit and uh i don't know it just seems like there's a certain point down there where you can breathe easier it may be all in my mind yeah one of the things they asked me to ask you was where you thought the major source was coming from or sources that's what i would think right yeah i think the automobile definitely is an area and any any industry that burns you know and then i don't know about chemical pollution i'm not real into that as far as how it affects the air i know we have a lot of chemical the indoor type pollution they have offices that are too well [insulated] they found people are getting sick but i don't know if that affects outside you know i i think seems to think seems to me that's what they were asking about was outside and the thing i can the only thing i can think of would be cars and factories yeah right yeah that is well that's destroying the ozone isn't it yeah that's it's kind of scary yeah i think something too that you probably see in older states all we we do it down here once in a while we will have a cold spell is where people will use their [fireplaces] i think it will uh_huh right right yeah in this area too since you know in texas we're so spread out we have to drive so far but i know in colorado i have witnessed that where it just uh it just stacks up at the when the [rockies] starts but we're even getting it here we can drive into when we've been on vacation or something drive into fort worth or dallas and you can tell it in the mornings too my husband likes to go out and jog and there's just a brown fog here and we don't even have any mountains that are holding it in but they also said that more dense the population and the more we crowd together the worse it gets you don't have to have mountains that are stopping it and uh they make uh making more and more high rise buildings and uh so yeah we can comment and we didn't see this a few years ago it was pretty clear here right uh_huh yeah yeah yeah and it's a shame too when you do see somebody driving a big car just one person in that it's a lot of waste but well i guess we're uh forced to finally to do a lot about air pollution i hear that the major automobile manufacturers are looking at [nonpolluting] cars and low polluting fuels are being experimented with [ethanol] and other types of fuels i you know i assume that the major sources are cars and factories but i i don't know for sure i just know that um acid rain apparently is a big problem in canada from would comes over the border from us yeah yeah the [smokestacks] or the exhaust pipes um i guess there's been a lot of pressure to um do away with the c f c's in these spray bottles which has been a real problem again i that's what i hear and and there's this big debate apparently about whether the ozone there's a hole in the ozone or not but at last i heard it was uh discovered that the hole was bigger than they thought initially well it is scary and i think it will uh continue to force us to clean up our act literally and [figuratively] we've got to learn to manage without destroying the environment i i i'm wondering whether it's going to get to the point where you can't do that in los angeles they're apparently going to they've passed laws that for habit for example people using uh barbecues gasoline lawn mowers um and it's really bad in places like los angeles and it's gotten bad in denver and and uh it's not too bad around here although you see it you know more and more in the sky and people in this country are really [wedded] to their uh cars and our economy seems to and this i think is one of the big problems yeah yeah well that makes a lot of sense i mean i i hadn't thought about it that way but it it yeah no and i think yeah and i think that that more and more it's becoming apparent to people that the earth which includes all the people on it and everything that's going on it is a is an [organism] of sorts and that there is a a whole set of organic relationships that if we start to destroy one part of it it's going to tell us about it and uh we're going to feel it and i think it's going to be real interesting and particularly in light of what is obviously going to be a big [structural] change in the economy uh in this country uh whether people are willing to get out of their cars and in this country uh the the solution that that people seem to think work are politically unacceptable for example taxing people heavily for using their cars and uh i have a little sports car that i enjoy using and i know just like anybody else how much fun it is to drive but i think uh we're going to have to make some fundamental changes and and i'm i'm not sure how long it's going to take or what it's going to take because they keep saying that the economy is going to depend on how many cars and houses we sell okay you want to start uh_huh yeah that's stuff we never even thought about three years ago um have they stopped that practice now yeah oh yeah uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh um yeah yeah i hate to see a car going down the street or even a truck or bus for that matter that's putting out a lot of dark smoke and i know there's a lot of pollutants we can't even see coming out of cars but that that particular bothers me uh_huh oh uh_huh yeah oh i see uh_huh uh_huh yeah i might as well uh one of the things i'm very concerned about the air pollution is the uh this this the ozone layer uh uh issue uh i used to own a heating and air conditioning business and handled lots of different types of freons and that uh rather bothers me that uh i was in in effect uh contributing to the delinquency of the the environment so to speak right right and one of the reasons they fixed up the freons eleven twelve and thirteen in in in that area was because they were inexpensive uh they could be made uh you know inexpensive and lots of it uh and in that and its properties were great uh with uh the machinery didn't have to have lots of expensive machinery to uh get your heating and cooling cycles to work so well course there's a a tremendous number of refrigerators and excuse me refrigerators and [freezers] both commercial and residential uh utilizing freon twelve and of course the new cars i guess starting with nineteen ninety three will not have freon twelve in their systems but uh there's you know the ton of after market machines and et cetera et cetera and that's got me very you know highly concerned that uh that's going to be quite a while before we can uh undo this now that could [spawn] several good industries and help pull us out of this recession but you got to have people that can make you know earn a salary to pay for this conversion so so i see us in a kind somewhat of a catch twenty two unless we unless the banks or industry and or the government go together and and come up with a way to uh have us as a part of the unemployed society be able to be [gainfully] employed again converting all this freon twelve stuff into the new [nonpolluting] uh [compound] because as i say there's a there's a well how many uh uh families own a refrigerator and then do you know that number and then how many a a freezer separate from and how many people especially here in texas own cars and trucks with air conditioning i mean this is there there are people that that make it have a [thriving] business uh that do nothing but heating and air conditioning on on automobiles and trucks and uh the only reason i didn't uh get into that more when i was had my little business was because uh most of your uh air conditioning in in on vehicles tend to be greasy and dirty to the n [th] degree and i mean so uh that's why i stayed in stayed more towards uh uh and that's a polluting type deal too is the excessive um you know uh petroleum products in your engine bay and so forth and the dirt and [grit] and those two mixed together with with water and uh really make uh make a mess uh_huh right well most most most of the time when you see bus uh you know the [busses] with the diesel that's uh those are carbon particles and carbon dioxide and water [vapor] uh because when you when diesel is burned it's it you know diesel fuel is burned in a in the diesel engine it's burned so completely that you don't have any uh [nitrous] oxides uh or oxides of nitrogen uh to uh form because of by virtue of the very [combustion] process of the diesel engine because diesel oil is uh is not very volatile you know where gasoline if you leave a little [pail] of gasoline out before long it's gone diesel is going to be around because it doesn't evaporate easily and it's got well you know it's [latent] heat is high but it's slow burning at at uh normal pressures that's why your diesel engines have such high [compression] [ratios] as the as the air is heated you know by virtue of the [compression] process to like one to nineteen or nineteen to one ratio and so if the car sucks in uh fifty degrees so how you like new jersey right i guess uh i don't know what part of new jersey you're in but i guess it's uh fairly industrial right uh_huh yeah yeah right right well i don't know about you but i've always considered automobiles to be probably the the prime contributor i mean there's a lot of contributors but it seems that automobiles would probably do more than their fair share of that yeah that's yeah that's that's a big issue is you know a lot of states don't have a uh inspection law so you get you get a lot of people out there without e t r emission control systems on their cars and things like that yeah and it's like sure right i guess from what i hear though uh next year ford is coming out with their electric cars they're actually coming out with the first [prototypes] in california yeah right i hope i i'm hoping that comes along quick uh i was reading a an article in time the other day about the ozone layer and how fast that's going and i guess it's it's really disappearing a lot quicker than people realize and i know that's not due to uh it's not due to to gasoline or to you know carbon [monoxide] so much as the c f c but uh yeah i think that's a that's a contributor definitely right right yeah i guess right now what they're what they're primarily worried about is third world countries because i guess united states and and russia have kind of taken the lead in terms of eliminating c f c production but it go ahead uh_huh right and that's one of the arguments that the third world countries have been using is that basically they don't want to have to pay for our mistakes if if that makes any sense uh in terms of exactly exactly uh those of kind of yeah those are joining arguments but uh i don't know that's that's kind of an interesting situation there uh what they don't realize those third world countries what they don't realize is how quickly the ozone is [depleting] i guess the latest figures are up to fifty percent at the poles and it's it's increasing even as far near the [equator] as like florida and cuba and those places so it's kind of an interesting situation it's not not a real good one actually but yeah uh_huh yeah yeah you don't get that that source of [cleansing] anymore are have you been in big cities a long time okay so you've got yeah those are actually areas that are hit pretty hard i would think yeah [denver's] definitely yeah that's one of the worst sure yeah [denver's] that that real good that real good uh example of sitting in a valley kind of like mexico city does i guess mexico city is historically been one of the worst in the in the world for that but i've been pretty lucky i've lived in cities that really haven't had that much of a problem although uh i'm really kind of based in orlando florida and there you can tell that it's getting worse i mean it it definitely it's not at a level comparable to los angeles or denver but you can exactly yeah and there's not that much in terms of of public transportation down there there is but it's kind of it's uh it's pretty good you know you get uh closer to the uh coast here and you do get a good bit of uh smog and stuff especially from all the uh fuel cracking [towers] and chemical plants yeah it's when you get further east towards new york city it gets very industrial but i'm i'm about uh thirty miles west of there so you have uh actually green trees and such that you don't notice that that other part of new jersey exists actually very you know you go even a few miles out and you got uh farms and everything so you relatively clear air but uh oh definitely it's uh you know there are a large number of them on the road they're all you know going and a lot of them are in relatively poor repair oh even where you do have the inspections you know the inspection is once a year you get the car that's in the accident and muffler falls off or something and guy keeps driving along for long period of time after that yeah that and i think also some of the uh car companies are coming out with uh gas powered [fleets] so you natural gas powered rather than uh gasoline it it is coming from cars though i mean the uh car air [conditioners] is one of the major leaking sources of uh the uh freon which is one of the major [fluorocarbons] well it it no it's it's the type of thing there that uh you know the third world countries are less industrial and they want to become industrial so they're on the different part of the cycle of the u s the u s used you know all the air pollution stuff and air polluting technologies to get where it is today or or they want the right to make the same mistakes themselves to [bootstrap] them up to the way where we got to yeah no well you also have the very close related thing of the uh rain forest [destruction] which is the main source of what's clearing out the atmosphere and replacing some of the pollutants mostly i've mostly been in the east coast so that's going between atlanta d c area well not not as hard as some places out west because you don't get the uh major pollution sources as you do out in denver with the inversion and los angeles and rest of california which is just terrible it sounds uh_huh yeah yeah there it's almost all automobiles because there's not that much in the way of heavy industry you know that would be causing it uh_huh well here in logan utah we've got a nice little valley here and it's like crystal clear all the time except for during the winter when the inversion sets in and then we get a little bit of pollution in the valley yeah yeah definitely here in utah up along the [wasatch] along the western side of the of these rocky mountains here where a lot of the big cities are salt lake and ogden and provo and [logan's] up in the valley a little bit further north we get a lot of pollution and it's like seventy percent of it is from cars and uh it always really hits hard during the winter when we get the inversion and when we get get cold air down in the valleys and warm air up above and it just sits and sits and sits and we're starting to hit pollution levels now on the [wasatch] front which match that of l a a few years ago it's not it's almost sad because when i grew up here it was just always the crisp air up in the mountain valleys and now it's not in the mountain valleys huh they're getting serious about things like uh mandatory well they've already passed laws where you have to get your cars checked for pollution if you're in certain counties emissions yeah they've actually started doing it down along the not in logan up here cause we're doing a lot better we have a lot population is a lot lighter up here yeah yeah they're eliminating that out here they're also talking very seriously about the thing called a dirt gun where they're uh looking at the emissions from the car using basically a [spectrometer] and looking at the basically how much of what is coming out of the exhaust kind of like a [radar] gun and yes yeah do it remotely just looking at the what they do they do several different types of things sometimes they put a source light and they look at the source light and then as the car goes by you can see the exhaust pipe and the source light behind it and you can look at the emissions actually and like across the street they'll set up like a trap or something like that in some sense and they're also looking at uh other you know ways of monitoring this and cause they've found out something basically that uh and a poorly tuned car can [emit] something it's an incredible amount it was like four hundred times as much uh of certain pollutants and it was like [unburned] hydrocarbons then a properly tuned car and and the idea being that if you just tuned up all the cars well if you tuned up this ten percent of the cars that were producing like fifty percent of the the pollution then you know you it'd be one way to cut the pollution in half uh_huh huh yeah and they're huh well here in seattle uh it's the [air's] getting more and more polluted we're uh we're in kind of a basin and uh seattle is on [puget] sound which is a inland [waterway] between two mountains and uh there's been a lot a lot of growth population growth around here and uh it's uh it's getting worse i think most of it is from cars uh_huh oh yeah yeah i live in the university district and uh uh it's supposed to have about the worst air pollution i think probably due to uh a lot of students going back and forth to school and then we're right next to interstate five also oh yeah have they started doing that yet we have that here and uh they're they're expanding it to uh more counties here uh as the population spreads out and i think they're also going to be making it uh mandatory for more cars there was uh something in the law about if you're car was over a certain age like over twenty years old you didn't have to get it done anymore and i think they're eliminating that uh that [loophole] yeah oh really you mean they could do that remotely huh now where does the source light go oh i see jeez yeah that's neat but it's also been uh-oh you know everybody is talking about using more mass transient here but it uh it's tough you know like i've i've looked into riding the bus to work and i can drive to work in uh and get there in twenty to twenty five minutes over a very congested [corridor] which goes over lake washington on one of the floating bridges but if i uh if i take the bus it requires several [transfers] and it takes over an hour so so it it's it's not hard to see why why i keep driving and you know i feel guilty cause i'm driving a okay yeah is it i know in here uh downtown dallas it's you i mean you drive by and you can just you can see it but then again i originally was from california and uh there is a big difference between texas and california and uh they'd have their smog [alerts] and where you'd have to stay indoors for so many hours with an air conditioner and of course they don't have that here in texas so there's no not in not in well not in dallas that is yeah we're going there tomorrow uh_huh we're packing and getting ready to go to uh_huh yeah oh okay yeah you do then is it really i would not imagine that huh huh you learn something every day uh_huh yeah i've seen that huh huh_uh huh no oh yeah yeah uh_huh yeah that's true right huh and of course i doubt if there's any you can buy regular anymore you buy unleaded right yeah huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh huh that is good yeah yeah huh oh that would be nice i think i saw that on t v one time they maybe it was c n n where they were [demonstrating] that or something similar to that huh but what i think that was a a a setback that they i don't know they went i don't know how many miles an hour i think like was that something maybe it was i don't know huh huh yeah and they're they're very expensive too well yeah yeah well it doesn't make sense because if they want people to convert you know they should make it worthwhile yeah yeah um well i'll tell you sometimes it's it's pretty bad here like today i think it was pretty bad i don't know if it was if it's just uh the allergies or what but some days it's very nice here downtown and other days it's just really bad so i don't know so what what kinds of things did you experience in l a when you were there or can you remember were you there at a cause i haven't been there probably yeah well we were there when they had a okay carol so air quality uh_huh surely you mean they don't have the uh the smog [alerts] right i i yeah i spent a summer in tyler so i know just east of dallas there oh really yeah actually i'm a california born person i was born in l a so i know what you're talking about in l a it's pretty bad uh the worst city in the in the world is actually uh mexico city yes the worst one for smog is mexico city the most polluted city in the world yeah i know that they've they're looking at uh uh you know uh you know better running automobiles uh some things they do one of them is they're using corn in fuel you ever heard of that yeah [methanol] yeah well that's big up here because of the they grow a lot of corn uh that's one thing that they do at that it's pretty easy to do and the uh unfortunately it still contributes to global warming cause you have to you know wipe out forests to grow corn and things like that it doesn't make sense uh but it's you know one of the most uh productive crop in the world is corn yeah drive cars with catalytic converters and all that it's interesting they're they're looking at there's some work being done on uh automobiles that are electrical powered and uh they're looking at where you have a battery operated car basically but it has a a engine in the back that charges it so the engine [kicks] on when the batteries need power and it turns off interesting thing about gas is when i mean about battery powered cars is when you're at a stop light you're not using any any energy unlike a car where it's running a electric car it's on demand i mean it's either on or off basically you don't have to shift so you cars become very simple all of a sudden too very interesting yeah there's there's a race in australia with solar powered cars and ford and general motors and all those compete right yeah g m uh chrysler announced that they're going to they're well they actually have an electric minivan yeah their their caravan but it costs uh fifty thousand dollars right now to operate yeah but you know people are buying them you know whose buying them the power company free you know free for them kind of interesting so see uh_huh yeah it's top speed is something like eighty miles an hour so it's a good good vehicle uh_huh oh i wasn't there too long ago uh well you know going over the hills you know coming into the valley you can see that horrible horrible brown haze well i guess without a doubt we'd have to say automobiles although i suppose manufacturing contributes uh quite a bit to air pollution uh yeah you know i'm wondering uh of course uh freon is uh is uh eating away at our our what you call it layer there ozone layer i wonder when they're going to what they'll be able to you in in place of freon though uh well actually you know that is the way a refrigerator works well basically what happens is you have to have some form of heat be it electrical as in your home refrigerator or [propane] as the one on the ship that you said uh you had and uh somehow heat must be created that freon oh i'm not exactly sure what happens but apparently it expands in the heat and in the process of expanding it goes through cooler [coils] and whatnot and it becomes ice cold oh yes yes [freon's] uh freon is in a closed circuit uh that's why our present day [refrigerants] uh systems are not dangerous unless the lines are broken well did you ever see what happens when they uh replace the or [replenish] the freon in your automobile air conditioner i mean there's uh a lot of it is uh turned out into the atmosphere and i understand now uh i don't know if it's international or just here in texas or what but uh service stations are going to require to have a special device to catch this freon as it is [expelled] the excess freon and therefore you won't be able to just pull in anywhere to or you wouldn't even be able to do it yourself at home no that's true you know i can remember as a child uh spending summers at my grandfather's place and i'd be running around with nothing but a bathing suit no shoes socks shirts or anything uh i mean from [dawn] till dusk and i developed a nice tan but uh my gosh never had to worry about uh skin cancer or for that matter you could stop at any stream that looked reasonably clear and and get a drink of water without worrying uh about catching some disease um yeah yeah i tell you a funny thing happened to me with with polluted water uh t i sent me up on a trip to wyoming i think it was and i was out in this little town kind of [backwoods] town you know where a big night on the town is going down watching the traffic light change but uh i checked into a motel and after i signed in and everything why the uh clerk told me uh don't drink the water it's contaminated he said now we do have bottled water we supply to our guests but unfortunately we're out of it right now but as as soon as we get it i i'll see that you get a bottle of it well the next morning i got up and the water had not been delivered yet and would you believe it i brushed my teeth with [coca] cola oh well they had this uh it's some kind of a bacteria or carried by animals and it they got their water from this uh beautiful mountain river well maybe not quite a river but a little bigger than a stream but this uh bacteria had uh [penetrated] their entire pipe system or water system and they tried [flushing] it out they they couldn't get rid of it i've often wondered now this is years ago and i've often wondered what they ever did of course oh it was a beautiful mountain stream [bubbling] nicely you know the which uh is what [purifies] the water when it [bubbles] yes and yet even at that it was still contaminated yeah yes well i'm beginning to wonder too i mean you you're always hearing stories about well the government [okayed] this and then all of a sudden you turn around and my gosh it's okay to to doing it this way but if you turn around and do it that way it's dangerous as a matter of fact i did neither have i uh yeah i've often wondered about uh l a now that's suppose to be about the worst city in the country i guess for air pollution yeah uh_huh well uh they used to do it down in florida now i lived down there for ten years no they did away with it because they found out that uh the people that were doing it it was just a [racket] to them and for uh for nothing to yeah uh_huh well now here's another thing diesels uh diesel engines are are the worst and yet they haven't done a thing to them uh_huh yeah tell me about it i just got rid of uh a diesel engine escort well they um i i had good luck with mine until it finally just blew up on me here a few weeks ago is that right well uh_huh well now there was at one time as a matter of fact it may have been buick i think because i think it was g m that came out with a or diesel engine that was converted from a gas engine and uh they used the same [pistons] and and cylinders and whatnot but all they did was change the uh uh the [induction] [ports] and uh et cetera et cetera whatever needed to be changed over and although they were it seemed practical at the time they were nothing but a headache and they did finally did away with them and went to a straight diesel well now of course in california they they have much stricter codes than we have elsewhere now could be that we could do the same thing that they're doing out in california i don't know what it is [precisely] but uh they're doing they do something a little more stricter than we do well i guess i've uh just i've listened a lot to the media and i've tried to read some things on it and i've tried to take some steps to uh understand it and figure out where i am in the whole mess um apparently it's getting worse i mean i can tell that just by driving in dallas you have the low flying gray cloud on certain days but you know it really gets to you in terms of being able to breathe and and and things like that so we know that if you do the same thing to like your plants and you don't let them breathe they kind of die on you um and so you know looking at the different areas that um cause air pollution um i guess we have industry for one um that has to be i guess a little bit more aware of you know the output and uh harmful chemicals and things that they use um what do you think about that oh right yeah yeah oh good yeah right well that's true i think you know we we had such i mean i'm i'm close to forty and i can remember the good old days when we didn't have to worry about all this stuff and life was pretty you know um complacent in these areas and uh i think you're right though that we not only pay the price in money we're going to pay the price in health and our you know in the future whatever's going to happen here and you know it takes a few people you know on the alert to uh um really make a change and make a difference in the way people think and you're right about the education it's just got to be little by little by little until people become aware but i think we've got sort of a snowball effect going on now and i think that you know in terms of air pollution we're um [pinpointing] certain you know industries in our own communities that are you know blatantly um abusing the [airspace] and i think we're beginning to make them aware that um you know it's not just the a financial bottom line that they have to look at it's you know um it has a a bigger impact on the on the whole environment and the whole area and gosh i i don't know you know health seems to get in in the act too you know your your health and your lungs and and all this i mean this comes down to smokers and i don't know what to do about smokers because you know that's sort of an infringement of they're rights see you can go overboard too you can be real radical about this and i'm not for that i'm for [persuading] people by the use of education and by demonstration and by um you know your example of how things go um and you know i know there's some real [radicals] out there and that that will tend to turn you off any time and think that they're you know full of baloney and they're not you know on the right planet sometimes but you know what i mean about that i think it's education like you said that really needs to and it starts with you like you said just tell them to you know why you're doing why you're collecting cans and why you're collecting glass and why you're recycling the stuff and gosh oh yeah just as yeah well get it's yeah it's hard it's really hard and they have to maybe sort of like like hit bottom like they either have to die or they have to be you know totally incapacitated before they change their mind and you know bless their hearts you can't do anything that will impact them or or you you can't find a way really that it's it's it's almost like you know you can talk about [alcoholism] too i mean you know in this hidden in this manner sometimes i think that it's just a person has to change their mind and uh it's tough but um you know it it i don't allow people to smoke in my house and i i hope they respect that and you know i i send them outside sort of thing and and they respect that or else they just don't come back they don't smoke in my car and you know and it's not getting to be a big deal anymore i you know they they seem to uh understand or at least have a little bit of respect for your wishes and they don't just necessarily light up and and uh you know not expect to get some flack these days yeah well yeah uh_huh use your own lungs don't borrow mine can take part in your air yeah well things are getting i mean like i said i don't know why i know how old i am and i know that i never had to worry about the stuff i thought you know the grass is green the sky was blue and the ocean was a pretty light blue you know and and i'm finding out that that's not always the case anymore and that you know the damage has been done and you know we're left with a mess in a lot of ways you know caused by um starting with the air pollution and and that's just one of the factors that goes into you know trying to get this place cleaned up but oh gary indiana huh which one oh really really yeah oh i remember yeah oh i'm from chicago i grew up in chicago so yeah you know we had a lot of snow up there oh absolutely okay well i i definitely think it's our the cars we drive and i think you know everyone has good intentions and and thinks well i should car pool and i will and but that we just have so many different interests and so many different things we have to do it's it's a bother to have to pick somebody up and if you have a doctor's appointment or something and they have to get another ride home or you have to arrange it's just a hassle and i guess we're not willing to do that but that to me is probably the thing that needs to be done or to start using public dallas area i live in plano which is just a a suburb of of dallas do you live in a major city oh okay no well myself i i go to richardson which is a i teach school and so i don't commute that far it's only about four miles but the majority of people that live in this area go into dallas to work and and when you're if you go out on the freeway and you look you see almost every car is just one passenger and our public transportation system's a joke so people just don't bother to take that because it's inconvenient we don't have any kind of a a train or uh you know anything like some of the big cities do we're supposed to get one but it's you know way off the in the future but no it's just it oh is that right sure how large is raleigh so it's pretty big yeah uh_huh and so you ride your bike to work and everything or aren't you well that's great see that's that isn't even i mean i'm not sure that a even a percentage of of people in the dallas area ride bikes to work you know i just don't think they do i never see anybody um another thing that that i think our my family's real conscious of is is is to stop using aerosol cans and you know uh you know get find another way instead of you know i know it really is and we just need not to buy the stuff and those businesses will have to you know the corporations and so forth have to change if you don't buy it they're not going to make it so yeah that is an easy one but uh you know and i notice probably a lot of uh commercial pollution and and factory pollution in dallas you can see it some days it's really bad yeah it's awful it's nothing like california where the smog is constant but it's still there and you know it if we i think if we really realized how much we do breathe in that's unhealthy we would immediately do something about it but i don't think people realize how unhealthy the the air is yeah well i think i don't see i only teach english and and uh but the science teacher i teach fifth grade and we're [departmentalized] and the science teacher does a really big unit on it and i think the kids are more informed than adults are i mean and uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh they do they do and they and and i think that they are they care a little bit more and i think as adults we need to care because it's the the future for our kids and i you know i mean my kids are much more aware than i was at their age about things like that and i think it's it's definitely has to be that no it really wasn't it wasn't a problem it i mean i'm sure it was beginning to be a problem but people were just weren't aware of it like they are today and i think that's where it has to start with the kids because it's going to be their world soon and i think it and and we're real big on you know plano which is a small suburb of dallas about a hundred thousand um i think we're more than that about a hundred thirty thousand now but um they're really trying their best to start recycling and things like that that will and we just we have separate garbage collections now for plastics and cans and newspaper and which i think is i mean that's that should be just a way of life for everybody you shouldn't even complain about it you should just do it uh_huh that's true you're right you're right well you know it just has to be when you consider the landfills we we're not going to have any soon and it's it's ridiculous but the thing the [quandary] that i'm in is that that we had a great big article in in in the newspaper last week about i've been real big about going to to the store and asking for paper instead of plastic well that was really controversial because some scientists you know feel like plastic i mean paper is worse than plastic it's just it's just a real um debate about which one is is the best really the best thing to do is to bring um you know a cloth bag yeah do you yeah see that's what i do too i forget and and besides when i go to the store i have a family you know i i get maybe ten twelve bags of groceries and you know it would be a little a little expensive although you know i'm sure some uh_huh yeah uh_huh yes that's right that's right you're right uh_huh well you know and they say that you know plastic is recyclable but not that many people use them again you know yeah that's true sure sure i think that you know i think that it's tremendous the research they're doing on all of this because i think we need to to know and be more aware of it so we can do some changing but the majority of people are so lazy about it that they're not willing to to sacrifice a little to to make the world a better place and it's kind of sad because especially if you have children and because you know you want your kids and their kids to to be able to be a part of a yeah a world that's halfway decent and you know just in my lifetime i've seen such a change in the environment and it's scary because by the time my kids have kids and they're growing up it's going to be a completely different world you know and it's it's scary so you know like i i know that i need to car pool and i don't and uh and i you rationalize and say well i only am four miles away and that it's no big deal and well you know but yeah right right well you know just yeah just with with our thing in plano it had recycling garbage it hasn't it hasn't been that long and it was just uh really an easy adjustment for most people but there was a small percentage that [griped] and complained and wrote you know letters to the editor and you know like it was some real great big deal inconvenience and but it seems to me you should just be able to give up a little bit to make the world better but some people don't think that so and some people don't and some people i think really believe and maybe they're [rationalizing] but they really believe that everybody's making a bigger deal out of the problem than it is and that and that it's right no way it's it's there and we've got to face it that's right i think in some cases they aren't and i see i wonder i wonder how much the laws that congress passed several years ago are really enforced as far as big companies and oh i think so too and i think that they're not fined the way they should be or they're they pay them off or whatever so they can get away with it i i was born in ohio and when um when i was young we we did a lot of fishing and on lake erie and i i mean when i went back i just couldn't believe the difference it's just terrible the way it's polluted because of of big corporations that dump and you know and you just feel so bad because at one time it was a wonderful beautiful lake and now it's a mess yeah i when i was little my dad had a boat and we would go fishing on lake erie and it was beautiful and it's not beautiful anymore that's interesting i hadn't seen that i know there was a lot of talk about freon contributing to the the uh hole in the ozone layer and other various pollution but uh other than uh making the air conditioning systems tighter i didn't know that there was any work on uh alternate [coolants] uh_huh the uh the the times that i've seen any sort of of loss is uh at a time when maybe i'd have uh the the uh freon checked in the air conditioner or maybe [topped] off and it seemed to me that they'd practically waste almost as much as uh they'd put in the car but i've noticed in the past few years that uh the controls on that are tighter uh people are a lot more concerned about that well obviously cars uh and trucks contribute quite a bit and personally i'll uh i carpool uh most of the time with someone i work with but my schedule doesn't uh doesn't make for a consistent carpool uh_huh that's a that's a good question uh the leaded fuels have obviously been out of the automotive industry for quite some time and there's always talk about uh about regulating the emissions that a a car engine can produce and [tightening] down on that and of course the uh the large auto makers in this country spend [untold] millions to lobby to keep business just the same as usual there's a big issue in rhode island right now uh there's a company that wants to build a coal fired uh energy plant very close to to downtown [providence] and they are pulling all sorts of tricks to maneuver around various controls and inspections and regulations apparently the the well we have the the usual automotive pollution although it's not very visible you don't worry about that uh too much uh but uh we have a lot of wood smoke here now i heat with wood so uh i'm one of the [polluters] if you think that wood smoke is a is a source of pollution but there are people in this community who who think that uh it's gone beyond the part of being part of the charm of the community to the point of being part of the pollution and and uh we're very close to the uh grand canyon where the air pollution is a very big issue because uh of pollution well it's debatable as to whether it's coming from the los angeles area on the jet stream or whether it's coming from the four corners power plant up near page arizona uh but because it's a national park that's a a big issue there uh here in [flagstaff] actually uh it it's something that's unique to us the the biggest [pollutant] that we have in our air is cinder dust and that's because uh we're in a [volcanic] region and we uh we have dirt roads uh in a lot of areas that are covered with [cinders] but they also use [cinders] on the highways in the winter time in place of uh using salt or substances like that that they might in the eastern part of the country and when the snow goes away and it dries up and the cars drive over it we get a lot of cinder dust kicked up into the air and as of you know the the largest quantity that's the biggest pollutants that we have to to deal with here yeah huh right does does dallas sit in any kind of uh uh i've been there but i don't remember if you sit in any kind of a trough that uh where you get temperature inversions that that capture air pollutants or anything like that sure i laugh because i made the journey once from el paso to dallas and then continuing east uh to the eastern coast of the united states and uh i [joked] that uh all of the [settlers] settled in eastern texas where the green rolling hills are and and when they finally beat the mexicans the mexicans said fine you can have east texas but as only as long as you take west texas too yep uh_huh uh_huh right it yes here in [flagstaff] uh [juniper] is the the very [distinctive] smelling wood that you can smell in the wood smoke uh and one of the issues here uh which gets into forest management but has an impact on on air pollution is that uh we're surrounded by the largest stand of ponderosa pine in the world but people don't want to burn ponderosa pine they want to burn oak which is very hard to find in this region or [juniper] because it's the more [plentiful] hardwood and uh aspen uh it burns very [cleanly] but doesn't put out a lot of heat uh and ponderosa we also have [pinon] but uh uh it like ponderosa is very dirty and so they're not [preferable] woods and so here we have this great abundance of ponderosa pine and the forest service is saying we really wish that we could find a way to make it uh less of a how's the quality of air in portland really uh_huh uh_huh quite a bit of ozone and a lot of smog yeah oh yeah i've heard that los angeles is horrible and denver is i hear it's really bad atlanta atlanta is moderately bad uh you know we have we have a big problem with ozone uh and you know it's generally uh you know it's just just quite often you know be a very [hazy] sort of day you know because there will just be this pollution hanging in the air uh i think a lot i think most of our problems cause by automobile emissions it's you know a very mobile city uh_huh uh_huh heavy industry yeah i think the industry has been you know relatively good about uh you know having regulations at least in the last twenty years or so about industry pollution but it's just seem that i think i think we really suffer because you know we don't have any sort of an organized mass transit system any sort of you know like high speed rail or even even you know decent regular passenger rail across the country uh it seems it seems like like there there's a lot more federal subsidies for automobile you know through the construction of highways for automobiles um i know a little bit of chemistry uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh until it gets to the air just can't can't support them in the quality life they want uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh they they do have automobile emissions tests but uh it's there's some sort of rule i don't have a car so i don't know the actual specifics but it's like your car is it's a if the model year of your car is more than twenty years old you don't have to have it inspected any more you know which which is just kind of ludicrous you know because it they're the ones that you would expect to you know be the hardest be the biggest [polluters] yeah that's true i essentially live downtown and i go to school at georgia tech which is pretty much located in the heart of downtown within a mile from the heart of downtown it's i don't think it's really announced you know in the sense that the way the way it is in california but uh okay what do you feel is contributing most to air pollution cars you think so uh_huh yeah i i would have figured that some of the factories may be contributing as much as as uh automobiles uh_huh uh_huh well if you only have to get your car in inspected once a year you can just have it fixed real quick right before the inspection and and a lot of when you a lot of places when you go get the inspection they just pull it out of the garage and then pull it back in and they don't really check anything they just make sure the lights work basically have they uh_huh oh gosh yeah that will help less people drive and more you know more people riding in one car rather than everybody riding to work by themselves would help a little bit and if if everyone car [pooled] that would cut it down in half uh_huh yeah well uh in uh san antonio the parking downtown i work downtown and the parking is so dad gum expensive you basically have to car pool to be able to afford to park it costs seventy five dollars a month just to park my car so i ride with two other uh girls so that way it will only costs me twenty five dollars a month to park but it's just crazy and it's from what i understand i know a girl in washington d c and it costs her a couple of hundred dollars a month to park her car yeah and from what i understand new york city is worse that it just costs a fortune to own a car in new york city huh_uh yeah yeah uh_huh yeah uh once you're in downtown san antonio it's real easy to get around they have a they have these uh buses that that look like little street cars and they go all around that it's just real easy to get around once you're downtown the problem is getting downtown and they have some uh park and ride uh [expresses] where you go to the the bus stop and you get on the bus and it takes you directly downtown but they don't have enough of them and they're not convenient enough and there just happens to not be one convenient to where i live so if if there were i would ride the bus uh no not really um i noticed once flying into d f w there was just a a [brownish] orange haze over the city it was the ugliest thing i had ever seen yeah this is a nice time of the year though when it's so windy it just seems everything is so fresh yeah um yeah yeah i guess so i think it's five and i think we have it was nice talking to you so what do you think about it um for the worst i would assume yeah uh_huh uh_huh you're probably lucky to see the end of the [runway] by now um well i'll tell you i don't know i i don't know whether i i i count the stink as part of air pollution and it stinks down here it depends on where you are now if you're over yeah if if you're over by [asheville] you're pretty good because you're up there in the mountains and you've got some nice ozone and all that over here in raleigh it's kind of flat and stagnant and just yucky it's fine over on the coast because you've got the you've got the breezes off the off the water there but uh seems like it's just dull and [uninspiring] here no i don't know they're they keep doing things and it doesn't seem to be doing any good i was i was really amazed because i never would have expected you know this problem somewhere like in atlanta and i drove through atlanta uh couple of weeks ago and it was unseasonably warm and you could see the smog just sitting on top of the city and when i drove through i it it was terrible i i had to keep the windows up it was just so thick and uh heavy uh i couldn't believe it i because i i used to live in atlanta years ago and it was always fairly clean i mean you always you didn't have a problem with stagnant air like like l a does but boy it was really bad that day yeah yeah right but you see all these all these trucks [belching] out this black smoke yeah i know it's i i i don't understand where the priority is it's uh like in atlanta they have um they have mandatory catalytic converter inspections there's only three places in georgia that requires that and uh even with that it hasn't done any good i mean obviously it's gotten a lot worse but you know just like you say you go through there and you watch all these trucks and they're just coughing out all kinds of stuff some of them spitting it out so thick you can't even see past it you know i don't know uh_huh yeah because of the stuff settles on it yeah yeah i don't know things like you know well like acid rain and all these sulphur [dioxides] being dumped out there it's just like a big [avalanche] you know you start putting sulphur dioxide in the atmosphere and you end up with acid rain acid rain kills the trees trees don't scrub the air and there you are and then of course you've got all these folks cutting down on the rain forest as quick as they can i wonder too you know they keep talking about ozone [depletion] and all this it it seems funny that it's coming around at the time when we're losing the most most of the forests because i i i think that a lot of the pollutants and stuff are being taken out of the air uh you know by the plants and the trees and all that good stuff and here we are losing it and now the now it doesn't have any where to go but uh_huh yeah well it's like our winter here i mean it was the winter that wasn't you know we were having having hot days in december and january and got in uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah you you might as well sell it for scrap or something because you probably never will use it it's a shame too because i miss all the cold weather i i enjoy winter yeah yeah it was an interesting day the other day uh i think it was um yeah it was last not not this past friday but friday a week ago we i don't know i think you had some bad weather up there too we had tornadoes and everything down here um that was the most historic weather day in recorded history for severe weather in the country on that one day i mean you know of course you always have severe weather somewhere but there was more of it on that one day than ever recorded before over four hundred reports of tornadoes hail and heavy winds amazing it's a little bit scary yeah um i read an article a couple weeks ago they were talking about uh talking again about the ozone layer they said that uh the ozone deteriorate is greater than they had originally thought over some of the major metropolitan areas that's a little bit scary to think about because that's certainly not going to improve things around there yeah well that's that's yeah that had that had been the thing that had always i mean i i i have always thought about the ozone layer as sort of like a layer and it would move around i'm not that much of a [meteorologist] but uh yeah i was a little surprised at that too because up to that point all i'd heard about was the one over the pole and i said well i'm not too awfully concerned about that if it's going to start melting the ice cap it's not going to be for a long time yet but opening opening up over major metropolitan areas now that's uh that's yeah yeah yeah course the ozone is up there so yeah i i mean i don't even know i don't even know if the ozone layer does move i mean apparently it doesn't but of course it it might be just a couple of scientists trying to get their name in the paper sort of like cold fusion yeah i'll tell you i i was real excited when i first heard that i said hot dog they finally did it you know i mean i'm yeah i mean i'm an old science fiction buff from way back when i was a little boy and this is the kind of stuff that science fiction was made out of and it's the days that i keep looking for that aren't going to happen in my lifetime but you know we're supposed to have moon colonies by now but uh yeah cold fusion would have been great could have gone might have started making a little [inroads] on air pollution with that but who knows yeah yeah there's there's always a drawback to everything i mean i don't know well okay i pushed it so what do you think um we can do to uh prevent air pollution yeah well you know what i was talking to my brother in denver and he told me that they have restrictions on when they can burn their fireplace yeah i couldn't uh_huh yeah yeah i just couldn't figure out how could they could restrict uh you know like a fireplace because a lot of places that's all all the heat they have in their home you know well i know yeah isn't that terrible well i don't know all i know is that we have to have our car our car [smogged] every two years you know and uh uh_huh well you think that they would be able to do that you know i think they could too you know they just they don't want to they want to use uh you know something that's going to burn all this gas so we can buy more gas you know uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i don't know about that either but uh i know i took a ride down southern california just recently and it was just amazing to look you know like being up higher and looking down and seeing all this crud you know it's oh it's terrible uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah it does it burns your eyes and everything but a lot of these trucks that's on the road now to i think they could do something to those because some of those trucks just smoke like heck you know but it doesn't seem like no one ever does anything about that uh_huh no the electric cars i think that was a good idea i would really go for that yeah right right huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah well uh we have a fireplace here to i don't burn it every night usually i just have mine on the weekends or when i have company that we're going to be in the house all day you know and it's just nice to sit in the living room with a fireplace going but uh other than that i don't use mine yeah right right yeah i know i think it's going to have to be these large companies and hi [cynthia] what did you wear to work today so can you dress pretty casually yeah well i um run a business out of my home so i tend to get up in the morning put on sweats um do whatever i want to do with the kids then whenever i have a meeting with a client i'll put a suit on and then come home and get back into regular clothes again yeah i've recently um tried to update my wardrobe trying to put suits together that i can [interchange] the jackets and the blouses and all that a lot that's helped me a lot with having i can only have a a limited wardrobe since i'm only working part time right now um but still it gives it some variety add different blouses and [scarves] and belts and things like that what about your casual wear do you like to wear jeans most of the time yeah it's nice you can wear shorts especially on a day like today when it's so hot dress shorts yeah yeah yeah but yeah but uh_huh oh yeah it'll be comfortable i guess down here uh we just recently moved to texas so my wardrobe has changed quite a bit um we moved from colorado where and i have a closet full of sweaters that you live in virginia now oh that's interesting uh_huh yeah i'd like to be able to wear those here today it's eighty eight degrees so needless to say my sweaters have been hung in the closet for quite a while now today was uh definitely a shorts day around here this is pretty [unseasonal] but uh at least we you know it it it feels good it gets uh everybody doesn't have cabin fever today it's nice to get out and about okay sounds good it was nice talking to you bye bye um let's see what did i wear to work today um actually i wore [corduroy] shorts with a white blouse um and flat shoes um on occasion on occasion um i do vary um you know i wear suits i wear skirts and sweaters on occasion i can wear jeans um how about you uh_huh yes uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um you know there's real no no real dress code where i work um you see people wearing you know all different attire i um don't like to wear heels that really tires me out i work in a big building so i predominantly wear flat shoes um you know in the winter i wear sweaters in summer i you know i like one piece dresses short [sleeves] things like that right right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right right [accessories] uh_huh um yeah mostly i mean at home i predominantly wear [sweatpants] and things like that also yeah well they're um you know they're like yeah they're like black [corduroy] bermuda shorts and sometimes i wear a blazer with them and i get really a lot of [compliments] on them um where i work is predominantly male so you know they their attire is always the same you know suits or slacks you know jeans whatever and um but i'm really the only woman i guess at work that does that but seems to work for me in fact i just bought i i just got a new outfit as a gift that um it's one of those [skorts] you know it's shorts but it looks like a skirt so i think that'll be good for work too yeah yeah so uh_huh uh_huh well see i live in virginia uh_huh yeah yeah so i'm you know like right now today was in about you know the fifties but um you know i i do wear a lot of sweaters and things like sweater dresses oh my uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah we're still pretty much you know in winter as far as that goes here uh_huh uh_huh i guess we've discussed everything there is about clothing okay okay it was nice talking to you also bye bye okay um i don't know about you but where i am we have a like an extremely lax dress policy at work and it varies like every day i mean from jeans one day to business suits the next it's pretty bad but it's true you know they tend to try to be you know real lax and supposedly the policy is like you know we you know we hire these wonderful creative people and we don't want to [smush] their creativity you know we want to go ahead and let them do what ever they want and you know you really will see people in in jeans one day and business suits the next yeah yeah you know we're kind of that way too i try to i'm the same way you are i kind of try to judge from day to day i know you know where i am we work a lot with the customers and we have a lot of government folks come in all the time and and you know if i know that they're going to be there you know you i try to really watch it and like you say you know really dress up and if i know they're not you know i i've been doing a lot of [reorganization] you know the last couple of months the same way you are you know and it's just it's just impossible to crawl down on the floor and dig through boxes in a dress it is and so uh uh_huh oh no oh no oh how awful it sounds like mister power hungry you know just yesterday though i saw a girl in the spine out here at lewisville that had on a pair of shorts and i don't care you can call them split skirts and you can call them [culottes] all you want but these were shorts that's all they were i don't care what else you call them you know if they're below the knee okay maybe you can call them split skirts if they're above the knee they turn into shorts you know and these weren't even really full ones i mean they had a problem out here with it last summer wearing these shorts that were you know the real wide full ones you know and these weren't even those these were like pretty short black and they were very dressy the were black [velvet] shorts and she had on black hose and black heels and she looked very very nice but you don't wear shorts to work you know i mean as far as i'm considered she was in violation and nobody says anything to them it's always been a big problem in lewisville in the summertime you know if they just you know the management doesn't ever seem to want to take an cut off you know that no this is wear we're going to draw the line this is shorts you know and and nobody will ever kind of take control and do that you know so it always gets annoying because the rest of us are going well god we have a pair of those at home too it sure would be cool and comfortable to wear you know but yeah yeah and then during the week you see these women in the you know just because you put on a pair of hose with them doesn't make them not shorts anymore you know i mean i've never seen them do it without hose i mean they always have hose on but still it's they're shorts i don't care what you say they're shorts well i think t i's dress code is pretty lax considering everything anyway you know uh oh do they really oh my god i i couldn't afford to work there oh no uh_huh t i says no shorts and no [halters] i know that's it wow i don't know that that would be a good environment to work in i mean i see i i am more i don't know about anybody else and a lot of bosses may say i'm nuts but i am more productive when i'm in pants i i am i work faster i get things done faster than when i'm in a dress and heels you know i and it's weird but i it's i do i can i can get so much more done if i'm dressed comfortable you know right yeah uh_huh you can't do that in a skirt poor soul oh yuck yeah that's terrible that's terrible gosh well i don't know i just figure you know yeah sometimes i worry about you know if i go in in pants and i never i never ever ever ever go in in a pair of jeans you know but i'll go in in pants i mean today i had on a pair of you know navy blue dress slacks and and uh like a peach colored top and you know not [cruddy] but not a dress either and sometimes i wonder if stuff like that would will hold you back you know if you don't dress in you know your dress for success business suits everyday if you know if upper management doesn't notice that and remember that later on but you know i don't know if they do or not you know i see a lot of the managers and they're in jeans so you know really wow uh_huh yeah isn't that funny that's great yeah that's the way to do it i mean that's the smart way to do it it really is because your making you know if when they're meeting with the engineers who they know are going to be dressed down if they come in in you know a six hundred dollar three piece suit it's going to make the people they're meeting with feel very uncomfortable you know or it would me you know yeah yeah look at this slick guy i wonder what kind of money does he make uh_huh i can see it now well it was good to talk to you it was really enjoyable it really is oh yuck yeah well it's kind of enjoyable i'm really looking forward to it well thanks a lot bye bye well i'm kind of that way too i work in the legal department and where we are now what we're doing is some very big lawsuits that happen to have a heck of a lot of boxes of documents and i get to [toting] around boxes of documents several times a day it always seems like i'm doing that and i can't see getting dressed up and wearing heels and stuff when you have to carry you know boxes of documents around so if i'm just going to be there working in the litigation center and doing you know odds and ends and stuff with the boxes of documents i dress down but if we're going to have a meeting where we're having the attorneys come in or people from uh other [party's] attorneys and stuff then i normally dress up yeah and i'll wear a dress and hose and stuff uh_huh uh_huh that's right that's right as a matter of fact i thought i had one funny story when uh i was at t i the first year or so we were sent out to our record retention facility to look through two thousand boxes we had them in the warehouse and at that point it the warehouse was over across the road and it wasn't air conditioned and it we were there like in the middle of the summer it's [unair] conditioned it was dusty and dirty uh there was like a fan at the very end of the row and that was it and so we didn't really know we weren't supposed to we thought t i dress code was just dress appropriate to your job we wore shorts we didn't know that was a big no no and the supervisor from another area came up to us and you know this area where record retention is there's only a few people that work there and he he knew who worked there he should have realized that we weren't [regulars] in the warehouse there and he came up to us and he just said who's your supervisor well he called our supervisor and our supervisor and our [supervisor's] supervisor and it went up all the way to the head of facilities complaining that we were wearing shorts he didn't at at least say to us did you know you're not supposed to do that that could have [alleviated] a big problem we ended up getting called out on it yeah uh_huh um um yeah um well i've seen some people try to just come in like over the weekend because they want to use the [texteller] machine and they have said no yeah i know i didn't know that e d s has a very strict dress code i had a friend oh definitely i had a friend who worked there for a year or so and they spell it out for men it's particular suits uh the pin [stripe] and the particular colors of shirts and wing tipped shoes oh it is definitely lined out women are not allowed to wear slacks you wear coordinated suits and and a particular kind of shoe you know so high heel oh it is spelled out when i was looking at her materials when she first started you know she had her benefits package and all that kind of stuff and it told about the dress code and it said these are the color pastel shirts you may wear or white shirts with this kind of [stripe] in it for the men and this kind of shoe and hair just this way yeah and e d s is very particular about this hair cuts i mean it was like you can't have you know such and such [facial] hair no [beards] you know and just really detailed well the the time we were there at the warehouse we felt really bad because we had uh another person coming from washington our outside counsel and she was told that we were going to be in a warehouse but she really didn't get the idea that we were in the warehouse part of the warehouse not the office to the warehouse but the warehouse and she came with skirts just like she'd be going into the office and we'd try we'd try to say didn't you bring any pants or anything we're we're out here in the warehouse you know you you got your skid of you know that wooden [pallet] of boxes and you're going to have unload you skid look at the documents in the in the boxes and then [repack] your skid and she and she was so she was so hot and miserable you know in the skirt she finally tried to go buy you know a pair of pants but you know i mean it was just completely miserable for her some of our people in the legal department we have um assistants to the general counsel and it's funny because there's one that always wears a suit a matter of fact he's never seen without his jacket to the suit on [buttoned] and then there's another one who's who's a little younger and a little more [yuppish] and he's always kind of like in the [khaki] pants and you know a shirt and sometimes he wears the jacket to it and some of the [patent] attorneys have been real casual in their clothes and then other ones tend to always wear a suit with a very [starched] cotton shirt so that's just with the you know the little [suspenders] or something on so we've we've kind of had a variety there but i think a lot of times it's it's mainly who they're going to meet with or they're meeting with people that they know is going to be dressed that way then that's how they are if there just going to be meeting with t i like to talk about a [patent] kind of thing and the they're engineers that they're talking too they dress kind of like how the engineers are dressed and they're usually casual yeah it's one of those [slippery] attorneys coming in here yeah this is this is kind of a fun project i've done some of the other speech programs but we've never got to talk to another person it was always just talking to the computer so this is a little different yeah okay bye well uh i am basically retired now i was a member i was in education and in administration so basically i wore dresses and uh heels and i was never one uh because my work often took me into court uh never was one that got uh accustomed to wearing pants suits and pants to work but that was just me i know many people are very comfortable in the classroom and what have you wearing pants uh it i guess i was just old enough not to uh be very comfortable in it how about you oh uh_huh uh_huh yes and i think that does make a difference because when you do have to be in front of people uh i think you the the tendency there is to wear dresses and suits and and uh more classical style of clothing what about the mini skirt uh_huh well there are mini skirts and there are mini skirts there are some that are really short and then there are some that may be will come like four inches or five inches above the knee and again it depends upon the size the shape of the person as well as the shape of the person's legs now i also uh even though i retired from education i uh i do modeling and i teach at a modeling agency here and uh so when we are doing [wardrobing] and we have uh two two hour classes in wardrobe we do discuss a great deal the mini skirt and the types of clothes to wear on the job uh even though i may have them from sixth grade on up through uh grandmothers in my class and uh i always try to emphasize the clothes that you wear should not necessarily be the greatest fad because maybe they those are not the clothes that are the most uh appealing to you or the most uh [complimentary] to you but uh the mini skirt many times will [evoke] comments you don't really want and and then uh then you're in the situation where you're very unhappy that's right well i i uh i have to uh agree with that even when they was very very popular in the early sixties uh i uh uh again maybe because i was at the school there were still many teachers who wore mini skirts uh we had no regulation against it and a lot of the kids did of course and it could be very embarrassing for the men teachers because they were not that careful in how they handled themselves in those mini skirts and so i think uh uh of course now i go the other extreme i do not like to see in the corporate areas uh all the women dressed like men with the suits and uh white shirts and ties and what have you so that they all look exactly the same uh i don't like that i don't i think there should be individuality in dressing yes right well i and i don't think that you have to be [manish] and extremely tailored to to look professional i think that you you make of that what you wish and you can go the opposite direction and uh over do all the frills and [laces] and [flounces] and what have you which don't belong in the in at least in my opinion in the work place uh but that that you can have a classical look without a lot of a great deal of [adornment] and what have you and still be very feminine because that was one thing i always fought against i started out as a physical education teacher so i was always fighting against the idea of looking tailored or [manish] uh and people would never ever guess that i was [phys] ed and um and that pleased me uh and so then i of course just continued what i considered the best style of clothing for me at work and uh and i find even even at home here now i i will wear blue jeans or i'll wear shorts and what have you uh and be very comfortable but when i go out somewhere then uh unless i have a pair of dress slacks i don't usually wear a lot of blue jeans i have difficulty getting them to fit me comfortably any how and so uh uh i just feel that uh you know each person has to dress to their own liking and for their own comfort but uh there are certain norms that companies should be able to uh put out as guidelines for their employees right yes yes that's good yeah uh_huh yes right right right yeah yeah well i don't either fortunately i don't have to work in those companies but uh i i uh did have a group come over from one of the banks over the children's hospital where i was volunteering and uh they were doing a presentation and every one of the young [execs] coming up were dressed exactly a like men and women they all had on the gray jackets and the gray [trousers] or or skirts and the white blouses and the same color tie i mean you could hardly tell the women from the men except for the lengths of the pants and one was a skirt and one was a pant and uh and i think that's sad because that doesn't allow for any individuality that's uh can [stifle] creativity so i guess so well it's been nice talking with you uh_huh bye bye okay what do you usually wear to work uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i work at t i and they don't really have uh dress code so to speak there it's pretty lax about um you know you can pretty much wear whatever you want to and i wear anything from jeans when i'm feeling really casual to uh suits and dresses when i'm meeting with a customer or i i teach training classes and so when i'm teaching a class obviously i wear a suit or dress so it it uh definitely [fluctuates] mainly with what i'm going to be doing that day and kind of what my mood is and when it's raining i'm more likely to wear jeans and and when it's really cold i'm more likely to wear jeans or pants or sweaters or that type of thing um but it just really depends on the weather and my mood and then you know obviously when i'm doing anything that i'm in front of people or or making presentations teaching whatever i'm going to dress up more uh_huh uh_huh there are a few people every now and then that wear those to work there pretty strict about that though um i've never worn i just wouldn't i mean even to well jeans aren't exactly professional but for some reason a mini skirt is to me a little more [unprofessional] to wear to work than jeans just because it's maybe it's just because of the [sexist] views and everything but you just feel like you're you're being showing too much i don't know i wouldn't want to wear a mini skirt to work i have seen a few people do it though but they they weren't overly and they weren't overly [revealing] they were pretty much in good taste but um for me i just i just wouldn't want to do that yeah uh_huh that's what i've seen uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right right uh_huh well i feel like too on the job when you know there's men around and some of the managers are men you just you know you don't want them looking at your legs necessarily and uh to me i just wouldn't feel comfortable in that at work but uh uh_huh uh_huh right right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh even with the very tailored look of a suit sometimes i like to have a just a little something that's feminine not you know you don't want to over do it but just a little a touch of it just to say yes i am a woman but i can be professional too right uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right that's what i one thing i like about t i is that they aren't overly strict about what you wear and they don't you know your boss doesn't come up to you and say now remember tomorrow you have a meeting so you'd better wear a suit i mean they they leave it up to you and your judgment to to use good judgment and dress [tastefully] and dress for whatever occasion you may have the only real restrictions they have are uh no [halter] tops and no shorts even the long walking short of the [squirts] the the split skirts anything that that could be considered shorts they don't allow and they don't allow uh any sweat any sweat shirts or t shirts that might have [vulgar] or you know anything like that on it but other than that it's pretty pretty lax and i think that's good because it does allow people to be individual and it allows you to kind of dress the way you feel that day or you know if you want to be comfortable and casual you can and sometimes i think you may be more productive if you're comfortable with what your wearing and can be be feel more relaxed whereas uh sometimes when your in the suit and feel kind of almost stiff and you're not you know maybe you don't uh can't get as comfortable to sit down and you know like when i'm writing training material i prefer to be more comfortable unless i know i have to meet with a customer later during the day so that's i think that is good that they're like that i do know there's a lot of companies that are very strict about what the employees wear and they must wear blue or gray or black and a white shirt and you know no variation and i don't i don't quite agree with that right uh right yeah uh_huh right i agree well it i guess we've talked probably long enough nice talking to you too i enjoyed it bye bye okay uh i was just trying to think about how i how i dress for work you know t i is a very casual atmosphere and uh what i usually do on the weekend is is lay out five outfits and uh on monday i i wear the the worst looking one because it doesn't seem like people are really you know are that alive on monday you know so and then [progressively] through the week i'll i'll wear nicer looking things and then on friday most everybody wears jeans jeans and sweatshirts or you know jeans and blouses or something like that uh but mostly what i wear are skirts and blouses or you know skirts and uh pullover sweaters or uh you know little two piece dress suit suits like but uh_huh right right like where i work it's it's pretty casual uh it's it's i guess it's more like a a college campus also i mean there's you know hundreds of people work for t i and uh a lot of people just just wear jeans and and uh sweats all the time and they dress up like when customers are coming in or uh when we have department meetings or something like that and uh you know a lot of people like those that work in the legal department for their the real uh higher ups like the the the t i lawyers and uh those that work for the the higher executives those secretaries they uh they really dress up all the time so there's a good combination in the hallways all the time you know yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh and that's very acceptable at t i i believe at i b m they they make you wear a blue suit and uh some kind of colored shirt and a tie uh_huh i i would hate to be in that atmosphere uh_huh oh i see yeah oh t i is everywhere uh_huh that's true that's a good idea uh_huh the no right yeah and if you happen to go into one of areas that is a smoke smoke area and you don't smoke you almost [strangle] so much smoke in the air yeah areas the smoking area you know it's closed in and if you if you don't smoke and you go in there everybody that goes in there smokes so it's full of smoke when when you go in there i used to smoke a long time ago i used to burn my clothes talking about getting back to clothes i used to burn my clothes with cigarettes that's one of the reason that i stopped yeah she always had uh yeah she always had to have a lot of clothes no i i wasn't either she my daughter she's real good at finding sales though you know she'll buy a lot of yeah she'll buy a lot clothes at the end of seasons you know and uh just have them for the next year and she you know she finds all the outlets and all the discount places and uh buys clothes uh you know when they were coming up i i didn't sew but now i've i've learned how to sew so i'm well i'm i'm still learning how but i'm and i'm getting much better at it and i i'm going to be able to make my own clothes right right because clothes are are really expensive you know uh uh a little simple shell shell blouse you know that you can make for about say ten dollars at you know at at the most out of a decent fabric boy runs you like twenty something dollars in the store just a little shell to go under a suit you know uh_huh right especially to pay that kind of money for it i have a friend who uh she had a she had a a little boy and uh she used to dress him out of [neiman] [marcus] i mean she dressed him uh [fabulously] and then seems like every time she turned around he was [outgrowing] stuff and she finally learned that you just can not do this you know so now she finds the basement sales and just like you know everybody else right yes and you right and yeah and you just have to keep buying them you know if you if you if you're not buying the most expensive clothes out there the the quality is really not that great you know for the price that you pay right right like i bought i bought the most beautiful uh sweater from uh i believe it was ross dress for less and it it was really pretty it was just you know it was just plain a plain uh you know round uh [necked] uh sweater and it had like it was [embellished] around the the top you know it had uh leather leather designs and um some other other little things on it and i just thought it was so pretty and i i got it at a real good price i think maybe it was nine ninety nine or something and it was so pretty and after i wore it a couple of times i realized why why it was it was so cheap there was in the middle of the back of it there was it's like there it had been [slit] and they had like just sewed it back together right in the middle of the back you know wasn't a seam or anything you know and that's why it was so cheap although it's not it's not really noticeable uh from the outside but but still it's you know it's really not not not a good quality and then i was told by somebody that works for j c penney's that uh ross ross is just one of those places that sell sells seconds yeah yeah um they don't really buy the first quality they buy the second and uh places like j c penney's that they'll reject the seconds they'll send them back every time but places like ross dress for less and uh t j max uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah uh you know that's a good way to approach it i've never thought about um i do plan my clothes a week in advance actually i plan them a month in advance i usually do a month at a time so i don't repeat an outfit but um i've never thought about wearing your worst outfit on monday because really no one's paying attention but anyway um i really i don't work outside of school um i work in the computer lab at school so i can just wear whatever i have on for school an and um and really it's i try to dress [presentable] but very comfortable like um in the warm weather it's always shorts and a t shirt or a button up or something like that and then in the winter time it's jeans or or pants i usually uh you know college is so casual you really don't want to dress up unless you you uh have a job and you have to be there right after school or something like that so yeah uh_huh oh well that's good that they're so casual i mean uh my brother works for t i and he's a computer programmer or computer engineer and uh you know whenever he was going to school he was expecting to having to wear uh a tie or a dress shirt everyday but uh he goes to work in his blue jeans t shirt and tennis shoes and he just loves it yeah that's what i've heard but uh i mean they they just moved into the new building he calls it the new building i don't know it's where all the executives are and um and so they were they were going to try to take their blue jean code with them and trying to get all the all the upper level to start wearing blue jeans but he just left for italy today at four and he'll be over there until july first setting up some kind of computers for them over in t i mean for t i but over in italy oh yeah he was so excited about going but uh he didn't carry any ties or anything because he he just went over there with the that attitude well if i don't take it then they won't make me wear it because uh he just he didn't you know he's not really into all that he would wear it if he had to for his job and all but you know if he had the preference i mean his his preference is um blue jeans and a t shirt so but i think that's great about t i and also uh to get off the clothing the smokers you know how they have the the different designated areas for smokers and stuff i think that's great oh really do you smoke uh_huh i think that's um well um you mentioned your daughter had graduated from college well when she was in high school did she always have to have all the new fashions and uh see that's how that's how i am but my mamma was not raised like that and so oh me to boy i have to hunt them down uh_huh that's great i wanted to take a sewing class at school but i just haven't fit it into my schedule yet but that i mean that can really benefit um that's something that i'd be very interested in very interested in learning uh they're outrageous uh_huh yeah it's it's marked up it is it is really outrageous but uh i mean like whenever i i was growing up and all my mom i never understood this then but i do now but she never would buy me like the new [designer] jeans that had come out that were thirty dollars or um or she wouldn't buy me the fifty dollar tennis shoes and stuff like that and she always told me it was because i was still growing and she wasn't going to buy me something i was going to grow out of next week yeah oh no uh_huh that's the best way to shop i mean i always thought my mom was being mean to me but i look back at it now and my child is going to i mean i'm going to raise mine the same way um i don't know i just they're just so outrageously priced it's just incredible i try to uh always catch the sales always yeah it it depends on um yeah there's there's always a reason why they're on sale so that that has a lot to do with it but um well uh uh_huh oh that's great uh-oh oh no uh_huh the [defect] uh_huh t j max does that yeah we have a t j max over here and um okay guess we can go ahead uh well i guess you know it's you know since living in dallas it's always so hot so in the summertime i just i wear lots of shorts so because i don't work during the day so do you work oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah and buying suits and stuff yeah because just being at home and i work at home so i just have you know i just wear my you know my shorts and stuff like that i don't go out and spend lots of money on uh different you know suits and stuff you know but when i before i got married you know i was working so i uh you know i had more suits and stuff then but worry about all that kind of stuff uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh when you're training right yeah uh_huh moved from winter uh_huh uh_huh yeah because i came from wyoming and i had wool suits and wool skirts and you know i've got all these clothes that i never wear because you can't wear them here and uh the seasons are just so much different you have so much summer and uh so then when i you know i finally get a chance to go out with my husband it's like a real chore to find something nice to wear yeah uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh yeah you hate to get rid of it because you know how much you spent on them and it's real hard to get rid of some of that stuff i know so uh_huh uh_huh clothes yeah uh_huh yeah yeah and i i just don't spend you know right now my clothes come from target you know yes and they you take them out of the drier and they're [wadded] up in a ball oh i'm so glad to meet somebody that that their iron board is their permanent fixture in their house you know i have very little furniture but my ironing board is part of my [decor] so uh_huh uh_huh yeah well yeah it is it is but it's like uh i just don't want to do it yeah uh_huh yeah that's an idea yeah yeah i you know if i have if i know i'm having somebody come over to the house and there's a possibility they might be going back into my room i will put it away but i iron our clothes as we go along so you know right no uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh you can't iron it all and yeah and then with my kids they're always getting into you know they can't decide what they want to wear so they change their minds you know i know i mean my oldest is only four but she's still changes her mind two or three times before she figures out what she's going to wear so and then they never put anything back uh_huh yeah that that that's called smart you know they don't we don't do that kind of stuff you know that's called too easy on mom our lot in life is to make her life miserable so uh yeah well that's it's been good talking to you to see somebody hear somebody that does the same thing i do because i tell people what i do and they just go oh how do you do that it's like it's easy you just do it you know uh_huh yeah yeah i don't think i'd know what to do if it wasn't there you know my husband wouldn't know where to hang his dirty clothes you know yeah he wouldn't know where to put things so yeah so oh it was nice talking with you too take care bye bye uh_huh yes uh_huh yeah i do work uh and but i work at a manufacturing plant so i wear a lot of blue jeans and t shirts but occasionally i have to get dressed up and wear [panty] hose and a dress and high heel shoes and i feel really uncomfortable doing that and in the plant so uh it's it's a problem for me but normally i just wear blue jeans and a t shirt very very comfortable i like that so much better than having to wear dress clothes uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right well i have plenty of suits and dress clothes because i'm like you when i first started working uh i have all these suits and blouses and skirts and mix and match and that kind of stuff but now that i you know work in the manufacturing plant then it's just it's so much more difficult for me to to actually get dressed up to come in to work like that uh but occasionally i have to because uh part of my job is teaching and training and uh so you have to look just a little bit nicer than your normal [garb] than your normal [garb] but i'm like you too uh i moved from ohio down to here and i had mostly [polyesters] and [wools] and winter clothes and buying all these cotton clothes and then of course you have to iron them all the time that's really that's been a problem for me right right uh_huh that's true that's true well i know i was just now uh uh putting away a lot of my winter clothes and i was going through here and i was thinking i haven't worn this in three years and because it's a wool skirt and there's just not that many opportunities to wear it and i have five or six wool skirts so i was thinking well maybe you know i need to think about getting rid of them but no i folded it up [neatly] and put it away maybe next year uh_huh uh_huh i know i agree with you well i know last year uh well this past winter it wasn't that cold but the previous winter we had more uh cold weather where i was able to actually wear your double and triple [layerings] of uh clothes yeah like you would when you're up north so that's really interesting yes yes yes and they're all one hundred percent cotton and yes yes i know so i uh i have my ironing board sitting out all the time i never put mine away it is it is that's true and and i've been looking at these uh uh like in home depot where you can go and they've got that ironing boards that will just flip right down off of the uh uh what the the the door and uh and then you can actually have one where you can put it inside of a wall you know to have it permanently attached and that's what i'm thinking i'm going to have to do because mine's sitting right out in front of my bedroom and it's just it's just an [eyesore] i think with all the uh uh uh uh no i've been thinking about putting the ironing board in the closet and and running you know a line in there for my iron so i could do it in there and i wouldn't have to have that [eyesore] yeah so i have a big closet uh_huh yeah uh_huh i no longer do that weekly thing because i have so many and i'm like you i the night before or that day i will iron whatever it is that we need and that's it because it's too many hundred percent cotton uh_huh uh_huh right right oh i know i know no no of course not no that uh that would be too simple absolutely not that's right uh_huh absolutely absolutely oh that's right that's right you do you do so uh but yeah i uh i know several of my girlfriends though we uh we all keep our ironing boards out and just uh an ever present thing in our household so there you go things that need to be [mended] things that have to get [ironed] uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's true oh well it was nice talking with you okay take care uh_huh bye bye all right and and your occupation is teaching substitute teacher yes it is it is right well i was just trying to make an introduction here but oh and and i haven't told you i'm going to be at a different school this year now i've just gotten a another job at an elementary library at [barron] right i well not really i've got the every day i've got to uh read to kindergartners so i'm going to be down on the floor with them i've got about forty kindergartners i'm going to be doing working with every day for uh you know a half hour so i'll be i'll probably be wearing slacks as often as i do because i'm i'm if i'm going to be down on the floor messing with them i'm not going to wear nylons and you know nice nylons and dresses right well of course you've been at clark enough that you know it's always cold but you don't know uh i guess at some of the other schools you go to unless you've been there subtract right i i think some of the dress codes are different at different schools that's one of things one of the things i ask about you know whether whether she would allow slacks and she said she doesn't have a problem with that she just didn't like sloppy dressing and and i said well you know that was okay and i'm basically i just you know i wear slacks year round except every about once a week i try to wear a skirt and and in the winter you know i just add a maybe wear longer sleeve shirts than i do in the summer and add a heavier jacket or you know wear jackets more in the winter than i do in the summer that's about i don't i don't really work in a profession that requires that i wear a business suit and you know look really yeah right and you never know that though sometimes when you're going in do you right right right on what thursday right right so that would kind of give you a a clue i guess and and sometimes you get the long term stuff so you're aware ahead of time of what's going on that so that's and i don't know you know i i think about well the dress code they have for the kids you know are they put one on the parents or the teachers and say they have to the men have to wear ties and there can be no blue jeans worn and because some of the teachers i know wear uh dress up jeans not sloppy looking jeans but [tapered] jeans that they've had dry cleaned so they have got the [crease] and uh you know they'll wear it with a nice top and and uh i don't know that that looks that bad but if you're going to tell the kids they have to dress up i guess you can tell the teachers that too uh_huh uh_huh right right right yeah there's a couple teachers up there that that do dress up more than others right right well and you always course it's a standing joke you know when the when the men come in in a a tie and a suit coat you say you know what have you got a job interview today or there there's there's usually yeah there's usually something going on that that uh and would would uh cause that to happen and i i don't know how a coach would feel if that teaches health or you know english or whatever that they had to wear a tie i some of those male coaches that might really right and a t shirt right that i didn't ever understand i mean we've got coaches that teach health for five periods and then have athletics sixth period so whether change then well see that's what i would think that's what i would think right course we had had one coach one period he'd teach p e and the next period health and then a period of p e and and that's hard you know so he just left warm ups on but but uh no i think really probably they could they could uh really and i don't know if if they put make uniforms the thing for the kids i guess the teachers will have to follow suit with a dark skirt and a white top and you don't think so well some of them yes they do and and it's not at some of the private schools but even there's a couple public schools in dallas where where the kids wear uniforms and the teachers you know dress in [accordance] with that uh_huh well i i think it would make a difference at school i i don't think we should be spending time saying somebody's wearing torn clothing or wearing too shorts too short or they've got the really short skirt and the black nylons and the high you know i mean it's a lot of trouble to to take care of that and of course the kids say then why bother just let me wear what i want and and yet we can't to that either i'd like to see them go to to not necessarily a uniform but saying that they've got to wear a button down shirt you know that would that would alleviate any t shirts with sayings on them but if they could wear a button down shirt and a pair of dark slacks and they could buy them anywhere they wanted and and then the girls right i don't no not in plano they may get but they said in the dallas schools that that helps their educational process there highland [park's] thinking about going that route so it and then i think that's going to push teachers to dress a lot more professionally than they do yeah i agree with you on i'm a i'm a substitute teacher is is this pat i'm talking to now yeah i'm a substitute teacher in i believe the same school system we both work in oh okay oh well i bet you're you're you may dress differently then for that well what i wear sometimes depends on on how cold i think the school might be or what room i might be in since i'm a sub and have different rooms to go to and always carry a sweater yes no you try to layer so you can add or or or take off and it's it's interesting to notice when you go to different schools that some are a little more fancier than others and have a very casual uh uh_huh uh_huh right and well for me sometimes they even have dress up days or they you know have have spirit week that that you wear your different outfits and you have to have the color for that particular school if you if you choose to participate in spirit week and one might be a hat day where you have to come up with some sort of hat no but because i sort of stick to several schools uh i'm usually aware that there might be a spirit week going on and and might might remember to do it and then many schools on a particular day during uh i guess football season maybe all year long they wear the school colors for uh game day which right it might be thursday for the high schools and it may be friday for the senior high schools yeah uh_huh yeah it it i see that the i think the elementary school teachers or maybe even the middle school teachers dress a little fancier than than some of the high school teachers i think but it i think it varies it it just so much anything anything can go and you can see in some of the departments in some of the schools like history at clark they're all pretty fancy but they're just sort of into clothes and then there's other departments that aren't and they'll just wear your common ordinary you know whatever you might might say right and so you try to maybe follow those if you know you're going there you don't want to dress too tacky because you're going to be in the same room with them or you're going to be observed yeah right they go around in their little coaching shorts or [parachute] pants yeah well at vines the coaches don't do that they they dress pretty good i would say and then they go to their coaching and they they put their shorts on there uh_huh but they they don't look you know they don't wear their sweat pants or or anything they're they dress like any other teacher would in in a classroom situation not in p e those i can understand yeah i don't think we'll ever get to that no i don't think i think we're going the opposite direction it's the parochial schools that i guess many they've had uniforms for years i don't really know if they still do it certainly makes it easier to dress uh_huh well it's certainly cheaper and easier in the long run i think that you don't have to be concerned about your wardrobe uh_huh yeah but i doubt that that would come that that will come about just yeah i i no not yeah well i think it does it it takes their minds off of of trying to compete uh_huh yeah i i don't think a lot of teachers are very professional but hi uh basically i wear pants i'm a real pants person and uh like when i'm at home since and i'll say i'm a homemaker since that's my basic thing uh i wear a pantsuit most of the time not a pantsuit i guess pants and a shirt and uh in the summertime i wear cotton tops cotton top shirts and in the winter i wear uh like sweaters i like sweaters a lot and so i do that but when i go out for meetings uh then i will wear either uh skirts or uh a dress and i have a couple of [pantsuits] because those are real in at this time but that's basically what i do oh right well that sounds nice uh it said the seasons do do you change much through the season or uh_huh maybe no uh_huh yeah yeah right uh_huh then uh well i don't have the resources to just go out and buy buy buy anyway and so my don't change dramatically over the years if i need something new i will go and buy it but basically i'm a a pretty much the same in the summertime i wear the light cotton and in the wintertime i change to the sweaters and so it's not a whole lot of of change for me either and uh especially when i go to the meetings and wear the dresses i i i enjoy that but it just wouldn't be uh smart for me to do that in my home with my children so i have to uh think about things like that too i have given seminars before in in creative writing and things like that now i don't know if they consider that a job i don't really get paid for that uh often but uh when i do that then i i think i become more businesslike uh but it doesn't really change my clothing style yeah oh uh_huh oh dear that's not helpful yeah i guess so well it's been great talking to you have a great day bye hello well i think our tastes are fairly similar although i am i government worker i do tend to i'm uh a scientist so that technically i suppose i could get away with with extremely casual clothes but for the most port part i don't i wear fairly respectable looking shoes and and a pantsuit of one sort or another and uh i guess dress it up with a with a a very nice black jacket when i have have visitors or have to give talks right no actually i guess this summer i i wore some fairly nice jeans uh more than i have in previous seasons but uh no i tend to to use the same things because actually our offices are very cold in summer i don't know whether they think by you know freezing them up overnight then they can save electricity during the day or something but but you know you wear a heavy sweater in your office all summer so right uh yeah i don't i don't i you know i'm not a clothes horse in the sense that some of my friends and i guess although in as i recall the stereotype of of secretaries was you know [overdress] over kill sort of and in a in a sense the people i know who spend the most on clothes are secretaries although the fact that most of the ones i know are in the government and they're not meeting the public it i find it a little bit strange that their priorities would would be to spend this money here you know i mean i suppose if you were a a more a receptionist and meeting the public and it was the image of your company at stake perhaps you would have to dress up uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh exactly i mean you can look businesslike in in a the same pant suit you would you know wear for other things yeah i'm i'm really glad about that pant suits are popular because i'm allergic to many of the [synthetics] and so i used to have a problem when when i was working in a restaurant while i was in college and had to dress up and nylons and things like that would just give me a terrible [rash] so right right but otherwise now i'm i guess we're both pretty practical okay well have a good day bye bye okay why don't you start so you probably have a job you need to get to pretty soon oh you are oh wonderful well how do you dress for work uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh so you're in a church there uh_huh well i'm working this is my first morning to work down at our little church preschool and they've told me to wear just something terribly comfortable because these are two year olds and they have a lot of uh they have bible lessons and they have all the things during the morning but they still have snack time and play time so i'm going to be dressing just in casual slacks and t shirts probably not blue jeans but little bit short of that just just tennis shoes and play clothes yeah i'm envious well it's a beautiful day here and it's in the sixties but we still have a lot of hot afternoons it's supposed to be eighty five today so you'll still see people it it's kind of an in between change that they're in their play clothes i mean they're in their summer clothes during the afternoons because you just can't stand the sweaters but in the mornings people are dressing for work in their sweaters because they just want it to be fall so badly did you i understand well so are the people around you um dressing similar to you uh_huh so you don't have to you don't have to buy the lot of the wardrobe that some of the people in banking and that kind of thing do well that's good that's good uh_huh well that's wonderful well my husband has to take the bus into dallas and doesn't return all day so he has to dress and he just really hates it they have the long sleeve shirts and the whole tie and the whole suit and even when his job is not going to be with people all day long he said it's just part of the uniform and the expected image that they have to dress uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i think that's i think that's great i think that's good i understand well another interesting thing on the our our end here is how even in my forties how much younger i dress than my mother would have in her forties and i will run around to the store in things in slacks and tennis shoes and she right and [pearls] and she would not have even probably owned a pair of tennis shoes after she got out of high school so uh she tells me i dress young but that's okay well there's not a lot more i can think of to discuss on clothing i guess this is what you call a natural end well we wear of course like i said if my husband's going downtown he's got the whole uh you know the dress men's dress shoes but for as out here just anything that the moms we all kind of have our own little dress code of just either tennis shoes or little [loafers] and and uh [tights] and things that feel comfortable to us around our kids yeah i'm sure they are there yeah i'm sure they are that's right i'm sure that true it's a lot different than working in a kids preschool that's right well you all have a nice day there thank you very much bye bye i'm already on my job so you you reached me at my job my my dress for work uh most of the time is uh rather comfortable and casual uh usually uh slacks and a soft colored shirt the um thing that that [distinguishes] me a lot of the time when i have to dress real professionally for a meeting or something is i wear a clerical collar and a suit and uh all of that sort of thing but when i don't need to dress up for a a meeting or a service of some sort i don't yes well around there you can probably wear uh t shirts and other things but around here at this time of the year we are into sweaters and uh coats today today we we wear coats and as the day uh warms up we may go to light jackets but i don't think there's an escape from light jackets the wind will take away a lot of body heat very similar no i'm not stuck with that kind of a uh situation as i say unless it happens to be now yesterday i had to dress up and and uh be more formal because i had a a formal meeting at noon time but then i can go home later in the day and and be a little more casual and then if i have a a meeting of people that i know i can be very casual in the evening yeah that's around here in a lot of places that's the way it is i mean there there are expected uh dress codes and the people need to follow that i think uh years ago i used to be far more uh committed to the idea of of a dress code but i've relaxed a lot more as i've gotten older and become more comfortable with myself it's taken a long time to break away from from that but now that i've broken away from it i'm i'm glad i have you mean you don't need to wear little old house dresses any more that's a good idea that's a good idea no there you know yeah what kind what kind of shoes do they wear down there uh_huh we we can wear pretty much that although um tennis shoes are kind of out in in almost every every situation unless you want to look like a [gook] a lot different you too and thank you for calling uh_huh bye okay so we're going to talk about uh what kind of clothes we wear while we work do you work for t i oh you do well you're like me then i stay home also yes i have two a seven year old and three and a half year old how about you oh oh my you are busy and they're all girls i have two girls so all girls around here yes uh really sweet that's how i am too uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh that's funny yeah yeah yeah i know that's kind of how i am i said who ever i talk to is going to be board because when it's summer time i'm wearing shorts and when it's cold i'm wearing sweat pants and most of unless i'm going to something special that my daughter's doing or something like that well that's that's good i used to wear jeans all the time until after i had kids and now nothing seems to be comfortable because i bulge in all the wrong places so yeah right yeah yeah yeah i know what you mean well oh uh_huh right uh_huh that's right one of my daughters was born in june and i remember i wore [sundresses] and you know just those real cool dresses almost the entire time and i had one that was born in december so um it was a little bit because it was a real warm winter so even even into like november and december i was still wearing the short sleeve dresses course i'm always hot when i'm pregnant too so i i didn't really need warm clothes but i really have been spoiled by sweat pants and these new uh units outfits you know that are just knit oh they are so comfortable it's it's just um you know a light weight kind of like a sweat suit but made out of that real light polyester stuff and it's just great because you can put you know you can decorate them up or dress them up if you want or you can just wear them with you know tennis shoes if you want so they're really nice and i've enjoyed wearing those but i yeah well i don't either if we if we had professional jobs where we go into an office and have to wear a jacket or something that would make a big difference i worked part time when my oldest was a baby and um i had to wear a dress every day and and it was a little bit hard to uh wind down i would i would have to drive six thirty five home and i would be burning up like in the summer time by the time i got home i was like oh i've got to get out of these clothes uh_huh right right yeah yeah yeah and then when you drive home like especially if you're in a lot of traffic which you are in dallas uh_huh because i always hated to run my air conditioner just sitting still all the time i was afraid i'd make the car [overheat] yeah so i would roll my windows down it was still a hundred degrees and i would just be [sweltering] hot by the time i picked my daughter up and um i had a friend who used to take shorts to work and after work she'd go in the bathroom and change her clothes and i thought that's probably a good idea because you really yeah because you can ruin your good clothes getting so hot in them if you especially if it's something that has to be dry cleaned which i don't have any of no when you have children you don't um even when i go to church i have to have something i can just throw in the washer when i'm through that's right or if you get it dirty or whatever i know it me too i know that's how i am too right me neither i have okay i'm ready uh_huh no i work at home do you have children oh that's good i have four girls they're nine and five and three and a [newborn] yes girls are nice aren't they anyway as far as clothing goes um my wardrobe changes all the time depending on my size we go from regular kind of spring clothes regular kind of fall clothes pregnant clothes clothes that are in between where you're not down to regular size yet or you're on your way up from regular size and they're all in boxes or bags and they all rotate all the time kind of the same stuff all the time though i don't uh get a whole lot new right now yeah yeah i i like jeans a lot oh and it's it's frustrating i just i find i have to get the right kinds though or it's not comfortable they it it works best if they have pleats in the front and uh they have to my waist is kind of small compared to the hips so it has to be not the straight up and down [levis] kind but um but i when i was i was pregnant through the summer this time and i wore dresses all the time because it was so much cooler and so much more comfortable not to have something [binding] on your waist but uh yeah yeah uh_huh yeah yeah oh i haven't tried those huh yeah yeah uh_huh i don't know if they expected us to talk about [blazers] and such here but i sure never wear them yeah uh_huh i'm watching [janice] uh_huh oh i i remember that from when i was i worked way before i was married even but offices they keep them so cold in the summer that you can't wear regular summer clothes and be comfortable you've got to have something to add to it or something i don't know if you can you burn up yeah yeah it's hard on the car oh yeah oh that's funny yeah at least something cooler that's true yeah i don't have to worry a whole lot about that that's right something that it doesn't matter if it gets spit up on too i've always been a creature of comfort too if it's not comfortable forget it wool was never comfortable to me uh the only work i do outside the home is i am an avon representative and i sell family products and uh so i i don't really i don't really dress up a whole lot do you work outside oh uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well you'd have to dress differently when you're working every day i think yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh it's kind of nice to relax a little bit yeah well my my dress up i live out in the country also so what i wear depends on the weather uh so i really i know a lot of the avon representatives are portrayed as being very dressed up but i mostly dress i try to dress nice but for convenience because when the weather's bad when i go into the home i take off my shoes which i try to wear something easy to take off you know and put on and i don't too often take off my coat even so uh i really don't have to dress up like you would like if you're in an office or something uh well not actually because we really only have maybe three four months of i'd say warm weather yeah and the rest is uh gets into the cooler weather uh_huh course they keep saying the weather's going to change and we're going to have more florida type weather up here so i don't know but for now but for now we have a lot of ice and snow in the wintertime and uh cold weather and that type of thing now my daughter works all the time so she dresses i think you know you have to spend more money on your clothing and that because you do have to have the appearance a good appearance to do a good job where you work uh_huh um uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right yeah did you find you wore uh slacks when you were working full time or did you did they wear more dresses and skirts no slacks uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh not even a dressy slack a dressy suit slack suit even if it's all uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i know my daughter mostly i don't think she ever wears slacks to work but i didn't know if the trend changes you know if uh uh_huh uh_huh look more like a woman huh uh_huh uh_huh uh well then you you you know why they make them then that way uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah but yet you need to keep up an appearance for your husband too though at home because that's i i believe oh you don't think you will huh well you'll be excused because considering everything uh_huh yeah but i i look at homemaking as a job also uh being a homemaker and i i think sometimes we lose sight of that uh by the fact that we don't sometimes watch our dress oh okay uh_huh do you well i i work uh i'm a c p a and i do contract work and so and i work with another c p a who just started his own practice and i work with him a couple days a week and so when i go to his office or to other [clients'] offices then i'll dress up but otherwise it's great being at home in jeans or shorts or whatever so that that makes it pretty nice it's kind of weird because before i used to work you know full time and and uh it seemed like i was wearing a suit every day just about right right and so it's uh some of my suits i haven't put on for quite a while so it's it's it's very nice gosh uh_huh sure uh_huh uh_huh right yeah yeah well i imagine that where you live uh you're in warm clothing quite a bit of the year not really oh is that right uh_huh uh_huh so you all are waiting for that uh_huh yeah right right yeah well down here it's sunny most of the time and uh usually warm i mean we had a few cool days uh this month but not anything i'm sure compared to what you've had so far so i mean people are still wearing shorts and and uh usually around halloween it starts getting cooler so you start you know breaking out a coat at that time but that that lasts you know for a few months no no never wore slacks it was i think it was one of those things where it's not like someone came out and said you can't wear them it was one of those understood things that you just you know either wore you know a dress or not no not not with what i did uh most people didn't sometimes like the secretaries might but even then you didn't see them wearing slacks too much and i really you know there's some nice [pantsuits] out and and i wouldn't have minded you know wearing those especially when it gets pretty cold but uh uh_huh you know i think it's one of those things where it's not viewed upon as being professional i guess they expect women to be in skirts or dresses yeah that's right and it's the men that make the rules but no we usually you know skirt and skirt and blouse or suit or dress is what you see down here so it's nice with me working at home because i can wear pants no no one can see me unless i'm you know yeah yeah but i'm not going to put a skirt on just for him yeah i think that the main issue at home is being comfortable in your clothing right yeah the way i'll go ahead and start the way i work uh the way i dress for work is uh this year nineteen ninety one has been really suit and tie or i shouldn't say suit but coat and tie every day a a year ago i changed jobs from being a researcher to doing marketing for the research group which means kind of a i guess it's a different set of standards i guess so uh i i dress almost the same every day i mean pretty much it's a white shirt and slacks and shoes and a coat but it was very different before how do you dress uh_huh yeah i understand right i understand that's funny so does it change your dress no so or i guess do you have things like presentations to do or anything like that so back in my old job up until through nineteen eighty i would usually wear blue jeans and pullover shirts and the like but probably once a month or so there was some reason that i would have to put on a suit for a customer presentation or something oh i see i understand oh well that's interesting let's see uh what else about this uh it it seems like t i is pretty cut and dried with two like two or three levels that there's the upper management that always wears gray suits and the people that don't uh i would if you if i want to say don't have power or don't have authority or whatever like i used to be in that research and i guess you are that we dress in the jeans and then there's kind of the the branch manager level or marketing people that kind of do that middle thing but there's not much it's nice that there's not a requirement for it oh yeah right yeah i guess you see those once in a while sure yeah that's right that's right i guess they're the isn't there a dress code something about spaghetti straps i'm not even sure what they are oh [backless] all right okay so this wasn't necessarily a big conversation but i think we we did it okay and and your name was lisa great i am yes and i work in the north building uh well thank you all right good day uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh well i'm a drafter so i just wear blue jeans and tennis shoes and i have sweatshirt on today and that's pretty much the norm for me if i come in in a dress everybody's shocked they ask me you know what are you doing in a dress and it's usually i haven't done my laundry lately ran out of jeans no no huh_uh no huh_uh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah every now and then i'll get dressed up and come in but that's for my husband's job and not mine i have to go to a business meeting once a month with him but so uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah middle of the road uh_huh uh_huh sometimes i think there should be some of these women around here look like they came off of harry [hines] and you know the they have the no shorts deal and some of these mini skirts you know are worse than shorts ever thought about being but uh you know that's i guess that's one of the things you got to put up with when you don't have a dress code supposedly and [backless] things but i've seen those too but uh yeah lisa are you the expressway sites oh okay thank you uh_huh bye bye okay uh clothing at work um i work as a news reporter and a lot of i work in a since i work in a small station this is my first job and so i dress very [variedly] if that's a word um sometimes i'm shooting and doing photography and so i'll be in jeans one day and another day i'll be on camera and so i'll be in a suit and another day i'll come in and i won't know what i'm doing so i'll wear a pant suit in case i have to shoot so it really varies i try to dress very comfortably i don't really like dressing up at all i don't i don't wear a lot of makeup or anything like that i just i don't know it just it takes too much time out of my day and i don't i don't know yeah i don't mind it at all um uh_huh okay white pants in a bakery wow okay what's the name of the bakery oh italian i guess new clothes and stuff yeah that's one thing i would like is just to sort of have i really don't like uniforms but just to have something i don't have to get up and decide what to wear that just bugs me to death oh yeah sweats and yeah when i was in school i was a sweat monster all i had was sweats and when it was time to go out i didn't have anything to wear yeah yeah um let me see i hate shoes if i didn't have to have shoes i wouldn't have them i just oh my feet bother me and they're just tedious to go find shoes for me it's just i don't know i wear size nine and it i don't know if just the shoes i get i either don't like them or they don't fit right and i just wish that i could just go without them oh really oh just the opposite but um let's see what else do i wear um if i were in a bigger market when i do get into a bigger market i'll probably go out and buy a bunch of suits and things and uh where i wouldn't have to shoot and do a lot of other things and i could then i would be able to dress more business like and things like that but we're all kind of just out of school at this station and so we're all you know still in sweats really so it's pretty fun though yeah i oh yeah i like this the uh suits with the they come like with a mini type skirt you know and the jacket i like that but but i'm pretty short i'm five four and so that really doesn't [flatter] me but i think it looks good on taller people are you yeah any time i go to the store i mean i i have like two pairs of pants because i can never find any that are short enough for me and it's just oh ridiculous pants too i could do without those pants shoes yeah those are nice those are nice yeah those are nice and tennis shoes my boyfriend's got me these l a gear they're kind of big and [hefty] tennis shoes and it it's just like a chore to pick up my feet because i'm used to wearing the little white girl tennis shoes the little ones yeah and i'm used to those they're just sort of you know like your feet i mean you don't feel them you put these things on it's it's you know like exercise or something for your feet and i have to wear them because he gets upset if i don't so so so how do people in wisconsin dress warm i grew up in new york and so i know what warm is like five pairs of socks and yeah oh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh oh oh me neither yeah yeah same here i don't mind not wearing any makeup um i work at a bakery because i'm a still a a college student um but we we have to wear white pants and um any color t shirt as long as it's not like a bright color like a pastel yeah yeah the [bakers] wear all white and we wear [aprons] and have to pull our hair back and so yeah it's italian bakery and uh so i don't mind having having to wear a uniform because i don't have to buy you know right as you know many clothes oh yeah yeah i know i do that every day for school yeah but i i like to wear comfortable things like cotton and baggy things and yeah yeah yeah i know i don't have very many dress clothes but i don't mind i don't need them yet um oh really oh oh um oh wow i love shoes i always buy shoes yeah uh_huh yeah oh i like the look the the like suit look professional like you know look but i i really don't have much of an opportunity to wear it um i'm going to be a teacher so i'll probably just wear casual clothes maybe skirts and some oh yeah yeah that is cute yeah i'm five three and yeah oh really oh i like the like stretch pants the cotton ones they're really comfortable with a baggy sweatshirt oh yeah oh oh yeah i have a pair of those yeah yeah oh yeah warm this time this time of the year pretty warm sweaters and yeah yeah sleeping in sweats or long underwear my parents keep the house cold i guess you heard our our topic for today was clothing how you dress for work and season to season and everything how do you dress for work sure you bet look professional yeah i understand i am a i own my company i am in the i am uh manufactures rep sales organization and my office is a small office and i am very casual and wear slacks and sports shirt and things like that but then when i travel it is a little different situation uh suits and sports coat tie and the whole bit cause you go to meetings and you are required to look your best and look professional of course yeah i think in today's society uh there is more credibility to be quite honest i will always remember i will tell this real quick story when i graduated from college my first job years ago uh thirty years ago twenty nine years ago in fact was selling agricultural fertilizer i worked for the uh smith douglas division of [borden] chemical and i sold uh you know manure and uh i would go out and call on farmers and i would always try to look my best wearing sport coats and things like that but i was calling on guys that wore bib [overalls] and so one day i got up and thought well i will just go casual and you know that i called on a guy wearing exactly that bib [overalls] and he sort of told me that he expected me to be professional and he sort of expected me to dress as a professional so uh it was sort of you bet even back then so i sort uh been aware of my dress ever since then and try to look my best but here again i dress casual quite a bit so it gives you confidence in my business if i call on the the j c penney company here in dallas or say someone say sears and [roebuck] in chicago then i wear coat and tie if i call on just uh a normal little dealer of mine i might be casual i call on [oshman's] sporting goods again it may be casual or it may be coat and tie so it depends uh probably no probably no because uh today i believe you can get away with but then it depends on who you are calling on who you're you like your minister standing up in front of you with no tie you just uh he would be missing something although he shouldn't be evaluated on that so it's its' just different yes it is i am uh like a catholic and the people that go to my church you know catholics dress very casual a lot of the times people in jeans and in whatever but yet the way i was raised i am a converted catholic the way i was raised i was raised a baptist and like as a youngster i use to always dress up all the time i guess that has changed also right sure but that is a very good point i am from west virginia so i understand what you are saying there and it's it's a very good point but you shouldn't what's the old saying you shouldn't judge a book by its cover and uh evaluation of an individual course all of it depends on the type of job responsibility you have i think you have to dress sort of accordingly but uh you certainly should not judge a book by its cover and uh or evaluate a person by that what about season to season does i guess your dress changes yes i certainly did uh_huh well uh uh about the same i dress for school i uh i am a graduate student so i don't have to worry too much about uh what i wear too much of the time which is nice uh uh uh although i do uh a lot of i am a speech pathology major and so i do a lot of [clinical] work and when i do clinic work then i have to uh uh look my best yeah unfortunately uh_huh yeah sure uh_huh yeah yeah uh uh do you find that uh on the average do people give uh more credibility or less credibility to a professional uh to professionally dressed individual uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh really even the farmers oh wow uh_huh uh_huh yeah certainly uh_huh yeah it depends sure uh so you don't uh if you had the choice would you wear a tie or not uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right right uh_huh yeah that uh if if you wanted to uh uh really get into a hot issue uh well at least in some in some beliefs uh how people dress when they go to church is uh is uh sometimes a pretty pretty hot topic uh unfortunately uh_huh uh_huh uh yeah i'm i am uh i go to the church of christ i have been raised in the church of christ and uh but uh i uh too many times you hear you hear a lot about what what you're uh supposed you're supposed to look your sunday best uh uh and dress and proper attire and uh and sometimes that really [disappoints] me uh in uh when i see in other economic areas like in kentucky you know people just don't have that and they are afraid to go to church or afraid to go simply because they don't have the clothes to wear uh_huh yeah certainly uh_huh uh_huh uh yeah a little bit uh uh of course in the summer if i can get away with it i wear uh uh a pair of shorts and that's it run around [barefoot] no shirt or anything but uh okay so how do you just figure wow uh_huh uh_huh oh well um i'm going to talk about when i was working as a teacher and when i was working at now um when i was a teacher um in utah i would generally wear um dresses and heels and things like that and even when it um rained and snowed i just [braved] it and i wore heels anyway and i know it might kill you to go up and walk up to the door but you're going to look nice for the kids oh oh yeah well i need all the height i can get oh yeah uh_huh yeah we too um if it was it looked really dangerous then i would wear boots but then i would change um into heels as soon as i got to my desk so um oh oh sure uh_huh uh_huh yeah huh well um yeah um the first two years i was in a room where they didn't heat it so i did yeah and then the third year we um got heating so it was nice right uh_huh oh that's nice uh_huh oh nice well uh no we we moved to iowa and um i'm working at a day care right now and so the way i dress is really different because i'm working in the nursery room with kids from six months to like twenty months yeah i wear uh tennis shoes and jeans and things that you know are sort of um not yes it doesn't matter if i have to wash it a hundred times or something yeah but i never wore jeans because um i thought that was too casual for yeah really yeah that's how i feel too um oh it there's some good things about it but i've seen a lot of things i'm not used to yet um um we lived in utah before and and i grew up in california well you know it depends upon our weather here you know today was a beautiful day it was like uh uh summer day it was seventy degrees so so i dressed in uh uh a light weight skirt it's a uh ultra [suede] skirt and a blouse with a sweater [cardigan] over it because i had some [appointments] at the office today some interviews and so i had to dress up anyway and then i wore heels you know but when it rains a lot which is has been doing here a lot lately uh very often you know wear uh pants and boots you know so how do you dress okay uh_huh yeah i i can see i i've been a teacher so has my daughter and i know that we very often wore heels despite the fact that it was [tiring] that's right that's right and it always makes you feel like you're a bigger person than the kids right yeah i do too so to be taller than some of the boys in the bigger grades uh older grades i had to wear heels uh_huh of course we wear uh an [unlined] boots you know it has a heel on it they're the kind of boots that i wear to work and we wear them you know they're a leather boot that you wear and as i said they have a regular heel on them high heel and they wear them we wear them a lot with shirts and things uh it's kind of a i can't say constant down here in texas that you wear these boots they're not a cowboy boot but they're just a real pretty boot but they keep your feet nice and [toasty] from the rain as i have a private high school that i run here and so when i'm interviewing a parent of course i feel like i need to wear heels you know and look like i'm a business person you know because the children will tease about where's your motorcycle if you wear boots too often you know of course you probably wear coats a lot oh my goodness so then you had to yes then things improved right but of course here we wear a light weight jacket a lot you know you know and uh that's very seldom we it depends upon our winter we have a few days you might wear a coat winter coat you know but most of the time you can wear a sweater and we just don't wear coats much we often laugh about even when it turns chilly we're wearing something [lightweight] or no jacket because we're so used to running around like that it's really different let's put it that way are you not teaching anymore i see oh so you don't wear heels anymore i'll bet yeah uh_huh more practical when you were teaching did you ever have uh uh a blue jean day or anything like that yeah well i know that some of the schools they have uh country western day or something like that one you know or tacky day and i always thought it was kind of out of got out of hand when the teachers looked real tacky too it's all right for the students they look tacky a lot but i didn't think teachers should you know yeah do you like uh uh iowa where did you live before oh well that's quite a change from california to utah okay hi well i work in uh corporate control so we have to dress kind of nice so i usually wear skirts and sweaters in the winter time slacks i guess and in the summer just dresses we can't even well we're not even really supposed to wear jeans very often so it really doesn't vary that much from season to season since the office is kind of you know always the same temperature not [formally] but it's kind of understood that we're supposed to dress a little bit nice a lot of times we have to go over to uh like jerry [junkins'] office and bill [ellsworth's] office to deliver stuff and we prepare a lot of [foils] for [marvin] and bill so we have to dress a little bit nice we're not yes now you know if if like in august when everybody is on vacation or something we can dress a little more casual or ice storms of course you know we all came in in our tennis shoes but i guess that would have to do with the weather but um unless it's an you know an unusual day uh_huh yeah uh_huh right yeah or uh_huh what area do you work in um okay it with the yeah but then usually in the summer it's cold in the offices because the air conditioner is doing it's job so well oh yeah it uh_huh just suits there's not a whole lot of fabric [variance] there uh they can't have a [rayon] suit so not really i think i mean it's kind of [unwritten] but i think we're supposed to wear hose and and shoes you know most of the people do anyway and most of the women wear um actually most of the women wear suits more than anything else but i'm not in that professional of a position so i don't i'm not expected to do that uh_huh yes pretty much i'm a secretary yeah yeah but there's really no written rule i guess they couldn't write that down that might be discrimination or something i don't know i mean i've never been told what to wear or what not to wear it's just you know judging from what everyone else wears is how i determine you know what i feel a comfortable in you don't want to stand out too much well that pretty much covers the topic well thanks for calling me well i haven't uh i've benefit working in my own home for just um about the last three years so i can just wear whatever i want around the house but before then i taught at the the university of houston and um so i tried to wear things that were comfortable but still tried to look you know yeah it wasn't quite business but to give the students um and made you feel like you were the authority i felt like if i came in just in jeans or or [tattered] clothes that i didn't have as good control over the class and if i tried to wear things that were a little bit more businesslike uh_huh uh_huh oh that's nice well do you um meet with clients and so you have to dress a certain way for the clients or huh_uh well i have noticed with my own children for example that they will depending on what they're wearing it it makes a big difference on how they act and so that could be the same can be said for the business office too uh_huh uh_huh well and i noticed in my teaching experience that since a lot of the people were my own age or older even um that because i taught english as a second language so i didn't have your average freshman and um so i i had to do something to just [elevate] myself a little bit off their level you want to be friends with the students but you don't quite want to be their equal and so for me to dress in businesslike clothes my uh you know um i i preferred slacks because we had to park pretty far yes and you wouldn't want to have to walk uh you know in high heels it's hard to walk a long way and the campus is pretty large so i preferred slacks and um you know kind of dressy shirts and things but so that i would look a little bit different and i would come in and i would have just the appearance of a little bit more authority than they did and that helped with their discipline and didn't make me have to much trouble and with the students huh_uh well i noticed since we moved down here to texas my husband is originally from texas but uh i'm not and since you don't have to have uh such a wide variety of seasonal clothes that you do up north you have a totally different wardrobe with different [fabrics] you know heavier [wools] and no and you don't um you know if you usually can wear pretty close to the same types of things just with a jacket or sweater or or something rather than having the whole entire different wardrobe different shoes you know we always had like um higher shoes higher tops on them rather than just the lower skim [skimmers] i think they call them that you would wear day to day but huh_uh that is really true a lot of it is um the color certain colors seem to be acceptable you know if you wear um [pastels] it needs to be warm weather and otherwise you have to wear darker colors in the winter for some reason and so i guess part of that is um just the physics of it that in what isn't dark colors attract the sun and light colors repeal themselves huh_uh that's true there's some rule that's like between labor day uh no is it labor day or memorial day huh_uh right and the one that's like in may you can only wear and supposedly we don't have an opportunity my husband and i we don't go to a lot of like where he as to wear a white dinner jacket or something and so you can only wear a white dinner jacket between those two holidays that is pretty funny it's funny that we have as a society go to so much trouble when we have so many other things we could be spending our time thinking about huh_uh huh_uh i noticed uh when we moved to plano that um the mall here collin creek i don't know where you are but um oh you do that there there is a pretty um i wouldn't say [snobish] it kind of borders on that if i depending on what i'm wearing i get better service at the mall i felt since uh since where you know where i've lived in houston that you have to in order to get the attention you might need help you need to be you can't just come in off the street is what i'm trying to say oh is it huh_uh yes i think i think your right i've noticed that too it's very different but i've i think it's kind of sad when you have to make have to dress up when you go somewhere i mean just to the yeah and you have to be sure that your everything [coordinates] and and everything everything is freshly pressed and everything no you can't well i appreciate the conversation we have had about clothing i know i've it's interesting to hear a man's point of view it's usually my husband he's got a pretty good deal i go out and buy all his clothes well thank you you have a good day this is like one of the worst topics i've had because i'm a terrible dresser i'm really not that bad of a dresser but um where i work um it's very casual dressing so i can wear jeans and um pretty much a sweater or even a t shirt to work yeah well we i work in a manufacturing plant so we i don't have to deal with customers or anything but no actually i'm at work right now i work at night and i'm using this phone as one of my you have to have two phones i'm using one of these yeah well i sit here i'm taking a course and i study when i when i read my course while i'm trying to get through so i just make a couple a night though oh you see that's i almost wish i had a job like that so it would force me to dress nice yeah because i can [slough] off and then when it comes things out or i go out to dinner or something or or not not so much going out to dinner i have like three or four dresses that i can wear something like business interview i went for another job in a different company and it's like i go right over to my sister's house what do you got to wear yeah and it's it's really convenient we're twins too and so it works out yeah she just had to change her whole wardrobe because she's going up like a management ladder and even though she still has to work i mean do some lot of physical work and adjust her machines um she still has to dress for success as they say so she went out and she changed her whole her whole wardrobe yeah that's true you know i know because you know even like i [ironed] a shirt to come to work tonight you know just a nice blouse and if i had to wear it with a suit or something i would have had done a a ten times better job yeah and it's it's got to be more expensive yeah but that's what's so hard when you you have to deal with the public or deal with the customers like that that business suit boots do you have to do you find that you you can are you happy with wearing dress slacks instead of dresses because i know a lot of people dress it's dresses dresses they hardly don't wear dress pants or anything yeah all the girls that i know i know a couple girls that work in insurance offices and that's all they wear are dresses they hardly ever wear pants then on the weekends you know they wear their jeans and their sweats but they uh the pants just aren't dressy enough but in the wintertime i think i would yeah yeah yeah even even here the secretaries they usually dress nice but it's not strange to seem them in jeans and a sweater so and you know sometimes it is on fridays but in the summertime if their going to like i know a couple of the girls and this one lady goes camping a lot and like every friday she's you know she still does her same function and everything but uh normally she's dressed to the t she's just perfect yeah well we're fortunate here cause the [building's] um very um climate controlled but we work in an electronics field and we have to wear polyester smocks so it's usually um a tank top in the summer and then silk and polyester are the only things that are close enough to being dressy and [polyester's] terrible on me and i wear my silk under this polyester uh [smock] and you just get so hot even though it's a nice temperature in here so you really in the summer time have to we have to dress extra light because we have to wear these smocks yeah and in the winter time pretty much just uh um even a [turtleneck's] all right because you have to wear these smocks a [turtleneck] and a sweater and the [smock] would be too much it gets really hot so it's kind of weird when it's really cold we we come in pretty much we take our coat off and then we take our outside sweater off trucking through the parking lot yeah but they still they have to keep the pants really just but yeah and their shirts have to be pressed so they still have the same thing here if they could dress casually it would take them less time too but i know it's great i mean just putting on a pair of [panty] hose can take you an extra five minutes yeah right i know um even my dress shoes i don't wear them a lot i notice the wear on the bottom of them and there's no way i could wear them all days i would be one of the women in flats well i'm pretty short but i have a very bad knee i couldn't couldn't walk in heels all day when i go dancing i stay on the ball of my foot hope that i don't slip on my heel because if my if i if i came down on my heel too much my knee doesn't catch and it's bad well it's no we don't at all um we used to be a lot [busier] so um it used to be important what you wore if you're comfortable because you knew you were going to spend a lot of time working and now it's very slow and i pretty much i've taken a couple of courses and now i sit at my desk and i and i read read my courses i'm a technician so i've taken a couple of technical courses plus i'm going to take a couple of college courses like i've taken um some business courses just to it gets boring to stay here technical courses learning about in computers yeah yeah this okay so do you think it's been five minutes see i never time these oh okay so we can end our call okay who knows did did you have you ever gotten duplicate people no i i'm almost afraid to get duplicate people i don't know why okay yeah okay bye uh are you a t i okay well we might have a difference uh to talk about on clothing uh what i am how come we got the same subject i was amazed that they had the same subject on clothing too i never have had that before i noticed it on the weekends occasionally when i call and how could they possibly get the same person that's ridiculous no no they sure haven't what other aspects i'm i i'm this is funny you know uh clothing let's see uh i was curious you know if they just want to talk about the words of uh related to clothing that polyester was coming back have you heard that uh i saw it on the t v that the models were they had a new kind of polyester uh whether that they just like to switch materials uh periodically i don't know we might i haven't we didn't talk about materials i i prefer you know the cotton with very little in fact when i look for uh i i try to go for the [cottons] and i don't know that polyester will although men's shirts are half and half or sixty forty or whatever yeah i uh i'm originally from the east and i we used to wear sweaters and things and sweaters are this isn't necessarily sweater country uh you know i i guess they're not as popular as they were i don't know about how women if you do you have problems with air conditioning or were you you were uh is that a factor that's very bad yeah yeah at t i i am too in and out and well of course we don't wear ties and jackets certainly not in this kind of weather the the jackets they don't disappear but you know they're they're on a hook usually the vice president's or the [manager's] and again i used to wear them but i don't i don't bother with it right now yeah that is a problem uh where did i see an article about where they're about that subject where they're trying to have oh i know it was [lunchrooms] where they're trying to encourage people to stay at work and so that's why they even downtown this might be applicable where they're trying to have restaurants within walking distance but at the same time in other words you go down in a subway or whatever and go to lunch and they say that's so much more healthy for you than going out in the street in the open traffic and going to lunch you'd be better off i'm maybe you do have some tunnels down there and they they say that's so much more healthy for you to you know when you have to go out or go to lunch or whatever it's to to walk or however and get to a place that is uh you don't have to go in and out of the of the temperature whether that affects how you dress i can imagine uh right yeah i uh well i'm for colorful things and i sure i i do enjoy the uh the newer products along those lines what do you think about women and wearing slacks and all that we haven't talked about that okay yeah do you have children i might comment on teenagers how they dress oh you have a lot to experience i have two right well have the opposite then i have uh well one of they're almost now teenagers at one twenty almost twenty and one almost sixteen and i learned early on being surrounded by women here that the i i love to take them shopping but i don't pick anything out you know i i just kind of influence but uh the the teen the junior high teenagers really i don't know if you can describe how they dress you know you you i i know what angle that we can talk about here we they want us to talk about clothes around work but uh the way kids in school should dress and i'll give you my i don't think that the school should just kind of let the kids dress what is the current style not that it's totally ridiculous of course but public schools oh i didn't hear that yet right well well whoever said that in my opinion doesn't have any teenagers who didn't grow they won't do that they'll never pass it that will be like right uh_huh i can uh of course i went to school you know a hundred years ago in college and uh we did wear ties and jackets and this was they have since changed it was an engineering school a city it was in an downtown area like i don't know well you can't compare anything around here to the school in like no u t a here is in arlington but i guess like that and they just historically since it was in the city they wanted us to wear jackets and ties and i did my whole college career which is i guess terribly unusual we wore jackets and ties for four years and i so subsequently i wanted to get a masters degree in in after i got out of the service and uh they changed drafts so there was a the styles have certainly changed to where i guess my campus now looks like typical uh college campus i guess huh the older i get the more open to other people's ideas uh you cannot be you have to let them come out with uh whatever they not whatever but some of their ideas too and so you kind of back off and see what people and i know their clothing is changing you know all the time and i'm i'm certainly open to how you should dress uh now of course the subject is work uh or clothes really i guess uh and the again the one thing i am at at work is is certainly a professional look but i'm not saying that that will not the professional look will look differently from year to year perhaps no i really don't it's uh uh go through a lot of shirts and think no i don't really uh_huh right well you're sure right there because not even when i wore a jacket and a lot of the guys when i was up at spring creek in uh plano uh we think he just brought the same jacket even that wasn't a that's not a black mark against the man and you're right that uh women are expected to look more everything matches i guess right right your work without saying much about it do they ever bring the subject up of asking your opinion on on whether you want things to change on how you dress or are the ties oh uh_huh right uh_huh uh t i has several locations different sites have a little bit different dress like i said at spring creek it was definitely more formal i think because it was newer and uh type and many many more people wore there was very there was very few production areas uh a little bit during the school year we're uh definitely expected to wear [hosiery] and you know things like that although we can wear slacks uh during during the school year and of course that's a good idea because i do sit on very low chairs to read stories to kindergartners and you know so it's pretty important to uh i also like very much the new split skirts you know because then you oh that's oh that's true the old [culottes] that's right but those are just real comfortable and uh you know allow you the privacy and all the only uh no i think it needs to be longer probably if it's split it it varies though between the from one principal to another there are some like uh some principals insist that you not wear uh [anklet] type shorts i mean socks uh that you have to wear you know hose but i know of other schools where they wear uh you know [anklets] and uh_huh uh_huh how embarrassing i know i hate that you really really have to check on the check on the length well we wear the knee high ones a lot too so do you wear uh suits very much uh_huh yeah right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i am too and i uh i've been here seventeen years but i'm from but i'm from illinois that's right that's right that's right right that really is nice i uh i'm kind of a pack rat especially when it comes to clothes and i i mean i still have some sweaters that i had you know from before i moved down here things that were were wool or just you know really nice things and and really very seldom get to wear them and should certainly get rid of probably all of them but like i said i'm kind of a yeah that's that's really true because who would want it down here but anyway they they still sit around in drawers and boxes and i i get them out at the beginning of the winter out of a box and put them in my drawer and then at the end of the winter i take it out of the drawer and put it back in the box and sometimes i never wore it now that is silly isn't it yeah are you from here then uh_huh well the thing is that you know it does get cold but it's just such a short season you know and you just can't wear that much oh how nice rabbit rabbit rabbit huh where have you found them uh_huh but they carry them at dillard's huh i'll have to look at those that sounds interesting uh_huh uh_huh well you mentioned that you liked the long skirts and i i really do too i just i don't know i'm really comfortable in uh_huh uh_huh i like that too that's exactly right oh well for work well you work year round right yeah uh_huh uh_huh that's true yeah that's true well i have more summer stuff i guess for that kind of casual because we do go on a uh i go back to illinois and visit my folks for a week and then we go out to the east coast to visit my husband's mom and family and we usually go to the beach while we're out there so uh in fact i was thinking this summer that since i'm doing summer school i haven't worn very many of those things but i was thinking oh well i got to get them all together so to take them on our trip oh how nice i took i went through my closet this spring and i i took some stuff out and put it in another closet in the guest bedroom because i'm so tired of looking over it and it's all just a little bit too tight but it isn't so much too tight i mean i could easily well maybe not too easily but i could lose that weight and then they would all fit fine and you know and there are things that i really don't want to get rid of you know i really want to keep them because they're nice and so i thought well i'll put them in there and then maybe i'll feel so bad that i can't wear them now and i'll do something about it but so far oh that's funny yeah that's right hey when you have kids you definitely have to have you think they're [hinting] yeah that's true ooh yeah you'll be glad believe me uh_huh oh it's just unreal the time though that it really gets the worst is uh is when the kids get old enough that they really care what they're wearing my kids are twelve and fifteen and uh you know they're both boys so they're probably not as picky as if they were girls but on the other hand they can be pretty picky and you know i mean i could get away with you know with it not costing nearly as much you know when they were littler because they didn't care anything was fine but you know now it has to be a certain kind of certain kind of jeans and the the shoes are just about the worst oh jeez i'm my son just came out the other day and he's his what is it i think they're [reebok] whatever my other son has nike [airs] at the moment but these [reeboks] and i was thinking he bought them in march it was early march he bought them and they are demolished i mean they are absolutely demolished there are pieces hanging off of them the inside of the sole on the bottom has fallen out i mean that's how worn out they are and they i bought them on a wonderful sale at mervyn's they must have been thirty five or so percent off they cost sixty dollars on that much of a sale and my husband and i were just talking you know it's i mean we're talking minimum of three of those a year that's a hundred and eighty dollars a year for his tennis shoes you know and my husband oh it's just awful and my husband bought i mean this year he bought a pair of of really good you know work leather nice men's dress shoes and they were about a hundred and fifty dollars or you know something like that and you know he said i felt terrible spending that amount of money on this pair of shoes he said but i'll still be wearing them in ten years and and he's i mean we're talking a just a piece of rag so anyway before we go visit grandma okay let's see um when i was working i would wear um comfortable casual type clothes nothing real dressy but um mostly um i do like to a shirts that are kind of longer and um not real high high shoes i would say more more more flat kind of shoes and something that would be comfortable to wear throughout the day nothing that would be too dressy uh_huh which is nice that's that's uh_huh i felt the same way well i work in a private high school and i always felt like i had to dress i dress casually but yet i dress a little bit i dress totally dressy compared to what the kids came in to what the kids looked like you know i had to right so i had this and real conservative my taste runs real conservative i like white blouses with little peter pan [collars] and sweaters and [cardigans] and turtlenecks and just kind of um just very conservative kind of traditional clothes and nothing nothing at all [faddish] i don't i get suits with dresses that i have that i had several years that i can pull out of my closet and they will still be in style just as they were when i first bought them you know that kind of stuff yeah yeah and just just um i do too i do too a lot of uh_huh well i have uh dark hair so i do like to wear the real bright i like bright royal blues and bright reds on on me and that's kind of nice especially for the holidays it's fun to dress with all the bright colors uh_huh uh_huh no too much for you uh_huh huh okay uh_huh okay yes now browns i stay away from browns because i have dark eyes and dark hair so for me i a lot of those pretty shirt uh_huh that that i have a a little three year old that has very blonde hair and i dress her with different colors that i never get to wear like the bright the bright um she looks really pretty in yellow just like a real bright lemon yellow and um certain colors like that and um i'll put on her and they look real cute um that's it well well that's the that's the problem i think it's you know the way you would like to dress and the way you could afford to dress is too different yes that's right i see i'm not even just working part time in this uh private school last year um it was it was an expense just to get started to get the clothes after being home with the kids and like i said it was real important because i was working around teenagers and i like you said had to set an example and i well wouldn't have felt comfortable wearing jeans although some of the teachers did once in a while that i don't i very rarely even just wear jeans at home you know i'm not comfortable in them yes yes that that is a big consideration if i have a a solid navy blue blazer i might you know go ahead and pick up a [plaid] shirt or something and then maybe a solid or whatever to mix and match that i sit there and really kind of i really have to take a long time to think about what to to get because like i said you have to right to make it right and also adding some [accessaries] to different different things i'm not a real um i don't like to wear really big earrings i kind of have a few gold earrings that are my favorites and just little [pearls] kind of boring and conservative no they once in a while i'd i'd try one on and it would seem right and then before i walked out the door i'd have it off because it just didn't feel right um i did until my company went bankrupt yeah now right now i haven't been able to locate a job down here in patterson it's kind of a small city so i've been going to modesto which is larger but it's not like being in the bay area where i came from you know but anyhow when i did work in the winter time i wore uh my wool skirts and sweaters and boots because the bay area gets kind of chilly in the winter time and um then in the summer time i just wore you know the polyester blouses and usually pants and just uh heels you know so uh where do you work at oh okay right do you i don't suppose you can wear pants oh because i never see anybody in the banks out here it seems like i never see them with pants on uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh no no i haven't uh_huh um uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh oh really isn't that uh_huh uh_huh um yeah that would be interesting to do um i worked for a trucking company so we didn't really even have to dress up at all if we didn't want to we could wear pants all the time you know but uh i just in the winter time i just like to wear boots and you know the wool skirts and the sweaters and everything but uh i've never gone to and had a you know anything like that done to tell me exactly what color i would look best in uh i know i don't look good in yellow but i like pink and blue you know and red but uh i just look in the mirror and uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh huh very interesting so do you have your do you like do you in dallas do you wear wool in the winter time or uh_huh uh_huh um uh_huh and naturally it gets real hot in the summertime i suppose yeah yeah yeah it gets hot here in patterson in the summer time more so than it did in the bay area you know um like here uh like um a hundred and twenty six miles from [fresno] but in the valley north right right uh_huh oh i see uh_huh so you have been to california though do you have we're supposed to be talking about hello hello hello yeah i am now wonder what happened oh really i couldn't hear a thing well oh gee i was on a cordless when she called but then i uh i never get it to work so i had to go to my other phone anyway we're supposed to be discussing clothing right um yeah where do you work oh you work for t i oh okay yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah i know what you mean all right uh yeah i uh well i work for [lomas] mortgage and uh our office is so cold i usually try to wear i wear suits most of the time except on friday we have casual day i mean we can wear jeans i'm not a jeans [wearer] but i wear pants but uh a lot of people in the office dress fairly casual most of the time uh they do carry me through yes uh most of them i can wear all year i just you know i just buy them they are uh leslie [fay] makes a [haberdashery] and uh i can even wash them in my washing machine yeah and uh so they're not too heavy for summer or winter or just anytime so i i usually buy maybe a lighter color you know like for the summer then i won't wear the real light ones in the winter but uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah right yes uh_huh uh_huh right yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah that makes it nice oh you are well congratulations oh yeah oh yeah that's nice uh_huh yeah uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh yeah well our company is our company allows jeans on friday uh everybody wears you know most everybody wears jeans but they are kind of particular you know what kind of jeans or what kind of shirts you wear with them and you know they want you to look nice and uh everybody is pretty good i i'm a student and i work at [nu] skin so yes uh we're allowed to wear we we just can't wear jeans uh every monday through friday we just have to wear you know nice slacks or uh just something that looks nice and then on fridays and saturdays we can wear jeans so like jean day uh it's pretty standard i mean just more sweaters and stuff of course in the winter but right oh uh uh_huh oh really and you don't find that gets too expensive or really wow uh_huh that makes it really nice uh_huh does he have to wear suits and ties and um uh i i rarely wear dresses yeah i mean it doesn't it doesn't have to be that dressy guys have to wear ties at work but shirts and ties at [nu] skin but other than that oh no no no but uh the guys seem to get to have to dress up a little more than the girls for some reason we can get away with more uh no we can't wear tennis shoes during the week either yeah we can't wear tennis shoes but i it's pretty casual i i found i mean it would be what i would wear to school anyways most of the time so yeah yeah i well i work in the mornings from six thirty to ten thirty so i get up pretty early and then school comes after that so i just don't bother to change for school unless i really want to be casual but how long have you been doing this t i really how did you find out about it he's in is he in dallas oh really that's where i'm from yeah yeah uh what is is he in a ward down there or sure okay uh i i like yeah i'm more into suits i think i'm more uh yeah more what's it called just uh yeah and oh what's the word i can't think of the word it's uh did women uh have the more variety in this area right are you saying that the that the uh teachers are wearing jeans treated as if they're sloppy or treated as if they're uh peers ooh uh_huh right of course motivation is everything and i suppose you're striving for [intimacy] on a intellectual level it's really hard to figure out how you're going to do that but of course we're trying to talk about dress and not teaching well i am in a much more [conventional] position i work as a uh white collar worker uh i'm a senior principal scientist at s r i international uh work with speech technology teaching teaching computers how to understand the speech in texas instruments oh yeah i actually used i used to be chief speech scientist at texas instruments no actually i try to stay behind the scenes which means i wear slacks and uh my own personal style and it's it's variable and there are a lot of people who wear jeans but i say probably most people uh wear dresses or slacks and uh wear the men wear uh uh probably most of them wear long sleeve shirts without ties uh it's interesting it's sort of silly and ironic not ironic but it's silly in in a sense that on [visitor] days which is are quite frequently people quite frequently dress up and they wear ties and coats and uh on [nonvisitor] days people dress down and they wear just slacks and dress shirts right and it it's not one of my dressing is not one of my main [obsessions] or [preoccupations] well i i buy a new shirt once a year whether i need it or not well i don't pay much attention to it now this this question did it relate to work or did it relate to to uh whatever huh i guess i'm a typical [oblivious] male in that respect hello hello did i reach the dallas area yeah my name is fernando hey how's it going do you work for t i north carolina state university yeah i'm getting a master's in computer science and computer engineering um i took a voice i o course well uh one of my teachers went to a to this conference up in bethesda maryland and so he saw it there and he just said you guys want to make some money and talk five minutes a day here you go so uh not originally argentina yeah well i used to live up in new york and maryland and i uh i like i like bigger cities i like i like more populated areas because i used to live in [buenos] [aires] but they have ten million people but uh this area is nice it looks like it's got a lot of uh job opportunities especially at research triangle park and so it looks it looks well it's the third largest growing area in the country for businesses yeah yeah no north carolina state yeah no the wolf pack yeah no we're we're not we're not the tar heels why do you run oh okay my dad is too yeah yeah it's nice yeah it's it's clothing right how you how you dress to go to work and how it changes from season to season and from day to day okay okay ready i'm going to press the one no then then we say bye and uh well i i've got a [stopwatch] here so i'll probably say you know it's like well we've been talking for five six minutes so okay well uh we'll just open it okay i'll press the one ready okay okay so well you see since i don't work i just go you know to class it all depends because i like to wear like sweat pants because it's more comfortable for me but you know it's like when you're in school you either wear [sweatpants] or jeans yeah yeah yeah okay are they like t shirts or are they like do they have oh okay well well because how how hot i mean like like in the coldest that it gets in winter down there how much is it yeah yeah that's well it's basically you know it's like i got like a leather jacket or a you know so i just put on a t shirt and a leather jacket and i usually stay in class that way and if not i would wear a sweatshirt underneath it and then you know you'd but what happens is uh what i've seen here on campus it's very strange because a lot of black people here they wear like dress pants and dress shirts to go everywhere okay and they wear either that or they wear dress pants and black turtlenecks or white turtlenecks and so the thing is you know is like i asked a guy you know why why do you wear that he goes well it costs me the same amount which is true because some dress pants you know cost me twenty five dollars which is the same as jeans but um but basically all over here everywhere everybody wears jeans and if not what the what the thing is that they're wearing now is sometimes you wear like shorts with [biker] pants underneath it which is yeah where at where at oh okay yeah yeah but the thing is when you started with t i was it as big a company as it is now yeah yeah i mean when hello you probably got wait calling okay well i guess i'm supposed to talk alone while he's on the wait call about clothing right so i don't know what to say i don't wear any clothing we're at [nudist] camp we don't wear any clothes here yeah oh that's okay yeah was that in the seventies no no but uh when it had gone up yeah yeah i i i sort of remember that i'm only twenty two but in the seventies i heard you know t i was even making uh those little watches you know those those uh l e d watches that you couldn't see in the sun yeah so yeah well they said that women like the the you know executive women or women that work whatever they spend uh five hundred dollars on clothes a year so but but for me yeah i mean women go all i mean what i've seen like you know they like to wear something different every day and for me it's like people know how i dress and we have you know like the gym here they give you shirts right which which you use and then you take back they give you a clean one and so sometimes you wear you know the shirts from from the gym every day of the week the only thing is that you can tell them apart because they have the year that they were bought in so i mean you don't feel as bad because it's like they they give you different year sometimes you know so you're wearing you know sometimes you're wearing eighty nine the other times sometimes you're wearing ninety one the other times you're wearing you know eighty six so it's okay you know right see when we take p e you have to dress in the in p e clothes but it is it's issued to any one that wants one that's in the university well right now since i'm graduating i'm well pat what do you wear to work uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah my my schedule yeah my [schedule's] pretty similar i um i teach so on the days i teach i teach a couple days a week so whenever i teach i try and wear a tie but uh but that's i wear normally just wear like [khaki] pants and a shirt and tie i never wear a sport coat that's ridiculous but then most of the time you know then i just have to uh i can wear jeans or or just casual clothes i think they i think they [frown] on shorts and sneakers but i think i could probably get away with jeans and sneakers uh yeah i could well if i don't have to see students and uh i'm just in my lab and no one sees me then i'm probably okay uh_huh yeah uh_huh right uh_huh yeah well that makes sense uh_huh yeah as long as you're clean and yeah that makes a lot of sense uh_huh yeah that's true uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh yeah that would that would uh_huh yeah and you don't have to worry about fashion and stuff too you know buying nicer clothes and things yeah that makes a lot of sense well you know my mother's a waitress and she has like three uniforms that she sort of wears in rotation and she likes that you know uh_huh yeah your your uh_huh that's right where the the uniform as as a waitress now your uniform really it might be a little expensive when you first buy it but you know that's it doesn't it's made of polyester so it doesn't stain like cotton or wool would you know uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah well that makes sense yeah that makes a lot of sense uh_huh that's uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh probably the people that probably the people that are prone towards getting dirty yeah with the type of job that you have you might be getting dirty either either manual label labor where you'll [perspire] heavily or uh or where you'll come in contact with uh oil and things right uh_huh yeah yeah that's what yeah i find too um if you're a programmer do you get cold does your how's your air conditioning work uh_huh yeah uh_huh oh oh see yeah because my office is really heavily air conditioned because i guess they they keep the air conditioning on all the time where they don't in a lot of the other offices because of the computers and um right uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah yeah see sometimes my air conditioning gets really cold i think it's probably because my office is one of the only ones air conditioned in a a large area you know probably probably that's why i get because sometimes boy i'll get i'll freeze it's so cold in there especially when it's ninety degrees outside right yeah and blows on my legs man one time i left i thought i was going to i thought i was going to freeze the one day i wore shorts to the office because i was just going to be in my lab and i wanted to be comfortable because i thought the air conditioning would be all turned off you know and jeez if it wasn't the air conditioner wasn't blowing it wasn't fifty five degrees yeah that's true a lot of those nice looking legs yeah yeah i was just laughing it's funny that um we get clothing you know because uh i'm i'm in graduate school i only work part time and my wife uh we recently we decided we'd buy a sewing machine because that would be a good investment you know and we could make clothes and save money so she's made me shorts well of course you know she makes shorts and she says here i made you shorts and they're they're a nice material nice [checkered] [plaid] material here but but she didn't put a fly in them yeah the pattern she bought didn't have a fly so it's like well they're fine for her but uh you know they're just everyday summer shorts you know but there's no fly yeah they're not for a guy that really changes your the whole way you do your day so i was laughing i thought that was funny you know because while i i was up at the office and everybody says oh jeez those new shorts i think they were laughing because they are sort of a wild color you know but i was just crossing through to get my mail and stuff uh_huh yeah that's probably true without being laughed out yeah i'm not i never i laugh at the wardrobe my father in law wears golf clothes and it's the only time he puts on those funny clothes and he doesn't wear those in the back yard or casually around just when they go to play golf they wear those funny clothes that's true uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah but they have that dress code i you know i also know um e d s uh e d s i have some friends that interviewed with e d s and uh you know they interviewed while they were in college so they didn't really have a suit with them and the woman said to them well your second interview would be here but [du-] oh and on that day i would say wear a suit because i guess they just had on a sport coat and the one guy even had like um a gel in his hair you know his hair was sort of [slicked] back you know which is popular with the kids and she says oh and you know uh i wouldn't put the gel in my hair you know in other words you're to bore us a two or three piece suit with no gel in your hair you know and that way she made it pretty clear during the you know the first interview how they were supposed to dress for the second interview you know so i thought that was really funny too you know uh_huh uh_huh i don't think my hair has probably changed in ten years uh_huh he he's into what uh-oh really uh_huh yeah i see them i see the kids with the the things cut in their hair all the time well you know my dad was the same way i thought it was really funny back in the nineteen seventies my brother came home with cowboy boots on was growing up in pittsburgh and my dad called my brother tex for about the next four weeks you know and other than calling him tex he barely talked to him because he was so angry he was wearing cowboy boots yeah i thought it was just so funny you know my dad we're not in texas it was very funny you know and all that over a pair of cowboy boots and it was finally my mother convinced him she you know the cowboy boots give you about uh an inch lift you know they sort of have a heavier heel what well what kind of job do you have uh_huh oh okay is that because you're a student or uh oh okay okay well i'm a student that's why i was asking and uh i uh i haven't been working this semester so i don't really have uh much to say about that but i do work in the hospitals once a week uh i yeah i have i wear a uniform a nursing uniform so i don't really have much choice yeah they they tend to be pretty expensive uh yeah they should uh unless you just buy a few and keep wearing those all the time and yeah and people tend to use [bleach] on them because you know you want them to stay white and that kind of [deteriorates] it a little bit but uh i'm hoping mine my one uniform will last me a long time until i have to start working more days and there's not much of a selection at least in my price range like styles or things of yeah yeah so uh oh you did oh okay that sure does yeah were you a receptionist oh okay yeah definitely uh_huh sounds good right also the shoes are expensive that's yeah that's really tough before i went back to school i work as a uh what do you call it can't even remember it's been so long uh office administrator or whatever it one of those titles uh sort of and it was a more of a casual uh atmosphere but i still wore dresses and things like that so i mean it was for a uh non profit organization so right yeah i agree i i really i totally agree i have a friend that has a [knack] for looking really stylish but always comfortable yeah she's really good at doing that exactly uh_huh yeah yeah well she she you don't have to wear high heels to look good yeah she never wore high she's an engineer and she never yeah she never wore high heels just flats and low low heels uh_huh more the classic look yeah see that doesn't have to be uncomfortable yeah but you're right i think those things tend to be more expensive yeah uh_huh right yeah because uh also you tend to those things don't go out of style so much and uh i find right yeah and since i'm a student i never buy fad clothes because i know they'll be out of style the next season and then i have to go buy more so i just don't buy any hello hey how you doing fernando wait let me turn off my stereo here because i've been like waiting like for about ten minutes to get connected to somebody yeah yeah what time is it over are you are you in dallas are you because every time i got through i went to dallas texas yeah i'm in north carolina on the other coast what yeah yeah it's uh i'm watching saturday night live here wait what did how how did you get to know about the t i thing what are you working on really i'm doing my masters in in computer science and computer engineering at north carolina state university uh i don't because uh i come from a lot a bigger city than this one and i i'm in raleigh and yeah that area and it's really small all all you have is like towns built around universities like chapel hill yeah where you at oh okay so so i mean it's like this this town probably has like two hundred and fifty thousand people and that's about it yeah oh okay so so where do you go do you go to berkeley oh okay because uh i was looking at at the doctorate degree in computer science center at berkeley and they're asking like for a uh g p a of like three point seven or something like that and like they're looking like for uh g r e like ninety nine percentile and this and that and it's like yeah i know that's why that's why i didn't apply i mean it was like for me it was like practically impossible to get between like ninety and ninety nine percentile on the on the [verbal] part yeah so are are you going to go for your doctorate yeah when do you get out oh okay but uh but what if they pay for it what if they pay for yeah because i know i know a couple of people here that work for uh the army uh i think i think they're military but i mean the guy is still in and uh uh he works over in maryland and so he's doing his masters here they gave him like a scholarship like for a year and he's doing it in like in a year and a summer and so he's getting that and uh they said like they got a lot of benefits and that that's why you want to join but uh this guy i mean you can earn a lot more money so you say i go why you still there if you can earn a lot more money once you've get your your your masters they go well they got a lot of benefits that would go with it so yeah but i mean i mean you the once you get your masters you can be earning between anywhere between like thirty seven forty five thousand a year and and that's not what they're paying yeah yeah i know yeah but that's uh yeah it's like it's like uh in i b m in i b m you can get certain points and uh everyone's a manager but nobody can get one more point to become you know like whatever you need to earn so much money yeah it's like no i i mean i b m is like there's a joke about i b m which says you know it's like uh all all the major companies get into a a boating race right and so i b m says well we have we have to have a team right and then they come in last and they have this whole team you know analyze why they came in last right because the person asked for it saying he goes uh the problem was that there were five people saying row row row and one person [rowing] right so he goes have you come up with a uh have you come up with a solution they go yeah change the [rower] you know it's like everyone's a manager but you know it's like only use like one person does the work so yeah so yeah well that's the way it works i mean that's that's why they're having problems i mean everyone's a manager and yeah i mean it's like it's like the people that actually do the work there are uh very few and then the other people just plan it you know it's like it's like have you have have you ever seen the commercial like for federal express where the with uh the think tank you know like all these people are just standing sitting around just going you know like what shall we do has anybody thought of anything no and then this guy from federal federal express comes along they go what's that this track which it's going around the world and they can tell you where your package is anywhere any time and so it's like the same thing with i b m you know so they have this think tank and they got to come up with ideas but see uh the the thing is that i b m is so [stabilized] that everybody will buy their stuff yeah and it fails and you're dead yeah well i b m doesn't fire anybody because uh what they do is they they put you in a different job which you actually are like sitting around not doing anything so you quit i mean that's their policy they never fire anybody unless you're caught doing something [illegally] yeah like if you're stealing something or doing anything like that but they won't let you off what they'll do is like suppose you know like you're a manager so they'll put you into keeping up the paper you know it's like how much paper is going in and then you say that's not my job so you quit right right right no but i mean it's like it's like they they have just like different policy i don't know my dad works for them but it's like i b m like never in their commercials they never put down any other company you know it's like they won't say yeah because see what happens is they have a good backup policy and anybody can fix it and so that's what you're going to go for and and you know it's like for example like leading edge have you ever heard of leading edge what they they made like uh small personal computers i don't know i don't know but what they do is what they did i don't know is buy all the parts that i b m would throw away and build an i b m p c with all the parts that i b m would throw away yeah for example you test a chip it can't last seven years but it can last five i b m says let's throw it away leading edge will say we'll buy it from you and so that's i mean they're still around i think so that's what they do they buy all all the things that i b m throws away and they and that's why they're so compatible because i mean and by the time you have computer for five years you're going to throw it away anyway you know well i mean there's like well in a way you realize i mean one one of my teachers got this computer which you know it's like uh voice uh [synthesizing] stuff and he got that he said you know it's like uh i was testing it and it was wonderful and then when you tried to erase and correct you know all the errors in your voice it takes up all your memory and i want more you know and it's like jesus christ you know it's like why do you want more because it's like one second of recording i mean you put into wave and you want to correct the errors into wave it takes so much i mean it's like of course it does i mean by the times it [transforms] into wave by mark off model and you put it in there and you want to correct those and then you know you're trying to make the the wave smooth so you can approximately of course it's going to take a lot imagine imagine what it is for us to make mark off models you know it's like jesus christ yeah yeah yeah well like they say like nobody can get enough you know it's like once you have something and it's like i was watching this program on t v yesterday in nineteen seventy six nasa came up with three d graphics right and they were showing this like three d three d graphics view of like what no no no this is like this is like video game stuff okay but the only thing was that it was just lines okay like if you hello not bad not bad what's your name fernando my name is nick sure really [phew] man i'm no no i'm in detroit or not detroit i'm in uh california yeah i really oh well you're on the uh let's see yeah twenty one yeah shoot man it's what midnight almost yeah okay all right well i guess we're supposed to talk what about credit card oh one of my instructors uh said that they were doing something like this and a a masters in uh information systems yeah where at hey how do you like it out there yeah oh raleigh durham yeah uh_huh yeah so it it's basically a bunch of small towns anyway kind of [quaint] little towns but they don't have a whole lot there uh well i'm in monterey california right now yeah two hundred fifty okay it it's it's a lot bigger than monterey is but we're just uh just south of uh san jose and san francisco and it's only a couple of hours away or a hour away to a you know to a large city no no i go to the it's the naval [postgraduate] school out here uh_huh uh_huh yeah well that's what they look for whether or not they get it is hard to say yeah yeah it's pretty tough it's pretty tough i uh let's face it you know and you know i you know did the you know as far as i found it a lot of times with regards to education you know the school only takes you so far you know it's what you do you know so uh i don't lose any sleep sleep over stuff like that probably not see i'm in the navy and uh you know most of the navy funds that i probably won't do it until i if i do do it it will be after i get out of the navy oh probably be another twelve years oh you know i like what i'm doing right now excuse me if they pay for a p h d [nah] they won't pay for it they've i think they have maybe two people a year go get get their p h d yeah they [civilians] or uh military uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh well a lot of times it's you know a lot of times it's not the money that keeps that keeps people in they they like what they're doing they you know they feel good about what they're doing that type of thing it's more uh_huh oh easily i'm sure no well it depends on what rank you are of course i mean like i say if you're if you're you know if you're at an upper level in the rank category you know you're probably pulling down close to seventy grand a year yeah those are few and far between though uh_huh yeah since i imagine it's fairly competitive uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah too many chiefs and not enough indians yeah i don't know that can be that that can really slow you down i didn't realize that uh_huh push paper around uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh yeah they've got a they've got basically a uh you know a lock on a lot of the market and a lot of times you figure you know with the support that they provide you know people generally go with that because they figure that the you know you probably won't get fired for getting i b m material where's if you try something different they'll they'll say yeah why didn't you buy why didn't you try something more [mainline] no uh_huh uh illegal or something like that yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh so in other words that's the way they force people out that's why they can say you know there's no layoff policy but it they don't really say that you know you're you're always going to have great career conditions hey that's kind of sad no well they're the standard right now or as far as that goes you know people think of computers they think of i b m a lot of times and the main uh_huh yeah well you know that's that's a that's a big thing yeah they are out of korea right leading edge don't they yeah small p c they're out of korea right uh_huh oh yeah okay yeah i've seen well i've seen them around anyway you know uh_huh most people do or they have to anyway uh_huh wow uh_huh it's amazing yeah well when you get you know when you get right down to it the uh the more they can do for you the more uh like i say the more the more memory they're going to require yeah both both in terms in ram as well as uh you know standard memory or disk disk base so oh yeah you find out more yeah uh_huh like the deal like a hologram with just graphics on on a okay what are you afraid of with them yes well that's very can be very very true well that's the idea they figure that if they give you card at no charge for a whole year that you will use it and absolutely well the other thing of course is the fact that they hope you will not pay your bill at the end of the month so that you would be paying interest i use mine a great deal um for groceries for everything that i can and then just write one check at the end of the month for the entire thing right that's all right sounds like you have a little one there oh you have great how old are they oh boy those are two very active ages uh_huh well uh do you uh do you ever use the a t m machines well i find it a great use from the standpoint that you don't have to continue to write checks in order to get cash oh that helps right well the the other thing some people are not aware of is they will use their a their credit card like their visa or their mastercard for cash and when they do that they begin paying interest right from that very day on yeah right absolutely because they they figure that that's correct the idea is to use their money and uh during that whole month and then pay it at the end of the month uh_huh right well i think that's the only thing you can do is just say no and mean no and not be tempted well oh absolutely preapproved that's their favorite word i think so you're right well it's interesting uh that uh people have the generally the same view of credit cards no matter where you go that much stuff right well and some people use one credit card to pay for another credit card they own and i mean that does nothing but [exacerbate] the entire problem that's right that's right well it's been enjoyable talking with you right well take good care take care of your little ones uh_huh bye bye well um with credit cards is me i uh i try to get maybe just one or two i don't i don't like having credit cards for every store i i uh i just don't like them what am i afraid of um i don't know if i'm really afraid of spending too much i just uh don't think that i need them you know i uh they are tempting at times but i i just you know sometimes i just don't like everybody knowing everything about me you know so so and you know everybody just gives you a credit card just so you'll spend money so yeah uh_huh that's right see they make money off of it whether you use it or not that's right uh_huh uh_huh that's what i do that's what i do just a second sorry i have two little ones yes yeah so um four and two and half yes so yeah um i'm i'm like you i i use my only use my credit card for um you know when i you know i just use it whenever i feel like i don't want to write a check and then but i don't charge anything that i can't payoff at the end of the month so no i never do my husband does at work just to get cash out but uh i take the checkbook so i you know i just if i need cash i just tell him and he gets it out and i don't even think i know my number uh_huh that's right see we he couldn't do without it but you know since he can just do it right there at work for nothing yeah uh_huh you're right and that's kind of silly yeah your [defeating] the purpose yeah yeah yeah i mean i get i get at least one or two a week people you know sending me a credit card or calling me on the phone and i just say i don't want it because i yeah it's like i'd like to know where they determine that i'm such a good credit risk that they can go and say you get this much credit line you know you've already been preapproved yes everybody in the country is preapproved i think so yeah uh_huh yeah and then some people they get so wrapped up in them that they find you know one day they find wow i didn't realize i had this much you know i'd spent this much money and then they can't meet the minimum monthly payments on it uh_huh yeah it does because you're you know you you're you know you're just costing yourself more money because you if you can't make the monthly the minimum payment you're paying interest again so yeah so yeah it's enjoyable talking with seeing that somebody feels the same way so well you you too good luck bye bye okay i was trying to get my children quiet for a minute well credit cards boy that's an easy topic isn't it oh yes yes i guess i've had some good experience and some bad experience with them uh_huh well i do fairly good until i go in the store and i see something i want you know not need want there's a big difference there but most of mine that i use is strictly gasoline uh_huh oh it sure is especially when you work out of town and everything that way at least that's for me yeah but yeah i've i've talked to some who's really had some bad experience and kind of knock on wood i haven't yet not bad you know i just i'm just shocked at the end of the month to see what damage i have did but i try to keep it pretty reasonable uh_huh yeah yeah and then they have bad drawbacks too i mean high interest it's like paying twice yes so oh uh_huh yeah yeah oh yes uh we used to have you know like several but right now we're just more or less at american express you know and that way we can go ahead and pay it off when it comes in yeah pay fifteen yeah yes i know yeah and when you pay fifteen dollars a month it sure takes a long time it sure does uh_huh uh_huh yeah well i've enjoyed talking to you and maybe we'll get to talk again okay bye bye okay okay yes it is it's one we all hold dear and near i'm sure yeah most of mine's been pretty good although i'm i guess i'm like a lot of other people now i'm trying to to pay off my credit cards and and uh i've done pretty good at it yeah yeah uh_huh there is a big difference yeah yeah yeah oh yeah i i do that i do that but the rest like i said the rest of them i've been trying to to pay off and uh get back on a cash basis except for gas it's too easy to to run into the gas station and uh_huh yeah yeah so yeah well that's yeah yeah well i've been pretty lucky in that respect i don't charge like i say i've i been trying to to not charge except for emergencies and uh so but i haven't really had any bad problems with credit cards there's you know they have uh wonderful features they're there when you need them you know like in emergencies or whatever yeah it's it's awfully easy that's true that's true i try to i did switch to one uh sponsored by the credit union though that seems to be a pretty low interest yeah compared to some of the other ones and you don't have an annual fee there and that helps uh_huh yeah that's one way to do it because that that forces you to pay for it instead of saying well i'll just pay on it this month and yeah takes a long time that's right and now without the benefits of being able to deduct interest off off your income tax that's you know of course it's been going down for a number of years but this is the last year you can take anything so so well i've enjoyed talking to you okay bye bye so do you have any credit cards uh_huh okay uh_huh yeah yeah i have one card and i try not to use it but right now it's maxed out uh_huh yeah um i have uh the thing that bothers me worse than the credit cards i think is uh you mentioned the gasoline credit card i don't have that but i've got you know one of the the the instant teller cards that you can use for point of sale purchases and we use that usually to buy gasoline and it's just it's really amazing how quickly that goes uh_huh yeah yeah that's what they've they've talked about it course it [eliminates] any waiting period god help those people who have to float checks occasionally because you won't be able to with that no oh it was well they consider it to be the same as cash well cause it actually is yeah it's better than cash they don't even have to deposit it it just goes straight in there right uh_huh yeah but i'm so glad he told me that when that they they got to such a point with their credit cards they didn't want to cut them up because they were afraid sometime they might actually need them they paid them off and then they stuck them in a thing of water and froze them she said at least before she could use them she'd have to thaw them out i mean that's funny yeah yeah i i want to still have just one just in case but i'd sure want to get the get it paid down and not use it for a while uh_huh yeah well our our limit is you know fairly low and uh so that's that's one thing that's good oh i've got another call okay all right bye bye yes i do i keep uh i have an american express and a visa card that i keep you know kind of for emergency purposes and i have you know i use a gasoline credit card which i you know pay off every every month but i've i've gotten rid of all of the credit cards you know that i possibly could and my balances are practically zero on the ones that i have especially since you know it's no longer after this year or after tax year nineteen ninety there's no deductions for you know credit card interest that you pay so it's a you know gosh credit cards run what anywhere from up to eighteen nineteen percent i guess it's just a bad deal course there are emergencies you know that you you know probably need to have a card uh_huh that's that's probably enough absolutely it's it's very easy to you know to do that or you know to abuse it it really is it's so easy to pull out the plastic but we're trying our best not to not to add any you know credit card debt to our structure here uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i'm sure you're right i don't i don't i don't participate in that but you know a lot of folks do yeah at least with the uh gasoline company credit cards you have you know up to thirty twenty five thirty days you know interest free for it but you know the instant thing may be may may be the way of the future to you know to replace checks and every other thing yeah it certainly does absolutely that's right do you get any sort of discount when you use a card like that i see i see i see it certainly is yeah uh_huh that's right no returned checks or anything yeah no i i understand it's becoming you know the popular thing to do we're not participating in that particular program at the moment and i don't really perceive doing it unless we absolutely have to but uh i have in times past gotten into a bit of trouble with credit cards it's just you know too easy to do that's right well that's a novel idea yeah that would cause you think a little while wouldn't it that may not be a bad idea but i'm kind of getting a little more leery of credit cards you know as time goes by unless you just absolutely have to now there are times when you'd at least think you do anyway yeah uh_huh yeah that's right my wife and i really i guess are fortunate we're really not compulsive [shoppers] you know we we plan purchases you know pretty well you know watch for the best buys things like that but uh some people have a real problem with it uh_huh sure absolutely yeah oh i'm sorry was nice talking to you take care bye bye well how many credit cards do you have sounds like we have no conflict we had for a while i was carrying one card and my wife was carrying a different one and since the slips all look alike uh you [commingle] them and then you get the statement and you try to sort them out uh and it uh it caused more confusion about it i finally said gee this is kind of a waste of time and then when a t and t came along and offered a free one uh i accepted that and we've been using that one uh the interesting thing is is that uh the amount of money you can can run up on them i don't know do you know any people that run up big big bills well did um were you able to get one while you're in college just curious because i have a son that's a senior this year and he's heading off with any kind of luck but there has been i've had a couple of ads for for for to provide a card for a college student uh what do you think about the idea of providing one for somebody like that well that that that i guess from the from the card [issuer] uh that since since it's it's in the parent gets it for them that really the parent becomes the one that's responsible but it's yes it's whether the parent wants to take the risk yeah to to go run up a big bill and the thing is there some advantages if he got off some place and stranded i i'm i'm leaning towards doing it for for a convenience yeah and the idea that you know if he got in trouble there's some some ways of getting out and that he doesn't have to carry cash the uh i i like the idea of credit cards that uh i don't i don't i don't carry cash around and and uh i don't even carry checks around i let my wife take the checkbook and she writes the checks and i record them so it's uh it's uh it's but it's interesting that uh the people that can that can uh the amounts of money you can run up on on credit cards and uh i i had recently had some dealings with a fellow that they had run up he was making oh considered a modest salary for an engineer and he had run up uh more than a years salary in in various debts to and he wound up declaring bankruptcy but there it it's hard to believe that you'd run up twenty thirty thousand dollars of uh well it was a combination of things he had there were there were several credit cards and then there were several other businesses but uh i i guess what's interesting have you seen the the the the ads where they're offering to extend payments from uh things like uh like the credit union's offering yes yeah the interesting thing about that is is that uh that that they're encouraging you to incur more incur more debt and and they make more money if you extend your loan yes and they know that people own a car that new unless absolutely die of service they're not going to keep on if the car were older the interesting thing about it is is that from a uh uh an economy standpoint or in economics i i thinks it's i think it's poor poor uh economics to to carry all that consumer debt at least from a tax standpoint so it's interesting that that the american public is encouraged to incur all that debt and then next year none of it will be deductible and this year it's ten percent or so it's uh it's interesting that that uh they encourage us to do things i think ten percent yes of your of your consumer credit oh if you had a thousand dollars that means there's another hundred dollar deduction i've given you yeah it's on uh yeah yeah on the the there's there's there's a place for consumer debt and then you take ten percent of it on the oh okay it's on schedule um schedule a under uh well it's the same place it's the same place you put uh interest but but see that's what that's what makes texas [squirrelly] laws that you can't you can't take out a a second mortgage like some states where you can take out the mortgage and declare that and so uh it's fully deductible the laws are a little [squirrelly] but it basically comes down to it's not in your best interest to borrow money from a tax standpoint but uh anyway sounds like you're you're very very financially responsible it's uh that's uh there're a lot of people who really run my boss drives quite a ways to work and he's got just enormous debts and he's but i mean what do you say it's like [shucks] boss i'm sure sorry you've got all that debt well he's had had two kids in college and and this kind of thing and that i think that the whole credit card issue i think they certainly encourage people to run up the debts and but i agree with you i don't i my debts well i did buy a new house last summer it's it's remarkable how many people as soon as they get out of college buy a new car and that uh apparently that's been going on for a really long time i didn't do it i i bought a second hand car when i was the middle of my senior year yep miscellaneous things like food and other things these habits you get into eating and and uh it's it's it's amazing how it what you learn well anything else good to say about credit cards i might just you don't have to carry the cash and and uh and it's it's it's certainly accepted more places than the places you know it's hard to cash a check if you're out of state and yeah they don't allow they don't do yeah carry all that cash with you well you know they they they've started towards a little bit of the debit card have you seen the debit cards where they actually debit your account when you yeah and i think that's where yeah i've seen a couple although the so many of the grocery stores don't do that because of the the time frame which they get paid in general that uh they i've seen checks deposited the very next day i mean cleared my account the next day my wife will write a check for groceries and you know almost well i guess it's the day after uh technically it's two days but they took that check and [scurried] it to the bank and the bank [scurried] it back to my account and you thought there'd be just a little bit of float but apparently that's why the uh the uh the uh grocery stores are reluctant to do that because their volume that is quite high and they have uh the [costability] of the cash flow is a big issue for them anyway well it's good talking to you maybe we'll get across we'll cross paths again good night um i've only i've got about four maybe i try to limit them because i well one i don't use them too much and i use my visa just for for about everything and i pay it all off so i try not to i just use it for free money for thirty days basically i'm i'm you know i'm in the age group you get out of college and i think a lot of these people have them maxed out um i don't think i ever tried um well yeah i i you know it's you know feasible i mean i know a lot of college kids who have them you know who had them but just depends yeah so basically if you want to take the risk it's your risk do you trust your your son uh_huh uh_huh i'd say you know have one with you know at least a thousand dollar credit limit or something uh_huh the the extended loan payment for your car yeah i saw that well it's it's it's business and they're making money off that yeah and and it's so it's business so and you notice that they're they're only going to do it to like cars that are one or two years old and so they've already shifted the risk if they assume that car then they just have to sell it themselves and they'll recover the loan uh_huh yeah yeah uh what now what's ten percent we can deduct i didn't know that i didn't think you could any thing on a loan or i mean a mortgage i know you can oh i've never [itemized] yet so maybe that's schedule a or yeah yeah i try i i really do i just try to stay out of debt and i and i use my visa for for as much as i can and i pay it all off and uh_huh uh_huh yeah hell i took a five year note out on my car when i right when i got out of college and uh i'll never do that again i still got a couple of years on it to go and i'm well you you think you're starting out well until you start paying all those bills uh apartment rent and yeah yeah so um you know they're convenient you know that's probably one big thing about them and uh yeah well i was used to using my credit card like at skaggs [alpha] beta in dallas and stuff and now i'm out here in phoenix they they none of these grocery stores take any credit cards so now i have to carry cash when i go to the grocery store which is new to me you know i got to have sixty bucks on me or something so uh that was interesting cause i always you know you didn't have to worry about carrying that much unless i knew i yeah i've heard about them that's mostly locally the banks will line up with uh yeah all righty all righty take it easy all right uh_huh um i wish i had well i it was done for me after a while i had a uh i had a business going and this was back in the eighties i don't know if you remember the gold and silver prices and all that but uh i had a coin shop and everything was going great while gold and silver was up and it started falling so i started paying expenses and stuff on my credit cards and things got worse and worse and finally boom yep yeah it was i ended up going into you know it was one of those things uh oh it'll get better next week you know things will pick up and so there i was in old bankruptcy court oh yeah oh yeah yeah i was buying from other dealers and uh you know they take payment any way they can get it yeah course on on stuff that i was on merchandise that i was buying on cards it was i was getting the money back because i was selling it i wasn't buying you know just to hold onto it uh but it was things like you know rent and phone bills and advertising and all that other good stuff that ate them all up so uh_huh uh_huh sure uh_huh yeah that's the way they suck you in uh_huh uh_huh well just today in the mail i got uh i got got my guaranteed acceptance by uh american express yeah yeah as soon as you're a graduate student they get your name and uh course i guess i guess i've been [purged] from their records i used to have an american express uh back when i had my business i got one and they they goofed up bad on my on my very first bill because i was using the american express strictly for the travel expenses and the bill would come in and i'd pay it and the very first bill i paid it and then i got this nasty letter from them saying you're [overdue] pay so i said well it just crossed in the mail so i didn't do anything about it two weeks later i get another letter even [nastier] and said we're going to turn this over to our attorneys if you don't pay and i looked at that and i said uh_huh so by this time my checks had come back from the bank so i made a copy of the check that they had [cashed] attached it to their letter and sent them a nasty letter with the card cut in little bitty pieces saying thanks but no thanks yeah they were i tell you they don't talk about they're charging that enormous fee every year it's up to fifty five on the gold card it's eighty five for the optima or i'm sorry no no yeah for the green card well now that's the card see oh yeah yeah it's um well of course on the green card you have to pay it when the bill comes in so there isn't any but on the optima card it's um let's see right now it's running at about it's not too bad it's actually it's about sixteen and a half percent which is pretty good as far as credit cards go well they're dangerous huh_uh mine don't either mine don't either they uh my mom has a uh has a mastercard and a visa card and that's it yeah yeah now i i do use gas cards yeah yeah exactly plastic is just too easy i mean that's the that's the whole problem with it um yeah sure naturally that's i got into all kinds of trouble doing that well having having been out of the credit game for some years now i've gotten used to either paying in cash or not getting it and uh well it is but i i i'm kind of uh grateful for the experience because it's taught me a lot of restraint yeah exactly i i uh i just went out and got a new v c r yesterday with cash and it it's no i wish i did yeah i could use a discount i have to wait for things to go on sale yeah especially on electronic goods especially now circuit city yeah they they're not their prices aren't that terrific they they used to be but they've gotten they've got to pay for all that national advertising now uh_huh yeah they're they're all over the country now they they used to be good i remember when they first opened up they did have good bargains i don't know if you have a place there called uh or you probably have something similar we call it service merchandise you got service merchandise yeah it used to be service merchandise was the place to go and uh circuit city came along and that was the place to go to get your t v and washer and dryers and refrigerators and all that and then after the years went by they just sort of kept creeping up on price and actually service merchandise is cheaper than them now so so much for circuit city i don't i'm a graduate student i'm a professional student it is it's great it is great i love it n c state uh north carolina state not yet ours don't ours doesn't start until uh next week where am i what do you mean where oh in raleigh little the [burgeoning] [metropolis] of raleigh what a dead place yeah i've got a nice little business at home and i sit around and tinker with that most of the time um uh human factors not a thing it's it's really looking at systems and design systems and seeing how people interact with them it's well it's more psychology and engineering uh my my master's is in industrial engineering yeah p h d in human factors well oh yeah i b m uh i mean uh a lot of people use human factors folks but i b m is what i'm looking at right now they might be but not at not at the human factors level they they're no as a matter of fact the i b m right here or in [carey] which is a little suburb of raleigh just just hired one more human factors person doggone it if they'd just waited a little bit longer it could have been me i'm i'm i'm going into or going into the uh dissertation this summer uh i'm going to start this summer i probably won't finish it until the end of the year but uh i'm i'm trying to get a uh [intern] position with i b m right now so that i can find an area to do my dissertation in it's hard finding an area to do a dissertation in this field yeah that's that and and it's it's limited application in some respects um in the area that we're in here there's a lot of places that use human factors people most well like i told you before and you're talking about credit cards we put ours up i mean i had a delightful evening one night cutting a bunch of those suckers up well you should try it yeah you lost your business oh [gol] what a nightmare well you weren't charging gold and silver were you you can't do that can you oh you can oh that's a nightmare uh_huh well i remember before i got married you know when you graduate from college they'll send you all those credit card applications you know of course you fill them all out because you're honored and uh i had stuff for like [sanger] harris and you know it got up like to couple of hundred dollars and i thought well that's okay cause all they wanted was ten dollars a month right i wasn't thinking a thing about it yeah i was just stupid and every time they had a sale there i was because you know got get such good bargains and i don't know oh yeah we've been getting those i went back to school and got my master's and they started sending those things to me again yeah they did uh_huh yeah um turned out they weren't [cheeky] so what is it now what do you mean fifty five you mean fifty five dollars but then what's the interest and interest is like eighteen or something yeah well credit cards you know my parents don't hardly use them i've got all my gas cards because i don't want to carry money around i'll do that now impact is kind of bad too though you know especially if you get forget to record those little suckers uh_huh well and you're tempted if you've got cash a little bit of cash and you don't have enough for the purchase right of course you got to charge it and keep your cash what are you saying oh my husband says i might buy it but i i don't really usually consider that an option maybe that's how we got in trouble yeah but it's hard isn't it well it makes you feel good when you whip out the cash instead of your plastic with cash do you work with t i no yeah you could have got a discount couldn't you but there's always a sale yeah what is that thing i saw circuit circuit world or something circuit city have you been in there oh it's national i think i've seen two around dallas well what else yeah in garland uh_huh so so okay what else can we talk about who do you work for sounds wonderful we were talking about that just today we could be just lifelong students where are you going to school what's that so you're on spring break so where are you yeah oh okay is it so what are you getting your degree in and what do you do with it well what is it so it's sociology so you're working on your doctorate oh lord oh that will that will sound wonderful won't it get you a little [plaque] aren't aren't they laying off several thousand people well i heard it on the news today i could swear it was i b m um how much longer do you have and get that done this summer ooh because you why there has been so much work done already okay um let's see how do you feel about credit cards uh_huh right right yeah right wow right well we uh me and my wife when when we have like extra money that we know we're going to have and we can put it in our budget yeah we'll we'll use it but like last year i think we paid i think it was like twenty something cents interest on our visa and i think this this year we uh i think we used it for christmas and we got caught just a few days on our grace period and uh so we'll pay a little interest this year but maybe two dollars but we don't like to do that at all and you know we i think we feel about the same way you do real strongly we uh we have several credit cards though we have a gas card our visa and then of course the american express and i think we have a couple of department stores but we use it the same way and uh uh_huh right right it's it's not uncommon for us to have paid it before we even get the bill that's usually how we do it uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah right yeah right right that's good i've i don't think we've gone that far to pay it in you know in advance before we spend it but i guess if you [foresaw] that you were going to have to use it that like that that may be good uh_huh oh really yeah right right uh_huh uh_huh wow wow yeah right right right uh_huh right yeah right yeah right yeah especially yeah yeah well that's good oh from the dallas area oh really wow do you work for t i well really um i wonder how t i got g t e involved oh okay oh okay yeah yeah yeah you have a very um very what's the word your your speech is very exact oh really wow yeah right i work in yeah yeah i think we talked for a good eight minutes about the subject so i think you get ten so i think we're okay well you too same here bye personally i do not care for them uh although i find them a necessity in business and so forth i i try to [refrain] from their use as much as possible um for a number of reasons one of which is the you know extreme interest rate on most of them the one i use uh of course for mostly only for business purposes is uh you know american express and uh i'm not i'm not terribly in favor of them not for my own personal uh point of view plus it uh has you know from an economic point of view it has increased our debt tremendously to the tune of somewhere on the order of five to ten billion i believe uh at least that's one number for this range of numbers i have i have heard do you use them frequently or uh_huh yes uh_huh i find the one i use mostly uh aside from the american express i do use my sears card but uh i try as with the american express i try to pay it you know as it comes in so uh i know when i travel or when i used to travel overseas quite a bit what i would do on my american express card is before i would before i left i would mail a check to to american express and you know have some idea of how much was there you know i'd sent them you know several hundred dollars or whatever i felt i would spend and then use it then but uh for hotels and and so forth but uh but i knew that it was paid i knew i knew that i had that much credit going in sometimes you know sometimes i would go over but it wouldn't you know it wouldn't hit me in a big in a big way because i knew that uh i would have it covered in that respect well i found i found in um in traveling overseas that uh often it would uh it would [expedite] things to have an american express credit card for hotel bills and so forth plus i would uh when they uh would send the bill they would automatically convert to the exchange rate so now the only time that got to be a problem was if the exchange rate changed drastically uh for example i remember on one trip to france when i started planning the trip i think uh a dollar was worth nine or ten francs and just in a matter of a week or two the dollar fell against the [franc] drastically and when i finally got over there it had fallen uh two or three francs to the dollar so the so i got caught a little short in that regard but uh uh i i was anticipating you know my room would cost uh let's say if it were say sixty or seventy francs a night that would mean it would be about ten dollars or so or maybe twenty maybe it would be more than that it was more than it would average out to thirty five or forty dollars a night which is a reasonable rate but then when i got back and i was working for the government at the time of course the government was several months behind in their on its per [diem] for exchange rate so there's a little [consternation] you know in trying to get them to compensate for the difference in the exchange rate that was the only time i really got caught short and i but as i said most most of all i try not to use them uh to any you know [lavishly] in that regard well from where are you calling so you're from okay i'm from maryland yeah no i work for g t e yes well i know jack [godfrey] i know him very well i've known jack for a long time and i'm also in the speech business so when i heard that jack was going to do this i called him and asked for an application where i could participate in this and so that's how i got involved oh thank you very much but as jack said i'm one of the the old hands in the speech business yeah uh yes i i've been doing it for twenty some odd years and so uh i was very much interested uh in getting involved in uh switchboard so uh you work for t i oh really i guess we're supposed to do this part of it before we started the recording alright okay fine well you have a good evening it's been pleasant talking to you take care good night okay how do you feel about them yeah well we have this philosophy we use it when we go off somewhere but we pay for it as soon as we come back you know as soon as we get our bills we pay it off and we only have one we tore all the rest of them up because i don't like credit cards for one thing you know i mean they're okay i guess if you're on a trip or something you don't have to take a whole bunch of you know cash with you but i don't like using them because i've seen too many people that used them and ended up bankrupt or on chapter thirteen and stuff like that because they have this weird opinion that if you use that card you don't have to pay for it yeah yeah and it gives you a um a false sense of security or something it seems like because you say oh well i don't have to pay for it now but you're going to have to pay for it and it seems like uh_huh right are you married oh okay well i know that a lot of young people you know i it took me a long time to get it through my child's head i mean that was her goal you know uh got to have a credit card but now that she has one she's only used it one time but she wanted to establish some credit but i think it finally [sunk] in you know because she saw some of the other people and just like she heard them say you know well i used a credit card and my husband's sister is the world's worst at oh well i'll just use the credit cards and she has all of her credit cards up to the limit you know and i'm i'm thinking woman wake up and smell the roses before they come and get you but right and people don't see that either right the only one that we we have that we kept was the discover card and it pays you to use it i mean if you pay your bill off right away if you don't ever have to pay any interest on it because they give you a certain amount every time that you use it and you make that money as long as you don't ever have to pay them any uh interest now it's and people say well you know i'm making money by using this credit card but they don't realize that if they i mean it only takes one time for you to use it and not pay the interest i mean you have to pay the interest not pay it right off that's going to take up what you would have made so that's the only reason that we kept that we debated for a long time plus they don't have that um charge on it you know like yeah right they don't have one of those so it we decided that was it you know and i mean everybody calls us and wants to give us a credit card we have we could have credit cards running down our ears yes yes and then i'll have just like uh department stores they'll call me up you know and i'll say look i don't want the credit card well we're just going to send it to you you know you don't have to ever use it if you don't want to they'll send me any credit card i tear it up i just can't see it uh_huh yeah i know it and you know what what's really bad about those though is just like young people if they don't you know we take the time to you know help my daughter she's in college but it this is her first credit card thing well when she got her first one she was so excited it was unreal look at this they sent me this money you know so then when i explained to her look you have to pay this back and they are going to charge you interest and stuff of course she tore it up but a lot of parents would not take the time you know and they wouldn't even think of it or their kids may not be as close as my daughter and i are and uh you know they may not even discuss it they go out and cash their check thinking that you know they've got something maybe they've won something you know somebody sent them something free and go out and spend it and um it's just unreal i mean i don't like credit cards i wish that they would come up with some other way to you know the only way you could use them is if you were like on vacation they would let you use it maybe once a year you know i mean of course i guess some people go out and spend their whole entire limit on it like that at that time but um i have seen so many people and i have a friend right now she just got off of thirteen she got uh i can't remember what she called it it's some kind of maybe it's sure or something like that it's something it's some weird name of a credit card and she is charging out of her mind already and i'm going you just got off that's how you got on to it to start with you know what is the matter with this person but um it seems like people just you know they just think well i can just have anything i want and i just don't see it like that of course i always see pay the bills first and whatever's leftover that's what you have but um maybe a lot of people don't see it like that but i can't stand owing i mean i cannot fully tolerate to owe something like you know i guess it's just because i've been brought up like that but um i could not charge to the limit and knowing that i was going to have to pay this thing out for ever and maybe suffer from having to [payout] but that's just the way i feel about it right yeah oh yeah i guess it is like that though because it seems like more and more people are like that but um i guess it's because i'm older i mean i'm not real old but i am older and um you know i didn't feel like that i didn't feel like i had to have everything i guess it was because well i had everything when i was at home but i i don't know why i didn't uh_huh yeah huh yeah well it didn't hurt you did it to i mean you didn't go out and charge a whole bunch and lose everything did you yeah well you learned then right yeah uh_huh well i keep trying to get away from them i used to use a lot of credit cards i guess for a while i would use you know a variety of the visa and the mastercard and the stores but i think i i impulse buy too much with them or i buy things you know i see it on sale and i think oh it's on sale i have to get it and i really don't need it or i really haven't budgeted for it so um the last couple of years i really have tried not to use them at all what about you uh_huh uh_huh okay uh_huh right huh uh_huh that's true if if it's on the credit card it doesn't seem like it's money out of your pocket sometimes you may think well i don't have the money so you use the credit card it's like fake money or something yeah you think well i don't have it now but payday will come and then i'll have the money but that's probably paying for things that were still owed from last time yes uh_huh uh_huh huh right besides the fact that how much interest you pay and then this yeah this thing that you thought you got on sale by the time you get done paying with that with all the finance charges because you pay it off over a long period of time you've spent a heck of a lot of money on that thing uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh huh service charge you mean yearly fee yeah oh you get that stuff in the mail all the time what i really hate in the mail is like for the credit cards that i do have still that they send you these things that look like checks and they say hey you know two thousand dollars you know free to you kind of thing you know all you got to do is go cash those things and you've got a short term loan i hate it i can't believe they have the nerve to do that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah i think it's it's somewhat a uh symptom of our me generation and that we think we need all these things and i think my parents always you know did without or saved up to you know buy things and we consider that so many of these things we just have to have you know like when i first got my apartment and i was setting it up i did try to [economize] some but you know i was just like well i have to have it all [furnished] and i have to have all of my kitchen setup and you don't you know do without too much and you know that's how i got started kind of with setting up a household all up you know it kind of like in the short amount of time you know you just have to have these things just you know have them at home have to have them at my own place and that's you know a big expenditure to start um buying all these things that you think or or have to have and actually they're kind of luxuries or you should save up slowly and keep buying them and not just rush out and [furnish] the whole place you know going in one big [swoop] save up and then buy it but we're not into that we're into like have to have it all now well we're geared to that we're like okay like i want a living room set and instead of sitting back and and going okay well it's going to cost maybe a thousand dollars two thousand dollars and i'll save for two years people go oh well i'll just go buy it put it on credit and they'll pay it off people aren't tuned in to like saving for it and then buying it they just put it on a charge card put it on account and then pay off the bill because they want it now it's always have to have it now no no but i have had some times when i've had some pretty good balances on there and uh you know i finally you know paid them all off and thought this is you know kind of nonsense so we don't uh have big balances on them at all now we're we're you know we i use it occasionally but i pay it right off we're yeah you learn the you know the hard way you hate paying all that interest and i've never been one to itemize on my income tax and never had enough to itemize and so it's just a big chunk of money and you realize that you're not buying anything on sale your paying so much more for that item because you've got finance charge and the cost of having that card every year which is what forty dollars sometimes just to have the card that's a lot of money that you went to buy this item and then you never feel like you've got anything to to put into savings or anything you're always just paying bills paying bills you know you don't feel that you have any extra to save and i hate i hate living paycheck to paycheck i like to have a little there you know that i can save so i can feel that you know if something comes up i've got the money to pay for it yes uh_huh right you have a lot of discipline they make it really easy for people to uh to get credit cards especially college students i have uh two daughters who who both are in college or in fact one has finished now but they both have a lot of credit cards uh_huh uh right and then they they give you uh uh the credit limit and then you're always seemingly up to that limit now i have quite a few credit cards that i'm always almost up to the limit on most of them and that's that's how a lot of people get into trouble uh_huh right yeah yeah well you have a lot of discipline i uh i'm trying my best right now to pay off some of mine i i've i've paid off about four credit cards this year and uh but still i have some that are are up to the limit and especially the visa card that you can go and get cash on and it seems like every time i'm short of cash i just go get get it from visa uh_huh uh well uh you can go in a bank and just hand them the visa card and say i want a cash advance or if they've sent you a uh a number that you can use you know a a personal identification number that you can use in the uh impact machines or whatever you you can do that because i have one that i don't have a pin number for you know sometimes you have to ask them for that and then i have one that uh just gave me the pin number automatically uh_huh right oh wow well they they do that a lot if you have good credit and you have been paying your bills on time everybody in the world will offer you a a credit card uh_huh uh_huh right well you know the way the economy's going and inflation and the recession and all that i think we we really need to try to stay out of debt as much as possible that's that's why i've i've really started to try to to pay off mine and get out of debt because we never know when we might you know get laid off or something especially me i work for texas instruments and they've had had a lot of of uh you know layoffs lately you do where are you johnson city uh_huh i know they're selling out somebody in colorado springs yeah it it certainly is i've uh i have worked on a part part time job uh where i was a collector for uh uh a jewelry company people uh that they just had this jewelry account it was [zales] jewelry in fact and uh a whole bunch of i mean they have about a thousand [collectors] i guess and uh there's just so many people that have bought jewelry which is really a luxury item and then they they just can't pay for it something something happens you know and you hear so many stories listening to them like uh you know they lost their job or uh they they've signed for a friend you know they got it in their name but they got it for a friend and then the friend wouldn't pay them and now they're stuck with the bill and it's ruining their credit and you really have to watch it this you know because yeah because every every month all of these credit cards report to the credit bureau you know automatically most of them do yeah and if you if you're uh it's bad because if you you know your bill is due on the fifteenth then [y-] you're not past due until the fifteenth of the next month but you know if you if you pay one day after that fifteenth you're not one day late you're thirty days late right right and anyway we need to watch our credit reports and all that kind of uh_huh well you know you you can do that i believe it costs about ten dollars oh yeah it is it is you might even find somebody's been reporting on you and you didn't even know it you know you i mean you might think you're paying something on time or and you by that day and you're thirty days is not real bad though anyway if you've got a charge off on your credit report or something like that that's when it really gets bad or something you haven't paid in sixty days or ninety days you know and things like that uh_huh do they charge a lot of interest on that card i don't uh_huh uh_huh yeah well always watch out for anybody who bills you out of atlanta georgia or there's a couple of other places that are able to charge us like twenty one and twenty two percent interest i know i had a charge with uh [spiegel] and i hadn't read the uh terms of the credit agreement really and uh when i did i you know i realized that that it just looked seemed like i was never paying the balance off you know and i looked at the credit card agreement one day and it was like twenty three percent interest and that's the one bill that i hurry up [hurried] and paid up and and i've always watched it since then you really have to watch those interest rates i mean that's true so anyway they can't bill you any higher than eighteen percent i think in in texas but there there are a couple of states that can and one to watch out for is anybody that bills you out of atlanta atlanta georgia well uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh wow i wonder if they i started when i was in college you know they always offer credit cards for college students so i went ahead and accepted every one that i was offered because i knew it would be easier to go ahead and get them and establish credit early so i i pack around a lot of them but i only use a few of them yeah and they give you such high credit limits it's it's easy to get caught up in the minimum payment trap yeah i've got i've got two that i you know that usually i'll have a balance on and then all of the others i just try to use kind of like you would an american express card and and pay it off every month and that way i feel like i'm getting you know a thirty day loan but i don't have to worry about you know running them up too high except at christmas then they usually go then they usually get run up pretty good uh_huh yeah now that's one that's i've never used my visa for cash before can you use it like at a bank machine or yeah oh okay yeah now we got that's that's funny you said that because we got a credit card uh my husband and i got credit cards in the mail one day that we hadn't even applied for now a couple of weeks later we got we got pin numbers and then we got uh a bill saying you know uh the yearly fee it was like forty dollars and we we cut them up and sent them back because we we hadn't even applied for them and we didn't want them but they they had just automatically approved us and sent them without even [contacting] us so i thought man i don't know if i trust this or not it's like let's see if we can get her to run up her bills but it's hard i mean it's it's tempting when you see something to say well i'll just charge it and sometimes i'll do that but usually i i will try to pay everything off the next month or the ones that usually have an outstanding balance all the time i'll i'll pay more than the minimum payment just i i feel like even that little bit helps i know it well i work for t i too and i think they're getting ready to to probably sell us out our division in johnson city tennessee yeah yeah they just they just announced that didn't they so i mean it's it's kind of a bad time to be a slave to your credit cards uh_huh man yeah oh didn't pay them man that's scary i didn't realize that yeah oh okay they don't they don't recognize any time difference do they ooh that's scary that's something i never thought about getting you know checking with to see what what your credit report looked like might be worth it for peace of mind yeah i think that discover card has a good idea with you know giving you a little cash back incentive for each amount you you purchase as long as you don't go crazy trying to get cash back and since they don't have the yearly fee i don't know i've never i haven't gotten one just because it's uh uh i felt like with visa and mastercard and american express you didn't need another one i would think it wouldn't be you know much more than the eighteen or nineteen percent everyone else charges so that that wouldn't be too bad yeah holy cow definitely that's awful i mean there's no point in giving them any more money than we have to so oh that's great i'll try to remember that one well let's see i was trying to think if there was anything else uh the i guess the worst problem i ever had with with a credit card though was um i got a an item on my bill that i had never purchased i had ordered a sofa and had filled out the paperwork but they weren't supposed to process it until they delivered it and i changed my mind but then they went ahead and charged it on my account and it took me about eighteen months to get that all of that mess off of my account so that's that's probably the worst thing i've ever had happen with a credit card i don't guess we got our first uh credit card oh back in the seventies early seventies when i first got married was a visa card uh issued out of a liberty bank in oklahoma city because my sister worked at the uh the visa some bank [americard] center there so we were still in college and had she not worked there i'm not sure that i would have qualified they've come in handy over the years uh and they have become or also a a real bother sometimes especially you know if you catch yourself short on cash or if you're on vacation it's just easier to put everything on a card and uh i find if you're not careful you wind up uh a month or so staring those bills in the face and you go i don't remember doing all that stuff and it adds up so sometimes uh especially traveling with t i you know everything goes on american express and it makes it a whole lot easier for [bookkeeping] but uh as far as personal life goes i guess i really try to use them as little as possible uh i kind of like having them for uh gasoline purchases yeah but other than that uh i i guess over the years tried to avoid the national credit card syndrome of just putting everything on there day after day after day and then then you really get [socked] to it if you don't watch it how how do you look at counting credit cards well that's right well that's kind of the way we were doing it's uh i guess for that very reason that that uh if you're not real conscious of what you're doing it's just too much by the time you get well if you got a bunch of cards you get a bunch of bills every month and for some strange reason those people think they need to get paid yeah and i give them maybe not maybe they're not really concerned about getting paid because they're know if you don't then they're adding on what eighteen nineteen twenty percent sometimes it's twenty two percent interest yeah i guess that's one of the motivations behind the the uh the uh american express card with t i there's no with the american express card from t i there's no um late fee there's no uh interest rate you you either pay the thing off or they come get it and it's turned into personnel and they come get you so they've got quite a bit more motivation i think to get paid then some of the others do but that's the one that your call center manager sees every month so you're a little bit more careful about what you put on that even though you can use it however you want to oh yeah you can use it like any other card and uh but it you know you kind of you know that somebody every month and who knows how many people are looking at those uh bills that come in and those statements you're not the only one so uh you want to make sure that uh is that okay is that okay that those people see what it is that you are buying and most of the time it is but most of the others i've sent back i mean all you get is card offers i've got three card offers now uh from gas companies and uh visa gold and uh some other bank uh [citibank] i think is always sending the visa stuff out and i usually just throw them away because i i don't want another one i don't want to have to mess with it you know you carry around a wallet full of credit cards and uh one of these days it's going to all be full oh that's not bad yeah no if they don't say no annual membership on them i'll throw them away um years ago well i had my visa card through this bank in oklahoma city for oh probably fifteen years and then they started charging uh annual membership fees and i said [adios] i'm you know i'm not paying you it's just another way to make money as far as i can tell i mean they've been well sure and they i guess they figure they've got enough people out there with cards they're going to get cards at the twenty bucks a pop there's going to be that much more uh so then a couple years ago i found uh a bank here in plano that if you kept a minimum balance in any kind of account whether it was a savings account or what it was you can get a visa card through them and no annual membership so i went over and just stuck three hundred dollars in my son's savings account in his name and got my visa card so as long as they have no annual membership fee i it would be okay but i can't see paying someone to use their card be charged their eighteen percent interest so yeah i think you're right the best philosophy is have them if you need them but otherwise leave them tucked away somewhere yeah yeah it sure does maybe they're counting on that i don't know well i guess that's it thanks for talking bye uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh tell me about it uh_huh uh_huh yeah they add up quick uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah we like to keep one on hand just for emergencies you know but uh_huh yeah we just uh quit using them and they got us in trouble we took a loan and paid them all off we keep them uh we keep uh one gas card and uh and uh visa just you know in case there's an emergency or something but other than that we don't use them anymore uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i know isn't that funny yeah yeah and then some of them add late fees on it if they don't get paid and uh_huh huh huh uh_huh oh really oh yeah yeah uh_huh can you use that one for personal use oh you can uh_huh oh i see huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh oh i do too i don't even open them much i throw them out uh_huh a girlfriend of mine found a it was a visa or mastercard she found an ad for one in like a good housekeeping magazine for eleven percent shoot i need one of those uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh why do they do that i mean i mean they get enough you know on the interest uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh huh no i can't either yeah yeah really gets a lot of people in in trouble okay nice talking to you bye bye well what are your did you like do you use credit cards huh_uh so it doesn't get uh uh the credit uh the interest rate is so high that you're really if you're going to use credit cards you need to use that policy i think don't you otherwise you end up paying so much more for your merchandise that it's hardly uh it's not a very good idea well i have a lot of them but i don't use them very much though i use them mostly for big things like maybe sometimes uh tuition if it's you know if i'm short to go ahead and get it and then try to get it saved back as quick as i can the other thing i i think if you do get overextended a little bit you need to be sure and pay it off uh more than one at a time because i think you could run forever paying what they require just goes on and on yeah yeah that's true there are times when it's when it's very useful like uh emergency trip or something sometimes when you when you the money will be available but it's you know not immediately handy i think uh they're very helpful plus the fact that it's helpful not to have to carry a lot of money sometimes but uh i you really do need to be very um oh responsible about it or you end up in deep trouble uh_huh right right that can be very handy under those kind of circumstances the other thing about them is too if you really don't you really need to get some and use them because if you have never used them and developed and haven't developed a credit thing it stops you from doing a lot of things if you if you pay for everything by cash uh there is a lot of things that a lot of people who will not give you credit when you need something like a house or a car so so they they have become a very vital part of our of our monetary system over the last few years but uh it's true you have to be very careful or you end up uh going in the deep end and uh and an awful lot of people are in trouble we have a boy living with us who works for a credit card uh company that and he makes calls to people who have problems you know credit problems that are trying to work out and uh poor thing he comes home very depressed every night because the world has so many problems of that sort so it's it's uh it's uh it's a really big problem i think and um takes mature people to to treat it uh so that it's so that it's a real advantage to you instead of a disadvantage yeah right it didn't do you any good now does it even before it probably wasn't though because you didn't get anywhere near as much as what it you didn't get to claim anywhere near what you ended up paying so well i'm not other than that i don't have too much on credit cards but it's good to talk to you uh_huh bye now uh not very often i usually uh the ones we use is like visa and we always try to pay it back at the end of the month i have uh uh right yeah that's right do you have a lot of credit cards right oh yeah which is what they want i think a lot of people go in debt because they think oh you know i can just charge it but really i mean if they don't have the money then they aren't going to have it in a month so they uh make the mistake of pushing all their cards yeah yeah right yeah i made that mistake when i first got a job and that's kind of like it took me quite a while to pay them off so after that i decided well i'm not going to use them at all and just try to pay cash for everything and that worked for a while and then we got married so we decided to you know if we used them we would pay them off as we go so right that's true yeah uh_huh uh_huh huh_uh oh yeah right i think um the way the tax system was they encouraged people to use credit cards you know with a big write off at the end of the year but now it's like it's punch money because you cannot right you cannot write off your interest yeah yeah you too thanks for calling bye hi what do you do with your credit cards oh jeez oh i was going to say that that sounds like like pretty many but i see what you meant you had them for each of the individual stores uh_huh uh_huh oh gee oh sure uh_huh uh_huh but each of these had an annual fee also right uh_huh yeah forty five right uh i exactly you know i that's it i really resented the fact that they were charging me for cards so i sent back all of mine except the ones that were free and um then then i also limited it to one of each one mastercard and one visa and here most of the stores will accept those and actually i then got a discover card since they pay you back oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh i see yeah uh_huh yeah yeah actually i pay off my cards every month only once in my life have i not paid right uh_huh uh_huh well and also in a sense they're giving you a loan for a month so that you know if i were smarter i would have that same amount in savings and get the interest which i don't do but but yeah the the thought of adding you know x percent to to the price of what i buy i just i can't accept uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's right that's right yeah yeah that i would that would be a very scary feeling for me to know that i was you know juggling payments to different people i guess because i never experienced it and it's not because you know i'm rich or anything it's just a mental concept that i have yeah that i just uh_huh uh_huh right right but it sounds like you know you you learned from it and you're coming out of it all right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh but now the fact that you still have two cards are you do you use them more [judiciously] yeah uh_huh purchases uh_huh uh_huh clothing sales sales i find are a pain uh_huh uh_huh well it sounds good you know like i said it sounds like you're you've really got it under control uh_huh uh_huh yeah and like i said once once it it happened i couldn't because my son's tuition came due and i guess i had you know not really counted on it quite at that point but um yeah i didn't like it at all i was very uncomfortable so you know and and i mean it was i thought a lot sixty dollars interest or something for for just a couple of months and i'm going jeez that's outrageous but in in you know retrospect it wasn't all that much i mean a lot of people pay a lot more and and you know but still i mean i figured i didn't need those items if it cost me sixty dollars more to have them exactly groceries for a week yeah uh_huh but now did you use to not feel so badly because you could take it off your income tax uh_huh right right thrown away yeah jeez you were good at it uh_huh yeah i suspect that you know thinking about it and looking at my friends and the number of credit cards that they use and you know the amount that i know they buy i guess probably a lot of them are in a similar situation and you know just don't talk about it uh_huh uh_huh very personal uh_huh yeah and especially if you if you don't feel you're handling it quite right or that somebody might make fun of you or that it would be uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right right but but once i suppose you you prove yourself by paying this off next year you'll be in very good shape uh_huh uh_huh oh well my husband and i have gotten into some some problems with credit cards we don't handle them very well we we tend to run them up to the maximum and then ask for more they they're they're really bad for us um matter of fact we've gotten rid of all of our credit cards except for a mastercard and a visa and we pretty much keep those maxed out yeah we had i had probably twenty credit cards for i had i had an american express american express gold an optima all the different department stores um two visas two mastercards i mean i had any time anybody would you know send me an application you know preapproved or whatever i went i took it and it really ended up getting us in some real serious trouble um because see the more credit cards you have the more people offer them to you and the more you use them the more they send them to you exactly the american express was probably the worst um because with the gold card i can't remember how much it was because i didn't even have it very long before i gave it up but i know the green card was like thirty five five dollars a year which was a lot because i mean you had to pay it in full every month uh_huh uh_huh yeah i had a discover and that was one of the ones in the group that i ended up um closing um it really wasn't my choice though i mean i ended up having i ended up actually losing my credit cards um i ended up going through a credit counseling service um because my husband and i just don't handle credit very well and um when when you do that they automatically once you start with their service they close your accounts out so i'm still paying on all these accounts but my accounts are closed so and i would prefer to keep it that way once we once we're paid off um i would prefer just to have one mastercard and one visa and that's it i think that's a really good way to handle it because that way if you if you paid off every month you never have to worry about well how much do i have to pay these guys you know this month you know this you buy what you can afford i mean if you handle it just like you would like a check or cash it's a lot easier to keep it in check yeah uh_huh yeah and i and i think at this at this point in time with the economy the way it is i think that um it's going to get even worse um i'm i'm glad that we're starting to pay our debts off now um you know we only we started this last year and we probably still have about another year to go before we're completely out of the hole but i think this they way the whole economy is going right now it's just not good to be in debt uh_huh yeah well when you when you're getting rid of the whole credit card cycle and if you really get into the mind set i got really good at juggling money and basically robbing peter to pay paul and it was scary because i was so good at it and i thought this is not right i mean this has got to stop because eventually it'd end up catching up at catching up with me and it hit me in the face um i yeah i have i've learned a lot from it i've learned that credit cards are extremely dangerous in my hand and my husband's too because he's he's the same way i am i don't i don't think that well when we buy on credit we just don't have a concept of how much money we're spending until the bill comes in and then all of a sudden you look at the bill and you go oh my gosh i spent this much yeah we pretty much use them for emergency type things like transmission fell out on our car and that paid for a new transmission um and and things like that um and we try not to use them for [incidental] type things like you know gas and stuff like that yeah yeah i've i've gotten i've gotten a lot more away from from credit cards and i pay by check a lot more now i i admire you for having having that mind set for not not even getting you know past the thirty days i would that's ideally the where where i would like to be uh_huh i can imagine yeah oh yeah uh_huh think about what you can buy for sixty dollars yeah yeah i i think about all all the money that that we've spent on interest on all of our credit cards and it's just incredible we've never been able to take it off our income tax i'm i'm fairly newly married i've only been married less than two years and before that i never owned a home or anything so i never had any deductions so really it was always just money thrown away and i never really thought about it because yeah i was so good at it that it just kind of got stuck in the back of my mind and just never um became a real problem until all of a sudden it came an [insurmountable] problem yeah most most people don't like to talk about money they feel uncomfortable i think you know for a lot of people it is very personal yeah but i think the the average american is probably pretty heavily in debt not not including like a mortgage a mortgage is an understandable debt because that's you have you have to have a roof over your head and i would much rather own my own home than than be renting it like we're doing i mean we're basically you know kind of throwing seven hundred dollars a month away we're renting a house but you know right now with the way our credit card situation is there's nobody in the world that's going to give us a mortgage on a house yeah yeah it's it's going to it's going to take quite a while hopefully within five years we'll be in our own home but um i'm not really counting on it real soon okay yeah we well we have quite a few but we don't really use them a lot we have well we like a lot of gasoline credit cards because we like to be able to stop you know when we're traveling and stuff wherever there's a station but as far as like mastercard and visa we don't use those too often what about you uh_huh right uh_huh yeah oh really huh oh is it like an automatic debit or oh huh oh really yeah we use our credit cards sometimes for a big purchase but we always have the money set aside already to and then we just pay it off the next month we never pay we don't like to pay interest on the credit cards at all yeah gosh uh_huh yeah right yeah yeah that yeah we we screwed up one time like that too we mailed it and they just never did get it and we had to finally mail them another check huh yeah i don't either no you figure you'll get your check back if you have to yeah really i like to use my card if i buy something through the mail which i don't do real often or something from out of state you know where if something is wrong you don't want to end up having to pay for it a couple times i've had to write big credit card companies and say you know i didn't really get this or i don't know what this is yeah uh_huh uh_huh oh yes it's yeah if you filed that letter with them then they will kind of yeah i'm like you too about the yearly fees i don't uh i don't like to pay the yearly fee for a card right now both the mastercard and the visa we don't have to pay a yearly fee on and since we don't pay the interest it doesn't really matter what the interest rate is too just as long as we don't have to pay that yearly fee now we had american express cards and my husband had always had that before we got married and those got so high we finally decided for him and me both to have a card it was like ninety dollars or something i think i can't remember but we decided let that one go and uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh yeah but yeah like you said if you really if you need that extra for charging tickets and stuff it's more worth it uh_huh oh yeah that wouldn't be too hard to do yeah have you ever run into problems of charging up more than you meant to and having to be stuck with that we've never had that problem either uh_huh yeah right yeah yeah i guess it depends on whoever you buy it from how fast they turn them in or something lot of places have i guess they're called those pointed sale [terminals] where it's like it goes in the minute you charge it yeah oh oh gosh yeah that's nice right yeah i like that feature and the like if you break it yourself even you know if you buy something that's [breakable] yeah oh really oh i didn't know that hi do you have lots of credit cards uh_huh um i used to have a ton of gas credit cards and now i have one or two of them but i think i've even let some of them [expire] but i was living out of the country for a while so i wasn't using them too much and i don't drive that much but i have you know mastercard and visa as you know i have a mastercard and an american express now i got rid of the visa because it was getting out of hand having fifteen million cards but as long as like my mastercard is um free as long as you spend about i don't know three thousand dollars a year or something like that and so i tend to buy almost all major purchases on a credit card when i have the choice and um i used to even use it for my grocery shopping and stuff the stores around here don't let you do it too much and so i don't but i was living in france and there you pay for everything by credit card but it's not really a credit card it's a it's a debit card yeah and um just you know it's many times you get out of the store faster if you pay with that than if you pay with cash bye thanks um yeah because they're just so well set up with it right well yeah i i never pay finance charges on them except when i screw up which i occasionally do and you know i'll forget to pay the bill by the due date or this last month i mailed a check to them on the twenty second and they didn't get it until the [thirtieth] and it was due the twenty fifth and you know so i thought i and so i got hit up with a uh finance charge on it which pissed me off because um you know i really did mail it in time but they have no proof of that i don't i don't want to probably talk to them some more discuss it but i i never um usually never pay finance charges i had that hassle one time and that went on for months and months and months because and they eventually found the check and deposited it and months later they were still telling me that i owed them finance charges and um late fees and things like that and i said well i mailed you a check and you eventually did deposit it so you know i guess i don't know who the the burden of proof is on you know kind of the because you never when i pay bills i don't make a xerox copy of it or i don't um right or i don't get a i don't mail them all a signed receipt whatever i you know at the bank to have a proof of when i mailed it and i mean you can't do that it would be ridiculous right well you can right or i returned it so don't charge it yeah well that's basically what happened with us is we bought a computer and the computer um wasn't didn't do what these people said it would do we need to just put external cards in and it wouldn't do that so he brought it back to them and they're supposed to [modify] it and so i called the credit card company and said well we haven't really taken possession because it's not useful for us we can't use it and then they said well then don't pay it and then a month later i had to dispute it in writing and i was out of the country and got back and i took care of it as as soon as we got the computer back and it was okay i mailed off a check but then it was too late so now they're hitting me up there with a finance charge but it's sort of you know it's it's half our fault and so right if i had filed the letter to dispute it and then paid it eventually it would have been okay so i learned that for the next time yeah uh_huh right yeah yeah well my husband and i both have that and i don't know what we pay for his card i pay i think i have a gold one so i think it's like seventy five dollars for me and i'm not quite sure what it is for him but i had really like there nowadays i'm not so sure that it's worth it but um in the past there you know there are some places that only take american express and then they don't have the credit limit because i've over done the credit limit on the other card if my husband and i both travel it you know a couple of plain tickets and a little bit more and you're over the limit on the credit card and um with the american express they say there is no limit there really is but they tell you that but then that was one advantage but that's like i don't i think it's seventy five dollars for me and forty for him for a year which is a lot be yeah well we should probably get another um visa card one another one that's free because there are some like i think a t and t has one that's free if you make two purchases a year well so yeah and so that's easy enough to do and if that's true that's um it might be better off to have that as a second card just to have the credit and get rid of the american express because it costs so much no no i and i don't i mean i guess i do understand the mentality of people doing it but i don't understand because people think it doesn't really cost them anything to pay i have had months where i was shocked at how much had come in because like i thought i would buy a big expense and think that it would take one or two months to process and sometimes it comes in right away and it's like oh well guess i have to pay that too because like many times i'll i'll buy some things towards the end of the month thinking hey i won't get that bill until the next bill not this bill and it will come in on the next one you have to pay for it right away anyway but sometimes the is long like i've had things that i didn't get [billed] on for two or three months yeah immediately yeah but that's what happened with us like we bought a washing machine seven months ago and that i got [billed] like the next day it didn't matter because we couldn't have paid for it by check but we prefer like with the credit card you get the automatic um one year guarantee so if something breaks things like that you can uh return it so like the washing machine we bought it in october and you know if something goes wrong with it within the first year we've got an automatic guarantee on it besides the manufacturer's guarantee and [somethings] like that are right or if it gets stolen or if you lose it or whatever it might be and so so that's you know another advantage and then even things like airline tickets you automatically get flight insurance which um you hopefully you never use but like if your but things like if your baggage gets lost you get money for that to buy new bags and things like that and yeah when you rent a car you get that and sometimes you get discounts with the cards and so do you use credit cards a good bit uh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh okay absolutely right uh_huh yeah well actually i i have a whole wallet full of credit cards i don't use them very often um oh i may use i try to use at least one gasoline credit card a week and try to use a different one so that you know i have keep those active i have a half a dozen department store credit cards and i i'll use those if i need to run in and buy a dozen pair hose right quick or something like that just enough to keep them active my [biggies] are the visa mastercard and discover and for the most part i had used those for like uh charging airline tickets where i can pay for those you know you could make the transaction over the telephone or i fly southwest a good little bit which means i can just run that card through the machine uh and it saves a lot time and that's what i was using it for however we had a had a a very pressing financial family crisis which said you have no alternative you must have the money to do this with and you do not have any other options so i charged all three of those cards up and right now i am paying and praying but uh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i never did right i never did use it for an advance most of my charges were uh medications didn't have cash for the medications or it was uh the doctor would accept mastercard or visa and uh a lot of times you can get by using those for uh uh different labs will use those charge accounts for uh_huh well i have not like i said that was just one period in my life where that was critical i don't generally charge i say well i need a checkup in six months and i kind of set that aside and just pay for it i'm reimbursed on insurance anyway and i can handle you know paying for it and waiting two or three weeks getting into a credit card fiasco is easy it is easy and it's very difficult to get out i just cringe every month when i see those interest charges i say wow i i ought to go to the credit union and borrow the money and pay this off big deal i'm saving two percent uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh oh yeah and it's not just paying back what you've charged it's paying that and half again uh you send in uh uh fifty dollars you're going to pay twenty twenty five in interest charges you only get half of that paid for the principal so i'm looking at three or four years before my balances are cleared on those charge accounts now as the monthly payment uh i mean as the monthly payment amount goes down that will free up more cash where i can continue to make the larger payments uh as long as i don't have a major disaster where i have to use it again i can i can do that meantime though i'm not building any reserves anything that i could be put aside into savings is going for interest on those cards uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh right right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well you either need a big chunk of money or you need a large reserve so that if you do charge on that account you can make a single lump sum payment now those are very handy if you have the reserves and you can make lump sum payments sharp good no problem because you're living on the other guy's money for a while but i can promise you that those credit card companies are going to ride high on my money and it just irks me i say my gosh i had to work three hours just to pay the interest on this and i've got three cards i've lost a whole day of my life to interest yeah yeah and that just blows my mind i my house is paid for my car is paid for i've got some home improvements but even the payment on that doesn't equal the payment on one of those credit cards uh_huh uh_huh that's right i think that is a good healthy safe use of credit cards uh_huh uh_huh uh i went to a seminar they said don't ever use your credit card for [consumable] items you only use credit cards for investments i said for crying out loud if i had the money to you know if i could do some investing you'd have to invest at better than twenty percent earnings in order to pay for the payments on the credit card that doesn't make a bit of sense to me i thought god [dang] where is his pencil that's right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh you also have to have that willingness to commit to that because you're committing a good portion of your life and income when you do it i do and i wish i didn't before i got married uh about the only credit cards i used were gas cards because i didn't like carrying you know the cash with me all the time but i just never wanted to get into the hang up of using credit cards and having all those bills hanging over my head in fact i remember getting my first mastercard and the only reason i got it was you know there was a while years ago when you couldn't cash a check without like a mastercard or visa and so that's why i went ahead and got one it was a mistake yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that's right uh_huh i know how that goes and that's exactly what we've i mean i have to say i have been thankful for them because there were times when it was just like that when we had to have the money we had no way around it and the only way to do it is go get you know an advance on a card and so like you were paying for it but it's one of those i'm glad it was there oh i see oh what do you find now though that even some doctors won't i've found some doctors that say you know i was so used to doctors or medical care places taking credit cards and so many of them don't anymore so yeah right right oh it is i know right but you know the interest even though it bothered me it didn't used to bother me so much because of course you could list it on a schedule a and you got all your interest you know towards your tax deductions and now they've messed that up to where it really is a financial burden to have to pay it and but it but it is easy to get into a credit card problem and i i think about young people that think you know there's kind of that feeling of hey it's so neat i have my first credit card and and they just don't understand that you still have to be able to make the payments you know that's right that's right that's right right right right no and that's frightening to me that's right that's frightening too uh i i just i my husband is in business for himself i work for t i but he doesn't and uh we're uh i i've kind of got my fingers crossed i've learned when you're in business for yourself that that you don't count on something until it's happened you know but he's got some you know it's those once in a lifetime cases and after ten years he's got two of them and they should pay through next month and and we're both just looking at each other every night going man that will pay off like both of our mastercards you know and you know just in one lump because that's the only way you can do it is to have a big chunk of money or it's like you say you pay forever and so i'm really looking forward to that that's right right sure yeah i agree that's right i know and i know you're like what am i working for today it's incredible boy i wish i could say that my house and well my car is paid for now it was wrecked three weeks ago but but you see again the credit cards came in handy i had to have the money to pay rental car pay this pay that till the insurance company pays back and uh yeah because you know that's coming back to pay it off right it's sure that's right that's right well the smart half was don't pay it for [consumables] don't you know if you can't afford to go to a restaurant and eat out and pay cash don't put it on a credit card you know and and so that that is the smart half but uh and i can remember before we had kids we did that a lot but it was no biggie you know because we could pay it off while after kids and you're paying child care and other things all of a sudden it's not so easy to pay off so we cut that out real quick and uh but i i do like having them there there is a bit of security in having the credit cards and knowing that in times of crisis they are there to use but you have to have a very good sense of saving and or common sense not not to get yourself in trouble uh_huh basically uh my husband and myself use the credit cards in regards to major purchases we really don't get into small little purchases if we're going to purchase something quite large we might put it on a credit card but other than that it's not something that we use a lot of uh we may have only two or three versus uh i know a lot of people have up to a half a dozen or uh up to a dozen credit cards but uh ours are just major credit cards that we have and uh use uh use only when when we feel it's necessary to make a big purchase yeah yeah uh yeah one sears sears is pretty major with us simply because we do uh appliances and things like that and they're real good with their appliance and stuff like that so but uh we try to avoid them with a passion because of the percent of interest rate if you've got the cash to pay for something it's better to do it that way than versus credit cards unless it's a small enough sum that you can do it within a two three month period but if it's uh any large purchases uh you've got to kind of think about uh how much you're going to put down as far as uh payments on it so that you're not getting eighteen percent or twenty percent interest taken off so uh_huh yeah yeah yeah uh_huh sure sure uh_huh sure so you know sure yeah exactly exactly or if it's a business transaction a lot of times that's important too to keep a better receipt of it so yeah uh_huh uh_huh sure oh sure for the month or whatever yeah exactly so uh_huh yeah exactly sure sure yeah oh yeah and you always get these preapproved uh credit card things coming through uh your credit is great so let's send you another credit card or it's preapproved for that's that's to [entice] you to get more credit cards yeah and so you know we always laugh about that because it's quite a bit i mean you know you always constantly getting those preapproved stuff so uh ours is through a bank yeah we had it a long time ago through a bank and it just a but oh you're already paying them uh if you're if you don't pay it off within that month interest anyway so yeah that's exactly it so okay okay all right thanks a lot bye now yeah is that like visa and and mastercard do you have department store credit cards too or uh_huh appliances yeah yeah right my my husband and i do basically the same thing but we we end up [sneaking] a few in there that surprise us we still pay it off every month if it kills us but we do it mainly for you know the cash flow what is that oh float that's the word float and i often will keep track of what i've charged and sometimes deduct it from my checkbook already and sometimes just and keep a list and make sure i i don't go over a certain limit especially around birthdays you know oh if we go out to a restaurant oh just to float it or i don't know yeah yes my husband has a a or anytime like a plane ticket or you know even if we have the i'm sure we'd have the cash before we got it but the float for more than a hundred dollars seems real nice for that that thirty days or whatever we have a new one from a t and t and we have you know haven't used that one too much be interesting that's nice because you can use it for a calling card also it's a mastercard too so it's kind of fun uh but you get a lot of junk mail about them yeah you're such a a wonderful person we'll give you five thousand dollars up front right do you have uh an annual fee on yours or do you get yours through a bank or yeah yeah i i can't see paying an annual fee for it i mean i almost yeah well it sounds like i'm being [paged] otherwise so good talking to you hello hello hi boy it took forever to find somebody good well i'm my name's gail and i guess we have to talk about credit cards okay well if you're ready then uh okay i'll press one okay well i'm not this is kind of an interesting subject to come up for me because credit cards are my downfall i just find it so easy to to charge something when i don't have the money to pay for it and i'm really trying to get out of that habit so i think they're kind of dangerous uh_huh yeah me too uh_huh yeah that's true that's true seems just like our society is so um pushes so hard for you can have it you know and then no interest no payments for a year and stuff like this they're really trying to get you into that situation because they know they've really got you then so uh_huh uh_huh it's funny that we've got a sears card and we bought a washer and dryer on it four years ago and we still owe i mean i i think like half the amount that they cost in the first place it's just uh you know you never never get it out and now that's real irritating uh_huh well we did you know one time we wanted to buy a truck a used truck and so we went down to the bank and they said sure we'll give you a personal loan it was only a thousand dollars that we needed for the truck and they said sure that's no problem but you know why don't we consolidate your bills and at the time we thought oh that would be great you know we could and it's going to be a lower payment than it was for all of them you only have to write one check a month not all those you never miss one or whatever and we did that but we didn't realize at the time until several months later that we we were real i mean this was four three years ago we were pretty young and we were just kind of like well i guess that means these credit cards are closed and we didn't you know about six months later we realized we could use them and so we charged them all up again yeah so then we were not only paying those bills regular like we were before but also adding the lower payment for all of them so we were paying like twice um so we didn't ever make that mistake again luckily but uh we're definitely working on not doing that credit thing we just as a matter of fact this it's real interesting the subjects i get they always seem to be so [pertinent] but we just discussed this last night at church talking about debt and things like that it's so so [alluring] and uh so easy to get uh sometimes uh_huh yeah yeah yeah that's true oh i just picked up my daughter and she was eating a [cupcake] and now her crumbs all over yeah what a mess you are oh so i don't know if i if i i just feel kind of my big thing was my husband really wanted to get rid of our visa card and i just thought you know if we ever had something go wrong with our refrigerator or something you know and we had to had to buy one then we would really need that and so he said okay we'll keep it and then we weren't smart enough to not use it so hello hello oh well i'm glad you found me yes my name is carolyn okay i'll just let you start i think they are too and unfortunately um we use ours in we don't use them all the time but we use them like at christmas time and then it seems like it takes all year to pay them off when you use them like that but um i would love to just take some [scissors] and cut them in half i think sometimes when you look at the interest that you're paying on them um that's what gets to be the really scary part you know if you think when it comes around to income tax time and you look at how much money you paid out just in interest all year you could really get a lot more stuff if you were just able to pay outright for it that's right yeah all i know is some of my credit cards like um we have a sears one and we always get a maintenance agreement every year and it's just easier to say you know just put that on my credit card well that's probably four or five hundred dollars you know that goes on at that point and then it seems like takes forever to pay that off wow it sure is we eventually did one time we just borrowed took a personal loan and paid off all our credit cards and the interest on the loan was cheaper than it was you know to just have that we haven't done it lately we probably need to do it again uh_huh uh_huh oh no uh_huh i know they really encourage you not to go into debt for anything except for maybe your house and your car and uh if you could stick to that you know we'd get rid of a lot of [indigestion] and everything else oh dear uh_huh you know one thing you might do with in a situation like that though it's just like keep um i do what what do you think about them yeah definitely i have one right now and um i just got it about eight six months ago and i find that it makes it a lot easier to get things that you generally wouldn't get yeah oh my goodness really that's good yeah i i made a rule with myself when i got one that if i couldn't pay it in full every month that i'd have to rip it up so that's yeah but uh_huh i have i have a couple friends too that have about three of them maxed out and they they can't do anything but work to try to pay them off and and and like one of my friends she has hers is up to nine hundred dollars and she she only earns like two hundred dollars a month because she's going to school and and so i mean that's just enough to pay rent and buy like thirty five dollars worth of food a month so and and pay for her like like monthly fee like i guess you have to pay like twenty dollars each month is the so all she's paying is interest on hers every month it just seems crazy to to me but yeah oh really was a visa card oh my goodness i bet yeah i i don't know i'm about sick of mine right now i don't uh_huh right exactly yeah my parents are really good about not using credit cards they are against it i don't think they like the fact that i have one either uh_huh yeah huh yeah i'm i'm twenty right now so just going to school and and working so it does kind of get in the when you want something that like last weekend was homecoming and i needed a pair of shoes so i just went out and bought them and on my credit card i didn't really have the money to do it but yeah it sure is so do you just have two kids or oh really neat i'm from plano texas but right now i'm out in provo utah going to b y u so yep but this is a extra long one they're giving us a lot of time yeah have you done a lot of this oh really do you do it every day so do you have an opinion on credit cards you do i think they get a lot of people in trouble uh_huh yeah and then you don't stop to realize that you know you charge this for twenty charge that for twenty charge this for twenty and pretty soon you owe a hundred dollars and you don't stop to think about it i got in trouble when i was in the service quite a few years ago like ten to fifteen thousand dollars in trouble and then you know so i eventually got it all paid now i carry one i have a gas card and a visa card and i never use them unless i need to so but they yeah that's a good idea stops all them interest rates and interest rates aren't none too shallow these days anyway but i know a lot of people that get in trouble with them especially you know we have i'm in lubbock and we have a bunch of college kids around here going to tech and they seem to get in trouble with them a lot yeah gee yes something like that yeah well my wife got in trouble one time with hers she was making like i don't know what she was making forty five dollars a month i think and fifteen dollars of it was because she was over the limit and fifteen dollars of it was interest so she was only paying in it fifteen dollars a month so and that was before we got married so but it's you know we sat down and talked about it and discussed it and it's it's come out pretty good now we have a eighteen year old that's fixing to get out of high school and go to college that's the first thing he wanted yeah so we kind of discussed that a little bit and shot that idea down right quick you know so but i think they're too readily accessible and there's too many companies out there that are willing to give them to you and get you get you trapped i mean you can always file bankruptcy to get out of it but that's a lot of pain and hassle when you know in the [olden] days when my parents were growing up and we couldn't afford everything we didn't have such things as credit cards we just waited until time come around that we could afford it and you know we had all the necessities so and i very seldom use a credit card on necessities i always use it for something i want not something i need so yeah i think if card cards were as as stringent as say a a home mortgage loan or something like that where you have to you know be able to prove that you can afford this and the rest of your bills we probably wouldn't have the problems we have of course we wouldn't have the [retail] market we have either so i guess they trade one for the other i disagree with it but they still trade one for the other well that's good i'm it sounds like you kind of got your head together in the credit department for you sound pretty young so are you yeah all right oh yeah yeah it's pretty easy uh we have a eighteen year old seventeen year old and a seven year old yeah oh are you are you a you're a mormon then oh all right what's that oh yeah they may not they must not have too much traffic on saturdays uh fifteen or twenty i guess oh yeah i try to every day i uh i get calls at work i get calls at home so doug you want to start you don't use any credit cards i don't imagine yeah uh_huh do you use them a lot uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh well that's an idea that's a thought uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh my husband loves them uh we do use them uh we try not to but he he's one who believes in credit cards and he uses them quite a bit he likes using them and then just pay at the end of the month he he likes that uh_huh and that's when you get into expenses right uh_huh uh_huh right well sometimes you do come on bargains and that and it's really useful and some places won't take you know like personal checks or cash even but they would take a credit card uh_huh right we yeah we have the same thing up here so we don't deal where they do that we you know we go to places where they don't charge extra some of them charge five cents a gallon even like the gas stations more and uh we just try to avoid you know the ones that do that we just don't uh go there because there's enough other ones around that don't charge you anything extra because actually to me credit cards are the same as cash to me they are anyway right right yeah yes yeah right well i can't say we never have now we have you know at times made payments on our things but we try not to we try hard uh_huh uh_huh right right uh_huh yeah because sometimes uh there's times when you may maybe couldn't take advantage of something but with a credit card you can so uh well i think we're [narrowing] it down actually uh uh like i said my husband likes them and we have quite a few but we really get when you get down to the nitty gritty there's probably three that we use most of the time uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yes well it's not every week but you you do get them they make it very readily available almost too much so but i i really don't like it the charges that you know we try to limit look at that also what they charge per year to use our money you know they're charging us to spend our money and i i'm not real crazy about that so we try to look at that also uh_huh right sure no of course i use credit cards i have a couple of credit cards and uh use them oh we try not to we're on a pretty strict and tight budget we use the credit cards however when we're at a situation where we don't have either the cash or the checkbook handy or we use credit cards also if we want to get an extended warranty on an item that we're purchasing so so yes and basically we use it mainly when we're traveling or out of state or or somewhere where you know they don't take local they don't take out of state checks and so when we're traveling some do you use credit cards often uh_huh oh yeah well that's that's a good thing because lot of people don't pay at the end of the month and they just pay the minimum required balance yes and you get in over your head it'll uh some people i know also try to use it as float where they buy something now and say well i'm going to buy this when it's good and on sale and then i can go ahead and pay for it when i get my check at the end of the month when i'm being paid that's true uh_huh right how how are the laws in pennsylvania uh as as regard well not the laws but the rates credit card rates in pennsylvania for example down here when you go up to a gas station you get an extra charge for credit cards than you would by paying for cash are they the same there that's pretty steep yes uh_huh uh_huh yes because you make the deduction at the time of the purchase and and so that the end of the month or when you get your credit card bill are you saying that that way you're not left stranded and high and dry very good you're you're one of the good i guess good faithful [shoppers] that don't get into a problem when it comes to budgeting their money uh_huh well yeah well i see that as an advantage to a credit card also that you can can find yourselves in those situations and use a credit card to to help yourself so i think that there's a great advantage to a credit card in those situations uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um do you have uh multiple credit cards and do you find that advantageous or uh_huh right we're we're actually in the same boat we like to use three uh basic credit cards that way we're not confused and we don't have an awful lot of expenses or surprises when it comes the end of the month and do you find that you get an awful lot of credit card applications through the mail once a week twice a week or three times a week yeah right so the annual fee right right yes so there is the basic annual fee for the credit card plus they charge any where from seventeen to twenty three percent uh based upon what the state will allow um i think i'm down to one well no i was pulling your leg i i well the way i'd like to try and use it is um you you you make your purchases at at prime buying time and then you pay that off and don't use it until uh it's paid off that's that's my ideal way emergencies come along and i and i use it uh like uh my car uh had a major problem and seven hundred dollars and uh things just come up and you just never get to use it the way you'd really like to uh_huh um yeah yeah well i i know i was up in there and a lot of credit cards and i was just starting to get to where it was getting me in trouble so we just disposed of them paid them off and got out of it i just yeah yeah yeah well now we pretty much just pay cash for as much as we can there our our only credit card is sears so and i have that for automotive purposes yeah yeah it's it's just too easy basically uh just get yourself in trouble with those i see yeah uh i wouldn't mind uh you know getting back into one if they would you know you start out at a low limit and then they just keep wanting you to increase your limit and and if i can get one that'll keep my limit at five hundred and i can never go over that or something like that then that's fine but they eventually get's up there to five thousand ten thousand whatever fifty thousand forget it i don't want that yeah so i don't know just uh writing checks is just as easy i guess yeah well really what what can you other than you use them or you don't use them you like them or you don't like them so i guess uh they don't care if we end it early so uh hopefully uh you have a good thanksgiving that's coming up and and then uh maybe we'll talk again yeah texas is the big one okay then well bye now so how many um credit cards do you have oh my gosh i wish i was that way is that why you said i had more experience than you oh well how how do you use your credit card i mean do you just keep it in reserve or uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh how how do you use it yeah that's understandable exactly uh_huh right right uh_huh uh_huh well actually i do have quite a few more credit cards than you have um and i use them you know like my american express i use for you know gas things like that and i pay that off monthly and then um some other credit cards like store credit cards you know i do have them up there a little bit but uh i try not to use them too often but living in this area uh like i live fifteen miles west of washington d c it's a very expensive area so sometimes you have no other choice if you need to buy something right uh_huh uh_huh well that was good that you had the opportunity to do that uh_huh now are you married that you both you and your wife use a credit card or uh_huh uh_huh um uh_huh uh_huh um right right well well that's great um everyone i know here uses um credit cards like they're going out of business to be honest with you yeah yeah yeah the only other one i have i have like a [diner's] club through my um where i work so that i use because i travel some so i use that and i don't really have to worry about that because i only use it for business so i automatically have the money to pay it off but um uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah um the [temptation's] too great um yeah that's true that's true but so i guess uh we've kind of exhausted this uh topic yeah you can't say too much about it really uh_huh okay you too yeah may be you're the furthest person actually that i've talked i've talked to a lot of people in texas yeah yeah so okay bye bye laurie okay i'm supposed to ask you how do you make use of your credit cards and i'm supposed to compare those with my my habits yes right no i do not uh_huh oh okay sure well myself i always i'm i'm a traveling person and i'm out of town quite a bit so i use credit cards quite a lot also as far as everything from service work and gasoline in my car to my [lounging] entertainment and for everything so that's uh as far as using them outside that i'm not i don't use them too much but i i think my wife is sort of like you she uses a credit card most of the time so she does most of the shopping for our household so she'll use them more than i will yes so it's me i'm always i'm the guy that always goes to like dillard's and i'll go in and charge something and i'll have to give them my driver's license they'll have to look up the number because i'm never carrying a credit card but i do carry like my american express and my visa which i use for you know primarily work type things this is my first call by the way so oh is it really all right so we're both [beginners] then i've had this for a couple weeks and i've been out of town so this is my first time to to use it so no i was given this topic yeah they give you they assign you a topic you call the eight hundred number have you tried it yet okay when you call the eight hundred number they assign you a topic and uh pretty uh cut and dried i'm not sure a couple about two three minutes i think but i really don't have too much more to say in regards to credit cards i one thing i've always tried to do is when i get my credit cards i always try to pay them off because i just sort of [detest] paying interest and uh like years ago my wife and i got married she was the one with a little bit than i was because i had my credit cards i think up to the limit and i was giving everyone ten dollars a month and everything like that that was like thirty years ago so now it's a little different we i get a bill and i'll pay it the same day it comes in or at least i try to and i just kind of tell my kids how much i hate paying interest so they should follow the same rule oh you bet it's it's an absolute savings you bet that's that's very handy well i think that's all i have nice to meet you and uh give it a try i think you'll enjoy it okay thank you bye yes okay how do i make use of credit cards um let's see i carry a lot of credit cards with me mostly because i don't ever have cash and i i do you work for texas instruments okay well at t i we have to use what's called a tex teller if we want to get cash out and those are only available at t i so if i'm in a mall or something i can't get cash out without paying extra money so i'm always using credit cards uh_huh uh_huh yeah me too yeah uh_huh but do you get to pay the bills same at my house uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah oh it's mine too yes yeah oh okay okay now did you pick this topic or were you given i see okay right no huh okay um let's see so how long are we supposed to talk for okay oh yes definitely uh_huh oh that will cost you a fortune yes yes that's right well yeah if you pay it that way it i mean it really is it's like getting a free loan for a while which is what i do or if you travel for work and you get your reimbursement before the bill comes in you get to keep the money yeah it works great okay well it was nice to meet you okay thanks bye bye where are you bob oh okay i am in waco yeah right down the street oh credit cards my favorite subject oh do i yeah mostly over christmas uh i get in a [rut] with credit cards cause they get me kind of in a vicious cycle where you use them a lot one month and then you have to use whatever money you have to pay those off and so then you have no money so you use a credit card yeah uh i probably have one of every credit card there is do you use them a lot uh_huh oh yeah yeah well that is a good idea is that that through a visa uh_huh huh uh_huh yeah that is my problem i don't try and pay them off i pay like the minimum i know so i have got myself exactly i have got that is why i have got myself with all this trouble now but i pay most of them on time and everything it is just the i always have them so it is kind of strange oh yeah exactly like the government in in debt yeah have they put the cap on the interest rates i didn't know if they actually did that or not i know they were considering it uh_huh yeah funny how that works isn't it i would be interested to find out how many people or how much uh people use credit this year say in nineteen ninety two as opposed to nineteen ninety one even nineteen ninety i think i think it would be amazing how much how many more people use it because of the economy yeah exactly i would be very i would like to see some numbers on that i think that would be interesting yeah i have a credit union yeah they do uh_huh yes i do yes i do a matter of fact uh i work for channel six it's it's an n b c affiliate down here oh really oh okay where do you work what is your oh okay oh okay so you probably work with uh uh what is the boy from here you ever work with davis davis iron work yeah oh okay and uh what else well i live actually in hewett yeah right outside so that is where davis iron works is uh i don't think i have seen that one i am sure i pass by it or something but i am not sure huh prime air oh okay okay have you ever been to marlin i think it is marlin or mart they have uh uh a place i guess that would be similar to prime air it is called h g h or something like k g h or i can't think of it i can't think of the name but oh yeah yeah uh_huh oh i don't like that drive i make that drive sometimes we have stories out there but uh huh oh really i know oh goodness they they are bad at hewett too on eighty four they are real bad that is where i got my last ticket so of course i couldn't pay that on a credit card i am in plano where are you is that right oh okay you mean you use credit cards i bet you used them all up over christmas and then your are in debt i understand that well uh it kind of comes and goes uh i use uh [citibank] the uh advantage one pretty much cause you get vantage points for every dollar you spend once a year i get a free airplane ride that way so as long as you pay it off every month it doesn't cost you anything that is what i yeah yeah but uh i got all sorts of credit cards for my business that i use but uh if i can get away with paying them off every month it is alright if i don't then it gets expensive well you shouldn't do that you never you never get out of the hole that way kind of like the federal government right can't never get out of debt and every time you try to get out of debt the economy goes to pot because people are spending money right no just the people who don't need credit get the four and a half percent the rest of the uh and me we have got to pay fourteen and eighteen percent the [thou] who doesn't need credit gets cheap credit well i think so because the that's right you have got to use everything you have got just to stay where you are at do you do you have any uh credit union where you work or anything like that do they have a mastercard or visa card you have got that one who who do you work for oh i do a lot of work down in waco a lot of i call on a lot of my business is down there i sell metal fabricating equipment and tooling [tyme] and mercury and [tempco] and all those people down there uh gene davis iron yeah matter of fact i just saw them last week are you in that part are you in the south part of town now oh yeah okay you know do you know parker machine tool down there bobby parker and uh there is a place in hewett called it is a new company called prime air that is in hewett just around the corner from davis iron works they make uh [humidifiers] and uh filters for air [filtration] stuff for hospitals homes something like that uh yeah oh really huh huh i will have to stop in there i went i have gone through there uh my oldest son goes to a and m he is working on his master's the navy sent him there for his master's mostly in engineering so once and a while we go up six there rather than take forty five that is about the last time i have been through marlin and mart there is always a state trooper down there you have got to drive careful between mart and marlin they will nail you if you go over sixty miles an hour uh_huh uh_huh yeah they seem to be a part of life yeah how do you use them uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah i use a few i uh i watched my grandmother go into debt on them and so i've and then i guess my mother yeah so my mother learned from that and i guess she taught me to be very very careful with them so basically uh i just keep them i use them so that i build up a credit rating you know but otherwise uh i generally and my husband it turns out i've just been married seven months but he has the same habit and we just keep a few you know few of the major ones and then use them once in a while for something but we always pay it off right that month so that we don't pay any service charge so that way we keep out of debt and we keep on top of what we're spending yeah yeah yeah that's what i feel so uh_huh it's really easy just to forget you know that you you charged that or charged that i try to keep all my receipts and keep them in someplace where i know that the [bill's] going to come but sometimes i forget and so you know a bill will come in and i'll think oh no i didn't know it was going to be that high but so far i've been able to we've been able to pay it off every time so uh_huh uh_huh um yeah have you ever used discover card yeah i'm not even sure what their interest rate is since i pay it off but you know uh i think sears originally put it out but it's uh it's pretty well taken all over the u s now i mean uh i've haven't found many places that don't take discover and there's no annual service fee which is good you know and then uh they also give you they say cash back uh like at the end of the year for the amount that i charge i get two dollars back or something but if you use credit cards a lot you probably get more back yeah basically that's it and i think the service charge is pretty low too but i'm not sure uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah i think it's best to keep the number down that you have so uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah well do you have anything else to say okay i don't think i do either so well it was good talking to you okay have a good evening bye bye well i suppose we both have credit cards yeah well i do use them uh i have a few favorites that i use more than others and uh i try to keep my balances fairly reasonable i i could probably pay them off any month if i wanted to uh but occasionally they can get out of hand and get higher when when you start using more than a few and uh they all can build up uh i think they're handy i just get uh i don't carry a lot of cash with me and uh i hate writing checks when you go shopping well do you use credit cards uh_huh grandmother huh uh_huh that's good oh that's that's wonderful well the interest rates in credit cards is so high now compared to what you're savings is bringing it's really i guess ridiculous to let them keep building but i know some people can get get you know carried away with them and let them get out of hand uh_huh yeah well that's good i'm looking right now i'm kind of looking for a visa that has a lower interest rate it seems that some of them have gotten higher and uh i saw on t v they had a program on uh credit cards and they're supposed to i don't know if it was tennessee or arkansas or some some other state had a visa card that was the lowest one in the country and i didn't write it down at the time and then i went and looked and to see what my visa was and i think it's eighteen percent or something so think i want to find something that has a lower rate no i haven't is that the one from sears okay okay uh_huh oh they give you money back for using your credit card oh i didn't know that um well you know sears was one of the few department stores that never would take any other credit cards i worked at sears for over ten years and uh it was only a sears card that they would take until i guess they decided to join the club and come up with their own credit card another credit card that was accepted so you know now they'll take the discover but i still don't know if sears will take visa or mastercard but uh i never did apply for a discover card i just figure with the visa and american express i probably have an i can do enough damage with those two uh_huh yeah i've got some that i you know i haven't even used at all uh past few years i probably wouldn't be able to use them but uh i i do like my dillard's i have to admit that's one of my favorite places to shop and i do use dillard's probably as more than any of the other department stores but well no not too much more about credit cards okay well good talking to you beth good luck you too bye well credit cards i'll tell you what i i can't say a whole lot about credit cards because i uh tore mine up yeah uh i got in some problems with uh financial problems because of credit cards so i uh basically just got rid of all of them i i have a a couple i have a uh gas card that i that i use just for gas and you know uh one that i use just for emergencies but yeah i know it uh_huh oh is that right that's a that's a good policy yeah yeah uh sometimes i wish i had them but in most cases i'm glad i don't because i you know unfortunately i i i don't have the control you have i wish i did but but i don't uh and it you know it i just don't want to get into that situation again so we'll oh that's it see and that's even with my gas card you know i find that i'll go in to get some gas and i'll end up buying you know candy and drinks and you know sweets and whatever and then at the end of the month i you know i get a bill and i'm thinking what did i get that costs so much and yeah that that's true but i can i can certainly understand where you know oh yeah isn't it that's unbelievable how let me ask you this how how old are you thirty three okay you'll be thirty three this year you want to be thirty two as long as you can huh it's coming yeah i i know what you mean about the interest rates it's uh it's unbelievable uh_huh oh jeez yeah and then you bet that's uh yeah i in fact i've i've even uh heard some people that have applied for credit cards with much less uh rates and have paid off their you know higher interest rate uh cards and just sent them back you know and i i guess there's some there's uh uh some [negotiating] there too because i heard uh on one of the local talk shows here they had somebody on and and said what you can do is uh call you know if you've got a pretty good rating uh credit rating you can call your you know your your card wherever you got your card from and tell them hey either drop my rates or drop my you know uh annual fees or i'll just go to somewhere else you know and if you've got if you've got a pretty good uh uh history with them they're more than willing to do that yeah in fact that's that's what this guy you know he wrote a book on it and he says that's you know he's tried it with several of his cards and he's just told them you know i i can get this card from this bank at this rate and yours is at you know eighteen or nineteen percent it does not make sense for me to do that and if you won't drop my rates i'll just go ahead and send you back your card and i'll go somewhere else and get it uh_huh yeah is that right i i know i know some other people that have done that um uh_huh uh_huh yeah i i have we have some some friends that did the exactly the same thing they uh you know they kind of overextended and borrowed and borrowed and finally they realized that they were they were abusing them and weren't going to get out of the hole and they just cut them all up except for for one they kept for emergencies and they're still paying away to get out of debt but no i did just the opposite i i guess i i sort of followed in my uh parents' [footsteps] i have quite a few of them i use them continually but i uh i basically never charge anything i don't have the money in the bank to pay for and uh and i always pay them off totally every month yeah yeah and it you know i mean they they're just a convenience for me i don't have to get cash out of the bank and i don't have to to be writing checks and and uh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah i mean it it's easy i mean you don't have anything [transferring] just a little signature so what you know uh_huh right surprising yeah well you know but the i mean there are sort some inherent limits there you're not going to you're not going to run up a few thousand dollars for that right now i the thing that probably helps me most doing that is really you know uh not so much discipline i mean well i mean you have sort of a discipline in general about finances but but i hate their their rates so badly i mean their interest rates so badly that i i'm uh thirty three thirty two excuse me yeah uh_huh you know i just that just irritates me so much that that i refuse to pay them interest and and my wife recently uh decided she had to go to brazil and was going to take off and she's from there and and uh didn't really have the money but you know she could pay it off and so i sort of reluctantly let her put it on credit cards but she's paying it and uh i just won't do it i mean she's paying i don't know i don't know what per month you know forty fifty dollars per month in interest and i just you know i just refuse to give it to them if i need to borrow that kind of money i'll go to the bank and uh you know income oh yeah right right yeah uh_huh right high i might um right um i might try that because i i have one card that i've had for about uh i don't know nine or ten years uh_huh right yeah for me the big thing you know is the uh uh is the annual fee and i just refuse i won't get any card now i've i've got a good rating and i've got you know and i'm not going i'm not going to pay an annual fee the only one i actually pay on is this one that i that the very first i pushed it so how do you use your credit cards uh_huh yeah that's me i won't use one that i have to pay an annual fee you know and um i'm uh like you i i use it well to buy my gas with my my shell credit card i use that and then like my [emporium] card and uh [weinstocks] card i use that but i'm like you i usually pay it off as soon as i get my bill why i don't just write a check i don't know you know it's just really weird but i i don't carry a lot of cash with me because i'm always afraid that someone's going to steal my purse yeah you know enough for a phone call and that's about all but uh other than that that's the that's the way i use them i know some people that uses them so bad that every one of them that they've got they they can't charge any more you know and i think that's terrible oh yeah yeah because if anything ever happens that you do need to you know you have excellent credit why it really does help yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah well i think it's better to use credit cards too like i say because there's so many people around any more that's watching what you're doing and if you pull a [wad] of money out of your pocket they're going to hit you over the head i know it just uh you know it just seems like they're somebody's always watching so i just don't i don't carry money i'd just soon use my credit cards and just pay them off you know right yeah yeah right yeah right and you know some of those stores don't even seem to check your signature or anything you know i don't know why they don't unless you have to spend a certain i don't know but i notice that some of them don't even look you know they just slide it in there and pass it back to you you know so i don't think that's right i think they should check it to make sure that the signature at least matches you know uh_huh uh_huh well let's see what else can i say about credit cards um yeah i don't i don't uh that that's that sears discovery card is that what that yeah now i don't have that one you know uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh you mean uh for for your using your credit card you get like a rebate or something uh_huh oh i see uh_huh um i see yeah well i'll okay oh we use them for paying our gas and for paying uh just about anything because um we don't like to pay for our checks so we use it quite a bit but we we pay off every month though so we never have to pay interest and we always we never get the the credit cards if there's a monthly or a yearly charge we always get it through our bank or somewhere where it's free so we never have to pay anything extra yeah we just don't think it's worth it so see well you i don't do it either yeah yes exactly that's how i i mean it's a rare day when i even have seventy five cents in my purse yeah yeah because it's really it helps your if you have good credit you know it helps you in the long run when you want to go make a bigger purchase or something yeah and i think it's more convenient too in a lot of cases like whenever we go on trips we always you know use our our visa or our mastercard or whatever and then um you know we really don't have to pay for it out of our own pockets until about a month later and so it helps us gain interest in the bank that when we do it we come out a even a little bit ahead because we've been able to use whatever first off and then pay for it later oh yeah yeah even if it's five bucks even yeah and also if you if someone did happen to steal your credit card my husband was saying that if you know you notice it within i think it's twenty four hours you can report it in and i he said the most you'd ever have to pay is fifty dollars for them to cancel you know whatever payments you had and if whoever tried to uh you know credit it to the [hilt] you'd only have to pay fifty dollars of it and then you know you can have your card back with pretty good rating you know because you can pay fifty dollars but not you know maybe five thousand or whatever i know yeah exactly yeah sure i mean it's just a precaution for everybody yeah so um oh i also use like to use discover when i can because they give you some money back every year yeah yeah well we just started doing that and you know what it comes in handy for when you're buying things like um tickets for the train or um airplanes because they'll give you some money back you know and it's only a little bit but i mean it's still something we got two fifty last year and so it's you know it helps out here and there so yeah they give you i think they start giving you like a half a percent back which doesn't sound like a thing but when you you know when you add up everything you've you've charged up on the discover card for a year and they give you a half percent of that and that adds up to you know two fifty or something and so that's what and i know we're going to get back more this year because they you know we spent a little bit more probably and they do it for how long you've been a member i think too and they increase the percentage a little bit okay oh yes and i believe we all do and it's it's just too easy to use oh i believe that uh mine would say the same uh but uh i seem too rely on them too much um it uh you know i seem to uh use those more than i do cash in fact i'd rather carry the cards than i would the uh cash uh yes yes that's real easy to do i have to watch it in fact yeah uh we i can understand that [predicament] um they they've um you know they've made them too easy and too accessible at everything to to buy oh yes and then plus then you for end up forgetting to write it down oh uh_huh oh that's good oh yes yes uh and then then then that gets into a vicious circle as far as you know paying off the the loan that you just got from the credit card to pay off the other loan oh no um yeah the a t m's they're but they're nice though to have in case you need to get some quick cash and everything is closed oh that's the best way it's used that's the best way yes i think that sort of [evens] it out as far as uh letting them carry it so as long as they do buy us something and see there's no [secrecy] to that because the bill always comes in and we know how much they pay for it oh i have to open it you know they mine always charges the flowers so i can always end up saying oh you spent too much you know and so yeah oh those are fun you get started on them and can't quit just exactly oh it's it's real easy to get addicted to them you know you get out on a shopping frenzy and uh just charge it all and then you don't have to write a check or anything yeah there is a a fear to it as far as what happens if yeah oh yeah that's oh yeah there's that's a weakness there that's just you know you you always want to get your kids everything and uh you don't care how much it costs or what it takes uh_huh yeah that's uh i always end up going into wal mart and coming out with everything that uh i didn't have on the list we're just getting more than what we went in for uh_huh oh yeah it's dangerous uh_huh oh yeah it's just too easy to do you go in for just one thing we're we're [infamous] about that and so oh well yeah i well i'm i'm glad we have credit cards that's uh because in sometimes when there's an emergency it it comes in handy it's nice to have yeah we've yeah we've had uh a sick animal and uh the vet you know the dog and [vet's] are so expensive that uh we uh the credit card helped us a lot there too so we wouldn't do without them huh_uh no no i think it's become too much of an everyday life here they're a part of it the balance oh yes uh_huh so you know he can't spend too much yes uh_huh i was i was just uh oh well let's see i guess we've talked what almost five minutes oh i wish i had one of those oh did you see there you go oh your up in memphis oh your in texas oh okay i was going to go goodness they really got uh this out far yeah yeah i'm down in houston oh okay yeah uh_huh well oh this has been just great this was the first one i had uh_huh my husband did one last night and he just loved it he's been getting he got a real good topic and so well uh yeah i was just trying to think uh i think we've pretty much said it all yeah so uh but yeah uh_huh i think we couldn't make it without them uh_huh yeah yeah but uh we uh we try to keep uh uh tight controls over them but it it gets hard like especially around christmas time and birthdays oh goodness uh_huh uh_huh oh it gets rough that's hard get that cash advance uh_huh yeah it uh it but see it does come in handy those they do they're worth it so well i i think we've pretty much come to an end here i think it was at least five minutes wasn't it okay um do you have a credit card i know i've got one i did have two and the i found that um it just made me spend a little more so when i paid one of them off i got rid of it now i have two only have one um i don't know i always used to be the person that would put something on and pay the bill right out and now i've at every christmas it seems the last few [christmases] i used it for christmas and i'm still paying it off i don't know i consider myself pretty good but sometimes i can go out and i can i can over [overspend] my budget i guess i can afford it but it is it's a pain paying it off i don't i don't know um i had uh i have seven hundred dollars in mine now and i've saved up enough money where i'm going to bring it down to two hundred and hopefully i can keep it around there yeah i know a lot of people have i mean fifteen hundred dollars two thousand dollars but um i don't know i never i never liked loans a lot so i'm not a heavy credit card user i have a girl friend that she probably has two thousand dollars on couple credit cards so i know it's easy to do especially if you if you have a job where you have to buy nice clothes and things it it i think that is the biggest problem when you really not you don't don't really need the stuff but the nicer looking clothes are the more expensive nicely tailored clothes even though you could probably get away with a cotton dress you got to go out and buy the [rayon] dress or something you know you got to be they say you have to dress for success yeah how many credit cards do you have that's pretty good yeah my husband won't even put his name on it i don't believe in those it's like but the time we went to florida and needed to rent a car you know he believed in it you've got to have a credit card to rent a car yep that's up here at some if it's if you're not in your home town you have to show them a credit card well actually if your check [bounces] i guess they could legally take it off your credit card if that's why they're taking it i mean i don't know how fair that is but i don't know um yeah i guess that percentage rates are like eighteen percent yeah thirteen that's not bad yeah then you have to pay your fee and american express you're really it's not a credit card because you have to pay it off at the end of the month but the fee for that it's really expensive isn't it i've never had one oh that's good yeah if he they they they have you pay it right out every month yeah because it's uh i know especially if your uh your reimbursement didn't come through from your company because i know they i don't know why but you can use american express and they give you an [itemized] bill you can use that i don't know why you can't use other credit cards for business that way american express yep this is this is it actually kind a boring subject of credit cards you really you just know some people abuse them but not a joke about the person who pays their master card off with their visa i bet you there are people that do that people get a cash advance on one credit card to pay the other i think they charge more for cash advances so yeah you can't get cash advances oh oh well no uh it it think that's a really bad plan in your budgeting if you have to pay one card off with another oh eventually no it doesn't be solid for a couple of weeks then you get both bills back i know credit cards almost seem unfair to a person who's who's got a victim of impulse buying like unfair advertising or something huh_uh oh wow and we used to lose four percent on the credit card orders yeah it's it's the thing if if a business is taking a credit card they're they sacrificing something too it seems the credit card company makes money all the way around because it is a four percent that they take three or four percent i don't know which put you in better rating yep because when i used to go to the bank i used to take it off the deposit yeah you do have to take it off your deposit yeah so it is a a service that they're offering i i know should own stock there instead of these uh banks going that are [folding] but i wonder how much is numbers how many billions of dollars it's got to be billions of dollars yeah that's uh probably true i mean you have the principal debt the car loan and your house loan and then there's all the merchandise you buy on your credit cards [sheesh] maybe they don't yeah i know i had a girl friend she just got married out of college and the husband had [confiscate] her credit cards i mean i don't know it's probably they're always saying the women are doing are the spending ones but i haven't heard uh a single woman taking their credit card away from the man well i don't know i i definitely want to get up mine paid off month to month like i used to and just as soon as i get it paid off i'll probably get laid off all right i have some do you yes me too well i have uh we've got an american express which we got that on purpose so we could pay that off every month that way we we know our limit but then i also have department stores and um you know we keep a couple hundred dollars um if that much charged on those which isn't too bad it's just your normal you know getting clothes and stuff every once in awhile exactly uh_huh right yeah right just your visa yeah yeah i you know uh people always complain about american express saying not enough people take it but i've i've rarely found a place that wouldn't that wouldn't take it so that doesn't bother me luckily uh_huh oh does it sure that's true that's true that's that's real nice to that's true uh_huh paid back i know when we first got married we you know went and got all the credit cards and of course charged those puppies up and it's oh boy when those bills start coming in they want a lot of money when you sure kick them up there uh_huh uh_huh that's good uh_huh that's good i've noticed on the like the department stores they sure do hate it when you pay double payments you know it's like whoa wait a minute don't pay us too much you know and they drop it your balance uh they drop your monthly payment down low because they want that interest to build up so that's what i normally try to do if it's pretty low i try to make a couple payments at a time and get it down quicker but they're easy to use no have you uh_huh i don't understand how they do that right but they say you can't be turned down and i don't understand how they can uh_huh oh i see sure they've got your money already well gosh well that's darn easy then i wouldn't turn you down either i'll give you one huh no i haven't attempted that i'm satisfied with what we have right now and we do have a gas credit card and we use that uh_huh right that's true that's true well we uh my husband always usually always pays with cash but i never seem to have cash or at least not enough you know to fill a tank up so i always almost always use my credit card on that on that and then it's you do tend to pay more for gas but other than that it's it's a good deal i think yeah i saw that exactly but they won't they won't charge i saw that advertised too that's a good deal but it's real it's real convenient for me i i just like being able to go in and do that and and it's like american express you have to pay it off at the end of the month so it's not going to go up too high so it's good for emergencies that's what we do on sure we always use especially on trips you know we just charge all our gas that saves us spending it or [shelling] out the cash right then uh_huh right yeah oh yeah yeah i know and isn't that terrible and save all that money um well do you think we've okay well thanks for talking [scarily] very very very seldom only in dire emergencies in fact i leave them home i have never uh i've used them but never to the extent of getting in debt like uh some people do it's just that since my money is tight right now i don't even give myself a tempting because i've gotten them all paid off so now i just wait before i use it but uh like i'll keep one minor one like sears in my purse just for identification purposes because i won't use it period i'll use uh visa but otherwise huh_uh never never uh_huh check very seldom would i even use cash uh_huh how about you see that's exactly i didn't get in debt but what i did was one year oh i can't remember when five six must be eight nine years ago when i paid my taxes i realized that i had ran up so much on my credit card that i was paying interest that was ridiculous i mean sure it was the tax write off but there was no sense to it i mean there was no sense at all to it i was paying more interest on that card than the card was worth as far as i could tell so at that point there we just stepped right on you know just saving all the way in and i'll turn around like on my car i'll borrow against my insurance which i pay five percent interest and buy my car that way and that works so i don't have to worry about it but i use uh [override] at uh [texin] credit union so that i don't have to keep too much i keep enough balance in my checking account so that i don't have to pay you know a service charge and then i yeah if i write a check real large it'll go ahead and pull it out of my savings account so i don't have to you know worry about it one way of the other and i just keep that minimum balance in there so it just you know and i pretty much budget that way all the way around but as i said my money's tight right now yeah there's no charge for it so i do it that way but i do as i said i keep the credit card in my purse for identification when somebody wants identification one way of the other but usually i won't put anything on that card unless it's something i really unbelievably need otherwise i'd better have it somewhere else because i'm like you i'm not going to have a balance on that thing because it's too easy i know too many people that pay off that well i've got this credit card well maybe i'd better use that one or something like that and i'm saying huh_uh not me well it's like um the little piece of plastic for uh to get your money out or the credit union all you have to do is put it in the machine one way or the other and like i'll run down there like you know for vacation and things like that and i'll leave it in there in savings account until last day and then i'll put the card in and pull it out what i want but i'll pull it out of savings because i don't keep any balance in the checking but that's still that's easy enough as it is but i wouldn't use the machine to pay fifty cents or a dollar for it i won't even go that far um but i'm like you if there's something really that i wanted i'll write to them before i'll put the credit card call in though i won't put it on the card unless i really i'll take write them uh check for it because it wastes too much time on the credit card and i'm kind of i'm leery about things going on my card because i've had you know had to go back and return something and it took so long to get it off and that was years ago so i'm having real good luck with a credit card i mean it came off there's no problem but it just takes too much you know scares me and like tom [thumb's] got uh credit card now they used for groceries yeah over here in in plano uh_huh and you can charge your groceries on it and uh you can either charge your groceries on it you have a choice or you can write a check and they it that way so you don't have to keep going and get it you know credit check and things like that and they'll give you an extra twenty five dollars no charge or anything else like that but i won't even put that on groceries because hey what happens if the clerk marks in an extra number or something like that and i don't check it no thank you i don't want anything going on my you know in my checking account unless it's i know about it but do you like discover card i hadn't heard too much about it uh_huh well credit cards um i would think they are wonderful but uh i think you have to have a lot of restraint uh i have never been in trouble with credit cards but uh my youngest daughter is and a friend of mine is and i think it is terrible that they can uh you know wipe out a max in uh such a short time uh i never pay interest charges i value my money too much to uh line somebody else's pockets with my money and i always uh pay it off before uh i am charged any interest on my balance never uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right you really have to show a lot of restraint but if you look at if you look at the time frame on that uh you will find that you have about six or seven weeks before you have to make that payment back to the credit card company without being charged any interest that is correct yeah you uh_huh your budget has to be so that you can uh you know [summarize] what your balance is going to be at a particular time and i can do that that is right well that is what the you know that is what that is what it is geared for advertisement you know is uh to [whet] you appetite and give you that oh i've got to have that i can't live without that and that is the image that the younger generation has you know uh_huh on that who was that that could is that a department store oh okay that is probably no it is not in uh in dallas huh_uh no we we have dillard's and uh [sanger] harris and [macy's] and [neiman] [marcus] and things like that and i am sure that they probably would not have a problem either well self yeah self control though is the key uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh dear uh_huh uh_huh wow sure well experience is the best teacher and sometimes you know uh a lot of us have have to learn by experience and and uh if you can learn by someone's else's past mistakes then you are very wise if you can heed to advice given that is true yes i am yeah uh_huh uh_huh sure oh credit cards are you know really a blessing uh but you have to be wise when you use them and uh i have nothing against them other than you know people abusing it and then they get themselves in hot water and you know they are just hurting theirselves and when you uh have a bankruptcy it takes you i think about eight years to wipe that off your record and so you know that is the shame about that is uh and people won't touch you and you have got to live that down so you have to be very cautious about how you use your credit i mean it is a wonderful thing but do not abuse it oh absolutely sure uh_huh sure that is right well there is a lot of people that uh know exactly what they are doing and they will run into thousands and thousands of dollars into debt and they will deliberately do this so that they can go into bankruptcy and they they have a way of uh [diverting] all of the things that they have bought and put it like in hiding no i have heard uh uh there was a radio program in dallas that we listen to and i well it in fact it is nationwide and i was shocked at some of the stories that came out of that uh program about these people that really you know they bought all these wonderful things and then they went bankrupt and they knew that yes they knew that they were going to do that and they just uh_huh and uh they said you know it was worth the uh jeopardizing their credit for that amount of time because they still had the stuff you know and they could write it off you know they can only uh be responsible for a certain percent and not the full uh amount that they owed and i do not know who uh determines uh the percentage rate that they have to repay but it is not surely what they are were indebted for uh_huh so it it they use it as a scam instead of uh to me they were criminals and they used that in a in a really bad situation and that has kind of [snowballed] i guess around so i do not know maybe the courts and lawyers are working on that to you know cover all the loopholes that might exist but i have never been in that situation and hope i never have to be okay no i can't think of anything i am sure that we have not covered everything because that is uh that is a great big uh a ball uh credit i can't think of anything right now well listen thank you for calling and you have a good day um no not really we use gas cards more than anything uh basically convenience uh which led to habit i guess oh really yeah we don't we don't ever we don't carry a whole lot of cash with us so we use the the gas cards because our families are both out of town and like when we travel and stuff we use the gas cards yeah yeah and then we have uh an american express that's through t i that steve uses just for t i stuff yes yes a lot probably the uh uh if there's a premium each year and the uh the a p r and there's it's it's kind of hard to beat t i and so you know usually we just trash it tear it up and trash it and most of the time it goes [unopened] we just yeah if if that much they're thirteen something but i'm not sure if it's i think it's a flat thirteen right now yeah yeah and then you're then you're if you're that lucky you get to pay them another twenty five bucks a year just to be that [privileged] to get twenty one percent a year yeah yeah yeah that would that would help a lot i i'm not even sure why i mean the purpose of an annual fee i'm not really well i guess so because it's not any more [prestigious] to have to pay it as far as getting another card where you don't you know oh really yeah have ten percent off if you got to use that credit card yeah that yeah right i did that with my husband uh he was off working at t i in austin one day and so i went out to the mall to kind of look around and hit mervyn's and found some stuff after christmas on sale and ended up getting fifteen percent off already off of it already whatever it was lower and i think that's the only card i have that's you know recently is gotten a mervyn's card and i used it for i think for the first time when i was in houston this weekend and i have i've had it for months yeah yeah i don't i don't like it a whole lot either uh yeah yeah yeah i never understood how people could i mean there are some people who say well i can't charge it it's at it's limit and i thought [gol] how can you charge a credit card to its limit it just it just i guess it's that that you know lack of discipline when you have a piece of plastic that says pay later you know yeah and i just it's the yeah it just worry about it tomorrow yeah and it just i don't i don't really go for them and i in fact i had my own before we got married and ended up cutting them up just for the fact that t i had lower rates you know and decided and i mean when i tried to close with chase manhattan it was just like pulling teeth i mean i couldn't close they'd send me a statement every little this is your new you know balance with bonus points or whatever you know and it's like look i closed this months ago and i don't want any more of your letters i don't want anything and well you have a credit balance well send me a check you know yeah yeah yeah yeah they do but we we were in in that same boat a couple of years ago and they had said well just list your major ones and the balance still owed on it you know or give it a balance still owed on it and that's all we did right right yeah and it's like well who are you to approve something for me without my permission anyway but i think um i think what you can do as far as i don't think as many companies when you are a good customer i don't think they report that as much as they should their [delinquent] customers because a lot of times you have to write and ask them to report it to the credit bureau so that you look like you have good credit as far as you know paying off you know your cards early or on time or whatever that usually doesn't happen unless i've heard people say well you have to write to ask that and i say well you know if someone's so quick to turn you over because you're thirty days late i think they they should do do that more often what do you think about that uh discover card oh really the dollar you didn't cash oh oh well i was wondering how that that worked because it's like you know we'll pay you for i'm going wait a minute you know yeah we don't we wouldn't even have one if it wasn't for t i and steve's traveling we just you know the topic today is credit cards uh why don't you go ahead and tell me some uh some of your favorite uses for a credit card if if it all that supplies okay well i wish i was in your shoes pat i uh i was i was in pretty much control of my credit cards up until the point where we moved down here from south dakota and then uh it took my wife and i about two months to find a job so in that interim everything went on the credit card and uh so now we're slowly trying to pay it off and if i would i just keep thinking if i would have just been able to take that money and put it in a savings account instead of right i'd be i you know i'd i'd be doing all right today but no i've got those darn credit card bills hanging over my head right well that's uh that's always a possibility um okay okay well i uh while we were doing like i said we were doing all right you know we'd put gas occasionally go out to eat or pick up a small gift or something you know some clothes or something but and we could always pay it off when when the bill came and when we moved down here and everything was going on the credit card i think we we got a little rampant we you know went out to eat out everything and you know we we would have to go to wet and wild and we had to basically play tourists the first the first month that we were here and of course everybody takes credit cards so it got uh it got way out of hand but [thankfully] we're we're now working to pay them off and and we haven't put anything on them in a couple months it can it sure can well what uh what do you find are some of the best advantages of credit cards uh_huh that's true right right that's right you can you certainly can well i understand that you know you can't even rent a car hardly or uh get an airplane ticket without a credit card it's right well even if you have cash it's hard to if you're under twenty five and you you have cash you still can't get still can't rent a car you have to have a credit card and that uh i don't know okay you work with t i then okay well you don't speaking of cash you don't get the five dollars for the phone call you you get the gift part isn't that how that worked if you're a t i employee well that's all right that's that's an interesting incentive we uh we wanted to do it because we weren't from the south and i think we would we'd be able to well not yeah exactly you know get get to i still have a hard time uh understanding some people's accent you know i i can't i just can't understand what they're saying but yeah there are okay where are you originally from los angeles boy there's a change i suppose it's about as cold there as it is here now well what's life in l a like okay a lot of crime and seems to me you know i couldn't understand why it would be such a heavily populated area if there's so much crime so much smog so much traffic this is a kind of ironic subject for me because this is the first year um i purchased i mean i i was actually able to uh get some credit cards because i'm twenty one and i got it through school uh and i i've kind of you know you kind of make a purchase and you and you forget you know what you put on your credit card and you know within a month you know they send you a bill and uh i'm about three thousand dollars in debt right now yeah they do i mean it's amazing it's like a an an illness or a sickness or something uh_huh yeah christmas time i can understand but what my after i got one i didn't just stop i got i've got about five six six credit cards yeah and uh so i just charged a little on each and uh and you just get the um the adding machine out and you add it up and it's it's amazing uh_huh we went to we went on vacation and uh and i charged a lot you know just well i charged um like clothes for the vacation and then on the vacation you know charged our hotel and then you know when you go out to eat you charge food i mean you know it's so convenient and you just don't i guess i'm just really stupid i just didn't realize uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i have a friend that um she's married and her and her husband uh she said you know they tried really hard to pay them off and it took them three years before they were able to uh pay off their credit cards uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i think it was hard for me because i wasn't working at the time and i was just going to school and like every weekend i would just it was just and go out and just spend uh but yeah um i have a discover and a visa a sears and i have like most of the department stores yeah i have um i have maxed that one yeah it is and i got the sears through the discover before i had um and i didn't even know i went over my limit i mean that's i just didn't even add it up i don't know i was just going crazy and there's about fourteen hundred dollars on that card uh_huh i wouldn't do that i would not do that i've seen on t v well my view i work for a financial institution and yeah and i love my credit card uh you end up with more consumer rights by using credit cards than uh what i mean is say you pay for something with a check your check clears you're out the bucks you pay for something with a credit card you are dissatisfied with it you take it back and they say sorry we you can't take it back if you know you can leave it there and then just have your visa charge back get your money back visa well that's the kind we offer and uh we're just offering a a new card that gives you up to one percent back of all the charges that you make cash back you know like [discovers] and we're starting to do that we are uh we do america first credit union yeah did you get much back well good for you that must mean and it's one percent so you spend about five thousand that's pretty good well i i do better than that everything goes on mine and then i've got a business too that i use it for charging computers on it is nice yep well how many cards have you got uh_huh uh_huh a debit card i don't like those oh really that's interesting uh_huh with a debit card oh credit oh okay yes is it twenty percent interest wow our [card's] thirteen and a half with a ten dollar annual fee well you have to be a member of our credit union america first it's we're the yeah yeah you have to a resident of this state uh do you have mervyn's and all those have you noticed that they all have started [issuing] their own credit cards what do you think of uh sears not taking any one but theirs yeah do you like that or do you think that's fair or oh yeah it's theirs this is jay in dallas how you good where you from oh okay so right that'd be great go ahead yeah that's right i i think that's what happened to everybody out they gets back when they just sent them to you without any i've got i don't know how many tons of them but uh i use uh this one particular one for everything i mean everything i buy including groceries and it runs up pretty high every month but then i pay it off because i get a air uh advantage miles on american with it so i i can get a you know i've already gotten a free trip just from using that card so i don't uh i don't have any carry over balances any more but i just i was wiped out there for years but that was the way to do stuff and uh i think you have to make the decision but um texas is uh you know it's a [debtor] state and if you get in too big of a trap you you can just blow them off and that's not good but i know a lot of people do it that's what runs that interest rate up you know pretty high yeah uh_huh yeah well it's uh the interest rates are still crazy up there you know and they've come down except the credit cards so it's not uh it's not really an advantage to have them now they uh some of mine i think up over twenty percent i don't use them any more but i think they've gone over twenty percent a year and some of them you know i think the one i'm using is about fifteen but i don't use the interest any more so it doesn't make any difference and then when i travel i travel a lot in europe i use diners club and that gets all my um uh insurance on rental cars and of course they have a pretty good uh uh plan on the gifts and things like that i try to get something out of them now so right absolutely there's no use paying that fifty or whatever it is a a a year oh sure um personally my my next project i think is to take those that i do have and cut them up that i'm not using uh especially the ones that don't that there's a working asset to these that gives a lot of money to um the environment and things like that that's my second here but i've got one [cigna] visa that doesn't give you a damn thing so uh i think i'll cut it up this year for my new year's resolution i've got a lot of um gasoline credit cards that i don't any more because they take all the others so i might as well pitch them i mean it's just weight carrying it in your pocket absolutely yeah oh yeah you can i was absolutely uh i r s checked me one time and they said nobody in the world could have paid this much interest and i said well i'm glad you mentioned that because i've got receipts for all that but you know something else i couldn't have proven but uh that was i'm not young any more so i uh took a long time to learn but a lot of young people do get trapped on it it's easy you know you don't have any money and yeah oh sure and they got all those late charges now and stuff they didn't used to have and if you go over the limit there's a charge i mean they're they're really starting to hit you know a lot harder than they used to they they you use credit cards do you uh_huh i see what is the advantage then of a gold card because um you don't pay any interest if you have a regular mastercard or visa i see i see we use to get the american express card and stuff like that and then we just kind of got back to plain old mastercard and visa uh because we never really had any um benefit that we thought was worth the the price of the special card so it may change if we do a lot of car rental which we don't do or other types of services i'm sure there're some things that come along with the gold cards that are appealing and and uh i've just wondered what they were they haven't been appealing to us so far yeah that you know i think that was my original appeal uh i was i was in my twenties and the american express card really appeals to people on that basis of of you know you've arrived you've got this card and uh you know it got to what fifty five dollars a year or something like that and my wife said well this is ridiculous why are we doing this and uh so we stopped doing it and we refused to pay i don't know whether you know this but my wife discovered this we started to refuse to pay our banks an annual fee for the that for the visa and mastercard and they said fine we'll give it to you anyway and we said you know we're uh we're not interested in your card any more and they said well wait a minute is it the price and we said yeah so well we won't charge you any more you know and they used to charge what eighteen dollars a year or something like that twelve dollars something like that so they're wonderful i mean i think credit cards are great we use it to get cash uh you know you can use it now in the safeway out here in san francisco and it's wonderful in that respect and we're glad to have them we we yeah it's great you know and it eventually what we're going to go to is nothing but these kinds of cards and it'll be mastercard visa and and american express i don't think the discover [card's] going to make it in the long term um you know we don't need to many cards and the american express will probably survive but it'll have to become more like these other ones and become cheaper i think if the price will come down i don't think it's worth fifty five bucks a year when you can use the visa or the mastercard everywhere in the world and they're pitching that in all their commercials i notice yeah yeah well that's that's interesting i can see why because then they get some sort of advantage in terms of the conversion fee probably right well and it's going to come that way and the reason it's nice is because basically what it does is put you electronically in touch with your financial resources anywhere in the world and that's where we're headed the technology supports that nicely and uh it makes more sense than than that because you have a card and if you have insurance which we have had on the card you uh can have you lose it stolen and you don't get uh anything charged to you and that's great it's just insurance we're very responsible with our cards but nonetheless if we lost them it'd be great to know we didn't have to pay five hundred dollars or whatever uh on the cards we look for the low rate we have u s a a cards you know u s a a um i use them carefully i guess um i uh i usually don't i usually use them to consolidate billing uh for convenience sakes but i usually just pay them off at the end of the month i don't i don't avoid the finance charges uh as high as they are i don't uh don't you know i don't let them carry over you know i i've been lucky i guess i haven't had a bills big enough where i couldn't pay them off at the end of the month but uh i try to try to live within a budget you know and so i keep that in mind i just don't you know i guess it takes self restraint when you have a credit card to know that that there's you really have to pay these things off plus a lot more you know and you got to realize that there's only this much money in the bank and if you're going to live you know if you're not going to try to you know say well pay it off sometime in the future uh_huh right well some people a rip theirs up just because they you know they can't resist them right right uh_huh right i use them to float sometimes if it's near the end of the month and you know and you know i don't have a check coming in a few days i'll go ahead and and charge it knowing that the money will be there by the time the bill comes uh_huh right you know we go out to eat a lot of times i don't like to carry a lot of cash with me yeah i have so i just carry my credit card and and answer things like that as long as i know you know that i'm i'm not over doing it it's uh and yeah i have i have what i have two credit cards that's all i use i'm always getting stuff in the mail all the time you are a preferred such and such and you are you're already approved oh sometimes they just send them to you and say here have a credit card i have that one yeah i just ripped i just cut it up and threw it away but you know they had already is that right huh i didn't know that that you didn't want is that right huh that's right that's right they could they can make your life miserable if they want to is that right we don't have too many exxon stations out this way we've got lots of mobile [mobiles] are big and we have a few exxon we've got some other ones like [citgo] yeah is a is a one yeah got some shell stations a few texaco stations uh_huh right and there's another local one i can't i can't remember what there's some few [sinclair] stations yeah the few with the green dinosaur they're they're they're [logo] yeah there's not that many down here but you know once once in a while you'll see one i guess they're still in business yeah yeah you ever you ever gotten in trouble with your credit card where they they've charged charged you for something you didn't didn't didn't purchase yeah i have uh_huh uh_huh right right from someone saying uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh somebody blew it right right do you have the discover card neither do i they they i don't know i don't know how anybody can fall into this you get cash back and buy into that because all they're giving you back is a little bit of the interest you paid in yeah their interest right their interest [rate's] twenty two percent higher than any other ones and then they said that we'll give you back some of your money how about like right it it's a rip off but a lot of people think it's wonderful i guess said they're they're doing well everything i've read they've been getting a more market share i guess they're they're advertising and [promotions] and i guess so yeah uh_huh yeah i have a on my credit cards i have a grace period if i pay it off within when the bill comes i i don't have to owe any interest and uh right uh_huh uh_huh yeah once in a while uh my i have an american express they have visa in a buyer protection thing where uh they extend the warranty so uh they both can be nice around christmas time and stuff if you're going to buy a t v or uh or uh electronic then and everything huh uh_huh he pays for that yeah a couple hundred bucks probably for that like hike high in card well if you have the money i guess get what you pay for huh for that little right yeah uh_huh right right right uh_huh yeah a lot of people do that for a living i guess trade money uh_huh uh_huh huh right the other check went through made a little extra money there huh uh_huh none at all huh i see yeah has it uh_huh uh_huh yeah that that's what we we got rid of an american express card for the same reason though we have a a credit union and we get our cards our other mastercards for free so we don't have to pay a a fee at all and that's i i know people who don't have any credit cards at all and i'm always amazed because i don't know how they can get by without them it doesn't seem like you can do anything anymore without a credit card uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i like um too with with us we've got insurance of course but husband's work but by the time like two weeks ago we all got sick all four us and one kid had to go to the doctor twice and then all the other the rest of us did and he was like six hundred dollars yeah and it was we were we all had it was a [viral] pneumonia it was really bad and and we were just horribly sick but i mean six hundred dollars i can't come up with but um yeah all the doctors here will take a visa so that and you know go to k mart and use the pharmacy to pay for the uh medicines and then turn it all into the insurance company and wait for it to come back you know and so our part of it was still twenty percent but twenty percent i can payoff in one month or as you know then i got to wait for the the rest of it to come back from aetna but it basically floats you know during the the time because we've got a thirty day grace period on the credit card as long as you pay it you know within that time and that's usually enough time for the insurance to get back i try to make that our biggest use of credit cards i know people who are so in debt people who have five visa cards you know it's like why did you go get they charged up one so then they but they were still paying their minimum so their credit rating was still good and and you would you know they get this in the mail say oh well we can't use that one anymore we'll just get another one and that's like who you oh yeah uh_huh oh yeah but that's that's a good way to make a big problem in your marriage real quick gosh that's just dishonest oh well maybe maybe they'll be all right i know in mine if i did something like that and then my husband found out jeez he would just be well i think i would feel the same way i'd i'd really feel like i'd been [deceived] you know that that wasn't the thing to do uh_huh um yeah we've tried to do that we've paid ours off you know all the way down to where we had everything down to zero and especially right before i i quit work two years ago to stay home with the kids and right and before i left we had everything paid off we were in great shape we were putting money you know because we were both working we were finally putting money in but we've gone back the other way to some extent because just because there are times when you just can't pay it all because there are just too many bills yeah uh_huh oh isn't that silly i i sent that one back because we had used it for a year and we had used a thousand dollars worth during the year and what we and i think we got back fifty cents or something it was like please what is this this is and the interest rate on it was was eighteen or nineteen percent and our visa card was we could get through our credit union was like fourteen percent so we just we sent it back we we keep gas credit cards and we have visa and then i have started my own business i have a photography business and i went ahead and got a separate visa just for that photography business because there are things that i have to buy and and with my when i when i take things to the lab to get developed it's several hundred dollars at a time and i was using up all of our personal credit with my photography business even though again it's paying off every month because i'm i'm putting everything i'm i'm uh you know i'm getting the pictures and i'm taking them back so the people already have their money but i wasn't [depositing] them until i gave them the pictures back another practice i found i'm going to have to stop hot checks you wouldn't think for a for a twelve dollar school picture that uh that people would write a hot check but they do i guess it's just you know and when i think about that this this particular lady who wrote me a check for twelve dollars and it bounced and i sent it through you know sent it through the check through the bank once and she [incurred] at least a fifteen dollar fee for a returned check so now she's already doubled the price of her check and i've sent it through a second time because they said there's money in the account now you know and and if it doesn't go through the second time that woman's out thirty bucks for one twelve dollar check gosh yeah he's going to have a debt going out the year uh_huh uh uh_huh well we have a lot of mobile stations around here and i used to use that card almost exclusively but now they're charging the extra five cents to use your credit card and texaco and [chevron] and somebody else is not anymore they'll take it you know at the cash price or you they'll now let you write a check if you have their card so you pay for it immediately instead of um you know putting it off for a month what's that writing a check for gas well all of them down down here you had a cash price for gasoline and a credit card price right that's that's the uh_huh right and and they've changed that now now stop it go play and leave me alone yeah and so i'm using the other ones now because they're just as easy to get to and then they're nickel a gallon cheaper so yeah we try not to we're probably the only two people in the united states the banks don't want to hear from us because they want those people who charge it up to ten thousand dollars and and then get all yeah and then pay fifty dollars a month and it all goes to interest oh i guess they must they must make a ton there's not too many places you can make eighteen percent interest on things anymore that's what we need see you and i need to get in the credit card business we need to start our own credit card if you can yeah because you sure can't get that interest anyway else oh yeah ours are like seven percent we've got one and with with i r a stuff in it and uh jeez you can't get any interest rates my folks have just retired just in the last couple of months my dad has and uh they're trying to figure out you know what they're doing with stuff and my mom's in there cutting up the credit cards you know can't use these anymore i got rid of mine about uh-oh it's been about four years ago now and uh went on a strictly cash basis and sometimes it's inconvenient but it is so much better for me because i i am the type that will always find an emergency but i have found that there were so many things that with a credit card i really did need and with cash once you know it took me probably two years to get on a cash basis when i stopped charging but once once i did you know it it only takes me two or three months to be able to save up what i want to buy and i'm not paying the high interest rates because it's so easy you know you have these wonderful intentions of well i'll just pay off the whole balance and then i won't owe any and then something comes up you know and well i'll just pay the minimum well you just do that forever no you're paying the interest you know i've i've thought about going ahead and getting something like american express where you have to pay within thirty days right and just for i d purposes but it's become such a way of life and like see it was so convenient and then pretty soon you get a [consolidation] loan to consolidate all your credit cards and then they send you another credit card right so i've i just finally figured out that for my way of life i did much better and i've i've been able to buy as much or more by just going cash and like i say it was tough because it's a really it's a habit or you know you'll think okay i've got x amount to spend this month and then somebody has a birthday or get they get married or something that well i'll just put this one thing on it well you don't do that once you start you know you're going to have a bill coming in anyway right and i i just you know for for me it was a trap that was too easy for me to get into uh_huh well you know there are times when you know it is but i i've been laid off twice in the last four years and had i had a lot of credit cards i well you know it it really helped that i didn't have that to pay for but in the other [vain] had i had them i would have lived on them right and uh this way you know i i made do and uh when i was you know employed then i didn't have all that that i had to go back and say well i've got ten thousand dollars worth of credit cards to pay off now it really you know with the first like i say it took me over two years to pay mine off but the first time you know that i could go out and make a major purchase okay uh first um i need to know uh how do you feel about uh about sending uh an elderly uh family member to a nursing home yes yeah uh_huh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah probably the hardest thing in in my family uh my grandmother she had to be put in a nursing home and um she had used the walker for for quite some time probably about six to nine months and um she had a fall and uh finally uh she had [parkinson's] disease and it got so much that she could not take care of her house then she lived in an apartment and uh that was even harder actually because it was you know it was just a change of change of location and it was very disturbing for her because she had been so used to traveling i mean she she had she had children all across the united states and you know she spent nine months out of the year just visiting her children and um that was pretty heart [rending] for her i think when she finally came to the [realization] that you know no i cannot i cannot take care of myself yeah i mean for somebody who is you know for most of their life has has uh not just merely had a farm but had ten children had a farm ran everything because her husband was away in the coal mines and you know facing that situation it's it's quite a dilemma i think yeah well my uh my uh probably one of the biggest decisions i think that was very strengthening for our family was rather than have one child make that decision than just [delegate] it i think that they they had a great deal of um all the brothers and sisters got together and they actually had a conference and i mean it was just it was probably one of the most strengthening things for our family getting down together and doing that and and just the children were involved in the decision because it involved just them and you know making that decision and then finding a place and everybody had duties to perform you know whether it was just you know giving money or whether it was actually taking part in a lot of the decision making you know like finding a proper nursing home and they i know they and well they had well they had they had seen it coming so so i mean it i mean i i i i i i truly wish that if something like that were to happen that my children would do something like that for me yeah yeah well we we yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh um yeah yeah well with my with my grandmother i think it was it was such that uh that she did not have the problem with she was very well aware and her daughter came and visited her at least her daughter came and visited her and also her several grandchildren came and visited her every day and i think that when she passed away it was probably one of the greatest um i i i think it would be it was more of a relief for her and um i mean but she was truly she was truly aware i mean i i i i don't know how i would how i would deal if one of my parents came with with alzheimer's or something like that which is which is far more devastating and um i i i think that what one thing that they were concerned probably was the fact it wasn't necessarily you know like the quantity of care but the quality of care that the people that worked there were very were very interested that to make it as close a home environment as possible i think i think i think you know for myself i i see that as probably the the what everything would [hinge] upon is it how close is it to a home environment that's the that's probably the major question yeah yeah yeah you know it's it's interesting that that a lot the population of the united states is changing because you know uh now that so many more minorities where they have had extended families for such a long time um matter of fact in the united states we used to have extended families it wasn't but i guess as we become more [industrialized] and more you know less in a rural situation we we don't we we we choose not to deal with the extended family because we feel it's kind of cumbersome when in reality it makes things much much easier uh yeah yeah i i i think that perhaps perhaps the extended family you know that it maybe one of the solutions to a lot of things even child care you know i mean of course there there comes other issues you know whether or not any of the grandparents whether we feel like are going to be a good they're going to be a good caretaker for our children but i mean they raised us after all yeah but uh i i i think that you know we always uh i mean i've i've had a lot of good experiences with uh with many many people especially where they've had uh extended family and i and i i kind of see that that you know perhaps you know we may need to like get close to the family environment and and get down to the values of you know i mean uh it's money seems to be too big of an issue with with with with what's going on today and i i think i think that we may not that may be you know perhaps if we put money on the back burner that may that may choose to alleviate a lot of the problem i mean i mean we may not we may not have as high a standard of living but the but actually have a [truer] standard of living yeah yeah yeah okay well i guess that was it okay all right hey bye bye well of course it's you know it's one of the last few things in the world you'd ever want to do you know unless it's just you know really you know and uh for their uh you know for their own good i'd be very very careful and uh you know checking them out uh our had place my mother in a nursing home she had a rather massive stroke about uh about uh eight months ago i guess and uh we were i was fortunate in that i was personally acquainted with the uh people who uh ran the nursing home in our little hometown so i was very comfortable you know in doing it when it got to the point that we had to do it but there's well i had an occasion for my mother in law who had fell and needed to be you know could not take care of herself anymore was confined to a nursing home for a while that was really not a very good experience uh it had to be done in a hurry i mean we didn't have you know like six months to check all of these places out and it was really not not very good uh deal we were not really happy with nursing home that we finally had fortunately she only had to stay a few weeks and she was able to to return to her apartment again but it's really a big uh big uh decision as to you know when to do it you know is there something else we could have done you know in checking out all the places that uh might be available of course you know there's not one on every corner especially you know smaller areas smaller towns oh right uh_huh uh_huh yes uh_huh right uh_huh i can imagine uh_huh that's tough that's tough uh_huh uh_huh yes my mother excuse me go ahead uh_huh that's great that's right right yeah uh_huh uh_huh yep you were very fortunate uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh absolutely unfortunately a lot of times it responsibilities like that seem to fall to you know maybe one child in the whole family you know and uh it's usually not a very smooth smooth thing we were i was lucky too that i only have one brother and uh fortunately we agreed you know on exactly you know what we thought should be done my mother also was very very independent she had her own still had her own little house and still driving her own car at age eighty three we were lucky in that in one respect in that after she had her stroke she wasn't really you know really much aware of what was going on that nursing home life would not have been you know anything of her choosing of course she would she would not have been happy there at all but as it turned out the stroke took care of that concern for us uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's great uh_huh sure uh_huh that would be tough yes absolutely uh_huh yes right uh_huh uh_huh yes it would oh yes that's right i think that great strides are being made nowadays in in caring for the elderly you know in several in a in a whole lot of areas just people are of course populations getting older uh_huh uh_huh true yes um uh_huh uh_huh that's right sure absolutely and people things are scattered so much nowadays yes yes just because they're grandparents yeah just because they're grandparents that doesn't automatically make them a good child [carer] uh_huh oh yeah sure realistically it is uh_huh that would certainly help uh_huh right that's just a matter of [defining] priorities i guess or some priorities anyway i think your right okay it was good talking to you yeah take care bye bye okay so what do you think about it should uh_huh right yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yes um it's it's funny because um i know people at that are in all three and people that work you know i know someone that works in all three different stages like you said and i have known you know people close to me that have been in all three and i have seen them like go from where they're in an apartment building they we call it um well we have high [rises] and it's just for elderly people you know or most of most of one of their spouses has already passed away and it's really nice for them because then they're with people their own age and people that have gone through things exactly what they have gone through and it's it's really nice to go and see them you know where they can still get around and everything and they still you know do their own thing but it's it's really nice to see them because i mean sometimes like i had a great aunt she lived with us for um three months and because she's starting to get alzheimer's disease and i know i have a bunch of younger brothers and sisters and i know it was hard for me as well as it was for them to to actually sit down because she doesn't like doing things that the younger kids like doing and to actually sit so it's really nice to see that uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah um i'm in college and i'm i'm only twenty one but we had a i had a speech class last semester and there was a girl in my class who did a speech on home care of the elderly and i was so surprised to hear how many people like whenever they're in you know the older people they're like um [fastened] to their beds so they can't get out just because they you know they wander the halls and they get the wrong medicine just because you know the the aides or whoever just give them the wrong medicine and so many of them you know are yes and it was it was awful to hear what you know what some of these people really went through and i forget the percentage of people that you know that she had said and this was i mean she did research on it and everything uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh i know and and sometimes they share a room and it's just a little [cubbyhole] and they share it with another person and they're still paying that much it it it just sometimes it just seems ridiculous uh_huh uh_huh yeah um i've been lucky well my mom's um parents they're both in their in their uh eighties and i was just home for spring break and my grandma said something to me about she goes well maybe we'll just sell the house she said it's getting too big for us to take care of and i was like no no no stay in the house as long as you can uh_huh oh uh_huh it sounds like uh an apartment or oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh oh really see now we've run into a lot of problems where our relatives were well i've lived here for thirty years and we've built this and this is our home and we have nothing else to show for our lives and we don't want to leave uh we've run into a lot of that uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah that's what like well um now i know we have an we call it an old folks home but it's basically a nursing home too but everyone has basically their own room and they're you know none of them have cars because they can't drive but if someone would come to get them you know they're allowed to leave with them and there's a staff there that makes supper for them and each person has a chore like maybe wednesday night it's [george's] turn to set all the tables and it's really nice because that keeps them going too rather than just sitting around and i know um our youth group goes over and we play bingo with them and you know like stuff like that uh_huh yeah just to keep them going uh_huh yeah uh_huh but i think before like you i don't think i don't think it's right to just put someone in it i think they would have to agree to go in it well yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh okay um i like the idea of nursing homes as a as a growing the choices you have in nursing homes now whereas used to you used to have only you put you know when when people got to the point where they were [debilitated] and couldn't take care of themselves and there was no other choice you couldn't take them in your own home then they went into a nursing home you know maybe you lived too far away to care for them or your daily job or whatever prevented it but um i like the choices you have now where they can go into an apartment type setting and have some basically have a independent life style but [assisted] care and then if things deteriorate they can go to a second level which is you know like where they prepare their meals for them and and they still live somewhat independently but they have people checking on them and making sure they have hot meals and then where the same community a lot of times will also have the third level which is full care you know where some people can't where they're in a wheelchair or where they're in a bed and they can't get around but then they have full care but i really like those those options now and and i think about it more often because my husband's parents are they're very active right now but they're seventy five and and seventy two so that comes up somewhat more often in my thoughts as i see these things because of their age uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right yeah that's some of the things i would find important before i i would look into that for a person is is is like you're saying a good mix of people who have the same interests and uh and the programs here they have different uh besides just different levels within the same program they have different types of programs they have several areas they have one area in town where the people i guess a lot of it comes with money i this this one area is a bit more expensive and the people who probably are living there have had more money in their life but but things that people where they have similar interests like you're saying and the programs that they have where where some of them will have dances once a week and some of them sponsor different crafts and they go to the [arboretum] to see things and they make sure that if they want to go to church there's a bus there and it'll or you know or someone will transport them to a specific church even though it's you know maybe it's thirty minutes away because it's a big you know dallas area is a big metropolitan area but a lot of these places have have churches or have have individual transportation that's that's something i'd look for something that would make me happy personally if i had to live there because i don't think a lot of people really even in the nice ones and even in the ones where they can live fairly independently they really don't necessarily like it because they're not in their own home so i think those kinds of things to make it more [homelike] and to make it more um enjoyable for them that'd that'd be one thing i'd look for along with the uh health care aspects to make sure they had you know that it was clean and that they had good doctors and nurses uh_huh uh_huh yeah are [overmedicated] too uh_huh yeah that's one of the things that that we don't think about as we get older and the the money that it now requires to uh be in one of these places because some of these people that are just on social security and if they don't have any living relatives perhaps they never had children or if their children you know passed away before they did they can be in some places that are you know that that are not good or they they have very minimum minimal care and the the care that they are getting the people who are giving it are are paid at a minimum wage and they just they don't care as much and and like you said they're trying to make it the caretakers in some cases are trying to make easy on themselves to the point where they're putting people in bed or [overmedicating] them so they'll stay in one spot and not do anything that certainly would be something to to watch for because you've got with some of them being some of these places can even be two and three thousand dollars a month to stay in yeah oh yeah so you've yeah you've got to really strike a balance in what kind of care what kind of level of care you need and then what you can unfortunately what you can afford at the same time well like there are other communities too that aren't necessarily a nursing home i had an aunt who lived in a small town in texas that um was in a it was a it was a housing division each person had their own little bitty house that they had built and it was um [supplemented] their they were most of them were on social security and they got some kind of supplemental aid besides from the state government but it was this little bitty one bedroom house but it was a separate house and they had a living room and a bedroom and a kitchen and a bathroom so they still had they had and they had people who came in who um supervised all these houses were like fifteen or twenty of them all right together kind of like on one block and they had a a supervisory um wasn't a house really it was it was more like um a headquarters or something anyway where they they staffed it three shifts a day so that someone if they needed someone they could ring and and someone could come to their house and that and they always cooked then they had they had the choice you know they lived in their own little house they had their own possessions still in there to some you know some of them and they could make their own breakfast if they wanted to and their own dinner and they always had somebody come in for lunch but they had people who did you know they didn't have to mess with the yard they had people who did the yard and they had a maid that uh uh service that came in and cleaned everybody's house so they didn't have to worry about that and it was really a nice it was really a nice compromise especially because she felt like she was still living in her own house and she still had her own couch and her own bed and it it really helped a lot and she was a lot more comfortable and she didn't resent like having to be in a situation because she still had a lot of her own possessions yeah yeah oh yeah yeah it would be hard to that's that's why this she was she felt that way too but when it helped that she got to still be in a house and still have some of her own stuff and i guess that that it was a pilot program i think where she lived so it's probably not widely available yeah uh_huh uh yeah that's good everybody needs some sense of responsibility an even even if it's just a little bit yeah so it's it's more like living with a big in a big house where it's your turn to to set the table like you're saying or whatever instead of being waited on hand and foot all the time yeah that would be nice yes unless they're at a point where they're mentally incapacitated like you're saying with alzheimer's and stuff they're going to be some people who have to be there whether they want to or not and that's when it's important to really check out the medical aspects of it when you're when you're in something like that that they'll get the kind of medical care they want without or they need without [overdoing] it without doing something to make this you know to keep like you're saying to keep them still to make the staff happy so all right well on this subject i really hadn't had to deal with putting someone in there yet but my mother's always been administrator of a nursing home so i've always been involved you know in one well i've well i can kind of see both sides you know i really can uh nursing homes to me i would personally be the last resort you know i you know if i had to put someone in there yeah if it's a have to thing yeah i yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah well i kind of think that's true too i guess because it's so under staffed you know that's like everything else though uh_huh yeah yeah but yeah yeah yeah i know i've always well my sister's involved in one also and i really think they really do a wonderful job but still there's those little things that happens you know there really is which i think it's a wonderful place you know if it comes to that you know if you just can't take care of them any more uh_huh that's it uh_huh other things yeah yeah yeah but i think when the time comes i i hope to have the time to really look around you know and pick one that i really think my mother would be happy at i do too [outside's] awful deceiving sometimes you know yeah yeah yeah yeah off yeah to no uh_huh and everything you worked so hard for all your life yeah uh_huh uh_huh now there is some really nice ones there's also you know some private ones you know but of course i would never be able to afford to put my parents in something like that you know that's way out of my reach oh yeah uh_huh the very same yeah no but i there's i think there's ways around it though that you know like they could put it in one of their children's names or something you know but still a lot of them doesn't feel comfortable doing that you know it's their money you know that's how i feel about it anyway yes yeah my mother's seventy now so naturally she's retired but she's still on her own i mean i think that's wonderful i really do just as long as they can and then on the other hand i've seen some people go into the nursing home and just so happy you know uh_huh they're not lonely oh yes uh_huh yeah no around yeah but i really don't know what the other solution would be you know i really don't but no when the time comes i'm really hopefully we'll really look around before i decide on one for my parents really do because i have been raised in one you know so there's lot of things i know to look for and i don't think they'd want to go where they used to work either you know i really don't it really would yes yes and like i said my sister's still in it and i really don't think my [mother'd] want to be there either oh well it's been nice talking to you and i guess we'd better get back to work huh all right bye bye uh_huh how do you feel about them i mean since you've kind of been close to that uh_huh well i've had a touch of experience my um dad had [emphysema] and got to the point where mother couldn't take care of him and uh she put him in but he wasn't there very long before he died but um i guess um the one time that i saw him there you know as far as the surroundings that seemed okay but um we kind of thought that maybe they just wanted to give him some medication to sort of you know keep him real out of it all the time and that's always kind of bothered me uh_huh i have a sister in law who runs a nursing home but i've never actually been there and i know that she's the kind of person who wouldn't allow you know a lot of the horror things to take place that you hear about but still i'm sure there are you know aspects to it that aren't really desirable yeah well sometimes you don't have any other alternative family and friends are usually well family's tied up with their own lives and things and usually working and it's hard to yes uh_huh i think that's important too in fact there's a yes there's one close to where my mother is but in order to get in you have to be able to um walk in on your own in other words you can't be in you know too bad a shape to start out with but then if you deteriorate um they have a separate section for those who need care you know all the time but it's always well and they have a long waiting list too so there's always this feeling of well golly gee you know you've got to be able to walk in the door so you can't wait until you're too bad off but then you don't want to go do that when you don't have to because like uh you have to give up your automobile or whatever yeah and if you're still capable of driving and doing those things then you feel like well gee i'm you know i'm [isolating] myself here for no reason at the moment so it's kind of a that's a hard one but it is a very nice nursing home uh_huh yeah that's the problem the expense of it all is and uh what i another thing i hate to see is when someone has a small amount of money and they go into one of these places and they just eat it all up immediately but those who don't have money can go in and get the same care you know so i don't like that aspect yeah that's right well yeah i've talked to my mother about that several times lately and i i said i want you to have control of your own business but you know what if yeah yeah my mother's uh seventy five and still has her own home and everything yeah that's true they have a lot of people around to do things with some of those places have wonderful activities and things you know lots of stuff going on and they'll take them places so i don't know it's not all bad but i guess once you get ill then you know you really have some problems if you can't get around and do things no uh_huh yeah yeah that might be kind of tough huh well you too okay bye so um well i'll tell you my situation is uh i have an elderly grandmother that we did just recently put in a nursing home and um her son which is my father is also elderly and this is one of the reasons why she had to go to the nursing home is that she was literally driving him nuts in his later years now my father's almost eighty my grandmother's almost ninety seven so um it's strange because it it so hit so close to home that um my father's an only child and really me and my sister are the only ones that will deal with my grandmother she had many sisters and a couple of them took care of her and then one her last sister died and it was probably seven or eight months after that she had to go in a nursing home because i was pretty much giving up my life my sister was and plus she was driving my father crazy she went through three [housekeepers] live in [housekeepers] so she's kind of cranky to get along with there's nothing physically wrong with her except she's very very old but her personality is is very [grating] i mean i hope i don't get like that when i get old so yeah you don't know if their complaints are legitimate um we don't have that problem up here we might maybe in a rural uh maybe there's a bad uh a bad home in a rural area but it would be a very small one um the one my grandmother's in is very um hospital like there were some really nice ones here all the a lot of the nursing homes around here have very good [reputations] um this one is more or less for someone who's poor and can't go there and my father's is he's no by no means wealthy but he's quite well off and he could easily have put her into a nicer um home but up here there's waiting lists and that was the first one that opened and i suggested to him why don't you change um he said well these people here are they are very nice to her and he was saying his excuses if you move her some place else the people might not be so nice so the the professionals in the nursing homes really have to want to do what their doing because it's a really trying job i mean i go up twice a week to see my grandmother and i know the staff very well so they couldn't they can't hide anything on you or anything like that but i have heard of really awful conditions especially down the southern part of the the country which is oh that's terrible well that's good so is your grandmother um [impaired] is she of alzheimer's or something like that oh oh that does happen yeah yeah you know my neighbors across the street their mother was sick at times and they they couldn't handle her so they put her in a home and then uh the old frenchman he'd get a little drunk look round at his kids oh you still need your mother i guess i'll look after here and that happens a lot when people are sick or they just real [manic] [depressants] they end up being put in homes and it's like oh well but that's it's it's i'm really glad that i come from an area where um that there's good people in the homes but it's just as it doesn't matter if it is like you say the best place they still don't want to go to these homes and my grandmother's real there i mean she [cries] every day this has been over a year and she tries to make me feel really guilty but i have to you know i have to put my foot down where where my life begins i mean if that was my mother i would really feel a lot more responsible i would probably take care of my mother i don't really um when my father when something if anything happens to him i don't want him put in a nursing home just for the fact i don't really want to go and visit him at a nursing home and hopefully that he can uh get along with uh in house help so he's going to probably hopefully set it up so that he will be able to pay someone to come in and stay with him probably for sixteen hours a day because i think that's the best situation is when you're you get that old and you've been independent your whole life you don't want to go into a home because like i say my father's eighty and he's really active he still has his driver's license here i mean you wouldn't believe what he does he actually tows cars and as the years go on the tow trucks got better more easier and he went out and bought himself a flat bed one so he won't have to do very much work so someone like that they i really don't want to see them go in a home he's got two dogs that are his constant companions and he always replaces them you know i've had like over the past thirty years i've had you know about seven or eight different dogs all the time and it's like you know it's oops dad's got these two and the old dies and the young one goes for a while and he gets another one so i can't see him without his animals even though it's very expensive to stay at home mentally it's just the best thing for you i mean when you get on in your years it's the only thing you really have and i'm thinking when i get older i i i think if brought all my precious belongings with me i think i could live in a home i don't want to be a selfish you know a burden on anyone that's what i think because i see what my grandmother puts me through and i'm saying that when i get older i could probably make the best of this place i mean and of course it's institutional food and everybody hates it and it's so ironic is that they go in there and they lose weight it's really it's a bad thing but when they go into the homes they lose weight and because of the institutional food you know i think it's fine but you know my taste buds are pretty uh flexible and here they are they're always used to these old fashioned foods they're very set in their ways and used to have what they could get at home and now they're feeding them um [quiche] and all kinds of strange food that we would eat just they don't feed them the old people food the chicken and biscuits and things like that that's that's the thing my grandmother really misses i mean really [growls] about oh yeah i know if if if people would think ahead of time and do things like that like build the in law apartment and have it on you know one floor and really easy access well that's what i'm telling my father now he needs a new floor in his bathroom and i says now is the time redo your whole bathroom so you can get in and out jeez yeah i'm i'm i have some great concerns about uh my parents and my relatives reaching that age um around here where i live in maryland in the washington area there's there's and uh i used to live down in dallas there was just so many stories about uh rest homes where the people are being abused where the people are being kept in filthy conditions in fact here in baltimore they've actually shut a couple of them down and taken all the people out of them because they were so uh bug [infested] and rat [infested] and uh i it really concerns me that um first of all that anyone could let someone live like that but if you have to you know how do you make sure i mean i'm sure when you make your appointment and go by everybody puts on a happy face um you know how are you sure that the home is really as good as it is because once you put someone into there you know they may not like the fact that they've been put in there and they might complain about the place all the time even though it's the best place in the whole world they could be just because they want to make you feel guilty for putting them in there and you know yeah uh_huh uh_huh yes uh that's true my uh my grandmother's um last time my mother went down there to visit the the place where my grandmother was staying at was so [overrun] with roaches that uh she even you know they went in and she had roaches crawling on her there were roaches even in her alarm clock um yes it was absolutely horrible they took her immediately out of there and they just threw everything away that that she had from there i mean they wouldn't even take the uh the uh the dresser that she had that was her own dresser because it was just you know full of bugs they just left everything and uh bought her all brand new stuff and they they had called a home where they you know where they were on a waiting list to get into there and explained to the person that was in charge you know what had happened and that they had they had to take her out of the home because of the conditions and amazingly enough the very next day they had an opening and they put her into that opening i'm not sure um what exactly is wrong with her up until nineteen eighty two uh actually i'm sorry not until yeah i guess it was around eighty two eighty three i found out i had a grandmother prior to that i was told that she was dead and um apparently what had happened was that i had a grandfather who um put her into a mental institution and uh you know it was a real hush hush thing and then i was wondering why my mother always referred to you know his second wife as that [hussy] yeah yes i know yeah yeah yeah my mother has made similar statements that she doesn't want to become a burden to the family you know just put me out to pasture or shoot me or something you know are the lines that come from her and uh and i tell her you know no problem mom always got a place for you but uh uh_huh hello this is jim in dallas uh how you doing oh you're right here okay yeah i'm actually working tonight i just uh called and came in do you work at t i yeah i just got a little booklet uh this not what we're supposed to talk about just got a little booklet in the mail with the gifts and i thought i better make some calls yeah well i haven't had a chance i haven't got a chance to look at them yet my daughter uh got a few calls at home she talked to some student in i guess they give them to computer students too in uh virginia something like that she's talked to two students yeah oh yeah great uh we're supposed to talk about the elderly now i guess uh do you have anybody that you uh are close to that decision on or anything or i've thought about it for myself and all and my my wife's mother is in a retirement home she's not in a nursing home uh yeah did i didn't we push let me i'll hit it again just in case i did it as she said yes but uh she's she's down in san antonio and it's it's a uh it's a brand new one it's a catholic uh retirement home for [nuns] it's at uh trinity uh no let me see trinity i keep calling it it's not trinity i'll think of [incarnate] word and they have a retirement home for the [nuns] and they take some lay people yeah and that one's really super now i i know what they're talking about on regular retirement yeah there's not too many they do have a wing where the people who are really sick you know have nurses and then they have other wings that we visited uh that are very nice i mean it's just super oh yeah they they they have uh like uh a guard with locks we've been there once at night at christmas she just went in last year she drives and everything she she she's perfectly healthy uh well her husband died they were in the military together and she just did not want to take care of the house and she visited the place and then fell in love with it and decided to just [shun] all responsibilities of any kind so to speak and so she's happy as as heck and they serve meals of course they have clubs and a swimming pool so that's nice now i i know the ones where you're really ill we visited a long time ago when she had a grandmother that was in one and they were all more or less hospitalized type you know really really sick it's a tough question oh you got more experience than i do then on it yeah yeah oh that would be awful i never thought about that you know uh_huh yeah i think that uh hopefully we as a country are learning a little more about it and they're getting nicer i've seen on t v where they take animals and young children in fact my daughter is one my wife took my daughters one year when they were getting some points for school took them to an elderly home and boy that really pumps them up that is very nice to see young people i think that's one of the sad things is when you're in an older home if you just have people your own age you never get a chance to see kids or anything or animals or anything you know you can't take care of them kind of obvious you can't take care of children or animals in a nursing home but it's nice to have them visit and everything yeah right yeah i think you do get more by by stimulation my in fact my mother in law just visited she's just about seventy five again perfectly fine but one and and she visited us here in in dallas when she went back every time she goes back to uh san antonio my wife has two sisters there too she said she's much better she's much more alive and and uh active when she's been on a visit with somebody else you know and and our routine has obviously hectic with teenagers and everything and she's much and so the stimulation part is really important i think like any animal anything you just lay around uh that's the fastest way to die i think you know oh yeah i'm afraid i'm a t v [flipper] anything bad i like i like to flip i flip it off but it's sad it's sad yeah oh yeah yeah right when i was uh younger we i lived in the east i'm from the east really and it seemed like there were several people that i knew that had their uh parents i guess they would be but well in their living with them and one of them was even a woman who was fairly old and i guess she she had her own separate room and i think whether it's more a custom up there or maybe because i was younger and it's just not a custom anymore to have uh you know the grandparents live with you anymore i guess that uh well we aren't getting away from that which is not right oh yeah oh right right yeah oh well that's nice in a lot of ways bet you were surprised that you said that by mistake yeah right that's what i think about it for me i think well my kids better not do that to me i don't want that you know so i i think of it well how would i want to be treated rather than well it's easy to say oh yeah let's put these old folks in a home but when i think i don't want to do that you know i don't want to be i'd want to have my little home i always threaten my daughters i say well i'm going to build a little house behind yours and i'll take care of your lawn he says but i'm not going to one of those places right yeah that's what we that's the way we call it which is really wrong but my wife's mother and the one she's in san it's everything but the opposite of what you've seen i mean it's a little hotel you might say again a swimming pool and grounds and she has enough room she has two bedrooms and a and a separate living area they don't have kitchens or anything but they have little it's like uh on each floor they have a little kitchen area where you can go down and have a make a meal you know oh yeah it's it's it's nothing like that it's like living in the hotel i mean she's totally on her own uh and she still drives which we do does scare us some because she has [dented] a few things you know and we keep thinking about that you know because she they get less alert and they don't care and i've seen some of these elderly people on t v you know the ones from florida that just run into people and they don't even understand what happened you know i know i i know go ahead i'm sorry oh he still drives that's well it's wonderful in one respect but i don't know if you can afford the insurance yeah yeah right that's good i mean people are all different i i wonder if they should give them a test or at least maybe not take their maybe give them a [refresher] driving course and just to see how well they are every five years are they doing it yeah well everybody needs [retraining] it doesn't hurt uh you know the best football players and all the opera singers still have coaches and i don't know why you couldn't after sixty five every five years have a [refresher] course and then take another driving it would sure the insurance companies would would probably help pay for some of that you know right there you go there's a good point very good point very good point but i think they maybe should do that and then the families hello fine i'm [callie] in garland yes oh are you yeah you i know i know they it was a lot nicer than i expected i've talked to i don't think they were students one i think worked at a university university um and the furthest away i've talked to someone has been new york yes we are oh well that's a did you push the button did we okay just in case now what oh oh well isn't that neat isn't that neat uh_huh oh that's good that's neat just supervised more or less than anything and security i guess oh uh_huh what made you all decide to put her or what made her decide to go right well that's good that's great uh_huh right shut ins and yeah it really is i worked in one as a teenager i [volunteered] well it was really it was really sad heartbreaking i guess and uh i just oh i just felt for those people especially the ones that never got visited that just bothered me that just bothered me so much especially you know at my age i was probably about fourteen and that really made a bad impression on me i always thought not really bad of them i mean because they are most of them i believe are probably pretty good for the people but i don't know it's just a it would be a tough tough decision right helps yeah uh_huh uh_huh right right right yeah and get that youth back you know sometimes that even helps them just being around young people to because some of them are so um just stationary i mean they'll get in a wheelchair or they'll just sit in a chair and and until you come along and really try and pump them up they're just stationary and i feel like gosh that's all they do all day long so i do love to see young kids go and and men take the pets and everything i think that's a real real neat idea yeah that's yeah right right stagnant yeah that's exactly right i think they're really neat um of course i've seen those reports on t v the horrible ones and that scares me it's sad to think that we would do that to people and you know i've seen them on t v with uh bed [sores] and oh they just stay in the same clothes or the same sheets and not do laundry and i just think how can you do that these people have given so much of their lives you know to to america you know whatever and here is how we treat them just put them in a home and leave them uh_huh right i think right i think it's neat i think uh you learn a lot from them from all their experiences and and that's one of my favorite things to do is sit around and listen to their stories i think that's neat because they really have a lot of good [insights] that my my husband's father is really old he he had him late in life and he's he'll be eighty this year and i just uh he lives with different you know people in the family he'll switch from time to time i just yeah i just couldn't imagine locking not locking him up but putting him in a home and just lock him up i know i know right exactly that's right oh you're going to put me away that's what my mother she always you're going to lock me up one day aren't you i can tell you're going to lock me up i know right that's great gosh right yes prepare your well that's great now can she leave um on a day by herself oh man that's neat right right i know bless their hearts you hate to hurt them by doing that that's like their one last thing that they can still do and you take away that driving ability and that would really be hard we've well we've thought about doing that for my husband's father because he yeah well luckily he drives a big old tank so he i mean i don't think he he could get hurt i just hope to god he doesn't ever hurt anyone but he he hasn't had any accidents luckily yeah yeah i saw that on twenty twenty they um you know they're testing that they're you know thinking of doing that and i think that would be a great idea because i think they do come become less aware and they just i don't know they and they don't hear as well for one thing and that doesn't help right at least that way the burden is not on the family of taking their license or their car away it's on the state okay um i don't have any i guess definite views about elderly care um the first thing that comes to mind is kind of those horror movies that you see where elderly people are abused and things like that i think that's one thing that i would look at if i was putting my grandmother or my mother uh in some sort of home the first thing that i would look at would be their history as far as any court cases that came out of there um the history of you know their doctors um their nurses and things like that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh just out of curiosity what what kinds of things were they doing when they were considered a bad place uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh my goodness uh_huh in pain or something uh_huh right right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's great yeah i would i would personally hate to know that my mother or grandmother or anyone is in a home like that and my biggest fear would that they would be is that they would be lonely and i would like to know that there are you know just a lot of activities like you said you know just putting a plant in a room you know just makes just [brightens] and and and just makes them just a little more active television they can go outside and just to know that they're not you know laying in a room looking at gray walls you know that that's what would just really kill me i'd like to know that you know they have friends there and they have little conversations and things i'd like to know there's a lot of interaction and maybe some kind of of activity little field trips or something i don't know how they would do that but uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i didn't realize that there were groups that go in like that that's really neat right uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh that's great that will be something you know they would look forward to if they knew you know that the puppy is coming on wednesday you know that would be something to look for that's really neat that really is uh_huh uh_huh right yeah putting any of my family in an elderly home to me would be the very last resort you know it um and i know it's hard for a lot of families if you're trying to to work or trying to take care of your own family it's kind of hard to to because an elderly person sometimes can be totally dependent you know on you and i know that's hard sometimes and but it would really have to be a last resort because that would just i would feel so guilty i don't know unless i knew that they were somewhere just really i mean just really great you know that they were really enjoying i don't know anyone personally that's in an elderly home uh_huh yeah yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah [nod] your head and smile at them uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right oh oh that's something that if i had to work in an elderly home i don't think i could do it like i i would really like to be a teacher but i don't think i could do it because i'm very very emotional and the minute i mean the minute something happens i cry on i mean [hallmark] commercials that's just the end of me and so i mean something real life i just i interview a lot of children i'm an education reporter and i always go and do an education things i meet these kids who are you know dropping out of school left and right and all the sudden they're in this program they're making straight a's they're going to graduate early and i'm just i just want to hug them and go you are just fantastic and you know i could just imagine you know working in a home like that and those people they're so sweet and and so genuine you know and all they want is just for everything to be happy and you know and so that would probably just tear me apart i mean in a good way but you know uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i'm sure uh_huh yeah uh_huh right yeah and children i mean usually a of elderly people like to they like to uh share their experiences with the with the younger children they'll be telling them all kinds of stories that they don't even know what they mean you know they feel like they've lived life so they need to share it and i'm sure i'll be like that too yeah but that's great i didn't know there were such groups uh_huh yeah yeah and i would hate it if anyone put me in one yeah somebody take care of me okay okay well nice to talk to you uh_huh bye bye uh_huh yeah right yeah yeah i agree with you i um a group that i'm a part of goes once a month to a um they call it the heritage house it's it's a nursing home for elderly people and this particular one has people that are in pretty bad shape a lot of them have had um limbs [amputated] or um have serious illnesses you know that kind of thing and um i watched the interesting thing was i watched this particular one change hands it started out just being a terrible place for the people and then a new company bought it and came in and remodeled the whole place hired new nurses and uh just really just redid it you know well to me it was dirty for one thing uh when you would walk in the smell was just awful the you know the floors you could just if you're walking on them feel how filthy they were um there were a lot of people just kind of up and down the halls laying in their beds hollering and you know crying of course i don't know how many of them were you know not in their right mind or how many were yeah yeah i just really don't know but i feel like they were neglected and um yeah that was what i was going to say it sounds like just neglect all over you know neglect to [cleanup] i don't really think anyone was being you know cruel or or trying to [mistreat] them or anything i just think they were not doing anymore you know than they had to do and um just kind of letting everybody live in a not very good environment but this new company came in and they like i said they remodeled the place and it smells nice when you walk in and it looks nice and they got like several new color t v's for the people and redid the dining room where they made it you know a lot more place for them to be they made a little patio area where they can go outside yeah just you know small things that make it seem a lot more homey yeah and it's like it's a lot more like an apartment place instead of just uh right right right uh_huh right exactly yeah right right yeah yeah well they uh this place that we visit it's really neat they have everyday they have schedules of groups that come in and they will do bingo our group does a church service once a month and then other groups come in and do the services you know other sundays so that they have at least one service every sunday so there are a lot of things there are places that have a lot of things for them to do but you really do have to kind of seek it out you know and make sure that it's not a place like this one was yeah yeah yeah it is it's real nice and um i know our church does it and there are a lot of other churches and they are just like civic organizations that do and uh i have other friends it's kinds of neat they take animals over and let the people pet them like they also have a dog that maybe needs a home and they will wash it all up and make sure it's it's a friendly animal you know and take it in and let just let the old elderly people pet the dogs yeah yeah yeah yeah i thought that was a real unusual thing for someone to do so yeah there's a lot that can be done it's just a matter of people not being lazy and you know doing the best they can again i don't know what i'd do if it was my own mother or grandmother you know right right uh_huh yeah yeah yeah yeah i would too yeah right yeah i know i know what you mean yeah well i have interesting conversations with a lot of these people because um many of them of course their minds are not good and so a lot them have told me exactly the same story you know every time i visit them they'll [reminisce] about childhood and tell me something that they did and then the next time i go it's the same thing you know that just somebody to listen to them uh just seems to make them really feel good right i'll tell you the people i feel the [sorriest] for there's a guy at this particular one i go to that i think that he's really an intelligent person but he has [cerebral] [palsy] so bad that he just cannot communicate and um he's blind and he has [seizures] you know i mean he's just like in a world of his own and yet he wants so much to be around people and if you come over to him if he can touch your hand he'll grab it and kiss it oh and he's always got a smile i mean he really tries to [brighten] up your life oh it's just amazing but he can't say anything he can just kind of make noises yeah yeah me too yeah i know i know uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah yeah oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah oh it does yeah yeah it is it's really hard and but one of the neatest things i think though is we always take our kids i have a three year old and a six year old and they um have gotten comfortable being around these people because they've always gone with us and the people love them and they want the children you know to hug them or hold their hand and so far my kids will do it just real easily and i think it's because they've gone since they were real little and they've never been afraid but that's something to me children you know need to people need to take groups of children because the kids just [brighten] up their lives as we walk through the the lobby they'll all say bring her here i want to see her i would love to hold her uh_huh yeah that's true yeah well me too yeah it's quite an experience yeah yeah there are and and uh it really helps those people i think but like you said i'd really have a lot of second thoughts before i put any of my own family members there it would be a last resort oh i know i'm always afraid like oh no what if i lose my mind am i going to end up in a place like that yeah that's right well yeah you too [tonya] thanks for calling bye uh_huh well my parents are both in their seventies my my mother and stepfather and my father and [stepmother] are all in their seventies and my uh uh father and [stepmother] are not in very good health so this is something that is yes it is yes they are they are not for them my my mother and stepfather have have uh set up an arrangement where they have a large home and uh two of my sisters and and their families one of them's husband and then all the children are living in this home its got a lot of bedrooms and bathrooms and and uh they all share the same kitchen and dining room and den and kitchen and and uh my father bought this uh my stepfather bought this thinking of a time when one or the other of them might need care and they felt like that would be their alternative to a nursing home unless unless they were so ill that they needed nursing care that could not be given in the home well i i felt good about it because that's my personal feeling also i uh i read a lot and then i know people then have visited nursing homes and uh have had great grandparents in the nursing homes and it was not a happy situation for for any of them and and uh we have a very active nursing home here in plano that that has uh activities going all the time and they have uh even the people that are wheelchair bound and and really are are incapacitated go and uh participate in olympics and they make their crafts and sell them at a big fair that's held annually at a big mall here you know so there are a lot of a lot of activities going on all the time and this is a nursing home it's not a senior citizens home so that the people are really uh right they need the nursing care and and but it's a very expensive solution right right right uh_huh right and that's right i well i took my husband one night to an emergency room when he was in an emergency situation and uh they brought in a very elderly man from a nursing home who had had uh apparently [inhaled] some chicken he was eating and uh he had apparently had not been in the home too long just a week or so but when they the family came in to see him they had not been made aware i was in the room when the emergency technicians brought him in from the ambulance and i overheard their conversation and when the family walked in his wife and daughter and son in law they were not even aware of what had happened so i told them he strangled on some chicken and uh they said the the woman the wife said he was not even supposed to be eating any food like that that would require chewing or so you know and i thought right right and then she was upset he had on two different shoes one of which was not even his he had on a pair of slacks and the wife said these are not his slacks and she said i just took two pair over yesterday for him that were clean and right right well i this was just something that i was i witnessed to and and uh at no point did anybody from the nursing home come in and we were there in the same room with the man for a half hour and with just a curtain of course between us and and uh they [revived] the man and cleared out his [airway] and so forth and he was definitely just by looking at him and the way he acted you could tell he was in need of of nursing home care but the family were all talking about uh putting him in another home they said he will not go back to that one i'm glad they the option i i would hate to be in a position where that was all i could afford and there were not there was no choice oh my um uh_huh uh_huh right right that's right visits everyday right visit right right suspicious you know i i my i remember my my grandmother many years ago when she was in a nursing home before she died and i guess there was not a name for what she had at that time but i guess alzheimer's would come as close as anything she really was not aware of what she was doing and uh i i can remember she had several strokes and the nursing home was right next to a hospital and they would rush her to the hospital and [revive] her and just bring her back to the nursing home in a couple of days and it was she was it was just like keeping something okay well the topic is selecting care for the elderly and i don't have elderly parents yet but not that far in the distant future what about yourself a concern of yours right now are are they living independently right now oh have you looked at any homes for them or talked to them about that oh that sounds the ultimate well even at that point most care can be given at in the home that sound like just an excellent solution you must feel real good about that uh_huh right really in need of a nursing home right uh_huh well it's you know i think we just you know listen to is the fact that there are good solutions both inside and outside of nursing homes it's just a matter of finding a good home and and then of course there is always the problem of being able able to afford either of those solutions and that i think is what is scary and i also feel that that's where some of the bad [images] of nursing homes come from is when people have to put people in a nursing homes and they really can not afford the best oh oh goodness oh what a shame they put him in the home so that he could be cared for and then they could have done that well at home oh you hear these stories all the time you happened right oh right well good good i'm glad they have a solution to do that yes i know exactly my uh my ex husband's grandmother had been in a nursing home now for oh it must be seven eight years and uh and uh it's just her her condition deteriorated deteriorated instantly upon getting into that home as the situation is so sad because it just takes all the [dignity] away from from people who have been independent all their lives like this was a really neat vital woman and you get in a nursing home and the first thing that happens you have to share your your whole living space with someone that you have never known before in your life and oh i i do not know what the answer is but i do know that there are some wonderful places out there and it i think it does a lot of it goes down to just money and family support uh if you you know have family that uh you can live with right right i i really i think the way of selecting a nursing home would be similar to the way you would select child care you know you would do your research and you would go visit and uh hopefully they would have they would have it so that you could go there anytime because if you could not go there anytime then that would make you a little bit right uh_huh hi you want to start first right uh_huh you apparently have somebody there in one oh you are kidding oh uh_huh i will be darned uh_huh oh for heaven's sake you are very very much aware of what goes on that is great uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right right i will be darned uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh now see that is a nice attitude to go into uh it seems like they must be waiting until it is a necessity and there is no chance of uh good companionship or doing anything uh_huh uh right right uh_huh uh_huh that is true but what i mean is instead of maybe entering a nursing home when you are still able to have good relationships with maybe other friends they wait until they are you know unable right right right uh_huh uh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah that is great uh_huh uh_huh yeah that sounds great yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh see if they could could get this idea across though better than what it is you know uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh well you have that with anything oh yeah in the homes yeah well we used our nursing home as uh like when my sister was real bad before she died uh we took her the last month and a half into a nursing home and they were super with her they were uh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well a lot of people do that they left them [temporally] maybe they had a broken hip or something or uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh and it can become home to them it it depends upon the individual uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh this is and there has to be consideration taken on everything yeah that is right you would look into it thoroughly and do do the best job you could in choosing one uh_huh no and you do not have the time to look that is what i am saying most people will not even look at that until it becomes a necessity uh_huh whatever their talents yeah uh_huh yeah i have a cousin who is uh she had a son that was [epileptic] from birth and he did fine at home they lived on a farm but she made arrangements so that when she was gone she did not want her her children her other children [burdened] with his care so he they she has made arrangements that when she she was gone that he would go into the nursing home and he has i would say he adjusted very well and uh he he he has been there quite a long time and uh he don't know me usually so he goes wheeling down uh the hall to bingo somebody else is helping him out you know and uh he has adjusted very well uh_huh oh yes yes uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh to keep them there uh_huh true yes but for some reason people resist uh the fact that they should be paid as well as businesses and that type of thing you know it seems to be a resistance uh_huh uh_huh right right but there seems to be a resistance yeah yeah so uh well around here we have some you know the churches take your the children and i know our kids thoroughly the children thoroughly enjoy of course we are talking about the elderly and uh whether or not we we like nursing homes and as a matter of fact i can tell you something about that no actually my grandmother owned and operated a nursing home for years and her mother no she did and then my mother also owned and operated a nursing home for years and then uh went on back to school and became the director of nurses at a nursing home and uh my mother and my older sister both are geriatric nurses so i do know something about that absolutely actually the motivation for grandmother entering the business was that her mother was very old and couldn't seem to find companions she was lonely and she needed company for her mother and so she opened a nursing home and initially started with eight ladies and then uh it it grew into a very [prosperous] business from that point uh then they uh_huh uh_huh well that is not really true either uh i think that is a stigma and an i and an impression that has come from some few bad experiences you see those who had bad experiences talk about them and those who do not may write a letter to the nursing home and say you did good but they do not talk a whole lot about that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh sure well now that is right well that is because they wait until the children make those choices they choose to not make those choices themselves however my daughter in law also is a nurse in a nursing home and uh she works for one here in dallas which is more a retirement village than it is a nursing home and these these i love watching these elderly people come they will come and tell her well i am going for my tennis lessons and uh would would you you know call down and have the van come around and take us for our tennis lessons and they are very active and very enthusiastic and they have some excellent programs right there on site their dining room looks like you know luby's cafeteria or or one of the lovely cafeterias and they have you know pink [linen] [napkins] for their dinners and a well equipped library oh i am certainly very much for a nursing home and i think when the the parent gets old enough to the extent where they just do not want to be bothered with keeping house and with taking care of themselves anymore that is a wonderful alternative it is expensive it is costly uh_huh well now my daddy's mother uh lived in a a retirement village and she and her sister had side by side duplexes one bedroom duplex she still had her individuality but they were there close and they did have uh you know the button that you could push the central office if you got into problems and there were lights that you could flip on and so forth and they have security no i am very much in favor i have heard horror stories i know that the elderly can easily be abused but i would be willing to bet they are far less abused in a nursing home than are they are in homes of their own children uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh absolutely well now my grandmother of course all of my folks lived to be very old and my grandmother developed [hodgkin's] disease when she was in her late eighties uh late seventies i mean she went to the doctor she had surgery she got the treatments and during the period of time that she was [undergoing] those treatments she was in a nursing home she got better she got well she got out and went dancing again uh_huh that is right uh_huh uh_huh i think it is a wonderful interim place it is a place that you do not have to struggle with hospital problems and yet it is not you know you have uh_huh uh_huh it certainly is it certainly does but you see we have had excellent experience with that and uh i i did not put my husband in a nursing home when he became ill but i would not object to going to one i might i might like to be uh coherent enough to make my own choice uh i would not particularly think i would want my kids to say well i think this is what i need for mom and then dump me there but i would like that is right uh_huh uh_huh and i think you would shop for a nursing home just like you would shop for a church or a doctor or anything else uh_huh sure uh_huh when you get to the point where you are in trouble and you have got to have that help you are in no position to make those choices that is right uh_huh absolutely i think that one of the best ways to do that is for families to realize they are going to be needing those facilities one day and to actually get involved and participate on a community level with community service go out to the nursing home help guide some craft programs perhaps work on some music programs whatever their talents are and work with those senior citizens uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that is right uh_huh uh_huh yeah that is right uh well one of the things i think that is most desirable for the elderly and that is routine routine and uh [constancy] uh the only real problem with that in a nursing home is that the staff turns over i do not think they pay the nursing home staff [sufficiently] to to get the dedication that they have in some other profession and that is sad because i think the health profession is one of the most critical and uh that is right care for the elderly and care for the children i cannot imagine a more costly and a more a more uh better area to invest your money you are preserving your heritage and your future there and as a matter of fact i do not see why they do not have children's programs in nursing homes uh_huh uh_huh we're to discuss a little bit about the process of putting someone in a nursing home and making the decision on a family basis and probably the first question would be whether you've ever had to go through that process uh_huh uh_huh so it was pretty much a physical decision um yeah my husband's family are reaching that point but it's it's so difficult was she in favor of it or or was she kind of opposed to it uh_huh yeah so often i think though elderly people don't realize that their diet is that bad i work with a lot of elderly people i'm a trust officer and so often they think they're adequately caring for themselves when they're really not eating very much or very balanced meals yes well you know that's part of the aging process that your taste buds goes back to the sweet taste it really is yeah uh_huh yeah and the portions people don't want to try to figure out little bitty individual meals i do that right now and i'm not near nursing home age yeah uh_huh so as a family you all just visited nursing homes or probably in college station there wasn't a whole lot of choice uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah that's a given uh_huh and sometimes the the help there does it i think uh_huh uh_huh adapt yeah i as i think i mentioned i was in the trust business and i've seen so many elderly people usually there has to be some wealth involved which is great if if you're financially if if you don't make the decisions so late that you're worried about money but the the places like presbyterian village and some of the the retirement places where where they have different levels of care seems to be so much better as far as elderly people [adapting] they're able to move in while they're still independent and still social and and they do group things and then if health or or mental capacity [deteriorates] they're able to take the next steps without so much change and oh i wish everybody could go that direction rather than just all of a sudden moving out of the home they've always been in it's really kind of difficult yeah uh_huh well and it's the first step in in actually accepting that you are failing and and aging you know once you make that step you know that it's just going to be downhill from then on and and i've seen people really fight it that desperately needed to make the change they they became in fact that's probably what's going to happen with my husband's mother she's going to [endanger] herself before she'll willingly and probably will never willingly make the decision and that scares me the the thought of forcing somebody to do something yeah uh_huh not as independence yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah and the quality of life really isn't there oh it's tough it really is uh_huh well they fear being dependent on somebody they they fear being a burden to to family members my husband's mother will have major surgery and we'll find out about it in a casual conversation she'll let something slip and we'll say wait a minute and and that's it she just well i didn't want to bother you she can't accept that we want to be the care givers yeah well she stayed she stayed in a temporary nursing home until she was okay you know it's just but it's frightening to us because we live pretty far from her she's down in temple and we can't see her often enough to really know what's going on so it's difficult it really is and we're all heading that way and uh_huh yeah well not so much personally but my um husband has an aunt who has been like a second mother i mean always lived in the same town and took care of him and such they live down in college station where his parents do too and they put her in a home last year she appeared to have a couple of light strokes and started to uh not be able to be in her apartment on her own so they found a a place nearby that they put her in last year uh yeah although she is uh in pretty good health and she's doesn't take any medication it's just she had had her own apartment and drove a car and everything up until that point then she was starting to get uh you know lose memory sometimes and which is kind of frightening when she's in the car uh well yeah when it finally came down to it um she just got to the point after the i mean it wasn't a very um strong stroke it was just kind of all of a sudden she wasn't herself anymore and she got kind of fearful of being on her own she never really ate very well it was one thing she hardly ever took care of herself and she didn't eat she ate very poor so i think she was you know bad uh nutrition on top of it and uh she got to the point she didn't want to alone anymore so um well she was almost ridiculous like she'd eat ice cream and cookies she'd didn't one oh really well she didn't want to cook for herself anymore oh that's too much trouble that's too much trouble didn't want to cook yeah although they've got uh meals on wheels which i understand is a really good you know way to handle that so that at least they eat no i don't think there was um i know a little bit more from a a co worker her mother in law had been in for quite some time and had different degrees of a place that she was in um she was ambulatory and so there was a lesser care uh then she got uh uh hip broken and then uh she wasn't as ambulatory so they were almost you know to the point of saying she can't be here anymore but i remember from her checking around she ended up staying at the arkansas house i think out in arlington something like that and uh you know the type of facilities whether it's a shared room or two separate rooms that share uh a uh bathroom all of them all seem to say that people there are going to steal their items they're always saying that somebody's going to and some of them i think unconsciously do it you know as a just you know half uh so they they uh don't have too many facilities it seems for their personal items very limited space waste but um at least they all seem to have uh you know people that monitor their uh medication intake and dining facilities you know go to the dining room and and eat some good meals i know when my friend's mother in law first went in i mean very [antisocial] maybe it takes a while for them to say okay well i'll be with other people but yeah i don't understand that they they don't want to be with anybody else uh_huh uh_huh yeah i have a um my [aunt's] mother is uh gotten ill recently and uh she lives in pennsylvania they live in alabama and they're saying hey we need you to be closer and you have women like that i don't to men it seems like the women out just out live their husbands but very reluctantly that whole i mean they don't get out of the house they don't socialize but it's my home and i don't want to leave it uh um but it's it's so lonely you know they can't get out and see anyone and i mean it's hard for for someone like me to understand that because i i think what do you have there it's a house it's walls and it's furniture but there's nobody there don't you want to be close to me i mean you know be with other people i just don't understand why they so much want to just stay in that building and there's no family there they don't get to see their grandkids they don't get to see their children they just there in that house yeah that's from the child's standpoint the child is going why don't you want to be close to me and your other family what does that house got attraction i know they're really proud of independence uh well when she got home who took care of her oh uh_huh um yeah my husband and i we have been thinking about his folks are in college station and we've pretty much planned that we'll be here in the dallas area and there's nothing to hold them there in college station since they're retired so we thought maybe we could get them to move a little closer here how would you feel about sending an elderly family member to a nursing home uh_huh right and what type of recommendations did you have when you decided where to place him oh my yeah so the convenience right my grandmother lived with us um until august um and we made the decision to put her in a nursing home she has leukemia and her the rest of her family and her regular doctors and everybody she trusted and knew was in dayton and were several thousand miles away so i made the decision to put her in a nursing home and my sister being on the other end found one that she could have what was called an independent living facility she had her own little room and didn't have to share it with anyone and could bring in her own chair and t v set so yes and that the other major factor is that she needs blood transfusions every week to ten days and would have to be hospitalized a day or two so in this facility they can do it right there from her own room so she didn't have to be [transported] back and forth so she's been there since august the [thirteenth] and seems to have adjusted pretty well it's not her favorite place to be in she'd much rather be here with me but when it got to the point i was spending more time at the hospital with her and i've got little children here who needed me here she needed somebody to watch her twenty four hours a day so she was falling down and [hemorrhaging] and you know all kinds of physical problems so it just became too much for me to handle even though i would have liked to have had her stay with her health being what it was she couldn't anymore yeah uh_huh yeah oh yeah yes well i think sometimes when people get to be a certain age other people have to kind of help them make decisions it sure wouldn't have been [granny's] decision to leave us and go back to a nursing home but she's accepted it real well now so well we enjoyed having her here but we feel she's much safer where she is now she still continues to fall but when she does there a nurse is right there to help her and i know she's eating the right things and her doctor's right there where he can come in and check on her so it became dangerous for us to keep transporting her back and forth in the car because she was so [wobbly] and needed a walker or a wheel chair so i think she'll adjust well i don't feel very good about it but i think that at some times it can be the right thing to do we sent my grandfather to a nursing home at the point when he was really [incapable] of caring for himself anymore he actually died a few months after that and so as at least in retrospect it was the right thing to do because he was either in a nursing home or a hospital or something else that he would have been spending most of his time in those days um well the see uh well we he wanted to get into a mennonite nursing home which is very popular and hard to get into and had like a ten year waiting list right we wound up just choosing a another mennonite nursing home that was easier to get into or but naturally no it was even mennonite related i'm sorry it was actually not a particularly great nursing home mostly the thing was that it was available when we needed it because he suddenly got sick and needed to be put in uh what do you think uh_huh yeah yeah yeah that's important i would say okay yeah right so that right and that becomes difficult then uh_huh yep we tried to convince my grandfather to live with us at several points during the last few years of his life but he was essentially too proud and too independent so that even though his heart was getting incredibly weak and his knees were going bad he lived in his own house as long as he could but he was living alone had an upstairs apartment could barely make it up the steps to the top without a great deal of pain and this eventually things just went too far and he allowed himself to be put into a nursing home right well that's yeah that's right that the children have some responsibility too to their parents and such to help decide what's the right thing and uh_huh yep now then i think that are you there all right do you have any one that has been in a nursing home oh yes well what do you think can be done about that i mean what can we do well i can of course i'm old enough to remember when the family or the church took care of all of this we did not have to call on on someone else and i feel no you tell me how you feel about yeah certainly i worked with an agency in west texas that they it's where they really started this concept of meals on wheels and i think it's such a valuable thing for our elderly if they didn't have to you know go into a kitchen my mother expired just just a little over a year ago and we had finally she didn't want to live with either my sister or me but we we got found a retirement center for her and it was beautiful and they had all these they didn't even have nursing care there so until as long as mother was you know mobile and got her food and she was with people with whom she enjoyed sure yes sir uh_huh being a widow i find that eating alone is one of the hardest things i have to do i have just recently retired and i am finding it extremely hard to adjust to so uh mother had the little kitchenette and she could do all these fine things that she just had a microwave had to pop her popcorn now this is wonderful but when it came time for a full meal then mother was able to go with people and and enjoy oh i think so well uh_huh yeah i'm here uh well only my um my grandmother but for a very short time um she uh she was just more or less in a in a nursing home for uh recovery from a broken hip because she could receive more medical attention but um that physical therapy was there and whatever but i think in visiting her there um it was very obvious to see that a lot of the people in the nursing home that she was in uh weren't there mentally uh she was probably the only person in the um whole nursing home that uh still had all of her mental facilities about her so that was uh that was very [disheartening] oh yeah it's really hard i guess i i come from a family of um of uh take care of your [elders] i guess uh my my dad's mother is an invalid and she lives with my aunt and uncle and they care for her you know all around the clock though she's not uh she doesn't have to receive constant medical attention she because of arthritis she's just unable to get out of bed so i guess you know there's that family commitment um i know that my parents my mother is trying to let my grandmother stay in her house as long as she can um yeah right yeah yeah well probably i think as long as the person's able to um to understand what's going on around them and i think you know my grandmother right now is still able to walk around and she's still able to uh to do some things for herself though she gets meals on wheels which i think is a great thing because um it saves people from having to prepare food for her because you worry a little bit about her leaving a stove on or whatever although she does most things very well it still makes a little bit easier for her uh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh right yeah that i think you know it's really funny i have two grandmothers still alive and my one grandmother says that she wants to stay in her house for as long as possible she's like openly told people she's always been very good about knowing yes she's eighty nine and she said that she would really like to stay in her house as long as possible because it's her home but when the time comes um she and she can't do things and she has to be cared for whatever she would prefer and she's actually said this to move into some type of community where she has her own apartment uh probably with like a living space and a bedroom with maybe a kitchenette so that if she you know if she wants to fix herself something light she can do that but if she wants to go to a meal she can go down the hallway uh to a room where there's a cafeteria and there's other people there and she can mix with them and talk with them and enjoy their company uh_huh yes uh_huh right uh_huh right uh_huh right yeah i think i think that probably until until they're really [invalids] uh the elderly are [invalids] i think that they should be able to interact with other people in an environment that they choose if they can if the family can afford it i mean um see i know that my grandmother would like to stay in her house and my parents actually said you know that they may have to take their end sometime so because you know my grandma she says who she wants to live with she's pretty you know she lets people know well about nursing homes and and older people uh my husband has a grandmother that lives with his mother and they're just really close here and his mother has bad health too and so i go over sometimes in the day when he's at work and i um help with her and [bathe] her and feed her and uh and i that's hard to be a caretaker i really believe it's really difficult to be a caretaker twenty four hours a day uh she has alzheimer's and does not remember uh a lot if anything and so she asks the same questions over and over again which is not you know unrealistic um and so you just have to try and be patient and answer them again or just answer another question uh i uh some nights his mother calls me and says can your family and just bring the kids in the family and just come over and and visit grandma because she gets very [disoriented] she's ninety two oh i think that's wonderful well uh_huh yeah i was just going to say yeah um yes uh i think it's wonderful these these places that aren't nursing homes necessarily but they can go and [reside] there like little apartments places in between places and i like that idea if they can handle it themselves um yeah yeah yeah uh_huh yeah nursing homes visit uh_huh they don't go and see them that's right that's right you know um i i think nursing homes are are um some are good i have to say that but for the most part i truly believe that the parents would be better if they were with the children um right right uh_huh i hope so you know it's i think it's very difficult in the first place to make that choice to have them go there and then if you find out that they are not having good care you know i'm sure that it is just you know you'd pull them out of there so fast and uh and yet if you didn't feel like you could be a good caretaker i don't uh it's a very very hard decision i think uh_huh i think that's right and especially if you're not a person that is like a medical person maybe or something that the person needs medical treatment now i know a friend of mine who had a father uh she brought to her home uh to live there but he needed the medical treatment and she had a nursing person come in like three times a week to to help him out and that might be a partial solution or something but um i personally am for the trying it at home caretaker part before i think i'd ever yeah yeah well i i think we kind of are along the same lines good to hear from you have a lovely day what is it about nursing homes yeah uh_huh right oh it's very difficult i know uh_huh uh_huh right yeah yeah how old is she uh my see my father is ninety two and still uh he and mother still live at the house and drive and and do the whole thing but you know if something would uh whenever something happens to one of them then i don't know what i'll do up there i i just know that too many horror stories about nursing homes and so they're in missouri and i could i i know i know stories for sure that they just they they just well they can't take the proper care of them most of them and uh it's it's tragic that you know when people live so long that they uh don't have a really don't have a place to go so right yeah there's one very close to where my parents are but uh i think it would be nice but my dad's the type he wouldn't want to spend the money on anything so uh i mean he's from that old depression era and uh you know it's oh it's just [blissfull] that they're both able to do everything for themselves i would imagine that i'll uh if something happens i'll move one of them or you know in in with me so uh but i know a lot of people have said that and then find out how tough it is and but i think you'd have to really they also wanted us to talk about you'd have to really check on the uh on this homes but i just don't know how much you can see when you go for a i think you just have to drop in all unexpectedly a lot and so many people when they put people in the nurses home they never see them they never go to see them i've talked to many uh owners of places and say that nobody even maybe maybe christmas uh_huh right oh i do too or if if they could be real real nearby where they could see them everyday or so uh because i know governor richards is really upset about what she's finding in the nursing homes uh regulation in texas so maybe we'll get it improved so anyway right oh it's tough i'm sure oh right that would be devastating i'm sure so it is a tough decision and it's one that needs a great deal of thought and prior probably yeah right uh_huh right i would hope we could do that and then go from there well anyway we've covered a little bit and uh it's good to hear from you and have a good have a good um i don't i am only twenty eight and i haven't had much experience with nursing homes i don't i have never visited any of them and uh i don't think i've ever even been in one have you uh_huh and it it takes a lot of care like twenty four hours a day someone has to be well there's someone in my my fiancee's family his grandmother too and they're that her son his uncle whatever you know anyway he he has he's recently retired and so he's the one who she moved in with when she had a stroke and and all the other children are working or whatever they're all my parents age and uh so he's got you know his retirement though is really twenty four hours a day they have a day care two days a week they call it senior citizen day care but she goes in the senior citizen center so he gets a break two days a week but it's only for like two or three hours at a time and you know just you see a lot of things like you you know was a great golfer and wanted to play golf when he retired and you know that a lot of the things he thought he would do when he retired he's not able to do now but he refuses to consider any other i don't yeah and is that how your parents feel or uh_huh uh_huh i know at this i know i feel like i would never do that with my parents either you know but i i really feel bad for the people i see not very i'm not really really experienced but like i said i just have that one family and i just really feel bad for the guy who his whole life is different now and than he thought it would be but yeah and he's got you know seven brothers and sisters and and uh he's the one because he's the one that isn't going to work every day and that she moved in with when she needed to move in with someone and oh well that's great that's a good idea we ought to yeah and maybe when the other brothers and sisters retire or whatever i don't know what they're going to do it's really not my family it's my fiancee's so i don't i can't say much but i always feel like i would never put my parents in either and i wonder i'm going to be the only [sibling] that isn't going to have children so if my parents do need to live with someone it will probably be with me because all my brothers and sisters will be having teenagers around and everything to care for you know and i'm i that's fine with me my fiancee and i both figure that's what's we're going to end up with both of the parents or whoever if you know what i mean we feel like it's our responsibility and i feel like i would never put them in a home but i wonder how much you know if one of us is going to have to quit work someday or retire early or something you think about it and it's really i don't know this country kind of takes the worst care of the elderly of any other country and it's really more of a um like a respect issue that the older older people in other countries that i've been to seem to really have a lot more respect for the elderly people and and they really seem as wise and and in this country nobody really yeah nobody really pays attention and they oh the old timer made with the old way and nobody respects the traditions and you know it's i i'm not saying that i do either but you know it's just funny and and we really don't have any that don't have the social security and everything really isn't that much for elderly people to live on you know even if they're in good health it's incredible they don't have any they don't get special treatment and maybe they should you know because we're all going to get old someday and so it's a it's kind of a depressing topic though how old are you so it is yeah and it must be rough for you too to see your grandmother um actually i have um i've i've been in them but um just visiting and uh we used to when we were like in in our teen ages we'd go on sundays and visit you know the older people but um i have an elderly grandma that lives with us and she's lived with us for like five years so i kind of know how it is to how to decide if you want to put somebody in a rest home or um like we i mean we've had those discussions you know about should we put her in or because she's pretty senile and yeah it's uh_huh oh really uh_huh right to put her in a rest home um well see it's more my grandma that feels that way she says that when her husband died that he said oh that my uncle had said that he would never put her in a rest home so it's kind of uh i don't know i mean i don't i don't think my parents would but she is getting pretty bad like she has to have like a little toilet right by her bed and it's and my mom has to take care of her pretty much so it gets i don't know it's it's a hard decision but i don't think i would do it to my parents personally when he retired yeah it's like that good for us just because my uncle and my and my mom switch off like we have her for three months and then he has her for three months so that that works out good uh_huh really uh_huh uh_huh you think i i i'm not really familiar with how other countries they're seen as senile right uh_huh right uh_huh i know um i'm twenty yeah it's it really is but and she she drives us okay have you faced uh elderly care yet uh nursing home care for any of your parents uh_huh yes i think sooner or later uh both my mother and my husband's mother we had to end up putting in nursing homes and they were to the point that they only lived both of them about six weeks once they got in and uh_huh and it's absolutely i believe that was one of the hardest things i ever did in my life i that it just you know it's absolutely devastating what have you found in dealing with the nursing homes yes um uh_huh yes yes no uh there well there's a little bit of difference in in the two between my mother and my mother in law and uh theirs both ran oh i think my mother in law's was like fifteen hundred and my mother's was two thousand then this has been five years ago and uh uh one of the things that you know i had discovered is that if they knew that i came in there at all different hours they got much better care than if when i started out with my mother in law because she was in there first i would go certain hours and they knew and if i'd pop in unexpectedly i discovered you know they did a little bit they did better you know uh_huh and you know a couple of times with my mother in law i would catch something not being taken care of and you know would have to rate so i got to where i knew then when my mother was in that you know not to go the same time all the time because they would and when i was looking for the nursing homes another thing that i learned uh we had my mother all set to go into one and for some reason i just went back and on my own went around the different floors and i saw areas that they had not shown me and they did not come across as well as you know what they had originally shown me so uh we did not put her in that one we put her in another one that i i went a couple of times when they weren't expecting me and saw and you know was much uh better pleased with the situation yes you do uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh does your mother have alzheimer's uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh did she know that she was going to a nursing home did she know that she was going to a nursing home uh_huh unfortunately yes uh in fact tonight i had the dinner with uh my three brothers and our wives and we were talking uh we had a review with the nursing home staff my mother's in a nursing home and uh we had a review today and a few things we had to do that are part of it that you don't really like like uh making decisions on living [wills] and extended care that type of thing so yes i'm very familiar with it and it's not something that is uh you know i never thought i'd have to go through this kind of experience but i guess we all do oh really uh_huh right well they're not every all the horror stories you hear about them i think are true uh we've you know we've looked around and my wife has looked at extensively at all the ones in the area and the one she is in now uh there's a lot of drawbacks a lot of things we don't like but again it's no different than every one and you know the cost of it the three thousand dollars a month when you think about it for what you're paying a hospital for almost the same well even not as much care it's not that expensive really uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh really uh_huh yeah uh_huh well i'll be darned uh_huh yeah yeah you you know this is the whole point you've got you've got to shop them i know my mother's in now in a unit that's mainly alzheimer's and uh we're convinced that she probably would be better off in a geriatric uh the fact that these people are they're up and around but they're they're it's reminds me too much of an asylum type situation and it's very very she well who knows they call it uh [dementia] and uh we don't know i i mean she does not know us anymore and whether it's alzheimer's or what it is nobody really knows but it's basically the same and her health is not that bad although she has gone down downhill drastically since this this last well she had been in a retirement community and somewhere in the back of her mind she had it that she would live with her children well she we we just did not have the capabilities to to take care of her and uh but she she has gone down steadily since she has been in and she's been in the nursing home now for oh i would say about three months and i'm sorry she no as far as she knew she was going to a hospital and that she could she could handle a hospital and we says you know mom if you you know if you get a you get better you've got to have the care the doctor [insisted] on it you know if you get better that you could come out okay well carolyn the uh one of the main things i'd like like to know is uh how do you feel about the knowing about the environment of a nursing home before you would send someone there to live and so forth what do you think would be required and so forth oh you knew of the homes then you knew of the homes themselves uh_huh oh okay yeah well from your point of view how would you feel about actually sending someone that that's you know means something to you to one of those homes i realize that you indicated you wanted to check out as much as you can about it and of course that makes sense but how do you think they would feel i should say about moving from where they have lived most of their life into a whole new new home situation uh_huh oh okay uh_huh yes uh_huh well how do you find that your your personal relationship is with her know that you're both together all the time and you are having to do a lot more for her than normal does that does that cause any problems between the two of you uh_huh is she it's hard to accept the fact that you're unable to pursue life at the level that you did before isn't it yeah it is different i had that almost similar situation my mother lives in an apartment with my sister and uh so i except for the three or four months this summer that's the only time i ever spent with my mother and of course since i see her only once or twice a year i was just thrilled to have her here with me and i spent every minute i could to be with her and uh cooking foods for her you know just to make her her life as though she were on vacation but somehow another it that doesn't work between my mom and my sister and they they find they they are in speaking they i don't know my mother feels uncomfortable around my sister and my sister's uncomfortable because her mother's there and i guess it's just because they're there all the time so it's it puts has put pressure on both of them from that point of view so that's that's kind of bad news and by the same token my wife's mother is now moved into a nursing home and after all she has been a farmer's wife for sixty years and now all of a sudden she's had to move off of her farm into another home where the environment is totally different she's relatively happy but she doesn't like the food and when she complains about the food then they kind of get angry with her so that's another one of those things you have to solve yeah after all their their life is so totally different because in those early days the food they had to make it from scratch so to speak i mean you raised your own chickens and you killed your own [hogs] i suppose and then they they had to store the meat in uh i don't want to say [barns] but they had regular little places they they would hang it you know to cure it and so forth and and now all of a sudden it uh comes in differently it tastes differently well uh i'll tell you i i watched what went on um with the twenty twenty show i don't know if you saw that a few days ago that that talked about nursing homes and actually they specifically talked about some in the area where i am here in texas and pardon well i no i'm not familiar with those homes per se but um they were in the area where i live uh and it was really [revealing] to see some of the you know the things that go on i guess in some of these homes so i would definitely you know want to really check things out and uh go i guess that the big thing would be once you got someone in a home like that to to make sure that you went daily you know and made sure that they were cared for and uh_huh well actually i have that kind of situation because my mother lives with me and she's eighty seven and uh from the time that we were tiny she said you know i want you to promise that you'll never put me in a rest home so i know how she feels about it you know if i uh if i ever had to put her there i think uh it would be probably when i just could not handle it any more you know if i she got to the point where she was totally bedridden and and i mean i just didn't have the skills or the strength to lift her or whatever it needed i think that would be the uh i wouldn't say any more than usual i think it's very hard for her um to be waited upon so to speak i mean i think it's hard for her to have that role of not being able to do as much as she used to yeah i think that's very true um on the other hand it takes on almost a a switch of a mother child relationship uh oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah um uh_huh huh uh_huh yeah well that's got to be a big adjustment for someone that's as you say lived on a farm for sixty years and then go to something like that uh_huh yeah uh_huh that's right yeah well well yes i do uh this is a a question that hit pretty close to home i had to go through this with my dad about four years ago he was his health was failing and uh he was adamant about two things one was that i take care of my mother and two that he not be put into a home and we talked uh about some length and i respected his wishes he uh stayed at home as long as he could and then uh he died in a hospital but um i think that my position is that uh you need to find one that you can really have confidence that they are taking care of the of the uh of their clients and um because i've heard about the many abuses and because he had heard of so many abuses he just didn't want that how about you yeah almost thirty all over thirty percent isn't it uh_huh they're captive uh we had a at one stage we had care somewhat like like what you're talking about we had the visiting nurses program and they sent somebody in and it it was a a nominal charge that this uh it started out that the lady would come in i think three times a week and eventually got up to the point where they were coming by every day they would try to get him to exercise they would try to uh you know they would check him over to to you know the basic checks try to get him to talk and be motivated and uh that's what we went through uh up to a point things seemed to be working and then uh i think he he became discouraged and they did not know how to take care of that and then um at that point i think it's mostly a psychological problem and uh but yes i agree there's a lot of options there could be a lot of options i think it's time that uh we decide to do something about it um i suppose at one time the church would fulfill this need yeah the church or [synagogue] whatever because typically these were close knit groups at one time but in today's large metropolitan areas or even in most even even the rural areas now people are not quite as close as they once were uh the mobility factor the factor that uh-oh we're living longer and people are less trusting all these things tend to destroy this type of system but i agree with you there might be some possibilities there although dealing with [geriatrics] is something a lot of young people just aren't emotionally prepared to do i think they would have to have some training do you have uh some strong feelings one way or the other about about the care of the elderly uh_huh uh_huh yes yeah yeah well my graduate work is in speech pathology and uh so so uh i've thought about this more than once uh you know dealing with uh you know i'm concerned we're going to have a geriatric uh population in in twenty years it's going to be you know phenomenal yeah yeah uh and um but i have been amazed and and in talking with uh some of my fellow students it looks as though um nursing homes are not going to be the only option any more and uh in twenty years uh where a lot of students are hoping uh to work as an in the home type uh uh approach where where the uh where there's you know the speech therapist or whether it's a nursing specialist or someone plans to uh work out of a family's home and take the responsibility away from the family but yet allow the the loved one to stay you know at home with the family members uh it's it's difficult for many families especially in the case of uh of alzheimer's and and uh some of the more [degenerative] diseases to uh say uh uh leave them to have them at home because then the family becomes completely uh exactly yeah and and did did you experience that with your with your father or not uh_huh yeah uh_huh right oh uh_huh yeah definitely you know one of the other subjects on the switchboard and this is one that i've been thinking applies here uh where where uh young young kids uh graduating from high school whether they should do a community service type work this would be an excellent example of some where uh some place where um the community could be more involved you know more than just leaving it only to professionals there is a lot the community the community can do to uh [enhance] the or or [assist] the lives of those who are keeping a loved one at home possibly before i don't know now uh_huh huh_uh uh_huh i agree that's a that's a good point well i was just wondering if you had had any experience with um the care of the elderly uh_huh right uh_huh well that's nice no it's really sad it's really a sad situation and uh i think a lot of people struggle with i i guess the problem is that the spouse of whoever you know the parent is doesn't always want the in law living in the house is that right well that's really sad uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right yes well i know when the i remember being a child and my grandmother had had several strokes and things and that we had my parents tried to keep her in the house and they did for a long time i couldn't tell you how long until she got uh where she had to have complete care and so they couldn't you know keep her in the house anymore and it was really hard on everyone she had to have you know twenty four hour a day care and i don't remember much about it except that there was a nursing home at that time just a block or two from our house and that um they put her there and we all went just constantly until she died but it was very hard on everyone to see you know grandmother be like that and i don't know that you know i don't being so young i don't remember why you know what was why she had to go there uh_huh well i do remember that she was you know totally [incapable] of taking care of herself in any way and that that they couldn't they found that they could not you know give her the [hygienic] care and everything that she needed no but like you say there is a tendency for people to be abandoned though you know in the nursing home i do remember the other patients there uh being real excited when we came to see our own grandmother because they got some interaction with someone uh_huh right right and i guess that's hard on people to give give up their lives if they're busy they don't you know it's easy to abandon people because we do have the nursing homes i guess if you can afford them but anyway well i'm glad it worked out good for your family yes i have in fact uh just a little over just a little less than a year ago uh my mother went to be with the lord and we cared for her the last oh seventeen months of her life here in the at home aside from uh having to uh take her to the hospital and uh you know those times well she was there in the the regular hospital and then she was diagnosed having [inoperable] type of cancer and so the doctor elected to have her uh finish out uh in the hospice program and uh i as far as i'm concerned that is far and above any nursing home because uh she's around her own you know the the elderly parent in question is around their own family the uh hospice program provides a hospital type bed well it is a hospital bed and all the [oxygen] stuff and a uh and a visiting nurse at least every other day et cetera et cetera et cetera and it's all taken care of by by uh medicare uh and uh it it's it's really neat uh and i you know i wouldn't i wouldn't [banish] uh my old loved one to a to a warehouse and that's that's what i basically uh view a nursing home as a warehouse so that's pardon me uh_huh oh uh_huh right yeah i know but uh in this case uh spouse and i uh are uh we're are are uh united in this area because i guess her father her grandfather and grandmother both lived with uh her parents uh their golden years too so this isn't like uh uh just one one uh instance in fact uh her uh uh experiences were were [invaluable] to me uh in fact i don't know if i could have uh held up uh you know without my wife uh helping in this this in this case uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh okay uh_huh well maybe well as as you say the care of of grandmother or was was just such that such mom and dad couldn't handle it oh boy yeah uh_huh uh_huh well then then there's almost then there's almost no no uh uh choice left to her then uh_huh right in fact just uh just uh sit and chat with them for five minutes and and be interested in what they have to say regardless of what it is uh_huh right and then then oh yeah it did and i was just i just praised the lord that that we were able to uh have uh uh hello hi my name is [dolphene] i live in texas okay i work for t i do do you also okay oh okay uh you ready to begin oh okay okay yes well i don't think that uh any of my relatives would really like to go there i i believe if i am in a position uh like when my mother gets to a point where she needs special care that i will be able to just bring her into my home and my father also and uh or have someone go into their home you know and uh and look after them that way uh_huh right it's basically it's more how they feel about it and it is like they feel they are uh the way my mother would put it like somebody had thrown them away you know right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh and another thing to think about uh on the positive side of the nursing homes here i use to work in one of the offices in a nursing home and i got to see a lot of the things that they did they uh they had a lot of crafts and they had a lot of games and uh they get together and just do they they do all sorts of things and then there some some of the uh the people that are in there are real you know very nice and friendly to everybody and uh then there are others that are uh it is just a job and they just you know want to go in and do what they have to do and get out go home uh the the attitude of the staff as you said is really very very important right right yeah yeah well it is like the one that i worked in uh you would see some of them just like in [wheelchairs] all day they would just roll themselves around all over the place and and they would enjoy enjoy themselves with activities and then you would see see some of the others that are were like distant from the other group and they they just didn't like participate together with the others because they had some some uh i guess uh slight mental disabilities and things like that what what do you call [alzheimer] disease and stuff like that and they don't don't uh they weren't really together with the rest of them when they got together for such activities hello hi my name is pat johnson and i live in texas too no no i live in dallas i work for the dallas school system we might as well i understand we are doing care of the elderly right and how do you feel about putting someone in the nursing home uh_huh yes i would find it very difficult uh to uh place my father or my step mother uh in a place like that particularly since i know how they feel about it yes yes i do think that there are some significant kinds of things to to look for you know if you are faced with placing someone in a place like that uh you know aside from the cleanliness and the medical care that is offered and such but attitude of staff makes such a tremendous difference and i have a a friend who is partly [paralyzed] and is in a nursing home and has no family who you know could care for her and uh i know that the cheerful pleasant people who treat her [kindly] make all the difference in the world in how she feels about uh her situation uh_huh uh_huh yes uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh i think it would matter too uh kinds of uh disabilities that the nursing home accepts because there are some uh who poor things you know don't have uh any real grasp on reality any longer and they may be ambulatory but they tend to behave like children small children and that would be very difficult i think for an adult who wasn't in that situation to to have to deal with on a daily basis uh yes uh_huh uh_huh yes yes [alzheimer] yes yes and that can okay well why don't you start cause it said i was suppose to ask you what do you yes i do oh my gosh uh_huh uh_huh right right yeah right my mother in law finally they had to make a family decision there's seven children in my husband's family and fortunately four of them live in the same home town and she has alzheimer's it was getting where she was getting dangerous i mean letting strangers in and things like this but they were very fortunate it's a small town and she happens to room with one of the doctor's mother's and then she's got a lot of family there and that go and see her all of the time but she really doesn't nobody thought she would adjust but she has adjusted beautifully but then i am also facing my father who is very sick and my mother and father [reside] in colorado she's been taking care of him i don't know how much longer this can last and at that point because he requires round the clock he can't do anything without her he doesn't know when to take his medicine and it's really sad and i have thought if something would happen to my mother for uh my brother's are not interested in helping me so i would have to move him down here that way i want to see the nursing home if i have to put him into one you know where i can go see it i i'd be very uncomfortable with him being in colorado and yes and some of them are limited care too where people can do uh like they have apartment styles but that wouldn't work for him i think he is beyond that where if you need help you can get it but basically people kind of have a small apartment and doctor's are available if they need them and allows yeah yeah well the only problem with these are that they are very expensive of course i guess all nursing homes there is but right yeah right yeah i uh yeah and i think a lot of people who do it now in colorado it's interesting i talked to my mother they allow you sixty five thousand dollars and your car and your home and my mother could make it on that what she probably would do is [disburse] the money to me and then i would send it back to her so that's what would happen yeah it's unfortunate right yeah it's frightening and i guess uh i don't know how old you are i'm forty six you know we're the generation moving into this and i don't know how our kids are going to take care of us you know yeah yeah right i also see on my generation a squeeze between looking to having to help my parents and still having to help my son because things are so rough out there job wise and he's still living at home and i don't know how he is ever going to get on his own the way things are and so it's kind of you feel squeezed in the middle of having both generations but it something will have to change as more and more of us get older uh luckily if we could be like your grandmother i uh you know i would love to live to a hundred and two if i were okay but you see these people in their seventies yeah most aren't that's the problem that's incredible do you have any elderly relatives currently in an uh nursing home now do you i have a grandmother she's a hundred and two she'll be a hundred and three in august and we decide not to put her in a nursing home she lives with my mother and my father who also live here in town and then my sister takes care of her she even though she is a hundred and two she still has all of her faculties she still has her snap she takes care of her own business this is the first year that she has gotten weak and actually has to have a little walker but with somebody that needs around the clock care i have seen my family age i have seen them in the she's been there ten years now and i have seen them age twenty in the time and and with the expense and everything i i still think it is worth it if you if you had a good nursing home and they needed some quality care i would put someone in a nursing home uh_huh oh well that's good oh that is great oh why yeah i am sure you have got some really good nursing homes around dallas uh_huh i i know a lady that lives in a place similar to that in austin and the bad thing about it before you can get any kind of government help you just practically have well you have to be a [pauper] it it takes every penny they want you to spend every dime you have before the government will pay for your your care and that's the sad part about it uh_huh i think that's what most people do you just have to give it everything away i i work at a [brokerage] firm and i have seen so many people that just have to gift you know their belongings as much as they can each year in [anticipation] of having to move to a nursing home i can't imagine i'm twenty nine and everybody in my family has always had we don't have any children everybody that has has them later in life so my my mother and my father are in their late sixties so i mean they're not that far away oh i know it but yeah most people aren't and that's the bad thing i would hate to have lived so long she lived by herself my grandfather passed away before i was born so she lived by herself up until she was ninety ninety one and just did everything i'm ready okay well i don't have an elderly person that i could send to a a nursing home or anything my both of my parents are dead but i did have a friend that was in a [convalescent] home uh like a nursing home and i went there very often to visit her and uh made me feel really sad if i did have a mother living i don't think i could do that i think they would be better off being at home with their family you know uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh i can believe that yes because most elderly people can't take having a lot of noise and kids running around and things like that in a situation like that maybe it would be better uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh oh uh_huh oh see now that's that's that's really a sad situation yeah really you know uh_huh yeah right right yeah in a case like that you know you more or less think it would be better if she were in a nursing home because you have your family growing up where uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh but the cost of these nursing homes are so you know a lot of people can't afford that you know so you really have no choice that way if you you know if you're not rich or you know uh i know this lady that you know that was a friend of mine now her husband was still alive at the time when she was in there you know and it was costing him a small fortune to keep her in there so uh_huh yeah then bring her back home at night uh_huh uh_huh yeah you know just come home for dinner and then usually they want to go to bed fairly early anyhow you know so that would probably be nice if we could ever get something like that but yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um uh_huh yeah if if they don't know anybody and they don't know what's going on around them and everything like that well i can see maybe a nursing home would be better you know but if they they have their wits about them and everything why it's kind of hard uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well uh my mother always said she hopes she never had to be like that and uh luckily i mean she lived by herself and then you know one day she had a heart attack and she was gone so she never did have to go into a nursing home or anything like that but there's so many of us kids there was like seven of us that my we wouldn't have probably allowed that to happen anyhow you know she could have taken turns living with each one of us you know for a a a period of time because we all don't live in the same city anyhow nor the same state so uh i i have a couple more that live out here in california but then i have a why don't you go ahead and start off i agree although we're in that situation right now we have a an eighty seven year old mother in law living with me right now and because of her circumstances she can no longer live independently and even moving from her house to our house has been tremendously [unsettling] for her and we have several young children and they about drive her crazy well we've you know we've struggled a lot with it because again most of the nursing homes i've been in are very depressing to me and she's still alert enough that i think she would really know that we were putting her there and i think she would really resent it and i think that would make it very hard but on the other hand i see my wife with i guess our youngest one now is five and her trying to struggle because her mother really cannot take care of herself she needs to be [bathed] and dressed and a lot of those kinds of things and so the drain on the family and when the kids have kids come you know she's always saying you know why do they have to be here why can't they send them home it's too noisy and she'll say that to the kids' friends so it's a hard situation either way i think i think that's one of the things we're really wrestling with when does it become detrimental to our family to the point that you have to consider that as opposed to considering her current circumstances and oh prohibitive yeah yeah i think we need to develop some alternatives like adult day care that's more readily available you know i think if we could send her someplace for the day and she could be around some elderly people and have some activities would be of more interest to her and then in the evening have her return and be with the family yeah but there's not many of those available right now and they're very hard to get them into and we tried sending her to a senior citizen center but they're really not prepared to cope with her because she's somewhat senile and so a lot of the activities that they're engaged in she can't participate in but i think it's an issue that you know with the [graying] of america we're really going to have to as a as a country figure out how we're going to deal with this because it is a difficult situation and you know you hate seeing them just sort of send off and not well cared for and yet and then i think it depends on their physical ability too you know if they could be up and doing some things it might be better than when they're just sort of needing almost constant supervision and care yeah do you live at all close to each other uh so what do you think uh about putting the elderly in a nursing home huh uh_huh that's true yeah huh uh_huh that's true i never thought of that yeah that's true until they get over that hump of whatever it is they're dealing with yes they really are they don't like to keep them longer than a week yeah what do you mean yeah that's true yeah and it depends on how how sick the person is too what you're capable of like if you have a family to take care of you know of your own yeah uh i would personally like it if my parents were to get ill i would like to take care of them at home and if i had the money with some help that's not always possible but uh to the best of my ability i'd like to do it until it gets impossible right uh_huh yeah that's true yeah but i think nursing homes can be good it just depends on what kind they are you know you need to check them out ahead of time uh_huh uh_huh yeah that they're yeah right who know what they're doing with that yeah well my uh grandmother's not really in a nursing home but a retirement home that also has a nursing home sort of attached to it and she really liked the idea of of moving there she's not ill yet but uh she worked there as a volunteer for about ten years and then she decided that uh she's eighty five years old that eventually you know she she doesn't want her family taking care of her and being a burden she's very independent so she's in this nursing home it's out in the country and uh she really enjoys it right now because she doesn't have to wash dishes or cook uh_huh right some support and then there's also uh sort of a wing for those people that do get sick and what i like about it and i think she likes about it is that she knows everybody there now and then so if she ever does become ill uh it will be like family around her yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh no she loves it she has a great social life and she travels and uh it's in in the very in the mountains and it's beautiful and uh i i hope that i have something like that when i get older uh_huh uh_huh oh definitely it's right okay well i think that it it varies on on the individual basis uh sometimes it is there is no alternative uh you do not have uh uh family available or family that's uh you may not even have family that is uh uh in you know who are around so sometimes it's not an alternative and i think uh but i think also sometimes it can be uh a benefit if it's for a short time sometimes in a nursing home uh especially if if it's after an [acute] illness to get over a or to rehab after uh an illness sometimes you know sometimes the nursing homes are good for uh just short periods of time uh_huh because too often the [acute] hospitals will are sending them out much faster than what they're really able to so so there is some good to it uh sometimes too it's used as a dumb job you know the well the families do not necessarily uh know what to do with them and they don't want to take the responsibility so they will put them in a nursing home so you see uh there's both sides to it too what do you think yeah that's true i think that's also where you're going to have a lot of people who are going to it's there's not a choice it's because it's not economically feasible even to put them in a nursing home so that that option sometimes is not available if they do not have the uh either medicare or insurance to cover it so yeah and then there's also some that are set up for specialties uh i know some unfortunately some elderly have to go to or have i guess it's alzheimer's or where they wonder or or uh confused or have some mental problem and you need a special nursing home for that you need one that has a unit that's locked where they are not able to get out and roam around and you need people who are trained for that type of problem yeah so so there's different types of nursing homes i think uh_huh gives her a little bit of her own independence but she still has uh a security there that's right and i i've seen some of them like that too and also they have a lot of uh activities going on for the ones who are more active so it's not sort of like uh uh a sick place yeah i i think i think the uh i think that the decision that needs to be made though on nursing home has to be a joint one between the uh elderly uh person who's going in and the family that's going to be uh effected by it and uh you know sometimes it can those those choices can be made in advance and sometimes the choices because of the nature of the illness when they're okay uh before a couple of years ago i had a a very narrow view of of nursing homes and it was uh more like a funeral home i always [joked] around about it being a funeral home and not really a nursing home and uh then i had to do some volunteer work here in tyler texas and i went to one and it just had a very good activities director everyone was cheerful and now i don't have such a bad view of nursing homes anymore but i i certainly wouldn't want to send my parent unless it was an absolute last resort uh i have a sister that is in nursing school and she's real interested in [geriatrics] yeah so uh she she's real interested in uh what ann richards has been doing she's ann richards is really cracking down on uh the nursing homes and i don't know you wouldn't know anything about a texas governor okay ann richards is our governor in texas and she's really cracking down on restrictions and what goes on in nursing homes and uh my sister's real interested in that and and getting into the to that side of nursing right uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh right right uh_huh right right right uh_huh it sure is and some of the really nice ones that really take care of their people are so expensive because cause they can afford to hire the people that are really going to care for the older oh yeah right my grandfather passed away several years ago i was much younger but uh he was in the nursing home the last several years of his life and someone visited him every day my grandmother did but uh if she couldn't someone visited him every day it was in a very small town nursing home and uh people didn't get paid much there at all they didn't care about what went on they would let a let a patient get a lot of bed [sores] and uh the the people living in the nursing home would have all kinds of needs that wouldn't get met because they were just old people and then the nurses and doctors really didn't put any for forth any loving care for them right right uh_huh right right and nurses get so worn down right oh sure and they feel they feel pretty [helpless] is it uh like a retirement center uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh how's he handling that uh_huh ooh oh sure there wasn't anything like that that you could do in florida well that sounds good i've heard the name and that's about all it goes yeah that's one problem with the the nursing home environment it the elderly even out of the nursing home are very open to abuse uh you know they don't always have their full wits about them they're not completely up on what should be going on or what's not going on and it can be pretty sad i've got a had a grandmother who had a stroke and she was in a nursing home for four or five years before she died and you know it's the type of thing that she was living down in florida my families was up in maryland and the other part of her family was up in uh new york state and you know it was very difficult for either them or my grandfather to take care of her since she was uh you know could not do very much for herself after the stroke and you know the nursing home was the you know best facility to put her in you know besides moving her up which is not a practical solution since both my parents work and both my uh aunts and uncle work which means it's you know very difficult for you essentially need to have someone taking care of the person full time and you know there's also a lot of medical problems that can't always be completely handled in the home which makes it you know it's a necessary evil i think yeah yeah and you know even there you have to watch out for you know you get one person who's a little bit dishonest working in there and you know the elderly sometimes have a lot of jewelry and other stuff that just very easily tends to disappear in the nursing homes uh_huh yeah uh_huh either that or they're just so [understaffed] that they can't afford to put in the uh care that they need cause it's you know an elderly person can you know it's like a [newborn] baby you need to have twenty four hour care uh answering all the needs cause they can't do much for themselves at certain points uh_huh and you know there's a lot of number of the elderly are very you know complaining because they remember the way that things used to be and remember being able to do things for themselves which you know they no longer can and it very very hard for them to accept that we just uh moved my grandfather into not a nursing home but you know a [transitional] type facility more of a retirement home he's got his own efficiency apartment and they provide one meal a day and you know the rest of the housekeeping and other meals a day are up to him but they do have you know group activities going on uh he'd much rather be living alone in his apartment down in florida uh you know to move into that facility we moved him from florida up to maryland and it's it's a bit of a shock to the system weather wise if nothing else well there was stuff like that in florida but well i don't know my grandfather is ninety two years old and he is still living by himself my grandmother died a couple of years ago but he doesn't want to to move away he lives in a little [farmhouse] on a farm and he recently had to have an operation but he just really doesn't want to go to a nursing home well he was until this operation he has arthritis and now i don't really think he's doing that well and my a lot of my aunts and uncles live near him and i have one aunt that really looks after him a lot but uh my great grandfather was put in a nursing home when he was a hundred and three and uh died six weeks after they put him in the home uh_huh uh_huh but i just don't think that nursing homes really do a very good job uh_huh uh_huh but i don't i mean at least i mean i think some nursing homes do that but i think a lot of nursing homes really uh are guilty of neglect uh_huh well julie uh are you in a situation where you'd soon need to deal with uh special care for elderly uh_huh uh_huh is he able to uh still do everything himself pretty well oh yeah yeah uh_huh yeah and i'm sure that kind of thing would influence your grandfather's feelings because uh i you know i think for a lot of people it really is the decision of do they still have some of their life left and and for for i'm sure a lot of people going into a nursing home it's like saying my life is over and i'm just here for the rest of the stay and so i you know i guess most of the time when i think about somebody going into a nursing home it's more a case of where they are not able to look after their day to day needs yeah they have can look after a lot of things but there's some of the day to day needs that they just are not able to deal with physically anymore uh i know my none of my grandparents were in a nursing home they generally were able to have someone care for them at home and they died but they were all goodness younger than your grandparents like they were in their eighties that type of thing uh but i did uh you know i guess uh when i think nursing home i do think of people that are not able to do take care of themselves physically uh and that's that's difficult part because i think what they often get used as is uh almost like a very high level or long term care for uh similar to a hospital uh i know like here in [saskatchewan] we have our hospital care the care actually for the older people graded in level in four levels and a level four type of care would be someone that really requires long term hospital care generally are not able to look after themselves to very to a very great extent physically often times they even have mental difficulty with [senility] or alzheimer's disease or those or or physical and mental handicaps uh you know where they really require twenty four hour supervision of some kind even though it may be minimal and uh but i think that it can be helpful in that uh it gets people the level of physical care they need uh yeah i and i think it happens more in areas where it's uh i guess uh a broad social medical system where uh you know there's government medical care and that kind of thing if it's the lot where it's funded by the individuals and and i guess that's sort of my lack of understanding i think that a majority of the places in the u s uh you know there is some government aid available but the majority of it is to the availability of the individual to pay and uh if you're not able to look after yourself then you have to rely that's right that's right you know what what uh what do you think is important if you were uh i don't know how how old you are but if you had if you had uh parents say or or or grandparents whatever it is uh who were ready who who you thought might benefit from a nursing home what do you think you would look for huh yeah yeah huh well my uh uh my wife's grandmother is in a nursing home in uh minnesota and we go there uh once a year we see we tend to see her there cause we're in boston so we're pretty far away when we visit minnesota though we go to see her and it seems uh i mean the the environment there i don't know too much about it but it it seems nice enough uh it it's hard at least half of the residents i would say are not not mentally sound so it's hard to tell how much of that rubs off on those who are struggling to to retain uh [clarity] say uh you know yeah well i i i don't know we we also my wife and i uh uh volunteer to go to a uh nursing home that's just a mile from our house we uh she goes more often than i we used to go once a month once every two months to visit some of the patients there and we'd take we have a two year old son and so we sometimes we'd take him with us and uh there i would say it's the same thing it's it's a nice uh relatively nice environment but again um it must be depressing for the people who who are who are just essentially not able to take care of themselves in their own house but but certainly uh certainly have are have [retained] all of their uh mental skills and so on it's must be depressing to to walk walk the halls and see and see all these other people who really don't know where they are i think yeah i think they're relatively respectful yeah and and concerned that in as much as they can be i i think sometimes you know i've noticed uh people asking for uh some of the patients asking for things uh just [repetitively] and but things that are not reasonable and so at some level the the the uh i'm sure that the that the uh the staff learn what's normal for this person and so it looks to me like maybe their not catering to this person's needs is really because this person is just you know is just in a state where they don't really need what they think they need you know oh yeah yeah i'll tell you one thing though that'll that that i i saw that was really nice we saw a husband and wife we used to see a husband and wife in there uh together and they were in the same room which not all husband and wives were but these two were and when you walked into their room they had brought all their furniture from their house and so yeah you walked in there and it didn't look like uh you know how you you walk into some rooms and there's it's completely generic there's nothing maybe a picture or two that belongs to that person and that's it but this room on the other hand you know they got rid of all of the sort of standard issue beds and [dressers] and this and that and they had all their stuff from their house and it looked like uh it must have been it was nicer to walk in there and to talk to them and it must also give them a sense of uh uh security and and uh and and you know uh yeah huh yeah huh temporary i that that's that's new to me i right right bye so we're uh our [discussion's] about uh the care of the elderly uh well i actually my dad's my dad's almost ninety and he lives by himself and he's in good shape uh but uh some friends of mine have uh gone through this i think i'd look for a home where they got a lot of attention and uh where they did some things to try to keep them um mentally alive and where there was uh caring and [compassionate] where there were caring and [compassionate] people uh operating it do you have any experience with this yourself uh_huh uh_huh from the lack of stimulation you mean do you think that in the case of the one that you've actually had some experience with that the people who operate it seem to have what you'd perceive of as genuine concern uh_huh yeah yeah it it's possible i was thinking also that there'd be there could be a fair burn out factor um in just having to respond to people's needs where the needs are sometimes depending on the person not going to be what we would perceive of as rational need uh_huh uh_huh so it gives them a sense of identity yeah i i think part of what you're saying matches what i have read i used to initially think that the only people who went into such [residences] were people who uh were adequately [deficient] in their abilities uh physical or mental that they couldn't take care of themselves but i also know a couple of people whose parents have gone into such things because i think they provide um a lot of social activities uh the one of my friend's parents who went in because she had largely lost her abilities and she was in there for awhile when they were away on vacation uh and well i think it i think it was sort of on the grounds that they were considering whether she would live there and i feel like the whole vocabulary of this is very loaded if you think of words like like put her in there and there there's so much do you know anyone that uh is is in a nursing home or has ever been in one uh_huh well i'm trying to think my uh uh wife's grandmother had alzheimer's and they were going to put her into a a nursing home and uh they when they put her in she had all kinds of trouble and the nursing home made them come and take her back because she was being a a you know a a [nuisance] or worse than a [nuisance] i mean she sort of went you know bananas and they couldn't couldn't deal with her so i guess you need to uh know whether it's a you know a no deposit no return kind of thing whether yeah right right my grandmother actually was in a a nursing home that uh there was a retirement hotel and then a uh there was some sort of full time care place that was also associated with it so for uh the first few years she had her own apartment and you know made her own meals sometimes but could could also go and eat someplace else and then uh as she became less able to take care of herself then she moved into this other part that was able to uh provide full time care and uh she didn't have to do anything anymore but my experience has been that most people that move into nursing homes die very quickly and that's i don't know whether that's because they you know sort of give up hope once they get in there or what the the reason is but i think the average length of time that somebody lives in a nursing home is only like six months or something yeah right yeah if if you can take care of yourself at all or have someone that can take care of you then you stay where you are then you only go there as a last resort or people send you there as a last resort uh_huh right right yeah i guess right when you need it you need it i guess right yeah sure and you probably if it were you you probably wouldn't want someone choosing a place for you to live based on lowest price yeah well maybe that's the purpose of the nursing home is to have them go someplace where they can see that it's not worth continuing yeah right yeah i've known quite a few people that have uh gone to retirement communities i don't know if they have them back there but here in california and in no but i my grandparents were looking into it before so i know what they've said uh_huh oh they thought it was too much of a bother right if they're equipped too to handle the kind of patients you're going to have you know put in there too because i know my grandparents wanted to have some independence still they wanted some place they can go and have their meals and a nurse on staff just in case they needed her but they wanted to be independent as well have their own room uh_huh well a lot of it's probably to do with the fact that people go to it because they need help they need health care so they're already ill before they go that's probably a large factor uh_huh right right that's what my grandparents it was just so that the rest of the relatives would have peace of mind knowing that if anything happened there was somebody there for them so that was their thinking somebody who would know what to do in the event of an emergency and also so they could find someplace that they enjoyed while they still had choices to make so they wouldn't be stuck going into just whatever nursing home was available at the time i guess that's a problem too for people wait lists and all that uh you can't always get in when you want too and of course you can't just sit around and wait yeah and the money is also another issue how you're going to pay for it at that stage of life you only have so much money left and i guess it's not exactly fair for the younger family members to have to put it in their savings i mean it is kind of fair but it's also not fair because they have their own children to raise so it's another problem right right so it it's just so complicated anymore i think people [outlive] their savings and with medicine being the way it is you're [extending] life where sometimes the quality of living has gone down and they're not necessarily enjoying life anymore it's just a shame that's the way it has to be i think the retirement home [idea's] a nice idea to go and find older people and with similar interests and someplace to stay and cause like if your spouse died all alone it'd be nice to go someplace with people similar to you to have friends okay well uh just briefly uh i worked in a nursing home so i kind of know from way back uh how things used to be run and i think there has been definite changes of nursing homes but i think uh if i had to personally put one of my parents in a nursing home they would have to be pretty bad off to where i couldn't take care of them at all it would be something that you know i would certainly if they're forgetting things or whatever i'd prefer to have them at home or have them in what they call now home care where somebody comes in and they cook meals and they clean their house for them that kind of thing so they still have their own independence and not reliable you know they don't have to be in a nursing home situation but uh i don't think the nursing homes when i was working in them were very much [understaffed] very much uh in need of good personnel uh i think the patients weren't given the quality of care that i wouldn't have you know i look at it and say thank god i got out of that kind of situation but they they were not given the time and they were not given the money basically to staff appropriately people to help and i can remember lifting a patient all by myself simply because there was not another person to help it's either leave the patient in bed all day long or get them up and i would have preferred to get them up than to leave them in bed all day but uh uh so i think nursing homes are have changed i'm not quite sure but hopefully they have uh_huh yeah sure uh_huh sure yeah i i think that's that can happen and i think in the nursing home that i worked for i wasn't quite sure of it but i'm sure that some of the patients were uh given medication to keep them in uh quiet and and yeah yeah and they would just lay all day long and uh the ones they also put mentally ill patients in the same they were not on the same you know ward but they they were in the same nursing home so that these mentally ill patients could walk into where the other uh older people that were in there for reasons of uh you know age uh the mentally ill patients could walk right in into the rooms or do whatever they wanted to basically because if you weren't there to watch them and keep them in their own wing they could they had freedom to just walk around and a lot of them were i think there was a couple that were [schizophrenic] and i remember one time watching one of the uh [schizophrenic] patients actually go out on i don't know what they call it a binge or whatever you want to say it she grabbed a hold of this and it was kind of funny when i looked back at it but i mean i remember the patient getting very upset that woman actually pulled uh the other person's hair i mean she just came up right behind him and pulled his hair you know and it was a guy that was just really upset i mean he said what the hell are you think you're doing you know and i laughed at it then but then i'm thinking god you know if i had to put my parents in that nursing home i wouldn't want them there so i think there's laws now that kind of protect that nursing homes either have to keep the mentally ill totally away from these people and not in the same type of facilities even though they're aging mentally ill they are still mentally ill and a lot of these older people have their you know they're not insane or anything like that they don't have these tendencies to to [lash] out but seeing that kind of made me think twice about jeez i wouldn't put my mother father in that nursing home at all a small town yeah yeah i don't know i don't know i i kind of look at it this way i think if you have a big city area i think there's more people to keep watch on it and yeah yeah and you have more competition and i think nursing homes have to be better than when there's one nursing home for a whole community and this is back in nineteen seventy seven that i worked there and i look back at it and say jeez you know it would have to be awfully bad for me to put my parents in there but my grandmother uh later on got cancer and uh could no longer well actually she uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah i guess i haven't had that much experience i've only seen like my great grandparents in a nursing home but i have an aunt who lived on her own until she was well in her nineties and then she she got sick and she ended up in nursing home and my parents went to visit her and it got to the point where the it seemed like the nursing home didn't want to deal her anymore and so they gave her drugs to keep her asleep nice [sedative] state uh_huh yeah to be violent was this in a big town or a little town oh really because it seems like the small town nursing homes there's a lot more personal attention uh_huh you have more options uh_huh okay uh i haven't been in this situation yet you know my my parents are not quite at that age yet so i haven't no so i haven't uh really been in that situation although they are thinking about my grandmother but uh but that's really about it how about you have you been in that situation yet uh_huh did it really yeah oh no that's sad yeah oh okay i'm sure they were yeah uh_huh ah yeah oh um yeah uh_huh yeah and i'm sure it's it's expensive yeah yeah yeah my my grandmother is not in a nursing home but she's in a oh they're like uh they're apartments for senior citizens and she loves that because they arrange activities for them all day long and then they have uh where the bus picks them up and takes them where they need to go and she she she really does love that but she's just concerned about in the future you know that she she knows it's not going to be like that all the time and she's just wondering well what's going to happen to me and and i you know it's i guess it's so normal to start to wonder about that even if she doesn't need that but you know she's kind of asking questions about what well what's going to happen this can't last forever and so yeah yeah she can but i i think it is also cafeteria style because i i really i i i doubt if she rarely cooks for herself so uh because i i remember her in her letters telling me she'll go downstairs for coffee or something to eat so i'm assuming it's something like that too so uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh and she lives by herself too she seems to like it and uh my husband's grandmother is well she lives she lives in a house on her own and she doesn't really need the care or anything like that but she has her own home and she's doing really well i'm really proud of her she's doing really well so we haven't had to do anything but then again she has a lot of support so i mean she's got her mother in town too and things like that so hopefully we won't need to go that route yeah they're not quite elderly huh uh_huh uh not for my parents but i i was around uh two sets of grandparents uh quite a bit we we put one i put one grandfather in a rest home and that killed him well yeah kind of well there was some other things involved but it before he was really active and the there was some you know he lost his drivers license and i couldn't get around and wasn't able to do some things and so we ended up just having to put him in a rest home and he just kind of became a vegetable and died so but that was a long time ago that was uh back in like seventy three so uh i think the way they did things were a lot different back then and uh my grandmother his his wife uh we also put her in a rest home she was in a rest home and then she was back out because she didn't really need to be there and uh had a physical had a good physical therapist at that place and they worked with her and got her walking and got her kind of taking care of herself and so she was able to come back home and then she had to go back in a couple of times but mostly it was just because she kind of gave up and they got her going again so i guess as far as looking i said as what you're looking for i think you need to look for an active uh an interactive staff somebody who is willing to work with uh you know work with a patients and do do things with them and treat them treat like they're it it is it is expensive uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh when she can't take care of herself uh_huh now uh_huh does she have a is it like a kitchenette type apartment where she can fix her own food if she wants to or she can go down to the cafeteria uh_huh in fact i uh_huh yeah i i really like that concept they've they have a few of those well quite a few of those places like that here in utah and you know couples can you know husband and wife can can live there too or or whatever i and and then and yet they have their their friendships and relationships and the you know of getting together and eating together and all of that i i think it really takes uh you know looking more at the people than even really the facilities uh_huh yeah yes well i i think that that's the thing that's a little bit scary you know a little bit tough about putting them in a rest home is it's it's almost like that you know they say putting them out to pasture and some some of the people that were there with my grandmother were really active they they wanted to do things they didn't you know they didn't want to go down and play bingo or uh you know play with the oranges um what is your experience been with but do you have elderly relatives that live with you or have lived with your parents or something like that uh_huh oh gosh and they gave it to her anyway we had my grandfather had alzheimer's disease and my grandmother kept him at home as long as she could actually my parents and my uncle and aunt who tried to convince them to go into like an old age community where he could have gotten care and she could of had help with somebody cleaning and things like that and she refused she she just didn't want to do it she felt uh i don't know maybe too much guilt or something uh_huh and so eventually they were forced to put her in one yeah well my grand father you know eventually completely lost control type of things i i mean i don't know if he ever really got violent but they put him in a nursing home and actually the problem that they had with him was more with the hospital the the nursing home you know some day he had a fever or something so they sent him to a hospital which is what they seem to routinely do which i think is ridiculous too you know because they might not be really be sick and at the hospital they um did an [electrocardiogram] and decided that he had a heart problem and uh you know you know he was very old he had alzheimer's he had been like a vegetable for a year and the hospital said oh we have to put in a [pacemaker] and you know wanted to approval for the it and all this sort stuff and eventually you know the whole family is in an uproar discussing it and some of these said well yeah they should do it and others said it's ridiculous this man's you know his body finally wants to die just let him die and um eventually the at the they said no to the doctor and they found out it wasn't even his [electrocardiogram] it it was some other patient you know by the time he had been sent back to the nursing home and under care there but oh it's horrible but sometimes you just can't keep the person at home they're just you know oh i felt went to visit my grandfather one time in the nursing home and i said never again i said i just can't go uh_huh but i had a cousin of mine that was in a different nursing home which was sort of nicer you know and until really close to the end she was able to go out and take walks and things and they took her outside and in some ways i think it might of even been better or i say cousins like my grandmother's cousin but i had been really close to her and it's only the thing for her it might of even been better because she used to live in an area that when she moved down there was mostly elderly people well not you know it was like a community of apartments that were mostly elderly when she moved there she might have been like sixty it wasn't you know like ancient but you know older and then that community for some reason started getting the apartments were fairly low income i guess and started being bought out by families and things and she instead of having fewer and fewer friends and people just she she she used to say to me at when she was ninety two or something at the time say um you know i just i all my friends have died off i have nothing to do i'm bored you know i walk over to the store i walk back someone comes and picks me up and brings me to the community and so when she went to a nursing home in the beginning i think she kind of liked it she did art work there she did it was almost a progressive type nursing home uh_huh yeah then you just can't get better uh_huh uh_huh well i'm sure does the medical care in nursing is typically less than in but are they supposed to give as much help as you know a jeez uh_huh at the second one oh my that's horrible had they checked into these nursing homes much before they put her in it or they just sort of i mean i it's sometimes hard to even get places in there you're lucky if you get a spot uh_huh oh so you probably don't have too much choice uh_huh but really it's pitiful often times i've gone into nursing homes where you know they have like a central area where they take the people to and all you do is just sort of sit there like you know almost like they're mentally retarded patients or something and some of them you know they're just sort of sitting in the wheelchair and sleeping or whatever and it's it's heart breaking you know and i i feel like you know what have i moved into and and they're you some of them i think just needs stimulation yeah well i've never been to a mental hospital right like you expect from the movies of mental hospitals like uh oh gosh yeah because the i mean the poor man too he could get really cold he could that's crazy but i think they're almost i mean i can't imagine working in a nursing home like that i'd be there because it must be so depressing but you know when i see them i don't know that i could you know when i think of my parents who fortunately shouldn't be close to getting there yet but i don't you know i think of having to make the decision as to put them into a place like that or not it's horrible i guess i would try and have somebody at the house as long as they were healthy enough but sometimes they're not i don't know are you you know where have the old days gone where people just sort of died of something in their family houses and they're you know people are [stabbed] and it's not just torture uh_huh uh that's interesting because it's my mother's parents well actually my father's parents both of them sort of you know they just died of something um but my grandmother you know in my grandmother's case which is very sad she fell she came into new york to visit and she fell at the airport going down some steps and spent you know six months in the hospital but it is was still it it it wasn't you know the same as a nursing home type of thing yeah no that was that was horrible it was and she never even got to see her family that she came into visit they no they came to the hospital but i mean she came in no no she came in for a [pleasurable] visit and fell and cracked her [skull] open and that was sort of it was terrible but um my it was really just my grand father i guess and this one elderly cousin of mine that went into nursing homes but it's just a scary thought every time i certainly don't want to be like that some day okay uh not with my parents although my parents are now in their early seventies and uh fortunately they have to this point been very physically healthy and very self sufficient and they really look after themselves and i think considered what they want done as they get older and may be less able well the it's more that they have when they retired and we are from south dakota so they retired from the rural farming community into [sioux] falls which is the biggest city in the state and set themselves up near medical facilities and i i can not say that i can tell you what they have decided as to okay because i think some of that is that maybe you think ahead somewhat but you do not uh book those facilities yeah uh_huh uh_huh well have they do they recognize the coming and try to make the decision themselves uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah that is one of the options that uh that is so related to the family situation of the children and uh you know i guess not that it has happened in our case in my family because it well i have seen it in their generation it what you do is first see your parents go through it with their parents and i would say at this point um you can say i have been through all that because i have no no grandparents left uh and it's you see all the different options and you see that they all can work uh uh_huh well if they are uh that's the thing if they are physically able it is a much more pleasant more caring uh situation to be in the home of one of the children uh the other side of that is that if the children are no where near where the uh parents had spent their life then in a sense you you have no friends at the new place uh in this that you are unless that you develop new friends and uh the best thing is kind of a combination where uh the at least one of the children if not several are uh uh back in the area where the parents uh had spent their years and then yeah uh_huh uh_huh yes well it's uh it's not an easy choice because it's uh but it's something that we all face and we uh yeah but the way society changes it makes it so that uh what was acceptable for our parents and their parents may not be as workable for us it it's certainly a problem as we as people live older of course as long as you can live a healthy life uh the uh the care is is not near the issue it becomes when you start having the physical problems yes okay do you have anybody uh in your family that you ever had to put in a nursing home or yeah was that here in texas right did did you have to put her in yourself or i understand understand well my uh aunt that i kind of grew up with uh was in a nursing home she did have alzheimer's and we had to put her in the nursing home because of that but uh this was up in uh milwaukee wisconsin and uh it was a situation that's probably as good as you're going to get uh it's associated with uh our church and uh what they do my mother is in is a [terrace] which it's called [terrace] and uh these are condominiums you buy into when you know whenever you know you're sixty or whatever you know whenever you want to buy into this thing and these are very nice condominium things and uh the idea is once you are in this program you are taken care of the rest of your life and they they have a nursing home if you can't maintain your own apartment or your condominium uh you automatically go into that and from there they also have a health care area if you can't you know if you need more intensive care and uh even the best there is isn't a nice situation with uh like you say when you get to the point where uh well she was ninety four and she was uh in the nursing home and the health care facility for i would guess about a year's time but uh it's a hard decision to make i tell you it's uh that's that was really the and that it gets very hard and on anybody uh i'd go up there and visit and and she would recognize me but as soon as i was out down the hall she didn't even know i was there and uh it's it's sad you know it yeah well it's but what's really hard is the differences of care you know if you aren't fortunate enough to have a situation like with my mother right now she's got terrible arthritis in her knees and it's probably not real long where she won't be able to you know get along on her own and she probably you know hopefully it will be a number of years but she's seventy nine years old right now and now she understands that someday you know if she can't handle her apartment that uh you know she'll have to go in the nursing home but if you have situations where you don't have that kind you know it's you're confronted with it and if you look at all the different nursing homes uh that are out there it it is kind of frightening some of these places uh it's like put them in a [cubbyhole] and you know they don't they're they're more caretakers kind of it's almost like putting a dog in a kennel you know some of these places they stink and they're it it's a tough decision and you know if people don't have the resources for uh it's i i don't know about in arizona but around here i understand it's it's anywhere from about twenty three hundred to three thousand dollars a month in a a nursing home right yeah well and that's the other thing that helps is that you have a relative a close relative that will look in on them okay uh okay one of the things they said about how you feel about putting an elderly person in a nursing home um i've had that situation presented to me personally about three years ago when i had to put my place my dad in a nursing home and um he had alzheimer's and he uh wandered and i had to put him in there for his own safety because i could not i couldn't care for him here any longer i tried as hard as i could yes and uh i had to work and he would get up in the middle of the night and he could get out and wander down the street and i was afraid for his safety um and so i had to make that decision um yes i did i checked into the facilities the other thing that i did and i recommend other people to do this same thing sometimes is to check and with people that have family members in that nursing facility you know see if you can find out who who has a family member there or if you go and check it stop and ask somebody when you see them you know do you have you know what relative do you have here uh how is the care are you satisfied um it took me quite a while to choose yes very much so there was a large range of costs uh and the cost didn't necessarily reflect the care the cost some of the costs went for other amenities for those that were uh up and ambulatory like really nice dining rooms and you know uh things like that but that was for one segment but then the other segment that needed full nursing care i didn't feel i got the benefit of the extra cost uh_huh right and you would want the maybe the uh extra amenities you know like the very nice dining room and you know the freedom of the grounds to be nice so they can walk out there and you know activities she would uh organized activities and things like that right yeah each state is different but uh here in texas there are certain you know requirements some of them yes there was a waiting list um in fact i had one when i first started i went through a series of see i had my dad in two different nursing homes when i first started he was in one that wasn't total total patient care but where he could be watched but he had the freedom to wander around and and help caring for himself but he could do you know he could feed himself he could do things for himself um and i had him on a waiting list there then he got so that he they could not handle him at that level and they didn't have a higher level at that facility which i really didn't think of you know when i checked him in uh so then i had to go and i had to start all over again uh medicaid will under certain circumstances medicare will again under you have to be [discharged] from the hospital and for so many days uh medicare will like i said under certain circumstances my dad did not was not eligible for medicaid and medicare would not cover alzheimer's so that yeah it almost goes by case by case it is it it does and well how do we feel about the nursing home right um i have a dad eighty nine years old and uh he has [parkinson's] and there are three of us children my sister brother and i and we decided that we could not live with him going to a nursing home and so for two years we took turns my brother and i live here my sister lives in [longview] going back and forth up there helping her she has him in her home and uh we just decided we couldn't put him in the nursing homes but i decided i couldn't keep on with that and now she won't put him in the nursing home i think she's getting close but the problem with these nursing homes is the cost and uh he has a house and since he has a house it would cost oh i don't know something like two thousand dollars i think to keep him and uh uh i really need to know more about it oh ooh yes yeah is she still mobile though oh really right they become a vegetable more or less and uh they don't they sedate them and forget them uh_huh well it really is uh my dad can't even feed himself and um he still you know has his pretty his mind pretty much and that's why we can't put him there i guess if he didn't have his mind you know it would be easier to do that but yeah well hopefully they're going to clean these things up i don't that they will right yeah i guess one problem that they're having in these homes is is help they don't have enough help to go around yeah i have a friend here that i think her mother's like ninety seven or something and uh she's been well pleased with the care of course she goes every day and i think as long as you go every day to see about them they get better care uh_huh yeah right well i do you know anything about the um qualifications uh i mean of knowing qualifications of the nursing homes uh_huh no no they're really not and i think as long as they're is a family member to go in and see about them they get better care uh_huh right uh_huh well that's kind of the way my dad was when he had to leave his home he he left my home and went to my sister's and of course you know as far as hi hi [bridget] i'm [gunner] i'm here in dallas oh you are oh okay oh okay yeah sure am okay well uh i think there uh you know need to have uh some some means of taking care of them in a in a reasonable and uh uh i guess respectful way and uh it's uh i guess my biggest problem is that uh they seem to uh be you know put in nursing homes and just forgotten about that's you know have you uh ever spent much time or worked around one or anything oh yeah is there uh uh well shoot i guess there's no uh medicare i don't think pays for it uh um i don't know it's just the whole thing is just kind of amazing to me uh uh_huh yeah and a lot of other countries though uh uh you know basically like family takes them and uh i guess take them for as long as they are you know as long as they live well i yeah i do too um especially now that all the you know everybody is getting older and living longer and uh you know it's it's there's going to be more and more folks yeah uh_huh yeah um yeah that is uh that's difficult i tell you uh_huh yeah yeah um yeah it sure is i know like uh uh lot of places it's like hundred dollars a day you know i know but uh is it i don't even know yeah no not really my parents are still pretty young my father is forty five mother about the same age yeah um so it really hasn't been an issue for me how about yourself uh_huh uh_huh right have they done anything with uh supplemental insurance for that or uh_huh yeah well i've heard about this uh insurance i was wondering because it seems like what i've heard is usually that is uh kind of thing where they cancel you a couple of years after you get into the home so it tends to be kind of useless anyway uh_huh right yeah uh_huh yeah right yeah i know it seems to me that for the kind of money a nursing home typically costs you can maybe even afford to to have a nurse come into the home periodically yeah dollars a year at that point you know it seems like you could hire somebody part time yeah certainly more [dignified] than uh than warehousing them right yeah it's it's kind of scary because it seems like uh you know a lot of people you know have the budgets of these places has gotten so tight and uh you know they just really can't take care of them very well the budget and staffing especially if it's state run uh_huh yeah it seems like every time i see something on television it's not good yeah yeah it seems that way yeah i sure do they're they're pretty healthy everybody in my family seems to die when they're they're in good health but they get to be like seventy or eighty and all have [aneurysms] just drop dead yeah i think you know that's pretty good way to go i'd be happy yeah that's the worst part um seems to me that a lot of times people wind up in nursing homes who tend to survive major things like strokes or uh heart attacks that sort of thing and then you know they can't really help themselves so they have to be cared for right yeah i mean it seems like they'd almost just doing better off just withholding care to some some degree yeah yeah well it seems to me it's a little bit easier with the elderly because you know at least they've lived a life and yeah yeah it's something it's something like fifty percent or greater of all health care expenses are in the last five years of your life so uh_huh right uh_huh right yeah seems like uh unfortunately many of those people who are put through those if they'd uh let their wishes be known ahead of time frequently they wouldn't have been interested in [heroic] measures and if that's the case then uh_huh yeah well i don't know my wife's a medical student and uh you know it's a journal of the a m a and the american medical news thing and it seems like that physicians unless they're in writing or video tape or something you couldn't take care of her anymore huh yeah that's rough isn't it uh_huh wow yeah that's really hard my grandma is uh just turned ninety and she's still on her own and she's down in phoenix and i don't know what we'll do when she can't take care of herself her her son my dad is dead and she has a daughter my aunt uh who lives in another state but uh she uh well i'm the uh yeah i'm my sister and i are the are her only grandkids so i don't i don't know what's going to happen with her but she's amazingly strong uh yeah but i don't know i guess uh most of us uh probably end up there sooner or sooner or later oh my gosh uh_huh uh_huh boy that's amazing that's a lot of stress uh_huh uh_huh amazing uh_huh every night wow that's dedicated oh i see huh yeah it's a tough emotional uh issue yep yeah that's tough uh_huh uh_huh [whoo] i remember one time i was uh in a mexican restaurant here in seattle and uh i i was sitting alone in this booth reading and eating and i overheard some folks in the next booth who i think some of them worked at the restaurant they were a little younger than me and they were talking about the differences between i don't know whether they were from mexico or or but they were you know definitely latin american they were talking about the differences between uh how uh our country cares for old people and what it was like back home yeah and they were just appalled that anybody could put somebody in a you know in a rest home yeah they weren't course they weren't talking about uh where you know you're absolutely unable to care for them but it was it you know they would come from large extended families where you know the the old people were uh were at home yeah and uh most people don't want to live that way today in this country yeah god yeah i don't know i and i've been single so long i don't even know if i could handle living with a wife i'm probably [incorrigible] yeah yeah i do have actually as a matter of fact uh and i'm i'm not sure how it would relate to the big city but there are certainly ways and humane and nice ways of handling care for elderly i come from a very small community in northern iowa and the churches have [banded] together and built and staffed a retirement home and the care of course is is wonderful because these are all people who care and every week the churches a different uh groups of the churches volunteer and come in and maybe have bingo day or special celebration day or help somebody with their birthday or whatever and it makes the care very [personalized] of course but since it is a small community everybody knows everybody and so there there would be absolutely zero chance of any abuse yeah it's it's a real problem uh it is a real problem and i know that everybody hates the idea of going to one of these but i also think that it is a choice that we have all made in our lives as we have drawn back and [internalized] ourselves as opposed to being a part of the community uh it used to be that neighbors looked out for you the churches looked out for you but many of us don't belong to churches anymore and so therefore we don't have this broadened community of caring people no no absolutely not you know i presume when when the time comes for something to happen to me that i will probably go back to iowa to be in that community but uh but it's the type of thing where i think we should look at some things that are working and try to use them in the cities also i mean is there some reason why some of the churches here could not band together and do a similar situation yes and actually a great deal more money right but you know if my if all of my kids still live here and i go back to iowa of course there's no convenience so probably it would [behoove] me to try to start something of this sort here in dallas but uh that's a big job you know uh so many needs are crying the homeless the abused children the the beaten wives you know there's so many things going on that that how do we all of this and maybe that's a part of it maybe maybe what we can do is uh of course this is kind of a far [flung] situation but uh you know they're talking about work fare now in uh wisconsin i believe it is but is there some reason i wonder why we couldn't have some of these people involved in nursing homes so that they didn't have to be so expensive you know if if you've got somebody who is drawing welfare then perhaps that can be quote part of their their payment for their welfare payments yeah because part of the problem now is that it costs so much money to get into a [convalescent] home or or an aged home you know it's almost prohibitive for many persons and uh you know so what do you do does someone go on welfare in order to get in one of those homes or does somebody in the family quit their job so that they can be at home and and but of course that's not always wonderful either because somebody with alzheimer's needs twenty four hour watching and nobody can do that well see i don't have a relative that's made it over sixty one huh_uh but my children's on their father's side have them up into the nineties but uh the only time we came close and we started looking into it was when my grandmother became senile she start senile at fifty and at that time the homes that we were looking for when i was a kid uh my mother i can remember them arguing they couldn't find one that it was either clean enough or they took enough care or there was one thing or another that continuously arguing about it and they ended up keeping her from relative to relative and of course she died when she was fifty nine so it wasn't that long but the few i've been in they have varied tremendous so uh oh well we were talking about it the other day because a girl at work has got that problem right now and uh she keeps saying she's never going to put her mother in one and i says hey look go around look at them they're totally different than your concept of what it was years ago and i says i don't know what condition your mother's in which i didn't but you do have the choice now and i says what is your mother going to do all day long while you're out here at work i says think about what she would like to have because a lot of them hey they might be bedridden but at least they've got company and people their own age to talk to to keep them home what do you've got they're sitting there like they're they [vegetate] is what happens uh_huh see you're not aware of the the horror stories and things like that that i've grown up with and i mean i'm talking about horror stories and they're still out there i mean it's it's not something that's been eliminated there are lots of homes out there that just literally people drop them off forget about them and they change hands i mean i'm not saying they don't investigate they investigate it's great when they're there but unless they keep current with it and they changes hands it goes either direction because they're relying on a lot of people that hey they're like any other business if you lose a lot of your customers they get into a financial bind and people say well you know they're a nursing home but i say hey it doesn't work that way they're a business well like my neighbor she runs down here to this nursing home down here and she just point [blank's] tired of the pressure and responsibility of working as a nurse in a hospital she admits it she's tired of it so she works down here she's a nurse she's qualified but she's fifty oh she's in her early fifties somewhere and working down here at the nursing home keeps her hand in there she gets good money for it and she enjoys the old people you know it's it's just that simple for her but uh and she says it's hard they get cranky they get obstinate but she feels the same way i do i would rather depending on the situation i would rather be able to put myself or anybody else in a nursing home if i was able to get close enough to them so they don't feel lost now see my grandmother she wouldn't go in a nursing home besides being scared and everybody else didn't want her she was terrified of one literally and positively terrified because she remembers the old stuff uh_huh oh oh she drives oh yeah they've got nothing or they get on the telephone all day long but i mean this is one area where i'd like to see social security or the government step in and take people over a certain age or with handicaps or something and take their social security away from them i mean give them you know money at a certain point and putting them in homes to where they can get something fed back to them in other words people talk to and become still human beings because you see people down in south dallas and every where else sitting in a house they don't know anybody they're scared to death of [robbers] they're scared to death of everything they hardly have enough food to even eat on i mean you're not living yeah i mean hey i'm putting all this money out to the government why can't they put it out there rather than in the federal prisons um but you know you see pictures on t v i mean i wish i had enough money to go down there and do something but you know i don't know they if they can have day care why can't they put elderly people care and put them in a home to where it's regulated well i certainly um can appreciate the patience and the you know energy and money and time and effort it would require for someone to you know take care of their elderly parent or whatever in their home i think that you know would definitely be [preferable] if the person is you know able to do that i think sometimes people take on i know i have one friend who is taken on more than she can handle you know with her her mom needing constant supervision and for one person to be able to cope with that you know is really difficult but i know it's hard not to feel guilty you know to put somebody in a nursing home i if i suppose if you could find a nursing home that you thought really comfortable you know that they were getting adequate care but i think that's probably pretty hard to do at times i've not ever been put in this position i personally would have a real hard time taking care of my father he's getting up there but he's very difficult to live with and i think that would be a real consideration in in um entering him into our family unit here you know so there's a lot of factors involved well i think i would in some ways have to decide how much personally you know i was able and willing to handle and how much it would affect the rest of my family because i have two small children and um we don't have a real large house if you had a lot of money and you were able to you know have like a little separate wing or something where i wouldn't have to constantly be having my children you know be quiet and go away and that kind of thing to accommodate an elderly person i think you know just the medical aspects too would be a big question how much um it would require you know in terms of nursing care at home and i know that there is often times insurance companies won't even pay anything to the families for doing things if they were in a nursing home would cost you know a hundred times more so that's a consideration too but i don't know it would be a really rough choice to make depending on the parent and their personality and you know your own family and what's going on with i'm home all day anyway right now with young kids but if i was working full time and had to give up a career that would be another you know problem too but um the only people i've seen is my husband's grandmother has been in a nursing home for several years i know that uh there's been a lot of questions from other family members as to whether she's getting enough attention and whether they just kind of let her sit there and roll her over once in a while it it's really tragic to go in those places so so um i think i would uh look for a place that definitely had the physical [attributes] and it wasn't a [sterile] kind of environment but had a comfortable feeling to it that respected uh that you seem to see some respect for peoples privacy and the attitude that the staff would have towards the patients i i was visiting a friend in the hospital and there was a nurse screaming at an older man that was a head injury unit and he had apparently wet his pants and they had a blanket [draped] over him and the blanket had either fallen to the floor or he had dropped it on the floor and the nurse was just screaming at him about how [obscene] that was or something and i just thought gosh if i walked into a place and i saw a staff member just [berating] or humiliating a patient i'd definitely that would be something i'd really want to be on the look out for um i would hope they would have some consistent staff i know they don't pay that much in a lot of those places and so there's probably a lot of turnover that would be another thing that would be you know something to be important because i think it's confusing particularly if people are in some state of mental you know confusion anyway to have constant new people on staff and having to develop new relationships and oh i don't know what else other than that maybe some place that had activities you know that they could participate in instead of just kind of sitting there watching the wall or something you know talking to other people who had family members there see how responsive the staff was to the things i brought up you know that i thought were important for my family member it would really be hard because when we go to visit i'm sure places have you know their best foot forward kind of thing unless you drop in frequently and kind of get the since of what's going on behind the scenes it would really be hard to know it's kind of similar in away to some of the things you look for in going to try and find day care for your kids you know so uh i'm sure if you have enough money you can find just super care but you know the cost of it is probably just horrendous yeah i think that would be great i had wished often with my husband's grandmother that she had been in a place like that because she had lived alone in an upper story of an apartment building away from even friends not really close by her or a grocery store or anything and i thought she could have lived a a lot longer if she had been in a place where she didn't have to climb up and down the stairs haul groceries and then she would have people to check on her and didn't have to cook because she just got to a point where she wouldn't cook just for herself and then she fell down and nobody knew about it for hours and hours and hours so i think that would be great if i had to choose a place for myself that's definitely i think that kind of atmosphere would be wonderful even i recall where i was living in the college dormitory as a graduate student i thought how how neat you know that you can have a place where you can you know go down together have dinner with other people because if your living alone the isolation and the depression and all those other factors should be taken into consideration too so i thought you know they should have dorms for older people so they had activities going on all the time and you know it was really a much more comfortable lifestyle i could imagine for an older person so yeah i think that would be great if they had places like that huh_uh yeah yeah they had their own privacy yeah huh_uh right yeah yeah i don't know you know how many of those there are but i definitely think it's a great idea to have that kind of thing you know for people i know um in that way too that sometimes the elderly can be more involved with their families they can have their grand kids and that kind of thing over to spend the night or there's a lot more freedom i think instead of just being kind of taken away from all of that and being told where you're going to be and what you're going to do in a nursing home yeah yeah yeah yeah let's hope it's true it is i've i've had a lot of thought thought provoking conversations on the topics huh_uh right right well as the insurance companies get more into this preventative health care i think that will help it just seems very slow that that is happening but uh yeah i definitely think that will help yeah yeah okay well take care thank you well i would i hate to see them being put into a hair or a health facility care environment because they then feel like you know the family has abandoned them is what i get the comments from elderly people that i know that it's happened to and the elderly people that i that are still hanging onto their homes that is their greatest fear is to be put into a a a care facility rather than their families taking them in because the families then seem to neglect visiting them but if that is the case that they have to go to a care facility like that i think that care facility has to be thoroughly investigated as far as the uh medical um evaluation what kind of credentials do the medical people hold uh if they're qualified uh what type of recreation do they have for them uh their food uh situation um the environment that they are exposed to the majority of the time that they're there is it bright and [cheery] and to put them in with people that have the same type of uh life style uh that they would feel more welcome in uh in making new friends because they can relate to certain individuals because of their personalities um so i guess i would like to hear how you feel about it now ray oh my i i see yes he did uh_huh uh_huh that's wonderful that's good so he was very independent wasn't he yes wow that's wonderful sure he it didn't have any [hindrances] for him uh_huh oh bless his heart uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i see sure i understand that uh_huh sure uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right wow i didn't know that they were that uh were you satisfied with uh the facility uh_huh right oh uh_huh so you established a relationship with the uh the personnel there uh_huh uh_huh okay well then you did see some compassion from the people there or were they just very businesslike and perhaps not of that faith okay okay okay yes i see uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right sure right oh yes sure oh absolutely absolutely uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah so he kind of adopted you and your wife uh_huh uh_huh well i'm sure he looks forward to that uh_huh right yeah they're abandoned by their families yeah or they might not have any at all uh_huh uh_huh oh yes uh_huh uh_huh of course yes uh_huh uh_huh like the old indian people used to do uh_huh yeah how long ago was that okay yes but that was uh okay so that was fairly recent and even then a lot of the conditions i think you're right they haven't improved that much yeah uh_huh yeah yeah huh sounds tough yeah right uh_huh oh yeah that's that doesn't seem right does it yeah i you know you walk into one of those places and you basically start to feel depressed because they don't it's almost like they just shove people in there and wait for them to die you know and it's it's really it's a bad problem uh i work at honeywell up here and i was talking to a guy that's actually working toward mobility aids for handicap people and one of the things he's done is interview uh nursing home directors because they're looking for get this they're trying to find out ways to restrain patients so that they don't look like they're [restrained] because apparently the family members who come to visit get upset [understandably] upset when they see that their loved one is in [restraints] you know uh at the same time you have to restrain him because they might hurt themselves they might stand up and not be able to stay stood up or might fall down or whatever so it's an interesting problem that's just one of the many things that you know you have to think about in a nursing home but you know the stuff that you told me is there's no excuse for that you know right stop when they're not on their guard you know oh sure you know it's it's really a good idea to look at places and see what's out there and see what the [modes] of treatment are and and how people act yeah you know it really is you know that brings up a good point i've got a friend of mine up here and we were talking about this because his father is getting to the age where they're going to have to decide what to do and he brought up a real interesting suggestion that works well for families that have a lot of kids in it like i i come from a family that has five kids well the way he said it was our parents spent you know quite a bit of time when we were young taking care of us you know call it call it three years per child now if you have five children that's fifteen years total therefore shouldn't it be right that they should be able to stay with one family member uh in a rotating fashion for fifteen years free of charge there you go it it's essentially repayment yeah that's it but the thing is hold on i got one more thing and i'll let you talk cause we started talking about that you know we started saying well you know some family members might not agree to do that and he said fine let the one who does agree to do it keep him keep the keep the father or mother for a longer time and charge the family member who doesn't cooperate just say basically look uh i'll take care of mom and dad for you but you have to give me a kind of a payment for doing that for you you know so essentially it it [relieved] them of the burden uh and at the same time everybody kind of comes out happy i don't know if that would work but then again it it depends on the family size okay um have you ever had to put one a a family member in a nursing home oh uh_huh oh well my mom is sixty five and she's which i feel is you know quite young still but she's not in the greatest of health and so recently she has been talking a lot about what we would do if we had to put her in a nursing home she's adamant that she does not want to live with any of her children and put that burden on us oh uh_huh uh_huh but their parents are still alive oh my goodness wow oh uh_huh right uh_huh right uh_huh oh oh oh dear uh_huh now how do you go about finding out things like that uh_huh right uh_huh oh that's right uh_huh well that's true that's right oh my boy well uh_huh uh_huh oh well uh_huh well that's what my mom's been saying you know she's been just saving her money and not paying a penny of it but she says my little bit of savings will probably pay for a nursing home for maybe a year and then i'll be on medicaid anyway so she said why don't i go out and and enjoy life while i can and you know when i get to that point of being in a nursing home then maybe medicaid will just have to take care of me but why don't i just enjoy life now i think so yes uh_huh uh_huh oh oh uh_huh that's right uh_huh yeah well it's it's kind of a sad thing to think about isn't it okay so what do you think about uh uh health care for the elderly right that's all all the bills does that include uh nursing home type care just strictly health care right right that's a hundred percent coverage so it's that's good huh um huh right so where does she well uh i guess in terms of where do you is your mother now in a a nursing home right i guess that's the big question is uh what what happens when they begin to get older i have a grandmother and it she is not really uh you know she is getting to the point where she almost can't be in a nursing home she spends some time with my parents some time now she is with an uncle of mine living with them but she requires a lot of attention and she can't really exist on her own any longer and that's that's kind of a difficult situation that that she has to live with one of her children right yeah yeah yeah my uh my grandmother is hers is physically she is in not too bad of shape she is in her upper eighties i guess forgetting in my order but uh she's uh alzheimer's i guess and so her memory is very poor and so she can't really be on her own but she can still do things by herself but you just have to uh kind of direct her um only if i had to yeah it's real hard on both the family and the people i mean yeah yeah how old is she i see yeah well um would like if do you think you're going to have to it's going to come to that yeah i went through this with both my grandmothers we had to get someone to look after them but we were lucky and we found someone to look after them in their home we didn't have to put them in a home yeah yeah well my great grandmother that we had to put in a nursing home because it got to where my grandmother couldn't take care of her after they put her in there with i mean she deteriorated i mean her health really got worse after after a short yeah well that's um i guess references or whatever from other people first of all and then all that you'd have to check i think all the licensing that they go through yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah see that's what it is the people are so old in there that they don't really know what's going on and i think that they can get away with that you have to i think you have to really check into them real closely and then even after you put someone in there then you would want to be able to check up on them on a weekly basis just to make sure that they were [treating] them properly oh that wouldn't be too bad yeah it's a scary thought yeah i think she was like my great grandmother was about she was i think ninety two one of my girl friends her her great grandmother is a hundred and two but she still lives at home with her with her family or whatever yeah no it's a it's a tough decision it's a tough decision to put to put them in there and then uh_huh but just it's a lot of responsibility no ma'am yeah no what um i'm trying to think what else we went through oh and then the medication if they have to have medication that's another thing that that i mean you never really know and you never really feel confident with anything unless you're actually doing it yourself and if they're at a home you don't know that they're being given their medicine uh_huh yeah well it's kind of you know you put them in there someone so someone else can take care of them and then you really wonder you can't feel really confident that they're being taken care of what huh_uh yeah well how do you feel about um putting an elderly family family member in a nursing home uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i agree i it's it's a tough issue i feel like each case probably has to be evaluated individually i feel um i i feel like as families you know we need to take care of the older ones in our families and yet i understand um well we may be facing that with my grandmother she is living near my parents out in california and they this year they moved her into a um retirement apartment complex so she's got part time care but as soon as she needs around the clock care then she's not allowed to live there any more and so we'll have to face the issue of whether she moves in with my mother or they put her into a nursing home and it's it's difficult because i know my mother feels really um torn about it she doesn't want to to put her in a place where she's going to be unhappy lonely or where there's bad care and sometimes you just don't know what the the place is like um i mean you really need to get recommendations i guess from others and um and yet it's a real burden to her to have to to be there all the time or else you know or else like you said you have to hire someone to be in the home it's a tough issue yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh i was thinking you know might i guess i would want to visit the place quite a bit before or something and and talk to the staff see what their attitudes are talk to some of the people that live there and see how they feel about being there um because i've been in different nursing homes where i've [sensed] different [atmospheres] you know often it's it's been negative where and i know that partly can be the attitude of the person if they they feel neglected by their family or whatever or they feel just ready to die and you know tired of feeling not feeling good all the time then they're not going to feel too good but then i've i've been to other places where you know the people have told me um this is a really good place the people here really care about us so yeah yeah yeah well no um but all the years that i've been alive she has for the last thirty years or so it's central california yeah uh_huh well i we're sort of in the middle of it uh last february we brought my mother from florida to up here in texas and so far she has been with us but i really look to the future that it may be occurring uh uh i don't know what i will do i am almost inclined to hire somebody uh to be in our home with her rather than have to put her somewhere you know but well i think partly and it's not me it's the it seems to me the older generation my mother and father and my in laws uh you know the stigma use to be you went there and you died and so they have all kind of right you know i just uh and you try and say they are nice now or or nicer and you know i wouldn't want her in one in florida because i couldn't check on her but if she were in one near here i i would probably be there you know several times per week and i would stand up and scream if i saw things that were you know [improper] or uh you know her care was not have you had that experience yet well oh right it's uh well my father died several years ago and that was you know he had cancer and eventually the hospital comes and says you know your father uh you know medicare says he doesn't need the level of care to be hospitalized so you are going to eventually they will come and tell you will have two days to you know move him somewhere else and that my mother and i needed to uh think what do we want to do at that point we did because he was not yet [comatose] but real close and he lived two weeks in the nursing home so we did do that but uh at that time three and a half years ago my mother was in such a state of depression i didn't think she could handle even if we had full time around the clock care i didn't think emotionally she could handle him being there well it yes that too you know there is no question that uh just moving them about is uh difficult but it really is and it's just uh and i have friends who we are all in the age group where we are thinking about some of these things for our parents and it really is uh with well of course this again was in florida actually the level of care and in fact two that we looked at you know they were all in [mauve] and blue and very elegant looking and so on but i didn't like the fact that they had you know eight patients for one uh you know nurse or one care giver and the one we selected was not nearly as uh up to date however it was clean and the patients were well cared for and i like to think because it had a level of five to one and i felt that that would be better care for my father uh and several of her neighbors and friends oh but you ought to i said i know but we are making this decision and my mom basically let me make the decision so uh and she was pleased with it because he did get uh you know just wonderful care oh absolutely i don't care what you know one of these had a little ice cream parlor and i looked at the manager and i said my father you know will never get out of a bed i don't care about an ice cream parlor you know if you went there and you were in your seventies and well you just went there to uh you know a retirement center yes you could do all that good stuff but this was i wanted him cared for and not left you know if he spoiled his [linens] or something i did not want that you know there what do you do in a hospital work with okay all right right yeah no i haven't either but a lot of my friends and actually my boss had to put his mother in a nursing home and i know just going through it with him i mean it's a real traumatic experience first just even deciding to do it and then i think feeling guilty after you know that it needs to be done you know oh really uh_huh okay that's what i was just going to say if they're out of state you know it's different if they're in the same town i think you have a little more chance to look out for them but then too if you work you know you get there has to be somebody there uh_huh uh_huh oh oh you mean not staying at home and not yeah yeah uh_huh oh yeah well that's it because gee they've got probably a good twenty years to live in some cases if they're healthy you know it would be clean yeah i know and to make sure that there's enough people there to keep everybody like that can you know to be involved instead of just leaving them sit in their room you know uh_huh yeah in fact i used to date a guy that reminds me when i was back in minneapolis but his mother i mean he had she ended up i guess getting it what they now call alzheimer's yeah but to begin with you know when they first i mean she would know us you know and we'd go to visit her but then it would get you know like she didn't really know she didn't know me and then she thought he was a brother you know and it just got steadily worse you know uh_huh and has been independent all their lives and then all of a sudden you know um uh_huh uh_huh just getting used to it oh uh_huh oh uh_huh well that yeah would definitely be a positive part because they'd be around more people and would be easier for them to get and to see those people i guess well i would think that you ought to be in fact i was going to say that i would go at different times of the day not only when they're expecting you to come you know just to see how you know at different time of the day what they do and how they treat them you know uh_huh or is it just because yeah they're having such a hard time adjusting you know uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh that's very spicy too i mean these bell peppers and curry oh that sounds really good huh i guess it was is this dinner time for you all done in advance yeah that's um i uh i'm i'm not that great a cook but i was single until i was thirty so i did cook a little you know uh and i cook a little bit now what i like to do mostly is stir fries and my wife normally says oh tom why why don't you make a stir fry tonight and so we even we just were recently married so we have a stir fry pan sort of like a big wok and we do a lot of um stir fry vegetables it's it's called a stir fry pan and it and it fits right on your uh it fits right on your burner whether it's gas or electric so it's it has a [flatter] bottom than a normal wok does and um normally what what we do is um just you know like two tablespoons of oil maybe sesame oil or some other type of oil than just regular vegetable oil but i will use peanut peanut oil or things and then we just stir fry broccoli and carrots and um green peppers and um maybe put in a little bit of um garlic and ginger uh beforehand that gives uh uh uh [spicier] flavor and then after the stir fry is over just mix in um a little bit of uh sometimes chicken broth and corn starch and soy sauce and that sort of makes a uh a glaze that sticks to the the vegetables i've used you turn them over a lot of times when we do stir fry we just put in [tofu] we don't put in meat cause i guess we're i'm not but uh she likes to watch all the how much red meat and things so we'll do a lot of times vegetarian but it's a real good meal because you have squash and broccoli and uh carrots and celery and green peppers and um oh gee mushrooms it's it's a pretty big and we put that over rice oh you don't oh uh_huh yeah see we never in fact i never had squash growing up my my wife eats more vegetables ate more vegetable than i did growing up i'm i'm from pittsburgh and pittsburgh is a very meat and potato town yeah recipes in pittsburgh [consisted] of red meat and a potato red meat and a potato oh she had all of those types of vegetables see never no vegetables in my family yeah it was really funny well that was a real farm no but i i've i've heard stories uh i've heard stories uh oh this is you shouldn't be talking about this right before while you're fixing dinner that's right you should be careful that's pretty funny but my dad used to tell stories you know about the way they eat chickens but i never we never we lived in the suburbs we we bought everything in a grocery store there was no but it was funny you know it so but when we got married you know a lot more vegetables a lot more you know a lot of changes i think so too but we just went shopping and we came back with uh with uh sweets you know chocolate covered peanuts and uh we came back with sweets we didn't bring all the healthy food back too uh_huh well that's that's supposed to be um the trend of the future but uh the cut back i uh recently was over a friends house that's indian and uh she had brought indian sweets into the office and it was really funny because they were made from yogurt and carrots yeah that was a sweet and i was like ugh this is a sweet oh it is it's a candy i'm like ugh you know indian candy is not very good but everything was and everything you didn't notice it at first but everything was sort of hot everything had a little bit of curry in it it was funny even the sweets did when you first took a bite of them you didn't notice it but then after a couple of minutes you could taste it you know it had that that after taste that very it was a very indian flavor good they didn't have i didn't like her desserts very well they were very yogurt and carrots and [pistachios] [pistachio] nuts and yogurt and it wasn't very good uh_huh yeah well have we done our ten minutes something like that i think we're no normally they just come in and they say you've overextended your your conversation oh okay well that's you'll see it will normally it will come on and it'll say you've over extended your conversation you now have fifteen minutes to fifteen seconds to complete it but uh i've been cut off twice so i just thought in fact i'm just also i'm hearing a [siren] outside i think my my neighbors car must have got bumped you know he has one of those alarms on his car one of the the neighbor has an alarm on a car and it's going off so i was going to go out and see what they were doing okay hey thanks so much uh_huh and you said this was your well you'll you'll get a couple more probably i uh i called yesterday i or friday maybe i talked to somebody that uh i got them on uh during the day it was a housewife and she was home with two kids and while we're talking the kids are screaming in the background you know that they wanted something and they were arguing back and forth and she just kept talking the whole time it was pretty funny okay hey thanks a lot i'll talk to you later bye okay in order to make the uh [curried] chicken i just fried the chicken until it was nice and brown you know make sure it's nice and brown on both sides and then you take it out of the fat and you you let the chicken you fried kind of drain so that a lot of the oil comes out of it and then you you uh pour most of the all of the oil out of the pan and you kind of clean it out and you put back maybe two tablespoons full of the oil and [saute] some um bell peppers and onions in in that little bit of oil maybe one tablespoon or two tablespoons let that brown then put all of the chicken back in there and then you uh mix flour and a cup of water maybe uh one tablespoon of flour and a cup of water stir it real real well then you uh pour that in there you know to make the gravy and you let it come to a boil again and then you let it simmer and you add uh about a tablespoon of what i'm using now is [jamaican] curry powder and that's going to it's going to be really good yeah it's right and then if you like it really hot you can add some hot hot peppers and hot sauce and all that kind of stuff yeah uh well it will be in a little while i'm trying to get it get it ready early oh uh_huh what kind of wok do you have is it is it a real chinese wok uh_huh i see yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh that's that sounds real good except the squash i just don't like squash i never did my mother used to cook a whole pan full of squash and she'd have squash and corn bread and maybe some she'd have chicken or something and i'd just be uh_huh uh_huh oh that sounds good we we were from north carolina and we had a garden and my mother would would uh grow the squash and she'd grow white potatoes and onions and cabbage and [collards] and all kinds of right wow you wouldn't believe it we even raised chickens you ever seen anybody kill a chicken and they put the head under a tin tub and chop the head off and then you hear the chicken jumping around under the tub and finally it dies down you get just a little [patter] and then it getting ready to eat chicken too uh_huh well that's good a lot of people are eating healthier now a days yeah ugh yeah i'm trying to learn how to cook um deserts without without all of the sweets you know maybe use honey or something yeah ugh uh right the spice yeah wow yeah uh_huh well i might have liked some of that i i like hot stuff i really do oh is it ten minutes i don't know do we get a signal oh well this is my first one oh wow uh_huh goodness uh_huh well okay yeah thank you it was nice talking with you yeah ugh yeah kind of hard that way okay all right thank you bye bye okay what do you like to cook uh_huh uh_huh that would be good for a dinner party that you know to cook that because you don't have to deal with eight different things coming out at once is that what you usually cook when you have a party uh_huh really that sounds good um fattening uh we it's funny that um we're talking about this we just had a dinner party and we had um our senior pastor and his wife came over and i catered to their diet is the only thing though so it wasn't something i really wanted to make i really wanted to make red beans and rice and with you know sausage because i'm from new orleans originally and um i was going to make that red beans and rice with the those cajun sausage and french bread with garlic butter and stuff and uh well there's salad and then for desert i would i really wanted to make um just brownies or french [donuts] would have been good but it's real hard to make them they don't really come out like they do in new orleans up here i don't know why i don't know if it's me or the water or the recipe i have but um that's what i want that's what i like to make is just real neat stuff like that but kind of like the italian it's really good but instead i catered to their diet so i made baked chicken in the crock pot and um it was good and everything it had all the vegetables in it but it seemed kind of boring compared right i find it changing the way that i eat but not the way i entertain because i guess i guess i feel like if they're on a diet like that i'm going to you know honor that but if it's just another couple came um over a couple weeks later and i made what did i make that night i made a roast and i made um uh i can't believe this my husband broke the coffee pot i just bought yesterday i can't believe that anyway but i asked when [ricky] and [carrie] came over we made um a pot roast with rice and gravy and salad and the whole bit and normally i don't eat we don't eat like that during the week because of the you know the calories and the fat in it but you know when we're having guests we just kind of say oh just do it and i made blueberry [cobbler] and we had extra crust with it it was so fattening but i don't think we gained any weight from it so right i made an apple pan downy when the pastor and his wife came over and she didn't eat it but i did bake apples so that it would be not brownies you know i figured there was less calories in apple pan downy than in fudge brownies so um i've read a good brownie recipe but uh anyway so i guess that's about what i did when i entertained so do you have anything else you want to say about it okay well it was nice talking to you okay bye i like well i like to cook foods i like to eat i like to eat italian food best and i find that i that's pretty easy to cook because a lot of it is one dish meals type things and they're kind of convenient right um i usually have parties that are smaller groups i don't have i've never had a real big dinner party except at traditional holidays like thanksgiving and such and so um yeah i guess i usually do i like to cook um heavy sauces and um noodles and pasta and such yeah actually how about you what do you like to to cook uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh oh really humidity or something uh_huh it kind of uh kind of down played compared to what you would like huh do you find yourself um with all the um cholesterol and and high fiber changing the way that you that you entertain uh_huh oh no uh_huh uh_huh yeah that sounds good well every once in a while i i think i feel the same way when i'm entertaining i don't take that thing into consideration unless it's really really like a lot of women will turn down dessert if it's too rich simply because they don't want the extra calories so i think dessert is the only thing that i kind of down play sometimes oh yeah yeah yeah oh that's good uh_huh um nothing comes to mind right off so i guess not okay you too bye bye okay um yeah that's what it said to discuss some maybe a recipe well it says why would you what you would have for a dinner party um this is strange because i pressed one and i thought it said begin okay maybe maybe we're all set okay we'll talk for five minutes they interrupt at the end um yeah it says what you would have for a dinner party i just happen to plan one out for saturday i'll tell you what i'm going to have um if i can find it well i have this new fondue pot and i was going to do basic cheese fondue and i have two different kinds of [breads] and some ham and i was going to try something weird which you know when you have fish au [gratin] i was going to make some uh like fish chunks and dip it in the fondue i don't know if it will come out yeah the cheese fondue i make some people like swiss um i prefer cheddar and i'll mix i won't make i won't have a sharp cheddar because it for fondue i think it should be a little [calmer] than real sharp cheddar and then i was going to make other things like potato skins see you don't necessarily have to dip this stuff and um i was going to have broccoli and cauliflower for a a vegetable oh yeah it's amazing how vegetables trays will go at a party yeah instead of something greasy or my uh girlfriend's do catering and they always about every party they do is they have a vegetable [tray] i think they try and suggest it what i've been doing when i get invited someplace and bring something i make uh food [kabobs] you take little toothpicks and cut up uh pineapple and strawberry and even banana if you can do it just before you leave it stays nice and fresh yeah yeah i like those um they they made a couple of those uh they made one for my uh [bridal] shower and i was pretty pleased i never made one for myself though but they look easy enough to make it's not yeah yeah you probably get this probably pretty sticky after you get done then you've got to drain the water out of the watermelon because you know when you scrape it it makes the water yeah um something i do is a fruit is i'll get um make chocolate sauce and dip strawberries and bananas in them yeah i have two nieces and they they they go melt some chocolate chips go buy me some strawberries yeah you know if you get a sweet strawberry they're much better but if you get a sour strawberry huh yeah no they um the strawberries are coming in season now from they're they're coming up from florida of course i live in vermont so but they're really reasonably priced they're coming up from florida so yeah yeah i think the uh actually i think they get um some of them from south america yep they a lot of um of a um winter produce comes from south america of course their seasons are switched so um do you want to discuss the recipe i have a recipe if you want um it filled a lot of people try to stay away from this but i make my own homemade pudding just because i don't like box pudding yeah it and it if you um well first of all i take about a quarter and a half of milk and i put it in a two quart saucepan and you put it on a really low heat and you want to use one of your good sauce pans that [dissipate] the heat because it it ends up burning i mean no matter how careful you are you still might get a film on the bottom of the pot i don't let that worry me and i get the milk lukewarm and then i pour about a half a cup of cornstarch in it and i have this thing it's called the [slender] blender it it makes the uh it makes uh a whip topping out of milk if you get the milk cold enough it's uh i don't know they're called [moo] [goo] leaves or something they're yeah they're real neat i think they're real reasonably priced some of them they used to be a hundred dollars and they used to whip skim milk into a dessert but i didn't get that one i got the black and [decker] kind but uh it's real handy because it doesn't have a cord and you beat this cornstarch right into the the milk you know and it does an excellent job or just hand beat it i guess you could use a hand mixer but i don't think it i don't think it gets it good enough and then before the milk gets too hot um i add two beaten eggs and i really mix them in good and then about a half a cup of sugar and i let it pretty much i beat it like every minute for about ten seconds and it's it starts [thickening] when it [thickens] the cornstarch might get a little i don't know it gets like little [globs] of this [rubbery] cornstarch and you just keep beating it in and it's the the trick is is to have this blender so if you were you'd have to probably almost go out and someone who's just going to make it first time it's you'll have much better luck if you had one of these little [blenders] and then you can add cocoa powder to it to make chocolate or after it's [thickened] i cook it for a good once it starts boiling i just i cook it for a good seven minutes seven to ten minutes and then you can make chocolate or you can take it off and let it cool you put um really good vanilla [favoring] in it and some butter and that makes french vanilla um custard yeah a chocolate powder yeah that cocoa yeah the unsweetened it comes in like a real dark can our mothers used to use it and then yeah we all used to yeah it's the unsweetened kind it's not like [nestles] [quik] i suppose you could use that yeah but um well i used to make the regular pudding the chocolate and put it in the pie shell and if it would sit in the refrigerator for a day where you cut the pie it would soak into the pie shell and it was like red and i'm like oh this is kind of [groedy] um actually i found it in one of my mother's um homemade cookbooks i mean something she had collected out of woman's day or something so i think you couldn't make it with a hand [whisk] or or a regular beater but um yeah but i still think a beater would do it good enough um the trick is to get the cornstarch um yeah right in the in the lukewarm milk sometimes i put the cornstarch in a separate bowl and i would put it in the sink and i'll take my lukewarm milk and put it in the cornstarch and beat it good it seems to be better than putting the the cornstarch into the liquid it once it hits the top of the liquid it seems to make little balls and stuff on the top yeah and i'll do this uh sometimes i'll put my after i pour that into my back into my saucepan i'll put the eggs in the same dish and beat them up and then pour the cornstarch and the milk mixture in the egg so yep and then you know if you can put your cocoa in with your cornstarch if you wanted to the cocoa even seems to [thicken] it even more because by the vanilla doesn't seem to [thicken] as well as the sometimes the cocoa is like my husband really likes it thick he says i can stick the spoon right in this because i'm always worrying it won't firm up because it when you take it out of the saucepan it's like boy i hope this [thickens] a little more because it's not like real package thick you know when you cook a package it's it's a little less but i put it in a nice glass bowl and um some people don't like that that film on the pudding so you can put uh saran wrap over the top and then once the pudding starts cooling it makes little balls of water on the saran wrap so when you pull the saran wrap back you sort of should be a little careful pull it back and shake the water off the saran wrap and i might put it back on but um yeah after well when it starts [steaming] a lot uh i definitely yeah put it in the refrigerator but um i my father always told me if you put hot food in your refrigerator you're going to make it work too hard that's yeah so that's why i do that so well i don't know that's my my great hard recipe what what is do you have a favorite recipe oh oh that's wonderful okay that's what kind of fondue the cheese dip or right yeah oh that sounds good that's always a good thing vegetable trays always go over so well because i think people get tired of eating junk i mean i think they like to have healthy stuff too you know it's oh definitely i think better even than than other kinds of food right exactly yeah uh_huh oh yes right right that's true or even have you ever seen where they they'll take a watermelon and just cut the top out of it and then hollow that out and then put the fruit in the watermelon that is really neat yep oh i think it would it would be a lot of work but um you know because it's you know you have to cut each thing or you know use the [melon] [baller] and stuff but but i think they're really neat and you know i think they're worth the time you know because they oh yeah right yeah is that is that good you know i've seen that so many times strawberries dipped in chocolate but i've never tried it are they really good oh i bet it doesn't mix well does it oh well that's good because i know they've been really expensive lately because they weren't in season of course they had to be be uh grown in [greenhouses] and stuff and in oh is that right oh i uh_huh right well okay sure is that right i've never heard of that uh_huh uh_huh i think i know what you're is it like a hand held the yeah okay uh_huh oh huh huh uh_huh oh wow that is really interesting are you saying to use like um for chocolate like unsweetened unsweetened yeah i have some i just want to right okay cooking chocolate that's really interesting i've never heard of anybody making their own pudding before that's really neat well how did you get a recipe for pudding on your own is that right oh neat that is just really neat because i it would probably be a lot more work and probably not turn out as good uh_huh so you put the milk in the cornstarch and then put that back in the saucepan huh that's oh uh_huh uh_huh do do you put it in the refrigerator then or uh_huh right that's true i knew that yeah yeah um hello um what is your favorite um food for a dinner party do you do tex mex oh fajitas how do you make fajitas uh_huh oh oh uh_huh uh_huh oh it sounds good okay well that's nice oh well basically um because i lived in the middle east for a while i tend to fix middle eastern foods when i have have people over and so um some of the dips are like [chick] peas mashed with um sesame and uh cold um what's it called i forgot what it's called anyway and and my that's right that's right it's called now i remember it and um [dipping] arabic bread the thin piece of bread in that or another dip is made with very similar but with um [eggplant] which has been actually it ends up with a barbecued taste i although we usually bake it in the oven or if we have uh those of us that have gas stoves bake it on top just like putting it in the gas flame and sort of getting it black on the outside but mushy on the inside but barbecue is it like steaks or is it uh turkey would you barbecue a turkey or a chicken or uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i'm sure that the chicken that we barbecue from the middle east has a lemon garlic sauce i wouldn't imagine that a barbecued chicken would uh_huh uh_huh right right well it's been fun talking to you right uh in wyoming it would be less spicy vegetables once in a while oh dear okay very good okay bye bye um i don't know i i think i make things you know i do things kind of simple because i you know i just have close friends over i make like lasagna and uh-oh we like to have barbecues outside so you know when the weather's nice because in texas you have a lot of nice weather so we do a lot of um things like that um i'm not really into gourmet cooking so i don't know how to do that so i don't have gourmet foods um yeah you know like fajitas and stuff like that so um it's kind of like made out of skirt steak and you marinate it you can buy [marinating] mixes here i don't know get it up there uh you can you know marinate it in any kind of barbecue sauce you like and then you uh you quick fry it real fast with in hot hot grease you know not a not not deep frying it but you can either barbecue it which is really good with uh green beans not green beans but green peppers and red peppers and onions and uh then you put it on a flour like you know you make your meat real uh thin you know bite size pieces then you put it on flour tortillas with you know guacamole and uh sour cream and you know all kinds of you know it's like a tex mex type thing it's really good you can do it with chicken too chicken fajitas and stuff so so what kind of cooking do you do up there oh that sounds interesting uh_huh you cook them so often you kind of forget their names yeah yeah oh uh_huh oh oh that's unusual i'd never heard of anything like that you know here in texas it's all you know tex mex cooking and barbecue and they're really big on stuff like that and yeah you barbecue pardon me oh yeah you can barbecue turkey if you have a big enough grill but my i cook my [turkeys] inside you know it you can buy smoked [turkeys] and or uh but most the stuff that we barbecue is like steak and chicken and hamburgers hot dogs you know the simple things like that and you know we we like things like that you know barbecue beans and baked beans and no no this is more like [hickories] [hickory] type you know depending on the it's like a smokey flavor if you've ever you know had stuff like that yeah it's totally different sounds like it would be interesting to eat some of the middle eastern cooking so yeah yeah it's been fun it's been nice it's uh you know new to learn some what different people eat so you get to think you know i come from wyoming and it's basically the same same type of thing except for you do eat more the tex mex down here so yeah yeah you you know down there it's just like meat and potatoes you know yeah right well it's been interesting to talk to you thank you for calling bye bye all right what are some of your favorite foods i imagine in argentina you've got some great foods uh_huh yes i've had i've had that meal in new york uh where they bring you a [plank] sort of with all this wonderful beef parts of beef cooked and barbecued and it's marvelous i have to find a place around here that has that okay i'll keep that in mind yeah you serve that yourself or the for a family you ever serve that yourself when you have company uh_huh yeah oh do you buy them um separately at you know an american grocery store now or do you have to you don't you don't go buy it from a [wholesaler] little butcher shops yeah yeah i've lived in mexico so i know yeah yeah you have to you have poultry place what do you what other what dishes do you serve with it yeah the turnover the stuffed turnover oh i love those uh_huh yeah uh_huh do you remember when you were in washington sam the [argentine] baker it used to be in georgetown years ago he moved i guess he he retired and went back to argentina i guess in the early seventies yeah so that that's before your time your parents might remember if they were here then okay i mean he was wonderful we used to get the most marvelous [impenadas] and other [argentine] things yeah i'm italian uh_huh yeah well because there're many italians in argentina uh_huh uh_huh yeah my grandparents my grandfather came to the united states through argentina this was around the turn of the century actually actually a little bit later like nineteen thirteen nineteen twelve nineteen thirteen yeah well i'll tell you it's interesting because when we cook here i'm of italian descent my husband is chinese so we and we both love continental cooking french cooking so we cook uh our meals are well we don't we don't usually mix i mean that sometimes well if we're entertaining we'll do a chinese recipe and um there are really easy recipe that is you know with chinese you always have several dishes and nowadays with microwaves you can steam many of the things in a microwave i don't know if you have one and if you like chinese food you can take filet of fish and put a little bit of soy sauce and a little bit of sesame oil on top of it and chop some [scallions] and a little ginger and just cover it with some uh [waxed] paper and steam it just until the fish is done and it's a wonderful um [flavorful] piece of fish yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah buy a fresh filet of fish a nice one at the fish the fish counter um any white fish sole is good uh um flounder sole or flounder is real good and even grouper little bit of soy sauce and sesame seed oil and not too much soy sauce uh some chopped up um you know [slivers] of [scallions] and [slivers] of ginger and then just cover it and put it in the microwave for just just two say two minutes check it after two minutes to see if the fish [flakes] and if the fish [flakes] it's done don't [overcook] it though well you see just check it you know during and another quick dish if you like um do you know what hoi sin sauce is it's that sweet chinese sauce well if you go in a chinese store ask for hoi sin h o i s i n h o i s i n or s e n either way they'll spell it hoi sin sauce it's a very sweet dark sort of a [purplish] plum sauce [purplish] brown and if you take uh little pieces of pork and you fry them like little cubes of pork and you fry them with garlic and a little bit of couple [dashes] of hot pepper and then mix some hoi sin sauce with sherry just a little sherry to thin it and stir that in you can even put a spoon of ketchup in and that makes a great pork dish with a sort of a spicy sweet sauce that you can serve over rice um well for two people um if it's american style i buy a half a pound if you know we if you're just serving that but if you're serving another dish with it say the rice dish um well with guys pretty healthy [appetites] i'd probably go a third of a pound and then you know you could and you can always you can always heat it up again and save you know yeah you can also do the same thing using um if you have ground beef just stir fry the ground beef drain off the oil use the same hoi sin sauce and some of the frozen mixed vegetables just stir that in and you've got a very colorful side another dish um the hoi sin sauce oh a dollar twenty nine a can a can would serve you for for you know for quite a few um meals you know oh no no no no no it's not expensive at all it's one of the chinese cooking basics yeah well listen it was good talking with you hope you enjoy your recipe okay bye bye all right mine well yeah well we got um a lot of uh european dishes we got we got what some people call the best beef in the world so it's uh [bishu] like every sunday you go out and you buy all these parts of the cow and then you just cook them over a grill that's like in our house it's already built in there's this whole special place in the back so you can make a barbecue yeah yeah and then well they have one in uh they have an [argentinean] place down in georgetown so um excuse me oh no well see the problem is i'm only twenty two but like like when i'm down at home and like somebody says okay when are when are we having this you know and i'll cook it you know like you have to prepare the fire and then put the sausages on and then you know you put all these different meats which take different times no but what happens is in argentina they have like all these little places like the fruit stand and you know the dairy and products and whatever and so and so they got they got the meat place and so you just go there and you can't find chicken there you got to go to another place to find the chicken well basically it's what we call it [impenadas] which is which is like right meat [turnovers] and then we also put sausages on a [bun] and then that's that's to start out with and then what you have is also like you know like three different kinds of salad and uh that's about it uh no oh okay yeah no we were only there for two years yeah and uh what i what i also eat now since i graduate i have an italian roommate and are you and since being [argentinean] we also have a lot of pasta and you know yeah and my mom you know like makes like what we call [niokes] and all this stuff that it's just you know everything like lasagna and everything oh okay yeah yeah at one point one third of the population of argentina was italian like pure italians okay okay right right yeah yeah yeah okay okay okay is it because i was at you know it's like when you when you go buy fish you know well like i buy like the fish so you can do it in the microwave the [breaded] fish and yeah i've seen you know the filet what kind of fish okay so we put soy sauce and sesame okay okay okay because i got i got um one of those little uh microwaves the ones that take forever to boil a cup of water yeah no i don't wait wait wait h h o i s i n okay okay okay uh how much uh how much pork do you buy for two people right yeah i could probably go half a pound so it's just it's just since i'm from argentina i just love meat and we okay okay and how much does it cost yeah oh okay yeah okay i thought it was maybe like you know like five fifty or something oh okay same here all right thank you bye bye well what would you have at a dinner party uh_huh oh gosh that sounds great uh_huh well um i think it would probably depend on whether this was a formal or a informal dinner party but if it was informal my first choice would be crawfish because i mean crawfish everybody over here likes crawfish but you know i i wouldn't have to worry about satisfying my guest but if it was a formal dinner party i would probably think of something else like uh shrimp shrimp [fettucini] is real easy to um make and everything and it's usually well liked by people i guess i'm just a seafood fan so i think on the lines of oh yeah um you're not supposed to i mean you're not supposed to eat them dead i mean well you eat them dead but right because if if they are dead for too long you can always tell whenever they're cooked if they've been dead for a long time because their tail [straightens] out and you're not supposed to eat those because they're bad for you yeah so if you ever go in a restaurant order crawfish i mean every once in a while you'll see i mean it doesn't happen very often because it's just an accident but if the tail is straight on it then yeah don't eat it but um you just put some cajun well lots of pepper and you just boil them and they're absolutely wonderful but there's uh they're a pain to peel for some people once you get used to it they're real easy but um you know if you have nails or anything you can plan on those being shot i think for a dinner party i i don't know it depends like if like my age if there was a bunch of college kids coming over for a dinner party no i they would shell their own you know we'd just have crawfish and beer or something but um if it was more formal like if i was you know working environment then i would probably um shell them or at least [disconnect] them from the head but there's a there's a big thing over here that everybody sucks the head so um it it would just depend that's the best part of the crawfish [sucking] the head but um i don't know it it just depends on what type it was i guess but you can buy uh the crawfish shells already peeled and everything and usually you use those like for frying or to put in salads or to um you know make a sauce with or something like that but you can go ahead and buy them cooked and [shelled] and they're more expensive of course but um yeah it really does i like shrimp better just um the crawfish i mean it just has a taste of its own it also depends on who's cooking it and how much seasoning they use stuff like that but um i think that and also to get totally off the subject of crawfish lots of vegetables and hors d'oeuvres and stuff like that for a dinner party i think that that really helps that's what i need uh_huh oh i bet that that got pretty competitive you know as far as who could come up with the best recipe that would be fun uh-huh sometimes it might be the [candlelight] and sometimes it might be the picnic out back or something well that's you know that's fun uh_huh that sounds right i would i'd take him up on that uh_huh i'd be i that's about how much i can cook you know i'm i'm doing a lot more cooking now than i used to but that's only because my mom just started working so she's tired when she comes home in the afternoon so i try to have things cooked for her but uh um i usually try to stay out of kitchen i don't know not one of my favorite hobbies well um my grandma speaking of those meatballs again she owned every christmas and and easter whenever we have at the big get together over at her house she makes this meat ball sauce and it has i don't know they are just kind of like quarter size meatballs and they are absolutely delicious i don't know what she calls them in i don't i'm sure she puts wine in it because um she cooks everything with alcohol but um i don't know i would i would be interested in getting that recipe for you if you have it around oh yeah oh that would be wonderful yeah um hum oh um hum well um how long do you cook the meatballs uh_huh oh yeah hum that sounds great especially i mean the fact that you can prepare the meatballs so so far in advance i mean like if if you are having a dinner party on wednesday night you could do it on a weekend that would be great i think i'm going to have to keep that in mind for my future because i hope to have to have lots of dinner parties cause i like to i mean um um i'm sure that i'll be involved in a big company and i know that my future husband will be you know he's going to be working for [chevron] in houston so he's going to be um you know i'm sure that dinner parties will come in handy oh yeah i have to impress the boss and clients cause um i'm in i'm in public relations in school so i'm going to have you know my whole job's going to be based on my clients and stuff like that so i'm going to have lots of dinner parties and have to take them out to eat right now i'm taking a class on [ettiquesy] and all the little bitty things that i didn't even know i mean i thought for sure i'd been raised properly but i've been doing a lot of things wrong i didn't know about but um so is there anything else oh yes you need to try em oh they're wonderful well uh lately since i have children i've cut down on having dinner parties but when i do i try to keep it pretty simple on things that i can prepare ahead of time uh i have one recipe for uh a really good um type of a [meatball] it's called burgundy [meatball] and it's made with red wine and um it's it's really good and you can make it ahead of time and then um make the sauce when you're ready to um to serve it that's one of my favorite things to to serve sure oh really well i guess being from that part of the country uh_huh yeah well how do make how do you you cook crawfish i in fact i just came back from the grocery store and being in texas we don't have too many you know people that that eat crawfish but they had live crawfish on sale uh_huh don't buy them that way uh_huh okay well i'll remember that uh_huh uh_huh huh when you were um when you serve it do you shell them and then serve em too um hum sure still have see that ooh um hum does it taste a lot like shrimp uh_huh yeah sure yeah we have a a friend another couple where the husband is the one who cooks all the time and yeah that's what i wish i had but in our family i am the one who who cooks and i i really enjoy it it's gotten a little more difficult with kids but i really do enjoy cooking and we um we have them over for dinner back and forth quite a lot and before i had my second child we sort of had a contest going where you know he would cook and then the next time it would be my turn and i'd try to outdo him and then he'd try to outdo me and we we was really a lot of fun and yeah it did we we tried to be fancier or more courses than the other or uh it was a lot of fun you know it something unique you know and then we got into different um themes you know um whether it would be ethnic food or um sometimes it would be um oh oh i don't know maybe an outdoor theme or uh elegant theme or you know it was a lot of fun that's right it was fun and and we threatened to make the other two uh make us dinner one time uh just to even it out since we seemed to be [unfairly] doing all the cooking and they were doing all the enjoying i'm it does except that knowing them they would probably do something ridiculous and terrible just just to uh make sure that they didn't have to do it again make hot dogs or some potato chips uh_huh oh that's nice it can it can be fun i if you have the time but you know a lot of times it's too much of a rush really be able to enjoy it able to uh_huh yeah it's um it's in the other room i don't know if we have enough time for it it's real easy one of the unique things in this it's like a pound of ground beef some bread crumbs um an egg um whatever seasonings you can just light so salt and pepper um and chopped up water [chestnuts] which is something different um makes them a little bit crunchy you need to chop em up real fine but um it makes them crunchy and that adds something new to it and then the sauce is just made with um [bouillion] cubes water burgundy wine and um cornstarch instead of flour so it's not a it's not a thick rich type of a sauce it's more of a when you use corn starch in in gravy like you know when you have um chinese food that kind of a gravy or a sauce that comes with a lot of that they use corn starch instead of flour in all of their sauces and [gravies] and it gives it a bit of a different consistency the meatballs you just um after you form them fry them in a pan until they're uh [browned] on all all sides and then drain off all the grease uh then what i usually do is i freeze them and then when you're ready to serve them then you cook the sauce and then put the meatballs into the sauce and heat it probably you have to heat it up for a good oh if they're frozen you know it may take a half for them to thaw out but then heat them thoroughly in the sauce itself let them simmer in the sauce itself and it's real good right and then freeze them sure uh_huh yeah you'll meet friends invite invite the boss over and and friends at work uh_huh sure oh really well i i think we've covered the subject i got some interesting information about crawfish i was in fact it's good cause i was curious about that today when i saw those for sale oh i will i'm sure my husband will be surprised because we were talking about them the other day before perhaps this connection no it still echoes okay um i love it uh do you work and have a family oh i expect so uh well for a dinner party i think one of my favorite things is baked chicken and white wine oh um i guess mostly out of an international cookbook that i have oh they have a t i plant in texas in [kingsport] oh uh_huh uh_huh great what is uh is a [marsala] wine a [sweeter] wine uh_huh okay uh_huh huh oh oh so it kind of browns and then you put wine over it uh_huh that sounds real good yeah what do you serve with it what do you serve with it uh_huh that's what i do too uh_huh that's what i've got i've got steamed broccoli down on mine no it's great i've got a good dessert recipe uh do you like angel food cake i just break it up in a glass bowl and then i mix up uh some cream cheese and a little bit of [amaretta] and some cool whip and i make a [thickened] blueberry sauce and i layer it with uh angel food cake and the blueberries and then that topping it is it's great uh_huh right i know i know what you mean we don't eat desserts much any more uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh and pour that over it that sounds great it would be pretty right yeah right that would be pretty we've been fixing something lately that well we've been cooking a lot of turkey breasts because it's low fat and i've been making a hot sandwich i [toast] a piece of whole wheat bread and then put the turkey on it and then slices of the low fat swiss cheese and then i make a little honey mustard dressing and put over it and pop it in the microwave it is delicious i wouldn't mind serving that to anybody no yeah it's real quick right uh_huh yeah well mix up a little uh mayonnaise with some [dijon] mustard and honey until it just i mix it until it just tastes good to me uh_huh yeah and it's real good and it keeps in the refrigerator oh it keeps a long time no uh_huh it keeps a long time oh and i put a little um oh yogurt in it too if i just plain yogurt it gives it a little tang it makes a great sandwich oh are you oh yeah that's kind of hard they'll eat fish she'll eat fish uh_huh right uh_huh that sounds good right i had a recipe from that um international cookbook two that's a great salad in summertime do you do you garden or not okay it's just sliced tomatoes and i put it on a glass plate because it looks real pretty sliced tomatoes and then green pepper strips just over it and some red onion slices and just a little bit of um basil and then a little italian dressing over it and everybody loves it and it's so easy and it's delicious huh_uh it isn't and you can put some [cucumber] slices on too i got it at the checkbook store and it's got all these beautiful pictures in there that are inspiring it's going to say uh edited by charlotte [turgeon] editor of i'm not french [laroute] [gastro] [lamink] the creative cooking course i'm trying to see who it's published by [ottenheimer] i've never heard of it this edition is published by [bonanza] books it's a big book but it was not expensive uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh we do too yeah that's right i don't think it would uh_huh i stir fried some the other night though some uh beef and broccoli strips it was good but it didn't have much beef in it uh_huh uh_huh it just takes the time to cut everything up cook uh_huh right uh_huh one of my daughters sent me a colorado cook book put out by the junior league of denver have you ever seen any put out by junior leagues they are great uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right yeah they are good usually good aren't they oh is that right what was that uh_huh you buy the canned baked canned baked beans uh_huh uh_huh oh that sounds uh_huh that sounds good right uh_huh jot them down huh do you like to cook i do too it it's kind of hard to find time sometimes but yes uh i don't have a family but i i usually work about fifty hours a week and by the time i get home i'm so tired it's hard to cook a full meal that's that's really weird that you said that because for a dinner party mine is is a is a chicken in a [marsala] wine sauce so where did you get your recipe for it oh okay well mine actually came from the um texas instruments cafeteria they they yeah we have it's in johnson city and um the cafeteria is real good about putting out recipes you know like once a month they'll put out a recipe of the month and they they put this one out and i tried it and it was really good yeah a little bit [sweeter] and it uh it's a it's a red wine and uh i'm trying to think what else i i roll it in bread crumbs and uh parmesan cheese and then i rub it with a little bit i rub the chicken with a little bit of oil and pour the wine sauce over it as like the last twenty minutes so that it gets just enough flavor right and it's really easy too so what do you use huh i like to serve um a wild rice with it this is really neat and i we're big broccoli fans well i just i just don't think you can go wrong with something like that oh what yes uh_huh wow what time should we be there that sounds wonderful i love desserts but since there's only two of us it's really i i try to avoid making anything that too fancy that we'd like too much and eat too much but i i guess one that that i really like that i haven't made in awhile and it's it's called a fruit pizza and you take a uh sugar cookie uh recipe and and spread it out on a pizza pan so you make it like a pizza crust and then you you bake that and then you um take things like [kiwi] and strawberries and bananas and whatever fresh fruit you want and you mix that with um excuse me you use cream cheese and a little bit of orange juice and i can't remember what else is in it and you make kind of a glaze and then you layer your fresh fruit on that yeah it is really good and it it's real light and it depending on the fruit you use it's you know it's real colorful especially with like the [kiwi] and the strawberries so but usually i just opt for brownies and vanilla ice cream uh_huh yeah it's just so much better for you uh_huh oh that sounds great no and that's that's something that just you know it doesn't take a long time to fix it's really good and it's really good for you and we eat out a lot and there are sometimes you just don't feel like eating out and i wish i had something a little bit different to just [zap] together uh_huh i was going to say do you just mix it to taste okay how long does it keep do you well you wouldn't have to make yeah and you wouldn't have to mix that much together even i'm sorry i keep coughing i've had a bad cold plain plain yogurt i'll bet that is really good man i'm going to have to think of that we're getting company tonight and i have been debating what to cook because one of my guests is a vegetarian so we're going to i think we'll try to do something a little bit we might try to to um to grill some flounder or salmon steaks yeah and i usually when they come down i'll grill those and brush on a little lemon butter sauce and um definitely go with it will have to be a rice dish lots of vegetables to make up for the lack of meat no we don't our next door neighbors do and some a lot of times they'll give us something yeah oh uh_huh uh_huh okay that's what i was just thinking it doesn't sound like it it would be hard at all where did you get where did you get this cook book really i'll might have to visit the state book store i haven't either okay well the ones that i've been i've been wanting to get um i guess you've seen the three hundred sixty five ways to cook chicken and the three hundred sixty five ways to cook pasta i've been i've been wanting to get those because we eat a lot of chicken and we do eat a lot of pasta so we we just said the other night it wouldn't be too difficult to be to do without red meat you know we don't have that much of it now as long as we have plenty of vegetables and lots of chicken yeah i've got a i've got a wok that we don't use near as often as we used to we used to stir fry a lot especially um a lot of chicken and and a lot of rice dishes yeah but usually if i'm if i'm if i take a day off or on the weekend especially i try to cook real real food and at least cook a couple of dishes ahead so that we can have those to enjoy so uh_huh yes cause we have some some local ones and we have a share alike column in the paper where people you know write in and share recipes or write in and say i'm looking for this recipe and that's where i get a lot of my recipes yes and i got i got a real good one from a doctor's office one time it's uh it's a baked bean recipe and you mix baked beans and [lima] beans and uh let's see i guess yeah just mix the canned beans together and brown sugar and [molasses] and bake them in [catsup] you know and and you just bake it and it's just it's like a a [spicier] baked bean dish and you can add hamburger if you want to give it a little more body so i i try to always keep my eyes open and because a lot of time you can find find really good recipes where you wouldn't even think about it so i try to always keep a little notebook in my purse but it's been okay you can go first or i will okay well i'm going to tell you what i'd have down in the south we have a lot of shrimp okay and i have uh shrimp that is steamed in beer that i cook and then i have a cauliflower that i would cook garlic bread green salad tea and we'd have a lemon pie for dessert yes and what's really neat about it is the shrimp is cooked in your uh like your rice steamer your rice cooker and um you place the shrimp in the in the rice steamer and you put a bay leaf and put some uh red pepper over it now you can either use you know the kind that comes in the little can or you can just get some you know regular red peppers cayenne uh_huh and you put a little bit of that over it now if you use the dried kind then you would only use two of them and you put that in there and then you pour two bottles of beer over it two pounds that's the jumbo shrimp in the shells leave the shells on them so they won't just roll up and you pour the beer over the top of it and you cover it and you only cook it until the mixture begins to boil and the shrimp turn pink then you remove it and you put it on a platter and then you serve it with melted butter and uh i usually put garlic powder in mine and they can just dip it and they shell it as they eat it but uh then the uh the cauliflower you cook that in the microwave and what you do is you just uh wash it and you core it and in a like a oh what do you call it like [pyrex] or something like that kind of bowl that would go in the microwave uh_huh but it's got to have one that has a cover on it and you uh put about two tablespoons of uh water into this bowl and about an eighth a teaspoon of salt and then you just set your cauliflower in there and then you cook it for seven minutes on high and you rotate it one time uh_huh uh when you core it you be real careful so you won't knock your flowers off and uh you just set it in there and you microwave it on high for seven minutes and you turn it one time and while that's cooking i take mayonnaise about a cup of mayonnaise and a teaspoon of mustard and some garlic powder and i mix it all together and i shred up some just regular white cheese and after that's cooked you take it out and pour this on top of it and then you sprinkle the cheese on top of that and you cook it for another three minutes on high you know just mainly to melt the cheese and everything and let all the seasoning melt into it and it's done it is good but it it looks i mean what you can do then see is like what i usually do is i'll like sit the cauliflower in the middle and then i put the uh shrimp around the outside of it you know on my platter and then i have a green salad that i put around the outside of that and you know you have all the different seasonings and stuff and then i just fix little individual cups for them and they have the garlic bread and it makes it a real nice looking you know huh_uh huh_uh but it looks like it you know you look like you went to a whole bunch right and uh usually i cut those little cherry tomatoes up and put some color into it you know and i'll lay those on top of my salad you know to make it look nice and things like that okay uh it usually serves six yeah uh_huh yeah yeah yeah have you ever had crawfish oh you ought to try some crawfish they are good but see that's one good thing about living down here is usually anybody that comes over you know even if it's like out of town guests and stuff they want our cooking you know they want it from down here because just like now especially crawfish it is starting to move out you know and more and more people are beginning to find out how good it is but uh it's similar uh_huh yeah it's not exactly i mean it's got a taste of its own you know but it is it is similar to because you only eat the tails of it um it looks more like a crab uh_huh but no um let me think of i can't even think of what you i guess if it uh it looks like more like a cross between uh a crab and uh and a lobster because it's small like that and it's got the [pinchers] like a crab but you know it's it's similar to a lobster too because the tail has got the little pleats in it like a lobster would and we call them mud bugs but i mean they're fantastic tasting they are so good everybody it's it's the season for them right now louisiana oh yeah uh_huh yeah yes you know you buy it you buy it as a seasoning huh_uh huh_uh i cook mine well do you have a uh like a black iron skillet oh okay well i guess you could cook it in in that too but i don't know you know i never have i use uh uh the black iron skillet to cook mine uh_huh but it really it's not it it it doesn't burn or anything like that the blackening is really the seasoning i mean there is it's it's a blackening seasoning you know i mean that is a seasoning that's really it's not like you would have to cook it for an extreme amount of time or something like that to get it because it's called uh what it's called is blackening magic and it it comes in a bottle and uh well i'm trying to see it's got a a picture of [dom] de [luise] on it uh_huh right uh_huh but uh_huh yeah but you do have to have it you know you do have to have it hot when you cook it i mean your pan it does have to be really hot you know when you put it in but it's not like it's burned and it what it what [blackens] it is the seasoning and it is so good oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well have you ever thought about coming to louisiana you know to visit yeah you ought to come down um you don't even have to go all the way to new orleans you know if you want to really get some good food i mean you don't have to go that far south but uh of course the further south you go the better the food is as far as i'm concerned and fact is we're going to take a vacation this year we're going to go to new orleans again and uh we're only going down there for the food though uh yeah we go to the the french quarters and stuff like that and uh i have some friends that live down there and so usually we go to we don't go to the tourist ones we go to the ones that they tell us to go to you know and we went to this one it was called the back porch and uh they were cooking the stuff you know while we were we went on this boat ride and then we came back and ate out on this it was like a back porch and uh usually if you can find somebody of course now when you go down there you know i mean they've got just there's no where you can miss i have never gone to a restaurant and not just been so full it's unreal i mean it's so good the seasoning they it's just unreal gumbo no gumbo uh_huh right uh_huh you can even make it with chicken or you can make it with seafood uh_huh uh_huh and i'll tell you what do you want to go first well you go ahead oh yeah oh yeah uh_huh oh it sounds fantastic oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh is it cayenne pepper you mean yes uh_huh yes and how much shrimp would you use two pounds okay oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh okay uh_huh oh yeah sure uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh a glass dish uh_huh okay uh_huh yeah uh_huh and it's are you cooking the whole head at one time okay i see uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh that sounds fantastic um um uh_huh sure and it's not much work that sounds yeah i bet it tastes good too oh yeah now how many could you serve yeah okay i figured about that oh that's good see out here we have so many uh ethnic people we have italians and we have portuguese and we have russians and polish and it depends out here like the type of people you're going to entertain you know so it's hard uh you you just have to pick something for the the group that you're going to entertain for that particular time and uh they're big on finger food here too you know chicken wings and uh ribs and that kind of stuff uh barbecue and uh cooking out in the yard it you know when it's nice barbecue outside chicken and that kind of stuff uh no but i have had shrimp oh of course that's yeah really is it like shrimp it's similar oh it does does it look like a lobster oh it looks more like a crab oh are they thin long or wide uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah yep oh and and where did you say you were from louisiana oh well do you do cajun cooking oh i love uh blackened you know uh the the fish and the chicken and that kind of stuff oh we have a few places up here that do that and if ever i see it on the menu i always get it it is so good now how do they do the blackened but uh do you have to have a certain skillet or something no i did have i don't have it now but i have mostly teflon you now but does it have to get extremely hot yeah uh_huh oh oh i see yeah oh i see oh oh really oh now would you would cook it for the same amount of time as you would prepare it any other time is that what you're saying oh uh_huh because i could have the uh chicken on the [skewers] with uh uh blackened seasoning and oh that is so good delicious uh_huh uh_huh oh it is i i love it i i in fact i was in texas for a little while and i liked uh the barbecues and the mexican food i have a passion for all that type of different tastes because i have been brought up mostly italian american food because my uh parents are italian and portuguese so we cook a lot of pasta and uh [gravies] and pizzas and you know [roasts] and that kind of thing that's why i enjoy going to restaurants and have you know trying different things i would love to i really uh_huh is that right uh_huh now where do you go when you go there uh right on basin street and those places uh_huh oh oh i see oh that's nice uh_huh really and don't they make a lot of um i'm trying to think what they call their soup i don't know yeah jumbo gumbo right is is is that with seafood oh you can that looks good too i've seen them the [chefs] on t v do that and oh it looks delicious see we do um uh a thing we call it a sea bake you uh you take clams okay so do you do a lot of cooking in your family oh yeah yeah do do you like to cook yeah yeah oh really oh yeah yeah but that's neat though because you get to have different stuff yeah i'm not i'm a pretty bad cook i'm pretty bad my husband is really good he put himself through college working in restaurants and uh he's much better cook than i am so when i was home i still cooked a lot and i was in to a lot of vegetarian stuff and now i went back to work about a year and a half ago so one of the things that he took over was the cooking and the kids are thrilled they're really happy that i don't cook anymore yeah they say oh dad let dad cook mom let him do it but um so so do you all do you have kids you obviously have one okay you have two two and half oh i was just going to say makes a difference in what you eat doesn't it or are you not at that stage yet yeah right oh yeah oh my gosh oh my gosh i couldn't yeah boy i couldn't do that i what's that oh really oh yeah what's what is that saint jack or something scallops saint something or yeah yeah yeah really with scallops no no i'm from new england so we we had um a lot of seafood before we moved down here and uh that sounds delicious to me that sounds great i think we're just thinking of having a uh dinner party we went to this dinner party the other night that was kind of like a game they had uh a murder mystery and you came dressed as one of the characters and you had to solve the mystery during the dinner and it was really fun and so we we were thinking we wanted to do you know we were going to try doing it ourselves but we're trying to decide what can we serve because at this one the [hostess] was pretty busy running around trying to get stuff ready for the table and that kind of interrupted the game so so i was thinking there's this beef [bourguignonne] recipe that i've tried before that's pretty good and then you can make that ahead and you can just leave it in the pot on a stove until you're ready so that's uh yeah uh yeah oh yeah i know my husband did too his parents are [austrian] and they uh always made sure they had a lot of meat at the table yeah yeah yeah oh my gosh yeah yeah oh gosh so do you oh they did the that you do right right that's just part of it yeah we didn't my family didn't but when i got into the vegetarian cooking we got kind of used to that but my husband always did it kind of [grudgingly] he never there was dishes that he really enjoyed eating there were several things that he liked but it never was really something that he would have chosen it's just that i cooked so he had to put up with it so but there was one thing that he couldn't stand and that was [soybeans] i tried it like once or twice and he just could not eat it so i never i had i was limited i had to make vegetarian meals without using soy beans but yeah yeah that's true yeah some of the stuff is good but it just it was a tremendous amount of cooking because you do have to make sure you have the right combinations of different [proteins] to make sure they're complete and we had little kids at the time you know when i was home with them and it it was just so much cooking i couldn't i don't like to cook and i'm not really that great at it so it just turned out to be too much of a too much too much cooking so well i guess i'll let you get back to feeding your little one there he's set oh okay okay do you like to bake at all or do you do you get into that's that yeah really no kidding yeah then be gone i know that's the thing about baking i used to i i don't mind baking at all and i i can do a pretty good pie we have this pie crust recipe in our family that my grandmother gave my mother and my mother taught me how to make it and um so i can make a pretty mean pie but um i don't do it anymore because it's just too fattening we had the same kind of problem if you make homemade bread i mean it's supposed to save you money but you eat like three times the amount of bread that you usually eat it tastes so good oh uh yeah yeah yeah uh_huh i've heard of that i've heard of it but i've never done it that sounds pretty good yeah oh yeah yeah and then you you make the bread but you [pinch] off a portion or save a portion of it for the next time or something yeah yeah yeah i know it sounds it always sounded i don't know how safe that was yeah that's true that's that's got to kill anything i guess but all right well yeah thanks plano yeah plano in texas are you in texas no kidding gosh it sounds so close yeah i thought for sure i thought for sure you were in dallas or something yeah yeah yes they're they're trying to get all different amount of people well gee my husband is from richmond and i went to u v a that's where we went yeah yeah oh you did yeah yeah boy we'd like to get back over to the east coast i'll tell you it's nice over there oh really oh yeah no kidding well things are doing pretty good down here we we were we tried to move over to raleigh last year and there just was there was so little such little going on in raleigh you know you couldn't get a job to save yourself over there so we decided we'll try in a couple of years but but business is yeah you probably could you probably could okay well it's good talking to you take care bye um i do some every now and then i i work and my wife's home during the day so she usually ends up doing most of it when i was single we used to always cook around the house huh yeah i really like it um there's a few dishes like i i grew up with the um you know having polish and [ukrainian] food and my wife she likes italian and stuff so we we definitely have different tastes so uh_huh oh wow uh they're like uh [preferring] it now right yeah two uh_huh yeah one is uh nine months and the other is two and a half yeah that's the hard part is cooking with uh kids around because uh yeah it does we try our hardest to get them to eat what we eat you know and my sister uh she's the master of the fast order grill you know she can make uh she makes six different meals but like to have one thing you know one likes chicken nuggets the other one like hot dogs and then she makes noodles with uh with soy sauce or whatever so all things but um yeah our favorite let me think i was thinking of the one recipe that uh that we made i guess the thing that always turned out the best for us was something we thought looked really fancy but was real easy and that was um uh scallops uh [scallop] um it has a french name it basically means that it has a swiss cheese cream sauce with it and you pour it over rice yeah uh yeah i can't even remember what the [recipe's] name is anymore but uh it was basically just ground up swiss cheese and then uh standard cream sauce base and then uh the scallops an and it sounds sort of funny but it tastes really good yeah yeah but uh uh_huh uh_huh right yeah uh_huh yeah that's another thing i have a problem with my wife she uh she likes to um she doesn't like the beef dishes she likes the chicken and fish and like i said we always ate beef and uh pork you know a lot so oh yeah red meat plenty of good red meat my dad could eat a a meal with out any vegetables at all and uh [susan's] you know they had you know [meatless] meals you know my dad wouldn't know what to do course she grew up catholic so you know they they sort of come with the there's a certain amount of [meatless] meals you have to have uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right yeah it's hard to get a protein content up then yeah i like i like them every now and then for a change it's nice uh_huh no uh he's all done yeah yeah i set him down yeah we used to do that um my mom used to go crazy every sunday until my dad like blew up you know after he gained about eighty pounds after coming back from the navy she stopped doing it but um she used to have you know two dozen sticky [buns] three bread rolls you know every week and um the sticky [buns] of course would last you know three or four days and that would be it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh we always we had that bread that was uh um you ever seen the the starter bread i can't remember what it's called they call it the um amish bread here but uh it's made with you just leave it out you know and you let it spoil sort of you know yeah yeah it tasted pretty good really but uh it's the sort of thing where you let a portion of it go bad and then you add all these other ingredients to it but yeah right you take some of the [batter] out and give it to someone else and that's how they continue the thing yeah i know it sounded strange to me too i figure well you're baking it so you know yeah okay well i'll talk to you later where are you calling from by the way texas where plano okay no falls church virginia yeah i know we've got a good connection must be a uh t i connection yeah yeah i i talked to so many people from texas that's where practically everybody i talked to is from i think that's why they call me because they want to get people outside the state you know oh oh really yeah i went to school at uh well i went to school at west virginia university but i grew up right here in falls church right outside d c yeah it's sort of funny i have people that want to go to dallas yeah one of my one of my friends here he was just talking how he's thinking of leaving the company and going to dallas saying how yeah yeah we were saying we could sell our house here and buy one down there cash you know well northern virginia okay nice talking to you too bye bye okay where where are you from oh okay because i uh i talked to a professor in uh what was it north carolina who got the the t i system and he gave to all his students so my daughter's even talked to and i've talked to several people from north carolina i was just curious have you too yeah i talked to the professor and i asked him about it and he said oh he says i think i'm the guy that actually uh gave it to all my students so that's why so many people are from this college go ahead you you first eve food oh great yeah we have them too and i i'm trying to think which is the best uh that i prefer uh my wife uh doesn't like to have all that work on the very day that you're doing it uh and we haven't catered out very much uh we i always worry about the barbecue in that you have to be the man always gets that chore and you have to make it perfect uh i've made shish kabob which i like it's fairly easy and fast uh i guess i'm thinking of the easy thing to do for for having uh uh dinner i do cook but not i'm mostly the easy cooker you know the [breakfasts] and and the steaks uh although i would like to experiment with uh the meals my mother made you know so to speak and i haven't gotten around to that yet uh well she was polish and uh she would make very economical meals we were very poor different rice and ham and things that uh she would throw things together and [galunkies] and all that and uh i would like to try that one day and she would make spaghetti with pork chops and and special meat balls and everything and my wife of course thinks i'm crazy which i may be too but yeah but dinner parties are a lot of work uh yeah yeah yeah well that that shish kabob is uh just because it only takes a few minutes to cook you know you get it ready you have to do a lot of work beforehand i agree and buy special stuff but uh so far as getting out there and and putting it on it only takes a a few minutes uh but anyway i'm i'm thinking of the easy way rather than my guests i guess but uh right right uh_huh yeah oh yeah right you'd get the odor of it yeah uh_huh yes oh great oh yes we probably ought to try this but it probably will never taste as good as we remembered i guess it gets better and better as we remember it back as we get older you know but we probably should try it uh to do that the recipes are really interesting you know we're probably going to lose them and we'll probably forget all about them you know since we're trying to make everything so here i am talk about trying to make everything easy you know i uh you talked about thanksgiving there are interesting meals at different times uh something my wife's from texas so uh i remember we were first married and we were living in new jersey and uh we were going over to my mother's house for christmas you know to have a meal and we were on the way over we were just married that very year and she said oh i'm looking forward to a nice turkey i said turkey i said we don't have turkey at christmas i said we only have turkey on thanksgiving i said we're going to have a ham she said what i said yeah i said no turkey is only for thanksgiving and because she had turkey a lot you know and uh that was surprising in the in the east uh we always had ham you know and and that's one thing that's another recipe i guess we could talk about now the hams just kind of you know go take it out of a can or uh uh a package sliced uh the cans were cooked for hours and hours and and were just wonderful you know i i'd like to try that too yeah oh yeah i saw them that's good no i i uh i've i know about sam's my wife i think goes but uh_huh oh really oh i haven't heard of that yeah yeah oh yeah i'll have to ask her about that uh because we have a delivery guy that comes around that sells i'm trying to think of his name of it uh uh i don't know uh i see a can here or a box here of gourmet choice uh he delivers uh what is the name of this thing i got a box distributor marked on it it doesn't say gourmet choices but he but it's a company that has uh you know a truck that comes around and and they recently had hams they have steaks and and uh actually [pirogies] and all that stuff that uh i i wish i could tell you the name of the company but i don't know what it is but uh they recently had a ham that was supposed to be it was boneless and we tried it it was real nice and it was fully cooked and everything we had it for breakfast a long time it was really great yeah i would like to try the old recipe though of cooking it and and i keep saying this uh to to do the different things that we did but i would like to put one in the oven you know the old fashioned way and put it in there for hours and hours and see if because i don't think in in my married life which is uh twenty six years now we've never done that you know and i remember that when i was a kid uh to have the ham cooking uh rather than that we just ham is just something you have for breakfast occasionally you know and that's it you know in the old days we had hams were the meal and i don't i don't think we really have it as a main meal right that's an interesting point how how have you changed your your meals now have you into that uh looking at those things uh_huh parents that's unusual oh yeah that's amazing yeah well that's amazing they'd go that they have started usually it's the younger people doing it yeah i uh my my wife's mother is the only [grandparent] left and uh she has high cholesterol of course i i have too but not like hers and i always get after her about salt and everything else and she just will i mean she's going to eat the same way she ate you know her whole life and she just tells more or less tells me to shut up you know and uh i like to i'm trying to do something about my cholesterol in the same way uh uh it's it's not the i listen to uh larry [newarth] on the weekend he's a fitness expert and uh he talks about you know the chicken and the rice and everything else and and uh throwing away peanut butter and all the things you know the things not to eat you know ever i think the peanut butter and mayonnaise he would throw away for ever and then he's got me into making eggs without the yolk you know try that sometime my wife says she can't stand it but uh when i make scrambled eggs now talking about a recipe i say if i have four eggs not not for me but if i'm making four eggs uh even for my daughter and i i'll take out all the [yolks] but one and and it's fine you you don't miss it uh in fact when i when i make eggs for myself if i if i fry them throw them in there i will almost hard fry them so i can take not eat the yolk at all and you don't really miss it you get the flavor of the yolk but uh you don't eat it at all you know you don't they're hard you get like uh a bite at at the most and so uh for cholesterol i mean i'm trying that and it has worked my cholesterol gone down twenty points so although i haven't gotten on the which whether butter or not cholesterol [margarine] and all that i don't know know whether any of that is true you know whether the [margarines] or butter um just here in dallas uh_huh that's yes yes that's true i've talked uh_huh people from virginia and and all over yeah uh_huh oh okay um well the subject we're supposed to be talking about let's see is uh food what type of foods do you cook and what would you uh cook in uh uh let's see if you were giving a dinner party and the only reason why i may know a little bit about this is that i'm planning on having a barbecue pretty soon and to me that's the type of thing that i like to give in um uh cooking for people and uh if he's cooking outside where it's cooler and uh you don't have to do all that much work you know you just uh slap on some food and slap on some barbecue sauce and away you go uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yes uh_huh what kind of meals did she make that you liked uh_huh uh_huh huh no sounds interesting uh_huh yeah that's great yeah yeah but uh that's that's why i like the the outdoor stuff a a lot better people can entertain themselves i think a great deal more uh when you have a barbecue especially when you have hot dogs and hamburgers and uh you know nothing really fancy like your your shish [kabobs] where you have to do a whole bunch of work uh_huh right yeah yeah well i i think you do do a lot of work even if people do bring over things you still do uh all the uh housework and get everything prepared and [utensils] and just just everything uh you know my mother used to make an [armenian] rice dish i'm thinking about uh special dishes and uh yeah it was made out of rice and consume soup uh and bacon and onions and then you'd simmer it like all day long oh it would yeah and it was just it was just wonderful that's that's something that i would really like to uh to try and find the recipe for but we used to have that at thanksgiving time because you can you can put it on top of the stove and do this and and there's so much broth and juice in there that it has to uh soak up into the rice all day long in order for it to uh uh to come out fluffy and and nice and that was you know when you were talking about the the polish dishes uh some [goulashes] and things like that that's uh that's what i thought about was that [armenian] rice dish that's true that's true uh_huh right right uh_huh oh uh_huh yeah uh_huh right right uh_huh uh_huh yeah you know what i found was at sam's uh wholesale uh stores and uh what they have is this honey baked ham they have you seen have you had any of those if if you ever get a chance to buy one of those i think it was uh twenty dollars for uh i don't remember how many pounds it was but you cook it in the bag that they send it in and all the juices and everything are all sealed in and i tell you what it's never failed to come out tender and [juicy] and just and just delicious because i normally don't like ham because it's so salty but with this honey bake that they have that that's the only one i have been able to find there at sam's warehouse it is absolutely delicious and it slices great uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh wow you know that sounds like it but that's that's the only ham i have found that i thoroughly thoroughly enjoy wow uh_huh right right that's true i i don't think so anymore not with more becoming more conscious of uh fat and cholesterol and and all those good things oh yeah well my parents actually started it and uh getting well it it's true i think my parents are very unusual because uh we grew up in the south where uh you have all the uh you know biscuits and gravy and oh fried foods [galore] and then gradually they started switching over to uh plain rice uh no gravy it's just it really is they uh they're actually they actually uh uh led us through it versus uh us teaching them you know the uh the [finer] points but my mother has really high cholesterol so it was one of the reasons which started them off and they started doing this like in the early or in about the middle seventies uh yeah it's true it's true i agree with you so it's really neat uh_huh uh_huh that's right right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh wow uh_huh uh_huh wow huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh wow that's good uh_huh okay um do you like to cook oh really what are you making uh_huh uh_huh and do you cook i mean are you single do you cook every night for yourself uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well like if you were having a dinner party what would you cook a variety of things i mean you know vegetarian and [nonvegetarian] uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's something that's you know really easy in fact i'm having a dinner party next saturday and that is what i'm having is pasta well for for christmas i got a um pasta machine and all all my friends are really anxious you know to have the homemade noodles so um no it's the hand kind old fashion kind uh_huh yeah yeah i like you know kind of still having in put that not everything's being done for me you know but um yeah so that's what i'm going to be cooking you know i thought i would um pasta salad first and um then just something for desert you know bread and wine and cheese stuff like that uh_huh yeah yeah yeah a lot of people think though that i've talked to about it think that it's you know a lot of hard work and i said heck it's kind of easy yeah i do uh_huh right right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um well i don't entertain that often uh when i do though i i have some friends that i always like to experiment on but you know um i see a recipe and think oh wow i'd really like to try this cause i'm single and i live by myself so it's not necessarily something that i would cook just for myself so i'll say okay you guys are experimental i want say how this is going to turn out but here we go and usually i'm i'm pretty good about it um i have this really good recipe for this um pork chop and apple casserole kind of thing and um you put stuffing and put [poached] apples and everything and my girlfriend and her husband loved it in fact she passed it on to her parent and so it's like it really made the rounds and i was quite impressed with myself if i should say so uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i'm the kind of cook that i don't normally measure things i just kind of throw them in and you know i don't to the point of you know measuring down to the exact amount that they say oh is that what it means uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh no i haven't uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um yeah i've been wanting to take an um oriental cooking class and i just haven't gotten around to it yet yeah i stir fry things on occasion but i'd like to know more about you know more elaborate things like guess uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh really uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um i just kind of you know cook here cook there i don't have any one specialty i mean i'm always willing to try anything usually and i i especially like baking and making deserts i've taken a cake decorating class and no no actually it was a private course through like a it is it's it's neat but it takes a long time you know i mean like i'm elected to always bring cakes into work like for people's birthdays and that and it's like you know you bake the cakes and then i guess just because i don't have the expertise to just hurry up and do it like you know some a professional would i try to i go real slow and you know it's a little time consuming but it's really worth your effort once you see how you do uh_huh uh_huh sure that's okay uh_huh uh_huh so uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh my uh_huh uh_huh well you learn helpful hints in the classes at least you know the instructor told us certain things about well don't follow what's really necessarily on the box you know if you're making just a cake from a box you know do this cause you know make it a variety you know some different hints yeah some different hints you know and the different the different kinds of [frostings] you can make you know and i have a book an it and you know all of the different you know decorating tips an things like that so yeah yeah well yeah yeah so that's about it okay well it was nice talking to you thank you bye bye well i love to cook as a matter of fact i'm making dinner right now um i um i'm making some uh i have a little turkey left from a passover which was in april and i had frozen it and i'm [defrosting] that and making some dressing and gravy and making corn and wheat stuff that you can buy at a store which is like uh rice [pilaf] but we with with with wheat [kernel] that no um i'm married and actually the my wife is a vegetarian so this isn't for her this is for our friends that came over and helped helped me do some stuff so stuff so he and i and and she's having i i do cook um virtually i cook most of the time because i yeah we we consistently if we cook if if we have a dinner party we usually make it vegetarian just to make life easier so we'll make something you know uh some sort of pasta or something you know homemade pasta or lasagna or something oh good idea what um electric or uh best kind that that that that's we we bought one in italy that's the best kind to have uh_huh that's real good um that would be great have you made pasta before um so you know so you know that it's a a lot of fun actually i it actually is if if if you have a food processor i don't know if you have a food processor or not actually it it turns out that if if you really want to be nice and easy about it you can make the dough in the food processor really simply and then um and with that it becomes really easy to make colorful pasta by throwing in some spinach or some tomato or something and mixing it up it it's a snap from there and then i made i making yucky it's also people think it's real hard it just time consuming to get all of the little things right otherwise it's real it's good stuff what other kinds of uh dinner parties do you serve uh_huh right you didn't want to cook that's great uh yeah that's how these things sort of make it for one person as an experiment and i usually find it when i make up for the first time i usually doctor it just a little bit and little here and there and it works real well that means you're a real cook if you've ever watched the ones on television like uh jeff [schmidt] the super gourmet he he just takes stuff he says yeah about an ounce of this or something it's real good yeah we have a we do uh uh middle eastern dinner quite a bit actually or uh we have people other that have never experienced it before and haven't had much middle eastern food we make uh cause we're my wife is syrian and um her families always have this food she grew up in and i've made some of it before as well so we make uh four or five middle eastern dishes that are just all real simple we put them out for people and that's always a real big kick for people who want you know who've never tried it before that's that's that's that's a fun idea i mean if you ever uh want something different to try i would try that oh do you have a wok though yeah i think it's god's gift to cooking cause it's just quick it's easy um and the food just comes out you know if you do it right i think it comes out the food comes out very tasty not very mushy you know and and it doesn't taste like a million calories of oil so we live in our wok yeah we we we like to eat even when we eat out and stuff we eat a lot of chinese food or japanese food or you know korean and that seems to so wok food seems to be our thing so anything else you cook well that's good that's always the way to do it i think it's uh oh the wilson course i like it that's great i haven't the wilson class right uh_huh yeah oh yeah we have um my brother can do it he's he's uh got a degree in business management so he learned to uh how to do this can you hold on one second thank you sorry about that some one kept [beeping] in our calling waiting so yeah he he does that a lot so you know he cooks a lot but you know he bakes a lot whenever he when my wife and i got married the night before we had a party or two nights before and he baked us he made a real big cake himself so new years our friend made a baby cake like a baby new york it was amazing i never could do anything with cakes so i get the mold i put i put it on you know the [frosting] always melts and it's it's just horrible yeah i'm oh that that you mean about the mix itself well that helps yeah well most [frostings] are sort of butter cream to aren't they those are those kill me it's like it's like i'm eating sugar but they're good sugar i think that's part of the problem yeah yeah i guess so it was it was a pleasure chatting with you yes well have a good time cooking for your dinner party next week bye bye all right what type of things would you fix if you're having company come over uh_huh uh_huh oh oh yeah you serve it cold oh yeah that sounds good um yeah usually when we entertain we do something really simple because i like to visit with my company and not be [scurrying] around in the kitchen so a lot of times we'll barbecue like uh for memorial day we had some friends over and we just bought a brisket and marinated it overnight in one of those like [adolph's] meat marinate and put it on the smoker and cooked it and it was real good you can buy a fairly cheap piece of meat that way and then people think they're eating steak or something yeah yeah it really does i don't usually i just pass on any recipe that's got more than five or six steps to it because i just know i'll never take the time to do it uh_huh yeah it seems like most people like spaghetti yeah uh_huh well i think when you heat your kitchen up it really makes a big difference in your whole house uh_huh yeah most we don't entertain like people from work or stuff often it's usually friends from church and stuff and it's usually kind of like you want to come over and they say well what can we bring and so it's real easy because you just make one or two things and everybody else brings something oh yeah yeah it's a lot more relaxing i don't know if i could take the pressure of having to you know put on this really fancy dinner for someone huh_uh yeah yeah do you work do you stay home with kids yeah i i've been working we're going to have a baby this summer and i'm not going to work anymore yeah so hopefully i think i'll enjoy cooking more when i don't have to work all day i don't like to come home and stand in the kitchen and spend an hour fixing something and then have to clean it up and by then it's eight thirty or nine o'clock at night so yeah eat at six yeah oh that's good yeah yeah that's neat uh_huh yeah that really is it keeps the family in touch with what's going on with each other right now we eat in front of the t v but since it's just the two of us it's yeah uh_huh to see what's happening oh uh_huh oh i've seen those in the magazines uh_huh yeah yeah yeah oh yeah yeah we like that that's good that that's a good way to get kids to eat vegetables too oh neat oh wow that's great how old is he eleven wow that's good do you cook like you cook a breakfast every morning or yeah yeah uh_huh yeah oh uh_huh yeah oh do they get [rubbery] or i've never tried it uh_huh yeah oh uh_huh huh yeah uh_huh yeah yeah we had my grandmother used to do that to us with things like squash everybody would say we don't like squash we won't eat squash so she would make these fancy casseroles and hide it in there you know and then we'd go oh this is really good well i have a really great one that i make in the summertime because it's cool and it's uh it's just really pretty easy it's pretty much dumping things in and [stirring] and i like that uh the only thing you have to do is cook the rice that goes in in it and then i you're supposed to do chicken but i just use those little cans of chicken and it makes it so much easier and so you dump the rice you dump the chicken and then you put in fruit like pineapple and [mandarin] oranges and [grape] now grapes are the ones that you have to pull all that off but i get my kids to do that so i i don't have to do that and um and it really and you mix it all up with there's a little dressing that goes in it that you have to stir up but it's so simple and it tastes really good because it's cool in the summertime uh_huh yeah it has to sit in the [fridge] over night but but it's really good and i like that one yeah exactly uh_huh oh that sounds good yeah yeah and these days that helps doesn't it yeah i know what you mean now [spaghetti's] such an easy one um i do that a lot i do spaghetti a lot yeah i don't like to do that if it's real hot though because um i don't know i have a real thing about being hot in the in the summertime i guess yeah yeah i think that's right and um we don't entertain that often but when we do i'm like you i like it to be fast and easy and something so that we can talk and not and not have to worry about being in the kitchen all the time yeah yeah that's exactly like us from our church we just do it yeah uh well you see all that on t v and i could never be that person it just uh i'm just not well i'm so i'm pretty laid back and uh you know so i don't i know a lady in a my church and uh she like does her own bread and does her own stuff and so when she um does food she really goes all out and i don't know how she can do it and be calm i guess no i don't uh_huh yeah oh how exciting yeah well i usually start about six and an and cook and then eat at seven i mean cook at five and eat at six rather yeah and uh my family and i we're a sit down together family uh yeah i don't like the run in and out part and i like to be able to sit down after school and have them talk with me an and my husband about what's happened and i think i that was [ingrained] in me during my family time at home and uh you know we could learn to talk about things and i think that's good yeah i think yeah yeah well that happens to us sometimes too but uh sometimes if something uh is on that they want to watch i leave it on but we eat in the kitchen and their heads are always [poking] past the door yeah anyway food is is uh a real life style kind of thing and some people don't like to do this but i like to uh cook with my kids and if they're going to have other kids over then then they help and we make real simple things you know those oh i i don't know if you've ever made them maybe not since you don't have kids yet but those [jell] o uh [gelatin] things you can pick up with your fingers i can't think of what they call it yeah they're so simple and the kids love to do that uh finger food is is a biggie with them and and like now one thing i wish i could find a a better way to do are celery sticks and [carrot] sticks because they love to do that and it's just really hard and if you have to work with a knife i don't like that so that's uh they like to eat it but it's a hard one to have to to prepare but they like that with the the cool ranch dressing that goes along with that yeah yeah my son's getting to be a a real good cook so uh sometimes he fixes me breakfast yeah i like it i like it a lot he's eleven uh_huh yeah so uh not every morning uh mostly during the summer it's hit and miss and we usually have like uh cold cereal or something like that um during the during wintertime when they're in school um then i try to vary it so that we only eat that like a twice a twice a week or something and then have like when it's really cold i even cook [oatmeal] because i like [oatmeal] and the they like it all right and um then sometimes we do something it has to be fast because they're on their way to school we do like [eggo] [waffles] and stuff like that but yeah so i try to uh and sometimes we do eggs if i get up early enough to do that i used to do them in the microwave but they don't like that um it it depends if you let them cook too long then they'll turn a little bit gray you can tell if they've gone to long because they'll turn a little bit gray and they will be a little harder and i don't like that so you have to just let it cook a little bit less than what it says in if you have a microwave book but you cook it a little bit less and then let it sit with a like a plate over the top and let it steam and then and then stir it up yeah an and that turns out okay and it's funny because if i turn them out on to a on to like a plate for them to take what they want they don't know i've ever done it in a microwave it's really funny it's very deceiving you know because if they see it with their eyes they go uh i don't like want that you know and yet if they don't ever see it then it's like oh this tastes okay you know so anyway yeah okay i i do a fair amount of cooking and and i love having guests to dinner i probably do that about once a month and uh i usually prepare something depending upon the guests you know it it i like to prepare chicken that seems to please everybody pasta or a casserole how about you um uh uh_huh well that's about the way i prepare most fish uh i made scallops the other night that was unusual and uh basically uh i found a recipe to make it in the microwave and you sprinkled uh you [swished] around a little melted butter and do uh-oh i do not know [microwaved] them for about nine minutes no no four and a half to five minutes and you had to add sesame seeds and bread crumbs on top very simple but very nice so if you are looking for a french recipe that was good sesame seeds and bread crumbs and uh my husband liked it and uh no unfortunately scallops are one of the more expensive uh fish items but you know i i look for them to go on sale at the grocery store uh one of the things i love to do eat out how about you do you have any particular places you like going uh_huh yes i have been there and uh it's kind of kind of like black eye pea but i do not think it's a chain oh oh yeah yeah i i do not feel like they are very healthy and i always feel like the home cooking places are are the [healthiest] meals you know i tend to have chicken fried steak when i go go to them oh how was it um uh_huh yeah i i tend to uh i get [teased] by my family a lot because uh i like experimenting on on food and sometimes i go for fairly exotic things and my father [teases] me about gourmet cooking which is not always true but and the thing about experimenting with cooking or anything else is that some of the experiments fail uh the last time we had some uh friends over for dinner i tried a dessert that sounded wonderful in the recipe and it was just a total bust i was sorry i did not have ice cream to fall back on oh my that's ambitious um yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh huh see i am not that's interesting one of the things i do not make is dessert and uh my husband [accuses] me of putting him through dessert [depravation] because uh you know we have ice cream or something like that and that's why when i took did this experiment for the company we had about three weeks ago it was just a total fiasco uh everything else was fine but that was a fiasco uh yeah yeah and i i also don't have much of a sweet tooth so i can live without live without dessert for the most part yeah uh do you cook for yourself or do you cook for others yeah well when i was single i used to uh i think my favorite meal was a a baked potato and oh yeah oh yeah and i mean i never put anything other than a little butter on it if i had or if i had a little cheddar cheese sometimes i would [grate] that up and uh it's amazingly satisfying yeah i i did not say it was [nourishing] but it was satisfying and yeah yeah but you know i never really enjoyed cooking for myself so i ate very simply and i was that's why i think that's one reason i like having people over because i could try things i mean i must be a frustrated chemist or something like that cause cooking is a little bit like like being in a chemistry lab and uh yes and have an explosion sometimes it blows up anyway i i once had a an old boy friend over to to dinner when i was recently staying with my parents and uh i had this wonderful recipe and you were supposed to make a a [toffee] like substance for a pie by uh boiling [evaporated] milk three hours and it does turn to [toffee] inside the can and uh the only problem was when i opened the can it just flew all over the place it was on the ceiling on the walls and me and and the boy friend thought it was he was supposed to be there at six o'clock not seven o'clock so just at the time all this happened the door bell rang and there he was and i had to have my my my my dad sort of entertain him for a for for awhile while my mother and i scrambled to clean everything up uh i really do not remember that was about ten years ago i just remember how embarrassing it was and i have made i have made it since i've i and several times before and i never had that problem just that one time and uh he he was a gourmet cook he was kind of pushy too acted like he came from san francisco and he had a very sophisticated taste i i really wanted to impress the heck out of him and and well it was a memorable evening anyway uh as far as i i do enjoy cooking so i was awfully glad i was given this okay uh_huh uh_huh yeah those are things i like the most i like fish and chicken the most and uh most of the cooking i do just comes out of a can unless it is unless it is i catch a fish and i prepare it and then i just uh you know i just [broil] it and put lemon on it uh_huh sesame seeds and bread crumbs uh_huh yeah right uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh oh there's a restaurant called string bean on spring valley and central i like that it's just it's just home cooking uh_huh right exactly uh_huh and that's that's the other restaurant black eye pea so i do not really like uh you know uh uh chili places or what is it judge roy bean's or i do not like greasy places yeah right and i and i got uh chicken [marinara] the last two times it was uh it was great because that's that's what i like i do not like it you know i just like a baked you know a piece of chicken and then i get like green beans and mashed potatoes you know uh_huh yeah that's true yeah yeah my uh my brother tried to make uh a bunch of things uh way back he tried to make bagels one time yeah and uh we took some and then we had uh german shepherds at the time and we took some and gave it to the dogs and the dog never you know he treated it like a milk bone and he never did finish it he just barely made a dent in it uh and uh then he tried to made [grapefruit] [citron] one time it's uh supposed to be candy and uh it it did not turn out very well it was you know it like made concentrated all the acid of the [grapefruit] into uh into a kind of a candy stick so uh uh_huh uh_huh huh well you have to put eggs and everything don't you or yeah just about uh_huh use about half the sugar or make everything diet mostly i just cook for myself uh_huh it's easy that's for sure yeah yeah i always put cheese on them uh_huh yeah but you know there's hardly any i guess there's hardly any protein it's mostly starch so it fills you up and then the cheese has to make up for whatever the protein you get oh yeah it really is then you have to make a salad or uh_huh right uh_huh except you get to taste the product instead fill them up or blow up yeah oh yeah right uh_huh did you let the can cool off yeah huh yeah right well hi i guess uh i'll just start by saying that we entertain with uh a gourmet club here um which means that we have like eight eight people four couples and most of the husbands this is really peculiar most of the husbands cook i mean the wives during the day you know get i guess so burned out on cooking whatever they have to cook every day um you know they don't really care about gourmet stuff but it was the guys that got together and did all this and um like my husband just he really really likes to cook in terms of um oh barbecue and i mean all guys i think like to barbecue i think it's [caveman] i'm telling you but um he really does cook and it's a good thing because you know you can't you can't knock that but all these other guys do too and so we've gotten together and we just do these really elaborate gourmet meals and it's really really kind of a neat thing to do you well we try i mean because you know everybody is so active with their kids and all that it's like you know if we can do it once every six months we're doing well yeah so i mean we originally started out you know when we were younger and didn't have so much stuff going on with the kids um then we would we tried to do it every other month but lately it's just been once every six months yeah oh really really oh it is absolutely yeah right oh yeah well yeah that's true and we have a gourmet friend that can't stand fish so i mean he can get within oh my oh yeah it sure it makes you uh keep looking for recipes every time you have an eye out for something like right so we we try to keep all that in mind but otherwise um i guess you know entertaining um i i guess i have recipes i um but that's that's basically what we do is the gourmet so you know they would be pretty elaborate um but it's fun i mean it took us four days to cook a stock and three days to make this stuff and you know you get all prepared but you're right it's very very rich and i'm glad we don't have it every because it is it's a quite a treat it really is um right but so you like food and i just love the the community of food i just think it's neat i just love sharing meals and and whatever you can do you know to do that i don't think you have to be you know more than hamburgers and hot dogs out in the backyard and the and the [coleslaw] and potato salad but but oh what are you providing right right there you go i know we're all not built like uh what what oh martha stewart you know we all aren't martha stewart and have our coordinated glasses and [tablecloths] and and time to you know yeah shot a video of the whole thing i don't know but it's it's really kind of a neat thing i get a kick out of it i i really do everything all parts of the food i mean i love to make things from scratch you know making [breads] and and you know people really pretty much appreciate it oh i think so oh oh oh there you go oh oh it is i mean we have [bakeries] around here that you know you you just gain weight going by the door you know just like that right but i don't know i guess some of the best things i've ever had um i some of them were just hors d'oeuvres you know doing little hors [d'oeuvre] things that i have a kick making that i mean you know i get off on strange little details of food i guess but um gee we have so much going on here because you know this is dallas this is the southwest this is you know chips and picante sauce and anything hot you know you can always make it hotter and and lots of stuff like that you know so that's um a really good party time eating all that hot food and and they just love it you know down here it just just you know all the stuff that goes with that so oh i'm not thank you for noticing i'm from chicago and how i got really and how i got to texas by way of virginia i'm and everything is a long story but yeah well absolutely i in fact it just came to mind um and this uh_huh great oh that's nice right right no how often do you meet oh yes yes uh_huh yeah oh well that's much more reasonable i was involved in a a club like that for um that you know where we tried to really do gourmet uh meals and uh we we were a little bit too frequent i think i don't remember if we were once a month or anyway it was it was difficult by the time we went around it was uh four couples so uh by the time we got around uh to each of us and it was time again we were almost tired you know um partly because um gourmet cooking is not particularly conducive for regular dining it's too rich and so we found that while we enjoyed the evening we regretted it the next day um so uh we we kind of and then one of the couples uh moved and so we sort of didn't didn't continue it but um and i must admit that as you say when your children start taking up your time then you you don't have as much time for uh regular entertaining but um uh uh when when we entertain i usually try to find something that will be um kind of good for everybody and that's that sometimes means you can't do gourmet because depending on who your guests are oh yeah well one of my friends doesn't eat any cheese at all uh so that's a real problem because so many dishes require cheese uh well i take that back uh she can't eat some cream cheese but that that really limits um oh yeah right uh_huh yeah oh wow yeah yeah sounds wonderful oh sure i do too yeah right right right sure well my um daughter is graduating uh sunday and so we're having a uh few people in sunday afternoon and i did a cop out on to it i'm buying cold cuts well i have to make a cake and i have to make hors d'oeuvres and i have to make dessert so i figured for the main thing it's going to be sandwiches uh so oh i'm buying the little tiny rolls and so on but i can't do it you know working full time and it's just too much those people that try to do everything yeah ugh wouldn't that be nice yeah right uh_huh yeah oh they do it's very difficult to purchase um items that are as good as what you can make yourself um in spite of uh or if you if you do buy it it's extremely expensive in fact uh i just got back from a shopping trip to purchase the cold cuts and i i bought turkey and [pastrami] and and barbecued ham at a an amish market near here and i've never been there before and found that there's uh individual [vendors] and the foods are wonderful and one of the uh the um [vendors] had cakes all sorts of wonderful cakes uh they fresh strawberry cheesecake now and and so on and it's like thirteen fifty for a whole strawberry cheesecake um which is really not such a bad price i decided i i just couldn't quite make myself um buy it because i do make cheesecake and somehow i didn't want to do that because it but i was very tempted because it looked wonderful and they had black forest cherry cake and all those things that but those are homemade they are not um commercial bakery made and in that they are made in their homes um so it it's kind of interesting uh it's out there if you want to pay the price but right just smelling the air yeah uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh right yeah we like hot food too so right you don't sound like you're from texas originally though i thought i thought that there was a slight difference in accent right i'll bet did um do you have a favorite hors [d'oeuvre] recipe that's easy or is it always good morning my name is jean oh where you from tina oh garland texas i'm in pennsylvania really do you work for texas instruments uh_huh most of them do now i don't have anybody that works for t i but uh my son works for a computer company the national institute of something i don't know what so i guess we're supposed to talk about foods today yes uh_huh you ready okay uh foods like you would for a dinner party or something like that well i don't know my brother lives down east of us down there and i don't think they ate all that much different uh i think as long as you plan your basic foods course for a dinner party you fancy things up a little bit more uh uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh right yeah and it's not as good as if it's fresh uh_huh is that right yeah well they probably were trying to do the best they could yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah well they do in the summertime i think that tea is big in the summertime mostly of course you have warmer weather most of the time so uh yeah so i is that right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh more like covered dishes for those type of dinners well i don't know just about anything yeah we we really uh use most anything i uh i think like parties and that though are well like we had a dinner party here here not too long ago with a mystery dinner party but basically we tried you know included all the basic uh foods that you are supposed to have in a meal your uh bread family and your or least what it used to be the regular menu was followed and ham and bake potatoes uh uh something from each each area that you're supposed to choose from and uh we we we ourselves are into the wok cooking you know they been advertising that and we've really been enjoying those uh meals they have a lot of vegetable to them and uh they really are very good is he a meat and potato person well all our family is is gone they are out on their own and uh it it's much different and uh uh_huh uh_huh well my husband didn't like that so we us kids we had five children and we ate that when he he wasn't going to be home for supper that's what we had uh_huh uh_huh uh yeah oh those always go good yeah yeah oh really well maybe that's good the way way the things are going uh_huh right children usually they like the ham and the hamburgers and that and it is easier to chew uh_huh right we don't really have uh you know entertain too much i don't know if you do or not but we we don't a whole lot we're more once in a while but mostly family activities uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah well that's good yeah we do a lot of that take things to church and our homemakers meet at the church also and uh that's what we do mostly most of the time for that so you don't really include any certain food groups you just bring what you like sometimes you have all desserts sometimes you have all vegetables yeah but it doesn't happen very often usually you get a pretty wide variety and you can you can have pretty good meals from one of those oh those are fun uh_huh uh uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh oh was there enough to go around uh_huh yeah that's kind of irresponsible and does upset you because they are grown adults usually and you know they know better even if they can't do it they can always maybe get somebody else to cook right right they said that we could share we share a recipe but i'm up at my daughter's i don't even have any of my recipes with me uh you know oh oh great they are ready to go well we probably have we talked long enough i okay so i'll let oh same here you have a good day uh_huh bye bye hi i'm tina i live in garland texas oh my lands you're the farthest person i've ever talked to yeah my husband does yeah probably most people you talk to do huh huh i see well that's neat yeah i guess you have to push one though okay yeah yeah i guess so it may be interesting because probably here in texas we may eat a little differently than you do up there oh really yeah that's true well uh the thing that i found interesting my husband and i lived up in washington state for awhile and up there of course they ate a lot of sea food and that kind of thing and down here sea food is pretty expensive because you have to ship it a long way to get it right and and uh and but here we eat a lot of like mexican foods and um up there there was no no place that we went tasted like real mexican food to me yeah it tasted like they were trying to do the best they could but it just didn't taste right yeah and uh down here we eat a lot more fried foods i think like chicken fried steak is a real big thing up there uh it was hardly ever heard of and we drink ice tea with every meal and up there hardly anyone drank ice tea really yeah right yeah it never gets real cold yeah but when when we have a dinner party around here i think a lot of the time a mexican menu is something real popular yeah i know that um i do a lot of planning with our church and a lot of the times when we get together well everybody will bring a mexican dish or and italian food is real big too uh_huh yeah yeah how about you what is real popular up there oh really oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well that's good uh_huh right oh yes i i love that kind of cooking my uh unfortunately i am married to a man and have two children that eat about four things right they uh_huh that probably makes it easier but yeah we find ourselves eating a lot of macaroni and cheese and uh and of course right yeah well that's pretty much what we do if dad's not coming home we have macaroni and cheese or something but they like uh spaghetti you know that's one meal i can fix and the whole family eats but uh there are several things that well as a matter of fact i keep chicken nuggets handy all the time because yeah the children love them and uh they are real easy to cook and that way whatever meat we have if they don't like it well and my girls don't like beef i don't know i guess well yeah it could be they don't i think it's the texture of it but it takes more chewing uh_huh right right so they're not too much into beef my husband and i eat more beef than we should but at least we keep our chicken nuggets handy for them uh_huh yeah well most of the entertaining we do is church associated we have a real tiny little house we don't have room really to have people here but we do get together for [fellowships] at our church and my husband and i do a lot of the planning in that and yeah it is and it's fun to uh i like just having a pot luck meal where everyone brings their favorite dish yeah uh_huh yeah yeah right that's right yeah yeah that's true that's the only problem with just letting you bring whatever you uh like best uh_huh yeah yeah i remember one time we had a progressive dinner it's the only time that ever yeah they are but it's the only time i can remember that i can't remember what food it was i it might have been the main dish that hardly anyone showed up with several people were supposed to bring you know each like uh a an [appetizer] and a main dish and a dessert and we had tons of desserts and tons of appetizers and but when we came to the main main dish plate there was only like two or three well not really you know we all took real tiny little portions and uh were kind of angry with whoever it was we were not sure who didn't show up with the food yes right right either either go ahead and fix your dish or call someone that can i know it well that sounds neat i can't uh believe you're so far away but you sound so close it sounds like you're here in dallas oh i don't know if i have anything handy we were just about we were getting ready to go swimming and we're waiting on my sister [cara] hold on just a second as a matter of fact my little one is hollering i think it probably has been so i've enjoyed talking to you thank you thanks for calling bye bye and i guess the suggestion is that we maybe talk about a menu for a dinner party if we wanted to do something like that or share recipes or something um are you one who gives dinner parties very often no nor am i they are a lot of work that is for sure yes yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah right yes uh_huh oh that's great you sound like my mother who has been well i bake pies too but my mother was always the famous pie baker in the family and she has the same the same technique i mean i guess after many years of doing it you just kind of do it second nature uh she enjoyed it huh well there is a woman in our choir who is nearly famous for her apple pies and uh we had a a an auction one time at the church excuse me and uh one of her pies was [auctioned] for fifty dollars well i think i i have had it once and it has been a few years ago but i do recall that it was quite good so uh yeah so that is her specialty uh i like to bake uh also i do not bake so much now that my children are grown but i do enjoy baking and i guess i always liked making uh cookies and bars and things like that that was more my specialty i suppose and they seem to last longer than pies around here pies would go practically in a [day's] time yes right and well it is interesting that yesterday i had lunch with a friend and she was telling me that she had a dinner party over the weekend for friends of hers for um uh one of her [acquaintances] one of her old friends i guess had been in town and uh they invited two other couples over and so there were seven of them that uh i said well what did you have and she said what she had uh just mexican food but you know she had uh uh guacamole and uh i cannot remember all she had but she also had made uh flan which is actually spanish i think have you ever made that or had it it's uh it's um i had used to work with a gentleman who was from cuba who would make it uh it's just a wonderful dessert it's like uh an egg custard in a caramelized sugar with on top of it and it's it's quite actually not very difficult to make but it's very very high in cholesterol i am sure with all the eggs that are in it but uh she said that she and her husband had uh traveled in spain a couple years ago and and flan is almost uh a basic with every meal that you get there yeah uh_huh it's just very [customary] to get flan so if you ever run into that you will sort of be aware of what that is all about but uh i would never have thought of making that as part of a a mexican dinner but you know [sopapillas] i guess would be another kind of a dessert if you decided to do something like that but flan is something you can make ahead and have just you know have ready but uh well i would have been thinking i would like to have a dinner party sometime soon but i tell you it i my it's one of those things where it does require some real uh planning and it's you know you don't just make the dinner you have the house to clean and you know the whole business that goes with it yeah probably a good way to do it oh the house needs cleaning i guess i had better have a dinner party oh uh_huh oh good heavens uh oh wow that is such a nice thing it's i you know until well we have my husband and i have been married twenty six years and until last year i had never had another person clean my house and then i got so involved and so busy i said this is one luxury i am going to let myself have every now and then and so i had a woman come in uh once a month and you know it was not just very often but for me it was wonderful well it is and it is buys you time to do other things like have a dinner party i guess so it is just a real gift of time as far as i am concerned but well uh i uh_huh i have heard about that but i have never tried it no well i should say i have heard of one that has vinegar in it i do not know that it has egg in it uh_huh do you have it right on the top of you head you do not have it yeah i would uh_huh right uh quite large yeah right uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh what is it about the uh the vinegar that uh makes the crust better uh interesting yeah yeah boy that that's the real secret oh it makes me think of years ago uh when i was visiting my mother in law in uh michigan she lived very near an apple [orchard] and we just had we could take as many apples as we wanted from it you know according to the owners and so i decided to bake about four pies ahead you know and freeze them well talk about working with big amounts of pie crust and having it be tough those were the toughest apple crust or apple uh pie crust i have ever ever made it was terrible i i could have used that recipe it sounds like where about well we lived in plymouth for four years uh yeah in fact i we were there from uh seventy three to seventy seven and i was i worked for the little the weekly newspaper there the the plymouth oh what was it called [crier] and uh my husband is from the upper peninsula so he was born and raised up there that is where my mother in law still lives so uh are you originally from michigan or uh_huh i will be darn yes uh_huh sure right no i avoid them with all yeah they are i mean i do them but they are a lot of work i usually have them when i there is a special event in our lives and i i make a big deal out of it for them and uh i think i am most uh happiest with my most familiar foods that i know are successful you know and i have i make my own pies and pie crust and you know i can make my pies from scratch i do not need a recipe to follow and uh yeah you just know from heart i had one of the ladies at church that tasted my [coconut] cream pie and she said make me one and i made her one and when i when she gave me back the plate she said i did not share this with anybody and i thought whoa that was a big pie yes uh_huh my word she must have a great pie recipe then wonderful uh_huh uh_huh yeah you that's right yeah they are meant for the that [evening's] dessert and you know it has got to be gone or daddy gets into the you know the [leftovers] puts about two more inches on his [waistline] and then he is [chastising] himself afterward uh_huh no i have not huh_uh uh_huh oh okay sure yeah like apple pie in america right uh_huh wow uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yes uh_huh well when i have a dinner party that is my motivation for getting the house clean yeah yeah we are catering a wedding uh um in august and uh this lady that is it at it's at her house she is not a good housekeeper so she has got to hire this crew of four women to come in two weeks prior to the wedding and get it ready yes and there you know she is she must have found some [jewels] because they start in the corner and work out yeah so uh_huh uh_huh sure yeah that is nice you know to have that that's a luxury today that's right yeah yeah uh_huh i i have a pie crust recipe that i that is unique that has vinegar and egg in it have you egg and sugar uh_huh uh i no i think it would be too [hazy] because um the i uh no well it like the liquid is like a half cup of water and then your egg and then your tablespoon of vinegar and you mix that together and then you you know your see it makes it makes uh five pie [crusts] at once so that it's quite a volume of i think it's four cups of floor and like uh a tablespoon of salt and a tablespoon of sugar and and you combine your dry ingredients and then you uh put in your liquid it just it just makes it very [pliable] and and very flaky and you can really treat it rough and you are still going to have a flaky pie crust like uh it's not mine it was from the one of the magazines probably twenty years ago and it said you can throw this on the floor and step on it and it will still be flaky i thought wow quite a statement for them to make uh_huh uh_huh oh wow wow well i am from michigan detroit uh_huh oh yeah that's real close uh_huh oh how neat oh okay uh_huh oh yes born in detroit okay well i i i guess if i was having a dinner party i depending on the number of people i might cook a like a brisket or a roast or a maybe a chicken dish and um i guess i usually plan probably a lettuce salad and a a potato dish and we usually serve fresh fruit and uh then make a dessert so that makes well that sounds good that sounds good bread do you have bread to go with it gosh oh well [lasagna's] always wonderful for large crowds i've heard you know i've heard a lot of people say it the short cut on the cooking for lasagna they they've told me that they go to sam's and buy a great big pan of lasagna so did you well i i know people that have have served it and they say gosh if you have company coming when you don't want to be always in the kitchen it's easy and she said it's they said it's good so that that's always sounds good to me um i feel like i feel like i'm in the kitchen cooking a lot i cook guess i cook a seems like i cook a lot of dinners oh not always for company just for just for family so feels like i'm often in the kitchen but a time consuming place yeah right right so i don't know what that is no i don't know what that is okay right right right right right do you like to make your own guacamole yeah we we don't make it very often i guess but uh oh do they gosh gosh oh that's good that's good or it's always good on top of something in the sandwich oh well we made i made guacamole that i would take to a pool party across the street the other day and and everyone there said they never made guacamole salad well i don't know i guess they don't have it at home they must they just said they never had it at home so i i was concerned that i thought oh taking this you know taking this as a dip i thought gosh you know sometimes when we have it at home it it turns dark on the top so quickly so i just oh does that help okay well well i'll have to remember that well i just i that day i just took extra lemon and just squeezed across the top and it really stayed longer than i ever thought it would so i thought maybe that was the trick yeah yeah so oh well i guess we bought a lot of we've been buying turkey lately instead of beef so even though you know the ground turkey it's the meat is softer and i everybody seems to like it so sometimes it seems to be cheaper too so we often buy it we buy it yeah yeah so we bought that or we bought the the [filets] and then the chicken or turkey nuggets and i don't think anybody in my house knows the difference unless you tell them or in yeah yeah less less cholesterol yeah right right well i guess that's probably all we need to do for tonight i always like dessert right right that's always good probably probably the only family recipe that we we make and it's really for special occasions is cheese cake and we take a recipe from my grandmother you know it's probably fairly typical cream cheese and egg and sugar and the insides of a uh_huh oh that sounds good uh we're not uh real wealthy at the moment last time i had people over for dinner we had lasagna and i used my mother's recipe i really like it it's got um you cook the noodles and make and brown hamburger and put tomato sauce in with it and i'm not sure she even puts must be some italian spices in there i can't remember but um for the cheese part you mix uh sour cream and cream cheese and cottage cheese and uh layer all that it's good and then uh uh tossed salad and and um oh my goodness diane get down from there and uh let's see what else did i serve with that corn yeah i made french bread with that one too i have a recipe that's pretty good for that so yeah i've heard that sam's has a really good lasagna in fact i think i had it at a at a party once it was good easy yeah yeah oh i know oh yeah not my favorite place but a necessity let's see what else do we like to have for trying to think what else i like to serve my mother likes to serve taco [grandes] have you ever had that you take a flour tortilla and you fry it like a taco shell and you uh for all the inside parts you brown hamburger and put some um tomato sauce in it and and i like to just add picante sauce to get the mexican flavor so you don't have to mess with spices and stuff and then um let's see and then and you heat up refried beans and you cut up tomatoes and lettuce and grated cheese and what you do to make it you take the shell and you spread the beans on first then you put the meat then you put the grated cheese and then you put um let's see what's next then and i i usually put the cut up tomatoes next and then the um lettuce and you can put uh like guacamole and [katy] i'm on the phone well get a towel or go change i'm on the phone um oh a little sour cream is good and and chopped olives uh yeah no i don't very often usually when we get [avocados] my kids just like to eat them plain so yeah i just cut slices off and i like an [avocado] sandwich too yeah yeah what you want where do they get it i can't imagine it would stay fresh long enough to i guess they just buy it at a restaurant when they eat it at a restaurant maybe yeah it helps if you i helps if you leave the pit in it yeah if you leave the pit in the bowl with the thing especially while you're waiting before you serve it that's supposed to help keep the um keep it from turning brown so quick oh oh that's good that probably helps too do you want it oh yeah we have too do you want scrambled yeah yeah if you get it on sale yeah yeah i don't think mine know either in fact we've been getting lunch meat that's turkey too it costs less than the other i don't know there's supposed to be something more healthy about it poultry instead of the beef and pork yeah yeah i i can't think of any other specific things i like to serve um one salad that we always like my sister in law always brings to family dinners is a i don't know what you call it uh you mix um cottage cheese and a package of [jello] and a thing of uh like cool whip that's good and quick and easy uh_huh okay i guess we're going to discuss food and cooking do you enjoy cooking i'm kind of that way too when i have i i enjoy cooking when i have time i don't enjoy preparing three meals a day everyday it gets kind of boring how big is the family you cook for uh_huh we have four so and two of them are teenage boys so are they yeah yeah yeah we have that problem too but also now it's just the amount that they eat it's just absolutely incredible yeah does he yeah that's true uh do you have any favorite things that you serve when you are doing a special meal favorite recipes that you've come across or uh_huh out on the grill uh_huh ooh uh_huh how ooh yeah ooh that's sound good i love that my husband really likes seafood um and i think that no matter what i do i don't serve enough of it really to uh to suit him i didn't grow up eating that much seafood and uh so i don't know it's just kind of not natural to me but i like it and uh i don't know one of his favorite things is uh well it's called seafood stew and it's really it's really like a soup that that you serve over rice and uh it has oysters and shrimp and crab in it and no no that's kind of louisiana i think if you do that yeah i don't either but uh no this is just it is really good and and one thing that's good is it makes the a large amount and so i've usually we eat one and i freeze two containers of it then that's just real quick to get it out and serve it over rice but neither of my kids will eat it you know so then they eat a pizza or yeah it really does one thing i've run across recently though a friend gave me a recipe that i really like for chicken enchiladas have you made them does he ooh uh_huh yeah well are these are done with a flour tortilla is that what he uses yeah isn't that something yeah i was going to say my kids both eat it i guess that's one thing that i particularly like um but i think it's good for you know for for company too and i've made it a few times um and you can make a lot at one time when i needed to make something to uh to give somebody you know like you know to take over to somebody's house or something else it it's nice when it makes a lot because you can feed your own family and then uh_huh what what does it have in it uh_huh sure uh_huh yeah uh_huh sure sometimes those are the best ones uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah ooh that sounds good uh_huh oh yeah those are good aren't they uh_huh um that sounds good right you cook the rice before you put it in yeah i bet the mayonnaise in there makes it really kind of gives it a tang that would be good i guess i would now use the the new mayonnaise free yeah that's really wonderful that they're coming out with so many new things like that because like i told my husband this summer i love to eat you know chicken salad and tuna salad and stuff like that and and you know basically it certainly a low [calorie] you know good thing except then you put your mayonnaise in there and spoil the whole thing you know and now it's it's it's okay and you can even i used to just put a tiny bit in well now i'm just putting more and more in yeah and it's only it used to be like a hundred calories per tablespoon and now it's like twelve oh i just think that's the best thing to have happened i'm just so excited about that anyway yeah yes right uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's when they as our family would say a pig out that's good oh one of my boys that that's twelve um is has high cholesterol have you ever found out about your kids um and my other one does not so oh year or so ago he found out and he went on a fairly strict diet to try to get it down and did he was able to get it down it's i think it's mostly [hereditary] because we really have never eaten high things in cholesterol he's never eaten any eggs he's never had anything but skim milk and you know i've never bought butter and things like that but um oh he just left for the doctor again and it's it's kind of back up um so he needs to be careful again so we've really been talking about the foods you know for him to to be sure to eat and uh so he's eating an apple a day for the last two days and all that kind of stuff does really help well i think we've probably talked long enough and alright sometimes not all the time right yeah that that's about the same boat i'm in too yeah uh five oh well i'll be hitting that fairly soon because all of mine are boys too so and they get pretty particular sometimes in what they want to have huh oh yeah well see i my oldest is nine and he already he already does that and i told him he's going to have to get a part time job by the time he reaches teenage years so he can eat um my husband and i our favorite meal is uh and we do it like for special stuff [celebrations] and we have like steak and he does the steak and then uh uh_huh and he [marinates] it in his special stuff that he does and it's real good and uh i do [sauteed] mushrooms so and asparagus and that's our favorite dinner yeah so do we yeah uh_huh it's not the one with all the shells and stuff in it is it i don't know what that i don't see how you eat that but oh yeah so it yeah it defeats the purpose oh yeah yeah my husband makes those i'm not i don't eat enchiladas i i don't like i don't like the i don't know i guess it's the texture or something i don't like the taste of enchiladas but everyone else in my family does yeah i don't know i it's i don't know what i don't know i i don't know what it is about the enchiladas i just and i'm the only one including my mom and dad and my brother i'm the only one that doesn't eat it but my kids love it uh_huh yeah yeah yeah i've got a chicken casserole that's like that that that i've yeah because i when i make this chicken casserole i it it makes a real big casserole and then another one that i freeze so or i give it to my mom and dad if i know we're not going to eat it's you can use chicken or turkey because my mom started making it like right after thanksgiving and using the leftover turkey and it's rice and when i do recipes i just throw stuff in i don't i'm not real good about measuring because i just i do it to taste and well yeah but it it's like it's just chicken it it's as much as you want you know torn up and and rice and cream of chicken soup and some mayonnaise and lemon juice and celery and that's it and some hard boiled eggs and that's it you just mix it all together and pop it in the oven just to you know heat it through and you sprinkle uh that those uh [toasted] onion rings on top of it for the crunchy and that's it you know and it it it goes and it's filling because of the rice so uh_huh yeah yeah it gives it a an extra yeah little tang yeah that cholesterol fat free uh_huh uh_huh i know i don't like tuna salad unless it's got lots of mayonnaise in it yeah i know yeah we did the low cal stuff well with my kids i don't they get enough sugar and stuff anyway mine are bouncing off the walls normally anyway and they don't need any added help so when we're here at home you know with sweets and stuff they they don't we don't really do that much i do a lot of fruits instead of the cakes and the [candies] and you know stuff like that and and drink wise they have [kool] aid milk or water normally now when they go to their grandmother's house which is every weekend it's a it's a different a different story all around uh_huh that's exactly what it is oh really no not yet huh yeah huh yeah the lower cholesterol foods and stuff they suggested some sort of a recipe uh for uh company for entertaining did you have anything in mind that uh you'd like to share ooh oh ooh that sounds good what uh_huh one tablespoon of [worcester] okay oh that how much chili sauce did you say like eight not eight ounces that would be a lot is it okay this would make a lot right and how much crab meat did you use one one can of flake oh okay have you ever used the uh [imitation] yet ooh that sounds i've tried it and then i have it here on hand for about a week and then all of a sudden it [dawned] on me wait is this totally [imitation] and then i found out i went back to the store and they said it is a fish product so therefore you really don't have a very long life you know once you buy it i thought so you know they should put some directions on some of these new things they're making that you really don't know what the shelf life is you know oh that's a good idea whose was that uh sam's right right oh oh that sounds good because that's great that must be the ones that look like they're packaged for a restaurant okay i i've right oh hey that sounds right and it's something good to have on hand too it's frozen in the first place right so you can uh it is frozen isn't it and then you can [refreeze] hey that sounds great that oh do you and that's my favorite and i really don't care for desserts that well other than one piece of it that's the that's the thing i hate most about entertaining is thinking of what i'm going to serve i i said i can make it no time it's trying to think and then we just uh built a new home and i have one of these kitchens that's the center of the house and so no matter where they're at your company can see you cooking which is funny this well this is what everyone has said they said it's okay for you because you keep a real neat kitchen and i said yes i decided it looks better in better homes and gardens than it does in [practicality] but uh what i have learned in the uh ten months we've lived here is it that when i entertain i have to have my foods all prepared and in the oven with all the everything through ready to serve because with the open area you don't want someone from your dining room seeing your mess like you said so you have to have the [picturesque] kitchen you know right out of the magazine you're right and you know the funny thing is now that i have a large kitchen with a big island and that i still have people trying to come you know they'll come in the kitchen and i said out we have the chairs on the other side of the counter for guests you're not allowed to [trespass] into my kitchen and it it has worked out but at our point of life we know many of the people we're entertaining uh well enough that they know you know it's very much at home type situation well we even have a better one now we decided that we all meet we have it worked well i uh just had a christmas around the world party the other night and had some hors d'oeuvres and i fixed uh a crab meat spread that is real good and real easy it's uh it's like uh eight ounces of cream cheese [softened] and you mix it with one tablespoon onion juice and one tablespoon lemon juice one tablespoon [worcester] sauce and mix it and spread it out onto a plate and uh_huh and then you take and uh cover that with [drained] crab meat mixed with one of the small bottles of chili sauce and spread it over the top and spread it on [triscuits] crackers and that always goes over real well and it's real easy it's one of the small bottles i don't think uh well it's about eight ounces it it uh_huh yeah it would probably make well it doesn't make quite as much as you think but yeah spread it out because you keep the cream cheese kind of thin one tin of the flake uh_huh and drain it real good uh_huh yes i have i used it uh last [christmastime] uh what did i put it in i think i just served it by itself there's like a little [tidbit] with the sauce to dip it into and stuff uh_huh uh_huh right right that's very true very true i had bought a cheesecake uh and they very nicely put onto the box that it may be [re] frozen which i felt was real nice yeah it uh was uh lawry's i believe or [lawler's] and i got it do you have a sam's wholesale warehouse up there it's real yeah okay that's where i picked it up it comes out of chicago and they're very good [cheesecakes] yeah yes yes and they have and they have the little papers between them and i think they're what about nine dollars and something yes yes yes yes it is frozen and i thaw it and then you can [refreeze] it and uh_huh it was they're very good very good and that's the one thing that i hate to make is desserts is it oh i love to eat it but i don't like to make it it takes time and you have to rack your brain and time i don't have anymore uh_huh it is uh_huh that's right and your mess yeah right right that's that's right well i like to have mine all done anyway because then i want to i want to party too i don't want to sit in the kitchen and be putting an olive on something you know correct sounds right well a lot of our entertaining anymore with the couples again that we've known a long time like you they uh we all bring things and it sure makes it a whole lot easier anymore okay so you're into microwave cooking yes and that's what we all are looking for isn't it something that we can just cook in a hurry after we get off work i've gotten in the habit of cooking something big on the weekends so that i have [leftovers] all week uh_huh i know i try not to make too much it's just my husband and i too and i try not to make so much that it lasts more than that week but uh i usually i usually like to make spaghetti or soup or chili or you know something like that or sometimes a roast but what's your favorite thing to cook if you're having a dinner party oh oh uh_huh ooh that sounds delicious uh_huh i end up with an old stand by that we call russian chicken because it's so easy and uh it you have to cook very little to go with it just some rice and some salad and that's about it you know uh you make you just take your boneless chicken breasts and then you take and make a a dressing out of uh russian dressing one bottle of that and a package of [lipton] onion soup mix and three ounces of [apricot] [preserves] and you mix it up and you just put it on the top of the chicken and then i cover the pan with foil and put it in the oven for about an hour and then i take the foil off and let it brown takes about another twenty minutes and it's delicious and it's so simple because i can pop it in when i come in the door you know and then uh go about my business and by the time i've got everything else ready the [chicken's] [chicken's] done so that's a real easy thing for me uh_huh oh really no i don't my mom gets that but really uh_huh um um oh my goodness uh_huh well i love cheese cake i have never been i don't know the ones i have made i have not done that well with i like a baked cheese cake you know i don't i have had a recipe that someone has given me that it's kind of like you just mix cream cheese and stuff and [refrigerate] it you know but that's not the same as a a new york style cheese cake and uh the recipes that i've used everybody will say oh this is real simple and then i make it and it's it's really not very good but yours sounds good i bet that lemon and orange peel gives it a little bit of [tartness] um well that sounds interesting so there's your good dessert for your dinner party are you into serving wines with your dinner party me either i wish i knew more about it uh_huh uh_huh they would be if you just had time to do it uh_huh uh_huh well how neat uh_huh um well i didn't even know they were offering that i guess i uh_huh oh well i bet that would be a fun thing to do yeah it's just it's so easy nowadays you know and it's uh especially when people are working just to come home and pop something into the microwave and it be ready in just a few minutes yeah all week well we've done that too there's just my husband and i and he he sometimes makes a huge spot uh pot of spaghetti and you know we're eating it for a week and a half and i kind of get sick of it after he uh_huh yeah right right um i have a great recipe for sour cream chicken enchiladas it's it's really good i got it from a friend of mine that i used to work with and uh every time i've served it everybody just loves it so that's that's one of my favorite things to make what about you uh_huh uh_huh well what do you put in it uh_huh uh_huh ooh that sounds good uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh ooh that sounds good is done right yeah that sounds good too i've got a um a great recipe for cheese cake i don't know if you get southern living but they have one if you like to cook they have every recipe i've tried out of that has been a really good one and um you know every month they've got all different kinds of recipes but i got one in there about a year or so ago on cheese cake and it's just a regular cheese cake and then you can put raspberry uh topping on it but inside the cheese cake uh recipe you put um lemon peel and orange peel and it's just enough to taste it you know when when when you're eating the cheese cake and it is wonderful but it takes a long time because you have to cook it for forty five minutes and then you turn the oven off and you leave it in the oven for another forty five minutes and then you open up the oven door and leave it in for another forty five minutes and then you're supposed to um i think chill it to room temperature so sometimes i'll do that overnight and then put the topping on the next day but it's it's very good uh_huh right yeah no it's not right it does and it it it is really good right oh sometimes but i mean i'm not a wine [connoisseur] by any means i've been to you know some wine [tastings] up in napa valley but um you know and i learned a little bit about them then but you know what would be fun they have some of those classes you can take yeah and then there's places um do you live in dallas okay there's places here that um offer i think it's like once a month you can go and to a particular restaurant or whatever and you can kind of take a cooking class and then you get to eat everything afterwards and then they also go into the wines you know to serve with you know different types of of meals and that kind of thing and it sounds like it's a lot of fun we have some friends who've done that and they've really enjoyed it yeah this place is called like [medina's] or [messina's] kitchen or something like that yeah it it sounds like like it okay while i was waiting for you to connect i i thought of a couple of menus so i decided it had to be in it informal or not you know if it's informal i'd probably choose something i mean just like hamburgers or steaks out on the grill because that's a lot of fun especially this time of year where it's so nice out um if it was formal i'd probably go with something like a chicken breast or lasagna or something i'm not i'm not into formal dinner parties but i'd probably go with lasagna a green salad and garlic bread um i have a pillsbury cookbook i got when i was married but it's kind of the bible of cooking for me then i have some from like church that are more family recipes that are more useful you know budget cookbooks but and of course you get a lot from when you're growing up um i cook a lot the same as as my mom did of course i've added several different recipes but what you serve or what would you well that's good uh_huh uh_huh huh yeah that would be wonderful in these times yeah either they're really fast or uh_huh uh_huh what's one of your favorites uh_huh wow sounds too good yeah yeah that thirty minute cookbook that sounds fun i find a lot of the cookbooks that i don't know that you buy over the counter ask for really strange ingredients or things i don't keep on hand all the time and i have young children and our budget's set you know at this time but i want to use simple recipes that i have things on hand i don't have to run to the store to buy or look for something i haven't heard of that's why sometimes i shy away from uh more of a traditional cookbook but well it was interesting talking to you it's a fun subject food is one of my favorite things too anything else you wanted to add oh wow uh_huh that's good uh_huh uh_huh that sounds good that sounds really good it sounds like you guys are a little more gourmet than i am i'm pretty simple right now but yes that's probably that's true i have little ones and we and they won't eat you know too many different foods right now yes yeah yeah [spaghetti's] a pretty staple every other week or so and it goes a long ways too so all righty talk to you later maybe uh_huh uh_huh yes i see so what do you use for cookbooks uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right well i i i think we come from from different backgrounds uh so the i i i so it you know have different perspectives that you are i find the joy of cooking to be a remarkably useful book to to fall back on because it has almost everything in it but on the other hand it's not very inspiring uh it's a good reference when you need to dig something up what we've found very useful is a book called the thirty minute cookbook i think that's the title by marion [burroughs] uh which has recipes which allegedly can all be prepared in thirty minutes you know the whole meal and so she's yeah now now i i find that the cutting up of the food and all that really makes it take a little longer than thirty minutes but they're but they're but they're interesting they're interesting menus um combinations that you wouldn't have nobody thought of um um gee the one i had most recently was was one that was she she describes as jim [beard's] favorite um summer menu or something and it [consisted] of of grilled [kielbasa] sausage uh a potato salad with olive oil and uh some tomatoes that had been chopped up with onions and curry powder and probably some yogurt was in there uh and that and that was you know that's that that's certain you can do in thirty minutes but there are a whole lot of you know i mean i i would recommend you look at that book if you're a busy person thirty minute cookbook uh_huh uh_huh yes yes uh_huh yes well you had said dinner you know you know what would i put together for a formal dinner we we had some friends over as recently as saturday night and and um put here here the inspiration was a combination of julia child for the dessert you know a chocolate [mousse] recipe and a sort of cookbook which has a recipe for a thing called chicken [marabella] um which is this wonderful thing you can do um basically you're baking baking chicken in a in an open pan um having marinated it first and my wife did this part so i don't remember all the details marinated in olive oil and some seasoning um and cooked with some olives and some and some [prunes] uh there's a little bit of brown sugar in there and it bakes up and it's a delicious thing and it's easy [comparatively] so um i'm sorry i just love well maybe a little more leisure time to do it i don't know yeah i found my kids were very frustrating when they were little in terms of their tastes well there again sometimes it was easy they'd you know canned [ravioli] was one of their favorites and so it was easy to open a can of [ravioli] yes well nice talking to you cheryl okay bye okay diane and a very good afternoon to you do you uh do most of your cooking at home or do you uh have a lot of people come in and have to prepare for them uh_huh my goodness well what would you uh like to cook what's what what's what is your favorite uh recipes uh that you would like to have for a dinner party now you're in dallas is it okay i was i was thinking in terms of mexican almost tex mex uh_huh well that's a very interesting food though and when i go out to eat dinner sometimes that's the type of foods i like to find we have uh i think chico's or or in these different restaurants in this area that uh have all this fine mexican foods but um if i were to cook uh a dinner party uh it may be standard to you but uh actually i never get too much fried chicken but i would have fried chicken uh with reasonably hot sauce on it almost a mexican type thing and i love twice cooked potatoes have you ever had twice cooked potatoes with with a cream made of the the sour cream and cream cheese and uh a little [oleo] and i use uh [oregano] and maybe dill weed uh mixed in with it and uh i like broccoli casseroles which would include onion and cheese and and more dill weed and some medium hot peppers as you can see i'm inclined towards the mexican type of a meal and i would probably have some quiet and gentle fried onion rings mixed in there with it too so uh how would you improve upon that more fresh vegetables included to that uh_huh how do you cook your green beans uh_huh so you all right that's what i was wondering about what what you use and and in herbs and so forth uh_huh have you ever tried chinese type green beans we use soy sauce well you might uh be interested in that have it gives a very delicious taste you you have a soy sauce taste and you also have a little cream sauce in there because you you would use the uh water and uh golly what's this white powder that that uh that you mix with water and gives a thick sauce i can't even think of the name of that right at the moment anyhow sorry about my mind but uh it does make a nice thick creamy sauce with the green beans and then you have a nice soy sauce taste under it with a few onions in there with it if it does it it brings out such a so much different things in uh in the string beans i i like it to try them differently i hardly ever cook them the same way twice just so i can enjoy them so you might uh think about that chinese cooking actually has a lot of very delicious tastes to them and uh north african cooking is good when you use something called [couscous] and that's uh made from uh i think they call it beans and that's the type of something that whatever you mix with it this [couscous] uh absorbs the taste of whatever else you put in it where that makes a very delicious dish you probably have to buy that from specialty stores c o u s c o u s and that's a a north african dish they eat it one to two meals everyday in north africa and it is very very flexible you can do a lot of things with it it makes a fantastic uh uh salad with cucumbers and olive oil and onions and oh boy real tasty well i've enjoyed talking with you and i hope i've given you some ideas and uh that's one thing we can enjoy is good delicious food well thank you very much miss diane bye bye and good afternoon to you um no i do most of my cooking at home and um i could safely say that i have never cooked for a dinner party um right i'm in dallas of course um dinner parties down here probably oh turn out to be more things like barbecues and uh_huh yes yeah uh tex mex uh mexican food um probably a little bit different than what you serve up in pennsylvania for a dinner party uh_huh right uh_huh fried chicken uh_huh oh yes i have uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh oh improve upon that let's see i'd probably put a bunch of fresh vegetables in and some yeah uh green beans and uh carrots and things like that my green beans um i just get fresh green beans from the grocery store and snap off the ends and put them in water and steam them for about ten minutes and i like to put a little mrs dash in with them uh_huh right uh_huh um i like to just put a tablespoon or so of mrs dash in there and it makes them pretty tasty the chinese type are they the real no i haven't ever used that uh_huh a white powder um gosh that's okay uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah i might try that oh yes i love chinese north african uh_huh uh_huh huh uh_huh well i've enjoyed talking with you oh yes okay thank you bye bye hi donna ready to get started okay sort of an interesting topic since i just got back from lunch here oh it was uh it was i'm an officer in the air force and we went to the [officers'] club for a little mexican food today yeah yeah if you're having a dinner party what what would you serve sure uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh jeez well well when is the party here i don't know being a being the bachelor here that i am i i don't think i'd i'd be i mean it it's not a question of capability here to do something like that it's just there's there's no motivation you know i want to i want to throw some charcoal on the grill and and throw a steak on there and some baked potatoes and stuff like that but um uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah that's what they they are shooting for here well i live on a i live on a lake here and uh so it and then during the summertime it's real nice to be able to entertain outdoors like that's a little more a casual thing but in mine the wintertime it's not bad too because then i've got a a fireplace and a nice nice house and all that so we sort of a really good place to do entertaining like that i just haven't uh really tried a whole lot but uh i don't know let's see i have had well one time i did have a dinner party i served a uh uh i had a gang of people over and kind of made a fried chicken thing and biscuits and kind of southern uh southern food even though i'm up here in new york so yeah oh yeah yeah it is it's oh no kidding upstate rome in uh [griffins] air force base well i was born in buffalo and uh been all over the place yeah right uh_huh sure yeah yeah i've been down to texas a few times and uh had uh the pleasure of their good mexican cuisine down there uh_huh uh_huh hi this is donna donahue hi uh yeah i think so okay well what did you have for lunch oh oh well that's interesting okay so our topic is is food today is that okay okay uh do you want me to go first okay if i was having a dinner party i would probably um have some um some uh um some fruit to start with with some apples sliced up and maybe some cheddar cheese and crackers and grapes and um probably serve maybe some wine and beer and maybe have some uh uh salsa and chips around and peanuts and then i would have um let's see i usually have like a little theme when i have a dinner party so um i would have maybe um say if it was like greek night or something um maybe um on the barbecue we'd put uh cubes of lamb or i guess lamb used for greek and um like a shish kabob and um mushrooms and tomatoes and onions and then we'd have um like a big greek tossed salad kind of like a [caesar] salad and um let's see what else um maybe some rolls and um i guess some uh some rice or something like that how does that sound yeah um yeah that would take some planning but that's right well that sounds good too i have um i have three kids so um when we have friends over i have my oldest kind of baby sit for the little two younger ones upstairs and um usually we just have very plain kind of you know interesting not very interesting meals pizza and that all so once in a while when we do something like that it's kind of fun but it's not a not a regular thing um now are we supposed to talk for about five minutes is that it okay okay um let's see now okay so you would have a barbecue uh_huh oh sure uh_huh oh that sounds wonderful uh_huh uh_huh oh you are in new york right now oh i'm i'm in texas i didn't know this was all from all over the whole country oh i see and i'm originally from long island yes and now where are you in new york oh upstate oh okay oh okay is that where you you are originally from around there oh okay oh wow that's interesting okay let's see um well i like to have um sometimes when i have a dinner party i'll have um everybody bring something and that's real interesting because then you get different um different kinds of foods and new recipes and um uh sometimes somebody will be bring something that you really like and get the recipe from them or whatever and we are just getting interested in in mexican food because here in texas they have lots of really good mexican restaurants and um we're we're just getting into the fajitas and all that stuff that you could do you know what a [fajita] is yeah okay yes they have some delicious delicious things and i um since i always make chicken [burritos] and just take chicken breasts and you boil them maybe like four chicken breasts and you boil them until they are cooked maybe like thirty minutes and then you [debone] them and and kind of shred them up into the meat that has gotten cooled and you take um little bit maybe two tablespoons of butter and a in a big frying pan and chop up some onion and put in [oregano] and salt [angie] okay um let's see uh i like seafood uh let's see uh shrimp steamed uh [shellfish] with maybe herbs uh spicy lobster with [linguini] yeah uh_huh right yeah uh i think hors d'oeuvres are good too uh and that way you can have a variety uh uh yeah fresh vegetables would be good or uh just no yeah yeah oh all these hard questions uh what white wine yeah i'm not really a drinker so i'm not i don't know a lot about that oh goodness uh chocolate something chocolate uh yes oh you do uh_huh yeah uh_huh that sounds good too traditional right yeah i just started i just really started uh uh learning about that and i bought a martha stewart i don't know if you've heard of her her cookbook and she talks about catering and uh you know goes into goes into all that and the different types of uh uh different types of parties you know different types of foods um my father owns a restaurant it's it's just a uh a cafe so it's not really anything you know that i want to it's not the same uh it's in lewisville trinity that's public no uh_huh it's not uh let's see what about [hawaiian] [luau] could have uh uh fruits and and pineapple uh let's see uh i think i think decorating your food is you know really now is it [stacy] [angie] i'm sorry well now so if you were going to have a dinner party what would you make that sounds good now what is uh what is uh the steamed [shellfish] you said and what would that be like a clam or uh okay so if you have a a dinner party and you're going to serve uh seafood for supper what type of uh hors d'oeuvres would you serve prior to the meal like cheeses or fruits or vegetables or probably not [nachos] and dip huh and would you uh would it be appropriate to uh drink with the uh prior when you have the hors d'oeuvres okay and then when you serve the meal what type of wine would you have with uh with the with seafood that would be my guess and and then uh uh dessert something sweet you must like chocolate well let's see usually when we have a dinner party i always i like to grill so we might have some [cocktails] ahead of time and maybe some uh some dip uh some cheese one of our favorites is uh to take some let's see philadelphia cream cheese i think is that what comes in those little blocks and pour cocktail sauce over the top of it and then get these little canned shrimp and uh wash them and cool them and then dump them in the uh sauce and then take crackers and then you just dip the cracker in the sauce with the clams and the cream cheese and you have a real nice dip that goes good with a cocktail and then i like to barbecue like steaks or pork chops and then we have uh oh lot of times we'll have baked potatoes with them and a salad and then uh i don't know what we usually have for dessert cake sometimes but uh that's what we would do for a dinner party i guess but that's i guess when you talk about dinner party that's probably not uh that's more for like when friends come over traditional yeah i wouldn't be the big uh [snotty] kind huh_uh oh well do you work in a uh in a setting where you uh are in the food business oh in uh is it in dallas okay all right so you graduated from which high school trinity okay and that's a public school or private huh okay i have to get to know this area a little better i guess uh well is your father's cafe uh one that you could cater out of um and he's not interested in letting his twenty one year old daughter experiment with it probably well let's see what else for catering uh oh that would be good and you could actually go with uh a chicken if you wanted to what are you guys having for christmas oh you're not yeah well funny you should mention that i'm a pig farmer yeah well now it's kind of a hobby more than anything else but we're going to have uh wild boar we uh we killed a boar the other day it was you know [mating] with the [sows] and you can't use the [piglets] you know so it's about six months of no use so we uh we shot him and cleaned him out and had him you know processed into ham and uh we're also going to have a little roast [suckling] pig because i i've got one that's got a a [hernia] and rather than you know pay the vet four hundred dollars for surgery we'll just cook him and eat him well no hey i tell you what preparing a little pig is is a snap i'm telling you real easy easier than chicken yeah you just uh you kill him you know you probably most guys just shoot them in the head they go you know in a second they're gone and then you just dip the [carcass] in uh boiling water pull it out and there's a we use a little [raspy] brush pulls the hair off and uh gut it and uh just stick it down in a pit with some [cloves] and uh some pineapple about three [pineapples] you know sliced them up and uh cover him up with uh wet uh sacks feed sacks is what i usually use and then start a charcoal fire on top of him and after about six hours you put the fire out and dig that baby out of there and it's the best eating you ever had yep just like a pig i mean you know uh it has a lot less fat this wild boar weighed probably about three hundred and thirty pounds and he dressed out to almost two hundred and ten pounds well you know we took the skin and the head and the and the feet off and that was about you know a hundred hundred pounds of just ham oh well we're you know we're not going to eat the whole thing it would take a year but uh you know we're going to drive up to kansas city see my wife's folks and uh she she what's what's what's your mother cooking for christmas yeah well her mom's doing brisket brisket it's a part of the cow that they used to throw away it's just tough as a boot and uh you know they used to use it for leather i think i mean no i was kidding but uh it's it's a part of the [loin] you know the rib cage and it has a lot of muscle in it and a lot of [gristle] where it [attaches] to the ribs so it's really really a tough piece of meat but it's so tasty you can't stand it so you just take it and you marinate it for a couple of days and then uh you just put it in the oven takes about four hours to cook one they weigh about anywhere from ten to twenty pounds and uh we're going to have that oh well we'll have [cranberries] and [hominy] and uh we we are we're big on olives and cucumbers and stuff up here we have olives black olives and cucumbers and uh tomatoes we still have tomatoes yeah fresh tomatoes well it started to freeze up around here you know there's nothing between you and us but our [barb] wire and half of that's down i mean it's thirty degrees this morning yeah but uh it'll go up to fifty or sixty almost oh yeah well it's desert you know where where we are it's it's it's uh the edge of the desert i mean it's part of the great plains so in the day time in the summer it goes up to a hundred hundred and ten and at night it goes down to about sixty yeah we get a fifty degree temperature swing in about four hours so everything that lives around here is real tough that's trees you know we got hundred year old trees that are you know twenty feet tall that's all the bigger they get they you know they're just hard as a rock what are we having let's see well i'm not planning the menu no we usually go out to either one of our folks they both live close to but um i don't know it seems like a a big thing for christmas is usually ham oh you are huh my goodness huh oh really is that is that hard oh really oh huh oh my goodness oh well does a boar taste just like regular ham does it huh oh my oh my goodness oh well how many people are you planning on serving at christmas eat it all yeah i don't what is brisket huh oh oh my goodness yeah oh my goodness huh and that [softens] it up huh huh oh gee well what else do you serve with your pig huh oh do you oh we we just got lots of snow oh really huh oh my goodness i didn't know it got that low at night oh gee my goodness oh boy oh oh gee okay um well i like to cook um but i don't like getting too awfully fancy about it just because um uh it's too much pressure you know if i have people over for dinner i like it to be nice and relaxed yeah and so i don't like to arrive or or when they arrive for me to be completely worn out yeah exactly uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh you'd just do it yeah uh_huh um boy i like that yeah well i'm planning a and naturally this is appropriate because i'm planning dinner for people tomorrow night and then the next night so tuesday night there'll be eight people here altogether oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's fun uh_huh yeah yeah that's a good idea yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah that's good well one of my favorites if i don't want to have other people bring stuff i just want to treat them is to make chicken and rice it's very easy to you don't like it oh you do okay yeah i have a really easy recipe for that where you just brown the chicken and then you put rice in the bottom of the pan you pour [bouillon] or chicken broth over it and and you put the chicken in then pour the uh broth over and you can put mushrooms in if you want and then you just yeah over uncooked rice and you can either microwave it or do it in the oven and it just it [fluffs] up and it's really moist uh_huh wow yeah uh_huh yeah well i'll keep that one in mind yeah yeah uh_huh yeah you can get away with it even having a semi nice dinner or you know semi yeah yeah you put in um let's see what was it three quarters of cup of rice or it depends on you can really vary it but you have to put the water in [proportionally] i can't remember i think it was three quarters cup rice to two cups water two cups um broth yeah flavor uh_huh yeah uh_huh um let's see i think it was an hour i've done it in the microwave so often lately because it's it's really easy yeah but i think it's about an hour or maybe it's only half hour um you just until the rice looks fluffy and and not overdone you know before it gets overdone yeah um i'd let it cook just a little bit just so that the cooking goes a little faster yeah i liked your idea too there uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh okay what kind of foods would you have oh i do too uh_huh uh_huh yeah you can't enjoy it right that's that's what i like doing things like making lasagna just because i can have it ready and baking in the oven it's everybody just says how wonderful it is and it's it's like uh yes i that's one of those things i got famous for in college people would come and say could would you come over and make lasagna for me it's like well i can't really give you a recipe uh i can i can just do it i like doing that kind of stuff and it's it's fun in fact that's what we had for a christmas party last week we just had a bunch of people over and we had we did lasagna and garlic bread and uh yummy uh i do too in fact oh oh good uh actually one thing we have done quite a bit through the holidays just because it's a real easy is just baked potato dinners and have you know like three or four couples come over and i'll do the potatoes and you know like butter and cheese and stuff and have everybody else just bring a couple of [toppings] whatever they like and it turns out great because i mean you've got like hot sauce and taco meat and barbecue and you know bacon and all that good stuff but it's it's inexpensive plus it's real easy on the [hostess] because you can just have the potatoes ready and just have a salad with it and you got a great dinner it's it's real easy i like doing that part i'm in favor of very little clean up um very little planning because we've got three or four couples that we get together with to play games and it's we invariably end up at my house since i've got two kids and that it's it's fine because then i can just say okay fine you bring this you bring this you bring this we're done and it's pretty cool uh_huh oh oh oh i love it um over the uncooked rice oh oh how neat huh now i've done it with where you put you cook the well i guess you probably could do it same way but cook the rice and then take a can of like cream of mushroom soup or cream of chicken soup and put a little bit of white wine in it and every once in a while i'll put in i'll slice white grapes and i'll put in there and that's just because i'm not a real big wine person but i like it it adds something to the chicken and then just bake it and it makes a wonderful sauce over the rice yeah it's that was one of the first things i made for my husband because i was like um yeah i could actually find something i could cook real easy that would be kind of sort of elegant kind of oh yeah but then i hadn't thought about doing it with uncooked rice so just like in a thirteen by nine pan um um uh_huh yeah yeah i i use that for for rice and for when i cook pasta or something i'll put a little bit of [bouillon] in there just to give it a little extra flavor um now that would be good how long do you have to bake it i do i do microwave too a lot how long would it be how long would it be in the microwave oh okay okay do you just brown the chicken to get it colored or do you go ahead and let it cook through um ooh this is a beneficial call i like this yeah but that one's an easy one it's like just put in a friend of mine makes it where she goes ahead and seasons up the with the soup and the wine put in garlic and onion powder or chopped onions if you want to do that you know what ever however much effort you feel like putting into it but it it makes a great i mean i've got a two year old and a four year old and they love it and because my daughter calls it her gravy and i mean she thinks it's wonderful my good you're a picky eater if i can get you to we could talk about my favorite subject food uh i don't cook a lot actually i have just started baking so uh i am kind of interested in cakes and uh muffins and stuff like that but i can't seem to get them exactly right so i am just trying to perfect some things i tried to make an [applesauce] cake which i will never ever try to make again it was horrible i don't know if the cake was horrible or if i made it horrible uh oh hey uh_huh uh uh_huh uh_huh wow uh_huh uh_huh they request it i have not gotten any [requests] yet last year i had a christmas party at uh my office and i uh made the tuna fish sandwiches and everyone uh i mean i think everyone knows how to make tuna fish so i thought that would be easy for me to make and i can not go wrong with that and so i made it and uh i used celery seed in my do you use celery seed in your tuna fish and i just thought it was so strange because i never i thought that that was what celery seed was for was for tuna fish and so but everyone really really loved the tuna fish and they just couldn't get over the fact that i used celery in it and it just surprised me celery and onion and uh_huh oh yeah just like uh really fine onions and green pepper and the celery seed and i use like uh miracle whip salad dressing instead of the actual mayonnaise because i really don't like the [helman's] mayonnaise but if you use salad dressing with kind of uh you know kind of i guess a [tart] taste then it comes out real good but i uh it was the first time i have i have ever found out that the the nobody else used celery seed i feel so silly but yeah right right yeah i would put that too i just did not have those things like i don't think i had eggs that night or something but i would have put eggs i would have put eggs in there also uh strange celery seed do you use a regular mayonnaise or the miracle whip yeah uh_huh yeah i do that also just to to put a little [zing] in it uh_huh i love barbecue anything barbecued i will eat uh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah i like to make that too i make that once in a while it is not really once you have all the ingredients it is just the [layering] really and not breaking the uh the uh pasta that is the hardest part probably but uh uh do you make cheesecake uh_huh uh uh_huh uh and just put the strawberries cooking and food huh what do you like to cook uh_huh oh dear oh probably not i uh have uh a bread recipe that is real easy that everyone always really does like that uh doesn't require kneading the dough and it is always it is wonderful it is and what is funny is that you use uh bran all bran and it looks like it is a wheat bread but it is actually all bran flour and uh you know it is just regular the type that you know [yeast] and that sort of thing and you let it rise and you can let it rise in the refrigerator and then punch it down and then uh make your rolls they really are good and they are so easy to do that is seems like every time that we have a dinner party or that we are going some place where everybody is suppose to bring something and they have had my rolls before they always ask me to bring those rolls no i haven't oh how funny well see i i have always used celery i mean i have used celery before but i never used the celery seed in it well what else do you put in it besides the celery seed uh_huh uh_huh see i have never put bell pepper in tuna fish either isn't that funny i was brought up with tuna fish you know where you put in uh-oh chopped hard boiled eggs which is now is a no no with cholesterol and uh you know chopped up dill pickles and that sort of thing the standard old tuna fish uh_huh but isn't that interesting so you you you use bell pepper and onion and celery seed i will have to try that sometimes i do and sometimes i use the miracle whip it depends on what i have and sometimes if i am using like regular mayonnaise to spice it up a little bit uh i will use a little bit of mustard with it uh_huh yeah but not a bunch but enough to make it have a little bit more flavor i like uh to barbecue baby back ribs and uh and and they are so easy to do if you uh have a good barbecue sauce and you uh just cook them very very slowly in the oven and it is not hard to cook like some meals are and it is not of course it is messy to eat that is the disadvantage and uh i make lasagna from scratch and people really like my lasagna and so uh sometimes i am requested to make that and that is not too hard to do because you can do it in advanced and just bake it uh_huh yeah uh_huh then i have a wonderful recipe for strawberry pie it just takes forever but it is uh when the strawberries are nice and big and fresh and yummy uh uh_huh i do but this one is basically it is like a normal pie crust but then you use this sort of uh it is a cream cheese uh uh [layering] but you use uh thin it out a little bit uh or make it a little [fluffier] and you put uh line the whole pie crust with that and so it is sort of like in a way uh using cheese cake but and it is not a real cheese cake and then you oh so what would be the your favorite meal to cook don't like to cook huh make a mean spaghetti huh uh got kids married yeah well my wife and i and we've got a thirteen week old baby so don't do much cooking for him yet uh uh yeah what kind of menu would you plan for a dinner party and uh what kind of dishes you might have for it or some sort of thing like that let's see a good dinner party menu i suppose it would just about depend on who was coming i guess you know uh something light and easy if it was pretty informal about anything breast of chicken oh gosh yeah how do you usually cook your deer how do you usually cook your deer yeah yeah i imagine i would imagine it is yeah yeah i understand we just had uh deer stew sort of uh it was deer steak stew uh well about a day day and a half in the crock pot uh uh some deer steaks in kind of a mushroom gravy uh some veggies in it no no the times i've been out deer hunting i i can go out in the woods [unarmed] and deer will be [tripping] over me and vice versa i mean i get close to the woods with anything [resembling] a weapon and suddenly there isn't a deer within fifty miles so no this was given to us by some friends uh guy was in a uh in a hunting club and you know but the whole group goes out hunting and then at the end of the day they split it and whoever brought it down gets the [lion's] share and the rest of it is split with the rest with everybody in the group well he they they went out last year and almost everybody got it the limit so there's everybody had deer coming out their ears so yeah they they gave us some deer and some of it's still in the freezer and they about eight months ago they gave it to us we we either crock pot deer or we'll uh you know put it out on the grill so that uh the bulk of the [tallow] will dribble off of it yeah yeah that is good deer spaghetti is real good anyway uh no i think if i was going to have a dinner party i'd probably have uh sandwiches or something along those lines and then uh uh you know just something light finger food sort of something or or maybe have something [roasting] out on the fire oh well anyway uh we don't do much in the way of entertaining usually it's one other couple come over for a dinner let's see what did we have the last time we had guests over ah yeah we had a uh a turkey loaf which uh kind of taco turkey loaf it was good uh [scalloped] potatoes no mashed potatoes mashed potatoes with uh cheese melted over the top of them a couple things like that it was pretty good little dinner yeah usually it's oh don't you hate that i've got a i got a few pounds to lose myself that's okay i've been fighting my weight since i was about ten years old yeah yeah i was left the fourth grade [weighing] about a hundred pounds and started the seventh grade grade at two none to cook i don't like to cook spaghetti i guess though i make a mean spaghetti yeah no huh_uh just my husband and i and the two dogs so what about yours uh_huh so i guess it's supposed to be dinner party is that what they said uh_huh huh we don't think you uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh sometimes we'll have uh we'll have a bunch of people over and cook deer huh how do we usually on the grill we'll take the back strap and soak it in italian dressing for a couple of hours and throw it on the grill and it is good real good either that or hamburgers we really don't have dinner parties um ooh uh_huh ooh uh_huh uh_huh did you kill the deer no uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh well that's nice uh_huh yeah we still got some from last year yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah we we usually have most of it made into uh hamburger meat though and cook you know spaghetti with it chili so uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah um uh_huh oh oh uh_huh um um sounds good this isn't a good topic for me right now i'm on a diet um yeah i have too i was real skinny till i was ten okay [cindy] you there okay what kind of dinner parties have you had uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh whatever you like huh yeah uh_huh um oh that sounds delicious yeah yeah you know i've made like little [swedish] meatballs but they're just made out of the beef you know and uh with spices and things in them but never anything mixed with [bisquick] uh_huh um yeah that's my that's my parties mostly is at christmas time and thanksgiving time you know i've uh i had an open house party here once when after we moved in here uh which i had things like that but i always cooked them ahead of time and then i just sliced them you know and had macaroni salad with uh shrimp in it have you ever had that put some fresh little fresh shrimp and it's in your macaroni salad that you make the shrimp just gives it a really good flavor yeah i don't like the can but the fresh you know yeah that was really good yeah right right but uh at uh christmas time we just have a regular sit down dinner you know which is kind of hard because you got so many people and then by time you pass everything around it seems like everything on your [plate's] cold so but anyhow i yeah you can always take your plate and just heat it up you know but uh other than that i i don't have too many parties uh you know i have like maybe just a another couple over for dinner but uh other than than than that i don't have you know a whole bunch of people like except except at christmas and i have my family uh_huh yeah right right yeah that's easy i always like to have that too yeah everybody seems to like that too no everybody likes that and then uh if you have a nice big roast that you can throw in the oven then you can put your potatoes and carrots or whatever else all in there you know especially if a pork roast that's what i love with my and uh other than that in fact i'm just thinking of what next weekend when the super [bowl's] on i've asked a couple people to come over and i just uh had been thinking what to have for that no not yet no and i you know i don't want to have to come away from the t v i want something that i can just take them and serve them while they're sitting in front of the t v you know so i'll think of something just that we can [munch] on over there you know and they can just fill their plate up at intermission and then go back over there and sit down yeah yeah yeah preparing it right oh it sure does well when i was brought up you know we didn't yeah well i've had them uh where i've served up to twelve to sixteen people uh and i had help with them uh and part of them i did were like a buffet and uh it i had uh just different uh side dishes and appetizers and one of them that that i'd remembered was uh some uh sausage hors d'oeuvres and uh anyhow uh you take uh a couple of uh cups of [bisquick] and uh sausage oh like a a owens mild you can i guess you could use the hot if you wanted to yeah and uh you put that in and then you get some real sharp cheddar cheese and put that in and a little bit of milk and make it all [doughy] and then like i just put them in little balls and bake them for about fifteen minutes and they are so good yeah it's making me hungry for them right now have you yeah uh_huh i i've used that quite a bit and it and it seems to work real well uh and uh uh when i've had so many people uh to feed like i try to do a ham and a turkey and and yeah uh_huh no what uh_huh oh i'll bet yeah i'll have to try that i like things that are easy and and uh [nutritious] uh_huh i know i know well thank god for microwaves you know yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah right well i don't anymore it's been a few years and and uh i don't have you know over a couple either and and uh i try to uh have everything all ready and and it it just makes it a lot nicer where a don't spend all my time in the kitchen and uh spaghetti and yeah i know i don't think i've ever met anyone that didn't yeah oh yeah i like it too i do too uh_huh yeah well have you had any good ideas yet oh okay yeah yeah and that's the way to do it too i think it's you know what's i think is so nice is that in this day and time that we can have good food that's good for you and you don't have to spend hours and hours and hours in the kitchen and and it makes an awful lot of difference doesn't it well okay did it click okay um well how do you feel about food and cooking uh_huh well we're vegetarians and we just became vegetarians for i i just became a vegetarian over the past uh year and a half and it's a real challenge to find foods proper foods to eat and it's a real challenge not to become like what they call a junk food junkie where your menu is [composed] of uh things that you want to eat that aren't you know that aren't don't contain meat products or don't contain animal products but maybe aren't you know uh balanced meal so to speak so but we we feel a lot better since we've become vegetarians i did at first but um not really no not i i can't imagine eating meat um the reason i [tranged] uh changed to become a vegetarian was for ethical reasons so the idea of me eating meet would be like eating something you know i i think of it as something alive you know so it i can't do it you know for me it's it just but i do sometimes when i smell meat you know when i smell particularly uh say steak or something you know that i i do admit that i you know wish you know that i could have that flavor but but i know what it i know what it is so i you know i don't want it but yeah yeah you you'd be surprised the things i mean you could like tonight we're having uh nature [burgers] which are like a grain burger and you can it's really pretty good i i the people i serve it to like my sister and family members well my family members are vegetarians now basically i mean they're not they're not when they go out to eat they sometimes eat other you know meats and things but at home we eat vegetarian meals and uh you can you know make uh pasta meals and different things that people are use to eating that wouldn't offend you know that they wouldn't be offended that there wasn't a meat there you know at the at the table or even pizzas you can make a pizza that's not that doesn't have any animal animal you know you don't have animal products it would have cheese but you know but you know not meat yeah we do eat i i had become for about three or four months i was vegan which is a person that eats um no animal products no cheeses no eggs and that's even more difficult it's really hard to find the products and it's hard that's even harder to keep yourself from eating because it it adds so much to meals you know when you put cheese on something or you know it really makes a difference or eggs yeah eggs my mother just said eggs it's hard to find [substitutes] for eggs when you're baking and cooking and things so although you can i mean there's cookbooks and there's ways to do it it's a lot more expensive too i think you know the the the market is just not made for a vegan so but um yeah it if well it really is because just today we were in the grocery store and they had lentils and i you know i wasn't really sure whether they would have lentils in the grocery store we've been living in bermuda and in bermuda they had a um a health food store that really had a lot of good stuff and where we're living now is a small town that really doesn't you know just having that kind health food store that [caters] to those kind of needs and you just have to hope that the grocery store will you know the bigger grocery stores and they actually had lentils which some stores don't have things like that you know which yeah see that lot of people don't and that's yeah like [lentil] soup or something people don't and that's such a good source of protein or like [soybeans] you know people think ugh they think it's something really horrible but there's a lot of things you can buy that have [soybean] products in them to begin with that you don't even know where in there so um it's it's just a matter of learning you had to know yeah so but it uh_huh yeah well think of it think of it like this takes a long time for meat to digest and you know if you've got that sitting in your stomach i mean even when you sleep it's still sitting there [digesting] so you you kind of giving your stomach a chance to relax a bit and not have to work so hard to digest all that meat you know because it takes longer than some products some other foods in your stomach to digest that meat so um you prepare a lot of vegetables and there's lots of different casseroles and things no yeah you just you just well see at ours uh we're living with my family my folks now so you know they they have the turkey you know they do they they you can't stop you know everyone's life but um i think if in our own house we didn't we would have things like a casserole things like that that centered more on the vegetables as far as we might have one special dish one special casserole that was our one special thing like the turkey you know with the main meal kind of thing and and i suppose because it's for me ethical we'd just play up the fact that [thanksgiving's] you know is a time for everyone to give thanks even turkey you know yeah so um but it it's interesting finding different recipes although my mother is the one that cooks um which yeah yeah lots of them lots of them and uh i have this one in front of me right now as a matter of fact it's called sundays at the [moosewood] restaurant and uh it's out of new york it's a pretty famous restaurant out of new york and almost every single recipe in there is um vegetarian there are some fish recipes i think in it but a few of those but not anything no we don't eat fish either but it the majority of the book is um vegetarian with no meats so or you know of any any kind of animal so there's quite a few out there uh_huh yeah it's strange because well it it's not strange because i use to be the same way and i'm even to this day you know some vegetables really turn me off but when you read so much information that says this is a healthier way to go you know and this is what your body wants this is what your body really needs and when you think about what what's the real reason your eating i know i know it's for taste because i'm boy am i a taste person but but the main reason is for fuel you know and and when you read so much information that tells you that meats and different animal products you know are causing uh can cause uh different kinds of diseases you know like heart diseases and different [diabetes] and things like that different kinds of diseases it's like uh is it really worth it and the people i i really think in general people in the united states just don't eat enough vegetables you know because you can talk grain all you want as far as you know cleaning your system out so to speak but you can't beat vegetables to give you all the [nutrients] and vitamins and and the the the kind that you can't get from a little pill because your body doesn't doesn't synthesis in the same way that it does when it gets it in raw food you know yeah that's true that's true so you it's it's all important you know it's an all important thing you i think you'd feel probably a lot healthier um my almost everyone in my family is is [obese] yeah i i would say you know almost everyone and uh except me except myself and you know my husband but um and uh yeah i i i don't know that my mother and father have seen any improvements since we've been here as far as them switching to meat you are huh you barbecue steaks oh okay i think my standard thing when i have company and i'm not too brave trying new recipes so a lot of times i will get the grill out and sometimes we do like surf and turf like we'll get some little [filets] wrap them up with bacon and then maybe do some little salmon steaks at the same time so that's my husband's deal he's out there you know with the grill trying to get those things he likes to put sometimes even [hickory] chips on the barbecue you know get a little different flavor and then you do your mashed potato and your salad you can't go wrong with that that'll push please pretty much any guest oh you do uh_huh ooh uh_huh um okay uh_huh oh okay my only other standard menu i guess is uh thanksgiving i know how to put the bird in cook the bird and make all the [trimmings] yeah well what kind of things do you normally have with it people have different ideas of what goes with it yeah oh okay yeah my uh mother in law is into the corn bread stuffing now i never really had that much before i came to texas but she has always she makes her corn bread and then of course you know she uses that to to make the stuffing we didn't do that so much i'm from kind of like ohio area and uh we're you know not into the corn bread as much so our stuffing was um lot of times was uh like sausage or what not we would make it with you know varied uh meats like that inside the turkey and then of course we always had to have mashed potatoes and your standard vegetables like you always had to have some peas and corn and you got to have your [cranberry] sauce now i like [jellied] kind and you got to have your pumpkin pie well yeah yeah and it's funny because people call things differently in different areas um my parents grew up a lot in the philadelphia area i was very young when we lived there but you call things differently like um uh we called them all [hoagies] down here they call them submarine sandwiches and we didn't ever call it uh cokes and such you know we call it soda so it's just different terminology for the same thing yeah that's it's a different kind of bread and it's somewhat of a harder crust it's not the soft you know kind of uh rolls that they have here it was a harder crust and some of the [hoagies] were cooked like the philadelphia uh steak the the [hoagie] steak that they they sell um well what is it for um new year's lot of people make ham and [sauerkraut] uh i think they cook cabbage up north i think that's one of the things they want i'm not sure i'm not now we always had a ham like on uh uh easter you always have to have a ham or something on easter i think last let me try to think i think the last time we had a big meal like that we did have both i think we did have both on thanksgiving just in case people you know have a variety yeah oh that's true well um you work here at the expressway site oh lewisville any decent food in your cafeteria up there really oh uh_huh um well i normally work in the north building and um you would think that since you know the executives are there that we would have a pretty good one but i don't know i think it's just kind of standard like we've got anything they do cater to the executive dining room but i think they give them different food oh um um that is a little [overdoing] it well my husband he used to complain at the cafeteria because it seemed like so many of their different items they always added garlic to it like he would get tuna salad this is what is that and the first [ingredient] no matter what you're making garlic and he said tuna salad shouldn't taste [garlicky] but everything always seemed to have a garlic flavor to it um um well i'm i spend a lot of time over in park central but we have just a little deli downstairs but in the mornings they make these really good muffins they don't make a lot of them and i don't think they make them at other places this little deli is like r c cooper it's a little place you know it's a little chain here in town it's real small but uh they make the best muffins we're talking it's a real good size one you know and they make them different [flavors] like oh they have a chocolate chip one [poppy] seed is my favorite and uh they'll have like a banana nut and a apple one and a zucchini and a blueberry really good they usually pretty much go fast they don't make a lot of them you have to get here early in the morning pretty good uh_huh um well you ought to try a [muffin] if you haven't oh well we all [indulge] right well yeah i know my husband he'll cook every once in a while but like the kitchen is a disaster area afterwards well what's your favorite dish yeah yeah i understand that i like oriental cooking and uh pasta and i have the same problem uh italian heritage so i definitely like pasta but i like italian and the two don't mix though i've tried that it doesn't yeah that doesn't work very well either uh i don't know sort of dumb what kind of food would you have in a dinner party well it depends on what kind of people you got coming over so we'll leave it at that uh let me see what do you you like to cook uh just everything or do you have specialties yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah i uh i i've been collecting recipes and [modifying] recipes for a long long time and uh i run a little direct mail business on the side and i finally put together a cookbook and uh i've got to i got to [reformat] it i i did it on my word processor and now i've got to redo the whole thing again and i'm trying to figure out a cheap way to a quick way to do it without having to [retype] it because uh it's it's all size about it's not it's not very big i mean it's like a hundred and five pages something like that but it's got lots of good recipes so i was thinking about trying to sell that on the side just for fun uh_huh well see what else can we talk about food well hardly any at all any more um i've i've gotten together sort of like basic recipes and once you have those you can add to them or take away from them and come up with all kinds of different dishes i i have several cookbooks uh betty [crocker] and new york times and a couple of japanese cookbooks a couple of chinese cookbooks i even got a [filipino] cookbook um they have a nice dish in there for a chicken dish i forgot the name of it but it takes a special kind of sausage and you can only get it at [filipino] stores yeah and it's a it's a strange sort of it's sort of like a [pepperoni] but it's it has a much [sharper] flavor and it's uh it's almost like it has red die in it or something when you cook it it [bleeds] and it colors the food it's pretty interesting but it's a real good chicken dish it's sort of like a chicken [potpie] in a way you have a crust on top and all that delicious though i love it yeah yeah yeah an idea yeah that's the way i am i generally get there and i have have an idea of what i want to do but i don't really know how to get started so i i look up something get get me oh yeah well i'll add this to it and do this and turns out pretty good sometimes yeah yeah well i mean i mean that's yeah that's the fun of cooking [improvising] if you're going to sit there and just follow a recipe that's no fun you know a monkey can do that i bet even my cats could do that no not this one she's dead to the world right now oh well well let's see i guess that's about it on food all right good talking to you brad take care i said one thing we've been doing around here is trying to find ways of having uh my husband likes gourmet food and i'm trying to figure out how how to feed him so he'll eat this stuff and the kids will eat it too and it's not going to be fattening high in fat or high in cholesterol get's to be a a real chore with little kids who basically want every thing covered in cheese i just have with that i have never really had an ice cream [fetish] but i'm married to somebody who just feels that you know if you offer it to him he'd eat a hot fudge [sundae] every night of the week and hate him for it oh yeah wow uh_huh give me something that's really easy to do i love clams but i'm not sure what clams [casino] are and i don't know if i could find clams that i would eat down here in texas uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh god that sounds good uh_huh now in texas it would have to be ten fifteen uh god that sound wonderful well i'll give you one that i i put together modified out of a heart smart cookbook now my husband really thinks that this is one of those fancy french sauces so when he when he request this i always tell him he has to take the kids for an hour and it really only takes about fifteen or twenty minutes to do but it gives me forty five minutes to sit by myself where it's quiet but what you do is you go take you can use pork tender [loin] it's more expensive but i and i like the [leaner] cut of pork the um like the center cut pork chops and you you need to have them thick at least a three quarters of an inch think and all you do is take those things and coat them in lemon pepper [marinade] on both sides no just the uh the you know you can do that just that you buy just lemon pepper and then you take about two tablespoons of butter which you know most people kind of go you know this is a low fat recipe but it is and you just melt that in a skillet you broken the uh the pork chops or the pork [fillets] you just brown them on both sides and i like to get them at a good golden brown and then just take them and stick them on a plate and keep them warm and into that same skillet add the juice of lemon about anywhere from a quarter to a half a cup to that you add two tablespoons of [worcestershire] sauce and one teaspoon to a tablespoon depending on how much you like it uh yeah [worcestershire] and then anywhere from a teaspoon to a tablespoon of [dijon] mustard and what you do is you just cook this down and it makes a a really pretty almost dark black drown [vodkas] sauce it's pretty spicy now i like to throw in just a you know a shot of white wine and then you just take the pork chops put them on a serving platter pour this sauce over it and i [garnish] it with fresh cut [chives] it really is a really pretty entree to look at uh_huh and the sauce i mean it has kind of this nice complex flavor where you feel that somebody's you know played around with this all afternoon and i have served it to company and uh_huh but you know the trick with pork most people think you have to cook it at a hundred and eighty five degrees well done you don't have to do that it can still be pink in the middle and that makes all the world of difference the other thing that that i've really got into down here in texas is fresh uh herbs oh yeah well see i don't have to try them cause they'll they'll pretty much grow all winter long and if oh i don't know we also have you know foot long roaches all year long too hey don't laugh don't laugh but what makes a really elegant um just a side dish and most people don't have any idea what it is why they don't i don't know and you can make it a day ahead of time cause i just take about a cup of fresh cut basil i mean i really like basil and then cook spaghetti and i this is smaller thread spaghetti it's like the [cappelletti] is the better add and i add almost i equal parts parmesan cheese a a healthy balance of garlic i mean i really like garlic yeah so you're basically makes a kind of a a pastel yes but if you serve it cold it really is just a wonderful uh_huh uh_huh and pine nuts and if you can't get pine nuts cause to me they're always kind of mushy i just grind up [walnuts] and use that in it it really is nice and even my kids will eat it and they've gotten to be kind of food [snobs] one of them went over to dry basil doesn't have quite the taste yeah i keep i do that and i find that it tastes just about as good and i freeze it in like little half cup quantity so i can even pull it out whenever i want to you you'll be surprised you'll be really surprised at just how simple it is and and it's not a a clear cut you know this this this and this it's kind of to taste uh_huh you know what also is really good just really really good and really really simple if you like to do [grilling] if you can get a hold of fresh [sage] have you ever worked with that just take the fresh [sage] and and you know like [crumble] it so that you you release the oils pour you know put that stuff over fresh pork chops and if you've got [balsamic] vinegar there oh i love that stuff do you have any special menus that you like to use when you're entertaining yes but we dream we dream though yes well are you a traditional cook uh_huh uh_huh yeah i do too sure then you can oh yes yes yes i have a son in law who is a wonderful cook and uh my daughter reads cookbooks and he cooks but uh for the last few years i have uh had something different for him every holiday uh for christmas or thanksgiving which ever one they're with us and uh i think the two that have been the biggest hits uh i think one of them came out of the martha stewart cookbook you're familiar with martha stewart and her all her [culinary] [delights] and it was it wasn't all that you know yummy an it wasn't a lot to eat but it was interesting caramelized onions and uh you cut them in half and turn them over with the you know don't peel them or anything and turn them over with the cut side down and you bake them like two hours and a half on about two seventy five or something like that and then when you know until they're kind of well not really burned they call them caramelized and then you uh you mix up this little uh mixture of [cranberries] and sugar and a few nuts and uh a little bit of liquid and then you bake that for about thirty minutes and then you it's just a really pretty [condiment] actually and so then you just eat the insides you know the few layers of onions that didn't get hard or anything and then uh then that filling but that was interesting and another interesting one that he liked so well was turnips i've always had a neighbor or two that wanted to bring me turnips well who not many people like turnips but i did a casserole using half turnips half potatoes swiss cheese milk and butter and just baked them and it it's absolutely wonderful it's and the secret is using half potatoes and that swiss oh i do too oh especially so many people like them to dip in vegetable dip too i think uh_huh no well i'm glad to hear about that uh_huh uh_huh well i'll be darned and you've eaten them do you know when i was growing up my mother wouldn't let us eat raw sweet potatoes she said they were poison so we just you know raw potatoes yes if she was peeling potato and we were you know she'd we'd want a piece and uh but she wouldn't ever let us so i suppose that is a myth isn't it yeah you're still alive and kicking no and it is colorful too well i have spent the last twenty years in oklahoma and so i've had a wonderful time with the mexican type dishes the santa [fe] influence as well as the tex mex and i have so many wonderful recipes and my family here i we're originally from this part of the country and if i do any of those casseroles especially they will say um this is sort of spicy uh_huh finally the taco bell started [springing] up yeah yeah they really don't my friends and relatives really don't like it very well uh_huh well it really uh_huh well it's been fun talking to you and uh good luck in your uh entertaining or cooking or get [togethers] or whatever and dream on hello hi my name is leslie hi carol where you from oh you're kidding so am i yeah you're not from choir are you leslie french uh christ united methodist oh okay i'm in the soprano parts yeah well i have too i have too and i i guess so i only had uh one other chance at this thing and we're supposed to discuss food and cooking and uh did it describe it to you at all yeah okay well and it says uh which foods would you recommend for a uh menu for a dinner party and then maybe we can share recipes what what they what they kind of said yeah okay i'm pressing one right now okay okay well i was thinking about if i did a dinner party right now i'd do a mexican fair of sorts because that's about the only thing i'm creative at and uh well for appetizers i'd start with you know the typical cheese [nachos] and uh melt the cheese over the chips and uh put some green pepper or i mean chili peppers on top of that for those who like it hot and then another good good uh recipe for appetizers is a bean dip i don't know if you've ever done that but you put just the refried beans and then a layer of uh of sour cream well it doesn't really have seven layers mine doesn't anyway and then i put like a layer of cheese and then some salsa on top of everything and then you just use it for [dipping] your chip into yeah it's real good and then probably go with fajitas uh season up some good chicken and beef and chop up a whole bunch of things so that they could kind of pick and choose what they like and yeah that's right so i haven't done any dinner parties though lately i've just been uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah that's me too in fact we don't even have our dining table yet so i guess we've been pretty casual for most of everything well speaking of dinner parties are we still doing this uh um yeah you know what i was planning on doing i didn't know if it was needed but was a salad i mean that's i didn't know if it had to be a casserole of sorts okay okay yeah that's right yeah it's kind of yeah yeah well that's that's my my love of if i'm not going to have a full meal is to make sure i get a good salad in there and a good you know thing of fruit and that that'll satisfy most anybody yeah okay how long we supposed to talk on this about three minutes i hope yeah okay well then if we're done it's all we do is just say good bye right well yeah i'll get yeah yeah yeah sounds good nice talking to you now then what is your idea on what to serve for a dinner party well if you were just going to have company what would well what kind of a what pasta dishes what is your specialty in pasta yeah do you make your own oh that must be interesting okay do you ever um since we are coming into the holiday season do you ever do desserts do you um do you care for the fruitcake not at all oh okay i have come up on a recipe several years ago now i don't care for fruitcake period and this one is absolutely it's so easy and it is so wonderful everyone i serve it to that does not even care for fruitcake wants the recipe oh my older daughter does oh she just thinks it's wonderful and we always provided her with one but this is one can of eagle brand a pound of nuts a pound of uh [candied] [cherries] and a pound of something else in the [candied] fruits mix that up put it in spray a pan loaf pan pour it into the pan and cook it at two hundred and twenty five degrees for about about an hour and it's it is wonderful that doesn't have all that [citrine] in it and i think that is what the uh people are so opposed to with with the fruitcake but maybe sometime when you have nothing better to do you would like to try that one so what more need we talk about this morning have you enjoyed this um switchboard conversations or is this your first one no that the way i feel about it and i have talked with some very interesting people so i hope you have a wonderful holiday both of them and uh take care thank you okay uh i guess uh do you have any uh favorite foods uh_huh yeah i uh we used to get the uh magazine gourmet and uh stuff like that i i did try a few of the the recipes in there uh well i made a a uh a bread pudding uh fancy style and it came out really good i guess yeah uh_huh uh_huh i see yeah i i do a lot of i did i've done some uh you know things like chicken and stuff in there but i i deviate from it i i never like to follow sometimes if there's something in there that i i don't like i'll substitute it with something else and and so uh i like to experiment yeah uh_huh i'm in the northern area up there in wisconsin minnesota yeah uh well i i like [waffles] but i usually go to a restaurant and eat them i uh i don't even have a [waffle] iron yeah oh i like all those things that aren't good for you yeah i uh i mean we we do use a lot of the the [margarines] and that but i do miss actual butter uh_huh yeah well i i know it's something that my wife picked up was uh we uh made some uh butter from uh you just take heavy whipping cream and you keep [churning] it until it turns to butter so yeah no okay um well actually i don't really cook um i'm i'm still a student in college and um i'm fortunate to have my mom cook dinners for me so i'm not not very experienced because uh oh yeah um well i have cooked like small dinners like just hamburgers and things like that and can foods that you just heat up nothing great though so oh cajun food's really good i've had that before in uh mississippi new orleans that's it yeah i've i've had all kinds of different foods i travel a lot but never cooked it myself so pardon me cheeses oh yeah yeah that's right oh yeah oh i love italian food though probably my favorite kind of food is italian food i don't think i've ever had portuguese food what is that it's oh oh okay oh yeah um i like mexican food a real lot oh really oh so what do you like to make for you and your son oh really uh my parents make their own sauce yeah it's really good um oh that's great that's really good i wish i would have cooked more when i was in high school oh that's great that's good to know sure it comes handy oh yeah i bet yeah oh wow oh that's good um i've never had shark well that's good i like seafood but i hardly ever have it i haven't eaten it in a long time yeah um i used to i used to live in the dorm for two years but then i came back home i went to uh university of madison so when you when you eat in the dorms you know there's a big cafeteria they have the food already prepared for you so i didn't i didn't get a chance to cook much and now that i'm home my mom's home so she cooks and but i i do i make some things you know once in a while you know get hungry enough you're going to cook for yourself i'm still i'd like to learn you know i it's i like to bake i make cakes and cookies and things yeah i can do that but oh oh yeah oh well i i'd like to learn how it's one of my goals i'm sure i will once i move out on my own see i'm not neither yeah yeah i should start doing that it takes a lot of time though doesn't it oh yeah you know i i think the simpler the better we often we spend all day cooking and uh it's like [erma] [bombeck's] cartoon said it you spend eighteen hours fixing your dinner and it takes twelve minutes to eat it less than twelve minutes well i think that sounds like fun yes right and we kind of get uh [overdosed] on the sweets don't we well they usually don't do a whole lot good for us and uh i've been trying to think of something uh nifty to make for neighbors and uh yes right i thought people kind of get so overloaded and most people are trying to lose weight anyway and uh so it's kind of hard to get away from that hard to kind of deviate a little bit uh so have you got any good recipes that don't have uh yeah that's true that's right that's right are you [diabetic] or oh okay no you probably that's the kind of direction you want to go with food anyway and uh nowadays food it's uh almost everybody eats out of these boxes don't they the t v dinners or the i think it's really changing to not spending so much time everybody's such in a hurry well and i don't think they have the time as much maybe oh yes i'm i just haven't you know acquired a taste for them have you yes most of them are in fact turkey uh would be my choice of meal any time i i'm a turkey lover and i could eat turkey unfortunately it's not the easiest uh or it takes a while to prepare it but uh it's not necessarily hard it just you got to plan on five or six hours to cook the thing so you're home and you've got the time to cook them yeah in the it just sets the the mood i don't know what uh thanksgiving or christmas would be without especially thanksgiving without the turkey wouldn't quite taste right would it well even going out to eat we had discussed going out to eat and uh i don't even care at your best restaurant it's just not the same on a holiday to yes yes you'd still have to choose that wouldn't you no right right you kind of get used to that um well i think i hope that the trend is to change to more health conscious foods and not have so many [additives] and uh [preservatives] and you know you it's hard to even to get a cold cereal that you don't feel like it's sugar no well and i don't mind cooking it's just that you know after you think of the hours it takes you if you get very elaborate sometimes it doesn't seem very rewarding to cook that many hours well we have an easy subject today i guess easier than trying to straighten the government out which was yesterday oh i didn't get that one thank goodness oh well you know i i went to back to school a few years ago and i tell you i haven't done much entertaining since that's another consideration well i know and uh time seems to be such a element nowadays and the house has to be clean that's the worse part to me oh yeah do you have children oh well that's one less thing to mess up yeah i have two i have uh one that's in uh college and one that's uh in high school oh oh yeah i've got that too i really seem to we're a family of [slobs] on top of that so the cleaning really is the worse for entertaining right well one of the easy things uh when i did used to entertain that i like to make is uh chicken in wine it's real easy and i can make it ahead of time and then just stick it in the oven to uh to heat up you know so i don't really like to actually cook when people are already there right and it makes me nervous if they're all in the kitchen messing around trying to cook stuff you know what i mean and um so that's one thing that i used to make a lot uh_huh um that sounds good we've done shish kabob several times and people always like that but it's a lot of work because the vegetables are so hard you kind of have to [parboil] them a little and then um season the stuff and [marinade] it and then stick it on all those things at the last minute it's not so bad because you can throw it on the grill and it doesn't take very long but boy the [prepreparation] of cutting all that up in the right sizes and washing it and like i said [parboiling] some of the hard stuff yeah yeah you chop forever i've never done that for a party uh_huh i know really are they good someone said the lasagna was good i think it must be good because i have an italian neighbor down the street that bought some for company i thought golly she but she cooks a lot too and i thought if she bought it it must be pretty good oh well it is i don't think i ever had something on a day i worked oh well man that's horrible where do you work park central on central expressway is it oh do they give you any samples at christmas well that's nice that's another expensive part about entertaining if you plan to drink i mean that is really expensive yeah that's what most people have nowadays for big parties at least i know you could spend well over a hundred a hundred fifty dollars getting all that stuff so anyway oh dessert um sometimes i buy it i have through the years i i used to make this really neat pie that was with crackers and pecans and you bake it and then you put whipped cream on the top it's just delicious um sometimes you can get it at luby's restaurant uh_huh um you make up the homemade filling but you use the that's a good idea i can't even oh i used i used to make a cheesecake it was a easy recipe using eagle brand milk you know but it was it was pretty good and there was a time when i made grand [boule] and english [truffle] right oh that's the way i am we haven't bad a baked ham dinner since we've been married for twenty five years my i hate baked ham for dinner my husband's family loved it they're polish and they live in new jersey and that was one of their big deals was baked ham did you hear the topic yeah well okay i heard it a lot of times i should know it by now um uh talk about food and cooking and then it got into um what would uh-oh what foods would you serve at a dinner party and share a recipe if you have one or something like that oh i'm not much of a cook in fact i'm standing here going through a pile of stuff looking for my cookie [cutters] to do my christmas cooking but uh i don't give dinner parties the most extravagant i get is pizza for twenty but uh i don't know but oh really a healthy person well i like that no do you cook much uh right uh_huh it is uh_huh uh_huh no well i'm not either i bought a [precooked] turkey for thanksgiving yeah that's right that was one of those smoked ones that was pretty good yeah it was pretty good uh we got it we got it real cheap is why we got it and i'll probably do it next year too it saved an awful lot of work yeah that's right see my mother can not anyway so i figure if it's not going to come out well i may as well not waste all my time on it and just get oh really yeah i've never really tried one though uh_huh um well i don't have much else to say on this topic i've gotten a i've gotten some interesting ones in the past i was just on a jury recently and the two days after i got off the jury one of my topics the first day was what do you think of juries and and the jury system the next day was what do you think of capital punishment so it was pretty funny because i had a lot to say on that oh really well that's good well listen it was good talking to you and i hope your wife's feeling better well good um well i'm glad i got a male because i'm going to need some help um i haven't really given any dinner parties but um i've had you know friends over for lunch that kind of thing but i promised my husband that i would throw him a super bowl party and so he's real excited about it but i don't know what men like to eat that it's different from women so um maybe you could help me out here in this sense and i keep i keep asking him you know what what what do you think we ought to have you know but i was thinking of like you know one of those subway sandwiches those long subway sandwiches and maybe uh um a pasta salad and some chips and some beer and some coke and um i thought a cake and he said no and so we're just going back and forth so uh_huh yeah yeah yeah yeah he's i don't really think men care do they yeah that's what he said right yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so that okay i guess i'll do something like that but um oh really okay what is that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh oh really is this an [artichoke] dip because a friend of mine had that at at one of her parties and it was really good but when she told me it was [artichoke] dip i was going oh no as i'm not much of a fan for oh see i thought there was something else huh huh yeah yeah yeah that's it sounds like the same thing my friend served and it was really good but when she told me it had [artichokes] in i thought oh god yeah uh_huh it was well my husband loved it yeah he really did oh really huh yeah okay yeah and he wanted to uh some uh chili dip that i usually make too so oh yeah yeah yeah and no women and children allowed yeah i guess so well um let me see we went to a christmas party and uh a friend of mine had this and it was she had she was the one that had that dip and another thing that my husband really liked that i and i liked too that i would have never thought of serving and it was really easy um and it's it doesn't sound good but when you all put when you put it together and you taste it it's excellent it's um the [mexicorn] and corn chips you mix all that together with a bottle of the [catalina] dressing and you and you just mix it all together and you serve it like that anyway so i'm so like what did you eat the last time you went to a dinner party uh_huh wow what was it what was the dish uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh it's it's [paella] is what it is because i've i've had that before yeah i have friends who are who well they're cuban and uh i was in miami one time and they fixed that dish and they used [squid] in it it it had all kinds of meats and uh_huh uh_huh it's sort of like the a it's sort of like a version of gumbo it's sort of like latin american gumbo or something uh_huh wow where's that uh_huh oh like near canton or uh_huh oh okay well i know where that it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i'm having friends over this weekend i'm from south alabama originally south alabama way down there uh close to mobile yeah [foley] uh and anyway so what i one thing i like to do is i like to cook real southern food and so my friends um whenever i cook they usually like for me to really like cook southern food so this weekend we're i'm doing like fried chicken i'm going to fry chicken and have turnip greens and like a black eyed pea salad and uh uh corn bread so i mean yeah actually just the with the greens not much of the turnips i don't like the turnip parts but so i mean it's kind of you know weird because you think all your yuppie friends wouldn't necessarily want to eat like that but they do the turnip greens oh sometimes like with pepper sauce you mean well i i yeah i i like seasoned food but i can it can get too much pretty quickly for me i think but yes i did a spivey in auburn no we had neighbors whose names were spivey [aubrey] spivey they were neighbors of ours my parents live now live in auburn my whole family my sister everyone lives in auburn uh_huh oh goodness uh_huh uh_huh well that's where i went to that's where i'm from well you know this is my first trial too right every time i have a dinner party lately we just barbecue hamburgers because that's good yeah i've where i worked dinner was a [cordon] [bleu] chicken or chicken [cordon] [bleu] i made that one night for guests it just took forever to cook right right uh_huh uh_huh well that sounds that's good too what do you marinate them in uh_huh uh_huh huh yeah little cherry tomatoes or something yeah uh_huh and i love mushrooms any way i love mushrooms just about any way that's neat uh_huh some frozen what oh okay uh uh_huh wine or beer well that sounds different well what's your best meal to cook though your best simple one yeah one that you when you're in a hurry for a decent meal uh_huh yeah have you seen that wok on t v no the one you put on top the burners beat out with the hammer it's supposed to be the original one uh_huh uh_huh you like the electric one then right does your wife do her own oriental cooking though does she like american food she probably she probably doesn't care for much much for the greasy stuff she doesn't uh_huh i've never tried egg rolls well what what goes in them i mean uh_huh well just about anything can go in the middle right well what do you make the dough out of oh okay huh uh_huh uh_huh brush it or brush the egg white on there huh right your kids have you noticed how kids won't eat tomatoes out of anything cooked tomatoes my my little boy would not eat cooked tomatoes well if i make a spaghetti i don't want tomatoes in it mom and when he came home from the baby sitter the other day and i asked if she feed him yeah but she made me eat tomatoes with i mean spaghetti with tomatoes in it he's upset huh uh_huh oh i put them in there i like well canned whole tomatoes or canned yeah they're peeled oh you don't rotel tomatoes rotel tomatoes rotel ones are sweet okay well i just bottled california peeled tomatoes yeah yeah if you take that sausage that tube sausage and ground it up yeah and put it in with the hamburger it just gives it a better flavor well in kentucky we call it hamburger you all always call it what meat well i've i don't know tube meat i know i love deer steaks venison oh that sounds good well you must be really into cooking i'm not much into it uh_huh well in texas usually not in kentucky we didn't do it much but you all want to [cookout] everyday or well it seems like every weekend somebody's got a [cookout] going on here in texas i've only been here about a year or two well see that's a lot in kentucky we use them maybe once or twice a month now if that uh_huh oh i just like the taste of stuff cooked out on a charcoal grill though uh_huh uh_huh well i have dinner parties quite often i really enjoy cooking um i like desserts and uh main dishes i'm a [chocaholic] do you yeah yeah well you know the best recipes that i have come from southern living um do you get that magazine oh it's wonderful you know i've never had a recipe fail that i've gotten out of southern living and i've had dinner guests come over for dinner and you know say i don't know what this is going to taste like i got it out of southern living it's a brand new recipe and i've never tried it before and and i've never had them fail yeah right i well that's what i do too and it has a it's been wonderful right oh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah where you from originally oklahoma uh_huh so you've had you know tex mex and that kind of thing i yeah yeah yeah well i had never had chili in my whole life until i moved down to texas and i had connecticut and i had never even tasted chili and i moved down here and it's hysterical because my kids have to have a refried bean fix at least once a week you know and it's like a week has gone by and we haven't had fajitas or or something and and i just laugh and laugh my family would die if they knew all these things my kids are eating that is funny that is funny oh really no no no i don't think i would i would care for that but you know what i recently discovered there's something um at the grocery store it's called cajun magic and it's like in the gourmet section of the grocery store it's on the bottom shelf and and it's um uh like red beans and rice with all the spices already in it and all you have to do is add water and and cook it and it is so good it is good it is good and it's called cajun magic and i'm sure you could probably you know i buy i buy it at albertson's and uh that's wonderful well you know where they have those kind of hard to find items you know the the real funny [mustards] and and that spices and things like that and that's that's where they have it at albertson's and it's really good i like easy i have a daughter who will eat everything and a son who will eat nothing so as a matter of fact she's baby sitting tonight and she called and she said mom they had the most wonderful dinner it was hamburger helper and it's delicious and i laughed what a neat idea oh how nice i love it i love it when i worked one time we had a thing where we had uh uh luncheon and everybody had to bring a dish and somebody gave directions to a to a bakery you know turn left on campbell road and right on you know and that was cute that was cute do you like desserts oh is it wonderful oh oh oh i would love that i i like i'm not crazy about sweets but i really have a passion for cakes any kind of cake i i really like chocolate cake and uh apple cake love apple cake oh i love apple cake or spice cake something like that yeah yeah i really like that uh_huh yeah it is yeah it is and i just got done with dinner so um we had beef ribs and a potato casserole and a salad yeah i do i well you know it was so funny when i was when i was reading the things and they said you know [checkoff] different categories that you could talk about i thought food i could talk about food have you not eaten yet tonight oh oh oh was your was your cholesterol that high huh really really wow is two forty really that high though yeah yeah you know what i just recently got um a cookbook it's it's the oh what's the name of it uh love your heart cookbook it's a low cholesterol cookbook and then i got the american heart association cookbook now this is not southern living you know lots of yogurt and stuff like that but if you go to like the [bookstop] do you have one of those in carrollton um they have lots and lots of of uh cookbooks with low cholesterol recipes and uh i every once in a while i get real ambitious and i think okay i'm going to do all this wonderful stuff and then that lasts for about a week and then i'm like give me the blue cheese dressing yeah yeah give me some more refried beans have you have you tried oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah have you tried the the no fat no cholesterol [dressings] like the [kraft] the italian is the italian is not bad oh yeah and does it take have you tried that is it terrible [heartwise] or heart if you don't cook though what do you like to eat if you go to a dinner party um uh_huh uh_huh well uh i was just thinking as i was listening to this recording go over and over til they found a party for me to talk to i could talk about a dinner party i had uh sunday and it included some seafood so that would probably be uh appropriate for you uh i had uh some people from germany visiting and they are uh fans of american shrimp so i did a kind of a stir fry dish with shrimp that you shake up in a bag with a little parmesan cheese and flour and then uh quickly uh fry up in a little olive oil and then uh take out of the wok put some uh red strips of red pepper and green pepper in stir that a little bit uh add some uh sliced mushrooms and then put the shrimp back in with a half a cup of white wine and just bring it to a simmer and then you serve it on rice and it's really a a pretty low cholesterol dish because its done with the uh shrimp and the olive oil you don't use any kind of beef fat or no no animal [fats] in it and it's very popular and it looks very pretty and uh with rice and a salad you've got a a meal um oh that's a good place to get it i miss it i lived in houston for a long time and we loved to go over to new orleans to eat uh_huh oh yeah oh yes oh i wish i had the recipe for my grandmother's gumbo she used to make the most wonderful crab meat gumbo with shrimp and all sorts of other goodies in it my job was picking the crab not my favorite part uh_huh uh_huh yeah well the reason for using those is that it makes such a pretty colorful dish people always [exclaim] when you have the red and green peppers and if i'm making a whole lot uh i use a yellow pepper as well for one pound of shrimp i use one red pepper one green pepper and oh maybe half a dozen ten mushrooms medium sized mushrooms and that's plenty for four people and if they're light [eaters] you can squeeze in six but oh yeah that's good uh my husband is a chinese cook he doesn't do much cooking either but he loves to cook chinese and he has a marvelous uh chicken with cashews and and the szechuan peppers now those are not the hot ones those are the little round pink ones and oh they are wonderful that uh he does that uh uh chicken with cashews and szechuan peppers and he also not at the same meal does a wonderful vegetable dish with szechuan peppers use that uses either asparagus or um let's see what does he use asparagus is the one we like the best oh broccoli you can do the same dish with broccoli and also if you're really in a [pinch] you can do it with just celery and it's pretty good uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh i like them too i think they're great uh we i've been trying to convince the cook at uh at the place where i work uh we are kind of isolated and so we don't go out to lunch very often and we do have an excellent kitchen uh which is encouraging for people to stay around and uh eat and interact with one another at lunch we're a think tank so that's one of our functions is to get people to talk to each other and she has started cooking uh much healthier food much more uh salad without mayonnaise and uh much more main dishes without oils and uh and vegetable i mean and uh animal [fats] so i think we're improving our [diets] i don't know whether it's the california influence or whether it's everywhere but uh_huh well my husband's cholesterol is not real high but he his father had uh an early heart attack and so he is very conscious of his uh physical condition and he walks a lot and tries to get uh to stay in pretty good shape and to watch out for high cholesterol and since i prefer the kinds of foods that one eats on a moderately low cholesterol diet anyway that suits me just fine um yeah yeah uh_huh yeah we don't either we just eat it once in a great while and uh it's usually if we're having company and it's somebody that we know is a big meat fan but there're fewer and fewer of those so we also do an awful lot of cooking when it's just the two of us on a little tiny uh grill it's oh it's less than a foot long and about eight inches wide and we just put a few [charcoals] in there and uh we can cook a piece of chicken we buy boneless chicken breasts and save us ourselves a lot of time and that with uh have you ever tried lawry's lemon pepper you can buy it in the grocery store it's a well it has sea salt in it but it's not the same as they have the [lawrey's] seasoned salt and the [lawrey's] lemon pepper and the lemon [pepper's] the one i love on chicken and fish and uh yeah just barely brush it with oil grill it uh so it's not too done and sprinkle a little of that on it and then i add some lemon [thyme] from my garden and that makes an excellent and very easy to fix dinner well i hope you have a nice lunch i'm just looking at our menu unfortunately we're having a terrible lunch here today for the cholesterol people because uh we're going to have italian sausage and french fries i think i may stick to the salad bar today nice to talk to you too well that would have to depend on the number of the people and the nature of the party fairly small parties with people that i know i tend to be a little bit more casual and i would tend to to uh serve things that were buffet style perhaps we'd have uh-oh i like those little little cocktail sausages in barbecue sauce or or maybe a sausage ball uh crackers and dips and chips maybe uh probably have some kind of a of a salad uh that's easy to pick up and spread fresh veggies probably uh possibly uh of cheese and chunks of uh deli meat have to include some fruit of some kind i prefer berries uh like [sugared] grapes and things that are very attractive to set out on a on a table a little bit more formal dinner party you might have just a little bit more formal setting i don't have a lot of formal dinner parties so i can't tell you a whole lot about that but i tend to be very lazy and want to do what is easy but looks and tastes good so uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well in recent years i have become far more conscience of conscious of balancing the diet and having healthy foods if i were having people over i would want healthy food to be one of the considerations most of my friends really would prefer a bowl of fruit as opposed to a big gooey cake uh they would prefer fresh stick veggies as opposed to chips and dips although there are some hard crust chips and [dippers] uh and i i'd like to have a little bit of nutrition content in the foods i'll be careful but for example about the kind of cracker that i pick to go under a spread i may be concerned about the number of calories that are going into the spread i know i watch my weight and i'm sure that most of my friends do too and i appreciate somebody being conscious of that when i go visit so i do try to cook more healthy than i did even five years ago five years ago i let my [palate] [dictate] uh now i'm more conscious along with everybody else about the kind of uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well there was a time for example that i always made a big gooey creamy pie for dessert now now i may use an angle food cake with fruit and a light whipped topping far fewer calories and far less cholesterol uh uh_huh uh_huh and just as [palatable] i love peaches and strawberries and i sure take advantage of them in season and uh as far as the the party snacks uh i may fix a trail mix or a [caramel] popcorn for [snacking] as opposed to what pure peanuts yeah or or something else that that really is loaded with empty with empty calories no nutrition oh yeah it's a favorite uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh that's right uh_huh well i tend to i i well nearly everything i try to balance uh you can take everything to an extreme everything to an extreme and i'm not going to take the flavor and the pleasure out of the food in order to make it quote healthy i'd rather die than eat terrible tasting food yeah yeah and there are you know people whose systems are accustom to that kind of discipline can actually tolerate it much better than those who are not i know that when i began to add bran to my diet i had a terrible [bellyache] until i until my system became accustom to it and uh by the same token when my husband and i first married he was accustomed to a a greasy diet lots of fried foods and i nearly died then because i was accustomed to fresh vegetables and baked meats or broiled meats or grilled meats i prefer my meat grilled to fried anytime i may do a little stir fry or a little wok or something like that but i do not fry my foods that much anymore used to but i don't anymore two reasons one it's just not that healthy and i makes my stomach upset second it's a big mess to clean up i'm not interested in cleaning up a mess uh_huh oh yeah uh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh why don't you start first and i'll think about it uh_huh yeah uh_huh i would say our dinners are probably more casual than that with um having kids and that kind of stuff it may be [inviting] you know neighbors over for dinner or something like that but not really we haven't really tried a dinner party i guess yeah or a barbecue or something like that yeah uh_huh right yeah yeah keeps the kids busy too gives the grown ups a chance to well like you said play a game or just talk or something like that yeah that's true yeah well i guess we we lived in kansas city for awhile and it was kind of fun to do mexican food up there because a lot of people didn't really hadn't had it before and i know um we were going to make um fajitas one time and the grocery stores i mean the people knew when i asked for the beef skirt that you use to make it they said are you from texas so it's fun yeah well it you can either use we've always used um beef skirt steak uh_huh and then you can either grill it or you can um [broil] it we usually grill it outside and then you cut it into real small real thin pieces and serve it on flour tortillas with like grated cheese and sour cream and guacamole and that type of thing uh_huh i think i was looking at this recipe we're going to have some guests in in a couple of weeks and they recommend a pound for four people i think three to four people yeah it it's kind of a thin steak and so it doesn't take very long to to grill yeah yes uh_huh well you just um well i usually just put it like in a [pyrex] pan you know i have an eight by or a nine by thirteen pan i put it in there and i pour it over the top and then you just you know turn it leave it in there for overnight or something and turn it every once in awhile maybe i usually cover it with saran wrap or something and then or start it in the morning and it's ready in the evening to cook uh_huh oh yeah the whole yeah yeah that would make it nice and easy and some people like sour cream and then you like warm your um flour tortillas up in the oven i usually just wrap them up in foil or something like that and stick them in the oven for awhile in fact as a wedding gift we got a tortilla warmer but i don't think very many people have those and it doesn't hold very many tortillas so we don't use that often probably yeah because once you get the meat in there it gets pretty filling oh you can yeah i i'm not into the hot hot food my my husband is but i'm not so uh_huh the hottest yeah oh well good well it's nice talking to you where do you live in indiana i have some relatives that live up um near [terre] [haute] oh okay yeah well i know when we flew up there we flew into indianapolis and then had to drive down there so well thank you you too okay who do you think the dallas cowboys yeah uh_huh yeah they're going to get better i mean you know yeah as long as troy aikman doesn't get hurt again that kind of killed them at the end of the season last year so i don't i don't even know who your favorite team is actually okay i think i did know that i just forgot okay yeah has herschel walker done much for them definitely well he was a good player i guess well i don't know he just never i don't know for a while there well he could always get past you know he'd get past like six or seven [tackles] and just keep spinning around and get on into the end zone but um i guess you never could really see him play because with the cowboys while he was with the team the rest of the team was pretty poor so you couldn't really tell if it was just him or the team and i always just assumed that he was too good for the rest of the team but i don't know emmett smith yeah he's been doing real good i'm pretty impressed with him so far did he did he actually play in the pro bowl i remember he was like a backup and then somebody got injured and he was supposed to go yeah i kind of i haven't been keeping up with football i mean in the fall i i can go on and on about football but since it's kind of off season it's kind of hard to think back about all that but uh yeah um i have no idea no [earthly] idea how did they end up this year did they did they make it to the play offs at all uh_huh kind of like the cowboys huh except i think the cowboys are on the [upswing] i don't know about the vikings just hadn't heard much about them lately yeah well the cardinals i don't know i think the cowboys probably have a a better team they just at the end of the season the kind of got messed up with aikman getting hurt because uh [laufenberg] just couldn't ever really get it together at all of course he sat along the [sidelines] all season he never really got in a game never did a whole lot well i'm just saying i shouldn't i shouldn't blast him like that say oh well [laufenberg] got out there and blew it for them i mean he didn't get to see much action but too bad because now now you know he had a shot and and didn't look too good and so no one's going to have much faith in him any more in fact i think they're getting a different guy for a backup quarterback i haven't uh i haven't kept up with it lately but i remember reading something a few months ago about them signing somebody else on or or trying to go after somebody or trade for somebody but it wasn't anybody i'd really heard of but i heard on the radio this morning or yesterday morning that uh [aikman's] back in practicing doing real real well um who is it michael [irvin] he said that uh aikman was hitting him right on the numbers every time so sounds like he's going to be all right for next season they're just trying not to [overwork] him right now until he gets his shoulder uh back in it was his shoulder wasn't it that he had the problems with i think it i think it was his shoulder he had surgery on but anyway they're trying to keep him you know keep him uh from [reinjuring] anything but anyway thirty day notice for what oh really what oh okay maybe i'll call you back after after the recording is finished actually i think we have talked about football for five minutes i can't remember really i usually have too yeah i've done that once or twice i didn't look at the clock when we started talking so i guess we should talk about football a little bit longer just to be sure we got five minutes in yeah so other than the vikings who do you like uh-oh yeah uh_huh back when they were in saint louis since they've been to phoenix they haven't been uh all that impressive i guess i guess i've always been a cowboy fan other than that i mean you know when i've you know when you grow up in a city that has the you know one of the greatest football teams until the last few years you kind of tend to get caught up in it yeah yeah i mean it it was really exciting growing up when when the cowboys were really big because my parents would always have season tickets and they'd go to all the games and you know the hype were just unbelievable it's just you know the last oh i guess probably since about eighty four about eighty five was when they started kind of going downhill really but you know i'm just used to always growing up and hearing cowboys cowboys cowboys and you know super bowl and all this other stuff so i can't you know i'm not going to decide i don't like them just because they're having a few bad years i mean i think they'll pull out of it and you know they'll they'll wind up being good again they've got some lot of really good young players that are going to that are going to uh do pretty good i think but they're raising prices on their tickets so they're banking on doing good next season i think tickets are yeah thirty or thirty two for really good tickets see they they [sectioned] it out even more they used to just have like uh first of all it was all one price and then they [sectioned] it out to end zone and then everything else and now they're [sectioning] it off to like from the from one twenty yard line to the other one just on the lower levels is the highest price and then the next highest price is that same area but above it on the upper level and then like from the twenty to the ten yard line and then they're some sections kind of in the corner areas and then the cheapest of course is going to be the end the direct end zones but um they have about four or five different prices now that they're [structuring] it with but obviously yeah they're all going up more or less is what it's going to do um you know i'm not sure i'm not positive i didn't i didn't really think about that i just remember trying to figure out where you could get that was real close to the good section but in the little bit cheaper but not that i'll ever go i hadn't been to a cowboys game time last time i went to the cowboys game was during that um n f l strike or the when they had the scab team teams in there and it was the uh dallas and washington redskins game and i went because my dad can usually get a hold of some free tickets because a lot of those doctors have season tickets and they um if they're not going to use them they'll give them to somebody else so my dad i went with my dad to a game that one time but that wasn't a real you know it was it was the scab teams it was kind of you know it was kind of different i guess and before that it's been quite a few years i've been wanting to go to a game i just never never have gotten around to it so maybe this year oh so who's your uh favorite team the dallas [cowgirls] huh well they did have a fairly decent year finally this year at least they're coming around well i mean you know i think uh once jimmy johnson gets his system established uh they'll do all right uh_huh i'm a [viking] fan and they haven't been doing too hot so no in fact in fact the cowboys got the best end of that deal i've never been over impressed with him well who's the running is it [sammy] smith or is it emmett smith emmett smith yeah i'm not sure who else is uh-oh there's you know mike minnesota vikings used to be the general manager starting the world football league so and and he was trying to keep uh uh i can't even think of the guy's name either the coach of the vikings jerry burns he was going to keep him as the coach somehow but uh i don't know i'd like to see the vikings get revamped somehow well they started out really bad they went like one and six and then they won five or six in a row so they were in a shot to make the play offs and they screwed up the last couple of games yeah i guess you can yeah and the cardinals were kind of like the in fact they were doing better than the cowboys and the cowboy cowboys came on strong at the end of the season and the cardinals got killed by the cowboys so oh don't made any excuses for him uh_huh uh_huh i don't know yeah i think it was but uh well i got my thirty day notice yesterday um i'm done where i work so anyway i guess we can't talk much more about that but i just thought i'd throw that in there oh i've always ran out of time ever since i've done this they always say you've talked your ten minute limit make sure we get our cash flow um actually when i was younger i was a [cardinal] fan too remember jim hart jim hart was playing terry [metcalf] was on the cardinals this was a long time ago um i don't know who else i've ever that's about it i was always a [viking] fan i think i was into the cardinals for a little bit and yes oh of course yeah well the cowboys were america's football team there's no question about that so again what are they going up to thirty bucks or something so now the tickets even got lower than the lowest one last year that's interesting i almost lost our electricity here okay guess i bet you can't guess you got it and i want to tell you something they're going to go somewhere pretty shortly yeah i think they are because they're getting better every year and uh they got a lot i don't think so we went to the playoffs yeah yeah now i like them too they are they are doing a whole bunch better who's their quarterback who's their quarterback yeah yeah i like to watch them too they're the i like to watch almost all the football but um of course i watch every saints game that i can watch but i think they're going to i think they're really going to do good because it seems like they're finally all coming together if they would just quit blowing it yeah uh_huh really bad but they got so much bad publicity too and i think that hurt a lot of you know people even wanting to play on their team right right yeah yeah because all the problems i mean if you think about those years that we had the losing season of how bad i mean his players were constantly getting kicked off the team because of drugs because of uh you know messing with young children and i mean it was just one thing it seemed like right after the other with them yeah uh_huh right yeah but uh that jimmy johnson came in too though and he just you know when he bought the team and all and it just seemed like he just decided you know this is the way it's going to be and it was bad i mean it really was to me it was like it's going to take them quite a while to rebuild because everything i mean anything that tom landry wanted or had he was going to change it i mean it's i mean you know that's the way i felt about it but i tell you what if new orleans ever gets a quarterback isn't nobody going to beat us there ain't nobody going to beat us then because look how good we did without a quarterback this year well they had quite a few quarterbacks if you think about it uh [fourcade] was for a while and then um i can't remember that guy's name the one that held out for the money and he was across the river uh i can't think of the i can't think of his name now but really we didn't have a quarterback that was the whole problem we had one guy that couldn't throw and we had one guy that couldn't run and it was it was just [bedlam] we really didn't have a quarterback it was uh defense won all the games i don't know because you know they gave away a lot of their drafts for different people for you know other places so i don't know i hadn't heard you know whether they have a new one or not but uh uh_huh not yet but i mean i don't know whether they have one of the first you know choices of somebody that would be real good i mean everybody gets in draft but i don't know whether they'll be far enough up where they can do any good but uh right but we really i mean really and truly we just don't have a quarterback that's all there is to it but the players and stuff they finally quit giving away the really good players and started keeping them too because we had some you remember when archie [manning] was a quarterback yeah well he was good but we every time we'd get a real good player they'd treat him bad and of course we had a different coach then too but they'd treat him bad and then he'd leave or either they'd trade him off to somebody else for two of these [nobodies] and it was weird it was like they were trying if you were good boy let's don't have you on our team you know but um this year they had all good players except for the quarterback the quarterback all of them every one that they played i think they played uh i can't remember whether we played three or four quarterbacks but all of them were bad i mean they were terrible they could not pitch you know they couldn't even take [handoffs] it was terrible but uh all the other places i mean our defense was unbelievable did you get to watch any of their games yeah yeah um do you watch it every sunday um did you ever get to watch any of the uh new orleans games i'm a um no teams in your area i know it yeah yeah oh that's neat yeah yes oh my goodness no because usually it's snowing ice and rain and everything but i tell you what if you get to watch some of these now i don't know how it will be this year you know but i mean these games go right down to the wire it was like i was sitting on the edge of my chair you know going oh no no and one uh i can't remember it was about uh it was right close to when we was going to find out if we was going to get to be in the playoffs or not so we're watching the game all right the other team got the ball and we had like no we got the ball back that's the way it was and they had to kick and uh to know whether we were going to win the game or lose a game because they got one point ahead of us so we had to sit there you know and they cut the show off and started showing us another football game we did not get to see the end of the game you talk about people calling in it was wild i mean here everybody is sitting on the edge of their chair you know and they changed it and gave us another game in the middle of another you know one that was going on cut us off right there the last few seconds the station finally you know how they'll put the little message down at the bottom started telling everybody that they were not the ones that had cut that off that it was the national you know uh_huh because it was funny i mean everybody was furious i was so mad i got up and went and called you know i couldn't believe that but almost every game that i watched it would come right down to the end we would be ahead you know but then at the in the fourth quarter they'd let them get up there either with them or you know right ahead of them and it'd come right down to the end and either we made it or we didn't oh and it was it was something else i said this is the most if we had a quarterback this year we would have went to the super bowl there's no question about it because everybody was playing good together except the quarterbacks and the quarterbacks just didn't do anything yes but maybe we maybe we'll get your guy so who is your favorite football team well i would say the saints after since what's that yeah yeah can't call them the new orleans [ain'ts] any more no yeah well i'm a i'm a buffalo bills fan from a from a long time ago so it's good to it's good to see the bills doing so well now and yeah what's that uh jim kelly uh_huh yeah well the it the the n f l draft really seems to be doing its job because got teams like like buffalo who weren't certainly weren't a powerhouse uh ten years ago now they've been able to get some good players and come around and new orleans the same story and uh a few years ago denver was a powerhouse and then they uh they weren't getting the draft picks and now the uh other team so it seems to be uh moving around and uh to to new [orleans'] benefit and uh you see how look at the cowboys now they're uh they're hurting and uh yeah yeah well yeah uh firing tom landry and hiring jimmy johnson what what kind of uh uh doesn't give you much respect for their team at all any any team that where the owner would fire tom landry you know is like one of the greatest coaches of all time and just because they had had a couple of bad seasons and you can't even [attribute] those bad seasons to bad coaching right right and he and uh had a lot of trouble with injuries too you know he'd uh never seem to be able to keep his guys healthy and then even like uh what is it eric [dickerson] left the team you know you're right you know like people were jumping ship right and left and i don't know that sounds to me more like the front office problem than coaching problem but then the team was sold so yeah right well yeah i know who was the quarterback see i can't even think of who the new orleans quarterback is yeah huh did they were they able to draft anybody this year uh_huh right well when is the n f l draft hasn't has the n f l draft even gone yet right right well they've yeah they've sure right or even making the playoffs so that doesn't doesn't help you in the draft yeah yeah uh_huh that was a few years ago uh_huh uh_huh right yeah huh right oh that's one it's one thing yeah [buffalo's] lucky though to have uh jim kelly than now he's the number one rated quarterback in the n f l i think i'm pretty sure he was this past season and uh then with uh uh the defense with bruce bruce smith there at [linebacker] there they've got a very well rounded team and it seems that they've gotten over their [bickering] and their fighting as they problems they had in the past and now they're uh really playing as a good together as a team so uh when i can i'm a i'm a musician and uh the band i play in uh i this is just something on the side and uh the band i play in we tend to [rehearse] quite a bit on sundays so i missed a lot of sundays during this i i'd have to confess i don't really scope out the new orleans games per se new orleans just isn't isn't one of the areas i've lived in so many places i've lived in uh denver but i don't like the broncos there's no love for the broncos but i've lived in uh uh i was born in buffalo and i lived in uh outside of boston for five years and then my family lives in philadelphia now and uh so i tend to look for uh uh and i lived in detroit too so i like uh first of all first and foremost the bills games i want to see and then i'll uh normally check out the eagles or the patriots and patriots were so depressing this last year that yeah that uh i kind of gave up on them but uh first and foremost the bills i even i went to got to go to a bills game this year which was fun it was the the bills eagles game which appropriately enough fortunately the bills won and it was good weather we beat buffalo in in uh was it third of december and it was sunny and forty five degrees so we couldn't a done much better than that in buffalo yeah sure uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh my gosh sure and then they changed the game right right right it was the network right yeah yeah well that's the that's the guy that counts oh i i don't think jim kelly is about to be swayed away from the bills any time well hang on let me try it again because usually um yeah um well let me try it once more well i think we're on maybe i guess we'll find out so in maryland are you uh are you a skins fan yeah oh okay so you were out there in san francisco oh yeah oh yeah it's um um other than the uh the big catch uh with the forty niners and the cowboys back a few year ago i like san francisco but uh i i don't know i i never really was a cowboys fan until i moved down to texas yeah i'm in dallas and uh uh i guess when you're down here in dallas you finally get indoctrinated into the cowboys um because uh you know this is a big football territory down here and uh uh unfortunately of course the cowboys have been doing so bad in the past few years that uh uh i don't know everybody's kind of they're still behind them but uh it's not like it used to be that's right but i think uh actually uh in in trying to follow uh you know the cowboys over the years i think uh uh they used to have a um a philosophy for well i don't know probably the last twenty five years except for about the last about five or six years uh they always went out and tried to draft the the best um athletes and didn't really put them draft for any particular spot but they would go out and try to go for uh the best people and then mold them into different areas or find their natural niche and then about five years ago four or five years ago uh they started going after uh uh specific players or positions you know like the press would get down on landry and this is when [schramm] was still there and um they'd go after them saying uh jeez what you really need is a defensive end so they'd go out and try to find a defensive end and when they when they drafted somebody and he didn't workout at that spot it really wasn't a good enough athlete to move to any place else and uh so i think it was kind ever interesting i think the decline of the uh of the cowboys as a powerhouse really kind of started with uh not drafting people the best athletes yeah yeah but yeah uh they still have some some uh some draft picks uh that they got no actually they picked up some from minnesota i think it was uh minnesota's yeah they traded walker yeah that's okay they um um i've got a friend that uh lives right next to the [cowboys'] training camp and uh uh he gets he sees them out running a lot and every once in a while gets a chance to talk to some of the guys and they're all uh they're all thinking that uh man they they they really got something going this year but i i guess uh when you have a whole bunch of uh professional athletes that get together at the beginning of the year everybody's got great hopes you know i guess it's the same way with baseball or or anybody you know spring training until you actually start going out and getting uh getting out against the competition everything probably looks pretty good yeah really yeah yeah really yeah they did as a matter of fact uh yeah well you don't uh you don't like the skins oh okay jeez well of course yeah oh yeah yeah um of course then you're not that far from philadelphia oh okay i it was buddy ryan the one that i can't uh uh stand too much yeah really oh uh_huh uh-oh jeez yeah uh actually uh you said you lived near uh baltimore you're out uh i used to travel out that way a lot and uh actually i used to drive a lot between baltimore and washington and um no oh okay yeah i used to go out of b w i a lot oh yeah is that near near the what do they i forgot the name of it is it the the wharf or the the uh inner harbor yeah great um yeah i tell you what i the there's the colts still you know still to me are the baltimore colts you know oh okay jeez yeah so uh uh you know did you graduate from purdue delaware oh there's not a whole lot in delaware yeah that's true i take it you're an east coast type guy plus the west coast right i guess we're on do you usually get a message um hang on let me check on it i don't know okay yeah um well not not really from you know i really wasn't from here so uh the teams i really root for in football are the niners and the seahawks um you know mostly because only the niners because i used to live out in california you know like i like seattle because i like seattle and besides i like the city uh yeah san jose actually but but close yeah oh okay oh is that where you are now oh okay uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh yeah well you know you you back the winners and you don't back them when they're not doing well uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah it makes sense because you know you you've got the flexibility if they're good athlete they can you know do a bunch of different things um and i don't you know my my my my main sport is baseball but you know um i've been enjoying football but i don't know it as well um i just you know um cowboys are going to have a problem aren't they is it is it this year they don't have a draft pick because of the walker trade or what was the whole deal on that they don't have anything high do they oh that's right that's right they it went the other way what was i thinking they gave up they they traded herschel to minnesota yeah okay my brain is really working well tonight uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah i mean you know if you go to i i you know i'm sure if you go to any of the twenty eight coaches in football in training camp they say oh we're going to be super bowl [champs] because i know i know in baseball you know any manager you go to say well we're going to be in the world series even though you know there's not a prayer uh this is the way it is well [kim] i mean didn't the cowboys even finish they finished pretty close to five hundred last year didn't they because they only won one game the year before right okay yeah i enjoyed that because it was against the skins um no i i i live near baltimore and um um i i really don't like d c a whole lot at all and um i mean i'm really they they got a big thing because of the you know the the expansion going on in baseball d c is like talking about how how they're going to get a baseball team and everything it's like you guys aren't going to get a baseball team i'm sorry it's not going to happen but of course you know the the the one the [griping] is that if you know if if washington doesn't get a uh a baseball team then baltimore shouldn't get a football team which is probably true but anyway um i just i've never liked d c a whole lot and a really hate the redskins and a lot of it's because you know i got a lot of people you know at work with and everything that are big [redskin] fans yeah i've i've never liked philadelphia the city a whole lot the only reason i really enjoy the eagles at all is because uh i really like randall cunningham well considering how how well he gets along with uh jimmy johnson that doesn't surprise me yeah there was um uh there was this uh in the baltimore sun has this uh [cartoonist] in the sports section and uh when uh last i guess it was january when um jimmy johnson got named coach of the year or whatever it was the same year that buddy ryan got fired and uh he had this cartoon in there about jimmy johnson's big day you know the first thing is the phone call from the you know from the league saying he was uh um you know uh was coach of the year and the second was this phone call from buddy ryan i got fired can you believe that yeah no i lived do you know what [ellicott] city is uh it's just west of baltimore off off route seventy yeah but well route seventy and and uh route forty um oh okay yeah that's not far from where the uh the new football stadium would be if we got an n f l team yeah well they've they've built a new stadium downtown um it's opening next year so the inner harbor yeah it's um a couple of blocks west there's a big um there is an old railroad yard basically um there's a big long railroad shed and then there's uh an old station and they're building the stadium on the other side of the shed from the inner harbor which is really stupid because one of the big selling points of the new stadium is supposed to be this view of the inner harbor and the only way you're going to have a view of is this big brick wall um but you know they're building the baseball stadium and they've got land set aside for a football stadium if they ever get a n f l team so it's um real easy access from from south of baltimore like um like the airport or more importantly for the orioles from washington d c the orioles say they get twenty five percent of their population i mean uh their [attendance] from d c uh_huh yeah they really ought to change the name i think in indianapolis i uh never been real thrilled with well not you know sitting here and talking about all the cities that i hate i uh i went to purdue university for a couple of years and uh really learned to hate indianapolis while i was out there and um i was not real happy when uh when they uh left to go go there of all places no i i uh i transferred to delaware and graduated there yeah yeah but it's close to philadelphia and baltimore so it's uh kind of all over the place but east coast lately uh i don't know i'm not a real uh great football follower i guess there are two basic teams that i seem to follow every year one is the dallas cowboys and the other is the oklahoma sooners uh being a native okie i uh i like to keep up with what the [homeboys] are doing uh no no it's funny uh i got out and got my bachelor's degree in uh seventy three and uh never went to a game there and have never gone to a game since but i always enjoyed watching them i just growing up in oklahoma there it was always the home team kind of like dallas is around here and there's always been an interest there yeah i guess you keep those things you grew up with i worked in uh missouri for a while and uh i was probably the only one in the room several times when we were watching football on t v when the cowboys were playing the saint louis cardinals and i was rooting for the cowboys but they were kind of closer to home when when i struck up with them i really don't know what's going to take place with the cowboys this year everybody keeps talking about the [reconstruction] they're going through and new players and how next year is going to be even bigger and better than the previous year in a way that happened this past season and i think that's quite a bit of [optimism] around here that still there's a chance that maybe uh these guys are right maybe they will come through and and do something this year i look for it to be a pretty good year they did uh they got rid of a lot of familiar names and got a lot of names in that we weren't weren't familiar with some of them turned out to be pretty good players uh some of them didn't and you know maybe the stuff that uh jerry jones is talking about the construction and [redefining] the team and maybe the effort might be starting to pay off at least we hope it will yeah but they have always been a really strong team once the pressure gets turned on they they seem to loose it see that's the typical [trait] of the dallas cowboys and the oklahoma sooners it's funny over the years it's it's been a rough tow a rough road to hoe ever since he left i don't know why it's so hard to find uh a good quarterback these days well yeah you know he was one of the few who come through in history that can really perform uh we hope every team hopes their current quarterback is going to pull them through in a way aikman has done some of that but uh the guy winds up getting hurt every other game yeah they did they put a lot of pressure on him from the outside and from the inside uh it's funny watching them them play he's probably like a lot of quarterbacks uh when the pressure is really on when it's down to the last few minutes of the game for the season is when the guys seem to really do their best and i haven't quite figured that out if they figure they have got it won or if there's no real hurry because the first three quarters or uh if uh if something happens that that [adrenalin] starts flowing they say hey we got to do something now and then start playing the game the way the game should be played toward the last few minutes so i don't know i'm looking for a good year i guess we're always looking for a good year uh no i don't think the cowboys have got a chance i think they will probably win one or two more games than they did this year and they'll get close to it they'll probably get everybody's hopes up and blow it toward the end uh that's a good question uh i'm figuring either one either the eagles or possibly san francisco i'm not real sure they did so i don't know how these changes are going to help or [hinder] the team sometimes it brings in new motivation and all you can do is get out of the way because here they come well that's true they are tough and they're big they're mean and they are going to come right through you if you don't do something oh yeah yeah no no and it's funny you know you like to pull for the underdog and for a long time i was pulling for denver uh marino makes me just crazy mad sometimes because of some of the stupid stuff he does but he's a good quarterback he's got a good arm sometimes it's too good because he throws too hard i mean l a sorry oh yeah has it been uh snowing up there wow well that will make the skiers happy oh you bet oh yeah up around the [keystone] and copper mountain those guys will love that well good to talk to you you guys have a good time keep those printers coming all right bye oh okay i see so you make it uh to that longhorns sooners game every year how about that yeah yeah well it's kind of same for me i grew up in southern new jersey and the local team was philadelphia and they were like thirty miles right up the river and i'm still pretty much an eagle fan i guess yeah boy they uh they sure did have a big turn around from a couple of years ago yeah i'm i keep waiting for the eagles to get over the hump they make it to the playoffs it seems for the last few years but they just have done absolutely nothing when they got there and you know they've got a lot of the tools to do it but doggone if they can't just put it together uh you know they have got the quarterback there in [randal] cunningham who's just you know phenomenal but he he's too [streaky] it seems yeah yeah and without a whole lot of big name players they have got a few anchors on offense and defense and you know they they've managed with those guys and i don't know i guess yeah yeah i guess since staubach left they haven't been able to keep it going well that that says a lot for the for his ability though i think for [staubach's] i mean yeah i i tell you it's difficult in that guy's position coming into that because there he was just so highly [touted] by the press and everybody expected so many big things you know uh_huh yeah so obviously though do you think they're going to do anything in the playoffs to make it to the super bowl this year or who do you who do you like to do that this year so who's going to beat them who are they going to blow it to boy they'd some big changes speaking of them yeah i'm sure you know my [sentimental] favorite would have to be philadelphia but i i sure am scared of them giants those guys are tough yeah that that sure was a fun super bowl to watch this year i mean i wasn't pulling for either team but that was just a good football game uh_huh l a you mean boy speaking of denver on another subject i've been up there like five times in the last three four weeks yeah we've been trying get this new d n b two thousand printer up and running oh boy i was just up there i just got back last night around eleven thirty or so and it was about seven inches of snow on the ground and it snowed all day oh yeah yeah if if it snowed that much in denver you know they got that much up in the mountains you know just west of there yeah enjoyed it bob hey we'll do it bye well a lot of women are as knowledge about football as i am can i guess your favorite team if you had one might be the steelers well i can understand that i you know i kind of like the cowboys too they've had some great games in the past uh_huh me too it wasn't nearly as much fun when bradshaw was playing for you guys i'll tell you he lives in the dallas area now as a matter of fact well actually it's probably closer to fort worth but it's it's in the same area he bought uh bought a big horse farm out in a little town called [roanoke] texas but he pops up on the dallas scene quite often as a matter of fact there was some talk about trying to get him involved with the team management in some sort of a coaching job i don't know he'd be good at it he's such a motivator he primarily you know with the quarterbacks that would be his specialty i wished i wished they could work something i really like him i really do yeah okay i'd love to see dallas and houston play in a super bowl that would be really great that may not ever happen i don't know uh houston has had some wonderful talent you know down through the years and in the earlier years they really had some super teams that's right he certainly is he's very good he's very good that's right randall cunningham was with philadelphia i guess last year but he's no longer with the team so you're right there are very few black quarterbacks or at least that are starting anyway how do you think the steelers are going to do this year you have any idea uh_huh yeah oh yeah that was just such super team yeah well that's a tough it would be tough to do it really would they have such a super team for years that won what four super bowls four in a row i don't know if that could ever be [duplicated] again or not yeah that's right and that's right uh_huh yeah he may have been the last of the old guard i don't know uh_huh yeah they had such a super team have you been following the big draft that occurred yesterday i see there's quite a bit of activity now of course they had so many you know nice uh choices because their record was so lousy the last few years they picked up you know quite a few of the of course you never know the guys they pick you know may never play a game you never know it's it's a [gamble] it really is they may get hurt or not be able to participate at that level if you know ever been probably an old guy that played probably before you were born his name was sam [huff] he used to play for the new york giants that was one of the toughest guys that i've ever seen in my life as far as you know dedication he just went all out every single play of course there have been some other great ones too dick [butkis] and bradshaw you know there's been so many but if i had to pick one i would probably pick sam [huff] as a matter of fact that's right uh_huh uh_huh he is he is of course a quarterback has a big ego they really they have to have they can't survive they always think they can win you know which is the way it should be boy he never gave up i'll tell you uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh absolutely i can't disagree with that they were super players they really were they really uh_huh yeah highlights yeah yeah yeah that's kind of funny too as a matter of fact some of them a a bit embarrassing yeah well they make mistakes too i guess absolutely uh_huh oh they they take such a beating absolutely i don't know how they do it it's it must just take a hundred percent concentration i guess because they know they're going to get hit it's just a matter of how hard you know or where oh absolutely they look like sometimes they're just broken in two like a match stem gosh what a beating they really do take a beating they really do i think he was just probably a passing phenomena i think i don't know i i'm knowing what you know of course mike ditka was in dallas for years and years as coach is knowing his or you know knowing of his temperament i'm just surprised he ever you know kept the guy around i really am he's such a he's about a half hot head anyway such a temper uh_huh that's right yeah absolutely there's just so much mass there i guess they just can't i don't know you know i probably the guy is you know probably physically strong i you know obviously not very fast but i guess it's just like you say a mass that nobody can seem to get out of the way as far as him scoring touch downs you know i think that was kind of weird i don't know dallas has a guy uh his name is [nate] [newton] now he has a real weight problem too he fights it every single year but he manages to still keep playing but he has a terrible weight problem they the coaches watch him all year long they they weigh him several times a year just to make sure he's not you know completely out of control but i guess most every team has has someone like that i don't absolutely they get bigger and bigger it seems every year i guess you have to to you know to stay in the game i guess yeah oh yeah sure well you'd have to uh or i would have to say you know someone like montana i guess who's done so well for so many years yeah his age is about to catch up with him though he's no spring chicken anymore and like you say warren [moon's] an excellent warren [moon's] an excellent but he's very exciting to watch uh_huh sure uh_huh absolutely uh i'm obviously he's a very good quarterback i'd i never was you know too a whole lot of a big fan you know yeah he may uh_huh yes he was i believe that's right at one point in time but he's a very young fellow yeah of course a quarterback can look so good if he's got a lot if he's got a good supporting cast you know if not he gets beat to death like poor old troy aikman has the last couple of years anyway you dallas did better last year hopefully they'll do better this year that's right yeah [miami's] had some down years too but they all do i guess it's it's [cyclical] i guess as the players get older get slower yeah with yeah oh yes very much so hip injuries and things like that yeah yeah that that forces a lot of the guys to get out of the game that's right uh_huh yeah i read some time well not too long ago that the average uh professional career only lasts seven years so that's when you think about it that's really not a very long time of course but if the average is seven years that means a lot of guys don't make it seven years you know that's right yeah that's that's that's a pretty short career on average of course they play their you know cards right and do some good investments they'll you know they'll do all right but a lot of them don't unfortunately yeah they they're always [branded] you know as a bunch of outlaws and if their if their you know arrest record won't let won't let them play anywhere else they seem to go to they seem to go to the raiders but that just may be you know perceived you know perception i don't know al davis is he's a kind of strange character strange strange looking guy apparently he's kind of a wild guy i don't really know for sure they've had some excellent teams though obviously i'm not sure they've yet decided where they want to play they keeping talk about you know going yes uh_huh do you uh_huh i i always enjoy watching the the dallas and pittsburgh together you know does he really uh_huh oh i wonder if he'd ever do that yes uh_huh uh_huh well what about the houston oilers do you like them uh_huh uh_huh and warren moon is is proving himself quite well right now uh_huh he's one of the few uh black quarterbacks that there are uh_huh i don't know i hope they they do better they they during the past couple of years they've been doing a little bit better but uh i think they still have a little i think they're still such a a young team i think they still have a little bit to go before they reach the potential that it did when ever bradshaw was playing or if they even reach that potential again you know they may never reach that again uh_huh yeah four in a row oh i don't know shooting for one for the thumb now is what they were saying but basically everyone that was on the team then is gone now so i think mike [webster] was left but then he he just left uh yeah i think he is i think he was uh_huh no i didn't huh_uh uh yeah uh_huh well who would you say is your favorite player or has ever been your favorite player uh_huh oh really uh_huh yeah oh you know that's really funny um well i i come from a large family and there's quite a few boys so that's kind of how i got in with the football either watch that or watch nothing and um at one time i could name all the players on the steelers you know and but even when bradshaw was playing i i don't know i i didn't particularly care for him i thought he was kind of [cocky] or something uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah him and franco harris i really didn't care for the either two of them i mean they were good but i you know you couldn't deny that but i didn't i thought you know well i just didn't really care for either one of them uh today my favorites out of those guys were probably um [lambert] ham and uh [stallworth] and [swan] uh_huh i i i like not just with the pittsburgh i like watching on saturday afternoons when they'll have like the plays or the the best plays from you know from the week or something yeah i love watching that then i like watching their [bloopers] too you know yeah uh_huh it's funny that more people don't get hurt you know especially i would say the [receivers] when they're in the air and they get tackled oh yeah it's funny some of their necks don't get broken yeah an they have to be in ideal physical shape basically yeah well what did you think of um a couple years ago for the bears the refrigerator oh you know and to me he does um oh he's just so big and fat he doesn't even look like he's in shape he's just so big no one can move him uh_huh yeah wow uh_huh oh yeah there's there are some really big guys playing in football uh_huh yeah you would uh_huh um now who would you say that you have a i mean other than dallas would you say that you have uh a favorite quarterback i mean the quarterback's seem to get most of the the attention you know yeah i i i enjoy watching him play no but he's still performing yes he is i i i enjoy watching him also what about uh marino i think he'll get better as he gets older because he he well he was the youngest quarterback there was wasn't he uh_huh that's true that's true uh probably around twelve uh_huh yeah uh i didn't i don't know i i just think you know marino will get better and uh his team's not as good as what it was when he went to the super bowl you know so yeah uh_huh yeah that's true and with age comes you know the the i'm sure arthritis sets in with them you know right yeah uh_huh and they're so young but they're retired you know and their so young still oh oh yeah but then you think about how many have been in there longer than that yeah a lot of them would have to get out like in just a couple holy smokes i didn't that doesn't seem like very long uh_huh uh_huh yeah um what do you think of the uh l a raiders used to the the oakland yeah yes they have real excited when i heard this so far i've been trying to call all day because i keep getting these subjects like capital punishment so football i love this this is great well we're from colorado so we're bronco fans and um we just moved here two years ago and they went to the superbowl when we first moved here and they lost again that was pretty pitiful but they seem to be doing pretty good this year oh yeah well they haven't they haven't have they just lost one game this year two yeah but they're not doing bad people are pretty surprised that they i mean they beat the giants i bet oh boy i bet all the men that got direct down there were just right on it yep yeah yeah well i am i'm a big football fan i never my father was a football fan my whole life and he used to have the football pool at the office and all this stuff and i just hated it and i think i was just mad because he spent so much time watching football on sundays and uh so when i met my husband he was watching football and i figured out that i couldn't see him all weekend i couldn't see him until like tuesday because monday night football if i didn't like football so yep uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh well i do i just i love it it's such i just think it's such a fun sport and uh i'm just hoping that the broncos can get back on their feet we're not convinced that we're going to be cowboy fans yet but uh well i guess we'll first have to get to used to the idea that we're staying here that's even harder but no we're just this is only the second place we've lived we've only been married for five and a half years and uh we have two small children and he had a uh just got transferred here to e systems so oh well i tell you this the weather here and there's no mountains or anything you know and when you go to a football game in colorado that's you know there's snow and it's an adventure and here yeah you've just got to drive down to the to the stadium and uh yes well he's from here so yeah that's what i hear which is rare which is good yeah but uh i you know it's funny in in colorado when the broncos went to the superbowl three times in the last i don't know five or six years whatever it's been um they have these songs on the radio they take popular songs and and change them to fit uh the broncos and stuff and they had i was just thinking about one the other day uh if i saw a picture of john elway in the in the cafeteria at school um but they did the johnny angel they did johnny elway to that and and i was trying to get my son to sing that my husband was just having a fit don't have him sing that song but they they do a lot of fun things i think football is football is kind of a a sport that i think you kind of it's hard not to like it because you know there's just it's exciting yeah yeah yeah they i i wish i would have bought the tape when i was in uh in colorado because uh i i think about that a lot but you know when i first moved here was when they well no i guess it was about a year ago they did this this interstate seventy five song or whatever it was about central expressway and getting it done in nineteen ninety five and everything that was kind of a funny song but they sure do it seems to me like they really love their cowboys here even when they were losing [pitifully] you know people still support them we drive by some houses everyday that have big signs we love the oh yes well i was from illinois originally and i grew up a bear fan and uh then we moved here even when we knew we were being transferred here we became cowboy fans and we had some wonderful wonderful years there under roger staubach and we kind of got spoiled we expected it to continue forever i think they're doing pretty well this year though i think two i know they lost yeah to washington and philadelphia yeah and wasn't that fun i went to the [balloon] festival in plano and carried my little portable radio with me and i must say i attracted a lot of attention people running up saying oh what's the score what's the score that's right and that's exactly what they said my wife dragged me away from the television you know but i wasn't i had forgotten or i probably wouldn't have been there yeah that's exactly where both of the wives came from i think it was uh you know it's easier to join them than fight them and if you want to see them you might just as well enjoy football and i used to tease my husband sometimes and say my gosh did you bet the house or something this week to get so excited about these games well it takes a little [brainwashing] first yeah are you uh transit usually i mean do you stay not in one place too long well it will take you a little while but you'll probably always have a soft spot in your heart though for for denver oh i know well if they close it in see we'll have the best of both worlds then as they're talking about doing but uh dan reeves is a pretty neat guy anyway yeah that's right you know he was one of ours one of our boys so we are never we never cheer against denver unless they're playing the cowboys yeah uh_huh johnny elway well there is so much about it to like you know it's so exciting and when the cowboys won the superbowl here of course they put together some real cute songs and we all ran out and bought the records and now we feel like they're kind of a [collector's] item uh_huh so who's your favorite team pittsburgh i used to be a big pittsburgh fan when i was little oh really huh that's pretty nice yeah that's good i i used to watch them a lot when they were playing the big iron curtain or steel curtain huh well last year it was buffalo and i i still try to keep up with buffalo because they just they just impressed me as being so efficient and they never score they never blow out their [opponents] they just score just enough points and that really impressed me but then down here i is pretty close to new orleans and i've been keeping up with the saints a lot yeah the saints are starting to impress me this year you know a lot this it they are really did you see the game sunday night or sunday afternoon it was funny there were they uh a fireworks display at halftime yeah and some paper or something in the super dome up in the roof caught on fire so they had to stop the game in lieu of the third quarter and put out this fire those big piece of something came [flaming] falling out of the roof and landed on the field so there's this big fire on the field and they were dumping the [gatorade] bucket and everything it was i mean you just really can't tell what's going to happen i know it's like about two weeks ago i was watching the saints and morton anderson kicked a sixty yard field goal and it it was beautiful right down the middle he is yes uh i i sure hope so i'm not sure i'm not sure who they play right now i've got it narrowed down to the top four teams it's pretty much going between washington they are undefeated and uh buffalo new orleans and chicago because chicago has only lost twice and one of those was to buffalo and they beat the saints their only time they lost houston i saw houston play this summer in memphis yeah uh from what i saw they were playing when i was at the game we sat right on the front row right behind the houston oilers and from what i saw the game houston houston impressed me a lot but my brother watched it on t v and said that warren moon was just having an off night and if that was an off night i'd hate to see when he's on a good night he's yeah the their their [backfield] is really impressive [haywood] [jeffreys] and drew hill and allen they really impress me that's right who who did they play dallas that's right all because that's right i remember that now do you have a favorite between those two really well that's true i hate to say it but i hate dallas yeah yeah i imagine that's the way i've never been a big saints fan until the last year or two and they they've actually started doing something so i've actually paid attention to them well do you know anything about the expansion teams they're thinking about bringing in really uh right now i think this memphis they're they're trying to get the teams and that's that's where i was when i saw uh houston play saint louis is trying to get a team uh baltimore is trying to get a team and there's some other city i'm wanting to say raleigh durham but i'm not sure think so uh_huh because i know they've got a football team but i think it might be them i would definitely i think they are supposed to put two in by either next year or the year after and right now i think memphis and it's memphis and i think baltimore have a really good shot at it because i know saint louis is much bigger than memphis and when i went up there they were saying that memphis sold more tickets than saint louis did yeah it's like the liberty bowl or liberty stadium in memphis holds about sixty two my favorite team is the pittsburgh steelers you bet well i uh when john [stallworth] played he was from my hometown in alabama so i kind of grabbed on to that team way back when that's right how about your favorite team uh_huh well they are exciting aren't they boy they are they are just a fun team to watch uh no i didn't oh yeah oh you're kidding oh my oh i can't believe that that's hilarious uh_huh oh oh boy he is tough he has an incredible leg well do you think they're they're going to be able to make it this year past the first playoff game who's that right what do you think about uh houston oh yeah huh huh oh yeah he's he definitely uh is one of the best i think right well they [squeaked] out a game on sunday they played dallas they won in overtime so that was i i watched that game and uh that was uh well because i'm right here in dallas i i kind of pull for dallas yeah well also houston is uh in pittsburgh's division so i'll almost always root against them that's okay well i you know i i was never really a big dallas fan until we moved here and they just kind of grew on me yeah yeah well to tell you the truth i haven't paid too much attention to that um what cities are they looking at uh_huh uh_huh you know i think you are right i think it is raleigh i think i remember hearing that that would be fun i'd like to see some more teams get in uh_huh oh really okay oh well i'm sorry what i don't no i haven't recently um no i'm not no what's that yep are you married oh really wow so do you like football the the same here do you live in dallas yeah really i haven't huh_uh we we decided just to watch them at home but yeah uh_huh yeah right now i'm in um college so i'm more into college football than professional i think um i'm at b y u yeah so nursing yeah oh really yeah yeah um i haven't really picked a field i haven't i i don't know i've thought a lot about labor and delivery but i don't know oh really wow is she a nurse in dallas oh uh_huh um wow uh_huh well that's great oh thanks yeah um i'd like to come back to dallas right now i'm in utah of course so um but my family's there so yeah i'd like to go back are you in san antonio oh okay um right yeah my brother in law um is in the medical profession i mean he's at medical school in san antonio right now so yeah thanks all right well it's not often you get uh many women interested in football do you follow football very much do you follow football very much well we can talk about something else do you have any uh you married no well i guess kids are out kids are out yeah i i'm married got two boys yeah oh i follow the uh the cowboys but that's about it uh yeah yeah i i i am a pretty big dallas fan been for a long time but i haven't been to any games recently but uh i try to catch the game every weekend that i can yeah have you ever been to a [cowboy's] game um it's pretty nice that's good at least you uh follow the game a little bit um yeah i'm not a fanatic about it i don't know who played when and who does what like some guys are i just like to watch and and hopefully they win that's about the extent of it oh i see what uh school are you going to b y u okay leslie what are you studying nursing great my mom's an l v n yeah so what are you planning to go into do you want to be an r n or uh_huh try that that's what my mom does labor and delivery yeah she loves it she she really uh enjoys no she's a nurse in san antonio but uh she's been she's been working a uh on a late shift she works the uh i guess the [graveyard's] what you'd call it she works the [graveyard] shift and she's worked that for oh years when i was small uh i guess probably going on twenty years now and she really enjoys it she likes the quiet that you have at that time of the night and uh and uh she's uh she just started a new job at a different hospital closer to where she lives and she's really enjoying herself she really likes it well good luck to you in pursuing your nursing degree hope you'll like it do you plan on staying in in the dallas area oh uh_huh yeah uh i think texas san antonio in particular has got a large uh base of hospitals uh i don't know about dallas i think dallas is pretty scattered no i'm i'm in dallas but i'm originally from san antonio and they've got large medical uh center down there they've got the u t health science center out there also so if ever wanted you know pursue anything more than your nursing degree that that'd be the place to do it oh great great well like i said good luck to you all right well um take care and maybe we'll meet up again some time okay bye bye uh well uh the cowboys are my favorite team that's pretty easy to say nowadays lot easier than it was a couple years ago but they had a big win today uh did you get to watch it oh are you a cowboy fan right yeah uh_huh right yeah right right yeah they made it to the playoffs finally like just you know two years ago they were one and fifteen they won like just one game and so pretty fast [turnaround] but this year they made it to playoffs and today was the first game and they beat the chicago bears so everybody's really going crazy you know down here they're going crazy so so they turned it around but you know they have a lot of young exciting players now uh i mean everybody was real upset you know when they fired tom landry but you know now it's like you know they're doing good so everybody's forgotten about that uh_huh right right exactly you know uh_huh right yeah uh you know they have a young team it's you know a lot different than the teams they used to have where it's the same old you know players every year and you know same coach same everything so now it's you know like a taste of something different they're all not you know mister nice guys like they used to be now it's like you know tough and dirty team so everybody is really excited and well it's supposed to be the redskins but you know we beat them already we beat them this year in in washington so you know so everybody has the feeling like we can go all the way to the super bowl but you know it's just that we have to play every game away you know it's going to be tough but but the competition is are teams that they've already beat this year so i mean atlanta they're in it too and we beat them and uh see detroit we play them next week but you know we should beat them everybody feels like we should be able to beat them so it's so everything's uh looking real good uh_huh right right right yeah well the cowboys are on a roll they've won like i think six or seven in a row now so they're supposed to be the hottest team in the in the league going into the playoffs so right yeah troy aikman he got hurt at o u so he transferred to u c l a right uh_huh they're playing tonight in fact i'm watching them on t v right now but they're doing some [stomping] on virginia really well they're doing good tonight yeah they're winning they're winning forty one to seven yeah right but yeah and uh that's right aikman did go to o u i forgot about that yeah uh u c l a yeah but the cowboys did good today i mean i was proud i thought i thought they would get beat today because i mean they're so young you know playoffs no i didn't i uh have been at my computer all day so well i used to be a real big cowboy fan and and uh i'm not a jimmy johnson fan being an okie i just really don't care much uh it's it's kind of hard not to be a cowboy fan though they've always been you know my favorite but uh and and i guess i still have a soft spot i just hate that that's the coach that's leading them so now have they they're in the playoffs right i'll bet they are uh football fans are probably the most [fickle] people in the world hit a bad season and it's you know the coach's fault let's let's dump him first good season the coach can do no wrong but they dallas has always been good ahead you know heading good players and both running running backs and and defense who is the competition going to be course i think you know you can't really go by what happened earlier in the season because teams [jell] together or they've had injuries that heal and you know it can be a or injuries that uh have newly happened and it could be almost a totally new team out there than the one we played but but since you have an o u drop out as a quarterback well well he he really didn't feel like he'd be able to do a lot of passing at o u o u has always been known for their running game more than right oh i tell you they've they've not had much of a team this year bless their little hearts are they i haven't been watching well good for us oh yeah they then he went out to s to southern cal is that where he went yeah so what's your uh are you into the cowboys oh yeah well that that's all right yeah well i don't know i kind of go back and forth uh depending on whose really hot and whose not i guess i'm kind of a fair weather fan in a lot of respects but uh i guess if i have uh my druthers i'd probably go for the seattle seahawks i kind of like them yeah they're kind of yeah to be honest with you i i probably watch uh college a little bit more than i do pro yeah i kind of like college actually quite a bit is it yeah yeah that could be yeah yeah you probably wouldn't like my favorite team in college then no i root for nebraska quite a bit yeah well i can see i can see definitely how you get into that i to be honest with you i find that too much running gets pretty boring as well and right sure well i think they're starting to realize that a lot of the like the big eight teams that used to run so much i think they're starting to realize that they just can't compete anymore right yeah so uh what's this world league is coming in uh that's getting ready to start up right have you followed that very much or yeah yeah right it can take over a small market share but nothing really right yeah i think i agree with you it's it's kind of interesting to see uh to see their claim of you know like world football but when in reality it's really americans playing somewhere else you know yeah actually uh i kind of like soccer i've never really played it but uh i like the idea it's it's an interesting game to watch that and rugby i've like to watch rugby every now and then yeah whatever you want to call it there yeah yeah there's an element there's definitely an element of stupidity in there somewhere yeah right exactly yeah yeah you've played it then no i doubt it you know not at least not in this country anyway yeah it is they really are yeah uh no i don't to tell you the truth i'm okay to tell you the truth i'm not even really from here yeah i'm i'm up here for a year on an internship but i i actually live in florida yeah well you know i i mean who who who the heck is going to root for tampa bay right i mean i guess i could go for miami but i don't know i'm from i root for nebraska so i'm i don't have a real love for miami anyway but i don't know i i guess i get into pretty much uh oh god no uh no i'm not i haven't been i grew up in dallas but i'm still not a [cowboys'] man i like philadelphia eagles yeah that's my favorite team so uh now that [randall's] coming back next season i hope they'll be do a little bit better they didn't do too bad last season but i hope they can do better how about yourself uh_huh oh yeah that's another one of my favorites they're not they're not my favorite totally but i do like them i like yeah seahawks are good they now that steve [largent] is gone i kind of lose a little bit for them but you know he really huh yeah that's kind of that's kind of strange it's too much running for me in in college football i like i like the pros they do you know it's more high tech more you know players are apt to act a little bit different when they when their jobs and their when it's a job and not just you know when you're getting paid millions to do it you i think they take it to another level but i can see it's more you know [grunted] out run the ball type college football is a little bit different but whose that notre dame nebraska yeah there's a running team yeah that that that's boring for me i i'll take the passing teams any day but yeah it's just it's four yards three yards eight yards tackle that's you know it gets kind of monotonous after awhile i i prefer forty a nice forty yard flea [flicker] every now and then just just to juice it up a little bit and but yeah it's high dollar you know it's all it's all money now even college is all can we get on t v so that's that's right yeah uh not really i i don't think anything will ever take over the n f l i think it's basically you know it's it's an institution it's like if we tried to start something to take over major league baseball it's just i just you know i mean it it it can be it can take over part of it but it's never going to be the next yeah it's going to take a little bit some people are going to watch it but it's not going to be wide spread super bowl and every sunday afternoon or anything you know it's just it's never going to reach that that standard but yeah yeah it's kind of it's kind of strange uh i guess we're the only ones who take it that far everybody else still nuts over soccer but yeah yeah or australian rules football that's yeah that's some brutal stuff there that's that's worse than football as far as violence i think golly those guys kill each other out there rugby is something else yeah that's just wild that's why it's a a big college thing rugby is definitely big in college because it's something a bunch of [fraternity] guys can get together and get a good beer [buzz] going and do so yeah i could see the feel for that but it's it's pretty it's fun to play i'll give it that it is fun to play if you don't value your very much but you know i don't think rugby will ever be professional but it it's it's no you can't stay healthy and do that that's a rough game but uh i don't know i don't know how my eagles are going to do this year so you the the seahawks are an up and down kind of team yeah my my it's kind of odd my roommate that i live with here he's uh he's lived in [pennock] minnesota do you know where that is it it's a small town it's about two hours it's in like central minnesota it's a couple of hours uh west of minneapolis but uh you just live there now uh_huh well he's live in florida like the seahawks hey i i i've only been to philadelphia twice and i you know i i still like really really yeah but okay i'm not as ashamed to claim them this year as i have been so oh yeah right well really why uh_huh yeah well it will be fun for you to watch up there anyway to see what happens now you uh_huh right well it depends on where you're from in texas i live right by dallas so we have one football team as far as we're concerned that's how it is it's divided yeah it really is so we've got our cowboys here and and uh i don't think anybody roots differently but i have a boyfriend that lives in [fresno] and he is for the l the uh raiders l a raiders so well i just started to this year because of these silly raiders that didn't do very well but i've been trying more this year i think i know a little more than i use to i never knew very much at all so i'm trying yeah so i shouldn't even try to do it huh yes right yeah really i don't even think we have that in texas we might do we i mean no you probably know i don't know nobody talks about it so i don't think we do no uh_huh and we have a soccer team that comes and goes we don't even have that very much so uh_huh yeah oh oh yeah yeah well i like to do i don't like to watch i don't like to watch anything so it kind of annoys me when people just lay in front of a t v and watch all this stuff i think it's an excuse to do nothing and i i can see what you're saying about the male bonding and the guys get together and that's kind of cool that's fun you know but it can get really overdone yeah i have yeah yeah i have uh no actually no i've done that for college football yeah yeah right and that's the thing you know yeah yeah that's right yeah that's right uh_huh yeah well in high school i went to every football game and well i [twirled] you know and i you know i didn't i still don't know that much about football obviously but i still had a good time you know oh so well it let's put it this way we've got the new england patriots up here so they've had some serious problems in the past couple of years yeah um well uh partly due to ownership you know uh [victor] [kiam] owned the uh the patriots uh for a period of a number of years and he always had this uh this wonderful quality of being able to put his foot in his mouth every time he went to say something and uh they've had some financial problems with the team and so forth and it recently was sold to uh some other people so hopefully this ownership can set up new direction and uh keep uh the patriots in the new england area anyways oh yeah i've been to a couple i've been to a few games before now you you're you're from texas so you've got two football teams down there uh_huh oh i see there's that type of [segregation] huh wow uh_huh do you uh_huh do you follow professional sports at all yeah well it's a good past time you know particularly football they say uh football attracts more men because of the you know the you see the the physical aggression on the field and supposedly psychologists say that uh that uh men take out their frustrations by watching football and you know they get together with a bunch of guys and they uh uh and they have a good time and everything and that's suppose to be some of the uh the male bonding and the and the uh the male instincts i guess or something about the uh well no it it's good as in terms of in terms of uh of a contest i think that uh i personally like hockey better because it has contact it's a contact sport it has the speed and the hand eye coordination and it takes a certain skill to play hockey not everybody can play hockey so we and that's we're a big hockey area up here i bet up here in new england as well as you know in in the minnesota area but what hockey no there's no hockey there's no there's no professional hockey teams in in texas yeah i think though that professional football in particular is becoming so [diluted] now like they have this world football league you see we have the n f l that that dallas and houston are in and new england patriots and l a raiders and those teams there are those teams that play in professional national football league but uh now they have what's called the world football league and they have all these teams from there's a team in london and there's a team there there's uh teams other european teams and there's teams in the united states and they're playing now during the summer months and it's really you know [overkill] and there's only so much football you can watch yeah that's good yeah uh_huh now have you ever been to a professional football game have you did you do the whole big the whole thing the [tailgate] party and the whole well see now see that's what you got to do see now we talked our yeah yeah you the well the same thing we we talked our wives there's about six or eight guys that we use to go out for these games and uh we talked our wives into going with us one time and they had a real good time and it was basically for the social atmosphere you go you know three or four hours before the game you go set up we set a table up we do some cooking some [barbecueing] have a few drinks and then go in and see the game and see the patriots lose and then go home and eat drink some more but but that whole it it's not so much sure the contest itself and the game itself but it's the whole atmosphere of playing uh of going to a game that you miss sitting home in your parlor you know uh with with a six pack of beer and some uh potato chips you know you you miss that and and any professional sport i think you miss that the atmosphere of being there you know yep well hello hello yeah berkeley california this is [carla] in sherman texas good how are you doing yeah that's what they gave us yeah okay okay um yeah yeah i love football football professional right well i'm not really originally from texas but uh professional football is my favorite thing to watch really yeah exactly i do like uh what's his name what's who's the quarterback out there oh yeah yeah i do like him uh_huh oh really so they're not going to be as good this year huh oh yeah yeah not at all not at all i'm i'm really a a a bandwagon fan i think i like whoever is good that year yeah i've you know yeah so i so i liked the forty niners last year but uh i like watching the colts play because i'm from originally from indiana and yeah the colts yeah yeah yeah i know a lot of people do but uh we like jeff george so it's fun to watch him play being a [rookie] and all last year yeah uh_huh well they did the wrong thing by uh releasing landry a few years ago i know i i liked tom landry you know i have no respect for the for the new coaching staff since they [ousted] him oh not i know not at all yeah so uh well well i have to admit i don't keep up with texas i keep up with uh i'm from purdue and so i keep up with what's going on up there they're going to have a new coach this year from ohio state and uh they it looks looks to be promising for purdue within the next few years so we're looking forward to seeing their program turn around yeah oh yeah you don't hear about them much in fact you don't even hear about their basketball team much any more that's how it goes i guess yeah uh_huh right what are they going to do about bo this year yeah right oh yeah some people think they're predicting that he'll make a big comeback yeah i would be too yeah uh_huh right t i uh somehow got us on it yeah yeah i bet they love to talk about uh pro football don't they or any football uh_huh you played football for north carolina where'd you go to college oh did you well great what year was that then long ago huh uh_huh oh yeah oh yeah definitely i understand that yeah you too and i hope the forty niners do well this year thanks okay my name is diane hi well what's your favorite team i like the chicago bears the cowboys well they haven't done much for they never did much even when landry and staubach were playing i'm being real sarcastic did you like them back then [touche] yes well when i moved here in the uh mid seventies um are you in dallas yes so am i uh i just use to laugh because back then i was a steelers fan i'm from originally from pittsburg and that was not the thing to be in dallas when they their [preseason] games at the stadium you know where the cowboys versus what do you think they're going to do this year uh_huh in he sure did that i agree with you on yeah what do you think of uh the guy who's coaching them now from miami i can't remember his name off the top of my head i can picture his gray hair but yeah yeah that's right uh_huh are you a football fan uh by nature or is this something you grew into that's true i agree with you there though at least it has a little more action than baseball well i don't know why i like the bears but i do i just think they have some good players but uh_huh eight nine yeah mister ditka well you can't say too much bad about him i mean he did learn his [hone] his trade under landry that's what i meant yeah the university of pittsburgh well i was probably a little bit too young for that but um i know we just laugh now in terms of not specific teams but um we have company and one of the men got bored earlier this afternoon and he turned on the television and one of the ladies said what's you know what's the football game and i wasn't even aware i mean i knew it but i just i guess i kind of shut it out like most females yeah something oh funny san antonio and san antonio has a team or something oh you're kidding oh goodness are you that avid a fan that you would watch it uh year round uh_huh yeah it it it seemed like it's up to about ten to twelve years ago i mean all the sports including football it used to seem uh before the higher ticket prices in terms of just not for fans but i mean what what the salaries some of the players were getting yeah i mean i um i mean like i was just reading something in today's paper about herschel walker and i had to [chuckle] you know i mean you wonder what he really is i mean i really don't care but what happens to a player when they're sitting in their cars and they fall asleep because um they're so tired and the carbon they're overcome by carbon [monoxide] fumes you know um but i think it's still healthy i mean i have a nephew that plays football and if that's what he wanted to do i certainly wouldn't tell his parents to encourage it but i think it's still an honorable sport i have no idea who is he who um the guy the young guy from uh ohio state i think he's already over the hill isn't he i can't even remember his my mind went blank today it must be the heat um i don't know i just uh i actually you know i was probably was like you were when the when [payton] was big you know this is probably about five years after when everything was the america team but um i actually once [payton] left i kind of just lost you know yeah i kind of just lost um and i don't think [ditka's] going to stay around much longer i don't know if he renewed a two year or not i think he's either in the middle of that or just did that yeah it's kind of you know i mean uh it's kind of like when the cowboys the bears and the steelers went you know like i said about ten twelve years ago it seemed like football was really interesting then and it didn't matter who was playing it just it was worth watching yeah and it was competitive and it seemed a little cleaner i don't know um yeah and there's some technical stuff you know this [minicam] stuff these instant replay things that uh i'm not sure that i would agree with some of it but i still think it's a good sport uh_huh some of those calls well i have to agree with you because i can remember um when they played the [dolphins] and i saw ditka take the [touchdown] and i remember there were one or two calls in that game i think it was in was that seventy three or seventy two i can't i can't even go back that far anymore uh_huh uh_huh no i know yeah usually when that happens and i mean it always seems to go the way of the [ref's] call though it never seems to go the way of you know either the coach or somebody protesting um but that's really i guess what i know about football pardon me right now i'm not i'm a homemaker yeah yeah it sure is domestic engineering domestic engineering there you go yeah it's um i don't know i just really had to laugh today i mean the what the subject was when i placed this call when the subject was football because uh we had just had that on that that was uh you know year round and i said oh they've got to be kidding i just don't think financially they'll make a go of it and then my husband said to me well it was somebody from the vikings uh mike lynn or somebody who um was one of the [promoters] of that and i said uh you know wouldn't they be [feating] their purpose to go away from the n f l but nobody seemed to uh you know nobody just thought that it the motive was just another way to make a profit yeah actually you know i mean that's just um that's the era i'm talking about i mean i remember when uh [gale] [sayers] played i i mean i can that's kind of when it seems like it was right any [probability] could happen i mean now it's just it's and usually it's one team that's great over the entire season and then it's kind of flat watching some of it i mean it's um right exactly i mean i can remember when drafts and [heisman] i mean i could i mean i just i mean i used to think [dorsett] was good now i look at him and i think well why did i ever think that in his younger yeah and walker now i mean i don't know if he's dried up or not the way they're talking that uh did he and who's going to quarterback the cowboys this year i don't even is it still the blond headed guy aikman it what do you think of him uh_huh so you think it's the defensive element that's really lacking in the cowboys uh_huh in terms of running yeah protecting him yeah didn't he just go through through some rough elbow surgery or something about five months ago ooh uh_huh sure probably my husband should be to i just you know you just go through and you check those subjects and you go well there's not too much well listen i won't keep you on a nice sunday afternoon okay no problem and you have a good day okay okay obviously the team that i support would be the cowboys uh i say that i support them there's been just so much that's happened to that team since they got rid of tom landry that was just like you know [blasphemy] around here so yeah oh yeah i know i know i don't think i'll ever forget when one of my friends called me and said you're not going to believe this because i had not heard it you know and they said they have fired tom landry it's like you know what [slander] how could they do such a thing so uh ever you know since that i used to be such a an avid fan you know it was ridiculous but now quite honestly i i think that i support the oilers as much as anybody you know just because it is a texas team but i cannot stand jimmy johnson or jerry jones uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah i don't know now yeah i just i think of bum bright you know but that's been many many many years ago yeah bum [phillips] i'm sorry yeah yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah i can't i can't think yeah how did you feel about having about jerry [glanville] you know people either hate him or they they like him quite a bit yeah yeah right uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah yeah it's it's you know it aggravates me no end when you're talking about a really close game and then they do something stupid like start a fight or you know they have they have something like that called and then that is aggravating yeah right yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh right uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah it seems like they blow it oh yeah you know it was just like you were so spoiled it was such a novelty if they lost a game you know and they could lose one game out of you know the whole season and people would just be completely up in arms and i really you know as far as future of the cowboys i really hate to say it but i think they're going to end up being a contender within the next couple of years i really feel like that will yeah yeah yeah and yeah right i think and it's a sad thing to say but i think it really depends on how much money you know it always comes back to money everything does but if uh jerry jones continues to pay these guys what you know they say they're paying them i don't know you know i think it depends on you end up you know the best players will come there if they're going to be paid the most so uh you know i don't know it's interesting we'll just have to see but it's just very very difficult for me to to support them it's you know a lot of the guys i really like you know and and uh i loved herschel walker that just blew me away when they traded him you you were talking about somebody that was really involved in the community and did a lot of things for for kids and stuff like that he was extremely involved in that in that aspect and i think that's why i i liked him so well but uh i don't know you know when i i watch it and then i start sort of seeing myself enjoying it i'm like you're just you're just doing this for the players you know don't think about jerry jones or jimmy johnson either one but you know it'd just be so aggravating when they did win and then uh jerry jones would come out of the uh you know the press box i mean i would just go uh you know wild it's like it ruined the whole game for me because i had to look at him you know yeah he's the owner uh_huh and he and uh jimmy johnson went to uh college together they played football together in college and so they're like this is just like the buddy system you know and they're of course they're not from texas so that [riled] everybody up you know this is like arkansas people so uh that didn't go over well so we'll see as i said i really think that they'll eventually they'll eventually be a contender so yeah yeah it's no i haven't uh you know i find myself it's just it seems like it's so hard to uh i don't know why it is but it's just so hard for me to get involved in it you know i love football but you know i feel like i'm not watching the n f l for some reason it's like oh it really doesn't count you know and that's terrible but that's just sort of the way i feel about it uh_huh right uh_huh yeah yeah yeah i mean you you see you can definitely get involved in it more when it's somebody that you've supported all along and it's someone local because you've got all the press you know you read more about them of course and and hear more about them on on television and and such but uh i you know as much as i love it i would think that i would sit down and watch it but it just as i said for some reason it's like oh they you know they're just out there playing around they don't uh they don't really they don't really count uh for dallas uh my mind went blank i can picture his face oh my word yeah he's uh he's been here for several years oh pooh oh well it'll come to me as soon as we hang up i can't i cannot think of his name he's been injured they've done he's had several surgeries he's a young like a young kid i mean you know he's i don't know if he's even twenty five yet i don't think but uh he uh he's had as i said several surgeries on his hand and and uh he's making a fortune of course he didn't play that much uh last season he was out for maybe you know four or five games so yeah uh_huh yeah yeah that's true he is he's considered an old timer i suppose yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah you know it takes a it takes a strong leader in that position uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah yeah oh yeah just so thrilled it's true yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh really getting into it uh_huh yeah yeah it's it's it's addictive i mean i come from a my i have several coaches in my family and you know my mom is just a freak about it you know she she's just as bad as anybody and my fiancee if it's involved with ball he will watch it you know so i i was raised with all that stuff so you know it's just like all of our holidays center on what time is the game start you know we have to hurry up and get all this food out of the way because yeah oh yeah yeah you know i would like to i i say i i didn't want the cowboys to win but sure i'd like to seem them you know end up end up doing better it's just you know you you really miss it when you aren't so intense you know as as we were when they were such a great team you know yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh it's like why am i even watching this you know i it was seems like it was the height of the of the uh cowboys empire so to speak when uh uh earl campbell was playing for the oilers and i'm a u t freak too okay oh yeah i guess we're sort of we're stuck with that down we're brad we have to be but uh been it's been difficult suffering with them through the past few years but it looks like they could be you know on their way back a little bit our quarterback's hurt right now he's going to be out for a couple more weeks at the very least and may miss the rest of the season course if they're lucky enough to make the playoffs he may be ready for them we're we're fortunate to have a you know a a fairly good back up quarterback that's come in but i tell you what the people of dallas uh they love their cowboys i'm a i've been here since seventy four and uh they're quite easy to easily to get attached to and uh we've got our new coach now jimmy johnson which i we we like what he's doing they've forgotten about tom landry he was a great coach in his day but they've forgotten about him oh yeah so who's your favorite team right sure no well i'll be darned i'm sure uh_huh right and how's your team doing well good they're having a sad year i know maybe maybe we're both teams of the future huh oh it was it was fantastic that was a hell of a season oh i know they had a great coach i think they're they're they're missing their coach but most of all they're just they're in a rebuilding type of thing their their quarterback's down too right now so the big oops big big [phil's] trying to come back hold on just a second that's my other line sorry brad okay so anyway [phil's] trying to bring them back right now i guess who do they play this weekend oh then it's a big game yeah they play at at philadelphia play in new york well yeah good chance there hope so right and we just hope we just hope dallas makes it and of course all that depends on what philadelphia and new york does too so i don't know that's true because both our teams are like eight and five you guys are up what seven and six i guess yeah i hope so their first playoff games travel to detroit i believe that's that will be a tough one on them right yeah it was there but they lost them playing there but uh still a tough game because you got emmett smith versus barry sanders it ought to be a little exciting be a good game anyway yeah yeah he was doing well and the kid from houston they drafted from houston uh they gave all that money to they've got a lot of high dollar players i tell you football well it is well actually it isn't actually the new york giants but i do like the cowboys well i'm in in uh plano in texas yeah where are you oh well uh well my husband was transferred down here no uh_huh but anyway they want us to talk about football and uh yes but you know they're not doing so good this year yes yeah that's true but i don't know they have basically the same team they had last year i just i think the coaching stinks well i don't know i just think uh they got rid of bill [parcells] well they didn't get rid of him he quit and i just don't like the guy that has replaced him he is very conservative in his play calling you know i think he uh he he could have taken more chances this year well that's possible but now i hear uh he's been talking with the uh tampa bay exactly exactly yeah well gee i don't know it's hard to say you know [hostetler] brought them to the super bowl and uh i don't know well it's a that's possible you know who's to say i mean uh i don't know [hostetler] he had his his numbers were there i mean you know he he had pretty good numbers but uh yeah i don't know it was very disappointing their offense was very it didn't do anything i mean their their maybe they they i think the most they [scored] in any game was like twenty four points or something you know they really had a i don't know why because they had the same well you know they had the same offense as last year but they didn't score all that many points last year in each game but they uh they have a terrific yeah i i guess yeah well how about the cowboys they're doing you know great well yeah but now you know they're really on the road back you know i mean that that game yesterday was terrific no no i i haven't been to a game in a long time oh really oh that's great were you out there yesterday oh man i don't think so i mean i hope not anyway i mean he's so good you know yeah he's he's real good uh i don't know you know i don't know i think maybe they'll give him another year you know but uh i was disappointed he was too conservative and he just didn't take enough chances and uh i you know i i prefer them to get somebody else i'd like to see them get [parcells] back yeah he left on top you know two super bowls in uh what four years that's pretty damn good yeah you know he couldn't really top it so uh and now i'm sure he's making more money doing uh you know sports reporting what the giants uh you know i really don't i guess i guess i can uh i really don't know defense and offense i suppose you know i've got the they've got the running backs so they could use a uh i guess they could use some more good [receivers] yes and [navarro] was terrific yeah they could use a a couple of really good tight ends they really they don't really have you know really you know super tight ends [navarro] he was uh injured and i don't know then he came back and then they released him yeah yeah no i think the cowboys have a good chance to really uh possibly take it all the way they're one of the they're one of two teams that actually beat washington redskins uh however washington has been uh what do you call it has been [resting] up and uh that could really hurt the cowboys especially if they have a lot of injuries coming into uh the next two games well uh that would be an interesting game i think that game would be sold out what do you think yes i think so because uh i think warren moon and uh steve beuerlein and troy aikman are some of the hottest quarterbacks for the uh for the nineteen nineties yeah the no name defense that's pretty good well did you see in the paper last sunday about uh the salaries for the different uh uh players well what do you think about uh montana being paid so much for not playing this year sure i think it will be too and i think steve beuerlein might get a little raise too he's uh uh troy aikman i wonder even though he's a real good player i wonder if he's going to be able to uh stand the physical abuse that the n f l offers he might not make it yep so what do you think about uh the games that going to be played uh tomorrow buffalo and who they playing the uh kansas city chiefs yeah i think john elway still has a hot hand the trouble is is sometimes it's cold and uh he's not consistent he has a good day he has a bad day uh i like that these other quarterbacks that that they're are more consistent i think beuerlein has been more consistent right right um i missed the name who was that again i didn't i didn't watch that game uh i did watch the notre dame game yes i i think that uh the coach there has uh really made a name for himself with arkansas and now with notre dame yeah that was a low scoring game okay here we go so what's your favorite team naturally huh oh really it's uh like seventy five miles from oakland and san francisco it's in the valley okay well i used to be a [raider] fan when they were there but now i'm a forty niner fan you know and the forty niners just went down down down this year yeah yeah right right so what do you think's going to happen sunday i hope it's buffalo you know i really i'm uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah lost by what one point yeah uh_huh well at least dallas was in the playoffs you know what yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh do you get to go to very many games uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh no i've never been to a forty niner game i used to go to all the [raider] games when they were in oakland that would be nice yeah but uh i don't think that's ever going to happen you know uh now i'm just waiting for something to come off out this way out in the valley sacramento still has a chance i guess of getting a team someday uh_huh uh_huh so you plan on uh watching the game sunday uh_huh uh_huh well that will be nice yeah that will be nice yeah we're going to have a little few people over to watch the game you know just serve hors d'oeuvres and stuff like that so we won't have to miss out on anything so i know it's too late huh yeah i was wondering for sure what time it started i thought it was three or something but you say it's four out here huh six o'clock your time huh that's terrible yeah yeah yeah well yeah okay then it's been nice talking to you brad you say you're a [steeler] fan so did i no kidding yeah chuck [moe] as a matter of fact uh did the coin flip in uh [yesterday's] super bowl he looks real good he certainly had a an unfortunate uh end to a brilliant career well that's what i think i think the the the sad thing about the steelers is that they stuck with the crew a little too long and i think that's the the biggest problem for [dynasties] is that you just really have to cycle people um yeah no yeah how about houston the oilers any more appealing to yeah well i you know i was a [steeler] fan and a forty niner fan um they've certainly built themselves a you know a great team as a matter of fact if they hadn't lost so many games early in the season i think they might have been a contender might have given washington a game but uh they lost uh so many games early that they that their comeback made little difference at the end well montana made a difference but as the [analysts] have said over and over again the game is won and lost at the line of [scrimmage] a smart quarterback makes a big difference and i really think for example yesterday buffalo might very well have been in it until the end had kelley been uh a smarter quarterback i i frankly am surprised that um [marv] levy would allow him to call all those plays yeah and i think that's just too tough in a on a uh uh you know a guy you got to be real real savvy to do that and i don't see kelley as being that savvy i don't i think that's one of the weaknesses in the buffalo offense myself because they certainly have a heck of a defense although it was picked apart a little bit i mean washington just looked phenomenal and uh yeah yeah it's it's it's nine years ago yeah it's been a while well it is it is a little disappointing and there's some it's it's very interesting to see you know what's what's behind this is it is it the uh i mean you would think theoretically that the draft picks would uh you know random and then free agency also makes a big difference and i don't understand it i mean they just uh they they denver you know went a few times and they didn't do anything cincinnati they didn't do anything now uh buffalo yeah well you know i think that's sad in a way because i think that if you look for example there were a couple of calls yesterday that were [appallingly] bad i mean i just it's it's it's [shameful] and and i think that that once [pandora's] out of the box you know so i don't know i i i think it can complicate things i recognize that but i sure think it's it's [reversed] some some calls that were bad calls although yesterday it didn't reverse one that was a very bad call well there yeah there is that problem and and but uh i guess that that the real the real interesting thing is in the age of television you're going to get so much analysis of it that a well i was pretty encouraged by what happened this year and and i think with all those draft choices that i hear that they have uh they ought to be able to pick up a few more players that would help them so i'd i'd have to say that i think that the j j boys have done well oh i i don't think there is any question that aikman has to be the starter because he's got the physical tools i mean that other beuerlein stepped in and did a wonderful job but i don't think that you can until troy loses the job on his own merits i think the job has to be his now that he is healthy again unless he doesn't perform then i guess the other guy is waiting to step in the wings but but that guy's got his head screwed on right he's not causing a controversy yeah he said he'd hit the first reporter that says the word quarterback controversy yeah and uh but he he doesn't like it he doesn't want that he just wants to go out and do his job when he gets a chance to play he kind of i think wants to let his actions speak for themselves pretty much yeah i am a dallas native so i have kind of grown up watching and i even went to s m u so i didn't even go away for college so i i in uh north dallas in lake highlands area richardson school district yeah i was in the dallas cowboy quarterback club when they started it back in nineteen sixty i was uh just a little kid then and i use to go to the games and sit in the end zone for a buck of something for this little club thing they had i played in uh up through about seventh grade and i was not big enough to keep getting killed out there uh now you've got to be a joe man montana fan a little now huh yeah well he's uh had a tough year but i think he will probably come back yeah i you know if his doctor's give him the green light i i think he will more than likely play again but yeah to a certain extent you know they sure have got uh they get the best back up in the league but steve young but i don't think that you can throw all of san [francisco's] lack of getting through this year to the quarterback i think it's been i think it's been a variety of things they have had several key injuries in certain spots and a couple close ball games could have gone one way or another and and uh they are still one of the premier uh four or five teams in the league and they're always one to beat so i don't think there is going to be any question they are going to be up there again another thing is some of their guys are getting a little older cause they have been up there for a while not since the season is over what i have been watching lately is the uh potential draft coming up as the players declaring which every time another good player throws his name in that means the draft is going to be that much stronger and i have been watching the uh [commitments] of the high school players to the colleges lately cause that is going on national signing day is coming up next week when they can sign their letter of intent as to what college they want to go to so i have been watching to see if s m u was going to get a few good players cause they have been kind of struggling along since their death penalty thing yeah i have season tickets so i go to all of the games well i was in the band there i uh was part of the spirit of the campus for a long time and uh we have a section of band [alumni] that all sits together called the [diamond] m club so we get the same season tickets every year and so we're uh we're all there and it's its' just kind of fun but it i've got a son seventeen years old and he's going to be going off to rice in the fall and he wants to play in the the [mob] the marching l band down there so i imagine i will be making a few trips to houston or following them a couple of places to see him play just one how about you have you got any oh wow yeah but what part of town do you live in well i uh i'd have to say my favorite team would be cincinnati [bengals] uh_huh oh that was sad wasn't it yeah yeah yeah that was just a couple of years ago yeah well uh it's kind of hard to uh to know what to do with some of these teams and they're either extremely strong or very very weak and uh nothing much in between oh you like the raiders uh_huh uh_huh no uh_huh well that that and that's the important thing i mean whether they win or lose why the fun is is in the supporting them and staying with it and hoping that uh you know the next time is a better time around well uh oh i love football oh watch it uh every game that's on i watch yeah and thursday nights no there uh well let's see i never use thought about football too much yet yeah right uh uh yeah that's the world league yeah what time is that supposed to be oh are they oh um well uh i haven't for some reason have never really gotten enthused about football in the summer from the the world league yeah yeah and uh it just seems like it should only be done in cold weather rather than just be played at anytime during the year uh_huh huh ooh uh_huh oh is that right yeah is that right huh i would think uh that if you were real cold and you hit uh hit the ground that it would seem to hurt more well that helps doesn't it oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah right right what kind of weather you having right now oh my well our weather's suddenly turned cold again uh our weather is so unstable never know yes and uh this morning why it was raining and it was quite cold and then it seemed to warm up somewhat and then before uh before i got out of church it cooled off again so much so that i uh stopped at home to change coats because i had to go down to the hospital and uh the coat i had on was just too light in weight yes very strong winds well been awfully nice talking with you yeah right right most people seem to be there out there right okay well good talking to you uh_huh okay well how about those redskins huh yeah do you think uh yeah they i don't think they've really traded anybody that i know of yet uh i've i've got three kids who collect football cards so they uh they compete pretty [vigorously] for all the redskins cards and uh actually we went to after they won the uh the uh super bowl we actually went down to the mall in uh washington and saw uh you know all the players down there when they had a big rally down there so it was surprising how big those guys were i mean they they look big on the field but they're even bigger in person though especially that guy joe [jacobi] is just a guy's a monster i mean not [inhuman] but uh oh yeah they're all they're all huge guys i mean a small guy would be about six three and yeah [ripon] you know for a quarterback [ripon] was six i think he was six three or four and two thirty which is really big uh_huh yeah well uh what what team are you predicting uh will come out of the a f c next year you know you think denver will be as tough as they were this year yeah yeah well i was real surprised uh that they did as well as they did last year i didn't realize that they were as good as they were and actually i thought they probably should have beaten buffalo in the uh title game but uh_huh uh_huh you think [mecklinburg] is going to hang around for another season or is uh yeah didn't they have a guy on there uh wasn't a uh [deaf] player on there this year davis or something like that yeah i think he isn't he from nebraska yeah what kind of college teams do you like [cornhuskers] right uh_huh yeah i kind of run out of steam uh until right near the the bowl games with all the colleges then i watch all the bowl games but does your wife let you watch uh plenty of football really oh that's pretty good yeah i usually i'm getting more and more into that habit but after ten years i still haven't been able to get into the habit of just having that time reserved but last year last year was pretty good i got she cut me a lot of slack so i could actually watch some football uh_huh what do you think of the instant replay rule uh_huh what i can't believe is you know there are certain plays i guess that they don't use a instant replay on and you'll see you know the most [flagrant] you know foul or something else you know and uh they just don't you know they don't do the instant replay and then on the other things you know [touchdown] pass or something like that you know they always get out the instant replay and call backs uh_huh yeah yeah which yeah well yeah they really uh they really [mauled] the yeah right uh well i i think uh uh i probably uh uh watching my son's a big fan of uh of washington and so uh for not not having any other real real preference i guess yeah huh yeah yeah it's kind of kind of bad when they get blown out like yeah just out of curiosity what uh people up in utah uh who do who do people generally cheer for who who are the close teams out there the california teams uh_huh uh_huh sure uh_huh right uh_huh um yeah i mean in texas there's there's plenty you know there's a fair amount to choose from between the cowboys and and the oilers and so but yeah well uh_huh and and being so strong consistently and then the last few years being being just walked all over by everybody i mean they've they've lost a lot of fans i yeah yeah sure yeah they're they're obviously rebuilding quite pretty well and and stuff yeah i i didn't know how he was going to make the transition into professional ball uh you know it's one thing to be a real successful college coach i i at least i imagine it is uh you know and then seems like it would be quite different to to be coaching pros yeah yeah course course also at that at that level i mean you're dealing with people who who who know you know who who are competitive obviously or they wouldn't be there and they're motivated obviously or they wouldn't be there and so you know i don't know but it seems like it would you know you can't treat them like they're kids and yet in in a lot of senses still a lot of them probably are yeah you would you would have be one of those coaches with the soft styles yeah my dad was actually a football coach yeah in a junior college yeah i played played high school but i didn't didn't go beyond that yeah um well i i didn't grow too big myself a little bit more so yeah because i i'm here in austin and we have uh u t austin is here and and uh you know they they look like they were you know they're kind of like the cowboys for years years had a [dominating] team then they went through this big long slump and and uh last year it looked like they were back and and there was predictions that they were going to be a you know going to be real challenge in fact i think they started ranked like you know fifteenth in the polls or something and then you know then it was a long slide down it really a fairly disappointing year yeah it's it's pretty serious uh you know i i end up being so busy that i i don't watch much of it and i don't follow it much but it's obvious that the people around me do you know and and i sometimes feel bad that i haven't you know i'm not up on it more right uh_huh yeah yeah right and and supposedly uh uh his brother his younger brother is graduating and supposedly his younger brother is supposed to be a lot better than he is yeah yeah no i don't know yeah yeah right uh well i i think uh uh i probably uh uh watching my son's a big fan of uh of washington and so uh for not not having any other real real preference i guess yeah huh yeah yeah it's kind of kind of bad when they get blown out like yeah just out of curiosity what uh people up in utah uh who do who do people generally cheer for who who are the close teams out there the california teams uh_huh uh_huh sure uh_huh right uh_huh um yeah i mean in texas there's there's plenty you know there's a fair amount to choose from between the cowboys and and the oilers and so but yeah well uh_huh and and being so strong consistently and then the last few years being being just walked all over by everybody i mean they've they've lost a lot of fans i yeah yeah sure yeah they're they're obviously rebuilding quite pretty well and and stuff yeah i i didn't know how he was going to make the transition into professional ball uh you know it's one thing to be a real successful college coach i i at least i imagine it is uh you know and then seems like it would be quite different to to be coaching pros yeah yeah course course also at that at that level i mean you're dealing with people who who who know you know who who are competitive obviously or they wouldn't be there and they're motivated obviously or they wouldn't be there and so you know i don't know but it seems like it would you know you can't treat them like they're kids and yet in in a lot of senses still a lot of them probably are yeah you would you would have be one of those coaches with the soft styles yeah my dad was actually a football coach yeah in a junior college yeah i played played high school but i didn't didn't go beyond that yeah um well i i didn't grow too big myself a little bit more so yeah because i i'm here in austin and we have uh u t austin is here and and uh you know they they look like they were you know they're kind of like the cowboys for years years had a [dominating] team then they went through this big long slump and and uh last year it looked like they were back and and there was predictions that they were going to be a you know going to be real challenge in fact i think they started ranked like you know fifteenth in the polls or something and then you know then it was a long slide down it really a fairly disappointing year yeah it's it's pretty serious uh you know i i end up being so busy that i i don't watch much of it and i don't follow it much but it's obvious that the people around me do you know and and i sometimes feel bad that i haven't you know i'm not up on it more right uh_huh yeah yeah right and and supposedly uh uh his brother his younger brother is graduating and supposedly his younger brother is supposed to be a lot better than he is yeah yeah no i don't know yeah well bo was uh playing football actually you know he plays both [footba] [ll] and and baseball and he was playing and during a tackle he ended up either damaging his hip or you know [injuring] his hip and there's been arthritis and he's been out for a number of of games and it just as of announced today the kansas city royals put him up on waivers made him a free agent so they're saying now that bo knows arthritis and it could be actually a career ending injury so they had uh they're having actually a special on today and they were mentioning that and even though kansas city may have dropped him some other teams may pick him up but the big thing was that nike uh the athletics shoe company is still going to keep him on as one of there cross trainer sponsors and since that makes him more money anyhow yeah he does it it's pretty amazing though how much he can get for endorsements anymore i wouldn't be surprised whatsoever on the same program they had michael jordan they were saying that he gets about six million dollars for playing with the chicago bulls about i think two million dollars for [endorsing] mcdonalds and fourteen million dollars for his endorsements with nike and then of course he's got uh [wheaties] also and that's that's in a year that's uh what would you do with all that money yeah i could make that go a lot of places it's amazing anymore there's a also a program on this evening about the a very sports intensive evening it seems to be on t v about the business of college athletics uh_huh yeah it it talked about all s m u and their the death penalty and how they're getting around all the regulations and rules and and things of that nature i guess anymore it's just a big business uh_huh i think it probably also is more as you get into the the big schools the ones that the t v are going to cover and things anyhow when you start at the the lower side or the smaller schools are all doing it just for the for the love of the game because they're not getting the big revenues from anyone uh_huh yeah they actually mentioned a little on the fact that he's started the n c a a program where he's actually not necessary to say he's getting around the rules somewhat but it's actually sounds like a pretty good idea where he goes out and [recruits] other students who don't meet the minimum academic requirements to get into the college and and then qualify for a student athlete position and he takes them and signs some contract or something with them but sends them then then to junior college so at least that's uh some way that they're you know i i guess the best part about it you can't just drop a whole scholarships because it does i would imagine at least in it's intentions help a lot of people who couldn't afford to go to school but that seemed like it was actually uh you know if there's a good way to get around it well that sounded like it was a pretty smart way well at least it's hopefully still helping the the student your not uh going to graduate somebody who still can't read and write uh way too much yes it has yeah but that's quite all right i think they just want to have some kind of normal conversation has it really well this has been uh actually some pretty interesting interesting topics that i've had i've had things from uh tax reform to baseball to fishing those are the three i've participated in uh_huh well heck you uh_huh well sounds like you participated quite a bit uh_huh do you normally receive the calls or is it pretty much split is the well that's good uh_huh well that's good well it's been enjoyable speaking with you hi well i mostly listen to popular music i uh listen to it all the time in in my car so i i tend to be one of those people who switches stations a lot because i don't like commercials but uh i find myself listening to popular music and uh quite honestly i i have some little children and i unfortunately found myself listening to a lot of nursery [rhyme] music here lately but that's not by my choice how about you lucky you um um uh_huh uh_huh yeah how do you feel about rap music it seems to be so popular these days uh_huh right when it was really just starting yeah uh_huh uh_huh right yeah you really it seemed to be influenced by a lot of different music a lot of times you'll hear songs that you know they're not original but have been put to a rap kind of a rhythm and uh sounds it sounds so much different and yet i i have a much younger sister who listens to a lot of rap music and uh she thinks its pretty funny how often i know all of the words to songs that she's listening to and yet she thought they were brand new original pieces that's right no yeah i guess there was even a a bit of [ruckus] caused by the m c hammer who's really you know seems to be the hot one of of today he used um wild thing do you remember that that song he used um i can't remember who the artist was on that who was it well maybe it wasn't that one because it was a living it was a living person that i'm i'm thinking of that um that said you know hey that those are my words and uh i guess that they because they hadn't originally gotten um permission from him to use it and he he since then has has [amended] that and paid them his [royalties] every time the the song goes on but maybe so i i can't think yeah right they destroyed it oh yeah i i remember seeing the video of it on m t v and i thought it was [hideous] it was ugh i didn't like that either i remember i saw him in a concert when i was i think it was in high school uh_huh he was very good i remember i saw him in a huge stadium in uh philadelphia it was in j f k stadium if i can remember hundreds of thousands of people is what it seemed like um um uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah no you can only laugh right well they i guess our age is showing when we we think that uh_huh yeah like paul simon like yeah yeah what do you mean by world music uh_huh uh_huh um right no so then it becomes a kind of music of of it's own so to speak or uh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh the are they trying to we've talked our five minutes though i've been listening to that a lot lately oh yeah hi um okay what now uh what particularly particularly what kind of music do you like yeah oh really well um i don't have that i don't have that experience to share i i do i do listen to a lot of you know i do i switch the stations a lot because i don't have a cassette player in my car uh uh however i i do i do like a lot of different forms of music so i switch quite often um i think i like i i'm really particular about the type of music that i listen to but the uh there's such a wide selection i think i like a lot i like a little bit of a lot of different types of music you know i i i like music that is that i feel if it is performed correctly or if it's done right or if the version is done right i like it but if if it's not then i won't i i really don't rap yeah well i i don't really have anything against rap music i the one thing i do object to about rap music is is when it becomes [militant] or if it's uh violence oriented i i have strong objections to that um actually i listen to one time i remember this was back when even uh i would say about ten or fifteen years ago i yeah right when it was just starting i heard what was called talking blues which actually is rap and uh it was about the the piece of music the piece of music was about i think about forty or fifty years old and it was incredible i mean the [parallel] you know between it and rap and um you you listen a lot if you if you hear a lot of old gospel uh uh especially well the black gospel you know you will you know you can really pick it up i mean yeah yeah yeah they they do they do copy versions they do cover versions of of you know like standards i guess you could call it i think it's kind of absurd you know the fact that you know they don't really they don't really give you know the original artist or the original composer the credit that is really due to them yeah yeah jimi hendrix was the original jimi hendrix was the original he wrote okay uh_huh yeah i don't know it may have it may have been somebody else because i think i think that even jimi hendrix did it i think that was a you know come to think of it i think that was a cover version of like a john lee [hooker] song or something i mean it was just like it was really old i mean i i there are a lot there are so many different songs i mean like the whole thing about cover versions a lot of times i mean i've heard some songs that that i just thought were horrendous cover versions of i'm like you know i i don't want to listen to this because you know you think of the original is like you know oh that was really great that was a you know a really good piece of work and then when you hear the cover it's like you know god what are they doing i i think a good one was um there was a peter [frampton] song and then the cover version i think i mean i thought was absolutely it was pitiful yeah i did too yeah but you know whatever became of peter [frampton] i mean there was nothing he was a phenomenon i there was no reason for him to really come into you know great stardom or anything yeah yeah i think i think it yeah i think that probably what did it for him was the fact that he was a good stage performer oh man yeah i've i graduated back in seventy nine so but but i've really i i loved i mean i was i was really into the album oriented music even then so i was really familiar with a lot with a lot of of the a o r type music um the album oriented like the uh james taylor and the uh the beatles and you know i mean a lot of people they go they're better than the beatles and i'm like you know you don't know what you're talking about i mean the comparison made between new kids on the block with the beatles it was just yeah you just sort of you know well i guess i can just humor them you know at this point yeah but well you know i i i've liked a lot of the new music i think um um when i saw some promise you know with with a lot of the new wave when it when it came out uh back in the mid and early eighties and then um i don't know music is kind of in a weird it's in a very weird position right now i think that i mean i like you know things like to hear you know what they call world music which is you know using all these natural forms of music and yeah yeah paul simon well you know really that's not world music but what what paul [simon's] doing i think is is is great because he's you know i think i think that using i guess what they call it is eclectic you know drawing from a lot of different sources and making you know a synthesis of a new type of music um well world music is um a lot of the a lot of where they where they make music that they adapt to a to another kind of to another type of [listener] uh for example let's say you're taking like an original [brazilian] form of music and with a certain style and then you try to make it a little bit more [listenable] for let's say another audience let's say a north american and then when they hear it it it's a really it's another form of music and you know sort of um trying to draw out the best sources the the best of every type of music because i mean there are some i mean i i there are some you know types of heavy metal that i really like but but i wouldn't i wouldn't say that i i completely like heavy metal i i think you know and it's the same way with you know world music takes the forms that have really been um i guess i you know the best example or you know the cream of the crop i guess you could say and then and then taking those those qualities and then applying in the styles that are really um that are extremely enjoyable and then taking yeah yeah it becomes a kind of music of it's own i mean when you listen to it it's um uh i think that they don't use some of it it's they use electronic and [acoustic] [interchangeably] so you know well a lot of the stuff you hear coming from south africa now and from west africa that's considered world music because it's not particularly using certain types of folk styles but they're they're trying to make it somewhat more modern i i i a good another good example was i heard miles davis and miles davis worked with [robbie] [shoncar] if you can believe it i mean you know he's a jazz performer and then he's playing with [robbie] [shoncar] who's a very good he's a very good [arranger] uh arrangement to uh we're going to have to get off i don't know but uh yeah okay but i mean when i heard his album i heard it and it was just incredible yeah i i listened and i heard you know you hear this guitar and then you hear the [muted] trumpet i me and you never would think that they that they can actually play together but okay so we've got to talk about music and um do you like classic rock or modern rock or which kind no not a seventies baby is it disco or is it like but oh okay so so they can get like the doors and led zepplin yeah that's cool and how about the rolling stones oh that's when that's when they took toured how about um pink [floyd] okay so so then we got we got some same things because no it's very hard because see well i mean in the whole spectrum i'd rather listen you know i listen to heavy metal or classic rock we're talking about what they what they call hard rock like for example let's see uh bad company what well they're like for example a c d c why have you heard of them okay and stuff like that that's that's that's not really hard rock okay well cinderella is is hard rock heavy metal but see for example they have see what but other bands consider it like really hard rock it's like [brash] metal which all they do is like they have this guitar and they just bang at the guitar and the guitar is set like really low and what happens is like oh everybody gets like totally into the music and then they start dancing around and they just bump into each other like like they hit each other with their shoulders and then you knock people down and what you do is you also try to get up on stage and jump down on top of all these other people no i don't like that music but that's that's what they do that's that's what some people call like really heavy metal and see the difference i guess between hard rock and heavy metal is that the lyrics also like really like heavy metal is considered like the words heavy metal and like you always thought about like suicide and killing people and stuff like that and just hard rock has they they don't talk about that they just talk about like life in general like [queen's] [reich] if you ever heard of them yeah okay well no i said [queen's] [reich] but but oh but you got to like queen also so because yeah especially uh-oh god what is it a night at the opera don't they have a no let's see the one that they have the the whole opera singing in the background bo bo [bohemian] [rhapsody] yeah that that was great i heard that the other day on the radio and i [pumped] it up because i mean i just love that song yeah but they had that that whole record was pretty good but then they started going downhill like everybody else yeah they're they're still around they've got a new c d out but i i wouldn't buy it because see what happens is the old see i like i like the old rolling stones i don't like the new stuff yeah yeah well for example i used to like old phil collins an old genesis and and then what happened was that phil collins said hey i can make money a lot of money doing this and then he came out with uh see for example his his record like no jacket required that was good but it was on his way of going downhill because he said i can make a lot of money just singing alone and then he came out with the invisible touch with uh genesis and that really like now i hate phil collins i can't stand him because i look at him and i say you know you were singing at this time and with these people and you were great and now you're singing all this stuff that doesn't matter what you what you sing or what you record it's still going to be a number one hit and so that's that's what gets me mad but did did you go see that new doors movie yeah i saw it when it opened yeah well it it's you know it's like i was watching [siskel] and [ebert] you know like those guys that criticize movies and they both loved the movie right they said the music's great it took me back to the sixties and stuff like that and then one of them said well everything is great but i'm going to give it [thumbs] down and they go but why because it's like the end is like really depressing and so but it but it's like the movie is so well made and the music that goes with it just picks you up see i was never i was born in nineteen hundred sixty nine so i mean so for me no but you learn to i mean it's just that like the the sixties music's got a lot to say i i never found out what a lot of the seventies music had too you know i was like hey but i bet you were out there with your bell [bottomed] pants yeah yeah did did you go to college oh that's cool okay yeah yeah yeah well they always say that the seventies was the lowest point in in [progression] ever in history so no about everything so it's like nothing happened during the seventies everything happened during the sixties the seventies i don't know what they're called you know it's like like the the eighties are called like the progressive years or the or you know like the technology years because of all the computers and stuff but the seventies got nothing i mean nobody cared to name it so yeah i know can you imagine the like a big picture of john [travolta] [ta] da what is it saturday night fever him just standing there yeah that's a good example to look for in history well from now on we're going to go from the from nineteen sixty nine when they took the first step on the moon to nineteen eighties okay what happened in the middle don't worry don't worry you're not you're not missing anything you know so yeah really and that's that's why i guess everybody yeah it's like they don't want to talk about that so they just don't name it i mean it was it was i guess it was pretty bad times oh well let's see yeah okay we've been talking for seven minutes so okay all right so um i'm going to leave you alone uh what what are you doing do you have a family okay oh i'm sorry oh okay okay all right so then uh have fun doing this it is not that bad bye bye okay oh i guess the stuff that was done more in the seventies because that's well no that's really when i grew up so that's really what i like better is that kind of music i mean no no no not that kind of music no more like uh rock um you know like led zepplin type right right oh sure sure i went to their concert last year when they were here sure yeah i like them okay well i just didn't know that much about music and i wasn't sure what kind of music what what kind of heavy metal are we talking about what okay like give me some examples oh well bad company's not bad that's not yeah a c d c yes well okay okay i guess i didn't really consider that heavy metal i mean i i think when you say heavy metal i'm i'm thinking about like cinderella you know well see i don't really care for cinderella but i like a c d c's okay yeah no i don't really care for that too much i guess uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh is that the kind of music that you like oh okay oh okay yeah right oh sure of course you you're talking queen is that what you said oh oh oh okay right well sure because queen was real popular when i was growing up oh um uh right right yeah yeah yeah that that was a real good one well that's true they came up with some pretty weird stuff after that of the stones yeah i agree that's the the older stuff is the best of it the the new [stuff's] kind of more like today's rock and roll which i don't really care for today's rock and roll too much right yes definitely i agree uh_huh right yeah no not yet i guess i've been kind of considering it have you seen it yet was it really good uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh oh oh okay so you didn't really grow up with that kind of music then right well no now well seventies music i mean i'm like i said disco i don't like disco i've never liked disco well that's true that's true but i was more in the late well i like mid to late seventies like between seventy five and and seventy nine was more my era well no i'm going right now but uh no i didn't go then but see i graduated high school in seventy eight so you know in seventy eight you know rock was starting to get really heavy you know and real um i don't know disco was pretty much dead by then so so that's what i mean disco wasn't really my time about music oh okay uh_huh that's kind of funny you're right i never thought of that the disco years that's what they're calling them are gone yeah right that's true well except for vietnam you know with yeah well that's very true but oh good i haven't even been keeping track uh yeah we're kind of i was kind of in the middle of supper but it's not a big deal i just left it no it's okay because see i didn't see somebody tried to call me last night but i didn't have my number yet i just got it today and so you know it's okay i i told them i'd be available during this time so anyway okay thanks great bye i was trying to think about some of my favorite people that i liked in music and they're none of them are recent right so i like [gordon] [lightfoot] do you know who he is and the moody blues and i like to listen to piano music a whole lot and willie nelson yeah but not all country i don't like that when they start i don't know i just like willie nelson i guess because he's such a character yeah my truck is broken down yeah there there's a guy have you ever heard of george [winston] he plays piano i think he's dead now but he plays wonderfully i like that very badly i've got a piano my mother got a piano and uh [vowed] that someone in the family was going to learn so we all had to take lessons and i was the one that did the least poorly so she gave it to me and it's sitting here mostly taking up space but sometimes it makes you feel good to sit down and play it it is real relaxing yeah oh so do i forgot about that i said so do i i forgot about jazz yes we've got about five of those i love them uh_huh i'd never heard them before until i went in a music store and you know how you put the [headphones] on and listen to it and i just i heard a piece and it was just so wonderful and then even my eleven year old boy loves to listen to it yeah i mean you can just sit you know those little booklets that come along with it and you can just see the things that they're trying to show with music my my little boy has gotten so into it that he's identified the the people that have written certain songs then he buys the pieces that have that person you know on it huh i mean i don't even know who did which ones but he does yeah were you in the band so was i yeah yeah i like the moody blues did you like them so what type simply red i've never heard of that is it just instrumental yeah yeah well my husband is telling me we have to hit the road we're going to go to commerce and see a friend and then i'm going to go to sulphur springs yeah where are you okay so we're in garland yeah yeah yeah just because there's a friend up there not because there's much else for colleges well they're not they're not going to recruit me anymore i'm through no more for me what what do you do are you going to go to east texas for that that'd probably be pretty interesting i was summonsed down to the [courthouse] last week they had summonsed eight hundred people about four hundred showed up and it was for a murder trial this guy had supposedly uh strangled this woman and stuffed cotton [toweling] down her throat and up her nose anyway this is happened in nineteen eighty three and they had us fill out a long questionnaire we stayed till about one thirty and they're going to call the ones that they're interested in from the questionnaire two to three at a time and the trial won't take place until june and they say it's going to last about two to three weeks and this guy in front of me said i can't believe i was summonsed i was an investigator and i was [tailing] the woman that was killed well then i have a friend at school that has a boyfriend that's a lawyer and he said that this woman this [socialite] in plano had hired four guys to kill her husband and the one that's accused was the one that actually did it and she has since taken off with another lawyer who had been uh getting cocaine from his client and then selling it and he had skipped bail and they finally [extradited] him and he's going to testify for the state against her so he'll have his sentence reduced yeah the the investigator yeah he he got off right away and i wrote that down on my questionnaire that he'd told me that so i figure that that will make me biased and i won't be chosen hopefully yeah the death penalty no i said that i could believe in it in certain instances but i would be i'd find it hard to levy that against somebody you know uh_huh yeah but then when you're when you're picked see i was picked for another murder trial before oh gosh and it's so hard because you know everybody is wanting to go on and get the sentence done and if you're trying to hold out you know there's so much pressure on you and you've got to come up with a decision uh_huh yeah uh_huh so you like a a variety sort of easy listening because you like country but then um oh uh_huh yeah i i like some of his songs though they're they're not so they're not so sad country all the time they're just kind of sweet sometimes you know i mean they're not the the typical country where they're just you know my wife left me my dog left me you know yeah my truck's broken down and my house just burned down you know but no uh_huh are are you do you play the piano is or you just like it yeah yeah it must be fun to be able to play it and you know if you can play tunes that people can sing along to it'd be it'd be kind of fun i think because i mean i play the flute and not many things you can play that'll you know people will sit there and sing along to and you can't sing along either so but uh i like a lot uh i like classical music just because of the when i i don't play i like jazz music but what's that what's that yeah i like a lot like i like uh is it the new age music like with uh uh the i don't know if you've heard neurotic collection yeah i love those too they're just so relaxing yeah yeah isn't that nice i mean it's nice when you have a piece that that is so so peaceful that everybody likes you know and uh it it it it you know it has pieces that are uplifting but it it's mostly relaxing and you don't because it doesn't have words you know you don't feel like there's anything you have to remember you know as far as singing a song or something like that or interpreting what they mean or but uh yeah yeah yeah oh i see what you're saying yeah i i can't identify them either i just like them i could i know which ones come next but i don't even know their names most of them i don't know their names of the song but i i can identify them but i like that and i like uh course i i like classical music and uh i was in the band yeah and i was in like chamber music groups and stuff so i'm used to pieces and and i played classical flute i didn't play play jazz flute or anything like that so i i can relate to it i suppose but uh and i like i'm like you i like the older stuff too because i like chicago and i like i like uh uh let me think who uh i like uh hebert uh-oh you don't know hebert laws but hebert laws a flute player he's a jazz flute player and i like uh uh chuck mangione do you know who chuck mangione is yeah i like chuck mangione trying to think of all uh-oh what's his name plays the trumpet uh yeah yeah i like moody blues i i like mostly the older groups i think oh but we do have i like simply red we got simply red i figure all our c [ds] that we have what i really like and uh i like breeze i like the group i think just because they all sort of sound they sound a lot like uh simply red if i'm going to listen to that kind of music nowadays that's it's easy listening uh no it's it's got people singing but it's it is instrumental but it's it's got people singing but it's got a like a whole bunch of people singing you know how many people are in simply red [stuart] he can't hear me i i don't remember how many people but it's it's got men and women and it's not it's it's nice i mean it's pleasant you know music it's not where it's it hurts your ears to hear it but it's not as it's not like uh chicago where it's got that much instrument to it you know it doesn't have like all the brass and everything yeah oh you must live in this area we're in sherman oh okay you're going to commerce for east texas or something oh okay oh okay well they're having a lot of recruiting this week in all the different areas that's why i was just yeah east texas is recruiting for you know their fall semester and they're they've been doing a lot of that in the area no more huh well right now i'm just a homemaker but i'm going to school uh for legal assistant and that's what i know so and uh just nothing basically no no it no i don't go to east texas i got a degree from t w u but i'm really interested in legal you know in the legal environment but i don't want to be a lawyer so i said well i think i'll go back to school and see about being a legal assistant oh uh_huh yeah yeah that's how it works and this is the man that was in front of you oh well they'll weed him out yeah uh_huh well not necessarily but there's probably something else that might make you because you could know about you could know about the crime but not necessarily be taken off the jury you know not be accepted for the jury i mean pretty much a lot of people would know about it you know and and know some of the different things about it but uh they they might weed you out some other way you know if you if you don't believe like if this was a capital crime and and you don't believe in if you don't believe in death penalty you're not going to be picked at all so but yeah so see there there they would have a doubt about you that you know because if that's what if that's what the punishment is in that in that instance then you're always going to say you know not you're you're not going to want to have him have that uh that punishment so uh_huh well especially with something where you have to you have to find it beyond a reasonable doubt you have to find whether they're guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and it's like do you really feel that sure about i don't know i grew up uh in the the sixties and at that time uh it was is a changing time for the whole music scene i guess and i grew up with the beatles and the rolling stones and the whole pot culture during that time and went through that phase and kind of stayed with it i guess for several years after i graduated from college and and thereafter but have since uh i grew up in a small town in in southern oklahoma i have kind of gone back to uh more of a county uh flavor in music um i'm not quite sure why that is and it seems like almost a opposite but i guess i got away from what i consider to be the pot uh sounding music it didn't have what you know i guess what i was looking for at the time country [tell's] more of a a story it kind of reminds me of my roots of growing up and i've i've become i guess more of a country fan over the years yeah that was my teenage years i was born in fifty and and uh yeah yeah yeah that's kind of the way i am uh_huh it is it's got uh basically an easy uh rhythm and and tone and it's it's pretty fairly well easily to uh uh something to fall into i'm kind of the say way i i've gone through different periods of life uh in music from pop to classical i guess one of the things was that influenced me was that i i've worked in radio stations as a d j for all my college years trying to support my way through there and was support i was influenced by all different kinds of music but basically because that's where i worked and i've developed a real love for uh classical music in probably junior high and high school because my band instructor was uh heavy into classical type music he said he used to sit on saturday mornings and watch cartoons just to hear the music uh that they were using behind them because they used especially disney used a lot of classical music uh behind the cartoons and so consequently we wind up wound up playing a lot of classical music there and i think that uh got deep seated into me one of things i especially like now in music regardless of what kind it is uh are those that call on those classical uh roots i guess uh barry [manilow] comes to mind for some reason there's there's not a whole lot of his stuff that i'm real crazy about but he does have some things chicago had some things uh and i think even electric light orchestra had some some real um influences by classical music and i'm still still my favorite in fact most of my c d are classical music uh_huh yeah yeah i'm kind of thinking that's maybe our generation was uh so in tuned to music of that time that we identify goodness or [badness] with uh things now with the music that's [behinds] them uh_huh right uh_huh that's their signal yeah when did you first take your uh first piano lesson yeah yeah it is a time consumer yeah right no it's making that that connection especially with the mechanical parts of it i was never able to to master all that in fact my brother and sister both they were oh thirteen sixteen years older than i they went through the uh parent thing where you've got to practice or you're not going out to play thing and when it came to my turn the folks said no we're not going through that again they sold the piano and is the turns out i was the only one who really had an interest in it and never got to so i that's one of things i felt like i missed in life and i i really in fact uh one of my favorite things to do now is sit down and listen to chopin that is played on uh piano i just you know i can just [drift] off into some other world just listening to that for hours if i ever have the time to do that maybe one of these days i'll you know i'm kind of like you maybe one of these days i'll get around to it i'll do something with the piano but probably not just never got a chance to come out no well it's a pleasure talking with you best of luck in your graduate school good bye when you say that you grew up uh in the sixties i take it that was the uh teenage type years or uh okay we we're very similarly aged so we probably have an interesting perspective on the music on the times so i'm just a couple years older than you um essentially i was one of the [nerdy] types in high school really which meant that i for one reason or another i didn't pay much attention to music but as i look back now i realize it was very [formative] for me uh my early popular music interests were in simon and [garfunkel] whom i saw perform when i was in college and i became attached to that style of uh urban urban country if there is such a thing i think with in a way one could talk about simon and [garfunkel] that way because they do tend uh to have a dramatic or story approach to their music uh usually tend to have some good or bad moral to it uh over time i became very interested in in baroque classical and i think that was just through experiencing [contacting] college and the fact that i found it it very relaxing for me my tastes now run i guess to a upbeat uh simon it's something that interests me uh combined with with the classical tastes i had mentioned and my classical music tends to be confined to the seventeen hundreds early eighteen hundred music i'm not a music um i'm not particularly schooled in it i know what i like to listen to as far as classical music and i i spent a good deal of time listening also to uh people from the late seventies really um neil [diamond] for instance um people of of that particular time i listen to some country and western but i'm not schooled in it and i i've enjoyed the times when i have listened to it i played a little bit of piano i continue to do that i want to do it and i never have the discipline to stay with it but when i do play uh and begin to [reacquire] skills i inevitably fall in love with country western music which tends to be in some ways easy to play for a for a new piano player right right i find it very interesting that some television shows that i enjoy i particularly like the music i don't know which is chicken and egg in that situation uh a good example would be uh i have connections but but not particularly deep ones to the vietnamese war type situations uh and i found that i really like china beach and i particularly like tour of duty and both of them i had as much [fascination] of the background music i think going on as i did to the theme of the shows uh and i i've uh thirty something i'm particularly interested but it's the music almost that i find myself listening to uh that could well be i i uh spent my junior year uh and sophomore and junior year in in college when i a song by the uh uh i think the title of it was just downtown uh and if you recall how it goes downtown [ta] da da da uh all i have to do is hear that song and i get strongly [evoked] memories of of difficult times in school being behind on work uh and my family now knows if they come into my study and uh i happen to have had a tough day at work and maybe i'm trying to get a project done uh at school uh and i'm [humming] or [whistling] in a sort of mad crazy way the tune to downtown they know to just stay away they can hear the [unconscious] music signal behind it that's right uh probably about first grade and i have uh returned about every four or five years to thinking that i would like to do something about it i usually get to the point where i can play some of my favorite themes and then inevitably i am swept away by the the pressure of other types of things uh it is in order to continue to to grow and i i always think that i'll be able to do it and then i inevitably discover that i have no [innate] music talent relative to composition and that i struggle and really can't quite understand what is that other people take for granted in composition themes and i keys and things are something to me that remain a mystery no matter how many times i bang on them i have a pretty good [mathematical] concept for what's involved uh but in a in a [innate] music sense there just seems to be something missing there which is always frustrating for me since i have pretty high math aptitude and i keep thinking gee i thought that all the math and music people are supposed to go hand in hand but but it doesn't for me uh_huh oh so we both have a secret background that says somehow or another we just knew we were piano players and never got a chance uh that's the most fascinating thing and you sir take care okay good bye okay what types of music do you like to listen to i like classical music also i uh like you i don't know a whole lot about it and i i would like to buy more classical tapes and stuff but i'm not sure which composers or which i really like so i kind of hesitate to buy something there are certain kinds i like and certain kinds i don't yeah yeah i understand that uh no not really my husband is but not i do uh the world a favor and i don't sing [aloud] to anybody but myself yeah i i don't care for rock at all i guess i'm real old fashioned in my musical tastes yes right yeah yeah i agree with that too yeah now rock and roll seems tame compared to like the new age and all that stuff uh_huh right uh_huh crops up every so often i listen to um the christian radio station when i'm in the car k l t y i like to listen to some of that yeah uh_huh yeah where do you live i thought maybe you lived in dallas because that's the complaint i make to my husband about the radio station too i said oh they're playing one of their ten songs it seems like every week they pick ten and they just play them over and over yeah yeah right my husband likes sandy patty songs he likes to sing those in church he'd buy all the sound [tracts] he could get his hands on if he had the money to well just an amateur singer he sings in the choir and he likes to do special music and stuff at church yeah yeah i like to hear him sing he does a good job no not yet we're expecting a baby in july i guess we'll start listening yeah maybe so we'll start listening to children's music yeah there are uh_huh oh uh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah that sounds really cute uh i tell my husband to sing to my stomach because they say that babies can hear quite a lot while they're still in the [womb] and i said then when when it's born you can hold it and sing that again and maybe it'll comfort her you know when she's [fussy] and stuff what huh how strange uh_huh [babbly] i'll say that is well we'll have to keep up with that then uh_huh huh right yeah have something to rebel against yeah that's good yeah variety is good well i guess that covers it it was real good talking to you well thanks bye well i primarily listen to classical music when i have my druthers partly because i find it more [soothing] i don't know a lot about classical music so far as uh any background in music but it's the the music i enjoy the most how about you right uh_huh i tend to listen to the classical music uh on the radio a lot there's uh one particular well there several stations in this area that play uh classical music all the time but there's one in particular that is on both a m and f m so i can listen to it without uh worrying it's cute though because my children when they get in the car and i have uh the button pushed for that they always switch it to something else because naturally that isn't their taste at this point in time anyway are are you involved in music well my whole family is somewhat musical um and not from training but just because we sing in our choir and my daughter's quite involved and all that sort of thing so um i think that one of these days maybe she'll get involved in classical music too because that's usually what happens if you unless you get into rock which isn't her voice style so no i well most of it is not all that exciting in that it is terribly repetitious it's loud and repetitious without having a great deal of meaning now i do like folk song um and there have been some nice folk songs over the years that you know kind of still hang around but um but uh the more popular music i don't care for usually um even when i was a teenager i didn't really like the music of that period so much because i found i liked um a little bit more [melodious] music than what was often the popular rock and roll kind of sound although now i kind of enjoy hearing the rock and roll i guess it makes me think i'm young again isn't that the truth it's funny in fact it's interesting to me that so many of the songs now i grew up in the late fifties and early sixties and so much of the music that was popular at that time has come back and you you don't hear everything all the time but you hear much of the same music perhaps a new version of it but it's the same stuff um which is always kind of funny um and i remember my older sister i have a sister who's sixteen years older and at the time that i was a teenager a late teenager i guess i can't remember the year smoke gets in your eyes became popular i think it was done by maybe the [platters] or something then and she laughed and she said well you know when i was a teenager that had been you know some years before she said that was a version of you know a song then and she said it's very similar but they've changed a little bit she said i like the original version better well they did it again about two or three years ago and i laughed again i said oh no here we are right right it does indeed uh_huh yes now there there's some wonderful christian music when you can find good stations uh the problem that i found um in this area is that the there there is [inconsistency] in the quality here if you get someone who's very good at selecting it's okay but sometimes they kind of get on a a a binge and they play the same sort of thing over and over again without really necessarily quality uh i live in the uh washington d c area maryland yes uh_huh and i i you know there's so much available that i don't understand why they do that but um now my children have have sometimes um they've gone to a few of the concerts and so on of christian musicians that come to our youth group at our church and um and when they buy a tape or something sometimes that's fun because it's different and something i've not always heard and you know i enjoy that oh wow yeah that's nice so is your husband a singer right yeah well that's a good thing to do that's nice uh well do you have children well wonderful that'll be a musician oh there's some wonderful christian uh children's tapes you can uh you can get and i know when my children were younger um we found a lot of really nice tapes that they that they liked um there was an [agape] music group and um i some of the songs i still find going over in my head over and over again because they were really um very memorable even though my children are now my youngest is almost sixteen but i still find some of the same tapes i uh some of the same songs from those tapes i enjoy um there's one that's um a little girl singing practice makes perfect and uh she's playing the piano and so she she gets the wrong note every now and then but then she keeps repeating it practice makes perfect and then you know talking about that so far as christian life too and it's really cute yeah yeah right yeah well do you know something because i have always played classical music uh or classical style it's not always classical as you know the official uh word might go but um even when i was pregnant of course i listened to that and when our first child was you know an infant um of course when i was around the house i played that music too when he first made sounds that you could detect they were in the scale the music scale someone else noticed it and i said well i guess that's true and it was somewhat [melodious] in other words it wasn't just you know it was really funny right right i do think there is probably an influence there because i noticed that even though popular music the the wilder stuff was around when my older children were were you know adolescents early adolescents when they first start listening to music on their own they first get ask for a radio of their own and so on um this same child um really listened to more um [ballady] or um pleasant sort of songs rather than and even classical rather than the real hard rock stuff that so many other kids listen to and i i never i didn't want to say too much for fear he would think it was wrong and wouldn't do it anymore right but uh then i must say they all kind of like a variety of music which is nice i like that yeah well it was nice talking to you and good luck with the baby bye bye okay what kind of music do you like uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um i listen i listen to a wide variety of music sometimes i'll turn on the classical music sometimes i'll listen to jazz uh every now and then country and western um i'll listen to some of the rock stations i also like the uh the the classic rock stations that play the older more mellow type rock music um some of the some of the rock stations now are the i guess the top forty stations or whatever they just it really gets on my nerves because they play so many commercials and sometimes the [deejays] are just kind of annoying and irritating and it gets kind of old and they play the same songs over and over and i just get kind of tired of all that so lots of times i'll just play cassettes instead of listening to the radio actually but uh most of my cassettes i guess i don't i don't like hard rock um i have some some rock and some jazz and a couple maybe one or two country and western some uh-oh i can't believe i can't think of his name um garth brooks i have a couple of his tapes and um but it's mainly it's mainly just the the light rock type stuff uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh no i don't i sure don't because i have so many albums and cassettes i feel like gosh i'm going to have to go out and buy a c d player and then start collecting c d and it just i haven't gotten around to doing it yet yeah yeah just like v c [r's] too yeah i thought of that too that if i wait it'll get a lot less expensive and i can do without it for a while uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's and a c d is a lot more expensive than a cassette ever was too right now i think they're somewhere between ten and fifteen dollars a piece yeah yeah i bought some at christmas time for friends of mine that have c d players i thought my gosh now i know another reason why i'm not going to get a c d player for a while right uh_huh uh_huh yeah see i've got a on my stereo i've got a a uh [turntable] and then i've got a dual cassette so i can record off other cassettes but i never realized you couldn't record onto i just never really thought about it because i haven't really looked into it very much i don't have one and and i've never really looked at one very closely but that that would be inconvenient because i have a cassette player in my car now i guess you know one of these days when i get a new car maybe i guess all of them will probably have c d players by then but uh i'm not planning on doing that for a while i just got mine paid off i'm going to stick with the cassettes and and uh you know until until they now my sister my younger sister has a she does have a c d player that she got for christmas and she's got the the cassette so she can record off cassettes onto c d i mean i'm sorry other way around off c d onto cassettes um so i can record some things from her and you know get cassettes and record off other ones or off the radio if i want to but but uh i just haven't gone to c d yet uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh oh yeah and they get worse and worse too uh_huh uh_huh well that's amazing how i used to when i was in college i used to have the stereo on all the time or i had on m t v or something but ever since i've been out of college i guess over the last several years i listen to the stereo less and less now i i will turn on i've got a small jam box in my bathroom i'll turn that on while i'm in the shower and while i'm getting ready because there's really not much else i can do and it's kind of boring standing there putting on makeup so i'll turn the radio on and and then i listen to it when i'm in the car driving to work because again there's you know there's nothing else going on i might as well listen to the radio while i'm driving to work but other than that i've i really don't i don't listen to the radio or even to my albums or cassettes or anything very often anymore i guess i'm just too busy doing other things that it's too much trouble to get up and go decide what i want to listen to and put it on the on the [turntable] i don't know i just don't don't bother to do it very much anymore uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's good what instrument does he play uh_huh uh_huh i've never heard of that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh i'm sure it is i'm sure it is i was exposed to a lot of music when i was younger i my parents had me take piano lessons for eight years and so i was i was a real good piano player but then i got interested in a lot of other things and i got real involved in many things and and now i don't have a piano in my apartment or anything i could sit back down and play a few things but not like i used to be able to it's kind of sad that i've let that slip away and i took guitar lessons i think for one or two years and uh that was about the same time i was taking piano and then i got too busy in high school to really keep up with it between homework and well i uh several years ago a radio broke in my car and i never i got out of the habit of listening to the radio and so i haven't been listing i i used to just listen to the rock stations but um lately i have been going back to classical music i don't really know what too many of the most popular songs are unless you know they're in the the news or something but um so i tend to listen to some of the older songs that were popular back when i was paying attention and then i like some classical music and some of the pieces that have been around a while i haven't paid much attention to most of the current music what about you uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's true uh_huh no uh_huh yes i don't i never liked any of the heavy metal music i never really listened to it because i you know i prefer to have more i guess an established pattern of music to listen to but and i back a long time ago when the rap music first came out it was kind of a novelty and i listened to some of it but i you know now that there's just a million rap groups and and uh they try to tend to try to do outdo each other with [raciness] i think and so i you know i'm not attracted to that at all but um it made a big difference in my life not to have a radio that was easy access and so now that i do have one i just don't automatically turn it on unless there's something i'm particularly listening to but you know if you go two or three years without having that what i got the most exposure to it really changed my life style and kept me from just having a you know easy access to current music and so i did like i say tend to go back to albums and cassettes and things that i had already had purchased but we don't have a c d yet do you uh_huh yeah i i kind of decided to wait until it it was around a while it was kind of like remember when personal calculators first came out and they were really really expensive and then now you can get one for two or three dollars uh_huh uh_huh sure and also they get better quality and they learn to have more features and things and without and making them less expensive so we're kind of waiting to like uh now you know and the price of cassettes has gone down because c d are so popular so i haven't even priced them i guess they must be oh really that is awful uh_huh take our time well i can't imagine um you can't record on them and so they won't be as functional as like a cassette player where if you heard something you could record it you know uh if you have i guess if you wanted to record something to play out in your car or something that you'd heard or that you owned an album of so c d won't be nearly as handy uh_huh uh_huh yes enjoy it uh_huh uh_huh well that's good uh_huh why we haven't either but we you know we like the the idea of having great extra quality you know in your music and things but but i'm satisfied to just have what i've been used to not have to think about the great financial sacrifice that that would be to suddenly try to switch over to all c d or something but i know one thing that has colored my music choice is when we had children um i really started to think about what kind of television programs i was watching and what kind of music i was listening to and activities because um you know i just didn't want them to be exposed to a lot of things and a lot of the lot of the songs have some lyrics that um i just wasn't pleased with you know uh_huh and so i really think we've tried to tone down our taste there to make uh you know our children not be exposed to so many negative things so early in life uh_huh uh_huh right right yes i know what you mean i i know my husband he um plays an instrument and he played in the band when he was in college and in high school and so he has a lot of all different kinds of music and he goes out of his way to play marching band music or like you say jazz or classical to the children to to give them some exposure to different kinds of music and i think that's really good because they're learning to like all different kinds and he plays the it's a [euphonium] it's like a small a really small not a tuba but i it's hard to explain i never had known anyone to play one before but it's kind of like a small small tuba but it's not the kind that sits up on your shoulder but it's a cross between a tuba and and an and you know a horn it's a brass instrument so he plays that and and a little bit of piano and but he has some real fond memories of marching band and concert band type activities and he thinks that would be good for the kids uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh so jack what type of music do you like uh_huh yeah i enjoy classical too i never really had listened to it till i i got married and and my wife uh enjoys it so i had never listened to it till then but now i listen to it well whenever she does and even every once in a while i put it on myself you know um oh yeah uh_huh oh yeah see those those are really nice i like those though i i couldn't tell you anything about them other than when my wife says this is bach you know uh_huh yeah that you what you like how about popular music um yeah yeah i'm pretty much the same way you know people always say wow the [meanings] of those words and i'm always meaning there's well you know i just thought they just all sort of [rhymed] you know right yeah that whenever they say it two or three times i'm the same way yeah it's funny uh depending on where you live i i i commute back and forth between baltimore and a rural town called salisbury which is two and a half hours away and the difference in the radio with popular music is totally different you know when yeah because baltimore will play more uh what might be considered a little bit more progressive and as soon as you go down to salisbury this town that's you know uh two and a half hours away in the suburbs or whatever uh in a real rural uh maryland they it turns into basically classic rock and they don't you know yeah mostly oldies but classic rock you know with if you know like when the doors movie came out you know doors was really on the radio there you know where you know you'd hear one or two of their more famous songs maybe top forty in baltimore but in salisbury you that's all you would hear was this is the doors you know so it was sort of a funny thing yes that's i'm starting to realize that i never really thought about that much but there is yeah i never i never i didn't i i lived in pittsburgh before baltimore and i didn't i never really noticed the difference when i moved to this area i really didn't notice at all it just seemed the same but when i went more rural you know that it really changed so oh does it yeah yeah uh_huh right yeah boy that would really be beneficial because you never hear the you never hear the news basically on the radio i never get it you know and if you don't if you don't read the paper you sort of fall behind if you're in the car all the time yeah that's pretty good uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah on fact my uh my grandmother does that a lot because she's blind or she's losing her sight or whatever but yeah that of in i can imagine you know if you're driving cross country you know uh listening to a story lot of the classics are really on tape yeah yeah that's that would be good well we [strayed] a lot from music but i but i guess music comes into that whole aspect of listening so as long you're listening so but if you do if you do have to go something i guess we can just cut off well jack it was nice to talk to you and good luck and i hope you get some more calls and make some more calls bye well i like uh classical and uh sort of uh popular rock type music uh oh uh_huh yep yeah i i used to play the piano and i like uh bach and um sort of the baroque music [handel] and uh vivaldi and those kinds of yep yep oh yep yep well i you know i don't i don't know all that much myself i just i just know when i hear it that i like it yeah uh [whatsever's] on the radio is is usually okay with me but um sometimes i have a hard time you know hearing the words clearly if i'm in the car and there's noise and stuff so it's mostly just the tunes yeah i know i know i know about the only thing i can remember after the song is over is the [refrain] yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh oh really uh_huh yes yeah oldies or what yeah uh_huh oh yeah yeah yeah yeah there's a big variation among the country i mean if you go down south country music and yeah yeah so uh_huh yeah yeah yeah chicago has a lot of good stations uh yes uh in fact they have they have a continuous news station which is nice if you're driving and you want to now you don't have to wait till the hour mark it's it's it's sort of constant you just turn there and uh you get the latest news and everything it's uh it's sort of like c n n you know you turn on your t v and it's on so yeah yeah yeah yep yep yep so yeah i like to listen to tapes uh of music or or um stuff on a long trip and um now you can even get books on tape um uh_huh yeah uh_huh right yep yep so that's a lot of fun but yep yeah i guess so well right right yep yep okay yep nice talking to you tom all right good thank you bye bye well uh if you had to pick a a type of music that you like would you be able to country music i uh uh are you from texas not originally where you from georgia okay well see i'm i'm from chicago so uh i'm kind of in a different category here uh uh i would probably go with it's tough uh i think i would just stick with the classics only because uh i like music just for music's sake and uh you know i'm from the era where you know we had all the rock and roll i'm forty so i'm you know part of that whole deal and uh that was a real interesting time and you know the music sort of made the whole time very rich with sound uh but i think i'd stick back with my beethoven and my bach and my mozart i mean because it's just it will always be there it's classic and i don't have to worry about you know what's current and what's not because i haven't been current with music for a long time but you know same uh and as far as country music is i've never really uh listened to it i mean because that's just it was it wasn't part of what i knew so there you go right yeah i it's it's a different perspective on everything too i i know well whenever they talk about uh country music it's about it seems sad to me it's always about some guy losing some girl and then you know playing the guitar and singing about it yeah well i must say though uh i listen to amy grant do you consider her country uh uh let's see well name some people that are country that i should listen to that would be good okay oh okay i i must admit that's yeah they're fantastic so uh uh she's something though she's got so much energy well i guess i i have listened in on some of the stuff and not really realized it that i do like some of that uh [dolly] [parton] she's kind of is she kind of country kind of right down there uh uh how about the oak ridge boys very much okay well i like them too so i guess i've had a [smattering] and i just uh you know picked i've picked up a little bit along the way that i probably wouldn't have if i'd stayed up north you know you know so well i think there's music all around anyway i mean i think life is just music so you know you can hear it wherever you want and uh and i've i've kind of [shied] away from some of the new stuff because i just don't understand it but maybe twenty years from now they'll look at it as classic rock and roll which i really like so yeah the greatest hits right yeah yeah so i mean it it it'll if it stands the test of time we'll see and uh then it'll if it survives then it'll just probably be one or two songs that sort of hey listen what we listened to can you believe this sort of thing but uh you know i i think of i get real tickled when i listen to some of these old [beatle] uh music you know the [orchestration] of it and that it's so popular still and and uh you know all these rocks rock stations call it classic soft rock you know but we used to listen to it full blast yeah so it's kind of funny the way we listened to the stuff but i don't know well you got any more well that's [okeydoke] well it was great yeah and we'll uh listen to some more music and uh i'll look at some country okay bye bye well i could pick country music as i've gotten older i've started listening more to the words of music and to the softer melodies not originally georgia if you had to pick one what would you choose well i understand what you're saying i think if you would listen to it a little you would discover that it has a lot of roots from the both from the classics and from some of the rock and roll of the era that that we both lived through uh well there's some joy in it also but mostly it it just tells a story about life i don't know i'm not all that familiar with her work well i kind of like uh i like groups like the [statler] brothers and the [judds] certainly [reba] [mcintire] is a little too country for me that's true oh yes that's certainly where her roots are very much so that's true well it's just difficult for me to believe that anybody's ever going to make a a record of the rap songs of the eighties yeah that's true yeah right of course well the big key is that i think you've already stated that all music is rooted in the classics and it has grown from there well listen i have to run i hate to cut this short you bet bye bye um i guess we're supposed to talk about music and uh let me go ahead and push one here uh do you are you a musician yourself uh_huh uh_huh where do you sing in in a choir or a choral group uh_huh what kind of singing do you like to do yeah uh_huh um are you uh are are have you have you been singing a long time or have you studied uh_huh right oh really oh great did did you do that in uh texas or somewhere else oh whereabouts uh_huh oh that's wonderful um well i likewise sang in high school and in college in choirs and then i didn't sing in a choral group um until after i was uh married and i sang in a couple of uh community choirs and then um waited for a while and now i've for about the last eight years i've sung in a church choir here in texas and um so i i enjoy just the [chorals] singing a lot as well um are you a soprano alto or a soprano yeah so am i do you and uh what kind of music do you like to sing um you were saying you had classical training do you have a particular composer that you like or a particular type uh_huh i've been listening to um some uh some advertisements for madam butterfly and i'm wondering if you if you have ever done anything like that have you ever done any uh if if you had done madam butterfly yes uh_huh yes uh_huh um madam butterfly was um in dallas it's been two or three years ago now and then i went to see that and it was really wonderful it was particularly well the acting was particularly nice i thought and um so it was quite popular um you don't play um an instrument so uh um have you ever wanted to like guitar or piano or yeah yeah that i think that's always a good instrument for anybody who sings or does you know some other kind of instrument i think piano is always good background [beginner] um i played piano all through well i guess from the time i was five until i graduated from college and uh then i was a piano teacher for a while while my husband was in graduate school so um that was the instrument both of my children started on but neither of them stayed with it one of them um turned into a [violist] and the other one is the boy is um guitar and and [percussion] so um but the i i think that the piano background is very um useful and um i'm sure that it for you it would have been great to be able to [accompany] yourself just for practicing and so on uh_huh do you have any other kind of music that you like uh_huh i have a i used to work with a fellow who had um although this was a computer company he had his uh p h d in musical uh i guess it was in composition actually from university of north texas and uh yet when i would go into his his office every now and then you never knew what kind of music he'd be playing on the radio it may be country it might be classical it might be rock you know it was just he said that that just about what you said that he just liked all kinds of music and that was that was neat for for me to hear that somebody is yeah yeah um do you have any plans to uh do anything with your music in the near future or uh_huh yeah i know that there are if you're interested in choral singing i'm not sure where you are in texas but i do know that some communities have uh community [choruses] and uh that's often a good way to get back into it again um it's not terribly demanding you might have to [audition] but that probably wouldn't be a problem but um there usually you know that they take tours and things like that and you get to know you know people socially as well as as in a musical setting so that's always fun i think that's well that's one reason why i have enjoyed my choir so much is that not only do we sing wonderful music but we've gotten to know each other quite well um in on a a social level and and i think we sing better because of that i think you know i think we sing more like uh people who trust each other which is really nice so whereabouts in texas are you if i could ask flower mound okay well i'm in plano so um we're just not too far apart actually uh_huh it was funny um uh it's you know i talk to people all over uh texas um and only one person outside of the uh of the state so i'm always asking where where in the state you know the person is from if they're in texas um are do you have a family uh_huh i was wondering if your if your spouse or if you know if you had uh other musical people in your family uh if you have other people in your family who are also musical uh_huh do you come by it naturally was your were your parents that musical yeah yeah that often is the case um the you know it's it sometimes it will skip like my husband is not musical at all but his mother is very musical and um and his children are very musical so you never know where the talent is going to show up i guess sometimes so um well i'm not sure how long we've talked i haven't paid haven't been paying attention to the to the clock but uh i'll bet we've done we've done at least five minutes well i've enjoyed talking with you uh becky and um maybe we'll talk again uh_huh bye bye uh_huh okay uh well i sing i don't play an instrument oh not right now oh pretty much anything oh yeah a long time out all through college and everything i was in the choirs and i've had some classical vocal training uh_huh no i was in europe in uh in germany oh yeah uh_huh soprano oh well as far as opera goes i'm i think most fond of [verdi] no no i haven't done uh i'd love to but um that's uh puccini i think right uh_huh yeah no uh i think it would be nice if i played the piano uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah um oh i like to listen to all different kinds of music uh_huh yeah there's you know some of the really totally country stuff i don't really particularly like but well i have i have like we i wish i could but i i don't really know how to go about it without having a degree or um uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh that's good uh_huh yeah oh i'm in flower mound uh_huh yeah that's pretty close yeah um i'm married i'm sorry oh a little bit yeah i think so i think probably okay all right thanks bye bye okay right why did i pick music oh because i know a little bit about music you know so i thought that i would put that plus i i like uh to listen to music um i really enjoy the oldies is what i really listen to most of the time uh usually in the fifties i'm not really sure i think it's it's a fifties sixties and seventies station that i listen to oh really i don't know a lot of the um uh [musicians'] names or the [singers'] names but i know a lot of the old songs oh yeah uh_huh yes i have um i played the [accordion] for seven years and i played the clarinet for seven years also no i played the [accordion] until i got into about sixth or seventh grade and then in fourth grade i started the clarinet and i played that all through high school i was yes oh okay uh_huh and then in concert band i played the bass clarinet yeah uh_huh oh really i like the low notes better than the high notes so we didn't have any bass clarinet players so i asked him if i could play it because i was first clarinet and they end up playing a lot of the high notes and i don't i don't care for the sound of the high notes so i asked him if i could play the bass clarinet and he said sure you know he didn't have anyone to play it so i played it and i really enjoyed it uh_huh pardon me no i really don't go to very many concerts uh_huh yes oh wow i would love to be able to go see les [miserables] oh my gosh holy smoke oh i would love to go see that and cats chorus line i would love to be able to go see those they do but i work and i went to i go to college i had just gotten i just graduated from college in may and so i really didn't have the chance or the money to go see them uh_huh yeah my brother doesn't even like that kind of stuff and he went to new york a bunch of there was like twenty students from high school that went and he went to new york with them and he saw it and he said it was the best thing he'd ever seen and he doesn't even like that type of stuff oh really oh oh see now i like that type of stuff but my fiancee doesn't really like it he's more into the new wave music yeah i guess i don't know either you know oh i don't know uh really weird names like the dead [milkman] or i don't know oh it's you know really weird stuff he likes and i thought oh my gosh yeah well i pretty i'll listen to anything basically except i don't like the real hard metal rock i just refuse to listen to that at all i'll even listen to country i don't i like some country uh_huh do you like randy travis uh_huh oh hank williams junior oh uh_huh oh yeah well those should be good albums if you have the chance yeah uh_huh uh_huh um i don't know maybe you wouldn't like randy travis he's really country himself but uh i you know i i really enjoy listening to his music oh i don't know if i were you i would get the greatest hits album if he had one because you know that would have a mixture of all his you know top songs on it but um we have i think four records of his i can't you know name the names of them off hand but we have i think all his records so far and all my brothers and sisters listen to them even the ones that like the heavy metal they really enjoy listening to him so you know maybe if you did like hank williams and garth you know maybe you would enjoy uh randy travis uh_huh yeah um do you know any oh i was going to say do you know any other country singers that you would you know i mean the women do you like the okay now now we're supposed to talk about music why why did you check music uh_huh uh_huh what kind of music do you enjoy like what what kind of oldies like the fifties oldies or older oldies uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh they have the same kind of station down here and when i listen to music most of the time that's what i listen to uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh we just got a disk the other day that was a um disk of nat nat king [cole's] greatest hits and it is excellent it it's about twenty of his greatest hits on it it's really an excellent excellent c d we are we were really quite pleased with it it was good have you um do you listen have you heard of nat heard of nat king cole okay well um um do you play any musical instruments or anything really at at the same time or uh_huh like so you're in the marching band and stuff in high school yeah i i played the [baritone] horn in high school band and in college so and my wife played flute in high school so really really actually that's exactly the same thing my ex wife did she played the clarinet and then she played bass clarinet during concert band yes yeah so um well i like it i i like the low instruments better too um do you go to do you go to listen to much live music do you listen to much live music like concerts or things there uh_huh we're we're going to one here in a couple of weeks the um um i don't know if you follow broadway much but uh michael [crawford] was in phantom of the opera on broadway you know you know whom i'm talking about and he's coming to dallas on the twenty ninth and we got a big group going down to hear him sing a bunch of uh [andrew] [lloyd] [webber's] music so that'll be good my sons are kind of into broadway they they my my older son is at columbia in new york city and he's been to see phantom and les [miserables] and bunch of other things up there so and he does it he can go if they get sixteen dollar tickets to that thing yeah yeah and one of the uh the last time they went up a friend of his wanted to go and chris didn't want to go so the friend david went and he went and bought one of the low priced student tickets and they they gave him the seat that normally belongs to john [bel] john it's his house seat that's under his control and he said it was a great seat so he he's been to they've been to see it several times yeah yeah would they do don't any of those ever come to pittsburgh sure well we're kind of you know they well i saw two two road shows of les and they were both excellent so if it comes to pittsburgh in the road shows and i think they have three different companies that tour the u s um you should go see it because it's really it's really outstanding right well i think it's just incredible i and then you know those um two guys who wrote les [mis] wrote a new show call miss [saigon] yeah it just opened in new york this spring and my son and his friend were in a lottery to get tickets to it and they got tickets for the opening night and they went to it and they said it was it was great it was great yeah like depressed mode and yeah i don't too much but my younger son listens to some of that kind of stuff so he listens to new wave and you listen to the oldies that's kind of different well that's good though you know it's good to cover all the bases there uh_huh well we don't now we don't listen to much country but we just at the same night we bought that nat king cole album we bought garth [brooks'] album no fences that is excellent we well we i've never never listened i mean i've i've probably heard him but i've never bought any of his music garth brooks is probably the only country album we have or no wait my wife bought an album of hank [williams'] greatest hits nope this is hank williams senior so these are a bunch of old recordings she bought that the same night we bought the nat king cole and the garth brooks it is pretty good she likes it it's a little it's a little too country for me it's a little too uh [ronky] [tonk] or something i like i like the garth brooks album a lot it's pretty good it's pretty good uh_huh which album which of his albums do you think is the best okay uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i i think we'll probably get one one of his albums because we do kind of like it but you know it's kind of different so so it's good yeah we do like the in fact we have a album well my favorite type of music is classical music and uh i i enjoy [orchestral] classical music and i enjoy classical guitar and classical piano you know and that's those are that's my favorite type uh probably the favorite instrument would be uh the violin yeah you know i guess i enjoy i enjoy jazz listening to jazz sometime although i don't feel like i have a good good understanding of it or a good a good feel for maybe what's good jazz and what's not but but um i enjoy it and uh sometimes i enjoy listening to uh fiddle music we were in colorado recently and heard this these uh well we heard this [fiddler] and we bought his we bought his tape and it's kind of fun to listen to the fiddle pans so oh chris [xeros] oh you lucky thing yeah oh gosh chris [xeros] you grew up with his children too then oh gosh gosh small world huh oh oh gosh well actually i used to play in the richardson symphony i played violin in the orchestra for several years you know yeah so yeah small world so i uh i know chris most of the time no no well life just took different turns here so uh it just didn't work out to do that now so he's he's about ready to retire another year and he yeah i heard that it's it's daughter it's his daughter that oh was it a boy or a girl yeah what did they name him oh oh of course oh yeah yeah oh so you've heard the richardson symphony yeah do you have a favorite instrument yes oh did you oh oh and it played by itself well i mean but you didn't have [oboe] or something with it yeah oh well that's really yeah that's i bet that was nice oh right right right well actually i play i play the violin in in a string [quartet] that often plays at weddings so um i always think it's a nice break from the traditional organ or piano and it makes it makes it nice it makes you know you can say [classy] or it makes an elegant wedding to have something else oh yeah oh now does does the school in in your in your city does it does it offer like band or some of the instruments okay right right right probably oh gosh yeah right right you got a little ways to go too right hey oh well my well my oldest is eight and and she's we've started her on piano so uh but that's been it's been fun i mean it's a lot of work to see that she's prepared but it's been fun it's been fun i feel like i've learned a lot about the piano i've learned a lot about playing the piano and uh it kind of makes me listen a little closer to to the piano when i hear it at other places or when i you know see some see and hear someone playing i sort of watch their technique too and and see if it [corresponds] up to what she's learning so it's been fun well oh well my favorite well i i don't really have a favorite i i like everything basically um i guess if i had to pick it would be like pop i would think but i like everything so it's kind of hard to choose sometimes uh_huh yeah i grew up next door to uh the richardson symphony orchestra leader so yeah so we used to go and listen to them all the time and my parents still do so i grew up with a lot of his music and and what not plus my parents are well especially my dad likes a lot of classical music and he introduced my brother and i both to a lot of it so yeah sure did yeah we all went to high school together and uh and we're still in contact with each other we all go back to parents' houses on the weekends and what not so oh really it is a small world isn't it yeah he's a pretty nice guy yeah well i never i had to work for him and i never would want to work for him so yeah he sure is he just became a grandfather uh uh_huh yeah they just had the baby's [christening] so it was really nice so he's a little boy i can't it it's a oh gosh it's like [elijah] or something like that i keep forgetting what what she named him his middle name is chris or christopher for for her daddy but i think it's [elijah] it starts with an e i can't remember yes yeah we've heard them and liked liked it real well of course um actually one of my favorite instruments is a harpsichord i really like those in fact i had a harpsichord played at my wedding yeah which was real nice i got married uh during the christmas season and we played uh old fashioned christmas [carols] instead of normal wedding [marches] and what not and it was real nice i liked that a lot i liked the sound of the harpsichord no somebody played it no no no no no just by itself just by itself it was real nice yeah it went well it was a change you know from your traditional normal you know stuff and since it was christmas time and and uh we had the church decorated with christmas hollies and [poinsettias] and you know stuff like that and so we did the harpsichord with old time traditional christmas [carols] not not you know the [bouncy] you know sing along kind but some of the old older ones that some i don't even i recognize the the melodies and whatnot but i didn't recognize the name so it was real nice um uh_huh it does it really does and it has such a different sound to it anyway it's almost i don't know the way it [vibrates] it's kind of [haunting] you know on on some of the notes it it's i i like it i don't know how else to explain but we've got friends that are in the music business that go around dallas they're uh called [odessa] it's a husband and wife team that we've known for years and uh we try to make contact with them periodically to see what's going on and stuff too so we've had a lot of stuff you know friends and and things to do with music that constant plus my husband's real big into music too so he doesn't play anything but he just likes to listen and my dad and my kids are now well my oldest is getting to the point where he likes certain types of music and favorite songs and when they come on we have to turn the radio up full blast and yeah well my my oldest is only nine so he hasn't really gotten into um that yet they have choir that they go to you know music class that they go to but um he's not old enough yet to get into the band yet so i think that starts in sixth grade so but i don't know he he's he the only thing he's shown interest in wanting to play is the drums cause his my brother plays and um i don't i don't know if he's really serious about it yet or not you know it's just one of those things i'm just going to wait and see if he's interested in something you know yeah just a little bit uh really yeah i don't know if any of mine will be interested in it or okay well um i um i was thinking about it for a long time and i like basically almost every form of music and type of music um i don't have a whole lot of [dislikes] i um like jazz um especially the blues and uh i like uh a lot of the uh of course the classics um everything back from bach and and beethoven and chopin and um just in general everything um i enjoy uh a lot of the the modern forms um uh right right uh well that gets some of the punk um when i was in high school that was uh one of the big things was punk music and uh a lot of it is has a lot to say or some of it has a lot to say the music does the lyrics do but the the actual uh well it it's it's it really [expresses] some of the opinions of of the people who enjoy the music um but as far as a musical art form i just don't see a whole lot of art to it um um some of it um it depends i like uh the rap the two types of rap i like or i enjoy to listen to and one is the the rap that is just funny um and they usually do a lot of satire um right right the monotonous the monotonous no that's not i don't enjoy that at all when they're just talking about well i'm better than you and blah blah blah i don't like that i like the funny satire and then some of it is some of it actually gets into some serious discussions of problems in our in urban society it really does it talks about um race relations and police relations and um that that uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's that's about my opinion of that it's it's okay um um the thing about country western that i don't enjoy is is doesn't seem to be any imagination behind it the one country and western song sounds like every other country and western and so the the musicians don't get to really get into their music they just play a certain number of [chords] the drummer plays a certain beat and you have a country and western song and um right yeah and i can't say that i like a lot of the modern the very very modern uh rock and roll but i i definitely i really enjoy the fifties the sixties and a lot some of the seventies rock and roll and uh i really enjoy especially the sixties what kind of music do you like uh_huh do you like like rock and those kind of things punk even i don't think they have a whole lot to say even yeah i guess uh_huh do you like rap yeah that kind i kind of like some of it is kind of [pointless] yeah uh_huh yeah yeah yeah i guess i don't really care to listen to rap that much except for once in a while some of the funny more satire kind some times um i'm with you though i like classical um i don't like to listen to it all the time but um some of the time anyway i like easy listening just kind of you know i guess i don't care much for rock and roll any more i used to like it all right but i don't really care to listen to it any more for some reason um let's see country western uh i'm not quite as big on that some of it's okay uh yeah some of it kind of falls in the rap category i guess so yeah a lot of them sound uh really similar yeah yeah um well that's kind of the way i feel about rock and roll sometimes too i guess they don't really has kind of the same sound over and over and the other thing i don't like about it is they have a tendency to play the instrumental so loud that you can't understand what the lyrics are you can't understand what they're saying on some of those songs which probably is just as well on some of them too yeah yeah earlier things okay basically i can tell you that i like just about every music there is except for uh uh real hard hard rock i really can't get into that but i go from classical all the way to uh jazz and country and uh soft pop uh so i pretty much have a a wide range of uh what i like and just there isn't any particular music that i enjoy more than just listening to all kinds so that's about it i can even take the now it's it's pretty neat music that they came out with so uh_huh uh_huh sure the old old stuff that came out i think it was was it oh jeez came out with some of that hank williams you talk about twangy yeah oh yeah the old old country yeah yeah yeah that's the way i am too so other than uh as far as instruments i can go from piano to the saxophone lately you know with the new music that has come out some of the really good uh music they have the saxophone playing and it's so funny because you can take an instrument and forget what it really sounds like when it plays by itself oops are you okay [tiana] come here honey oh my daughter just fell uh yeah a little bit i can i can pretty much oh it's all wet [tiana] i just wiped uh did the floor and she slipped anyway but uh um yeah i can take all kinds of music pretty much except for when you get like i said into the real hard rock yeah i have no interest in that i i don't have interest of losing my ears let's just put it that way hearing anyway uh_huh sure uh_huh exactly okay well it was good talking to you then okay you too bye now uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i'm pretty much the same way but there's like certain types of country western i can't handle that twangy stuff yeah my in laws listen to the kind of music i hate the old real old yeah but other than that i like pretty much everything uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh do you like kenny g uh_huh on no uh_huh yeah the heavy metal yeah i saw peter townsend on t v last night and he said he's lost most of his hearing and i thought no wonder so um well same here you all have a good day bye bye okay who do you like yeah that's the same with me same with me uh_huh like clint black he's pretty good and who's the other big guy garth brooks yeah that's yeah that's the other guy i was thinking of was garth brooks yeah in fact i think both of them have performed here and kenny rogers he's kind of country western verge you know on the verge of country western oh wonderful well then of course you like him that's great but well i have teen age children and so you know i'm hear the the rock music not the hard rock but the you know michael bolton type stuff he's my personal favorite oh that's good uh_huh uh_huh no no i i don't i don't actually we don't listen to any elevator music at my house but i've got teenagers so yeah that's good i actually when i'm home alone which isn't too often but uh our public radio station has wonderful classical music it's just very wonderful [soothing] and you know uh lot of [symphonies] and i just i love that that's probably my all time favorite um right right relax yeah what do you teach what grade good for you a certain subject good for you i was just sitting here while she was trying to find a a another caller uh i was reading my my husband and i are taking a computer class at our junior college yeah it's pretty good it's just a real basic class but we're learning a lot and we have a home computer so it's it's very interesting yeah the subject of music i play i play piano i took lessons for thirteen years and right now my nine year old is taking piano and i just got a whole mess of music i i play the volunteer to play the piano at the children's christmas program for the whole grade school which is k through six five hundred kids i did it last year and and um i i just sub at the school i don't want to work full time so i just sub at the school and that's kind of my volunteer thing so that it it's really neat and my older daughter plays the saxophone my next son plays the drums and my third son just started [baritone] this year and my little girl will start french horn next year so oh french horn is absolutely wonderful instrument it's just my favorite of course that's what i played and so i'm pushing that on my daughter because i want to play in our city band not the symphony with just the city band once we get the the french horn and i get a little bit more time right now i'm busy chasing my kids i do i do i love it but we have a a marvelous band instructor and and he's just he's wonderful we have uh couple of hundred kids in the band our junior high band is just wonderful he lot and their concert band and then he has a jazz band that my older daughter was in and my son will be in next year that's i mean they play college level music in junior high he's that good of an instructor and the kids just love him so it's really good it is wonderful oh do you uh_huh uh_huh okay what kind do i like i like just about any kind except country and western it's it's course country and western even i've gotten a little bit used to because it's not like it used to be well in oklahoma we say garth brooks right of course garth brooks lives about uh you know his his home town is about uh fifteen minutes away so he is he's a home boy uh_huh my son is uh twenty eight so but he he's real unusual in that uh he likes a little bit of every kind he likes jazz and uh blues and and course the rock i i can't say he's real crazy about elevator music as he calls it well my teenagers are all gone i can listen to any music i want to you know uh i i teach and we can have music in the classroom but it you know it can't be the rock or anything like that and i i find that the classical music is very good for the kids too it doesn't [disturb] them and yet it's it's it [stimulates] them and and uh well it's ninth nine through twelve and well it's uh business technology but uh oh boy uh yeah i'd learn it too uh back to i guess we'd better get back to music though i uh do you play any instruments ooh you took on a good job oh well my son played the [sax] and drums my daughter the piano organ and french horn so oh okay yes sounds like you've got a [houseful] oh that's a oh that's wonderful i i have totally totally a tin ear and i love music i cannot carry a tune in a basket i know what i like but i you know and i love to listen to it love to sing and i my kids when i was little and they were little and i was rocking them singing to them okay all set good morning let's see music um well i play a couple of instruments i try to um clarinet is my primary instrument and i also play a little bit of saxophone flute and piano when i get the opportunity which isn't very often how about yourself uh_huh uh oh wow wow that's great uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh so are you a professional musician uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i understand yeah i'm in one community band here and that's just well we [rehearse] once a week we generally have a concert every other week and yeah that's a lot no we sure don't well one thing is we have a summer summer series and every single sunday night we play at the library to have a little out outdoor stage set up and so we do that every sunday night during the summer yeah and then i don't know we just have an awful lot of [engagements] and we're just having to turn a lot of people down um because you know uh we don't want to do things like have a concert back to back or even two days in a row oh yes definitely we really do you know you get your little [sousa] book and you just flip through it and that sort of thing it really depends on who shows up um and it's always a mystery because it actually doesn't matter who shows up it matters what instruments they brought because so many people switch instruments so often but um yeah in the winter we do more concert stuff and um i think there's about seventy yeah there's a lot but on any given night there's not seventy you know it alternates quite a lot yeah it really is oh yeah well oh okay uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's fun well let's see well there's another band around here someone at work is trying to get me to join that one because they need clarinet players and their concert schedule isn't as heavy but they have more in the summer i think they have ten in the summer you know one one week after the other i think they're like monday nights and they don't have rehearsals during that time period uh well it's not really sight reading when you've done it you know again and again and again but some people are yeah some of them are well they're in the suburbs of dallas in richardson and plano we're real close to dallas yeah yeah well it's more of a i think it's very much more of a social group than anything else you know and and people always bring [refreshments] for after [rehearsal] and hang around for an hour or so and that's probably why we get so many people um well the conductor gets paid a little bit you know we do get some money from the city because we do play at a lot of city events um i think he's the only one that gets paid the city uh_huh yeah it's a similar thing i can't remember what they call it but the same type of thing um but we do get an awful lot of music you know we can borrow music from any of the area colleges or you know if some some group just isn't going to play any more they'll just give us their music and that type of thing and we do an awful lot of you know we don't charge for any of our performances but we get a lot of donations yeah good morning uh_huh what do you play uh_huh really that's too bad i play uh the violin and play trumpet and i run a municipal band and i sometimes [conduct] so i'm pretty busy too i play in three different symphony orchestras we have a nice big one here in state college called the [nitny] valley symphony i play in the [altoona] symphony was about forty five miles away and i play in a slightly smaller one called the [lockhaven] symphony and community orchestra no i'm uh just retiring from penn state university only i i should should have been i spend about half my time playing music or preparing for it somewhere but uh i've been working at uh penn state and using up all my [nighttimes] and weekends uh going to these orchestra rehearsals and and concerts and so forth you have one that often that's amazing because i i i have it set up here that we have at least six to seven rehearsals per concert wow uh_huh oh you are busy where do you get all this music i mean you you must back up and play some of the music twice oh okay so your you don't play pretty well a full concert band music most of the time then uh_huh right uh_huh how many people in your band seventy holy mackerel that's uh_huh boy that is a huge organization that's great because about the best i can normally hope for is about fifty in in the band i have here but that fills a stage and keeps us busy but they were half have been professionals from uh a lot of them are from uh faculty at penn state here and so they want to play things that uh push them to do so that's why we have to work real hard when we get a concert together we have about four concerts per year indoors and two or three that we play outside and the last one we did was in a large uh mall close here we played christmas about an hour out in this mall so that worked out very nicely yeah uh_huh wow that are you just saying you you sight read every concert okay uh_huh and where where does this happen laurie is this in dallas uh_huh well i declare that's amazing okay okay uh_huh do any of your you in your group get paid for any of this uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh and you do have to buy your music who who sponsors you basically the city yeah uh my band is sponsored through what they call parks and recreation yeah uh_huh yes uh_huh well i i work the same way well i'll be darned it's amazing well what kind of music do you like yeah me too i mostly like classical and jazz yeah i play the trumpet uh_huh mostly the trumpet music uh uh uh baroque and uh uh uh romantic baroque and romantic yeah that is not there is uh things written for doc [severenson] and uh a few other people but uh they are just uh as far as [solos] and [concertos] are concerned but the rest of them are just parts and uh yeah uh_huh who are the trumpet players uh_huh leonard yeah uh_huh yeah richard [jung] [julio] recorded an album at the same time as didn't he yeah uh_huh well that is what that is mostly the rest of good trumpet marks are romantic music [mahler] and [ruckner] and strauss uh i like i am liking it more and more now getting use to it they are mostly uh mostly mozart i mean there is not any kind of trumpet parts but uh you know the i just like the melodies more and uh [libretto] uh yeah i like [rossini] better than puccini i like more comic licks no uh no i have never been to a dallas opera only the fort worth opera and my trumpet teacher used to play in the fort worth opera john nelson uh_huh yeah he plays in the fort worth symphony and fort worth mostly yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh which church is it it seems like a lot of churches are hiring more musicians now than they use to yeah he is still teaching at brookhaven isn't he uh yeah yeah because i heard glen bell taught at plano as well uh_huh well seeing as how i'm a musician i like all kinds of music all very very kinds uh_huh well i like everything from hard core country to you know wagner and [mahler] and i like new age stuff i i basically have a wide range of musical likes do you uh are you musical uh are you a musician at all do you jazz uh_huh right well i love baroque music so it is one of my favorite periods in fact i i sing with a texas baroque ensemble well we used to have uh ralph [dutchen] but now he is in massachusetts he has come back a couple of times then there is a trumpet player at north texas the the teacher the main teacher yeah and he has played and the two of them have played natural [trumpets] and occasionally when she can't get those people we use you know just uh e flat [trumpets] with valves and like glen bell plays uh rick uh [bogarts] played too so but actually i like trumpet and organ together it is a nice combination yeah i think he did with paul yeah he is wonderful both of them are so do you like romantic music uh_huh do you like opera uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh you don't like puccini uh_huh uh_huh are you going to go see the [elixir] of love do you ever go to the dallas opera uh_huh who was your trumpet teacher uh_huh i know him i kind of know him is he still around here because i don't i have not seen him playing anywhere lately but maybe it is cause he is playing in fort worth well i am basically a church musician i do a church in plano and we do all kinds of music at my church and we hire lots of instrumentalists off and on for uh different things so i am always making music of one kind or another the christ united methodist church in plano yeah most churches have the well there are some of the few organizations that have the funds to uh you know do like big big works uh but we hire you know we hire an orchestra at least twice a year and then different instrumentalists off and on through out the year in fact we have do you know john [qumenato] he plays at our church a lot in fact he is playing this sunday at our church but he plays pretty regularly uh i think so he teaches a lot in plano at high schools and i think he teaches at brookhaven yeah glen teaches here too they are the two of them are mainly pretty much the they have [cornered] the market on trumpet why don't you tell me about your choir uh_huh great uh i play the piano and uh i have a four year old who who has started to play the piano he does that uh [musically] listens and then he can play which is kind of interesting i think it's because he's always heard music in our home all the since he was a baby uh my husband and my other son who's eleven just got through singing in a musical here in in the community at music man yeah and that's lots of fun uh basically they read in the newspaper that there were open [auditions] it was the plano [repertory] theatre and so they went and tried out and my husband played harold hill from the music man and my son played one of the children in a band so yeah it was really fun and uh my son plays the clarinet in his band at school and my daughter takes piano lessons too but uh we just really like music it's a i i especially like it as an outlet when the t v goes off we get the t v off and just have some nice quiet music uh_huh uh i have him take from a friend of mine who teaches suzuki which is an [auditory] type learning experience you listen to the music and then learn to play it by by hearing the [intervals] and things like that i teach uh like what is traditionally taught you know you look at the note on the page and you play what's on the piano but he can't learn like that he's a delayed child he's only about i guess he's about two and a half in his real understanding of things and uh so when my friend played something on the piano and he played it uh with his right hand we went wow we better have him do do something you know [educationally] so that was really fun my husband and i love to go to the musicals downtown though so my husband and i love to go to the musicals when they come into town into dallas um oh i think that's great that's really hard i think because especially if you start them and then they get pretty good and then they get close ten you know eleven or something they go i don't want to do this anymore and you're like god i really want you to do it you know so sometimes it's hard to to know exactly when but i don't know if she acts like she wants to or says she wants to maybe you could have her take some for a while and see how she likes it uh_huh that's like me well it can get expensive that's for sure i my friend is is very generous in in letting us have my children uh do the suzuki method without paying a lot out yeah so it's been good for our family i don't have any suzuki students uh something happening to me at christmas time that that [verified] to me that i will oh okay well we uh are a group of uh musicians that just kind of have you know formed out of a desire to sing and many of the people in the group are very professional in the sense that they or just real talented i should say lot of them are former music teachers or currently teaching uh others have there's one gal that's in the uh plano community orchestra uh just you know different backgrounds it's been really kind of interesting so um oh yeah uh_huh oh they did how did how did they get involved in that uh_huh oh how fun uh_huh um uh_huh um yeah yeah that's nice you say have your four year old taking lessons already and uh who do you have her or him take it from uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh yeah yeah well because my pardon me uh_huh uh_huh well i have an eight and a half year old daughter who's taking piano lessons and started out at the age of just turning five because she wanted you know she just seemed to enjoy it so much and now my my four year old four and a half year old daughter is is trying to imitate her older sister and wanting to play and she actually does some very nice [chording] just naturally she just so i wasn't sure when to start her i didn't want to push her too early either but uh kind of had a mixed feelings about that scene uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah i think she'd like to i just don't know if it's really knowing from what my daughter has gone through she's she learned a lot and of course it was something she had to keep [relearning] if she ever got away from it it was something easily forgotten so uh i don't know if she's any farther ahead than those kids who started when they were eight or or should i say seven i mean she's not a gifted [pianist] in the sense that she's going to excel just naturally she does have to really work at it but uh so yeah but so i'm kind of you know just playing with it but at this point we're going to kind of wait i think just more for the financial reasons of it anyway but yeah yeah uh_huh oh that's good well as a piano teacher do you have any feelings for kids who come from a suzuki method have you had any former suzuki students i was wondering how well uh what is your favorite kind of music oh same here yeah oh well i guess i like a wide range uh everything from uh from baroque through at least some modern music and my wife and i these days are especially into opera we've been sort of opera fans for a few years now well we uh generally the places we've gone they sing in the original languages like the dallas opera here normally does i guess well one thing that's helped us a lot is that uh you you know you can buy a lot of these operas now on video uh video tape and so we have quite a collection of those and you watch them at home and they have subtitles so you you figure out what's going on after a while and then you can enjoy it in the uh theater but you know the uh dallas opera now has uh super titles on on all their performances i think well they they give an uh an english translation on a on a screen up above the stage yeah in fact they even do that for operas sung sung in english because it is hard to understand the words sometimes yeah well i really like vivaldi uh he's uh definitely one of the one of the top of that era uh_huh oh uh_huh how how old are they so they're doing this in school or what uh_huh well you've got half a string [quartet] there yeah well since you seem to like uh italian music have you ever uh gotten into [gabrielli] or anybody there in that era the uh period right before actually before vivaldi i guess uh_huh oh yes uh_huh no i don't but i think i know what it is isn't that a uh uh see can't you get records through that or something recordings uh_huh yes yeah i think uh uh uh yes right so they're actually [commissioned] performances uh_huh uh_huh well i had heard good things about the uh music heritage society but if i get involved in one of those things i end up spending all my money on on music i almost uh almost uh [bankrupted] myself out of college as a freshman when i got into the columbia record club many years ago yeah my roommate signed me up he got a bonus record and i got a lot of bills so we have to watch that uh do you play any instrument yourself well i have to say my favorite type of music would probably be uh classical music oh really what type of music do you like in the classical area or what era do you era do you like the most uh_huh um do you go to the operas that they sing english or go to the ones that they sing other languages uh_huh uh_huh i i haven't gotten into that too much because i uh if i don't know the story line and um i don't speak the language then i have difficult time [comprehending] what's going on uh_huh oh what is that oh i didn't know that that can help people like me well i can understand that so i'd say vivaldi is probably my favorite uh composer yeah i like baroque music i like full body music uh with the um um with brass and winds [woodwinds] instruments you know course i like uh also string instruments and i have two string instruments in my house uh instrument players both my sons play string instruments one plays the cello and the other one plays the [viola] so i get to go to at least four or five concerts a year one is thirteen and one is eleven yes yes yeah we're on our way so uh um i try to enjoy all of it um a little bit but um a lot of the um music i don't know about uh as far as the titles and i have to listen to it and and figure out what i'm listening to um i do belong to a musical heritage society do you belong to that you can get recordings uh they know have them on compact disc or or uh or cassettes or l p and uh they do their they do a lot of original recordings themselves but they also uh they also uh go to the different composers or the different i guess what do you call them the guys that [orchestrate] the the conductors yeah they go to conductors uh and and they actually have them perform the music and they record it sure a lot of them are or they will find out when they're performing and they will uh record the music at that time and so uh it is uh uh high quality grade music and of course now they're getting they also have a jazz section and they also have a uh more contemporary and american uh composer section yeah well you can control it oh really i see well that's good yes i i play guitar and and early years played saxophone favorite type of music or musician or any do you uh_huh uh_huh oh i i'm very uh i'm very varied as well i uh i don't think i've ever met a type of music i don't like except for uh maybe you know heavy metal and that yeah yeah yeah i don't enjoy rap too much either that that doesn't appeal to uh my ears uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh oh gosh uh_huh uh_huh yeah sure well um i listen to uh specific most most likely i would be listen to uh jazz or classical music um i in college i took uh four years of classical guitar and i played in the in the jazz [combo] all four years i play guitar for the jazz [combo] so uh that's where my two my two listening [enjoyments] are but you know jazz can get on my nerves after a while uh you can't just listen to it you know to uh especially a lot of the deeper stuff you just can't listen to it for enjoyment unless you're yeah unless unless you're playing it it just it just doesn't do anything uh uh blues are okay i i tell you i do like um i grew up on blue grass music my dad is a big blue grass fan and so um i wouldn't have admitted it when i was in high school but i really do like it a lot so no it doesn't it doesn't yeah uh they've all got you know the real [screechy] electric [guitars] now yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah i i yeah i grew up on him uh_huh uh_huh sure uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh do you yeah you sure do uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh oh they're great aren't they yeah yeah it sure is yeah uh_huh yeah i like his he has a nice smooth voice yeah sure uh_huh sure uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah something like that it was last last last year wasn't it i don't really have a favorite type i like uh a lot of different types of music yeah i have a a tape collection that i like to listen to uh cassette tapes but it's pretty varied yeah how about you that's exactly me the acid rock or the heavy metal even some of that i like okay but not mostly as a general rule i don't care for that at all well as far as the rap goes i think there are a few artists that appeal to me themselves and i like some of their songs but as as i agree with the general rule i i wouldn't choose rap either but i i like to listen to uh what you might call pop easy listening country western jazz uh classical um i i don't i like uh like i said pretty varied uh music i have a couple that my husband really hates that i listen to like billy holiday i really love to listen to her and uh i even have a a tape of lady smith [blackman] [bazo] and well i mean they're very [harmonic] they really are so they're interesting to listen to you might try that how about you oh yeah it's too um uh you have to concentrate on it it seems what about the blues or something like that uh_huh i i like some of it um as far as like the what they now call country western it doesn't sound like the old country music at all does it um some of it sounds more like pop music oh yeah i don't care for that if i'm going to listen to today's country western i have tapes of like randy travis and clint black and i even liked jim reeves you know or uh what what [merle] [haggard] and [faron] young that type of country western is what i i like to listen to asleep at the wheel uh sons of the pioneers you know stuff like that um oh i like sound tracks a lot yeah it seems like you get a lot of original music that way i mean you know think about like the twin peaks and stuff like that that's just real recent things like that i like to listen to um i like instrumental things um i have some [spiro] [gyro] tapes oh they're wonderful i love them i have some [dulcimer] music i mean like i said that that's pretty varied al [jarreau] he's somebody i like he's pretty kind of jazz inspired but but still kind of pop too oh yeah and you know what i like the most about him is i've gone to see him in concert and he always he looks like he's having fun i mean some people sing and they have their faced all [contorted] like it hurts them or something but he looks like he's having a good time i mean he's up there moving around and smiling like he's happy and and like all he wants to do is is make the audience enjoy it too and he he is real fun to listen to um [bonnie] [rait] i like her a lot um in fact whenever she won her big grammy i think it was like five of them or something was was it five or yeah last year or the year before i can't remember but um i was listening to a particular radio station and and the one d j said who the heck is [bonnie] [rait] and why does she deserve five [grammies] well i [vowed] then that i was not going to listen to that radio station any more if that d j can make such a music do you like uh_huh uh_huh i am more into rock and roll myself uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh do you like any bluegrass oh well at least your not really yeah um uh we'll have to uh i have a lot of friends that like country music no i'm more into uh older rock like the [psychedelic] era like uh late sixties seventies uh [greatful] dead crosby [stills] and nash what oh i've heard a little bit of it i've just uh now i've heard of striper so the only one i can uh_huh uh_huh uh the first of amy grant before was you know became more mainstream top forty uh_huh uh i've never actually seen her in concert i imagine that she puts on a pretty good show uh_huh uh_huh uh i like some country music it's just that i like finding a lot of it's yeah mama got run over by the train uh_huh uh_huh like garth brooks [reba] [macintyre] you don't like [patsy] [cline] you don't like [patsy] [cline] uh yeah actually i just went to see the [greatful] dead about i guess about a week ago no they're they are still on tour they have been [touring] since the late sixties no they're still together they're still making albums uh_huh uh in fact i mean there are people you know that basically just follow them around from city to city on tour selling tie dye and things like that uh yeah they're they're like late forties early fifties but you know like whenever one of them dies off they get a replacement you know they seem to have a really bad time with keyboard players they keep on dying and they keep on replacing them and the new ones in this thirties you know uh but uh yeah well they don't actually look as rough as the rolling stones they just i don't know if you saw the tour posters of the rolling stones when they last toured but it looked like leather day at the geriatric all their faces were just all [shriveled] uh_huh i mean it just just looked like they got a bunch of retirees and put them in leather jackets and blue jeans well uh actually i prefer my my [performers] to be pretty sober you know just uh just so that you know that if they're [jamming] you know that they don't just lose themselves and you know go into [lala] land uh_huh uh_huh so uh have you seen any concerts lately uh lots of different kinds i guess uh i like country music of course texas and i listen to christian music a lot because there's a christian music station here in in our city so i listen to it quite a bit so uh_huh and i listen cause on friday nights they have the uh they have what they call saturday night alive or they have on saturday night friday night and saturday night and they have christian rock and roll so you know they have that type of music but they just have different words so i listen to that too uh no not really huh_uh and i like i like rap music do you like rap music not really well i can tell we're we're together here okay uh what kind of what kind of rock music do you listen to do you listen to like that really heavy metal stuff or seventies and like that stuff uh_huh yeah i have friends that like that yeah so you have never heard of like the christian music that i listen to probably like have you heard of uh of [carmen] have you ever heard of [kim] striper they're the really heavy yeah like the heavy metal stuff i guess yeah yeah cause she she plays both [secular] and christian so yeah i like her too i have been to a concert a couple of times of hers she does she's real good she's real good so i like her i don't like the country music that's like my wife left me my dog left me everybody's left me yeah i don't like that you know i like randy travis you know i like more of the real new ones you know garth brooks oh yes you know he's fine yeah i like them i don't care for the older you know like the dog left me stuff huh no huh_uh i don't even really know who she is you know you know so but have you ever been to any of them concerts that you like that music that you like to but aren't they done with i thought that they and i just thought that they done broke up and left huh wow i didn't know that huh that's interesting uh_huh cause they are on up there in age aren't they okay alright oh alright cause they look pretty rough i mean i've seen like picture of them and they just yeah i mean cause they just uh_huh yuck looking i mean uh uh_huh well are you into that that rock music you know all that [druggy] stuff and all that i mean you know what i am saying like i mean like they come on the stage and like you know you they don't even know they are there you know they are just so out of it yeah so i just don't i just don't like you know that so i don't know um uh well what were you saying oh okay uh well i haven't really been up to date on a lot of music i've been in school and i haven't really gone out and bought any or listened to much on the on the radio except for classical and uh yes uh_huh okay well i like most of them except for country music no i think i i might like dancing to it but i don't like listening to it oh uh_huh what's the old country music like uh_huh oh okay that's the kind you like you mean oh oh okay well i guess i i like the blues a lot and i guess you could say it's similar as far as the kind of the way they do it yeah me too too i guess i like except heavy metal and uh most rap i don't like yeah oh okay yeah uh_huh okay okay yeah uh_huh oh i i really haven't listened to that well uh i used to a long time ago but since i've started back into school now i haven't really done that much i've been pretty busy uh but uh so no i haven't i you know i used to go out and dance a lot but i don't do that anymore either so no i've just been real busy with with lots of other things twenty eight well no i i went to school and got a degree and then i worked for awhile and then i just started i started back a year and a half ago changed directions yeah how old are you oh okay all right yeah and uh i didn't really start getting into music until i went to college because uh my parents didn't really have music in the house put it that way yes so i'm always behind i'm i'm not i'm never really up to date on all that stuff but i know what i like when it's uh when i like a sound a certain kind of sound yeah uh uh_huh okay uh_huh huh yeah yeah oh really oh well yeah yeah well i i do play the piano you know but uh i i like the uh early seventies late sixties rock kind of stuff the old stuff and uh uh what kind of music is does what songs does he play uh_huh i think i've heard summer of sixty nine yeah okay i'm not i'm not very good at remembering the uh titles yeah but i can remember this the song yeah yeah no i don't watch t v much at all so no no yeah so uh_huh do you like uh like someone recent like enya have you ever head of her she's not rock but she she's from ireland and uh she's gotten some uh she's been on like the top ten i guess or whatever she she did okay i i think we're started now uh do you want to go ahead and start well you like classical music uh i like classical music i like rock and roll i like country and western uh i i like all kinds i like i like different things about each one of them oh you don't like country the the kind of country i like is kind of the older country music not the not the kind like kenny [rodgers] and stuff like that that's uh that's a little bit to uh it's such they're trying to make it too much of a [crossover] thing you know what i mean oh like like hank williams like the old hank williams even even hank williams junior is real good stuff the kind that uh this stuff makes you cry it sounds so sad i mean you yeah sometimes i do i mean not all the time yes and i i i do too i also like jazz yeah you're you're about like i am then i i can't watch m t v anymore i used to love m t v and i can i can barely watch anymore because uh they have this heavy metal stuff on there and and i can't even you know i can't like that and and i liked uh [aerosmith] and led zepplin and uh you know and uh jeez who else is there van halen now i like i like groups like that but when you get uh i i even like guns and roses some of their stuff but uh some of these groups now like slaughter some of them are just really rough so so you went to school then in i'm surprised you didn't go to to any parties or anything where they were playing a lot of music or stuff or okay oh i see are you married at all okay well how old are you okay so you you were out of you went to school for awhile and quit then went back oh okay oh i'm uh twenty eight i was born in sixty three i guess we're the same age then oh were they religious uh i see i my parents were very musical my mother had a piano in the in the house my father likes uh country western music he's from uh west virginia so that's what he grew up listening to and he's always liked it and and you know he's probably about fifty three years old now so he grew up like in the late fifties and you know when they had that the elvis [presley] music and stuff like that and that kind of rock and roll so he likes that and my mom always liked that kind of stuff my mom likes like uh [doris] day you know she always had those these old [doris] day records and stuff like that though so you know i grew up listening to that stuff but uh i could see why you went uh you know i could see why you were kind of sheltered i guess from from music oh okay oh okay yeah so do i do you like uh like van halen or anything like that or how about brian [adams] it it this love cuts like a knife uh summer of sixty nine yeah he sings that he's he's from canada the titles and artists well do do you watch music television m t v at all or v h one okay do do you get cable oh okay that's that's you have to get cable to get those stations anyhow but uh yeah i like to watch rock and roll videos and any kind of videos i like watching that kind of thing it's no i haven't heard her oh okay oh really so what kind of music you into the opera yeah it's right on track i like classical but i can't deal with opera at all and heavy metal uh it's noisy i'm into uh some industrial music that's a a bit even harder than that but it's it's got to have a point to it yeah what kind of progressive stuff uh oh yeah yeah it's a lot of people like saying that you know bands in that position you know sold out i think that's pretty much you know bull because r e m really hasn't changed if it's it's interesting they're producing uh similar music and it's good music but you know people have picked up on it that's good i'm impressed oh yeah uh but he picked the right songs and and that that's about all he had going for him or still has for that matter oh yeah yeah i'm sure that that that sold a lot for him that's all you really need for a lot of lot of pop i'm i've kind of like developed a a short hatred for for pop it just seems like there's no no real point you hear the same same tune over and over again in a thousand [guises] and uh_huh yeah i can i can believe that what kind of things are you do you like in classical what's the standard oh yes uh_huh it's safe well i have a uh pretty wide taste uh in music [ranging] from progressive rock to jazz to uh lot of different forms of uh music in fact it's easier for me to say uh the types of music that i don't like are opera and uh screaming heavy metal uh_huh oh i don't mind music that's difficult to listen to but uh the the uh basic point of heavy metal which seems to be music to annoy you is uh gets a little annoying uh lot of stuff that actually has uh ended up becoming popular like uh [nirvana] and uh-oh you know i'm thirty so lot of the stuff i was listening to in my teens like the [clash] and and the sex pistols and r e m that sort of stuff uh r e m makes me laugh because they've gone from a college radio progressive group to being uh you know ultra mainstream at this point and it's not really that they've changed their musical style so much as the stream changed uh_huh uh_huh i think it is uh for a while there music seemed to really popular music seemed to have uh not a lot of point to it i was really tired of uh the michael bolton michael bolton really got on my nerves because he he was making all this money doing mediocre cover tunes and i could uh go down to a bar that's about three minutes from my house and hear people doing covers better than him not making nearly as much money i guess that and a marvelous [hairdo] uh_huh well it's interesting because you were you were saying that you liked classical music and i like a lot of classical music but i also dislike uh some classical music and what gets me even more is the attitude of people who are really into classical music and feel that if if it's not seventy five years old it hasn't stood the test of time uh stuff that i like uh i like bach i tolerate vivaldi i can't stand uh uh [debussy] or [debussy] uh uh i like [tchaikovsky] he can make a lot of noise when he's uh so inclined uh and some of some stuff that i like uh for instance frank [zappa] has done a fair amount of [orchestral] composition and that's interesting music but it would not get performed by any uh [municipally] funded uh [philharmonic] uh just because number one it's frank [zappa] and he's weird number two isn't he still alive you know we're we're much better off playing uh [beethoven's] ninth that's right you know we'll do we'll do the ninth and everyone will know it and and hum it and it it just isn't chance taking enough for me uh i feel that uh that that music should take chances in one way or another and that uh you know if you've heard a piece oh a hundred a hundred times type of music is hot down in texas oh okay uh mostly folk music yeah i find myself uh listening to a lot of uh uh either old timer or new england uh dance bands as well as uh just more popular folk music and new artists coming up okay uh_huh yeah what about uh classic rock type stations oh okay so some some of the older eagles stuff was good i i didn't like uh they started getting a little more you know the type of music at least to me it's uh sounds like it's only sounds good at a high volumes and i don't like listening at high volumes but uh some of their older stuff was uh you know quite enjoyable to me you know hotel california and that era yeah well down in texas uh you know little listen to a little country every now and then i'm sure there's a lot of that down there well there there's a [conway] [twitty] twang then there's the uh [dolly] [parton] uh hollywood sound yeah yeah i think some of them the artists are even uh hitting the pop [charts] hey i i i think most artists are in to make a few bucks but they're not in it to say anything or give a message which is what they were late late sixties early seventies they were they were definitely pushing a message yeah i i don't i don't think gun at least to my mind guns and roses doesn't have too much of a message too much to say uh_huh right right uh_huh yeah it's the artist not the merit yeah well i don't know i know for myself that uh for the most part i don't know which artist is which so i listen to a song i either like the song or i don't like it and then if i really like the song eventually i'll figure out who it was well you have to figure out what to buy or do you just buy along the same artist yeah yeah so you keep buying the same artists until you don't like an album then you stop yeah yeah see that's one thing i like about the uh some of the folk music scenes you know there's a couple of nice uh small coffee houses up in new jersey and it's very nice you go into the coffee house and you know an artist is there and very often the artist will have a an album and so if you like the artist you buy the album so you definitely get to try before you buy you know it you you you don't always quite get it right uh well i don't know exactly what's hot down in texas i know what's hot down here with me so that's about all i can feel apt to discuss with you since i just know i don't ever listen to the radio and that's usually what's hot around here so so what kind of music do you like folk music uh_huh well we're on totally different [wavelengths] i'm more uh old rock and roll uh some new newer i guess you would call it heavy metal rock and roll type you know uh van halen that kind of thing uh i don't listen to the radio at all we live in a fairly small town so uh classic rock for me is what i have which is like uh doors eagles jimmy hendrix uh yeah yeah yeah yeah well they yeah yeah that does that's something you don't doesn't even sound good loud really you know you know definitely uh so anything new you like coming out now other than folk music some i might know of i don't know any folk music at all yeah oh yeah here oh plenty way way more than i can stand down here i i don't care for it at all that texas twang or whatever you want to call it i yeah yeah that's more even more commercialized for of country music but uh it's getting uh uh getting pretty big everywhere as i see it garth brooks is [outselling] guns and roses so yeah it's it's kind of strange that it's getting as big as it is concert tours for country and western sings is it's it's quite quite odd but uh i don't know it's music is kind of going an odd direction nowadays i think it's becoming not necessarily good music just popular music you know yeah and that's all it yeah that's what it yeah that's what what you say and and then music is wrapped around now now it's the other way around no no they don't have anything really important you want to hear but you know it's kind of odd it's like it doesn't have to be good it's just who does it you know you hear a you hear a [paula] [abdul] song and you and i think if somebody else were to play that you know they wouldn't they nobody everybody would think that's lousy but because she did it it's supposed to be good you know it comes to the point where it's your name not what you do more than anything madonna can do anything and it would be considered good because it's madonna you know madonna could start playing folk music and folk music would be huge just because madonna does it so it's it's it's really backwards how things are working now but yeah exactly so i don't know i i don't know that that's i don't think that's a good thing at all but that's that's what the point we've reached so i don't know how how much farther we can [digress] before we have to turn it around and go the other way at least yeah yeah yeah that's about how i am on popular music i don't you know you don't i don't know enough about it because i just listen uh everything i listen to is what i buy not whatever they play on the radio so uh i yeah i just mostly buy along the same lines all the time i don't really switch around to new things very often it's just it's you know it's way to hectic and too confusing uh yeah generally or about the only new music i hear is somebody else that i know will buy something new that i haven't heard and i listen to it that way but as far as yeah i don't go out on a limb and buy something new very often unless i've heard it yeah yeah yeah yeah that's definitely i you like everything but jazz what don't you like about jazz so you like do you like rhythm and blues okay i like country western it's my favorite yeah willie [waylon] and the boys uh_huh yeah uh_huh do you like um any rock and roll at all right i can't stand that yeah yeah yeah some of my favorite groups are like chicago and uh-oh some of the i guess what what you could call softer rock groups they were the bigger groups in the seventies and until all the heavy metal and all that came in and yeah i don't care for that at all yeah no i got away from all that rock and roll stuff probably ten years ago and just started listening to the country yeah i guess so i like some classical some of that stuff grates on my nerves too like you were saying earlier about the other i just stir up but there are some pieces that are really pretty right commercials and cartoons and things like that uh_huh try and give it to us subliminal way that's right i think so there we go yeah um i like um a lot of different things so um i'm into got a big record collection and uh mostly rock but i got some folk and some jazz yeah okay that's uh that covers a pretty wide range right there yeah um well yeah i mean you can get c d's of the sex pistols which um i think kind of defeats i mean somebody's missing the point well i have um i i don't know what the exact count is but i know it is like eight hundred to nine hundred albums and um yeah i i got a c d player about four or five years ago and i've been buying c d's but um you know i'm not trying to i'm not trying to go l p to c d because well for a couple of reasons one is i can't afford it and um the other is some of the stuff that um i've got a and i'll never find on c d it'll never be [reissued] and and there's a bunch of stuff that i really really don't care if i have it on c d oh you're you're a big bowie fan or yeah i was just kind of well styles change and you get it's like oh dave [bowie's] not weird anymore i'll get uh he married a model i didn't know that um i haven't been i been uh i got to pay um no man you know just got the new issue of rolling stone and they didn't mention it so it seems so odd to me that david bowie is showing up in people magazine it's like wait a minute i mean you know it's like uh okay new kids on the block alright these are you know these aren't serious people anyway but bowie i mean i'm not i'm not a huge bowie fan but i like his music actually the the [coolest] bowie thing that one of the [coolest] things i have happens to be a bowie item it's a um um it's a picture disk with uh of him and bing crosby doing peace on earth uh little drummer boy and you know you can get this as a forty five but this is like a twelve inch with um the um the label is instead of being a real label is a picture of him and bing from the uh from the christmas special that it was from it's it's a trip um yeah you can get uh you know if you can actually buy the forty five it's usually out around christmas time because it's it's it's a really neat song actually and they they do a good [duet] um but it's it's always the thing that's like oh you know you know when i got people over and we're trying to you know you know you know [weirding] people out on music that one usually gets them um uh_huh yeah huh uh_huh well i know the feeling when i've gone um and just knocked myself out um i'm a big who fan and i've gone and knocked myself out sometimes finding old who forty fives with like these b sides that never got put on an album you know i was knocking you know i found these a bunch of them you know didn't spend a whole lot of money on them um yeah yeah it was a big thing well i got i have a friend who's like the forty five king of the world he has something along the lines of fifteen thousand forty fives he has every top forty single since he was born nineteen you know like nineteen sixty four and i think every top twenty single going back to around fifty five i think he's cut it out lately because most of the stuff you know he can only get as cassette single and he you know we both despise cassette singles um but he's found some of the who stuff for me you know we went you know all all this trouble to find this and then they released a couple who rarity albums that had like half the stuff on it it's like great you know and then the one other i think the one other who thing he located for me was um uh i don't know if you're familiar with the who they they have a song called substitute doesn't ring a bell oh okay okay anyway um there was a um a single of substitute okay now you know what i'm talking about yeah um anyway it came out in the mid sixties in in this country on a weird on a record label that they aren't normally on so it was cool they find it for that but the b side was something called [waltz] for a pig which wasn't on any record and it wasn't on the rarity records so this was a big deal and then um you know once once steve found it for me and everything i i happened to go and look at some like who biographies i have and uh i discovered that the b side isn't actually by the who it's by what's called the who orchestra because there was some like legal thing that said the who couldn't record and so it was actually by the by a band called the grand bond organization so it's like gee all this trouble and it's not even the who oh well it's a fun thing to have anyway but it turns out that um uh you know listening to the the version of substitute on the single it's actually different than than um the one that was normally in the u s because um uh there was some lyrics they found [objectionable] i think the one uh i look all white but my dad was black um the american record companies said [nah] you know you can't release this so they it has a different [lyric] on it so that's kind of neat but yeah well um you know i have um you know like you were saying you know i've got i have a lot a lot of [bootlegs] and stuff by the who and uh by pete townsend and uh some of the really fun stuff with townsend is um one of the demos i have is called obscure and [oblique] and it's it's a bunch of demos and i you know i'm really curious actually how they got their hands on this stuff but um it's really cool listening to the stuff because um you hear things that are different than the way the who actually recorded the song or or he recorded the song solo and it's just kind of interesting to see his um you know yeah there's um he's also put out a couple albums called scoop scoop and another scoop which um are collections of demos so i have like three collections of demos of his and there's a couple songs in the collections that are the almost the same as songs the who did on their last album but aren't so that's that's really cool i mean there's this one song called popular that became the song it's hard with um a different [verse] so yeah well uh_huh oh but you got a good one though yeah i'm like that a lot with the who i've got i i counted it up sometime and i have like twelve versions of [pinball] [wizard] by you know either by the who or it's a demo or it's a live version by the who and then there's like the elton john version and then um i guess the the the weirdest ones i have are ones by the new seekers you know the guys that did i'd like to teach the world to sing and uh the other one is uh rod stewart of all people uh_huh i don't know it's it's hard for me to listen to it in true light anymore since i've heard it so many times um i mean i i mean i want to throw up usually when i hear it anymore i um well the the problem with the problem with [pinball] [wizard] is that it's you you hear it on the radio and it's completely out of context with because it it it's part of a larger work and um so i don't know i mean i oh i like to listen to music i just am not a very educated person when it comes to music what do you like to listen to okay oh i'm sure well i'm not originally from austin i'm from minnesota so it took me moving to texas to start liking country music and now i really do i'm i'm really becoming [texanized] i haven't but i watch it on i watch it on um television sometimes and and uh i've taken country western dance lessons oh yeah i love it i absolutely love it and uh-oh yes i definitely am am much more into country um so you you which uh singers do you like i mean i can actually name singers i'm i'm not too bad george [strait] so you know him from well that's great wow well who are you going to go see now i mean who do you see now that's going to be somebody someday oh oh alan jackson um well okay well maybe it just has changed and maybe it's more accepted all over right and then you you know you kind of think of alabama you know that kind of brought everyone into a more country and and you know yeah kenny kenny rogers he's kind of country and kind of rock you know had to listen to that one again oh uh_huh you you pump up the volume yeah from new jersey yeah that's great that's like about the farthest call from country music you can get oh oh that's great where do you work oh that's super so you can do things like that yeah i'm i'm i'm being envious one thing that i did in music that i mean was a big [extravagance] for me but i have two daughters that are eleven and fourteen and [whitney] houston just came to town and she was coming to town the same day that my daughter was getting her braces off so i and i really like her so i thought well we'll we'll go buy tickets and this is how we'll celebrate getting braces off teeth and she really she really i i wouldn't say it was the a great concert not that i've had that many but i know it wasn't a great concert you know but it wasn't a bad one either and the one thing that i really appreciated in going to hear her sing in person is her extreme volume for that tiny little body you know and she really does have to work to get it all out and you'd you wouldn't catch that you know off of a a c d or a cassette you know i did not no yes i know i know so that that was really really fun uh_huh yeah that was just last week uh_huh so we had a good time i'm not i know eagles uh_huh wow well you know now that you mention it i probably would know you know know a song of his oh yes i well they're you know they know everything and then they always ask me if i know sport figures too so i'm a real [flunky] oh so they kind of i know i know it is it's it's sad when you reach that age but you're not doing bad i have a a good friend that i mean she's much older than i am she's i think probably fifty eight and she's really up on all the new music even better than i am and and i mean she just likes music and she's just a person that's really with it so maybe you'll be like she is right right and it really gets bad when you can remember what you oh i remember that's right oh and we're we're just getting to that age where we date ourselves all over the place did he really like beatles uh_huh you're picking up some new stuff well i play piano and organ and have since i was a child and i sing in church choir and have done that since i was a child and still sing now and uh i played cello in high school and college and occasionally play as an adult but i don't have a cello and i rarely ever practice so it's like adult groups that i teach school adult groups at school or something when they are in dire need of somebody so i still pick it up occasionally but uh my son is a music major he's uh in performing french horn he was an all state french horn player all through high school so there's a lot of music in our family uh_huh uh_huh do you do anything with music nowadays no you you buy it and listen to it huh uh_huh i do too i don't really care that much for rap the only thing i i've liked with rap is when the kids at school uh will take information and they'll learn it by making a rap out of it and then i think it's useful otherwise i don't have any use for it uh_huh uh_huh i understand uh_huh they seem to like it well my [eldest] son took piano for oh about four years and lost interest but he learned enough that he can still sit down and play and enjoys doing that and has a keyboard and then my daughter uh took piano for a while she also played [bassoon] and then she has taken dance well she took dance from the time she was about five on up through first part of college and she got so involved in dance and that sort of thing that she let the instruments kind of slide behind and but yet she still enjoys uh music and still enjoys dance and you know for exercise she wants aerobics to music and that you know that kind of thing well they do have quite a bit of musical ability which is is nice uh we do enjoy the music and uh like however uh with the kids going through college and we have two in college right now they are the ones that have the stereo we we don't seem to much stereo one of these days we will the only ones that i ever had were actually through the church where they had uh a voice teacher uh offer lessons at sort of at a discount you might say for members of the choir who were interested so i did that a couple of times but as far as as any other training no i just it was uh what i learned through singing in choirs and um my other music piano and the organ and the cello uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well there has to be some talent there there has to be some voice something to work with right i mean you can only overcome so much but there are tricks to make okay oh i would have liked that oh i bet it was huh well um was it a lot of his old songs or uh_huh oh does he oh huh i would have really liked that yeah oh did he oh uh_huh oh well i have seen him before but yeah it's been years ago it's been years ago i saw him in las vegas once yeah long long time ago but um yeah we just we went to a kenny [loggin's] concert well he's he's rock but um yeah he is really more rock than country uh_huh um well he he sings [footloose] from the movie do you you know [footloose] that song yeah he sang that yeah but um and that was good it was loud though it was in a real small theater in salt lake and it was very loud oh oh yeah oh i don't enjoy it that loud uh_huh huh well do you like the instrumentalists like have you ever heard fresh [aire] um well [manaheim] steam roller oh uh_huh they're well they're it's all they're instrumental and um yeah but they're real good they i know they were here in salt lake we didn't make it they're here this december but we didn't make it to that i tend to like the more mellow my husband likes uh harder loud but well i'm starting to sound like my mom i remember her telling us turn that off i can't stand that it's like i'm like that with my husband now turn that down oh yeah i don't even know what uh i i have younger kids so i don't know they talk about these groups nowadays and i don't even know who they're talking about are your kids all grown oh uh_huh yeah well i know they talk about um all these [rappers] now do you like the rap yeah some of it's kind of fun but it's different oh well have you seen any others or uh_huh oh that's nice uh_huh oh did you go with your cousin then did you go with your cousin then oh oh uh_huh oh oh well good oh did you oh oh it's quite quite big huh quite large huh oh well yeah oh they do usually huh oh did you uh well i basically listen to uh all kinds of music uh easy you know from easy listening you know i just find that so relaxing uh you know like fall asleep to that uh i listen to uh i listen to rock but the only thing the only thing i don't like uh is uh hard rock you like you don't like uh my boyfriend listens to guns and roses and i just you know i just can't uh grasp that you know i just don't understand why he likes that uh i listen to the lyrics and i don't know yeah and you you right and you listen to the lyrics and uh and and uh he even went to their concert and i'm like uh i don't know this person he no they yeah they made them they made them wait forever and yeah uh_huh tell you that just scares me uh because he's he's not really like that i mean he doesn't and he he's not wild or anything but i just i don't know oh you're a you're a pretty cool mom then my mom would would have never gone for that uh_huh my mom would have probably ripped the radio off the out of the stereo if i'd have turned it on uh_huh okay what what is that the summer musicals i've heard of it but i don't know uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh what what uh what uh what year was all that popular is it was it in the sixties that it was that that uh what did you say [hammerstein] fifties uh_huh um so it was just concerts or did they did they uh oh they acted out the scene oh uh_huh uh_huh sounds really different you know from what we've got do you listen to country really i'm a i'm a clint black fan i don't yeah he's okay he um she's okay uh_huh have you gone to uh [garth's] concert i heard it's kind of did they did at a tell you that he swung from a rope like [tarzan] like [tarzan] he he he swung through the audience like on a yeah i think yeah oh what else i like [cher] she's an old you know she's kind of old singer she's been around a while oh well well mostly rock yeah what about you well i like well i like different you know different things but uh primarily you know rock and roll oh you know well you i i really like more the modern stuff you know but i like the oldies you know they're okay uh yeah i listen mostly to the you know the modern stations yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah see now i don't like country and western uh i don't like you know most of it i don't like but i recently saw that garth brooks show and i thought he was terrific and i really thought i mean i thought he was a great you know really wonderful [entertainer] the way he um he you know he was very good i don't like twangy no i don't oh he's really not that uh country i mean i've heard him sing stuff that really doesn't sound too you know i don't know yeah yeah right i yeah i have heard him and uh i didn't think he was a country singer you know i yeah uh_huh oh well yeah that's true oh really oh uh_huh yeah yeah you know well i said let me watch this and see what all the fuss is about i mean everybody's [raving] about this guy you know and my son i have a son he's uh twenty four and of course he hates country music and he said ma i can't believe you're going to watch that i said i have to find out my best friend said she likes him i said if linda likes him i said he not he couldn't be all wrong you know i mean he's there's got to be something good about the guy so i watched it and really i i just thought he was terrific i don't know but i mean and his songs uh uh were you know i liked them uh they weren't they weren't that silly country western stuff that you know they used to do years ago you know with with [dopey] lyrics you know very simple lyrics you know there's yeah oh there are but uh yeah i think as a whole it's gotten more definitely more sophisticated in the you know in the past few years you know but then i wouldn't you know listen to it uh you know steadily uh you know i wouldn't listen to it at all actually you know i just don't really care for it any you know as a whole but uh i usually listen to either the uh classic rock it's uh ninety two or or uh one oh two yeah and then my husband loves the oldies you know every time he he gets in the the car he sticks on the oldies station yeah hi [brigette] i'm jackie it's nice to meet you are you um well where are you from and what's where's that oh i'm from wisconsin kenosha yeah i'm not very familiar with texas yeah i'm far yeah i i live in kenosha wisconsin yeah i i've gotten a lot of people from texas and they always think wow wisconsin uh_huh okay okay all right well what kind of music do you like oh yeah is that really popular in texas or is that just like a stereotype because it's the south is it oh um well i used to not really like country that much but i think well my dad really likes it and i'm used to listening to that and the older i got the more i you know i i can listen to it but um i prefer um um groups like i like um fire house and slaughter and um the um the [scorpions] yeah yeah but i also like the top forty too and i really like the oldies station like um fifties music yeah and and um the doors are pretty good too i can listen to them and the who i i really like all kinds um no that's about the only kind i don't get into is like rap and like classical and um jazz is all right but um like the blues and stuff like that i i like to dance and if it's like a upbeat you know good song then then i'll listen to it and if i'm out you know dancing then makes it better to listen to yeah um there's this station called the [blaze] from chicago and that's my favorite yeah they play um all different kinds of um harder rock uh_huh oh i've been there uh_huh oh really uh_huh uh_huh oh really um oh yeah oh that's neat uh_huh me too yeah um oh really we get a lot like at the bars because um we have a lot of like bands that form by themselves like at from milwaukee and chicago trying to get started you know oh really i think a lot of music has to do with like you know the type of people you hang around with and especially your environment like you know the [settings] like the bigger cities you get more variety i think you know oh yeah um i've gotten to like um a couple of songs from garth brooks yeah i i just um heard of him this year my boyfriend uh he uh likes some types of country music and he was listening to that and uh_huh yeah yeah i i've liked most the songs i heard so that was good yeah same here oh yeah uh i just started um listening to it too because of my boyfriend but yeah after i heard it a while at first i didn't like it and then i heard it and then i'm like oh this isn't so bad you know it's you know upbeat and you know i got into it and i saw on t v one time um they were playing garth brooks and they were um showing how to country dance to it and it looked so fun because like i say i like to dance and it was just really neat yeah it it looked fun and like oh i want to learn now oh yeah uh it it varies it's totally dependent upon what mood i'm in it can be anything from classical to uh uh rock and roll no not hard rock i'm i'm talking like elton john or uh steve [winwood] or something like that uh usually the the album sounds better than the concert and i don't like fighting the crowds uh_huh yeah yeah come to think of it i saw the four tops uh about three years ago yeah it it was a lot of fun it was yeah that that that's is something i i'd rather it's one of those things where i have a very stressful day at work and then i'll get home and let's uh pick pick out a something on the symphony something that will really relax me and uh that that's where that is and the one thing uh i guess it's opera is the only kind of music that i i i don't care for and uh traditional country and western which i find offensive yeah like i like i said it depends upon the mood that i'm in uh i i prefer instrumental over over anything but what i don't like is listening to a a station that will play uh i guess it's elevator music where they they have people that have have redone the song it's it if if if i'm going to listen to something like white christmas i want to hear bing crosby sing it i don't want to hear somebody else sing it uh i'm i'm a firm believer in the person who made the song popular that's who i want to listen to regardless of how good the remake is or how good they think the remake is yes that that that's really good i enjoy that uh and that's where very rarely live recordings of uh symphony music is good where they they have to get everyone in the studio to do it right depending upon which hall they're in cause i've listened to some uh albums or c d where the live recording they did it in a an auditorium or hall that was horrible acoustics and it just kind of washed out the very highs and the very lows and you had this what sounded like mud music it was like why bother uh_huh oh boy uh_huh uh christmas concerts are a lot of fun well with my voice i'm glad that they drown me out i can't i can't uh sing worth a darn yes i in when i was in college i got a minor in a music composition with uh heading toward piano oh by all means various types uh my tastes range from rock and roll to classical in fact about the only type of music that i really find offensive would be uh country western yeah i take that back rap but i consider rap music to be an [oxymoron] yeah yes i do i play two a bass guitar and [kalimba] i used to play three which was the clarinet but i've that's since gone into [disuse] yeah well there was [rockabilly] in the fifties and that's what gave rise to like carl perkins uh jerry lee lewis uh elvis [presley] in the beginning and that type of music i do appreciate it had some it had it had the spark of creativity it was it was out there and uh since then it's sort of fallen into formula and i guess that's my thing is i have a problem with formula music huh well i've only been exposed to that [minimally] and that's usually through occasional you know [viewings] of concerts of said type on public television you know oh it was something i had basically for background it was not uh [obtrusive] it was something i could listen to and uh and do my chores around the house oh yes it's not completely offensive yeah uh_huh yeah sure uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh that that that's cute i would have liked to have heard that oh yeah had to have some beer too or some sort of alcoholic substance new age yes huh yeah it's like the [windham] hill stuff it's it's yeah it's uh new age classical so to speak well what i what i often uh call air pudding yeah yeah well i only use it when i'm studying and that's the extent of it it's just it's good background filter stuff and you know what it is it's pleasant but it's not talent in in my view it's not genius uh when i really wish to get into listening pleasure uh with something of that nature i put on mozart or beethoven something that will [evoke] a response something that almost reaches in and hits those [proverbial] heart strings uh yeah um not really not really i've uh i uh i'm forty years old now so i've yeah we uh we grew up with the same music and i just uh i heard what they call around here they have a thing they call uh-oh what are they uh it's a [spoof] on the song and the song was um you you've heard of the song dance to the music you remember that okay well they did a uh a uh twisted tune they call it and the twisted tune was rap isn't music and they they sang here rap isn't music to the tune of you know dance to the music it was pretty funny yeah that's true that's true now if you can just uh make a [rhyme] and sometimes not even a good one you know you and you don't even need a band because you can just use that uh crazy little radio to keep time for you oh god yes i i mean i i can tolerate a lot of different things and i can you know i can tolerate a certain amount of rap but if i have to listen to two songs in a row i'm ready to shoot somebody yeah that that must be it um my i get a real kick out of the uh these remakes of the old songs that we grew up with yeah it makes you think that all the uh singer song writers are running out of you know things to write about uh_huh run d it'll never be elevator music let's put it that way yeah i know and you you'll you'll never hear it in the uh the restaurants and the yeah i've i've found that as i've gotten older that that some of even the hard rock has started to to bother me and it uh no no no from this new uh_huh yeah me either yeah but it's fun to prove your age um i i get the biggest kick out of my i have two fourteen year olds and a twelve year old living at home and uh they hear one of these old remakes of a song and oh that's just a beautiful song and i'm like that's a remake they that [song's] twenty years old oh no it just came out that's called music well we've got uh four cases of albums downstairs and then we've got another case oh yes we do we've got some songs that will totally blow my children away uh we've the problem we've been having is that we have a uh an old fisher system and can't find a needle for it you know because they're not pressing yeah horse and [buggy] yeah so i'm hoping that we can locate one soon and once i do locate a source i'm going to buy about twelve of them um i've heard of it uh_huh great i'll try that out i really uh i really do want to dig out the old l p yeah because i've got everything from god back when i've got all of bill [cosby's] original comedy albums and i've even got old silver throat that's the one album that he sang on yeah he's horrible singer i listened to it one time that was it and i've i've got stuff uh all right yeah i know well it's been nice talking to you too that that must have been wonderful were you able to hear sometimes oh oh well uh actually that lead into a couple different things uh my dad worked with unions uh for placing so he could really relate to what you were saying but uh my dad enjoyed opera and classical music and [ballets] and so uh even as a child i got to go to a lot of different uh kinds of musical events uh i grew up in detroit and so we had opportunities for a wide range of things uh one of the [regrets] i have is that i grew up with a house filled with classical music and music that i really loved but i never took the time to find out uh who the composers were or it it was just always there and there were certain things that uh i liked so much but i still have trouble to this day sometimes i will recognize a passage but i'll have no idea what it's from or whose it is and uh over the last few years and when my father lived with us uh i made more of an effort to learn but uh that's something that i regretted but uh when you mentioned the band music my son just started high school this year and has been in band since middle school but this was the first year with marching band and i really enjoy band music uh it oh what instrument did you play oh i like that a lot oh yeah what uh my husband tim played a trombone in high school and he also played in a a band in college not marching band but [symphonic] and that was really the first time that i got to hear a lot of uh uh band music and some of the wonderful composers other than the traditional [sousa] and things that everybody knows and so i've enjoyed this so much with our son now doing that and he plays tuba so i don't don't get to see him when he's doing uh concerts we just see the top of the bell at the back but in marching season he's easy to pick out yes uh we uh laughed when they're in sixth grade and they try them out on instruments and try to find the appropriate instruments we thought of suggesting that they ought to also find out what vehicles the parents drive because uh the tuba and the [sousaphone] don't fit in in every kind of uh car oh oh oh gosh god yeah well he must have collected that over a period of years uh_huh i was going to ask you and it seemed that there must have been a big gap uh i also have a brother who's thirteen years older and one who's nineteen years older you don't run into that very often uh_huh yeah oh i'm glad you got to go and hear him in new york that that uh that must have been very special so what kind of music do you like yeah uh_huh and where do you live okay i'm from pennsylvania right exactly okay uh well i like a lot of folk music and jazz and different sorts of experimental music uh yeah some stuff that you could call new age let's see i like uh cherry [riley] a lot and okay uh let's see well who do you like from that category yeah say new wave or okay well who do you like like that i mean uh_huh okay yeah i'm not i'm not that crazy about the bow house uh i liked joy division a lot and oh maybe right uh_huh oh how horrible how can you live like that uh right uh let's see and uh_huh right okay uh_huh yeah i i think right least the [jacksons] i can agree with you uh yeah you like stuff like prince and his what okay let's see yeah i think i heard that once i like what i've heard of the new album his uh like what uh_huh yeah well that's very good have you heard uh dirty mind oh that's a that's a fantastic album it's even earlier it's one of those where he's playing all the instruments and it's actually pretty brilliant a lot of it's uh like the dirty side of his stuff but that's all right too uh_huh right well yeah well i think that kind of happens for a lot of artists i mean you could say the same sort of thing about elvis or jerry lee lewis or something or well jimmy [swaggart] he's in he's a singer right uh and no it seems that a lot of people a lot of christians seem to sort of walk the line between uh you know total [depravity] and you know and religion and [asceticism] you know what i'm twenty uh uh six yeah uh-oh well uh acoustics right okay yeah no i'm in engineering basically but i'm very interested in music anyway i play some stuff and i'm a radio d j and blah blah blah uh well just i worked for a radio station as an undergraduate just the college radio station and had had to [gosham] college which is in indiana and i found it to be a very good experience i mean besides having access to millions of records i liked being able to control the [airwaves] you know and so now i'm just working for the campus radio station at penn state where i am okay well wendy what kind of music do you like uh_huh uh_huh uh a lot the same i don't like hard rock at all and i uh don't like uh rap either i don't care too much for jazz sometimes i do a few things i have heard that i like but okay and uh i like classical and i like uh a lot of different kinds of contemporary uh [folksy] type where you can hear the words and uh you know where there are some things they are saying i guess my preference is uh well either classical or christian contemporary praise type songs uh i don't have a particular favorite i uh i like some of the music that is put out by [josannah] uh integrity tapes they are instrumental mostly where they just have uh praise songs such as just instruments or uh praise songs with words uh uh there is a few things i don't pay too much attention i turn the radio on and i don't always pay attention to who is singing what i just know there is a song here and a song there i like i don't spend a lot of money buying tapes and yeah uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah i do too have your ever heard of john michael [talbot] i guess i he is one that at least i know you know if i hear his name that i will probably like it he is just real quiet reflective i think he did the companies himself on the guitar and i uh classical guitar i really like classical guitar uh_huh yeah uh_huh have you ever heard of a [venezuelan] he is local but he has cut a couple of albums now or whatever you call them these days c d i guess uh [carlos] [guetison] yeah yeah he is on the [oasis] and uh i have heard him play locally yeah he plays some times at la [madeline] and uh there is a couple of other places that he is regular at and uh yeah i really enjoy him but i don't know do do you would you consider that rap music yeah uh_huh i am sure the influence is there yeah okay i think so so it was good talking to you well being from texas i love country music that's you do uh oh absolutely do they really well you you don't sound like uh from new york oh my well someone called me the other day from uh new jersey and that was whoa huh i see uh do many people listen to country music uh_huh yes yes i don't particularly care for that yeah uh_huh right well country music is not that sad kind of cry in your beer you know the expression kind of music it's got a a lot better uplifting beat now and it sounds better and i think more people all generations like it a lot better yeah uh_huh uh_huh definitely well i think that's gosh that is about the only thing that i listen to i'm originally from tennessee and of course that's a big country music place too and that's all i heard growing up so uh you know that's that's golly that's big and popular yeah crying loving or leaving that's it and on the radio that's how they they have a little segment crying loving and leaving if you think about it every song is like that just like you're saying well uh i can i can i don't uh we don't smoke so we really don't go to bars or anything but but uh used to you know back in the single days uh but yeah i can how about you oh for sure that is true that is absolutely true or you're going to make a fool out of yourself or trip over somebody's feet uh you know i really i like like uh the seventies music and uh oldies music fifties sixties that type of music uh i run and i like to run just various music either either like seventies music or country or uh or the oldies oh absolutely yeah and uh you know i that's what i have gotten away from is what like the top forty stuff is i don't i couldn't hardly i couldn't tell you right now what the top one or two songs are oh yeah yeah yeah absolutely [foreigner] and [santana] and all that in fact i was listening to that on my way home today but uh i i enjoy that type of music oh guns and roses now i have heard of them oh yeah the who it is old isn't that funny but it does yeah it's kind of like making a comeback it's just [cyclable] and just kind of making a comeback now i guess and that's what they enjoy hearing which that's funny cause i was let's see you were born in fifty i was born in fifty nine so you know when i was in high school that's some of this kind of music was popular and that's what i like to hear right now even uh well i was in band in high school and i played clarinet then i took piano lessons yes i do uh_huh and i like jazz that kind do you do you oh well that's good uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh um yeah oh yeah is that k v i l or yeah huh well i grew up around here i grew up in fort worth and uh it's funny because k v i l back when i was uh a teenager was an a m station i think yeah and uh it used to have like the top twenty top forty all the time you know and i course i was listening to rock music but what i called rock music when i was a teenager now the music is so different than what i used to listen to that i don't know if i could consider it the same but yeah yeah right right yeah yeah well my husband and i are both that way we we both really like the beatles a lot oh really that's funny well i'm probably older than you then but i uh i always thought the beatles were great oh oh that's funny oh yeah yeah see i liked elvis a lot and he was like my hero and now my little girl thinks it's real funny because uh she'll see him she'll go oh you mean you really thought he was neat um yeah yeah well that's good i like willie nelson too yeah well see i the reason i said my taste was probably different is i have always liked country music and my husband has always been just total rock and so uh we never could agree on what we were going to listen to after we got married because i'd want to hear country and he'd want to hear rock and we couldn't get along because his rock was too rock for me i like soft rock but i don't like some of the heavy metal stuff he was listening to and um so both of us we're real strong members of a church and uh we decided we'd start listening to contemporary christian music so we started listening to one of the stations around here that we both really like it plays just christian music all the time and we've gotten now where that's pretty much all we listen to and uh there're some really really talented artists that's you know song writers and singers that do just christian music so of course you know amy grant and people like that are pretty well known there's a guy named bruce [carroll] and he's my favorite because he has a country sound but it's christian lyrics and he's a wonderful song writer he won a an an is it [emmy] or what does it grammy it's the grammy awards they give for music yeah he won a grammy for [inspirational] song of the year last year so yeah yeah well that's neat oh sandy patty yeah well that's pretty neat well see i'm excited that kids these days are liking decent music and uh i mean all the songs of course on on this station have real good good lyrics and good ideas that kind of thing so i really encourage my daughter to listen to that she right now she loves it i don't know if it'll stick with her she's still young in elementary school so yeah well that's that's good that she still chooses that but you know i like the country sound there are i like willie nelson i always like don williams my dad thought i was crazy but he's always been one of my favorites and um then my husband on the other hand he i guess when he was like in his early twenties really got into the heavy metal kind of stuff before we got married so then he'd want to play that stuff and i was like oh that's giving me a headache yeah yeah yeah yeah well i still whenever they um have these advertisements on t v for um records that have like all the songs from the seventies i was in high school like from the early seventies and uh so all that music brings back a lot of memories you know and i'm always thinking oh i'd like to have one of those albums but since we made this agreement that we're going to listen to christian music i think i will i'll probably set it on the shelf and would never you know play it yeah that's right we buy things that we know the whole family can listen to uh_huh oh that's neat uh_huh oh that's good yeah yeah well see i'm an interesting person because i go to the church of christ and there's a lot of people at church of christ that think uh that's right and and i think my personal opinion is they're missing out on a lot and i love um this you know that k l t y that's what i listen to all the time and i i love all the music that they play on there but i have a lot of people that go to church with me that kind of criticize that and think that uh it's wrong and all this so uh yeah yeah yeah well i told my husband the one thing i like about it is uh you know you kind of think about whatever you listen to i mean you may just you may not realize you're doing it but you do and uh when i listen to christian music then i'm i'm thinking about something good you know and i'll be washing dishes or something and i'll think about a song and it'll bring back you know some ideas and so to me it's just a good influence but there's still a whole lot of other music i you know really enjoy listening to my husband and i both kind of really got into i'm pretty diverse actually um i consider myself as a performer and also an [enjoyer] so i kind of get into all all types i run the gamut from uh alternative to uh to rock and roll to heavy metal to you name it so i'm pretty open on that country's not bad i grew up in nebraska so it's like um yeah i listen to it once in a while but it's it's probably not my my top mode i guess that's pretty pretty popular down in plano though uh oh yeah or you didn't do anything at all right uh_huh are you into the garth brooks thing at all or is that popular down there right now i know that he's kind of a big name right now yeah and you're also into the christian contemporary stuff yeah i had a i had a roommate that was really into that he was into all the um groups like uh i'm trying to remember d m z [resurrection] band uh who else there are a couple of other ones he was into he was into [petra] as well in fact it's interesting he's he's actually an engineer i don't know the school in florida and he's an engineer that does sound mixing right now for christian brown yeah he's pretty into it it's been lucrative for him well yeah um kind of like i don't know in the early seventies i think it was called punk rock now it's kind of taken a different slant and i think it's it's gone more diverse toward um not so much the head [banging] on the wall stuff as much as just runs really a wider more eclectic uh tone flow and things like that so it's i don't know i like i said i consider myself fairly diverse so um yeah yeah well i play the trumpet um and also keyboards i played keyboards for about uh-oh i don't know twelve thirteen years and played trumpet for about ten so it's it's good for a side diversion and a little bit of side income you know whenever i can do you do you play anything at all yeah oh wow sure sure free time is not much of a luxury i know that feeling that may be more quality you know after all yeah joe scruggs huh interesting when you said scruggs i was thinking because earl scruggs is a real famous [banjo] player a real famous blue grass player and uh in fact if you remember the the theme from the beverly [hillbillies] he actually played part of that he and [lester] flats so i was thinking wow wonder if this is a relative but oh yeah i don't hear much about that no yeah yeah kids probably get into that quite a bit i'm uh i'm not quite at that point in my life yet it'll probably be a while before i get into the kids' music at all yeah uh_huh right uh_huh well it's yeah it's hard to tell i know like in the appalachian mountain area there that thing's real popular great uh i like uh probably cutting edge rock would be the best way to describe it good deal cutting edge rock oh i don't know you got your top forty rock which i just can't stand top forty music the stuff you'd see on m t v and v h one and what have you and then there's new music come from we've got a radio station down here that uh started broadcasting about a year ago and they've uh they play music that you just wouldn't hear on any other radio station more like a it's more like a college station would play which we don't have down here but uh it's just music by different groups and you know things you wouldn't you wouldn't uh you wouldn't would never be exposed to yeah most of it yeah kind of noise noise yeah yeah do i go out to listen to music well i go to school and work so i don't get too too many opportunities to uh go out and see a a live band although occasionally i'll go downtown they have what they call deep [ellum] down here where a lot of local bands play and i've gone down there a few times no i'm [musically] destitute have no talents right yeah yeah i used to go i when i first moved to dallas several years ago i've gone to a few concerts but it just it just gets to be more of a hassle than it's worth yeah and you get a lot of thirteen and fourteen year olds and it's just a crowd of little kids yeah we usually go down and there's a tower that they have downtown you go down and have a couple of drinks and wait for traffic to go away it's it's an indoor arena reunion there's one there's the bronco bowl that's out in fort worth though arlington stadium there's several big things down in down here most of the most of the concerts are out at reunion arena and it's it's okay the the acoustics could be better but like i say i haven't been down there to a concert since jeez i don't remember who i went to see last i like the beatles some billy [joel] you know like in high school i guess i was a big billy [joel] fan but i've been well you know i listen to it but i won't go buy it i've i've like i've been exposed to so many new and different bands lately just through this new radio station that i realize there's just a lot of a lot of things i've i never would have heard or even thought of looking at or listening to and oh i'm trying to think of a good example one that won't get me into too much trouble um yeah be a bad example but like for example the violent they've been around for a while and they've just started playing some new music of theirs and it made me go out and buy some and listen to it i won't say i like the whole album really but uh uh_huh yeah i was reading an article about that yesterday the only thing i like about madonna is i think if if i was given a ticket to see her perform i think she'd be entertaining to see perform but i don't i don't really care for her music there's one or two songs that i liked you know for a while until they [overplayed] them to death but uh i've never been a big madonna fan but i do think if someone gave me a ticket it'd be a really entertaining show i wouldn't go stand in line or sleep overnight at the yeah that's crazy some no there's some my parents you know i used to listen to the stuff they listen to you know the guess who and what have you i've got some of that uh i don't i won't say i make tapes to listen to in my car but occasionally i put on l c d and crank it up because i'm you know the stuff i grew up with listening to so i'm i've got pretty broad musical tastes i don't really care for gospel and i'm not a big country fan but other than that i'll listen to just about anything yeah i've got some i've got i don't know about a hundred hundred and fifteen c d i suppose i just i've got a bunch of albums but i never play them because c d have taken over yeah you can scratch them up pretty good and they'll still play yes so go out and play in that sun all right well pretty much uh the thing i'm into mostly is new age uh like yani um oh uh peter [barden] uh gosh there's just so many of them i can't even can't even name them all enya i just got a catalog just now as a matter of fact uh actually my husband got it uh lady [slipper] catalog and it's it has music from a lot of women and it's got uh enya in it and carol [nessin] have you ever heard of her well actually most of the music that i listen to there's no theme it's instrumental um and i tend to like instrumental better because there isn't that underlying theme there's no message to be get gotten there um it's just enjoying the [melody] that's what i like about music well um i guess you could tend to [categorize] some of the stuff like i like in into jazz uh jean [luc] [ponty] is he's kinds of a he's he's jazz but he's kind of more of a contemporary type jazz he's got the um the electric violin um my husband just said before i switched to this other phone he said so you like the [dixie] [dregs] and that's is another one of my favorite groups but it's they're kind of in a group by themselves really they're more they're more like progressive um no progressive music is more like they have real complex um uh [rhythms] and key uh key changes um it's it's a more complex it's it's not your your typical top forty type that has um it'll it'll be in a particular key or whatever and it doesn't change um progressive has a lot of different um i don't know it's it's a lot more complex no no that's really a lot of groups don't like to be called new age because it's kind of a a label that it it kind of kind of [connotates] the out of body experience like the um [shirley] [maclaine] type thing and that's not it at all it's it's just a different type of music and i guess um i guess you would really call it contemporary jazz i think so um do you ever listen to one oh six um they play some of the stuff that i like although they've gotten they've gotten to a lot more into the saxophone stuff and i don't really care a whole lot for saxophone like um kenny g he's okay but um i like more of a variety and it seems like they are playing all of this saxophone type music that enough is enough you can only handle so much of it well yeah he's kind of a new age kind of a jazz new age it kind of kind of depends on how you look at it uh_huh what did you think of it uh_huh yeah i saw him in concert several years ago and he is puts on a really good show he really is incredibly talented what what what kind of music do you like to listen to mostly uh_huh yeah yeah i i like top tom petty until he got to be kind of top [fortyish] like his first two albums were really good they're real real you know nitty gritty down to the i mean real roots of rock and roll and i really liked that when he got to doing his um um didn't he do a he did an album with who was it [stevie] nicks i think and that was okay but i liked his early stuff a lot better yeah uh_huh uh_huh i like some classical except that i have a really hard time going to buy it because some of it is just really awful and some of it is really good and i don't know the good from the bad excuse me yeah yeah the one one classical piece that i really do like is [vivaldi's] four seasons i really like that and i like i like some beethoven um and that's really all that i've really [sampled] that i why i should say i i have listened to some others that i like that i can't remember their names offhand my husband makes all these tapes of all different artists and i never know what i'm listening to i just know that i like it i'd i'd probably put a c d on and i would i would probably probably most likely go to something new age i would probably carol [nessin] or um or yani or somebody like that um once in a while i'll put on some classical um sometimes my husband has a whole variety of music so i really have a pretty much anything to choose from um i do like a lot of the older stuff too but we don't really have a lot of the older stuff on c d um and that's pretty much all i listen to i i hardly ever listen to the radio anymore yeah yeah i live in [carrolton] oh okay okay yeah okay great thank you okay bye bye yes okay well that's good because i'm a singer uh in high school and college in the classical lately it's been more contemporary country uh no actually i do what's called carioca uh with a it's a a thing where you've got a background video that just has the background music the [instrumentals] and there the video has the words to the songs on it and you sing along with the with the tape it's pretty they do it at a lot of different clubs uh like dave and [buster's] and oh little country bars and stuff you get up in front of the audience and a [microphone] uh_huh yeah they've got a little t v monitor on the stage most places do uh the person singing sees the monitor and most places have a big screen behind you so that everybody can see the words yeah uh not usually unless it's a real ratty song it's it's fun uh_huh uh_huh yeah it's you some of the places do carioca like once or twice a week and then they have like there's a a country bar or country [saloon] i used to go to that they have uh country bands most of the rest of the week it's it's pretty neat i like it uh_huh uh_huh i i i had a a music scholarship to college but i didn't use it so what do you do oh how neat oh i don't know about elementary i don't know i think elementary would be good that would be interesting with the little kids uh_huh uh_huh yeah i i i can remember music back then oh good um i think that's one reason i got out of music because i didn't think i wanted to go into teaching and at that point it was either performing or teaching it was like oh well yeah yeah yeah well i after college i got out got married started working or started working got married and i didn't sing for ten years and i just found carioca last october i guess and i was just thrilled i loved it it's it's neat uh not really not in not anything not anything organized no periodically if we'd go to like a christmas eve services where they do the part of [messiah] or something like that but that was about it but back in high school i was more of a classical kind of stuff through wagner and chopin and and [schubert] and yeah yeah the things you have to do for competition uh in high school i was from second soprano down to tenor believe it or not i i sang tenor a lot in church uh_huh they yeah that's i found a lot of stuff like anne murray she i have to that's one thing neat about carioca you can change pitches i mean change the keys and her stuff i normally have to take up at least a step if not a step and a half oh okay oh good i don't feel bad no my i'm in a sorority but we decided not to do it for the sorority my boss his wife is one of the uh the the [transcribers] for the tapes and he was like do you want to make some money okay here yeah it is oh now that's a neat idea that's wow now that that would be a good idea yeah i proposed it for the uh for i'm in a service or actually it's a social sorority and it's beta [sigma] [phi] and they decided no that we wouldn't not everybody might be able to make all the calls so it's like okay that's fine i'll do it for myself uh_huh well yes okay well that's good because i'm a singer uh in high school and college in the classical lately it's been more contemporary country uh no actually i do what's called carioca uh with a it's a a thing where you've got a background video that just has the background music the [instrumentals] and there the video has the words to the songs on it and you sing along with the with the tape it's pretty they do it at a lot of different clubs uh like dave and [buster's] and oh little country bars and stuff you get up in front of the audience and a [microphone] uh_huh yeah they've got a little t v monitor on the stage most places do uh the person singing sees the monitor and most places have a big screen behind you so that everybody can see the words yeah uh not usually unless it's a real ratty song it's it's fun uh_huh uh_huh yeah it's you some of the places do carioca like once or twice a week and then they have like there's a a country bar or country [saloon] i used to go to that they have uh country bands most of the rest of the week it's it's pretty neat i like it uh_huh uh_huh i i i had a a music scholarship to college but i didn't use it so what do you do oh how neat oh i don't know about elementary i don't know i think elementary would be good that would be interesting with the little kids uh_huh uh_huh yeah i i i can remember music back then oh good um i think that's one reason i got out of music because i didn't think i wanted to go into teaching and at that point it was either performing or teaching it was like oh well yeah yeah yeah well i after college i got out got married started working or started working got married and i didn't sing for ten years and i just found carioca last october i guess and i was just thrilled i loved it it's it's neat uh not really not in not anything not anything organized no periodically if we'd go to like a christmas eve services where they do the part of [messiah] or something like that but that was about it but back in high school i was more of a classical kind of stuff through wagner and chopin and and [schubert] and yeah yeah the things you have to do for competition uh in high school i was from second soprano down to tenor believe it or not i i sang tenor a lot in church uh_huh they yeah that's i found a lot of stuff like anne murray she i have to that's one thing neat about carioca you can change pitches i mean change the keys and her stuff i normally have to take up at least a step if not a step and a half oh okay oh good i don't feel bad no my i'm in a sorority but we decided not to do it for the sorority my boss his wife is one of the uh the the [transcribers] for the tapes and he was like do you want to make some money okay here yeah it is oh now that's a neat idea that's wow now that that would be a good idea yeah i proposed it for the uh for i'm in a service or actually it's a social sorority and it's beta [sigma] [phi] and they decided no that we wouldn't not everybody might be able to make all the calls so it's like okay that's fine i'll do it for myself uh_huh well good well my uh uh my interests lie mainly in classical music and uh uh i although i wasn't raised with opera it's something that i've i come to enjoy how about yourself right absolutely sure sound well i uh i tend to shy away from someone who uh uh is born later than nineteen hundred other than [erin] copeland uh [erin] copeland i enjoy oh uh [gershwin] is uh i i uh i i haven't uh quite found jazz to be enjoyable and and and a lot of [gershwin] has a a some of some of his work is a little uh has enough of jazz uh that uh that uh is not particularly enjoyable for me to listen to the uh uh uh like i i i suspect my favorites uh are in the uh seventeenth and eighteenth century uh uh musicians uh i'd the uh-oh there's one uh uh i guess more recent one with uh copeland uh is uh [raspegie] who i was always amazed that he was uh so contemporary um but i uh uh i our family gets down to uh the [myerson] relatively frequently it it's our uh uh our one enjoyable uh if we can make it to saturday uh everything is okay so it's uh it's a relatively busy uh activity we uh one uh very nice uh uh opportunity that we've had is the is the dallas chamber orchestra that has uh uh actually it's it's it's wonderful they they have a sunday matinee that uh uh if you buy two season tickets the kids go free and uh that gives us an opportunity to uh uh to take the to uh uh make sure the kids uh get uh get dressed up and and go to the symphony whether they want to or not and uh the uh their they [oblige] us by falling asleep so at least that's pretty good they're uh eleven nine and eight and it's it's nice in that uh in that they're that you can get real close to the uh to the chamber orchestra and see the music and watch the musicians it's uh it's a very intimate setting and the the music is really very good right it was just [recital] oh uh_huh right right okay now it's sandy right sandy um what kind of music do you like to listen to uh_huh in san diego uh_huh uh_huh do you oh oh um now have you lived in california all your life no you just moved there oh now where's home oh okay so country music is prevalent in arizona is it oh oh oh how fun oh oh gosh i don't blame you uh my husband's in the navy reserves and so he's going out to san diego in about three weeks for his two week yearly [stint] so i'll be missing him then but oh oh and how long does he stay out oh oh thank goodness uh_huh oh i think that's terrible oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh oh boy so he is real country now oh that is that is well out here in utah we have a lot of country and we live kind of in the country it's by ogden utah i don't know if you know salt lake city oh yeah well it's it's about an hour north of salt lake so we're out here in the country and we hear a lot of the country music in fact i work in a bakery and the baker comes to work at four o'clock in the morning and i come to work at six o'clock in the morning and he just has the country music just [blasting] and he just rocks and rolls in the bakery to country music oh i i bet that's really hard being their mom with all those with the two little ones it's a way of life for a while huh yeah that's good well um my favorite kind of music is new age and it's that sounds like it's hard rock and roll but it's not it's the oh the [synthesizer] [synthesizers] and all of that uh_huh and yes um i was wondering whether you were in favor of statehood independence or the status quo for puerto rico well i'm i guess i don't have such close experience with with um an area becoming a state as you do um my concern is the economy because as i understand it puerto rico has a very low uh standard of living or at least um annual average income um part of this i suppose is justified in in that the climate they don't need perhaps the heating and the housing that some of the more northern territories need however in that case i guess i would favor status quo i have been to puerto rico and and found it very very interesting i did peace corps training there and so um you know i saw it also as a young student and and it was very foreign in a certain sense although i had grown up in california and so the spanish was no problem um it was it was you know very lovely and and the people seemed very friendly and and nice i have actually i work with uh a girl from puerto rico and i guess i have never thought to ask her what she favors um well probably more on in terms of the u s um you know i'm i'm not quite sure how the u s [copes] with this sort of thing i've live abroad most of my life so i guess i i've been very cut off i lived actually in lebanon so i was very cut off from the the press as i you know and be was becoming an adult so i don't know how the u s would cope with uh a new state that is so very very poor um i guess you know we'd have a lot of aid if if you consider the inner cities of like new york and and how much aid it needs i suppose the whole country or the whole um new state would require such aid i think so uh_huh yeah those are good points um which obviously i had never thought about uh i don't know uh i suppose they also not being a state are probably freer to determine their own um ways of life than they would if if i'm trying to think exactly what is [imposed] if they would become a state versus a territory perhaps [compulsory] education um and taxes uh_huh well well actually i one one thing that i remember hearing in the news the past couple weeks that might be significant is that they've recently voted that spanish is the official language which i always assumed it was anyway so if they've just taken such action it would seem to [indicate] to me either they're doing it because they're afraid they might become a state and want to declare this before they become a state or maybe because they don't want to become a state for fear of losing the spanish or hispanic heritage i i believe i would probably tend towards that well that's interesting right what about if if um they demanded to have spanish as the official language as a condition for statehood uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's interesting because although i tend to be bilingual spanish based on experience um i was in bilingual education in california and i didn't have any problem with my students but i noticed my my brother who was quite a bit younger was learning spanish in elementary school and he can't speak a word and so obviously it didn't work in california right right oh i see uh_huh uh_huh okay well thank you very much bye bye i was a resident although very young of the of what is now the state of alaska in nineteen fifty nine when alaska stopped being a territory and became a state uh so i guess i have a left over positive feeling about the question even though i don't know very much about puerto rico uh i know that all the things that happened relative to that territory in alaska have been very positive uh and i have a suspicion that that i believe that a the statehood is a good idea whenever you have a territory the size of puerto rico one ought either to make it a full [fledged] state or or let it go one or the other what is your situation oh that's very interesting your concern on the economy was one in terms of if it became a state would that put even more pressures on on puerto rico or pressures on the u s in terms of aid or uh_huh i guess um we're assuming that that puerto rico would be per capita significantly more poor perhaps than than say mississippi or okay that's something that that i guess i have not much of an image of other than than puerto rico as a tropical island and consequently large numbers of [barefoot] [natives] or something not in a [perjuritive] sense but in a in a carefree sense i guess although i'm aware of the political problems and unrest and and also difficulties they have um i don't know whether state statehood would improve their economy i don't i don't know that the the act of being a state would have any impact on on them uh i guess they would have the ability to do some taxing that they don't have now but of course if their economy is weak there is not much of a base on which to tax i don't know if they suffer in a sense of income loss as being since they aren't a state whether there are monies that escape them so to speak because they aren't able to tax like a typical state would be how do you feel though about well i guess it's to their advantage to be a territory but um i wonder how have having been in a territory but only as a young student and my parents were in the military at the time so they didn't have ready negative feelings about being in in alaska at the time since they voted absentee i i would imagine that it must be a little bit of a feeling of second class [citizenry] uh to be in a territory that large and not being able to vote the district of columbia people for instance are quite frustrated i think at times in their not having a senate representative uh_huh uh i see what you mean so that yeah taxes would undoubtedly be occurring uh there i don't know i don't even understand exactly how taxes are handled in a territorial situation um frequently the laws in a territory are are in some ways as stringent as they are in other states i and i'm thinking in terms of education but then again each state sets its own and i don't know how a territorial governor takes care of something like puerto rico um it's interesting because i haven't thought of them in terms of the problems relative to uh economy uh i had thought of it more in terms of political uh [realization] and i guess i had automatically made the assumption that gee anyone would rather be a state of the u s than an independent country so uh_huh well that's interesting too well it sounds as though you are in favor of uh status quo and i think uh having listened to you relative to the economy thing i think if i were being forced to make a decision i would plead ignorance and wait to do more research before picking one of these so i'm i guess i'm ultimately in favor of status quo also at this point leaning towards the statehood i think i would be troubled i suspect i believe that any of our states and i [constitutionally] i don't think there are any prescriptions against that decision even if louisiana chose to go with [creole] or something um i don't think there is any [prohibitions] i would be bothered by that i'm i'm bothered by any tendency to resist what i think was one of america's [strengths] and that's the the the melting pot uh i i am particularly fond of a number of ethnic [cuisines] but i'm troubled by too close a [clinging] to to the past and i'm also realizing that that a common language i think is the ultimate bond of a country and canada i guess comes to my mind as they're going through the [throes] up there relative to french quebec and whatever uh that i i think that would be a negative step to make and i think that that they would need to [reassess] that um i'm troubled even in by [bilingualism] uh in so far that it it gets in the way of of of the melting pot aspect um yeah but i'm rather in favor of people being bilingual and i'd be quite happy to see a national law in which every student was required to learn english and a second language but i'm i'm disturbed by a country that attempts to be [functionally] bilingual at the official level um i'm i'm concerned about whether or not that causes [fractiousness] i guess well i think we have gone to time and i appreciate your having called good bye okay well i i mean what thoughts do you have on the subject oh you did uh_huh uh_huh that's wonderful well do you have you probably have a different sense than i have i went to an inner city high school in chicago um and that's not where i am originally from it was a divorce situation of my parents and it was a a cultural shock to me uh in terms of what i went through the high school is now called in fact it was called [tulley] high school and now it's called [roberto] [clemente] that yeah that's exactly about twenty years now uh what was it like living there i mean did you find that people appreciated having the privilege of being right i agree with that yeah i didn't mean that in a totally negative sense right uh_huh uh_huh right that you had ever been right i mean i'll give you and idea that i had um and i would say i would say the ones the majority appreciated what they were having in this country uh but a lot of the ones that didn't even in the minority not in the sense of the cultural world word they made it worse for the other kids in school and you know chicago back then even had bilingual classes yeah and i mean i had [geometry] the teacher was from cypress [greece] and it was spanish and english so if you can imagine how i even and i mean and i guess i look at is as an enlightening sense um but i think basically i think they should leave things the way they are right now i mean i don't really have enough in terms of an argument pro or con in terms of making any type of change uh_huh uh_huh right that's exactly and that's exactly i mean i can remember instances that uh wasn't as uh you know bad lord i don't know how it would be today well i know what it looks like i've been back up for a reunion it does yeah um but its' but it's an experience i wouldn't change i mean my husband um grew up in um a majority uh wasp southern ohio you know so that um when he saw where i you know saw my later teenage years he was just i hate to say aghast because that sounds so trite but he was and yet how did i turn out the way i did turn out and i said that's really irrelevant what you find is that um if you can talk to like i mean i learned a lot about the um island of puerto rico from talking to these kids you know and you lived there so you know that parts of it are beautiful and parts of it are [squalor] like here yeah it's the same uh_huh uh_huh this is true uh_huh i know what you're saying yeah uh_huh right right i probably would say the something if i knew that intellectually that it was good and emotionally that the people there wanted it you know it's just um i mean right now they have the privilege of voting with the united states don't they they count yeah as a principle that's what i thought um but i've also been down there we traveled a lot to the b v i the british virgin islands so you always pass through san juan in going to places like or i um and it's just it's i think what they do need is an [infusion] of some of the united states um privileges some of our resources the educational the teachers the um academic opportunity you know i don't think we do do enough of a resource transfer if there is such a thing uh_huh uh_huh uh uh_huh they'll lose their [ethnicity] as they say yeah that's uh_huh see uh_huh uh_huh it sounds like you probably know i mean to this day are you still in touch with any native puerto [ricans] that you have made friends with or no that's natural i just thought i'd ask that because i wondered what you thought they might think because i really don't have any um personal or professional or [familial] ties down there i don't know the the the the that's just children but the the people that i went to high school with um i think the majority are in that the probably the generation yours and mine and the one right after us that um their parents did not want to [acclimate] to the united states um in terms of [retaining] um and my [background's] european heritage and their background it would be you know the i guess i would say the latin or [latino] heritage not speaking in english um having the children drive them everywhere and these were not old people these were like in their early forties um and i always that always bothered me and then there were some children that i noticed as soon as all the kids were out of high school i mean they went back to puerto rico to live you know they had made enough money here but on the other hand i guess it's all about choice in everything um was it i mean how were they toward that's interesting the the way term you used [continentals] which i'm sure is the proper term how were they toward the united states in terms of just general relationships i mean were they glad uh_huh yeah uh_huh i know what you're talking about yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah i don't i don't predict what you're describing is actually a conflict very hello uh you know what i've got to go because that's my cordless battery going i'm sorry i enjoyed talking to you and uh thank you for your time okay bye bye uh you know we even lived there for a a while when my husband was in the navy in fact the first year we were married he was already over there had been there two years when we got married and so our we had a one year honeymoon uh uh it was very nice um uh_huh uh_huh i'm sure [roberto] died while we were down there as a matter of fact yeah it's like anywhere else people are individuals and i find it really difficult an and frustrated trying to make stereotypes you know and uh i can understand the the frustration you must have gone through uh going to the the school uh no no it's just if if it's not part of your culture and you come upon something that you're totally [unprepared] for uh the i had gone to a very uh uh um conservative uh college and when i started teaching school it was in an inner city situation although it was not puerto rican it was uh a mexican american and black students they weren't like any of the mexican american or black people i had gone to school with so it was it was very very different yeah oh really huh oh my yeah i'm not so much against their making uh it a state but i would want a very very very clear majority because if the minority can be so [vociferous] whether you're talking this group or or any other group that that has a stake in something and they can make as you said uh so well the a a few can make it so miserable for everybody else that that my give you a clue uh_huh yeah right oh i'm sure same as as any other part of the world really i i don't i don't think it's really to their best interests to uh uh [attain] statehood as it is right now they have the best of both worlds they have uh representation but they don't have to pay all the taxes and so forth that we do uh being that it's an island economy um everything is imported and yes the cost of living is super high but but they're protected in so many ways without having to to pay for the rights and privileges so so you know i i would just as soon an an and if if they voted to for independence i would back them a hundred percent and that's that's because i i guess because i'm not into [territorialism] or whatever that we have been in the past right yeah yeah oh yes uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh part of that though has been i think uh selected by by them in that that whereas they want the benefits of some of of what the [continentals] can offer they they want to maintain that um culture of theirs which which i understand and and so often when you when you bring in the advantages the resources and so forth there there is a trade most of the people who that that i know about who really uh would favor statehood have pretty much [assimilated] into the the continental states already or they have family here and this way they can go back and forth and and it's not that much of a strain and you know they're kind of [lackadaisical] about it at least at the present time that's the way the way the pendulum seems to be [swinging] right now no we really didn't keep that up it's just um uh_huh uh_huh um and so yeah there really were three major um camps and there were those who who uh were very friendly very open any anything we can do for you uh uh either way you know was great and then there were those at the other end of the spectrum and those that ho hum whatever you know and and uh it it was interesting the whole time we were there it was very very political there was always some on sunday afternoons uh going through the all the little [urbanizations] the little neighborhoods with uh blow [horns] oh i can't think of the term but you know and with banners and and a parade of vehicles with their with their colors of the of a particular party so they were very very um [passionate] about their beliefs but it it it kind of broke down that you couldn't really see i couldn't see that there was a clear majority that that stayed it seemed to shift as as oh oh i see okay well i have enjoyed it uh_huh bye bye so what do you think uh do you know any people from puerto rico oh really uh_huh yeah have you ever been there have you ever been there really no i've never been there either i've not known but just a few people from there one uh there was a girl in in my flight in in uh air force basic training actually who was from there uh_huh oh yeah it always sounds more oh its i think i think everything always sounds more glamorous than it really is because i spent five years in europe and everybody goes oh you're so lucky and i'm like well yeah sort of you know it's but having lived there it's not it's not anything like you picture it you know it's not it's like i still have the [fantasies] about hawaii and all that stuff but and your just like yeah well sort of right but um what do you think about about um their situation should they should they become a state yeah really i i think i'm not opposed to it but when its when the time is right it will probably just kind of happen you know where are they going to put the other one well where where are we going to get another state or texas no that's not a good idea oh yeah oh yeah because it's just a territory or is that what it's called a territory okay is that a u s territory though that would be kind of bizarre that's kind of far well that's true but there is not a whole lot between here and there where you you start dealing with [guam] it's like you know flying over all these other places to get there my dad was stationed in [guam] during the world war two though yeah of course you could [annex] cuba but they wouldn't like that a bit i don't think they'd go for that uh_huh oh yeah he thinks no i have no idea but uh so you think that mostly they're they're pretty much satisfied with things the way they are yeah exactly really that's why i said you know when it when when their time is right when they're ready for it you know that it will come about okay well rick it's been good talking to you i think so i think its they want like five minutes or something don't they oh okay okay so i guess um i start with maybe if if does do you know if the population favors statehood or where we we're supposed to whether we favor it well see i have mixed feelings because um it it with the financial situation i don't really quite understand what would happen there if they would be a burden to us or if they already are a burden so i i really uh i really don't care you know i mean yes i think that's true so if that makes them feel definitely like outsiders but like getting back to the their government benefits they they do have a lot of uh tax benefits yeah so um also of course they they can they join the they can always join the military service they are considered citizens i believe yeah they can yeah that's a strange situation you're a citizen yet you can't vote so if yes i went i worked um i went there for a class in a factory and some of the people in my class couldn't speak [fluent] english they had a very difficult time with it and they they couldn't the ones that could speak speak it had a really hard time reading it so yes as well as the the um the quebec people that that speak french they're supposed to be bilingual but um yes what do you what do you um do do you think they should become independent maybe or do you think they should yeah i think if i was the middle class puerto rican maybe that that would be the um [stablest] thing to do they would yes so they've been talking about this for a long time do you think they're going to ever vote whether they want one one of the three choices i read this ten years ago that they were having these big uh um rallies and people would be in the streets [flashing] signs statehood yes and other people were down with statehood it's it down there if um if you're familiar with their politics they uh it's very i don't know it's called or they have [loudspeakers] on their cars and they run down the neighborhood saying vote for you know pierre he's or uh uh [pedro] he's the best it's really kind of comical yeah these these people have these big [loudspeakers] because they have uh democratic system just like ours where they elect their mayors and their [councilmen] it's really kind of funny it's it's kind of an invasion of your privacy too going down these streets with these really loud speakers yeah there there's some really poor areas where when i went uh it it looked like it was you couldn't if you didn't know the area they they didn't advise you to go out and uh you know go in the the uh poorer sections of town but the the big cities where the big hotels were that was that was safe ground to walk around but uh particularly in san juan we wanted to go walk on the beach at night and they looked at us like we were crazy says no you can't go at night because uh we were we our business was on the other side of the island we were only in san juan it was at night they didn't want us to go out on the beach you know said it was very dangerous um actually we um met some people that were in the naval base down there and uh they didn't particularly like living down there because it was very foreign very different the the people they they didn't treat them nice you know um so i think there i what i learned from them there was a lot of resentment towards the americans so and it was like they were puerto rican and were americans so that's why they're so um emotional about about statehood yet like you say they can't really support themselves so yes yes it's very true i don't know that that's a good one yeah but the thing the thing that bothers me about it the most is they don't make decisions they don't vote i i think if they voted that as you say the um they they would probably stay commonwealth or that would be the best for them yeah but as you say it's two two different cultures i don't i don't know um so you like i said i was reading this ten years ago whether they they're going to be talking about this in another ten years i don't see them doing anything so i don't know and it's also a long way away you know if it was cuba yes [cuba's] very close but uh particularly it's like uh i live in vermont from vermont to florida it's another another uh what fourteen hundred miles across the ocean yeah they have to import a lot of their um [cereals] and things and i don't understand that when they don't have a processing i guess it they it's just as easy to bring the cereal in boxes as it is to bring it in in you know bulk grain and produce it there uh i really don't know um it could be i'm sure they rely heavily on tourism and even all the american companies down there with their uh electronics industries and [pharmaceuticals] are big down there that's one thing that i did notice [pharmaceuticals] electronics makes up i mean enough to be like eight or ten percent of their business but um i really don't know [agriculturally] they could have so much and they and they don't they don't seem to uh i don't know if i heard they don't feed themselves or not i don't think they support themselves [agriculturally] i found that to be really odd you know i can see they can't grow the [grains] i mean they're if they i guess their [grains] don't do well in the [tropics] so like you say grow sugar beets and sugar [cane] and that's all [export] well yeah that is it's [mountainous] and uh but it it looks [fertile] and it it um i mean it rains enough they have the climate and the rain and if not it's like i've been to [saintthomas] and it just starts from the ocean up and and it's very it's like one big rock but uh puerto rico has lots of uh lots of uh [mountainous] region and [coastal] region yeah that's very true i don't know if they just take it for granted that they you know it's an american commonwealth they really don't have to advertise that much but that is an interesting point but i believe it's a very popular vacation destination so the topic is vacations i think so i enjoy them uh the last was back down to lubbock to visit parents it was the last one was back down to lubbock texas to visit family but that's not the tradition for us uh we enjoyed yellow stone real well last year yeah oh rocky mountain national park it's it's just like any of the other national parks it you know there's camping and fishing and hiking and wildlife watching and oh it's yeah we usually try and drive up there oh once every year or two sure to the top the of the peak sure oh it's not bad at all it's it's a beautiful drive now i admit up there the altitude is kind of interesting you know you get a little [lightheaded] and [giddy] but it's fun you know take along a picnic lunch and oh we love it uh no they're only to the east uh i mean to the west of us here in the springs you know it's right there at the very foot of the [rockies] you know and once a week we drive up into the mountains usually you know usually once a week once every other week yeah well i enjoy hills in texas too i've been in sherman no i haven't you uh once to mexico city but just a little day thing on business uh that's nice did you enjoy it did you enjoy it uh_huh uh got to eat some different kinds of foods and meet people from a different culture and oh huh so the place that i went that we've gone on vacation that i think i enjoyed the most was seattle well we uh was two years ago we went during the drought i'm sorry three years ago it had been dry for a whole week it didn't rain for a whole week yeah somehow we picked the right time and uh walked down on the wharf and i think we ate seafood every meal for well not quite every meal but most meals for a week uh it was wonderful uh the pacific science museum the little girl really enjoyed it's very interesting yeah yes it was it was super and uh went to the seattle aquarium and it's right down there on the right there on the ocean and down there on the wharf by the piers and all and you walk down in a dome a glass dome and the bay is [circulating] over your head and you and you can watch the fish swim by and sharks and oh it's yeah and then there's [walrus] and sea [lion] and [porpoises] and oh it's it's amazing oh absolutely without a doubt seattle is beautiful and the mountains the mountains to the east of seattle are just incredible i rode a ferry for the first time in my life you know up there you go from the [mainland] to a whole bunch of islands around there by ferry instead of by bridge and you drive your car on you park your car you set your brake you walk upstairs and you have a beer or coffee or whatever depending on the time of day it's amazing yes yes yeah yeah and there are people literally that everyday take the ferry you know and drive on to it yeah live on an island off off shore from seattle and you uh everyday they drive on the ferry they go upstairs and have their morning coffee take for the twenty to hour and ten minutes that it takes to get across and you know depending on where it is well in some places you know in some areas you know depends on how far they are commuting oh it it's strict i'm i'm a west texan out there in the land of no water and to think that people live on the water daily is kind of odd to me you know it's it's a different life style than we are used to oh galveston yes i liked galveston real well uh there's uh one of the areas down there close to galveston is i forget the name of the island but it's a bird [sanctuary] with all kinds of wild birds [whooping] and sand hill [cranes] and ducks and [pelicans] and it's very pretty uh i like the rio grande valley real well of course you haven't lived until you have been to san [antone] to the to the [alamo] yeah the river walk oh it's and you need to go in the spring when all the flowers are in bloom all up and down through there oh it's just simply beautiful and of course always when i lived in west texas had to annually go down to san [antone] just yeah and go to uh lone star and uh you know make my annual pilgrimage to the lone star [brewery] and uh el paso is kind of neat in kind of a funny way you know go across the border and all uh the davis mountains are interesting out there in west texas yeah yeah uh now the right time of year to go there is in the middle of winter because there's a beauty to the desert that it can most be it can best be appreciated when you are not burning up you know whenever you've been kind of cold where you are at it's most enjoyable to get you know to get warm that's nice uh down there in the lower rio grande valley closer to where the rio grande [empties] into the gulf that's interesting i love the texas hill country and uh austin is neat for for an occasional visit yeah yeah it's a fun few days uh oh u t is real pretty uh there's a lot of little limestone lakes and [caverns] around that area marble falls and all that's real pretty uh i would say definitely go see that part and uh i'd say go to uh midland once just for the heck of it i don't know why exactly but uh you know find out when they are holding the petroleum fair uh alright that's a good that's a good topic huh where did you go on your last vacation what uh_huh yeah uh oh yeah what's your out of the out of the state type where do you like to go really what kind of uh vacation spots are there in colorado uh_huh i think my parents took me there when i was real young we went to colorado springs and uh rocky mountain national park it was real pretty got to see [pike's] peak you drive by yourself up there oh wow oh that's tough i don't i don't think i could do that oh yeah yeah sure is pretty up there you have mountains all around you uh_huh wow that's neat i'm jealous there's hills in texas have you ever been out of the united states for uh vacation or business uh_huh i went to uh the bahamas last year on a cruise for my honeymoon it was really neat i had never been out of really out of texas or out of indiana much out of the united states i'm from indiana so what yeah it was great it was really pretty down there uh_huh yeah really did there in fact one uh family that sat at our table every meal was from london and they had never been to the united states so they were really enjoying it and they were telling us about all their trips they had been to disneyland and it was neat to meet different people uh_huh oh really i've heard it's really pretty up there uh_huh oh oh wow yeah that would have been nice that would have been best time to go uh_huh pacific science really uh_huh uh_huh oh wow oh neat that's the vacation you recommend huh yeah yeah i've heard it is uh_huh really oh wow uh_huh oh uh_huh and your car is on a ferry and it goes across with you that's really neat to work that's really wild huh hour and ten minutes yeah that's really interesting uh_huh yeah yeah it is i've been wanting to go to the west texas and see different parts of texas because i haven't lived here very long and i haven't really seen much so what are some good things in texas to go visit galveston uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah [boardwalk] and all that yeah i've heard it's really pretty really yeah uh_huh down by big bend uh_huh yeah um uh_huh yeah i've heard to go to austin too a lot people say to go down there what's there to see in austin uh_huh and uh what part of virginia uh [blacksburg] okay i've been sounds vaguely familiar yeah okay i i hadn't been down in that part of the state really uh i wish we did oh okay where all you guys go uh_huh uh uh uh all these places that i've never been uh well it really depends i mean uh seems like i do a lot in the midwest lately uh my uh fiancee's family's from wisconsin and so we've been out there a couple of times and uh i uh went to purdue for a couple of years so i've gone up to indianapolis on occasion to visit friends and uh uh i'm a real big baseball fan so i usually try to combine it with uh catching a couple of games somewhere i'm uh i'm a big red sox fan but uh i uh uh you're a red sox fan too i usually try to catch whoever's in town though i don't specifically i you know go to cleveland to see them play the indians or the red sox uh uh that's about it we don't i mean we do a lot of little trips around here uh and uh not that much we've gone out to um uh a place in western pennsylvania called falling water uh have you ever heard of it yeah it's it's really neat it's this house built on on a [waterfall] and it's uh really cool um of course we keep picking crummy weather to go out there uh the first time we went out there was uh the day after hurricane [hugo] had come through so i mean they they didn't have any power and it was really cold and and rainy and uh we went up about a year later and it was better but not a whole lot better so uh where else did we go uh we've gone to richland last year and uh had a good time down there uh my girlfriend has with her sisters but i haven't been down there uh i hear that's nice we're going to get down probably down [norfork] sometime this summer just to see why catch a football game actually uh spend a day and a lot of money yeah i've heard uh i'm not real interested in williamsburg because of the of the price attached to it we just we i uh uh yeah we'll do that oh okay so i can wander around without oh okay i just have it pay somebody to get into the buildings oh okay i didn't know that yeah i think uh they do the whole with you know paying they really did throw away a lot of money to get getting one thing or another but they had a good time so uh uh yeah i was uh we use it live in california and uh my um up up around san francisco and uh there was one year when my father was uh my father's company was starting to do stuff down in los angeles so my father was working down in los angeles for like uh six months or so uh actually i think it was closer i think to a full year and you know we'd he'd fly down there on mondays and fly back on fridays well any time we had a school vacation or something like that we went down to los angeles so i saw i went to disneyland about five times in one year and i really have no great [urge] to go back now oh it was great because uh well the times that were really fun were when uh we had vacation but the kids in los angeles didn't so we basically had one of the parks uh disneyland i mean there's still a lot of people at disneyland but there was another um another amusement park down there [busch] [gradens] uh there was nobody there when we were there we got we won a log floating ride like five straight times we just get get done with them and they go oh do you want to go again sure no i'd like to sometime but yeah i've never been the [fartherest] south i've been on the east coast is charlotte so i um keep wanting to get further you know i thought i would go to florida a couple summers ago but never did it my uh my sister lives in charlotte and they've gone to charleston a couple of times and had a real good time uh yeah one of these days we'll get down there although i don't know when we're going to have vacation to do it we're uh we're getting married in about a year and our honeymoon we're going up to this um uh place in wisconsin called door county it's up by green bay it's a place my girlfriend's also wanted to go and uh it's um uh i don't if you've ever seen a map of wisconsin but there's kind of like a little a little thing sticking out uh in the lake michigan that's door county so yeah they call it the cape [cod] of the uh the midwest so uh we're thinking that'll be a lot of fun she uh she had this uh book of pictures from it that were really nice kind of like a travel guide so uh that should be a lot of fun oh oh boy oh that'll be fun well yeah you won't even notice it though is that is that how you got into this uh this you know uh data base oh okay yeah i was i was just i mean most of the people i've talk to are from are from texas so when i you know when i heard you were from virginia i was like oh okay there's somebody different and you said oh i got somebody down in texas i go okay that the connection right there uh i uh most people talk to texas there's been a couple of other the people uh most of whom are like me that work in in speech labs that are going to use data base eventually so uh it was fun i actually yesterday i ended up talking to somebody else from the same lab i'm in oh uh_huh uh_huh uh that's neat i haven't uh i haven't had something like that happen just uh just getting the one guy from the lab uh you're sure have a nice town uh my uh sister lives on lake norman just yeah uh we keep wanting to get down there and visit them over the summer and it's never really works out yeah traffic not much else we do for vacation really uh just so we don't haven't been able to take really no no are you guys golfers or uh except our outside though oh i don't think there are any traveling that was in my early teens down in that area and i'm know real sure there are um when uh i was thinking i might be minor league but yeah [buccaneers] yeah um yeah i maybe seeing them um in a town just west of here frederick has a uh has a minor league team that plays in the same league with salem and uh i think we may be seeing them this weekend yeah i think they're out of town yeah uh that's a nice little town actually frederick uh oh there's there's some nice things in baltimore you know the inner harbor and the uh the aquarium and all that are very nice uh they've just done a uh you known i you know the aquarium is one of those things that you know because everybody uh i live down in the south western part of [blacksburg] uh_huh have you ever heard of virginia tech v p i yeah okay uh_huh okay well we vacation a lot how about you quite frequently well we retired early so we're we take trips pretty often well we go to maine every fall then that's kind of a family visit and a vacation all up and down the coast and i have a daughter in texas and one in new mexico so we go out there and we go to florida and down oh we were just out recently at the outer banks of north carolina is that right where do you go what type of vacation uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh what club do you follow red good me too yeah uh_huh uh_huh ever go up in pennsylvania in the mountains or oh i've heard of it i've never been there uh_huh gee uh_huh oh did you did you go to williamsburg have you been down there uh_huh uh_huh we were down well when we came back from the outer banks we came up due [norfork] and spent the night there with a friend in [portsmith] and then went to williamsburg and spent a night yeah yeah but it's a pretty neat down to just go and walk around if you like to walk it's a good town to just walk in you can go to the buildings and not go in if you're not yeah you can wander it's a good town to wander in that's right yeah yeah we really didn't do that really this time we just uh visited around we've done it a couple of times and that's enough for uh probably another twenty years oh that's great as a kid though isn't it i mean uh_huh right have you ever you've never been down to [epcot] at florida and disney that's good we we really enjoy that we've been two or three times and probably go back again this winter oh uh_huh charleston is a really nice place to visit uh_huh yeah it's a real pretty place oh are you yeah uh_huh is it on uh one of the lakes uh_huh oh okay yeah that would be really nice oh uh_huh uh_huh sounds good well i don't know what our next trip will be i guess our next well i know what my next trip i'm going to be a grandmother in july the first the first one so my next trip is going to be to texas yeah in the middle in the middle of the summer well they'll be air conditioning anyway so yeah my daughter's a [temp] at texas instruments and working on this project uh_huh that's it yeah i talked to one in california i never asked him the other day how he was connected i don't think he was t i employee oh i see is that right well we spent last week end in charlotte with real good friends that had just moved to back east from oklahoma and she's uh working on this project too i mean she's talking on the project too and uh we got back monday and i got a call yesterday and it was her on t i network uh_huh oh does she that's nice out there uh_huh yeah it's real pretty well are you a golfer no me either no uh_huh no uh_huh nope not too much into sports just walking that's all no professionals oh there's one in salem salem rebels salem rebels [buccaneers] oh okay oh is that right up there in frederick uh_huh i've never been up there i've never visited baltimore i'd like to go just sight see a little bit sometime uh_huh okay uh have you did you have you grown up in dallas stephanie oh where are you from in germany well now there's a place i'd like to visit oh that's neat uh_huh my my husband had a bicycle tour of europe or took a bicycle tour about five months right after the second world war and so we've seen lots of pictures of the of the beautiful spots and areas yeah yeah that's neat neat what kind of vacations do you like oh uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh yeah yeah when when our children were younger we enjoyed we lived up in uh new york or new jersey and and used to like uh traveling into upstate new york and camping and we had a little collapsible sailboat and liked to sail and that sort of thing but we've never really uh did any diving or anything little bit of of uh uh-oh water skiing but not much of uh of anything else uh uh_huh it's got to be the water right when when we were in jersey we used to go down to the jersey beach a lot and really enjoyed that a lot it's really they had a really nice beach areas there uh_huh oh i see that's a really pretty area too uh_huh yeah yeah we loved the we loved the the new jersey area too because the the lakes were really pretty close you know you could you could drive within twenty minutes to an hour and just be at a real nice vacation spot where you could sail and and just really and then we weren't too for from the appalachian trail we did quite a bit of hiking which is kind of fun are you a you a [hiker] or not not so much huh uh_huh so your your next your plans are try to find someplace to scuba dive you have any children okay then that's probably one of the reasons our we had little children all the time so some of the things are not as quite as uh [adaptable] yeah it is you have to try to figure out kinds of things that you can do that they will enjoy too and so i think yeah eleven or twelve i would think probably but maybe fifteen even i know that uh uh one of one thing that happens to us to vacation trips now is that usually that try to involve some of the members of the family you know we go wherever somebody is that we haven't seen for a while so that that's kind of uh we just came back from uh uh grand rapids where we saw one of our sons graduate from uh with his master's degree in social work and so that was fun and and the summer we have a we have a a reunion in in salt lake area up by park cities where we're going to camp for a week with as many members of of a rather large reunion group that uh as we can get together so yeah um we we've we've moved around enough so that we now have people in different parts of the country i guess my favorite vacation idea would be to somehow figure out something kind of mobile where you could stop and sleep maybe you know like a a small camper we've we've travelled in a big one i hate them because they're hard to [jockey] around you know but maybe a pickup with the back on yeah so you could kind of sleep in it sometimes but you wouldn't want to do it all the time uh we have enough friends here and there i would just love to just drive through the united states and stop and see people i know and visit for a day and then go on and you know uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah i think i think that would real and i would like to maybe not take great long trips but but have your home base where your home is and then just travel out for like maybe oh a month maybe go and yeah yeah there are a lot of neat neat places to visit in america that's for sure we've i haven't been much to the south i haven't been in in georgia or florida or mississippi or alabama i guess that's those are the only states i have not visited but uh up the coast uh at uh uh in maryland and around there where the where the early history is there's some [johnstown] and uh in in that area is just really neat interesting things to so you know so yeah we took a trip uh around to the uh civil war battle grounds and things back in nineteen sixty when it was the [centennial] or something i believe it was uh had about three kids then i think but that was a really fun interesting trip i we we read bruce book before we went you know and so we were ready to look up the places we read about it was really interesting yeah yeah yeah well now camping is fun with kids if you're you know once they get a little bigger not teeny tiny ones but even even some little ones do pretty good but but when they get a little bigger so they can help that that's a fun way to to uh cut costs and it's enjoyable too very [restful] i mean i find yeah i find the outdoors very relaxing and you know kind of a change yeah well i'm with you i need my creature comforts too well it was great to talk to you okay see you later bye bye uh no i've only been here for the last ten years uh i grew up most of my childhood in germany uh and we we took a lot of vacations while we were there because everything was within driving distance so we we travelled all over europe when i was when i was very young unfortunately a a little bit too young to really appreciate uh i was grade school age uh um that that would be a to me a really nice vacation because i'm i'm not in physical shape for something like that but uh i i sure would work on it if i had an opportunity like that uh well my husband and i are scuba [divers] so we both like to go to dive resorts uh we went to hawaii on our honeymoon and we [dove] there uh but we we did about six [dives] while we were there and uh we were originally planning on going to [cayman] uh last year uh but we weren't able to get enough people together for the trip we had to have like eleven people for this package uh deal uh and we couldn't get enough people together uh to go so it ended up falling falling through we were going to get a really good price uh_huh uh_huh snorkeling oh really um well my husband and i both like water so any any vacation that we go on is usually involves close to the ocean or or something like that yeah we after we moved away from germany we moved to new hampshire and i lived there for seven years uh and i really enjoyed that because you know the mountains were real close we like the we like the white mountains and uh unfortunately i didn't really get to go skiing much while i was there i went skiing once uh_huh uh not not really so much if if if there was some place that that we went to where there was hiking involved i i would be you know happy to go hiking but we we never have really planned a vacation around uh places to go hiking yeah our next vacation will will be scuba diving i'm sure no not yet yeah yeah it's a it's a little more difficult planning a vacation when you have have children yeah yeah and diving is something that especially for small children uh i think the the minimum age for diving is is probably legal anyway would be probably about sixteen yeah uh_huh um uh_huh that that sounds like a lot of fun our family had a reunion last year that was kind of like that too that there were several hundred uh people and they all kind of met at a central place i i didn't go uh but it would have been nice it would have been a nice vacation uh_huh or something like uh what's the like the volkswagen [vanagon] i've heard is really nice yeah uh_huh my dad has been talking for years about uh getting a fifth wheel and just picking up he's retired uh he's in his sixties and he uh would like to just get a fifth wheel and just travel across the country and spend a month here or a couple of weeks there and just you know not be settled anywhere just see see the rest of the country uh_huh he he does that quite a bit he he hasn't lately though uh because he's been ill uh but he's been known to be gone for a month or two at a time and you know he'll say this is my [itinerary] i'm going here here and here and i'll be back in about two months uh_huh have you been a to a lot of the different historical sites uh_huh yeah i i think right right now while my husband and i don't have any kids we'll probably take as many vacations as we can doing things like scuba diving and and adventurous types of things and then when eventually when we have kids now his his folks did a lot of traveling across country you know they went to the grand canyon and did things like that yeah yeah yeah i i do enjoy camping as long as i have a shower nearby i'm fine and electricity yeah it was nice talking to you too beth okay bye bye so where was your last vacation oh i i'd well actually i did visit hawaii once but i never made it off of oahu which i've heard is not the nicest of the islands uh_huh oh that's wow yeah oh i've i've been lots of places my last vacation was actually in morocco i guess we that one would count uh that was about a year and a half ago and uh well my husband is french and we were living in france at the time and we decided that i i've never been to africa and i needed to get that continent since i hadn't been there yet and it it's actually it's a fairly common vacation place for french people to go and they speak french and so uh you know in that sense is just a little bit easier and it just seemed like it would be a fun place to go and so we we didn't really have enough time we had about a little bit less than two weeks and as always it it seems a bit uh rushed we do a lot of traveling around we rented a car and drove pretty much everywhere no in fact some of the days we froze it was well we were there in the winter in uh january or february i don't remember which uh_huh uh_huh at at excuse me at what age did you oh that's too bad because uh_huh yeah it was a very interesting vacation the only thing i didn't like was in some of the more [touristy] areas uh um the it would just be [besieged] by people wanting to be your guide and you there were some places where people there would be kids there that were excellent at ripping you off and we had nothing taken because we knew and we had things in inside pockets and in you know in jacket underneath a coat type of thing but uh_huh yeah the the worst place was in [marrakech] and the other cities it wasn't nearly as bad and a couple of them it was what we did in some of the other cities and they tell you to do that is to hire a local guide it doesn't matter who it is and they keep everyone else away from you and it's worth it and it's like ten dollars a day or something and its worth it just to keep everyone else away from [badgering] you and you feel stupid doing that but we did it and we were much happier and you also get in to see things that you might not get into if you were alone uh uh yes no actually i haven't been all through europe like i haven't been to italy yet uh we're going to go for a conference in september and so hopefully we'll get to travel a little bit too uh my more exciting spots have been i've been to the [galapagos] islands uh_huh that was one of the most wonderful vacations i've ever had yes if you like wildlife it's a fabulous vacation if you don't like wildlife it's probably not of interest but it that was really really fabulous and just the photos i have of it and gosh incredible and be so close um august eighty eight and then actually after there i went to um hawaii a lot of my travel has been sort of based around conferences or business meetings and so i went to hawaii and then to australia and japan and china i i actually i didn't go diving i i'm a [diver] and so that's that's actually been another of my favorite vacations has been taking little diving trips but uh no i didn't get to the great barrier reef i drove from [sidney] down to [melbourne] and over to [adelaide] it's gorgeous absolutely gorgeous the coastline was just incredible it's huge australia yeah uh but i don't remember if i had shrimp i don't think so oh i like that too but uh in fact i didn't eat out that much there because i was traveling by myself in a car it would have been i think much more fun to do it like in the van with a bunch of people but uh uh_huh and i was by myself in china too yeah china was a little bit more uh of a challenge but it it wasn't more of a challenge in a sense because i hired a guide all the time and so i never you know got out by myself or not much no actually i paid about either a thousand dollars or a little bit no maybe it was about a thousand dollars maybe a little bit less i don't really remember for ten days including all my meals a guide a car the [airfare] and but this is from hong kong because i was already in hong kong and um but it only cost you about a thousand dollars to go there and i went to beijing shanghai [chengdu] and actually then i took a train up from shanghai to a little [quingdao] i think is the name of it it's a little uh sort of getaway [retreat] village not far from shanghai it's just a train ride and that i had two internal one yeah two internal plane [flights] and a couple of other things it was really uh_huh around a thousand oh [japan's] ridiculous and i stayed i didn't stay in the top of the line hotels but i stayed in they were all completely clean and you know they were newly built and they were sort of the lower end of the top of the line hotels because they said you can't stay in the cheap stuff right right uh but yeah that was i highly recommend that way to go if you're ever interested in going the route i dealt with this woman her name was rita at china tours in boston yeah uh and a friend of mine who had gone for a business trip to china and she just gave me this woman's name to contact and it would really be fun i think ideally with like two couples because you have a car and a driver and a guide and then uh actually my last vacation was in connecticut uh we went home to visit family before that we were in hawaii oh it wasn't actually it when we were in oahu uh i couldn't wait to get off we we took a cruise and we went to four different islands and it was a really nice kauai was nice and maui was nice we had we had a great time we were there for ten days yeah yes so where have you been morocco really no kidding what what did you just decide to go there or uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh i'm sure it was wonderful uh_huh was it hot really uh_huh uh_huh i was born in saudi arabia and uh when my father worked there we they used to travel quite a bit all around you know in in europe and whatnot but i was very young so i don't remember that and i was three when we moved back here so i don't remember but we have all these wonderful pictures of all these great places that they have been and that i was when i was a baby but so morocco i think would be wonderful because that's you know that's that area of the world i think would be great uh_huh yeah uh_huh really we we found that in jamaica it was the same way that people would come up and try and sell you well try and sell drugs and things like that but they they were so destitute and i guess they they make all their money on tourism and and they would come up and ask you you know if if you want to buy different things and really after awhile it really gets annoying you know it it's a little scary too when they're coming up and they're all over you uh_huh uh_huh oh really really uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well that's great where else have you been well you lived in france so you've been all through europe no really uh_huh really lots of wildlife huh yeah uh_huh now when was that when were you there uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh did you go on the barrier did you see the great barrier reef and and go snorkeling uh_huh oh diving uh_huh uh_huh is it really yeah yeah did you have shrimp i've seen in you know they they show all this wonderful seafood and and great big [prawns] you know the big shrimp and no didn't have shrimp there huh i remember food uh_huh uh_huh oh you're adventurous you went by yourself really really oh wow uh_huh uh_huh was it very expensive you're kidding no kidding uh_huh uh_huh all for a thousand dollars wow that really surprises me i guess i relate it to to japan where things are very expensive aren't they yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah and you don't want to stay in the very very very exclusive because you don't really even get a flavor of the country if you're yeah yeah wow oh really uh_huh okay where have you all been on vacation recently detroit is that a nice vacation spot right okay right so you probably wouldn't recommend that as a big tourist spot ooh that would be nice did you scuba dive there ooh that would be nice oh that would be enjoyable right yeah that's a nice break i haven't been on vacation in a while either um usually when we go we go to colorado to estes park area which is up kind of near denver and uh stay in the mountains up there do a little hiking and [resting] get away from the texas heat that kind of thing so it's a lot of fun i worked up there last summer so i guess it was kind of like a vacation the whole summer long worked at a camp there and so i got to spend a lot of time up in the mountains so that's probably my favorite place when i have to go somewhere on a vacation oh that's nice we um we [canoed] up in arkansas at the buffalo river and that's the best place that i've ever [canoed] it's really really pretty i was a little kid then and we to have uh we stayed at some park and they had a little uh mountain man who came down the river every night and he would give a little talk about mountain things you know i think he wasn't a real mountain man but we were pretty convinced he was a full [hermit] who lived up in the woods that he'd come in his little log boat down the river and we would have to we'd and he'd make sassafras tea out of sassafras roots that he'd found and that's a good family place to go and then the river was really nice because it wasn't too frightening but it wasn't you know too easy either it was like that's true uh_huh right yeah well that's good well we um let's see the only other place i've ever [vacationed] we'd you know go on camping trips up to texoma and things like that and then i went to england a few years ago i was a student there and spent um a semester studying abroad in london and that was a great time because it's so that's such a neat place and it's there's not a language barrier so you don't i mean there there's a little bit because there's some of those english words that you just don't exactly know what they mean and a lot of people have trouble wrestling with their accents but it's it was really fun i i i really enjoyed that i'm probably going back there to work for a year it it's really nice i would i would spend all my time in london or most of my time and that's it was really different being in a big city because i don't get much into urban you know really urban areas a lot and it was it's really it's sort of a weird little anonymous feeling where no one knows who you are and you can spend a whole day without talking to anyone which i thought i would just hate but it ended up being kind of nice because you're not accountable to anyone you could just kind of kind of walk around and observe i did a lot of just going out by myself and riding on the subway and watching people and i had a great time doing that it was really interesting yeah i know i keep wanting to get up to i haven't i haven't been anywhere else outside the united states i haven't been to mexico or canada or oh yeah that would be nice i had a friend from there then i i'd love to go somewhere in asia but i'd have to have a tour guide with me to help with all the language and all that so yeah that's why that's why england was nice even we traveled in europe for about a week and that was even nice because there wasn't uh the most the places we went we went to germany and switzerland and yeah we have we we did we [whirlwinded] through europe it was just insane twelve days where we'd just stop like a city a day and you slept on the train at night but there wasn't a it was strange it was kind of sad there wasn't ever a language problem there because everyone in germany knew english and everyone in switzerland knew english so we were kind of pitiful we found one restaurant we were in and got seated and then no one knew english in there and we were just finally had to break out the phrase book and start looking up things but it was oh i had fondue that was easy to say tried to get fondue and white wine and that was we were able to have that pretty pretty [effortlessly] there were some people at the next table who spoke english so we [elicited] their aid for a while and they were very helpful so it was it was a pleasant time i'd i'd love to go back there there's just not time there's not enough time to go see everything and then to afford to see everything right that's that and sleeping late i keep hoping for well it was nice talking with you and have a good afternoon okay good bye okay recently my most recent trip was last year and that was detroit yeah well it wasn't really it was um uh to see an old relative and it was uh just to uh have some fellowship with her no the only thing that i i visited that you know is quite a tourist spot is [cancun] mexico and that was real nice uh no we just kind of walked the beaches and looked at all the beautiful scenery there yeah and just kind of relaxed and [unwound] a little bit from our daily routine huh uh_huh yes oh that's always refreshing to get away from oh well that's nice yeah well my uh my middle daughter and her husband have just taken up a new activity and that's canoeing and uh they've been to the guadalupe river and they also uh uh have been to uh i guess colorado and they've really enjoyed it it's a whole new uh_huh huh sure uh_huh oh that's neat sure uh_huh well you learn a lot of um skills too and i think you're more receptive when you're younger than when you're older to learn new skills and i think they really it really [penetrates] in your memory you know what to do because you really have a great interest in it because it's something you weren't forced to do so you have kind of a relaxed mode of learning and you're more receptive uh_huh oh that's exciting uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i had a friend that uh visited england not well i think it's been probably two years now but that's her next goal and she can do it is go back to england because she really has a great desire to do that because the love that she um has for it now after visiting it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh do your own thing yeah uh_huh that's wonderful there's a lot out there to see i'll say well i lived across the street almost from canada so that was that that's a nice place canada is very nice uh_huh oh yes absolutely sure somebody that knows their way around well you've been quite a few places there once you think about it huh uh_huh oh that's great uh_huh that's great uh_huh what did you wind up with oh okay uh uh_huh they kind of guided you uh_huh well good i guess that's why we need to plan for retirement so when we do have the free time we'll have the the means to uh pursue our dreams yeah i guess that's what retirement is all about yes uh_huh i understand that well it was nice talking with you too craig you do the same thank you bye bye certainly um well i i tend to uh take two kinds of vacations the vacations to visit family and the vacations to just have a week being cultural and going to the theater and doing sight seeing and things like that oh well i couldn't live without the family vacations but uh my favorite is the the [indulgent] ones where we go off and and uh see places that have interested me since i was a kid for the most part and uh uh not anymore they uh they've been in san diego for the last few years and they're moving to florida and that's one of those things you just have to go once a year so uh basically it it sorts out into that and then once about once every three or four years i try to get over to england because i lived there for a while some years back oh beautiful country beautiful country beautiful people but uh and i'd real really like to go because um i'm fairly recently married and and my husband has been hearing about these people for years and uh but he's never met them so uh i'd like i'd like to do that but anyway that's that's our typical vacation and uh we enjoy the family vacations but the other ones are very special [getaways] and we probably take one of each every year how about yourself oh i've never been on a cruise uh_huh yeah um well what do you do on a cruise i've never been on a cruise huh uh_huh uh_huh and where have you been on these cruises i see oh the the mexican coast that's all mexico i think where are you from originally uh_huh uh_huh oh yes well i i grew up in dallas so i mean it's not it's not like i'm going home my my parents retired first to san diego and they're going now to florida and so they're going very nice places thank god that will be a pleasure to visit and get to know i really came to love san diego and feel very comfortable there they've been there eight years and uh you know i just grab the car and drive everywhere so it it is it is nice but it's not home this is home and um and i've never thought about a cruise it's so funny uh_huh uh_huh what's the best part from your point of view uh_huh oh that will be nice oh sure sure well go in don't go in the winter oh well there are exceptions made for special occasions like that but the ordinary thing is to stay out of the north in the winter and get out of texas in the summer so huh well that sounds wonderful i i guess i i would [contemplate] going on a cruise uh-oh all circumstances permitting it uh_huh huh how long are the cruises uh_huh yeah yeah uh i tend when when i spend enough money to go overseas i go for a long time oh that's interesting uh_huh oh uh_huh huh that's really nice uh_huh huh well may maybe now things are [calming] down again that will happen well that that's really great uh i i mean as i said basically all i've done is go back and forth to parents and uh and and uh we had my husband had a conference in l a so we spent a week in l a and of course uh i'm i'm i'm very unusual i like lynn do you do you want to start okay do you want to tell me about summer vacations you've taken or uh_huh which is your favorite uh_huh your family doesn't live close then okay yep i understand wow i've only been there once and i'd love to go back and it was yeah it we had a great time well uh we we as you do take family vacations uh sometimes one a year and but this year we're not going to be taking one for several reasons but vacations we really enjoy i think we've been on three cruises and we we really love cruises we've gone on carnival cruise lines and uh we've gone fairly inexpensive from as most cruises go uh we usually book just a month before it's ready to go and we get upgraded last last two times in fact we had an outside room and it was beautiful and we like not having to take our [suitcase] in and out of hotel rooms and drag it all around it's kind of oh my god you do everything you i mean you can be as busy as you want to be or as laid back as you want to be you can sit in the sun all day around the pool or you can take part in the games that they have going on they always have bingo they have a [casino] uh they have a [massage] parlor they have exercise i mean you can do anything and that's just [aboard] ship and then when the ship [docks] you get to go sight seeing and shopping and that's quite fun uh nassau san juan saint thomas we've been there twice we went two cruises that hit those islands but with different people we we've gone with friends each time and then we went to uh the western caribbean which is uh port uh [cancun] [cozumel] and [ocho] [rios] pardon me yes uh_huh and but it was wonderful so we really like those and uh i guess we just like to go someplace someplace entirely different we've been to a few places in this country we still have a lot to see though we're from illinois originally and we've been down in texas eighteen years and so like you we always try to make it you know back home to see the relatives we both still have family there and that's fun it brings back a lot of memories uh things are different there though they're uh i don't know it's just entirely different world than this area did you uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh that's great oh they they they really are we've yeah as i said we've done them three times we'd be going again this this year if circumstances hadn't changed we we'd probably go my husband would you know the minute i said the word he he he's [chomping] at the bit he kind of likes the [casinos] a little bit but i like all of that i like seeing other countries and shopping in other places i like shopping i can shop anyplace shop in london and france and wherever now my kids are moving to toronto so we're going to be able to go up there so i'm kind of looking forward to that except i hate to see them go but oh that's what everybody says and i i think it's i think i'll try to stay away except my my second [grandchild] will be born in in the winter in january so that will be hard to stay away from yeah isn't that the truth uh_huh well there's all age groups too and that's that's kind of fun uh you if you sit at a table with a lot of people for your meals you meet different people you may meet people you know thirty years older than you or younger and everybody is really interesting and everybody is there to have a good time and uh we've only gone on the seven day cruises they have shorter ones and then they have ten day ones but i think seven days is long enough for us by that time we're ready to get home and get back to our routine i think most vacations uh seven days is enough for us we've gone i think when we went to england and france we were there ten twelve days and that was pushing it a bit yeah well that that makes sense it really does i mean oh we went to panama too went to panama last august our son in law is from panama and uh we went with our daughter and son in law to visit his parents who live there and his father is a a doctor and his mother is a kindergarten teacher and they took time off it was their winter and they were having a little break so they took some time off that uh they could show us around and it it is a beautiful country it is beautiful they have mountains we were an hour away from the mountains or an hour away from the shore and it it is gorgeous they live in a small town called david which is northern panama up near costa rica and uh it's it's just it's just a gorgeous country most people don't realize it i think if they could get tourists coming to their country they'd improve the economy considerably yeah we really hope hope so yeah well that that's that's pretty good that's pretty good oh do you like l a well this is the season for vacations and uh i guess for places i like to go i enjoy going to the beach and having having outdoor being outdoors somewhere someplace that's very different than texas and i as far as maybe maybe as the summer heat comes along i would sort of like going somewhere where it's not so hot and being able to be outside enjoy outside activities so enjoy going places where i enjoy playing tennis so i like to have a tennis court there or or if it's at the beach the beach is great a pool is great and i oh well let's see we have plans this year to drive up to the uh to colorado and we will be going to estes park and colorado springs so one year we went to the southwest corner of colorado into [durango] and north of the area there and i boy that's a nice a nice place to visit it's really nice at there's a nice nice train ride that goes up to the city of silverton where they used to do a lot of silver mining and uh and then actually north north of that is another town and a smaller on a smaller scale i guess than silverton but i and then there's lots and lots of real of mountains that are covered with uh boulders so i guess people jeep through that area and we did not have a chance to do that but i sure would like to go back there and do that again i have not been but i have heard it's wonderful right right and the beach is nice the beach is really nice isn't it oh sea shells sea shells yeah oh where do you stay my husband always wants to go to [destin] we just have not gone that direction yet okay right oh that's nice great oh nice oh great oh well we have just we have just are you driving oh well we are the neighborhood that we live they are switching to an alternate calendar this year so it starting well starting at the end of july we will have two vacation weeks in october and two vacation weeks in march so that will be an interesting turn on vacations for our family so i well it's what it truly is supposed to mean is nine weeks of school three weeks of vacation nine weeks of school three weeks of vacation and uh in and in the summer would be more like a two month two month break so and they hope to boost the they hope to boost the learning of the children just the retention of the material for them so uh yeah yeah so it's so anyway so maybe maybe within a year we will see how that falls we will head for we will head for florida maybe in somewhat of an off season instead of summer so uh well that's probably all we need to do today alright thanks a lot right yeah where where do you usually go uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh right we are uh we have not had a vacation in several years so be our first chance in awhile uh we are going to go to uh [destin] florida which is a very nice beach area if you are not familiar with it oh it's it's gorgeous uh we used to go quite a bit uh before i moved out here we were closer and uh used to go almost every summer uh and rent a condo there on the beach uh there's quite a few uh there's a lot of development of of condominiums there on the beach front and uh so they have uh they are very very large [condos] and they have quite a few rooms and uh so we we will usually rent one for about a week or so and go down oh yes it's uh it's beautiful white sand and very clear blue green water and a lot of nice waves usually uh enough enough to make it i am sorry uh there's not as many sea shells along there uh that's the only thing that they really do not they have some but not not so much um if you go further down uh you will usually find some but not right in there uh i do not know why it is but uh it just it seems not it seems not to have as many there right there but uh we we enjoy it uh it's the place where we stay is we usually stay at the same place every year and they are like i say right on the beach so it's a place called [jetty] east uh j e t t y e a s t and it's uh called that because it's at the very end of uh a [jetty] there which is uh sort of at the end of this little little point and uh it's a at the very end it's the last set of condominiums there and it's uh it's very nice uh it's not very expensive uh you can i think we are going to go with another couple and their kids and uh they have a we have a uh i think it's three bedroom or two bedroom uh condominium which will sleep i do not know quite a few about six or eight and uh cause it's got you know pull out couches and all that and uh i think it's going to cost us per couple about three hundred dollars for the week yeah it really is because uh the uh you know it has got its own kitchen full size kitchen and everything and this one i think has two baths and it's the one we got is on the on the beach side so we have got a beautiful view and balcony and uh just you know it's really a nice stay uh in fact we stayed there on our honeymoon we i had won a trip to the bahamas but did not get to take it on our honeymoon time so we instead went there uh and loved it just as much as as if we had gone to the bahamas we in fact we stayed an extra day or so because we liked the uh the particular uh uh uh [suite] we had gotten was very nice and so we decided to stay but uh it's a pretty nice place you will need to try to go and stay there sometime it's a little far from here but uh yeah we are we are it will take uh a day and a half to get there probably so uh_huh uh what does what does that mean alternate oh uh_huh right i see kind of [scattering] the vacation out throughout the year yeah right right okay okay so long bye bye where is your favorite place to go oh that's great have you ever been there oh that's a perfect age for disneyworld oh that's great yeah so we've been there a number of times and uh we're going next year we have a business trip every fall well we go on a lot of business trips i i don't work well we do we my husband travels a couple times a month and in the position he's in they don't care if i go along so it's great i just kind of join up when it's something interesting and uh disneyworld is the one for a week next year and it will be at this time of the year and this year we're leaving uh uh matter of fact we're leaving next saturday for new orleans have have you ever been there well you know we went there once in fact we had been in dallas and we were on our way home and we were driving and we said let's go to new orleans so when he said well this year you know i have a week there on a a project he's going to be and then i said well i'll going along i hope it's swimming season because it wasn't a tremendous thing amount of things to do that i wanted to do there it well and that's probably we do like the night life to an extent and they do have a mardi gras night planned and i'm kind of anxious for that but uh yours to disneyworld sounds a little bit better did you know that next week there's several t v shows coming from there in celebration of their anniversary well and with a daughter nine it is just she's old enough to really grasp the meaning behind uh so well if you're working then you're probably on a limited amount of time per year that you can go oh that's well i really i think travel when i heard my topic today i thought okay that's my that's my favorite and really at our point of life our children are grown and uh it has just worked out really well with this uh position he's in because i can go at a spur of the moment or what have you and it depends where he's going whether or not i decide to go along but i do do like to travel and it's uh i don't mind the pool life at all during the day and i like to sight see and i love to shop so it's that's right but it well and one of my very favorite is las vegas uh that i would have to say we both end up going to las vegas uh probably once every maybe year and a half and presently we have quite a few frequent [flyer] miles and so i've just requested that they send us two of our coach tickets because we have a lot of flying with continental and they're recommending that you use those because they don't know the future of continental and i said now that we have all the miles we better start using them uh so we are thinking that we might go to las vegas during the winter this year sometime for just kind of a quick trip uh when we normally go that way we like to go to california at the same time because we really don't get out there as often as you could probably from texas i think that's a good trip and really for the children to learn as well for a family vacation that would be excellent now we did what we sometimes do since we are in ohio and it takes a while just to even get to the what i would call the more [picturesque] part of the country we will fly to something like once we flew to colorado to denver and then we rented a car for two weeks and we went through the northern route and through utah and as far west as las vegas and then we returned through uh new mexico that you just mentioned and it was oh it was just great oh i i think that's that's the way to well we haven't traveled outside the united states that much uh we usually take family type vacations we're looking forward to one in october to disneyworld in florida we have a nine year old when when both of my kids were much younger and this time we're going to be going with just one daughter and she's nine so it ought to just be a ball uh_huh i think so too oh wonderful so you travel a lot uh_huh sure uh_huh oh that will be fun too yes we went years ago we haven't been lately and i know they've changed it a lot and upgraded everything but we used to have a lot of fun there uh_huh yeah if you don't like the night life and the antique shopping there isn't much there but that can be fun uh_huh no i know this is a real good time to go because they are having so many activities and special shows yes be excited about all of it well not really we're doing the same thing tying it in with my husband's business trip and i just save vacation for things like that and uh just travel whenever we can how easy right uh_huh sure uh_huh uh_huh so that's perfect what more could you ask for and then got to pick and choose the places oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right it's kind of shaky that's true it really is uh_huh our last big trip we drove through new mexico and colorado and went to the grand canyon and and uh back through silverton and [durango] and oh it was fun it was so relaxing and a really neat part of the country and the kids were old enough to really enjoy it our uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh oh there's too much to see really where have you been on a wonderful vacation oh that's where we go home too that's where we go yes my husband's family lives just off of academy [boulevard] at [maize] land yes uh oh we've been there we haven't skied at [broadmoor] we went there last year at christmas time and it was twenty seven below so we had to cancel our ski lessons really oh just this year oh my uh so that wouldn't be a good spot to go on a vacation now if you were a skier uh_huh no uh_huh yes oh well we went on a family cruise last year on the premier family cruise line and then we went to disney it was all part of the package and on the cruise ship they had mickey and [minnie] and chip and dale and goofy and donald duck and it was really oriented toward little kids so the kids could eat with chip and dale you know and you know it was just a lot of fun so then we were on the cruise for three days in the bahamas and then landed at cape [canaveral] and then drove over to orlando and spent four days at disney yes that was the way to travel yes yes that's right that's right and kids are really cheaper too we really lucked out because the ship we were supposed to be on developed engine trouble two days before our cruise so they said we could either cancel [reschedule] or take whatever was available so we took whatever was available and we left a day early and they put us up at the cocoa beach hilton and the ship that was available the only uh rooms that hadn't been booked were the [suites] so we got the [suites] at the same price as a regular cabin yeah so then our cruise was actually extended a day and our disney was extended a day so we turned a seven day trip into ten and they paid for everything yes so that was a wonderful vacation yes well what kind of things do you like to do when you go to colorado yes yeah oh uh_huh right that would be yes i know i think one of the places i always hit in colorado is that current outlet store that's what oh with the santa claus on the cover yes i've already ordered from that one but we will probably be going up at thanksgiving this year so texas yes i'm in the dallas area in plano uh so that's not too far oh yes well it was when we left last year we left on the eighteenth right before that big snow storm hit colorado and we pulled in just as it hit so how do you go do you go up through the [raton] pass when you go up there that's on like route two eighty seven or something like that okay okay we uh went a different way when we went last christmas because of bad weather and because we were pulling a little u haul trailer because we had to take our dog in the car there was no room for luggage so we went all interstate we went up um through oklahoma city and then up through uh kansas and then turned left and went in on i seventy and it wound up only taking us about an extra hour it was a little more mile wise but because you could go sixty five miles an hour on the well normally when we go on vacation we go home to colorado really yeah colorado springs is where we're from how funny really we live up up uh lake in the [broadmoor] area that's where my my in laws are oh uh_huh as of you can't even ski there anymore yeah they closed it down uh_huh they don't have enough money to keep it going it doesn't doesn't pay so well you know well now i don't know now colorado springs is real accessible to lake [breckenridge] it's only a couple of hours away and uh so it's it might not be too bad if you want to go skiing somewhere else but you can't can't ski up there any more oh i'd like to go on vacation i my husband and i want to go to florida to go to disney world but we have two little ones that are under two right now so we want to wait until they're a little bit older to do that and oh well how fun oh yeah oh i bet wow well that sounds pretty yeah that sounds pretty good and it was all a big package deal where you just pay one price and get everything really wow oh what a deal great well that's great oh yeah i bet that sounds like the way i'd want to do it i think oh well we like to ski of course so we spend so much time with our families uh and seeing our friends because we moved to texas about two years ago so when we go back we are just jam packed full of people to see and things to do so we don't we don't get a lot of time to just vacation we did um last year though go to san antonio for memorial day which was fun just to get to kind of walk around and see the sights down there and do that kind of thing uh but you know other other than that with with both my kids being under two it's real hard to do any any kind of events that uh don't don't require as much yeah that's funny funny you should mention that i just got my catalog this morning and was looking through it uh_huh oh do you live where do you what state are you in oh you're in texas so am i i'm in garland yeah i talked to somebody from wisconsin or something the other day yeah so i guess they get people from all over yeah driving for thanksgiving that's going to be quite a drive for uh_huh wow uh no oh well wait a minute yeah we do we do yeah uh_huh and then we go straight up through [trinidad] and straight up i twenty five from there uh_huh oh uh_huh well the types of vacations that i usually take i usually come back more tired after my vacation then i do you know before i take it um i need to definitely take a vacation where all all i do is rest and i guess to do that i'd probably have to take it at home but um the vacation spots that i like to go to are places like the bahamas and florida i enjoy the beach [antibeach] uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh you might be like i am i enjoy i enjoy going to the beach and to beach areas but i really don't like to get in the water the ocean i prefer a swimming pool uh_huh uh_huh right i can understand that uh_huh that would be nice uh_huh i know i've taken several vacations to colorado and i used to live in colorado oh sometime ago for a couple of years and i really enjoyed that uh_huh yeah i've never been up to the yellowstone area so that's right that's right you got that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well you have you have a lot of vacation areas you can go to then right that's right right uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh it would be sort of i feel like it would be [confining] you know i would rather much rather get on a plane and get there and then enjoy myself uh_huh yes i i agree i can i can do that too and uh you know i think if i had if i had the money i would probably go to europe every year because you know i think that they have they have it all over there in just a few tiny two two miles you know there's mountains and there's beaches and it's all right there so uh_huh oh right oh oh i am after our last summer's vacation i am [antibeach] uh_huh we went to uh cape hatteras well we we were out visiting one of our kids in maryland and we went down to cape hatteras for a few days and uh uh the the waves were huge i've never quite seen waves like this one and uh i was standing in water not more than in barely above my ankles and uh you know when the waves go in the waves go out they kind of all of a sudden you're in sand above your ankles and i was standing there talking to my daughter and this really big wave came and totally threw me and one foot did not come out of the sand and it tore the ligaments in my knee so i'm never going to another beach again ever i'm well i i love to go and play around at least i always did but although actually my i like the mountains i uh i don't really like hot weather that's my biggest gripe about living here and i basically don't want to go to a hot place on vacation oh i my dream vacation is alaska this is just someplace i've always wanted to go and someday i hope we can afford to just take a [humdinger] of a vacation up there uh_huh yeah i'd i'd like that uh i haven't been to yellowstone for a long long time and i would uh we've been talking about going there next summer uh i don't know we'll have to to it's been a long time but you know it seems when your family is is different places a lot of trips involved going to visit oh i'm we usually go up to wisconsin at least once a year because this is where my husband and i are both from and my mother and his mother live up there feeling lost and alone because we moved down here and uh we've got one of our our kids lives out on the east coast and so we have to you know go to those well i know but i'm tired of them i want to go someplace different up there uh my my idea i guess of the ideal vacation would be to begin with uh money be no object you know so just absolutely you know first class fly where i want to rent a car if i want to uh you know just the really the nicest hotels and stuff like that and and not worry if somebody says well let's take this little side trip you know and not have to sit there and figure out um you know again we we fit that in there or not and uh that that's what i um you know that's what i would like to do i have no interest for example in taking a cruise to me why somebody would want to ride around on a boat for a few days is mind boggling yeah uh_huh yeah i just uh that that does absolutely nothing for me but uh i don't know i can say that i think my my favorite spots are still to go to go where there's mountains and and a lot of trees and and wildlife to view and and uh i like that kind of stuff i could just sit there all day and look at the scenery uh_huh yeah uh i i guess i've never really thought about it that way our uh we have a daughter who's almost thirteen but she's uh a very picky eater and our our standard excuse for not going someplace like that is you know gee holly would starve to death if we you know we took her into the country so so but i i would like if you know it was anywhere in the world to go i guess even though it's hot i would like to go to africa all right uh well let's see i'm twenty how old are you older okay i'm calling from uh provo utah but i'm from plano texas oh really oh wow my dad used to work at u t d also uh generally we just go on family vacations to arizona my grandparents live there that's generally our usual summer vacation uh tempe so uh mainly just being with family is it we just hang out and my grandparents have a pool so we go swimming and uh yeah but we keep cool just by going swimming and it's fun to be with my cousins they're up there also my grandparents and my cousins so no have you oh my goodness wow around christmas time oh wow oh really so do you travel a lot or oh huh so you know a lot of good vacation spots huh that's your favorite i haven't where where do you live wow um um i do i work for nuskin yes oh really oh my goodness great uh i don't probably maybe the [rejuvenating] cream is the only other thing i would use than the intensive eye uh_huh good yes i do yeah we get free products every month so right right now i'm getting about sixty bucks a month free products so i've worked there about a year yes they're wonderful to work for yep uh_huh i ski yes i've no i don't actually since i grew up in texas i've only been here about two years and have gone skiing about three times well five times each season yeah i uh_huh yep i do like to ski yeah i i said i do like to ski and it's it's kind of nice being up here just because it's all like a vacation in itself when you get to go if you like that kind of thing i am actually a junior beginning of my junior year so nursing you think i know i'm not i'm not and it was great how long did you get to stay there oh really uh_huh i just had a friend that got back from europe and she was there like all winter semester how old are you lisa okay i'm older older than you are okay we are supposed to talk about places we like to go so i'm going and where are you from where are you calling from oh you are from plano my sister lives in plano yes her husband is the new director of admissions at uh university of texas at dallas yeah so anyway so where's your favorite place to go where in arizona okay i've never been to tempe that's where i'd like to go what do you like about tempe pretty hot isn't it in the summer that's good uh_huh been to hawaii yes in fact i just got some reservations i'm going to go for uh almost two weeks this winter yes it's the longest well actually i lived there so i was there longer but two weeks is the longest vacation i'll have ever taken there so i'm kind of looking forward to that one uh no in march we're going to go in march after my children's birthdays and get all that business out of the way yeah so i think i would like to go to arizona i mean i was in phoenix in january last january but it was rainy and [icky] it was the coldest it's been there ever in january i think it's very cold but i would like to go to tempe do we travel a lot uh some yeah well i've been a i was a travel agent i mean i have been up until just a few months ago but i'm thinking of going back to work yeah i i know a lot of good places to go but you definitely need to go to hawaii very definitely yes it is my favorite my husband hasn't been to europe yet and i'd like to take him there and but he's traveled all over the united states and i haven't like i haven't been down south i'd like to go to new orleans have you been there we i live in yakima washington so it's cold and rainy today it's yucky but we've had some pretty nice weather we played tennis outdoors until last week so that's a pretty good deal so do you go to school in provo utah do you use nuskin skin care they're located in provo do you i'm a nuskin person yeah i sell nuskin too i i am my only and best not only and best but i'm my best customer since we're not supposed to talk about this though is there anything more intensive for the eye area than the eye cream do you know i have that too i'm forty two i need something i need more yeah i didn't know if there was anything else and i use the [celltrex] but anyway well yes nuskin is wonderful i think it's a wonderful product do you use it oh my gosh that's great yeah oh yeah that's good are they good to work for that's great anyway so we're supposed to be talking about places to go and you have not been to europe do you go to school do you ski ski you probably ski very well in utah uh why did you move to utah you're going oh you are going to school at b y u is that where b y u is okay i know some people that went to b y u that's great pretty good pretty pretty down there huh so where have you skied sure sure so you're a sophomore or junior you're a junior good for you what are you studying good for you you sound like a girl that has it together i would just encourage you to do a little traveling though before you get married because when you get married you won't have the money or the time so just you know don't don't be in any hurry you really should go to europe i went to europe for six weeks after i graduated from college and that was just i i mean i could have had that or a down payment on a new car and i took the trip and uh i traveled with a group of sixteen other students actually they there was two other graduating seniors besides myself and we just had a ball we stayed at uh six weeks yeah it was wonderful so you should think about doing something like that okay do we just go ahead okay uh well we're supposed to talk about vacations and uh i'm trying to think of the ones that i've been on that i liked the most and probably the one i liked most was hawaii yes yes we went uh six months after we were married and we just went to uh two islands we went to oahu and kauai the big one oh oh yeah it was yes i enjoyed kauai better too oh it was rainy rainy but you know we don't like to spend the money to go over there and sit on the beach anyway so oh really oh uh_huh oh uh_huh yeah that was that was nice uh_huh you know i've been to nassau too i went on a cruise uh_huh and uh to tell you the truth i i think i'd rather just go to the island well i got sick yeah i did the first night i went with my sister just uh a couple years ago and and we both the first night just had to leave dinner it was bad but and then after that it was it got better but we just it was a four day and we were both ready to get off the boat yeah oh have you oh wow i'll bet it is oh you haven't been to spain oh i was born there yes uh just ten months yeah so no no and i would like to huh would you now now i don't know if i'd like to go there just from the the problems oh yeah yeah that would be nice now have you been to yellowstone yellowstone have you uh_huh well oh uh_huh yeah now i'm just about oh a half hour uh north of salt lake so uh it's at my husband works in salt lake so we're real close and yeah we yes we we like it yeah it is well we kind of like it well do you like to camp those kind of trips uh_huh oh you like the motels oh oh well oh did you uh_huh oh huh uh_huh uh_huh do you want to start right oh did you get to go to hawaii yeah we went there for our twenty fifth wedding anniversary it's lovely isn't it uh_huh what islands did you go to kauai uh_huh we went to kauai and then we also hit maui and then of course uh uh the big one uh_huh with uh the big one i thought was very commercialized but the other two were just lovely uh_huh it was quiet and [restful] and and so beautiful it wasn't commercialized yeah was it that's right well it wasn't real rainy we had a few showers but uh nothing that really got in the way with anything and just very brief ones and and when uh now we went to nassau and my husband liked it better than he did hawaii uh_huh yeah he really did i don't know why you know he didn't like oahu at all he thought he thought [honolulu] was just horrible you know although we went to that [polynesian] village did you go there that was wonderful and we both enjoyed it very much have you oh neat yeah uh our son and daughter in law just uh they got married last january and they won a cruise and i know they didn't like it now we have several friends that uh have been on and just love them but james and i like i don't know i think we would get bored on the boat all the time oh did you ooh uh_huh um uh_huh were you well i think if we ever go it will only be for a three day now we've been real lucky we've been to europe twice yeah we went the first time we went to london europe and touched a little bit of [scotland] and second time we went to munich germany and were there a week and loved germany it is just absolutely gorgeous with the mountains and we were there in the fall before the snows you know started and it was wonderful it uh it was just it was marvelous and we would love to go back there and we'd love to go back to london no have not been to spain were you how old were you when you left oh ten months uh_huh have you ever got to go back would you my uh my sister we went with them to germany and uh she would like to go to spain i'm not sure whether i would like to or not and uh i would like to go to ireland uh_huh well the there is uh_huh is is a little scary but i would still like to see it i'd like to see uh italy i would love to go there and course there is a lot of places in the united states i still want to come you know go to uh yes yes we have been there we i was there as a child and then we we went to california and came back through yellowstone with our kids and they loved it i was in utah in salt lake city when i was a uh youngster so uh you know i've touched on that oh yeah uh_huh now that's a pretty city very clean you know utah is a pretty state from what i remember of it uh_huh we no we used to we used to camp a lot with our kids and uh but now we like things like the regency [hyatt] we like the motels yes we have we've gone past the camping stage we lived in [chattanooga] tennessee for two years and we did a lot of camping out there in the [smokeys] and it was beautiful and our kids loved it and everything and then we moved to uh uh the dallas area and uh it's hot down here and camping is not near as much fun and uh so and then the kids were getting older and and were involved in activities so the camping sort of went by the wayside and uh although our son loves to fish and uh and our daughter and her husband are talking now about starting camping with their boys now that they have gotten older okay we're supposed to talk about vacations well uh i haven't been to many places but i have a opportunity to go to uh paris france uh with uh with my friend in april she is her uh her family you know lives there and she's only been there once her grandmother lives there so i'm hoping to i'm praying i get to go uh yeah it's it will be probably the most exciting place i'll ever get to go have you ever been to uh like new mexico oh i was curious i was just wondering what it was like [tahiti] [tahiti] oh oh haiti where is that uh_huh uh_huh um so what did you do when you were in europe uh_huh what did you do on the farm are you just kind of sight just kind of uh um um paris yeah uh two weeks last time she stayed two months but we're only going to stay two weeks so we're going to take a cooking class there so that might be fun cooking class you know french cooking yeah museums you know go to museums and do you go to museums in europe um um that's neat hey what about have you ever been to hawaii no no i'm wanting to go there oh where have i gone that's anywhere uh right so uh well uh what kind of vacations do you like uh_huh oh that's great uh_huh uh no actually why have you oh okay no uh i have been to europe once and to haiti and uh yeah no no haiti right it's uh well it's in the caribbean and it's the western half of an island with the eastern half that's the [dominican] republic and i was down there with a program from the college that i went to where we would just spend like three months in a foreign country most of them third world countries and study the language and then do a little service project so yeah that turned out to be a really good experience for me uh well see i went there when i was in high school actually and i mostly went to germany and visited some friends of my family and uh hung out with them worked a bit on one of their farms and also went to a youth camp uh uh uh well not that much just uh right i mean i wasn't a great asset to them or anything but i you know drove a tractor helped them weed beets and that sort of thing and uh yep and i went to a youth camp that included working at an old people's home and that was pretty interesting and while i was there i visited my aunt and uncle who were uh staying for their vacation in france in [nantes] which is on the west coast like right across from england uh so uh where in france are you right paris and uh um how long do you plan to be going for uh_huh great and uh a what oh great and uh what else are you planning to do if anything uh_huh yeah um uh actually no i don't think i went to any of them uh the closest thing i did was go to some like uh restored [castles] and stuff that there is some on that west coast of france and i went to a [vineyard] or two in germany yeah that was nice uh um but so uh uh no i haven't have you okay well uh well where have you gone first yeah i mean what vacations have you been on that you like right uh_huh so you most of yours is kind of driving and um how how far do you usually end end up driving just now where you're from where oh wisconsin okay yeah i have a brother in minnesota that used to live in wisconsin so yeah that's quite a ways i've uh we went to california this last year and uh liked it but it was too crowded walt disney world and other places it's just the wrong time of the year to go and uh course uh you get in any of those tourist traps and everything's uh outrageously priced and uh kind of you wonder if they're it's really worth it to pay uh thirty five dollars or forty dollars just to get in but there's lots of fun places to see um i think the scenery kind of that's something do to you like to get up in mountains or do you have any mountains nearby pretty flat isn't it um i think uh the biggest limitation is a lot just time and money isn't it what vacation have you enjoyed the most what is it okay uh_huh probably a city in itself kind of like huh summer place how far away is it huh okay sure sure right well and you can probably you're in a climate that's kind of humid so you have probably a lot of green and lot of real pretty things our our [climate's] real dry and you have to kind of get up into the mountains to get much of the [greenery] most of most most of the [land's] pretty brown you don't have as much of the [greenery] like you have uh idaho is where i live and uh yes it's by uh i have a little baby thinks he needs to cry now that i'm on the phone it's by um boise you ever heard of boise and uh it's fine it's nice it's uh lot different kind of i lived in indiana for a while and it's a real different uh land and scenery than there it's kind of fun to have a little bit diversity and things like that i think uh there's a lot of places uh-oh down even in southern utah the [canyons] canyon lands and bryce canyon and oh boy they're gorgeous those are kind of fun places we usually go over to bear lake in the summer which is kind of on the border of idaho and utah and the lake goes on forever and that's real pretty over there too but i think i'm kind of a summer [vacationer] right right where'd you um well i really enjoyed um i went to [mackinaw] island a few years back it's in the middle of michigan and so that was nice i like um driving to different cities because of the scenery so that was nice yeah we've i've been all over the states except for pretty much east um it's very pretty driving like um up north in wisconsin too um the furthest i drove was probably texas and then i've taken a train before to california kenosha wisconsin uh_huh oh yeah it is uh_huh um oh yeah uh_huh yeah that's true oh yeah uh_huh no yeah yeah oh yeah yeah uh um probably uh when we go to wisconsin um it's pretty fun there's a lot to do up there it's pretty busy though you have to like crowds you know um oh it's a like a huge amusement park um they have water slides and it's just a big big tourist attraction the downtown is all like little shops and candy shops and it's it's really neat i don't think uh hardly anybody lives there because it's just kind of like you know tourists yeah it's mostly a a summer summer place um from kenosha it's about three hours it's about a hour away from madison yeah so that's nice it's it's a pretty ride up there too i really like the city [wausau] in wisconsin it's really pretty it's nice out there oh i like all the nature things there are to look at you know where is that oh where's that okay oh yeah yeah yeah yeah oh oh yeah me too uh me too unless i'm going somewhere warm for the winter yeah that'd be nice any vacations recently that you would highly recommend oh really oh wow wow uh_huh uh what what has been your favorite trip do you think really better than europe oh uh_huh sure uh_huh uh_huh yeah well uh i have been to canada several times but uh that is about it for me i i am from denver and so uh growing up uh we would spend most of our vacations right there in colorado uh my family is uh uh real into camping and four wheeling and so uh several i i think maybe uh four summers in a row uh we spent uh our vacation time in the summer uh four wheeling through uh portions of uh the southern half of colorado and and uh every time uh my mother had uh uh i have two other sisters and my mother had us uh do some studying of the the area which we going to visit and then we had to write uh reports reports about it during during our vacation which which was really fun it was really fun we we each got to write little books uh and uh it had sparked an interest that uh of mine uh my fiancee is a very very good photographer that is what she had originally gone to school to do was photography and uh i i am close to receiving my english degree uh as as well as my my graduate degree so so i uh uh we have thought very seriously of trying to uh incorporate travel into and writing a book about uh some portion of travel uh so we are hoping soon uh not soon maybe within the next ten years to get to to take a trip over from uh over to europe and take uh a trip from the northern portion of france uh down to the southern tip of spain uh and follow it is kind of a backward s shape uh trail that the [pilgrims] use to take uh in in uh back in the medieval times uh to see the [relics] uh in uh southern spain and in italy and so we would like to take pictures of the [gothic] and [romanesque] [monasteries] and uh just take that journey all the way down and then right a book about it yeah it would be uh it it is our big dream oh uh really uh_huh uh_huh oh sure oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh wow right uh_huh oh yeah yeah you said that you have been to england several times i wonder have you ever been to a uh a small town uh well it is actually about thirty minutes from salisbury it is called uh [bemerton] okay oh okay alright yeah uh uh the reason i am curious i uh the other place i would like to visit uh well that is like my favorite hobby so yeah i would travel everywhere and i have been all over europe and a lot of the united states and hawaii and so when i can that is what i do well i am not sure uh i guess hawaii is one of my favorite places yeah well no that is exciting you know i have been several times so after the first time it is like anywhere you know it loses that [newness] but yeah i love it i love to go over to europe i do and mostly i travel through germany and switzerland and we have good friends in england so i have been there quite a bit and i just love it all i love to look at the different people and the different cultures and to see how different they are from things are from the way we do them the most interesting part more than the museums and things like that so how about you uh_huh oh no uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right that would be quite a project yeah well it would be a lot fun you know there is good and there is bad and my experience in italy was not my favorite for sure but well i flew into [milan] my daughter is uh a twirling champion and she had to perform over there and in [turin] and so we had to fly into [milan] and we got on the subway after so much trouble because the italians even if they speak english they do not want to let you know and they gave us all the wrong directions and there were just two of us at the airport they put us on the wrong bus finally we saw a policeman he put us on the subway we sat there uh we did not know italian we looked at each other we said things like spaghetti you know things like that we finally followed some kids who told us where to get off we followed these kids with uh gym bags and we figured that must be the sports arena and we lucked out and then when we needed to go to the bathroom there was nothing but a whole in the ground i mean it was so it was kind of a nightmare but that was our experience and i guess all of italy is not like that but where we were it certainly was and the hotel that we stayed in we stayed with our english friends their team in the hotel and it was beautiful it was very modern but it was very far away on a bus so you know it was it was really uh it was interesting you always learn something and you always have a fun experience so it is great you know uh_huh no i have not huh_uh our friends live like an hour outside of england like ash around there so uh_huh okay and i've pressed the button you haven't been to too many places well okay i have been to hawaii it is beautiful well there is there is a lot of japanese over there and they are uh_huh uh well yeah there is it is commercialized but there is still a lot of beautiful places to go and see you know on all of the islands you know i don't think i have enough oahu naturally has got more people on it than the other islands but it is still beautiful you have got to see at least once so uh i like maui yeah well i like it because the beach is nice and white and you know it is like oahu you can go over there and lay on the beach and it is really nice where the island of hawaii you can't really lay on the beach over there but uh kauai i mean the beaches are nice but i don't know just not nice as maui and then uh where where have you been oh you have oh how long ago huh okay oh yeah i know where that is at because i use to live in oakland so yeah right right yes uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah right uh_huh yeah did you go on the cable cars and everything yeah isn't that fun oh yeah up by napa yeah yeah uh_huh isn't that pretty i love it down there uh_huh oh the weather huh well i have also been to the [carribean] well i uh have been there a couple of times i went on a cruise the last time i went i went with my two sisters and it was over christmas time and we really had a good time well they they had this cruise director dress up like santa claus and we went to the beach and they had put a christmas tree on the beach decorated it up it was it was a lot of fun so oh yeah yeah because you don't have to worry about [unpacking] or anything like that you know you put your clothes in your room oh you will have to go on one no i mean there was some people did uh on that last cruise that we took because they was having a storm come in but that is unusual uh one of my sisters got sick but the other one didn't and i didn't you know but uh it is really nice and they they just do so many things for you you know to make you enjoy the trip and everything so you will have to do that once i want to go on another one but i want to go to alaska uh_huh uh_huh oh really yeah right oh i think i would like to too i keep hoping to win the lottery where i can do all these things you know okay let me tell you i haven't been too many places no no i haven't see now that is where i want to go that is where i have always wanted to go i have never been there i know is it is it uh i had an aunt that lived there and she couldn't stand it any more she moved out because she said the whole island was uh you know being taken over by the japanese yeah and she uh also told me that well not her uh necessarily other people that have been there have said that it is too commercialized is it yeah sure uh_huh oh well i will you know eventually well what is the most uh you know the nicest island maui i think that is what usually people uh say they do they like the best uh_huh yeah yeah well i have been to california i've been to san francisco i loved it i absolutely loved it yeah and uh oh uh eighty six my sister lives out there my sister lives in piedmont yes uh_huh oh well that is right near piedmont yeah that is like a suburb or something whatever oh yeah okay well she was in [berkley] also and she lets see i went when she was uh was living well when i went out there she was in uh now i can't oh lafayette she was living in lafayette and then they moved to piedmont so i uh i haven't seen uh you know her house in piedmont but but i loved san francisco i would like to go back oh yeah went to [alcatraz] you know we did the whole bit and then we went to the wine country yeah oh beautiful and we went to carmel and we took the eighteen mile drive oh it is beautiful that is really beautiful my girlfriend was down there a few months ago first time she has been down there and they wanted to take that drive and they had closed the whole road because of uh uh fog yeah so they never got to do that oh i haven't been there either you name it i haven't been there uh_huh oh that is nice uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh well that's nice is uh a cruise nicer than uh if you just go on a regular uh you know to a hotel it is i have heard it is yeah uh_huh you don't get seasick that is what i am afraid of no huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh right yeah oh yes now someone i know was on a cruise to alaska was it to alaska yeah i am pretty sure that is right my [hairdresser] she went last year she said she went on a cruise and i was thinking you know cruise i am thinking so on and she is laying on the beach and i said well you are not very tan for someone who has been on a cruise she said we went to alaska and uh that that i would like to go well hawaii is my uh is number one i would also like to go to australia and get a yeah oh well see i am am just in the publisher's clearing house and the reader's digest because we don't uh right now the lottery here well what kind of vacations do you like to take uh_huh uh_huh yeah where have you gone there uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah well i've been over there too i even let's see um mostly germany and france i lived in france for a year and a half so i was able but i once when i had a chance in france to go on vacation instead of [travelling] around france i went to germany because uh i've got relatives there and i just like it there so but um [austria] i found really pretty and switzerland yeah and i i lived in the [alps] in france so i anything in the mountains over there i just love then i finally made it to england too uh on my way home um i lived in africa actually and on my way home from there yeah yeah so um and you always have to go out fly through or unless you fly from nairobi you have to fly through um uh europe on your way home so i went to england and i really liked it there too i know it's true that's the one thing yeah yeah actually now you can get some really good deals flying over but it's once you're there you still have to spend money unless you know people you know uh_huh that helps a lot but uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah i haven't i've been i've most of my vacationing in the u s has been on the west coast or this summer i went to colorado and uh i'd love to go to the east coast during the fall yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh i haven't been there anywhere on the east coast i think tennessee has been the furthest east i've been yeah yeah i guess so uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah yeah yeah so the type of vacation you'd like um like would you go over and spend a lot of time in one place or travel to whole bunch of different places in one week yeah mainly probably because you want to see everything yeah yeah i know yeah well i liked it i was working in cameroon africa and it's not a it's not a place for tourists i mean they're not used to having tourists there so it's you're kind of roughing it but um i liked it i liked it the people there are just very very friendly and um i was working with an organization that does bible translation so i was doing [linguistic] work actually [travelling] around finding out about languages and uh what they call survey work find out where the languages are so i travelled a lot around the country and met a lot of people um yeah i enjoyed it so yeah yeah my cousin came over while i was there and she came to cameroon and then she went over to nairobi and took a [safari] around you know close to nairobi in [kenya] so she'd always dreamed of doing that too so yeah so is there any place you would try to talk me into going to it sounds like we've been to some of the same places well we've uh we've been fortunate enough to take a couple of trips over to europe so so i i guess those are the types i like we've really enjoyed them we've gone to um germany switzerland [austria] ireland and england we've been to germany twice but um i guess my favorite is probably switzerland and ireland uh_huh where have you been uh_huh oh how neat uh_huh oh that's neat uh_huh uh_huh oh how neat oh yeah you lived in africa oh my goodness wow uh_huh it's so expensive over there it really is it just it's it's i love to go over there but it's so darn expensive to go over yeah oh i know just right then you can stay with them and yeah yeah you know there's a lot of places in the states that we haven't even gone you know i'd like to go to hawaii some time and and uh we made it we've we've at least gone to the grand canyon and [niagara] falls so feel like we've accomplished a little bit here uh_huh uh_huh the oh the it's oh i've always wanted to go there i've seen pictures and and it looks gorgeous we um we made a trip up the east coast it was uh in the summer and it really is pretty it's uh both [coasts] are really pretty but um i love the [carolinas] it's just gorgeous over there yeah uh_huh well you'll just have to plan a vacation some time and and go over there yeah but there's you know there's a lot to see here but i just love going over to europe because it's so their way of life is just so different than ours you know we're so fast paced here and over there you know every time we'd go and and eat dinner or lunch or whatever we'd always have to ask for the check you know they're so [leisurely] over there and it's kind of nice to to have that well usually a bunch of different places right see as much as you can while you're there yeah how did you like africa uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh what type of work oh okay oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's neat i've i've always um i've talked to people who have been to africa and they and then of course when that movie out of africa came out um but i've always thought it would be neat to go on a [safari] over there uh_huh oh how neat yeah that's great uh yeah it does well i don't know um i i like to sail and my husband's a camper um but i've never been camping in eleven years of marriage so that tells you something camping is not my bag no is that your bag oh my okay uh_huh yeah yeah well we do that to yes uh i could tell you one place i could probably convince you to go to have you ever heard of the british virgin islands not the u s but the british yeah you have and and peter island and you've been there yeah you need to you need to go there uh_huh [tortola] that's okay yeah you uh it's it's i mean it really is have you ever been to hawaii or bahamas or yeah what you what you never want to do is go back there and you don't even want to bother going to the u s side you just want to go straight in to the british virgin islands it's wonderful yeah i mean it's the [natives] are friendly um the water is even more than you'd think um and i mean if you could talk yourself into i don't know if you like boats are not but they sail tall ships down there that are that are like being on a regular cruise right right yeah um where else i'm trying to think what what are some of your favorite vacation spots i've never been there i've been to the is it i think a long time ago when we were going to go there they were having some trouble in they they were having some unrest among the [civilians] uh_huh yeah i think that's is that worth going to now we lived in uh the the upper mid west for a while before we were in texas and then we left and then uh we came back with my husband's job about eight months ago and when we lived in the up the mid west um we were talking about wouldn't it be nice in the winter to be able to just fly to mexico um but one thing we never did was do that or go to places like puerto [vallerta] uh_huh you can get the taste of mexico without getting into a lot of trouble in terms of the water the food and you're still like in southern california essentially i mean i know you're not but you know uh_huh that's nice to hear yeah uh_huh family yeah and i've never been to either of those uh_huh isn't that a shame yeah see that's nice to hear yeah um one place we like is northern california napa valley have you ever been out there oh you do you go to [silicone] valley oh okay yeah i can say that because uh we haven't been i mean that was like once you know five years ago or something but um i used to work in a place called e d s and i know i used to go a little bit more than i wanted to to sacramento and after a while it just or l a and it wasn't fun anymore yeah i mean it's um every other week well look at it this way you have great frequent [flyers] to to to the vacation spots one place you might consider is um are you native texan and i mean or have you traveled around the mid the united states a lot or oh okay are you a pilot or something uh_huh not anymore um i was going to say one place my husband's been trying to get me i probably wouldn't camp but i would stay in queen [victoria's] i think that's the name of it but [vance] national park in canada yeah have you ever been up there that's yeah a place i mean that's i mean i see pictures i mean that's to us would be god's country uh_huh i've been up there i i mean i like canada i we where we came from when we came back here was minnesota and uh it's beautiful it's just too darn cold do you what do you do if you don't mind me asking i'm not supposed to i i'm not supposed to ask this kind of but what do you do oh you are my he's an engineer too but he doesn't do that that's beautiful uh_huh uh_huh in vermont you mean uh_huh you mean changing from the you mean changing into green or yeah right uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh the fall you mean yeah that's okay what month is what time of of of what time of the fall is a good time to go to vermont yeah sure really because we talked about uh they offer bread bed and breakfast bicycle tours that kind of thing hiking tours and that's kind of my outdoors type you know hike and then you can stay somewhere where there's a nice fireplace and yeah gee that's nice well what's a good bed and breakfast in vermont yeah by name yeah well what's a good what's like a good town to go to then uh_huh burlington no that's that's a city yeah no [bennington] no that's in [waterville] okay [middlebury] i've heard of that okay uh_huh oh uh_huh see see we i mean if new england if the um economic situation were different we probably would have gone there instead of coming back to dallas um because the [topography] here i don't know how you feel about texas right it's just not i mean in general it's got the different [terrains] but i just don't think it's a a beautiful state yeah i'm originally from pennsylvania now there's a pretty state um and [allegheny] mountains oh yeah uh_huh oh my goodness you really yeah what do you do sell airplane parts now if you engineer them or what i'm kind of envious of somebody that gets to travel that much but it's like anything else it's not all it's cracked up to be when you're in a [suitcase] that often yeah yeah and overseas do you go overseas i mean we've never been to europe at all have you have you been to eastern europe germany uh_huh if you were taking an airline overseas is [lufthansa] a good airline is it how about [yugoslavian] airlines i mean when you when you've been overseas are most people receptive to americans that's something we're considering here of what that you have too much on you or something or uh_huh like i'm in journalism i wouldn't walk around opening my big mouth saying that's what i do for a living low key yeah that's a good idea yeah that's something we're pursuing we're thinking about oh goodness uh_huh hello well that's okay she wants to talk about vacations that's what it is really see now european travel i mean so you're i mean you sound like a a fellow that knows i mean is it still safe to go though did they mention our topic okay right anything anything in the area of types of vacations you've been on lately you've really enjoyed uh_huh well i'm a lot the same way we uh i was raised well west virginia but also virginia and i spent an awful a lot of time on the virginia beach area and i sort of love the water i've always loved the ocean so i enjoy going to the beaches myself as far as a favorite beach um probably myrtle beach is as as more of a younger person i haven't been there for years i'd like to go back and see how it has changed but i enjoy myrtle beach i enjoy padre island right here in texas but i enjoy pretty much any beaches well i haven't been right haven't been for twenty years myself but one of these days i'll go back and see how nice it is i'm sure it's just as nice as ever as a as a high [schooler] and a college kid it was a great place to go it was the big weekend place and things like that especially in the summer the place to go in the summer to get a you know a summer job and to spend your dollars and uh have fun and everything no i haven't oh i'll bet it is what do you do what do you do while you're there uh_huh right yeah my wife would probably enjoy joy we'd probably enjoy that also are you catholic okay we're we're catholics so we'd we'd definitely enjoy all the old churches right uh_huh oh no kidding we'll have to maybe give that a try sometime if you're a a water person my wife still says the best vacation we ever went on with our kids and as a family was we went to one of the jack [tarr] [villages] in the caribbean and we went to one the one located at puerto [plotta] and you know that's the most reasonable vacation we were ever on we just opened the paper one morning four or five years ago and it said round trip all included seven days hotel food all you could drink just every party everything it was almost like a cruise but uh it was like five ninety nine so we said let's do it so we packed up everyone four of us plus my son's girlfriend we all went and it's probably not like i said not only the most reasonable vacation we were ever on and everything was paid for it was just glorious i mean the water was fantastic you they had pools they had beaches people were so [courteous] the lodging was fantastic the food was just like being on a cruise ship everything from baked alaska right on down and all this for five hundred and ninety nine dollars oh it is unbelievable and we keep saying that one of these days our kids are getting older now they're in college and uh be getting married and whatever so we doubt we'll ever have the opportunity to go back with our with our kids but but we're certainly going back but that's probably one place that we really enjoyed that included everything [airfare] lodging every meal i mean if you were a heavy drinker you could sit there and drink twenty five or thirty drinks a day or whatever you wanted i mean just it was everything and it was just a a caribbean type of surrounding very tropical just uh entertainment every night i don't know if you've ever been a cruise ship or not but it was exactly like being on a cruise ship um well we just moved here and um the only places we've gone to for a short like one day vacation was we went to lake [macbride] which is like two or three miles north of iowa city and it's like a big park and um they have a beach side and a lake side and so just depends on what type of uh you know water i guess you're used to and i'm used to the beach so we went to the beach side because i'm really from california well we moved to california and then i went to school in utah and i got married in utah and then we um lived there for a little while and then we came to iowa uh santa [anna] it's near anaheim disneyland yeah it's really close to there we see the fireworks from our upstairs window oh uh_huh at long beach uh_huh well utah actually is uh one of the dryer states but it actually has some really nice scenery and um have you heard of bryce canyon or [zion] national park yeah and um they have a lot of good skiing up there and they have um park city and um what else do they have over there i don't really ski but i just have heard that it's really good skiing over there um we went there for a conference we went to we stayed in houston for a couple of days and then we visited a cousin in dallas just for a day you know we went to the southfork flea market or the one in southfork or you know what i mean uh_huh um we've only been to the east coast like once no oh yeah i think that would be a neat place to visit because i had a cousin who went to school at at uh [brandeis] and he was talking about how it was pretty there and that's where he's want to grow um not grow but live there and he live in new york um he was going to school in massachusetts and he wanted to stay on the east coast because of the surroundings and the historical part of it oh well that's a place where we have never been to but would like to go to because you know just all the historical things and oh is it humid there oh huh um another i guess place to vacation is um we travelled up the california coast and we went and visited [hearst] castle and was going to go in up you know one oh one and things like that and it's really pretty up there because you're right on the coast oh yeah just a little bit beyond and then um we had to take the five the rest of the way up because car trouble but our destination was washington and when we got up to washington we thought it was really pretty because all the trees line the highways and that part is in oregon too no we didn't have time but that we've seen pictures of it i think that'd be nice to go there wow but yeah i wish we could go and see that sometime um let's see well close by um iowa is a place called [nauvoo] that's in illinois and uh [nauvoo] well i've been to europe uh england and france uh specifically i like those but uh my favorite things to do i think are going skiing in the winter utah colorado uh et cetera that was a single about a ten day swing through uh maybe six in england and four in france it was great yes i had my son with me uh my sixteen year old son and so that was that was a good experience for him to see some of the things he had studied and so forth no it was it was well yeah it was as it was happening actually kind of uh it was it was pretty close to that time but we weren't over in that part of the world so it wasn't really uh something that we got a lot of of input into but how about yourself where do you where do you like to go to vacation oh okay you got some great camping areas in your area there close i'm a i'm a boy scout leader so i'm out backpacking camping quite a bit too i've done uh mountains in new mexico and colorado but i never have gotten up into idaho and wyoming and those parts of utah that are so pretty and no i would like to uh_huh yeah you just fly into denver or salt lake or somewhere and then rent a car and go the rest of the way yes usually with uh just whoever uh the whole office is going skiing i'm taking my my whole office in february to [crested] [butte] and then in a week mom and i agreed to [chaperon] my son's school trip to [vale] with about fifty five young people and five adults and then that'll be five days in march but uh sometimes i've taken my girl friend and gone like last winter i did that and so planned it myself and uh arranged for a private uh residence in um england through a guy that we knew that had a flat there and then uh the travel agent downstairs helped me with a a lodging place in paris and then we kind of booked some other things on our own that was so it was sort of a piece meal thing yeah i think so it depend on where i was going i had good inside information about where i was headed and so i knew kind of what i was getting into but if if i were to strike out to a part of the world i didn't know anything about i i might not do it all on my own yeah yeah we kind of had a list going of things and we did some trade offs and we saw most of what we wanted to see we had a list of far more than we could possibly see so we kind of had to pick and choose a little bit yeah and sometimes you wound up staying longer at one place than than another oh sure but if you don't like to fly then well uh i one place i haven't done is go somewhere like a cruise in in a warm climate or or down into a tropical place for a beach well when we were kids we went to uh mexico a couple of times and we went to [carlsbad] [caverns] and uh [alamo] and oklahoma and since then i've gone to uh well i went to mexico on one trip and i went to lake caddo and um uh no nothing like that uh_huh no i don't think so because because uh i like to fish and i camp out and stuff like that yeah uh_huh yeah oh yeah uh_huh is that in the spring is that this summer oh uh_huh uh_huh and the water's real clear down there yeah um no just to galveston uh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh huh uh_huh did you ever go to yosemite that's pretty isn't it uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah and then in in colorado it's mostly streams and they've dammed up some of them now so you know uh_huh yeah uh_huh and northern california really is out in the [boondocks] isn't it uh_huh but you fly in to portland then oh they have a airport there uh_huh uh_huh yeah they have a they have a coast highway there don't they or uh_huh uh_huh how far is it from [tahoe] huh uh_huh master the mountains too uh_huh yeah yeah and around here the uh the possum kingdom is about the the closest place yeah they have real clear water and plants it's uh near um well it's it's kind of near abilene but it's it's uh about halfway in between here and and abilene it's uh you if you know where albany is and uh it's about maybe an hour west of [weatherford] out there west of fort worth it's a big it's on the brazos river they dammed up the brazos river and it's beautiful uh_huh yeah yeah i think so yeah nice talking to yes hot springs arkansas oh it's beautiful in fact we purchased land up there uh_huh yeah it's it's well it's not really time share it's just a lot it's really pretty up there in a place called hot springs village it it's it's really nice yeah something like that well we got three nights and four days up there so we went it was a nice way to get away oh what a deal no that's the way to do it you know might as well i know we we really liked hot springs just because we neither of us had ever been there and it was it's a pretty town it's full of i was going to say full of retirees and full of nursing homes and funeral homes but well it's still a beautiful area well i wasn't born in texas but i moved here when i was six months so yes i i consider myself almost a true texan um oh that that would be nice oh yeah that's that's the kind of vacations i like to do what is what kind of a cost do they have uh with that uh_huh um you're kidding oh that'd be wonderful we got to get there first oh okay real expensive there um yeah and it's just through the local through the y m c a oh okay oh yeah because we're in the the garland y so that would well yeah we have a two year old and a four year old well yeah colorado colorado being a resort place i can kind of understand that but that's i love mountains i went to utah one time and i was just in heaven we got off the plane at the air force base and i was just yeah ooh uh_huh uh_huh um oh and you're going we're like in civilization here we're not out in the country how funny oh oh no but they do have horse races at the oklahoma track i don't know about that i'm sure they do with with the age group that's there i would imagine they do but i know they have horse tracks and they weren't running while we were there in september but they doing [simulcasts] with louisiana downs so they you if you want to bet and that did draw a big crowd you could bet there year around uh_huh yes no at the tracks they they they run well yeah but legally they the horses run there from like february to april so we're planning to be back the middle of february like i want to go back but it's it's in the mountains and i really like mountains i keep my husband had never been outside of texas until he and i got married and it was like let's go to let's you know let's go to florida and we had a friends over there and that's a pretty area too we've been to orlando a couple of times not to go to disney world but just to go and do other stuff that's there what is where is it oh yeah i i'm a texan i have a problem with oklahoma well this is true [robber's] cave state park yeah see that's my parents go to they have what was the last vacation you went on anyway uh_huh oh that is a long trip with four kids in the car yeah uh that sort of a trip can can be kind of long just by yourself well that works out uh yeah so far about as far east as i have gone uh christmas about five years ago up to uh minneapolis uh flew up and then drove back well uh the weather was wonderful the roads were fine uh the car i was driving back was a problem though it kept wanting to fall apart basically i was bringing it back for the sons of a i was renting from uh because one son living up there wanted it wanted it rebuilt uh restored and the son back here was going to do it but couldn't get loose for a couple of few days to go up and get it so oh that was in uh may and the weather was wonderful yeah i uh flew up and it was the first time i have flown and uh flew up just above high thunderstorms that stretch from texas at least up into uh the great lake area oh yeah yeah we got to watch i got to watch uh thunderstorms from the other side for once it is a unique experience yeah the lightening from the top side is a unique experience i always enjoyed watching it from the bottom side but it seemed more fun that the top uh most of our vacations uh have been you know camping trips of one sort or another and uh just going home to see family i uh well actually i am at a pay phone at the post office uh no i do have one child he is about twelve weeks old twelve and half weeks old now why thank you yeah yeah from the looks of things my wife and i are both in school the next trip is probably going to be next christmas uh several of my [siblings] have decided that it has been too long since we were home for christmas uh west virginia uh that is home for me uh i met her down here so her home town is only about an hour and half drive away but uh i am a thousand miles from home so they are support to uh they are trying to arrange to get us train tickets uh to go home the three of us yeah yeah i have been through the northwest corner of georgia that has been it uh that is pretty much in route between here and home so there is about a nine mile stretch of interstate fifty nine that cuts through the northwest corner of georgia yeah yeah [kudzu] that stuff is an absolute [blight] on humanity it seems it is pretty it it was [genetically] engineered that is the southern version of what they have go up north called [multiflora] rose which is also engineered and it is almost indestructible i mean you about have to expose you know the first four feet of soil to uh high levels of [radiation] to kill it off it is the stuff is incredible durable yeah its well you see that stuff will actually take over everything and literally kill off large old trees if it gets the chance so most of the states in the southeast have uh spraying programs where they they go in with [defoliants] and try and kill it off here in the [hattiesburg] area no not yet apparently it is moving this direction actually up in the delta you know four or five hours drive north along the mississippi river they have got it there too but right now it hasn't really hit the uh the the general area around here uh one trip i use to be an auto mechanic right right i have been well i go quite a bit i travel about forty percent of my time but my vacations my favorite spot is las vegas yeah really i i any particular reason you're not into gambling or i see oh really france yeah uh_huh uh_huh no uh my in laws have and i i stay [steer] away from boats as much as possible because i can't take really uh_huh right right uh_huh i yes everything i see that they brought back it i i definitely agree uh_huh really oh yes yes i it's it cruises from what i understand are are really the way to go and some someday i will convince my or convince myself that i can handle it and i will surprise my wife and and book a cruise uh i much definitely prefer warmer climates than alaska so i would probably head for the caribbean uh_huh i've used those right uh_huh interesting i never i really never thought of that it's good to know uh_huh yeah yeah this is one spot you know being in ohio the new england states are not that far uh that is one thing that really has not interested us we do like the [virginias] the [carolinas] carolina oh yes several times yeah and uh we next week we're leaving for new orleans and i i i do prefer the warmer the warmer but uh and i loved hawaii uh we had bought really it it's it's uh it's just beautiful i just i would be very happen staying in hawaii becoming a [beachcomber] when i retire which isn't too far off it's it's something i might want to consider but uh i you know i've i've been tempted i've gotten down as far as san antonio but i've never gone down to uh really to the coastline yeah so uh_huh i love it yes i love uh_huh yes it is and you have to do that uh people that go and go and they only go to one area you have to see all yes very good well it was nice talking to you okay um bye bye okay uh what kind of books do you enjoy reading oh right i've read that one too i only had a subscription once but my mother always gave me hers and i i really enjoyed you know all the little things that you find out about texas uh_huh uh_huh well um i have an interest in art so i frequently purchase and read uh books mainly on water color because that's my big interest at the moment and uh-oh i guess i like a variety of things uh lots of fiction uh type books uh right now i'm occasionally reading on a book about uh the mardi gras in new orleans and its history that's fairly interesting yeah i don't know that i read anything strictly labeled self improvement how about you yeah uh_huh right yeah yeah yeah well uh maybe i am into some things occasionally that i don't think of in terms of self improvement i mean they are but i don't label it as such well i don't know um i uh have attended some seminars that had some tapes that went with them but uh i guess not so much books although they sometimes have manuals and things but uh they would be things on like how to be successful and sort of talking to yourself you know getting your yourself in gear to uh sort of pull yourself up by your boot straps and do what you really want to do convincing you that you need to get on with it yes sure um yeah yeah i don't know i'm not sure i could take too much of stephen king that's a little little heavy for me yeah well i guess i also have been reading uh a lot of things on uh quality improvement and that type of thing because that's what i'm involved in a lot at work oh yeah you could almost label everything quality in some sense or other but uh i think sometimes the word is a little over used but yeah okay well any other comments well we just started right well you too and uh good bye good bye wonderful touch tone telephone there uh haven't have i have a wide variety of of hobbies therefore my my reading [pleasures] are quite wide um i get a charge out of uh texas highway which is uh very colorful and uh not being a native of texas but being here eleven years have a tendency to uh find out the uh about the different areas of the of the of the state by reading it oh yeah it's it's uh absolutely it's great the way that it's broken out and you can uh set up little trips and day trips and things it's pretty pretty neat um oh i like photography um magazines i don't take a subscription or anything like that um things oh being an engineer in facilities i do read a lot of a lot of uh building magazines and and and plant engineering magazines and read up on different ways to do things and energy management type of magazines and and uh kind of strange because i it's not unusual to uh see uh an engineering manual or something laying around the house and then i'll sit up and read just to [refresh] uh you know to keep active on it but uh how about yourself oh that's great uh_huh i bet that would be rather interesting uh that's uh self improvement that's that's well that's kind of a hobby but it is self improvement from the standpoint of probably relaxing uh um well i hate to yes i do we uh we have these classes we attend uh management classes and and they give you books and and the last book uh matter of fact i read was at america's service by carl [albrecht] it talks about uh who the customer is and being customer oriented uh which falls in line with the t i culture here at texas instruments uh one of it's great [slogans] is if you're not serving the customer you better be serving someone who is uh so that's all in self improvement to stay focused on who the customer is and as you probably well know all of us are our own customer your my customer i'm your customer sort of thing um every now and then i'm loaned a tape i can stick in the uh in the car cassette set on the way home to make the drive more enjoyable talking about uh better [outlooks] on things and the philosophy of of pat [hagerty] and these kind of uh mind stimulating philosophy type which all you know [betters] yourself uh_huh like what for example sure sure how about items like um the one minute manager which used to be a big okay so those are self improvements um our supervisor uh [subtly] bought all of us a book called what every supervisor should know by a man man named doctor [bittel] b i t t e l and it's a very [layman's] uh uh approach towards managing different types of people and the very last chapter and i haven't figured out why that one was last is how to manage engineers so it's it's it's interesting here again it's it's casual reading and it's not eaten up with a lot of uh mechanical stuff and it's really excellent fast reading and uh but as you say it's it's sometimes it's difficult to to know if it's you know i think if somebody would say hey read these ten books because these are self improvements i would probably be turned off to them if he casually just walked into it and uh put down a stephen king book and i picked up one of them i might be a little more interested yeah they're uh quite uh they're hard to set down because it's so interesting and of course they're all just a little [spookier] than the movies but uh it's always they're always challenging to get through one of them i have a hard time finishing books uh_huh in quality especially now days uh that's almost everything that comes across the the the [airways] exactly exactly right yeah we we have i think we we name drop it a little too much and and don't fully understand what what it is we're saying i think it's just focusing in on the issue and walking your talk and and all that kind of rolls in together there but uh that's just kind of part of it uh not that i can think of um i think i'm under my quota a little bit i need to probably make a phone call or two uh this is true i've enjoyed it have a good day bye bye uh books mainly i read the bible these days good that's great to hear uh and christian literature uh i've kind of i used to read a lot of uh novels but it seems as though if you really want to set a side time to read the bible and you work and and whatever uh that pretty well takes up your time for reading and i i been praying that god would put a desire to read the bible in my heart and he really has it's getting to where a just really want to read it do you uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah have you ever read any of frank e [peretti's] uh this present darkness and uh uh i forget the the other well he uh he's also written a lot of children how old is your daughter five okay he's written some children's books as well and they're all [spiritually] uh oriented yeah frank e peretti p e r e t t i uh_huh yeah do because uh i love to read his his uh children's books just yeah oh they're good they're great and it's like uh uh usually about a family of uh [archaeologists] and the spiritual fights that they get into like uh uh digging in old ruins and running across like uh the old gods and things yeah it is it's real exciting and it also teaches them spiritual warfare you know so uh_huh well it's hard for me uh_huh i know it and especially it's hard to keep your interest in those [begats] uh_huh that's right uh_huh yeah i've read a lot of his too yeah can't put them down uh_huh yeah uh there's another guy oh what can what is his name oh [durn] you would well you know when you're recording you can't uh-oh dean uh [kratz] or [kranz] or who uh no it's a guy and he he writes the same thing though it's that real gruesome horror stories yeah koontz uh his last name ends in a z i know that yeah uh uh_huh i kind of got burnt out on steven king though it seems like it's all the did you ever read the uh uh-oh it's one of his first books the stand i know it and that seems like all of his books have kind of come from that i mean you know that uh_huh i love that book though i thought it was great ooh yes oh those [hedges] when they started moving whenever they they made that into a movie i was thinking oh my gosh if they show that i'll just die for some reason that scared me more than anything yeah uh_huh and that was a pretty scary movie too yeah uh_huh that's right yeah that's true i liked it as well that's another big fat one yeah except it broke my heart i'm a dog lover no it was uh what oh yeah i've read that one too he's written a lot of books boy he just sits down eight hours a day just like any other job that's right that one about the [gypsies] or that [hunger] or uh yeah richard bachman yeah he's so [prolific] oh i know it and i have gone back and after i i graduated i read some of the old classics that i just [bluffed] my way through and have found that i enjoy them quite a bit too uh once you can get into the language you know the it's like it's english but it's not the same english they speak today so it's kind of hard to keep you know at it but their worthwhile literature yeah me too uh_huh [nathaniel] hawthorne is pretty scary himself uh wasn't that jane [ehre] no he wrote jane [ehre] too yeah yeah uh_huh right right that's why i like to watch that masterpiece theatre on channel thirteen because they'll take a classic and and uh televise it you know put it into a viewing format more or less uh_huh do you well i can imagine yeah yeah me too well i think we've accomplished five minutes so it's good talking to you bye bye yes that's very good i do too uh_huh uh_huh yeah it does it that's good that's good it it it's uh it's hard for me to find time also to read uh a lot of times i do just read magazines and stuff like that for you know because i don't have a lot of time but when i do get to sit down and and read i like to read the bible and i like to read i read to my daughter a lot too and uh i like to read you know i have bible [storybooks] so i like reading those to her and she really enjoys those so that's good and it and it's kind of short because we don't [woe] don't have a lot of time to to read so it's real enjoyable for both of us frank e no i guess i haven't five oh really what's his name again peretti frank e peretti i have to look for those just to read them well that's good that's good uh_huh oh yeah oh that sounds pretty neat oh i'll have to look for those right well that's neat well i i have a my daughter has precious moments collection and i like that because it's a it's real easy to uh follow for her you know uh gosh if if i read straight out of the bible to her she'd never understand any of it that's right it is it is real hard to to follow and understand and uh i've got a bible that uh has a little bit of a uh a [glossary] in the back and it helps explain who people are that's that's about the hardest thing is who's related to who yeah yes yes it sure is but but it is good reading and it's good for us and and everything i really do enjoy it but uh i also but then on the other extreme i like to read uh uh i guess i don't know horror steven king type books the and i i like that that's good fun reading no you can't you really can't they are good and ooh they just they're just so suspenseful i really do enjoy his i know judith [krantz] judith [krantz] i know her oh okay oh ooh yeah that's good yeah oh i think i know who you're talking about uh i've seen i don't think i can pronounce it either but yeah i'm in a book club and i think i've seen his books in there i've never read any of his but they're real yes that oh that long thing yeah they do kind of follow or are similar yeah it really was and i loved the shining that was that was my favorite yeah yeah yeah that is he just brings stuff alive you know you could just visualize everything that's yeah i think they did a pretty good job but they didn't follow it exactly but they did give it you know do it justice but uh most of the time they don't with when follow books very well when they make them into movies yeah yeah uh i did too yeah yeah that was good i liked uh i also liked uh [cujo] did you read that one and yeah me too and then uh night stand is that night dead dead zone that's one i liked dead zone that was a that was a real good one i know it right and then he has some under uh another name that he's written yeah yeah uh i think his name was bachman he wrote under the name of bachman yeah he is really interesting yeah ooh i wish i could do that uh_huh i do too i love old good old yeah right that's true but i that's that was one of my favorite subjects in school was uh literature i used to love those old good good old books i didn't mind doing that at all yeah yeah i liked uh-oh gosh why can't i think of their names uh shoot the one that wrote uh [wuthering] heights no that was another one yeah yeah uh well you know who i'm talking about yeah those are good old good old books and classics that's right sure is neat yeah right right a lot of people just don't have time to read nowadays i know it's it's really hard for me i work two jobs and uh have my daughter and teach sunday school and go to school myself so it's it's hard for me to sit down and read but when i do i just just love it i think we have too thank you very much you too bye bye yeah the question was uh what kind of books do you read for entertainment uh uh i guess okay with two little kids i can understand that oh what uh what kind of huh oh uh_huh by uh somebody who was there or uh_huh yeah well any of the guys that were ground yes yeah i can imagine well i tell you what i'm a kind of uh a history nut i'm trying to think back now i read an awful lot of uh periodicals and uh you know almost what you call reference books and uh the last uh i'm embarrassed to say the last you know honest to gosh cover to cover book that i read i cannot right offhand i tried to read uh one of the the michener uh lone star or the the texas history book oh well i've had similar problems it does tend to to yeah as a matter of fact yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh battle cry of freedom yeah uh_huh uh_huh there was a lot more to it than that weren't there yeah well it was a political move it was made to [placate] some of the northern support but not completely [alienate] all the southern support because you know it was uh if you read it it only [emancipated] those who were in areas uh in rebellion against the united states all the other areas which would i think at that time would have included west virginia and oh may have been kentucky a few states you know that were not part of the south but still had slaves they didn't [emancipate] them uh_huh i've got the same problem yeah uh_huh isn't much there was there right they [supplied] some uh you know they were some groups of it the vicksburg if you ever get a chance to go over to vicksburg the [battleground] at vicksburg uh there's an area there where there was uh some texas uh groups and they had an interesting time there and down there at [sabine] pass uh i can't think of the guy's name but he held off uh you know just he and a handful of guys managed to hold off the whole union navy for a while from coming up the [sabine] river which was of no consequence but still is an interesting story that could be it could be it and then the last civil war battle was fought at [val] [verde] you know over there on the texas border you had a lot of of groups heading for mexico and they were cut off at the pass more or less at eagle pass and they didn't get across the river there so they're the last and that was actually after the war was over but it was the last organized battle between the two units was in texas so yeah texas participation in the civil war was uh minor at uh it's been yeah yeah well my wife's from galveston so yeah well i'm from new mexico so you know i was uh_huh huh it sounds like iowa or something uh_huh uh_huh yeah on yeah oh well my sister's living in illinois right now so yeah uh_huh i've always kind of enjoyed it i i used to read a lot more than i do now uh_huh yeah uh_huh i just turned around and looked at my brief at my [briefcase] my uh [bookcase] up here and i see [armageddon] up there and uh the shadow of blooming [grove] and two thousand and ten and grant takes command and the war in the year oh space that was the one i was trying to wade through was space james michener didn't get very far on that yeah yeah yeah yeah it really the the books are kind of uh [imposing] to say the least no let's see here's one called ghost towns and mining camps of new mexico now not too many people have read that one i don't think and there's the history of [yoakum] county texas there i've got uh yeah and i've got yeah and i've got a history of [kingsley] iowa well because that's where my folks all came from and they had a [centennial] here awhile back i read the grant takes command that was pretty good that was part of that trilogy that uh bruce canton did yeah sometimes it's awful hard some of those get very philosophical they can be in any setting they just happen to put them in a futuristic setting you know the oh yeah uh_huh you're reading dune that was a movie too wasn't it was it yeah i'd i didn't see it but uh yeah patrick stewart was in that i guess the guy that's on the new star trek series was in that thing uh oh really uh_huh couldn't yeah um well some history books are pretty scary but yeah no somebody who saw the movie here the other day told me it was the most [terrifying] thing they'd ever seen they didn't sleep all night yeah yeah i have no uh i don't have the foggiest notion what it's about so okay yeah but uh_huh that's the one even better than jaws and some of that yeah oh a a [freddy] [kruger] type huh oh the worst kind yeah yeah oh i just read for escape well i mean it's yes it's that's simple i read to escape and i don't read any parents magazines either so well i just finished just i just finished one last night a great book it it's very a typical for my reading though but a great book one called the things they carried by tim [o'brien] and it's uh god i don't know if i would call it a collection of vietnam war stories or if i'd call it a collection of vietnam love stories strange book beautifully written just beautifully written yeah a guy who was there as a uh foot soldier so he considered himself to be you know a a true vietnam soldier yeah so what's the latest one you've read uh_huh i have never been able to make it through any of [michener's] work have you are you a civil war buff at all because i finished one i think this is like two years ago and somebody had given me one of these [dinky] do crappy women's novels set in the civil war john [jakes] with and the novel didn't do that much for me but boy the period of time was fascinating so i then read was it battle cry of freedom or yeah i think it was battle cry of freedom it's kind of like a historical [compendium] of the civil war and it's not a story of the civil war it's a story of all the politics and uh lobbying and just basically state by state events that lead to the events that brought about the civil war and it's fascinating because i had always you know been raised on this you know [emancipation] [proclamation] with the civil war there was a lot more to it than that as a matter of fact that was a very minor part that kind of become like an [afterthought] oh yeah uh_huh well you know what else really surprised me now i'm married to a native texan and i'm not uh yeah i'm glad you put it that way and i have two native texan children too my husband is always you know talked about texas being a uh rebel state and oh my god all this civil war pride i kept waiting for where's some reference to this [goddamn] state of texas and the role that they played either leading up to or in the civil war they might as well have not even been there you know they weren't a state and the only the only way that they had any part in it was after worth as to you know who's going to be going there and i keep telling my husband that and he keeps saying oh no i thought okay oh i'll bet they did well you know why they actually held them off none of the yankees wanted to listen to their kind of [luted] grammar now you didn't hear me say that outside of uh yeah oh boy don't tell that to a native texan though i mean my god they fought and won the whole thing oh that's a beautiful state that's a beautiful state see i was raised in the midwest which you know hell we didn't even you know we didn't even know where the mason [dixon] line was and besides you know if corn didn't grow there it didn't matter iowa and nebraska yep and then i had probably lived the last eleven years in massachusetts so you know what does that make me an [honorary] yankee or god knows what well then she's going to come out well rounded but outside of those kind of things you know the other thing that i've really gotten into reading and i think this is because the kids are getting to me is science fiction well i've gone to the point where my husband my husband travels i get out like you know two or three books and i i'm trying to think of oh [isaac] asimov robot series i mean i think i've read all four of them and i understand that there's a fifth in the last six weeks he's been on the road a lot you know i think i read hawaii when i was about ten years old or so which is about the [developmental] level that you know you need to be at to read those things and i still even then i was so so disgusted with it i i tried to read i don't remember which other one it was whatever one it was it was such a [blockbuster] [seller] and i just i got about like a hundred pages through it and realized i had like a thousand more i thought i can't do this yeah no is that a big thick book what the what the hell for why [kingsley] iowa oh okay well now that's one that that's one i don't know see i had never really been into science fiction that much until uh somebody gave me mist of [avalon] probably about five or six years ago i don't know if i'd call it science fiction or fantasy well i loved that novel and then somebody said oh god this would have been even long ago because i was in boston and it was raining all night and i had a hole in my roof and i was waiting for the whole house to collapse and uh i was reading dune which seeming rather ironic and i read the whole damn book while i was home hauling out you know like ten gallon buckets of of water and waiting for the roof to collapse and reading about these guys wearing their little free man still suits and i think that's probably my favorite of of any piece of science fiction that i've ever read and the movie was awful oh yes it was just terrible it was it was beyond uh i don't know i just remember sting was in it yeah and if you were trying to follow any type of uh plot it it even having read the book and i've read that book probably three times watching that movie i couldn't figure out what they were talking about at all i was real disappointed in that well i'll tell you another good book do you like scary things have you that's true have you read the silence of the lambs oh well see i i am debating whether or not i want to go see the movie after having read the book i mean the book is is [chilling] just [chilling] then i won't tell you it's just that if you're ever ever really want to just be scared out of your wits that's the one yes yes because the the the character that is so horrible is another human being and you're just drawn into his his horror of him that you begin to kind of like him i mean no no this guy's smart and he's [suave] and he's all the all the characteristics yeah all the characteristics okay what kind of books do you like to read for enjoyment uh_huh what kind of business is it uh_huh well that sounds that sounds fun what kind of business is it uh_huh really uh_huh well that's interesting a what oh really well that sounds interesting my mom always wants me to open a health food store but i'll i'm not really into it i don't know the i don't know that much about it so anyway but well that's interesting i personally i like mostly um if i had a book of my choice i like books i go to the library a lot and it seems like i always i never go to the fiction section i mean that to me is just ridiculous it's like life is to interesting to read fiction but i always get books like um i like to quilt well i'm not into quilting but i check a lot of books out to learn how i just haven't done it yet because it seems to monstrous to do with a book but i like to um can and do food preservation and mostly canning just for fun to go pick the things and just to have fun doing it and to give them as gifts and stuff and i like to check books out like that and i always come away with i'm a christian and i enjoy reading books about um i have a real heart for people involved in [cults] and so i have a real you know heart for them and i'm going to bring my mormon neighbors some amish bread today and that's just where my heart is so i read a lot of books on that and you know christian books written by people about you know to help you out and stuff and i read the bible i don't read the bible as much as i should but but i think i would always think that no matter what i did so but i do enjoy reading that and so pretty much we have different interests i think in reading but and i have a neighbor with a big [motorbike] and he likes to run down the street with it and you you can probably hear him but um i don't know so do you enjoy reading anything like that um uh_huh thirty or younger is that what you said oh ten years younger oh that's funny uh_huh uh_huh oh really yeah maureen [solomon] i had a a friend of mine has a book by her right now called foods that heal they eat a lot of it you know you can take your vitamins and she was telling me to take [zinc] so anyway i've been taking enough [zinc] you know to kill a horse probably i hope it doesn't hurt me but anyway i did read one chapter of that uh_huh no i haven't uh_huh the quantities and what's the name of it again life extensions uh_huh uh_huh oh really uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh really uh_huh oh really really i know there's not any food that you can get and it's grown on good soil hardly anymore and i know my my husband's uncle owns some acreage in a [eastland] texas which is in west texas owns and he owns a lot of acreage that's been [farmed] properly you know and uh we get black eyed peas off of it and stuff but i know that you know the further we go from adam the worse the food is for you but god still somehow makes us all be able to still live i think it's a miracle we're all still alive after so many generations well the last couple of processed foods you know i mean but i don't know i like to i like to my i like to be able to eat really healthy you know and i guess i'm going to have to wait for the [millennium] i think though because i do don't think we're going to restore the earth to you know i think jesus is the only one that can make this earth be restored to what it should be but uh in the meantime we pray over our food because i'm always looking down my plate and i think man this stuff was probably grown in who knows what you know kind of environment but i do take some vitamins on the side and i do like reading books like that i just i have a hard time a lot of the books are real new age oriented like mother earth and we're going to restore the earth i just don't see that i think i mean i think to think that is almost it's hopeless to think that man can do anything with the you know what i'm saying it's and i think god's in charge and god's going to restore it when he wants to so sometimes i get bogged down in the you know in the [ideology] that motivates a lot of health food and motivates a lot of vitamin taking but you know there's a balance in it sometimes i read stuff like that and then i just chunk off like water off your back some of it and you know and try and do what's what i can do out of it that's practical but anyway uh uh_huh uh_huh because it's what oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um really really you know i bet that's why we have some friends that eat only i just took this amish bread out of the oven man it's going to be good i had a starter that friend of mine made anyway uh i had a friend that read a book on that and um i've all my relatives my you know you probably read back to [eden] or something i don't know we read a lot i know people have read all those books but the um they they drilled a well i don't know how many feet but it's three or four times deeper than it needed to be and so their water comes out they live in grand prairie but it's they live kind of in a the planes go right over from d f w so it's not real developed and so they have a probably half an acre and yeah and they drilled this well and the water comes out at thirty two degrees so it's kinds of neat would that be healthier do to do that to drill your own fresh water well like that uh mainly the the books i read are uh business related or self improvement um i've got a a uh small company on the side that i that i do things with so uh a lot of the reading that i i do has to do with um how can i uh do better at at my small time business uh important issues such as a you know taxes and business expenses and all those kind things um i've got a uh small [distributorship] uh i uh sell a uh healthy cookie on the side and uh i have a few health food stores that i send it to i can buy the cookies in a larger quantity than they can so i can get a deal from the uh from the from the supplier and then i distributed them and then i i get i can sell them at a cheaper price plus i've got a uh drinking water system business that i've had on the side for years that i've done a drinking water business uh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh sounds like it um i haven't really read anything like that in in in years there was a time when i was really into the home things and i did uh had my own garden and i did canning all those kind of things that was when i was about uh ten years younger and uh i had about ten years younger yeah and uh uh the problem that i've had in the past with uh my children growing up and moving out of the house and and still having three left at home out of the five um i've tried to devote more time to them and trying to get them interested in in reading more and and spending more time at the library and it i've been moderately successful uh with my daughter and with my son they both have different interests in books but um they they uh they do read them um i have some books on on health that i read all the time one's on vitamins that are good for you and that kind of thing yeah i i'm uh_huh there's a uh a couple called um oh i'm going to forgot his name now uh [dirkson] um and uh there's a book called life extensions i don't know if you've ever heard of it okay it's a book called life extensions there's also a book called the life extension companion uh [dirk] [pearson] and oh i forgot [sally's] last name anyway it's a couple i've i've seen them on t v and uh they they are pretty down to earth about uh what you can take and and what you can't take and um the quantities what are good for you what isn't and um life extensions uh yeah he's probably about forty years old now i saw him probably seven years ago on johnny carson show and uh i was pretty impressed he had a he before he started out on his experiments he had a battery of tests done on his body to determine the age of each one of his [organs] you know based on how well it was performing and then he [embarked] on this uh vitamin treatment and then every year he had the same tests run and at the age of thirty two i think it was his um heart was that of a fourteen year old and all the rest of his [organs] were all greatly you know all tested out greatly below his actual age and of course sally uh isn't a very big woman i mean she's you know she appeared to me to be very petite and um she took a horse shoe and and turned it turned it into an s and uh it was all from taking the right vitamins and things that that give you the strength and of course doing [isometric] exercises uh together they both exercised about five minutes a day doing [isometrics] rather than you know physical strenuous exercises uh_huh yes uh_huh yes yeah there's i've i've read a lot of things um since i got involved in the water business back in eighty three um and it's amazing that the the legislation they have um for food that doesn't apply to water they don't consider water a food and uh the basics premise is that if water was a food it would be you know they wouldn't be able to sell it to you through your pipes because it's toxic um chlorine it's toxic it's a i don't know if your on city water city water has chlorine in it chlorine causes cancer they know that they've proven that um yet their saying well we're putting such low doses in there that well you don't have to worry about dying from it the problem is that i've that i've read books that uh have proven that there is a link between the [ingestation] of chlorine and arteriosclerosis which is heart attack and if you look at the history of hear attacks heart attacks were nonexistent prior to nineteen twenty and we started doing um large quantities of [chlorination] of water starting around uh where we experimented with it in nineteen oh three and nineteen thirteen most of the major cities had [chlorinated] water uh_huh yeah i'm very familiar with the area it depends a lot of uh a lot of things were thought that uh as you know the farmers thought okay we got chemicals we're putting chemicals on the field well the ground will naturally filter out the okay your name is lynn linda yeah i read quite a bit probably don't read as much as i would like to uh_huh um well um i'm a i'm a counselor a therapist by trade so most of my books are um i guess what you'd call self improvement type of books uh_huh what kind of things have you read uh_huh uh i haven't gotten through it yet no um as far as dealing with divorce good self help well um probably the best one that i i know of and i work with all the time is called search for significance by robert [mcgee] and it's one that we use in our work it's probably one you'd find in like a christian book store i don't know what the chains are down there maybe in the mall family book store something like that um probably should stay on the topic but that has a little bit to do with some of the things that i read i'm a therapist for [rossa] it's a christian treatment organization and because of that i see uh work with adolescents specifically so i see a lot of kids with with various problems right now some of the things i'm working with are kids that are dealing with sexual abuse so a lot of the books i've been reading have to do with helping them get through those issues uh_huh well sometimes it's rewarding and and sometimes it's a struggle um i guess i've got so many books like that that i need to read it's it's hard for me to do a lot of uh reading yeah reading just for enjoyment in fact uh_huh um that's neat yeah i've always wanted to go back and read some of my literature texts from college um because i enjoyed some of those stories so much but i never seem to have the time to do that kind of reading uh_huh yeah i've got a stack next to my bed i tend to get a little bit of ways in a book and then i i get distracted and or have to start on another one it's pretty tough to keep up with i was trying to think of i i've got a copy of the road less travelled but i was trying to think there's another scott book that i've got that i had read yeah that's the one i was thinking of uh_huh uh that's interesting uh_huh is it um uh_huh um not very long i really just started my wife has been working for t i oh uh_huh it's just i was just thinking at at [rossa] they tend to come out with a new book every couple of weeks just to help us deal with all the things that we have to deal with so i keep getting stacks of books i need to read and i don't know when i'm going to get to them all i don't think so yeah i don't think so yeah a little bit um trying to think uh_huh i like that kind of stuff i think the last novel i read i read i guess in conjunction with my wife over vacation last year it was a um last name's it's called [piercing] no it's called this present darkness it's uh kind of unusual book it's a lot about spiritual warfare and some things like that uh_huh yeah that's true well i guess we've covered the topic pretty thoroughly yeah nice talking to you linda okay great hope you like you it uh_huh you too bye bye okay that made a nice ugly sound so linda uh_huh so sounds like you like to read i don't read as much as i would like to either i'm i'm a single mom but i have always loved reading what do you like to read that what i've been reading lately a lot of um my interests switch around dramatically i used to read just mainly fiction and now i like a said i've read a lot of self self help books oh i read all kinds of things for um helping people survive a divorce uh the road less travelled was probably one of my favorites have you read that you haven't okay what would you recommend oh i'm kind of getting that one past me but a good self help book yeah um that sounds good uh_huh uh_huh i'm writing it down that does that's sound really good um what kind of counseling do you do or should we stay on the topic of books oh oh i would imagine helping them feel good about themselves they're at a bad stage anyway and then to have to deal with sexual abuse would be terrible as a teen that's uh that must be a wonderful feeling to be in that profession and be able to make a contribution like that oh i'm sure i'm sure uh what is is that just the only type of reading you've been doing or do you have you read any good novels lately just joy reading yeah i hear you there that's for sure um i guess the last book i've read my oldest daughter had to read lost horizons for her english class and i just realized i had never read it growing up so i just finished reading that for enjoyment and it it was good um she she's not didn't enjoy it much so i didn't get much satisfaction trying to discuss it with her but i thought it was real interesting uh_huh i know yeah um i trying to think of some of my other favorite books but i i keep lists i must have a list of oh two hundred three hundred books that i want to read just like i want to read that and i write it down so do i uh he he also wrote people of the lie yeah i i bought that one and i didn't get into involved in that one as well there's another one he wrote that even sounds better and it's kind of the whole concept of global peace you know like and communities building communities someone just recently said something really neat about that uh i got involved in uh beginning experience weekends and uh it was of the people from there that said that his latest book and i can't recall the name of it is just excellent and his whole idea is we can build a better world if people get involved in good community building projects and he did uh mention beginning experience weekends as one of the you know one of the places so i've um yeah it it really was a real fun bunch of books that i read uh the beginning of last year were um the author of jonathan jonathan livingston [seagull] i can't think of his name pardon me uh no uh-oh it'll it'll come to me but he wrote he wrote the [illusion] and a bridge over a bridge to forever those are mind expanding books his [concepts] are so different than what i would have ever dreamed of i can't think of what his name is right right off the bat though but uh they they were fun they were real just books for fun have you been involved on the switchboard long uh_huh how did you get involved oh i see i'm a former t i er i just recently quit and so uh i got myself involved in a sales job and right now my list of books to be read have to do with uh the art of selling so uh_huh never never there's never going to be enough hours in the day even if you took speed reading huh so well i'm trying to think of what other kind do you like to read mysteries do you like ken he writes uh spy novels the eye of the needle and uh i've i've really i really have found his books enjoyable um oh that sounds interesting it sounds really good hey you should make yourself a promise that you'll you'll read one novel in the next six months just for you you know it's it's so easy to get caught up on reading just for your work or you know self improvement and you kind of forget the fun of reading yeah very easily so i think so too and i thank you for calling and uh i'll have to check out that book you told me about okay thank you you take care bye bye well there's been a lot of publicity lately about that new nancy reagan book out by uh kitty kelly the unauthorized biography are you interested in that at all uh_huh uh_huh well i the reason why i was thinking about looking at it is because it's supposed to i'm not a fan of nancy reagan and so it's supposed to have a lot of [unflattering] things in it and i thought just purely for entertainment i might enjoy that but i i wouldn't want to go out and buy it like you know the hard back copy of it but i might check really uh_huh uh_huh in biographies well i uh i have read some biographies i prefer to read if i read a biography it's mostly because maybe i have to uh you know back when i was in school i had to have information about that person or um preparing some kind of lesson and i need to have more information about people but i i do like to read some biographies but that one just sounded like gossipy and i wouldn't want to sit down and just read it cover to cover but flip through just for just to get a good laugh uh_huh was it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh a while uh hum right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh right well i like the classics too uh i think that there's a lot of books out now that are kind of garbage books and i well i don't prefer to read a lot of the things like you might find at uh well like at a target or a supermarket or something where they have a bunch of books out paperback type books usually i i'm going to the book store for a particular reason uh yes yes and and uh i buy some of the not self improvement books but uh self help books like we just bought a new house so i bought a couple of books about how to buy a house and what to look for you know and or how to repair this or repair that in your own home i bought that for my husband and or how to how to do something books you know for reference and uh and those are really helpful i think in helping um well you know like some symptoms medical symptoms like when how do you know when to take your child to the doctor or not type books which i use as reference and have been real handy but purely just for enjoyment i i had a major in english and linguistics and so i have a lot of books in my home that i can read from the classics and i do enjoy those quite a bit and um so i tend to for reading just day to day uh you know i have a particular book i'm looking for or i just enjoy uh you know the newspaper magazine it's handy uh_huh right light reading uh_huh uh_huh right well i think that's good because you do have to use your mind and imagine up the circumstances and things it's not like uh most television where you you know you just you can sit there and not even pay attention very much but still understand what was going on uh_huh right right uh_huh not too much not too much well that's right well i think it is good to to read books and and because even if it's like you say it's light reading you are still getting some uh mental exercise right that's right that's good uh_huh right uh_huh i think so well i guess i'd better close now so i can uh well i i was i'm home now full time but uh so yeah we're we think books are important around here well you have a good day stay out of the rain bye bye not really i'm not much of a fan of nancy reagan so i i don't particularly read um biographies or [autobiographies] i haven't read too many i i'm more of a fiction and nonfiction reader that not of that nature though yeah if they if they had it i don't even know that i'd probably read it even if it was at the library though i i just you know i'm just not really interested in reading about other people's lives to that degree you know unless maybe they lived a long long time ago for me it would be interesting to find out what life was uh like you know in that period but not not really interested yeah i think the last biography that i read i'm not i think it was it was um on lady [randolph] churchill [churchill's] mother and that was excellent um yeah it was it's in two parts i think the first one is called [jenny] or something like that uh because that was her name and um i only got to read one part of it and i've been looking for you know the other half of it and read the i read that half where she was in her later years and it was absolutely excellent and it was very [descriptive] of of people with money back then and uh [affluents] in england uh that you know were associated to the king and all and it was really pretty fascinating and i and that was actually a couple of years ago so it's it's been a while since i've read any biographies uh i love to read i mean i'm constantly reading i read i like uh mysteries and i like um as far as improving myself uh i haven't read any lately but i was reading classical works that i hadn't read before you know that you might have needed to read in school but that i just didn't read for some reason or another another or that you know that you can only read so many in school that they make a requirement of and you have so many out there that uh that you you know you never get a chance to read and so i said well i think it was because i read um [dickens'] a [tale] of two cities and i just um that even when i read it now it still makes me cry the ending of it and i couldn't believe i i could not believe that it took me so long to read such a good book i'd read some [dickens] before but i hadn't read that one and i i was like i thought to myself you know what other things are out there that are that are classics you know that have [withstood] time and that are just excellent something's excellent about them whether it's the way they were written or whether it was the material they were written you know that was written about and um so i started reading i had this like you know i had a binge of my mother uh i was living in bermuda at the time with my husband but my uh mother sent me you know like you know uh boxes full of different books and uh she just would get them real cheap and stuff and send them over but she she is constantly was i guess because it seems like uh older people have much better uh in their schooling they they got more of the classics than i did you know and she knows so much more of them than i do i wouldn't even know you know to go look for that author or that book you know probably you read a book review or something a review on it uh_huh yeah yeah well what i do is i usually have two books at one time i have a classic which i have to work on basically you know uh just depending well some authors i can just you know basically drink in but others eh i really do have to work at them and then um whether you know they're a foreign author or whatever um or if it's their style or or just understanding the material and then i you know some of those it's like i said it's like school you have to work at it but to me it's worthwhile in the end i feel good about it and i usually remember those a long time later and then i have books that i read just purely for enjoyment you know i mean yeah just light reading that are i particularly like dick [francis] books and just some of the the authors that are uh for mysteries just you know just uh purely for entertainment you know that's it i'm not really expecting to get anything out of it except to be [momentarily] pleased you know because i don't i can never remember the plots or anything later on those books yeah yeah that television it gives you everything so it's basically [mindless] i mean all your the only really thing you are having to use is [connecting] the things that they give you you know what you're hearing and your your uh your sight but they give you everything else and it's usually the television that we see nowadays seems like that it's it's it doesn't even have some of the underlying uh things to it you know that maybe the old movies and things had you know the underlying themes and stuff that maybe you had to kind of figure out or you know like with [hitchcock] or something where you're you're you're either expecting something or i i don't know it just i don't really care much for t v at all i just i mean i sometimes get hooked into it but i really i really get mad at myself when i do because i i realize fully there's no really redeeming value for t v no yeah you're developing your imagination you know when you develop your imagination that can take you into a lot of other areas because you've developed uh your your your mind in in seeing things you know even if it's your own set way you know it's you're you're taking words and developing a picture in your mind so i mean it's it's excellent i i'm we haven't got children yet but i hope to uh set an example for ours that you know that reading is can it can be your best friend basically i mean even if you haven't got a a a human friend around you can pick up a book and and be with somebody basically it sounds like your kids are doing stuff or are you a teacher i gathered you might be a teacher oh uh_huh yeah okay okay you too take care bye bye okay um well i'm not i mean i read a lot but i don't i don't read a whole i mean uh eh eh eh i i i i tend to read like only out of a couple you know groups uh and i'm a uh i'm a big baseball fan so i tend to read a lot of the baseball books and oh okay and uh i read a lot of science fiction uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i um i don't really i probably should i don't really read the self improvement books or things like that i uh um i'll get like uh books on history and stuff like that that look interesting and i uh of course i don't ever get around to reading them you know i got uh um i i belong to quality paperback book club and i'll get get stuff out of that like i got battle cry of freedom you know like a couple of years ago and i started reading and got about sixty pages into it and it's like eight hundred pages and it was like uh i want to read something else for a while yeah yeah well especially you know well battle cry of freedom starts off you know in the eighteen forties you know and it's like wait the war wasn't until the you know it's like okay and i realize these things you know these things take awhile like to move up but it's you know it's hard sometimes i read a lot of science fiction yeah yeah that and i i do the same thing i yeah uh there's one science fiction writer named uh allen dean foster oh okay yeah he um i must have like fifty or sixty books by him i mean i have you know i have everything he's ever well almost everything he's ever done and um you know i i know that when i you know when i get his book i'm i'm usually going to enjoy it um so it's really you know it's it's fun to to do that uh yeah well he does a lot of like um uh movie adaptations and things like that yeah and uh his adaptations are usually really good um it's it's funny he um the the [novelization] of star wars was you know it it was out in the uh in the stores as being by george [lucas] but it turns out that uh foster actually uh ghost wrote it for him which you know when i read it i should have realized that because i mean it had [foster's] style written all over it yeah oh i'm sure he does i'd hope so well i mean he's doing all right probably yeah that's true well yeah you you're a baseball fan you're you're aware of that kind of thing uh_huh yeah i had a uh had a subscription to that last year but i'm uh i'm mostly a baseball fan so i'm i'm not as you know the other stuff is interesting but um i was mostly interested in the baseball stuff uh actually i'm a red sox fan more than anything yeah um but uh i i i do like the orioles also yeah toledo i was in toledo last summer went to a uh to a mud hens double [header] yeah i saved that issue actually um that's when i had the subscription yeah it was a lot of fun they don't exist anymore i don't think at least not by that name there's the iowa cubs but i don't know if they play in the same location um i minor league baseball i think is a lot more fun than major league baseball and it's a lot cheaper yeah there's um there's a city just west of of uh baltimore called frederick it's about forty miles west and they have a minor league team and i go out there almost as much as the orioles and um i it's just a lot of fun i mean it's free parking and three you know four bucks now to get in and you know the hot dogs are a dollar and and it's just great oriole game if you park in the lot across the street from the stadium it's four bucks the ticket the the cheapest ticket you can normally get is like six fifty to seven fifty yeah and um hot dogs like start at a dollar fifty oh that's nice yeah uh_huh well how much are the box seats there do you know offhand yeah that's um that's a little [steeper] i think the uh most expensive seats in memorial are eleven bucks but we're getting a new stadium next year so yeah it'll go up and if it opens it's uh something we're really irritated about around here or some people are really irritated about they're they're building this new they built the new stadium downtown and they're saying how there's going to be a lot more parking for the stadium but i park for free up at at memorial stadium because i know where i can do it for free and um i'm not going to be able to do that downtown yeah we uh_huh uh_huh weren't you guys supposed to get a stadium in downtown dallas oh it it didn't go through oh okay uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's that's what i'd always heard i've uh uh_huh yeah that's about what it takes me to get to memorial um it's it actually funny that um i live just outside of baltimore and it takes me almost the same amount of time to go to frederick but as it does to go to the the [ballpark] in in uh baltimore because um to go out to frederick i just jump on the interstate and because i live just south of the interstate hop on the interstate and the [stadium's] right off the interstate so it's like i drive west and i'm there and you know and then to go into baltimore i mean it well it's fewer miles but i've got to go stop and go traffic and everything do you read um i guess you read sports illustrated but you don't read many sports books or uh_huh um huh there was uh i understand there was a really good basketball book called uh a season on the [brink] yeah i'm not sure i don't know i'm trying to think of the guy's name it was like john [feinstein] or something like that wrote it i just heard about it the other night uh i was listening to something on the radio about uh you know a talk show about sports books and they and they mentioned that one yeah and uh i was thinking about there was a i saw a book kicking around on the history of the a b a which yeah i get in to even when i don't like the sport so much i get interested in the history of sports [franchises] okay uh_huh uh_huh i'm a big baseball fan too well i like i teach school and so during the school year i just don't have time to read and i you know i would love to to be able to read more because i i enjoy it so much but with correcting papers and and i two kids of my own i just don't have time but in the summer i try to read a lot and and of course being a woman i like romance novels and stuff like that a whole lot i just i really enjoy that because it's kind of a a getaway type thing so i i read a lot of that but i also love sports and uh uh i i don't have time to read in but i do read sports illustrated during the the year because my son gets that and uh but uh i don't read a lot of nonfiction and i really should because there's so many self improvement books out right now that would would be benefit me greatly but i just don't yeah yeah oh do you uh_huh oh my word yeah it's some of those books are real tough to get into but after you get into them they're really good but it's just tough to get through that first two hundred pages or so yeah it's right that's right i find though that if when i find an author uh and you don't read a lot of fiction you said but when i find do you when i find an author i really like i try to read everything they write because you you get used to their style and you really enjoy it uh_huh i've heard of him is that right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh isn't it amazing that somebody can write that many books about science fiction i think that's unbelievable oh does he really oh is that right is that right uh_huh well i i've never read anything of his but i've heard about him but wouldn't you think he would does he get some [royalties] from that hopefully well i would think he would oh i'm sure he is i'm sure he is but sometimes the more you get the more you want too so yeah oh yeah oh right right right i in fact i'm a sports fan period we i mean that's why i like to read sports illustrated so much because there's everything in it oh so you're probably uh a baltimore fan right an oriole fan is that right boston oh well that's good too i'm i'm sure you do well i'm a ranger fan simply because i live here but i i was uh i'm not from here i'm originally from ohio so i've always followed the [tigers] because you know i was i was born and raised in toledo yeah oh i love the mud hens they're great i love the name and there was a really big article on the mud hens in sports illustrated last year did you yeah i i really enjoy that team i we used to go there all the time i used to live in iowa too and they have the iowa oaks and we used to go go to their games all the time and i know i know they don't oh they must they must have changed then because it used well i haven't lived there for i've been here for like twelve years now so and i haven't been back to [des] [moines] in a long time but we used to always go to their games and it was kind of fun it's almost uh more fun than going to a major league game i don't know i just really enjoy the farm teams yes it is it's not quite so serious you know that's for sure that's for sure is that right is that right well how like how much is an oriole game oh gosh see it's higher than the rangers oh yeah the food here is outrageous but uh you can get a good seat for uh well it used to be three dollars but i think it's gone up to four dollars this year but you know it's in the bleachers way out in the you know in center field but it's still nice you still can see well and uh we usually sit there unless somebody gives us tickets you know box seats or something then we usually sit out there box seats run from oh like eight dollars to twelve dollars oh so it'll go up uh_huh oh oh uh that's yeah that's a bummer well see baseball here though is the cheapest game in town because the cowboys it's it's outrageous to go to the cowboy game and the mavericks are it's high too so baseball's cheap compared to other games well that didn't go over now they they they decided you know george bush who who's the main owner of the rangers decided that uh they'd stay in arlington so [arlington's] going to build a stadium a bigger one so we're going to they're going to stay there which is fine because [arlington's] got a lot of things to offer and and that was their main main money making you know deal for the city and it would have devastated them if they would have taken it away because everything there's six flags right by the stadium there's a wet and wild and and it you know that's all the tourists come there and and they it would have been devastated they would have collapsed so i'm kind of glad they're staying there because it's right in the middle of fort worth dallas and you know yeah we you know we i like it there and i think dallas has enough to offer that they don't have to hog everything so i'm glad that they're staying in arlington and it's takes us maybe uh well thirty five to forty minutes to get there from plano which is not too bad at all yeah so is that right uh_huh oh gosh yeah yeah yeah well not really now my son does i have i have a son that just turned sixteen and he reads everything he gets he gets his get his hands on he's reading a dick vitelle book right now because he's a real big dick vitelle fan he's a basketball fan because he he plays for the high school he goes to and uh just loves dick vitelle which not many people do so but he's reading it and he's and he says he's so interesting mom you just can't believe all the things he's done and he's really enjoying that and i and he said mom you need to read it after i get finished so maybe i will i never heard that one uh_huh huh uh_huh uh_huh i'll have to tell my son about that i'm sure he'd like it oh that would be good okay what kind of books do you like to read yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah so do i yeah right uh_huh um well i like like you said real life um i like biographies of people's lives like especially like athletes for some reason it seems to interest me like people that make a big comeback or you know [orel] [hershiser] things like that and um i like to read books on improve like family marriage you know things that are written by like christian authors or um doctors about family and you know how to improve your home and all that kind of thing um i like to the magazines i to i like to read i read a lot of bicycling magazines they're i mainly look at the pictures and stuff but they usually have some good articles in it but uh i don't know i haven't really found any romance type stuff i like to read i i'm more true you know uh nonfiction i haven't found a lot of uh fiction books that i really like but uh not to say i wouldn't eventually i mean what was the last book you read really yeah really i know yeah i i set a goal for myself to read a book a month this year which is like about eleven more books than i would have read last year but so far i've only read like two books and so i'm not doing very well but yeah yeah i find it's real hard i let papers newspapers stack up and magazines stack up if i don't really set aside a time to look or read them yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah oh i would too um kind of train your mind have you ever read uh or heard of the book this present darkness that was one of the books i read this year and it's really fast paced and intense it was a nonfiction book or is a fiction book but it was it was one of the best i read i mean it was real good and it was um it was one of the few books that like it you know just hurry up and go through without putting down you know uh_huh yeah uh_huh no i'm sure it's fast or something uh_huh i know what you mean i like reading late at night right before i go to bed sometimes i just sleep better or something but uh uh_huh yeah which what book have you read that is along those lines that was really good well how about who do you know who it was about uh_huh yeah yeah and then do it uh_huh uh_huh huh well that's all right you're more fun though see you're not [ridged] right that's good yeah there may be some schools you could read about and learn uh about twenty no no sometimes sometimes more than others but yeah i do i've been there about three years yeah i just got married last year and um most of my family's in indiana so i've only been in texas three years yeah i do i love the weather down here yeah i know boy they they have storms here i've hail and thunder and yeah were you here during the [hailstorm] two years ago yeah boy i had thirty three hundred dollars damage done on my car a lot of people had their cars totaled just from hail i think state farm went bankrupt just about but uh really huh yeah and colorado springs yeah i talked to a guy on the phone on this the other day and he was telling me about it they just sold it closed up and moved down to mckinney yeah i know how do i feel what uh_huh yeah that's good that's yeah oh yeah yeah it's really surprising how many people graduate from high school and that i work with and people i mean i get memos all the time across my desk and things are misspelled and it's really it's pretty sad a lot of people that work for me that can't even spell or read you know yeah sure go ahead oh i like all kinds of books mostly uh something i like like true life not uh you know documentaries or real stories about real people and that kind of stuff or dramas in real life and uh i also like romantic novels i like uh i like readers digest believe it or not i usually read that from cover to cover i like it because there's a little bit of everything in it you know that kind of a thing uh as far as like real novels i haven't gotten into shakespeare or any of that type of thing i wish i had in in some senses but i don't have time really as much as i would like to to get into that kind of thing how about you uh_huh sure uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah uh jeez let me think it i tell you i haven't read a book in a long time and it i can't even really remember uh i think it was a romantic novel by danielle steel or one of those you know yeah honestly um i don't do as much reading like i say as i would like to working a lot of hours at work and yeah and then of course we have a home so it's you know a lot time is spent doing things as far as the yard work or housework or you know that type of thing but see i do crafts too so it's hard i if i have a minute that's what i i do that's the and and that's like myself i've i've i miss it because i really find it a very relaxing hobby too i really do and um i don't know it seems like you can get lost in a book you know it it it's like an escape for me i don't know about you it's if i'm really interested in what i'm reading i mean hours can go by and i i look up at the clock and say oh my word you know in fact i'd rather read sometimes than watch t v but i think you get out of the habit like you say you have to like kind of set yourself yep no yeah right see that's the other problem i have if i start into something and i really enjoy what i'm reading then i have a terrible time getting away from it too i'll stay up until two or three o'clock in the morning you know because i'm so engrossed in it and then before you know it it's time to get up and go to work you know that type of thing that's why i i don't know i'm i'm kind of a nut when it comes to stuff like that even if i'm uh doing something like an afghan if i'm close to the end sometimes i'll do the same thing i don't know what you would call it maybe i have a problem it's terrible i i really like books that that you can get into and that's that oh yeah you do you kind of get relaxed that's true i have a lot of craft books that i have too and uh magazines i like people you know those things that are about real people and um i i like to uh read about people who have been a successful you know who who made a success of their lives uh to to give you specific titles i i can't like i say haven't done it in in such a long time um well i went to uh seminar on uh it was for by american business and some of the people uh what the heck was his name i'm trying to think he's one of the uh [paroe] and um it was more like oh it was tapes and things that they had about him too how he started out as just a salesman and now he's you know multimillionaire and that type of thing and how you have to uh be aggressive and you know really want something for yourself and that type of stuff it's like up to you in other words whatever happens in your life it's not up it's not someone else you have to do it and i find that fascinating that people you know can do that kind of thing just make up their minds that that's it you know have this one direction do it i can't i'm not that focused on something i i'm off in all directions um and i'm not uh uh a planner which i wish i was you know kind of off the wall if someone says do you want to do this tonight uh and i got a mountain of things to do it's okay you know we do it i know i know but i wish i was more the other way yeah right i i that's see i like it that way though i i i would i don't want to change that part of me that's funny even though i admire someone who isn't like i am you know and and i wish i could be more that way but that's true that's true how many people do you supervise oh that's not bad that's not bad at all do you like your job oh that's oh that's important do you have a family oh uh_huh do you like it i i loved i loved abilene too that's what i liked too is the weather except for tornados yes they do and it it it's so surprising how it just happens you know unpredictable uh no oh i've been up here about three uh we were down there uh from eighty six to eighty five to eighty six no uh well part of eighty four to eighty six i should say oh wow oh jeez i know the whole situation is bad up here we're having a terrible time with the recession yeah yeah it's not good at all i know things are pretty [booming] down there i heard they sold johnson city though and colorado springs oh wow amazing oh well that's good at least they kept the business part of it it's scary though i'm telling you i don't know and well you know with the other part of this thing was how do you feel that this influences family that that books influence do you know how to use them in your life or to influence i i feel like it's important for young children to read too and what you read to them when my children were younger of course they were all married and grown and i have grandchildren now they were uh i i read to them a lot and uh i think they've all developed kind of an interest in reading also i'm not saying they read all the right things but they do read uh where a lot of people don't have any interest in it at all and i think it's important because uh even today where people are so [illiterate] and they go off to school and really nothing happens i mean they don't learn anything it's because they can't read yeah oh it's unbelievable isn't it yeah exactly and i think that that's why reading is so important because uh i think even mentally when you can do some tell me what books you read um i try to avoid the uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that does cut into your reading time a lot yeah well my my kids are up and out of the house now so you know i will uh encourage you that you do get a little more time to yourself later on i won't say what yeah oh uh well i read for a living uh i'm an editor and so i i'm at the center for advanced study of the behavioral sciences and therefore i read uh psychology sociology [anthropology] political science philosophy linguistics history uh yeah and you name it i've read some of it it really is it's it's a great place to be and the uh it's nice to work with people uh who are not required to use your services and so therefore are grateful and not arguing with you about them if they don't want an editor they don't come um no we don't uh normally we don't publish uh things under our own [imprint] uh we have books that are written here that are then published by all sorts of different uh commercial and academic [publishers] and university [presses] so uh i end up sometimes reading the things that are written here all the way through sometimes just a few chapters because that's as far as they get but i also get of course lots of references to neat stuff to read about so i'm uh i was just thinking when they told me the topic i should just i should read the uh titles of the five books that are sitting on my desk right now that i'm in the middle of and uh i'm reading uh within the [plantation] household which is a history uh sort of a [sociological] history of southern women black and white living on [plantations] uh a book called [poisons] of the past which is about [ergotisms] that uh fungus that grows on rye it causes the uh uh saint [anthony's] fire disease where people fell into fits and there is a a theory at least that a lot of people who were accused of witchcraft were actually under the influence of [erga] and a book called job cues gender cues which explains uh how certain professions and [vocations] get uh flip [flopped] from one gender [predominance] to the other like uh nursing started out all men and then in the nineteenth century began to have women and now it's practically all women and that uh that's right and the thing that changed that was the manual typewriter it then it became you see just sort of a clerical task when you wrote it out in long hand you were a yes you were a [confidential] assistant to the person right and then i've got a book called fashions in science which is a sociology that explains uh why certain theories get to be popular in uh sociology and uh how difficult it is to swim against the [tide] if you have a different idea that isn't [vatted] by your peers and then i have one novel that's called first light that's about uh [archaeology] the british novel so it's really quite interesting i haven't got too far into it yet uh those are all books that are out uh published and bound now but they're just things that [pertain] to various things i'm working on or were uh mentioned [prominently] and attracted my curiosity so i got them out of the library and decided i'd read some more in them so i read a lot of history and uh a few novels occasional mystery stories just for fun uh_huh oh yeah yeah oh hey that's a nifty idea great oh i think the the boom to parents and the the [shoelace] department was those little velcro tabs i think that's incredibly uh_huh yeah uh_huh what do you think is the most promising or practical book uh of that kind you've read recently um uh_huh yeah i knew his literary agent in houston when she was just uh convincing him to write all this down he was teaching yeah i i saw one of those episodes on p b s uh from time to time out here we have four different p b s channels that we can get on the cable and they'll have all ten of those shown back to back in the middle of the night for people can video tape them yeah uh_huh huh uh_huh oh yes oh oh there's some absolutely wonderful illustrated children's books yeah uh_huh right uh well yeah i read the publisher's weekly uh which lists all the [upcoming] books [forthcoming] books and uh there are so many that look like they would just be absolutely wonderful but i was tickled to see that some publisher is uh [reprinting] the the james [thurber] books for children the wonderful o and the thirteen clocks that have been out of print for about oh i think about twenty years well i had those for my kids and they really did enjoy them oh but they were old copies then i didn't buy them when my kids were little and so they probably were out of print all of already when my kids were small but um i was really happy to see that yeah i guess it's in honor of his [hundredth] oh boy well um i haven't been doing a whole lot of reading for enjoyment lately i read uh one book a friend recommended to me i can't even remember the guy's name it was a science fiction dean cole or something like that and it was so frightening and it had so much violence in it i just could hardly stand it yeah i didn't think it was so great she thought it was [riveting] you know but i couldn't deal with that but um mostly i read i'm a marriage and family counselor and mostly i read things to do with raising kids and now i have two little kids or co dependency or you know fifty thousand things like john [bradshaw's] books on uh the family and homecoming and inner child and so i read usually that kind of stuff if and right now i'm reading um judith [viorst's] book called necessary losses where she talks about different losses that we've had in our lives that we have to get past if we're going to mature and so in in my spare time with a two and a half and a three and a half year old i i read yeah that's really changed my reading habits because i used to read so much especially when i was in school you know but gosh it's uh it's getting pathetic now if i get through a magazine i've been yeah later you're probably looking for your kids so you can talk to them when they're out running around with friends yeah what do you read you do who oh well how interesting what kind of books um oh my goodness yeah well that sounds like a fascinating job yeah yeah that's true that's true well you probably i i seem to remember that uh little [byline] on a lot of things i've read um is is is that um do they have a mail kind of campaign that they send to professionals in the social no um that sounds so familiar uh_huh yeah yeah yeah oh that sounds interesting yeah oh i thought that was going to be oh oh my goodness huh uh_huh nursing or yeah secretaries i bet that used to be mostly men who were secretaries of any type for business yeah oh yeah then you were important yeah yeah like the [scribes] who did the old documents you know for churches and yeah well that's interesting uh_huh um gosh really so are you reading these in the form of just like printed manuscripts that have not been huh yeah my goodness well that's fascinating gosh uh_huh yeah yeah i never have gotten into any of the romantic novels or any of that kind of stuff my husband reads a lot of the um well he did before we had kids the star trek and all those kind of [sci] fi kinds of things you know but he's got a quite a collection of those but uh my stuff uh [revolves] around uh one one let's see i've got one called one thousand practical parenting tips which teaches you to put elastic instead of [shoelaces] in your kid's shoes hey i've done that to every pair my three year old has you know really and uh oh yeah yeah but there's a surprising number that are still around that aren't that don't have those so that's an alternate means of dealing with but um i'm trying to think of what else i've got uh since i'm um a therapist and all i've done recently a lot of research into some of the twelve step groups so i've got all the different alcoholics what they call the blue the blue book the big book and all the o a literature and all the coda literature so i'm trying to get more [familiarized] with that because i refer clients and different groups and uh well let's see i'm trying to think of the um oh i i have a love affair with john bradshaw i just have found everything i've read of his to be fabulous um he started out with one called the family which does the family systems and people's roles in the family and then he did uh healing the shame that [binds] you about how shame can just be so [paralyzing] and people isolate and withdraw and then the third one that he came out with is now called homecoming uh and uh there's a [subtitle] to it i never can remember what it is it's something like um a journey in in your inner child or something like that oh he's just great and now he's had the the first the first one and the third one put into a ten session uh p b s series yeah oh i know yeah so people can just tape them i guess you know but i definitely have gotten a lot out of his lately he's just probably been one of the most there's an author that's in um that's in uh arizona who used to be in dallas it seems like we have a lot of these that have been in texas called p m [melody] who does a lot of writing on co dependency and she's got some fabulous [workbooks] out and a whole series of tapes and uh a [workbook] called breaking free and just some real uh helpful practical things for co dependency so that's been another one that i've thought was real helpful but other than that uh my reading centers on [paddington] bear and [winnie] the pooh and doctor [seuss] but i really have enjoyed exploring children's literature because there's so much more uh new things out that you know i i'd pull out the classics once in a while for my kids but there's such cute things out for kids oh i know and i just go to the library because i just they're expensive i mean it and they go through them so fast you know so i just i really have been going to the library and getting my ten books out and they just love to sit and read and now finally the littlest one is oldest to to sit you know and watch the pictures instead of grabbing it and trying to rip the pages out so that that has been fun to do do that you know go through the children's literature and uh uh uh_huh oh wonderful gosh really well i'm going to have to look for those yeah oh yeah yeah yeah yeah okay what do you read what is your favorite oh i am not much into magazines i do read them i like good housekeeping and stuff like that i will get ideas out for my own house and yard and stuff main thing i like [pierce] anthony i love [pierce] anthony novels figures what like those uh magazines you get through the mail i uh_huh what about like those time books that they put out about uh uh-oh ancient discoveries you know how they found out like that uh ancient man performed uh brain surgery successfully and stuff like that uh_huh uh_huh yes oh uh_huh oh i like far out facts or whatever i like to read stuff like that but i am a superficial buff i cannot take a day i just superficial i like i like it if it is fun i do not get too into it yeah uh_huh yeah well because you read it you are an engineer are you an engineer for t i okay uh i worked at t i for a little while uh we have got a book that says uh how do they do that and it answers everything yeah and i well not everything but a lot of silly little questions like what makes a [firefly] light you know now yeah uh_huh well that do not yeah yeah we used my little sister was blind and going to school and she would have to come home at night cut out different she was not fully blind just legally blind but she would have to cut out different colors and that is the best book to go through those national geographic and they are great oh now i do like national geographic and stuff because i like i said i like reading about i don't know animals i love reading about animals the [gorillas] and stuff and the [sloth] it fascinates me that's something moves that slow and it is just weird oh well yeah well we can talk about anything we want well for me there is no well you know the financial pages does not hit me directly which i am sure it does if i get into it but like i said i do not keep up on all that yeah the yeah with everything going down yeah i know i heard bush say that you know we are either [bottoming] out or seem to be but that is bush saying that yeah well i like ann [landers] no i like getting the paper and reading the want ads and just i do skim over it but mainly i am a front page person i do not go into the details well i know at t i they have most of the stuff on the printout don't they i mean on the computer where you can read the daily news uh_huh uh_huh yeah when i huh when i worked at t i i read that more than i read the regular newspaper because i would read that every day because you would find ten minutes here that you do not have anything to do i know you do being an engineer there are some times when you have got ten or fifteen or even an hour off not much not in the area i worked in we had an engineer in there every ten minutes so yeah well it just encouraged me to read it uh_huh yeah uh_huh well see that is me with the newspaper especially financial page i do not uh i read it so less and i watch so little t v i did not even know what the deal was with this uh-oh i cannot remember his name now him and his wife are getting divorced and he is [tycoon] or something what is his name yeah trump i did not even know i still do not know what the whole deal was with that oh yeah immediately so that is all it was he was just having an affair on his wife huh oh that has got to be hard to go from really rich to poor which i am sure he ain't poor yeah huh well see that is like i said i like i do not watch much t v any more either but i have got three kids so it is hard to watch t v except for donald duck well anyway i have enjoyed talking to you yeah and have a good holiday bye bye uh well i read everything uh i guess uh uh well i like all kinds uh in fact i was just reading uh a magazine now an automobile magazine uh i like historical uh books time magazine newspaper how how to do it type things uh uh uh_huh oh the novels yeah no i am not into soap soaps and all that stuff i am uh not into novels at all really other than historical things uh uh i am kind of a a chore person i like to do i am again i am a fix it person i i would read all those kinds of things yeah i will buy car magazines course i am an engineer and i read the engineering magazines and the money magazines and uh well i am reading historical uh not a novel but historical book now about the uh russia before uh the czar not before the czar during the [czar's] time and what it was like and everything oh you mean the ancient astronauts things i have read some of that i i did not some of that is uh it is very interesting without question i i do not really know that they have the answers in those books they make conclusions in them that may or may not be true but they are very interesting that they have what they have discovered yeah you are what kind of buff oh okay oh yeah right well i am kind of a hobbyist so i i read all those things that uh and being an engineer all those books that would bore everybody else you know how to do things i am one of those crazy people that reads the directions it always make my wife mad i when she ever there is something i say well have you read the directions no i hate reading the directions i say well engineers we we are the few people in the world that read the directions yeah yeah uh_huh yeah oh really oh yeah that oh yeah those are oh interesting oh you like science things uh i have not gotten them in a long time what is that uh one that is on t v that book uh national geographic is really a fascinating book uh uh if you ever get those or but i have not gotten them in years uh they were kind of expensive i know people just collect them like they are uh they have wonderful [photographs] and just amazing [photographs] that they have done yeah it is it is they they they uh the [photographers] just got fantastic pictures in those things uh uh_huh yeah oh yeah you know i have not uh of course was it all books and things or was it any did it say anything about newspapers i have forgotten what the question was exactly but uh what do you read i guess in general or yeah uh i i glance at all newspapers i do like uh since the since the economy is doing so bad i never have read the uh uh financial pages more often than now you know and trying to analyze and look for some good news in in there you know uh to see if the well i have only been more interested because of things are doing so bad and everything i thought well uh see if there is anything in there that uh uh would be positive you know you always look for things with with this terrible recession that we are in uh to see if there is any oh yeah yeah it is uh hopefully uh we will recover here uh yeah yeah right and he he yeah i know i do not really know if uh any one person knows uh uh what some of the problems are uh but there there are some there are some interesting things in the paper really yeah it yeah no i glance at it i i with the so much uh you sound like you have a family too but with a family and everything there is just so much going on that i uh actually i am more of a not more of a radio buff but uh it is easier to do when i do some chores or yard work or anything put the radio on and listen to that and oh yeah i do every time i come in uh i will punch up but they call it t news and all that and i i do get uh it gets a little bit of everything even the the last page is uh is sport uh listings and and different things uh and world news you know about you can read it in one minute you know uh_huh yeah yeah yeah yeah oh yeah it is it is it is uh interesting uh with the computer to read the computer news and all that i i guess that is a that is a source of reading i hadn't thought about that in that respect uh oh yeah yeah it it does have a good uh simple uh you know again you can read it in uh in a lot less than ten minutes it is usually you can you can page through it in i do not read everything on some of the stuff is pretty boring i i skip over some of that but uh uh it is yeah yeah yeah well oh yeah uh uh trump donald trump yeah well i guess because he was so rich you know when you are that rich uh you always get into the paper whatever if you have a family problem whatever well he had a young girlfriend he was he is well into his forties and i guess he got a young girlfriend who uh and and then every every time you take you you are that rich you just get uh in that uh in the news immediately you know uh which is tough well that and uh his business is going down the tubes so bad you know he was uh uh essentially like you said a [tycoon] uh donald trump and had it all he was high roller for about ten years and then he is now uh essentially bankrupt you know and so uh yeah yeah no right uh who knows uh what he has really got but uh he was kind of an arrogant guy so i think the newsmen uh enjoyed uh writing about him on his way down you know and his wife was very uh uh seemed to be very smart and actually running some of his business it was uh she was actually somewhat of a business partner of his uh did very well [ivana] trump uh oh yeah they have been on all the news and everything in the in the papers and uh uh on barbara walters and everything else huh oh yeah i can imagine right yeah uh uh i know what you mean really okay yeah well uh hang in there and good luck with those kids right bye bye hi ed hi oh who wrote that huh i see well that is interesting right that is an intriguing type of book to be reading and trying to keep up on things like that uh_huh and they have not made a movie of the week of it yet yeah uh explained supposedly [scooped] up by the triangle yeah yeah on that same topic have you ever read anything about you know the [amelia] [earhart] story whatever happened with her i i think that would be i am sure there is something out there uh i thought she was a prisoner of war or something for like ten years well whatever this is one aspect of it of course you know it is so weird cause no one will ever really know it's it so but it's entertaining and it makes you think about things that is for sure yeah right well i i guess i just have not read i mean usually i just if i find a good book i will sit you know for two days until it is finished if it's that good and i think the last one i read like that was scott [thurow's] and that was presumed innocent and i just really really liked the way he writes it's just incredible yeah uh that was good i think and and the other book i am trying to think you know like was in the last year and i think i did read tom wolfe and [vanity] uh [bon] yeah uh yeah i that was really really good the movie was nothing compared to the book and yeah oh the movie was a joke compared to i mean because tom wolfe is so [perceptive] when it comes to you know [pinpointing] uh society's [ills] and things like that and just [nailing] people to the wall and [exposing] things and and so it was it was a much more intense book than the sort of [flimflam] that they cast off in the movie and anyway we are not talking about that but uh gee i just i like to read gardening books and things like that just to tell me what to do with my garden and uh and uh yeah like what is a book on your list you know i have a list too and i have never gotten to it oh hi uh books i've actually i am reading a couple of different books uh one is uh a story well it is not a story it is a collection of uh of memos supposedly written by howard hughes uh that was uh that was it came out a couple of years ago and i have just now gotten around to reading it i have had it a couple years but uh oh i do not remember the man's name he was used to be a reporter for uh i think the new york times or the washington post one of the two and he supposedly got this this story uh i mean this uh was contacted by this guy who had these these memos he wanted to sell and they were they were ones that had supposedly been stolen from the uh corporate headquarters in uh in los angeles they on i think it was [romain] drive or [romain] street or something there in los angeles they used to have a or i guess they still do uh had a uh uh big warehouse kind of thing which had offices and it was sort of [nondescript] for a uh you know for the size of the company which inside was basically a store house of a bunch of stuff he collected he he was uh a great collector of everything he he he did not he did not throw anything away and uh supposedly this guy had had been breaking there for he was a like you know burglar had been breaking there awhile and uh and had ended up he had some [accomplices] that were kind of suspect and they uh they broke in one one night and found a bunch of memos that were uh supposedly from from hughes to uh to his main uh main assistant back uh in the fifties and well i guess in the sixties up until his death so it's pretty interesting work so yeah it's a it's a little it's a little hard you have to [plod] through it and you know it does not have a real story or any plot you just kind of have to read and understand what is going on no i have not seen it but it's but it is it is real interesting uh i also reading uh the uh it's a an old another old book that i happen to have i am sort of [rereading] it it's uh a book about uh the bermuda triangle but it's uh it's about it's a real good book that a guy uh wrote who was uh a research librarian he wrote uh sort of [debunking] many of the uh uh the stories about the uh bermuda triangle you know he he was thinking many many of the the myths many of the myths of the triangle were uh actually could be explained and you know uh and the reason i was picked it back up was in light of all the uh well when they found the uh the airplanes on the in the atlantic thinking they were flight nineteen and i don't know if you are familiar with that at all but it's uh flight nineteen was one of the uh was a a collection of a flight of five navy adventures at the end of world war two right after world war two and they were they were lost and uh yeah they were and so and in the book you know even he wrote this book back in the seventies and even and even then he he had a very good case for the fact they probably just got lost and they [ditched] in the water and uh because he he [mentions] he he goes through and brings out points from the [navy's] findings and so forth and uh it's probably you know real close to what you know everyone is thinking now that they just got turned around and could not find their way back uh no i have not yeah i would i would like to too because it's a lot of things coming up here lately about her you know possibilities of of where she uh yeah right yeah so that is pretty much for right now that is what i have been reading i kind of like to read different stuff and uh i like to read a novel every now and then but uh i am trying to get away from just reading novels all the time yeah yes yeah i read that too i got it uh right after it came out my uh you know he was an an assistant district attorney in chicago at uh and while he was writing the book and uh my sister in law lives in chicago and she had before it actually got big she sent me this book saying you might like this this guy is you know from here and uh i read it and really liked it and then about that is when it really got big and uh so i [bonfire] of the [vanity] i have not read that although i have heard it is pretty good yeah that is what i have heard i saw the movie and uh yeah right right i know yeah i have a lot of uh uh computer books that i am i do computer work and so i have a lot of those so i spend a lot of time looking through those not necessarily reading them but looking through them but i i'm interested in a lot of that but uh i have got a lot of books that i i intend to read but i have not been able to yet you know for one reason or another oh gosh i do not i do not really have a list cause i just kind of uh i just have all the books out you know i have book shelves and i have them all out and usually when i am through with one i will go in and uh uh uh look look through uh i have one now and i i can not remember the name of it that i that i got is the sister in law in chicago usually sends me for my birthday or or christmas or something will send me another another good book and uh uh i have one and i can not remember the name of it uh it is supposed to be a mystery yeah yes i talked with um i talked with people from richardson and plano and uh the first three days and then yesterday i talked with someone with from pennsylvania so it's the oh oh i know sometimes i just i'm in it just takes a very long time so yeah i know well this is hilarious oh well tell me what books have you read lately well i don't read all that much for enjoyment i mean i read a lot for school but gee i just don't have much time for enjoyment reading uh_huh um yeah huh oh yeah oh yeah interesting uh_huh yes yes yeah uh_huh yeah yeah that kind of was um kind of a pop psychology time for when a lot of books like that were coming out i think and so that makes real sense that that's um when it was written um i haven't wasn't really aware that she had written anything for um adults i was always just more aware of her you know for her young people her books uh_huh i'll be darned yeah uh_huh yeah right yeah yeah yeah i wonder if she's written anything really recently if she's got anything printed in print uh_huh i'll be darned yeah yeah well it's i'm trying to think the last actual book i read that wasn't let's see i think i read oh when i was on vacation um between semester break and summer you know on semester break between spring and summer and i went to my mother's i read a book that i have should have read when i was probably in high school i read um jane eyre no wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute jane eyre no no no no it wasn't jane eyre no it was um uh pride and prejudice by jane austen that's what it was yes and um you know i i didn't know what to expect except i had heard that that jane austen was such a wonderful [novelist] and she really was good i mean i was was very much impressed with the way her plot was put together so [intricately] and um and you know i just but i as i say i was pretty much ashamed that i hadn't read something before then uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh oh how interesting yeah oh i'll bet yeah yeah right i wouldn't be surprised yeah sure oh yeah well i read that and then i'm trying to think um usually i try to to find something long that i'm going to when if if i have long periods of time like christmas vacation or you know when i know i'm not going to be doing anything for a while um yeah and that's about it because otherwise i'm reading so much for school i'm um i have just started reading a book actually it's for school but it's for um there's a a literary well not a literary journal it's a it's kind of a journal of of the history of ideas that's that's starting to be published um from u t d the first issue doesn't come out until next year but um i'm doing some reviews of books just to what to sort of recommend to whether or not a full scale review should be done for the journal and i've yeah it's really neat because these are brand new books and i just got a i got a this one um most of the stuff is on uh literary [criticism] and philosophy and religion and all that this one is on [johann] [sebastian] bach and it's a a a biography that is really interesting i mean it it's fascinating it really is um but it's so long i i don't really have the time to read the whole thing but i think eventually i'll go back to it but it's it was written i mean the the [copyright] is nineteen ninety one so it's a brand new book yeah uh_huh yeah and he really this man really shed some light on um some aspects of of [bach's] genius and and and you know the and more [sociological] things you know like the the idea that um that music to be a musician was as much um of a family occupation as anything i mean you know that was it was families had just loads of musicians yeah that's right yes uh_huh and um yeah so uh it was just really interesting if that's you know that's kind of what but i have to not only am am i reading it to decide whether or not it should be reviewed but also um because the board of [advisers] for this um journal doesn't have right now doesn't have a really respected name um who's a uh a scholar on on music um and i'm supposed to decide whether i think this man might be a worthy person to be a you know in that position on the board so i don't know if i want to take that responsibility or not but but at least i can tell them what i think so um it's real interesting yeah it is uh_huh yeah yeah yes yeah that it you know you see you see a lot of small colleges doing things like that right uh_huh because it attracts really a a lot people's interest that's one way it's really good public relations for small schools i think so but uh another one of my projects this summer is actually it's part of my research [assistantship] is um it's helping a professor uh [compile] a bunch of translations of of various [poems] for a book that he's writing and so i'm learning the names if not the actual [contents] of a lot of different [poems] and a lot of french people um well where where for instance um a [baudelaire] poem that was written in the french and then has been translated into english by various people and the translations are all so different from one another uh_huh so it's multiple translations of single works and and that's right now right now pretty much what i'm doing as far as um my work is just kind of [compiling] all that for him so it's real interesting oh well let me tell you there are days when i would be prefer really doing that i don't know if i've told you but um this is not on the subject yeah because i've only made this is only my third call i i tried to make calls two different days and i couldn't get through does it yeah i've been trying to you know do that and and sometimes i just can't wait that long so i just hang up because it keeps going through the thing over and over again but i knew as soon as i heard your voice i thought [kathy's] it's kathy [kester] well let's see i um gosh i can't even think i haven't read any and you're such a reader i know that and i yeah the the last book i picked up was a book by judy bloom and it was um it was called um smart women i think um or something like that and it was it was kind of i really didn't like it at all it was it was written back in the early eighties and it was all this this um divorced woman syndrome of the um it was almost like a a pre aids scare kind of thing it was really an interesting because i i right away looked at when it was [copyrighted] because i could tell by the theme of almost when it was written and it was all about women searching for themselves and um you know a lot of [hanky] [panky] going on that's right yeah yeah uh_huh yeah and she's more famous for that but she has been writing for adults also and so i thought hey i'll just try this you know and see what it was like it was very um the style was very [conversational] you would have lots of conversations between people rather than any description you know how that is and um yeah she has because i i remember seeing a new book by her that was out and i think it was a it was an adult book so anyway but that's the last thing i i've read and um yeah i [wuthering] heights oh yeah by jane austen yes yes uh_huh yeah because i i think i was i think i read it in college or had to write it read it in high school or college but i don't remember it and then when [jennie] had to read it at gettysburg and i got her the i got her someone i think it was um oh some actress reading it you know they had an [abridged] version of it on tape and so i got that for her and she loved doing that but i remember that was the book and now i i mean i think it's around here somewhere i'm just going to have to put it in the car sometimes and listen to it but um uh_huh yeah oh that's what i do too oh yeah oh how neat oh great uh_huh uh_huh oh great oh that's fascinating oh yeah yeah oh it's a brand new book oh that that would be wonderful to read something like that yeah yes yeah and they just went from generation probably to generation just with these with these all passing it from one to the other yeah that's the way it was i'm sure back then yeah oh that's interesting uh_huh oh yeah wow that's rough that's real rough yeah well that's a neat thing to be involved in because i think our i think my alma mater um gettysburg i think they were just starting a magazine that was similar to that i think that's probably a sort of a thing to do in small colleges but um uh_huh yeah oh yeah yeah oh now translations what do you mean translations of of yeah uh_huh oh i see all different oh that's interesting gosh that's great boy you really lift me up to a different i mean here i i'm dealing with uh cleaning the stove and you know i'm i wish i were dealing with [baudelaire] that would be nice okay well uh some of the books i've read lately have to do with crafty type things where i've where i've um learned things that i'm going to do for my children for christmas and they were really uh helpful because i didn't know how to do this one stitching and so that was very helpful to me as far as books otherwise um i like to read children's books and things like that what about you oh um uh_huh oh uh_huh it's interesting that you said that my husband and i had uh took a book out of the library about gardening too and started a garden a fall garden um oh yeah and our our uh [cantaloupes] and and um peppers and tomatoes are on right now so it's been really fun and and we learned that you know um some of the gardening skills we had were before but some of them we learned from a book and so that was helpful to us now i've read two books uh that were uh nonfiction lately and uh i well one was nonfiction and one was fiction and the fiction one uh was about a boy in uh during the time of [adolf] hitler and he grew up and lived through a concentration camp and that was not enjoyment that that was too realistic and really um mind a real eye opener uh and i guess it's good to read those things too uh but i didn't enjoy it necessarily and uh the other one was quite enjoyable it was uh about a a chinese lady and her generations down her what happened to her family through the years so that one was good i think all of well even if they're not enjoyable they bring you a uh some kind of of learning so even if it's the country that they're from or anything like that so i i i like to read the the children's books i think that's the most animated and [imaginative] so i like those a lot oh there are a couple of [newberry] award winners uh a [wrinkle] in time is one i don't know if you've ever read that but but um oh there's one about an indian girl and i can't think of that island of the blue [dolphins] is another and that's a good one now some of the ones that have just received the awards this year i haven't read and i would like to read those but uh it's funny because i've read some from like nineteen twenty three and nineteen forty five and things like that and i didn't enjoy those as much and i don't know if it's just because they didn't come from my era or what but uh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh no even that's good uh_huh yeah uh my children and i uh i started a thing where i read a book with them before they went to bed at night and there was one called the pig princess and it was a a princess from a long long time ago and she came through a a spell kind of thing and ended up in a pig um [sty] and the people that she came to were just farm people and she didn't understand them and they didn't understand her but it came together in this book and it was really a lot of fun uh_huh oh goodness well i was an english major so i like to read period uh lately i've been on the whole very practical and uh i'm trying um to to uh [furnish] a home so i've been looking at i'm not sure reading is the word but looking at books on uh antiques and [paintings] and uh interior decoration hints and uh lots of books on plants and and and gardens because we started a garden and things things like that so i've been doing very little reading except i i did finally dip into a couple of biographies um all of sort of literary figures of this century oh good for you i haven't gotten around to that uh_huh yes um um no uh_huh oh uh what are your favorite children's books uh_huh no um uh_huh uh_huh that's interesting i i i well you can't be an english major unless you like reading things from the past so i've read a great deal of old things i tend to go go back i don't have any children so i don't read the new ones but i occasionally if no one's looking dip into something like [winnie] the pooh or uh uh the [grimm's] [fairy] [tales] or something like that um just because it's sheer magic uh_huh yes yes i think that uh we we uh i guess i don't know it's the first time i've made a phone call on it right i read uh a lot of steven king dean r koontz uh some danielle steel my aunt got me hooked on those so i yeah they're all novels i'll read some uh classic too uh like the graduate by [steinbeck] i'll uh a a rose family by [faulkner] that's one of my favorites oh and this this is more of a play or something that that it was from that that i saw and i read the book from that and by the way my name's bill i'm from north carolina uh i let's see what kind of books do you like to read i really have to be in the mood i i read one like maybe once a year i'm not as i've never read anything by him yeah okay i like to read a lot of non fiction history when civil war era and and that kind of thing i found that real interesting i'm reading the [lion] and the wind right now and that was on t v it was uh during teddy [roosevelt's] time and uh about a american woman that got kidnapped in uh morocco uh this is when they were having their revolution or whatever and teddy roosevelt sent troops over and really [portrays] him as a kind of a crazy man you know surprised me i had no idea that he was like that well just like some one quote that he had was that he thought the america's [emblem] was stupid because it was an eagle and it should be a grizzly bear because you you know like the grizzly and stuff like that so it's i saw the movie and that's what made me want to read the book [candice] [bergen] was in the movie i'm a real big fan of hers so uh_huh i like i like to read some of the philosophy stuff yeah i think that i'm fascinated by that yeah i'm fascinated by that that and and uh even stuff about not like ghost stories but real [encounters] with ghosts and supposedly [haunted] houses i like i'm kind of a [doubting] thomas and i like to read stuff like that some of it really freaks me out and i like to read uh i like to read some self help books like uh i read [dianetics] once once i got past all the [gibberish] on it it was okay it it it it took me a while to really get into it it it didn't help me that much but uh i think once you're set in your ways you're set in your ways uh then i one real interesting book i read recently was when i was looking for a job i read how to get the job that you wanted and it it had real good tips and it and i got the job that i wanted by applying the the methods that that all right so we started recording already oh so you pressed one okay so i guess we're supposed to start talking uh what kind of books do you read uh_huh uh_huh so it's mostly all novels okay oh like what yeah i like that i like [steinbeck] a lot i have never read a lot of [faulkner] oh cool i'm doug i'm from pennsylvania uh well a bunch of stuff i guess uh fair number of novels but mostly shorter ones and like i don't really like the you know six hundred page long stephen king novels and all that right uh_huh no like i like say uh richard [broudigan] a lot uh okay he's uh he's dead now but he was really a pretty amazing writer he wrote books that were like pretty short and pretty easy to read you know like written at a third grade level or whatever but they were still very heavy and philosophical also very funny like he wrote trout fishing in america so that's anyway and uh i read a lot of non fiction books too uh let's see uh_huh uh_huh now what's that uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh what how crazy oh uh_huh yeah cool see i also read a lot of books about music because i'm interested in that and fair number of stuff about science and also philosophy things like uh_huh like let's see and even like reading some new age things things that i don't quite believe in like here on my shelf i have a book called [journeys] out of the body it's all about how to have out of body experiences and all that uh_huh yep uh_huh yeah uh_huh right definitely uh uh did you like it uh_huh i see yeah uh_huh what kind of books do you like best huh yeah i've heard of that one i don't think i've read it well uh i'm a tom [clancy] fan and i read i just finished a book on [novelle] [netware] uh that's computer stuff i do a lot of computer reading and uh i'm just finishing another one up on uh statistical sampling so i do more work kind of related reading than uh just for enjoyment well that's pretty good oh i've had them like that before too mysteries any particular writer [ludwig] yes what does he write oh so you kind of learn something as well as enjoy yourself raiders of the lost ark stuff oh what what time is it there ten thirty uh it's nine thirty here uh presumed innocent oh i haven't seen the movie uh or read the book but oh is she is she kind of [racy] just feel good oh really my mother in law's a real fan of hers oh well that's nice yeah uh you mentioned sunday school [ladonna] uh do you are you a bible fan too oh yeah but uh that's always a challenge so do you do my wife talks with other people well i alternate between danielle steele is one of my very favorites and uh then i try to go into one of the self improvement books uh we we take books every once in a while in our sunday school class and go through them uh i love scott [peck] and his road less traveled oh it is it is wonderful i i thoroughly enjoyed that what do you read okay oh yes i i try to keep a book going all the time uh i try to read when i first wake up in the morning and then before i go to sleep so i probably get oh thirty to fifty pages a day read and i just you know i don't feel like in fact this morning i was almost late for work because i'm almost at the end of this book and i didn't want to put it down but i like i like mysteries uh yes i like uh uh-oh i'm drawing a blank uh he wrote the uh [bourne] [ultimatum] [ludwig] yes and uh i like jeffrey [archer] he is an english author who writes some mystery uh well i guess they're they're a type of mystery they're usually some he's a ex lawyer so or he he's a lawyer who no longer practices but his are all have some part of the law uh [enveloped] in them right and then uh the new author that came out with uh-oh the one that uh harrison ford starred in no no it was the uh it's late i'm tired so i'm not thinking too well uh_huh oh it's uh it was his first book it came it was on the top of the list uh he was a d a yes okay and then he's he came out with the second one uh a sequel to it and both of those i've enjoyed real well but i i like that i love danielle steele and and you know if i want to get a fantasy and get away from it all no no she isn't at all her books uh you always cry i mean it's it's always good for good tears uh one book that she wrote that's good for both men and women is fine things f i n e things well it's it's one that's you know it's it's always going to make you have a good cry and you know it's going it turn out good and you're going to be happy in the end and i said you know i don't want anything too real anymore i have enough of that in my own life i want i want happy fantasy like uh_huh uh i i do my share of it i i certainly can't say that i understand a lot of it arlington texas now since i got somebody from arlington virginia one day yeah oh birmingham right it's funny how many names have been used uh all over the country well to tell you the truth i've been going to college for the last four years so mainly text books no um but i i really tend to like biographies a lot not necessarily always heavy ones but you know sometimes i just read one about grace kelley i love to read about real people to me half the time it's more fascinating than some of these made up stories yeah it happened really right i used to like to read about royalty a lot i when i was younger i read about every king and queen that lived i think in europe that was my thing for a while oh really oh it sounds like fun wonder if it was by one of those famous writers you know margaret truman [daniels] writes a lot those really sounds like something she would write yeah i've heard that she's done you know her books are really interesting and they always sell well and uh yeah brings it to life i know uh the some of the british people laugh at us because we're so enthralled with their royalty i know our movie stars oh right um oh yes oh i always like those have you ever read anything by susan [howatch] isn't she fabulous oh once you i don't like to get one of her books because i i just live to read i'll i'll skip everything just to get back to the book oh yeah she's just a i don't know does she how often does she come out with them i probably have missed the last few since i've been back in school well she can she can turn them out overnight i swear yeah i've never read a whole one of hers i don't think and think how rich she is oh yeah and then make movies out of some of them well hers are so involved and they're so such a higher intellectual level because she quotes a lot you know i do too so she couldn't possibly turn them out like some of these popular writers but oh her books are just incredible i don't think they've ever made a movie do you yes well no uh i really just thought about it now but there's just maybe it's because they take so much in i don't know they're so big they're such you know it would be like another gone with the wind i guess another three hour movie oh i know it's about one of my favorite movies no it had such a bad press i wasn't too uh_huh right me either do you know anyone that's read it no i haven't heard of anybody that's read it either i think it was on the best [seller] list though for a while is that right well i never thought about that but there is an arlington like i had a call the other day from birmingham michigan you know and i was thinking yeah and i was thinking the only birmingham i could think of was alabama yeah well tell me what kind of books have you read i was going to say not fun kind right uh_huh yeah it is because you know that's it's really and truly a true thing you know i read one about bob hope that i liked yeah that was real good i'm like you if it's not a heavy biography you know i enjoy it i was trying to think uh i read a uh a novel that used the names of like princess [di] and prince [phillip] coming over here to be entertained and all and there was a murder yeah it was some time ago seems like it was the spy went dancing or something like that it was a lot of fun because they used these real names you know yeah in fact i believe it was because uh_huh i believe yeah i think it was by her now that you mention it because someone had given it to me and i thought well this will be great and it was uh_huh well when you use real people like that i think royalty especially you know yeah but you know that's like them being enthralled with our football and so forth you know our movie stars because it's totally different concept to us i haven't i haven't had a chance to read a lot lately either i have read uh mostly novels i went to visit my daughter in florida and i took a novel with me uh and read it at thanksgiving time and uh it was uh one of those generation novels you know starts out when they're small and continues through generations and i like that yes i have oh she is wonderful i stayed up one night i think until two in the morning finishing one of hers because i i could not put it down well no it seems like she doesn't write as often as oh well like danielle steele and those silly things she writes the same thing yeah and and they're the same silly things i mean if you've read one i mean it's it it's practically the same thing over and over you know yeah wouldn't i you know i'm [criticizing] her and wouldn't i like to have her money because they go from [hardback] to paperback and she has millions of them uh_huh you know mini series and so forth and it seems to me like susan [howatch] does not write as often i have not seen as many of hers uh_huh i think she does a lot of research too huh_uh no i don't think so and i've often wondered why haven't you you know i yeah uh_huh maybe they're just too involved for the average person to go and sit through them you know uh_huh yeah and maybe that turns people off but look at gone with the wind you know uh have you uh gotten into [scarlett] yet yeah that's exactly what i was going to say i was amazed because i in the beginning when it was on you know on route coming out i heard mixed publicity kind of good and bad and then when it came out all i heard was just oh how bad it was that i didn't even want to get it huh_uh no well it wouldn't surprise me okay uh read any good books lately oh okay uh_huh uh well i'm in graduate school and so i read a lot of books but i don't know if i consider very many of them good uh i haven't read a book for enjoyment since i guess around christmas uh i received uh uh several books for christmas and at christmas break i read uh [sarum] by uh uh a fellow named rutherford uh it's the history of uh well it's sort of the the historical fiction about uh the salisbury area in in england and so i i really enjoyed that book a lot uh he's not quite as good as you know michener or some of uh some of the other historical writers but he he did this job well so yeah uh do you find do you find you have much chance to read for for just pleasure or mostly for business uh_huh i don't think i have seen it uh_huh uh_huh oh okay i think i have heard about that yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah that sounds great did did it have something to mention about uh sort of uh cultural [rituals] of of manhood okay yeah i have heard of that i have uh someone suggested that i read it is it iron john okay good b l y okay great uh_huh uh what are your favorite uh do you have a favorite subject to read whether it be science fiction or or history or uh_huh uh_huh okay uh_huh okay uh_huh that sounds great uh who is your whose your favorite religious author uh_huh uh_huh max [lucado] yeah yeah uh he's a great man i've met him several times uh huh uh uh_huh uh yes i i've read uh several good books lately uh lot of them related to uh business and financial matters since that's what i do for a living how about yourself yes uh_huh well that sounds good no i read for pleasure some also i read a book recently called iron john have you seen that by [bly] okay well it's a book about uh uh greek gods and and greek uh mythology as well as uh man and [interacting] with other men and a book about uh men and how they mature through life and how they deal with life itself but it's uh it's all revolved around uh mythology uh as far as uh traditions from uh other cultures and our culture and how we uh interact with one another yes yes by [bly] b l y i believe it is uh_huh and uh it's a very interesting book well it depends again if we're talking about uh i read a lot of religious books uh just because i have an interest in that area and i read a lot of books in the area of uh uh psychology and self help type uh materials uh always trying to understand people better and understand myself in relation to other people and try to understand where the people are coming from because i'm in a people business and uh so that that's my work is my hobby so i i enjoy it well i don't know if i have a favorite uh religious author i would have to say that uh some of the ones that consistently put out good materials uh you know that that's difficult because one person might write one book extremely well and some other ones might not write as well uh i had to stop here and think a second one of the ones that i've read recently that i've read several of his books and i thought that each one of his books were good he's the man out of san antonio and uh max [lucado] max consistently writes good books yes i know him yeah but uh there's other authors also that have uh uh that write good books from time to time but not consistently put out the materials all the time uh i'd say another which is a local writer here in plano uh is uh i'm trying to think of his name he's with the bible church and that is uh i see his name but i can't i mean i see him but i can't see his name but he uh he talks about uh he talks about a lot of different topics and did i interrupt your reading schedule oh oh well what have you read good lately well not even lately tell me who's it by do you remember yeah my husband is a big science fiction uh reader but i don't uh care for it as much i don't have uh he's a computer man too i think that sometimes goes hand in hand well uh i'm at a stand still right now but we haven't lived in charlotte very long and so uh and our furniture is stored somewhere else so i've had a lot of time i've read a lot of books but and this is one group of books if you've read that i i guess i started reading them two or three or ago by jean [auel] the first one was clan of the cave bear oh gosh that is wonderful and then the second book of hers was valley of the horses and the third one was the [mammoth] hunters are they sounding familiar and her last one which which i think everybody waited about a year or two for to come out uh plains of passage but uh i think clan and you have to read them in order you have to read the clan first but that has that is the most different book that i've read in many many years probably since brave new world made such an impact on me many years ago and my husband says so too the clan so it's if you can pick those up uh and sometimes they're packaged together those first three in paper back yes i have yes good but how uh do you read more realistic books perhaps self improvement or how to books yeah yeah um i'm i'm sorry huh_uh huh_uh are you working or are you a student are you well my husband is working uh temporary well under contract we had moved here after twenty years in oklahoma and in fact he started with i guess um first generation computers is that called mainframe and um he's under contract with uh an insurance company that has bought many agencies so uh and they really needed he's an accountant also and so they need someone to uh get things under control so he's been reading a lot about different kinds you know several agencies are on um uh one system uh some other on some other systems right now what not red house what's what's that oh i can't not red house the system i guess is what i'm trying to talk he's converting to it and then they will convert from it to another one later on but he's he's you know he he's good at and he's probably uh as good at [troubleshooting] as anybody that you can find but anyway let me are you married do you have a girlfriend yeah well there is a book that i want you to recommend to her okay and it's called and i can't tell you exactly the author i get a lot of authors if i remember the title remember the title i sometimes forget the author and it's called women of substance and i believe one also one of the best books that i've ever read and there is a series of them uh and it's either by [belva] plain i think it was probably by [belva] plain but if you can just tell her to get that from the library it's excellent have you read silence of the lambs yet did you yeah i had that's not my type of book so but it is my husband's yeah yeah but uh one other thing i wanted to mention too someone a few years ago a dentist and his wife were getting rid of all their paper backs that they had read within the last few years and they were going to take them down to the y or somewhere like that and and i said well let me have them first and go through them and see which ones i want to read and they said well sure take them uh just take them to the y when your finished and as i divided them into the books that i i would like and my husband picked out the ones that he would like those that he liked all had similar covers the ones i liked had similar covers and and what's what's the more uh those that he liked better were black and silver and gold and red and i'm talking about paper backs you know and i thought that was really you know we had two huge piles and all his were shiny like christmas lights and mine were just blue and and all that well it's been nice talking to you and if i if i didn't do anything else i recommended a good book to another woman okay uh uh do you have any uh particular books that you've read lately that are are good books that you've enjoyed not real lately when they came up with this topic i thought gee i read a lot of books and now i thought what have i read lately oh isn't that funny i will have to say oh well it seems like i have read a lot of children's books lately to my my kids and things like that but oh oh huh oh is it by the same author oh uh_huh well that may that may be the reason you can't get into it as as much oh oh uh_huh yeah i you know if i get reading a book i like to just close the door and just read you know and even stay up really late at night and and just stay into it until i finish uh yeah sometimes it is hard to do that with our lives oh uh_huh oh oh i see well some of the books that i have read uh that i really enjoyed getting into was uh the one ellen [drurey] books you know advise and [consent] and have you ever read any of those yeah it really is um it's been around awhile but it's not you know it's not from the eighteen hundreds or anything this is it's a book um it's written in the nineteen hundreds and it's written uh about what goes on in washington you know with the senate and the house and the president and everything and uh it really gets into kind of the wheeling and dealing type thing and it's just it gets really fascinating i didn't think something like that would catch my interest but uh the way it's written and everything it is excellent it just really uh it is well worth reading oh there's another book out that is called all i ever uh needed to know i learned in kindergarten have you ever heard of that is just real cute it's uh it's just got a lot of ideas in it about basic things you know that we do and uh you know things that you learn in kindergarten that that really apply to your life um there is one little section in there that that talks about um uh holding hands and sticking together and uh you know having cookies and milk and wouldn't it be nice if we could all still take a nap okay yeah well i picked almost every category they said you said pick fifteen categories and there wasn't really all that much i was into i mean i'm interest of course i do read a lot but that's uh but i also picked gardening and i tried to talk about that for five minutes i don't really garden very much but books i could talk about you know forever i well mostly fiction and um the nonfiction i like are are the usually the crime stories see and um oh you too oh see now i don't like i don't like those types i i can't relate to stuff like that it's so weird you know yeah well i like i i like a book i can in some way relate to and and that's i don't know it's so off the wall most of that stuff you know you i you can't really believe it i mean you it's hard to to to read it and and really think that this could really happen it's just i don't know it's not believable to me at all well well that's true you don't have to read a book and believe it you know stuff can happen but i don't know i guess i just go more for realism oh yeah it's very good yeah yeah that was good i read that oh quite a while ago oh by um oh [cryton] right [cryton] no now what is that about is that uh an [espionage] thing oh uh_huh yeah yeah yes i have but i terminal man was it was that one of his he he writes stuff his his books are similar to robin [cook's] have you read any of robin [cook's] yeah and they're sort of similar you know in the you know he deals a lot in you know scientific stuff or you know stuff that um i you don't know if it could it could happen or not you know it's just um you know but i mean most of it is good i yeah i haven't uh i haven't read anything by him in a long time fear is that what you said fear oh no i don't no i'm not familiar with that oh yes uh did you read his other one the red dragon yes now uh both of them were terrific well see now i couldn't either now i uh a friend of mine started to read it because you know i told her it was terrific and everybody she'd spoke to said it was terrific she couldn't get into it oh she's sort of a [lightweight] you know her her uh her reading consists of have you ever heard of v c andrews you know stuff like that you know danielle steele you know you know stuff like that so she really she couldn't get into this but she i think she said she saw the movie she liked the movie i don't you know yeah the movie was good but i well you know compared to the book right no well they did but um i don't think it was as scary as i expected it to be i i really you know i i don't know i just didn't think it was as suspenseful as as i expected it to be i don't know but it was a good it was a good movie yeah well that's true and i'm waiting his new one comes out sometime in the spring i think yes probably another murder thing you know that's usually what he you know well this [this'll] be i think his fourth or fifth book and the other the previous ones were murder um the he wrote also black sunday which was a about the uh bombing in the in the [superdome] oh it was a and they made a movie out of that um gee i don't know i think it was called black sunday it was about well no about ten years ago i guess it uh you know but uh that's all he's written yeah yeah that's about all i get a chance for between that and and um uh bible study as often as i can that's about the bulk of it not a lot of chances otherwise okay um officially a junior right now um well right now i'm taking a a uh my fourth semester of of electronics dealing mostly with uh uh and [transistors] and well okay they they're uh no computer engineering okay i'm getting some programming right now i'm taking my first semester in uh yeah yeah well with it well they classify it as computer engineering technology so i'm getting a fair amount of programming as well as electronics uh it depends on which language they're working with um right now i'm taking c i've got three semesters in [pascal] behind me uh that we're working with what what they call standard uh [ansi] c um i'm not real sure what the difference is going to be between c and yeah uh_huh okay what we're working with uh i don't remember the [author's] name used to be i read a good deal of uh science fiction um asimov um clark uh there's uh the big one was asimov his he his stuff is easiest to find what got me started in the first place was uh my brother in law gave me a set the uh um foundation trilogy back ten year a year one of the in junior high school he gave it to me oh yeah and he's come up with uh three more books uh parts of it i got three parts of it yeah yeah wait a minute matter of fact i did read i i robot i robot yeah that's pretty light reading for science fiction those kind of things yes he does well the uh foundation trilogy is directly connected to i robot as a matter of fact his last book foundation and earth they made the finally made the connection that uh um leader robot whatever his i don't remember his name now anyway he's still going in uh uh uh in foundation and earth they meet up with him he's on a base on the moon and somehow or another earth has been so utterly polluted with uh uh radioactive [fallout] that it's utterly [uninhabitable] even though it's been several million years several hundred thousand years anyway but it's utterly [uninhabitable] oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah well i i got started on student a little late i was thirty three when i started to college for the first time oh yeah yeah i i'd been an auto mechanic for twenty years started about twelve years old for my father but i decided you know i i had a pretty good idea that wasn't what i wanted to do any more no didn't go through military so i'm okay so what kind of books do you like to read uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um i prefer my favorite types of books are uh human interest type books biographies um it can be fiction about people i like books that are about people that have historical you know that tell you something about the history at the same time you know in a certain area so um both either one yeah um i've read lots of books i really like let me think um have you ever heard of a book called the hiding place by [corrie] ten boom yeah yeah uh_huh yeah yeah i like um i guess my preference is for christian biographies but um i'm interested in both you know because i you learn a lot from reading about people's lives and um so yeah that's probably one of my all time favorites what what would you say is your favorite book that you've ever read uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah i uh_huh uh_huh i remember a long time ago i read some books by glen [bristol] you ever read any of yeah those um i don't know why gone with the wind made me think of that but those are books that are um like they some of them took place in well there's one that took place in georgia and another yeah they're historically based fiction yeah yeah uh_huh i don't think i am i don't think i am but go ahead oh yes uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh oh yeah yeah yeah that's right i do sometimes but um they have to have illustrations or else i i get bored with them for for the most part i mean illustrations real examples you know instead of just giving me a [sermon] or giving me a you know how to type idea yeah yeah see they have to have it for real yeah some real examples from their own life to prove that they know what they're talking about i just read one called uh the language of love by gary [smalley] and someone else and that was really good yeah it was full of personal illustrations and illustrations of people they'd work with they're um psychologists so what about you what do you like to read for self improvement uh_huh yeah yeah yeah i guess i agree there uh_huh yeah uh_huh oh dear yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah with humor in them yeah yeah those are good yeah i think it probably does yeah i have too good bye have a good evening well what books do you like uh_huh great uh_huh yeah yeah those are great uh i've been a [sherlock] [holmes] fan for years and i think i've read most of his stuff multiple numbers of times i just find it very relaxing and very enjoyable and i always hope for my memory to to fail me so after a couple of years i can pick up a story and read it again that's great uh_huh yeah yeah yeah i started reading them years and years ago i it's and i i'm not really much of a mystery reader although i've always liked [sherlock] [holmes] and then somebody turned me on to a guy named dick frances um and he's uh a former [jockey] and he writes mystery stories and they always involve horse racing in one form or another he's very very good if uh you've never read him that would be a great opportunity his name is dick frances and any book store owner will know who dick frances is and you can pick up any of his stuff and you can just sort of try it and if you like his style well he's written i'd say twenty or twenty five novels you know he's he's quite quite clever the adventure stuff yeah huh yeah you know i always suspected uh uh uh michener of doing that you know i read some of his early stuff and then it seemed like his later stuff they would be these long long long [passages] that were just of inferior quality yeah i mean i just got the feeling that he sort of has a of of students and he says okay go write three chapters on this and he and he kind of he might write some stuff i don't think he writes all his stuff every word i may be wrong yeah i've read a couple of his things i i just wasn't that crazy about him which really puts me in the i know in the vast minority yeah huh yeah huh yeah yeah i read dune years ago uh i just did not care for dune i read through it all it was [laborious] i i felt i had to get through it and when i put it down i never wanted to read another thing by that guy again yeah yeah yeah but again i realize i mean i all my friends were saying how great dune was and i just could not could not get into it i read the whole thing but i didn't didn't enjoy it that much i really read a lot of science fiction and asimov is one of my favorite authors i think his stuff is is great just going back to his very early works and almost anything he writes i try to read yeah interesting and i was just crazy about [tolkien] i read his stuff and i [reread] it and i read the whole twelve hundred pages [aloud] to my son when he was uh a young boy when he was about eight or nine we would just read ten pages every night and i just did that you know for a half a year until i'd read the whole thing out loud and uh yeah yeah well uh uh being a college professor there's just a certain amount of academic reading i do as a matter of course well yeah forced is probably not too strong a word but to keep up in your field you usually have to do some uh some technical reading but uh i actually like um for technical reading i like to read what i call uh soft core science like uh discovery magazine which i like very much and they get some of the best [scholars] and scientists in the country to write articles that can be understood they're not highly technical but they're not probably not as simplified as in discovery but they're very good except i couldn't i just got on their list somehow because at one time i did some research for them and i'm not really sure how one would go about getting this but it's it's excellent uh for finding out what's going on in fields other than your own i don't believe so source book oh no no oh that would be fascinating i don't know what what about them uh_huh i see okay that would be a very interesting thing right uh_huh yeah do you have any interest in stonehenge or did you ever have any okay so what books do you like to read like what what authors uh_huh no i'm not okay yeah i heard of that oh that's interesting no i i have never really never never read science fiction much uh_huh yeah uh_huh right that's older stuff yeah yeah i had a professor at school whose sister wrote a star trek wrote one of those novels that yeah as under this fake name she wrote it in since she's a professor at another university and it was kind of a hush hush thing that she'd written this book so we all had to read it for a sociology class so um no i don't the author was like [madge] [larson] or something like that it was a kind of [feminist] star trek people on a it's the woman had been a p o w in vietnam who wrote it and so she she's one of the first female p o w and so she had um kind of [paralleled] that with kind of a space version of it and it was kind of it was interesting i don't know if it was interesting just because i knew the person who had written it or if it was actually a good book but i've never really read a lot of science fiction it's right right oh but you've got them so that halfway there that's good uh_huh yeah i've i've read a lot of medieval lit this year in school a lot of like took a class in [chaucer] so we were reading in the middle english and all that and that was a lot of fun kind of weird but um well i'm uh i like a lot of contemporary short stories um authors like [bobbi] ann mason she's from kentucky and writes a lot of just kind of contemporary realism sort of stuff um john [barthelme] who wrote he just died a few years ago and he wrote kind of weird [avant] [garde] short fiction and then like in the sixties through the late eighties and he was kind of responsible for turning around the short story movement so that was kind of neat um if i'm reading kind of trashy stuff i like um i guess kind of mystery books and then stuff that's funny i like pretty much any humor book and gosh oh that's fun uh_huh right no i i i have one of them sitting on my [bookshelf] and i just never picked it up yeah yeah i i like him uh_huh yeah i used to oh what have you read by him uh_huh oh i've never read anything i got a book of his out of the library just the other day to try it out i'd been to england and thought you know he's like the british stephen king so oh really i'll have to oh well he's next on my list to read i'm reading a little private eye book now yeah oh those are the ones my dad keeps trying to get me to read but i uh_huh well that's good right well that's interesting i read i like moby dick that's a that's my big book that i like that's one i just my very very favorite book so if i had to go read something again i'd probably read moby dick or [scarlet] letter i always like no i actually have never seen any of the star trek movies was that oh well that's interesting i had a roommate in school who did a did you ever see the movie [heathers] oh it's it's kind of this sort of black comedy movie about this these kids in high school who are not real popular and they kill all the popular kids in the class it's it's kind of [bleak] but it's sort of fun and they do a lot of moby dick i had a roommate who wrote a whole paper on moby dick and [heathers] and i i thought it was a little much but it was kind of fun i like john irving that's he hasn't written much in a while but when he does i'm pretty happy with it yeah i'm trying to think what else i've read that i've really just loved i don't know how i it's hard to read when you're in school it's like you just read those textbooks and that's it but i guess maybe in the real world too you just don't have time to read but uh_huh and then you fall asleep and have to [reread] it the next night because you forgot what you've read yeah i i do that too oh i like larry mcmurtry he's good and like [lonesome] [dove] was it was a long book but it was really good really uh_huh oh i liked jaws and the deep and the island those were pretty good so i would read that all right um i think the topic was crime in the city i do not live in a city i live in a real small little place uh it's about thirty miles from sherman it's north of sherman not too far huh_uh uh i've been through there okay oh yeah i had been through saint joe but um just as far as watching the news and reading the papers and all that it sounds like the crimes in the cities are really getting bad huh_uh oh yeah sure huh_uh oh i know i know i know um i think nowadays people just really just murder is nothing to them you know huh_uh yeah yeah because uh most likely that will happen won't it that you know huh_uh huh_uh no yeah huh_uh huh_uh um huh_uh um so you're you're kind of thinking in other words if you get if you do something the first time that's not real bad you know yeah to go ahead and let them go but if they do it again and they really need to face the consequences then uh oh huh_uh yeah huh_uh huh_uh huh_uh no apparently not because look how many years they've been doing that and look i mean yeah huh_uh huh_uh huh_uh three or four times yeah that is true i know yeah oh i'm i agree very much so on that i yeah huh_uh yeah huh_uh comes yeah huh_uh sure they just think that's the normal thing to do don't they yeah huh_uh in the first grade oh know huh_uh huh_uh oh i know i know um i work in school you know that's something i do and i it really is i'm like you [astonishing] what the younger ages know and they react to what they see at home you know if they see violence at home that's what you're going to get from the kids at school you know it really is and that's kind of sad huh_uh yeah huh_uh teen huh_uh huh_uh yeah right where is that north south east or west well you live almost in oklahoma yeah that's kind of ironic because i don't live too far from oklahoma either you know where saint joe is i'm about eight miles south of it well you know i've i've seen those statistics and everything and you know what frightens me is that you put a half a million people out in the middle of the desert with high tech weaponry you know i mean the iraqis didn't have a lot of high tech weaponry but they had [mortars] and machine guns tanks and all that and they didn't kill as many people in in forty five days and they were intending to kill people i mean that was their job as they killed in washington d c well i [formulated] a pretty radical theory over the last ten years i guess and i've come to the conclusion and this is a pretty scary thought to me even that if a guy is convicted or a gal is convicted of a crime rather than put them in prison because [prison's] proven not to work just let them go say okay you're convicted and just let them go and if they get convicted again well just kill them well i think that the best hope to eliminate crime as we know it today is to eliminate the criminals from society if someone is known to have been in prison they can't get a job you know they can't be accepted into society you know if they're not going to be accepted into society then everybody's going to become [sociopathic] and you know who's to put the limit on it i mean i was watching a thing last night up in washington state if you get convicted of uh sexual offenses on a regular basis you know i mean some of these guys are forty years old and got ten convictions and they're still let out on the street after one or two years well in washington state if you're a habitual sexual offender they just don't let you out so you serve your prison term and then you go into the mental hospital and if you're pronounced cured they'll let you go well they may find a cure for it but there is no known cure now hey people make mistakes well yeah use that or you know there's other consequences rather than killing them you know you could always make them the slave of the people they committed the crime against you know at least they might get some benefit in that and if the people they committed a crime against feel at some later date that these people have learned their lesson are are okay you know well they can free them but uh you know with the technology we have today you can put a collar on a guys leg that will knock him down if they leave the property i mean it will just in [incapacitate] them and you can put a collar around a guys leg that will prohibit them from committing any kind of prohibitive act but you know putting them in prison my god that doesn't work well you look at places like turkey turkey has the death penalty for just about everything i mean if you get convicted of uh you know drug trafficking they just kill you you get convicted of uh you know heinous crimes they just kill you i mean there's no two ways about it and uh you look at their society and the repeat offenders are very few you know and you look at our society almost everyone out on the street that has been in prison has been in prison three or four times i mean you know the way to stop that kind of behavior is is two fold one you need to make it illegal for both parents to work while the kids are under seven i i think that's very important and then if a parent has proved to be [unfit] for any reason take the kids away from the parents because you know we are what we teach because that's what our society becomes we have we have just a bunch of people and i've and i've i've lived in that that environment for quite a few years when i was doing construction work you know and these guys they come to work every morning and they're stoned to the bone i mean their so high they could fly up to the top of that building and they work all day and they go home and they smoke their dope and drink their booze and shoot their drugs and when they run out of money they go down to the corner store and pop the guy on the head and take his money and then they go back to work on monday and the kids of these people they're [sociopathic] and i worked in a first grade classroom for one full semester and these kids were more [foulmouthed] than i've ever been i had one kid threaten my life threaten my life told me that daddy's going to [whoop] me to death you know and they flipping me the finger and all that and i just said to this kid i said you got two choices kid you can step into mainstream society or you can die because you will eventually be killed and i just i'm just totally aghast at a what's going on huh_uh exactly well you can see it in the work place you know used to be when you had a personality conflict you just you worked with it and you got through it now you know people get fired or what's even worse is they promote them into a position that they can't handle and let them get fired or one thing or the other you look at another kind of society like the japanese you put that many people on that small of a space they've learned to live together okay it's in their culture and one of the things that's in their culture that i really think the major corporations should pay attention to is the fact that while japan was becoming a great power financially the people that worked for those companies worked for the same company they worked for at sixty five as they did when they were eighteen and the company took it upon itself to find a position for these people if they weren't fit for the job they were hired for they didn't just can them they made a position for them some where you look at frito lay my wife used to work for frito lay as a typist you know [transcribing] stuff into the computer well she could type about one hundred and five words per minute but she don't like it she just doesn't like to do that i mean she will but you know her preference is to be in an office situation where her job is hello did i reach the dallas area did i reach the dallas area dayton ohio i'm from north carolina in raleigh yeah so my name is fernando so um do you well how'd you find out about this oh okay he works for t i oh okay because i'm down at n c state and so i took a class and he said sign up and get some money and just talk for five minutes so are you ready okay let's get started okay so uh what do you think that uh what do what do what do you think we can do to solve the crime in america yeah but what what what are the steps well see the problem is is that um what happens is as that you're uh you know as you go from the country to a city crime always increases right because in the country people still respect uh the property of other people and so as as and the people in the country don't want as much as the people in the city now what happens is all those that don't have any money in the country move to the cities and they rush to get the same thing they say why can't we have the same things that these other people have and the thing that we can do is we need money for drugs and what we have to do is we have to go uh get some stuff steal it and then you know just resell it which one yeah that's uh that's uh the main reason i think uh everywhere because uh you have deaths i mean i mean you have murders and you have you know people stealing other people's stuff and that's a lot of it has to do with drugs it doesn't have to do i mean the thing is is that you know it's like you might be standing somewhere right and like let's say you you're you're you know you're driving out and you're driving back home and it's late at night and you stop by one of these you know twenty four hour you know gas stations joints and uh somebody walks in there with a gun i mean they're going to want the money and you can tell by the people who are always caught that these people are there to get money for drugs i mean they don't want the money so uh so they can do something else with it right right and so okay yeah yeah there's a there's a uh a song that i know which says you know it's like in uh nineteen eighty eight nineteen eighty nine the local state and federal governments spent the least amount of money on crime in america and uh their figures i think are too so i mean it's like compared to you know compared to weapons or stuff like that i mean you're spending nothing on on crime in the country itself what you're doing is you you know it's like you have other things you know you have the aids we're going to solve try to solve the aids problem while while you know some people are getting killed here and there and then uh_huh but those people never get caught the people that that that i see their theory is that if i'm surrounded and i'm going to be caught i'm going to try to find my way through and they're not going to take me alive but i have such a big army outside of my place that nobody can touch me you know it's like of course i mean i might be you know the the leading drug dealer here but you won't find me dealing in drugs i mean there's no connection between me and the people that were caught you know right yeah yeah i was i was at a at a party on saturday and this guy comes over he goes hey how you doing he started talking to me and this guy was from jamaica right and he's got his little brother selling drugs you know and he goes yeah i just came up here to work and i go oh you did you make very good money up here he goes yeah i make a lot a lot of money he goes you know and uh in the movie good fellows did you see it okay in one part the guy goes out of jail and within uh two months he has all his house payments gone everything paid you know and he had enough money to you know it's like those guys at one point you know they had so much money that they didn't know what to do with it yeah yeah that's that that was also in the movie yeah so hello mary we've been talking for five minutes all right okay same here bye bye hello there i beg your pardon no you've reached dayton ohio oh you're from north carolina where in north carolina raleigh great well my name's mary fernando glad to know you uh i was visiting my son down in dallas and no no but his wife has a contract with t i and that's how we learned about it uh_huh yeah uh_huh right i'm ready all right okay oh if i knew that i'd be a very wealthy person well you have to see i the way i look at it you have to think first of all why or has crime increased and if so why has crime increased uh_huh right uh_huh it's easy you said the magic word there drugs and that certainly is one reason why crime here has increased oh yes yeah no they don't want the money for food that's for sure well but you know the the strange thing uh perhaps not strange but something that many people don't realize is that you can go back as far as nineteen fifty one and fifty two and find that there were drug dealers at that time trying to influence the high school kids because uh i'm a retired [educator] and in fifty one and fifty two the police came to the high school where i was and were telling us how to recognize when kids were on drugs how to recognize the pushers outside the one [entrance] that they were giving their drugs away in order to get the kids started and so on and so on so it's a problem that's been around for over forty years and we're just really uh uh now trying to uh figure out how to cope with the problem because it has grown so huge uh_huh yeah and another one of the problems is that the people who are the dealers the big dealers in drugs may be may be part of the power structure that's keeping us from spending the money in that direction that's right they'll never get caught uh_huh that's right but they'll that's right that's right and they one person doesn't know the other person down the line but the guy at the very top the one who's who's really making the millions and the millions is the one who also many times is part of the power structure uh the uh and had the political uh pull to keep things from uh keep the interest or the emphasis in some other direction other than on the drug dealing because it sure is monstrous in this country uh_huh uh_huh yeah might nope i only heard about it uh_huh yeah really you know even in our prison systems they're finding that they're they're having drugs [smuggled] into them right been nice talking with you i beg your we've been talking for a little bit i appreciate the call i enjoyed talking with you uh_huh bye bye okay well like i was saying [burlington's] crime it doesn't involve children and what you see on the t v from you know in washington and new york so what i believe the people want the subject is is big city crime which is something that i don't have any first hand experiences about but i have you know concerns and i have a few ideas of um how to combat it i mean i don't i don't think ideally you know you need money to do everything so that's one thing that that's that's crime that you can't fight it if you need that money so oh does it spread out of the neighborhoods into the more the uh retired people's community or does it stay in the bad neighborhoods so that's a big concern if you live there is to really lock your car up oh my it sounds like um san juan puerto rico we were there just well for a lay over and um well it wasn't a lay over we were we had we were staying at the other end of the island and we drove into san juan to catch our plane it was at night and this boy really wanted to go on the beach and they look at you crazy you don't go on the beach well it's a big tourist town you know don't they don't people go for a walk on the beach at night and they said no it's very safe in the daytime but at night they even have the policemen come around at dusk and sound their sirens pretty much telling people be wary you know and get off the beach well what they what they say they try to do is to get the kids um early and young and what we have here in burlington which it doesn't cost a lot of money but they have a kids council that they have all these after school activities for kids they set up kids with elderly people in the winter time they [shovel] their snow they have a big brother big sister program they have bottle drives they have [cleanup] outings and they have also organized fun activities like gyms going to the beach and playing volleyball at the beach in the summer and they have gyms open and it seems that the younger you can get them and get them involved with programs after school you might keep them but you again you need that one on one like a big brother trying to keep the younger kid you know tell him hey stay in school it'll get better you know so that your mom doesn't have a job and she doesn't work you don't know you can be better than that you don't have to live on the you know for a street life but yeah but it's so cheap they don't have a problem here i mean um they can deal with that scale they might have five hundred troubled [youths] when you have five thousand troubled [youths] plus when you're getting into well the kids now it's twelve years old and they're selling drugs and they've got a fifteen year old that's their boss that is carrying a gun it's just it's the morals of the people which i mean i guess we everybody's responsible for the society but if i had a child that that did things so bad it's not they don't care about anybody these people they're stealing from they're just the big bad rich guy and we don't have it so we deserve it and we should take it yes well i think a lot of it is the parents are totally irresponsible too we're talking these kids are fourteen years old the parents might be thirty years old and i'm thirty years old and i'm kind of irresponsible but i have the morals that keep me from you know if i was going to go out and drink or do something i wouldn't do it in front of my child these people you know they bring their their johns home and they bring their drugs home and the kids are just sitting there in the same room it's just that they have absolutely no no morals and it's really sad but i like your idea of education i mean if the parents aren't supplying it they've got to get it from someone else from the schools yeah it's really sad like if they did have a big brother big sister program those those people trying to help the kids the parents might have hostilities towards them you know like you're judging us and i'm not good enough to raise my child which basically is true it's it's it's i'm glad i don't live in a big city just because i mean not just because i wouldn't feel safe it's just because that i would be reminded every day of something that i don't see and i might see it on a you know a sixty minutes special i know it but san antonio is considered a nice clean city believe it or not i mean they have all kinds of nice write ups about it but any big city has a bad section yes they're very bold it seems really even uh even in the worst crime areas in burlington i i can walk the streets i wouldn't i if i did it every night i think there would be trouble in our house so you wouldn't get confronted or anything but i don't think you would uh someone might grab you mess around with you but they're not going to grab you steal your money and [slit] your throat which in a lot of big cities i mean that's what you your going to have to expect that to happen people are just totally [unfeeling] uh_huh uh_huh right yeah well when uh we lived in san antonio i grew up around san antonio and it's always been a very large uh city and increasingly growing it's has kind of the split population um there's a lot of retired military uh individuals that live there and then there's a very large hispanic population there and the one thing that we noticed that over the years has gotten worse and worse is hispanic uh gang crime in the city and that has uh been the worse thing that we've seen happening um the majority of the actual gang crimes like the the drive by shootings and stuff stays in the neighborhoods but the crime spreads out into the more affluent divisions through robberies rape and uh car crime there's a very large uh or very high percentage of car theft and san san [antonio's] not far from the border to mexico so a lot of the uh cars go to uh you know shops and they take them apart and a lot of them go over the border especially like mercedes a lot of those those in the the z uh the z cars the datsun cars end up over the border and uh very much so very much so in fact for a while there they had downtown if you were to come to a stop light they had a [rash] of where people were when people were stopped at stop signs that people would get in their car and hold a knife and hold them up so now ever since then when you drive into the city most people keep their doors locked while they're in the car until they get down there and once you've reached the the river walk area which is the tourist area it's usually pretty safe during the day if you're just kind of cautious and don't go down the back streets or alleys and um you know or alone if you stay with the groups and along the area where they have the river patrol cops it's very nice but at at evening um again you they have the high tourist area the river walk area which is nice but you don't want to get off the beaten track um there's a lot of parking garages there because parking is very tight and so you don't want to get caught in the parking garage uh alone uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh it's just so sad you know it is just really so sad you know it is just really so sad because you can't enjoy anything any more um in san antonio i don't know what the answer is education i think is a lot of it um so many of the kids are drop outs um uh there's a lot of drugs that go on and that they just have hopeless lives they they lead themselves down hopeless tunnels i think education helps a little bit there um then again i don't know really what steps there are that they uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's good that sounds like they've got a lot going on there uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i don't know how you combat that i i don't know where you start or with a lot of these kids um so many of them all they see is just the gangs and unless you can take them out of the environment enough to where they don't have the peer pressure from the gangs as soon as they come home from school oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh and i don't know how you combat that i i don't know what the answer is to that problem you know uh_huh uh_huh yeah and what do those kids do they get it at school and come home what do they do then i i feel i feel for them i don't know how to make it better for them or you know because it they can't remove themselves they can't just leave and say okay well it's not acceptable i'm leaving the big city mom and i'm i'm going off you know when they're ten they have to live in it and uh_huh right i think so and uh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh no in san antonio it was like every day it was just a matter of who was shot that night uh_huh oh yeah but but there's a lot of them it's very prevalent a lot of the crime is very prevalent uh_huh very much when we moved here to monterrey it was a big change because it's such a small community we're just above carmel and um there's hardly most everybody seems pretty well employed around here and um those that aren't there's [celinas] which is about a fifteen minute drive which is mostly migrant workers and there's a lot of crime there um migrant hispanic farm workers people that are down and out and uh they all seem to [congregate] in [celinas] not so much here in monterrey so it's it's pretty quiet you know we walk the streets at night and uh people run in the park and you know you're just have your normal smarts about you then you really don't have to worry or uh_huh right uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh i didn't know that about burlington i'll have to keep that in mind okay i can go ahead and start uh in dallas there's definitely a crime problem i know it's you know worse in the larger cities um it's kind of a concern for me in fact at the moment i'm thinking of possibly moving to a new apartment and uh it's i am single and female you definitely are going to worry about the location and uh you know [accessibility] of people to be able to break in i live on a third floor now but i you know i'm real concerned that i i don't want to be on a first floor where you can have problems with things like that and the um some buildings do it depends on the location the area i live in right now is is real good as far as crime rate is concerned and we don't have anything at all no burglar alarms no guards some some places do have guard gates that you have to get through or electronic access gates and things like that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah yeah uh_huh there's a lot of that going on in dallas too yeah it's really sad uh_huh uh_huh oh i agree i think that people are getting off too easy they're getting they're getting paroled too easily they're just getting uh put on probation or something because the prisons don't have enough room so they get they get lighter sentences and some of those people they don't deserve to be let loose oh yeah oh my gosh uh_huh uh that's terrible uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah right it's a little more understandable under the circumstances i guess uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right we have enough enough problems with overcrowding in the jails as it is so let let their country take care of it we don't have i guess too much trouble in dallas with well i guess i guess we do have a lot of people come in from mexico that cause problems but uh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh it was amazing i went to the far east uh back in october to do some training for t i and i uh some of those countries were so safe it was unreal singapore is very supposed to be very safe and in fact tokyo and i thought tokyo would be dangerous being such a huge large city with so many people but they at at the t i there i said is there any area i should avoid and the guy said let me ask another girl here and he turned and asked this girl and said can you think of any place where dana shouldn't go by herself or anything and she she thought for a few minutes and she said no and he said is there any place you wouldn't go by yourself she said no and they said it is so safe there that you can leave your purse on the subway and somebody will turn it in and and nothing will be missing they said they can just about guarantee that there that that would happen if you did that i thought boy in america if you left a purse on a subway you would never see it again yeah that's true that's true but i was thinking boy in dallas if somebody asked me if there were places you wouldn't go by yourself at night i'd have to set them down for about five or ten minutes to list all the places out i mean i couldn't believe that she couldn't think of any place they said the apparently the crime is just uh i'm not sure what it is there now i know what it is in singapore is they have the death penalty and they really enforce it like for drugs for drugs they they enforce the death penalty for that uh they're just very very tough and i guess maybe that's the way tokyo is too or japan is too they're just very tough on criminals uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right right and if they're overcrowded well you know they shouldn't have gotten [theirself] there in the first place uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah i agree because it's not fair to those of us that that deserve a safe you know life to have to right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right right not much yeah huh_uh and especially not in some of these big cities like in dallas i mean they've had they're up in the top top five i think of cities that are getting policeman killed on on in the line of duty and that's really sad uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh all set do you want to start sure go ahead do they have many buildings that have security there yeah yeah well i i went to dallas uh when i worked for t i in abilene and uh i'm a little familiar with the city area forest lane and you know through that off off the freeway and uh it didn't seem like it was that congested in that that part you know because to me where we live out here in the north east it it's there are a lot of buildings very close to each other and the cities are very populated with [tenement] housing where there are more than one family in a house and with the uh people that are coming into the country from other countries not knowing the language and uh they're going to the big cities it makes it very difficult it really does and and i've seen the same thing that you're talking about uh much more crime than ever before drugs of course uh a big part of it i think and uh i don't know a lot of younger people you know into more violent crimes that that's really sad you know you got young boys or girls that at fourteen or twelve years old that are committing murders and no remorse what so ever yeah it is and and i don't know if it's uh the family you know thing where they're not bonding anymore where mothers are working all the time and the kids aren't getting the attention that they need or the television and i i really think that we're we're falling by the wayside with not [incarcerating] these people uh uh yeah exactly and uh you know they had uh in fact on the news last night we were watching this uh man who lost his ten year old daughter he ran out to the store for a few minutes and he had left her home alone now ten years old she's old enough to be alone for a few minutes you know and while he was gone he had looked went looking for a job and stopped at the store that's what it was and uh someone who was in the neighborhood cleaning carpets these two men went in raped the girl murdered her and the whole bit and one of the men got uh i think it was seventeen years and the other one was in for uh life imprisonment the one that was in for the seventeen years actually served seven and he's out and the man said that you know if it weren't for the fact that he would go to jail that he would eliminate this person himself and then go to mcdonalds and have a hamburger and not thing a thing think a thing about it and i mean i think that what this is going to lead to is people will take things into their own hands and that innocent people i i shouldn't say innocent because i mean actually if they commit a crime that they're in the same circumstances but the reasons that they're doing it compared to the reason someone else is in jail for it you know it's like two different things sometimes when you lose someone that you really love you do some crazy things i don't know i i like the idea that uh if someone is from a foreign country and they come to this country and uh commit a crime i think that [irregardless] of whether they have already become a citizen or anything they should be immediately [deported] especially if they're found guilty of the crime you know once they they have been arrested and if they know beyond a shadow of a doubt these people are guilty that's it we don't take care of them we don't support them nothing i mean they go right back where they came from exactly and but that's uh they're so close i i don't consider mexican people in the same category with uh especially like uh people who come from cultures that don't have the same uh kind of moral [upbringing] that we have like you take asian countries or uh the eastern countries where women are like in the [foreground] uh in the background and the men are in the [foreground] and it's like you know um they live back in where we came from two hundred years ago you know we've advanced beyond that and i think that their uh mentality as far as the way they treat them and that kind of thing you know what i mean uh_huh yeah wow wow you better believe it if you wouldn't even have to leave it i mean it would get [snatched] right off your arm oh sure that's amazing well what's the difference there do you know oh i i believe in the death penalty i really do yeah yeah i think that we're too easy uh and we take the the uh civil liberties uh stuff too far you know like people that are in prison i mean we didn't put them there they put themselves in that situation and as far as like them uh entertaining the rights that they should have i mean we educate them we feed them we take care of them and they no sooner get out on the street and they're back in again i'm not saying they're all bad but i think people who are guilty of really serious heinous crimes do not deserve to be cared for for the rest of their lives i think that they should be put away get rid of them exactly i i really i i think that that's the whole key here this plea bargaining baloney where uh you know they plead to a lesser crime or uh they plead guilty in or you know tell about someone else and they they get less time or if they're in there and they've got seventeen years and they're on good behavior for every year they're in they get so many less you know that they don't serve the full penalty i i i really think we're going to far overboard with all of this yeah same with drunk drivers i think it's too easy for them that if the the laws and and were were [harsher] and were enforced i mean you have to set an example you have to start somewhere and i think that people know that they're going to get a slap on the wrist they might serve a little bit of time and that they'll be out on the street again an it an i feel bad for the policeman because he's out there every day facing these people this this craziness you know people with uh automatic weapons and uh all this other stuff and trying to do a job and let's face it what do they get paid twenty thousand dollars a year if they're lucky i wouldn't do it for that it is it really is and i mean they're the first ones that take the [brunt] of everything you know and i'm not saying that they're all good either because there's good and bad in everything but they they're already uh have three strikes against them when they're out there because they'll arrest someone and you know go through all that paperwork and writing a report and all this and having all kinds of evidence and you have to even be careful how you arrest them how you talk to them uh you know what they say okay uh_huh uh_huh yeah well i i'm i'm from butler and i can't say that there's too much of that there um i know the bigger cities have problems with it uh i really don't know what we can do about it unless they start enforcing the uh uh start giving more people death sentences that's the only thing i can think of uh_huh yeah i i uh i don't know what they're going to do with the problem because it just keeps getting worse and worse um i'm a senior at clarion university well not only that a lot of them's not even turned in you know what i mean a lot of times the girls don't even report it um i've heard of a few case up here but i can't say that i've heard of uh you know any significant amount uh but then again like you don't know how many girls are reporting them or not uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh see you see now i would say that that's a bigger problem up here than even the date rape or anything i know a lot of people that [partake] in that and i'm not saying they're bad people but i i i would say that's a bigger problem uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh no i don't either uh no i can't say that i i just know that it's really bad in some areas and something's going to have to be done sooner but i don't i don't know what they can do uh_huh well it was nice talking to you you too bye okay what can we do about crime i don't know the one thing that keeps coming to mind to me is that they're they don't have enough space in the prisons to put people and they keep letting out people that have you know these horrible records so maybe we need to have more prisons or use the old army bases and make them into prisons or something that's one thing i guess i could think of uh it's definitely a big concern i mean every day it's you know all we live in a little small town and there's just rapes and murders and [burglaries] and everything all the time and you just can't get away from it no matter where you live so it's pretty scary uh_huh yeah yeah it's rough because yeah yeah well even some of the sentences just seem ridiculous i mean you hear about people you know six and seven times have committed [burglaries] and they're still you know only serving six months in prison so that's definitely something they could have a more automatic sentence instead of having the judge having the choice of like you know from one month to ten years or something that would be one thing that you know i think could help is having the laws be changed so that they were more stiff penalties and more automatic penalties you know for certain crimes yeah yeah and one things that they're saying now are you going are you a student or are you in the work force or oh okay because one of the things that i've heard so much about um lately is the situations on campus where crime has gone up so much and apparently many of the especially like in date rape many of the uh you know [perpetrators] seem to be getting off because the universities kind of cover up and they don't really wow yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah they say like only one in ten are reported i believe it that's awful so one thing they could do is probably support people more reporting it i know some police agencies try to have women police officers that the women can report to and this kind of thing but i'm sure it's still terribly [traumatizing] you know for people to report it so that's probably something else they could do i don't know it seems like something else in terms of crime is certainly involved with drugs you know and that's like as long as it almost makes me feel in a way like making drugs [legalized] just to get all the money out of it and not have you know because these kids are saying why should i go to high school and so i can go out and work at burger king you know for four dollars an hour or whatever when i can make four hundred dollars a day selling drugs so that's certainly a big problem i don't know what the solution to that is having more drug treatment centers available jeez i don't know yeah yeah because it ends up even if it's just kind of like this social drug use you're still ending up supporting these big drug pin you know huge amounts thousand and millions and millions of dollars are getting spent you know on higher and higher up on drugs and it's definitely got to do with crime you know you hear about people selling their babies you know to get some crack i mean just oh gosh horrible stuff like that one of the things they're doing is is they're prosecuting the women who are having these kids that are addicted to crack they said uh some of the statistics show like one out of every ten babies being born in these public hospitals are addicted to crack and their moms are crack users so that's you know another way of looking at it is as the woman is being a criminal you know for doing that to her child so i don't know who's the victim there i mean the kids are the victim it seems like a lot of times the women are victims because they're addicted and it's a very complicated problem i don't envy the government trying to cope with it gosh yeah well i guess that's about all i have to say is there anything else you would want to okay yeah yeah yeah it's frustrating okay well thanks for talking have a good day bye bye okay well i heard dallas is pretty bad with the crime uh_huh uh_huh the same way here in dennison i mean uh back a couple weeks ago they found uh some people i don't remember at some fast food restaurant they had been i can't remember if they had been shot or if they had just been thrown in the freezer but i'm pretty sure they'd been shot and put the freezer at the fast food restaurant and i've worked worked in fast food restaurants they don't have that much money on hand they really don't uh_huh uh_huh yeah right my husband worked at a gas station when he was a teenager and he well i don't know he decided not to work one night or something and one of the guys that was working was shot and kenny quit the next day he just he couldn't deal with it uh_huh everywhere uh_huh it just seems like a lot of people are attracted to the bigger cities though the worst part of it um i lived in louisville kentucky for a while but i lived on the outskirts too but louisville was pretty bad especially during like the uh kentucky [derby] at this time of the year it's horrible to live in louisville but uh uh_huh the ones that blink off and on by themselves i mean right uh_huh how many kids do you have oh a boy or oh that's what i've got it is scary are your are they babies or oh well good that they're a comfort to you i've still got babies okay i've got a a four year old he'll be four and a three month old and it's scary sometimes i'm used to living in uh which we don't live in the city but we just it's still more crowded than what i'm used to i'm used to having you know eight or ten houses on one street and this one's got houses on either side and you know real close together and just right oh oh well we think our neighbors are stealing from us actually my husband they uh well the one of them's a teenager that lives next door and her friends are pretty wild they've stolen gas out of our vehicles and so he went and got a locking gas cap for his they weren't stealing it out of mine so much because my car the gas thing is kind of weird where it's hard to [syphon] gas out so he he went and got a locking cap and they tried to break that off and you excuse me he went down to [uba] and noticed that it was hanging off where where they had tried to break it off and they stole our [tailgate] off his truck well we can't say they did but we're pretty yeah it had to be somebody that you know could do it in the middle of the night and you know they'd seen it earlier uh_huh well the only thing that we can do as citizens is you know like uh watch groups that they'll have but they can be dangerous too i've thought about it you know that this isn't like walking around and looking for somebody you can get yourself into trouble uh_huh yeah well i watched it on t v oh i guess last year sometime they'll break in at the day in the daytime and i hear that you know it's if you lock yourself out of your house and you try to get in your house it will you give that half the time it takes you to break in uh a professional could break in in half that time yeah it is uh_huh i'm getting me uh i want a german shepherd um i don't want any of those ones that will up the kids but i do want a german shepherd because my husband will leave every once in a while for he works on the railroad and i'm scared here by myself and loud uh_huh the cocker spaniels are loud well that's now that's one of the best [deterrents] for a [robber] is a noisy neighbor even if the neighbor's got a noisy dog that's a deterrent because they know that that dog's going to bark but it's easy to fool a dog too you know throw them meat or um a a real intense burglar can just get another dog that's in heat from what i've you know saw it on t v yeah it was and i maybe we'll meet up again all righty bye bye well you know you know last night i was listening to the uh ten o'clock news and for the first five to seven minutes of a news broadcast all they were talking about was the number of shootings the number of drug deals that were going on and crime and and it's so depressing just to even listen to the news anymore uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah i did too i remember i used to work at uh kentucky fried chicken and and i just couldn't believe um you know that now i would hate to work at a fast food restaurant or even have my children work in one and uh because of uh the crime that they would um kill people just for the few couple hundred dollars that they would have in there uh in their cash drawer uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah oh i understand what your talking about so yeah i have uh uh you know a real problem uh even though i live further out in the suburbs the crime follows you anywhere it it doesn't matter if you live in a small town or if you live in a small town or if you live in a large city like this um so but i just think about the all the different ways that we have to protect ourselves from uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah so i don't know um you know it's asking about what kind of steps we can take um uh you know just as citizens to try and um uh protect ourselves i know i have uh um home security system plus i have the uh the special lights on on the outside and i have yeah that uh yeah yeah by themselves if you if there's some kind of movement then they'll automatically come on um but i mean it's just i'm constantly think about keeping us safe and protected verses um two two one of each yeah yeah no no there teenagers now yeah oh wow yeah that's a problem yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah it's different yeah living down here now now the nice thing uh i feel a little bit more comfort since we're so close together like this um i i feel like that there's going to be uh less crime or your neighbors going to be watching out for you um because it's it's practically it's in their backyard too oh goodness uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh my goodness uh_huh uh_huh oh goodness someone did yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah i know that it's a real problem it doesn't matter where you are anymore it's uh more of a matter of what you the steps that you do to keep yourself safe and um so that's that's why i try and uh do uh_huh uh_huh really uh_huh yeah yeah you know i was going home the other day and i saw um a guy who who looked like he was breaking into a window and i thought gee whiz you know i don't know if he's really doing that or not or if he's he's the person who lives there uh you know and and i was thinking well i need to call the police when i get back home and because it was about oh about four or five blocks from where we live and uh and i thought no you know because i wouldn't know if that was really a [robber] or not because it was in broad daylight but anymore you know the crime happens in daylight as it does in in night uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh half that time wow i mean that's so scary so scary you you think you've got yourself all locked in and safe and and uh somebody could break in uh oh i have a dog that's the one thing that i like uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah oh yeah so that's uh we have a little dog now but he is just as vicious as is you know if you and loud yeah and i thought that uh you know we'd have to have a big dog but we doesn't need a big dog we got this little bitty dog that uh part dachshunds and part cocker spaniel and he um ease very protective yeah very protective uh_huh uh_huh that's right yeah uh_huh right oh wow gosh well it was nice talking to you okay okay bye bye well i do not know how big a city is rome i mean you have heard about dallas and the crime here is pretty bad yeah i was going to say uh_huh yeah have you ever been there that is uh probably enough to see um are you in college right now oh okay are base that's interesting concept are bases safe you know yeah the they uh minimize the access uh_huh oh no sure oh great that is wonderful yeah well dallas uh we lived in minneapolis uh we moved here about ten months ago and dallas is pretty uh well we live in north north dallas which is like a suburb near a suburb called plano so we are out of the city but it is uh it is bad everywhere in terms of uh you know the handgun situation um the number of rapes the number of [muggings] just it is it is i would not say it is not as bad as new york but it is pretty scary you know people put bars on their windows in certain neighborhoods and you know they call them ornamental grates but they are still bars yeah it really does and if you are a little bit [claustrophobic] but uh i do not know i mean the jails are crowded i i i am not a criminal justice specialist so i do not know what you know what can be done i am you know uh_huh yeah oh were they teenagers or like that girl in new york that got beat up by you know when she was jogging in central park a couple of years ago yeah yeah but they so they weren't you know and were they uh were they were they obviously poor or you know that is really like i say yeah unless they stole it and i mean that is one big thing down here i mean they have like uh and they are not all young i mean they are eighteen to twenty four some of the young men and women but i mean you can you can see the crime [stoppers] ads on television and they are sometimes it is the same people that have been that have been observed and they still can't catch them and you are wondering how you know um we lived in minneapolis and wisconsin i mean there was all kind of i i know i i i know it is getting worse i do not know what the world is or is not uh the in a small town in wisconsin near madison um a young boy somehow got a hold of a shotgun and killed his parents and his three brothers and sisters and the child had and he they said that he was twelve years old and he had uh he had not uh displayed any tendencies [deviant] or disturbed or whatever you know and you are thinking to yourself um i know that and i do not think a lot of parents i mean i do not i do not know how it is in the air force base but uh i just do not think a lot of people because of the economy both need to work you know i just do not think a lot of parents are that involved any more uh right and discipline i do not know how your folks were but i mean i sure knew as heck when i was growing up that uh my parents were the superior and i was the [subordinate] and you know it was sort of like there were boundaries and i do not think i do not know i think today a lot of parents um are ruled by their kids i i yeah right i mean they are not learning how to uh well like boundaries i mean i do not i see it in work place too sometimes i do not know how old you are but you sound a little bit younger than me but i am in my thirties and i uh i see uh even people that work with me that are ten years younger that you know they kind of have an attitude that i i hate to to say it but it's that's just what it is it is an attitude like the world owes them something do you are you in the air force okay sure huh right right right and the air force is one of the bitter better military supposedly military experiences i mean pardon me i mean that is are you going to be a career person i'm [digressing] but i do not talk to many people in the military so i am that is the way to do it i mean and that's you know at least the air force is i do not know i just uh i am nervous in dallas i mean i you know i mean i go to like an aerobics class or something and i you know uh seventy women in a jazzercise class in a public uh parks and rec building and you are supposed to feel safe but then there are all these it does not matter race but you know it is an inter racial mix and you see these guys standing there watching you jump around in your [leotards] and i do not even think that way but i mean you just think to yourself you you just i mean nobody can think that that it can't happen to them no matter who they are or where they are at you know i mean did you i do not know i was in the grocery store this morning we uh went to new orleans for four days and came back late last night driving and it is about seven hours um and that is a very we had never been there that is a very very neat town to visit uh in terms of the french quarter and all of the things you hear about but the crime is so bad there i mean in all the tourist brochures you read about what you should or should not do how to carry your wallet uh new orleans yeah i would never yeah you just do not do not even bother it is not worth it uh the when we came back i do not know if you have seen i was in the super market this morning and on the cover of time magazine there is a girl she is in boston she is on the east coast somewhere real attractive young girl college freshman i college coed i think she is a freshman she had been dating a fellow for several weeks they went back to her dorm room and date rape i mean and it just she looked [anguished] i mean it was really just sad i mean did not pick it up and read it but i should have but i just looked at the picture and thought what a world i mean i do not yeah i do not have any uh cure no you really can't i mean i they we lease out a really nice two story town home in north dallas and they have a real big thing here people i mean even dry [cleaners] knock on the door and are soliciting you know they everybody wants your business kind of thing and my husband is the kind of guy he's he's sometime he was raised on a farm in southern ohio near dayton and i think sometimes it is just he and i are very different in terms of that i i mean i basically have started not to trust anybody in general street smarts and uh he opened the door i came downstairs and i was real upset and i probably got more nasty than i should have but i just said howard you know oh my god i would not i mean oh yeah and it does i mean it is it is not a reason i mean i have been to new york you should not deny yourself going to visit and all that uh but it is not any worse i used to work for a mortgage company that was owned by uh are you from boston home owners savings and loan in boston and i know i never felt i mean i have been to downtown new york city and i have been to downtown boston and i never felt any safer on milk street in boston staying at the [meridian] i did not pay for but i mean i never felt any safer there than i did in any other city i have been in you know so i would say one thing do not deny yourself the new york experience but go with people that you know no uh but i mean it yeah i do not know i mean i i guess i could go on and on about what to do about criminals uh i think the handgun i am not real big on guns myself so i mean are the new york uh are the new york i do not know how the new york state prison system is but are they booked up that is a way to put it they are booked up are they paroling uh like murderers and i mean here it is just a real big deal they parole people that have killed police officers and then they are out doing it again uh_huh uh_huh i know and then you think i mean i i mean i can remember i have not been out of school that long but it has been at least ten years and you think to yourself was it that bad back then or is it just i think that like you said television is it just that more people think there is like excitement in it you know i mean people that may have been close to the edge just go over because they see something or read something uh_huh uh_huh oh god it is yeah isn't it something i mean i i have a i am originally from pittsburgh pennsylvania and i have a niece and nephew and i just uh i mean my ten year old nephew says things that he is aware of that i am just going michael how did you hear about that you know it is just i think kids get too much too fast and all those sort of things in atlanta where my [inlaws] live uh they had that thing you know the high top sneakers the air [jordans] et cetera kids killing each other and beating their brains out right or the or the jackets the team like the raiders and the caps you know stealing the hundred dollar jackets uh i mean it is i guess it goes from the most petty like that to like what you were saying that they in boston that is crime where they [videoed] that is probably one of the most bizarre i have heard of where they videotape themselves okay well rome is pretty small but uh we hear a lot about uh new york city there is a lot of crime down there and i am i am afraid to go down there because you know i mean you hear about people getting mugged you leave your car for ten minutes and it is stripped when you come back no i have not only to the airport no i am i work at for the air force so there is a base up here and bases are pretty safe because they check your i d on your way in and right but even so we had a uh uh at new years we had some people come in and uh like attack one of the planes because they were protesting uh the presence over in the persian gulf so yeah yeah that makes it bad for getting out during a fire i do not i do not know it seems to i think it is getting worse because i keep hearing things like i when i was i went home my parents live in boston but i went home and we were watching t v and this thing came on where these a group of like five or six guys went and filmed themselves beating up people in the street and and robbing them and it was really disgusting and my mom was like they should just be all shot right now and i mean you uh yeah yeah um they were not i think they were early twenties they were young men i know it how deprived could they be if they had a [camcorder] those are a thousand bucks yeah uh_huh yeah i wonder where i do not know i wonder where he gets it you know you must i think t v is bad because they uh show all sorts of violence on yeah they do not they do not talk to their kids and take them out and and are not there all the time so the kids are off to their own devices a lot oh definitely i think so definitely when you go to a restaurant and like kids are running all over the place they yep but they right i i see that too in the air force oh yeah a lot of uh especially since a lot of us are engineers where i work i am in the air force yes and so uh people outside the air force doing engineering get paid a lot more than we do and so all the young engineers are like well i am just going you know get it for all it is worth and that you know and i am like you are the one who signed up if you did not want to do it and yep it is i like it a lot i like it so far oh probably not but uh they pay for my college so yeah it yeah and you never know who is watching either huh_uh uh_huh right uh_huh this is new orleans oh i would hate to be there during mardi gras let me tell uh_huh uh_huh i know you can't trust anybody it is it is really scary right right we uh_huh well you you hear about people opening the door and getting blown away or people you know uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh right right yeah i would not want to go by myself uh_huh i think our justice system needs to be stricter i mean because everyone they do it and then they get out in a couple of years it seems like they are booked up yeah right um i do not i do not know because i am not real up on a lot of news things but you know you just hear about that that you know it is a lot of repeat crime and you are like why are they repeating they should have been in there longer or it seems like a lot of that it is more like in boston there was a case of uh a couple of kids fifteen year olds they wanted to see what it was like to kill someone so they they picked on this kid who was like new in town and they were like well no one was going to miss him anyway you know and it like ugh that is horrible how can you even think like that yeah yeah right right oh for the sneakers yeah yeah yeah yeah it seems like crime is turning into a [pastime] instead of like you know be i have uh i well i used to have the opinion that there that there really was not any more crime in america in the cities anyway than there was in previous centuries uh before uh simply because the reason there seems to be so much was the fact that the police now had advanced uh reporting methods with computers and other devices that's right and those statistics in turn got them bigger budgets however i have been persuaded lately i guess simply by the uh overwhelming data that seems to be available that there is indeed a lot more violent crime well yeah no i am in i am in washington d c actually it you know i do a lot of business here and i come here quite often and and that again is a is a sort of media perception there's some absolutely lovely and marvelous and peaceful areas in washington regardless of the racial makeup but it's it's real uh there's pockets of violence that is so violent that they uh yeah right now just to focus on that a minute i guess uh uh when uh previous secretary of uh [bennett] i think his name was became the drug czar uh for uh president bush he was going to focus on it on this area and do something about it and i see that even he was met without with with little success even though the entire i guess a a quite a bit of money and other uh planning efforts went into that well yes well i i have three theories about it you know three things i have one theory and it's brought to us by two things one i i believe that this is a function of uh the violence that young people see on television and the movies and i am not just talking about you know uh role models of of tough guys and [gangsters] and things like that i am not even i am not even convinced that maybe things like football hockey and the you know the and even baseball games now where the everything is settled with a fight you know the the immediate need to show some sort of violence to settle the argument and and then i i am an advocate of hand gun control to some degree so i think that particularly i i was reading the other day about uh corpus christi texas which has the the highest i think it's corpus christi that had the highest rates per hand gun death in america uh per capita i mean the saturday night special stuff so that that's what i think about it that's some of the things i think about it plus i do not know what are your views yes well that's that's that's the impression i get you know and i and i imagine that it's you know it just feeds upon itself when we have this sort of violence in society people want to it conditions people to it and uh you have to it has to be even uh magnified to to attract people's attention i guess to have them spend money on something like that and i am sure that it does form role models for young for young men and young women and uh i mean i i read now where we are you know women are young women are arrested fighting with knives over over whatever whatever reason which is kind of unheard of when i was young now i do not want to sound like an old [fart] but that's what seems that those things happened did not happen in that manner before television and i i i i have to think that that it has some influence on it but yeah no oh yes yeah yeah yes yes well i mean i i guess what i wanted to say and i stopped uh i do not know i got diverted was that that uh there's so there's so much of a return from to prison that the rehabilitation programs seem to be a failure and and that is not emphasized i recognize there's there's over crowding problems and and since we have decided to put everybody in jail that commits a crime now that that's complicated the entire process what i also think that i guess it's the reflection of the society where where we have so much more mobility and less attachment to uh you know it does not seem to be any responsibility to the community where you where you live or i do not mean attachment and responsibility i guess i mean any sort of yes that's right yeah i i do not know how that's i do not think it's done by uh the changes come simply by [statutory] nature i do not know what it really will take and i do not know if i have solutions except except to you know i am sort of a a an advocate of of uh of letting people of having free speech and i guess to curb uh television uh the violence on television and in the movies would be contrary to my beliefs in that however there does seem to be a right now in [verbalizing] it does seem to be a higher need for something of that sort and the sacrifice is not that great yeah yes yes i think i think that's correct well texas has uh texas has uh has always struck me i mean i i i have lived in and out of texas both in the service and uh uh short business [stints] and it seems to me they are a pretty pretty tough law and order state but that's a but yet that does not seem to have effected the amount of violent right in the state just [citing] that you know yeah yeah [compile] more statistics uh_huh more especially where you are are you in washington d c or washington state yeah yeah i was going to say oh yeah it just really grabs your attention it just makes the whole place seem like that yeah what do you what do you think is causing all this because it seems that there even though crime though i think it is increasing in number it sure does seem to be increasing in [intensity] and violence too uh_huh um yeah i was i have not seen that but uh yeah well yeah i tend to agree with you with you know it seems anymore uh a movie can not be considered good unless there's just some some sort of violence or something in it and and along with that you know and then you start making a movie and it has no there's no call for something violent but so they just throw something in there just to say they have it yeah yeah you become [callous] yeah yeah um yeah i listened to a radio talk show today at lunch time uh rush lynn bottom i do not know if you listen to him or not he's on a m but there's a fellow that had called in and was [lamenting] about the there was an interview done on the assistant chief of police for los angeles the guy under gates and they were just really coming down on him because of some of the things he was just some of the things that he believed in some of his morals for instance uh they asked him if he spanked his kids and he said you bet i believe in discipline and people i i i i guess they confused discipline with punishment you know and just it seems anymore that uh if if you have you know this type of a moral stance that people come down on you it's like you know hey everybody has to be free to do their own thing and i disagree and i think that's really contributing to this high rate of crime yeah well nobody feels responsibility to do something it's like oh boy i wish they would stop doing that yeah um yeah yeah and then how many how many studies have to be done to show that there is a link between you know what you see and how i mean what you see affects how you think and therefore what you do and yes but you know as soon as you start uh yeah uh unfortunately you have got a lot of the uh some well a lot of it can be contributed to the racial differences i mean just that we are so close to the border with mexico we have got a lot of that influence well it depends where in dallas you are there are certainly parts of town i would not want to live in because it's the situation it is very location dependent and there are parts of town here where when they talk about the nightly gunfire uh_huh uh_huh yeah that uh the what they call the [latchkey] children yeah the sort of on my end is more of the upper middle class so i think our uh not that we don't have a certain amount of local problems but on the other hand uh we get the uh affect of the uh the city and uh the main crimes within the suburb here are the the theft crimes a small number of assaults uh well if we have one murder a year that's probably as many but then you know you go into dallas and they are unfortunately uh having murders at a rate greater than one a day uh_huh well the thing is i don't it's one of those things where if you're a grad student you can appreciate the statistics on unfortunately there are often these [correlations] that are [inverse] of what they should be like uh wherever there are more uh criminals there are more policemen but that's which came first but on the other side of it is it's it's basically the the problem is within the in the society and the society's views and well uh since now i'm in my mid forties when i was in grad school or when i was an undergraduate growing up in a more rural area i thought you know crime was was reasonably unknown and just the situation that's developed with the the drug aspect of uh uh the pushers the dealers and the addicts uh because it just was not uh something back in the sixties that uh i even had to worry about but i think you know that there is a lot in the society where things have changed uh so it's effected all of us uh_huh uh_huh you know in a sense i don't i'm i have real mixed feelings on that because it comes a bit from the angle that the uh uh it would certainly be an interesting test but the other side of it to me uh well the other side is that unfortunately some of the down side and i think if i look back fifty or a hundred years i'd say you know back then there were the [opium] [dens] but the thing is if somebody ruined their life uh society didn't try to then save themselves from it they let this person who had ruined it uh become well die or whatever i mean they probably became [weakened] physically and other things to the point that their life [expectancy] was real short but now we tend to believe somewhere in the health care system otherwise we need to take care of people even if they have you know physically ruined themselves yeah and so to me that's i uh i would certainly like to see a real test of of making drugs real cheap to see if when you make them available people then don't use them uh uh_huh uh_huh yeah well some of that and of course i'm a baby of the old school but it it bothers me from the fifties on not that i'd remember that much from the fifties but but basically we have so much more of the something for nothing mentality and so they in the there were the sixty four thousand dollar question shows in the fifties but nowadays there's so much on tv where where people seem to have the idea they can get something for nothing of course uh i work for lawyers a lot and i see unfortunately we have this whole mentality that somehow there are these pots of money out there that you can sue somebody and you know there's a million dollars you can have uh for mental [duress] or whatever but you know the other thing that bothers me in the crime is the uh in europe they seem to have mentality and drunk driving is a good one is that people are well indoctrinated in their society that [drunken] driving is unacceptable and yeah if you're going to drink and you may drink you better have your designated driver in this country and for example with alcohol or with drugs is we don't seem to understand how to handle it as a society to say okay it is okay under these circumstances but if you step outside these bounds the punishment is extreme and we mean it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah but that kind of shows how our attitude toward drinking and driving was uh [misplaced] for years that you know it was an acceptable social behavior what are what does your city have for gun control if anything well hal what's uh what's crime like in dallas uh_huh yeah uh_huh oh yeah yeah in baltimore we have similar uh i live on the outskirts of baltimore and uh we live right outside the city and our neighborhood is pretty much working class people though i'm in graduate school uh i live here because it's close to the university but you know we have uh it it's really funny the only crime we really see is uh just the kids being malicious you know and i think most of that is because their parents aren't around that make sense yeah yeah something like that no one's you know or or fathers are just missing you know so there's no uh no consistency there in the home or whatever there's no one to tell them what's right and what's wrong you know uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah yeah i think that's we're about the same in baltimore though uh washington i think is uh close by and you know they experience a lot more i think they definitely have more problems that uh in in the area what what do you think can prevent crime uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah i think uh_huh yeah i i i think i agree with you there uh_huh uh_huh yeah i think they the drug culture definitely has uh is one of the main problems yeah our uh our mayor in uh baltimore is one of the people that goes on national television and says they should uh [legalize] drugs because it would eliminate the uh the violence and the uh the the the market i guess the the hidden market of the drugs and everything that goes along with it that make sense he's one of the big [proponents] of that he gets on national television and and says that you know so it's uh and he was a a district attorney before and a prosecutor before becoming becoming mayor so that's a really you know it's a different viewpoint i uh yeah uh_huh what happens if we lose worse right uh_huh right yeah yeah they have [induced] it themselves yeah that's true uh_huh uh_huh well i think you know they did that in alaska that that actually alaska just recently [legalized] marijuana but i never i never heard results or anything like that so i never you know plus that's such a that's not a true uh you know it really couldn't be a good test because [alaska's] so different than every other part of the country you know so that but that was interesting you know i i don't crime is one of those things that's uh i i don't know you know the drug culture the uh the uh you know i i see it with the kids in the neighborhood just stealing things not thinking anything wrong with it yeah uh_huh yeah that's true that's true we worked hard for everything that's very true uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah right uh_huh yeah yeah that i think that uh the drunk driving has just actually just caught on uh and i i i really uh my father was hit by a drunk driver when i was in high school and uh that was a very uh that that was an awful three years afterwards you know of recovery and the difficulties and uh everything we did and you know the guy went free because this was twelve years ago thirteen years ago there was no his father was even the uh police chief of the town so there was no [repercussion] at all you know other than insurance but he was uninsured so uh our insurance paid for everything but it was a very difficult time and and then later this was actually funny my brother and i were picked up by the police for questioning because this fellow had bought a a new car and somebody had taken like a baseball bat to it and broke all his windows and his lights and his [dented] it everywhere and they came and questioned us you know and right uh_huh yep uh_huh yeah very much so yeah that those are some important points yeah i that's those are well see maryland is one of the most we just voted in uh gun control strong gun control here in the state of maryland i i think okay um does is this something that concerns you uh_huh right yeah well i live outside of dallas and it's kind of in a little suburb so i feel pretty safe out here but i know the murder rate is going up every year in dallas and that worries me yeah yeah there's a little boy just got shot and killed like last weekend down in what they call the projects which is you know sort of a bad area but he was just out riding his big wheel and a couple of drug people got into a fight with a gun and he got hit and killed by a stray bullet that's really sad i've so you know it must be frustrating for the parents who can't get out of a situation like that it'd be so scary it really doesn't it's kind of scary i think that uh i think the laws have gotten so lenient you know the court systems are too lenient i think that's part of the problem yeah they do that here too but i say you know they commit crimes let them be overcrowded you know let them suffer a little bit yeah i think so i think if they knew it was going to be really horrible wherever they were going maybe they'd think twice about doing it yeah you know the other thing that worries about it is kids that are doing such bad crimes so young you know like eleven and twelve and thirteen year olds that just go out and kill people they i don't know if that's just a symptom of society and the breakdown of family and everything but that worries me i wonder what the next generation will be like yeah yeah oh yeah seems like if they had more immediate uh consequences to their actions it would sink in faster really yeah yeah because it seems like now even in the country you hear about bad things happening yeah i think they have them in dallas because i hear them talking about in the schools different things happening and they've had some drive by shootings outside of the schools me either yeah seemed like like in the fifties when gangs were big it was just to be part of the gang but now they're so much into selling drugs and weapons and all that it's pretty scary really yeah those machine guns and all that yeah that's scary it's a wonder there's anybody who's willing to be a policeman anymore yeah dallas they were saying in dallas that they can't hire anymore policemen but they keep losing them all the time and that uh you know eventually we're going to be way short on the number we need because they won't let them hire any new ones and they keep leaving yeah they figure what a heyday huh it really is well there's someone at the door so i guess i'll have to go see what my dog is barking about but it was nice talking to you well thanks same for you bye well i think it does um especially because i just moved to massachusetts and uh they're having real problems because they have so many uh police layoffs and uh personally i don't live in a real bad section of town but uh just because of the general area i live in the insurance rates are real high on your car and there's a lot of crime within a few miles of me how about you yeah i uh yeah i recently moved here and when i was looking for a job there was a lot of openings right in the in the worst areas of town and uh my husband was was what he his concerns were well not that i think you'll get involved in anything but it just be an innocent bystander just to be in that location and i thought how sad it was that just to be in a wrong location at the wrong time and and a lot of kids you know are caught that way but uh_huh yeah that exactly what happened down here uh_huh i know they asked in the topic for ideas on how to control crime and it doesn't seem like anything is working but in in on the other hand they have to be because the jails are full we can't at least in this area you know they don't have any room to put anybody so a lot of people just get out you know back on the streets because there's no they can't keep that many people in the buildings they have uh_huh i know it they have all sorts of of rights that you know are questionable maybe they gave up that right when they committed the crimes that's true maybe the punishment should be more severe i know it yeah exactly because they get involved in things so young that they don't really realize what they're involved in and uh some people [prey] on that you know they'll take uh kids who don't really realize the seriousness even at fifteen and uh get them involved in things because uh well i don't know i was watching on a movie on t v i don't know how true those can be but you know they one guy got all sorts of kids under eighteen to do it by telling them you know you won't have a record because you're under eighteen they'd steal cars and everything so i guess if they had more of a deterrent if they had more severe punishments it might be but the courts are so [backlogged] right now it takes forever just to go to trial i think it would concern me even more if i had children which i don't but if i had children i wouldn't know where to raise them to protect them uh_huh it's true they uh and they they talk about too the gangs spreading you know like everybody thinks of them only in l a and new york but they spread out to cover more area and i don't know if if gangs occur much down in texas do they yeah the same in some of the areas around here but i've never had any personal you know i never met anybody that i knew had anything to do with it or seen anybody but uh that's a scary thing too because at that age kids want so much to belong to a group and i think that a lot of people that sort of control them control what they're doing are older you know business you know trying to control whatever you know uh_huh it's true and the weapons my god the weapons that people have are some people are seemed to be armed better than the military or the same as the military i don't know where they get them uh_huh that's the other thing uh is it's hard to even i can't even think of what the benefits of the job would really be especially if you're an inner city you know you can't really feel like you're putting much of a dent in what's going on and you're putting your life on your on the line everyday i uh yeah i just read an article yesterday um where this what used to be a nice town in this area they had a lot of budget cutbacks massachusetts is broke right now and a lot of the towns are declaring bankruptcy and they had to cut twenty guys from their forces and the crime wave rate went up almost instantly because it was so well publicized that everybody in the area knew that town wouldn't be patrolled as well and so it's like this is a depressing conversation though okay i hope things look up bye bye [jeri] we're supposed to discuss crime in the united states and what can be done with it they're usually pretty broad anyway where do you live okay so that's a i'm in richardson so when i heard the topic i was thinking of the thing down at uh [maceo] high school in dallas it is you know no mine are already in college now so i don't have to at least when they were in high school it was beginning but not like the [rampages] that's true yeah well i just i just don't understand how of course in my little world how guns could be so available oh my heavens well maybe that's the answer to crime is getting more prosecution you know because i don't now i somehow i feel we're living in an impartial society as far as people seeing something happen you know across the street or seeing someone get mugged or unfortunately raped and people don't do anything a woman was raped in richardson i read in the paper oh about a two weeks ago now and all the neighbors said they heard her yelling for help but nobody nobody did anything you know i mean they heard someone calling for help nobody even called the police to say you know i hear a strange screaming i'm afraid you know if you i don't blame people with today's society about going out to help themselves yeah i just you know it's it's really frightening that we're not we're trying to live in our own little [cocoons] and probably one of the best things we could do for crime is to participate ourselves in its prevention yes yeah well you know the call for help is what scares me now because it it just i don't know people just don't i don't know i can't say they don't care because people just have to care about another person but it's that not getting involved that impersonal society i think we live in today yeah let me ask you getting back to your son's football practice because it really sort of [astonished] me that police aren't doing he didn't have a license for the gun correct uh_huh yes that's a rather rather broad topic yeah uh we live in plano uh and where you are uh_huh right right that is so frightening uh do you have children in school yeah well i have my oldest is his first year in high school so we have all this to to look forward to and it is really frightening uh to think that you can't even send them to school in safety i mean certainly you know you can't just turn them loose in the middle of dallas but you know when you can't even send them on their normal activities in safety it it's really frightening and uh i really you know they're coming down on the principal but i really don't know what they can do i mean it's just in so much of society with the violence and the kids having access to weapons and drugs and i i really don't know what what can be done well i don't either but apparently they just really are uh i mean to me in plano you would think that would be about you know about as innocent as you could get for for being in a a large area but you know my son comes home and tells me that you know he hears kids talk about having guns and uh someone came to his football practice about two weeks ago with a gun and i mean it just scared me to death and you know they called the police and and nothing happened but my goodness you know it it could have easily maybe so yeah oh no i just can't imagine that right right well i can see you know especially if you heard screams from a house or something not going over there maybe because you know it could be dangerous but certainly i can't understand not calling the police i right well i i think you're right there i guess people just kind of keep their noses pointed in their own business but i think that's real dangerous and uh i don't know i try to tell my kids just just kind of be aware of what's around them you know and if you see a situation that looks like it could be trouble just get out of it or call for help whichever but uh yeah well maybe this thing with with the child at school maybe that will make people think a bit more and you know take some steps to to correct it i don't know it's it really is is frightening i uh i don't know i mean i don't know the details this was not a child that was on the team it was someone that uh you know just kind of showed up at the field uh it was a a student age person but i'm not even we're supposed to talk about crime in the city and uh seems like all big cities have plenty of that nowadays doesn't it well it is but our crimes up here uh as i think it must be in most cities now but uh i was listening to the news the other day and they said they thought a lot of it the reason it was up so was because of the uh so many people are without work nowadays economy's so bad that's a good point that's just what they quoted over the news i don't know if i believe that or not but it it does seem up and what kind well we got a i think we got a pretty good newspaper uh we have two the morning news and the uh times herald morning news seems to have the largest circulation i think it's a pretty good it's a locally owned paper the herald is owned i think by the times out of uh l a or somewhere but well they don't no not really uh they don't play it up i don't think uh but there there is too much of it you know uh too many homes broken into we had our our fact about uh last year sometime our home was broken into we yeah we uh uh i didn't think ours ever would be [burgled] into [burgled] but so many in our neighborhood had been and uh because we live on a corner and back up to a real uh highly traveled main street but uh we were so uh sort of yeah and i never did get a security system but since that happened i certainly have it's uh uh i guess excuse me just a standard uh with the uh all the doors and the uh [infrared] thing you know motion detector pretty standard yes yes it's monitored and all that and i think uh the thing that makes a lot of noise would would [suffice] i really do but uh this deal that was part of it for you know three years or so to pay the unit off or whatever and uh but it uh the monitoring is not that bad though because uh uh we've goofed it up you know several times you'll hit the wrong key not intentionally or something and and they call back pretty quickly so i guess it's you know i think it's all right but i to answer your question i think uh uh i think uh that is a pretty good deterrent in itself whether it uh_huh well it's got a back up system that doesn't work supposedly uh that if it's cut supposedly it [notifies] them anyway supposedly who knows you know but that's a selling point and i think they're probably i think it probably does these things or supposedly pretty good boy they sure advertise them you know so many of them nowadays but uh well don't don't you all have a pretty high crime rate up there i'm not saying it's any higher than anybody else's down here we seem to or or not here but the statistics seem to say that i don't know is that right i would gather probably from drugs and i think that's the reason it's so high everywhere but i don't think there's anyplace used to years ago you thought well these little small cities and all wouldn't have that problem but they do we've had relatives that their children were just as involved in it uh as anyone you know that's a good question i don't know i don't know what the solution is i really don't yeah yep and nothing seems to change and uh i'm not sure that anything will because these if something could happen to make these people not want to buy it uh but they want to buy it so supply and demand long as somebody wants to buy it somebody going to provide it for them so i don't know i don't got you know i don't know what the solution is i really don't i don't think anyone does in fact uh_huh well uh i that's sure uh i i think it's statistics obviously vary greatly i always thought of dallas as being a fairly safe place do you really believe that i mean it it's been up every year for many years and the economy hasn't been this bad for so long has it yeah what kind of newspaper do you get down there yeah uh_huh uh_huh yes do they do they play up the local crime [angles] or or do they uh_huh yeah really so this is a topic of personal interest uh_huh yeah so so you saw this happening in your neighborhood and you figured it wouldn't happen to you yeah what kind of system do you have uh_huh is is this is this one with some company that that services you and takes your calls and all that stuff yeah well is that a necessary feature to have somebody you know at the other end of the line or is it enough just to have a thing that makes loud noise yeah yeah uh_huh yeah so you got a sign up there that says you got this alarm system and what if a burglar comes along and cuts your phone line how does it do that uh_huh sure well yeah uh i i think it's the murder capital of the country now yes absolutely yeah yeah so what's the solution and all these politicians make make hay over you know being [anticrime] but they haven't seemed to have changed anything uh_huh yeah yeah yeah what all right i've never done it before so i guess that's all i have to do right i've been called several times and i push in pushed in my number they kept saying you have the invalid code and then i found out that my new phone wasn't working right oh so this is the first time i've even done it i wonder how long it's going to be on for oh no i mean this whole thing like for two months or something do you know yeah okay well back to crime i guess we're supposed to talk about that they say what aspect are you worried about well i think at this point i for one am worried about every aspect i think the drive by shootings are getting to be so common that's really a something you got to protect yourself from uh_huh golly i know have they done that in garland now um right well we had a vice principal shot at here last year on the you know on the school grounds after school and the one boy killed himself a few years ago in the in a grade school so you know these kids don't have any trouble getting a hold of guns in any in any neighborhood doesn't seem like so yeah it's kind of scary to think you send your child to school and you wonder if he's going to get shot i mean we didn't have to worry about that before what next right and you know we can't really depend on the police to solve all this they just can't do it i think it goes all the way back to the break up of the family to a certain extent and uh and how we going to bring that back together uh_huh right and i think so and and then there's a drop in uh the training of morals really you know these some of these young kids you read about just doesn't bother them to kill someone at all i think i think years past maybe our criminals had a little more morals you know wouldn't kill somebody in cold blood i think it was just rare i really do my mother well she's like seventy four now she when she was a young girl she had a beautiful beautiful cousin that lived in california and she was dating this [millionaire's] son and he wanted to marry her and she wouldn't marry him and so he drove out in the country one day and shot them both and uh no i'm the one yeah that must have been at least fifty years ago or more but the point of the story is that that was so unbelievable a thing in those days that it was in all the papers all over the country for weeks but now you know you wouldn't probably read about it here in texas it's just you know another killing uh_huh um uh_huh uh_huh right lots of their picture and life story and everything uh_huh right right i know how we and straighten up all these twisted people before they do something terrible so uh that story i just told you about my mother's beautiful cousin well the same thing happened here in arlington when was it i think it was oh it was almost a year ago in december to a girl that my daughter had graduated from high school with yeah i think it was on a hard copy she was a real attractive blond girl in in her freshman year of college and some boy she tried to get rid of he was like in his twenties remember that right right that's uh my daughter graduated with her from arlington high school yeah can you believe it that's just uh taco [bueno] right uh_huh uh_huh right yeah uh uh isn't that weird i know and uh the police are not going to do anything until they they've committed some sort of a crime you know he was just begging her on the phone that's not doing anything and there are times i think gee i should give my kids i guess so oh really oh yeah i think five minutes is the max oh i don't know right especially uh you since you're in the same metroplex you know there's so much going on here well that and in the schools too starting to put metal detectors in and no i not that i'm aware of i just heard you know last week at that one school they started putting them in because there was that one shooting so um is that right uh_huh not at all yeah yeah i know i know it's it's it's getting it's been out of hand i think for a while and it just continues to get worse yeah right yeah that's i i agree i think that's where it stems from is that and um you know you've got a lot of a lot more women that are working nowadays that aren't home with the children and that may impact it as well right right yeah they don't think twice about it yeah either that or i don't know if it happened and it wasn't as highly publicized as it is now or what the what the uh_huh you're kidding himself and her oh wow i bet oh i know well they were i was watching some show the other day and they were talking about uh mass murderers and they brought up what happened in killeen here recently and they were saying you know that these guys want attention and that when it happens they're glorified because all the newspaper it's on all the newspapers and t v and everything right and then you get to their life story oh they came from a broken family oh this person had mental problems oh duh duh duh you know yeah is that right uh_huh uh i remember seeing that i saw that on hard copy yes is that right i'm trying to remember he um had her in the car in front of a taco or something and he just shot them himself and her i remember seeing that yeah there's just too many crazy people out there these days yeah uh i guess it's uh watching the the t v today there had a lot of stuff on on uh crime in our state right now uh recently they've had a lot of uh uh the rapists uh murder type uh killers going around and well i i they've caught them and they they're in there well yeah wisconsin uh and milwaukee area you know yeah so that's well i i live right on the border of minnesota and wisconsin so i kind of get both both news and i know in minnesota uh they had uh the one that just uh got out and went after a uh college student and raped and killed her and they are not too happy about that now i guess so there yeah uh that's hard to say for sure i uh sometimes i wonder if these people aren't don't it just for the publicity and they they get their names in the in the paper and they become big celebrities but well uh i know one i i think texas has the death penalty right yeah no no see i i yeah well it's it's it's not going to prevent any people from doing it but the person that's caught he'll never do it again if he gets the death penalty and that's and there are a lot of [repeaters] uh yeah yeah huh yeah well some i'm just wondering a lot of times they will put uh people lesser crimes in uh with uh people that did more severe crimes than they maybe they just tend to learn from these people and they and when they get back out they just go into worse crimes maybe they should try and separate them a little bit more uh yeah uh_huh well uh i don't know with with my limited uh psychology background i do have i don't i don't even feel that prisons and stuff are are the answer if you want to stop the crime i think you've got to get uh the people when they are kids a lot of this probably just starts with from the from the homes also from the the the media the t v the uh all these uh gory movies on there becomes uh just a natural fact of life yeah uh_huh well a lot of the european countries uh they tend to [sensor] well they probably won't [sensor] so much the sexual stuff as much as the violent and they have a lot less crime some of some of those european countries are are you can leave your your uh doors open and and and be safe uh even uh i think new [zealand] is one of one of the places uh that oh gracious uh_huh wasn't it your state that had the uh guy that committed all those murders there was that uh yeah yeah that was really on the national news a lot we heard a lot about that in texas oh well i can imagine it seems like the violent crimes are increasing a lot to me i i don't know i don't know if [statistically] they are but it seems like you sure hear a maybe you just hear a lot more about them on the news i don't know you wonder about that sometimes uh_huh that's kind of scary i i wish there was some way that we could change the news media so they didn't feature these way out stories maybe it wouldn't give other people ideas yes we do do you have it up there i see do you think that's a deterrent yeah uh_huh i guess that's another thing that to me is a a real problem and i know we have got so many people in our prison system now at least here in texas i mean they are really in a crisis there has been times they have had to just close off the prisons and leave them in county jails or whatever because there just wasn't enough room for all of them and a lot of them they put out on parole and then some of the ones that they put out early you know do repeat offenses and the crime rate is the worst than ever before i think that could be true too i think the whole parole thing you know if somebody is convicted of second degree murder or something gets fifteen years well they are out in six or seven you know [outbound] on the streets again and to me that's really scary some of these crimes that they commit you know seems like the punishment is not really equal to the crime oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh they think it's okay thing to do yeah i think that's a very good point you know i there's a lot more working mothers a lot more kids in day care centers all that kind of thing [morality] is being taught more by the schools a lot of times than in the home anymore and uh_huh huh well i'm in a i'm in an urban area i'm in dallas and we're finding that crime is going up very quickly and has become a major problem uh even a more major problem uh in dallas some of the major problems uh drugs seems to be related to quite a bit of the crime we have now there is a lot of theft a lot of assault dealing with uh people trying to get money for drugs and uh i think that's a national problem though it's not unique yes uh_huh well now we're pretty close to the golden triangle aren't you right research triangle and all of that and uh i'm sure you have a lot of students there uh and a lot of [researchers] so you you may have a you know perhaps a little better economic climate but in all your cities now it seems like there is a a crowd that's really effected by this bill really really um well here uh i'm not sure how many dallas has had i've uh houston is averaging about two a week or three or four i i don't know a a number every week uh dallas is having quite a few seems like most of ours are occurring in late at night or or like i say drug related uh i guess the other thing was that are causing a lot of the crime now is the decrease in values seems like a a lot of people don't hold human life quite as high as perhaps they used to uh i the economy is lousy uh_huh boy that really that really takes someone who is bold to do that well now do you find that security is very good in in a in a town home uh_huh well that i see yeah well i think you hit on one point there is you know each other i'm i'm in a neighborhood where we try to keep up with everything uh i am oh about three blocks off a major road and uh a couple of blocks off another road that kind of runs i guess you would say the neighborhood road it runs between the high school and the the commercial districts and uh i'm over the northeast part of dallas it's a in a nice neighborhood the houses here uh before the recession were running two hundred thousand or so and course everything's down ten to twenty percent now but we have uh one one thing that effects us is we have apartments that are probably about a half mile away and now the economy is bad they have trouble keeping those full so they've dropped the uh they're not nearly as selective as they used to be and course that's kind of like a cancer in an apartment complex you start letting that happen and they go down and then before you know it you have drugs and a lot of other things so uh i'm sure that aggravates it also but unemployment now in dallas or in texas is up around six point okay what do you feel are some of the main problems uh_huh yeah it it it's pretty bad here too we've had a lot of murders drug related and stuff in durham which is right next to raleigh yeah that that durham raleigh and chapel hill is the triangle right yeah it's it's really it's and i've seen in more in durham than i have in raleigh or or or chapel hill chapel hill is kind of a a [ritzy] city or whatever i mean it's kind of i'm i'm sure there is problems with it but it has a pretty low crime rate compare compared to to durham has probably got the worst they've had like forty eight murders since the beginning of the year and over half of it has been drug related yeah yeah well that and the and the economy is so bad and and so many people have been laid off and stuff they've done special stories on the news local news here we had a lot of bank robberies and different lot of break ins and stuff i know like a week or so ago i live in a in a town house which is you know it's a pretty nice neighborhood and this lady was going to work she came home and everything in her house was total gone light fixtures everything and nobody thought any different they just thought she was moving it was a moving man pulled right up to her house broke in and stole everything she owned well yeah it's it's it's pretty bad uh i would say so for the majority in in our in my little section of the neighborhood because there is always somebody at home and we all know one another and and on our one little section of the street we all know one another and know that we're not moving and different things like that it's i i'm i'm probably the one of the youngest people that live over here most people are are retired or or or you know they're they're in their forties or or whatever so and i'm in my twenties so i i'm i'm out more than they are but they're at home at night so i really don't worry about anything yeah yeah see that's the same thing here yeah yeah so i've been concerned about crime lately uh it's really scary to listen to the news every night and to hear about all the problems i wondered if you were taking any special precautions in your neighborhood uh_huh uh_huh no um well we moved in when we moved in there there wasn't any outside lights and so we've been trying to install some uh outside lights and we put up a fence in the backyard mostly you know not so much thinking that we would deter someone to break in but that our children would be safe playing in the yard you know and i guess most of the crime that i'm concerned about generally is against my kids it's scary to send them off down the street a few houses to let them go play with someone and because of what you hear about people getting picked up and everything and so i have to spend a good deal of time watching them walk down the street and say call me before you leave and come back and uh_huh uh_huh oh no that's a good thought well we've been real lucky that i don't believe there's been you know much trouble in our neighborhood but it but it does seem there that there is a lot more here in plano of uh just bored teenagers vandalism uh_huh yeah and they don't uh i know my sister in law who lives in our neighborhood they've had their they parked their car out on the street before and it's been spray painted and a few things like that and course you know i don't know i'm getting scared for kids to get older because you don't know if it's someone their teenagers know who and or is it just random crime but uh we've been real lucky that no one in my family with the anywhere that they live has had been a victim of you know a serious crime but uh it's really scary to know that you can live a normal life and try to be a good citizen but it doesn't mean you'll be safe and but i guess i take a lot of uh little bit of uh safety in knowing that a lot of the crimes that they report are like drug related or uh things that places usually that i wouldn't be going and things i usually wouldn't be involved in and uh there's not so much of it completely innocent victims compared to but it is scary were you raised in this area uh_huh so has it been getting worse that you noticed or about the same um uh_huh right right take a lot of chances well i noticed that uh that uh when we we moved here from houston not too long ago and so of course we were interested in schools and uh but the schools in houston all have big tall fences around them and they're not really very safe and so it's been interesting to come to the plano area where the schools don't have fences at all around them and it's just a whole different idea that that at least the people here feel that their kids are pretty safe at school and in houston that there was the mentality that they weren't safe at school and so that's been something that's been good for the you know in this area that you feel like uh you know there's not going to be too many [knifings] or shootings at school today and i guess i don't know how people live with that every day pretty scary but anyway well i guess i won't take up more of your uh_huh uh_huh well i i think we have a neighborhood watch i think i'm not real we don't get real involved we're never home so uh uh well i know they were going to start one but uh i haven't heard any more since so i don't really know but as far as personally doing something no how about you uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah huh oh i'm sure it is uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um i would too if i had kids we don't have any we did install a a a uh motion detector light back in our driveway and that was mainly it was so when we pulled up the light would come on but also we have a boat back there and we have neighborhood kids that like to get into [mischief] so we thought with that light you know it would maybe keep them from doing something to the boat yeah so uh_huh yeah yeah that's what it is we live in coppell and and that's pretty much what it is is you know kids that are bored like you say uh_huh oh no uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh i know it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah it is really is yeah i'm originally from chicago but i've been in this area in the lewisville area for uh let's see about twenty three years oh definitely in the last few years i think and uh like i say now i don't think necessarily in this area here but just dallas in general i don't know i think back of when i was uh younger and in my party days some of the things i did you know i wouldn't be caught dead like being out that late at night in the dark parking lot uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh huh uh_huh uh_huh um i don't either yeah um well got any problems on mockingbird with crime or is that a crime free zone there i'm afraid you're right oh my oh boy by your house oh my goodness aye aye aye oh my that's that's got to be a frightening way to spend an evening oh boy unfortunately yes yes i think uh you know as any city grows up uh you get the hoods and the [riffraff] and everybody else in there and i think uh you know fortunately the sirens and everything we hear are over on spring creek but uh we've been we've lived here sixteen years and now you you know you can tell the change for sure yes well with all the uh central expressway uh with all the stores and the uh restaurants and the uh convenience stores and all that kind of stuff it's just prime [pickings] for people driving by you know and that's that couldn't be too far from you neither okay oh yes okay i don't know uh how a few bucks can be worth shooting somebody but it's kind of kind of stupid isn't it but i guess when people do those things they don't really give a thought of the consequences at the time it's looks like easy [pickings] and away you go right i think you're right uh although i think that may be an excuse for people too right right right just like the old alcohol idea and i think people uh i think when you have haves and have nots you're always going to find people that are too lazy to figure a way to earn money and find it's easier if you can get a gun to go out and hold something up than it is to figure out a way to [legitimately] earn the money oh boy where do you work uh yes i think i do that uh is that [amelia] [earhart] school there okay that's a pretty rough area there isn't it oh my goodness huh definitely that area that that's big time big time there sure is i don't think i'd go to work without a [bulletproof] [vest] on myself that's the worst neighborhood in the whole area no i don't think there is any such thing as a crime free zone any longer uh one evening i decided to retire early and heard sirens and noises and thought oh well something's happens on mockingbird and then heard [yells] and screams and the next thing i know there are policemen all around my house and they had stopped a uh a stolen car and caught one of the men in the hedge and then the other one was on the roof in the back on my house so i'm very much aware of uh crime in the cities and the and the concern about it it was i uh i kept hearing noises and so i i knew that i was not going to sleep until i got up and went out and checked the garage so i got a my gun and walked to the you know through the house into the garage there was no one there but i wanted to be sure is plano beginning to experience the the kinds of things that are more common in the metropolitan you know in the urban area that's too bad uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i was thinking if you've been there that long you've seen plano grow from what was really a a small town to a city uh_huh yeah well i was appalled to read the other day about the uh uh shooting on the tollway uh well it's farther west of me i live over near white rock lake but uh uh it was really frightening to think that uh it's not even safe to drive onto the tollway or for those people in the [tollbooth] uh i never thought about someone robbing those but apparently they do yeah it just doesn't seem possible does it uh_huh no yeah and i think the drugs play a tremendous part in uh the theft and the the violence that we see it it is convenient isn't it i didn't know what i was doing that kind uh_huh uh_huh well yes and i work in south dallas for the dallas school system and uh uh uh do you know where oakland and [hatcher] are uh no this is over near lincoln high school uh just not far off south central expressway it is a pretty rough area we're over by fair park and uh you know you watch the people there are marvelous b m w and mercedes and cadillacs and everything parked all up and down the street outside these awful [taverns] and the kids see that and uh they know that they can earn several hundred dollars in a day where uh you know running for uh drug dealers if uh_huh it surely is well i'm careful yeah it's uh a little scary sometimes and uh i manage the so what are your feelings on the topic today as far as crime in america today yeah no i have to i have to agree with you i had occasion a couple years ago to hear the chief of police of richardson texas speak and you know it's a shame a a criminal today not a murderer but a guy that breaks in houses and [steals] things and you know he does this and he does this for a couple of years [hides] all the stash and works off of it and then when he gets caught he'll be sentenced to something like five to seven years but he gets five days credit for every day he serves i mean it's like a bonus to go to jail so subsequently a five year sentence means he's going to be out in uh a year on probation i mean what he does the chief said is he just merely goes back to his his stash where he has it hidden and continues to operate and uh when he uses up all that and spends all that money then he uh starts robbing houses again or whatever and gets caught again and goes through the same thing now see that's a you talk about that's a crime right there well we don't either in texas well it it certainly is and uh that would be a huge concern you know i don't think the general public really realizes this as far as what goes on with our criminal system our [judiciary] system and everything else it's just uh it's terrible the way it is right now yeah as far as steps to reduce crime if it's uh crimes like we're just been discussing obviously we we need more prisons and more [corrective] facilities to put these people in to uh take them off the streets but i don't think that's going to happen because just like you said and our state's a good example your state's a good example and it's just not going to happen as far as the murderers and people that commit rape and things like that i'm not sure what's right but i know it it's not right to put them in there and let them live for years and years and [leers] years before you do execute them or whatever because it's has to be very costly to feed a prisoner and to clothe him and you know to i'm sure he gets to watch a lot of t v and i'm sure they have uh exercise facilities and movies and and everything else you know they can have a good time in no it really isn't a big it's a big problem and hopefully something will come out of it so i don't know i'm uh i'm pretty much of a hard person uh i believe in capital punishment i mean you know a person rapes a kid or shoots someone or kills someone i mean you know if it's just [downright] outright oh you bet i mean that's the only way to oh yeah and you spend thousands hundreds of thousands of dollars to uh take care of them and all you know it's just unbelievable can you really god oh i know meanwhile you're living in a country club situation perhaps you know yes the drug problem that's another one well i think some of the blame can be placed on plea bargaining and people getting less time and not serving any of the or a lot less of the time than they're given by the court system but i don't know with the economy the way it is i think crime can't do much but go up right well there was an article in our paper sunday that the average person sentenced to seven to ten years in north carolina the average serves six weeks well see we don't have any room in our prisons so they they shuttle them in and shuttle them out and they get them get them early parole in order to make rooms for the new criminals who stay there for their six weeks and then they're they're paroled uh to make room for the newest criminals and it just it it's just really absurd i think the general public is so overwhelmed by things right now so many different things coming in so many different directions that they've just decided to become [apathetic] towards it all because they realize there's or they think that there's absolutely nothing they can do about it yeah yeah well i don't know what the answer is but i know that asking the question over and over and over again isn't working so uh i hope so oh i definitely believe in capital punishment it's when they it's when they're in on death row for nineteen years that i don't i'm kind of curious about yeah you can appeal now in north carolina for almost a period of twenty years yeah you can just keep going around and around and around the merry go round until you i think the i think it's uh the average is eight to ten years to get in to the north carolina supreme court and then uh after that it goes to the supreme court of the united states and that usually takes another four to six years so it's they're hoping i guess they're what they're they're trying to [prolong] their lives and hoping people will forget what they did but it's just a we have a serious problem we have so many problems in this state now and and the the thing is the the thing the fundamental problem is the is how do you feel about crime in the city you say you're from atlanta uh_huh uh_huh i mean do you do you find crime in atlanta really i live in atlanta also uh uh_huh uh_huh well what do you think can be done about the crime in the city uh_huh i probably agree with that uh uh_huh yeah that's probably true um so um well do you think [atlanta's] as bad as most other cities uh_huh uh_huh i don't think it's as bad as l a either we i don't think we have as much of the gang problem as a lot of the other cities have uh_huh uh_huh yeah i don't know i came to the conclusion also that you know just if you are walking in a downtown area you know where there's a lot of crime a lot of that's going to just just keeping your senses about you and and trying not to look like a victim you know you know walk you know walk with you know with just walk in a confidently and you know don't don't be looking around like you've never been there before and you have no idea where you are yeah uh_huh uh yeah have you have you ever have you ever been mugged in atlanta uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i've been pretty lucky about getting mugged um yeah i think i've only actually seen like one you know one actual robbery with a gun and that's been about the only you know real violent crime where you know potentially violent crime that i've seen in atlanta and that was just a guy running out of a store that he just robbed oh really oh where was where where was that was that downtown or really metropolitan yeah yeah i've actually i've known known some people that have had their cars stolen uh and uh and you know about half the time they seem to the a p d seems to recover them you know in various states of [disrepair] up on blocks my friend had a v w rabbit and when he when he got it back his um [dashboard] was sitting in the front seat uh_huh well you're probably [luckier] than uh_huh um so like does insurance pay for the body damage or was that all there was body uh_huh uh_huh so how do you know this much about um stealing cars right i i i actually i live in the city and uh i guess it is a concern of mine uh you know for my own safety well that's right uh uh i think it is bad in certain areas however i think the area that i live in it's not uh the crime level is not as high as it is in other areas of the of the city i think it seems that there's certain areas where uh the crime is focused uh well i think it's what's been happening over the last several years it seems they've been [beefing] up the police patrols trying to put put more guys more cops higher [visibility] and uh they've had some impact but not a tremendous amount and probably um they need to try to increase community involvement that sort of thing i think yeah you know particularly in some of the housing projects uh you know that's that tends to be where a lot of that crime is focused and they've got to do more than just having having cops there they've got to kind of change the way people think about it um well i've been to i'd say it's it's probably in the top top ten in terms of crime um it's nowhere near as bad as new york city for example probably not not as bad as detroit no yeah that seems to be true um yeah if you've ever been to like new york city and you can just you can just as you walk through the street on a given evening you can see crimes being committed it's that obvious yeah that's true with a big stick or right sure right don't don't walk down a an alley or don't get just try to keep yourself out of a bad situation but yeah there are times when you can't avoid all that and and then you're kind of on your own uh no the only thing i've ever had was i've had my wallet [lifted] but that was in a more of a a setting where there was a number of people around and i kind of got i was much younger at the time and kind of a couple of people they just took it from me without me knowing really and kind of passed it off so i didn't know who had it i've had that happen but that's that's about it oh yeah um really well i've had my uh_huh i've had my car stolen so maybe that counts yeah oh no that was in the northern um up near [cumberland] mall area it's actually cobb county but it is atlanta and uh there's a lot of car [thefts] in that area right yeah yeah mine was just it had been wrecked and some superficial type damage but they didn't they didn't strip it so i got it back yeah than most right it was about three grand to put everything together they cracked the steering column of course to steal the car yeah you got to you crack the steering column and you pull the there's a pin in there that you can pull on these g m cars and you can start it up basically pretty easily well after i found mine i had to i had this do you think that there's any way that uh or do you think there's too much crime now i mean i guess any crime is too much but it's out of control really i would not of okay i would not have [guessed] that in seattle yeah you know yeah i wonder i mean i wonder what what really is the answer i mean it seems like our our the prison systems we can't seem to decide whether or not it's a reform system or penal system yeah but but the problem is is that we we only have but so much room and we we try to put aside in the warehouse and all we do is just [displace] other people which come back into society and commit crimes and so it's uh i get the feeling that a lot of people have i'm not convinced that i have uh see i mean my mom taught english as a second language and and she was dealing mostly with people that were were in on drug crimes and uh yes in a in a maximum security prison down in central virginia and the problem she had was not with the inmates at all the the people that she had the most problems with were the people that ran the prison i mean it was it was i mean they they put her i mean i didn't obviously i didn't see the classroom uh and hopefully never will but uh they they put her at the end of a hallway there were no other classes going on at the time and they refused to let her wear a body a body alarm which and i don't know exactly what that is but i just assume it was something that she could hit immediately and and really annoy a lot of people but uh you know no she didn't she didn't she she felt fine for the first year when she had her first set of inmates and then later on the uh the administration kept getting worse and uh she got a couple of inmates that she wasn't she didn't feel quite as comfortable around but well she had decided that it was when we came back to the states she decided that it was too she didn't feel that public schools were were safe so next thing you know she's teaching in a maximum security prison but uh yeah but but the point that was that it you know you said that perhaps uh people have given up the thought that [rehabilitation's] possible and and i'm i'm thinking that it's even to the point that the people in that run the system have given up on it uh but getting i mean well see i always have problems because because i can never decide whether or not i'm i'm supposed to be a conservative or or a liberal but but i keep i keep thinking that there's got to be some way that that a lot of this is circumstances i mean i can't help but wonder if if i grew up without a father on the streets and with like little or no money wouldn't wouldn't i be in prison at this point i mean i don't know we've got [methadone] programs where people who desperately want to get off drugs can't get onto the program i don't i don't remember the the [gentleman's] name but the the uh the mayor of baltimore is a is a rhodes scholar and what he well what he wants to do is take all the money that uh he gets for drug enforcement and use it for uh drug education and basically just just attack the problem at the demand side stop trying to attack supply because which which to some extent makes sense and to some extent doesn't i mean switzerland tried the the grand experiment and you know they had this park where they were letting anybody use drugs as long as they stayed in the park and uh yeah yeah uh well uh out of control i don't know i guess it could be worse uh we've uh we've we've got quite a bit of crime in our neighborhood uh i live in the university district in seattle near the university of washington uh there's uh there's a lot of problems i mean there's like a big rise in [homelessness] and more street people and uh you know we get cars on our block uh regularly uh uh uh gone through [rifled] through and stuff yeah yeah you figured it was like omaha right no it's uh it's not [newark] but uh yeah it's got problems yeah i think most people regard it as a warehouse where you put away the people that are so bad that uh you don't want them out in circulation yeah that's what i hear yeah i i think you know don't you feel like most people have given up on the rehabilitation idea yeah oh you mean she taught in a prison oh i see uh yeah the the bureaucracy uh yeah so she didn't feel safe yeah yeah right well at least it's maximum security right uh well i i think the people that run yeah that run the system are the most hardened and probably the most cynical you know i mean i uh you know i i talked to a few people who worked in prisons and stuff and it's uh you can get pretty hardened i'm sure yeah right those are funny labels see oh yeah oh oh yeah absolutely i think uh yeah i think you can blame it on social problems sure i mean as as you know as poverty has gotten worse as you know education has gotten worse as there's been more single parent families as there's been more [homelessness] there's been more crime yeah there's not enough beds and treatment programs rising drug abuse and yep it's a mess is he the guy wants to like [deregulate] heroin or something uh_huh uh_huh okay well needless to say here in washington d c this is the war zone uh d c around here stands for drug capital or death capital it's uh it's really bad here uh for example the uh local high school uh they've already found two students with [sawed] off shotguns and they're starting to uh get these hand held metal detectors so they can inspect the kids every morning when they come to school of all things so uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right that's how they uh they bind themselves together in groups i guess and uh now the interestingly enough i don't think we have here a a lot of gangs but uh only a couple uh of not a whole large group of them but uh just a few most of them centered around uh drug territory and so they're protecting their economic interests i guess and uh nowadays the latest thing i've i've read about in the paper here that they're doing as far as uh crimes involving stealing cars is that instead of stealing uh cars like at night breaking into them or whatever they will pick out a car that they want and wait until you show up and then as you get out of the car they just uh step up and uh take the keys off of you and drive the car away and leave you standing in front of your house yeah that's the uh latest thing that way there's no damage to the car or anything they just wait for you to show up after they've picked out which one they want uh_huh right just wait for you to drive to your house you get out and they get in off they go with your car so it's uh i think they call it car [jacking] around here uh_huh yeah that's kind of the latest thing but every year in the d c area it gets [progressively] worse as far as the number of homicides so it's uh it's unfortunate that we feel sometimes even that we have to bring our kids up in this area because we're not from around here we're from uh i'm from ohio and my wife's from florida so and we've just come from twenty years in the military and uh which is an entirely different environment so this is a whole new thing for for us to to have to put up with and it's uh really scary sometimes right and it's pretty bad when they're using metal detectors in school and uh of course the mayor uh of d c is having a real problem uh trying to what do you do to to reduce crime in a in a major city like d c where it's a way of life for everybody it's uh i would hate to have to [wrestle] with that problem i don't know what what the solution is uh there's no way they can stop the drugs and that's what's causing all the killing uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right and they see all their friends and neighbors uh yeah and their friends are driving mercedes and so it's actually they grow up with that as their way of life and uh i think uh to a large extent they don't understand the concept that what they're doing is actually illegal because this is the way they were raised right exactly so maybe it's the law that wrong in their eyes and they they say well it's it's the law that's uh got to be changed instead of their way of life so i don't know it's i'm glad it's not the kind of problem i have to come up with an answer to because it's not easy uh_huh right they've always been with us uh_huh uh_huh right so how serious is the subject of crime in your area jeez well luckily it hasn't gotten that bad here uh san jose actually has a pretty good record in terms of being relatively low on violent crime uh but it's on the [uprise] especially in a lot of the uh [outlying] agricultural towns uh because you end up having a lot of gangs forming uh largely around the hispanic core uh it seems to be that uh gang warfare follows very rapidly on the heels of poverty conditions yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah well that's efficient they're decided they're completely [unworried] about being identified or anything of that sort wow yeah yeah i'd heard that phrase uh_huh yeah there aren't that many places that are safe from that sort of thing nowadays uh_huh well uh there's a couple of things that i've heard uh most of them are fairly uh radical in terms of what you'd have to do uh course the the reason that that these kids tend to to turn toward the drugs and everything else seems to be just you know the the the end results of of poverty and and parents that aren't doing any parenting and everything else because i mean you know the parents aren't making a living at anything uh and they're accidental parents half the time anyway it's illegal but it's not wrong because all their friends do it yeah well i think that the drug thing would actually be relatively easy to solve in terms of of an actual solution to the problem uh the the social the other social problems wouldn't wouldn't go away uh i mean there's there's been a lot of uh and i used to think that this whole argument was completely [bogus] but then the more i thought about it the more sense it made is that uh alcohol is as bad a drug as anything else uh and prohibition didn't stop it and didn't do anything really to slow uh well i'm not sure how it is in georgia but in in pittsburgh the the crime rate really is not very high at the moment is that is that true for for atlanta yeah i that's probably not true only for atlanta but for just about anywhere well uh the least what from what's on the news uh there are very few like actual robberies reported uh uh of of [residences] what's more likely to occur is uh robbery of uh you know knocking over a a small store or a car theft you know it things of that nature very few uh assaults although on the college campuses uh there are uh cases of you know like people getting machine from a from an automated teller and you know somebody trying to to device a scam for for uh getting the money for them that actually [preys] mostly on foreigners but mostly petty things and no nothing nothing really too big right uh_huh yeah uh a strange case that uh that happened oh it's about about a year ago was someone actually stole a complete automated teller machine it was a free standing machine and they backed up into it with a truck and put it on the back and drove away with it now there's a crime for you yeah but uh i guess most of the things that happen around here are are pretty uh [innocuous] although uh from what i hear in the news and and i i saw an episode of the t v show cops uh one time that was in pittsburgh and uh it it it did surprise me because you know they were doing drug [arrests] and thing and things like that but i i don't really think those things happen too often because like i said from what's reported in the news at least it's it's not all that common yeah yeah you know i just to [diverge] a little bit uh i live in an apartment right now i'm finishing out my last semester at the university of pittsburgh and uh the apartment like would be very easy for just about anyone to break in but even so it i mean it's it's still difficult for me to convince my apartment mates to to like lock the doors when they go out you know and things like that uh it would be so easy for someone who is motivated to do so to just you know sit out back take a look at when people are here and when they're not just come in you know there's a t v and a v c r and they could uh they could get in pretty easy and and especially uh since there are bedrooms upstairs and people leave the door open you know while they're upstairs playing music it could still happen then atlanta is kind of high uh it's it's lower than it has been in the past uh i guess nineteen ninety is when it start to drop off and usually around the christmas season is usually when the crime rate is a little bit higher yeah uh what kind of crime problem do you usually run into any specifics um right well i guess here we run into that sometime but i guess a lot of crimes are done with apartment type break ins that type not much home break ins there are some but not not very high uh as far as [tellers] and things like that it's not extremely high either there were one case where uh this one guy uh was taking women from the teller and and you know making them give him money and stuff and then at the same time [raping] them all so so that's kind of like a double assault there really uh_huh oh wow yeah there's a crime uh_huh oh okay i don't know crime situations here they like i say lot of lot of cases is usually just apartments and and break ins and things like that and a lot of it is due to drugs uh drug related you know in in most cases it's not like uh it's someone do steal a a or television or v c r or something like that it is for drugs you know because you really can't on the street make any money off of it per se you know you going to get ten or fifteen bucks for it so you really not making a sizeable profit so it's not really lucrative to take chances like that you know even though it it does exist right yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's true but you'd be surprised also how much people watch you that even not uh participating in any type crime i guess there was one case i was surprised uh so happened this person worked at the same place i work for georgia tech and they work at the same place i did but i didn't know that they had been watching me because i was getting ready to to go in my car one morning and the first thing they said is uh you must don't have to be to work at eight you know like shock so um how do you feel about the crime in your city is it uh uh_huh oh really uh_huh oh yeah san jose california here you know the real problems are the gangs a lot of gang related a lot of murders uh just in general the whole we've only been here a couple of years uh before that we lived in colorado but in comparison to colorado it's real noticeable i mean you can just feel i mean i can just sense i mean i won't even i won't go to the grocery store at night you know and it it's that kind of thing and uh yeah we have a neighborhood watch program in the house uh the development that we live in which i think is a great way to reduce uh home theft burglary and things of that sort do you have that where you live or uh_huh oh no uh_huh uh_huh yeah well you know uh also i've heard that uh the newest thing is a lot of people are [specializing] in robbing people during the time they're home like on the weekends a high percentage of uh free time i think it's like fifty percent of most people's free time is uh spent doing yard work outdoors so they wait while you're out outdoors they know the house is [unlocked] and then they just slip in slip in slip out you know they know exactly what they're going for so i've heard that's really on the rise as far as uh you know a new type of crime yeah unfortunately yes uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh i mean yeah it helps to know your neighbors you know they give you you're supposed to make lists of uh cars like i know a lot of my neighbors right around my development if i see a car that's unfamiliar we we have a list is that what you you did in your program where you have a list of license plates yeah uh_huh oh uh_huh yeah well uh_huh i mean you you hate to be paranoid but there are really only so many things you can do you can have the house alarm uh neighborhood watch program you know uh as a woman not go out at night uh you can do that which is what i choose to do yeah uh_huh uh_huh that's uh_huh but it's not uh if you kill someone in your home as long as they are in your home it's considered self defense though it isn't uh_huh uh_huh huh really yeah yeah well i think if if you had a handgun though in other words it wasn't premeditated you had a handgun it's the middle of the night someone's well um minneapolis isn't too bad uh i know that there's been some increases in crime lately in terms of murders uh that's kind of gone up in scale and and some other things uh i personally had a little experience the other day uh somebody broke my passenger window and stole a uniform out of my truck but actually you know when you look at at minneapolis as compared to where i used to live it's really quite a bit better uh because i came from florida and in orlando there's crime is getting to be a bigger problem than ever so what part of california are you from oh really i have a good friend there yeah oh yeah uh_huh yeah yeah that's that's really a shame when it has to [constrain] your activities like sure well uh interestingly enough right before i moved up here i'm an [intern] and then i go back down in may uh but in orlando before i moved up we had a real problem with it uh we've been broken into in my apartment about four times in like two and a half weeks and one of the things that i i helped organize was a neighborhood watch type situation down there uh because they were just it's one of those things where the new thing is that they operate in the daylight because everybody went to work you know and then the houses were left [unguarded] uh but yeah i think given that people are pretty conscientious about it that's a good way to to work it with a neighborhood watch oh is that right oh that's amazing yeah uh yeah it almost seems like they're getting quite a bit smarter really you know yeah unfortunately it's starting to really you know look at people's habits and where they are at particular points of the day like one of the guys i work with really laughs when he looks at minneapolis because he's from detroit and uh the the crime level there of course is quite a bit quite a bit uh more pronounced uh but uh yeah i guess i think we've got a neighborhood watch program here in minneapolis i'm not real sure uh pretty much yeah i was i was basically involved in that in the organization of it and then i left right in the middle of it i'm not sure where we went from there but yeah that that whole thing of being alert and kind of noticing your surroundings noticing people who look suspicious uh activities like that sure yeah yeah yeah one of the frustrating things about that is that you really are limited even even if you know that the threat is there it's against the law to set traps it's against the law to do a lot of things you know they could basically uh when i was getting robbed down in florida i was really considering [electrifying] doors um things like that like they did in miami that time that's not always true no there was a there was a case about two years ago where a guy knew he was going to get robbed and essentially what he had done is set a a a [electrocution] trap for the burglar in his own home the guy came in while he was home and sure enough he fell into the trap and was severely burned he didn't die but he was severely burned and he took the guy to court and won a settlement yeah so that really that makes you think you know it's like your hands are very much tied i'm ready well in atlanta georgia you probably have a lot more crime than we have here in patterson california uh this little city is only about eight thousand people so well in patterson there's it's not a problem here but like uh i lived in oakland uh until just recently and uh oakland california god they've had like uh sixty seven murders so far this year compared to like uh forty at this time last year so it's really bad there and and it's all related to drugs it seems like is that what it's there too uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah like i don't know what they can do to make it better unless they just hire more policemen uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah well i i think that if they would do something to these people that they do catch instead of just [slapping] their little hands and you know then maybe those other people would be kind of scared and they would not do these bad things you know yeah i just don't understand our our laws here because you know like in other countries man i mean they're really a lot stricter than we are uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh yeah yeah i know when i lived in oakland it was just that uh like i definitely wouldn't go into certain areas of of the city by myself and uh and then then again some areas i wouldn't go by myself after dark you know but down here in patterson well like i say it's so small that you can go anywhere but just uh like twenty miles away see in modesto they have uh those gangs and things over there and it it's bad in sacramento also they have uh drive by shootings it seems like all the time so i don't know i just i just don't know what what they can do you know i know yeah i mean like even even going to the grocery store i know we've had this one lady that was attacked you know i mean just you just you just don't know what to do anymore you know and some of the times it's happening in the daytime too you know so it's not always happening at dark so i don't know oh could could be huh yeah we is is crime a problem there like a major problem minor problem or uh_huh yeah yeah oh yeah yeah i've only been here for like uh probably just over six months i start i started school here uh i came from a smaller town in in new york and the city was fairly big size or not real big but we had a problem there but here there's just no comparison that much more crime uh every night the news is very depressing because it just they run down the list of how many people were shot you know drive by shootings or whatever and it's it it's pretty bad they're they're it's things have basically improved here over the last few years they've they've actually taken steps to try to make it better but it still it still is a problem well that's that seems to be what they were doing and it has and they've started stepped up more patrols in certain areas and it has has made some places safer but you know it's very difficult i mean if you don't have an infinite amount of money to to try to stop the problem although most people wish you could as it is a it's definitely a problem and you know the more more less that's done about it the more it seems it tends to spread into smaller areas unfortunately right yeah i think i think that uh it's uh seems to be that i don't know some people they they do something you know they shoot somebody or whatever they go to jail sentenced to jail for like thirty years they're out in five and they're back on the street and then they shoot someone else and just a a cycle and it seems seems as though the the system doesn't tend to stop them unless something is drastic is done yeah it's definitely true it seems seems as though we try to play humanitarian i think to a little to much and maybe some of the people don't deserve the the humanitarian treatment that they get but i don't know it's a difficult situation i think and some something has to be done because i definitely think it's it it really plays reeks [havoc] with your quality of life when you know you can see it's going on around you but then when once it finally affects you then then it really starts to bother you but it seems i mean people have moved like out of the city because they want to get away from the crime and so they tend to spread the cities farther and farther out but you know it's only a matter of time before you know it still catches up with them you can't really run away from the problem and something you know something has to be done but just that too many people argue about how to fix it oh sure right right yeah yeah that's good right yeah yeah yeah it's it's to bad because it's uh i mean just even the random occurrences where you know it's unsafe for a woman just to walk from the car to the some in certain areas like from the car from their car to the mall or something and it's dangerous and it's just that's just ridiculous and you know it's just that's just not right something you know right right right yeah yeah it's definitely unfortunate compared to what do you live in do you live near downtown um well i live i i live in northwest garland actually about a mile south of one ninety so we're really quite far north and the house we just moved into a house that has lots of windows and i course i have a dallas policeman that lives right behind me so i don't know if that'll do any good uh it's it's interesting though that you've been broken into you must you must look at this whole mess a lot different did you see today that they the the police [commanders] got a pay raise and the regular folks didn't it was just on the news i was just watching a little of it just before you called and they and they cutback on overtime and they have to take electric clocks home and you wonder what that does to fighting crime if they had an electric clock on their desk they were supposed to take it home to save energy i'm serious doug [clark's] on channel eight what what what do you think why people breaking into your house um what time of day are they breaking in yeah well are you uh you said you're not in a in a rich neighborhood but are there are there obviously um drug people in the area do you think they just kind of hit your house at random or were they going down the street okay so they're really just looking for a nice enough house to find something to steal oh that's scary because every feels you're supposed to have dead bolts well my the front door on the house i have has uh glass in it well i wonder you know you know it's i don't know this is tough but i guess the issue is is if it's drug people what's the solution well that uh_huh yeah uh_huh well that that's real scary but is the is the solution uh cutting off drug supply or is it do you see that these people you know are they going to if you cut supply it's going to raise the price or if you uh well how expensive is um how expensive is marijuana it's not very expensive but um the people that are i'd be curious to if the people that are wouldn't you think the people that are breaking in are probably are probably crack that have got a pretty high because i would think a hundred dollars worth of marijuana i don't know what it costs but i should think that would be more than a lot more than just ordinary recreation it would be interesting to see if to the problem is is is what do you lock them up for you know yeah but they don't have enough proof against them and then we got to well we had interesting enough we had a long before we moved we had some couple little kids came by and stole our drill and our saw and i had them marked and uh we called the police about a week later it was a go cart in the alley and he got to talking to the kids and we [recovered] the drill and the saw but uh it it's one of those you know it was not not a real expensive neighborhood uh but it's it's interesting that the motivation and the question is what's the motivation not to steal and i guess that's what bothers it's like the criminal you know if somebody says well let's lock him up for life well how should he you know what bothers me is the incentive that he's if you if you know you're going to be in there for life why should you be good but if you if you say i'm not going to let you out until you have a skill and we think you're reformed well that's not how they do it they let them out when there time is served i i guess the problem is is is what it would to do that would be more money than we it's like the school issue and which i guess we're not supposed to but anyway the idea of how much money would it take to reform these criminals and lock them all up um in your oh my yeah everything well did they did you take your t v yeah but who buys silver any more well yeah but have you bought a place setting i have a niece that's getting married and uh she's not even um selecting a silver pattern because it's i've forgotten what my wife was telling me what the cost is just incredible to you know a place setting is is i don't know two or three hundred dollars or something i mean your silver probably is worth a lot but uh what are they going to do walk down the street and tell everybody would you like to buy yeah well how would they know i mean they look pretty sophisticated no and and and how to put a value on a ring that you had made yeah that is scary well that's the thing scares me about it is um who gets shot with the gun they say that a large number of the homicides are people that know each other that uh i've forgot what the forty or fifty percent it's surprisingly high people that shoot each other know them i mean it's not like the problem goes all the way back to the entire criminal justice system needs to be [reworked] no longer do we have a point where the crime fits the punishment we've got guys now with in texas anyway is what i'm talking about with the situation we've got with prison overcrowding and everything a man gets a fifteen year sentence they're averaging serving one month for every year [assessed] that's not the punishment is not fitting the crime now i even gone have gone to the point where i don't believe in giving them a life sentence if you have to do that you might as well shoot them it costs twenty five thousand dollars per inmate per year just to keep them locked up that doesn't count any medical or dental health they get a bullet costs twenty five cents you tell me which one's more cost effective the victims and and the citizens of texas as long as you've got the problem a big part of the problem anyway take a look at most of your politicians that are in now ninety percent of them are practicing lawyers as long as you got practicing lawyers in politics they're going to rig the laws to where they know they're never going to run out of business as far as hard line laws dealing with criminals we don't have them in this country anymore we have situation ethics john q citizen goes up robs the liquor store shoots the guy behind the counter his his uh lawyer is going to argue that well my client was under the influence of whatever drug he was on at the time and he wasn't really in his normal frame frame of mind well apparently he had enough [snapping] to where he got it whatever weapon he used and he was coherent enough to tell the guy give me the money or i'm going to kill you if he if he had enough snap to do that he knew what he was doing the penalty [assessed] is death period that's to simple that's well that's that's one of my biggest screams about the entire death penalty goes for in this country they just appeal it and appeal it and appeal it if a person has done a crime so bad that the jury gives them the death penalty of the supreme court says we've got to give them one appeal okay i agree give them one appeal when that appeal fails within thirty days execution of sentence i think that you know of the the uh run across a man's file that was like on death row for nine years before they finally got around to executing him i think you keeping him on death row for nine years was cruel and unusually torture that's it eight is the average because they'll appeal it for that many times they want the money so they're going to they will twist it and bend it things are going to come to a point it's going to probably get to such an extent where the average american citizen if they see a crime go down or a crime is happening against them they're not going to worry about trying to get a policeman they're not going to worry about it because they're going to be packing their own heat and they're going to take care of business themselves that's we're if you had judges that had any [backbone] whatsoever they'd have thrown that out before it even got i work there now when i walk through this is what's bad when i walk through the front gate the inmates have more rights than i do some days it is uh you can put uh there's um any number of things you can do aside from locking up in [solitaire] you can reduce their class in good time have them sent to a harder prison than what they're already locked up in they've got the different security class you've got your minimum in minimum out you've got your medium and the well i don't know how you feel about this but uh it's really scary to me there was a thing in there our we have a little lewisville paper that just comes out twice a week and there was a thing in there just this week saying that in all of denton county lewisville had the highest crime rate of all of it i guess that's true but you know you've got to figure uh you've got to look at it like carrollton is in denton county you know you know you know and it gets kind of scary you know when you're looking at lewisville you're looking at denton you're looking at you know some of the larger cities and and lewisville had more crime this last year than any of them and it's just getting it's just getting really scary and almost uh out of hand you know there's been i don't know if you've heard any any of it on the news lately or not but there's been a couple of uh you know a few months ago there was a deal in north dallas where they had the man taking little girls out of their bedrooms breaking into their bedroom at that time there's been a couple of those here in lewisville over the last few weeks yeah and they're you know they're not sure if we're working with the same guy or not but uh it's really scary you know it really is so what are things like you said mckinney do you live in mckinney too are things pretty calm up there or yeah uh_huh oh yeah yeah i grew up in i went to high school in frisco and lived there several years so i was up you know pretty close to where you guys are and and it was always i don't know frisco there always seemed to be a lot of drugs in frisco for as small a town as it was there were a lot of drugs but as far as major crime there didn't seem to be it was you know one of those nice little small towns and nothing ever happened and it would be nice to kind of get back into that so i don't know i just don't know as a matter of fact i had uh one of these conversations the other day where our topic was uh capital punishment and you know the death penalty and you know what you know we were talking about that and one of the things that we kind of got to talking about is you know what is it we can do you know what can what can be done to stop it and i'm not sure that i know the answer to that question you know i mean one of the things that we talked about that i truly believe is you know you give somebody a you know a jury convicts somebody and they give them a sixty year sentence and the guys going to be out in twelve or thirteen years you know yet they oh it's very wrong it's horrible you know i i take a business law class um on tuesday nights and my instructor is a practicing criminal attorney and you know so he does this like everyday you know deals with this and he said you know you could pretty much if you sit on a jury now right now you could be sure that they will serve just about a quarter of whatever you give them you know well they they say we don't have enough room in the prisons and we've got to get them out well if that's the case let's come up with some money somewhere to build some more and keep these people in i mean there was a thing on tv the other night where they were interviewing it [wa] it was a women's prison and they were interviewing these women and these women are they asked them is this a deterrent and they all said no i mean we're going to be out in a couple of years this is no big deal i mean this is like a little vacation we don't have to work we don't have to you know we don't have to worry about making a living you know we're fed and we're [clothed] and we're you know this is no big deal and and you know they were asked you know well when you get out will you commit that same crime again and they said probably you know that's how we live that's how we make our living we live by selling drugs we live by stealing we live by this you know obviously the system's not working you know an uh and i don't know what to do to make it work it's you know right years and years that's something we talked about too you know if what this person had done ten years ago the [brutality] of their crime exactly oh that kind of wears off with time and people's outrage slowly goes away and you know no mine doesn't either but with specific yeah but with specific cases people you know the names aren't familiar anymore an you know people don't remember the what happened and they don't remember the outrage they felt at the time you know that oh my god look what he did you know an yeah yeah they don't mention that part yeah that's exactly right there was a thing on the other night about they had this women uh her husband was a police officer and was killed i think [brutally] i mean this guy point blank just shot him in the head i mean just uh for no reason i mean he the cop pulled him over for like a minor traffic thing you know and and uh you know she was getting ready to go through the trial you know for this guy and you know they asked her uh can you imagine they asked her if she wanted the death penalty and she said yes i do and i want to sit on the front row when it happens i want to be there i want to watch it you know and you can't blame her for feeling that [vindictive] you know i mean and you know it showed her trying to explain to her children where daddy is you know and it was just oh it was just it was just horrible i mean this her little girl was like five and she was you know all of a sudden she started crying and said mommy i want my daddy and and you know her mommy said i know honey an oh and this little girl said uh said something about that man shot my daddy didn't he and the her mother said yeah honey the man shot your daddy and uh she said where did he shoot my daddy and it was in the head and the mother said well we won't worry about that right now and she said i think he shot daddy in the face and mom said well you're right you know and she just started crying and it was just so sad you know i mean just i want to no you an adult can't grasp something like that the [enormity] of it you know i mean i i don't know and these poor children are going to be [fatherless] forever and this guy ought chances are he he'll be out he'll be walking the streets and it's just doesn't one of the two that's right that's right i don't know i just i know you i look at some of the millions of dollars that we you know give to other countries every year and i know some of the i know those people i i mean i know they're people too and i know they deserve to have food to eat and water to drink but i just want to say hey you know let's straighten out use that money and straighten ourselves out before we go trying to heal the world you know i mean oh we do we do we we really do and i guess if if we would as a country [unite] and sit down an and if congress received a millions of letters in one week saying we're not going to take this anymore you're either you know do away with some of these laws providing this or we're going to vote you out next time maybe something would happen you know but people don't get involved and don't sit down and do that so i don't know yeah and just not pay any attention to it yeah yeah well we're feeding starving kids overseas but we're not paying any attention to the ones that are starving next door you know it's really sad it really is i heard something that their supposed to be starting a huge campaign in new york about um child abuse and stopping child abuse and it's supposed to be like it's starting there supposed to be like a big nationwide campaign and you know so hopefully that will take off and really do something i don't know there's just yeah kind of [fizzles] out yeah that's true that's true uh_huh i chased a bunch of kids down on easter sunday we had put easter eggs out in the front yard for an easter egg hunt for you know my son and for his cousins and stuff and and uh a bunch of kids came along and just started grabbing them stealing them i went running after them screaming hey you stop you stop i called the police you know i mean there was people that laughed at me they were easter eggs [dena] i called the police because i figured if these kids were stealing easter eggs at ten they're going to be stealing cars at sixteen and robbing houses at twenty one you know that's right these boys knew that what they were doing was wrong and when i screamed at them to stop they kept running they knew what they were doing was wrong that's why i called the police to heck with them you know the police asked me if i wanted to press charges and i said no i'm not going to press charges i wanted the boys parents to know what had happened and i want you to go to talk to their parents and i want you know their parents to be aware well this is exactly what i told my mom you know when it was all over i said if we had a decent set of parents here those boys will be back here this afternoon with money to repay the eggs and with a big apology and nothing the one girl the boys ran i couldn't keep up with them but the one girl was like carrying a two year old on her back and i was able to keep up with her and follow her until the police came you know so we would know who they were and her mother the police called her mother to come and pick them up and her mother had the same attitude as she as she did they were convinced that the absolute only reason i called the police was because she was black it had nothing to do with the fact that she stole from me and the little girl told me that the only reason you called the police is because i'm black and the little two year old sister she had with her she [patted] her on the leg and said see what happens when your black honey you'll live with this your whole life and i told her i said honey this has nothing to do with you being black i'd follow white kids that stole from me i mean stealing is stealing i don't care what color you are you think just because you're black you can steal and nobody's going to call the police that doesn't make any sense you know oh it was just horrible and then the mother's attitude the mother looked at me and goes well what is it that you want do you want me to pay you for your eggs or what you know it was that kind of attitude okay um i don't know if you want to start first okay basically um we're not in the city we're out in the country and uh we were living in the city and i think uh crime has escalated quite a bit just from the uh short time we were in the city their crime and murders alone this is in uh the city of minneapolis and that's quite a ways from uh you know uh other cities like new york and uh detroit and all of that but just in particular crime has escalated quite a bit in murders i mean with guns and teenagers not so much um with people that are in their later twenties or thirties or whatever it's basically people that are uh sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen nineteen years old killing each other um and there's like one a day so that kind of gets to the point that you uh from the years before it wasn't quite as much so uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh wow yeah oh definitely for you guys sure and like i said in minneapolis it was basically uh one a day every night you were hearing about a murder whether it was uh between gang related murders or uh somebody in the wrong spot at the wrong time that kind of thing and uh teenagers killing each other or random shootings just basically shooting a gun into somebody's house as they drive by or shooting somebody on the street just because they didn't even know them but i think what's happening is um at least in minneapolis uh the i think that people are getting fed up with it and just this morning was uh reading uh or watching a t v program on women carrying guns to protect themselves against uh crime and i'm all for it i mean when it comes to somebody is going to do crime against me they're going to uh you know if if i have a gun i'll shoot them i won't even think twice about it just simply because my safety comes first and that person that's uh doing something against me would uh get shot but i'm an old country girl that a long time ago learned how to shoot a gun and i'm not afraid of a gun and i yeah it's hard like with uh in our home we have a gun in the home but i don't go out and carry it around with me in my purse but it comes down to i think a lot of new york women do from what i've been hearing is that new york and uh other cities that have such a high crime rate in the [subways] and that are starting to carry guns so sure uh_huh sure well he did it out of a pure and vengeance and i think he murdered just purely because of his but if you're uh up against a gang of boys or teenagers yeah right exactly if he had shot them and uh shot them or wounded them or even shot just basically straight clear on onto their face or whatever if he felt that he was uh that much of a victim i think uh the court system would have looked at it a little bit differently but he bluntly just shot them even after they were i think down on the ground not moving uh or whatever but uh i think there's a justification of where people say um most of the people are fed up with crime so when you're going to get juries you're going to get juries of people saying well you know this guy asked for it or this person asked for it or whatever and i think you're going to find less and less juries uh saying well the the victim should be put on trial for it um uh when there's a crime being produced you've got people like jeff [dollmeyer] that was bringing people into his apartment and killing them uh no no that was in uh wisconsin that was in milwaukee area yeah so you know you've got things like that if maybe those guys would have carried a gun they could have shot him right then and there before he the guy um got them but it's just the idea that i think people are more aware of crime so i don't know i think people i don't know what's going to happen in the future either people are going to be going back to the old west and carrying a gun [slinged] you know on their hip or hidden or whatever but uh unless something happens maybe laws change maybe some of these people that have had two three crimes against them never released from prison um then you've got to pay for them in prison though so i don't know uh_huh oh yeah yeah there's a a lot of things that center around that crime area uh you know from from just uh people trying to make a living on the wrong side of the law to those who are just trying to uh keep their drug habit up and uh so i think that it [encompasses] a whole lot of uh concerns oh really uh_huh uh_huh yeah i i just don't know what kind of criteria they have used for most of those early parole [leases] [releases] so uh that's right i think you're right i'm sure it has a lot to do with it well i think uh certainly that might have something to do with it but i also think that the standards of uh what we consider normal is drastically changing each generation at least if not faster by because of the movies that are out there and what all the kids are exposed to and also the grown ups out there that we're just constantly watching and what we would and you know used to consider awful is almost a normal kind of thing on t v now and yeah and i so i think that it's uh and also i think uh the way our lives our families are are uh being raised that with a lot more single families or a lot more full time working families that uh there are a lot more strangers out there taking care of our kids and i i mean strangers in the sense of not the close family [nit] type that they used to have and uh i felt so i think there's a lot more people growing up confused and feeling not really considering uh you know necessarily as wanted or loved as they might have felt uh had their family been a little closer [nit] that's that's right that's a good good way to to say it well i think it would be a long term change i don't think that we will see it too soon i think it will not i don't think it will slow down for quite some time just because there you know it's going to take that pendulum a long time to swing back the other way that's true uh_huh oh yeah i think there are definitely a ways that both parents can work and have you know responsible and and you know very loving children growing up and staying that way but i think it takes the effort and extra time and effort out of those parents and not too many not as many people are doing that as they should because we're used to having an easy get it when you want it society and uh you know the easy way out is considered more appropriate sometimes than than the working hard message that used to be so right i think we're all tired and having too many pressures and i just occurred when you mentioned principal it occurred to me when i was teaching how uh it was becoming quite disturbing realizing how many crack babies there were becoming you know out there in the educational area and and the things that we'll be dealing with just on the educational front that uh are people children that will eventually grow to be older possible crime makers themselves because they started out in life without any you know uh well i feel like the major problem we have and the reason that crime has gotten so out of hand is because there isn't a punishment that's matching what's being done and i think it starts when the kids are little i think the parents in our community teach our children that as long as they can get away with something that it's all right because i don't see a lot of parents especially where i'm at i have a lot of the responsibility of whatever is done in our neighborhood because there's no other mothers at home and i see a lot of kids very small kids coming home to empty homes every day and doing all kinds of unbelievable things and as long as they don't let anybody know about it they get away with it so you know i feel like if our mothers stayed home if we had that secure start you know where kids learned the right way to act um they were rewarded for their good behavior and they had a secure family that they came from i think we'd see a whole different society that's right yeah right well you know i did a survey on why mothers left their children to go to work and i found out that more than eighty percent of all the people i talked to the mothers went to work to provide a better life for their children and when i talked with their children their children wanted their parents home rather than the the material things they were getting and it's just too bad that the parents won't listen to this survey so i just think that um another problem is i think the way the legal system has been set up that the criminals get out and the jails are so overcrowded they can't handle punishing the people that are committing the bad crimes [sufficiently] i think they need to put more people out to death um if it's completely witnessed and it's uh seen that there's no you know i think there needs to be more severe punishment but it needs to be fair right i think that to oh outdo it yeah or outdo what's been done yeah i think that's another problem um i know that once when i was reading a book when i was studying history and it said you show me a country that can produce strong families and you'll have a strong country and if you look back over united states history our country was strong until the mothers started leaving the home that's right that's right and they do and then they grow up and it just continually will get worse so i guess what we both agree on is that families need to change their way of thinking right and i think people need to have some sort of a an idea of why we're here and what we're doing and what we're working towards and why it's important to do these things rather than just getting ahead [materialistically] so that's right well um do they come do they come on and say when we've talked visited for five minutes this is your first time um we discussed i discussed on here with someone um last week about the justice system and how it could be improved on juries we discussed about how half the jury that they select to you know come up with the verdict if half of those were law students then they could understand what was going on in the court room and have the time that they spent in their jury district count towards some of their graduation hours wouldn't that be a good idea so i think though sometimes the juries don't understand all that the legal you know talk and and what's going on uh actually we live out in gainesville virginia and uh my wife is originally from the [bronx] so for the longest time we didn't have any any kind of crime protection on our house at all because we lived way out in the country here and uh then you know over the years we have visited her folks and her folks have probably the most impressive crime reduction system i've ever seen on any house you know they have grates across every single window they have probably three or four dead bolts on every door uh just amazing [array] of uh you know sort of security measures on their house i mean it's harder to get into their house than it is probably a lot of minimum security prisons so anyway now she's turning our house into sort of the same thing we have uh we have like grates on the on the uh door on the basement windows even though there is very little crime in this area and we just had a a guy come out a [locksmith] come out and put all those on as well as sort of [reinforce] all of our dead bolts and uh put new locks in them some doors and fix our french doors up so that they were you know secure so yeah yeah what's it like in dallas uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh oh man incredible yeah yeah yeah it's clearly i mean they're not in category of business criminals i mean there's there's criminals who are in just because that's their business you know i mean that's their trade essentially and you know then there's then there's really random of violence we actually had a a woman who was very close to our house which sort of inspired my wife to you know beef up our own security measures here uh she was a couple of houses away and her husband travels a lot and is gone you know for weeks on end and she was upstairs with her uh child and heard somebody say hello hello from downstairs so she immediately calls nine one one and uh the county police come over and of course the woman kept her on the phone the whole time which i thought was a really good security measure because you know if you can get nine one one in gainesville virginia you know you're probably you know i mean it's probably a pretty effective thing you know uh so anyway the police showed up and they told her the person on the phone told her to run you know take the child and run downstairs and to let the police in cause they were at her front door and so she did that and when she opened the front door she had just bought this new german [shepard] puppy which had apparently you know gone all over the floor so the the policeman stepped into the front door and actually started sliding around on you know the dog mess and she [yelled] [simultaneously] [yelled] look out which the policeman thought was like somebody's about to shoot me so you know he's like spinning around in this stuff you know i mean it's a pretty comical scene but anyway it when the guy finally [regained] his balance you know he's just like get out of the house lady and stop trying to help me but anyway later on it's it's going to it's they didn't find anything i mean apparently you know if the guy came in he ran out and and the police tried to convince her that it was the dog playing with the remote control on the t v which just doesn't make any sense at all no i really don't they need to do more with uh you know the police forces they need to make sure you have more people out on the street i think you know to try to keep track what's going on and be harder on criminals when they go to court you know make sure they go to jail and they serve all their term but other than that i don't really know what about you right right right oh you do that's true uh_huh well i believe i believe that's true i think you have to do more the teachers as well education but before they get to the high school of course because by then they're pretty much set i think you start way back when uh_huh right right uh_huh well i think it's like the problem with you know drunk drivers that people don't they're not cracking down they let them back out on the street they don't really take away their license they don't really make sure they can't drive anymore so people don't think it is any big deal and they just go out and do it again nothing's going to happen to them uh_huh right uh_huh so it doesn't do any good people just do it again same thing with when you have like sexual offenders and you don't make sure they have adequate [counselling] then they just go out and do it again because you haven't really fixed their problem at all so and that's probably part of the problem too because do you bother [counselling] these people or you make them go to jail will it really do them any good to counsel them or is it just going to waste taxpayers' money right right yeah and the problem is yeah i guess that's why we have the problem nobody seems to know what to do about it yeah that's true yeah right i'm just afraid that if you put back in the death penalty every place that people will be uh the juries won't want to convict a person because they're they're really innocent because once and you kill them they're gone you can't like fix the problem so there will be that much you know they will be really really worried about sending them to jail when they really should be in jail they will be like well i don't know and the people who don't want to put them you know to death who think that's wrong won't convict them either even if they really believe they're guilty because they're really just on their part things like that right right and if nobody had guns they would just use some other well do you have any good ideas about this problem right uh_huh right yeah well i have the same thing and i understand because i live very close to dallas so we have quite a crime rate too but i'm not real sure what to do recently it's been kind of a topic at work and uh i just kind of feel that there's a lot of people in jail for crimes that are not really against the person and i think maybe we need to find another way to punish those people and put the real criminals in jail where they really can't do any harm and not let them out on parole in six months or three years or whatever and put them to work doing something useful where they don't just eat up our tax dollars and that's kind of what we've come up with but i don't know what are your feelings about that right well a dangerous thing you know where you will get hurt if they're out on the streets i mean it i think this deal of [leona] [helmsley] has just kind of brought this all home and that's what kind of sparked the discussion was that this is a seventy two year old lady going to go use up tax dollars in jail and i just i just have a real problem with that i think there's another way to deal with that other than put this lady in jail to set an example that's right you know that really is true well that's true well that is a potential danger though you're right about that but uh traffic tickets things like that i mean i've known of people just to be picked up because they didn't pay their traffic tickets and i i say yeah fine them extra do whatever but to go ahead and put them in jail it costs us money when they do that so i don't know i just have a problem with overcrowded jails on crimes that nobody is really going to get hurt uh financially maybe and things like that and yes it has to be dealt with but i'm not sure that's the way yeah yeah and also i think that they can get off on too many technicalities i think that it turns out sometimes that the victims are the ones that have to defend themselves rather than the criminals and i think that's another thing that needs to be addressed too i don't think you have many rights as a victim right okay uh_huh yeah i think so and i don't know i i've been [thru] a two year divorce recently and i find that the system sucks to put it bluntly and so you know i just i don't have a lot of respect anymore for what i thought you know would be fair you just figure oh well the judge will be fair well forget it it doesn't happen they're in a hurry their [docket] is full they want you in they want you out and that's the way it is and so uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah so i don't know but i don't know how you and i can solve this so that's the problem you know we all have ideas but nothing seems to change and i'm not sure how it can right well now that's not so far this year is it or is that oh i see uh_huh that's i think that's the most of the murders anywhere i think yeah well we we have our share of uh murders down here uh i don't know i i'm i've been here for five years and i don't know this kind of things don't hit national news very often but seems like down in florida but seems like down in florida there's a lot of strange crimes and murders that happen i mean really off the wall stuff uh just a couple of weeks ago these people rented a house and the pool in the backyard of this house was kind of like a pond it was all green you know [algae] grown over it and so they were cleaning it up and the guy hit something he couldn't see what it was and so he dragged it up into the shallow end and it was a garbage can and inside the garbage can was a body and uh you know i think that stuff happens everywhere but it just seems like when i lived in illinois i never saw as much of that kind of thing as i see down here in florida and i don't know why it is maybe i just don't remember it or or maybe the media in illinois didn't uh expose it the way the media does down here right i bet yeah they they have it here also no actually uh the university of florida in uh gainesville which is about two or three hours from where i live there's been uh there's been serial killers there for the last two two to three years and uh they'll go through one two three four six seven eight girls they caught one guy and then no sooner had they caught him and and convicted him a few months later there was another serial killer killing these college age girls that are living on the campus down there or and so we have a lot of serial killers it's a there's a lot more it seems like here than when i lived in illinois there was the one guy in chicago that had buried some thirty odd boys he was a [homosexual] and uh he had buried a lot of young boys teenage boys on his property you know he had raped them and killed them and buried them and some yeah like ten or twelve years ago this was this happened right oh i bet that's just a [madhouse] i can't imagine that's incredible yeah uh yeah right i tell you there's just more and more of it as as every year it [progresses] i mean the world's getting worse actually about anything you can imagine uh from you know this petty theft kind of crud going around vandalism up to uh certain amount of organized crime where uh gangs are starting to to show up and actually you know qualify as gangs yeah right around fifty thousand we i think this census we just missed fifty thousand by a couple of people or something like that but uh yeah it's just right at fifty thousand uh_huh murdered and [mutilated] uh what these are girls that worked at this ice cream parlor or so so the place the place had shut down already um yeah character profile [psychiatric] profile yeah uh shoot the the big problem is there's no real punishment for crime anymore i mean the bigger the crime the less likely you are to get punished for it i mean get out of any punishment anyway yeah yeah yeah yeah well they slaughter lots of innocent lives and they get you know a few years and a slap on the wrist someone else turns around and you know [embezzles] a couple thousand dollars from the local bank and they they practically get fried yes yeah yeah that's good if nothing else they've got the gangs pushed down to where they're you know not going to be very active at least as far as you know murders or open crimes are concerned yeah the neighborhood watch type programs yeah that's one that's the one thing that starting you know the only two things that are really making a difference are when the local people get involved and when they start doing something positive with families families have gone in the toilet in the last twenty thirty years and it's as though they're really trying to push to make sure they go down the toilet lot of lot of institutions they seem to be fighting against the family yeah yeah well to a certain extent it can be [traced] back there and and and that's okay to say so as long as you understand that you got to forgive it's not like they're doing it on purpose usually very seldom are they doing it on purpose yeah had some [modicum] at least of acceptance to support yeah well that's the way it was with us we had i had a pretty good family life fact uh i had an excellent family life by comparison to a lot of people out there it may not have been perfect but they did what they knew how to do and they did it the best they knew how so yeah yeah i mean considering the conscious it seems to go well [crime's] not very bad out there uh_huh right it's been a lot worse this year um they have a lot of drug dealers over on you know where spring valley is and coit it's real bad there has been for a few years especially on the dallas side dallas is just across the street and and uh they've closed down a bunch of apartment complexes and uh you know like that and they're having to crime sweep uh_huh yeah it used to be right get someone to pick up your papers and your mail set your lights on timers and yeah uh_huh the murder rate really seems to be up in fort worth and dallas well especially dallas last year in fort worth this year uh_huh yeah this morning uh_huh and apparently they already they already caught him or they're talking about somebody else they're talking about two million dollar bond for somebody yeah i never i never heard all of the story about that i just heard it from people at work and on the radio uh a little bit it's really been fort worth has really been bad because of the [kidnappings] and all the armed robberies i i think i think that um they're just getting well they had that crazy person that kidnapped the the woman and took her all they way to saint louis before they were caught you know and she called the f b i oh i i think that was [redbird] yeah it's real bad too everywhere there's a mall there's bad crime though yeah yeah yeah exactly uh_huh they stole the [emblem] off of one of mine yeah apparently from the insurance yeah they also they tear off the hood ornaments too and one of them costs thirty dollars so right that's right uh_huh yeah i think so i mean and they said take what steps and we already discussed that right yeah i work at valley view and they have horse patrols and um and they have the mall security that that drives around probably around the mall at least once every ten minutes at night especially because they have so many stolen cars and they've had um three three armed robberies of jewelry stores and uh and they've all been in the middle of the day you know and one of them was three hundred thousand dollars yeah really is but i've seen they've stepped up security quite a bit and the police are around a lot more now so yeah then they they use [undercover] too uh_huh right uh_huh oh yeah small town but still you know right yeah it's nice talking to you you too have i um no i guess not yeah that's true that's true they uh in fact uh they also i don't know if you're familiar with the japanese method of dealing with crime but they don't they have an extremely low rate extremely low especially considering the uh the density of the population and stuff uh they have uh they have this sense of of family that's very important to them and and family honor and what they do the the main punishment the most effective portion of their punishment is that they take and publish the [offender's] name in a newspaper that gets spread all over the country especially in the region that they're in it well it gives the person's name and the family is typically so embarrassed that they have to they sell their house they leave they leave the region and move to the opposite end of japan and so it [shames] the entire family including the grandparents and maybe aunts and uncles uh_huh right i'm willing to bet uh_huh yeah you know the i guess the thing is is you know what uh uh in part one of the things to blame is the [disintegration] of the family in general and the importance of the family and and and that's you know you can't just [magically] push a button and make that come back i guess but uh probably related but [incidentally] um i just uh just reading in the newspaper about uh uh this they're i don't know they're moving some of the uh highway uh things in here in texas the offices and they had ranked dallas as being uh seven out of seven on scale of quality of life and i assume that that includes that includes crime no [nowheres] nowhere else in the state was above about a three point two yeah and and and and dallas was a seven point oh yeah i i really i thought it was pretty surprising yeah well they they uh even even austin had it's share of nasty crimes recently right with the with the sort of [senseless] murder of these girls at the uh at uh the ice cream parlor guy just walked in and yeah but you know look at the what's the cost of keeping them in it's something like uh yeah it's like twenty thousand dollars per per year to keep somebody in jail nobody wants the the city or the the government doesn't want to let them do it yeah it works yeah that's true yeah but i don't know you know i mean obviously you know having some more jails isn't really the solution either i don't know i mean there doesn't seem to be terribly effective you know there's been several you know those kind of died on the vine they were there were separate proposals around to do that kind of thing and i haven't heard anything about them recently maybe i'm the one just hasn't been paying attention uh_huh well i am a school principal uh_huh well it is elementary school elementary school but i have gang problems uh_huh i am in a part of dallas where there is a lot of gang activity and my i have through the sixth grade but some of my sixth graders will be thirteen fourteen years old and they get [recruited] so uh we we have really very significant problems uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh it is surprising to me that it's through there because the only time i have ever been to utah i spent a week on the brigham young campus at a [workshop] and it was very uh dramatically different that the people you saw than what we see here because you have no minorities you know uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh but of course you know a lot of parents that are not really parenting much have you that in utah do you have that in utah because i would think that being mormon influence there would uh_huh well i i work in an an area of town like my school is about seventy five percent anglo and that is very unusual in the dallas public schools but it's very it is like the lowest socioeconomic anglo yeah it is what in the south we call poor white trash and then the other significant percentage i have is hispanic and of course that is growing but the kids that i have the biggest difficulty with are anglo children and i i have got lots of anglo children who are just not really wanted by anybody well for example i have a boy now he checked out today he is fourteen he is in the sixth grade he lived with his mother in mississippi he had been to he thought ten or twelve schools in mississippi then his mother now his mother and father are not divorced but they don't live together in a long time his mother had a new boyfriend who moved in who owed so much back child support for his children that they couldn't afford to keep her children anymore so they sent him here and here he was with his father and his father's pregnant girlfriend and they [pawned] all of his personal belongings like he had a nintendo a v c r and some stuff they [pawned] that and he has just been tearing my school up and he told me he is going to be bad enough to be sent back to mississippi and today they checked him out and sent him back to mississippi now those kids but those kids are ready starters for gangs sure something to belong to give them identity give them importance give them a certain security so do you live in a high crime area uh_huh oh do you think that that will do it they'll go to the yeah huh oh yeah arlington texas uh_huh you don't have much street crime right um that's what i would think in that area yeah so what do you think you can do to uh_huh right right family unit you mean uh_huh uh_huh fix yeah yeah and that's what the uh seems like the uh genre of the crime these days is a lot of desperate people whereas i think probably fifty years ago the crime wasn't quite so intense that way and it yeah with the uh_huh well i mean i think the reasons were different back then more than they are now like you're saying the drugs can make people really desperate so that makes them also very dangerous uh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah that's really disgusting yeah uh_huh right uh_huh oh yeah because they have no idea what it's like yeah uh_huh right well i think for the u s i think from what i've read that the u s has one of the highest crime rates in the world so i think that's a priority we're not uh_huh right yeah no if you come down to it if you look at uh the statistics on child abuse and uh violence against women and uh the drug wars and uh also uh let's see i think with like with rape it's one out of three women and one out of ten men or boys rape the the amount of rape and uh uh like with the drugs i think that one solution that i i hate to say it but is [legalization] because that's where all the the gangs get their power over the drugs because it's illegal and uh i there's a lot of complications that go along with saying that well my uh uh basic concern is that overall we have uh such a overcrowding in the prisons now that uh judges are actually uh [basing] their decisions on what they do with criminals once they are caught that uh probation and stuff like that is uh becoming more and more prevalent and more people are getting out earlier and so there's less you know motivation for people to you know deterrent i guess the deterrent value has gone down yeah uh_huh yeah i know it's a yeah it gets sort of hard and then uh they get information from people and their attorney isn't present and they can't use it you know because they just assumed that the guy was you know [tortured] or beaten into uh giving his confession no yeah that i don't what ever happened but that is amazing oh brother yeah yeah he's a little upset he doesn't see me so he's like oh where'd you go you disappeared down here stephen he's uh ten months uh_huh yeah he's getting to be a big boy really uh no i have another one that's two well yeah both of them in diapers yeah that's a that's a little of a work load yeah but uh my wife's home during the day so so she uh she does has most of the fun time uh_huh yeah right uh_huh yeah i think that's probably the that that seems to be the [guiding] factor with the judges they say hey we'd like to convict more of them but you know we don't have a place to put them so what are we supposed to do and uh yeah right yeah right if you don't want to have the death penalty take it away but you know make up your mind florida yeah and louisiana yeah i know they have it up here but it takes you know yeah uh_huh and it's going to take a few years for it to kick in uh_huh yeah right uh_huh right oh my word yeah i i think the deterrent would uh really make a difference that and you know uh paying cops a little bit more you know because the police officers we have they're either you know there are some that have that are actually going corrupt because they don't get any money and there are some that the best quality people are not going into the force because they say hey you know there's better things i can do you know uh_huh there's yeah there's some people that are dedicated and will do it anyway and then there's some that you know the police department would say well it actually would like to turn this particular person down but we need them you know and um i'm sure you yeah right yeah um yeah right right uh_huh right uh_huh right i think that that is true well i better get going see what he's doing okay thank you unfortunately it's apparently the crime wave is not limited to cities you know it's spreading to you know our communities also and smaller uh_huh i'm originally from a little little rural town in southern oklahoma yes yes that is that's really scary it has it's done the same thing even in my little town and gosh it's only like a thousand people there's one [deputy] sheriff that tries to you know patrol the whole thing and he's you know he's just overwhelmed that's right sure it's probably a safer environment for them boy i who knows i don't know uh_huh uh_huh are you talking about education wise yeah uh_huh that's true absolutely uh_huh yeah yeah you know as you know you watch the nightly news you know like i did and boy you know it's not a day or night that goes by in this in this area at least as somebody at least somebody doesn't get killed or raped or robbed during this the [jillion] others we don't even hear about probably uh_huh yes that's a hot topic you know uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's right that's right you never hear about and you know the some of the crimes are so crazy you know just you know killing somebody for a five dollar bill or some stupid thing like you know you just you just never know you know it's i sometimes get concerned about you know driving down the down the street you know if you look [crosswise] at somebody they're liable to blow your head off it's really scary i don't either yeah it's also not getting any better uh_huh yes uh_huh right uh_huh and even down to the death penalty i think as far as you know appeal after appeal after appeal i think they've finally began to say you know [enough's] enough yeah that's right yeah there are a lot of people favor you know mandatory jail time with no no you know no good time off you know i don't know i don't know if that's an answer or not i'm not too sure people are really scared of jail time anymore because they're in and out so quickly i'm not sure that's a real scary item for them you know it's uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yes yeah right you know this building jails you know more jails the answer i'm not sure it is i don't know i honestly don't know i wish i did i'd be glad to share it with everybody if i knew uh_huh yes yes before they get to jail yeah i agree i don't know maybe you know maybe maybe it needs to start at home you know with the parents as much as they can do you know parents can only do so much up to a point and they've lost it uh_huh right that's right yeah i tell you the truth though both i have two children both of are you know young adults grown and gone away from home i'm honestly glad i'm not raising children at this point and time yes uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh absolutely yeah yeah it's no guarantee that's right uh_huh that's right if you can help it that's the key you know that's right yep up to a point you after that you've lost it sure have i'm just glad i'm not raising young children anymore uh_huh yeah uh_huh i'm not so sure yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's right nope maybe just a smaller just a smaller scale maybe but you know the idea is still the same it's there it really is i don't know uh like i say i'm just glad i'm not trying to have to raise small children again yeah me too in the time allotted no i don't don't think so but i don't i don't know anyone that isn't concerned about it uh_huh that's right not to mention monies spent so i don't know wish i did yeah i guess so the police i'm sure are just you know maxed out there is only so much they can do uh_huh yeah no i don't either as a matter of fact i think they're doing you know probably for the most part the best job they can do with the resources they have it's really must be discouraging though to know that you know you bust somebody for something they may be out on the street before you finish your report you know that's got to be discouraging especially if you've [risked] your life to do the you know if you're a cop you expect to risk your life that's right uh_huh yeah as i understand it talking to a couple of my police friends what they fear most is a call to go try to settle a domestic [quarrel] you know apparently it's very dangerous you just never know uh_huh that's right apparently it's very very dangerous situation no i don't i don't think i could be a cop i really don't i guess that's pretty well it nice to talk to you bye uh that's interesting because i've talked about this subject before and it it didn't come up to either one of us to act uh nothing that i would consider major probably the most that anything of mine has ever been violated is uh you know like you know how people throw their change like into uh the glove box or the ash [tray] of their car and one time we had you know some kids go up and down the street and anybody whose car was open they kind of trashed that stuff out but they didn't do any vandalism and yeah it bugged me but you know when i think of crime and and things that could happen i i guess that was minor i have ah that's a very popular pass time up here do you have a [vette] a [transam] uh in fact there was a ring i know that you stop right up here and uh the police department would call t i security when they knew they were in town basically and say you know tell all your folks with vets and whatever else to be on the lookout for them but that's expensive you know yeah they don't want to write you uh oh that's not good well okay now i uh i mean i've had other members of my family touched um i have had a cousin of mine that was murdered uh things like that uh for no apparent reason you know it's that was lost in the country trying to find her folks new house up in kansas and stopped to use the phone and a teenage kid whose parents had lots of money uh killed her so nothing was ever done to him but so you know yeah i i'm not sure there's many lives that aren't affected by it somewhere uh i don't know what the answers should be per se yeah yeah uh_huh yeah i um i would like a home alarms that perimeter alarm system i've been very impressed with the one that the amway corporation uh puts together because it's it's as extensive as you want it to be you can you can kind of coordinate to your own home you know however many uh types of devices you need and it's a [wireless] system so it's not one they can [disable] the name [amguard] yeah they make it uh_huh and oh oh yeah about my husband he's like one of these like i want to have guns and guns kind of scare me uh not so much for me you know i feel like i'm responsible i'd learn how to use it and yes i could shoot someone if you know they were trying to take my kids or take my life or you know i'm basically a [nonviolent] person but i could do that but it scares me because of so many accidents that have occurred with children in the home that find the guns and uh you know accidentally shoot a brother or shoot a sister or shoot themselves and i'm not real sold on that yet by their own yeah well are you for uh capital punishment well that's interesting that you say that because i am too my my [sadness] with it [occurs] that it doesn't seem to be consistent you know i i have a hard time putting one person's death for the same crime that you send the other to jail for you know it does to me need to be consistent but uh i i for life that's true that's true of course my husband's of the mind that you ought to take them all out in the back alley and shoot them i don't know i guess i have a little bit more compassion i do think they ought to have their day in court only because there have been ones sent away that didn't do it but i know that's few and far between i uh i don't know the answer you know i have always thought that maybe the answer to the dope problem that you know generates so much of the crime is you know is always you know shoot the dealers and somebody made the you know take away the supply but somebody made a comment to me a couple of months ago that's kind of had me thinking he said somebody else will come up with the supply he said what you have to do is you know shoot or make it hard on the users because if the demand is gone they won't have anybody to supply to well that makes a little bit of sense sure sure that's true but where was it uh-oh several years ago and i want to say like malaysia or something with an m [madagascar] or somewhere a small country uh you know it's it's a crime punishable by death to them to be carrying anything and i think some british citizens had gone in like uh a lady and her son and they had some marijuana on them and they hung them was that malaysia okay i knew it was something like that and i thought jeez that seemed so severe for marijuana but then i thought or is that just because uh i have become accustomed to other things in hearing other things you know if i knew two of my friends got hung for carrying a little bit of marijuana it might make me think twice before i ever did it if i was of the mind to you know so i don't know what the answers are but i i do feel like i do feel like when they're [blatant] criminals and they've got records that it seems like the system protects them more than it helps the others no we're not death yeah yeah i don't know i know that you know i remember growing up and uh you know we'd leave the house open if we were in the house yeah if we went somewhere i grew up in a large i grew up in san diego you know if we went somewhere sure we'd lock the doors if it was just down the street we wouldn't or if we were in the house we wouldn't but now you know i come home i lock the door if we open the door i lock the screen door you know i want it locked when i'm in it every time i go somewhere and i i just almost hate that feeling yeah well that's one way to look at it isn't it where'd you grow up oh okay [umm] excuse me yeah that's pretty minor when i think that some people give their lives so i don't know the answers though i i i do wish we had a system that was a bit more fair oh well that's good right i'm sure that's true i'm sure that's true i do know that our neighbor across the street our development is probably only eight years old maybe not that long we've lived here six years probably seven years old and the the house across the street you know she walked in one night on somebody and of course he left she was fortunate but things like that make it real to me and aware that it really is going on you know that's it not a [fairy] [tale] world here yeah that's true well and i appreciate you calling it's gary right thank you very much huh you too bye yeah now then are you there so they're recording recording everything now but you tell me the crime is rampant out there yes um well that's what we have had here in dallas for oh for the past year we lost so many people due to crime this past year so what do you think is a solution to any of this do you think that's the majority of our crime well i think here in dallas we've got uh it's greater than that i think you know like ninety percent of our crime is uh connected with the the drug scene because we beg pardon go ahead yeah okay you mean in their clothing they okay i'm not aware of that being part of our problem it's just that uh seems like these kids or older people that uh need the need the money for the drugs and then they're shooting and we have we had a little boy in uh well it's west of here was riding in the car with his mother and father on new year's eve night and someone fired into the car the the mother and father did not even realize that there had been a i mean they thought fire crackers and that sort of thing and when they arrived where they were to have had celebrated new year's they found this baby dead and the bullet hole directly behind the driver's seat now this is something that my lord something's got to someone has to do something that's right yes no way can we uh anyway i pray that you have a good new year i hope it's a safe new year for you and what about this isn't part of the conversation but have you had any rain out there okay that's what i understand california needs but well i mean when you live in texas you accept it when it comes and don't complain about it oh i still have an apartment that has furniture up on bricks because of the rain uh_huh and i live in a a nice part of dallas but uh anyway if if the criminals uh do not come around here i'm going to be extremely fortunate yeah uh_huh you mean this is not occur after after sun down it's during the day to o okay um how has it been this week for you weather wise oh no damp uh_huh my goodness well i don't even want to tell you what ours has been like then it was ninety six yesterday and we set a record yesterday and uh very windy but then today the wind has dropped off and also the temperature so very cool uh i think right now it's like sixty nine and that's cool for or it feels cool compared to yesterday but very pleasant no rain in the last month i don't think the [ground's] very dry and our yard work everything is in bloom so our yard work is pretty tough the ground being dry but i guess it also uh brings about allergies we're having a lot of allergies down here right now everything blooming and and the weather and uh i think a lot of people have contracted uh spring fever too so had a lot of people out at work you know for fishing and and uh and golfing reasons and things like that yeah yes um um uh yeah uh_huh no snow um um um uh_huh yes yes it is down in the more southern and western areas and of course we are um about two hours from the northern border straight south and and uh very windy it's amazing to me because i have only lived in dallas for three years and i cannot believe that the wind blows all the time it does i i very seldom if any i can't remember you know a day that i walked out and the wind wasn't blowing um um uh_huh uh_huh oh where did you go to school in indiana purdue i have a brother that lives in uh uh south bend indiana and i had to always i've lived there for eight years myself i'd always said i was going to go back to school and go to notre dame but i didn't uh no originally i'm from new mexico i was born in new mexico and we lived in uh south bend for eighty eight years and uh then moved to uh tennessee actually and uh very much very much cause i i spent thirteen years there and uh then moved to dallas about three years ago so yeah uh my father was in the air force so uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh right yeah it's um it's just as long as you want to i mean it's just uh as long as you want to and just you know a reasonable [lengthy] conversation uh do you work for texas instruments oh okay uh_huh oh okay yeah well actually i i work for texas instruments and uh i'm an a i'm an environmental engineer and uh they just published this internally you know getting people involved so that that's really strange i i was wondering why we had somebody from maryland though i was saying god do we have a t i in maryland or uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh well yeah yeah well really it uh the letter just says um let's see i can't i was looking at it i was trying to find out speedy short cuts and i always thought it's not necessary to measure your time just to go ahead and enjoy the conversation and and end it when needed so uh_huh uh well it's actually um waste water taking taking care of uh i'm actually in the air division and we monitor um anything that comes out of a stack or out of a building or um we do have customers that um their concerns are in the work place and we take care of that but within our department we take care of everything waste water uh solid waste and recycling and and air and oh uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah we actually our division is corporate wide and we take care of just the dallas area of course we have several plants here but um we do air modeling also and and yeah i take care of all the air modeling specifically for the dallas area what we do we have a weather station that we get all of this information you know temperature wind speed wind direction and uh we have a huge chemical data base and uh our our chemical data base so that we know every chemical on site and and um it's concentration and if if anything ever happened god forbid you know a building explosion or something we'd be able to track chemicals from that building with our weather station weather wise or otherwise weather wise damp cold warm we have we have gone through what might be called the four seasons uh in the last week we have had highs of seventy two lows in the twenties i heard about that um uh_huh uh_huh the blue flu yeah the blue flu or the white collar flu depending on where you work i guess oh we have had uh as i've said we have had variable weather uh it has been [untypically] wet for this time of year and also we have a lot of green you know the grass has been growing and if you look outside you would like to go out and mow your lawn if you could go out and buy a new spark plug or something along those lines but fortunately it rains and you uh do not have to go out and buy the spark plug you know but we've had an unusually uh uh warm spring and well i guess we're still in winter and uh we have had no snow to speak of to speak of we usually average oh anywhere from six to twelve inches during the winter and this year as well as last year we have had less than four inches total [accumulation] so it's been inordinately warm uh here for uh for this time of year so uh in that regard it's fine but uh i envy you your ninety four degrees i thought i heard this morning that in san antonio it was in the nineties yesterday yeah uh_huh well i spent six years in graduate school at in indiana in the [flatlands] and it was that way every day rarely a day went by when the wind was less than fifteen or twenty miles an hour summer and winter so that uh you you became accustomed to it i guess but uh otherwise as i said we have had uh a relatively mild winter speaking for this area of the country purdue oh yes well you are not from that area originally i can tell oh okay uh_huh well i thought i heard a little tennessee in there somewhere uh_huh gee you've moved almost moved around as much as i have oh i see well i worked for the government so i i moved uh much more frequently than i had intended for sixteen years but uh i guess the uh this is my first conversation in this uh uh series i i received a call last night because of the uh i had not received my uh personal identification number so i had to call jack [godfrey] today to ask him what it was because i i had to [abort] the call last evening because i couldn't get on the line so uh is there any i'm not sure how long we're supposed to talk oh no i do not i work for g t e and i uh of course was i was sent a uh an application from uh from jack i've known jack for some time i'm in the speech processing business and have been for a number of years so i was very much interested in in being a speaker for this oh i see uh_huh i'm sure you have a representative somewhere in the area if just nothing more than a business representative or government services representative and um but i have uh i have been a speaker in other uh similar type of activities and i know the reason why this is why the uh this is being gathered and the program and so forth so i was interested as i said i was interested in being a speaker we haven't talked much about the weather i know that's what we're supposed to do uh_huh in environmental engineering uh is that with regard to work place engineering or just you know the work place environment or oh i see uh_huh well i had my the the call last evening was supposed to be about uh concerning recycling in the community the call i received and so i had uh i had thought a little bit about it um before hand so i but that that's interesting i have a uh uh friend who is a planner uh a city planner and one of his and he models uh city districts and so forth uh does computer modeling and one of the uh he has inputs or gets inputs from uh an environmental engineer uh_huh oh i see well that's interesting all right have you lived in this area long okay yeah it it it's it's a lot warmer a lot drier too because usually about this time of year this you know you see a little bit more rain i mean by by mid february i mean we start getting a lot of rain but it uh_huh yeah [unseasonable] i used to my wife and i we used to live in san antonio couple years ago and it was it was i remember the first day of spring it was so much ice that came down later on that that afternoon and evening it was just it was horrible yeah yeah well um i don't know i i guess i'm just sort of acclimated to colder weather um i i like it warmer i mean i like it you know i like it warm but it doesn't really matter i mean i'd i would much rather see it cool at this time of year anyway because it would mean a little bit more rain possibly but uh well i spent three years in germany so i'm not too thrilled with the whole thing anyway but i got used to it it was really strange i mean when i when when when we came to san antonio it was just like uh you know it just just [swelter] and then we got used to it and then we went up to dallas and it was just it's it's not not that it's just hot or dry it's just not very comfortable it just yeah a little bit yeah yeah my wife and i the last day we were in florida we my visiting my uh my parents and my brother and sister we were we were down there and the last day right before we left we had to i had to ride with my sister and the air conditioning went out on the car and we you you just get used to air conditioning all the time and this it was just the humidity was like eighty plus eighty percent plus and it was just killing us yeah yeah well i mean i i i guess i've been in some places you know where the weather was just so mild you know places like monterey california or you know just you know so mild and then you've been to such extremes like san [angelo] texas where you just where you walk outside and you sweat you know you're sweating you look down at your arm but you see the water leaving your arm it's so hot you just feel it pulling away bizarre yeah yeah i tend to agree but i don't know i i think in in some in some respects it probably more [tolerable] no the other topics i got one topic they said talk about the middle east well well i mean i've had some pretty bad i guess some pretty controversial topics so it's just like well that was my fault but then the weather's like man i mean it gets pretty [mundane] i mean you can only talk about about the situation just so long okay bye no i've only been here a couple of years uh but uh i've i've noticed that uh this year it seems to have been a lot warmer than it has in the past yeah yeah well i remember last year or the year before uh we had ice and snow uh uh terrible ice storm uh around this time of the year and uh this year it's been so hot and uh sunny it it's really quite uh quite amazing uh_huh um yes i was just talking to my son today he's up in boston and it was twenty nine there and it was you know in the seventies out here and it was really uh he really wished he could be here rather than there oh really uh_huh uh_huh i have you know i i i think it's really been delightful i come uh i've spent most of my time in in warm weather areas and uh uh the ice and snow just doesn't uh hold any [allure] for me at all do you you think san antonio is more comfortable than dallas uh_huh you must well uh it must be quite a bit hotter down there isn't it oh wow oh yes oh yeah it's terrible orlando is the only place i've ever been where i've seen the car sweat i mean that's really bad uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh wow uh i know i i tend to i tend to be able to get along with [monotony] in the weather when it's very temperate uh it doesn't some people say uh they they like to watch the changing of the seasons but uh i'd rather you know like southern california you know have it kind of sunny and temperate all the time so it's kind of a luxury yeah well i guess this the weather isn't as lively a topic as uh as some of the others we might have gotten i guess we're supposed to say good bye or something and think about what my daughter is here [prodding] me to say good bye we messed up the conversation anyway yeah i know weather's just not all that inspiring okay well it's nice talking to you bye bye there we go i think that's true the uh the bermuda grass is [greening] up in march and sometimes doesn't really start doing that until the first part of april so so i think we're a little ahead of schedule on that that's true it's been a a fun break but the break is over yeah now the last couple of weekends have been nice and sunny well yeah but i'd rather have a sunny weekend than a gray weekend yeah yeah i haven't heard whether it's going to rain or not well that's good yeah that probably is a little bit under what it is for this time of year i think i haven't seen the the weather on the news in the evening lately but i think the average high would be should be about seventy yeah yeah that's true um one of the remarkable things about the weather in the summertime here is that quite often the average daytime high of say ninety nine degrees is within five or six degrees of the all time record high and what that tells me is that the summer weather is very predictable that it doesn't vary very much i mean any other time of year that's not the case because it could be very warm or very cold uh_huh right right yeah one of the weirdest things i saw i think it was around this time last year was a twenty six degree lightening storm i you know i was going into the grocery store and a a lightening bolt was almost directly overhead and it was six degrees out and i thought well gee i've i've never known it to lightening at that temperature that's right it uh it probably was a lot warmer up high sometimes they get those inversions like when we had that twelve and a half days a few years ago that it never got up as high as freezing the air temperature at five thousand feet was fifty degrees the cold weather was just simply trapped along the ground and couldn't get away nope yep i i'm really enjoying this now well this has been interesting not too challenging to the brain nope all right ellen well you have a good day bye yeah well uh i think the weather lately has been a bit warmer than i would expect this time of year yeah yeah i was out in my yard yesterday afternoon and i noticed all that grass coming up and i thought ooh we've got to start this mowing bit soon yeah well um oh i guess another thing i've noticed too here lately is that even though we've had some pretty warm days it's been awfully gray you know just yeah but it seems like every time at work i look out my window it's gray oh i go for that yeah in fact i'm a little worried about this one coming up here we have a long weekend and it sounds like it's going to be a little bit on the cool side i think there's an eighty percent chance this evening but it's supposed to be cleared out at least by noon tomorrow and then the rest will be without rain but i think the highs are going to be in the sixties and the lows in the forties that's getting back to a little bit [chillier] yeah i'm not certain either but you're probably right well i like it when it's sort of a medium temperature uh maybe seventy five to eighty somewhere in there i don't like it when it's too cool or too warm i'm much more apt to get things done when it's at that sort of in between temperature um yeah you're probably right yes as a matter of fact i heard the weather the other day on t v and i think it was one day this week a year ago they said that we had a freeze and some kind of bad weather you know it wasn't just a super bad storm but it was it was that sort of thing that we never like to see in the the late spring time oh wow um yeah that that is pretty unusual and you really take notice of it too um wow i don't don't like that super cold stuff i just don't move very well when it's that cold yeah well not not a real in depth topic but enjoyed talking to you okay bye bye so what kind of weather have you had in dallas really yeah see i didn't i don't i thought uh i thought i lived in euless and i thought it was pretty normal but anyway but i guess you're right though it has been real hot because it um i've had to use the air conditioner in march my husband usually uh_huh yeah yeah i know the trees are real pretty right now and everything and uh i don't know i know the pollen is real high but i think it's higher than usual isn't it yeah i know it's been bothering me a lot but yeah i think i think the weather overall has been um probably like you said probably a little bit warm and uh anyway so we basically live in the same area so it's real hard to i know i just think it's been warm and it's been hot and i liked it and it's beautiful and all the trees are pretty and i wish it would stay like this all the time so yeah i could too and uh [gah] i don't think we can say anything else really yeah that sounds like a good deal well you have a nice day and we'll talk to you later bye well it's been very windy and it's uh probably unseasonably hot for time right now yeah we've already had to use that and we've had like i mean this is probably typical though uh we like tornado weather and tornado warnings and uh so uh you know i i forget from year to year i'm getting too old but the uh it the [wind's] blowing very hard but i guess you know we're just out of march and uh will bring the rain in uh april yes it is seems very high it hasn't bothered me but i know that people that have allergies it seems to be pretty high a little bit warm and a little bit [blowy] i think really hard to make too big of different [comparisons] right yeah yes i could stand this all summer i don't think we can either let's cut off you too bye bye well amy it's been uh kind of overcast today and cloudy we have our i have a son in kindergarten he was having a [kite] day and i was really worried about it raining because it has there's been some dark clouds and it's been um and it's been pretty rainy looking uh_huh i know it just has that i it looks several times in the last couple of weeks it has looked rainy that day and not not done anything and we have a lot of trees in our yard and i probably they're pretty old big tall trees and so if it's an overcast day then the weather is pretty blah because i really have to catch some sunshine or else i feel like i live in a cave all the time uh_huh oh i bet yeah that makes a big difference but i uh we're kind of new to plano and i'm working on a carnival that's going to be in a couple of weeks for our school and i'm thinking that this has been pretty you know rainy season and it's been kind of scary it's kind of been cloudy every day and i thought well i'm just not anxious to have worry about the weather well yeah uh_huh well i know in um i'm from missouri and we always had pretty nice four seasons and and you know we have some extreme weather in each season but uh i like that and we moved here from houston in in uh july and everyone kept saying oh you're going up north it's not going to be so hot it's not going to be so humid yeah that has just not been the case it has been oh it was extremely hot i thought i was going to die my car i thought it was going die last summer but well the air conditioning was broke but broken i guess it just couldn't handle the stress and the heat the record heat and you know i was worried about every time we came to an intersection the car started [idling] rough you know because of the extreme heat uh_huh oh i know that's really awful but but i uh understand that this is kind of typical for this time of year that rainy season uh_huh no sure brown yeah that is that is awful and it it takes time and the the kids they you have to water your lawn and they want to go out and run in it and get all muddy you know so you're going do i want a a green lawn or a muddy feet in the house oh no well i don't know do the nice thing i'm looking forward to is uh not having a hurricane season yes we always had uh big concern about hurricanes and they're close enough to the coast and you know you had to have a supply like uh emergency supply on hand all the time during the hurricane season and and it was pretty spooky because you always have to think you know what's the weather doing right and do we have enough you know um food storage and enough uh batteries and all the kinds of things that's right so uh_huh well i yeah i don't really like tornadoes either but uh at least there isn't we i feel like i got rid of something hurricanes so not too much of that yeah and it is and i just i can't believe the the record temperatures that have were here last summer that oh it was just unbelievably hot that is pretty bad oh i know i can't imagine even well that would it is just pretty bad but i guess um i guess the weather hasn't changed too much from here to houston and but it is like you say coming a little bit further up north it's a little bit nicer to have a spring and a fall season where you have some pleasant weather everyday where you can feel like you just want to open your windows and uh_huh and get some fresh air in the house and it feels good but but i guess no but i remember oh no now that sounds awful now i have seen those i have driven around in the neighborhoods and seen those little flood [gauges] that will be at little yellow signs it's you know has it like from one foot to four foot and i thought i would never buy a house with a flood gauge down the street yeah that would be awful well i've got some kids out on the [trampoline] i need to go look and see what they're doing well you too bye bye yeah oh boy yeah i've been trying to put weed spray on the lawn for the whole week and you can't put it on if it's suppose to rain within forty eight hours and so i keep hearing the forecast it's going to rain it's going to rain it's going to rain but it really hasn't rained i know yeah yeah uh_huh yeah yeah well i get tired with the i have two preschoolers a three year old and a two year old and if it's not nice and they can't go out it's really the pits but i appreciate it when they can at least go play in the backyard for an hour or something you know yeah yeah yeah yeah well my three and half year old he really wants to have the pool out in the backyard you know any day i mean all winter long he's been wanting a pool in the backyard so i'm hoping you know that it just seems like the weather around here goes so quickly from being winter to you know muggy and hot and it's just you never really have like nice cool sixty five or seventy degree weather with sunshine you know i really miss that i'm from chicago originally and i miss the seasons that you know that we used to get up there that you just don't have down here yeah oh oh really yeah it's pretty hot here during the summer gosh do have air conditioning in your car or yeah yeah yeah yeah i know my husband doesn't have air conditioning in his car and he when he comes home from work you know during the summer he's just he feels like he's burning like he's been baking for an hour gosh yeah what i hate is i hate having to water so much around here you know we never used to have to water our lawns you know in chicago it was always enough rain here and there so here if you don't water it just looks awful i just hate to spend the money just going down the drain and watering grass you know yeah yeah we have a dog too so that adds to it you know [traipse] in and out with whatever the weather is like out there so oh yeah because houston was really hurricane alley wasn't it weren't there a lot of hurricanes there oh boy yeah that would be gosh keep the weather radio close by and stuff like that yeah yeah really every time i store batteries i wind up going to use them and they're dead they've been stored so long oh boy well now this is a little bit of relief although they still have warnings all the time around here for you know tornado season hurricanes and stuff so i yeah yeah well i've been worried about mostly with having little kids now with taking them out in the summer and getting them burnt up i mean i have to keep the sun screen on them just constantly when they go outside because they say it's just so dangerous for little ones to get a bad sunburn so yeah a hundred and ten degrees and and i can't stand to be outside at all when it's like that i just don't even want to go out you know of the house to get the mail even leave me in the air conditioning we had our air conditioning broke break last last summer the switch got something wrong with the switch and we had to call somebody out to fix it because i couldn't take it more than a few hours without it on yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that's really nice i hate having to leave the house you know closed up all the time yeah yeah well have you been here during the real heavy heavy rains i mean i can't remember what time of year i think it's usually this time of year when we get some just [torrential] down [pours] gosh flooding our neighbors had flooding so badly it was like a foot deep in their house last year they had to replace all their carpeting and everything it was miserable yeah that would not be fun uh_huh oh really oh gosh no kidding talk about asking for trouble huh yeah yeah okay well have a good day thanks bye bye well good afternoon to you mary first let me ask you what's what's the weather like up there to begin with that sounds more like our winter weather down here um well you know i bet that's what we that storm we had last night oh we had a frog [strangler] go sweeping through here uh yesterday and last night and we're expecting another one tonight oh i mean it was raining so hard you could swim down the street uh_huh well it's probably on its way up there it was heading north well it was nice today uh in between the thunder showers yes well you know what they say about the weather here in texas if you if you don't like it wait five minutes it'll change uh_huh uh_huh well tell me uh is is it normally that cold up there in in the spring you're kidding you are you sure you didn't leave your refrigerator door open um hum oh oh mother [macree] no i should say not well i i [sincerely] hope that you don't have that terrible storm we had i hope it doesn't reach you up there well i let's hope it well if it's the same as what we had at least it'll be warmer yeah oh boy the that whew that would be tear disastrous if you had that rain storm and freezing weather oh uh_huh oh yes uh_huh well uh i heard on the news this morning that um one of our local schools uh lost the roof of their [gymnasium] and they suspected may have been a tornado but uh uh thank god for small favors the uh uh what do they call them the the the marching band or something uh uh had just quit [rehearsal] about a half hour before oh and how uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah well during the winter yes we do uh we've had uh well past four or five years i guess at least one day during the year when just everything would just close down because we'd have freezing rain and uh of course people down here they just don't know how to handle themselves and well uh not only that but we're we're don't have the equipment to handle it either uh they go out there and the well all you can do with with uh freezing rain of course is spread sand on the ice and but uh you know we don't even have vehicles that will do that they they have to get uh a truck of sand and uh uh four or five [laborers] up there just spreading it by hand well and then to make matters worse it destroys your vehicles too yeah they well we they do that down here too they mix the salt in with the sand yes uh_huh uh_huh i've no i'm a dog lover myself i guess it would be oh oh wasn't that nice of him uh i have uh a a chowperd myself a chowperd well she's part chow and part shepherd uh_huh but she's the best the best of both breeds well june is medium sized but she is scared to death of thunder storms uh_huh oh oh that must be nice uh_huh well good no well now you know it sounds like you ought to be in a condo down in miami beach somewhere or better yet down around saint petersburg florida uh_huh that's what i call home i lived there for ten years uh_huh yep well i lived there in the seventies and uh i i love it i have two sons still living down there oh uh_huh well that's that's why i was suggesting uh that saint petersburg is got got to be the finest weather in the world oh i i loved it down there course you could tell always tell which were the the and which ones were the [snowbirds] yeah the [snowbirds] were the and good well well today uh when i got up it was twenty nine degrees yes and it managed to get up to about fifty this afternoon but it's been cloudy overcast and threatening rain all day and we've also had extremely strong winds fifteen to twenty miles an hour for the day is that right oh really we had one of those two days ago but not uh but uh no rain at all yesterday and uh no rain today thanks a lot couldn't you send us some nice weather oh was it well the one thing's for sure we can always discuss the weather how some ever we can't do very much to change it what's that oh yes well that's about the way our weather is here also and i grew up in saint louis and saint louis was much the same no it's not this is uh about uh ten degrees cooler than usual but about a week ago we were up to eighty and eighty five degrees no no it uh it [fluctuates] from one extreme to the other it seems i'm sure i didn't i was ready to turn on the air conditioning it no it really was extremely warm it only got down to about sixty five in the evening we had about three or four days of that and then all of a sudden a cold front came down and uh temperatures dropped thirty degrees in a very short length of time and uh it has gone down gradually each day this morning it was twenty nine yesterday it was about thirty two uh cars were scraping ice off their cars this morning if they've been sitting out all night so it it really wasn't too wasn't too pleasant oh i hope not well they are predicting rain and thunderstorms and i wouldn't be a bit surprised by what we would not be getting the same weather you had uh yeah yes warm rain well of course by the time it gets up here it may run into a cold front coming down from canada yes yes we had uh a week ago they had golf ball size hail coming down in one part of the uh of the city of dayton itself and uh then we just had about an inch and a half or two inches of rain in less than an hour it was just coming down by the [bucketfulls] and a great deal of lightning so it it wasn't uh it wasn't conditions to being out in it and i had just gotten home we had a lot of tornado warnings also and i had gotten home shortly before that uh the rain started so uh i felt a little more secure that i was at home rather than having to be out driving in it is that right uh_huh yeah oh they that was very very fortunate for them because that could have really been disastrous well of course this is tornado season uh in to uh we have many tornadoes [spawned] in this area and northern indiana now we're in the southwestern part of uh ohio just forty miles north due north of cincinnati and uh but uh northern indiana has many tornadoes come [roaring] across and we get the backlash off of it if not the part of the tornado itself so uh we you know we get a lot of bad weather in this area but of course you're supposed to be the sun belt and i do know that you get some freezing weather down there on occasion um hum right yes i was going to say that it does make a difference when you're not accustomed to uh having to drive in it right right and right um hum right well uh well here what they do and i i [contend] that it's certainly not the right thing to do they spread salt and of course the salt does melt the ice but then what melts immediately freezes and becomes uh a perpetual problem oh it sure does do that well sand and uh but i have learned to do is uh now that i am alone is uh to carry bags of salt in the trunk of my car um not only in case i need it for that for traction but for additional weight in the back of the car and then of course kitty litter is also excellent for that i don't know whether you've ever thought in terms of that but yeah well well the dogs don't use litter but kitty litter is excellent for uh getting under the wheels of cars and what have you and giving you traction uh_huh yeah it uh works out uh really quite well course i have i have a dog also my son brought me a little [lhasa] [apso] uh for my birthday last thanksgiving he brought him from dallas he yes that uh he just thought i had been without a dog uh for three years that was long enough he he had oh a what now that one i'm not familiar with uh okay okay that makes sense then i believe yes right well i've always had big dogs before never had a little dog before and yes well oh well i had a german [shorthair] that was frightened of storms the minute it would begin to storm he would just [panic] and uh i had to push him down when he was fourteen and two months later i had to put my yellow lab down because he had leukemia and uh then uh then there was no point in having all my acreage i had four and a half acres with game [preserve] on three sides oh well it was great i loved it but then i didn't need all that anymore so i finally sold that and i'm in a fair size condo and i have a nice size patio and uh so this little dog has plenty of room to run yeah and he is a a [cutie] and uh but i've never had a dog i had to keep taking to the [groomer's] to have [groomed] either and it's is that right oh is that right oh well i was there once way way back in nineteen sixty i think for just a week's vacation but uh i that's about the only time i've been to florida except passing through on the way to someplace else but uh uh_huh um hum well uh uh most of my friends do spend a lot of time down in florida but uh i have just that's just not been my thing we used to always head west or head north now that i'm alone why uh i uh prefer to travel overseas if i'm going anywhere and uh course there too you never know what the weather's going to be when you start getting over to oh is that right um yeah oh is that right both yes uh_huh well are you summit or are you uh spring creek oh this is fun what building are you in oh i'm building two at least we found something different that's i've never had a call no isn't that funny i usually get some place i got a woman in new jersey the last time i called i think that is funny so the weather in building two is cold it's been cold it's been cold in the building outside the building it's not bad typical t i or t i listen i got me doing it typical texas spring are you a native to texas from so what do you think of the texas weather how long have you been here oh okay you you you know about august then okay there's no surprises left uh_huh good idea real good idea we went to alaska that is really nice it is so cool you wear a jacket you know yeah or keep one handy because it's it rains a lot in alaska uh it they call it their liquid gold but it you know you get sunshine and it's lovely and then it rains just enough to keep everything nice and moist and very green and blooming oh my goodness it's pretty well texas isn't bad not in the spring spring is nice right oh we always we always do though uh it that's right and then we get all that heat right oh really oh you got into that bad stuff isn't that strange i think that's one of the strange strange things and you very seldom see it though so it had come it's a drop of water that had come through quite a few rain clouds apparently is that correct i think i think that's it's not on the ground but in the clouds it is i was dumb i was in um florida for a week on business and i had called back to the house i stayed the weekend and i called back to the house my housekeeper was baby sitting my cats and dogs said something to the effect of now we've made the national news don't get upset and don't worry it's in garland where all the bad weather is i said okay you know and i watched the news and i thought ha ha that's garland that's not plano i don't have anything to worry about i was on the plane heading back to dallas before it [dawned] on me stupid you own property in garland felt so dumb finally i got home and found out my property was okay there was no problem with it but i guess you just tend to think of of where your house is you know and nothing else oh oh i see oh okay the house that house that i bought is close to a firewheel golf course just going to be blocks off of that new highway one ninety that's going through oh really is that a nice area well the house that the house that i bought was really really nice yes yes really really nice home very pretty uh no i'm going to lease it it's it's investment property but it is really it's a very nice place uh i i would [cheerfully] live there of course it's not my home and i've lived in my home in well almost ten years and you know i've got everything just exactly like i want it but if i were to live some place else it certainly meets my standards it's a nice house no it's not it's off the golf course and i'll be honest with you i'm going to have to get a map to figure out exactly where is the golf course versus where my house is but it's in the [estates] that [adjoin] it yes it is yeah that one nine that one ninety is just going to be the the [outermost] loop around right just continue to do that where are you from in california san diego i've been through all of that uh there is an area beyond thousand oaks north of los angeles that is really an eerie strange looking area with boulders i they're not really hills they're more like just huge boulders with very little vegetation uh well you know it may be a little bit more inland that is one of the strangest areas i have ever seen uh i had to go up to t i on business a couple years ago and we went up that coastline and i was just amazed how unusual that looks here hang on just a second i've got a los angeles map let me just quick valley yes beyond thousand oaks you don't think that's strange looking oh okay maybe maybe i'm used to texas the elevation is extremely high it's got [curving] roads on it but but the it's just a strange landscape there's very little vegetation right it's a maybe it's a place i went to it was far extreme thought we'd never find the place it was interesting because we went out the [ventura] highway to thousand oaks and on up through that way oh it's green sometime well it doesn't stay green you know the really and in all honesty i know this sounds like a texas story all honesty you haven't seen the hottest of summers if you've only been here five years we haven't had a really bad one oh it may be eighty two because we bought our house in eighty one and we built a pool in eighty two do you live in plano or work in plano or both both are you a t i are you at work right now so am i in building which building i'm i'm i'm spring creek i'm building uh one not like that neither have i right that's funny so how's the how's the weather in building two no no i'm i'm a transplant from california not as nice as california oh five years now i've been here long pretty long so yes oh i've been through five of those right right a lot of people try to leave the state for a couple of weeks in august for you know if they're going to go out of state for vacation that's the time to go yeah we went up to wyoming this last uh summer during that time and it was like you know eighty degrees up there it was beautiful nice to get out of texas for a while well that's that's the even even farther away even in the summer time huh uh_huh uh_huh is that right um green um right no no right i have to think every year to try to remember what it was what's it supposed to like this time of year yeah because march we usually get a lot of rain in march you know it'll seem the news the harold taft you know on the local news march we typically get a lot of rain and we've had this many inches and you know we're right on target you know and just seem like we were getting a lot of rain in march but i it's hard to remember twelve months ago what it was like yeah i wish i just wish it wouldn't come all at once and and right well it's just that you know when it rains it rains in california you get these nice lovely rains you know nothing really you know like [downpours] like you have here the other day we had some hail the biggest hail i've ever seen in texas yeah i live in garland yeah we got hail the size of [marbles] i mean just so noisy hitting the house and the glass on the windows it didn't break anything but we went out there afterwards and there's ice balls the size of [marbles] all over our lawn i know i you pick them up you know and they're perfectly round and i go gee how did they form you know so perfect like that right right i've seen hail you know but usually the size you know of uh tiny tiny [pebbles] you know really small you know but this was uh really large uh i don't know how hail is formed to tell you the truth you don't think it's cold enough you know to right must be i guess and then i think you know all that falling would warm it up and melt it but maybe that's what rounds it i don't know but [tumbling] uh_huh uh_huh um yeah right right and close to that what's called duck creek that runs through part of garland that's the part that always seems to get hardest hit when there's there's the hard rain the creek [overflows] and a lot of houses a lot of houses around that creek seem to to get flooded the streets and stuff around that area get a lot of flooding okay right that's where i live close to that yeah uh uh not quite i don't live in that firewheel division but i live close by there in north far north garland yeah they're supposed to it's getting built up you know with more new new shopping centers and things you know it's a fairly new area yeah and uh and they're supposed to be building a mall somewhere close by by the next by ninety three or ninety four or something a brand new mall not too far away from that area so it'd be nice uh_huh in the firewheel [estates] there whatever uh_huh uh_huh but you're not living there right now oh i see i see right uh_huh yeah that's a nice area is it on the golf course is that right yeah right right well that's a nice area that really is a nice area when they get that highway finished you can hop on that and get anywhere you need to go fairly quick right another belt line just uh farther out right right right southern california i've lived in san diego for six years when i was a younger and l a area and my parents live in anaheim right now lived up north of los angeles in thousand oaks area where the cowboys have their training camp or used to anyway yeah huh i'm not familiar with what is it along the coast or or inland um out there uh_huh uh_huh huh yeah they have some pretty nice weather out there in los angeles valley okay i know where that is i know where valley is i've been out there before sure i didn't notice anything strange i guess about it maybe texas the way uh_huh huh i didn't i don't remember seeing that part of it i know valley yeah it's just a suburb of l a and they've built some new highways out to that area and things lately people can get in and out of l a easier huh yeah sounds interesting right right right i i know exactly that area it's a nice area out there i love thousand oaks uh texas i don't know thing things you just have less a variety i guess i think i don't think it's quite as green you know it's green with all the trees and things out here but it's just yeah but it's just you know i don't know right yeah i missed that one of eighty or eighty two or eighty one that had the heat wave all right okay oh yeah uh_huh oh okay uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well right now we're we're having the little bit of spring that we have we don't have many seasons here it goes from winter to summer usually spring usually consists of a lot of rain especially thunderstorms we've got we had one of those blow through tonight and i think we got the same thing in the forecast for the next two or three days so it's gotten up to uh ninety a couple of times but basically it's been in the low seventies and eighties yeah it's not really been too bad usually it [sneaks] on into the nineties a little earlier yeah quite a bit well the season is just about over for that uh in fact we drove down to corpus last week and uh there were still some paint brushes and bluebonnets down along the way drove through san antonio and i spoke to somebody else this morning from san antonio and were they had and we came back what day was that sunday evening and they had a big [rainstorm] come through there part of the same thing we're getting now i guess yeah that's the second or third year in a row that we've had a real rainy spring we had a pretty rainy fall last year as well um we've had a few down here but not anything like kansas but this is the season for that they do they do pop up occasionally around here yeah yeah i'm from here originally so when it's july and august i'm pretty well used to the hundred degree temperatures the biggest problem with with the weather and the rain in this area is the soil it's that black clay soil you know it's not sandy like most of the state is so it doesn't absorb the water real well you know once it rains a little bit it's it's filled up and everything else just runs off you know yeah yeah we have it especially as rainy as it's been in the last couple of years and there's a section in south dallas that's had a whole lot of flooding problems because of the rain really uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh i guess i'd prefer that yeah uh_huh yeah it's pretty dry we get some when it's this rainy but it's nothing like i guess san antonio summers it's nothing like houston or east texas is a little more humid uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah probably the pacific breezes make a lot of difference that's nice well my wife's originally from virginia and we lived there for about nine months and that was a real change for me um parts do we we're over in the western edge in the mountains and they have of course some pretty severe storms winter storms snow and that type of thing but they're so good about clearing the roads that you know it doesn't usually bother you very much yeah their springs and summers are pretty mild too it never gets real real hot uh_huh yeah well as we were talking the weather came on and there's a flash flood watch and more rain for the next three or four days yeah maybe we can send you some i think that will do it well i enjoyed talking with you lisa uh_huh you too bye okay well i can go ahead and start and tell you mine and we're from san antonio and that's where i grew up so i was used to the heat out here right now gosh it gets to about seventies high seventies and it gets very cold at night and monterey it's um right on the coast and i don't know if your familiar with california coastline but we're we're about two hours about a two hour drive south of san francisco and it's uh really nice it's a big area for people to come from the different uh countries mostly like japan germany and england and they usually go to carmel and vacation on the beaches so it's it's pretty nice uh year round but uh cool always cool in the evenings and warm warm in the summer but it's stays pretty cold even uh during the winter for as nice as it is and um we usually get a fog uh right about i guess about four o'clock and it kind of rolls in over the coast and uh then it usually breaks back off again the next morning and if you go just a little bit ways in i'd say about a fifteen minute drive in towards [salinas] uh the weather completely changes and it gets very hot and dry and the fog never makes it that far but along here it's uh very very different from the texas type weather what's it like down there oh really well at least you've got some uh_huh oh well that's good uh_huh have y'all been having any heat waves or like the ninety degree uh_huh uh_huh women that's good for this time of year uh_huh uh_huh so do y'all have many bluebonnets and stuff this year oh uh_huh uh_huh oh i miss that oh oh well that's real nice because i can remember two years ago that in about february the hundred degree weather started in san antonio and just continued at least y'all are getting some rain up in dallas i'm glad to hear that uh_huh y'all weren't getting any of the strings of the tornadoes and stuff were you uh_huh oh gosh uh_huh oh yeah i really don't miss all the heat there i'm getting acclimated to have the cool evenings so we get a bit of a relief uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh is that what dallas is okay yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah san antonio has that same problem when the rains come it's it's a complete mess everything floods all the under passes i didn't realize that dallas had that same problem uh_huh well we could use some rain up here we're like in the bottom of the fourth year of drought up here and they had a pretty good early spring and we got quite a bit of rain but it wasn't enough to offset what they lost over the last four years and uh so they're still talking water rationing this summer so it would seem strange because in san antonio we had lived out um west of san antonio in castroville and the water in [medina] lake and that area was really going down that they were considering that they might have to do water rationing and i thought oh gee i'm so glad to get out of there and get up here to the california pacific coast where it rains and everything has flowers and there's no problem with water and then i came here and found out they were in the you know four year [draught] so i said well gee this is pretty much like texas and it pretty much is in the middle of summer they have rolling hills around here but um they turn to golden dead grass for the majority of the summer just because there is no water to keep them green but um it's a really nice area it's just it's just such a change from uh texas because i had grown up with uh the heat and used to essentially like you said you have the cold winter and then you have the hot summer spring and uh to come here it's kind of the temperate weather all year round it's kind of like uh spring i guess if you year round except and then in the winter and then it seems sort of like a san antonio early winter or fall year round so it seems like we only have two springs which is or two seasons and that would be spring and fall we never really get any of the other ones but it's a really nice uh change of pace yeah to the heat i really don't miss the heat um we do a lot of you know when you do a lot of outside like running and stuff it's just so much easier up here and you don't have to worry about the high humidity does dallas get high humidity or is it pretty dry uh_huh yeah it seems like san antonio is increasing in humidity over the years because i had lived in san antonio for about twenty years and it just seemed like every year it just got more and more humid more and more humid and here it's uh well it's right by the ocean but um it's not the same as corpus corpus you get that humid salty feeling in the air but here um well the water is extremely cold up here you can lay on the beach all you want but if you want to go wind suffering or diving or swimming you have to wear a wet suit and a thick wet suit at that because it's just extremely cold and i for some reason because of the cold uh ocean uh water the air is always cool it's never humid or sticky or salty feeling so i really like that about this area and uh we just hadn't expected it we were used to what uh gulf coast weather was like when we came here to pacific coast weather it's just completely different and it's much nicer uh_huh it does and the air doesn't feel anything like it does along the gulf coast region but you um but we like it so it's a nice change so we'll be here a couple of years and we thought well we'll take advantage of it and see what all the pacific coast is like so it's been good oh i imagine virginia i imagine gets real humid doesn't it oh uh_huh uh_huh yeah not like texas where everything comes to a stand still uh_huh i'll have to try that out because i had heard that north carolina was sort of like that and uh i've just never really been in that region of the country and i guess i'm going to have to try that area sometime and see what it's like because a lot of people that are from that north carolina region really like it and uh they get the snow but they said it doesn't really get messy and it doesn't really hang around that long so they the people i know that are from there uh they always miss it and they want to go back nothing seems quite as good but anyway well oh gee whiz oh gosh well i hope it moves up this way but i'm sure it won't yeah because we could sure use it well you think that takes care of the time and okay well i sure appreciate hearing how things are going in texas and uh yeah good luck to you okay we'll see you bye well i'm talking to you from dallas what part of the country are you in well we can uh complain together or swear we can complain together about the humidity no i don't think so i wouldn't think yeah i far north dallas yeah about a half a mile from plano so we're in the yeah it's been very very rainy i know oh um i don't know i haven't lived here let's see we lived out of state in wisconsin and we just we lived here ten years ago and when we first lived here we we were in garland east richardson and um doesn't seem like it was quite as humid and i don't know then we went we lived in uh madison wisconsin for five years um for my husband's schooling graduate schooling and it just it's a lot cleaner up there but um it's a lot colder too uh his job he came back to start work again for a different company so said here here's a here we are again it just seems a little more humid than it i don't ever remember of course you know you only remember the good stuff but um i just don't remember the humidity this much rain and this much humidity uh yeah they are actually though it was a lot [rainier] here in the winter uh we came back last august it's just a lot [rainier] than i remember it all through the seasons you know um yeah and i think it's because it's just getting more crowded and more polluted i really do think that's part of it um uh in in wisconsin and minnesota when they get winters it's um the winters are bad but not what you hear about it's just like down here when you hear when people here think it's a hundred and six people up north think it's a hundred and sixty down here i'm making that up you know when it's only like ninety five um it's just like up there when you hear it's forty below it's probably really only five below um and it's so dry that it's it's like going to well probably what arizona used to be like you know it's just dry and cool so it's not it's not what you think it is um no there have been times though when it gets so [frigid] that you you can't stand it where did you move here from well there you could talk about that that's that's a strange state for oh there you go okay this is very true yeah right well actually the summers up there we thought were the most beautiful time of the year um in terms of colorado i know my husband likes to camp and backpack and all the stuff i don't like um but i'd used to go on i worked for a mortgage company in wisconsin and i did a lot of business in uh um well denver and that's that's probably one of the stranger things when you see the air inversions and then you go into the mountains and it's snowy and uh it just was a very mixed bag in terms of colorado isn't that strange yeah and then things like are there tornadoes in colorado yes or i don't yeah the mountains yeah even i mean i'm originally from pittsburgh pennsylvania and i can tell you that um they've even had in eastern ohio and western pennsylvania they've even had i'm going to say mini tornadoes for lack of a better word and and that's just a part of the country that it's rolling hillside that was unheard of you know twenty years ago um so i don't know what's happening if it's you know we are the greenhouse i don't really know it's just you know it's definitely not as um i know i associate the pollution with weather in general so i guess one thing we do miss is that's a smaller town and it it was it just seemed a little bit more pleasant in terms of the atmosphere you know you too okay bye bye oh boy this is going to be tough i'm in plano exactly i guess the weather hasn't been too different between us what part of dallas are you from oh north dallas well jeez well then you've been getting quite a bit of rain also how about that how does it compare to the years past uh_huh oh huh well what brought you guys down to texas then how about that that's great right well definitely i'm sure the winters are more mild here uh_huh sure it seems that progressive i've been down here five years just over five years now that every spring and summer seems to get more and more rainy huh a hundred and sixty uh_huh right sure right uh_huh true colorado oh sure i i'm uh i'm very familiar my grandparents and all my relatives are from wisconsin so i'm uh quite familiar with how it is up there and if you kind of interesting uh the people down here typically don't think it gets above you know fifty degrees and it's always snow you know but uh oh yes uh_huh oh sure my parents just live uh thirty miles south of denver and it can be sunny and and no problem in denver and they'll be having snow so it's pretty amazing it can be that drastic in just a short distance uh it's getting to be more and more of a possibility it used to be no problem just because it was such a a rugged terrain and with trees everywhere but now as they start to clear more things out uh_huh right yeah me neither but sure sure well it's been good talking to you good bye good bye well the last three days it's been pretty rainy we went to the beach and uh it started uh let's see around four o'clock and uh it had thunder and lightning it was and then you know it was just overcast and rainy for uh the next two or three days straight how about yours uh_huh you're from virginia oh from texas i heard they had some flooding down there uh_huh um uh_huh well the last couple of years we're um we're over as far as our rainfall goes before that it was really dry and uh everybody was you know talking about rationing water and doing this and doing that not really rationing water but just cutting down and uh it seems like uh you know the weather pattern is just shifting and uh that uh jet stream is moving uh into our area north carolina and across but it's uh changing [latitude] oh yeah uh_huh it's finally cleared up it's just now still a little overcast but the but the sun has finally started [popping] out oh yeah well right now as a matter of fact i'm fixing to go play tennis it's um i'd say it's at least seventy nine eighty well about seventy eight seventy nine degrees um actually the uh the wind normally blows let's see let me think about this south southwest yeah uh but but actually our i guess our weather pattern comes from the uh blows north east yeah you're right it blows north east uh_huh uh_huh how how far are you from houston oh i see so you so you don't you don't get anything off the gulf uh immediately from from the ocean uh_huh um well we've had some you know pretty pretty rough winds oh uh bangladesh boy they they caught it bad but we'll probably have our share of the hurricanes i know uh hurricane [hugo] you probably heard about that uh last year yeah and they're still uh rebuilding from that storm and so the the beaches here just get really beat up and it usually comes this way it comes up from uh miami uh down around or you know around the bahamas and it usually travels uh northwest and uh it'll go up the coast quite a ways before it finally hits um let's see two years ago we had one as a matter of fact it went within a mile of my house and um it was real odd the [barometric] pressure drops during a tornado and our uh fire alarm went off so of course that woke everybody up and we knew what was going on to uh you know go downstairs or go into the bathroom and uh take cover but uh we get uh yeah we're we're uh we get our share of tornados no huh_uh we're about two hours from the beach so uh you know it's uh [barometric] pressure i believe is higher in the mountains and we we catch some winds you know a few winds coming off of them i think but uh let's see you all just had a tornado uh over close to oklahoma and texas uh_huh oh gosh oh did it um um boy i would have like to have heard that that would have been something uh_huh uh_huh i used to live in amarillo originally so i'm oh yeah we used to sit out uh especially in [borger] we use to sit out on our back uh picnic table and watch them come out of the sky through the [funnel] clouds and the only time we got worried is if it hit the ground but otherwise we'd just sit back there and watch them go in and out of those clouds yeah yeah yeah you'd be amazed at how clear the sky was but the clouds are just really uh uh rolling kind of just real [pillowy] i guess oh well i was in that uh big tornado went through wichita falls and uh the sky i mean we were right in the middle of it when i mean signs and telephone poles were dropping all around us and a whole roof of a restaurant came off and uh it was a eerie uh a real eerie blue green color and the lightning was almost continuous just uh you know as if you put your hand on one of those electric uh things that causes lightning uh i think it was called the storm but um the the whole sky was full of that eerie blue green uh lightning um uh_huh we haven't got that much rain but uh when it rains it's it's been [downpouring] you too okay thanks bye okay how's the weather been out there uh_huh it's pretty normal for this year you know uh they have tornados about once a week and it rains about every three days the last two years before they've had record rainfall by this time of the year they'd had enough rainfall for the whole year but this time we're only um i think maybe five inches ahead of of uh normal so it's not been bad at all i'm from texas uh_huh and uh um they had some flooding in houston the other day real real bad over i think it was over the weekend the [radar] just looked nasty with a bunch of red [splotches] all across it yeah that's that's right there uh_huh so you get a lot more rain that way uh_huh brings in that cold air and mixes it with the with the warm air coming off the atlantic ocean that's what uh_huh is the temperature like sixties to eighties there too or um do you get east winds a lot of the time from the ocean or uh_huh uh_huh that's the way it does here most of the time but uh sometimes it just comes straight from the north and then it and then it doesn't [veer] off to the east until you get down to houston or or uh maybe mid mid texas depends on how strong the cold [fronts] are um well uh richardson's a suburb of dallas hardly ever unless there's a hurricane or something like that well uh it's kind of early i was going to say the weather man on on uh one of our stations was talking about the way that the weather's doing now is like tropical weather and he was afraid if it kept doing that that they'd have early hurricanes this year yeah kind of wiped them uh_huh wiped everything out yeah uh_huh do do you get many tornados this time of year or um huh right uh_huh and uh the uh uh you you aren't in the mountains or anything like that are you there's just there's just hills uh_huh uh_huh yeah they they had a lot of them they had a a huge one that was on um inside edition the other night in uh the southern part of kansas um they took a bunch of film of it it uh kind of chased them it was a few hundred yards away and it chased them under an [underpass] and it was tossing around the car right before it got there and it tore up the people inside the car and the the camera man on the news crew held the camera out they were hiding underneath the [underpass] and he held the camera out as the tornado went by and the the wind you know it had a mike on it and the wind and everything was incredible i'm surprised they didn't they because we saw it on the news a couple of days in a row and that and you know and that was way up in kansas but over here it's a lot it's a big thing about tornados and people that get pictures of them yeah you can really see them well there yeah it's really strange the way it does that especially the way it starts it starts you know just like a little swirl in the clouds and and uh then it just grows from there and it and and usually it's not even raining when it starts it's just uh_huh that's right and they're black and sometimes they're even green colored oh yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah that's it wow and that's about that's what we get this time of year just all the way sometimes all the way through june the last especially the last two years it's rained uh what i think it rained nine inches in in one one of the [junes] the last two years and this year we usually get about five inches in may and it's it's over that uh_huh all right well i hope you have good weather the rest of the summer have fun playing tennis bye bye okay you want to get a start uh_huh uh_huh oh great great uh_huh uh_huh yeah i think you are i think you are earlier than we are as a rule aren't you your your your growing summer starts a lot earlier than ours uh_huh see that is quite a bit we are just beginning people are have got their gardens in a lot of them now we could still have a frost uh_huh uh probably not but we have had we have had a frost as late as as in june early june so but we have also had nice weather an unusually uh nice spring it is almost like an early summer for us uh_huh we could use a little more rain i believe uh uh_huh uh_huh yeah if it could just be spread out a little bit uh_huh uh_huh yeah it has really been nice here uh we are supposed to have some rain this weekend but i don't know if we'll get it or not a lot of times in our area the weather forecast has missed us the the weather they forecast for our area seems to go right past us and misses us just by well not too many miles yes uh_huh we have uh_huh uh_huh yeah we have quite a few farmers we we live out in the country we are on a farm but we are not a farming person uh we have a garden but uh but we are not farmers uh_huh oh yeah they get burnt off uh_huh uh_huh yeah well and that makes it bad too because uh when more with water being at a premium i know our aunt in california they they have really been [rationed] on their water and it makes it real hard to have a yard or uh or anything like that a their garden their farms their farmers i guess are hurting because of that also yeah yeah well they are not allowed to water so what do you do yeah uh_huh uh_huh but your humidity is different though than ours i think and it makes a a bit of a difference too oh i don't know i think our humidity is higher normally than what it is in texas i could be wrong i do not know for sure either but it always seems well it just felt different like when we were in texas it had a different feel to it uh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well it could be i know my brother's home has been flooded a couple of times uh well there is a lake not far but it is more run off from surrounding you know areas and that and uh he is just in an area where it is just low enough that it's you know it it collects there and uh he has had a couple of inches in his house several times uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh because of that uh_huh we are fortunate or uh we are on a where we are we get flooded it floods below us behind us but we are uh we are high enough that our house itself we never you know have had any problem like that yeah it is an old farm house and uh we really like it here uh_huh uh_huh it is nice down there i i i liked it when we visited there uh_huh right right that is the best time to go yeah and usually it has been when we have gone it has been nice it has been hot but it is it is hot to me in the wintertime down there you know but it is nice it is a it is really a nice area oh really oh oh good heavens not me i avoid the sun yeah it takes me about four and a half hours to do to mow our grass and i try to cover up when i do the lawn yeah well i have had a little a couple of problems and uh i decided it is not worth it i i like to get tan in the summer time because i think you look healthier and uh we are just crazy uh_huh is that right it it just makes your skin more [leathery] it uh it yeah so uh_huh well the [elasticity] of your skin the [collagen] or whatever they call it they say it destroys a lot of that and you lose a lot of that so uh yeah but uh but we have really had nice the weather i can't complain we have really had really good weather of late and when it has rained it it's been a good soaking rain and uh it has just been a really nice spring oh oh that is great how long will they be there uh_huh well that is great well i hope the weather stays real good for them and and uh that you have a good visit and everything and i hope your garden does good and so okay well it was really nice talking to you and uh good luck in your this [venture] it is uh like i said it has been real interesting so i hope you enjoy it as much as i have been enjoying it yeah i forget to the day goes by and i forget to make a call usually great great okay uh bye bye certainly uh the weather here is warm and it has been sort of raining on and off and uh i am an avid gardener so i measure the rain in our rain gauge on a on a regular basis so i can can avoid wasting money on watering and uh but it has been threatening to rain for the last couple of days and it has not really which is a bit of a disappointment but it is very warm here which is typical for this part of the time of the year how about it starts in uh march as a rule really this late could you have snow oh well we do not have that problem oh that is nice uh well we will be glad i will be glad to give you some of ours usually we get it in in great quantities in april and may and then it stops for three months right uh_huh are you in an agricultural area well i know the i know the weather is very important for people who make their living off of off of the land uh_huh uh_huh huh well you know there are some disadvantages to being down south and that is it gets so hot that you know a lot of things die during the summer from the heat they they really do and you have to be very careful to make sure you keep everything watered yeah well my parents are now in san diego and and they've got [pebbles] in their yard because they can't almost nobody there has has lawns yeah uh it is very it is very rough on them so actually i think i think it is pretty moderate here in dallas because the the summers are extremely hot um what is your humidity like uh i do not know what what it is percentage wise but i yeah it is it is drier in dallas than it is in houston or san antonio or even austin which is further south but it is not dry and and i have lived here for many years and i think it has gotten more humid over the years where the water is coming from i don't know oh does he live near the lake uh_huh uh uh_huh that is that is a problem uh they tell you when you are looking for a house or or or buying land to build on to be very careful and check the [drainage] because uh it is it is [deceptive] and uh i know exactly what you mean uh_huh oh well that is fortunate uh_huh well i i like it i like it here uh i i grew up here i have lived other places and and but i i did grow up here and this is very much home for me and i hope you visited during the winter one of my one of my theories is that you always go to warm places during the winter and you go to cold cool places that well i go to cool places during the summer if i can anyway oh sure i mean i i had a friend from england visit once at christmas and we could not get her out of the what she called the back garden because she wanted to go back with a sunburn and she went back to the north of england with a sunburn well yeah basically i do too well i that that is really healthier frankly uh_huh that but you you know it is interesting because you get out in that sun an awful lot now my sister is a a sun [fiend] and uh she is five years younger than me she is more [wrinkled] yeah and i think that is why exactly i think it burns off the i don't know the the the theory the scientific principle but it burns something off the natural oils or something like that yes yes uh that sounds like a good that sounds like the right theory good well that is great it has been it has been very nice here too and i hope it continues because my parents are coming to visit this evening and i want them to have nice weather for their visit instead of driving around in the rain uh probably four or five days well thank you thanks yeah and the same to you a pleasure i am sure i will in in fact if i had not been preparing for this the out of town visitors i probably would have been making some phone calls in the last couple of days well i am glad you have broken the ice with me because now i will i will start doing it okay well thanks jean bye bye okay it's real dry up here yeah we need rain really bad all the farmers you know well it's good for hay you know all the farmers got their first cut of hay and everything but they're going to need some you know rain to get the second cut i i'm working for a lady who has a strawberry field and if we don't have rain she's going to lose a lot of money oh oh my it's usually dry down there isn't it uh_huh oh i hope they come this way oh really uh_huh oh my now see every everyone up here with their gardens they're not going to have much of a garden this year because it's so dry yeah really well gee uh does is california getting rain then out of the gulf oh yeah uh_huh oh my gosh uh_huh oh well see now we need we could use two days straight of rain it's really [drying] up up here does it i was telling everyone hang your clothes out on the line and it's surely going to rain whenever you hang your clothes out on the line it always rains uh_huh we've had real hot weather yeah yes we you know and uh let me think i got out of school in may in march i was wearing shorts i was wearing shorts in march up at college and uh we what they said is that this area has had its summer weather in the spring is what they said what happened i hope that oh i don't know but i hope that doesn't mean we're going to get an early winter yeah uh_huh yeah i was wearing shorts in march you know it was [nippy] but um like it was still in the seventies you know high sixties low seventies in march uh_huh yes uh_huh yeah we haven't oh my gosh huh really see i like i like the snow but i like to watch it fall and i just like it where it's deep enough you know but not too deep really well isn't it weird at christmas time without snow oh yeah well it's real dry down there you don't have the humidity either do you uh_huh yeah yeah muggy huh uh_huh yeah see that's what's bad up here is when we do get the real you know hundred and the high nineties we have the humidity to go with it so you're like real [mucky] and you you know your legs stick together just from walking you know so um uh_huh yeah oh that's good well i don't know well i guess that's really about all so what's it been doing up there oh really oh well oh oh my goodness well we have been [drenched] we have had so much rain for may and june that we've got all the uh weather people down here really confused uh we it's probably it it's just yeah right now by now it's usually no you know it's quit raining you know by at least a month and it's still we're still having april showers for june yeah uh i don't know where where it came from but it's been really we got a lot of uh we're in central texas and it feels like we live in houston yeah it's it it you know like it rained today and then it just kind of steamed everything up you know uh it's been great because we haven't had to use our sprinkler system but it's uh it's hard to plan anything outside just because they show up out of nowhere and then they're gone we've had some with really really high winds that have trashed trees and everything else it's just yeah well i hope you get some of that we got enough we have had plenty and we're still uh forecast for more yeah so uh i'm not real sure i think a lot of this is coming out of i think what's of it's coming out of canada and it's meeting what's coming out of the gulf and it's just causing chaos and i mean these are good these are good summer rains you know electrical storms and and all that so it's been it's been uh wet and we've moved our yard i think three or four times in the last two or three weeks i mean just because it just keeps growing and growing and growing and and one one week it just rained [thunderstormed] for a day straight and you couldn't get out there you just couldn't get out there by the time you finally got out there where your lawn mower wouldn't sink we were you know yeah lawn mower broke so oh well what always works for me is if i water my plants or we wash the car it usually rains if not that night the next day yeah yeah yeah um hotter than usual wow huh huh i guess that means you're going to get a double long summer because you surely wouldn't get no i wouldn't think so i wouldn't not as early as it came i mean your talking september maybe that's a little early still the uh_huh yeah yeah and we were there we were in new jersey last october and it was hotter there than it was here it was just like a heat wave and i was like oh i want to go home because uh we had we packed to cool off you know brought shorts and sweaters and everything and we just died it was really hot so but i like it here i wouldn't i wouldn't trade it for snow any day yeah right and i can handle a vacation in it and you know but my husband is from new jersey and he wouldn't go back either he did all the [shoveling] and everything else he said it was a pain so no i don't think so well see last year we had snow at christmas time so it really wasn't it was weird because we had snow it's like wow it actually fell on the right day so uh no it's not in fact uh you know we're used to running around in you know spring clothes in december and so when it throws in a real cool winter we get broken pipes and and all that kind of stuff and because texas is just isn't built for you know real cold weather for long periods of time no not not were we are now in houston and stuff they've got it they've got it where no [hairsprayer] works it's so humid at times but here it's it's just about right it's it's pretty dry and not too dry where you know you just it hurts to breathe but we're just about right we're just having this all this rain and late rain has made it kind of uncomfortable made it the humidity real high but no i like it well we're right in a good stop because we're you know we get over in the over the hundreds in the summer but it's it's not it's a dry heat and it's not really as hot and muggy as it would be being over a hundred plus ninety degree humidity ninety percent humidity so oh yeah yeah i know what so we like it where we're at if it's not a whole bunch of everything at once type stuff so but no it's interesting when it gets really cold here and people forget that they're live in texas and they don't know how to drive in snow and you know but uh i wouldn't trade it for anything i was born in texas and i visited other areas and i'm just a sun person i think i've gotten used to it yeah weather is not real hard to talk about it doesn't last real long either i thought the weather is the last thing you talk about but in this case it's the only thing to talk about but well [michelle] it's great talking to well the weather has been certainly has been hot and it's been humid i don't remember a year in a long time that the humidity has stayed up this high for uh this late into uh well it's not really late into the summer but the the humidity has hung around all of june no i grew up in michigan so uh but i've been i've been in texas for fifteen years so uh but you know i know the summers get hot but it certainly uh this humidity has just really hung on there yes oh that's right that's right i can remember it not it's really august that it happens you get those great big cracks in the ground where it's been so dry and it just gets so dry and the earth opens up i can remember the first year i moved here and it didn't rain i moved here like in late august and it didn't rain from august until december and i went home and told it just doesn't rain in texas i mean it was great after growing up in michigan and not and you know every day was cloudy almost every day was cloudy and i you sort of forget how much it did rain and coming here and then it didn't rain it was just wonderful oh yeah that's right that's right yeah that's right oh i grew up in [dearborn] which is a suburb of of detroit you probably know where that is because i know where pontiac is so uh anyway yeah oh a teaching job yeah i did i did for a while uh_huh so i'm home with home with two children so uh so new career new career but uh anyway so that kind of uh well i had been down here to visit so i school and said hey let's you know find a place that has a nice job and uh that's how it worked out oh yeah oh well it's a nice place you know i mean it's it's a nice that's a nice place though okay sort of yeah yeah that's right that's right lake i think lake [whitmore] is the only one i have real memories of which is well i think it's i think it's toward ann [arbor] so it's probably out in that direction but that's the only one i probably could name after all these years so but uh yeah oh right right sure sure and isn't that where they have a summer music festival there too that's right that's right i know we used to we we didn't do a lot of it but we did we did so those are always fun and [alpine] was it [alpine] was another ski slope that we went to so uh it was nice i always tell people that in the winter we use we used to uh my dad would kind of bank up the snow in the backyard and turn the hose on you know make a pond in the backyard for us so but uh you know we probably did some ice skating on it but then it chipped chipped and you know it would melt or whatever and get pretty uneven so yeah oh oh oh right right if only it would make nice snow here in texas we'd be okay at christmas time yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i know no that's not fun either so uh i i just as soon have all the [slushy] snow on the streets than have the ice on the streets so but uh well we have our house is kind of on a little hill so uh we get the [sled] out and uh the kids go down the the hill on the [sleds] when it's [icy] i mean they just go down the ice and if it's cold we say okay out you go i think we must be the only people on the block that make use of that cold weather and get out there yeah are you native to this area oh okay uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah it seemed like well you know last year was so strange having all those heavy heavy rains in april and this year we really didn't have heavy rains until may kind of like pushed the season back a little farther and now it's kind of [lingering] with kind of still a bit of humidity and it just tried to rain i mean i was coming in from my car just a few minutes ago and it was trying to rain which seems strange to have it raining in july normally we don't have too much uh humidity or or uh rainy time when it's past june right uh_huh well yeah see i i lived in uh ohio mainly i lived in uh pontiac just a little while before i came down here and you know so many times when you were trying to schedule outdoor activities you just never knew if it was going to be a go or not because of the weather it might rain on your little parade you know and here it was like pretty much you could schedule some activity outside anytime and you really didn't have too much of a chance of it getting rained out you could pretty much do whatever you wanted to do what part of michigan were you living in okay yeah yeah what brought you down here so you teach in plano schools oh okay okay well yeah i think a lot of people were uh leaving michigan all about the time i came here in the early eighties and it seemed like it was almost a mass [exodus] you know the the little joke about will the last person leaving michigan just turn out the light well you know i i said i lived in uh the pontiac i didn't live in the city of pontiac i lived to the west of it uh i forget the the county but you know where all the lakes are around there i lived in an apartment complex on one of the lakes it was real close to where i worked it was only like four miles to work and it was wonderful being on the lake like that you know in the summer you feel like you're you know on a vacation all the time because you're right on a lake and everybody's you know out enjoying the water and such and uh in the winter time the lakes froze over you could still kind of go sledding and such out there but i thought it was just really neat to be out there on all those lakes there's lots of really small ones out there you know like maybe a mile two long that's enough to uh do some boating and it was lots of fun um uh_huh yeah yeah but it was yeah just lots of little lakes and of course it was you know a little more expensive to live on the lake but i just thought that was grand and i think a lot of people didn't really know that there were all those lakes out there unless you were from that area and kind of [spotted] them but there was quite a few lakes all around there it seemed like it was almost like you were living on an island there was so much water around where i was i said i wasn't close to downtown pontiac i was way out to the west maybe four or five miles from from the city limits and it was really nice out there we had uh pine [knob] you know to go skiing and stuff so there were things around there really was pretty nice right right in the summertime they have musicals there and in the winter time they make snow and have a ski slope yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah yeah yeah yeah we used to have a christmas time uh some of our relatives would come up from alabama and i think most times we would have snow around christmas and the kids when they were young would just go nuts you know because they were from alabama where it never snowed and they just had a grand time watching the snow and getting out there and playing in it you know [eternally] my first winter here i i came down in uh early eighty two and there was just a freak [snowfall] early one morning in december couple days before christmas it lasted only a few hours like by noon it was gone and i remember getting up and somebody telling me hey better wait to go to work because the roads are all you know snow and i was laughing going yeah right that's a good practical joke ha ha they said no really there's snow and there was but a very short time and the weather got warm so quick it just melted it all away course when we get an ice storm that's not too much fun yeah oh yeah i think it's fun even the couple of ice storms i've gotten out there in my ski pants or something and still just been out and enjoying it a little bit i mean sometimes the ice is pretty bad but if you get on the the uh [grassy] kind of part you get a little bit of traction you know not slip and fall i mean first okay how's the weather been in plano yeah this is probably unusual topic to give two of us in the same city well i don't know about you but i was really enjoying the cool snap last couple of weeks and i'm ready for it to come back well not the rain so much as the cool the other mornings when it was like sixty five when we woke up and sixty six and today i know when i got up that the temperature said more like close seventy nine or eighty so i'm kind of ready for the pumpkin weather you don't are you a summer person are you well i have a friend who's the same way and anything below sixty she's just not happy but i i think what i would miss is the change of seasons and all because i know in plano we really don't have as many seasons as uh my husband's from nebraska and they have more of the four seasons oh you're used to that too you don't like the cold well i usually like it about sweater weather and the problem here in plano is it doesn't last very long it goes from hot and then you get a couple of weeks of that indian summer and then it's cold and i wish it were several months of that well i don't either unless it's like uh some of my [favorite's] like a friday night when it rains and you really didn't have anywhere to go and it's sleeping time but if you have to get up and get out in it i don't like it either oh yeah well sure it does that kind of schedule you really need a lot more sunshine and also the evenings are going to be getting uh darker sooner as it gets cooler but i did a walk last night and it seemed like it was a little bit hot still sometimes when you work up a sweat you need it to be a little bit cooler well i agree absolutely and you know it's all relative because i was from west texas and it was very dry and so i thought dallas was awful and i still think so but then this summer we went to orlando for a week and it was so humid there that your um all your windows were were wet every morning they had to get the [squeejies] and clean them off and when we got back to dallas it seemed really dry because it's kind of like what you're used to but i agree with you the humidity especially for curly heads like me yes i do not like the uh_huh yeah i think so too i know our grass needs mowing twice as often when it rains but it seems like here i would like it to rain and then be over and then not rain for a while it seems like when it gets stuck in a rain pattern that's all it does so uh but i i am ready for a little bit of the cooler weather and not so much in the nineties but something like i guess my my best would be probably sixty eight when you wake up or sixty six and then probably seventy five during the day yeah yeah are you do you like the heat in the summer then when it gets up in the nineties and hundreds yeah yeah yeah yeah keep it there yeah well i do too i do too and that was one thing about the year around school that originally we had been sort of negative on it but then we started thinking especially in plano the weather is so hot in august that there really isn't a lot the children can do outside anyhow static here yeah we do too i think a lot of people agree the same uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh now there have been worse summers in fact this morning when they were talking about uh harold taft they were talking about how this has been one of the [milder] of the summers and [milder] fall everybody seems to be you can tell some of the [newscasters] when they like the heat because they'll talk about it being so gorgeous on those days when we're melting and you can tell when they talk about beautiful weather some mornings when we're it'll be too cold and they'll say well those are the ones that like the cold weather oh yeah he did he did it was it was really a shame he didn't go with all the [gimmicks] that some of them did it's kind of hard to keep on about the weather for five minutes oh is that right okay oh good well good well then have a good day and i hope you enjoy the weather this week basically about the same as what you've probably had uh_huh oh you like the rain do you uh_huh oh are you i don't care for that as much no i'm a summer person i like the heat yeah and i'm from utah so i i like the four seasons i just don't like the cold uh_huh yeah the thing the other thing is the i don't like the rain either well we have several children that are in sports and so it always makes their games be [postponed] forever and ever and ever on on and on i like it better i think uh_huh yeah the thing about when it gets hot here is i don't like the humidity that part i don't care about oh really oh is that right well another reason well i guess i can't say that it i don't like the rain completely we have a little garden that we have and and so it really helps our garden and you know even i don't know if that's because plants are just that way and they like rain or it seems they thrive when it rains they just really uh_huh yeah yeah yeah well well i like seventies i like seventies okay oh i don't like nineties you can give me seventies and you can give me eighties and i'm okay but when it gets too hot then it's that i don't like that i stay in the house because it's just it's just too hot yeah yeah that's okay um i've i've thought about that too and um when we take our vacations we we do take them in august sometimes so that we can be away from here it just really gets way when it gets way too hot and we've been here for several years and we've been here years when it's been hundreds and years uh_huh yeah yeah he he always did such a good job i thought a good weather man yeah anyway um i guess it's that's okay they say when you're done you're done so yeah you don't have to wait for them to say cut off your time you just say have a good day or whatever you too you too well this is a subject that you never think you'll be assigned to one that kind of comes up when you've lost it the others other subjects um as i was sitting there i thought the weather's been perfect i don't know much to say about it it's uh it's you know for the [balloon] festival here in plano it was just gorgeous are you it couldn't have been better i mean it didn't foul one launch and that's kind of unusual and it's kind of cold in the mornings so you dress up warm but by that's the only thing wrong i can find with it oh how fun i miss that yeah yeah yeah ooh i guess you have to take some things and leave some things yeah i'm from utah area and they you know they have tons of [canyons] where the leaves change and they're gorgeous you could spend every weekend of the fall going to a different area yeah it's kind of hazardous for driving that's for sure but i can't complain i don't know if i've been spoiled i've been thinking it's getting cold sooner than normal we've only lived here a couple of years huh we'll have to see how it goes a couple of weeks ago we were cooler than normal but then we're back to being warmer than normal this week or last week so i don't have to live through many any of those really a bad i mean nothing comparable i guess to what you've had before you're right well they get ice and no one can drive on ice i mean we used to think they were pansies but then when you decided what ice was so well i think we've discussed it good enough today it was it was good talking to you maybe we'll get the next time take care bye bye no i'm from plano also that's right right i just got back from dayton i spent the weekend in ohio with my family and the trees are changing color there so that as soon as we got out of the cloud cover of course it wasn't sunny like it is here it was real gray but as soon as the plane got through the clouds and i saw all those trees it just really made me realize how much i miss the fall i don't complain weather wise though because it was also thirty five degrees there yesterday morning and the high was only fifty and it was supposed to drop and get sleet in the afternoon so it was nice to get off the plane where it was in the seventies that's right yeah we did that when we lived up in michigan we went up to the upper peninsula and they actually printed out [maps] of routes you could take so you would get maximum leaf exposure and then on leaf weekends it was which is this time of the year it's bumper to bumper traffic people as whoever was driving could never have a prayer of looking at the leaves because they had to keep watching the road yes i think it is and my family said that in ohio there was just an article on at the t v news that they are three weeks ahead of schedule as far as the [coldness] of the temperatures and uh the first frost everything just happened three weeks early this year just so we don't have one of those famous ice storms in the spring well i've only been here just a short time too so i haven't been through any of those either so i have in michigan but in michigan you can get twelve inches of snow and life goes on so as i understand it here if there's anything they'll call off schools and and close businesses right right the real definition of ice i think so it was nice talking with you okay okay bye okay forty eight that's a long time uh uh_huh andrews well for the past week or two it's been cold and wet but before that for most of the year it's been hot and dry um september really was i'm not sure about october i think for about twelve months through september the the average temperature has been higher than normal each month um lots of ninety degree days during the summer uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh if you had it early yeah i think we usually have a frost in october uh but you know we really need the rain that we've been getting and it has not today but the last few days it's been been pouring most of the day flooding anywhere i have not heard of it any problems of it flooding anywhere i mean that's occurred certainly at times in the past but uh no i've not heard of any particular problems this time yes yes yeah we had summer lasting long and then it then it then it became winter like uh today it's today it's sort of change to warmer to sort of more typical autumn day yeah i don't know yeah our leaves are are all on on the ground now i think it was an especially good winter for fall colors oh yeah yeah yeah we we did for a time uh_huh uh_huh been that this year for the trees for the leaves um yeah that's because it it can't tolerate a freeze this early is that right if it would came later it would be all right um so what do you guys having up there i haven't been up there since oh lord forty eight i guess well no it wasn't forty eight it was it was uh let's see yeah it was forty eight i was in the air force we did an air show out at uh out at uh [boone] [greene] no out at uh andrews yeah so what's it been like up there uh_huh yeah uh like september was hot and dry october really huh it really has been strange here this year i mean this whole course this whole year has been a different year in more ways than one but uh we had uh you know all these we have all these uh somebody said you know you're either a stranger or a fool to try to predict texas weather but well always they were saying it was going to be the hottest summer ever and we had all this rain and it really is not a bad summer at all really cool but all of a sudden in in uh in october uh september october it got real hot and dry and just stayed that way for a long time and uh then the end of october it started rain almost a week without stopping just pouring down you know there were flash floods everywhere that kind of deal and then uh into of november the first like the second week uh you know the first week actually we had we had a freeze and the average you know the average uh first frost is like the fifteenth of november here but usually it's not until later it's really strange yeah is it is it is it flooding anywhere it's just kind of uh we're supposed to have a chance to get some rain the next couple of days here uh which will be you know a little bit more typical uh autumn weather but really it's strange we haven't really had an autumn it's like we went into winter you know the poor trees said what yeah uh it's yeah there you you know usually there's uh i have a farm a hundred miles east of here in east texas and you know all these huge trees just like the eastern hard wood belt all the way up to maine you know it's that same trees pines and and hard woods you know [hickories] and oaks and stuff and uh i was up there last weekend and there are trees that that still have their leaves on and they're green but they're dead you know the the freeze just got them they they weren't ready for it at all apparently and and we haven't had a typical fall at all not much color you know changes have occurred at all really weird this year i'm not sure what that what that means so you you all actually had some color huh it kind of crept in and yeah it's usually beautiful up there isn't it gorgeous that's you know i think you could drive along in maryland and look at the sweet gum trees on each side and the and the pines and what not and you could you know you could be driving along in east texas and looks just the same it's almost you know identical kind of country beautiful yeah oh yeah i was up i was up there cutting some firewood this weekend so little little oak tree that was dead and cut it up and split it well uh it there's some trees like the oaks like the white oaks seem to be pretty hardy there's nothing bothers them their leaves are still green and some of the other oaks there are a few oaks that have lost their leaves um what i notice mostly is the red [maples] that the leaves are just dead the [dogwoods] still look still look you know they got uh bit on the ends of the leaves a little bit but they still look pretty good it just depends on the on the uh on the tree so how is the weather out there oh really um uh it's just it's a it's about same the usual i think so nice for skiing and all that kind of stuff it's good oh really what part oh really okay it's more humid in utah than there or there okay right okay yeah see that's how it is in texas too because when it's cold it's really cold so what's that right yeah so the humidity is i think what does it because i i noticed when i got here too because like i'd when it would snow in texas uh i would just i mean we'd be really cold and we'd have to get really warm and here you can almost not even wear a coat outside when it's snowing and you don't you don't feel super cold it was weird but so how long ago did you graduate or did you or oh really oh so you just barely moved away do you like it out there you do yeah uh_huh so you just moved away a year ago wow really recent oh warm oh man it's got to be like it's probably fifty fifty five maybe maybe not that warm probably about uh yeah it's not it's not that cold really yeah yeah that's a big deal in texas too um yeah that's true that makes a big difference huh so did you used to ski when you were out here did you used to ski when you were in utah oh really uh not tons but i like to when i get a chance i've only been once so far but had the opportunity a couple times since then just saving my money for christmas things and that uh no this is actually my third year uh_huh yep no at b y u yeah so but i'll be here a long time at this rate uh it was nursing but i'm in the process of changing it right now because it's really really competitive at b y u you have to have like a three seven to get in so it's really i'm going to look into some other fields i'd like all the science classes and that i'm just not really enjoying too much so i think i better get into something that i can enjoy the process of going to school so did you graduate in a certain field or in really that what my sister did yeah you might know her here name is lori bird maybe not i think she graduated around then too though eighty seven probably but she got her yeah yeah because they since uh stopped that program i mean where you can where you can get it double pretty easily i mean it's it's really uh it's really cold and it's supposedly for this time of the year it's unseasonably cold and they've gotten more snow than they've ever had you have breaking records for [coldness] and all that kind of stuff how about you guys oh yeah well the weather let's see well the snow here is different from utah's because i have lived in utah for like ten years and uh provo i was going to b y u yeah and uh the snow is like really cold i mean it's like really humid so it seems [wetter] or something like that it's uh_huh it's more humid in iowa than utah yeah and it seems like when the winds blow it's really it goes right through you it's really different from utah's weather i thought utah was cold but i think iowa is a lot colder yeah i don't think there is any mountains to stop the wind i don't think there is any mountains to stop the wind yeah i think that's true uh_huh yeah yeah that's true yeah uh i graduated in nineteen eighty seven yeah my husband got his doctorate at b y u so that's and so he just graduated this past year uh_huh yeah we really miss well we really miss utah we miss the mountains because it's like really flat here well not flat but hilly but no big mountains or anything uh in august yeah but uh see see what else can i say about the weather uh well today was warmer it was like forty five so what's the temperature up today over there oh really and whenever i remembered the weather reports in utah i never really remember them talking too much about wind chill but they talk about wind chill here all the time they said it could be like six degrees out and like negative forty one wind chill so that's what we're not used to so oh i what's that oh i've only i've only skied in utah once i only skied once my whole life but do you do a lot of skiing there uh_huh yeah so is this your first year in utah and you're going to school there oh at u of u or oh really oh what's your major uh_huh oh yeah that's true uh_huh yeah that's that's a good idea uh education i got a double major uh elementary and special ed uh_huh oh really yeah well i can't there are so many girls in all my classes i can't remember how many people oh have they oh oh yes very appropriate i guess uh you ready for this okay john just a moment well guess what we get to talk about the weather uh_huh oh you do so you you you probably go everywhere and have all sorts of weather i imagine it's kind of an experience also trying to land and take off in the weather well actually i'm i'm i've heard on the news that we uh will be setting a record here in the state of texas for the uh large amounts of rain and moisture we've had this year that it's going to break all kind of records that were set set set back since nineteen thirty two so yeah if it keeps on raining like this and i understand it's supposed to rain until saturday night oh yes uh_huh wow and so are you an airline pilot oh great for southwest fantastic i have a brother i have a brother that's a pilot also with american yeah so i imagine you uh-oh with all this kind of weather it uh makes it kind of dangerous for you oh i guess so yeah uh_huh oh yes well we moved actually down here from another location and it's spectacular the the thunderstorms and rain storms you get in the spring time the [torrents] of rain pardon me i've never seen a thunder show like i've seen down here before in texas lights up the whole sky and even on a on a actually i've i've seen it where there's not a cloud in the sky it's a [cloudless] night and the rain isn't falling but you can see the thunder and excuse me see the lightening going [horizontally] across the sky and back and forth and what a light show it's it's fabulous yeah that's true i'm from uh northern utah and that's a very arid climate from uh salt lake city area and there's always a lot of snow in fact where i grew up we were about an hour's drive from seven to uh twelve different major ski resorts and so there was an awful lot of snow and because it was an arid climate the snow was always a crisp powder light snow which made it fantastic for skiing and and [sleigh] riding and everything else so we had a great time um yeah in uh in [snowbird] and [solitude] and and [brighton] and yes all those areas so i imagine have you skied before uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah yeah great well do you think this the the weather is typical for this time of the year yes yeah yeah it's been it's been cold there was a time though in the uh middle part of november that got really cool really really unseasonably cool and then it warmed right back up and i thought great and that's that's a fun yeah my wife was just listening here and she said yeah it froze in fact and uh but uh i've really enjoyed the weather down here too because uh two years ago we were the day after christmas able to go out in shorts and play tennis in the nice sunny weather and it's not as severe i should say as the weather that i've experienced up in northern utah down here not in minnesota i have a brother in law that lives in minnesota and they say boy six months out of the year it's bitter cold and and the wind and the blowing snow and everything uh_huh about the weather yeah the weather is uh this time of year has actually been kind of unusual i haven't expected it to be colder until you know like we've gotten the last couple of days i don't know i fly for a living and i've uh the weather's been terribly unusual every where i've been yeah yeah well it was around here last night i'll tell you that no kidding um saturday or sunday they were saying yeah yeah i know the systems have been real strong out i went through uh phoenix on twice on uh wednesday morning and uh approaches to low minimum both both times and phoenix never gets that kind of weather so yes i am for southwest yeah oh is that right well now i wouldn't call it danger this is uh this really isn't bad stuff to fly around in this is much better than dealing with the thunderstorms in the springtime yeah the the air systems are reasonably calm we don't have uh the [turbulence] have a uh little bit of chop but it's not like it is in the spring time spectacular is the right word for them spectacular is a good word for them it's amazing oh yeah yeah yeah cloud to cloud it can be real really sensational here where are you from originally uh_huh oh oh yeah oh yeah were you near near the park cities area beautiful area uh_huh well we've skied i have not skied that area i've driven through it several times uh i skied we skied california a bunch when we lived out there and and uh um and of course grew we grew up in minnesota and we do some skiing there lot of cross country skiing there well not really i you know minnesota's gotten just [hammered] with snow um the um uh we've gotten a fair amount of rain for this time of year already i think and uh i've been surprised that we haven't seen more of the temperatures that we've got today you know that moved in last night yes yes it did yeah yeah it was it was real cold yeah but that was very [unseasonable] for us down here yeah oh yeah that's that's real true same with us from minnesota it's it's uh in fact i've i've played golf on on uh new year's day one year yeah yeah no no no no oh it is it is well and they've had uh you know usually in minnesota they get their snow in january and february and they're up over sixty five or yeah yeah we have uh in california i'm in i lived in central california we have rain couple times a year and other than that you know it would be maybe october and then in the spring and then other than that there wouldn't be any rain so yeah yeah yeah there has so here i know that uh last year there was some ice storms while i was out of the state and i'm glad to see there haven't been any this year yeah yet still could come huh uh_huh yeah um yeah yeah it's so hard to predict here yeah well today it's not bad out there uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh yeah so you do that even in january huh uh_huh yeah oh that's interesting uh_huh yeah i have and they're not too pleasant it gets so humid to me it's humid here people that i know that come from uh like georgia or north carolina yeah they say it's yeah but i find it right i was central california central valley it's very dry there yeah yeah well it's pretty hot in the summer it's in the usually you know for a good three four weeks we have over a hundred degrees but it's a dry heat yeah uh_huh yeah i know well i lived in africa for a couple years in cameroon and that's a tropical climate and it really feels similar to this during the summer no i was uh working with uh i still work with wycliff bible translators it's an organization where we are looking to translate the bible into languages of the world that aren't yet written right languages that don't have anything written yet so this is like the first thing that's written down or you know first an [alphabet] is developed and then uh so yeah yeah well it's based here uh the international headquarters for wycliff bible translators is right here in in dallas yeah right now i am that's what brought me here yeah yeah yeah i agree i agree i i thought the fall was really nice uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah you probably do a lot of that with scout scouting uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh okay well considering you moved here from california i guess the rain for the past few weeks has been different than what you have down there especially the last few years it's kind of it's kind of been a drought out there hasn't it uh yet generally if we're going to get them it's not going to happen uh prior to january one you may get a cold snap or two or some rain or something like we've been getting in december but usually the [bitterest] weather if we're going to have any comes in january and february then by march things are getting warm again so we really don't have as long a cold season i guess as people up north it's been eighty degrees on christmas day here before lots of times no it's nice i just came in from outside and it's it's really pretty it's kind of nice to have it dry all the ground out before it rains again i'm a i'm a [scoutmaster] and so i wind up going out camping with uh a bunch of boys at one time and so it's better for us if it hasn't been this totally wet before we go oh yeah yeah we camp year round but uh it's uh it's definitely different and then i guess you've been through a couple of summers here too right oh it is it's not as humid as houston say or atlanta but it but more humid than arizona and california for the most part were you northern california central so that was dry but pretty even climate wasn't it year round fairly not wide [fluctuations] but it's a drier hundred when you have a hundred here everybody's dying oh what types of what type what type of business takes you to those climates or was that just vacation or something oh not so much still trying to translate old texts as just trying to translate modern versions into other languages oh that's interesting you don't think about that as a career a normal career uh when you're thinking of things that people might be doing so you're you're with the home office now well the uh i think uh all in all there are a lot worse climates than dallas uh the weather you know does change fast and things do happen severely a few times a year but there's an awful lot of good weather too in between yeah and usually a lot of the spring months are really nice too after the last freeze and and when it begins to be in the sixties and seventies most of the time uh i like that particularly if i'm going to be outdoors and doing uh outdoor activity hiking and things and that's nicer yeah i do quite a bit of that think we're going in just a couple of weeks out to the east texas and it is a little more humid out there than it is here so i guess we'll the only thing you have to watch out in this part of the country is during the change type seasons is the really severe storms that occasionally come through out here on the plains there's not much between us and the north pole and then when you get one of those tornado type systems through or severe hail or thunderstorms and then what kind of crime do you think uh is the most prevalent in our society such as new york city yeah i i i wonder if uh if drug use is a more prevalent crime though because i mean so many people use it and even though just using is not really i mean it is a crime well that's true but i was i i was staying in the realm of of felonies versus misdemeanors and uh drug use well actually drug use is probably a misdemeanor but uh what kind what kind have you been uh have you been the subject of such a crime such as stealing or anything that that's not that much i mean you know those aren't i yeah i think it is i in some ways it's almost worse than murder uh murder murder is is hard on the people that were related to you know i mean it is a rather final solution though yes what what do you think is uh is an appropriate uh punishment for some of the various you know such as things such as rape or or uh murder or something like that i agree with that yeah i think virginia does too up here yeah i think the appeal process takes too long i think i i think it should take from conviction to execution should take no longer than a year uh_huh well yeah i mean the system isn't perfect i mean it's run by a bunch of imperfect humans you do the best you can to make it perfect you know you you go out of your way to try real hard to make it perfect but i think you have to accept some of the errors i think that murder itself would decrease significantly if if there was a [credible] punishment uh for murderers and society probably too i mean just general society to uh yeah it does and and it [decreases] the prison population and which is significant i mean yeah yeah generally the crimes of passion and things like that uh are not premeditated i mean they can be but usually they aren't they're spur of the moment and uh the premeditated murders the ones where the person plots and plans when you catch those those individuals i think that you you end up with a uh uh how do i want to you end up with a you end up with someone who's more dangerous to society because they actually could harbor these thoughts for a long time yes they they would have no problems doing it again uh_huh and i think locking them up for you know fifty years doesn't do a any good because as a as a taxpayer i'm going to pay you know one and a oh boy probably uh robberies people stealing from each other is that what happens up there a lot uh that that's mostly what i hear though is people getting ripped off and things getting stolen that's the most prevalent crime uh the ones that really you know the ones that really add up after a while i guess you know from far as insurance money and stuff like that insurance costs you know everybody has to pay for it indirectly eventually oh well yeah that that that is a crime i guess uh when you when you count all the little things that people do like uh speeding is a crime i break that law every day uh_huh well i've uh i've been caught with marijuana before so i guess that was a crime i got a year's probation for that but uh no it wasn't that big a deal uh when i think of crime i think of stuff that that affects other people like people getting you know killed or raped i think rape is one of the worst crimes yeah it's very degrading and yeah yeah right once once a person's you know gone then it's but the person that's been raped has to live with that the rest of their life you know well for for a lot of the kind of premeditated murders i think the death penalty is it's a pretty good thing they they have that down here in florida still they the electric chair and uh oh do they yeah i think i think that's still an appropriate penalty to pay if they absolutely sure they got the right guy and i guess usually they're they're always sure they got the right guy but uh yeah so do i yeah if that you know the sooner a a a year's plenty of time you know for something to come out i guess then you know there's been guys in jail for six years and the other guy admits that he did it and they it's like oops but uh_huh right um yeah i don't know if it would or not though i i don't think it's a so much of a deterrent as as it is a a good uh a good way for vengeance you know for the relatives and and family members you know what i mean yeah yeah it kind of gets it off their chest yeah i know that a a lot of the lot of murders that you hear about are people that know each other and they're the kind of like crimes of passion and stuff like that i don't think you'll ever stop all that stuff dead but i you might be able to uh stop people you know they're thinking about it they know they're going to get the chair if they get caught right yeah that's right yeah yeah they could probably do it again that's right they didn't have any time doing it the first time no it my husband's been in dallas during an ice storm he said that he pulled up to a stop at a stop sign and completely stopped just [slid] to the side of the curb that they're that bad lubbock we get ice storms but not not quite to that extent it's not the thin sheet you know all across the road ours if it [ices] over it's thick it's with snow it's something that you can drive on you can get a little traction with uh i think we've been fortunate that we've missed any of the real bad weather this year because we went to california instead but right now uh we're having unusually warm weather it's it's almost like they're try it's trying to skip spring and go straight to summer it's either uh thirty degrees you know one day and ninety the next and and we're we're missing the fifties and sixties in there somewhere well i have been here permanently or full time since nineteen eighty and uh pretty much off and on since seventy four so really quite a while and i've watched the weather shift you know i can remember being here back in the seventies in college and the spring dust storms were uh they were massive i mean you could stand on one side of the street and not see buildings across the street that dust yeah not fun to be in but i haven't seen any like that in probably five or ten years so it's it's changing and the summers are getting hot and the winters are cold but i guess i can live with it uh_huh uh_huh that's true well now does dallas get snow or is it usually just the ice storm okay well that was one reason why i figured that i could stand lubbock texas that was about as much winter as i could get because i grew up west coast sunshine green leaves on trees came back here and could not realize why i had been so depressed through the winter and realized that that was the first time in my life i had seen trees lose their leaves and uh and of course when spring and everything came out again uh it was beautiful but that's about as much winter as i can take i mean it gets cold here and with wind chill it sometimes gets you know fifteen twenty degrees below because of the wind but it's not six feet of snow and it doesn't stay on the ground six months out of the year and i know the sun is coming uh_huh yeah well now when did winter start there you said you had more winter than summer now was there actually snow on the ground all that time from september through what march oh goodness uh_huh oh oh my goodness well now was that expected though i mean employers expected people to not necessarily be there on time due to the delays or uh yeah everything stops yeah well now do you work at t i i was going to say there have been several times when i know they had ice storms down in dallas uh that we would be up here trying to call and it we'd figure out after about the first hour that there ain't nobody at work oh okay hop skip and a jump there you go well that's good well are you uh do you prefer the kind of weather that you're getting in dallas over your years in new hampshire or do you miss the winters oh my goodness sure once you're out of the house you're in the street that's good i did go up to new england one time during their fall season when the weather was just you know it was kind of uh a brisk feeling outside but it wasn't freezing the leaves were turning and now that part of a winter up there i could truly love but uh uh-oh well what about your summers in dallas now is that similar was it humid up in the new england states like it is down there yeah well so that's no big i tell you what that's funny to hear you talk about that because for me to come to dallas in the summer it's [stifling] humidity to me because lubbock is so dry uh you know it may be a hundred and a hundred an five or whatever up here but there is no humidity and its you know if there's a breeze blowing it's nice comfortable day and you don't feel like you have to take ten showers a day because you you take a shower and walk outside and the humidity is so great you know you're sweating to death again yeah oh well today was really nice the past few days have been rather chilly uh we had a lot of rain recently i'm in texas where are you oh you are do you work for t i oh i see yeah so then we've been having just about the same weather yeah have you been doing anything outside in this great weather no yeah i know we had a tornado watch uh couple of days ago but nothing really happened are you originally from uh texas the uh_huh well i lived in new york for a long time so texas is texas weather is quite uh different for me yeah we did they're always mild to me compared to new york winters have you have been to new york in the winter uh_huh right right yeah the only thing i don't like about uh dallas weather is that it gets a little bit too hot sometimes in the summer yeah yeah like new york was really humid you know you but you could you could walk around outside in new york you could stay outside in in it you know because it was i guess the average summer temperature is about eighty you know in the eighties and it was pretty pleasant except for the humidity uh_huh well at least you can plan you can say well i'm going to go to the beach next wednesday and you'll know it's going to be hot enough to go but in new york you really never know you can plan to you know to go up to the beach on the fourth of july and then you know it might be seventy degrees or something uh_huh yeah i'm sure it will in dallas texas right have you ever been to canada um uh_huh that's supposed to be really cold weather in the winter that's why new york gets so cold because it's so close to canada uh_huh goodness uh_huh was it snow snowing um you know uh christmas really doesn't seem like christmas to me unless i do see the snow and the ice it's just really pretty with the snow and the ice and all of the lights not necessarily not the ice i should leave the ice out of it but the snow is real pretty uh_huh i know one christmas when i was in dallas it it snowed and and there was a white christmas but i don't i guess it's been about five or six years ago uh_huh yeah i just think it's really really pretty one christmas here it was sixty degrees that was so strange to me having lived in new york you know yeah yeah and people drive like the street is dry yeah i don't think t i's closed down in a couple of years for bad weather um i'll look forward to one of those days not that's true did you say you work in plano oh you do i do too did i get what two days ago uh i know it sprinkled some uh_huh i believe it it it uh it rained at night or something because i saw [puddles] of water outside but i didn't uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah well march is the the month for high winds and it's been rather windy here too uh_huh have you heard the forecast for the week coming up yeah i haven't either yeah it's probably going to start getting summer hot yeah well that's nice oh you plant oh uh_huh uh_huh yeah well it probably they'll probably do okay now i have a friend that's planted some uh planted a garden some things like [collard] greens and cabbage and uh they're coming up really pretty just need a just need a good rain uh_huh yeah yeah well i live in an apartment so the only thing i grow are plants inside and i don't do very well with those i think the temperature in here yeah but i guess i just don't know what i'm doing sometimes i i sit the plants outside on the patio and and i forget about them and it gets too hot out there and and they you know burn up and so forth that's happened to quite a few of my plants yeah uh_huh uh_huh well good i hope hope it's nice too yeah i hope it's as nice as it was today seems like it was extra cold last night though but i know it was cold i had turn on the heat and quilts yeah yeah uh_huh i remember on year seems like it started about the end of february yeah hot uh_huh yeah but it up in new york it's cold till about june um yeah one thing about the snow in march it at at least it'll melt it melts quickly up there that's true okay the topic said to discuss the weather what is it like where you are and how's that different from normal well let's see if you're in plano and i'm in plano are you in east plano or west plano okay well i'm in east plano i'm out in las [rios] so it's bound to be different over here oh got a little sunburn yeah i worked around in the yard a little bit and i've got sunburned a few years ago and you know got one of those what second or third degree burns and the doctor looked at it and said don't ever don't ever let that area get sunburned again and uh it's got the you know the kind of the black [freckled] things on it that the doctor looks at every once in awhile for that what [melanoma] business so i am super well if we go down to galveston to the beach or something like that you know i look kind of stupid i'm out there in a t shirt and everything pretty much covered up but uh you know i'm never going to let my shoulders and back get sunburned again uh_huh well it is march after all you know you're not supposed to worry about sunburn in march that's right yeah well yeah i hope so yeah we're going to go to lubbock they'll probably have another [sandstorm] out there you know big lubbock yeah are you a native type [planoite] or you been here a while or okay well well where were you from originally oh well i'm a tech graduate so yeah i grew up over in new mexico at [roswell] and my wife is from plains if you know where plains is it's on the it's on the road when you go well you go south out of lubbock down to [brownfield] and then you like you're headed over toward [roswell] plains is right there uh about fifteen miles in from the new mexico line so yeah you talk of little towns in west texas yeah i'm okay yeah i know where panhandle is that's north up there isn't it yeah yeah i had a friend who lived in dumas yeah so anyway yeah we're kind of familiar with that part of the world now there's where the weather's interesting i think it's kind of dull around here compared to yeah my mother still lives in lubbock and we talked to her the other day and they said friday they or thursday or friday they had you know one of the world class [sandstorms] out there that happens every once in awhile hadn't had one like that in a couple of years yeah i recall a [snirtstorm] out there one day where about this time of year that there was a big cold front coming in and they got the dirt up in the air and then it snowed a little bit and uh i can imagine that happening more in amarillo than i could in lubbock but still anywhere out there it could happen yeah yeah i we like i said i grew up in new mexico we lived in albuquerque karen and i both lived in albuquerque for quite a long time and then i went to work for t i here and i came here in sixty nine and then in seventy two they opened or seventy three they opened up that plant out there in lubbock and uh man that was like going home and so went out there and were there for about ten years until that all folded up out there ended up coming back but uh yeah the weather out there was uh_huh it could get a little bit a little bit interesting now and again uh_huh well if you've been here for three years you didn't get here the year that had the big freeze and stuff here did you what was that eighty eighty four oh wow that would have been six or seven years ago uh_huh with the ice yeah well the uh was it i guess it was three years ago that they had the real right before was it right before christmas or yeah yeah got down to around zero somewhere warmed backup and killed everything off that was that was bad news we're still i set out a whole bunch of crepe myrtles and stuff and of course it killed them well they all come back from from the bottom so i'm getting kind of convinced that if something doesn't grow naturally here there's no sense in planting it because eventually you're going to lose it and you noticed all the pretty little trees that are out everything now the native trees they're they they know better they know better yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah well you're just about there uh_huh well we moved into this house it was a year old and the landscaping was semi in but there was still a lot more to do and one of the things that uh well they were really selling everybody on back then was this indian hawthorne boy you know that's the best stuff in the world well i am somewhat less than enthused about that i've got some out here that's five six years old now and still doesn't look a whole lot different than the day i put it in i noticed that a lot of the garden well you know that indian hawthorne that didn't work out quite as well as we thought so now they're pushing something else yeah yeah well anyway uh like i said if it doesn't grow out in the woods here somewhere i'm not sure that it's worth planting yeah this uh [photinia] the red tipped bush it seems to do pretty good we've got some here that's really taken off that and uh the little dwarf yaupon hollies you know they seem to or just [yaupons] period seem to do all right and we've got a couple of live oaks in the front yard and of course they're they weren't native to this particular spot but they seem to have done pretty good and uh yeah it's a strange one it will kind of scare you if you don't know what it's doing because right now is when it's dropping it's leaves and you go out there and you look at your tree after a good [windstorm] and the thing is bare and you think oh know look real close and there's all the little new leaves getting ready to come out so it holds it's leaves all winter then loses them in the spring that and that red what is it red oak we're thinking about putting one of those in uh_huh well you know i heard something about that here whether neil uh here again it may have been neil sperry they say you know everybody looks at these oaks and says yeah they grow slow and all that but most of the time that's the way that the native ones grow because they don't get the water they don't get the so that they're growing under bad conditions and uh if you bring one in or under good conditions they'll grow about as fast as any tree yeah anyway that's that was i guess he was talking about some of the other kinds of oaks i don't know whether the live the live [oak's] is not really an oak i guess it's something yeah it just got the the name of being an oak because it's got a kind of an [acorn] kind of thing on it but uh i think the real honest to gosh oaks like the what [bur] oaks and pin oaks and red oaks and all that sort of thing they they'll grow a lot faster well i guess we were supposed to be talking about the weather but that's yeah well are you you with t i yeah how many have you gotten very many of these calls at home okay well i got the first one this evening that i had gotten at home i i had made a couple at work you know made several from work but i'd never uh i'd never gotten one yet and i was just yeah yeah well you know you'd think that this crazy system if you're going to talk about something about the weather they'd have tried to plug you in with plug you in to somebody like you know new york or something yeah yeah weather difference between east and west plano clear across town well when we lived in albuquerque there was such a elevation difference there that there was a weather difference between the valley and the heights you know it would be snowing up in our area and then the sun would be shining and it would be hot down in the hi [debbie] how are you what do you think of this weather oh i love it yeah yes you can hear her huh uh_huh yeah i have a four year old and a one year old so uh yeah i'm glad it was nice too i got a chance to to go outside and just have a nice day the um i remember last year wasn't it raining a lot this yeah all that flooding and everything i'm glad we don't have that this year so far uh_huh we live just north of trinity mills and it floods there you know quite a lot um it's not it doesn't usually damage any businesses or anything but you can't get off of thirty five to um to go to home depot and that's a problem yes or target for that matter now uh_huh oh yeah yeah we're not from texas either um we're i grew up in pennsylvania so yeah it it's not like this in pennsylvania it's awfully hot yeah oh you're kidding sure oh i'm sure i i think you would probably ooh down here yeah i'd i think it's a necessity we um we have uh i guess we bought the my car in colorado that's where we we moved from and uh so we we had a feeling we would be coming back this way and again there they don't sell all the cars with air conditioning it's you know it's really a not it's almost a luxury we didn't have air conditioning in our house or anything oh yes it does no i don't think so either no oh no we didn't even have any of the famous dallas ice storms no isn't that surprising uh_huh oh oh my gosh well you know we lived in colorado for four years i guess so and we you know we had a lot of snow and i i really don't miss that we had a big sidewalk and he didn't like that at all but i don't know oh definitely uh_huh that's right it doesn't matter right colorado wasn't bad for that because um it was so at least in colorado springs where we lived it was so sunny most of the time that at right after it snowed it would almost always be a bright sunny day and all of the roads would be clear you'd still have the snow on the yard the kids could play in it but it would be a bright sunny day and you know it it would melt and you could drive around and it was really no big deal yeah yeah really that's good they scaled down quite a bit they have a lot of changes out there lately that's true certainly not [localized] but we i don't know i i don't really miss the snow i miss the change of seasons myself the fall is what i really miss from pennsylvania yeah it just turns brown and makes a mess nothing pretty about it my folks don't live in uh pennsylvania anymore but for a long time i would [purposely] go back and visit in october just so i could see the trees and the fall and such a pretty time uh_huh it really is and i think you don't i growing up there i just assumed that's how it was all over the country i never really realized it was such a local thing i yeah nope yeah they they do yeah i do too i'm ready to get outside and get the kids outside and seems to even my one year old it really changes her temperament she can be in here all grouchy and put her outside and hey she's fine uh_huh my my son he was born in colorado and when we first moved here um he was three i guess just turned three and for the first week we were here it was over a hundred every single day it was in july and he was lethargic he really he wasn't used to the heat at all he would go outside and he would turn into a [zombie] and walk around like he didn't know what was going on but he's used to it now i think he's i mean he certainly doesn't like the heat but he doesn't become lethargic anymore uh_huh uh_huh that's a good word for it really hot well it's been good talking to you hopefully we'll have some more good weather but we'll see all righty yep uh yeah we've been uh real lucky here it was one of those days where you wish you uh you didn't want to have to go back into work uh_huh huh yeah yeah i remember how the weather was when i was down there i got a sunburn in february working on my uh my roof in a house in plano so i uh i remember how it was yeah it's it's really great um here on the east coast we've you know we usually have the traditional april showers but it has just been so unusually wet here we've had all the rain that they [should've] had out in california yeah well that's great yeah i remember those yeah well we moved into a new house uh at the end of february and of course it's a new development and there's only one house in the whole thirty houses that are here that has grass so everything everything else is mud there's mud in the road there's mud on the sidewalk there's mud in the house i mean you just can't get away from it and of course it's been you know ideal weather for grass to grow and unfortunately they haven't gotten around to put they you know they were waiting until they got i think the other two houses on the cul de sac on one done before they're going to plant all the grass at one time so uh_huh you can put in any number of grasses up here uh a lot people like the red fescue they like to mix red fescue in with uh kentucky blue um the uh my favorite is uh a zoysia grass i when i lived in laura which is about sixty miles south of where i'm living now uh that my neighbor had it and i was forever trying to get you know decent grass to grow in my yard and he talked me into trying to some plugs of the zoysia and i just loved it because the zoysia you can uh you can quite literally just plug it around the yard and it just spreads and it [chokes] out the weeds and the weeds can't get in there and so you don't have to weed and feed and do all that other crazy stuff you just you know the only bad part about it is during the winter the grass is brown but i mean you know yeah uh_huh yes it's pretty much standard now well the uh the thing about uh maryland is um the last few years uh since i've been back and uh it was like that oh it started this way about mid seventies um we started having a very [abbreviated] spring you would go from having fifty sixty degree days right into the eighty eighty five degree days which you know in texas it's not bad because the humidity is real low but here when the temperature is eighty degrees the humidity is eighty eighty per cent and and and worse i mean i've seen days here when the humidity is like ninety three a hundred per cent and it's just absolutely the worst feeling in the whole world uh not really we had uh a couple uh real good snow storms uh but they were the kind that came stayed for a couple of days and then melted off and that's the best kind to have around here yeah i remember the uh ice storm back in uh nineteen eighty eight yeah wow jeez oh god uh_huh yes yeah i remember that wow yeah i noticed uh tonight when i was out driving around that the uh the one of the main reservoirs in the county i live in is uh [fuller] that i've ever seen it i mean it's it's up over its banks but it's not that far over its banks uh moved back here in uh eighty nine yes i spent two uh just about two years exactly in texas yeah i lived in plano um worked at spring creek for a while and was on the moon job and then when my [clearance] came through for a p d i worked for d e s e g uh worked at north [billings] for a while and then down at love field oh god don't i tell you it [spoils] you rotten to work there you work there and they send you any place else it's like you've been [demoted] right i had a uh a uh an employee that i hired though [lita] [mytek] um [lita] [mytek] i mean she uh she worked over in the building at center three i think it was and uh you know she said she liked it over there yeah uh_huh uh_huh um i'd i'd prefer it not to be that hot uh the days usually aren't aren't that bad uh it's just when the humidity gets up i mean it's like last week we had a day it was i think it was eighty degrees but the humidity for some strange reason was only nineteen per cent and that yeah that was a rarity for here and god it was just beautiful okay well you want to tell me about the weather that's right yeah that's true lot of records i think oh hasn't been bad so far well yeah i guess not well how about somewhere else you been somewhere else lately and what was the weather like there you want to go back right did it rain every day it usually rains every day there really huh uh_huh did you go to uh what is it disney world oh oh really and you didn't get to go huh have you been there before oh my gosh have you been to the one in california gosh you have to go it's just one of those things you have to see you know yeah yeah um well we can't go very far with this subject oh i don't know hopefully not too bad well bad enough so it kills all the fleas and bugs and whatever we have to have a freeze for probably a week but aside from that i hope it's still warm not too maybe maybe well maybe a little snow on christmas eve or something would be nice but it doesn't look good oh yeah oh it was amazing uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh what restaurant is it oh okay all right i work out in plano too i was just wondering if uh you're near where i am yeah i remember going to work one day and just [crunching] on the stairs it was terrible that's pretty bad for a restaurant i guess probably didn't have the business huh well here we started to get some in the house now i wonder if it's because it's getting cool out and they want to come in yeah yes and into the house oh huh uh_huh huh yeah i know i know i mean it sounds cool to say but yeah it was pretty and we ended up spraying for them anyway after a while i think yeah i bet you do huh you probably have to do that a lot of times during the year don't you oh oh huh wow yeah i guess you'd have to you don't want bugs in there that's for sure um uh_huh yeah it'd be nice yeah that would be nice yeah well as long as i don't have to drive in it that's that's the lousy part oh well i'm not from here but yeah i never really did learn i don't probably nothing oh sounds good well listen i enjoyed talking to you and uh i hope we get a better subject next time or at least someone on the other side of the country so that you really can ask yeah well part is just whoever is around or has the right hours on their sheet they can call because it's getting hard to find people now takes a long time well my weather right now it is rainy this is the most rain i think we have ever seen uh over a twelve month period of time since i moved to uh to the texas area uh i was uh i have seen climates uh both rather arid and and complete and total uh tropical so i have seen kind of the gamut but this is starting to lean towards the uh tropical end how about you oh my uh_huh uh_huh oh this is this is uh a neat year you missed the nineteen eight eight one uh uh mess the nineteen eighty summer that about [roasted] everybody and then the eight one spring that uh where practically every lake in uh north north texas [overflowed] really oh yes ma'am well that was that's pretty good however the one in seventy nine and uh and uh seventy eight and seventy nine uh [dwarfed] that one yes ma'am since uh you know i have been well the firm i am with uh i have been with them them for twenty three years so and they are in the north texas area so yeah i have seen quite a bit of of weather uh patterns of course like i say uh when i was in the service i got to see plenty of uh different uh [locals] as far as wet and dry uh climates and uh uh i was kind of like you i'm i didn't want to go back to colorado because because of the tremendous weather we had uh no no no oh okay tampa florida uh_huh well let's see my in laws uh winter in the [leesburg] area well it's uh in the orlando area and tampa saint petersburg is not that super far away yeah something like that i think we made to from their house to uh bush gardens in ninety minutes that day well no no no no no not not at that not down that uh uh tollway they've got there's there's [smokies] you think our [smokies] are bad with uh uh our uh little [mustangs] that are hot rods they got them there too oh yeah i know we uh we were uh over run by one in uh we went down for christmas and we were [cruising] along in our little rental car and uh this this car comes over the hill and pass me and it was one of those puppies and he was flat moving yeah yeah he's he pulled he pulled one over and was uh [stead] having a little chat about something other than the weather that's for sure because i mean he didn't look happy when we went by so i don't know maybe it was uh who knows but anyway this weather here is is certain [evolved] from a dryer hotter uh nineteen eighty to uh the present the last summer we had i think we barely what cleared a hundred i think that was stretching it oh well believe you me i i'm not not [advocating] cold summers no no no no no no wrong wrong wrong but uh uh the summer of nineteen eighty we saw one hundred fifteen and one hundred sixteen and i was running a little heating and air conditioning business at the time well uh what happened there was that most of our everybody's customers uh down here about april start to call call call you know call their local guys and we go out and tune up the systems and we are normally expecting some hundred hundred degree days so we tune for that so we had everybody nice in tune when the hundred and fifteen degree weather hit and so the only thing that got replaced were the weak systems you know that would barely make it at one hundred but when the hundred and fifteen degree days hit well it just couldn't couldn't handle the load and they then they then the [compressors] blew like popcorn i mean just pop pop bang bang texas boy oh boy that's nice and warm what's the humidity like not like right so at the pretty average for this time of the year yes course don't you have some uh was it tornado watches not too long ago or hurricane or something maybe it wasn't right in dallas but uh the flash flash floods or it's built up so much right right don't think where it's going to have to go huh if it comes pretty quickly and twin falls that's kind of by uh have you heard of sun valley or boise oh have you then you know where i am yeah it's kind of pretty we don't have uh any snow on the ground it's probably in the forties are you so that's a real switch though from seventy five in the morning to thirty at night though we we probably go from the forties to the twenties right maybe do you need a jacket and that does it you don't know what it is huh everybody around here is going crazy because they want a white christmas and they're pretty they're they they're the type of thing you only want to have once they're not as fun to drive in but they're sure and uh you just don't know exactly what to expect when it goes like that do you kind of stays that way and the snow usually stays right then it shoots back up this uh our area pretty much you get oh we got snow for thanksgiving and about three days later it was all gone so uh it doesn't stick around very long we've only lived here four and a half years and uh it's been fairly mild from what i understand uh they've they've talked about being snowed in and and we've never had a bad bad winter right you think that's making a difference than you used to i think the weather seems like it's changed everywhere a little bit hasn't it just uh real peculiar peculiar and not normal right right we got a lot of the effects from that and that's hard to believe isn't it you wouldn't you wouldn't think we could even be okay well now i'm from dallas well actually i'm living in dallas i'm not from dallas i uh was living in west texas before this which is a very dry arid well obviously it's kind of a desert area uh_huh real close new mexico anyway well dallas is since i've moved up here now so i'm beginning to get a little bit of this but i'll tell you uh considering well okay i've uh mostly throughout my life i've lived in in the smaller parts of of texas and so moving to dallas i was a little worried about the traffic um the differences in terrain because uh you know dallas is is a lot more hilly than it is where i i was living and i had just bought a new car and it had uh had standard on you know standard and i had never had a standard car before right so i mean i was real worried about having a lot of ice and things like that we just had a wonderful winter i mean there was one or two days of ice the entire winter i mean we had cold weather we had a little bit of snow here and there but i mean i couldn't have asked for better first year of getting used to dallas and my car at the same time i mean it just worked out great oh well today it was probably in the eighties um well yeah we've had uh we've had several days in the eighties in fact i'll tell you what last night i came real close to turning on the air conditioning i didn't do it i didn't do it but i came close uh_huh i would imagine yes uh_huh right uh_huh well i heard the uh that um washington d c has actually got the cherry blossoms blooming so so that's well yeah it's i heard that uh_huh well that's that's sort of what happens here except uh we may start a little earlier and end a little later but uh yeah they've been they've actually been going at it for a good you know four weeks now i would think you know in fact it's kind of funny uh you know you're watching the [newscast] i don't know about way up they are up there but the weather cast down here one of the things that they like to do is to tell you what's all in the air you know the fungus and the trees you know what the yeah well but mostly it's you know allergy type [index] and it's been like like i said about four weeks now that they've had um multiple pages of things and you know of of names of things in the air and uh you know so that's a real good sign that that the trees are in bloom and the flowers are in bloom and stuff like that pollen count yeah exactly uh_huh uh_huh yeah well it's it's um it depends on what part of the south i think the farther east you go you know from from here on east uh you do have a limited winter um now south of here uh like in houston i did even though i said i lived mostly in the small towns i lived a short time in houston it was winter and you know the coldest day we got down there was like in the sixties you know when it got down in the sixties you were cold down there yeah yeah the uh_huh uh_huh oh yes it's a big difference i have a one of my friends is from kansas city and uh he has lived down here for like eleven years but he refuses to get to to where everybody else is i mean he will not wear long sleeve shirts he will not wear you know jackets and things like that i mean he's the only person i know that in thirty degree weather still has a short sleeve shirt on you know um but it you know it's still not cold cold here compared to what he's used to uh_huh well i think that's true yeah i mean uh i grew up with a lot of trees around and then i lived out like i said in west texas where it's desert and there's not a lot of trees and that's the main reason i moved up here was that i did not i mean i hated seeing you know no trees i mean it's just you could stand on a [rooftop] and see for miles and miles well now that's that's not necessarily true there are people that are born out there that can't stand it here they they feel [claustrophobic] around trees i thought that was hilarious when i first heard it but i mean i heard it from more than one person so it's got to be somewhat true exactly yeah see i wouldn't have thought from the beginning but i've talked to so many people about it that it makes sense now i guess i agree i agree but i wouldn't mind having an area with ocean but we won't get involved in that yeah yeah that sounds good uh_huh okay well it was nice talking to you too uh well let's see it's been cloudy today and no not very much we've had a little bit of [sprinkles] but for the most part it's uh pretty dry out there we didn't have a whole lot we just get a little bit a lot of [dew] this morning oh okay yeah yeah it definitely is warmer and then there's a lot of difference between the plano weather and the uh dallas weather uh_huh yeah there's a there's like a five degree difference between like if you leave t i the central expressway site and you go north at about the richardson plano border there's a distinct change in the it's usually about five degrees cooler uh_huh about five degrees usually most of the time you can definitely tell a pronounced difference no the only thing i figure is that maybe it's because there is more concrete that absorbs heat and things like that and down there there's a lot more uh natural stuff like you know trees and parks and things like that up here and everything but there is a difference uh when i used to drive a convertible all the time i'd have the top down and maybe it was sixty in dallas and then i'd drive up in plano and it would be like uh gosh i'm cold you know turn the heat on or something yeah uh_huh uh_huh right right probably more rain and everything because i think you get you would get hit more by it was more like west right of dallas just straight north no little m okay north north okay yeah there i know most of the stuff seems to kind of peter out before it really gets into dallas and a lot of it just kind of [phases] away you know a lot of times you'll hear it's real bad over in uh fort worth too yeah me too i've planted a bunch of roses outside and so i'd like to i'd like to get the rain because i'm getting tired of watering oh really is it really what kind is it um oh the little metal tag and everything oh yeah well we planted something like thirty of them this year no no um they're all growing and i've got buds on quite a few of them so i'm hoping that in about another week or two i'll have lots of blooms i'm going to i'm going to put some in the house but i'm going to bring a lot of them into work because hey you spend a lot of time at work and so that's the place where you kind of like them but oh yeah i love them and then just i'm on a test a rose test panel this year for a national company and uh they send you roses that only have numbers no names they're brand new [hybrids] and they send them to you and you you know it's like well what do you think of the rose do you like the leaves do you like this and well i go through a i get a lot a lot of advertising and stuff from jackson and perkins roses that's who does this and um i go ahead and they send me some well this year they sent me the test panel thing because i always get a lot of roses from them and so they sent it to me and and i said oh yeah that will be cool one of them there's four that they send and i've got one that's going to be pink one that's going to be white no i take it back one that's going to be yellow uh one that's going to be red and white and one that's going to be pink and white so i'm anxious to see what they look like because that's all they tell you they just say well they're supposed to be these colors they don't tell you which ones are supposed to be which so i've got these planted out there that have numbers and i've got the little form i'm supposed to fill out and write all my opinions and stuff on it and so it's just this is before they even are named like you know you can suggest names for them because of what you think and things like that and then they um you know then they let you know you write in and they let you know later on what the general results are throughout the united states oh no we have a tiny yard oh it's going to be it's going to be really neat it really is and so i'm really excited about it because it's we have the bed for them we dug up the soil i mean we the took the soil up and like two feet by two feet down and you know the [bed's] pretty big especially the long one that has that has all the regular roses in it it's real big it stands about forty feet on one side of of our fence but we have the perfect yard for it because the sun comes up in the morning and strikes the back yard all morning until you know about about two o'clock in the afternoon so we get uh_huh oh really right it bakes the front yard so is your is uh so is your front like facing kind of north too like northwest just due west because see we get the afternoon sun the the front of our house also gets hit blasted by the north wind so the front so the front of our house is kind of [angled] kind of strange i mean we're facing kind of like north northwest and so the back is is like southeast and so we get we get really horrendous weather in the front of our house you know because we get you've got to have something out there that can protect itself from the north because the cold hits us and then it bakes us in the summer and the backyard is great because we get all the [southerly] winds back there and so they're not blowing as hard and uh then we get the eastern sun so the [backyard's] great for growing stuff uh_huh oh yeah yeah well they can take they can take a lot of heat and a lot of sun the red ones don't tend to do as well the blooms out like in extreme heat because they tend to turn black so if if you're looking you know plant some of your uh your pinks and your [yellows] tend to do really good in extreme fertilizer whereas your whites and your reds tend to do better like say with an eastern exposure so they don't bake as much so that's a little something i've been doing a lot of research and a lot of reading because i i like to grow i like to grow the roses outside and then i grow african violets inside oh really uh_huh that's all all i do is i water mine once a week and they are kind of like [succulents] so if you kind of forget to water them a little bit sometimes they'll be okay but the problem i think most people have with african violets is that they water them too much and uh they are susceptible to [rotting] and so when there is too much water they die that's that's what really kills them if there's too much water yes well when the leaves get sort of when they're not real stiff anymore then they really need water i mean you know i've used up all my water give me some that type of thing but uh yeah that's something you know i have lots of lots of babies lot of little baby african violets and stuff because i break off a leaf and i start them off a leaf and stuff oh yeah yeah and they're they're just stick them in some soil and you kind of cover it up with a plastic bag or something with little holes in it because it creates a kind of a little greenhouse when you do that and it keeps the humidity high and after about three or four weeks it's already established a root system and you can take the little bag off and then just keep watering it and then after about about eight weeks after you take off the plastic bag you'll see leaves coming out and uh it'll it'll grow leaves and you've got sometimes you've got more than one plant you'll have several plants that will form off of that one leaf yeah it works great you know i've got and my problem is i've got more than i know what to do with where do you live oh oh oh my word yeah well we've had unseasonably warm weather here in texas we um last week it was i believe um i believe it was monday or tuesday we had had ninety four degrees uh_huh um i grew up in wyoming so i you know we had i didn't mind the heat then um the summertime the summer's here get heat real hot and i have a hard time with those but i get use to them you just kind of stay indoors um this time of year sixties and you know stuff like that so today i think it's about sixty five today here something like that so uh_huh yeah it's yeah my husband's outside in a short sleeve shirt right now working in the garden and we've planted our garden and yeah we've been you know we've been working in the yard and our peach [tree's] blooming so we have very warm weather here right now compared to what you're having i grew up in you know i grew in wyoming i remember ice storms and we get ice storms here but we haven't had one in you know in a long time but um the lowest temperature that it gets here um in the wintertime this winter we had um some temperatures get below zero and and then with the wind chill it got lower but that was it was you know it doesn't you know it was real unusual um um are people going to work around there in this uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh uh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh you know when we get snow and ice here it just shuts down the city yeah because nobody knows how to drive in it so when you get i mean here they start even to forecast the weather you know it's going to be an ice storm tomorrow they'll come before the ten clock news they've already got schools calling in saying they've canceled yeah they don't even wait around here to see if they canceled it they call them the night before and and we've had you know say that they're going to be get this real bad ice storm and um it's beautiful the next day the weather here is so unpredictable you know i don't even put much stock in the weather reports because they're hardly ever accurate uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh yeah they wait a little bit of rain here and they a it's going to freeze and the sand trucks are out yeah we have you know it gets even in a [rainstorm] here that roads get so slick you know not even cold weather but just rain because the roads get so [oily] that uh we've had you know twelve car pile ups on the free ways because they don't slow down for nothing around here so oh no no i'm talking to my daughter she wanted her shoe off i'm sorry no no i was talking my little girl wanted her shoes off uh uh_huh you don't even have power back to your house yet my word yeah oh oh you need to stock up to batteries then uh_huh destroyed yeah you have to have some food to eat because the grocery probably ran out real fast uh_huh uh_huh oh well yeah yeah because it's beautiful here today i haven't gone outside been too busy working inside but it's beautiful here oh oh yeah it's amazing how it can be so different in one part of country because i have family in boston too uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh but going through it is so much different yeah uh_huh yeah because his family my husband's family lives in um anaheim california you know just a couple you know miles from disneyland and so it's amazing how it you know it can be cold here and beautiful there yeah uh_huh you could never get use to that kind of weather uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right that's how it was in wyoming too you just you know it was always cold and then you can you only had um two or three months that you could plant a garden and here we can get three gardens in a year we can replant three times a year and get stuff pretty windy yeah so far yeah oh yeah oh really uh_huh right well you know they said that we haven't had enough rain though and that surprises me because seems like we've had a lot of rain this year but since we've uh last i heard that we hadn't met our you know hadn't got up to the right level yet that we right well it truly surprises me because it seems like we seems like we do get a lot of rain but i guess not i guess it doesn't accumulate too much but um i'm glad it's summer me too yeah i don't either i want some you know ski or something you know i'm [benefitting] from it i guess in a way i just i really like the summer like uh be able to lay out or you know just be outside yeah i know it seems like you can never get warm enough to me i do too yeah yeah that's true that's true that's true uh_huh uh_huh i do like um like an old uh warm summer the breezes that it gets at night you know you can open your windows and oh and that gets those nice warm breezes coming in and that's nice and that helps on utilities yeah and that's especially in garland it's real bad yeah yeah well we didn't have much we had some good ice but not a lot thank goodness not yeah sure have how about you are you serious ugh um are you serious um gosh oh that's horrible oh i hate that that's horrible right right well that's true well a friend of mine went home this weekend uh he lives up in the pan handle and um he went home for easter and it snowed up there and then the next day it was up to seventy five yeah that would be horrible i wouldn't like that where you just can't depend on it yeah yeah it's just real comfortable here where we live and that's the way i like it i like being able to depend on a hot summer and you know it it gets cold enough in the winter to where you yeah and you can do your fires and everything and then move on yeah right yeah yeah i don't either yeah yeah i wouldn't mind some you know like i guess after awhile in the summer when it hits i guess about october and you get a few cool days i don't mind that because it kind of gives you some relief you know that's nice yeah yeah they really are yeah and all the trees and plants are coming out thank goodness and grass for a change i got i get sick of winter just looking everything is so dead i hate that so yeah yeah it really is it's just an old gray looking sky and it's boring really i guess it wouldn't be bad if you i guess up north it wouldn't be bad to visit and we we love to go skiing and um now it's beautiful when it snows and you have all those pine trees and everything that is pretty but i sure couldn't live there yeah i guess so warmed i guess so uh gosh uh uh_huh that's right yeah right i don't blame you i would too i do hate that feeling though it it yeah yeah my fingers always get get it real bad i hate that i mean i bundle them up and everything and and i i still get it i guess i can bare the cold it's just when it does the wind hits oh that just feels like it goes all the way to the bone it does yeah it hurts exactly hurts i hate it well me either it's kind of a boring topic i guess all right i'm through how has your weather been recently record what oh wow that's something we've had a really wonderful spring it's been rainy it's been comfortable it's been cool and we've only had a couple of really severe weather storms which is unusual for northeast texas generally we have some you know there's there's always at least one or two good hail storms before the season ends yeah last thursday though it was just raining buckets and it was probably in the low eighties it was really a nice late spring day very comfortable just really was nice had plenty of rain and within three days time all of that moisture is gone the sun has come out and it is hot i mean big time hot the air [conditioners] in the buildings are saying oh no not again uh_huh i can imagine well typically though what does your weather run when does your spring actually start uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh wow right oh boy i know it's been about eight years ago i guess now right here in dallas i guess it was late may temperatures got up into the nineties and by early june it was rocking a hundred and it stayed that way until september we had ninety one consecutive hundred degree days and i didn't know whether we would survive at all oh but well actually you know we affect our humidity a great deal this at one time wasn't a real humid area but we've built a lot of lakes and a lot of reservoirs and that increases the relative humidity i mean if it's there to evaporate it's going to go up into the air and the hotter it gets the more [evaporates] well we have attempted to [reforest] some areas but as a matter of fact at one time this was uh a very dense forest in this area and for farming and for construction and things a lot of the forests have been cut down and then of course you know they [bulldozed] a bunch of forest when they dug out the reservoir moisture but for the most part we have very mild winters here we may get one snow storm i may actually see white on the ground one day but if even [ices] over a half an inch worth of ice or just a little bit of snow man businesses close down traffic comes to a [snarl] i mean nothing happens if it gets enough snow you can see it on the ground um god yeah uh_huh right right yeah oh yeah that's true they sure do you know one of the things i have noticed is that the weather changes over time as well i was raised in amarillo and i can remember when there was really only one snow storm a year in amarillo it started in october and stopped in march or april and it you know there stayed snow on the ground all winter long to to some depth but actually that has changed considerably uh the winters are no less cold but they're dryer uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right oh wow that's something well i don't think there was a single day out this year for our kids they i don't they don't put ten in there i think they put three but good grief here three days for snow days actually one year before last they took a snow day because it was flooding it was a spring flood and they just couldn't get to school so they just canceled school there's just too many we're in a very uh they're low hills you don't notice them because of the trees and because of the so many buildings built around but there's a lot of hills around here which means there's a lot of [gullies] which means there's a lot of creeks and a lot of flooding and uh that can create almost as a big hazard and i drive a little nissan when it floods it [drowns] well yes uh any time there's a storm there's going to be plenty of it yeah one of the uh_huh yeah right oh goodness it really does climb fast didn't it well i am a little bit concerned this last week our temperatures did not drop down below the upper seventies at night which means that you know we could be looking for a very warm summer i really don't want that oh um oh my goodness that's right okay charles uh gun control what are you uh for in favor or no comment oh you are well this should be very interesting because i'm against it well you know uh now here's something that uh first occurred to me when they started having all these problems with these automatic uh weapons uh now there always has been a federal law against fully automatic weapons and yet their uh the gun control enthusiasts are are uh [preaching] about the gun control and how they should be we should have stronger laws and what not i don't understand why we don't enforce the laws we have now this is not just a state law this is a federal law controlled by the treasury department uh for fully automatic weapons and uh all right now for instance in california where they passed the uh uh semiautomatic or or uh now what was it they called them the military version attack weapons or something uh how is that going to affect the uh sports weapons i mean rifles that are automatic or semiautomatic uh_huh well now uh i've got to admit i'm inclined to agree with you there uh even though i am a member of the n r a and they are they their reason being that well if you let one little law get through pretty soon one's going to stack up on top of another and so forth and so on and you've got to admit that congress does kind of look at things that way uh that that's true uh now did you hear about the the control that they have up in virginia uh it it's it's a little hard to believe but they can uh of course like just like just about every other state in the union they have a felony law anyone ever convicted of a a felony is cannot purchase a weapon and they don't have a waiting period because they have access to computer records concerning all these felons and uh when you go in and buy a weapon or a handgun in uh uh virginia the salesman just calls some number and uh [punches] in your name and if it comes up negative okay fine and you get your your gun right then and there uh but they are the only state that does it and uh according to virginia it didn't cost all that much and frankly i i don't understand why a state doesn't have those records available anyway uh uh at least uh records of of uh known felons which are available to local police departments uh uh uh certainly those those records are available and all they would have to do is expand it to uh uh well connect them into a modem somehow well virginia is not a particularly rich state and they managed to [squeak] out a few bucks to do it and uh it's uh uh one hundred percent successful yeah i just heard about this last week uh they were bragging about it with uh uh they should have have pride in this because it's it's a good system and it's working well and they don't need that seven day waiting period because the whole idea of that waiting period was so that uh it uh the police could check up on you well you know what's going to happen there those files are going to back up on somebody's desk just some of that typical bureaucratic work that's another uh uh [thorn] in my side [bureaucratics] politicians so anyway well we seem to be one in favor and one against although neither one of us are are uh really uh uh [dyed] in the wool uh we but we both well there should be some way of checking now here in in texas uh all you need is a driver's license and uh even felons can still get a driver's license so i i don't think they are too well they're not rigid enough here in texas but don't tell the n r a i said that they're liable to tear up my membership you say you retired a year ago i'm looking forward to it in about a just just over a year myself uh uh_huh oh uh_huh well uh i bought a motor home here four years ago and i have been living in it ever since and i'm looking forward to just traveling i have four sons scattered all over the country and a few grandchildren and i'm looking forward to just traveling around visiting them well charles good luck to you on your yeah nice talking to you too take care now bye i'm very much in favor of gun control yes i am i don't i don't mind people owning guns i just think it should be a little you know a little a little more regulated yes i believe that's correct uh_huh uh_huh that would certainly help i'm sure uh_huh yep uh_huh uh_huh yeah right uh_huh uh_huh yep i really don't have any problem jack with you know uh people using firearms for sporting purposes i don't have any problem the only thing i i am in favor of the seven day waiting period i would like to see that see that happen i uh_huh uh_huh right yeah i understand that uh_huh that's true i i like i say i don't have any problem with people using firearms you know for sporting purposes or hunting purposes i just think it's just may be a little too easy you know to acquire one on on a whim of some sort i'm not sure i have uh_huh uh_huh i see hm that's interesting uh_huh yeah yeah you would think they would uh_huh yeah right yeah i'm surprised that more states doesn't do that uh_huh yeah right uh_huh i wouldn't think it'd be that difficult to do yep right hm that's interesting uh_huh yeah absolutely yeah i agree uh_huh yep uh_huh uh_huh yeah right i agree yep right i was just thinking there's yeah i guess that's about right uh yeah i'm not totally rigid on the subject i just think there should be you know shouldn't be quite so easy to do uh_huh right uh_huh sure uh yeah that's true i i promise i won't okay i promise yes i did uh_huh yeah i really enjoy it i stay pretty busy i do quite a not quite a lot i do some uh volunteer work here in plano i i have a few uh handicapped persons that i you know try to do things for help them do uh_huh that's uh sure i can understand that uh_huh yep that'd be neat sure would okay nice talking to you okay take care bye bye okay well what do you think uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh right that's true right that's true right but uh_huh yeah but he has to go out and do it that's true i think right and see that's my only problem with uh making you um you know get the check and everything is is i guess bad guys if you want to call them bad guys they are going to get a gun no matter what they're not i don't think they're going to go to a gun store or [pawn] shop and get it the right way when there's a check i think they're going to go out and find it someway individual sale or something like that yeah i hope that's true knife exactly he's going to do what he wants to do that's true i i just think it makes honest people more honest and right right and if you have to have it in a hurry something's wrong that's right that's right well i'm married to a policeman so we we talk about this a lot yeah yeah yeah i was watching a worried about that yeah they do they do right right or even even the um the little um toy guns look real i mean i've heard so much about that on tv and that's kind of scary to think that you may be shot for holding one yeah right uh_huh right i mean you can't blame them it looks like they've got a weapon that's right exactly right and i think that's a good idea that's right i know right right a gun is a gun to them they can play with anything and make it a gun that's exactly right right right exactly that's right that's a good idea i was uh watching t v yesterday and there is a town in georgia and it's the law that you have a gun every adult you know uh is able to carry a gun and and they encourage it yeah and the police love it which really surprised me and and i think and that's what they were going after uh they went to interview this town i mean it's a little [dinky] town they went to interview them about the gun control laws and uh the police said all the people said that's fine we could care less you know we're all honest and everything like that we we all carry them but we we don't mind being checked and uh and i think it kind of took that uh [neatness] away from it you know like well heck everybody's got one you know and so it was it was quite unusual to see the people in that town uh_huh right exactly uh_huh yeah right that's what we're doing oh yeah oh uh_huh well that's neat well that's real neat yeah right well that's real good right right and they usually are real basic common sense things i know and people don't want to believe that yeah well see i in the chamber that's exactly right yeah well we we're trying to teach our daughter she knows real well about uh about her daddy's guns what not to do and what to do around them yeah um and and she and she's real um she'll know she'll even tell her friends don't ever touch my daddy's guns or something like that so she's real she's real good about it and she's never been curious i mean cause he's always you know if he has them out cleaning them you know she can be there and he'll tell how he's doing it or you know show her the insides or stuff like that to be [feared] and right exactly right they'd have that respect for what it does and what it can do uh_huh oh yeah still uh_huh right he's got to go to a lot of trouble yeah hold on hold on he's in here somewhere i know he is yeah well i know how to use one we we go hunting every once in a while and he showed me how to use his guns and i really enjoy it but boy if someone did break in i don't i don't know that i could or would even grab it uh_huh that's true yeah yes yeah right true true well we we have dogs that are pretty you know very protective you know yeah if they're stupid enough to come through then yeah yeah they've got to be pretty stupid and and most people that uh break in or whatever go to houses without the dogs luckily right and that's one of them so well yeah really does well do you think we've me too on gun control yeah i think we are right right i'm glad you're not okay well good you too thanks bye bye well i'm kind of leaning towards i don't know i'm thinking about what from one to ten what my no would be it would probably be somewhere closer to uh less control because i don't see i'm not a member of the n r a although my father is but i guess i believe i think the n r a has gone overboard the wrong way you know they're sitting there on number ten they're saying absolutely no gun control we don't even want to think about it and and i think that's a dumb situation because there has got to be some kind of background check to see that the people who are buying a gun are buying it for a useful purpose you know if if you're going to hunt with it or if you're going to do sport shooting you can wait a week it's not a big deal for them to go if they're can check your drivers license every time you get a ticket you know i mean they should be able to go back and find out if you've had any kind of [psychiatric] record armed you know felony record any of that kind of stuff and it seems to me right now that there's not there's not that much of a check i i'm not really sure what texas law i think there's a check for felonies on your record if the gun shop owner does it you know but yeah if and if it's a private sale of course then there's nothing uh_huh yes but but maybe we'll prevent a few john [hinckley's] you know i i that that's the kind of people like i say i don't think the guy who's going to rob a seven eleven is going to rob a seven eleven whether he has a gun or a knife baseball bat or you know whatever but you know yeah and and the people who want it it's not that big a deal like i say to wait yeah it makes you wonder what they need it for all of a sudden here um oh yeah i i imagine his his opinion is a little bit towards the one there on the scale of one to ten he needs some more gosh if i was a cop i would be too many people have too many too much access and i guess i think the other thing that we ought to control to some extent is there should be some law against the types of i mean some of these saturday night specials that these companies put out that are i mean they're are basically it says here buy me and go rob a seven eleven yes they that's really gotten bad or your child [accidently] if your child is old enough i mean there are a lot of kids who when they're ten look like they're twelve or fourteen or and and especially some of the minority children whether you know a racist or not that's the truth and and if some of them are doing something that they shouldn't be and then they have one of those toy guns in their hands and a cop comes up you can't jeez and you can't take the chances because there's been kids that age who have killed people and you know you know there was a law in i think it's in oregon where they've now made all toy guns they're making them neon colors you know like yeah and the kids don't care my kid didn't care he picks up a stick and goes bang it doesn't make any difference to him yeah yeah so you like to do i think they ought to do that with toy guns they ought to make them very reasonably do something outrageous to them you know so that they're not very [distinguishable] from a real gun that's kind of they encourage it um huh i don't know i that's kind of an odd thing i don't know i have a gun and uh my folks have always had i learned to shoot when i was real little i think that's a lot of it too is that people need to teach their kids what not to what to do and what not to do because i started shooting my dad started letting me shoot like a little air b b gun when i was probably five or six years old but you know it was this is how you hold it this is the only place that you do it which was you know out far and away and you don't ever touch it unless i'm here and you don't you don't point it at people and then they had then they went to the texas parks and recreation i guess but anyway the hunter safety program that you have to do now i think it started in about nineteen seventy if you want if you want to go deer hunting and your [birthday's] after nineteen something fifty five or something then you have to attend one of these hunter safety courses or you can't get a deer license and it and it it's basic stuff it's like it's don't you know when you're climbing over a [barbed] wire fence don't point lean your gun against it you know and then you crawl over it and shoot yourself and uh those things happen it it is always incredible to me the number of times those kind of stupid accidents happen to people yeah put the safety on the gun don't assume always assume it's loaded that's that's got to be the most common thing that people yeah it's oh it's empty it's empty boom i took the clip out or whatever and i forgot about the one in the chamber oh oh yeah does he got them locked up all the time too when he's don't even think about it yeah yeah um yeah if you make it where it's not something curious not something to be curious about and not something to be totally scared about if it if it's just one more piece of something but they but they've got to understand like you said never touch it yeah ours is a we have a shotgun and it's up in the closet and then the shells are in another part and it's something to think about and i got it because my husband used to travel and be out he was out of the country at one time for three months and i was like i live in a nice neighborhood but still and then i've got it so far sometimes i think i wonder if i i'm not about to load it because i you know i assume that the kids are not going to ever get up there and it's in a case and it's you know it's put up and it's away and all that but i don't want to take the chance and i think if somebody ever does break in it's going to take me a year to find the shells and then get it yeah right i know i i used to think about that it was a lot easier when i was when i was single it was one thing and when i was just married with no kids when it was just me it was an easy decision it was like you you come after me you're going to get it you know and now there's so many other things where are the kids what are they doing you know where is this person coming in from uh you've got and and if if you manage to get it out and then you know what how can you even afford to to think about what what you're going to do because you don't know where your kids are at the same time ugh we feel if they make enough noise that yeah it it we have two big dogs in the backyard and always kind of thought that too kind of an extra buffer yeah anything that the well any any advantage that they can take unfortunately yeah guess it makes it worth the dog food over the years yeah i i think that's about all i can we we're in pretty good agreement actually on it it would be an interesting it would be even more interesting you you to be some of these people who are at the other end of the spectrum me too i'm glad to find there's another reasonable person in garland well it's been nice talking to you bye bye well stephanie what's your position on gun control uh_huh now was that just on handguns or was that on rifles really and that didn't help at all huh uh_huh i usually just i'm trying to think of i guess i would tend myself to be more towards the the like three where i don't think you should necessarily ban guns any by any means but you should definitely have the character search and the seven day holding period and things along that nature uh you know you shouldn't be able to go out there and just buy one and you know right off the shelf and but uh_huh exactly and so i think that kind of control is would be good but the uh i you know i'm trying to think of how many times you make the statement and just to kind of [exam] it a little bit and i i know that any statement in [absoluteness] is not necessarily true uh only the guns were in the hands of the criminals but how many times i guess i have never heard of a a robbery being [foiled] or spoiled because the person who's being robbed had a gun and maybe they just don't report those or i'm not sure or you know i can't think of ever hearing on the news or whatnot or hearing or knowing anybody who was being robbed but good thing they had their gun on them and they they [thwarted] the robbery attempt uh_huh uh_huh true did did you were you brought up in a family that hunted or how about that huh uh_huh oh jeez right uh_huh right i've also always thought about the idea you know most sports you know which are the n r a and people have their thing you know if you ban guns you're just banning the the recreation the sport of hunting things of that nature most of that's done with rifles and such uh though there's you know probably i'm sure some sector that does it with handguns but just by the [mere] fact of [outlawing] handguns would make it so that it would be not as [conspicuous] you couldn't be [inconspicuous] when you walked into a store stuff like that you could see someone coming or dressed [inappropriately] you know if they had to have a rifle or was you know made it more difficult to get a a uh a handgun now of course you know in this world anytime you've freedom you can be able to get anything you want but i guess to make it more difficult for the person who's just so irate and upset and you know temporarily a little bit uh offset or off keel i don't know if that's a large percentage of uh crime or not but i guess it would be some but i i think definitely like today they just introduced the what's called the brady bill the seven day mandatory waiting period on getting any guns and i think that shoot that's a good idea oh sure uh_huh right yeah that's crazy yeah that's kind of kind of wild uh_huh that is kind of wild well that's all very interesting well thanks for talking good bye well on a scale of one to ten uh being ten no kind of legislation and zero being uh total ban i probably would lean more towards six or seven um i feel like a total ban on guns is just going to put the guns in the hands the criminals um i lived in massachusetts for two years and they have a total ban on guns and i saw that it didn't stop crime in that state any any kind of firearms yeah uh it's there's was a mandatory jail sentence if you were caught um with a firearm and also i think there was a fine no i don't the the crime is not any better or any worse i mean it's i i shouldn't say i don't know if it was any worse but it certainly didn't get any better uh_huh yeah i i i agree with that i i think that the the law is on who can buy a gun are are way too lax i think that i think that the yeah um i yeah i i'm i'm not really sure i don't personally i don't own a gun um and i don't think i probably ever would um although i would like to know how to handle one and i think it's good that and i think everybody should learn how to handle one um you just never know when you might come into contact with one um no uh nobody in my family hunted uh my father had had guns when i was in high school because he got them from a friend who lived in massachusetts we lived in new hampshire at the time and he lived in massachusetts and had to get rid of all his guns so we ended up uh with these guns and my really my only experience with a gun was shooting a pistol and not knowing how to hold it right and the hammer came back and hit me in the thumb and blood [squirted] everywhere and so that was really the only experience that i've had with guns and it it kind of scared me but i think that if i learn how to use one i would i would feel better yeah yeah that's true uh_huh i would definitely support that yeah i i i agree the thing that scares me uh though about where i would i would definitely want some sort of legislation and coming from the north east i'm just not used to seeing um these and i i know this may sound kind of stereo typical but the cowboys with the gun racks in the back of their trucks that's kind of scary to me that kind of to me it is more like [vigilantism] you know and it kind of scares me especially with all the shootings that have been going on in l a on the [freeways] and then you come here in in the dallas area um i don't i don't believe that people should be allowed to carry guns in their vehicles um especially not in the back window for everybody to see sure you're welcome okay bye bye well um i'm uh pretty pro gun control over all i uh i've had a lot of arguments with people about the issue of gun control and uh i must say that there are a couple of arguments against uh strong gun control which i find very [compelling] although most the people who argue gun control with me i find uh use sort of canned arguments you know sort of the n r a slogan arguments and um uh see i've been very frustrated when i do debate with people about it um i guess on a one a scale of one of ten i'm probably around a two in terms of fair restricting guns and i have to admit most of that is uh strong personal [distaste] i don't like the idea of people being able to kill me with very little effort um and uh guns are very symbolic of them having that power over me uh_huh um uh i'll give it a try i've got my texan stereotypes in place uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh it's pretty power isn't it okay okay uh_huh that applies to anything as well as guns a gun uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh what i don't gets dangerous in terms of civil liberties because pretty soon it's it wouldn't you don't want to have someone making a personal trust in that way i would hope i mean because i mean someone the personal sheriff doesn't like doesn't get to have a gun and someone the personal sheriff yeah but if you're not a if you're not a basically good citizen you just told me that you're going to get one of those guns anyway so why so why have any restrictions at all uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh well we can could be well that makes a lot of since to me i mean i certainly feel that if if we may disagree on when someone should own a fire arm but uh i certainly agree that if someone owns a fire arm that have as much responsibility to know how do use it safely as someone learns how to drive if not more so yeah well i have a bicycle and that scares me too to tell you the truth because i've been run off the road and all sorts of things well i'm still i'm still puzzled though what is the argument how does the argument work if uh if the bad guys are going to have guns anyway what's the point of putting a basically the restrictions are just to [penalize] the good guys because the bad guys are going to get the guns anyway they're not going to take those courses is it uh is it a way of raising the prices of illegal guns if it's not going to cut the supply of illegal guns it must going to at least raise the prices does that uh mean advantage uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh no bay area san francisco bay area uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh what if you're looking down the barrel of a hand cannon i yeah well i'm i'm sure i'm sure given all given all your training i'm sure that you know you'd if i walk into a bad neighborhood i'm sure i'd want to walk through with you because i'm sure you have good you know far above the average instinct for how to use guns and how to use them effectively and everything um i'm quite concerned that if you let everyone hasn't yet used a gun in a haven't hasn't yet committed a felony if you let them all walk around carrying guns in this sort of wild west scenario you're going to get an awful lot of people shooting guns pretty quickly just given human nature you're going to start getting a lot of gunfire it's it's hard for me to imagine that a a situation of you know take it to a logical extreme if everyone walking around carrying a guns you're not going to have an increase in gunfire uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i know no i i understand that what if uh what if you think someone's trying to hurt them and you make a mistake yeah well uh that that was the topic uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well as as someone who would would possibly be in the role of an independent bystander i feel more comfortable with people having blades because uh you're not going to get bullets flying around killing people instantly and uh well me being from texas i hope you're ready for this well i'm not your stereotypical texan i was raised around guns hunting so i don't have a fear of fire arms in any respect i i respect them and what their capabilities are and on top of that spending a good portion of my earlier years in the military as a green [beret] i definitely respect the power of weaponry and here in houston as well as just about any big city anywhere across this country and here here here you go here you this will be border line n r a which i am not a member of when you i mean you've heard the the slogan um if you outlaw guns then only out laws will have guns well you you've got well any of the big cities you've got the different rival gangs and they're having their little turf wars over their little drug [kingdoms] and such and they get out their little mac tens they get out there little uzis and they're going to fight with them and it doesn't matter what restrictions you put on that type of weapon or a class three firearm if they want it they'll get it i don't care if if they've got to go down into new mexico to get it they'll get it and they'll get across the border now my position although i have absolutely no use for a fully automatic weapon anyway since i am a law abiding citizen and i have never had a felony if i wanted to buy one i don't think there should be that big of a restriction on it if they want to run a background check on me fine if they want to put a seven day waiting period fine again if they want want me to present a letter from my county sheriff saying that i've got his permission to have an automatic weapon in his county that's fine too well the only well the criteria the sheriff would have to follow has is this guy a convicted felon uh is he a habitual trouble maker are we picking him up every saturday for a drunk and [disorderly] and if he had an automatic weapon could he really be raising some problems you know just proving that you're a basically a good citizen if if they want the firepower they can get it because it doesn't matter how restrictive you're border control points are they'll get it across the border one way or the other uh okay go back to that one to ten scale where one being full gun control ten being none i'd said about an eight i said the restrictions i would like to see on for anybody whether it being for handgun a rifle a shotgun i would like to see them go through either i'd like to see a law enforcement agency not n r a but whether it be the your state police or your county police for you to be able purchase a handgun you got to go through there course and get certified that you know how to properly handle the weapon how to safely handle the weapon how to properly maintain it the three basics well the in the hands of the wrong person the car can be just as deadly as the weapon as a as a pistol well there's uh not necessarily a price thing what is happening at least in this state and i expect to see it in other states very soon legislation been introduced as that if a citizen of the state being myself has not committed a felony and has completed a certified weapons course i can carry a weapon on me at all times concealed or [unconcealed] okay you you're you're from california right l a area okay okay you've been to the city and all these people come around someone attempts to mug me i would i would as it stands now if he pulls a blade on me we're equally matched because i can meet him blade for blade now if this legislation comes through he i'm out with my family we've gone shopping we're fixing to get in the car this guy comes up he pulls a blade on me i can pull a gun on him now when you're and when you're looking down the barrel of a hand cannon things change real quick then it's still equally matched having having spent time in combat i feel i feel it before they'll get the gun on me if i'm at the same time i actually it's it's more of a police action in itself the fact that everybody is packing a piece is a [deterrence] for someone saying well i'm going to mug this guy right here but hey he's carrying just as much firepower as i can and if they're if you got to go through a certification course to get where to where you can carry it in public then this individual also knows this guys pretty good with it now whether this person is made the moral decision whether he can take another human life or not that's another trip but in defense of myself defense of my family or defense of my friends i can blow somebody a way in a heart beat even even more so when it comes to my my wife and son anybody anybody tries to hurt them i won't even blink this this is where the question of gun control comes in what i consider gun control is being able to hit my target with the first shot say a person uh uh get all of a sudden my combat in me goes up and say i've got the [vibes] this guys fixing to do something i go ahead and pull my piece and i make sure this persons sees it so that he's got now doubt that i will use it on him and i will use it right then if he doesn't back up at that point he deserves what he gets because i have sent the [clearest] signal you mess with me you mess with my family i'm going to dust you as it stands now i've got to do that with a blade and the only reason i feel comfortable doing that is because of the training i've had well if i'm the one doing the shooting i don't miss that's the kind of training i've had i mean well i grew up out in the country and uh was used to having uh guns around the place and uh i'm uh not for gun control in the [strictest] sense of the uh word yeah yeah yeah well i i feel that its uh i think the what was national rifle association uh had this bumper sticker a few years back if uh about if you outlaw guns only outlaws will have guns then and i believe that too because the person that is wanting to commit a crime is going to find a way to get a gum a a gun a knife a a rock a stick whatever it is to commit a crime with and it's the honest citizens like ourselves that are responsible about use of guns uh we can handle it but there's an element that can't they have got them [outgunned] there was a an article in the paper just this week where i think it's uh one of the gun companies i can't remember which was developing a ten metal ten millimeter automatic pistol for the f b i which would give them additional firepower it had held like a fifteen shot clip which uh would be able they would be able to put down anything that came at them but you figure you got some drug guy out there that's got an uzi machine gun uh a thirty eight uh smith and [wesson] [revolver] isn't going to do you much good yeah i have lived in uh illinois at one time and they they passed a uh it wasn't really gun control but it was you had to register as a gun owner you didn't have to list your guns but you had to have this card it was like a driver's license card that you had to have it in order to buy ammunition and that was the first uh this was twenty years ago but they had that so that they were trying to control it a little bit in that respect pardon yeah uh_huh yeah yeah yeah yeah we lived in tennessee for awhile and i bought a pistol there and there was a fifteen day waiting period you had to fill out an application and go down to the [sheriff's] office and get [fingerprinted] and then you had fifteen days while they checked to see if you had any kind of criminal record before that you could pick up the gun you were purchasing no i think that uh you know a a waiting period uh can make a difference but again it's going to be the law abiding citizen that's going to comply with that so there's i don't think there's any way to control the criminal element as far as guns is concerned because right right yeah i'm we we're getting into capital punishment now but i i agree with you there that uh yeah the uh the again the purpose of gun control is to control how it is being used is what the purpose should be it's not to keep people from buying a gun that need one for a specific purpose legal purpose but to keep the guy that's illegal from getting his hands on one and i'm in favor of keeping the the illegal guy from getting one in his hands but the legal person or [lawful] person should not be penalized because there is the criminal element oh yes yeah you don't have to carry one in your car or your uh or your pocket all the time yeah yeah yeah well i know what uh i took my kids out and taught them out how to shoot a gun my wife the same thing uh she knows how to shoot any weapon that we have not that i have an arsenal or anything but we have several guns around the house one of these days my grandkids probably but i think it's uh you got to have have the living in dallas there's not that many places to go shoot but uh still i think they ought to know how to use one and that it's not just a toy and that when it's not like on t v when someone gets shot uh they get back up if someone gets shot with a real gun they don't get back up yeah yeah i remember i had an old uncle up by tulsa oklahoma that took me out and uh showed me this was it was not my it was my mother's uncle this was a gentleman in his sixties and he took me out with him and uh single shot twenty two and taught me how to shoot we went squirrel hunting and and uh he taught me how to shoot uh a old single shot twenty two and i was probably about twelve at the time and i thought that was the neatest thing and of course uncle sam took me out took me hunting with him and he let me shoot and showed me how right oh yeah well that's about all i we agreed pretty well on this i think okay well it's been real nice talking with you okay bye uh_huh uh_huh i i think i'm kind of bent towards middle liberal of the bridge myself you know i have quite a collection myself and you know i'm a good hunter and i started hunting when i was twelve years old of course my parents made me take hunters safety classes and you know i don't want to see them ban guns completely but i don't want them to completely turn loose of their controls either so i believe that yeah yeah yeah and it's you know it's got to the point now where even our our police departments and our d e a agents and everything have to carry automatic weapons because everybody that's in drug trafficking has got them you know yeah so um yeah yeah that would be yeah that's no it's sure not huh_uh yeah um yeah see in california they in california they make you register when you buy ammunition you have to sign a you know they take your name and driver's license number hunter hunting license number and all that good stuff before you can buy any big ammunition especially for handguns now rifles aren't too bad but you know any kind of handgun at all if it will fit in a handgun and a rifle you would still have to buy it or sign up for it so uh_huh gee gee that's not a bad idea yeah yeah yeah it is no the only way they could do it i think would be to stiffen the penalties on anybody using a gun you know i think if we kind of stiffen them up a little bit course i i feel kind of weird about that anyway i think if somebody shoots somebody they ought to be shot so yeah but you know it would definitely be gun control yeah yeah yeah yeah myself yeah well and they're actually a necessity in life you know they're not you know not everybody needs a gun but sooner or later i need one you know whether i'm out hunting or you know i'm never had to protect my life or well i did in the service but not you know not on the street so i don't really need one in the in the aspects no huh_uh no so mine are you know i use mine for recreation i don't and i enjoyed my guns i have a good time with them so yeah probably yeah no huh_uh yeah yeah i had to explain that to my i've got a six year old now and he you know i have a fifteen year old and a seventeen year old well they understand now you know i've taken time to teach them and now the young boy wants to know and you know like i told him you're a little bit young for a gun let me go out here and you know we would start with the b b gun deal you know so he started with the b b gun and shot a couple of holes in a couple of windows and i took it away from him i said now you know so he's learning the hard way but at least it was a b b gun not a twenty two or a four ten or something so um uh_huh all right uh_huh yeah all right i think there is a lot of responsibility on any of us gun owners to make sure that whoever is around us is at least safe and knows how to use one you know i don't want to get out there deer hunting and have some guy blow me away so yeah i think so all right have a good one bye bye okay we're being recorded uh number one i am one hundred percent for total gun control i yes i am not a member of the national rifle association and i don't believe in hunting and uh i just have had my fill of what is going on with the crime rate and i really feel that we have to do something in order to uh to uh_huh no there's only one problem i have with the whole thing though is you know when they do it i think our biggest problem is yes the the crooks and what have you are going to get weapons if the weapons are available i think the biggest problem we have in this country is there are just entirely too many weapons available and the types of the weapons i mean there is no right there is there is no reason for it i mean and you know when people say you know well my god they're they're cutting into my civil liberties and all this no i i i take a different stand that as long as they are available and they are so readily [accessed] out there then something is taken away from my civil liberties and uh maybe i'm a little bit strong when i said total gun control that's that's really not what i meant but i mean we need control we've got to be able to get a handle on what is happening and we've got to reduce the number of weapons that are out in the in the in the public uh_huh um uh_huh yes all right you you sound like you're into the technology of it which is yeah i agree and you know and again i'm my entire family are they are all hunters and you know they they don't appreciate my stand and i i have no i really have no problem with sports hunters i really don't it's just when they come out and they say they need an uzi in order to do some accurate or decent deer hunting i think i think that's totally outrageous what's happening is people are losing they seem to be losing their common sense over the issue and the issue is the issue is becoming the focus and not what is actually happening with guns uh i i think something will happen all right ron total gun control yes i i agree something should be done but i there i don't believe there is any way of total control over weapons because crooks and people who are going to perform things that are not correct will have access to weapons from somewhere and that means they'll always have an advantage over us and uh they may even get worse because they know we have nothing to support myself now you know i i agree with a lot of the things you just said in your few moments because personally i used to be a great hunter and in the last few years i've said no way matter of fact if i find a uh a a fly running around in the house i pick him up and carry him outdoors i i don't even hit him with a [flyswatter] so i've uh gotten over this business of wanting to go out and shooting and and killing and that sort of thing but i i think that uh personally that we do need some weapons available to most of the people most of the people really are uh honest and uh worthy of carrying on their lives properly uh i'm sort of in line thinking in terms i don't see anything wrong with this five day waiting period if the waiting period is [utilized] to really look at the background of the person purchasing the weapon i mean there's nothing wrong with that do you see anything wrong with that right yeah i'm i'm against this uh automatic and semiautomatic stuff i don't think we should have access to those no huh yes and the the people should be uh selected so that we know that they are all right and that they're they're not uh [acquiring] weapons for [illicit] use uh that is not good there's nothing wrong with a person that enjoys the mechanisms as a matter of fact uh there's a fellow out there working on my house right now who uh brought to me a target from a rifle that he uh pretty well halfway designed and he he put together the uh the bullets in it and he was showing me that at a hundred yards he kept five shots within a quarter of an inch of each other at one hundred yards now see from a technical point of view that is something that that our military people need to know about so there are other interesting uh [facets] in in guns and weapons this is a uh bolt action rifle i think he has and he has done other things to the way the uh barrel sits in the uh the wood part of it and uh he designed the the the bullets themselves and he has fantastic accuracy just just from a technical point of view that interests me not to kill anybody with it or anything with it but just the fact that a piece of mechanism like that could be made to be so accurate uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh okay on a scale of one to ten where do you stand and why yes true right yeah i can i can understand that i was raised in oklahoma and of course being [oklahoman] and texan uh yeah the hunting and everything and i used to things in my father and my husband having guns and all and i i did used to be all in favor of it but it's all of a sudden it's starting to get really scary with these gangs yet i think i would vote a one if i thought that it would be nation wide and they can guarantee no one would have a gun no crooks nothing but because i know that's not going to happen then i have to probably right up there about an eight well it just seems like in the past three or four years it has just gotten so much worse than it was there's always been a certain amount of crime in your you know your urban areas and i know we lived in chicago for seven years and of course it was definitely there so when we first moved here it wasn't as bad as this it's you know it's just getting all of a sudden so much worse i don't know whether it's due to the drugs and the uh drug kings that are here and [jamaican] drug kings coming in i don't know whether that's it or street gangs i don't know what the answer is i know that it's scary and yet i hate the government constantly telling me what i can do and what i can't do and that's basically what the gun control would end up being well it's very true it's not the law abiding citizen that you know is is dangerous with the gun it's the ones that are going out and stealing it and i said i think the only way i would be in big favor of gun control is if they could absolutely guarantee that nobody would have them and i think that would almost have to go with [armies] too i mean they'd have to be almost world wide which we know would never ever happen because even if you said okay you know armed forces could have them some idiot would come out and sell it to somebody on the street to make a quick buck that's very true very true who knows we maybe want to overthrow the government i know if somebody doesn't do something uh what about uh what do you think of this this uh law that they're putting into effect that you have to wait x number of days before you can uh carry the gun or buy you know actually purchase the gun yes well i guess i stand on uh on probably ten for no uh restrictions i uh recently just moved to texas from uh south dakota and nebraska and i guess in terms of gun control i've always uh been raised with the uh idea in the constitution that uh citizens had a right to bear arms and i realize that probably way back when when the constitution was written it probably [regarded] uh more uh of a national defense uh than anything else but uh on the other hand too uh people then uh needed to use firearms for um survival in terms of uh food and uh i was raised uh you know hunting all the time i lived on the farm and uh you know enjoy hunting and i guess i have uh some problems with uh being restricted to um owning a gun for you know hunting purposes mainly and um it scares me a little bit to think that they would begin restricting gun control to the point where um eventually we may not be able to have that right any more yeah it uh moving to this area of course it happens everywhere but uh i guess we're pretty naive coming from small towns uh in the midwest and then uh moving to a larger city where there are drive by shootings and uh there seems like killing for no reason at all and uh i i think so and and there's always the uh the uh the old uh saying that keeps coming up that if a person wants a gun bad enough they'll they'll get one and uh and then uh yeah yeah yeah yeah that's for sure yeah and uh and you know uh i suppose uh years ago way back when uh when uh they had the [revolutionary] war and people decided that they uh were fed up with the government uh and if they didn't have a way to uh to fight back they would have been in big trouble well the way things are going well you know they introduced some gun control back when i was a teenager i believe in terms of uh every gun you bought had to be licensed i believe and uh you know that didn't bother me uh too much and so i guess it depends um if there are some statistics that show that uh that people uh commit crimes on the spur of the moment okay brian fine thanks are you a total banner yeah okay well so let me make sure so you think that uh maybe a five day waiting period for handguns or that stuff would be legitimate uh you just you would be able to buy it but they'd just have to mail it to you i suppose huh oh okay oh yeah let's see i think that gun control has come up because there has been some [crazies] that killed people with guns and i think that's the problem that we need to address is why these people want to kill other people rather than the instrument they particularly used in the assault whether you know sure well we have some laws on the books that uh don't allow convicted felons to purchase guns if i understand correctly and uh i would agree a a short waiting period would be appropriate to uh take care of the heat of the moment type things but uh i think banning semiautomatic twenty two rifles is a a bit on the extreme side and a total ban on guns would just leave guns in the hands of criminals who don't care what the rules are anyway the only purpose for handguns is to shoot people in my opinion or you could do it just for fun you know kind of like a game but uh i think that i should have a right to own a handgun not a automatic semiautomatic no no uh but i think a person needs a way of defending themselves you saw indiana jones the guy came after him with that big knife and just he took care of it just one shot that's right so how is work going they don't let you take guns to work do they uh_huh can they be is it concealed or does it have to has to be on the hip can a hi how you doing kevin good good glad to hear that i understand total banner no i i believe that uh the american public and i as an individual and private citizen have a right to to bear arms and to have a gun as long as i uh am responsible with it and protect the safety and welfare of my kids and and so that they're not playing with it and so that they can't hurt themselves or anyone else playing with it i think that education with a gun is is critical and important uh however i do believe that uh guns ought to be maintained and and controlled that you can't go out and just buy one off the corner and do whatever you want with it because people that are angry or have concerns or want to seek vengeance right away have easy access to guns and in the heat of the moment they can go and do some damage that can hurt themselves and other people so on a scale of one to ten i i think i would rate myself as a in the six or seven or eight but i think that there ought to be some control but i still think that uh individuals have a right how do you feel about it well i don't know if a five day waiting period would be legitimate uh that uh that might cool down some [tempers] i think a a one day would be sufficient the reason i say that is there is an awful lot of people who go to gun shows and if you see an awful lot of [exhibits] and things and if you would like to purchase a gun if that five day waiting period were in effect you wouldn't be able to purchase one at that gun show well i don't think you can mail thing guns through the mail i don't know i think that's a against the law ever since kennedy was [assassinated] so how do you feel about guns uh_huh well do you think that there will continue to always be [crazies] then uh how do you propose that we prohibit those types of individuals from gaining access to guns uh_huh uh_huh okay do you uh do you feel there is a need in the world today to have a an automatic handgun well i think that the the police uh or law enforcement have a need because of the tight quarters they might find themselves but the public i don't know uh_huh yes not an uzi uh_huh yes yes that's true and he uh saved himself in the in the in the process also very fine very no they that's uh that's prohibited where we work although down here in texas uh you do have a right to to wear and carry arms with you at all times that's still that's still you can still do that down here oh you can't no it should not be concealed it has to be on the hip has to be in sight so that uh you know that you're not uh a menace or a problem to individuals how about where you live there in utah hi what do you think about gun control well i guess that i would like to to say that perhaps someplace in the middle where people could somehow qualify or uh have a legitimate use for the the the weapon i suppose because also living in this area the the problems in d c come home very quickly well i'm not so sure about that but i think somehow uh safety courses or i don't know whether this could be something that was done in school but somehow people i'd like to know that the people who had them at least knew what the responsibilities were whether they followed them or not you know at least there's the moral issue that they they knew better which is sort of you know flaky but still uh_huh yeah i don't know this morning in our paper it there was an article about somebody who had bought three guns in virginia because all you have to do is get a driver's license so he went over there and got a driver's license the same day bought three guns and went up to new york and sold them for you know very high [markups] now in a sense that's a legal way of getting the guns but certainly the the purpose is not very legal uh_huh right uh_huh right and i suppose uh you know total ban would lead to more illegal weapons uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh but that's true i mean some people grew up with guns in the house we never had any in the house so to me the you know the first time i saw a gun up close was a pretty scary thing and i'm not sure that's good either uh_huh uh_huh well uh sort of mixed feelings about it i guess uh uh i i i lean more towards the control side than than towards you know just the the free free army uh on the other hand i it's it's sort of an issue of of uh i'm not i'm not a great fan of of government control in general and so it's it's kind of a tough issue what about yourself uh_huh i'm i'm sure yeah uh so you would take a position where somebody without without a uh uh specific use in other words if they just wanted to have a a gun to have in their home uh you wouldn't you wouldn't like them to be able to do that is that uh yeah i i have uh i have the impression that that the the majority of the problems that we have with guns are not are are probably not from the people that are are buying them through legitimate channels anyway uh that may be wrong uh you know i mean certainly there there are cases of of you know children who find their parents' gun or something and and shoot a brother or sister or you know things like that that need to be definitely avoided and that's that's certainly within the channels right but uh a lot of the the crime i think that goes on i i don't know to what the degree the guns are are purchased through regular channels or they're illegal guns uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah i i mean i think uh some or i i don't know if it's been actually been implemented i think so uh or at least there's been talk about doing uh you know like waiting periods and and things like that uh and and uh you know i i think stuff like that is perfectly good i mean basically if you if you don't intend to do anything you know if you if you're buying it for legitimate purposes waiting ten days shouldn't be a problem you know and and things i don't know i've you know i i don't own a gun and and don't really want one and i'd just as soon a lot fewer people did uh but on the other hand you know uh like i say i kind of kind of against government control in general uh yeah and i you know something about banning is that you know there there are so many weapons out there that that they're not going to disappear anytime soon uh and they're already i know there's a ready market for them you know in the the stolen stolen guns can be sold i mean the first thing a a a burglar will pick up if he can is a gun right because uh because they they can be so easily sold and you know they're they're i don't know how many millions of guns have been sold in this country but uh it's not like they're going to disappear all of a sudden uh even if you do do a total ban on them uh it's a real tough problem i i don't know i don't know where i really come down on it i mean i i grew up my father was a hunter right and that's and that's sort of almost a separate issue i think we've generally been talking about handguns and that kind of thing right you know and uh_huh um yeah well we you know we i grew up with them i never really took to hunting i mean i did some of it but uh you know we didn't have any we never had any handguns or anything like that we had you know had shotguns for for [quail] and pheasant hunting and things like that and you know it was a whole different thing and and gun safety was taken very seriously and it was you know i mean before we go hunting we we took safety courses uh you know and and and it but you know that's that seems to me to be just a whole another issue uh you know the the thing the the yeah i'm not certain that people are are are terribly concerned about other people how do you feel about gun control um uh_huh uh_huh well don't you think that you know just having you know some you know almost like a driver's license be required you know with stiff penalties if you are found with with you know a gun that is not registered or you know that you are not licensed to carry i mean it varies from state to state there is no national uh in most states as long as you aren't a convicted felon you know or on probation or uh you know other obvious things like that uh and i know i know that like in a lot of states you could you could be just like released from a mental hospital the day before you know be be obviously insane and then you you know but have your legal right to get a gun uh yeah i'd probably i'd probably say about a five seems like it's a good safe number to pick you know uh_huh uh_huh well you know uh uh if you are looking at like you know country that uh where they do have a lot more gun control like england and places like that you know the amount of violent crime has [decreased] by so much well i mean yeah the uh the in comparing per capita murders are incredibly lower than the united states uh you know i mean the problem though you know they if the since the united states had this you know pretty much unrestricted flow of guns going for so long that i think you know if you were introduced you know any controls it would probably take a long while for them to take effect just because there is a glut of guns out there already you know so it's it's really kind of a complex problem uh i'm not really sure how bad it is i've i've not really had that many problems with it but i mean apparently we we were ranked pretty high up uh i mean i think you know in the i mean i think we have been like ranked in one of the top three for murders in the last few years uh_huh no i've thought about getting one if i get one i think i will probably you know get something i probably wouldn't get a hand gun i would probably get like a shotgun just for protecting myself you know from burglar type thing i do kind of live in the downtown area you know and shotguns are really good because they're i mean somebody is not going to break in steal it and you know use it to mug someone you know uh and you know you yeah i just don't understand these people you know like when they they decide they're going to buy a gun to protect themselves they go out and buy a three fifty seven [magnum] which is going to shoot through you know they are probably going to miss the person and and they're going to shoot through five wall and hit someone you know i mean a shotgun just really struck me as being you know a real good defensive weapon you can sort of point it somewhere in the direction of you know whoever you pretty much stop them and you don't then the actual shot doesn't go that far you know a wall will stop it pretty much uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah that that really does scare me people you know that have guns because you know if you ever get in the situation where you know you are not prepared to shoot but you pick up the gun and point it at the person that that person [rushes] you and you know you're pretty much dead you know because you you've just told the person that you you're about to kill them then you know and and well i mean you you basically made it clear to the person that you know unless he unless you know that you are a real danger to them and then you know if you if they manage to get the gun from you you know their first reaction is going to be you know stop you uh_huh uh_huh um yeah the did it happen at a cafeteria or something uh_huh well uh i mean i don't think that guns should be outlawed but it's going to a lot of the stuff that i mean all you do is to get guns and then like with the stuff of that [massacre] in killeen texas not too long ago but i don't really know i mean unless they do uh just outlaw them how you can uh prevent that yeah that well do you even know what the procedures are now um but it's kind of like if you want a gun you can get a gun especially if you have the money to pay for it yeah huh i didn't know that well that's pretty scary so does now do they want us to say where we feel about it like in rating it one to ten that's where i would probably be well i mean i mean i don't really know what they can how they can really enforce the laws any better because i mean i do think that some people need them and like for protection and stuff and i can understand them wanting to have them but then again it's just like all those nuts out there it has because then um yeah well is the crime that bad there in atlanta yeah i know dallas is i don't know if dallas is in the top three but do you own a gun uh_huh yeah that's true yeah well well now when i first moved to dallas i moved up here by myself and uh my dad gave me a gun but i never did go out and practice with it enough to feel comfortable with it so i finally ended up giving it back to him i said i don't want it i don't want to be responsible for it because you know if you're not going to teach me how to do it and if i am not going to you know be responsible enough to go out and learn i don't need it yeah and they get it from you uh_huh set them off yeah well that's why i ended up giving it back to him i thought well you know i don't want it if i don't know how to you know if i don't really know how to use it and i just didn't want the responsibility so well uh did you hear about that killeen [massacre] or whatever yeah right that kind of i mean it just makes you wonder how people get guns i would be scared selling guns to people okay what's your view what's your view yeah yeah that's true you know even if they give it a shot it's still going to be black market all over the place you know i don't know coming from texas you're probably i don't know i shouldn't make stereo types but gun control is probably [frowned] on quite a bit down there i would think oh you're just live down there yeah oh well yeah well i know how you feel i'm uh i grew up in nebraska and and we always use to go out and hunt all the time you know and man there's no way there's no way i would ever go for a total ban on all weapons that's just i don't know yeah it doesn't sit with me very well i don't know i anymore i keep a thirty eight in my truck you know yeah i just about all well i live in minneapolis and i well actually i live in florida but i am staying in minneapolis for a year and you know both areas are pretty crime ridden right now and it's just you never know who is out there you know it's just for self protection purposes and then of course there's the hunting issue so yeah that's good what do you do jeff oh yeah all right yeah i'm uh researcher of honeywell up here so uh yeah you guys uh do you get much of a chance to hunt or anything or yeah you know that's something i miss quite a bit yeah yeah all right yeah my brother was uh a guide for bear and elk hunts out in idaho for a while and uh really enjoyed it quite a bit but i don't know i guess that what the scale now is it's zero for uh for a complete that's right i guess i am about eight or nine yeah no doubt about it but uh yeah yeah if there's if there's a way you know to limited it to people that i don't know that they i guess they passed a couple of uh uh laws a here while back in some states in terms of a waiting period where you know you go to buy a hand gun and then they actually uh i know it's this way in florida they have a waiting period where you buy one and that's a week and then they check you out and make sure you don't have a record you know and things like that i think that's a pretty good idea uh and that's i don't know that's not a bad idea but then again you can always get around that you could go through the black market like you say you know you always be able to get around but uh yeah it's one of things but uh i don't know i guess i guess some forms of guns should probably be controlled just like i'm not real sure why anybody would need a full automatic weapon yeah i'm just not i think those have been pretty much you know banned altogether anyway there it kind of takes the sport out of hunting you know it's like what can you do with that that you can't do in a self protection situation with like a seven or a twenty shot twelve you know you might do the same thing and so it's like i don't know it does it takes the sport out of it for me i would much rather have a bow anytime i i like bows you know i have done some bow hunting and i uh i get into it and i think it's more of a challenge you know but uh i don't know i guess it keeps the shell makers in business but uh i don't know anyway that's about where i stand you uh and you uh have you eaten yet or whatever is it seven o'clock there you guys central oh it's not too good it's kind of rainy actually around this time of year you expect it up here to get down to about uh i don't know ten or twenty degrees and it's been up around forty so people are people are whining about the rain and stuff but not too bad about the temperature ice is starting to melt and stuff like that so i am just up here for the year and it's kind of shocking all right huh well i have a hard time thinking that they can control guns personally i mean that's right that's right yeah it is but i'm not really from i'm not really from texas i just live down here now i've i've lived down here a couple years i'm originally from colorado but yeah there uh there uh there's a lot of hunters here uh_huh i just think i think it's ridiculous i mean really uh_huh right right sure uh i i'm in uh program control for a company up here yeah we do schedules for programs schedule programs what do you do oh okay uh i haven't had a chance to do any hunting since i've been down here i don't own a shotgun but i'd like to go bird hunting so yeah uh when i was in colorado we went deer and elk hunting you you know quite a bit but one for a total ban and uh yeah i i agree with you there i mean if they can anyway get it keep criminals from having guns which they can't i you know i'm not for it uh_huh uh_huh sure yeah i don't either yeah i fully auto but even well i mean a semiautomatic i guess that's yeah right sure right oh really yeah sure me too yeah i am about the same way yeah uh yeah it's about seven fifteen how is the weather up there is it right yeah okay um i guess if i had to rate it from one to ten i guess i would rate it a five in the aspect that i wouldn't want everybody to have guns and i think there should be limitations of like [semiautomatics] uh things like that should not be just given out to anybody in fact you know i can't imagine anybody having a semiautomatic for what purpose uh so i guess you know being that i come from a hunting family i'd rather have some restrictions put on weapons but yet allow hunting rifles uh things that people would use for sporting type of uh a activity those would be fine but when you get into a a lot of the more complex weapons i would say yes we need to put restrictions on them uh_huh uh_huh exactly for self protection sure i can't imagine that yeah uh_huh to do massive amounts of killing uh yeah the only thing that i can see is the police having it in a case where somebody is uh uh you know going to kill a massive amount of people or uh somebody that's [escaping] that's uh very dangerous semiautomatic would allow more rounds to be put out to hopefully catch the person and and uh get him down but uh you know i i think of my family uh they're very much into sporting and uh you know as far as hunting and also like uh clay [pigeons] things like that so they have may have some shotguns they may have other type of uh hunting type things but i figured if the if the criminals had to take a hunting gun out to kill somebody more than likely somebody would see it you know what i'm saying versus a you know a small handgun uh that can be you know put right in your coat pocket and nobody would see it but yet you can't stop people from having you know a handgun in their home even if there are small children around there's you know you can't say people with small children can't have guns and people without small children that may have grandchildren you know still have these guns but uh i guess i i was always taught number one a gun isn't a toy uh you know and i don't know if that makes a difference if the parent sets down to them and say this gun can kill you you know and don't ever play with it uh so i don't know if that makes a difference or what but uh_huh the criminals would get them i mean even if they had to go across border to get them uh_huh how to use you know to make sure the guns are put up as something as uh not a toy yeah because we had guns all over our house when we were kids and not that they were laying on the uh couch or anything like that but uh i never had an interest in them being in the fact that i knew that guns could kill and i had four brothers and never messed with any type of guns and so it was kind of the idea that we knew that a gun could kill and that a gun wasn't a toy and of course we were quite young and we went through uh the national rifle uh club and so we were taught you know kind of at a a good age ten and eleven and twelve to sit down with a kid and say okay if you're going to learn how to shoot a gun you're going to learn how to do it correctly and you're going to learn how to have [safeguards] and and know how to protect yourself but yet have this training so that kids aren't you know they have to have a certain respect for it uh_huh sure uh_huh sure yeah yes yeah yeah i think so and i don't know if the kids nowadays are different than what uh_huh uh that's i probably would have to agree with you pretty much all the way i think uh i definitely think that there some things shouldn't be limited like like you said rifles and uh hunting rifles and possible handguns for people who use them to right and but i think the i think semiautomatic weapons people say they use them because it for sport but i i personally cannot see any use for them other than uh for for like people who dislike have some sort of [crazed] you know ambition to use have high powered weapons or something right and i mean you can only how much do you uh_huh right right uh_huh right yeah yeah that's true right uh_huh yeah right right uh_huh right well i think uh in that i think that cases like that it's definitely um i think if you're to say okay we have to get rid of them all because you know they can only they only seem to do bad it it's uh it's saying we're right right and people who people who have them and are responsible with them are are are being punished and people who and they're saying that people you cannot take care of things yourself or like that you're not smart enough to teach your kids how to how to uh right right uh_huh right uh_huh right right uh_huh uh_huh right well i think i mean we i grew up in a family and and my father had two guns because he used to hunt years ago but he stopped before really before i was old enough to remember but and i knew we had the guns in the house and the time my father was keeping them just for protection at the time but we it was never my brothers sisters nor i never i mean none of us ever thought well let's go look at the gun or let's go get the gun it was just something you knew was there and it was your father's and you that was not something you'd go and play played with at all and i think maybe uh and that's the type of the thing that should be you know stressed i'm ready if you are well i think that people should be allowed to have them especially if they go hunting which my son goes hunting he goes deer hunting he goes duck hunting uh he's read books about guns since he was like probably eleven or twelve years old and i just think that uh as far as that's concerned he should be able to have them to go hunting with you know as far as just having handguns around to to have them i don't believe that you should have handguns around well no there's too many sports people out there that that do do these things yeah well i suppose you could uh uh_huh and i think if they want one they're going to get one you know the bad guys are you know like i say if they want a gun they're going to find out somehow to get one well i agree with you on that because i know uh in fact i had bought my son a rifle like for a christmas present one time and for a rifle there's no waiting there wasn't anyhow now there might be now but there wasn't anything for you know rifles and things like that i guess it was just handguns that there was a some kind of a waiting you know two weeks while they checked you out or something but uh most of these people that's got these guns that's going around you know robbing people and shooting people uh_huh uh_huh i see now i know they were having a gun show about a month ago and i was just wondering how that did work if somebody wanted to buy a gun at a gun show there's no restriction though you don't have to wait or nothing then huh yeah i was just curious you know because uh i know at at the regular gun show you know gun shop that you that you do have to wait for pistols like a couple of weeks and then they check you out then they call you up and you go pick it up which i think they have to do on rifles and things now too i think there is some something like that anyhow here out here in california i think there is now but uh_huh now we don't have guns because we don't go hunting or anything like that but like i say my son he's he's always had a like i think his first little rifle that we got him was like he twelve or thirteen years old but he's always he went to the to the school to learn how to shoot it he goes to the pistol range and and the rifle range to shoot them he likes to go to that uh shotgun thing where you shoot at those uh yeah right he likes to do that you know but uh i don't know i think they should try to control it and everything you know but as far as just banning it completely there that's not going to happen uh_huh yeah right right now i do believe though like in california if a little kid gets a hold of a gun that someone has i think they're liable now for they can be you know put in jail and everything the whoever owned the gun you know now when they have kids around you'd think that they would be locking them up or you know uh_huh well they can get into almost anything anymore okay um where do you stand uh on oh uh_huh uh_huh right right right yeah yeah yeah i agree too i uh it's it's as far as the ban goes and everything i don't think it's possible uh to completely ban guns there's just too many right and i yeah right i mean yeah that that's true and i mean the the [technology's] not that hard i mean you could make a gun you know from simple you know you know you know if if you really wanted a gun you you could make one uh oh you know true that's true uh_huh yeah yeah it's yeah i mean yeah there's there's no way to stop uh stop anybody from getting a gun uh i think there should be more control as like uh like maybe waiting periods and things like that you know uh uh_huh yeah uh_huh sure yeah right uh_huh yeah uh i i know my friend is uh really into guns and uh uh i went a couple of times with him to gun shows you know that come through town and everything and i mean they just have i mean they have anything you'd want i mean you know you know anywhere from rifles and semiautomatic weapons and there's i mean there's nothing you can just go buy one and take it home and it's easier than getting a like a video membership card at you know a video store uh yeah yeah you just go and uh buy the gun and uh no well except for the the pistols and i'm not sure how they do that i know they uh_huh uh_huh right yeah i think that's uh_huh yeah yeah i'm not sure i'm not really sure but what uh the gun laws in pennsylvania are like no uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah the [skeets] you mean uh_huh yeah i don't yeah i i don't think it can happen either i just don't i don't see and then i i think uh hadn't thought about this before but if you do that if they would uh uh decide to ban guns it would just open up a a market you know a black market for them and so you know they they would just all the profits would go to you know yeah oh oh yeah the owner's responsibility yeah yeah yeah you know that's that's true uh you know i i had a friend who was a uh a policeman in a in a local [borough] just a small uh one of the little neighborhoods you know one of the small towns uh near pittsburgh and uh she said that that uh you know he used to always keep his guns locked up and everything like that but i mean you know you're you know people make you know they forget or you know you know kids get in the way kids the way kids are you know i mean they can you know right uh on the scale they gave one to ten i'd say i'm probably a four i'm not totally i'm not one of these people that believes that we should not be able to buy guns but i don't think we should be carrying uzis either you know what i mean yeah i know i mean i don't think machine guns automatic weapons i don't believe in things like that but i think that everyone should have the right to have a hand gun in their house if they so choose an but i think there should be some restrictions when you buy one you know they should do more background search on you they should i think it should be harder to buy one yeah no they don't they don't ask anything except how old you are i don't think that's kind of scary yeah they might be you know how we are here in texas it's like everybody is a hunter so i'm not much of a hunter but i've never even bought a gun myself my dad's given it to me or someone's given me one so i'm probably real illegal i'm carrying guns that aren't even mine it really is uh the only problem i have with gun control is that they the [radicals] want to ban all kinds of weapons and then the only people carrying guns are going to be be the people who are going to kill you anyway yeah exactly right it really is because they're going to get them one way or another they will always have a way look at drugs they always have a way to get that so and they're illegal i don't think it would do us any good to outlaw them all together that's true i think they ought to teach people how to shoot them too how to take care of one how to act around one when they buy them yeah exactly you can not take the gun home until you have taken this course sign up here something like that right exactly before graduation yeah oh yeah they do they get real emotional about it all the i've worked with a lot of people that hunt and they just they they don't see any sense in at all they think it's ridiculous to have any kind of gun control but then of course they're hunters they know what they're doing they don't realize there are a bunch of crazy people out there that don't use it for that well yeah that's true they shoot each other thinking they're a deer yeah darn i thought you were a deer bob sorry my mistake looked like [antlers] i don't know yeah that happens a lot too but i guess that's it my opinion on it so what now uh uh i think we just hang up yeah well uh she said uh one was a total ban on gun control and ten was uh no control at all where do you fit in there oh yeah well we're probably not too far apart i'd probably fall in there at a seven or eight well i pretty much agree with that that's uh uh_huh uh_huh is that right in the whole state golly well the they're now criminals themselves yeah that's that's the crazy thing about it you're you're putting uh they're they're putting more laws and more restrictions and more burden on the honest citizen the one who doesn't give them a problem anyway you know and it's it's crazy they're just putting more giving more paper work problems to the honest citizen an an you know because uh a person whose going to use a gun for a crime he's he's not too concerned with the crime of not registering his gun that's yeah i i would agree with that that well you know that's that's why i say i kind of fall into a seven or eight range you know i i don't have a problem with registration but uh you know when it comes to restrictions and and yeah yeah it is crazy because like you say this country was founded uh and obviously had a uh had a big interest in in letting them their citizens arm themselves and which uh you know which maybe does cause some problems that maybe other countries with more restrictive laws don't have but it's one of the prices that you have to pay for for freedom i think yeah yeah uh_huh oh yeah yeah oh yeah everybody who lives out in the country or or around around my area everybody who lives out in the country has a gun yeah you know it's not for uh not for protection or hunting or or anything just you know for all those reasons just you know nobody thinks anything about having a gun it's no big deal i'm in uh trenton texas yeah did you say you were in california well i well i didn't know this program reached out this far all right well that's that's a neat deal oh i be we have we gave them a few minutes worth all right you too good night there yeah i think uh i i'm a i'm an advocate of uh gun control uh maryland i think you'd be surprised is is very pro gun control yeah as a state in fact we have uh they're now introducing some of the more most restrictive gun control laws here in maryland and uh the uh n r a did a nationwide campaign to raise money to [defeat] uh maryland's uh local state laws and lost maryland uh voted in favor to have gun control here i think the problem is is because of uh we have there's so much crime in the [adjoining] community of washington d c that uh we're hoping that they could you know if they put in more stricter laws then that crime won't reach out into maryland which is in a sense a suburb of that uh i guess they're experiencing now i don't know two murders or three murders a day in washington d c normally associated with automatic weapons so i think that's the uh that's the big press up in the northeast is that they want to remove automatic weapons so yeah i can understand you know guns for and we everybody else in maryland supports that and i yeah yeah i think what you'll find though is that the east coast is very uh is pro gun control i know i am but like you know you're a hunter and you're a sport you're a sport hunter that's true and that that's why you know in a sense how it doesn't it does inconvenience you but it could save lives i think is the way we look at it here and we're seeing so many murders uh between uh in in washington d c well i think i think the long run is is to get uh is to get and this is very active in the politics here in maryland now then the long run there's also there's a bill being trying to be passed right now i guess through the federal legislature on uh instant checkups uh a total computerized system right and it's year it's years away but it it will be it probably will be implemented on the east coast first because the f b i headquarters is here in in virginia and the this will probably be the places that will start to come in faster so yeah it will take a while before uh it comes in but that's one reason why i guess the the plan is here in maryland uh because i actually just received uh information from my uh uh the uh brady organization that uh they want this seven day bill passed until the uh the new bill until they can actually have a computerized system and i think the idea of the brady bill is to have this seven day waiting period to be able to check up on gun purchases or whatever uh until they can do it automatically on a large computerized system oh sure that's that's true but he had uh he had a history of of depression and and [suicidal] behavior you know uh_huh yeah well i don't think he would have been i think that his his type of crime i i don't think he would have been i think a street criminal would be you know like what you find in washington d c they would be capable of doing it i don't think this fellow would have i think i think the idea is that they also uh my idea too is to remove the automatic weapons from from the markets you know not to be able to purchase walk into a store and buy an automatic weapon right it will eliminate some of the you know that that type of crime or whatever yeah and right you can do anything yeah and i i think that's you know in a sense uh i have friends that are peace [activists] and i'm not that extreme everything they think that everything comes down to you know the whole world but i just think that right now we should do a little bit better checking and and uh and i i believe totally that automatic weapons should not be sold in this country uh those are you know [paramilitary] i don't think even sport you know do you know anybody that sport hunts with a automatic weapon see and i don't either so and i do have friends my brother is a lifelong member of the n r a so it's fun you know it's uh but it's just a belief you know i guess we all work towards uh what we think will make it a better society uh_huh and everybody's differences of opinion are probably good that's what makes our you know yeah no but it's a start i think i think what you i guess you have to look at things almost just like the i guess the like the pro life and pro choice is that you start with something and if you accomplish it then you increase your objectives and and you move to the next yeah you can't do it at once yeah so once if you can uh i guess if you can show the put a seven day waiting period in you can [mobilize] for that then you can also uh uh if you show the weakness in the n r a which is a big lobby you know hopefully you can show enough weakness uh from the the the gun control [advocates] you can show enough weakness that you can you know get the president to put a total ban on on assault weapons or the legislatures you know yeah well that's yeah uh_huh right yeah and see now and if it doesn't work i would be the first one to say you know just like prohibition didn't work if it doesn't work i think i'd be one of the first ones to say okay you know it hasn't worked in five years it hasn't reduced any crime the statistics still show the same so uh_huh yeah well see you already registered i think the idea is to get a better idea of who purchases guns uh what type of person purchases what type of of gun and and and also you know the idea that somebody can go out you know a lot of the the mass murderers you know like that one fellow that walked into the post office purchased he was severely depressed uh from he'd just lost his job uh the he was severely depressed he'd been taking [depressant] drugs or whatever and he walked into a a store bought automatic weapons bought bullets drove immediately back to the post office and shot his former uh supervisor you know and i think the idea is if you put a seven day waiting period on some of these instant crimes you know this fellow may seek help before he murders you know ideas like that and you know in in all honesty i think all of us believe that uh that uh uh you know people kill guns don't you know that i i think but the idea is to is the the compulsive neurotic by gun killer there there are and and they always take a number of people with them so i yeah yeah see and in the back of my mind if we save one life if you save one life you have to wait seven days probably less because if you have a clean record it probably would be faster than seven days you know but you have to wait seven you have to wait seven oh they probably wouldn't not yet they probably wouldn't uh_huh uh_huh well they might contact maybe an immediate member of your family and and ask them if you know they thought that you were capable sure yeah but i i think it's worth it you know that's you know they have strict gun laws in london and they have and england and they have very few murders by by uh automatic weapons and and uh uh guns you know even the even the police for the longest time didn't really carry guns and all over great britain though the english no it's far less than what we have in the united states we're like the murder capital of the world in the civilized world you know above third world countries yeah and i don't know it's it's just who knows it's an argument i guess you know but i see that's the thing i totally a hundred percent see everybody's point my brother's a member of the n r a we argue about this over dinner and my mother and dad don't care one way or another so they just always say oh just shut up boys i have pretty strong feelings about it yeah i think that guns ought to be controlled well let's see on one to ten i guess i vary i actually started out as a member of the n r a in my youth but having looked at murder statistics in other countries uh it's so dramatic that i think that i'm probably down to about a two or a three in terms of control however no i'm sorry maybe up to a nine or a ten uh i opened the [almanac] one day and it just has murders of by by guns and you look and you look at european countries and and it's like six eleven four and you get to the u s and it's four thousand and that tells me something about yeah that that's i mean the other problem is there's so many guns out there if you ban sales of guns right now there'd still be millions and millions and millions of them but uh would it would really be nice to make it a little harder to get one so that every punk in the world doesn't doesn't pack a rod yeah right yeah yeah i think i think that you're right it would be the pretty much the same problem that that prohibition is in fact pretty much the same problem that drug control is if enough people want it and they're willing to pay for it they'll get it yeah yeah yeah that's certainly true i mean i own a handgun myself i've actually never fired the thing but but uh but i went out and bought it intending to to learn to use it and so on but i never did yeah right right yeah i mean i certainly just walked into the store and bought mine and a box of bullets i suppose i could have gone and blown my own brains out or anyone else's who was who was nearby although i must say i have a healthy respect for the thing yeah yeah it's uh it sort of amazes me that that in the gulf war people were really concerned about ten or twenty or thirty or a hundred people dying and if a thousand people died in that war it would have been a mess and if five thousand had died it would have been considered a national [calamity] and yet that many people die uh from [gunshot] [wounds] yeah i mean i think that we have our values in a in a sort of in in a funny place yeah i mean in some in some fields we seem to have this really profound respect for human life and in other fields we don't i think guns and automobiles are the two places where we're willing to take our licks you know we're willing to accept sixty thousand highway deaths a year yeah yeah in some areas but i think in other areas uh i don't know i guess this this this this gulf war came to mind where where uh well war just comes to mind you know couple a hundred people get get blown up and it's and it really [shakes] the country to it's roots maybe just because of the way it happens and uh but you know we'll go all out uh to save uh a child with a rare disease who makes the newspaper will get millions of dollars in contributions and and all kinds of medical aid because that one life is considered so precious when it's viewed somehow when it's viewed in i don't know as as a single life it becomes very precious and when you view it as a statistic whether it's guns or automobiles or smoking uh people just don't see those as individual lives somehow or they don't they don't uh relate to them personally yeah yeah yeah yeah it yeah they are and and it's really changing the social structure of things i know i went out with a bunch of people i don't know six or seven people and we were just sitting around drinking beer and the waitress asked us which one was driving she didn't want to wasn't going to serve that person anything um yeah i didn't think about that i sort of thought that yeah i thought that was the case i mean if uh if my kid grabs my gun and goes and shoots somebody i would really have the feeling that they're going to come [banging] on my door um um um i don't know what that says it's pretty sad yeah yeah it's well it's just too late i mean there are countries i've lived in both japan and england where guns are not available even criminals don't carry them or it's so hard to get and the and the law is so severe for people caught using them that by and large uh they don't yeah yeah yeah no i think by the by the the the year nineteen hundred there were probably enough guns in the u s i mean it's just always been a way of life here the wild wild west well yeah that's uh that's a point although uh if that's the case why are we spending all this money on all of this high tech weaponry i wonder yeah okay well i just on on gun control i just always felt like that i think i don't think it hurts for anybody to wait for a week or two before they get a gun if somebody goes in to buy one so that they can check that person out uh i don't believe that most of the criminal acts that are done are done by guns that are bought in a gun shop though i believe it's probably bought across the market and i don't think gun control is going to have any control over that at all uh sort of a a little bit of restriction maybe i might say if a if a criminal should go happen to go into a gun store i don't think it would hurt anybody to wait a week to go back and pick up that gun so that they can check them out and if it is somebody like that then no but i really think that most of the criminals in our city who have guns do not go into a gun store and buy them i think they get them from other means oh i don't know like from each other you know uh i think so jeez now i don't know that's right nobody over there carries guns i don't know but you get away with guns completely i guess that's right i agree with that i agree with that i we do not own one uh and i don't intend to buy one and i'm not a hunter i guess those people feel a little bit different but i don't believe in hunting either so you know right uh_huh no i don't either well it is terrible when you have ride down the street and think somebody could just shoot at you for nothing which has been in the news a lot lately you know no apparent reason right right huh yeah [uprising] you think we could ever get to that point where there would be no firearms i don't either that's the problem not in this country right oh yes yeah well i think we ought to have some right i could go for that yeah i think that would i think that's the only way well i've enjoyed talking to you oh me too okay uh_huh oh where would i be i would be somewhere around um seven or eight i think for control oh no uh more on the uh higher end yeah uh well for one i think criminals uh they uh i mean i'm all for people you know hunting and doing their thing although i don't hunt personally i don't uh i don't own any guns but uh you know i mean i've i've shot guns plenty of guns uh target practice and uh well i mean i've kind of gone out hunting a little bit you know with boyfriends but uh it's it's fun but you really have to have respect for the weapon and uh but the thing i'm concerned about is you know those people you know like a seven day delay is not going to hurt those people it's no big thing uh you know because it's it's you know recreation whereas the people who are going out to uh you know for crime you know to rob somebody now i think that's good that they have enough time to check their record you know and it hey yeah it's for everybody's safety uh_huh yeah i mean i could be five too oh well i didn't think about that yeah uh_huh yeah yeah it definitely is i didn't think about the other side huh huh well i served in the service so you have to you have to uh shoot a weapon and qualify otherwise you don't pass so to speak and uh we had to zero it you know to your own eye each gun you have to kind of zero to your own eye and how you look at the sights and uh uh well i'm kind of fifty fifty you know you know hearing your argument it i'm just right smack in the middle uh well you well you definitely need to you know have the uh respect for it and you can't just pick up a gun and expect to hit something you know you might be within let's say a foot range i mean uh i don't know half a foot to a foot off uh just because of your sights and how you look through a sight as compared to somebody else oh uh that was uh i think it was just for small it was [quail] i think i mean yeah that was just nothing not not anything like deer or rabbits or squirrels but uh uh_huh oh well here uh actually about thirty minutes away there was a guy that fired and the bullet actually went through the deer and then hit somebody and killed them so it hit two different targets uh in oh no it's i'm surprised because usually when a bullet hits something it uh it it [compresses] you know it loses it's shape but uh evidently they had bone [fragments] of both so uh yeah it killed and and they've had several instances right here in raleigh and it was national news and it was a real big thing but uh had several uh one woman was out in her backyard and she had a white glove on she was taking her laundry down and the guy thought it was the tail of the uh deer and shot her uh i think so yeah there was two or three [killings] like right one was a schoolteacher and of course all the kids uh were upset about it and it made the news so uh you know it's it hit pretty close to home i guess i know i wouldn't even want to go hiking you know with people out there hunting bob it's it's kind of like abortion it's kind of a touchy subject but um i feel it any person is has the right to be armed but i don't think they should have an arsenal i don't believe in uh automatic weapons i don't believe in in uh having [antitank] guns and um i i there's just there's just too many uh weapons around no i'm i'm yeah no uh i think that's a good thing in the sense that it um it stops someone that is acting on a impulse however uh anyone that has a revenge factor in mind is is is going to wait that out um most um dallas has if you read in the papers recently um the um uh murder ratio in dallas is one point seven i think per day uh and ninety somewhat percent of these know the [perpetrator] it's it's not it's not criminals that are going out and killing people it it's people with guns that are that are shooting other people no someone that's got one and and and for some reason whatever um they became uh [enraged] or uh you know uh some of these are somebody's dating somebody's uh girl friend or ex wife or um a person that they know and and it's it's again something that you know it's it's a uh it's a decision of uh emotion not um it's not something you can really control you know i don't think you can i don't think you can regulate it if they don't use a gun maybe they'll use a knife sure well yeah and and you look at the you know drive by shootings and things like that with with young uh people involved it's it's a very volatile situation and it's a funny world that we live in uh_huh uh_huh yeah sure well that's parental control and that's you know that extends beyond guns that extends to drugs and everything else that that is bad in our society and and we don't have the we don't have the parental control that we need that's a well um gosh it set up on a scale one to ten uh you know i i think i would too i think i'd [straddle] the fence uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah well right right yeah uh_huh right yeah oh well i agree with you uh it seems like the the crime rate has gone up even more um here this year they're talking about uh there're more murders in dallas um almost since last year and uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah oh yeah so but yeah i i just i wouldn't want to ban it completely um but uh somehow there needs to be the one thing that i did like was that where you had to wait seven days um you know um yeah yeah yeah waiting seven days so that they can make sure that check it out and everything's okay and to me that was uh that was perfectly acceptable you know because if you are a law abiding citizen you're not going to want to you know it's not going to matter to you if you have to wait a little while uh_huh oh yeah oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh oh yeah yeah oh i agree with you yeah uh_huh oh yeah yeah no i i don't think that they should ban it i i really don't um you know i i don't have a gun in the house myself because i have uh children and uh you know feel really uncomfortable about that but if i was by myself i'd definitely have a gun uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh okay uh_huh yeah so that oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah yeah but see these people i know they keep them up underneath their pillows you know sitting right on top of their dresser drawers i mean it's no wonder you know the kids get in there and then they blow uh other people away so uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh oh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah yeah so that um yeah but that that's about the biggest reason why i just never never and and i won't even let my my son play with play guns either you know not even get that idea about about them yeah there you go there you go that's right there you go yeah me too oh i've gone back and forth on this subject uh many years my husband use to be uh when we were dating he use to really enjoy going out and hunting you know he grew up learning how to hunt uh so i had grown up thinking that was an awful thing and then as i learned more about it i realized some of the advantages and and then the real reason people most people go out there and hunt and so i kind of got accustomed to the idea but then over the years and when you hear so much about uh what what's actually going on out there it is kind of a volatile subject and and i i tell you at this point in time i cannot give you uh a real answer to how i feel on it i think i would agree with the with some of the uh things the movements out there that are trying to get a a time at least a time restraint on purchasing guns so that you know there's some research that can go on before someone can just walk out with a gun i do feel like that's worthwhile and making sure that that kind of thing goes on but as far as not allowing sales of guns to the public i think that's a little drastic and not realistic because as we all know when there's a ban on anything the people that shouldn't have them still get it anyway so i don't see where that's going to solve anything personally yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah i have to agree with you there uh yeah i think that after my husband actually got away from hunting just due to the fact that he was busy working and all he's also kind of lost the the love of going out there and hunting like he once use to in fact i think if he really had the time to get back in the wilderness i think he had rather grab a camera now than the the gun and try yeah and try to rather capture it that way than uh because really there's no sense of uh the joy of it like he once had and i think that you know what he was use to when he was a kid and what they did as a family compared to now what his priorities are i think yeah there are some real strong minded people on this issue yeah yeah uh_huh yeah yeah that's the problem there are many fools out there that just don't think you know always you know my kids are smarter and they know about guns and what happens then it may not happen to their kid but it will happen to the neighbor who doesn't understand it and happens to come by and visit or you know that kind of thing unfortunate that there are many people out there that just don't have a lot of common sense and i think that could happen oh i don't know does it really register what we're saying uh let's see i got confused it was a one to ten on what oh uh you know i would have to put myself at a five oh from the from the scale of one to ten i i lean more towards no restriction we by the constitution we have the the right to bear arms and i believe our freedoms are being constantly [eroded] all the time and president bush just signed a law that that banned lot of automatic weapons and and such where they wouldn't do any more damage than some winchester rifles or things like that what do you think about that well that's a that's a that's a good point also we have to we have to be [cognizant] that our society's becoming more and more haves and have nots and the main the main purpose say for the police is to keep the have nots from taking from the haves and that is the purposes of the gun control oh i i i agree i my point was that the police want to get rid rid of the people of of guns and what's happening is that i see i i view this country as as as we have peoples and societies and cultures and things that are be that are [oppressed] and so that to to take the way the those weapons so they can protect themselves is that's what the means and that's what they're trying to do and by [enacting] all this legislation that's true yeah well you know i another perspective is that the people in this country i'll just for not lack of a better word i'll say they're spoiled they haven't been except for the immigrants that have come to this country they're not [cognizant] of war and and chaos and terrorism like lebanon or countries that have been invaded and if our country needs if our country's invaded we need the people to to rise i mean the the military and the police isn't going to do it all for us and and if we don't have the the what do you think on uh on a scale of one to ten where would you rate yourself on on gun control most and ten being no restrictions at all uh_huh yeah i think i would be be somewhere around a four or five myself and uh it seems to me like there's there's it's not it's not fair to just kind of do everything all the same with all guns cause they're not all the same you know like hand guns and uh assault rifles i think are a little bit different than rifles and shotguns so and you don't need three hundred rounds a minute to uh to get hold of a deer and and if you did it really wouldn't be worth eating so yeah yeah uh_huh yeah that makes sense that makes a lot of sense i don't see uh i mean it's not like you're going to go hey i'll go hunting today and usually if you are going to go hunting it's pretty early in the morning anyway and the store is not going to be open so a three day waiting period makes perfect sense to me i guess the only real questions then is uh is gun control does it does it work i mean can you enforce it uh_huh yeah i don't i guess i mean the only thing that i i question is i mean i think if if it was really easy to enforce that it it would be great the only thing that uh that would worry me about it is that the only real way that i know to enforce it is if someone commits a crime while having weapons not registered you can tag on a couple of extra years but as it is now you put someone in prison and they're out in you know one fifth of the time they were sentenced to anyway so i mean they're they're not even staying in prison without the extra years on there much less i don't think they would be staying any longer with extra years [tagged] on there uh_huh i think you might have had i guess i'm that got to be but i like the idea of the uh the waiting period because i don't think that i mean i really think if someone wants to get a gun to commit a gun to commit a crime they are going to get a gun but uh if someone is just like all hot and bothered and ready to go out and uh and get someone just because they're all charged up emotionally that a three day waiting period you're not going to stay that angry for that long at least i'm not yeah and so uh i i guess it's the subject is uh gun control uh_huh uh_huh yeah i sort of believe the same way i think i'm i'm probably considered more of a conservative but i still think that uh with regards to gun control the uh like convicted felons you know they shouldn't be able to have one uh also i'm in if you look at it uh like say a waiting period i'm in favor of a waiting period as just that a waiting period before somebody buys a a handgun like you say a week or two weeks as a cooling off period but i i i guess the uh n r a they kind of look at it as a spring board towards more restrictive gun controls and so i can kind of see both both sides of of the of the uh issue on that uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah that that is true uh as a as a toy you know i mean if you call a gun a toy they would be it would be interesting to have one shoot one but uh but you're right there's no no real legitimate need for one unless you consider uh like personal defense like if your home or something that's kind of extreme i i don't personally own one but uh it's it's really it really is a touchy issue i know uh the uh like you mentioned the plastic handguns the glock it seems to me like like that that weapon they could it seems to me like they could [bypass] all the i i think the uh the major concern is is that they think that it can be slipped through airport security like it it's impersonal to x rays seems to me like technically that would be very simple to solve just put some sort of a a metal flake or something that would show up on on x rays you know to show the [outline] of the gun and then you'd still have the advantages of the gun which is i believe light weight and uh that would uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah it's uh the n r they're uh they're almost a little too radical in the other extreme i i i'm pretty strong in favor of of personal gun ownership but they uh they might even get a little carried away you know with the lobbying and and whatnot but well i think we have a lot of laws on the books right now that if they were kept and followed would take care of a lot of the problems we have pardon yes the gun the gun control uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh we require permits like if you're going to carry a pistol for protection or for whatever reason you you know have you to have a permit for that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i i just i just don't feel that uh a stronger restrictions is going to stop a person who really wants to have one for misuse i really don't personally feel that it's going to help well those we don't need uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh no no no somebody's who's into into shooting though like you say [sharpshooters] or uh that type of thing wouldn't be so bad but uh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i don't think the laws are going to keep them from getting them if they really want one i just i really don't believe that uh_huh oh definitely definitely uh_huh that's i say if they would use the laws they have on the books i think it would stop quite a bit of what goes on but they're i don't know it it sometimes seems like they're too lenient with some things but yet if a guy [steals] a loaf of bread for their family he's in worse trouble than they are yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah it's kind of a cop out uh_huh oh yeah definitely yeah yeah i think a lot of people put themselves in the in the place of the person that has done the crime and they think of how they would react and then they don't think anybody could do the things that this person is accused of doing and i think that sometimes colors some of their feelings on uh uh_huh uh_huh right right right right uh_huh uh_huh they should be kept there and overcrowding of course that has a lot to do with i think a lot of times with uh the type of sentence that's given you know what's available for keeping them what uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i don't have a my my my husband and my one boy he hunted uh so uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well some people have no sense at all in shooting to know how far to be away from buildings and that to shoot i mean some of them use no sense at all uh_huh well we've had that happen in our area also uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i think it depends on the community now we're rural also and our houses are not they're not that close like we have a shooting range across the road from our home but it's far enough away if we have fields around it and it's it's far enough away from you know houses and that type of thing that uh no it's just our own personal we just have a a personal lot yeah yeah now we do have a [sportsman's] uh club who has a an indoor shooting range and it's very nice our our one boy was a [sharpshooter] he was interested in yeah he was interested in that then uh did a uh no not really he doesn't do it now because he's not here he lives in pittsburgh now and so he he really hasn't been doing too much shooting lately but he he really did enjoy it uh i don't think they had to have not for shooting not for their rifles and that it would be just like uh going hunting you don't need a permit to carry you know you're not allowed to carry them loaded or anything like that uh no no i don't think so uh the rifles that they use like in their uh uh r o t c now i think they had to i think they had to do a little bit more when they use them they also had a club at the college here that he shot in and they had a few more restrictions there right right yeah yeah there's no there's really no call for for that that type of weapon uh_huh uh_huh now the lady said they she wanted us to rate from one to ten as to how we felt on a one being uh yeah ten ten would be no regulations at all let's see no wait how was it okay yeah yeah i would go along with that a happy medium so to speak uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah i don't know if we solved it but it is a problem and it unfortunately uh i'm not real crazy about guns myself but being from hunting families i tolerate them and i like i like them to learn their safety rules and that and and i think that is good that they have to have a uh now here at least they have a [hunter's] safety course that the the young people have to take before they're allowed to hunt yes yes they they have to do that before they can get a license to hunt uh_huh well i tell you i'm i'm for some really strong gun control measures but i mean that opens a lot of questions that i don't have any answers for it's like i'd i'd like to see a lot of controls um on it and because i would like uh i think the you know with a goal and a purpose in mind of seeing violence decrease in our society but uh how to get from here to there i'm not sure yeah yeah uh_huh right yeah but i i think what would happen though is that yes you would have a certain type of criminal a certain criminal element that would um be able to find a way to get the guns but i think in a lot of domestic uh disputes and a lot of family disputes um i'm not sure that those people would be able to get a hold of the guns you know in other words a a family that has a history say of physical abuse or physical violence but isn't the kind of family that's involved in criminal activities if if there were gun controls and that there just were not guns accessible to that type of family oh yeah yeah uh_huh do you uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i know well that's the thing i'm not really sure if i want to um learn how to use one i'm not sure i could use one i i've thought a lot about this there something that came up that made me think a lot about it and i i'm not sure uh somebody was saying that you'd have to you know be able to pull the trigger in the end and i guess i always thought if it was threatening my personal safety or especially like my kids you know you have uh_huh oh my goodness you're kidding i can imagine yeah yeah uh_huh yeah yeah but yeah that's the that is the thing see as in the past say five years i've [evolved] from thinking no i'm really am so much of a pacifist that i would have to find another way to deal with the situation or deal with being victimized you know i couldn't use a gun hold on just a minute sorry we have a kind of a open house and the sound really travels um uh_huh no yeah but i but i what i started to say is i've come to the point now where i'm thinking no i really want to take a self defense course and i want to take control over um you know my own defense and my own safety i i i think i'm i need to take more responsibility for that than i do right now i think i just i allow myself to think well it will never happen to me or it won't happen to you know i'm not going to have to deal with that and i just i don't think that's it will i'm sure yeah yeah yeah oh boy uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh wow wow right right holy smoke that's wild i was again i was talking with somebody just last week and about crime in general i guess it's been on the news a lot lately and i must be in the back of everybody's mind but i was saying if people around here think if they just get a better security system and a higher fence that you know they're going to take care of themselves and i said there's it's going to come to a point where that you can't get a fence that's high enough and a security system that's good enough yeah because no kidding no i i don't know uh_huh oh that they can't do behind that's something wow yeah well i can see how that might be now i mean you don't have to answer this or not if you don't want to because i know it's a personal thing but with the crime that your family was involved in was there were there guns involved in that there were gosh that is really well they don't have to use them in that case i mean they just have to have them they weren't yeah uh_huh uh_huh really wow is he just crazy wow he has killed people and he's and he's out yeah yeah yeah yeah if he could yeah gosh uh_huh uh_huh there's no prison space right you got to do one or the other uh_huh uh_huh gosh yeah i because we can't yeah have a chance did you did you hear about that um prison reform that's going up in washington state or oregon or someplace up there where they're taking criminals who are repeat offenders and i mean really repeat offenders that uh have raped several times or child [molesters] that have [molested] several children over and over again and they have put them in i don't even think they call it a a a prison but that's some kind of special it's a separate building in a separate location and they are just in there [indefinitely] they don't have any time when they are going to be released uh_huh yeah yeah yeah i i understand that no that's right that's right no i can i i can understand and respect that i have you know my own three kids and i i've i saw a story on t v about one time about a father who did take revenge on um someone who had hurt his children and and shot the guy and uh i you know i remembered that that was years ago and i remember seeing that and i i really could understand where that was coming from yeah yeah i i've heard that yeah and using it yeah and terrible accidents do happen when there's kids around but on the other hand you can't rely i mean the whole time i was growing up up until last five years i always thought well the police will handle it you know they'll get it under control and i just don't feel that way i don't feel that's true anymore they're not going to be able to handle it uh_huh uh_huh right wow that that would be hard to understand what do you think about gun control uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah and i i think i think that is right uh the only thing i object to is like uh machine guns and uh yeah [faintly] uh_huh [faintly] do you think uh like reagan of course before that you know he was in westerns all all that time and and uh he was real gung ho and then then just now just this last year it seems like he's he was uh and he was not that bill does not restrict anything outside of just having to wait seven days but it is interesting that he turned around for some reason because it uh_huh uh_huh i think and i think a lot of times you know that uh criminals do not go out and buy a uh what uh uh a good gun costs like two hundred to five hundred dollars you know a handgun they go out and buy the cheapest thing they can and then then they go rob a liquor store or something yeah that is true right uh_huh uh_huh that is right and a lot of times like uh what is his name i cannot remember his name right the guy in the austin tower uh [whitman] you know he was sane and and i guess they could have said like lee [harvey] [oswald] was sane when he bought his gun you know but he bought his by mail anyway but later on you know something can happen they can they can have a brain [tumor] or they can break down one way or another yeah right uh_huh right yeah he might have uh_huh yeah yeah i do not either yeah that is true because you know once once they start [clamping] down on one thing or being against one group then the uh it gives them a [foothold] to to be against somebody else you know and uh and the hunters you know the hunters uh with what gun species there are left well especially i mean using a rifle white tail [deers] mostly you know that is what people hunt for the most with a rifle uh you know they have every right to have a rifle and be able to to hunt uh_huh and that uh i think it was a rifle that that kid shot that burglar with in arlington or wherever it was it is i think it was uh two years ago or so now you know uh_huh yeah i wondered how he managed that uh_huh exactly uh_huh and and more and more of that kind of thing happens i mean can you imagine i mean it used to be like with the [dapper] bandit is one guy you know with a gun and a a lot of the stuff that he did they did not publicize because it would [breach] the security of the rest of the the banks one of the things that he did is is uh any counter top that was there up to maybe like four feet high he could [vertical] jump on top of the counter top and and and jump down and and be with those people behind the counter before they knew it you know and they they showed a a a a piece of tape of that one time but it looked like they had cut it up some and that was one of the things that was so scary about him and not only did he he uh rob banks but he uh at the time when he first started he robbed the safeway that my brother was working at at the time and that is how he that is how he surprised the cashier he jumped he jumped back there with her and and you know there was nothing she could do by that time yeah uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh yeah i would yeah and then uh_huh yeah right like the the judge what was it two or three months ago the judge in uh fort worth i think maybe it was dallas but he he just convicted uh a man for murder and the guy jumped up and and apparently knew where the judge kept his gun and held it on him for a couple of hours uh [subject's] gun control uh do you own any guns yeah yeah i know the sort i'm not much into guns myself either i know it enjoy working with them from time to time but personal opinion is a whole lot of weapons available in markets that really shouldn't be available at all uh yeah they got well very few of them it they do make some for bird hunting but still those aren't real high powered they're just you know small [caliber] with a long barrel on them but uh no the and these assault weapons the real short stock short barrels and [armor] [piercing] ammunition yeah they sell them there at wal mart three different models of glock yeah wal mart sporting goods department here in town carries the glock they haven't got the the latest version but uh they've got them i think seventeen rounds in a double wide clip craziness like that practically yeah no no i didn't luby's what's a luby's oh wait yeah uh that's been several months ago okay yeah i did hear about that they weren't the least bit sure what happened what what set him off oh see i hadn't heard anything about you know what the bulk of his victims were but yeah that's what he was using was it a rifle or a pistol no no the the other gun okay no i hadn't i i hadn't heard what it was he was carrying all i knew was he'd been in there shooting i hadn't heard anything about what he was carrying yeah i do know they have a fast uh fast recovery uh goodness well uh they yeah probably ought to be longer than that really seven's probably as long as you can expect the law to to require yeah seven day wait waiting period and a check through the f b i files and yeah yeah they ought to carry they ought anybody with a permit to carry a gun uh you ought to have a permit for any kind of gun to carry period whether it's pistol or rifle or it doesn't matter uh the permit you ought to ought to be required to keep it in your [billfold] at all times whether you got your gun with you or not like a driver's license yeah uh it's part of the problem with guns in general they got hundreds out there you know the only experience they got is the you know the last couple times they got about half [looped] and went out and the gun uh uh out in the woods and started blowing up bottles every hunting season scares the stew out of me even just to drive by a section of woods bothers me a little bit because i know there's [maniacs] out there the first couple of days yeah well later on in the season it gets to be less of a problem so how do you rate gun control i agree uh_huh i agree uh_huh oh my gosh so i guess they don't have a drug problem over there huh yeah oh no uh_huh uh_huh that's right uh_huh well um just recently i think it was sunday on sixty minutes they had an article or uh a news story about uh gun control and in florida they have started something where you know you always have to be eighteen or twenty one to buy a gun but um they have started where they do a background trick and so you can go apply for this gun but it takes like seven days until you can get it and i think that's a good idea you i'm not for total gun control because i feel like people need to protect themselves but um i think that you know the background check is a great idea was it brady yeah i didn't know about that uh_huh i think that's great but they also said on this um news story that that people can sell it to one another and they wouldn't have to do the background check and i mean they went on to tell about all the the illegal guns and everything and that i think that sixty minutes bought some guns and um like an uzi even and and so you know there's a lot of controversy and people walk around at gun shows with their big guns on their back saying for sale and you don't have to do any of that kind of checking i mean any they would sell it to anybody uh_huh enough money that's right uh_huh yeah there is oh really well um my dad and my brother both have a collection of guns and um i don't know i guess we've been taught responsibility when it comes to guns but accidents always happen but my dad has always kept his [hid] from us i mean even to this day i don't really i right i know where his big gun is like his shotgun and stuff but um his pistols and stuff like that and he keeps those hidden and it is just for our protection you know if we did have a [prowler] he he keeps it like um he has the little rotary dial thing and like i think it's the second shot or the third shot the [bullet's] in there but i mean he'll give them two chances and um right yeah his wife that's happening more and more often too huh_uh oh my gosh that's right uh_huh uh_huh yeah because she might be um apt to go get it a little quicker than uh_huh oh no yeah yeah really if it landed on her pillow beside her if she had uh just rolled over oh my gosh yeah i do too um i think i would rate probably a seven just because um you're right i think that if we did ban them the bad guys would still have them i mean probably like the country malaysia is that where you said i mean they started it oh really uh well i'm kind of in the middle i lived in the ozarks for a long time where a lot of people do a lot of hunting and uh now i live in dallas where there's a lot of crime and i'm all for uh the average joe being able to have a gun but then again i'm not you know as far as this seven day law and all this stuff for two weeks or whatever i'm all for that too i don't think anybody needs to be able to go buy a gun right away if you want a gun for a legitimate purpose you should be willing to wait long enough for someone to verify that you're not a a potential criminal yeah and i i don't think you know i think it's one of the constitutional rights that is important and you know we we should be allowed to have guns i don't think they should turn around and say you know the government says you can't have a gun because that just i don't know any any any country where they've ever [revolted] you know it takes guns to revolt and sure we don't need to but uh never know there might come a time so well they do that now i mean you're not supposed to have a hand guns well maybe you're allowed to have them say in the city but you're not allowed to use them in the city limits and things well what does that do to people that uh use it for protection like you know i personally i don't have a gun but i wouldn't mind having one i live in a neighborhood where the crime rate is going up somebody breaks in my house i wouldn't mind having a gun you know in self defense but uh yeah yeah well i've never had it never had to have one in the city you know when i was in the country we used them and out there was a necessity i mean you don't kill a [copperhead] with a rock you shoot them but uh i think there need to be stronger gun control laws that can be that can uh that uh what am i trying to say in in cities in urban areas but i don't think guns should be banned i just think it should be harder for for a criminal to get hold of them and of course the black market anyone can get one if they want one well that i guess that's the whole point of some of this legislation they're they're eventually going to make he turns around yeah and passes it on yeah there's no perfect answer i'm more for no i'm actually more for less control because i think it's it's a right that that i would hate to see us lose and the more the more you give gun control the little the little bit of time before long you don't have anything i mean i'm sure when they started out with taxes they didn't plan on taking thirty percent of your income but uh they just start with a little bit you know yeah i don't know what the deal is on that i know you can't buy them any more you can't can't buy imported ones anyway or is it the other way around right right i don't see any reason for anybody to have one unless they're fighting a war you know right right right yeah i wouldn't need an uzi though or a u b forty i mean a a pistol would be fine it's more for a scare [tactic] than anything else i don't really want to shoot somebody but i guess if uh it was me or him i would have to yeah course you've got people that are pulling them out on the highways down here it's like you cut them off and boom they blow you away so you have to draw the line i guess i don't know so if we're supposed to pick a number i'd guess i'd pick oh that no gun control was was ten i guess i'd have to pick about eight or something down there toward the low end well supposedly in seven days they're going they're going to look through your background and make sure you are not an ex con or don't have yeah i don't either it might stop some people but some people with a history of something but uh you know i guess there's a lot of information out there on everybody whether we we believe it or not they know everything you've done for the last ever since you got a social security number really so uh i guess they've got some time to make sure you haven't been in prison or don't have a history of you know i don't know i don't know i really don't know what the the actual on how how they work that out i imagine with the the way everything is computerized now it won't take much you know a perspective buyer comes in and they throw in your social security number on some nationally network system and it based on whatever criteria it's got it says yes or no this guy can get a gun or he can't and whoever decides those [criterias] you know that's something the legislatures do i really don't know i don't know what the you know what the status of those laws are yeah i would think if they're going to make a law it would have to be something uh it'd be a crime to uh not enforce it and uh all right take care yeah okay uh where do you stand on gun control your a one then uh_huh i i uh your against gun control why that's a good that's a very good point very good point i personally i guess i would be a five they said pick a one to ten uh because i i'm i think i'm dead smack in the middle i think that if there is going to be a ban on gun control that it should be enforced like you said and i feel like if there if if there is a band put upon us it wouldn't be a enforced just like um there's suppose to be working on a drug problem suppose be working on our education problems things like that and those aren't being enforced but at the same time i want to see people protect themselves because things like the drug the drug war is not is not helping and i feel like i have to protect myself when i go out somewhere because there's so many people they're crazy people out there you know and so uh_huh uh_huh exactly uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh wow uh_huh uh_huh yeah it's just it's just like the drugs i mean they're legal but you can get them anywhere if you want you can get it uh that is a shame uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right exactly the reason i think i'm so cloudy on the issue is because i mean it it i want to protect myself but at the same time i don't want anyone to have a gun that could harm me you know what i'm saying and so uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh exactly uh_huh right but everyone weren't they weren't going around killing each other trouble yeah but do you think more and more people now are carrying guns and weapons i mean just to i'm talking about the regular like joe blow on the street uh_huh uh_huh right right uh_huh i mean you you have to because i i mean i don't have a gun it just scares me to have one but i feel like that very soon i'm going to have to get one just because i would probably feel safer right now i have a knife under the seat in my car uh if i'm going anywhere at night anywhere i mean if i'm just stepping outside my door i carry something on me if i'm you know going up to my door and i don't have anything i put my keys in some kind of weapon like position in my hand you know i'm sorry yes yes i am i have a boyfriend but you know he's not always around uh_huh uh_huh yes my boyfriend that that got me you know put the knives here and there and you know just different things and yeah and i have mace on my key chain i mean i have a lot of you know little things that that i don't i don't like to have to carry them you know but i have to yeah uh_huh no no that's right that's right uh_huh uh_huh now that's just [lunacy] that's yeah he'll find some other way whether it's a gun or bomb or what oh do they yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh uh uh and still got a gun uh_huh right uh_huh uh if you offer a uh enough monies to somebody they'll go get you a gun you know if your not eligible you know come to me offer me enough money i'll go get you a gun you know there's probably a lot of people like that yeah uh_huh uh uh right and not probably going to help too much uh_huh exactly a lot a lot of people that are in jail you know it's their first shooting or why do people you know not everybody has shot someone before uh_huh uh_huh baseball bats i didn't know that i could see knives yeah [stabbings] and things uh_huh uh_huh yeah i didn't know baseball bats was like that uh uh_huh that's a very deadly weapon i mean one blow at that and uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i'm sorry very true a lot of sense uh uh uh right right you sound like you're pretty strongly yeah right what do you think about making some kind of application or something do you okay uh_huh yeah uh uh uh uh well that's a lot of help uh_huh and they probably really do that uh_huh okay i live in richardson texas you bet well see our subject was gun control i'm sort of uh prejudiced prejudiced on this subject because that's my vocation that's what i do for a living because i'm a i'm a manufacturer's sales rep and i sell hunting and shooting supplies working working for eighteen different companies so i guess i would be sort of pro pro pro guns okay no i agree one hundred percent i agree with you one hundred percent jean i'll tell you that somewhere i saw a bumper sticker years ago i'd like to see more of them i think uh speaking from my my viewpoint think it read something like uh when guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns and i think that sort of speaks for itself i believe uh in some gun control but i think it's and i you know in selling to the or selling for the industry to dealers i think that it's the federal government's stand that should be taken and i think that dealers now or to by a gun now an individual just has to go in a store and and show his drivers license and if he has a texas state drivers license if he lives in texas he can go to any gun dealer and buy a gun merely by filling out a yellow form and and paying for the firearm and leaving right it would be handy if they had you know computers being like they are if they would have some kind of a computer program on a national level where you could just dial an eight hundred number and and run a check on someone i would be for something like that that's true absolutely yeah you bet absolutely well that's wonderful well that's great we've always done the same thing and being in the business i've sold guns for twenty seven years i'm fifty two years old and i've sold guns for twenty seven years worked for some major manufacturers like winchester and people like that and and i always consider a a firearm i know they're very dangerous but i always consider them a sporting firearm and i realize that just as you say some people don't think of them as that but that's how i think of them being that i'm in the business but main thing is just be education and communication on the subject and that's something we've always tried to do and i'm a strong believer in that absolutely right no handguns are permitted in d c at all uh_huh uh sort of yeah i live in virginia i don't i work in d c so how does that rate you in the uh the scale that they've given us one means total restriction nine and a half are you an n r a member right this is a rather a right huh i i i fall smack [dab] in the middle uh yeah uh exactly i mean i'm originally from new york so right already have them or can get them if they want them right well i mean the same thing went everyone uses england as an example saying oh well you know there no one has guns in england and look at the crime rate there it's so much lower but right right uh_huh right well i mean look at d c i mean you're talking you're talking about a district where handguns are illegal to be have to have at all and it's also the murder capital of the country right exactly right crime uh_huh they're not allowed to do that right uh no okay i get the point yes i've had a lawn before right do you have any interest in gun control would you like to start first uh go ahead oh yeah that's right yeah i guess i would pick a five i'm not quite sure i i share an interest of of guns and i have some guns and i have two brothers in laws who when we get together we go [plinking] and and one of them hunts so we've talked about it i don't quite understand the n r a uh c i a type stand it seems to me they'd be guns can become an a hobby and they they take the approach of uh too too hard nosed on it i don't quite understand i don't i i i mean i my brother in law hunts and and he doesn't need a automatic or semiautomatic gun to hunt and i don't quite understand the uzis and all that i think those should be banned i don't think that uh oh yeah hunters uh should get whatever they think they need but heck we've had hunting rifles for a hundred years and so uh they're certainly not uzis and things like that oh oh yeah that i think that's great that's a great attitude no right right they had twenty twos yeah well i agree right there you go i think that's a that's a you've eaten [raccoon] and possum oh my goodness oh yeah yeah oh yeah i don't know why the uh i always did uh i'm probably a five although i haven't really that's not a very well thought out uh since they gave a number system uh my brother in law one of them hunts and the other one is a real collector and we get together we go shooting and i've been a lot of [plinking] and uh as a kid you know as a teenager we'd go to the rifle range and everything and shoot twenty twos and everything problems we have in society is like today some teenager locally here in the metroplex used a a twenty two whatever and it's on the news if you listen to the news tonight and went after his teacher and fired three or four shots uh at the school now to me gun control is not going to control it but the parents you know a teenager you know below eighteen or whatever the age should be right guns should be an adult should be responsible now i think that if you have a gun an adult then you have a responsibility for whether you call it locking it up or putting it somewhere where absolutely no teenager can get to it that's oh well that includes little kids too yeah yeah right i'm not sure it should be part of a crime bill i think i i i think guns need controls intelligent controls but i don't think it has maybe a one percent relationship directly to crime uh buying uzis and all that may you know i think that the cops should have the best weapons and whatever they need but i don't think the average uh [plinker] or hunter needs to go out and buy be able to buy that i don't think he should uh be allowed to buy an uzi or something oh yeah i know it's it's shooting against people they go out you know i i've seen them on tv and they actually have these little clubs where they go out and practice shooting each other you know i mean yeah and i i think uh it should be in the hunting realm i don't know why the n r a doesn't have nice range you talk about a range you're right ranges are hard to we have them here in arlington uh one here in fort worth i go to but uh it would think the n r a would take the positive side and open up some nice practice ranges and teach it you know and rather than just uh try to lobby for it you know they ought to come out in the open uh and open up some maybe they do have a lot of good ranges but the ones i go to are just ranges you know i don't yeah well my my brother in law's in san antonio and he uh they're they're closing the the ranges they're slowly but surely closing so when i can go here in fort worth it's south part of fort worth is run very well of course it has guns uh to buy but they have a state trooper i guess he's in his spare time he's always there with a forty five automatic on his side so that that's the only range i've been to that has a cop there right no i think that's the i've seen him there are some real amateurs that yeah there's some real amateurs that come i saw one one time when somebody came with with a [nonhunting] one of these and he was just you know moving it waving it pardon me no he's just there to uh tell everybody hey this is where you aim and watch it you're endangering the rest of the people and of course when you go and take your targets down he's there to make sure that people that's what it was people did not totally unload their guns when you you when you take the targets down you walk in front of your own guns and he would look over everyone's shoulder and say hey your your [gun's] not [unloaded] you know you have to unload you [walkout] there in this particular range out here in fort worth now the other ranges it's always somebody else but the the inspector would which by and say or the rifle range uh owner would come by and look at everyone's gun before he would step in front of you and so you need some sort of common sense as well as expertise with a gun before you put a bunch of dummies out there with guns now oh yeah that's great yeah that's a good question yeah i i have girls so they haven't been in scouts does does scouting have a gun section where they they teach them twenty twos oh that's great i think that's the way it should be they just [plink] yeah yeah and again that's why i don't think it should be part of a criminal or a crime bill because they well i've i've seen all kinds of [carnage] and i'm very much in favor of laws to restrict the access to guns uh i you know i cannot understand the the argument on the other side uh_huh i don't understand either now there there probably are cases of certain occupations certain actually certain individuals in certain occupations who would for who that may be legitimate uh but there are whole countries where guns are banned uh i think in the united kingdom of japan where the [homicide] rates are far far lower than the united states i don't see how it possibly makes sense for us to have all these guns lying about uh_huh no i'm in washington yes uh_huh yeah yes that's that's amazing yeah yeah yeah well it happens a lot around here too uh in fact maybe even worse in terms of frequency uh drive by shootings in high schools and you know yes yeah yeah yes uh uh everybody heard about that yeah so i'm i'm i think on the scale at the one end you know uh that wait i thought uh uh eight nine ten was no restrictions whatever whatever we're down at the same end whatever end that is yeah yeah would you somehow get them away from those who already have them would you somehow disarm those who are already armed how would you do that in many cases not uh because many cases they're they're stolen uh i i i have no idea what the statistics are on that but uh yeah yeah yeah i don't know this for absolute fact but i have a suspicion that the gun industry that manufactures these things and also those who dealers who sell them are are a major force behind the n r a and all these campaigns that that stir people up and try to get them to uh to to right to oppose them because they have an economic reason over and above whatever the their private preferences are until the thing has to be won on an economic ground too so there has to be some way to compensate those who lose at the yeah right yeah uh_huh um i don't know i don't use guns i mean and i don't you know i i don't have any occasion to i've never been much of a hunter and any of that so i guess i haven't really felt real strongly one way or the other how about you uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right yeah well i guess i do too i um i think that law that they tried to pass i'm not even sure if they passed it or not the seven the seven day waiting period i i think that's a a reasonable law and i'm not real sure why the n r a was against it uh you know it it really didn't the only thing it restricted was that you couldn't pick up the gun right away um yeah seven days shouldn't be a big a big deal yes right and if you do you want the gun for something else other than than shooting target because you can always get a gun to go and shoot you know targets with or you know even hunt you can borrow a gun to do that but uh if you want it right away you want it for a different reason than than a legitimate reason for having a gun yeah it yes and i i wonder about that because they're the sale of automatic weapons because uh i mean how many how many rounds does it take to kill a deer if you need thirty shots to kill a deer you should be uh you should be shooting with a camera you're dangerous anyway that's right so i yeah i guess we uh we kind of feel the same way about about that i uh it's it's funny because i was over at in mckinney the other day in picking up a dog and uh and i saw some women um practicing you know shooting and just outside yeah out out in the uh range but um i it reminded me of uh you know i was listening to a talk show the other day and and heard that the majority of the accidents that happen or the shooting that happens happens right in the home with somebody that you know misuse of a gun yeah yeah a lot of that happened yeah i don't i don't really see why the n r a would oppose i guess it's because they you know they don't want any any kind of uh of government restrictions on then it's a lot easier to just keep going from there is that your phone or mine yeah you must have had a cordless hello hello oh hello you still there uh so where do you stand on gun control uh_huh i'm i'm more in favor of of uh restricting them but uh as far as getting a number it's a little hard no cause people like to hunt and and you know in some cases i think it's it's a good uh i mean it's a valid reason to have one for defense although you know the statistics about uh accidents uh it's kind of uh [worrisome] i mean i wouldn't i know i don't like the idea of having guns around a lot because they're mostly used i mean to they cause a lot of they there are a lot of accidents because of them being so handy uh_huh i'm not sure huh no um um no uh_huh yeah it it's kind of brutal oh yeah no i've i've actually done that with a friend of mine with his gun uh and he no no if i have one handy though then if i'm or i can imagine somebody being outraged at something and saying uh i just i want to go for the gun i know where it is it's easy and then pulling the trigger is so easy that uh well huh right uh_huh right right so in massachusetts they uh they have uh uh mostly just some rolling hills so there isn't really much uh_huh all right uh i i would like to talk about just briefly what happened over there in saudi arabia in the political context i think it's uh refreshing to see the uh the support that the president got from the american people right right um yes that's right really right yeah that's great um if if you remember the vote in the congress to [authorize] war if necessary was actually pretty close and if if my memory serves me right i believe a majority of democrats may even have opposed it it it was that's right yeah especially the ones that came out and said oh come on guys let's talk about this little while longer i mean how many years are we going to wait and and what what do you do with the people that are over there in the mean time no doubt i think so too well they were and in fact they were so well dug in that uh when we sent our tanks around behind them they couldn't get turned around in time well had had we done a [frontal] assault it probably would have worked more to his favor um interesting well baker is really not very much pro israel and did you know john [sununu] is uh half arab yeah right in in fact when he was governor of new hampshire i believe okay i believe he was the only one of fifty governors that voted against some kind of resolution of support for israel a few years back and uh now he is a conservative but he is not a conservative that favors israel and that that concerns me greatly well they didn't have much choice they could either fight or die it is a positive thing um however uh every time an organization such as the p l o says well we'll see if we can work with israel then uh they get embarrassed some every few months by documents that reveal that their ultimate purpose is to totally eliminate them and so you you basically have uh [mutually] exclusive interests either israel is going to [occupy] the area or the arabs are going to [occupy] the area and i'm just not sure that that there's going to be any easy permanent solution exactly it is yeah i i [commend] israel for their restraint in not responding to the [scud] attacks yeah exactly exactly no may not well it's been fun i enjoyed talking with you you never know bye bye yeah it we i i read an interesting article in the paper that discussed uh that uh seemed that every other time a president tried to get support for an action like uh uh president carter and his thing with the the [hostage] crisis and he always did it through [rhetoric] and this time president bush did it through action and he he drove policy by the course he took and almost forced public support or uh i mean he left almost no alternative and and it was very interesting how he did it and uh i mean i'm i'm an air force officer so it uh it was interesting for me uh you know i'd certainly uh i i mean i think it's great that all the support i have uh friends of mine from the air i'm i'm an engineer and work in the [rolm] laboratory but other guys here on base this is a b fifty two base where i work so we had about a thousand people gone from the base that went over there and they're getting a tremendous amount of support out of it yes it was yeah i'm i don't know the exact figure but i i would imagine that because of the how close the the vote was i'm uh i mean almost certainly would have to be just based on the sheer numbers of uh the disparity of excuse me democrats and republicans in congress he'd think that it would have to have been um and uh i i gosh this uh this whole thing now with all the uh all the political cartoons on the democrats and how they're uh uh they're in in a sad way for ninety two now in terms of the presidential election anyway yeah yeah right right i think that was all those factors played a part in you know uh the everyone was discussing whether we should uh wait longer but i i i know that there's a lot of reasons to wait longer but i think we were genuinely concerned about how their military capability and we uh i think we over [estimated] it but still we were really highly concerned about it and that we were worried that they were getting dug in and uh yeah right they couldn't yeah they couldn't yeah it's true they saddam thought he had the whole thing uh figured out to to which way we were coming and which what what our [doctrine] was that uh that's right that's true that's interesting i think uh this political situation over there now is uh uh it'll be interesting to see what comes out of it whether the this opposition will uh uh today the [turks] uh agreed to support the kurds which is something they've never done before and uh and uh this and the israelis uh and not the israelis but the arabs all of a sudden are uh are [cheering] for baker on his drive for to [reconcile] relations with the israelis so it's like yeah i no uh i i think i did hear that at one time a long time ago because i used to live in uh massachusetts but uh yeah new hampshire oh my gosh uh well i don't yeah i'd certainly uh support israel in in their their policy that in defending themselves and in uh in their handling of their foreign policy i think i think the stand they have or or the way the command respect i i support that i think that is a a positive thing for them after um uh thousands of years they have to uh they i think they in when they became a country they more than or more or less decided they weren't going to take it anymore and uh yeah exactly exactly and uh um so gee i lost my train of thought here but uh um so okay so i can't say whether that that i'm pro israel or anti israel i mean i'd like to see them resolve something in that situation and get some stability in the region and looks uh that the joining of forces for this uh uh desert shield and desert storm thing ended up being a positive thing right yeah somebody's going to and i think that's the problem the p l o has is that when they whenever one group of them decides that they're going to negotiate or they're going to do something they're going to try to make some peace but uh the end result is that they there so many factions of them and uh some more violent than others some with a certain agenda different than the others or they split they end up being becoming [divisive] themselves uh i it's interesting i i'm i'm looking forward to seeing what happens over there in the next couple of months but uh that's yeah i know that that is almost i mean that's absolutely [unprecedented] that was an an incredible foreign policy coup on the part of the president and the state department and that i mean that's never happened before and i don't know if it will ever happen again but yeah okay uh i guess uh well maybe the computer will pair us up together another time all right bye bye well actually i think it's good i i i hope that we uh uh get a chance to uh promote peace out there uh because i think without peace we're not going to get stable oil prices and and uh i'd i'd really like to see stability in that area because i'm always afraid that's where another big war is going to start not that desert storm was a small one i saw um just recently where uh uh the u s is supposedly going to be uh putting pressure on all the you know the israelis supposedly to come to a bargaining table to actually i heard that the israelis were even at least mentioned about giving up some of the [golan] heights yeah okay well uh i guess it's one of those things that uh if it's going to really promote a lasting peace if there is not going to be a peace yeah oh yeah do you think the u s is going to wind up keeping uh military bases over there i i haven't heard that i watch c n n every once in a while but i i haven't specifically heard anything about that what i thought was interesting is that uh apparently the formal cease fire has not actually been signed yet and uh then i guess there's still the possibility that uh hostilities with uh u s troops could still break out yeah do you have relatives over in israel oh really yeah do you uh does she ever want to go back to syria oh okay no no do you ever want to go over to israel oh okay yeah yeah yeah okay well you know do you have a lot of kosher foods there at your house yeah no [kish] [ki's] or [knishes] oh i got you still get your passover [matzi] and all that right oh really i dated uh i dated a nice jewish girl for many years up in chicago and i was the only [goyim] at at all the seder dinners and everything and i used to have to go with rolls of not [pocketful] of change to buy all this bread the kids would see me not not not uh just just enough to get by okay oh wow oh really yeah well they had the matter of fact i just watched charles [heston] this uh this weekend in the ten [commandments] did you well that's to me it's really um i guess i guess i can intellectually kind of come to grips with all of that but you know emotionally i have a real difficult time believing that uh that that people that believe in god and love not war and to forgive can't get together you know i i know that the problems are so deep but i mean even within the [muslim] uh [religions] different [sects] they can't get together yeah or the uh you know the catholics and the [protestants] up in ireland you know i mean yeah yeah yeah yeah it sounds like a it sounds like a john [lennon] uh type so uh what do you think about our involvement in the middle east yeah well yeah that's probably true i i suspect that if any world war is coming at this point in time they're going to come from there uh i would think anyway just seems to be that that's the most unstable part of the world as far as i can tell really that would be interesting because i am actually um um i'm i'm i'm jewish and i'm actually sort of not not not really a [zionist] per se you know but i have a um i have a lot of friends you know who are sort of adamant you know israel it's his right and do whatever they want and i think they've been sort of hard nosed about the entire thing and you know in some sense the moderates may be right they may you know may be better if they give up just a little bit to settle things down right then then then then is it worth it at all i mean i could the way i mean the only way to think about it is well they won you know they sort of took over the um they're one of the only countries in history that has been told that they have to give back what they took in a war which they didn't start basically so so i don't i don't know how to i don't i don't know what to do about it but i think that that you know in general the region is really in bad shape um probably oh isn't isn't there a plan now to make a command center there or something i just heard something about moving recently about moving um there there there's some central command post in tampa i think that they now want to move to somewhere in the middle east actually there was um a small country or small city i think or even not actually in saudi arabia or anything but a little bit off to the um east of it i think and i they want to keep something over there so that they don't have to um i guess it's i guess it's sort of so they don't have to move troops out so quickly or something i'm not quite sure exactly why they want to do it but they want to keep some sort of central command post there that's true yeah that's they claim that's why we're still there i mean you know why only you note it's only only a small number of people have actually come back yet but i think that's actually the [scariest] part because when in the way what what's happening in iraq right now you know in itself it being so crazy there i have no idea i mean what do you know just to imagine that one day they're just going to turn around and someone is going to say we don't like you and start attacking again and it's going to be worse i don't know um no i don't i i i i have some friends in israel and [coincidently] actually my wife is syrian um yeah so i am we are sort of we are the middle east peace talks at home um and uh pardon me i'm just sort of putting away some things from dinner now in the background but we um we she has sort of friends and family in saudi arabia who are some friends in saudi arabia and um i have some friends in israel and we we talk a bit about it but we try and keep it out of the home life no she was she is actually um i think it's um for her not really relevant because she is second generation american actually her parents who were born here would like to go see it though i think they would like to go to syria but they recognize that [syria's] not the place that one wants to visit right about now you know something about the place makes it not not quite enjoyable yeah i i've actually been there i was there a couple of years ago when it wasn't you know sort of dangerous to be out there i guess and i do i do like it actually i would never live there i think i'm too [americanized] and um sort of have too much you know too much invested in sort of the easy life but i do like the food if that so if that if that amounts for anything yeah actually my house is kosher but it turns out that one of the strangest things about about israel is that um most folks don't realize that for all the food people think of as sort of you know jewish food and so forth um and you know um in general it really isn't the food that is eaten in israel so you typically think of it like bagels right you know bagels and [lox] turns out you don't you don't you don't really find bagels in israel what you find is sort of middle eastern foods the same foods that you find in um syria and egypt and everything else have you ever had those oh [knishes] no you don't you don't see a lot of that's basically eastern european jewish food it's it's very different i was actually very amazed when i sort of figured out for myself that everything i grew up with really wasn't israeli it was more jewish you know it it it is very strange that that starts tomorrow night that's what i'm making that's what i'm doing now i'm making dinner bought up all the bread from that's good well you've you've you've really got a handle on this stuff i've noticed got the vocabulary down and everything that that that makes you real good yeah we um we actually we have the reverse situation turned out that um um most of my friends aren't jewish and and my wife's not but i um i sort of you know do a lot of these things so so that um seder our first seder is tomorrow night and this is a rare exception there are going to be sixteen people at my house tomorrow night which and five of them will be jewish two two years ago we had a seder we had sixteen people each night sixteen is the magic number for us and i was the only [jew] both nights so which to me is wonderful because it means that people who never would get to see this um so get to see it and my view is passover is should sort of be in in in in my mind passover is sort of a generic holiday anyway because it it sort of [predates] christ so yeah i caught the end of that yeah every year i try and catch that but yeah that's what always amazes me actually is that um is that you know my wife and i always sort of bring this up about her being syrian you know and my being jewish you know we look alike we act alike we sound alike well not totally alike but you know um um it's amazing to think that people in the middle east sort of all hate each other right right that's that's actually the part that that that i find really strange i mean i i i sort of understand somewhat i mean i i knowing the history i understand that the hatred of the muslims for you know the israelis or whatever and i can sort of handle that and but i sort of think about the muslims sort of running around have [jihad] against themselves you know i mean and and that seems really weird right exactly same same thing i don't i'll i'll never understand it my view is look what did you ever do to me didn't hurt me at at at the moment so um and and and i i don't know there's a there's something about there's a poem somewhere i don't know if you've ever seen it or not but everything i ever wanted to know i learned in kindergarten in this and it talks about how you know if we could just all get you know when we were young everything was great because we all went to class together and in the you know we all had snack time together and then we all took naps and we all held hands and [hugged] you know and and and that's what kindergarten was like and wouldn't it be nice if if we could solve all our problems by just sort of getting together and everyone in the world sat down and took a nap together woke up and had snack time you know and then [hugged] each other as we left yeah i wonder if he secretly did that well i haven't uh you know when the war was on i watched c n n and uh nightline pretty regularly and read the paper and all but when uh lately like the last week or two i guess with easter and spring break with the kids i um i hadn't been thinking much about the middle east and what's going on over there have you been keeping up uh_huh uh_huh um start up there's no official document signed or anything well i um when the when the crisis began last august i began to think well i i couldn't remember things that i had studied in the past in school and all so i got out like my [encyclopedias] and tried to read about the history and it was really what i felt was kind of cynical because it there just hasn't been any peace over there ever in thousands of years of history yeah that's right and it just it's just not people they and it's not uh you know there isn't any real arab coalition because they do fight among themselves and they fight with each other and they have such hatred for uh israel and oh yeah um oh no and got it over with well i just there's just no way for us to be involved over there and hope that there will be much peace and um with and that i'm afraid that we would have to stay uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right yeah yeah yeah right right right yeah right right well i just uh i'm not interested in keeping big military over there and having to go and call the shots like you say and i just would prefer that i mean sometimes we've said let's keep we're not interested in what other countries do and then other times we jump in and do things and while i'm glad that they uh i it was important [demilitarize] that area because of all the build up [armaments] i don't i hope we don't try to keep uh in there and try to keep our fingers in the pot and try to stay over there because we just don't want to send our people there and make them stay yeah yeah yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh i noticed that well i don't think there's much hope for a lasting peace over there like they expect yeah no no well i guess i better go i have a repairman just came for my refrigerator but yeah well i enjoyed the topic i hope you have a good day okay bye bye okay uh_huh well uh just really the last couple of days since this uh the u n debate or whatever you want to call it that uh voted on whether there was going to be a cease fire i guess you know the thing really isn't over they uh they had uh kind of uh i don't know if you call it [standout] or whatever but anyway they stopped and waited to see if iraq would accept a permanent cease fire situation though as i understand it from the iraqi point of view this current cease fire thing that the u n uh had set up you know the iraqis are probably not going to go for at all unless they're just absolutely forced to so i guess from what i understand the thing could just it could just they could take off at any moment without uh you know you know any local you know congressional effort or anything else because you know it's not really settled yet not yet not yet at all uh_huh no yeah i don't know why they expect it's going to start this week you know uh_huh uh_huh yeah the uh the thing that's kind of interesting about this my sons in the air force and uh he came within a quarter of an inch of going uh to saudi he ended up in korea instead and because of the way they split a transportation group out in lubbock so he ended up going to korea and his buddies ended up going to saudi well he's still in korea and his buddies home now he he almost wishes that that he could have gone home yeah uh_huh yeah the thing uh the other thing too when this all started if you you know if you did much reading on the thing you know kuwait the country of kuwait was just you know somebody's uh you go back to world war i when the uh [ottoman] empire broke up and the british and the french and the yeah the british and the french mostly decided to [carve] up that part of the world and call part of it [persia] and part of it iraq and part of it something else you know and they they split things along um geographical lines but they didn't take any kind of consideration into uh social or cultural things at all so the country of of kuwait really doesn't make just a whole lot of sense except that it is an [excepted] place you know it's like any other country you know for whatever reason it's it's actually there well iraq has had uh designs on that place since nineteen twenty two so you know it wasn't like something that just suddenly popped up and it's just that this was an excuse you know to make some noise now something that i read in the paper the other day that i thought was kind of interesting was that the arab uh uh their version or vision or whatever the united states now is somewhat changed in that we won you know now now we are a uh a legitimate player in the game over there you know the the i don't think we can really understand their attitude because there cultures are just so much different but uh we are now a legitimate player in the in the in the game because we came in with a certain amount of force and we you know we defeated you know iran couldn't do it in seven years and we went in and did in seven days what iran couldn't do in seven years you know so that kind of ups our stock in there just a little bit it makes us more legitimate so now what they're saying is that well since we won whatever we say goes because it's uh a kind of a might make strike sort of attitude about it and you know we've got the power which is why for centuries or hundreds of years the british and the french had so much influence in there because they'd go in and they'd win something and then and then they could call the shots for the you know period of time until the next strong man came up and you know and caused problems yeah yeah uh_huh yeah um yeah that's that's the uh that's that's the big thing you know we still got a little bit of the old you know vietnam um problem you know in the back of our minds we we got this we're we're used to wars where you can get in do the job and get out vietnam we never did get out you know never did get the job done because they were too ham strung uh this thing they they gave the guys uh the power and the material and the told them to go do it and they did it you know got in and got out i'm not sure the the big fuss that we're going to see now for the next few weeks i would think is uh you know the uh the business with the uh the [shiites] of all people you know in the southern part of the country and also the kurds because these people evidently are you know being killed off by the thousands and whether the the united nations i don't think the u s will do it on their own but whether the united nations comes around and says hey wait a minute we know this thing isn't uh all that much over we've got to go back in there and and be sure that this large population isn't just wiped out which is seems to be exactly what's happening right at the moment but um you know oh well no no there there never will be i mean uh uh the only way that you're going to have peace over there if if we determine that we want to go in and wipe out every last one of them you know until we make a decision to do that there won't be peace but i don't think we want to make that decision either so that's that's a little rough you know we're not we're not quite up to that sort of thing so oh oh well that's that's fun you too bye bye okay um the u s involvement in there then i guess even though well it is over but i don't think we're out of there by any means and uh i wonder are we going to set up you know peace keeping type forces for long term you know is that something we should do or shouldn't do i don't know i think that's true because of all the support that came through the other thing that i think is good for like american businesses are to be involved is the the reports that i hear back and of course on the news i try to listen and also read between the lines you know but they said that because the americans you know took such a proactive stance involvement in the war that like so much of the business and the rebuilding in kuwait and things like that will go to american businesses where as before they may be dealt with japanese firms or other people they said even though the japanese were involved monetarily uh they still like the first first priority ought to go to american businesses which i guess will be good you know which will be good for our economy but i you know boy don't you know i mean we don't seem to slow down even when there is a crisis but i imagine your oil companies they may see probably the first big rise in business they have seen in years uh_huh i do too yeah but look at their war that was his whole war is is i'm not satisfied with what iraq has i want what everybody has and and you're right it's like you see two little pre school kids fighting over a toy you know i i am a little concerned about you know i know they are putting president bush right now in an awkward position concerning the the [treaty] over there right now you know what am i trying to say well supporting the kurds but uh you know the cease fire i'm trying to say another because he yeah you know because he he wants them to [uphold] their end of the deal as far as the cease fire but at the same time he's not wanting to go in and say okay i'm going to fight your war for you which which i think is right you know if it's an internal thing i don't think we can walk in and say gee i think you're right and you're wrong you know we're not the judge and jury uh but i know that that's causing him a little bit of [unpopularity] with the people over there because they feel like gee you told us to stand up against him but you're not helping so i think he's in a pretty awkward position now and i i think we ought to help you know yeah supply arms and support them if they need help but i don't think we ought to be over there fighting it for them and and so i think he's done good on that stance yeah boy i would say that's right yeah yeah i agree you know they'd advertised and said in the news and said he had the fifth largest army well he may have but you well not any more but you have to have [loyalty] you have to have people who believe in your cause you know i know they tried to turn it into a holy war because to them that is what's honorable you know if you die in a holy cause but i think they are smart enough to see there's nothing holy about it we just want to go in and took it you know sure sure uh well i hope that's true i would think so i would think that you know i guess in the back of my mind i think like maybe the israeli [massad] probably has ideas of going in and huh you know i thought they uh showed a tremendous restraint in their reactions towards everything but i don't believe for a minute that that means that they don't have ideas and plans of their own but i do agree with you i think president bush handled it all politically very smart you know giving the support of of the other arabs and other nations in the world and i think that's how you have to go into something like that and don't you feel that's right and don't you think that long term that's been a big boost for the united nations i mean the united nations been there for years but all of a sudden yeah there are some teeth behind it and the fact that when they have sanctions and we support things like this it means something and i think that's good for the strength of the united nations yeah and rebuild from nothing yes yeah that's true right they supported it that is right yeah they did ask that they build up israel and kuwait and i think they should have to they lost well that's true well i don't think iran is under the same type of [madman] type leadership but there's always the possibility i guess i think so i think the person who really may be at this time has a hard road to tow is [jordan's] king hussein because he really kind of really tried to kind of [straddle] the fence you know he wasn't necessarily for iraq but at the same time he didn't feel like everybody ought to be going against iraq yeah right no i know isn't that amazing the way that they will find their cause no matter what situation they see they're going to find their cause whether it truly exists or not i know that's true but see you are also getting back to the ages old problem of arab israeli conflict as far as [personalties] and who is the selected one of god and theirs tie so much to their religion so very different things than what we face let's talk about the middle east situation now that's it's all over with you know i don't know i understand that the u s is talking about leaving more of its planes and things over there uh i guess they uh they're anti u s in that region and now they're you know like syria and egypt you know had some pressure against the u s but now they now they wouldn't allow us to have a base in that region but now i think they are [rethinking] that that's right uh_huh uh_huh right right they get so much of our money from oil anyway no no yeah i think that's a nice [gesture] on the kuwaiti government part to do that and a few people i guess will make a few people pretty wealthy in construction and so forth right go over there and rebuild all those i think it's such a shame that the iraqis had to just go destroy everything i just i mean what's what good is that if i can't have it you can't have it you know that sounds like something a little kid would do you know that's right uh_huh uh_huh the the deal with the uh supporting the kurds right right the cease fire right right uh_huh yeah to help out yeah maybe supply some arms or something yeah i think bush handled has handled this whole situation quite well he stood up to to the bully and didn't back down and uh and uh saddam hussein [miscalculated] all along thinking that he wouldn't commit u s lives and and forces and and monies to just to [liberate] a little country and uh then he [underestimated] his ability to to wage a war with us i mean one thing when we all came over there and said okay here we are get out and he said no i can i can win a war with you guys and that was a horrible [miscalculation] not any more right right yeah right saddam hussein is not a religious person but he uses it when he sees it to his advantage and uh and i think the people were smart enough to realize that and i think they're afraid of him is what they are the population is afraid to speak out against him and i don't think he's going to be there too much longer someone is going to [assassinate] him you know yeah yeah uh_huh that's right yeah right right i've heard reports that president bush was [staking] his future on this uh this war and that setting a precedent saying that this league of nations will always combine against [bullies] and to stop this kind of stuff in the world any would be bully would think twice if he knew that you know there's this united nations or world government or whatever they keep talking about that the whole world will deal with you and you can't you just can't do it and get away with it you know hoping that you know because it's a world thing and the nations will combine against you and you can't you know you can't just do this oh yeah had no had no teeth right people i guess i feel sorry for just the average you know iraqi who has had to go through all of this and the suffering i'm sure with no water no electricity no sanitation must be terrible living conditions must be terrible and it's not getting any better the sanctions are still on you know except for a few medical supplies they are allowing through now and then [powdered] milk i guess for babies and things and until they i guess yesterday they came out with this these rules i guess or whatever for a permanent permanent cease fire and the kuwaitis said we don't want to have to repay israel for all the bombing that we did that was in there you know but that's only fair yeah yeah it's going to be really tough for them to swallow but we don't want a kuwait there that's also you know just has no power at all and that that you know because iran still isn't too friendly with them and we don't want you know to be [stabilized] to the point where iran will say now is our chance you know to go in and wipe them out and yeah yeah yeah yeah since [khomeini] died over there things have gotten a little more [normalized] not quite as radical a stance more moderates are in power now yeah put in the middle and yet so many of the citizens are the uh the lebanese who were hoping this would evolve into a war against israel and uh trying to connect with israel all that time and there really was no connection at all and uh but boy those lebanese in jordan they were saying you know this whole war is [israel's] fault because israel told the united states to attack iran it was like it was like you know israel controls our government right but one thing i did learn was how deep the the hatred runs toward israel by a lot of countries they just hate i mean anyway they can you know they can see to connect into something and hate it more i mean they just i understand most of the land is now israelis they bought and actually purchased it and then and then moved in and started a country right yeah right right and they both have holy sanctions well what do you think about it no i don't either i don't think it's going to change very much but uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh yeah well you know the funny thing i find about american opinion is that when we have gone in to [destabilize] a government before the american public goes crazy and now the fact that we're not interfering with the internal rebellion in in iraq they're going crazy you know i mean you can't please them one way or the other you know and i and i think that i i agree with you this is exactly the right course i mean that's an internal problem to iraq it has nothing to do with us and until he starts doing something so [inhumane] that the u n gets involved then it's nobody's business um all the time i mean yeah i mean yeah yeah and it's certainly and it's certainly been going on over there for hundreds of years and it's going to continue as long as you have so many diverse groups that are that are [vying] for power it's going to happen all the time i mean the kurds have tried it before they've gotten their butts kicked and this is just another time that it's happening you know they'll [regroup] out in the mountains and they'll try it again in a couple of years sure and and and i don't have any doubt that through some back channels that we encouraged it you know but i'm not real sure that we promised them anything i that would have been stupid and and i don't think we did it everything else we handled in this seemed to be perfectly right i don't think they would have done that but it just it it really doesn't make any difference this is just a a another chapter in middle eastern history oh sure i mean the the british occupied the place the french occupied it we've done it it it's happened so many times this is this is really nothing special uh that's right it's it's mostly religious anyway yeah yeah exactly well i i i think one of the big problems i mean looking at it from the the american public's [standpoints] they don't understand the middle [easterners] they don't understand what i mean their politics really isn't politics it's religion [couched] as politics and there's a big difference you know uh we sit there and and we think that they think the way we think and that's a big mistake because they don't uh_huh yeah yeah that's that's it a lot of the time i i was stationed in in turkey for for a year and a half and it it was tough understanding those folks you know it they they're they're so completely different culturally and socially and and religiously it's just it was very strange it was very interesting now i shoot i i think some of these people that they claim as middle eastern experts don't don't have a clue sometimes you know they they sit there and and read their books and then [proclaim] themselves an expert well i'm not real sure that's that's appropriate no well i sort that sort of goes to my pet peeve about the education system in this country too and we make experts by reading books you know and the japanese and the germans and everybody else make experts by doing yeah yeah i uh i i guess you work for t i so you guys are well aware of the problems with the japanese markets and everything else yeah it's it's like our car industry the only reason our car industry hasn't gone down the tubes is because the japanese you know came into it and helped us out uh_huh uh_huh yeah and until we until we start changing our educational system i mean we're we're going to be we're we've already been [overtaken] but it's going to get even worse later i mean looks who's looks who's getting the engineering degrees and the the math and the science and everything it's not us you know we we've got folks running around here who get who get degrees in basket [weaving] and you know underwater psychology or some some ridiculous stuff like that and and where are the engineers coming from yeah exactly my uh my roommate is a uh he's getting his doctorate in industrial well it's not industrial engineering it's human factors his degree was in uh industrial engineering uh and he's from the philippines and the only reason he came here was because the education is so much better for those who will go after it he has no intention of going back to the philippines because there's no jobs you know uh but i i see it all too often i mean we've got loads of foreign students and they're coming here going after the hard degrees and then they're going back to korea and japan and hong kong and everywhere else and they're applying it there and i don't know it's to me it's amazing i don't know what we're going to do as a country we're we're going to become dependent on these other folks sooner or later uh_huh yeah you i don't i don't think there can be anymore long range planning i think it it's it's sticking your finger in the holes in the [dike] you know it oh here's a crisis well let's plug it up i don't know i don't know what the answer is it's far beyond me yeah all we can do is keep [plugging] you know i i wonder i i read in the paper just last week i b m's [unveiling] their new laptop computer well at a price tag of six thousand bucks i don't know if they're going to have a whole lot of [takers] now i have the i have the i b m p s two but i'm sorry i got it it's slow it's uh there are many better machines on the market right now for a the only reason i got it is because i got it through an educational purchase plan through the school and i saved forty eight percent so i said yeah if i can have an i b m for forty eight percent discount i'll take it but up to that point i had i had always said i would never have one because i wouldn't pay that kind of money for their name but now you watch just sure as anything the japanese are going to come out with a laptop at half the price with more stuff on it uh_huh it's already outdated yeah yeah yeah i i can imagine i uh years ago i remember when i had a t i ninety nine put all the money into the expansion box and all this that and the other and uh things just kept changing so much and i kept getting rid of them and i finally said well you can't do this you've got to buy something and stick with it so i so i just at an opportune time i got one that that suited my needs and i've just stuck with it the only thing i've done to it is just add a uh add a mouse and a hard drive and that's all i plan to do of course i'm limited on memory now because i've got the low line i got the model twenty five so i'm stuck with six forty but i'm not a power user so it doesn't matter yeah yeah now my [roomie] on the other hand he is a power user he's he's looking now to get rid of his he's got a three eighty six and wants to get a four eighty six you know this kind of stuff well um most of the stuff up until now in the recent months i i i don't have any problem with uh i mean it's you know it no i agree with that as as far as the as far as the mess that's developing as a result um you know as a country the united states uh i think our hands are tied as far as as as any further involvement until the u n sanctions it in fact it really was to begin with and uh i just i heard a comment on the radio this morning that uh you know it it gets to a point where uh if enough people are are going to be [slaughtered] over there over the the the internal problems um somebody may step in again but uh i really think it's it's a u n issue at that point because it is internal uh_huh that's right that's right absolutely right uh_huh that's right i mean these these types of internal things go on all over the world all the time some of them have been going on for for tens of years if if i understand it right in places like the [sudan] and yeah that's right yeah that's absolutely right yeah that's that's absolutely right yeah it was just you know it was it's a very opportune moment for them to try you know you oh yeah yeah uh_huh yeah yeah i agree yeah and you know and it there are many of them there's no doubt about it uh_huh well and and and so many of the so many of the conflicts um really don't have a basis in in uh politics or or human rights or anything like that it it's it's religious based and uh you know by by self [proclamation] this is a holy war and it is right and then uh we we go on from there and yeah it it's it's a mess it it's there's no doubt about it and uh that's right uh_huh uh_huh absolutely uh_huh you bet you bet well yeah because there's no uh you know there's there's there's a complete different set of values um there's there's different value placed on human life and uh right down the list you know possessions and and everything else and uh what's right is wrong and what's wrong is right in some cases okay yeah yeah uh_huh i believe it yeah yeah i can i can i can believe that yeah i i don't claim to have an in depth understanding by any means but uh that's probably true that's probably true uh_huh no no that's that's uh a a little bit of background study has never made an expert in any field but uh yeah that's right uh_huh absolutely absolutely that's right yes right right that's an everyday occurrence uh_huh uh_huh i agree yeah it's it's uh there there is there is it's an overall problem in in in this country understanding uh foreign cultures or even accepting them and uh it it it bites us over and over again the the the uh_huh that's right that's right uh_huh absolutely uh well they're they're coming from various places and a lot of them are going back there that's okay i see yeah right sure okay uh_huh absolutely that's right yeah you know every every the the country's got a problem with uh with [quarterly] reports and annual statements and things like that and the long long range views are are just kind of become a thing of the past and uh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah that's for sure that's that's the way things have gotten yeah uh_huh no absolutely okay yeah yeah okay okay uh_huh absolutely that's right that's absolutely right yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah the the unfortunately the way the the way the high tech market goes by the time you can get get something in your hands um it it's it's obsolete and uh we're we we fight that battle every day here at work and uh uh_huh that's right that's right okay yeah oh okay yeah well that that's that's the key you know whatever works for you and uh if it does the job then that's that's what you need uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh it doesn't matter to me uh_huh uh_huh well how did they feel about the uh the united states intervening with patriot missiles did did they uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i live in san antonio and fifty percent of the population is minority uh_huh that's the [barrios] but it's it's i don't think it's any different of a problem than any other major city it's just hispanics here instead of blacks i grew up outside of houston and i don't think uh as far as gang violence and things i don't think it's any worse here than in houston houston is not at all yes there's quite a bit of crime uh_huh huh i think it's unfortunate uh as far as the kurds are concerned it i yeah yeah we can't get involved in their civil war um unfortunately but we've kind of driven these people out sure well i think the war ended too soon yeah we we didn't damage enough of their arsenal we damaged most of it but we we should have gotten made sure we got everything unfortunately though the the original goal of the mission was to drive them out of kuwait and once that was accomplished it yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah uh_huh i just have a feeling that the military involvement isn't over yet that i i still feel like there's more to come i don't think this whole issue is settled as far as we're concerned they've got sixty or so of [iraq's] planes uh_huh there are some kurds living in iran i was real surprised that israel stayed out of it as as much as they did uh_huh yeah it and from from what i can tell if they had gotten into it it would have started a whole new war well this is a good subject isn't it it's it's something that you can really talk about um i don't know what we're going to do about it but but it's certainly something that has a lot of things to talk about um you know when they say the middle east it's such a big area and there's so many different problems there uh what do you want to concentrate on well uh i'll tell you something um i i have a sister in law from israel and and they're really quite uh arrogant about it all they they believe that they they belong there and they've belonged there forever and the palestinians and the arabs are uh more or less they they consider them second class so they're really quite arrogant about it i don't uh i don't know if that contributes to the problem oh uh i'm i'm sure this is the one time that the israelis are really happy to have their big brothers the americans but i didn't really talk about that with her she um um my sister in law now lives in um switzerland but um when they were living in israel it was it was the the palestinians they they come in an and they're they're nothing but really servants for them and they really treat them like second class citizens they they don't really want them around but they like them around because they do all the menial labor and such but they they really do they look down on them and i don't know being i i live in uh vermont and being up here we pretty much treat everybody you know as someone that has merit even if they're poor or if they're hispanic or if they're black we give everybody pretty much the benefit of a doubt because we don't see all the crime and all the hurt in the big cities you know if i lived in washington d c i think i'd have a different attitude about black people because i've heard that it it the they're terrible you know it's just like it's a dog eat dog world and here you know all all my black friends are professionals and they're they don't you know they don't go out and abuse drugs and they they send their kids to school and they they they uh you know really encourage them to go to college and stuff so it's just a different world oh um i talked to someone about san antonio and um they said that they they have you have quite the problem with uh the [ghettos] i don't know do they call it the [barrio] down there yeah but i heard that san antonio unlike like like a city like san diego it it just has a really bad problem yeah like say houston now i would now me not even knowing anything about houston i would think that it's a pretty calm city no huh there's a lot of crime oh my um yeah like i we're so protected up here it's it's really strange i mean our red light district i mean uh you could go walking around down there and pretty much not fear for your life you know and we're just so protected but it's it's over in the mid east especially israel it's just like israelis have a like a [totalitarian] system when it comes to the palestinians you know the israelis can do anything they want but when it comes to palestinians if they're out in the street at night it's it's really looked on as odd um usually they're they're bussed in to the the um jewish neighborhoods and the jewish cities and then at night they're bussed out to the occupied territories so they don't have that but uh what do you think about the mess that's we've created in iraq it's just what do you do for them you want to do something for them but you don't want to get so directly involved that you're [occupying] the the country to do it yeah but you see president bush is telling them rebel you know uh [uprise] and that's what they did and now they're like asking him for help and he's like no we can't get involved what my husband had very strong feelings he uh agreed with um the general schwartzkopf he said um he should have let bush should have let him finish his job he should he should have let them um corner the republican guards yeah exactly that's what everyone says everyone i talk to they says you know it's real easy to say that yeah i don't think the higher ups were thinking about what this guy's going to do with the rest of his war machine they're going oh well it's not going to hurt us so we're just going to let them go but really we didn't think about the people that he was going and i mean he he's just they yeah they they did they stuck right to their goals and right what they were going to say and the american people when this first started they were even reluctant to let them do that so they were they were playing it very safe but you know it an ounce what do they say an ounce of [hind] sight is worth whatever they i don't know they it schwartzkopf knew what had to be done and it's too bad that he just didn't have the ability just to do it to you know the uh the go ahead to do it because he had the he knew what was going to happen more than any of us because i didn't realize that um it was going to make such a mess i mean i feel really sorry for these people these people are middle class people just like us can you imagine if someone started bombing your neighborhood and you knew this these people are going to come and if you were in your house they were going to take you and beat you of course you're going just going pick everything up that you can carry and you're going to run and it it's just too bad that we couldn't see that well you know what i was hoping i was hoping iran was going to take a very um dramatic stand and invade you know and then like [iran's] the big bad guy you know but really if if they were going to save people's lives yeah i know it's like they were using them as friends when we were having the conflict but i i you know i almost swear i'm kind of disappointed with the iranians why they didn't go save i mean i don't know if the kurdish i know the [shiite's] are their people but i don't know i think they have a bond with the the kurds yeah i i think they should have just done more uh and maybe if the world could have given them some type of aid it's it's just so complicated oh yeah well you knowing them they're very um oh i don't know almost compare them to a very [egotistical] man you're damn right i'm going to protect my family you know so i i was amazed too i was really i was really um proud of them though that they stayed out of it but oh yeah i was i that part scared me that that um the [egyptians] would pull out and i just saw atomic bomb we're supposed to talk about the middle east crisis and should we be involved and uh what's it going to cost us in the long run are you ready the middle east crisis should we be there well you realize why we were in the middle east why we invaded iraq why we were in saudi why we attacked kuwait and we we're why we are still fighting iraq no i really believe it's because i think it has something to do with oil don't get me wrong but saddam is saddam is a [madman] anyone that would use chemical weapons to fight his own people and obviously that has something to do with it and and if you know i can see that he was in kuwait kuwait was the [nonaggressor] and the [saudis] are our allies we have several [treaties] and several [alliances] with the [saudis] that range back for probably forty years you know they've been our friends through thick and thin they were at the saudi border and ready to storm into saudi shouldn't we try and help our friends what did we lose forty one americans lives oh of course our government is full of liars thieves and crooks and that's our own fault because we elected them you know it's uh i went on jury duty here not long back and uh one of the guys that was on the jury they were asking him if if you could believe a lawyer or if a lawyer's reputation was so [tainted] that he couldn't be believed and one guy being selected [snickered] and couldn't keep his head up you know and the guy said well can you share it with us what you what you find so funny he says well i already told you my sons a lawyer he said that when he graduated the day after his bar examine there in houston he told him dad you know how to tell when a lawyers lying to you his lips are moving and ninety percent of all politicians and lawyers so by definition all lawyers and politicians are liars the fact that they take our money and don't do what we think is right makes them thieves so what's it going to cost us in the long run there in saudi are we going to lose more lives there well we hit them with more in one month than we used in three years the last three years of vietnam and whenever you strike on open terrain with that sheer volume there's nothing they can do about it you know it's not like we threw eight aircraft over there all by ourselves and said this is wrong we were there the [brits] were there the french were there this is with u n backing and to some level even russia was behind so honestly if there is was a well perceived war world wide this was it but what i can't understand is then many of the kuwaiti youth didn't fight wouldn't fight it's okay for us to go extend our [youth's] lives like so much water in the desert and it's not their job to fight for their own land and really from all i can from all [indications] the iraqi beliefs if you will are more similar to our own and the kuwaitis aren't even helping rebuild their own country the kuwaiti young won't rebuild anything they won't work yeah it was on the news last night the uh u s army is doing it all well they talked to one kuwaiti woman yesterday and her biggest concern in life was that she couldn't get a housekeeper and do you have a housekeeper well i wouldn't mind having one but you know i'd like to make sure that i have a job tomorrow first it it [astound] you realize that the kuwaiti government gives every kuwaiti man woman and child money for nothing for for for doing nothing for sitting on there [kiesters] oh that ought to give their programming trouble shouldn't it uh they do nothing they hand them money each year and they're part of oh okay okay i guess so oh dear that's a hard one that's really hard for me because uh you know i really i have a son that's sixteen and i think you know eventually you know he'll be of of drafting age and i think gosh do i want him to go and yet i'm proud to be an american and i know that we have a country that you know people would give anything to live in a lot of people anyway because we have so many wonderful things that they don't have and yet i don't know whether i'd be willing to give his life for for this country and yet and yet i know that i that and i i when i was in school it was always the tired the tired excuse that we went to war to save us against communism but i'm not sure that that's the reason anymore i mean not sure that communism is is as strong as it once was and i'm not sure that that that's the reason why we're like we were in vietnam supposedly so well with the well it's because of oil isn't it uh_huh oh yeah i agree with that oh yeah well yeah he's uh a bad person very definitely yeah oh sure uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah many years uh_huh well uh_huh certainly but what at at what cost you know that's the uh the thing it came out it came out wonderfully supposedly i mean everything is and we won yeah and that that's wonderful but what if if that wasn't the case what if we would have lost thousands of young men would that would it have been too much of a price to pay for that i don't know see and i think there are a lot of things that we don't know but that the american people oh sure well and there's a lot that we yeah i think that's true but i think there's a lot that we the public doesn't need to know i think there's some things we shouldn't know just for national security sake and i you know i think if we did know i think there would be a lot more chaos than there is because i don't i don't think people could handle it so i think there are things that we should not know the masses shouldn't know but i also agree that there are a lot of crooks and liars too uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh my gosh oh uh_huh uh_huh have a lawyer background yeah have a law background you're right yeah that's true yeah that's true see and i don't know i don't know i can't tell the future that's what scares me so much about it i mean i thought the war was going to go on and on i really was surprised when it ended so quickly and i know yeah uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh right they were oh sure sure uh_huh yeah yeah yeah that is very it's very strange uh and yet you know see that's another thing that that's difficult for americans their culture is so much different than ours you know i've heard from many people that we could not even begin to understand how they feel about things because their values and their [perceptions] are so much different than ours and um they just don't think the same way we do their culture is completely different and almost opposite uh_huh that's true uh i didn't realize that oh my word uh yeah see and that's another question you have to ask is this our job is are we should we still be there even you know i don't know the answers to those questions i think they're tough and i think you know it's i don't know that anybody knows the answers i think they know what they believe but i'm not sure they really are one hundred percent sure uh_huh you're kidding that's unreal no no and don't plan on having one either ever oh i'd love to have one but you know sure sure that's right that's right uh no i wasn't i didn't wasn't aware of that no for doing nothing yeah uh_huh uh_huh yes um how do you feel about um the way the u s has [reacted] in the middle east huh_uh what is the [woodward] book you are referring to huh_uh huh_uh right that was my feeling i was i was very against our involvement so quickly huh_uh huh_uh right i think we're very naive as far as that part of the world is concerned right right in spite of all the promises huh_uh huh_uh huh_uh huh_uh huh_uh huh_uh and i'm not sure we're sensitive to to other cultures huh_uh huh_uh but i'm not sure it's something you can teach i mean awareness huh_uh that's true that's true yeah right right and um what about the whole situation with the refugees the kurds but what about the palestinians right right huh_uh huh_uh huh_uh huh_uh well do you think the u s should even be involved i mean as the world leader in the sense trying to resolve these issues or should we have just stayed out of it right right right huh_uh right but in a sense i don't know that i would say it's good in a sense i'm glad that saudi wasn't more changed by by the situation because i mean we really don't i mean i don't think it's our world to [westernize] the whole world so the fact that the saudi could just sort of pull back and uh remain you know culturally sort of clean is interesting huh_uh right right well you know i mean i actually lived in beirut from sixty eight to eighty four and so i mean it's been dangerous for sometime i'm not sure that it's changed that much well see that's it it really hasn't exactly it depends on whether one talks physical or or sort of cultural culturally i mean it's obviously changed a lot because it's more of a survival city but the buildings are still [intact] and still beautiful you know you know there was garbage on the corner when i got there and there's garbage when i left but i mean it's just a different cultural aspect i mean the trucks don't come daily and you really don't want the garbage in your house so and i mean i traveled in the area too and um so that many of the countries turkey and syria are the same as they were for traveling yeah i was never able to go to baghdad it was i never could get a visa so even before so even when things were good in the middle east americans weren't really given visas to go into baghdad and um but it's it's a very beautiful part very interesting historically of course which was my interest art history so uh right right huh_uh huh_uh i see i see then great and um you know have a good business trip okay thank you bye bye well i was it was favorable i i just i think the sanctions would have worked but it would of taken longer and uh now with all this stuff coming out with [woodward's] book and everything uh and then i saw a nightline program last night about all the funding of [hussein's] uh back as early as nineteen eighty six so uh been a different turn and then i don't think we projected what was going to happen after the war it got over so fast so uh well it just came out i guess yesterday it's called the [commanders] and it's uh it says big story in the paper about it today bush trying to comment on it that [colin] powell was against the uh uh an early uh he was for sanctions and so it seems like there's you know always some body digging things like that but i'm not for sure we know exactly what what all happened in that situation so we were so uh fast to get over the vietnam whatever the vietnam syndrome is that now we've tied ourselves up there in the middle east for a long period of time yeah i just think i think if we had been very i mean if we had that good of a correlation through the united nations then they could have uh they could have made sanctions work i'm pretty sure with that much support you would have just penalized any nation that broke the [embargo] we are we are i think you know in in we've just [misread] almost everything in that we always seem to be getting in bad with the wrong fellow for the next next tenure for the next thing down the road and uh then we can and we don't tend to read israel correctly so uh i don't know it should be a mess it's uh not going to be anything we're going to get out of very soon right they can talk a good game but uh being a historian it's you know you read all that clear back at least to the turn of the century with all the mess after the first world war and we just we're still i i you're absolutely right too naive we just if we do find so called experts in any area of the world we don't listen to them so um i don't know be be interesting to keep watching i guess but i'm just afraid it's going it's going to break us not very much in our colleges we're trying we're i happen to teach at a college with a tremendous number of international students and and cultural diversity is just something we really don't understand and it needs to be uh taught from the [earliest] grades with our school systems in such disarray i don't know if that it doesn't look terribly hopeful well you can at least uh give them the awareness of the different cultures and uh you know have all sorts of um at least you know let them know what that that other people do things differently than than than maybe in their own neighborhood so and when when when those people are around and you can get them to meet and we're all pretty much alike so uh but it's uh it's something as you know as i said won't go away so it will be a good topic for me in the class for along time because i teach history so well i would just think if bush was so successful in [lining] up the correlation to [prosecute] a war then he should be equally successful in getting that same correlation to push the united nations to uh uh somehow persuade those nations to give the kurds a [homeland] they were promised that well that's the same thing they uh they haven't been waiting quite as long even though they've been waiting since forty eight uh that that becomes a different matter simply because your dealing with israel and they seem to be more [intractable] than ever uh that [shamir] can't can't retain his leadership if he if he backs down the [slightest] bit so uh i just don't see us i don't think there's anybody of of major [stature] on the scene of like the great [statesman] of the past or at least we thought they were i'm not for sure that they were they seem to have gotten us into some of these messes well i wish we could stay out of it but the oil is not going to allow us to we absolutely need that oil that's the major thing if we didn't need the oil and if we didn't have the ties with the israelis we could probably stay out of it but i'm not for sure that we're not [destined] at least for the [foreseeable] future as long as we can keep our head our own head above water to be the world leader so i bush is probably if he can keep that correlation together especially the french and the british and the germans and be sure that the japanese can kick in some of their money they may just have to i don't know what type of pressure they can put on all the nations there too because now that the war is over societies have just about gone back to their own uh uh cold [selves] and i wouldn't have necessarily fought for the kuwaitis they uh they're nobody likes them in that part of the world but uh it's just such a volatile area i mean there's just no stability period huh_uh absolutely yeah i think you're right i it's not our uh role to make everybody like us but it's just uh for those who have may have wanted to travel in that part of the world that are up in the age i am it's going to eliminate that for awhile i think it's going to be too dangerous to be any place in there oh did you yes yeah well i i haven't been to beirut but i've heard what a wonderful city that it's just totally gone to uh it hasn't that's one part of the world i've been to north africa a lot but not um i haven't been to beirut or syria or baghdad right sure well i think we've done them a good job today then for this little project they're doing in fact i just talked to the director awhile ago so uh he was checking to see if i was going to stay in because i've been so busy with this presidential search i haven't had a chance to really do any calling myself so uh thank you and you continue bye bye hello hi um this is betty and i'm in richardson texas oh okay well here we go i guess we're going to have a lot of [parades] this weekend in honor of these guys that are that did some stuff over in the gulf um yeah uh no i haven't pushed one yet i just okay we're just sort of getting acquainted here um you know i i just wanted to see if you know you had an opinion about this or you know um so if that's okay with you then i'll just press one okay well hi good morning um i think i mean if if i start this i just wanted to say that um one of the things that i don't think we really understood about the the middle eastern situation is that they're a totally different type of people than we are and i mean they think differently and their idea of what is justice is totally different from ours and and right now i i think that that's been proven in the fact that um they have just well anyway i just think that you know the united states policy over there i think we should just leave them alone i really do in in a major way because they just um that whole region over there i think needs to settle it's own differences within itself and that's the way the course that they should go i mean you know we can maybe help them a little bit prompt them but i don't think this intervention at such high levels should be going on the the thing with israel and [palestine] i believe that should be settled between them and also um you know the other thing is their idea or our idea of democracy has nothing to do with them i mean i mean i'm talking about the whole middle and and maybe this is too general but i just believe that um they do not look at democracy the same way we do they don't understand it as we don't understand the way they live and so you know trying to put like a square [peg] in a round hole is just you know i don't think that that's the way to go in this and um you know it it oh well that's that's a couple thoughts on it i i guess you know i'd like you to maybe express something here yeah that's yeah well well yeah um i i guess we could be a [catalyst] for their change i um the war has certainly sort of set things on end over there and i don't think we'd be talking about this you know the israeli situation [palestinian] situation um sort of came to a head um unless there had been a war i mean that was one thing that came out of it good or bad i i don't judge any war as good or bad it's just a war and i don't see any winners or losers i just see dead bodies i'm sorry you know but um i i just think you know you're right and i think maybe it's at a whole different level of them trying to cooperate and get along it's not going to be that we're going to uh you know sort of tell them to go to their room and that's going to solve the whole problem it's going to be them yeah and you know it's yeah that that's true too i um oh well yeah they they understand violence they love violent leaders to you know i mean look at you know the leader they had they they just adored him because he was so strict and cruel and you know for a while there he had them well it has a lot to do with their religion i got to say that over there um and i know this only because from personal experience that i'm speaking of this because i i've you know traveled around town with different cab drivers in a situation where i've done that and one one of the [kindest] people i've ever met in my whole life um is from that area of the country and i mean he is just overly he he is [abounding] in [kindness] let's say and his wife is so [godly] i mean every thought they have a totally different life than we have you know and when you add the um [commercialization] of the western world it sort of screws everything up for them and they have very basic life um well it's just a very basic life and they just really believe in [allah] or god or whatever and it's you know everything is to the glory of [allah] and and you know and it it's almost like yeah well that's see using that yeah and it's always been military and it's always been and that's that's always been the way of the world don't you think yeah so it's really hard when you see the leaders compared to the people yeah yeah right and [surrendering] that was yeah it just really comes down to people are people you know you have to have some compassion some [humanness] doesn't matter where the boundaries are um you know there are political boundaries and those are man made boundaries but you know for heaven sakes that's something that's been going on for ages yeah that's true hello i'm nola and i'm in plano yeah now did you push one oh okay okay but i think it's i just started doing this so i don't know too much about it oh okay uh_huh that will be fine hi yeah yeah yeah well i i i think overall that's right i think it's kind of sad though that for generations they've been taught to hate each other and that's you know if somewhere in there someone's going to have to learn a different way you know an an i i think that um true we do have completely different ways of looking at things at a lot of things but uh at the same time i think there are a lot of there is a lot of good that the united states and other countries can do as far as example and and uh i think some different things could come from what's happened than what we expect yeah yeah yeah but that's the type of thing they understand they don't understand any other way and so at that at that you have to work at their level to an extent too they wouldn't have understood anything else than what we did in the war there was nothing else yeah yeah i can't figure out why they adored him yes yeah yeah huh yeah uh_huh what's sad is that the leaders that have control are power yes and they abuse that which i think that that's not the the way the majority of the people over there really are but i think in a in a way the war uh i think in a way all the involvement over there too though has shown a lot of people that there are a lot of people that don't follow what those few are doing and there are a lot of people who are good people you know there's and i i think we may not have ever have seen that without some of these uh [newspeople] being in there in the broadcasts and the the uh soldiers leaving um you know [surrendering] and trying to get out of that situation and and the you know that's right and i i think so much of it is what you're taught you know they teach their children uh in such a way that all right carolyn when do you are you reading the papers about the the middle east summit yes i'm just a little bit too i think um i think i was worn worn out from middle east after the war uh_huh yeah yeah that's i think uh i don't know in the short run it would be really nice to get the hostages all back i think that's really uh really important i i i i guess we grew up in such a different world i could never even imagine taking hostages but i think they just have a whole different world than we do so i don't know but i don't know what do you think some of the long term repercussions might be uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah i think um i don't know i have uh i just have this this civil rights mentality i i guess you know should we or or you know should we uh those i wish those countries could have the same type of freedoms or whatever that we do i guess that's what i i hope for them but some of them don't want those freedoms i think their their religious beliefs may um may not you know they may not want it as a whole so i think that's something that has to be considered too but i think that's a that's really a long term type thing i know that the the it said think about long term repercussions and i was just thinking well peace is peace you know and that really is the nicest thing uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh yeah yeah i i think so i think um and right i think i think they realized we would probably never push him out and uh i think the other probably all of the other arab countries said that we were sort of [wimpy] for not forcing him out uh_huh yeah yep uh_huh yeah i i think the the thing is though i i guess the the arab countries that used to argue with us or not support any ideas that that [coincide] with the the u s ideas or whatever used to probably receive money from the soviet union and i guess that's all gone i think that's really uh probably what started the whole process i yeah i think i think that they're they're so much more vulnerable now because they don't receive support from the soviet union so i guess they're saying well you know we can eat two ways or we can get this aid free from these countries two ways we can either act like we're going to be pro communist or act like we're going to be pro uh pro democracy and whatever gets us the most honor that's what we'll act like we're going to do but we really won't change in the long run i think that's the way i sort of see them all working you know yeah uh_huh yeah it's it's really funny as an american and always being an [ally] with the israelis i always find it very hard in my heart to to [align] with the israelis because they seem to be just as bad as the arabs you know but then again they have to live in that environment they have to be subjected to all of the arab [bombings] and terrorist attacks and whatever then they have to negotiate almost everything and then you think to yourself well you know in your heart you don't want to be [aligned] with somebody that's mean and cruel to someone else but if that's the environment that they have to live in and survive in then you have to sort of like i don't know logically uh some yeah i think it kind of uh it didn't really take over the first page quite as much as it did i think during the war but um we definitely need something there with all the hostages and what all uh_huh yeah oh well you know i just see this middle east situation with with russia and everything there that's happened i think that that crisis has kind of slowed down and i see the middle east as being you know the real hot spot of the future so to speak so i guess i view it as being the prime importance as far as trying to negotiate trying to wind down some of the [tensions] and everything that are there uh_huh yeah uh_huh i guess the question in my mind somewhat and and it depends on the country you know i think some are more peaceful than others if you look at um iraq for example and you know the recent thing with the u n going in there and the the bomb development and all this kind of stuff you know gosh i think you know we should have got him while we could or whatever and i think there's a certain mentality to that that's in the middle east you know the the constant fighting you know and yeah i think they they look at force as a way of you know their their means to their ends and uh so i you know i don't know so much if these peace talks are going to i don't know how much they'll stay to them you know if if we even if we say that we're going to do stuff i don't know how they'll stick to that uh_huh uh_huh well that's probably a bonus on our part yes it is uh_huh yeah i tend to agree with you you know i think they have in mind what they want to do and i think a lot of times their might make right and you know it kind of the [forceful] you know i don't know but i just don't think peace is [uppermost] in their minds uh_huh yeah well what do you feel about the um present situation in the mideast uh_huh yeah i agree i think i think there's definitely been some changes um and i think you know the the um end of the soviet union will definitely have it's effect on on the situation um you know in that there's there's not you there you know you know basically since the end of world war two there was always you know that little [proxy] war going on you know with um the u s funding israel and and the um soviet union funding the arab countries yeah uh_huh yeah but on the same token you know israel has lost a lot of their you know value to the u s in being you know the [foothold] of capitalism you know in in the mideast uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah but on the other hand you know if they would have had a hard time [retaliating] because the you know they they wouldn't have been given access to the friend or foe codes they basically would have you know had a had a they had they would have had had to fly through you know two enemies the u s would claim that they would have not given them to them i mean of course you know public statements can be taken for uh_huh uh_huh you know well to begin with you know i pretty much question or what what the u s motives were in uh in in actually the original involvement uh i the cynical side of me says that you know it was more for uh the the domestic political situation than for anything else you know and that you know and for portraying bush is a strong president uh i mean i really i really think that that my gut feeling is that that you know he pretty much picked picked the fight with uh with um hussein i mean i'm not not saying at all that hussein wasn't quite willing to enter that fight but you know i think i think that that um we chose to have our official feelings hurt where a lot i think i mean i thought i think that um in the past we've allowed lots of things like that to happen and i i really don't i really don't think that i think i think it was it was there were there were a lot more demographic related interests involved than true foreign policy interests um yeah and i mean in in in along this line since since you know it it really it really didn't accomplish very much except we're getting getting uh the iraqis out of kuwait i just don't i just don't i i i i i i don't foresee bush making the decision to invest a lot of manpower and money and you know in in fighting a second battle um you know over over the uh over over what what probably won't accomplish him accomplish much for him politically uh_huh uh_huh well i have i have very fixed feelings about israel um i think that that for a long while we've we've had almost a you know well it looks like it's just about as volatile as it usually is what do you think mark oh yeah uh_huh and then we'll see what happens when uh they're not funded quite as much or [supplied] with arms the same way uh_huh well i we tend to be pretty strong [supporters] of israel ourselves you know we kind of cringe when they make mistakes but yet overall tend to support them but i think one of the most interesting things to me recently was you know during the war uh in uh kuwait was uh the fact that they did not [retaliate] for the uh [scud] missiles that were uh [launched] there that just seemed to me to be a uh a phenomenal uh demonstration of restraint and it must have reflected uh uh some awful good uh diplomacy on the part of the u s i see oh you don't think they got the codes from the u s already i see that's true they can yet they yeah well what do what about this situation with the you know the uh continual uh harassment by iraq right now and uh apparently failing to let the uh arms [inspectors] have free access uh_huh huh yeah okay sure uh_huh right uh_huh well do you think that uh we should ignore it and just allowed him to go ahead and uh you know move on into kuwait and see what happens uh_huh right yeah well may have been you know i'm not saying that that's not the case uh right no no it doesn't look like we're getting ready to do to do much more in there even at this point yeah well what about uh do you have any any views on uh [israel's] relation to the u s do you think we ought to you know back off on our support of the country or what do okay so what do you think about us getting involved in the middle east oh i don't think we did really either well that's that's true yeah the uh the the biggest difference i got to agree was the idea that we were allowed to go and get it done rather than than set up a a line and say we're not going to let you cross this this point anymore and that really hurt the uh the uh the vietnam experience uh i got to admit that one uh_huh well do you think that um by uh going over there and doing what we did that uh it's going to give us a chance for peace over there yeah that kind of well that's uh_huh but is i mean is that any different than uh the way it is in even our country i mean uh back in the fifties and forties the blacks didn't like the whites the whites didn't like the blacks but we're getting to the point where we get along pretty good i mean isn't it logical that just any of the that you can solve differences like that so you uh_huh so you think it comes down to education or or something like that i suppose that's probably true uh_huh no oh uh_huh yeah because yeah i guess the uh you kind of think about the good things and not about the bad uh_huh uh_huh right right uh_huh right well isn't it also though based on religion i mean isn't that a a real powerful uh_huh well don't you think though that uh because of religion it just [enhances] the differences uh of the tribes and makes it so that it's that much harder to get along uh_huh right right uh_huh that's true well since there's not going to be peace over there don't you think like getting involved as we have that that's going to mean that we're going to be involved from now on and so any war that breaks out we're going to have to be in the middle of it uh_huh it doesn't seem that way does it uh_huh yeah i know yeah that's probably true uh_huh uh_huh huh true they want the the gas guzzlers and uh_huh didn't it though yeah i got to agree with you there i think that does get a lot a lot of good there uh_huh uh_huh huh united states right uh_huh let's say i'd have to say overall that the the war was was beneficial to the united states with with the change in attitudes and all that you know all that stuff i mean it's people think better about uh the u s now and that's really going to i think eventually come back and and help with overall business standards i mean people are going take more pride in their work and things like that i think it's going to really help out overall yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh that's right uh_huh oh yeah he had some excellent military people yeah i was the person i was impressed with most i mean i i really you know [colin] powell and and general schwartzkopf they're military people but i really didn't know that [cheney] was as military minded as he is i mean that's right i well he was what uh uh senator from utah or something like that i can't remember where yeah and see i don't know that and it you know i was real impressed with his handling of this i know that oh yeah uh_huh i don't think very many people are yeah uh_huh yeah there was uh there was a lot of talk about the idea that the even the uh iraqis themselves the people wished we would have done that uh yeah well unless they finally do take care of it themselves well that's true too yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's true yeah especially the cost of that and and uh uh the attitudes of the soldiers i mean they're there they think they could handle it better but if they came back and then had to turn around and go the attitudes would be just horrible yeah that's probably true uh_huh well i i thinks its been interesting to hear you know about the overall outlook and before we ended the war what implications we'd be dealing with uh you know the strong religious beliefs and you know it's just another uh attitude you know and what we are really getting into and the fact that that war you know coalition forces stuck together uh and uh you know i just think now is that they should have finished it all off because i think we're just going to see reap the repercussions down the line because he's still probably maintained power it sounds like he's you know knocked down the revolt or at least saddam hussein you know if they uh yeah yeah no i i don't think a lot of them didn't want him to lose you know power completely but it's hard to say yeah to go after the political heads of state yeah anyway but now it looks like uh kuwait has asked us to defend its borders more of a permanent type of basis which will be a first uh it's interesting uh yeah yeah yeah i don't know if the united states is interested as much as establishing a democracy as opposed to just getting rid of saddam you know if uh but you know we'll see if anything if he if he gets stability and he doesn't you know get knocked off you know by a coup or something down the line you know what happens on down the road i just uh it'll be interesting yeah yeah uh_huh yeah interesting interesting there's like a two square mile area that's occupied by some iraqi soldiers and [kuwait's] saying it's their land and did did their line of [demarcation] don't they call it and they've already outlined that for the cease fire and uh apparently we don't want to deal with that but the kuwaitis want these this land back that they're saying is theirs so it's interesting that we said that we said no we're not going to get involved you know we've already established you know the line of cease fire you know and uh the [demarcation] line so um they were definitely trying to avoid any hostilities i thought it was interesting though that we did shoot down some of their airplanes when they went up but i don't think they're doing that any more yeah yeah they warned them we told them we would this is after the cease fire i don't know maybe they were helicopters i thought they were i thought they were letting the helicopters fly around anyway so it's yeah yeah uh well they hate i mean they hate us over there most of those people but obviously i think it was in you know the heads of state obviously you know you know the ones that let us in but uh it's anyway i would think uh yeah i think it was good that that we got that you know that we drew the line somewhere and whether that you know the effect it has in the long run you know to bear on it yeah but i think yeah and i think you know it'll deter the next person from you know thinking the same types of things but i think the problem is that we'll never get away from the expansion idea i mean you know we're a territory in general we're going to run into another [huddle] and then go so far and say it's a hitler but perhaps saddam seems like he's as bad as hitler almost by the way he you know they torture and kill people you know from what you read but um you know once the nuclear power you know nuclear bombs uh get in the hands of some of these other countries uh for them to you know who knows uh who may yeah that's the only thing is they they don't understand implications i don't think or may or may not but yeah well we'll see and you know it has i may got to be going here they keep saying they think he won't make it but it looks like he's you know taking control of all these cities that were [besieged] by the rebels but sounds like he's gotten control and you know it's just a matter if he can survive you know without somebody else you know a coup attempt or something alright and take her easy alright there so we're discussing u s involvement in the middle east that's a tough one now isn't it but should we be the world police i i that's my question to myself i don't know would that be smart on our part well but we've done it before and it has not been successful those poor [souls] aren't going to get in to anything but food lines at this point and use the u n as it was set up to be our people now they had an interview with uh i'm going to [mispronounce] his name i know i can't pronounce his name i give up the general [stormin] norman and at the end of it it must have been sixty minutes or something like that no david frost that's what it was anyway at the end of it they rolled all of the u s names of the u s casualties and there were two women there so it's not our men anymore it's it's our people my husband thought both of them were the [quonset] hut he thought so well well i mean i think it's horrible what they did to the and i think [gassing] a whole village of women and children and all this sort of thing that's even before this latest event it's horrible and i think what he's doing to them is horrible what did he do he did some [atrocity] the other day he dropped something on them um it wasn't chemicals what was it it it was i can't even remember what it was now it was something melted but it was just [dreadful] you know and i i'm i'm horrified but i don't think every time there is an [atrocity] committed in the world we should run over there and monitor it we can't afford to and we're not smart enough to know who's right and wrong either maybe you know there's no telling what the did at some point in time you know we're not smart enough to be objective with all these situations and say okay these are the ones this is the side we should be on and we have so many internal problems that are not they are growing we are twenty fourth in the world for oh no infant infant [mortality] that's what it is and i mean the countries ahead of ahead of us that the babies live longer and are more healthy are rather embarrassing i mean there are some countries in there that we have no business being behind our technology is there and and i've found and i think we're breeding another disease this i think i think we have a social disease called poverty i think people get into the syndrome of poverty and they don't know how to get back out again they're following what their parents did and their parents did but the money they get is just i mean it's borderline survival i couldn't live on two hundred and thirty dollars a month i can't go to the grocery store twice for that kind of money i can't with my family and i have a small family so you know i granted they can do that very easily it's easy to do but look where it puts them it puts them in a trap and hopefully things are more [merciful] where you are but we actually had some uh street people picked up last week in dallas for picking up tin cans for picking up tin cans they were going to turn them in they were going to cash them in disturbing the trash or something like that it just blew my mind wait a minute well dallas politics are rather strange you know anywhere they're down here they're strange i can imagine from an [outsider's] point of view oh we are too i think we should promise to solve all of our problems and then we can work on somebody else's well they may have come into their own because for so many years they were just a lame duck organization that really didn't have anything and maybe they have at last achieved the status or the need for a organization such as that that they will achieve the status they should have had all along well the other way is to say no and to refer to the and to just say i'm sorry we're not yes yes it's sad your losing people but why should we lose people because you you know that's not the answer though the answer is yes you're losing people and we're sorry but we're not the people to make these decisions a a world council well now that we've solved the problems of the world that was easy well i think people agree i think it's just getting it implemented oh i i think we could use a lot of it at home but definitely a hot spot is the poor last year a lot of i agree uh i i agree i like the i like the the peace process spend more money on things like that and especially with um i don't know the [palestinian's] and the israelis fighting so much over who is going to go to this peace conference i'd tie some of the money to those peace conferences if they don't want to go to the peace conference then i guess they don't want the two billion dollars for the next batch of f [fifteens] or whatever which we'll never do but i think it is about time especially with the israelis that we because many times in the past they've you know they're happy to take our money and stuff but they often times fail to give us any support in return right well uh they they seem to do a lot of that so the problem i have in the past at least it was you know they were very [strategically] important to us but i think that's [diminished] a lot lately too especially with the relationship we've started to develop with saudi arabia after the gulf war and all and i don't know maybe we could use that to our advantage at least if we are going to be giving them all this money then at least you know we should get at least some cooperation or whatever in return right well that's for sure and we built some good friends over there now with uh time when we can use them you know little right well most of the large enemies were large enemies to begin with though there's not too many people that went from being our friends to being our enemies but there's quite a few that have been from our enemies to at least [tolerating] us or right that's right uh and i don't know iran now wants them to [reestablish] more normal relationships with us i don't know if that is in our best interests either but it's good that i don't know it seems slightly more stable now but how long that lasts you know it can history has shown that can just be a [lull] before the storm right well they have the all the religious [battles] they have the [nationalist] battle they just seem to have a lot of different cultures and [religions] [nationalisms] all packed into that one small geographical area they all believe that they have rights to these lands you know these two three four groups that all believe that this portion of land [rightfully] is theirs hopefully you know [optimistically] okay what opinion do you have about what was what happened uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah see i feel like i don't know i feel like there's motivation bush is a member of the [trilateral] commission and he's a member he was a member of the [skull] and bones at i think at [princeton] or [yale] [yale] and uh his motivation goes i don't feel like he is absolutely on the up and up with us on you know the the true motivation he talks a lot about the new world order and most americans probably don't really know what that would mean and i maybe i'm being maybe i'm assuming but i don't think most really don't and so i feel like the real motivation was something that uh most people have absolutely no idea and that that motivation is to um you know to establish a one world order and to break up the monopoly power of the middle east world so that they will submit under their uh one world order well like that's what i felt so i'm like going um am i glad we went over there and did that um i think god's ultimately be in charge and you know i'm not afraid of what they've done i'm not afraid of saddam hussein i feel he's lost and you know he needs to get saved just like everybody else but you know i just i guess i have kind of like um kind of real cautious in the whole thing because i know that there's a motive that hasn't been openly discussed or [revealed] to anybody and uh that's where that's why i really don't have a real set opinion because i don't know everything i don't you could watch the news all the time but you don't know anything hardly and he did talk about that though he did at least he did mention that you know what i'm saying i don't think most people understand what he's talking about when he talks about that new world order so i don't know what do you think about uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh but the motivation though see wasn't didn't have anything i don't believe it had anything to do with the oil because i think i i feel like the real motivation of the war was to break up that arab power not to [disperse] the oil but to there were big problems for the the [unifying] of the e e c the european economic community which is going to become i mean they're going to be they're going to put us under if we don't become part of the new world order next year the united states if we don't i mean we're going to be in big trouble because when europe [unites] and that's why t i building plants in italy because they're going to have power like we can't imagine because i think bush wanted to break up this other power thing and it looks real good but in the end i just see that ultimately who's going to be in charge of this one world order you know what i mean is is george bush really any better than saddam hussein or does he just look better do you know what i saying i mean i think one person in power that's not really seeking god and wanting to do good for the people and not deal for selfish motives is very dangerous and i don't see that this one world this new world order that him and gorbachev keep talking about i just don't see that um that's just a real good thing i think it's something that's going to help him but i guess i feel like it's going to happen with the war that was the motive of the war was to try and break that up and so that they could be you know get more power over that arab land you know and try and next year really start pushing this new world order he talks about it all the time i mean that's all he talks about but anyway there's a good book by leonard abraham you probably have heard of none dare call it treason and call it conspiracy well call it conspiracy is a real good book and he talks a lot about this i heard him interviewed some so i think it's kind of interesting but anyway he probably has a new book out that i don't know about yet because i haven't heard him in a while but i don't know well that's kind of my feeling on the war i'm kind of like no it's all power plays you know there's so much stuff going on we don't know about you know i'm like uh hey peter jennings you know he knows a little bit but i mean we would all die if we knew what was really going on i mean all of america would probably go into a coronary and die well they would that they're doing this but it doesn't change anything so i'm just like i don't know just i mean i was most people probably think i don't even have a high school education you know because of my attitude about it but i just feel like there's so much going on but you know hey i'm going to pray about it and if i feel led to vote for a certain person i'm going to do it but i'm not going to get all up tight about all this and stuff you know huh_uh because i know at first we were watching the news a lot and man it was like all the time and i thought gee you know god's going to protect israel and he starts he starts nuking israel he's in big trouble we'll hear about it you know what i mean anything major happens we're going to find out so let's chill out and just do what we need to do i know it was kind of exciting at first but and then i know the first night of the bombing we had was a wednesday and we had home church and we had a surprise birthday party planned for a sixteen year old and so we you know we're on the way to home church and the [bombing's] just begun you know and we go into the birthday party for a surprise party that was you know we just went from one extreme to the other you know and we felt kind of it was like man this is really hard you know i want to watch the war and so imagine the sixteen year old yeah we're having a surprise birthday party and a war started in israel that'll be a good story when she's thirty won't it well anyway i guess do you think we're finished i think so too i don't know if we did what we were supposed to but yeah we did they can do a lot of we get along good too some of the callers you don't along with that good you know you have you know what i'm saying isn't that funny i bet they're going to do a lot of research on that uh_huh yeah he probably had those glasses on like you know those annie hall kind of glasses i don't know what you call john [lennon] glasses that's what they are the women i call annie hall glasses but if i don't know if they're annie hall glasses or not i just i don't know i always think of annie hall when i see them really i know the female version of john [lennon's] but i know i talked to some guy who was i talked to some of the yuppie types you know and they're pretty interesting but yeah they're real opinionated but i guess that's better than nothing you know but yeah it's been interesting though all these different people and some of them are real friendly you know and it's like yeah man when i come to dallas i'll call you you know and then others don't even relate they just want to go and then some of them have babies crying in the background too so there may be other reasons than you know that but well anyway are you in dallas yeah i had a guy from rhode island that we talked about fishing so and uh i i've had people in massachusetts and vermont they work at t i up there do you work at t i see mine does too in dallas and uh yeah but no there's t i up in rhode island and stuff and that guy talked about fishing and i asked him if he took his wife and he didn't have a wife and i felt bad that well i'm sorry and he goes we're divorced well i'm sorry it was real sad but he was pretty nice and stuff and then him and my husband started talking salary how do you make up in rhode island so i was just going wait a minute we're supposed to be talking about fishing now stop but anyway is that funny but we did talk about fishing though so well i guess i'll let you go i'm going to finish my dishes and if anything happens interesting in the war maybe they'll have another thing and i'll get you again all right well yeah i uh and i'm i'm sure there's things going on that that uh we don't know about but but uh it a year a year ago now when the the war desert storm was finishing up seems like things were uh going to settle down and nothing seems to nothing seems to have settled down after all uh_huh yeah right right yeah and and i think there's a yeah i have very much doubt that that there's a real understanding at the top levels of of the of the cultures and of what's going on in terms of and and it seems to me that our policy basically seems to be uh the army of my enemy is my friend and that that saddam hussein was uh was our buddy buddy as long as he was against iran and uh iran was our bigger enemy and then when it turns out that uh saddam hussein right right yeah oh yes yes and when we decided saddam hussein was our enemy then the uh uh-oh what's his name in uh syria uh [hafaia] [susaad] i believe uh is suddenly our friend even though he was he was on our our leading terrorist yeah our leading terrorist list so uh you know right right right and and uh i think we're trying to we're trying to extricate ourselves somewhat from being so definitely tied to to the israeli side in terms of all of that israeli versus arab and uh i haven't seen solid evidence yet that we're doing a really good job of that yeah yeah so right right right and yes yeah well it it from what yeah from what little i heard in terms the the the most understanding to get really cynical about it the most understanding uh i uh felt that was displayed in terms of of uh iraq in particular was that it seemed to me that george bush was was trying to play the [peacemaker] in such a way that that he was [guaranteeing] that given their culture that saddam hussein could not back down and would not could not do anything but go to war and that uh uh-oh boy oh that must have been that yes that must have been really yes yeah right right yes right uh we eat out quite a bit it's just my husband and i at home now so oh at least once a week we're we're retired now when we working out we ate out more than that uh uh_huh well what type of restaurant do you like richard right oh have you we like chinese we eat a lot of chinese food what do you look for in a restaurant you what you oh i right i know what you mean i like some ambiance and i like good food i don't like fast food hamburgers and all of that uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh i don't care to go to a place just for the price of it i mean it's like continental french restaurant or something really with high prices and seven courses isn't what i usually look for it isn't no that isn't what i look for right uh_huh presentation and well like we we've been eating some in a restaurant that that just changed hands recently and we're trying to give them a little [patronage] but sunday we went there and i had a pretty good meal of grilled pork chops and a baked apple and potatoes so i said if they would just add a little bit of [cranberry] sauce something like that yeah that's what i mean by right uh_huh it would mean a lot to the looks of the plate tex mex tex mex right i know uh we have a daughter in texas and one in new mexico and we've really gotten to like we like the real mexican food better than tex mex right it's all pretty good isn't it right uh_huh that's true i'm originally from maine so we like seafood too and that's something we don't get here and we're in the mountains in virginia and most of the [seafood's] frozen right uh_huh that's true lots of shrimp i know it i know the feeling we do the same thing my son in law is a texan and when he goes to maine he eats lobster i guess at least twice a day all the time he's up there oh yeah yeah it's like two ninety eight a pound for a pound lobster yeah oh yeah cheaper right right yeah a lot of the restaurants you can get two two one pound [lobsters] for like ten ninety nine yeah it's a good place to go lots of little restaurants too with home cooked food that's up there right uh_huh uh_huh we went to we were in galveston last year right well the first of this year actually and ate in a restaurant and they claimed to have the best shrimp on the gulf coast no it wasn't on the way across louisiana we pulled off we saw a [billboard] and just pulled off taking a chance on a place and they had it was a small restaurant just kind of out of the way and they were set up with two buffets one for their regular sunday chicken and roast beef and vegetables and everything and then one complete seafood buffet that was the best shrimp i have ever had in my life they had shrimp fixed probably six different ways uh_huh right it was wonderful uh_huh uh i tried it but i didn't care for it not there but at my brothers i tried it that's probably true it i wasn't hungry it wasn't a meal we just he went down and bought some at a local place that [steams] them just so we'd try them probably needed some cold beer with it and quite a bit oh right we used to do that once in a while but we don't anymore uh_huh it's fun but it's just so much food hate to come away feeling uncomfortable do you well that makes a difference where do you go to brunches like at hotels or restaurants there oh yeah uh_huh we eat at shoney's oh uh_huh that sounds nice right i imagine it is out of which direction out of which direction from there uh_huh so eating out what are you interested in in restaurants uh once a week twice a week yeah i understand uh but we both work and we have a daughter and we normally manage to eat out once a week anyway uh really i'm kind of open on food i'm what you might call a [culinary] [adventurer] i'll uh try anything once been on a real barbecue kick lately yeah excuse me uh yeah we usually have chinese once a month i hate [franchised] restaurants i despise [franchised] restaurants i i i always prefer to go to something that seems more family run uh some place where you seem to have the attitude like you're going into their home for dinner almost i don't but i don't like something fake or put on either you know if i could have a good small restaurant or a good large restaurant i'd go to the good small restaurant and i don't know why that is i think it's probably due to pricing often well yeah yeah yeah it is what you look for oh isn't isn't uh i try to get my money's worth and not just that i try to well that's a big part of it i try to get my money's worth you know and not just in quantity you know but quality and and flavor and texture and care well [presentation's] not always all of it either it's it's important uh_huh yeah yeah something a little extra and just for color if nothing else yeah yeah what i miss up here is i'm originally a texan and i miss home cooked mexican yeah home cooked tex mex uh mexican restaurants where it's not owned by an anglo or a corporation yeah well there's real mexican food and there's real tex mex mexican you know by third or fourth generation americans of hispanic heritage oh yes and and there's big differences of course and of course when you talk about mexican cuisine you that's kind of like talking about american food or chinese food because its regional too so oh uh yeah that's the way it is here in colorado also no fresh or almost no fresh seafood and in texas we got it from the gulf and yeah here a couple years ago my wife and i went to seattle on vacation and i think everything except breakfast was seafood for almost a week and it was i was like a man starving at every meal it's a lot cheaper there isn't it lobster it's like shrimp on the gulf two ninety eight a pound that's as cheap as steaks some places i mean in a grocery store oh my gosh i've got to go to maine then you may have sold a trip for some time uh it sounds wonderful uh so that sound good uh down in the gulf i've eaten a bunch of those little uh seafood [shacks] we've called them and uh it's just so much different than to eat something that's been frozen you know shrimp straight out of the bay hm was it true hm huh uh yes the [cajuns] they can they can do things to shrimp that that no one else can so have you eaten crawfish yet oh as with anything it's preparation uh uh_huh it there's all kinds so you do eat out a lot one of our other real problems with going out to eat sunday morning brunches you know sunday brunch all all you can eat brunches uh we still find it fun well i work in machine shop and do a lot of physical labor and so yeah uh actually one of our one of our favorites is a chain shoney's yeah in spite of the fact i've spoken so badly about chains chain restaurants uh we uh do like shoney's pretty well but then there's a place up the pass up in the mountains that we pretty [reliably] like to go to on some sunday mornings drive drive up to i think it's about eight thousand foot elevation and and drive through [woodland] park and go for a short drive in the mountains and have breakfast it it it's the way to spend a nice sunday morning i think it's as much the the trip to the mountains as it is the breakfast brunch you know and it's not that far it's thirty miles colorado springs west west out of colorado springs all right do you want to start out oh are you really oh are you strict vegetarians uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh there's very few places that you i'll bet that you could uh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah and you wouldn't have the meat products in that and some yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh how long have you been doing this uh_huh do you feel that it has improved the way you feel do you think uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i always thought it would be hard to figure what to eat if you were a vegetarian how how yeah uh_huh uh_huh because you don't eat any of those things is that right uh_huh uh_huh we we throw more of it off our out in other words uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh all that's in it uh_huh why uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's interesting uh_huh after you have been on this uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh he thinks more about them then uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh so you kind of have a combination uh_huh well see we i live in a farming community so of course we have a lot of animals and that type of thing raised in our area uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah yeah uh_huh you get adjusted to the taste uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh so you would have a little more trouble when you were looking for a dining area than what most most people would now we wouldn't have that problem because we're not vegetarians uh i think the main thing that i look for is uh cleanliness uh you know the in the appearance of the people that work there and the uh quality of the food that they serve yes oh we try new places but when we a lot of times we do eat where we know what uh_huh what the quality because a lot of them are the same no matter where you stop and uh we do do that a lot and i guess i'm getting old older also i like to be served i like to sit down and have my uh order taken right yeah so i suppose you'd say i well i i don't know whether it's age or what it is but i have yeah yeah uh_huh you should have a treat and i like the light meals not all restaurants have light meals on their menu you know and i uh l i t e like uh uh things that aren't as heavy a meal it that you get more uh fruit and maybe cottage cheese or a chicken breast or things that aren't as uh they're not [breaded] and they're not fried and they're not yeah uh but it's not all rest uh_huh i know it's too much yes uh_huh i don't know what it is but now for instance we we had a scout dinner last night we went to and it's it's they uh well they'll serve you at your seat and usually the salad bar is included so you have to get up for that but they have so much food that you not matter how hard you try to restrain yourself you end up eating much more than you need uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah you can eat as much as you want and you like the food you know uh a lot of times the foods like uh [haas's] carry a bread bar that is just out of this world and you know you and soup and uh they just and fruit and vegetables and they they just i don't know i know i always [overeat] no matter i go with good intentions but i somehow along the way when i come back to my seat i have too much and i eat it because it's so good yeah and i like reasonable prices of course too i don't like to you know go to anything that's real expensive i think that's a waste of my money uh_huh uh_huh so do you uh_huh uh_huh chinese we've got a good chinese restaurant in town i i really like eating there and and you don't get stuffed on their food it seems you know you can eat a whole big plate of their food and you really don't feel like you've eaten too much you're full you know you're satisfied but you don't feel stuffed and miserable uh_huh um uh yeah yeah yeah well it'll be real easy for us because we're both my husband and i are vegetarians so yeah so that's the first thing we look for is if we can eat there or not we're not vegan vegetarians we do we're [ovolacto] we do eat uh eggs and and milk products i used to be a complete vegan vegetarian where i didn't eat any animal products at all but um it was it's really difficult in the area if you don't have you know the products that you can get and if you go out to dinner there's virtually you know there's not a whole lot of things you can get yeah i think maybe if you were somewhere like california where they have a lot more vegetarian restaurants and stuff but here basically you go to an italian restaurant or you go to a mexican restaurant you know where you can get foods that you know where you have a little bit more variety as far as the pastas or the the corn meal you know or something but yeah yeah you have to watch that too all you know some of the restaurants here they will you know you can ask them and they'll tell you whether or not they use like [lard] or you know animal fat to cook with so but so that's that we don't really eat out too much we we tend to eat at home and actually you know i think we we we get a we have a healthier diet than the average person um i've been a vegetarian for uh two years now my husband has been one for oh just over a year now and uh so definitely and it it makes you more aware of what you're eating because you you have to be i mean you you i think you you you balance the foods uh you know you're more aware of what [nutrient] you know value each thing has and minerals and you're just more aware of food for energy for energy sake well that's just it you you do have to figure it out and and you know to get [proteins] and things and when i was a vegan it's you know you have to consider calcium and iron and things like that you you're not even getting through your milk products your egg products if you don't eat any of those but actually you can get everything you need through vegetables i mean there are there are there are you actually you can get more calcium through leafy green vegetables than you can get through milk products a lot of people don't know that well the thing is that milk products our bodies don't uh don't uh the [lactose] that kind of milk it doesn't our we we tend to uh what's it called we don't [synthesize] the the calcium the same way yeah we we [slough] some of it we we send we send some of it out because it our body doesn't accept some of it so we're not utilizing we're when it when it gets rid of some of that um that we can't use it get [rids] it gets rid of some of the calcium whereas when we eat say broccoli you utilize all of it you your your body accepts all of the broccoli so it's like it's like say a person using vitamins as opposed to uh vitamin supplements as opposed to eating regular food your body just doesn't accept vitamins and the minerals in the the vitamins in uh supplements that it does in regular food you know so but we both we both feel much healthier much healthier and i couldn't consider going back to eating yeah well now i changed for ethical reasons and my husband has changed he feels more ethically about it but he he in the beginning began for health reasons but um now he he feels like i do that he looks at the things that he eats and he realizes what they are before he eats them and he you know yeah plus he eats we both think more about i thought more of about it as far as what it was i was eating you know as a living creature and now we both think a lot of well what is it we're eating in relation to what it's going to give to our bodies uh_huh uh_huh well we do too i mean i was raised in um we're in cattle country and people here buy a half a cow and put it in their freezer you know and that's that's the way i and i believe you me it wasn't easy to give up to give up a hamburger that that was one of my favorite foods was was a a was a good steak or a hamburger but you know i suppose if you really believe in something it's you you adjust your life because your mind you your you inside yourself you just it's not right so but um oh yes yeah so what do you look for when you uh_huh do you normally when you're traveling do you look for places that's established that that you've been to before or are you willing to try new places yeah like a chain restaurant or something uh_huh as opposed to like a cafeteria kind of situation yeah well no i don't think so i think it's just your because i i prefer to be waited on too i just if you're going to go out to eat why not have the whole service you know why not get the whole i guess because we don't go out that much i feel like it's a treat yeah uh_huh oh light menu you mean like cooked light or oh i see uh_huh not a lot of gravy and things like that you know i i like those too i like those too because uh some seems like sometimes it's you order a meal you order their dinner meal and it's like they're trying to find out how much you can eat or or or or like evidently people go in there and they're not satisfied that they'd been given enough and they complain and maybe they're afraid that people are going to complain or something uh_huh and i think that's a shame i mean i must admit sometimes i do like a buffet but uh but i think that they just tend to make you you say oh well i've have got all i can eat or or you know it's one of these situations where nobody's going to restrain what you eat the amount that you eat and i think that that we just tend to eat [overeat] yeah yeah yeah yeah well at least it's fruit and stuff there maybe it's not too bad yeah just for food it does seem like it yeah but uh we like uh we do like international food so we take i like we like indian food and uh i love italian food and uh chinese but yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that's one thing that i wish we had more of uh because where we're from it's it's pretty limited and it's most of the restaurants are oh they tend to be you know american style food and we don't have too many you have to go all the way to dallas and so it really is a treat because uh you know we don't make a trip sixty five eighty you know sixty five to eighty miles depending how far in dallas it is yes okay no i haven't is that good it's not my favorite but i like it's okay uh_huh that's okay uh_huh oh oh that sounds really good yeah well are there just the two of you okay well when my husband and i go out we have four children so that makes a difference for us when we go out with the kids obviously we want to go somewhere that we can the fast food ones are probably the ones they like the best but we don't like to go there because that's the most expensive so we like to go to a pizza place where you can buy a pizza for one price and feed the whole family and like that right right but when my husband and i go out we like to go somewhere with a little atmosphere and we usually head on down um oh what's the freeway down here yeah and there are um all along that that freeway there are restaurant but one of our favorites is pappasito's no we love to go there you know it always kills me cause i don't like the the decorations so much it's too yeah but i love the food i love the food the food is great yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh i like to get that uh a shrimp it's a shrimp dish and i don't remember the name of it but it's rolled up into into something and oh it's really good yeah they are really good yeah yeah yeah uh_huh yeah yeah it's very expensive yeah sometimes it's hard isn't it to keep a no sometimes mark and i that's my husband mark um go to the august moon which is down there it's a chinese uh restaurant with the [lions] in the front yeah and oh it's pretty good as far as chinese but chinese isn't my favorite so but he likes it kind of so he heats us up a good fight now me i'm like i said seafood i'm i like that so um oh uh_huh is it oh how nice yeah i don't know that place was it um that's what we need isn't it no there's a lot of nice barbecue places here now i like barbecue okay texas barbecue it's good yeah now they're real good they are good yeah free ice cream yeah yeah oh just to die for exactly oh in heaven well my two littlest i just had a baby and she's six months and then my four year old he he still but my other older two they can so they're they're kind of my littlest girl she's still like wants mcdonald's mcdonald's mcdonald's oh i'm telling you well it's kind of funny is sometimes we're like we all want different things and so there's a h avenue down here and along are these fast food restaurants so we all get to go to our own little thing and drive through and get our own thing and then we go to park over there so we can all have our own that's on the nights we can't decide well five of them they're good kids oh how nice it will be neat food's food yeah yeah yeah you have to be careful if you go to a a restaurant that that really is more adults you know with the atmosphere and everything they if you're like we could probably take our oldest son and and our oldest daughter and they know how to act i don't think i would chance it with my younger ones because they're just too much of a [distraction] and some restaurants are really trying to go for that atmosphere kind of thing yeah so yeah yeah oh is it tia's not tia's um yeah i know which one it is and i can't think of it oh dear it was one of these you have bad experience and say i don't think i'll come back here oh dear oh oh yeah yeah yeah well i i've got one of my favorites were and i can't really think of any other um places yeah you have to watch it if you go out to eat that's true yeah there you go well good luck yeah maybe okay bye bye are you still there okay it worked out fine well we just ate out um had a big lunch actually because we both have been working late and we had italian um have you ever been to the olive garden yeah well do you really like italian food then don't then this will probably i mean this isn't really excellent italian food that sounds terrible to tell you to go somewhere where it's not that great but it's um you're not going to believe this but i have to tell you this if i don't because you're in plano but my um softball unit here is acting like he's dying of [tramane] poison it wasn't that bad actually it's very good it's all of these run adult males which i'm not italian no it's it's all the garlic bread and all the salads you can eat with an entree so it wasn't too bad it really wasn't but i was more in the mood for french [toast] any way so so i really like italian food though but do you have any favorite uh yes uh_huh oh you're kidding oh sure yeah you can usually get a variety of what you're looking for like at [gatti's] or something like that uh six thirty five uh_huh oh yeah pappasito's we went there on my birthday in march it's great too much like a bar naturally and mexico yeah i know i've seen it the food is probably i'm not a i'm mexican food gourmet by any means but it's probably the best tasting i don't know would you classify that as tex mex um the shredded beef the type of spices or sauces they use really uh_huh i've never had anything there that wasn't delicious even though you have to stand in line and all of that that's the only thing i don't like about it too it's a little bit with the meat market atmosphere you know even though we don't have kids we've been married long enough to um be around not be around that um i'm trying to think of what else we like to eat the one thing i notice is it's just um about dining out that you probably can relate to with four children and two of us getting ready to adopt i mean we find prohibited just to cost any more i mean lunch today was eighteen dollars yeah i don't know how you feel about that but i think that some of it's over priced i'm glad i'm talking about food normally these conversations are yeah it is i don't know um uh_huh oh yeah my husband likes that yeah off of arapaho down there yeah august moon uh_huh i don't like it at all usually so yeah i love seafood and i i like a lot of different ethnic foods i like japanese food there's a place on greenville called [sagar's] well we haven't been in years down near [presby] and i had a meeting down there today and i saw that and i said gee i remember that they offer you um authentic japanese feeding or american or piano bar and i remember when we went we were married with another couple that was just dating and um i had never had [saki] it made all raw fish tastes great but if you're looking for a very uh it's very pretty inside and the girls wear [kimonos] and you know if you're ever looking for that um but what other kind of foods gee i don't know we went to a place called [grishman's] in greenville which was really over priced uh_huh they had a great desert bar yeah yeah i like barbecue have you ever been to i think it's called spring creek barbecue that's real good yeah there had oh my husband's going upstairs and he says free ice cream i didn't know they had that i can't talk i had chocolate [bavarian] tort for desert today which i never eat at lunch and it was wonderful it was in fact if i could pick my um restaurants on how their coffee is and how their french bread is and the butter and the desert i would be yes i would be in hog heaven and how are your kids at an age where they can contribute to what they want or do you still order for them oh congratulations uh_huh yeah everybody every child that i even know that eats vegetables um looked five years old still after a certain age realized that there is something called a mcdonald's it's really sad isn't it cause it's hard to get them away from junk then uh_huh uh_huh i know where that right that's all well that's all right as long as i was going to say because with six people how do you um cause with two we have a problem i mean i can't even imagine you know trying to um you sound like you're doing pretty well with four children that's the way the yeah well we're getting ready to i shouldn't say this on this conversation but it's just on my mind we're getting ready to go overseas to adopt yeah we're excited i think it will be worth it and somebody said to me in terms of this is food so i can say this but they you have to bring a formula and i said what's that they laughed and i said well you know i'm thirty something and i think that that would make them drool any way you know i guess are you is it a little bit of [constricted] because a lot of restaurants don't take in terms of talking about restaurants i mean are a lot of restaurants how are they when you have children let alone three or four children uh_huh sure uh_huh uh_huh yeah that yuppie kind of crowd yeah yeah i just i just i've been in some places where they say they take children and then i've just seen where the wait [attendance] the wait staff is rude you know and that always just bothered me and then um on the other hand sometimes the children or the adults are themselves i don't know what other kind of restaurants really pappasito's we love um we went to one italian back on the italian we went to some place across from collin creek mall that absolutely [putrid] for italian food i can't remember the name of it it's on uh no that's mexican um right across from on the dillard's side there i can't yeah it's in the strip yeah and it had white [tablecloth] i think it was like paper where you could write on them or something with [crayons] it was just terrible i mean i was shocked i mean the dish was dirty um yeah where you felt like like when you're in a bad part of italy or something um boy but other then that i don't know we we do our share of pizza eating too but more like go get it and carry it in cause we're too cheap to pay the delivery i don't like strange people coming to my door um no except that this makes me fat no i'm just kidding yeah that's true but you can always blame it on having children no well i enjoyed talking to you and i guess you know maybe we'll see you in the restaurants somewhere okay bye bye well let's see um i i like to go out to eat i really do but being from dallas um i think we have an average of six or seven restaurants that open and close every month and we we have a really high turn over rate oh yeah and and this is i mean there are streets just called restaurant rows and uh you can get everything here from um a very spicy indian meal to you know the favorite barbecue and and uh just anything your little hearts desires around here so here they have to entertain us to make us come back and i guess it's all one big game because you you just never run out of places to go you really don't yeah really and and we go to you know like an older part of town and we just notice how many oh well that [restaurant's] changed and oh gee there they've changed and oh we've got to go try that one you know and it's it's really you have the pick of the you know the crop here oh you know your your fourteen ounce steak with your potato and stuff um you can get that too no they've got everything here from the uh french room which is ultra ultra to um um dean [ferrings] uh uh restaurant which is the mansion on turtle creek i mean we've got beautiful places to go you can get as dressed up or you know just going to the local barbecue and just doing take out so you know i guess uh some of the foods that we really enjoy though are the um um like chinese and we're always searching around for chinese and now of course they've added the [taiwanese] and and um uh various you know any any part of the country you want to hit they have got it i mean vietnamese restaurant we went to you know last week it's great it's good stuff you but uh it's so it's very very mixed and uh you know i think if you like food like we do i i don't know if that happened before or after we moved here but um you know you get a lot of uh great variety of things here so but if you were going to a restaurant say um where would you go right oh okay oh yeah right i see that's true too to another place yeah yeah well oh there you go yeah oh we're sort of in the middle of uh the extension of the cajun country too so we have um a lot of ambiance provided by you know the the bands and you know like you said jazz bands and things like that you know you go out and you eat your crawfish and [jambalaya] and stuff you know i i really don't like that stuff but my husband does he loves to cook it so he and a friend of his get together and they cook i mean you know like for a bunch of people and and uh it's really in fact we do a lot more entertaining i think at home than we do going out so when we do go out we really you know want to be [wowed] by um the presentation so to speak and uh you know but but there are little places um and like i said some of our very favorites are the chinese restaurants just to and we do a lot of take out because everybody's so busy running around and it's the fastest thing to do and so we sort of enjoy the you know both parts because uh_huh oh right yeah just to be abused by the [meanest] waitress oh that's a talent um got to carry through with the abuse huh oh gee well that's funny i we just went to an italian restaurant this um just wonderful and they i mean it's like being in i mean i've never been to italy okay but it's just this big beautiful italian restaurant very um low key in terms of the people are from california you know so they have their own [adaptation] of what italian is i mean but it's it was a wonderful wonderful experience you know they have uh women there going to s m u going to uh southern methodist university and and graduating in opera or something like that and they are all singing [arias] to you and and just walking around the restaurant singing and they make the food right there so it's display cooking and and uh then they have wine [casks] all over the place so you're lined up waiting in line to this place and you just take a drink of wine and you know they don't count that really they just oh really uh that's good i never really thought about that but uh a good turn over would be sort of nice course if you find a place you like and it works out that no one else likes it it would be sort of sad to see it go under are they big into ambiance down there or is it more like uh texas to me makes it seems like it would be portions would be the big thing yeah right uh_huh uh_huh um uh_huh yeah oh well we had uh we have a lot of favorites here uh in northern virginia and of course we've got d c to call on you know and there's all sorts of things down there one thing about d c is that there are a lot of traditional restaurants where you know it's the guy used to be the cook for the capitol and so he stays in the same restaurant for twenty years you know and he's got a big clientele and um so there are there are some hang outs where you can go if you want to see people you know it's it's sort of like hollywood in a way because there's there's favorite [haunts] for [southerners] and things like that um we don't hang around with them because usually it's you know ninety dollars a plate or something silly like that so uh but uh my wife has a a friend that runs one of the restaurants down there and we've been down there and had french cuisine and uh i don't know i don't particularly care for that sort of thing just the type of food just because i do like uh you know getting a meal and uh most french food always leaves me hungry for some reason i i don't know what they say about chinese i'm always hungry after a french meal uh and uh but the the atmosphere is just wonderful you do feel like you've gone out you know and done something when you go to a french restaurant or a restaurant downtown well as out here you might have enjoyed the meal and go away feeling satisfied it's not so much a an event you know out in the suburbs when you go to a local restaurant and there's they're starting to get a little bit different um they're they're realizing that more of the the people with the money are coming out and living in the suburbs getting away from the city and so there are a couple jazz houses you know that have jazz bands playing while you're eating and stuff like that which is kind of nice because uh_huh yeah right uh_huh right uh_huh yeah we have two uh two very special places in northern virginia that people go to uh one's called captain [pell's] which is a crab house you know being so close to maryland maryland is you know a big place for crabs with the with the bay pretty much taking over most of maryland and um captain [pell's] is a place with the big huge wooden tables inside and people just go in there and just pig out and everything and then um the other place is called the vienna inn which is uh uh vienna is a suburb of d c also in virginia and uh that place is known for the the [rudest] waitresses in the country are are at the vienna inn and uh people go there to be abused i mean you actually go in there to be abused by the by the waitresses and the [bartenders] and stuff and people come all over the country amazed at um the abuse they were [seized] and then it's on the honor system you pay totally on the honor system and so you know you tell them what you've eaten and what you drank or whatever and they figure out the bill for you and you're lucky if you get change usually they they take your change and throw you a couple of [mints] in your hand and say thanks you know because uh they yeah carry on with the abuse they say you need [mints] here guy you don't get any change you know oh wow are you ready she didn't announce that to you oh i see that's fine um i think uh that's [pleasurable] for all of us if we choose the right restaurant so what are your thoughts on dining out not for the price okay uh_huh the really okay uh_huh my word it's like mama in the back kitchen huh oh yeah uh_huh okay wow and where was that at near your where is it in dallas is it in the phone book do you know how to spell it okay [kalli] k a l l i okay uh_huh section yes uh_huh what about fast foods do you have a preference if you were going to eat a fast food you do like arby's see i don't like arby's no because they use everything they can and make this into pressed whatever they use the they use the insides of the animals heart and liver and they they form it and they make it look like roast beef and i said no thank you well that's not what i heard from one of somebody that was supposed to know what they were talking about uh_huh really unless somebody is trying to [blackball] them uh_huh okay how about the health food uh restaurants well like this one but it's probably not advertised as such is it or uh_huh health food uh restaurants that well well like um well i can't really think of any off the top of my head right now because there's so few and far between but they ought there are restaurants that cater to the people that are very health conscious you know as far as their cholesterol levels and their their fat content and you know the amount of calcium and so forth that are in each product and they list them now there's one restaurant that does that and it's called [rodolfo's] over on preston road and royal lane i believe and they have very good food over there uh_huh uh_huh they do list um you know list the fat uh_huh uh_huh well it was pretty reasonable i it was around ten dollars for lunch okay which is kind of high for lunch i guess yes yes uh_huh yeah uh but um you were served by [maitre] d's and and uh um men waiters well if you're looking for a nice uh_huh well i guess if you were having if you were trying to impress somebody like taking somebody that you hadn't seen for a long time and wanted to show them a good restaurant it's a special occasion type thing yeah uh_huh and now the red lobster i found is very nice at lunchtime because they're well they have lunch specials that you can't you can't beat that price uh if you went to a cafeteria well i had the i had a broiled chicken breast and it was excellent it was a marinated broiled chicken breast and it was oh it was well i've never had catfish either in a restaurant because i'm from the north and that was a no no and i haven't gotten over that from the north i know they say that that is but i'm but they've got all these [caution] signs now on fish and so i kind of stay because of all the pollution in the lakes and the everywhere i mean there isn't any safe [haven] anymore for fish and especially uh in wisconsin and michigan they say no buying of our fish i well yeah so i am and the the best brand of chicken to buy is the uh [pilgrim] pride because they don't use all these hormones to remote uh [unnatural] growth in their products so i mean we have to be on the lookout if we want to stay healthy so i'm i you know i uh_huh yeah [corrode] huh uh_huh well i'd like to get ahold of some engineers and knock their heads together if it would do any good oh dear wow sure yeah that's right everything we eat everything everything we eat should have a label on it yeah well you know well becky you know even if you lived off your own land that you would have to put [caution] signs uh_huh oh i didn't i didn't quite hear all of it right well i i really choose restaurants more for the quality of food than anything else well a little bit for the price but uh i think that as far as quality of food goes the some of the most expensive places i've been had the the really the the worst quality of food really um a lot of places that even don't look don't look like much some of the some of the best food i have ever had was out of a outside or inside of a place that we drove up and i was like i'm not eating in there are you nuts and uh we went in and it was the it was the most wonderful food yeah i'm serious um a lot of uh one place that we went just recently uh was to [atchafalaya] no that's not right that's not right that's not right what's the name of that restaurant where at the [hari] [krishna] oh kalachandji's kalachandji's it's all vegetarian and it it was just fabulous i mean my husband was aghast because i ate turnip greens and liked it um kalachandji's it's uh it's a [hari] [krishna] run restaurant yes uh i think so it should be uh it starts with a k so k a l a i think c h a n d that should get you close enough to to be able to find it i think it's uh probably listed in the restaurants you know but it's uh it's just fabulous food well we like arby's as far as fast food goes oh really why oh no no no someone has been lying to you what they use is roast beef that's what oh my goodness i'm surprised my dad worked for arby's for several years yeah well that's happened before but we like good uh we're we like mexican food and stuff like that and so um a health food like like name one i'm not sure what you're talking about huh i don't guess i've ever been to anything like that so i really don't have anything to compare it to it would be good i think uh i don't know how expensive they are it sounds like that it would probably for one person oh a bit yeah i i won't really be interested in going to in going there because i feel like i'm i'm paying you know five dollars for the food probably and five dollars for something that i could get along quite well without yeah maybe maybe that yeah yeah i could see that then maybe yeah i like the the seafood that they when they had it you know the broiled yeah probably that's true but i know a lot of their a lot of their specials sometimes are fried things that you can't really get away from the fried now why would you go to a seafood restaurant to eat chicken that's one of my husband's pet peeves he doesn't understand why somebody would go to a seafood place and eat either chicken or steak you know oh really oh catfish is wonderful oh really really why oh huh that's too bad because i'm probably not going to stop eating it uh_huh yeah that's true oh on one hand i see that and on the other hand uh my older sister remembers when uh at one point they were taking radioactive wastes and storing them in tin barrels which i guess had a half life of oh five years if they sit empty on dry land so they're putting radioactive waste in it which reduces it dramatically and then they take these things that will rust and they throw them in the ocean which is going to [speedup] the process even more oh and then they wouldn't think they were floating around so they shot holes in them to sink them and this is before i was born so i mean we're taking thirty years ago this happened and and who's you know the tuna is radioactive to a certain extent you can't get away from it so i think to some point yeah you know so there's you know there's some things i think we can we you know we can't avoid for health purposes and some things that we just need to like you know this is not in my control so i'm either going to be i'm either going to starve to death or i'm going to get over it and just go ahead and eat as [healthily] as i possibly can you know okay well i guess i enjoy eating out um uh here and there or it's it's a good change and a good change from cooking and eating at home and i guess i like a variety of a variety of restaurants uh sometimes it's fun to go out and just have a hamburger and french fries and and sort of a hamburger and french fry meal and sometimes it's i enjoy it's i enjoy going out having a formal meal and uh sometimes it's nice to go out and have a salad something you know well a variety i i like to go sometimes without them and sometimes i sometimes it's okay to take them along so sometimes i think we pay the baby sitter as much as paying for their dinner or lunches so uh it just you know it just varies we do a mix sometimes it's really nice to be able to go out and eat with just my husband and it wouldn't even really matter which restaurant it was just to you know have a moment of peace and quiet without little ones at the table so uh i guess i guess actually on those those times uh we even there are times i even say oh please don't sit us next to a table with other children this is our night out so but uh anyway where do you like to eat uh_huh right right oh which one do you like oh okay well it's been a long time since we've been in there but uh but it's good there's an italian restaurant over over by the mall over by uh plano parkway there oh is it [campari's] or something well it's good i haven't my husband had been in there several times and we went in there actually we went in there for lunch one day and uh their pastas were great you're brave oh god right no i don't think so oh well even though traditional it can backfire uh well my husband's kind of the he he's the ethnic fan so he's i don't know you know what we read we read the uh d magazine we we check that and uh the friday section in the newspaper the pull out section there they often do ratings of restaurants so uh we've uh we've usually we often save those and ventured out on from there uh just for something that had a high rating okay that's that's right oh good oh good oh oh yeah we i guess we we use the coupons too that's true that's true oh right right well i think that it's just that's sometimes i think going out to eat it's it's sort of a recreation so uh just a just a change of pace from uh eating at home so uh anyway i guess uh as far as as far as service when we go out gosh it's nice it's nice to have someone come and wait the table and clear the table and yeah and do the dishes and uh actually it's kind of nice to you know i always uh a waitress or waiter that waits the table it's nice that they're [attentive] but it's not nice when they're too [attentive] so uh we've had experience with that too so oh yeah well how we it may it may help their tip may not huh gosh i guess just in plano i plano i like to go to souper salads uh chili's chili's is always fine i guess if we go to dallas into dallas we like uh the [routh] is it [routh] street cafe well well you would like it you'd like it especially it you're adventuresome it just we've we've taken people there several times and uh they have a good they have a good choice of things that are very different sounding i guess it's whether you call it southwestern but uh-oh we had venison venison chili one time which was absolutely wonderful and then i guess it must be seasonal and we've been back oh i guess it's in the winter season well they've never had it when we've been back so but uh well you ought to try that it's it's it's very good no oh that's good yes i've been there uh_huh yes uh_huh do you usually go out uh with the children or without them right yes yes yes well uh well uh we don't have any children so uh we tend to like to try all sorts of different things and uh we're very attracted to exotic food and uh we like indian food and thai cuisine and uh sort of gourmet mexican and uh things like that as well as tex mex and italian and uh chinese and things and and things of that sort now yes of course we like to occasionally go out and get down and dirty with barbecue or hamburgers or something like that too and uh we probably go out one to two times a week and uh uh we're pretty much [regulars] at an italian local italian restaurant [momo's] uh_huh i've heard about it i haven't been in there uh_huh that's one of the things a good pasta means a lot to me i i like different kinds of food so when we go out i'm always looking for something other than the standard menu even if it's a mexican restaurant like something other than uh you know the standard [tacos] enchiladas [tamales] and fajitas now yes yes and once in a while things backfire i mean we've gone for [romanian] food and lebanese food and things like that and i'm not fond of some of those things but we'll try we'll try anything ethiopian we've had ethiopian and uh not in plano of course but we really we really do enjoy going out and uh and um i'm pretty adventurous in cooking too which also occasionally [backfires] yeah i think we're supposed to say what will bring us back to a restaurant or or what attracts us to a restaurant how do you usually find a a new restaurant uh_huh so do we uh_huh right uh_huh we have found uh a number of restaurants either through d and the friday paper and sometimes the the observer which my husband usually picks up and also through coupons when a new restaurant opens up they usually send out coupons and you know when they say you know buy one get one free it's hard to resist so we'll go in and very often we'll find a place that we like and we'll stick with it once they give they no longer give coupons we'll we'll uh we'll stay there but we've found probably half of our sort of regular restaurants through coupons and the other half through the through the newspaper reviews i mean it's wonderful particularly if you have more than two people and you've got say four or something like that it's very expensive to go out to eat so yeah that that is really one of our it's almost a hobby with us yes yes yeah uh_huh oh absolutely and do the dishes oh yes my sister who also lives here in dallas uh tends to uh chat with waiters and waitresses and become their best friends during the course of dinner which drives me absolutely [batty] but what's your favorite restaurant uh_huh sure you know we've never been there and that's supposed to be wonderful um uh_huh ooh uh_huh i would probably like that one or two times in my life i've ever had venison i've loved it but you know just it's just not i don't know people who hunt so uh that's that's supposed to be a wonderful place uh uh uh here in plano well we tend to go to [momo's] a fairly often and uh sometimes we'll go you know we we also go to chili's and uh [colter's] bar b q and and uh we go to there is a little thai place that's over on park that we go to my husband particularly likes that we go into dallas a lot and because we're both were from the richardson north dallas area up until fairly recently and uh we'll go down to uh blue mesa grill mexican food and okay no um we don't although we enjoy it um we do it more when we have company come um what about you i've heard of that but i haven't been there um where about is that oh okay i i've been to cafe pacific right yes uh before we moved to the area my brother uh lived in dallas for a number of years and we came up one time when my father was visiting and we all ate there and oh their seafood was wonderful now where is the atlantic cafe oh okay no um but i've heard that's really good too and oh oh oh okay uh_huh you know right away what you want well we really enjoy prime rib too and uh actually the the steak and ale out here uh we've gone to uh my in laws also enjoy prime rib when they've had some of their specials on sunday monday or tuesday night and uh the time we went the prime rib was really good uh_huh yeah yeah oh i've heard about that too but no we've uh i guess we eat out even less than i realize oh yeah yes i'd i had heard that too um have you been to the little uh not for prime rib but the cafe de france um right here on central expressway oh okay yes uh primarily lunch well and breakfast sometimes but uh during the week they often have a a limited menu choice but uh very reasonable complete dinners for six ninety nine that included the soup or salad entrees and [accompaniments] and dessert and uh the my husband and i like veal uh a lot and their veal dishes have been good we've tried different ones when they've had them as one of the uh_huh i yes no right and i haven't either uh one place and i've only been there for lunch but uh i went with a friend and we met her husband um down on greenville down near the highway twelve area is [gershwin's] oh i we just it was and we had the uh we both enjoy mushroom soup and linda had told me they had the best mushroom soup and they did it was wonderful but uh and we just had soup and salad so we could make room for the dessert which was a chocolate sack i don't know if you tried but or yes it yes it had a sponge cake and whip cream and it had strawberries [kiwis] and [raspberries] in a raspberry uh [puree] and and we shared one the three of us and it was plenty because it was very rich but uh i wished i'd had a camera it was beautiful uh oh oh yes yeah oh it sounds wonderful well that's uh one of the things that i do enjoy when you get a good restaurant uh i love fresh berries and their their fruits are always exceptional i don't i'm know they must have a special source for getting them because even at the farmer's market uh you can't find them like that and uh_huh i would too because well because we don't go out very often when we do go out um in a way it's like a little mini vacation i guess and uh it is it's a whole experience of course you want the food to be good but the atmosphere and service i think are important uh too yeah um that reminded me of a place for lunch that's a little off the beaten track but it is wonderful it's called cafe max and it's at plano road and campbell they have the most wonderful salads they do what they call a salad [sampler] which easily could feed two or three hi nancy well do you do a lot of dining out uh_huh well we do some dining out um i i do a lot of cooking so um mostly like when we go out you know it's my husband and i i we don't go out too often as a family um unless it's like a fast food kind of thing but um but we do enjoy dining out one of our favorite places here in in the dallas area is atlantic cafe i don't know if you have you ever been there um well actually there's the atlantic cafe and cafe pacific and uh have you now that's down in uh highland park it's highland park village did you like it oh i love it uh_huh oh it is it's fabulous it really is a great place atlantic cafe is down on i believe it's on mckinney um and originally the two the the guy who owns the cafe pacific and the guy who owns the atlantic cafe were partners in the atlantic cafe and then they they separated and the guy started cafe pacific and i loved them both i really do i think they're wonderful that's our favorite you know what we'd really like if if we just have a a casual evening is houston's have you been there it's wonderful the only thing is you have to wait you have you have to expect to wait at least an hour so you have to go knowing you're going to be sitting there there for an hour waiting to get in and as long as you know that it's okay but they have i think one just about the best prime rib um anywhere in the area i love it and my husband really likes their ribs so it's hysterical we go in and we sit there for an hour waiting to get in and then we get there and we don't even look at the menu i know right away what we what we want yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh was it really i've i've i've been there for like you know lunch but i've never been there for dinner and it was good yeah oh that's great that's great another nice place for for prime rib is baby [doe's] [maxwell's] nice have you been there and i didn't think we ate out very often see baby [doe's] is nice and one place i'd never been that i would really like to go to uh is lawry's i've heard that's real good lawry's prime rib i've i've never been there but i've heard it's real good yes yes actually they have one in richardson that i've been to uh they have real nice lunches have you have you been there for lunch or yeah really really uh_huh the specials have you ever been to [biffin's] i keep hearing about it i keep hearing the advertisements of it and and they keep saying you know oh it's wonderful it's wonderful i have not been over there and i was thinking you know it's supposed to be a family place over near plano super bowl and uh i've i've not been there i've been there that was nice oh i've heard of it where where it's made it's like it's like a it's all chocolate like made like a paper bag and it's filled with what whip cream and and strawberries and something yeah oh oh oh oh i bet it was i bet it was the last time we went to cafe pacific it was father's day and we took another friend with us and uh for dessert we thought we had just stuffed ourselves and so we had they had uh like a berry [assortment] it was it was [raspberries] and blueberries and and strawberries on a plate with like a custard on the bottom and you know they did like the raspberry [puree] just kind of like in a in a decoration on the you know how they do the plates real fancy with the decorations and then piled the berries and [shaved] chocolate on top of it and it was outstanding it was really really relatively simple but oh it was good it was really good you can't find them yeah yeah yeah yeah you know i'm originally from connecticut and uh i was home a few years ago and my sister and brother in law were going to take us out for dinner and uh i was really amazed you know the the restaurants up there were kind of [quaint] you know they were real real pretty but they [lacked] the service and they [lacked] the the just the i don't know the restaurants down here seem like they have uh i guess there's so much competition that they really have to be good and i thought i would really miss that uh_huh and you know in order to survive in this area i think they have to be good because the ones that aren't so good don't just don't make it oh really all right this is easy for me since i yeah well i travel i do about forty percent of my time is on the road i eat a lot of meals out well i'm also married and my wife is an a one cook but she enjoys eating out so i have to share it with her and uh actually it's very easy for me because i i have a make it a practice when i am out i eat differently than what i could eat at home or around here so i look for just about anything and it's it's uh it's a lot of fun i don't have to worry really worry too much about price considerations because i you know oh sure yeah and it's it's really great i i i like different types of food uh-oh you okay you name it let's see you've got one down in uh down near uh addison uh there's two restaurants that i particularly like that i every time i get into texas or i get into atlanta georgia i make sure i go and that's houston's yep okay it's it's great there's a a restaurant in um right outside of reading pennsylvania it's called [alfredo's] that does not look like a restaurant that you would really want to recommend to a lot of people but it is fantastic uh there's a restaurant and i don't recall the name of it uh in uh panama city of course not too many people want to rush back to panama city uh panama the country uh panama no this is the country this is the country panama all right and uh but i have gotten to quite a few and i go to canada and get quite a few restaurants up there i you know and i know the locations and i know the places but i lot of times i don't remember the names i'd have to go back through some expense reports but particularly down in your area i'm looking for some some more restaurants so i you know i don't know what's what's down there the ones out in addison not particularly that's one of the few why which one were you going to recommend uh_huh right okay i have a okay let i'm i'm writing it down okay i've been there okay i've been there um one down there is the uh i think it's an old [schoolhouse] well i like the food but i don't care for the [clowning] around oh really oh i've had that's it that's it i've had excellent food there true true uh_huh yeah all right well that's great uh no italian is fine i make it a habit of always going out to pasta [oggi's] which is right down there in oh yeah all right really uh_huh good well this is great this is going to give me some more places to go okay fine i guess our time's about up so uh well they don't always yeah i they've been doing that when uh the [circuits] are busy and other than that they you know leave you go about five minutes and then that that's about it i guess that's what they need for their machines to get everything down pat so it was a pleasure talking to you okay you bet bye bye and me too because i eat out a lot so you eat all your meals out sure i was going to ask you could you go to you know nice places and so where are your what are the places you know memorable places you've eaten oh houston's uh_huh it's a great place uh_huh oh okay because i was thinking well i i grew up in panama city i get it right uh_huh do you like mexican do you like mexican food oh well i mean there's so many places here you know there's just it's just lots of good mexican restaurants here but in the addison well about everything that you could want in dallas is in the addison area anyway i mean now there's a new italian place [sfuzi] that has a great i've not been there but it has a great reputation as one of the best restaurants in dallas and now there's one in addison it's f s it's s f u z i and it's on it's in addison and it's a great place also a great place that they have like cajun food is [copelands] now i really like [copelands] oh the yeah the i know no i don't like that place see uh uh yeah i i when i went i thought the food was not good magic time machine is the place you're thinking of see i when i went i thought the people drove me crazy first of all but then i just thought the food was over priced for what it was do you like like southwestern well now there's a good place in addison too called blue mesa grill that's on belt line that's close to houston's as a matter of fact and um it's great i mean their they have i think sometimes i've been when i thought well it wasn't as good but i went there recently and i thought well this really is good so that's that's a very good place to eat the blue mesa grill and um a whole new dining experience well they haven't beeped us have they oh i thought sometimes they say you know this is three minutes or whatever oh okay okay well thanks for calling for helping us out bye bye okay where do you enjoy dining out yes do you have children uh yeah that makes a difference doesn't it what area of the country do you live in yes i am too but i did too i'm from the dayton area oh uh_huh that's right yes when we travel we look for wendy's because we have kids and my husband and i like getting the salads or the lighter meals and then that way they can get their [burgers] and fries and we can have a salad bar so sometimes we drive for a couple hundred miles until we find a wendy's because it's all either mcdonald's or dairy [queens] right that's right i know uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh um yeah well what are some of your your favorite inexpensive places uh_huh oh we are little [caesar] fans here that's where we always go yes we like [grandy's] too oh where do you go if you like to have a nice meal out or a big meal where do you go for steaks oh uh_huh oh you ever been to houston's on belt line that's where we go to get steaks they have a [teriyaki] steak there and when we have something to celebrate we head to houston's they don't take reservations and you wind up waiting about an hour but the food is good and they've got a nice patio area that you can wait and get something to drink unless you get there at five o'clock then you can go right through but they have real good signature salads there and nice steaks so that's our nice place to go we don't usually take the kids when we go there yeah right that's right yeah that's the way with my husband he's gone during the week and likes to eat at home on the weekends and i've been eating at home all week long with the kids and would like to go out somewhere so we have a conflict of interests on the weekend right yes uh_huh right yep oh i generally go to the quickie places just because they're cheap uh we have four but most of them are gone now so there there might be but we were taking you know uh four five and six people out yes i'm in texas and we we lived in ohio prior to this uh we were up near cleveland yeah uh but i look for service even at the quickie places type things uh i don't like to go to the drive [thrus] because sometimes they get your order wrong and then you're stuck and it's a pain to have to stand there and see what it is before you leave so i really don't like the drive [thrus] that much i i like to go and eat there but i would say service uh atmosphere and whether the food is good and on going out i like steaks so we try to hit those places when we can uh_huh yeah uh yeah and in in in the countries unless it's a large city i guess dairy queen and wal mart are their main that's what you find right my husband likes uh dairy [queens] he likes their milk [shakes] and their chili cheese dogs i guess so he's a fan of of dairy queen and and we'll go even in town here at times just as a a change although i'm not that excited about it but we've eat we eat out so much it's gotten so i don't like to really eat any place but yet i hate to cook food at home so that might be why i look for inexpensive places just because we're eating out probably five nights a week maybe or we eat junk food at home uh now my oh we'll go to them all we sort of take turns and we uh i sort of favor the ones if i have a coupon we can go there and if not we can't because it's cheaper so mine is monetarily i guess strongly monetarily based uh we'll go get pizza and uh at little caesar's although the kids prefer domino's right but it's just a lot cheaper than than domino's so that's we go to [grandy's] quite a bit i would say mcdonald's uh we've sort of been off of that for a while and no particular reason and i maybe we avoided wendy's the last few years because our daughter worked there and she never wanted us to show up there so i don't we don't go there that much a nice meal oh it's usually when we're out of town and i'll order steak or steak and lobster combined so it's really not in town no uh_huh uh_huh right but well we don't go out that much i well i guess we do go out without kids we're usually picking things up quickly though we just don't dwell on food too much and uh with my husband traveling he can get all he needs of that during the week going to those places so it doesn't really matter to him he'd probably just like to stay home well i think i i never have liked to cook food but i think it all began eating out when we had uh the boys in in different uh baseball on baseball it was mainly baseball teams and my husband would coach so we were never home at the same time i'm not one that's going to fix you know the meal at two o'clock in the afternoon so they can eat it all day whenever they're there if there not there in between five and six well then i guess we don't eat today or you go you know you fend for yourself you go somewhere else so that you know that really [snowballed] when we got down here when i started to sub make money i went oh well i'll just sub to okay i'll just go with you first what kind of eating out do you enjoy right uh_huh uh_huh do you go like home cooking like black eyed pea and that kind of thing or cafeteria me too uh_huh mexican uh_huh uh we do too we do the same what are your favorite places uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah well we go we've gone to august moon and we think that was real good but our favorite when you have a little more to spend is to go to taiwan or may dragon and those are excellent they're really a nice place you could take someone to eat it's not the the [rinky] chinese decorations but it's a very elegant nice place to eat we go very very often we go out for fajitas that's my husband has just gotten stuck and we go to on the border and lots of places that have uh i think and some of those and get fajitas and he'll just eat chips until we've got three or four baskets coming back and then uh last weekend we went out for italian also and for some reason the cooler weather makes me tend to want to go eat lasagna and garlic bread so we went to el [sorrento] it was fun you know what this is that's real funny you said that because we were coming back sunday on central from church and bob pointed to it and he said i keep hearing good things about that place we're going to have to go that's what he in fact you're about the third or fourth person in the last month that said that so i guess we'll have to do it that's what it that's what d magazine said that it said there was always a line but that's probably i mean that's a good that's a good sign yes we did now my kids didn't like it because they just wanted to get plain old spaghetti or lasagna and most of those things were a little more northern italy and they like just the traditional they're not very yes they are exactly exactly the place of the seventies uh_huh yeah most kids do do you ever go for steak just a steak and potato and salad bar that kind of thing uh_huh yeah well i'm i'm real curious to try this one that has such commercials the uh that [del] lincoln and oh what is that guy's name they do those real corny commercials it's uh over there's one over there in addison i can't remember his name anyhow it's some yeah it's some famous steak place over in addison there's a there's a second one downtown and they have these really corny radio commercials but but they're steak is supposed to be wonderful so i i had not tried that my husband was saying that up north they have such nice restaurants where you can go after a theater or after the movie and it seems like i've been we found those one time and then they discontinued it was over in addison and then they uh closed up so most of these places are pretty much just uh theme restaurants around here uh_huh uh_huh well that's exactly true that's right that's right yeah that's right that's yeah that's right uh_huh i had a friend who was taken to lawry's downtown for prime rib and i haven't been we usually don't go for beef really anymore where we've gotten so used to doing chicken and things at home that that's that's usually the way we'll go if we're not going lasagna uh_huh uh_huh i know well i understand that's right and save you some money too well now what is your what's your child's favorite place to eat oh yeah they're easy yeah well mine enjoy that too they like to go pretty much where we like to go and they'll and then our favorite thing on fridays we generally order pizza in so not pizza inn but pizza to our house so we've done well um is there anything else you'd like to discuss about it i think we've i think it's come to an eye conclusion so i'll talk with you later thank you bye bye okay well i like dining out of course it means that i don't have to cook but um i'm a divorced woman i have one child and you know when when we [dine] out we go to like medium priced restaurants i don't i don't particularly i think it's sort of a waste of money to go real to a real high priced restaurant um not really we go more for the uh chinese and italian and stuff like that mexican stuff that i can't cook yeah um well i like chinese food um there's a little place down on what is that coit road um chinese pavilion or something that is really good and i like it and um i do i do like chinese buffets uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh yeah have you ever um tried pappasito's oh it is delicious uh_huh it's you always stand in line when you go but it's worth the wait uh_huh uh_huh and have you ever tried um the macaroni grill up on uh_huh right they're the spaghetti warehouse type right yeah yeah but my little girl likes uh spaghetti warehouse real well it's real entertaining for her um not really that's a steak is something that i cook at home you know that you grill out and i really don't particularly um huh steak uh_huh uh_huh huh yes right i think that's what goes you know really goes right now in the in the dallas area of course you know down next to downtown up around mckinney and everything you know there's just a there's a different class of restaurants up there that i can't even touch you know it would probably take my whole paycheck just to go in and have one meal up there but um uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh yeah when when i go out it's it's normally to get um some specialty type of food besides you know because chicken and steaks and everything i grill at home and and really it's they're a lot better than what i get in the restaurant that's right saves you a little bit money um favorite place uh she has a lot taco bell yeah that's right that's right uh_huh right right uh_huh no not that i know of uh_huh thank you bye bye oh i guess uh this is a a topic near and dear to my heart since i am a am a healthy eater well i'm not uh i there really isn't any kind of particular food that i i don't don't like really and i like a good italian restaurant or a good uh uh especially like good prime rib so if it's uh nice to get out and find a good restaurant like that and i live here in uh rome new york and there are a lot of good restaurants around here uh_huh uh_huh really oh no i'm in upstate new york and it's actually very inexpensive i there's a there's a place um half a mile from me here that uh has uh fantastic prime rib for oh eleven dollars for a whole meal you know a potato and salad and soup and the whole whole nine yards so that right uh i was going to this place up the street from me is the best i've ever had so i'll have to go there when i get to get to dallas uh_huh sure uh_huh no no i'm not into the the don't do the the raw raw fish like that but i do like uh like a seafood bar like a raw raw bar like oysters and things like that uh that they uh i go on i'm an officer in the air force and travel quite a bit on business so i uh find myself down in [melbourne] florida about once once a month once every two months or so and uh go and hit the the [oyster] bars down there quite a bit but i love that yeah and um and uh maryland's great you get the crabs it's like i can't go anywhere where i where i don't enjoy myself so that's true yeah well uh it's really strange that that that seafood is so expensive because when you in reality uh uh i say that uh the [oceans] have the greatest resource of food on the planet and yet we haven't as human beings haven't figured out a way to harvest it economically so we managed to uh figure out how to get at just about everything else but uh but not uh not seafood yeah yeah i like uh i make a a wicked chili and around here the big spicy thing is like uh buffalo wings and so uh it people they you know you go out to get the chicken wings and those are really hot and the hotter the better right sure yeah uh_huh my generally my my [scalp] will start i can feel just the top of my [scalp] getting hot the weirdest weirdest [sensation] almost like a [tingling] but uh i don't know but uh yeah well there isn't isn't too much in the way of restaurants that i don't like things that are kind of [oddball] like uh thai cuisine i never been really fond of that stuff you talk about spicy that'll that'll literally blow your head off it's so hot and uh and i can handle just about any kind of food without uh um well but that that stuff is goes one notch beyond uh my tolerances so although i guess on this topic are to talk about the uh service in a restaurant is always nice though too that's one thing what's that yeah well i find that lately that so many people are working you know working [waitressing] jobs or waiter well i i try to be as well uh_huh uh_huh oh you're in new york i was going to there's a place if you ever make it to dallas they have the best prime rib it's called lawry's like lawry's seasoning salt and it is absolutely wonderful and uh we were there a few months ago and it i mean it's kind of pricey well from new york it probably doesn't matter but oh is it okay wow uh_huh yeah well i think the cheapest there probably starts at eighteen and it includes you know salad and rolls and oh some other stuff but it is absolutely wonderful it's the best i have ever had yeah well yeah well we like uh lots of people down here like mexican food so um that's i i think italian and mexican food are probably my favorites but um i'm not into [sushi] or any of that kind of stuff uh_huh oh okay uh_huh oh yeah fresh seafood down there uh_huh yeah yeah seafood seems to be a a little bit more expensive than than other types of food but it sure is good and it's supposed to be good for you right right uh_huh do you like spicy foods or oh uh_huh yeah yeah well we uh we like spicy food down here especially uh the hot sauce picante sauce or salsa whatever you all call it and uh we we sure go through a lot of that but i like it hot but i don't like it real hot because then my nose starts running yeah uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah and the price and the price make you want to come back uh [kate] what kind of uh where do you like to eat out yes do you have you tried mother [mesquites] that's at skillman and l b j there is it's where skillman uh [curves] into forest lane and it's real good mexican food another real good one is uh [rafael's] down on mckinney avenue they're both very good uh_huh chains uh_huh oh el chico's or el [fenix] one uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i like tia's better than i do el chico's or el [fenix] uh much better uh mother [mesquite's] is one of our favorites but then fajitas are one of my uh i like it better than just about anything and they make very good fajitas there in their own uh homemade flour tortillas that are just absolutely wonderful especially with butter and honey on them yes yes so do i well what else do you like uh_huh yes now i haven't eaten there have you eaten there uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh i we like uh uh for the cajun the spicy we like [atchafalaya's] out on belt line in addison and it's a good restaurant and fish for one of the best fish restaurants in town is either vincent's there in plano or uh i believe it's a rusty [scupper] over on uh uh dallas parkway in addison which is absolutely wonderful the service is great they have every kind of fish that you could imagine you'd want and the the atmosphere is wonderful too if you want a really special night out and fish food that's a good place to go fast food well i can understand that i can remember when our children were small we lived in the chicago area at the time and we had a lot of mcdonalds when they were first coming out i can't look a mcdonalds in the face now well taco [bueno's] good and cheap and cheap yes yes yes sounds like my grandchildren oh yes well it's just my husband and i and it's either t v dinners at home or we go out to eat and i would much rather go out to eat than t v dinners oh no no i like breakfast out i like the [ihop] there in plano oh oh now that's surprising because normally they're just they're real good i like because they they're even if they're crowded they're fast service you know um don't have to wait forever for a table and we also like owens uh country yeah yeah we think it's good uh_huh it's good yes yes and we like [applebee's] yeah it it's fun i like your up there in plano that uh country steak house have you tried it we like it because it's fairly reasonable and they have we go for the salad bar well we uh we really like the mexican food you know here in texas and uh so we try and go around to different mexican restaurants trying them out and so uh tia's is probably our favorite uh restaurant there and i think they have one of the best services that uh that we really like it no where's that at uh_huh uh_huh oh really oh that uh no we haven't explored uh you know too many places um you know lot of the big name brand i guess uh chains yeah but um oh we've tried places you know down uh by the collin creek mall the uh you know [alvarez] and um gosh we tried what was across the street el [paso's] el chico's or something yeah something something like that uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah oh yes yes oh uh_huh uh_huh oh i know i tell i tell you what they are they just um they're excellent uh excellent food i wish i could make them here at home just can't make those flour tortillas but well i love uh i love seafood and i notice they have like the you know the louisiana purchase um [razzoo's] has opened up down you know off of um um oh close to six thirty five yes i have eaten there now the only problem i love the food it's a lot of cajun food and good seafood but uh the service has always been so strange every time i've been in there mostly it's been at lunch time and uh but i hear at night though they have uh you know the outdoor um bar and um uh that's it's really uh you know kind of lively so it's it's really good all their blackened grill stuff uh_huh oh well that sounds great uh_huh uh_huh huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh well i uh i have children and and work and so we uh we can eat a lot of fast food uh_huh yeah i know i i know i i'm so sick of mcdonalds and we used to eat there we used to eat there all the time and so now we we we branch out at this wendy's or some other fast food joint oh and and cheap too yeah but but the kids they've got those expensive tastes so uh they like tia's so they can sit down and all that good kind of stuff yeah i know they they they're just spoiled rotten but uh but no i uh uh we love to eat out of course it's just so much easier and simpler yeah so we uh we usually eat out generally two or three times a week yeah yeah oh me too me too so i know uh i i know that i uh you know i just work and i'm just tired when i get home and i i just don't feel like cooking and uh you know on the weekends there's always things to do and uh so we like to go out to lunch on saturdays especially uh_huh uh_huh yeah now i we've been there twice and and both times i just oh the food just didn't quite settle with me and i don't know what it was uh_huh uh_huh yes and i love uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh family restaurant uh_huh now i haven't been there i went to one i think in ohio or or or somewhere up there but i've never been to that one here i know it's just down the street so now have you been to [applebee's] yes yes i i really like that too so that was uh oh i've been i've been there twice uh_huh yeah so salad bar yes okay um we have small children two and four and so we our dining is very limited oh we're past that now we're a little sick of that no um we're more like um you know like [wyatt's] cafeteria yeah that way and the kids just love everything that's there so we're pretty fortunate kind of um buffet style uh so you can go in and go out and the food's already served and you don't have to wait and it's already in front of them when you sit down and things like um souper salads you know it's again it's buffet and it's already prepared and just things any any eating area that you just don't have to wait an extreme amount of time we no we tried a [bennigan's] one time and it was terrible course it was just probably one of the worst days to go anyway we we waited almost forty five minutes before everything was brought out and it was we were ready to go home yeah no we fought with them for forty five minutes so we we we rarely go eat in those kind of eating uh situations any more but we do love to eat out and um and we do it as often as we can and and times that we do have baby sitters we we try and catch um some things that we normally wouldn't do you know oh um let me see uh for new year's we went to eat at uncle [julio's] it's um on on walnut and greenville it's called uncle [julio's] um basically mexican food and it's supposed to be very similar to um uh what is that restaurant off of central it's a um it's a mexican restaurant off of central no but i've heard about it really really uh_huh yeah we like um seafood also and uh vincent's no we haven't really really no uh_huh oh okay i've seen it yeah yeah we've been to um [chefalia's] it's basically the same thing seafood cajun style that's in addison off of belt line midway like around i think it's a little past or it's right before midway or it's right at midway and um excellent food so what what is that oh really oh uh_huh uh_huh really and where is that uh_huh yeah uh_huh really uh_huh yeah well my [birthday's] coming up so i need an excuse uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah oh oh yeah all right uh_huh i bet you're mcdonald's fan are you gosh where do you go [whataburger] oh is that right yeah that's that's good i can understand that we got we got three kids too and when the kids are small if you going to wait you don't go out they won't put up with that and you had and you had the kids with you and they waited forty five minutes i don't doubt that one bit where where do you like to go when you got a baby sitter where's that never heard of that place what's the name of that again what what are they what kind of yeah okay well there's a [zillion] of them have you ever been to [mercado] [juarez] that's a good place i they've got one in addison too now but the original was on northwest highway uh just the other west of loop twelve that's a good mexican place good good prices good good food there if you like mexican stuff it's it's a good place you you ever been to vincent's that's a good seafood place yeah you ever been tried a place called louisiana purchase well this is in plano they might have another one but it's on uh parker and central expressway and it's it's yeah it's cajun type stuff if you like it kind of hot that that is good food that's good stuff yes where's that place yeah okay belt line and what okay yeah okay uh_huh we got this premier dining card thing and we've we've been going to all sorts of weird type places with it well you get uh one free and you you you pay for one now and type thing and uh we've been to from barbecue to there's a [swan] club which is out central and campbell uh that is if you like continental stuff that is really nice talk talk your husband into taking you there some night i mean it's not a cheap place but uh it's very nice uh it's on campbell it it's north of campbell but uh off central uh oh it used to be a northern telecom building in the in the ground floor i don't know what they call it now northern telecom kind of moved over in their own building but it it's a big tall it's the [tallest] building on the west side northwest side of campbell and just before you get to campbell and it's in the lower floor but it's really a nice restaurant if you like continental stuff and tell him to take you there for your anniversary and then they got a place where you can dance you know and all that kind of stuff there you go all right you got one coming have you ever been to [ewaldes] now there's if you like i i like continental stuff myself my wife doesn't necessary like that stuff but i like that and that's down in the the [stoneleigh] hotel now and that is really super kind of stuff too take if you like continental at all that kind of stuff either one of those two you go through a hundred bucks without half trying but it it's it's nice really nice place oh you don't have to spend that much i'm kidding you okay it's pressed are you still there okay so what's uh things that you look for when you go out to dinner uh_huh huh um that sounds pretty yeah uh_huh well we don't go out to dinner that much either we try to get out maybe like once every month and a half or something like that but i definitely want to go to a place that's nice and clean you know um i've been to some that's been terrible you know you see [cockroaches] crawling around and everything you know but i try to get one that's nice and clean and then i like to you know good food and good service so yeah right right right so is there some nice places to go to eat in plano uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um um that sounds beautiful uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well this is only a little small city uh we have uh excuse me i didn't think my coughing would come back anyhow we have only like one uh restaurant that's kind of nice you know they have prime rib on uh weekends and then they have about six miles from here is called a little city called [wesley] and they have a [wesley] hotel there that they serve food and the atmosphere there is really really nice so and then if we really want to you know something different we go to modesto which is like twenty minutes away but uh we don't have any fast foods here in this small city do i have kids well i have a son but he's grown up uh_huh yeah all the kids seem to love mcdonald's don't they you know no no i'm sure there isn't uh_huh i know yeah yeah uh_huh well let's see what else can we talk about oh it's foggy and cold here uh_huh uh_huh yeah and it's i came from iowa when i was sixteen so i've lived out in california for a long long time yeah i like it real well we used to live in oakland so we used to have a lot more restaurants to go to there you know but uh then i quit work and everything and i bought a house i had a condo in oakland so right in [chinatown] so we went to lots of restaurants chinese restaurants and they were really good i really miss them you know uh no i really don't miss living there i just like to go in there and have a nice chinese dinner once in a while you know but uh as far as missing living there no it's close enough if i wanted to go there to san francisco for dinner or something why you know an hour and fifteen minutes we could be there and you know have dinner and then come on back but uh have you ever been to california oh really um uh_huh um uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i'm ready oh i just like a nice quiet nice atmosphere and of course good food that's always that's always a concern but just a nice quiet easy place maybe [candlelight] something just to relax you know because i don't really go out to dinner that much so uh_huh right oh yeah yeah where you don't feel rushed you know and you can just relax and stay as long as you want well nearby we're almost in dallas we're just north of dallas so we have quite a bit between us and there it's about ten miles and there is all kinds of restaurants and i had one that was a favorite for a long time and then it changed hands and doubled the prices and then it finally went out of business so but it was really nice it had a fireplace yeah it was really nice they had entertainment sometimes and you could just really relax there and enjoy it but it's gone uh_huh oh that's nice uh_huh right that is probably very fortunate for you do you have kids yeah oh because i have a twelve year old that would eat a happy meal every night you know and [now's] she's graduated to two [cheeseburgers] so something's happened here but but um you know mcdonald's is definitely at the top of her list and i hate these places uh_huh they do and i don't think there's an ounce of [nutritional] value in anything they have well we have all kinds of fast foods everywhere around and it's really it's tempting when you come home from work and you're tired and you know you just are tempted to give in to that and it costs a lot of money to do it too you know it adds up and it's not healthy and i really got into that habit for a while but i got out of it again because i just felt like it was just too unhealthy so well how's california today is it that's what i've heard yeah have you always lived there oh and you like it yeah we've been oh yeah oh that would be fun yeah do you miss living there no yeah yeah um yeah oh yeah i go all the time yeah well i have a twenty one year old daughter in college there and she um is a world champion twirler and her coach is in california so she went there for six years so i went out a lot with her and uh yeah i know california pretty well and i love it and we tug back and forth who's going to move but i think he's going to move because i'm the person with more to lose here i have my twelve year old in school and she's happy she always lived here in the south and i have my house so i have too much to lose okay gene so it's nice to talk with you and um food is a very intriguing thing our lives are are built around foods that we like and [nutritionally] good for us what kind of dining out do you like oh yeah uh_huh pancho's that's a new one uh_huh we have one called chi [chi's] in in our area and uh we had a restaurant called la [bamba] but it's just it closed recently but chi [chi's] is a national restaurant i think isn't it mexican do you have it there uh_huh well i love mexican food myself but you go ahead now is that right uh_huh oh boy that is wonderful well i i agree with you on that and i was really a seafood [addict] myself i i love crab meat in particular i uh i can almost live on on seafood and almost live on the crab meat if i had to i uh know the name but i haven't been there uh_huh where did you go to college oh the u s naval academy uh_huh i'll be darn well we're we're supposed to be talking about [dinning] out but i'll just make one comment that uh i just retired from penn state and uh all my work has been in research for the navy underwater acoustics i have dealt with nearly all of the all of the research laboratories that the country has uh_huh oh you grew up in orlando uh_huh well that's what i worked on the end of last month i certainly have so i hate to uh i wish i could talk to you about that uh but uh i guess we should continue on uh okay how do you like chinese food uh_huh well i uh enjoy the szechuan type of uh chinese food yes yep uh it's uh i i do a lot of chinese cooking myself i have in the past i haven't done recently but uh it's in the sweet and sour [porks] and things like are just really delicious meals uh just at home i i enjoyed the food and i bought a lot of uh good cookbooks and i've been following through on that when you find the right cookbook why it works out okay well that one's a good question here it's right under my nose if i can find it oh boy yeah right one of this book i have is called chinese cooking made easy uh it's a paperback and i think it's by someone named [chang] yeah [isabelle] [chang] yeah yeah i think you will enjoy that well it certainly is nice talking with you gene and uh what is your phone at home yes sir well there is two kinds one i guess i'd say is with my wife where we enjoy uh oh i guess we usually enjoy a good seafood restaurant uh you know something nice and the other is with my whole family whom we uh go somewhere that the kids will enjoy uh recently we have been hitting pancho's up it's a local mexican restaurant because they have got a good rate on you know good prices and everything yeah yeah it's it's a chain down uh it goes up into colorado and down here i don't know where else it is what about you oh yeah i think think it might be i've i think i've seen it around yes sir yeah oh do you yeah oh we we do too we uh we enjoy mexican food i'm just not impressed with the quality of it it's just primarily the price that's uh satisfying at this point but the kids seem to enjoy it uh and uh let's see we've uh just recently discovered a super restaurant down here but it's uh not part of a chain it's just an individually owned seafood restaurant but the first one we've been to that uh i don't think there was anything on the menu that that any of us had that was uh not just really super it's nice to find a place like that yeah um oh boy have you ever been to uh what is it original book [binders] in philadelphia uh that's an old established uh restaurant i used to go there when i was in college uh i went to the naval academy and we used to we use to go up there on uh for football games sometimes and have some liberty and yeah we would go over there to uh pretty sure it was original original book [binders] i think it was yes i haven't been back there in years okay what area is that right did you have any dealings with the uh underwater sound reference laboratory in orlando florida yes sir my dad worked there for years and years that's that's uh that's where i grew up was down in orlando so that's uh that's interesting well i was in [submarines] uh okay yeah must have had some interesting uh assignments for you there when did you retire well great i'm sure you've seen some interesting developments in acoustics yeah okay right where's oh we we do enjoy that yes sir uh i don't know if we are particularly adventurous we find something we like uh like cashew shrimp or something that's got a good uh at a particular restaurant and then we usually stick by it but do you what about you hot uh_huh um where did you learn how to do chinese cooking uh_huh uh_huh what's a good reference cookbook for chinese food i guess one of the things we've uh started [avoiding] is the uh run of the mill chop [suey] and things like that but we enjoy trying uh different kinds of chicken or uh you know even uh shrimp uh dishes that are fixed in a chinese restaurant okay thanks for that uh reference okay good yeah well i haven't been to any new ones but i have uh several that i frequent uh mainly because of specialties in foods and i have so many so many foods that i prefer uh that i enjoy such as oriental foods i don't like japanese food but i like all chinese food yeah sounds familiar yes yes that sounds uh very much like one of our very very best places to get steaks uh and they open at five and if your not there at five thirty you'll probably have about an hour wait and they have a bar also which is always crowded as can be but it's it's an specially fine restaurant and when you consider they take no plastic or checks strictly cash and they've been in business oh for at least forty years uh that's the yes yes it's their their steaks are [exquisite] they also have uh excellent uh liver which i happen to like and um those are the two specialties which they have that and their [stewed] tomatoes which are well known all over the dayton area oh uh_huh uh_huh right yes right well one of the nicer restaurants supposedly that opened up here not too very long ago called harbor lights specializes in fish and uh the atmosphere is fantastic and i was there with it's a group um that uh we were having a going away dinner for a friend and there were twelve of us and i the the food that uh we ordered each of us was quite good but the service was horrendous and the the waitress never once came behind me um um on our side of the table she reached across the table she never once asked if we wanted coffee we had to grab onto someone else they didn't [refill] our water glasses um someone had only eaten a portion of their food and wanted to take it home and asked to have it [boxed] and she just pitched it out and then when she finally did bring something um to replace that she practically threw it at the person yes and oh absolutely what made me angry was that when there are groups such as ours there were twelve of us they automatically put the tip on the bill and i'll tell you we had some very unhappy people who were so unhappy with the service and resented paying fifteen percent tip when they had such poor service but oh yes right right oh well one thing that gets me is when you see them do putting out the um the um knives [forks] and what have you and when they put them down they hold them by the edge that you are going to put in your mouth and that really up sets me when i see that oh oh uh_huh yes but yeah oh no no and actually you know those are the kind of things that should get taken back to the management because the the the waitresses have no control over the the way the dishes are and cleaned in the kitchen and if they're not cleaned off well when they go threw the dishwasher food just doesn't always get washed off and it sticks on there and then when they dry them um if they air dry them or heat dry them it dries it right on and that's terrible yes i agree with that but just don't ever get a glass that has [lipstick] on it oh that is terrible i had that happen only once i don't remember where but it's always one time is enough for me to be aware of the situation and i look at every glass that i get yeah i don't mind that um my husband never cared for fast food so we didn't go that often but you know i have no problem with going to a mcdonald's or a wendy's or a or a long john [silver's] or any of those once in a while not often but once in a while yeah oh yeah that's very true now once in a while if there's a good [ballgame] like there's going to be tonight with duke and um kansas city um kansas um you see i would enjoy having a pizza and just sit and watch the game and a have a pizza and a beer that i would enjoy no no at home just have it delivered yeah we we have some of our pizza places deliver and i assume that you have that there also domino's was the first one to start yes yes yes we have domino's we have pizza hut and then we have a couple of other smaller little [ceasars] and [juan's] pizza they're all in the general facility where i live and so i can and then my most favorite one doesn't deliver it's called [marian's] pizza but i think it is local and no uh_huh right that makes a big difference well we have a lot of businesses going out of business uh in this area and i don't know whether it's necessarily nationwide but many of the smaller stores grocery stores card shops smaller restaurants i can't compete with some of the larger ones and they are all going under yes yes absolutely well i um i've been retired from education for uh-oh what eight years and i do i have a bunch of had i should say a bunch of little jobs such as a sales associate um job at a women's specialty dress shop and um i was a manager part time at a card and gift shop as well as teaching in a modeling agency and modeling so the card shop just went out of business we've been there almost a year almost two years but and the store was precious everyone liked the store they liked the kinds of cards and what have you but the location was so poor and it was in a shopping strip that had a grocery store on one end that took them almost four years to really get that going and that strip filled up but kathy selected the middle store in the middle strip and there's still no stores on either side and it's been over a year and a half yes and and it's sad because it was it was a nice store and she was such a lovely young gal to work for i just feel very bad oh well you wonder how these topics get chosen where was the last place you went out to eat well last place we went was uh uh-oh we went to [popeye's] fried chicken actually it was a drive through well our our kids are a little older actually we got a seventeen year old and a fourteen year old but but we still wind up i still i like fast food reasonably well yeah well how old are your kids oh so they really like that sort of stuff i can remember many times though uh uh it's interesting though that that you know particularly when you're traveling and you go some place you stop at a mcdonald's with the big playground when you know when the kids really need to get out and run around after been driving a while yeah that's that's really nice that they started doing that because it's the problem is you take them to some place nice and you know the even a place where they have to sit down even if they are really good kids they get they get bored in a hurry and uh yeah you know we now we're a little older we can go to i i still like um i like buffets yeah well have you been in the area very long huh you say you in denison oh okay so we were i was in sherman um um last month or the i took a i sponsored a youth group up there and it was funny we went to a uh-oh we must have had thirty of us and we went into a pizza hut and you wander into a pizza hut with that kind of crowd and they sort of hate to see you coming they get the business but with a crowd of people it's uh it it it's kind of funny and we went in first and then it was so crowded and we went and i'm trying to think it's right off anyway i don't know if it's pizza hut or pizza inn anyway we went to another one and uh they the rates there are fairly reasonable but you know even those places are starting to have you know video games and things for kids your kids play video games oh gives him something to [amuse] him while there uh yeah well do you have do you have any like [chucky] cheese well got one in richardson pardon me i try and think there there there's a couple of those that they combined and it's a combination pizza parlor and all kinds of yeah and they have the room full of balls and yeah yeah show biz that's the name of it you like the pizza at show biz oh yeah yeah well you know they're so large they animated it yeah that's really uh yeah we were until the kids got older we'd go there and you know it was um i'll date myself a little bit but it's remarkable the number of those things that they make i guess i think show biz and [chucky] cheese and all those i think they [merged] or something but it still it's still quite popular i have to i'm not sure the pizza was okay i mean uh_huh uh_huh uh well do you ever go out to eat at a higher higher end type more expensive places huh huh well we got a lot of barbecue places around around the dallas area spring creek barbecue that's right in richardson and it uh i like the barbecue there and uh it's fairly reasonable you can get uh it if i mean if you know you go through the line and pick up your food yeah it is they're probably just being normal though well when it's funny when when when the kids get a lot older though you can do as you please our son graduates this year and we're kind of looking forward to yeah yeah they're you know it's kind of like wanting to talk and you know but you but then they learned to say no it's kind of funny and now they get older our son's a senior in high school will talk to us but you know you know it's mostly no no no it's sort of i guess it's a little disappointing but i suppose it's just the way life is right well you know everybody says you'd be surprised how quickly it comes but it it uh we moved here in seventy six daughter was six weeks old and hard to believe in nearly fifteen years no i i i grew up in uh in alabama well no actually i was until i was eight i lived in in in south uh western georgia and then we moved over into central part of alabama but i've been away from there for goodness i haven't lived in alabama since nineteen sixty five that's been a long time ago i lived several places europe and asia and yeah i spent right i was in the air force yeah i was i went in in nineteen and sixty five when they were drafting people in fact my father was on the draft board so yeah well it things are different when everybody in fact that was vietnam era it was in fact i went to vietnam myself it was it's a different world well see i never had a hard time coming home it didn't uh you know there all these people who spit on them and all these kinds of things i came home and got married and i i never uh uh uh i could now but i didn't and i mentioned that to my wife and she said well you never wore your uniform when you were off duty but i didn't i flew into los angeles but i had um when i was in vietnam but by then when we landed actually went into field okay where do you like to go out to eat oh i can relate to that lucky if you go out once a month yeah uh_huh i we like all most any kind of food and here in texas they seem to give such large portions so you know you really i really enjoy eating out here yeah i know eating out is a real treat for me because you know i with two we have two children and it costs so much to take the family out you know we treated the kids today because they wanted to go out to lunch at wendy's but its like they it cost so much to even go there so yeah we like to go to my one of my favorite places is like [sizzler] and uh you know i like red lobster and and you know the [sizzler's] real nice because you get the you know you get a lot of food but the [atmosphere's] nice and yeah you can you can just make a meal out of the salad bar and uh i i look for in a restaurant i they have to be [courteous] and clean you know that you know i don't i'm not looking for you know gourmet food but you know i want food that's you know good something that i would you know if i made it i'd serve to my family or guests so so uh_huh oh yeah addison has some wonderful places to eat yeah oh no i haven't cajun uh_huh uh_huh yeah see i grew up in wyoming and so i'm so used to the you know the beef and the barbecue type stuff you know uh i like uh i think going to steak n ale is a treat too i really like that but uh uh i can't remember if my husband's taken me there or not my husband's probably gone there because he works up at the plano plant uh_huh uh i have i don't think i've been there he might have yeah yeah my husband used to work at the north building so he probably has been there uh_huh i i uh and you know being on a budget the it can't be real expensive either what's wrong [melissa] do you need to go potty oh yeah yeah it's real treat to go so some people you know they just go out almost every night you know and i'm like no no uh_huh uh_huh yeah no you can't because you've got to consider a baby sitter on top of that and uh i'm a person that loves to do coupons you know it with the grocery store so i just you know like this is why they come out with coupons and stuff so i'm not afraid to use a a coupon at a place either so pardon me oh el chico's i really like yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah whatever yeah oh i i really like el chico's so that was one place that when we lived over in the you know we just lived over on greenville and l b j you know so there was an el chico's real close and and my husband working at the north building we would go there this is before we had kids you know we'd go there you know quite a bit because we just really liked it but i haven't been there in so long i think the last time i was there we took our kids and so with children uh_huh it is uh_huh oh i i have to agree there it oh yeah it does you know by the time you you go through the you know the [spilling] on the floor and the sit down and be quiet and quit yelling in the uh_huh yeah one thing my place my kids enjoy going is [denny's] yeah because you get those you can get coupons you know like in the paper you know that come in the coupon section of the paper they've had you know like buy get one dinner entree get one for free so we've done that a couple times where we've taken the kids and you know they have a little kids menu and they really like that but then again it's difficult to keep them quiet and then they like [showbusiness] pizza you know oh [showbusiness] my daughter calls it oh oh you're not a kidding it it that's why we've only been there a couple times yeah that you might when you go no isn't that the truth you you go there just for the kids it's the rides we've taken our kids there just for to play you know but yeah when you go in there you expect to spend twenty dollars yeah yeah yeah no for kids amusement parks we go to monkey business that's a plain amusement park but yeah its it's in uh mesquite off of military and [scyene] on six thirty five it's an indoor amusement park you're child's probably too young yeah so but yeah uh my kids love it i have a two year well almost a three year old and a four year old so and they love it but yeah we enjoy going out and of course mcdonald's and oh i know um with mine i don't know if it's so much the food i think it's just the the play on the outside equipment you take them uh_huh yeah yeah i think they enjoy going out too it's a treat for them too so yeah well i think we've about discussed the subject before the lady comes on and tells us our ten minutes up it was nice talking to you too bye bye well we're probably different from you folks down here we're into uh mexican or tex mex or something like that that tends to be one of my favorites is to go out to uh have some mexican food we have like um el chico's and one new place uh that's pretty good is uh pappasito's so when i go out and i like to splurge on eating i usually like to go out and get some mexican food and make sure there's a basket of chips keeps being [replenished] on the table no no i'm not a native here actually um from philadelphia originally and lived in uh ohio for you know a good portion of time going to high school and college there so i've been down here for about eight years but uh i don't know that's just something that i really picked up on i really did like the mexican food the other thing i like i guess um i don't eat it as often is maybe italian food we don't have as many places around here to eat italian food but i like italian food uh_huh uh_huh yeah um uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's not too close to the real thing oh yeah uh_huh where did you go for it did you go like to [hoffbrau] steaks park [suite] yeah right across the street yeah um uh_huh um um and what was the name of it um okay right yeah last night we went out and people we were with she uh had fajitas and she had this pepper on the plate and maybe she thought it was a sweet pepper but it wasn't and she ate it and i was wondering why her eyes were watering she and she had drank all her [iced] tea and she yeah no no i i can maybe eat some [jalapenos] but i really don't you know ask for those on there i'm more like into the enchiladas and and stuff like that but no i don't really like it hot um i remember meeting somebody a long time ago before i ever moved to texas and he put hot sauce on everything he ate i mean [tabasco's] and that kind of stuff on everything he ate i think he [must've] just had a a stomach that was iron or something uh_huh yeah uh_huh well those are my two favorites you know uh yeah yeah there's one favorite place that we have called august moon that's that's pretty good and uh i've got one thing on the menu that i really love but um we don't do that probably as often we used to do a a quick take out kind of place that wasn't real great chinese but we used to do we just liked vegetable fried rice quite a bit just you know as a quick kind of dinner thing that's you know it's not real filling but you know get some veggies and rice and stuff every once in a while we go out to a little bit nicer chinese place yeah uh_huh um well recently we've both been trying to do some diet so we haven't gone out because when they tell you about how much fat is in all that food you know it really kind of [crimps] your style there but um we probably you know maybe go out like once a week on the weekend usually with friends or something we kind of go out um not always you know sometimes we cook the meal at home and have people in but i haven't really thought about you know the economy all that much and and eating out we we never really did it a lot but you know we do maybe go out a couple of times a month at least to eat out um uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well though you know t i has laid off quite a few in this area and then general dynamics has its [woes] too so that it seems like there's been a lot of people recently you know when big companies uh change their programs and and such that there's been an influx of some unemployed but probably when you spread it out over everybody in dallas it maybe has not changed the percentage all that much you know maybe one or two percent possibly it's hard to say it just seems like a lot when you hear about companies that keep continually advertising or [stating] that they're you know you know cutting out so many thousands of employees it sounds like big numbers of people out there that's true i think the people down here must shop for entertainment because we have more shopping malls within close [proximity] i mean it's like we could have shopping malls even across the road from each other there must be a lot of people with a lot of money who just like to go out and shop because we have [plentitude] of shopping malls within like a five mile [radius] i oh yes i love uh mexican and uh oriental foods both so uh i could say enchiladas down on greenville avenue in dallas texas is uh a real good mexican and we like uh stir fry [hunan] style over in addison oh yeah yeah i enjoy and good food in the blue [goose] yeah that is a good place where do you like to eat uh_huh favorite spot oh yeah yeah that's good what other kind of food uh_huh uh_huh [schlotzky's] is probably my favorite deli deli sandwich i guess because of the bread the uh roll uh_huh sounds good that's true that is true well both uh probably eat out for dinner say once or twice a week and i eat out for lunch probably three times a week so uh_huh yeah uh_huh there is a new italian restaurant that is really good uh on greenville it's uh la [fontana] or something like that it's right after you cross uh six thirty five on greenville it is actually the family has not been here even a year in the states it's real authentic italian food and their deserts are fabulous so if you like italian that that's a really good place to go uh_huh i haven't tried that is it good because i live in plano too uh_huh yeah yeah that means a lot to me too [nonsmoking] yeah um let's see what was uh what about steaks where you for a good steak uh_huh right uh_huh oh well that's good because i i know steak and ale is a favorite prime rib that they have is is usually what i get and i was real pleased now i haven't had prime rib at the [hoffbrau] but really yeah yeah oh yeah oh uh_huh yeah and from what i understand i know on the weekends passing there they have quite a wait really um well what about fast food what do you grab you know say what's your favorite hamburger wendy's oh yeah yeah yeah i understand that yeah well i don't know wendy's i think wendy's tries to be more of a homemade burger so it's to me it's probably a little bit better you know an maybe it's an adult hamburger place uh_huh uh_huh well i like just about any kind of food i usually i can eat anything at anytime so usually whatever my friends want to go eat it suits me just fine an oh is that where the [flamingo] was okay i noticed they were redoing that oh gosh uh_huh i've never been there this new one is [razzoo's] oh cajun is that a chain or uh_huh well good deal i'll have to try that what about that italian there have you tried that uh_huh uh_huh oh my gosh yeah a lot of food uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh soup yeah souper salads is a favorite place to hit too one of those things you got to go early you know to find a seat yeah yeah let's uh as far as fish i think my favorite place is uh [dinger's] over on forest lane oh it's very good very good matter of fact it's right by the t i plant that little shopping center it's pretty good and uh_huh yeah yeah yeah uh_huh also in the shopping center you know where uh [zaks] is that little craft shopping center there's a a home if you want just like a plate you know home cooked meal that's it's called b j and every day they have like a plate lunch special and it's fairly cheap it's like two ninety five or three fifty and it's real good so oh it's just kind of a mom and pop restaurant that's uh vegetables like a couple vegetables and a meat an and roll and quick usually really quick too so i have never tried any uh_huh uh_huh i was going to say how does it compare are the spices different uh_huh oh okay more like an entree and and vegetable okay okay how wild yeah okay well what about indian have you tried indian yeah oh it's uh right there in richardson on the west side of seventy five and uh she i've never got the courage to go but that's once a week place for her so yeah well what about t i cafeteria do you ever uh oh gosh yeah that's the only thing that's safe yeah yeah the [burrito] you can only handle every so often we enjoy various types of restaurants uh there is excellent italian restaurants here there is some cajun cooking and of course there is always steaks and barbecue right oh not as much as we used to but still at least about once a week let's see we ate at louisiana purchase up in plano just recently we had a [craving] for catfish and they had some good catfish there and uh we enjoy there is an italian restaurant over in garland also called taste of italy i do not know if you have tried any of those there is about four of them around town but it is good home style italian cooking it is not the fancy veal and things you get at some of the other italian restaurants they make excellent spaghetti sauce and little garlic rolls and things like that and i have also recently eaten at [jacolya] out at addison cajun cooking north dallas and richardson and plano area we live out near richardson square mall so it is generally in that north side of town yes there is an excellent uh i guess it is taiwan the southeast asian type restaurant down in deep elm i west wind or yes yeah i believe so i am really not sure exactly what style it is but it is very very good now right in the edge of north dallas there at skillman just north of l b j there is another vietnamese type restaurant called [yoli's] y o l i's which serves some excellent food too in that in that style of food it's not a fancy place i have eaten there at lunch primarily oh that is hard to say but the ones that we like most are out of business now but right but [papillon] is one we go back to quite frequently for uh continental style cooking oh right i think you would enjoy it it is a [tad] on the expensive side uh probably run uh with dinner and uh some drinks about twenty five thirty dollars a person it helps quite a bit right yes we have used some of the coupons also at some of the places but uh that is i think one of our favorite our our most most favorite restaurant was [lalouve] which was here on in north just off of central expressway in north dallas but that has been gone for several years now it's gone right that does not surprise me yeah well we we have enjoyed it the there have been some excellent restaurants here through the years and of course some go up some go down and uh it just depends on the chef in some cases of course no i have not uh i have not been to that one yeah yeah well again the old [sonny] [bryan's] up there by uh what is it by uh methodist hospital up on [inwood] yeah yeah that one is not it's it's a it's a barbecue stand really it's not really a restaurant that's right they make some really good barbecue there right i used to work over on on just off of [stemmons] and we would go over there about once a week for barbecue for lunch but there is uh-oh there is a lots of good restaurants here i think the really hard thing is that you want fresh seafood of course we are a little bit away from the coast not as far as kansas but right for seafood just all around good eating seafood vincent's has some really good seafood yeah well there is several there is one in plano one on midway there is one over by love field i think there are three or four of them here in town and we have gone to the one over on midway and also to the one up in plano as a matter of fact we were there new year's eve at the one on plano yeah i think you would really enjoy it uh_huh yeah yeah we had dinner there we have a group of friends we go out once with and we had dinner at ralph and [kacoos] last fall i think and we were there and it was excellent the night that we were there oh yeah it depends on whether they got comp the meal or not i think we have i certainly enjoyed talking with you you will have to try it do not expect anything fancy it's home style food not expensive and uh get the dinner salad with the olives on it yes my wife [swears] by the lasagna yeah they have excellent lasagna and if you get like spaghetti with uh get with the italian sauce it should taste like home made italian sausage you get in chicago yeah thank you okay i now say arlington texas since the other day i said that and somebody said well i'm in arlington virginia yeah i was really surprised and i got one person from utah but usually it's right around here well what do you like in a restaurant i know number one that's definitely it uh_huh yeah you know i used to like to go to friday's because i like kind of lively fun places but the last time we went there it was so [horrendously] noisy that i don't know if i'll ever go back it was awful uh_huh that's right oh i know that's the half the fun is the conversation right i really think american restaurants are all overall getting noisy noisy people just screaming i say that because i the time i was in europe years ago you could be in a tiny little restaurant everyone talked lower they still seemed to have fun uh_huh i don't either i know i and uh another one you can tell i go to cheap restaurants now that i have a daughter in college and i'm going we go all the [cheapies] but we go to [cheddar's] a lot there is one by us and they'll just blast the t v in the bar where you have to wait till they call your name you know and and i'm not that excited about some baseball game or whatever they're it's just so loud you can't even visit while you're having a drink or anything oh they all run screaming in and singing yes they do too i think uh_huh uh_huh right oh golly uh i like most kinds of food really i'd never go to a barbecue place i mean i don't mind barbecue but that's one that we just don't go out to but you know i like italian and mexican and i love french and uh we don't i don't even think we have a greek restaurant in arlington we uh i used to go to a greek restaurant over in dallas couple of them i thought they were great uh i like most everything i like seafood too course it's hard to get my husband to a seafood restaurant but another thing to consider is the uh help you know uh their attitude i i think and uh some of them you know they come up with all this phony stuff too hi my name's bill i'm your waiter for the night oh i'm tired of that right i don't care about right we don't have to exchange backgrounds but uh price is something to consider but right now the more expensive the restaurant the more i want the the waiters to really wait on you and be good you know really really i think so well we went to new orleans this fall and talk about great restaurants oh oh oh i know and uh really we we went to [commander's] palace and and you know it was supposed to be one of the better ones in america and uh our dinner that night you could choose one that had like four courses and it was thirty nine dollars a dinner but my gosh it was worth it it was just beautiful surroundings at one time there was five people waiting on our table oh really that's the first time i've been in new orleans before was the first time i'd eaten there and i thought it was worth every penny and uh really enjoyed that and then i enjoyed that more than [brennan's] i think it's better but still [brennan's] is so lovely and the service is so wonderful that's true oh i know all right now then we should be ready to go with our conversation what are your preferences oh i've decided there's so many places in dallas i will not make too many repeats and i thoroughly enjoy the ethnic foods yes certainly course i perhaps would enjoy tex mex and that's uh a good tex mex is awfully hard to beat do you do you care for that flavor i i understand that uh but you don't care for the steaks uh yes i found a little place over in uh preston center tonight it's a called oh i don't have the matches now but it's a it's a cafe au france and they had the it's a small place but most delightful i had not been there before and then i found with a neighbor oh couple a about a month ago this uh [salvadorian] and that is on six thirty five in a i don't think it was [days'] inn motel but this woman's son had been there two or three times and their food is excellent except for their fried banana now i do not care for that but uh the the other things the seasonings were so oh wait i have a just second i'm sorry i didn't know i'd have that one come in but anyway that was it was very good and very very reasonable good service and the things that i look forward to i mean i want to be waited on i don't want to go cafeteria style i'd rather have them cater to me when i'm when i'm [patronizing] them the only time that i would go against that would be the sunday brunches that many of the places have one that i have enjoyed and had the privilege of eating there new year's eve night was the marriott on six thirty five at coit have you been there eat uh_huh well they had a buffet dinner which was very so what kind of dining out do you enjoy uh_huh four children or uh_huh yeah uh_huh so that has a children's menu or uh_huh uh well i don't have any children uh and i'm a [newlywed] so right now i guess my favorite type of restaurant is is a place that's fairly quiet and has a pleasant atmosphere i sort of like the either an old country look or uh [dim] lights or something just you know uh well i enjoy steak and ale yeah that's that seems to have a pretty nice atmosphere usually not i don't like noise i just hate it when restaurants are like [bennigan's] that's the other one that i really like yeah i haven't in plano i haven't uh-oh yeah yeah yeah i've been to one here in dallas yeah they are they really are i've only been there once uh almost a year ago and i want to go back i've thought about it ever since it's not on our side of town yeah uh well my husband loves anything beef so he likes steak or ribs or something but i kind of like more variety i like to be able to yeah exactly uh_huh yeah yeah i like to have a choice of fish or chicken and italian food mexican food you know something uh yeah something that i wouldn't that takes more time to cook at home uh i'd say well one thing is the price i don't think it yeah yeah if it's overpriced or you know i mean if it's i like to still be able to get a meal for well i'd prefer five dollars or less but that's unusual these days if you go out uh_huh yeah yeah we like uh tony [roma's] it's a rib place uh_huh well uh let's see there's there's one up at uh see what is it just as uh loop twelve turns into thirty five it [merges] it's right there it's sort of a restaurant row in dallas there and then there's also one down at the marketplace west end marketplace and we found out one day by mistake that lunch is about half as much as dinner is and you get almost the same amount yeah uh_huh so i'd say that's the first thing i look for is price and then atmosphere yeah how about you yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah so so what would your favorite place be or one of your favorites or some of your favorite no i've never heard of that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i like chinese too yeah sometimes you can uh you can often get that at a good price and some of them have good atmosphere too so uh_huh yeah some of them don't yeah yeah so do you like places that are noisy that are lively yeah uh_huh right yeah i'm sure it does uh_huh yeah i have yeah yeah that's what i found too so well do you have anything else you wanted to say what uh what are some of your favorite places to uh eat at royal tokyo uh_huh okay oh all right oh yeah well i'm a vegetarian so uh my places are my my my choices are somewhat limited uh but my very favorite is the olive garden i think uh if or or else uh uh el chico's if i have if i had my choice that's where i like to go yeah i haven't been in dallas for very long and so i don't know you know too many places to eat but uh it it it is a little bit uh you know there at almost every restaurant there are uh things to eat it just depends on you know whether what you really want to eat is there yeah are you vegetarian also or oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh well uh several reasons um um most importantly i have a uh a disease and and both of in all of my joints that uh in which arthritis is a big factor and uh several reports uh in the last five years have given validity to the uh to to the theory that that uh vegetarian diet greatly reduces the pain involved with uh arthritis yeah it really does work um even to the point now where uh i'm able to run you know to go out running or jogging on a a [periodic] basis which which was impossible before yeah it it it really has helped uh unfortunately um i i can't give up uh milk so so i drink uh i drink skim milk but if i had my way i'd drink a gallon gallon a day so but but my my restaurant choices then uh i guess since i've uh been a vegetarian that's what i eat it doesn't doesn't matter rocco's uh_huh okay uh_huh oh really uh_huh oh good yeah um i'll try that out uh_huh oh really uh_huh yeah what makes you go back to a restaurant really yeah uh_huh right uh_huh the i i think more than anything else uh the atmosphere yeah which i think you know the the the the service is is a big part of but but uh my very favorite place in the world to eat uh believe it or not is in i went to school in abilene uh and and there's a there's a little restaurant there called the uh uh the [oxford] street which uh the food is okay uh uh and uh you know it's it's on the better side of good and the service is okay but the atmosphere is just beautiful it's uh uh you you know it looks like an an old english uh home with uh you know the high back leather chairs and uh uh the the cloth the cloth uh you know how they cloth the walls with with that [tapestry] cloth it has that it's it's just really nice and i like to eat in there just because i like the feeling in there yeah yeah makes you hungry yeah what kind of restaurants do you like or what do you look for uh_huh yes yeah that's a big plus i've got a two year old and a four year old so uh i i need some place that well actually i've got very well behaved kids but i need some place yeah everybody tells me they're [angels] so you know i guess i just expect it so i'm not well yeah they're good actually no i hate going to mcdonalds we only go for very very special occasions because i don't think they need to get used to that right now i actually like mexican and um there's not really a place up in the garland or richardson area that i like to go but you mean that i found that is not real expensive oh yeah yeah yeah we've we've been going there for like oh i'd say about fifteen or twenty years because we i used to go there with my parents every wednesday night [yea] i do like that one no i haven't i've never been there think that would be good um um ooh that would be good now we've been to pappasito's up there on central they're good but they're a little pricey they're they're pretty good but when you take four people to dinner it gets like pretty expensive i know well this is true boy no kidding no i've heard of it is it wonderful oh oh it's oh so is it kind of a continental kind of ooh ooh that sounds good yeah yeah i think i would like to splurge too it sounds wonderful because i've had the flu and it's like i can't eat but now this is making me hungry now like um have to go home and make steak dinner yes yes i think so oh well now i'm i'm we're pretty much mexican we when we do go out normally we like to leave the kids at home so we can like go out and not have to fight the children i mean like i said they are good but there's only so much that kids that age can sit still for yeah yeah oh i know we found one restaurant uh string bean up on belt line or spring valley or somewhere they've got a little kids room which is nice because it's got games it's got a couple of video games and toys and it's like here honey you take the kids in there while i just kind of stop let me just relax and you take the kids while we're waiting for supper and it works great yeah it it's real good and it's not just extremely loud in there which a lot of places are when you take kids so it's um pretty much like that on oh i do too especially for their prime rib oh it is part of the family yes yeah we i like to go there we don't go there very often but i do like to go there just because it's nice to really be [cuddled] and that's what i feel like i'm getting there yeah oh me too yes we went to steak and ale one night and there was a family at the table next to us that it was somebody's birthday and the girl went nuts this girl was probably two years old maybe she went [ballistic] because they started singing happy birthday and apparently she has some kind of a hearing problem anytime she hears loud noises it really affects her real bad and so she just starts screaming and just going off the deep end and so for and that night there were birthdays everywhere because it was my birthday too well i know oh i tell you i thought uh this is a great topic for me because i love to eat out my husband says i'd eat out every meal if i could um i like well my favorite restaurant in the whole uh dallas area is uh [siciliano's] a taste of italy i love italian food and they have wonderful garlic rolls and all of their entrees are wonderful have you ever heard of that place there's one on arapaho right at the intersection of arapaho and [jupiter] and then there's one i live in garland yeah there's another one over here real close to my house at walnut and [shiloh] but they've built some more there's one over in the hurst area of fort worth and yeah yeah it is the atmosphere is okay i mean it's kind of dark and has candle lit tables and that kind of thing but it's not a real fancy place you know it's just the food is just really exceptional and they give you real big quantities and all their entrees come with like a salad and soup and all the rolls you can eat and so by the time you get your food you're already full yes oh oh well you could go there what i do sometimes for lunch is uh just just get like soup and salad and eat their garlic bread because it's so delicious yeah yeah well um what's your favorite place oh you like mexican i like that too oh yeah uh_huh yeah well that's neat yeah well that's my main thing too yeah yeah yeah yeah that is a real noisy place i've only been there a couple of times but the the times i was there i felt like my head was [echoing] and i was trying to talk yeah yeah yeah i know what you're talking about well we have a a restaurant down here a lot of people won't even eat there but we like it it's pancho's have you ever been there mexican buffet uh_huh oh uh_huh yeah oh yeah well they have a chili [relleno] or chili [relleno] uh_huh they're really good and they uh the plates the thing i like about this place is they bring you all the chips and stuff you can eat plus they bring [sopapillas] as many as you want so you know a lot of places you have to order that separately yeah oh it's really nice and the children eat free we have two kids and one of them eats free the other one's up above that age but she still gets a you know reduced price yeah so it's a real good deal for a family to go and you can just really get full yeah well i like i really prefer to go you know some place where i sit down and someone waits on me but uh my kids of course both love mcdonalds and uh burger king anything that's got a place to play so i spend time at those places too because i know how much they enjoy we go to show biz a lot do you have children oh show biz is the [noisiest] place you can imagine right that's right it they have a wonderful area to play you know they have big balls and games and rides and i mean all kinds of stuff it's like a little bitty amusement park in there and it's really fun they have these uh [puppets] that get up and sing and dance you know so it's real entertaining for the kids and the food is good they have real good pizza there uh_huh right have it at home yeah yeah i know i don't like domino's either yeah yeah well i've just never cared for for their pizza at all we have a little caesar's down here yeah yeah it's really good and very uh you get a good quality for the money you pay so yeah yeah yeah uh_huh oh you do is it northeast or where do you like to go to eat out uh_huh wow uh_huh well my wife and i go to this place in denton texas called rocco's it's a italian restaurant and uh well i guess the first time i went there is about eight years ago i had just moved back from florida and went over there you know with my parents and uh when my wife and i got married we had our our wedding dinner there and uh one of the things i like most about rocco's is the people there are real people you know they're not all you know [hoity] [toity] and all that good stuff sure excellent service uh the food is is always hot there's always enough you know i hate when i go to a restaurant i spend twelve bucks for a meal and you know i got to spend another twelve bucks to find the appetizers yeah yeah i got cans in my [cupboard] uh well uh let me put it this way the nearest seven eleven is about forty miles yeah we're out in the country and uh fast food for me is fuel you know it's like i buy the cheapest stuff i can find that will hold me over until i can get home usually i don't go to fast food places because if i leave the house i generally pack my own lunch i i cannot stand cardboard food you know you know it's nothing fancy for lunch but i you know i got celery and carrots and and [pears] and apples and uh yeah that's real food you know my wife will make me either you know like a ham sandwich or turkey sandwich or something like that you know we raise [hogs] and butcher our own meat so we have a wide variety of stuff available yeah yeah do you go to restaurant row got you your mcdonald's your pizza inn your taco bell and uh burger king and [sonic] and all that well that's yuppie food it makes you have to eat bran yeah i went to see my doctor the other day and he gave me you know two pieces of news one was good one was bad the good the bad news was i was going to die the good news is that i uh i i don't have to eat bran muffins or jog well you know uh have you seen any of the statistical reports on the the well yeah they say you might extend your life oh three or four months but it takes three or four months to get in shape so whoops i've got a call so what type of restaurant do you like uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah yeah now do are indian foods kosher uh_huh right i was about to say i didn't think so but most of the most of the the vegetarian indian meals uh_huh uh_huh oh definitely chinese would uh_huh uh_huh yeah because pastas and the and the different types of sauces and things sure yeah which is of right now we don't have one uh_huh you know my wife and you would probably love to go eat together yeah oh definitely well when we go someplace they have to have good french fries if they don't have good french fries you know if it's one of if it's a place that has other things if it's not that then we go to chinese food you know i order you know a beef and broccoli or or chicken and broccoli or something like that you know chicken and cashews and she orders um bean [curd] and and vegetables right you know so um you two would probably eat real well together yeah she she normally picks all of our restaurants though yeah well we really we really don't do that that often um i i guess recently we did um i get when we got engaged last summer um we went for fine dining because we were sort of [celebrating] and we went to the annapolis area which is um annapolis maryland it it's uh state capital but it's also on the water so there's a lot of restaurants there it's uh it's a uh very [trendy] resort type town but the my wife lived in annapolis for a short time and uh she really liked this one restaurant it was it's french but it was really good everything in it was very [garlicky] and their big specials are things like um very fancy [omelets] or very fancy [crepes] and then they also have a lot of other uh french oriented uh meals and i normally get something that's crepe and very american and then she gets something french yeah but um yeah but yeah definitely definitely yeah but most of the time when we go out um we either go mexican because uh uh she just has a a need for either some type of mexican chips or mexican pizza or something like that or french fries you have to you have to have french fries with just about every meal unless you're eating something other you know some other uh right yeah um yes yeah we just had salmon last night for dinner uh but also the spices here um old bay is a spice i don't know if you're even aware of it it's what they used on the uh if you ever hear of the maryland steamed crabs okay well old bay is the spice they put on the steamed crabs well true male [marylander's] have have old bay on just about everything they put it on their french fries they'll put it in their potato salad they'll um they'll they'll put it with just my wife loves old bay with everything so if we have french fries they have to they have to have old bay on them right yeah yeah well see i i grew up in pittsburgh uh where heinz ketchup is and my fan was big ketchup yeah uh_huh right yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah we do the same uh_huh no you get a couple yeah it's not a real meal uh_huh yeah yeah we're the same because i'm in graduate school and we're living off her salary and my and my part time work you know it's not our the restaurant our favorite restaurant in the town of salisbury where actually we live you know where my where i'll return to my job or whatever we can normally eat out for um under fourteen dollars and that's you know that's the two of us having unlimited french fries and uh it may be a mexican pizza sometimes both together um along with and see it which is really funny too you know normally she goes straight for vegetables except when she's having french fries then i'll order like a vegetable soup or something you know but she'll just have the french fries you know no no in fact we're very environmental so we very rarely eat at any of the fast food restaurants uh just because of the um the styrofoam and the plastic waste and whatever we very rarely will eat at a uh a fast food restaurant i will i'll eat at one more often because of graduate school and being on the road more but um yeah she almost refuses you know to do that in fact we're at a point now where if we do a salad bar at the grocery store we save the same plastic container and we yeah we take it with us back to the store and bring it home yeah and we take yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh well that's a really good idea yeah uh_huh yeah we we've used the same uh you know tin bottom with plastic top probably for the past oh i don't know six months yeah so so we're very you know we try to be very environmental and in fact it's terrible now because um i guess we've donated money to a number of organizations and you know we're in school i'm in school and we're just barely surviving here and and we get calls now from like world wildlife [federation] like demanding a hundred dollars yeah and when you say but we're in uh we're in graduate school we can't afford that you know they they say well how about twenty seven how about ten you know yeah so uh_huh yeah we do all we can now but that it you know i think that also goes along uh the reason why we pick the restaurants that we go to you know we we really we really look at restaurants now there's one other little restaurant in town that we'll go to that is um sandwiches and chips and a pickle you know but you still and that's five fifty but if you go to a fast food restaurant you're going to spend four fifty and you're going to produce a lot of styrofoam and a lot of plastic so we you know we'll go there instead of you know just going to a fast food place uh_huh yeah i do too uh_huh yeah i i agree yeah yeah no no oh oh jeez i'll tell laura about that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's really see because a lot of times we'll order a pizza we'll just get a regular cheese pizza or um uh we just recently got married so my wife got a uh a heavy duty mixer like a [kitchenaid] or something like that it's called so she's make she makes dough pizza dough and freezes it and then takes it out before i get home for the weekend because [pizza's] probably one of my most favorite food yeah and she'll make that for the weekend and she'll make you know we'll have two pizzas mine will be regular tomatoes and um [mozzarella] and monterrey jack cheese you know sprinkled on it and [hoselebee] you know something uh more gourmet but more you know with yeah more with what you like she loves broccoli and spinach and i think uh she i don't think she's ever probably thought of that uh_huh yeah so it's it's just regular it's just tomatoes well i think we're very fortunate because uh in the past twenty years washington has really developed a a good number of quality restaurants uh mostly although you have your normal continental we've gotten the excellent ethnic restaurants um we have ethiopian restaurants we have latin american restaurants um you know besides the normal range of french and italian and things like that so uh we try to because i am italian background and my husband is chinese we really try to uh experience quite a bit of difference in cooking styles oh god yeah but uh_huh uh_huh oh my well what uh_huh is it continental it is french uh_huh uh_huh and i'm sure it's quite i'm sure it's quite pricey oh so it's a price fixed and you go in for the menu that they have yeah yeah oh that's interesting uh_huh what kind of food do you like any any specific place and and you're adventuresome uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well we're very fortunate we have we have two sons and ever since they were even very little they we very adventuresome i mean they tried [frogs] legs an and they tried rabbit and all sorts of things so uh we've never had to have the problem of picky [eaters] and uh_huh oh well they they've been they've been adventuresome since they were i mean even preschoolers they'll they tried anything yeah so um it's been it's been great and uh of course in the area of maryland where we are of course crabs are one of our big [delicacies] and uh_huh uh_huh oh i know but you get some other kinds of fish that are just wonderful i know that you have [abalone] out there there's nothing to i mean fresh [abalone] is wonderful yes yes but uh you know baltimore also is a wonderful eating city okay and [baltimore's] got some great dining areas it's got little ethnic communities little pockets of [ethnicity] in the city and it's absolutely marvelous the it's sort of one of these [underrated] cities and they're some great restaurants there um it there are mostly um besides the little ethnic things you've got your great seafood places and there's one great german restaurant there called hausners the owners of which um traveled all over the world and this place is room after room of art so that you feel you're in a museum except it's completely over done and it's it's a real place to bring people for something to talk about and it's a very german restaurant they've got the whole gamut of german dishes so uh when we go out i guess we look as you said you like to try when you were young something different we try to go out for either two things something to make it a [festive] occasion and to try something very unusual or else we go back to a few of our uh for chinese restaurants we usually follow the chef if we know the [chef's] in a restaurant and what their specialties are so there are certain chinese restaurants this is something i learned from my husband where you only eat certain things and uh other things that they don't produce in you know in quality but other other chinese restaurants you would eat other things so uh we we do tend to eat out at least once a week sometimes more although with two sons in college now that may be it may be a little less yes it certainly is so uh what's what's your major consideration when you go out to dinner uh_huh yeah which would so it's fun to find good food for a reasonable price too uh_huh oh that's oh well how tempting uh_huh yeah yeah we have to we have to drive any restaurant where we're not in walking area of any even a store so we do have to drive but you know within a um fifteen twenty minute drive we have a whole span of of restaurants that we can chose from and unless you go into downtown washington and the elegant areas uh even the some of the areas in you can get very reasonable and very tasty meals and uh hausners hausners h a u s n e r s uh_huh yeah if you ever get out there well i enjoyed talking with you too yes ma'am that's my understanding sure thing uh_huh well what i look for in in a good restaurant is a combination of uh uh atmosphere and uh uh tasty food and uh uh competitive price and uh uh in the in the locate where i live is there are several uh good restaurants within a three mile area of our our residence so we we have quite a quite a choice to you know choose from and uh uh i guess the most the most i look for is the the [tastiness] of of the meal closely followed by the the uh whether the place is clean and and uh the the the servers are uh how do i put it uh customer oriented uh_huh well that's they beat on us to be [coactive] out out at the office so i got to everybody else does too right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh well that's no mistake that's that's just fine but see he did that on purpose because i do well that's all right he uh you're worth you're worth every penny of it well i know so my sweetie is worth every every penny of it in fact about every other uh uh anniversary i take her to the uh top of the tower antares the antares restaurant yeah the antares oh yeah i've heard about it but never gone uh_huh huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh for two people what would an average meal uh okay well we don't [imbibe] so uh_huh yeah okay uh_huh yes well you're not supposed to on special occasions that's that's not allowed uh you're supposed to go and uh have a good time and you know let let wisdom be the be the [watchword] but don't look at the you know what's well you know you have to walk a uh have a balance in all things oh that's true unless you have hit uh ed ed must ed mcmahon has delivered to you a check for ten million dollars roger uh another neat place up close to uh the main the t i plant is the uh the the [sheraton] hotel across from uh the center buildings has got a real [neato] restaurant up on the uh twenty first or twenty second floor oh well pardon me yeah they have different uh you know the steak uh uh fish categories and i think there's some poultry and i'm not not sure what all but uh every last bit of it was delicious the last the last time i had one of these conversations i you know discovered that i my tastes and and and the other persons were very different uh uh i my my own uh um well sort of yuppie places i guess is probably the best way to describe them um places that are comfortable and have sort of unusual different foods um where where what do you find particularly good atmosphere wise uh_huh uh_huh well that sounds different i've seen things like that in movies but it don't recall having ever been to a ever even close to a restaurant where that was an option huh huh yeah the yes yes yeah that sure is now can i top that can i even come close sure enough um uh this week it's been chinese food five days in a row so um but normally not not so not so concentrated um um southwestern cuisine um you know new york deli kinds of stuff uh you know it covers you know quite a range i mean the the only thing i find difficulty with is is these raw fish things um how do you have red [lobsters] in texas in the middle of texas yeah i would have thought they would come out of out of the water somewhere crawling around on the on the around dallas oh oh oh i'm sorry oh i'm sorry i thought you were talking about a kind of food red lobster yes the the chain yes thank you never mind well it's it's um it's a combination of a lot of things i mean there's sort of a value [quotient] i mean i i you know there's no absolute dollar limit that you know is either okay or not okay but it's it's more like gee this is a really good you know you got a lot for your money either one of your quality or interest or and service and uh yes do you prefer to have men or women as servers uh_huh why is that yes yeah i've never been to mexico what how how how are the how is the food in mexico compared to what we find in mexican restaurants yeah compared to what we have in this country uh_huh uh_huh i i i think i probably have a slight preference for for male servers but but not very great um you know it's the the quality of service is is important and it and it's and it's i don't think that that's i don't [correlate] that with [genders] um i think i think it really it might actually just be that you know some some restaurants more of one than another it may just be the restaurants i go to uh_huh how how did you like being a waiter or waitress that's that's what my impression is and and and being a chauffeur that isn't also hard work yeah uh_huh yeah i i enjoy going out but my husband goes out for dinner a lot with his company you know with his work so it's something that i end up kind of experimenting with with my girlfriends or maybe taking my girls out when he's gone and and so we end up usually finding something that's uh quick service and uh that's hopefully economical and uh certainly tastes good i hate to uh pay any kind of an amount and then have the food be real mediocre uh as far as to really go out for an evening though i do like to have a place that's not real real formal but kind of on a formal side just because usually their atmosphere is more on a quiet atmosphere and it's real relaxing and then uh the quality of food is usually kind of is affected by how the mood is set so uh i guess my favorite kind of foods would be uh the ones that well i don't know favorite is just going out for a good good hearty steak but i i find it amazing around here we don't have too many good steak houses it doesn't seem and i i find that amazing being in texas i'm from another state originally and i always thought texas was supposed to be such a good meat state and it seems to be a tough thing to do is to find a place that cooks up a real good [juicy] steak oh really uh_huh huh huh yeah it's kind of an interesting approach uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh yeah yeah that's what we have too and yeah you do have to kind of decide well are we there to get a good meal and and just be comfortable as a family or are we looking to spend a lot of time and a lot of money which doesn't work with kids so what would make you go back to a good restaurant uh_huh uh_huh and do you find that when you have children that it's it really makes uh you can really tell the difference between a good and a mediocre restaurant by the way they treat you with kids yeah yeah yeah yeah uh_huh oh yeah yeah we have a restaurant over here called [gershwin's] that has a piano player always during your [mealtime] and it it just makes for a real [classy] feel and uh it kind of carries over the conversations next to you so you're not concentrating what someone else is saying next to you but i mean you know at the next table but just within your own little group so it makes for a nice nice place to go oh yeah uh_huh yeah yeah well sounds good no i think we covered everything well thank you for being home uh i don't know uh medium priced restaurants usually not anything too nice because we have a four year old so i usually like things that cater to children yeah and are loud so when he gets loud it's not too it doesn't bother the other people lots of fast food too i hate to admit it but oh yeah yeah then we go to some place nicer quieter uh_huh yeah there's uh [birraporettis] is one of our favorites it's real nice it's italian it's nice and dark and quiet so it just kind of depends on the occasion what do you like to do so that's just like every day food for you huh oh um yeah hers probably would be the best oh yeah thirty nine cents or whatever for those little [tacos] yeah my son likes those yeah yeah and it tastes pretty much i mean i like the way it taste good and it's fast i like that too well i have to cut this short but i think i'd better get back to work so thanks for calling bye bye bye no okay uh_huh my mother used to work at the plano location i think she moved back down into closer into dallas so okay let me let me let me hit one hold on just a second here okay uh_huh okay uh my favorite i have a lot of favorites i like to try a lot of different things uh there's very few foods that i don't like i don't like asparagus and beets and anything else i can pretty much eat uh recently i went to a french restaurant and i had something called uh spinach [fettucini] and crawfish and it was so delicious i've been talking about it it's my birthday and i've been talking about it ever ever since it's been about a week now i've been talking about this plate of food and uh the real important part of it for me in a restaurant is the service uh in this particular french restaurant was our problem to be going back again and again uh there were three waiters that waited on the entire restaurant they just all kept an eye on all the tables and something that really impressed me was that i asked one waiter for butter and then the next second a different waiter brought the butter out and and they hadn't even talked or anything and it was it was really amazing and so that really [impresses] me the service in a restaurant uh_huh exactly uh_huh uh_huh and that's probably not a chain restaurant i find that most most family owned restaurant or or single restaurant you get the best service simply because that restaurant belongs to somebody it it it has the family name on it and so whoever's in there is going to take care of you as opposed to going into a chain restaurant where they're just hiring you know people out of that really don't probably don't care too much about the establishment so they're not going to worry about taking care of you whereas someone that actually is there that owns it that you know has been working there for twenty years or so they want they want you to be happy so you get the service and you know of course with that will come the good food uh_huh exactly exactly uh_huh the guy that took me out to this french restaurant he works in a hotel nearby and he just happened to mention to the waiter that he sends a lot of the people from the hotel over to the guy's restaurant and and at the end of our meal you know we're ready to go and we're full and this guy sends us a platter of each dessert that the restaurant has so it was like ten desserts on one plate and he just gave it to us to eat of course we couldn't eat it but you know he just did this and so the next time when we come in he'll probably remember us just because we looked so weird at the you know but that that was exactly exactly exactly one of my favorite restaurants is steak and ale now that's a chain sort of a chain restaurant but they seem to i like i like atmosphere myself and and their food is good and i really like the salad bar and that that gets me in a restaurant if there is really good salad bar because i love salads and [soups] and things like that right right uh uh_huh uh_huh did you just recently try it uh_huh yeah uh_huh all right wow maybe i need to get me wok and have some people over uh_huh right right uh probably that it heats up real good and uh_huh uh and that was on a television advertisement one of them nineteen ninety five deals yeah okay that sounds good yeah i don't like i've tried probably just about everything just because i don't like to you know i don't i hate one thing i hate to do in a restaurant is to be with someone that want try things because i'm also wanting to anything that they have i will try and uh you know sometimes i may not like it but i feel like i miss out you know if i had gone a long time without trying chinese food i would have had to try it one day just because i hate to miss out uh_huh yeah yeah the little crunchy things i never know what they are i just call them the [crunchers] so uh_huh um that sounds good i love catfish uh_huh and i love shrimp and uh_huh uh_huh uh right right right uh yeah i don't like scallops too much they have they have kind a funny taste i can eat them but they're uh_huh yeah yeah yeah i'm originally from new york i grew up there so i got to eat a lot of uh i mean just fresh fresh i mean one one day we were out just driving and they are always uh oriental people with their little stands and they're selling things and we decided we were going to buy this thing we didn't know what it was we got in the car and opened it up and started eating it and it was really really good and we figured out that it was [octopus] you know and so we all find of [freaked] out but you find all kinds of seafood things in up there where all the uh [harbors] are and things yeah yeah yeah there's not a whole lot of taste it's just basically meat and there's not a lot of taste not a lot to eat not to like you know so unless you think it's bland or something um now that's something i may not try yeah i've heard that's good i've heard frog legs are good i haven't had any of those yet so i'll have to try those one day uh_huh exactly uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh uh_huh right right um i think my favorite meat is lamb no i think i think it's it's got i like the texture of it is why i like it not so much the taste but the it's not real [chewy] or i mean it's just real good to me i can't really describe why but yeah i like veal too uh_huh uh_huh uh yeah that sounds about what we i mean we go out to places i mean we don't go to places where we all dress up and all that you know and all that we try to get uh you know some place that you know that's a little better than home and all but you know it's not going to cost a ton of money either huh oh yeah no i'm in uh maryland well i'd go there all five i mean how how old are the kids that's pretty impressive uh_huh uh_huh yeah we're we're having a kid in october and it's like well you know no more no more eating out for a while uh_huh oh that's incredible uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh we've got we've got to look around here find out if there's anything like that around here yeah oh yeah i mean we just we're like well we're not going out for a while you know my folks live close you know fairly close here so it's like well we if we're going out to dinner we can drop the kid off at my folks and it's like oh great grandpa you know yeah there's um there's a place i live just outside of baltimore in a town called [olicott] city and uh there's a seafood place here called the crab [shanty] that's really good it's like rated higher than like the the seafood restaurants down in the inner harbor in baltimore you know the the [trendy] section of baltimore and uh you know we've eaten there sometimes and it's pretty good it's you know it's a little more expensive than than i normally like to spend plus the other thing is i'm not uh i'm not a big seafood fan so you know it's like great we go to the crab [shanty] and i'm going to have veal you know not that bad there's some well actually we've been we end up doing a lot is uh there's a couple of places around that are like uh yuppie i mean it it seems like a big thing now with uh with diners uh yeah there's um there's a place up in my my folks actually live up in delaware and there's a place up there that we like to go to called um the hop which is you know just a fifties diner basically and then there's um a chain around here called silver diner um and you know you and uh let's see there's another one up in uh just north of baltimore called ralphie's diner yeah i'm uh i'm a baseball fan i you know my my girlfriend's like you know she she puts up with me being a baseball fan you know but uh we go we walk into this place ralphie's diner and i look on the wall and there's like uh like a relief of the of of the guy who ralphie's diner is named after and it turns out he used to work for the orioles and she's like no not more baseball but um all these places you know you can get like you know a hamburger or um you know um i've had turkey and [meatloaf] at all these diners and you know we usually get out of there for around twenty bucks you know it's good food and everything and um you know you get [malts] or whatever so it's really good you know my only big gripe is every time i've gone to silver diner i have tried to get the banana cream pie and they they are always out uh_huh oh sorry well neither of us are big wine [drinkers] yeah we went out tonight and i had a you know i had a beer and and you know obviously since you know she's we're not we've been kind of laying off the alcohol since she's expecting and all that um but i mean even before i mean usually we you know we might have a beer but that's about it so yeah yeah there are yeah yes i've seen them i know that uh [cici's] has [margaritas] in big glasses like that oh oh yeah well i i i would i mean you know they've got them out here because it's you know they don't actually know what you know what mexican food is here yeah huh yeah i was going to try i um years ago um we we're uh my folks were um we were visiting los angeles or something and i remember being taken to a real fancy mexican restaurant there called [senor] something [senor] [pico] or something like that and you know i hated everything at the time i just hated mexican food i'd i'd love to go to some place like that now where it's you know a real mexican restaurant because i like it i um i like chinese and i should experiment more the problem is that my favorite food in the world is cashew chicken so any time i go to a chinese restaurant i want cashew chicken uh_huh i was just thinking the same thing it's like we haven't had chinese in a while let's have a shake up we get this uh there's this take out chinese place that i mean you know [stone's] throw from my apartment here and uh we can get they do this thing for dinner for two where we can get like um [kung] [pao] chicken you know it's a big you know container full [kung] [pao] chicken um pork fried rice two egg rolls and like you know i don't know a pint or two [pints] or whatever of uh of uh [wonton] soup and it's like twelve fifty yeah it's great we should have done that tonight um uh_huh there's um i'm trying to think there's a french restaurant real close but we've never gone there because i'm not oh i'm you know i'm not a big french you know i i don't eat yeah well i also i also don't do [snails] so well wayne i've never done any uh auto repairs myself at all i mean i may have screwed in a little screw that looked like it was falling out on the door or something but uh i personally haven't done anything maybe i've uh changed [wiper] blades or something but i have noticed since uh i got married that my husband he hates to do auto repairs but he would rather do them himself than than to pay someone else i guess he can't make himself pay someone to do the repairs when he knows he knows how to do it and he'll do it so he he hates the time that he takes but he has changed um the brakes and he has done all of the tune ups and the like that and recently he changed the steering mechanism in the car i was really impressed with that we had to have it to get the car inspected it wouldn't pass inspection and and so he priced around and everyone wanted several hundred dollars for it so he thought well i can get one in a junkyard for like fifty dollars which he did and then he did it and so i guess uh he's been pretty good about keeping our cars up what uh what's your experience been like uh_huh right uh_huh that makes sense huh yes right uh_huh yes i'm sure it was uh_huh right yeah well that's exactly the way he feels is that he really hates to spend the time it takes a lot of time if he if he thinks it's going to be two hours it's four if you know whatever it always takes him twice as long but then when he's finished he's he always says well now you owe me three hundred dollars and then he thinks that he has the money that that he can spend on something and he hasn't given it to someone else so he gets some satisfaction out of that although generally i think he he does not look forward to or anticipate there's some people that enjoy [tinkering] around on cars there's a lot of people and he just isn't one of them yeah uh_huh right right no uh_huh right you know that it's uh really has a bad reputation is to feel that that people in general feel and have have [rightly] so i think been [cheated] many times and um and well i know once when we had a we usually inspection time we find out there's something wrong with our car but um once the muffler needed to be changed and uh he had looked at him himself and but we saw a commercial for like fourteen or twenty dollars or something for a change he said that's really really good so he went in and uh but when they quoted him a price they really wanted fifty or something anyway but the car that the muffler people had um my at least my husband felt that they had damaged the muffler further you know they had [punctured] a big hole in it when it really could have just been [patched] or whatever and so since then i don't think he's ever even seriously considered a you know any kind of job he thought he could do himself but i know from his childhood he says that his father always buys and [restores] cars just as entertainment i guess and um so kelly growing up he he felt like that that was a good way on [saturday's] that he developed a good relationship with his father and so he used they used car repairs kind of as a way to have a you know something that they did together and he thought that turned out pretty good because it you know it helped him to understand and be functional now and it helped him to have a close relationship so that's one one way he looked at it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah it didn't always work well i felt um i feel like i could myself do some things but that i have enough responsibility that if i have someone like my father when i was living at home and my husband that's willing to do it i go ahead and let them do it i don't feel the need to um you know be a [feminist] on that issue and say i can take care of my own things i'm i'm happy to let them run the cars because i have so many other responsibilities that um so i haven't tried to do a lot myself uh_huh uh_huh it's a good experience it helps you feel i think comfortable with your car and feel like it's not so scary if um your driving it and you might get stranded somewhere that you might you think well i've i've been under that hood and i know what's going on but uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i uh i have a long experience with cars i uh when i was younger uh my brother had a corvette and i bought a corvette and when you have a corvette you more or less do all the work and i've done everything from build the motor from the uh you know the bare block on up and i i'm the same way as your husband is when it comes to my car i hate to go pay somebody good money you know i hate to pay somebody twenty five dollars on hour for something i can do myself it just to me it makes absolutely no economic sense to do that in fact i um just this past weekend put new plugs in both uh my car an my wife's car and so i uh i pretty much try to [troubleshoot] and do everything i can do myself but i've i've gotten to the point in my life um you know i just crept over forty years old where i don't want to crawl underneath the car anymore i mean it's um i don't know whether i've i've just reached a point you know it's it's real rough in the winter time and uh so i try to make sure that uh by the time fall runs around because we actually have winters here on the east coast um that uh i have you know the car's in pretty good shape enough to last through the winter and uh then springtime i usually end up giving them the uh a tune up and make sure that they're running well and uh you know it's like i had the muffler go out on my on my car shortly before it was required to go in maryland they have uh emission tests and you're required to get your car and go through the emission test well my muffler of course starting going bad right before i was supposed to go to the emission test so you know i had to do that job and of course that was back in december when it's nice and cold outside but the thing was that i could do the job myself i mean the parts cost me oh roughly a hundred dollars um if i'd taken it someplace and have it done it was going to be three hundred twenty five now like who's got that extra two and a quarter i know i don't yeah yeah i uh i don't mind it um there was a time when i had my corvette i mean of course i loved it um but if you know i've got other interests now and there's a lot other more important things i think i should be doing with my time and i have the same problem i mean you can tell him from me but it doesn't matter i mean i've i've had greasy [fingernails] for years and it still takes me twice as long as i think it's going to take to do the job so but i think the difference is that uh when you own the car you take more care in what you're doing and you want to make sure that it's done right and put back together right and you know i've i've in the past i've had brake jobs done by someone that when i went back and looked at it some months later i'd find something drastically wrong with it you know like a spring that was put in incorrectly which could have resulted in brakes failing and me having an accident you know those kind of things and when you have a vehicle that's being used by you know other members of your family you know you don't want that kind of a situation to come up and it's very very difficult to find a mechanic these days that you can trust i only have one guy that i know that i trust to work on my car and uh he's about sixty miles from here and so it and if i have something that's really major that i can't handle or feel i don't have the time to handle i'll take it to him to do it uh_huh yes uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah that's probably uh uh something that uh is is you know is good for both of them i know that uh my older son i could never get him interested in cars and i couldn't you know i just like you know you sure you're a boy i mean your not interested in cars i mean he he just would not have anything to do with them and uh later on and like when he you know grew up got out of the house got his own car um he didn't know how to do anything to it i mean absolutely nothing i mean he couldn't even check the oil i mean that's that's how [uninformed] he was and disinterested and i guess there are some people out there like that um you know i always thought maybe you know if he took more of an interest and you know what i was doing and maybe we could have communicated better but uh yeah i i think that's great uh i trained my uh my wife in the in in doing things in fact uh when i uh first transferred down to uh texas instruments back in nineteen eighty seven um uh when i left here uh she had to change a set of plugs on the car because she was up here for a month or so after i was and uh it was an interesting experience for her i mean she'd always [assisted] me and done some other things but for her to actually get in there and do it herself it was uh it was something a little different yeah yeah i think it's important that everyone know you know basically how how the darn engine works it helps you figure out what's wrong with it you know i've i've been out with my sister before when you know her car died on the highway and i happened to be with her and managed to get her to the other side of the road because it was dark and all i don't know what the the last thing i've done as far as car repairs go is is change oil and filter an and that kind of stuff i haven't gotten really involved in anything uh extensive in car repairs in oh oh probably a year or so i think the last thing i did of any significance was change the water pump on an oldsmobile yeah i know what you mean yeah or fuel injected and so there's yeah no there's no way somebody once said uh i had a car that said fuel injection on the side of it and a woman asked me what that meant and i said that means that i can't work on it you know they've gotten so complicated or so high tech that uh the guys average guys can't really go out in the in the garage and do a whole lot of repairs uh yeah absolutely yeah i used to have uh chevy van it was a short van that had the the three fifty in it and basically it it was a motor and you didn't have all the other junk around it and you could get to it to work on it yeah the hardest part about uh water pump changes is getting all the junk off before you can get too it well that's kind of the way i was i tried to remember as i took stuff off where it went and i don't think i had too many nuts and bolts left over when i got it all put back together oh yeah yeah i don't think i'd know where to start with a diesel well that's true i think the closest thing i've come to to a diesel is i've worked for a tractor repair shop uh when i was in high school and uh we used to overhaul farm tractors basically and they were nearly all all diesel but as far as cars i've never never been involved with them well yeah and you you can get to them well i yeah i'm i guess you're right the the diesel has almost fallen into unpopular status i don't know exactly why one of the reasons is i i'm beginning to wonder is where do you get gas at i i don't know if it's still uh limited like it was i don't notice it probably because i huh yeah i don't i don't notice but maybe because i'm not looking for it yeah but you got the the three fifty in the van yeah that's what i like because they've got plenty of power and uh if you treat them right they're not the gas guzzlers i think that they've got the reputation to be i'm convinced that uh detroit or whoever it is made a major mistake years ago when they stopped putting the small v eights in and went to the fours and some of the sixes i'm convinced that the small v eight like the the [mustang's] original two eighty nine or some of the chevy two eighty [threes] were good little v eight engines that were not gas guzzlers but they had enough power pull all this weight and the four cylinders just don't have it yeah i think those those little v eights could have been made to be pretty powerful little engines if they would have gone with it but oh yeah yeah that's kind of like the the first well my first car was a fifty six mustang and uh over the years uh all i had a uh dodge pickup several years ago and uh i can't remember the size of the engine it was a three oh seven or something like that but uh i remember working on those cars you'd open the hood and there was basically nothing in there but an engine and a few things now you open the hood and it's scary like you say it takes a plumber to figure out where all this stuff goes yeah yeah well if you had to you could climb up in there and do what you needed to my dad's got a new um i guess it's an eighty nine or ninety uh chrysler something or other it's one of those [transverse] [mounted] v sixes front wheel drive and uh he was showing it to me and we're looking under the hood and everything's nice and clean and you know you can see the three spark plugs there in the front and i said well where are the other three and he'd never really thought about it and he says well hopefully i won't have to change them before i trade it off yeah it's going to be a problem getting back there because it was [shoved] right up against the fire wall so they just about complicated the things so much that shade tree mechanics can't do much with them uh_huh right yeah the anti smog pumps and all that stuff loads the motor down so it's trying to push the weight plus have all this drain on it from all sorts of belts and things but that's one good thing i've got a uh eight ninety uh chevy blazer now and it's got one uh belt on it a [serpentine] belt yeah i haven't had to replace the thing yet it looks like it would be uh better than having i've got an an olds [toronado] that i think's got six belts on the sucker and i had to get all those off you know when i was replace that uh water pump and uh i had to struggle with that for a while to figure which belt goes where oh man you bet everything else's got to come off first well it's a pleasure meeting you uh i've got uh five [stickers] here from t i so i guess i've done probably uh i'd say seven or eight of them yeah i haven't gotten any calls in two weeks so i don't know if if it's [tapering] off or what i had a difficult time the past couple of times of getting uh answers so it sounds it's taken them ten fifteen minutes at a time so people are either not maybe they're burnt out or yeah anyway let you go thanks for talking yeah i had a similar thing that i've worked on cars ever since i was uh a kid and that was some time ago but i've gotten to the point where uh the newer cars are getting so complicated to work on that uh-oh most of the cars i buy i try to buy as simple a car as possible so you know changing the oil changing the spark plugs and most of them now you know you don't go through the [ignition] stuff anymore because that's all solid state or or fuel injected so there goes the carburetor and if the fuel injection system breaks down there's no way in the world you're going to work on that oh yeah yeah basically that's it yeah i've got uh an eighty four chevy van that's uh a one ton van with a camper conversion on it it's got the the the good old three fifty standard engine in it regular gas engine and that engine i understand i can i can actually work on that engine yeah uh_huh right yeah i had to change the water pump in that here about a year ago and it was really fairly easy take the grill out and the radiator out and you can just stand there and work on it well that's true you're right you know by the time you've finally got down to it i was hoping i could remember where all those other things went a few years ago i had an oldsmobile diesel and uh the uh it after about a hundred thousand miles the injector pump went out on it and uh i bought it when we were living in lubbock when i came back here i brought the car back here and uh i don't know diesels got pretty unpopular and you couldn't sell the i mean though for what you could get for one you might as well drive it over a cliff and uh the injector pump went bad so i found a outfit down here to rebuild it and uh [reinstalled] that and that was probably one of the most miserable things i had gotten into in a long time oh well it you know diesels don't require mechanics they require [plumbers] and uh yeah well the injector [nozzle] and stuff in you know the big diesel farm tractors you know what are about the size of your thumb and yeah you can get to them and the ones in in the diesel cars were little tiny things and just almost impossible to do anything with i've had a lot of good service out of that car but uh uh i finally gave it to my son and he drove it literally into the ground you know he was out at tech and he he finished it off what the availability you mean the diesel availability yeah well i'd bought uh a g m c diesel pickup and uh loved that thing you know i really liked it but it turns out a pickup wasn't what i really needed and it was the van that i needed then to buy the you know traded it in on the chevy van but uh sure enjoyed it yeah yeah the three fifty regular gas engine uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah i think that little the little chevy v eight when it started out in sixty in fifty five i think was two sixty five something like that little you know not whole lot more than the than the than the six cylinder that i think was like about two thirty five or so but uh they kept boring that block out to where you could a get a four hundred small block four hundred that was uh the same block you know just just kept boring it out and boring it out and [stroking] it a little bit more an well that was uh that was a short stroke engine it could really wind up the two little cars i've got now bought a mitsubishi [mirage] here a couple of years ago and and it was normally [carbureted] and it's fairly easy to work with because there's not just a whole lot in it to go wrong and you know changing the plugs and stuff yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah the friend of ours over here he's got uh sixty five or sixty six mustang the six cylinder and uh i was look under the hood of that the other day and like you say you can see the road it's amazing you yeah you could stand in there if you really wanted to i guess oh yeah yeah yeah yeah well when they went to the started with the newer engines you know when they started putting all that pollution control stuff on the older engines is where they started getting into so much you know trouble because the three fifty with all the you know like well actually i guess within a couple of years ago anyway was the last i've paid any attention to it the three oh five was that that v eight that they put in the the three quarter and and half ton van and it had all the air pump and uh uh i don't know all that all that stuff and all the anti smog stuff and uh boy that was uh really a mess back under there under the in that van uh_huh uh_huh oh it's that one that's about uh what an inch and a half wide got a bunch of [groves] in it yeah yeah yeah it's kind of like the inside dual on a truck you know when one of them breaks it's not the outside one it's it's the it's usually that power steering or something that's way back in there everything's got to come off yeah and we'll uh how many times have you done this now is this yeah i hadn't uh hadn't not gotten any calls here in the last uh this is the first one in a week or so if it's [winding] down or what finding a taker yeah well okay all right bye bye are you a t i oh good yeah uh she had a hard time getting a few folks uh i thought well every all these t i have gone home uh at one o'clock on friday i i i do it a lot i have i kind of worked my way through college as a mechanic as a kid uh so and my father and brother were in it and and my brother's still in it and i had periods when i didn't do anything but in the last ten years i've uh my car doesn't go to a shop you know it it i just do it all do i uh there's hardly anything that other than putting tires on that i'll do i did take it to a transmission place to put in a new transmission but i change the oil and transmission and uh uh i do essentially do it all i don't know uh uh if there's anything specific in fact i could advise people uh i happen to be a m e besides but i do it for fun really and to save money and i guess that's diversion uh i i've i've tried a few groups uh you know where you i can recommend it for people to take their cars like i think sears is probably the best place because i've heard when i used to go there and when i i just overheard what they did for me very little because i didn't take it that much but what i heard them tell other people was always right you know when i sat there i you know i dropped my car off for tires or something like that and so i respect they seem to actually have mechanics there i was pretty impressed with western auto but they didn't do a great job of changing my transmission uh oil last time and when when i did it the next time i realized the filter was loose and everything and i didn't like it so i'm just doing it all myself i i you had to do it yeah right oh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh oh yeah well you like fords apparently huh yeah really my goodness yeah i always wonder when you have little things like that happen why even here at t i why we don't inspect i'm in facilities why we don't inspect areas and and guarantee it so to speak uh we always fix things and put things in and walk away we there needs to be a time of inspection and check out and and thing like that with a car there ought to be someone there that [inspects] it before it's turned there ought to be an inspector or quality insurance guy after after an oil change you know just in case uh they didn't put the oil in or whatever i i always wonder about that when when someone does repairs or little things like that uh yeah no no i don't either i don't either yeah yeah you need to really uh i i do uh a lot of the simple things i i think i do most of the things better than the average person you you have fords and i i uh i have three [chevys] which i worked my way into having the same engine i don't know how long i'm i like a v eight and i'm i'm sold on small block chevy v eights and i i bought one car new and i almost accidentally got the next car although i was kind of looking for it when i got a a used car with the same engine well then the the truck i got next i definitely looked for the same engine so i buy filters you know three or four at a time and essentially the engines are different the cars are different years but the same chevy v eight and the the [carburetors] is the same almost everything is the same the course is two are eighties and one eighty six you know so you can learn a lot that way i there's no way i could i could fix every car in the world you know yeah yeah right yeah yeah yeah yeah i think they're all bad really they're uh_huh is that right yeah what did they want to charge you for it yeah yeah this is your little water uh heater in there for the uh the heat inside yeah yeah yeah did you get it inside or outside i i took one off my little buick i had and i pretty much took it loose on the inside but it came out from the you know underneath the hood it came from yeah maybe you're right maybe you're right i it's been a long time since i took one out course i broke mine you know so i'm always very careful when i change hoses on it i don't know whether you did yours not to really pull on those i when i take those hoses i cut them off very [gingerly] because if you you know pull on that and i've always done that as a kid you know just yanked on it and they must have been stronger and heavier copper at the time but i broke one on my on my buick and i always remembered it was my own fault and i thought well i'm going to going to carefully take those hoses off oh really yeah it it spread out yeah yeah yeah yeah sometimes if you're a [tinkerer] you luck out my wife's uh chevy uh it was a [caprice] air conditioning stopped i i just heard it i realized that the air conditioning wasn't cutting in and i went out there for five minutes and i just pushed on the wires and sure enough just pure dumb luck that the connection over by it's not the [evaporator] the big filter on one side i just pushed that in and i heard it click and so sometimes you have dumb luck i i was you know you could have taken something like that and thought well the [compressor's] not working or it would have taken me all day probably if i didn't do that but sometimes you have some dumb luck if you have a little curiosity and you have enough knowledge to check things out i know i feel bad for people who just when anything goes wrong a fuse you know they just have to take it and i know that's tough if you don't uh at least give it a shot i've got girls daughters and i've always said i'd teach them and my my one daughter was fairly interested and i really haven't gotten around to i learned because i i just uh learned you know and i feel bad about not at least showing them some of the things and i'm going to do that i i told my daughters in college this year i said this summer we're definitely going to spend a little more time on the car i said so you can learn the basics you know yeah right i have the there's one expression i don't like uh the country expression you know if it ain't if it ain't broke don't fix it uh yeah i am yeah yeah i've been uh i uh it is friday yeah that's for sure well uh i guess i'm trying to think the last thing i did to a car oh wow okay uh_huh yeah sure uh_huh right right yeah yeah right right yeah yeah really yeah that's that's the aggravating thing yeah i i try to do as much as i can i uh i grew up on farm so i've got that uh you know take care of yourself attitude and uh-oh i've done i've done various things i've got an i've got an eighty three t bird and i've i've changed out uh heater core and uh-oh timing belts and things like that um i guess the last thing i took to anybody to have done was on my wife's car um when we went in for inspection it didn't it didn't quite pass so we had to have uh that's uh that's a mustang with a two barrel carburetor on it and they had to do some adjustments on that and of course it had never been adjusted so they had to pull it off and pull all the plugs out to get to it and uh yeah yeah i've uh i'm kind of stuck on them right now i guess but you know that's it's partially because i can work on them that's uh that's that's that's a big part of my decision but uh yeah we ran into some problems with uh having them to work on that carburetor i mean they get they got everything tuned up right you know but they we got i got it home and uh and they had left the uh oil uh cap off and it was [rubbing] on a belt and it rubbed a notch in that little things like that that really start to aggravate you that that's a lot of the reason i do my own stuff uh_huh sure sure that's right sure yeah any anything that gets that that's in a gets to be an an assembly line type operation you're you're always risking that if there's too many people that get their hands on one little project you know that things they're you get you miss that overlap sometimes and and they miss things yeah i've i've had a hard time finding anybody i can trust like like you say it it well transmissions and things like that i'm obviously i'm not going to i'm not going to tear apart a automatic transmission and try rebuild it but uh it it's it's real stressful to try to find anybody that i think's going to do me right and and uh you know have an idea of what's going on uh_huh okay yeah oh yeah yeah uh_huh sure sure uh_huh uh_huh well yeah that that the biggest you know that's the three biggest things to me you know number one you've got to have the tools around if you don't have the the special tools or well any more the the [testers] that you know i i don't have a forty thousand dollar [diagnostic] [tester] sitting in my garage you know so obviously if it starts my car starts missing or something like that it's almost impossible to track that down any more without a diagnostics but at the tools and the space to do it that that can be a big problem if it's if it's under [carriage] or something like that but then it's experience you know you can you can look through a a chilton's book or something like and get an idea of how to go about it but you better figure on [multiplying] that time out about by at least by five or so just just by not knowing you know how to get to that that one bolt or that one screw or whatever to get things apart that was that was the biggest thing when i did uh the heater core in my t bird that is got to be the worst location for it and and the only reason i did it i yeah yeah the the only ones i've ever heard good good things about are are the old lincolns and cadillacs where they had the little door underneath the hood you just open the door and pop it out yeah but but uh i i had i had taken this in to have it done originally and uh oh it it was it was well it was about seven hours labor so it it was going to run about four hundred dollars or so and they looked it over and they they they thought they could patch it up a little bit you know and what not so they yeah yeah and it was it was leaking inside the car in the condenser unit so uh they they did a little patch on it and it it held for about four to six months and i finally went back in and started looking at it myself and it's a matter of tearing all the dash out and all that kind of stuff but hey it was not uh it was not a seven hour labor job for me it was about a week before i finally through yeah oh really no this this was the only thing that sticks in inside the engine [compartment] on this are the two uh hose fittings yeah it it's i i've never heard a good story about uh yeah right okay yeah uh_huh sure you bet well that that's what ended up being the real problem on this was the uh the the pipe wasn't busted but the it wasn't [soldered] in good enough and it had it had broken loose enough to where if it got hot and just normal driving didn't do it but if if if it was an especially hot day the pressure would get high enough and it would start blowing the water out inside it was real aggravating but uh i i couldn't even a week's a week's time is is worth a whole lot less than four than four hundred dollars to me you know than to have somebody else do it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah right that's true uh_huh yeah well yeah and and not only from a from an economic standpoint just just pure safety you know if you can if she can get yourself out of a bad situation without having to to go to a phone booth and stand around and wait it it it can it can save a lot of time and trouble hi my last uh auto repair was my my uh alternator went out i have a nineteen eighty six toyota uh it's a little tercel and uh i have a a friend whose real good with uh repairing cars so i got him to take the alternator off and take it and uh you know get a replacement part so we went to a uh a a place called quality auto parts an and their parts are supposed to be guaranteed and and everything and they're they're uh very reasonable so uh i bought the alternator we put it on the car and it it didn't work and it blew out all the [fuses] yeah uh i something like sixty nine dollars something on that order no he hooked it up right it it was just that the the part just just didn't fit the car so i took it back and uh he he took the the guy in in the parts shop took the alternator and he put it on the little thing he has in there to test them and uh he said there was nothing wrong with the alternator so we we went back and tried it again put it on again and it still didn't work and we took the car up to um a little place called [pep] boys i don't know if you have them in your area but uh they're they're pretty reasonable uh car repair place also so uh took it up there towed it up there because it you know wouldn't start or anything and this thing just kept blowing out the [fuses] and uh took them about an an hour to um figure out what was what was blowing the fuse and it was it was the alternator that was blowing the fuse anyway ended up taking it to the toyota dealer and the only problem was that uh it had to be a genuine toyota uh alternator because most of the other ones that they say will fit it that that you know they sit in there and everything but there's just some little difference that um causes it not to work an yeah i guess so and that was my that was my last experience uh_huh goodness are you able uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh well my car is uh it's an eighty six and i really hadn't had any any trouble with it until that and the car now has a hundred and thirty something thousand miles on it and uh and this was just recent so i really can't complain about this one um well i used i used to work uh it was a seventy mile trip everyday you know two ways was seventy miles no it was it was just seventy miles yeah and uh i did that for about three years and it really it really added up i've only taken uh maybe two trips that were about four hours long uh down to shreveport and uh the rest of it was you know it's just basically driving a long ways to work and now i drive like twenty twenty three miles each way so i'm getting a little a little uh little relief but still i drive a long ways but i guess because they're highway miles you know it's not so bad on your car as as if it you know were just regular street you know yes i do do you points uh_huh uh there's a number that you call it's the same number that you that you call to make a call you you call that number and and uh somehow or another they'll give you an option to leave a message and you can leave a message i know someone that did that you leave a message and they'll they'll call you back oh really uh_huh uh let's see before i had this car i had a um i bought an audi five thousand but i bought it i bought it used i i just bought it from a friend who was going to who just charged me what the dealer was going to give give him for it for a trade in and uh it had a whole lot of miles on it i i figured maybe i'd get one or two years out of it an i an i did get a couple of good years out of it and the uh the engine messed up on me and then i gave it to a guy to repair who works for the for the audi dealer and uh he took the engine apart and you know he just said he couldn't fix it so the engine never got put back together again i wow i think those old cars might might be a pretty good bet because you i don't know uh_huh um uh_huh i read a book one time that said that the best cars were made before seventy four uh_huh yeah yeah it's easy to it's easy i guess it's still easy to find engines for those cars engines and transmissions and if you i guess if you keep changing them out you can keep a car for a long time course i guess i could do the same thing with the the toyota that i have i just don't know how much they'll want to charge me to yeah i guess so but i just think they cost too much in the in the first place now a days uh_huh uh_huh oh no how much was the alternator did he did he hook up the wiring wrong uh_huh uh_huh they probably built that in so they could make money well i had a weird there's a little sensing device uh in front of my uh um i'm not sure right in front of the fan it's a it's an air conditioner sensing device i don't know why it actually there's a metal piece that fits through the belts uh and somehow that broke off and uh i i still can't figure out how it broke and uh anyway so this piece obviously um i have a subaru and uh i think you can only get it through subaru dealer et cetera so uh this little sensing device [costed] like sixty bucks and and i haven't had too many problems with my car i got a eighty eight subaru g l x t and it uh and then you know just basic maintenance and oil changes an i and i do not do my oil changes and i will not do my oil changes i've i think the first time i tried to do one and ended up um trying to uh borrowed somebody else's jack and i did this and i went and bought everything so after buying the filter and all the oil you're looking at ten bucks at least or somewhere in there an and uh and then to go to the trouble that i figured it's easier spending eighteen bucks at [jiffy] lube so that that's um you know as far as any maintenance on my car i i shy away from the oil changes that's for sure how did you put that many miles on it in four or five years oh a hundred and forty mile trip oh thirty five miles each way yeah yeah uh_huh do you work for t i okay i was going to ask you you know as far as how we're getting compensated for what we're doing right now um i don't work for t i and i'm just i get these green i don't know what you want to call them fake point things and uh i just wondering how i go about getting the cash oh okay okay okay all right well that's good to know i haven't been doing this is the first time i've been called in a long time and i haven't been doing it so and uh i've done it maybe twelve times well i don't know if i've done it quite that much but uh mine is mixed up too i have to call and get it fixed uh_huh huh oh well i was driving a sixty six plymouth [fury] yeah yeah and oh that's when they made cars though this things was the body was in good condition and you know it ran fine it was starting to burn some oil and um but i had to you know you know i after about couple of months after i was out of college i finally [splurged] and bought my car so yeah well you know these these cars made in the sixties and stuff i mean the steel i mean the [thickness] i mean those they're just you just don't see cars like that and they last a long time and they were simple too the engines were simple and durable and some people will still buy them you know they'll it almost costs so much to fix anything or do anything with it you're just better off buying another car hi so uh what was the last car repair you had oh oh no did you crack the block or what yeah i see you got lucky you didn't ruin the whole engine though that can be pretty serious oh i guess it's been awhile for me i'd it's been about a year yeah i had the uh the water pump break on my car yeah i was traveling uh i was going on my way home from thanksgiving and it broke like in the middle of nowhere so i had to get it towed and then fixed and big pain yeah that's where i was luckily someone came by and gave me a ride yeah yeah so is mine yeah i'm hoping mine gets me through i got until may until i'm out so when i cross that one i'll be okay oh that's nice yeah yeah i don't want to do too much on mine because it will be worth more than the car is and it's not worth it yeah yeah i got new tires last winter too so i'm like well that's the last major purchase for this thing it's not worth it yeah yeah we get some killer winters up here in the mountains yeah lot of snow and a lot of cold yeah at times there's a lot of it you got to like clean out the underneath of your car all the time when you get a chance yeah i haven't had a big problem with that though so i've been pretty lucky there yeah that's usually pretty good you just rinse it off after the winter is over and done with it yeah i usually like to do most repairs on my own though yeah just because that way i know what's wrong with my car and what it needs and what it really doesn't yeah plus if something goes wrong i know who to blame more fun things to do well that's nice yeah one is bad enough yeah i was just wondering that yeah i didn't either yeah this must be a a hard category just recently i was kind of laughing when i when i heard the switchboard talking about the question because uh i had to have my uh radiator [flushed] and it was getting rusty and the thing that they forgot to do was to um to also look at the hose and i had gone about oh two days with my new radiator [flushed] and the hose [burst] so i was stranded out on the highway no i i didn't do that thank goodness but uh there seemed to be enough antifreeze in there you know left to do that but it cost me all kind of money you know to have that repaired after they said they were going to they had repaired it so that was that was a horrible experience just recently yes yes i know i know what about you uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh oh i know i know especially when you're out on the highway uh_huh uh_huh i know well you know uh living in dallas you know we've got uh bumper to bumper eight [lanes] of traffic and uh that was that was horrible you know to have the you know your car is [fuming] and everything it's already a hundred degrees you don't need that too oh shoot but my car is getting old see it's about six years old now so yeah so i got it right out of college and so it's uh it's starting to show the wear and tear now uh_huh uh_huh yeah that uh that was my graduation present to myself so yeah yeah i know so but gosh it's really starting to to wear so i've been thinking especially now is a good time to buy a car because i can't uh i don't know if i want to you know pay all these repairs now to start getting it fixed when it's starting to breakdown uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's true i agree with you there so i don't know uh because i i need to have it tuned you know tuned up and i don't know replace some of the belts and i was looking at the uh tires need to be replaced and so i was thinking just a lot of money i'm might as well buy me a new car for that uh_huh well you have to in pennsylvania boy you have to really have your car [winterized] and stuff huh uh_huh oh really oh okay so uh_huh well especially don't you have what a lot of salt on the ground uh_huh yeah yeah well rust and the and the body too huh uh_huh well i think they get the new z bart stuff and everything to where you can um uh_huh yeah and go like that so do you uh_huh uh_huh well i i think i'm getting too old for all that my uh i had four brothers and they used to drag me out underneath the car and stuff so i can i can do all that stuff but i i think i'd much prefer to pay the twenty two ninety five to to go have it done now so i can get my hands dirty so yeah i'm just getting getting to that age i guess you just don't have your time becomes very precious so working on the car is just not one of those things i want to spend my time on anymore absolutely absolutely so yeah i'm trying to you know i just need one i had two cars there for a while so i wouldn't have to worry about which car was going to run and yeah so but it became a hassle trying to keep up and maintain both of them and yeah so that yes one was bad enough but i think i got rid of the wrong one i soon i need a lot of repairs done on on this one so yeah that was uh that was something else well are our five minutes up i i didn't i didn't set the time or anything to uh yeah put well yeah i guess um you know unless you're um you know big do it [yourselfer] um to you know fix up your own cars and and things like that so but i guess they were talking about experiences you know i uh uh i did my parents live in ohio so i i do know something about the you know the really cold weather and uh i've always lived down here in the south and oh i took my car up there to their house and um i guess i had a crack in the block and when i got up there the car okay is it mike do you repair your own car well i tell you what that's count your [blessings] because uh it really is good when someone can do some things to a car themselves well that's why i don't do as much as i'd like because they are i mean they've got they've gotten complicated haven't they uh_huh is that right yeah i i agree about all i ever i never was too mechanically inclined but i used to always change my own oil and do the points and plugs and course they don't use uh points anymore but uh they do still use plugs and uh now brakes i've always done a lot of you know changing brakes and i used to do i could always do the alternator you know and starter i don't anymore but i have on a lot a lot of times uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh it probably slipped loose didn't it uh_huh uh_huh um oh well it really wasn't quite as bad as you thought was it was it well it was a lot of money but you had to have the help didn't you yeah well do you still do much work on them then disposal is a problem that's true that's true right that that i've i've quit doing that myself and but one of the main reasons was the disposal of the oil you know and uh but it but no i guess that and the main reason that it's it's quick yes i try to whenever i can i've always been a a i guess a product of a handyman father yeah yeah there's although i'll tell you you know over the years the cars get more complicated right yeah yes one of my first cars was a fifty six buick which after awhile i could you know take it apart in my sleep if i needed to yeah it it got to be pretty straightforward to understand and now since then you know the closer a car is to a fifty six buick the the more i know about it and then start getting into these [nissans] and the like and i just can't keep up yeah that's right yeah yeah uh_huh yes yes i understand my last car repair actually had to do with brakes and it's one i did not do myself i took the car my i have a seventy nine el [dorado] took it to be inspected and the parking brake failed so i got under there and messed with the the that uh that adjustment to make to tighten it up and that didn't do the trick and then i got there and tried to well actually that wasn't even eventually the problem i i did a lot of things that i i did everything that i could think to do and eventually i brought it up to a a place called just brakes and it turns out that there's a the parking brake in the rear there's a there's disc brakes and the parking brake is a [piston] deal and because the parking brake hadn't been used in so many years the [piston] froze up so they ended up having to pound it out and one of them they were able to get running uh kind of [oiling] it and playing with it and the other one they just it was just frozen solid so i ended up having to buy one and all total it was just under two hundred dollars believe it or not to get all that done yeah actually i i think it was a lot of money but i i don't like i yeah but i it got to the point where i didn't know what was going on so that's right that's right i do actually that was just a at at the beginning of september and whenever i can i do try i actually i'd say this i i've gotten to the point where i don't change the oil anymore only because well that is one problem but also these uh these fast oil change places you just can't beat them for sixteen bucks they'll not only will they change the oil in ten minutes and do a you know as good a job as i can do but they'll uh lube too yeah yep that's right seem to have the topic already on top of tip of your tongue there so why don't you go ahead and start yes sir okay right exactly i sure do i uh in fact the last thing i have i've done i i don't even remember what it is i've had to have oil changes done myself because i live in an apartment complex where we are not allowed to work on our vehicle we can't even wash our vehicle so uh but the last thing i can remember doing i had a sixty six mustang and that was all right because like you said that was pre technology days i guess and uh you know you could do a lot of it yourself still and uh i didn't tinker too much with the engine it was it was in pretty good shape but my main concern and what i enjoy doing was was the interior and uh it was it was pretty [shelled] uh but it was fun it was taking the whole thing you know the whole interior apart and you know ordering new carpeting and uh right and it it was i my wife enjoyed uh she you know helped out a little we [sanded] down the the insides of the door panels and painted those and no i sold it yeah it was fun though it was fun i i really enjoyed it and i was surprised at at uh the availability of parts yet you know you can you can still get factory original parts but uh you pay a premium but you just don't get them i i didn't i went ahead and got you know japanese made [duplicates] or wherever they were made canada you know [prefabs] and all that stuff but well actually there was and uh i had heard rumors that it was because they couldn't duplicate certain patterns uh exactly and so like the the glove box was just a little little wider little harder to fit in and the carpeting uh stretched a little too far i had to cut some of the sides down but just just little things you know one of the screws on on the door uh window [regulators] you could get three of the three of the four to lineup the fourth one you couldn't get to lineup no matter what you did you know oh it was but the end result is after you put your your panels on nobody sees that you got one screw missing in your your window [regulator] anyway and it it runs it works just the same so disc brakes don't seem to give me too much problem but i i honestly don't have the tools for the drum i know you got uh certain spring [lever] that you got to have or some uh some spring pulley or something that you got to pull that spring back over onto that notch uh my dad has got all that and and i i helped him when i was growing up but i don't have that stuff now because of the drum brakes i you know don't have any choice but to take them in sure uh_huh i'll tell you what the other the nicest thing about them is uh everything was standard you didn't have to worry about finding a metric anything boy i tell you yeah isn't the uh the subject auto repair for tonight yeah that's great the reason i say that is pretty timely because just tonight i went out and changed the oil in my car and that's something i like to do and uh something i something i can do with now the sophisticated auto cars we have today with all the computers and everything it's uh and there's not a whole lot you can do without the equipment and electronic analysis that needs to be done on a car but i do like to get out and tinker with a car and it's something i can do still do you enjoy working with your car oh dear oh that's too bad oh oh yes oh and did you install all that yourself well that was i bet that was a lot of fun uh_huh wow do you still have the car well that's too bad a sixty seven uh mustang is about the uh top top year for the mustang car yes huh yeah well you know that's that's fine i i don't think that there would be uh you know a a quality difference i don't know you wouldn't you didn't notice the difference did you oh uh_huh oh dear uh_huh oh dear oh i bet that was frustrating wasn't it right right yeah that's that's true well you know that that is something i really enjoy doing um working on our car too the uh i just changed my oil oil tonight but uh i enjoy also working on things like the brakes and uh in fact just two weeks ago i helped my neighbor out on his brakes on his car and uh either if it's a drum or or disc brakes i enjoy working on those kind of things yeah [spoons] and yes you do uh_huh yeah yeah that's true and you know it it doesn't doesn't hurt every once in a while to have them done professionally too because um i was helping my neighbor out and one of his drums needed to be [resurfaced] and i don't have of course the equipment to do that so he took it into a shop and had it uh [resurfaced] and and fixed that way but yeah it is true uh you know i did have a sixty four ford truck that i wish i still had and loved to get inside that and tinker around with it and work with it because you didn't have all the extra extra stuff that's in there now oh yeah and you know say you did uh starters and bendix springs such as that on an old one yeah she had to label everything what was she driving uh_huh yeah yeah [quad] not really easy to get rebuilt just right uh and like what were you replacing the starters and bendix on yeah did you replace just the uh bendix on the chrysler station wagon or the whole starter yeah the starters are kind of [fragile] especially if you need a tune up yeah well if they start real easy you know you just hit the key and it starts up and when it's properly tuned up that starter will last for a long time see they built that starter so it would fit every v eight and all the slant sixes that they've built in like thirty five years they all take the exact same starter they'll [interchange] completely i mean completely one starter will fit all of them so they've got a whole lot of [torque] but to do that they did it use an [underdrive] system but they geared it down so the motor [spins] really fast so it's got to [spin] for very long it's kind of tough on the bushings usually what goes is the bushings you take a little time replace the bushings you still got a perfectly good starter but uh most places don't put don't rebuild them with with with good enough bushings so it's you know after you get rebuilt one you have a tendency to go through them pretty quickly especially if you need a tune up anyway what are you driving now that's good it was a late model is that chrysler van yeah one of the little mini vans do you like the way it rides and stuff rides rough yeah yeah yeah right now without getting some of the sportier models uh the four cylinders aren't real [peppy] but uh they're starting to change that out in the last couple of years too uh yeah i've driven one uh i drove a volkswagen [beetle] for a while about a month uh in a month i think i put uh three oil [coolers] on it uh every time i turned around i was having trouble with it everything else i ever owned was american built uh mostly older cars uh i've been a mechanic well i worked starting working my father's service station when i was about uh twelve so i've been around cars a lot but uh driven a lot of old [pontiacs] my first three cars were uh seventy model [pontiacs] a g t o and a bonneville and a station wagon i had a couple of chryslers had a super b for a while with a four forty in it it was a lot of fun but uh i don't know gas mileage wasn't too bad it got about seventeen well till you got crazy with it you know you get the four barrel all worked up and suddenly it it it drops off fast but long as you didn't [spin] the tires too much or or spend too much time with the [secondaries] kicked in it it didn't do too bad on gas didn't have to work too hard to move the car around oh yeah yeah definitely yeah the my last g m car was a seventy chevy station wagon and it still had the points and condenser in it when i rebuilt the engine on that about a hundred and thirty thousand on the car i uh pulled that old points distributor out and got an h e i distributor electronic distributor put into it yeah and uh helped my wife replace some [carburetors] some that she had to uh label everything yeah because it was a cadillac and they uh well they quit making those the quieter jet carburetor and they quit making it they rebuilt it and it never did never did run right again yeah uh a maverick and also uh a chrysler station wagon before that uh the i'm replacing the two or three starters on the chrysler they yeah and the uh_huh they kept saying that the that's what chryslers did is they wore out starters yeah uh_huh right uh_huh yeah right uh_huh yeah uh my chrysler van and it's it's pretty maintenance free you know and uh at the beginning of the year last year and drove a chevrolet cavalier station wagon and it didn't give me any trouble at all yeah it's a eighty seven uh_huh yeah is a uh rides or runs it yeah well yeah it rides rides rough it runs good you know i kind of it took me a while to get used to a four cylinder engine you have to kind of wait for it especially when you get on the highway yeah you driven american cars all uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh not much gas mileage though oh wow yeah now do you think since they started with electronic [ignition] that it [improves] the way the car runs uh_huh yeah okay now then you heard the question what what do you like to do for yourself in car automobile repairs okay um well is that the reason you're not doing it or are you so busy you don't have time to do it uh okay well being a female and being alone you i don't do anything but put gasoline in my car and let someone else check the oil even but uh have you had any major repairs recently oh okay well you should be feel very fortunate i had to have a transmission replaced in an eighty six automobile and i'll declare that's an expensive yes uh_huh maybe i should have just traded the car in oh it just well i have a very comfortable car and i have a health problem that i need a large comfortable car so um anyway i have a new transmission and i'm sure that any of them would have cost or charged me almost the same amount but it hurts it hurts real bad no i took it to an independent out in garland i had um these people were recommended by a neighbor and you know that's the only thing i am not a native of dallas so that means i have to depend on on [trustworthy] friends and that's anyway it's fixed it's running and i pray that i get my thirteen hundred dollars out of it uh_huh oh i know it it certainly is frightening what work are you in oh okay okay no no i have just retired from um the southwest medical center yeah where there are a lot of people down there that could help me with my car but they're all too busy so i have to do it the other way and that's find someone and pay them to do it so i certainly hope you have a nice new year oh it could be but i don't much think so i'm well we're starting out a new one so let's make it a good one okay thank you bye bye bye uh_huh well i'll tell you i used to do a lot more repairs when cars were easy to work on than i do now i do uh i do the easy stuff now i change oil uh and then what some people would consider a little more difficult i i'll change spark plugs and i'll change you know points and you you know do air filters that kind of stuff but uh i can't do as much as i used to um i used to do a whole lot more but not any more they're just too weird to work on now well that's part of it yeah part of it is like you said i don't have time uh_huh well um on this car i've got now no but i had a van before and it was only two years old and it had transmission go out on it but fortunately that was covered under the warranty um oh yeah yeah sometimes it makes you wonder uh_huh uh_huh yeah did you take it to a dealership uh_huh oh i see uh_huh oh i see right oh gosh it's going to run for a for a while yet uh i i work for t i i i work in the [networking] area do you work for t i no okay oh yeah yeah yeah oh yeah i'm i'm planning on it oh it can't be any worse than last year that's for sure yeah that's true that's true yeah i'm going to try and plan on it all right well i enjoyed the conversation all right thank you bye bye okay ron welcome to the net and uh what did you do about your last auto repair oh and might you say what kind of cars you have and so forth um my goodness gracious that's well that's still not enough for a total is it it's a very expensive automobile oh and do you buy one every two years uh_huh did this car have one of these expanding balloons or just are there normal safety belts in it that you had did that help you they didn't go off but you were hit in the side weren't you that may be the problem you you may you may need to be hit from something the leaning towards the forward to [activate] it my goodness uh_huh my goodness i would think so this doesn't sound like you've got very good luck with that one well i'm relatively fortunate about that uh here we somehow don't have many people run into us although at the beginning of each school season uh students move into town who are from big cities and they sort of drive kind of wild for about two three weeks then they finally settle down and realize that they don't have to drive that way here and now that takes the strain out off of everyone that uh is driving a vehicle and i find that the most of the repairs i have to do here is body damage due to the salt that we have to put on the road to uh take care of us in the winter time uh i have a sixty nine cougar and a seventy seven pontiac so forth and i have to and i drive a honda most of the time and i have to make sure that uh salt and so forth are kept off of it and once in a while we have to replace some of the plates in the bottom of it because it's rusted away uh_huh well i just i i had this cougar totally uh the body of it totally rebuilt uh to get some of the [rusts] that were in the [fenders] uh done and then it all repainted and then winter got here and so i put the cover over it then to keep the ice and snow off so i haven't had a chance to drive it very much but anyhow uh now are you going to buy this next car or you going rent it lease it again are you uh_huh well that's an awfully big one that uh that one that you had that lincoln uh isn't it too large for normal town driving finding parking places and getting in and out the doors uh_huh uh yeah well that certainly would be a wonderful comfortable machine to take on long trips i'm i'm very much aware of that yes i'm sure it is because that's the way that i enjoy this pontiac that i have it only has thirty eight thousand miles on it but it's very quiet and very smooth riding machine uh_huh do you do you feel that uh okay well larry my last one unfortunately was a an expensive one because i had a brand new lincoln town car and and a couple of ladies ran a stop light the lights weren't working properly it wasn't their fault but we they didn't run it we both had green and she hit me and did about eleven thousand dollars worth of damage to my car so that was a huge repair bill i know i hated that so it wasn't enough to total it but that's my that's been my most uh expensive repair probably in the last year with the except of just service work because i buy a new car every two years and well i travel a lot so you know uh this last one i leased so i don't know and i leased it on a twenty four month program first time i've ever done that but i'll probably go back to buying them because i don't care to lease them no it has the expanding balloons uh it they didn't go off no i guess we weren't going that sort of upset me we weren't going fast enough when i called the dealership about it and called ford motor about it but no sir didn't go off uh we were it was a bad rainy dark [dreary] day and and the street lights yes yes took off my whole front [fender] and hood and everything i tell you just took it all off it was uh uh my doors were okay front and back but it did uh right eleven thousand dollars in damage it was a then i get it back and two weeks after that i'm driving it in front of the local high school and some young man just wasn't paying any attention and runs in the back of me that's another twelve hundred dollars worth of damage so i'm going to get when my twenty four months is up on this car i'm getting rid of this car my golly how about you larry i understand i understand sure i understand that because i'm from west virginia and we had the same thing up there continuously [salting] the roads for snow sure no i'm going to i'm going to buy it larry i don't like the rental i think i'm getting ready to retire myself and i'm going to i'm going to be you know driving a car for longer so i usually drive a car for three years and and anyway and so but last couple of cars i've only driven for two years and so i'd leased this one for two years so i'll probably go back and buy one and uh this next car will probably be my retirement car well no sir not really not really uh no problem at all my wife and daughter we have uh two toyotas in the family one nissan and then we have the lincoln and the not really no problem there at all as as far as finding parking places it's it's convenient in that in that regard yes it is and i and i travel i'm like a traveling salesman don't travel a lot any more but uh when i do take it it is very comfortable to drive yes it's is that right well my wife's toyota is soon to be four years old it only has doesn't even have thirty thirty thousand miles on it so gosh been much in such good shape that'll probably be an eight or ten year car the last auto repair i had was i have a nineteen eighty four nissan truck i had a tune up done and i had i had the brakes done on it and then the reason i did that was because i don't have a scope and it has eight spark plugs and it's hard to to get get at them and plus the time on them i just don't have time any more uh as far as maintenance tasks that i do myself i i usually change the oil and wash the air filter and i i had an occasion to change to have to change the battery once but the brakes i was really surprised that the brakes i wanted i do have the background i know what needs to be done and i know that the oil needs should be changed very regularly and all of the bearings and the lube [lubrication] system needs to be [lubricated] and so i i stay on top of that but i i wanted my front wheels i wanted the bearings packed and they wanted something like fifteen dollars uh a front or something like that or maybe it was thirty dollars to do it just to pack the bearings but what i found is that they had a brake job and they i had them the other thing i let them do some times is that i let them go through and let them tell me what let them do the diagnostics that's free okay and then i can decide whether i want them to do it or whether i can do it see and they told me that my my brake pads were gosh you know seventy percent still good you know but still it was cheaper in the long run and uh so i just got the the brakes done and i thought that was a good deal and plus and they [repacked] the the wheel bearings yeah but uh i've i've had considerable experience i'm you might say i'm uh uh good back yard mechanic and i you know i took auto shop in high school it's been a while back but i i still have a pretty good feel for it but one thing i didn't know is that when i was messing around with cars and stuff and most of the cars i i had bigger cars and the brakes go out fairly rapidly on those and what i was surprised at is that on my little nissan i bought the truck with about sixty thousand i have almost one hundred and ten so i drove on those brake pads for uh you know forty five thousand miles and there was hardly any wear to them so those small little trucks and cars like that they just the longevity of the brake pads is really good exactly so i you know i just did it anyway i like to i like to stay up on it you know like i just kind of stay up on it and then if you go and like just about any point any you know point in time and pull my dip stick and pull it out and look at the oil the oil is you might say uh a white golden brown you know it's not dirty i i i keep it that way because that's that is the key to the longevity so so how uh_huh oh oh uh_huh uh_huh okay uh_huh you're talking about the vibration [dampener] that's the vibration [dampener] yeah okay um uh-oh um uh-oh huh uh_huh just to pack the bearings right right and they [repacked] the wheel bearings you know they've gotten to the point that where they don't weigh very much and the the surface materials on the pads is so good right well it sounds like you've had some good experiences with that uh and my experiences have been kind of contrary to that uh i i get a little more involved in the maintenance of my car and uh and in fact i have an eighty seven mustang with a three o two in it that i've uh [beefed] up a little bit and one of the things that i did was to change the pulley system on it to use under drive pulleys so that the engine doesn't have to turn the [accessories] and can use more of the power to the rear wheels uh the only catch was the first set of under drive pulleys that i put on it were uh not even cast aluminum they were just pressed aluminum well there's three there's three pulleys that you change you change the crank pulley the alternator pulley and uh the water pump pulley so when i changed those over i put on these these pressed aluminum things and uh probably about four months ago the water pump decided to go out so in the process of [seizing] the belt spun on the pulley and wore through the water pump pulley almost all the way but not far enough to notice so i was on my way to work one day and uh the water pump pulley split [laterally] in half so there was half a water pump pulley still attached to the water pump and the other half was kind of [dangling] off the end of the crank and uh i i uh try to stay away from cars as much as possible in terms of repair actually uh that is really a sore spot with me i i think perhaps the automotive industry is improving but uh like ten years ago uh reliability of automobiles at least u s automobiles was pretty dismal and not only that but the uh repair capability of uh service departments and dealerships was equally dismal and uh it seemed that the only way i could [reliably] take care of my car was to repair it myself which is not my cup of tea but uh i pardon well at that time actually i had a volkswagen rabbit and uh it was it was a real lemon uh subsequently i got a uh buick century and it wasn't as bad but uh last year i bought a honda accord and i take it in once every seventy five hundred miles for its [periodic] maintenance and that is it and it's wonderful huh huh huh so what do you have all the more reason to uh have a a honda so you bought a pontiac now how old is the car huh huh huh so apparently it was the same one that was on there apparently just uh uh probably filled the the brake fluid up and that was it so what's the solution to that i guess find a reputable service huh uh_huh right well that's wonderful you're lucky oh really huh uh_huh yeah so do you have a car do you have a car uh_huh uh_huh yeah we used to have a honda accord and they're good they're really good cars every time i get taken to an auto repair place you know every time i go i get taken bad you know woman goes in and they go all right we got a sucker let's see how much money we can get out of her you know that's what happens every time uh so i have a pontiac six thousand yeah but our honda just got old and just wore out it was let's see eleven years old and it just just out of it so no huh_uh my uh ex husband's this is just happened a couple of weeks ago he's my ex husband but just a few months ago when he was my husband uh his father gave us this car and everything is wrong with it i mean the power steering fluid leaks the oil leaks the brake fluid leaks you know uh eighty seven and he just doesn't take care of things and but i was awarded the car so there is a man in my church that is a mechanic and i can trust him so he is trying to get you know things fixed on it but it's just you know leak leak leak everywhere but uh you know i hate to go into a a repair place because they'll tell me something is wrong with it and it's not you know and charge me twice as much the last time i took it into a repair shop the man told me i needed a master cylinder so i said okay and he charged me a hundred and thirty something dollars and then uh about a month later a man was looking at my car and he asked me you know not a man not a repair man but just a friend and i was telling him that i just a new master cylinder put on and he looked at and he said that's not a new master cylinder and i didn't even know what one was and uh he showed it to me and it was old rusty just awful it was no more new than nothing uh more than likely that was it probably it was i was so irritated and that's happened to me more than once or twice just just about every time i've went in somewhere and and you can hardly find one you know the guy that's doing most of my my car now uh goes to my church and that's the only reason you know i go to him because i know him and i know he will tell me the truth because he doesn't even charge me for for doing it so he's not going to you know take me i just pay for the parts and he does it so yeah yeah i am so i don't know i don't know what the solution to that is because the place where you buy your car they're usually the worst one of all we took our honda to the honda dealership and they ended up telling us we needed a brand new engine for our car yeah and so [idiots] as we were neither one of us knew much about cars we you know they told us we just had to have one and we bought one we didn't no more need no new engine give me break you know so it was it was not good and uh i think the last thing we had done on the car had to do with uh the transmission and i'm not sure exactly what it was that they did uh speaking from other ignorance what about your car uh_huh oh you can't go to a different one oh oh uh_huh oh my buy two more well that i have forgotten um i i have a little station wagon that i drive to work and my husband has a a van that he uses in his business and he had a similar experience to yours just i think it was last week or or it certainly was in the last come of weeks uh went to get his uh sticker renewed and had a couple little things like the clip that holds the uh-oh the muffler pipes up had broken or [sheared] or whatever and they measured the tread and i don't know they did that to the tires and he had to get two new ones too so i'd never heard of it before so my mouth was open when you mentioned that that circumstance well yeah you you want it you want them to check what's what's [needful] for your safety and so forth but the other sounds like a fluke when they didn't do it you should have known when you went in the first time uh if there was if you needed four tires okay fine but tell me all at the same time you can't help feeling that way that's yeah that's a common feeling i i [empathize] because um i'm real glad my husband knows something about cars but when i go in i feel really at a loss and and if we take my car in to be fixed he'll he'll tell them what he wants and then he'll stay well well call my wife if there's anything else that needs to be done and then they call me at work because he he doesn't work near uh uh doesn't have an office yeah a phone and and so they'll call me and say well mrs parker we've got some good news and we've got some bad news the problem we thought about this morning is not a problem but the real problem is uh and so the only way that i the only thing i know to do is if if it sounds [plausible] i'll say go ahead and do it but save me the parts or something so i can have him look at it that's the only thing that saved us is his background there that's that's sure uh_huh all that scheduled maintenance right that the that's the truth i always wanted to know a little bit more but i think it was more to [showoff] when i was growing up and i before i was married i was teaching school and teaching down in corpus christi and i wanted to be able to at least change a flat tire between arlington where my family lived and down there and so i i one day i had told my brother i said now i know everybody's suppose to change tire no help but i said i can't do that will you help me will you show me and so i had it out there and he was helping and mother came to the door and said larry you've got a phone call so he went in to talk to one of his many friends and i i'm there i'm there with this tire off so i thought i have better things to do i can do this myself and so oh i guess i was getting ready to start that was it it wasn't even off so i started [jacking] it up and and so forth and somehow or the other the the jack since it's one of those that has the [ratchet] kind of thing and i reached out to grab it and it caught the the [webbing] between my thumb and my my [forefinger] it caught the and i couldn't do anything i fortunately it was loss it was no longer under the car and i i could not get my my i could just see me for the rest of my life with this jack attached to my hand and i couldn't see anybody on the street nor kids all over so i went to the to the door and it was summertime the air conditioner was on the door was closed and i couldn't knock because i had to hold the jack with the other hand i finally with my elbow rang the [doorbell] and mother came to the door and i wouldn't let her touch me i wanted my brother to help me with this that was he took the phone down pretty quickly and it didn't take him long to extricate my hand but oh i was scared to death i i could see them cutting out my whole palm just to get this little flap of skin out so that's that's how mechanical i am and that was oh that was twenty five years ago so i i've not tried it since oh plus plus before this i had put all the [lugs] back in place but i had the wrong side out i didn't know there was a right and wrong side the thread worked and so i was so proud after she got me [extricated] he looked and went out there to check it over and he just laughed he said [sissy] i'm sorry but we're going to redo this so uh listen i'll call triple a uh auto club any time it will save your fingers trust me well i enjoyed it jay thank you okay um i'm very [unhandy] in these things and uh i don't like to do anything myself i like to have a service station that i can feel confident about which is [problematical] uh_huh is is the problem that it's hard to get the appropriate battery and other types of things for a sixty six car excuse me i'm sorry so are you struggling to get around as a result i try not to uh i suppose i ought to learn to change the oil and things i could save a lot of money doing that i mean it must be great to to to really understand what's what's going on you can both do things yourself and talk confidently with people when you have to take it somewhere to get parts or whatever was it easy to get a more appropriate clutch you have a slight oh uh well the car i drive is an eighty four and it's reached the point where various things are are going wrong with it and it's had to be in recently it needed a new battery it wouldn't start um my wife and i did manage to to uh [recharge] the battery from the other car um and the exhaust system has needed work and um uh so the so the latest work done it just yesterday was to have the front wheels [aligned] uh so we've been spending yes in fact in fact on the battery uh uh it's the old one that had a four year warranty and the day it gave up was four years and six days oh the last thing i had done or did let's see uh was getting a an old seventy eight jeep [cherokee] ready to trade in and uh so i was basically just going around and doing what i could do fixing door locks and checking the transfer case fluid and things like that i'm kind of a motor head myself so this topic is actually pretty good for me um i've got a seventy chevelle that i'm restoring too so it's uh there's constant work going on to that car yeah yeah sure uh_huh oh wow uh_huh that's some that's some serious work not only uh you have to have a yeah but you have to have a knowledge of quite a few of the the systems there to to do that yeah have you tried any like the chilton's uh manuals oh i i recommend them i've uh i uh i have a chilton's manual in my chevelle and every anytime i [undertake] anything that i start with that that book yeah yeah yeah they're they're pretty good uh the only problem i've noticed with them is that when i started working on cars i um uh didn't really have much knowledge of them at all and and you know it's hard the language of automotive mechanics is a language all it's own and just the names of some of the parts you know they tell you to put the wrench on something and you know yeah you know and it took awhile before you figure out what everything is and uh and what you are supposed to be doing with it but i think it's a lot better than than starting from starting cold and that's for sure no yeah uh_huh oh i know brake job right well i i don't know i've got i've gotten the chevelle i've did done the brakes all the way around it myself and uh well this one has got drum brakes though drum drum brakes are a little bit tougher than disc brakes but uh but still it's not anything that that you know it's just a matter of putting the parts in the right place and there isn't really anything you can do wrong to it um and those ones did have to have the lines [bleed] though but but bleeding the lines is just a matter of uh you know just having somebody on the uh pumping the the brake [pedal] for you and when it is yeah yeah exactly sure yeah yeah yeah there's no not not too much trick for that or uh buy i just this new vehicle i buy just bought a ninety one g m c [sonomo] which is a little pickup truck with a and i'm wondering when the time comes for the maintenance on this thing how much i'm going to be able to do myself and how much is going to require all their diagnostics and all that it looks pretty simple i used to have an eighty five chrysler laser and this one certainly looks a lot more simple than than that motor but uh i haven't i haven't gotten into fuel [injectors] and things like that and everything is fuel injected so i don't know what the uh how that will will be the only thing i've ever done on a fuel injector is replace the hose on it it was leaking so i don't know i like the old cars you open up the hood on my chevelle and there's nothing under there but a big motor and uh you know no well i just uh i have a thunderbird that i spent last month twelve hundred bucks just on getting repairs to but that's a that's a hundred thousand mile tune up so i guess if it gives me another fifty thousand in between i'll be happy with it but uh well i tell you it's expensive if you try and keep them running you know keep them so they're top shape uh i don't well what what do you what do you do uh_huh i mean do you travel a lot in your job or not oh okay and that's good and hard on a car yeah it uh i uh i cover most of texas and oklahoma with some of the lines that i sell and and i'll put on thirty five forty thousand miles a year but uh it and you got to keep the car in good shape when you do that uh i i'm on my third set of tires on this thing and uh you know brake job and you know shocks you you do the whole thing if you want to keep it going and about the only really [aggravation] was when they had a uh it turned out they had to change processor out on the car which doesn't seem that difficult a thing to do but it took them a week before they realized that they had two other bad processors and uh without a car for a week in my business it's rather difficult i i guess the only thing that really bothers me and uh the auto at least down here and it sounds like you got the same problem where uh they only have probably one really qualified mechanic in the whole garage and uh the rest are maybe a level above or perhaps at the grease monkey level and yet they'll they'll charge you for brain surgery on these cars as though they all know everything but four or five days that's funny how long did it take him to catch on to that one that drove him nuts that's a good one oh that's nasty just driving this guy crazy probably couldn't sleep at night worrying about his expensive car getting blown up and that is funny that is funny i got a customer that uh has a [jaguar] and he and his wife had one he says well if you have a [jaguar] you got to have two one for the shop and one to drive oh well i don't know uh what age you are but when i was a kid the cars you could you could fix them you that's right get sick with the flu uh_huh wow are these disc brakes right well i have nissan uh maxima and i had the rear brakes on those redone but i guess auto repairs are cheaper around here i think it was around eighty five dollars is expensive uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh you're very fortunate well i ran into a problem with my car uh course we have a little colder weather up here and i had set the emergency brake after we'd had a freezing rain apparently and there's some kind of a boot that had come off the car so the emergency brake froze on and my uh brakes were on all the time i drove to work one morning it got warm it was pretty smelly by the time we got there which is not too far a drive but that that was the reason i had to replace mine right right you would hope so but that you can't turn that's right i've seen your spaghetti bridges though when i wouldn't want to go over them you do that yourself oh you're that's right i've thought about taking a course just so i could change my own oil but and that would help a little bit but i haven't done it oh no oh that's crazy that is mean or take it to the pit and let them let somebody else do it they have but i really hate paying twenty two ninety five for an oil change when i know what the oil costs right right well right some of the stations around here will take it i think maybe they have to accept it recycle it that's right uh we were down in dallas right after christmas and on the way back we stopped in louisiana to visit my brother and we were driving my husband's toyota pick up truck well we made a quick little stop when we got to baton [rouge] and he came back out and the car the truck wouldn't stop i mean it wouldn't start so gave it a somebody came along and helped give it a little push and the next morning they took it to the garage and it was just a small private garage and he said it was the starter motor probably and he was going to take it off and either repair it or replace it or whatever and we got a call in the middle of the morning and he said i've got good news and bad news uh the starter motor is fine it it just had a couple of bolts that held it in place and one had been broken off and allowed it to shift enough that it wouldn't match just right and the only bad news was my husband would have to go to a garage and pick them up pick the bolts up for him so he went to a used car garage i guess or place and got the bolts and had it running for about fifteen dollars i couldn't believe it because the man could have really stuck us no it was great okay greg okay thank you i uh try to do what i can and uh we have two vehicles uh and uh on the honda which is the older vehicle i try to do as much as i can on that on our newer one uh uh mini vans it's all electronic and computers and everything in it yeah uh well some things are some things aren't you know not everything's covered by [warrantee] i don't try to mess with that at all i mean i i can change the oil and uh no no i do have a place that's rusting i need to get something on it put some paint on it or something to stop the rust like scrape it and paint it right right right i know if you don't get the rust off that's there already that it's just going to continue on but yeah i'm just sitting here looking at my honda manual when i got your call i got the yeah yeah right the uh yeah yeah i do my own brake brake work on the honda i just finished finished working on the brakes right right not the things i know how to do i i'm not an expert i don't claim to be uh_huh right right seems anymore you need special tools to do a lot of jobs you know and and i'm afraid i'll get something take it taken apart and not remember how to get it back together and then i'd be in big trouble i do know a couple good shade tree mechanics and i call them once in a while for advice and once in a while they'll come over and say oh this is how you do it you know and i try to learn but i think a lot of people learn how to do maintenance from whether their father did it you know my dad didn't do much at all and he doesn't know much about cars and as a result i really didn't have that much interest to learn how to maintain fix and maintain cars so i didn't learn much growing up and i just after i we bought the cars you know and things got so expensive to take them someplace all the time that i decided that i better start learning you know right that's right well yeah that's that's when i call some friends or something or sometimes i just take it to a place you know and they'll tell me what's wrong and i'll say and i'll say oh it'll be this much money and i'll say oh well i'm going to think about that that sounds like too much right now and so you know i got to think about that so they'll put it back together i'll take it home and then i'll fix it myself sometimes they charge you you know if it's a [diagnosis] problem some places do some don't right just depends you know how long how long it takes them to figure it out if they can just tell right away by just listening to it and then they're usually going to charge you you know right they're pretty tricky uh_huh right that's how i figure on those things it's just not worth the worth it right right uh_huh right now that we have two cars i'm not as scared to play with play around because we always have the other car seems like i before i would get the car all apart and realize i needed a part you know and so i'm calling all the neighbors and stuff trying to get them to give me a ride down to get my part you know because i don't have another car so now that we have two cars i i'm not i'm less leery about just going for it um no no i haven't had any problem yeah i know i had an estimate for that little rust spot and they wanted like three hundred bucks i said i can live with it you know if the car's ten years old on your plastic bumper right whoa that's on the other car or your car is that right uh_huh yeah i've heard of them the chain is that right uh_huh uh_huh yeah well you're a student right so that's important yeah yeah it seems anymore the cars are they want so much to work on a car they we've had our car in the dealer or our van and they want they charge like forty five dollars an hour labor i think golly that's yeah i i right well the mechanic doesn't see that you know it's the owner or the dealer who sees who sees the big bucks mechanic probably gets about twenty dollars an hour so yeah the thing about automobiles they're so unpredictable too you know they're hard to hard to plan ahead for for things uh_huh right no i haven't seen that one uh_huh that's true that's true i mean it's hard to you know it's hard to say oh i should set aside this much money for repairs on cars because you never know it could cost you nothing or it could cost you three times as much it's hard to plan for those things and when you need to have it fixed you know a lot of times you can't just take it all over town if it uh you know sometime you can but on some things it's you're just stuck and you got to have it towed somewhere or something you just got to got to make a quick decision i don't know i don't trust a lot of people who work on your cars too i know this one guy that works for dealerships as a you know they at dealerships they replace things they don't fix things right so they'd just rather replace something and charge you for the new part rather than just you know fixing the part and the part could be probably fixed you know for a third of the price of of a new one but they that's dealers don't do that oh sure sure they do and then they take your old part and sell it to some [reconditioning] house and make money off of that too you know so anyways well we got to got to have cars in this society not like uh europe and japan and some other countries where they have good enough public transportation where you can just get anywhere you need need need to go anytime you need to get there well i hope so right uh_huh right right but it it's going to be a while i think but right okay what i was going to tell you about is that my fiance and i have just finished as a matter of fact today restoring a seventy three mercedes i i we've done a little bit of it ourselves but mostly we were lucky enough to find a a guy that works for a mercedes dealership and he [restores] cars on his on his uh you know off time well it was uh a gentleman that works with my fiance and he had bought it for his daughter and she wasn't taking care of it and boy was that obvious when they pulled up in it it had been really uh it was in a mess it was just in a terrible mess uh well the last thing we did to it was today they had uh replaced the gear shift um it's uh it wasn't we had to order the part from the dealership and the guys put it in today when you shifted it down you didn't know if you were in park drive reverse whatever so that was the very last thing that we had to uh had to have done uh basically the whole car's been redone they put in new uh they used new sheet metal and stuff to to repair the body i mean there were you know these rusted dents a new paint job yeah it was completely [overhauled] and uh for what it's a diesel uh_huh it sure is yeah you're right uh_huh yeah yeah and it's it's just been [lovingly] restored that's one good thing about about having somebody to do it your you're you're there because they worked on it here at our home i have no idea i i doubt that anybody will ever really know well i i i can't really remember what it shows on there but i remember when we discussed it we said that we were pretty sure that that was like times maybe or an additional one hundred added on to that a hundred thousand yeah because it's uh it had definitely been through the mill but uh uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh oh my gosh you've had it oh my word uh_huh uh_huh oh my word uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh replaced yeah yeah oh definitely oh gosh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh gosh that's unbelievable um uh_huh right right uh_huh uh_huh that's that is amazing is it the same engine that's been in it all the time uh_huh uh_huh wow uh_huh yeah yeah that's amazing yeah yeah so the car was how old when you when you bought it uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh i see uh_huh yeah exactly yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh is it does say that on the can i didn't realize that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh oh i see yeah that's amazing yeah and this is a maverick you said maverick well i had uh i had owned a cougar up until oh just several months ago that i had had since uh um i think it was in eighty two or something and i had that car only uh about two years and the engine blew in it and so i had to put in a new engine that was that's an experience when you have a two year old car you know and it wasn't in warranty i mean it must have like the day after the warranty was expired it must have [exploded] i have no uh v is it v eight i don't i don't know a lot of what's the biggest one is a v eight bigger yeah that's what it had in it and yeah so it it uh that's my latest experience with anything major yeah yeah and i'm sure i shouldn't i shouldn't feel that way that's why i was surprised to hear you talk about this car it sounds very [resilient] whatever they have in that whatever a kind of engine it is in that car yeah yeah yeah maybe it has something to do but i i know i took good care of it i changed the oil quite often i didn't even do that myself i i could never do any of this myself you know i'm just not uh i'm not uh yeah and it still blew up well now that yeah not that i know of oh really you would never have a problem well you know that's possible i never had thought about it but that's my i'm i have a what what does that do okay just like just like sugar would it uh_huh yeah yeah yeah ugh well that maybe that's what happened to it because it had it had been fine but the odd thing about it was is after i had that engine replaced that car ran hot every summer i mean even though yes texas is notorious i mean we it's true we have a hundred and eight degree days but you know it uh i had i had trouble with that car after that i don't know if it was just a lemon even though it was a brand new engine you know so uh yeah course it was a brand new engine supposedly now that's what the dealership told me you know yeah yeah that's what i i know my i had uh had my dad finally took it down there because i would take it back and forth and the dealership would not it was i still had the problem it just continued and continued and they would charge me you know two hundred dollars every time they looked at it and um he kept saying the same thing he said it seems like it was your [thermostat] but at any rate it was really never [rectified] and i told the people that when i sold it to them i said you know you you might need to watch out but they didn't seem to mind they wanted the car so you know as far as my ability to do anything on it i can check the oil i know that's about as far as it goes it's been amazing to watch these guys work on this car i mean you know just well it just this this gentleman had this car and uh you know he had he had told my fiance that he was going to sell it i mean he just i mean he sold it to us for like three hundred bucks you know and and we took before we said we'd buy it we uh took it to a mercedes dealership and they looked at the engine and uh the engine had been rebuilt about uh i think the guy had told us two hundred miles previously or something an they said it you know the engine alone was worth you know much more than that so we didn't feel like there was any problem and uh it's it's definitely been amazing to to see the [transformation] we took we took after pictures it's a shame that we didn't take before pictures because yeah it was just so what was the last car repair that you had done on your car uh_huh the control [module] a mystery box huh that's that's impressive he's able to do a job like that because that requires special tools oh that's interesting that that's great what what kind of jobs would you folks repair refer to a garage uh_huh wow well um the last thing that i had to have done to my car uh i wound up doing myself and um that was uh tuning it up and um i had been having a a problem where i would be driving along and and i would notice this at night when i'd be sitting at a light i would see smoke in my uh my [headlights] and uh then later on when you know i'd i'd get out wherever i was going i would smell uh something had been burning and i had pretty much figured it was oil because i had looked under the hood a couple of times and there was a a lot more oil sort of floating around than you should have on a honda which i [ironically] have too you'd expect the car to be really clean inside and it run real well real well and so anyway i i had been thinking about it for a long time and discovered that um uh i had decided that what had happened is there's a a a little piece of metal that sits over the top of the valve train called the valve uh uh cover and uh i decided that there must be something wrong with the gasket or perhaps the whole cover itself hadn't been uh [tightened] down well or whatever and so when i was doing this tune up i decided it was time for me to explore and sure enough that's what the problem was and so i went out and i got a new gasket and slipped it in there on on older cars up to i i in fact i have no idea when they started doing this but on the older cars they used to make the gasket out of a [cork] like material and on this car they make it out of a rubber like material so uh yeah up to a certain point i used to do a lot more of it when i was younger than i do now um and i have to admit that when the weather starts to get cold there's just no fun like a busted [knuckle] i just uh i just can't even tell you the joy i get from that experience and sure and my finances have always been a little [precarious] so sometimes repairing the car is a financial necessity um but it's the the down side of that is that i very rarely always had the right tools and right yeah exactly yeah it's a sort of a catch twenty two if you're well enough off to buy these exotic tools you need to do the work then you can generally have somebody else do it for you so well uh it's funny i've i've owned a lot of different cars i started out with [volkswagons] and then um graduated to um a honda and had that for a long time and then graduated to a volvo and then wound up with a honda again and so i've i've had them all and and uh uh have gotten to know the engines in each one of these uh sorts of vehicles and but uh i in the [volkswagon] business i i went from you know owning a bug to owning uh one of their cars called a rabbit and the and there was a completely different kind of engine in the rabbit um but i i actually rebuilt a [volkswagon] bug engine at one point and uh so i learned an awful lot about cars have i what excuse me well i'm not much of one for getting my hands dirty i never cared for that but i do uh well like last weekend i was uh [attaching] a tow hitch to the front of my little pickup so i could uh tow it behind my motor home and i'm telling you the air around plano here turned blue before the day was through oh it it was a very simple thing to do and i didn't start until three in the afternoon because i thought oh maybe an hour two hours at the most eight thirty that night i'm still working out there under the flood lights yes yes no no all nuts and bolts but trying to get the holes to line up i mean i had to [loosen] the front bumper and i you would be amazed you you think well there's just two bolts on each side that holds the bumper huh_uh no no such luck no uh i don't go in like i say i don't go in for uh any deep repairs especially with today's automobiles that are computer controlled and everything uh_huh uh-oh uh_huh uh_huh that's always the way uh_huh uh_huh well you know i ran into the very same problem back last christmas uh let's see where was i i was over in mississippi and uh driving at that time i had this little ford escort which tows like a little baby behind a motor home and i dearly loved it for that but uh i was out driving around looking at the sights well this is vicksburg so i was looking at the civil war [battleground] and i developed this [hellacious] [squealing] just like you did only mine sounded like uh it was coming from the [depths] of hell somewhere that kind kind kind of a [squeal] yeah and it was more outstanding when i turned in one direction rather than the other yes yeah well oh oh no wonder uh_huh oh boy well i guess i was pretty lucky it only ended up costing my eighty five dollars but of course all i got was the front brakes uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh uh_huh oh for [pete's] sake well i thought they had a minimum charge of one hour uh_huh say are you from boston by any chance i'm afraid so the car in the garage where are you located right now oh no i'm in i'm in dallas well i shouldn't have because i'm a damn yankee myself well i've spent better than half my life in tennessee north carolina florida louisiana mississippi um well twenty five years ago i was in the radio business commercial radio and well i was a d j at the time and i i really worked on losing my new york accent and uh i like to think i managed to stay away from it but you're right i do catch myself every once in a while talking along with that southern accent once in a while okay so uh oh oh yeah that i do and i've been well i do it on my motor home because it means if i take it somewhere to do it i have to take it to an r v dealer because local stations just aren't big enough to handle a motor home and so i do the i change the oil myself but something i have been putting off for too long now is [flushing] out the radiator that i've got to do this weekend i've been promising and promising to do it oh yes definitely i had uh-oh a few years ago i had a ford one fifty pickup the brakes what uh what did you have to have done to the with the brakes jeez uh_huh uh_huh oh really yeah that's their way of [capturing] your [pocketbook] i guess for those who are least [suspecting] a lot of regards i mean uh actually you probably had a better deal that way uh_huh gee well i generally try to find my own personal car mechanics uh rather than taking it to a shop i'm kind of like you it's uh i kind of equate them with some bad dentists who try to find problems in your teeth which i have had that experience and um that's a different subject so i better stay on cars but the last problem i had with my vehicle was a uh fuel pump that needed replacing and that's all the major problems i've had for a vehicle that's got eighty nine thousand miles it's a nissan yeah yeah that's been very good to me i've i'm going to uh i would eventually like to get into an american car but right now this one's doing fine for me but then the other problem too is just a fuel filter and the fuel pump and i've had to replace a set of tires a couple times but that was due to [quirks] uh if you ever have a flat tire don't ever have it plugged have a patch put on it because those plugs wear eventually will wear out all four of your tires yeah because it causes an [unevenness] in the rubber and uh that happened to me twice before i caught on well enough to what happened i had one tire uh plugged after a flat and somehow the [unevenness] of the plug just caused all the other three tires to wear out so always have a patch put on it's it's happened to me twice and that's enough other than that that's the major problems i've had i used to change my own oil and filter but i got tired of that so i let somebody else do it yeah you're you're saving about uh ten bucks by doing it yourself but what the heck if you can afford it um i'd rather change it myself but i don't have the facilities well enough all the time so that's the only major problems you've had then yeah what kind of vehicle [chevette] yeah gee whiz uh_huh uh_huh yeah the only thing you can do is somehow through your own network and the friends find uh mechanic through them that they trust and and then i'm sure that that [mechanic's] not going to uh do you in through their recommendation now what was it the belts uh_huh uh_huh yeah i i know this guy that's a car mechanic and he told me i told him my belts are slipping a little bit and he said they'll last forever all you got to do is just tighten them uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh i don't have that much problems so with my vehicle knock on wood excuse me i just remember a seventy nine chevy nova that i once had never again that was a definite lemon oh i got rid of that one after it cost me [megabucks] so do you do any of your own repairs or maintenance work yeah do you have like an american or foreign car okay because i know like i've got a a honda and and it's just beyond even my my dad's and my husband's comprehension a lot of that stuff they grew up with americans little simpler arrangements on under the hood so so they'll change the oil for me and um that's about it these days yeah it's it's you have to have metric don't you yeah yeah well it's it's a lot easier than getting under there and finding out something major has happened that you didn't know about and advanced auto closed fifteen minutes ago and getting into that kind of hassle yeah i had um i was having problems with the cruise control so i had to take it down and have them look at that and they said it was something with the um the way the choke was adjusted yeah well i had the um like the sixty thousand mile tune up done at the same time so the whole thing was like two hundred dollars no it i mean the first time i found out how much it was going to be i about fell over but holy cow wow was it is it a fairly new car i mean was it well that's still i know i haven't the little bit i know about cars i've never heard of anybody having that happen to them man did they yeah well i've the only two cars i've had i had a honda civic and it was let's see uh i'm trying to think how old it was i got it in eighty one and got rid of it in eighty eight so it was seven years old and had almost a hundred thousand miles on it yeah and i i mean i never had any problem with it and i've got an accord now and other than you know minor tune ups like with the the choke and stuff i've never had any problem with it so i've been really lucky mine was an eighty eight yeah no i've i've got the l x okay yeah and this one's you said yours was just now about sixty five thousand and mine's an eighty eight and it's it just turned over seventy thousand so yeah sure yeah we've been looking recently just you know mainly window shopping but um we've been thinking more american just because we want a bigger car this time and we've been looking at um crown victoria and grand [marquis] and we're leaning a little bit towards the uh grand [marquis] as far as just looks but my parents have a um continental and they've had nothing but nightmares with that car it's been it's been one thing after another going wrong that the local dealer either says there's nothing wrong it's your imagination or says well it's supposed to be that way just get used to it it's been an absolute nightmare for them so it kind of makes me dread going back to an american manufacturer yeah sure yeah uh_huh i believe that yeah i wish there were bigger foreign cars really it seems like they kind of really yeah i hadn't really even yeah yeah moving them up and i i don't think people mind too much taking the car in for a tune up you know just general fifteen thousand mile maintenance or or even getting the oil changed if they know that they're not going to have any other major problems that they'll have to pay for on top of that what did they used to say ford stood for fix or repair daily well that's great i wonder why they can't extend the truck's you know reliability out to the cars i mean i don't know that's weird really man that's great i think they need to uh take a look at and see what they can't figure out what the catch is there yeah and you know like i said i've had i've had great luck with the hondas and it's kind of hard to walk away from a good thing when it's you know you're not sure what you're going to get when you change yeah i had the um tires changed at fifty two thousand they'd they'd started to to look pretty bald well what is it that you prefer to provides as far as maintenance on your vehicle wow how about that that i'm not quite as mechanically inclined although that some of the the basic things that you need to do for uh the maintenance of your warranty on a vehicle is stuff that you can do yourself just the oil uh changed and things of that nature that's about where i my expertise ends in in that category just you know uh_huh i believe that boy i'll tell you i just got my car back from a dealer and when it was in there i had them just go ahead change the oil and filter thirty four dollars huh well that's uh that's quite a savings having that talent how many miles has it got now what did you just replace now i'm not even familiar with what that where that is uh_huh uh_huh huh sure well how much how long did it take to replace that uh_huh oh sure uh_huh how much would something like that cost in the garage [jimminy] and how much do you think the parts was by itself oh really wow oh gosh yeah at a hundred dollars a night that's not still not too bad sure uh_huh exactly yeah well fortunately i just well replaced the the power antenna uh you know it kind of dumb having the garage door i drove out before the door was completely up and the radio on so it took off the antenna but the [mast] itself cost uh thirty two dollars and i went i called the dealer and they wanted two hundred and twenty to put it in and gosh and then i went to well it i i looked at it myself to see if i could do it myself because i you know i i feel i'm pretty competent and handy but unfortunately they buried this one in the sixty six [mazdas] you have to remove the dash and the fuse box to get to the motor and so they say there's uh three hours of labor just to [uncover] where the the metal [shaft] goes in because it goes through the through the door in between the windshield and the drivers side door and comes out above the drivers head yeah so it's terribly engineered everything was visible oh yeah anymore just putting everything on a chip is your going to have to replace the chip unless you have the tools to diagnose what's the problem with the chip i have a a seventy nine uh mazda r x seven first year of the rotary engine that i used to do i used to work on because it you know back seventy nine if i was to do something screw it up electrically uh i i handled everything i put in [antenna's] there you know the antenna the [replacements] parts all that kind of thing but when it came to ever giving any kind of tune [up's] or things like that i'd take it into the shop anything basic yeah and they just stop making them now so it's kind of interesting when it's work great smooth i suppose but i had a hundred and twenty eight thousand on it when i sold it yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh wow sure sure oh really well that's good sure uh_huh right sure sure of course of course uh_huh right well it seems like you've got a very valuable talent oh great uh yeah that's true well it's been goods talking to you every once in a while down here at the main site oh it's been beautiful there you go starting to [defrost] well that's great you too all righty good bye it's terrible bye bye okay yeah the topic is uh car repairs and the last one i've had done it was a fluke the last one i had done well i was driving down six thirty five at the um coming from north dallas and i was uh going um almost hitting the um entry where all the the [merges] go from six thirty five seventy five and coit and uh all of a sudden i get this liquid all over my hood and my windshield and i had smelled it before i thought and i thought that it was coming from another vehicle and then when i saw it go all over my car i thought huh_uh something came through my radiator and just something's wrong inside my car so i i was waiting for my car to collapse you know so i was going about sixty five miles an hour and it kept going and i thought well what is going on and so i made it home and i looked at my car and it was a mess so i immediately the next morning i took it to my dealer and i i left it just well i drove it in the the night before and he says well it looks like your uh antifreeze uh something happened to your antifreeze and they checked everything in that car and it wasn't from my car it was from some other car some other car did that to me well i'm glad but it was a very [panicky] situation but no i do not do any of my own repairs the only thing i do to my car is put gas in it and wash it oh you do good for you that's great oh i see oh well he probably showed you all the tricks of the trade that's great sure you did well bless your heart well i think that's wonderful i mean i think that's great uh_huh well gee you should uh you know you should get some money for your talents and start [branching] out it is oh well you know uh loosening those nuts and bolts would be a problem for me and i know they have some really sophisticated equipment today where they do it electronically and all that but that takes money to buy those kind of tools too uh_huh uh_huh right yeah no i wouldn't want i wouldn't want anybody to touch my car without having all the the yeah the computer and all and everything because you have that uh as a a gift to you don't you that they do it for you for [gratis] uh_huh right well i have a woman's agreement on mine and they they did it for three years yeah yeah that really was nice so i uh appreciated that uh present that they gave me oh uh_huh right well don't they have if you that you hook it up to the computer and the computer does the analysis and tells you what's wrong with the different areas yeah yeah well i i have put windshield washer [solvent] in the container but no i have not this one hasn't needed any thus thus far um it's been a super car it's uh let's see uh it's three years old it's it's a plymouth [acclaim] i really like it it's been a very dependable um no maintenance i have not [channeling] all of her energy into running now yeah okay so which uh what basketball teams are you interested in uh_huh uh_huh no they're more of a football team than they are basketball team yeah you know that's true i don't think i've ever seen them nationally on basketball uh_huh huh um that's not too bad uh_huh well i'm uh originally from the saint louis area so the only basketball team pro anyway in that part of the country is chicago so i i do pull for chicago i mean of course this year is a good year to be a a chicago fan i guess because they're doing pretty good yeah yeah um as far as college teams uh i know it's really easy to say but i've been pulling for uh duke for about four years now so uh so i finally am feeling better about myself as far as college teams although i've i've really you know again being from saint louis i pull for missouri uh but they're on uh probation this year so you can't do much about that but uh oh yeah i watched every uh i watched all three games of that and uh i was very pleased with all three games because kansas uh you know i was pulling for kansas on the other side so it was real nice to have the the teams that were there of course i wasn't really i mean i i u n l v kind of gave me the impression of being a uh uh-oh i don't know a macho team you know they just didn't seem they seemed to think they were better than everybody else and and maybe they were but um i was real happy to see them get knocked off so uh_huh oh yeah yeah uh_huh u n l v yeah they they play the pro style is what i've always called it and uh yeah the fast breaks and and right and uh u n l v wasn't used to that of course i've i knew whenever u n l v went in at half time see i don't know if they were necessarily behind but they weren't ahead as much as they normally are uh and you know that meant that they had to play a second half and they they've not had to do that all year and uh that's right i mean [duke's] schedule was was so much harder than u n l v's that it uh it just made them a much tougher team overall and uh that had to help them a lot uh_huh so do i take it that you think though that the lakers will uh will win or i mean [portland's] pretty good um yeah yeah no well he's uh i don't i he he to me is not a center he's more of a a real tall forward uh i think magic does a oh yeah that sure is it i think that's going to be one of those that's uh that's won by the home team you know whoever has home court advantage is going to win that one i think [detroit's] in that same uh that that same uh division no but as i heard isaiah came back this week so uh that might help them oh yeah oh yeah that's true uh_huh he's yeah but he's been yeah but he's been kind of up and down all year uh one game and he'll be playing to where everything he throws up goes in and then the next time he'll you know he can't seem to hit the side of a barn so i don't know i'm i'm kind of i'm not sure about him this year uh_huh well that's when you do it yeah well the dark horses yeah that's yeah well anybody who has david [robinson] has got to have a chance anyway uh_huh that's right uh_huh huh that's true yeah well then he's gone now so they don't have to worry about that well i thought he was gone period i i didn't read the story but i i read that uh well that might have been what it was but i i guess the headlines said something about him you know that the mavericks released him or something i maybe i [misunderstood] what they meant well yeah you never know yeah but yeah that's what i think yeah yeah it's coming up isn't it portland yeah portland uh_huh they've got two the two johnson brothers or they're not brothers but i mean there's two guys named johnson on their team that are really good or doing good or something i forget how that works but um like i said they're doing extremely good right now phoenix isn't doing too bad so it it ought to be a real interesting play off yeah uh_huh uh_huh when it's on the line uh_huh yeah that's true well it's been nice talking to you all right take care well i guess i'm a big laker l a laker fan when it comes to pros uh the college ranks um i guess i really of course i try to follow my alma mater that's uh b y u in utah but they don't have much of a team usually yeah yeah you see them in football on t v once in awhile you never see them on a on nationally basketball they uh last year they had a really good team the year that danny [aines] was there that was about five six years ago by now so they made it to the sweet sixteen once or twice in their history and that's and they usually lose in the first round how about you uh_huh is it the bulls you're talking about yeah the pro is that right uh_huh no no so did you watch the uh final four this year every game right right yeah i i watched that game and uh it was a good game it was a very close game and hard fought game and it just i don't know it looked like u n l v may have had more uh talent but as far as playing together as a team that day it didn't duke seemed to have them off balance and that uh they didn't couldn't aren't they more of a running gun team right yeah fast breaks and things and they shut all that down and made them play half court it seemed and right right right they didn't have they didn't have to go through some tough games during the year and that and that so that's a terrible time to have to deal with that right in when it when it counts so much right i think i think that that probably was the difference in that game because it really could have gone either way down to the end you know well i don't know probably not since [kareem's] retired they haven't had a center and uh they've got perkins but i don't think he's really been a super star for them yeah right right so they'll make it you know it it's going to be a war between uh between chicago and uh and uh uh boston celtics that's going to be a war it's going to be a great series yeah one of those two will probably be um in there um let me see where does detroit fit in uh_huh so i don't know those three uh detroit hasn't been having that great a year this year uh_huh yeah they have the they have the play off experience but so does detroit i mean so does chicago so all three of them do with larry bird back uh you can never count the celtics out when larry [bird's] starting to click on all cylinders they say he's starting to do starting to play right right right last i've heard is that he's starting to peak right now he's starting to be more consistent you know right at the right time of the year oh any dark horses i uh you know san antonio san antonio is the dark horse that could could really flip in there i think yeah he's got to be pretty much you know i use to say [akimo] [lija] was the dominant player you know when he against any team he would dominate but [robinson's] getting up there where every game he's just i mean it looks like he's going in for a [dunk] and they kind of just [scoot] out of his way or take a step back you know nobody's got enough beef i guess to challenge him when he's when he's driving hard to the [hoop] he's uh he's too bad the mavericks couldn't get him with roy tarpley they're in big trouble yeah for awhile anyway i heard he was suspended because of his um if they did they'd still have to pay his contract they may have done it it was a lot of money he was making like i heard on the radio it was sixty three thousand and change a month that's what he was being paid you know he wasn't even playing oh boy what a good job he had he ruined his sweet position yeah i'm looking forward to the the pro play off uh l a yeah san antonio who's the other one that's doing so well this year is that portland portland i haven't seen them on much t v that much at all but all i can do is hear about boy they have the seeing eye what do they have walter davis and um right right yeah yeah i don't think there's any clear pick you know i guess the two teams that you can't count out are the celtics because of bird and the lakers because of magic johnson they are two guys that seem to find a way when they when it's on the line they seem to find a way you know uh so those are what makes a champion i guess yeah nice talking to you take care bye well did you get a chance to watch any of the games oh okay yeah no i don't think so because uh i saw just a little bit of the game today and he was out there playing although uh i what i saw was at the end of the first quarter i think he only had like eight points at the end of the first quarter they thought that was big news so i don't know but i don't know who won and uh i don't know who do you normally pull for the the mavericks or oh yeah oh jeez yeah because that's just dollars right out of the franchise oh man now i uh i i've always been pulling for the lakers for a long time and uh not just not just because they always win but uh when they had uh [akeem] anybody who was old as that playing that well you know i just kind of had to go with them now they kind of got caught up with a lot of the other players and uh course uh all the people that follow the lakers and everything out there in in california uh and it also helps when they were winning i was uh i always wondered that you know i i will take a look at the individual score you know in the individual stance in the n b a and you know they they have in the paper you know like fifteen different categories and they'll have like a individuals uh they'll have the the highest [scorer] the top [rebounders] uh [assists] foul shooting percentages and all that and you go down through and virtually every one of the categories there isn't uh a laker in the top ten usually hardly any any anybody in the top twenty except for like magic and uh yet the lakers continue to win so you're right i think they do really play much better as a team than they do uh uh each one you know individually at their spot but uh yeah well i understand that uh i guess boston's really uh giving uh are aren't they playing detroit i think boston's playing detroit and i think they're really giving them a run for their money did he get hurt again yeah yeah i tell you what i guess it's tough to play that many games and still stay healthy yeah yeah he ought to have his own bed come along with him you know oh yeah yeah yeah matter of fact i watched him uh on t v you know sink i don't know a jeez it was like uh uh thirty five baskets in thirty seconds or something like that from three point range unbelievable oh i don't know did you ever play much basketball yeah it really is for a [noncontact] sport quote unquote yeah really some of those guys got pretty funny looking uh eye wear man yeah several years ago when i was up in uh cleveland i was staying at the marriott and the cavaliers were playing somebody i think it was like utah or somebody like that and uh i was down by the pool and there was all these guys standing around about chest deep in water now i wear uh contacts and i i had my glasses on and i went down there and and just jumped into the water where they were and it went right up over my head and i came up [spittering] and [sputtering] for air and they were all the basketball players there to play the cavaliers they were all like uh like six eight and uh you know six ten and they were standing in water that was like six foot you know and it was uh it was funny i tell you i saw i saw a guy i don't remember what his name was but he got on the elevator and he had his [swimsuit] on and uh he was just skin and bones you know it looked like something out of africa and uh i made some comment and uh he says yeah he says i weigh about uh uh two hundred and forty pounds but he says it's not much when you stretch it over seven foot one so you're right those guys really you know the the big ones i don't even know how much [ewing] weighs but uh he's got to be way up there god that's a that's a lot that's a lot of a lot of guy coming down on you jeez i didn't even see who's who's supposed to have the the uh the best uh draft picks yeah oh yeah i used to go down to reunion arena uh went down there a couple years on the day of the draft and that was really pretty interesting they usually have uh uh you know a video uh highlights of the season you know and basically kind of walks you through what happened to the [mavs] and who they traded for and how they did and a lot of good footage both the good and the bad i i don't know i haven't i didn't go down there last year but uh it it was only like a couple dollars to get in and it was really kind of interesting but uh so who do you thinks going to win the playoffs chicago uh and let's see uh golden state and the lakers and chicago and philadelphia think [chicago's] playing philadelphia and then the uh shoot i can't remember them all now right yeah yeah n b a playoffs philadelphia was uh [favored] by one point over chicago and the lakers one point over golden state and detroit by five over uh boston jeez think so i tell you what those guys really hang tough now i i'd like to see them back up there again they really uh they really gave some some really good years of uh uh of enjoyment and fun and everything have you ever been up there to boston garden well i don't know is that in i i haven't really gone to a lot of games live but boy i'd sure like to basketball's gotten to be a lot of fun uh no i i just kind of i i kind of watch them on the news and that's about it uh the michael [jordan's] on chicago bulls isn't he what did he get hurt last night or oh okay uh_huh oh yeah no i kind of feel like the about the mavericks the way i do about the cowboys now yeah uh just all this roy tarpley stuff and and uh what is it their you know he got he's in trouble again down in houston and and uh they said the other night his contract is so big that if anything happens to him you know if they don't trade him they'll have to pay him off you know so they're rather have him except that he gets in trouble all the time and falls off the wagon and and and have some chance of him playing you know earning his money sure is oh yeah they're consistent uh_huh yeah well they play better as a team than anybody else seems like uh_huh uh_huh yeah year in and year out it's not like they have you know a lot of teams will will will win in the playoffs and then the next year they'll be all they'll be too busy doing their endorsements and stuff to to concentrate on the game yeah except larry [bird's] hurt he his back is bad all the time now i think yeah they play two or three times a week like you know and then they go on road trips and they do the same thing and and then they and then they stay out for two or three weeks at a time so it really gets you know i mean they're sleeping in different bed every night and and i imagine that really helps his back uh_huh yeah he said he said the other night on the news that he hadn't done any extra shooting for six weeks so you know and he's the one that's always winning the uh the the outside the three point shot and he does that every year uh_huh yeah not much just uh just just playing horse and stuff like that yeah because it's it kind of a violent game and they yeah and they don't wear any pads i figured yeah they have to wear [goggles] because they get hit in the in the face with [elbows] all the time well it's it's i was looking in the paper for something on it and here's the top n b a draft prospects and uh i mean they're all the size of football players you know except they're just taller uh_huh six foot yeah uh_huh yeah yeah really oh yeah well here's a here's a guy from l s u stanley roberts he's seven feet tall and he weighs two hundred and eighty pounds so yeah uh_huh it doesn't even say it doesn't say here it says uh it says the this is for [underclassmen] for june twenty six and uh i guess i guess they don't they have they they uh have a lottery on it they pick numbers and that's how they take them in order it must not be according to their how they did during the year uh uh uh_huh i don't know who's going is it chicago and utah portland boston and detroit okay that's the n b a i think boston boston will win yeah uh_huh oh no uh uh_huh all right i had to register us in there hopefully you're a basketball fan hopefully you're a basketball fan great i'm glad you are i'm not i couldn't care about any of it but go ahead i i would like to talk about uh maybe college basketball i'd like to see it be more of an amateur sport i'd like to see it turned back to like the southwest conference down here i would like to see texas and all the teams uh since we're supposed to talk about specific teams i would like to see them turned back to where the college player plays for four years and then they're not they're not semi pro and just go on and are stolen by the the the league you know in three years plus i'd like to see them to be true athletes where they're they're taking a regular college course you know i'd like to see they didn't ask that but they're talking about college teams i you know since you're being you can talk for hours go ahead you you if you like sports go right ahead with this one yeah that's surprising that they that they have better requirements that's good that's what i like to see go ahead i'm all for that that's great oh yeah oh i i agree i think that that there's a lot of [inconsistencies] when some conference uh players come from outside of texas you know and play us here uh they're obviously practicing sixty hours a week you know and there's no consistency seems to me that like purdue when they're trying a student athlete is spending so many hours in class he only has twenty twenty five whatever hours he has to spend on practice he should be playing they all should be playing another team that that has about twenty hours to practice a week but there are teams that practice sixty hours a week they're not going to class at all i mean that's that's what i mean by semi pro there's too many semi pros in college and i think they ought to get rid of that well i'm all for i'm all for the oh baseball has a uh a uh minor league system and i think that the football and basketball they asked us to talk about basketball should you know let let them go have a semi pro team but i think i'd like to see college athletes let's talk about college basketball i like that any basketball that i like i like that i i don't i don't like the pros at all uh they're high scoring there's no defense it seems like and they just kind of score a hundred twenty five points you know hundred twenty two you know and i don't really get much out of that uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah i like high school football which again is not the subject but that's so much fun to watch because they're they're pure amateurs you know and there's no money involved you go to college you don't really know it loses it somewhere whatever sport it is if they're really putting a lot of money in these players let's face it ninety percent are being paid so i'd like to see college basketball and all the other sports go back to being amateurs i don't care about seeing the best players in the world play i like to see the people going to texas just play the ones that are in class and i'd like to see athletes uh or fellow students like myself you know to play the game i i in fact i like amateur sports i don't see it has to be i don't think that college football or basketball should have to be semi pro you know i wish it'd return to the good old days of the amateur everybody play that's what i like everybody should play you know yeah well again i'd just like to see the true athlete the true student athlete play basketball you know i don't like to see the ones that aren't have no intention of going to class uh then again just picking a school texas is is usually not the best team you know because the other teams are i'm sure practice a lot more and s m u down here in [footballs] and trying to get back uh to having true student athletes and and that's what i think is a lot of fun to win and money yeah yeah i always thought that university was for an education and then sports of course is part of the education i don't think that sports has to make a lot of money or you do away with it i don't know why the don't keep fencing and all that you know and and they seem to be there's articles in the time magazine and all about whether it be basketball or anything else if it's not making money then we'll do away with it well that's not i thought it was so that you give them an education of that particular discipline and i i i just think that amateur sports should stay in universities that's where it's at i'm sure [saddened] to see i think it was wisconsin or somewhere they were getting rid of fencing and a couple of other things i don't know what it was it just seems so sad to have to only rely on you know college football is that all they're going to have to make money you know but i didn't think that was the objective to make money but it seems like it is uh_huh uh_huh you went to indiana university oh purdue okay well good you're you're a t i up in sherman oh very good yeah yeah i'm in the facilities there down here in dallas uh certainly high school football and college football but again high school football is just so much fun to watch because uh you know not everybody plays of course but they're still it's good and it's still you know the kids and there's absolutely no money involved whatsoever and you know they're going to class you know it it's it's real amateur sports huh_uh huh_uh is that right i never heard that's uh i never been in a football game in high school that had that many well my office [mate] here earl he he goes to all the maverick games and he loves that he he would be this is a great question for him uh to talk about like he's got i'm looking at his calendar he's got all over the place and he goes to a lot of the maverick games and everything but i i i can't get interested at all zero i i listen to him and occasionally i'll watch them on channel eleven but gee i can't uh more than five minutes of a basketball game just seems about that's it of uh pro anyway yeah yeah uh_huh yeah i'm surprised a little bit when you're talking about basketball how some players work mavericks had oh two players this year that they got rid of last year i'll think of them in a minute perkins sam perkins can't think of the other one they're both pardon me yeah tarpley and they both left this past year and both of them were on playoff teams uh so they benefitted tremendously by leaving the mavericks and sam perkins here he's one guy i did follow from think he was in virginia i can't think of what school he went to but from i guess he's been here about five six seven years in the pros and he was he never quite achieved the you know the super stardom that he had in in college but uh basketball they have a nice i don't know if you've down to the sports for reunion arena it's okay excuse me yeah i'm from indiana uh_huh yeah yeah um well i know like what you just said um purdue had to had to uh their best player this year you know averaged twenty points a game they had to make him sit the bench and actually kicked him off the team because um his uh grades even though they passed big ten standings and they passed you know n c double a they weren't they did not pass um purdue requirements and so yeah and see so he was treated like all the rest of students you know and so um their very best player they probably lost over half their games because you know by twenty points which is what he averaged um and so you know he had to sit you know he was kicked off the team and then they've got three players top you know recruiting class this year that they're going to have to be well the the prep school they go to before they can play because they aren't smart enough you know it's just sad because i mean purdue even though they're one of the few schools that really uh stress academics they're suffering you know and yeah like yeah that's what happened to this guy i mean he was uh he didn't go to class and so they just said you know you can't make the grades you're going to have to see you later yeah i don't either it's yeah um yeah it is fun to watch some real disciplined teams play in in college and i saw [princeton] i think it was or harvard play this year they're like all white and their starting guard had s a t scores of fifteen hundred and it was so funny to watch them play against the other teams because it was like they played so much smarter and more disciplined i don't know if they won very many games but i don't know their style of play was so much different from from the teams that just run and gun yeah yeah yeah yeah i'm kind of racist i guess when i say i like to see the white guys do well you know instead of the run and gun all the time yeah yeah in there's just so much pressure on the schools i think to win though you know yeah and you know it's like if they don't win they don't get any money so and the school [suffers] which is kind of bad but that's just how it always is yeah yeah really yeah huh it really is i know there's a lot of pressure on schools to have a winning program to get the best athletes so they can keep their seats full uh purdue yeah so uh_huh are you from dallas area yeah i guess football is the big sport down here isn't it yeah you heard of have you heard of [damon] [bailey] the i u white guard that plays well last year when he was in high school they drew a crowd of like forty one thousand for the state finals when he played yeah so that's i mean that's pretty big like he's from indiana and he plays for indiana now and indiana him to be a lot bigger than pro basketball up there the [pacers] don't really draw that big of a crowd you know the high school games i mean that seems to be the big attraction and college yeah seems like you could set the score at a hundred and then give them five minutes to play then it'd be the same result because they they start they shoot so much and then the last what five minutes they decide who's going to be the winner i guess tarpley is he one tarpley yeah uh_huh okay you want to go ahead and tell me your favorite team or who you think will be doing well this year are we talking about is this the n b a this is college college okay uh_huh and see that's probably all all i saw i we have moved in the last couple years from utah to texas and there's so many colleges and universities in texas we haven't really followed them too much and none of them are our our alma mater so that seems to help uh i i follow it especially around the playoffs so course i was real familiar with the utah jazz and the [mailman] or [karl] [malone] was you know pretty big thing and the lakers have always been amazing to watch i i did keep track a little bit of the mavericks they've not had any good seasons for a long time and have a lot of problems with with tarpley and maybe now that that's over they'll they'll come out of it but yeah i hope they do something they need to or they're not going to have any of the team left at all yeah kind of like the cowboys i guess yeah they coming out of it this year we'll see if it's held on the bulls yeah they'll probably be pretty good course the celtics are always really really good too with their players be interesting to see how the olympics does this year with all the the n b a players playing on the olympic team so yeah i don't know how close i'll follow them though and the season hasn't started yet i'm usually more the end of the season person and we need to talk about baseball and so well it's yeah yeah it is it is and that's why i've i guess my mind went blank it's like last season was so long ago and i haven't really even started thinking about basketball yet so but this wasn't a good subject but we'll see how our predictions come true okay it's good talking to you all righty bye uh well where i'm from the atlantic coast conference is a very big conference and course we have duke university that was the national champions last year so i'm kind of hoping that they'll repeat again this year they have a lot of the same players back no this is college basketball right we have like carolina and duke and georgia tech and n c state teams that are normally ranked in the top twenty so hopefully we'll have a good year i don't really follow the n b a very closely do you like professional basketball yeah well that's an up and coming team though that's somebody you can get behind and be patient yeah they seem to be kind of not having a very good few seasons but i think chicago will probably with the n b a again yeah uh_huh that's true that's true it will be interesting it will certainly be different yeah oh my atlanta braves well i really do uh you know the basketball [season's] supposed to start in the next couple of weeks it's a long season yeah it's a little early we definitely will good to talk to you bye bye okay [lucille] i'm on on and our okay our topic was did you hear our topic all right basketball i guess i'm probably a lot like you i'm a dallas maverick fan well unfortunately i don't expect a great deal out of them they just have too many problems too many [ailments] too many hurt bones and maybe too much age at this point you know when roy tarpley just now he messed up on them it just hurt them so bad i feel like everyone else i feel sorry for donald carter and the members of the team and the management team and everyone else it just seems like they were just getting themselves in a position where they could possibly be a final a final team playing for all of it national championship or the world championship and something like this happens yeah i think at this time we're just in a a rebuilding type of phase you know i think that probably be evident with the more and more the more and more young guys they draft but oh gosh i'm so much a maverick maverick fan i don't know probably the boston celtics i've just always like the boston celtics they have a they have a similar situation in that a lot of old guys on the team and but they're still playing good ball but i'm i've always been a boston [celtic] fan too but you know i've lived in texas since seventy four so being a [transplanted] texan in in the dallas area i have to stick with those dallas mavericks yes we do you know yes i go to a few games i haven't been to many i'm not a season ticket holder or anything i was a season ticket holder of the cowboys for years and when my kids got to a certain age and went off to school and college and doing their own thing sort of gets boring going by yourself oh you bet well i don't know it seems like [rolando] [blackman] and and [harper] sort of carry the team they just i don't know i'm afraid to say that's probably who they need to trade to get someone in there good but and that can really help the team but they do that they trade the nucleus of their power right now well you know i feel like uh the best they can hope for this year is probably an opportunity to make the playoffs i like their coach i really like a lot and i just i think he deserves a good break i think he deserves a healthy team so they can really see what he can do for the club i think donald carter the owner i think with all he's invested he deserves a a healthy team for one year and a good break also this thing with roy tarpley just upset everyone i think fans owners management everyone you bet i think they're fools if they ever bring him back hate to put it that way i just would not believe him any more no there's an old saying you can you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink so and i think [tarpley's] just a sad case but to be making a a million dollars a year that's pretty sad oh i think you're right everything has been put out of perspective now you know you take a a young kid roy [tarpley's] age i'd say he was twenty one when he came into the league and now he's probably an old age of uh twenty five or six and making all that money well that's uh that's quite a that's a little more of a challenge for a young man than they they need at that point in their life i think i think you know it's created by [lucille] hughes all right and what yes uh_huh well i certainly am too now tell me what you expect from the mavericks this year um yes sir oh well do you think it's time that we go for new uh coaches is that part of our problem well it just it's so discouraging that they can't really i mean they're entitled to more than they've been able to do so far i i'm awfully sorry that the mavericks can't come on and and do roy who's your next best team or who do you like after the mavericks well we certainly need to support them do we not do you go to the game yes it does i'm sure it would in such a monstrous place down there but um maybe next maybe they can do some i don't know who do they need to trade yes sir it seems that way to me i course i don't know any of the newer ones that they have and i'm not well versed on their capabilities but we really need to do something i really yes sir and they have just done as much as they can for that man and he apparently can't straighten his act out so we need to to build on something more positive than that oh i do too i certainly would agree to that well it um i mean you can't give anyone too many chances and i think he has gone over the limit that's right well it is tragic i don't um i mean we're going to have to do something about all of these fabulous salaries they're paying to all of our athletes i think yes sir i think you're right i believe that one so uh did you watch the bulls this morning they won in a [squeaker] they won by they won by two points uh they were behind as they headed into each quarter and then they came back in the second half and at the end i think they were uh looked they looked like they were closing it out and then detroit kept coming back and uh isaiah missed a three point attempt at the end and uh i think the bulls won by two i think they do as a matter of fact one of the uh commentators said that they expected that the bulls would uh if they continued at their current pace uh set an n b a record for seventy wins in a season yeah they looked real good and right yeah well they they're they're balancing their attack and i think they look like uh they'll repeat although uh here in the bay area people are real impressed with what don [nelson's] done with the warriors i saw the the second half of the game last night and they were impressive billy owens looks like he was that was a good move for the warriors to trade for him well they traded away uh mitch richmond or is it tim [hardaway] one of the two uh who along with uh chris [mullen] was you know though three were three of the best in the n b a and and they made a heck of a [threesome] and they traded either richmond or [hardaway] to sacramento for billy owens and uh yeah oh yeah he's really worked out well they've got the warriors have got a team uh and uh i think that will be real interesting to see what they can do they're ahead and the lakers are down i guess in fourth uh position in the west and i don't know in the east i don't know uh is it boston in uh first place boy they've had a hard time they said they've lost a lot of [squeakers] yeah how do people in texas deal with dallas houston and san antonio do you for example like san antonio in dallas so there isn't much [crossover] huh yeah yeah it's true because san antonio isn't that close to you are they no is it yeah so it's not something you'd drive yeah i was thinking maybe david [robinson] made a bit of a difference with kids and that sort of thing they've done a good job i mean of course drafting a franchise like him certainly yeah i mean that's i think the way it uh i think that's the way it works now in basketball you you know magic was a franchise for the lakers and you know uh bird for the for the uh celtics and well it well yeah well i think you're right and i think isaiah thomas would fit in detroit and i think those things do make a difference and there are [marquee] players and i think i think jordan and the and the bulls have to be uh considered the likely favorites i don't know who would meet them in the west uh i don't know how good portland will turn out to be by the end of the year they were so you know i wasn't i i i watched only a few minutes of it and i wasn't paying attention uh and so i don't know uh but phoenix you know phoenix and portland have both been very good clubs and you know what i watched a little bit of uh of the bulls game and i uh had to leave uh in fact i i think the bulls were ahead when i uh when i left who won the game is that right uh_huh wow they've got the don't they have the best record now yeah wow they they do and they you know i think by uh by [relieving] some of the pressure off of uh of uh uh michael jordan really helped them out you know he doesn't have they don't have to rely on him to score you know thirty or forty points at every at every game so oh i know i'm yeah i saw the i saw the warriors uh just a little bit of the highlights of the warriors uh dallas game they look good yeah now i don't uh i haven't kept up with what was going on with uh with the uh_huh good move yeah uh i think boston's in first uh i you know i haven't kept up with any of the other uh teams i'm so depressed with the dallas mavericks you know oh man that well yeah but i mean just this whole year has been just disastrous for them and uh you know they're going i i think they're going for an all time record of how many you know losses in a row they can they they can uh pull out it's unbelievable uh well actually actually the the the dallas area here uh pulls for dallas uh san antonio pulls for san antonio and houston pulls for for the rockets there really i mean not a whole lot you know i mean you find them they're find them be to be pretty [loyal] uh in with the local teams uh you know it's kind of i guess it's kind of like uh there in the bay area you know you don't find a whole lot of uh of sacramento fans really isn't uh uh it's you know it's it's about the same uh same distance from here to to san antonio as it is from there to sacramento so it's yeah it's not really a local you know uh he does a lot of local stuff there in san antonio and they i mean they have got a great club you know yeah yeah that always makes a big difference so yeah and you know uh you know i used to think that that one one player really doesn't make a club but it really does you know you get somebody like magic and you can see the decline in that team once he left you know it's it's just not the same uh it's not the same team there's not the leadership there that they used to rely on him for oh yeah who won that portland game uh all right there we go so what's your [prediction] on north carolina and duke i mean my gosh uh look who kansas beat to get to meet north carolina i mean they they beat uh arkansas and they beat and they beat they beat indiana they [creamed] indiana well i i thought so too they they just had a [letdown] in the second half and they couldn't recover well they say u n l v may be the greatest amateur team ever yeah big time i i'll bet they could hold their own in the n b a seriously i i bet there's teams they could beat possibly yeah actually i'm kind of a lakers fan myself oh yeah him and worthy and uh yeah yeah he's good coming off the bench now and of course the other they got sam perkins and that that helps oh okay well you remember sam perkins when he was at north carolina don't you see he was a [teammate] with james worthy and michael jordan the the three of those guys were the three [pillars] of the national championship team north carolina had back in eighty two i think when jordan was just a freshman yeah in fact uh jordan hit the winning basket to win by one point with like sixteen seconds to go they gave him the ball he took the shot he makes it he's a hero if he misses it he's a goat he made it yep well i really don't think anybody can beat u n l v they they might beat themselves but i don't know they're at such a high level of [intensity] they would have to have a really off day and somebody else would have to have a really on day and if that if both of those happened at the same time you might have an upset yep yep they're absolutely [relentless] well they're so close to an undefeated season they can taste it and they want to make history so i don't think they're going to lack for motivation well i mean it's it's no [disgrace] to lose in the final four well u n l v is kind of in a different league from everybody else it it's kind of similar to back when u c l a was winning seven titles in a row from sixty seven to seventy three back then they they called the well with him yeah and with bill [walton] and they used to call it the uh the u c l a [invitational] because they figured everybody else is coming to just to be there yeah i i don't know that any one team is going to be able to dominate for that many years in a row uh partly because the really many of the really outstanding players leave college before they turn seniors so you don't yeah so you don't really get to keep the the nucleus of your best talent for the whole four years well this has been fun i've enjoyed talking with you and god bless and you have a good day now well i think uh n c a a is going to go to kansas they just won it holy cow i just walked in i i didn't even i guess uh i can't believe it's over what was the score well i suppose they must be they must be pretty good if they took on u n l v so well you and everybody else well a lot of pressure on them though i think uh i don't think they had the same type of enthusiasm or attitude probably too conservative or too yeah yeah well what about professionally i'm out in the uh phoenix so the suns are starting to look pretty descent but i think yeah yeah i used to live out there and uh seems like they well tarpley just got pulled over again who who else do they got on the team now i haven't uh_huh yeah yeah how's he doing this year how about the guy from north carolina perkins perkins that's right that's right he is a [finesse] player he was good [dantely] didn't they get [dantely] i think that was involved with the perkins trade to tell you the truth no no no no no no it was what is his name [mcguire] that was [mcguire] yeah yeah i don't understand that i thought that he was always a good player are they over five hundred uh_huh yeah i think the suns are yes well they're i don't think it was last year the year before they were doing really good and i think they had an off year last year did you say white or black chambers yeah he's the big guy here i haven't been i don't follow basketball real close but yeah the big ten didn't fair too well in the tournament i'm i'm from the midwest so yeah i kind of watch you know see what's happening but uh what's that well no basketball is you know michigan won it last year yeah indiana and michigan uh and uh iowa and ohio state ohio state was ranked like number two most of the year michigan won the n c a a last year and you know there's also about six teams that go to the tournaments uh from the big ten it's it's they are really good in all the sports they actually in the last few years um football you know looks like it has gone down a little bit so and uh yeah we'll see [alrighty] well have a good one okay bye bye what basketball team are you most familiar with yeah where'd you move from uh_huh well yeah the mavericks uh have done fairly well in the past but doesn't look like they're going to do too good this year oh i kind of follow it a little bit i'm not a great fan of it but uh you know i read a little bit about it and follow it on the radio and everything but uh i was glad to see them get rid of that guy tarpley although by far the best player they've ever had i guess yeah it did it did and and they had to do they had to get rid of him but i couldn't believe they'd given him a contract like they had where that they couldn't get rid of him i guess they felt like that was enough you know uh if that you know if if they had to get out of it they could and they wouldn't want out of it unless he did something wrong if he did that well that'd cancel the contract i guess yeah yes that's right he'd be worth it yeah he'd be worth it but oh they got blasted didn't they yeah that was unbelievable i i hadn't seen that score i just heard somebody talking about they'd gotten beat real bad and uh but i think they did better last night though didn't they yeah so that was a good game i guess i i really don't follow them that closely although there was a good article today in the in the sunday magazine about uh brad davis did you read that course well it just uh this is going to be his last year but it just you know he just been it's amazing that he's one of the original mavericks you know still playing he is the only original maverick yeah he started out with them when they started and has made just to make the team every year so so and you know you don't you don't make the team if you're not any good so he's done well six hundred thousand a year uh_huh and he's worth it huh no i don't see how that no they won't even they won't even come close to the playoffs i don't think yeah yeah that's a big stretch probably yeah and uh but boy they you know they've had some darn good teams in the past i guess that's why it's so hard to swallow you know right off the bat they started doing well yeah it makes you they've had some coach problems over the years uh [motta] was probably the best they've ever had or ever will have but he i don't know he just he was such a hot head that he just quit one time and man once he made up his mind to do something like that he gone he don't change his mind but he was by far i think the best coach they ever had but he couldn't get along with [aguilar] i mean aguirre yeah aguirre and uh he he had a hot temper uh_huh uh_huh yeah probably yeah at least two years ago or longer but they did they used to have some darned good teams but uh i've always been a and i don't follow basketball that closely but i've always been a celtics fan because i love to watch larry bird play always you can always count on playing a good brand of basketball and of course so can so can you depend on the lakers for doing that but i don't know i just always liked ole ole bird he just can do things that i don't think humans are supposed to be able to do with a basketball him and magic johnson and ole jordan but we'll have to keep our fingers crossed i guess for the ole mavericks well and they got a they got a good owner i mean he's willing to spend the bucks to get what they need so i think it's just a just a matter of time until they it may take them a couple of years uh_huh yeah and that that's yeah that's just too old for a basketball team kathy you know i was thinking about basketball teams and uh the funny thing is that when i was in college at b y u i followed the school team and uh and then when i graduated i mean and got married and everything i really kind of lost interest in following teams have you been following any oh no i know they are always have uh i mean i can't believe the amount of money that the players make in the first place and i uh i mean i know that they have a short uh career and everything that's true it is really a lot but uh my sister always gets uh season tickets to the utah jazz and uh so she watches their games a lot and everything but i don't believe we have ever been involved with any teams that you know makes it to the playoffs too much uh_huh you did well i was at b y u when they made it to the playoffs i think they played notre dame or something uh for the big game i can't remember now that was so it seems like it was [eons] ago it was like ten years ago i think and uh uh isn't that the one that was like the star player with danny [ange] i think he started playing for the boston celtics after that and uh and uh there was another the center it has been so long i can't think of anyone's name but uh i i was there that year and enjoyed that game and uh but mostly like i say i haven't been following the team and don't know who's got what record i haven't played in uh i broke my knee cap but i did play in high school i was on a high school girls' team well i went to missouri and i went and i played for a [parkney] high school in [springfield] missouri and i played uh a forward and uh i enjoyed that then and it's i always loved sports do you play for your ward well that is a problem uh_huh no well i was thinking about my own personal basketball experiences as opposed to professional you know i had rather play than watch any thing and uh so i you know like i uh well i uh i should [sampson] do you remember him and because he came to houston when i lived there and uh to play for the houston team and he was really i thought a bad sport and uh and i haven't followed like i say uh_huh uh_huh yeah that is really true but a well don't want to spend so much of my time uh [memorizing] statistics and uh keeping you know being wrapped up in a team and caring whether they win or lose in the sense that it makes a big difference in my life i just don't have that kind of time uh_huh that's true and you know i get i have interest in the games but i am satisfied to watch a score in the newspaper or on you know the sports news report or something right rather than just like you say watch clips from the game no i my both my children are little they are just in kindergarten and first grade so no they don't play and uh my husband loves baseball which i don't really prefer to uh so we haven't uh had don't get into basketball too much but anyway now if i can remember what they were called uh no i don't think so no it was the astros the astros were the baseball team and the oilers rockets yes that is it the rockets oh do you uh_huh yeah it's been around for a long time hasn't it yeah who's the coach's name yeah that sounds familiar yeah and with pro ball you mean who will the [opponents] well why that doesn't make sense does it uh_huh yeah yeah but to me i'd want to quit oh that just shows how much he gets paid anyway huh really where are you all living now denison yeah do you ever watch the mavericks yeah huh yeah like who uh_huh yeah yeah he's good too i used to watch basketball in fact of of the pro sports i guess it's my favorite it's just that i haven't watched many sports this year or in the past several years how come the uh academic requirements uh_huh huh four out of five hurts four out of five hurts huh so well no wonder they're out of it i said no wonder they're out of it uh_huh so they'll be back uh_huh well do you agree with that requirement that they meet those uh academic uh_huh well i didn't realize it could vary from state to state or to huh how does that coach feel about that uh_huh huh on national t v yeah it's all politics yeah uh_huh huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh for heaven's sake what a [cheapskate] yeah oh his elementary school wife oh really well she might have been the cause of it yeah yeah oh yeah yeah i can imagine especially the kids that were buying them yeah huh well that [almighty] dollar uh_huh yeah it is well i think we met our time limit well probably the one that plays here the mavericks uh they're not doing the greatest that i've seen them play before but uh well they're doing okay no no i i think without uh roy tarpley they're he he added something to the team but uh i think they need to let him go maybe he doesn't seem to course i have a lot of players that i think are really super i think isaiah thomas is just great and uh i think uh he he does really well i like to watch him play he just has a really good moves and uh i don't know i i guess uh uh i guess i like to watch the [mailman] play for the the utah team uh when he delivers he does okay and uh uh i can't think of the name of the team that has larry bird on it oh the celtics i like to watch them play the whole team i like their whole team yeah uh_huh i you know like i said i like isaiah thomas but i think sometimes that uh that uh he he sometimes ends up being a one man team uh whereas the celtics like you said they play more as a team uh yeah i like michael jordan a lot too he's really good uh danny [ainge] i like danny [ainge] okay well well i guess because he played at at my alma mater so i i kind of watch him every now and again yeah yeah and he played really well when he was there so uh it's it's hard to name him with some of the very top players i think sometimes but i'm glad he's playing in the in the pros you just wondered why i named him portland uh_huh right now yeah they yeah i i liked when he uh he was playing with celtics and then he traded to portland and uh it was a good trade so uh i don't remember i really don't it seems like he went straight there you know because i don't remember him playing for another team other than straight through yeah so what's your favorite team do you have a favorite team yeah uh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah yeah uh_huh i watched uh well i didn't watch them but i i saw in the newspaper and on the news the playoff teams and and without larry bird and and michael jordan when they got injured you know it was interesting i think then how their teams did uh how it brought the scoring down a little bit but their teams stayed relatively together you know and so you know i think sometimes it's interesting we we really watch the big name players and but they have to have a solid team underneath or else they really don't don't go anywhere so i i think that's kind of the mavericks problem they have okay players but sometimes the [strongness] of the team isn't together you know every once in a while they click during a a game and then it works for them but then it's just not always there so i i guess that's yeah english did okay he did okay but uh oh i think [adubato] as the coach of their team uh has done a lot for them i think he he's uh brought some strength to that team uh uh he he's really trying hard he's a nice guy i like him as the coach of the mavericks so i don't i don't know a lot of coaches in the in the n b a though yeah that's true yeah that's true yeah i think they're i think they'll let him go anyway i i uh i like basketball it's a fun sport i i like to watch it i like to uh i guess i like it because of of the [quickness] of it uh and and i like it because it takes the players have to be you know it's not a game where you can just not practice i mean they have to be on the top of their game to be in the n b a i think yeah or else yeah yeah i don't watch much of that i watch our town plano uh plano east is where my children will go i have an eleven year old son and he plays basketball and my my husband coaches his team and uh they uh i think they were one off one loss to the playoff and uh i like to watch our plano east senior high boys play they are they did really well so yeah i like yeah i do like the the games not only basketball but the other ones too that the high schools play i keep up with that so yeah yeah yeah well you know what i think is you know like [spud] [webb] i mean you can really even if you're short like that you know in basketball today they get these huge tall players that that just you know if you want to do it bad enough i think it's a possibility in anybody's life he's he really goes for it and he's a good little player so i so i think if if any of these boys want to do it they really can if that's really their dream so takes work though that's the big yeah yeah yeah yeah well i just think that basketball's a fun game and i guess i still have to stick with the mavericks i guess as far as what are they called jazz oh never heard of them oh oh yeah uh_huh so that's good yeah well maybe we'll hear of them more often well i guess what we have here is the mavericks is that right basketball what is what is our dallas basketball i'm not really sure one is soccer one is basketball the mavericks must be basketball and uh my daughter plays basketball you wouldn't know it would you from this conversation i'm familiar with the teddy bears and they're my favorite well now she's twelve so but she's been playing basketball for four or five years on a little team called teddy bears and that's been fun so now she just made her middle school team so that's and they've won so far that's good but uh yes she likes it a lot yeah she really does and the lakers i guess is my favorite as far as as anything i know about basketball yeah because i my boyfriend's in california so i'm going to have to look at lakers this year a lot so i guess i'll get used to it i learned a lot about football so far so uh i guess because her friends signed up and she wanted to sign up she [twirls] and she's she's been real real involved in that so we haven't had time for soccer which is the most important thing around here pretty i mean all the little kids play soccer they even have like a preschool soccer team it's big in texas and maybe all over now i don't know but uh it's very big here but we didn't have that time and so i did let her play basketball and i like it because it's indoors yeah i like indoor things so yeah yeah well she's pretty fast she's not real big but she's real fast and so uh yeah yeah but oh in the beginning you know they couldn't even make the basket and they were allowed to stand halfway forward to take solid shots and they couldn't even get the ball that high because they were so little and not strong enough and then uh her last game just before the whistle blew they had two seconds left she threw the ball from center court and it went right into the basket so she was the hero after all those years of trying to get that ball up in that basket so so that was pretty fun to see the improvement and her coach was behind us in the bleachers but from the other team and he said christmas came early this year so yeah no my son never played uh basketball he's he's grown and he he's in the band and he swam some mostly he was a student so yeah he's a national merit student and he speaks five languages and all that so he wasn't much into sports he did play baseball for a while and he liked that but uh he didn't he didn't play basketball at all i did i played basketball in high school i loved it that and volleyball uh_huh yeah i love it i think it's my favorite and it's my favorite to watch and when i was in high school i was a twirler and so i always enjoyed that and [cheerleading] you know we got to do it indoors so i always liked the basketball games better than the football games because you weren't out in the cold well yeah and it's easier to follow if the ball goes in they get two points football everybody falls on top of each other and it's real difficult to say exactly what went wrong you know for me anyway oh really oh my gosh uh_huh do do they do they traditionally have a good team or is this sort of an unusually huh huh yeah see and we it's they're actually in the university of texas system and i don't i don't even know anything about them i'm here in austin we have uh u t austin right which is which is just generally go to the university of texas right and the the longhorns and uh actually i don't know right now longhorns aren't having quite the year that they had hoped uh they they had a a star forward that that was [disqualified] because of of something i guess since he was leaving his junior college day some supporter gave him a car or something and uh yeah it sure did because they were they had a real good start and then and then and then ended up you know they they're they're holding on but it's not it's not going to be a a season like they had last year when they went to the n c a a uh_huh uh_huh yeah no it something that happened outside of that you know and and it happened as as part of his junior college career but no but they pulled him out of the out of the lineup you know and it was something he he reported himself or i mean they it wasn't a and and the n c a a uh immediately suspended him and then and then actually u t on his [behalf] filed a an [injunction] in the court system to allow him to continue to play which worked for a few games and then they then they pulled him in so yeah but they've been having uh i mean last year they had a real good team they had they had a new coach tom [penders] come in um about i guess about three years ago and and the program had been in a long a long decline you know for for years they i guess back when abe [lemons] was here they built quite a quite a tradition and then it it kind of went downhill for for a couple of coaches and [penders] has done a good job of getting it back on its feet and doing some you know playing some good basketball but yeah uh_huh uh_huh huh i don't know yeah the women's program is quite interesting down here the the women's program here in in austin uh actually for a while it was was drawing bigger crowds than the men's program if you can imagine that they but they you know they just have have traditionally been a dominant a dominant basketball team i mean they've they've always been in the top top eight in the country um and actually had a couple of years that they haven't been quite as strong but but uh the the southwestern conference the they've been undefeated in the they were no they aren't now but they had been undefeated in the southwestern conference for something like a five year streak or something and so it is they've they've that's that's quite a tradition here in texas uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh well so you don't know too much about the dallas mavericks this no they are uh only just a slightly a bit better than uh the other expansion teams they're they're they're a team in disarray right now actually i used to and i gave it up this year because i thought well roy tarpley wasn't going to make it and sure enough about a week after i decided not to buy my ticket he went down with his uh his drug problems and uh boy the team just is going into a [tailspin] since then yeah you're kidding how did you manage that uh_huh sound sounds like a real game huh well he must he must be a pretty big guy jeez well it's it's nice to see those uh know those kind of guys when they get paid all those big bucks to uh you know to be halfway friendly but i know what you mean about talking about being big i mean that's when i was in high school i i went to a a cleveland cavaliers game i'm from ohio and a friend of mine runs or used to run the clock down on the floor so he'd let me get down on the floor at half time and i stood by these guys as they all walked out and and gee whiz they're just [monsters] i mean seven foot doesn't sound that tall but when you stand next to one it is real tall so you you don't get down to uh basketball games very often then uh_huh wow so you didn't watch the all star game uh yesterday yeah i i got out the weather was so nice here that i got out and didn't didn't see any of it well that's uh you talking about the olympics now yeah summer olympics is his next thing well i really you know it's it's his choice to play but there's a lot of other people you know the other team's choice not not to play against him i think he's going to find a a lot of people just say well heck i'm not going to you know i'm not going to mess with that are you serious how how can they do that if he hasn't played the whole season oh unless they yeah unless they're just carrying a one odd guy instead of carrying the ten or eleven that they carry just carry one less well i you know i didn't watch the game but a friend of mine was telling me that he you know he played a lot but he he played then he'd sit down then he'd play and he'd sit down it wasn't like he was out there for twenty or thirty minutes at a at a go yeah once once uh he starts losing that weight and can't keep it on you know he'll have to slow down and not not do that kind of stuff that that's got to be awful awful tough on his [bod] oh jeez they they are they need players and and they need a front office that that can judge players we've traded away so many good players in the past five years and got nothing for them and drafted so many bad players and you know they haven't turned out it's uh it's very frustrating we we had one year we had two first round picks and we picked uh a guy by the name of bill [wittington] uh who's a seven foot center a white guy and [uvay] [blob] another seven foot white center and they're both okay but i think both of them are playing in the italy now and they you know they traded away mark aguirre and got nothing for him i mean he had to go but they okay ellen what kind of a car do you think you're going to buy yeah oh you do want a lot of that stuff what kind of uh things are you going to consider you know what uh you said something about the about the well what do you call them you said amenities that they have but what about um their reputation of the company or the price it is for me other people don't seem to have the same problem yeah yeah well um the last car we bought was american because of because of that reason but have not been entirely happy with uh several things about the car it doesn't seem like the quality is quite as high as i expected it to be because several things minor things sort of but still they cost us money um that we didn't feel like we should have had to pay on a car that that was that new you know we bought the car new and after um well well well under two years we had to replace the clutch and they just said well you know [clutches] are disposable and i said since when brake pads are disposable you know we know that but i never thought a clutch was disposable yeah so that was that was kind of a shock yeah you know the less actually the less you spend on a car it seems like luxury cars they're called luxury cars even though they're much more expensive like like uh uh a mercedes [benz] they don't have the history of breaking down or things like that that would go wrong would definitely not be considered disposable you would never think of having to replace the clutch in a mercedes especially not after two years really oh i don't know uh_huh yeah what kind of what brand of car are you thinking about buying or like what things are you looking at uh_huh how come i've been kind of um i guess the commercials are getting to me the toyota commercials and i know that a lot of people i've i've known that have had toyotas have been just extremely happy with them that hardly had any problems at all i think they have a really good uh quality uh_huh uh_huh yeah they seem to be really durable so i don't know i'm i'm not ready to buy a new car yet but i don't know if if the next time i'm going to try to to stay with buying something american or if i'm going to go for a little more what i would consider to be a long term investment oh it's easy to get gas mileage in this car it gets excellent gas mileage uh_huh i think so all righty thanks bye bye well as a matter of fact i was thinking about that the other day and uh i really don't know the answer uh i would sort of like to uh think about something in the way of uh uh sort of a sporty car but not any not you know a luxury type sporty one but um something that still has a lots of amenities and you know [gadgets] and things yeah well yeah i like i like some of those things they come in really handy amenities yeah well of course i guess uh price is always the big consideration but yeah well that's that's a big one in my book but uh um i have preferences for uh for some uh makers over others um and i would sort of like to buy american but you know i'm not so totally hung up on that that i wouldn't buy something else how about you oh really uh_huh oh yeah yeah yeah i wouldn't have thought so either oh yeah i i guess there's a lot to to think about when you're trying to make that decision right no but then no but on the other hand i guess too uh whenever you do have to have some major work done on one of those it costs a fortune yeah i've uh worked with a couple of people who have owned uh various years uh mercedes and even though they do a lot of the work [themself] then just buying the parts and everything is is pretty expensive but for them it's it's sort of a hobby too to own them well i haven't really gotten that far with it um i've always sort of liked general motors a little bit better than some of the others but uh-oh i guess i really don't know yeah yeah that i think that's uh_huh my uh daughter has owned two different ones and uh you know we've had some work done on them but it's not too bad and the reason one of the reasons we um bought the first one was because a friend of ours had a toyota that he just really drove for years and years and years and he lived way out in the country so he put a lot of miles on it and you knew it had had been through a whole lot and yet you know it it held up pretty doggone good so i thought they would yeah yeah well and i guess you know you always have to think about things like your gas mileage and stuff like that you know you yeah yeah that's one of the big throwing cards for some of the foreign ones well we talked long enough okay well enjoyed it bye bye okay so what kind of car are you thinking about getting well when you decide to uh_huh so you like the ford uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh yeah it's the this the car i had before this one was a thunderbird as a matter of fact and uh i loved it i really did but uh um i finally decided to go check out what the uh what the uh foreign cars were so i bought myself a a a nissan a two forty s x but even though i love the car i've got now i think my next car will probably be american again because if i can at all do it i'd like to stay american i always have up until now i just for one time decided to go outside so uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh well [ford's] done a real good job in the last uh say ten years or at least the last five to six years so of really turning around their um quality i think um uh_huh um oh yeah those were not good cars uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh you know the only thing i'm looking at right now um i just i just bought you know the nissan that i've got about uh say nine months ago i guess it was so the only thing that that would get me to change cars right now would be if see at the moment i'm single and if i were to get married and have a family that would have to have something to do with it but uh i don't have any plans for probably another two three years of even looking you know uh cars are too expensive right now to uh to even think about buying new cars every couple of years you know it's uh_huh um uh_huh yeah that's uh i went to a a car show down here about uh about two weeks ago and um you know of course they had the normal the ford the the chevrolet that stuff but then you started looking at the uh uh they had ferrari there they had uh b m w and all these other kinds of cars and ferrari didn't even let you near the car i mean they were that's how expensive they were and then you saw uh hundred thousand dollar cars you saw eighty thousand dollar cars and even even though i i i do enjoy cars i enjoy um driving them i enjoy uh riding in them and everything but i can't see buying or paying more for a car than i would for a house you know that doesn't seem likely uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i think so that's happened to me once so uh yeah like uh i think the one time i did it was on the mid the mid east the crisis out there that was had a great conversation but uh then they came off and told us we couldn't do it any more so yeah you too bye bye well none at the moment no no no i currently drive a a ford taurus and i would i would imagine that if i change or if i get another car a new car i will go with the taurus or something similar uh in that regard absolutely i have had it for about two years now and it's uh it's everything it's supposed to be uh i haven't had a minutes trouble with it and uh the only thing i have against it in that's it's a taurus but i still feel a little even after two years i still feel uncomfortable driving it because i had a honda before that and so it's a little bit larger but that's the only the only difference that i see really but i would my my criteria would be at the moment it would be uh american uh personally uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well my wife drives a still has a a honda accord and it's a very it's an excellent automobile and uh but you know price and so forth i'm not a real car fan so i i i do not uh opt for uh something that would be you know expensive you know i want i want something that's serviceable serviceable something that i can use and uh and i and with the taurus i have a taurus uh l x and it's you know you're talking when you think about price it's several thousand dollars lower than the comparable honda or nissan or something along those lines and as i said as far i'm concerned it it has been extremely uh uh serviceable and everything i wanted uh_huh oh i think so too now i you know in travel and renting automobiles uh in i've driven you know chevrolet automobiles and so and dodge and i if it's chevrolet i just will not touch it uh i had a chevrolet before i bought my taurus i purchased a a chevy um [citation] and uh i was ready to get rid of it two months after i bought it and uh so i i shopped around and i would i probably if i had thought i uh wanted to pay the amount of money i probably would have gone with uh uh an accord or even a a civic or something comparable from nissan or toyota and uh but it was just i had i have a friend who uh has a uh an auto shop and he purchased one of the first [sables] that was uh manufactured for his wife a [sable] station wagon and he just absolutely swore by it and it was upon his recommendation and so forth for you know comparable [comparably] equipped you know with cruise control and air conditioning and a m f m radio and all these other things uh it was just there was no there was no comparison uh the only thing that i find you know if i would have anything against it is that it still has that soft american ride uh not uh that's about the only thing i find you know [disadvantageous] to it but my criteria is simply something that looks good something that's serviceable and i you know i drive around a lot but uh and it's you know it's very comfortable on the highway i can drive for you know ten hours or so and not really be tired in any way but those are my criteria and i i probably in another six months to a year or something will probably start looking around again and if there's something out there that uh is comparable to what i have now i'll go ahead and get it uh_huh i yeah in our parking lots uh two or three days ago i saw one of the new honda sports cars uh i i can't remember what the name is it's the thirty five or forty thousand dollar one whatever it is and it looked it resembled a [mazaratti] very very closely and it's an absolutely beautiful automobile and well appointed and so forth but to pay that much money for an automobile uh is just i can't i can't conceive of doing that uh_huh that's true well the difference there is too uh is between us is that i am not really crazy about driving i never have been since you know my parents had to force me to get my driver's license when i was young when i was sixteen so i've never really cared now what i was you know before i was married and before i went to graduate school i used to do little sports car racing i never it was never my own car it was always someone else's and that sort of thing i enjoy but to go out and drive uh never has really been had any appeal to me in that regard so well i guess we've discussed that enough don't you think we won't we don't we won't get the recorder or the uh system to shut us off uh tonight that's happened to me almost every time i've well it's very easy when you get a you get on a topic that you know you enjoy oh yeah well i was talking to a lady last evening and we were talking about fishing and uh we were cut off well we were told to quit okay well you have a pleasant evening take care good bye oh okay oh uh_huh yeah sure you ready okay well it won't be too much longer because my husband and i are both going to retire and when we retire we're going to buy us a you know a new one and and get rid of the two that we have right now i i don't know we're either going to buy a pick up or we're going to buy a van or we're going to buy an economy car how do you like that uh yeah yeah it sure does i really would like to have something like that and i'm hoping that by you know that's like right now my husband would like for me to buy another vehicle right now but i keep saying lets put it off lets put it off because i'm hoping they'll get so many better features well just like that air bag i think that thing is fantastic because i've seen some of the you know like the head on [collision] type things when they had it and people walk away from it we had one here i guess it was about three weeks ago and the people walked away from the wreck with no scratches nothing you know a few [bruises] uh_huh uh_huh you got it i i tell you what i would not i would not buy a car that had the seat belt where it was hooked under the door well you know what the average person would you ever have thought of that i mean now you probably wouldn't have right because you always think i mean i don't know maybe you don't but just like me i always think well you know these things must be safe but that's just like i don't know if you've heard about it a few years ago they said you know before they had the like the shoulder strap thing where it was just like a seat belt that goes across your waist all these people were and and it it was on one of those kind of shows like twenty twenty these people were like [paralyzed] and because it threw them forward but they were hooked at the waist and so it like you know did something to their [spinal] cord then they were like [paraplegics] right yeah well tell me about your van do you like it uh_huh huh the reason that we're thinking about something like that we took a trip in my brother in law and sister in laws to florida and like i said i mean we're not that old but my husband works for the state and after a certain amount of years you can retire and when he [retires] i'm retiring well as soon as i get my quarters in i'm retiring period that's it you know no more as though uh_huh and we wanted to travel well that was really nice traveling but you know i like to know more i mean hear about more people that have things like that you know and see what they think of them the different kinds because i've only ridden in the one that's it uh shoot i can't even think of the name of it now uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh yeah well now this one that we went in it did baby what kind of van was that that we went to florida in ford a what ford a ford ford what you remember he was trying to think of what the name of it was this was a big one i mean it was a big one it has the front and the back and you know it has the uh back seat let down into a double i mean a queen size bed and then it had the two [swivels] in the middle and then the two [swivel] chairs on the front and i mean it was fantastic and it got good gas mileage but i don't know i don't really i don't i want something i can drive too you know and i was scared to drive that big van well do you does yours have that this one had it where you know you would see something coming in the rear view mirror i mean not the rear those little side mirror things and it would look like it was further back than it was yeah does yours do that too oh i was wondering if all vans did that uh_huh yeah well see that's the reason we couldn't make really make them at first we were going to get a pick up truck with a camper on the back of it of it but then that gas mileage was just atrocious i mean it's unreal it's it just practically don't get any yeah and then uh he talked about a van and i said well you know i don't know i don't know how the gas is on most of these and another thing was that's the reason i said you know there was such a big difference you know in a little economy car but i said maybe we might have to get us an economy car to pull along when we went somewhere but really and truly the safety features but i wouldn't get one that if it had the seat belts on the door now i wouldn't get it period oh that would be good oh i think so too i don't think they should do away with the seat belts now i'm but i think you need the shoulder thing i think you need the thing around your waist but i think you need that bag to pop out too you know because i know so many people here that have been killed in head on [collisions] where maybe if they had had that that air bag they may still be walking around but uh i think it's fantastic i wish they required it in everything every new car that came out i wish they would require it in it yeah well no because what they would do is that's what they're going to plan on you know they would have to do it the insurance company would have to do the same thing they're given like a ten year time limit where okay these cars i guess they figure all the old cars will be off the roads or something by the in ten years and then you know if you didn't have a car that had one then your insurance would go up enormously oh that's okay okay well you you too all right bye bye uh no i think that maybe the the [automation] people that are very [discrete] or not [discrete] electronic devices so and did he is he the one that got you connected with us okay it's a lot of fun you want to punch the button and go [yip] well are you going to buy a car soon and what are you going to buy well have you been listening to [iacocca's] arguments that uh that chrysler products are the only ones that that all have air bags does that make a difference to you yeah like what yeah that's did you see the uh i don't know if it was twenty twenty last thursday or friday night on on seat belts did that scare you a little bit with the lady being thrown out and run over that really i i guess i that that a little more than scared me that irritated me uh that because it it it surely didn't come as a surprise that that if the door came open the lady would fall out i mean and uh no probably well i might the problem is i'm really into cars and so it's not a uh for me it's it's a real it's a real consideration uh uh and and uh the but no i probably wouldn't have even though i'm really quite into cars it's it's probably my main hobby yeah uh_huh yeah yeah you know road and track had a had some articles on and particularly with with back seat uh with some where kids were were sitting in the back seat with seat belts on and they were thrown forward into the front seat and there was enough stretching the combination of stretching the spine to uh i mean the serious injury even though they were they were still locked in the they were forced to go so really if your sitting in the back seat your better off not not to have your seat belt on if it's just a seat belt we have a van that uh just has seat belts in the back doesn't have a shoulder [harness] i have an arrow star van we really do uh it's it's a mini van we've had it goodness in may will be five years and uh they replace the engine at sixty thousand under extended warranty and the transmission was replaced but they really are nifty uh the mini van it's actually we had a station wagon before and it's a foot or two shorter than a we had a regular size station wagon and it really uh we like it it the interestingly enough one of the features we like are the electric locks uh_huh uh_huh yeah well but the did you did you go to florida in a van yeah yeah what what kind was it what what was remarkable this van even with the we have two kids and we went to disney world uh actually i grew up in alabama and i went to see my mother and then went on down to disney world and it got better than i think twenty two twenty three miles a gallon and this was with the air conditioner on and and you know four people with with luggage and uh course this grant it that's you know it's been four years ago but it's remarkable that the that the bigger vans uh they're uh my boss just bought a a pick up truck and uh he only gets seventeen miles a gallon but it it has a big engine and it it pulls a boat and stuff but it's and it it's got the seats that and the other thing that is interesting is it has uh rear air conditioning and that that makes a lot of difference in those of us that live in warm climates well the big you know the big vans are all real nice yeah oh those are yeah yeah all right uh_huh well well the mini that you'd be surprised if if you drive a one of the the mini vans uh more or less alike the the uh chevrolet and uh well of course oldsmobile has got one and chryslers got one but they drive remarkably like cars yeah yeah but the little thing etched in it say objects are are closer than they appear or something yeah well you you can you can uh install those mirrors we've got the big side mirrors which are really nice i don't know if you've well if you've driven a pick up truck you know these are these uh mirrors must be six inches across not nearly a foot high and they're really nice uh got them on both sides actually they they fold so when you get in tight situations you can fold them back but they're uh_huh uh_huh well they have got some of the newer ones they you know with the [aerodynamic] features you can get pretty pretty decent gas mileage uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah ford now announced i think in ninety two they're going to put uh air bags in their in their vans so uh and i think i i believe safety i i i i really do believe in this stuff uh and i i think it can go i'm not the air bags are a good deal but uh surprisingly uh they're uh you really need to do you need a combination of both the air bags and the uh and the seat belts so yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it would be that would do to our insurance rates you know if if uh if the insurance companies says it says we're not going to pay you know a claim if if the car doesn't have uh air bags would be interesting wouldn't it uh that wouldn't be fair but uh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh i've got to go my son's in a performance tonight i have to leave in a couple of minutes uh i think we've probably spent a reasonable amount of time it was good talking to you okay good night okay so what kind of cars are you looking at uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh oh okay uh_huh right that's a real good deal in fact my dad recently got a um a pontiac uh believe six thousand and he got a demo and it's been a real good car and it's it's like new and it only had had very very low mileage on it and so i think he got a real good deal of course they're fully loaded usually so it's i think it's a pretty good option are the uh oldsmobiles that you're looking at are they the demos or they used are they new uh_huh uh_huh and then the cadillac is is definitely a used car or uh_huh oh no uh_huh yeah uh_huh right that's what i'm thinking about on my next car is do i want to get another brand new car because last two cars are brand new or do i look for a used car that's maybe two three years old that but that's you know low mileage and in good shape but i just i kind of worry about getting a car that's that new with low mileage on it because you wonder why did the person that owned it want to get rid of it is it a lemon or or is something wrong with it but i guess that's a risk you have to take uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh about how much do they charge to do something like that do you know yeah that's not bad it'd be well worth it if you're considering buying a car to find out yeah yeah well it's kind of hard for me to talk about buying cars because i just got mine paid off about a month ago and i yes i don't want to think about buying a car for a while i just want to enjoy not having any car payments for a while and enjoy watching my savings account get larger and uh you know hang on to the one i've got for a few years because it's it's it's almost four years old but it's still in great shape i have a mazda r x seven uh_huh yeah i just about could really because i think my car if i continue taking good care of it it's going to hold a pretty good resale value and uh if i consider going the used car route and save up some money i shouldn't have too much trouble at all could you hold on for just a moment okay i'm on a cordless phone and i was picking up uh some background noise so i just switched the channel up on it i didn't want to interfere with whatever they're trying to record anyway but uh i really i really enjoy the car i have now and i do want to hold onto it and and you know enjoy it while it's not having any mechanical problems whatsoever in fact it never has and uh it's been kind of nice and i surprisingly enough after four years i'm not tired of the car at all and i want to hang on to it while it's still being a good car and while i'm not tired of it and while i'm single and can handle a two [seater] for now and get that out of my system because one of these days i'll be getting a six [seater] probably too so uh_huh wow uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh my gosh oh no yeah right what kind of car is it uh_huh are you going to trade it in on this new one or okay uh_huh uh_huh so she's going to sell it rather than trade it in that's probably the best thing or maybe more than that as i've learned yeah when i bought my r x seven i uh best offer i got for my other car was twenty five hundred well i turned around and sold it myself for forty two hundred so you can do much better i'm glad you're you're taking care of it yourself i i think trading it in they just use that as additional they may give you supposedly a better deal on your new car you're buying but they just are going to give you that much less for your trade in what i think so but strangely enough the best i mean the best bargaining i had made with a dealer on my car was also the same place i got the best price trade in but it's a place in arlington and i think maybe as you get outside the dallas area i kind of i bet you it's kind of what i decided well maybe because it's outside of dallas they are giving a little bit better prices plus i was going through that t i fleet discount program well it's before they had that i had gone over to texins and they had a little file where they said which dealers participated in the in the fleet program and what you could expect they said you know a five percent over cost and then options at cost and everything so i figured out a price based on that but i i guess i got a pretty good deal because i went back to the town north mazda right off central and offered them the same price as what i knew i was going to be able to get it for in arlington and they said there is no way you can get this car for that price especially if we add on the [equalizer] and the cruise control he said you're going to get a car that's got flood damage or hail damage and they just laughed at me and i went the next morning to arlington and they gave it to me for that price and what's so funny they took the car they i knew they were going to pull it from town north because that's where the white one was and they had already told me we located one at town north so it was that same car yeah well unless you're selling car with hail damage and flood damage i got the car off your lot for that price oh i did and i laughed real hard when i took it in for the two thousand mile checkup and uh that they required you to do and i took it to town north and sure enough i saw that guy and he recognized me he said oh hi dana and he kind of looked down and saw that car and i'm sure he probably knew what was going on the very next day of course when the place in arlington went and took the car because i told him there's a place in arlington that's going to give it to me for that price he said no they're not and the next day they pulled the white car and took it to arlington so i'm sure he knew so i loved it i sat there and i just had the biggest [grin] on my face it was kind of nice yeah good talking to you too don okay good luck in your car hunting uh_huh bye bye well we've uh we've we've test driven the oldsmobile delta eighty eight and a cutlass supreme and a used cadillac about three or four years old because uh i get married in a couple of weeks and i have two kids and my fiancee has two kids so we need a car that's big enough for six and so we went i guess it was two weekends ago we went uh car shopping and looked around we found something interesting at crest oldsmobile cadillac up there on central expressway that uh in addition to getting a new car there they can get you a car that's new but it's been uh a demonstrator model for two or three thousand dollars even cheaper than the best deal they can give you for a new car so they call this program cars and they come with a new car warranty and it just seems to make sense to me to get the most car for your money to get something like that uh_huh okay yeah uh_huh sure oh yeah yeah i think so too well the ones that we were test driving were the uh were the new ones there uh_huh well now uh now they may be the demonstrator models that the sales [reps] drive around in yeah the guy said it'd been on the lot about thirty minutes he says it'll probably be gone in a done and it's probably gone by now those things go fast uh of course we're not we can't consider getting a brand new cadillac because those are twenty five to thirty thousand dollars but when they're three years old they're the price already drops in half so then it becomes uh more realistic uh_huh yeah that's right that's right well you can reduce that risk by uh having the car checked out i mean you know if you're going to look at fifty different cars you don't want to do this but if you've narrowed it down to one or two you can have the car uh uh checked at uh an independent service station and have them go through it from top to bottom and tell you if they can find anything wrong because they don't have any financial interest in it and then you'll have a realistic [assessment] of what you're getting oh i'm thinking around twenty or twenty five dollars no huh_uh i would i would think so i would think so isn't that a good feeling that's right well what you can do is take your car payment and put it in the bank for three or four years and when you're ready to get another car just pay cash for it yeah oh yeah yeah i i would think that's true sure right right that's fine that's right that's right well yeah that's right that's right eventually yeah the first two cars i ever bought well uh uh i've bought three cars and i've always bought them new the first car i kept for thirteen and a half years and got a hundred and sixty one thousand out of it the second car i ever bought i drive to work now that just turned ten years old and i've got a hundred and twenty two thousand miles on that so that that's kind of in the way i've done things is to get things that are new and then keep them forever but uh my car is using two quarts of oil a week now about about a quart every hundred miles so but uh it runs fine all you it's just very [thirsty] if i just keep the oil in it seems to be okay but you know that's a sign that i'm going to have to do something sooner or later it's a a buick century no my fiance is selling uh a nineteen seventy eight cutlass supreme that she has it's actually in better condition than my car and so she's going to get some money for that and take some money from the bank and then try to make as much down payment as possible to keep the monthly payment low yeah you lose four to six hundred dollars a trade in oh really oh there you go well that's fact i think you're right interesting okay did did you use it at the car shop place oh okay that's right yeah right right yeah that's good uh_huh right yeah yeah is that right my gosh and you laughed all the way to the bank uh_huh yeah yeah that's right yeah such a deal i'll bet you did well dana it's been really interesting i appreciate talking with you okay have a good evening thank you much bye bye okay what kind of car are you thinking about buying next what year oh okay well i have a ninety honda civic and i'm ready to get rid of it actually no uh well i i had an eighty eight that i really liked and it got wrecked and so i bought a ninety um because i i really liked my eighty eight and i've had a lot of problems with this one so well you it's it's kind of funny um i know a lot oh yeah it's it's true it's definitely true because yeah well honda does too that's why i was really uh_huh yeah that's true that's true no not at all oh i i definitely agree with you there because i had uh uh uh ford t bird before i got my honda and it was the worst car i've ever owned and um that's why i mean i was so tickled with my honda it was just a wonderful car and then it got wrecked and you know i wouldn't even look at another car i just went and bought a honda i mean i didn't even i didn't look around or anything i just said that this is what i want and i really have had a lot of problems with it but i don't know well i'll probably hold on to it since it's still under warranty but in the first twelve months that i owned it it was in the shop an average of about once a month it was in the shop about twelve times the first twelve months yeah it was i was really disappointed because i was you know so [hyped] up on honda so yeah well i know this well it's this is going to sound really strange but i really like to have a mazda m p v van i really like those and i have kids so they're a lot i don't like the new style like of the toyota van and the the new chevy [lumina] van i don't like those styles um the m p v is more of uh uh just uh i don't know what you normal i don't know how to explain more of an old fashioned type i i'm not sure how to explain it i mean it looks i guess kind of like uh the chevy [aerostar] or arrow no what astro astro i guess is what it something like that but i used to really like the looks of the m p v because it looks more like a mini van rather than i think yeah i have a couple kids oh yeah definitely but i know that it's got to have a radio it's got to have air conditioning i'm sure you can uh relate to air conditioning um living in arizona but and cruise control and tinted windows that's about it i mean it's got to have those things otherwise i don't care uh_huh yeah oh really sports car i'd like to have a sports car too but it's not practical for me but yeah whoops there's some kind of problems hello are you still there this is something's wrong i don't know it sounds funny though doesn't it huh oh at least yeah i know well new cars aren't cheap anyway but huh yeah we have we all have those kind of dreams too don't we what i'd really like to have yeah this is strange hello i think something's wrong with this i hope it's recording yeah yeah you're right yeah oh those are nice yeah they're they're cute cars uh_huh oh wow i haven't seen those wow oh yeah definitely if it's a limited edition usually no matter what it is if it's a limited edition it's usually worth something later on yeah oh really now see i would have never figured that i would have figured that to be a lot more than that for something that's limited edition and well they weren't really that bad though when they were introduced were they yeah that's true uh_huh huh huh yeah it really is have you seen the new uh dodge [stealth] the the real nice one yeah yeah the mitsubishi is real nice looking too now those are nice right right the expensive ones they have a cheaper model too that you can get for about seventeen thousand but those are pretty stripped and there's nothing there's really that one's just more for looks you know it doesn't have any really the performance that the expensive one does you know but i've seen one of those and it's not that great i mean because they really yeah like i mean they have um better it's not quite as nice for a little bit less yeah they're not really that bad but i don't know like i said it's it's still not practical for me i have a hard time looking at cars like that because i think now there's no way i can do that right oh really uh well what a what do we currently have i have a subaru uh g o x t eighty eight oh it's not pretty old so you think their quality [control's] going down over there kind of well i i i think we're going to see that i think uh that the quality that the japan [carmakers] had is slipping a little bit while american [carmakers] are trying to get their put together so but but that's one reason i uh i've had no problems with my subaru that's one reason i went with it because i subaru had a good reputation uh for you know low maintenance so well really there's there's no question but you have a nineteen i mean i've got to see if i mean i've seen and i've had friends that have uh like uh eighty one or eighty uh [celicas] and those things just keep [ticking] i mean they just they can rack up a a hundred fifty k on them and they're still beating on them and it's just amazing and then they got and you know they're not making them like that now you know so but they're still they're still a lot i think definitely better than the american [carmaker] system yeah yeah well maybe you need to unload it on somebody yeah that's a lot oh well anyway so what's your next purchase supposed to be oh really if you had a choice of your car what would you get i'm not sure i'm real familiar with the body style on that uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah oh okay yeah do you have uh do you have a family okay well that's probably influenced maybe a little bit oh yeah yeah well when i bought my car it was right out of college and uh you know i always been looking for something sporty and i ended up getting you know basically something that i could you know afford the only gripe i have is performance i probably uh a few girls that i've gone out with i've had uh like mazda r x seven's and stuff and they're they're pretty fun to drive so so i think that's what uh i i'm going to have to get next time around i keep i keep holding off and then i could i could upgrade now if i wanted to but i just i it's just such a huge expense and and uh i i'm just going to keep holding off but i'm definitely going to look for something uh in the you know nice you know yeah i'm in are you still there hello okay wonder what happened huh anyway um but i'll probably um it just depends i know that's what i want but i don't know if i'll get myself to spend that kind of money you're looking at you know for a new r x seven or a [supra] or something you're looking at twenty five k or something that like and so anyway but anyway my ultimate car though the the one that i really want is uh five sixty or so mercedes so maybe someday yeah that's the only one that i you know i you know i see uh you know early on that that that says it says you there hello okay i hope it's not my you there it may be my phone um anyway it's the only car that says you know sporty and class uh so uh kind of what i'm but it's at the other one my brother's got a miata and those are fun and uh yeah well he did he had a a red miata and uh he actually they came out with a european racing green uh miata that's a limited edition they're only going to make like three or four thousand so he went out and he traded the other one in and got this one and i'm like um but uh i haven't seen one yet either but supposedly they have some real wood built in to like the clutch and all this and the steering wheel so it's it's very authentic and there only is supposed to be limited edition so it may be may be a good investment if it yeah uh_huh but uh i think hello okay yeah i got off my pace or my cordless phone anyway uh hope it's not going bad it's going to bump me out um but he i think he he only spent you know the low [twenty's] so i don't know well i don't know i think the demands gone all down a little bit i think you can the prices aren't as high you know and the the miata was first introduced uh yeah the demand is so high that uh you know they were going to [retail] them around like you know thirteen standard you know and you get your options your looking at fifteen or fifteen but there were you know people were buying them for nineteen and twenty and um they they may have gone down a little bit but i they're still pretty much in demand i think there's another car coming in it's supposed to come out and compete with that miata and i can't remember what i read about that but so that's i mean i would think somebody would try to compete with that because it is very popular so but oh yeah yeah and the mitsubishi three thousand g t is the same same yeah well that's that's that's the same manufacturer and so they just market them but uh yeah those are and those are supposed to be very performance power i mean they're there is yeah big time yeah i think they're only around uh twenty nine k yeah yeah i'm being single and no other responsibilities for yourself i guess you know it's i can i can i've been pretty happy i've i've haven't tried to upgrade myself right now that's uh you know i could i could have you know get something nice and upgrade but i just uh i'm consulting right now so i just made my first job hop about eight months ago so i drive a honda prelude oh yeah i bought mine a year ago so i'm not buying a car any time soon yeah yeah it well i i like where all the controls are they're they're in good spots and i i have an automatic i can't drive a standard yeah but um i it's an it's supposedly real reliable the only thing i've ever heard about hondas is that the breaks go out first yeah yeah i had a buick regal yeah the buick was was great it was nine years old and it was still going strong the only problems i had with it in the nine years that i owned it i had to replace the [compressor] when it was about seven years old and that was the only major problem that i had i mean i had like little piddly things like i had to replace the muffler and i had replaced the tires and uh seems like it had a radiator leak once but i never had any major anything other than the [compressor] huh_uh well i never well i kind of know how to drive standard but i've never owned one so i hadn't i don't drive one a lot so i don't feel comfortable in traffic with it and for everything i've heard it's a lot easier to sell an automatic and and resale value is really important to me yeah yeah i did pretty well with my uh regal because it was in really good shape but it still looked real nice the the interior was still really nice there wasn't cracks all over the dash board and stuff and it had some some nice features so i ended up okay with the buick and i anticipate the same thing with the honda whenever i decide to sell it of course i may never sell it i may drive it until it's dead but yeah yeah uh_huh well uh_huh yeah oh i wasn't even looking for a car when i bought this car i uh i was thinking about buying a prelude from a friend who was moving to new york or something so and she was going to sell her car because she didn't need it anymore and it was only like a year old and i had never driven uh a prelude so i went to a dealership because they had like uh the same year and same model of prelude on their used car lot and i went and i test drove it and you know i just fell in love with this brand new white prelude uh you know two liter s i with the sun roof and the moon roof and i bought it loaded oh yeah i went there looking at a used car and two days later i bought this car i felt like i felt like that was the worst impulse that was that was largest impulse that i that i had ever made the the two other things that i bought on impulse are a v c r and a washer and dryer i go for the big stuff oh yeah i got i got my buick as a high school graduation gift yeah but i i guess this wasn't really an impulse i mean buying it right then and you know right quickly was kind of [impulsive] but i'd been thinking about buying a new car for about three years and i was just scared to i was scared to start taking on payments because the buick was long since paid for buy a you buy a used car sure yeah well um like on hondas they supposedly the maintenance records was supposed to be registered with honda or whatever and you can request whatever maintenance records exist on cars and you can have them checked out by mechanics and stuff i mean they can't stop you from doing it yeah well and even if they didn't you can still get a good idea from a if you can get a good mechanic to check it over real carefully and check the block and everything so okay well i enjoyed talking to you bye bye what kind of a car do you drive now do you i drive a honda accord yeah yeah me either i just bought mine uh it will be a year in august i love it though i love hondas i think i found my car right oh really i have a standard oh really i hadn't heard that what did you have before you bought that did you i had uh a mazda r x seven before that and that was the worse car i've ever driven in my life really really yeah right i really never had anything major with my mazda but it was a standard also and the clutch went out on it toward the end i had it five years and the last year last two years it seemed to go out really easily i think it went out twice in two years and that's that's a lot it shouldn't go out that much and so i went ahead and bought another standard when i bought the honda but i don't think i'm going to do that again i think i'm going back to automatic now right right yeah it is that's true yeah it is me too that's why i got the honda hondas have great resale value the mazda definitely did not not at all they're worse than american cars i think or just as bad as far as resale goes yeah right good right yeah that's what i did with the mazda drive it until the until the clutch went out and the wheels fell off so probably what i'll do again but i really like the hondas i like foreign cars a lot i looked at the mitsubishi [galant] i was looking for a four door car having driven the r x seven so long and it was so small and it's really impractical so i wanted something with a real trunk and four doors something easy to get in and out of and i looked at the [galant] and those were really nice and i can get them for a great price but i found it hard to deal with the the dealership i was going through so that's how i ended up with a honda right oh yeah they're nice i think oh yeah oh yeah i have to have them loaded um i love all those little things that you don't need but they're so wonderful i understand yeah i noticed mine was definitely not impulse i really needed a new car mine was just it was getting worn out i guess from being a sports car i drove it kind of hard and i got it right after high school so by the time i traded it in it was ready ready to go did you right right that's the same with me would you ever buy a used car for a new car for yourself like right i i was going to buy one once but i just i worry about who's driven them and what they've been through and the warranties and things like that just i can't seem to get over that that just bothers me i don't know why yeah that's true hoping that they do go to a honda dealership to get them [serviced] yeah yeah that's true well i guess that's all i enjoyed talking to you bye bye actually i'm real close to being in the market to buy a car i've got uh a couple older cars they're both over ten years old and uh they've served me well but i kind of would like to get a more uh gas efficient car and a newer model something looks a little nicer uh i've got three children at home two fourteen year olds and a twelve year old and so i need to make sure i've got one that i can fit all five of us into and if you if you know anything about teenagers it's kind of hard to get them to sit together for any amount of time well uh i've kind of been leaning towards a caravan uh now i know that that uh they've gotten quite pricey in the last couple of years but uh i like the dodge products and uh been uh couple times i've had a opportunity to rent one uh i've been really pleased with its performance and with the size and because if you get the seven passenger version you can put some space between the kids and uh i think that would that would serve us well plus it's got uh good storage capacity in it for you know taking things along going to the store uh_huh exactly correct yeah if you want yes yeah it uh the dodge [caravans] will do that uh you can take the uh uh usually there's a uh a double seat behind the uh front buckets and then if you get the and then there's a three seat that goes or three person seat that goes in the back now what you can do is you could take that middle seat out and just have the three seats in the back and the two seats up front or you can take the uh three seat out and just use the two seat or you can take the two seat and move the two seat to the back so it's very versatile you can move the seats all around about the only thing you can't do is take that three person across seat and move it forward uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah i think that's getting to be kind of important now that uh the price is becoming the driving factor and then you look at once you realize how much money you've got to spend then you start looking around at at what you can buy with it where before i think you you looked at the car you wanted and then you looked to see how well you could afford it or how you could afford it yeah yeah i know they're trying to do everything they can to uh end the recession and dropping the prime is probably one of the things i just bought a new house so i got a a uh nine and a half percent interest rate i'm not sure i could do much better today but uh that is also effecting buying a new car well that and that uh two fourteen year olds will be uh fifteen on the fourth of july so yeah they're twins born on the [bicentennial] you're going to have twins have them on the [bicentennial] is our [motto] july fourth seventy six so uh uh i've still got another full year and three months before they're going to be behind the wheel of a car so america's safe for another fifteen and uh after that now i may keep the uh one or both of the two cars i i currently have for them to drive you know they're they're they're small enough that a first time driver could handle it yet big enough that i feel feel safe that if they were in an accident they would survive know what i mean it i don't get that kind of feeling with the kind of car like you talked about the honda they're just uh_huh is that right uh_huh right jeez well yes definitely the thing is that they're i think it's a two part seat belt though there's the uh door belt and then there's one a lap belt make sure you smack him around then yeah yeah yeah the uh the supports uh a good source of information i've found has always been these uh used car manuals because you can flip through the used car manuals and they'll give you a list of all the problems that the car's had in the past and you can look at the uh the track record on a car over the year and you usually notice uh a lot of problems at the beginning and then things kind of iron out to where there's fewer problems and you get an idea on how well the the next car's going to be now as long as they aren't changing the model you know like when the uh pontiac grand prix went from being a huge car to a small car they had a lot of problems with the smaller car as long as they aren't uh_huh yeah sure uh_huh yeah i remember when that happened so unless they're really changing the model uh yeah chances are that it's probably going to have the the fewer mistakes than it had the year before uh_huh yeah yeah i agree uh_huh yeah well what what kind of car did you just buy a car or are you in the market to buy a car or oh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah i i seem to remember when i was young that was a problem no no car was big enough for that uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh which is the one that has [modular] type seats you know which one i'm talking about they have the commercial on tv where you can you can pull some seats out and you can move around is that is that the dodge caravan that does that or uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh well the one that i can't remember one it is if it's the it it's the toyota or or one of the other ones i don't know if it's one of the americans or the import ones where uh they actually have like uh some bucket seats in the back but you can actually pull them out i mean they're really easy to pull out uh and you can uh move them around and stuff and it it to me that that would be real good for us uh my husband and i uh like to go camping and stuff and right now we have a van which is it's an older van and we're we're thinking about buying another sedan uh probably next year uh right now motorcycles takes [precedence] since that that's what my husband really wants right now but uh next year we'll probably buy a new car and we're looking at uh possibly the honda accord uh that's kind of uh as far as far as the interior it's got the luxury interior but it doesn't really have the luxury price tag that a lot of the other cars have which is one of the things that we were looking at you know finding something that's that's fairly affordable but yet has all the nice luxury items that we want yeah uh_huh yeah well i think it's going to be a lot easier now i just heard that they [lowered] the prime lending rate so i think it's going to be a lot easier to to be able to get a car now and finance it i think banks are going to be a lot more a little bit more lenient yeah uh_huh yeah i can imagine you got to kind of work work that into your budget balance that and the house payment and of course uh is if you buy a new car you're going to are any of your kids driving age yet are are they twins oh wow uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well the the [honda's] have been have been very safe in in accidents uh more so that a lot of the american cars matter of fact i just heard something today on on the news about those uh automatic seat belts that are attached to the door uh they're questioning the safety of those now saying that and they showed uh a [simulation] where there they had a dummy in the car and the door opened and the dummy actually fell out of the car and the car rolled out on top of him so they're saying they're not as safe as they give the appearance of being safe but they're really not as safe as they as they uh appear to be so uh i'm kind of concerned about that as far as you know the seat belts uh i don't know if maryland has a uh a seat belt law but they do have one in texas and you're you're required to wear them exactly but ninety uh probably about well i don't know about ninety but probably fifty percent of the people that have those probably don't wear the lap portion of it i know my brother doesn't and he has one in his car so i mean it it kind of gives you a false sense of security you think oh i've got one portion of my seat belt on uh but if your door comes open you know it's not going to do you any good so that that that's a concern of mine as far as uh what i'll be looking at with buying a new car uh i'm not really sure if i would want the seat belts attached to the door i think i would feel better with them attached to the actual car the inside where they're normally attached to like behind the door uh_huh um yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah the the [le] [mans] is like that too uh we used to have a [le] [mans] when i was in in high school uh and it was a big car i mean it was like the uh the grand prix and in i think around nineteen eighty uh they changed the model and it like went to half the size literally i mean it got chopped in half and it wasn't even the same car anymore didn't even remotely resemble the old car yeah well everybody that i've talked to who's ever had a honda loves them and my husband had a honda uh and it was a lease car and he had to turn back in uh a year and a half ago uh and he had it for four years and never had a single problem with it and it was great uh and the only reason why we ended up not buying it was because we didn't feel the at the time the [residual] was like sixty five hundred dollars and it was a four year old car with seventy thousand miles on it and we thought that was a little bit too much to pay for uh a four year old car so so we ended up just went just went ahead and just turned the keys back in and and got out of the lease uh one thing that i that i am curious about is uh reading information on air bags do some of the vans i think i don't know about the dodge caravan but some of the vans now have driver side air bags which i think is a good idea okay what did you buy i'm sorry what oh really yeah uh_huh oh really um if i had the money i think i would love to own a a b m w i don't know i from what or either that or mercedes just because they're put together so well it seems like they last forever oh i don't know they're they're not as nice looking uh to me i don't know i'm sure there are some that are but everyone i've seen is kind of plain but sherman where are you dallas yeah if i had um had the money i mean that's just i know i never would own one but uh i don't know i like my actual favorite cars were uh like the ford [thunderbirds] of nineteen eighty five i really like that body style but i don't own one of those either uh mercury [topaz] cheap taste cheap taste in cars okay yeah they're all right it's it's a good car i mean i've never had any problem with it sorry i [roped] on volvos then sorry i [roped] on volvos then oh is it see i don't much about them i guess yeah really uh_huh um i like anything besides japanese of course everything has japanese parts in them anymore i don't like japanese cars but uh european i don't have any i mean those are the kind i usually end up liking the most american cars a lot of people say they they don't last long but i've never had any problem with um my mercury or my my husband has a uh cougar and he's never had any problem with it either so i don't know well what are your i guess this is your first time to buy american so yeah really yeah yeah where okay yeah this girl that works for me just bought a car down there and they they had a problem with they uh took their [camaro] in to get it traded and they they hadn't signed any papers and they had all ready uh taken it in to paint it and everything and everything was stolen out of it and the people um wouldn't reimburse them for anything yeah so i've heard some stuff about them but um what oh oh just about a week yeah yeah really oh wow yeah you too okay thanks bye a ford explorer a ford explorer yeah one of the new ones and um i'd i'd probably buy another this is the first american vehicle i've owned so i would probably purchase another one um i would be more selective in the dealership that i purchased it from but as far as uh the quality seems to be there um it's quiet it's it handles well um but i believe i'd get that or a porsche one of the two no not and why would that be what's wrong with the volvo oh what what city are you calling from oh up in dallas um b m w or mercedes yeah well that's a that's a uh_huh what do you presently drive um fun well there nothing wrong with those uh they're they're nice they're nice vehicles nothing wrong with those it um it's just everybody has their own taste but man the mercedes are expensive my wife has a volvo and it it's nice i mean you know it's okay an huh oh no no no no no no no it it i i kind of wish we would have maybe gone for the g l rather than the d l but because it is the safest car on the road uh oh yeah yeah there just safe to just that's the reason why we mainly got it we got white and it's the safest four door you know it's good for if you have a family which we do we just we just one out and so it's it's uh um you know they're kind of low to the ground after driving the explorer you know i presently i used to have a two eighty z and i'm a tall guy an and uh they're hard to get around in traffic to see because you can't see a car ahead of you but they're fast as lightning and all that crap but the explorer i mean you're sitting up on top of everything and you can really see real well and i just it's so comfortable and and uh so you're what are your feelings about american versus european cars why not that's the way it goes i guess yeah i was real hesitant but it was i don't know uh i mean i think european cars are great course you've got to have metric [wrenches] and stuff and they're some some of them are easy to work on a volvo being a four cylinder is very easy to work on uh excellent warranty i mean just unbelievable warranty and and uh of course ford isn't too bad i think chrysler would probably make a good vehicle uh but all of it has to do in my opinion with the service and the attitude of the service of the dealership i wouldn't send my dog to buy a car from middlekauff ford there's middlekauff ford in plano their just their attitude is just slimy and and uh i've written a a letter to middlekauff and i've told them that matter of fact i got another letter last night from the quality ford division their still concerned about my attitude and it it will never change about that place and uh but uh anyway that's my own personal comment i guess but middlekauff wouldn't she needs to find herself a lawyer she'd she'd come out like a [champ] on that one so have you been using well anyway that was i was asking you some questions about the telephone and how long and how many have you been doing but that's they they don't want to hear that is that all a week good lord i think i started in january or february oh god i've i'm like twenty some phone calls that's why i i wasn't sure if this was the second time around or what well look i've enjoyed speaking with you and keep smiling bye bye okay cars you you maybe this is a fantasy we can to talk about any kind of car we want here i want a rolls [royce] and a cadillac oh that's great i'm i'm a hobbyist too i like to work on cars too oh that's good was you why they they didn't say buy it they didn't necessarily say buy it new they just said what would you buy you know oh sure a restored vehicle is is great i think certainly if it's an old mercedes will be good well that's great oh yeah you all done a lot more when i talk about working on cars i sure don't do that oh okay oh that is good [acknowledgeable] people that's amazing i i do all my own work uh so i i have chevies mostly well that's all i've got right now i've got three chevy v eights i'm uh i'm uh a chevy i'm an american car person but i do like mercedes yeah yeah well i'm not a ford person and never have been as a kid and uh i do like the v eight engines and i think the i went to the auto show with my daughter recently down in dallas and i to me the american cars are far superior to the japanese in styling engines right now i mean i'm not saying that they were a couple of years ago oh yeah oh yeah i uh you know they said they said what do we want to buy i i'm uh not seriously thinking but i i would like to put it in that category uh by a cadillac but i wouldn't buy a new one and you know of course if i had the money i'd be happy to by a new one but uh i do look for a one year old vehicle with twenty some odd miles or whatever twenty thousand miles whatever oh yeah i remember those that she may want to save if she she doesn't have it anymore that since they don't make them anymore she that could be turned into a classic in in ten fifteen years uh no he wanted new one yeah right yeah i'm still a full size person and i like a full size cadillac i i want one of those i think they are i don't know a classic but they're certainly not they haven't changed in about uh twenty years and and they'll eventually phase them out and i sure would like one ever those uh uh within the next five years or so right well even the japanese cars are bigger too but uh i've never had a i've never had a japanese car i i've had friends who had them and i think they're a lot over and they're is just no styling to them you can't tell one japanese car from the other because they all a like you know i don't mean that as a joke i mean they really all look a like and the i don't have any idea what which car it is until i look at it to see what it is and i think they have not uh lead the field in styling they do have sports cars but the price is way more you can get a cadillac for the same price as you can get a small japanese car it's ridiculous now uh_huh yeah oh yeah yeah well if if you're interested you ought to go to the next auto show i i look at the cadillacs and boy there were some cadillacs that i didn't even realize they made but they were just [styled] so differently they were standard cadillacs but they really looked beautiful oh no they have they have [convertibles] now in the cadillac field and they have that new uh it's not the big uh [fleetwood] the one i want which is been the same in the last twenty years there's another one that has came out in the last two year not the seville the seville is totally different now at the auto show they had fantastic looking cars oh yeah it was a month or so ago well they have it every year right now this was uh in it was downtown in the uh convention center and they had all the cars they had japanese and german cars they had the full range and they had some they had some new cars that weren't even out they had uh a new chevy suburban truck you know that big big one that was uh they didn't have a price on it nor did they know had a it would cost it had a microwave in it and everything it was they had several futuristic cars yeah i know and i like engines they had a lot of broken down not broken down i mean you know cut uh displayed engines you know yeah but uh that that sold me in buying a new car you know i mean certainly interested in buying a new car but again the yeah the american cars were for superior in styling and new engines and uh i thing so because they've been making these four cylinder and six cylinder engines for a while and i think that i i would definitely buy again there's the question are we in the market uh and i could buy anything you know yeah yeah well i haven't work on them myself so i don't that you know my cars don't go to the shop you know so uh i am the kind of engineer and i've always done it myself and uh i've got three of them and uh i can't remember one i think i had one someone [welded] a muffler on for me in a years time i think that's the only thing of the three vehicles that i've in it just the [welding] on like i said i don't do that you know yeah i i noticed that when i was a kid uh i was wasn't a mechanical engineer but i worked my way through college as a mechanic so i learned early from fifteen on and dropped it for a long time when when after i got out of college and then picked it up again later on and now again i've got three vehicles and i don't i never get in them and just go to the shop at you will you know uh_huh yeah i'm keeping v eight v eight chevy engines because that's what i know and in fact i stock the same part i'm like a little stock if you brought your chevy to me i could i'd probably have some parts for it right now you knows oh that's great i've always wanted to that too oh i can imagination hey that sounds like a great deal to me you have great [aspirations] well let's see i we just bought uh a seventy three mercedes that we have restored and it yeah it has really been a lot of fun uh we found some guys that actually you know worked for a mercedes dealership and uh they also repair them for other the people on their off time so have we we have redone that thing from stem to [stern] i mean inside outside you know we've redone the body repainted it detailed it so you know i really haven't thought much past that it seems like you know i don't know if i'll ever want another new car again you know maybe not yeah that's true i i don't know it just seems like uh you know for what we've put into it i feel like that's something that might retain it's value a little bit more than you know yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah right we the one thing that uh we did decide as it's it's we wanted it to be as authentic as possible but we did break down and put a c d player in it that's not quite authentic but at any rate that that was one thing that i one of the features that i did want i'd passed up on one and put a [sunroof] in it i had to stop there yeah well of course we do it ourselves but like i said we were just lucky to find these guys that do it you know they're they just weren't really expensive and uh yeah you know right and they work on it so the things that can be done here they just come here to our home and and work on it or work on it so yeah it's you know it's really it's really been nice we uh uh_huh uh_huh yeah you're an american car person yeah yeah i i have always had an american american car and uh i had a real real bad experience with the cougar that i had it was an eighty two cougar and uh i don't know i think it just [soured] me on it for some reason because i had trouble with it starting the engine blew up in it i had to replace the engine when it was only two years old so you know i i thought what the heck you know we'll try something different so yeah uh_huh uh_huh really yeah right yeah yeah i would that that there's i see a marked improvement you know as far as uh what i've heard about performance and such you know so uh uh hopefully it'll stay that way i mean you know i'd i'd i would hate to see the american car industry suffering more than it already has you know even though right now i'm not driving an american car but uh i think uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah uh_huh yeah twenty thousand yeah yeah well that's what my parents are avid cadillac freaks they had uh and i think my my mother drives the seville now that's uh i guess it's a couple of years old and uh she had a seville before that that had the odd backs that was that was so uh yeah yeah and she it final just wore out they had they had purchased it i don't can't remember how many years they had that car but she loved the styling of it no she sold it and she yeah i know yeah she kept telling herself that and it's sort of a bone of [contention] between she and my dad because my dad said well just let me take it down there and find out what's wrong with it i mean he came back with a new car yeah i think he had an [ulterior] motive he could just see you know dollar signs starting to flip by as far as repairs went but uh they they really are nice cars there there yeah uh_huh yeah yeah yeah it seems funny you how within the last couple of years cars have gotten bigger again you know they had they've scaled everything down so much and uh i have i don't i've never owned a really large car i don't know i think that cougar was the biggest thing i ever had and yeah now the lexus are very nice looking cars you know uh_huh that's true that's true yeah yeah what is what yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah i know that uh i've i've sort of always felt like with buicks it seems like all buicks to me look alike you know i guess it just uh it seems to me they're all the same shape i have a very good friend that has a buick regal and she she's had she's got way offer a hundred thousand miles on it and that's what she's going to buy again and i'm like oh please it looks exactly the same as this old one that you've got and so i guess it's in the eyes of the [beholder] i suppose really uh_huh uh_huh are they still are what they're what they have out for like the next year is everything still pretty square it seems like the cadillacs is one of the few makers that are still making really i i can't think of a car that they make are the than maybe the [alliance] yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh now when when was this was this recently oh okay because i have yeah usually when i see the new cars it's during the fair when i go to the auto building at the state fair and that's usually when i see anything you know oh i see yeah oh really uh_huh oh my word that's wild you know you hear about things like that and you think that can't possibly be done i mean it just that's just too weird uh_huh right uh_huh so you could tell see the inside of them or whatever yeah yeah yeah well maybe somebody's finally [woken] up you know yeah yeah oh yeah you know if i could fine i i was really crazy about [jags] for a while and the convertible had a is it x j s or something like that and i you know thought that's a dream car and and you really would have to be a dream car because the repair bills are supposedly just constant you know yeah yeah well that's good that you can oh really that oh gosh that's great i think it takes a talent to do that you know my my husband is uh engineer but he cannot i mean or maybe he's just doesn't want to mess with it that's might be part of it but uh you know we just i just say forget it we'll just take it in and get it taken care it he drives drives a honda uh_huh right yeah uh_huh yeah well that's to that's one thing that when you would consider see when i go out to think about a new car or buy another car i don't think about well is this engine that i can work on or that you know my husband can work on or whatever you know so you're you're pretty lucky in that respect that yeah that's when you know yeah uh_huh that's pretty good it's really been funny because we have like been you are own contractors kind of with this car and when i say we have redone everything i mean we have done everything and it's it's really been so interesting the people you meet because uh my husband carl has called all over the country you know he's gotten these catalogs it's really more difficult to find these [vintage] parts when you might think this is for a seventy three are you in the market for a car recently oh what did you get uh_huh what what convinced you to get that one uh_huh oh incredible how many miles on it and it's still running real well oh great yeah we have uh right now we have two cars uh i have my husband and myself and we have two sons who are drivers and one of which is a um an eighty eight plymouth voyager van and then we have um about a year ago we picked up a second hand uh uh audi and uh that was a you know a sedan and uh we got that the major things the reason why we got that is we had had a nova and a well my son was driving and someone came into his lane and hit him and fortunately he was able to his i mean he was checked out of the hospital was out of the hospital by that night but the car was completely [totalled] and mike and they had been my two sons had been a passenger in a car about a year and a half before that which was hit by another car so i mean i got i was getting really nervous so i finally said we i want a really solid car so we found the audi second hand i guess right now my criteria for cars is uh of being solid able to take an impact and uh so uh i we're not going to be in the market for in the near future for any new car but the things that i would want would be a solid car another thing i'd definitely want would be anti lock brakes uh our our van which is a a [delight] to drive does not have i think the brakes on the plymouth van is just are terrible if the road is at all wet and i'm and i don't go all that fast but the uh it it just doesn't hold it doesn't hold well at all so i i definitely want to get anti lock brakes so i don't know do you have any particular things that that are priorities on your list yeah i guess down here air [conditioning's] a must isn't it uh_huh that's incredible that is incredible uh we we get about our the van gets on highways can get about twenty eight the audi does not have good mileage that's the one drawback it's a powerful car um but it does not uh i mean i if i'm on a highway and i can get twenty twenty one miles per gallon i consider that i'm lucky maybe maybe sometimes i've gotten twenty two it comes out around the eighteen or nineteen local driving and that's a to me is a real drawback i wish i would you know i could settle for twenty eight but uh the uh the frills on that car are nice but they're not necessary for me except air conditioning in this area uh in washington d c area it gets hot and humid yeah uh so air conditioning is uh definitely a necessity for us through two or three months in the summer um but i uh i i don't need uh you know power windows are nice but i don't need them although i must say when you're driving in the east and there are all these toll roads come into a toll road you just push that button down it's real nice for that window to zip down and zip up instead of having to crank it yeah but or you know if you want to have open windows to be able to if you're alone in the car just to press buttons and but you know i've lived all these years without them i probably could have lived a little longer uh one of the things that we have uh we've liked when we gotten a new car and this this used car has it is a sun roof and those are really nice in good weather so so i guess if we get a new car it definitely would have to have anti lock brakes i'd love to get an air bag and a sun roof and uh just so it'd be a good solid car i guess that those are my major criteria everything else is you know a luxury and they make the car more expensive but they often add more things to repair when things go wrong so uh if you were to buy a new car now a brand new car what would you look for yeah yeah isn't that true it's it's funny um uh that you use the [audi's] german and i have to say it has been pretty dependable yeah sometimes one advantage of an american made car is if you get stuck anywhere most local garages can fix you up but once you get if you once you get something fancy you get stuck somewhere off of the main area you can be really and the parts i know the audi parts are terribly expensive i mean it i [shudder] i would not get the audi again just for that reason but i would love i wish an american an american that you know engineering would make something as solid as a german car you know we certainly have the technology but it's amazing when we bought this audi i mean everything is more solid in it uh if you don't feel you've got any of the [flabby] plastic and i know and i i and i'm willing to give up a little bit in the mileage for a solid car i don't think i have to give up as much as i'm giving up but do you need air conditioning down there yeah oh we've had eleven days in a row over ninety they've in fact had to excuse school down here because of that well listen i enjoyed talking with you okay and enjoy enjoy your car thank you you too it's going to be a hot one okay bye bye yeah i just bought a car i got a nineteen ninety three cavalier station wagon well a friend of my father's and he'd driven it all over the country and it runs great it's like it has a hundred and fifty three thousand yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um right uh_huh right um well it's i didn't really need power windows but it has power you know windows and steering and air conditioning and and uh uh_huh oh yeah it has a stereo and a cassette player and um he's told me it gets forty two miles to the gallon uh_huh so uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh it's really humid right crank yeah right you don't have to stretch that's true uh_huh that's right uh_huh right um like you said anti lock brakes and air bag and uh i'd i'd really like to have a car that's dependable that that you drive you know like a american made car that's as dependable as mercedes or somebody you know that's uh_huh yeah they have parts uh_huh right uh_huh right right uh_huh right yes we really do because even today it's supposed to get up into the nineties so uh_huh um it was nice talking to you yeah have a nice summer yeah bye bye okay you say you're going to buy a new car uh_huh yeah yeah right right uh_huh yeah yeah i i understand that we uh just paid off one my wife's car uh i guess early last year and so we're you know enjoying not having that that payment every every month and but it's getting up in age uh we're trying to hold out a little while longer uh we've got a a a daughter who's almost two now so we're getting to the point where we really kind of need something a little bigger than what we've got but uh so i guess if we when we do buy another car it'll it'll be something that we can uh kind of grow into a little bit it's it's tough on trips because uh anytime we we're getting ready to go anywhere it's uh you know it's uh try like trying to put a puzzle together to make sure you get everything in the car you know cause it's uh_huh right that's what i i ideally i would like that in fact uh you know i i've i've thought of that possibly uh i don't know that my wife would go for it but you know i would i'd like to do that i i have a truck myself and i'll i'll take you know a truck's a thing that you you need when you need it but you know the rest of the time you wonder you know could i use something else so i i've still got a couple years payments on it i may uh if we can hold out til then you know i may get get to where i need a something else maybe maybe buy a van because they are really really nice for for long trips especially uh_huh right right right um right i don't either well my wife's car is probably around five years old now and it's it's got oh uh i guess it must have seventy or eighty thousand miles on it you know and so it it's getting it's not not in bad shape it's it's you know she's kept it up real well but uh you know it's it's getting to the point where we really need to do something with it you know if we're going to get anything out of selling it so i'm i'm uh i'm i'm hoping we that we can work something out here we've got other bills that kind of [precede] or [preclude] us buying something buying something else it really is and you know and you can't uh you can't afford you know a a car payment now it just will wipe you out every month it's almost getting to be like the house payment you know right right uh_huh oh i didn't know that uh_huh oh man yeah right right uh_huh right right uh that's that's our our our daughter's problem you know because when you when you get out on the road like that and it's just long [stretches] you know where they just have to sit you know in town she does okay you know and even on the road she does all right for a little while because she'll sleep some but you know she she [wakes] up she wants to to get up i know uh coming uh right around christmas we were we were uh right before christmas we had driven over to shreveport and we were driving back and it was when all that bad weather was was hitting and the roads were all closed and uh we were trying to get back and it took us a lot longer and she was you know she was pretty good most of the way but then get to a point where she just had to get out of her seat and we had to stop and and we got out and played in the snow and put here back in and she was fine but you know if we had if there was something to where she could kind of get up and move around like you say on on the highway or where where it wasn't wasn't as bad you know just for a little brief period of time it would be would be okay so i'm i'm thinking maybe we can can do something like that later on we'll see what we can do yeah well i you too i hope everything works out right well no it's probably going to be a very old used one my husband had an accident in my car a little over a week ago and i drove a nineteen seventy seven um b m w and so i believe and i'll know the answer today that they're going to total it i think that it will cost more to fix it than it's probably worth but i'm not interested in having any car payments so i actually went last weekend with my father was in town and we went and looked at used cars around town uh and i you know i found like a nineteen eighty four regency ninety eight with only forty six thousand miles on it and that was pretty good condition uh but i also found a nineteen eighty volvo uh station wagon that was in just super condition i mean there's not a dent on the outside body the inside is clean it's had the same owner for years it it has about eighty thousand miles on it but that's all right you know the [engine's] in excellent shape and i think it would last me probably another fifty or sixty thousand miles so i guess i'm kind of in [limbo] waiting to see what the insurance is you know company is going to do to see whether or not i can get one of these cars i don't want a new car though a new car payment um uh_huh well not only that needing the room you know we finally ended up buying a dodge caravan here about two and a half years ago because i too have very small kids i i have one that's now well she'll be four in september and then a little boy that's just turned two and you know it's like you go on a trip and you know you pull over to the side of the road throw them on the hood change a diaper and keep going and i wanted something that i could maybe walk through and get to them and well yeah yeah yeah we have definitely put a lot of use in on ours and i understand it is too expensive to have two car payments see that was the problem my b m w was paid for and my husband's been in business for himself for several years and so he can [depreciate] cars but you used to be you kept them three years well when they did all the tax law changes you had to keep them five so i was trying to keep my b m w in tact uh for three more years so that then i could take the van and we'd trade my car in on a new car for his business and so basically that's what i'm looking for in a used car something that's going to last me at least three years well if i can pull a deal on this volvo you know it will last me longer than that it will actually last me quite a while but i don't know how families afford two new car payments it's just it's outrageous uh_huh uh_huh that's right know how that goes it's the pits isn't it that's right i know you can't find what you used to could find something for you know seventy five a hundred dollars a month it might not be brand new but it was a decent car and you just almost can't find that payment anymore so i understand that it's it's kind of hard to go do well if you do look at them i really recommend the dodge caravan we've had wonderful it's the only uh minivan they make that's on a car [chassis] instead of a truck [chassis] so it doesn't you know shake you around like a a truck does and we have had just wonderful luck with ours i mean it's we take it everywhere it it's been it it's so easy to get the kids in and out see my car was also a two door and which drove me nuts trying to get car seats and kids into a back seat you know and so it's wonderful to have the room and the space and you can haul things and they climb in easily and it's just been everything that we were hoping it would do for us and it is nice on long trips in fact christmas we drove to california which is my home and you can take out the middle seat and they come out fairly easily so we took out the middle seat put the car seats in the back and just had a whole area in the middle like if we were out on open road and it was their nap time we just went ahead and laid them down you know i wouldn't do that if we were in a city or if there were a lot of cars around or anything but it made it so much easier to travel uh_huh uh oh yeah sure it's a long time uh_huh right well that would be good that would be good well i appreciate talking to you good luck in your car buying well really i'm supposed to hear today and i i hope it i really would prefer the volvo i think i know it's older than the regency but you know they're built of that [unibody] steel construction and it would take a hit fairly well and you know my b m w that my husband was going forty to forty five miles an hour and you know it didn't even bend the frame it bent in the bumper and the quarter panel but unfortunately they think if it says b m w on it that you have money they don't know are you ready to start okay well i just found out that my car was thirty months old and it doesn't seem like it's that old seems like i just bought it it's an eighty nine and i bought it uh in uh eighty eight so yeah i know i really will do that the next time i buy it too uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh that's wonderful uh_huh oh okay uh_huh huh sure right uh_huh but do you feel though uh [craftsmanship] is much superior to the american abilities is that how you i have never its isn't that a shame my word isn't that sorry that's sorry my word oh mercy you huh huh huh uh_huh sure no thanks that's right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh wow uh_huh uh_huh who makes that car i mean but where are they where are they what what is their location is it uh asian or is it european or who oh it is japanese okay i didn't know uh_huh okay yeah i guess so that's true yeah if if if i had the car i wanted gee probably um uh let's see i like the looks of the lincoln town car but i i don't know the performance of it that's a ford product and you know i would get hung up by my boot straps if i if i ever mentioned the ford product in my family yeah yeah uh_huh can i put you on hold for one minute thank you well that was one minute they hung up um well the comfort of a large car that the security of a large car um and the luxuries of a large car uh now color preferences i think i would opt to go with a bronze which is probably closest to gold that you can get yeah right well practical yes that's uh_huh right and it's cooler i believe too when you're driving in uh_huh uh_huh oh um can you uh hang on again thanks i've got the phones for lunch hour so just don't mind me if i bounce back and forth um so you like to listen to uh a lot of music or do is it talk shows uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh all the yeah uh_huh that's true do you listen do you listen to w r r huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh those are nice aren't they yes those are nice uh_huh uh_huh huh yes have you recently bought a new car catherine oh oh wow well i really the last car we got was a was a used car i really don't prefer buying a new car i like to let somebody else pay for that but uh mine was a year old and we bought it for very functional purposes and that was we bought a station wagon we wanted an economical car to operate but we wanted one that could carry a lot of equipment so we chose a nissan [stanza] wagon and i've never been sorry however the need for that kind of car has changed now and uh while it is still good and it's quite serviceable and i'll drive it until it no longer is reliable and probably then some i'll spend a lot of time praying over it before i give it up i think that i would like to if you know we all say if i could have the car i always wanted i would either buy a nissan maxima uh i'm sold on [nissans] i a or or foreign cars actually uh uh its reliability its reliability and uh i you know i've read all the consumer reports and things and they just run head and shoulders above the american made cars if ford was a head and the shoulders above it i'd buy a ford but i had uh had a ford escort that absolutely needed taps the day we got it uh you know i mean it was ready for the [graveyard] and i spent as much on that car in twelve months as i spent for the car so and that was just trying to hold us getting out of that was a used car and it was an older car but you know escort is supposed to have a great track record as far as sales but it's just it just was not and you get stung a time or two and you say no thanks so i just trusted the consumer reports and the auto uh reports had my son who knows a lot about that study them thoroughly and he gave me four choices of cars to buy an escort definitely was not among them in fact there wasn't an american car in there uh the nissan came and and we bought the nissan for functional purposes not what the consumer reports said we should get but it served our needs uh later on his reports the reports that he studied showed that uh nissan was head and shoulders above the rest in the in the class that we were looking for and that and i'd rather have a maxima than a cadillac i really would it's not necessarily prestige but it's comfort uh there's a lot of features on there that are desirable if you're going to pay that kind of money for a car uh nissan no no no nissan is japanese uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah and uh if i couldn't have my luxury maxima then i'd buy me a fancy little red c r x sports car i mean you know every every one of us have two sides yeah now what about you if you could have the car that you wanted what would you get and why uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah see there uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i tell you that's sad too because there one time ford was the best that was made really was and uh i i really have not seen now a lot of the american cars actually are are parts are produced in foreign countries and assembled here or vice versa of course okay uh at any rate do you have color preferences or what would be the features that you would be looking for uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh wow we like the stuff that [glitters] good there's nothing wrong with that actually i think probably if i were going to get if i were going to be practical which doesn't mean i would be i would prefer white because simply because it's more visible at night and uh_huh uh_huh now the interior okay i don't care about the interior just as long as it's not black or red but if i had the little red c r x i guess the interior would have to be black leather and i'd have to live with that and if i got the c r x it would have to have a real good sound system in it because i'd want that too i'd just go back to my teenage years and just throw all my experience to the wind uh_huh uh_huh that's okay no no no i generally would uh prefer to listen to uh well i listen to k c b i a lot but i will listen to the news and the and the traffic and those things at work but if i'm going to be traveling in that car for any period of time i want some real good classical music i love classical music and you just can't enjoy it unless you've got a good sound system to produce all the all the characteristics of the instruments so i do love classical music or it or or uh contemporary classical uh_huh sure do w r r and the [oasis] are the two that i listen to more than anything else and i do like them and i'd like to have a compact disc player in the car that would be something that i would really like those compact [discs] really are good for cars because they don't melt they don't [warp] you know there's nothing in there that can wrap around the the uh rollers or anything it seems like a really good answer to portable music that you can choose all right why don't you go ahead first and tell what kind of car you'd look for in your next uh_huh and of course it has to have air conditioning does it have to be a special color it sounds like something your husband would drive right yes well i don't think we're looking for another car right now because we just bought one but when we were looking we were looking for something that had enough seat belts of course and we wanted air conditioning and a five speed and that was kind of iffy but that made it better economically so yeah we'll probably have to look for another second car sometime and we'd look for about what you're looking for but probably real cheap too it wouldn't be a used used car so but no uh_huh would you like four doors or doesn't really matter yeah it it's hard for people to get in with a two door sometimes it would be fun just to win one wouldn't it that would be great all right well i think that's all that we need to say all right we'll talk to you later bye bye i think our next car i would like something like a an economy car that gets really good mileage and uh one that's really reliable i would i think probably not a a brand new car but maybe something like a nissan sentra or something like that uh something my husband oh absolutely air conditioning and a radio uh a m f m and a cassette player and uh what else do i want uh i would think kind of a [subdued] color would be nice you know a a navy blue or a yeah that's what it would be for is for him to drive back and forth to work i think that's something we might want too is some kind of standard transmission at least rather than automatic i think we would want one that even though it was a compact car or whatever that it would still be nice enough that uh you could take someone in it and not be embarrassed well probably probably that would be a good idea yeah that's right so if we wanted it to take people out it's that's a good thought i that hadn't crossed my mind yes i would go for that well thank you for calling all right bye well i've been real um thinking i'd love to buy a new car right now if i could afford it but we have two cars right now and we're still paying on them but i would love to have one of these new mini vans i've got two little ones and i think that would be just the perfect family car oh what is it oh yeah we have um we have we went out to buy an american car so we bought um a chevy nova about three years ago and and we opened up the the hood and it said toyota made in japan right across the front of all the engine parts uh_huh toyota uh well the chevy nova is the same car as the toyota camry uh at that time was the same car so they just put different names on them depending on who they're being shipped to i thought that was pretty yeah uh_huh uh_huh that's why we were so surprised to see toyota written i mean [imprinted] on the engine it was real interesting but uh i with so many options now available you know where where cars are concerned it just seems like there is there's almost too much of a choice anymore you know there's so many different options and so many different prices and who has this cash back and whatever i think that if i were really serious about looking for another car i would take into consideration the price naturally but um you know i would really want something that i would want for that much money for ten or twelve or fifteen thousand dollars or whatever oh definitely i cannot imagine that you know somebody i heard a commercial or something about a sixty thousand dollar car about oh it would how exciting it is to make that kind of a purchase and i thought i don't think i'd find that exciting i'd be wondering you know here i am buying this expensive of a car and my house isn't worth that much money that's true yeah yeah well we had a pretty we bought our chevrolet brand new and then we bought a used car just a minute i'll change your diaper then we bought our our next car used and uh we had better luck with our used car and i like it more it cost us less money and we got more features and air conditioning and whatever on it then we did on our brand new one for twice as much money if you can find one that's uh you know reliable if you can get someone that you trust to buy one from or you know make sure that you can have it checked out well enough uh i wouldn't uh_huh [sh] yeah that's we bought one like that uh_huh we bought one car that way and had we bought it real reasonably and it was in real nice condition so because apparently whatever the bank get oh i right now my car is [terminally] ill so i am really looking at uh facing the purchase of a car and uh what i would like to have is so totally impractical for me that i won't do it but uh well i would like for one time in my life to have a convertible and uh you know i don't even like the wind blowing in on me so i don't know why i think i want one but i do uh i will probably stay with a foreign make i've had real good luck with them is that right oh well i didn't realize it i knew that one of the that nissan which is toyota had uh joined with had a plant over here and and i didn't know if it was general motors or who but i i never thought of i know uh you think it's a chevrolet in the good old u s a huh well yeah and that's minimum it you know it's it's a major purchase now what we used to pay for homes is now what a car can cost if they held their value that would be one thing but when you consider that when you drive them off of the show lot they're immediately two thousand dollars [depreciated] and you know that i don't know that i'll go with i've bought a new car the last three that i've bought and i don't know that i'll buy a brand new one again well i'm i'm seriously considering going that route instead of a brand new car well some people you know some people have to have a new car every year or it you know at the most every two years and they don't drive them that much especially your foreign cars you know like a honda or uh a toyota six thousand is just getting broken in for them and if i can find one or a [repossession] and with the banks being in such financial you know problems now that people you can find the banks willing to sell you a car okay what kind of car are you going to buy next uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's true that's true well i'm really not looking at anything for a while but you know when you're driving down the road you see all these pretty new ones that are out and you think oh well maybe maybe i would like a new car but i think i'll be driving mine about two or three more years anyway but uh right they are i sure do like the looks of that new mitsubishi [diamante] that is a pretty car uh_huh that's pretty too yeah they get pretty expensive the last one i bought i bought a uh well it's a it's a town car but it was a demo returned and i got it with like you know i think it was like fourteen thousand miles on it and nearly ten thousand dollars less than what the list price was so i was really pleased to find that and i then i bought it for cheaper i was looking at a honda accord a brand new one and i bought this uh the the lincoln town car for just a little less money than what i was going to buy the new honda accord and the thing about it is they give you that ten uh that hundred thousand mile five year warranty where it only costs you twenty five dollars to have anything repaired so uh i have really been impressed i said i probably never be able to find another one that i can afford you know but i have loved this car better than anything i've ever driven because you can go on the road and get there and you're not even tired and it gets like twenty six miles to the gallon on the road it sure does i they kept telling me that and i thought they're crazy so the week after i got it well actually before i signed the papers on it i took it over to [boozier] city and it did it but it's uh yeah well that's kind of what we've always been told you know they'll do and then we hope for it and it never happens but it really it does get good gas mileage most of the time when i don't go anywhere i can drive it for like three weeks from to and from work you know and then fill it up so i haven't had anything i've taken it in twice for like just really minor things and it cost me the twenty five dollars the uh really something really silly when we first got it we couldn't get the light they have all these lights in the car and it has this fancy little light that gives you a reading light for the [passengers] in the back seat and we couldn't get the light to turn off and we kept trying you know and we went out to dinner with some friends and it stayed on all night you know just shining right down on them you know and we couldn't get it to turn off and the next day my husband goes out there and he tries to get it off we turn the [knob] you know in the front that's supposed to turn the lights on and off and we turned everything we could and he took it in and they said you know you just have to press the switch he says i've pressed every switch in that car and i can't get the light off it's broken so they took it in and charged us the twenty five dollars and they called and told us though that all you have to do is turn the off switch and they showed us where the switch was they they thought there was really something wrong with it when he told them he had already done the switch but he hadn't he hadn't done the right one and it's right on the arm rest in the back and we didn't know it was there and the guy hit it with his arm when he got in the car and so we thought you know there there was it was broken but we've had just uh i guess it's been in two times i've had it three years now and uh it's been in two maybe three times but it's just been real minor things that's right uh_huh that's right but it's really it's been an enjoyable car like i say i'll probably never be able to have another one because i think we bought it for about sixteen thousand you know and i said i'll never find another one for that price and they keep going up so i'll have to enjoy it well one of the cars i'm thinking about buying next is uh a nice safe small car but um uh the reason being is we just purchased a van a little while ago because we have a big family and we use that to get back and forth and haul kids around and so forth and we have another four door car that i drive to work and i think it'd be more economical if i were able to a smaller car and uh wouldn't be wouldn't cost much with gas what what are you looking at uh_huh oh yeah oh yes oh yes well the cost of new cars recently are extremely outrageous for the oh yes oh yes i'm uh i really like the looks also of the new mazda that they have but um i uh you know the the costs of a new car and those new models are extremely out of our price range right now yes they do uh_huh right well you can't go wrong with that kind of opportunity yes wow well you get a much bigger better comfortable ride yes well that's fantastic that's real real good no do you very comfortable smooth ride huh oh it does that's that's unbelievable for that size of car yes wow that's great that's great that kind of gas mileage uh we're we're kind of hoping for on our van uh_huh well that's excellent uh_huh do you uh do does it uh need a lot of repairs is it a very reliable kind of car yes yes um oh dear oh dear uh_huh uh_huh yes they charged you twenty five dollars just to tell you that huh uh_huh oh so they probably went through the i see uh_huh oh okay and found it right away uh_huh yes well i think that uh you have an excellent deal then and the the company is able probably to offer that kind of warranty on the car because they know it's so well built that they don't expect any kind of major repairs whereas with an awful lot of other lower quality cars you would be getting repairs after repair after repair and those companies wouldn't be able to afford that for that kind of extended warranty or warranty at all so yes no not at all well i don't know if i really have a a lot of uh requirements uh i guess i look at uh getting the best deal uh that's my main objectives normally whoever is willing to deal and and give me a good price uh_huh yeah i don't know i've had pretty good luck you know even if if you take any car and and you care for it well enough uh you are going to get some good life out of it uh my my oldsmobile right now that i have uh is getting near eighty thousand and it's still in pretty good shape uh there was a [flaw] in there where a where a head gasket bolt broke and it cost me some bucks to to fix that but that was you know something that was [unforeseen] but i still think i i'm going to get probably a hundred fifty thousand or more out of it well i i drive like the song says the little old lady but uh but not from pasadena but uh yeah i i baby them as much as i possibly can uh it's a pretty big expense nowadays uh and i guess i like to take care of it uh so i don't have to buy one too often yeah i i i got an old uh seventy six uh grand [fury] that uh doesn't want to die on me so i i just keep running the thing don't want to sell it or get rid of it until it quits but it just doesn't seem to want to i'll probably have uh three four hundred thousand before it wants to die oh i've got the big three sixty in there gas [guzzler] but it runs good yeah yeah yeah well i'm considering probably some kind of a pickup truck myself for the next vehicle uh i just have so many hauling projects a lot of times and uh i i'd like to just start doing some uh carpentry uh type work around i just feel that well [sid] have you established what kind of requirements you are looking for for your next vehicle okay well i i tend to be more [methodical] i guess uh i determine first of all what i'm going to use the vehicle for whether it's going to be primarily as a family mover or as a a personal mover uh where it's going to be driven you know what types of uh driving i'm going to be doing on it primarily highway or or local mileage more often and uh hanging in the back of my mind is always the knowledge that i tend to drive cars for about ten years and a hundred fifty to two hundred thousand miles so i'm i'm real picky if you are going to keep something that long you know you better get something that you wanted to begin with and that you are going to like for a long time sure well it sounds like you tend to drive your cars quite a ways also then that's true uh do you have more than than one vehicle in your fleet uh do you have a family fleet or well that may be they chrysler made some really good old engines back then like the the three eighteen was particularly an [exceptionally] good engine yeah at the moment i've got uh cadillac [cimarron] which is approaching its tenth year of age and a uh reasonably new plymouth voyager it's only a a couple of years old but that's the second one of of those that we've had and that's the the family travel vehicle you know not only does it do all the the uh carpooling around during the week but it's also the vacation vehicle that we all drive in i think that what i'm getting ready to get next is probably a suburban unless they drastically change the the vehicle a lot uh i'm just getting tired of when i do get hung up in traffic not being able to determine what the problem is and and come to some resolution of whether it's better to sit in the traffic light and wait or get off at the next exit and that kind of stuff just because i can't see you know i'm to my [cimarron] is just so small and so low to the ground that i can't see past any vehicle that's in front of me what kind of car would you like to buy next well why would that be okay well that's good if you had uh no financial requirements if you could buy any car in the entire world no matter what it cost what would you buy do you which type of cadillac uh is your favorite the seville that's a sharp looking car that really is it it always has been though you know it doesn't have the coup de ville or the sedan de ville [squareness] it never really has it's always had it's own unique look well i've always liked that i liked the the one year they had a couple years they had where the trunk head would look like belt [buckles] across the back of it i thought now that looks sharp that looks real sharp uh_huh yeah and uh the i i've never really uh i've never ridden in one recently um but they're supposed to be just real smooth just a nice comfortable ride uh_huh right now they've got a unique uh feature in them now if uh if you have a front end accident at such a rate of speed the the engine will actually drop out of the car so that it doesn't come through the so it doesn't go it doesn't go through the you know into the inside it'll go underneath the car instead so that's that's a big safety factor they've got in them now the air bags yeah so well that's great that's great so you say you've always have preferred general motors products right what kind of uh general motors cars have you had in the past oldsmobiles those are real nice riding cars too has that been the cutlass or the sierra the ninety eight okay well i don't think uh let's see the ninety eight now that's got that big v eight engine in it doesn't it doesn't it has a little v six okay it oh that's great that's great that's always nice to get uh reliability in a product especially when you're spending you know anywhere from fifteen to twenty five thousand dollars for for a single item you know you just don't want any hassles with it you just you expect it to do its its job and i think a lot of a lot of car manufacturers don't really keep that into don't take that into consideration you know they just expect you to buy their product but that's always been something that's been a key factor in me is how reliable is this car going to be you know price is is an issue but it's not the most important issue right well i've always been a ford man myself yes but that's all right you know it's american made too which is good um but i i've ever since i guess i i was growing up my dad's always had fords and uh well i grew up in south dakota so everybody has a truck and my ford trucks have just i've i've just never had problems with them i honestly think i would die before my truck would keel over on me so well i guess cadillac i guess that's kind of everybody's dream oh i guess it's a general motors product and i like general motors because they're made in the united states and uh we've had general motors for years and have always had real good luck with them uh_huh oh um i think i'd still go with the cadillac i don't i don't care about a big fancy fancy oh i don't know i guess the seville probably or yeah yeah yeah they have been uh_huh oh yeah right yeah well i think the ones now with all of the uh fancy gold [lettering] and all you know i think they're very pretty and course the top now the what is it a vinyl top i think those are pretty uh_huh yeah they are and uh they they're just always they they look like they're sturdy you know they look like they're very sturdy and you don't have to worry that much about um getting you know hurt like you would in a small one oh i didn't know that yeah and i suppose they all have the balloons the air bags yeah well yeah yeah yeah i do um i i go for things you know built in the united states rather than foreign countries help our economy and mostly oldsmobiles oh yeah that's what we have now but of course if i have a choice i'd still have the cadillac but uh i've been very satisfied with the with the oldsmobiles we've driven them for about probably twenty years uh no the ninety eight uh_huh yeah so well i don't know the one we have has a six uh_huh but it's a very good car it's a had not had one [minute's] problem with it and i've had now i have twenty three thousand miles on it yeah right no yeah yeah that's true uh_huh no it really isn't because now you can get like five year financing on them and so um but i i i would go with the general motors any time oh really oh yeah well sure right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah well i yeah those are good products also um let's see well what kind of car uh are you thinking of buying next you like the chrysler products do you do you really what year is it and why don't you like the mustang i'll be darned well you know the old sayings about fords what they stand for there you go well uh well we've always uh we've always had oldsmobiles and uh been very uh happy with oldsmobiles but uh my wife thought she wanted to get a ford mustang and then she kind of changed her mind and thinks her next car ought to be one of those uh mitsubishi [eclipses] she she likes uh likes those she has a sister that lives in uh phoenix that has one and uh really uh enjoys it well what uh what things do you consider when you buy a car i see yeah especially when you're in high traffic areas and have to mess with that all the time that makes it very frustrating now this is a lebaron i sure like the uh convertible those rag top [lebarons] they really look sporty well uh we always this last oldsmobile we bought uh it's an eighty seven but we bought it in eighty eight you know right at the end of the year when they were trying to get rid of them and uh we found that uh we found a real good interest rate you know when they're trying to get rid of those cars at the end of the year like that they really come down on their prices and uh uh you know we looked around at used cars and we really couldn't uh afford the payments on a used car because uh if you go to the bank and try to get a loan they want to charge twelve thirteen percent you know and we ended up i think with like a four and a half percent interest rate on a brand new car and the payments well that's great uh_huh well when our kids were younger we really wanted a two door our first car was an oldsmobile back in seventy seven it was a two door cutlass supreme and uh it just happened that when we looked for our our new car they had a thing going with oldsmobile and if you'd buy a a new oldsmobile they'd give you four hundred rebate because it was their seventy fifth anniversary i yeah seventy fifth anniversary so in addition to everything else we got off the car all we had to do is show them our uh papers on our first car and they gave us another four hundred dollars off on it so we we got a four door this time and i sort of went more for the uh the comfort factor and uh i liked the smaller cars but i'm a bigger person and i i really like comfort you know driving along the road and stuff yeah and if you try to take anybody you know go to the show or go out for supper and you go as a [foursome] uh more than likely it's going to be a chrysler uh chrysler lebaron yeah it won't be a ford i've got a ford mustang now and i hate it yeah it's a eighty eight it's um i've had one problem with it after the other the the paints peeling off of it and there's no reason for it you know fix or repair daily or find them road dead that uh i uh it's my electrical system shorted out like two or three times and it's been torn up since april and i and luckily everything was under warranty so it's only costing like a hundred and forty dollars to get it fixed it would have been like two thousand those those are nice cars um the gas mileage for one thing and i've i've i've always had like stick shift i want to the next car i get i want it to be automatic i uh i i hate driving anyway and then and changing [gears] at stop lights and stuff is really getting on my nerves now yeah and you know when you work nine to five or eight to five and you're in rush hour traffic to and from work unfortunately and i look and one of the things with chrysler right now is is their the warranties that they have and i i feel like their everybody i've talked to that owns one has has has been real pleased with it and i like the the driver's air bag i like that uh yeah well all chrysler products has it in there but lebaron would be the next car i get yeah yeah yeah i like i like that too huh but uh i i couldn't afford the insurance on one of those yeah well that's what i'm paying on mine now i had to get like a first time my dad's always [cosigned] on on my my loans or whatever and this is one when i bought i got my mustang this time was by myself because i got on my own or whatever and um i had said they they said it had to be like a first time buyer's car or whatever and they're charging me unreasonable interest but i've got eight more payments and it's paid for but i got it when i got it when the eighty eights first came out it's a it's it's a good car i mean i got in eighty seven i guess in like november or something like that and uh_huh well that's another big factor of mine next next car i get's going to be a four door too something with some room because i uh my mustang is is is two door with bucket seats and you buy groceries and stuff like that okay did they tell you our topic okay it's uh the topic is cars what kind of car will you buy next and what kind of decision you'd do you think about getting you know pick that car out and uh and why okay yeah i'm the same way i was uh i had two cadillacs i went to my first lincoln this last time i travel and uh my grandfather worked for ford motor company so he always said why don't you drive a ford or why don't you try a lincoln so i finally tried one after fifty years and uh i've had i guess i guess four cadillacs and and one suburban in my last five cars but i bought a lincoln and i like it oh are you uh_huh well i'm a i'm a traveling salesman i travel on the road so i like a little heavier car but so that's why i choose you know to drive a heavier car and more luxury car but i tell you what i will probably get a cadillac the next time quite honestly yeah because i like the lincoln but there's just something about that cadillac that whether it's a g m c product or whatever seems they handle better i think so too yeah they really do you know i'm a funny duck that came it comes to the simple things like front end [alignments] i have never had to have a front end alignment on a cadillac i don't know why why whether i just seem to drive them better or what but i've never had to have a front end alignment on a cadillac they always appear to hold well uh_huh did you and the only thing i miss about a cadillac is a [fleetwood] [brougham] was my last car and i traded it in traded it in on my lincoln and they're just not as large as before i do miss that well you're right yeah it's big but the trunk space for me uh what i usually do is i usually take the back seat out of my car and that's where i put my samples because [trunks] just aren't big enough yeah now i have the town car and it's it's a deep trunk but not as broad as the uh the cadillac uh_huh oh good they went all the way down well that's good that's good yeah i sell sporting goods uh hunting related items i sell guns gun cases and things like that and i need to you know that's about the same size as a golf club they need to samples need to stretch out and gun cases and things like that and nope right yeah i drove mine a couple weeks ago to our one of our big national sales meetings in nashville i usually fly i drove it with another one of my guy that worked for me we drove it ten hours to nashville and it it handled real well but my main thing is space so if a continental i might consider it the next time a continental has more trunk space you always have leather interiors on your cadillacs yeah i like leather interiors also uh_huh that's a nice car you bet and i'll i will say one thing about cadillacs versus uh no somebody else answered the phone and put my number in uh what is the topic okay uh my next car to buy probably would be a cadillac i've had uh well i'm on my third one and i'm not real sure that i'd be in the market for a car for quite a while uh_huh my my dad has been a a uh lincoln man for a lot of years but i've always been a g m man i'm in the auto parts business myself and uh the last cadillac i bought was an [allante] and i just love it to death i'm not sure i'd ever get rid of it i used to do that quite a bit myself yeah really they seem to put they seem to be put together a little bit better and you know the buttons on the controls and things like that are a little easier to get to than ford products and i think that's one of the things that makes me shy away from uh imports is they put so much you know [gadgetry] on the dash and and the the buttons are so small to push and g m doesn't seem to do that i kind of like that feature so uh_huh uh_huh i've uh i had an eldorado was my first one was an eighty and uh i think at about sixty thousand miles i finally had it lined up and i had them do all four wheels that's true yeah but what is big today you know lincoln is still as big as it always has been but you know a car i ran across recently that has a tremendously large trunk is the lincoln continental well the town car i noticed uh or with the with the continental uh i was rented one one time uh we could uh put golf clubs in them you know straight across i mean front to back not going from side to side and we got three full sets in there and still had room for luggage i see yeah uh_huh i don't know if you've ever looked at a continental uh it's not as [peppy] as a as a town car because it's a v six but it uh i i drove it from here to memphis and i really enjoyed driving that car if i was going to buy a ford product that's what i would buy you might take a look at them they they had a a lot more trunk space as a matter of fact they had more trunk space than my uh sedan de ville had uh all three of mine have had leather interiors yeah uh i had a eighty eldorado which was leather and uh then my eighty six was a [touring] sedan and uh it had the gray leather package in it and my [allante] has uh i guess saddle saddle colored type thing well uh let's see what type of car do i want well i'd like to have a corvette but my uh weekly wages don't apply for me to have that kind of car so uh i'm engaged to get married so i'll more likely get a car for economic reasons yeah and uh so uh to drive back and forth to work is all i'll need a car for pretty much and we have a truck so probably a economic size car or uh right now i have a eighty seven cavalier it's a piece of uh_huh right but while we're talking right right oh i know right that insurance does come into play i forgot about that what kind of insurance do you have up there or is it real high up there right right i mean that insurance is high dollars but right yeah right right yeah what's everybody drive up there i mean in wisconsin they drive them little four [wheelers] or four wheel drive or do you all need four wheel drives up there because of snow and everything right it never snows down here so really we haven't had snow yet we usually only get like once a year or so kind of strange to you all huh because how it's like seventy degrees here right now yep how how cold is it there really huh really huh but um so what what is your dream car uh_huh what's your favorite color yeah blue right right so what kind of car do you drive right now really really really oh yeah right does everybody have their windows tinted up there everybody has tinted down here so you been down here before really did you like it yeah it's different i bet huh right it's like you know everybody freaks out when it oh wow yeah right what kind of a car do you have now my car is really old too because uh i drive out of town a lot of the weekends and uh i would like my next car to have good gas mileage and uh same here uh you know a nice car american made and uh you know a a nice car but not too expensive because uh i couldn't afford like a brand new like [lamborghini] i hardly drive while we're talking my next car i'd like to be sporty and you know nice but you know it's expensive and then insurance is really high for that too so something with a that's not too sporty because of insurance then yeah uh no mine just got [lowered] because i just turned twenty one and uh i'm not sure really how much i pay i just my mom's helping me out you know because i'm a college i'm in college and uh so i just give her the money and take her word for it yeah yeah it is so and the more expensive the car the higher it is so unless i win the lottery i won't be driving anything too expensive i don't plan on buying a car for many many years so i have to make this one last as long as i can uh in kenosha oh it just is yeah we we have a jeep with four wheel drive because uh because of the snow you mean or well we don't have any snow here now it all melted yeah there is no snow at all huh yeah yeah it is oh don't tell me that well actually it's been warm it's in the forties yeah and that's that's really warm uh and it's supposed to rain tomorrow so we i've only seen snow once this year and it was really bad and then it all melted like within the week and now there is no snow so uh i haven't really thought about it i'm not too big on cars i mean i don't know the names and stuff but if i were to go to a car lot and like look at them i would pick out one that you know looked really nice uh for a car probably blue like if it you know was just an average middle class car but if i were to get a sports car maybe white or red yeah uh it's a sky [hawk] buick eighty three i think yeah uh like eighty two thousand miles yeah i'm afraid it's not going to last me that long and i hope it does though it's a two door i like i like smaller cars they're i find them more comfortable to drive uh no i don't see too many cars tinted oh i'm sure yeah i could i could see why yep uh it was busy yeah it was nice i remember uh swimming on easter day and it was like really cold up here but came back with a little tan so that was nice okay go ahead yeah oh well if you if you had all your all the money in the world or something uh_huh uh_huh oh really yeah uh_huh what do you have now uh_huh oh really yeah we just we well i have my car is the first one we ever bought new too but we just bought another used car a couple weeks ago actually uh mine is a honda accord yeah i do and and um it's funny because after i bought it i was doing a lot of business traveling and i some of the cars that i got were like the toyota camry and the nissan maxima and some of the competitors and um i don't like them as well except it wasn't really a fair comparison because those were [automatics] and mine is a standard and the reason i got a standard was because i thought it handled a lot better it had a lot more pickup and everything uh_huh um usually avis avis yeah it's just because we're on i think of it i'm not sure those are avis or not but we have corporate contracts you know with the various companies so it depends on your destination too kind of strange work for t i uh_huh which is how i heard about this uh_huh uh_huh oh really it did huh oh my gosh oh that was great that's unusual to hear usually you know something breaks you look at the warranty and it's excluded oh i see okay oh you got your money's worth yeah yeah that is good yeah well i've been lucky mine hasn't had any trouble except last week a shopping cart [crashed] into it but i was real lucky because it just hit the um the [lens] to the light it didn't actually dent the car or anything so it cost me twenty five bucks to replace that and the store will pay for it anyway so no big deal um i probably wouldn't just because i already have one but you know if i had to make the choice again i yeah i i'm perfectly happy with what i decided um although we did just buy another car and that's a legend um but it's it's a used one and um my husband has really wanted one for a long time and the fact that you know this this car that i have has performed so well and before that i also had an accord it was a real old one and uh i bought that used i had absolutely no money to my name and bought that and it served me real well too so he's been impressed with all the honda cars and uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah how did it go for you hasn't left you stranded yeah i know yeah really huh well that's what my husband thinks about my car now that he's had the legend it's windy i can't drive that the legend it's just so huge i i don't like it and it's so uh all right well what kind of car would i want to buy i don't know the question is i mean would i want to buy or would i would i probably actually buy may be two different things if i had all the money i wanted then that's whole different matter no in that case i'd i'd i don't know i i my dream car for years was a was a porsche turbo but uh i don't know if i'd want one of those now of course i would want one if somebody was was given to me but i maybe would buy a b m w uh or or even a volvo i've got a uh a dodge daytona it's actually the first car we ever bought new uh_huh uh_huh yeah me too so what car do you drive what is it uh_huh we almost bought one of those do you like it uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah you get a little more control over when when it's doing the things it's doing yeah uh what what rental agent did you go to to actually rent to rent those kind of cars to what avis really huh i guess i see uh_huh right you work for a big company then t i i see uh_huh um but yeah i i uh i don't know i would probably if i were to buy a car you know with the constraints of real money i probably would would go with something like you know like a honda accord maybe it would one thing i i really liked about about the dodge daytona is the fact that they have uh this seven year warranty um and it really saved us some big money once yeah they had a whole bunch of things that that sort of broke at the same time and the bill would have been over fifteen hundred dollars and i had to pay twenty five for the yeah it was well we we bought the extended the the extension and uh at the time we bought it it was like you know i don't know four hundred and twenty five dollars or something extra yeah we did but you know we really debated at the beginning and of course i'm glad i did it but um we still have we still have like you know three years left on it oh no bumper oh well that was good are you uh_huh um if you were if you were going to uh buy a new car would you buy another uh another accord uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah those are nice uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right yeah my sister drives one she drives a uh i don't know is it legend it's a i'm not certain but she's liked it um but i i have i have never had and we in fact what i'm driving right now we bought a we only had one car for a long time and and yet most of our usage of the car was just this little shuttle back and forth four miles to work and back kind of thing and so uh i bought a used [yugo] just to be a little you know little car that i could care less about oh well it's uh it's worked i mean that's exactly what it is you know it's just a it's a cheap little little car just to go you know run around town in and uh it's actually kind of fun to drive i i you know getting back in the daytona now i almost don't like it you know it's like too too mushy and it you know it's an automatic and it's too the steering you know you feel like you're in a boat or something you know it's kind of oh okay well all right um um well uh tell me about the car that you've got uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well that's very interesting i've had i've had exactly the same experience with the one that i've got it's a and surprisingly it's also an eighty four and uh yeah i'm still here um i'm sorry what yes it's an l x it's not a hatchback but it's um it's uh four door yeah and very very comfortable car big [roomy] trunk uh and uh and very happy with it and i must admit it's you know if if if uh my only consideration were were you know buying another car just to tool around town in and make you know brief trips and things like that i would very very seriously consider buying one uh i think they're extraordinarily reliable cars um my my real concern with uh uh why i'm not sure i want to buy a honda is because i have to make a kind of a a steady um trip down the road about once a month because i'm divorced and i have a daughter that lives down in north carolina and uh i drive down interstate ninety five and it's just an absolutely wild highway yeah and uh_huh and you well you've got it and uh so having precious [cargo] in the car with me as you can well imagine it's very hard for me to imagine that that uh a [honda's] going to be as safe a car as as the one that i've got my eye on which is a volvo in in fact quite frankly i've owned a volvo in the past and uh i've i've they're expensive cars to keep up when they need service but uh i've found that i've had a lot of luck with them uh course i'm a mechanically inclined kind of person and i always wind up getting under the hood and finding out all the things that you know need to be taken care of and so forth and i guess that's one thing that that [recommends] the honda to a lot of people is is there's just very little that you have to do under the hood and uh oh i know it's really amazing it's uh absolutely incredible so um yeah anyway i've been looking at the prices of these cars and and so forth and i think that it's it's very surprising some of these very expensive volvos can be gotten for a lot less money than you would think if you're willing to buy ones that are about the [vintage] of the cars that you and i currently own and um well certainly some of the top end ones you can still get get uh even the the low end [wagons] um for less than twenty thousand dollars and uh we get you know in the washington area of course being as affluent as it is there are lots and lots of volvo dealerships down here so there're lots and lots of them available in the paper at any any week and i sort of you know scan the paper and look at them and so forth and so um anyway and that's that's the other thing is that i've i've never really been too terribly much of a new car person i think i've bought one or two new cars in my life and i've tended to um to uh buy cars that are you know two or three and sometimes even four and five or six years old this honda that i have i bought used and in fact it had an extraordinarily low amount of mileage on it i've just rolled seventy thousand miles and it's a seventy four i mean an eighty four so yeah there we are well i have a honda um hatchback nineteen eighty four and i had a hatchback a nineteen seventy eight version before this one and uh i'll be honest with you i have never found any automobile that has been more [conscientiously] constructed and and uh put together and it it does its job all i have to do on my honda is change the oil and the filter every thirty five hundred miles and i i did have to put two two new front tires on at fifty thousand miles but that car just [purrs] like the day it was built i get forty two miles per gallon on the highway and uh twenty eight to thirty driving around in town it's a five speed straight stick machine and i can carry more in that uh that trunk area in my little honda than i can in the big cars and i have a large um pontiac and i have a sixty nine cougar which really is i'm saving because it's it's old but it's in beautiful shape but i can carry as much in my honda or more than i can in in those other bigger cars oh oh l x it was an l x uh_huh yours is a four door uh_huh yeah yes they are um uh_huh ninety five is wild in any car there's no doubt about that because i i i run over to crystal city or used to i'm retiring the end of this month but i'm very much aware of the crazy driving that goes on over there uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yes it just just sits there and [purrs] and you all you got to do is the main major thing of changing that oil and that filter i get six hundred miles on a tank of gas yeah beautiful beautiful machine is that right uh_huh uh_huh well a brand new volvo costs what thirty thousand dollars uh_huh um uh_huh yeah well my my eighty four just has seventy seven on it and i've made many trips to washington and down to virginia beach virginia where my mother lives and things like that and i drive it uh are you presently looking uh for a used car just bought one what did you get lexus uh okay lexus is a toyota [subbrand] okay i was wondering where that came from because they're talking like it was an american built car yeah yeah yeah yeah that's their big selling point uh other than general luxury and but the particular seems to be the uh the quiet ride yeah uh was that wasn't a standard feature was it okay uh yeah you get the impression that uh_huh [skidding] control you mean the antilock brake system yeah oh this is a uh uh probably suspension tied into the brakes um yeah yeah uh shoot some of these muddy [driveways] could use it around here no snow doesn't happen very often yeah uh originally i'm from west virginia we got a pretty fair amount of snow but uh i got down here in june of eighty four and the first winter down here was probably the worst winter they'd seen in twenty years and it was amazing how a few inches of snow would turn normally sane [manly] adult men into [playful] little children we had this group of uh [surveyors] come into uh a shop i was working in uh four or five of them these big old flame worn [suburbans] and the snow all over the place they had just come in to get gas in their vehicles and get the oil checked but while they were there they set back drank about four or five cups of coffee apiece and made [snowmen] on the hoods of their vehicles threw [snowballs] all over the place had themselves a ball for about an hour yeah yeah oh so that's kind of it's a package deal yeah ouch no it doesn't sound real necessary in texas yeah yeah i worked for lincoln yeah sounds like the lincoln mercury dealer i used to work for they didn't order anything but the extra luxury version of whatever they got little mercury [tracer] imagine or not they make a they make a luxury mercury [tracer] yeah yeah uh_huh like sitting in your living room adjustable yeah well as a matter of fact i just bought one just just within the last three weeks i got a lexus l s four hundred which is made by toyota yeah it's kind of their right it it sounds like it but it really isn't it's uh [marketed] of course it its own dealerships usually or somebody that's maybe got a cadillac or lincoln and lexus dealership uh sometimes they do that but it's uh a brand car but i've really liked it it it drives just wonderfully and there is it's so quiet almost can't tell the engine is running it really is it's got pretty good acceleration too it's got a c d player in it so i can i can play those and uh_huh but there is not very many options on that car there is only about five or six options everything else is standard uh some of the tracking control things and [skidding] control things for up north the c d and the premium sound system yeah it's kind of a traction control i think they call it it's it's not just antilock brake i think that's already on most of them but there is a further traction control uh yeah and and also the suspension can be raised for driving like in the ice and snow it can raise the car's center up a little bit for going under a lot of piled up stuff if you were up in michigan or somewhere mississippi probably doesn't mississippi probably doesn't have to worry too much if it does people go what's this stuff oh well you had some there yeah oh i know oh no well the uh the lexus uh really and the moon roof i think is also an option although most of them are ordered them with it but there really is only about a half a dozen uh things and everything else is pretty standard i did not get the traction control which also when you take the traction control and the and the suspension thing it also puts [heaters] in the front seats too you go out and get in that real cold car and you turn that on and it yeah and it kind of uh but that's only available if with the traction control and the other option and those two are sold together so you have to take a two thousand dollar option there to to uh do it so i i opted not for that but and uh the dealership i dealt with they order them all with the uh moon roof and uh you know nice floor mats and everything in there so the only thing i had to decide on was whether i wanted a c d or not in the stereo system and that was pretty much it and they had like three or four basic packages that they they offer yeah i've been i've been yeah i've seen that in the dealership i was driving a lincoln a mark seven for the last four years before i traded it for this and uh i'm leasing the lexus i usually lease them since i own a business i just run it through my business but but it the lincoln ride is certainly good too but the this lexus is nothing like i have ever been in before it's just yeah it really is and it's got a [lumbar] support in the seats adjustable uh power and just kind of brings that support up in the well are you in the market for a new car oh what sort of requirements to you have for your car uh_huh uh_huh i see top of top of the line oh uh_huh right right uh_huh uh_huh well i guess i'm uh more traditional in that i don't like power windows or power locks because the people that i know who have them always seem to have trouble with them and uh so i don't i just don't like anything that i can't figure out why it doesn't work and then i want you know good uh gas mileage and i want an air bag and uh i guess no i haven't have you somehow i just think you know i like the idea right right that's a good idea uh_huh uh_huh well i actually i don't know a lot about different brands i tend to have you know my requirements like the last time i bought a car i i guess i did sort of prefer american and my requirements were basically you know good repair record good mileage uh and i needed air conditioning and uh can't remember what my oh i wanted uh stick shift and so i didn't have a whole lot of choice there was one car in all of the the metropolitan area that i could find that you know was sort of a medium priced car with a stick shift in it it it turned out to be a a chrysler uh [lancer] yeah no a five speed and it basically it was something that a military guy had ordered and hadn't picked up and so it had been on the lot three months and they were really eager to sell it so i guess in this area at least you know if it's not automatic it doesn't move well i just wanted it because again i had i guess traditionally always had a car that had one and i thought it would be more reliable uh i found that out i mean you know the people would just sort of look at me like you must be crazy when i went in to and asked and that was a requirement so so well i'm not even sure all of them are anymore at least in this area not that i was looking for sports cars but now the people i've talked to don't seem to have stick shift and so why do you like stick shift uh_huh uh_huh right right and actually it's probably safer on you know at long trips because it keeps you more active so uh well yeah i am as a matter of fact well actually i'm looking for another car but uh uh new probably not uh sports car uh usually either black or red and electric windows and power locks now well not so much that as it is i've had so many times when uh uh you know i'll have a friend next to me or i see somebody uh guy broken down on the side of the road and try to lean over and roll down the window it is just a real pain or you know if i'm driving along and there's somebody next to me and uh somebody that i know and you try to talk to them it's real difficult to drive reach over and try to roll down the window and uh so power locks power windows are just just things that uh just really help a lot what about you oh sure have you ever had a car with an air bag no well it it sure seems to save lives and uh yeah i actually i like the anti lock brakes and i have never had a chance to i have been in cars that have had them but i've never [tromped] on the brakes to see uh you know on ice or water just to see if they didn't lock up but uh you think you'd buy uh an american car or a european or japanese what was that huh stick shift huh did it have what a three speed or a four speed wow well actually i much prefer a stick shift and what i'm i'm curious i i know why i love a stick shift why why did you want one uh_huh it's hard to find stick shift cars anymore huh yeah no i mean most of the sports cars are stick shift huh huh uh i guess i i grew up on it and it's fun it's it's an enjoyable part of driving i do feel like i have uh more control over the car and it it to me it gives me more a lot more control in snow and ice and slick conditions uh it it does uh i don't know it it's really more fun than anything else as long as you're not stuck in heavy traffic it's fun yeah yeah yeah uh of course i like [gadgets] and and uh fun things on the cars which are all the things course the let's see mine's pretty easy actually uh i just got done reading a a magazine or a couple magazine articles about the uh new saturns uh and although i can't afford it right now i would just like love to have one well no regardless of that fact it's the best car in the class for the cheapest amount of money i'm interested in having it for uh doing a little [autocross] racing uh closed circuit racing and uh it seems to just blow the competition away handling power everything yeah it just got like the top rating it was compared up against uh let's see there was like the mazda m x three uh [nissan's] whatever their two n x two thousand the civic s i and it just you know it it dominated over all of them everybody all the uh [raters] loved it i like the i like the styling and i seen a few of them actually race and they seem to be really good cars for it mustang g t uh can't afford it right yeah i'm a graduate student and let's face it i don't make any money so yeah yeah we'll see then yeah right now i'm stuck i i've got a a pontiac [sunbird] turbo that it's fast but [unreliable] and trying to get it prepared for racing but it's it would be nice just like scrap it and go for the saturn oh yeah i'd do it i'd use it for both the nice thing about [autocrossing] is you can you can do both uh just like a uh set up a lot of times and it's like really large uh parking lots and [pylons] and things tight turns hard acceleration i've seen a lot of [mustangs] uh compete and it's interesting they get dominated by the [corvettes] that are also in their class yeah uh what are you thinking about buying the legend uh uh_huh yeah yeah well i was i was actually in uh a lot of the b m w are produced in uh uh [stutgardt] and uh and munich and i was i was there this uh summer and uh i was really impressed by the uh the uh factory uh tours and such for b m w yeah uh oh of course of course they are they want you to buy their car yeah there it was it was interesting i was at i i also went to uh the porsche and uh it was it was amazing how they were completely opposed yeah the uh the b m w is really oh like oh we have all these like high tech things and everything is put together with [exacting] tolerances and and then you go to porsche and it's like well uh these cars are completely [handmade] and no two of them are alike and so it's like completely opposed i don't know which do i like better i think i like the [porsche's] philosophy a little bit better although it's not really practical unless it's it's a toy let's face it yeah yeah but it it b m w good for that what kind of driving just like commuting you'd want to do it use it for wow yeah that's cool yeah that's good i also i was impressed by uh by the mercedes too i really i really like the mercedes the factory was nice and and is it different for the for the b m w probably right i can imagine that uh_huh oh really you like uh so you're an american you want to buy american um it terms of handling uh acceleration what about mustang g t those so you're talking about ones in a lower lower end price range right well you can wait till you graduate and you'll have plenty of money you can buy whatever you want right would you use that for city driving and racing [autocrossing] is what kind of track is that okay and you put up set up the track [pylons] okay oh really yeah i would guess so uh i think i'd like to get uh b m w or if i go the german route which i'm kind of leaning towards right now but uh or maybe a i mean a a [acura] legend uh a lexus uh s c three hundred maybe something on that order i haven't really determined if i like the the japanese or the if i like them enough to purchase one you know because your b m w your german cars have good [reputations] i think yes the yeah they their they have the whole philosophy i mean they they kind of even [brainwash] themselves into thinking they're better which is kind of hard to take i mean as you're walking through that little tour in uh munich it's kind of they're trying to [brainwash] you too oh really um yeah that's no it's not realistic yeah if you can afford that kind of a toy then i guess uh yeah just work short trips no no heavy mileage i'm putting on less than fifteen thousand miles a year so it's pretty minimal lasts a long time that's mainly what i'm looking for oh yeah but but if if you have a problem with a mercedes you take it into a shop they're going to they're going to hit you up for just all kinds of things uh i think well something on the order of a three series it's probably different once you get up in the five series and higher then all your repair costs go up significantly so i'm kind yeah i'm not sure if i really want before the one will take uh okay let's see i guess uh i can start i'm actually we're actually trying to find one now because our family's growing yeah uh so i'm looking at uh something larger than what we have we've got like an eighty four [charger] that's about gone and a uh an eighty nine horizon so i'm looking for something uh littler bigger yeah uh so we were thinking mini van for a while and uh we're looking at uh some just four door five passenger [sedans] as well uh i don't really have a preference either way i guess you know it's you know it i guess the american cars had a bad reputation but i haven't had any real substantial problems with the ones i've had uh_huh yeah yeah i mean even if it's just details it seems like uh they you know i there's a door seal that doesn't quite seal and you have to take it back every once in a while it's clearly just a a design problem there uh_huh oh like a miata or something like that um interesting yeah that's interesting yeah i guess probably the factors we'd use to compare are a little different because i look for you know size and safety and then mileage probably uh yeah yeah i i think in terms of computer terminology i look at you know price performance and things like that and then a little bit at life [expectancy] i guess but it you know depends on what you what you pay initially but you know i've got a hundred and twenty five thousand miles on the [charger] actually it was my wife's car that she brought into the marriage and she got just a commute between cincinnati and dayton it's you know we we had to replace the friction plate and the transmission at thirty thousand miles but uh the other ninety four thousand have been just fine with it so but uh um uh_huh yeah that's interesting but yeah it it's hard to beat some of the uh like i guess in particular we're looking at a like a ninety one [corsica] uh buy back at a they say g m sponsored auction but i think they're obliged to have these things because [hertz] and avis and those folks have it in their contract that they can sell it back to g m after you know it's after they've used it for six months and put you know twelve or fifteen thousand miles on it and you can get those for like eight thousand bucks if you yeah because i guess uh i mean well ninety [two's] granted but the new ones you know fourteen to sixteen is what they go for on the lot so all the [depreciation] has been taken off and the dealer comes out okay you know i don't know what kind of i don't know what g m corporate kind of hit the i don't know what kind of hit they take on it but sounds like everybody's had their chance to make their money off it and so but uh i don't know we keep looking at that mini van it's just you know we can get a like a caravan for at twelve five but that's a little bit more than we want to spend right now but uh uh it's interesting but uh i don't know if if uh it seems to be are you really uh_huh which are both kind of small uh_huh are you looking for an american car or you open to buying foreign cars uh_huh uh_huh right personally i have a japanese car right now and i really like it a lot uh i think the japanese really build good cars and i know that kind of rubs against the grain right now in the whole uh you know buy american keep american auto workers working right now but i feel that the japanese have really produced a much higher quality product than our uh car manufacturers have for a while if i were to buy another car i would be uh i would be partial to buying another japanese car but i would also look at american cars but when i bought the car that i bought now i did that also and i just felt that the japanese car was a much better product so if i were right right it is uh i'm kind of right now the next car i buy is going to be sort of a sports car i would really like to have a sports car uh i don't really i don't have a family so i don't need a a mini van or such to uh haul people around in so i'm looking for more a a two passenger car that uh well i like the miata but i don't like it enough to buy it i would buy something actually the the car that i really like right now is an eagle [talon] which is an american car but uh something along that lines uh because i have a an economy car right now which is okay but uh i think i i'd like to move on to something a little better right right that's when i bought the car that i bought i was looking for mileage and i was looking for uh [dependability] and something that was going to last a long time i was that i would get a for the money that i was going to spend that i would get a return that was that was worth that money so right exactly yeah that's right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh okay uh i've had uh i've had one or two american cars i think and and they were okay i had a pontiac once and and i never had a problem with it but uh my mother had a dodge at one point and i i had driven it a few times and i really did not feel that it that i would buy a dodge just from well actually i had a uh a dodge [omni] at one point and that was i think what really prejudiced me against american cars was because i did not feel that it was a very quality uh car so i guess you'd have to say if i was looking i would definitely be looking for a foreign car uh_huh right which is a good deal uh_huh right yeah that yeah i'm sure they did uh_huh right yeah jonathan uh you you say it's near and dear to your heart buying a car is uh something you're contemplating i take it uh uh_huh uh uh_huh wow they get uh_huh what do you think you'll uh what kind of a car do you think you'll buy next uh_huh uh_huh well i think the next car we get will probably be a well i i like buicks we have a buick century now it's a nineteen eighty seven and uh whatever i get i want to have uh air bags uh both driver's and passenger side and four door because it's much more convenient if you're carrying anybody to you know rather than have them [stoop] down to get over so i think the four door is probably a major requirement and other than that uh you know reasonable cost and safety and uh as much economy as you can get out of a car uh you know i'm not looking for one with a great big engine uh something that will carry it around careful i guess is best best way to describe it right now we've got a v six and it that seems to be just fine i know they they're coming out with some v eight now and i think that's probably a little over kill for this day and age uh_huh right i uh i drive a a truck a ford truck i i like trucks because they're [spacious] and it's handy to haul things uh it's not related to my business i just really use it basically for transportation but there's so many occasions when i've had to move some members of the family or do this or that and it's it's handy to have a truck and not have to borrow one traction uh not really uh you know it's a two wheel drive truck and i figure if it's so bad that i need a four wheel drive i probably ought to be home anyway wow uh_huh what kind of what make is the mini van mazda i see right one of my sons has a a plymouth uh van or you know uh uh that same type of thing the voyager i guess and uh they have a a child that's five years old and it's really handy for hauling him around and and their stuff and of course as he gets friends i'm sure that will be even [handier] so i know if we were if we had kids still at home we're in our fifties now but if we had kids still at home we'd certainly have to seriously consider a van just for their functional value what about uh all wheel drive is that something that you'd be interested in or is that uh_huh uh_huh right uh [fantasizing] about can't do it right now our situation is that we're a two car family and i have a mini van we bought a few years ago it's got a uh five year loan so that's still got a couple years to run and the car i get to drive is a uh nissan sentra that's going to be ten years old next month so i think about uh [sprucing] that up in a couple years if i can well since i just turned forty i'm thinking about a forty year old man's car something uh something real sporty but uh realistically with uh the need to take the kids to school probably have to have something that uh wouldn't [wined] up putting their knees this their throat when they sat in the back seat something a little [seating] room how about you uh_huh sure sure yeah i was surprised to hear that the v eights are coming back so they've got some pretty powerful sixes and uh you know v eights seem to be a return to the days of you know ten or twelve miles a gallon sure is uh traction much of an issue for you up there actually uh pretty good way of looking at it yeah we uh we had a small accident with our mini van a few years ago a case where there was a sort of freak ice storm and we weren't aware of it and just slipped on some black ice and went into another car and this is a rear wheel drive model so we got some monster [studded] snow tires after that haven't had any problems since it's a mazda and uh we're pleased with it in terms of comfort and uh [driveability] fuel economy isn't great being a mini van but uh it's real nice for carrying around our kids and others and it's uh got some nice features in terms of being able to remove seats and flip them around so we've been able to do some real creative uh load hauling when called upon uh_huh right yeah i think that we're going to be uh owning a mini van for some years to come probably till the kids are out of uh high school anyway uh i'd be satisfied with a a good front wheel drive car when it comes time to replace the sentra and even as as light as that is with uh the small tires it's it's done pretty well in winter uh again like you if conditions are are that bad i probably don't want to be driving anyway so i know i'd be happy with a a reasonable uh four door you know again we've we've got the same issue with getting kids into the so have you heard about saturns ooh that's great actually that's kind of the type of car that i i'm thinking about we might get saturns you can't go to a dealer unless you go to a a saturn dealer this this [offshoot] of g m and uh supposedly they've got great customer satisfaction from what things i've heard well like what uh_huh yeah yeah i've got a sixty five mustang and i and i do the work on most of the work on that myself and when i look at modern cars and stuff like that i just say i will never do that with the modern cars it's not worth my time you can't get in there you can't do anything and it's so complicated too i look at it and i say boy you know i i'd have to almost go take a class or something like that uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah that's one of the things that my wife and i have thought about actually the car one of the cars we'd most like to get would be the new ninety one ford taurus cause they're actually one of the cheaper cars that have dual side air bags yeah uh_huh yeah ninety yeah or excuse me the ninety twos the ninety twos had dual air bags this newest model you could get them with [duals] yeah but the thing is that it's twenty thousand dollars actually my my wife and i are actually thinking contemplating buying a new car in the next year and a half or so so we're actually been looking around and thinking about things we'd like to get like a oh i don't know what do you call it a dealer return type thing on a ninety two and ninety three or something like that you know year old ninety two or something like that see if we and the other thing we're looking at is the saturns too because they looked really nice well the saturns you can get air bags in them i don't think you can get dual side air bags but one of the the two things that i'm really the the i'd say the most important thing is a car that's not going to fall apart that doesn't have problems you set down you look at consumer reports we've been pouring over consumer reports and you just get so depressed for the u s auto makers when you do that because you see the reliability and the types of problems they have and and the two cars that apparently are close to that that actually have high reliability the taurus is one of the highest u s cars and the other one is are the saturns so those two things and then you know we kind of want a four door i've heard some about saturns i don't know a lot about them i haven't been over uh to a dealer to look at them although i did see something in tonight's paper that said that their uh reliability is rated to be equal to that of the i guess the japanese cars uh_huh yeah um yeah i've heard a lot of people like them uh yet i don't know whether i would buy saturn or not at this point i'm kind of my card and uh desires tend to be pretty picky and so uh well let's see i i like cars that are designed with with human beings in mind and that's not just the driver and the passenger but that's the person who's working on it cause i do almost all my own maintenance and uh those types of things and i found that while you can find some cars that are comfortable to ride in uh finding a car anymore that's that's fairly easy for me to work on it's just not very it's not very almost unlikely at this point and uh ooh uh_huh yeah well i've got an eighty three saab and i find that for a normal you know everyday things it's really very easy to work on and so uh you know i'm kind of spoiled i used to have a chevy with a three fifty in it and uh i really liked working on it uh cause it was pretty easy too it was about a nineteen seventy so i'm kind of uh biased in that and you know i want a car that i can work on because i think it just costs too much even to get the oil changed anymore and that's kind of that's that's probably one thing i'd look at i think another thing i'd look at is safety huh that's a real nice car i think i've driven some uh [tauruses] over the last couple of years when i've been on business trips uh as rental cars and i've always been very impressed with the taurus it's a really nice car i think it's very it's a stylish car both inside and out it's comfortable to drive uh reasonable performance and this is out in california where where they don't make a car that's got reasonable performance anymore uh i've been real impressed with that and i didn't realize that they were putting dual uh air bags in that car now uh_huh oh i think that that's excellent that's excellent because oh uh_huh uh_huh sure those are yeah that that would be a good deal to go with okay uh_huh what do you what do you looking for in in those what what attracts you to the saturns or or of course we've already talked you know the taurus is safe but what kind of things are you looking for uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh okay well actually i love the car i have i have a chrysler lebaron convertible and i love it and i would get another one in a minute unless i could afford what i really like which would be a red ferrari or you know a little corvette or something like that and that's what would influence my decision to change because i like a really sporty car and i'd love an expensive one but i probably can never afford it so uh_huh uh_huh yeah well i'm a nurse here and we have a doctor at this hospital that has a beautiful new red ferrari and i couldn't tell you but it's just beautiful and i go out and i love to touch it but i can't even do that because of the alarm so i just look at it a lot really exactly but it sure is a pretty thing no i'm working on it no i really haven't no huh_uh i did test drive a corvette last year maybe the year before it was brand new white it was like a big [marshmallow] when you sat in the seats they adjusted to fit around you i mean they came in and up and out and i mean they did whatever and and we went for a test drive in that and i was able to open that up pretty good and that was really fun and i wanted it but i had a choice of that or my house and i thought that i'd continue to live in my house so yeah you know it's just necessary and i did i thought well a tent wouldn't be bad but probably not practical yeah right so they are they're pretty aren't they lately they really are really oh no no no see i'm not into station [wagons] and vans and things that people are really buying now and they go isn't that a nice van and i go um not really you know how about a [greyhound] bus yeah i mean that you know there's some that are prettier than others and yeah the new type is prettier than what their they used to look like but i sure don't think it's attractive you know it's not like like driving a little sports car yeah i don't think that happens so but i i love mine so and i i bought it because i drove a friend's in hawaii and i just went home and i walked in and i picked it out and he said take it home and bring it back if you want to and i never did i just went back and signed the papers and i knew nothing about my car when i got it nothing i didn't know how anything worked yeah and i've had it it's almost three years actually and i've i still love it i put the top down everywhere i go i [timed] it when i first got it and it took twenty i mean twenty seconds and so i figured there was nowhere i was to late to go that i didn't have twenty more seconds so twenty seconds yeah that's all it takes i mean it's just a button that's it you release it right at the top so you don't have to get out or anything well i did actually last week going to the airport i just hit a [downpour] and i was on a highway going like eighty so i really did i mean i was soaking wet i thought i would drown in the seconds that it took me to pull over but it all dried out you know didn't take long when the sun came out but it was kind of funny i'm sure people around me really enjoyed it but oh and wasn't it pretty last week with the bluebonnets and everything yeah yeah yeah a lot of people say that and it's pretty far from where i live so what sort of car are you interested in getting next ah uh well i understand and can sympathize with that because i also enjoy driving performance automobiles uh i currently have an eighty seven five liter mustang g t that i've done a bunch of [modifications] to to make it uh handle and perform better and i suspect if i were to be able to get another car where object was uh the best car i could get regardless of money uh i probably would be tempted by something along the lines of a lotus or possibly a ferrari a a three twenty eight g t s you just go hunting go out and [lust] after it so have you had the opportunity to drive a ferrari uh yeah there there's something about having a place to live i don't know could sleep in the back of the ['vette] i find that uh that the [corvettes] are are becoming really really nice cars yeah and they they've improved the performance and the suspension such that they're actually a lot of fun to drive it's not like driving a a winnebago or something nice yeah nice isn't the word i'd choose maybe practical isn't that a practical van yeah it it's very hard to find something practical that's also attractive well so it was a completely new experience for you and i'm sure you enjoyed every minute of it right and and you couldn't get how long does it take to go back up about the same time yeah so so you won't get yeah and twenty seconds you probably won't get caught in anything too substantial whoops yeah oh no i was just down in austin last week and the weather was pretty nice too so with the bluebonnets out yeah it really was yeah i decided that austin is certainly someplace that i could handle living uh i have a ford pickup and uh the family car is a uh a dodge caravan and uh because we have three kids and they're under thirteen so uh they sort of fit our requirement yeah i have a one of those uh pickups with the uh seat with a seat in the back and so they just fit in there when they get to be teenagers with long legs it may not work right now i can right now i can throw them all in the back when we have room and uh and since i do a lot of projects i throw things in the back and i kind of like having a pickup truck actually i think of it as a as a car that'll last i like the way trucks are built and i don't care about comfort so i'm pretty happy so i wouldn't hesitate to get another one i i never buy new so i wouldn't hesitate to get another used truck and uh yeah i don't i don't need to pay for the glitz i'll let somebody else uh have the [showroom] shine and i'll pay for the rest of it right and uh the van we're we might go again on a on a van we we could probably do with a a something just a little bit larger than a compact in a sedan next time i'm not sure we have to we we'll have to face it in a couple of years but uh i i guess we had a small toyota wagon and we were real happy with that because uh my my second requirement after price is uh low maintenance and uh it certainly had that we didn't do much to it at all so uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh-oh how at how at how many miles huh you didn't [overheat] it uh_huh huh well that was uh_huh yeah i have one [colleague] that uh [commutes] to work on one when it's not raining and uh uh he's a it's he's pretty conservative guy i don't think it's much of a sport for him i guess uh i'm sure he does yeah no yeah uh yeah right if i only had some place that i could store the uh camper top i would have it off most of the time i really leave it on there just for just to have it out of the way because you put it on the ground it gets dirty but uh they're solid uh trucks are built uh i mean they're the only things americans still know how to build and uh yeah right i i kind of like mine yeah so mine's a ford oh i heard about that yes yeah that that's a serious truck right this uh i i know a contractor who just got one of those he's pleased with it i don't know what you drive now i mean what do you drive now oh okay throw them in the back cab oh yeah yeah there you go yeah right yeah i know yeah you're looking at i got a toyota four runner i wanted a truck that i i wanted something that i could throw people in the back too so i got a four runner you're just like me i've never bought a new vehicle in my life no let somebody else break it in right yeah right right yeah yeah my my pretty much the same i i got a like i say i got one of those toyota four runners and uh it pretty much does everything i need it to i mean it it'll tow three thousand pounds so i can tow everything and it i can throw i've had eleven people in it before believe it or not and uh it's real reliable i i mean i've had it for almost four years now and up until oh say two weeks ago it had never had anything wrong with it and then of course two weeks ago it decided i don't know it's the strangest weirdest thing in the world but it blew a head gasket didn't do any damage to it uh i caught it real early uh-oh ninety seven thousand so it's not real early no never [overheated] it i smell i smelled the uh i smelled the [coolant] went out and looked saw it was saw where it was coming from drove it right to the shop and left it off and that was it because i i have that and then i have a a [kawasaki] motorcycle which is actually the usually my preferred mode of transportation if i can take it and it's not raining i mean that's that's sort of my hobby though more than a vehicle it it's a i don't know people who buy motorcycles for transportation i think are kidding themselves i know but i bet you he really enjoys riding it yeah so you know when was the last time you took out took your truck out just to just to go driving yeah and i go out twice a week on the bike so at least just for the enjoyment but yeah i i mean the only thing i think i might get a new car or not necessarily a new car but a another car uh i would consider going to a a non to a normal pickup rather than a a covered pickup like the one i've got just because there's a lot of times i wished i had just an open bed to throw stuff in i'm sure i'm sure that that's very i mean you got one it's that's really convenient to be able to throw that sort of stuff in the back and right to have it out of the way right i think they last a lot longer than anything else yeah yeah the trucks do uh even though you know the [jap] the little [jap] trucks are are good there too but so are the though i think the chevies i don't think the i don't like the chevies as much as i like the fords i think they i think the fords tend to last a little longer at least until recently a friend of mine just bought bought like a year ago it it's a really nice truck i mean i don't like [dodges] at all but one of the [dodges] they have out now has a uh the [cummins] turbo diesel on it oh it's beautiful that thing that thing will last forever i mean oh yeah that thing's uh it's got a boat engine in it uh_huh an interesting topic uh_huh ah boy you and my husband would have a whole lot in common uh_huh oh really what's the how old is your car oh yeah right oh yeah so what do the [miatas] run well that's not too bad yeah really i've never driven one huh uh_huh and so you've done this oh okay oh really yeah whatever my husband buys oh not too much no we uh we just got rid of a full conversion van that that i i that wasn't me that was my husband he wanted a van and he wanted to drive that van and travel and wanted everything in there t v you know the whole bit but i never drove it so it just it wasn't me you know and then oh i'd want a minivan because i'm with the kids all the time yeah yeah and yeah you pick up i pick up my little one from preschool and the whole parking [lot's] full of minivans but you know i i drive a little subaru and uh we i love that i we were going to trade that in for the van but i just wanted to hold on to it cause i just really enjoy that and uh that's really all i needed was for something just to go here and there and back uh_huh oh really oh really yeah yeah it's amazing what a minivan can do we went camping this past weekend with some friends that had a minivan and pulled the uh the little trailer behind the pop up trailer and uh it's so it's really amazing how much a minivan you know what it can do no they're not they're probably yeah yeah and we we do a lot of uh driving we do a lot of traveling by car and so that's the only time that the that the uh conversion van came in handy but it really didn't cause our our kids are still little so uh that was the only time we really needed it other than that it got terrible mileage and yeah yeah yeah yes the uh type of cars that i was uh i would be most interested in if i was going to buy another car now would probably be something like a uh mazda miata uh the uh i'm very much a a fan of sports cars the the uh uh uh though actually in actually if i i have i've avoided buying a new car for quite some time i'd rather put my money into uh restoring my old cars i have a old [triumph] t r six and uh uh so uh but if i was to buy one probably something like a miata it's certainly i wouldn't have to worry about it breaking down all the time yeah uh well i have a i have a nineteen eighty uh eighty five c r x uh which is you know it's it still works fine but it's it's actually it's kind of annoying cause i've got no reason to replace it but uh oh those are they're about uh uh thirteen to fourteen thousand dollars and you know a bit more if you add some some options and so on but the uh yeah that's a pretty good price and they're they're they're they're so nice to drive uh uh it's it's it's nice they're i've been down to a dealer and driven them and i've also driven one at a something mazda put on where uh they went to uh [autocross] events across the country uh which is where you race in uh you race on in a parking lot or something like that with a bunch of uh cones to see who can get through the fastest uh you know about a minute or so and uh very [twisty] stuff and oh it handles so nicely yeah yeah it was just it it's just so smooth and yeah nice car what are you interested in yeah you you don't get involved in uh car decisions yeah i can understand well would you want if you had to decide what would you want okay yeah they're nice oh yeah that's perfect for that it's not it it's small enough that it's easy to drive holds a lot yeah yeah right yeah minivans are nice i have a friend who has a minivan and uh i've driven it a few times and uh it's nice it's nice of course you know my my family has always had cars like that uh in that you know my father's had a had a always had a v w bus every since uh nine about nineteen sixty or so uh uh they well he he used it he often has to transport plants or uh things like that cause he's he goes to orchid shows and and you know fills the car with plants and so on or uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah and they're not that expensive yeah mainly because everyone makes them you know you can take your choice of how expensive you want it to be uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah minivans do pretty well you know twenty twenty twenty five miles per gallon or more some of them probably even do thirty the uh yeah there there's some other cars i'd like but i i would never be willing to send quite that much money for uh like uh uh i'll drool over them okay it says what kind of car would you buy next what kind of car would you buy next yeah a lot of people you going to buy one of those mini vans or you going to buy a full size was the gas mileage decent or oh that's not bad well oh i've never i've really never had a new car i mean i'm pretty young so but a lot of people they go out and buy new cars you know i've i've been for ten years so i i have enough money to go out and buy a new one but instead i go out and buy toys and things oh uh but see my situation's really different because i always had an older brother that always worked on cars and he got into business and he only worked on one kind of car yeah and what happened is he his he had a business and they and they bought a lot of cars a lot of the same kind of cars what ended up he eventually had his own private junkyard which is terrible to look at very illegal but it was very cheap for us to run our cars because pretty much everyone in the family and there's seven of us kids would have one i mean me and my husband have the same kind of car my brother and his wife drive the same kind of car my sister has the same kind of car and my father has the same kind so it's you know when we get together and go places and we meet places it's like gee you guys don't like one kind of car do you it's a very strange car i don't know if you have them down there but it's a saab yeah they're not that popular down south i don't i maybe it's something to do with the front wheel drive and they're supposed to be good in snow but they're very popular up here in vermont and a lot of people used to bring his car their cars to him to get them fixed because he was he was really good at it and uh he he didn't charge as much as the dealer so and he also was really nice to people and he'd help them out a lot if they were broke down he'd try to go fix their car on the road instead of calling the tow truck so that saved them a lot of money yeah i've heard that that's a really good way to get cars up here they only come around like once a year in the summertime they have a state auction but but they don't uh they don't [repossess] that many cars up here figure in a big metropolitan area there would be a lot of uh where they they uh take their cars for illegal activities you know it can imagine you have a good you have you could have a good uh choice of cars but then of course there is more people interested in them too i don't know but i know someone who goes to massachusetts and buys cars that have been wrecked or uh [salvaged] they they might have been stolen and and the insurance company buys them and they sell them and i've known people who have got really nice late model cars for cheap but but they have a [dubious] background they have [salvage] [stamped] on their title there's there one of my friends got one that the the whole underneath of the car the frame was twisted and they didn't really know it was a real nice late model car real pretty on the outside but they couldn't keep tires on it it kept eating the tires yep i know a lot of people who have [boughten] other cars the same way and and have done very well i mean i the my car that i drive came out of uh a [salvage] yard but see it wasn't uh wasn't in an accident it had burned the whole inside of it burned the wire and cable burned and of course my brother being the clever person he was had an identical car but it had been in an accident so we took the wiring [harness] out and the engine and the transmission and everything else and we put it into the the the shell that was burned we had the shell all [sandblasted] and painted and he pretty much built me a car so yeah i was i was pretty happy i got what i pretty much wanted i could have it any color i wanted that's true but you know i always thought american cars weren't any good but i uh rented a car i rented a ford taurus and i was impressed i really liked it yeah and uh i was talking to my older sister the other day and uh she said she had to get a new car and they were thinking of getting something big enough she's got two teenage kids and they go camping a lot and she was thinking of getting a ford taurus wagon she says they're not very pretty but like she was really impressed but i like them a lot because they resembled the saab when i got inside the door was big you know it wasn't it wasn't like a volkswagen rabbit you know i i mean it had a full size door handle on it and it was the interior was very [plush] and padded and it it was just i liked the car a lot and when you shut the door it made a real solid sound and the performance it you know it it you could make it do anything on the interstate you wanted so i was really impressed because if i if i didn't have if i didn't buy uh used [saabs] you know if i didn't have a father and a brother that help me out i would even think about buying something like a ford taurus as opposed to a volkswagen rabbit or a toyota but that's one thing about cars my husband wants a toyota pick up truck and i can't talk him into a dodge pick up truck or a chevy pick up truck he wants a toyota pick up truck and they are they're very popular and i guess they run they they you they just keep running and running and running they have a really good track record yeah i know this this person they go they have this old toyota truck and he goes yep i says you know this thing's been running for me for two years he goes boy i wish i had the money to treat it right i'm uh what do you you mean he oh i haven't tuned it up in two years and i change the oil about every four months because he can't afford to uh change the oil as often as he would like and he can't afford to tune it up so it it's amazing even when you abuse them all the time well i i have problems with my car i'm not saying it's not perfect or anything but i wouldn't trade my saab for anything i yeah it's a [swedish] car i'm just being stupid and [sentimental] it's just because it's about the only kind of car i've ever had i had a volvo once you know it's like if i had to go out if i to buy a truck i could i could go out and easily buy a truck but i'd have a hard time going out and buying another car if it wasn't a saab i don't know uh it was it was fine but it was an old one and uh it was pretty much it or was something that i bought to resell because it was really uh it was a nice old volvo and at that time i was going to college and i liked to go camping and [bajaing] and going up dirt roads and i was ruining the car so i sold it and i saved some money by buying a [junkier] saab that i could beat around so it worked out pretty well i've never had problems really getting getting cars it's it's [refusing] them because uh people always come to my father and brother and try to sell their old cars to them because they know that they deal and sell them so yes my father's very [shrewd] with them yeah that's a good way to do it uh the thing about it is you got to you got to like to work on cars to be a mechanic if you want to be involved and that's a hard job well i you know i always dream of buying a new car but i just the money just isn't worth that that [shininess] yeah i just bought one so yeah guess so uh mazda uh price basically price and uh what all the things it came with for the price i couldn't beat it uh i didn't really look at american cars uh had a couple bad experiences with american cars just not holding up so uh my last car was a foreign foreign made car and it held up real well and the car before that was american and it fell apart so i just decided to go foreign really really well it comes to trucks though i would probably think to go american because everybody i know has got a american made truck they just seemed to be more rugged but uh the cars just seem to fall apart get out there and test drive yeah right i don't know how much going to how much better you're going to get with a blazer there really oh that's not so bad then right yeah i don't know i haven't been in the now ones you know they look big on the road some of these uh yeah yeah [durability] yeah if you got to take it out in the field yeah they show them jumping over those ramps but hey yeah right oh about uh twenty six twenty seven in the city it's a it's a four cylinder and it's kind of a sports [coupe] guess a little sports car but it does pretty good huh yeah i haven't even had a chance i've only had it for about three months i haven't had a chance to take it out on the road i'll probably be heading down your way in uh-oh the end of may end of april i guess when school's out i'll have to keep that in mind because uh [roundrock] and where georgetown oh uh yeah i wanted to get a mustang i wanted to get a convertible but the [convertibles] you know they tack on an extra five six grand and it's like i can't see paying that for a for just being able to take the roof down yeah yeah it's like i got and plus the way crime is going around here in the city you know take a knife to it break in yeah i'm sure they're yeah and you tack on the insurance they can add to it because insurance yeah i had a friend that rolled a convertible not too long ago it was a b m w totaled the car he walked out of it though all right i got a meeting to get to so great uh_huh a mark seven uh what do mark [sevens] usually run thirty five k well that's a tremendous amount of money alright i see i agree that uh american cars should be the ones to be bought um i just wish there were to still improve further oh yes it's a matter of time it's probably going to be another two to five years before they're really up to par where they should be and then i believe the majority of american people will yeah they will already have in fact i have one myself i'm reluctant to admit she does honda accord that's one what year model is it eighty nine well that's fairly new mine is an eighty four sentra and the only problem i've ever experienced major type problem i've experienced is a a fuel pump had to be replaced and it's got eighty four thousand no it's got eighty nine thousand miles on it now you do no major [malfunctions] then i see well that's good to hear in consumer digest or a consumer reports a taurus uh_huh well that's not too bad in price it has an eight cylinder oh yeah correct what about stressed on the mini van i mean the mini van has been one of the best top of the line vehicles for chrysler isn't it um their [durability] is a lot better i understand than most other vans right there's a lot of [duplicity] in the vehicles the way the build them too insofar as their design um uh american even foreign i'm sure it's all for streamlining or for air streamlining right yeah just a second you going to pick them up excuse me for a moment right i'm fixing to get them right now excuse me i had to uh talk to my boss okay so i guess we have nothing to do on the other end there's no interruptions here to tell us what we're done oh really what kind of car do you have oh uh_huh uh_huh oh really yeah me too many many cars i'd like to have too i bought a car around the same time in eighty eight and it was a um a toyota [corolla] and um i like it pretty well except it's not real comfortable it doesn't give a comfortable ride you know it's a cheaper car and it gives a cheaper ride and it's not the luxury car so if i bought one i'd probably want something like a new maxima yes really rides and you don't hear wind noise and all that uh_huh yeah really yeah well i'm almost convinced that you pay for what you get because my car in eighty eight was like ten thousand five hundred dollars and it was okay when i bought it you know it was great running around town it's a great little run around town car because i get good gas mileage but when you're out on the road on a trip like my parents live like five hundred miles away you are exhausted by the time you get there yeah because it's just the seats aren't real soft and comfortable and there's only so many positions you can get in and your body gets tired plus you hear the road noise a lot so uh_huh oh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh it did you buy it here in dallas uh_huh well oh really well that means a lot uh_huh yeah got to see them all the time uh_huh uh_huh yeah well um like how many have you had any major repairs or anything you've had to do to it because you know my car's about same age as yours and i've been lucky i haven't had any major anything happen uh_huh right yeah because you have to get back and forth yeah yeah well that sounds good because you know hyundai is a fairly new car compared to you know ford and everybody so i i didn't know anyone that had one that's good to hear yeah uh_huh yeah oh uh_huh that's about what i have thirty two or thirty four i can't remember i just turned over one one or the other yeah luckily my husband is real good at that and he knows how and he changes it regularly and gives it tune ups you know replaces the spark plugs and uh i know yeah i bet the sun roof is great that is something i would really want if you know if i bought a new car i would want a sun roof uh_huh oh i see yeah well that's good oh yeah i think i would too because you know even i have to drive seventy five every day i do i drive seventy five every day so i would i would still you know in plano right i come down seventy five and then i have to come up in five o'clock traffic you know the dallas site expressway there at seventy five and six thirty five uh s c uh_huh yeah so you're in dallas yeah oh yeah that'd be the only way uh_huh about how many miles is that twenty miles one way yeah see i have about twenty five round trip is what it is about twenty five miles a day yeah i still want that sun roof though that'd be good uh_huh hyundai um oh yeah yeah oh i just had a friend buy one and he loves it he does it's convertible he puts that top down and it's just a fun car oh yeah they are i couldn't believe what he paid for it it was like sixteen thousand dollars you know and hear i am thinking this car is smaller than my car no not really i mean it's you know the seats are typical volkswagen seats the vinyl you know i know but that car is so expensive but you know talking to my husband and he was real impressed with the car the motor and everything in it is just fabulous supposedly it's one of the best built cars uh_huh yes and [kharman] [ghia] it was the little sports car on really those are the best supposedly the best built cars so the little volkswagen he has he's loving it well i know i know yeah i i can just see parking it at t i you know and then somebody right right it'd be gone in a week um oh and it just ruins you too you just makes you sick and then you have insurance you know goes up and well i drive a pickup truck and uh that's probably true it it's a small pickup truck though it's one of those isuzu uh space cab types with a [sunroof] so it's actually not a real pickup truck you know it's uh it's got nice bucket seats so it's very comfortable and uh it has uh with the space cab in the back i can carry some storage but i have to admit fred i i've never had a gun rack back there so i probably wouldn't fit in texas no no nothing like that it my it's pretty [preppy] i think uh my truck sort of puts me as a uh as a baltimore baltimore [suburbanite] i think is more you know i uh when i bought the truck i was going to buy a boat and i needed something that would be able to haul a small boat but then i i um i because i wanted to try water skiing and enjoying some water sports and things and that's one reason why i bought it but then right after i bought the truck i broke my foot and i and the doctor said because of the type of physical therapy i got no [sideward] movement you know for a couple of months and that meant the whole uh water skiing you know uh season was over so i thought well okay and then by the the next year i was thinking about doing it again but i invested the money in a house you know so little more sound investment yes so so then i still have this pickup truck and then i think well now maybe i'll you know go by the boat again yeah that so that's so i'm not ever going to going to own a boat oh yeah i love my truck in fact uh well my wife and i [contemplate] selling both of us owned pickup trucks actually when we got married so we now we're a two pickup truck family uh hers in some ways is is a little more convenient and then mine's convenient other ways so it's hard to decide she has a a cap on the back and and uh she has um uh roof racks so we were able to carry things on the roof and able to put things in the back of her truck without them ever worrying about them getting wet or whatever but with mine see i have a space cab so you can put like luggage immediately behind the seats and i also have bucket seats and air conditioning i think family um i do a little bit but surprisingly i have uh two of my brothers since i bought my isuzu pickup two of my brothers have bought uh isuzu [troopers] which actually you know can open the back and just take out your back seat and you can haul washers and dryers and almost anything in them so i think um i used to be the one that was called but now everybody owns one themselves you know i do have some friends every once in a while that will ask me and i'll i'll of course do that you know that doesn't matter it's for a friend you'd do it anyway so it doesn't really matter uh_huh yeah that's true what type of car do you drive fred uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah they're nice looking i like them oh really oh gee uh_huh yeah so but your wife drives a mercury [topaz] they're nice too uh_huh yeah so you've gone yeah back to visit family have you driven back to visit family in indiana uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh that's really good uh_huh yeah is uh gas mileage an important reason why you buy the cars you do uh_huh yeah yeah i i take it you don't have you don't have kids then because if you had if you had kids you wouldn't say anything about sportier looking you'd be saying things like it has a good back seat uh the car seat fits in very easily and we can seat belt it in [securely] it's that's a big difference in conversations there no we well we're just recently married in december uh but that's we we laugh now my wife says we should sell my truck and i say we should sell hers and i said well the reason why we should sell yours laura is see mine has the space cab and it actually has little drop seats in the space area with seat belts i said and we can seat [buckle] in a car seat there so we should get rid of yours because the three of us won't be able to go on trips i said but we can go on trips in mine you know we can travel anywhere with my truck so that's uh you know we i laugh about that uh_huh yeah we haven't either well the ford ones yeah i think uh i think ford was one of the first ones to step into that new um that new almost shuttle space shuttle like appearance and i think they've done they've really come on strong with some of that um uh wind resistance and energy saving and uh uh developments i think that that's their station wagon i think those are fords but i do i like those yeah now now the station wagon looks [sleek] it looks yeah and hopefully i think you know it's supposed to get better gas mileage and um i think that that's becoming an important thing too my wife and i've been discussing this you know looking for a car when we do get rid of one of the trucks we'll probably look for a car that gets good gas mileage just because um it just has become such an important thing i think for the environment and for the economy and everything you know to start to pay attention to that more and more so no i think i think the reason why i i bought the isuzu is because you know i looked almost all the small trucks are made by japanese anyway there's only a couple of them like i looked the first place i went were the were dodge chrysler plymouth and you know i went to a number of them and i priced them all out and i was just the the i was almost going to buy a um a chrysler which was actually a mitsubishi truck but the salesman insulted me um the guy the salesman you know they always do that deal with you where they say well i got to go talk to my manager well here the manager is actually the guy that owns the place and in this small town we live on he's always on t v and he comes out of his office and i asked him for i i said well you know it was like maybe eighty three hundred dollars for this truck and i said well i i'd like it for eight thousand dollars i said for eight thousand dollars i'll you know i'll write out the down payment now i can get financing through my credit because i'd checked about financing and everything you know i said i'll for eight thousand dollars i'll take it you know because it was sort of marked down you know and the and the guy came out of the back and insulted me he said he said you want a truck for under eight thousand dollars go back to the used lot it's behind the building and he walked away i guess it was a sales technique he thought he was going to pressure me into giving up that three hundred dollars that i asked for i don't know and i said i said i looked at the salesman i said i'm i'm sorry your boss just insulted me i can't it's against my pride to buy a truck here now and i felt really bad i walked out and the guy called me at home the next couple of days it was terrible but you know i walked out i got into my brother was actually with me shopping for a car we drove down the street and he said why don't you just look in here and we went into the isuzu dealer because my brother always had this love for an isuzu trooper he wanted one you know and we walked in and here there was a demonstrator model on sale like ninety six hundred dollars with everything well that's a good question we just got in from looking at cars and we've probably been looking at them for a couple months and we haven't bought one yet so that almost answers the question how about you oh uh_huh yeah uh_huh well we we've been looking at just about everything i guess because we really don't need a car we just sort of want the luxury of buying a new car and uh i don't know we were today we were looking at [lexuses] and we keep going back to cadillacs and looking at those and then you don't know if you want to spend thirty thousand dollars and buy a new car or whether you want to buy uh like a ninety one cadillac a ninety or ninety one for you know twenty or nineteen or fifteen you can get them fairly cheap compared to buying a brand new one and the new lexus that that they have that you you pay sticker price for those yes yes we we were we were all in them today but you know when it comes to whoops you know do you want to spend about thirty thousand dollars and uh it will probably be a little over that with the tax so that's that's really where where we are or should we just buy you know a little volkswagen we right we you know the one of those [cabriolets] i guess they're called uh it's a convertible it's sort of like you know square in the back but the the selling point i guess that that i or it has to pass my test i'm i'm short and i need to sit in the seat see if i can get the seat high enough to see over the steering wheel like i like to see yeah i'm about five two and to make sure the seat belt doesn't hit me in the neck that it comes really over the shoulder and not up around your neck so right well it can be comfortable but those things not all the seat belts are going to work that way nor can i get all the seats up high enough to do that so uh so on those we just we just forget about and we've been looking at cars with other seats but uh i know this is a new experience for us just mainly because my uh my mother died which meant that we were coming into some money that we could splurge and buy car with but yet it's difficult to do though when you're not used to it so that's why we're we're out uh sort of doing this and uh yeah well we've always bought used cars before and they haven't been very expensive um so this is just just a new a new thing you know we've had vans we've had a new van and you know some other another new car that that wasn't used but the prices are what you used to buy a house for uh_huh i bet uh_huh right it's hard to adjust to it and and you just don't want to really uh_huh uh_huh well i hope you enjoy your car uh we we looked at [thunderbirds] uh i guess maybe about a couple weeks ago we seem to do this every every weekend we've been out looking for for we still haven't bought yet so i guess every every month we don't buy we save more money than we we're just shopping and shopping is free until you buy yeah but it would it would be nice our son works for e d s and and we could use his uh discount that he gets through general motors except uh we were only out looking at general motors cars except cadillac and we're not looking at the at the new ones anyway and in the cadillacs and they're not using they're not getting uh discounts on the new cadillacs that we're would be looking at to begin with so yes plano uh_huh yeah we were just got back from there yeah that was our last stop you know about eight thirty i said we can always swing around crest so there we go and we're [swinging] around yes okay what kind of car would you uh would you buy if you're going to by one these days what kind of truck oh i i think that's pretty good i uh i got to look for something too i i unfortunately i have a ford thunderbird that uh has been in the shop for three days and they can't fix the thing so i'm not real happy with ford at the moment i i think i will try some other line how how did those work how long did they last you how many miles you get on that did you get a couple hundred thousand really um yeah maybe that's the kind of car i better buy i drive too many miles i uh i drive about thirty five thousand miles a year and uh american cars i guess just don't do that kind of mileage well well i think the cars do i don't think they have mechanics that can fix them that's the whole problem yep well they can't fix them they don't they don't have the yeah where where do you live what city do you live in you live in dallas well you got the same problem with mechanics i think me i i just don't think there's good mechanics around i think you're right want to fix my thunderbird they can't fix it that's the problem i agree with you used to be you could you could repair and do all those things yourself i i think that the [antipollution] stuff is what really [fouls] up a lot of engines and uh there's no way you can work on them yep that's right i think they can it's just that that's why the electric has been made for some time but uh there's too much politics and too much gas and oil people that will prevent that from coming on the market for the time being i'm afraid then they bring it on board well we can always go back to horses least you don't have to worry about maintaining them uh well actually about six months ago we were uh but it was kind of a different type deal we had a a large conversion van that we're looking to sell it to uh to get a smaller car but but when i was looking for the van we were looking around quite a bit oh yeah yeah as a matter of fact the reason we sold the van was just so that my wife could stay home with our two boys now so we got rid of that big payment and so that was and now she's a stay at home mom uh it did fairly well for me uh i got about fifteen sixteen in in the that's a combination city and highway driving and then on the open road i got about nineteen or twenty uh uh yeah you would think it would be a lot worse i know mini vans don't get much better than that they get about twenty one twenty two yeah uh uh uh_huh yeah uh_huh [ow] you got your use out of that but uh yeah that's true no i don't think so yeah well i looked at some of the uh toyota makes a really nice van i i like theirs a lot uh but if you really want size you know the prices are about the same depend you know you can spend as much on a mini van as you do on a full size conversion van the difference is the the conversion of course mileage is a little bit worse but because you do have a bigger engine and bigger transmission you can pull stuff like trailers and boats and stuff easier than you can with a you know the other mini van uh uh_huh oh yeah yeah just lots and lots of vans uh_huh oh it doesn't yeah uh_huh yeah well i don't know if you'd be how old is your oldest eight yeah see uh i don't know how long you'd be happy like that well i don't know how often all all six of you all will be in the car but i know that once you get one or two car seats in there uh and then that yeah then you'd have your eight year old you'd probably have your eight year old up front on the bench seat but even then after a while you'd feel cramped especially if it was a you know a fairly long trip any more than about an hour uh-oh yes definitely you know a station wagon the back end of a station wagon probably can carry as much as a van but as for passenger space you can't beat a van because you can you can you can carry seven in a van and that's a mini van a large conversion van you can you know you can carry a lot carry about nine well because for what i wanted in a van the mini vans were were about a thousand dollars less and you get almost twice the room in the conversion van than you do in the mini van plus like i said all the extra pulling power and i didn't feel i was losing that much on gas mileage because they're not that far off yeah it was a new one uh_huh yeah i mean i was really surprised because because when you you know you can like take dodge for instance they got two sizes of mini vans one's the extra long and then the other the extra long option with all the power options you know windows locks the nice stereo was only about fifteen hundred less than the comparable full size van and you know like i said uh the mileage on a mini van is about oh twenty one twenty two on the highway and on the you know on the full size it was nineteen twenty and that's nothing well right now i have a uh small toyota tercel and i think next time i want something just a little bit bigger uh perhaps [midsize] i really don't don't like the the real big cars i'm thinking about maybe a volvo you do uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh how did your uh [corolla] hold up um uh_huh do you remember how many miles you had on it at the end uh_huh my my tercel now has a hundred and forty six thousand miles on it and i really haven't had any trouble out of it except the alternator went out at about a hundred and twenty six thousand miles i think right right right and um it's really been great i have had no problems with it you know except little little minor things like you know belts and actually i didn't i bought it from um [hertz] rent a car and it had like twenty six thousand miles on it when i bought it uh_huh right uh_huh yeah uh_huh wow right wow yeah i'm trying to consider that uh that could do to the plight of general motors and all of that i'm really trying trying to consider but i don't know i i i don't want to have to spend a lot of money for car repairs have you heard that um or do you know anything about the foreign cars being easier to steal than the uh american cars there's a lot of of car theft going going on in dallas right now i don't know about in your area yes i'm here what kind you get how do you like it that's good my uh wife just got a new car a honda civic so i think i think it's my turn well a c r x not a civic i don't why i said yeah yeah she liked and it's been pretty so far she's had it about uh six months now and uh it's been a really good car but i don't know she got one i should get one so i'm looking although slowly right now pardon me yeah yeah just about i've never had one but everybody i know who has they don't have too many complaints which is can't be said about a lot of cars but i don't know i think i want a a chevy blazer or a g m c jimmy truck is what i'm looking for a wagon type of deal it would be good i look was i looked at a toyota [forerunner] actually it's the same time of deal but smaller kind of like the s ten for the [chevys] i don't know i i like the bigger ones better than the small ones if you're going to buy a truck you might as well buy the real one instead of a toy truck yeah yeah that sounds pretty good i used to have a an s ten a little truck i don't know was it was more like having a car than a truck so i decided this time i'll get a big one yeah he wants a big one again yeah that has a lot of advantages and i'm up here in new hampshire so up north with the snow and everything it's a a big advantage to us you from texas by the way yeah yeah most of the people i talk to on this are from down there i'm one of the few east coast people so that sounds pretty good do you shop around pretty much when you were looking for your car or right yeah yeah yeah oh that's great are those uh four cylinders do you know or six cylinder four cylinder yeah you get pretty good gas mileage around thirty or more than that even or yeah yeah that's a that's about what my wife's car gets little bit over thirty which is pretty good i can't complain right now i have a ford escort which is the terrible car but it gets good gas mileage so i can't complain too much it's ugly and you know it's not real comfortable or anything but i bought it used the after i graduated from school and it's getting the job done but it's nothing that i really enjoy uh my brother used to have one of those yeah lot of time in the shop yeah yeah i know about that i had i had a ford thunderbird for a while and fixed or repaired daily is the joke about the ford and it was pretty accurate with that car i swore up and down i never own another ford as long lived and i ended up anyway oh i don't think i'll ever have another one after this one but so far it hasn't too mean to me uh do you test drive a lot of cars before you uh bought them yeah michael here nice to meet you where are you lubbock i'm in [biloxi] mississippi yeah not too far away yeah i guess so well uh i i like i don't like real big cars i like fairly sporty smaller cars and uh i have a toyota celica right now and uh uh the the question they asked us was what would we buy next and that's sort of what i have in mind for the next car that i buy is another celica uh it's an eighty seven oh you have a celica oh really what what year is yours eighty nine yeah yeah oh i do too i do too yeah i think so too that's is the second toyota that i've had yeah and uh i've had it since it's new and uh that's what i i plan on getting another one you know whenever the time comes uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah yeah i know uh_huh uh_huh just can't afford that that's just a out out of my range yeah uh i've heard of it i'm not sure what it's what it is uh so a so a sporty car oh okay uh other than the bronco i'm not sure i don't know what it is uh they have a new one other than the bronco you're talking about huh no i don't know what it is i haven't even really looked at the vehicles much lately oh yeah i think i probably will too because i've had good luck with it never had hardly any problems you know and the one i had before was the same way yeah we had a a uh tercel before this an eighty two tercel and that thing never gave us any problems we had a wreck with it and uh the only problems we had was because of the wreck you know front end alignment problems and stuff like that but uh uh i will i will say this uh the the celica that i own now i have replaced the clutch in it yeah and that was last year i think so i think you just wear them out because we live you know our area's fairly congested and a lot of traffic so it's you know we use the clutch a lot i do you're stopping and going a lot you know oh yeah yeah and uh i don't i'm i'm you know i don't worry about getting a japanese car you know everybody's talking about buying american and everything and uh i just like japanese cars i think i think they're just better made that's right yeah yeah if they could make one as cheap you know too i i i think the american cars they have the japanese beat when it comes to big cars of course but uh when it comes to little uh sporty cars or that kind of a car i i don't think there there's any competition really i think the japanese have them beat oh yeah sure i do too uh_huh well i can too i'm uh i fill up maybe well i fill up about once every week and a half i'd i'd say you know and uh i do a lot of driving right now i'm in school and everything so uh been doing a lot of extra driving but it's you know it's not bad not at all well that's right well uh is yours the celica that you have is it a uh an s t or a g t or what g t mine is an s t uh it's little lower model than the g t yeah they had the s t the g t and the g t s you know and the the s t is the uh cheaper version of all three of them yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's got a little little power more powerful engine and a lot more uh little more options on it so yeah oh yeah well that's the way mothers are well what kind of requirements do you think you'll you'll want for your next car uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah well i i have a nissan that's what i bought and i i guess i originally bought it because of first of all because of the price because when i bought it i you know i wanted something you know enough as much bang for the buck and i bought the car and i bought the car used and i had almost sixty there's almost sixty thousand miles on it and i have almost a hundred and ten thousand right now and since i've had the car i've bought a new battery i've i had a a fan belt pulley go out and the [universals] in the drive [shaft] but other than that i haven't had any problems with it i when i bought it i went down to sears and had them put four sears road [handlers] on it and they've been on there for i guess almost forty seven thousand miles and they look [visually] they look brand new and it was i guess two months ago well i i changed my the main thing is is the maintenance as you say and i do that i keep the oil changed with the high r p m motor you know and i get took it to get it tuned up and when i first got it i took it i wanted the valves adjusted and i the guy went in and i had to pay for it the guy says you don't need them adjusted they're fine and so i waited another forty thousand miles and they just adjusted them but they really weren't out of adjustment he they looked at it and he goes it looks like a brand new motor it's because i keep the oil changed and i says well i i wanted brakes changed and he said they looked at them and he says in the back you have three fourths of your pads and in the front they're three fourths you don't need them and i so i've been driving all these miles and i didn't need them but i i changed the front i had the brakes done in the front anyway just because i wanted the front wheels you know packed the the bearings packed and things and it worked out so i mean i i'm just amazed at the performance and i the japanese cars it just seems that as far as the well i just going to [interject] quick as a my next purchase i want something with a little more safety features i want the air bags and the antilock brakes that that's something that i want but uh i was going to say is that when general motors they sell their cars and there's too much of a i i believe there's just too much of a profit margin and you they're you're not getting the car you're you're you're paying for you might say [markup] where the japanese cars you you're paying but you you you're getting that performance and so that's i said i'm i'm very very satisfied with my car in fact i it's a you know it's a little little nissan pickup truck it's five speed i just don't it's i'm i'm not really that tall and it you know it fits me comfortable i have good [visibility] i mean it just it just a blast it handles like a little sports car just really satisfied with it okay so what kind of car do you want to buy next right uh_huh well do you have children are you married no well i am uh divorced just just like in three days i'll be divorced and i have two little girls and uh i have a pontiac six thousand and uh that's worn out and if i would have had the money to go buy a car i would probably get a toyota just because that's what everybody says i should get when i get a car is a toyota they're supposed to just last forever you know and uh if i had my choice i'd want a mini van uh probably a chrysler you know plymouth voyager or one of them other ones you know one of them that's what i would want lots of room so have room for them children to you know move around and not get cramped up and fuss you know so but i would probably you know want something with really good gas mileage because i'm cheap you know so that would probably be my choices two choices well you're single and you know yeah have them women look at you in that sports car driving around oh goodness uh_huh uh_huh no i wouldn't no i wouldn't oh yeah well we had a honda accord and uh an older one it was a eighty one and uh it just you know lasted forever it was really good car and uh so i like them but uh i have a couple of friends that have toyotas and and they have a hundred and fifty two hundred thousand miles and not a thing goes wrong with them get great gas mileage and they still just run run run and i've got this poor pitiful pontiac and thing breaks down every other day so you know so i don't know so if you were married and had children what would you want to buy of course you have a budget you're married and have children it depends are you a doctor or a lawyer then you don't have a budget or you just have a bigger one right ooh i do too i like them they are well all just about everything is expensive now i mean you know the mini vans are way on up there you know they're real expensive and so you know uh_huh you don't you don't like them i like riding in them i love them i think they're just great two of my friends have them and they're great they're i really like them uh i rode my one of my friends has a dodge caravan and one has a one had a plymouth voyager and i liked the plymouth voyager the best you know it was a little bit fancier you know and they haven't had a bit of problem with them they're ride real smooth and the kids have room and you know i like them so anyway um um i'm a student in college right now so i'm not really in the market for a car i have one that i bought uh this past summer a used car which i uh hope it will last me for a while uh but uh i guess it it fits my needs pretty well it's uh a ford [tempo] and uh it's sort of a you know nice car not not really you know huge and a tank but uh big enough so that you can fit people in the back seat so it's nice when i go places with other people uh and uh an ordinary car it seems fairly reliable how about you yeah they're they're pretty nice they're kind of sporty right i if i have the right thing pictured yeah if i i said if i was going out and buying a new car i might possibly buy something like that uh but you know i'm pretty happy with what i have now as i said the other the other kind of thing a friend of mine just got a new car got a ford explorer and they're kind of neat cars although they have their draw backs i mean they're they're you know they're kind of big and whatever but uh when it comes to uh moving stuff around which i find myself doing fair amounts since i tend to sort of move about twice a year at this point uh that kind of thing would be very handy uh but uh yeah i don't again i don't really have any uh you know strong preferences when i bought my car uh you know the major criteria was that it uh be something that was rated fairly good for reliability uh and uh you know not too expensive and you know decent looking but uh i i ended up getting a pretty good deal on the car i got but uh i am very happy with it it's not you know i suppose if i the maximum reliability i would have gotten from a japanese car but uh they also sell for much more especially used and i sort of decided that it probably wasn't worth the price difference but uh you know even if i did occasionally spend a little more for repairs but uh it would probably work out now buying it new i don't know if that's true uh you know it probably isn't worth it more huh no i didn't that's a ford yeah i didn't i mean i i would say they probably are a little bit more reliable but at least on the used car market i think that's uh that's [factored] into the price already and i don't i don't think it's worth the added price you pay i mean if you're going for like uh uh you know say uh uh you know a five year old car uh with for the given amount of mileage the japanese car will be going for a lot more money generally yeah and especially this one thing that i was kind of appalled at is people would be selling uh japanese cars for you know that say had a hundred thousand miles on it and they would be asking for a lot of money for um like not much less money than i found say the equivalent japanese car for with fifty thousand miles on it or something and you know people would say well you know i mean they last forever and whatever but i i mean i have to be a little bit skeptical i mean maybe it's true but huh yeah i mean yeah any any car wears out eventually and starts to have problems so i i knew that you know i definitely i definitely wasn't going to buy something with you know eighty or a hundred thousand miles on it uh if i could avoid it so really i'm surprised oh okay well that's yeah that's yeah i've heard is it the hondas where you have to replace the timing chain or the valves can get damaged or something like that did yours actually fail on you or did you have it replaced as sort of a [presumptuous] huh yeah i think yes i think i remember hearing that either the hondas or the toyotas uh that if the timing belt went in under the right circumstances you know i guess which would be while the car was running and maybe some you know certain [speeds] or whatever that it could cause the uh uh cause fairly serious engine damage i could be wrong about that i it's just something that i just vaguely remember hearing yeah uh do do you do any work on your own cars oh yeah yeah i actually i just uh just recently thought about buying a new car and i went and saw all the japanese cars and uh really liked the uh actually the [diamante] which is uh sort of the luxury nissan uh but i i just decided i wasn't going to get i wasn't going to get first of all i wasn't going to get a japanese car that was about the time that uh you know all the all the sort of [antitrade] stuff was going on and then uh later decided that uh i'd just hang on to my own car which has about two hundred and eighteen thousand miles on it it's a chevy celebrity four cylinder and i've driven it since uh grad school and uh just decided you know i think i'll hang on to this car you know it's been so good for for me all this time so uh in fact i got my wife a a used car that was uh also a chevy celebrity because you know i i had good luck and uh i knew enough about all the the basic maintenance you know brakes oil and that kind of stuff to do it myself so yeah yeah yeah all right so if you have any problems with it is it an accord it's an accord yeah uh_huh yeah yeah yep yeah because it just breaks it more yeah yeah wow that's as much as i make programming i mean and i don't even get the sixty i only make i only get the thirty so huh yeah huh in other words there's no there's no benefit for going to a skilled mechanic yeah yeah somebody told me uh once a casual conversation that this guy ran a a [towing] service and uh i was telling him about you know i was thinking about buying a car and he said you know i he said he he knew it would sound bias but he said that about uh i don't know four out of five cars that he tows are japanese cars and he said he just he didn't why you know he'd been he'd been in the business for awhile and he wasn't sure maybe it was okay all the goodies an oldsmobile had you owned oldsmobiles before uh_huh uh_huh and you what just the memory of that made you go to oldsmobile again or oh yeah do you are you still driving that car how old is it now eighty five are you going to be looking again soon or how long do you normally keep cars for a long time or oh my uh_huh uh_huh oh my was it still under warranty or uh_huh uh_huh you put a lot of miles on a car or oh my for what almost six well six years huh uh_huh well we don't we don't buy new cars that often we drive them you know till they get maybe seven or eight years old and then we'll what we'll do is sell off we'll have one about seven say and one that's twelve or thirteen years old and we'll get rid of it and then we'll buy a new one and and uh i guess right now we have a a seventy eight chevy wagon and then a a four year old uh crown victoria that i love and uh_huh well my husband's my husband got to chose choose the make and then i got everything else he he he likes fords and my youngest son still lives at home he's in in college but he drives an old ford seventy seven ford pick up that he loves but no i this was the last year they made the big crown victoria and before they started [chopping] it up and making it look ugly so i it i i guess some people think it looks [boxy] but always like to to have a room in a car i'm not into [compacts] i like something you can relax in right well that's not that's a good choice for a child i think to start to start to drive in our oldest one started in a old datsun of ours but our second one uh bought a real old i guess it was a olds ninety eight but it was one that was still metal before they brought in [fiberglass] and we she was such a nervous driver we felt like she's probably better off in that you know if she if anything did happen she was going to be all right but not well just for [safety's] sake and i don't know i i look at the new ones on the market now and the the bodies are so [sleek] i guess for wind resistance you know and and uh they just don't look like they're [roomy] inside i guess they are i haven't been looking at them to oh really uh_huh is it supposed to seat six uh okay a lot of knee room in the back or yeah right right well i even in our car i know like when my husband and my sons and sons in laws all have long legs they're tall people and so if one of like my husband's driving then he [scoots] his seat back and so we can't put a we can't put a tall person with long legs behind him so it oh my word yeah you're like my son in law no that's so you can't then then like i could sit in back because i'm only five four so my legs would fit fine back there but you couldn't put a a real long [legged] person back there comfortably right well yeah i wonder sometimes you know we have the dallas mavericks here that play and they'll show them sometimes on t v and they've all got these real low sports cars and i well i've never been in one so i but i'm always wondering how on earth somebody six seven six eight is getting into those little old things they must because i don't know where they're going corvette well even to get out of it though i mean you're only a foot off the ground at the most and it's got to be you know you can't get your leg out and i thought i always you always see them standing by it you know if they're advertising they don't ever show them getting in and out and i thought that's the part i'd like to see is them getting in or out right well listen i never had a car that's had the [swivel] seats that where you can like when you're wanting to get out you just turn it to the side and then your feet are and and i don't even know if they i know for a while back i saw them advertise that and i thought that might be kind of a neat a neat thing to have but i i for some reason they don't carry them and i don't know if they found they were unsafe or you know maybe to do that they had couldn't make them where they were just real stable one thing our our car doesn't have that i'd look for in another car is that that little [gutter] like it runs so that when you open the door the water doesn't just come off the it doesn't have that so when you open our car door it comes the new the new one does so they i guess that's the year they learned that's not a good idea because it just comes right off the roof and straight down and just you know i try to put an umbrella up there but that doesn't help too much it just so i get the interior wet and i don't like to do that just along the side there well i i don't know we how many inches do you all average a year how many inches do you average a year you just have had a lot is it is it uh kind of a dirty rain you know i i've never been down in there but you always here how polluted with all the oil it's not it's not well i i didn't course it is up here too it is everywhere but with all the oil right right that's where i was thinking of that doesn't that doesn't affect oh then you don't have any trouble with the water oh my well i just i don't know i you know i just hear that when you read about houston seems like they're course all their advertising or not advertising but news reporting is maybe an oil [refinery] blowing up or something like that you don't ever i i need to get down that way i guess sometime when i retire see what they i know my grandchildren keep me [landlocked] uh_huh uh_huh huh yeah i that was where they had when the economy went bad a couple years back they had all the [limousines] for such good buys we had one of our principles at our of a school here in plano an elementary school went down and bought one i think she paid eighteen or twenty thousand dollars for a [limousine] and she's still driving that thing around and they tease her just just you know to see her drive up in front of the school everybody wonders who it is it was just a well they just said you know the [limousine] companies were going out of busy and and you could pick one up for a real good buy and they had supposedly in houston they had a lot of them so i thought well that i don't know we even debated about that at that time but decided no that wasn't the that wasn't the right when our kids were little we had a van which we loved for for traveling we had four kids and they just okay uh what do you think well that makes a big difference doesn't it it's kind of like well if right a little more domestic there yeah i i guess the biggest factor for me lately is american versus non american and while i would really like to buy american i don't know it just it really depends on reliability for me uh i have a ford right now and it's been a pretty good truck but some of the things are not that good about it and ford sales have been really bad in terms of uh customer service at least for me so it's i don't know it's kind of disappointing but yeah yeah right well one i guess one of the good things that i have to work on is my my father he's a pharmaceutical rep and he he gets a new car about once every three years and he's been driving a lot of mini vans in the last like five or ten years and uh he generally goes with i think the astro van uh it's the only one that has a standard six cylinder which is real important to him but i don't know i guess i guess for my next car i'd probably have to scale down to an actual car instead of a pick up i'm starting to get into that i'm a college student right now i'm a doctoral student and uh i anticipate getting a full time job soon so you know probably one of those things where i really don't need the hauling capacity much i will be a little more stable but i guess i don't know i'm i think i will probably buy american but i'm just not real sure you know uh_huh sure and it yeah and that opens up a whole another can of worms i guess ford is suppose to start up they are going to actually put out a line of electric cars next year in california you know yeah uh_huh oh that would be a definite yeah that would be the way to go for sure i think there's no questions in in terms of whether i would have that or not sounds like your kids want to get on the conversation i bet they would have something to say about buying cars huh yeah oh really how old are they oh i see uh_huh right yeah oh yeah yeah i've heard some good things about that car actually yeah yeah a big factor for me is is [ergonomics] and and in terms of control and display design that's what i am going into for my degree and so that that's something i really try to consider a little more heavily heavily more than most people probably do but uh_huh yeah it's amazing how much spot light it's gotten lately you know it seems like everyone that's a big concern now you know all right well we're supposed to talk about cars gosh yeah uh_huh well i'll probably look for a family a family type vehicle like a van mini van or something because i've got two i just uh i've got two young ones so we're we're looking for something that's more family oriented yeah something bigger that we can carry six yeah right right um that's that's right near me yeah plano's a few miles north who does he work for oh really corporate office huh uh i've got a i'm taking a class and uh one of the guys that's in my uh my group that we're doing a group presentation he works for j c penney three years they're moving their offices to to plano right right now well that's good well that's great yeah huh that's super yeah well american cars are hopefully they'll i think unions really screwed american cars up they uh you know the price of the cars are just more than incomes are because people are you know the people that work at car manufacturers make well the g m plant or yeah the g m plant that they have down here that they're thinking about closing uh the average worker there makes twenty two dollars an hour and that's you know that's more than a lot of people make you know professionals make yeah i don't either yeah sure yeah sure uh_huh what kind of car do you have right now uh_huh uh_huh yeah i know my father in law has have a has a turbo charged uh engine on his truck and he's had some some problems with that but uh he put the turbo on himself and uh there was some problems right from the start with that well i think it's probably about an eighty seven also excuse me but i guess my tastes in vehicles are just a little bit different uh uh i've been more into just kind of a family car small uh not real big car uh but lately we've been uh trying to get something that's a little bit more reliable so we've been going with uh toyota vehicles lately and i'm more into pick up trucks lately i i got self a pick up truck last spring and i'm more interested in the the off road that kind of thing hauling things around uh uh_huh uh_huh right yeah i know we do a lot of that on the road traveling and we we have a toyota camry for that kind of traveling that's a little bit more comfortable it's it's not real fancy but it's a lot more comfortable than a lot of the other vehicles we've had prior to that uh_huh are you pretty satisfied with your jeep as far as repair and reliability on it uh_huh yeah yeah we just got that a few days ago here in wisconsin so uh_huh yeah well it kind of goes the other way with the vehicles that we've had because the toyota we have now was built in i think tennessee and the uh before that we had a a volkswagen [jetta] which was made in philadelphia or somewhere in pennsylvania i think so but you wouldn't think that just off the top of your head you think they're german or or japanese made yeah i read that in the paper the other day found that interesting we used to have a jeep a long time ago when we were first married and i i swore i'd never get one again because we had so much problems with it it was just a a never ending uh stay at the the repair shop just well the [carburetion] never really worked quite right and there you must have a family uh_huh ooh right well i can tell you about reliability the last two cars i've had have both been honda accords and uh i mean it's probably it's not a hugh car but it's been very reliable and uh i was just very impressed by it uh when i first looked at it and when i talked to other people who had hondas they cost a little more and when i was looking for them the dealer just wouldn't negotiate at all because they're such a big demand but it had all the features i needed the uh you know the power and the uh [adjustability] and power windows and things like that and the [dashboard] just looked good to me it was just no nonsense had the the uh [speedometer] and the tack and the a couple of other little [gauges] like engine heat but none of the big [flashy] electronic stuff uh_huh uh_huh that's right uh_huh god well it's well if you like american cars it's a good thing that they're getting better i'll tell you that you uh_huh right yeah maybe it'll work right then huh great yeah well chrysler is supposed to be when if you're looking at reliability chrysler is supposed to be one of the best american cars right now and the american cars the one advantages one one big advantage they still have is you can typically find them for a lot less so anyway but uh some of the other things i like about well some of the things i don't like usually are uh the [flashy] stuff you know all the doors lock when you do something or uh uh i used to now i'm getting more to where i think i might like a a sun roof on my next car i'm not really sure about that because i'm very much a person who uh likes to drive around with every with all the windows closed and the air conditioning on so i can hear my stereo well but you know so a sun roof or or a tee top or something like that you're just going to have to crank the stereo up to compete with the wind noise you bet they don't sell any cars down here without it you know uh_huh yeah great uh_huh oh no that's right no i'm not uh and i won't be for a while it's kind of called not having the money but i always like to look at what's out there are you looking at cars right now well what what are you thinking about uh_huh so you're looking at uh luxury cars a little bit bigger have you looked at uh the buick [riviera] it is well i happen to drive that one just because i think it looks nice and um i owned a buick for a while and it it performed real well um i i have a lot of friends that have bought cars recently and it just seems like there's and um a million people that buy honda uh honda accords its like everybody buys a honda accord and i really don't know what makes them select that over any other car oh are they i didn't know that i didn't know that uh and i uh i've read some articles too about oh i think the last one that got me going i don't know much about it at all but those little [geos] they're kind of cute and they get excellent gas mileage i mean they're like the top rated gas mileage car out there uh_huh whoa ugh that sounds nice uh_huh i agree with you there i have uh uh a friend who has one and you know another thing is is they don't age they always look the same so you really don't know what what year it is they don't and uh you know they're a quality car they well i would definitely have to look at price uh and i would look at what i could afford uh i definitely would chose a car on on what appeals to me as far as looks but it would have to be dependable uh it it'd have to be exactly and there there's such a range of prices prices in the car market that if you don't start by [narrowing] it down by that factor i mean that really gets you into just one little slot and then there are many many options to go to go to from there uh i'd one thing that always interests me is whether or not to buy an american car or a foreign car uh_huh so you're going to uh something a little bit bigger and and having better gas mileage too uh_huh well you make me laugh because right now i what i did is i i acquired a car through my folks which is a nineteen eighty four l t d and my teenage daughter hates it because it's an old persons car oh well absolutely and uh it's it's a nineteen eighty four car and it has eighteen thousand miles on it actual miles so it's kind of thing like i'm going to drive this car until it dies you know i mean it's just too good to and then maybe when i go out and look in in the car market i'll be able to get what i really want and oh i think i'm going to fall in to the category of most women uh in saying that i feel better going to a dealership because i don't know anything about a car mechanically that was an experiment i did last year was i went and and talk and drove a few cars and talked with the the salesman and i found that uh i had [matured] a little bit in that they don't [intimidate] me at all uh-oh they well they they make you they don't make you feel at ease but i've come to the point where i know that i'm the one they charge and that they can't you know um i think they're [intimidating] to both men and women and exactly and once you once they sense that you really like something then you're really in trouble exactly yeah the uh i also had a had a nineteen eighty four uh bronco two which uh my ex husband had purchased i paid it off and and when i acquired this l t d i thought well i'm going to sell this car while i can get some money out of it yet so i was selling a car and that was interesting because i had to kind of research well what is it worth um and kind of understand what someone would ask me about it oh yes absolutely and yet at the same time it's it's a matter of like selling anything else you have to find someone who wants that particular item uh_huh uh_huh that's what i did is i kind of did a little bit of both blue book is kind of a dream it's kind of like if you can [attain] it you're doing well but if you go by what the other cars are listing for then you can rest assured that you're going to get right in that ball park so how soon do you think you'll be purchasing a car do you think of colors at all when you uh_huh uh_huh that's right would you order it or would you uh uh_huh well that sounds exciting it really does so well that sounds like a good plan you might as well just you know get it enjoy it for one more year and get it in good shape for selling it or trading it in uh_huh my goodness what type of car do you are you driving uh_huh oh i'm sure uh_huh because it has such uh powerful right right uh_huh i can understand that they're i mean they're just very difficult to work with and they can they can see a potential for a problem even if your record is good well that's good they don't really appeal to me that much i right right you seem to put a lot of um image into your selection of a car which lots of people do that's true uh_huh uh_huh and i liked what you said also about when people have cars that are uh that are quality cars so what kind of car do you want oh uh_huh do you have a family uh that helps uh_huh you you sound like you've been looking recently your or you're buying it soon uh_huh that won't be much longer yeah well actually i haven't it's funny i haven't been looking at all i mean because um i'm a grad student and my wife's got an eighty seven olds [ferenza] and i have an eighty two bonneville which basically our our our our plan is to wait another year until i'm down with graduate school and then sell the bonneville for whatever we can get for it and go out and buy a a new car some place else and i think we i'm i'm sort of stuck i want half of me wants some sort of little sporty thing just for the hell of it because it may be the last time i can drive one for a long time and the other half of me says be [pragmatic] and get some sort of um probably small economical car for a couple of years and then get something bigger like a minivan when when when we have kids and stuff or or or when we travel a lot yeah right yeah they don't work yeah right well it's a it's a it's note like the i've seen that mazda van and and it seems like it would be the right thing then right oh okay that'll be nice oh okay right that's just yeah it's thinking ahead it's real good that'll give you a little extra yeah yeah it's actually a real nice feeling i uh grew up driving the suburban and then recently i test drove um for some strange reason i test drove a range rover not because i was going to buy a forty thousand dollar jeep mind you but just but but because um my my wife works for a [temp] agency and they and and they had a job and they called me basically i basically i was shopping the agent to make sure you know he was doing good things by range rover you know they sent me out as a to sort of act like i wanted to buy one basically and then report back to the company as to how the salesman is doing so i had to act like a buyer and uh yeah it's a neat little um it's it's it's it's sort of like being a scab i guess in a sense but uh but i used you know i mean he did a wonderful job so i just went back and said wonderful things about him you know but we went and part of it was test driving a range rover and i realized afterward you know it's a real nice ride because it's nice you're nice and high and lots of [clearance] and stuff like that like you said but forty thousand yeah that's just way too much for for a jeep no i wouldn't i mean i would get if i wanted to pick out a car like that i'd go for a bronco or or or you know blazer or something i figure it's yeah yeah oh yeah this this is nothing i mean he uh he was showing me they had this i was you know they had they had a [beamer] there that was seventy eight thousand and a mercedes that was ninety you know and the man claimed that he sold fourteen of these mercedes the previous year it was amazing yeah it totally and i i can't imagine what's that much better about them that right yeah i agree it'd be nice to think that i could afford it mind you but yeah no i was going to say a volvo at eighty five thousand miles is still being broken in isn't it i mean yeah aren't those the ones that that have is it volvo or saab that has like the three hundred thousand mile club and i think it and the car's probably still fine right right it's wonderful yeah that's nice to have no payments yeah uh_huh that's great you've really thought this out it sounds like i mean i'm sort of you know i sort of look around and go yeah that's a nice car that's a nice car but i haven't really right uh to be paying for a car that's true that's that that that's real true actually that's that's actually it's got um it's actually it's low on mileage given that it's eighty two it's only got seventy five thousand on it and uh or seventy four or whatever you know and it's it's in uh it's a funny coincidence that my cousin sold me the car and she's up for the weekend now so she's out baby sitting in the next room sort of perfect coincidence it's a perfect time to be talking about that car um but yeah it's just it's just you know i have little problems here and there you know um stupid things start to go like the uh i can't open it it has electronic windows unfortunately electric windows and doors and the uh and the passenger window is gone you know it doesn't open any more but i'm not going to fix it because i'm going to sell it in a year yeah it's it's it's seventy five dollars for the motor alone and then another seventy five to install it you know so that can that that's crazy or like the air conditioning went the air conditioning sort of blowing warm air so i went down to the you know my local mechanic and for forty dollars they did an air conditioning check and they went through everything i told them to put a shot of freon in and they said yeah it needs a shot of freon but then he came back and he said well the reason you're losing the freon is because you have a leak in this condenser line and that's a hundred and fifty dollars to fix that and then while we're in there we have to change this this and this and you know and so it it would have wound up costing was close to four hundred dollars but he said look if you're selling the car in a year don't bother doing it all he said i'll give you a shot of freon every now and then and and you're fine you know so she has an eighty seven um [ferenza] it's an olds yeah it's an oldsmobile yeah no it's olds actually olds yeah that's actually a real good car i'm finding it's uh mechanically is very sound um unfortunately the body was uh rust [proofed] by a company called rusty jones which i'm not sure if you've ever heard of or not but uh rusty jones went out of business because their rust [proofing] wasn't very good and now i've got some i mean the eighty two has no rust at all and the eighty seven has some pretty big rust spots on it so it's so and yeah actually we're we're looking forward to getting out of here right now i have a nissan sentra and it's my first car and so i'm really i really have grand designs on on my next car uh just a about two years now yeah oh probably another year another year or so i'm i'm working in waco and so i probably won't buy another one until i get another job so but this one i mean i like this one a lot um if i were to get a new car i it may be a a another uh nissan so uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right i've always heard that the foreign cars are are the you know foreign cars or the toyota and nissan they have good mileage it's better and they last and last my mother has a toyota and she's she's going on about a hundred and fifty thousand miles on it and it's still trucking so i she's sticking with it um i think i probably want uh a kind of a sportier car the one i have now is gray and i like black and probably like tinted windows and a nice stereo system tape player i don't have a tape player in mine which is really killing me yeah uh_huh oh uh_huh right right right the problem with that in waco is there's not many stations and so you pretty much depend on tapes and c d et cetera and so on because there's not a whole lot of stations to listen to um pretty much yeah i not in my own personal car i drive a lot in my uh company car um my personal car i usually just drive to work and back or to the mall or something but not a whole lot i do drive back and forth to dallas a lot in that car and that's probably wearing it down quite a bit uh_huh right uh_huh if you were to get another kind of car what would it be uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right right i do tend to like riding in american cars i've just never had one so i i can't really compare right uh_huh the big problem with a foreign car my father he drove or he always forever and ever he's had [audis] and those german cars and they're so expensive to get fixed and that that's a big big uh [minus] sign for the foreign cars uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh yeah i think i've got my eye on a maxima when my price range is in reach so what do you think about the about all the new vans that are out uh_huh yeah uh_huh right up but it it it would seem to me as if i was sitting in a bullet of some sort and i'm right in the front you know it's uh_huh right uh_huh right i don't know i think i'll probably be hanging on to my nissan for a while i guess here move up as i move up i haven't had to put any tires on it and they're they're still they still have tread on them and everything i probably will have to change them here soon but right right uh_huh yeah this car i haven't had any problem at all except for uh a couple of weeks ago the it completely like shut down and it really shouldn't have done this because it's it's relatively new car and it completely shut down it wouldn't it just started going it went in drive and just kept driving i would put it in rear it kept going straight so i just drove it to the nissan place and they said that it looked like i'd bumped something underneath the car and i knew i hadn't bumped anything but i had taken it to sears for an oil change a couple of days before and i'm thinking they did took a screw out or bumped something or something and exactly that's what i was thinking because i know i haven't done anything to it and so i really haven't had any other problems except for that which i don't think would have been a problem had i taken it somewhere else or something but yeah i haven't had any problems at all yes yep oh yeah it's been good talking to you too okay thank you bye bye bye yeah i am uh a truck yeah think i'm going to buy american this time yeah i got a yeah we got a toyota two of them actually they uh they've always been real good cars but it's just uh well i actually haven't had any problem with them at all but uh i i think it's probably pretty important to uh to buy american i've i'm coming to that conclusion uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i yeah i do too i i think uh i've i've had pickup trucks before and i've had uh [chevrolets] and they were pretty good but i i think uh ford uh is is pretty much focusing on quality uh_huh is that right yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah i was looking in uh it was uh i i forget the name of the magazine used to be changing times sort of like a consumer reports magazine and uh they were saying that ford ranger was the number one selling truck counting all of yeah yeah something i believe something like that yeah i'm not sure i i kind of think i'd like to go with a something around a a one fifty i don't want a full size but i don't want uh one of those little uh mini trucks either besides i probably would look at something uh maybe a a v six you know yeah yeah i've got one little girl and and and a set of golf clubs so yeah yeah yeah that's it yeah yeah uh yeah yeah i i kind of like the looks of the short bed but or the short cab but but uh you know like i say just you just really need the extra space unless you have some sort of a cab you know cover or something but yeah uh_huh although uh i i notice you said rust right before that that we don't have that much problem down here but i know you all have it up there i guess they salt the roads and yeah uh_huh yeah yeah yeah i guess i i as i was working with some people from buffalo here recently or actually it was a couple years ago but they were they were saying you know a lot of people up there they got a winter car and then a summer car you know yeah uh_huh yeah out comes the sixty eight nova yeah uh_huh okay uh you want to start by telling me what camping is to you do you backpack or hike or no i've never done a canoe trip that sounds interesting oh man i imagine so they'll actually fit in the canoe and then you go for days at a time god that sounds like fun well the camping i grew up with was like tents and coleman stove type and uh you know that just either out in the woods or actually i i grew up water skiing i was uh from california and so we would go up to the sacramento uh river [sloughs] the delta there and you just pick a campground on the river if it got you know over a hundred and ten degrees you went over the [levee] and jumped in the water you know cooled off but uh when i got married my husband had always [backpacked] and so we did that uh i guess we haven't done it since my kids were born so about three years ago and that was a new experience for me but i enjoyed it i like being able to go back into the mountains or you know where the trail didn't necessarily lead and where you couldn't necessarily pitch a tent but uh that that was interesting i i have always wanted to do some white water rafting and so your canoeing kind of made me think of that don't let that stop you i know yeah so you haven't done that before my parents uh were sailing uh this last year down off uh costa rica and they took about two weeks and went into i don't even know the name of the river there but they went white water rafting and mom said it was absolutely just a wonderful experience she said it was truly incredible and you know i there's that sense of it you know you're kind of scared that risk of like gosh what could happen and then the thrill of you know the excitement of doing it so well do you have anything planned for this summer oh okay oh i imagine oh that doesn't that sounds good that sounds we've been wanting to start camping again this year too uh my oldest child is a girl was born three years ago three and a half and then i have a little one that just turned two and we are in the process of potty training i didn't want to go camping with diapers you know i and and you know at a time when they're afraid of their shadow all they need is you know some skunk or something to rub up the outside of the tent they'd be awake all night so but i think with him almost potty trained and you know she's not afraid of her shadow anymore that i'm i'm hoping and crossing my fingers that we'll be able to go uh this summer you know even if it's like over to rio [dosa] for a couple of days or something to get them used to it and get them started uh with little back packs of their own and you know things like that uh_huh well that's true ugh i would need that before i could teach them well uh a little bit uh nothing overly strenuous no the majority of my camping experience is uh a tent by the lake type situation or uh maybe a canoe trip or something like that oh it it's we've had a lot of fun uh i i moved to dallas about five years ago and we've made three different trips since i've been here the group of friends that i run around with of [varying] degrees uh of difficulty the the last one we did and we haven't had a chance to duplicate was uh was a canoe trip in arkansas and the river was it was up about three feet so it was uh it was it was pretty challenging but uh and then we uh as far as the camping part of that we just drag along all our tents and sleeping bags and uh find uh find a clearing in the woods and go for it well yeah yeah it's the that that particular one was a two day trip so what uh there's uh there's a [outfitter] and uh they haul you up to the [headwaters] come down about halfway and then you get to you spend the night and then uh the second day head on down to the to the pool at the end of the river yeah it it really is okay okay right right okay boy i bet yeah uh_huh yeah that's that was uh that's always been our next step our our little group of friends here we've been kind of getting married off and what not but uh yeah that well it it just puts a [damper] on things for a little while but we're we're starting to get everybody back together yeah we'd like to do a float trip down uh-oh like big bend area or something like that no no we haven't made that trip yet i'll bet yeah uh_huh yeah exactly um not really just yet we've uh well i i do have uh a little bit of property i grew up in south dakota and i've got a piece of property in minnesota that is completely [undeveloped] as of yet there's uh there's a little lake up there and uh a group of friends that i i went to college with um got together and we basically own all the land around this little lake there it's divided up into ten lots so we've got a private lake and it's completely [undeveloped] at this point so that's a possibility and the weather is typically always nice up there in the summertime it it's it's about two hours north of minneapolis so uh yeah in fact uh uh well i got married last summer and uh that's that's we ended up there for a couple days uh on our honeymoon we kind of took uh a tour of the united states for about a week and uh up through that area but uh my wife's real excited about it so we're uh we're going to hope to get up there sometime early last year it was the end of july and it was a little too late for the fish but uh hopefully get up there early enough to to get into some of the some of the fish and uh the the good weather and what not uh_huh oh gosh yeah yeah that's right sure right you bet yeah we'll that you know and there's a lot of places with uh like nature trails things like that where they could learn a lot too you know it's like okay this this is this is what uh a pheasant looks like you know and okay now we'll go look for one well yeah that's everybody might learn something that way but uh but yeah that's there is there's an awful lot of things set up you know just any anything you want to do like like you say it can be uh a water ski trip or fishing trip or just a [sightseeing] bird watching you know hunt hunt with a camera type of thing or there's a lot of different opportunities for things like that it's a lot of fun it really is hello all right now we used to be big time campers but now we're not quite so much since the kids are involved so much in sports well when we before we had kids we was in a motorcycle group you know we went like twenty or thirty at a time we took uh just our little tents and we did it that way then when we started having children we bought a camper you know and we did it that way so we've always enjoyed camping uh_huh yes now we have friends with a van and when they go on vacation a lot of times they'll just sleep in the van you know like one night and the next night they'll stay at the motel you know or something like that and they enjoy it oh yeah oh me either i hate to be on all that stuff oh yeah oh yes yes oh but now i enjoy it every once in a while i mean it's not something i'd want to do real often i'm a [sissy] i either want to do it in the fall or spring you know yes well not really because usually it's when we go off you know like for a couple weeks or so it's usually like that just about just about oh it really is it really is also i said we mostly did ours before we started a family it's a lot easier then oh uh_huh yes uh_huh oh i'd like to go anywhere you know i just like to go i really do no not really not that much um we've been well we've been to wyoming you know and kentucky and montana and you know places like that but usually if we're with a group of people we really don't stay any one place very long you know like if we're just going through and they camp one night and then head on but now that we have children and we go every blue moon i'd rather just go to galveston you know yes yes yes uh_huh uh_huh it is my children really enjoys it they really do but by the time we really get a chance to it's july you know and it's so hot and our camper doesn't have an air conditioner yeah it's one of those pop ups i'm sure you could put one in probably but we hadn't did that yes we all enjoy camping and they're you know they're in like and scouts and stuff like that you know so they get to go camping in those organizations also at least their daddy goes with them i don't when they do that but that really is well how old is your boys your children uh_huh oh yes yeah yes it really is mine's eleven and eight so they really enjoy it too yeah yes yes oh but i have uh brother in law and a sister you know that just really just camp you know they love to go camping they could they would all the time they wanted you know wanted to because there's nothing holding them back but i'm just not that involved in it yeah oh uh_huh me i haven't really as far as entertainment i don't know what you would do every you know but i guess my [entertainment's] television i guess uh_huh oh i don't either uh_huh yes but they probably live in a city also don't they well see we're in a real small county area and you know that makes a big difference because if we want to go camping we can just go just a few miles you know that makes a difference it was nice talking to you too and we'll probably be talking to you again okay bye bye uh_huh what type of camping did you do uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh oh how neat uh_huh well i know i have um i just have a tent and the kids and i like to go out and camp in the tent and then i bought a van and that way i can sleep in the van and be more comfortable uh_huh right yeah uh_huh yes i don't i don't think i'm a real true trooper you know when it comes to camping all the bugs and stuff but i i try but but i try you know to uh to get out there and enjoy everything but what was so fun though is that i had to take my son to the doctor this morning because he went out camping with some friends and he got poison ivy and it's all over him the poor thing you know so there's definitely hazards to going camping if you don't know what you're looking at oh shoot uh_huh yeah right right definitely when it's cool well have you done much camping around texas uh_huh uh_huh yeah well have you camped all over the united states wow see now i haven't so that i bet you that's an experience there uh_huh uh_huh right right well i know my parents like to camp a lot and they uh they've been going to gulf [shores] alabama and uh which is really really neat they said they've got the white beaches and the sand and it's not real populated so they can they feel like they're in the outdoors and still close to the ocean and uh from what i understand from them it's really really pretty there uh_huh uh_huh well have you done much camping up in kentucky and and those parts in the mountains uh_huh right right yeah oh yeah yeah yeah rent a beach house or something yeah that's that's my idea of camping but we're uh we're getting more into it and we've done uh we've done quite a bit and uh uh the kids like to go out you know as often as they can um so that's good you know they're they're becoming enthusiasts then of camping right uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah well that's really neat well uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah oh that's neat that's really neat well i well i have um a son that's uh going to be eleven here pretty soon and then a daughter that's thirteen so they're they're getting old enough to where they can help out with a [campfire] and cooking and and all that kind of stuff too so that's that's really neat uh_huh yeah yeah yeah i i agree with you they like to get out there and but this wasn't so fun this last time for [nathan] to to get out there and he didn't realize he was touching poison ivy and it got all into his eye and it was really [swollen] and uh so they had to give him shots and everything so oh well maybe next time he'll stay away from those particular trees or what bushes whatever they are uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh no now i like to go out like several times a year but not on a on the regular basis i have some friends who go out every single weekend when you know in the season uh and and i just couldn't do that you know yeah yeah just getting away yeah right right see i see they just want to get away but every friday night they'll go home you know straight from work and they'll pack up and you know and then they'll leave and i'm just going you know by friday night i just want to crash you know and i want to go home and you know do all that and then uh get out on the road to boot so but anyway that's their life yeah yeah that's true uh_huh now that's true that's true yeah that's true well it was nice talking with you okay okay well take care bye bye okay they suggested that we uh discuss what we think of when we say camping oh i can camp just about most anyway camping or uh motor home is nice uh travel trailer pop up oh really oh you really rough it then uh_huh do you do that very often uh_huh uh_huh you'd have a lot of hills in that down in that area yeah that would be really great pardon uh_huh that sounds like it'd be fun did you go alone or with a group or uh_huh uh_huh oh that's great long as it's not raining uh_huh really oh that would be huh_uh well i'm in pennsylvania yes are you in texas now oh okay most everybody i've been talking to is from texas but uh we're up here in western [northwestern] part of pennsylvania uh_huh well you kind of know what it's like then yeah but we've uh we've done uh many types of camping we've we've done tent camping and we had access to a motor home which is really super great if you don't want to rough it too much uh_huh uh_huh right just get you away from the everyday things that are going on we when the children were smaller we used to go to uh delaware along the ocean most every year and that was fun we stayed mostly in state parks and uh we really enjoyed that huh oh maybe my dropping my phone is that better oh but yeah well we used to we don't as much anymore but uh we used to we kind of slowed down a little bit but uh i think the worst the worst thing is when it's raining if you get a rainy season and you happen to be camping then it can be kind of bad uh_huh i don't think i would like that what kind oh those aren't too pleasant yeah we have some of them around here you probably have more there though i would imagine oh uh_huh uh_huh but you still [backpacked] and camped out uh_huh uh_huh yeah i guess you know enough to look where you're walking or sitting or whatever you're doing yeah yeah i would think i would think a cave would be could have problems like that too uh_huh uh_huh is your brother younger than you or uh_huh uh_huh well that's great that'd be a lot of fun you have a lot good experiences from that yeah did you really what black ones yeah that would be exciting yeah they're usually more afraid of you than you are of them usually they're on the increase in this area uh_huh the black bear oh yeah yeah the [population's] been really up they've uh they've had longer hunting seasons than that even to get rid of more of them because they were uh increasing so much uh_huh yeah but uh we we really like camping i i must say that uh we we really have a lot of fun a lot of memories in that from camping and uh yeah yeah it's just so it's a lot of work too it's uh you know getting ready and taking care of everything but it's um it's really refreshing so i think so well it was really good hearing from you and i hope you get back into camping again and do a little more of it okay thanks a lot and you have a good day bye bye okay yeah what do you where do you like to camp how do you like to camp i used to uh live in the ozarks and uh liked to go up there and just take a backpack and strike out into the woods yeah i haven't done it in quite awhile since i moved down here but i used to do it quite a bit yeah yeah it was real hilly take a twenty two and go out take a twenty two and find a creek i used to go with my brother we just lived up there yeah it gets kind of i we used to have one of those little [caves] you can go back in get out of the rain but i don't know much about camping in texas you live in pennsylvania i didn't know they did this yeah yeah i'm down here at t i i used to be in ohio it's some pretty country up there so yeah you can get the they have some nice camping grounds you know that have the water [piped] out just set it up and get out of get out of the city for awhile tell you what i'm losing you i said i'm losing you you're getting you're fading out yeah so what you try to go and take a vacation every year and go out and camp yeah i know the rain bring out the snakes or used to bring them out in the ozarks that's kind of kind of rough when you got to fight snakes off when your sleeping uh [copperheads] mostly no they're yeah one year they were they were just everywhere i don't know what it was we had a real rainy spring and then it was all year there was just [copperheads] everywhere yeah well i lived down in down in the bottom of a big hollow and we had to pretty much hike out most of the time if it rained we were stuck back in there had a four wheel drive you just get used to it yeah yeah this cave that we used to go in was little it was small it was more it was just big enough for a couple of people to sack out yeah he's about a year and a half younger yeah yeah it was saw a few bears things like that yeah yeah the first first couple of times it's pretty scary but uh after that you realize they are just as afraid of you too but uh oh really i don't know if they don't have them up there do they yeah oh do they yeah they down here they they stopped for awhile or they really made it hard to hunt them i don't know what it's like now i haven't been back up there in awhile well it's good to get out and smell some fresh air too so yeah well i think we're about to run out of our time yeah yeah i'm sure i will you too bye okay i was thinking about camping and different people's ideas about it we've even seen people with these campers and they got the big old antennas up so they can watch their t v when they're going that's not yeah a satellite dish oh golly that's not the kind we do do you go camping well so do we in fact when we first got married we would try to take these trips to minnesota to see his family and we didn't have a tent or any camping supplies so we'd sleep on those picnic tables at [roadside] parks i mean i know it's dangerous i wouldn't do it now but we did and one time we went to yellowstone and we were doing the same thing we couldn't find a place to camp and so we were on top of a picnic table with our our sleeping bags i guess and this ranger comes up with this light shines it on us and said that we're just bear bait out there we had our food you know and told us to get inside our car bear bait yeah yeah we've got some land at holly lake outside of tyler and we go up there fairly often sometimes we get a lot of people together to do it and we've done things like when when it's kind of cold we take extension [cords] and we've all got [heaters] in our tents and in the summer same thing we get our extension [cords] running from all these tents but we've got the fans going so we're not roughing it too much and we have taken t v out there for the kids and they've got their electrical [hookups] so it's not so bad i think the longest we've stayed out there is like five days and they even they had a library at one time out there so that's really not roughing it so much but we have gone on trips where we [bathed] in streams that's kind of different and a pool to go to that would be nice uh_huh well my husband has even camped at lake lavon with one of his friends he just decided to take the kids out there i mean it's not very many miles from our house at all but they had the time of their lives you know had the boat just pulled up right by the tents it wasn't bad yeah and we've taken our tents though loaded them up in car carrier and decided we were going to tent most of the way and it ended up when it came time for us to pull in for the night we'd take a vote and most of the time we decided we wanted to stay in a hotel instead of getting out all that stuff you know yeah then you have to get up the next day and move it on huh_uh but we're set now we've got cook stoves and we've got our bug light and everybody's got their sleeping bags we got air [mattresses] we decided that was easier than cots and more comfortable yeah those double ones pretty good we're on our third one i think somehow we've got an electric pump that hooks into the cigarette lighter i didn't know you could do that yeah no joke i hope you didn't have a big vacuum cleaner yeah now we've used a hair dryer before but i put it on hot and also melted it i found that you don't do that i didn't realize it would melt so easily i don't know yeah i don't like it when there's [mosquitos] so bad and then one night we were camping and it came just a [torrential] [downpour] we had the steaks on the grill these people were with us and it i mean everything was [sopping] wet inside the tent it was just that bad you know and we decided we'd just go across the road to the office and see if we could rent anything so i got a condo with a [jacuzzi] and it was wonderful yeah yeah it was it's horrible you mean that you put on a truck or what oh yeah yeah uh_huh how many weeks have you been doing these calls i think this must be into my third week too so do you work for t i in a speech lab and what exactly are they going to do so any voice no matter what the speech pattern or the [dialect] or anything um i wonder if these are going to be speaking the computers oh that's kind of neat do you put all the uh [huhs] in here on everything too what do you write for [stutter] that uh uh_huh i guess so unless you want to talk about stakes what size stakes to put in you need metal instead of plastic and you make sure that you keep up with them for the next time we got one of those kind that have got the oh what is it they're plastic and they've got the elastic on the inside of the poles and you just put them together and it's a dome tent that's good isn't it yeah um no i've done it in a shelter it was in padre island and in a truck off corpus not but not in a tent oh well that's about all okay uh_huh bye uh_huh right or their satellite dish on top of the recreational vehicles yeah we have a little bit and we've just gotten one of those little tents that we throw out on the ground and that's what we camp in so we kind of rough it uh_huh oh no oh uh_huh gosh bear bait that would make me nervous have you done any camping around here uh_huh yeah that sounds fun right yeah yeah yeah do you go on long like a week at a time or just weekends uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh yeah i like the campgrounds that have a nice shower uh_huh yeah we've uh we camped at the [degray] state park in arkansas in the fall and there was nobody else hardly around and it was just really nice that time of year we had taken our electric blanket too just in case it was [unbearable] but we didn't need it yeah oh really yeah oh yeah uh_huh that sounds nice yeah yeah it's a lot of work to set up just for one night right yeah those are nice we have one of those too uh_huh yeah how do you blow yours up oh we were looking at those in a magazine last time we went we took our vacuum cleaner with us and yeah you can if you can reverse the [nozzle] on your vacuum cleaner and it blows air out instead of [sucking] it in and you can fill them up that way but something that's smaller would be a lot more convenient no uh_huh we have a my husband and i we have a pickup truck so there's plenty of room to hold things uh_huh oh no yeah oh we take we take our dog camping she likes to go out and stay in the woods she sleeps she sleeps in the tent with us it's fun oh me either oh no uh_huh oh boy that was lucky we've been lucky we've never really been rained on the few times we've gone oh i bet it when we were younger when i was a kid we camped in virginia and we had one of those little pop up tents which is really nice because it kind of gets you off the ground but it seemed like it rained every weekend for about a the year we were really into camping no it's a little trailer you pull behind your car and uh you know you the lid pops off the little tent comes up the top and it had two double beds in it oh since the beginning i guess it's been two or three weeks uh well i work as a temporary in the speech lab uh_huh where they're doing this program the voice recognition program oh they turn them over to somebody and they're going to i guess they're going to try to teach computers how to recognize voices and search for specific words and stuff right yeah i don't know i type up the tapes of what people talked about yeah it's sort of interesting uh_huh everything like that all the little [stutters] and everything like if they say i i we just type it in like that well i guess that's it for camping uh yeah yeah oh uh_huh that's what we have too yeah that's what ours is yeah yeah they pop up pretty fast have you ever camped on sand that can be a mess we camped at the beach one time and that was sort of miserable you just everywhere you went there was sand you couldn't even when you're eating it it was in your bed uh_huh oh uh_huh okay well it's good talking to you bye i don't know um do you do a lot of camping yeah oh so yeah um up here some of the state parks are really nice and some of them aren't some of them are pretty rough um yeah they they just have like [outhouses] they don't have like a shower room or anything yeah but some of them are really nice they have showers and full bathrooms um but i don't know i i've been camping a couple times but i'm not a real avid camper uh a lot of people i know are but um i don't i don't yeah we went we went once to a lean to and it um i mean there wasn't any electricity on the camp site but it was all right we only spent two nights there i wouldn't want to spend more than two nights i wouldn't want to go for like a week but um two nights is good um especially there was a little store close by so it was pretty nice oh really oh um yeah up here you got to wait until august until the water warms up well it's not that bad but it's still pretty chilly um i don't know i was i have a tent and i fluff out in it in the backyard and stuff but this thing about camping that bothers me is you've got to pack everything and another thing is the thing seems to get it's dirty you know so you can't keep the dirt out of the tent i don't know we have a seven year old it's pretty funny like stay out yeah boy he doesn't go in and out of the tent a hundred times and use it as a play uh they like to play in them yeah i don't know yeah well what we were doing we were just going to say we're just going to sleep in the tent and hang out at night so you know no going in and out and or what he wants to do we had brought his friend along was play in the tent it was like no this is not working you can't do that you get the tent all dirty plus you get it all wet we were at a beach site too no but you know i was just thinking of getting one those for the yard because they are really nice and um up here we have uh we have quite a few mosquitoes at nighttime they're terrible they're really terrible uh but there's this one campsite that it just some of them are known but there is one that's out in this big lake and it's it's it's mosquitoes are terrible and then there's this there's this other one that's more up in the mountains but it surrounds a man made reservoir and there's no bugs that's the whole thing that everyone told me oh i'm i was going to go to little river state park that place is great there's no bugs but oh okay because uh we were having a really big problem up here in certain areas we were really affected bad by it but really got it um almost destroyed the the tourism in one town because of the mosquitoes they're so bad yeah that was it's a really nice area i've been there before and it's i i couldn't imagine living just sixty miles north of them but they were plagued they were plagued with them with mosquitoes and you can go out outside in the daytime all right but the minute the sun went down um that's when it's usually the minute the sun sets the mosquitoes come out i mean just the very second it's really strange they uh they must uh work on that you know the it gets cooler when the sun sets and then they all come out oh yeah yeah i never really noticed how effective they were but um because that wasn't really i bought them i really didn't get to use them like oh there's mosquitoes let's turn them we just sort of lit them and um we weren't bothered that much by mosquitoes so we didn't really contribute it to that but um i think in an area that's really thick with mosquitoes i can't see all this little uh smoke buckets i call them they work but they're suppose to work really well oh i'm in my paperwork here that's what i do when i wait for a phone call i get in my paperwork oh to find my most important parts but i don't know i don't know if i'm going to go i wish was an avid camper and i could really talk about like gardening or something you can talk about that a lot but um i do want to go again we just moved to a new into a house so i don't think camping maybe in the backyard but i don't see going on a camping trip probably until next summer so it's easy for you to go um oh god i don't know but that sounds that my my kind of camping it really does yeah okay um well um that is is to have a a nice vehicle where you can have everything in it plus your tent yep um well those they're kind of nice but they're also um [flimsy] when you really look at them but when you get inside they're really nice you know everything's really but then when you look underneath them it's just got these little wheels and this little [axle] it's like oh my and then a big [windstorm] it would pick you up oh jeez yeah what do you what do you do when you get a i mean like a really violent storm like a tornado just stay in your truck i mean i wouldn't stay in the um oh so then were they successful but it took them a little while yeah so did they get stuck yeah huh well so they [evacuated] it wow yeah i know i always i like to get right on the water yeah by the campsite it's so we have lean [tos] up here i really like them like i say they're kind of just kind of more sturdy than anything you know just just yeah they're they're lean [tos] they're um yeah they're pretty nice they're they're uh it's like a little house except the whole face is open and the one time that we went we got one it was overlooking the water but it was a big [embankment] i wanted to get one right on the water we had an electrical storm too and it was really it was neat sitting there watching it i mean it was raining when we called home everybody said oh we were worried about you in that storm well my husband and i haven't done a whole lot of camping we but we bought a van last year and we were hoping uh to do some camping in the van um we did go camping in not arkansas oklahoma uh last year in we camped in a tent and uh there were two other couples with us and there was uh state park and it was really nice really um i i don't like really camping in the rough i like the the the little necessities like having electricity available and running water and showers and things like that yeah that would that would be much yeah the campsite that we went to was an area that it's right on a big lake and there's a lot of boating out there and we we went up there to hopefully be able to get on the water a little bit but it was still uh it was still too cold yeah it it was pretty early in the year yeah yeah yeah we we have we have a dog and that's just about as bad as a kid uh_huh yeah i don't know how you can really keep uh the inside of a tent clean other than you know taking your shoes off right before you walk in or something and and sweeping it out everyday it's really hard to to keep the sand and dirt out of it did uh_huh um did you have another a big tent like uh um like a looks like a sitting area type you know like a two room type yeah yeah we don't really have a problem with that um in these areas um and even even when in oklahoma when we camped i really didn't notice a problem with bugs and i noticed that i know that i said that's i've i've lived back east before um they huh really huh well have you ever have you ever taken any of those um what do they call this lights have you ever used those uh_huh yeah huh uh_huh yeah i'd i'd like to go camping cross country um i just got married less than two years ago so we don't have any any children yet um yeah so easy to pick up and go and we have a van and we can just throw a couple of sleeping bags in the back of it so it's not really i guess camping the way most people picture camping in the tent but yeah or or get my brother has a real nice pop up and he just he just tows it behind his truck and he he's got three kids so his kids will sleep in the truck in the in the back of the bed um and they sleep in the pop up yeah yeah he did have a problem uh when he went camping last year in [beavers] bend oklahoma um a a storm came in and it started raining really heavy and they were all everybody was trying to [flee] the campsite everybody was getting stuck in the mud and uh well theirs was so bad and they were so close to the water that the water was coming up and they had to get out of there yeah they yeah they were but yeah they they decided that that was enough camping for the weekend no they ended up getting out they ended up helping several other people though that were that were stuck yeah yeah they the whole the whole campsite was [evacuated] i mean some i think some people that had fairly sturdy um vehicles or whatever if they had like a winnebago or something and they were farther in away from the water i think they stayed but everybody that was real close to the water ended up it was either that or their truck was going to go floating downstream yeah they have them right at the [campsites] wow okay well there there are quite a few um parks i guess state parks and there's a couple of national parks i guess that you can camp at um most of them have pretty good facilities i don't know if the camping that i've done is really roughing it without a a whole lot of stuff uh done a little bit of that mainly just um like camping out at the state parks i've been to a couple in texas and there's some real nice ones in arkansas um i think arkansas has one of the best parks departments around uh_huh yeah part of them are yeah they've got uh real nice lake system and around their parks one of them uh the gray i think that's one of the ones we've been to it's real nice there a bunch of lakes around it there's a golf course and um just a whole bunch of camping sites what about you where have you uh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i think we've collected stuff off and on over the years the more times we did it the more serious we get about it where where is raleigh in north carolina okay are you kind of away from the blue ridge mountains an area uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah my wife's from the western part of virginia we've been down the parkway a lot but i didn't know how much how much camping areas there were along there what what's it like camping in the desert and california that seems like a challenge uh_huh uh_huh yeah huh are the temperatures real extreme there or the the uh_huh yeah true yeah yeah we've talked about planning a trip up through um i have a sister in law that lives in new mexico up through new mexico and into colorado and the grand canyon area i don't know don't know when i'm going to get a chance to do that but uh_huh i'll bet that one one thing you said about the stars is really true it's when you're close to a big city like dallas the the lights kind of wash wash off the star so it's nice to to get away it's just amazing how how much you miss huh uh_huh well i guess we've talked as much as we need to on the subject yeah it was good talking to you robert bye bye all right what uh what kind of camping is there in texas uh_huh yeah so you do uh like backpacking and the like uh_huh huh is the ozarks in arkansas yeah so that's probably a pretty nice place to go yeah oh i've been camping for years not on a regular basis but uh i first started camping out in the desert in california and then sometimes in the mountains also in california and uh then i moved to north carolina and i i didn't camp for a long time and then i started to uh go camping again kind of in conjunction with white water rafting so i'd go up somewhere and camp overnight and then do some rafting and then maybe camp another night and drive home and that was uh that was pretty good so i went out and bought a whole bunch of camping gear and uh you know i still do it once in a while uh_huh yeah uh well it's it's uh in terms of north south i would say it's uh a little a little more towards the northern border of the state and pretty much in the eastern half of it so what well it it's uh actually the the blue ridge in virginia are closer to raleigh they're about three hours away if you go due north um of the blue ridge in north carolina i think are much nicer and you can pick those up going west but then you're talking about six to eight hours the way it works but um it's a real it's a real nice place to go and camp and there's some pretty decent campgrounds although i don't think raleigh i don't think the state of north carolina takes they probably just don't spend as much money as a lot of other states might i think there's quite a few i can't say i've checked them all out though it's uh it's actually kind of incredible it's really really nice um i like it better than almost anything i've ever done just the sky is so amazing you know you really can probably count thousands of stars and uh it's it's just kind of nice i like the uh i think the desert has a rare kind of beauty which uh a lot of people don't realize you know they hear desert and they think of [scorpions] and snakes and sand and being real dry and lack of water course it it has all of those qualities but it also has a certain quality of beauty that you just don't find anyway else except in a desert so it's pretty nice the uh the movie the doors has some nice desert scenes those guys all go camping out in the desert of course they drag a lot of drugs with them but um the uh the shots are are pretty nice and it's sort of like that i mean it's just almost [surreal] in some places it's very pleasant they can be yeah i mean you got to you sort of have to choose your season carefully and know what's going to happen i've been camping in death valley one doesn't go in july but it's beautiful in february i mean it's just beautiful the days get up into the high eighties uh maybe the nineties but it's it's quite [bearable] and then the nights are reasonably warm you know sixties or seventies it's just great it's really very nice yeah well that would be that would be pretty nice i've been i have been camping on the south rim the grand canyon that's okay a lot of people like to go down and camp down inside i was just too lazy that trip to do all that walking especially with my gear oh yeah yeah it yeah it yeah it really is i mean i don't think i ever see the little [dipper] you hear people talk about the little [dipper] but i don't think i ever see it except when i go get out of the city and go camping in the desert or in in the mountains otherwise it's just too faint yeah i think we fulfilled our obligation well thanks for calling nice talking to you okay bye bye okay do you go camping very much uh we try to go once maybe twice a summer uh we uh just you know for like a short weekend or something we don't go for the long you know week long thing but we usually go to uh a lake area you know where the [campsites] are and do that uh oh no no no a tent me too you're really roughing it yeah oh yeah are you here in local texas i mean i'm in garland right outside of dallas so we um we have a five year old and we started taking her she was pretty young when we started uh camping with her i know i know and then they and they you know there's no t v and they don't have all these modern toys and they have to use sticks and rocks and stuff like that to play with and i like that it's pretty fun uh_huh yeah we we try to uh go with another couple that have children also and uh that makes it a lot more enjoyable plus you know we don't have to go out and buy all the equipment and stuff you know we kind of split it up uh yeah because it gets it really does get expensive if you if you don't want to rough it all the way you know even the sleeping bags those are running you know a good thirty dollars a pop and and so we've built that up but no want one bad do you oh yes yeah i would too would too we usually uh let's see we try to go to a lake my husband and this uh other couple that we go with her husband um kind of likes um is it scuba dive and so we'll go to a lake and uh where they can go do that we're close enough so they can do that and the girls can play on the beach area yeah yeah that's fun really am i pretty texan no you don't you don't sound like it to me oh have you yeah yes oh that's true that's true i see i don't think i do but uh but a lot of people do say i sound like i guess i have i guess more of a twang to my voice i sure am i've lived here all my life but any way uh yes yes we went last summer actually or is there okay well we didn't go camping we just uh we did like uh we drove down to houston to visit friends and we went to galveston and uh to san antonio and then up to austin and and kind of uh you know doing the sight seeing type stuff so we didn't go camping that would be fun though to go that's one thing my husband wanted to do was on this summer's vacation was to go and camp wherever we went and i said well i'd love that but it does and and ever once you know on my summer vacation you know my week long vacation i want to be a little bit pampered you know by a hotel and a waiter so we're hoping to do like a three day weekend there's um a thing called [pfeiffer] rim i don't know if you have ever heard of it it's uh there's a town called [glenrose] i think it's around two hours from here and uh it's it has like dinosaur tracks and stuff like that and it's got one of those wildlife parks yeah i think that'll be fun so we're going to try to do that like on a three day weekend go there and no i haven't where at is it i've just been up there skiing and well we've driven through and you know but but not you know camping or anything but i would love to camp in the mountains that's what my girlfriend says yes she loves that place she loves that she says that where we need to go sometime oh uh_huh oh i love that that's neat that's neat i used to go camping all the time as a a girl scout all the time i got real used to it then i felt like we roughed it then right yes exactly i mean we had to make the fires and dig [latrines] and everything you have to get poison ivy and all that good stuff to really be camping yeah well do you you you say you haven't been in years oh gosh bless your heart yes uh_huh uh_huh i don't blame you i don't blame you at all years ago it would have been fine but oh yeah yeah uh_huh yes i i can imagine no i don't blame you not nowadays yeah now are you with t i down there good have you okay oh oh that's neat um it's hard isn't it now how old are your girls oh goodness no you're not old you're not old at all sure oh okay do you need to go yeah that's very smart yeah me too and good luck how many have you made so far calls oh have you they're all this is only about my second one i've ever made i've been a [recipient] on the others how many have you had so far do you know four that's good very good yes yeah i don't yeah you bet you bet i know yes i always try to find out where they're from you know cause because it is neat it really is well then i guess i'll let you go so you can go get the door and you me too thanks okay thank you bye bye no i've haven't gone camping in years but it's is something that i've done in the past how about you that's that's pretty average to me uh_huh right do you tent camp or do you have a camper that's what i you know that's how i camp too that's how i define camping the rest the rest of that is really not the same as a matter of fact my my you know the majority of the amount of camping i've done has been really roughing it um as a little girl i'd go with my dad and my uncle and my brother and we went to the [boundary] waters area in minnesota so that's that's really wild yes i'm in austin where are you oh uh_huh oh the kids love it i mean they just love it it's wonderful for them to be outside exactly yes well how it it's really is a is a good good family thing to do yeah and uh_huh good planning exactly you're right do you have a boat no oh well actually i would you know what i would love i would absolutely love a sail boat that doesn't go along with camping but now that that that's what i would like to have yeah uh_huh and i would play on the beach area too that's what i would do yeah i'm just sitting here listening to your accent and thinking what a good time the computer is going to have with that you're pretty texan yes but you know you know what's really funny um i've had people tell me that i have a texas accent and and i mean there is just no way i've not picked one up i've only lived here about six years so if i have one it must be very very slight the yankees can hear it uh_huh are you a a native texan oh well good for you have you ever been to austin this how was i'm wondering i'm really not that not familiar i know there are some good places to go camping along the uh the lakes uh_huh it takes a lot more planning uh_huh right exactly exactly yeah no i haven't oh that sounds that sounds great have you ever camped out of state you know where you should try sometime is colorado it is beautiful absolutely beautiful uh_huh uh_huh yes estes state park is fantastic see you need to go there it is it's you know it's it's high canyon and uh and there's this little mountain lakes and it's very peaceful and um in in the early fall time um i can't remember what type of trees they are but they all the leaves turn yellow and it's just brilliant and yes you would you'd like it very much i know you would i was too yeah uh well we did you know we really did i mean i just don't understand these people that think taking an r v and parking it and sitting inside and watching t v and having your microwave it's not camping right right i mean that is it right oh no i haven't i'm um i'm a struggling single mom and uh thank you um it's you know time is precious money's precious um and it it i think i haven't been able to do it and you know what that was one of the things i really thought i'd like to do with my children you know again and i'm a little bit fearful of trying that just women you know i hope yes i i really now i i have gone on one little vacation just the girls and i we drove down to port aransas and rented a little efficiency you know and and had a marvelous like two nights and that was great and even at that it it was like the first time that i ventured you know out of the city by myself and and you know i i stayed in a nice place but it's still it's real different not to have another adult with you you know i'm just a chicken i know lots of women would do it all the time i haven't quite adjusted you know well i i was with t i until january i uh i left t i in january hoping to strike out and find a job where i could make some money so well it's it was a good plan but i haven't yet i got into sales and i'm selling uh telephone systems and it's it's fun and it's interesting but it's also um pretty challenging and i haven't i haven't started making money yet so yeah it's it's hard eleven and fourteen yeah so i'm old well excuse me just second honey i'll be yeah go ahead there's someone at the door well um i'm going to listen we always check and see if we should answer the door at night yeah so well i've enjoyed this and uh i i haven't made any i've been just a [recipient] i think i've had about four yeah that's four each well you know when i had to this is my my [gemini] nature you know it's like what are you interested in and it's like virtually anything i'll talk about anything to anybody and it's it's been real interesting the different personalities that i run across exactly uh_huh uh_huh well thank you and um i enjoyed talking with you you have a good time camping when you go next time think of me all right bye bye all right i i think our experience of camping is i i am the the passive member i get things ready and then i enjoy uh because my my husband is a good camper and so they he manages the troops and they do the work and i have fun that's when we camped the most when i thinks it's a marvelous activity for younger families because uh i it seems like i would go through a period of time where i just uh was really overworked you know and and getting out into nature and relaxing and having the family do a good share of the work you know and the part that i did was more fun than uh than labor because they did the the running and [toting] chores and i just helped cook and kind of organize you know it is isn't it it isn't what kinds of things have you tried have you done uh uh uh the big pot cooking oh yeah big frying oh that's interesting you know interesting enough uh the food part was kind of uh important thing in our camping uh when my oldest son uh always at the beginning i did all the shopping and everything but the the neat breakthrough was when my oldest son mark took his uh uh cooking merit badge in and and mark was the kind of camper who ate beef [stroganoff] and uh i mean you know he did it up really good and so uh after he took that merit badge he did all the shopping and preparing getting ready for it it was it was a marvelous experience because after that then all i had to do was uh follow the instructions you know and do and we did a lot of interesting kinds of things like i would take corn bread and uh cook a pan inside of a pan over a over a camp uh stove and it works real good it's like an oven just put uh put a thing on it what did you like to do most that's neat isn't it right i agree huh well now in florida is is there are there times of the year when it's very comfortable to camp or is it always kind of hot uh_huh oh is that true now now we're we're in texas now and you're in texas right okay uh we have not camped a great deal here because uh a good share of the time in the summer time it's too hot really to be very comfortable camping i yeah yeah we have done that but but we camped mostly when the kids were little we were in we were in new jersey and uh in uh [allendale] and uh and uh [waldwick] it's just about twelve miles south of the new york border and we'd go up to the [adirondacks] and camp and it was so you know pick your own uh blueberries and make blueberry [pancakes] for breakfast uh also go ahead oh are you where did you live oh oh yeah i know that i had a cousin who lived in white plains that's a that's a neat area but it's a that is a particularly neat area for camping because yeah it is neat though because there are lots of lakes fairly near by you don't have to go very far and uh and there's uh a lot of trees lot of mountains and lot of uh hiking sort of things and and we had uh collapsible boat which we clipper little clipper sail boat and so we would sail and and uh did a lot of camping that way oh do you we've gotten out a time or two on a rented basis and it's fun too i think do you that's neat so you kind of uh uh an everyday camper a full time camper well now are you living alone now or you and your dog huh hey that sounds great well we don't we don't camp quite as much as we used to but uh i still think it's a great way to spend a time with your family and enjoy nature and uh kind of wipe out the stress of everyday life i'd always right i'd always come home just relaxed and uh comfortable and ready to go at it again so it was a neat activity good to talk to you tell me your name again jack all right yes we've been here we're we're in plano but we've been here about uh eighteen years are you are you how about that well we're all lots of people from t i up this way all right good to talk to you all right all right bye bye uh_huh uh_huh well uh uh your you said your family was uh all grown up now how about when they were younger did you go take them camping uh_huh uh_huh yeah even cooking over an open fire is a little more fun isn't it oh oh uh well it was really my ex who did the the uh uh the cooking back when we first started and we found that the you know what was one one great handy things was this uh uh uh hamburger helper because all you needed was a big frying pan you dumped everything in together and it was enough for all five of us six of us oh well that's great uh_huh well cooking was our secondary interest i mean well really just [commune] with nature we started out uh well we were living in florida at the time and we early in life we discovered that six people all going on vacation gets to be very very expensive so my ex decided we're going to try camping and she went out one day on the spur of the moment and bought a tent and that's how we got started we did it for years and years uh well uh yes and no i mean um in the winter time yes it's it gets kind of chilly or it can get chilly but uh there's really no time of the year that you can't go uh yes i'm in dallas well it just depends on where you go for instance if you went down to the sea shore it would be wonderful a nice breeze blowing in from the water oh where abouts uh_huh oh yes yes i i come from up in that area i'm a new yorker myself a little town called [tuckaho] over by white plains well that i wouldn't know i left there when i was quite young uh_huh uh_huh well uh me i outgrew uh sleeping bags and uh tents and i now have a motor home well i live in mine yes uh well yes i consider myself what they call a full timer yeah well just me and my dog yeah oh yes definitely nothing like the fresh outdoors jack uh_huh are you uh from dallas too beth oh well that's where we that's where i am plano uh_huh nice talking to you too beth bye there a lot of places to camp in dallas uh_huh do you do a lot of camping uh_huh well that must have been fun though uh_huh well that sounds fun yeah we've done ours i've only been camping twice and one of them i don't really consider camping it was on the edge of the lake and it was at a camp i don't like those camping grounds where you know you got r v beside you and then another people in tents beside you i just don't care for that uh_huh right well it doesn't uh we uh four years ago it was about four years ago my little boy was three months old and the first time i left him we went overnight camping and we went and we found this little peninsula out in the middle of nowhere by the lake and we had a ball just sat out there with our we didn't even use tents then we just had uh sleeping bags and fire going and we fried potatoes and bacon and everything for breakfast the next morning oh it did it did i didn't even think about frying potatoes but my sister in law she's always done a lot of camping and she's good she'd think about bringing a rake so you can rake your area out and yeah uh_huh well yeah she was she is always prepared i mean she brought everything from like i said toilet paper to the rake the only thing we'd had to do we had to go out looking for some kind of a grill you know we and we and we seen this old refrigerator that somebody had dumped and we broke the i guess it's the freezing [component] and we broke that out of there and put it over our um hole yeah well it held our pan and you know the potatoes and stuff we had a good time yeah we're still waiting to go again uh_huh arkansas uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh pretty well i love to swim so i like to get out by a lake or a uh you know somewhere close where we can swim uh_huh uh_huh yeah how old are your boys oh so they don't go camping with you oh yeah well i haven't taken my little boy yet i'm afraid to get him out he is so [fearless] he it [terrifies] me he think so well it's the water he's not scared of he'll go out into it until it's up to his nose and then try to tread back uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah if you know what to look for well that sounds so neat yeah well i'm impressed my mother in law and my well they've always done a lot of camping i grew up in louisville kentucky and there wasn't i don't know but we just didn't get out my mother and my father split up when we were young so and my mother wasn't into that and that's who i stayed with so we didn't do much outdoors stuff except swimming and we went swimming a lot and uh-oh excuse me my baby's getting sick i know yeah um i've got to clean her up i'm sorry appreciate it i enjoyed talking thank you bye bye well not necessarily in dallas but it's a very short drive to areas near here well i have done camping in the past uh i can't remember when the last time i actually went camping was it was uh several years ago and then i did most of my camping in the mountains well it is i enjoy hiking and camping we went to the i have uh some land there and so it's it's handy to to station yourself there on the land and then make trips up into the mountains for backpacking and hiking and and overnight camping do you do most of yours in tents oh wow um uh_huh uh_huh no i agree with you i think it's much nicer when you can really get out far enough away where that you can't see people right out the window but uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh doesn't that always taste so much better when you're out like that yeah uh_huh that's right if you don't you'll find every rock on it when you put your when you put your bag down uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh what a clever idea i wouldn't have thought about that oh that's a good idea uh_huh well if you get a chance now there are some really nice camping areas uh up in the [wichitas] which is in oklahoma and uh arkansas i can't remember the name it's it's on the oklahoma arkansas border and it won't take but just a you know just a quick look at a map to find where those mountains are but i took a drive up through there as a matter of fact last september just took the drive through to see what was there they have some wonderful camping areas there beautiful beautiful country uh_huh yeah right well lake lake tawakoni is a pretty nice place and we had a two bedroom mobile home there but the boys still liked to throw their sleeping bags out by the lake and build a little fire and roast their marshmallows until the [mosquitos] bit and then they came in oh oh they're grown now they go camping on their own once you start them they enjoy it all their lives uh_huh uh_huh oh don't be concerned there's much less for them to get hurt on camping than there is elsewhere uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well it's easy to keep him occupied though on land i know that i took my kids we'd go out and i've them walk with me along the [lakefront] and we'd have a little contest finding the [tiniest] shell and finding the biggest shell and or we'd hunt pine cones or we climbed some uh [pinon] pines one year and gathered the cones so that we could eat the pine nuts and we did a lot of [naturalist] work when we were out we you know we we searched for and we ate the wild plants and we gathered wild berries and uh it's really you know the the mountains can accommodate you if you know what to find uh_huh i had my boys build their own little you know three leg camp [stools] by cutting a branch off the tree and [binding] them together with bark and uh we cooked in a pot i baked them a cake right there on a camp fire they were so impressed i used a tire chain and the bottom of a dutch oven uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh-oh well if our time is up we can quit okay uh_huh you bet bye bye okay wow i don't know what that was i don't know uh_huh oh yes uh_huh uh we have not camped in any of those places in fact it has been a number of years since we have camped but we used to go to tyler state park and uh [daingerfield] and in texas that is where we camp basically uh they are very nice tyler is really really a neat place to camp it has a nice little lake and it has some really wonderful uh sights that are in the wooded areas uh the facilities are quite nice and our children liked liked it quite well uh the kids are well they are quite a bit younger than and you know they we felt real safe with their being able to do what they would like to do there in the area and uh it was just it was just a really nice place to camp uh now [daingerfield] is let's see i think that's a little bit more east further east and and maybe south if i am remembering where that is no i think it's a little bit further north when i think about it at any rate it was it was very nice as well but tyler we sort of got spoiled with i think but uh we had lived in michigan before we came here and uh had done a lot of camping in michigan i think the upper peninsula of michigan especially and then also we had done some camping in colorado in the mountains so uh my parents were real avid campers and my husband's parents were really avid campers as well so i guess we just kind of came by it naturally do you have a large tent or uh_huh and how many does it sleep uh comfortably right yeah well sort of early on especially as our children got a little bit bigger uh we invested in some [stacking] uh cots you know that were like bunk bunk beds but they were cots fold up cots that really gave us a lot more space um floor space and so you did not have to be constantly getting things off the floor in order to walk around and uh gave us a place to stack things during the day so that was real nice but uh we uh like my in laws also had a camper or uh a pop up tent you know one of those trailer tops and those are really nice too a little more uh [luxurious] so to speak but not much yes uh_huh it's really nice in fact it even had had a little refrigerator uh and the whole business it was quite nice in that respect uh and everything was very convenient and you did not have to to be hauling things out of your the trunk of you car and that was nice so uh do you have plans for for any other camping trips in the near future uh_huh right uh_huh right oh yes yes yes i have been in that area that is a really pretty state park uh just we did not camp there but we drove through it just one time when we were in that area and it's real lovely it's close to the lake and close to i think it's close to the dam up there so it's it's really quite pretty uh are you um let's see what was i was going to ask you something else oh do you have a favorite among all those that you have been to yeah uh_huh uh is it true that caddo lake is the only natural lake in the state of texas i i would i have never been there and i would love to see what it looks like uh_huh oh i see how interesting i guess i never heard the history of that huh well that might be some place where my husband and i can go we are talking about starting camping again in the fall um our children are both grown and and so it's just pretty much the two of us who do things and so uh we thought we might take some weekend trips and maybe that would be a good place to to go to and see what it looks like yeah yeah is it uh yeah i think so especially with uh uh when the trees start [blossoming] out and everything it is really very pretty especially in east texas it's really nice so uh well i um i have enjoyed talking with you and um have uh some happy camping trips hope you get to those places you have talked about well okay thanks uh_huh bye bye what was that and uh to uh the brazos river near dinosaur valley state park uh_huh what are they like uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah it was a nine by twelve uh_huh well there well supposedly they always say it sleeps more than it does but they it would have slept three adults anyway yeah right do they have a kitchen in them trunk of your car all time right uh maybe uh maybe back to caddo or uh [purdis] creek or i like bob [sandlin] too it's a new park and there is uh not really camping but uh what is it called cedar hill lake joe pool and sometime i like to go to eisenhower up on lake texoma oh from those three just just uh from when i have been an adult i like caddo the best yeah that's right it's not it's not very deep and they did build a dam on it but it was there before they built the dam it has been there for a hundred years apparently an earth [quake] caused it yeah yeah it's really nice and i i don't know probably spring is probably the [busiest] time anywhere in texas right it was nice talking to you yeah you too bye hi i'm wondering what what camping means to you oh very good that's sort of the same thing that that i do i don't think of um trailers and campers and all this stuff um do you do much camping oh you've never been camping oh gee well um yes and no and the uh i haven't done much recently but um up until gee maybe five or six years ago i did a lot of it and you know i've say no um i used to live abroad and so i i camped a lot in um the middle east and i was able to camp right in ruins which was always very exciting and a bit exotic for those who love bugs but um and then when i used to come back to the states in summer we'd often go up um to the lake country in new york with my brother's family and and do camping there and you're not going oh that's too bad oh gee i guess it makes a difference i grew up camping being in girl scouts and things like that so uh_huh uh_huh oh that's too bad i think you know there's certainly a lot of aspects you would like but maybe not the you know the canada men's trip but some other you know a nice tent on the the shore of a lake and right the the the no telephone the gee whiz you go to bed when it gets dark and you get up when it gets light yeah and um i guess just just the change from the rat race no it's uh it's pretty isolated um and to me i like that i guess too although there are people i mean you know it's really hard to get away and i guess when when we did sites in in the middle east of course it was with a group in order to make it safe but i mean we'd go in different parts of the ruins and and things like that but we didn't even have tents there we just sort of put out the sleeping roll right right actually i just joined um the appalachian trail walking club or whatever they call it what uh and i'm very eager to to start uh i love to walk and um i'm going to start with day trips though because i don't know the territory and all and i'm not sure my son is not eager to go and you know i think that that that might be a little eerie at first going alone oh but you know i'm going to try well gee whiz i hope you get into camping some day just slowly oh yeah right i think that you know i guess one time recently we went up to maine and had planned to camp and you know the only site left when we got there was in the middle of a field and i said gee whiz for twenty dollars we can go down the road and get a a motel which we did and so that you know if the setting was right and that it's it's great but if it's hi when i think of camping i think of of bugs and sleeping bags and and tents uh like along the appalachian trail no i have never been camping no do you do much really where you live now or did you camp up in maryland or oh okay oh i bet uh_huh oh okay well my uh husband and and his uncle especially uh grew up camping together and uh they they just love it and they're planning a trip uh into canada this i guess in about a year and they're going to spend about a week and a half camping up there no this is this is a a man's trip so they're really looking forward to that so and see i was i was never exposed to it so i i feel like i'm a little bit too uh much of a city city mouse to try doing it what's the best part about it to to you the the quiet the getting away wow now do you usually like do you usually go and there's lots of other people around or is it pretty much isolated yeah yes oh good grief that that does sound neat but i don't think i i've got quite enough nerve to do that i know my husband's gone uh for several days on the appalachian trail before and he said that you can a lot of times you can go for you know a good day before you'll see or meet anybody else on the trail so it's not for the faint of heart i don't think oh uh_huh i think it would be yeah well that sounds really neat well i don't know uh we talk about sometimes going up to [chincoteague] and uh i maybe like you said start out slow and and kind of get used to it and find out that it maybe it's not as bad as i i fear it might be yeah okay well what uh what do you all do for camping uh_huh uh_huh where do you go oh uh_huh oh oh i bet it was around [gatlinburg] or somewhere up in there um uh_huh well now did you all sleep in sleeping bags and did it get real cold at night or oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh well we only did that once now since we've been married we just go uh we go real often to colorado to the mountains but we'll stay in cabins and you know call that going camping but we're really not but the one time that i did go camping when i was about i guess sixteen or seventeen with my family we drove to uh up by [cosa] springs colorado and went back seventeen miles back in the back where you couldn't even get a forest ranger if you tried and to the the tent for a week and at night it was so cold you thought you'd never feel your feet again and the smell and the stars were just five feet above you you know they were just right there and it was the most bonding most wonderful time we enjoyed it but about the fourth day i thought if i don't get a hot tub and shave my legs i'm going to die and i had i i got enough of it right then so when we can go to a cabin as long as we've got running water i'm a little bit better off i know that i agree with him too well that's true uh_huh uh_huh well that that's and they can't believe that they could survive it and then once they're there they they think it's kind of cool yeah yeah and we hike we would hike all day mom did the whole uh pork and beans and you know the slice the potatoes and fry them outside and all the little stuff that we just were so amazed that she knew how to do you know couldn't believe oh yeah with bacon oh yeah and and daddy would always try to prove he could catch fish for breakfast so we usually had a bite apiece one one oh my goodness well now is that hot camping is that where you're you're hot like on a beach i mean is that because a lot of our friends will well a lot of our friends in east will go to east texas in the summer and camp and i'm thinking how could you stand it you know you yeah yeah yeah yeah that's true we didn't but i like that and see especially in the tent every afternoon it would rain and you would get your book and just kind of cuddle up and i thought that was fun uh_huh oh no oh no golly well yeah well yeah i understand that too because some of the places we in fact the the more urban we get with the television and the cabin and the whole bit it loses it's flavor so well i've i've gotten in the mood to go now yeah i you're crazy well listen i enjoyed talking with you okay have a good day bye bye well we don't do so much now but when uh i was uh a child we went regular old camping tents and and everything like that and then with our children we did uh we had a pop up tent camper and we used that to go camping we uh years ago we lived in oklahoma and we went to uh lake [ardmore] i mean lake murray all the time but when we did it with our children we lived in uh tennessee and we went up to the [smokeys] which was just absolutely fantastic uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh and along the uh there's a ridge that goes down from tennessee through uh georgia and into alabama and uh i think it was called uh uh white cloud or white mountain and went up on it it got real cold but the uh camper had uh beds in it you know when we had that one and uh so we just you know we had our bedding we didn't have to go with sleeping bags but the when i was a a teenager and growing up that was sleeping bags and joining blankets and sleeping on [ledges] or you know ground and uh that got kind of rough sometimes oh do you oh uh_huh oh uh_huh oh oh just beautiful yes yes i understand that but yeah my husband and i his he says his idea now of roughing it is the regency [hyatt] and i i agree with him our children are are grown but i know that we liked it when our kids were teenagers because we got away from the t v and the phone and we got just strictly by ourselves we uh some of the time we would not allow them to take friends along so that it was just the four of us and you know and we could you know get back in touch with each other oh i know i know oh they just you know they just thoroughly enjoy it you know or enjoyed it uh_huh yes yes yes like i i know that you know breakfast we would you know we'd have these big [breakfasts] cooked over this little coleman stove and yes and it would just absolutely taste wonderful yes one yes yes but i know that we you know as a teenager growing up and going to lake murray there would be oh maybe twenty twenty five of us because it would be all of my mother's family you know and all my cousins and it oh no we were in the we were in the woods you know well we didn't notice it back then but that was back before air conditioning was so you know prevalent and all and uh you know it it always rained on us i don't care what weekend we went and when it was it always rained on us uh_huh uh_huh cuddle up uh_huh well i don't know i remember one time uh some cousins were in a tent and it was married cousins and they they had the tent and this you know frog [strangler] that we used to call them came through and they had put their tent over kind of i don't know what it wasn't a creek bed it was like kind of like a little little uh [gully] or trench or something and the water rushed down and they said they looked down and there went [bud's] boots and you know there went several things floating down this water you know we just used to have balls you know it was it was more fun you know and as i said it just rained every time and then my folks had a cabin at one time at lake [tenkiller] and we went up there but it was never quite the same thing you know yes yes it does it really does uh yeah yeah even i would kind of like to go and i know if i go home and say oh let's go camping my husband says you're crazy i enjoyed talking to you too thank you bye bye um tell me some about your camping experiences carolyn okay where do you go camping at around here okay sure uh what uh what activities do you do when you're camping uh_huh well that sounds like fun i uh i grew up in south dakota up in the black hills and so we used to go camping my dad would take us there was there was four of us kids we'd he'd take us and we'd all go camping my dad and my mom and and the kids and it was always fun uh because what i always remember is my dad would let us pick our camp spot and uh he'd always tell us you know okay look for you know a nice flat little area where we can pitch our tents and it always had to be somewhere near a a river so we could go fishing and hopefully we'd catch our supper but we never did but it was it was always fun we'd always mom was always prepared and she'd bring along you know something because tradition had it we would never catch anything so we always had something along to eat but then we'd roast roast marshmallows and it it was always an enjoyable experience uh about nineteen eighty two i moved from rapid city in the black hills i crossed the state to to aberdeen and uh there's no hills it's flat and then i was in high school and uh couple of friends couple of my high school friends and i we'd go camping out by a river of course and and go fishing but by then of course i was able to catch uh catch some things but it it was always fun it was a different experience camping in the hills versus camping just by a river you know in the hills we we would do like you you folks did you folks did would take the nature [hikes] and you know and look for animals and we always you know in the hills you can see quite a few different animals but go ahead okay sure now is there anything uh are there any mountains or big rocks a person could hike around this area okay uh_huh i right is the one in tyler has it been pretty commercialized i suppose okay helps helps keep the the [pests] out i suppose well that sounds i don't know if i can rate camping but you know it sure beats driving a thousand miles to to find a mountain i guess no we just moved down in in june yeah i'm still trying to find my way around i if i can get on central from anywhere i'm happy okay well um i have gone to girls camp a few times as a you know a [chaperon] or a leader whatever and uh i enjoy camping i we we have a tent and we've gone even with our family a few times out camping and have a camp stove um i guess our our my biggest memory is when we froze to death we just didn't take enough blankets and whatever uh we went camping at uh lake bonham which is is pretty close here um we went fairly early in the season for this area which is probably april is when we went and and it got really cold at night and of course we were close enough that we could go back and get some more blankets and things in the morning but oh we take little nature [hikes] and and uh we take along games that we can play with the with the kids and just that kind of stuff usually try to have a uh occasionally a camp fire at night you know and roast the marshmallows and what all oh um uh_huh uh we used to live in utah and uh of course there's lots of mountains around there to camp in and and streams and stuff that's that's a great place to go camping and the hiking is just really great you know hike up those mountains is just really fantastic um i'm not acquainted with any you know i there's woods and things out in east texas tyler area you know there's a tyler state park that's uh really a nice camping area but it it's just a lot of trees it's not i don't know of any place in texas that has uh really big you know what i call mountains the rocky mountains are so much uh bigger than anything that they've they've got down here that no it's not well it's not too bad they have um screened in areas you know they're not really cabins i wouldn't say i guess they could call them that but they're they're more just a screened in uh camping area whatever they're they're not bad yeah yeah yeah that's right i i take it you haven't done a whole lot of camping in this area oh i see well you're still uh you're just trying to get over the culture shock still yeah yeah well really the ideal times to camp in this area are early spring and in in the fall it just gets so hot in the summer you can hardly i mean there's there's a lot uh it seems like an unusual subject this time of the year but uh it's it's camping the last time i went camping was about uh in the middle of october and we went up to lake bonham and really enjoyed it had a real good time with the family we do an awful lot of camping how about yourself uh_huh uh_huh yes oh very good i bet it's pretty over there what do you think what kind of camping uh are you talking about do you go out and is camping for you in a motor home or a trailer or do you actually put up a tent or oh okay so you have yeah a pop up trailer huh we have a tent yes so i guess we really rough it and we really enjoy that uh one thing uh i've done all sorts of camping i've i've camped uh in the snow on a [glacier] i've camped uh basically almost anywhere even to the point where we've had to backpack in and everything you carried in was what you had to use to sustain you for that that camping trip and had to pack it back out well we enjoy it yeah but since i've been married and with a family uh we have to go where there's [restrooms] and [playgrounds] and so forth so we really enjoy it but also while i was growing up we did have a trailer and uh i camped in that trailer and in a tent and in in log cabins and so forth too so a lot of different things and yes i to answer your questions earlier yes i we do enjoy fishing and i do go fishing haven't done a whole lot down here we recently moved from the rocky mountain area up in uh northern utah down to here because of work and uh haven't been able to enjoy fishing like i used to up there which is uh clear water fishing and streams and and rivers we normally yeah we did we did a lot of the fishing but mainly what we did was we did a lot of hiking and exploring and and just going out and seeing what there was to see uh in the area oh yes that's true that's true and no we never did that they although i've stayed in k o a campgrounds uh we've never done that just to go around and camp um personally i when i when we were growing up and when we were going camping i thought that was a little too structured of a camp ground um you know that was mainly for people in motor homes or or had trailers or and so on and so forth where you know we really wanted to go camping in a tent and uh k o a is is geared for the people that have a [hookup] right exactly and uh i started out basically camping when i was when i was in boy scouts and we did an awful lot of that as as a boy scout group as i mentioned earlier we went into wilderness areas and we camped in the snow and in uh snow [caves] and and uh all right and you got a lot of that in huh what do you like to do when you go camping uh_huh enjoy it huh tell scary or scary stories around the fire and oh yeah you know lots a lot of people i've talked to have said well isn't camping boring don't you get don't you uh get bored and not have anything to do but i've found out that actually we we really enjoy getting away from the television the telephone and yes exactly get out getting out and enjoying nature and each other as company when we're out camping yeah running water and a private bathroom yes yes they really do they have a great time and like i mentioned uh the we we've been camping a couple of times this year and the last time was in october and we went up to lake bonham and there was a playground for them so they had swings really when was the last time you went well i haven't been in probably about three years and the last time we went was in um well i guess it was it was like hunting season and we went down to like a hunting ground and a lake lake sam [rayburn] which is in east texas it is real pretty um let's see do you do a lot of fishing one of the ones that you pull along and then pop is it pop up pop up yeah what do you have a tent really so you're a serious camper well that makes sense but when you all went camping is that what you normally i mean what did you normally do i guess probably just wherever you live at has a lot to do with where what you're going to do when you go and you do actually camp did you ever like travel around to what's that the little k o k o a camps whenever ever done that yeah uh_huh that actually travel what city to city state to state that's probably where i first started was in girl scouts yeah um well let's see i just i mean i just like to go and normally i go with a whole group of friends and we just kind of go and hang out and just do fun stuff roast marshmallows yeah or um take a deck of cards if we can actually see and um play cards and stuff yeah it's relaxing plus you um kind of makes you appreciate some a lot of the things you take for granted running water your hair dryer [curling] iron what about your family do your kids and everything like to uh what sort of camping do you like to do the most huh rough type huh okay oh yeah motor homes can be a lot of fun yeah uh that can be a lot of fun too yeah well so far my wife and i have pretty much had to stick with tent camping this summer we went to uh the smokey mountain national park and uh stayed about three or four days in there it was wonderful nights were cool enough to where they're comfortable and the days were nice and warm and it was beautiful beautiful few days it worked out particularly well especially considering she was what six months pregnant so i don't know it worked pretty well it was one of those uh those dome type pop up tents nice and quick and easy to put up packs away nice and small and about had to be something like that getting around in a [pinto] it was a lot of fun oh yeah wow that's got to be beautiful territory yeah what like [sequoia] national park uh yeah yeah do they still have the uh the scenic uh [roadways] that cut through the center of some of those trees okay no so far new orleans is far west as i've gotten well new orleans and uh minneapolis oh yeah we're hoping one of these days soon after we're out of school to head that way oh yeah yeah they seem to be [trailing] out quickly yes i imagine i would imagine they are yeah uh not a whole lot of [forestry] down there is there oh place is [forested] with with those concrete trees yeah well i guess that's god's place too anyway uh what do you figure has been the longest trip you've taken camping three weeks yeah the whole family then was in on this yeah that would have to be a blast what well you went out from texas up in into that area yeah okay oh wow okay big [sur] highway that's uh where you're pretty much in view of the ocean almost all the time aren't you uh well i i do uh real rough type camping i have a motor home yeah uh yeah they really are they really are i've i've enjoyed it i've never actually done any uh like tent camping but uh one of these days i'm going to try that too yeah like to go visit uh the national parks and state parks and and uh just get out and see nature how about you uh_huh oh how great oh yeah um uh_huh that's great uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah well that's true that's true i guess the last real uh camping trip i took was has been a couple years ago uh i went to california up to the [sequoias] yeah it's gorgeous i love the big trees just just the drive up through uh up the coast line and then cut over in into the into the parks it's gorgeous though uh_huh uh_huh yeah i had been there before when i lived in california but that's my first trip back in oh goodness um um thirty years maybe but that is god's country it has to be yeah uh no they don't they the last one well the first time i was there the the tree was still standing but it has since come down yeah but they are huge if you've never seen them it's it's very awe inspiring uh_huh uh_huh well there is lots of pretty country further west yeah yeah yeah and you just need to take the little one show them all the all the [pretties] before they go away yeah yeah because there is lots to see there is course the the grand canyon and uh the painted desert is is real pretty in a different sort of way and course the the [sequoias] and the [redwoods] and and you get up into bryce canyon and yellowstone and uh the grand [tetons] are gorgeous too yeah course i i guess i'm partial to big tree country i don't know why i got stuck down here in texas now i think it's called a job i don't know no not around here not around here uh_huh lot lot of concrete and glass you know yeah uh probably the the last one that i went to california i took uh three weeks and i was actually on the road a little more than three weeks uh_huh everybody yep yeah it really was it was great uh_huh yeah we went uh we took the southern route and went went through uh uh the grand canyon again and we stopped at uh uh las vegas for a couple of nights and then uh went into [malibu] in california over on the coast and then we went up the the big [sur] highway all the way up to san francisco and uh and then cut across through the wine country and then went down to to uh [sequoia] national park oh yeah okay so you enjoy camping yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah is it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh well yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh do you have electricity out there yeah you've got a phone obviously uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah yeah i guess so huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh uh yeah uh_huh yeah well i grew up in california in in central california right in the valley so it is a forty five minute drive to the mountains and uh so my dad loved fishing and camping so we would go up first we went up just to uh with a toyota pick up truck and laid out our sleeping bags under the stars and you know cooked our uh hot dogs by the fire or whatever but then later my mom and dad got a camper so uh we have kind of moved up yeah a little bit in the world yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh no uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah oh that's uh that will be pretty that's really pretty out there there are a lot of nice places yeah oh yeah i uh like you i haven't done any in quite some time except for what i call living now which is which is very close to camping yeah you know i uh camped in the boy scouts and you know my dad and i went out sometimes but uh even my first uh eight or nine years of working i camped almost all of the time because i was in construction and it is cheaper to pitch a tent and cook your meals out by the fire than it is to rent an apartment add to stress i mean when you have to have it you have got to have it and you know in those those kinds of situations uh room rent which is outrageous so my buddy and i we just camped and we figured what the hell we did it when we were kids and we loved it of course we didn't really rough it that much when when i was in high school he is a couple years older than me and uh he graduated and went off to college and uh during the summer we would camp out at the lake but it wasn't very much like camping because we had a refrigerator and a stove you know i had a little boat house and [floated] it out on lake grapevine and uh well it was fantastic we would get up in the morning go skiing uh that [substituted] for a shower and then we would go to work and uh come back to the uh you know boat house at night and uh in the afternoon you know it is still four o'clock you have got four hours of day light good skiing left and uh it was great but uh you know now all my life is more like camping than not camping really oh yeah well actually as a matter of fact they just ran the phone three years ago we didn't have a phone they didn't have phone lines you just couldn't get phones and uh we are on the we are third from the end on the electric string so we are at the end of the mail route like i said we are probably as far as you can get from the seven eleven and still be in texas but uh you know right now uh what we did my wife and i is we got a mobile home one of these twelve by forty [eight's] that got [repoed] and uh [swapped] them a cadillac for it and put it out here on the land figuring i would build a house some day you know i'm in construction and uh you know i just had this place you know to shower up while i was you know out here you know putting up fence and building a driveway and [drilling] a well and all that stuff you have to do before you can even put a house in you know and uh i came home from work one friday afternoon and our truck was back everything we had was in boxes and my wife said uh we're moving and i said where and she said out to the trailer and i said oh she said yep and i said okay so we have been roughing it out here for about three years but it is not bad i we have color t v microwave you know it is not horrible but it's it's a lot like camping uh_huh uh_huh sure became civilized yeah my mom goes camping you know she takes her uh motor home you know she's got one of these huge [winnebago's] with a refrigerator and air conditioning color t v microwave oven you know she just roughing it for me is going to the holiday inn and getting a shower you know but you know she has a lot of fun and mostly it is just a way to she she goes to dog shows see she shows dogs and uh you can sneak a dog into a motel but you can't sneak ten dogs into a motel so she uh you know takes the motor home and she made a deal with my dad that she would take all the dogs with her when she went dog showing and she if he would buy her a motor home so he did but as far as camping my wife and i have plans to uh not really camp per se but to drive up the uh you know highway one there in california uh as soon as we get this house finished i am going to need a vacation okay bill right okay bill have you done much camping uh_huh oh well that that sounds good yeah you do um now do you have a lot mountains well you don't have mountains in texas do you where do you find places to camp oh uh_huh oh oh my word well that sounds adventuresome well um i've done oh i would say quite a bit of camping mostly with my husband and i um we have five children and so we have found that camping with the little ones isn't as enjoyable as just when we go ourselves so we've tried to get out once a year and go on a anniversary camp out and we have gone up into the mountains and uh not necessarily roughed it but we have just found it just real enjoyable to be alone up in the mountains and then the boys are our boys are old enough now they're twelve and eleven and so they're involved in the scouting and they do a lot of camping with the scouts and last time our one twelve year old went to the scout camp for a week and so this year they'll both be going and so that's been real enjoyable for them so um yes they've well no actually they've i remember they have taken the the the heavy cast iron dutch [ovens] and done their cooking there over the fire and i don't think they've taken the stoves um last year they camped in tents and this year i believe they will be in tents also uh_huh yeah oh is that right oh and what does that [consist] of oh uh_huh uh_huh oh yes well see when when we go camping here we have to take our big huge heavy sleeping bags and lots of tents and i like to sleep on the air [matresses] i'm not my bones are getting so old so i like to i like to sleep on the [matresses] um so have you had any adventures on your camping trips with [encounters] with wild animals or anything like that oh my word gee uh_huh oh oh oh uh they're covered like with a heavy [armor] type stuff uh_huh my word uh_huh but they won't necessarily attack a human or bite you or anything oh uh_huh uh_huh oh my word well that sounds a little less [fierce] than bears we we want to yes uh yes i'm a [scoutmaster] in boy scouts and i camp uh every month uh camp at least one weekend and during the summer we camp uh two or three weeks a year i'd say i camp quite a bit well uh we we do a lot of canoeing when we go camping and we uh we also uh carry all our equipment with us and so we canoe down the river and then sleep on the river on one of the um sand bars and then get up the next morning cook our breakfast and go down the river again how about yourself well that's good uh_huh great what uh what kind of camping do they like best do they like it where they have tents and uh do they cook on stoves uh_huh course i imagine it gets cold in parts of utah it doesn't get very cold in texas so lots of times we don't even take tents we just use trail [tarps] uh it's just a piece of material that has uh that has a lot of places where you can tie off to it and make it into a tent uh like a uh they're very light weight and we use them when we go backpacking so we go backpacking fifteen or twenty miles then uh they're not very heavy see so you carry them with you and they'll keep you dry or whatever uh_huh yes in fact uh um last month we went camping we saw a lot of deer uh in the morning and the afternoon just deer everywhere uh_huh so uh but it even though uh it wasn't hunting season and we were with boy scouts so of course we don't uh want to go hunting but we got to see a lot of deer um out and about and there's of course we see smaller animals all the time and uh one thing that is a big concern in the evening at night uh is uh make sure that all the food's put away and so forth because uh we have uh [armadillos] do you know what [armadillo] is uh_huh and [possums] and uh [raccoons] and we have those [creatures] down here that they like to uh they like to go hunting for a midnight snack and so that that uh that can be a problem if you don't put all your equipment away they will if you attack them but most time they run away from you if they if they see you're up you know but they don't have any problem walking right by you if you're asleep so uh i don't know your camping experience is probably i don't know if they're similar to mine but uh since i've had children it has changed a little bit but uh when my husband and i were uh camping we'd take this [domed] tent that uh is easily collapsible and uh go camping and uh just kind of roughed it as long as there was a bathroom there and some clean showers and things like that then it was fine but uh we'd get up at three in the morning and start on our little uh [escapade] for the day and uh kind of uh do a lot of different things and then stop when we wanted to but uh that's kind of changed now when you have a small child because they don't want to get up at three in the morning and you don't want them up that early oh yeah yeah we did a lot of different things we'd stop when we wanted to that kind of stuff so we kind of did a little bit of hiking sure and a little bit of uh [sightseeing] uh different areas uh sitting back at different areas and spending hours we never had really a time limit we just kind of did what we wanted to do for that day very comfortable so well there's uh places in wisconsin there's the [apostle] islands uh which are in [bayfield] which is a wonderful place and then there's also uh what we found uh in the state of uh south dakota the black hills and we just have this uh really good time there one thing is they don't have mosquitoes and uh sorry to say and uh in wisconsin we do so that kind of puts a little bit of a hamper on your uh you know if if you're going to go camping who wants to deal with bugs and uh we found this one area that doesn't have mosquitoes they just don't have them and it's just wonderful not to be bugged all night long with a [humming] mosquito at your ear so uh_huh uh_huh sure sure uh_huh sure yeah yeah that was really called roughing it yeah i anymore yeah see uh_huh sure uh_huh than you sure than it when you were younger uh_huh it with kids they don't care if they take a shower everyday with kids they don't care you know uh a about a lot of things but as adults uh it's like if i don't take a shower every day i feel like you know ooh i i just don't feel right so there's lots of places if you're going to go camping k o a are wonderful it's kind of it's kind of the uh yuppie type of camping because they have showers they have things for kids to do they have swimming pools things like that if you can find uh some really nice clean uh campgrounds versus uh if you go to state parks uh we have found state parks not that they're lacking but uh they're certainly not up to a standard of a k o a where it's you know a little bit cleaner you've got the showers available it's not you know in the same category state parks you know you get a little bit fearful too uh you know things like that simply because it they are supposed to be patrolled but uh you know it's it's a little bit different but so we've always kind of stayed with a k o a and then uh did other things besides just sit at the campground at night that's the only time you really use your campground if you're going to be gone all day long walking someplace or doing tourism or whatever uh you're camping really is just for like in the evening to start the fire to sit back and watch a fire uh to enjoy that you know and then to get up in the morning and get a shower and get cleaned up that kind of stuff so we never really spent that much time at the campground as much as we did would you then go hiking i mean would the camping be part of a long hike um were you up in in wisconsin or would you go into where would you camp uh_huh oh yeah that's beautiful right oh yeah well most of my camping i haven't done much since i was a kid but uh we'd basically take the tent up in the sierras and uh usually just camp near some stream or some lake and uh just it wasn't even a a full tent it would be more a [tarp] uh strung up between trees and my dad would take uh four kids my brother and myself and two cousins and uh we just thought it was absolute heaven uh there was certainly nothing like a a bathroom a shower or anything near by it was dig your own hole and uh and i i'm not sure i'd do that that anymore but it's it uh uh actually some friends of mine and i are planning to camp this summer uh for four days also going fishing uh and i have a idea it's going to be a a lot more equipment and a lot more stuff than before yeah but yeah oh my uh_huh no i haven't been camping since i was about sixteen but uh my family used to have a pop up trailer and we'd go camping to a lot of different places we spent two weeks in [bastrop] texas once it's near austin uh_huh have you ever been camping in any of the big national parks when i go camping i don't i don't like to rough it i like to have a little bit of electricity and a little bit of running water i'm not really into this going and sitting in a tent for a few days with nothing i have some friends that go camping for a couple of weeks every summer they are both [geologists] and they load up their truck with their tent and they go to new mexico and they just find places to camp and go looking for rocks and it doesn't sound like a lot of fun to me my friend said that the last time they went uh she just got tired of the tent and it was cold at night and she got tired of eating out of cans and so they stayed in a hotel one night just for fun no kidding no kidding gosh this way the the bugs i don't like the bugs yeah the one nice thing i remember about camping with my parents is they had a big [hammock] and they would always find a couple a campsite with a couple of good trees that to hang it in between and i could just lay in the [hammock] for hours yeah oh we stayed in galveston island state park once but if a storm blew in and it was just horrible and the sand was blowing up our camp the little camping area was pretty near the shore and there were some pretty big [dunes] before the the camping area and the sand was all blowing up and you couldn't even go out of the camper the wind was blowing so hard because you'd get sand in your eyes yeah it was pretty bad pretty bad but we had a good time in our camper we we usually took box games and things to do in case it rained and my parents always let us take a couple of friends so we always had a good time yeah yeah well children aren't easily entertained by just enjoying the nature yeah oh god makes it a little my fiancee and i one day would like to own a big motor home mainly because he's a football he's a college football coach and we're going to have to travel a lot and it would be nice if we had a big old motor home and that way i could load up the rest of the wives and go to wherever the football game is and have someplace to sleep without spending big money for a hotel and and park it outside of the stadium and have a good old time um um uh_huh no kidding it really is oh yeah yeah no kidding okay nice talking to you too okay i haven't in a while but i do enjoy it when i get to go the last time i went camping was um in san antonio texas and uh um in a park guadalupe state park or guadalupe river state park and then i guess before that the last time i went camping was up on backpacking up on the continental divide in colorado yeah for two weeks it was pretty fun oh really where would you go camping uh_huh i've been there uh_huh huh um i guess in colorado i'm trying to think of the place we went was in pagosa springs and we went up kind of in the southwest corner of colorado yeah yeah because we went isn't mesa [verdes] where they have the the cliff [dwellings] okay yeah we went by there and then we went to on to pagosa springs and that's that's when we got the packs and and you had to put everything for a week on your back and there was no showers no nothing for a week it was pretty interesting it was quite an experience and this was in the middle of the summer and we woke up one morning and it snowed for about fifteen minutes but it didn't last any amount of time uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh wow uh_huh well that sounds like fun uh_huh yeah yeah i guess the wind and everything uh yeah uh i've never camped on the coast before i've always thought it would be fun uh_huh right did you get a lot of sand in your sleeping bag and everything though i can imagine sounds like that would be a mess yeah i guess that's true too oh god oh no god um uh_huh oh hold on just a moment okay i'm on a cordless phone and every now and then i get [interference] and i have to switch the channel i hear something weird in the background sorry about that um i guess so i guess it gets pretty cold in that part of country in november i mean here it's pretty unpredictable it could be cold or it could be really warm in that time of the year so yeah well it's been i guess the last time i went camping was well probably about two years ago um i've been wanting to since then i just haven't had much of a chance to a bunch of my friends went and camped at the at a lake in oklahoma once this last summer oh i was going to south padre that weekend that was why but um i really i like to camp i just haven't had much opportunity to do it lately uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah i guess really the most times i've been camping i would have to say it would be colorado and new mexico in that area just on a big group trip thing and i didn't have to come up with much equipment because a for the group we got all the stuff that we needed but um and that was boy that was a while back when i did that actually it's probably been ten years ago but it was quite i just can remember sleeping in this sleeping bag and waking up in the middle of the night just freezing cold i mean i just you couldn't stay warm at night no matter what and i was sleeping on my down jacket with my pillow and sleeping in long johns and freezing but during the day it would get nice enough and then after that week of being up there i can remember coming back down to our base camp area at at the lake at pagosa springs and we all made a [beeline] for this pump because there weren't any there were just [outhouses] and a pump and we all went to the pump and we were all washing our hair under the pump and it was so cold it must have been like thirty three degree water that just was all but frozen and it gave us the worse [headaches] we've ever had in our lives it was so nice just to at least get clean hair and we all jumped in the lake and everything just to just to rinse off it was quite an experience i've never gone for a whole week in the wilderness with with no you know no running water nothing so it was pretty pretty uh interesting experience yes definitely definitely i mean when you appreciate an [outhouse] you know you've been roughing it but anyway well five minute well actually we've gone more than five minutes so anyway it was good talking to you rick i see sure uh_huh well for me camping i've never owned a trailer so for me camping is has a lot more to do with [backpacks] and tents but i guess that this two kinds of camping that um i've done one is to throw a a tent and food and the like in the back of a car and drive to a campsite and setup the tent and have the the car right next to me the other is to actually you know carry everything on your back i've done camping out in at in the aspen mountains in colorado where right right exactly i understand oh yeah right well either way it's get i guess maybe we can define it as living away from the home but exactly uh_huh yeah when i when i mentioned i've done this camping out of the car i've actually done of the situation just like that but what's interesting is it's through texas instruments yeah t i has a uh owns a piece of land on the edge of a lake that borders that the lake is on the border of texas and oklahoma it's called lake texoma yeah that's right so that's where i've done most of that actually it is it's really beautiful the the lake is is outstanding it's a huge huge huge lake oh yeah oh yeah i think you can go up there and get a space for the night for two bucks yeah so it's easy to do i'm actually interested in getting one of those kind of my wife has been talking about this in the past couple of years one of those kind of campers that pop up so it's about uh maybe eight foot square and but only about two feet tall and when you get to where you're going it raises up and there's [tenting] material yes exactly exactly my wife has a lot of interest in those and i've actually been keeping my eye on the paper and they seem to be running between one and two thousand dollars which sure yeah uh_huh oh yeah yeah that's i see oh yeah you said yours is eighteen feet long what oh yeah the brand is terry oh i'd never heard of it yeah yeah well that's neat oh yeah that's something yeah yeah well that's great right oh yeah yeah that's right and it right uh_huh and you still do that and so you drive to work from there or you just take the summer off oh wow that's nice yeah i see right well i envy that what a great life yeah huh i understand and that's right just want to get in and yeah yeah that's funny well nice talking to you too well i appreciate it and good luck with your uh your your hopes of buy a winnebago i'll do it nice talking to you ray well we uh as a little girl i used to go camping with my family and uh we'd load up our car and take tents and cots and all kinds of stuff and the place that we went the most often was uh in oklahoma it's about a two or three hour drive and it is a little bitty national park right in the right in a town called sulphur oklahoma and it was real pretty had lots of trees and creeks to play in and it was a lot of fun yeah probably so uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah huh uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh oh my goodness did you have uh very warm sleeping bag or oh my goodness oh yeah uh_huh yeah oh yeah oh no oh no oh oh oh no how did you get out of that uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh man oh that's awful oh my goodness oh that's quite an experience i probably would have had a heart attack and died right there on the spot oh that i bet yeah yeah yeah that's just like moving to another area for a while yeah yeah i know it's kind of funny yeah well did you go camping by yourself then you didn't go with other people or huh yeah yeah yeah yeah well that's nice yeah just a second [tara] would you hold on just a moment please uh when i uh planned my little uh schedule of when i could talk on the phone this one was suppose to be asleep and she's not cooperating yeah i think so oh yeah wants you to my kids want a cat so bad and uh i'd i'd like to get them one but we live close to a busy street and almost everyone has a cat it's been hit run over [maimed] you know and i just can't stand the thought of it so yeah keep them in the house well that may be our only option if we ever get one huh huh well this is real interesting that you're as far away as you are because i really thought this was uh uh we're yeah t i people yeah and so i just figured no it's just this area you know well that's interesting well you're my third one and i have never gotten the courage to do it myself isn't that funny uh_huh uh_huh for it oh my oh i never thought about that that it would take a long time to find someone available uh_huh oh my goodness yeah i guess it depends on the time of day too yeah yeah yeah oh wow that's great well i got a catalog that you know shows all the gifts and things you can get and i started getting inspired thinking oh we need to do this i'd like those things yeah that's right and they probably will soon so yeah yeah i can see that huh well that's pretty neat well yeah yeah every time i've talked to them my husband said i can't believe that you made five dollars every time you do that it sounds easy so he signed up to do it but he's never done one so i know yeah i know it's crazy that's right yeah he'll say yeah i did that oh well that will be neat oh i tell you my kids would love to they'd just want any kind of a cat bless their hearts and like i said um i really would like to have one too because i know how much they want one it's just hard one my youngest daughter has asthma and uh been a little afraid to have a cat in the house all the time with a child that has asthma so i thought well i need an outdoor cat but if i have an outdoor cat i'm afraid it's going to get hurt so i have a problem yeah huh i don't think they'd be too fun are they huh oh my land i'd be scared to dead to have anything that expensive huh oh i've never heard of that yeah huh huh yeah i would hope so well that's good yeah yeah yeah i guess so oh that's neat well it was nice talking to you i think i'm going to have to catch my daughter before she eats any more candy when i'm on the phone that's her sign that she can do what she wants to do yeah you too i used to love camping but since we've got two little kids our camping styles have changed dramatically we've tried to go camping with them and the last time it wound up with my husband the only one that couldn't stand them left in the tent because the kids wouldn't calm down they wouldn't go to sleep they were crawling all over us they thought it was just party time all night long you know yeah yeah oh boy so you're an old hand at it yeah yeah yeah i like cabins they're real nice also i've found that when we've gone camping we've had some bad experiences sometimes when you even have seem to have uh you know tent sites that are a little bit off the beaten path but there's a cluster of them and we wound up with people like you know four feet away from us that are just bombed out of their minds or something all night long partying and that's not my idea of going out you know and being with nature so oh yeah it's frightening yeah yeah yeah we went to yosemite and uh we went we got a little cabin there and that was really nice but uh someplace like that where you like you say you can get way out in the middle of nowhere you know where you can really be away from civilization i i would feel safer there than i would some of these little uh tent site areas you know um oh wow oh my goodness my body can't handle that anymore i want a queen size air bed you know to go in the tent or something yeah yeah i found a problem here too since we moved to texas three years ago i was feeling like there's places without fire ants or that aren't like all summer long it's so hot i you know i don't want to be out there when it's a hundred and ten degrees out trying to sleep yeah and it's so wet in the early part of it yeah yeah contained yeah yeah yeah i can relate to that we had some friends invite us to go to a place on a couple weeks that's uh four miles of dirt road and they have a trailer that they keep permanently there a little travel trailer and they said we could just camp out but with a two year old and a three year old three days without running water without the toilets i mean i can't imagine you know the diapers after three days forget it yeah so you know i think we'll pass on that one but oh really that would be nice yeah yeah yeah that would be fun yeah fishing and then going and you know eating what you caught and all that good stuff huh yeah yeah give me the [ramada] inn yeah well i can understand that well we don't we'll have to get more supplies too i mean that's why it would be hard for me to imagine backpacking in because it seems like our car's just totally loaded down with everything we have to go camping it's like yeah my well my husband said next time we go camping with the kids we're just going to strap them in their car seats at ten o'clock at night and then we'll go back to the tent they'll fall asleep and we'll with able to enjoy nature yeah yeah it seems like it we need a van or something to get i mean even if we take the dog forget it there's no room for anything else so yeah it's hard to do without the creature comforts sometimes well last time we tried we bought a coleman camp stove that was practically new at a garage sale for next to nothing and then we brought it home and tried one night to get it going and we could never get an even heat off of it so we need somebody you know with experience to go with us sometime or come over and show us how to get it you know going so yeah oh good grief yeah you could stay really nicely at a spa somewhere for a week for what it would cost you to buy all that really yeah well it oh that would be fun oh gosh yeah yeah i guess i'd like to think that anyway yeah yeah well they have these vacation packages i had a friend that went on where she went uh now what do they call it when you go down the rapids like in these rubber boats and stuff rafting or whatever yeah and she went oh gosh to colorado or someplace and i mean they had like a a a gourmet chef that put you know the meal on for them wherever they tied up at night and i mean it was a whole different ball game wasn't like eating beef [jerky] or something yeah expensive yeah unless you just go and wear them out so badly that they'd collapse by the time they got off the raft they'd be wouldn't be any problem at all for the rest of the evening oh boy yeah yeah that would be fun uh_huh oh really from all the bouncing yeah that's true oh gosh that's funny yeah yeah that's true yeah yeah well i you know hear like most of these people say things like going to you know walt disneyworld and stuff like that with their families it's more of a luxury kind of vacation than it is the the roughing it or whatever but um oh that sounds neat yeah yeah well maybe when ours get a little older and we really want to get elaborate we could do something like that but right now they think it's a thrill to put a pool in the backyard you know that little five foot k mart specials give them a glass of juice and boy they're ready for the afternoon you know yeah yep yeah yeah roast marshmallows and how old is she oh yeah they'll just pass out huh oh gosh yeah no no that doesn't sound too yeah when we were living in california people all the time went in the winter you know up in the mountains and stuff i don't know i can't see that either uh south of san francisco in [sunnyvale] yeah yeah oh yeah the weather's really nice and then you go you know you can go up in the mountains and it'll drop thirty degrees just on your drive up there so that's kind of uh_huh well yeah that's exactly what i think of too uh that's the way i think of camping in a tent not comfortably yeah that's that's great well when i was a kid my father had all different kinds of travel trailers whatever he liked he had a travel trailer and he had a winnebago and he had a truck camper and he was always buying new things like that and i hated it i hated going camping and when i got older i liked things like caesar's palace you know that's where i like to stay and and right exactly so this summer uh my boyfriend lives in california and he loves to go camping and he said let's go camping and i went and i loved it and so my my parents couldn't believe it you went camping but it was nice it's peaceful and quiet and it was just nice and i sat there and thought what do i have at home that i need that i don't have here and i couldn't really think of anything so in california in the mountains it was just beautiful and uh it wasn't very crowded it was during the week and it was wonderful so that was nice so i guess i do like camping right that's exactly right boring to me oh they went all over yeah i mean they they even moved they did they went to parks like uh well we lived on long island we went to new jersey and things like that you know not far away and then to the extreme uh they sold everything and bought a house trailer and uh moved to florida and pulled it behind us and that was really funny because i mean it's funny now it wasn't funny then all these very strange things happened i mean it was just really yes yes we did that's exactly where we went really oh and did they camp out probably yeah yeah i wouldn't like to go to the same place all the time yeah that's boring to me yeah well there's so many places to go if you went to a different one every time you couldn't see them all so yeah oh yeah yeah yeah uh_huh yeah i have it's been a long long time though uh_huh oh i'm sure well i don't know if i get invited maybe yeah if i find time oh yeah how long to go for where in california do you live okay i was down that way once but i don't think i remember that is it on the coast i went all the way down to [imperial] beach once that is as far as i went uh_huh yes i guess we are going to talk about camping is that right okay well yeah my wife and i like to camp uh usually just on short trips like a weekend or long weekend and we generally go to uh state or national parks uh_huh yeah well we don't really care for fishing anything that that [resembles] work so we just uh we what we do is hike and take pictures that is about all well texas has a pretty nice system of state parks we have got uh state parks just all over the place and different kinds of terrain and most of them uh well texas has every thing from desert to uh swamp so uh i don't think they have too many they don't have too many [swamps] in arizona i don't think i don't think i have uh seen too many [swamps] in arizona now we may do some camping in arizona though i have got uh my uh brother and sister and father all live in [fredonia] now so yeah what is it mayer oh yeah uh i i think i remember going through there is that between [prescott] and [jerome] or uh over the other way uh_huh well it yeah i think i do remember a little wide place in the road called mayer well anyway the uh everybody there says the uh you know there are places you can camp uh right around [fredonia] there uh_huh yeah well we we do we like actually we like to get off where there aren't too many people around we did find a nice uh [prospect] uh down on the gulf uh there is a uh national wild wildlife [refuge] called [urandus] i don't know if you have heard of it that is where the [whooping] [cranes] go in the winter or at least that is where a lot of them go and uh there is an island right off there called [matagorda] and uh you can take a ferry boat out there and it is uh completely uh pretty much anyway complete wilderness island sort of like a big [sandbar] you know you want to make sure there aren't any big storms coming but uh then you can take a uh take a little bus across the island to the to the gulf side rather than the bay side and uh it is really nice down there lots of sea birds all at once or all at once uh_huh that could be difficult i have seen a few people that had small babies camping but uh it didn't look like any of them were really enjoying the experience very much yeah well i sort of like to feel less tied down rather than more tied down while when i go camping uh_huh well i really like arizona i like uh uh a couple times this last year i made it up to [jerome] just to uh enjoy the altitude and everything it is really neat up there some how well steve do you take your entire uh family camping you have do you take your children with you yeah i got uh one child he's ten years old when we go camping uh we normally have to round up another child to keep him occupied otherwise he drives us nuts do you do you wilderness camp your your wife doesn't like that wilderness camping does she my wife thinks holiday [inn's] wilderness camping she uh she got to have a bathroom and showers we live on the lake uh there's a very large lake here it's called lake [lanier] it's in north georgia my house is on the lake so there's a lot of places to camp around here where the they have rest rooms and showers and stuff like but the [lake's] really crowded so we normally go to the mountains we found some nice little places in the mountains there's a lot of state run camp sites now this they're charging us now do they charge you in texas oh oh they do here they they uh you pay taxes to support it and then uh you pay to get in too you know like a user fee i think they call them now so i don't know do you all do you fish and go camping you take a boat or yeah is it uh do you uh load the car down till the springs are dragging the ground we do we we we got uh my wife is putting tables and chairs and yeah oh yeah it we have a hard time getting the uh [recliners] [bolted] on high on the car too well it takes three days to load the car and three days to unload it and we camp for about a day and a half uh yeah how old are your children steve a five year old boy that's rough to camping then when they're five isn't it well when uh ours is like i say ten years old and i think they might be a little bit more hard to handle too you got to keep them occupied and then plus you end up with the fish hooks in your ears and stuff like that well that's all they care about anyway casting that's all my boy cares about seeing how for he can throw it i try to explain to him fish can swim he don't believe uh_huh we drove we drove through there and looked that looks like it would be beautiful out there sort of yeah i don't know if i could take that last time we went camping i went with my brother and his wife and we went the on top of this mountain there's a little narrow road and it takes it's just eighteen miles but it takes like a hour and a half just to get up that road it's a rough road so we get up there and we sit around and get ready to get ready for camp that night and and they didn't bring the poles to hold their tent up so we're all had to [cram] this one little tiny tent and it rained all night long and i was stuck at the door and it just it just flooded me all night long this so that was been our last little camping experience but uh we enjoyed it if if you don't get pneumonia well there's getting less and less of it oh not recently we we've done a little bit of car camping uh since since i got married and did a little bit of backpacking several years ago but uh not recently well not real long maybe three or four days at the most how about you uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh yeah well i've done a little bit of that too uh i guess i've kind of done the full range of camping anywhere from backpacking in the mountains to for a week at a time to the car camping kind of thing well i've done some down in uh tennessee and kentucky that area north carolina and then done some in new mexico and some out in montana colorado so i've kind of gone around and done it in a number of places right i used to work at uh summer camps a a lot when i was in high school and college and i worked at some summer camps in new mexico or uh the emphasis there was on backpacking exclusively right uh_huh you've been there uh_huh yeah yeah it's a very popular place and i worked there three summers so got to know it pretty well well probably the biggest concern that i would have now is getting safe drinking water uh cause a lot of times we'd just pull water out of a stream and uh use that and i was never really big on using a lot of chemicals for water [purification] and treatment uh and nowadays i think i'd be a little bit more cautious about that than i used to be uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh well i suppose in some of the real big parks and stuff that could be an issue but generally i haven't ever found that to be a problem usually people are very friendly and uh cooperative all the way around so i've never [deemed] that as a threat to myself but been been fairly careful about not leaving tempting things out in the campsite and stuff like that uh_huh right and usually if i'm backpacking of course there i don't worry about it much at all cause if there's something there that they want they'd have to haul it out a long ways so they usually would think twice about it so uh_huh you know i've had some friends of mine that have made the trip down through there a couple of times they really enjoy it but there's something about going down in a hole that just uh doesn't really relate that strongly to me i suppose i'll try it some day but i always like to climb mountains get up where i can see something uh_huh well no it's well i tell you what uh my my uh notion of camping is uh well i haven't been very far out see i've been in the hill country about as far as i've gone as far as camping so i haven't done any really really rough rugged camping but uh you know to me it's the uh pitching a tent and i mean we're talking real roughing it no cabin no johns nothing just being out there in the woods yeah that's it exactly no uh i don't no actually the only camping i ever did was was when i was a scout and as much as i would like to you know to do it i you know don't really have the time right now but i've got two young boys and i'm waiting for them to get a little bit older and then we'll start doing some camping oh great uh_huh oh i see yeah that's great yeah that's great no not yet but i'll tell you i i know i was when i was smaller i started out indian [guides] and then went into cub cub for a very short time and then we kind of i kind of got away from it for a while and then uh when i got back into it again i was ready for for boy scouts and i joined the scouts but i tell you i i sure uh recommend it for any any any young boy girl too i mean i really enjoyed my time in the scouts uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i think for a family [outing] it's good uh but you know if you're with a bunch of uh preteen and and young teenagers who really want to rough it yeah i'd recommend going the old backpack method yeah yeah i can understand that uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh huh_uh yeah yeah i'm really looking forward to it you know i i really did enjoy my experience and i'm hoping my boys will enjoy it as much as i did no not yet but i'll tell you i know my wife she hasn't she really wasn't well her family they used to go camping quite a bit when she was younger and then as she got older they kind of stopped going and she's expressed interest in going and doing some camping so probably yeah probably not that rough we're probably talking probably tents yeah work her with with cots yeah uh_huh oh no oh uh-oh oh no really i didn't know you can do that oh not like corpus okay what uh what do you mean by camping uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh so like camping to you means tent camping and sleeping bag and to some people camping is going out you know in a motor home oh now camping to me is you know like the question said there's different types of camping and going out in a tent and not being around any sort of facilities shower facilities or bathroom facilities i don't i don't really particularly care for that you know i don't mind staying in tents with sleeping bags and everything but i like you know a bathroom near or a shower near uh_huh right you know when i was younger i would go up into colorado you know and we'd go up and we'd hike up into the mountains and camp with tents you know and we wouldn't have anything and then when i'd gotten a little older right like right i don't like to go camping now and stay in a tent without one of the big thick air [mattresses] to sleep on because the grounds a little bit uh_huh right uh_huh right i i've tried those too the only part of those is that that they're really not wide enough for your arms to have any place to hang down you know yeah uh_huh right no yeah i i don't either you know some people even bring charcoal with them and um yes yeah that's that's what i like to use they just kind of look at me and go well why you going to go to that trouble we have this coleman stove here i just look at them and go uh_huh that's like the people that bring instant coffee with them too heat up their water and i go what's wrong with a coffee pot you know yeah that's right well i enjoyed talking with you thank you okay what do you consider as as camping uh_huh uh_huh um uh_huh uh_huh well the only camping the only camping i've done really is living in a tent we used to go to lake shasta like fifteen years in a row and uh you know take everything up there park our car unload the car and then go by boat to the camp spot you know two or three trips back to the car to unload everything and uh the no no it was just a little camp spot that we found our you know by ourselves and it was usually in a little place called [calucci] creek and uh you know we put up our eating tent our john tent and our sleeping tent and uh slept in in the tent you know on well you know what it is it's actually one of those little tents that you take to the beach and you set up to change your clothes in that's what we use to put around our john yeah it was like two weeks uh_huh uh it was well just it was it was nice for a while but after fifteen years i got tired of it and then my next my next vacation trip was to hawaii right right but uh i've never gone anyplace else really except lake shasta camping you know no [patterson's] down by modesto it's like twenty minutes away i used to live in oakland and uh used to go camping all the time up there but i've lived down here in patterson now since eighty eight you know uh_huh uh_huh do you have little kids that like to oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh it's fun for kids though isn't it you know uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i'm ready to go camping again i i did go camping in a in a camper on a pickup deer hunting uh over a weekend so know lived in a camper on that yeah it's that's not too bad at least you're inside you don't have to worry about the bears and uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh but uh_huh yeah it it it would be fun to go camping up there again i haven't been up to yosemite for god i don't know how many years i would love to go up there again uh_huh yeah i know they said the road up there is terrible now you know with all the traffic it was a long time ago that i went there but i've only been there once you know uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah but it's beautiful though you look outside in the dark and you see all the all the stars up there and everything compared to you know living in the how did you first get involved in camping yeah uh_huh are you a native texan okay i guess i grew up camping my folks were big campers from day one as far as i can remember we grew up in southern oklahoma and they were uh we were always at texoma some camping area always either texas or oklahoma and i was involved in boy scouts as a young kid and we were camping uh seem like every other weekend we would go somewhere i when they talk about the [definitions] of camping it kind of struck me as funny my brother and sister in law live in oregon and go camping uh a lot during the spring and summer and fall but their idea of camping is a little bit different than mine they have a fifth wheel trailer that they pull it has you know two bedrooms a tv and microwave and stove and all that kind of stuff and he pulls it with a big pickup when i go camping i usually take a sleeping bag and some cooking stuff and that's about it well it's not like leaving home when you take it with you the whole idea is to get away from it i have been and some of the boy scouts have been up in there they have got some great hiking trails and camping areas up in there uh_huh i'm not familiar with that one yeah oh yeah well that's a fact yeah a lot of my camping was up in the [arbuckles] as i was growing up there's a place that used to be called [platte] national park up around sulphur and davis and not too far from turner falls they i have heard they since changed name of the park to something else but it was one of those parks with a natural uh spring fed river that [flows] through the camp sites you know all along the river the water was real cold because it was spring fed but just like i say it's a beautiful area lots of hills to go camping in uh dad never believed in tent camping uh we had some old army cots that we would sleep on uh come good weather or not many of times we were sleeping out under the stars and it would start raining and we would all wind up in the car and that got pretty cramped sometimes a lot of good memories in camping you know it helps you [unwind] and get away and forget about t i and everything else back home i guess no i haven't i've never been up there yeah well that's true i've never thought heard about it [countless] times but never thought about going up there yeah oh yeah well that would be great that shoot let come what may and they're fairly close to the water aren't they when they throw right on the lake have they got a place where you can uh keep your boat while you're there for the weekend yeah yeah oh yeah yeah it's time that's right i'd forgotten then all about the texan side and that's but you got to be a member of texans to use it yeah oh that's outstanding oh yeah i've got a boy that is thirteen and the girl is eleven the boy had learned to ski oh probably two years ago he's a [slalom] skier now and the girl is eleven and she just now started to learn to ski i've got a sixteen and a half foot [bayliner] it's [inboard] outboard just a ski boat it's about the right size for us yeah i know them you bet goodness yeah i expect it would yeah but boy it would move you across the water though that's what you want plus out on texoma you have got all that you know mass of water to get across outstanding uh_huh you're right that's what happened to us we had a boat for several years in early marriage and along came the kids and it kind of sat there and so we wound up selling it and it's been about uh i'd say eleven years since we got back into boating now they are big enough you bet plus they can help now too they don't go along for the ride well i guess that's our five minutes now so we will we will call this thing to a halt i appreciate talking to you bill sure uh well i had only had the boat two years now most of the time we either go out to lavon or we have been going up to arkansas her parents live up on beaver lake in northwest arkansas it's a dammed up the white river real pretty arkansas lake but we are hoping to explore a lot of the lakes around texas and stay close to home oh yeah yeah yeah well i have heard a lot about possum kingdom oh yeah it's not over crowded see that's one of my biggest [gripes] about texoma as many times as we would go up there it's so rough that sounds oh no well that sounds like a good place to start out this spring i'm looking forward to it all right thanks a lot nice talking to you well there are several things that we've done as a family uh as far as uh when we go on vacation we have four children and so it's difficult sometimes for us to afford the hotel all the time and so we take our tent and we pitch it and our kids are just great at camping my husband and my son are scouts and are very adept at that kind of thing and so it makes it a successful thing you know we just pitch the tent and we find the campgrounds that have facilities which is really nice because there are a lot of them across the united states now and um an uh uh like i said our kids are just really good and we have a four year old and even he's not any big problem with it yeah uh_huh uh_huh they're nice too yeah um and i was a den mother for a while too and uh like they have a thing called mom and me and that's right you'd go out with them even the mothers do and camp over night so oh how fun uh_huh yes yeah uh_huh we did have a really bad experience uh we went to corpus christi one year and uh while we were there we uh had camped on kind of a sandy ground area instead of uh the hard firm uh dirt ground and in the night there came a very uh windy type weather and it blew our stakes out an and the the tent fell yeah yeah so that wasn't too exciting but good experience for us to know that we definitely needed to do the stakes into a firm ground yeah exactly exactly uh_huh oh how fun oh uh_huh and stays huh well that sounds neat yeah see that's that's very nice the only thing i think about camping is when you have to cook outdoors and you don't always have to do that but uh we have a dutch oven and and we found some really fun recipes that we can do in that that are quite [tasteful] we've done that before uh_huh uh_huh oh oh [jeepers] uh_huh well i think camping is one of those things that you can make memories with so i think it's a wonderful activity oh uh_huh uh_huh yeah well i'm from utah an before we moved to texas and uh i i see the different kinds of camping there are you know like the mountain camping and then here it's mostly [flatland] and uh i'm not sure which i like better it's kind of nice to be on flat land but but i think you get a more scenic type thing in there so no i don't think we've ever gone there oh that sounds nice well thank you i've enjoyed talking to you well go go go have a good day uh well yeah fair amount mostly with boy scouts well mostly uh well boy scout camps near uh near dallas uh in fact i i think i know your sons danny and sean right jan [novak] but we can talk about camping nonetheless they didn't but we we should talk about camping because they're recording this uh_huh well we used to do a lot of camping uh in fact before we had kids [marie] and i would go we did a lot of canoe camping uh either in upstate new york where there are a lot of lakes up near lake [placid] and in that area and in northern ontario which is also full of lakes and some of our longest trips went for about six days and covered about seventy miles you canoe uh from lake to lake sometimes by rivers where they connect or else you have to [portage] your canoe and all your equipment to the next lake and so that that was a i i think it's a lot in a way easier to go canoe camping because you don't have to watch the weight so much and it's also cleaner because you can go swimming every day and it's very easy to keep keep cool and keep clean and that's what what river was that yeah i've i've seen the russian river we never went canoeing on it that that can get pretty fast uh_huh uh_huh sure sure yeah well you have to be have to be careful have to be careful you your guys are going to [philmont] are they right so [danny's] not going again okay well i'll i'm going with them no okay uh what what is it what does camping mean to you and and what camping have you done um well what uh what what do you mean by environmental camping oh okay but yeah that's neat i've not not not had that available anywhere that i've lived at well what what state is that california okay i'm in texas and uh uh but most of the camping that we've done we spent uh ten years in new england and my wife and i did a lot of tent camping before uh our first uh boy was born uh there in the state parks in uh new england and uh here in texas there are there are state parks where they have uh uh shelters they're called they're wood frame on a concrete slab screened in kinds of of shelters and but they have electricity and uh water at those cabins cabins well that's the no the there's uh one outlet and a light in the cabin uh an overhead one overhead bulb and then just outside the cabin there's a a [faucet] coming up out of the pipe coming up out of the ground so that there's access to water like that uh well uh no it's it's the ones that i'm familiar with are are uh basically wooded areas uh texas has an awful lot of of man made lakes and uh uh tend to be uh wooded areas around those lakes i'm in i'm in dallas northeast uh yeah oh yes yeah yes there you you could you know depending on what kind of camping you wanted why uh you go an hour in a different direction here you go three hours in any direction and it's still about the same so uh that's a difference but we also well well we didn't we took a break from camping uh for with the the uh boys until they uh they got into scouts basically and uh and our biggest one we rented a pop up tent trailer uh several years ago and went up to uh the black hills and back down through the uh colorado rocky mountain national uh park and colorado springs area and so forth [pikes] peak and that was a that was a lot of fun yeah oh okay uh_huh yeah yeah yeah yeah right right at at at at two she's old enough to walk but not too far i would guess and right right right right but you also don't do a lot of hiking associated with the camping i presume yeah yeah it sounds good sounds good and uh yeah yeah uh uh and uh although it it after a while it gets with teenage boys at this point well one's in college but uh well do you go camping glen by camping you you mean really roughing it oh i bet that was uh well i've our children were growing up also uh we had a boat and we'd go camping on the long weekends uh memorial day fourth of july labor day and uh we went with some good friends and we'd get as many you know involved as we could and so our kids really grew up all through uh you might say junior high and high school camping and uh we've really had a good time doing it uh we went to a lake called lake tawakoni uh it's just kind of east and south of here in texas and uh we camped outside one time we had a tornado come through our campgrounds it was kind of interesting we had snakes and [armadillos] and all the fun things that that make memories a bear oh oh oh uh_huh didn't didn't mind you being there a bit huh oh first time huh well maybe you'll get a chance to go again take them well we kind of gave up camping about three four years ago to and we built a lake house and so now all our outdoor activities are centered around the lake house we're we're still outside but we we figured we're getting a little too old to rough it as much as we used to i didn't know they did yeah oh you know there's probably not any part of the country that doesn't experience them every once in a while i bet yellowstone was a neat place to camp in we we went up we pulled a trailer out there from illinois uh when uh probably about nineteen seventy four i'm no no no no it was before that it was must have been nineteen seventy two before we moved to texas and uh we had like a sixteen foot trailer that uh we pulled behind the car and all the kids and the dog and everything and actually i i think i liked the camping with the tent better than pulling with the trailer but we made it out to yellowstone and it was gorgeous never forget that yeah it was and uh we needless to say we we haven't done it again um i'm a more of a want to be uh my wife uh uh was an only child but her family all though her [adolescence] had a uh small pull behind trailer so they didn't go out necessarily camping in tents and such but they did a lot of weekend uh trips all through the midwest and the east uh [lancaster] pennsylvania and so forth and so on they did a lot of traveling with that so if you can count that as camping which some people may or may not uh she had a lot of experience with that and when we first uh got engaged and got married we you know kind of hung around and did a lot of stuff with her folks uh till they sold the trailer and then finally they passed away but don't have a whole lot of experience or opportunities to but we're we're all kind of want to be here at the family uh_huh yeah i know what you mean sure there you go uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's that's more like a mobile home not a camper uh_huh yeah i guess my kid you know my kids go to the y m uh or go to the uh girl scout camp uh there are several of them here in southwest ohio that are all run by the same uh council and they're usually there for a week each during the summer at some point so they're they do a lot more [rustic] camping but most of their meals are served in the mess hall i think they have one or two outings where they cook at the campsite uh out in the [fringes] of the uh of the park rather than uh than at than at the mess hall so they get some of it the only other opportunity really that i get anything like that is uh in the summer uh i'm a ham radio operator oh can't wait it's like a pilgrimage to [mecca] but it's and it's very convenient for me because it's only forty five minutes up the road but uh for field day which is an exercise in the summer where ham you know it it's a couple of things it's supposed to be a uh a demonstration of how the ham community can be [mobilized] to operate under [simulated] emergency or field conditions yeah or well some people set up [towers] other people use a fishing line and pull wires up into trees and use wire antennas or whatever depending on how [energetic] the club is but uh you know it it's also a contest to see how many other ham stations you can contact who are doing the same thing and then it's also a chance to get out with your buddies and drink beer and play radio all night or if if you know we have a number of women in the club also but you know it's a chance to get out with your friends and drink beer and play radio all night but we do go out to one of the local city city municipal whatever parks uh here in cincinnati and uh you know go up on top of a tall hill and string some wires up in the trees and such and uh put out the picnic tables and uh lawn chairs and set up the equipment with a [generator] and set up a tent for the kids to sleep in or for the people who are who are uh taking a break to to go off and sleep in and then use [propane] stove to cook breakfast at six o'clock the next morning with and that's about as close to camping as i really have much of a chance to get right now uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh so well i am new to texas so i don't even know what the law is in the state do you oh that's right i think now that i recall reading about it in the paper um you know different things is it restricted to certain crimes or just uh_huh um well yes i know the one thing that i think is really sad about it as i recall from the articles that i've read is that if if people who have been there are going to be killed um there's people that come to the prisons and they're very violent and they want i mean they're anxious for someone to be killed i just i can't see that uh_huh no well there is so many chances for appeal that it it's really sad i don't know i just think um somehow i hoped that as a people we could be better than than um expecting the feeling that it with someone is calling for someone else to be killed you know is really kind of bad um that's true and there really are criminals that are hard core and repeat and never have any chance for oh i don't know is it do you feel at all like it's a religious issue uh_huh um i don't know sometimes i feel i mean i do go to church and things i don't know how i would feel about it but like you say if it hit you personally closer at home you would feel feel differently do you think most states have that or uh_huh huh that still does it that's right uh_huh have that well and it doesn't seem like very many people uh are really i mean there's a lot of people that are on death row but there's not very many people that actually um do get killed uh_huh so it seems like a of people live there and then through appeals because i know they do frequently i mean they cover cover it pretty heavily on television and the newspaper if it finally gets to that point yeah uh_huh uh_huh so is it uh are we doing lethal injection now uh_huh which seems so awful so it's a little bit more humane i guess it is yes the other one just seems so terrible um well do you think that we do it because we want it to deter crime or it's not because we don't want to pay for inmates to stay in prison uh_huh um yes um well um and i notice that the crime rate was up in the dallas area it's it's kind of been scary to think about it and and you're hoping there is something that will cut down on that you hate to have the [dubious] honor of being you know so high in the in statistics but i you know we have been really fortunate our family hasn't had any crime and so we don't it's harder to think about the poor people that have suffered that way and how they would expect how they would hope i mean you you hear of people who have um committed crimes and then they get out of jail and they go and they do the same thing again and you wonder why they can't just stop it so maybe you would but still i would hate to be on the jury that sentenced someone no i know when um we just we moved here uh i from the i got a summons jury summons just like constantly it seemed like but fortunately i had small children and i didn't have to go and it's not that i mean i think everyone should have to serve on the jury it's just that i didn't i hate having to be in charge of someone else's life and i would hate to have to hear any kind of case involving a violent crime or anything that would be really awful well anyway i sure have enjoyed uh talking to you about this although it has been difficult but uh i'd hate to decide it but i guess uh guess it's important that we decide as a people what what we're going to do anyway well you have a good day thank you bye bye uh_huh well yes of course we do have capital punishment and we've you know done away with our quote fair share number yes yes it's certain crimes uh capital crimes murder of course uh rape this sort of thing it seems to be a [disproportionate] number of blacks you know that get into the system uh_huh yes that happens on occasion it sure does maybe it just depends on you know how closely the crime you know has affected you personally you know i don't know or a person personally i think i would be you know i guess really if i had to say yes or no i guess i would say you know that i am in certain cases in favor of the death penalty i don't know that it's a big deterrent really i don't know that it is i don't know how we'd ever find out you know really whether it is or not oh yeah oh absolutely yeah it goes on for years and years and costs hundreds of thousands of dollars taxpayer money yeah yes yes uh_huh yes it is it's a tough tough question it really is i suspect i would be uh you know a lot more favor of it if you know one of my children were you know [brutally] killed or something like that like i say i think it depends on how personally affected you know you might be by it oh absolutely that's right not with me personally it is with a lot of other people it's not not to me personally no no uh_huh yes that's a it's a tough tough question it really is yes i think most states do have capital punishment yes but i think the u s is one of the few countries that still do yes they're only i was reading something about it the other day i think there was only like six or eight countries in the world that have capital punishment still a lot of them had to have elected not to do so now i don't know what they do in place of it you know maybe it's life in [prisonment] or you know something i i don't know how they handle it i was surprised to learn that so few countries have capital punishment oh yes yes a lot of them do get their sentences [commuted] to something else yes uh_huh yes right the first appeal is automatic so that delays it for a few years just right off the bat there's there's a lot of you know last minute uh things that happen cause a person not to have to go through the whole thing yes uh_huh that's that's fairly recent i don't know how recent but fairly recent in the state of texas before that it was uh death by [electrocution] yes it certainly does yes it would almost have to be i suppose if you if you had to chose i guess i would i am sure i would take the lethal injection yes absolutely it's a it's a tough question it really is i guess if i had to say yes or no i would say you know yes i i would have to lean toward capital punishment you know for certain crimes no i don't think it's a monetary thing i think we hope that it will be you know some sort of deterrent or you know an eye for an eye type thing or something like that some of the crimes are just so brutal and so you know useless this may seem to be the best way out i don't know easiest way out maybe no i don't think it's a monetary thing yes especially the murder rate its just gone crazy yes absolutely yes i wish i had the answer for that everybody does yes it's nothing to be proud of certainly not yes yes so have we been very very fortunate that's right absolutely uh_huh absolutely uh_huh that's right uh_huh so would i i fortunately i have never been in that circumstance i hope i never am like like everybody else uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh sure it's it's a big responsibility it really is yes so would i yes absolutely it is it's a tough subject it really is right that's right well thank you it's nice talking to you uh_huh bye bye okay capital punishment oh i honestly don't feel like it's strict enough in my opinion uh_huh applied at all well i i just feel like there's a lot of murderers and rapists and everything else just walking the streets you know yes yes not getting paroled lets say in so many years i mean if your going to sentence somebody lets say twenty years let them stay twenty years there has that's right uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh that's right that's honestly right they have really got it better than we do in a lot of ways you know uh they sure are just because some innocent person can really it seems like really a rough time you know i'm not saying innocent person let's say someone wrote a hot check for instance you know it seems like when they go to prison it they really seem like it's a rough time for them and a murderer well go to prison oh he's just there to serve his time and get back out on the street yeah uh_huh uh_huh time uh_huh yes i was i would just be i would love to see them just really get real strict on parole you know uh_huh uh_huh yeah you get it back yeah yeah yeah but it's i i know same thing yes yes uh_huh uh_huh uh a lot of people really doesn't think that much about it because it hasn't happened to them which it hasn't to me either you know thank goodness but still it could yes uh_huh and as far as the other states i honestly don't know what their capital punishment is you know i i haven't kept up you know anything like that uh_huh uh uh_huh yes but still it came up though didn't it i mean you know uh_huh uh_huh yes the victim is really seems like left out in the cold more or less doesn't it in a lot of well especially in things you pick up the paper and you read you know you think oh my goodness uh_huh uh_huh or you know plead insanity you know and a lots of things oh yes uh_huh uh_huh yes i it just just doesn't make sense i uh_huh uh_huh well like i said i live in a small place you know but uh even the small towns now though has really changed from when i was a kid but now i'm raising children it it really is uh_huh see them yeah yeah it really is well we're probably fixing to run out of time pretty soon but i've enjoyed talking to you bye okay bye bye in the way that it's applied or it's applied at all so i how do you feel that it should be applied and that that the penalty ought to be out there and be enforced yeah that's i agree with that completely i know we don't have enough prisons but there has got to be some kind of punishment for these people because if they turn around they can get away they get away with it and they get away with it and they get away with it and then they do something worse and they get a slap on the wrist they get thirty days in jail and they final get up to where they kill somebody else and they go through fourteen appeals and how many hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars and it's well they certainly are living off our at our expense i didn't yeah uh_huh and and be paroled and and have served the sentence that's what that's what people face with that choice one thing i really hate is they don't explain to the jurors in a in a trial in a capital murder trial or in cases of rape or in different things that are so horrible what it means when they sentence them to you know they'll sentence them to ninety years and say that it's you know that it's going to you know that should be life but instead in in given the choice of either sentencing to death or sentencing to life they'll give them ninety years in prison or something and then turn around in thirty years that you know and less they're out even if if they're even in that long or they appeal and then they get an appeal that says it was you know an [unjust] amount of time an extraordinary long length or something yeah i'd like to see the death penalty more as a deterrent i think people know that nobody that it doesn't you know it's not a deterrent right now because it's not really effective there's should be you know this for this crime this is the penalty you killed someone you know in cold blood or whatever this is what's going to happen and i mean it sounds horrible it i hear myself saying this and but i don't know what else to do with some of these people that are because they let them back out again and they do the same thing over and over again then they put them back in jail and they get out and and more and more innocent people are hurt or killed and these guys just are on the endless merry go round in the legal system and it's like i said at our expense yes i know i you read about it in the paper every day somebody who's done this or that something really horrible and they just get away with it and nothing happens yeah i think i think texas is texas the southern states seem to be somewhat more conservative and still have the death penalty and i think i know california had it for a long time and then they uh took it off the books they repealed it and people like charles manson and and some of these other people who were sentenced to death at the time they repealed the death penalty were sentenced to life in prison and are now now that even though california has reinstated the death penalty for whatever various crimes the people who were there originally when they when they changed the laws to [revoke] the death penalty are still in there for are in prison in quote for life and and are now coming up for parole some of them like manson who's come up you know it's been denied fortunately but yeah well the jury that sentenced him sentenced him to death and then while he was on appeal on his [thousandth] and one appeal the state of california revoked the law in the early seventies and then they reinstated it later but the penalty didn't go back you know it seems like a lot of times the law is is totally on the criminal side and and isn't protecting the rest of the people uh_huh yeah and the the laws are all the rules some of the things that would make sense to to tell the jury that this this guy has a a prior criminal history you know where he's raped ten women and then he gets up for this one trial and they don't finds anything out about the facts that he's done this over and over and over again and so they say well this is you know i i don't know if they say it's the first time offense or whatever but they give him a lighter sentence thinking he's not a habitual criminal yeah yeah well to some extent if they would do something with some of those people but that seems to be a good way to get off for a lot of them too they plead insanity and then three years later they're cured and let loose on society again i mean it's a it's a scary world out there anymore where your afraid to go out i know in in the dallas metroplex area i don't go out hardly if i don't have to at night by myself and i i certainly i i grew up in a smaller town in texas and it wasn't that way when i was younger we could go around and boy and yes ever you can't even when i was a kid i would run between my neighbors three and four blocks sometimes and as long as my mom had a general idea where i was and i was back on the time and now i don't let my kids out of the front yard that i can't see them uh_huh well good talking to you too bye bye okay [deanna] uh on capital punishment in our state they give the death penalty for shooting of a policeman and i believe also in shooting of uh rape i mean killing a rape victim i mean someone in the process of rape and i don't know what i don't really remember what else but i think it's justified very much so i think it should be in other cases other than just shooting a policeman i mean i think they're doing their duty but i think if they're going to come out and kill somebody else then they deserve it that's right i agree right uh_huh oh i think right right did you see sixty minutes tonight by any chance well they were showing a segment on a man in philadelphia that's going after the drug dealers he's just a civilian he's a black man and he just got fed up with it and he said he's had his house broken into and windows smashed and his car stolen three times and everything trying to keep him quiet but he's organizing people and they're going out and marching on the corners and taking back their territory i think so i think that's right i think you're right right we won't allow this in our neighborhood and it said they're going to other neighborhoods from there and then quite often they'll get shot because they're [horning] in on somebody else's territory i think they said forty one had been shot out of one church in the last year right i know it well it goes all through the it goes all through the state supreme court system before they're uh_huh then it should happen yeah that's right right uh_huh that's right yeah it is i know but that that's the way it is we had one in virginia that was sentenced to death and the execution was to have taken place a few weeks ago i don't know if there was anything in your paper about it and there was a lot of protest even robert [redford] you know was protesting this guy's execution so the governor backed down and i was so mad the crime was horrible his crime was just horrible no i don't think huh_uh huh_uh and being under the influence of drugs is no excuse to me right yeah that's right yeah yeah i do too right wasn't it [lewisburg] that had a lot of uh bad things happening just in the last couple of weeks or was it not no it was i think it was the south east area from dallas my daughter my daughter lives down in rowlett and she was telling me about it yeah uh i can't remember what the town was some little area oh gosh and that's the last they yeah oh gee is that right i hadn't heard about that gosh they don't kill them they just gosh gosh boy that's scary isn't it yeah oh boy yeah you wouldn't even dare put these signs in the little [emblems] in the window saying child in this room in case of fire you know have you seen those yeah yeah yeah it is uh_huh oh gosh oh gosh yeah uh_huh yeah oh oh boy and he's five [shoo] i guess so gee i know yeah there was a little girl picked up in rowlett from uh from her front yard and her dad was working in the back yard and had just left her few minutes in the front yard and somebody apparently drove up and took her and they never saw her again yeah right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right yeah and watch yeah yeah i don't blame you uh_huh and if they find who's doing that to those little girls as far as i'm concerned he could fry yeah right yeah yeah huh_uh that's terrible oh gosh it's going to be reduced right uh_huh yeah yeah yeah it's just not it just doesn't seem right well what are we going to do about it how i mean how can it be changed unless the legislature will do something and they don't seem to uh_huh yeah yeah right right i think so yeah i think it would be worth it everybody uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh how do what do you think about it yeah yeah i agree i i agree you know i yeah oh i do too i do too they ought to get it for killing a civilian just as easily as a policeman yeah i agree uh i heard something on the news the other night they were talking about uh-oh i know what it was it was in our in our little local paper our little lewisville paper that comes out twice a week on the front page every week uh there's a little thing at the bottom it's like a call in survey that says you know do you think so and so and then you call this number and you press like one for yes and two for no and one of the things the questions the other day this last paper and i haven't seen the results of it i'm anxious to was do you think that um capital punishment ought to apply to drug dealers which i thought was a real interesting question no i didn't huh_uh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh you know i think that's what it's going to take though i really do oh yeah it's going to take uh you know the police i think i don't think can do it can do it alone you know it's going to take uh it's going to take all of us getting together i'm sorry i'm trying to my kid is asking for a kiss and a hug so he can go to bed it's going to take all of us you know getting together and just saying we are not going to take it any more that's right that's right uh_huh uh that's right that's right uh oh my gosh the only thing about the death penalty and and i know that that they try to be careful and they try to be sure but these people are on death row for like twenty years you know you know if if you know i i think to be you know being convicted is one thing you know and that's and that's great if they're if they're sentenced to death to me you could not sentence them to death unless the case was for sure i mean it right right by the time it gets there and they've been convicted and then they've been sentenced to death they're sure i mean there's no doubt i mean i there can be no shadow of a doubt in my mind there has to be no shadow of a doubt to get that penalty so once they've gotten the penalty and there is no doubt do it you know just i i guess i mean that may sound that sounds cold but gosh you know we're keeping you know we're we're keeping these men in prison for fifteen or twenty years on death row and not doing anything with them and it's costing us a heck of a lot of money and that's terrible to look at it that way but if the crime was bad enough that they were sentenced to death then do it you know uh i didn't notice it huh_uh gosh yeah oh man yeah and those kind of people i'm sorry you don't reform them you know i really you don't if they're the kind of people that commit these excuse me [grotesque] crimes and have done it over and over and over again you don't reform those kind of people no no and i don't know the same thing goes with some of these insanity [pleas] you know well if you're insane enough that you can go cut twelve people up into little bitty pieces and bury them in your back yard then are can can you be helped you know i have i have my doubts you know i you know i don't know i think there's a point some of these plea bargains and all this kind of stuff that they do it's just it just gets out of hand and i understand that you know that you know my husband and i no no huh_uh oh really yeah oh really yeah we've had several here lately and it there were several of them in north dallas and then it started kind of happening a couple of places in south dallas and that's maybe what you were talking about men breaking in uh to houses and taking or a man they they think it's the same person taking uh little girls right straight out of their beds at night and you know breaking in obviously watching them in the house because they're breaking into the right window you know the little girls bedroom and taking them out putting them in a car and driving them out and taking them out and molesting them and then bringing them back and throwing them back in their own front yards yes that is happened i think there's been i think there's been like six or seven of them over the last like probably eight or nine months they don't kill them no they've and they're all like um like anywhere from nine to twelve years old i think is what they've been and he's taken them and and raped them and then brought them right back and just kind of thrown them out of the car in their front yard oh can you imagine because it it happens in the middle of the night so the parent you know these parents didn't know this the the kid was gone until the kid is knocking on the door screaming let me in you know can you imagine i you know i've got one of those in [brian's] room i never even thought about that god maybe i'll take it out i hadn't even thought about it that's terrible well it's really bad that you have to be you know we we were over at a neighbors tonight and my little boy is is just a little over two and their little boy is like five you know so there's a big difference and they were playing in the back yard and we were getting ready to leave and i went out in the back yard to get brian and the boys were gone and the back fence was open you know and she didn't act like it bothered her at all oh this happens all the time and we walked through the fence out the alleys come to the back of the house you know and and i looked down both directions of the alley and i saw neither one of them and uh and she was like oh god he does this all the time you know where are you you know screaming j d and you know my heart was in my throat you know and uh he brian was two houses down you know and he you know i don't know parents around here just let their kids run everywhere and i just can't do that oh man this is too scary that is just too scary you know i let brian play here in the back yard and we've got there's two gates that go into the back yard and we've got one of those big eight foot privacy fences and one of the gates has a [padlock] on it and then the other gate just has one of those slide bar things but it's on the inside it's you know you'd have to like come over they'd have to come over the fence they could not open a gate you know and i still feel a little uneasy about him playing back there you know i mean if i don't hear him playing i mean i i get up and come out and look out the window real often you know so it's really scary that you have to be that scared about your kids but i mean you do better safe than sorry he could fry yes to put it very bluntly he could fry yes yes because sometimes there are crimes worse than murder you know i and i believe that and this is one of them because these little girls will never be the same never be the same so i don't know it's it's really scary and i don't know what to i don't know what needs to be done you know it seems like there's no room in jails to put them in jail and when they do put them in there you know i'm taking a business law class at night and the guy that teaches it is a practicing criminal attorney and so he comes in and tell us all these bizarre cases you know and he said you can pretty much you know if you ever get on a jury you know you're not told this but if you ever get on a jury you can pretty much guess whatever you sentence them to they're going to serve about a quarter they'll serve they'll serve a quarter of it so if you want them to stay in prison for fifteen years don't sentence them to fifteen years sentence them to a hundred you know because then they'll serve fifteen or twenty so which is really i don't know no it doesn't it doesn't they just get out you know there was a thing on i don't know that's the thing we're just going to have to adopt a completely different attitude and we're going to have to say if you commit this crime and if we're sure you commit this crime you are going to be sentenced to death period period and do it you know and if you commit this crime you will be in prison for the rest of your life we're not going to say we're going to put you there for the rest of your life and let you out in fifteen years we're really going to do it you know it's just the system has just and i understand they're doing it because the prisons are full but somewhere we've got to come up with some money to build to build more you know and keep these people in them you know well i was watching a show about this the other night and you know they were like in a i think it was on forty eight hours i guess i don't really have a problem with capital punishment i'm not really sure what the exact uh specifications are for texas i know that they uh have capital punishment for certain crimes and that's probably the way i feel about it is is uh it kind of depends on the crime that's committed my belief all my life i guess has been that that if you take someone else's life then you automatically are giving up uh yours in place of it but i don't seems to be a lot of controversy about that that's true i guess well there's there's probably two or three different types of of views as far as the controversy goes i can see where if a life was taken by accident or uh i don't know what you'd call it not premeditated or i guess primarily by accident uh there may be cases where the death penalty is not called for but i lean towards if it's premeditated or if it's uh kind of a habitual or or a habit that uh a tendency that people uh may get into then i guess i don't really have a problem with it yeah yeah i think that's what aggravates a lot of people is somebody does get a life sentence in place of the death penalty and they wind up back on the streets after five years or six years or like the kid on the news tonight out in mesquite who was out in six months no right no it's not you think of your chances of getting the death penalty after uh committing a crime are really pretty slim right now and you can probably spend uh a lot of time uh or maybe eventually uh just waiting it out and that's where a lot of [aggravation] comes i think is is uh these guys spend so much time in the appeal process or just in the waiting process they may spend years and you know the last i heard it was costing ten twenty thirty thousand dollars a year uh to keep these guys waiting yeah to yeah to carry it out it sort of takes the justice out of the justice system yeah it should be over and done with yeah it is and she winds up being a a victim day after day after day right she she's an emotional victim and you know the like you say the cops that are out doing the work day by day have got to have a lot of frustration when they see all their work basically go out the window yes they are well that's about five minutes so unless you've got something else well it's a pleasure talking with you [okeydoke] good bye yeah uh uh i tend to agree with you uh you know probably pretty similar views on it but that's that's one of the things i don't don't understand is is so much of the controversy because uh you know i i do also myself believe in capital punishment uh uh you know it it really irks me to see so much effort put into preventing someone being put to death by the state when they so [callously] and usually so you know without even thinking or without any concern uh you know end somebody else's life and in a lot of cases several people's lives oh yeah yeah that's that's kind of the way i feel if if you've got a guy who's who's been to trial and has been in and out of jail you know basically a a three time loser for the [twelfth] time you know and he goes out and kills somebody he's not going to be reformed he's not going to get any better you know it's it's not going to it's just not going to get any better and and the only thing you know a lot of people have the opinion that you know don't don't have capital punishment but give them life in jail and you know i could go along with that if if i could be assured that it would be their natural life in jail and not parole after ten or twelve years uh_huh yeah it's it's just our criminal system is just so i guess overloaded but the you know the the problem is not so much with the prison system you know i mean because the the cops are out there doing their job enforcing the laws and the prison system are just you know they're trying to cope with them but you know the thing about capital punishment i you know a lot of people don't think it would be a deterrent uh to to future crime and the way it is now it's not because you know you if like the state of texas for example may uh you know may execute somebody twice a year you know that's that's no kind of deterrent because we we've got literally hundreds of people on death row and and many of them who have been there for literally for ten or fifteen years on death row and that's that's certainly no kind of deterrent and i would tend to agree with anybody who says right now that it it's not a [terrent] a deterrent because it's not oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah it it's amazing there's uh there's a girl i work with our secretary as a matter of fact her her father was murdered her father and three other guys up here in sherman and the uh the guy that they tried and convicted and sentenced him to death you know he's been on death row for like eight years and you know this this was her father uh you know that that got killed you know just cold blooded murder him and three other people and but still for some reason you know this this guy's sentence has not been carried out you know he's sitting on death row for eight years after having killed four people and the state still can't bring itself to to execute this guy it does it really does you know she and they have to go back uh occasionally you know she has to write letters to the parole board and you know lawyers and just just ever so often she [mentions] well she's got to do something else you know write another letter or do something it's just yeah yeah you know she should be getting on with her life you know getting getting that part behind her but yet it's it's kind of tied to her the way it is now yeah yeah right a victim not only of indirectly of the crime but also indirectly by that [indirect] involvement it's just it's it's ridiculous yeah yeah it it's terrible you know and yeah oh that oh man i i couldn't be a cop for that for that very reason you know because they do the the criminal gets right back out and you know the [cop's] just got to go back and and do his thing all over again because so many of the crimes are are done by repeat offenders it's yeah no all right ron we'll see you later bye bye all right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh really i think that i don't know i i don't think our prison system isn't set up where we um rehabilitate or you know restore anybody i think it'll only make them worse but i i believe that god can come in and change a person's heart and genuinely change it but that doesn't [negate] that you do reap what you [sow] and if you do kill a person and it is you know you're found to be guilty i believe god [establishes] the authority of our court system and i believe that you know that i do believe that capital punishment is uh alternative even you know god can still change your heart but that doesn't mean like the alcoholic that charges up all the bills on the credit card or the [shopaholic] you know you get your life right with god but you still have to pay your visa bill you still have to you know so but god sent us his grace and they give [pardons] but i believe if it's a genuine conversion there's a genuine and those prison people know they know a genuine [turnaround] in a person's character they see that and i i worked in a prison in fort worth yeah i have a degree in social work you see it you know the ones that have a genuine character change it is obvious and they know that they're they're not going to pardon someone from the governor you know what i'm saying they're not going to go without going through every channel of authority in the prison so i feel like you know that's is there is occasions where there are they do spare lives and you know i leave that with the governor who of course is going to go through every authority because they want to be be reelected so uh_huh punishment yeah that's okay uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right but in in the old testament uh_huh yeah right we don't well yeah we definitely have lost the judeo christian ethic of the judicial system for sure but the the base is still there the foundation is still there though of the system but i know what you're saying uh but also they're under a law because we haven't been removed from the law we've just been taken out from under under a law because under the law if your child back talks you he would be stoned he under the law he would be stoned so we've been removed from the law of from being under the law but we're still you know we're still accountable to it we don't need to back talk but you know it's like god changes your heart to not do that he changes your heart not to look upon a woman in [lust] because in the old testament they could look all they wanted just couldn't do it but in the new he's looking at your heart and so i guess that's what what i mean by their character changes and you know what i mean it's like looking beyond what they're doing and looking at a heart and seeing what is the heart what's the character showing me here and those and then any of if i don't think see if i don't believe that there's not a character change and the authorities agree that this person needs to be excused i believe for murder uh rape i even believe [incest] things that will permanently damage uh the character of the child i believe crimes against children should be punished by by death i believe sexual crimes unless there's a true change of character and that's where we just have to to trust the authorities and they're not going to excuse people if it was was run like that i don't there would probably be very few exceptions to that and if it was done quickly and done [swiftly] and but it's not because the judicial system has rejected they've rejected the answer to all these problems they have pretty much right uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah anybody yeah yeah right i know in jamaica uh it think it's jamaica i think it's jamaica i know that they have you know crimes punishable by death and i'm sure they hit a few every now and then and i wouldn't want to be one of them that are not guilty but i know that they have like uh their crime rate it's not jamaica i don't think i can't remember which it's uh one of the caribbean islands and and they singapore is it like that my husband's going singapore and they don't have a lot of the crime because there is a law and the law is enforced and that's what when you have [lawlessness] i mean the law's not being enforced and all that does is [lawlessness] we were we went on a mission trip to manhattan and to the [bronx] and stuff two years ago and all these kids were up on there getting arrested for crack and everyone was out uh we were across from that big bus station i forget what you call it but anyway and everyone they had like fifteen people lined up on the fence and within two hours there were fifteen boys sitting there doing the same thing and you'd see the same kid who were back out there in two days because there's no the answer is not being given to them in the court system and i think initially when our country was set up it was set up with god and it was really an [integral] part and no you can't you can't force people but i think people are hurting and they're out doing crack sitting on the street they were the kind of people that i think mostly we would want to receive it if it was presented to see i don't know i guess i'm kind of frustrated that you know we've gotten away from the christian basis that our court system was founded upon i mean it reeks of the bible just the whole thing the whole system and so i feel like if that was presented more openly and not just relying upon and [para] church [ministry] to come in and do it that that the system itself you know you know what i mean i feel like that might be better if it was run on a more [scriptural] basis which would include you know you know and [expediting] the penalties and just getting it over with right right yeah yeah yeah right yeah i know you're right they would lobby that and and i see that and that's why you know i'm like okay what's my role in this thing you know what's my part because i don't think the system is going to get fixed i think it's crippled um there was a crime here in mckinney uh a rather heinous murder there was no um remorse shown by uh at least one of the [perpetrators] and yet for whatever reason um his crime was not considered a capital crime an and quite honestly i i feel very strongly that the man the has no redeeming social values and if if and when he comes gets free again he will have no [compunction] but to complete that that same kind of lifestyle i mean continue that same kind of lifestyle and perhaps do the same thing again so it really bothers me that there's not a way of getting him out of the way forever that's that's right but yeah did you uh_huh yes but my concern is first of all that not all all persons who i think should be receiving capital uh whatever capital uh uh uh hum punishment thank you i'm sorry i just got home from work and i'm just kind of spaced out a little bit uh that not all of them are being convicted of it that that the the they're not even being charged with that i agree with you that that a person's heart can be changed but the same god that can work that miracle also established the laws that said um for certain kinds of sin certain kinds of of uh breaking of the law there would be a capital punishment right then it was it was uh almost immediate as soon as as the trial was over then it was [stoning] we don't have a speedy trial we don't have speedy um punishment and so it kind of loses its meaning if you sit on death row for months and years and so forth that's correct uh_huh i tend to agree on that very strongly plus the all the judicial system is overloaded with all kinds of um problems and crimes and so forth and then all of the um civil things that [clog] the courts and having sat on both uh uh criminal and a civil uh jury some of what goes through our courts is a total waste of time because we're suit happy but but back to the to the capital situation sounds like you and i have a lot of of of uh common ground at least as as far as as capital punishment is concerned i would like to see some some kind of reform or some kind of streamlining so that if a person is um convicted and sentenced to to death that that automatic appeal which goes in could be more quickly dealt with and and go ahead and get the punishment phase out of the way because it doesn't do the criminal or the victim's family any of us the taxpayer any good to have him sitting around for months and years an an him could be a her but um that's sad yeah however certain uh very liberal minded groups who do not um subscribe to the same ethical system that you and i do such as the uh civil liberties unions and so forth will lobby against that and hold that out as long as they have breath which is most unfortunate because we all lose out when people go so far out to the extreme on either side because too too often they're can be [extremism] that that hurts from from any direction regardless of whatever you're arguing or concerned about yeah i think you got it uh_huh well it sounds like you have really strong views on it and i can see that point but i also have this you know i i question i guess i can look at it both ways and just to play devil's advocate it never seems right to me that uh we take in people that are criminals and people that are you know low income or even middle income that are struggling to provide for their families our taxes are paying to feed and shelter those people and it just that that i find very difficult to swallow sometimes uh_huh i'm with you there uh_huh uh_huh right exactly and then when you think of the thousands and thousands of dollars that get burned in court costs you know we could be feeding poor people and helping you know helping the environment i mean prison is such a waste of a human being it doesn't do anyone any good yes people need to be punished and i do agree with your statement that to take a human life is wrong um but you know but locking someone up and not getting you know any benefit from that for the person or for society to me is wrong too uh_huh uh_huh oh exactly that's right that's right uh_huh we want a safe environment for ourselves and we want to remove them but but i think that the whole [crux] of the problem is no one has come up with a solution that is acceptable that does you know basically you know i i think you know that the whole idea of uh the death penalty was invented for two reasons it [removes] them from society and number two it's it's kind of uh it's the punishment it's the ultimate punishment because you know they've harmed someone and and you know you want to [appease] the people that have suffered but it it really doesn't take their pain away uh_huh but it's a right exactly but that the the problem is so incredibly complex i have a friend who works on the pardon and [paroles] and she interviews inmates all the time that are coming up for parole and she says it is just really frightening how easy it is to you know have the prisons release people because they're overcrowded and these people have not benefited from the stay there she says just their emotional state and their way of thinking is so incredibly wrong and there's not anything she can do to keep them in you know if they meet certain guidelines you know and those guidelines keep getting lessened and lessened because they have to do it to make the system work so it's uh_huh that's right that's right uh_huh i know i know i i would like to see the money that's been budgeted budgeted for new prisons being put into the research of of alternate solutions to the problem how are we going to fix that tanya how are we going to make that happen what power do we have uh_huh that's right really i know i know but it it sounds like you are uh you know interested in what's going on around you and uh you know when you have a a voice you do contribute and i guess that's you know what what we're meant to do maybe an opportunity will come by that we will have a chance to make a real change where do you work oh you do that's great uh_huh exactly uh_huh most of us are so sheltered you know and a few people in the news that bring it to us and make us see what's out there well that's you're you're really performing a a benefit to society in doing that uh_huh uh_huh i i'm just i'm just agreeing with you when i think of it how difficult it must be to just to just give the facts because usually on an issue that you really care about uh you want you want to you know persuade people to your viewpoint and you're right that has got to be a challenge sometimes right uh_huh right and you have to walk right down the middle with it yeah i'm sure well that's that sounds interesting and i'll read your book sometime i enjoyed it thanks for calling okay uh my first thoughts on capital punishment i the first thing i want to say is no just simply because we as human beings don't have the right to take another human [being's] life uh we are punishing someone for taking someone's life or in some cases we are punishing a person for taking someone's life and so in effect we are committing that same crime uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh one thing i don't understand is the the whole concept of death row okay these people are supposedly i guess waiting to die right okay and there are thousands upon thousands of people on death row and i'm not saying that oh i guess i am kind of saying what what are we doing i mean i guess that's the same thing you were saying what what are we doing with these people they're there we should either take some kind of action or take enough or go a different route but they're just oh exactly uh_huh uh_huh exactly uh_huh right but uh_huh and i guess i see both sides in that at the at the same time that i'm saying that you know we're committing the same crime i also agree that i mean if there is somebody out there that's crazy and cruel enough to kill somebody or in some cases kill several people at one time uh there was a case in dallas well i'm sure they haven't gone to court yet but uh apparently two teenage boys held up a taco bell they put four people in a freezer and shot them all now to me that is [inhumane] and for two people to be out in the world like that i don't i don't want them in my world you understand what i am saying i'm i'm i mean i'm not for killing anyone but i don't want these people around at the same time exactly uh_huh right and uh_huh right right uh_huh and at and at the same time like you said it [drains] society we i think we should be we the same money that we're using to build more prisons and make more prison space and keep these people in prison that same money or half of that money could be used towards uh rehabilitation programs of some sort something to get to to put these people back in society but prepare them first uh_huh uh_huh exactly uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh and you want people out of prison and you want people to get jobs and and live happy lives but they can't just walk out of prison and do that they can't just walk out of prison and say okay i'm going to go a different route there has to be some sort of buffer in there some sort of program or and i know this costs money but it couldn't cost any more money than we're already spending uh_huh really how what can we do oh goodness i mean you know everyone's trying to make it you know in their own little world you know i'm trying to make it with my job and make you know myself okay and make my family okay and it's so hard to you know try and be one of the [movers] and [shakers] i guess you would call them uh_huh uh_huh oh yes right uh_huh and i i'm a broadcast [journalist] and so i feel like one day i probably will write a book or or something you know and some of these views will be able to come out i work at channel six here i'm i'm a news reporter and so i i guess i'm i'm pretty emotional about crime things like that now i've only been in it for a year but i get to see pretty much uh close up you know a lot of things that happen that people don't see uh i got to get to see a lot of crimes and i get to see you know people's uh pain and things and so when we talk about yeah exactly uh_huh uh_huh a service yeah but still you know we can't we can't i don't know i i guess i would like to probably [editorialize] more we have to just report what's happening we can't say well this is what i think about you know the situation sometimes you really want to say that you really want to say you think or what you think should be done or how you think this court case should have gone or you know that's a uh_huh especially when you are dealing with a a subject like uh capital punishment or something or abortion or something where there's an an no or yes side and you have your side and you have to report both sides but you really don't want to because you have your side yeah yeah so sometimes that's hard but uh_huh that's good all right well it was nice talking to you okay okay bye bye i'll let you go first yeah it seems like they could die of old age waiting to get the death penalty yeah i know what you mean um i in maryland they they do have capital punishment and uh i've seen uh a lot of people get convicted sentenced and then just nothing happens just endless endless endless appeals yeah what's amazing is some of them have been on death row for a number of years and uh here in maryland i know we have a real problem with overcrowding in prisons uh just yeah but i mean in here it's uh to the point where they were letting prisoners go uh commuting the sentences of those that were in in jail for lesser crimes in order to put more people in into the jails and it was just uh amazing to me and of course they made a big deal out of the the few that got out and turned around and committed a crime within five days of getting out and being [rearrested] an uh i can't remember [refresh] my memory um i don't remember myself um i think if they if they started executing them on a regular basis uh that i think it might make a difference right now i don't see it making a difference i don't see someone not going out there and committing murder because they're afraid they're going to get sentenced to death i mean most people out there committing murders don't care they just don't care yeah yeah yeah and there's uh there's a lot of people here in baltimore that uh have and we just had uh a real big cocaine bust and of course you know they're they're playing it up real big that it was looked like it was a very very small ring and they just happened to get lucky and catch the guy but i mean uh baltimore has uh an all time record for the number of deaths so far this year i think they've got over a hundred dead already this year well it's kind of it's kind of moved up and you have to remember that it it it uh there's i think x number of people out there that are going to commit murders and uh once you kill off a few of them i mean if you murder a guy because he murdered your partner or something like that i mean pretty soon you run out of people to murder yeah yeah yeah you know it makes sense um you know you have the occasional person who may have been falsely accused but i mean uh so few and far between uh you know makes good t v movies and that's about it yeah yeah yeah i had my uh my father in law participated in a uh a jury trial he was he was actually on the jury and uh this man was accused of killing uh i think it was two people uh and shooting a uh policeman um point blank in the face of course he didn't die and uh this was during a [holdup] of a uh uh a restaurant and it came out during the trial that um they had tried to rob another place and uh when the guy came out with the bag they thought was money it turned out to be a couple cookies and uh you know jumbo cookies and and so they were so upset from robbing this guy you know trying to do this [holdup] that didn't work that they quite literally were mad and went into a restaurant to hold the place up and just started you know shooting people you know it's yeah yeah and get even with who i mean you know stupid guys and uh it turned out that the you know policeman survived to the point that he was able to you know identify the guy and of course you know they tried to make the cop look like he was uh a uh no good rotten drunk i mean it was amazing oh he was found guilty yeah he uh um last i heard he uh he beat a push for the death penalty now whether they finally got it or not i don't know i kind of uh stopped listening after a while um you know he would come home and and you know after the trial was over he came home and told us what was going on and of course then they had to go back to you know after he had to go right and uh yeah everybody everybody was pretty much you know let's burn him and that's you know that's the way they wanted to do it and he was surprised because he thought there was going to be a problem because he uh you know some people on the case were were a little hesitant on convicting him on some of the charges but i mean when it all came down they just within an hour decided the man's fate yeah yeah yeah well it it it went pretty pretty quick from what he said but i mean there's there's there's a lot of other crimes out there i mean besides murder i think uh now if you're dealing drugs now caught more than twice or something uh it there's uh a death penalty associated with it uh_huh yeah yeah i agree yeah i agree i i've i have uh a low tolerance for that kind of uh that kind of person and uh as far as uh you know there are some some other crimes that i think uh you know uh kidnapping um you know when they i mean kidnapping per se has a certain uh uh fine and penalty associated with it but um some of these people are just out and out brutal i some of the cases i've heard about over the years oh well what's there to say doesn't seem like it's being carried out very well in my opinion seems like it takes so long between conviction and carrying out the penalty that i don't see that it makes any difference to sentence anybody yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh well from what i i saw a statistic just a few days ago um so far this year or was it during the last year during a years time i think it was they executed twenty five people in the nation meanwhile there were twenty five hundred people on death row so i i and it's building up you know they're they're convicting them faster than they're executing them so it's really building up uh_huh yeah everybody's got that uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah isn't isn't maryland where the famous [willy] [horton] case was it was uh that was the one that was used so much in the campaign in the in the presidential race uh may it may not have been maryland it may have been massachusetts i don't remember anyway well the question is you know do you think it does make a difference in whether or not a criminal commits a crime or do you think it can if it's done right if it uh_huh yeah well i think in large measure the reason they don't care it's not because the punishment but so many of the people that commit crimes don't get punished the police don't catch them or the courts don't convict them or or they don't serve very much of the time and so uh you know their their success rate is very high crime does pay you can make a good living at it yeah last year it was d c i guess baltimore caught them uh_huh yeah yeah the only [consolation] is so many of the murders are you know the the violent people going against each other and so they you know society's not going to put them to death well at least maybe the guy they cross next time is going to uh i think i think capital punishment is an appropriate punishment for the kind of people where we say you know this sort of person is just not acceptable to our society and we are there by going to remove them from society not temporarily but permanently i mean i i personally think life imprisonment i don't think much of of life imprisonment first of all it's never turns out to be life but second you know why should we the idea of life imprisonment with no chance of parole well that means you're going to put them in a cage you think it's never ever going to be safe for them to walk the streets again well then why bother just execute them because that's that way you're sure they'll never ever going to walk the streets again so any any anybody that says life in prison with no chance of parole i'd say uh give them the death penalty so yeah and and also um the the thing i don't like about a lot of these court trials and a lot of these appeals is that it's not based on what is true and what is false but rather it's on the rules of evidence what can i hide and what do i have to tell and i think our courts should be geared much more strongly towards finding out the truth than they currently are and and that way we can be sure you know we can find out the truth we can find out what really happened and and base the sentence on what the person did not on what we're allowed to let the jury hear uh_huh uh_huh just started shooting people because they [botched] the first job and so now they're going to get even yeah uh_huh yeah so what was the verdict what was the results there oh uh_huh uh_huh the the penalty phase yeah they've decide the penalty separately from the verdict uh_huh yeah well you know you just have to decide you know well there's really two separate decisions there i guess one is did it really happen the way the the prosecutor said it happened you know is this man really guilty and you have to decide that but then you have to decide you know as a member of society what do i want to do with this guy who did this thing and that i i've never been on a jury i've never had that experience i'm not sure i'd look forward to making that kind of decision about a man's life uh_huh uh_huh yeah well the thing i'd be most likely to attach the death penalty to is the violence i mean i can handle people people selling drugs you know it's it's wrong but it it's not worth somebody getting executed for but we hear so much about the violence and how it's not safe to walk the streets because somebody you know these random drive by shootings and that sort of thing and the people i'd most likely want to sentence to death are the people that just show a really low regard for human life that you know you never know when they're going to turn or hurt the next person because it doesn't really matter to them whether someone else gets hurt or not and so i go these are the kind of people i would like to get out of here and get out of circulation and say i don't we don't accept your kind in our society uh_huh what's the uh in texas law has a uh what does it have it has a death penalty doesn't it but now it's coming back into favor well my sociology class at s m [u's] taught us that it was not a deterrent uh but now that's just what they said uh i don't know maybe maybe if i went back and took a sociology class now they'd say it is a deterrent maybe they've changed their minds maybe that's it maybe that's it because that was back in the seventies i think i agree but i think it ought to be expanded to include children i i think they're they have they're working on uh something in austin now and i'm not sure what it is i just remember seeing a uh kind of a synopsis of it well uh i'm i'm personally very in favor of it uh why should we let them set in prison and work on their college degrees after they've mowed down a class yard full of kids or or tried to or done their very you know given their best effort at doing that i i don't care to support them sure uh_huh uh_huh and then there was the black woman that uh robbed and shot the [furrier] and she was set free too just in two examples in texas recently but she actually killed the [furrier] or someone she was charged with murder and then then they decided it was a case of mistaken identity or something i didn't i don't i didn't retain all those facts very well but i know what you're what if we make a mistake and that's not one of those things that you can turn the wheel back and reverse everything well well i guess though where i would have a problem with it if i were on the jury that that put that handed down the death sentence because it was my [judgement] the person's guilty now that's tougher it's easier to say it on the telephone and everyone agree that yeah the death [penalty's] the way to go it's a deterrent to crime they shouldn't catch themselves in that circumstance anyway but to be the actual one of the ones that decide that would be tougher for me i think i'd probably do it but we could never say what we would do if we're not in the circumstance it that's that's that's a real easy thing to say that oh sure i would but i don't know well yes but you know that's what they did or rather than have a warped mind it was just the only way to get whatever they wanted and they they wanted something worse than they more than they respect the human life hang them yeah i agree it should be in effect also i agree there should be a lot of care in the enforcement uh so i guess i would say i want it to be in effect but i want maybe well i'd i now i have a problem with this too i think our courts have too many opportunities for them to go back and get one more chance that's correct it is it is now there's some and maybe now i don't remember if this is texas or not that has something about all drug dealers can be sentenced to the death sentence convicted drug dealers is it what is what's the it's something of the they're on the distribution end they're not selling them they're distributing them it's for the large dealers is what it's reserved for and they they are in effect killing people oh okay is that how it's worded i knew it was there but i i or or is it proposed or is it passed i believe it is i believe you're right though i think it is and i have to agree with that i i think it certainly should be one of the options uh i've been fortunate with my children and grandchildren so far that i know i qualify that heavily because you never know but to the best of my knowledge we haven't had a major problem yet but it just touches so many young people um well my children are about in the same age bracket i think let's see the oldest is thirty two and the youngest is probably twenty seven twenty eight so it's the same age bracket and there's four two girls and two boys and i think one of each experimented very slightly with pot and i think that was the extent of it to the best of my knowledge boy that's tough my husband hasn't quit yet and he knows he has to and he knows he should and he knows and he knows but he hasn't i do respect the fact though that he refuses to smoke in the same room with me he he's very conscious of of passive smoking and he's concerned about it but hasn't quite made it yet yeah i've seen all of this yeah well charles will actually charles will not smoke in anyone else's house except our own he will get up and he'll go outside you know and he he's so when we're invited to people's house he will not smoke in their house which i think is good because there's a lot of people that are very particularly if they have children but uh and he's you know he tries his best but the actual quitting he hasn't done he changed brands to a brand he doesn't like he put up all of his ash trays he will not smoke in a comfortable position you know but still he's done everything the smokers anonymous tell you to do except quit smoking it's a long process oh how neat he has his in the kitchen oh yes yeah they just uh started it again too just late or within the past few years you know for quite some time just about every one of the states had given up the death penalty uh yes well they find it is more deterrent well uh if you you know compare the figures i think that's where they're uh they're coming from the uh oh there yes they are that was before the uh uh they adopted the death law again but uh i i myself am in favor of it uh particularly for uh well i think texas has a good good law uh crimes murders related with uh drugs or killing a policemen uh_huh uh_huh well why stop at children why not go to adults too uh_huh uh_huh yep well i don't either but uh uh but there is something to be said about or uh uh just for the sake of argument i'm taking the a con i'm i'm against it uh you know yourself how many times have you heard where uh uh a citizen was wrongfully arrested and served time at a [penitentiary] uh just recently this uh black man served nine years was it for robbery uh_huh that's it uh_huh well right now our laws are so liberal that uh even with the death penalty in effect i don't think that uh they're going to use it uh too frequently uh unfortunately i like you say yes let's have it put them all give them all a shot get rid of them why should they be sitting in uh prison getting their college degree uh_huh yes very true i uh i agree with you there uh uh_huh well i myself wouldn't want to be on the jury like that uh i it it's uh that's an awful lot to uh to expect of a person to uh to kill somebody is what it amounts to it true very true but they they did it because they have a warped mind for some reason yeah well uh uh_huh yeah exactly well anyhow i guess we both agree that that it is it should be in effect oh that's true well now any uh just believe in just about any state in the union uh uh a death uh or uh yeah death verdict is an automatic uh appeal and uh uh yes i'm inclined to agree with you i think so there should be a limit as to the number of appeals um um well not just for dealing in drugs it uh there are certain circumstances and i don't remember what they are uh yes uh_huh oh oh yes yes i i believe it's any capital crime related to drugs i think that's the way it's worded i do believe that's in uh i wouldn't swear to it myself but i thought it i thought it was in effect uh_huh uh_huh oh it does uh i have four sons myself and the youngest is twenty eight so they are all pretty well grown up and they all went through it you know going through high school and everything and knock wood that uh they have not well i won't say they didn't try it uh i wouldn't know but uh they i doubt very much that they're they're using it now in fact i'm sure they don't huh yes uh_huh yeah that's usually the way it is it it's just uh try it out with their peers and none of them even smoke they don't uh they never strangely enough uh their mother and i both smoked when they were growing up now my my my wife my ex wife she quit uh well when she was pregnant with the last one and she never started up again and i just quit oh about fourteen months and two weeks ago yes it is i and it seems to be getting tougher as time goes by um well well when i was still smoking i i felt that way if i was in a public restaurant seated at table with uh non smokers i would try to pick a a a my seat where the smoke would blow away from them or i'd hold the cigarette under the table and uh but uh now i'm on the [shoe's] on the other foot uh i'm aware of other people smoking now um yes uh_huh uh uh_huh well the there's a trick i use they used to leave my cigarettes in the glove [compartment] and every time i wanted one i have to go outside and just take one one at a time and uh that that's gets to be uh a deterrent okay yeah uh_huh uh i believe in it too i'm catholic and we're not supposed to but uh i feel that it like you you know on the premeditated murders i feel if you're you know i mean if it's beyond a doubt that you did it you know i would say go ahead and execute that person as well but it's the cases you know like sometimes you you know you hear of people that they say they went to jail falsely you know they really didn't do it well you know you you got you got that point well you know what what if a mistake is made and you put someone you know to death that really didn't do it there's always that chance i don't know but i would say that you know for that many people to all of them agree that you did it and it was premeditated it would be kind of hard for you know you know what i'm saying like yeah so uh i uh_huh exactly uh i'm not sure about pennsylvania whether we have it or not for some reason i was thinking that we do but it's you know it's not very often i think maybe last year was the first time in like eighteen years or something like that that anyone anyone from pennsylvania had gotten it i don't do you know if virginia has it uh_huh i know florida has it uh_huh yeah uh you know yeah but it's funny that uh i mean like you know like i said i think last year was the first time in like eighteen years for pennsylvania i'm not even sure of that but for some reason i think that you know it was something like that and it surprised and even florida i know they have it and you don't really hear about it real often how many people yeah but you you think that i mean if you think of how many premeditated murders are committed you know compared to that and to how many people are being sent that doesn't seem like very many yeah everyone would appeal that's true too uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh and then they get out yeah they get out in three years on probation and they do it again you know it's like a slap on the fingers for them i don't i don't i don't i think that it should be i mean if it's beyond a doubt that someone did [premeditate] someone a murder then i think you know that they should likewise you know someone should take their life also but uh but are are you would you draw the line there with just the premeditated murder yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah i think some of them would rather be in jail yeah they probably have it better in jail than what they would out in the streets i don't know uh i was just going to say something i forgot what it was oh i don't even remember what it was now in clarion well i live in butler but i'm at i'm at college i'm at clarion university yeah uh_huh see yeah okay well see i'm i'm in kind i'm in kind okay uh we only have seven thousand students in the entire campus yeah and that would be pushing it so i mean this is definitely a college town uh we're about two hours north of pittsburgh if that would help you out any uh north of pittsburgh pennsylvania oh i've never heard of polk but oh i never heard of that it might have a new name yeah yeah we're probably about an hour away from sharon uh_huh uh so i most of the kids here i you know like you know just from dorm mates and stuff they'll say that they don't believe in it but then after i would say my point of view then they'll say well yeah you know you know yeah you know i think people can be persuaded one way or another i've never seriously ran into someone i mean like other than my priest you know who definitely says you can't take a you know you can't take anyone's life uh anyone that is like so against it that you couldn't persuade them in any instance uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah but you know i look at that and say well they should have thought about that beforehand you know uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's something you know but uh whether they plea bargain or not if they're guilty of murder they're guilty of murder you know so i don't think that they deserve anything less it's just i don't i don't know i just uh_huh and that costs money yeah uh_huh yeah okay well uh anyways i'm not exactly sure i i wasn't really uh paying attention as to what particular uh parts of capital punishment we're supposed to talk about but it was uh basically what's your views on whether you thought there was certain cases that should be used that sort of thing right and uh i don't know i've i've always thought that any uh crime that uh that uh intentionally where someone goes out and [premeditatively] takes another life would be the ones where i think that capital punishment would be necessary to keep that person from perhaps uh doing it again and even more so to get people on the outside who are professionals to realize that you know there's a a very steep penalty to uh be paid when that's done and uh yeah how do you feel about it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right exactly uh_huh right if if the evidence wasn't overwhelming right uh_huh well i think that should be likewise decided by the jury you know because i don't know i think a jury would be less likely to just send a man to death just for any reason i don't know a judge might be a little more cold blooded about it yeah i don't think we no huh_uh no we don't yeah uh_huh oh yeah they're always in florida florida and louisiana i think and uh some of the other southern states course they have such a crime problem because they have such a unemployment rate get that unemployment way up so then people you know tend towards crime and then they they start [stiffening] the penalties well in florida seems like uh two or three times a year it's constantly on the yeah no that's true course they have a requirement that uh that every single appeal must be permitted so of course the the attorneys take them through the whole chain you know even if the case is open and closed they go all the way up to the supreme court you know they almost always get thrown right back out again but they have to have every single appeal made open to them and you know it's sort of strange because it almost it almost seems like the attorneys are doing it for the money or something because i mean the guy knows that whether it's you know a a month or two or six years he's still going to get you know the chair when it comes around you know some of these guys are really uh you know violent son of sam killers and stuff like that you know i mean they everyone knows they're going get not going to get out yeah uh_huh uh_huh i think so uh a lot of the the the other violent crimes i don't really feel that strongly about although you know [stiffer] sentences and [lessening] the effects of parole i mean these guys are certainly not going to uh be they can't i mean they're getting into drugs and fights and all that stuff in prison i don't think the parole system is really helping that much reduce the violence in the prisons i think that's its only purpose is is you know to reduce uh the violence in the prisons so people behave themselves a little bit better if they think they're going to get off early off earlier but some of these guys just don't care you know and so uh yeah right uh_huh um that's possible i guess um so where do you live in pennsylvania oh okay i don't think i really know that because uh you know that all depends too on where you are at that's uh sort of interesting to get opinions as to where different parts of the country are because the more grass root country uh parts of the country tend to to support capital punishment where the places that are you know less in contact with crime you know the the more more urban i mean less uh_huh two hours where oh okay near polk polk institute it's uh an old uh university that turned into a place for the mentally retarded uh very old uh historical place there sharon [pennsylvania's] up there yeah oh okay in that case maybe you know right that's true yeah well it it you know you get certain circumstances where you hear about these people that have you know stolen kids and you know done terrible things to them and killed them and you know that sort of thing you just like i don't want that person sharing the earth with me you know i mean that is just terrible and uh you know we had a case like that here and on the other hand you know people are saying that because the he knows because the criminals know that the uh penalties can be very severe they uh there's less criminals that are you know turning themselves in or you know pleading or whatever because they know that the judge you know if they find them guilty is you know has the the opportunity to sentence them you know for for the death sentence yeah well i'm just saying that that that's what the the client lawyers are saying they're saying that you know you know more of my clients would have [pleaded] guilty if they would have gotten a light sentence instead of possibly having to to to get a death sentence because you can't plea bargain what the sentence is going to be you can plea bargain what you're guilty of but you know but not how they're going to sentence you right uh_huh yeah right uh_huh i was just saying that way what they're saying is that they can't get people to turn themselves in then and so we have to go through a trial then to prove the person's guilty and perhaps we can and perhaps we can't and so the guy might get off and uh although usually the guys that are turning themselves in are are guys that are you know going to get caught anyways but there's always a few of those people that are you know lost their head or whatever anyways but uh yeah we just had a terrible case in virginia where some girl disappeared and and the guy like i said he just uh said that he took her but he won't admit that she died or whatever and he won't say where the body is because he knows the [penalty's] very you know mandatory life sentences for murder okay there's one uh i meant living in texas where you at in where rome new york rome new york okay well texas let me look at my husband and ask him yes they do he's reminding me of where i live yeah uh_huh uh_huh yes yeah i uh i ethically don't like the idea but or i should say morally i don't like the idea but uh social and ethics socially and ethically i think it's a good idea in certain crimes uh_huh uh_huh right any on the street no i know uh_huh yeah and texas is having a problem right now and it's the the the the the i think that's the the repeat crimes and the repeat offenders is happening down here where they're they're patrol the state patrol board is letting people walk that have done oh heinous things from from killing police officers to i mean just multiple you know [molestations] to murders of children just you know really bad things and they're get these people are getting out like three to five years before they're even suppose to be considered and now they can't find them and they're finding bodies in you know i mean you think why they say it's because you're over crowd it's over crowded and you think how is is everybody that stupid or is the world really that rotten i know and then i don't know how americans are about handguns but uh yesterday a lady i work with just told me today that uh in the state capitol here in austin texas they had been uh looking at a bill uh making it easier to accept the bill to access to access handguns and they passed it which basically means without an f b i check any person here in this state over twenty one can get a gun is it that's good say that good i think that's like the state of virginia yeah that's great uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right they're no the [cattiness] behind right yeah i mean i don't like guns in general but when i think about uh this topic like capital punishment i look at somebody i mean i just remember when i was in college in a dorm and i think if he'd been around one of my family members probably would have killed him but in florida in the state of washington when they had the ted bundy case and how they just well it hasn't been just but it was in the i think the second or third quarter of last year nineteen ninety and i had you know i knew some people that said why are you glad you you know this is nothing and i said just maybe because he got a lot of media hype and all that but i actually i mean there should be more cases like that where they flip a i might be too cold too but they flip a switch i don't know i mean so many times yeah yeah i mean and that's just maybe because of the little more they said celebrated that uh he's not the only one you know you you see somebody's mini series and you hear about somebody's crime there was something on and this gets back to capital punishment but the man had stolen uh not stolen but kidnapped uh some wealthy ex [athlete's] daughter somewhere in florida and they changed all the facts that they said it was true and they buried her alive and peter strauss had played the lead role and the man and and at the end of you know how they have these mini dramas at the end they said this set person was paroled like six months ago and you're thinking oh that's nice i mean you know i'm not sure that capital punishment serves as a [deterrence] but it does serve as a uh definite you know lasting right in that particular instance uh but i but i don't but i know it's on a and all and be all that's the problem i have with it in texas they think it's and all and be all they think that if they [electrocute] or slip or do something or gas somebody uh that they're not going to have the crimes that they do have and we happen to live in dallas which is extremely crime ridden and we just moved here uh we've been here before lived in minneapolis saint paul uh which has an exceedingly low crime rate and then we were transferred back here and when you're gone from some place like it for about six years as we were you really begin to see uh just how [problematic] just living is even suburban no matter where you are and how you're in rome new york is that and and is that like near albany or syracuse what what type of area is that is that in term uh_huh uh_huh sure how would how is the situation in there in terms of crime and and things that would not too bad yeah uh_huh not the harsh [criminality] that you find in yeah now dallas is a i'm being very sarcastic it's just a great uh on some days uh it's uh i don't know the good ole boy network here is uh very strange like i said they believe that if they kill somebody you know [tit] for [tat] and deed for deed that that does something uh but yet they want spend the money to build the new jails that i mean they really are over crowded i mean that's that's just not a cop out uh and i just you know i'm originally from pennsylvania which i think is basically like new york these days i'm not sure if they i don't think they have capital punishment there uh_huh yeah and i'm from pittsburgh so oh well we'll forgive each other uh because they use to be very very conservative when i was growing up i and i can't i haven't lived there in twenty years but uh there you go i don't know that's a different subject altogether but uh i don't know i think everybody would feel it is same way if they were touched by crime i think everyone would you and i think are honest and [candid] because we could do it on in this vehicle uh but i think everybody if they were touched by it would say if they had any sense of rage that could be brought out i think every human does i think they'd say yeah do it if somebody in my family or if it happened it me you know uh uh_huh yeah i just don't think that uh you can rehabilitate i mean i just don't uh-oh i did a paper back in college a long time ago for criminal justice class and i just the subject i remember we drew things out of a hat and it was something uh it was basically the essence was does the crime fit the punishment and when you see how many repeat offenders there are uh check check fraud cases where they go to jail for five to ten years and uh rape rapist getting their hand just slapped you know and how it is based on the judge and if the time of day that the court is in session you know all these uh [intangible] things and you're thinking oh you would not only would you not want to be a victim you wouldn't want to be a criminal either because you wouldn't know what you're getting uh but i don't know methods of capital punishment i have no opinions on that either i just uh_huh is it uh how about the injection is that suppose to be yeah i'm not even sure in the split among the fifty states do you know which way it is the ratio it's more than aren't uh it's more that don't have it isn't that correct uh_huh uh_huh yeah i don't know if they've they did something about i'm not sure if texas minnesota i they didn't they didn't they were well did they have it they were against it uh texas as i said has it but i haven't been back here long enough to to realize whether or not if they've done it in the last i'm in rome new york rome new york yeah yeah i i new york does not but uh they're they're trying to [reinstate] it and the [governor's] opposed to it being that uh the democrat that he is and mario cuomo but the state legislatures are more and more coming to supporting it i'd i would agree with that even more i don't know if this is cold and too [pragmatically] but i'm really offended by the thought that i have to support uh just the existence of you know murder rapist you know right that uh after they've gone and done horrible things [molested] children and kill them whatever that society has to pay uh [upwards] uh thirty thousand dollars a year to [incarcerate] them right i i don't know it's a hard question you look at the united states we have the largest murder rate of any developed uh or uh here in new york it's a lot harder than that uh it takes uh it takes almost six months to get uh handgun permit in this state now the the and that's with uh you have to have uh-oh a police investigation you have to have references and i know because a friend of mine wanted to get one and listed me as a reference uh and i know it there is it's very easy to get uh uh you know there's no restrictions whatsoever on hunting rifles and shotguns and things like that which aren't the i i don't consider to be the kind of crime uh weapon you know uh so right right yeah yeah well and the thing with bundy was though he escaped and then yeah and did it again and uh no uh_huh oh god great surely there's and end to the situation right uh_huh right rome new york it's up state it it's uh near syracuse it's about uh well i i actually live in a village of [sylvan] beach i work in rome uh it's more rural uh it use to be use to be a uh uh have a lot of heavy industry but it's kind of uh all the industry has gone south and uh now the air force is the largest employer in the uh area and uh uh so it's not too bad it you know you still have the uh more drug problems and typical uh small city type problems but i don't know that there's a real uh no there isn't the harsh crime and all uh_huh uh_huh right i think i think pennsylvania may have just [reenacted] it because i'm from uh from pennsylvania also just uh just outside of philadelphia yeah right the west part of the state is and then the east part of the state has got all the bleeding hearts and all the welfare cases so right right sure yeah if your friends or family got uh had that happen to them i think everyone would i they'd probably pull the trigger themselves or flip the switch themselves and with a smile on their face as they did it yeah right right right well uh i uh yeah i don't know i think the old gas chamber seems to be about the most painless because i guess it's a pretty pretty rough thing to be uh [electrocuted] oh yeah an injection yeah that would be even yeah i didn't even think about that i think yeah there's more that don't have it but amazingly it's like uh massachusetts went back and reinstated capital punishment oh maybe six or seven years ago i don't know if they've used it since then since they've reinstated it but uh it's on the books right okay well what's your opinion about capital punishment right i think i would agree with you on that too i i can't see any point in keeping someone who's obviously beyond any kind of rehabilitation uh keeping them you know paying for them to live in prison for years and years and years when you could probably just eliminate the problem maybe spend the money on someone who could possibly be helped right uh_huh beyond murder or just beyond like first degree murder yeah yeah well that really gets into a sticky issue uh i could see that too i think there's probably things i could think of short of murder that someone i think someone would probably deserve to be killed for but gosh and who's going to decide which is how bad you know something that to you is really bad might not be quite so bad to me and uh it's gets into a pretty sticky issue right yeah yeah in some eyes i think some people give up that i think some of what we consider rights are really more privileges than than what most people think of them as i don't know what um texas's criteria for capital murder is do capital punishment is do you know are there some set guidelines like only under these circumstances uh_huh i used to live in virginia and i know when they first reinstated capital punishment it was only um if someone killed a police officer or someone committed rape and then murder those were the only two circumstances where you could give someone the death penalty which i think is a little too limited uh_huh yeah yeah in general terms i'm not so harsh but then whenever i hear of a specific case you know where someone did something then it's like yeah put it to them so i think i probably tend to be a little bit harsh too as far as that goes because yeah i think you're right that person voluntarily gives up when they decide to commit that crime they voluntarily give up their right to continue on with their happy life just you know they ruin someone else's life right uh_huh right yeah he didn't go out with the intent of hurting someone else or with no regard for someone else's well being what about uh like teenagers that get involved in a gang and do a drive by shooting or something like that say fifteen sixteen year old would you consider uh capital punishment for them uh_huh right yeah what age they're accountable for their actions yeah i know that they are lowering the age of uh whatever is considered a minor i think the kids certain kids have been tried as adults who were a lot younger than they used to be like i think i read about a boy that was nine or ten that got mad at some [playmates] and went in and got a gun and just opened fire on them and they were trying to charge him as a well cathy i think that uh capital punishment certainly has a place in our society um maybe from the sense that there are some things that we just can't afford to have repeated even in the remote chance of [repetition] that might be true um i'm what i don't know is where do we draw the line uh do we say that every one who commits murder in the first degree is liable for capital punishment if that's what the jury decides is an appropriate punishment for their crime or do we extend it beyond that well either you know uh i have a a nine year old daughter and there are some crimes that could be committed against her that are not even considered capital crimes that that i would consider basis for murder yes it does a lot of that has to do with the cultures that we grew up in and what's [termed] acceptable and um to what's [allowable] and where are we uh you know if we were lived in a different country then murder is not so bad but over here where we're promised the civil liberties of life liberty and pursuit of [happiness] then taking that away is a a heinous act i don't know i believe it's uh at the [discretion] of the judge or jury i tend to agree with you there um my belief is that is that um any crime that's [freely] committed you know freedom of choice these people had a choice of committing this crime that involves the taking of [another's] life or the [altering] of someone's life such as rape deserves punishment by death but then i'm also told that i'm a pretty harsh person all right i can see a difference between a person who goes out to rob a store for food than a person who commits a crime to either for the thrill of committing the crime or the thrill the feeling of power that they get from it or to acquire drugs for some other i mean acquire funds for some other illegal activity you know that second group of people falls into the group that i say give up their rights the the first guy you know i just assumed it was a guy the first person that went out to rob a store for food that to me is is a different set of circumstances where he he deserves help instead of uh loss of life that's right or with the i think i would probably lower the age to about fourteen there's some and i i certainly don't know myself but somebody needs to do a study that says at what age true and complete logical thought to include the the consideration of of long term consequences begins you know i have an eighteen year old and uh well he's nineteen now and i don't think that i saw it in him until maybe last year and i have an eleven year old and a nine year old and i don't don't see it in them yet but i'm i'm not sure where it begins okay well i'll start off being controversial i'm in favor of it well it seems to be in the current situations but uh i still feel that it could be a deterrent to crime particularly with the increase of serious crime that's going on now okay yeah i think uh oh definitely any any crimes against person uh i feel uh there should be more than a slap on the hand and being sent to prison and being released in uh two or three years oh yeah that's a i don't see a thing wrong with that i believe that uh well it's just an an example i think there's uh someone that's on trial right now here in the dallas area and they were interviewing the the a young lady was killed sometime back a young girl a personal trial and the reporter was asking a stupid question of the people outside well how do you feel about this and you know how do they feel about it i'm sure that uh they want it over with and they want the person punished and punished properly yes yeah well i feel like the the cost of someone who's [quoting] figures made the cost at like thirty thousand dollars a year to keep someone in prison and well the problem there is they're not keeping the right ones in prison in many cases there are more and more instances being on the news or this individual was out on the streets on probation or parole and killed someone else or seriously injured someone yeah yes yes indeed yeah yeah no here again anytime anyone goes out with a gun in their hand and crime on their mind uh the opportunity exists for someone to get killed now i'm not in favor of gun control to the degree or anything because uh there are uses for guns which are [noncriminal] but it seems that the criminal element are the ones that are using them uh aside from domestic disputes husbands shooting wives or vice versa but these individuals if they have a gun with them i think that the the sentence should be even longer than if they don't well well but here again uh if a matter of expediency part of these costs like the people on death row is that their appeals can take years and years there should be some uh i know there's a law i believe that it's automatic appeal if it's a death sentence well i think that automatic appeal ought to take place uh within a reasonable length of time say six months and a decision be made and not drag out in the courts for years because of [misplaced] [commas] or whatever technicalities there might be right there's got to be a there's got to be a time limit a a [legit] legitimate appeal not a technicality of uh if and they're not arguing that the guy or woman committed the crime they're arguing over well were his civil rights violated because uh someone didn't file the proper paper at the proper time those are the things that have caused them to drag out i think yeah he didn't see his lawyer as quickly as he should have or some some mickey mouse type thing like that oh yes yes no i'm not a lawyer i i'm an accountant and i agree we practice law ourselves because it's too expensive to hire lawyers to a degree there you go well it's it's a case that we have a a legal system which the criminals have found a way to use and a way to benefit them rather than the public itself so that's how we get caught in this uh sort of a catch twenty two but you have to continue uh to protect the innocent you're giving an open door to the guilty yeah yes it does most people again one of our one of our problems is that uh our legislature and the state and our national congress the majority of the members [thereof] are lawyers that doesn't necessarily mean you're controversial well i think that those crimes which are punishable by the death sentence need to be reevaluated i think there are other crimes that could easily draw the death penalty and not make me feel bad at all crimes against children is one of them yeah uh_huh actually i would like to see the system [revert] a lot back to some of the forms of punishment that exist in middle eastern countries if you steal you lose a hand you know uh if you kill you lose your life what's wrong with that yeah uh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh deciding what that proper punishment is is one thing i think that there should be no way i i realize that innocent people could go to uh what is it lethal injection now innocent people could do that but for every innocent person who would be executed hopefully there would be ten guilty uh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh to maintain a prison that's right that's stupid uh_huh sure uh_huh uh_huh sure sure well i don't have solutions to the problems but you know you have these this would be nice if and there's probably thousands of holes in that theory but i think that if you did something for example to an individual and caused them to lose the ability to earn a living i remember a man drove by randomly shot a women in the head while she was driving [blinded] her i think then that a life sentence to [restitution] is appropriate i think he should spend the rest of his life working to support that individual or the family of an individual uh who has been harmed you you you know people who kill policemen policemen who are killed in the line of duty they may or may not have been [willfully] intending to kill that policeman but that family still has no provider and i uh_huh that's right uh_huh uh_huh i don't i don't agree with the length of the sentence though i think expediency is the answer uh_huh uh_huh that's right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's right technical i think that there should be a [statute] of limitations on appeals you can appeal it once i think if it is appealed one time and the appeal is turned down or the sentence stands then you might be allowed one more appeal if it is if if it is [contradictory] yeah that's right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's right well one of the sad things is that so many of these never actually come to trial because of of the process in which the criminals were [apprehended] i mean uh you know the guy is guilty you know he's done what he's done you you may have stood there and seen it but because he wasn't read his rights whenever he was arrested you know he he goes free uh_huh uh_huh yeah right and i realize that that is designed to protect the innocent it's also designed to line the pockets of lawyers and uh i i just don't think that i think we could get along a lot better in our criminal justice system if we had some [statute] of limitations on lawyers i hope you're not a lawyer yeah absolutely that's why you check books out from the library but i really believe that our justice system is is the best around but it's not perfect and that doesn't mean that you leave it in tact that's right that's right uh_huh that's right that's right and and it i don't know there just seems to be so many clever ways to avoid the real intent of the law by following the letter and that just that really does [ruffle] my feathers at times i mean i can just get so aggravated about it but you know it's it's going to take smarter people than me to solve the problem and i hope not lawyers do you have any personal feelings on on uh the subject uh_huh uh_huh so outrageous i know i know right well i i guess my concern is what we are reading especially in texas right now with them letting out the people out of jail as soon as they are out of prison when they do and having them go right back the day they get out back in crime and especially when they are [assaulting] people and then killing people i mean the man who killed those three [sheriffs] [deputies] he is out free walking the street i have a real problem with that i think so right right well does not have the right right right right and meanwhile the witnesses move and die and and they and there's no one to face them right right well they can not get any if the judge is going to have any award to the victim it just puts off their collecting it it's it's really bad it i uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh a time limit too do not let it drag on for fifteen years right right do you feel like there's any certain type of crime that this should be the results they should be consequences of capital punishment or or are there some murders committed that you think leniency should be shown uh_huh okay right uh_huh and how do you feel about murders of law officers or fire people or something that are because they have had them they have had them killed when they have um um um uh that was their goal oh that would be premeditated uh they killed him uh uh uh uh_huh uh_huh no well that's right there's no reason for murder i do not care if you are poor or if you are rich or if you are ugly or what there that that's just beyond the i think this giving excuses is pretty prevalent uh i work in the school district and the all these kids they have got an excuse for everything and i can see it continuing on when they are adults i just it's just a bad habit uh uh kids have got to learn from the time they are real little there's no excuse for for being bad or making bad choices deliberate or anything it's it's uh i i sometimes think if i were on a jury and had to make the decision could i and i like to think i could like you if if especially violent crime where serial type killer or maybe a child has been deliberately killed right uh_huh well uh capital punishment is a hard thing but uh there's been several there have been several things that have happened where i felt like if i had been involved in it i would have had to to go along with with that being the punishment given to to the people there have been some things you know there's things done that are just yeah that i do not know how i do not really there's any other way to deal with it yeah i think that that that that's a really yeah if it's a if it's a clear and present danger i mean it but it's something that's really hard to deal with the way that our justice system is right now is basically set up in lawyers and and anybody will tell you that uh it is set up right now all the laws protect the criminal they are the ones with the rights they have the right to uh you know i think i watched something last week uh i am sorry the accused has the right to a speedy trial but the victim does not have the right does not have the same does not have the same the same emphasis on those things as far as they are concerned so now the accused can can ask for delays and extensions and what do they call whatever they call them you know uh_huh uh_huh exactly [continuance] they can get [continuances] on for years before the thing ever comes to trial and that makes the victim suffer more the yeah that too um i think that uh you know that there needs to be a way that you know once someone has gone through you know a trial i do not know how to fix it i mean it just seems like there there should be a limit on how many appeals can be made you know when someone has been yeah when someone well even when someone has been convicted and i mean it's just so so [abundantly] clear that they did it but appealing you know and continuing to appeal like four or five or six times to have convictions overturned and then they have to be [retried] and all that it's such a waste of time and energy and money and it it just that's what keeps that's what is keeping all the the you know the criminals in a position of being able to be released all the time like this oh well i guess there's [extenuating] circumstances to anything like that uh you know like i i could see uh a first time offender being you know maybe in a in a robbery situation trying to hold up a store and getting scared and you know firing a gun and [accidently] killing someone okay i could see that that might be the situation where uh the person could be rehabilitated but i think just out and out murder and i am talking about uh cutting people up you know where there's shown to be [pathological] tendencies where this person has done it over and over again in a serial fashion or whatever that those kinds of things and any any kind of violent assault rape included needs to addressed in in in that context well what bothers me that bothers me a great deal i had a friend who was a police officer who was killed in the line of duty and the thing that was the worst about it is that these that uh two of these individuals were well all of the individuals involved were very young one was technically a minor and so he was sent back to mexico he was an illegal alien the other two had lived here they had graduated from high school here and they had told their teachers that i mean repeatedly during high school they had told their teachers that they were going to be that they were going to graduate from high school and kill cops that was what they had told their teachers and so that's what they did and uh they were they were given i think oh absolutely he stopped them for routine traffic violation and they uh several several things happened that night but they they beat him up and took his gun and shot him with it and it was it was really terrible i mean uh i had seen him like three or days before that he we had gone out uh with he and his wife and that was really really disturbing you know that that happened and these people you know in the in the course of the trial you know came up with with all these you know things about well you know they were disadvantaged and all this stuff well nobody is that disadvantaged and there's just no i mean no yeah i think so too and that's uh so i i do feel strongly about yeah yeah uh_huh the thing that even though juries sometimes make the decision and still the people nothing ever happens to them you know they stay in jail they get off time for good behavior and all that stuff and they get released and they go right back and do it again well it's i am pretty much against it yeah how about you oh good we can have a debate well like um i don't know i think that i one of the reasons that i'm against it is that uh um i'm afraid of someone losing their life for um wrongly right and uh another reason one of the arguments that really i really actually have been kind of ambivalent about it but one of the arguments that really uh made me feel kind of strongly against it is that uh you know someone said to me once well imagine if the person you love most in the world like your mother or something if someone killed her wouldn't you want to see them killed for the punishment but then i thought about it and i thought well the loss that i would feel at losing my mother someone else would feel that about that person no matter how rotten they were somebody loves them how about you yeah that's true uh hum right well you know that's true because um a lot of um these conversations i've had on this program this these telephone conversations have revolved around um criminal you know justice uh_huh uh_huh or whatever and most of the time i hear myself saying well you know we don't have enough room left in the jails and people crime is still climbing and we need to have different punishments you know but i just am scared of capital punishment i guess uh_huh right especially when it's so far removed if it's no one that i know then you have to think about the taxpayers paying the shelter and feed and clothe them for the rest of their life letting him out again uh_huh uh_huh that's true you know i just recently moved to massachusetts i'm not sure what their policy is on capital punishment and that was one of the questions but uh i do know that they are notorious for paroling people yeah when they're when and then having them [reconvicted] for violent crimes and i guess they said you know do you think it should be restricted i guess if it were if if because a lot of states do still practice capital punishment i guess violent crimes would be the crimes where i can see it making the most sense you know violent crimes with no uh with just malicious intent yeah hang and what is he going to do prison to the other people right well i was i saw on a human interest story or whatever today there was a woman who was just being paroled and trying to make it back she was off drugs and everything but she said uh you know in prison you can get anything you can any drugs you want there's it it's just like being outside you know people find ways around and there's a power structure that you have bow to and and it really isn't for some people who have been there for over and over and over it really isn't uh as bad i mean there's it's not that bad of a life as it should be for the punishment aspect but the society is turned against punishment and more towards rehabilitation and maybe that's why one of the reasons why crime has gone up because it's not so scary anymore right and what they're going to be doing when they get out handed it to you oh oh i see well maybe if they could uh if they had more money or more more resources to work more on rehabilitation i mean deep down i think every every human so how do you feel about capital punishment really oh i'm pretty much for it we'll have some interesting discussion i guess wrongfully yeah yeah yeah it would never be equal right right yeah well i guess you know i i guess i can see it from several different perspectives but you know when i hear about things like you know what they've what they've been reporting about in milwaukee you know i i to me i don't see any way of [rehabilitating] the guy you know maybe there is i don't know but you know and you know he's never going to be to me a functioning part of society he's already been either paroled or whatever for child molestation i mean i don't know i just i really have a hard time with that because he really sounds like a real [sicko] and you know for the things he's done i don't know i guess it's either you know put him in jail for the rest of his life you know or or capital punishment i guess you know uh_huh oh really right yeah well i can i i mean you know there there is always that chance but you know i guess to some people it'd almost be better to die to them than to spend life in prison or whatever i don't i mean i don't know but uh you know but that would be a situation where if somebody you know was [gonna] be you know you you you really throw a lot on the courts hopefully that they won't do that you know for any for any situation really but uh you know when i you find somebody just like that situation i mean it was disgusting when i read about it today and and when you find someone like that that you know is guilty he confessed already to killing eleven i i'd you know i guess i have a hard time feeling [merciful] toward him and you know right right right and trying to rehabilitate him too and you know right exactly and uh you know nobody wants that you know everybody would be just as scared to death you know we we've had a real problem here in texas with uh prison overcrowding and they've been releasing people left and right and you know they've committed murders and rapes and everything else and you know you just think you know where's the justice here i mean you know they're not even having to serve out what they should be serving oh really uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah right exactly yeah well you know that's exactly i mean i'm i'm not saying i i think capital murder or capital punishment is the perfect solution in every case you know especially because there are some cases when you just don't know and i i think there's a a shadow of a doubt you know like with this this guy in in milwaukee i mean it he pretty much confessed to it i mean they you know just everything i mean [cannibalism] and everything else uh i really would have a hard time especially if i was on a jury not wanting him to you know be executed yeah because i mean that's just awful right well i have a i have a [hunch] that you know the other prisoners aren't going to be too happy with him anyway either i mean you know they i don't know from from what i hear about jail life is not any way to live but uh i don't know it's just uh_huh really yeah yeah yeah that yeah well you know especially like repeat offenders it it just [appalls] me that they can be out you know they even get a ten year sentence and be out in in two or three or four years you know that's that's scary because you know i'm not sure i think we're paroling them without even knowing if they're you know going to be committing any more violent acts or not right and it it's it's really scary i you know i i don't know what the perfect solution to that is but i know that especially with violent crimes where you know you're nearly a hundred percent convinced that they're guilty and without much repentance or anything else you know then i don't know i i guess i i just really don't see much use for this guy in milwaukee you know for instance i mean that's just i could see capital punishment in a case like that and you know for for other people too that do things like that but uh when uh my wife and i are both participating in this survey and she picked up the phone and when she heard the topic she said capital punishment so she was uh yeah well luckily it was for me because they want they coordinate the times so it can only be one or the other so she tried to enter her number and it wouldn't work so she said whew it's for you so but uh you know i don't know i i struggle with it but i i really think that in in terms of like this i'd i think that it it might not be such a bad thing because i don't know that anybody i don't know that anybody would feel good you know like if you let someone like that loose in your community you know i i i'm you'd have to be scared to death okay capital punishment um for myself i'm personally against it but we seem to have a [duality] of in this country where most states in theory have it but but but do not use it okay well uh texas uses it as about as much as any other state texas is a big state um here in maryland to the capital punishment law people are sometimes sentenced to capital punishment but no one no one has actually has the sentence carried out uh i'd certainly uh_huh i think so i uh or affair number uh in fact i think that it it affected the sentence though capital punishment is available the sentence of life without possibility of parole uh has become a common one and is being being used much more uh i don't know the exact numbers but but yes prisons are overcrowded um okay you're you're certainly in the majority uh at least in this country uh we are i guess the only one of the major western nations currently with capital punishment no at least not in western europe probably not in eastern europe these days either um there are many reasons for it but they they certainly have lower crime rates and lower murder rates well in part it's uh it's the nature of societies perhaps more [homogenous] society in many cases uh [arguably] if [arguably] is because of of uh of uh welfare state benefits though i tend to be we tend to be skeptical yes oh there's no question that that they that uh you know they have you know all kinds of cradle to [grave] uh programs welfare programs providing for everyone some way i i i however the question is is that making the difference oh um i think i think that idea is even even more common in western europe uh_huh me too all right okay what's your views on it correct okay well i'm for it i think there are certain crimes that definitely uh call for it i i feel like that child molestation and murder i don't see any sense in someone living that does things like that i i don't feel like they're a benefit to society in any way and of course texas has it but they very seldom you know put it into effect so instead all of our prisons are full of people on you know a lot of people on death row well uh yeah which is not very often right what do they do just keep them on death row for the rest of their life uh_huh uh_huh do you have the overcrowding in your prisons that we are facing down here i know that we have you know really in fact they're they're releasing people uh that are in there for you know not major crimes but uh robberies and assault and things like that and because they don't have room which then they're coming back on the streets and of course doing it again and um you know so we're having problems in in that way and i know that there are some cases that uh you know capital punishment does not fit the crime and there are [extenuating] circumstances on certain types um but i have to say that i'm honestly for it uh almost that eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth yes i know they use it very um they do not have it in europe as i understand yes you wonder what their you know how they manage to do that well england has uh don't they have a large fairly large welfare oh i i don't know but we have a lot of welfare programs and if both do and they tend to have less crime you wonder if that has anything to do with it then you know or is it in our society people are brought up over here thinking that you know everybody owes them something oh do you well that's interesting i would not have i would not have said that i would have said that it was more prevalent here in the united states that's an interesting theory i'm not that familiar you know i've only been over there a couple of times and i'm not that familiar with that all i know is that for instance we were in germany in uh well i did hear the end of the prompt this time was that you that we didn't hear the whole prompt and it said that what what do we do we think that certain crimes should fit certain punishments and uh i was thinking about it after i got off the phone that that i really you know wish that there was some way to uh send a message to people you know about um child abuse and things like that that uh those kind of crimes deserve some kind of severe punishment too often i feel that people get off uh without uh_huh uh_huh right right yeah uh_huh yeah well sometimes they even wonder when when uh criminals plead temporary insanity for for for crimes that are so severe and then you know they get sent to a mental institution and they play [loony] for a while and then they're back out in public yeah yeah oh i agree i agree because we uh_huh yeah yeah well and too you know they can always be [blaming] the other person well she looked like my mother who abused me when i was a child or something which i think is unfortunate for that person and yet shouldn't be an excuse i guess you know a lot of and i was just seeing in the newspaper or the grocery store that some miss america was abused by the man she loved and is that the new i just happened to see the headline on it and i didn't couldn't realize if it was the husband or the father or what but i thought uh you know if these things if children are being abused i i'm wondering how our school system is failing that they're not even seeing this you know if it was that severe that when they're later in life adults that it's all of a sudden affecting them in this way that it wasn't shown up at all when they were younger and that kind of that kind of worries me with my kids only being under two and not having you know to to deal with that yet but still never and i lived in california which i feel like california you know anything can go on in california yeah uh_huh uh_huh i really would have no idea i um i don't don't really know uh_huh that would be pretty lenient in my opinion yeah that's that or like when uh i've heard when i yes yes uh_huh yeah i i agree with you although i will say i'm not sure you know i sometimes have a problem with some of the especially more famous people who all of a sudden are crawling out of the woodwork to say that whatever problems they have you know was was because they were abused abused as children and the parents are saying hey wait a minute we didn't do anything like that you know and and and i guess before i'd like to see that severe of a punishment for it it has to be a an absolute [certainty] you know like uh caught at it or something you know or if they they uh you know severely beat up on a child or you know i would have absolutely no problem at all you know with with i don't buy the routine oh they're just sick or they were abused when they were little well you know forget that uh_huh well but i can't see that either i don't feel that that should be any excuse at all or any deterrent uh you know reason to not use capital punishment i think uh i think if i wanted to badly enough i could convince somebody uh i was crazy so my family may say that on occasion who knows you know uh i i don't think it's that hard to do you know to to convince somebody that uh gee you just had no control over what you were doing uh_huh uh_huh that's the new one well you you're right uh and yet i mean did you ever in your life when you were little know anybody or hear anything of anything like this no well yes i but i was from conservative wisconsin and uh you know there was there was nothing on it which makes me wonder you know if it's as uh prevalent as as some of them claim it uh it it it's you just don't know and it all unless they're caught in the act or the child is very badly you know beaten up it comes down to a one word against the other that type thing now texas is capital punishment for it used to be just capital murder and now they added mass murder are those the only two things that we uh uh you know because i have a feeling it is and i i think there ought to be more things added to it uh yeah i i think that's i you know uh killing a child or kidnapping uh and possibly not well i guess kidnapping maybe if the person gets very badly hurt you know if they release them two hours later he probably doesn't deserve the death penalty okay we're talking about capital punishment how do you feel about that [lenore] well wonderful i am too one hundred percent uh_huh all your life uh_huh there's no deterrent that's right there's just no deterrent and so many of those kind of people they got they have a better life in prison than they have on the street anyway so you know unless they really make it rough on them that's not a going to prison for a little while is not much of a deterrent i don't think right well i don't know what [oklahoma's] laws are but texas's i don't know are i don't know it's it's no ones i mean it's not the judges fault i don't think it's just the way the law is down here man our our uh prisons are so crowded that uh they can commit some pretty serious crimes and be set free within a year to two well that's what ours did same thing uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh huh_uh it's not here either really i do too and and you know but the way the courts are set up they've they've got so many chances for appeal but i think i think it needs to be [expedited] you know if they've been convicted and given an appeal and they're still convicted of of a crime that's [deserving] of of a lethal injection let's do it and not waste so many years to do it that's right uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's right somehow it just doesn't it works and then again it takes too long for it to work uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah it i do too i think that needs to and i don't see why it couldn't be [shortened] considerably but you know that's true it is overcrowded because there's so much drug uh problem with the people on drugs because that they with the drugs they're they're robbing and killing and uh that's why it's filled the prisons up so much i think no it doesn't yeah that's true with all these lawsuits and people suing people over ridiculous things but boy haven't that we though we really have but anyway i'm glad to hear that you agree with me on the capital punishment i'm i'm very [muchly] for it always have been always will be it could be supportive it it's it's supported with facts though it could very easily be supported with facts right i am very much for capital punishment my dad retired from the federal prison of bureaus and i've been raised around prison prisons all my life and i believe if you don't have a punishment [befitting] the crime there's not any deterrent that's right especially not a federal prison well see we were under uh the states prisons were under a [mandate] to uh it was over crowded and the federal came in and said hey you know you have either got to build more prisons or let people go and finally our governor at the time which who is not in office now came in and said okay where we draw the line is no sex offenders will be let loose under early bail you know or early uh get out but uh we have the death penalty is not given often but there have been and you know i maybe it should be uh well it should be given you know i i won't say [sparingly] but i do believe it should be [befitting] the crime right of course you know they're they're entitled to a speedy trial but then they're they're also entitled to drag it through the courts for years and years and years on appeals so somehow you know it doesn't really balance out too much and it seems even though you know that they got the prisoner himself can come to the point that hey i'm tired i just want out you know i'm tired of fighting it then the system just keeps on and at that point you know i i really think there needs to be maybe a shorter appeal process well part of that is the overcrowding of the court system uh it doesn't it doesn't help them any at all and of course your court system when you get into the appeals i don't believe criminal is in a court by itself and the whole judicial system is backed up with a lot of junk that shouldn't be in there we've gotten into a very litigious uh type of life well i just i just feel like their crime and punishment and if if you don't have the punishment you double your crime and the you know that is just personal feeling it's not going on facts i think the facts would probably back it up but what well yes i what do you want to start right you are right yeah i i suppose i should have uh_huh uh yeah uh i uh i guess i i hate to see anyone die uh but uh i guess these people that go around and and kill children and women and everything else without any remorse uh i don't think they deserve to to live and be supported by us the rest of their lives uh_huh yeah yeah well and even even that i don't really know if that would help i think a lot of these people do it uh mainly because of of t v and the double reason they they see it being done on t v and also the fact of of notoriety i mean they become well known they are almost like like a big star yeah uh_huh yeah right yeah well i i i think if they went according to uh the bible where it does say an eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth a life for a life uh you take a life you give yours uh uh that's for sure uh there's exceptions to the rule i mean if if it's an accidental taking then uh you look at that but you know most of these people that down right go right and and do it out of pure pleasure uh i don't uh like to see that i guess also the fact that they say it's not a deterrent it is a deterrent in the in the sense that that person will never do it again not not not if he's killed he can't do it again the death penalty uh_huh right uh_huh yeah well i i guess i'm also looking at beyond even that i i i guess i been thinking about it and i don't have a definite opinion but uh repeat uh crimes uh maybe not the the more mild ones but you know a more severe ones especially on on armed robbery and stuff where they been taking from elderly people and not just taking the money but beating them half to death just for pleasure too and i guess you've got to look at something like that do they deserve to uh remain on this earth too right right yeah uh_huh uh you hit you hit uh it doesn't matter um we're discussing the capital punishment i believe uh which i am am pro capital punishment except that i don't like the way it's done uh_huh i i agree i i'm capital the the capital punishment is necessary in in many cases but uh the it's not a deterrent um or our jails would not be so full there wouldn't be so many people in death row i think it needs to be something uh uh a [throwback] to where they did a uh public execution where it's visible uh something you know not gruesome but but something more where people know that it it was a deterrent and it was equal for all people if you committed a certain crime you were going to receive a death penalty and it was going to happen to you no stays of execution no no loopholes no notoriety yes but but they they know that their chances of actually receiving the death penalty are minimal they know that they will probably be out in ten to twelve years that they are going to write a book they are going to go on talk shows they're that that that's a reward uh for a heinous crime rather than uh having them pay the penalty which is [forfeiture] of their life in in complete uh of any notoriety uh_huh right right uh_huh well yes they will it oh well that's correct yes if if he indeed receives the death penalty and it is it is executed yeah but but the the the chances are not great that that will happen but there's a greater chance that he'll be back out on the streets in twelve years uh_huh uh_huh that's right yes why you know you could carry it to that if uh if they are a repeat offender and and you know that as soon as you let them out on the streets they are going to do this unfortunately the way our system of jurisprudence is set up um you only receive the death penalty for capital crimes and of course uh of battery or assault or that is not a capital crime see you you wouldn't be able to under our system now china and a few other countries have a little different view of that um you get caught with dope there and you die period there is there is no no appeals there is no well how do you feel about capital punishment oh you did wow oh really yeah right uh_huh right oh wow okay wow really wow yeah well the cases like that they should i mean if he's going to be drastic somebody has to be drastic back really right wow uh_huh no no remorse whatsoever huh well i guess in cases like that you know where the guy would obviously go out and do it again i mean you've got to do something right wow you're kidding right really well i guess if the police came out and saw him fire the gun oh really okay oh wow what i guess cases like that i don't see why they wouldn't bring in the new evidence from the other case okay of that crime but he was found guilty of okay that works right well they pushing the death penalty wow okay so yeah and i'm really kind of against life in prison anyway because it costs so dog gone much that's true i mean if you're going to put him in prison for life with no chance for parole that's true uh_huh that's true i mean i don't know whether i'd stay in prison or not or yes ma'am yes they do i they've had a a number of cases here i mean not a whole lot well jackson i heard just the other day had their sixty first murder this year it was like last like year they had forty nine so that's going up but yeah they have a death penalty i hear of one every now and then and i visited the prison up here and at [parchman] and i've been i haven't they won't let you on death row but they'll let you look down the hall you can't see any prisoners and and it's kind of a weird feeling i've been they took us around on a tour you know and i went got to walk in the gas chamber and it is kind of a weird feeling knowing you're sitting there saying like people have died here but i guess just going up there and seeing the surroundings and stuff the people up there well i i just last friday got off a capital murder case yeah i was on the jury uh yeah which is funny because i got called last night and the topic was uh something about juries yeah so i am just hitting it right uh how do i feel about it i i don't know well i guess it is right in certain cases uh well the one i was just on i don't i was an alternate on the case so i don't know what was decided they are probably still in deliberations on it but uh what i found out once once i was declared an alternate and i was dismissed we met with the judge the two alternates did and uh he went on to tell us how they happened to catch this guy and i remember hearing about it it was about a year ago uh he was he was involved in another one another capital murder the very next month and he was caught just they they drove up the police drove up just as he fired the gun and killed the guy so he was caught and uh it's interesting because the county i live in i'm not in dallas county i'm i'm pretty far north of dallas uh county i live in in the past ten years only had two capital murders and last year there were six and this guy is [indicted] on three of them yeah so you have to wonder you know yeah yeah although you know it's not really revenge because it doesn't mean anything to him you know he he has no concept of what he has done he just well from what i can tell i mean i didn't talk to the guy or anything but i mean he doesn't seem to have any regard for anybody's life including his own so it's it's kind of strange that you know no huh_uh yeah yeah well it's funny because when you know they interview you before you go on the jury and for capital murder i was interviewed by four attorneys for about five hours and i the i was the i think the ninety eighth person they'd interviewed but you know at the time when the guy kept saying could you ever convict someone and do you think you'd ever know beyond a doubt and i said i can't imagine i said if i knew beyond a doubt or if i felt beyond a doubt that he had done it yeah i guess i could convict him but i can't imagine you ever making me that sure of something but they really did it was it was really amazing well that was a [subsequent] case that we didn't know about and those jurors don't know about but this particular case i mean they had a complete confession from the guy with a lot of things that that the police hadn't released so no one else would have known it was it was really pretty interesting educational well they can't they can i think in the punishment phase but not in the guilt or innocence because he hasn't been he hasn't been found guilty of it right right so you know it's although it's not going to take much to prove that so uh yeah this guy is up for the death penalty uh and in texas there is there is a couple of questions you have to ask uh in the punishment phase uh for example was the guy [provoked] and was the response reasonable given the [provocation] and there is a number of questions and just depending on whether you say yes or no uh you you can give him capital punishment and if you're up to the point where if he still [qualifies] for capital punishment then you can look at mitigating circumstances so there is a lot of outs but the only result is otherwise he gets life in prison yeah right and and to me i mean you take away a person's freedom you've taken away most of their life yeah but but then you have to look at reality i mean i think you know normally they they may get out so but what is it worth i don't know personally i don't know which i would pick if i had a choice for myself yeah so you said you're from mississippi and do they have the death penalty there uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um yeah ooh that's right so how do you feel about capital punishment right you don't think i uh i have the same dilemma i think uh it's you know it seems right sometimes and then other times you don't know uh right right uh_huh and also it doesn't seem like it does that many harm i mean sure their life is taken but they'd spend the rest of their life in jail anyway so i think sometimes they'd prefer just to get it over with so it's more of the easy way out than making them pay for the for the you know what they've done yeah uh_huh right but then again also you can't bring back lives that have been taken anyway so uh it's it doesn't it seems by that by i don't know doesn't ever really uh yeah right it doesn't bring back every what state are you in oh really in dallas oh really uh right now i'm in utah but i'm from plano texas so uh uh what are the laws like in texas oh really uh_huh wow i haven't no and they do it that way huh wow i think they're there i think that capital punishment is is uh in in utah also i'm not really familiar yeah i am so but i think they a long time ago i i remember my dad was telling me this i think that uh they do it by like a bunch of men have guns and one of them has the real gun in it so they don't know who killed right yeah no i know well i i'm not really certain how i uh i'm not certain that that it does a lot of good i mean that it ends up ends up effectively uh uh uh [avoiding] a lot of the crimes that have capital punishment penalties yet on the other hand uh i don't know i mean there is things that seems like it's it's it's the right thing to do now you know i mean somebody a serial killer or somebody goes in and machine guns you know fifty fifty children in a school yard you kind of i don't know what about yourself uh_huh i mean people like i it's been i mean like the arab societies and stuff end up uh having effective effective punishments and and they're extremely severe uh i you know i think to a certain degree the reason that it it doesn't serve as a deterrent uh may be because you never know if it's going to be applied right unlike uh like in in arab societies if you get get caught stealing they chop off your hand and and you walk around the rest of your life with one hand and everybody knows exactly what what for uh and you know and here with our court system and and ways of sort of screwing it around and stuff you can you can kind of always count on the fact or or there is a good chance you're going to get off uh_huh yeah some people yeah except that i mean the the average cost to to society of having somebody in jail for all their life is is extremely high i mean something i i was amazed at uh uh per year it's something like twenty thousand dollars per inmate per year to keep people in jail uh you know and it's sort of a sort of a crass perspective on the usage of capital punishment but on the other hand uh uh you know i don't i don't know if it's that is that is that serious that they're really never going to be out of jail uh uh_huh oh i know i mean you can't it doesn't taking taking one more life doesn't doesn't doesn't get things back the way they were right yeah i don't know i i don't i really don't know uh i'm in texas no i'm in austin where where are you calling from oh i see uh_huh it's texas is has is one of the one of the well i guess there is more and more states that are that are going back to capital punishment uh texas has had it for a while it's one of the [quickest] it it once it was it was [reallowed] i think it was outlawed for a while but uh by the supreme court i mean or the interpretation of the constitution and it seems like everybody stopped and then and then once they sort of [reallowed] it texas was one of the first to uh to actually uh implement it again they do it by uh by do it by lethal injection uh i'm originally from kansas and in kansas also uh they they almost immediately put back capital punishment and uh there they do it by hanging still uh they have i still remember the the the movie uh in cold blood i don't know if you've ever i'm sure you're familiar with it but have you seen the movie yeah that way yeah well they they show it not not i mean the the movie was made in like nineteen sixty two or something like that and so it's uh it's not particularly graphic but on the other hand it's it's fairly impressive to watch them you know walk into the room with [gallows] it's kind of a barn like structure is that right are you there in school yeah uh_huh has has a yeah has a real bullets and the rest of them have [blanks] yeah i i certainly wouldn't want to be the [executioner] i know that i've always said that if i if i had to kill and clean and do my own my own meat i think i'd become a vegetarian as long as you're sort of safely removed from it it seems seems not so so bad i guess yes gary gilmore yeah that's right and we still have a death penalty some a gentleman uh that was one of the hi fi murderers just had his conviction overturned well appealed again i guess we have the longest uh running inmates for death row too and then we had another guy uh ronald [lafferty] that thought god told him to kill his sister in law he just got a a new trial because the judge felt that he was [incompetent] uh how do you feel about the death penalty oh well i'm sure that's well i kind of agree with terrorism i think those guys should be done away with that's one of the worst crimes in my book and uh drug dealing um that's close but uh terrorism definitely and uh selling out your country uh no it's got to be something that is going to cost them because we never lock anybody up forever not very often at all we've got these guys in new york that uh i'm sure you heard about the ones that killed uh the gentleman that came from utah to watch the tennis people and i guess they got convicted the four of uh murder so you've come to a definite opinion on it now yeah you kind of hate to you mean uh violence the witnesses well maybe it would uh i kind of have a problem with our legal system at the moment uh as it is i think that people who uh [infringe] on other people's rights uh and screw up their whole lives with rape uh child molesting uh terrorism just uh there's just like five things that i think they ought to be [snuffed] for but i'm i'm for it for certain reasons and i think that things like rape uh you can't get over uh it takes a lifetime uh if it was yeah if it was it would probably have to be a pattern you know we have plenty of convicted guys that go into jail and come back out do the same thing and go back and uh if they're habitual like three times caught for rape or child molesting then [snuff] them pardon yeah but we don't seem to keep them long enough and then they learn such bad things in jail that isn't a place of rehabilitation yeah it's a tough question isn't it on whether at what point do they become so detrimental to society that society can't afford to keep them around to keep giving them chances uh let's see so the other question that they wanted was whether the place that we live in uh [compares] to how we feel what's the laws there in d c so utah that that's that's the state that got was famous when they executed somebody gary gilmore by firing squad as i recall uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh well i you know until recently i've been sort of could go either way you know it it sort of doesn't much you know it didn't it wasn't a strong issue um i guess it still isn't a strong issue but i must say i find it very silly the way politicians are running around creating more and more capital crimes um instead of dealing with you know the real problems that you know that they're they're getting votes presumably by um i assume they're doing it for that reason by by by saying well this doing this particular crime in this particular way is a capital crime now uh_huh it's not it's not enough just to lock them up forever not often yeah yeah uh_huh right well i i've it it seems like it's gone gotten carried away um and i i do find it hard to know where to draw a line and so if i had to draw a line i'd say just no capital punishment i mean i don't i don't i don't see that it [accomplishes] a whole lot whereas i do think that convicting people and and [incarcerating] them for a long time if that could be improved upon that would have more impact i think no what about the argument where where somebody who is committing one capital crime chooses to commit a a more serious capital crime i mean murder um because that one at least you might escape from because his victim you know his witnesses will be gone doesn't this doesn't this encourage uh more doesn't this yeah i mean doesn't this encourage murder in order to wipe out the the witnesses yeah uh_huh i see so so if if william kennedy smith had been found guilty you believe he should have been uh executed a six person jury could have decided either way of course uh_huh well the problem is that they've just been let out of jail the problem there is that they've been let out jail if they've been [thrice] convicted they should have been kept in longer yeah well yeah that's that's for sure uh_huh yeah uh_huh i do too uh_huh well i think you know i'm i'm in that same i think if it's uh if it's a if it's a convicted uh felon on parole uh and he goes out and and commits another crime or kills somebody i you know i i feel the same way i don't think i think that person is is beyond uh rehabilitation and and he should be taken out uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right yeah yeah you don't hear you don't hear too much about of those cases yeah yeah that's right huh right huh yep it sure is yeah it's uh_huh see the only thing i don't you know i don't understand i guess i i don't understand our judicial system uh as it is right now because i you know if somebody has been convicted and has been sentenced to be put to death how is it that they can appeal and appeal and appeal and get stays of execution i mean how you know is there uh_huh uh_huh right yeah yeah uh_huh huh yep yeah huh yeah yep what do you think about uh uh convicted uh well as far as i'm concerned and it's probably apt that your [call's] at this time because we just got through watching uh reasonable doubts which had a you know capital case in it and uh i personally have uh my own feelings about uh capital punishment is i think it should be mandatory upon a third conviction felony mandatory i mean summary execution on the steps that day uh_huh well i i also firmly believe that no one is beyond [reclamation] but i do know that some people almost all people usually die before that point they just get too old uh as far as capital punishment on on it's own merits i have the trouble with the way it's applied i think it should be applied on a little bit more fair manner uh and i've i've said this very often and i believe it to be the a very true [axiom] so i would be rather be white rich and guilty than black and innocent because if you're if you're black and you kill a white guy you're going to fry kill you they will kill you and if you're black and you kill a black guy you know it's you know two hundred hours of community service well it's a social disease that we have called one [upsmanship] you know we're the majority so we can do whatever the hell we want to do and you're the minority and you're stuck with it but uh you know we had this in the vietnam war you know we had you know population of blacks among military people in vietnam was about eighty percent but the population of blacks in the military was about twenty two percent the [handwriting's] on the wall there isn't it you know but that's another issue altogether as far as capital punishment i think that uh ten years on death row is cruel and unusual punishment i think the guy should have ninety days and if he can't produce evidence not argument but evidence well that goes back to when uh america was a a colony of england in england you went to court you were assumed guilty until proven innocent and once they found you guilty you know judge said he's guilty kill him well there were some people that uh that had a problem with that because they found out later on that jeez you know a guy will lie rather than get killed and he'll say you know hey that guy did it you know not me and uh or he'll have somebody lie for him you know people lie it's a strange thing but they do that and to prevent that kind of misuse of power they wrote into the constitution a protection against judicial [mishap] and the judicial [mishap] in this event would be hey you got the wrong guy look at that guy uh at e systems they were they convicted him of a robbery that he could not physically have been able to commit he was too far away when it happened he had witnesses that were you know they weren't dope dealers they weren't drug [fiends] they were employees of a an establishment that had a very high level of security sense too and these were really responsible people you know and they convicted this guy because somebody says well he looks like the right guy they all look the same to me you know big lips flat nose yep that was him uh greg uh i i'm not familiar i think uh you guys in indiana don't you have the the death penalty uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh uh i i tend to agree with you uh i've changed my views over uh even within the last few years uh to be honest uh uh when i was in when i was an undergraduate i was a member of amnesty international and uh and of course at that time you know i thought uh uh it was stupid to kill anybody for uh you know that the eye for an eye was a stupid argument but the uh the more now i live in downtown dallas and i uh you know i've seen uh i've seen cases on in the news and all where where you know uh a a person who had murdered a person is back on the street and then commits another murder i think that maybe uh a good solution to capital punishment might be uh reserve it solely for uh repeat offenders of a crime like uh murder yeah uh yeah it seems sensible and [failsafe] i i uh i don't you know not completely [failsafe] but if a man's convicted of two murders uh you know there's a pretty good chance that something's wrong uh i also uh to tell you how liberal i have turned uh toward this or or or whatever side that is i've kind of chosen uh i believe it that uh big time drug [importers] like uh say noriega for example that these people need to be uh eliminated uh from society and i think i think the death penalty is the best choice for those people because uh really any kind of uh uh jail sentence for them is just another chance to uh create another power structure uh_huh right right right uh_huh uh_huh well uh do you uh are there cases where you think that that uh the capital the capital punishment shouldn't be uh uh sentenced uh_huh right that's true yeah right uh_huh uh_huh right sure yeah i understand i understand your point yeah uh of course you know with uh with with dahlmer now uh you you realize that i think it's ohio uh gets to try him next and they do have the death penalty yeah so uh that was a curious case i uh uh something is sort of [nightmarish] to say the least uh well here in texas we uh i think even even this last week last week they had another they uh you know they use their capital punishment by lethal injection uh uh yeah we do have the death penalty here it's not exercised very often but we do have it i believe it i can't even remember the last execution we had here actually uh personally i'm in favor of capital punishment i know there's a lot of lot of problems with it but uh seems to me that some crimes are just so heinous that that the person just i feel doesn't deserve to live doesn't deserve for the tax payers to spend however many thousands of dollars it costs a year to keep them in in prison for life but i know there's a lot of problems with that like well they say okay if you declare someone put them on death row and execute them well then ten years later you find out that he really didn't do it then that life was wasted but just seems like in some cases that it's a it's a good policy uh_huh right right right that's a that's a thought that i had never really had on that which seems pretty sensible right right yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah you're you're right there uh i basically my views i guess they tend to be more economically oriented in that i just you know they come out with these figures that it costs fifty thousand dollars taxpayer dollars a year to keep someone alive in jail when they're going to be there for life they're never going to be rehabilitated i mean i don't believe that the prison system that we have today does much towards rehabilitation to begin with so to me i'm paying taxes you know twenty percent of my check or whatever to keep somebody alive who i in my mind shouldn't be there in the first place and is never going to be a valuable or worthwhile part of society so i i'm all in favor of it well i i really don't know on that question it just seems like for instance the jeffrey dahlmer case i mean i don't really think that this person is going to ever be a worthwhile part of society i hope the guy never gets back out on the streets and in that case wisconsin doesn't have a death penalty so he's going to be sentenced to life imprisonment and i think that that he should not be allowed to live but you know then you're kind of playing god which is never a good thing to do but cases where i think the death penalty should be withheld uh not really that i can think of i i would i would be in favor of the death penalty in things like you know murders and like you said repeat murders or serial killers uh i don't really agree with the uh death penalty for people like noriega and such as that i think that they're they're operating on a more i mean i know that they're causing massive problems in society up here but i don't really think that that it's it's in our power to take these people from a [sovereign] state and say you don't deserve to live because they're feeding our consumer needs uh_huh yeah yeah that is very curious yeah that's that's right okay so what are what are your views on capital punishment yes so are they currently practicing capital punishment in your state yes that's similar to georgia that's probably true considering yes yes uh i guess in a way that it it kind of defeats the purpose of having capital punishment if yes right that would be the intent of it well i think it would be more successful if it was applied in a more expedient manner if there weren't so many appeals yeah if if the person who's going to commit the crime knew that they were going to be punished severely possibly capital punishment uh i'm a research engineer i work uh with georgia tech um yes um uh_huh um that's probably true but i guess there's other factors that but pumping more money into the school system is a good thing but it's not going to oh i see uh_huh um so that's a difficult situation um uh_huh uh_huh well that's probably true um yeah i guess that's not an easy solution there's there's no easy solution for that uh_huh i'm sure it is yeah um yeah i don't i don't certainly capital punishment isn't going to solve a lot of problems but uh i guess i am for certain yeah in certain crimes uh premeditated murder crimes of that nature i think should definitely any mass murderer type individual um uh_huh well you always have [castration] yes i read about that uh_huh i have ambivalent feelings because i don't think it serves as a kind of deterrent we would like to think it is but on the other hand it is very very expensive to maintain you know texas has one of the biggest criminal justice systems in the country and it's eating us alive budget wise and uh yes we do practice capital punishment but the nature of the uh courts and the appeals and the stays and all that means that it's a very long haul before anybody's ever executed yeah and then i was reading in the paper just this morning it's interesting because i had forgotten i guess that i wrote this little topic down that it costs more to execute somebody than it does to keep them because of all the costs of the appeals and all that you know well i think capital punishment is supposed to be primarily a deterrent to other people you know who would see it yeah but i'm not sure how successful that is quicker maybe yeah uh_huh what what kind of work do you do um well see i'm a school principal elementary school and in a very poor section of town with predominantly anglo kids and i see kids already that are going to be criminals in spite of everything we can do and see i'm afraid i think if we would take the equivalent amount of money and invest it in young people that i mean course you couldn't do that because you got to do something with the ones that are already there but i think we would make a bigger investment in kids we'd have fewer decisions to make down the road you know oh yeah well i'm not talking about just in the school system see i'm talking about like in in uh i'm afraid i think that there are kids who just ought to be taken out of their homes and [reared] uh i know the institutions don't work that well but it's a bad day because i get all these kids through my office i have a school of five hundred and thirty seven kids five hundred of them are good solid kids and i have the same thirty seven in my office every day and a lot of their parents are totally irresponsible some of them in the penal system and you know you just see those kids going down the road now not all of them will commit offenses that have to do with capital punishment but some of them have already been in youth centers and that kind of thing and if we had something to do before they get to be full blown adult criminals and i'm not talking about necessarily in the school system i'm not sure that the school system should be the agent of all the social action i think that's one reason we have problems in schools uh and some of them are our problems but a lot of it's because everything society wants we are supposed to do but that's another subject but anyway i dealt with two or three kids today that are going to end up where somebody has making a decision what to do with them uh_huh i don't i don't know that there is an easy solution but if you could find a way to prevent some of it and i'm not sure what it would be it would be money better spent than do you know it costs more to keep an inmate on death row than it does to send a kid to harvard that's true [statistically] that's true uh_huh are you for it i'm for it in in some cases yeah what kind of crimes would you use it for uh_huh i i would consider it for sexual abuse of children on going you know not one instance but perpetual [abusers] of children well you know somebody elected that recently and all the civil rights people are up in arms about it you know but uh so uh you know my feeling is that uh it's really being used today it it you know it it really isn't doing any real good purpose for anything because it's not cost effective because of the amount of time the people end up waiting on appeal right because you you've got all all the prison expenses plus all the legal expenses uh and you know it certainly doesn't seem to be a deterrent uh for one thing because it's used so [infrequently] and for another thing because i honestly don't think the people that are committing the crimes that would be eligible you know really care right i mean it's kind of like the aids phenomenon you know i'm [invulnerable] i don't need to care about this you know i i i'm never going to get caught yeah one one way or another yeah but but the other side to that is if you put him in prison for life there's a chance that he might do things in prison or you know and somehow redeem himself well you know so that you know the the question is you know the other problem with capital punishment you run into is what are you going to do about people who are later to have been found innocent you know there are cases where you know twenty thirty years after the fact of getting evidence especially as new technology comes along that might prove their innocence then oops i'm sorry guess we killed the wrong guy right you you can apologize nicely but you know you know i think you know the the price you know it i've heard quotes you know it's better that a thousand people go free than one person be [unjustly] imprisoned i think is really the the philosophy of the way our legal system works yeah and you know the i i think that you know and the way it's being used now it's like you listen to bush is you know well where are we going to impose you know it's like for drug dealers is the new big thing like in tsongas is also saying you know capital make it a capital crime to be a major drug dealer and again i don't thing these people care they risk their lives every day yeah yeah and and you know uh especially now i live in in massachusetts you know we're going to get capital punishment here probably after the second coming or something so you know but you look at our our crime rates and things like that and you compare them to to like texas or someplace that does you know it it it's impossible to make a case that it's it's affecting it in any way i think it's mainly people like they get the vengeance of it because you know oh yeah it's lot of blacks also a lot of young people you know a a a sixty two year old guy is less likely to be put on death row from what i've seen and you know i i think when you listen to like the uh the the [victims'] families and things they're always talking about you know uh feeling justified or feeling you know like they've gotten something out of it i mean my thought has been once the guy has been imprisoned if he goes to jail forever or whatever if he gets killed it shouldn't make any difference to the uh the victim's family the only thing that should really i mean obviously if someone of mine who has close died i'd probably feel differently but you know you know what the important thing is that they be caught and not be a danger to society right i mean the right and the the other thing is that you know i was reading through a book on uh [geneo] human [geneo] research and there more and more things like [schizophrenia] and why does it just turn out to be [genetic] or [biochemical] in [origin] so if someday we can go to jeff dahlmer and say well the problem is you you've got an [endorphin] [imbalance] and you know if you take this regularly you'll be a sane and productive member of society you know you really get back to the question of you know is someone responsible for their actions society made me do it yeah right i think i've seen some statistics that say that uh it's more expensive to kill somebody than to keep them in prison for life right well that's committing them mostly is you know either crimes of passion or at the moment or they think they're not going to get caught or yeah yeah but you also have to think whether it's worthwhile on the individual basis for example someone like uh jeffrey dahlmer do you want by putting him in prison for life there is still a possibility that he will get out again whereas if you kill him there is not that possibility yeah i don't think he could ever redeem himself but in some cases yes yeah it's it's yeah once you've made a decision that way it's a little difficult to go back on it oh yeah yeah it's the benefit of the doubt to the last [iota] is uh based on the uh person who is accused right yeah and there there they seem that the profit uh drug dealers the profit [margin's] so high that yeah the the risk is almost not there yeah yeah yeah well it's also i used to live in georgia and you know the the big thing down there was all right we have capital punishment but if you look at who gets accused and who are the ones who actually get executed it's very [racially] related and [ethnically] related right right right and that and you know also by keeping them in prison you do have the possibility though we don't currently do this of making [restitution] you you will work your prison job and any money you earn will go to the victim's family uh_huh right uh_huh yeah well i i think on some of it you have to say someone's responsible for his actions i never like the uh the defense well i never liked the uh insanity defense do you ever think that there's a crime that's just so heinous and so bad that the person who commits this crime just doesn't deserve to live anymore uh_huh of the statements made by people against the the death penalty um i i like the statement made by cuomo cuomo i believe is um he's he's governor of new york but uh he's uh against the death penalty but um he said that he would he would want to to seriously hurt or if not kill someone if if they did something to his wife and that's but but even even in that in that uh uh situation he would he would hope that there would be people around him who would uh keep him from doing the doing the things right exactly uh_huh yeah see i don't think the decisions that are going to be made on on the death penalty until we decide what our prison system is intended to do are they [reformatories] where we're trying to take people who can't survive or or that that aren't [conforming] enough to society so that that we work well together or are they is it a penal institution is it is is it designed for punishment um the death penalty surely fits in well with uh in a penal situation where you're trying to punishment uh perhaps not in the manner that we do it but but it in in theory it fits in in system in a [reformatory] i mean if you if you put someone to death you obviously can't reform them so yeah i don't think it's done i don't think we run it as a deterrent i mean people say that but i mean if it was really a deterrent i mean i think like horse thieves in the old west you know they saw other horse thieves hanging by the necks every once in a while and if we really if it was really seriously going to be a deterrent i would think that it would be public i mean i don't think it would be this private thing because nobody ever nobody ever sees it if someone ever if you know like say some young kids or something like that that might be inclined more towards a life of crime had to sit and watch and and see a guy burn or or you know something or shot by a firing squad or something like that i would think you'd make a bigger impact on their life rather than you know telling them that there's there's [protestors] out here at the you know that's a good question uh there would be a point there was a point where i would have said no that no one would deserve to die for for a crime that he committed but uh since i've become a parent and since i've seen uh things like jeffrey dahlmer i really have to question that i really uh i i can't conceive of someone being that brutal to that many other people and uh try and figure out what would be a [suitable] punishment uh oh it's a uh it's a question of your your gut reactions to something like that versus an intelligent reason response uh and that was the thing that uh killed dukakis back uh four years ago when someone asked him a similar question and he he thought for a second and gave a [thoughtful] well [reasoned] [reply] when uh people wanted to see if he was going to go for an emotion uh a gut level reaction and i think that the people who are strongly in favor of the death penalty are really working from that gut level uh you know whether it be a biblical force uh you know the eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth a life for a knife life type logic or just uh uh some sort of anger at putting putting uh murderers up in federal [pens] for the rest of their life uh while we foot the bill i think people are are working at that from more of a uh a gut reaction than a a reason humane one that's true uh the other argument is that the death penalty is a deterrent and i really don't uh agree with that i don't think anyone who would commit a uh a crime that would get them the death penalty would stop at the moment and say well i was about to kill and [dismember] this person but oh if they catch me they're going to kill me so i better not do it i i just don't think that uh that it works that way uh_huh well i i don't know if that would really work that way or not uh there's a lot of violence okay looks like we're ready to go capital punishment uh the problem i have with capital punishment is that uh uh it's supposed to be a deterrent to crime but i don't think that it really actually does that i don't think it [deters] anybody because most of the time crimes are uh are committed with a without any thought to the consequences and they don't think that uh stop and think and say well maybe i shouldn't do this uh because uh i might get the gas chamber or something like that they worry about it afterwards and then they try and get out of it and uh how about you uh_huh i do too yep uh_huh yeah you still have to do it i i uh_huh so you're in you're in favor of capital punishment then right uh_huh uh_huh needs to be punished or uh eliminated from society right and then do it all over again uh_huh right have to agree with you and i'm kind of in favor of capital punishment also i just don't think that it acts much as a deterrent to these people because uh you still see them committing the same crimes but i tend to agree with you that uh we should have it i just i don't know that it's always effective but i guess we uh we're kind of stuck with it it's it's a difficult uh problem isn't it to determine how you're going to punish somebody for a particular crime uh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh huh do you think they should be punished at all or uh like go to prison uh because they're not really a danger to society it was almost really self defense isn't it in a case like that uh_huh i know they put uh put them in jail sometimes i guess uh uh_huh uh_huh um uh_huh you know now i wonder what you think about this and uh unfortunately we we don't get to do it but uh it used to be a long time ago i guess in biblical times when they had punishment if somebody did something for example to your family then you had the right to administer the punishment so if somebody killed somebody in your family then you had the right to uh if that person was caught and found guilty you had the right to uh execute that person and i know that uh if somebody had done something to my family i would feel that i had the right to to get revenge on them and uh but i i don't think that's done much anywhere that's kind of drastic punishment right might make you feel better but uh_huh right uh_huh right uh_huh right because they're a danger to everybody else huh that's interesting i have to uh agree with that there's a lot of folks probably that are in prison that uh that aren't really a danger to society huh and uh right right probably more of them then the other way around interesting i don't i don't not sure i i'm in washington d c or at least very close to it i'm not sure what kind of uh capital punishment we have here uh_huh well i think that in some cases it is warranted and i don't i think in some cases it doesn't matter if it's a deterrent or not i mean i mean i'm thinking of an extreme case like a serial murderer or well for some things i think for serial murder it is warranted because if a person who would do something like that in cold blood i mean you can't guarantee that they wouldn't escape from prison and do it again and i don't think that that rehabilitation is effective but then you know i think that that some murderers don't really warrant capital punishment you know just like for example uh you know you hear about cases where women have killed their husbands who abused them and i don't think that would really warrant capital punishment uh it is to a certain extent but i think i don't know because i think in and it just would depend upon the circumstances and and the extent of the abuse and and if another alternative was available well i think that would be kind of drastic punishment and but one thing i think that if there is a chance for rehabilitation then that chance should be investigated but like i said if if someone is is just [pathologically] going to murder people no matter what then i think they should be eliminated from society but and a lot of people that are a danger to society that aren't in prison well i know in north carolina we do have capital punishment and i'm in i'm from south carolina your turn but not for petty theft well it should be used as a deterrent do you think or should it be used uh to prevent further uh crime huh uh_huh well you know there's this old uh jewish is it saying about an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth well one of the things i was thinking about is uh you know from society's point of view if you put a value on each person what you want to do is to [maximize] the end game value so if you have someone that that destroys that value uh then what you want to take steps to uh minimize the loss of course you have to also put value on the criminal so if you terminate him that's a loss of value so you know if you weight everyone equally then you have to say well the likelihood of not [terminating] him if you don't terminate him the likelihood is expected value of loss of life is greater than one person in other words you'd have to you'd have to murder more than one other person uh in order to justify taking his life another way you could do it is weight this value by uh the value to society of the people uh which is pretty delicate thing to do but one way of doing it is uh by income so if this guy doesn't make a great deal of money which is often times the case then then he's obviously not worth very much and so uh the likelihood that you know maybe expected expected murders by him is is uh integrated over the income of the people uh that he murders is maybe you know a loss of who knows eight hundred thousand dollars uh but if he only uh integrated you know integrated income over the expected [remainder] of his life of is uh small less than eight hundred thousand dollars then you terminate him of course one of the things that happens if you use that [algorithm] is you find that it's more easy it's easier to uh to uh terminate older people than younger people since the [integration] of their income over the rest of their lives is going to be less which means well i suppose you could say well that has something to do with potential for rehabilitation uh_huh now that's all fine and well and and uh good philosophical but if you're involved yourself personally uh i know i have a friend whose uh son was murdered uh on the night before his [sixteenth] birthday and let me tell you uh i i knew them personally uh not [intimately] but quite well and uh you're talking about real trauma i mean trauma that extends beyond the counting of bodies the father you know of course a parent losing a teenage child is about as bad as it could possibly get i think in terms of psychological impact uh and oh yes they found him and he is on trial for capital murder uh well actually he has i i'm sorry he was convicted uh and of course now you know and you go through two or three hundred years of appeals process but okay uh i don't think they should [abolish] it i think i think if they put it into force more often they wouldn't have as many problems as they've got right no no for major things like premeditated murder mass murders uh you know that type of thing i don't think it should just be used [loosely] well yes yes to prevent these people from ever getting out on the street by you know some technicality and they go down the line ten years and then on some little technicality they get out and on the streets again doing the same they did before and you know that's about the only thing like for petty for theft and and stuff like that or [manslaughter] you know i don't think they should do that oh well i guess if i if it was someone in my family i'd probably feel that way you know i've never had anybody in my immediate family uh murdered and so i really wouldn't know but but i feel like if i did i probably would feel that way uh_huh right well that's true besides him okay his life isn't worth very much then right potential i mean that's that's the key right there potential now are they are they [rehabilitative] or or not uh_huh i can imagine yes was he murdered did they find who killed him so it hasn't been a long time ago just recently yeah yeah that appeals process i mean it's what you know really you know just drags out and out and out my brother in law here in texas his by marriage my sister's uh husband his sister was murdered down here by a guy in in well actually in houston and uh he well actually uh i i don't think i'm in the uh majority of in in texas i don't think i agree with no uh i wouldn't say that i think i would have said that a few years ago when i was younger i thought it was uh a sign of a civilized society if you didn't have uh capital punishment but um uh maybe slowly changing my opinion i'm not thoroughly opposed to it i still think it's sort of true that a more civilized society wouldn't have to use capital punishment but i'm beginning to believe this is less civilized society than i thought uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah i certainly don't uh advocate turning people like that loose i'm not sure executing them uh does anymore than keeping them in jail but uh yeah that that's a factor right uh_huh yeah yeah yeah well i the cost is something but it's but i think it's relatively [unimportant] compared to what's the most effective way of dealing with crime and i guess i would like i don't know the european countries certainly uh none of them have capital punishment and they they don't have a crime problem either no you can't they don't execute anybody in britain or france and i don't believe they do in germany or italy either and they don't have the crime problems we do i don't really think that there is too much of a relationship between the two i guess what worries me about capital punishment is uh when i see people enthusiastic about it and uh uh sort of [bloodthirsty] i think it brings out the worst in the in the people who do the punishing and the that that bothers me but it but uh huh yeah huh well actually i the other thing that bothers me is when it becomes a political issue because i don't really think it uh i don't really think it's a very important aspect of fighting crime or law and order or anything else i think it just becomes a uh symbolic i'm tougher than you are type of emotional issue for politicians so i would like for it to be settled once for all and uh get in the background while the more important issues get discussed uh uh like i said some years ago i think i would have said there's no place for capital punishment in the civilized western country now i'm i'm not so sure of that i'm i i wouldn't vote against somebody just because it was for capital punishment and nor the other way around uh i guess i'm i'm my view of uh my i'm beginning to believe that some people are simply not [rehabilitatable] and uh that uh uh costs and other factors justify uh uh executing people maybe it's more a symbolic [gesture] that uh uh than anything else and uh i've also never been a victim although i have some i have two friends whose wives were murdered and uh i can imagine that uh uh for some people it would be the only form of justice in that case oh really you don't believe in it yeah you sound a lot like a friend of mine a a girl i hang out with she has very very black and white opinions you know there's no gray in her opinions you know she she probably would agree more with you but but i don't know i think i would rather a person go ahead and be put down than give them the opportunity to get out and do it again i've never had a a punishment or a a crime like a murder touch my immediate family but i still feel very strongly that capital punishment is a good way to to punish especially criminals who seem to have absolutely no remorse for what they've done and we see that more and more like in our state right now there's a fourteen year old boy who raped and then killed a seven year old girl you know that's fourteen years old what's he going to be doing when he turns into an adult yeah no it doesn't but it costs less and yeah to me it is i mean i work and i pay my taxes and i lived out in texas for a little while and they're and that's a pretty heavy state compared to georgia i mean you guys are are a lot more uh for to each his own even than we are in georgia but even in georgia that's the attitude for the most part if i work and pay my dues you work and pay your dues and we'd get along just fine but when i've got to work to pay my dues and your dues then i don't like you very much anymore oh really yeah you might be right i mean i i'd hate to be the person to pull the switch you know i would never in a million years want that job but i do believe it's necessary and i on the one hand i i guess i admire the person who has the guts to do it because i couldn't i couldn't stand behind a gun and shoot somebody for nothing and i couldn't pull the switch but uh yeah right uh_huh what what's making you become more convinced that it might be a good way of punishing yeah oh gosh oh yes if it ever touched my capital punishment uh i guess out in california is has had a lot of uh a lot of you know [discourse] in the paper uh apparently you know there's they haven't uh executed anybody since nineteen sixty seven i believe yeah they well i we were we uh we just started we lived in redwood city when we were out there and uh and we found that uh you know it was a very liberal kind of community but the uh i i really feel that that the law enforcement community uh you know puts these people behind bars and then they they uh uh you know lawyers these lawyer groups get together and they uh they i think extend beyond the normal uh appeal process uh you know and just drag these this guy uh his his uh ultimate uh [demise] out for ten or fifteen years uh and i i think that uh that there's something that has to be changed in the system to to do that i think capital punishment uh uh was or probably stringent enough but i think the appeal process is really getting in the way do do you feel as though there should be uh more uh was or or more uh you might say [transgressions] that would be [enforceable] by uh by uh uh capital punishment uh_huh well the term technicality the law enforcement community uh uh you know has to has to separate the difference between somebody who is being set up in which uh [grievous] acts are done to uh to you know to get somebody into a a situation where they're going to be guilty of of a crime or whether uh and whether the rights of that individual are been have been you know [impuned] uh but or whether there's just you know a policeman has just made a uh a you know a non a [noncritical] error though be it not the right way to do it but but you know the the merits of the case in terms of you know the guy was a law [breaker] as being supportive now i i'm at this [juncture] i you know i'm i'm not sure you know what [constitutes] a a technicality you know that that's what all these these hearings are about and that's what all these you know court cases are about i mean our uh our our glorious uh you know mayor here in washington is six days away from getting out of out of the can and uh you know he he tried to appeal his conviction uh and you know it didn't work but be that as it may everybody who got enough money will pump the appeal process dry uh in in the old days you know and say round about times of battle of [hastings] you know and the [villages] if you were a [transgressor] they they either you know drove you out in the woods or you became a ward of somebody and he you were his slave and if he didn't like what you did he killed you and that has that's pretty effective uh you know it's not good for civil rights i guess but it's pretty effective in that you know you've got to get along in the community and if you don't you'll [perish] either by the hand of your your your master or by being pushed out in the woods so i i i mean as as man has gotten more complicated so all of the uh [imaginations] to uh you know protect him from from being uh dumped on by uh civilian authority in in in criminal actions especially you know murder cases and that sort of thing uh_huh uh yeah that's that's as far back as i can remember well that's before my time actually uh_huh uh_huh well i think that currently the way the law stands isn't so much that the laws are [enforceable] or not it's more they're not enforcing the death penalty itself it's at that point where they're saying like here you're you're going on death row but you'll stay there for twenty years and nothing is being done about it uh the laws exist and are frequently [upheld] in in uh in appeals court just because of technicalities and because of maybe small little holes that their defending attorney can find and it's it's really getting out of hand in many states well it seems like well it it seems as if in the past typically there have been a lot of cases of people being wrongly tried or wrongly punished and the whole idea behind the current criminal process system is to protect those who actually didn't the crimes [albeit] it seems that we are failing in that in that ultimate goal because there are times when people who are guilty are getting off um for instance um there's a case a few years back where uh someone uh someone who's being convicted for was under a was going to trial for murder was let off because of a technicality in that the the [arresting] officer uh did not read the defendant their rights and where his old evidence was there the witnesses were there the everything was [conclusively] [pointing] to this individual yet what do you think about capital punishment yeah which crimes do you feel that yeah because of so many times it's so brutal and just [recurrent] selling i think should also yeah uh_huh yeah that's go ahead texas is too texas i saw on t v the other night is the has had forty six in like the past several years so they're pretty hip on it too i guess they do it by lethal injection at [huntsville] yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that's what's happening here there is like uh that's in fact a big gubernatorial issue is the the turnover rates of uh uh repeat offenders being let out and doing it again uh_huh yeah i wish if they were going to do it they would be a little more consistent in dealing with who gets lethal injection and who doesn't be a little more you know not being able to put it off for fifteen years oh really goodness uh_huh yeah yeah i yeah i tend to think the repeal system for the death penalty is a little little too lenient uh kind of takes away from the significance of the death penalty i'm a graduate student at the university of texas in dallas uh [audiology] yeah what do you do oh really oh really neat yeah i just this was in conjunction with the guy that was put in the gas chamber in california so i think it the forty sixth in the last twenty five years i think is what they gave a run down that texas texas tends to be a little more [robust] and disciplined area then yeah uh they they don't get repealed as easily as they do like the guy in california got you know twice before he went to the gas chamber and then they said okay no you don't have to go and then they took him back i mean it just seems yeah it just seemed a little [inconsistent] and then you have like two you have these people who are serial killers that didn't even get the death sentence back when ever you know no i don't i don't think uh the military doesn't execute anymore so or death before the firing squad or whatever so i think about the only one is uh rape well i'm kind of in favor of it for certain crimes well i think first degree murder uh probably [warrants] it right exactly [recurrent] crimes like serial rapists or serial murderers or whatever i come from a state that has well i originally come from the state that has uh the death penalty i come from florida and uh they're pretty liberal on it they tend to like fry people left and right which go ahead yeah yeah okay i think florida still uses electric chair uh i don't i don't know in some ways i don't like it because it's like they're playing god and that's not i don't think that's right but on the other hand there's a lot of advantages to it i think crime rates [deterred] a little bit by using it and of course you have some savings in terms of taxpayer money keeping people in jail or not um with florida that's a big problem because there's so many people in jail that they have to let them out every year they uh_huh sure and it's like you know that's a big problem but there's not a whole lot you can do about it because there's only so many jails you can build and it's really you know it's it gets to be a a big problem uh go ahead right uh_huh yeah because a lot of these guys you know they get in and they they get off for good behavior and i don't know up in minnesota where i am now they don't have the death penalty and you can almost sense that people are just laughing at the system you know because they figure well you know sure i i get thirty or forty years for maybe rape or something uh but then for if i if i [elicit] good behavior i'm out in maybe five or ten oh sure you know i mean just because like we said before they don't have enough room in the jails uh you know there's a lot of incentive for them to be let out early but if you've got the death penalty hanging over your head uh i don't know i think that may solve a lot of that maybe not solve it but i don't know maybe yeah uh_huh what do you do [georgeanne] oh okay great what program you in okay fantastic uh i'm a doctoral student at the university of central florida yeah i'm doing an internship up at honeywell uh yeah but uh i don't know it's it's an interesting issue there's like you say in texas there's been quite a few and and in florida in the last few years i think there's been a lot i can't i you know i can't give you figures but uh uh_huh oh is that right okay yeah i i kind of yeah i've heard things about that i've heard that they don't mess around very much uh_huh jeez that's a lot of [repeals] uh_huh yeah i don't know i i'm trying to think about other crimes that would warrant it uh i guess what is it what's the policy now with treason do they uh do they [axe] you for treason or is it a life sentence yeah yeah uh in texas they do have the uh capital punishment and uh i i i i'm probably one that has to agree with it too uh there some things that go on that i just feel that i i just feel that that that is a need i don't know a lot of people don't feel that way either but i just feel that uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah that is a consequence yeah right right uh_huh well maybe that's something that needs to be worked on but i i just feel that that capital punishment needs to stay within the system not all states have them but i you know was that was that the i'm not sure if that was in was that the man that that claimed he was abused or and that he had he oh yeah yeah yeah and how long had he been appealing how long was that gosh boy yeah boy well i mean and it seems like it it rarely does happen you know it's not it's not used that often you know at least here in texas but i think it's something that needs to stay i really do yeah right right yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah my sister and i were wondering about this recently because a an old friend of ours in california this happened about a week ago uh her husband just killed her and we're wondering if that has an effect if that if something does capital punishment you know does it happen with that within that uh i don't know right i think you're right uh_huh yeah yeah and uh i have an uncle that is an attorney that [defends] people well i don't know how much publicity it's gotten outside of the state but california we just put somebody to death uh for i think it was a double murder uh to be honest i didn't pay that much attention uh to the details of it uh but it had a lot of controversy out here uh basically because in california people like to protest about everything uh but i agree i believe that that there are a number of crimes that capital punishment is the best way to go uh the big disagreement i have is that in california the appeals process uh is so extensive and takes so long that you end up spending a huge amount of money in like ten to fifteen years before you can actually you know put somebody to death for for a crime and i mean that's that's ridiculous i mean if you can you know the trial is supposed to prove you know within a reasonable doubt that the person is guilty and then they have appeals well that's fine but it shouldn't take more than a few years i mean i should think two or three years maximum you should be able to know and you should be able to either put the guy to death or he's innocent i mean it's if he's guilty for for you know multiple murders or whatever the case may be you know yeah yeah he was like uh the the defense the defense they're were giving given was that uh like his mother had had been an alcoholic when when she was pregnant with him and so he he wasn't you know mentally competent or anything else which is ridiculous and and the court found him competent uh and he knew what he was doing and everything else i mean you know it was it was the best defense they could come up with i forget i think it was something like twelve years or something it was it was something really outrageous yeah i think in general uh punishment in the united states is a lot weaker than it should be i mean it needs to be you know it's kind of like the the justice system in the united states is kind of like the dog [poops] on the carpet and you wait three months and then you put his nose in it and spank him for it you know i mean there there's no connection between the two i mean you take these you know most of the people who are committing violent crimes most of them not all by any means but you know a large percentage are the kind of people who are living very much day to day in the first place uh they don't really see past next week much less next year and to say you know well if i kill somebody then a decade from now i might face the punishment that's not real it doesn't have any real impact on them uh_huh uh you mean would he be put to death for that uh largely depends on the circumstances and generally you know from what i understand it's it's only the most brutal types of things usually where it's multiple you know if if they can say things like you know well he was just you know temporarily insane because of some domestic [squabble] then you know they'll they'll give him you know twenty years with with parole in in twelve or something like that yeah i you know i'm not sure if we have the death penalty here to be perfectly honest with you hold on a second do we have the death penalty in rhode island no okay no we don't but you know um i i have some feelings about it in the sense that i feel if a person is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and it's a really heinous crime i feel like the bible says an eye for an eye yeah you know something really a serial killer or you know someone who really has no remorse you know that that just does these things uh i don't know without feeling guilty about it at all you know and the and their we in fact we have an example going on right now with this uh school teacher involved some teenagers into uh committing murder getting rid of her husband i don't know if you're familiar with it [pamela] smart in new hampshire see now in a situation like that the boys are only sixteen years old and they were sexually involved with her and i think like at that particular point she was twenty three you know so she wasn't really that much older than them and being a boy at that age i think that they're very uh you know let's face it that's at a point in your life when you're just starting to realize all the things of life i think she probably had a lot of influence on them and they probably would have never done something like that if it wasn't for the crime of passion type of thing uh_huh yeah now see i agree with that i i don't think a person should be [electrocuted] or hung or you know in other words i believe that they should be punished and done away with on one hand like i say if they're if they're guilty beyond a reasonable doubt but if there's the the other the other hand where you say you know if there's just that slim chance that they didn't do it and then you know spend the time say life imprisonment then at least they have a chance to over the years be proven not guilty you know yeah oh that's the [cheerleader] thing oh yes that was on t v here it made national um yeah really but you know i i i saw i can't figure out what people are doing any more i mean it's getting so bad and i don't think unless that the that the laws get to the point where people are afraid to do something because they know they'll be punished you know what i'm saying yeah you know and i i don't know if it would be but i mean we don't know that it wouldn't either yeah and the other point someone made at one one time was that if someone is guilty of a terrible crime or they're a serial killer or mass murderer that if they're in prison that gives you the chance to um get into the person's mind to find out uh what led them to the point that they were at when they committed the crime to uh try to understand how their mind worked to prevent you know another person from getting into the same situation but i don't know you know maybe you could do that for a certain period of time but i mean how long does that kind of a thing take you know to to uh say to question the person or to get into their head you know even if it took five years i think that if at that time you you feel that they were guilty or that they were of sound mind where they knew what crimes they were committing i mean people know what they're doing you know that that i really do i believe that uh capital punishment should be there the prisons are overcrowded it costs the taxpayers a lot of money yeah i'll tell you in the state of rhode island it was so bad that the intake center that they have to house the the criminals before they go to the uh [penitentiaries] and stuff uh were overcrowded and the judge fined the state thousands of dollars a day to build a bigger intake center so i mean it it's like where does this all stop exactly same thing here and that's that's what they did yeah in fact the news tonight they had uh someone come on a seventy three year old man they they had gotten into a housing for the elderly and and the person who perpetrated the crime went in with someone who had a relative there and uh apparently this this person was on drugs and the old man was an invalid and he was in an elevator and he died for twelve dollars yeah yeah and i also think that the uh fact that a lot of mothers are working today and that children are not [bonded] to the parents and other people take the responsibility for raising these kids or the children are left out you know on their own and they don't really feel the family um closeness that we had when oh when i was growing up and my my mother didn't work you know and when she did a part time job she was there you know it wasn't like she getting mothers back in the home you know kind of oh i know i know how do you feel about it do you do you think there should be capital punishment yeah i i do myself i really think that it's it's all well and good to uh be a do [gooder] or to to um you know try to spare everyone's life but when someone has no regard for another person excuse me their property or their personal uh being or their families i mean you know when whole families are killed and yet you have someone [who'll] commit a crime of robbery and spend twenty five years in jail i mean to me it's like we have things messed up somehow you know what i mean and and like this banking crisis thing where people have stolen millions of dollars and they're out walking around i think all our laws are really screwed up i do i don't know what to do about it i wish i did but uh yeah yeah exactly morals yeah did you ever see the program uh why does johnny kill about these young children who were not even like sixteen years old they were eleven and twelve and fourteen and fifteen year olds and they they actually committed murders and the question was whether to try them as adults or as children or whether or not to uh institute you know capital punishment where it was necessary and things like that that has to yeah i mean what would you do in a situation like that you say well he's only ten years old but the crime he committed is that of an adult he made that decision you know you're talking to probably one of the late sixties and early seventies original [hippies] now living in [suburbia] raising kids um i don't know i have a i have a real gut response that says nobody's got a you know a right to take anybody else's life on the other hand i have seen an awful lot of i have lived in major cities and i have kind of come to the conclusion that there are certain people that should just be shot yes yeah something like twenty two or twenty three i remember reading that and being horrified well had she had any previous criminal history now that's the of thing i'd have to kind of look at in texas if you're going to sentence somebody to uh to death what is is there a specific criteria that they have to meet um if you were on a jury would you be able to to give somebody a death sentence uh_huh how about if it was a a seventeen and a half year old with a a list and all of what do they call it uh criminal as long as your arm over the history of violent crime yeah yeah i come from a catholic church background too and always thought you know that being raised in the midwest you really didn't see any crimes really any more heinous than uh [shoplifting] and it was very easy to maintain this stand that you know that that life is something that you have no right to take i don't know there was a oh what was his gary gilmore did you ever read the book that norman [mailer] wrote the [executioner's] song gary gilmore was the one who was arrested and uh found guilty of i think two or three murders in utah outside of provo and he was the one that was [petitioning] to have have you know himself executed when you read his book with all the interviews this guy did with gary gilmore you know it sounds like the guy had about every turn given to him every rehab opportunity given to him and even interviews with his mother she said that you know as a small child he basically was [amoral] and when i finished that book i kind of thought you know what do you do with a person like this see i would i always come look at it do they have could they be put even in life imprisonment could they be put to useful labor could they do road work and those kind of things and then you get somebody like charles manson who just the guy allowed and then what do you do about the the thing that you know the the was it one tenth of one percent chance that they might have been convicted [erroneously] have you ever sat on a jury neither have i and i'm one of these people who votes regularly and i'm always registered wherever i've lived and i have never been called part of me says that i'd kind of like to do it just to see what it's like to be in that position where you are playing you know life and death with somebody else could i bring myself to do it yeah have you ever lived in a in a well but dallas is are you calling from dallas okay have you ever been a victim of a crime when we lived in boston i had eleven cars stolen yeah some of them i had for two days and you'd go to court and you'd see these kids and then and what they did they usually hired kids to do this because you would get a you know a lighter sentence or no sentence or probation or you know something trivial and it'd be the same damn kids over and over and over again and the first couple of times you know i felt really sorry for them but after a while it was like you know shoot the little [shits] right then and there then i felt really you know guilty about feeling that way yeah yeah i you know i really don't know what i would do in that situation if i had to make that judgment i think i would i think i'd be very easily swayed by fellow jurors but if they ever catch this guy in in richardson and coppell who's been uh you know [abducting] the the young girls i don't think i'd even hesitate and then you get what do you do with you know people that are you know chronic child [molesters] where even a psychiatrist says you're probably not going to change them they're always going to be you know at risk in society and and i think you know having kids has probably really changed you know my thinking on this i don't know i really don't know yeah but the code of ethics that's learned in prison is so bent and twisted that you wonder when they get out of there even if they you know claim that they're [rehabbed] they don't even have social skills oh i don't know i really don't know i i think that if somebody asked me i would [hesitantly] say yes that i could hand down a death sentence uh then a big you know my big problem would be what if you were in a in a state that absolutely did not allow it and you were on a jury with some heinous you know criminal who had you know just wiped out an entire family uh the bottom line after four years of working with the state prison system i've come to the conclusion if you're going to give the man the death sentence go ahead and fulfill the sentence [understandably] the supreme court says any time you hand down a death sentence to somebody they get a one appeal once that appeal fails within thirty days execute sentence if you're going to give the man the death sentence don't keep the guy on death row for eight nine ten years and make him worry about it plus costing the taxpayers twenty five thousand dollars a year just to keep the guy locked up no i do not think one appeal everybody's entitled to one appeal absolutely and i wish they would exercise it more thoroughly let the punishment fit the crime in this state we've got a very weird situation going on we're under federal supervision and i agree to a point i agree with how the system works in some respects other ways i don't for first time offenders everybody's entitled to screw up once we'll give them the early release credits we'll give them the good time credits we'll give them the early parole second trip down whether it's for the same crime or totally separate one you serve your sentence day for day third trip down this is where my views on it goes way far beyond what the law states third trip down if it's for the same offense or for a totally different one this individual has proven that he does not want to conform to the rules of society so you kill him period end of story uh texas has got it [rigged] to where i can't shoot the guy can enter my property and i can't shoot him but once he's physically inside my house uh the law reads to where you can defend yourself if you feel your life is being threatened yeah at two o'clock in the morning if somebody's in my living room i feel real threatened so i'm going to come out with guns blazing well the legal system in this country has gone to such extreme measures they've swung so far away from there there is no such thing as justice in this country any more situation ethics i said yeah the guy robs the liquor store and yeah he shot the owner but he was under the influence of [narcotics] that should make zero difference you shot the guy you get the death penalty period that should be automatic death penalty no [ifs] [ands] or [buts] but that's what's got our system bogged down so bad now they've appealed everything to where if they've got one [typographical] error where in their in one line instead of spelling they've got one word misspelled i mean it's a very minor clerical error they couldn't tell they they'll appeal the hell out of that and that just throws another wrench and it takes two years to work an appeal uh_huh no the people that came up with the laws that made all these loopholes and technicalities take a look at your congressmen and senators you'll find that the vast majority of them are practicing lawyers that's it what they don't realize is that the time is coming and i see it coming over the horizon that the majority of american people are getting fed up with their b s and are are going to demand real justice instead of this in texas we're getting to a point where a guy gets a fifteen year sentence he's going to serve fifteen months and he's out one month for one year actually assigned overcrowding overcrowding we've gone too far to the left it's fixing to come back hard right yeah i've been with them for about four years now all things considered i'd rather be a cop on the street because once i walk inside the gate the inmates have more rights than i do say an inmate swings at me or he's raised his [fist] [threateningly] toward me i've got to let him hit me before i can hit him back to be justified and have it called what they call a justified use of force thank uh federal judge named william wayne justice no in inside the gate i do not carry any weapon at all nothing so they can't take it away from you i seriously doubt it it all boiled down to when the opening for this came up it was the best deal going it was paying so much more money than what i was making before i couldn't turn it down yeah so it's got to be the most controversial thing if you could pick on the list oh we don't have capital punishment i believe you do oh yeah the the only thing about capital punishment is the i i remember someone saying i think it was a chief justice in this state he goes if you make a mistake how do you get the person back that's the whole his whole basis was if you do have that error you know some people have been in jail for years and years and years and they're finally [exonerated] and then you know if if if there if you killed the person and it's like oops too bad i mean i think i've heard of cases where someone did they uh the they were uh it was capital punishment they were killed and they found out years later that the he really didn't kill the person i believe there was one case i don't i don't know where i read it or anything but i think that there's has to they have to have put innocent men or women to death before i mean yes i'm the type of person who sits you know it's the same thing about the war i'm this type person you know you need it but you're the one who you can't you can't make the decision and go yes or no i'd be a terrible president because i would you know i knew we had to go to war and i know it was the best thing but i didn't i would not want to be responsible for people getting hurt if you know if i don't know well like yes but like you say there there's people out there that do such terrible things i had one of the subjects was uh crime and it was talked about the the way society has worked out there's some people that are economically trapped and they really their parents don't bring them up properly they have absolutely no morals because no one taught them i mean morals isn't something that's just in your heart you're born with it you're it's something that's taught it's something on the streets that you see so if it's a dog eat dog world it it's just really too bad that we have to have something like capital punishment but i don't know how much of a deterrent it really is you don't think it's a deterrent so even though even though you don't think it's a deterrent which i have a tendency to agree i mean it's a deterrent it's it's the ones like carefully thinking it out and stuff they think about it but a lot of the street crime that goes on and stuff they don't really care and they don't really care what happens to them i can see where it's not a deterrent yes does it matter to you do you have a lot of violence where you live where you work so is dallas a bad city i talked to someone from san antonio and the [barrio] she said it was very bad dallas yeah oh jeez and that's relatively calm city yeah oh it's very calm i mean you can our uh bad district i wouldn't advise going walking in there alone at night but you could and if anyone was bothering you you could make such a fuss where people would come to your aid even though you're in the worst part of the city uh the only difference is that every street light is lit instead of every other street light so we we're a really we're uh pampered up here uh and when they do have a crime a murder let's we had quite a few years ago a young two young men they were sixteen years old uh raped and and beat these two twelve year old girls really died and it just shocked the whole state i mean how can anything happen like this and the guys that did it were so ignorant they didn't even they didn't they didn't have any remorse for what they were doing but they were just so ignorant that one of them says well i didn't realize that because i was beating her in the head that she was really going to die on me you know it's like although why did you do it she was screaming all's i wanted to do was shut her up he he acted like he didn't even think that this was going to kill her the kids were really quite ignorant about it and it it was a [tragedy] on both sides but it just shocked the uh the state that something like this could happen i mean usually if something if someone robs in the night or something and uh a home owner [confronts] him i mean it's not a [blaze] of guns and stuff you know the guy might hit the guy over the head and people start running i mean if this happened in the city the i'm sure the youth would be armed and just take the family out i mean we're really fortunate to live here but doing these conversations it makes me feel really bad that there are kids that can't can't get out of the situation they're in and they're they'll eventually end up even if they want to be good kids they'll eventually end up uh more or less victims of crimes even though they're doing the crimes they're more or less a victim yes it's it's really sad yes it's bad sometimes the kids have no choice because the parents are are worse i mean it they'll do drugs in front of their kids they bring the boyfriends and girlfriends home in front of kids they they treat them like little slaves they holler at they hit them and they go they go to the gangs more or less for uh family oh this guys nice to me he doesn't hit me oh jeez that's stupid we sit up here on our fence posts judging but we're not there but it's just it is totally unheard of that you you you even think it would happen yeah i know oh yeah well then they wouldn't do this for the drug [kingpin] that they were going to uh institute the death penalty or or was it life in prison or whatever for the drug [kingpins] i don't it's it's so full of [bullshit] the the drug war is just you can't trace it because a lot of the authorities are probably tied up into it i mean that's true do they have a law on the books up there right so what's your uh opinion on capital punishment yes uh there's you know there are some things just that just are inexcusable brutal crimes and serial crimes things like that um you know to me the punishment doesn't even fit the crime but you can't get any worse right i think in a way it's unfortunate they've come up with with nice ways to um execute people i guess to me if if i was a uh potential serial killer or something it wouldn't stop me to be uh to die of lethal injection i mean it's as painless as you can go i mean i think if i was in a bad accident and they gave me the option i might say yeah you know give me an injection but uh i don't know about that um but uh you know the electric chair on the other hand is probably a pretty painful way to go i don't know i don't know personally i'll never be in that position so but i don't i think it should be something that's that is a deterrent that's something that that that's scary and something that's going to make you make you be afraid to uh afraid of the consequences depends on the nature of the abuse and i really don't uh you know that that's it's something that's got to be evaluated on an individual case you know because there's there's really no excuse for abuse but then there are other options there are ways to get out yeah i mean there you would hope but i guess it's really a it's easy to say but uh you'd hope that someone in that situation would you know get out there are enough support groups enough you know over the over the last decade or so anyway there's been you know you don't have to kill your uh kill your husband because he's beating you up all the time you can can leave and have support it's not like you'd be stuck on the streets this is almost as much of a crime and i guess i don't know it's to me it's almost as much of a crime to just let it go and uh and i think i guess it gets back to if if if a woman kills her husband because he's been [brutalizing] her or her children there's maybe more of a reason and it's not an irrational you know just a brutal crime for the sake of just i don't know without a conscience or something like like some of these that's kind of what i think what capital punishment should be for is you know somebody that's just you know missing something upstairs or just goes out and you know rapes and [brutalizes] a woman and turns around and does it again and it's like there's just no excuse you there's no reason i should pay for this person to spend the rest of his life in in prison no but i don't think uh i don't think it's right for somebody to uh for me to to uh pay for something i mean the the way it is right now the prisons are overcrowded and we're giving people that aren't going to change we're just we're just housing them until they die and if they've you know caused as much pain and suffering as they have for for no reason and they're going to do it again if they get the chance it just doesn't seem uh right uh it's just like uh back in california the charles manson thing and of course he'll never i don't think he'll ever get out on parole just because it was so well publicized but uh you know he comes up every so often right maybe they ought to have an island out in the middle of the ocean we can drop them all off australia might not care for that these days on an island so far away there's no chance they can ever get off yeah so i'm in the richardson area okay good doug did you did you hear our topic right what do you what do you what do you feel about capital punishment sure sure all the people we're feeding and taking care of sure you know i feel sort of the same way i i think somewhere in the middle east in one of those countries if they catch you dealing in drugs they cut off your right hand because that's the hand you use i guess to wipe your butt after you do your job right then after they catch you doing dealing if they catch that same person dealing in drugs again then they whack they take off his arm so you know i bet they have a lot less problems with drug with drugs over there than we do here no just uh public's too sympathetic but you know i don't know how old you are i'm i'm i'm fifty but i go back to where they were used to [hijack] a lot of planes and things like that you know i used to i had a good friend who was very [vindictive] in his attitude when he said you know best way to stop this is if they catch a [hijacker] the very next day they stand him up in front of a wall and they shoot him and just watch how many after that happens two or three times as far as execution wise how many planes do you think will be [hijacked] and he's exactly right you know he a [hijacker] gets put in jail and and lord knows what happens he doesn't get any kind of a death penalty as far as punishment or capital punishment and we feed him and clothe him and give him a probably probably put a t v probably put a t v in his cell and everything else just to take care of him i guess oh you bet i believe in capital punishment and i oh i know i think our state state i believe state of texas has capital punishment and you know uh and i think the i think the punishment should fit the crime or vice versa because you know a rapist goes out and for that guy to walk free if i mean he deserves to be executed as far as i'm concerned if they get the hard facts on him and he is guilty i mean you know this these people there's there's got to be a line drawn somewhere and uh not that i'm that hardened cold and cruel but there just appears do you know i listened to the chief of police of richardson talk about four or five years ago do you know if a man goes out and commits robbery not capital punishment i mean not capital crime but robbery and he gets caught and gets sentenced to say eight years seven to ten or something like that you know he gets five days credit for every day he serves just like a bonus for god's sake that's the [damndest] thing i've ever heard of you get five days credit so if you if you uh get a sentence of five to seven as far as time served in one year you're eligible for parole that's ridiculous yeah that's true i'm surprised there's not more [vigilante] cases you know i really am and there's probably a a lot more than we know about because they're never they're never found out about yeah oh yeah well you love someone or what if you're my age and your your daughter was raped by someone and you know who did it oh gosh you know that would be a tough time holding any father in his right mind down uh just like you don't like to think about things like that uh what are the capital punishment laws in your state or do you have it yeah uh or is it set for a specific crimes you know if you're convicted of this then it's the death penalty or or is it kind of just to the [discretion] of the certain cases yes i i'm the same way i feel that capital punishment ought to be mandatory under certain crimes sounds like he'd grow old and die long before they get to kill him seventeen years on death row well uh since they reinstated the death penalty was it about seven or eight years ago i think the [shortest] anybody's waited has been two or three years i mean death penalty does not seem to be [swift] for anybody i to the best of my understanding they do not have death penalty here right now uh-oh you know it doesn't make any sense that they don't but they don't uh and right now to the best of my understanding there is nothing [afoot] to get it reinstated uh personally i think there should be death penalty for uh the death penalty should be available almost any major violent crime and mandatory for murder yeah it should be at least available as punishment for rape i think if it was a serious possible being executed for doing any of the major crimes that it would be a little less likely for people to commit them yes yeah yeah and it i don't know i if i think also they should be they uh somebody providing drugs to someone that kills the person that ought to be considered murder and potential death penalty uh it they used to have the death penalty in my home state of west virginia and there it was death by hanging uh but thirty four and it when they eliminated death penalty all kinds of things changed and the rate of crime doubled within a about a year or so and at that point when they were still hanging the uh state prison in [mountsville] uh had a very small guard force and they had very little problems with their their inmates uh after they eliminated the death penalty shut down the [gallows] uh place has gotten to the point where people who live in that area are all trying to get moved away it has become a maximum security prison they have had a whole lot more problems with [breakouts] with uh with violence within the the prison uh just the whole whole tenor of the thing has changed completely well i'm sure it doesn't much now because the death penalty is very seldom uh given and even then like you say it could be yes it is i know well i i believe in it i think uh yes i do think that and i do think that i believe in it wholeheartedly i really think that a lot of crime we have the criminal you know element is just unreal i work in a high school here and it just boggles my mind what's happened over the last few years i've been there fifteen sixteen years and just watching the mentality of our teenagers and and the tough stuff that's going on now you know uh uh well i think that they tougher laws for the teenagers yes i do believe that not but not the uh capital punishment for them i really don't feel that but i do feel tougher laws but someway i feel they have to [revise] our criminal system uh_huh i really do and i think that the um oh rehab is terrible you know they put them in there and there's too it's just because of numbers well i understand the rehab is so big they can't but anyway back to capital punishment i do believe in it for murders and and especially um oh you know when they actually thinking about it is that number one [manslaughter] something like that i i don't know i'm not real sure premeditated right murder definitely of course i do feel that and then the uh_huh uh_huh right right and um uh_huh that's true uh_huh right right uh_huh uh_huh yeah yes that's right that's for sure well and sometimes the uh on the rehab i just from being around the students around they know how to talk to the authorities they know exactly what to say to anybody in a uh they know the right answers like right what's well what's within their legal rights and how to manipulate them and how to manipulate them just just they they answer to authority and to people to adults and that type of thing that they have to answer to or even the criminals do in to the people that count the judges and that type of thing you know they they usually answer to them in a way that like i said [manipulative] they just manipulate they've manipulated so long so this is uh_huh right and for right very [sorrowful] and then when they get out then we run into the problem of getting right back into a routine again of the same thing so uh_huh uh_huh i really don't myself i really don't i know they permit it here but i don't know you know the difference in actually in fact we just had um a person put to death oh about three weeks ago it was in in texas and i forget for the reason now oh it was for the uh that [clergy] that he murdered he murdered a uh a uh it was a priest i believe he murdered okay well um about capital punishment first of all i know that in uh texas they have lethal death by lethal injection i guess that's the preferred method have they used anything else in texas in your memory i see oh yeah that's kind of the [euphemistic] term for it um so uh have you been following the the dahlmer case at all oh that's a little too grizzly too huh uh_huh i see um do you think that uh putting putting those people in jail permanently would be an equally good solution uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well certainly for for someone like charles manson who's very definitely going to stay in jail for the rest of his life i uh i can't imagine that he will ever be allowed out by the parole board that uh his life is not going to improve um do you think uh do you think that that uh the death penalty is effective as a means of [retribution] yeah as as as a deterrent value yeah uh_huh um well to be honest i think that the uh capital punishment is is is a uh red [herring] in the crime and punishment business um as you said we're letting our people out far too much really the problem is that i i think two fold number one in los angeles as you may know there's uh lots and lots of problem high crime areas and uh in black parts of town the cops the cops don't trust the the people who live there and the people don't live there uh people don't trust the cops who uh run the beat so in this heated air of [mistrust] people don't do what's necessary to keep crime down because uh you know if if uh it takes too much work or if you're liable to get beaten just because you're black or whatever things are not going to change and so capital punishment doesn't matter if the criminals who are committing the crimes don't get caught in the first place oh yeah as as uh yeah yeah exactly you know john john [singleton] who's who uh made the film um boys of the hood noted that uh one in twenty five black men will be killed at the hands of other black men and uh that's you know for them the death penalty is irrelevant okay [toby] this is brian weight and our topic i guess tonight is on capital punishment and how we feel about that um if you don't mind uh how do you feel about capital punishment okay uh_huh uh_huh and that way it can be a a deterrent uh_huh yeah uh_huh oh great the response yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah right yeah right right well i tend to agree with you uh i'm kind of uh torn between two items however i i definitely believe in due process that if a person is found guilty so that we're not [ramrodding] a a guilty verdict on them that's it uh up for review in uh the appeal process however i tend to agree with you that well i don't tend to agree with i definitely agree with you that there are people that are going to make sure that every t is crossed every i is [dotted] and to make sure that everything is just right otherwise you know someone gets off on a technicality now not only in the courts is that costing us money and millions and millions of dollars and wasting our taxpayers and uh [clogging] up the court but also when the uh the detectives the [homicide] detectives and so forth when they're [researching] when they are gathering the evidence they're they're bending over backwards uh in typically what i believe is an open and shut case where the guy is guilty there are seven [eyewitnesses] they saw it happen they have [testified] what happened um yeah exactly exactly and the guy is in sound mind and and so forth he's he's not an idiot he wasn't acting i i don't know you know in that case we're we're spending money in the in the judicial system we're spending money in the law enforcement area trying to verify all this kind of information and the and the individual's guilty i believe that if we have capital punishment that it should be executed [swiftly] that it should uh be taken care of not after seven levels of appeal but after a couple levels of appeal uh under certain circumstances um i have to plead ignorant i really don't know i i think that that uh i think texas is for it i don't think we have had any instances of it pardon oh okay i'm sorry i said texas is is for capital punishment uh_huh i don't think we've had a case uh recently but but it is uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah could be could be how do you feel about about about the capital punishment uh_huh well uh i probably tend to come down on the side of of being for it but i i think it's it should be uh there should be more safe guards to be sure that that you you know no mistakes have been made but then i i tend to i tend to come down on the side that if if the laws were enforced that were on the books you probably wouldn't need it well obviously that person wouldn't do it again and it but i think that like i said if the laws that are already on on the books that exist were enforced to the letter of the law then i think that in itself would cut down on all kinds of crime uh_huh right because i think i think too too many of them walk you know uh_huh um well that's true you have got to have the foundation there uh_huh um well i think murder is number one uh i i tend to believe in an eye for an eye you take a life then you need to lose yours you know not not that you can bring the other person back and obviously can't but i see no reason to for you to continue you know and and possibly get out and do it again you know there's too much of if you could put them away and then [assure] that they would stay there you know where they couldn't hurt anybody else that's correct right uh_huh right yes i i really think that uh there is room for that i feel like if anybody has committed murder and they and they convict them that they definitely and they're sentenced to life in prison then it's not fair to have us to pay for them to stay there for life and then get paroled and go back out i believe that if they're convicted and it's uh you know the only scary part i see in that is a crooked law system that would put people to death without enough evidence to close the case do you know what i mean right well i don't think it's too uh productive to put someone in prison for a life time or like they say sometimes people get eight life sentences on top of each other right and uh then they are repeat offenders uh i went to school with one of ted [bundy's] attacked girls she was uh older than me she was three years older but she went to the same high school as i did and we all knew when she was taken and he had been under suspicion and everything at that point and i think he killed her definitely uh_huh right we uh i believe that if a person has killed then there really isn't much point to them going on anyway because they pretty much ruined what they came to earth to do you know what they're here to do to try to make life uh the best that they can i definitely no i don't think so i don't think that that's something that we should try to get excited about watching like [boxing] or some sport i don't agree with that and i don't even think that they need to have more than just a couple people in there to make sure that it's done and it should be i think it should be done as [painlessly] and just done as nicely as it can be but i don't believe in keeping all these prisoners what do you think right oh i think that there should be capital punishment even for other things i think that somebody that's caught selling drugs if that shouldn't be capital punishment but if they are the high ones that are making these drugs and [importing] them i think that you could consider that because in essence they're taking lives because people are thinking you know what am i going to get five years if i'm caught so what's the big deal yeah no and uh so i i i think it could go even father than i think that i don't know it's hard you don't want to be so mean that you're you're doing away with people that have a chance to change but then i you look at the reports of people that are in prison and they act like they're reformed and then they get out and they repeat these offenses so yeah yeah i i'm a christian also and that's why you get in the situation where uh it says how i believe but if a person's committed murder that's an [unpardonable] sin and so why should we pardon something that we don't believe our our god is [pardoning] do you know what i mean this is for for for private and commercial sector uh my feelings are is that i i don't really think that they should test for drugs that if you're going to take a job you know and then they say well we're we're going to we're going to test you you know periodically or something like this because the job is of a security nature or for the you know the public safety or something that's might be one thing that i really believe that the employee should have the right of of before he takes a job of making that decision there's just uh there's too many false positives and your your your privacy is is just taken away from you just you don't really have a a recourse if they say well it's it's you have a positive you know and you say well no that's not really true and they say well okay well here you have to go and and here you go pee in the bottle and and we get something we can watch you pee in the bottle and we'll see if if if if if it's what happens this time and they they just that the testing part of it is just really bad yeah they are they are they it's one of the reasons is because of the cost and when you have such a magnitude of people and oh let's see crimes and circumstances actually i'm i'm against capital punishment uh probably not for the reasons that a lot of people are i'm against it because i really don't think that uh there are any crimes that warrant executing a person and the reason i think that is because i really don't have the belief that uh any particular person's life is worth so much that you ought to take this other guy's life for it i think you can either you know put him in jail for you know some very long period of time or if they're really you know mentally ill then i don't think they can really be held accountable for their actions anyway so uh i just i i'm just basically against it uh i also i also don't have enough faith in our our criminal justice system to to avoid getting the [bloopers] in there once in a while uh_huh well isn't locking somebody up i mean equivalent to that yeah do i yeah yeah actually see i'm i'm sort of there are there are some other things i'm i'm against also i i think that [jailing] people for a really long period of time is is [tantamount] to sort of cruel and unusual punishment which i'm also against so and so so i'm sort of in this [quandary] you know i mean either you have either you execute them and uh you're done with it or you know you throw them you throw them in jail for some incredibly long period of time and then i think well i wouldn't you know you you don't want to be cruel to these guys and they say by throwing them in a jail where they're you know constantly abused or what other other brother or uh other cell mates you know so so you kind of get into this hotel phenomenon you know where you got to set up you know some incredibly safe rubber room but you know then when you set up the rubber room you know it's so uh it's so [antiseptic] that it's almost drives the person crazy if he isn't crazy already and so isn't that cruel and unusual punishment uh on the other hand i think there a lot of individuals who probably haven't really signed up to the idea of you know our i mean most western people's concept of civilization you know and i mean western in the sense of just you know western philosophy i guess uh but you know i i kind of don't buy into the idea that uh that to have a society you necessarily have to to you know terminate somebody if they have stepped across that line because i think there are probably a lot of instances where uh you get into a situation where somebody hasn't really signed up to being in that society and i mean they kind of consider it almost they're protecting themselves or something and well for instance the society sort of forces [themself] on somebody you know you hear once in a while you hear about these incidences where uh some guy is you know off there in the wilderness or something you know and and and he just doesn't want to be part of society and society kind of invades his turf you know makes him want to or you know makes him makes him sort of [abide] by their rules when he really wasn't even known to society before and he winds up you know shooting somebody or you know killing a cop who's trying to get him to you know come in to pay his i there's a million there's a million things uh i'm against capital punishment uh i i guess there's a cliche that uh for every thousand of criminals let free if one innocent person is uh killed that that's a terrible thing for the state to be doing and i agree i i remember watching a a documentary film a couple of years ago i've forgotten the name of it now but it was about a killing in texas where somebody was sentenced i think it may have been just to life imprisonment but in any event it may have been capital punishment but uh this documentary [documentarian] or whatever you want to say uh he uh interviewed all the parties involved and basically got another person to admit that he had been the one who had committed the murder i don't know uh no i don't think so it was a i don't remember the circumstances actually i i just remember no no this is documentary uh it was a a you know released in theaters i saw it on p b s finally i guess uh but any event it was it was very interesting and it you know i guess they say that you look for views in the media that support your own and maybe maybe that's the bias well what's your perspective on capital punishment uh_huh and there's also the factor that there's obviously racism in terms of even though certain minorities might commit a higher percentage of crimes than there are represented in the overall population they are also convicted of capital crimes and sentenced to capital punishment at a higher percentage than are represented even among criminals so oh really uh_huh uh_huh right i think i don't know uh_huh i think some bar associations uh a lot of bar associations are against capital punishment and uh this is one area where perhaps they've done some of the work i'm not sure right uh_huh is that so i'm not sure i think i that sounds right offhand but i'm not positive i i have only recently moved to kentucky so i'm not even sure what kentucky's law is my guess is it's probably legal but probably similar to carolina that it's not used very frequently all right so i guess we're all right uh i don't know what the laws are up in uh new york what's the law up in new york for capital punishment uh_huh gets sort of repetitious it's legal down here uh i i know they've done a few most of the time they'll get real close and then they'll pardon them or it hardly ever gets to that point uh i don't think they've one in a long time but i know it's legal and i know one just about happened recently but it never went through so they try but you know very few actually go uh_huh yeah yeah there's always those loopholes ooh was that was that on purpose or was that a a [snafu] uh_huh yeah that was his dirt huh yeah uh well i can i can vouch for the fact that the uh the appeals will go through and go through and go through and yeah it drags on for about forever you know i guess i'm about your your opinion of it i have nothing against it [philosophically] in terms of if you're absolutely sure i mean uh uh i i would feel that you better make sure it's one of those cases that has virtually no possibility of you know pretty i mean supposedly you got through the courts you're not supposed to have any reasonable doubts anyway but i guess it would have to be one of those extremes in the first place but there's enough of them but i i've also heard that that these things cost so much in the end that uh that it really doesn't save you any money if it's a money thing and as a deterrent thing i don't really think uh personally i don't feel that capital punishment as a deterrent is a is a big deal i don't think that really works that much yeah yeah yeah right [whoo] yeah oh down here it's not all peaceful either though i don't if you've been following any of this stuff of course we had the big [snafu] right now with the the mets thing but there have been a lot of uh a lot of things going on down here all the gainesville murders of course i don't think they've they that then actually down here there's almost more publicity going on on police screw ups and and uh [beatings] and everything than than actual murders and uh the with the gainesville picking up people seemingly capital punishment is uh you know an accepted punishment it it's legal uh there are there have been a number of [executions] over the last few years uh they drag you know the the appeals drag on [interminably] it seems sometimes uh personally i kept i keep thinking that if i could be guaranteed that the people who [perpetrate] some of these vicious crimes were never allowed free then i would not be in favor of capital punishment but uh but uh when i know that they could be paroled and go right back to doing what they did before i i feel [decidedly] un uneasy about it what about new york uh okay uh_huh yeah uh_huh yes uh_huh yes i remember reading about that uh it uh it's more than that i think it's a capital murder uh where there there was an intent to do other harm as well you know where you you engaged in another felony like robbery at at the same time that you murdered someone yes by accident yes uh_huh that's my understanding of it uh but that uh murder is something that you do intentionally uh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh no you're not uh_huh uh_huh or that's right and and it's a terrible thing to do uh and the world our world seems to become more and more violent all the time by the way i'm a public school administrator so ooh at all they they do not respect authority uh they kill for fun uh they shoot guns for amusement after parties uh yes well it's not it's not legal to carry a handgun in texas but no it's not you can have it in your home or in your car if you're traveling from one city to another but uh rifles shotguns those sorts of guns are legal oh yes it's just that they're harder to hide but i do hi i'm paul pleased to meet you i'm in texas dallas oh okay sure anytime well i think it's a necessary uh a necessary tool that uh needs to be used uh to establish justice in some cases and to that that it if used properly uh i think it can be uh it it would be a useful deterrent yeah well i think that i think there are certain people in society that have no redeeming uh worth to them and that it's it it's a waste for society to continue to support those people those people should be you know disposed of that's right yeah that's right i mean they probably you know we the you know our justice system is not designed to be either efficient or effective or just it it's designed as a set of artificial rules that you know judges and lawyers play with each other well it it it uh uh yeah but uh you know the problem is it when when we administer it by you know i mean like like in texas we have the death penalty right and they killed a guy a while back and you know he'd been in jail for twelve or fifteen years or something like that waiting uh you know waiting his sentence there there's no point in it i mean well it's it's it's because you know people don't want to recognize how to make you know how to how to make a punishment effective i mean it punishing the person by killing them doesn't do anybody any good the only way the only way it does some good is if it [convinces] somebody else that they shouldn't do something like that and you know if the guy waits around ten or twenty years or whatever it is you know how is that a deterrent to anybody because the courts require it i mean they they they have said that well everybody has to have you know has to have the the the right to appeal well not only do they have the right to appeal they must appeal and you know they the lawyers go in there and they generate well they generate all kinds of possible reasons that they might be able to appeal uh you know they they're they're trying to generate technicalities you know things which aren't really related to whether the guy did it or not as to whether something in the process was right or wrong and you know it it doesn't work our whole justice system doesn't work like that yes that's right it is it's terrible i i don't feel sorry for the for the victim how do you feel about capital punishment yeah for what reasons yeah definitely yeah i i agree that you know capital punishment is bad but just more for the for economic reasons because i i don't think it acts as a deterrent and i don't think that um and and and like what i've read it costs a lot more to actually you know go through the process of condemning someone and killing them than it does to actually just feed for the end you know uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh is he he's he's for the defendant okay uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah it's uh i mean i've you know i've seen people that you know definitely got screwed by the system yeah um is do they have the death penalty in new york yeah they do um yeah i'm not sure how often we how often this actually it seems like about once a year they execute someone i don't really keep you know i only keep up after when the last one was uh_huh constitutional uh_huh uh_huh in tennessee one thing that i've always that i've one idea that i've heard that that that i've you know kind of had some sympathy for is though that you know when you have someone that's you know that that that's you know that you are going to be stuck is going to be stuck with life imprisonment you know or two hundred and fifty years you know none of it served you know at the same time that you know to give them the choice of having the death penalty it seems you know if you lock him away for the rest of his life you know uh_huh uh_huh yeah he he told us his yeah he said that he wanted to die at that point uh_huh you know it really bothers me that in historical cases where you know someone tries to kill themselves in prison you know on death row and you know where they've actually you know spent you know thousands of dollars [reviving] them you know just to kill them and it always so it seemed to be some sort of really even if the the crime is extremely extremely serious well it's not necessarily someone has the right but we do have the responsibility to punish criminals so if some person just blatantly [slaughtered] [painfully] killed ten people does he really have the right to continue living and be a burden on society yeah i agree with that part yeah well some criminals would see it a life in jail doesn't particularly sound too harsh to someone who has been living on the street you know for all his life and and uh jail jail time would seem like uh know a break or a a paid paid [sustenance] for the rest of his life yeah make it make it harsh as possible yeah uh well i live in california i'm not really up on it i i think we don't have capital punishment either uh yeah well yeah i'm one of those guys okay you too uh i'm not sure there was the big one uh earlier in the week in uh california that on and off and on and off uh i don't know i'm i'm uh mixed views on it it seems like that there just aren't are uh some crimes and and some lives that that that there's no other at least emotional reaction to it what about you yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah right right that that there's just right right right well now does uh uh utah have capital punishment huh huh yeah yeah that's it you know that that if it's going to happen it seems like there is some sort of [closure] when it when it's over and done with i know that was one of the aspects that covered the sequel to the case in california was was both this is the first one in twenty five years and they've got something like over three hundred on death row but the other thing was you know the family of the victims uh one of the fathers of the boys i think in california wanted to be there to to witness it and they didn't feel like the whole thing was over and that's been fourteen years too i think and uh yeah well that's then that's the thing here in here in texas we've had a couple of cases in the last one one was was a murder case where it was at this point it was fairly obvious that it was a a girl was killed at a high school and it was pretty obvious that the police just picked out the black janitor and and uh set him up for it and uh he really didn't have anything to do with it and they that certainly makes you think a again and yeah and uh yeah yeah well now in uh in utah what's the method is it firing squad or what huh well texas has capital punishment yeah and uh they go through a set of appeals that lasts seven years and uh there are so many cases here like sixty minutes is on right now here there are so many cases here where they proved that they've convicted the wrong person that i'm against it they should just give them life in prison right yeah exactly right uh_huh well like in your state charles manson or the guy who killed all those children yeah uh_huh right something's going on right yeah i think so too after after it's gone that far then they pretty well have uh enough proof that that person's they can't be rehabilitated either so yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh right i never heard about those yeah uh_huh yeah right uh_huh and that's that's a reason that ted bundy supposedly went to florida that was his primary goal was to to have the death penalty because he started out in washington and oregon and travelled all the way across the country they had um mark [harmon] played him they had a movie about it a few years ago uh_huh and then of course there was a lot of publicity about it um the days before they killed him so and he was really you know he was off the wall so right yeah and some of the ways i think that um the way that texas um [executes] the prisoners is probably the most humane way they they do it by injection yeah instead of you know the electric chair the gas chamber it's you know yeah well they you know they just go to sleep and then then eventually they die instead of being you know fried or or yeah fighting fighting for breath right uh_huh uh_huh okay hello yeah okay uh_huh yeah that's the same way it is here right right it's just nothing but cost the taxpayers lots of money huh yeah and then they end up doing it again no i think that's very very very wrong um i'm with you i think if they if they've killed somebody they should they should pay for it you know period no you know none of this going on and on and on and on uh_huh yeah you know i don't in other countries i don't think they do that if someone does something bad like that they just do it right now you know uh_huh yeah they pay for it right now yeah right yeah you know like you say you know anything they do they don't care they could go out and rob somebody if they get caught they know they're just going to be out in just a little while anyhow so it's the same thing you know but uh i just don't think that they should let it go on and on and on like they do yeah right uh_huh uh_huh yeah they make it wait for so long and then people forget actually what did happen you know yeah right right yeah uh_huh uh_huh okay i guess we're on uh capital punishment uh my my feeling by the way is that i think there is a need for capital punishment i don't think it ought to be applied to every crime obviously but there is a need how do you feel about it uh_huh uh yeah i think it is does get uh strung out too long that they uh they keep people there ten twelve years uh uh that seems to be the norm um i i don't know how effective a deterrent it is when when that happens uh but more and more people are being executed for crimes i think down in texas uh just today or yesterday didn't you have one an execution down there yeah well they haven't executed anybody in uh in our state in new hampshire since i think nineteen forty four somewhere around that time frame it's been a long time we do have the death penalty but uh they don't use it very much instead they sentence them to life and uh we end up as you say fitting [footing] the bill the next forty or fifty years i think one interesting question would be uh uh you know as far as circumstances uh i think we agree if somebody you know is involved with a premeditated murder or you know a cold blooded first degree murder they deserve the death penalty that's in my opinion i don't know how do you feel about that if they take another human life you know and they've they've planned to do this or they're doing it for pay don't you think that deserves the death penalty now how about drug dealers where they don't directly take a life you know it's not like they're pulling the the the trigger on a gun or something like that what do you think about uh major drug dealers getting the death penalty i think capital punishment in those instances is probably even more effective than for uh the just the common street criminal that kills somebody that person probably isn't thinking too much about it but these major drug dealers uh you know they got some brains they wouldn't be in the business if they didn't have and if they're threatened with the death penalty i think it might make a difference on them uh_huh that's right it certainly ruins a lot of lives whereas a you know somebody that uh is holding up a bank and shoots somebody effects a fairly small circle of people i mean the relatives and friends of the person that was killed but but a drug dealer a major drug dealer is effecting what thousands of lives and in effect causing some of them to die oh is that right uh_huh uh_huh i i that l s d even gets into the grade schools when they sell these uh [stickers] they look like i guess they're [dots] on a piece of paper or something and uh you know that's really that's really a crime to give it to the young kids like that well i guess we've talked about all we can on this topic what do you think okay well it's been nice talking with you hope you have a nice day good evening talk to you later bye bye yes uh_huh uh_huh do you have a has texas always had capital punishment have they ever had a period where they outlawed it i see right from day one i'd have to confess to you that uh i don't know what the i honestly don't what the law in maryland is i think we have i think we have a capital murder law uh i think that's probably the only crime for which you know capital punishment is meted out my own i guess my own personal feelings are i tend to take a look at the social cost benefit ratio which sounds kind of [callous] but uh basically you know is what what is the net the net benefit to society if you execute someone for a particular crime versus say if you lock them up for the rest of their lives or something of that sort and in many cases i decide in favor of capital punishment in fact i think in most cases uh and there probably be a few instances in which i would think that maybe it wasn't warranted that that's death right and uh let's see texas uses death by lethal injection now right oh i see okay i see uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well maryland's a pretty complicated state because it's a well because of its colonial you know background and then of course during the civil or during prior and during the civil war it was a border state you know with half the state northern and half the state southern you know in [sentiment] and so forth i suspect that like most most states uh you know in the nineteenth century and so forth that they certainly had capital punishment uh it's not a [quaker] state or something of that sort you know like pennsylvania but uh and as i said i think we we have a a capital murder law on the books right now i guess my feeling you know i can set up some [hypothetical] cases where uh well suppose there was uh you know a famous uh medical researcher who murdered his wife you know now this you know the question is what is the prospects of this medical researcher making medical break [throughs] that might benefit human beings in the future never mind that he murdered his wife right you know and i i i think i'd have to sit down and say well what kind of contribution would they make and also what what do you i think another element in it in it is what kind of society do you what what message are you trying to send to society i mean like in the uh i i'm actually in favor of things like uh if you're going to execute somebody you uh i don't see any reason why they shouldn't televise it you know or what have you it's uh it uh uh you know people ought to be aware of what it is that you know what it is that they're doing and uh you know what what the sentence really means when you uh you know if you sentence somebody to death this is what it really means just like they show you what prisons are supposedly like uh they pardon uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh sure i certainly agree with that we have dallas has now become one of the m [ost] our crime rate has just exceeded all possible goals or whatever and we keep [coddling] all of our our men or women [incarcerated] we have to have certain amount of space for them i'm i think we just must keep this capital punishment and i don't believe keeping them on death row for four or five years is answering any of our problems well it's not fair to the taxpayers so uh uh the lethal dose of uh you know slip in it i think they maybe should get back to [courtyard] hangings no no i don't really mean that but if people could see what was really happening i think it would deter this more than than going in with the needle and [injecting] them uh_huh that's right since our have you ever served on a jury that is one of the most uh well i think everyone should at least once it was uh i've never been on capital punishment but uh i wonder if these people were guilty until proven innocent if we would not gain or more from our attorneys i don't know yeah well it certainly is a responsibility but i think that uh we need to demand more from our attorneys when they withhold information we have three cases going here in dallas now two of them were murder the well finally the husband admitted to having [smothered] his wife even though he loved her dearly so he goes up for forty years with with a possibility of being out in ten and the other man is charged with uh [poisoning] his wife with [arsenic] and it was a apparently it went on over a year they were a very wealthy family and uh-oh it just it it you know you wonder why why this happens yeah well we our previous governor wanted to put a tent okay so uh then do you keep kids is this two year old yours or do you keep children for other people oh that's exactly what i have yes i know i my my little girl was three and a half in march and my son was two in january that's pretty close yeah yes it is have you been able to do that all along or yeah oh how neat how old were they when you adopted so he probably doesn't remember oh yeah definitely needed well that's that's pretty interesting well i have always wanted to be able to stay home with my kids you know that was always my dream you know i wasn't necessarily a career person but as long as i was single and had to work i was going to get a good job and do the best i could and my husband was in the type of business that you know it's insurance so you have to build a clientele and by the time we had kids i couldn't quit and so i haven't been able to quit yet so i've had to deal a lot with child care and course we're hoping within hopefully the next two years i'll be able to quit and stay home but uh i started out uh my best friend kept my kids from the time my daughter was born until she went to work last year in august and it worked out pretty good you know we had always said from the beginning that if it gets in the way of the friendship then i'll take them somewhere else you know the friendship is more important and uh it was a wonderful experience for my kids because she really loved them you know she loved them like they were hers and i i knew you know i had good peace of mind i knew that they were taken care of and yeah uh_huh yeah huh but she had no help she had no help she was alone with them oh that is hard yeah jeez i don't either so yeah you have to let them have some wild time if that's considered wild yeah right right yes yeah well when when my friend decided to go back to work and whenever we had problems it worked out okay because she would come and tell me and we'd work it out after that i found another girl that had gone to church with us that you know they needed it financially she had a little boy that was the same age as my little boy and i though well you know we'll try her but she came to our house and that just did not work uh i mean she loved the kids and she was good with them but uh you know they were filthy when i'd get home now i understand kids go out and play and they get dirty but i mean filthy i'm talking sand in the ears and the eyes and the hair and the and i was like gosh and then you know my own furniture and stuff was like you know the kitchen table the i'd find peanut butter and jelly all over the table and the chairs and the and clean and i was like yeah and then in the end uh she basically ended up stealing a hundred dollars from me so i was i had a pretty bad taste in my mouth she told me about five thirty one afternoon it was a friday that she wasn't keeping kids anymore as of monday morning well you know i work eight to five thirty so what am i supposed to do so i well i had been sick and i it ended up that i didn't go to work monday because i was sick so i stayed home with them and we went to some of the kindercares yeah well that's what they said there were two pretty near our house and they said well bring them in this week for a free day so i lined up someone tuesday they had a mother's day out that my baby sitter took them to you know which was fine they liked it they had been going to it for years and so i stayed with them monday tuesday they went to that wednesday i took them to one kindercare thursday i took them to another kindercare and then friday my husband and i split but on thursday i didn't like the kindercares they they didn't give him oh oh that's horrible and doing something with him well not only was it going to cost me like a hundred and fifty dollars more a month which i didn't have you know i didn't i you know we're we're a christian family and you know they because they're you know like public they're not private you know they can't pray they can't talk about god they can't do anything like that and i don't want them indoctrinated you know but i'd like them to be able to say gee god made the flowers you know and things like that yeah yeah basic so uh i talked to another lady at church it was like thursday of that week and she said oh i found the most wonderful place that i've been taking my daughter and i've know this girl i went to college with her so i really i you i i value her opinion and she told me about a private one it it was associated with one of the churches here it's not the church i go to but it's you know it it was lubbock view christian church and it's a private academy and so i went over there and i talked to the lady well they have like a three year waiting list but she said i had a mother tell me that she may take a job in san antonio and she has a three year old and a [toddler] which mine was at the time and she said i should know something by tomorrow which was friday and she said if she leaves she said i'll let you have her spot and so friday afternoon at five thirty she called me and she said she's going you can bring your kids monday i know i was just like god set this up for me he knew i needed this and uh so since october then they have been going there and i love it i have been at such peace with myself it's just been better than even when they were with my best friend because we don't have the little day to day hassles and the cost was not near as much as the kindercares were going to be did you hear my printer in the background i'm sorry i hope you can understand what i yeah i was only about twenty dollars more a month than i was paying because being a private institution they're [nonprofit] so they don't have to charge as much and the hours are wonderful and i just i think it's the best thing i told [russ] that we should have done this a long time ago you know it's great so i guess as long as i have to work i feel good that they're there they're getting the love the care they have a little curriculum they teach them you know the [alphabet] the numbers the things which you know if they learn they learn if they don't they don't i don't feel like i have to [indoctrinate] them by age three but it's kind of neat when they come home with it you know and uh yeah oh and the teachers well taylor got bit several times and taylor bit several times and the teachers dealt with that we're like hey they're two and we keep them apart and we [scold] them and we correct them and you know they mark it all down and they let you know and and you know they get over it real quick and he doesn't do it anymore and they work at the potty i just just so my i don't know i just feel like a big burden was [lifted] it is i know i know and that's hard yeah well and it it you know but i i i i wish you could find a good mother's day out because that would be good for your peace of mind also yeah yeah yeah yeah and that's usually like you know i don't know when mine were going to mother's day out it was like from nine to three so that was a pretty good pretty good time you know my baby sitter would take them and then pick them up so that worked out real good well i'm tickled to death i hope you find something and it was good talking to you well i guess it said child care criteria and i think we both listed an experience and you too bye no i have two children i have a two year old and a three and a half year old really that's wild oh boy well mine was two in march and the three and a half year old will be four in in july so that is pretty close but i'm home with the kids all day and i have really uh tried to make that a priority even though it's financially a big strain on us but pretty much pretty much uh i work part time but uh my husband's able you know mostly to take care of them when i'm working so but uh we adopted these two little guys and that was another reason why i really wanted to be here because you know they have had a couple foster homes already the baby was eleven weeks old and his brother was twenty twenty two months yeah so yeah yeah yeah oh boy yeah oh that's neat yeah yeah yeah that's the hardest thing i think you know to to deal with is that people love your kids i put uh my oldest in a preschool program just for him to have the experience of two mornings a week of being with other kids and starting to learn some taking turns and you know that kind of thing and uh he was in there for three months when i pulled him out and the the teacher had eleven kids it was excellent supposedly the reputation was fantastic for this place was supposed to be an excellent school and i had several friends who had had recommended it too but it really gets down to the particular teacher and she was a new teacher at the school and she had eleven you know three year olds in a room and i just think it was way too much the were almost all boys pardon i didn't think much i don't think much yeah and she was just my uh three year old is real active and she just kept saying how wild he was well you know there was kind of a [connotation] there of him being you know it being a problem like he ran back from the bathroom singing and [skipping] she said well you know at three years old i don't find that to be a behavioral problem you know i mean it's kind of like she was there was so much going on that she felt like she needed to control more and it's really hard to you can't control eleven three year olds with one person you know yeah you know so i just finally took him out plus financial reasons it was expensive but i was real careful and visited and everything ahead of time but i still felt like even after all the checking i did you know you really can't know everything about what's going to happen i felt safe that the kids weren't going to be left alone somewhere in a room where a teacher could do something inappropriate with them you know because there was enough classrooms close together that it was like a house with different classrooms and i felt like that was a big factor for me that they would would be safe you know from any kind of abuse or that kind of thing yeah uh_huh yeah oh gosh you had to come home and clean before you could even do anything probably oh gosh yeah oh yeah i was i took the kids there once just to try it they had a free day at kindercare yeah uh_huh i didn't either i had one bad i had two bad experiences just that one day with medicine that my son was supposed to have for a cold that they never gave him and the other one was that the the younger one got bit really badly by another child and what they did was they took my younger one out and put him in a crib and left him in a crib the rest of the day instead of taking the kid that was biting out and do something with him yeah yeah yeah so you feel like your values aren't getting yeah yeah yeah yeah god loves you you know basic things like that yeah uh_huh yeah wow oh what luck really oh that's great yeah oh really wow that's okay i got the dryer going in the background so yeah oh that's great yeah yeah yeah they think it's fun it's not a big you know trauma to them to learn something yeah yeah really because sometimes it is a burden having them all day because i can't do anything with them here i can't even go grocery shopping right now with the two of them because the baby is so into everything and the older brother is you know running around all over the place so it is it's hard yeah yeah so yeah i need to even for just a couple days a mornings a week or something to have something like that so i i think i'm going to look for that remind me of that now that you mention it i was been meaning to do that you know because some of the churches do have them uh you know for like six dollars per child and that's not that big a deal you know for a couple times yeah yeah that's sounds good well thanks did we cover everything we need to okay okay yeah okay well great well thanks a lot you have a good day bye bye okay do you have yeah there okay had to mess with my phone here um do you have children oh okay i have three yeah yeah uh do you work okay oh uh_huh uh_huh oh no kidding really yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah uh_huh because there's yeah it's like a family thing yeah oh good oh good i was just going to ask you how it you know if you liked the the but obviously you do or you wouldn't have him there i know but uh_huh oh gosh right wasn't the same uh_huh uh_huh yeah was it yeah good oh good that's great that's good well i got to stay home with my kids for the first ten years my oldest one is ten and a half now or she's i guess yeah it's was about ten years so i yeah i i was really happy that i was able to do that but i that's what i wanted to because i uh you know i just couldn't wait to have kids and so if i was i was so anxious to have them and i couldn't wait to have them it would be kind of silly you know to go back to work as soon as i had them so so it it it it was really great by the end of the ten years i was really ready to go back to work and my youngest was only uh two and a half i mean she was already two and a half so it wasn't you know she wasn't an infant yeah yeah yeah so i felt real good about that but uh boy i tell you with summer coming up i'm just pulling my hair out in terms of what i'm going to do i i guess i went back to work about a year and a half ago and uh i worked full time all last year and now i'm going to school part time and uh graduate school and i'm working part time and so i'm still yeah i'm still going full time but i only have half time salary and uh when school lets out i just don't i haven't i have no idea what i'm going to do because i certainly can't afford what we did last year which was well we did we tried we had all different things we sent them to camp one first month in june they went to summer school then the second month they uh one my daughter went home to visit my mom for a while and my son uh went to camp and there we had uh i don't know some forget what else we did but it was all uh really expensive so now they're a year older and i my daughter's eleven going to be eleven this summer and my son will be nine and a half and so i'm not i think i can leave them home for a if i can work part of the day you know i'm going to leave them home right yeah yes in fact i'm doing that right now with their afternoons when they get home before i do you know that's okay but the four year old now i i have had her since i went back to work or before i went back to work really in a home day care situation and uh we've just been really thrilled with it too we were what actually we it took us two or three different people to find yeah right but i wasn't embarrassed to shop around you know so the the person we found it through the there's an association here in town of professional home care providers or something like that in plano yeah and they have a number you can call and all these people are registered with their association and you know go like our our uh i don't want to call her a baby sitter she's doesn't like to be called that care provider right she goes to seminars and uh she gets home [visitations] by the i don't know the state boards i guess some of them and then some by the association and they have weekly meetings and everything and so it's just really really well regulated and she's just great in fact uh she's all upset because galen is going to go to kindergarten next fall and she says this is it you know i'm not going to have her anymore and i said oh no don't count on that after noon classes she's going to be here because she's going to morning kindergarten so but we we've tried we've tried everything and one year i guess last year when i went back to work i had my son was eight at the time just barely eight and uh we put him in amrein's day care after after well that's why we picked it because they were were supposed to be real great and you know i think they were fine but the thing is he was in school all day in second grade in in plano it's open classroom situation where they don't have walls so there is like a hundred and twenty second graders in the same area with no walls and uh and then he'd get on the amrein's bus to go to amrein's and then there would be a whole ton of other kids all in the same room you know you know what fun they had with these computer games and then they'd go outside for awhile they had snacks and story time and everything but it was just like going to school until five thirty at night instead of being able to get home at two thirty yeah because he was always around with a crowd of kids and he just really missed being able to be by himself and having some peace and quiet or you know yes yeah right that's exactly it so another thing that we tried to do i i know your son's too young right now but we're trying we tried to sign him up for after school scouts and stuff like that and yeah right it is it is and yeah i bet yeah uh_huh understand yeah oh my gosh you're kidding you're kidding oh that's great well good for him uh_huh uh_huh yeah well that's great that's so good uh_huh he's out of there uh_huh uh_huh yeah good uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh my gosh no kidding she knows something right that she and yeah that makes such a difference that's the way it is at my daughter's nursery school too and i think that really makes a difference they're in it because it's a profession not because it's a job they could get because they didn't qualify for anything else you know uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right because because right some sometimes that's fine that's great you know sometimes it isn't you just have to well is it real expensive then uh_huh wow yeah right right uh_huh uh_huh no yeah uh_huh that's exactly it see we do the same thing since galen goes to nursery school we pay our our home care provider for our day care provider full time for a whole week but she she's gone three mornings galen just doesn't go there three mornings a week but i said to her i said you know it doesn't matter if for whatever when school holidays come around i used to have such a problem with that they wouldn't have anything to do i'd either have to are you there okay okay yes i have one how about you oh my goodness yeah i do i do i work and and uh [brian's] in a day care center he's uh he was two in december so he's not quite two and a half yet he uh i put him i'm kind of had different different ideas from what probably the majority of people have i put him in a day care center from the very beginning he started in day care when he was eight weeks old and i just i don't know i have kind of the opposite opinion of most people i have had this real problem with a a private individual i mean i i kind of looked at it like if you take him to a home with a with private individual when the door shuts that one person has total control and i always figured at least in a day care center there are other people around and if you get one bad apple there's are at least other people that can see it they can watch and i just kind of always felt that the chances of something happening were less you know how can you help depending on the day care center you know you got to when you hear about all the horrible things that happen in day care centers have you ever noticed they're always like a family owned center where the mother and the daughter and the son run it you know kind of thing yeah yeah you never hear about it really in the big ones so that's what i did and i have had just excellent luck i have been just so happy he's right right well he was in he was in the same center for two years for the first two years and uh it was wonderful and i loved it and i was so happy there and the woman who owned it sold it but i thought okay i'm going to keep an open mind here and the people who came in it just wasn't it just wasn't the same and their their attitude and philosophy was just completely opposite from mine and i left him there for about a month and just decided i can't do this anymore and i moved him which was an extremely traumatic experience but but he's done well he's been there a couple of months now and i just feel so lucky yeah how about you do you work or do you get to stay home with them wonderful right right yeah i bet uh_huh uh_huh a baby yeah i know how that goes yeah right right did you have them in a center or something last summer yeah that stuff is expensive it really is yeah yeah i was going to say they're getting to the age where you should be able to trust that a little bit yeah uh_huh to find the right one that's what we have to do though no where do where do you live plano care provider oh that's wonderful that's great right right uh_huh i've heard that they were very good uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah poor kid was in school all day yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh even at that age they need that time we all need that time just some quiet time to wind down from the day yeah yeah i think that's really important and we've already started about you know i mean how young can they start t ball and soccer you know i mean i just you know we both think of that that as just so important to get him involved in stuff like that and you could hardly wait i mean he's he's so much fun now he's really he's really starting to get lots of fun and i can't wait until stuff like that starts happening you know and you know we did the easter egg hunts which was really the first year he was really able to and to know what we know what he was doing you know and enjoy it and it was so much fun and gosh he went a couple of weekends ago and rode an elephant and god he got up on this elephant all by himself and lord i couldn't believe it they had so much fun i bought us tickets and stood there in line and i thought i'm going to end up on this elephant with him you know he did it by himself so stuff like that is starting to come along where it's really getting fun you know day care has just done just incredible stuff with him and he like comes home with something new everyday you know and so i know i know they're working with him and he's excited to get there in the morning and just doesn't even want to kiss me good bye it's just like bye and he goes running you know and he's always having fun when i pick him up so you know yeah this this day care is is it's bright steps in lewisville and whenever you say bright steps everybody goes oh i've heard that's the best day care in town you know and it's it's one of those that's very hard to get into and they have this this this woman owns three day cares two in lewisville and one in irving and she had to open the second one up in lewisville because her waiting list was just like you know like a year old it was ridiculous and she's got two day cares within like three blocks of each other yes so its she knows what she's doing all the teachers like about half the teachers are degreed teachers oh it makes a huge difference uh_huh yeah that's right that's right that's right and his old day care as much as i loved it you know and the owner i really liked her and she worked really hard to get good people but the people that she got were there because they weren't qualified to do anything else you know and and i got lucky and all of his teachers were very good yeah but then sometimes you know yeah um it just went up the first of this month i'm paying uh seventy nine dollars a week for now so it's a little high but but it's you know it's like where he was before i was only paying sixty three so there's quite a little jump there but i looked all over lewisville i looked in every day care there was in lewisville and you know and there were places that were cheaper but is it you know your peace of mind is worth a little bit of money you know and i have peace of mind where he is and some of those other places i wouldn't have yeah yeah uh_huh okay do you have any children you don't yes i have uh one a five year old daughter yes i do she was um at a private well i stayed off work with her for little over of a year when she was born and then i had her at a private sitter for i guess two two and a half years after that um she was referred to me by a couple of people and she turned out to be wonderful i couldn't have asked for anything better i don't think i didn't want to send her straight to a day care and even though she was that old i still didn't want her to go to a day care and this lady you would think it was her own yeah she's real good yes it is and um now i have got her in a montessori school and she's really really doing good and learning a lot and actually i've started working up there in the afternoons too so well yeah i guess i'm going to quit as soon as school the school [season's] over but uh i really enjoyed being with her up there i hate it for her she has to stay that much longer but yeah they they go uh year round uh teach them now in the summer they have like a lot of field trips there's a field trip just about every day if they want to go on one and stuff like that it's a lot more lax but but they still go through all their uh curriculum as usual um gosh i my husband and i both went we kind of give her the third degree yeah well we went over to her house so we told her you know well we didn't tell her we just told here we'd be over that day we didn't tell her when so that way i didn't think you know the house would be you know cleaned or anything for me specifically and um she had a daughter and i want to say her daughter was like six or seven right around first second grade and um at the time she kept one other child um about a four year old i believe but it was only like a part time basis so we went over there and we questioned her about what she fed them and um what she did with them during the day and um you know just how she treated them how how her daughter was with the children when her daughter got home from school and stuff like that and uh we really seem to be pleased with her and um yes oh yes and she still loves her to death i mean when they see each other you know they just love each other to death and she literally spent almost the entire amount that i paid her on my daughter either making her clothes or buying her things so we're real real lucky but uh so she stayed with her about roughly two years and she um she had to go back to work they had some other expenses that came up so she had to go i guess get a real job yeah so uh well i checked a lot of places out you know the kinder cares and the stuff like that and uh i live in garland and there's this montessori school that's nearby and um it had been recommended by some friends of ours but uh it it's an older place and so i uh checked out all the new places that were near us and then i checked that place out and uh even though it was older it was it was real comfortable and i guess kind of homey and they didn't just play all day long you know like i noticed a lot of these other schools that i went and interviewed on or interviewed at um they did a lot of play work and stuff and then they almost all of them had a montessori section and i thought well gosh that must be pretty good you know if everybody's trying to incorporate a little bit of it into into their school and they made sure they pointed it out you know but after i looked at this place and i took [randi] with me uh i think just about to every place one place i think i didn't take her and i just kind of let her go see see what she felt like doing and that place boy if somebody came and she liked them and she went outside with them and it's hard to drag her away so i felt more comfortable at that place yeah and she was real comfortable and she has really really done good i i it's hard to tell how much has been that or how much is just her but she seems to me to be you know pretty quick and smart and she's already reading and writing and stuff like that and she just turned five last month so yeah i think so i mean i didn't want to rush school at her the whole time but exactly i wanted to quit my job so i could stay home with her the next five months because i know she's going to have to face that and oh my god here we go you know i just hate that but anyway so you don't have any children do you have any nieces or nephews then oh really oh oh really just easy to get them there and well that's a shame oh really that's scary yeah i i was [petrified] i mean that's uh i don't know that's just it and that's why i don't mind paying more um i don't know i just feel yes and that's one reason i like working up there a little bit is because i know what's really going on because you don't know uh because like at her school um as soon as you drive up it's got like a circular type drive they sit and they have car callers and and some kid goes out and gets the kid and it's time to go well at first that always kind of bothered me i mean not bothered me but i thought well you know i'd like to see what she's doing you know but now that i'm there i mean it's it's a lot more convenient because there's so many kids that [doddle] you know when their parents come and it's hard to get them out and a lot of parents have places to go and and things like that and it's late at night so you know now it doesn't bother me at all but yeah sixty six that one that's set back in the woods yeah that's it yeah right right it and that's something i like too because a lot of those places are like you know the one over here on seventy eight skaggs that little kinder care whatever it is you know it's right there on which this is on a highway too but it's set back enough to i'm scared i would be scared to death my child might accidentally get out or or if that seems like a real accessible place to where you could you know go in and get one yeah and that was one of the places i had checked out and it was it it was brand new when i checked it out and of course it was beautiful and clean and smelled wonderful in there but you know i that i didn't base everything on that that's right that's exactly right you get some kids in there and it's over quick but um i've been real pleased knock on wood i'm scared to death her going to public school i don't know i i do know why because you know drugs and everything else and they talk about how soon they start that and that scares me i mean you're just with them yeah they've um they've had police officers come in and talk to them about it but of course they still have no concept of what in the world drugs are you know but right but i just think of her you know next year she's going to be five six years old in kindergarten in same school with you know uh i guess ten year olds isn't that six sixth sixth grade you know and that's a big gap and that's uh that i can honestly see the peer pressure there and that just [terrifies] me to death and stuff those kids getting [snatched] and i'm i'm probably a little too over protective but well nowadays you have to be if so i at first thought you know when i didn't have kids i was going god how can you be so protective you know but it's easy now yeah definitely that's exactly right and i do but anyway well are you ever are you are you are you married are y'all planning on having kids or well that's good because they're really neat it's just no i don't do you uh_huh did you ever have her in child care uh_huh and how did you choose that sitter yeah right yeah really it's hard to find people like that uh_huh oh yeah well that's neat yeah do they have classes for them during the summer too huh yeah what kind of questions did you ask about the private sitter before you took her over there uh good i'm glad to hear that yeah right yeah did you did you [introduce] your daughter to her before you made your decision really yeah yeah get a real job full time so what made you decide to put her in a montessori school uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah huh yeah yeah uh_huh yeah that's the true test yeah yeah that's good huh that is good then no especially we're going to spend the next eighteen years in school yeah really that's right yeah yeah i have a nephew he's a little brat he goes to a really crummy day school my sister's not real bright so but he he's always sick i mean he has always got some kind of cold or something and i don't know i don't think this place is a very good place for him it's just kind of convenient and she's the kind that goes for convenience over anything else yeah exactly yeah i don't think she checks things out very well which really surprises me it is scary yeah i know i would be too yeah too many horror stories out there that you know oh yeah that's right i think that's an ideal situation yeah huh yeah uh_huh that's right is that where the over there off of like i'm not sure what the street is is it off of near country club and all yeah yeah i i i've seen the signs but i've never actually seen the place itself you know it's pretty set far back off the road yeah definitely uh_huh yeah right yeah there's a difference uh_huh yep that's right or you know or a car accident yeah yeah no because that all wears off yep really i would be too yeah yeah yeah i know it is scary do they teach them in school right now where she's at about drugs good right right and what to do when they're faced with it yeah it is uh_huh oh i can see it too uh_huh nothing wrong with that yes you do i don't i don't think there's anything wrong with that uh_huh uh_huh now you understand that's what i'm thinking what your mom and dad always used to say when you have kids of your own you'll understand uh_huh yes yeah we'd like to yeah okay um i have two children and they're older now but um i found it very difficult to find good child care when i was looking for a place to for stay while i thought school and um i wanted when they were very young when they were babies say till they were about two years old i preferred that they had an individual take care of them in a home and that's what i looked for and i was lucky enough to find one right across from my school and that worked yeah that worked out real well but when they got older i wanted them to be in a school type situation three i think they were both three when they started where they could learn to interact with kids and and be around kids their own age because i think that's that that would prepare them for school also it's real important that they do that um that they get that preparation for school so but i had i have switched schools several times because i i really didn't care for what was going on at that the school i wanted them to learn to play i didn't academics forced on them at an early age yeah for the for the kids yes uh_huh okay oh wonderful oh great um great oh that's wonderful yeah that's wonderful oh great right oh that's wonderful too uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh that's wonderful oh dear sure yeah oh you know that's an ideal situation but not many people can afford something like uh_huh uh_huh sure uh_huh right sure oh i do to oh yeah but they're they're are just so many people out there that aren't that uh lucky uh uh because i'm a single parent and i uh you know my husband and i ex husband and i got a divorce um when the children were small and so i uh was a teacher i uh still am teacher and it was really difficult to find affordable child care that was that was what i wanted where i could have piece of mind and when i taught school and i knew my kids were being taken care of yeah and uh plus i i uh wanted them to get something out of it i just didn't want it to be a day where they went and slept and ate cookies and that's it uh_huh right sure well i agree with that well the thing is i teach this grade and i i can see very readily the kids that didn't never learn socially how to get along with other children and they're the ones that are having problems not only getting along with the other kids but academically because they were not they're should be there's to many things in their way and so i want my i wanted my children and they did learn to get to get along with other people yeah and i mean i feel a lot of [maladjusted] adults and i bet if we trace back to their early childhood we could see some you know times they didn't get to play or be with other kids their own age really learn how do get along with people uh_huh uh_huh i bet you could too because it you know kids have to learn how to get along with other people and if they don't they just don't turn out to be really you know good adults or successful adults i should say you know really but uh it is a big problem and you i have lot of friends right now that uh have young children and they daily have problems with with whoever is taking care of the child or they switch a lot which is not good for the child either so you need cause you need that consistency when they're young like that and it would be ideal like you you hope when you have children your wife gets to stay home i would have have given anything if i would have been able to stay home with my children yeah you right oh great uh_huh uh_huh oh that's wonderful oh great um you're very wise uh_huh sure sure uh_huh oh don't they though that's what i have right now thirteen and a sixteen year old oh it is they really are expensive yeah exactly well and they most of the area where we live in most of the kids have cars so you know right now i'm looking for a little truck for my for my son so that you know an older older older truck so i can afford it but you know i i just look forward to him helping me out because i for years just car drove in carpools all over the place and and it will be nice just to be able to have him say will you go to the store will you take his sister somewhere something like that right exactly right that's right it does for ever and then when you get through with your own you've got grandchildren so it's not ending is it you think we've talked a long a long enough time oh they come in see this is the first time i've done this oh in ten minutes you have to talk that long uh_huh oh i see i see are you from the where are you from oh my gosh i'm from uh plano texas which is which is outside of dallas yeah because that's where t i is that makes sense uh_huh well that's good uh_huh yes yeah uh_huh yeah i um that that's oh oh you mean you switched schools for the kids uh_huh well i'm just recently married so i don't have any children though we plan on having them soon but i think um that i that that's probably one of the biggest difficulties uh i think um i'm lucky though that um my wife will probably not have to work while our children are under four or five yeah i'm a college professor so and that's also and it's nice for me because um most of the time you have so so much flexible hours so that i could probably work two or three days a week and then one or two evenings so that if my wife does um does go back to work part time um there probably will be a possibility that i could stay home two days that she would go to work and that i would have to teach at night yeah so it will probably workout real nice for us uh i think we're very lucky because just my job sort of builds in flexible schedules i can even teach on saturdays and and things like that yeah um i do know that my brother and his wife have a terrible time finding uh child care and one of the things they made in um uh real they're number one priority was that um they're children didn't have to leave their home so they um um my sister in law is a uh um a [clinical] speech [pathologist] so she is i guess her most recent position after she returned back to work she applied for a [director's] position and got it so i guess she's very well qualified for her field i guess and even though she took off two years for um i guess four years all together it would be three years how old's [kayla] three yeah i guess she took off three years all together um for cause i guess they have a four year old and yeah and my nephew is two almost two so i guess she took off three all together and then when she decided to go back to work um she was able to find good position and pay for somebody to come into their home yeah i think they were really lucky there but i think they've lost this woman she she will not continue and and she won't do it in the summer because her kids are home from school so i don't know what they are going to do uh_huh yeah i think i think they they're both they were both professionals unlike me they're um they were married my brother's five years younger then she is so she was probably twenty seven when they were married so she already had had gotten [bachelors] and masters and established herself in a in a practice almost um where you know he then they waited a couple years and and he got himself pretty far along i guess they didn't have kids until he was about twenty twenty six so by that time she was so well established you know i guess it made it a lot easier but uh i think the longer you wait the easier the easier it is if you have that that professional occupation where you can change yeah yeah that's right that's true yeah uh_huh uh_huh yep yeah definitely were safe yeah uh_huh yeah that yeah that's you know that's so important i um i i guess it's so funny now with schools you know they don't take kid into kindergarten and when i guess when they're five and sometimes they [flunk] kindergarten now they don't let them into kindergarten unless they can count to ten and know their a b c and i think that's so funny because um i don't i don't know if i want school's very important i'm an [educator] myself and my wife teaches and i it's a very important part of your life and i hope to read with my kids but i don't know if i want my kids to go to school at four or three you know i can see that when you make that point yeah uh_huh uh_huh yep uh_huh uh_huh that's a really important point yep i think that's really that's important i i've seen the same thing i i think you're exactly right because you know i've gone or before i was married i went out with a girl and you know um boy after you know after about two months i realize this girl really has some deep set emotional problems and i bet and they could be [traced] back to just not being uh you know being moved between day care centers when she was one and two and three years old and never always being a bit [snippy] and [spiteful] i bet you could trace all the way back yeah uh_huh that's true yeah uh_huh uh_huh yep that's true yeah that's really true uh_huh yeah yeah i i think i'm i'm very lucky um because of having you know flexible higher education provides a flexible schedule i teach a computer classes so it's it's one of things where i'm paid a little bit better then a history or an english professor and i'm also um you know they have [vocational] type courses on weekends almost everywhere and you know you can take you can teach two three hours classes on a saturday which means that you know whole week's worth of courses so that lets you be available three days during the week you know so you be will home with your kids i you know it's really funny is that i i picked this career when i was in college because uh i think with my commitment to family and um wanting to spend more time with my children because my dad had very um nine to five type job with uh forty five minute commute into the city and a forty five commute home so by the time he got home he was so tired and he was all [rung] out from the day and i think he he missed a lot of um our up bringing you know my mother i i came from a family that my mother stayed home until we started school um and i i don't uh it's funny i don't think she had to work until we started school i think teenagers become much more expensive it's probably costing you a fortune my goodness if if you want them to be able to drive the car the insurance bill um oh uh_huh yeah carpools uh yeah my parents did a lot of that that's right yep and just to save you trips to and from you know uh ball games and athletic events and activities at the school yeah isn't that something how you know you think about child care and it lasts along time it it lasts a long time well normally they come in uh oh oh cause they'll come in in ten minutes normally and stop us well you don't have to but they they um you go the length and sometimes if it's a very busy time period you'll go about seven minutes depends on how old the tapes are at that time uh_huh yeah this is baltimore maryland yeah well most of most of the people i talk to are from texas uh_huh yeah and i've discussed i've discussed um so child care your views and what religious faith oh that's that's good uh they do seem to be at the outside edge of both extremes don't they and whenever they are they seem to regulate the good toward the bad instead of bad toward the good better situations yeah yeah that's that's very well [phrased] uh so have you ever used outside child care real day care uh our step daughter's ten now and most of the day care has been provide for by grandma but quite honestly what i believe to be the best day care situation was while we lived up the pass of [woodland] park there was uh ex school teacher that uh did a small amount of before school and after school you know kindergartners or half [dayers] in her home and they would read and play seem to be uh yeah and uh despite our beliefs she was uh one of the more uh charismatic christian [faiths] and it worked out wonderfully uh yeah but i don't know that it would be state approved i now i don't know what the current texas laws are but i but i do know that the license doesn't seem to uh guarantee quality uh now here i believe that child care meets by in large certain standards for uh balanced food if they provide food cleanliness and levels of supervision levels being defined as number of working adults for number of children but yeah uh my wife is uh [agnostic] and i'm uh a [backsliding] presbyterian and uh get i really believe that this charismatic care or the charismatic belief when emphasized on care or semi charismatic i might say was quite good yes very and and uh the care is what i guess you should emphasize in the term child care instead of the child and not have any care and i'm not sure that really child care per se should instill any education per se do you know had a i'm saying proper interface it's just just [correctness] of of social skills if you will uh yeah uh it's a very broad issue and you know it's a shame but most people doing child care earn almost no money they operate at you know the owner of the of a you know a large child care facility now we're not talking somebody that does six kids in their home or three or whatever right their employees earn almost nothing and that's really really a shame too because do you and your husband both work well that's wonderful if if you can make it that way well like i said that's grand if if you can pull it off but more and more we're being forced into a situation we as americans are being forced into a situation where you've got to have uh well we only have one child right now and another one on the way and right now i'm i'm all with her during the day i if i was looking for outside care i probably would stay away from professional child care centers and try to find if i was close to home relatives or people with it is same values and possibly religious faith or something similar so that she would be raised in an environment that would be similar to what we would have in our own homes as as parents uh latter day saints so so that's what i would try to do with a teaching background i've um had a little bit of experience with the child day care type situations but i've seen some good ones and i've seen some really bad ones uh_huh and everything in between yeah in most states there's nothing to regulate them and so right by trying to get them to conform to concern standards they uh kind of uh eliminate a lot of the uh yeah the the uh what am i trying to think of that not the imagination but the creativity in in the situation and so no i haven't we've had like people come in and baby sit for an hour or two but i've never had um right she's she's not even a year yet so we haven't been in you know a lot of need yet uh_huh i like that situation that's usually real good uh_huh uh_huh have a relative a structured activities and not just you know stick them in a corner and say you're on your own uh_huh yeah i know that uh that i guess if you have the opportunity to pick and choose and you've got the time and that uh i don't know if the resources are the proper term you know just the the know knowledge of who's a available then you could probably find some really good care that's true you can get somebody maybe willing to baby sit but actual you know that's sometimes different done on a different scale i have even considered you know baby sitting myself i have a teaching degree and uh thought well you know i could structure and then for one reason or other decided not to but i think if you take more than three children in well that was how it was this virginia we've recently moved here to texas but in virginia i think if you take more than three children in on more than a several hours a day bases you have to be licensed yeah a lot of times you might just need to go now and feel file for it just like a business you may not have to prove any type of qualification for it i don't uh_huh uh_huh that's uh kind of a minimum there that you're getting your covering basic care there and not all the extras that most people would like to see done with there children you know like the educational activities the supervised play and so forth i like that term uh_huh yeah it was a good influence for your daughter uh well that's good uh_huh yeah a little bit of love and and attention is what most of them need you know even if it's not a real educated program you can have good educational program and and right and and that's not certainly what you want for your child or what you would give your child yourself and so well even educated play uh supervised play can teach without and i'm not saying talking about sitting down and teaching them math or or or something like that but just kind of promoting social skills and uh uh you know like my my child that she want be an only child for long but you know she was an only child or maybe your daughter not having yeah yeah just right those basic things that uh they would that you know you would be a little bit of uh i don't know if [manners] is a good term or not but you know dealing with other through proper [mannerisms] and politeness and so forth you know that sort of thing you'd want your child to learn that from the experience of someone else certainly you wouldn't want your child's day care person to yell at them and scream at them and say do this do that you know you'd want them it promote politeness and [niceness] you know the things that you would want any child to learn and the reason that's done through example you know not an actual sit down learn situation so uh_huh it is uh_huh uh_huh somebody that doesn't really put a lot of overhead whatever into it you mean somebody that has an actual establishment yeah yeah i know i i did that for summer so i can i can vouch for that no just he does i'm i'm here during the day with her well we we decided to we live on a lesser budget so that we have that that's more important to us you know as as uh there may come a time when i will be working again you know but right now that's what we've chosen and we wanted to have several we got her and we've got another on the way and maybe another one soon after that so right okay what kind of do you have children oh okay uh_huh oh uh_huh and you had trouble finding somewhere for him to be before he was five uh_huh right but uh_huh to learn something and that's i mean that's even not only [toddlers] but you know even your older children it's hard to find anywhere they're really going to learn something and then yeah you do have to pay you know if you the better the place the more you're going to pay true very true it's uh_huh if i had any children i would uh i hope that i'll be in a position to stay home with my child because i'm not real uh uh trusting of a lot of people uh especially today people i work in the news business and i just see different things all the time and people are just crazy these days they're crazy and and i don't you know it takes me a takes me a long time to just trust someone as a friend much less to you know trust someone with my with my child uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i guess that's the best way you know to get recommendations from your friends or family members uh_huh huh uh_huh yeah yeah i mean you have to be you've got to be sure that these people i mean not that they're going to abuse your child or anything but you just have to be sure that they're going to be watching them you know that they wouldn't let them drink something or you know eat something off the floor you know just simple things that can be harmful uh_huh huh then you hear so much you know on the news about uh child care places and also um senior care facilities you know you hear abuse yeah and so you just you just don't know and you almost want to you know spend a couple of weeks with in class with your child just to see how it is or something but no i don't huh_uh no i'm uh no i'm only i'm twenty three so i still have a little bit of time um it's just not in the cards for me right now i'm trying to get my career going and uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh and you brought up a good point you know about learning you just don't want a baby sitter you you would hope that maybe they'd come home and know some of their a b c's or something you know get them uh_huh uh_huh huh yeah uh_huh right uh_huh right uh_huh did you take this same uh route with your other two children okay uh_huh uh_huh i was wondering how uh_huh uh_huh right and it helps that he has older brothers uh you know just to have role models and things like that uh_huh uh_huh huh uh_huh that's excellent uh_huh well what kid isn't these days so uh_huh do they have any kind of program like at t i or wherever your wife works um some in kind of day care huh because i know they're they're putting that into a lot of uh corporations now right so maybe that will be an option for but then i i foresee that being just a baby sitting thing not much learning but you know kind of somebody to just watch your kid while your at work huh uh_huh right huh uh_huh huh do you think it would have been better for him to have um maybe one continuous teacher somebody to that he could uh get attached to or is it better the other way with a lot of different uh_huh uh_huh right huh right huh uh_huh right yeah each child is individual in life learning and things uh_huh right well it sounds good sounds like he's doing real well huh good uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh and they'll probably sit him in front of the television you know while they do other things yeah huh yeah well that's good that's good uh_huh uh_huh that's great right right that's probably what i'll try and look for whenever i do have my children i don't know when that will be but um you know just really look into it will it will take me a long time to find somewhere i'm sure just because i i just want to be i want to be so positive that you know my children are okay as well as the other children in the center you know uh_huh uh_huh exactly uh_huh it's difficult these day it's it's a lot more difficult these days because you have both parents working a lot of times and so you have to find day care whereas you know here uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh no choice so child [care's] a necessity whereas years ago you know the husband basically worked and the wife basically stayed home uh_huh uh_huh right i think that has a lot to do with just just all children how they learn and things just because the basic family is is breaking you know the basic family is not there anymore uh_huh i think that plays a big part in in a child's learning and you know what they can and cannot do in child care i don't think yeah we have one that's seventeen one that's fifteen and one that's just now six and we had kind of a hard time finding someplace we could put michael's goods his birthday is the first of september and he was going to school at five so he started the first grade when he was five or started yeah first grade when he was five years old yeah so we could you know we tried to find him someplace where he could learn something and it was uh mediocre expensive it wasn't really that expensive but it's really hard to find someplace where you can send your child and expect him to learn something yeah yeah well yeah but parents pay when they stay home with them anyway you know my wife works so it costs us more for her to stay home more than it does for him to go to the baby sitter so we try to yeah see i don't know yeah yeah yeah well see we took our time and we checked it out and we found a preschool for him and it you know through other folks where i where i work i work at t i so through other folks where we worked we found a nice preschool it was actually at a licensed preschool you know we had those requirements so yeah i know i'm well that and you know i don't think i would have left him anywhere that would i would have stayed home with him first before i left him somewhere that you know they still have [unlicensed] baby sitters running around up here and you know i just i i don't think i'd take that chance you know i think it's out of sight or out of mind for less than for more than a minute or so but you never know yeah yeah but you you know as as far as child abuse is these days you never know you don't know who you can trust and who you can't you know yeah senior care is getting real bad yeah so you have no children at all gee do you miss that part in your life or yeah yeah yeah i imagine yeah working in the news production anyway back to the subject we should have discussed this earlier but anyway it's tough it really is it's hard to find good child care and it's hard to find someplace where you can leave your child and trust that he's going to be fine all day long and yeah you know and he's he's doing real well it it it has paid off for him he's in first grade now and he's you know got a second grade reading level and a fourth grade math level so you know those early ages when he would you know when his mom and dad are at work and he's actually in child care in a preschool not just child care you know we could have sent him to anybody you know there's a lot people at work that would have baby sat him but sending him to a preschool where he actually learns something has paid off not only for us his his attitude is i think a little bit tall for a six year old and you know but his um they they were outside my marriage so i don't know i would say no but you know all my children excel they're they're really good and i guess no he learns from the older boys too but yeah yeah yeah seeing like uh in one way we're kind of lucky because they're all boys but in another way we're not so lucky because we don't have another woman in the house for my wife to share but you know so we faced that too but he learns quite a bit he learned quite a bit from not only from nursery school but he learned quite a bit from the older boys and you know he's excelled and it's paying off for him it really is he's he is pretty smart sometimes he's a little bit smart [mouthed] but he is smart you know yeah but i think it's important i think it's really nice to know that you can find someplace i don't know you know how it is down there in waco but in lubbock we have a few that you can send your children to and they can actually learn something instead of just being baby sat and no not in huh_uh we just yeah they're trying to the federal government is trying to [intercede] on that too so no we don't get well it would be nice you know there yeah there's not well you know where where we sent michael the first few years was there was different teachers all the time you know some girls were there in the morning and then some substitute teachers in the afternoon and they actually taught him something instead of just watching him all day you know and then they had a group of kids and they put on [skits] and they put on plays and they did the halloween thing and the [valentine's] day things and it's you know it was important to us so we you know we took a good look at it and made sure it was going to go that way um no because i think you know as a child growing up i think is a task that belongs to his parents i don't think he needed to be attached to too even though he did you know he attached himself to a couple of those but i think his [attachments] at home and you know he gets the idea of what school is for and uh you know i have different teachers here and this person can teach me one thing and this person teach teach me another and no so i i i really can't say that it would be it's important for him to attach himself to anybody he did well you with with another child i can't say that because i don't have that experience yeah see but i don't have that experience so i can't say that you know he did well so i don't think we made too many mistakes we tried hard yeah he's doing real well and he learned from it so and that was the most important thing that we wanted was for him to learn not just to sit there and be baby sat all day you know baby sat sounds to me like well you're here i guess i'll watch you when i get time you know maybe i'll clean my house maybe i'll cook you lunch maybe i won't you know and yeah yeah yeah and i don't you know i don't allow that when he's at home so but we had a good experience and we really did well so and he did he served better than we did you know he gained he actually gained from it you know sure we gained from it because we were allowed to continue our employment and continue our family but i think in the long run he gained from it just being somewhere where we learned something instead of just sitting around watching t v and playing all day and it's important yeah yeah yeah well yeah well you know his mom didn't go back to work until you know when he was six months old and we just didn't want to dump him somewhere and make him feel like he wasn't wanted and we wanted his center of attention at home but we did what we could and it it worked out real well i'm glad we were so careful oh yeah you know well it most of the time now it's a necessity you can't afford so you know i'm not making seventy or eighty thousand dollars a year so it's pretty tough yeah and mom mom was allowed to stay home and you know there was a few families outside of that where dad stayed home and mom worked but not very many that i know of when i was growing up and you know i'm forty now but you know when i was a kid mom was always at home so we didn't yeah it is yeah it is i'll agree with that it is it's it's not there yeah okay i do have friends that have children yes they i think that's correct there uh relatively nonexistent from uh from what i hear from my friends it seems like uh even when they have [consulted] day care centers that are quote unquote reputable that are sort of like a chain if i can use that word uh still you have to deal with the people that you know happen to be operating it locally and uh it's just a matter of of trust you know i think they feel that these people are um under qualified basically and underpaid and i think that sort of goes hand in hand so it's it's difficult for them huh_uh huh_uh huh_uh right right huh_uh huh_uh huh_uh huh_uh i'm sure that's true huh_uh right right i do have a friend that uh uh she and her roommate became live in care givers and they loved it they had stayed with this family from the time these children were small you know four or five years old up until they were well into grade school and uh she was paid very well because they the parents trusted them and they you know had done such a good job so um i can see where someone you know in a position like that in a live in capacity would definitely be the way to go if you're you're lucky enough to have the financial to be able to do that yeah yeah i think it's just a matter of priorities it's uh you know it's a terrible thing to say when your speaking of children in that way but you still have to be realistic as well i think yeah yeah yeah yeah and that's that's that's bad to have to admit too but uh you know it's just there's so much pressure when you're talking about two people that work outside the home and and i think that is one reason why i continue to be without children i it's just such a responsibility and and when i've had friends that have said when you hear people say it it [alters] your life forever please take heed well i realize that's true so it's uh such a responsibility huh_uh oh yeah huh_uh yeah most of the time yeah oh sure sure sure sure right right right right but you know it's funny i did i had a friend that said you know before we always said we don't want children because we can't go off on the spur of the moment or this or that and the other and she got older and she said but you know we never do those things anyway so why why am i waiting you know it's it's just the way your attitude changes and you mature i suppose but the thing about the child care i you know i have friends that struggle financially and and they both do have to work it's a matter not necessarily uh that she might want to stay home or he as well but you know they need the money and uh when i seen some of my friends that have taken that six week old baby you know to someone else it's just i can imagine how emotional it must be and and you know [multiplied] by the fact that you don't really trust the person or you're uncomfortable with the situation as far as child care um it's just a scary thing huh_uh that's a big plus right right huh_uh yeah huh_uh right right right yeah huh_uh huh_uh i think it takes a i don't know i think your patient level must needs to increase as the child gets older i think that might be part of the problem with some people you know taking care of a baby i know is not an easy thing but when you have them in their their little feet are moving and you have to chase them down constantly i'm sure that's a whole new ball game oh really well you sound like your pretty well passed the worst of it as far as worrying about since they're both in school you don't have to worry about a full time person to take care of them that's something altogether different uh huh_uh oh of course not you can't do that no no no that's out of the question i'm sure right right right right huh_uh that's amazing it's amazing that people actually the stamina that you must you know draw from yourself to deal with it it must be interesting i guess you find out that you're a much stronger person than you thought maybe huh_uh now it's just a reservoir that you tend to regularly i'm sure well are your children now do you feel comfortable um with them coming home after school until you and your wife get home or no yeah huh_uh yeah yeah that's just a difference in kids i suppose yeah huh_uh yeah and it's it's the one that's going downhill is it is it the one that needs needs more supervision that has a bad influence on the older or more mature one yeah how unfortunate well i i i'm living in a dream world what do i know as i said i don't have kids and i'm an only child so i've never been around children so uh i'm sort of at a loss where that's concerned but i do hear my friends talk about it huh_uh yeah that's like world war three every minute i don't know i i i have to admit i was selfish as a child i didn't want a brother or sister and now that i'm older of course it's different you know i think about uh wouldn't it be nice but uh anyway yeah oh i have wonderful friends that's true my best friend is one child of ten and so they just sort of you know adopted me as their eleventh child so that worked out pretty well she never had to worry about taking anybody to child care because there was always somebody there older to deal with them so i guess that's an alternative if you could just um have a whole bunch by the time the youngest ones are there you'll have older one to take care of them i don't know when you see all these horror stories on television about child care and gosh i just i was seeing something on the television earlier about a little girl that's been telling her mother these terrible stories and of course people are [denying] it and uh it's just frightening it really is huh_uh huh_uh yeah huh_uh huh_uh all right uh do you have any friends that have children and what do they say about finding adequate child care i think that may be the key word right well we certainly found that to be true uh indeed we've our children are now eleven and nine and we moved away from [institutionalized] child care if we can call those chain kind of things like that uh by that name and found that uh more creative avenues were the right answer for us uh at one point in time we've had au pairs by trading services with them and that worked for a while but they were really adequate ones were really tough to find it takes that mixture of a very mature college student who wants to do something and yet is willing to give the time and the interest to the children well that's true and that's something that we're struggling with now oh yeah much as other cultures disagree our lives don't revolve around our children well it certainly is uh if i can the other side of the coin for a moment it is such an honor and a thrill to be a parent that most of the time it's worth it well i just have to be honest about it it's not always worth it there are those times when i think gee if i didn't have children i could be out playing bridge or golf well we were lucky when our children were that age and having lived in a community for a while and we knew the person to whom we were [entrusting] our children and felt that that and feeling of safety and were leaving them small children but we also learned something from that experience as our children got older it's that care givers are not [omniscient] they are not all things to all people or all children the ones that are good with babies tend not to be good with [toddlers] oh yeah yeah i have a nine year old that i would trade happily for a baby oh you don't know what happens after they get in school oh yes now we have uh one takes piano lessons somewhere on one afternoon and the other one of course can't do the same thing it has to be somewhere else and no it's not adequate to sit and wait no that just that will not do of course but we are helping you know we are being cooperative what's wrong with you you don't understand this that's just the way their minds work and it's almost everyday well i've been finding out that i really am a nice person hit for many years because i didn't need it and now i need it yeah and it stays low a lot absolutely not i mean one of them i would i would leave [unsupervised] any time any place any where uh the other one i wouldn't leave [unsupervised] two minutes that's true what one leads the other and uh of course you don't think you don't think that good [prevails] we we're having such fun my wife and i were both only children and we just couldn't wait to have two children so they would be such friends wrong just make good friends have enough that's true well what what's frightening is a parent to see things that that you don't really don't understand and then you don't really know what happened we gave up on one baby sitter because we came home one night and found pieces of um ribbon you know hair ribbon tied in a chair where obviously she had had well we're just starting a family through adoption so i don't really have a lot of uh concrete uh opinions just what i know out of my peer group uh has gone through and none of it has been good yeah uh the ones that can afford to have live in nannies they seem to be having an okay time uh but a lot of the other ones that have are professional uh i'd say fifty percent of you know my peers that i'm in my circle of friends have tried it and then stopped working until they're you know going to get their children in kindergarten or first grade uh but i there must be some good service out there if you really look and pay for it in terms of what they're talking about oh infant uh infant yeah after eleven years of marriage yeah we are we're actually it's happening now so we're just going through the process so and actually the question is uh very appropriate cause i'm not sure whether uh how strong the maternal instinct is going to be they tell me it's going to be strong do you have children and did you put him in daycare or is he older now or younger or sure so he's out of daycare you uh_huh oh flex yeah uh_huh yeah oh that's wonderful right that's wonderful yeah and and i guess uh because of your um your uh profession i mean i uh i'm in corporate communications but i've done free lance writing in the past so what we're hoping is that uh i mean my husband thinks i can do it i've just never worked out of a domestic base you know i've always been in a corporate uh environment uh but i'm hoping that possibly i can do something where i can go [flextime] or part time or if they don't have that uh my boss i'm very lucky though again too my boss is very [akin] to family building so i think that's something that couples need in going into this uh i don't know i do think there's good daycare out there what part of the country are you in you're in maryland right that's what i'm hoping uh_huh oh my goodness you were fortunate yeah yeah uh_huh sure uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right so do you think that i mean do you think that that was in a way though good good [objectivity] that that doesn't really that's not a correct english but you know in a sense you see what i'm saying though from a mother's standpoint i mean in a way it was quote and unquote good [objectivity] uh_huh see uh_huh yeah right and then he learned he he also learned that uh there were times that you had to be gone so you probably [minimized] well we're actually uh we're getting ready i mean you're far enough away now i can tell you since this is locally i make sure we're going to romania in a few weeks and that's uh just romania as in like what twenty twenty and uh but we we're real excited because we've just developed a contact through professional people and it's private and it's hospital it's we're just very excited uh and what's the word i'm looking for when you deal with issues like that uh in terms of family building through adoption uh and then you have people responding to you well if you go through that why would you put them in daycare uh issues are being raised [prematurely] in my mind but i guess they're not because it's something i'll have to deal with sooner than later uh and i what i've learned to do is just tune out everybody's opinion i feel that if the child is healthy uh and as long as we make it feel secure i'd love to do something like with what you did uh i don't think i could be [dumper] where i could take it from you know eight in the morning till nine at night or six at night and leave it there uh maybe after two or three or years old i don't know um yeah well they need a schedule i think i don't think the united states what country were you uh in europe when you were uh uh uh that's well that's the same thing i mean i don't know how they are there but uh in eastern europe my [stepfather's] from england it just seems the united states does not provide for either child care or or [elder] care as i call it uh and we're just not set up for that uh with the go ahead uh_huh see i think that's wonderful to right we cast off right right i'm that way yeah right it's easier and i agree with that that's why i you know what is amazing to me is now your son is already grown but you can probably [empathize] with this it's amazing to me how [forthcoming] people are with their opinions and thoughts in terms of what to do uh and i just don't think there is a day a good daycare system uh my company i'm particularly fortunate that they have they're in tune with that but i've been at companies where uh you know the the the trend is or the definite mood is well we made conscious decisions not to have children you know and in and a couple like us building through adoption there it's almost radical to some people and what you just learn to do is tune everybody else out and uh i respect there are some women that i know that are divorced or on their own or in single parenting and men that they you know they may have the need for child care like that but i agree with you that it's just i call it dumping i i uh_huh uh_huh then yeah it's in [tandem] then i just uh and there are trade offs too i think one of the things that is a problem is that uh in terms of compensation to some of the child care providers uh it's just you know it's so low but yet the overall cost for somebody doing it on a daily or even a weekly basis it's prohibitive and some people that are not making more than twenty thousand a year uh really uh_huh sure uh_huh and they yeah i haven't thought about that yeah and actually my neighbor has an eighteen month old and she's at home part time paralegal so i'm thinking um and we get along [fantastically] so i'm thinking you know and that's the way you have to uh how i'm just real curious how was the middle east in terms of that with children is that is child care or that type of idea completely foreign to them uh_huh uh_huh oh really he must be smart yeah uh_huh uh_huh the professional yeah i was wondering about that uh there i'm in dallas and there was just a very big uh series about [moslem] women and there were enlightening things that broke some of my stereotypical thoughts i'm [digressing] here but uh i was just real curious when you said middle east if you didn't mind me asking oh no that's okay well even if you did that's okay actually i think right right they fight they work oh really huh uh_huh uh_huh right what what age child are you thinking in terms of no for for yourselves oh okay so you're starting from the from the [baseline] i see right i have one son well he's he's now eighteen and in in you know has completed a couple of years of university i right and and so that but i was working full time uh when he was born but i was very lucky because i was a a college professor and so i was able to you know and i it was walking distance from from my apartment so i went up there and i sort of left him with with a neighbor and i left him in a carry [cot] when he was very little and i said you know he doesn't need anything except you know look at him if he [cries] but you know don't pick him up and and this sort of stuff because i was gone only an hour at a stretch or an hour and a half and i was able to you know get his schedule just uh [cooperated] and yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right i'm in maryland but but i was out of the country when uh my my son was little but but the thing is if you have this [flextime] and that you might be able to do something similar to what i did which is you know be there short times and then later on when he was you know i mean this we're talking about uh i went back to work and or taught some some classes like a week after he was born and so yeah and so that's when i was saying you know don't don't pick him up and stuff but then later what i did was i brought a woman into the house and she she was supposed to help me a little bit with cooking and doing the baby's laundry and this sort of stuff and then i also came home and sort of was able to see from a distance what she was doing and you know in a sense she she carried him around a lot too much uh you know for for my taste it was constantly no i don't want him to explore anything he might uh he might hurt himself i think it worked out very very well because what he learned to do by the time he was two or so he would sit next to the desk where i was grading papers or writing lesson plans and he had asked for a paper and you know sort of [scribble] and then he realized that there were quiet times and there were active times oh did you say romania or [armenia] oh okay yeah yeah oh good oh great oh that's silly uh_huh right oh i in my opinion it's even than i mean your kids need you no i was in the middle east right right i yeah no i was just going to say i guess uh my [sensitivities] are are much more with the you know to be at home because actually i had my grandmother with me from the time she was from the time she was ninety two until she died at ninety seven and i mean that was recently after my son was going off and i mean yes in a sense i went to work and she was at home alone some of the time but but still you know it was much better than being shipped to a daycare center you know which is much my feelings on kids and the elderly i think we're we're too too much towards it's somebody problem you know i want to work shove them in in some school for twelve hours a day yeah right right and that's sad right uh_huh yeah no i i think that certainly there is a role uh for this type of help and and as long as one can can supervise it and and you know make it work in into one's own schedule without it seeming like dumping or or or uh giving it you know the whole job to somebody else to take care of yeah yeah uh_huh yeah actually there seems to be an alternative in my neighborhood is there seem there are several mothers who stay home and they take you know it's probably not completely legal uh i maybe it's legal up to one or two additional kids but and they they take care of another child and i i can actually could name five or six people around my neighborhood that really do a good job on this and i mean that's another possibility and you know you might want to stay home one year and some other lady might want to stay home for a a few years and yeah yeah no well actually there was a daycare center uh where my son did go for a year i think from when he was two to three but then he actually started kindergarten at age three and so and you know it wasn't like [prekindergarten] it was real kindergarten yeah so he he was ready to to go to school at that point but yeah they're they do have such facilities but for the most part uh with the extended family you know you can usually find somebody which is much like our neighbor you know to sharing responsibility and i'm and also there aren't that many women who who who work yeah uh_huh yeah no no and i didn't mean israel so you you assumed right well no because at first thought when i you know i said that not many people work i'm i'm thinking oh well she's going to you know because certainly in israel the women do work all right oh uh_huh uh_huh that's the way we always were we always lived away from our family and relatives while the kids were growing up so well i guess we're going to talk about children today so you ready my children are all gone already they're they're all out on their own so uh do you want to start first do you work uh_huh right uh_huh right uh_huh yeah but yet most of the problems we hear of course maybe that's what we hear about is from organized and approved day care centers but maybe we don't hear about the other ones though that could be you know the individual [incidence] or something uh_huh how old is your oldest oh well he's plenty big enough then uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's the way with me i i worked four years one time but my last two children were uh both entering high school age and uh they were of course gone while i was working so it wasn't a problem i saw and i stayed home the rest of the time i so i didn't have that problem either now i have i my oldest daughter she has two children and they've been in day care uh she works full time it it's difficult but yet she's the type of person that i don't know if she'd be happy staying at home uh_huh she she surprised me though she's done a lot of things that i never thought she would do you know with with the family because she was the one that said she was never getting married and never going to have any children so she is she spends a lot of quality time i think when she is with with the children and uh they've used the day care most of the time they tried one once they had a lady come in and uh she she also had a small child she brought with her and it did not work out uh at all it she thought it was going to she was real excited because it was so much easier than taking the children out in the morning but uh the lady called and her baby wasn't very old at the time and said she was having trouble and this baby is the is the most pleasant uh real pleasant baby easy to satisfy usually and and she was having problems with her and so she called and said things were okay settled down and was all right well my daughter decided to call them and check and things weren't okay her her one son was watching the [soapies] which she doesn't allow them to watch the [soapies] and the baby was in his crib with the door shut just screaming his heart out and the baby sitter was in the kitchen with her baby and so that ended that episode and she was most upset uh over finding this so uh she they kind of had decided that the day care was better there's uh more people involved more than one adult they and the age groups are separated and uh uh_huh yes story time uh and the this one has been particularly nice it uh it kept track of what they did and they would tell the parents what they did that day you know if they said anything or did anything so it kind of kept them yeah i i always thought that if you were checking into a day care that you would be good to get references uh on people that had been in that day care but was no longer there because they wouldn't have nothing to worry about saying you know if there was a problem they they would i think be more ready to tell you what it was they may not say anything and uh other than how else how do you judge other than from what others have uh what you see uh the cleanliness and that type of thing uh_huh uh_huh but it would be real difficult to pick you you know to find one and decide uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah it worked out good i'm going to i've decided i'm going to baby sit my two granddaughters since they'll be going back at the end of the month and so i'm going to give it a try i i i sell avon and stanley products and i've got that worked out my husband he's retired so he's going to deliver my products so i'll do my orders and that by phone so um i'll be able to keep that up a little bit but i i think i'll enjoy doing yeah i i think i'll enjoy i i guess i kind of miss having a baby around a kid around or something yeah right that's right well they do say you enjoy them more a some somebody said if they knew grandchildren where so much fun they would have had them first uh_huh uh_huh yeah my daughter always said she would not let me baby sit because you do hear grandparents complaining you know because they're stuck with their grandchildren so much but they're the ones that complain a lot are the first well she lives in utah so yeah okay let's do uh_huh okay no i don't i stay home most of the time but i know that it's very difficult to to find good help sometimes when and especially when your when you want your children to be taken care of um you know there's a my neighbor she tends children though and and um there's a big controversy whether they should have to um have a a a law to have them certified or or not and um you know there's pros and cons on both side of that because if they were then you kind of know that they had to go through some kind of testing or some kind of something to be on get an okay seal that's right that's right yeah uh_huh uh now usually when i have someone tend um my oldest tends for me now if i go somewhere but before he's almost a teenager yeah he's he's very good um but um before that i would i would use uh kids from our church and they did a good job for me um but i've never had to leave them like in a day care center or anything and i've been very lucky just be able to stay home uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah that's hard well some people aren't yeah oh is that is that right i think that's really important uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah yeah oh oh uh_huh oh dear oh yeah yeah i bet uh_huh well nannies have been an option uh but i know that at day care they have more of a a routine like maybe in uh preschool would have where they have lessons and so forth and so on uh_huh uh_huh gave you an idea of what your child was progressing in or doing yeah yeah yeah oh i think so because if they were still there you know they might not right right you can't really you can't really unless your child would be old enough to say something and usually they aren't at that age you know um uh_huh well i know i uh about three years ago i i tended some children and uh you know i i wondered if i would have to be certified or whether they'd just bring them and and we got to where well we were just friends and so they said no don't do that we'll just bring them and then if there was a problem and then we'd sit down and talk about it but it never happened to be a problem and and so things worked out okay and their kids played with my kids and it worked out well oh that's great oh uh_huh well that will be great yeah yeah i bet you'll have some great experiences with them yeah sure why not and and you know the grandparents uh i always hear it's always fun when you can send them home at the end of the day instead of having to so that's right well uh my husband's mother lives right over here and she takes care of them sometimes for me and and just is a lovely lady and i've always appreciated when she's sat with them and oh uh_huh uh_huh okay no i don't but i have nine younger brothers and sisters uh_huh uh_huh i would assume it's you know if you were looking for a day care center or something like that or probably even baby sitters would be the same thing yes i would think someone older and i would want to know if they've had any past experience with children uh_huh yes that's true also uh_huh uh_huh well um i did a lot of baby sitting when i was younger i'm twenty two now and i did most of my baby sitting when i was between the ages of thirteen and sixteen but um the only thing people ever asked me well of course they knew i came from a family with younger kids but they really didn't ask me if i was used to children or not the only other thing they asked me is what i would expect in pay you know and um i was pretty surprised because if i had a child and someone you know i would want to know i personally would ask for people that that person has baby sit for before uh_huh uh_huh yes well see when um i first got my my first baby sitting job was pretty strange um this lady saw us at church and she was a you know she was a younger lady she didn't really know my mom she knew my mom by name and that was it and um she knew that i was one of the oldest girls in my family so she just asked my mom if i could baby sit you know she really didn't know my name or anything you know i thought that was pretty strange you know and she had two children one was still in diapers when i started baby sitting so um she pretty much you know just assumed that i would know you know how to handle them so i you know i enjoy kids and i get along with them very well so there's no problem but uh with today's world and the kids today uh there's no way i can't say that i would just ask someone you know that i didn't know like that to baby sit uh_huh that's true uh_huh oh i would be too oh my huh_uh uh_huh yes uh_huh oh i know um well i i obviously you've never had to look for a day care or anything uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well how did you [stumble] upon the day care center did you just look it up in a phone book or what was it uh_huh yeah there is i would say most people would probably go by word of mouth uh_huh yes exactly uh_huh uh_huh then again did um money come into play with it at all uh_huh uh_huh yes well i take it since you selected this topic that you have children you don't my goodness so well i have two daughters and um they're past this they've been [latchkey] children for a while and they're almost where i can start saying they're you know young adults so i don't have to worry about child care too much anymore um we're supposed to discuss what criteria we would ask or expect well if i were exactly exactly um i think my my top priority would be that it would be someone who would be responsible and someone that would actually like children uh_huh and i think that varies i think a lot of your criteria vary with the age of your child um you know it's it's once they get to a certain age it's almost more important that it's someone that can entertain your child as opposed to someone who's you know really really qualified per se um with a with a baby definitely have to be someone who knows how to handle a baby and would know how to respond to an emergency so oh uh_huh uh_huh well i my experience i baby sat a lot also at when i grew up and um coming from you know that background and the background as a parent now i think the reason that people don't ask a whole lot of questions is a a lot of times baby sitters i know i did this with my children it's you get somebody where you kind of know the family already and that gives you so much basic knowledge that you don't ask a whole lot of questions because i had three younger brothers and sisters myself so they they thought okay she knows how to how to treat children uh_huh uh_huh wow oh i agree with you but there again she you know she knew knew of your family and she and she met in a safe setting such as church so she was going on those two instincts just the same i know myself i never and i was very very protective on who baby sat my children and and in it really shocked me because just about six months ago someone came to my front door rang the [doorbell] she had just moved in the neighborhood she had her daughter with her and the daughter was oh about a second grader and she was actively looking for people who would baby sit her child and i thought well she doesn't know me or my children from anything and it was i was almost more reluctant of letting my older children go baby sit for her because i didn't know her then she was reluctant of letting strangers into her house so i mean people are so different well i did i did have um my my child uh in a day care for just a short time when my oldest was about two and a half and i worked just a part time job and uh in in those situations um what i did is i'd i went in and you know i made a few phone calls i went in and visited i asked questions such as how they would discipline a child um that was a concern with me um you know you you learn a lot by going in there and they they explain to you you know what their day consists of and what their general rules are and um that's you know that's as much as i know you probably could get really good feedback from a lot of other working mothers you know that have done this over and over again but i go ahead um i think lots of people i i think i went by location for one thing i think most people do that i think you start out with the criteria of you know do i know of anything or do i know anyone who has their child in a day care and right right and then you know i mean even at that you have to consider the logistics of it you know i mean you're not going to take your child south of town if you work north even if that's the best one in the whole wide world so there there are just so many considerations oh money is always a factor in my life definitely i've never you know i've never had the luxury of not having that be a factor um even in something as important as day care i know if i didn't have that [stipulation] i would have done things differently you know um montessori school would be something that i would have pursued but that's always a little bit more expensive than what i could look at um and i was very very fortunate in that i didn't have to do that on a full time basis so and and then when you get you know when you get into the full time basis day care okay uh_huh oh great great well my children are grown but they're teenagers so i have three children um fifteen ages fifteen seventeen and twenty and um about i guess about when the first when the youngest one was in kindergarten i started working at a preschool and uh you know doing some work and then i i took a couple of years off and then went back as a music teacher in a preschool so so i am around not a day care situation but in the you know in the child care environment so um uh_huh yeah yes uh_huh oh it is yeah uh_huh yeah in other words there're more people yes yes that's that's an interesting point of view i uh you know seeing the children in the school the way i do i i mean i see the ones that we can always tell the ones that have not been around children at all when they come in as three year olds as opposed to the ones that have been in the program that started at twelve months maybe and were were even in there one day a week which is all our school provides for the you know for the under three year olds but still they have an an opportunity to be with other children and it is true and uh i but i think that would but as far as looking for a place you know i the criteria i mean i think it's very important to have very caring people you know to take care of the in a school if you're going to have the structure and you're going to have the large numbers you're going to need really yes yes yes it is yes that's right that maybe yeah that maybe have another salary in their family that where they can do that and that's what i had the opportunity of you know doing and and i could concentrate on the creativity and and you know really having a lot of fun with the children and and providing them with a great atmosphere yeah and they have to be there at sometimes six o'clock in the morning which is yeah yeah yes that's true that's true yeah yeah because people can't pay to provide and well ours is not you know ours is just is a church and so we we don't have the the expenses of a building you know we share the expense with the church but we don't have enough you know taking care of a whole building and that responsibility so uh it is it is a lot different oh my goodness yeah yeah uh_huh yes oh you did um yeah yeah uh_huh yes yes uh_huh uh_huh yeah well that's different than most people do it i mean a lot of people do it really the reverse and go to work after the children are in school you know but uh yeah yes that's true uh_huh yeah yeah oh dear oh dear oh how awful yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh oh yes oh oh gosh oh dear yes oh good yes okay i my children as a matter of fact are all grown now so i am [assisting] them with their children in their selections so uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i myself really feel like the structured day care program is more successful in today's environment than the one on one care is uh when my children were growing up i actually had them up and until they were in the preschool situation i had them in a in a home with a lady who kept two or three kids and i felt like that home environment was very important to them it was important to me and uh i feel like that they they had that one on one that's so necessary at that age however in today's environment it may be more critical to have the ability to interact in large groups simply because that's the way our young people are are dealt with they're dealt with in packages uh_huh uh_huh sure uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh absolutely oh absolutely without a doubt uh_huh i recently stopped by mcdonalds and i was sitting out in their little playground while my granddaughter was playing on the things and was visiting with another mother who was there with her children and she was telling me that she was given the opportunity to manage a day care center and of course she was she had just gotten her degree and she was so enthusiastic and she was excited about it and she was going to accomplish all of these things however uh when it came to hiring and staffing people who cared and who were willing to take care of those children and spend that kind of time the pay is minimal and it takes people with total and complete dedication who really don't want to make a living for themselves in order to be in that environment absolutely uh_huh uh_huh well they ask so much of those caretakers for the amount that that they pay they are to be there ahead of time you know they're there early to receive the kids that's right and then then they have to work until the shop until the place [closes] at six p m and then it's their responsibility to clean up and be prepared for the next day because they don't have cleaning [crews] in most of those and uh she just had a terrible time keeping [sincerely] dedicated people simply because they could not live with a kind of hours and the salary uh and she uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh sure uh_huh well i know that when my youngsters were small now my older son was adopted so he went into child care at two weeks and uh my younger son went into child care at six weeks so they were in that environment actually up until they became uh seven and nine and at that point i said look they have been given the [custodial] care that they need and the after hours care has been as good a quality as i can provide for them however they're going out into the school environment now they're under a lot of other influences i need to be here for them i need to be involved in their school because i want to be the one who influences the way they develop so i quit working after my kids started to school and got involved in volunteer work in their private school so that i could help direct their their learning experiences and their development i i felt like that anybody who cared and loved the kids could change their diapers and feed them and [bathe] them and hold them but when time came to direct their ability to make choices to develop the kinds of things that that they're going to need to interact with other people i felt like i needed some strong influence there so i i know that's right once they get up in uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i just felt very strongly about that and i i did not work as a matter of fact my son was in the second grade and when he started uh at [skyline] high school i asked him son when uh you know where do i go to sign up for the p t a and he said mom don't do that to me please don't do that to me so i knew it was time to go back to work but i feel very good about spending those years with my boys uh and i was just really grateful i only had one bad child care experience it was in a home uh the care taker that they had had since they were infants just could not do it she was from um uh uh argentina and she was going back home and i couldn't just you know wait for eight three or four months and then bring them back to her so i had to find a new place and i put them in this home the kids cried when i took them the kids cried i could hear the kids crying when i went to pick them up they were always cranky and [irritable] so i just took off and went there one day and uh the children were left [unattended] in a room you know they they were not well cared for and uh so it didn't take me long to take them out of that place but that's the only bad experience i had the rest of the time they stayed in la petite academy and i was very pleased with their development and their progress they learned a lot of things in those public environments that you just as soon they didn't learn but they're going to learn it sometime so but for the most part they did have good care and it did appear to me that the people who cared for them had a good concern for them and in one particular case they had a summer program where they were to be taken to the y and taught to swim which just pleased me to death because i've always been you know been afraid of the water however my older son came home and he said mom i don't like that man said he took me by the head and [dunked] my head under the water and told me i had to get my face wet or i'd never swim boy it didn't take me very long to hot foot it over to the school and [relay] that to them and she said well she said you know kids do [exaggerate] but she said let's go ahead and send him another day or two days and i promise you faithfully i will watch the instructor every minute and see exactly what's happening okay so what were you saying no no not at all i work with computers yep they what one thing i i have some friends that have children uh not that many actually uh i do not really know excuse me too much about child care in new york excuse me one second huh_uh no not at all in fact my situation is a little bit strange i was uh a student for many years and then graduated and went and worked in france for awhile and i have just come back and was doing consulting work so i am just taking a little bit of time off right now uh and and i might yeah well hopefully i can do some consulting work at home and if i can do that it will yeah i'll be able to spend the time with my daughter and not have to worry too much about child care but uh i might start to go crazy with it too it is a little i miss the intellectual stimulation but at the same time i really it would break my heart to give her to a stranger right now and oh yes yeah well i think for me the important concerns i do not think i would put her in day care for joint situation right now unless it was like one other child with a with a person i would not want her to be into a in a large day care situation so young because i think a little infant just does not get the stimulation they need maybe if i needed to work part time like four hours a day i might do that cause like you should get enough stimulation from you the rest of the time but uh i just think that you know when there's two year olds running around the whoever is taking care of the care givers are going to pay attention to the two year olds and only when the infant screams are they going to go there and if not the infant is going to lay in the crib all day and maybe have a mobile above it to play with and you know i play with her most of the time she is awake and i think that is so important yeah well such as things for learning gives the child stimulation i think is important and uh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah well she's she's just been doing all kinds of stuff where she's you know she's two months now nine weeks and she's just drastically moving her eyes from one side to another and things like that and she's just started that like yesterday or the day before and so every days are different and i think that you know i think child care for infants is much harder than when they are older and i will probably be going back to work around january whereas she will be about eight or nine months old and so i think you know she will be at a i have heard it's a rough age to put them into a yeah but but i think it yeah we are just going to have to see how things work out uh but i am trying to you know leave her a fair amount even at this young age with her grandparents just to go to a movie and things like that so that she is used to other people taking care of her my parents my husband's parents are in france so it's a little bit harder but during you know she's met them already not that she will remember them but she's met them uh_huh are they all nearby yeah well if i work part time that might be [doable] yeah well right now the situation is so tight at many places that it's even hard to have a choice incredible but you know since this is people before they get pregnant are finding child care for the kids and you know i just find that incredible and my sister in law is going to have a baby very very soon and she is intending to stay home with the baby and you know maybe do some free lance type work at home and so if i go back to work on a part time basis i am hoping i can leave my daughter with her because her daughter again will be a couple of months my daughter will be about six months older than hers and it will be a little rough when she is a very very little infant but like when she is a month or so my sister in law has had lots and lots of experience dealing with baby sitting for large families and so uh she might be able to do it a couple of hours a day and we might even be able to do it on a trade off basis that i watch their baby when they want to go out to dinner or to movies or whatever or if she wants an afternoon off even if she wants an afternoon just to work uh and not be bothered we might be able to exchange that way and so we will just have to see how things work out but i think the whole you know ideally i think uh business should have the day care centers there whether it's the parents who take turns watching the kids or whether they hire a couple of people and uh you know parents come down to supervise or whatever yeah yeah oh yeah yeah well she's my daughter does not seem to be on a real schedule yet and it's probably my fault because i do not have a real schedule now but yeah well she's been staying up late at night and you know sleeping late in the mornings and things is just fine by me right do you work with do you work around children when you work with computers okay do you but you have friends that have children uh_huh what is child care like in new york what is does the company you work for have child care on premises for employees oh oh my a sabbatical well i hope you can stay as long as possible with it oh yeah that would be wonderful right right right i think it does when when they are real little and they are changing every day there's and you just miss the little things and and uh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's right that's right that's right right right well that it is important for the bonding that they do it with the mother right our oldest grandson when he was eighteen months old went into a a montessori day care system and they took infants starting at six weeks and they have a program uh in that was [devised] by this montessori person and uh and a certain type of [stimulations] and there's times of day that even when the child is awake that they that they lay quietly and look at certain things they keep deliberately keep the room not real bright and and uh they have different things they will they will put them down on the floor and of course they never have more than like five and and they will put them down on the floor and they will have i think one of them was a little mirror and some were just different objects that have had a definite purpose for kids you know and there's something about their eyes uh how old is she oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um a little older it is because that's when they are [clinging] to mama so you might have a real problem with that i think it it hurts the parents to leave when the child is crying so it you know it would be ideal if you could get somebody in so you are not really leaving the child in a strange place but that's unusual uh_huh is it your parents or your husband's parents oh right right that's nice when uh i my i have three grandchildren another one coming in september and i it would if they were where i could not get my hands on them i am afraid i would probably go crazy you know i i like that but if it you do not have to put them in child care that's that's an ideal situation for you is to stay with them as or you can set up your work program and your husband's so that one of you is there all the time that's that's wonderful for the child but right and you need to look at when you if you do decide to go with child care you really need to to look at what your options are and and look at the what they offer drop in at times that are unexpected the uh uh uh_huh uh_huh oh oh that would be wonderful uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh right right right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i do too really well trained people right and have have some kind of real good program set up so that you when you go you can be assured that if there's an emergency that person in charge knows c p r or first aid or and have some kind of program set up like you say to [stimulate] the kids or educate them in some manner and have the you know the right toys and the right setting and uh have a an organized type of program set up so that the kids have a schedule you know that's real important to little kids uh_huh they they adjust to what the parents uh_huh you know that works until they start school and that's a problem society is geared to a a day person and it's i have another friend who's brother and his wife have done this they stay up until all hours of the night oh yes i'm an old experienced hand i started back when it wasn't stylish to do that at all my daughter that's seventeen now i worked even when she was a baby and i had private care for both my daughters until they were two and then i was really lucky to have put them in a methodist day school at preston hollow methodist right off of walnut hill and preston and it was a wonderful environment i i just wish all kids if they have to be put in day school could have that kind of place so it worked well how about you uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh it's not hard to find anything that's part time so many of the churches have really strong preschool and children's day out but it was a nightmare back when cheryl was little and this is one of the few churches that did it there were a couple downtown dallas but they were so seemed cold and impersonal i just couldn't hack it and what i liked about preston hollow is that the people that were there when cheryl was two which was fifteen years ago many of them are still there today so there was real [continuity] she went back as a teenager and these people that had changed her diapers when she was three were still there so it it was really neat but it was because they had a director that had always done it as a labor of love and she just kept good people and real cheerful place lots of arts and crafts and i'm really glad my kids had it because plano schools do so little of that that if they hadn't had it before they hit first grade they were never going to have any art or music or any of the [interpretive] stuff uh_huh or pay for it after school our [emily's] in the third grade over at [huffman] and they started a pilot program where we can pay private tuition so that they can take french and music and art and you know i willingly did it but i thought this makes me angry this is something that ought to be in the schools rather than some of the other stuff they do yeah well that's the only way they're yeah well that's the only way they're going to be able to do it and parents who really want their kids to have any humanities are going to have to do that so in some ways i think the the day schools do serve those purposes yeah yeah put the colors away which is too bad uh_huh uh_huh until they were two yeah yeah both times they were at our house and that was hard too i i lucked out with really good people both times but i know so many people that are never able to find that and i'd practically give my paycheck away to do it so yeah well no she didn't live with us uh the first one was an elderly lady who was putting a a daughter through nursing school just purely on baby sitting money and she kept cheryl during the day and then did more baby sitting at night and she was neat because she was like the grandmother that my kids never had because both our parents are dead so that that was a plus from that respect as well and then with emily it was a neighborhood friend that kept her so i just cannot [fathom] putting a little bitty baby in a commercial care center uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh that would be hard well they give a lot more leave i work at n c n b now and our benefits for maternal and and parental care and even for elderly people are are really expanding we have more options now then we did when i my kids were born with being able to take off full time longer of you can phase your schedule in so that it's not full time for up to six months it's really neat i've i've had a couple of assistants that came back just three days a week or they've you know whatever schedule they want from a pay standpoint we try to work it with their hours and that helps because you don't have to just [wean] yourself cold turkey and say okay i never get to see my baby for eight hours a day again and the bank has a lot of programs now for child care [referrals] i've of course it's too late for me so i've i've not tried them to see how effective they are but i think we're finally beginning to make progress but just not very fast and for our age group it's too late too little too late but i i do think it's an area that needs to be looked at and improved because more of us are going to have to work two income families i think are here to stay uh_huh right yeah oh sure you retain employees and keep them longer that's that was the rationale they gave when they were giving us information about our employee assistance programs that they want us to be happy and want us to be able to cope with trying to split ourselves in fifteen million pieces so i i hope it helps it seems to help the new mothers not have to come back full time because that's hard uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well in plano though the problem is you find and this is what i found with emily i from the time she started first grade i wanted her out in plano area and i kept finding neighbors and friends and they'd move she ended up being in a different home every year and i finally decided i didn't like that because it was traumatic to her to get so attached to a family and then have them move so this year i i tried kinder care and then she's old enough to okay do you have you ever had to put your children in child care mary [dell] uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i see oh well i have uh a nine year old and a six year old and neither one of them has ever been in in uh day care for the reason of of me working but uh they both went through preschool and uh we've just been real lucky i think anyway to not right like half day programs uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh oh my gosh uh_huh oh my goodness right right yeah uh_huh yeah that is uh a big drawback i think in that in the uh public schools out here you know to your lucky to have an art teacher and if you do you get them once a week or something you know oh is that right i had no idea oh my goodness and with our budget cuts i'm sure that's not going to not going to change anytime soon oh my goodness yeah that's true well even the preschools you know they get so much of that in preschool and then when they hit kindergarten you know it's like [wham] culture shock it's just yeah yeah get the computers out and you know that's hard it's so difficult for them um did you have your children did you say in home in in private care was that in your home or in someone else's home uh_huh so you were able to have somebody come there yeah yeah did you have a nanny or did you have someone that lived in with you oh oh my goodness uh_huh yeah oh oh gosh uh_huh uh_huh i have uh uh_huh i was just listening to a program this morning oh well i guess it was on the home show but they were talking about uh a new uh oh i can't even think of the name of it i was halfway listening while i was painting um it's some kind of [advisory] board they've put together for parents and children and they've now moved it to washington d c and the the doctor that was on there the pediatrician said you know i can't imagine leaving a three week old and taking them to a nursery day care and leaving them there you know so um uh_huh uh_huh oh boy that's great uh_huh uh_huh yeah right right yeah uh_huh uh_huh god it's amazing right right uh_huh uh_huh well and i would think you know since big business is supposedly why the government makes the decisions they do you know the the people that work in big business have families they have children so it's only to their advantage that they get these programs going and working and uh uh_huh uh_huh right right right oh that's good that's good to know i have a couple of friends that have have found the uh you know a a private home to take their children to when they're young until they hit the preschool age and they usually you know you'll find a a woman that's keeping like six children or four to six children in the home and my future future sister in law's mother does that too full time uh_huh oh too transit uh_huh and her surroundings okay well basically i am a mother of a three year old so i kind of relate to trying to find a good day care because it's uh extremely hard thing to do to trust somebody else with your child uh trust their emotional and their safety and all the rest of that and uh i've been pretty selective and what i'm finding is with um day cares that are like day care centers like for instance uh learning tree or kinder care and all of that what i find is that they're highly structured highly organized almost too rigid for the children if you bring a child in at a certain time uh like nap time or whatever time uh because of parents' hours they are and when i bring my daughter into such a system like that uh they only have one thing going on and that's nap time everybody is [napping] whether they came there an hour before or they came right during that time and with that kind of a system my daughter just isn't likely to enjoy it if she has to good there immediately and lay down on a [cot] so um home day care has been an option and i've looked into that the only thing is you raise the question of if it's safe uh can you trust the people you know um uh_huh sure oh sure sure that's really scary and to the point that you kind of say to yourself especially home day care i mean i think center day cares there's so many people coming in and out that you're better off if you're going to put a child into that type of system for eight hours it's fine it depends on the age of the child now some children do real well that are at the age of four or five or children that have been in that kind of system for a while but home home day care works well if it's an infant if it's if it's if you want to have kind of like a family [structuring] where there's a home that they can be provided because i've seen things at the day care where they can't keep up with all the kids the kids have colds and they're sick all the time and uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's right and you never know i have um an ex sister in law that um currently has a child abuse case on a home baby sitter uh_huh right right uh_huh right very good uh discussion or on child care uh they're all grown up oh well you know all about it then it's been quite a few years i have grandchildren but uh haven't really been into selecting child care for them so and it's been quite a few years since i've had to think about that no uh my daughter that has three stays home with her children and one of my daughters has one but an aunt keeps the baby but i would i would not really know how to go about selecting one nowadays but i would imagine it's very hard uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh well that's good i've always thought you know it would be really tough what if you had a fire or something with babies you would have to be able to have enough you know you'd have to be able to get them all out uh_huh oh well that's that's a i hadn't thought about that but i was thinking oh my gosh if they had very many babies they couldn't possibly get them all out but you could put them in one of these [cribs] and then roll the crib out i guess oh well that's neat well do most of your day care workers really care about the children or is it just a job for them uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah how old a group how old are the children go with this center where you work uh_huh uh_huh you've got the little bitty ones those are the probably the the best group to have and they're fun babies are fun and they're not quite big enough to be getting into everything yet so uh_huh uh_huh do you think there's very many really good day care centers around your area uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh sometimes it's a have to i hear a lot of the girls i work with uh constantly oh i wish i could find someplace i really felt good about you know most of them don't really feel that it's a great place to leave their kids and it's really bad you know one of the girls she was leaving hers at where she felt like was a really good place and then they called her one afternoon and said well we thought we'd better call and tell you before you got over here [lacy] fell asleep on the bus after our field trip today and we just now found her they had left her on the bus closed up all afternoon and so immediately she says well i can't have any confidence in them anymore if they'll take a group of kids to the zoo or somewhere and then come back and not even count them and realize they're one short but one of the teachers happened to walk by and see her pounding on the window trying to get out of the bus and this was four hours later you know and uh so you know what do you do so she has switched to a different center now and uh do you have any children oh i work in a day care center and yes i enjoy it a lot oh do they go to a day care center or do they stay at oh that's nice oh that's nice i i think so i think it's hard to find a good day care i have worked in at some other ones that were not very good in my opinion but this one that i'm in now is is very good and one of the key things is how many adults are there in ratio to the children and like in pennsylvania for babies that's what i work with there has to be a one to four ratio at the most no more than four babies per care giver but we keep it down to like two to one yeah that makes it a little easier to deal with oh i know we what we do is we have these [cribs] in the back room where they sleep that are um low to the ground and they're [reenforced] real strong and they'll sit four babies we would just lie them in there and they roll real well and maneuver that will get them out no right right yeah that's certainly something we hope never happens most really care in this center really care uh most everyone has a college degree in like early childhood education and really there's only like eight children per room and then there's like two or three mostly three care givers in each room and that enables them to spend more time with the children sometimes i feel like all i'm doing is changing diapers giving bottles and putting babies down for a nap so it's nice to be able to play with them and really get to know them it's easy to get attached to them too um in my room they go from eight weeks to nine months and throughout the center it goes up to like age twelve so i have the real real young ones in my room uh_huh they're you know they're wonderful they don't complain too much yes they are a lot of fun not quite it's a when they start to crawl they try to climb up on things and you have to be real careful all the everything is baby proof you know all the doors have [latches] and stuff so they can't get into anything but they try but yeah in my area because i live in a college town in penn state university so i there is a lot of a lot of college educated people and stuff that are in the centers that really seem to have an idea of what's going on and uh in general though i've i've been really disappointed with a lot of other centers i've worked at and it all and all it's not my choice for when when i have children but but some people don't have a choice yes uh_huh that is sad what oh my god oh oh my god oh that poor child that's awful well i hello my name is donna and i'm calling from plano texas oh okay um would you like me to go first okay um i have three children um two two who are in regular school uh eleven year old an eight year old and then my little one three year old is in um a university of gymnastics it's a a preschool and um i think it was really hard to um to pick the right uh day care or preschool or mother's day out i guess you can classify them all together um some of the qualifications that i look for was that uh you know the cost and um exactly what they did if it was structured or [nonstructured] if they had a little academic um uh in there and um you know um you know what the qualifications of the [teachers'] were and if the place was clean and um the hours and um just just kind of going by word of mouth and finding out if anybody else has been pleased with their program that kind of stuff oh congratulations right or staying home uh_huh that's a very good place to start i think uh_huh yeah the mother's day out programs and that's where [shannon] had started in a mother's day out program and uh the churches always have i think a a pretty good program and you have to make sure that you um that you apply pretty early because they do have a lot of places have very long waiting lists and um and another question to ask is if they're um state certified um you know if the teachers have um their master's degree in in child education and um child development um you know what what kind of a structure is it going to be um when your child's a little bit older like a three year old you'd be more concerned with if there's a type of care that it's torture for them to lay down and take a nap is there like a mandatory nap time what they do at [shannon's] school is have a video tape going and if and they lay on these little mats and if they fall asleep they kind of let them sleep and the teacher stays with the sleeping ones and the other ones get up and go do something else so she doesn't have to necessary take a nap there you know which is which is nice um that's true right and sometimes when the child's a lot younger before they're really um before three years old you know like the church is a good program and sometimes you even consider um you know having a private person come to your own home when they're real little or or something like that and another consideration is how many infants or children are they what's the ratio of of teachers to to children because that makes a a a difference and if your child would be maybe sleeping in that crib all day just your child and or do they just put any child in any crib you know you would want maybe your child to have their own sheets all the time and not have another child use that bed you know i'm sure that um whatever you decide you'll be happy with and it's exciting time to have a new one i bet that's that's wonderful uh_huh asking right some some places um start them as early as i think well some some places take them as infants i guess you know like eight weeks even um there's a place to look into um um a friend of mine who's a nurse is was telling about a wonderful new place that opened some place in on fifteenth street up it's in plano somewhere where um nurses that used to work in the hospital take care of infants infants and then only up to like two years old and it's it's supposed to be really a a you know some places just [specialize] in just real little ones and then other ones uh are the older children but it is a difficult situation i think when they're when they're little it's almost easier to leave them because when they're three and they're cry hi this is laurie and i'm in garland sure uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right well we don't have any children but we're going to have one next year thanks so um that's something that i'm probably going to be looking at maybe in the future we haven't quite decided if i'm going to i'm working part time now and i don't know if i'll be doing that or what we're going to do but if we do then i'm going to need to find somebody and our church has a mother's day out program which they started last year and we know a lot of people at the church so i would feel very confident with leaving my child there uh_huh uh_huh okay uh_huh uh_huh time uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh um you know it's kind of scary i guess because you hear so many bad things about day cares lately and so it's i guess it's such a growing concern but then there's a lot of good things you don't hear right to children right uh_huh right right yeah yeah we're pretty excited yeah but that you know we have been thinking about that but it's a little ways off in the future but um i figure you know i'd probably start asking around at church because i know they have a limit as to how old they can be before they you know before you can bring them in uh_huh um right uh_huh okay uh do you have young children oh well then you are familiar with it okay i uh i have grandchildren and i know uh one has gone to a well two of them have gone to preschool and i know what the experience my daughter has faced with that why don't you tell me what you have found okay so okay so it was in home child care you took them to someone's home well both times uh_huh oh uh_huh i know that in raising my children uh i was fortunate i didn't have to work we didn't necessarily have a lot of things but uh and i know my daughter because she has three and to have three in day care you know even though one of them's in school full time one of them's you know in kindergarten that is a lot of money i mean it's so expensive you have to really make a lot of money and i'm glad that she gets to stay home so that she can then participate with what's going on in their life uh bosses don't always seem to understand getting off to go to christmas programs in the middle of the day or something you know and i know that one of the day cares and it's a a well known chain uh she was not at all happy with it was there was too many children per person they were just kind of left to play there was no structure to and the middle grandson went there as a uh like a preschool thing she was wanting him actually to start getting a certain amount of of learning and training and stuff not just there you know so he went like uh i think he went well five mornings a week if i remember correctly and uh you know and it was supposed to be a base you know starting to learn the colors and and learning to associate with children so that when he went to you know school and stuff and uh she was most unhappy with it there was no structure there was nothing to it you know and uh she pulled him out of that one and put him in a another one that was excellent it was it was like a little kindergarten and uh they had hot lunches and and they had classes that you know one class they'd do art they even [familiarized] the children with computers uh it was just it was really a very excellent one he's now five and a half he's in kindergarten this was last year and uh so you know it helped him and and the first one uh he went to a uh church preschool that was very good the methodist church in richardson the big one and it was a excellent they very good oh does he yeah they uh the church ones church ones seem to be very well run oh really oh i had uh i just assumed that most churches going by you know experience there that you know that they were good i i didn't know that uh you know i'm not that familiar i just know that you know first united methodist of richardson was just a great program uh_huh yeah it's a pretty good size church too isn't it uh_huh so well are you enjoying staying home oh uh_huh uh_huh well isn't it very hard to teach young children and then come home and deal with young children and have enthusiasm uh_huh i have got two one is uh two and the other one's four and uh this is my first year of staying home i've always had them in child care uh_huh uh_huh well uh the with our second sitter the first one didn't quite work out there were some things going on that i wasn't really happy with and so i felt that that i need to move on with them and so i found another baby sitter and she was wonderful except i thought that there were too many in the home and it just seemed like it was so hard to find uh really good child care she was wonderful it's just that i felt that there were too many in the home it was in home child care uh_huh uh_huh right and uh and then i worked in in the child care centers and i wasn't really happy with the particular one that i was working in so i just always had a fear about you know child care centers so that's why i put them in a in a in home day care uh_huh and then i just decided that i was just missing a lot of their time whether they were so little and and i couldn't get off of work as often as i wanted to when they were ill so i just decided it was probably best just to stay home for a while until they were a little more uh independent and uh i could go back to work yeah that's how it's going now uh_huh oh yeah yeah yeah oh no yeah uh_huh wow uh_huh uh_huh huh uh_huh oh uh_huh and how old was he oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh my little boy goes to the methodist uh in garland uh_huh i'm real happy with that one well i've i've heard that the methodist ones are excellent uh_huh even the even the mother's day out programs i heard are real good yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah because this is first united methodist in garland that he goes to and i'm real happy with that uh_huh yeah well that's a yes i am uh i taught for richardson school district and uh i taught early childhood and i really enjoyed it but it was just it was taking a lot of my time and i noticed i was spending less and less time with them and it just seemed like they were sick more often and i just couldn't get the time off to so yeah it is it really is yeah it really is and i felt so uh what do you think about child care right probably find someone how come you wouldn't take them to a day care just because of the yeah they seem to pass a lot of yeah you kind of wonder whether or not i took uh [cammy] to a oh it was a preschool day care type of thing but i kind of i liked it some ways and some ways i didn't uh i think the ratio of kids to teacher is really important and well i think they had a they had two teachers and i think there were twenty kids but i only had her going two days and most of the other kids were going more days so that was probably my own fault that she didn't oh you know one thing i noticed is uh uh just they were trying to get her to teach her to write her name and uh i didn't notice it until this summer when i was working with her that she would bend her wrist all the way oh not in a natural form yes and uh i was kind of mad that they had never noticed that and either pointed it out to me or or uh tried to say look you're holding your she was holding her pencil in the right fingers and stuff but she was yes and uh i hadn't worked with her on writing at all at that point she was four or three yeah she was uh it was last year and uh then this summer i got the thing from the school that says things to work with the kids on and i like i said i didn't notice it till then because i hadn't worked with writing letters or anything and stuff like that no they never course like i said i took her two days a week and maybe that was my main reason for taking her was uh just social skills more than anything else i felt she needed the just i didn't feel like she was mature enough socially and uh uh_huh oh yeah i think it would be hard to take them to people you don't know [preschool's] a different thing but i think it's hard to take kids to somebody you don't know and or unless you have awfully good references reliable uh people i don't know it's so hard to take young kids anywhere for very long it is the older ones it's not you don't even really have any real worries because you know that they'll play with whoever's there and they usually adapt pretty well but uh well and you know their kind of their schedules and you know if they're upset and that type of a deal i don't know how uh people uh that have young kids working work full time and and do it really without being stressed out all the time i think it's well i don't know then then on the other hand i think it's harder to stay home in some regards it's hard to always keep yourself feeling like you're doing something productive and at the end of the day your house still feels like it's a mess and you haven't got anything done and what am i going to fix for supper yeah it's kind of hard to always feel gosh what is this important what i'm doing and no no it it doesn't but i think for taking kids to a probably people that take them to uh preschools and day cares full time oh they would i don't know probably just feel a different uh i think i just think it would be hard to do that full time i feel such a responsibility even when we go out for a few hours that are they driving the baby sitter crazy and you know oh well my my feelings on it is uh i wouldn't take a child to day care you know i mean i'd i'd wind up uh just a baby sitter in a home uh well too many kids and and i think too many infections and things coming in yeah [sicknesses] and i don't know then all the things you hear about them yeah i mean i'm sure there's some good ones but i just i don't think that i would uh oh uh_huh oh yeah yeah how was it oh she went oh she did [wrapping] her arm all the way around yeah oh uh_huh well they'd never picked it out though huh or just never said anything yeah yeah yeah well one thing that's kind of different too though a preschool than than taking a a infant or to at a day care where they're taken care of yeah yeah well i think it's hard to leave them it is yeah yeah it it is i think just hard to leave them because nobody will give them the kind of care their own families will yeah yeah oh yeah oh yeah it is yeah well uh the work never ends that's for sure so huh uh_huh or is everything okay nancy do you have any children oh well that's nice that is lucky well how old um does a child have to be before you have to you get to stop making arrangements for him i wonder uh_huh uh_huh well and um it's nice for them not to be alone uh_huh not after oh no yeah she is well i'm glad you have that um opportunity to have your mom well i i have two kids and uh five and six a girl and a boy and um so far i haven't had to make a lot of child care arrangements for them because um i'm at home now full time but um when i was going to school i would go to school a time that my husband wasn't you know when he was at home so that we would just switch back and forth like that but um it's really scary and i would really hate to be in a position to have to find child care uh_huh no uh_huh oh well that's nice and i know that i have um done some [babysitting] myself and uh when i was in school and needed extra money and i know how i feel how i felt as a provider of child care that even though you're you're taking care of someone else's child and you're forcing yourself to you know treat them equally and you know better usually better than your own um it's not the same and it made me realize that um no one will love your child as much as you and your mother your and um the family and no one will look out after them and i just think um so far i think my preference would be rather than to have like a oh a big day care that um what is that like child kinder care and things like that rather than having one where they would deliver the children to school in a van or something i would prefer to have in home care either my own home or a neighbor or something uh_huh right it is hard no no and i know um when i pick my kids up from school they want to come home and i and i would hate for them to have be picked up by a day care and be taken to another large group situation so i think uh my preference would be a small small if i had to find day care would be a small someone that i knew uh_huh no well that's true because even now when they're gone to school it seems like there's just not enough time left over in the day and uh by the time they have to eat and have homework and they want some free time and there's just not enough to time in the day to do anything good quality for them but that's really yes i have a twelve year old and i've been very lucky i haven't needed child care except for my mom so i've been real lucky i'm a nurse i go to school i mean i go to work early so my mom comes over in the morning and gets her ready for her school or just hangs by while she gets ready drives her to school then i'm home to pick her up so i'm very very lucky well i could do it now but she gets lonely in the morning and i feel better um she has a crazy father out there somewhere that i just don't let her out of my sight so um you never know yeah yeah she feels that way you know and we have a neighbor on the next block that she could always walk over there and go to school with but we just feel better doing it this way so i don't know what day we'll stop we we were about to stop one day this year and then her father called the school and made all kinds of [threats] and so we didn't stop and so so um you know you realize that it only takes one second for something to happen so even though she's twelve she's still a kid so you got to be careful yeah i'm i'm glad too uh_huh uh_huh yeah well i would too because even though a place can look pretty good on the outside we're finding out now that it's not always on the inside and i i just don't know what i would do if i had to do that i know the hospital that i work in is a big hospital and they provide child care and of course they charge for it but at least all the nurses can leave their children and they're always watching them they can eat lunch with them if they feel sick they can call them at work and they run over and check on them and they feel a little better than if they dropped them off somewhere on the way so yeah it is nice right right well that's right yeah right right yeah yeah just never know i [babysat] for the little girl next door for a year or so when her parents first got divorced and it was hard to treat her equally with my child they were the same age and they played together and they were good friends but like you said you tend to go more for the other one's side just because you are responsible and so it it got hard my daughter got jealous and um it just wasn't the same as when they were just playing as friends because she had to be there every day so i stopped that after a year because it was difficult to balance it so they do uh_huh uh_huh i know i know yeah yeah well i would rather do without some things and i know that some parents they both do have to work but a lot of people where i live are working just because they want bigger and better and i would never do that i never have done it and i just never would do it i would rather do without some things that really aren't very important compared to being with my child when they're growing up so no there isn't there isn't any time that's true so you have a child two years old in child care right now uh_huh uh yes our first and he just turned three months so we're just starting into hunting for child care right now both of us are students uh uh university of southern mississippi uh she's yeah uh probably uh actually spring semester a year from now he's going to have to be in child care uh five days a week more than likely uh depending on how my class schedule runs because my wife will be doing her internship that semester it will be forty hour week not no eight to five type of thing so depending on what my class schedule looks like he may spend four anywhere from four to eight hours a day in child care at that point right now we're trying to avoid it but we just as a matter of fact just yesterday hired a a girl to uh watch him uh i get out of class at certain time and my wife is already supposed to be on her way to her class you know once a day this overlap happens where we can't one of us be home so for about twenty twenty thirty minutes a day we got a baby sitter comes in uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah uh that makes a big difference yes yeah there's a lot of child care available but invariably there's waiting lists and we were a little slow getting on the waiting list with the uh okay the university uh [university's] uh uh department of uh uh their home [ec] department uh they uh they have a [subbranch] uh american family counseling and their people staff this this uh the child care center just off campus but uh they have a pretty good size waiting list so uh_huh yeah yeah well it's best yeah a cottage industry's the best way to do it really because if you over uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh yes and it's amazing how much good things like uh sesame street will do yeah we two year old daughter in child care and we went through the process of searching for child care and uh finding what we consider to be real good child care at a uh pretty reasonable price we think how about you do you have any children oh boy yeah are you where are a student no kidding i was a professor in a university here in california for a while yeah uh are you going to uh put your son in child care in a a year or two yeah uh_huh yeah yeah yeah well that's a good experience i think and uh there are a lot of things to think about and the articles that are written on the topic are pretty good and they kind of boil down to uh any other important decision you really have to explore the alternative and what we found uh to be the best guide was our own instincts about people who were going to be loving and uh that's more important than anything else we could have sent uh her to a fancier uh facility uh she goes to a home this is a uh a couple uh [emigrated] from china early in in their lives they've been here probably thirty forty years they've got three daughters uh and they have a loving home and uh they're both there and they have a kid that comes in and helps them in the afternoon and our daughter is healthy happy well adjusted and enjoys going to see her friends so it's a good experience i if it's good i think it's very good for the child and if it's a loving environment i think it's very good and and that's really what we've learned about it she'll have to go on to something more stimulating in terms of preschool in a year but uh we feel real fortunate and we were able to uh just uh choose in the marketplace i don't know what it's like around uh [hattiesburg] uh_huh yeah yeah i'll bet they're involved yeah yeah well that's uh i know it's it's a real hard thing to do even for people in in uh university communities out here at [manford] they have a you know a a a real good facility and there uh is quite a waiting list to get into that so it's uh uh you know it's a it's a it's an important decision it's an industry that's still a cottage industry and i think this is really is buyer [beware] well it is the best way to do it interestingly i think that uh my own interest in in development human development leads me to believe that that's a good sign and that uh private enterprise is the way to go and that it will lead to a fundamental change in the way we learn because i think what we're going to go to is much more commercial entrepreneurial learning [ventures] in the market as a matter of fact my future is [banked] on that uh professionally because i believe that that there are uh pressing needs in the marketplace [unmet] by schools colleges universities for uh learning a lot of things that kids can learn watching sesame street and in child care primary skills which turn out to be the most important skills in life it's it's phenomenal it's phenomenal the programming the human operating system okay well um i used to work in a day care center i worked in um in all the different areas of the day care center and it is they can be deceiving to people i did not work there long because i couldn't handle the the treatment that the children got and this is supposed to be a very well known center here in tyler who had two or three um centers all over you know the um city and they would um be one way when the parents were there and be another way when the parents left so um i think you need to make you know if you do do day care centers you know you should make frequent checks and um to check in on them when they're not expecting it because they do do things differently when you're not around so uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh well this one was set up good i mean they had two teachers to every room um sometimes three and they had a good system like so when you walked in everything looks cool the problem i had was that they did not show affection to the children enough they did not show them care to these small children who are being left um they one time i picked up this little boy who was crying and the owner came and just chewed me up one side down the other you know he said you are going to have every child in here wanting you to pick them up and i said no this child was crying and needed some comfort you know what is your problem so um yes right they did they had like um the the crawlers the babies that didn't walk in one room the ones that were starting to walk in one room then they had like the um three three year olds upper fours lower fours upper fives lower fives you know just like that you know they really did separate them well it was just the teachers themselves right but yeah that they're not yeah their system right but their but their system was was great but um the you know the caring just wasn't there the one woman that taught that did the babies i worked with her and she was fabulous she loved them babies and she loved them and cared for them but um every one of the others that i saw was just screaming and yelling and um you know would make me a nervous wreck so you know yeah these kids are just in a day care center all day and uh with no any type of emotional you know getting love getting care they're just there you know going through this routine which is lousy uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah you don't see that much that's cute yeah that has to be with a day care center i've never heard of that that's that's a new one on me uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah well that i know the things that we kind of looked at is is you want to see how many teachers you have and and how many kids they have and how they break it up because we had we had one that sounds kind of like what you were in it it was a really good one and in fact it worked out for us because my wife we kind of [bartered] my wife did [artwork] for them and then you know so we got our day care free but they didn't have enough teachers and uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh huh yeah did did they separate them by age group because i'd think you know i think that's one thing that was important uh_huh yeah it sound yeah it sounds like to me your your concern would be to make sure that they are loving people affectionate people that they're they're kind of may be parents themselves or something uh_huh uh_huh yeah i i i think that's probably a really important thing because you can have [doctorates] and p h d's and all that kind of thing and you know know all the technical stuff but if they don't reach out and touch the kids then that doesn't do any good yeah yeah the other the other group that we had was kind of interesting the other one we went to the it was a husband and wife team and we knew them from other associations but uh it was kind of interesting because she was kind of the strict one and i think you know she would she'd put her arm around the kids and talk to them and stuff you know but he was actually the more um the more uh what [demonstrative] type the more loving he would you know laugh with the kids and play with the kids and and it was kind of interesting to see that that it was actually the man in the group that that did that side of it yeah so they had a really nice balance we liked that one in fact it was called [humpty] [dumpty] play school or something but they also did they also did some of the teaching things and then they had um you know obedience obedience was important and you know so they you know they used uh-oh i think they used the you probably heard where you know where you stand in front of the clock and get your power back to control yourself and it's it's one uh i can't remember what they call it actually but you just stand them in front of a clock and you know it has a second hand that goes around and they have to stand there steve this is like i mentioned brian and i guess we're going to want to be talking about child care uh do you have any experience in uh finding child care uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh well uh we're kind of lucky i i'm uh i'm working my wife isn't working and she is taking care of the kids also and and so we haven't had to look for child care either which has been very nice but i do have like you mentioned a lot of friends a lot of uh co workers and associates that are looking for child care and some of the things that they're very critical about is the number of kids that are in the child care uh what kind of you know uh guidance counselor to student or you know uh adult to child relationship how many you know you don't want to have thirty or forty kids and only one adult then uh something happens and the adult wouldn't be able to uh accommodate or take care of the kids very well and uh they also want to make sure that the kids are being taught and not just playing around all the time so you know depends also upon the the level of the child we uh we uh take a very close look at finding a a preschool a good preschool for our kid and i kind of relate that to that in in making sure that the the uh teachers are very well educated themselves they have a good curriculum and that they're willing to teach the kids and have a fun time with them and it's very important i feel uh that the kids interact with other children also it's a it's a good way to develop relationships with other kids their age and uh get to know and work with kids so i don't know i i guess we're kind of in the same boat we haven't had to look very carefully for child care uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right right i think it's uh important like you mentioned that's a good idea on the uh parent co op because uh i'm very concerned about the welfare of my kids and i don't want to just take them to somebody i pick out of the yellow pages or out of some ad somewhere i want to trust the people and uh you know you hear in the you hear on the t v and you read the newspaper quite often of of people that you know don't treat or take care of your kids the way you think they ought to be taken care of so and hope to never get into that situation where we have to have to find somebody and we have to trust someone with the welfare of our children and hope that we can stay in this situation for awhile so uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's true that's true well steven it's been well ourselves we have i guess never had to look for child care our kids are now fourteen and eighteen but uh and so you know you go back those many years and uh we didn't do it very much we i guess we were in a situation where we didn't need to be looking at uh two family income at the time and our kids were older but i've had to deal with uh you know friends of ours that have used child care and that kind of thing uh so it my involvement hasn't been direct but still have been you know certainly exposed to criteria people are using how about yourself right right right uh_huh yeah yeah i i kind of think that uh you know some of our friends or even our own children will be in a situation where they may need to look for child care but even you know here i guess we have in one sense two forms of uh child care there's where individuals will in one primarily babysit children in their own home and that will be groups of anywhere from one or two to maybe seven or eight children and then otherwise there will be the majority are co [operative] day cares uh people form a co op and uh parents will work in the co op and put a fair number of hours frequently they will hire staff to be at the day care and the emphasis is primarily uh someplace for the children to be but at the same time there's some fairly good training programs and and some of them formal two year programs uh so that you know there is some definite uh creative play good social interaction that kind of thing yeah yeah you know we've even had some of those kinds of situations publicized here and i guess you know it are it's uh typically uh whether it's been child care in a home or in a larger situation where actually it's more of an institution and you've actually got children that most people would consider problem children and it's not and it's more of a group home rather than actually day care type of facility uh go ahead um well you should you should have some opinions on that then well i guess if i were going to choose i mean my first consideration would be safety my second consideration would be uh uh health and uh i guess my third consideration would be uh warm environment warm personal environment oh absolutely as a matter of fact i believe that the safety and and health uh issues uh depend in a very direct way on the people who are working with the children and it's the most difficult of all for a parent judge uh because a person can be very nice and warm and loving but if he's a space [cadet] and doesn't watch the children and be aware of what the safety hazards are maybe the right thing to do is to uh when a couple has a child then they should both take you say the first four or five years are the most important and i think i would agree with that they both take four or five years off and devote to parenting get rid of all these child care centers at least for young kids below the age of six and then uh and then of course to make up for that uh the uh parents would have to work in their later years longer you know in other words they probably would not work may not may end up not working at all in the twenties uh but then they have to work from age thirty or or forty to age seventy or eighty or ninety right well you know the uh uh the world is changing uh from from uh industrial uh base to uh information base and so what that means is you don't have to be physically powerful to work all you have to do is have a sharp mind and i believe that uh mental [acuity] is easy to sustain maintain if you just simply continue to exercise your mind so i think a person could work uh into the seventies eighties even nineties for that matter if they didn't have to do a lot of physical uh labor they could maintain uh oh okay yeah the uh subject is child care and how to determine child care and that's uh an interesting one for me to talk about since i have no children but i did run a child care facility for a while and uh have some i do have some thoughts on that yeah uh it's uh an interesting experience to be a surrogate parent for or parent for a lot of people there and uh it's also very interesting in terms of how people choose the child care facilities right right well right uh in texas we have to meet certain state standards in order to operate on a at an institutional level and at a like a small home level so you meet the standards but then after that there's there's a lot more i think it's important as the safety and health and that kind of stuff is qualification of people who work there and in hiring people who would work at the uh day care the child care facility was very difficult to find qualified people uh in terms of not just just because somebody has a child or uh likes children doesn't really mean that they're qualified to give the child the kind of supervision and training that that uh exactly and that was the most difficult thing of all to find the the right people the qualified people oh oh exactly and the other thing that's difficult in uh it's a too small setting like a day care center is to find the right program of enrichment for the child because you don't want to just warehouse the child and i didn't want to run an institution where that was the case where all we were doing were warehousing because the first four five years or so important and you have to have the right kind of enrichment and that that includes uh an atmosphere in which the child is safe and and he's watched and his physical needs are cared for but also his uh [developmental] needs are cared for too that would be lovely uh_huh well that's an interesting thought because that would be okay that would that would help on the other end too in in terms of not warehousing people and letting people be productive for as long as they can be uh_huh that's exactly right oh okay so what kind of experience do you do you have then with child care does it say something okay well does it usually make a recording or okay okay uh_huh i have three uh_huh yeah i do yes uh i don't work though but i used to work and when i had two children i work off and on just temporarily and usually find friends to babysit but i don't envy anybody who's in that situation to find day care but does your sister live in a big community uh_huh oh really uh_huh um uh_huh wow how lucky i i know a lot of people around here sometimes have like mothers or grandmothers that take care of their kids and but the community i'm in is not a real large one so there are a lot of people who babysit in their homes that you know you either know them or know somebody who knows them to get to yeah to get references and that so but uh i i don't feel comfortable about leaving my kids in a big day care center but simply because there's so many kids and so many yeah and uh you know colds and things like that get spread real easy and things but and they're expensive and course there's a lot of different types of day care available too you know where they teach them academic things or they just watch them and let them play and things like that but take a long time to find the right place uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh when he starts [toddling] around and stuff yeah uh_huh it would be hard i think it would be kind of stressful it would be nice to have him around but uh seems like you know what if he cried at the wrong time or the phone rang or you know at the wrong time but uh_huh well when you have kids will you work do you work now uh_huh uh_huh uh yeah actually i teach my kids at home so i'm here all the time uh_huh yeah yeah so not it depends on the state you live actually some laws absolutely prohibit it some states uh say that you have to be a certified teacher in order to do that our state doesn't yet say that and i'm not a certified teacher i went to college but i you know but my kids are only elementary grades levels right now and so one of them was for a couple of years and so you know my oldest he was and then my youngest two have never been so anyway but we don't i guess i think uh i wonder if that worked i think it usually does you might try uh i don't know hold it down a little longer and see if it uh okay i well i don't remember it seemed like it did but it might not i guess i guess we can start uh no i don't i don't have any kids i uh my sister has a she just had a baby he's about five months old and she was worrying about going back to work and what she was going to do with him and the different do you have kids oh really uh_huh yeah uh yeah she lives it's a it's a fairly large community she uh got real lucky though he had a boss who uh moved into a larger office and she's able to take her baby to work with her and it's a small office that she works in and uh it's a it's a legal firm office and it's just one lawyer and so she's the only one really that takes care of the office there's no one else that works there and so they have an extra room and everything for the baby so it works out pretty good for her yeah yeah so it's fairly safe worried that they're not going to get enough attention yeah yes yeah and you and you don't always even know if it's it's going to be the right place or not anything i guess could happen because after i guess after he you know gets to a certain age she's going to have to take him to a day care yeah when when he's not when she can't keep control of him and he starts crawling that's uh_huh yeah i think she has problems with that too i don't know that's something i've considered uh i always kind of think it would be neat to be able to watch them and be there for them all the time is that what you do oh so they don't go to school is it like uh oh what's that called it's uh correspondence school they do it at home that's interesting do you have to have any special training so they haven't been to public schools at all um so you've never had uh i've had uh three boys through i guess uh some child care each one of them and now they're in school so it's all over but uh i guess i would say it's not easy to find what most parents would want is that right i guess uh the only rule uh i can think of is that i like to look for places with uh good respectable [nonprofit] behind them like a university or a hospital or something like that if they're associated with a college or a university they're usually a pretty good bet uh i think it's sort of the opposite of what you would want when you buy a car or refrigerator something you'd like to get it from some good [cutthroat] capitalist company but not with child care yeah for profit places i would really look at them awfully carefully but uh when i was when my kids were young i was teaching at a university and uh the child care center associated with our university was quite good so i felt confident that they'd do right oh you mean uh learning type uh yeah i mean actual experiments they would have to get your permission but yeah i suppose uh if you're if there is a psychology department or an education department around you might find you might find that they're pushing one form of education or another i guess that's true but uh i never had bad experience in that respect of course you also tend to get people that are associated with the university and the hospital as the parents and they you know pretty good people uh_huh yeah i never really worry very much about it i tend to think those are very rare but quickly [exploited] and made public so i never really worried too much about that being uh uh the case with my boys uh i you know i think those things get into the headlines immediately when somebody finds out about them but i don't think it's as common as uh the newspapers would make you believe oh yeah i mean that right well in our case we made the decision that my wife would stay home until the boys were uh in school and i'm really happy we did it although it was very very difficult and i think it was the right thing to do and we were uh we just decided that we would do it and we went ahead but uh not everybody can make that choice and even even though my wife wasn't working we did have uh one or another of the boys in uh child care for part just for part of the day uh or a couple of days a week just so that uh other things could get done around the house and so on so so we did look around i think my wife is much better than i am at that walking into a place and getting a feeling for whether it is a loving and caring place or not and uh so i would always trust her judgment on that uh_huh there's absolutely no question that you're going to be the best child care provider for that kid so yeah do it as long you can but i think you know you have to look through a place and you have to get a feel for uh how they treat the kids and uh uh what kind of staff members they have and how much turnover they have and things like that before you commit your child to them and i think you have the main thing is that you have to determine that they're perfectly open that you're welcome anytime without notice in the middle of the day and so forth and if they're at all [queasy] about that then i'd look elsewhere yeah right you have other friends that have kids uh being taken care of in uh child care uh_huh so but i really think the news reports are uh tend to sensationalize the problems i think the problems are more ones of cost and resources and uh pay and [exhaustion] and you know things like that rather than these uh uh really wild abuse cases that you read about because it make good copy yeah uh_huh well well i can profit by this because i'm due with my first in about three months huh i guess not i suppose you're absolutely right there uh_huh uh_huh of aren't don't they kind of use them for everybody kind of use them for guinea pigs for their for their pet theories or some such thing yes um well the thing i really worry about is uh the sexual abuse cases you read about and i mean you'd just feel awful if something like that happened uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh and another thing is cost i know so many of my friends i went to school with who are having babies right now and they finding in some cases they're finding it's just not worth it to work because it's all going out in daycare um um huh huh huh well i'm just [thanking] heaven my husband just got a new job his last company he was only working four days a week so it's and he just got a new job he's getting lots of overtime he got a pay raise and so i'm just grateful that we don't have to worry so much about my working or not i suppose uh_huh uh_huh you have to start wondering if they don't want you yes huh uh i have one but i haven't really had a chance to talk to her about that for a while uh_huh this is true current affair can get several shows child cases well i haven't had an awful lot of uh incidents regarding child care when my two year old was in new orleans she got bit on the cheek and uh but uh that's about the the uh the extent of it but but but when i really am am concerned about is that uh so many of these child care places are are coming under uh uh you know investigation for for uh you know child molestation and i and i and i'm saying to myself well you know you dump your your your little turnip off to uh you know this child care place and they don't pay very much and why why would they be interested in in your little turnip unless you know one of the motivations in the hidden agenda is well that's somebody to [molest] you know and uh that's a terrible kind of thing and i don't think my children have ever been subject to that but my wife didn't work and so we really didn't have that much exposure to it huh huh oh well that's interesting oh my god well you must have a just one hero [ace] professional job to support something like that oh well yeah uh_huh well not not all of us you know what the kind of things you're supposed to look for i'm an engineer and uh_huh yeah five hundred dollars a week for two kids that's incredible oh oh well yeah you know they could somebody will have a job at three hundred a week to get off welfare and you know that's a good starting wage but boy three hundred dollars a week doesn't go very far on child care huh i mean we used to pay pay fifty cents an hour to baby sit but mine are twenty two twenty three and twenty seven so you know that i guess baby sitters now are up at what five dollars an hour oh my uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i am a working mother i have three children and my children since i uh since they were very young i've had various um different alternatives child care arrangements and like most working mothers i'm really not defensive about it i personally feel uh in our particular situation i'm a much better mother when i work out of the home and my kids i think are very very secure well raised children my comment on this is that we paid an absolute fortune over the years for a variety of opportunities so i i i you know it is a problem and but as you pointed out i i think the real problem is the low pay child facilities and that is sometimes what some women who have to work that is all they can afford when our children were very young we had a pay a live in paid baby sitter that was wonderful and then as they got older they went to uh i preferred to call them schools and they were really all day preschools and they were wonderful and i think they got exposed to a lot of neat things but we did we really truly did pay a fortune i mean we were paying at one point well about about a close about five hundred dollars a week for two children so well i i'm a physician uh and as is my husband and and i felt uh very good about working i'm a pediatrician actually so uh but i think there are some wonderful child care opportunities out there for children but and we all know the kind of things that you're supposed to look for i think oh well i think it's real important that you have a place that first of all parents have a lot of input into and that they're always welcome and that they have a lot of activities where parents come in during the day and that at any time you can drop in and we had a really wonderful arrangement uh i'm with the university actually and they had a wonderful uh program that started at age three and it was about a block away from the hospital where i work and so many times at lunchtime i would go over and visit the children and eat with them and see what they were doing and they had wonderful they had things like gardens and lots of pets and just they had a four to one uh teacher student ratio so that that sort of an most of the teachers had degrees uh yeah it was incredible actually but it was good i mean it was it at that time there were two children and they were in special programs and each one was a little over two hundred a week and then in addition i paid a little bit extra but the kids were i mean they really had some great opportunities but what you were [alluding] to earlier is you know women who work for minimal wage and and really have feel they have to put their children sometimes they do put them in uh fairly low paying situations uh_huh uh_huh no even that that really i think i don't it's been awhile since i've looked at my youngest child is eight so it's been a little while since i've looked into actually daycare centers but they are you know the good ones do cost maybe sixty dollars a week since uh_huh something like that well you know but you made the comment earlier why would someone be interested in children i mean it has been a real uh there have been some good entrepreneurial type experiences and i think i think they have captured a certain market again the but then there are baby sitting groups as a pediatrician one of the things we've been real concerned about is the infections as you start putting lots of little kids together the [infection] rates that go around okay uh so your you i guess you're probably in the same uh same situation uh we're in we're kind of past having to provide child care our our kids are grown up we don't have any grandchildren yet but uh uh they're uh one's twenty six and the other is uh twenty twenty one so they're uh uh they're they're getting there you know there's no no no prospects right away for anything to happen but uh uh_huh oh uh_huh oh okay uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah it's hard we uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh huh yeah what did you do when your kids were growing up were you uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh he got sick yeah right well guess so yeah huh right yeah a little more flexibility you can come and go yeah when when our kids were small we had a couple of uh good good women who uh would often uh get them to come to the house uh_huh how old are your children uh_huh well they're going to be getting there yeah uh_huh oh i see i have uh five children i have a eighteen year old son the rest of my girls are like twenty three twenty six twenty eight and twenty nine and i have three granddaughters right now and uh i uh one's in iowa and uh she's she's a teacher and what she does is she teaches at a preschool and and so she kind of and they let her bring her her little daughter in for free and then so but she just works part time then i have another daughter in uh [bountiful] utah and she has to work full time and it's just tearing her apart she has a private baby sitter and uh the baby just screams i mean the baby is like seventeen months and she just screams well even if she knows that they're fixing to get ready to go over there they're not even there yet you know and and then i have my uh uh i have a seven month old granddaughter and uh her mother stays home and she they live they live with us you know in as orange county is really expensive they live with us and so of course we love it because we get to see this cute little baby all the time but uh uh she just uh she used to work in pre in the preschool and and and child care and she says after working in there and and you know here she was a provider but you know there's only so much one person can do she said it's so awful she said she'll never put her child in a in a in a in a in a preschool i'm sure there must be some good ones around here somewhere but it's really it's really really very difficult and well when when the uh the first uh ten years see first ten or twelve years i stayed home and uh then after that i i went to work and uh uh uh a couple of times i just uh uh you know then i had one job and then that job ran out because it was kind of a government [seeded] type job and then and then like about later i i tried to get the baby to a baby sitter supposed to be good uh recommended person from the church and i knew her personally she had two kids of her own and everything but i quit my job because i couldn't stand how she was taking care of my child i mean first of all uh her children were sick all the time so when my son stayed over there he got sick same thing same thing that the her kids had right and so uh we didn't take her over there until like about eleven o'clock then he she'd take my son and her daughter over to kindergarten but that day uh i was saying now he he's sick and she goes well she goes he has the same thing that all my kids have that's what he got you know goes well okay so it's not like he's going to [infect] her kids but then what happened was is i said uh he just threw up and kindergarten starts at eleven thirty so she said well she'll keep him home and he'll probably just sleep anyway well you know what that woman sent her sent him to kindergarten she sent him to kindergarten as soon as he went there the teacher took one look at him and he threw up again and they put him in the nursery uh they put him in the [nurse's] office and then what happened was is you know they gave her a call because they knew that she was my baby sitter called her and they said uh that he's sick well she wasn't home i mean her all her kids were sick but she wasn't home right and her and her her daughter that was in kindergarten with him also did not go to school because she was sick now why didn't he why didn't she keep him home with her no she didn't do that so it got to the point where he's he's supposed to get out of uh kindergarten like about two thirty and i had to leave work it was it was five o'clock in the evening and i found out he was still there at school and they were calling me and they said somebody's got to pick him up and i kept thinking that she was going to get picked up she was going to pick him up because she only lives in like two blocks away from the school i was trying to get my husband to come and pick him up and all that kind of stuff and he had a hundred and four fever they couldn't uh give him anything because they're not allowed to at school and everything i was so furious i i quit that job and i stayed home for awhile longer then i went and got a uh a job in real estate where i can kind of adjust my time a little bit better yeah but uh i haven't had any good really very good experience with child care no what um what do you think needs to be the criteria set for those what would you like to see in one uh_huh yeah i bet uh_huh um yeah yeah oh well that's good yeah is it i don't know maybe would you think a better student to teacher ratio do they have too many kids in most day cares for the people they have uh_huh uh_huh oh my goodness yeah um we don't yeah we don't have any but we have you know plenty of sisters and brothers that that have them and i i'm not sure that there is a solution to that as far as uh you know everybody has in their mind the kind of day care that they want but it seems you know that there's not really the perfect one out there right and that's not even possible anymore i don't think to be able to take care of your own kids without you know with everybody working these days uh_huh oh yeah yeah that seems probably the best way to do it yeah yeah um i haven't really the only day cares that i have been familiar with are the ones that are local here with the churches and they seem to from my experience be the best at what they're doing just because of what they're based on oh uh_huh yeah yeah i i think that's that's important uh_huh yeah how old are they oh uh_huh well you know kids kids do those uh_huh right right right yeah they're probably i would think needs to be i don't know if they have any type of uh formal or informal [spontaneous] or routine drop ins of agencies you know people checking up on like they do nursing homes you know they drop in to see if you're meeting all of the requirements by law and and i think they need to do that with day cares and just see what's going on so but i'm not really sure yeah i don't either it's not until you have kids i guess you worry about those things yeah uh_huh well i don't know what we've done to solve any of this but i've enjoyed talking with you and welcome to texas thank you well about the only thing i know is um one of my um friends at work um has um one little boy and she's about to have a second baby and i hear some of her um [tales] about trying to get uh child care now she doesn't like to use some of the places like um kinder care or la petite academy she likes to just find individuals you know who take children into their home and uh you know sometimes they have found somebody by word of mouth other times she has to go through the newspaper and see what she can find there are some um like um oh chamber of commerce you can kind of call there are some places like that that will give you some [referrals] at least but she just kind of goes and meets people that she sees advertise and and interviews with them and ask them their ways oh oh yeah there's been a few people that have kind of used the same person kind of like word of mouth one person in the department had them and then um you know other people had followed and had the same one as their child grows like some people only want little infants you know and when they get to two years old they don't want you know a whole lot of two years old because they're a little more active so they you know a lot people in the department seem to have used like the same couple of woman as their their children uh grow but i really keep thinking that t i ought to come up with something like through texins to have you know some kind of facilities there at work because it really is uh a lot of extra pressure on our working parents no i think it should be done through texans i mean i understand that that that t i wouldn't want to have liability for that and i can understand that i work in the legal department i don't want anymore lawsuits than what we got but but you know i think they could work out something with texins something that would be close to work because i think that would help ease things too if you've got your child somewhere close because i see these people you know [dashing] out the door um have to be up by a certain time because they have to go pick up their child if they don't pick up the child by a certain time then they run extra money you know to uh have late charges and uh you know texins is is not uh well i don't think it's really directly supported by t i i think it has it's own kind of funding but something like that that you know you would have to be a t i or a texins kind of um does it well how would i do that well uh again i know from the person who um you know is a friend ever mine at work she and i i've talked to her after she's interviewed some people just really sound i mean bizarre i mean you can't imagine that these people are putting in for um you know [minding] other children um like if you could go to the house and it seems to be in a disarray and the woman really isn't even dressed and it's afternoon and and you ask her about you know previous children and she won't talk about it kind of go okay um others if they have some way of handling like i kind of wonder about these women who take in children there are times that you're going to have to do you know for the women they're going to have to do some personal things themselves i mean every single day they may have you know every once in a while they may have some kind of um personal doctor appointment or got to get the car fixed or something like that how do they do that so you ask them do you have a fall back you know for those times are you going to put me in a bind or do you have somebody else who can take care of the kids or do those things for you on the times that you need to you know have personal time off and do those items and ask them you know who else uh have they you know baby sat for in the past and can you talk to them look at the facilities and ask them what kind of things they do to you know during the day with the child that kind of thing i guess uh_huh um um uh_huh um oh do you know one time i um we just got married a couple of years ago and there was people that were coming you know into town with uh children and and i wanted you know baby sitters for uh the service and and available to them if they didn't want to bring their children or you know get away and stuff and i just called in the from the yellow pages you know a baby sitter outfits that are um again must have some kind of licensing or whatnot and uh just had them i mean what i did was i had a baby sitter during the service you know and and um anybody who had children could just you know take the child to the nursery and i had somebody there everybody i knew was going to be at the wedding so i knew i had to find somebody i didn't know to do that um and it worked out okay i didn't know that there were services that you just called the yellow pages and uh there's baby sitters are us or something and you say please i need one you know oh yeah no problem we'll send you out one uh i thought i checked into it one time just pre planning and it can run like a hundred dollars a week i think my friend who now has a uh uh a two and a half year old she spends about fifty to sixty dollars per week for him so i think it's anywhere from like fifty to a hundred depending on the place you take yeah yeah it gets to be kind of expensive and i think you know some of the woman do uh weigh that um we've had some that have had their children and not come back so it just depends i think uh well we have one now who um is is part time she works half days well actually we have two one paralegal and one secretary and one attorney each have very young children and now they are part timing it is kind of like a test to see how this will work to have these people work part time uh depending on the responsibilities that we're giving them and to see how that will workout because they all want to you know still have a little income to help out financially but they want to spend time with their children so they're part timers and uh for the one that's working with me it's working very well i don't have any problem with that i have one that's um helping me out at um for the litigation we're doing and she's there uh three days a week and this that seems to be fine i can handle that very well with her being there only half time next week oh yeah well it's whatever they feel comfortable with you know basically whatever they feel best and there's probably some women who may not do their child any good being there all the time because you know they they they can't uh quite see themselves you know dedicated that much maybe they want to work a little bit whatever it is maybe they should think about do you really want a child or not and maybe again you know their their you know their ideas change once the baby is there they go oh well you know now i like this a lot more than i thought i would but uh [cathlene] the part timer she says you know she just doesn't she she's always one of these [workaholic] kind of people and she just really can't sit still enough to just be home with the baby she has to have you know something else she's always been one who's put in you know like the fifty to sixty hour work week and after she had the baby she was coming back in to check her office and to check her in box you know like ten days later she was back in and we were like [cathlene] you got two months off you know you don't have to be back in there she's just always back in there and she's well tell me about you said your daughter had some of this why don't you tell me a little bit about that without a completely oh my gosh really isn't any substitute for mothers no it's very bad i found out seen the thing that scares everybody to death right i think maybe when you talk about the criteria that's the one thing is to is to somehow get to know well enough what where you're putting this child and if you know your child well then then you know whether this is going to work sometimes some of these things work out well uh interesting enough my daughter uh just started working in uh in a day care center she needed to go to work and she has two little boys one's about uh uh almost five and the other's almost three and uh uh they were driving her crazy because they were never busy enough you know she couldn't ever do enough things to keep them uh away from the television and uh uh and that sort of thing and uh so but she looked at places to work for along time before she finally chose one that she said she could not have been comfortable in any of the others because uh this one's kind of laid back a little bit you know it's kind of [flows] with the children like her children play in another area but they're welcome to come and sit on her lap anytime they feel like it and uh and she can go by and wave at them you know and talk to them and visit with them and she gets this feeling of uh of uh [intermingling] with them and yet they get the activity of the other children which they seem to need at this point yes there's a lot of times when you need some of that but the idea of of having nothing else is what's uh and uh_huh no right it's very difficult costs so much but you can't hardly afford to work even when you have to yeah there are some ways [rightly] so you know it's a sad thing that uh that you realize the child care if it's done right is probably the most demanding job in the world and if they real are good at it you're probably not paying them any too much and yet and yet it's uh you can't get something else to do i guess uh that's probably the reason [sheila] felt like going that direction uh i have a niece that stayed here to that uh uh they were here for about six months with their two two little girls and uh she look in children here at my house while she was here uh you know not many like three others and uh uh we have a big house so it wasn't a problem and she uh but it was kind of an it was interesting watching her you know her interaction with the children she didn't do anything else all day she just sat and played and [intermingled] with them you know and read to them and change their pants and fed them and moved them from one thing to another yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh that's true i think so too i think that's the answer i think it's got to come through the work place where they where uh uh a parent can take a child and may be even have an area an isolation area where children who are ill can be there and uh you know if there not too ill uh and uh and a parent can go and do her work and there is somebody there who can do it think of how many jobs they would supply people who are not trained to do other kinds of things and with the right kind of supervision you know if you had somebody who who really knows what she's doing supervise other people you could really go a long ways to [alleviating] some of the problems that people have and so well it's been great talking to you right uh perhaps we'll talk again now what do you mean by letting go uh_huh right right well uh gosh my kids are older now so i feel like that that my uh choices are are different than when i first when i first went back to work uh you're right i i wanted to have somebody who came into the house and who performed you know certain functions and that closeness and i noticed that as the older they got you know the less and less picky i got about that uh uh that criteria uh but you know now uh you know i wish there was somebody not so much to baby sit the kids but tutor them in homework really really so but uh_huh oh see and that would have been wonderful uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah yeah yeah those uh those people who can uh stay you know home and and take care of the kids and uh you know do that i think are really special people uh so you just don't find that anymore uh even now the the day cares though are so expensive that uh i don't know how parents afford them right right oh yeah uh_huh yeah i i think it's gone up to like a hundred dollars a week and depending on on what age they are and uh you know if you want quality day care to where they have uh not only just their meals taken care of those basic necessities but also uh their education too uh_huh because uh_huh oh yeah oh yeah so it's a i i think it's changed over the years uh but you know i found uh like i said they at least when my kids were growing up that uh it was harder especially companies didn't have programs to where they would help you find baby sitters uh_huh that's right that's right because uh_huh no but you know i've read uh you know some stories uh about that and uh now now i don't do you know of anybody uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah no i just you know read in a uh-oh i don't know the the want columns uh but i guess when i had thought about it since i've been a single parent for so long that uh you know i wished i had the money for something like that because of the special uh-oh i don't know the uh the special closeness that bond that's formed versus taking them to a day care where they just they're one of many children yeah so that's a that's to me that's extra special uh_huh sure sure right right yeah it it could be age but you know i i can never regret regret uh the children uh going through that day care experience because they learned so many things uh such as responsibility independence uh you know that sharing i mean there are a lot of good things i i know there's a lot of drawbacks to women going back to to work but uh i think there was so many positives that that i saw uh that i really didn't have that much guilt about it yeah that made it real easy hi patty we're supposed to talk about uh child care my children are all grown you don't have any well some day you will and then then you'll be real selective about choosing a child care right well you know all about them then well tell me about it you didn't like the director yeah uh_huh oh boy i bet it did my wife worked at a child care quite a few years ago and she liked it all right oh i think she worked there about two years uh two or three years well we had small children at the time see so so uh it worked out pretty good she'd be there with some of them and and uh it worked out real good it was a church school where we we went to church there and uh she worked there but uh i have uh all my children are grown now and they have their children in day care one one of them keeps her child with a with a relative though and uh but the other one has used a day care for her children and uh yeah they uh her husband's sister and she needs the money and and plus you know she's close and gives them good care and and she has kids too and he's just a baby but he does enjoy though she has twins and they're two or three years older than him but they all spoil him you know and he he likes it watching them play and everything but uh oh gosh i'm sure it was i wouldn't you couldn't pay me to work in one you know you got to like you just got to you know not mind children that much but uh well of course that's just the way they are yeah and when you don't have children of your own that's not a lot of fun is it well but you probably will some day [reckon] huh well yeah but you got plenty of time to do that you sound pretty young but uh so i don't have a whole lot of experience with day care centers myself now either was it in dallas uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah oh yeah uh_huh i thought it might have been something that the state required but that wouldn't that wouldn't apply to that would it uh_huh they didn't make sense yeah well and it those kind it probably didn't pay a whole lot either so if it didn't pay a whole lot it's hard to put up with a lot of that mickey mouse stuff that's my other line no i'll just ignore it yeah i'll just i'll just ignore it if they want anything they'll little while and uh since we got yeah yeah i have four grandchildren yeah well neither one of them have them in a day care center right now but uh uh my my daughter that has three sons she is you still there aren't you i guess it was that thing hung up uh she had him in one and was real happy with it and then got unhappy with it and then she moved him to another one and was just real happy with it it's in garland so uh she had really i'd say she had pretty good experiences with them oh oh yeah the one the first one she quit they lost his medicine sent it home with another kid and it made her mad but i mean that's you know you got fifty kids there i could see that happening but of course you lose fifty dollar bottle of medicine but it looks like well it looks like they would whoever took it home would have brought it back but anyway it made her real mad that's why she left it but other than that i mean uh you know they'd been real good too so i'd i'd say she's had really you know real good experiences with them nothing no horror stories or you know of course they're regulated pretty strictly by the state all right [sandra] uh what we are supposed to talk about this morning are and i i can tell that you are must be an expert child care services and my my first question is what criteria is normally applied by a parent when they are selecting child care what are they looking for in other words uh_huh what age would you say uh a child should be before you could start applying this business of teaching them a little bit preschool information we talking what six or seven or four or five uh_huh they do seem to have a very much improved uh intellectual sort of a spirit and they're bright they look around and and they they know what's going on that's that i guess that's as important to say yeah uh_huh yeah i'm trying to think uh yes we've had our children in day care a little bit but not much i the the interesting comment i was going to make was that when my children grew up i felt very normal and uh with them and i didn't consider a lot of these little details that we're talking about but now that my grandchildren are growing up i look at them in a totally different style i i watch very closely their activities when i see them and i can i can tell when they're speaking more clearly the next day and and when they are understanding situations more carefully and i i don't remember doing it maybe i did automatically with my own children but uh i'm just looking with a much higher technical detail at at the grandchildren well i wish i did i'm still working but i'll be retiring soon it's it's just that uh with grandchildren they are for a short period of time and you just look at them and you absorb anything you can from them and uh you start comparing when you get from them with what you got from your own children but it was really a different environment something like that well let me ask you this is it difficult to find a day care when you have a a specific criteria of your own is that is that hard to find i see yeah uh_huh that's true yes sure my my daughter my oldest daughter lives in amsterdam holland and they have over there what they call a [kresh] well fortunately my children are pretty much beyond that it certainly is yes um our y m c a has after school child care um at several of the schools so that they don't even have to you know go any where yeah um and then for other schools that they don't have it at the school they have it at the y and they pick them up in a a you know a van or whatever i think it kind of depends on how many students oh okay uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well that's always nice too i did that when mine were were littler the first couple of years that i i worked only halftime when my first child was born and and he just stayed with a friend or somebody that maybe had one child you know his age um and that always seemed to work out real well and you know when somebody would decide to quit or something i always felt real [panicky] but i always seemed to manage to find somebody that i felt was just as wonderful as the other one you know so it seemed to work out um uh when i had my second one i stayed home for three and a half years and then and then went back right right unfortunately the preschool that i wanted the second one to go to because my first one had is a preschool that does not have any day care at all but it's such a wonderful preschool so i had to find somebody else to keep them and then and then somebody to take them there so that's always another problem uh_huh uh_huh right yeah uh_huh but then that's awfully expensive too well i mean if so you have someone come into your home that would be real nice but just almost almost cost prohibitive prohibitive you know uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well you just worked period huh if you had six children yeah oh where did the girl come middle oh that's good uh_huh right yeah that's true it's true well how cold is it up there oh okay well it's about fifty here so uh no it's quit yeah it was bad there for a little bit but uh anyway i'm a librarian uh_huh yeah i like that a lot and i kind of wanted to continue it even though my children were you know when they were born but like i said i was able to stay home for those three years so it made a difference uh_huh to get out yeah that's true i think everybody feels that way at times at least and then also that you'd love to be home at at other times but uh one thing i think it does do is it it it forces it forces you to make your children be organized and okay um well why don't you go ahead and start because you have more experience it sounds like uh_huh uh_huh oh oh goodness uh_huh oh goodness so do they know what they're saying though do they seem to know the words that they're saying because they're they're real young yeah because that could be a blessing further down the road but it can also be a problem now uh_huh oh uh_huh oh goodness um uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah they'll be because at this age they're real real young and they could pick up any kind of language it's it's amazing how easy they can learn well i've uh i got two children as well my oldest is eight and my youngest is four and i used to teach and when my first one was born i was lucky enough to be able to choose whether i wanted to work or not and even though i had just gotten my master's degree i chose to stay home just because i worried a lot about child care and really wanted to be able to be that person that raised my children and i like you're feeling the frustration of what they're picking up on that's exactly the worries that i had is that i worried about what kind of things they might be exposed to or pick up on and i was just really paranoid and i guess just decided to be my own child's care giver and at times i've regretted it because i miss working with adults and uh you know speaking regular language more than uh the children's you know kind of language right and as a cartoon once said i would like to have dinner with someone who can cut their own meat and that kind of thing um but now i'm getting at the at the stage where i will need to go back to work and so i'm looking at this issue and my four year old is just at the point where she'll be starting kindergarten next year which is still only half day so we'll still have to look at that kind of of setup for her so uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh oh are you so am i yeah what part oh okay i was in the phoenix uh mesa area oh okay uh_huh oh yeah because now you're depending on other people that you don't know uh_huh yeah yeah yeah that's right yeah and even if you have someone there right at your own house doing that kind of day care you still always have that little worry i'm sure so that that is a problem what kind of criteria do you look for when you are shopping around okay um have you had any experience in trying to find child care uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh really okay well i've done more or less the same we have five children and um uh yeah i just haven't found it equitable to work outside the home and so i have done the day care inside my home well i've done it for seven years and uh it's pretty well driven me crazy oh oh was it oh uh_huh that's true sometimes they do offer a just a play time for your kids uh_huh okay oh my goodness oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh no no you don't oh good oh how fun uh_huh oh good uh_huh that would be fun yeah that's good for the kids and then it's fun for you too to have that little break during the week oh now on that co op um do women just trade [babysitting] or oh oh uh_huh oh gosh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh my goodness uh_huh uh_huh oh well that sounds like a terrific idea any uh child care situations or experiences right yeah right well i've got three kids the oldest is nine and the youngest is three and we have actually a live in child care worker here that we you know a nanny that lives here and that makes it very easy for us yeah we've had um we're on our um our third our our our second long term person you know that's been just about two years for each of the two people that we've had and prior to that we had to take child care we took the kids to somebody else's home and that worked out okay but it wasn't that great well you know it was just it was partly the convenience and partly you know the woman the women that took care of our kids also had kids of their own and the households were a little hectic you know how it sometimes is oh yes definitely without a doubt i'm you know it's like having a a young adult in the family just about but that's okay i mean you know as long as their problems don't get too far out of hand well a little bit of a problem but you know that's just reality of it and you know you have to work with them and tell them ahead of time that somebody's leaving and somebody else is going to be coming in and help them adjust to the situation oh the youngest is three and the oldest is nine and the middle one is six and the after school school situation is great it's really convenient to have somebody whose job it is to make sure that they get home and and you know are taken care of properly oh yeah it it's expensive it'll it'll probably have to change when they get you know all old enough to go to school of some after school service our local y m c a has something like well yeah to a certain extent uh i guess you know my wife does more of that sort of i mean she she and the and the caretaker have intense discussions about that and i suppose i'm sort of a slug for not getting more involved but that's the way it is yeah oh it works out pretty well i think it's a good plan uh i think it's kind of [disgraceful] that it's so hard for so many people well yeah oh no doubt if one of us got laid off she'd be gone in two seconds i'm afraid i'm or have to oh we've got those situations and you know we've got to deal with that kind of stuff but but it's absolutely you know situation like ours you know where we could make enough money to cover it properly you know both we both work and then we pay the pay the nanny and we pay the do you have children okay uh_huh uh_huh that's a hard process isn't it i'm kind of at the other extreme i have a nine month old and one that will be born in october so oh really yeah that's when my [nephew's] birthday is and he goes well you should have it on the fifteenth so we'll see yeah it's that close i he definitely i had an unusual situation in my home my father was was alcoholic but uh and very [withdrawn] at that and so my husband is ten times more involved and we have more of a uh i guess a christian based home and so we try to make the family as important as we can and uh and i guess you don't have to have a christian based home to to feel that way but that's just part of our priorities that's right it certainly gives you some some specific goals to work towards but uh he helps a lot with her he helps feeding her changing her and playing with her and and i think he has to be conscious of of uh needing to spend time with her if not then he gets wrapped up in the t v and the newspaper and whatever else and he says oh i didn't spend time with emily but if he forgets i try to to help to him remember i think so i think uh i've been reading a lot lately about the children of alcoholics syndrome i don't know if you've heard of that or not but uh trying to relate that to me and i think because i had a strong christian background personally it affected me differently than it affected my sisters and i see myself uh with some of those qualities but with not quite as much anger as i see them towards him or towards my mother with certain things and uh as far as me personally i think it made me appreciate my husband more because he doesn't do certain things that my dad did so i uh_huh i think that's that's how i feel too i feel a need to dominate certain things and i try real hard not to be too [domineering] with with emily because i don't want to my mother was also a [domineering] type of personality because she had to take over the things that my dad fell short in and i find you know i think okay i want emily to be this way and this is what i'm going to do to make her be that way and then i think no you can't do that she has to develop her own personality and so sometimes i i have to step back and say okay we want to encourage her we want to influence her but we don't want to control her and so far it hasn't been too hard but she hasn't been making a whole lot of decisions on her own yet and so you know i guess i'm i'm just going to have to be real conscious of that as i as she gets older and does start making decisions and be conscious that i need to give her options but not make the decisions for her uh i i look at myself and i have three sisters there's four daughters in the family i look at myself compared to my [sisters'] families and see that one of them married an abusive husband one of them married an alcoholic uh the other one married into a pretty stable relationship and mine is pretty stable or much more stable i think probably than any of them but now i waited until i was thirty to get married and they all married at eighteen but uh uh well my dad in his [alcoholism] he was kind of irritating and there were a few times he was violent towards my mother but it was almost he like if he had any opinions to give he would tell my mother and she would tell us and so we had almost no direct relationship with him i mean he was there and and we you know did little things together as a family but on the whole there was no no direct communication no show of affection no even no show of anger unless it he was you know really really drunk oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i see my father relating much better to the grandchildren than he did to us not completely no he he still has a problem with it and he goes in stages but he still you know he will pick up my one of my granddaughters and say you know give her a hug and say i love you and the first time he said i love you to me was when i had been away from home for almost a year and a half yeah it i said i love you dad i miss you and then he said was able to say it back and and i was twenty four and that's the first time i'd heard him say anything you know similar to that um uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh they went through that entire process yeah uh_huh i think too that with us as women being out of the home i'm not working now i didn't work until about from about the time emily was about four months before she was born and but so many women are having children and returning to the work field that the the dads you know have to to follow through or a third person has to come in and follow through with with the the care and the dads are are doing more and that bond is starting you know like you said right at the beginning and then developing it's not breaking at any point at least it shouldn't and and and and in a good family it isn't unfortunately there's so many families where there isn't a father in the home it's just yeah that's right yeah yeah so uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah they see you go through the problems and still come out okay working together uh_huh yes yeah well that sounds good do you know something about how to take care of kids it is what i i do not know i have got mine well yeah i i do not have kids yet uh i am work for a couple uh for at least two or three years and my wife is planning on probably taking care of them at that point uh yeah that is actually yeah what i have been i am thinking of the child care center because they have like licensing procedures and and stuff like that that seems to me you know good and i mean it is a state license to seemingly more often than not it means that they are good and they have lots of activities and people who know how to take care of the kids and some uh_huh with somebody else yeah oh i agree and i wonder actually i wonder about costs because most people i know who who have kids you know uh one parent does not work a part of the time you know only works part time and takes care of the kid part time and then it turns out that that person's salary just winds up going to paying the people who who who take care of the kids you know that which amazes me uh uh i you know it never occurred to me how expensive that sort of thing can be yeah yeah that yeah i do not i do not you know i just it yeah it is it is strange thing because people do i mean in that sense it probably is pretty good to go out and just who cares if it if if all your salary goes to pay somebody you sort of get away for a while too we have i do not i do not uh it is strange it is funny that i should get this particular we should be on this topic now because uh because we have even though we have no kids we have people staying with us uh for the for the for the for the the weekend and they have a six a six year old son and a three month old son so i am just sort of seeing what all the hassles are you know of you know like last night we we we the six year old decided he wanted to go camping in the back yard so we pitched a tent in the back yard actually and his father and and the little boy and i all went out and had you know a a a boys' night out in the back yard and about quarter of one he woke up half crying and he could not sleep and this and that i mean we wanted to bring him inside so one about a one o'clock in the morning we all got up and sort of wandered inside all the benefits of taking care of kids or all the fun part of taking care of kids i guess yeah we plan on a couple of years and i suspect issues like child care will become very important to my life then you know yeah that that that is probably true although i i do not i do not like you say i don't know if i would put a kid there who is less than you know uh four years old or something yeah probably just to make friends and and stuff like that yeah i if it is just like i say this is a very foreign topic for me so one of those things i have to learn about i do i work with kids a lot i i do work with kids a lot i uh i i do uh uh i teach a karate class twice a week with with with kids uh they are four to seven actually there is one at i work mostly with four to seven and then eight to twelve i i am i am the class supervisor so i i help out in this class and uh and it is really um weird because i am not you know the when i first started doing it i i can put it this way it it has helped me gain lots of respect for people who can work with lots large numbers of kids because when i first started like i had no idea how to how to handle a five year old kid especially when there are ten of them floating around and you are supposed to be running around teaching them things and of course uh i i do but i am finding there is there is uh another person there who has he has got absolutely no training from what i know but he is just wonderful with kids and he seems to know how to hold their attention you know he keeps them she does lots of you know he is he is he is fast moving with them they will do this exercise and they will do that they will do this they will do that he keeps them moving quick enough that you know when they stop losing attention they start you know they are all of a sudden they are switched and you know there are a couple in there who actually have uh who i think have attention deficit disorders or they have a very very low attention and those are harder to work with but you know but i i i i uh the regular ones you know the normal kids you can just let them go a little bit and and and he sort of he is real good at keeping them in line and i am learning from him how to do these sort of things just just by watching him no it is it is boys and girls it it it it is mixed there are uh there are uh more boys than girls but there are a number of number of girls in there who actually uh do some good stuff and beat up a lot of the little girls i mean i mean a lot of the little boys too uh in some case actually a lot of parents send their kids or just bring their kids because because of the sort of discipline you know and it is it is not we do not you know say get down and do a hundred push ups for me now you little guy but uh it teaches we we we focus very highly on you know on on on issues of respect and self discipline and self confidence we have a lot of kids who come in very shy you know and [unsure] of themselves and and you can see them come you know week by week that they come more and more out of their shells and start to become you know more sociable and okay um do you have children of your own oh you do what ages are they oh my sound like a busy parent i have two a seven year old and three and a half mine are both girls yeah oh do you and your wife both work well that's nice i i stay home too yeah to me that's the ideal situation but i did work part time when i had just one child and uh i'm pretty picky about my criteria of child care i i don't care too much for day care centers and preschool well you know schools where the children stay all day long and so i i think the thing that i would think was most important is if they're getting the individual attention that they need from an adult and i don't think they get enough of it yeah mine's pretty low too uh the lady that i left my daughter with only kept only had two other children besides my daughter so three to one i felt comfortable with i think if it got much more than that i would start feeling like someone was going to be left out yeah right well i think once my uh child got to be maybe four years old i might feel a little better about a larger group setting but up until that time both of my girls had such passive personalities that if they had been around a whole lot of other children i really think they would have been you know taken for granted some of the other kids would have pushed them around and um probably taken advantage of them a little bit what do you think yeah no no oh i didn't even hear one no it might have been i have call waiting but if so i'll just try later that's fine yeah you said that uh you would like if your wife had to go back to work you probably would prefer that they stayed in a home oh yeah yeah yeah right yeah i don't know see i feel real sorry for couples where both people are you know have to work to make ends meet because you're kind of you know stuck there i i know that um if i had to go to work right now i would really have a hard time finding someone because i baby sitters are just really hard to come by especially real good ones and you know ones that uh don't keep that many children and give them the individual attention that i think they need and that kind of thing so i would really be hard pressed to find something that i felt like was quality child care so i don't know i feel real sorry for you know working moms that are really looking hard and trying to do a good job with their kids i'm just thankful i'm able to stay home it makes the choice a lot easier wow that's great oh i know yeah yeah oh yeah we feel that way i mean even now it's really hard to make ends meet even with two children so i can imagine with four but you learn how to to stretch money how to use hand me downs and that kind of thing really makes a big difference too but i don't know i uh i worked at a little preschool it was a private one you know like a church sponsored type thing where it was only two days a week tuesday and thursday from like nine until two and even that i was not totally satisfied with the way the kids were treated uh uh_huh yeah oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right even if it's in the home i think this is important even if it's a private home situation and not a day care um probably number one too would be close references if you know people that have had the experience that they hands on experience of one would be very important word of mouth um friends uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right right and all of course better business i would check any of your business um any type of thing references of that type as well as your word of mouth if you were putting them in uh uh school or any day care type you know that's public you know what i mean like a church or a school type thing i would check that awfully close um i'd go in often unexpectedly unexpectedly wherever they where uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i wouldn't do that i mean i wouldn't not put my child in there though would you you know i would never have a controlled situation not with a little one especially you know that's not a not a good situation on that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right that's real important i believe so too to meet the and administrators as well and really kind of research it and get an idea of how they feel about things you know have your questions ready on their feelings on things and all kind of how they basically anyway because they you know that's um seventy percent of your child's life you know is developing is there so that's real important do you have any children in it yourself your sister is uh_huh yeah it's a scary thing my daughter has been in houston and had to do it you know just out of the cold she's had to but she's been real fortunately in finding women in their homes and uh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh wow yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh not the best situation yeah yeah that's for sure uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yes right and what you would want done right yeah uh_huh i would think so yeah uh_huh the cleanliness and the care health care uh_huh uh_huh right no yeah i agree uh cause i suppose when when i do start having children uh i'd like to stay home for a while but uh you know eventually i'd i might have to put them in day care to work and i think it's hard to find uh good day care because just the other night uh on the news in milwaukee uh they're closing down a day care because uh the lady who owns uh slapped a child and uh she had a lot of uh like uh what did she have uh like tickets against her uh saying that the she didn't have proper food uh prepared for them and that it was just dirty and and she didn't take very good care of the kids and you know you don't want to send your kids to place like that right right uh_huh uh_huh right or you have to uh it's pretty expensive i the college i go to they have uh child care uh there but you still have to pay you know it doesn't come with them no i don't right it's like uh uh if you do work most of the money goes back into taking care of your child you might as well stay home if you're married right yeah i've i've heard a lot of things about that too uh with some people say it's not healthy for your children to be in day care and you know other's say it is so i don't know uh no yeah yeah yeah uh_huh yeah that is it's a tough decision uh_huh uh i think it's for the students yeah i don't know if it it's it makes sense to have it for the teachers too but uh i'm not really sure i haven't looked into it i don't need it uh yeah my mom stayed home uh she had four kids and she stayed home with all of us until i got into about kindergarten and then she went uh back to work after right uh for a while she was there uh when i got home but then uh and she started working later until like four and i would come home first and i and my brothers and sisters were all older than me so okay we're rolling i uh what what would you what would has your experience lead you to advise uh if my child were thinking of going to the air force academy what would you say uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh how do you feel about it must be a somewhat different environment from a regular college how does that uh how do you feel that is for someone at at that phase in their life uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i sort of one of the reasons it's taken so long is i've been working all you know sort of half student half working and source of income and stuff so i'm actually managing to do this with zero debt uh i couldn't you couldn't do it otherwise yeah i think if there's any major piece of advice i'd give is to find a way of getting an education that doesn't incur that kind of debt it's not i mean i remember seeing an article one time about you know if the average person who spent that much money going to college just took the same amount of money and put it in a a in an investment fund they'd be considerably wealthier than they would be from the job they'd get after college so it's it's really kind of crazy uh_huh really huh yes yes i know i was actually i i was thinking of trying to get a job there i heard of it uh uh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah well my my real feeling about about the purpose of undergraduate education is it's really the time yes you do get an education you do learn some things but you eventually forget most of it but what you don't forget is the growing up it's really the period when people become adults i mean people who don't go to college become adults in other ways but really it's the entry into [adulthood] i think and i think that the best way to choose a college is to decide what kind of environment you want to be [fostered] in as you become you know as you gain new social skills as you become you know more of a functioning member of society and maybe the air force academy is a perfect as you said for someone who you know a more you know who needs to learn self discipline and so forth would be appropriate for them yeah and want to develop that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh the same patterns of behavior you mean yeah yeah exactly it's i find it kind of sad i really do uh_huh yeah right uh_huh uh_huh yeah in high school everyone sort of tries to have the same opinion it seems yeah the the one thing i think that's no good for anyone is these monster institutions these institutions of thirty thousand students and such and i see some freshmen wandering around in there and they're they're just like you know someone from the country lost in the big city i mean they they i don't see them getting i mean when i was undergraduate i went to a relatively small school for my first two years and then i transferred to a very large school and that worked out pretty well i went from a you know a second rate institution to a higher rate institution but the first couple of years it doesn't matter to me what the quality of the education was i needed to make friends i needed to sort of learn the [ropes] you know there were things like that that [mattered] a lot more and i needed basic really simple education that you can get pretty much anywhere for the first couple of years yeah yeah exactly and if you're [alienated] i mean i see people at supposedly really good universities who are just having psychological problems that you think this isn't sinking in uh_huh yeah yeah yeah it's sort of a a rare select environment yeah right right sure yeah it's a top rated institution and now i uh_huh uh_huh well i i had known a lot of [undergraduates] who pick schools because they want the best reputation for a school not realizing that the reputation for m i t is because of the of the doctorate research and the professors who go there and you're not going to see the professors you know you're going to see some t a you know uh so they they they want you know they want the best and they don't think they think what the best is is reputation for for research and that's a one standard but it's not relevant to what they need uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh huh yeah you won't get that at m i t or virtually or anything like that and you you know and you can't blame the professors either because you look at their job description you'd you know teaching is third down on the list of importance things and yeah and and that's appropriate if the university is trying to do serious research because it's hard to be a researcher and a teacher at the same time so i'd say go to a go to a college that has teachers people who really are committed to the students and can afford to be because that's their job but oh well uh_huh well i'd encourage it it's a good general education for a a bachelor's degree and obviously and obviously it's where they don't have a any post graduate program there but you get a an excellent wide uh basis of topics you know you get a good broad education out of it you don't they don't graduate the best engineers or the best english majors but maybe a graduate pretty good overall students out of there uh well the for some people it's good because they maybe they need a little discipline need a little [reining] in at that that stage in their life uh other people it uh it's uh [suffocating] you know you kind of choke on it uh it it depends on the person on the individual but uh the one factor i think more than anything else in this day and age that's got to be a big factor in your [decision's] just the the cost of how much you're going to pay no matter where you go to school and if you've been in for twelve years i'm sure you've you've got a your share of student loans that uh you're probably going to be paying off or have been or uh_huh oh that's good oh i mean i know people that graduated or that i went to high school with that went to civilian colleges and they they've got twenty thirty thousand dollar debts i mean you could have uh yeah exactly it's it's staggering when you think that just here in central new york is uh hamilton college is just a few miles south of you know maybe about twenty miles to the south from where i am and uh they're looking for twenty two thousand dollars for tuition and room and board now a year at just a small i mean they they they are it is a select college oh yeah but you're talking incredible [tuitions] now i don't know how many people actually pay the whole shot very few i would imagine but uh i get i just couldn't i mean it's more money that i make in a year so you know it you know me being one person with a above the [median] income for new york state you know i'm a i'm a second lieutenant in the air force now and uh i even as a somebody making twice what i was making how could you put half of that into to your child's education and then just when they make made make it to the college years it's my god i can't imagine yes or it's also a good environment it may be good for someone who already has self discipline who has a certain amount of leadership quality in their own that and that yeah the it's the same it can benefit different people different ways but uh you know i i agree with that because i see people that i know again from high school that i still keep in touch with that didn't go to college and they do the same old things they did in high school and same patterns of behavior same uh same socializing same exact crowd that they hang with and it's like it's like frozen time you know it is it really is that they haven't found anything anything better that uh or their their experiences haven't been broadened at all to to you know you know it's it's a it's a tremendous thing when you sit in a in a college environment and discuss some issues and really sit there with people with [disagreeing] opinions and you hear all these different sides of the story that you never thought of and uh that's another big thing i think people get out of college is the [appreciation] for different point [differing] points of view you know or different opinions yeah exactly yeah oh i yeah uh_huh uh_huh well your [education's] a lot what you make of it too so yeah well i i've seen more graduates from m i t and that being i work in a in a an air force laboratory and so we've got a lot of uh m i t graduates that are in there and they are the biggest collection of screwed up people that i think i've ever run into even even more so uh like military academy [grads] are a strange lot too i i mean i have to confess to that yeah and they have their own [quirks] and tolerances and you know certain things that don't bother us at all that would drive other people nuts and then certain things that ways things we do the way we do it that drive other people nuts that but these m i t [grads] are off in their absolute own world it it's a i i have more i have a lot of respect for m i t master's and doctorate uh degrees but they're [undergrads] are like i i'm amazed at at that's a lot of them even graduated but uh i don't know right right nope yeah no it's interesting that you mention and i didn't think about that before when you were talking but the service [academies] have all all the faculty uh for the most part is is military with a few exchange professors from other schools but uh having the military faculty is really beneficial because they see it as doing their job and spending time with the [cadets] there uh is investing in the air force and it or the the military itself it's the future officer corps and so i hear horror stories from friends of mine that they could never see their instructors they could never get extra help for me any time i needed extra help any time of the day i had all my instructors home phone numbers and could call them you go to their office anytime i had some instructors that uh would invite me over to their house for extended study things on weekends when i was having trouble with something and no no and that no right right publish first and the right yeah yeah it's there's a lot of factors that people don't ever ever consider in in their selection of a college and uh i don't know maybe i wonder if if they enter these conversations that people have been having uh okay um well the first thing uh what do you think you would offer as far as uh information about selecting a school uh_huh yeah uh do you do you feel that the first two years that the um depending upon the field i know there are some fields which a person should go to the school that school all four years but i know there are some fields where it's really not necessary uh_huh yeah yeah yeah what was your degree in political science oh okay well i i know i'm going to school right now and uh i have a friend uh u t d university of texas dallas i know that's where texas instruments is um something that i i think that i've noticed that i i have a friend i think if you're going into like uh law or medicine a very particular very specific field even even engineering you can get you can meet a lot of the requirements at a public um institution and uh it's a lot cheaper my parents my parents made a mistake in uh in sending my sister to a private institution for the first two years and she found out after that she said you know my parents they just they really wasted a lot of money this is about twenty years ago but uh well right now i just i mean as far as selecting selecting a school i i i feel that uh a lot of it depends upon the major uh_huh uh_huh okay yeah uh_huh yeah right um yeah yeah i'm i'm pursuing what they what's what's called an [interdisciplinary] field i'm a speech therapy major and fortunately i have a lot of i have a good medical background and yeah it's it's actually turning out to be more more useful than what i thought and um i also have a good languages background linguistics and some psychology so it's all working together the only field i'm not familiar with really is education which is required requires about four or five different fields really so it's a uh_huh well oh so you are a disgruntled graduate student oh yeah [bah] [humbug] i i i think yeah there is i i i think uh law would be a fine field a fine profession fine field to go into um i know one time i was in a political science class and you know talking about fields people going into different fields i made an off off the [cuff] [remark] about lawyers about their integrity being questionable and i mean oh that was like a can of worms no there was a woman she said my my best friends are lawyers and you know all this and it was just yeah i know or jewish it used to be jewish you know yeah i know it's but yeah yeah i have a i have a friend she's studying she's going into law another friend going into law and she's i i i'm really i'm really concerned about you know she's just going to be you know what's going to happen when she gets there you know all of her dreams will be [dispelled] yeah yeah it's i i think it's probably more embarrassing and very painful i see i see that happening yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i went to a language school and and that was a it was a an i guess uh united states institution i was military at the time and i i think probably the biggest huh i was in the air force yeah yeah for myself i mean i think that military experience was fine it was just i just wish that there was something else that that that i could have done you know with yeah what what was your job uh i was i was a [linguist] um in [tak] uh no i wasn't no no i didn't i didn't go flight crew matter of fact i didn't make it completely through that through that field i was in intelligence school and about three weeks short i didn't make it i sort of washed out yeah after about eighteen months of talking about the year and a half training you know it's it's something you know i think that's why you know children really need to think about the field they're going to going into and i mean spend a lot of serious reading before they i mean not just thinking about they actually should do some reading and they should study it yeah i i i i think i think there's a lot to be said for kids working after school i mean they they find out whether just how much of a people person they are oh and i tell you what i worked at mcdonald's as well and i i can tell you one thing there are just some people that i you know you just came to the point where i mean and oh i eventually worked in a lab in a as a lab technician and i worked front desk and i mean somebody could walk in the door and i knew exactly what they were going to do and say yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's good i was just wondering um getting back to the school thing so i i almost wish that there was something well first i think they've got to have a pretty good idea of what they want to what they want to do uh once they have that then they can start looking in all the various publications that give out all the information about schools and write to the schools themselves and start finding out about the different requirements for the programs and what kind of uh of job assistance and all that other kind of stuff they offer yeah a lot fields are most of your liberal arts degrees and stuff aren't really concerned with your first two years anyway it's it's your core education your general general education requirements um if you know if they want to get a liberal arts degree i don't i don't know what advice i'd give them go to the school you'd like to go to that's what i did i didn't care about the program or anything else i went where i wanted to go uh political science where are you at well yeah i guess everybody's in dallas that i talk to i'm in north carolina yeah right sure oh yeah um uh_huh yeah it does um i didn't know what i wanted to do after i got my my degree um originally i had planned uh undergrad degree in political science and then a master's in public administration and i went ahead and pursued that i i got as far as the thesis and decided to hell with it i didn't want it um and from that point i went to law school and after a year and a half of that i decided i didn't want that either haven't figured out what i want to be when i grow up and so but i i i really did enjoy the law i mean that's that's where i wanted to be but i didn't want to go through the uh the hassle that the law schools put you through because i never did want to be a practicing attorney i just wanted a law degree and i've since discovered that i would be far better off being in the paralegal field because that's the nuts and bolts of the law and that's what i like and you don't have to put up with all the b s that the lawyers have to so that's that's what i'm pursuing right now and i'm pretty happy with it so far uh_huh yeah that's probably very useful uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh good grief yeah i thought at one time i wanted to be a teacher but i i quickly [dispelled] that idea when i became a substitute teacher for a while just to get my feet wet i said uh i couldn't do this everyday no way maybe maybe being a tenured professor would be one thing but being a public school teacher is entirely another thing i am a i am i am just a disgruntled person all around i'm the uh i'm the uh original uh mister [scrooge] i guess yeah [bah] [humbug] yeah i just probably you probably got everybody on you because they were probably all going to law school well that [remark] in itself is a slam my best friends are lawyers you know like like uh my best friends are blacks jewish now blacks and i guess i i guess iraqi now is the law law was a lot of fun until you get to law school and it doesn't become fun anymore yeah you going oh yeah yeah if if if you've ever seen the program paper chase it's very much like that except worse it is yeah very much so yeah it's it's a lot of that um it it was enjoyable for a while um but it's such a grind and you begin to wonder you know if if i'm not i mean you really have to be dead set on being a lawyer to do it if you have any doubts whatsoever you better not get into it i mean i wasted a year and a half of awfully hard and i aged ten years but i i i wouldn't trade the experience for anything in the world it never hurts to have some kind of a [grounding] in law what branch were you in what branch were you in i was too well i got i got tired of the service after a while i mean it i had a terrific job really enjoyed it uh command post i was just wondering were you in sac by any chance were you in sac sac oh okay i i thought maybe you might have had some experience with the uh r c one thirty fives oh well well uh_huh yeah yeah that's right and it and if it's possible even get some experience at it or at least watch some people do it uh_huh sure that's true i found that out when i was in high school i worked at mcdonald's yeah yeah i was the same way too i'm not a people person i i i hate um having to play such a nice guy you know especially when it's all phony especially when you got some uh jerk coming in i it's just not for me i'm uh i deal much better in research and books and stuff like that which is why i'm going to enjoy the paralegal field a lot okay he did really decide to go uh_huh sure i'm familiar with it and he well he must know is he interested in law or medicine he must have a definite profession in mind oh okay medium size aren't they is he excited wow i can i uh_huh while they're east coast i mean i don't know anything about their football but there you go yeah that's where where you at oh okay i'm in uh suburban dallas no i don't i have a husband we don't have any kids yet about all i can say is i guess about picking schools um i guess uh if you don't know what you're going to do liberal arts program is a good idea this is true right the humanities the history yeah right right no no no yeah but they you know if they learn the job and they can go into graduate school usually a company it will if it's worth it's weight will subsidize and uh_huh this this is true yes and if you want to go away right right good okay so he wouldn't have gone to something like where we're at they'd in austin texas university of texas right texas yeah okay well that's i think the other thing is too um i know i went to a uh city high school in chicago and a lot of the kids weren't as fortunate as say my brother and i were and economics was the choice um sounds like your son has academically the standing to get into that type of school uh_huh yeah university of penn i'm originally from pennsylvania university of pennsylvania yeah that's strong i mean that's you know and it's it's well it's a little bit i don't want to use the word wilder that's not the word i want um more diverse at williams or pennsylvania at williams at pennsylvania well how large is williams right well that's not bad which is a lot yeah uh_huh uh_huh that's the thing to do i mean i not having any children my husband was an ohio state person and uh that has something like either the first or second largest student population like fifty thousand combined yeah that is too much and i mean i um i can only say it's strange your son picked those kinds of college because i spent a year at [bennington] in vermont um and that was this was twenty years ago showing my age yes oh my god where are you from well let's not talk about that it's um in that area i mean i just can't say enough about it well you know um my husband's an engineer and a strong a strong liberal arts background with uh a graduate degree in a technical field will get him much further than say like a a strong um business administration degree than with another m b a on top of it uh_huh and they usually yeah but they usually don't right but they no but who does i mean i think i think all i think the majority of people just don't know no he looked at criteria such as location size of school uh that's still pretty far though i mean a lot of kids just don't even want to go oh that's not too bad yeah he will enjoy williams i think and is a good academic uh_huh that could very well be and so he's developing his his uh internal instincts right now that's good because i mean i'm sure what he said was true that uh you well actually that's one of the reasons i went to kenyon he he made a good choice i went i well i was supposed to but i spent a year in vermont my freshman year it was just too far away it was too different uh the level of income of lot of the students and their attitudes was just um beyond my um in terms of drugs et cetera which i thought was shocking right yeah you're right but then i went yeah uh_huh and you're going to get a little bit more input than discipline yeah well i don't know how to put this either in this way and then it doesn't sound like your sons would need this but i just think the other thing is with the way a lot of the youth is today i think the [refinement] that they get i don't mean specifically or culture but just what you're saying just a solid background because i just don't think at that age i just don't think that young people know what they want to do you know and um that's right right yeah this is very very oh they have video lectures yeah video lectures this is true and i mean that is very ironic too that your son just made the did he just make the decision today how funny that's funny it was easy for him to rule out he knew what he didn't want that's exactly yeah now is your other i mean we're talking about what you think but obviously you're experiencing it uh did your other son um a clam oh wonderful uh_huh the smaller and the and they'll do fine in their studies and i'm sure they'll go on to graduate school and and now he's a he's a senior or is this early admissions so he's so he's yeah well sounds like you have two talented sons i think and a lot of people talk about and it's not the economics i solely [zeroed] in on but i think a lot of people think a lot of people think about the tuition level and what exactly are you getting in return and i think that a lot of people shy away from the smaller colleges because of that and i think it's rather sad you are wonderful parents no and i agree i mean my husband and i in fact i'm taking my l s a t um i'm thirty something and taking my l s a t on june tenth the point being and your sons will learn this from you i'm sure that uh no matter what age you are you can learn and it sounds like they're going to you know they're um to williams college in massachusetts and that he was trying to decide between university of pennsylvania and williams and it was a very difficult choice and uh no but that's one of the reasons why he chose williams that it has solid liberal arts about two thousand very excited yes uh i have another son who's at their chief rival amherst college well they're they're they're really very strong academic rather than you know big sports we're outside of uh washington in maryland how about you uh_huh do you have children in okay um well i i one of the the [advices] we've given our children is that you can always learn a job uh but what you can't learn uh on a job is a good solid well rounded education that's right you know the [renaissance] man and uh and if you get that you can and if you do well you can you can learn a job that's exactly right that's right so the advice we gave to them was number one visit the colleges that you're thinking about describe first of all the size school that you might be interested in do you want to go away how far from home do you want to be what do you want in a college now my son is a national level competitive swimmer so he wanted to swim in school but he did not want to be in a swim factory that's right that's the university of texas at austin or stanford or something like that so he didn't even consider those uh_huh uh_huh he is very very strong academically yeah so we've just but you know he had to look to see what kind of environment he liked and yet he he did wind up having to make a choice he did apply to a large you know large group it's got about nine thousand undergraduate yeah yeah yes and it but it does have the under you know that's total undergraduate with five hundred graduate school so that the uh the college of arts and sciences is you know i guess about four thousand at pennsylvania williams is an undergraduate school only um and it's a total of two thousand yeah so he knew the feeling because my other son is at amherst which is fifteen hundred and he had visited his brother at amherst and knew that he liked the environment but he did go on college visits and he liked yes yes it's large and they both boys had decided no that they did not want that oh it's so you uh_huh and did you ever eat at the blue bin diner no but we've been there when whose gone up there oh it's it we went and he was you know impressed by the clean air and he he met the students at both schools and he liked them uh_huh that's it the thing is if if a person really knows very early on that they want to go in a technical field than you're not then it's probably good to go to you know to apply to a school with a good technical program but uh for if you're going into if you know engineering is the thing if then you've got to at least take engineering that's right uh_huh no he didn't apply to any school further the furthest away was [bowdoin] in maine which is about twelve hours yeah that was the furthest and then kenyon in ohio which was about six and a half hours and williams is about seven yeah so well i mean he so it wasn't he you know then the university of pennsylvania is like two hours from here by train and then [bucknell] in mid state pennsylvania yeah and he will and if it came down i mean as he he came he's been talking to them and and he came down and one of the things that he said is he went to pennsylvania this weekend and he had an absolutely marvelous time he had a great time but then he said you know it was such a good time that i almost got the feeling that their emphasis is on having fun and he said it almost i think it [backfired] so uh_huh yeah yeah of course that period too was probably difficult but i did uh my advice to him and my was that uh he had to really decide what he wanted out of college he had to look at himself uh in a larger school he had to realize that if he was going to screw around it he could probably slip and it wouldn't be caught up until it was too late where in a smaller school where especially in a kenyon or a williams where you see the professors around town all the time you skip class in the morning and they see you that's yeah yeah and a swim coach is going to be right on top of you uh so that and he will know the professors in a small uh_huh yeah yeah that's right that's right and um and it's just the personal contact where if you need help he had i told him to look to yourself are you the kind of person that will go into a large college and if the professor says i've got office hours but you really don't feel that you know him because you're in a class of a hundred that you're really going to look him up but if it's a class of fifteen and you need help you know that it's much easier to do it and especially in the large schools they have lectures and even though they may break it up into smaller groups penn is known for having graduate assistance teaching they have graduate assistants to teach the smaller groups he made the decision uh i'd say about uh an hour and a half ago yeah i mean that's so funny i mean and and in fact he had just an hour before that two uh recent graduates from kenyon spent close to two hours talking with him and uh i mean and he they were really nice and but he said is that they didn't tell him anything that he didn't know but they helped [confirm] his decision that a smaller school was better yeah yeah my other son is just as happy as a bed bug he the moment he knew he he decided early on that amherst was the school he's a classical [guitarist] and he decided he also got into the graduate school of music as an undergraduate for classical guitar but he decided he was going to go to the um the smaller now and then graduate school later well he's really my older boy's real happy and he's [minoring] in english and he had thought about economics and he took a couple of courses in economics and decided that wasn't he's um he's going to be a junior he'll be he's finishing his sophomore year so he's double majoring well you know see the advice we give is to not limit yourself especially this you know go to a school where you're not forced to make too many [irrevocable] decisions your first year or two yeah well one of the things we said is that they should pick the college this was our advice too [irrespective] of the cost that somehow we would manage well we place a real high priority on education in our family oh good that's wonderful oh that's great that's right that's exactly okay i guess i'll start um one uh big thing that the advise that i would give to a parent to give to his or her child is to let their let their child experience college in a kind of general sense i like large colleges because i went to university of texas at austin they have fifty thousand students there and i feel like that now if i went if i had gone to a small college that only had a couple of thousand that i wouldn't have have gotten as much exposure to different people and different uh i don't know different languages different cultures and things like that just by being around those fifty thousand students uh_huh uh_huh huh huh uh_huh right uh_huh yeah yeah i i could see i could see that point i could see how it would be i'm sure your classes were a lot smaller um because like we would have biology classes that did main courses that everyone has to take i mean hundreds of students in this class so actually yes you were a number but um i i just i don't know i'm thinking in a sense of uh just being exposed to more it just seems like in a larger college you i don't know your exposed to so many more people from all over the world and i'm sure a lot of people come to you know small colleges also but just that they're more of of the different cultures there not that it's not that it's better but i'm just saying that i think that big uh_huh uh_huh i think uh a lot of a lot of students now would probably be afraid of a smaller college a lot of the students that i talked to even here in waco they go to baylor um they or they're considering going to baylor they're also considering going to u t austin but one of the big no [nos] is because of the fifty thousand students and i have to tell them that just like just like i live in waco it's a large city i can still function in my own kind of area in my own group i have a job i have my friends and i'm really not as as concerned about the entire city so when you go to a big a big university you're not as concerned about the entire university but your group of friends your classes your interests your clubs and things like that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right right right uh_huh uh_huh on paper uh_huh exactly that's that's one important thing that i think about school i'm i'm not a kind a person that i didn't i i was kind of a b student i guess you'd say and i didn't really i was i [strived] to be an a student but it wasn't like a real priority to my my priority was just being as [worldly] as i could possibly be getting into as many organizations as i possibly could and and one other point i was going to make was that i can i can see that probably if i had gone to a smaller school i would probably have more friends because you like you said you know you know everybody knows everybody and so you probably come out of it knowing and by friends i mean like contacts for when you get out of school um you know you just you may walk into a company and see someone you went to school with more so at a small college then a large college you may have gone to school with them but you wouldn't you wouldn't know them uh i guess let me think of another important thing to look at when you look into college um uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh wow uh_huh right wow that's great right right that's great that's great yeah that's what i that's basically what i and when i first i've been out of college only two years now so it's still pretty fresh on my memory um but now that i'm out when i went into school my parents told well my okay let me let me go back to my my sister now is in college and my father was really interested in getting her in a school that would look good on her on her uh diploma et cetera and so forth and and i kept pushing her towards just kind of u t or a larger school and it was just a big conflict between us because my father wanted the academics and i wanted her to get the life experience out of it and so it was you know she went the academic way because she's a straight a student which is yes yeah so she you know that's probably you know what she what she wants anyway but that was the big deal and right right and that that's another point is that the a parent should tell their child to be or or to give their child the leeway to choose their school not so much choose the school for them but you know kind of guide them along but let them more or less choose what they need and what they're going to do uh_huh right huh right uh_huh uh_huh right well that was pretty [courageous] yeah oh yeah yeah i'm i'm dealing with the loans right now so so oh yes very every every month that memory just [seeps] back in my [mailbox] oh well i guess i'll get over it oh yeah yeah okay uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right because when you when you do want when you do finally graduate that that's what you need the most i'm finding out now that what i'm needing the most now is not smarts not what i can do on paper it's stamina courage uh words it yes i'm needing you know my i'm needing to rely on myself and i think i learned a lot of that in school too that's interesting i went to a smaller school of probably three thousand thirty five hundred and i i thought that was the best experience in that we had more one on one since we seemed to know everyone on campus and we had a broad spectrum of languages and cultures and backgrounds and so forth so i thought it was wonderful to be a bigger fish and not so much a number um one of fifty thousand i was one of three thousand and and you know different perspectives i uh but it sounds like we were both kind of looking at the same sort of sort of thing yeah uh_huh yeah that's one thing to definitely consider uh_huh yeah i think that's probably keyed to me is not so much the size the school but what what is the particular needs of the students and whereas some would immediately feel very comfortable in this um larger university setting some of the students um when i was when i was teaching school would not have been comfortable with that they needed uh at least at first they needed a smaller setting that that was more like family where they could get one on one from from teachers professors and so forth and then after a year or two move on to a little bit bigger pond where where when they had a little more self confidence built up oh yes i can do this oh i've done this before it's just in a bigger setting and so maybe to me the key would be what is a the the students needs and what what school or schools can best meet those those needs besides education you can expect all of them with uh [accreditation] to give the education but it's these other things that you and i are are [keying] off on that that are really more of an education that but they're the things that don't show up in that's right that's right right huh yeah uh_huh yeah i guess i guess now i've been out for i i'm older than you i've been out for twenty one years and i was looking at an annual last night something had it sparked a question and i went to a small private school um and it was church related and i got to looking at my class of sixty nine and i realized that even though that school's two hundred miles from here and i've lived in other states and done other things for the past twenty years where i go to church now there are five other people that went to school at the same time in the same class as i and it's it's neat to know that we have that contact that goes back that some of the same memories if not the same education in you know we weren't all out to be teachers or or whatever so we didn't have the same classes but we had a common thread something that still ties us together twenty odd years later and it's it's it's kind of neat just knowing that those kinds of things those are what i carry beyond that piece of paper that allows me to be an exempt at t i i have something more important to me than that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i was going to ask who won in in that case uh regardless of what you or your father pushed for it sounds like she was going for what she needed and finding a school that that met her specific requirements and and made the best fit for her yeah i think it helps a now my grandfather was going to pay if i went to uh what's now u t arlington because it was there in my hometown i could live at home but i chose to go to another school and even though he was pleased that it was a church related school he was not willing to pay any at all even the same amount of money and i think i value my my education more because i had to work for it and because i knew all along that's what i wanted even though i had to buck the family in order to to do what i needed to do so um i guess i guess it was it was my mother's support that got me through it that and ten years of of uh loans after i got out sounds familiar huh your it's very fresh in your memory i yeah well sorry about that tanya i'm sure it was worth it though if if nothing else because i work in training at t i now if nothing else just those experiences beyond and and including your educational classes that help give you the self esteem to do and achieve whatever you set your mind on and the you you made the right choice in going to a school that met all of your needs to make to give you the the potential to do whatever you wanted young lady you have gotten your education then that that's right yeah okay um do you have any advice for college i'm i'm i'm full of advice i'm still a graduate student so um yeah um oh that's interesting i went to a a liberal arts school actually at first and you weren't really even um they didn't expect you to choose any sort of major or anything at all until you were in your second year and then you you know you had i think you had to pick it by by by the end of the second you had to pick some sort of major but until then they didn't sort of force you they they sort of forced you to run around taking classes in everything until then certain requirements so that so that you had to sort of get a general feel for everything so it wasn't that specialized so that yeah yeah uh_huh i was just on a committee recently actually sponsored by uh the american association for the advancement of science trying to sort of you know where where they were just trying to figure out how to fit science and liberal arts together you know because there are people who are getting just wonderful science educations and not getting enough liberal arts and then the other way around as well people are getting pure technical science educations and not getting very good liberal arts sorts of issues so uh_huh well that must be helpful that could be very helpful yeah well i figure that that that's probably the thing i would most tell any parent you know to tell their kids i think probably make sure the kid goes to a school where they get sort of a general education and save [specialization] i guess for graduate school unless they're sure they want early on they want to do something like engineering or something or they can um yeah but but that's a good idea well where i am right now actually i'm at the university of rochester and that's a pretty good engineering school i think i think we do some they have pretty good engineering here they also have a fairly large liberal arts college as well a sort of a separate you know arts and sciences college um and i believe the engineers are sort of required to take classes in in everything and i know people i do uh i do work in language processing and and and at least one person who's in my field started off as an engineer started off as an an electrical engineer student and then switched over at some point into language processing because he found that he enjoyed it more so they do force them people are forced to sort of take all different kinds of classes here which i think is wonderful uh_huh right uh_huh yeah uh_huh um um uh_huh that would be very good actually right you you don't need any philosophy at all in school uh_huh or yeah or or or or some other thought provoking area you know very true we had uh when i went to undergraduate we had uh went to [brandeis] don't know if you know of it or not uh we had uh uh a requirement freshman year of just humanities then you were given a choice of um you know there were ten or twelve or whatever or fifteen different courses that you could take but they all centered they all came out of philosophy english and literature departments and they were they were they were a set of assigned [readings] everybody had to read you know for so the first year humanities courses everyone had to read the [iliad] an and so forth and what they did do was they all approached it from from very different so that you could have one class in the philosophy of something that the philosophy of greek mythology or something that actually approached this or um one literature you know or a a literature course or just all sorts of different perspectives on it and people got to pick and choose but but by the end everyone had a good sample of of of sort of how to think about these things [nonscientifically] you know and uh and that sort of forced them but i believe that that that you one of the one of the best things to do at least for me in school was was i was sort of forced to take lots of different kinds of courses um i was forced to take i think you know some sort of art history course and we all [grumbled] about it at first but then afterward we all wound up taking extra art history classes because it just seemed like something something we didn't totally know nothing about but just enjoyed very much doing and something i would never would have done if if i wasn't forced to take it uh_huh yes uh_huh and that and that really is something that that i notice like i talk to a lot of my friends at school that are more specialized and they don't have that they just you know they went in and took their courses that they were expected to take and that was all they never had some of the more fun classes i guess i feel a little more [worldly] now yes i'm i'm i'm hoping i'm hoping yes i i graduated um college in eighty seven and i just went straight through um i'm finishing up next year so yeah i didn't take any break or anything yet i've been trying actually in graduate school i've been trying to do the same thing take courses completely outside my area and i'm finding in graduate school it's a lot harder because uh i just don't have the time any more to sort of sit in a course that i'm not getting graded for whereas before i would just sign up for credit for it now i can't sign up for an art history course for credit necessarily so i have to try and go myself and i went for like two or three weeks and realized not enough time for the work unfortunately i'm pursuing a doctorate in psychology so i'm just wind up spending a lot of time doing that instead uh what else i i think i oh uh_huh um you had real world experience in the middle there and that helped you think or that was uh_huh um yeah i'm getting some of that um i have i have sort of some work experience my wife is not an academic at all my wife is sort of in the real world and so i sort of [hinge] halfway out in the real world and i getting you know real world especially she works in uh uh she works in the she works for a temporary agency and i never would have had she's the office supervisor i never would have had any i've i've learned much just sort of by watching her and her and her business as well so yeah so i i can i can see where that might be a yeah that's my oh yeah yeah agreed agreed well i'll i'll take that i'll take that and think that through a little bit uh yes uh_huh uh_huh well having been there not too long ago and my wife having only recently completed a doctorate i'm fairly full of it of it myself uh the main point that i have about choosing where you want to go to school is that you have to early on define what it is you want to do or at least what area you want to be in uh i had the [unpleasant] experience of going through several schools that were very specialized i went through a number of them uh undergraduate schools before i found a a good school that was more general uh to give me time to make up my mind that's wonderful i'm a great [proponent] of liberal arts education for anybody uh being an engineer now i believe in it even more strongly than i did before well thus far it's working to my advantage uh the great gap historically has with engineers has been while they may have all this technical information they have no way of [imparting] it to except to another engineer and i have the ability to listen to them and then translate that into something that [nonengineers] can understand well it's a lot of fun at the moment even at that i have a son that who's only nine at the moment but i see him very rapidly becoming the engineering personality and uh if he decides to pursue that i'm going to insist that he spend two years at a liberal arts college before i'll even let him go to an engineering college and yes that'll add one year to his education experience yes it is oh i agree uh i have the experience uh the last school that i went to was mississippi state university which is historically an engineering and agricultural school uh the typical land grant university every state's got one anyway while it has both engineering and liberal arts the engineering students tend to cluster together you know they're in classes together even when they're outside of the engineering department and they don't learn the communications they don't learn the thought processes of other fields of of endeavor it's you know it that's kind of like if i were king for a day and got to and got to make one rule my rule would be no one could get out of high school without an entire year of philosophy and it's that's not even true in our colleges right yes i i remember that experience that and uh extra music classes well that will continue to grow even as you go beyond graduate school have have you gone straight through that's true are you pursuing a master's or a doctorate well let me let me encourage you to stop and experience life along the way i i first enrolled in college in nineteen sixty six uh six years and a and a war later uh i got a degree an undergraduate degree and then fifteen years after that i got the first of a set of master's degrees and four years after that i got another master's degree oh yes it it certainly makes acceptance of different ideas a lot easier well [vicarious] learning is a wonderful thing it certainly means that we don't have to experience everything but experience is a wonderful teacher also my wife as i may have mentioned just finished a doctorate a couple of years ago and she pursued her education along the lines that i did with lots of break in between and she feels reasonably comfortable teaching now she has an awful lot of experience to draw on no longer uh yes yes i have a daughter yeah she's only about uh uh a little less than two years old no yeah uh no uh um no particular school uh i think that's really a decision that they well help them make in terms of you know what they are they are wanting to do you know that that's a big influence i think and you know what not only what you can afford but what what's going to be best for them in terms of what their career goals are so uh you know you need to go to a school that handles whatever it is you want to do uh university of mississippi uh well it was well it was within the state but it it was not necessarily local it was what's the [criterion] for choosing to go there uh well at the time i was uh thinking of going pre med and in the state uh they had the best pre med uh curriculum for the uh state institutions it was choice between there and uh a private college that uh was a bit more expensive at the time we really could not afford it so i ended up going there although it was quite a drive away for me it uh i enjoyed it no no no it was a six hour drive i was uh it was like another world basically it was a no it was a did not get home that often you know and at that age it's uh it's kind of kind of difficult sometimes especially if you have not been away a lot that extended yeah uh_huh uh that's true yeah that that's like you know when i went on to get my my masters i uh basically was you know it was where i was at the time you know i was not going to try to pick and go somewhere else because i was pretty much settled and i was trying to work but uh so when you are first going to school that you kind of have the luxury of being able to have some [latitude] in choosing the place to go um uh the computer science center uh north building uh about three years uh yeah i have uh uh no actually i mean i came straight from school to here so cause this was the first first real job after getting my degree after my masters my undergraduate degree was not in not in what my masters was so i made a career change basically yeah one day i would like to uh you know the uh i i like the school where i went i mean and i would not hesitate at all to to encourage her to go there there if she wanted to or the school where i got my masters at which which was a different school and uh i liked it almost as well uh but uh you know that i'm not going to hold them to that just because i went there i you know think that's if they want to that's fine but otherwise not although i uh would get quite a break on on tuition yeah because they uh allow for uh uh tuition uh break for out of state students who children of [alumnae] well certain schools do it this school does so uh it's it i i was involved in some uh-oh [alumnae] recruiting uh here in town uh recently uh well last year uh and it was kind of fun because you are trying to to trying to get people interested in your school you know and they were this was a college night at a at a high school in richardson and it was and there were a bunch of kids you know and a bunch of schools there were a hundred schools probably there all competing for the same kids it's kind of interesting to to to talk up you know your school and i was surprised by the number of kids that came came by and had heard of you know our school and and were interested in it uh you know we uh situations like that you don't realize you know until you start thinking about it the kinds of advantages you school may have over others and so i i was real real pleased with that that worked out so well i think so i don't know offhand but uh it seemed like there were quite a few kids that were definitely interested in going there so there there was one mother who uh came by right even before we started who who obviously was uh very interested in getting her her daughter in or or having gotten her daughter in or something and she was wanting some more information but she was her her daughter was uh a a a [majorette] or something you know a baton twirler or something and she was she was letting us know she how how good her daughter was she had cards printed up actually describing you know business cards describing her daughter's uh you know she had won several different twirling awards and all this and she was had these business cards she was passing out and it was quite a production i think some parents go a little bit overboard yes do you have children do you how old is she uh i guess you have not reached the stage where you need to uh promote a college or anything huh i've got one that's seven and one that's three so we uh we started saving but that's all so do you is there are you planning to like encourage your children to go to a particular school that you are going to let them make right uh_huh yeah yeah right uh_huh yeah where did you go to school oh was that local or uh uh_huh yeah but i i mean so what's yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah so you did you commute everyday then or oh okay oh okay when you said it was quite a quite a way away i did not know it that meant you had to drive like an hour or uh_huh yeah yeah yeah so did you go there like straight out of high school yeah uh see i did not get my degree until later on so i just finished mine a couple of years ago and uh you know i guess you know when you have to do it that way it makes makes your choices a lot easier but uh_huh right right right exactly yeah which group do you work in in t i oh uh where is that at i see how long do you work for t i did you work somewhere else like sounds like you got your masters before here or i see uh_huh after your masters or after your i see i see uh_huh i see well let's see i have not you know there's a lot of pluses and [minuses] for different schools you know just like you said uh depending on what they want to [specialize] in and what you can afford different things like that so i i have not really made up my mind you know whether to encourage them to go different places or uh_huh right right right uh_huh right yeah yeah um because you went there um i didn't know that yeah huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah your own school uh_huh um uh_huh yeah so did you drum up any interest then or well that's good uh_huh and that uh_huh uh_huh oh really uh_huh yeah it sounds like it well you know i think richardson is probably you know one of the places that would definitely well steve did you go to college oh that's good so you probably could give some great advice uh_huh well what's your what's your interest your uh uh_huh that that's similar to what i'm in a p h d program right now and uh my area of expertise it's information systems which is a little bit less technical i think than uh than computer science but my area of expertise is uh uh human computer interaction and i think that's one reason why i'm part of this study uh because it's of i'm working with voice systems yeah so so good luck i guess we should talk about giving advice though what what type of advice do you think you'd give to a a parent yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah i think that's more important probably than even the career vocation because most people change i i know very few people that uh started in one field and stayed with it you know they i think that's what you just said you know having to do more with the size of the school the environment of the school uh i think that's much more important i i think i'd i'd advise a parent to send a kid to a school though that has a number of different types of programs you know that uh some of the smaller schools might be very limited in what they can offer but some of the uh the small some of the larger small schools you know i guess around three or four thousand students have a can offer a broader range of curriculums and things so if the kid does change they don't have to transfer or they don't have to uh uh i don't know they don't have to give up years of you know of credit transfer and things yeah i normally and and parents hate to hear this you know because i i actually teach college i hate to uh i hate to talk to the parents because um one of the reasons is because you know the kid doesn't know exactly what they want and i always say make sure you major in something that you like even if it's not going to be your career vocation because you'll get better grades i i think most employers would probably rather hire you know a a three six in um in history uh to be a salesman than someone with a two oh in business administration does that make sense yeah i always you know tell them that you should major in something you you're going to get good grades in because that that's always i think more important you know overall i don't know yeah oh you you're at the office now at work yeah i would i would it would i i tell you i live in maryland and the public schools here are pretty good i teach at a public school actually and i know that the s a t scores for our [admitting] freshmen are higher than a lot of the public a lot of the private schools and um i actually i would full time at a at a public school and then right now i'm teaching part time at a private school at a catholic institution and um and i really think i think i'm getting a better [caliber] of student at the private school because i think their parents pay more and i think the kids are a little bit more challenged because their parents are probably college educated where at the public school i don't think as many parents are public are are college educated and i don't i think because it costs less the kid doesn't take it quite as serious you know they're not it it's the minimal cost but i think you can get a good education at public or private but i think you can also get a bad education at public or private you know i you have to really you have to look around at the school i i think the bad part is that most parents or kids don't know what to look for uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh right right yeah does it have a big ten football team or yeah i mean uh yeah is it a [pac] ten school you know but i think yeah see i'm i'm at the university of maryland so in this this region um though i go to a smaller branch of the university of maryland my diploma will still say university of maryland um you know it doesn't doesn't [differentiate] on my diploma though i would put it on my resume what program i went to but i i think you know i'm actually at a smaller program i'm not at the the big college park campus you know that's the big one with the football team so i i think um i think you're right that there's a lot of there's difficult decisions there based on name recognition um you know when i first was applying for graduate schools i applied to some big programs you know in this area like [stevens] institute of technology which is recognized in the northeast as as you know one step below m i t in a sense you know so it's got big name recognition in this area a big science school no football team but a big science school and technical people know that but i yeah i think you're right you really have to think about that for the job i went to a very small state college when i got my bachelor's and when i now i was in education at first when i was looking for jobs i was going to be a teacher i was just a high school teacher so most people recognized that institution because it was a teaching school sort of you know but then when i went um for graduate work you know or for a new job people said to me you know [shippensburg] state where is that you know and you know when i went into higher education even at other universities they weren't aware of it you know so i think yeah that's important um i think it depends on if you want to be a if you want a regional job or a national job you need that first job or so out of school too uh_huh yeah right uh_huh right yeah depending on your technical areas yeah i could see that but you know at some of the large schools i know that at at at university of maryland where i am you know in a p h d program i i haven't even met uh someone outside of my area of information systems except for yeah in fact i'm still going uh well i don't know about that but i in fact i'm in the process of trying to choose a p h d school uh well computer science and cognitive science so oh i see oh yeah yeah to a parent well you know the thing is when you're a kid and the kid at that age especially if they're going into undergraduate it seems like they think they know what they want an and i mean choosing from my experience you know i thought you know my i know what i want a lot more than my parents know what i want but uh i don't know at the same time you have to decide what is important about the school you know the size of it or yeah yeah yeah that's disruptive oh yeah yeah well yeah i see what you're saying yeah uh give me five minutes yeah yeah i'm just getting ready to go to lunch uh yeah that's like what we were saying though would you uh advise a private school or a public school you know what's the trade off there what oh i see yeah yeah yeah i think uh i would agree with that in fact the thing that i'm going through the same thing where in graduate school i was trying to choose you know a particular institution might be better for my area yet like say you know the university of small town in arkansas or something might have some top specialists in my area yet if i go to u of i or c m u or you know some you know any big name school my quality of education might not be that much better but it's the same thing there's you know what will the name recognition get me kind of thing yeah yeah that's that's usually the basic criteria yeah oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i i guess another thing that concerns me is uh so many people it seems like everybody today is still in that job market and uh um where was i at oh in going to school you get taught the things you learn in school but there is also a whole other [dimension] i mean the growing up while you're going to school part and uh actually in the midwest especially a lot of the schools have like university of missouri will have a main campus like columbia which is big multi disciplinary and they'll have a satellite campus in a usually in a smaller town that specializes in the technical field so you've really uh i guess sacrificed some social exposure to different groups and everything yeah advice for people taking for parents uh help their kids through college no i just graduated from college yes i went to clarion uh_huh um i would want them to make that decision and i would you know uh i pretty much made my decision on my own and my older brother likewise and uh you know we we were both pretty much happy with what we did so i think i would not push them towards any one place uh_huh uh_huh yeah exactly i think one of the first things kids ought to look for is first of all they have to decide what they want to major in and then you know find a school that's good for that well i picked it for a couple of reasons it was only about an hour and ten minutes away from home so it was far enough away that i was away but yet close enough if i ever wanted to go home i could uh pardon me yeah i lived up at school yeah uh another reason was uh i paid for my entire education so i had to look for something that i could afford economically you know and uh clarion was oh it was roughly around six thousand a year yeah that was for everything and now i did not go out a lot and i did not order out a lot and i you know i did not spend money on myself but uh then again i was there for school so uh and then another reason was i was not sure you know i always wanted to go to school for nursing and then at the last minute i changed my mind and i knew that clarion was known you know for two things actually for their they are known as a teacher's school and also for their business so that's what i ended up going for is for business uh_huh no no not yet i am moving shortly so i am not looking around here uh maryland uh_huh my fiancee is down there yeah he works for the government yeah uh_huh uh_huh exactly uh_huh exactly yeah it does have a lot of bearing on it whether you are paying for yourself or whether your parents are you know uh yeah because i was paying for it myself i kind of slacked off because i felt it was mine and i could do with it what i wanted i think if my parents would have paid for it they would have been on me you know uh they pretty much got to the point well well you know you are at that age and you are going to have to decide what you want to do if you goof up it's your fault it's not ours you know and then lets me go and i mean i did not do poorly i finished with a two five that's not that wonderful either but uh you know i i mean i worked i did not you know goof around i worked it was just harder you know i do not know i was used to being you know on top and when i started there it was like you are mediocre so uh_huh yeah uh_huh oh wow that's really good uh_huh yeah see well i screwed myself up also there was a point in time that i decided that i did not want to in school and my parents never pushed me until my dad just said what are you going to do and i said well i am going to go because i have not whipping butter the rest of my life you know so i went and i just took business well being as i was paying for it myself you know i just kept you do not get into your major until like your second or third year and i am going into my third year and i decided well i do not want to do accounting anymore right and i thought oh my god i am paying for this myself i am not switching completely because i will put myself a year behind so i switched to finance and i liked it better and i pulled myself from a two oh to a two five you know in my last year my senior year but i would have really liked to go on uh secondary ed with math education but it was just the fact i was paying for it myself i was not going to put myself behind another year uh_huh uh_huh exactly i think if uh i would have went with the math i think i would have done a lot better because i was more interested and that's what i i knew that's what i wanted but uh i think a lot of kids that hold off a year or two oh my gosh i would like to see the results on a study done i think they would do a lot better because they are more focused they know exactly what they want to do so uh let's see what was the topic i forgot we are supposed to talk yeah do you have any children oh did you where did you go clarion huh uh would you i mean if you had children would you want them to go to a certain place or yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah i know i kind of feel the same way i i just finished college a couple years ago and i uh you know it was while i had my family and everything and it was a lot harder but uh you know i went to a college that was fairly local and i feel like my education you know you get out of it what you put into it i think but you know i know it's some people are real adamant about you know going to a certain school or whatever i do not know i guess it a lot of it would depend on maybe what your major was or something i do not know but but uh_huh yeah is that why you picked the school you did or uh_huh yeah yeah so you lived there at school then you lived there at school uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh and that was for tuition and uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh for business so uh are you working somewhere then or oh i see where are you going to move to oh are you do you have friends there or oh i see so does he work for a company down there oh i see oh the big company so yeah i i have been working for t i for about twelve years i guess so but i am not originally i am originally from illinois but you know i have gone to college i guess a few different places but i think you know for the most part you know the teachers have been pretty good and i have got out of it what i have what i have put into it so but you know i think i think that's most of it personally but that's why i you know with my kids i think that you know i am just going to encourage them to go and i am going to try to help them financially but uh i think you know financially i am there's only so much i can do for them and i will say here's what you have got you can either you know go a couple of years locally and you know then if you want to move off to a more expensive school then we might be able to handle it but otherwise you can just go for four years you know somewhere and i will try to try to help you but uh i do not know you know the financial end of it like you said i put my wife through school too of course t i paid for a lot of the tuition and books and stuff but uh it still was a challenge to do and uh so i think you know financially that's that's one of the big aspects you know you right yeah well did you uh since you were paid for school yourself do you think you had a different outlook on it like your grades and things like that uh_huh uh_huh right right uh_huh yeah yeah right yeah well see i think you know i have known a lot of people that would go to school and their parents paid for it and and i guess it depends on the way you are raised too but if you if you grow to expect that you know you kind of go there as sort of a vacation you know i that's the way a lot of my friends did it and you know they were not they did not take it very serious i know i took it real serious because i did not start to college until you know i was about eight or ten years and uh you know out of what i should have been in school but uh you know so i think that helped me be real serious about it and i i ended up graduating with like a three point six yeah so i you know and that was hard cause i had two kids and you know a family and everything else so i had a lot of different hats to wear all at the same time but yeah you are right exactly uh_huh right uh_huh right yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh right right well my wife was sort of in the same situation she was she went to school to be a teacher just because she did not really know what else to go for and she did not realize until she got to be a senior and was doing her student teaching that she did not like it but you know by then she had practically got her degree so so you know uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah i think i think you are right when you pull yourself away and then you get out and you say man i really need this uh well let's see five well any number is nice let me tell you yeah it's not as fair to the children either i do not think oh yeah but sometimes you can hurt them by having too much quality time too uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh you can tell how to just entertain themselves yeah yeah it's a problem for any child and you take one that's used to being uh busy being having something to do all the time it makes a big difference uh keeps you busy yeah well that's great no our last daughter she did not want to go to school she's uh but she's married now they built a home just a couple miles from us and well we did not do it right all the time with our first boy we persuaded him to start here and i do not always think you should try to make them stay closer to home i think the main thing is to uh right now i think the main thing is to look at what they are interested in uh and take what they are interested in and then then start looking for schools no not necessarily but mike our oldest boy i think he would have he wanted to go to [embrey] [riddle] and we talked him into going local here first and he only went a few months and then transferred to pittsburgh he went to [aeronautical] uh-oh just learning to work on engines and that uh it has to do with airplanes and everything which is what his whole life is and i really wish we would have let him go where he wanted to go originally and he would probably be flying is what he would be doing uh but but right now of course he's he's working for [pratt] and [whitney] in connecticut and they build and rebuild non jet engines uh the other ones uh the second one she chose we let her go where she wanted to uh we did not want her to go but she went to erie to [gannan] university uh or [gannan] college i am not sure which it is college i guess uh she went there two years and it was more expensive and she soon realized you know even though she did not like clarion she came back and finished at clarion because it uh saved her quite a bit of money and she got really the same basic education that she wanted and our other two boys they went to clarion also and uh did very well there and they have all really got uh they have all really got really good jobs and uh uh_huh uh yeah they kind of had that they just expected to go [daphne] never went she always said she would never go to college she said i i always thought she would change her mind you know but she did not and there's nothing wrong with that you know if college is not for everybody but uh it it does make a difference in your wage income i think it's what they want out of life because if they get an education and are willing to go where the jobs are they can make a you know a much better income like my kids they are all making more than my husband was making when he retired from the state you know that boggles my mind uh_huh uh_huh okay did you go to college you did see it makes a difference uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh some place else uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's great uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh different life styles yes yes uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right it's quite a bit different see that's the way we are we are more of a rural type of an area and it does make a difference i they say you should not look at the expense of the college when you are looking yeah not really because they say that a lot of times you get more help with a more expensive college and so in the long run if it's really what they want you know they are better off now our children all pretty much borrowed for their school uh we we did all we could but they pretty much had to borrow a lot of their money to go how many you said yours are all i mean that sounds like an army oh lord that is an army i came from a family of six and i have only got two and they are one well i kind of decided that single single children that that that's not parenting that's a hobby but well do not tell that to all my friends they are into quality time i am into getting through the day well i i i can spot a kid who really you know whose parents spend every quality time with them you know outside of the work day and when i take care of some people's kids you know when they when they have [teachers'] holidays and that kind of stuff i will take my [friends'] kids that are usually in day care and you can spot them because they have no idea how to hang out and mess around yeah really it's not a problem for my two they are only eighteen months apart they can find things to do and mess around and plot and scheme and everything else you did all five of yours complete college well how did you go about selecting a college then do you think that what they say that they are interested in is at eighteen is going to be what they are ultimately ultimately graduating at uh_huh uh_huh how about the other four other three who went uh_huh when they were like in junior high and high school i mean had they did they have an idea that they were definitely going to go to college and uh_huh uh uh_huh yeah i was i was making more than i was making three times what my father was making as an executive in the insurance industry when he retired yeah i went uh four years to undergrad at university of nebraska at lincoln because lincoln is where where my parents live and there really there really was not a choice i mean the finances uh [dictated] that you had to go there i kind of i am not going to say i resent it but i was well you know one of the national merit scholarship [qualifying] and you know one of the rhodes [scholars] kids and the whole bit uh my parents did not even discuss with me going to college out of state or anyplace else and i just knew that the finances you know would not support it if i had known how not i am not going to say easy but how much less difficult than i thought it would be to get a uh scholarship to go anyplace else i think that i would definitely you know have gone now when i finished there then i got a scholarship to go the harvard university in boston and that was uh i think that was probably one of the best things that had ever happened i mean i was taken out of my element you know the [homogeny] midwest which is a lovely place to grow up and put into someplace else where people thought differently looked differently sounded differently you know different life style and i think it was probably one of the best things that ever happened to me now my kids i keep saying that uh you know i would like them to go to the best school that they possibly could and i do not know you know what the [realities] you know is going to look like you know we are putting money away already uh but i really think it's important to put these children someplace where in addition to you know them getting an education they really need a you know a socialization away from what they are raised in especially if you lived a pretty [insular] community and an upper class suburb of dallas let me tell you it's very different you should not uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh okay yes i did i went to a small liberal arts college in virginia uh it was [sweeper] college of about seven hundred and fifty students i had gone to a small school growing up uh and a lot of my friends went to university of michigan but my parents were retiring in south carolina when i graduated and uh were looking for a southern school and uh also u of m seemed overwhelming in size and uh what about you oh so you're from the midwest too uh i live in texas now where are you oh uh my brother's in austin uh he lives [lakeway] he uh had moved uh we're in plano and oh austin is so pretty i really like it and your daughter is going to be a sophomore is uh because you live in austin is she thinking about the university of texas oh yes uh_huh those and those were several uh that we did consider uh my parents uh certainly didn't push but wanted me to look in the south and because i had been in a small school they suggested that i probably i when i say small my graduating class had eighteen in it and so they suggested that i might want a smaller school because i was used to a lot of one on one uh or small group situations and i did pick it because at the time i was interested in majoring in biology and i also wanted to spend one year studying in europe uh i had had an a f s student from germany live with us our senior year and we just thought that would be a wonderful thing and i ended up majoring in french one of the reasons i picked the school was because they had a strong science department they also had a strong language department and i'd always loved working with children uh and i found that i couldn't fit everything in but because i had had a fair amount of french going in i was able to do my year's study in france and able to take a lot of the other courses that interested me uh and so that was some of but several of the things you mentioned were the things that uh our son has talked a lot about texas a and m he but he thinks he wants to be a writer and i don't think that yes uh and really his his graduating class will probably be in the neighborhood of eight hundred and fifty to a thousand uh and so he's used to a bigger size and because my brother is there uh he would have family close by so there there are advantages uh but i also because i had so many friends who did go from our small school to university of michigan which was so large and they really felt uh like they were numbers you still yeah well that's certainly uh especially today with the cost of college i mean that is a a major uh consideration and i do feel fortunate that texas has so many good schools and even though baylor uh and when you mentioned that we we have friends who have children there who just love it and for a private school it is not as expensive as most are and it is a smaller size and uh i do feel like there are a lot of options it's it's but i had been hoping some schools i know give uh-oh even this year jay had an aptitude test uh yes he thinks that's what he'd like to do but he's really strong in math and science too and we keep encouraging him to keep an open mind does your daughter know what she'd like to do yeah yes uh_huh yes well he but he has even now that he's in high school uh and of course there's there is still time but he's beginning to feel that as much as he enjoys writing he wonders if he can make a living at it you know it's the it's okay well did you go to college and where did you go uh_huh uh_huh i went to the university of minnesota i am uh_huh where do you live now well i'm in texas i'm in austin uh_huh i'm familiar with plano i visited once or twice oh i love it i love it i really do that's correct i have two daughters but my oldest will be will be a sophomore she has her heart set on u t and uh you know having gone to the university of minnesota i know what a big university is like and uh one thing that i did this summer which i thought might benefit both my daughters is my youngest daughter got involved in band and baylor has a band camp so she went for a week and it was overnight and they lived in the dorms and i thought this would expose both of them to what it's you know like on a a smaller college campus and uh my oldest one just wasn't impressed at all with the idea of a small school so uh i i i still think the exposure was good the reason i ask if you went to college is i thought well you know what were your selection criteria did you base it on what you wanted to major in or what you would feel comfortable with or what you could afford or you know there's all of these areas to look at in making the decision oh wow oh definitely uh_huh oh how exciting uh_huh oh that was that worked out very well for you well then he should come to u t uh_huh large classes oh i went from a large high school to a large university and i definitely felt like i was a number uh i mean it is a different feeling but that was that was my only option i i mean i just really couldn't look at anything else that was the one and only thing i could really afford other than a you know a junior college which i didn't want to do so that's how you know my decision was made but uh yes what what does he hopes to be a writer huh oh she she has uh you know interests that are just you know going in all directions uh what she talks about a lot is theater which i think is okay [bethany] let's be real uh she really is is pretty [unfocussed] at this point and i don't know she's taken a lot of french and she may end up doing something with that and i am a single mom so i've been and i made the mistake of dropping out of college to get married so i'm trying to have my children not make the same mistake and i'm you know showing them if you're strong in math and science [kiddos] this is one area where women can make some decent money you know i mean i'm kind of really putting the practical application you know and and saying yet do something that you enjoy by all means go get that piece of paper you know do you just have one son i see well it sounds like he's got some really you know good strong ideas of what he wants to do okay i guess our topic is um advice about going to college do you have children of your own oh are you what school are you going to oh are you enjoying it are you working on your um bachelor's degree and what field of study are you in uh_huh oh well that's neat are you from north carolina oh are you really oh well what took you to north carolina oh i see well that was one of the things i was thinking about in school um i went to texas tech out in lubbock and uh i had a friend my roommate went to tech also but she was from new mexico and she had to pay out of state tuition and i think that would have uh played a real big part of my decision yeah because um she was of course back then it was so much cheaper than it is now it was like four dollars a semester hour and so i was going to school for you know just a few hundred dollars a semester and she was paying forty dollars an hour so she paid ten times as much because she was out of state oh that's good yeah so i think that would be one thing i would definitely consider try to find a school within the state that um i liked well enough to attend uh_huh right yeah yeah right yeah that's true that was something else i had was i had government aid of course but uh it was wonderful because i got one of those grants that you don't have to repay and yeah it was so nice it paid most of my tuition and um a lot of the book costs and that kind of thing so yeah i really i'm sorry what did you say well it was called a b e o g a basic equal opportunity grant and it was from the government and it was based at first it was based on my parents' income my parents had five children and really didn't make enough money to send any of us to school and so uh because based on the number of children and the amount of money uh my father brought in i got a small grant but then after that i was on my own working and you know trying to go to school on my own so then i got a real big grant because the amount of money i was making really didn't compare so it was kind of nice i don't know if those are still available or not but yeah yeah this was great it was just based on you know how much your tuition costs and everything and generally it paid everything so i went to school about three years of my four for almost nothing so that was yeah it was really nice uh_huh right uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh that's right um i didn't know that um well i guess the only comparison i had ever heard was between a a christian college because i thought about attending abilene christian instead of texas tech and of course the price was just astronomical compared to tech the christian college was so much more expensive but i guess some of the other smaller colleges might might be a lot different really yeah yeah huh yeah yeah you're just a number right yeah oh that's a shame well i i felt a little [cheated] at tech also once i got into my i um majored in uh_huh oh no i don't have any children but i'm still going to college uh_huh n c state um well it's a lot of work my bachelor's uh_huh um it's actually in computer science and i have a special interest in voice i o no i'm actually from amarillo texas originally uh_huh oh um the service yeah uh_huh uh_huh ooh it would have played a major part in mine uh_huh golly yeah luckily i've paid in state tuition the whole time uh_huh um uh_huh the second thing is some colleges only offer the uh liberal arts and uh whereas like state they offer engineering courses so depending on what your major is or medical you might want to some um attend somewhere like tech and um aside from the uh well some schools may even give you financial aid where another one won't oh really um wow that's great was it a [pell] grant what kind of grant was it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh wow uh_huh um uh i'm not quite there's there's a lot of different organizations who uh who do give grants but uh i'm not exactly sure which ones they are and how much they you know they generally run uh_huh golly that's great oh another thing i've got a i've got a degree from another college and uh something that might play a part is the size of the college uh the smaller schools can give you a lot uh a lot more specialized instruction and attention than the larger schools in the larger schools you get caught up in the bureaucracy and and they just give you a teacher's assistants you know instead of a scholar you get a t a and uh you don't get near the uh quality of education and as well the uh smaller schools often times don't cost as much oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh um um oh i at state i think it's just a waste of somebody's money to go there it's really a shame because of you know the instruction um i'd rather go to any other college you know in the state and i would definitely get my money's worth uh much better than state it's kind of unfortunate because they've they've just grown so big that they just don't care about the students any more yeah they're they're bent on uh seeing how much land how much more land they can get and how much uh how much of the campus they can build up and uh yeah it's really a bad situation here jay um my kids are are both in college um and i'd i played a fairly active part in helping them decide where to go on the other hand they really decided themselves um what what kind of experience did you have uh_huh um i see well i may maybe i'm wrong but i think it makes a big difference in terms of finding a school that is sort of right for the child in terms of his or her [happiness] and and and the appropriate support environment and things like that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh did did you play a a strong role in helping them pick schools or did you just sort of say listen to your guidance counselors and uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i think that's a great idea i mean that right it's it seemed expensive at the time you're doing it but but the compared to the the total decision it's nothing yeah uh_huh yeah yeah right yeah yeah well back back to this visiting thing i mean i found that my kids had no conception what college was really like and and that the process of going around to a few schools with them really helped them understand and being able to go with them to at least some of them gave me a chance to explain things to them and to uh in reference to what we had seen good grief good grief what is twenty one thousand what school is that uh_huh uh_huh yes uh_huh yes uh_huh helps to at least set up range of things to look at uh_huh well i uh one girl went in in state and has graduated and then uh that was uh you know that was her choice pretty much where she wanted to go and i have uh one out of two out of state both in missouri and um i teach uh in a college and so i they had heard me talk about it and for years that i didn't think it really made too much difference where they went for their undergraduate uh so that was pretty much uh oh oh if they if they're content there i mean as far as the education as far as looking at the degree at the end that uh it's very little difference is paid to it where you get that bachelor's uh if it's a halfway decent school they should be happy naturally and if they can get uh um two out of let's see my son got a full total scholarships and so there's uh there's plenty of scholarships out there and so people should be [advised] to look for those and um uh well they uh i went we went around my son was a graduated from a jesuit high school and so he he was pretty much looking for a jesuit university and so there you know that was limited to five or six different places and um so he's in saint louis u and i guess i played a role in that i i just sort of uh let them um you know they'd all been uh pretty efficient as far as studies and uh so i didn't have that much to do they just uh they just knew they wanted to go to college and i you know helped them get there as far as traveling with them to look at different places we did do that and i would suggest a person always goes and looks at the school before they sign up some people don't do it and then they get there and hate it or whatever so if it's possible right i think in the short run it is expensive in the long run it's very uh reasonable if the person my daughter has been in in missouri for a second year now she's coming home at the end of the semester so uh you know she's already twenty one she started late so that's you know strictly up to her and uh she'll finish down here uh uh finish this year down here and then decide what she's going to do next year it'll save me a lot of money because i'm not going to have to pay out of state tuition but again that's her decision so uh but i have so many students in my classes that have dropped out and come back and they're much better students at twenty five twenty six may twenty eight so you know i don't i never have pushed them i just say that education is important you should do it uh but uh they have to do the work so uh right yeah oh i think so and also i'm opposed to the to the size they've just gotten so huge and so my daughter first looked at a place that was forty thousand see that's just too many ended up going to where i used to go and that was twenty five hundred when i went there it's twenty one thousand now it's too big so pardon it's southwest missouri state university and uh it was twenty five hundred when i went there forty years ago and uh my son's in a school about seven thousand and that's that's not bad i teach in a school about eight thousand and that's that's even a little large but it's much better than twenty one thousand but they do have to visit and if if the parent can point out all the different places to look for for scholarships and then oh those rating uh the magazines and all those things are doing the ratings now and everything i don't think it hurts to look at them i don't put that much stock in them but probably fine just to compare right if they you know uh they need to i was going to say my uh college is northern state university in aberdeen south dakota and our head football coach dennis [muir] used to be an assistant coach at b y u so i thought that was kind of an interesting coincidence uh northern state university in aberdeen south dakota i in what major or what year international business yeah and you okay well that sounds interesting how long of a program is that you know i read a study once and it said that uh like thirty four percent of uh college students actually graduate in four years from a four year program it took me it took me five years so you just you get started and you change your mind or you want to pick up a second major if you're management you you thought i i'll take that marketing it's just only was three more classes you know and you just doesn't happen that you get out in four years but my advice is is uh look for at the student to faculty ratio you know if you're going to go to a college where student faculty ratio is three and four hundred to one i don't think you're going to have as meaningful of a college experience as if you're down to the thirty to forty to one yeah it was about twenty six to one yeah which is you know it it's interesting but it it's what i thought was nice is you could there was always time to talk to professor you know and and they knew you you weren't just in their class you know and so you could you could go talk to them in their office almost at any time and or if you ran into them in the student union or whatever you know you could sit down talk to them about a problem they're always willing to help you out so but i i's i i put that against uh my high school where we had uh a biology class of three hundred and fifty students and yeah it was a biology lecture class and you know it it just wasn't the same you're sitting there and you're taking notes and you know you got a computerized test scores multiple choice because there's no way they could correct a three hundred fifty point short answer test uh you know a three hundred fifty person short answer test and it just wasn't the same you you'd run you'd pass the teacher in high school and even in high school you could say high to your teachers unless you're in that biology class and they just they'd look at you like do i know you or should i know you do you get uh a lot of tutoring or uh_huh and you could get there and his office hours could i mean he could have like a nine to eleven in the morning office hours and have forty two people waiting to talk to him and you still didn't get to talk to him anyway well what would be your advice to a parent of a child thinking of attending college that's excellent advice well it it it does get it you know you get to the point where it's i'm never going to get done you know i i mean i was taking summer classes and let me get out of here but uh no that's good advice even if you don't have your major decided on have an idea what you think you might want you know so you don't want management but you think you want business oh really huh so you went to what college and what did you graduate in yeah major oh really i'm going to b y u and i'm going into nursing so forever seems like anyways it's about five years but it's probably going to take me longer because i didn't decide to major in that until uh about a year and a half after i was already in school so oh really that sounds yeah yeah uh_huh so what is your advice to picking a college uh_huh is that what was yours more like was there a really oh that's great uh_huh wow in high school oh wow uh_huh uh_huh yeah there's it's the classes here are pretty big so it's hard to get individual help it's kind of you're on your own no very little i mean well like my for example i have i'm in a chemistry class right now and there's tons of students in it and there's one t a for the whole class and he only has certain office hours and so there's only certain times you can talk to him and right yeah oh man i think your advice is good um let's see my advice would be to pick a major before you get into college because i i didn't and i took tons of classes that i didn't need to and um i don't know i just feel like i'm it's it's going to take me a lot longer than and not that's always bad but it's i don't know it's frustrating i guess right yep uh advice on son or daughter going to college uh that's advice that i will need in time future for my children rather than one that i have uh personal experience with uh i suppose i would ask what the child wants to do in life and what the child hopes to to get out of college and what sort of college would best meet meet those needs what advice would you give i guess one clear cut piece of advice is by all means visit the college campus uh stay in a dormitory if you can go to classes talk to faculty members and students yes i'm thinking what what problems my children might have in that uh but i agree with you uh_huh yeah well course it it is a big factor in having an understanding of how much parents will pay and how much has to come from other sources and you're willingness one to to work during the summer or or part time and two uh to to take out loans to assume uh debt after college yes mine is twelve that's my gut feeling too i my son is certainly not persuaded of that hello oh yeah uh yes i didn't have a car in college i think it's more an a burden to to provide for is it uh i didn't do any of those though i feel less strongly about the t v and refrigerators right uh_huh uh_huh right uh let's see when i when i went away to school i'm trying to think my criteria i guess when you're when you're eighteen or so uh it would be important to know if it was a coed college that was a a strict requirement for me uh again what uh how serious a person is according to uh uh you know what what they want to get out of school and uh i guess they'd have to consider how expensive the college is and how close to home if they could handle being away for real long periods of time or if they need to be somewhere where they can drive home when they needed to get home uh let's see uh now what was the question what what's the criteria for picking a college what advice oh okay uh yes yes and also uh depending on how uh uh adjustable your child would be or or flexible i guess it would be uh if if they chose a college in a different part of the country that maybe the they were [unused] to their that the way they run things i mean the the northern colleges are very different than the southern colleges i think the people are different and uh you have to be more flexible and more willing to uh uh adjust to other people's [mannerisms] and [customs] or ways of doing things you know you have to be a flexible person to be able to go all the way across country to something totally different than what you're used to uh you think so uh let's see what else uh well climate would be you know you'd have to you know is somewhat if uh if it's something different than the one they're used to i guess uh if they're used to the northern weather then the southern weather they might kind of feel like they need to go out and play all the time not be in studying if you're in florida or california uh i i'd also advise them that uh if mom and dad paid for their college that uh if they decided to drop a course or decided that they need another year then they'd have to get a loan to continue that's right there's the the responsibility of that and uh uh uh they could they could work and earn money towards college also if they stay within their state you get a lot more financial aid or it's a lot cheaper if you stay within your state than if you go out of state to a private school uh and like i said if they was willing to work uh in the summers and also maybe then the parents could pay a third and then maybe they could take out a loan for a third depending on how expensive it is by the time i have an eleven year old is my oldest so it's not too far away but it's oh okay but it's getting there i mean we still have definitely can put away the money for college now uh i would advise that that they did not have a car at college they would yes i'm here no i think so too i think i think because most kids don't have a car at college the ones that do get taken advantage of and you know there is just i think it's just trouble waiting to happen so i would advise they didn't they didn't take a car and uh they didn't take a television and they didn't take a refrigerator maybe that no i i yeah we didn't have okay scott let's uh talk about advice that we can offer a parent where the child is going to go to a university and i have some yes some children i have three boys and they're all quite young and so we want to plan for their education or we're saving right now and we're getting bonds and and uh and hopefully finances set aside so that they can choose a college that they want to how about yourself do you have any kids so i imagine you've gone through the experience yourself of selecting your college your own college very good what uh what do you use as a basis to determine which college or university you go to uh_huh uh_huh yeah what you thought huh just the degree itself well that's a that's that's good because i did quite a bit the same thing in my undergraduate work i wanted to get a school that was small enough that was [personable] that you didn't have a lecture uh hall with about fifteen other students competing for the [professor's] attention and uh but you i felt that i got a pretty good uh undergraduate uh i went to utah state university which is in logan utah and the nice thing about it too is i knew that i wanted to get into business and that their business college of business was [accredited] and well known at least there in the state of utah and around the surrounding states and so forth and so i i feel like number one you you also need to see what kind of name the like you mentioned before the name the college and university can can give you and another thing that uh another reason why i chose that was the the finances i wanted to make sure that i would be able to afford it that i wouldn't get through four three years of the undergraduate work and and have to leave and uh so i did a lot of talking with friends with family with uh counselors at high school and also read some some books on on the subject at the at the library and uh it was kind of unusual because my my two older brothers and i all went to three different universities depending on what our choice was so hopefully we we chose the one that was best for us and i i felt very comfortable and good about that so i don't think so i don't know the the way that tuition is increasing um [exponentially] it's it's it's kind of hard to set aside money and have that money grow at the same pace that the college tuition is increasing i uh and that that your children can use the benefits of that university well that's an excellent idea that's an excellent idea one thing that uh that we did uh and my parents and our family is that we weren't able to afford um the kind of education that we all desired so my parents stressed that we get excellent grades so that we apply and try for scholarships and uh scholarships were very beneficial in my case to help pay for my education because my parents couldn't and what the scholarship could not supply i was able to to work for and and save and and and get also my my brother um he's a he's a medical doctor right now he had to you know once he got past his undergraduate and graduate degree he had to take out some loans and he's he's working to pay those off so i i think that the uh you know once you get past uh the initial stages of it that there's different options you can use and and uh the student loans are are good options yeah yes and and as you're well aware that [tuition's] not uh_huh do you have any do you have any kids or uh_huh uh_huh no i'm in i'm in graduate school right now yeah yeah definitely in fact i'm even going uh selecting again for for my p h d it's it's a close subject right now uh well i use uh uh uh i have used uh several techniques depending on what for undergraduate i i you know my criteria were much different than than like for graduate school uh when i when i wanted to go to an undergraduate institution i was looking for something that was you know rather small and easy to get around you know and what i would what i thought would be easy to get through yeah and and uh my choice of graduate schools was uh you know it changed a whole lot i i got to where i i wanted to uh graduate with a little you know with a name behind me rather than uh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah where where did you go okay uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh do you do you worry do you worry any about uh uh being able i mean obviously you've taken precautions you know or measures to uh try and pay for your children's education but do you think that that's going to be enough no yeah yeah yeah i all i all i can hope for is that i land a [professorship] at a nice heavy university yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah yeah yeah that's what that's my biggest option right now okay uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh damn it i agree with pretty much with everything you've said uh the one the one thing that i you know i'd advise any parent uh you know or any or any person looking for a college uh is that i think i think you know it's really important for them to actually visit the college and actually try and get away from you know the guided tour of the college and try and talk to the you know actual students there because you know they're just uh in my experience i've talked to people at other colleges uh that you know the the the way the you know the the the lifestyle pictured in the catalogs isn't always the whole story uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i i go to georgia tech which is you know primarily an engineering school and uh you know i think i really do miss the fact you know that it's not a university that there's there's not the the you know it tends to be a very conservative school and there and there doesn't seem to be the diversity of views that a lot of you know universities will will have uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh i don't really know of anyone that's like that's looking for colleges now you know because it with the exception of uh people's younger brothers and sisters then the only advise passed down is don't go to georgia tech uh but uh no actually i'm i'm i'm more interested in in in choosing the right job when you graduate type information uh_huh uh_huh program uh_huh uh uh uh_huh like a fine arts education i uh_huh okay well mark our situation is that we do have a daughter that is uh in the situation of choosing college she's actually at bible college for this current year and uh i guess uh first and foremost it really it's a question of what the student wants to have in the way of a career and then uh uh which colleges or universities can best offer that program and then it comes down to the dollar you have to uh it's whether or not you're a resident for that jurisdiction or you know it does it comes down to uh trying to come with a trade off of the costs uh what do you feel about come of the things that need to no the the college the the catalogs are sales material it doesn't matter whether you know they're they're selling school and uh and true it uh really is helpful if a parent and the student can get there and see the real character of the school and the real life experiences of the school uh i guess there's a difference in here the at least the university here in saskatoon is primarily uh off campus resident students like they just live in the community uh you know i know that there are a lot of colleges and universities particularly as they get to be a little bit on the smaller side where dormitory life is uh is right on campus as well and that you know that changes the character of it quite a bit uh_huh yeah uh i guess we're here this is the university that has for years had the the car that uh will travel the farthest on uh on a small quantity of gas our engineering students uh in competitions and that's the kind of thing that also you see uh if you can see the kinds of [achievements] that have been made by students as well as graduates can give you idea of the character of the school uh whether you you know in one sense whether you've got a spirit of innovation and [excellence] or whether you've got a a spirit of somewhat [unkind] but producing graduates uh you know as sort of some development and some training uh like it's easy enough to crank out graduates but to really challenge them and uh and that can vary between colleges and faculties even as to how you know what the attitude towards achievement is uh do you uh have anyone that you're seriously needing to uh feed information to i suppose if you're actually at georgia tech as a student you're a ways away from that right well that's that's one of the really a valid point that people need to consider as well uh you know to going to college university is going to take four to eight years depending on the programs person's involved in and after that you have to be out in the real world and have to be able to support yourself and if you go in an area that there is just not much of a job market jeez if that's right best training in the world is not going to put food on your table but uh that's funny i didn't expect to have any more calls i thought i was uh through i had done ten i thought ten was the maximum yeah i've been writing mine down just in case anything you know just i did i don't any more my husband does oh well where you going oh how neat well that's a good choice oh [onum] yeah i know them i used to work with them i was a mechanical engineer i did uh package design and i when we first contacted on them years ago i was part of the gene [rickey] was part of that yep probably yeah he's been there for since i left well i worked up there for a year oh yeah he made a lot of trips i don't know him um that's sound like a good deal yeah go ahead yes well how did they decide which colleges to go to and what'd you tell them um yeah that's kind of the way i was when i started school i was in midland and when i was looking for things and what i probably recommend to other people was something that i was comfortable with and i wasn't quite ready to be a long ways off and i knew i wanted to be in engineering so i was looking for a good engineering school so i ended up going to tech in lubbock so i was there i was you know two hours away from home so any weekend i wanted to come home i got in the car hopped you know i was home in a couple of hours and so that worked out real well uh_huh uh_huh um oh well that'd be good i think he'd enjoy a lot it's a good school it's a good place to grow up oh so though so academic standards will improve yeah absolutely yes and a lot of people that i knew would go to school in some really in rochester and some of these really nice these name schools and of course they would get out but they got they ended up getting more or less the same job i did and then they but they're thirty thousand in debt from student loans no yes it's what you do after that yeah yeah it's incredible now yeah yeah and they're all going to be paid back they're going to be in debt for the rest of their lives i guess the main thing if i was recommending to someone like you said you've got you've got do something you can afford but then to go to a school that also is somewhat well known at least in the state for what you want to do like tech is known to be a good engineering school and a and m maybe is known more for computers and that kind of thing i would i would if you know what you're going to do i think that would be important to deal with too because when then when you do try to get your foot in the door at the various the companies that you would possibly want to work for tend to interview more heavily at those locations because they know that that particular school had a good department you know in computer science or in engineering or in business or or whatever uh_huh will transfer so that's good yeah uh_huh yeah i think to some extent you're right most people have a general idea and then there's there's probably fifty percent have a general idea and the other fifty percent are waiting to see what hits them when they get there um yes i had yeah i was in public school i was in all honors classes i was also a national merit scholar and i had i think the other things that a lot of kids could benefit from in high school is taking an aptitude test because there are some good ones out there and i know in our high school at least they offered several different ones where you went through and you know you answer all these questions back and forth and things it ended up being things you liked versus things that you had an aptitude so you have three cats what type okay i'm trying to i don't know the first two yeah of course that's the ones that always look like they are sort of scary okay uh_huh is yours skinny or is it a [tubby] one uh_huh and so she's young uh_huh and how did the kittens come out are you keeping them sold them all uh oh i guess i've never been around a cat when it was in heat i'll probably be happy about it uh_huh well a friend of mine i i don't remember what types they have but they are really really fuzzy yeah i think she has a himalayan but i'm not sure okay hm she sounds really pretty how old is she well she's just a tiny little thing they are [adorable] at that age too wow does she like to sit on top of whatever you are reading and things like that not on the keyboard my friend's cat gets on the keyboard you know uh_huh that come from her more peaceful my uh one set of friends has four cats and let's see these four cats two of them are sort of [strays] i guess then the other two one of which i thought was a himalayan and the other one i'm not sure but they are both so cute and they are like big [fuzz] balls and they're almost more like dogs one's name is [malcolm] and he sort of follows you from room to room wherever you go and things like that so it's really really cute i didn't until i watched my friend's cats i watched a different friends two cats one of them is really old the other one also had been like a stray but he's huge and we think part [angora] he he's black could that be i don't [longhaired] yeah and yeah he was a real wild one and uh but he was fun one time i was cooking chicken and i make taken all the chicken breasts off the bones and i had this whole stack of nice chicken breasts left and he jumped from the floor probably about four and a half feet high and grabbed one of them off and [devoured] it before i could get near him really wow have you ever taken videos of her or something that would be fun huh uh_huh maybe she likes the smell of it that's amazing that's really cute now maybe she will type something that you need for you and then you will be in good shape like the paper oh when i had uh cats at my place as soon as i took out the newspaper to read it they would plop right down on top of it and just not move and just stay there forever uh_huh she pays kitty cat back for all the hassle have you always had cats did you have them when you were a kid my brother was [asthmatic] and so we never had pets in the house we had a dog for a little bit of the time and then but that's why i never really liked cats you know i always thought cats were loose and sort of the typical thing you say about cats you know they don't they don't they're not people animals and things like that and i favor dogs a lot but dogs are just too impractical to have at all oh yeah it's impossible people have them and they're out walking them on the street but i don't think it's fair to the animals yeah you let your cats outside are you afraid they will get stolen or run away or well that's for sure uh_huh how old is she again you breed them that young i mean like a year i see but you breed them the first time they go into heat oh really wow that's amazing i would have thought that it would be better to wait a little bit uh_huh are you going to try and breed her several times or you will see how the first breeding goes or uh_huh how expensive are the [thoroughbred] cats to get that's not bad but you certainly want to protect them after that wow how much can you sell the litter for you know the same type of price if they are good or you know the same type of place if they are good yeah what should i tell my parents huh not being a parent but being a student uh i guess i'd say there's a lot of things uh i think they need to provide a lot of guidance during high school preparing them for the college they want to go to and then it's a trade off between what you know what you got to find out what a kid wants out of college you know is it uh a a social thing or is he looking to make big bucks later with a with a name brand college so to speak things like you know do you go to s m u you want to spend all that money and get that name or do you you know you you just kind of wasting your time to spend all that money if you're not going to use the degree for something i don't think in high school you know but i think that's when you should start being exposed to the ideas and start asking some questions having the you know somebody that's been to college needs to sit down and explain these things to you you know i went in not knowing anything and if i'd a had a little better idea what was going on i'd a probably made a lot of decisions differently oh i'd probably started sooner and taken courses in high school that would have prepared me better for for what i was going to see probably not in my situation i don't have the money for it but uh then again it's kind of hard to say where i would have gone had i been thinking about it back in high school so i think i don't know to me college was a was a i knew nothing about what it was going to be like it's it's a whole different thing than high school you know just go up and show up and stay up all day and and you know they tell you what to do and you do it it's kind of a you drop in a couple times a week and it's up to you to to learn it and get it done so i think those are the kinds of things that parents should let their kids know if they know themselves yeah college is a whole different ball game no so yeah right decent price yeah yeah right right that right right right a lot of the schools i i think i don't know for sure but i think the schools up in the northern states are generally provide a better education i could be wrong about that but my experience with texas schools has not been all that great yeah yeah i had this topic uh the last time i called i believe well do you have any uh children or are you in college i see well certainly and where did your uh children go to college well that's great i see well that's great i'm the director of admissions at u t d well what advice did you give them when they were choosing their colleges it looks like they uh you have a variety there well well you're going right down my list uh the first thing that i always talk to students about is the academic program because if we don't have what you're looking for it isn't going to do you any good no matter how bad you want to come here and uh cost is always uh usually next on the list especially for the parents and financial assistance and scholarships and usually then we talk a little bit about uh the size of the school and uh different types of organizations and activities that they can get involved in and of course distance from home and size of classes and it sounds like uh from your experience you know how to go right down the list with them yeah you know it's interesting especially when uh my experience uh has always been at a public university and a lot of the students in that home town uh sometimes [shun] the idea of staying and going to school across the street so to speak but uh it always seems like at the beginning of the year they're talking about well i'm going to this state and i'm getting out of here and i'm going way over there and a lot of times when it gets right down to the practical aspect of it they end up staying pretty darn close to home because they can save money as far as housing and uh laundry you bet it sure does sure well there's a little barrier around the washing machine and the dryer and for some reason men just can't get around that barrier uh i have a daughter that's a seventh grader and then i have a son that's a sophomore at [shepton] high school and so it's uh it's been interesting them uh sign up for appropriate course work and things and they're they're on the college bound track at least well uh they certainly have two different personalities but uh in terms of needs the older son is interested in the medical field and uh at this particular point you know taking appropriate course work but really nothing that's out of the ordinary and the daughter has indicated that she wants to get a degree in uh business um and then go on to become president sure you bet and no go ahead you called uh_huh yeah well i i don't know i think it depends a lot on um well all those things that's true but i got my daughter into college last year and it was really a major decision but there were just so many things to consider and i don't really think we even considered all of the things we should have uh so she's out in california yeah but what we didn't consider was coming back and forth and things like that you know yeah really so that's kind of that was kind of hard so i don't know i think it's always confusing it's hard to make a choice uh_huh it really is and you don't get to come home as much as you think you will yeah yeah yeah so it's really hard to and i don't think you even know that answer until you go either you know everybody's anxious to get going and get away and go do their thing but then they really want to come home and they can't always so that's kind of hard too that's true isn't it yeah it is i know well the size of the school because we live in plano so the schools are really big here very crowded so she didn't want a school that was really too big and we looked at that and i don't know that that's really relevant because you're going to end up with your little group anyway so i'm not sure that it makes too much a difference although we did find that like down in texas uh at u t you know down in austin that those classes are so full like you can have two hundred kids in a class that would be horrible that's horrible oh my gosh yeah where are you going and it's that crowded is it really oh yeah yeah wow gosh yeah where are you in college now junior yeah my daughter went to plano east too she [twirled] yeah she was the only twirler they've ever had but that's what she's doing out in california that's why she's out there because we had to consider where a good spot was too and yeah yeah well but a lot of times kids aren't sure what they want to be like she started out with sport psychology so we looked all over that was a hard thing to find and then she changed her mind anyway and i think most most people do that i think they say you know yeah see and they say that that's average that that's very common so maybe that's not such a great reason to look at a school i don't know yeah well she was too when you live in plano you know you sort of have everything they really spoiled everybody here at school we all are all our kids are you know to be honest and we went out to u s c because they wanted her to [twirl] for them and she was terrified she was just terrified of living in l a she was too scared to go there so i guess you have to look at that too and i understood it at the time when we went to the campus and visited i thought oh gosh it would just yeah that's certainly helpful your last suggestion there about saying within state i realize that there are a lot of schools and unless the uh student has a real specialty and there oh maybe are one or two universities that are highly respected in that field they really ought to try to stay within their state i mean financing in universities now is getting a very very high and they can't help themselves on that either so it certainly is an advantage to stay within your own state yeah uh_huh well that's very important well that was certainly uh good advice to get him to go to a school who follows up and has such a reputation that others are happy to get their students that that means that the quality of what he was taught must be uh uh very very high and that's good for him too regardless of where he works he has uh a top level of information that will last him the rest of his life basically uh_huh well we have that same situation here i'm i'm a retired professor at penn state and uh the field i worked in was acoustics and we have an acoustics department here and we have lots of students several hundred i guess in in acoustics and they have an excellent opportunity to follow through on their fields because our university is well known for it's research in addition to uh teaching obviously if we can do high class research we must be well trained and and uh available to teach the students well yes yes yes because penn penn state is very well known in uh many of its uh of its fields and uh we we get a lot we'd uh we only we get our sort of say we get state uh students not only from out of state but from all over the world i mean they they they really come here we have a very high a percentage of foreign students because penn state is pretty well tops in many of its fields and we have doubled in size in the last fifteen twenty years i guess uh_huh yes that's true yeah i had five go through college we put five through college uh_huh uh two at texas a and m and three at north texas right so uh_huh right right right uh_huh that's probably your best bet because you know you narrow it down you're better off i think in that and right right is he going on for his master's in the engineering uh_huh you almost need a master's in like if he's in engineering in his major right now one of his majors anyway right now to do anything with it no matter what field you're in uh well my daughter uh both daughters let me see one daughter was in uh business and business degree and then the other daughter was in a special ed degree and lives and works works with [autistic] children uh_huh and then the other one was a personnel director uh down in houston for um several years seven years and then uh my son is a c p a and another has a business degree and then the fifth one is he was hotel management but actually he's in the sign business now and making signs and uh likes that and has kind of hit on a nice setup with that he is local right here in richardson and he really loves it uh_huh and it's uh you know that the type of signs they do is new in the last five years it's the latest thing in signs it's the type that you put on the put on windows and it [peels] off kind of like it's painted on yes so he yeah right he has the dallas uh furniture mart uh clothing mart and the world trade center all tied up in that he has so yeah so it's a nice deal yeah he has he's just starting in it but it seems to be a real up and coming thing because everything's so portable any more i mean you know things are not stable and people are renting places for a short times and they don't want anything permanent any more so it works out quite well right right uh_huh or on to a larger place and not put that much into anything permanent so it it works out pretty well for him it is it's wonderful it's wonderful so oh right the other son the other son used the library a lot in the college section for scholarships and uh my daughters and sons both did that and they they came up with some of the you know you would never think of hello my name's dan nice to meet you i think so well no uh luckily i don't i just rent them yeah i'm a i'm an assistant scout master for a boy scout troop yeah it's it's it's it's so much better to to rent yeah ooh that's uh let's see i used to be able to do this quite well but that was when i was in college yeah the college that i've got that that i went to was pretty good which was cal [poly] in [pomona] and uh uh it was a regular it was a state university and it seemed to be pretty good oh really which one uh_huh yeah yeah well my my parents wanted me to go to uh community college and uh i ended up getting into the university and they never really said anything about it until my sisters went to college they went to the community college and my my father's going gee it it it uh costs a lot more or just as much to go to community college and you aren't getting as much you know so uh_huh oh yeah yeah uh_huh well because his parents gave him a car to go there well you know uh_huh uh_huh that's that's the way colleges are right now anyway is they they have a bunch of kids come down they say hey you want to be here it's it's so it's pointed towards you and if they sell you well enough there ain't nothing that's going to change your mind we're consumers in society uh_huh yeah you got to got to find the good classes and things like that well i can imagine that i i started off the the counselor at the high school said oh you want to do this wanted to go into [aerospace] and i went and my first day of [enrollment] in college i walked around i go into the [aerospace] building and they gave me the curriculum and it's like twenty one units to twenty four units a quarter yeah average is like you know supposed to be like sixteen eighteen you know you know this is like i don't want to be a doctor yeah happened to be walking down the hall turned into some some other [instructor's] office and said help me and he sold me on his program yeah yeah yeah uh_huh yeah there's some tests like that you know but they're kind of strange some of them you know it's like you you you should be a cement mixer or something like that you know and the guy walked in going yeah but i wanted to be a psychologist yeah well i think i think the biggest thing that's important is is to learn enough about the student to match the student well to the to the school and one thing i learned i went undergraduate to harvard and then came out to berkeley and it's pretty clear that there are some people who thrive at berkeley uh and there are some people who who just die here because of the the amount of support that's given and the amount of uh bureaucracy you have to deal with and other things like that uh in a large public school i think in general and uh this is a school with some thirty thousand students and it is set up in such a fashion that students register for classes months in advance and if they don't get them they may not get a chance to take them that year uh average graduation has crept up closer and closer to five years largely because of the number of students who can't get all of the courses to fulfill their major on time uh on the other hand this is it is and it's happening in in a lot of public schools uh because of of budget cuts but on the other hand what it does provide is for the uh for students who who need a chance to be forced to fend for themselves uh who have perhaps been too isolated this is a a case where they're they're forced to do that and and my wife went here as an undergraduate she had been sort of protected right through high school and and had to learn to to make it on her own and she graduated from the place in four years by learning to be smart and picking courses that uh at the right times and right priorities and i can see that as advantageous but there are a lot of people for whom this is just a waste of time uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right just to be able to find a job that you would qualify for yeah well i i think one of the reasons that i don't see that as as much of a problem see i would encourage people to go into college not knowing what they want to do because so many of the high schools have done such a bad job at introducing different areas that it may be that what you want to do and it may be a very practical thing to go into doesn't seem attractive because what you have learned of it so far is is not interesting a lot of people are turned off from math because of high school math and going to a school that offers a lot of choice and taking your first year or two to explore what the choices are still gives you plenty of time and and then eventually focus on a single major i certainly wouldn't say to go to a liberal arts school that doesn't have a strong science program uh and i'd even encourage a liberal arts school with an engineering program but i tend to look i don't like what i see from the students who are graduating here with engineering degrees where seventy five or eighty percent of their time is spent in a [prearranged] technical curriculum and they are moving here towards a program where they have a bachelor of arts and a master of science combined where you get a general education with guaranteed admission into an engineering degree for a [masters'] degree okay well having uh personally uh helped uh two children attend or or to select colleges one of them not very successfully i'm not sure if i'm any authority on this topic at all well a daughter uh went to the university of virginia that was a good selection she yeah really is and she was she was very very happy there and and very successful in what she picked to do so uh she's just graduated from there so that was a good selection uh our son has this kind of you know he's well he started out going stephen f austin and that turned turned into you know [flunking] out because of of of uh too many parties going on then he stayed out of school for a while then he went to richland for a couple of years and then he went to to [depaul] in chicago which would have been great but uh it was so expensive so now he's now he's back well in in that case with him uh he kind of made the selections by himself and i think that we should have given him more direction and he was our first you know so we we didn't have quite the insight that uh that we would have had if he'd been our second like we did with karen so uh but i i think you know just in terms of of what happened i think that first of all i'd i would know the reputation of the school and uh for more than just academics but you know if it's a party school or not although i think every school is a party school to some degree personally right uh_huh right uh_huh yeah right yeah yeah yeah i've heard that from people who have gone to texas yeah i went to uh iowa state which is also a big eight school like oklahoma yeah and uh when i was there it was maybe eleven or twelve thousand people which was just a great size i thought it's it's oh gosh that's just awful uh_huh yeah yeah yes that that's true it makes a lot of difference and uh uh_huh you went to school there yeah right uh_huh uh_huh sure oh yeah yeah well our daughter chose uh virginia because she didn't want to go to school in texas i mean she just sort of didn't want to go to school here uh_huh yeah same deal yeah and uh in fact she was accepted at two schools in texas uh rice and trinity but she decided she wanted to go out of state and uh virginia was uh you know in the east it wasn't a you know it wasn't an ivy league school but it was well it's quite a bit further and it was uh of the state schools that she could have gone to it was one of the cheapest yet one of the best you know with the academics and the tradition and everything that is there uh she made a really good selection we thought and so uh she pretty much made that herself but she did have some others in the wings you know there's another school that she she would have have gone to if she hadn't been accepted there so uh i don't know i think it really depends a lot on the child because our daughter is was just a lot more [levelheaded] about her the process yeah so uh but you know i guess you have to really look at your finances and uh texas has such a bargain in education i mean yeah i know i know uh that's something uh oh wow my gosh that was a [shocker] no i'll bet not yeah yeah yeah i know how that is you did pay yours good yeah my husband went to school on loans too and and we he was able you know we paid his off after we were married but uh well i'm at the university of texas at dallas and as a graduate student and uh you know i have to say that uh it's a real bargain i mean for as far as i'm concerned it's been a real bargain of course you know living at home makes a lot of difference if i had to to pay room and board somewhere that would make a lot of difference uh in uh i think uh on a yearly basis i'm trying to think i would just make it a rough figure of about uh with with the travel expenses and so on although she didn't come home that much uh actually i would say between twelve and thirteen thousand a year it's not when you look at the you know the school and the fact that she was uh no on the lawn no no that's that's an honor that's [bestowed] on very few and she didn't get to do that although she knew people who did live there but yeah that's that would have been neat well you know the graduation takes place right there on the lawn on on that in that big fat [grassy] area and uh they had four thousand graduates this spring and boy that was quite an event i'll tell you oh yeah yeah that's a great place to visit that really is yeah yeah well they're just so it's just [steeped] in tradition and and the uh you know they're they still talk about mister jefferson the you know i mean the [founder] of the school of course was mister thomas jefferson and they and and a lot of right uh_huh and and a lot of the of his traditions i mean for instance they don't call the students freshmen sophomore junior senior they call them first year second year third year and fourth year because mister jefferson felt that one's education never ended and to you put those four [designations] of freshmen sophomore and so on on the person's education limited them and he felt that you could go on to school forever you should just have the number of years that you were there attached to your name if you want to do identify someone so i had to be very careful about talking about seniors or fourth year students you got to get the terminology right yes all righty yes it certainly is i got to go make it here well and kids in college and how to help them yes and you've been through three of those yeah well i've been through once so how did you do it with your three where were you living back then okay uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah i i think there's a lot of that when you go to a school with two thousand kids there suddenly a college that's small seems i'm going backwards so yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh well i think it was well a little bit of she narrowed it pretty rapidly to eliminate the real big ones texas and a and m and then it kind of got to be a combination of what she thought she wanted to do and uh the uh quality of the program it it you know baylor was kind of always at the lead there for uh for some time uh she looked at austin college i think she applied at trinity but she really wasn't applying at any of the state schools um accounting so it was a bit of of the major but not a whole lot there's a lot of campuses have business majors so that was not a big deal for her but she just uh it was sort of her choice and i think it was a little bit of we visited there and she visited some because her high school boyfriend's sister was there so she had spent some time there and felt pretty comfortable she she looked at austin college but i think again it was the the size aspect it was just too small for somebody coming from plano unless you you really felt you needed something smaller so it's uh about uh eleven thousand yeah so it's uh it's sizeable but it's it's sort of in the not giant size yeah yeah in the case of your kids that i i guess with jennifer it was more uh that she was making her own choice which i kind of feel is one of the keys if they're going to go do it they better they better decide where with uh yeah yeah uh_huh yeah definitely yeah well it seems uh i don't know of a whole bunch of kids who uh really do what their father did there's some i think doctors may be a place where and i don't know quite why that sons often follow dad into the profession and maybe that's some of it takes dad's pull to get an in and another folks can't get in as easily but uh i don't have any kids who want to become engineers uh so uh you just kind of live with it yeah uh_huh yeah yeah well that's the key to it is that enjoying what you're doing and uh you know i think the folks i see having more trouble picking colleges are i got some friends who at [arco] there who uh well they're from back east and uh their kids are are looking in on some of those eastern private schools when you start looking at the twenty to thirty thousand dollar price tag and you start saying well do you really have to go there to get what you want uh_huh but they're from back east and they got a lot of relatives there so it's uh some of them do that yeah yeah i have uh i went to western state college in [gunnison] colorado what about you oh okay i personally would recommend the smaller colleges just because you know you get a lot more individual attention and you can go talk to your professor and uh it's just more i think it is more conducive to studying especially if you are like a freshman uh_huh right right is that uh is that in the mountains oh great well that is the way that was what western state was too yeah i wouldn't trade it i wish i could move back i am tired of the big city that's for sure yeah yeah we are just uh out skirts of dallas yeah did you ski right oh yeah definitely no i regret it too i really want uh i would like to go this year we are suppose to go on a ski trip but that is that is one thing i would recommend too cause you know most college you go to a college and make what you uh can out of it and when you get out you are you basically promote yourself and and you try and network into a company or get a job or start a business or whatever but uh you just can't trade that the time you know that you spend in the mountains you know if you fish and hunt and whatever and ski you know i would never give up that right sure right right yeah yeah they do that is right right uh business administration yeah emphasize in finance yeah really i am at uh a company by the name of e systems we are a defense contractor down here it's it's a pretty good company yeah i am a scheduling analyst yeah so oh really is there a lot of a lot of companies up there uh_huh okay so uh do you own a p c but you have one at work okay and now because um see i'm i'm doing my uh master's in computer science and computer engineering and um and i i don't have one but i have to use them like during especially during my undergrad you you use um like your first couple of years you use personal computers because uh you know the software you know like it's easier for you to go to and run a program you know through the disk because um the grader can do it at home then as the you know as you go up higher like in your senior level you're doing projects which are are so big and you have to have so many people sharing the same data that you can't use personal computers so you have to use you know a main frame oh okay but does it have uh like a disk drive oh okay because uh the ones that we use you know are like unix base systems and so they don't have a disk drive you know so you can't the only way that you can do it is through a modem and you you know you just do it that way but that's uh that's the only way that you can get to through to the system you can't store it anywhere oh okay and then you also have to do all your grading on the p c oh okay okay yeah well uh for us it's uh uh you know it's like for doing like you know like [resumes] and presentations we use like for example a mackintosh which is a lot easier for graphics than the than you know the i b m p c's or anything compatible with that due due to the fact that well you know i i haven't tested the the p s two yet but i don't know if the software is as easily you know like you can manage it a lot easier than than the old one the old one you had to go pick a line use little arrows to go onto the screen and check where you wanted to start and where you know with the mouse you do it you know like a hundred times faster and uh you also get you know when you see it on the mackintosh with you know the one i have that doesn't have any color you can look at it and that's the way it's going to print out and especially if you have a laser printer it's going to print out the same way as it's on the screen and so with you know with the i b m what would happen is uh since the software that i had was it was basically you know you only see part of the page and so the whole page you you never can actually see it you just draw it and they have to [zoom] out and [zoom] in and you know it's like every time that you have to do something is it's really a pain and also you know it's like for for presentations it's like if you have to do any statistical data it can be easily represented on a on a p c it can be easily represented on a on a p c you know like years back when you didn't have that you would have to map out all this all these numbers and get a [graph] which you weren't sure if it was okay or not you know but with a with a new system i can calculate everything so fast you know like for spread sheets you can see what the trend is over the years yeah that that i i had a i had a program due and uh one one window i had the program and the other one i had the program running so if there was ever a mistake i could easily check you know i could look at the program and say this is where i made the error instead of saying where did i make the error you know go back and forth and and you know you always you know the old ones you had to go out of your program load up um uh well load up the program again in this case after you load it up change it hope that's right get out of that run the program run uh_huh as long as it took and then go back and see if that worked or not but with windows you can have the program and say it messed up in line fifty four so you take a look at line fifty four you take a look at the output at the same time and you can see that where it messed up because you know it's like in the old computers the ones that uh we're using here a couple of years ago you would always have to have a printout every time that you ran your program you would need a printout because everything else was [erased] in the background did did you learn it in computer science and when was this oh okay yeah i know because uh all i know is that when i came here in eighty seven they still had uh it was the last year to to put all your punch cards in so yeah no but it it was just sensational because i walked in and they go oh my god they're still using this it was like this is the last year you can put your punch cards in and get your program out and you know you can get a hard copy of it and that's about it so but i mean the price of computers has gone down they said that um if the auto industry would have kept the same trend as the computer industry has ever since you know it started they said that uh cars would cost two dollars and they would run forever so i mean it's like you know the the joke with the [yugo] you know it's like yeah you know like when your uh car runs out of gas just throw it away and that that's the way it would be it's like yeah i think i'll buy a new car today you know so yeah but i mean the price has really gone down i mean i b m which uh an i b m p c in like in nineteen eighty one it would cost you five thousand dollars and now you can get it you know like for one thousand dollars because you know because of the parts basically yeah the parts and the labor is what they're charging you they're not charging you you know over pricing it because it's like if we sell it for less you know it's like we're losing money you know it's like we want to sell it to break even at least and i think they stopped producing the i b m p c and uh and the uh p c junior was a total failure to them they had uh they're trying to get out small computers but the only problem was that when they took that one out the small computer was the i b m p c and so you couldn't you know it's like sure bring out into the market something that's smaller when nobody uses anything that's smaller than you know this you know and so but over the past years it's like i b m has been producing like every two years they bring out a whole new system you know like the p c x t a t and the p s one p s two things you know and so it's just that you have to always compete and uh mackintosh took a lot of the market from a lot of schools because of of their you know you can work with it a lot easier so that's what they're trying to do oh well i'll leave you back to your work and uh have a good lunch all right bye bye um no not personally but yes uh_huh yeah several uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh right right yeah i know i uh i do have a uh you know a computer at home but it's one that the company has loaned me and that that's been my situation is that uh that way i can get in access our uh computers that i have up here and you know do work from home oh yeah yeah yeah yeah right uh_huh right right yeah right yeah no i um i i have both because that that's what i use all the time is unix systems um versus the dos but then i teach dos classes uh at night uh_huh part time so well that that's the really neat thing i teach in the continuing education classes so i don't uh i don't have to have any grades no grade books so that's great but no i find that i use the the personal computer a lot though for my wordperfect and also for my spread sheets um so i think it's extremely helpful and very useful uh_huh um um uh_huh yeah right um um uh_huh right right that's true that's true uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh oh what a hassle yeah yeah uh_huh yeah right yeah uh_huh right right yeah and i love all the windows that they have out now too they have really simplified things right right right uh_huh uh_huh yes yes yeah yeah uh_huh yeah yeah right right yeah i know i uh i remember my college days and having to do that too oh yeah uh_huh i sure did uh i graduated in eighty six yeah so it's been fairly recent the cards oh oh dear i didn't have to bother with that at all thank goodness yeah yes wow wow uh_huh wow uh_huh oh that would be great uh_huh wow oh sure oh sure right yeah and the two eighty six too so yeah uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah yeah oh uh_huh yeah yeah that's true well okay thanks bye okay um now the term personal computer uh i don't happen to have one at home um but i do have a personal computer on my desk here yeah uh yeah just kind of it's kind of a [kluge] that was [pieced] together to to uh shall we say [bypass] the formal [procurement] process and uh it it works just fine it says it's a [monochrome] monitor [panasonic] printer uh no big deal it it does the things i need for it to do no it's not even that uh i think that's about where it is uh yeah i do that i i do uh some lotus on it uh do some uh samna some uh p f m uh nothing extremely complex uh_huh yep oh yeah i bet that's a pretty nice setup yep wow yep wow uh_huh uh_huh sure uh_huh yeah yeah right well um i seem to always be in the the next to the last generation of word processing software when everyone was in samna i was still in p f m and now that i finally become proficient in samna everybody's going to wordperfect so i can never quite stay current with that uh_huh oh huh i can i can believe that no not really i'm not that up be on that sort of thing oh okay oh okay okay oh well it sounds like you're pretty much into computers i can believe that well it's it's been interesting yeah of course needs and wants aren't necessarily the same thing i is is that the newest thing now the four eighty six that that must be a fairly recent release okay okay because i i had done capital packages for two eighty sixes and three eighty sixes but i didn't know they had a four eighty six just yet uh_huh yeah sure yeah i did too and you have a good day bye bye a type of work station is it a two eighty six or three eighty six base machine it's eighty eighty eight okay uh what type of uh [utilizations] do you make of it word processing obviously okay uh i use them both here at work and at home and i have i b m clones in both cases here at work i have the t i one thousand which is a three eighty six base machine yes it is uh unfortunately i need all of it uh for example i was messing around with a spreadsheet this weekend that's a third of a meg in beta size and that i know that uh brings an eighty eighty eight machine to it's knees because i had taken it over from a friend who was working on it and he had a two eighty six machine and it brought it to it's knees just in the ability to handle and then i have uh a three eighty six f x a sixteen bit machine at home and i'm really pleased with it it manages to take care of all my home needs in terms of word processing and spreadsheets and uh [databases] [database] [searches] uh what i've gotten into more recently are the tools to use them have you to try to make them more effective and useful have you been uh struggling along those lines well i think you will be real pleased to get away from the banana as i used to call it it's uh i used it on uh some other machines in days gone by and was real pleased to leave it it was a real memory hog when you started making large [blot] changes to it the at least the version i had tended to keep copies of that of what you were changing and [deleting] off in memory until all of all of a sudden you got a disc full error not a fun thing to try to recover from very frustrating uh but again i've been dealing with large files both data and and otherwise uh that was a engineering [spec] on b two you come here with the b level of [specs] well it's just a huge file that tries to describe the requirements of what you're trying to build uh to one level down from assistant description well i sure need them uh there's no way that i could begin to process and keep up with the kinds of information or the magnitude of information that i need to to try to do my job without them yes uh maybe you'll play around some and figure out how they can help you do different things i think that's when you you start deciding that you really need greater assets than you already have when you start seeing what all they can do for you well i understand that you know if needs and wants were the same i'd have a four eighty six machine at home right uh that's came out around the first of the year it does a few more things uh than had been available before but i'm not sure that it's such a massive improvement uh you know once you get passed thirty three megahertz all help is kind of lost in the in the translation because you no longer can think that fast anyway well okay i enjoyed our discussion you do the same bye well how about you do you use p c yeah you and me both huh_uh yeah and so i like the i b m p c personally but that's pretty much everything i've worked with and uh i've become so accustomed to it that uh it's second nature what do you use yeah oh huh_uh huh_uh huh_uh oh okay oh okay so we um we use it's an i b m p s two also and um you know every now and then the file gets so big that you know it moves slower than i'd like but i uh i do mainly graphic work on it and uh a little bit of word processing and then lotus applications to it and uh i don't know i just i enjoy working with them there's so many capabilities out there i mean the things you can do are endless huh_uh yeah huh_uh we have one at home but i just don't find the time that i can use it yes huh_uh one of the reasons why i got mine was before i went on maternity leave they didn't know how they were going to do without me at work because i am pretty much the like you said the guru in the office with the different programs and any trouble shooting that there is and um so they didn't know how it was going to work they knew they were going to have to get a modem so that we could in the [decks] machine so that we could in my home so that we could make it through this eight weeks or so but uh you know it's uh it's almost like we could become too dependent on them and oh i we use a lot of free lance and uh that's uh pretty much takes up a lot of our day so for as producing [transparencies] and things and um it uh compared to the way the things have upgraded have uh really what's the word i'm looking for i'm just totally drawing a blank but uh the way things have changed over the years with the p c and the different programs is just great it's remarkable the things we can do now and compared to you know a few years just the power i'm i'm trying to uh get an updated machine mine uh is just putting along yeah yeah huh_uh um now that's awful huh_uh okay oh okay right oh yes right the copy that you can with one of those as compared to one of those dot matrix printers yeah huh_uh um we're just trying to talk ours into getting a laser printer and uh it's just so the budget [restraints] and things like that it's makes it difficult and uh huh_uh oh huh_uh and we uh got a quote on some laser printers the other day at six hundred dollars yeah i don't remember what kind they were but uh we do a lot of [transparencies] sometimes the color would take too long to plot out so they just want black and white which see we can just run them through the laser printer real quick because it will only take a minute to print one of those out and then run a [thermal] copy of it but uh it uh no huh_uh if it was a customer presentation then that would be different we would want to [razzle] [dazzle] a bit but uh it's uh yeah we have one in the office and if we want well in our area if we want to use it we have to you know like you said you had to change it put it on a disc and carry it over to there and see if they're not using the printer right and uh wait for an opportunity to use it huh_uh i know i know i understand huh_uh oh huh_uh right so how are you supposed to expect to stay number one when you're behind the times in technology huh_uh huh_uh right we find it hard to believe sometimes or hard to understand when uh we work for a computer company and uh how are we supposed to present the imagine that we're supposed to present with equipment that's outdated that's obsolete and the guys that some of the guys that run this place are very tight and it's like well why do we need this can't you do that with you know what we have and when we try and then they complain about this doesn't look good oh constantly it seems everything i do is computer related and if it goes down then we're stuck all day huh_uh yeah well i have an i i b m p s two model thirty it's kind of kind of getting too slow for me but my job i'm an e d p auditor so i audit uh computer applications both on the personal computer and the mainframe level and i use my personal computer constantly not only do i do p c type things like uh using lotus or word processors i also use my p c to emulate a mainframe terminal for our i b m mainframe and also to emulate a deck terminal for our deck machine so all i have on my desk is my p c but i'm i'm getting not only our local area network but i'm getting two separate mainframe machines also huh_uh huh_uh huh_uh yeah yeah yeah i've become kind of the p c guru in our audit department because it's mostly financial [auditors] with an accounting back ground and there's three of us e d p [auditors] and one of the three of us has an accounting background and so she's not real proficient in p c's and the other just has not used p c's that much so i ended up taking on the load of making sure everybody knows what they're doing and i'm the administrator for our local area network and i need to keep that going and so i i'm i couldn't live my life without a p c i don't have one at home yeah right now i would rather not have one at home because i would work at home um we've got a couple of portable lap top p c's at the office that i end up bringing one of them home a lot to do work if i had a machine already installed at home i would probably work just about every night yeah huh_uh yeah yeah huh_uh yeah right yeah and it's not fast enough for a new four eighty six chip but uh i don't know if my boss will spring for it but i'm determined to brake mine so he has to get me another one we think about that a lot well that's what i do we had a printer a hewlett packard ready writer and we had about ten people sharing this printer by it was attached to like a central p c and you had to take your [diskette] to the p c to print something so the first thing when i started working at this bank is i said well now first of all we need to all be able to share this p c without getting up so i talked my boss into investing in a it's not a uh a uh real elaborate local area network but we can share the printer and we can uh send files to each other and we can mail send mail messages to each other which is good enough it's what we need and then i talked them into buying a h p laser jet and that was a major [ordeal] to get him to buy it but once he bought it he has been so pleased it's it's fast it's quite oh it has good copy yeah i've got a little little uh i b m pro printer on my desk but and i can use either the pro printer or i've got my p c [configured] to where i can use either printer the one that's on the network or my own so if i just need something real quick and i don't feel like getting up and going and getting what i printed i can just print it in my office yeah they have gotten really cheap hewlett packard makes it's actually a dot matrix printer but the quality is almost laser quality and i think it's called the desk jet and they're you understand i think they're about five hundred dollars now oh really huh_uh yeah yeah yeah so that's all you need for like [charts] and stuff you don't need them in four colors yeah you use the system yeah yeah we you'd have to just sit and wait while someone else was using the printer until they got off the machine that was i was amazed when i came to work i worked at the uh well it used to be the largest bank in san antonio until n c n b came up and bought the rival and now n c n b and now n c n [b's] got a little larger market share but it's the only uh well it's part of the bank holding company and that bank holding company of the ten largest banking holding companies in texas it's the only one that's still alive any way i work in a big [prestigious] place and i couldn't believe when i walked in the door on my first day and here's the audit department of this this huge holding company sharing a h p rugged writer i was going oh wait a minute come on guys this is crummy yeah yeah we're pushing real hard though we're we're trying well see the entire bank is not like that we the the bank philosophy is one of innovation and lead the market it's just the audit department happened to be just a little behind the times because the uh the senior vice president over [audits] is cheap and it's real hard to [pry] money out of him to to do these things but i was i was able to convince him that it would be cost effective and that our board presentations would be much better and um yeah yeah unfortunately the the uh computer equipment and and related [peripherals] are changing and improving so rapidly like for instance we bought a hi how are you today good well as a matter of fact i'm before we started this conversation i was working on my p c at home do you have one yeah do you have we have an um actually it's a t i computer but it is the i b m um clone it's not the t i p c from back when right yeah that's what we have um well i really do i um am an accountant and but i work at home so i use it for that quite often we have you know used some of it for some personal things we keep track of personal budgets and things like that on it i since it's tax season i'm doing a lot of taxes so i do a lot of um a lot of that work on it as well uh_huh oh it is yeah you can yes you can that's right we really we we didn't decide to get one until i started working at home then you know then we thought well we can use it for you know some personal things we for us it really took you know a business application to justify the expense of it really right she could just as easily do those things by hand yeah uh_huh oh my gosh right right and you know there's not going to be those adding mistakes that we all make right i i think in most cases i'd have to say no not unless somebody really enjoys it or perhaps is using it for education i have a four year old son and we have some education programs that he likes a little sesame street one and we have another one that plays music and he really likes that one that's right and yeah on now i think about it i guess for for kids like as they get older especially now when they get to junior high school high school and even college i mean my sister went to college started about three years ago and she had to have a a computer i mean it was like a necessity she couldn't imagine going through college without a computer right yeah any more i don't even know if they have if a college kid would have a typewriter probably not even no uh_huh well unfortunately in our family my husband and i went through college together and then he went on and got his master's degree while i was working and i'm the better typist of us and we just had a regular old typewriter not even a correcting one back then it wasn't that long ago but i typed his master's papers and things on a typewriter oh boy to have a computer back then at least i mean and then of course you have some changes to make and do the whole thing over you take out a sentence on a computer you take it out [bleep] print it out fine take out a sentence on a piece of paper right oh yeah the first time that's probably one of the problems and frustrations that it's brought about because people do feel like oh well we can just change it yeah use it as a just a right oh yeah uh_huh i believe it uh_huh well it's good that she does that i mean bring it to people's attention right oh i have to especially when they're in school i think they would get a lot out of it uh_huh ooh ooh that still could add up yeah yeah you too have a nice day bye bye i'm great yeah no i don't have one at home i work with one on at work continually you know but i do not have one of my own at home what do you have at home uh_huh right from the oldies but the goodies it's probably pretty close to what i have because i have the same kind of thing at work i have a three eighty six s x which is t i computer but everything in is in i b m mode so do you use it a lot at home uh_huh uh_huh so you're on it a lot uh_huh i was amazed when i took our taxes to our tax person and she works out of her home also and the uh software that does the taxes is just incredible you know i mean she just you know i expected to go and you know drop the stuff off and go back two weeks later and you know she had it done and out in twenty minutes on her little p c it was great that's wonderful i have often thought that that having one at home would be neat i just don't know if we would really use it that much you know uh_huh uh_huh oh definitely definitely i know my stepfather bought my mother a little personal computer oh i guess probably three years ago for christmas and you know it's got some stuff on it it's got a nice little word processing software on it you know and some budgeting type things and stuff and i don't think she's ever touched it you know it just it just seems like a lot of trouble for something at home you know she always seems to have better things to do than to try to sit down and figure out how to use her computer you know so yeah just as quickly now i know my boss has bought the software um that he can that his checkbook is on on on a disk and he goes in and and types his checks on the screen and then hits print and they print out on the checks and he's ordered envelopes with the windows in the right places you know and he just [whips] out you know i saw him yesterday morning over there and and he paid his monthly bills and he just you know wrote all the checks on the screen and hit print and it printed out like ten checks and he just you know they're [perforated] and he just ripped them off they go through just a continuous thing on the printer and he ripped them off and stuck them in the envelopes and there they went you know and he said you know i can balance my checkbook in seconds you know because it's all in the computer you know so that's exactly why he said you know he said used to be i always sat looking for those you know he said this way there isn't any you know it does it for you so this you know there are some definitely some some advantages to it it's just a matter of like you say are the advantages does it justify the cost if you're using it strictly for personal business so right yeah yeah as he grows up he'll be even more and more too that'll be great uh_huh really well yeah i well i'm going through right now i'm you know going part time in the evenings and you know i do yeah everything has to be typed i mean they require it you have to type it you know and and so i'm up here you know nights and weekends you know working on the little on the p c up here you know typing stuff so i can see where it would be a great advantage to have one at home you know if you were going to school well you i don't know no no and they probably used to have it i just finished a a major research paper a couple of weeks ago and i couldn't imagine not having that thing on a disk where i could go back in and move stuff around and change it i i don't know what they used to do before they uh_huh uh_huh oh and you had to type all of his papers oh gosh oh cut your time in half at least at least uh_huh you do the whole thing over that's right you know i remember when i was working in high school you know i was working in an office right after i got out of high school i continued working there for probably another year and we did everything on a typewriter everything but it's amazing you know then when where you know someone would have you type a letter they did it right they did it right i mean they were yeah they sit there and they go is this really what i want to say and you typed it and that was it and now you know people just send it back over and over and over and over well we'll try this out and see what it looks like yeah yeah instead of knowing what they want to say before they they just you know play with it and which in a way is nice to be able to do but you know it it gets a little out of hand sometimes i've seen it get out of hand up here you know where we've got a secretary that sits over here that's keeping metrics right now and keeping up you know of all the letters i type how many how many of them do i make changes on and on each letter what types of changes are they [typos] are they because i couldn't read it or people just change a like one word because they think it sounds better or whatever and you know she's also keeping a percentage you know what percentage of letters am i [retyping] for whatever reason and there's like one week she did [retypes] on ninety percent of what she typed you know and it's like you know it's ridiculous and that was that was the high week but it's running about seventy which is still ridiculous to have to make changes to seventy percent of everything that she types well that's exactly right you know she keeps you know keeps several [weeks'] worth of data and then in addition is keeping copies of all the changes to show you know look this didn't really need to be changed you know this is ridiculous and you know changing add this time to now you know i mean that's the kind of things you know that she's keeping and showing that this was a big waste of time it was a waste of paper it was a waste you know to change something like that so anyway maybe you know maybe it'll it'll help in some way but i don't know there there definitely even with the few disadvantages like that are far better than the alternative without a doubt without a doubt well i would like to get one at home some day we've got a two year old son and so you know some day i would like to get even just like the video tell or something like that you know just to to be able to pull in sources from outside would be wonderful you know so oh i do too i do too the on line [encyclopedia] just sounds wonderful you know that sounds like such a great idea you know it'd be kind of fun to be able to play with it so i know my father had a p c and when we were in high school it was always fun we could um link in and i don't even remember now what it was called but you could link in and talk to other talk to people all over the country you know and like you have your own little code name you know and you'd type in du du du hi how are you du du du and they'd type back and everybody and you'd have five or six or seven people talking to each other at the same time and everything everybody said prints out on your screen as they're typing it and it was just great fun you know it was very expensive because the whole time you were on there you were on long distance you know it was like a long distance phone call so we were each limited to like twenty minutes a day you know so oh it added up big well you know we my parents were divorced and so the time we were like visiting our father in the summer time you know so he felt like he could splurge and let us do it i'm sure we would not have been allowed to do that under normal situations you know but when you're doing the guilty father complex you know because he's not there to watch us grow you can kind of get all kinds of stuff that's sad well it was nice to talk to you have a you too bye well do you own a p c oh wow what processor does it have in it oh what kind of work do you do on it oh okay yeah huh yeah i don't own a p c but i've i've yeah i work for t i and uh well i have uh pretty a fairly fancy one it's a t i model it's an s p one thousand which has a it has a fast processor in it a three eighty six and i the the job that i do i do a lot of training of our customers for new products and i have to develop uh functional [specs] and disk and desk top publishing and everything so it's it's kind of fun i mean i i always say that i need to buy a computer for the house but i just haven't got around to doing it yet your husband what what group is your husband in oh defense systems and electronics group i see yeah oh okay yeah i work on uh printers and the peripheral products division basically uh i work in the airline marketing group so we we do a lot of oh yeah uh_huh yeah is he a programmer i see uh_huh right right really so uh does your husband ever use uh a laptop or a notebook does he bring a little one home with him or uh_huh oh i see yeah we we build uh laptop and notebook computers here in temple also and those are really handy i mean we they they have [modems] in them you can send a fax from your p c but they're they're really what's that yeah they're they're pretty handy because you know when i travel it's easy to check messages just you know plug in the phone to your computer and dial in and oh okay yeah i just found out i'm going to denver sunday night again so that kind of reeks [havoc] with plans but it it's really not enough to become a big hassle i see well i don't know there you can get well depends on what you consider expensive i mean you can get real high powered stuff now for under two thousand dollars where you know just a few years ago it would have been six seven eight nine thousand dollars yeah it's still i mean you know two thousand dollars isn't just just pocket change to a lot of people yeah when i started at uh t i i was a summer development student and finishing up at school and so those papers really i mean it was nice having access to the equipment to uh yeah well how many different types of packages do you use uh_huh oh okay yeah golly i've got up up at work anyway i use wordperfect and lotus and and which is uh uh a a line draw package yeah you probably use or something like that for your uh data entry stuff that your talking about do you get do you work at home all the time or just uh_huh oh that that was that worked out pretty good then uh_huh yeah so it keeps you in the company huh uh_huh yeah boy i tell you if i could bring a computer home and do stuff here i'd get all kinds of stuff done [phone's] always ringing and people always asking me to do something else i've got a lot of especially right now we've got several new products coming out and i've got lots of documentation i need to review and some i need to [revise] well yeah but you know i need to be at the office too you know i've just got to deal with all those other things that happen but a p c at the house would really take a lot of the load off uh_huh well i've i've done that before on a couple times but that would make it just that much easier instead of bringing home a computer you just bring home a few floppy disks you know oh my man that sounds really nice uh_huh uh_huh right yeah i've got a lot of folks that i've worked with like that as well yeah we sort of stayed to the topic anyway okay well we'll talk to you later bye no i don't i have one at uh the company i work for [furnishes] so i can work at home and it's just an old old compact that is super slow and but it does it does it's job so um i don't know it's so old it's one of um i do um television ratings and i process some ratings and put do graphics for their television stations their clients so it's basically just data entry and running you know some some software so it doesn't really have to be anything sophisticated you know yeah my husband does too so uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh yeah i'd like to have one for the house too but sometimes my husband my husband says usually i work on the computer all day at work i don't want to come home and have to work on one too um something with the defense huh yeah something like that yeah they've changed their name so many times i've lost track so he works up in plano so uh_huh oh i didn't even know they had anything like that man there's so they're i learned so many things that they they do they're into so many different things so yeah i just kind of in for a while you know he had a he had uh one of those what are they top secret things you know where he couldn't talk about what he did so for a while but then he switched jobs i don't understand half the stuff he does and i have uh uh_huh software design engineer so as they call it so but i have a degree in information management which is computer you know it's basically the more the business end of it than the programming end of it you know so but i've been at it for you know five years so everything's changed so much i probably couldn't even get a job right now it seems like it's changed so much so you know they've made such advances in computers so no huh_uh sometimes he he brought home a uh a portable one but uh it it quit working so he brought it brought it back and he just hasn't brought another one home but they did give him a new computer at work so oh uh_huh oh how nice no he doesn't have one of those so he doesn't have one of those uh_huh yeah well my husband doesn't have to travel so oh boy well at least you get to uh_huh well that's good some people enjoy the travel but i don't think i'd like it if he traveled a lot yeah i would love to have a computer they but they're so expensive uh_huh yeah you know i guess it's not it's all you know it's inexpensive compared to what it used to be but it's a lot to put into one that's right no it's not it's it's not pocket change so it's major maybe when the kids get in school that will be you know when they start needing something you know then that will be different but uh_huh oh yeah yes i remember that i had to do some of my husband's papers because i had access to one but you know he his was more for scientific stuff than for word processing you know so i did a lot of his papers yeah they come in real handy that was a [lifesaver] at home um all i the packages i i don't really use i what i use that outside development that we use most of it's just stuff that's been written in house that i use yeah i know those two uh_huh i've just used wordperfect and lotus and the most yeah yeah a lot of the data entry stuff they used uh survey system and and um you know just in house programs to do what they needed i work well no i worked for this company before i had my first daughter and they just wanted me to continue working for them at home doing other things so yeah it did you know i don't do i don't really don't do basic a lot of what i used to do i just do you know something really minor but it's something that nobody else wants to do and it's time consuming so that's right you know it gives me a paycheck you know it's only like the works only you know three weeks goes for like three to four weeks three times a year you know it's not something that's continual because you know the television ratings don't come out you know all the time they only come out four times a year so but oh uh_huh yeah uh_huh will they let you take a computer home to work oh uh_huh yeah yeah i bet yeah my he took one home when they when they had it you know they had a big [deadline] coming up and it was looking a little touchy to meet so yeah uh_huh that's right i thought that would be you know because it's real nice with this because i don't even have to go into the office i've maybe been into the office once in the past three years you know they just um they just send me everything and pick it up courier or whatever so you know yeah it is real nice you know i just deal with them on the telephone half the people don't even know who they're talking to but i you know worked i know most of them well i can't say that a lot of people changed around there but most people know who i am but i don't know who they are you know a lot of them just know me by name and phone voice yeah you just know them by the telephone so but well it's been good talking to you i think we've got the subject yeah we tried it's hard to sometimes okay well thanks bye bye um so do you have a personal computer oh yeah that's what when this subject was mentioned to us i said well i went gee that's all i use mine for is a word processor and i haven't used it since i got out of college and that was six years ago but it it was my sister's who my sister bought it and uh my father had a small business and she thought that he would incorporate it and use it in the business and he never did he always did everything out by hand he only had three employees so you know it wasn't really worth it to him to do to do it yeah like pay the payroll and yeah basically payroll yeah um it's an i b m i think it's a professional three hundred no that's that's the digital one it's an uh i b m p c junior i think yeah she she uh she uses it now uh my sister to actually she moved and my father wasn't using it she took it with her because she needed it to do she just finished up her bachelor's degree so i don't know if she's going to even use it anymore it it's yeah oh yeah that's that's neat that's a very good use yeah well i know there there's got to be a lot of uses but it's just you have to have a need yeah but you have to have a need i really have no need for it at all um i work for digital equipment and we have a powerful computer down at work no and i i still really don't do that much as you say play games on it they're great for playing games my brother yeah i know some people who just they just went through a course uh and took the electronic [grafting] course drafting not [grafting] but drafting course the c a d yeah and that's really neat i mean yeah you can do graphs graphs on it too but this is you know this is one step above it but it's actual um drafting and i always yeah and the computer does it all for you so it was really neat i wanted to go to that course but my boss wouldn't pay for it i'm like i'll get a job some day and my boss will pay for it i'll be needed because um i i i didn't want to go do it myself because i didn't think i was really going to use it i got this [cough] i've got a cold because it was eighty degrees up here and i went outside with no coat on yeah it was bad yes it was a big change you couldn't really wear a coat because it was so hot and then again i picked up a cold but i'm doing all right getting over it so i don't i don't even know how much um personal computers cost nowadays yeah they can't do your um your drafting and your graphs and all of that yeah you do run you do run into limitations on yours oh wow yeah wow that's neat that you you even reach the limits of yours i haven't even begun to reach the limits junior yeah yeah yeah they say that commodore has made a good um p c for the price though very competitive i don't even i don't even know much money my sister spent on hers but i i just thought i it's it's going to be a waste she's not going to do it not going to use it oh well yeah well she likes it she gets to write her reports but like i say she could have bought a much cheaper model and done what she wanted yeah a typewriter with memory would would have been fine it's all she uses it for um i think it might have a spelling editor on it i'm not sure um yeah yeah that's one of the one great thing about it um no i i really don't it's it was six years ago she pretty much set it up she goes here this is you make your file and then you can uh edit it right um i used the one the one at work a lot um matter of fact anything i've had to write from now on i had to god forbid write a couple of [resumes] and i was just great and all you have to do is just put it in a uh the spelling check mode and i don't even have to look my my words up anymore oh okay good okay yeah well bye uh well we do have one in in our home uh it's on the [fritz] right now because the monitor isn't working properly but uh it has been uh used tremendously mostly by my children for uh playing games however um you know the [bane] of our existence these days uh but it does have a word processing program which all of us have used for reports and papers and that sort of thing oh wow uh_huh oh oh yeah yeah actually it would be worth it if he were able to get a program that would do something that he normally had to do by hand exactly and there are lots of them on the market but you do have to research that find out what works for your system what kind do you have oh well that's a nice computer uh_huh so she took it with her yeah don't blame her uh_huh yeah oh well well encourage her to try other things because um i am uh i work in a school system and i teach writing and we use the computers a great deal for word processing you know because students really do seem to be freer when they write on the computer as you probably found out yourself but um i also am [sponsoring] a literary magazine and we're doing our entire [layout] on the computer uh because of the graphics program and a page maker program that we have a publishing program so it is wonderful once you get into some of the programs that are out now you can do so much with them that you don't do until you really make yourself use them you have to make yourself do it yeah yeah uh_huh oh so you don't need a personal one yeah yeah yeah right well my son is uh studying electronic technology and he's been able to do things on uh on the personal computer here that really have [enhanced] his um reports and his learning and all because he can lay things out that way um and i guess it if you're doing that sort of thing it's really useful but um unless it is i guess it's kind of a waste oh that's fascinating uh_huh yeah i knew what you meant yeah yeah yeah yes you can do wonderful design it it's really well especially when anyone who's ever done any kind of drafting or engineering uh drawing um you have to be so precise yeah oh well yeah uh_huh oh boy what a change huh yeah right well that's good well they vary tremendously um because you can get because you're they're uh the ones that were made a few years ago uh have come down in price significantly um you can get them i've seen them for five and six hundred dollars but they're much less um have much less memory and capable of much less no you can't do very much on them right right um well it's just that you have to have uh you have to be able to get your program in and and many of the programs are so big uh they take up so much space that you don't have any place then to work you don't have any [bytes] left but um if you um if if you want to go into one that's really useful you're going to have to go over a thousand dollars and even for a personal computer it's probably smart to spend that much and we've ours is not quite that powerful and so you know we are we are limited which may be one reason why oh yeah uh_huh some things we can't do but but then we haven't needed to either you know um but we've been able to do what we can no but i mine is not as good as a p c uh uh junior yeah yeah ours is a commodore one twenty eight and it it's not quite as um as useful not quite as powerful so they did yeah that's very true that's very true they did sounds like he that you were right yeah and she could have bought a typewriter also yeah yeah yeah it yeah it if if it doesn't she could easily put it on yeah right right which program did you use did you use word perfect oh yeah uh_huh yeah they're great you're right well i guess we've spent our time i need to go help my daughter do something so this has been fun talking to you good luck uh bye bye so i own a a p c a t at my home well that's actually a good question my wife works out of the home our home she has an office and in fact she sits in the office and she uses it to [compose] and print out letters so that's a very regular use of it that she has and in addition to that i tinker around with it i'm a computer scientist and so i write programs to do little things i'm actually working on a data base at home just to keep track of things nothing special and also i'm interested in writing some programs that will kind of like remind me of things like remind me that wednesdays is trash day and the like uh_huh oh that's a key thing well actually that's a there's really two issues to that that there's so many software packages available today that just require no programming so that in other words when someone built that software [packet] they had to use the programming but if they were careful they could make the use of it totally without understanding how the computer works but i think you you really hit the nail on the head for the average person is exactly what he can use it for and if your wife isn't working out of the home and sending letters or if you don't want to build a data base to keep track of the nuts and bolts in your garage whatever there your issue is then there really oh i see well i see well congratulations on that yeah well actually one other thing i might ought to mention is that they are actually getting quite cheap uh_huh right oh the calculators you mean yeah they sure do yeah i actually was thinking about upgrading mine very recently and kind of look at the whole spectrum you can actually buy a whole brand new computer with a not not a necessarily a slow one or inadequate one but a pretty good one for six hundred dollars no well actually i wasn't including a printer but you you can buy a printer now for a hundred dollars so make it seven hundred yeah yes uh_huh yeah the prices had [plummeted] you can buy the computer the guts just the guts with the power supply the box and the mother board of a type of computer called an eighty eighty eight for about two hundred dollars and then the keyboard is another fifty the monitor with the card that drives is another hundred and then the disk drive is two fifty well that's that's the deal is you're not buying brands now you're buying these knock offs so there's probably the way to do it if you really wanted to buy one is there's a magazine called computer shopper it's a big magazine it's twelve inches narrow the narrow side and seventeen inches the tall side and it's probably an inch thick a thousand pages but the book is the magazine is full of these mail order computer mail order houses and they're all competing with each so you just flip through there until you find a eighty eighty eight computer that that's called it's the original p c so it's we call the t i i'm sorry an i b m p c compatible and you'll find all these things and you'll find the monitors forty dollars and the card that drives the monitor that goes in the back of the board for twenty five dollars which is amazing to me and you mix and match and then you do it by mail order but there's no real brands it's probably a half a dozen companies around the world that are making those mother boards the main computer the circuit board they're available in you know the b [daltons] that that type of thing you'll notice that in that it's it's a it's a although it's a magazine it's large and like i said it's about an inch thick that's right there's great oh yeah yeah that's great yeah i understand that's great that's a good joke i did for years and then i was a scientist over in central research labs and just recently i've changed my job to actually do some of the marketing uh now i i type that one but i don't use it anymore uh_huh yes uh_huh yes i agree oh yeah oh i see that's fascinating uh_huh yeah uh_huh right yes yeah they certainly are so let's see see so i guess with respect to the question yeah i guess we've kind of covered it great nice little conversation with you jack good day thank you same to you uh_huh i could never justify owning a personal computer at home uh i mean that's quite an expense to look for uh well who is this what do you use yours at home for okay well now uh_huh oh uh-huh well excuse me i uh uh well i'm a technician electronics tech years ago t i sent me to their uh computer school down in austin so uh i learned to repair one but you know i never really learned to operate one yes uh_huh well uh space is a handicap with me i live in a motor home and i'm preparing for retirement and i'm not to far from it another year and a half yes definitely but just like the computers uh remember how they started out running three four hundred dollars i mean calculators i beg your pardon you're kidding including a printer a hundred [wholly] smoke a respectable one well see of not being particularly interested i don't keep track of prices on them but i'm i'm that does [amaze] me uh_huh huh well what what is a a good brand a inexpensive uh_huh oh wow uh_huh uh i see how do you go about getting one of those a catalogs uh_huh uh_huh well getting back to the p c i'll tell you i ya first of all i don't like a machine that's smarter than me and secondly i did learn this much about computers they they are pretty stupid because they add one and one up and come up with ten in binary well anyway that's one ever my favorite jokes one and one equals ten course it's it's kind of an inside joke you know you can only tell that to somebody who understands binary so what do you uh uh work with a computers a at t i uh_huh uh_huh well i just recently started using one in connection with my work uh i keep track of an inventory here and of course now that is where a computer is very handy and well i it's my responsibility to see that equipment is sent off to be [calibrated] see i'm with the q r a lab qualification and evaluation so naturally our equipment has to be in top condition and is constantly [calibrated] and they're dated so i have to keep up with them uh and and it's very handy doing it on the computer i just run a printout every week and and it puts me right up to date what i'm what i have to do what i have to ship what i should be expecting to be returned so a it it is handy and i must admit that up until i did start using one uh it was i had very little interest in computers but they are amazing i think we did yeah mike you take care now good luck to you so p c personal computers do you have a personal computer uh_huh uh_huh i i work with them at kelly services doing uh data entry uh_huh what do you what do you think about them you mean instead of people or uh_huh right uh_huh and you really have to be able to type pretty fast before you know before it really saves time uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh to set up the boundaries correctly and how many lines you're going to use in an uh_huh can't you can't you put can't you put it on a disk and then just edit it if you need to when you go back right uh_huh and and um rewrite the whole thing how does the word wrap work on that do you end up with very different length lines um and it [divides] the words by itself oh okay uh_huh right uh_huh they space it out in in the line itself oh they uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh do you think it's a lack of training or it's just that they don't use the materials that are available to them uh_huh right uh_huh it's better to learn it directly from the manual especially when you have to trouble shoot some things because a lot of the times the computer the program still has uh bugs in it and you have to work around it have you worked mostly on i b m uh_huh yeah that's that's all i've seen in offices is i b m right well do you think it's been five minutes yet or oh okay well it was nice talking to you thank you bye bye no i don't not at home i work with them quite a bit though oh okay well i think they're useful i think they're in some instances they're they're over used well that's not the right way to say it well i think that uh some some work places where i've been they they set up like every body has their own p c which a lot of times everybody doesn't need a p c and it really without them knowing how to use it properly it [slows] them down more than it helps them accomplish something they spend more time messing with the p c than they would actually [accomplishing] the tasks that they're trying to do if they didn't have a p c at all uh_huh that's true and you have to you know be familiar with it like there're so many different software packages it you have to be familiar with the one that you're going to be using most a lot of times uh people know about half of the capabilities of a package that they should know to actually be able to use it properly and so they waste more time with their trying to uh figure out how to do you know other things than they would if they if they actually understood what they were trying to do you know like uh they want to to format a report a certain way and if they really understood the capabilities of the package they could they could do that in about you know half the time that they spend trying to figure out how to do it without spending the time to learn the package properly right exactly uh_huh a lot of times they they they do it manually on the computer which just really is a waste of time and then if they ever have to change anything in that in that in the document they have to go back and redo it all manually whereas if they had learned the package properly to start with and had set it up correctly the package would do that for them whenever they wanted to make a change so i i've seen that as a problem right but in some in some cases the with the [formatting] what i'm talking about is that they would set up they set up a certain document and it may be eight pages long and they set it up manually so that they have all their [spacings] and [formattings] and tabs set manually and um then when they have to make a change say they want to [insert] a paragraph they got to go through the document and [reset] all the page breaks manually and rewrite the whole thing instead of having the if if they had set up the [formatting] on the system itself it would do that for them and save them a lot of time but a lot of people don't spend the time to learn the package oh no no you can left and right justify the whole thing it comes out just perfectly spaced like a block it'll it'll automatically it's like [typesetting] it'll automatically do that for you usually it doesn't divide words they usually have it space the words in a line rather than divide a word so you see like in a newspaper they [typeset] they don't usually break words in a newspaper if the if one line is going to be a lot shorter than another line they just add spaces to that line to make it look long as the rest of the lines right and most computers do that most most software packages will do that for you i've i've known people that have used a package for for five years you know and i would say well have you you know you know more about this package than i do how do you left justify and they would say i don't know and it would take me maybe two or three minutes looking in the manual to figure out what command it was that caused this to happen and they would say how did you do that and i'm like well it's really easy and they were like well i never knew that so obviously they'd never considered looking it up you know sometimes it's sometimes well it's a number of different things sometimes they don't uh they don't think that they can get any information out of the manual some manuals aren't really designed very well but some of them are and more and more of them are coming out written in a way that it that just a basic general user can understand them so i think um people think it's going to take them a lot longer to learn it properly than it really would and so they're really wasting time rather than saving themselves time because they think well it's quicker just to do it myself when it's really not well i think so uh_huh exactly uh_huh with p c they're either i b m or i b m compatible mostly that is the you know the industry standard uh_huh there's a lot of really good i b m [compatibles] too they don't have to necessarily be the i b m brand but they have to [adhere] to that industry standard oh probably okay bye bye okay uh do you own a p c by the way i'm guessing you probably do oh i see right uh_huh uh_huh and what kinds of things do you use it for when you when you go to their houses to them yeah oh uh_huh uh_huh great yeah oh sure yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah well i tell you once you get used to having them you you get spoiled really quickly uh oh uh_huh yeah right yeah yeah um i i'm a a writer by profession and uh when when i was first here in in dallas or in plano um and was finally able to this is oh been like fourteen years ago we moved here and i was finally able to afford a new typewriter and i got an i b m [selectric] i thought i had died and gone to heaven because i thought oh they're so wonderful well then um yeah ours really needs to have some work done on it but but then my husband um worked at t i and i got a um this has been years ago he doesn't work there anymore but he got a um uh the the t i professional and brought that home and i learned wordstar on that and boy once that happened there was just no way that i could ever go back to doing anything of length of the typewriter uh_huh yeah have you ever used do you use wordperfect ever have you ever used wordperfect or uh_huh right yeah yeah that's probably where you've used it uh_huh yeah um i have that on my uh computer here and also um i do some work at u t d and uh that's what they have there and it was just so nice to be able just to step into the position and and already know the you know already know the the software and um i don't know from my own experience um wordperfect is just so much better than than wordstar at least the version of wordstar that i used to have it may be improved by now but yeah it's uh wordstar was never very [intuitive] to me i mean you know you some of the commands just had nothing to do with you know what you were supposed to be doing what they what they did on the computer but uh i mean like going um forward and backward a word or up and down a line that sort of thing just you know didn't match with the kinds of keys you were using yeah and but wordperfect is just a lot more [intuitive] in a lot of ways and you and it does a lot of things too that if you if you do any kind of uh research or anything like that where you have to uh use [footnotes] it is just wonderful because it keeps track of all your [footnotes] yeah and if you add it if you put a [footnote] in in the middle you know if you come up with some new piece of documentation and you put that in the middle of your paper and have to [footnote] it you just change um it just automatically changes all your [footnoting] numbers for you so you know it's just yeah yeah and i think about how it used to be if you were doing a paper and you had to go back and [retype] everything and oh it was just awful so um i don't know i think we have just become really spoiled but i think it's a nice kind of way to be spoiled so um well i have not really paid much attention because i clock although i think we've probably been talking at least ten minutes so um if you um unless you have some other things you want to talk about as having to do with p c well um i was a technical writer for many years um and my husband and i actually met in a computer company um i was a tech writer and he was an engineer and uh so i did tech writing for a number of years oh sure got a problem huh um oh trying to figure out what all that was about huh but um i have um that that was the majority of my writing although um i have also done oh free lance magazine writing and some educational writing and um for a while i had a um uh a [partnership] with a in an advertising agency with another woman who is a an artist so i did some advertising and p r but um now i'm actually i'm i'm not working anymore i'm a student i'm a graduate student so i'm doing a lot of writing but uh now all of the [scholastic] majors though i've done a little a lot of different kinds but i i just know right now that i couldn't have put out half of what i did if that much without the being in computers so that's been really great and uh i'm so i'm real spoiled yeah uh_huh yeah good that's great yeah well those are skills that she certainly is going to need early on and you know the and it seems like it's getting earlier and earlier with the children so um i think that that would be a real a real uh advantage to to her to have that and uh do it early so uh do oh neat yes right oh great right that's great well that's a that's a skill that she can use for the rest of her life so might as well start now huh well nola i have enjoyed talking with you thoroughly this is really going to be fun i think and um my husband is a ham radio operator and i think about all the people that he talks to all over the i don't have one in my home here my um parents have one and they live just about three miles away so we use that one and my in laws also have one and they're almost as close they're in richardson um usually uh word processing something um such as oh forms for things uh also i have a nine year old that i've been home schooling for the last three years and we got uh the one that my parents have is an apple two e and i have a sister in law who is who works in the fort worth school district and so she got me copies of uh several of the apple programs for school programs and so we use those and there's some whenever we go over and visit grandma the kids love to play the computer game so that's part of it um my husband has used the one at his folks house for mostly business things uh his resume his uh letter he's been applying for jobs and things so that type of thing uh forms for his photography business and that kind of thing yeah i'm uh my father had a software company and they have a bunch of computers leftover from that and we're hoping that they can put together something for us here that we can have the word processing here but um they're kind of old older so i'm not sure that we'll be able to do get too many other programs for it oh i have one of those yeah mines broke at the moment but oh yeah i learned i i learned wordstar uh i did some typing for my father when he had the company and so i learned that on there too that was i haven't that's the one that my father well i guess i have used it once or twice uh it's the one that's on my father in law's computer he's got on i b m and uh so that's the program that they're using there that's what i've heard uh_huh yeah you had to memorize it and oh oh that's neat oh how wonderful that i had heard that that was better that was a better one yeah yeah i agree not too much what kind of what kind of things do you write oh go talk to daddy about it excuse me go on and talk to daddy about it tell daddy i [unplugged] it for you but you don't need to drag it down the hall daddy daddy came home and found her playing with the telephone that i had [unplugged] yeah huh yeah yeah i'm anxious some day to have one here i'm and they just talked to the other day other day about setting something up again so hopefully pretty soon we'll at least have the word processing my nine year old i've decided to teach her how to type using the computer so yeah i've that's right uh_huh yeah we've been we've been uh writing a story together and so i and i wanted her to put it into the computer and then print it out and make a book with it you know and so i decided well if she's going to do that it would be a whole lot easier if she could type so we'll slowly learn just to type here and then then put the story in yes yes i agree yeah so do you have p c uh_huh uh_huh um well i sort of own a computer we have two p c at home but neither one do we really own um no both of them are sort of work related and yeah that's the nicer way right no no um i actually i'm doing consulting right now because i just had a baby and my husband's working at bell labs but he's really from france and these computers actually are from france one of them's a [compaq] it's a three eighty six and the other is actually a i b m p c compatible it's a three eighty six i guess it's twenty five yeah three eight six twenty five c maybe i don't know no we don't have the we decided not to get the which is actually another [loaner] one too that we picked up for a consulting job that my husband was doing and um well i actually do some work working at m i t and at [nist] national institute of standards and technology in washington and then i worked for dragon systems for a while um well it depends it's very different in the different places but yeah yeah program related research related and i work in the speech field and i do a lot [metacoustic] [phonetics] and looking at the [acoustic] characteristics of speech and i do that type of stuff typically for other people and we like here we use the p c to do that mostly i use it for writing papers and things like that well more uh do you know [latek] word text processing so i don't i don't use i mean you can call it word processing but i don't usually use a word processor to do it and we don't have too much standard software like i haven't bought we haven't really bought any commercially available software at all so we don't use it for things like our accounts and addresses and things like that we use it more for just writing programs when we need to or um doing research looking at the speech signal and then doing writing and also as a just as a terminal and we connect to other computers to read our net mail and things like that uh neither one has a modem but we have a modem neither one right yeah we have uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh so that was it oh i didn't hear it do you hear the the beep in the background oh that's a an ambulance or something going on here i think i haven't ever noticed the thirty second warning actually in manhattan yeah i'm at home uh_huh so it'd be interesting for the people that look at this signal i mean because there's a lot of background noise that you know people can hear so it'll be interesting how much of it actually gets picked up um yeah and often times that i can't talk on can't do this much later than now between sort of like six five thirty and six thirty or something like that because the traffic outside they [honk] the horn so loud i can't even hear the phone call uh about twenty after four okay yeah we're eastern and um what did did you ever try using like [prodigy] or any of those systems uh_huh uh_huh yeah i've never tried using that i don't know too much about it what about have you did you use commercially available software or uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i've never used d base um but i've heard both good things and bad things about it uh_huh yeah people told me that it was sort of cumbersome to use uh_huh uh_huh do you think you d base is more flexible or allows you to do more or do you think the others are pretty much compatible these days but uh yeah i didn't mean compatible i meant comparable my brain is going to [mush] and what do you work on at t i uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right i have a personal computer at home it's an a t compatible i don't use it very much any more i used to use it quite a bit i also have a p c at work that i use as a terminal i do some p c stand alone work on it and i can transfer data back and forth between the p c and the main frame what about you do you own a computer are you leasing them [loaners] from work do you work for t i what brand are they uh_huh i'm jealous what kind of consulting do you do uh_huh what kind of work do you do when you're consulting is it programming related uh_huh word processing no i'm not familiar with that uh_huh so you've got you've got a modem in it then at home you have a modem that you can connect to each of them uh and so it's an external modem i got when i got mine i had an internal modem in it i used it uh quite a bit when i was uh uh looking at uh information on a large bulletin board sponsored by a newspaper in a in fort worth but uh went out of town for a while and and sort of got off the uh bulletin board and off of my micro completely and after a while the modem started making noises on its own without uh even without using it on the computer i could turn a computer on it'd start [squawking] so i finally opened up the box and took it out i think that's the thirty second warning yes okay where where are you and uh are you at home now so you've got a lot of traffic noise real close what time is it now where you are so you're an hour ahead of where i am i'm in central central time zone no i haven't done that uh i know someone who has and and she's uh very uh pleased with it she told me some of the things you can do and it's just a a very handy tool to have yeah and you can do a it makes things very convenient you can save a lot of money too certainly cut down on long distance charges if you if that's what you have in mind i have i have used lotus i have used uh word perfect uh i not heavy use i've used uh d base and uh i've used a substantial amount of shareware um i haven't done much lotus work connected with my job i've been through three classes and i have a great deal of respect for it um i haven't done much word processing work with my job i do some and i and the d base work i've done was strictly class related well it's probably the [granddaddy] of most uh data base management systems it's got some pretty strong competitors some of them have reviews that are better than d base so i i think by now it's a matter of uh personal taste i can understand that very easily i've used i've had a class on um r base and also in [paradox] and both of those seem very easy to use compared to d base um i wouldn't say compatible but certainly comparable uh_huh i'm a computer programmer on the i b m main frames i do uh mainly business data processing i also handle production support for the systems in my area of responsibility um sometimes i get called late at night at home because there's a production problem and that gives me the opportunity to uh come in to work and fix it if i can't think of some thing to tell the trouble [shooter] while we're on the phone um i also uh handle most of the calls from our users and other [programmers] who need to find out something connected yes we are we are talking about computers this morning you have you have four machines around you boy well you've uh you've got me beat i have a a zenith here and at home i have a commodore and a zenith and my wife has an a t and t twelve hundred i believe it is well actually on my commodore i mainly study lottery numbers would you believe i have written some uh programs in basic whereby i can select any number of uh drawings and from that [extract] the numbers that have appeared the most i have another program in which i can look at the [cyclical] uh appearance of these numbers to see if there's anything that's consistent on that i have another number that allows me another program that allows me to add all the numbers i want and then it generates a complete set of numbers so that all combinations are covered so this is what i do most of the time uh on my commodore on my commodore uh_huh and of course i have uh word processors and i write all my letters it's wonderful uh my uh thoughts in my head come in [bursts] of about a paragraph at a time and i get them all down and naturally on a computer if you make a mistake who cares you can go back and uh correct it very easily so that makes it very very nice i get all my thoughts down and go back and clean it up very very readily so how about you charles uh_huh uh_huh yeah so where may i ask where you work sir i know you work for the government i just wondering are you an or what what what section of it oh uh_huh because see that's my type of work too i work at the applied research lab here here on campus and my my field is underwater acoustics and there's a lot of things we can do with computers into uh studying how uh things vary in the water you know and uh taking advantage of them and so forth so it's a very nice very nice field and i i am retiring at the end of this month end of december excuse me yes i'm a i'm an associate professor but my i i'm a full time researcher and it's uh been a very very interesting career believe me well uh the ones here in the laboratory obviously i'm they're going to stay but i have similar machines at home i would consider doing some more consulting when i get home but i have a very very busy extra life anyway i'm also a musician and i play in several symphony orchestras and uh i run a concert band and so i have a lot of external uh interests but i do want to get very deeply much more deeply into computer work because obviously the world is going to be controlled run and operated by computers in the future there's no doubt about it because it is really taking over and the amount of work that we're doing and the depth of things that we are studying can basically only be handled by computers because uh it's so much involved and it sounds as though you're probably more aware of that than i am because uh i don't get to use it in my daily work as much as i would like to here again let's say i'm starting to getting ready in preparation for retirement and uh so basically what i'm doing is slowly getting rid of my things for many many years i had a full size acoustics uh study laboratory where i could take recordings and and uh perform experiments with them and so forth and so that's gone now and so i'm sort of out of business uh as i say i worked with fellow named steve [blazey] was the fellow i worked with for many many years and he is now retired so it's been an interesting life and computers have come in towards the latter end of that i wish we had had computers in the very beginning it would have been so the the question had something to do with usage of personal computers um um i'm a firm believer in in having lots of them i'm sitting at my desk now with four machines in front of me uh_huh uh_huh good grief what do you do with all those uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh that's what you do on your at least one of your machines on your commodore yeah uh_huh yes yes yes well i um i do an awful lot of preparation of documents um uh and i use word processors and and fancier programs i mean you know graphics programs and simply make all of our slides some of them i do on a sun some i do on an x t now maybe we don't call these personal computers um i started out with you know an i b m p c back in the you know about a year after they came out and you know i work for the government in washington of in in in an obscure part of the defense department uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh are are are you are you also a professor or or do you just research yes i can believe what are you going to what are you going to do when you stop i mean take all your machines with you or uh_huh uh_huh yes uh_huh yes yes uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh um uh_huh uh_huh now we're ready do you have a personal computer you do in your home i do not have one in my home i use one all day at work but i don't have one at home do you find you use it a lot uh_huh uh_huh what kind do you have uh_huh uh_huh well that sounds interesting i have a a p s one i b m type uh and i use it all day at work and i put all my personal stuff on it at work so i really don't haven't had a need for one at home but probably if i didn't have access to one all the time at work i'd want one at home uh_huh yeah what is that [tracing] tracking the [flights] and things uh they tell us when we're through they come in and tell us have you just started doing this oh really they'll come in and tell us that the switchboard is full now and it's time for you to wind up in the next thirty seconds or something like that it's not more than five but i'm going to ignore that that's a call on my other line so i'm just going to ignore it but it's kind of a hassle when you have this but other times it i work at texas instruments yes i sure do well no i'm doing this at home i'm already home for the day i do it you know i can't do it at work i i'm i work in the legal department so i'm pretty busy but i use my p c there mostly for creating legal documents we use word perfect lotus uh yeah it's really i love lotus i think that's about my favorite uh_huh it really is and i know there's still a hundred things i don't know how to do on it but uh you know you learn something every time you use it uh_huh you can did they give you a number to call you can start calling in whenever it's convenient for you but you can only make one call a day yeah if you've talked to someone like you're talking to me now and i place the call this counts as your call so you cannot make a call now until tomorrow no we both do didn't they ask you for your i d number when you answered okay so you both do from what i understand it's for research it's a research type project on uh voice activated electronics you know to uh it's uh well they call it the speech lab that is setting this thing up uh_huh uh_huh they're doing research for a lot of big companies from what i understand on this now i don't know i don't know everything about it but they uh try to get as many people as they possibly can to contribute to this and that way they can check voice patterns uh_huh and get the computer where it [recognizes] voices well i probably do because i've well i've been i was born and raised in texas have lived here forever so i probably do i'm in richardson it's right outside of dallas uh_huh well richardson's right between dallas and plano you probably did uh_huh well what are you doing way in washington uh_huh well that's interesting uh_huh so i imagine they use personal computers do they do their correspondence on it uh_huh uh_huh we have one yes yes ma'am do you wish you i don't use it as much as my children and my husband do my actually my husband and i are taking a class at our local junior college called micro micro computers one o one and we're just touching on data base spreadsheets and word processing and just kind of you know different kinds of storage and we're just kind of touching on a basic computer we have an i b m compatible it's a [gateway] brand that we bought mainly for our children to have educational programs yeah what kind of a computer do you use at work uh_huh uh_huh right i worked on my airline apollo focal point computer for about four years which was different but i didn't right right how long are we supposed to talk on this oh okay okay this is this is my very first time yes oh okay uh-oh oh okay oh okay that i have that too where do you work oh you do oh well of course of course that's why you why you're making these calls right oh i see well this is a pretty good deal uh_huh uh_huh oh you do know lotus huh oh that's great that's something we want to learn oh i've heard that people that finally learn how to use it really like it that's great uh_huh i have a question on this this thing that i'm this survey or whatever you know this i [volunteered] for do i start calling in myself or do i wait for people to call me right and eight hundred number oh only one a day right oh oh i see okay so then do you get the five bucks or do i oh we both do well that's a right i had to put that in well that's a pretty good deal so why why are we doing this actually i'm doing this for somebody else but you know for a friend of mine uh_huh oh it's almost like that like a voice command computer type thing oh well that's wonderful i see different kinds of voices and things wonderful see that's why i it's interesting because you have i i'm going to say you have an accent and i and i think that i don't i mean to you but you know and you're in what city okay my sister one of my sisters lives in plano and that's right outside of how about that i probably went through richardson then and then i have a sister that lives in austin but well we're actually all from nebraska they just are recently moved there my brother in law is director of admissions at the university of texas in dallas yeah and then my sister works at the air force base actually yes they both have personal computers uh i think they just send christmas letters on it as far as i mostly my one sister uses hers for her children you know children's games well i uh couple of them i at the moment use an a s t two eighty six and i got a leading edge and i got a american one and had a i b m one but what do you have oh yeah what did you do put it together well that's yeah yeah what do you use it for what do you use it for oh yeah what kind of programs do you okay i mean like business programs or man uh_huh huh well that's well that sounds interesting matter of fact uh i guess you do uh you get a lot of graphics in there i imagine huh that's where the speed helps out yep that will that will slow you up well i i do uh uh programming for c n c [turret] [presses] and uh cat cam system type things and uh really need a faster system uh i got a new line that i i sell metal fabricating equipment and cat cam systems and tooling et cetera uh who is that i've tried to do is get this outfit to give me one that's how i got my other ones by selling their product for them they not only give me a demonstrator but the hardware as well as the software and as they and as they go to the next one i just keep the that's why i have so many different levels of p c around at the moment a t s and where are they at oh yeah in richardson there in richardson i know where you mean there is a [mobil] and all that kind of uh on that one corner that's about lookout there i think isn't it yeah yeah oh really well that's a good deal yeah uh there is a lot you ever go by lucky computer there i used to when i was putting shop floor computers together for guys i'd go and get their units and put them together and go and interface the stuff with our systems haven't been doing much of that for the last year or so so i i don't know where those guys are at these days but i yeah yeah i tell you those prices have just unbelievably come down yeah i yeah i was kind of surprised how rapidly they [bypassed] the three eighty six that wasn't alive for but maybe two years is that right that's it i'll be darned huh well hi well i guess which one have you got right now or my my just a couple uh i've got an [omega] and i've got a uh generic three eighty or four eighty six machine yeah it's very very generic yeah and and uh upgraded it and put things in there and [dibbled] and [dabbled] and now now it's now it's a fast machine that's all i got to say for it huh uh work uh i'm a contract programmer uh anything uh i've done business programming you know scientific applications like you know petroleum science stuff and uh uh test equipment and i did the i i did one that was the demonstration of a touch touch screen for a company that sells uh touch screens it was kind of fun put a little bitty portable computer in there and a [plasma] display and make it look like things like uh you know attack [simulators] and and all sorts of little things you'd want to put your finger on the screen for oh yeah definitely uh yeah unfortunately the little portable p c that was plugged on the back was only a seven and a half megahertz eighty eighty six it's like slow huh uh_huh uh_huh i know a guy that [upgrades] uh for a reasonable cost uh his name is t q or something like that and my notebook is somewhere around here see if i can make my telephone cord stretch far enough uh he's uh up in huh uh_huh oh that works uh here it is a t s computers uh_huh uh do you know where uh custer is okay he's uh uh south of [renner] on on custer and there is a little bitty mall that looks kind of like or strip kind of center huh uh_huh right it's it's it's just south of there it's a little place looks like a castle kind of uh little guy in there he he uh gives reasonable prices like i i traded my uh three eighty six for the four eighty six for about six hundred yeah it was pretty reasonable but uh uh he and he does a good job and he he he uh guarantees everything he sells uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh they they're up there in that mall uh just below campbell or that strip strip center they're still doing business big business apparently uh_huh oh yeah i was amazed i was able to get this four eighty six for six hundred even with a trade in you know it's like wow that works i'll go do that and boy that thing screams now uh_huh well i thought was funny that they kept pushing the three eighty six s x even though the the price difference is about ten dollars yeah it when it comes on the manufacturing floor it's about ten bucks yeah uh let's see personal computers so do you use them terrific what kind mostly for word processing type things nice did you buy a program to handle menus oh yes eighty eighty eight is what you said eighty oh gosh it's worth your time to just upgrade they're so darned cheap now computers oh no uh i've i've got one at home too it's a three eighty six thirty three megahertz forty four meg ram and hundred and thirty meg drive and super v g a and yeah it's fun i do programming too my job is uh e d p auditor and so i'm into computers all the time electronic data processing yeah i really enjoy it and it treats me well uh what are you studying in college computers how nice how they work is fascinating to me was it did hardware stuff huh what do you think of that fuzzy logic uh_huh yeah they're pretty amazing uh i've written a couple of programs for commercially uh and it's a fun field what no in uh no just regular uh but you have to take into account you know with any computer program all the type of things people can do to you to make your program crash or things you normally don't consider yeah pushing keys certain times and uh messing up your files and things like that and you're going to be an engineer computer engineer type i don't that's good uh yes uh yes um we own one uh its an [emerson] eighty eighty six um two low density floppy drives and no hard drive yet but uh you know it's it comes in [mighty] handy uh yeah a big chunk of it's word processing we're also taking programming classes and uh so there's a fair amount of programming getting done on it but uh uh the uh right now we got a project going where we're trying to put uh all my wife's stray recipes on the disk uh it came with a menus program but uh that doesn't it it both excuse me mostly kind of a pain in the neck without a hard drive and hopefully sometime this spring we'll be able to get one and get it [configured] eighty eighty six which uh [impoverished] college student this one went on a credit card and we got a way out while to pay it off yet so it's oh that's sounds nice e d p okay that sounds like fun job yes uh computer engineering well computer engineering technology uh which uh all i can understand is it's a slightly more hands on version of computer engineering but i've got a ways to go yet so far most of what i've done is getting gotten core classes out of the way taken some electronics classes and one class in um with computer logic oh yes i enjoy it myself the uh lab for that uh computer logic class was a lot of fun yeah we got to hook up a few uh [counters] and uh [encoders] yeah i've not had a chance to work with it although um my uh data [structures] teacher was telling us something about how fuzzy logic works as far as the concept behind it now how you'd implement that software wise or mechanically i don't know but uh it sounds like a very impressive piece of piece of work yes in the fuzzy logic direction yeah entering bad information of one sort or another and yeah uh_huh uh yeah well what the computer what the c e t program seems to be so far is just a broad based specialized from you get programming a fair amount of programming you get hardware you get uh more or less uh you get basic electronics courses that uh deal with you know not only the digital [circuitry] but uh you know power supplies and and uh just the whole [gambit] but mostly towards uh computer electronics so the idea is that um you can go in a variety of direction from c e t major but i i have more with the hardware than i do with the software so yeah i pretty much plan on i mean so far i'm planning to go in the engineering direction okay jerry i guess uh tonight's topic is about uh personal computers and level of interest and uh and your your expertise oh well okay well first of all you want me to start off okay real real fine uh first of all uh yes uh i do own a p c here at home and i also have one at the office and my level of interest is quite high with p c and i was really i am really interested in them however not to the extent as i was about uh two years ago when i basically knew about everything there was to know about different things and that was the time when we were shopping for one and i think we got a top of the line at that time but uh as you know p c change quite rapidly and the technological advances kind of outdated our p c where i can get the same p c i got two years ago at the fraction of the cost and i also enjoy using ours at home and we use it for a a number of different things plus i get in a lot an awful lot of good use of one at work where i work lot of uh [analytical] uh testing reviews uh lot of different things i use it at at work so i enjoy p c and they they make my life and my work a lot easier how about yourself uh_huh wow all right uh_huh yeah uh_huh oh yeah oh yes sounds like you're an expert at it too yes oh well well well that's great uh_huh right great we do an awful lot of that too with ours oh yes definitely agree with that uh_huh yeah wow wow you got that's a four eighty six processor too wow that's yes yes has to you have to have that to support unix uh_huh of ram right yeah wow okay well good for her you say she's a programmer also uh_huh well great well she probably needs that kind of a powerful type of a machine to do her work oops oh well well okay well let's let's fire away uh well brian yeah why don't you why don't we why don't you do about thirty seconds and i'll do thirty seconds and then we can work off of there well uh since uh well i guess since this time last year i've changed uh jobs within the firm i'm with and uh i now am learning to be a [sys] [admin] on on not only p c but uh uh professional work stations as well and these are the big [mamas] i e sons uh hewlett [packards] uh uh uh-oh the big [solburns] and and so forth and uh and and uh we have uh two p c here we have uh an x t and then recently we we made a the command decision to go ahead and get uh the absolute top of the line because spouse is a uh programmer and so we got one that that could do enough uh and you know hold three different o s as far as dos uh unix and uh o s two so uh i i get to see all kinds of different applications no no learning i'm learning i'm learning to be uh one who knows what's he's doing but expert no i [frown] on that that term because uh too many people you know uh misuse the word so i'd rather say i'm i i am continually learning but my area my level of expertise is increasing almost daily and uh yeah so i've got a p c and a work station at work and i and we have two p c here at home and the a lot of the the the new mama we're uh i've got [aldus] and uh [micrographics] on it as far as uh technical publishing and we do a quite a bit of church work with ours and uh you know some i i i've found that uh the more we do with it uh it seem and the [lord's] just pleased that we're kind of this is this is part of giving back a portion of what he's given to us so uh i don't mind because seems like the more we do there's there's the more stuff that's uh available that comes along and so forth and so uh rather than being [niggardly] and and [chintzy] uh we've just said you bet boss seeing as he was the one that uh [enabled] us to get the money to buy the four eighty six because the top of the line we've got well we've got a compatible it uh eight meg of ram and and two two two hundred and eleven hard drives uh_huh uh_huh like i said we bought a real steam steam burner uh mainly because of [spouse's] unix because unix takes a a a well four [megs] minimum of ram and then uh it it it likes to live on about a hundred and fifty megabyte hard drive so the next size up was a two hundred and eleven and so rather than just have one we went ahead and got two uh at some point in time i'm going to do the [mirroring] uh experiment to where one disk mirrors the other for fault tolerance and uh-oh speak speak of the angel she just walked in t i stuff so uh uh yeah she's she's a squirrel for uh uh contractor out at american airlines so do you have a p c uh_huh yeah a lot of my friends are into macintoshes i have a um p c a i b m p c myself a two eighty six i'm probably eventually going to get a three eighty six um um mostly um word processing applications and uh just as a dumb terminal um but i um i think eventually i'll start using it for spreadsheets and things like that um what do you find that you use yours mostly for uh_huh uh_huh no i i think i i'm planning on like moving up getting a three eighty six before i move up to windows although you know i do like the the [graphical] user environment yeah it's um i want i want to be able i just want it more for multi [tasking] which i suppose is also like a macintosh uh uh_huh yeah that's what i learned a lot of languages on was an apple two e in my high school uh_huh uh_huh well do you use your computer for um just things around the house or in the well see what do you do oh wow um and uh are these like uh do these programs um are are they based on on a on a um other language or are they based are they based like a lot of the um you know a lot of the english as a second language classes will have people from all sorts of you know parts of the world and the teacher just tries to tries to teach english you know through natural understanding uh_huh well it was just uh when i was high school i worked for the community school and they had a english second language class and it always seemed strange to me that you know all these all these people that you know spoke english not too well and spoke you know a variety of different languages were all being taught at the same time i imagine it's a lot harder on a computer because you have to you know you don't have as many cues you can't don't have hand [gestures] and things like that uh_huh uh_huh uh to see how well they retain the vocabulary and things like that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i would imagine so um so um what were you doing when you were using an apple two e uh_huh it it's yes it's amazing you know how how like in the general user community the expectations have just grown so much i remember my first computer was a t r s eighty with four k on it and you know then then we then i started playing with apples you know and those had forty eight or you know if they were really great they had sixty four k uh i know i know that in my school they had a bunch that had sixteen k on them is all and there's i remember that there was one game that i played that required forty eight k and there was only one computer that had forty eight k on it at the time and you know it's just so amazing that generally you know if you if you i'm not sure about macintoshes but i know i b m you you generally you know you buy a megabyte at a time you know that's that's your that's the low end uh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i imagine yes i have a macintosh s e thirty uh_huh what do you use yours for mostly uh_huh well i do a lot of word processing and spreadsheets and data base and uh about the only thing i am uh i'm just starting to get into uh a little bit more communications now i've just today ordered a fax modem so i'll be able to send and receive [faxes] right over there without using you know you don't have to make a hard copy that way uh are you using windows uh_huh uh_huh well it's getting to be more and more like a macintosh uh_huh well the one thing i used to use a uh i've never used an i b m actually i used to use a just an apple two e which of course is looks pretty [primitive] now but i don't have any uh any real programming capabilities on my uh mac right now i don't have uh any [compilers] so i'm uh i use it in my business i uh do uh [consultation] and and testing of various kinds for uh english as a second language programs that's uh exactly what yeah that's the kind of thing i'm working with exactly you seem to be uh better informed than the average person on that uh_huh right well now we uh what i use a computer for is to write materials that are later printed though most of the stuff that i do is not uh interactive and i use it for uh data analysis on testing so well just actually just uh item analysis statistical analysis of the tests uh you know when you write a test you have to look at some data from it and see how the different questions are performing and find out which ones are [discriminating] well and which ones aren't find out how reliable the test is you try [correlate] it with other tests and things of that sort so it's involves a lot of spreadsheet use well i was doing some of the same stuff but doing it more slowly and with smaller files i can't believe you know i've got uh five uh [megabytes] on this one now and on my two e i had a hundred twenty eight k yeah oh the old the old apple uh the the original apple had what yeah forty eight i guess didn't it my goodness uh_huh uh_huh well the s p thirty goes up to eight but i haven't upgraded it quite that far yet i think probably when i get system seven i may have to do that and and get another possibly another hard disk i don't know they say that system seven uses a lot of memory actually i've been involved in electronics a long time uh in computers and i have really resisted the impulse to get one for the home uh up until i guess maybe about a year and a half ago i got one for my son a a macintosh uh l c it's a real easy to use color uh computer and i got a very nice printer that goes along with it and he uses it for his school work huh where you going to school i see in engineering so that explains all the uh computer assignments well do you use your p c for things other than [explicit] computer work no no i just have one for my son and i really sort of have the feeling that word processing is a big market for home [computing] at at work uh i'm a [technologist] uh and i in the past have done a great deal of of uh system development just through uh software development programming uh but now i find myself using the computer even the computer at work is primarily a uh word processing system and a communication system yes [emil] is probably pulls down a third of all my time uh_huh uh_huh huh well i'm a old timer i did my master's thesis on uh a typewriter uh i rented an i b m [selectric] and it was a pretty big deal yeah it uh well you know it's just it was just a completely different world then i like it yeah i like it from a distance really i i see the packages on it uh that are available and it's nice i really don't use it myself uh i when i come home from work i i like to stay far away from computers and electronic things uh so i let my son do it and uh of course you know there's uh there's an intellectual evolution taking place where it's sort of a joke but it's really true the old timers even the people who are [technologists] don't know how to operate these electronic things like v c r and whatnot and the kids they just take to it like candy oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh well i've i'm currently in school so i i've had an i b m clone i guess for a couple of years now which i've been trying continually upgrading i guess and uh i've found i've found that i pretty much become addicted to it and i can't really i've found that most of homework assignments really require some sort of computer uh [simulation] or analysis so it it's very essential for me schools have them uh but lot of times so difficult to get on them at school it's very easy it's much more convenient to have one at home at georgia tech yeah so yes actually yeah it uh um sure i have some games of course which i play on there and uh uh i have a program which allows me to access a uh weather data bank so i can like check up on the weather around the country or whatever which is a hobby so it provides other means other than just strict uh you know [computations] and so on so have you do you have a computer for yourself at home oh yeah yeah uh_huh yeah yeah do you use [email] and like that yeah it's i i uh i have modem night computer so i can log into the the uh network at georgia tech and access my account through there which is which can be useful but uh yeah that's that and word processing is while i tend to i mean obviously i do most of my almost all of my report writing on on my computer uh whether it's term papers or even some smaller homework assignments so it's it's really become i don't know really become my [mainstay] i guess i can't even remember actually i don't think i've ever used a typewriter in in my life to do a a to do a report because my family when i was growing up we got a basic computer t r s eighty when they first came out and i even used that to do my first reports when i was in junior high so oh yeah oh yeah it must have been tough it's a little bit strange for me i i did my master's thesis uh last year and i did that on a computer and it seems like i just can't imagine how people did it before it must have been just so much so much work yeah so uh so you used your son's macintosh then do you do you find it do you like that kind of computer uh_huh yeah huh yeah yeah well if if if the interface is there so that it's like fun to use and the challenge uh yeah i have one of these little zenith [laptops] which uh the uh everybody here at school has to buy one and oh yeah i'm a student uh at at harvard business school and uh tremendously useful thing it's uh the the [portability] and the [compactness] of it are uh pretty nice it's uh you know enough that you can kind of throw it in a [briefcase] or uh slap it over your shoulder and carry it around uh it's got an internal three and a half inch floppy yeah and uh it also has a forty megabyte hard drive built in and uh you know the batteries carry it for at least four or five hours and so you know i use it uh both in school to do uh spreadsheet analysis for various uh businesses that we're studying and also uh you know it hooks up to normal printers and what have you and uh works pretty well in that mode as well i i'm curious what you'd use your uh your home computer for uh_huh uh_huh does it does it cause a problem for you to use a different computer at work than you use at home uh_huh yeah right uh_huh are are you at the point where the the mainframe appears slow to you relative to your personal computer given the the ratio uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh you you don't think that they went and did a uh what is it an [ishihara] uh quality analysis uh_huh uh_huh that that's tremendous are are your computers at work net uh [networked] at all or is that uh_huh uh_huh huh that's tremendous it's clearly a uh a uh productivity [enhancement] uh device and allows you to do that that's been my experience also i've actually i guess i've been doing that since probably when i was in high school many years ago and uh it it it's gotten to the point now i think where the uh secretaries are are finding other jobs to do because you know the typing and to some extent the filing is just not there anymore big paper files are disappearing uh_huh i guess there's there's a fear that one day if the computers ever stopped working there'd be a bunch of people staring at the typewriter with no idea what to do with it huh do you uh if if i assume you all are [networked] to a a variety of of laser printers uh_huh huh because what i was what i was going to ask you is it seems like the next big jump will come with color printing you were talking about doing your own presentation and [foils] it would seem that color capability would be the next big sort of leap in yeah right huh wow interesting yeah that's uh that's uh pretty powerful uh set of tools to give to people who traditionally have had to go through a whole production process just to get people together huh well uh frank i think i kind of need to get back to some other things so i hope we've talked uh covered enough of of this for for what this is all about yeah it was a pleasure so do you have a computer at home do you i got my i got my first one i've been at t i forever and i found an engineer selling his really old t i p c uh i think so no not ninety nine it's one of the full t i p c's and he's an engineer so he even came over and set it up for me and had it running for like two hundred dollars so i thought that well now it does no no no no it's just the old p c and it has two [floppies] it doesn't have a winchester it doesn't have anything but for what i need just keeping records it does just fine oh really i'll be darn when i uh i'm in uh plano right now but when i was up at uh mckinney i had uh i b m p s two i loved that thing i loved it well i have kids fortunately that have left grown gone thank heaven to them i admit it it was fun leave the [emptiness] syndrome is a myth there's no such thing i mean it's nice it really is yeah we're talking though uh on my you know i don't really know i knew when i bought it but i don't know right now i've got a little program uh genealogy program called family ties and i can research and go to the library and and discover who married who what year and all this sort of thing and come back and load it all into my computer and then when i want to say this is going to be a present for my grandchildren tell them all okay here you are and then i can sort it all that they can trace it back to their parents and the grandparents and on you know do an explosion and it all prints out up to five generations per and you know you can select the child oh how how fantastic oh get out of here for heaven's sake i've never heard of one i didn't know anything about this that's fantastic i'm familiar with commodore well i'll be darn what what do you have at work so you're into oh we have some suns in this building uh i'm a buyer and and i help them with their maintenance contracts and repair and things like that just it's it's not much of my job but it you know i do come in contact with them those are expensive machines good grief why do you think t i has not used the [amiga] because uh_huh um oh i see uh_huh yeah well that's wonderful i'd never even heard of it so your kids were having a good time and you were working that's marvelous just marvelous well i work in i a [smiths] so we're forever looking at something else uh i you know i work well you know you'd be surprised how many of the various ones are coming in and giving us demos at all times and i sit in on all this stuff let me ask you something if you were if you needed to go to another town somewhere you know fly to a to see a supplier and do a review there could you put your presentation on a television and just kind of send him the disk instead of going yourself uh_huh so you could just say okay fellows we've got a problem get everyone in the room and let them see this tape rather than buying an airline ticket uh_huh how much would this cost yeah for the whole operation we don't need that we don't need that type of graphics that's just i share your your uh sense when you change job to work or job to home uh the way your your image of the machine changes i tend to do slightly different things at home than i do at work um i use one two three a lot the lotus product as a spreadsheet and i have i use a uh what you see is what you get editor for almost all of my word processing so i have not although i have access at home to things like works and wordperfect uh but i i do obviously notice it i i think the thing that surprises me most when i change work to home environment is the [cursor] speed and after i if initially get over the uh the [cursor] speed in the sense of moving [linearly] across the screen uh as opposed to [tabbing] uh i'm a touch [typer] and i haven't ever really noticed uh differences uh the machine tends to react as fast as i can i use an as a matter of fact use an eighty eighty eight at at home uh which is really old iron uh probably ten years or so and and at the office uh i am indeed using a three eighty six um i use a p c for a great deal of things in in private life uh i'm a church treasurer and i use the machine a lot on a uh uh data base and financial package that that operates at the church office i do some uh volunteer work at home using uh a buttons p c file program that uh is a very [simplistic] [relational] data base for labels and things so i guess i would have to say on a home setting i'm probably on the personal computer as much as an hour a day on average at home um i don't have a concern too much about the speed however because most of the applications i find are as fast as i am if not more so and i tend to notice it more when it comes down to an issue of [peripherals] uh at work i'm used to various batch printing capabilities and uh pretty high speed output either laser printer uh or uh machines like uh i b m thirty eight twenty high speed uh a p a printers and so i get frustrated uh watching things slowly come out upon my matrix printer more so than i do over over access speed um i guess that i have gotten to the point where if if i didn't have the personal computer i would be [impacted] a great deal on the things that i do in my life i'm i'm sure i would probably find ways to return to what i was doing in nineteen eighty one when i got my first home computer but it would be i think a a dramatic sense of loss on on some items uh no i have access to uh spell [correction] uh material i i seldom use it although when i'm at the office and i'm producing work correspondence uh i i run about ninety per cent of my office work on a mainframe uh i i execute on a three eighty six machine that is attached to the mainframe as a as a intelligent work station but i use it frequently as a [dumbhead] to get to the mainframe and and there i tend on almost all of my editing and stuff to to be using some fairly powerful editors and word processors and and [wordproof] but surprisingly at home and i seldom ever bother uh or worry about it too much uh i guess ultimately i'm not a a horribly bad [speller] although i have a tendency to [lisp] when i type so to speak uh nothing that that's particularly horrible and i think most of the work word processing i do since it's somewhat of a personal nature i've probably don't have a sense of [vulnerability] in this in the even that i were to to to send a a misspelled word out the way one might have at the office place uh okay right that's a that's an interesting point i think a the more i as i've thought about our conversation i realize that one of the things that perhaps causes me not to get a jarring difference between the two locations is that at the office i'm doing work things that in some ways are dissimilar from what i do at home uh and as a result i don't get the [comparative] feel uh i suspect if i were coming home and trying to do some of the projects i do at the office i would go crazy on my on my machine uh i haven't tended to play the games and and uh do the applications at work that i do at home so i probably have never been in noticed how wonderful it might be uh i suspect lotus one two three and spreadsheet application might be the one common thread um and there i think that even though i'm on an eighty eighty eight at home the the speed is really quite adequate uh and and i consequently don't even really notice uh the the difference between the the fast machine and and the eighty eighty eight right right i i do have some uh retirement modeling that i've done at home that uh tends to crawl uh which on which i've just turned the calculation off in between and a couple of models that i've built uh for school purposes that i start in the evening and then go to bed and get them the next morning but they would have run an hour and a half even on a thirty three eighty six machine i imagine so i suspect that what happens is that uh you get to the point where it's so long that uh from a human being perspective there's not much difference between six hours and an hour and a half yeah i do i own a um i own an i an x t clone it's a [samsung] and uh with a hyundai monitor [monochrome] monitor that i just keep at home for work and acts as a terminal for me because i'm a graduate student and i log out of school from there i'm a graduate student in psychology yeah i do uh language [acquisition] work but it's it's it's very helpful it's nice to have a machine at home that i can use locally for things like writing and so forth but i don't yeah and then i don't need a printer yeah yeah i don't need a printer or anything because i just sort of i can just call school and transfer everything over to school over the phone lines so how about you okay i know it yeah p s t general [architecture] there'll better we just bought it last year and they um there are some slight differences between those and other machines i'm finding oh it fine i actually don't i haven't actually noticed a major difference between a p s two and everything else actually um you know in in in terms of performing faster or better or anything i'm not actually sure what the major advantage of a p s two over anything else is with the possible exception of the fact that it's got a mouse port built in the back yeah yeah i think so um it's it's although it's funny because i just i just had to discuss one of our machines because it's just too slow somehow it slipped by us that we had bought one with two meg and of of of of ram and one with only one and we're running this new version of lotus i don't know if you've ever seen this or not you know that's true actually i um i found that this particular version three of lotus one two three actually i think performs maybe even in the high ninety per cent of what i'm expecting at this point i u i'm i'm it's it's it's because i'm new enough at it yet that i haven't figured everything out my first exposure was i guess when i was an undergraduate um a couple of years ago we had they they inundated us with macintoshes they brought a bunch of [macs] into uh there must have been some sort of program and they brought macintoshes in for us to for the school to do you know for all the kids in the school to do word processing on and no there there never was an undergraduate requirement it just everyone really everyone took to them very quickly because there were a number of them available and uh i'm not sure they must have they didn't in my case i was a psych major and they didn't i know that here they're required of some of of um where i am now they require it of of actually a number of different uh majors you know um some psychologists people psychology can take that in lieu of other courses and people in business have to uh i think are supposed and people in cognitive science definitely have to oh yeah i i actually um you said you said you work on [mainframes] a lot that's a lot of what i do is on a a sun i don't know if you work on suns at all um so sun micro system machine which is another mainframe in a type of a mainframe we do lots of um sort of brain you know [neural] network modeling on on on a on a lot of mainframe machines so yeah this is been a lot of expanding and having to be able to have things at home and and to study the interaction too has been wonderful wow well no i mean wow they must have been very different back then uh uh wow why base five god so you've really watched the whole the whole thing grow i mean the the the notion of personal computer back then meant you had to have your own living room wow so this is the perfect topic for you okay well how do they compare with like um you know the big um the big you know the ones that that took up a whole room in the sixties i mean how would you you know power wise was that less well actually less powerful oh god that much and and and that much bigger too for the same analogy wow okay oh god okay right that's true that's true right and they'll and they'll say imagine those big [clunkers] laptop computers way back one yeah they they going to say there's a big move for that my uh my my sister in law is a principal of a school and she just switched but before she was in a um a in a in a different school and she wrote a grant with i think it was apple or i b m one of the two i'm pretty sure it was apple actually to uh to get a whole [bunchy] of you know p c into or p c type machines into the school for the kids to use and and it just according to her it's just a wonderful thing kids go in and are able to work at their own pace and you know computers aren't [impatient] uh_huh uh_huh i don't have it at home but i used one at work and i play on there but i do i do some of my own stuff on there too so um oh games mostly um data base like address lists and recipes and just uh sort of the stuff that i like to keep track of mostly most of what i do is shareware games and and copies of stuff that i've gotten from other people i use lotus a lot just because i like using lotus uh no because they're two and four so they're not quite old enough to use it yet i tell them mommy is playing on the computer so they know what i'm doing but at work i use it mostly for i most of what i do is in lotus i we've got a couple of word processing but i'd rather use lotus i know it better uh yeah well we've got wordstar two thousand we just got wordperfect and i haven't gotten around to learning wordperfect yet so yeah it's i like well i work for the r t c so we that's what everything they send us is in wordperfect so we kind of had to get wordperfect so oh i bet uh_huh well good yeah that's that's one thing i'm hoping but the time mine get up there that we will be able to have one at home uh_huh uh_huh huh yeah that's since i work for the r t c we used to i used to be the loan teller for a failed savings and loan and couple of our customers would use the automated check writing programs yeah and it was i it was always interesting to see them it was like oh okay i recognize these who would be i i guess that would be a pretty good feature to use on that uh_huh that would be good yeah i'm kind of hooked on tetris well the shareware version i got has got like six different versions of tetris uh_huh it was like three dollars i i like that it's it's pretty cool um it's called [nyet] n y e t which is what is it oh something about it's not not called tetris you know it's like uh_huh and the other [version's] called ain't yeah well the the four letters i can't remember what they stand for but it's a little can't think of what that thing's called but it's it's a four word phrase that means no it's not tetris it's really not it's fun i like that and plus there's a guy at work that he and i trade different games like he's like well what do you have and i'll give you this and so we trade he's given me jeopardy and monopoly and wheel of fortune and oh yeah the only problem is the computer i like to play them on that's got the color monitor also i can't turn the sound off so i haven't figured out how to turn the sound off yet it's like oh because i i haven't really been into computers except for about the last five years before then it was like get that computer out of here i don't want it around here leave me alone but i've i've gotten to where i took a basic programming course out at richland and i really i enjoyed that and i got a little bit further into programming and i worked with a couple of our programming [analysts] down at uh frito lay and i thoroughly enjoyed that and now it's like give me computer and consequently i am the person that everybody comes to at work it's oh it's it really is it's like um amazing how this turned around she used to hate it and now she loves it but i like it it's fun oh i guess we have that sounds pretty good yeah i think so thanks a lot [vic] okay uh personal i don't have a personal computer i'd like to have one if i had more money i'd have one is it is it hard to find uh compatible pieces for your the one you have at home yeah oh yeah i would think that would be the hardest part about having a home computer is the it seems like every month they're coming out with something new and so then you're not compatible oh yeah even with like the computer games nintendo and that kind of stuff i mean they change it every year and the the previous game or the previous program or whatever isn't compatible oh oh okay well that isn't that doesn't sound too bad not really not in my work uh i did try and take a class uh i think last was it last spring no actually it was last fall it was at at i took desktop publishing i just wanted to get sort of a a slight feel for it and it's an introduction course and it was pretty fascinating we we learned how to do how to make a [brochure] type thing out uh off the computer so it was pretty interesting oh so you yeah uh_huh yeah now the lotus is for mostly numbers and graphs and things like that right yeah i'm not real good with computers at all and that's mainly because i don't use them i wish i did i'd be you know more up on it oh my goodness yes yeah have you heard about the phone that uh believe it's a t and t is it a t and t coming out with the phone with the like on the jetsons when you could see the you could see the person's face have you seen that yeah yeah yeah i saw that in a in a magazine recently i was really shocked yeah oh i know hopefully you can have control over whether they can see you or not but it looked pretty nice and it's only going to be two thousand dollars so which is not bad for something new like that so uh_huh yeah oh my mother does a lot of work on computers and she taps into computers all over the world she works at at she works at t i and uh yeah uh_huh and uh you know she talks to people through the computer from everywhere so i think i think that's really neat too okay uh_huh maybe she knows my mother because my mother used to work in plano now she works in uh north dallas i think but uh_huh i visited with some kids in elementary school and nowadays a lot of the schools have computers and the kids are really they're more interested in their [schoolwork] with the computer you know they can also play games but then they can help them write papers and help with their math and that kind of thing oh yeah and there's always something new even if you know even if you think you know everything about the computer there's always one button that you never quite use and you don't really quite know what it's for and you know can be fascinating in that way too especially for a kid that you know is just learning so well hopefully i'll be able to get a computer at some point i don't know when but i don't need one right now but there's going to come a time i'm sure when everybody's going to have to have one oh yeah uh_huh you want to start or you want me to start okay personal interests in computers basically nowadays it seems like you can't get by without one everywhere i go it's got some kind of computer interface like pressing on a keyboards uh pressing in personal identification numbers all the a t m machines things like that i personally don't own one because i can't afford one uh every time you look in a friends houses and they show their computers and all the [knickknacks] they have it seems like they go from their basic computer to all these peripheral devices like uh [modems] and fancy printers or lazy printers and fax machines and games that they like to play course i i was impressed by some of the games they have like flight [simular] game [simulator] for the different aircraft very close to it i understand except for the bouncing around you use it mostly for spreadsheets or do you use it for like word processing yeah i use a z two forty eight two eighty six at work but it's basically to tie into the communications network then through our communications network we go to our mainframe on the base there and use the unix operating systems use their v i editor and we use uh read on line news through it and we also have terminal [emulations] through i b m thirty two seventy eight and i don't know i just don't i don't even use the hard disk drive to to copy any floppy disks or anything like that i just basically use it for a window into their to the unix world yeah is that i b m or is that an i b m type i'm familiar with unix commands like uh [copying] files and [compressing] them things like that i just have a fun time using their mainframe at the base but i think a different language all right yeah we can use system five or we can use uh [seashell] you know i like uh i favor [seashell] over the other in fact i think most of our users like because they were trained in it and they just don't want to learn something different pardon oh yeah plus everybody in your office knows it and as the new people come in they kind of help each other out but you have different people with different backgrounds and they have a hard time sharing information yeah the disadvantage of v i editor you can't see all those fancy things i have another thing called q office from [quadratron] back in california that people like to use but it's a very slow system and i understand it's only on like we use a gold nine thousand fifty and that's basically their format they use for word processing and they're trying to push people into using either word good morning do you have a a personal computer oh uh_huh uh_huh um i have one uh a [wang] or a sorry a [compaq] portable that my son picked up at one point uh without documentation so it was very cheap it's a two eighty six so it has no hard drive uh so that's limiting i tend to use it to log into the the mainframe at work and then i have a mac that i use for graphics and um i don't there's something about the mac a lot of things about the mac i don't like i don't like the size of the screen i have an old uh plus i don't like the keyboard but it's extremely easy to use and it's very good for for graphics and actually i i mean it's to the point where programs are readily available and inexpensive so i did my income tax on it i have uh uh it's not really a budget package but a a financial tracking package you know for my checkbook and stuff like that right and i mean you can you can buy an extra screen but uh it's somehow because the screen comes with it it it always looks awkward to have the two screens and i found uh my son is um uh second year college student and he in high school had no interest in the computer at all and so he when teachers said you know you have to type your papers at least with a mac he was willing to sit down and type his paper and um now he does play with with the you know i b m clone but um and has learned quite a bit about it and tends to use it instead of instead of instead of the mac so even without any propaganda and stuff he he seems to have switched no i mean he sees it as a tool much as i do and uh he no he's in international studies so he's basically you know whatever the computer can do for you fine i'll learn enough to to make it work well for me but i'm not going to be a guru uh_huh right but i think that is it is very frustrating because you know you're sure you did x and it just doesn't work and so you tell somebody who knows about computers and they say no you obviously didn't do that because the computer doesn't doesn't [balk] right and talk to them yell at them uh_huh basically you're using it as a word processor and what would you do right right well it's been very interesting okay you too i guess they mean just one that's in your home uh_huh okay i guess that's like the ones in t i oh in your home oh uh_huh how do you know about building you own computer uh_huh was that a little less expensive oh uh_huh oh seems like it would be more fun any way my husband gets a kick out of building stuff for his self rather than buying one no he's not into electronics i'm just saying per se he just likes to build stuff but uh uh_huh somebody to help do you use your computer for home uh uh_huh is that for your house or for your office oh okay well couldn't you like um i'm pretty sure you can do this have it one in your home that has the same stuff in it that your office does perhaps kind of connect it uh_huh just [contains] okay right right okay you could just bring your disk home and do it yeah that was my problem in school i could not write programs i loved messing with the computer though but i just could not to a certain point i'd just get messed up and i would be totally lost yeah i want i'm wanting to go back to school and this time i'll try a lot harder uh_huh well a lot them more or less close the computers the microwaves all have these new little buttons and just about every thing is getting computerized yeah have you seen that uh thing that shows the [maps] i think that's neat uh_huh okay now a friend of mine is trying is going for c p a and she is having to take or she maybe it's just a preference that she's taking it on herself but she is taking a computer class yeah i do our income taxes too and you're right it probably would be a lot easier if i the use a computer uh_huh uh_huh and redo everything right uh yeah well i've so far i've had been able to use the easy form just me and my husband so now i'm for my little boy's birthday is coming up and i was thinking about getting him just one of those little i know i they've got toy computers more or less just for kids just starting and he'll be four but i've seen it on uh like twenty twenty and stuff whatever where they do have little third graders and stuff working on uh_huh uh_huh probably but i think that's the way it goes with most parents uh_huh well uh go ahead well i don't know much about them the main thing i didn't i don't even remember them having computers on uh that little sheet but uh uh_huh well it's been pretty interesting so far yeah all righty all right bye bye yeah well yes i do i have a t i p c in fact i have two of them i have i have one that i collected the the uh [ports] for one at a time like first i bought just the uh the central processing unit and the monitor couple years later i bought a printer and then i needed a a hard drive so uh there was this guy at t i selling a a t i p c for four hundred dollars and it had everything had the works and it had the hard drive and everything so i bought that one instead of buying a hard drive for mine so now i have that one with the hard drive and mine with no the the the other one with no hard drive and what i thought i'd use them for was just to to do some work out of my house for you know people who needed uh word processing and stuff like that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i thought i might uh get some extra income somehow or another uh yeah yeah yeah i think i'll i'll i thought about doing that one time in fact i saw somebody else advertise in the [dallasite] once and uh thought about putting an ad in the newspaper also but then i might just get too much business but right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i i found a uh book once in the library that had sources for uh work at home uh you know some of them required that you have a p c but most of those wanted i b m [compatibles] and as as you know the t i p c is not i b m compatible yeah they did the the uh the business pro which is that's what i have at work but uh i still have the problem of upgrading mine either to a business pro or just going out there and buying a an i b m clone then i'll have three p c's uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh and circuit city uh_huh uh_huh wow uh_huh uh_huh i saw a fact i believe the one i saw was a three eighty six also it only had one one drive though but it had a hard drive you know some of them have the little uh the the small yeah plus the the bigger one uh_huh i've never used one of those at all you're kidding uh_huh oh i didn't i didn't realize that oh wow uh_huh uh_huh well i'm going to look into getting one of those i b m clones but right uh_huh yeah all right bye bye yes but i'm sure there's always something new to learn because we have a growing growing uh computer world out there no i'm at uh texas instruments uh_huh oh golly numerous application presentations uh memos uh uh spreadsheets um just all kinds of things i don't do any [plotting] though i don't do any you know i don't do any uh device [creations] or anything like that like in [autocad] i don't do those but we have that capability here uh_huh uh_huh that's been ongoing for quite a while now is the speech recognition it's uh i don't know how old it is but i know they've been pursuing it for a long time that's right yes a lot of uh [glitches] to get out of it to work out of it uh_huh oh that's interesting isn't it oh my word uh_huh well that's wonderful how are you advancing on your uh endeavors well great that sounds good uh_huh yeah well that's wonderful that's wonderful now if we can get everybody together that has got all these uh uh new inputs that they're doing for speech and if they could get them together and compare notes they probably would do well to jump a couple of hundred feet in that area uh_huh well that's good do you have do you have a group that uh you can interface with each other like uh who's interested in speech that wouldn't be a bad idea though do you think that uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh so it's that that soon uh_huh it's going to be interesting to uh uh look at i'm not involved in it myself you know but uh just hearing what is going on at t i is very fascinating and i don't know that much about it i know that um in the group that i was working in there was an area that was really focused on speech recognition however i'm not in that uh organization any more within t i i'm in uh a different area of t i now working on something totally different so uh my interest was [spurred] and then it was taken away because i i um was moved out of that area oh it's definitely very fascinating uh_huh uh_huh oh that's wonderful that's like almost giving them a um evaluation and going into the direction where they're gifted in that's wonderful um uh_huh uh_huh well you're you sound like you're very current with all that information uh i know because you have children too and you're also interested in the uh voice recognition it's been so long since my my grandchildren are in school now but i won't have to worry about them any more just worry about your children and uh let let the let the parents worry about the about their babies but you just know that their doing well so but i don't have any idea what's going on in the schools today i'm not active in any school other than paying my school taxes is uh kind of fun it's best done when you have leisure time and i had more of that in my childhood days than i have now and i grew up in an area that uh was just a few feet from a rather large lake and a few more miles from that was a even larger lake and we had a variety of boats at our disposal uh i worked for a camp for a number of years my father was on staff there and we had every kind of things from [canoes] to paddle boats [sailboats] [speedboats] you name it they had it and we did a lot of watering water sports but i think uh the thing i liked the best was uh we spent about a summer couple of guys uh restored an old wooden boat that was built back in the mid thirties and got a new canvas sail for it and had a real big old foot center board that went down in the middle to keep you upright when the waves or the wind came from the side and we got that thing in the water and had a real good time with it if you ever got it dumped over though it was a mess to get back up it wasn't like the newer ones that have nice chambers that keep it [afloat] or keep it uh upright again this one you had to work with you get out of the water again and get it upright and uh sailing was was kind of nice to learn the [maneuvers] you had to make to work your way down a lake or work back up against the the wind as it were [tacking] back and forth and uh more than once we'd get out there on a really [stormy] day and uh the storm or the wind was due to the front blowing and as soon as the front came over it was calm so you're out in the middle of nowhere with a paddle and you paddle your way back in and hope it doesn't start raining on you right away and that didn't always work we [oftentimes] got wet but uh it's it's a nice nice hobby to have nowadays i don't think i could afford the boat or the time nor do we live that close to a lake anymore so things change i guess what are your memories of boating or current right that's true yeah i remember learning how to ski oh i guess i was seven or eight years old and the lake that we learned on was the smaller of the two that we had access to and it was maybe fifteen twenty acres and it was uh it had a lot of uh turtles in it and i got all ready to go and i was down in the water and and set to go and uh and just as that boat took off a turtle bit me in the middle of the back it didn't hurt too much but it bit enough to where i let go and the boat went off without me and i reached back there and pushed him away and got out of the water a a while and and uh it didn't even leave a mark it was just a little [nibble] and so i told everybody what happened and they go oh yeah sure you know and so i get back down in there and and i'll be if he didn't do it again this time a little earlier and and i had let go before then and before they took off this time and and [swatted] him away so i moved over a a few feet in the water and got out of his little realm where he was living underneath the dock and uh managed to get up didn't go very far but i got up and it it was a nice uh nice long skiing career but now i've gotten to where skiing is just kind of wears me out more than it does thrill me i've i've uh done about all i dare do on skis you know skiing on one and jumping around here and there and i i i know how you can get injured doing much more than that and i just can't risk it right now being a head of the family and the [breadwinner] and all that just uh can't take the risk i did as a dumb teenager i guess so life just changes a little bit in that respect i'd kind of like someday to maybe end up on a pair of skis that that doesn't have a uh well what they call trick skis they'll allow you to ski backwards i haven't managed to get a hold on that uh craft yet but uh yeah it it would be kind of nice i hadn't quite figured out i don't have anybody to teach me either that's another little thing you need somebody to kind of tell you what to do but just from what i've seen you just kind of work your way up to it and turn around real quick you know grab the rope behind you and then just let go real quick and let it whip you around but uh i don't know maybe someday i'll i'll get back to that as after the kids are up and grown and the monies are there to get away for times on end weekend or something uh about the only memories that i have of boating uh my husband's family had a a motor boat uh when we got engaged and they took us out on the lake several times and uh i really did enjoy that i i don't know that i ever learned to drive it or anything but uh we did some water skiing of course and and uh driving around the lake in the boat and and just the basic safety rules and things i found real interesting uh you know they they just didn't patrol you like they did with the automobile or whatever the the laws were there and if you didn't [obey] them uh you know there were a lot of accidents i guess but uh i found the motor boating was real fun oh that sounds like a real challenge uh_huh well my son supposed to talk about boats have you got a boat no i don't i i've had one for quite a few years but i i've not had one the last couple of years but it's something i've always enjoyed do you do you like boating yeah but uh my children all have been grown for a few years and we were using it less and less and less so we decided to sell it and what's that oh no now i loved having a boat i loved having it no oh okay oh yeah yeah guy just you know he needs his weekends free or to be able to use it or a day during the week or something but but no i guess for the cost of them you don't really it's hard to get i don't know i felt like i got my money's worth out of mine i had bought it used and kept it uh i don't know ten years and got within uh three hundred dollars of what when i sold it of what i'd paid for it and had it all those years you know so they hold their you take care of them they hold their value real well so you know you couldn't complain about that no no it was a uh big boat big ski boat type thing i had a hundred hundred sixty horse uh [murcruiser] in it [inboard] outboard oh i did fish out of it occasionally but i'm not too much of a fisherman and uh but i but i did enjoy owning a boat would recommend it to anybody and uh uh but uh and now sailing i've never been sailing have you been sailing uh_huh i've never tried i've always thought i bet that would be more fun but i'd want to be with a skilled sailor but it yeah well i i've always thought i'd like to i've never wanted to bad enough to make any effort to do it you know and at this stage of the game i'm not that interested in it anymore we go out with friends on the we go to the lake just about every weekend down at mount vernon and parents' next door neighbors have a big barge and we go out and take them out on their barge they're getting kind of old and they like us to take them out on their barge quite often so we we get out on the water occasionally you know but uh uh anyway it's it's it's fun i i do enjoy the lake but uh once the children were grown and we'd go down there and i'd get the boat out on the you know saturday and we'd go for a ride and enjoy it so much it's such a pretty lake down there we'd enjoy it so much and i'd say well i'm going to leave the boat out because uh we'll probably do this again tomorrow it got to where the tomorrow the boat was still sitting there and we never did go out again and i'd have to go load it up the next day and uh mount vernon cypress springs cypress creek springs yeah it's down at mount vernon it's probably the prettiest lake in the state of texas yeah it's just a hundred miles from here no you go down i uh uh you uh you go down uh yeah thirty thirty it's east of here east of here hundred miles due east of here and uh did you where did you all move from oh did you how are you liking it well good yeah uh_huh oh i think you'll like it better but of course it's hard when you don't have any family around yeah uh_huh yes it's hard on the your folks too i know they're all yours and your wife's folks still live in colorado uh_huh uh there are supposed to be uh some people moving down here from colorado springs for t i yeah supposed to be do you work at t i uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i don't either my wife does but it's a good company but anyway we're supposed to be talking about boats so back to boats so tell me the last time you went for a boat ride oh my gosh now that had to be that's boating that had to have been fun no i don't do you oh really yeah i love them well i heard that's the second happiest day of your life the day you sell your boat no i just heard that that's just a joke i guess first best day is the day you get and the day you get rid of it but i'd like to have one i just don't know if i'd have the time to use it yeah uh_huh really did you go fishing oh okay oh wow really yeah i like to fish uh yeah i've [sailed] some i just like uh fourteen foot sunfish nothing big yeah really well they offer classes out at uh ray hubbard yeah oh okay okay oh that's nice yeah where is that yeah okay that's south of here okay really huh what do you take i thirty five thirty oh okay all right yeah it just we just moved down here a couple years ago so colorado springs yeah oh we love it up there that's where i grew up so but uh we're we like it down here pretty good yeah we got two kids that are under two and it's kind of tough when my folks call and they want to see them yeah so oh really yeah that's right uh i don't no uh a friend of mine's dad is was a program manager up there and he just moved down here to what do you i guess it's he's working in mckinney okay well actually i went uh canoeing down the brazos this weekend it was fun it was fun mike i'm calling from dallas from richardson okay well good you know our subject is on boating and sailing and quite honestly with the exception of being involved in a part ownership of a little bass boat i have never really got into sailing or boating oh do you well great well that's neat right i've seen some nice nice [sailboats] the guy that used to live next to us in richardson before we moved twelve years ago or whatever he had a sailboat used to park it right in the uh driveway and it seemed uh i think it held probably uh it must have slept four people anyway right i i understand i tell you oh they are and you know we have a swimming pool at our house and i think of all the time now that my kids are gone and away and married and going to college or whatever that i put in there i just could not imagine a boat because i know it's a lot of maintenance oh gosh yeah you bet sure you bet i know my wife and i were first married here aunt and uncle aunt and uncle up in new york they kept a boat on jamaica bay and we used to go out with them and back then they had bought an older chris craft and we were involved every weekend in just uh as we visited we were involved every weekend in just helping them redo this and [refinish] that we just worked all the time but their boat slept about four people plus had a little kitchen it was sort of neat we but i think that was the last time we were really involved and that was twenty years ago or twenty five years ago it is a lot of fun you bet i visited my cousin a couple of years ago my wife and i and our daughter and he had a place on lake of the ozarks and he had a boat and uh i never seen so many boats in all my life people actually park their car when they get to their place they're staying townhouse or condominium whatever they own and they they go boat i mean they go if they want to go to the [lounge] to have a cocktail they use the boat and that was sort of neat that that that's true that's exactly how they do it they go to dinner that way go to all the restaurants and that was sort of a neat setup i enjoyed that we spent a week with them i enjoyed that i'm envious i'm envious of people that have the big boats and uh you bet think you think you'd really enjoy it yeah oh i yeah that's great oh i know and putt putt sure well that's neat where do you work who are you with well good oh okay great i'm in addison here right i do uh quite a bit of sailing i own a sailboat that i keep it parked up on the scout lot of my scout troop and we take it out and we do some teaching of sailing with the scouts but i haven't really been taking it out [recreationally] too much lately it's just i don't have a trailer hitch on my car anymore so it's hard for me to get it somewhere but yeah this one is not that big it's a day [sailer] it does have a little kind of cabin thing that you can store things in but you couldn't really sleep in there unless you sort of stuck your body out the hole back into the main part of the sailboat but but it's they're they can be black holes to throw money into boats are kind of expensive to maintain especially a bigger one the bigger they are if you get a big cabin [cruiser] or or a big ski boat power boat then there's always uh stuff to go wrong with it a sailboat at least doesn't have an engine to mess up but you still have to worry with the [hull] and the condition of the [sails] and [spars] and [rigging] uh everything that's in it it takes a a pretty good amount of maintenance to keep one up but well it's a lot of fun i think uh just from the standpoint of getting away from the dodge here and when you work hard and you're under pressure and everything all week long a boat can be a lot of relaxation uh to especially with a group of friends and cook out or camp out or whatever uh or a cabin or something depending on how much you like to rough it but but it's uh use the boat for transportation they just go across the boat and get a and tie it up and go in huh that would be fun i've just never i've never moved up to a really big class of sailboat uh once i get my son into and through with college he's going to be starting uh rice next year so he's going off but uh once i get to that stage where i'm not paying for something else and uh i don't have to worry about a lot of other scheduling things where i've actually got the time to go out and enjoy it uh i might do something differently i might just donate my little one to the scout troop and let them keep it and maybe consider getting a a better one for me uh yeah i think i would uh the sailing part of it i like because it's so quiet and if you get a big enough one then you've got a little motor on it also where if it's light wind you can still putt around a little bit and have fun or if or if the wind dies you're not stuck in the middle of the lake i've with my little one i've been out there many times on a calm summer day where all of a sudden the wind stops and you're just stranded out there trying to pick up what little [gusts] you can to work your way back in and and that gets hot and and [wearisome] doing that and if you if you're a big enough boat to have the little [auxiliary] motor on there at least you can kind of drop the [sails] and putt on back in but it's fun i own an insurance agency a managing general a [wholesaler] of insurance uh out in addison and uh i'm a scout leader though so i'm i'm out with yeah all right yeah i'm kind of into it i'm uh kind of a sailor i'm up in minneapolis now but i was in florida so uh yeah i was kind of into it for a while there yeah for the most part yeah i had a little sail no what part of texas you from okay whereabouts is that okay all right is that right wow that's pretty wild okay so you got some lakes around you can do that on you do skiing and stuff or yeah all right yeah all right yeah that sounds good yeah we've uh our the snow up here is really kind of starting to melt now yeah not not not too many no but uh no i just got back from a weekend we went and uh had a kind of a picnic in the woods type thing it was pretty nice but uh no i i have uh i had a boat last summer that i took out a [catamaran] that i do did a lot of sailing on and stuff that's a lot of fun but uh my parents are pretty big [sailors] too they're kind of into it oh yeah i guess it's pretty uh fishing's a pretty big thing huh yeah yeah all right so where about in texas is that is that centrally located or uh no what what major city is nearby okay and that's south or north of there or something yeah okay oh okay all right well that sounds pretty good does uh i guess the weather does that stay pretty constant there or yeah okay well that's pretty temperate yeah that's not too bad but uh yeah have you done uh any other boating then or yeah oh that's great yeah i oh that's fantastic yeah i used to uh kind of be that way myself when i lived in uh north western florida in the panhandle i used to sail about every day i'd work go to work yeah it's a lot of fun it's uh especially if you get a a pretty fast boat like those catamarans are pretty fast you can actually well actually i i've known how to sail pretty much my whole life uh my family's pretty into it and uh i took sailing lessons when i was about six and then uh yeah it it's kind of a thing where you get the hang of it after a while you know uh just kind of get a feel for the wind and how it works and and the physics behind it so it's it's not too bad it's pretty easy to get the hang of i think and uh generally everybody i've i've known has kind of gotten into it but some people are more [motorboaters] you know which is fine yeah yeah lot of people don't don't see the excitement in sailing but then again they may they may never have tried anything like uh [catamaran] and uh that's when you really start getting into speed you know you actually some catamarans you can actually pull people behind the skiers they get so fast you know yeah they get pretty quick but uh yeah yeah i haven't i haven't personally done that but uh the races i i work with a guy right now that uh races catamarans in the summertime and uh he's pretty [gassed] about it he's got a good uh well he uh he's from detroit so he usually goes on one of the great lakes i think and does his sailing uh for me i i go back to orlando uh in about a month and so down there basically just go to the coast we're about thirty miles from [coco] beach and the east coast and there's a lot of places there you can go you know so uh so that's a good thing but yeah so what do you do for a job oh really okay is that for t i or okay are they primarily electronic then okay well that right oh okay great yeah how do you like it down there in texas yeah oh no doubt okay i've never been to texas i've been to oklahoma but uh that's about as far as yeah okay well that's good because i didn't like oklahoma that well well we have we used to when i was younger we'd go every weekend but we haven't done whole lot of it lately yeah were you [sailboating] yeah well we don't get to do a whole lot of that up here just [motorboat's] all we uh nacogdoches that's between houston and dallas it's the oldest town in texas yeah we have uh lake sam [rayburn] out here and lake nacogdoches so we do a lot of boating on yeah yeah little bit just got through snow skiing yeah just came back from denver but yeah it it it was heavy when we were there though i didn't see any boats there though yeah uh all we all we have up here mostly bass boats uh_huh lot of lot of fishing going on up here it's uh well you ever heard of [lufkin] houston let me see houston's north dallas is south it's it's gets cold at night and then warm in the afternoons probably seventies eighties in the afternoon no i hadn't done any in a uh lately but that's all i used to uh have a friend that owned his daddy owned a boat shop and we used to when i was in high school we used to go out go boating every day just about and we had a different boat every day i'd like to do some sailing yeah what do if you get one like that do have somebody teach you that or they just yeah is it pretty easy yeah yeah well that's about all we have uh_huh i didn't know that that that would be something uh_huh what kind of what lake do you all use uh_huh yeah uh i build [transformers] yeah no it's for cooper industries yeah well they have a you know worldwide but all we do here is make [transformers] electronics and stuff like that it's real nice been here all my life yeah oh it's [oklahoma's] nothing like it of course my dad is a big sailor so he likes to sail and he likes to do all that stuff but it has been a long time since he has a boat but we use to go to lake michigan and fix up you know or paint a boat that he was working on so we use to do that but i never [sailed] i was in from chicago i grew up around there and then uh moved down here about ten years ago no it was it was it was an old forty foot [yacht] that no it it well no it it was never in the water it was on dry dock so it was always uh kind of just sitting there so uh he fishes i don't do you uh so did you from [docks] or from what uh_huh huh nope divorced yeah so uh yeah we live sort of fifteenth and independence oh yeah are you by parks sort of oh okay so you are far up there oh are you oh huh and you moved here how long ago oh yeah so you have been there about the same time we did we moved from north dakota i was married at the time to a coal mine well he you know strip mining kind of thing soil engineer but he uh moved down here with that so we came down here yeah we were in north dakota with mining too so yeah so that was real different i have four do you shepherd and wilson i have uh middle school uh twelve ten nine and three uh a seventh grader fifth grader fourth grader and third uh three huh then you have little ones oh yeah well just mine is almost four all girls girl [meagan] yep [meagan] walls so yeah she's i know uh in band and that kind of stuff so we are probably about the same age oh really do it against that team cause our [meagan's] friend is on that team she tried out but she didn't make it so uh [mandy] uh uh no [nickols] [amanda] [nichols] she plays uh i don't even know which you know number we haven't gone to a game we are always going to a game and we haven't so she plays the flute yes i sing that's what i started in college on yeah yeah so then i do [bells] we have [handbells] at church and so i do that and do that kind of stuff but i just started on uh i don't know now i am out of that whole field pretty much except for uh the kind of thing yeah that's about it it's about all i have time for so that's what i do never uh no we go we have gone to lake lavon and uh what else is east hubbard lake ray hubbard i guess so we have done those and uh camped there and that kind of stuff and we have camped up on uh texoma yeah but i don't know that i have [boated] there i don't have any friends with boats well i will have to do a better [grouping] i know cause i thought well gosh well i was figuring you know uh as i was listening to this uh sailing and i thought it was probably a they are seventh grade girls no well where in california are you from oh i know where san francisco sort of area cause we have apartments there i do i recruit nurses for a company called flying nurses and so we have apartments in walnut creek okay the question was um what what is your opinion of youth uh spending a year or two in in public service yeah huh_uh would uh would you be more in favor of uh you know like a local uh my only experience with it i was in central america for a while and uh in san salvador in el salvador for instance everybody had what they called there social year that they had to put in and basically it was a uh repayment for for uh high school education and most of them joined the red cross and it was done internally i just there was very little external i think possibly what uh they're thinking about here more external peace corps type things where we're sending people off shore huh_uh yeah i don't i don't know how the peace corps works i guess i was of age when the peace corps came in and all that did you ever get any information on it like that's what i was wondering about was whether they actually yeah wasn't jimmy [carter's] mama that was in the peace corps where they couldn't do that yeah you might end up with a revolution i don't know which end though yeah yeah that's that's been interesting though the kids that have been over you know coming back right now you know you wonder if being exposed to that for a while what percentage of them would actually say hey that's not a bad way to do it because from what i understand from some of the guys i know you know crime uh is punishable just almost uh instantly and public yeah public hanging and this sort of thing you know so you don't have just a whole lot of what we consider street crimes yeah well i guess that's uh the price of freedom i guess is a little anyway the uh uh the the public service thing again i i i guess in my own having had the whole three or four minutes to you know give it a great deal of thought you know um i i think i agree with you one hundred percent about it being some sort of voluntary but when you do that then it becomes almost uh a or it can be you know there have people will kind of set up their own little club and uh but if you know yeah yeah well if they went [awol] what are you going to do shoot them put them in jail yeah right i know my dad always talked about uh he was in c c c during uh and he was uh a rock rib iowa type republican and the only good thing he could ever say about uh the whole roosevelt administration was uh civilian conservation corps because he was in it he thought that was great the rest of it was all hog wash but that was great yeah yeah the only well you know that brings up the interesting subject too you know what would you have who who who would determine what these people do you know if uh you know if it's run by the individual state you know like c c c was run by the army and in effect and the only opposition to it really was that it was you know starting some sort of a military elitist type you know special corps of [cadre] of people and that sort of thing and uh when the politics get real confusing yeah yeah well we've gotten to the point where you know if if well if the racial make up of the group was such and such you know they'd have to do that percentage of work and what is perceived to be that part of town and you know that kind of thing oh yeah suppose uh well you know they had a group who were construction oriented and they went and they they built uh can't think of a good example a swimming pool or anything you know and one you can you can only build it in one place you know and know matter where you build it somebody else is going to scream well you didn't build one over here yeah i think uh oh boy it's one of those things on the surface you know it seems like a great idea it's like a joke i heard once about uh elephant foot soup you know it's easy to do once you find a elephant foot it's uh the logistics of the thing that uh gets you going yeah huh_uh yeah yeah yeah it's it's it's just the you know here you are to the logistics of the thing again you know who's going to run it you know what how oh it's just so many like like i said at the beginning i've got so many connections with people in central america my daughter in law is panamanian you know and they have situations like like that down there where they they have these the social in some sort of way if you want to go to school outside the country and many [salvadorians] did they'd go to school in cornell iowa of all places and when they came back they'd have to serve this this year and it turned out to be kind of a joke the ones i knew you know always chose the red cross because they didn't do anything and they had all kinds of uh things they could go into agricultural and you know really good stuff but uh unless there was a flood or a fire or something like that red cross it was so many of them in it that at any particular chance your chance of having to do something was it was very slim and so huh_uh huh_uh yeah okay then that's uh kind of a private organization you know i'm i'm familiar with my instructor pilot was a mormon he was he was a good construction uh you know instructor pilot because he considered himself indestructible yeah right he felt that he really had an in so you know things he would do with an airplane but any rate that's off the subject but i huh_uh i see how they were organized in central and south america and uh it's uh i think it would be a great idea i'm not sure about requiring it you know of people because people are going you know feeling [resentful] i don't know but i think it would be a great idea seems like there's so many kids that don't have any since of you know what they want to be or do or you know they could learn something and maybe help other people at the same time and we sure our country all countries sure need help so huh_uh huh_uh oh really huh_uh yeah well i think that would be real interesting for people to do but i guess my concern about that would be the cost involved trying to train people in a new language and ship them you know to other countries and but i don't know if you did it internally and it was just people in your own country then maybe countries that are so poor that they wouldn't be able to really you know send children to do that i didn't know yeah i was too i thought seriously about joining at that time i thought it was a fantastic idea i sent off for stuff on it but i don't remember that much about it i know that they trained you in the language and um you actually got paid too while in the peace corps it wasn't much but i guess they you could put some money aside while you were there your expenses and yeah i think so yeah yeah but it might be interesting to see what would happen if you took kids at a and then took then to another country instead of having being exposed to all the drugs and violence and sex and everything here and take them to some other country that had different moral values like saudi arabia where they couldn't drink really yeah public hanging yeah yeah i've heard that like in china and stuff there is virtually no such thing as rape because if you rape somebody you'd be murdered you know on the you know street so yeah yeah that's true people that might benefit most from it might not go in that situation you know like people that really are trapped in a ghetto or something like that might not go if it was voluntary but i don't know how they'd enforce it if it was yeah i don't know send them over to iraq have a vacation in iraq for a year yeah huh_uh yeah well it seems like it would develop pride you know in people if if it's in their own country it would certainly help them to appreciate some of the things that we have here and develop some pride in them if it was handled that way i i it would take quite a few people i think it might build jobs for people you know that were [administrating] and running and training and [coordinating] and all that so maybe that part of it would be helpful too i don't know like to have a volunteer come here and rake leaves and mow the grass and yeah yeah huh_uh huh_uh yeah really there could be um some [scandals] involved if you know it wasn't people that were really fair and you know in a legal way or something they could send all the people over to uh you know one particular part of town or one particular project that somebody had paid somebody to you know get supported or yeah that could be a complicated too couldn't it yeah yeah that's true unfair or something yeah yeah really yeah well it seems like there's there's a lot you don't hear much on the news about young people really you know wanting to do anything good or anything like that but you know i'm sure that there are a lot of young people out there that really do have good hearts and are willing to help and serve and that kind of thing i just i saw on the news the other night that the uh the little girl that used to be the littlest girl on the cosby show [kisha] [knight] [pullman] was starting a i guess now she's practically a teenager she started some type of um national organization for youth to volunteer to teach tutor other kids to read and you know do different service projects like that and trying to get youth more directed towards you know helpful things and i know everyone like in the high schools in dallas there's a couple high schools that have wanted to start like a um minority you know i think it was in a hispanic area they wanted to start like a club for the teenagers instead of they said all these gangs kids could join to belong but they didn't have anything positive the kids could be doing helping you know so they were trying to start that out so if there's people out there that are willing to you know kids that are willing to sacrifice their time and energy gosh we ought to use them you know if their willing to do it yeah yeah huh_uh huh_uh huh_uh oh i see yeah yeah yeah well we um belong to the church of jesus christ of latter day saints which is like the mormon church and um there there is men and also women women aren't nearly as frequent and also that have elderly couples once their kids have left that can volunteer to go on a mission and um they're all over the world and its incredible logistics i mean they have a training center where they teach them it's called the missionary training center in utah and they have to be taught the language and [customs] and all those kinds of things and then they um you know go and actually live in that country for the the uh young men do it for two years and the young women for eighteen months right oh yeah he had a direct connection somewhere uh yeah yeah they they don't get paid for it and um but there is funding that comes they're supposedly saving up on their own and the church helps them out some but you know that it is incredible you know yeah yeah uh i was thinking about whether or not we should have people uh be required to do public service for a year or two and i was thinking that you needed to put some waivers in there for the handicapped and also for people that had to stay home and maybe be wage [earners] for their family or they had somebody at home that was ill that they had to tend to i mean you can't make it everybody but then you need to make it sure that the rich people can't buy somebody off and and maybe send them in their places or get out of it some other way too and then we could maybe give [physicals] to the rest of the family members right give [physicals] to the rest of the family members and they all had to pass uh i thought it a good idea too though would be to extend this and make people that are accepting public welfare have to do something along this line before they got any money and uh if they did this maybe help them out in their college cost and maybe they could pay people for doing this at least something so they could [subsist] yeah yeah and you know all these old people they would get out of this right all the ones that are already retired so what we could do is take all the retired people that are going around in their big mobile homes and they could do public service all over the country i'm just teasing well i thought it would be a good idea if maybe you took some of the kids and had them go over to other countries and children from their countries came over to ours too a trade off yeah and other than that i can't think of any other ideas oh with w p a yeah and we're still using those things too we're still using those things they built [lodges] before too like at caddo lake caddo lake it's between texas and louisiana it crosses into both of them well it's real pretty it's like a swamp you know with all the spanish moss on the trees it's really it's eerie yeah i don't know where are you from virginia oh that's neat i talked to somebody from ohio the other night there is somebody and i uh i can't remember who it is but there's a really famous of [dang] i can't remember that proposed it i read something in people about it huh mitch snider i don't know who mitch snider is yeah what have your other topics been i had one that i hated it was what meal would you cook for uh uh special dinner how far can you go with that one right another one though that was good was uh what do you think about the social changes for the last ten twenty and thirty years and what do you think has caused some of the social problems that's probably the best one and we had to talk about air pollution too what do you think is causing it and what should we do about it uh_huh right because we don't have much coal in virginia yeah well how did you get into this program for t i no so does your company have something to do with t i huh uh_huh and do you know how much how long this is supposed to go on i don't either i mean it says just keep on until and they'll [notify] you at first i was thinking it was just a week because that's all it shows you know on the schedule but then it seems like it might be longer than a week so what do you think we're going to get what do you think we're going to get for this money prizes do you know anybody that's ever done this i know t i gets prizes i was led to believe that if you weren't t i that you get money i'm not t i huh_uh let's see one of my friends had a roommate that worked for t i and she saw this on her computer and thought it might be neat so she ran off copies of the thing and i just signed up for it yeah uh_huh and it shouldn't be too good right now anyway because they've been laying off so many people yeah really so we're [footing] the bill on our taxes okay well thanks a bunch we'll talk to you later bye well i'm going to try to clean up the house after my two children for about an hour see if we can walk around bye okay well go ahead i'll let you start uh_huh right yeah uh_huh or it could be like the draft where you know before they draft you they uh you get a physical anyway so when they send you a draft notice and then they give you a physical and if there's nothing physically wrong with you then you're drafted it doesn't matter how rich you are that would be good what did you say oh yeah uh uh_huh that's true well that's true america's paying all this money to have other people give uh aid to other countries so they could be paying their own people and training their own people at the same time because actually when you when you do uh service overseas you end up learning something usually that's that's really useful plumbing or farming or or something like that so you're really learning a skill what did you say uh_huh yeah i i think well that's probably the idea i don't know whether the idea is to be within the country or outside the country yeah that would be neat yeah sort of like an exchange program uh_huh yeah that'd be sort of neat i like the idea of uh being uh a mandatory thing for welfare course that's what um that's sort of like what truman had or was it roosevelt i can't remember um with the big yeah getting people uh the the work program and all the all the make work jobs that was sort of public service in a way all the highways they started building what did you say yeah that's true a lot of them are still out there like all these wonderful highways in west virginia and no one knows why lake what caddo lake no i've never heard of it oh oh okay real pretty like a swamp oh yeah oh okay yeah i been uh i got uh talked to someone else before that was a uh a texan but i guess that's uh that's what we're going to have this is uh a t i experiment to see how talk texans talk to other people uh virginia oh yeah it is neat to get other people especially since you got other uh ideas about how people uh how people react to things and stuff especially when it comes to um social services uh uh i'm glad they have a lot of uh um you know topics on social services because like this thing this is a pretty good idea i didn't even know if they were thinking about it i wonder if they thought about it themselves or whether someone somewhere is really thinking that uh it would be a good idea to have everybody spend some time in public service politicians pushing it or uh or mitch snider or mitch snider oh okay well see that's a d c thing mitch snider is the the advocate for the homeless that uh he he's said it out here in washington but he started the um uh the movement for creative [nonviolence] yeah he started that and that that was basically a you know donate time and money to uh help the homeless but uh uh the other topic was like i said uh something about politicians i can't remember exactly what it was it was real general statement gee whiz yeah yeah uh_huh that would be neat i'd have to basically say my birth uh_huh well that would be sort of interesting because then you get people from other countries i mean other parts of the state you know of course pittsburgh would say you know oh find the better cheaper ways of burning coal you know cleaner ways of burning coal and people in the south would say don't burn coal you know oh we have a lot of coal but uh it's uh it's a dirty fuel that's for sure excuse me how did i get into it oh i'm an electrical engineer here in virginia no uh no they i'm in a [telecommunications] company and they uh sent it out in our bulk mail so that if any engineers wanted to participate you know um not really i mean no more than any other company you know we buy their parts just as much as anybody else but uh no no real association with t i other than being in the same industry electronics industry they just uh they just sent out a letter to everybody they do business with saying that you know if you're interested we're doing a study and and since i don't know no i don't right what do you think what get oh i don't know get your own you're going to get you own t i seven thirty two or something oh i didn't hear about that probably for t i employees oh your not you don't work for texas instruments oh okay oh oh oh oh that's a neat idea uh_huh yeah well he's gotten a good mix i was saying because i've like i said i heard some other people talking that they've talked to different people in different states and stuff that's good especially since you call that one eight hundred number so so probably knock t i profits margin way down yeah right this is probably some government study program okay okay well i enjoyed talking with you i'm going to save my two year old from the pile of grapes she's diving into okay we'll i'll talk to you bye bye okay uh what do you think about uh the idea of having volunteer service for everyone well are you doing any kind of volunteer work now what about when when would people do it when they finished high school i think particular boys that the maturity in fact i wasn't very mature when i left high school and i think there's a there's a real challenge there there's also this this issue of of uh you know whether you're really ready and i think it gives a different perspective the only [complication] is is is how do you fund something like this yeah i think the mormon church has sends out missionaries that that's uh it's interesting it gets them away from home and and gets them to do something useful although the kids today though it it seems that almost that their concern for money i we were doing some investigating colleges and said the kids are much more interested today in in trying to find a job study something that will give them a job as opposed to be curious be curious as to if if there was if there was mandatory you could choose the option of either a mandatory military service or voluntary do you think that would be reasonable well but the the issue of of of which what what would what would you find what would you have them do you know there are a lot of people around with there's a lot of unemployment right now what would you have these people do if they were brought in well yeah or say say the volunteer say that say that it was mandatory yes my father was in the c c c well it seems that there's some things like the uh the programs at least just go around and and and clean up streets and and and pick up trash and even aluminum cans and some of these kinds of things yeah in fact we we helped with uh-oh help to help humanities and that was a that was a good experience but you take the kids out and and a lot of the buildings in downtown areas that that either need [demolishing] or need fixing up so it would be a good idea uh we've been doing this three or four minutes i think that uh do you have any other further comments well it was good talking to you betty have a good night uh i think that uh really it wouldn't hurt most of the young people of the country to have to go and do voluntary service uh and you know i mean there have been so many people that have done it and i've talked with several and i think they've gotten a lot out of it not right now but i have done uh red cross work and uh i've taught c p r training i think probably as soon as they finished high school it would be ideal because a lot of times if they go straight into college i think they're going in too quick but right uh i i think if you've been out of school a year year and a half before you start to college you appreciate college more than someone that just goes right straight into college well a lot of parents fund their children there are uh some groups that have their children you know go away for a year even the religious organizations right and the parents fund them for the whole year year and a half that they're gone i think it would in in israel the even the women are are required to to be in the military for a certain period of time uh i was in the military and i personally feel if if they have the draft that they should draft women as quickly as they do the men what into the service or well i i i think that they ought to have something for the the unemployed in a voluntary field like the uh i don't know if you know remember about the w p a he was in that i mean you know uh it's not the best thing in the world but uh it gave them something to do or go into the the more depressed areas and help repair the houses uh_huh no not really okay i'll talk to you later bye so what do you think should they uh should young americans be forced to do a year of service yeah i think something like the peace corps is a bit harsh no kids yeah i think it's a little harsh to say that they should have to spend a year or two i i i'd force them i think that uh i think it would be i think i think a lot of kids actually do a lot of work and no one just realizes it right exactly i was a i was a boy scout as part of being a boy scout you had to do you know projects all throughout and then to become an eagle scout you have to spend a do a [yearlong] project yeah i think i i now i think people generally volunteer that there's no problem with getting them to do stuff well we have a funny commercial around here it says something like if people were to give five hours a week or five percent of their salary we could they could solve all the world's problems or something so i guess if we all give five hours a week or five percent of our salary we could uh or just or just gave or or or just forced our kids just to to force kids to serve for uh parents i guess substitute my my yeah my kid will do four or five hours this week for me no problem uh_huh i've seen that yeah they they just started trying to get them something together like like that around here from for from the community because uh we had a big ice storm uh very very recently you don't sound like you're in the north you sound like you're in the south somewhere yeah uh i'm in uh new york upstate new york yeah and uh long way uh and we just had a really big ice storm and basically half the trees in in our city i'm in rochester which is uh right upstate half of the trees in the city uh are no good anymore that's how bad it was everything is just down everywhere you know we had three hundred thousand people without power you know it was and you know and and they and we didn't have power for a week and there are still people who don't have power oh yeah it's been it's been it's been ten days already and there are still something like ten thousand people without power and were officially yeah and we're officially in a state of emergency funny thing is the news the national news how they covered it uh yeah i think it made about three minutes on one of the national news stations or something and and we've been in a state of emergency for over you know for ten or eleven days you know we just got our phone back today uh and and they're you know putting out ads now for people to come volunteer or to have their organizations come volunteer to help clean up the streets because we have you know everywhere that a tree is down people need help and we're all all a lot of older folks need help getting their yards cleaned out because they can't afford to pay anyone and they and and they certainly can't carry it themselves and so oh that's great and is that supported by all donations to the church and so forth or oh so he that's real nice right that that's real good and i and i bet it gives you a real good feeling to be doing that yeah that's that's uh that's real good we had uh we had organizations like that in college you know we had a community service group in college that had all sorts of different groups and some did like that some did elderly visits some did uh some did you know big brother big sister stuff like that and i'm convinced that that that at least twenty five percent of our school participated in some sort of a some sort of group you know activity like that you know twenty five i don't know twenty five percent yeah my wife was big in that and she thinks yeah twenty five percent it it was a small school but uh yeah but i mean a a a lot of people would get involved and you know because there were all different organizations to do there was big brother big sister they had a yearly auction they had a dance [marathon] for charity or to to support that group such that you know lots of people got involved that way yeah yeah no neither do i i think it should be completely optional and you know yeah they're not worth a year or some people just just can't even afford it you know whatever i mean the peace corps doesn't pay very well you know people get shipped off and then you know and then and then their parents i have a uh a a friend whose whose son is in the peace corps in guatemala or daughter is in the peace corps in guatemala right now and you know he and his wife just went off to visit her and you know i know i could never afford to go visit a kid in guatemala you know so so i think you know and and and the kid's certainly not making much money so i can see where that that may be a problem just take off a year yeah i don't yeah yeah well neither can i so i i i i i i did my service before and i'll do my little community service throughout but never never for a year again so so i guess our vote is no well it's been nice talking to you again well yeah we're we're slowly getting everything back together again you know it it's taking time but everything you know we got lucky we had no damage to our house or anything so the rest will just have to come with time well good luck to you too bye bye i don't i don't think they should be forced but i think they should be i guess encouraged to to do some kind of public work i guess to just to get them i guess involved with community maybe you know just community activity if nothing else see how the city works stuff like that yeah i kind of i think so too i think that's a bit dramatic but but other than that i think it's it's a good idea to get them involved in city and community activities and you know like the uh shelters and uh that kind of thing helping out uh volunteering i guess if they can yeah your right i do too i think they start out young like in uh girl scouts and boy scouts doing right that's see that's what we did in girl scouts and that got you involved real good and it i think it starts kids out on the right track and then it lets them decide if that's what they enjoy doing something yeah i do too i think i think a lot of people a lot more people volunteer than than uh than we than get credit for it as you know like in hospitals and uh and the shelters and stuff like that and even if it is a couple times a year like at the holidays i mean at least they're getting out and doing it and you know helping helping out i think that's good and yeah yeah yeah there you go right yeah it sounds pretty good that sounds good i've noticed a lot of uh different organizations in our community uh pick up like on the highway and stuff and i think that's pretty neat they uh go along and have so many miles i guess of highway to take over and they clean it up and keep it clean i think that's i pretty good idea and i think you know again i've seen a lot of young kids doing that and i think it gets them prepared to to learn how to volunteer as they get older i know i did you know in girl scouts and everything and after that in high school i would volunteer at a nursing home and stuff like that so oh yeah i'm in texas where are you at new york oh gosh yeah yeah uh_huh oh no oh golly are you serious oh my god how do they live yeah i haven't heard a thing lord well that's good that's great right yeah right right that's one thing we do at our church is uh we have a group called hearts and [hammers] and we go along and i'm really not sure how we find the individuals but we find older people that cannot afford to fix up their homes that desperately need it and uh we go along with all the material and in one day more or less go in and say roof paint fix whatever we can yeah and spend a day doing that's really neat i mean it's not a lot because you're just doing a house at a time but you know every little bit helps uh yeah they uh luckily we have a a man who owns a building company so he [donates] a lot not everything but a lot of the material then what he doesn't donate we just go out and buy yeah and it's not you know we don't promote it a lot outside the community because we don't want recognition for it you know so much as we just want to help people out so it's real neat it's yeah it's like i say it's not a lot but it helps people like this last couple we helped you know they were in their eighties and she was bedridden and i just you know just tears your heart out to to see this kind of thing and you know if you can do any a little bit it helps so yeah yeah gosh that's great that's a lot that's that's a lot of kids though oh well still that's a you know that's a good chunk of kids yeah yeah that's neat that's great that's great but uh like i'll agree with you though i don't think they should have to do a year yeah i don't think that some people i don't think have uh a year in them to volunteer if you know what i mean they're not worth it right oh yeah that's true that's true oh i couldn't either i couldn't either right right yeah i just know one person that's in the peace corps and i mean she's a teacher and and just wanted to do it she'd been a teacher for a while just decided she wanted to do it so i mean i'm grateful for people like that but i don't see how they can just yeah just pick up and head on out i wish i could do something like that but i can't so right that's the way i am i know the feeling that's right we're against it that's right you too and i hope everything works out up there yeah good good that's great yeah well good luck thanks bye well how do you feel about it no the the only people i know that have done anything remotely like that are people that have gone to be missionaries and that's only because i went to baylor and a lot of students from baylor go and and serve as missionaries during the summer but i think i think that's a terrible idea that's like forcing someone to donate to a charity i mean and it's nice to to try to teach young people some some uh uh civil uh consciousness but forcing them to to donate basically their time and efforts you have to i don't either i don't either i was i almost hung up because i thought well gosh i don't i don't really have an opinion except for no i think that's dumb but uh i've been here for um just almost well no almost four years and i lived with dana in school that's how we know each other uh_huh last weekend we went to six flags saturday had a good old time well back to the topic at hand what other types of community service would they be talking about i mean the the recording mentioned the peace corps yeah i mean i'm all for [donating] my time to worthy causes like i do some volunteer work here and there and every once in a while i'll do uh a uh local big brother big sister thing or i'll go you know do a yeah yeah i couldn't possibly commit a year or two of my life to to go do something no kidding i have this thing against bugs too and seems to me like the peace corps they send you someplace that there's a lot of bugs yeah have to live in a shack with no air conditioning and no medicine and no anything i'd probably catch a terrible disease and die yeah uh_huh oh i don't know either growing up all i knew was you go to high school you you know you work you go to college you get out of college and you get a good job and you work and and none of this you go spend two years in the peace corps to to broaden your horizons uh_huh oh kind of like joining the military well i mean in that respect a lot of people join the military to to grow up and to decide what they want to do and the peace corps or something like that is probably useful as as that kind of a time uh_huh i'd probably have a different perspective if i actually knew someone that had gone into the peace corps but i don't and none of my oh that's okay and none of my really close friends in college went off to be missionaries or anything so i don't really know anyone first hand that's that's committed a chunk of their life to do service work everybody i know has been well i'm going to go get a good job and make some money and buy a nice car so yeah i certainly didn't mark off anything to get this one i i can't imagine and the [switchboard's] been down for several days and the last time i called it before it went down i had this topic and i didn't feel like talking about it so i hung up and i guess they they keep you on the same topic until you actually talk to somebody about it yeah i know oh probably five or six not a whole lot yeah did dana sign you up for this yeah that's she stuck my name on some list so they mailed me the information that i filled out um i've talked about camping with someone i've talked about the weather that one was interesting because i talked to a man in in washington d c and it was hot here and it was snowing there so that was pretty interesting and i talked to someone about the uh the uh education system i forget exactly what the focus was on that one but that was fairly interesting and i talked to somebody about credit card usage and i talked to this person who i gathered from speaking to her that that she and her family just didn't have much and they didn't have much credit available to them and so she basically didn't use credit cards and didn't know very much about them and how they work and and how you can use them to your advantage and and how you know you you can do certain things with them yeah yeah yeah yeah well that's always a good plan i can't think of anything else that i've talked about all that most of the ones on the list i checked off stuff like football and and stuff that i can i i would enjoy talking about and i haven't gotten a one of them yet when i've called oh how funny uh_huh i had to talk to someone about hobbies and the switchboard called me so i was caught a little off guard and i couldn't think of anything at all so i started making stuff up i told this woman that my hobby was gardening and i can't even i can't even grow an ivy my grandfather gave me a plant once that told and he told me when he gave it to me that it was impossible to kill you could freeze it you could you could dry it out no matter what you couldn't kill it well i killed it pretty quick well uh i don't have any strong convictions about it that's for sure um i know i haven't done any peace corps service and i don't know anybody in my immediate family that has or you know has ever even thought about it do you know uh do you know anybody that's been it yeah yeah it's definitely up to the person uh so i'd have to say that uh it you know the people who do it well some feel it's rewarding i don't know you know but uh i don't know how we got the subject i have nothing to say about this uh_huh well how long you been in san antonio um okay oh okay and uh you you were just up there then huh oh okay well that's good well it sounded like i mean this is like major long term commitment like a year or six months or so you're looking at the peace corps or sabbatical maybe or you know i don't know i mean but uh uh_huh but that that time is [minuscule] compared to what what they were referring to yeah yeah they couldn't cover my hourly rate i couldn't afford it but uh yeah africa yeah well i doubt that but you know how it is i i mean it would it would have to be tough going somewhere you don't know the culture usually i guess i think that maybe that's why some people do it is uh to see the other cultures or you know and some of that but uh to do that i don't know i'd have to be i don't know uh_huh well you know uh i know american express i'm i'm working at american express now and they after a certain amount of years of service these employees can take off like six months or something for some type of sabbatical or some you know some something like that and they're allowed to take that time off and then come back where they left off so it is something that i think uh you know even the larger organizations will support uh it's it's really for the community to give you know to to give back to the community type of thing i don't know it's for i think at the same it's for some people to you know help them grow in other areas yeah yeah maybe a little bit in that perspective but uh and a lot of people have gone in the military i mean you know when they're in the college sometimes it's to help support college you know the money uh others people don't know what they want to do but as far as uh you know the peace corps i guess i suppose there's a few people that have done it at that point in their lives but i think a lot of it's you know when people get older they'll do something like that yeah i i i don't didn't mean to cut you off there i yeah or or try to make a living but uh yeah i i have no i don't know anybody that's done that either so i i it's interesting we got this topic because i i i don't know what i marked off to get this but so you had the same one huh oh well well you'll you'll get it over with here how many times have you talked yeah oh i've done maybe four or five well she just sent me the information out i i got a hold of it you know i just sent it back in and what other topics have you had great great uh_huh yeah uh_huh huh yeah i always i use everything with my visa and i pay it all off so that's a good deal for me i get free money for thirty days that's the way i use them uh i try i try to make sure i don't get in debt so i had uh let's see i've had fishing and uh i can't remember me and i think me and dana had football yeah we did yeah so we talked about the cowboys a little bit and i'm out here in phoenix so we talked about cardinals and so so that one was all right and then what else did i have i think i had some other uh like staying in shape or working out this other guy i got this guy from new york so and you've probably never [gardened] in your life yeah i don't have too much of a green thumb either so i do have one plant here it's been hanging out for a while but i think it's one of the easiest plants i can't i don't know the name of it but i'm not too much into all right uh_huh yes all all young americans they did not [specify] you know exactly what young means yeah yeah yeah you're probably right two years might be a little too long that's right that that would be the problem sure would uh_huh uh_huh yeah or maybe offer them you know some sort of an incentive to do it uh you know college credit you know something you know i'm not sure what but i'm not sure they need to be you know paid you know a super do salary of any kind but that that kind of takes away from public service but just you know to receive a letter in the mail that says you know you need to report somewhere by next monday you know you need to report somewhere by next monday you know i'm not sure that would be a [terrifically] good idea i'm not either really that's right that's right uh_huh that's right absolutely they need young families whatever they just couldn't you know take off to do that oh that's right uh_huh uh_huh it sure would it would have to be a lot of you know thought given to something like that i would think uh_huh yeah yeah that's right i'm not even really sure at this point in time you know what what programs are out there uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah like maybe if if there was something they could do in their own own in their own town or city yeah and not have to pull up roots and you know go somewhere half way around the world or something that's right yeah that's that's true too that's true too yeah yeah me neither and you wonder you know what kind of quality job would they do you know just sit around for their year or would they really you know make a contribution of some kind yeah it's tough it's tough yeah yeah i i'm not sure either but i think there would have to be a lot more you know information you know [disseminated] before you say let's do this you know yeah yeah yeah that's right yeah uh_huh right that's right yeah that's a real waste too it really is i don't really see the emphasis on things like peace corps like we you know we saw back i guess in the carter administration that was that was a big thing with him and i guess even back to kennedy as a matter of fact i guess kennedy may be the one that actually started the thing or was you know really interested in things like that i just don't hear much about it anymore like i say i don't even know what programs are are even ongoing now you know anyway it's a tough question okay well thanks for your time i enjoyed talking to you okay take care bye bye okay um i i understand that it's being proposed as a requirement for uh young people to be to go into public service i think yeah yeah i think that it probably would be a a good program i think probably two years is too long i think maybe a year would be the longest yeah and there will be a lot of rebellion in that and when you get people who have no desire to be there in the first place i don't think that they're going to be serving anybody yeah so i think it would be a good thing though to encourage other people who aren't even aware that they can do such a thing to get out there and do so yeah right right college credit is a good idea because right that's right yeah they probably couldn't do anything monetary but i think giving giving some kind of college credit no i don't think so either because a lot of people um depending on how the public service programs are set up and i'm not that familiar with them to know but you know if a a lot of people flat can't afford to you know and most kids these days have gotten themselves into uh financial situations where they have to be working all the time so it's it's a really tough question that's right yeah and if you put them in public service right out of high school then that that [postpones] their college for a year and that would upset a lot of people too because they just want to get on yeah i you know i think it would be good for a lot of people to get involved in that kind of program but i i think it can't be something that's mandatory it has to be something that's voluntary you know which is pretty much the way it is now they might yeah and that's the other thing is that you know instead of making it mandatory they maybe need to publicize it a little bit better and uh you know go to the schools and do programs and tell them that we need your help and you know uh volunteer for such and such a time and you've a choice of where you want to go and and that way handling it that way they could probably get some results out of it yeah in their own community right yeah that's true most of them probably wouldn't do something like that although there are a lot of kids who would do it just to get away from their parents but they would have to be supported in some way and i'm not sure that those programs are available to do that right right exactly yeah it is tough it's and i don't know who's even proposing it or or how they plan on implementing it if they do yeah yeah i think going to the schools would be the easiest for them you know it be it wouldn't take up much much it would take up more time than anything but it wouldn't take up a lot of money they wouldn't have to spend money advertising and things like that you go to school and you have a kind of a captive audience get them all in the auditorium and you you give them your speech and maybe a little slide show or something and i think that they could get some results from that because there are a lot of people who are volunteer and community minded but they don't know where to go to to to do anything yeah it is it really is right yeah yeah uh_huh i don't either that's one yeah it is a tough question sure same here you too bye so what do you think about a year or two of public service uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh you know i i really agree with you um i uh though i've never done that myself i i'm was a basically an education major when i graduated from college and i accepted a job that at the time was just slightly above the poverty level to teach to um very rural children in a very low income district and i spent a year teaching there and i think it was probably one of my largest eye opening experiences because i come from nice middle class white suburban home and i did it um for one reason i wanted i was working on a masters degree so i wanted to stay close to where i was working on a masters degree but also because i just thought that it would be interesting to live some place else so totally different than my own up bringing and i it changed it probably changed my political views it changed my understanding of the world around me and i think um in fact if i had to do it all again i you know after that you know you never think of it because i guess because i paid for all of my college education myself i never thought about doing that because i had all these college loans i'd started paying back um so that was that was one reason why i never considered it but now that i'm further along and i'm still paying these college loans i i think realistically you know you can have your college loans delayed now because i had them delayed because i'm back in graduate school at thirty years old um i had them delayed because i'm back in graduate school and on that form it says if your joining the peace corps you can have them delayed and i thought that was you know very interesting and i i would have thought of that earlier i probably would have done you know just like is that is this is that the mormon church that does that because one of my neighbors uh did that in pittsburgh from pittsburgh and i thought you know that really now that i'm thirty years old i think that one or two years out of my life would have probably like you said to be able to travel some place else whether it be the united states or outside the country i think it would have been a very good um experience for me uh_huh uh_huh yes uh_huh uh_huh yeah and i think you know we have such a need now you know i taught you know i i think i was paid uh about nine thousand dollars to teach for the year and i worked in a very rural school district and i i one of the things i taught was a computer class and these kids um you know every girl i taught except for one was pregnant many of the boys in the room had children and they were they were high school [juniors] and i just there you know they came from poverty they were going to condition in poverty and it was it was the school district couldn't hire many people it was very difficult for them to hire and i think you know in the sense that aspect of public service for education in some of the inner cities for um just social workers in some of the inner cities and some of the rural areas where they just need advice on medical um things i think it's a really good idea and even if it is overseas see i never i i tell you sometimes i worry about things over [seas] because we have such problems right here in our own country uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i think it would also help them if they then went on to college i know that my first couple of years of college were um uh probably too carefree at the beginning and then at the end i had to be too serious uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's true uh_huh that's right i yeah i think i think this was this was a very interesting topic uh because it's something that you know we don't talk about in this country probably enough uh you know uh_huh yeah that's true uh_huh oh i think it is i really think i think um people you should i you know the kids today i teach i spend a lot of my time teaching college students and um i find great [disgust] in them in their in their um their self [centeredness] and their [inability] to understand um [multicultural] or [multiracial] situation and i really you know they don't understand uh how other people live um they don't understand uh_huh yeah i think that's uh just having a good time i uh a friend of mine is a psychologist and he always [refers] to it as short term pleasure oriented i guess he's a technical aspect he likes to apply to it you know today's young people are short term pleasure oriented and everything has to be an immediate reward and it has to be fun uh_huh yeah well they say i think i um have read recently that uh the bush administration has increased the funding for the peace corps uh_huh because i guess because of the changes in eastern europe uh they've increased funding for the peace corps some of the i guess it's some of the peace dividend in the sense you known when they're decreasing some of the military spending some of that money has gone into the peace corps and some of the are the overseas programs uh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah that's true uh_huh yeah that's very true you know how many is it they say we have so many lawyers in this country and i guess i i live near washington being in in baltimore it's something like one in four people in the washington area are lawyers and and i just sort of think that's ridiculous yeah with with the great needs that we need today in science and biology and uh you know the the problems we have with aids and cancer and and how come everybody is a lawyer you know you know uh_huh right uh_huh yeah you saw statistics that lawyers and doctors make the most money in the long run yeah that's true that's interesting uh_huh okay hey thanks so much for the conversation well thank you very much bye bye well i know it's hard for young people to think about giving up their years you know their carefree years but people that i have known that have done that like from other countries especially from germany and [finland] um they are just they have such a better more mature outlook on life and i think they're better people because of it they're much more responsible i know um the church that i go to um the young men give two years of their life when they turn nineteen you know they're encouraged to do that missionary work and i i really believe that the people that do that are better people that make our society better uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh huh yeah huh yes yes uh_huh uh_huh well i think so it puts you out on your own and and in a time after high school um there's kind of a [selfishness] i mean teenagers in our country are kind of kind of a year that parents don't look forward to and and things like that and i think that it would help people to become less self centered and to be more responsible when you're out on your own trying to um thinking less of your own needs but of other people uh_huh uh_huh oh no uh_huh right uh_huh yes it would really um and i don't the people that i've known like from germany and [finland] that have done that are they do military service which you know i don't exactly recommend but still they have benefited from it and um you know although i wouldn't want it to make people to go off to the military voluntarily but it's it has helped them and they are just a lot more mature than the average student and uh_huh well that's right a lot of people they [flunk] out or they get they just get so excited to be away from home they just spend all there time partying and they do a lot of things to themselves that that we really don't want our young people to be doing and um yeah uh_huh because we're so we love our freedom and our freedom of choice and um having people but you know our like in our church it it is your free to do that or not you're encouraged to do it because um you know it it helps you and of course we think it's helping other people and so uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh and they're [preoccupied] with drinking uh_huh and uh_huh that's true that's really true yeah well i i don't know how that would ever happen here but at least um oh really uh_huh huh well i have seen a big change i think in high school kids that my relatives and friends that um i know when i was in high school i had an idea of what i really wanted to do with what my what i was going to study and at least i had some interest in a lot of the youth that i come in contact with are they say oh i want to be a doctor i want to be a lawyer why because they make a lot of money and they don't have a goal they don't have a goal they don't have an interest in their own field of study they're just looking what's going to pay the biggest cash uh_huh area yes yes there's just too many people uh_huh that's right not enough people want to do that to for uh because of a service that they could provide you know if you want to be a lawyer because you know that you can provide a service that people need because you have to have lawyers in this country um but if you're just doing it because you think that's the best way to be rich uh_huh that's kind of sad well anyway well i guess i better go well good luck to you i enjoyed it thanks bye bye what do you think about the uh peace corps or public service commitment well i think it was uh thought up when there was so much controversy about [reviving] a draft and people said well they uh young people who were drafted have to provide military service to the country but there are an awful lot of young people who would benefit from um some sort of public service like the conservation corps back in the thirties or uh various other things of that sort and it seems to me that it's it's not a totally bad idea but i don't quite see how they'd make it work how would they decide who goes into uh building fire breaks in yosemite national park and who goes to saudi arabia yeah the the difficulty would be in whether it's voluntary or involuntary and the people who were proposing it said that it should be involuntary that it should be like a draft and some people would get military service and some people would get civilian uh service like working in hospitals this i assume it's the kinds of things that they had conscientious objectors do when people were drafted and they refused to serve in the army they were allowed to do hospital service or uh things like that and if they or farm work in world war one i remember uh reading about and and i suppose that there is uh justification for taking everybody if you take anybody but i just really think that the difficulties involved in paying them uh sorting them out [assigning] them training them would be [insurmountable] yeah well it's a possibility well i think that in the in the cases that like that uh they had to be uh pretty thoroughly [examined] to prove that they had pacifist and religious beliefs and so forth and that this wasn't something new just to keep out of going to war it was uh something that was a fundamental part of their philosophy of life oh yeah sure and in addition to that we have the cost because you have to pay something for their room and board and then you have to pay them some kind of a [stipend] uh even if it's like the peace corps where they don't get most of it until they come home you have have to pay them something oh yeah yeah now i had a lot of friends who went to the peace corps uh back in the mid sixties and it really did seem to be a worthwhile organization but on the other hand i'm not sure what the permanent value of it was i don't know what we got for all the money we had an awful lot of idealistic people who went off to uh what was then east [pakistan] is now bangladesh and to uh [algeria] and to uh southeast asia and lots of uh out of the way places but i don't know if they really had significant effects in the places where they went in teaching the people how to cope with their lives better uh_huh uh_huh sure and it was definitely voluntary too they were not drafting you and sending you against your will yeah well what about a voluntary program do you think that would be a good idea i don't either yeah out here in california there's a program like that for uh [juvenile] [delinquents] the the ones that are not dangerous and they don't have to be locked up go to these uh camps and they do [forestry] work they maintain trails and they uh put up signs and they do fire prevention work and certainly things of that sort and that i know is run by the state but there may be other things i'm not so sure what kind of uh training that is for the future for those kids it's probably a a very good way to keep them off the streets and out of trouble but whether it's something that they can put to to economic use later on is a different subject that's true good point oh yeah yeah i'm sorry i'm going to have to go but my other line is [blinking] but it was good to talk to you uh that's the first i've ever heard of it i haven't heard of it anything too much about it um uh_huh uh_huh right yeah i the my first impression was um it would be very good i think it would be good for people to serve but i don't know if it should be an option it would be great to have some of those organizations like you mentioned that were during the depression or coming out of the depression available for kids and i think there are some available now where they are able to work but making it a mandatory thing kind of right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh it seems like you'd have a lot more conscientious objectors if they had that choice yeah you know i'd i'd much rather work in a hospital than than to go war and i'm sure most young men and women would and so uh uh_huh uh_huh well that makes sense and then you run into again to um the bureaucracy in running it you know how you going to cover that many people because we've got a lot more people now than we did then so right uh_huh uh_huh plus the training involved yeah that would be expensive in most cases because uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i know in i personally took a year and a half and went as a missionary and taught christianity in japan and i was living such a stringent lifestyle that it was very beneficial to me it taught me not to be so self centered and it you know to think of others but i don't know if i was doing it in different situation you know not a really religious background if if i would get a lot out of it you know i think i did because it you know it emphasized that sort of thing you know a lot of self evaluation right right and that i'm sure that would make a big difference too you know you've got um well like i say i know that there are some type of programs that they have available for a youth like teenagers to go and do um work in the national parks and work in uh neighborhoods to do um clean up and that sort of thing but i don't know what organization it's under i don't know if it's a government run or if it's a private charity that's put it together but i know that that helps a lot with training and um a lot of uh_huh uh_huh yeah how much benefit it'll do them in the long run right especially in you know if you take a a child that's from the inner city and then put them in the a middle of a park if they go back to the inner city they may not see trees for a while much less be able to take care of them so that's yeah so that may not may not benefit them in the long run but okay well thank you you too bye bye well what's your views on it uh_huh yeah sure sure yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah we're not too far behind i graduated in seventy one so i'm i'm same generation i i'm it's going to be a short conversation because i agree with you i i think uh i don't i don't even think it ought to be uh voluntary i think it ought to be mandatory uh for kids to either either do military service or public service one of the two uh a lot of reasons for that not not just because i'm a i'm a hard ass or anything it's just that like you say kids are getting out of high school not knowing what in the heck they're going to do and either the military or public service organization can give them a lot of focus and i think that it might stop us some problems later on i mean you know these kids will get their their heads on straight and and figure out what they want to do instead of hanging around street corners selling drugs or something uh it's i think it would be good for them uh it helps mature them a little bit and helps them understand the world the way it really is oh yeah oh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah and and most of them aren't i mean you look you look at the number of marriages that are occurring right i mean even in high school and you know you wonder where are the parents in all of this you know why isn't somebody stepping in and and putting a stop to this kids in high school are just too young to be married they they have no idea what the world is like they don't how tough it is out there to make a living uh i mean i was in the same boat when i left high school i my parents wanted me to go straight to college and i didn't you know i was ready i was ready i had [wanderlust] i wanted to get out and see some things so i joined the air force and ended up staying there for thirteen years um but i had lived in my own little [bubble] up until that time and and after traveling around the world a few times i realized that things ain't the way they seem and i i did a lot of growing up there uh uh_huh yeah that's right that's right uh_huh well you know it's just like you say there's so much stuff that needs to be done here in this country and uh you know if if you could have a thought of something like uh like a uh uh a peace corps sort of organization i mean this would be so useful just in uh for instance just helping old folks you know they you know they need help they don't have anybody to depend on and it would be nice to have somebody come over and cut their yard or paint their house or do minor repairs or something like that yeah uh_huh yeah yeah yeah my mom's in the same position late sixties and and it got to the got to the point where i mean me and my brother both were were gone and she couldn't maintain the house without large expenditures of money you know it finally got to a point where she just had to sell it and move into an apartment and uh i i'm not i'm not saying that that wouldn't have happened anyway but it would have been nice if there had been somebody to come around and take care of the little things you know like the like the yard work and little repairs and painting and stuff like that oh yeah sure sure i mean i mean the kids who would be giving the service are going to get a lot more out of it than just money you know that i i remember when i was a kid i used to do little little things for the old folks around the neighborhood and uh i know how it made me feel you know you uh people just don't help people anymore they're they're out for themselves and yeah well that's that's the that's the point we've gotten to you know every time somebody wants something they always turn to the government and the government's going to be limited i where are they going to get the money they're going to get it from us and we can do it a lot more efficiently than the government we don't need to add fourteen layers of bureaucracy to a program um the thing that carter works on uh [habitats] for humanity i was involved in that uh in montgomery before i came up to north carolina and uh it was it was a pretty neat little program we'd just go out and they would buy a plot of land and contractors and builders and everybody else would donate their their time and uh the materials were at cost and we'd put up houses and that was kind that was kind of neat i uh in a way i think it's a little bit [inefficient] but but it's better than nothing and and at least i had the opportunity of seeing two families move into decent housing um course on the other hand i can start complaining very [loudly] about people on public assistance who are quite capable of doing something for themselves but just won't because it's far more advantageous for them to sit there and just draw uh welfare money than it is to work uh we did a uh a cost comparison in one of my courses and we took all the benefits that a family that a a married couple with two kids would get under welfare and what they would be making at minimum wage and they came out four thousand dollars better a year by taking welfare so there's no incentive for them to do anything far better for them to sit on their butts and draw the money you had to do something yeah and that's been tried that was tried in alabama too and it got shot down i and i don't understand the reasoning for it i really don't it it seems perfectly logical that if somebody's going to take public money then they should return something to the public i mean if nothing else go out along an interstate and pick up garbage yeah what do they what do they do in maryland do they use highway people or do they use prisoners yeah that's the way they did it in alabama too usually you'd see these big chain gangs out there picking up trash uh_huh uh_huh yeah we have that here in north carolina i think it's uh a good idea um i grew up uh my teenage years were spent during the sixties graduating uh high school in sixty eight um i remember when the peace corps movement first came about and i thought it was a very good idea at the time i was one of those uh kennedy children if you know what i mean and uh right now i see a lot of kids who get out of school have no idea what they want to do and there's a lot of things out there that we could do uh for our own country let alone other countries and i think that we've got the the people power to do it it's just uh we need to channel it and focus it on some things that that need some fixing up um some examples are this uh some of the things like jimmy [carter's] been involved in uh a little program to you know fix up housing for people and there's a lot of housing i know in the area that i live in that's run down and beat up but it could be fixed up and used and it's just you know sitting there wasting away uh_huh yeah i think a lot of people grow up with uh with uh [preconceived] [notions] what the world's about a lot of it has to do from too much t v and uh you know it's there's there's a heck of a lot of difference between you know the intake that you get from t v and and movies and what you hear in school and then what reality is uh i remember uh i've i've worked since i was well i started [delivering] papers when i was ten and i had a real job when i was thirteen so i've you know worked most of my life but i remember when i got out of high school all through high school was boy i can't wait to get out of high school i can't wait to get out of high school and i wanted to go to college and i had the grades to go to college and i got accepted to college but when i got out of high school i kind of said you know what am i going to do now you know it's like you know when i actually started working full time and i i got married shortly after getting out of high school i uh thought i was smart ran away and got married and uh i remember there was a time and within the first year of marriage i said boy wouldn't i give to get be back in school and just have to do homework and and go work my part time job because life and the reality of working for a living and trying to make ends meet is just so overwhelming to someone if they aren't prepared for it that's true yeah yeah a um yeah yeah i think once once kids get out and see how other people really live and know how bad off some people really are and how good they've got it and what it takes to have that good life if you're willing to work for it then they're probably be more inclined to work for it uh_huh exactly you know i've i've i my my parents are in their late sixties now and um so many of the people that live around them are unable to do those things for themselves anymore and it's it's really hard on them and the you know the thought that i i see the uh the mall rats you know walking around the mall nothing better to do than just walk around the mall all day long when they could be doing something to help someone and uh you know there's a uh a nice warm feeling i remember getting out of doing things like that when i was younger i mean i was a boy scout and the whole bit and yeah yeah i think there'd there'd be a you know a uh economic benefit for you know everyone concerned those doing the work and those receiving the the uh the services yeah yeah i think uh president bush covered that in his uh state of the union address this year when he said that you know it's time for you know the individuals to start thinking about what they can do to help each other out instead of counting on government to do everything yeah exactly uh_huh yeah yes yes yeah one of the things they tried to push through in maryland and uh weren't very successful was that if you were an able bodied person on welfare you had to do some work and yeah that's exactly what they were trying to get them to do um both yeah they use both uh they have a they have another program in maryland that's called adopt a highway okay um yeah one year public service for everybody is that that was it right i don't know i've been i've been sitting here thinking yeah because it was you know took a couple tries before i found somebody well you know i'm like i'm not really sure what i think about this um uh i mean the first thing is the uh if it's going to be mandatory it's got to be mandatory i mean everybody not just like you know poor people and all that you know but you know [senators'] sons and all that stuff too i mean everybody's got to do it um i don't know it'd probably be it'd probably be good i just don't know if you know i was eighteen or whatever i'd want to be stuck doing it for a year or whatever uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh it is uh uh_huh well i guess it would still depend on how i mean if if you're talking about if you're talking about something that's like a full time you know one year full time you know this is what you do you know you're going to go and and fill pot holes and you know and you know all that stuff i mean i you know i don't know uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well and also you know you you feel more like you know you're actually part of the community if you've done something in it uh_huh uh definitely right yeah yeah oh that would be a nightmare and just i mean just getting getting it going yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah no not yet in about six months we will uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah they have that here um they've got um in most of the states around here i think uh you know down in north carolina there was a big controversy for a while because they uh the local chapter of the k k k wanted to uh uh to participate in it and uh there was a yeah well uh it was it was interesting because that's an interesting question you know should these people be allowed to or not i think they finally decided not to because they figured that stretch of highway was going to get trashed yeah i think [virginia's] got it and i know maryland does and we just we went to indianapolis last weekend and back and um i'm pretty sure i saw yeah stuff in ohio and indiana about it and pennsylvania maybe pennsylvania i don't remember for sure now uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah and but then they lost too much business uh_huh well the thing about that is though it's got a i mean because it was i mean it was big you remember like in the early seventies and all that and you know and then it kind of just went out of vogue and i i'm worried that it it might you know it'll it the same thing will happen it's like you know [environmentalism] was really big for a couple of years and then people like well you know i'd [ruther] rather spend you know fifty cents less on uh on on such and such you know and even if it's not environmentally safe who cares you know yeah well yeah uh well uh wouldn't it's just probably a good thing that the [oil's] burning and may may make some people realize that hey you know this stuff runs out of course that's probably [blasphemy] for you to say uh coming from where you are in texas uh_huh right yeah right well my dad's in the in the solar energy business so uh you know we're [acutely] aware of a lot of this but you know on the other hand he voted for george bush so um you know i i wonder sometimes if he knows what he's doing uh_huh yeah well the the thing with bush right uh who wants to start this one right right i'm not sure i want an eighteen year old to make that kind of decision uh i mean that that doesn't sound right um i guess i see overall beneficial if if we're going from that point of view um you know in the past i don't know i don't know how old you are but when i was uh in high school it was the beginning of vietnam and so forth and many of my peers were being drafted and i could see that many of them had conscientious objections to war or whatever but i i felt strongly then that even if they didn't feel like they could kill someone or go into a military situation that they could help the country in other ways be it cleaning out uh lots in in their neighborhood or whatever kind of community or public service might be available and i guess i see that as as not so much a demand but but a privilege it's it's kind of uh uh it's something it's it's since we live here and we all benefit rich poor or in between uh there are benefits even for those who have it the hardest i just see that as maybe a good idea i wouldn't mind doing it at forty four uh and i find ways to to turn some of that back to to others uh and i i guess i i can't see that as being something to really object to i could see a a full a a gamut of different kinds of opportunities things that need to be done that that could be done in an hour or two uh a day or several hours of the week like a half of a day on saturday or something like that in addition to what one does uh besides that i i can't imagine what kind of uh uh [bureaucracies] we'd get into and expense having it be full time oh you're going to go to this camp and you're going to you know like um back in the depression the c c c the construction corps that went out and did things that was great it was needed it gave some folks some jobs and we got some great public works out of it but um i don't see that as being necessary now i can see it being done uh on a regular schedule uh everybody has to put in so many hours of uh public service in a given time perhaps uh i i guess i see all of us [benefiting] and i i don't see it just [relegated] to the young but i see i i see so much going on that that's bad and this would give them a chance to have some positive self esteem something that they turn back that's right you take pride in that and and get some some positive feedback from those who benefit besides yourself and i i see it being most beneficial if it's in the neighborhood where or or at least the area where the person lives it might not be the same neighborhood but the same city or county because then you're you're coming in contact with it it's not as meaningful for me to go to minnesota and do something up there that i'll never be able to see again unless i happen to go on vacation up there it's it almost needs to be something that has more impact for the individual on going but as far as putting that into work i don't want to i don't want to deal with the with the [heartache] of first of all getting it started and figuring out how to do the logistics of it yeah i i see a lot of things like uh scouting uh boys clubs girls clubs things like that that kind of get into that citizenship uh the uh looking after the environment sort of thing and i guess i don't see uh this being that different but even more beneficial because it would be something that everybody participated in and would take a turn in do you have kids oh well good you'll have a little time think about that i guess i i have uh when i was teaching school i saw many so many kids that were at loose ends and that didn't really have a purpose and i can see you know some some really significant things coming out of it i know you've got to get past that that [grudge] attitude that many have but that's uh that would be a part of selling it to the community the adults uh ahead of it would probably never serve and and to each [succeeding] generation there definitely would have to be a major p r campaign in each community each county uh [parish] or however the state was divided up um i may well i don't know around here we have a number of community projects that folks just volunteer for boy scout troops or church groups or civic clubs will uh police a uh a couple of miles of the highway and and i i've seen it in other states too i don't know um and there were those that said no you can't do that i'm sure yeah oh and i hadn't even thought about that uh the the other end of that that that's an interesting uh situation i hadn't thought of that we had visited relatives in virginia not too long ago and i thought i had seen when we were traveling around the state some similar signs up that indicated that certain sections were being [policed] and cleaned up and and i don't know about your part of the country but uh down here in the last oh year plus i it was beginning with last year's earth day there's just been more of a turn toward uh environmental concerns and i work for texas instruments and they they've started some recycling campaigns that a year before that had been turned down because they said well it's not feasible it's not a good idea and i see that as being i i see that as being a a a change uh for the positive kind of along the same line as as as the mandatory thing it's just thing a part of everyone's consciousness i'm sure the pendulum will swing the other way uh there have been too many other things that it's done that for just in my life and if you look at history at all you see that you know uh we go from one side to the other on just about any subject that you one might care to bring up but it is [comforting] to me to see uh more concern about some of these things that that cost us money especially when we have dwindling uh resources such as oil that's burning out of control in the persian gulf and and so forth just just every little bit does it makes me feel better it it makes me feel like well there may be something left for my children my nieces and nephews and so forth that's that's right because uh no no because if we what was it seventy four when we had the the last last oil crisis and uh we started getting smart and and we were looking all these alternative sources of the energy and so forth and as soon as the oil prices came back down we the pendulum [swang] the other way and we need those [reminders] uh or we'll suddenly be in the dark and say oh my goodness now we don't have the ability to go on to some new technology ah well i you know just about anybody you could name whether i voted for them or not uh makes um uh decisions that i just can't go along with but that's why they're there and not me i don't want the i don't want the stress huh okay well i don't know if i know anything or not but i've i've got some opinions on it see those type of people that that have the most opinions ones that don't know anything well uh i've had teenagers and i now have grandchildren that are teenagers and i don't know that it might do them a little bit of good to see the world from a different perspective uh i think this me generation has gone far too far and the young people are overly impressed and i think it wouldn't hurt them to step back from themselves just slightly and see things from a far more disadvantaged viewpoint uh i personally know nothing about the peace corps though but they have i read somewhere and i'm i'm out on a limb here some type of college uh volunteer work for teachers that they are straight out of college and they do one year of volunteer work teaching in the uh lower income brackets of the united states have you ever heard about that one oh really and this is money that she's borrowed to form her college education but she got credits for it that's very interesting huh yeah i think that is an excellent program i really do i like that and it's it's beneficial to the small towns too because they really really have have a disadvantage that we wouldn't understand because we're in the metroplex right you know if if we had some really major health problem that required a specialist we could find one it wouldn't be convenient but we could find one we wouldn't have to drive and spend the night someplace or something like that so i i can see the advantage to that one the peace corps itself is really a uh dying out isn't it it's still in existence i want to believe they go into other countries and teach them how to do things like farm uh dig their own wells set up their schools yes they it's not a program to teach them to use the american money it's a program to teach them to be more self [reliant] and yes you're right i think it's a sixties program i think it was one of [kennedy's] hot points that he that was his big deal right right um i think i i've [singled] out my grandchildren and but actually they're they're pretty good along those lines as compared to what i have seen from other people's children and grandchildren mine aren't really that bad but at the same time i think it would do them a world of good but there's a mandatory just like like the draft no every time you they could buy their way out right you know they they'd figure a way around that one in a heartbeat but i'm wondering if there's another issue here and maybe this is why this has died out can you go into and this wasn't the question but it's it may be the more of the issue versus should young adults can they go in there and can anyone go into well out of the kurdish community is a little bit extreme at this time but say i think bangladesh would have been a good example or some some really desperate situation and teach them to farm and teach them and it doesn't do any good i don't know that it does i i don't know that um if you step back from the current issue and look at it more intellectually there are forever over as long as we know there are races of people that are dropping out you know we're losing certain races of people there are people now that are obsolete point and fact just just like endangered species of animals so there are quote tribes of people that are endangered or obsolete and i'm just wondering if you're fighting a natural process there of being [winnowed] out there's a german word for it that's elegant but i never can remember what it was uh but but that they're they're being [winnowed] because they're where they are they're not [adapted] to their environment essentially um and one of the quick examples is the [aborigines] uh when we were in australia uh sad little things uh i felt sorry for them because their society isn't there anymore and their belief system and all their structured of theirs all the [structures] of their society are gone essentially and they're just kind of more like a side show than anything else and that's sad but i don't think there's any way you could go uh the peace corps could go in and rescue those people and i don't think you could have done it fifty or a hundred years ago either so i i'm wondering if the peace corps is really an effective tool good point we've got enough without without a [passport] there's plenty yes i think we ought to worry about our own species i wonder now in and i've been out of school too long to answer this but i wonder if there aren't some sociology courses that's the last thing you want to do yeah that's exactly it they're not going to take that money you give them and go try to figure out a way to dry out with it now come on let's be realistic that's just not realistic right no we're not i don't think i think that's more realistic than making them go in the peace corps i think that's a lot more realistic uh i i think that we should be spending more time and and again i don't think the the peace corps is is as successful now simply because it's not it doesn't fit the circumstance anymore uh we've got plenty in fact we've got far too many you're in uh what flower mound i was that's exactly what i was going to ask you have you ever have have you been downtown i don't know how much i know about this subject yeah okay go ahead yeah that's true um me either i i went to college and then started working and then got married and no i haven't i know that uh my sister i have a twin sister and when they graduated she went to uh teach in a small town down in south texas and i know that like if you have college notes if you teach in a lower income bracket where they don't pay as much and they cancel part of your you know your college note or whatever uh_huh if it's like you know really a you know a lower paying job you know where in a small town you don't obviously you don't need as much as far as to you know to live yeah she only taught there one year but i uh_huh and um i think it would be i know that also one of my cousins who uh he is in like the therapy type thing and he was um some group paid part of his college income but then he was required to go back and work for a certain number of years in this town at uh uh i mean it's a nursing home or something like that so you know if i think that's a good way for people to you know maybe get people to come back to these small towns to work by helping people that normally might not be able to go to college and get the type of degree they want yeah as far as yeah getting doctors and all that stuff yeah yeah uh_huh yeah i really don't know that much about it you know i i i think of the peace corps you know more like the sixties and that kind of stuff when yeah and don't they go into other countries and stuff uh_huh things that make the yeah make them more self supporting yeah right yeah but it definitely would give a lot of the kids now that have everything given to them that they want to see what it's like if you don't have all the money and can't have what you want when you want it uh_huh yeah i don't i don't know that you could require everyone to do that for yeah to do it for a whole year or two years or something like that i don't know that that would work if somebody's was didn't really want to be there and didn't have yeah i mean there would be loopholes just like there is in anything else yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh right yeah yeah uh_huh yeah yeah yeah well down here with the peace corps we're talking about all these people that aren't even in our own country when there's enough people here that i think probably need help and could be helped yeah and maybe rather than just require somebody to join like the peace corps for a year maybe like um during college you know maybe have some kind of course where they'd be required to do some kind of community service type work and help people in that area or people in the united states there probably are you know for but i'm sure that's probably like people that do that are are the people that are going to go into social work and stuff but i think that it wouldn't really be half bad for everybody not to do something you know and realize it's everybody's responsibility to um help these people you know and i'm not saying just give them money but i mean because they have to be taught to be yeah i mean i know that's what my father in law was talking about you know when you give these people money or what was it they were bringing up points asking as far as whether they need to give um more money to these people i mean and that's not really the answer i mean because if they're alcoholics they'll just go out and spend it on you know booze or something like that but yeah or you know to find a job where they can learn how to support themselves i mean i guess we're getting kind of off the subject here but yeah i mean it's true yeah yeah flower mound yeah so we're a little you know farther removed from like dallas and some of the areas where they probably have more of the homeless and that type of thing can you speak up please yes uh but they will accept you later in life also yeah after your children are grown yes no no i'm not some of the people that have been involved with peace corps among other things were retired teachers uh there was a retired plumber that went to uh uh [uruguay] i think and helped them quite a bit with [concepts] in plumbing you know providing for a for better public [hygiene] yeah but so do you think that people should be required to give a couple years for the good of the country why well i understand but if it were told to us that we would find the time somewhere between our seventeenth and uh twenty sixth birthday to give a year or two to the to the country in the form of maybe building better roads or the parks service or the peace corps or you know the military service or something wouldn't we have uh maybe a better class of americans a lot of these a lot of our uh pardon the terminology but [yuppies] now are interested in one thing and one thing only and that's themselves and at least if you [legislated] giving for a couple years of their lives or or uh a honestly purely giving but but some sort of equitable exchange then at least the country would have gotten two years from them where um they would have given something to the country instead of take taking away all their lives uh give them your give them your entire life for two years no it will be a job of sorts i'm sure that the peace corps pays it doesn't pay well it's not top wages but but it does pay the military for young hiring in soldiers does pay it doesn't pay well okay currently in our country especially in some [regions] there's an employment problem you're aware of that i'm sure and texas instruments you know in in another time we had the w p a works progress administration during the great depression though i can't see why it was great uh that gave people pay that was halfway between relief which was welfare and the minimum wage in trade for money and and living they gave them food and uniforms and uh here in colorado you'll find a great many things public roads that were worked on by the w p a uh [dams] that were built by the w p a uh scenic [overlooks] parks we are road our road system's falling apart our our national road system system of highways and roads is falling apart there's a lot of work to be done i i can't see the problem in it for a year what what i'm saying is that if it were mandatory that every person right after graduation from high school that were able bodied would give a year well or not give a year but but trade a year then they at least one not more than say three or four then it would definitely effect unemployment i don't know well you know texas new mexico colorado huge numbers of other western states have no real welfare system there's aid to dependent children and aid to mothers of dependent children but there's no real welfare system but if we took these people off off the streets for a year there would darn sure be more hours labor available in the nation for everyone else and who knows maybe some of our graduating high school seniors would find out a little bit more of what the traditional american work ethic means you know we have had some problem with that in recent years uh they wish only for the paycheck really producing yeah be it selling drugs or whatever yeah yeah and maybe if we [instilled] the work ethic you know i enjoy the i enjoy working uh you know i when i was much younger uh than i am now i i had wanted to go to the peace corps and uh it seems like i it it was something that i i really wanted wanted to do seems like wanting to go to the peace corps was something that i had really wanted to do when i was young but uh i don't believe they accept you after you you know after you're married and you have uh kids and all that so i got into that and then i wasn't able to to uh participate oh they will oh i didn't know that then there's no age limit your kidding goodness i'm surprised i really had no idea well i don't i don't really think that they they should be it should be mandatory i mean well i don't know i it's that just might not be something that everybody wants to do i mean there are a lot of people who would like to do it and there are a lot of people who get into other things and they get all involved and they just you know don't want to or don't have the time i don't see how that can can make a better class of americans to make everybody to make it mandatory for everybody to participate that's true well i don't i don't think that yeah are are you suggesting then that if if uh if i have to go and and do something for the country for two years that the country will compensate me in some way i i will be compensated for this i'm not just going to okay uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that that that's true but in even in our region there's an employment problem there's a lot of uh people gotten laid off lately you know from just companies like general dynamics and and texas instruments thousands and thousands of people are out there looking for jobs no i'm not i'm not familiar with that oh uh_huh i see and that was that was that was some some program where people gave their time in trade for for money okay uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well then i guess there are a lot of a lot of things that people could do to contribute to the good of the country uh_huh i i really don't see anything wrong with it i just don't think that it should be mandatory that every person have to do that well uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh all right i wonder if if they didn't make it mandatory if they would actually get enough people volunteering to to do it that it you know that they would have enough i mean i i'd probably uh_huh uh_huh oh well yes we have with with uh recent generations i i know exactly what you are talking about i i mean i know several people who do not wish to work well they wish for the money and they they decide that they're going to get the money anyway they can with you know without uh without without working in the the traditional american job market right so one other thing and they they get the money anyway they can yeah okay um i think that in this day and age everyone needs to have some sort of exposure to community service because it it seems like and i'm i'm thinking of the of community of people that are in jail now i think that maybe if if if some of those people had gotten exposed to the community gotten exposed to working with other people that some of the things that they did they would not have done because they they understand people more they understand helping people more they understand the plight of people uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i would think that for like people that are just filthy filthy rich i think that they would benefit also in doing community service so that they can see and i'm i'm speaking about people that are like born rich and that's all they know and i'm thinking that community service would help them uh just get a feel of what else is out there how other people are living you know if they were to work in in a a i don't know a soup kitchen or something they would understand how other people live and uh you know on the same note if poor if poorer people uh are working to to serve the community i don't know they probably have a better perspective of of life itself uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um uh_huh [demeanor] yeah uh_huh right that's great uh_huh and i i think that that you know this on the same note being he was exposed to that and maybe he wasn't before and now he sees and i think that anybody that works in the in some kind of service or for the community or something they can see you know you don't see what you don't you can't know what you don't see you know so and you have to experience some things you know a lot of people know that people that other people are poor but you they don't know what poor is unless they actually see it and you know help or something uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right there's something i i've really be skeptical of you know you watch television you'll see the service [announcement] for children in other countries and if you want to send like you know fifty cents a day or something like that and you can help a child it's i don't know i guess it's just me but i don't know whether to trust that or not i mean there are so many scams and things going on you know i would love to help somebody you know but i just i can't bring myself to trust this this company who is trying to do this or whatever it is you know just because people or so i don't know just today people are just so money hungry that i think they would do anything and so you don't know what they uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh more self centered uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh but you can't do that today uh_huh yeah even when when i first moved to dallas from new york it seemed like dallas was so open you know everybody left their doors open you just run in the store you leave your car running you know and this was only uh well i guess it has been awhile it's been almost ten years since i moved here and it's amazing now how much it's changed i mean i don't go out i don't go outside at night you know uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh wow wow uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh god that would be the exact opposite of here i mean if you leave something anywhere you might as well forget it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that is sad yeah yeah that's a big that's a big thing with me i live in a one bedroom i'm single and i've i could live in an apartment i live in waco okay and you either live in really low priced housing or you live on the other side of town in the high price apartments and i live i don't make a lot of money but i live in the high price apartments simply because i feel safe here and i pay i'm paying probably the hundred or hundred fifty dollars more than i would be paying somewhere else but i wouldn't be able to sleep at night and that to me is worth the extra money for me to be you know i feel very safe where i am you know instead of uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh right right huh_uh yeah they don't even consider it uh_huh to yes yes i was talking to someone yesterday about that and we were saying that the basic uh the the basic family is is disrupted these days and so i think you know before the father would work and the mother you know would stay home and having that mother there that base i think was a big part of of family a big part of of what you know your your uh youngsters thought about what they did you know uh_huh uh_huh right right uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh when i call uh_huh uh_huh right right that's true uh_huh i agree with you in the sense that uh i think that it's important for people to uh also share give something of themselves and uh i think that there's too much in the in in a way of self [gratification] today and there's not enough sharing uh_huh yeah yeah yeah uh_huh yeah and i think the peace corps is great too because uh it you go to different countries and you see uh in fact i saw an interview on t v the other night with uh patrick swayze and he's making a movie in i think it's uh [calcutta] or either india somewhere where it's it's a very poor poor country and he said that people in the west he said since being there and i guess he's been there about six months he said that his whole idea of what's important has changed and he said that people have no idea he said of of what human sacrifice is you know since being there he's he's learned to what it is to be poor and have nothing and yet those people have uh such uh a happy uh yeah in in other words they don't dwell on on what they don't have they dwell on what they do have and they're happy with each other type of thing he said that out here he said that when he comes back he knows that it it's completely changed his life right exactly uh_huh exactly right yeah right uh_huh well i i know that it that must be true especially if you do something along the lines of uh you know helping them learn how to survive how to plant how to find water and i've seen so many uh extraordinary things on t v that people have done working in the peace corps and how you know uh the people of the community they worked in is so much better it's like one person can make a difference and i i really believe that they can in something like that uh_huh yes uh_huh i know and how do yeah right uh_huh i know it's true it really is it's the sad life i think today it's uh it's it's not like it used to be even in in the years of my growing up i mean i'm fifty three years old and i have seen a town change from a town to a city and its uh people you know grow from a small town to a large town and you would think that more people would be better you know share more do more you know be more community oriented and all but if they just get more uh unto themselves kind of right and and it's not the sharing of uh a neighbor to a neighbor and we would go out and not even lock our doors and not even worry about it but today i mean you know it's like you wouldn't even think of doing that if you don't have bars on the window you're not even safe you know uh_huh yeah yeah yeah in dallas i i was going to say cause i i heard i in fact i was talking to someone from dallas uh just last week and they was saying that uh in fact it was this one girl particularly that worked for t i and she had gone overseas to tokyo and she asked them there if there was some anywhere that she shouldn't go because she was alone you know being a girl from another country and everything and she said they thought for a few seconds and they said uh no there's nowhere that you can go that you would have to be afraid they said to her that even if she left her purse on the subway okay that she would have that purse returned to her this is how confident they were okay with nothing missing okay this is a foreign country and you would think you know uh being uh an american or whatever you know a [foreigner] there that that would be all the more reason that they'd take advantage of you okay and she told me she said she could tell them for fifteen minutes places not to go in in and around dallas and that's where she was from she said even choosing her apartment she had to be so careful because of being a woman alone you know she had there are certain uh_huh oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and that that's why i think if people were more exposed to uh especially uh young kids getting out of high school i mean at one time they would go into the service to have the same exposure and you know uh to further their [worldliness] so to speak and go to see uh foreign countries that they would not necessarily be able to afford to see it was like they said join the navy to see the world type of thing you know but nowadays they don't do that anymore it's not a a thing a a lot of young men don't even uh have the desire to go into the service or to uh you know do something for someone else and i don't know i [attributed] i think a lot of that to women working you know to mothers not being at home the bonding process yeah it very definitely is that's right yeah and the thing is like i think a man can afford to support a woman but the woman affords the luxuries in in other words like anyone can live on a certain income no matter what it is you have to so to speak okay it it's what's important to you now a family i i think that like girls today have children and six weeks later they're back to work they don't even have a bonding with that child they don't ever see the it's it's the most beautiful thing that happens between a mother and a child the first like say six years of life so much happens in that period of time and i mean once the child's in school if you had a job from say nine to three big deal i mean they they're in school you're at work that's great but it's kids that come home and don't have a mother there or the kids are at home in the morning and um well i guess first of all i i could have asked that before do you have children no okay because i i didn't know if that would make a difference in how you felt um what do you think about the proposal that all young americans should spend a year or two yeah i just um i guess that's my that's something that my family has always believed strongly in and uh i had opportunities in high school to work in some programs um and and i agree with what you said that it's uh it benefits the person doing it so much i don't think they realize and i uh i i think it gives you a better perspective on life and uh it gives you a little bit uh more a [glimpse] of the the real world and and it would certainly help the country too uh yeah yes yeah well i think sometimes through groups and organizations um my first when i first thought of it i thought it uh when they asked the question i thought well that sounds wonderful and then i wondered if people were [unwilling] but but i think even if you went in with a negative attitude i don't think it would stay negative very long um but i do know through some organized groups like scouts and church um they do still have opportunities but i i think that's a small uh number could no um not since um not as much as i remember growing up and that was something uh i think in the fifties and sixties um seemed more common in the last two decades but yeah yeah where uh where abouts do you live what part of the country oh okay we're in plano so we're not far apart one of the calls i'd gotten before was uh down to austin and and i know a friend of mine talked to someone in the midwest so i know there is the possibility that it could be out of the area oh yeah well and maybe uh maybe this would be a way to get that feeling back um if we've lost some of that and it it seems in the last decade or two um that's true maybe that's a way if if young people had to do it um maybe that would start the trend back because that's one of the things i always thought was a wonderful part of our country um is helping others yeah yeah i think uh i think it does help um even preschoolers you know they're um things even just starting around the home you know little ones can do a little bit to help the family and and just watching the parents do things too um it can start a pattern there's always something no matter how young and then that helps develop that attitude um i guess i would really like to see this happen with families more you know i think this is certainly a possible way um to handle it but i wish that's something that i think that has been lost in families and i think that's a good place to start again yeah and i do think um the schools if you're trying to do something even with food drives and uh sometimes what richardson and plano both i mean when you live in areas like that where there's so much they don't realize what a small percentage of the world that is i mean that's uh gosh i'm sure not even one percent of the world is as fortunate as these areas and uh it's i know our church youth group uh starts with projects young but they have a high school group that works in the [appalachia] area every year they've done this for fourteen years now um and it is it's uh and they've also see that there's there's a different way of life and those families are really close some of the things that we talked about that were common in the fifties are still there and uh it really every youth that's ever gone really has felt that their life has been changed and it's changed their perspective and and that's just the two weeks during during the summer so if two weeks uh could have that kind of effect i would think uh well that's yes well i guess um did you have anything else okay well i enjoyed talking with you and i hope you have a good evening thanks bye bye okay no yeah i think it's a good idea i think everybody should should uh put in their time so to speak for the for the good of the the nation and for the good of themselves i think it's uh would everyone grow up and mature and and realize what this country's all about did you oh uh_huh yeah really yeah i think that's probably like uh quite a few things that that the kids uh maybe not so much nowadays but used to go through you know they just they were they did things for people you know for their communities for their their uh families for their friends where now i'm not sure they really do uh_huh yeah that's probably true you know but even even through those groups do you think that they participate as much as maybe they used to uh_huh yeah i think that's probably true i think it's probably more true still in the in the smaller communities then in the larger cities well i live in richardson right now which is just right yeah okay yeah gosh i hadn't even thought about it being out of the area but you're right yeah i grew up in a real small town in florida i mean a real small town and uh i think it was just of course it was back in the in the fifties and i think it was real prevalent back then i i think people thought more of others than they do now you know as far as doing things for them and and then gaining benefits from it uh_huh yeah i do to i do to i'm not sure that that today's kids would go for it though i think you would have to start younger i i don't know how young you'd have to go but i think by the time they're oh early teenagers anyway i think it's too late now at least around here right uh_huh yeah i think it has to start in the families first because if you don't do it for for your own immediate family you're sure not going to do it for anybody else uh_huh that's probably true that's probably true uh_huh oh that's great uh_huh uh_huh well that's that's great i'm glad that there are still some areas that that get the youth involved in that sort of thing like i said i think it does even a small amount of exposure can make a vast difference in their attitudes well no no i guess that's about all okay well good talking with you you too okay bye well uh and that's an idea that's been around for kicked around for a long time i don't know that it's ever been seriously considered uh as far as close to passing uh any legislation or anything like that but uh i believe israel does that don't they for their everybody has to do has to do something or maybe maybe theirs is in fact one year of military service for everyone but uh okay no i don't think it's it's i think of that it it couldn't be military service is not that much but the military used to do it but the idea that uh there are things that that do need to be done that could be done and then uh country would benefit from one year from from everybody and even out the the uh requirement well now that's a thought yeah yeah uh_huh yeah right oh yeah i'm afraid you're right there but uh but uh anything like this that came up whether it it quickly would be significant industry in in figuring out how to get around it where people yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah uh i suspect that yeah that that that that's not the thing that they that they don't feel it's open to them it's just that they uh are more self centered if you will and not not considering a voluntary yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah and uh now i i don't know it i i think you're right that that's not the not the way that the society these days is going and i i think we need to we need to try to figure out some way to to turn that around that everybody huh yeah yeah well that could be yeah right yeah i i agree with that and uh and i i i don't know what what has what has set it off or what but it it certainly seems to me that that uh uh things in in the last twenty three years uh things have definitely gone towards uh very much the concentration on self and and loss of loss of perspective in terms uh yes i think so uh yeah i don't yeah i believe that's right and uh and i don't know that that's really what we're talking about yeah for for kids in high school it could be in the summertime uh you know um it it could even be done while they're doing another job while they're doing you know a job to make money but uh it's uh you know such a [grassroots] idea that it i think the family would have to be involved in it and people would have to be convinced that you know i i think the the basic message is that giving is better than receiving and that's not the kind of society we have right now there's lots and lots of volunteer programs and uh but most of those are at least it it's my opinion that most of those involve adults adults who have the time to give and and uh you know the desire to to give it's not uh you know it's not uh maybe the maybe it uh younger people feel like it's not open to them i don't know but it should be if it's not yeah it is kind of an [introspective] time of life but some schools some high schools have actually started a program of like a [visitation] program to uh you know areas economically uh say less [advantaged] areas and uh they they promote service on the part of the kids to to uh some of those people so at least that's a step in the right direction i guess it's really it's really unfortunate because when you do i do volunteer work for the american lung association and i have have done uh gone to work for american heart and just recently for the leukemia society and there's there's no question that doing you know doing that kind of service you get a lot more out of it than uh than the people involved uh it's it's really a gift to yourself and and that's i think that's a really important lesson to learn and and maybe that's why we have so many people in society who are not uh not really happy you know because if you concentrate all of your [energies] and efforts on yourself you're just kind of down the tube you know uh it really is better to give then to receive okay you want to tell me first how you feel about the proposal uh_huh the boys not the girls the boys uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i i thought it would be good too but i did not think it would be good that they all do something like the peace corps because not all young people would have uh what it takes to go like that because i think it takes a certain person to to be able to do something like that but there's a lot of other public service things that could be done uh_huh right right yes yeah uh_huh yeah i think it would be that when they say this proposal is this something that they're just suggesting or are they actually why why why did they call it a proposal that uh_huh uh_huh that's what i wondered it'd be good character builder uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh well people that are um have received sentences in jail they have uh some of them are going out and doing uh they have to go out and do public service activities which to me is is good uh_huh well i think sometimes it gives you a better picture of what some of the other people live like you know what what some of the other parts of the world are like or even other parts of the neighborhood some of the people how they live or uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah because that's one thing that's hard with young people you you can't tell them how things are they have to see for themselves now of course this might be after they've gone through their teen years i don't know what their thought is on what age that this should be done uh_huh uh_huh of course they've already gone through the period of time where they need more direction you know they their teenage years and that they really sometimes need a little better direction to go and something course now peace corps that couldn't be done of course until they were done with school so uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh kind of an in between time uh_huh yeah huh_uh no and like i said not now all young people should be able to do something but not all certainly would be geared to even the the mormon boys that go out not all of them go i mean it's disaster if they don't go but but some of them are not they're just not made to do that type of thing and they just aren't able to do it well um i i just think the way that things are going that um it would be good for young people to go ahead and have um dedicate themselves to at least something i know like the mormon religion you know they require two years of service uh missionary service right the boys yeah and um so but i think it would be good for all young people you know to be able to to do something like that um so that um you know i don't know i just feel it would be good for them to do that yeah uh_huh oh sure oh yeah and and even even in our home towns there's a lot of um public service things that they could do uh you know drug rehabilitation and and alcohol and and just uh helping old people and um uh you know helping [cripple] just helping somebody else and i think that art of giving is something that um we don't have very much any more oh i think they just gave it a title but is this not something that's um in legislation or in work some yeah no no it's not it's just a just a topic i think so too i think so too um because there's so many um kids who have uh you know so much money and so much free time and uh nothing to do um and nothing to give their time to um they don't even have a direction to give their their time to so i think it would be really good for people to um to be able to give their time in in uh some kind of public service uh even in our government you know as uh aids to uh you know congress uh people so um yeah it would be it'd be really good i think uh_huh right oh yeah oh yeah i agree with you this is something that um like you say is it's character building um you know learning how to to give to others and being less selfish and uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh i agree with you i agree with you and i think uh young people are so um uh focused just on themselves and their activities and whose going out with whom et cetera that uh you know to get a taste of what the real world is actually about doing that public service would be great yeah right uh_huh oh yeah i would think so like right after um high school you know even if it was the the their um that summer right after high school you know three months uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right right you know something that out that was outside of uh outside of school yeah but yeah you know right right after you graduate from um high school because a lot of people are just um uh well gee whiz what do i do now if they're not focused on going to college and uh you know having that that uh gung ho plan uh that's you know setting their life goals uh_huh uh_huh yeah so to me see that would be the the uh the greatest time for um you know teenagers to to do that would be right after they graduated from high school but as for its being required you know we're just not we're not based on on that uh type of a system um uh_huh right oh right uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah so um yeah it'd be good but like i said requiring it would be uh surprised they get anybody this time of day but i've been trying all different times but i don't get anybody at five thirty don't get anybody at nine at night so thought i'll try oh oh well i go to school so i'm home certain days and uh i really haven't been making any phone calls have you got oh have you have you received many yeah it's it's uh well the first time we were on this it came just about every day i never had to make one they just always came people must be tired of it or something well anyway i guess we're supposed to discuss this uh subject what do you think oh well i don't have any objection to people doing that i think it might be good for them but as a mother of two daughters i might be afraid of where they were sent i'm just concerned about their safety because if they do good work in america they'll probably be sent to a ghetto and if they were sent to a third world country i couldn't help but wait worried you know that that would be my main objection uh i don't think it will probably never happen but yeah well it it probably won't i don't i don't even know how we'd pay for it anyway we can't uh seem to pay for all the little things we have going now that's another consideration but uh i don't know some kids are so spoiled nowadays it might be a real eye opener you know i mean sometimes my kids are on the other side of town here and they just see some really tiny modest wood frame homes and then they think they're just kind of shocked at that side of town you know i probably lived in one of those when i was a little girl oh well that would be an eye opener wouldn't it i mean right next to us is such a pitiful country i know sometimes i wish we'd help them out instead of going all across the world and helping some countries i never even heard of it seems to me we are it would be to our benefit to strengthen that country right on our borders but what do i know right i'm just sitting at home and and uh doing laundry today and certainly not up nobody has called me from washington oh but uh anyway how did you get on this program oh you do work at t i oh you're in lewisville oh yeah i just went by that place we were going to a football playoff game a week or so ago which we lost and uh we went by that's the first time i'd seen it it looked really nice a lot of trees there it looked like a pretty little a sight sure oh sure well my husband works at t i over on central uh why we're living in arlington i'm not so sure but he works over there and we did it last time and uh so i'm just my daughter and i are registered this time i don't know they didn't even ask him back that was weird wasn't it but like i said i hardly ever get any calls this time and i can never find anybody so um right uh_huh yeah i've had the same experiences all right around here yeah i don't know uh i wonder if they really i don't know if they could possibly teach a machine to recognize all the different accents there's just there's so many with this one town you know even in some families some people talk a little bit different my husband is from new jersey and one of his sisters does things that really sound funny to me and he doesn't pronounce them at all that way and that's one family right of course i think everybody in new jersey sounds a little bit funny but you know how that goes oh god well i'm surprised she hasn't told us to cut it off yet sometimes she says at night or or or [overloads] so please end your conversation right well do you have any more words of wisdom about the subject you don't have any kids you want to send over here well is well uh i don't know if mine would want to go live in the ghetto well one of them is real idealistic she might uh_huh oh well i'm at work and i just happened to walk back into my office i've been gone for a little while uh_huh i don't i haven't ever made any i just receive them i haven't here lately yeah yeah yeah exactly well i never gave it any thought myself i was hoping you could tell me what you thought uh_huh exactly uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh i don't know i think maybe it's it should stay on a voluntary basis yeah yeah i i think it would be good for uh everyone to do something like that but i i guess i don't feel like it should be something forced upon you uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh exactly really uh_huh uh_huh i have a girlfriend that every time her son starts taking things for granted she threatens to send him to mexico with her relatives and let him get a taste of that for a while wouldn't it though uh_huh it is uh_huh uh_huh i know it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i work at t i uh_huh yeah hang on a minute no i don't think so yeah patty might i'm back but how did you get on it oh uh_huh really huh uh_huh i don't get too many huh the first time i used to get calls from far away too like maryland and new jersey and but now it just seems like it's in the dallas fort worth area that i get calls from uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah yeah oh i agree oh shoot yeah uh_huh uh_huh no i sure don't no no kids oh shoot my sister is i'd be more suited to that than her she's just bugs uh well you know uh i think public service is a worthy thing and as a matter of fact there are a lot of programs uh such as peace corps that promote that probably the most popular one but uh one that is not typically recognized as such is the boy scouts uh i know that because my son is a a scout now and uh is thinking about his eagle and uh in order to get eagle you have to have merit [badges] in uh citizenship in the community citizenship in the nation citizenship in the world and you have to do a public service project uh in which leadership is the key element i uh i think the question is [posed] somewhat strangely because uh it's talking about a requirement for public service and of course the peace corps the boy scouts is a is a voluntary activity uh right of course uh uh military service falls under the category uh of a public service and so uh one of the things that would fulfill the at least the nominal uh qualifications set forth in the charge is military service or draft uh but i agree with you that probably is not what was [comprehended] there are other things such as civil service uh which many people uh are lifelong employees of but i suspect that was not what they had in mind either more of a voluntary kind of thing or uh uh_huh why why is that oh no no no it's to defend the nation against external evils well it depends on whether you whether we figure that we have that we have a defense oriented military or an aggressive aggression oriented military okay go ahead uh_huh huh right uh_huh uh_huh right i i think that might be talking referring to uh something kind of uh alternative to the draft you know either you have uh military service or some sort of alternative [nonmilitary] service for a few years right right huh right right well uh_huh right yeah yeah yeah for for years there has been an idea [batted] around of having some sort of alternative uh public service for uh young people to go into uh after high school uh kind of in lieu of the draft for for people who don't uh who you know are conscientious objectors or don't otherwise want to be in the military you know say okay well you can go into the military or you can do this other thing for one or two years to kind of serve the community and and learn about things and it's interesting because i i'm not a particular fan of the military but i have seen a lot of people a lot of young guys go in that don't have really a clue as to what they want to do with their lives and aren't terribly disciplined you know even just personal discipline about what they want to do and they come out and they they at least have now they have at least some [marginally] [marketable] skills and more discipline and they have uh you know in in some cases they have a greater self esteem because they can say they can see that you know if i do something or submit my own will to the will of the [sargent] or whatever at least for a short period of time i can accomplish a lot and it it's a good lesson for a lot of young men to learn that they don't need to be you know cowboys they don't need to be out there and uh you know constantly [flaunting] their ego to get things accomplished and you know for some for some young men that's good for me it would have been lousy idea uh because i i did have the personal discipline and i went to college for four years and got out you know so but uh you know for some people that's good i i don't particular like the fact that it's the military you know and the whole point of the military is to kill people essentially as as an instrument of u s policy well that's one view and and you know and that that's another debate but uh it's uh uh_huh right right and well it's it it seems pretty aggressive oriented i mean you you look at the last military action which was in the persian gulf and wasn't anywhere near the united states and it was uh you know it was definitely a [projection] of u s power on the other side of the [globe] so at at any rate this is getting off the topic but my my point was that there is for people who don't want to do the military service there it would be neat if there were an alternative that could instill the same sort of personal discipline and sense of purpose and uh sense of community that the boy scouts i don't know if you feel the same but uh when it comes to telling kids that they have to do uh two or three years of service into some kind of community i don't know if that's appropriate for a government to suggest that and say you know you have to do two years of community service before you can be a citizen or you know in the aspect that we're telling kids that this is what is suggested for you to do and uh i as far as a high school course i could see it as uh maybe a social uh sociology course to where a student would get credits if they were to be involved with some kind of community type of program and to me that's fine to have a student do that for like four or even a year but to tell them that they had to do two years thereafter post high school of community service i i'm not quite sure if that's appropriate for anybody to be telling somebody they have to do uh_huh exactly right right uh_huh exactly and doing it for a purpose that they want the other thing is this i have thought about this on many times when you get these uh young troubled teenagers that uh don't have like the perspective of uh uh of the community a sense of community or perhaps the sense that they may have problems but there are other people out in the community that may have problems then i can see it as like maybe a [probationary] type of thing you have to do so much as far as in community service now if they were you know abusive type of situation perhaps then they would have to work with the victims of abuse or if uh they destroyed some property around the uh area then they would have to do uh to restore it and perhaps uh work uh for the community to [beautify] it or whatever but i could see that working in you know cases where it might be young teenagers getting in trouble with law and teaching him that there is a whole community that is effected when they strike out and do their crimes or whatever and that's i think they have done that and judges have said well you know this is what you're going to get for a you know a misdemeanor or something you may end up having to do some kind of community service so i could see that as something that might occur in the court system for those that are troubled so uh_huh uh_huh sure we sure do uh_huh yeah yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh exactly yeah uh_huh and there's a lot of anger sure you know especially if they haven't went through treatment and they dealt with other people in the uh system of prisons which uh you you always deal with somebody that's a little bit worse than yourself next to you or whatever i would say the crimes would probably be you know if you went in for a certain crime there might somebody that has done a crime even worse than what you have so you're dealing with people uh that may uh be an influence later on and uh an issue of anger would be is that i went to prison for a year or two but i didn't get any rehabilitation or uh you know but then again those that have physically assaulted somebody uh that's extremely tough to put them into some kind of program out in the community if they're of a violent sort and to say right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um well that's a good idea to have it as a study program for school where it be more on a voluntary basis as opposed to uh mandatory yeah a yeah i kind of agree with that uh i don't think you know it they should have they should have the same rights as anyone else you know it shouldn't be uh anything shouldn't be mandatory other than i guess like uh when you come to paying taxes or something like that uh or if it's beneficial in some kind of way then maybe uh people be more eager to do it yeah right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh that's a good idea uh i think they should have more programs like that and i think uh us being taxpayers we pay for uh people that's in jail or in trouble anyway so they should be programs set up by the government that could utilize those forms in different areas and i i agree wholeheartedly yeah but uh the thing is is that's not enough of that kind of stuff going on uh because like you say is a lot of crimes and stuff or misdemeanors so why have someone in jail for a year or two for a misdemeanor and sometimes you know putting them in jail doesn't really help because there's nothing in there that would rehabilitate rehabilitate rehabilitate them and then when they get out they because they have this [stigmatism] of being in jail uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh and in what way are you talking about right yeah right see i yeah and i also thought that uh that would interfere with with college work and they didn't yeah yeah that's true yeah when do they assume this is going to be proposed or mandatory or when when what what year are they looking at uh_huh yeah yeah right right yeah i thought that was your line uh what age group are are they looking at eighteen yeah that seems normally that would interfere with college i would think i moved maybe that is that's part of it oh oh um right uh_huh yeah well that's kind of scary i'm not near that age i'm way over it but i do have children to think about you know that's kind of scary right yeah oh uh_huh huh i do too he's he's helped out in a lot of ways yeah he's he's from dallas or he's in the dallas area and uh he's very well known around here so uh_huh yeah i i yeah yeah i i think he's got a very good chance so there's a lot of people here pulling for him so i don't know we'll just see how did you uh you work in the uh computer business is that what you said oh okay uh my husband works for uh texas instruments and so uh that's how we found out about the switchboard okay uh mandatory service yeah i don't think it's a good idea uh because we'd have to change the constitution to to uh allow uh involuntary [servitude] uh in service to the government and i'm not sure that we could do that in such a way that we could avoid [winding] up a slave state it's i like the idea well i like the idea of volunteer voluntary support i mean they might be able to ah say that anyone who does that uh gets certain benefits that would not be available to someone who didn't do it but to use force uh really sets us a a essentially says that your body there's a title to your body and that title belongs to the government and you are not a free american citizen the idea itself of service is good and when someone is say out of high school and not sure about college or out of college and not ready to go into a career and they're not committed to huge amounts of debt that's the best time to be able to do work that doesn't pay very well yeah unless it were tied directly you know if someone were studying something take something obscure somebody was studying economics the state department could offer to send them to the soviet union for two years to teach them how to run their country as an extreme example right but in reality i think what you would wind up with is a political football where they would see all these body counts that they can use to for their own will and i just don't think it would work well they're not it's been suggested and it's sort of a topic of debate every time it comes up it gets voted down the people who are [promilitary] oppose because they don't want people to have the right to opt out of the military into something else and the people who are [proconstitution] oppose it on the grounds that the government shouldn't even have the right to enforce you to join the military unless the united states is actually under attack so mostly it's just kind of one of those things that goes away ah they've got a noisy line yeah well it's somewhere between here and there uh-oh eighteen the draft age yeah wait a yeah let me see if i can get on a cleaner line if it's my line uh yeah it is my line i was on a radio phone all right that's better yeah now their they they figure that they can draft you at eighteen they usually do draft you at nineteen and that's the age they're looking at and of course they're this one the women would be equally grabbed and they're almost on the verge of saying that you if you're going to draft men you're going to have to draft women and you're going to have to put them in front of the guns just the same so uh if you're near that age or you know somebody who is uh you know be aware of that yeah oh okay yep and you don't want them sent off to the middle east to help defend bush from saddam after bush gets done [arming] him you know we only find out about that a year after the fact so it's another thing when in doubt don't trust the government at all it's really reached that point hey you're in perot country i'm really thinking that this guy might be good for us i've been it seemed dangerous i thought is the guy a closet fascist and then i find out that he helped rid the united states of the [gablers] yeah okay well i'm in the computer biz too so i know he's well known in the industry they uh i i have high hopes for him and i think that you know if he could get people interested and encouraged and to believe that the government was actually for us then i'm for him i mean in the democratic primary i'm going to vote for brown just because i kind of like brown and his attitude but when uh when it really comes down in the fall i think i know where it's going to go uh_huh yeah you know yeah i'm an end user i teach people how to use macintoshes and how to buy equipment and desktop publishing magazine production and things related to that uh_huh oh yeah oh that's their project too isn't it i found about it on the network well i don't know but uh i'm twenty two years old and i think it would be uh it's not a good choice to do that i mean you have uh everything here you know like uh the army and everything else is all voluntary and that's the way you're going to dedicate yourself to to that you know to your job if it's voluntary i mean if you don't like it i mean if you're like in other places where they have a you know mandatory you know services yeah because i mean the thing is is that whenever you i mean you seen like for example you know like the war just that went on you saw you saw that some people were not going you know people that that had all the benefits that were sitting around for years you know maybe three four years getting paid uh by the government or you know because when when the time came they said no way you know when they when that was their job they joined it because they wanted to or well you know some people didn't didn't have the you know the money they said it's a good way of uh coming in but those are public service i mean you i mean you would be getting paid very little you know or anything at all and um you would just hate it so much that whatever you had to do would be just you know it's like you know yeah i mean you wouldn't you wouldn't do it i mean the the thing would be that it would throw you you know totally the wrong way you would be there because you had to be there but yet you would still respond to everything in a very you know negative way you know it's like do this why you know i i have a i i don't have to do anything you know it's like what am i going to do if i sit here if i stay here for a whole year they'll let me go and then i can get back to my life yeah i don't think there's any way it can you know like they say this proposal would would get anywhere because of the i mean first of all i've never heard of it until this this phone call you know and uh if it is actually proposed and taken you know to the government or something yeah to to actually support it you know it would be just like saying that you know what what are you crazy i mean i mean you know we had enough of the abortion issue that's still going around that you guys want to bring you know the next you know yeah but see but you're going there and you know what you're getting into yeah yeah but it's it's not like saying like i'm born and then when i reached a certain age i'm going to have to do something you know it's uh it's not by choice it's like everything else you know it's like if i want to do it i'll do it but you know it's like you know and um yeah i have a background i'm from argentina and uh everybody everybody that is [unlucky] enough has to do the military service and but you go into this whole big lottery every year and you know each uh your last three [digits] of your document you know like your social security number you're matched up with other numbers right from from uh one to a thousand and so if your number is below four hundred you're not going to have to do it say it's between four hundred and six hundred you might have to do it depending how many people are in your class and you know and like you the they right and if it's above six hundred you're going to have to do it and i got one thirty one and so yeah i didn't have to do it but the thing was that you have you know the whole the whole nation's watching you know like if it's your class everybody that's your same age is listening to the radio waiting for them to announce the number you know and it's like and then you know you have people you know going you know it's like everywhere you know you have some people that are glad some people that are saying shit and the other people that are going oh my god i'm somewhere in the middle you know it's like wow am i going to have to do it yeah and you know but it's my brother goes everybody in my family had to do it and they go you know it's just a year and a half of your life that's that's totally wasted you don't do anything else there's no time and you don't do anything you know you go there you train you get treated like shit and then you you i mean then you get out right and so i mean but you know it's like the thing is is that you know you just get treated i mean one one of the guys that was doing it was uh like uh a waiter at one of the restaurants that you know like the military had and that was his job you know he got he got you know like three months of uh you know physical training and then he got to serve all these people you know but that's what they do i mean that's a year and a half of your life that's that you don't do anything that you have to be there you know maybe five times you know five times a week and that you know you have i guess a round robin schedule or something and uh no oh there i don't i don't think there is any pay wait i'm not sure because what happens is you you get to like to ride buses for free well you do i guess you do get paid but the thing is is that you know people are what if they see you in the uniform right like for example you know like when they go around the train asking you for tickets like short distant trains they won't ask you if you if you're wearing your military uniform for a ticket they'll just skip you and uh you know it's like they they consider that but it would be the same way here you know it's like if if you had to do it you know you have a big sign i'm sorry i don't get paid you know it's like please let me ride for free you know it's like i'm i'm living off dad for these wonderful two years which i have to do you know it's like and then the other thing is when i get out of college at twenty eight with my b s you know it's like by the time yeah and so that would be that would be see there are too many things that go against it that would be ridiculous so oh well it's been seven minutes i don't i well i don't i don't think they'll ever pass this i i i'm just going to laugh if i ever see it in the newspapers i i mean i don't read the newspaper that much but i never heard anything about it so so and but then you won't have to do it just imagine sometimes your kids you'll be saying well it's your job go do it you know yeah really then you'll have to say see in my age i didn't have to do it yeah oh well okay i don't know much about this topic let me ask you does she spell her name with two n and an e oh okay well then we're all right okay that would have been totally weird i have no idea who listens to this there you go yeah oh right i didn't know there was a proposal to serve young people to have a year of public service yeah i didn't i didn't either are you from pennsylvania are you from pittsburgh ha we're not suppose to do this i i can i'm from originally from beaver county oh my god no i could smell an accent a mile away are you in pennsylvania or dallas right now oh okay yes i'm in dallas my husband's a t i oh how nice i don't know i'd first of all is there a proposal in the i mean is there a legitimate proposal i didn't see that on the list but i guess it's unless it's yeah yeah really i guess i would say that if there is one i would think that they are talking eighteen years or twenty one years of age but i personally don't think it's a good idea for a year i would look at it more as a uh internship kind of thing maybe three months you know ninety days to six months or something um but more than that i would have a problem with it enforcement yeah the way the the way the voice might have worded it it sounded almost mandatory as opposed to elected and i would obviously i mean not obviously but i would be against anything like that being mandatory right thirty something there you go yeah that and thus think i mean i don't know i went to uh even though i'm from that part of the country i did go to high school in uh the midwest and chicago and i we had it was mandatory that we took civics every year yeah it was a mandatory and then you had to take a test that showed you had a certain knowledge of state government and state service and they did offer actually certain types of public service [internships] that i think is a very good idea that that's mandatory but i don't know how any i mean the whole thing sounds a little bit ludicrous but that's my word uh_huh right and when they're younger not when they're getting into undergraduate and college age situations i don't yeah and i maybe that's not what they meant maybe that's just the way both of us took the [wording] but i i think it's a good i idea to get younger people involved in the government in some way or the public you know it's just they they're not aware of why things cost what they do why things operate the way they do and i just you mean in in the area of geographic region you're in uh_huh grass roots uh_huh huh oh my uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah they do that i mean in in in north texas they do that quite a bit where you know if you want to go to this particular movie or concert or a [discounted] thing the big thing down here is [rodeos] uh if you yeah really pennsylvania listening you know i just talked to my brother it's like really weird coincidence yeah um i really don't think they can do it though i mean i i you know i think that things that your talking about like anything that [emphasizes] the social services with the public service i uh_huh are they are you are you in northern virginia or are you in the district of columbia yeah okay yeah that's we're in a yeah that's we're in a near next to a town called plano texas and it's very um it's like falls church i mean montgomery county i'm familiar with where you're at um and they really that's a good way to put it i know i went to high school in the city of chicago at an inner city school although i lived in a different area near a place called evanston illinois and the reason that i stayed at the school i did was because at evanston [township] which back then was like one of the three larger schools in the country everybody was already doing the um driving the [beamers] and you know with nothing to think that um they didn't have five hundred dollar [wardrobes] you know every week that kind of thing i i just i just think the one thing they do so strongly about is what your saying that i don't think kids have a sense of civil responsibility i think then that's a step away from even duty i don't think they even have a sense of the responsibility uh_huh this is true yeah yeah i think the one thing the the there's a program called uh [habitat] for humanity that jimmy carter started the former president and i think i think programs like that with what you just talked about going on in your area local area at and something like that would be good you know but not that specifically but things along that of of activity formed yeah they're already yeah right uh_huh uh_huh yeah i agree with you like [prejunior] high and and um see make it you know a curriculum oriented type of proposal as opposed to anything [mandated] like the old selective service or anything so it sounds like we're in agreement with that anything any else we can we can talk about talk about pittsburgh yeah your right it's like i mean this is very because i'm not in that part of the i don't care if they listen i'm not in that part of the country i don't want to offend you i and i'm not in their part of the country so what i hear all my best friends are in western pennsylvania and it's like oh yeah i i do i mean i didn't grow up totally there because of a parent parental divorce in my family but um you know it was always shuttle back and forth so uh it's like two homes but yeah i miss it yeah yeah really is they've cleaned it up a lot though i mean i don't think we'll get in trouble doing that yeah i lived there in my early twenties too before i moved here that's weird i hope we never have you had any thoughts on this uh_huh how old are you if i can ask how old are you okay so we're about the same age uh_huh uh_huh yeah i think this is also a a broader scope i think uh they're talking about uh just service in general and um i i did a lot of this sort of thing in in college in the summers um i worked uh in uh mexico doing community service uh for two summers while i was in college and you know it was an incredibly worthwhile experience so in theory i'm in favor of this but on the other hand i'm an [economist] and uh just like uh well the military has a tremendous uh you know responsibility for security and everything but there's also an equally tremendous budget so i guess on the other hand as as as as good as this idea is it's got to be paid for uh even though it's uh you know it it's it's never quite voluntary people have to be paid if they're asked to serve for a year in any capacity so uh you know uh uh the idea is great where does the money come from uh_huh it should it should or shouldn't it should uh_huh but i don't think it was voluntary i think it was just a year of required service there was nothing about voluntary that's why as an [economist] my my my ears [perked] up uh_huh uh_huh and doing it at a less expensive rate then uh_huh of course you'll probably get another whole layer of bureaucracy running it i mean let's face it the military is probably one of the most bureaucratic agencies so i i i you know on the one hand my immediate reaction to it was oh it's wonderful you know i think people do owe their country something whether it they serve in the military of for those who for one reason or another can't want to serve in another area and have talents in another area great but then who pays and if they have to and they don't go into the the other labor force you're losing money in terms of taxing from other jobs i mean so there's it's not it's not a real cut and dry thing uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh and just marching around waiting for a war yeah uh we did have something similar to a volunteer thing with uh which was although volunteer there was a minimum payment uh like vista which was a domestic peace corps some time back and probably coming from texas you may have bumped into some of that yeah and i know the what the army has a corps of engineers which uh could probably be one of those areas that uh could be uh [privatized] or [civilianized] or whatever some of the areas there you know for domestic use i've always wondered why the army corps uh of engineers took care of floods you know in in certain areas why was uh_huh uh_huh but of course there are many private engineering schools that are absolutely [superb] yeah the main that made uh_huh yeah and of course back during the depression when the government started doing things like uh c c c the civilian conservation corps so i uh you know there's a bit of a history of people serving the government and it doesn't have to be as the military you know if you go in just as a an [enlistee] uh the wage isn't anything great so if if you're asking for a year of service it doesn't have to be a wage comparable to the uh if it's a required year it doesn't have to be a wage comparable to the private sector so it could be you know a wage enough to for have someone to live on to eat and if uh if in fact so i guess that it a lot of thinking would have to be done if it were implemented uh_huh how it's administered and how you know uh just the who uh who who would be [exempted] because i'm sure there would be exemptions to it uh uh_huh uh_huh or even or even doing paperwork for a police system you know uh_huh yeah homeless homeless and all i think they're going to cut us off oh oh yeah but i think you know in terms of the the the pressing problems in the united states today that in terms of the homeless in terms of the state of the the state of the prisons um there are probably a lot of things that could be done uh on a volunteer basis so maybe they should do pilot projects to try it out and see how it works yeah well listen it was good talking with you that's you have to start the new year out by the way happy new year i hadn't really heard that before uh i had at one point thought about doing the peace corps myself many years ago uh you know many years ago it seemed like they had uh uh involuntary [enlistment] and mainly like in the fifties i know a lot of uh men that were into the military you had to go into the military uh i don't know about that a lot of people i don't think would like it because it's going to interrupt college plans but a lot of people don't have plans so for them it might give them a little help to uh get uh some kind of more awareness about the world and be of some use for a while uh_huh uh_huh um uh_huh i haven't no but uh i had known of the peace corps because i had a cousin in the peace corps course you know it was much more publicized in the sixties i don't even know if they have it today i had a friend though in the seventies join uh vista which is a similar program although you stay within the u s which can be very beneficial too i mean a lot of times there is a lot of help we can do within the u s uh and that program i thought was excellent uh i just don't think they even i don't know if they have those programs anymore if they even try to publicize it and recruit and i think that's a shame because both of those programs are excellent i don't remember i guess i haven't seen it recently not that you know not down here any i don't i don't remember seeing anything about vista or or the peace corps recently right right yeah i think it would be extremely beneficial to just about everybody uh i i could see that there would be some people that you know would throw up their arms about it and go i'm going to harvard and i you know this isn't something i want to do but uh you're right it would give everybody a better perspective of uh you know ourselves and what we have maybe make us appreciate what we have a little more so uh_huh um right i had uh twice now been a big sister you've heard of big brothers big sisters and uh i have had uh two little sisters and even though they were local to me it was almost being in a different world because both of my little sisters came from very poor backgrounds and of course they don't have usually normal families i mean there's not a a mother and a father and they live in pretty poor housing and uh their education is very lacking because their parents you know don't uh encourage them to go to school uh so that was beneficial to me as well as the child because uh made me appreciate my background a little more and i helped to give this person uh a more one on one idea of there can be a different life than what they've had and uh to uh experience some things that otherwise they wouldn't be able to get out and do it's usually a year uh and they try to find somebody in the local area to you and uh you know the age group that you want to work well actually i've i you know it kind of caught me by surprise i haven't ever really thought about uh you know mandatory public service i obviously believe in public service and you know think it's a good idea i i'm not sure if they would get the service they anticipate if they force it do you understand what i'm saying i mean you know you're going to get a lot more commitment a lot more desire a lot more uh maybe quality time effort energy from somebody who really truly wants to be there so although i believe in it i'm not sure requiring it would be the way to go uh_huh that's true if there were enough opportunities well that or have something available in that field you know and and when you go to employers then is it really a public service thing or more of an internship you know i don't know i i definitely agree and i i had you know some family that did serve in the peace corps and i i always thought it was a wonderful thing uh i i do think that if people have the opportunity to do it it's something that you know they won't forget it [enriches] your life and gives you like you said a a good understanding of oh well what do i want to say we take so much we take what we have for granted you know we're very blessed in this country and and we take so much for granted because we really don't realize uh how other cultures and other other countries live so i i definitely agree that it's it's good i just you know i i to to require it i think would take a lot of [forethought] and planning if you want to get the type of service you know that you're anticipating that you're hoping for yeah that's true that's true and then i guess i can look around you know i automatically when the uh switchboard suggested peace corps i kind of like you i thought international or going out of the country and i i look around though and there's an awful lot of public service that could be done within our own communities and our own you know a lot of times people say i don't want to go somewhere else i want to help my own community you know united way i want my dollars to work here something like that so that might also be a motivating factor then minor offenses yeah i agree i think that's a very good idea what you said the field you're in what field are you in does it okay so you have to do it in that field actually like if you like yeah that's true well and it might also make them realize too this isn't what i thought it was and i don't want to do this that's a good idea not for any longer than about ten seconds no i have no i have no real desire to do that yeah yeah i don't doesn't appeal to me either where i work uh there's a guy who actually joined the peace corps he worked here for a couple years and then he went to [ghana] in in africa and uh well he hasn't come back yet yeah he went just recently well there's yeah but there's actually been a [resurgence] of people getting into it i guess part partly for economic times and uh i don't know any other reason but lot of people are been getting back into it i think uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh sure yeah yeah i don't i'm not sure i mean i guess the motivation is partly you want to help these people but i think it's a lot of people join it just to go to another country and kind of for the adventure of it i guess um oh yeah yeah seems a little rough for that but uh i don't know i kind of you know i don't mind going to europe you know traveling and seeing the sights but i don't want to have to go to africa to no maybe they they'll they'll fly you over there and back for free but doesn't seem worth it what type of work do you do now okay for who do you work for you work for oh really i didn't know they had an office up there sanders [avionics] okay yeah i've heard of sanders corporation were they bought out by [lockheed] and all of that okay right that's that's kind of the work that i do so that's why i've heard of sanders i work for i work for georgia tech in research right that's right yeah you're just kind of [biding] your time uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah it we're essentially the same although some some laboratories are hiring if if they can find new technology uh you know or make an efforts to get into the commercial markets okay uh_huh yeah probably not as much so right i guess my i you know i come out am sitting on the fence but i have some concerns about uh you know if you require someone to do this for a year or two that's a big chunk out of someone's life uh certainly you know there could be advantages and things to be learned but on the other hand you know how do you enforce it or what if they are just totally against it then does it really benefit anybody you know so right uh_huh right or might teach them a little more [empathy] towards those who you know have problems and need help with things well i was thinking too uh we usually think of the peace corps as going overseas to do something but if they required this where you stay in the u s and you know benefit the people here and perhaps too the fact that we have more elderly people now uh you know it could be an advantage to them um uh_huh yeah yeah well and probably too even those who might initially be opposed once they got into it then they you know would see that hey this this is giving me some benefit as well i mean they they might not express it in words so much but just sort of get in step with with uh what's going on and and really enjoy it um yeah uh_huh i think a lot of our young people need to learn that older ones too i know of few of those yeah uh_huh yeah i don't understand that either that's that's tough yeah yeah well another thing too is if you have uh some young people who are really gifted and who are leaning towards maybe the uh math and science and that sort of thing which they say we have a shortage of taking them away from that which they are centered on might you know be a a bad thing to take a couple years out of beginning you know their life in that respect they might you know get off on some other track but you know it's hard to say uh_huh yeah oh yeah and she didn't get around to it very much uh_huh right yeah yeah yeah yeah but i guess that's not a terrible alternative if you've you know you've done something that's not too terrible but they want to slap your hand a little bit better than just sitting in jail all day not doing anything but but yeah i agree with your point it it might not make the other person feel like you were really wanting to be there yeah well yeah enjoyed talking to you all right yes it is do you have young people yeah three small ones okay would you feel like those youngsters could be raised with a balanced life understanding all of the aspects of their lives if they did not perform some kind of public service uh_huh uh_huh well you're looking at it from a perspective of something equivalent to the draft where you take two years out of your life and and serve as as a a in the military however they didn't say that it would be required to be two consecutive years what about the option of requiring these young people to have two years of public service in association perhaps with their education and that they get you know how we have uh life credits in college experience credits why could those not apply in exactly that way you actually are using that as a part of your college education and it's a quote public service course uh_huh well it would be like an elective it would be the equivalent of an elective do you want to serve in the peace corps or do you want serve uh you know on a on a some sort of a social agency where you do volunteer work or perhaps you'd like to do reading for the blind for a couple of years in your spare time and it might be three hours a week that's what a class is three or four hours a week then they have a balanced view i think of what is out there i know that a lot of young people are raised in a very protected environment mom and dad don't want them exposed to the kind of things that they had to [endure] or they had to go through they want a better life for their kids and they do put them in this wonderful little cocoon and then when they get out in the real world and life does give them a good smack they go to their knees because they haven't had the experience in helping people therefore they don't have experience in seeking help or in being helped [gracefully] uh i myself have done a lot of volunteer work but i am very [apprehensive] about accepting help i'm very independent and i don't care much for that and i raised my children to be very independent and yet they did their share of volunteer work we went to the nursing homes and carried christmas gifts and we visited sick people those are all good community service [behaviors] and activities and they don't require a big bite of your life uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh defense uh_huh right right but you did serve in in a different respect and that's what i'm saying you don't have to go into the peace corps in order to be of of service to the community uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah i do a great deal of you know i would rather expend the personal energy than just shell out a few bucks and let my conscience rest i feel like that you i don't know the the benefit to you is much of greater value if you are physically or emotionally involved in what you're doing it's no big deal to be emotionally involved in writing a check i mean you know you don't really get involved and you don't really [comprehend] what you're [accomplishing] and i think that's important and that's the reason that i think there there should be some [provision] even if it's not mandatory at least provide the avenue through which young people can do volunteer work even if it is not a two year [stint] in the peace corps uh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah you've got to remember though the nature of the person we're when we're involved with here you you can expect someone like that perhaps to be willing to volunteer to get expend the energy to go out and find the area where they match very well but it might be of interest to put in some sort of a formal system like they do the screening system in the military service okay you know what are your interests and what are your [aptitudes] let's see if we can match you to a job that you prefer particularly with you have the education to deal with it i don't know that may or may not be uh a useful choice but i do know that there are a great deal of young people out there who would say why do i want to go you know out and get mosquito bit and sleep on a hard ground when i can sit here in this [cushy] bed and not go out and and uh i can have my music and drive my cars and have fun through the summer and there are a lot of them who just do not have that sense of consciousness and i think maybe something in place might build that um i think there should be some control but on the same hand i think you should be able to like and some places i think you should be allowed to carry guns no i'm not well i'm kind of i'm like two hours north of pittsburgh and there's sometimes i won't go down there at night you know no and my fiancee is about an hour from d c and you wouldn't catch me dead down there no uh_huh yeah exactly uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh exactly yeah uh_huh uh_huh no uh_huh uh_huh oh really oh i didn't even know that yeah well that's the way it is i think anywhere because like this in d c like my fiancee said like um he went to the doctors one time and it was located in d c and he had to park his car and his car was like two blocks away from the clinic and the clinic had someone escort him to his car because it got dark it was after [sunset] yeah that's that's just ridiculous you know i mean that's just down right ridiculous and i know driving through pittsburgh we got lost down there one time and we were trying to come home and um we went through this one section and there were you know all the people standing on the corner and stuff and i was just like wind up my window lock my door you know i mean it was like don't you dare stop i don't care if there's a red light uh_huh uh_huh yeah exactly like i would call my fiancee and well he moved now so he's in a much nicer area but he lived like twenty minutes out of downtown d c and i would be talking to him on the phone and i could hear sirens and i could hear yelling and screaming and i'm like what's going on and he'd go to the window and he'd watch a policeman chase someone down the sidewalk and i'm like and the thing was he lived on the ground floor of the apartment building and i was just like would you please move just get out of there please i mean i just don't think it's safe uh_huh yeah uh_huh exactly yeah yeah well um i come from a large family and all my brothers hunt so we have hunting guns but they're always locked up at all times other than when they're being used and even like whenever you know like like if three of them are out hunting and there's still three guns left it's still locked you know it's locked all the time but as far as having anything else to protect ourselves we don't have anything you know other than maybe a butcher knife that's up on the wall you know and what's your chances of getting to it or something uh_huh yeah but i know my um roommate she's from and that's right out of pittsburgh and her father is a state policeman and she has mace you know even to carry like i'm i'm at college so even for her when she goes out at night if her and i are out like if we walk to another building or something we always take the mace with us you know just because you know two girls walking but her mom sells real state so her mom has a gun in her purse at all times because she has to pick up strangers you know that you know people that you've never met and take them to these houses and they're in her car so she he taught he has three daughters he taught all three daughters and his wife how to shoot and i can very well see his point uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh you know and some you know i think that like when whenever i graduate i'll be moving to where my fiancee is and i'll definitely want to have something if were a half hour away from d c you know but then again you know you would always keep it locked up or something then you know what is the sense of keeping it locked up because then if something would happen are you going to have time to actually go and [unlock] it you know and you you hate keeping something laid out like that oh my gosh oh my god i just don't people are sick for doing that they just wanted his money uh_huh yeah iffy situation i think people should be allowed to protect themselves but then you know or you know so many families you don't want to let a gun out because accidents do happen uh_huh uh_huh yeah like i had a neighbor and he got shot in the stomach with a gun and to this day they declare that the gun was not loaded and i just cannot get that now obviously the gun was loaded you know but to this day they swear the gun was not loaded i'm just like well i'm just like well then where did his stomach go you know i mean he survived you know but he was [wacky] and that's all there was to it uh_huh i i just think it was an iffy situation hello larry okay well i you know i think that uh i think it's fine to do that but i don't think it should be mandatory i'm not i'm not for having the equivalent of a draft that's right it uh oh is that right uh_huh uh_huh well i'd say as far as government jobs uh they could uh have some incentive for instance veterans get a preference when they're applying for a government job and i'd say people that had voluntarily served in such a thing as the peace corp or or something could also get that i don't know either and i'm not sure we'd want it right i feel the same way uh i think that uh i have nothing against the draft when you know when when the nation needs it uh but obviously when you don't need it you don't have a draft and i feel the same thing with universal service if there was a need for it then i'd say uh possibly i mean but it would to be an emergency type thing and i and i don't see that ever happening uh uh_huh that's right uh_huh uh_huh that's that's true right right uh_huh uh_huh right i think about on on public service too i think it has some some thought has to be given to what do we want these people to do in public service and and that would have a bearing on what training should they have because if you wanted to have people you know as an incentive you can have people go in after high school and then offer them assistance with their college and that way you'd be getting people who really didn't have an expertise in any particular but uh any particular field but they'd be willing hands so so to speak on public service projects uh_huh right uh_huh are you familiar with the civilian conservation corp back in the thirties okay well i mean it's before my time too i i read about it but you know in the height of the depression the government employed people to go work on public service projects that's right like w p a it was the same thing and there were many uh a lot of the national parks were built up by the civilian conservation corp and a lot of w p a projects are still serving uh uh the nation okay so what are your opinions on it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh not much i'm twenty eight so no i really don't remember anything about it i guess i was about ten when it ended right i was born in sixty two so when did it end yeah because i was ten and i don't remember a lot about anything at that time in my life very much in great detail no i didn't but i i did read the book i do i have six years of college so i did read and study about the vietnam war though so i am pretty you know i'm more familiar with it than mine i think uh i think that there was a lot of rebellion in our nation and that i think it was the right thing to do to try and not to take away to you know just leave their freedoms there and to you know get rid of some of the atrocities that were going to i don't i don't know i don't really i'm tired of pacifist though see on the other hand i'm a i'm really struggling with it am i a pacifist physical pacifist i'm a christian and i believe that the real warfare is not with saddam hussein or the north vietnamese but it's in spiritual [kingdoms] and that the real warfare is done you know in your prayer closet on your knees so in a way in a sense i'm a pacifist but i'm really not you know what i'm saying i don't think just lay back and not do anything i think lets go to war but let's go to war praying and let's go to war for that way so uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh still have a problem with uh you know i haven't come to an absolute conclusion on my opinion on this but and i know other christians would disagree with me my husband and i are kind of not even in agreement on this but we don't fight over it or anything but you know how can you know the bible says bless your enemies and bless those that curse you and it's like be gentle unto all men apt to teach patient kind so it's like how can you i don't know for me i don't know you know i can't say that i agree with vietnam because how can you be gentle unto all men and and then shoot them so uh_huh uh_huh yeah it is a difficult thing but then vengeance is mine [sayeth] the lord and i will pay so i think god is ultimately in charge of what goes on and i know like now in china he did all these terrible things and they were terrible and he was going to be accountable for them and but if you look back and you say wait a minute while he was in power he built roads he put in all the [temples] he he [unified] the chinese language it was impossible for missionaries to do accomplish anything in china because of all that and so even in north and south vietnam i bet you'd see the same thing and that now he builds roads so then it and then he dropped dead twenty five years premature he dropped dead and so something good did come out of that in that now you see what i mean if like now uh_huh well bless your enemies if your enemy is hungry feed him if he if he needs your asks for your shirt give him your coat also so if the the the the south vietnamese they asked us to help them right is that right uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah but then again yeah i'd say it is wrong to and i'm not saying president bush made the wrong decision i think i'm lacking in my i don't think i can come to a complete conclusion on how i feel about the vietnam war because i'm going to interpret that through the bible and i've kind of always i've been a christian five years and i've kind of avoided that that those the war things and how god approaches that because i think it's just now coming up to where i really feel like i need to come you know need to decide what i feel yeah right they left a woman and a child and a the sheep yeah i know but then again though jesus the grace pushes you beyond the law you know what i'm saying like so he didn't just say don't kill your don't kill your enemies but not only don't kill them bless them you know and so therefore when we have an enemy come against us i really feel like that i really feel like i know i do feel this strongly that when if we had someone come and attack us the best way to handle it would be to bless them and [humbly] go to their other king or the other ruler and say what have we done to offend you what can we do to [rectify] this situation and that god would move in that [sovereignly] and he would get the glory though no king no bush wouldn't because it wouldn't make any sense you know what are i'm saying it would look absolutely ridiculously stupid but it would work out because if you follow the [scriptural] principals it's going to work out because those are that's the best way to do it you know but the thing is is that then god gets the glory not a president not a king and i think that's a problem for a lot of politicians is they want the glory uh_huh well i believe personally i i i woman always says my husband always goes three that i guess yeah if the one if somebody broke in my house i would pray that i would have this faith to to take authority over that and i know people that have done that i mean i know that there have been people who have had people break in their homes and just say i bind you in jesus name your i just and [rebuke] any enemy because i believe it's a spiritual war that's going on and it's not normal for someone to come into someone elses home that's not normal there's something going on there and that i would have [discernment] by the holy spirit to deal with pride over that do you see what i mean and then the same in vietnam you would you wouldn't handle vietnam the same way you would handle uh saddam [houssein] but i was i have a problem with all the killing but i'm not a new [ager] i don't believe i am not for one world government i'm not for all these new age things i i you know i don't have a problem with uh national identity and i'm an american and having different nations and all of this but i'm concerned about the killing that went on there because i just feel like god has a better way to handle it than that and well let me [preface] it i'm a i was a staff officer in vietnam in sixty nine and seventy and i'm in active reserve now so uh i'm probably not going to have the you think i would have uh it's i was an interesting in that i think that he gave the american people some uh uh a sense of the fact that that uh wars are really run by politicians uh i are you old enough to remember the war yeah well december seventy two was when we bombed north vietnam and then they released the prisoners in early seventy three in that in that time frame i think the the significant thing is is today did did you uh did you see barbara walters interview with schwartzkopf well what's your perspective on it yes well well the difficulty i have is that uh are we our neighbor's keepers and this is what i find particularly difficult in that uh if we see injustice and weather it's in a uh you know chicago or uh or or dallas i i think if we see it you know we see john wiley price hollering injustice i think that's wrong now the question is is was there injustice in vietnam or was there [injust] in iraq kuwait the difficult i point is is to where do we step in and uh and i think that we that's that's the part i have difficulty and the the other part is that the the when when your when your when your looking at vietnam and you say well is fifty eight thousand lives worth it and i don't know that anything is worth fifty eight thousand lives well the other issue is is is how do you allow uh how how do you allow injustice just like the the policeman in in los angeles how could how could could you stand there and watch them beat that guy if your brother or your sister were being beaten by the authorities do we step in well in some cases we would and i i think that's what makes it so difficult yeah but but the other the other difficulty is is that it's just if if you take the to to feed my sheep and the question is who are my sheep and the idea do we go out and feed these people when they're hungry yes uh they did but i think the biggest difficulty is is that when your at an economy like south vietnam well the then reality uh the the poor farmer the poor rice farmer was going to pay taxes and the question is who was he going to pay it to uh the communists are the all [alleged] democrats uh democratic formed government and i i think that's i think i think uh that's a little was a difficult part there and and i we didn't understand the culture we couldn't uh we had uh we had a a young lady that was fourteen that worked on our in the unit i was [commander] of that appeared to be eight or nine years old and and the people looked like children i mean you couldn't imagine that one would would would [conceal] a bomb and and do these kind of things i think socially it really destroyed a lot of the people that that went over and saw these people you just couldn't believe that they would that they would be mean and and and and drop bombs and kill people and then we would turn around and and nay palm them you know if and i think there was a lot of a lot of tearing of emotions and i think that if anything that when he was saying the idea that we learned we we learned a lot from vietnam now it was it was in general bad but and i don't know the problem is now i'm i'm concerned a little bit that now that the gulf war is on that we're going i think it was a good war and it was okay to go beat up on people and i think that i think we need to a little more justice at home i'm not sure how we get that wonder if there's a connection there but well the difficulty is is if you look in the old test meat and in the numbers of places that uh the lord went out and just simply struck down and that was part of the problem when they went into the promise land that they that they uh they didn't destroy everybody and and that that you know and you i think that's one of those things when we get to heaven we're going to ask god why did you do it that way yeah well and i i and even if the even at the local level when somebody's assaulted what do you do turn the other cheek yeah uh i have uh i guess a lot of thoughts about the vietnam war um i i guess i feel like i was pretty young while it was going on and so there's probably a lot of things i remember and a lot of things that i really didn't have a clue as to what was happening um looking back like maybe some of the things that i know now i i'm not sure i do believe it was worth the cost in dollars and lives that was one of the questions that she asked us to think about because i because we never went to war i don't think we were committed to winning it and getting out and i i feel like it went on and on and i i guess i see such a contrast like as opposed to the middle east war we just had where president bush went out and got worldwide support for for what was happening you know i just feel like maybe we went in to be policeman and i'm not sure that's our role but uh_huh don't you think that maybe that's why we had it this time i mean i do think that it's been too long in coming but i feel like maybe the american people and and the government are aware of the things that we did wrong that we didn't support that that those so many people were opposed to the war what it translated into was they were opposed to the folks that were there fighting it and those guys were there doing their duty yeah and i i think that we learned from that and i think it it's one of those things that you learn the hard way it was a tragic mistake the way that they have been treated over the years and i believe that's just now turning around just now you know trying to be [rectified] and i'm and i'm not sure you can undo the damage that was done emotionally on so many of the people no they're not yeah well i i appreciate the i feel like president bush is in a hard spot he went over there to get them out of kuwait which he did and then he has backed out he has pulled out and i realize they're still saying well here you're encouraging us to get rid of saddam hussein so why aren't you helping us and you see i think him going in and doing that would be putting us in another vietnam situation and i don't think the u s will stand for it i don't think he would do that uh i think we learned too much of the effects uh you know whether it was justified or not i know that they probably felt like we were going in for a good cause i i feel like maybe they felt like we were doing the right thing to try and help maintain the democracy over there and and beat the communism but but i think somewhere that got lost you know in the long term effects of the of the war and yeah yeah that we don't get fixed i know and i i believe that we have to have a military and i believe that we have to have a defense to keep anybody else from walking in and doing it to us but i also believe that we need to turn so much of that [inward] i know i do think that in the middle east war um i think that maybe a lot of the arab countries that were so [hateful] towards the united states have come away with uh kind of a different attitude uh i think that maybe we're not their big bad enemy any more an uh and i think that's good you know i think that's a good i think so too and perhaps the reason that good came out of the mid east war is because we had the experience of vietnam so i i i do think that we've learned from it you know i i i wish there weren't war but uh i do think we learned yes no there was no feeling of accomplishment no goal no we went in but what did we do we lost lives and and what were we trying to do who knows and i i think you're right uh i think you're right there um i do remember when it was over i remember when they were coming home uh but i remember the feeling back then you know like i feel like right now i feel like this country has been behind this war uh yeah there's a lot of people that aren't for war i'm not for war but i believe that the way that it was done and the way that was handled were right i don't remember that feeling back in vietnam i just remember oh yeah our guys are over there and it's sad and we shouldn't be fighting a war but there was no let's support them you know yeah that's right that's right that's right they don't see it as supporting the folks the people i would agree with you there i i agree um and i and i recall when president bush said that you know he said look i you know i'm sorry that you're opposed to the war there's a lot of us that are opposed to war but uh you're not helping the people that are over there by what you're doing and i remember a lot of it kind of stopped after that but not that's true uh giving a [soapbox] to stand on but well i just i i'm glad we've learned i'm sorry we had the experience of vietnam and uh and i'm i'm i'm especially sorry for the people that are you know have spent all these years trying to deal with it emotionally because you know until the past four or five years nobody ever really worried about that for them and and i think that's where we as american people really failed you know failed them so i don't know well do you have anything else you want to say on this i think this is the first time that i haven't been cut off by the computer usually i can talk all day but this is something to me that's sad so well have a good day and i appreciate the conversation bye bye yeah right right yeah i i agree with that i was i was fairly young at the time too i i really don't have very many memories about it at all in fact and uh my husband is a vietnam veteran and you know he in looking at the persian gulf war that just went on he it frustrates him because of the support that they have and the support that the vietnam vets did not have from the people or the administration either one right that's right i mean they weren't there by choice and and right right no i don't think you can and i i agree with you that i i think that the the time difference between the two wars has allowed a lot of people to see the mistakes that were made in in in every aspect of it and i i agree with you also that i feel like it was not worth the money spent or the lives lost to fight that war i mean they're still not settled over there and i have a feeling that the persian gulf crisis is going to be the same way i think we're going to end up back there in a few years or if if not sooner uh_huh i think it would too no yeah i agree with that uh_huh yeah yeah you have to you know you have to give bush a lot of credit for he he said that's what we were going there to do and he did what what he said and he did pull out before it got any further than that where where it would have turned into more of a police action uh or more of a political action i guess you getting into their governmental affairs which you really can't do as as another country i mean my my biggest problem with all of these wars is we spend all of that money on all these other countries and we have so many problems here at home that we don't address that's right and and that's what frustrates me more than anything right i think there's a lot of waste and and they don't if they could just cut out all the fat and and get it lean and start addressing some of the other issues i think we could take care of everything and quit taking care of all these other countries all across the world you know who just end up using things against us later on anyway uh_huh right yeah yeah a lot of good has come from this one and i think i guess in in uh ironic way a lot of good came from the vietnam war toward this war because like we we said earlier that you know the a lot of eyes were opened after years and years of of that war and and right exactly uh_huh yeah no kidding and i just i just hate the emotional price a lot of the vietnam people paid for you know nothing i mean it was they're they still don't know what they were there for no yeah that's true uh_huh right right right the when this war broke out it frustrated me all the [antiwar] people and you know their all the demonstrations that were going on i felt like they got way too much media coverage and publicity because those kind of people i mean you know they're the kind of people who are who've always got to have a cause whether it's good bad of indifferent they've got to have a cause and and i you know nobody says because you're supporting the troops that you're you're supporting the war you have to support the people that are there and for some reason those people don't see that no no they don't and you know they're just real shallow people yeah yeah i mean they're not helping anybody that's the that's the whole point they're not doing anything for anybody except themselves and i don't even know what they're doing for themselves you know yeah yeah that's true yeah uh_huh yeah no i guess not i know we get cut off all the time too yeah it is thanks same here bye bye well i guess it depends on what age i am in the thirty something so i know i mean i lived through it uh are you old enough to know about the war uh_huh okay well yeah you are old enough but it was on the fringe it ended uh when i was in uh college in uh when i turned nineteen in nineteen seventy i cannot even remember at this point uh when i turned nineteen it was the year that uh the draft was still going on if i had been a male or in israel i would have been number two yeah so i learned a lesson in gender uh in terms of the war i do not know uh actually i do not really know that much about it i just know socially the impact it had here and what you hear in the media you know uh i guess i think it was uh uh not that great that we were in there uh in terms of for how long it lasted you know what do you think uh_huh uh_huh right the [devastation] yeah uh_huh yeah and in full [faction] yeah yeah it just kind of dragged on uh i do not know how you were historically but i was a little bit older before i realized just how long it had been going on since l b j and i mean i yeah it really well yeah in fact because in terms of when your there is at least ten years between us so in terms of when you were in school i am sure that it was you know the majority of your high school and junior high years uh one of the things i did not like was the weapons the weapons i can't even say it the weaponry systems that they used uh it just did not seem that uh i do not know technically we knew what we were doing either and then you heard about the things like agent orange et cetera and you would think you know just uh how could the government or the [pentagon] uh or [whomever] is in charge there been so [careless] uh conscious yeah [nutrisweet] yeah and all these other things that is true uh uh monetarily too i just do not think we have done enough for the uh vietnamese people as a whole uh in south vietnam in general in helping them restore themselves you know and i don't know if it is because there are not any oil fields there yeah i mean i do not think they do but i just think it is kind of a shame that uh you still hear things about the children that are [orphans] there and uh so on a whole i do not know war is not good and that one i probably uh my main opinion would be we should not have done it well that is what i know about the vietnam war unless you uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh vietnam jeez yeah uh_huh and that that uh_huh in terms of the personal yeah the [bitterness] is more on a personal level than on a uh_huh the money is after yeah i mean i think it started actually like like in the late fifties i mean like in fifty eight fifty nine so it really i mean because i know in nineteen sixty three i mean i was nine years old when kennedy was shot so i mean i remember uh right around then that's when i first started hearing about vietnam but then as i got older and studied in school i realized it was even going on before that you know and you think to yourself oh my goodness eisenhower that sounds ancient yeah and i know i know you know a lot of the vietnam vets that are my age in their later thirties uh guys that i know that they are just kind of bitter you know they they you know i hate to that movie born on the fourth of july but it is that kind of idea you know they just do not feel that socially they were given like a friend of mine called it the yellow ribbon syndrome yeah they were not given the yeah so well i won't keep you any more that is probably as about as much as we both know but thanks for talking to me uh yes is that where you are at oh i know where that is that is beautiful where you are at d c yeah are you a native of there yeah uh dallas it is uh ninety two degrees here today but at least the humidity is uh below forty percent which makes it kind of like phoenix really well you yeah well you are not missing too much then really well take it easy okay bye bye uh just barely yeah i am uh twenty nine so uh yeah but just uh yeah exactly had some friends that were that were in it really [wowie] uh_huh right uh_huh well i think it is uh basically the same way it is certainly has affected uh u s policy though there is there is no question it had an overwhelming effect of how we approached the the thing in uh iraq because uh the whole thing that was bad about vietnam it was no different from iraq i mean it was uh one country picking on a smaller weaker one yeah the only difference was that the government said okay if we were going to support this smaller country then we are going to support it a hundred percent and we are going to consider ourselves against in war against these people as well which uh right which really was not the attitude with vietnam it was sort of of a president's war rather than a country's war right yeah it seemed to me like it was it seemed like it was going on forever yeah uh_huh yeah right yeah right of course now uh now everyone's more uh you know environmentally uh intelligent than they were back then i mean back then it was not [commonly] known that [saccharin] was bad for you and all these other things that people that people know about themselves now uh_huh yeah i do not know if they uh i do not know if they have that resource or not yeah right yeah yeah well you know a little uh a little bit more than i do explain it i did not uh get to live through it that the people that i know that it did uh felt very strongly most of i work for a government contractor so most of the guys i work with are uh-oh at least some of the guys i work with rather are veterans and uh from vietnam and i have not talked to any of them that that were not you know glad that they went or or rather thought that the reason they went was a good one you know most of them are very strongly that that the reason for america to be there was a good one they just felt that the way america backed them up was not was not at all right yeah in term of uh yeah personal level and and the finances how they started you know like air attacks and stuff like that dropped off like crazy because the congress would not approve you know so yeah huh i i uh_huh yeah yeah right uh_huh right right the [ticker] tape parade and all that okay yes uh were you calling from texas no i am in falls church virginia yeah right in right near d c uh pretty much yep been yeah it is about the same weather here little bit little bit cooler like eighty nine but basically the same thing yeah right okay bye bye uh no uh no my father was uh came in right after world war two i am too young yeah uh yes a couple uh the the one guy i worked with down in austin hated it uh he was a [lineman] down there and while he was there he caught some kind of a strange disease and uh all his hair fell out and he had like a hundred and five fever for a while and and uh i do not think he was in combat so uh_huh uh_huh yeah right yeah but he was in the navy though he was it makes a lot of difference uh_huh huh oh yeah well the armed forces did so much to you know agent orange they did so much to their own people all during that time you know and they they take a even now uh they take a free hand as far as medicine and uh you know how they treat the war casualties you know if you come back and your leg is blown off you know or or it is hanging by a thread they still can't put it back together now but but what they do afterwards and how they rehabilitate you uh_huh yeah oh yeah it's it's about nine or ten percent now uh_huh that's true no uh_huh yeah that is uh_huh well they are probably not doing very well at all because i know there is there is still people even in the dallas area there are there are still people trying to get some member of their family back from uh vietnam uh uh native vietnamese people yeah they were lost you know when they were little and and they never did get back or yeah and uh and as is really a big waste because they didn't they didn't win they didn't [regain] any of the land that they had it [spilled] over into uh now i can't even think of the country but yeah [cambodia] and to [laos] and and all they did is run and hide and they were not really fighting you know it it would have been the same as desert storm if all they had been fighting was north vietnam but and i am not even sure who was involved more whether it was china or russia you know they were pouring they were pouring weapons in there and and [advising] well digging tunnels for them you know and there is no way that they could ever catch them yeah that is right uh_huh yeah yeah all they can do is dig in and they you know and then they try to [camouflage] the top well now even i think even now and in vietnam they could probably have done a better job because they could they could kill all those plants you know which would devastate the country as far as farming from then on but and the and the corps of engineers i think do a better job now like they did in desert storm because they had he he dug a bunch of [moats] and filled them with oil and he set a lot of [booby] traps all along the way as they went and they had to you know they had to blow them up or or disarm them and then they had to fill in little bridges all the way where he where he had made those [moats] uh yeah partially uh_huh yeah part of it is technology yeah because all go ahead yeah i think that is one of the reasons that they have they have pretty much avoided getting involved in south america because look what happened when they were looking for noriega and they lost him for four hours when they were right on top of him you know he probably just went right down into a tunnel yeah that is right uh_huh yeah and they they really need everybody that has that has stood there it's when in vietnam i think it was much closer contact you stand there with a rifle and blow a a piece of somebody apart or blow their head off and that has to affect you if you are human you know so they had to work all that that anger out and the and the nightmares that come along with it i do not i do not really think that anybody can ever forget that but they can they can reason and and try to adjust to to why they were there right uh_huh right yeah and that and that was that was in the in the era when kennedy was president that they were afraid of everything you know and and and they initially got into it because of eisenhower and he just he did not want to be in it any more than than what we started out in august with desert storm and then it just blew up into the war uh_huh french yeah uh_huh right yeah uh_huh yeah right exactly uh_huh yeah more than what was [apocalypse] now yeah i think so yes it was nice talking to you okay bye bye are you a vietnam veteran dudley no do you have family who were in the vietnam war okay so he was too old and you were too young right all right do you know some folks who have been there okay okay how did it influence them uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh what about long lasting effects on him has he still suffering from those problems uh_huh well i have talked with a number of vietnam veterans and i really i had no one directly related to me involved but uh my sister's husband was in vietnam and it it really made a completely different man out of him he went to vietnam one man and came back another not better then uh another friend of mine went and he was in combat but he came back and he said okay that is it that is behind me i am going on with my life much like what roger staubach did he was uh he was a vietnam war veteran and uh yeah that is true right and but uh most of the folks that i have met that were actually on the land or in combat are still still carry a lot of anger they really do and uh i i i i really do not think that we did those young men right i think that uh desert storm shows a lot of learning since that time uh yeah that is true yeah uh_huh uh_huh well you know one of the most troublesome things that i have encountered as a result is the incredible influx of southeast asians into this country since that conflict uh not so much that i say i do not want you here but there is just such a [surge] of southeast asians it has affected the culture of this country uh very much yeah yeah yeah well uh the culture is changing look how much more oriental food we have restaurants now for example uh even ten years ago there were not that many a lot of shops are are operated by southeast asians a lot of people have complained in the schools there is a culture change there the southeast asians seem to be very hungry there seem to be very [studious] and uh tends to cause our kids to really have to [buckle] down to keep up with them which is not bad not really uh but it might in the long run you can see where scholarships for example uh even jobs uh jobs that would normally go to an american with a lesser education might be going to to some of these people here and that is all a result of of of vietnam and and you see a lot of a lot of men that were over there brought families back uh and it concerns me that there is probably a lot of mixed breed youngsters still there and i would be concerned or interested to find out how they are doing now i know that there you are talking about p o w or missing in actions native vietnamese people okay oh i had not that that had not occurred to me that would be an interesting concept [cambodia] uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i think the terrain had a lot to do with the the success of desert storm as opposed to that in vietnam you know there is incredible cover in vietnam and you can't find much cover on in a sand dune that is right uh_huh uh_huh well uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh what world war do you think they found the experience for that don't you think they learned from the mistakes in vietnam part of it is that part of it is technology but when when when you get into trouble like that in a place like vietnam you do tend to analyze the problems that you get into and you say never more and and you overcome those problems and you are prepared next time uh_huh right uh_huh sure sure sure well i know that uh from a personal standpoint people was one of the finest assets that we lost we did not actually physically lose them they did not lose their lives but they lost a whole lot of the life they might have had uh being entirely different people i had dinner monday night with a vietnam veteran who is just now beginning to recover from the drug and alcohol struggle that he had that is a long time to suffer uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah yeah i can't uh oh yeah you bet you bet uh_huh yeah well you see that is what the veterans are so angry about now they say well we're going to listen to this and we are going to look at this find out what our mistakes were and we are not going to make them again but that does not undo the ones that were done and that is what makes the veterans angry and i cannot blame them i do not know a solution but i sure cannot blame them for being angry on the other hand you know you can be angry about something for a very long time or you can say well that is the way it is and go on with your life uh for the most part i wish that it had not happened but it did so that is right oh yeah well it has been that way for a very very long time though i can remember when i was in the sixth grade and that was many years ago we were reading about the french struggling with that in southeast asia so and and and the asians historically have always had these kinds of wars going on there there has not been a lot of peace in that part of the world i really i do not know we should not have maybe gotten involved but if we did we certainly should have supported our people who were there more so supported them when they got home and uh i am afraid that they were treated as [castaways] for the most part and i i saw the movie born on the fourth of july and i think it did a good job [depicting] the temperament of the times uh_huh well dudley have we pretty well discussed the subject well i think so i enjoyed talking to you uh_huh bye bye tell me what you think about the vietnam war uh as i understand it and i uh don't know a lot about it uh we got in there because of france uh france was there first they had sure jerry what did you think of people like uh jane fonda another war anti war [activist] right or wrong uh_huh uh you know i i didn't realize that we'd signed some type of deal like that i thought we came in as first advisors to the french and then they decided to pull out and sure sure wonder what happens to this little [beastie] on call waiting or something huh fascinating well that's not that's okay um no i had thought that they had uh colonies there or something right uh_huh yeah i'm thirty two so uh i well i missed it seventy four is when they quit sending troops yeah i was just probably three or four years okay well i'm a vietnam era veteran and uh i was uh fortunate not to have to serve in the theater however my support roll in the service was to support those in the theater of operation uh i'm of the old school that believes that uh the uh uh contracts that we made back years ago needed to be honored however uh i think we could have executed the war and gotten it over a whole lot quicker uh but those are my personal thoughts and i think that if we'd let the generals run the war like we let the generals run world war two we'd had got it over a whole lot quicker and lost a lot fewer people but as it was the politicians ran the the korean conflict and ultimately the vietnam thing and we managed to come out uh losers all the way around and so this is what ultimately [triggered] us uh united states uh per se being uh deciding to get out of the role of world policeman your views well we got into it because of [seato] agreement back just right after world war two that uh we [pledged] a mutual uh uh defense of of the south vietnamese and as it turned out they were in a civil war one with another and really we i i question us you know now of course [hindsight] is all too clear uh so we're we we have to have to deal with with the uh situation as as we played it i don't get me started on those people you know before she before jane fonda did did what she did i thought she was a wonderful person but after uh uh well i i just don't have anything want anything to do with her any more because you support uh you support your government uh okay right or wrong i don't think is is we can determine whether we were right or wrong because you're you're having to deal with again uh i think we could have made a different agreement back in the the late forties era that would have kept of there can you hold just a second terry one moment please sorry for the delay uh yeah this is the uh the the uh mutual defense thing was uh we we it was complicated and i don't think everybody knows the whole situation i don't but from what i can gather is we went and said yeah we will help the south vietnamese uh should they ask well the french went in and tried their old style warfare and uh got [soundly] [thrashed] and we didn't do a whole lot better well yeah that was the old french colony but see the french the french were our uh allies in [nato] and they're also our allies in [seato] which was the southeast asia [treaty] organization which has since been uh [disbanded] as far as i know you know [nato] is is on the way of being [disbanded] uh but uh the you know the french yeah we go in as an [ally] to the french and says yeah we'll we'll help you out if you get in a bind well they got in a bind and says we don't want to you know play any more so uh we we kind of we kind of got got the ball rolling ourselves versus a bunch of top secret silly uh um oh operations and then the full scale you know full scale troops et cetera et cetera et cetera uh yeah yeah roughly how do you feel about the viet nam war uh_huh yeah i saw that as well uh_huh uh_huh well were you ever in viet nam or um i was much too young i was born in sixty seven so um you know both my well both my brothers were um draft age but neither of them wound up going over which i think they were very happy for uh_huh yeah uh_huh well um so well do you do you feel that it was worth what we did over there okay um do you think i mean do you think our the investment in lives and money was worth it i totally agree with that um what what effects do you think it's had on our country uh_huh uh_huh i think you know that's pretty typical that of the entire entire involvement over that you know that nothing was really addressed it it wasn't you know it was never we we announced that we were going to war it was such a [gradual] and subtle you know um you know [increasement] of of force that i vaguely remember we um we had a we had a um spy ship [torpedoed] or something oh uh_huh um so um do do do you think that like uh um for example like in in this past war in the persian gulf war that uh that you see it seemed to me that that bush was going going to extraordinary lengths to um you know prepare the country for war yeah okay uh i wasn't really keeping count but i guess good bye bye huh well um you know i guess it's pretty deep feelings uh i just uh went back and rented uh the movie what is it good morning viet nam and uh got that uh uh some insight there to to kind of help me put together the feelings i really appreciated the the whole uh english class where the uh the uh fellow just wouldn't do it you know the guy's [gouging] [gouging] your eyes out what are you going to do you know what for him to finish me off and uh it it was uh good to remember the uh that that kind of asian philosophy that uh no no i was kind of an in between uh finally drew a high draft number and you oh well i personally uh you know uh i just went in [limbo] i had a [passport] and was ready to go or um out of the country or join special forces either one i mean i just didn't know so uh um yeah just a second okay sure now well mark um what was that again no not not really um [downside] um uh well the says we should uh go into the grief that that's there and you know presidents have always avoided that as a country so it's pretty serious really you know lot of things that aren't being addressed yeah gulf of [tonkin] uh resolution and was it a dolphin or a [torpedo] you remember that yeah yeah only only it was foggy and finally president johnson said well they're weren't really sure whether it was a dolphin or a [torpedo] isn't that something uh_huh hey mark i've got to go um we'll see you i guess our five minutes are up according to me are they to you yeah okay bye bye uh i'm of the age that could have gone although i didn't and uh i guess uh looking back on it i tend to think it was pretty uh mostly a mistake on the other hand uh the more i learn about the history the more i see it was [incremental] uh decisions any one of which was sort of understandable at the time and uh but on the whole i think it uh probably was the wrong thing to do how about you uh_huh yeah right yeah yeah yeah it's funny tonight i was uh helping my kid with an [essay] on uh stalin and i was thinking in the course of talking to him about it how uh in world war two the [personalties] of stalin hitler and churchill more or less defined the war and actually when you think back on the big events of the war it was uh it was almost a personal struggle among these three uh i guess you'd have to call them great men in some sense uh they're certainly all leaders and uh and uh with their nations pretty pretty [solidly] behind each one of them and i got a feeling that some of that was involved in the uh early decisions of the vietnam war that the uh people saw the cold war as uh you had to draw a line and and defend it otherwise there'd be they'd get you someplace else looking back it seems like that was only partly true that uh there might have been a better place to draw the line uh i guess you can i guess you can say that a a certain amount of resolve and willingness to fight uh brought the cold war to an end but i don't think you can just fight anywhere just just in order to uh call the bully out and beat him and i have a feeling that that's part of what was involved in the vietnamese war they felt like this was a place where we could draw a line beat them and they wouldn't come forward and uh we were wrong but i uh you know the like i said the more i hear about it the more i can see each decision that was made as being understandable but the [accumulative] effect was to really get into a a hopeless situation where and as you say uh going halfway was probably worse than uh committing uh committing to a completely and uh winning it whatever that would mean yeah yeah yeah well you're not it's ambivalent yeah what what about the domestic effects like i was thinking that maybe the most important effect it had was to make it uh possible and even popular to uh criticize the government and they that pendulum started to swing uh maybe even too far to the point where uh uh supporting a government decision in foreign policy was sort of optional from the vietnam war on and that tradition is still i mean it's dying now but it's still alive as opposed to this desert storm stuff may have uh killed it but i think that was one of the biggest that you know the uh the domestic unrest uh_huh uh_huh well i'm uh i i was just uh in high school i guess when it when it ended ended up being i was in the last last lottery and i was glad it was over by then i've never really totally understood what our purpose was over there just because you know we didn't really do anything when we went over it seems like you know we uh those people that i know i work with several that were over there and for some of them it was just kind of i don't know not so much a holiday i guess that's how they tend to talk about it but that they just kind of lived out in the woods and ever now and then they'd go and shoot their rifles and then they'd come back and you know but that they weren't really allowed to do anything i uh to me it seems like we only went halfway if even halfway uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah well i i i think we did i think we did learn some lessons that we weren't uh we weren't prepared for i guess the best word would be the atrocities of war uh i mean the other wars seemed like a [valiant] war i mean they seemed like a [valiant] thing you knew you knew who was good you knew who was bad and it was a it was a traditional the traditional battle of kind of good versus evil if you you know whichever way it is but in in the vietnam war it seems like it was a a the sides and the lines that were drawn are all confused as to whose good and whose bad and and uh you know the even it seems like even the people you know had the south vietnamese the north vietnamese and of course the [laotians] and the [cambodians] weren't even supposed to be involved but yeah yeah yeah i think that's what's called a [moot] question yeah the the i think that had we had the war or had we not had the war we'd a had a lot similar uh effect upon the population in terms of uh the freedom era as it were i think what we saw was a phenomenon of a large number of young people at one time that were of the age of decision without the maturity to handle it me among them and uh you know richard [nixon] is my hero because he kept me out of that place and my number was six and i was going yeah yeah yeah forget that you're not going well i quit college when uh they when they moved out went into construction took me seventeen years to finish my degree was it worthwhile from whose point of view well i think one of the the major points that a lot of people including myself missed until recently is the fact that we could have [annihilated] the north had we won it well even even at even at the not on the you know the gross [tactical] but on the on the very minute [tactical] arena you know they were sending out you know eight or nine guys to [engage] a company you know and they'd get wiped out and you wonder why you know and at every turn the [tacticians] were denied access to information which is a biggie and uh components you know whatever it took to do the job by the politicians why because somebody was getting rich i found that everywhere you look if you find the money you'll find out why and dow chemical had a real good thing going you know dow chemical had a photographer at every demonstration yes and if your picture was in that demonstration you didn't get hired by dow chemical yeah and uh [dupont] was was uh doing a lot of that too yeah well it was a big part of their market you know and we they have no moral conscience and that goes into and it and it's all tied together too i kind of believe that the vietnam event i'm not going to call it a war or a police action it was an event that the main push for that was outside the united states our involvement for one thing we were on the wrong side you know we were side of the fascist dictator and you know ho chi [minh] if you've read any of his [writings] he was a democrat you know he wanted democracy the vietnam war yeah i am forty one so was well i uh was in college when the war escalated to it's height and uh i guess my feeling is consistent with that of uh the general public that it was an unfortunate event uh it's real interesting to uh think about it in the context of this new movie j f k which is apparently [linking] the kennedy assassination to his decision to uh uh that apparently the people who worked for kennedy say he did decide that he was going to pull out of vietnam he was not going to commit more troops that that had nothing to do with the assassination people say but they that he had come to that conclusion i think it was uh particularly in light of recent events a really unfortunate mistake communism was self [destructing] even then and uh the history of vietnam which has been uh represented in a number of different commentaries and documentaries one on the public broadcasting system uh it seems that it just didn't have to happen and i think its a valuable uh if painful lesson for this country right at the time i wasn't that uh wasn't that sure i i really didn't know enough about it and wasn't that politically active uh but it was uh apparently something that could have been avoided and i you know i think i look at wars generally as falling into that category uh people are beginning to wonder whether or not the uh gulf war could have been avoided even though that was a remarkably painless war as wars go right third world country really well i think what what's uh i i guess i would use the word relevant to the vietnam war the question is that the vietnam war was apparently [avoidable] too it was a time when ho chi [minh] apparently came to the united states and said look if you are willing to provide me with support all i want to do is [unify] vietnam and uh he was turned away by truman uh so it's uh a painful lesson i guess one that we are beginning to learn i'm really impressed by how much effects some of these movies have had on public consciousness the j f k movie is causing one person after another to uh call for the release of the documents that have been sealed did you see any of the vietnam wars uh any of the vietnam war movies oh the deer hunter yeah those two yeah yeah they were they yeah well they were both remarkable films as a matter of fact there is a new film out about the vietnam war about the making of [apocolypse] now which its self is suppose to be great yeah have you is it good that's what people say i am really looking forward to seeing it his wife apparently made it from documentary oh is that on the film could that be captured on film right right right hello hello this is [lois] and uh i called you know from that the the t i data base calling instructions yeah this is about changes in the women in the uh there's really a lot isn't there i think there really is oh i guess the work force would be the main wouldn't it okay all right are you ready now okay like i said i guess it would be the work force you know as far as changes in the generations uh no i think now you go to work when they're six weeks old you know and you stay there and i feel like the next generation you'll probably just work right along with your husband you know oh i do to much and it's just going to get better it really is oh i can't either not a one uh_huh yeah even in washington you know there seems to be a lot more women involved yeah yeah oh i do too just your qualifications and that would be it yeah i kind of think maybe in time that you know you'll go by social security numbers you know and that way they can't say well they picked a male over a female female over a male you know yeah yeah i do to just go by your social security number and then look at you qualifications that you know that you have and then if you get it you know then uh_huh oh yeah as a matter of fact that's what i'm doing uh_huh it sure is it sure is oh yeah yeah that is uh_huh oh i do i really do i think it's great uh well like one week she'll work three days and i'll work two and the next week you know i'll work three and she'll work two and we just share off like that uh_huh yeah we get the full benefits but we've just really got a wonderful system that we're working under yeah it really is and that way we're not really missing any thing out you know of children uh_huh oh it is it is well both of ours is school age but we don't want to miss any of those p t a and you know all of that uh_huh i think it's great i really and i look for more of that in the next generation yes oh i do too most of the time now you know it's just the weekend or just forget it uh_huh to do yeah uh_huh well i think we've really come a long way in that because uh_huh yeah but i can remember back growing up my mother i mean it was she always worked but it wasn't that easy for her to just take off oh yeah oh i do too yes yes they really are i know i know the feeling okay i sure will bye bye hello hi hi hi this is lisa uh_huh yeah i got a call yesterday too this is a different subject though uh_huh yeah it's kind of an easy thing to talk about yeah uh i think you have to push one and then we can start recording it okay yes yes i know because i know when my mother was a you know going into the work force there wasn't very many opportunities for her i guess she's in her late forties you were expected to stay home and take care of the kids and i've never faced that at all uh_huh yeah uh_huh i think it's definitely gotten better uh_huh because women are in every field now i mean i can't think of a field that they're not involved in and i know at least in the medical field it seems like they've come out with a lot further advances as far as female medications and things since women have gotten into the doctor field i don't think that men really took the time to work on that sort of thing yeah hopefully the next generation it won't even be an issue i mean people will just look at you as a person and not as a man or a woman i think that would be the best goal uh_huh exactly not what color you are how old you are what your male or female that would be wonderful i guess it's kind of an ideal world though huh yeah exactly or the way you look or the way you you know your age or anything i think that would be a wonderful way to do it uh_huh and then uh_huh also with uh women in the work force they've gotten a lot more options as far as you know what's it called job sharing like if you and another lady were to share the same full time job or is it that would be great or a lot of women i know now and my uh one of my supervisors when she went on l o a to have her baby we hooked up uh uh a terminal at her house and she you know we could send her messages and and she kept in touch like that and basically just worked out of her house i would just take her the actual paperwork once uh every week or two and that worked out great too and that's a real attractive option if you have the the technology for it all it was was you know i mean she just used a phone modem and she was like she was sitting in the office so i think that's real nice too to come up with different options do you like the job sharing do you do you work like half days or half weeks or oh oh that's great uh_huh do you get the full benefits oh that's wonderful yeah especially with children and so many things going on that would be great either way yeah you have your career and your home life and that would be a nice way especially if you have young children uh_huh oh no i think yeah my son's just in day care but even that they have extracurricular activities and the older they get the more that you're involved in that yeah i do too especially as women get up in management and and can be in on those decision making you know when that subject comes up they can say yes that would be wonderful plus i bet it cuts cuts down on your [absenteeism] because you've got two days off that you can do everything so you don't have to you know unless you're just really sick or the child's sick uh_huh oh yeah i have to plan way in advance because or what i've done is found like doctors' and [dentists'] office with extended hours that's been real helpful too like my doctor stays open til nine in the evening so that's real helpful so you don't you know have to do it during office hours run out on your lunch hour i don't know how many times i've done that to do something post office or the bank or any kind of [errand] so uh_huh i guess i take it for granted kind of because i just it's always been that way but i know oh no i can remember my mother getting in trouble if you know one of was sick and i know she probably didn't make hardly anything you know compared to the work that she did i think there is still some discrimination there where as you know men and women work in the same job i think men get paid more but i think that's improving it's such a slow process it's frustrating but you can see that it's wrong and you just want to make it right but at least the wheels are moving forward yeah i think it's getting better not worse well i should probably get back to my job call again okay bye bye the uh uh you know there are so many ramifications to this entire thing of woman how women have changed uh look at them in england margaret thatcher was prime minister uh [indira] [ghandi] uh in india so many uh women are heads of state and i you know we we keep saying oh yes we feel some day a woman will be president but uh i have some question whether or not they will ever really get around to that i think we'll have a black president before we have a women president and uh i don't know whether that's bad or good it's just a point that i have observed that we yes right uh-oh uh-oh i think we're we're supposed to hang up yes all right thank you bye bye back by that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i i yeah i i i truly believe that that before that that we have to address the racial racial issues in the united states before we can go anywhere um because it is so you know it's a friend of mine traveled to [balise] and into honduras hello yeah well it wasn't the matter of wealth it was the matter that they were not wealthy that made them equal well i'll talk to you later okay bye bye you want to start uh_huh yeah uh_huh i agree uh the equality of uh the roles now between the sexes i guess has been dramatically demonstrated with this war especially compared with uh the vietnam war and you see women going off to wars as well as men uh i have wondered why they allowed or let you know both the father and mother go uh and the children are left without either parent now to me that's kind of a drawback but uh i guess it's a price you pay and i also wonder about the children that are being brought up in the uh uh day care centers well uh from what i understand there's been studies that uh these children are uh more [rebellious] uh they term it as more uh creative but uh that they uh are much more [contentious] so i i don't i i guess we'll have to see another generation to see what differences a child being brought up you know in a uh kind of a uh community rather than a home yeah uh_huh so they yeah uh_huh uh_huh what do you mean oh yeah yeah that's strange a nanny sort of uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's right that's right uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh to come in and live with them to come in and live with them uh_huh yeah right uh_huh and then you might have more control over uh the the morals that they would be taught rather than in like a classroom or a day care center i know the day care centers are not cheap either you know they're uh well no i just know i know several single mothers who absolutely can't afford it they have to go with the a single uh i mean a baby sitter more more or less but i think it's like about sixty dollars a week for two children if i'm not mistaken and you have to pay that whether you're on vacation you know and taking care of the children or if the children are at home at home sick i mean that is you know just a a rate that you have to pay and uh uh i think i really don't have a vision yeah i i i think that they will be more in the work place because uh the [door's] open and uh it's just human nature to walk through an open door so and i would be glad to see that i hope i don't see a lot more single moms but it seems in my experience i'm running across single women all the time yeah yeah yeah it's awful yeah uh_huh right well i think we've done it thank you very much it's been interesting okay bye well i guess i would first identify myself as middle aged and therefore having seen the last generation i guess it puts me in you know gives me a perspective on that uh i am quite positive on the things that i have seen happen recently relative to women in both in society and in the work place uh there's no doubt about the fact that when i was first graduated from college the impression was that a woman's career would [consist] of a [childbearing] years and perhaps a return to the office but not necessarily uh now i think the change that i've seen as much as anything is one where couples uh are more carefully planning their intention on how to both share homemaking duties and also how women will uh have their children and then deliberately sort of plan how they go back to the work place and i guess that's a significant change that i've both participated in and noticed uh_huh wonder about them in what way uh_huh uh_huh i have not to be honest had much experience with children in that situation i i guess one knows one's own [storly] and i know uh in my children's case it was one where uh pretty much up until the older of two was in uh let's see i guess basically starting junior high and the younger was in fifth grade when my wife [reentered] the work force uh so i guess my experience is is just with what we did and and so they didn't really go through the child care route they were able to be home together uh and we never actually experienced that what in terms of changes relative to women in the work place and the potential changes over the the next generation or so i guess i anticipate uh an increasing equality uh greater presence of women in management roles uh i don't know whether there will be an increased amount of of [surrogacy] that we see i just don't know uh deliberate [childbirth] by surrogate mother sort of rent a mom to be you know not to be crass about it but uh uh whether one might conceive no pun intended of the possibility that there might be a kind of a deliberate uh uh a professional mother person for instance that and i could you know i could envision a society where that would happen and make an interesting uh uh story or whatever i i don't think i have a philosophical problem with that in fact i think it sort of raises [nurturing] and being a mother to what it ought to be which is a respected profession uh i i don't have a other than than a reading and and male perspective on on the on the biological [urges] involved relative to being a mother or not uh i know that that my sense is that i have very much an interest and had one in being a parent i i don't know that i uh felt myself necessarily [encumbered] with the necessity to have [heirs] uh i don't have boys that doesn't didn't bother me never has vision more women deliberately raising children either in [surrogacy] or or as a professional nanny nanny as you put it uh maybe we'll see a growth in that where someone makes a career out of say taking care of five or six children as opposed to day care it would be a sort of day care but it would be more of a family setting uh i know that there are young people [characterized] i guess as being half my age so that by definition that means they're young uh that in my work place who are both of them earning rather decent professional salaries who probably would consider paying a woman uh eight or nine or ten thousand dollars a year to take care of their child i could easily envision that pardon or to put their child into a into a home setting where they would you know like they they would get leave at eight in the morning and and drop a two year old off in a home where you knew there were going to be four other kids and and you were paying for really high quality care uh i have [acquaintances] of mine where i know that they are paying figures on on the order of what i quoted to someone because that's what the experience they want and i would imagine if there are more of people like that with an opportunity that that's a possibility of a change that we could see in the next few years uh_huh uh_huh i haven't ever really looked at them are you aware at all of of what they would what they cost uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh what what do you envision for the next twenty years as far as women in american society that's okay too uh_huh i'm i'm noticing that too and and i notice the the a [terming] [emerging] called solo parents that i'm very aware of the number of solo mothers that that i [encounter] in the work place and that that is a little troublesome uh because the pressures on them are are rather rather [formidable] uh and maybe that's a change we'll see maybe uh the possibility of of women uh who deliberately say no we'll let the man will take care of the children perhaps in the event of a separation or whatever so well i think we're about done okay uh good bye you take care bye i suppose i do because i've seen a lot of those changes the changes that women have had in the last well you know not even the last generation the last fifteen years twenty years going from well take it back thirty years i'm going back too far from my parents' generation when mom stayed home period and there was no such thing as a job or any hope of a job well unless if you were educated you got you know you might teach for a year or two before you got married and if you really pushed it you taught until you had kids or something you know if you had if you were a teacher then you know that was it until the kids were little yes there was not there's not supposed to be any reason to use this education or this brain that you might have for anything other than your house and your children and how clean can the bathroom floors be on any given day and then and then of course today it's supposed to be all the other way you're supposed to only want the job and and uh your kids should be totally happy in day care because everybody else goes to day care and and we have these wonderful people who are who are totally prepared to to teach your child everything they need to know in day care and we'll see how the generations go yeah i at least for a lot of women depending on on what she did i've i was an engineer with uh mechanical engineer with t i and uh i did it for six years and for one well i had one while i was pregnant and then one while my oldest was a year old and and it just drove me crazy i could not do either well i couldn't put in enough overtime that was or that you know things that would come up at work that would require me to stay late or to come in early or to do something on saturdays as is you know as is needed because my husband for a long time was out of the country also with uh with work for like three months and yeah yeah might have been better yeah yeah and so it was in my case i just uh decided that as long as my kids were little i would be better off at home with them instead of driving myself crazy trying to do everything at once well actually i've found out that i'm not going to go back to being an engineer i'm i'm i'm a photographer now i have i have [branched] out i was a photographer before but when i went to college it was i felt like i couldn't support myself if i decided to be a photographer that it would just have to be a hobby and i'm very mechanical and mechanical engineering interested me so i did that and then i you know i did that for six years and then i stayed home with my son and did nothing and found out that i was that you know it was great but i was bored part of the time too and i wanted something else to do yeah it's it's great while they're really little but as they get older and they're more independent and there's things to do then it's good for them to go to different i mean it he goes to a a mother's day out program now once a week both of my kids do and so they're getting they get the socialization with other kids and you know and not really school but but a different authority than mom once in a while you know kind of learning how to deal with society yeah i think they do too and i need it for the break uh_huh and enjoy it that's that's the whole thing yeah i think that's the thing that were going to see well i think the biggest thing we're going to see coming up in the next ten year even in the even now they're starting to do it but i think it's going to be more in the next ten to fifteen years is that there's going to be a lot of women and they're going to have to work it out to working part time because if if i had been allowed to work you know maybe thirty hours a week instead of fifty hours a week i might still be working basically full time or part time if there was if there had been some way to work it out because i liked my job really well but i was just pulled in so many different directions i was it was just driving me crazy and now with the photography that's you know it's working that's what i'm doing is working part time because i can put my kids in a day care situation for a few hours in the uh week and use those hours to do the thing that i'm doing is taking school pictures in day cares and in mother's day out programs and also soccer teams and you know different stuff like that so my kids can be in day care for a few hours a week or my husband if it's you know uh when he's at home can take care of them i think they're really going to have to and not and not just for mothers for fathers as well it's going to have to be both yeah it's just convincing your husband that that's important or that it's important enough for him to do it because if he saw mom doing only that you know all the time he was growing up then it's hard to think of it in that other uh that i should do it or just to think about doing it rather than having someone tell him to do it i know that was a big thing in our house for a long time was that if i wanted my husband to do something to help and even though we were both working the same number of hours and and doing things i had to come in there specifically and say this needs to be done this is what you do it now yes and yeah and without and and it's just they don't look at things most of the men don't walk into the kitchen and see that the dishes are there and that yes you probably ought to unload the dishwasher and load the new ones in and run it they just you know just [scoot] it on another spot on the sink and put the next plate down and in a while get around to it and i think most women walk in and and and with oh got to clean all this up got to get this out and this in and this you know taken care of instead of having someone say now this needs to be this is the time this needs to be done but that's right uh_huh yeah uh_huh and i think that's that's going to show up a lot more now in the in the next generation of of boys and girls it's not they're not going to the boys in this next generation are not going to have to be told as much this needs to be done because mom was there saying that dad is there you know you both got to they were both working at whatever things were needed to be done they're going to say to the kids you need do this because it needs to be done not because it's a woman's job or a man's job but because it's dirty and it needs to be clean and it's going to it's going to yeah some kids are really having it if they'd been in day care the entire time and it wasn't yeah the ones that are now getting to be teenagers and in some cases young college yeah yeah yeah yeah i think that was one of the main reasons that i quit was because i wanted my kids to have my values and i felt like when they were young that was the time to instill it that it could be it could be added to and [strengthened] as they grew older but when they were little you know this is the way i feel about this and this is the way because i it's that you know when you when you if you if you teach them when they're little the way you want them to be and the things that are important to you then you just you add onto it as they get older but if no one does anything when they're little then it's twice as hard as i think as they get older yes i understand i wait until i put mine in bed before i make my calls that's the thing if woman's role like we said if women's roles change drastically men's roles will too and a lot of it's for the better some of the some of the women's roles i think are almost for the worse because we're losing out on some things going back to work but i think if we can if we can expand the men's roles at the same time like your taking care of your child and your dad probably didn't very often i know mine almost never did so well you're you you take this subject much more personally than i do i suppose uh_huh yeah yeah yeah yeah you you weren't supposed to want a job yeah yeah uh_huh yeah but but uh a really good day care is probably going to cost more than you're going to make at the job yeah did you uh_huh oh yeah so it was you and the kid and your work schedule is well that's the thing see you know maybe if you get along for example if you'd been a technician instead of an engineer you know the technicians work the eight to five job and know when they're going to be there but if you're going to be more professional oriented then you've got to have this to be able to perform well on the job you've got to have the flexibility that doesn't really go with the family uh_huh so you figure one of these days you're going to go back to being an engineer is that what you're saying what will you oh okay you've found something else yeah yeah yeah i mean you figure there's got to be more to life than sitting here playing with this child uh_huh and and they need that you know to be able to relate to other people besides the same person every day yeah well that's the other thing you know they talk about women leaving the home and going out to work well still taking care of the children is a very important job and and someone's got to do it and be able to do it right and and if it's not mom then then dad or somebody's got to move in there and do the job because the kids really need it uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah yeah yeah uh_huh yeah so jobs have to i guess become more flexible yeah well so so that's another thing that has to adapt is you know the the father's attitudes about you know who whose job is this well it it's his job too and i to me the only important issue is the children because as far as housework goes you know men can do housework just as easily as women and thanks to a lot of new [inventions] housework doesn't take as much time as it used to so uh yeah yeah just yeah con yeah well uh_huh yeah and you you you yeah you talk yeah yeah uh_huh yeah and a man might say out loud well you know i understand this and i agree but still he was raised with a mom taking care of him and that's a very hard attitude to change uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh and a lot of that is is how it was drilled into you when you were a kid which brings us back to the idea you know someone's got to be there taking care of the kids to drill in these you know drill in the right ideas to so that they know that uh you know male and female are both responsible for doing this and uh uh_huh yeah um uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah but i think in between we got a group of kids a generation of kids who didn't learn to take responsibility because mom left to go get a job and dad didn't move in to fill the gap and so basically no one was taking the responsibility and i think that's happened in a lot of cases uh_huh un you know some time day care is really good but sometimes it's just it's baby sitting it's someone you know keeping an eye on the kids but the kids are basically doing what they want and not really having any relationship with the adults to say you know here's what's right and here's what wrong and here's what we expect of you yeah uh_huh yes i'm saying this as i'm trying to keep my nine month old from [trashing] something yeah well she's usually in bed by this time but she's staying up late tonight but yeah i want to have a relationship with her you know my dad was a very traditional dad and when i was a child i didn't really know my dad very well and i miss that and i want yeah but men have to be convinced of that no okay oh i think i think that a woman's role has come a long way we have gone more into the business aspect of like i say of i don't know working more and we i think we've even gone into more the labor aspect of it also with the pay and everything you know yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh and a lot of times you can't yeah uh_huh yeah my mom she's a housewife and well there is twelve kids in my family so my mom never could really work you know because she was kind of pregnant from day one she never really had a chance to work she worked before she got married but uh she uh she doesn't believe in she's very old fashioned she doesn't believe in the woman working unless she has to yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh yeah and also like my mom my mom thinks i mean she's kind of right with it when both partners of the marriage work she feels that that's taking more away that's increasing more unemployment for people that need to work you know like for for the men that don't have jobs if you know she feels if there is women out there just because they want to do it she said you know they could stay at home yeah yeah uh_huh yeah what do you think about that do you think that uh what do you think about the women that are not having families because they want to continue their business uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh or they won't be as good as they could be uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh exactly uh_huh uh_huh oh my bless you uh_huh uh_huh yeah i i agree uh_huh and they just enjoyed the income the extra uh_huh uh_huh exactly oh i know uh_huh uh_huh exactly uh_huh see yeah see now my parents there is no way they could afford to send twelve kids to college and so far there is only two of us that have gone and my older brother has paid his entire way and i'm on my i have six weeks left and i'll you know i'll graduate and i paid my entire way and that's the way it'll go down the line and like i don't have a car because i'm paying for college and if i want a car my parents always said if we wanted a car we paid for the car and we paid for our own insurance and i think that's right because uh_huh yeah uh_huh like i've had my you know like i know kids up here that have their own cars and money is just given to them like they still get their allowance they are twenty years old and they still get an allowance well i have held a summer job you know since i you know i was in the eleventh grade and i have had to take care of my own money i have my own checking account i pay for my own life insurance and i know a lot of kids that don't even know i mean i tell them i pay for my own life insurance and their mouths just drop to the floor you know well if they do they don't know it you know uh_huh oh i know uh_huh uh_huh uh actually i think abortion is going to take a turn where there is not going to be as many because i think contraceptives are going to be more popular i mean i realize that they are popular now but i think i really think people are going to start using more contraceptives and with the abortion i don't think there is going to be as many [abortions] but i don't know what women will do when they get into politics you know about abortion i think it will be freedom of choice uh_huh exactly yeah uh_huh yeah i think if a woman would get into politics or enough women get into politics i think it will definitely be freedom of choice uh_huh i i do i'm catholic and we we are not supposed to you know say that that's okay but i really feel that it's freedom of choice i do uh_huh and different circumstances call for different things if you want to go first go ahead yeah definitely i feel that uh we've missed as far as the top jobs go you know the higher [echelon] because if you look at most corporations there isn't a woman you know that's on the board of directors or that type of thing they are mostly all men there may be a few but very [incidental] and i really think that it will be a long time probably before we see that in one sense i'm an older person in my fifties so i feel that we've lost some things in the sense that women have to work today you know that they are not in the home by choice anymore it's mostly you know even if you want to say home you really can't you know it's gotten to be a two income family to just survive today between taxes and the cost of living and i don't think raises have kept up with you know a lot of the stuff you know as far as your medical insurance and just groceries and gasoline and all you know so i think that we did come a long way in the sense that we are allowed to vote in you know like you say we're out in the labor force but i think we've lost something too yeah that's what i mean and you know there's a lot of truth to that if you are not going to have a family then that's fine then you know a career is a smart choice and i think it's great but if you you have a family i think you owe the family a responsibility and to have children and just get a day care or someone to take care of it and not really have the bonding process that takes place with babies and stuff you know i i think that the mother and the child lose and i think that's why there is so many problems you know with kids today because they don't have the family roots anymore you know i'm not saying that that it's totally gone but it's nothing like what it used to be you know in that sense oh definitely that's right they don't want to take care of the kids and the house and that kind of thing that's very true but then they shouldn't have a family that's what i'm saying you know i think it's great that women have a choice today that there are ways to prevent families you know like basically there's contraceptives and all kinds of ways to prevent [pregnancies] there is no need to have children if you don't want them that's fine that's that's the freedom of choice and i agree with that because anyone who has children that doesn't really want them isn't going to be a good parent well i shouldn't say they are not going to be a good parent they won't be a caring parent like they won't have that right that's what i mean they'll feel like it's a job it's not like something that they really wanted like i had three children and i mean i i wanted every one of them i'm not sorry i had any of them and i worked third shift for a good part of my life just so i would be home with them you know i had to work but i tried to make it as painless as possible in fact at one time i worked as a second shift and one saturday morning we were all sitting at the breakfast table and the kids were talking daddy this daddy that daddy this daddy that and i was sitting there it was like i didn't belong anymore and it was because i had worked for about nine months and when they were coming home i was going to work and i wasn't there at supper time or bed time or they couldn't tell me what went on at school because they would be coming in the door i would be going out so we were i felt i was losing my family and that's why i said that's it i either have to quit or you know try something else so i went on third shift and i worked that shift for eleven years yeah just so that my kids would have me at home you know and i feel that's very important it really is and it's too bad because mothers miss out on so much too so i mean in the sense that we've come a long way yes but we've sacrificed a lot to get there and uh i really think that if uh like after the second world war when women went to work in factories and all that that was like out of necessity because the men weren't here anymore but then it got to be a point where they got some independence exactly a man can afford the necessities a woman affords the luxuries and i notice today kids you know like we had apartments before we had homes and we had to walk before we had a car and now kids at sixteen years old they have their birthday what do they get they get a car and to me it's like we've lost our values in this country we really have and i i'm not trying to be uh you know a [prude] or old fashioned or anything but i i don't think if you unless you earn something and you've worked for it and you have a sense of pride about it because while i did this in you know no one gave it to me you will take better care of that and you will prize that possession more than someone [handing] something to you and it's just like college too i think that if a kid goes to college and you can help them fine but i don't think you should pay the whole way of course sure but i'll bet your values are a lot higher you know and your self esteem and the the way you uh you know think about things is probably a lot more common sense than these kids that don't have that responsibility sure they probably don't even have any yeah exactly and that's what i say you'll you'll be so much better off for it as you get older because you know a lot of kids resent things that parents tell them and stuff but it's because you've been there and no one can tell anyone anything you know you are going to find out for yourself but i mean i don't think you should just not listen to advice even if you don't take it just listen you know there is no harm in that whereas sometimes you can't even get that from a kid you know just attention you know but really uh what do you feel the changes in the future like with the [abortions] and that type of thing women in politics and president someday maybe yeah yeah well i still think people have a choice you know if you can live with it and it's you know your conscience is clear then i mean all of us are going to answer to it one day maybe or maybe not i don't know i mean no one has said for sure you know but yes yes which i mean i think it should be anyway yeah because i mean you as an individual what you do that to me is your business and uh exactly exactly that's well i wondered if i was going to get to talk to a male or a female on this type i was afraid we might get into an argument well uh i guess uh there have been certainly a lot of changes in the last couple of generations for uh the roles of women and uh i guess the most significant probably is that so many are working now and trying to juggle job and home and family and all sorts of other possibilities you know they may be going to school or may have elderly parents or you know all sorts of other things oh i think so absolutely i i i think it's extremely difficult to keep up with all that we have to these days sometimes i think i am going crazy trying to do it but yes uh yes they are getting older now so they are not quite as much of a responsibility but they are still there you know they still take time and and i you know i still provide most of the things that go on around the house so uh yeah and for a while i was going to school too and it was tough uh_huh uh_huh but in some ways i think we are expected to do it all you're almost looked down upon if you don't try to do all of these things and that's where the problem is really uh_huh uh_huh yeah right yeah yeah it's a tough one i mean i've done some of both i when my kids were real little i was at home for a couple of different periods of time oh i think the longest was less than a year but still at least i was able to to spend you know those first months with them but uh i mostly went back to work because i was tired of doing without things you know the money was the issue but uh even now i would i would like to not have to work in some ways it it's kind of pull and tug on the other hand i can't imagine just being at home uh although i have a lot of interests and a lot of things i would like to pursue uh still uh there's there's sort of a feeling of accomplishment with having you know a job and all that goes with that oh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah that's a good deal where do you think this is going in the future i mean do you think things are going to change or are we going to keep having to try to juggle all of this yeah uh_huh i don't yeah i well i see i think some people wanting to stay home more and take care of the children uh and even those who may not do it seem to be spending more time with their kids and really trying harder at making all of the the family things work uh but i don't know if they're going to ever give up their careers you know it's sort of like they went to school and they worked so hard to get where they are i don't know if they want to completely give that up but it would be nice if there could be an in between a middle ground somewhere yeah well yeah i think they they like a routine of sorts well yes i i like the fact that you know gradually you're beginning to see women in public office and executive positions but it's still a long way from being what it ought to be yeah okay well i enjoyed talking to you all right good bye have you been talking to males yeah yeah this is this is probably more interesting if it had been a male and a female right uh_huh right yeah it it seems too me like though that women's roles are changing faster than the men and therefore the women are spreading themselves thinner than before uh_huh do you work outside the home do you have children uh_huh oh sure right yeah i uh i think that while it's a good change for i think women to be able to fulfill their potential in whatever they feel you know their expertise may be uh i think sometimes other things suffer and i think it's hard to find a balance there right yeah yeah i have little children four and one and i decided that it was very important to me to stay home uh and when i i i happen to you know be i'm very active with uh people other people with children my age and most of us do tend to stay home but when i run into people that you know just have recently had babies or have very young children and are working full time i there's almost a uh friction between us uh_huh not people that are you know necessarily good friends even though that has happened too uh it's almost as though it puts you on different sides of a fence you know if you decide to go back to work then you feel like you are always having to defend yourself and if you don't then sometimes you feel like you're looked down upon by people that go back to work and so you're just wasting your time at home uh_huh uh_huh right yeah right yeah uh_huh no that that's definitely true in fact i i work out of my home um i'm an accountant and i do taxes and [bookkeeping] and i uh it was it's a way for me to stay home and i mean i still unfortunately have to be very disciplined in doing my work at five in the morning and ten o'clock at night but uh but it it's worked out for for my family to have my cake and eat it too kind of thing well i i hope that they will change uh but but i'm i just i know it's going to be a slow change uh i i feel as though a lot of people are going back to just having a one wage [earner] i mean i'm just thinking of my circle of people that i know i know quite a few people who have decided to not have both both both uh couples you know both uh of the parents work and yet uh i i i hope to see employer based you know helping out you know child uh care centers at the place of employment and and things like that that will help out what do you think do you think we are setting a trend uh_huh right right it's a very personal thing yeah i think it's hard though when you talk about about families and and raising children because i think children have a hard time understanding a middle ground i think they uh they need security and yet they i don't know i from speaking from my children they aren't real flexible when it comes to things like that they uh they want to know things are going to be a certain way uh_huh right well we will see i i'm hoping to see more female leadership in our society oh yes the the numbers are still very [skewed] to say the least okay you too ellen bye bye okay i'm twenty nine right and i have i mean i've seen some change like i know um when i was young most mothers pretty much were housewives and stayed at home with the kids and to to me it seems like its almost the opposite now where the the woman is working and and they you know take the children to child care or maybe they work part time or something so that seems to be a pretty big change uh_huh yeah right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh that's true that's true uh_huh uh_huh right well i know the choice to either work or to be a mother is probably pretty difficult because i think women just naturally tend to have those instincts that you you know you protected the children and you want to be with the children yet there's so many material things to be had out there that a lot of people think oh but if we both work we can get a really big house and we can have two really nice cars we can take a vacation we can do this and it's kind of almost expected of you anyway people kind of look down on a on a you know the role of a woman as a housewife it's kind of like oh well you know she didn't go to college and she's just a housewife right right even though there's probably women with m b a's maybe even p h d's that are staying at home with the children um uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah right there's some t v show on now and i i think i've seen it once i don't get to watch much t v but uh there's a t v show where the man is the one raising the kids and the wife is and i maybe they based it on that mister mom movie but uh but uh there is a t v show out there i guess they're trying to gain more public acceptance of things like that because i know there are cases of where that happens and uh_huh right it's probably getting more and more accepted today in fact it seems like it's kind of like anything goes now you're not too surprised on much of anything when you know the husband's the one at home raising the children the mother works that's not real surprising and right yeah in fact i'm pretty sure t i has something like that because uh one of the area supervisors uh in my area as a matter of fact took off um for a couple of weeks when his wife had their baby now it might have been just to take care of her and the baby instead of having a you know a a nurse or someone come in or or something like that or whatever mid wife or whatever they call it that they have for the first couple of weeks but i don't know if he took that out of his vacation or if they really do have a paternity he put paternity leave up there but it might have just been him describing the fact that he was taking vacation days to go be a father for a little while i don't know but i'm not real sure how that goes right uh_huh right well people they in general are just getting married a lot later i'm still single so i'm sure i'll be one of those parents that's you know one of those women in her thirties when when i get around to to ever getting married and having kids that's uh i think i think that's getting a little more common too uh_huh right yeah i agree i agree i think it also gives a woman a chance if she does have a job and a career it gives the man and the wife both the chance to both be working and maybe save up some money and then it gives her a little more option if she wants to stay home with the children while they're young and be a mother for awhile and then once they've gotten to school age maybe she could go back to work so she's kind of got that option if if they wait till later they've saved up some money that it's not as difficult for her to stay at home with the kids and live off one income or something yeah uh_huh uh_huh i seem to see more women in uh in leadership type roles and management positions in politics yeah like the mayor of dallas is a woman and i'm sure that twenty years ago that never would have happened but yeah she's i think she's in her second term now so she's she's yeah this is her second term i think she's going to going to uh not going to run again after this but but uh we do and we have several council women that are women but you just start hearing more and more in fact oh the the governor of texas is a woman too we can't forget that one so ann richards yeah she was [inaugurated] in january so so you're starting to see more of that and i know when i was younger it was all the presidents and still all the presidents are men but i'm sure that one of these days well look at ferraro ran for vice president and i guess one of these days we'll we'll eventually have uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right right right i agree well i think we've we've gotten our five minutes or it was nice talking to you too you too bye bye well what what do you is think is the uh the main change in what generation are you i'm i'm thirty years old you're twenty nine okay so we're we're both children of the very early sixties um um uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah the family structure in general is being really [restructured] from one income to two incomes which means from one parent to two part time parents if you're lucky um i uh it it's funny it's both of us then were really just adolescents when when i think most of the major changes for adult women were going on in america i don't think changes are still progressing but it seems to me that the uh really the seventies the early seventies was a period of the most change and if i had to somewhat [abstract] about it it seems to be the major change has been that woman have acquired more choice uh i mean that's sort of the overall the [meta] the [meta] change as it were uh where that woman really have more of a choice now about what they do uh course they find that the choice creates its own [hardships] in a way because life is not quite as simple even if it is for your you know you can share something you really want which is a wonderful thing but it does seem like an awful lot of my uh my adult women friends are [anguishing] over over some of some of these choices um uh_huh yes yes yes right she just settled for that yeah well i only know i have of my friends who have have children uh i only know of one woman who's decided to go that quote unquote traditional route and i have a lot of respect for her because she made it as a real choice she really knew that she didn't have to do that but she decided that was what she wanted to do in her life and she wanted that role she's a marvelous parent and i you know i say all power to her because she's an example to me of someone who really does have the choice i feel that a lot of uh women don't all right i said they have the choice but they don't necessarily feel that they do because they no longer feel like if they were just to be a parent rather than uh you know a sort of super woman success in the business world as well they would somehow be perceived as a failure in their own eyes or in others and and then you and then it's not a choice anymore uh and frankly it's the way that men are uh men don't have this choice they don't feel this choice uh in most [subcultures] in america that that i've been exposed to if the man were to say uh no i've decided not to work i want to stay home and do the child rearing my wife has a good job and i want her to keep that and i i'm going to be the primary caretaker and you know and then then take care of the children because we don't want to put them in day care and this and that i think most americans would feel funny about that maybe sort of feel like he isn't that success that he could have been so it's um uh_huh i didn't happen to see that oh yeah i knew i knew people who did that years ago but they were very [apologetic] about it because you could tell they were used to people saying what are you doing that for you know yeah yeah i've seen more and more companies that have uh parental leave not just maternity leave they can have paternity leave as well as maternity leave uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah the other big change i see in in woman's lives is um to remain biological they uh women because they have choice are having children much later in life uh i mean my friends who are having children are having them at age thirty and uh if i'd been a couple of generations ago they would have had kids running around by then yeah yeah yeah i actually think that i'm i'm somewhat encouraged by that trend because after all people live longer lives now so it's not like you know it's not like you're going to uh you know pass away before your child is an adult i mean barring you know [unforeseen] circumstances and i think most people make better parents when they are a little bit more mature i really do uh_huh yeah yeah yeah that's true so i guess i i'm pretty encouraged i really am but then i'm a product of my generation i don't know if i had been born a hundred years ago and were looking at this time i might not like it but it sure seems nice to me uh i mean i have other things to complain about but in terms of uh woman's roles um things really seem a lot more flexible yeah i mean it's still it's still a small minority but it's but it's an improvement it really is oh really uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh what's what's her name no it we don't get much texas politics out in california to be honest uh_huh that's right although during during the presidential [debates] there was some really nasty [patronizing] stuff toward i don't know if you saw those but i thought she was treated badly for being a woman frankly i really did by by uh the the then vice presidential candidates uh who really i thought had a [demeaning] attitude towards her and uh it was sort of it was acceptable to say certain types of things to her that she couldn't say back that kind of thing which i i i found myself getting quite [enraged] about but really that's a previous generation i don't it's harder to imagine people of our age doing that and not feeling really stupid well they've gotten their five minutes worth of us i've enjoyed talking with you okay take care bye bye okay what do you think about it oh yeah uh_huh yeah i do too i think it's going to in like in the future i think all women are going to work i mean they may let you off for a day or two to have your baby but that will be it or either they'll have a computer at home and in the hospital where you can just you know just continue right on with your work i mean it really is coming to that because most women now days cannot afford the time that they could take off unless the company pays them they can't even afford to take off you know to have children it seems like yeah right now i was real lucky because my husband had a good enough job where when my kids were you know when i had them and when they were small until they got in junior high school my youngest got in junior high i didn't have to work i mean i didn't work i i needed to but i didn't let me tell you you go without a lot of things that you you know oh yeah right right well it's getting where you can't hardly afford if you're going to give your kids any kind of education and stuff you can't hardly afford to have over two and i mean it's hard with two now we uh my youngest one i have two i have a son and a daughter and my youngest one is going to be graduating from college soon and if i had a third one i just don't know where it would come from because i work now i work full time and uh you know it when you put them through college it just takes just about everything you got they get loans and grants and scholarships and stuff like that that helps out but still it cost a lot right and cars and all their books and the books are outrageous i mean absolutely outrageous and they're getting worse uh my daughter brought home a book the other day that she was going to have to have for her one of her next classes and it was like ninety six dollars and this book is a little bitty skinny book i said my goodness what is it lined in gold you know uh but it is it's getting worse and if i'd of probably had three or four children i don't see how we could have made it you know without me working right but i think i would have had to work if i'd of had that many i'd of had to work in order for my kids to you know even though he brings in a real good living and everything in order for me to keep up i would have had to work but i think it's getting more and more like when you have one child now that's it you know then you go to work and you work because if you have two or three kids by the way the [inflation's] going i think a woman's always going to have to work and it's just going to be an accepted thing there isn't going to be any of this you know very few people will ever stay home yeah well you know i can't imagine how i did because now i work all the time and um well i work all week and um i can't imagine how i stayed home you know i think to myself what did i do and i think it just it [revolutionized] an where a woman thinks that a way you know just like now my daughter there's no way that she can imagine herself married at the age that she's at now to her everything is you've got to go through college you've got to get a job you know and then when everything's set up then you look for somebody that you want to spend the rest of your life with but i mean it is so far down the road where now when i graduated high school the thing uh_huh and then you got married and then you had a family i mean that's just the way it was you know and uh that's like when my i know when my mother's age it was always the kids and the family and everything had to come first and the woman stayed home and took care of them an yeah uh_huh yeah but you know that now even whenever i was coming up and everything and we got married right out of high school well a year after i got out of high school and uh i didn't have kids for four and a half years but that was because i wanted to work and i wasn't ready for kids and everybody thought oh my gosh what is the matter with her you know right i mean they thought that it was terrible you know and then when i'd tell them you know well i'm just not ready for children yet oh but that you know you better you better just get ready now well you don't just get ready but i was kind of odd because as a general rule the people that married during my time they had kids within a year and i just was not ready for kids i wanted to get out and work a little bit and i wanted to travel and stuff like that which we did and uh kids didn't fit in right then but it's getting more and more like that where there's more and more couples and really if you don't want the kids then it's not the time to have i don't care what anybody tells you and i think that more and more the [attitude's] getting that a way because that's like my daughter now she says that you know maybe when she's thirty she might want a child then and uh even though i'd like to have grandchildren i can see her point right uh_huh yeah yeah and it really is i know just like now you know there's there's so much more now all my income goes for things like luxuries i mean it really does accept for what we give to my daughter to you know put her through college and stuff but the rest of it we just buy things like boats or we go on trips or you know just the more or less like entertainment stuff but yeah i feel like i have you know because well we're just a age now i'm not old but i'm older and uh i got to stay home with my kids which i really wanted to do but now i could not go back and do it i really couldn't i don't think i could stay home all the time and do nothing and i mean i did stuff but to me it feels like i must have done nothing and i think it's just the new way that people are thinking but uh well you know more and more of them are i don't know if it is up there where you are but where i am the just like all the hospitals they're getting day care but the reason they had to do this was because so many people you know so many women could not afford like you said if you had four kids or even if you had two kids you would be paying all your salary to pay for those two kids to go so uh more and more of our hospitals especially over here are getting them and then some of the bigger companies but it's mainly the hospitals oh really well uh the roles have definitely changed in the last generation or so um i think a lot of it has to do with women working yeah yeah yeah right right and it and it seems if you're going to have kids uh that you are you know society has decided for you how many you can really have and make it and uh because if you have you know two well if you go to work you're just working to pay for day care two or three you know um uh_huh oh that is good yeah steve's steve has a sister who has four she just had her fourth one in uh march and she doesn't have to work either i don't know how they do it i i don't know how people do it with one you know um yeah obviously we don't have any and and i don't i think that's part of the role [reversal] is it's okay to get married and not have kids and i think for society for such a long time said well you know you're married now you need to have have your family and i don't think it's been until recently that that they had decided that two people was a family you know and right oh yeah yeah oh yeah i mean just the you know the cost of living and loans don't pay for groceries and stuff oh i know i know gee yeah yeah but that's that's probably because you know if you had three you you know would say if i'd of had four i guess it's always not not being able to picture one more but in essence you probably would have worked out fine yeah yeah yeah yeah and and that's all right with me because i don't want to stay home you know i think i'm just part of the new stuff that is just i don't know i think i would just go nuts sitting at home all day long yeah yeah right that's you did that's what you did uh yeah i uh i i like the way it is it's uh being see we're from houston and so it's not so hard for people you know you've been married three or so years and you don't have kids well it's okay nobody does but you come to a place like [belton] and a lot of the kids here get married out of high school it's real small town and and a lot of people in our we're the only couple in our sunday school class except for one other couple who are in their forties and they can't have children who don't have children and they can't imagine why we would want to have children and i'm going well you know there's more to life you know there's life in there that's you know not everybody has to have kids and i'd rather spend the time with my husband than you know spending time here it's your turn you know uh_huh yeah i think that's what it is i'm not either they're probably going oh i bet she can't get pregnant yeah yeah right yeah yeah steve's mom finally uh finally you know said that that god will take care of us when it's our time she finally admitted you know she finally told me it's okay if you don't but it took every nerve in her body to say that because she's from a very very old fashioned family and she stayed home and raised her kids and and she expected all of her kids to do that too and their wives and to be the the housewife and have dinner ready by five and and you know be there at every [beck] and call and i was raised totally opposite how we got together i don't know but because my mother had six girls and you know she worked too and i guess i just and i saw how life was when she stayed home and it was rough it was hard and uh uh_huh right yeah i think you've you've earned that though uh_huh yeah right yeah i think so i think it would be neat if if they could incorporate into small and large businesses both a built in day cares where the children were there in the facility but not necessarily right there with you uh_huh are they right yeah i don't know if the t i in dallas does or not i know i know nobody around here does it we're it's too small around here yeah all righty i think one of the most significant changes that have happened is that they've changed from homemaker to the work market and for several reasons probably some of that is divorce and some is they're more educated than they used to be i think uh i think sometimes uh leaders in government they've become more uh [adroit] in that area too instead of just men all the time we have more women in government and now i'll let you say something very limited uh_huh yes uh_huh uh_huh right i think that's right uh_huh right i really think women have so much more responsibility than you know as far as everything and like you said uh one women today have so many uh the average today of having a a single family you know with the mother as the head you know it just really uh so [commonplace] nowadays uh_huh right right uh_huh you know isn't that funny uh because the same thing happened to us except i was twelve and my mother had a nursing degree and was able to make it in her profession and was isn't that funny uh but just that they were able to do it you know and even today i think the chance for education is is is so much uh better for all of our girls and and boys too but but the girls especially a lot of things yeah right yeah and i also think that in the future that uh it's going to continue we're not going to see a lax off of women in the work force i think they're going to stay there and i think that they're going to uh uh be really responsible and and do everything just like what you said you know make make it the grade and and make it so women can be the top people in their in their field oh i think so right right exactly exactly that's right and i think that is happening more and more i think it's just going to take a little bit longer well great okay good to talk to you sally thanks bye bye okay uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well uh i probably a little bit older than you are so what i see uh is the change that i see the most is is that uh women have much more many more occupations and careers to choose from than when i went to college when i went to college you could be a teacher or maybe a nurse or a secretary or but there were very few women in business at that time a few but they were the [oddity] and yes and now i see and and i see for my daughter which is wonderful this she's thirteen and i see a whole wonderful world out there that she can choose from so many different jobs which i think is terrific because i'm a teacher and i mean i love teaching but there i think there are a lot of other things i would have liked better and uh not that i would give the career up because it's it's a safe career plus because i always have a job plus i am a single parent too and i i need the income but uh and i think that's the reason why a lot of women have have started to work too is because economically it's just a must uh you just it's very difficult to get along on one income unless uh the male uh has an extraordinarily good job and especially men who teach school they don't make that much money and and most all they always either have they're either [moonlighting] or else their their wife works too uh it's just an economic need now oh definitely uh_huh oh yes exactly we have quite a few teachers at our school that are single parents and uh the majority is uh married couple with children but still there's a lot more than there used to be and see you never picture yourself in a situation like this when i married i thought i'd be married the rest of my life and uh but i'm all i'm really grateful that i went to college my mother always said you know get an education in case you need one because my father died when we were i have a twin sister and we were eleven when he died and she had a nursing degree and she was able to make it but she said in you never know what's going to happen and i thank god that i did go to college and got a degree because otherwise i don't know how i would be able to raise my children isn't that something yes yes oh yes yeah i do too but i think it needs to continue to change and i i think it there's still not equality as far as uh paychecks for men and women i think that the we still have a long way to go uh_huh and i think that uh i think by the year two thousand it we're going to see some a lot more changes uh hopefully that women are you know able to get the the executive jobs and hold positions that men men do because they can do it just as well you know if they want to dedicate their most of their time to that they they're they can do it uh uh exactly exactly and i think that's the way it should be i think it i mean not that i i think that i'm equal to men because there's a lot of things that men can do that i could never do strength wise and so forth but also there's some things women can do like have children that men can't do so you know it i don't i don't want to be equal but i i want to be i want to get what i deserve and i want to be able to be on the same level with them if i can do a job as well as i man i think i should get the same pay you know and and i just i'm not a women's libber i really am not but i i think that that we have just as many rights as they do and i feel like if there's a qualified woman to do the job and if she's good or better than a man then she they should get the job with the same pay i do too oh i do too definitely well it was good to talk to you all right bye bye hi this is judy i'm from maryland and i'm in california visiting right now oh okay i know i'm sitting here going oh dear should we give it a try okay okay well um so so so what changes have you seen well actually that's what i was thinking too and um you know just to jump ahead a little bit but then we can back up is it perhaps woman in politics is for the future because i don't see that really yet in positions of power really uh_huh that's true that's true um do you work in private corporation or government uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh you that's the best status yes um i don't i see um and a government and i work in [academia] before and um actually there's one um woman in our i don't know what you'd call it uh institute who is a manager and i mean in a since perhaps um a lot of she gets protected a lot because it's almost like a token and and it's sort of unfortunate because i think that they don't accept her technically and but she's a good paper [pusher] and it's in a technical position really and you know she should be more technical for what she does and i think that's sort of unfortunate because it doesn't it doesn't really help the cause in the long run but um you know i don't know and and teaching i still see that that's where most of the woman are in teaching and you know and it's always been that way right not well uh_huh uh_huh not department [chairmen] yeah not the [deans] and things like that uh_huh uh_huh um and do you think it's because women aren't qualified or or just don't or don't want the job or just aren't hired for the jobs uh_huh they're just not selected somehow uh_huh uh_huh oh okay but i'm wondering how many women actually major in engineering but you know i say that but yet i know too yeah i'm sure there are yeah uh_huh yeah i mean the two that i know obviously are not in teaching but um it's i suppose in a since i was surprised when they told me they majored in engineering i don't know why i but i don't know that many men that have majored in engineering either i mean it's just because i'm in the humanities it's just you know it's not it's not something that i tend to hear about but um yeah it's a oh that's interesting yeah yeah i mean i i suppose that that it's difficult to really say why because uh you know there there probably are a limited number of women who are interested in the subject and well qualified and maybe there aren't you know maybe they don't apply for the job right right which could be you know partially cultural anyway so that it might be [circularly] being the same problem of of expecting not to get hired for the good jobs anyway so why spend your time getting qualified it's a it's a rough it's a rough a rough situation um and i guess what i what amazes me is the number of men who are willing to stay home with the kids or and in our case we actually have one father who works part time a six hour day so that he can take the kids kids or kid i'm not sure to school in the morning and be home when the children or child comes home in the afternoon this is uh well see i don't know anything about the family but but yeah i would imagine she might um because he's you know he's a really nice guy but he did say that because he was in the humanities and he's now working in more of a technical situation that he had trouble finding a job so that maybe he you know maybe she was more qualified but but still it's interesting that you know he he's been doing this evidently for a a good number of years and uh but it's unusual uh_huh yeah i oh he was even before they had children oh now that that really is oh she was uh_huh uh_huh yeah i mean i think that would be it would it would strike one as strange if there's no reason for somebody to stay home that yeah that's true but but yet you know we have to think about that because if if she had offered to stay home we wouldn't have thought anything so so we're carrying our own prejudice yeah oh gee i guess we can't win because if yeah if if somebody does if and breaks tradition you're surprised but if oh dear so so if they could get away with it oh dear you know well uh i mean it it's an interesting topic yet i must say it's not one that i've given a great deal of of thought to but uh in the past it's um one of those things that you know seems to happen i don't i don't feel for the most part that i've been discriminated against no i was a department [chairman] i but i don't like administration so then i'm uh uh probably a poor example although you know i was an administrator and could still be i suppose uh_huh oh really you were you were more ambitious than they would let you be yeah yeah well i would uh oh jeez yeah actually in a since i suppose when i was hired into the government um at i was taken advantage of and and that's true that you know sometimes other people get get higher [increments] for you know even right right that's probably true i hadn't i hadn't thought about it because i do like what i do and uh i just sort of ignore the administrative part of it since i didn't like it when when i had to do it so i i figure you know nobody must uh nobody must like it it must be a rotten job for everybody but i know some people thrive on it oh gee well since i don't have a whole lot more to say on the topic hi judy this is norma and i live in virginia we got a great topic i guess we might as well okay let you start what changes uh i guess the biggest i don't know your age judy but uh in my lifetime the biggest is in more women working definitely yeah for the well yeah right i don't see them in positions of power in corporation either not many i did work in government and before that i worked in a bank for eight years and now i'm retired that's right which do you work in excuse me a government uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh right in teaching but not at the college level we live in a college town and i worked at the university for a while and there are there are woman there but they're not the high paid professors that the men are well they did have one woman dean but and i guess she she probably did very well but that's the minority none of the above i think they are extremely well qualified uh i don't know how i think they're not selected and of course at this university uh this it's a big engineering school and i don't think there are many women in the engineering college and that's where the high pay is quite an well i think there are more than there used to be but they may not go into teaching uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh yeah uh_huh well i met one one day that uh had just joined the faculty in agricultural engineering and that really surprised me uh_huh uh_huh i don't know i don't i don't know how many go on and get a p h d in engineering that could be that's true uh_huh that's right oh that's interesting is it uh was she the major wage [earner] i mean did she earn more money that he did or you know oh uh_huh uh_huh uh i know one uh gal that's she's a c p a and her husband is a house husband and then they had a child and he he was still the house husband he wasn't going to uh_huh even before that right she was a little [perturbed] about it at one time i don't know how she's moved away i don't know how it is now but i know uh we're we all went out one evening and after work and uh she was there was an underlying note she was [perturbed] about it uh_huh i don't think there was a valid reason because her statement was i told him let's face it you're a house husband that's what your going that's what you'll always be she wouldn't have be that's right uh_huh that's right it would it wouldn't have been a [doubter] uh_huh that's true huh_uh oh that's right i think maybe more men would like to be if they weren't put down so badly huh_uh no i didn't how do you feel your career has gone you don't that's good oh uh_huh i was discriminated against very definitely in banking it was terrible right and the money didn't go with the positions the promotion [promotions] came but there there comparable pay for the responsibility and i was told you don't need as much pay as i have because your children are older than my children or your husband has a good job and i uh_huh i think we uh are [programmed] to just take it as it comes uh_huh uh_huh i don't all right i guess the biggest one is number of women in the work force few are uh basically staying home and being homemakers and raising kids exclusively uh_huh yeah true well mine taught kindergarten but she was always uh i guess her schedule was shorter so she was always uh home yeah yeah that that statistic i guess has been growing every year it's like something around sixty sixty five percent or so now uh i'm not sure what the future holds for that whether uh_huh huh that's unusual uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah that is tough yeah we're looking at that now my wife's about six months along uh_huh true yeah i'm surprised that the main people you work for are women that do stay home i would think it would be women that were working full time huh uh_huh huh well i guess that's good that they they've got something to keep them active yeah we're we're going to try and have her stay home for as long as possible what do you think yeah we think it's uh that important and i i kind of hope that the trend goes back in that direction i'm a a counselor and a therapist and i work with adolescents and i see some of the problems the kids have when they don't have a real good family structure uh_huh uh_huh true well the [husbands'] roles are almost nonexistent in family anymore in terms of being the father figure and with women working so much they're kind of pulled out of it too so kids are raised around their friends and by the media and that's you know that's contributed yeah maybe that's contributed to a lot of the problems that we see all the time so if there was some way for for women to to stay home even if they could work you know there are a lot of jobs that are coming about like in computers at home and those types of things that would at least in some ways um bridge the gap about the balance i don't the the divorce rate keeps [hovering] around fifty percent or so and it got higher than that for a while um that's hard to say families are such a strange [configuration] anymore um i i see a lot of families where you know in the in the back i grew up about the same time you did and back in those times we pretty much were taught how to be responsible uh nowadays it's not the case kids don't kids are bombarded with all kinds of junk and one of the reasons i guess is because there's so much more income in the family with both parents working they get bombarded with junk and they don't have to do anything around the house they never learned to be responsible when the bigger trend called the [boomerang] kids where they move out for a while and they come back and you got twenty and thirty year olds who are living at home with mom and dad so you know you create a bigger bigger family generation after generation but not really on purpose so it's not not a real functional situation anyway so you know i don't know it's i don't know that that [trend's] going to change the single parent type families and the families as long as we've got so many other crazy things going on in society uh_huh yeah it is i guess unless unless there's a a major swing in the change of what's important to people you know probably keep going downhill and i i don't know we we feel like that that we can make it on one income it it may be tough but we may have to give up on some some things yeah yeah i think so too okay well i've enjoyed it stephanie uh_huh bye bye what what changes do you think have taken place in the last generation yeah uh_huh yeah i i i grew up in uh sixties and early seventies and uh my mom didn't work at all when i was growing up she didn't start working until i was um well into high school so i i had the advantage of having a mom at home that nowadays kids it's a luxury item for mothers to be home with their kids always home by the time you got home uh_huh it seems like there's it seems that there's a grass roots um effort or whatever going on i i um clean houses part time and almost all the people that i clean for believe it or not are mothers that don't work um they are they're all um it's and it's i think it's kind of a new movement it's going back towards you know women have come into the work force in the last twenty thirty years and now they're wanting to go back to the old days where you know women stayed home with the kids you know and try to give the kids quality time and i i think that in the future you're i think you're going to see a lot more um women choosing to not work after they have a baby um i think with uh the uh the work force with the the salaries that a lot of a lot of the women that i work for have husbands who are um vice presidents of companies and i think with uh um this it seems like it's more the upper class people um i don't see it as much the like in my situation where i don't i don't have children yet but ideally i would like to be able to stay home with my kids but realistically that's i'm i'm realizing that's probably not going to be possible um for middle class people to be able to live just on one income uh_huh i think it's going to be a luxury item to be able to stay home with your kids you know it's going to kind of kind of go along with the b m w in the driveway and or in the garage or whatever um and the quarter of a million dollar home or whatever yeah believe it or not though the all the women that stay home are real busy when they are home um they're real active in volunteer work um one of the women is real active with uh [muscular] [dystrophy] and uh does a lot of of work with them on a volunteer basis but it's still it's almost like a job she just doesn't get paid for it yeah when when your wife has her baby is she going to stay home or is she going to go back to work that that that i would i would like to be able to do that uh_huh yeah i i see a difference in the generation of even the generation before me uh were you know mom was like um mrs [cleaver] uh you know june [cleaver] or whatever where the the attitudes were a lot different um as far as i think the kids back then seemed to be a lot more um there wasn't a lot of the drugs and alcohol and um a lot of the the things that are going on in today's society i think morally um it seems like there was people were a lot better back then as far as higher standards yeah yeah that's true and i think i think you're going to see a lot more of that in the future uh_huh yeah i i think that um in the future um the the family unit as it as it once was known is is going to be nonexistent what how do you what do you think that as far as do you think there's going to be still a family unit or or do you think that um the trend is going more towards single parenting uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah yeah i i think that eventually the the family [unit's] just not going to even exist anymore like you said the divorce rate is getting so high that i think there's going to be more single parent families than there are um you know two parent families that's pretty sad i i think in the long run though your child will benefit from that and it will it will make the the strain worthwhile well i i need to go ahead and and wrap it up um it was really nice talking to you and uh thanks a lot okay bye bye yeah the changing roles of women how roles changed and what do you see coming in the future okay yeah sounds good okay hold on are you there oh my goodness i can't believe i did that okay hold on okay um i no i i'm twenty three uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh i know that uh_huh i know that uh in in the early seventies uh i think women were the first people to to make a move as far as individuals um uh before that a lot of people that wanted to protest were large groups like uh black people or you know just large large groups of people but but the right and i think i think the women's movement kind of brought in individual lives where you had women's movements and you had gay movements and just the smaller groups of people and i think since then is is when a lot of the women's roles have started to change uh_huh uh_huh exactly uh_huh i think that uh you know you can just look at home life and see i've been talking to a lot of people about education and things and and what what what affects the school system and i think that a big thing that effects it is that the mother is not home anymore um like she used to be she used to be kind of a kind of a a rock you know in the house yeah and uh since since everyone is going out and working now whether it be because of finances or just the economy uh the mother's not there anymore and the children are i think i think a lot of society is suffering not to say that women shouldn't you know go out and do what they want to do but i think that um society's really going to have to get used to it and they're not quite used to it yet and that's i yes uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah yeah uh_huh speaking of getting married i was talking to someone yesterday on this on the project and uh uh we were talking about child care and he asked me if i had any kids he was about forty or fifty years old and i said no i'm just twenty and i said no i'm just twenty three you know because i don't think of myself as needing to have children but the first thing he says is well don't you miss that part of your life and i just i my my mind just went i went what you know because it it really didn't doesn't even occur to me right now to have children yeah and i it just you know i think that i'll probably have children when i'm about thirty thirty five something like just because i'm not sure if it's just if it's just me or or women in general that are twenty three right now because um i'm really into my career i'm trying to go somewhere and and get there quick and then worry about you know because right now in my career i'm i'm really starting out and it's going to take me a while to move up and i don't need anything kind of holding me back um uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh right right right uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah yeah it's it's just really not there anymore and that that has to do with you know the women getting out and other women seeing uh women seeing other women you know out in the corporate world that's like oh i can do that you know maybe i don't need to get married she's she's about forty uh_huh okay i i just turned twenty three uh april twentieth and i'm still going you know oh my god i'm getting so old i just because me myself i just like to move really really quickly i like to anything i do i got out of school quick i'm you know i'm working quick i want to move up quick i want to make money quick i want to retire quick and so anything when the age creeps up where i'm twenty three and twenty four i'm thinking my time is running out you know but i'm actually very very young uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh right uh_huh exactly exactly uh_huh yeah yeah yeah i think i think a lot of uh people probably feeling that way i know i'm probably feeling that way because it's everything's geared towards young you know and whether i want to realize it or not everything on television is young young young young you can't be a model after thirty you can't do this after twenty you know and everybody that's in the music business is starting out at fifteen you know and so i feel like i'm old it's like i sing i sing and i would really love to become uh a professional singer but i think i'm too old now and i'm twenty three because everyone i've seen coming up they're fifteen you know and so i'm going i'm so old and i'm i i really have to always tell myself no you're not you're very young and you know so it's uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh wow uh_huh yeah right uh_huh yeah very true uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's that's why i say i feel i feel really lucky right now because i'm not married and because i don't have children i'm out of school i'm twenty three i can do anything i want to do anything and so i mean even some days i'm looking for another job now but and i get so depressed because not because i can't find a job but because i can't figure out what i want to do and yeah and i and i'm lucky though because not a lot of people can sit there and go gee i don't know what to do i have so you know not a lot of people but it's depressing too what do you what do you that you're uh_huh oh uh_huh oh huh huh okay i'm a i'm a news reporter now and what i'm looking for is something in i really don't want to stay in news but i would like to stay in journalism and i've been looking for something exactly like that uh_huh okay no i i went to u t at austin and i i just happen to work at a waco station because you know broadcast news t v women oh okay that's not a broad enough topic i'm ready when you are okay yeah i'm here that's okay okay um i don't know are you in your thirties or oh okay well then i can tell you that roles have changed i'm thirty eight and they changed quite a bit um i this was my twentieth high school reunion in chicago and basically um the choices i mean you know you probably heard that in the fifties women liked to stay home and all that that's kind of um the opposite of what it was in the sixties and early seventies it was sort of just to um go protest and uh just everybody be damned and live with some one and you know social morals were a little bit lacking uh_huh right it was more it was more civil rights oriented or race oriented rather than gender based yeah uh_huh it did it did and some of the other stuff that um i think that changed it you uh when i first got out of college fifteen years ago they were always saying well if you if you were assertive you were a libber or you were aggressive not assertive and independent and in terms of the corporate community i've seen a big change in terms of men finally being quote unquote used to women who are in uh controlling positions as higher you know corporate in the corporate [hierarchy] so i think that's good uh_huh right the [mainstay] yeah and restructuring [stepfamilies] yeah right the schools or the the schools or the parents yeah um i'm trying to think of what else i have a lot of opinions on this except all of a sudden i went blank a lot of the things um the demographics do i mean there are more i don't have the numbers in my head right now but a lot of the things that brought [feminism] i mean there are just more women in in in the demographics just generally in the united states in terms of being i mean i'm the typical baby boomer i hate that term but in terms of women women going out i mean twenty three i remember that what's it like to be twenty three as a woman today i mean when i was twenty three the issues were either go to graduate school or get married um those were the general issues uh_huh he was ancient yeah uh_huh you didn't know what you're going to be missing i don't have any either and i've been a married for eleven years so yeah when it's time uh_huh yeah you want to establish uh_huh right and and you'll find that that's the other big thing that has changed in terms of um women don't feel like they need to get married anymore i was twenty seven when i got married and i just at the time um my husband actually even jokes about it he was twenty three when we met an i was at a point where it was like i didn't date i mean i just i went out to have a good time but i didn't have to have male companionship um and a lot of the um friends that i had in school at that point who had gone back and gone to law school or m b a programs um which i also had done had just you know they were very sad but then by the time i got married um it seemed like they were on their second or third around the marriage track so i guess that's a big change in terms of just um the [attachments] that women feel like they need to have the dependency their self identity is stronger yeah right uh_huh right and i i i mean i don't know how how old your mom is she's probably let's see my mother's in her early sixties so okay i'm thirty eight your mother's i just turned thirty eight um yes i'm laughing oh my god it does start to creep up no um but it's okay don't ever let age i mean i don't nobody talks about it for women except other women and other men uh_huh yeah an uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah you are because what i was going to say is what you will find is my background is in journalism and corporate communications and what you'll find is i mean i'm just now finally to a point where i mean i don't know why i didn't didn't do it sooner but this is probably typical of the women's movement too is the idea that you're going to be forty tomorrow anyway if you want to go back to school i'm seriously considering going back to school for law um which is a complete i wouldn't say career change it's it's a subway but it's still is a different application and i mean if you think about it you know i i still can have another career i mean i've worked for over fifteen years in what i've done and i mean so when you're saying quick um i think that's probably one thing that your generation coming up after mine is thinking that um they have to do you know sort of i call kind of i call it a chewing syndrome they have to eat real fast they have they have to [rapidity] of speech they have to just go through everything and you'll find that probably by the time your twenty eight thirty if you haven't slowed down something will slow you down do you know what i'm saying um because it's just you find out that you're really not um smelling the roses and i know that sounds trite and all that uh_huh oh it is that's right uh_huh uh_huh oh you're not no no that's true i mean it's it's no you're extremely yeah it's it's well it's like us we're getting ready to do if possible for an adoption and i have friends that say well why would you do that if you know you haven't been able to children which we do know why would you do that now at this part point and um it's just individual choices i stopped comparing myself a long time ago to somebody who had um in my family my brother's children i mean he just turned forty his children will be out of high school before he's forty five um i mean that's like your mother look how young she is compared to where you are out of school and everything it's just it but what you find is you don't compare the woman because you just get into trouble it's all independent and choices um but what i was going to say about mothers is uh your mother probably just won't say it but i mean my mother and her sisters are always saying uh to my cousins and i my female cousins you girls are so lucky because quote unquote you have all these choices you know you went to school you can do this you can do that we couldn't do that then and my cousins and i go well why couldn't you uh_huh and that's normal i mean i think that's the world today right that's yeah that's how i mean what i'm right now i'm i'm a free lance writer right now and then um what i'm doing is working at um a an electronics company for their company newspaper right now on the side and then i'm also actually i'm excited tomorrow i have a uh luncheon appointment with a perspective client to do uh marketing communications for them oh you are here's what you this is off the topic and those people probably did you go to baylor by any chance oh okay that's even better i went to or you in radio or television or news uh my journalism degree is in uh_huh oh uh_huh yeah uh_huh around there huh well you're you're just a youngster then i passed the fifty so i guess our [topic's] going to be changes in the women's roles so it should be real interesting so you think we're ready okay okay uh you want to start off uh_huh very much yeah yeah yes uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i think all things get started sometimes in that manner you know they come in that way uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i hadn't thought much about that but that is true that uh_huh some of them no no uh_huh very much uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah not no they they hurt themselves a little bit in that way uh_huh there you go there's a lot of truth in that yeah uh_huh that's right uh_huh yes it shouldn't be destroyed yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah well that's kind of makes it exciting you know yeah uh_huh i think now when both are working they have a more more of a chance of working together because they're starting out that way yeah right right yeah because you get set in your ways and it's really hard because to to really to get help uh you know to get the work load shared yes uh_huh our i we have five children they're they're all grown and on their own so they're uh uh how do you mean that uh we have uh two girls and three boys and our our baby girl just had a baby girl last week was her first baby so it's been real exciting uh_huh uh_huh yeah have you been that way long just eight years that's that's a long eight years though uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that makes a big difference uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yes well probably your role and and the way you are also has changed though you know compared to what it would have been twenty fifty years ago uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh the best you can yeah i yeah that's the only thing i worry about is the the child's love and security that i think that's being damaged uh a lot uh_huh i do too i i think uh now some some women can can do both they're very capable of working and and uh_huh it it really is yeah uh_huh so many have to work to make a go of it it seems or they say they do anyways and but i think ones that don't have to the it's not as much of a stigma not to work as it was for a while there well that could be uh_huh uh_huh uh yeah yeah you mean it's stronger there much stronger yeah right right right uh_huh yeah yeah yes yeah yeah uh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right but they're both yeah they're both different people too that's that's where the trouble lies some people some people can adjust and have both do both well and others can't uh well uh i have one daughter that works full time she has two little boys and they seem to do fine she has been has talked about quitting you know and staying home for a few years but then it's real hard because she's got an excellent job uh uh basically i'm at home and i have two cats and my husband i mean my husband's great it's wonderful you know and and uh so i'm about forty and whatever so yeah yeah i'm just a spring chicken i guess well [righto] i think i'm ready well let's see the changes i've seen in women's roles uh since i am in the forty age i'm a fifties baby uh and from my mother's generation to my generation it's just a very very wide uh it's been a big change very much and i think you'll have to agree and and since we were in uh sort of the ground level the [bra] burning of the sixties and and we didn't really know what the agenda was going to be uh and i think you know it got off to a really radical it has a radical fringe to it that uh i've sort of backed away from yeah and to make a change you know you have to make a [splash] but to continue in that vein i think it got a little bit warped and off the track in several areas but i really do think that women have made a contribution uh to human beings i mean to be human and what it's like and have feelings and emotions and it's okay and i think uh you know on the other hand i don't know that men have changed that much so in in contrast to the women's changes uh you know the men stay steady and then the women change around them uh i think men are trying but they don't have a national organization of men to uh help them out and uh what's changing them though is the economic situation where both team it has to be a team [partnership] now and they both have to work and they both have to raise the children if we're going to have any kind of future at all and and that i think has been the downfall of the last ten years you know the me oh i don't know the the [yuppiedom] the whatever it was the you know women didn't know how to go about doing the careers and they wanted to compete with men they wanted to be like men and that's wrong i think they finally discovered that they don't want to be like men men absolutely and so that's you know they sort of threw the thing back another you know ten years that they've had to you know [restructure] but i saw the greatest t shirt the other day i got to get some for all my men friends it says let men run the world women have more important things to do right but uh i think men and women both have valuable valuable assets to offer and you know we shouldn't we were made differently however you come to that conclusion we were [biologically] [physiologically] made differently and there is great [wonderment] in that and uh you know we should respect that in each other so right and and you know just sort of all [swooshed] into one channel sort of thing it's it's [viva] la difference someone said that and i think that you can truly respect the other person i mean you know tom is just always saying what a mystery you are you know you know depends yeah well that depends on what day of the month it is but uh i don't know i guess we've gotten more of a in in terms of that i think we've got more of a sense of humor about each other and our roles and but it's still a challenge being in a marriage and trying to figure out those roles and yeah well that's that's a very different way to do you know the woman doesn't start off at home raising the kids and goes back into her career you know twenty years later uh you do yeah are are you married do you have children oh my goodness oh my how did you do well i mean okay well did you have boys girls how did how oh my oh my oh how [exiting] i i tell you what i don't know what i would do without my friends having all their kids i just love the babies and and since i'm sort of in a medical situation where i can't do that it's just eight years just the most important years of my life you know yeah it has been and uh so there have been major major adjustments but that's another story but you know my husband has really really filled in the gaps i mean i i couldn't ask for a better life i mean if this is the way it had to be this is the best way i could possibly do it and and that has a lot to do with his strength and his just pitching in and and his being able to you know all all ego aside do a lot of things that really so when i say men haven't changed i guess i should look at my own backyard sort of thing and oh yeah yeah that's true i mean boy i mean i i would have had so i had so much guilt to begin with and the changes that had to take place you know where i couldn't do a lot of things and uh just adjusting to that that uh yeah that was a major change but so i guess uh in the end you know you each take your own situation and you and you deal with it the best you can but but but women i think are a whole you know sort of riding the course they're they're got a little [wobbly] and a little shaky there i think the future of this whole thing is going to be what happens with the day care situation i think we're going to see a generation of kids that you know are just going to be a little bit uh-oh not very [nurturing] i think yeah but i wish they weren't so many i i wish they weren't role models for everybody because it's so dangerous it's dangerous for the woman too to think that she can do that and then when she can't you know the failure of that is you know her life sort of falls apart and she doesn't know who she is and she's absolutely well you know i think that's that's really i think it depends on what part of the country you're in uh i i would almost just say that because you know down here in the south you know a woman's role is a woman's role sort of thing and you know uh-oh yeah yeah and and i think that uh you know career women still have a lot of problems here with the good old boys here in texas sort of thing making career moves but uh you know in terms of women staying home and being appreciated for their talents uh it's just like the way it it has been for years i mean you know since the days of the pioneers around here that's the woman's role and it and it's hard for her to uh you know watch her peers be appreciated i think sometimes but then i'm not there so i don't know that and i have women that do both and i see a little [jealousy] on the part of you know the woman what has two little boys and and she has an au pair which is a live in college kid working for her and then she has her business in the back and then my other girlfriend that has you know just runs the whole household herself and just has two kids and goes crazy all the time and so i see i little bit of that and i always wish there was a balance you know with the one and and wish she could spend more time with her kids and the other gal i wish she could just get out of dodge for a while get some peace and quiet yeah definitely so you're right about that yeah and that's that's true that's so true how how did your daughter do it uh_huh right well uh how do you view this whole subject are you uh one who feels like you have have benefited from the change in in roles in women or or what do you think uh_huh yes oh yes i think so are you uh are you someone who works outside your home or have you oh yes well uh have there been significant changes uh do you think in the employment place especially uh say at t i have has anything in particular changed that you have noticed during your time there yeah uh_huh what what kind of work do you do uh_huh right yes yes yes uh yes in years past i know in fact even even the word drafter has changed because it used to be they were [draftsman] right maybe not huh well uh i when i was in college i graduated from college with my bachelor's degree in nineteen sixty four and i was a math major which was a real rarity among women at that time so i was in a lot of classes where uh there i was either the only girl or you know one of just a very few women in the class so that was a change and uh even uh i did not uh use my math uh in my work i i became a technical writer but uh even so there were very very few women in technical writing but that has changed a lot in recent years it has just really really changed a lot and and i think that uh you know the one thing that i have seen is that more and more women are getting into management but i think they have got a long way to go there was something on t v the other day that said that fewer than one or two percent of the heads of uh [chairmen] of the board chair persons uh if you if you will of the board are women in this country and i thought that you know that's pretty a pretty significantly small number so there are some some strides to be made there but uh i do not know i i think we have come a long way actually when i think about you know when things were like even when i you know just when i was in high school and how it is now for girls and uh uh i guess my i uh the one my one bad thing is that i am that i wish my mother had had some of those opportunities because i think she would have really she would have [succeeded] in a lot of ways that men that women were not able to succeed in her generation so anyway do you have children i was going to say do you have daughters that's always a good question yes in fact i have a daughter who is in a a who just graduated in civil engineering from college so she is pretty much although there were some other women in her class she was you know uh one of the minorities uh females in the class so she definitely entering into uh a male profession but uh but you know for instance there are there is the organization women the society of women engineers so that is recognized as uh you know a place where women should be but uh i do not know i you see it in uh also in uh like in church uh where more and more women are becoming [ministers] in uh you know in protestant [congregations] and uh it will be interesting to see if if roman [catholicism] ever uh [recognizes] women in in the role of priest i i do not know if you are roman catholic or you know what you know about that i am not either but uh that is one area where it that i can see might change but i really doubt will change no probably not huh_uh so uh uh how about what in particular would you think that uh women still other than the work place where women still are being uh-oh you know found wanting you know or not as highly [regarded] as men would be uh i was just trying to think oh i know something maybe you could what do you think that what do you think tell me what you think about this the uh the uh the role of women in combat roles during the war because i know that there now there they want the armed forces to recognize that women can serve in combat roles and the only uh branch in the armed services that seems willing to do that is the air force and uh i spoke because women were filing flying missions into you know for whatever reason into uh in the persian gulf war and so but i know some of the other services do not think that women are capable of doing the job it was real interesting they were i was listening to some of the comments on television the other day uh about it and uh one of one of the men who was a i do not know if he was a general or you know what his rank was very high he said it's just a personal thing with me i mean i can not be real you know i can not tell you why i feel this way but i just would rather have uh a man doing some of these jobs than a woman i thought well at least he was honest but that does not sit very well with a lot of folks i am sure yeah right you know neil well neil as far as i am concerned and i could be wrong about this but the only one area where a woman could not do it is if she just physically did not have the strength to do something uh because i would think i think you know mentally uh and emotionally i think women can handle a job and every bit as well so anyway it's still sure no i would not either no i agree but i am sure that there are women who would would [relish] that you know kind of job so uh i guess that should be taken into consideration as well so well this is an interesting topic um i have you know i have having a daughter who has gone into this into engineering i sort of watched progress to see if she did anything differently than i did she's a lot more [forthright] about her opinions and a little more assertive than i think i was so that's that's progress i guess well i have enjoyed talking with you lisa and uh have you talked with a lot of people in this project or yeah oh yeah oh yeah right yeah well that's great that's good yeah yeah well yeah well that's good that's good because uh i i guess i placed all but one or two of my calls and uh only because i going to make some money see we our choir is doing this as a money raising project we we got the connection through a t i uh church member and uh uh so we are doing it to raise money for uh a large project at church and uh so i feel like this is one way i can contribute that's not too painful financially painful anyway it's just real nice that way so uh i thought well i will just get on the stick and do it well i will say good bye to you but i have enjoyed the conversation thank you bye bye oh yeah i yeah i think so yeah there's been a lot of changes i think there's still a lot to be made though uh_huh yeah yeah i work for t i uh_huh uh_huh uh uh i guess there's more women in uh what would be classified as a man's job i am a drafter i am in a man's job but we have got more women in it now there's a lot of us in it so uh uh_huh we have some engineers that still on their uh the drawings that they mark up for us they put [draftsman] and i want to scratch it out and put drafter but i thought well i am not going to do that uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh oh definitely definitely uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah do you uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh exactly no huh_uh do you oh wonderful uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah no huh_uh uh_huh yeah yeah not for a long time anyway uh_huh uh_huh oh oh uh_huh uh_huh huh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh there's some men out there that are more feminine than most women yeah yeah yeah oh i do too uh_huh uh_huh and you know if she wanted to go to combat i do not see that they should stop her i personally would not want to go but oh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh good yeah well same here well i am not a home at home a lot i am at work right now i put my work number but at home uh the recorder gets my calls usually i am not there but i probably talked to seven or eight people uh_huh i personally have not made any calls yet myself i just it never crosses my mind but i enjoy receiving them uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's wonderful yeah that's great okay well thanks for calling uh_huh bye bye hi pat uh_huh we are certainly not our families have changed society has changed everything has changed yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah it's well even even raising boys today is different though because they are expected to do so much more than they used to you know used to be they would just go off to work and come home and you know everything was done and it it's a different world it's some good some bad uh it's nice that there's a choice i i have chosen to stay at home and raise my children and i have a ten year old and a twelve year old and i was a single parent for awhile and worked and that was great i was able to and i was able to provide for my children and and you know that was wonderful but i i thank god everyday now that i have that choice and that i am able to do things at home and and uh i volunteer a whole lot and uh that's my job right now and i i love it i really love it right right right and that will come i know that day will come and i am looking forward to that too but that's a different phase in my life and i am i am glad that i am able to do what i want to do right now uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right right right you are not beating rugs you are not right doing laundry by hand and that kind of thing uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah but don't you think it's that way with men too i mean you know men are sitting behind [desks] a whole lot more than they used to yeah yeah uh_huh right right right right and stress disorders and things like that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh right right you know it's funny yeah yeah it's funny it's funny i was i was really looking forward to summer thinking oh we are going to have some time off and it's been real busy and actually today is really the first as far as i am concerned the first day of summer because we have had so much going on the past few weeks and uh you are right uh well that's how society has changed uh you know uh the family has changed we you know we find ourselves doing things that we never did as kids you know i do not remember being involved in things like this it's it's different it's just i do not know only time will tell whether it's better or worse than the way we grew up but uh it's it's just very different um yeah yeah yeah uh_huh right right right but is not that difficult to do when you are working full time and have to come home and prepare a meal and get homework done and you know where do you find the time uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's very true and then that way we have not changed in hundreds of years have we yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh didn't he though that's very true that's that's very true i as a matter of fact i was talking to a friend yesterday who said she has a new policy in her home and when her her family comes to her and says fix this you know i am having a problem with you know another member of the family she said i have taken a new stance and i say no i will not you know you work it out for yourself and she said it's amazing she said you know every single person in this family [expects] me to get and they suck me into these arguments and these conversations and i i am supposed to be the one who is going to fix it all and and [soothe] everybody and she said i am not doing it anymore i i just um uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah hi one of the interesting things that i have considered about the role change for women is that women of my age my generation were trained and taught and brought up to be the leave it to beaver housewives but we are not living in that world uh_huh families uh_huh oh yeah sure uh_huh that's one of the and it makes you really concerned i am glad i raised guys you know let the world train them what to do but [characteristically] you know the women are trained or have been in the past trained in the home and i really would be at a loss to to raise and train a girl i think i would oh sure uh_huh oh sure uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh sure uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah i did very much the same thing until my boys got into high school and said mom please do not be involved then i went back to work yeah sure right right well you know there's a lot of things that have happened actually and and it's it's like the it's like oil on top of water it changes but it's never different in a lot of ways uh women at one time did very heavy physical labor and were expected to maintain a household then as times changed uh as it is today we do not do a lot of physical labor even in even in housekeeping and homemaking there's not a lot of physical labor because there are uh_huh right and in that respect we have to make ourselves become involved in physical [exertion] or we really do develop some health problems so in in that in that respect i am not so sure that the hard work of years past was not better for us than we are willing to admit and uh oh absolutely true it's that's true with society in general but specifically the woman's role in society has changed and you know medical reports tell us that women are developing diseases now that used to be [predominately] male diseases heart disease was [characteristic] of men now there's almost equally [predominant] in women and i uh_huh uh_huh right and i think that that's a that's a symptom of our society it's a symptom that there's there's a general illness that needs to be [healed] i do not know what the healing process would be or what was causing the problem i am not i am not god but i i do know that in raising my boys i really did meet a lot of pressures saying you know you need to get them into music lessons you need to get them into sports you need to get them into this they need to be busy and they need to be active and i fought all of those things i said if those boys want to be involved in that they will come to me and they will say mom this is important to me i want to do it otherwise i will guard their ability to have quiet time i refused to [cram] their lives full and that's the way it is with a woman too uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh of course uh_huh well i just am very much a believer in quiet personal time if you do not have the time to talk to yourself who are you going to talk to right and i [guarded] my children's rights for that and i think that that's one of the things that women are sacrificing that they should not do they are sacrificing their time with themselves there's nothing wrong with sitting and being bored if you thinking internally and you are working on your own self you are finding out who you are well i think um well in the first place it's not your homework it's your children's homework and i was always very careful to be there only when they came to me and asked me for help i helped them with exactly what they asked for and that's all that's a part of the problem that women have always had and that is accepting responsibility for things that really are other people's responsibilities they they that's right that way husbands are crippled they are intellectual [cripples] and so are children they do not know how to think for themselves and be responsible for themselves i do not know why god made women brilliant i yes but i do not know they tend to look at the mother as the one who [solves] all problems they are all things to all people and that's never changed uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's right you know i think that's one of the things that we have today that is very useful and i think every woman ought to deal with it or ought to at least be exposed to it and that is [mediation] training uh we are not talking about strikes or things we are talking about [mediators] who get involved in family [crises] parents and children husbands and wives uh you know boss and employee those kinds of things [interpersonal] [mediation] because the [mediator] is an unbiased bystander who okay yes uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right oh mercy yeah that that's too bad um um that's sad it really is uh_huh uh_huh that's that's wonderful uh_huh well that's wonderful that speaks well of your mother she had high standards yeah oh bless her heart challenges uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh surely well i think that you carried forth your subject matter very well uh [nickie] and i can uh relate to that uh uh i think it's it's the image that the woman has and uh in the world as uh the lesser of the two and uh i think things are changing but the changing is taking a long time longer than we would like it to like it to take and uh i think we are progressing at a [snail's] pace but we are progressing so that's the main point is that we are going ahead and uh i think that uh in the long term that women are going to be able to have the recognition that they deserve and uh men uh have a lot of them have uh come around and have seen the error of their ways but there are a lot of die [hards] out there that will never change so we have to uh face that reality also it could be if they are they are not sure of themselves the one's that uh go along with that they are sure of themselves and they know that they can uh you know uh be on the same level and they do not have any uh ego uh problems that they are fighting and uh i think that we are going to be uh on par with them in salary and in recognition in the long term uh and i what i would like to see happen [futuristically] is what we are discussing is that yes uh we each have our uh jobs in life and that we should recognize that and that we should support each other and uh i think our problems would be fewer if we supported each other and just looked at each other as equals and none lesser because we are equal uh_huh uh uh_huh uh_huh well i guess we would have to go back to the way that the lord made us and uh the women when they are married they are to be subjective to their husbands and i believe that strongly and uh but i think that they should be in [harmony] with what they are with what the subject matter is and i think the issue should be settled before there's a conflict uh and i think that can happen in a very wonderful way and if we men and women would do as the bible said that we would esteem each other higher than ourselves can you picture that i mean if your husband did that to you and you did that to your husband you would always be trying to please each other and not yourself and uh that's really the the [divine] answer and and the right answer so uh uh that would be a beautiful relationship and i think there are some people that have done that and i have seen it and it's it's just marvelous and i am just in awe to see this all right well i am uh the product of uh i think as much the changing roles of women as anyone my mother uh we come from a my mother and i were uh really first generation divorce in our family my uh mother was divorced in nineteen uh fifty seven when i was seven years old and was i was the first one of anyone that that anyone had ever known to have a divorce of course now fifty percent divorces in the united states uh my mother uh was treated very badly uh in a by a lot of people family members um especially from my father's side of the family and also uh uh uh we were uh [ostracized] by his family uh basically just you know uh we just kind of dropped off the face of the earth and they all felt that there was never an issue that my father was the was the cause of the reason for the split up even though he had [impregnated] another woman and forced the divorce uh it was always my mother's fault she was not uh sufficient you know she just was not good enough what was wrong with her was she not attractive enough did she not take good enough care of her man to keep his interest it was that kind of an attitude so uh yeah it was too bad it was really rough uh so you know that's so changing some of the changing roles of women in that respect i have been a product of um i think that there are people that i think that uh i was i was first generation going to college in my family uh first my mother had always had a quote career but always a career as a uh uh in a secretarial position she did rise to the highest position that a woman could rise to in a secretarial profession in [des] [moines] iowa she was a secretary to uh uh the to uh a circuit court judge federal judge and it was a lifetime appointment for her as well as for him so that was a really high high status position she made over thirty thousand a year well yeah she a real hard yeah hard driving lady with a steel rod up her back you know but uh so i went to college and now since have completed two masters degrees and i am the director of music in a church um and but it's interestingly enough i am still everyday confronted with absolutely challenges that have to do with my sex uh for instance uh well you know i am just not taken as seriously you know at professions as many of the as many of the men who are doing the same job i do and uh the choir members treat me differently because i am a woman they expect me to be more [motherly] they question my authority more uh than they ever would a man and i have experience with this because i work at both both as a director of music and also as an associate under a man so i am pretty i am pretty pretty i mean i am pretty aware of what goes on uh in the church so basically that's that's well i am done talking do you want to talk uh_huh uh_huh oh always uh_huh indeed uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i have never been able to figure out why they can not ever change why they can not bend i mean why they can not just accept you know competent women i i have never been able to understand that i guess it's fear i mean what sure uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh men have a lot of trouble with that though they in their in their own peer relationships they do not treat themselves equal and so it's really difficult for them to treat women as equals they are they are really much more comfortable with somebody being the boss and somebody being the follower uh it just seems that it seems it seems that they are more comfortable that way and i do not know if that's i mean that's it's a [militaristic] point of view i guess you know somebody can not be [colonel] and everybody else is [infantry] but it's just really interesting to me i am married to a wonderful man you know who treats me very you know with a with as i think probably is as [enlightened] as anyone can be at this particular stage in their life time but when he gets angry it's always over control issues it's always over power issues it's never over you know it's always you said you were going to do something and you did not do it as if he is the boss and i am the you know and i am the slave and it those are the only only issues we ever fight about i think it's just i think it's just difficult for men to uh to accept women equally even if they want to they are more comfortable when somebody is the boss uh dictator [dictatorships] are real efficient um um um um huh huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah it's true uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh it would be uh_huh uh_huh okay did you want me to go ahead okay well one thing i i guess both of us are very much aware of the equality uh it seems like women are uh just starting to really get some kind of equality not only in uh jobs but in the home where husbands are starting to help out a lot more than they ever did uh it's not uncommon to see men doing dishes making supper or taking care of the kids or uh the generation of my parents and my great grandmother which uh they did everything they went to work and they took care of the family so exactly exactly yeah yeah that's the way my husband is too i mean it it doesn't uh doesn't bother him at all to do the dishes it doesn't bother him at all to do the laundry verses uh men from way back there is that well if you did that you were [henpecked] or whatever but men are starting yeah those are very few i think those men don't last very long in relationships because i think women know what they want right exactly and it's it's hard enough to be a woman out there trying to do everything uh you know and then kind of real light pay there's just no way that we can be happy trying to do it all so it's it's kind of a uh neat thing to see as far as equality in the households and i think that's even going to get better even you know even more so i think it's just going to be where men will do as much cleaning as women do and that it won't be your job description instead of your role definition is this it will be uh hopefully for my daughter who i instill into it doesn't matter if you want to drive a truck honey or it doesn't matter if you want to be a nurse it doesn't matter if you want to be uh the president or it doesn't matter if you want to be a lawyer or a doctor it doesn't matter it's what you want to be so i have always [instilled] into her and i think mothers um are doing a really good job in raising their daughters to say hey you don't have to stay with nursing you don't have to be a secretary you don't have to be you can be whatever you want to be whether it be a [welder] or [trucker] or whatever as long as you uh go to school for it and get the education so uh_huh uh_huh if they want to right uh_huh i do too you know there's a certain part of me uh_huh yeah yeah well emotionally i think uh women do a little bit uh i i think that's the gap is coming closer as um what i've learned in uh just just being out there it seems that men are now starting to get into groups called men's [gatherings] and they get together and they talk about issues of marriage talk about manhood talk about what they didn't have with their fathers are expressing more emotions learning what emotions are it may be in the future that men you know some men may be better parent or mothers than mothers themselves um i i know of some mothers that i i guess i'd rather be with the father because the father is maybe more understanding more um low key more apt to be a better father than some mothers that i have seen that have been raised you know to develop whatever skills that they have and some of the men are developing uh very good too so it may come down to where it's it's individual basis where everybody is treated an as individual and not by sex if you want to stay home and take care of the kids honey that's fine i will go out and make the uh take care of the uh money making and it it wouldn't matter if it's a woman or a man saying that on one income uh_huh yeah yeah that kind of like what uh my husband and myself are doing right now my daughter's three even though at this current time she's ready to get involved with she's an only child i don't know if you've only got one i'll let you go ahead and start yeah you know i think that's changed just in the last generation just in the last little while because i know my father in law doesn't do that much of that kind of stuff but my husband is wonderful yeah yeah yeah there are still some that aren't cooperating but they're not accepting that anymore yeah yeah yeah yeah well i feel like um to an extent that is really important you know that that um it is important for women who need to work uh or are in a position that they want to that they can do that um but i also think it is important for them to be with the children i i think there there are some things that women just are designed to do better than men and there are some things that men are designed to do better than women i don't think it should ever be totally equal you know that's not uh we're not made like that that's right huh yeah yeah yeah one of the frustrations that i have with the way things have developed is that and for some it's not a problem but there's more and more it's difficult for a family to make a living on one income it can be done but you make sacrifices you know and and it's um yeah what what do you feel is the the major change that's been going on i think that has been the major change is that women feel they need to go out and do this they they no longer feel it's uh it's no big deal to to stay home and raise your family any more i know it and i i think i think that's really sad because i think there's going to be a generation of kids that are going to grow up raised by somebody else you don't well i'm i'm still home with with my last one and i wouldn't trade change a minute of it for anything but i i can't i can't help but think that eventually the [pendulum's] going to swing back the other way again uh_huh oh yeah that's yeah it it's sad uh_huh uh_huh yeah i i think too many people feel they need to live a more extravagant life style than necessary uh you know to i i don't think you know the kids don't benefit from the bigger house and the fancier cars and and and this type of thing i think that they would from the you know attention or whatever uh but it i uh i i don't know i i see it as a major problem and i think it's going to have to swing back the other way because i think we're going to have an awful lot of kids who are going to have major problems from all this uh_huh what what grade do you teach six seven and eight i've got a uh where do you live are you out in richardson we're in plano here i have a daughter in middle school and uh i know there aren't very many she has a few friends that have moms who are still at home but do you see um you know do you ever do you ever see problems you know that you feel you know that the kids are left alone too much and he stays at school and the school allows that uh_huh uh_huh oh my uh_huh uh_huh no mother to talk to well i've just do you do you feel it will swing back the other way or do you feel there's just going to be a big push to uh you know for for more more and more day care type situations uh_huh yeah that's a tough question we are now able to work full eight hours a day and still do our housework right don't ask me well it has no credibility any more well i'm a school teacher and i'm in charge of raising them so i can appreciate it oh good for you good for you well you know it's interesting because when i heard the topic i was thinking uh this summer oprah had a t v show about wives that refused to go to work and how their husbands thought they were terrible and one woman had four children and her husband said she wasn't pulling her own weight in the family that's frightening and it you know it was almost from the audience participation it was almost a social issue you know people were siding with the husband saying you've got to go to work if you have these four children you've got to support them and nobody would give her credit for being home and raising them that's true that's true yeah well you know i as i said i teach school and gosh i'm trying to think i don't know i have one woman one mother that i know is home but she also has ten children six seven and eight in richardson oh okay oh yeah i've got one child um that stays with me every day until five because his mother doesn't come home until seven and he doesn't want to be home from three thirty until seven by himself uh_huh well he stays with me and i have a tendency to work late i work until six so he stays with me until five thirty and then goes home and you know i have lots of kids because they know i'm there late i'm a slow mover to say the least but um they'll come in and say can i stay with you because i don't want to go home to an empty house and that's frightening because you know the when i said i i'm i'm raising them i am because we're talking about boy friends and we're talking about what the girl said in class and you know what's right because there's no mother at home and um it makes a difference i and just the social values i i don't know i i have a feeling we're going to go more and more i've got a twenty one year old female and i've got twenty two year old male child children and i listen to my daughter and she's going to work and she's going to buy her house and she's going to get her car and then she's going to have her children and then when you know they go on one salary will they be able to sustain what their life style is and they're back to work and you know i agree with you i was raised in a generation we didn't need all those things and we lived without them we did fine hello hi my name's gail i'm calling from texas oh what a deal took long enough to find you yeah seems like they take forever any more but um so did you hear what the topic was did she tell you okay great well if you're ready then uh i'll just go ahead and start okay hold on okay well i guess we're supposed to talk about the changing roles of women seems like um to me everything is just changing so much that it's almost like um you can't keep up with things any more and everything is uh everyone's striving so much to make it equal between men and women i personally i'm a stay home mom and i like it the way it used to be are you yeah uh_huh yeah how many kids do you have two are they young or five and two i have two and mine are two and nine months so um being being home is real i i just am fortunate because i don't know a real lot of moms that get to stay home and uh i just it's just weird that i was just talking to somebody this morning who's who's a working uh lady a working mom and you know these people have secretaries and these high power jobs and it just seems like um she she told me now her daughter took her first steps at the day care and uh i just think i i i just don't agree with that i think it should be that people should get back to staying home and and being family more family oriented than than not you know it seems like everybody's always so busy with everything that they're doing that there's no time for this and that and the other and i hope it just doesn't get to where you know there's more women more and more women going into the work force yeah uh_huh yeah well i find that i whenever i have to whenever i'm in a group of people and we're discussing things like just over the weekend i visited my family and some cousins i hadn't seen in a long time and everyone's all interested in what everybody's doing and uh you know well i had my baby with me and i found that all i talked about was my baby which was fine with me but it's like you know here these people are they're going to school getting degrees making all this money and you know they kind of looked at me like i was from the dark ages you know like i because i didn't have really all that much to talk about uh where career and things like that were concerned and you kind of feel little bit like an [outcast] for a while in social situations sometimes which is too bad because you know i i feel like i don't obviously i don't get paid for my job but i should get paid at least double what my husband makes working in an office for staying home that's what i figure i'm worth a lot just for what i do every day but you know i don't know this is kind of a um at at least here i've noticed i'm not from here i'm from colorado but i've really noticed that there are a lot of uh a lot more people that are more comfortable at least with some women being home and at least in the circles i've travelled and in the church that i go to you know that men don't treat you like you don't know anything generally speaking yeah yeah yeah i can see where that would definitely [hinder] the problem definitely well hello hi i'm sandy i'm in texas too oh really yes yeah okay yeah so am i you know i think it's kind of coming back around to that don't you i mean that there's a lot more people that stay home now than before but i guess more than anything i think maybe people were just kind of wanting to have the choice of what they could do you know i don't know i mean i think sometimes some of the the women's [lib] though is kind of like they wanted it all you know and you can't have everything i don't i don't think that you can have i mean there's no way i could have a career and then be the kind of mom that i want to be and to me that's more important two uh_huh five and two well i agree i mean but i i hate for them to make people feel bad that have to work too saying you know you should stay home you know otherwise your children aren't going to you know turn out or whatever because that's not fair to you know like the single moms that have to work or if they wouldn't be able to make ends meet not working or whatever i mean i think it's got to be a personal choice and it's nice that that we could have the choice to stay home yeah yeah yeah well and i think a lot of companies are realizing this and offering more opportunities as far as like job sharing or you know even having a day care on site and that kind of stuff and i think that's really important that that they do that and they realize there's a need for that and um i don't know i found when i did do some work when my son was young it was like contract work and it wasn't where i had to be there every day but i mean we were going to the doctor once a week so i don't know how you could have a full time job and ever have any vacation time to do anything besides go to the doctor okay do you work i think that's the main change what do you think right that's right well i've worked all the time up until just about a year ago and i just physically i wasn't able to and i mean i love my job but i have four children and that's real hard you have children i assume so right right right oh right oh it's real hard it's real hard i mean even i yeah it was so hard for me to work full time of course my kids are are a little older but then you then you give up the money you know yeah yep fine yep i know yeah well i've decided now in fact i'm just i'm substitute teachers aid which is a [afar] cry from my travel agent career which i loved but i'm i'm there in the same school as my children my two littler ones and i'm home when they are home in fact i've had an offer to just work the christmas season at a local jewelry store and i'm just really [hesitating] because i've i enjoyed my the first summer home ever so like seventeen years with my kids i mean well i didn't have babies or day care or working as a travel agent and it was wonderful my kids and i we just had a ball of course their their ages they are almost seventeen well sixteen fourteen eleven and nine and we are just running every direction and it is it is always worked what yeah right right i think that you know it's good you know sometimes i'll have the cookies ready when they come home and and a lot of my boys uh my older boys' junior high friends will come over in fact everyday i've got boys hanging around and it's wonderful i'm real close to the schools and you know we are just i i'm very happy to be staying home but again i miss the i don't i keep on working right that we are because it's so expensive if we want uh extra clothes the extra car the extra the thing is when a woman does work then there is the clothes to buy and then there is the gas and then there is the lunches and then the day care you must pay for day care yeah oh my gosh yeah for two it's almost hardly worth it for you to work until they get in school then you work summers unless you are a teacher are you a teacher uh_huh no it's not the same i i don't see things changing really and and it's terrible for divorced women you know who are forced to work who maybe don't have a college education thank goodness i have mine and i could get a real good paying job if i wanted to you know in fact i still have offers you know please come back and we'll pay you this yeah yeah and it's been a real tough decision but i'm very happy to be here with my kids my kids we've seen a remarkable difference in now that i'm home yeah i'm real and i'm but i've been doing a lot of volunteering at the schools and playing lots of tennis yeah yeah i know right yeah well oh that would be great right i think the the other thing that that has changed for woman because we are working is we are having less children yes i do well i think that's a big part of it and i i think it maybe started because women wanted outside of the home and i almost think with our society and and inflation and the cost of things it's anymore it's almost couples have to work outside the home but but yeah i think that's a big change i'd like to not work what about you yeah uh_huh yes i have two and that's been a big deciding factor because i mean i never wanted to be a career woman but as long as i you know was going to work i was going to do as as much as i could as well as i could et cetera and i i wanted to stay home when i had kids well i have two i have a four year old and a three year old and we would like two more but i it's like we talked uh i don't want two more unless i can quit and stay home and take care of them which is something right now financially it takes both people to work yeah it's full time work uh_huh yeah you do there's of course you know everything you give up something but i just i the kids are so wonderful but i do think that's one of the major changes you know my mama i remember her being home uh you know she made breakfast in the morning for us and if she worked it was part time and it was work that was done while we were maybe at school and she was there when we got home you know and uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh oh yeah see and i think oh oh but see it's such an important time to be home you know and that was important to me enough you know my husband was raised uh his his parents were divorced when he was young so his mom always worked and he's like well you know what's the big deal about being home for your kids well as our kids are getting older you know he sees it more i said [russ] you don't understand what it was like to have her home or to if you needed mom at school you know she was there to help or she was there to take you and and i want to be able to do those things so yeah i think that's wonderful so where do you see us changing in the future well see that was one of the things the the question i think is you know what changes do we see and i'm i'm not sure i i see it go anywhere i think they are still going to have to work right uh_huh uh_huh the day care eats me alive you know i pay four hundred fifty to five hundred fifty a month for two kids they would eat you alive i know no i'm not and i would love you you you talked about having the summers off and i thought oh that would be so wonderful and i love the little preschool they are in it's wonderful you know so i feel good about them being there but it's still not the same it's just not uh_huh uh_huh please come back to work sure that's wonderful that's wonderful i like that well we're working on it i'm hoping in about three to five years i'll be able to stay home and my kids of course will be in school then but i'll be there mornings i'll be there [noons] i'll be there afternoons and all i feel like that's good and i can work part days in my husband's business you know so that he can afford for us to do that you know okay would you uh like to begin or would you like me to start okay yes uh_huh yes i agree right right i agree with that i i think you do see more and more women out there in politics too as mayors or uh you know in in helping to maybe uh get some legislation passed to to have women have more rights i think still even with that whole um thing with judge thomas and and uh you you still felt like the woman was the one that you would maybe [discredit] first before the man or something the way they had the trial and uh i just think that it's it's still going to take another generation or so before before the women really could really feel that they're really equal in the business world and that they work just as hard or harder uh but it's still uh going from from homemakers into uh corporate leaders is still a big step right yes i think it's true i think also people are having children at a older age so it's maybe like uh you know you go through college and then you maybe work for a few years and then you have your first child and uh you know you you know both sides of the coin you know what it's like and how much work it takes to keep the house running smoothly and to take care of the kids and and then uh maybe people that are just working and think oh you just stay at home but then when they're in their thirties and have their first and second kid it's like they lose it they say wow this is harder than i thought well you know i know it i know uh_huh are so involved yes right right their role has to change to kind of accommodate us too i know i have three children and my oldest is eleven and i've pretty much been home uh since brian was born and uh just recently i went back to work uh last school semester to tutor uh high school age students with learning disabilities and i was just out of the house two days a week but i thought wow this is really hard only and it was only two days and i was home before three but getting the baby to day care getting the kids off to school i still did everything i always do you know my husband still got up and went to work but uh it it only those two it made a big difference i thought wow full time i don't think i could swing that personally oh oh boy pick up dinner right i bet i bet well i i know a lot of people i know i had my first child when i was twenty five and that's not considered really young these days that's almost you know but uh i have friends that that have kids just starting kindergarten and they're they're forty years old and and then like maybe a two year old at home and i think boy i i'm i'm in my uh-oh i can start i i think one of the the biggest uh improvements in women is that finally you're starting to see them get into uh management and you're seeing them uh get uh elected to uh political offices uh not near enough i know there's still a long way to go especially in top management you're not seeing you know looking at t i you see them in management but you're not seeing them up there as v p and i have a sister that's an attorney in oklahoma city and i know the company that she was with uh the women didn't have near the positions the levels that the men attorneys had and were not uh given the same respect yes uh_huh uh_huh right right right i also think that uh uh women as homemakers are beginning to get more respect than they used to be used to be people would say do you work and you'd say no i work in the home and it was it was then it was almost like a put down particularly particularly even by women in the work force but i think now i think people are realizing that the roles women play in the home are very very important and it's getting the respect and which is about time yes very definitely that's right right yes and and to those that have never worked and had you know and have stayed home with the kids kind of does your heart good because i know i stayed home with mine and didn't start working until mine were in high school and uh so you know it it kind of does me good i think also one of the things that that's really tremendous and it doesn't necessarily have to do with women but the fact that the fathers are so involved with families which again i think it helps a woman's role you know uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i had to course i work full time but my daughter and her husband were out of town so i had my grandchildren for four days during uh football soccer season and so i would work and her some friends would take care of the kids but i would have to get them picked up from there get them fed get them to practices get homework done get baths i was absolutely exhausted and and these women that are waiting until they're in their late thirties or early forties to have their first children i think are absolutely crazy uh_huh we're set what changes do you feel have happened right increases each year doesn't it it increases each year i think well and i think women have kind of had uh in the past the real [subservient] role and uh well we do to some degree but uh uh i think it's not as much as it was i and especially i think with women increasingly working they're going to have to demand more from men because there is just impossible to keep up on everything else have more of an active role in taking care of children more of an active role in taking care of the home right well you know there is a lot of companies that won't give women maternity leave for that very reason uh in fact i know the school districts down here you they don't have maternity leave uh you simply have to take accumulate your sick leave and take your sick leave and i don't know uh if bigger company companies do but when i was employed with the school district i didn't have maternity leave either and that was the reason because they thought was showing [prejisim] to women and not to men but so uh yeah it is you have to save all of your uh vacation time you do you have to save all your vacation time and that's usually how it's uh happened but uh what do you see uh changing in the future right and and top level maybe top level that would be kind of nice that's right that's right yeah i think that's probably good a little more [integration] and uh maybe not so much that we sit on the back burners and i think right right no i don't either i don't think they're ever going to prove that men and women are equal we just function differently and uh i'm not capable of lifting what uh a man can lift and you know that type of that type of thing but uh one of the big changes uh they're doing in salt lake is uh and they're probably i'm sure in dallas since you're big places a lot more women are uh working right out of their home with their p c's or with their lap computers or whatever i think that right right you only have to check in with the office once or twice a week and course they're talking about uh that we're going to be able to do our grocery shopping and banking and everything like that so uh it would be kind of exciting in some ways to to see a little bit more of that and some ways it might be kind of scary think anybody could do it but anyway right right but then you know there is the process of selection would you have to give them the brand and uh you know when you shop you usually compare the prices and would be nice though okay oh i guess the first thing has been the uh for the right for women to vote i think that has been a major change and also the fact that uh there are so many more women in the work force nowadays than there were and that's probably going to increase you know i'm sorry it sure does yeah there is a lot more women in the work place nowadays role right that's changing right right yeah i i agree it definitely has changed uh_huh yeah yeah well you know they've been talking about and i don't know uh what the status is on it but you know women get maternity leave and stuff like that and i know that they've there has been discussion about men also getting maternity leave to help out but you know i haven't really heard much about that recently uh_huh oh is that right oh uh_huh huh that's interesting that's a bummer though i mean you got to take the time off yeah uh_huh i think that we're probably going to see a lot more companies uh run by females and we'll i'm sorry right right upper management more women in upper management and probably uh we'll see more females in political roles more governors and i think you know roles like that well we've got in texas we have a female governor and we had a female mayor here in dallas and she just her term just ended and uh so i think we're probably going to see more of that in the future uh_huh right you know i mean and that's fine with me but sometimes i mean i'm not a women's libber by any means but i do there are issues that you know as far as like equal pay for men and women and that kind of stuff i totally am for but i don't get into the uh the real women libber movement you know yeah right right yeah right yeah i i've heard of that uh i haven't really talked to anybody that's you know too involved with that but i mean i think that is a like the cottage industry is is that what you're talking about women working out of their homes yeah uh i think it's wonderful yeah oh i by the phone and all that right right yeah i wouldn't mind just calling up the grocery store and giving them my order and going an hour later and picking it up right right well nancy what do you think um some of the changes in roles of women are in american society in the past generation or two uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um yeah i agree i also think that there are more um the people are women stay single longer it seems like yeah i know my mother and her sister were both married by the time they were twenty and i waited until i was thirty two so you know um i know that uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah yeah yeah seems like there's uh_huh go ahead uh it just seems like there are more single mothers too i mean that's there're a lot of either divorced or um you know never been married so yeah i agree well what do you think have been the most significant changes in the past generation or so uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah and it really it's affecting the families you know for mothers not not to be home and yet you know um i mean i i don't blame anybody when they have to work because um yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah well what do you think's going to happen in the next generation you think it'll continue yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah it is i think some i don't know how many you know what percentage but some are will move back toward more traditional lifestyle of staying home with the children i guess i see that happening already some choosing it and and they get you know there're people [chide] them for it you know why aren't you out well of course working that's definitely got to be the biggest thing is that everybody's out there working including me well what do you think it is yeah yes they do yeah they do right uh_huh yeah yeah that's true it's a big change i'm an o b nurse and so i really do see what you're saying there it used to be that our list ran nineteen twenty twenty one for our [patients'] ages and now our care plans look more like thirty two thirty three and if we get somebody twenty one we go oh look how young so yeah you're right there's a big change and we have a lot of first time moms in their late thirties and even forties so it's true but again i guess it probably does go back to the same thing of women having careers if they didn't have if they weren't out there working and having their careers they probably would be married and having their children so i guess it's a combination no go on yeah yeah yeah yeah there's a lot of mixed up families that's for sure well just that i think the families the the role in the family and the mother doesn't stay home and cook the dinner take care of the children um we do it all i really think that and i know that there's a lot more participation by the fathers but i still think the mothers have the major role i really do i think they're just they're not doing very much less i don't think as far as the kids and and the house and everything are concerned not from what i see and and they're contributing to the income besides i think that we're really really putting a lot of stress on ourselves oh it is yeah yeah it's it's difficult and i think that i live in plano actually so it's a very wealthy town and we're not part of that but it is you know and i think what i see a lot of parents a lot of mothers working just for bigger and better and i really hate that you know i hate to see that and i i've been here for a very long time but um i don't know now i'm a single parent and i don't have a choice any more but i used to just work occasionally for extra money but now i have to work all the time and that's really hard and and i don't know how a mother does just choose to go out to work and and leave the kids in a way it's good it's very good to get out with adults and i think that's a good thing if you can do it part time but to just go out there forty hours a week at least and and work and and leave your kids to get home from school alone and that kind of thing i think that's not very smart i think that's difficult on them so well it's going to be interesting yeah i think it will change but i'm not sure how it's going to because you see young people today and wonder how in the world they'll ever afford to buy a home and and to raise a family i don't know how they're going to do it and so i don't know how it can change to where the mother can get back into the home again i don't that ever will go backwards but i don't know what effect it's going to have on these kids now when they grow up how they're going to feel about it it you know it could lead to another woodstock type thing you know where where there's just too much material things and and maybe these kids will really resent that their parents are out there working for things and they might want to do without things rather than do that to their families it's hard to say uh_huh okay you probably uh more up on this subject than i am but the roles that women have played in the last couple of year in our or couple of generations you bet you bet you know where i've noticed it more i think is i'm a traveling salesperson and i have traveled most of my life and i know just especially in the last oh ten years and really since in the last half of dozen years i see more and more women traveling you know as far as [boarding] planes and driving cars and calling on customers i sell sporting goods and even in our industry uh there was virtually really and truly no women as far as selling the type of things i sell and even in the last five or six years boy we see more and more women being involved and you know it's a it's a credit to them as far as how they're doing things you bet you bet that's sort of neat sure i think uh it's the age old thing every once in a while you read in the newspaper or you'll see it on t v or something where the discussion comes out that you know women are paid less than men and they're and they're doing the same uh or carrying the same job responsibility and you know i that's a very true statement and it shouldn't uh it shouldn't be that way you know i think so hope so absolutely you know i've right yeah they forget also i think uh a good argument for that is in the area of politics you know if a a woman congressman i'm sure makes as much as a man congressman as and the same as a senator or whatever so they certainly uh they certainly deserve it all the way but i guess just the most significant thing changed for me again as i mentioned was just in traveling you see uh more and more ladies of all ages with [briefcases] and uh and in their business suits and and going and i expect you're right in regards to having two parents now that's a good a good statement and i think if in the future it's even going to be uh more noticeable and more significant wow you bet good point right now i'm self employed and and my wife's always worked she's a schoolteacher but for she started working and then when i first started my business uh she was selling real estate at the time and hers was the only income we had for three or four months so you know she certainly did her part in help getting me establishing in my business and she still works everyday so you bet uh-oh enjoying it what kind of work do you do well good right married yeah well trying to think what else i can say in regards to this subject you see the old uh cigarette ads you know about you've come a long way baby right and uh you think about this when you come to when it comes to a subject like that and it's really true women have come a long way and you know that right well they've entered the work force more uh you know since world war two is when they started and uh i think that that is you know very significant that the percentage of the work force today consists of such a high percent of women right yeah the you see more of that you see more of them uh leaving their children in the care of their husbands while they do travel too you know i i go to a i have a club that i belong to on tuesday that you know one of the girls travels quite extensively and she says well my children have two parents you know why not so that that's a i think that's a change and i think that's a change you're going to be seeing more of in the in the future people having that kind of attitude that the father's going to take more active role in child rearing right no that that i think should change will change in the near future also it's been changing it's been [evolving] but there's still a an an [inequality] in the work forces or jobs it's you know and you hear some people say you know well he's a man he he he needs that salary right and going yeah uh_huh right yeah i i think it will be i think i well another thing i read too the other day this is not just for working women but how much they're out there i guess is the car [designers] uh are starting to design cars with women in mind uh because in the past the male bought the cars but now they're showing that fifty five percent of women are actually making the new car purchases and that they are looking for uh different things in the car the man is looking for the in the engine and the woman is looking to how easy can she slide in under the steering wheel uh can her makeup come off the [upholstery] and if they're out there buying that many cars then there's that many out that are self sufficient and you know mobile and working right yeah we all do i just happen to be off today i work too i'm a nurse and i work at medical treatment center uh which is at uh [jupiter] and arapaho no i don't know i'm kind of out of out of things you've come a long way baby right alright allen uh the questions is concerning the changes in the roles of american women in the past several generations and you know in their the society we live in what do you think has occurred there uh_huh but are are they being given the full honor for the work they are doing and for the uh-oh my gosh i can't think of the word but for the what they have to accept that's they are responsible for uh responsibilities is what i am trying to say uh_huh by the same token most in most cases women have the jobs with the same responsibility of men who have been there before but at lower salaries is that right and wrong yes uh_huh yeah well what changes do you think are most significant over the past few years any individual thing or is it just a general switch over uh_huh i have a feeling that business with the woman working out at the same level of responsibility as their husband sort of tears into their social or their loving relationship in that uh the the lady needs to stand up for what she has made and her own rights and has a right to do so and this upsets the man because we have always been built to think that we were sort of head of the household so do you think that is going to be uh difficult saying as far as marriages and people enjoying each other in the future years uh_huh well do you have any opinion of potential changes that may occur in the next generation specifically uh_huh uh_huh yes well i actually a lot of women are being hired now instead of men because they can get brought in at lower salaries because that's what everybody else assumes they are going to get and the people well how do you feel about women in uh armed services yeah um yeah i somehow can't do that i was brought up in the ages where the ladies were kept home safe secure and made happy and the men went out and took responsibility of earning the money bringing in whatever they needed and protected the household and it it really still bothers me i spent plenty of years in the service but it still bothers me to see ladies out in combat or actually out in places where there is two or three of them there and five hundred men around i mean how are they going to protect themselves so to speak it puts them in a very bad situation i i really don't go for that uh_huh yep well that's not fair because i can tell you one thing stay home sometime and start doing some of those jobs that she's been handling and you're going to learn there is a lot of responsibility just keeping the home going yeah yeah and if they go into the work force they should be treated as nicely as as well as a man or any other person and uh not well i think one of the major changes is the whole attitude towards women in the work place and the role of women in doing jobs outside of the home that's probably one of the major changes i see over the last period of time oh i don't think so i think it has come a long ways in terms of giving them equal opportunities but i still think in lots of job markets they are not treated as equals in other words in some respects the other direction in some job markets they don't really want to be treated as equals yes i think that's generally speaking pretty true and i think that's what we really ought to look at that going is if they are going to do equal work they ought to get equal pay and that uh they ought to have equal opportunities to advance to those positions and i don't think that we have gotten there yet oh boy i think it's generally that switch over and and i think that switch over has been more in the work force i don't think that women are treated as equals in the home as much as they are in the work force i think those women who are out working are probably still expected to carry more responsibility at home that the husband is having them on the other side of that coin picked up as much responsibility at home so they have one and three quarters jobs now whereas the husbands have one and a quarter yeah yes yeah i think also in terms of parenting i think there is going to be some increasing problem because i think women are expecting husbands to do more parenting and i am not sure they are becoming more skilled at it so i think it really has put some additional stresses on the family units well i i think one of the things that always happens is i think is when the one end you know were moving out to the end where a lot of women will be at work and then i think we are starting to see now some tendency of women at mid thirties and so the opinion of this career thing isn't all that it is cracked up to be and i want to go back and do something else i think we will probably see the pendulum in terms of the work force swing back a little bit also much of it is driven by economics right now people have gotten out and gotten use to incomes coming in yeah well i think they ought to have the right i have some problems with my own family thinking about my wife going to or my wife and my daughter going into combat but i have problems with men doing that and i guess if they want to they ought to have the right to do it it's nothing i would be greatly enthusiastic about pushing for it i agree i think one of the other things that concern has concerned me a little bit and i think i see some change in attitudes there my wife happens to be a wife who has chosen to stay at home and there's uh has been a tendency over the past few years to treat her as though she was somebody who didn't have much intelligence because if she did she would be out in the work force uh fulfilling herself and i hope we reach the point where whatever women chose to do that's acceptable if they chose to go into the work force that's okay if they chose not to that's acceptable as equals okay uh do you want to go ahead or uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right i do too i like the idea i see a lot more uh my children i have five children and they're all married and uh i love seeing the men help the women so much and they both cooperate together on i think it's great right that's right that's right i've always taught my men that they better clean up with their women and help them if they did that you know and they're they're good about it but it is neat to see them all work together and a big thing that i see all that most of the most of the women getting married now uh go back have gone back to you know they they stay at work or go back to work or whatever and they're well educated and i believe we'll see a lot more c e o in companies they're having a fit about how little there are and i think we'll see a lot more don't you of upper management then we do now even i think it'll [escalate] and uh and i think black women now in fact i work at a high school and my boss is a black woman and has only been there a couple of months and already promoted and she's very sharp and i think that and the ethnic thing will be you know is a good thing now they're moving them up and they're sharp and they so you're going to see a lot a lot more of that in leadership i believe uh_huh right right that's a shame yes yeah but they wouldn't know what they're doing but i'm not big on [subserving] as far as to the men at all but i never have gone along with that you know even far back but i was brought up pretty good in a home that years ago my mother was that way the same i my you know some people say oh the boys shouldn't have to do those jobs the inside jobs but we never were taught they had to do as much as we did so that was good so that's i think that's good to keep the equal as far as as uh not uh necessarily by sex type thing you know you should be able to accomplish as much and i think the uh attitude is a lot better towards the parents raising the younger ones now you see a lot more of the mothers and all saying to the young girls you know you can do it if he can do it you can do it type thing uh_huh uh_huh right what about politics on it do you think the political scene yeah i'm real i'm kind of disgusted this year because i don't see many women into the political scene and i really think we should have more political leaders in the women than we do up for and even for president and vice president this year there's nobody again i think they're all scared out after after uh oh what was the [lady's] name that ran a couple of i forget her name now but you know who i mean yeah she took such a rough go of it and they their tax deal and right right but i wish they would get some more on that i really was disappointed this year when i see any of the candidates talking that they're talking about uh they i didn't see any of the women in there and that [disappoints] me and right now i don't think we have too many uh in the [forefront] [schroeder's] about the biggest one in washington congress woman and uh other uh we really oh sure uh well i uh went to school at madison for two years and they are really big on women's rights and and equal treatment and so i i've seen a lot of like rallies and things like that but uh i'm not that [liberated] i mean my mom is kind of old fashioned you know so i you know you pick up some [traits] from her and stuff but uh i think it's i think it's interesting and better for women to see that there's more more of them doing men's fields i like to see that and i don't like to see women you know like waiting on men hand and foot but you know i i believe in like sharing and doing things for each other uh_huh right oh me too i hope that happens to me someday i mean i i don't mind doing stuff uh i have a boyfriend and i got to make him dinner and stuff but you know i he'll help me do the dishes i don't want to you know expect to help to clean up then after yeah yeah so right uh_huh right uh_huh oh oh yeah uh_huh right yeah uh_huh oh me too yeah i like to see that i think it's uh really neat to see and all that educated minority uh person who really knows what they're talking about and it's just too bad that some people you know still look down on them just because of their color you know especially black women so right uh_huh right right same here yeah right same here uh_huh yeah yeah exactly i i see more men uh like participating in like the family things with children like you know helping to take care of them more and and uh uh doing the jobs equally you know oh i'm not that big on politics i'm not that educated on it i'm oh yeah i agree with that oh i don't know yeah i know who you're talking about yeah at least she was strong to like try it and you know so that's good uh_huh oh uh_huh well i think the biggest change in like the last fifty years has been the increased number of women who work now i think overall there's been a change i don't think um that's uh been [surpassed] by anything else than uh that because most women seem to be taking into careers and working now and changing the way the family situation is because they're now working and we have to have people to baby sit and such employed outside the home now more visible things and things that use different kinds of mental skills maybe that's a a change because sometimes taking care of a house depending on uh you know how big the house is and whether you had you know a lot of children may not take as much mental skills and such as what working outside the home does uh i think a lot of the modern conveniences today you know have eliminated matter of fact you know i think women even back maybe two hundred years ago when we were first starting the country may have been looked at a little differently because it was really important to have the woman there and she probably you know gave half of the uh work output in like a farm you know her skills were as needed as the man's to you know to like establish a farm from the beginning and then it got to be that you know with the industrial age i think the women uh were the ones staying at home and not as involved in like a big operation as a farm and their the work was more confined to the household chores which didn't really uh have as much to do with the whole livelihood of the family if you were in a farm situation it's kind of kind of kind of gone all the way around that way in the beginning you know their work input for a farm and even like putting in the crops and [harvesting] and such was as important as the man's you know needed both and then she got to be kind of in the house when that wasn't needed as much and now she's kind of like back out of the house but not working for the family business working you know somewhere else yeah well some are kind of forced to but i did see something in the paper today i didn't read it through thoroughly but there was uh article about a a project a study that [elizabeth] [dole] had started when she was still at the department of labor something called glass ceiling it was trying to look at how uh much opportunity there is for women executives to move up they're still saying that there are too many women in higher uh [echelons] as management you know c e o's and that kind of thing no there's not many they're saying that there's kind of like a glass ceiling that uh you just don't find too many women in those positions i think it will just kind of take time um you know for women to be more you know accepted into those kinds of areas and to have [progressed] education and experience wise i mean starting with women working a lot in the work force in the last twenty years it takes awhile for somebody to really gain enough skills to be a c e o and i'm a little frustrated too because a lot of women who have their own businesses still don't seem to have gotten away from what we might kind of consider a more woman kind of business i call it like the three c like they're into cookies like mrs fields and they're into [cosmetics] like mary kay and they're into uh clothing you know but they haven't really [branched] out into some other things like you don't find too many women uh really involved with technology why why how about a computer designed by a woman oh oh okay but historically historically you think of cars being done by ford and such so you don't want to think about a car now designed by a woman huh well there's possibility that there's some woman on those design teams hey there's some men [designers] out there that do very well bob [macky] and such oh oh oh okay all right bye i think it's come along very slowly i think that uh a lot of the stresses that you talk about have have taken a long time to become recognized but more strides are made toward addressing those stresses in women than ever were in men and i think that you know women have had stress you know for the last two hundred years but it's been a different kind of stress different kinds of situations because just being in the work place is different from being at home but at home you still have work to do you still have things to take care of but you don't have the responsibilities and the pressures that you have in the work place so a lot of women have a little bit of trouble adjusting to that but i feel like the in the last couple of decades the the roles have almost come full circle because you know early on people were wanting to we were wanting to stay home with the kids and then they got into everybody has to have a career and it seems to be going back to a lot of women wanting to stay home with their kids although i don't think it'll ever go back to the way it used to be there will still be many many women who seek careers uh before they seek family both i think it's it's a matter of both um economics has a lot to do with it unfortunately but uh i think a lot of choice has gone into it lately and and most of them or a lot of women i know would rather um if they have children they would rather stay home with them if they if they possible can uh_huh yeah your neighbors that's true yeah right there's no one for her to go talk to and there's also no one to to kind of come in and take over for her and allow her some time to herself for even a day you know because there's fewer and fewer people left or women left at home to do that uh_huh yeah uh_huh um yeah right right yeah i agree with that i it it's something that um you know i guess science will eventually have all the answers to everything i don't know but it seems like it it would really be it's it's really difficult to put two a male and a female in the same role in the same circumstances and have them react to have them and their bodies react to the same situation in similar ways i think you know even between same sexes in a different in the same role there would there would be differences in the way one guy handled something over the way another guy would handle it so i think when you put a male and a female in in in comparison you know it would be uh completely different i mean just just totally different and it you know goes a lot of it goes back to the way you were raised as children you know the males are raised to believe this and be this way and the females are raised to believe something else and be this way and uh when when you're raised that way you kind of [perpetuate] that oh those ideals that other people uh force upon you and so you don't you're not able to well i guess you are able to if you want to change them but you stay in those roles for so long that it's it's hard to to adjust and it would take a a really long time for i think science to figure out you know what affects women how and how the same thing affects men i think i just don't think it's any kind of study they can do in any even twenty or thirty year period of time you know that's right it would uh_huh right yeah uh_huh to pick up the slack yeah that's right yeah yeah you have to it has to balance out and i guess that's when you get into relationships and people people are attracted to people who [compliment] them most often i mean they say [opposites] attract and i'm not too sure i believe that very much but uh i think that people when they get into relationships you know if there's somebody who like if you got two people who hate to cook they're going to eat out all the time and you know that's not that big a deal but you know if you get somebody who likes to cook and someone who doesn't like to cook then the person who doesn't who doesn't like to cook probably likes to do something else you know so i think that people end up i think that that women are more diverse now than they ever were as far as what they have learned and what they're capable of and and uh what they're willing to do and so i feel like you know that men have gotten to be that way too they've gotten a little bit more relaxed in their thinking about uh women and you know what they expect of them so i think that you know it's a slow evolution but i think it's it's it's a good process i think it's it's working you know there are still people who men who believe that women should be home you know all day and cooking dinner my husband's in the kitchen cooking dinner saying right on yeah well i i have noticed a lot uh more women's roles at work which i like in management which that's good i i guess to have a woman's viewpoints and uh in a way things are handled at work especially in personnel type jobs which i think is probably better on the hand of women for uh any kind of maternity benefits and stuff like that women probably understand that better than the men do so i think that's good yeah so i think that that's a good benefit i think having women uh in in higher up positions stuff like that uh_huh yeah right and how to treat them right right and who wants to be treated which way yeah right i thought that was really interesting in the war i figure right they couldn't do anything about it right right that's exactly right they can just watch it i think it's uh i think if they want to do it you know if that's what interests them and they think you know they can handle it i think they ought to be able to do it that's right you know right that's exactly right now they're trained and everything so let them do it if they want to that's what that's the way it is in a lot of jobs you know like the firemen you know for a long time they thought stuff like that you know trying to be firemen policemen and stuff like that and now if they get to be all that right and i feel the exact same way that's right right you're uh you know it's the best person qualified i think and and that's the way it ought to be but it's as we know it's not right exactly same with a doctor in a hospital that's right she got that scholarship right that's true that's true with any case i hate that but but that is true but right it's yeah any ethnic problem or race uh_huh don't want to hurt anybody's feelings and get everybody covered uh_huh uh_huh and now everything's his you know uh his and her and you have to you always have to say it like that you can never say you know his you know and that never has offended me when you know when someone's talking and they say you know his job or something like that or that's never i mean i understand that they're talking about the job not the person in the job that's that's always that's always been strange i thought but some women like to fight it but yeah she she uh i i don't know i i can't say that that i well i can't say that i did or didn't vote for her because i didn't get to vote this time but i don't know that i'm i guess i'm ready just hard to see a woman in such a i guess powerful position right right right that's true and right [inexperience] also that's something that bothers me is uh you know she is you know the treasurer forever it bothers me that i don't know that she doesn't have that much background i guess in well it's hard to say i don't know something about it just just kind of bothers me yeah she i mean she seems on the outside uh good and everything but but i don't know it just it just kind of bothers me and that that just may be because we're not used to having i'm not used to having women in in roles like that you know as role models you're just always used to men i mean that's just something that men always did right that's exactly right and probably yeah and in dallas you know we had the uh [annette] strauss and she's a uh first woman mayor so do they i didn't know that oh does she really oh lord big combination of both she's got covered all the bases didn't she yeah right that's really good i guess right yeah yeah they they they say a lot of times that you know woman have more emotions and they can or cannot handle a job because of that so that side would be interesting to see how that kind of stuff does play into it because a lot of times you know you do look at the men and they never seem to show any emotion they just yeah exactly and that's that's sad to say that that that that's true though uh_huh right right i am surprised though that we do have so many that are in politics down here yeah yeah yeah yeah that's right that was a good that was a good leadership that women that's what they say that's true it's true well i hope you know that they whatever these leaders of ours do that everything's for the good that just like like you said it's with man or a woman it however they're going to be able to take care of us and i don't know yeah i do know though in our company we don't have a lot of upper upper management i mean we rarely have any women that are upper management i don't know i don't know that's really that's really well it's it's so uh i guess we're we're kind of the good old boy type atmosphere of men always did the you know the engineering and all this and the technology and men are so i'm i'm sure that's has a lot to do with it but right right that's right that's exactly right so but a lot of more women are starting their own businesses i've noticed than and that's that's pretty interesting oh does she that's pretty interesting yeah there's a lady here in uh dallas who started a or a cheese company can't remember the name of it and she's a [naire] from it and i i just think god if only it could be me oh god um that's hard i i suspect there's i i don't even know um virtually everything um yeah that i i i didn't know that much actually that that it it it's happening a lot and and and she's a woman oh really who is that right what's her name oh the only texas politician that i actually know is is a woman is ann richards yeah who who to me is just um i i had heard very little about her before but um i saw her speak at the uh i guess it was the eighty the eighty six no the eighty eighth convention whatever and i was just i feel in love with her yeah that's true i think that there's but that i think that will come with time with um more more more [pac] and so forth being interested in them oh really why is that that's interesting i um no i'm i'm i'm probably partial to uh i mean i i think that there there are certain jobs that men i i don't mean to be [sexist] here but i think there are certain jobs like minister and i think you know men are possibly better maybe [pediatricians] although that i i could split on i i think i have some i know some good males but there are some things i just think you know that uh now that's interesting yes um right anybody who wants to go into combat i get to that point uh go ahead and have fun yeah i'm i'm no yeah there are some that i there are some jobs like for instance i get a little bit annoyed when i see people saying um that they should you know there was an issue a while ago in new york where they were going to lower the standards for firemen because they so women could be right and i might think if you're going to lower the standards you know you're you're just what what what what good is a fireman who can't pick me up but as for other stuff i think i had no idea about the politics and i i i think that's wonderful i mean yeah we're very [impatient] well that's probably better i suspect as a general rule i i don't know why this is but i suspect it's probably the case that women are are are are more honest politicians i mean it it it may be because there's an old boy network that's true any anywhere you go basically there there's there's well yeah i guess although there are some women who honestly if they were uh i i'd go running if they were chasing chasing me but but you are right i think there are some i i think that you know more often than not i'd be you know i mean there there are still biological differences that i think lots of people forget um i'm probably of of of the i i never had that situation so i'm probably of the opinion that uh that well if they really want to i guess maybe they should but i'd i'd sort of look at it and go well are you really sure you want to do this i mean yeah right even today uh_huh i'm i'm i'm i'm sort of like that i believe in equal but different i mean there there are differences and people just have to sort of realize that there are differences and work from there and figure it out you know you mean they're they're everything a politician should be uh_huh until women are are better represented in politics i think is one of the but yeah almost almost well not not not so close but uh oh really i i don't know anything about her politics i just saw her and saw her give this wonderful speech is she oh well well well i guess it was good while it lasted for her you know i don't know what to say about that uh there there are some now that i think of it there are some um we don't have like the mayors and and and the governor the governor of new york mario cuomo you know if ever there was an old italian you know part of the old boy network mario cuomo i suspect but yes he's still the governor um and still they're desperately trying to talk him into running for president oh yes they they keep his name always pops up an for for for the democratic nomination because i think if he would actually take the nomination he's one of the only democrats i know that could actually possibly do it at some point but um as for as for the rest of we have we have some senators and and and representatives and so forth but that's probably about all i don't i don't know that we have that many women politicians around here i guess new york is still still behind the times not like you texans are way up there really that's really cause i don't even i couldn't think of a woman mayor that i'd ever known some sort of uh county mayor well yeah okay she does the actual running wow wow that that that is a lot for a mayor that's great well i guess i guess if if she deserves it i mean now that's strange okay i think we're supposed to discuss the changes in the roles of women in the last generation or two an and my opinion is that uh the biggest changes uh probably are about two and one of course is obvious and that's the working woman and uh the second one which i don't know if you'd go along with or not is that maybe a lot of women are not as uh likely to want to be dominated as past times and you're proud of that of course well uh another uh thing that i want to talk about is which of the the changes that you can think of are the most significant well and don't you think that you do see more women who are um becoming part of middle management attorneys uh_huh let me ask you a question uh while we're talking about the c p a women uh in uh a firm say do you think uh a woman c p a gets paid equally to a man uh_huh and even within women they perhaps some women do not expect uh going away on those [audits] uh_huh uh_huh yeah well what what future do you see for us in the next twenty years say yes oh yes charlotte also has a woman mayor well i'll tell you what worries me a little bit about uh the role of women these days and i'm hoping that that's going to be a change and i don't know if you see it or not my husband doesn't always uh see it or understand it uh and that is the uh the trial of trying to be the [superwoman] the [supermom] yes and uh i have gone through that uh myself and it is hell it really is is tough and to be able to excuse myself from doing that was a wonderful [liberation] and i i i think the woman pretty much has to do it themselves but i believe that in the future that they're going to stop trying to be all things uh_huh yes and a very i will say this very quickly i had an attorney friend who said and he'd been practicing probably twenty five years and he said i wish there were more women in politics they are not quite as crooked the acceptable morals that we uh_huh yes are [reticent] about it anyway uh_huh however i being uh uh former employer myself i did change from being someone who i who felt that women could uh share out share one job and things like that and i became more understanding of how men often are or for for many years have thought about uh women in the working world and my husband couldn't believe and he started teasing me and calling me a male [chauvinist] or a female [chauvinist] but i do i think there certainly some pluses uh on both sides we just need to get them all put together well it's been so nice talking to you an good luck to you and have a nice day well the the changes of course in the past generation are the women in the work force um and the while their salaries still aren't there yet the opportunities for women who are at least driven uh do tend to be a little bit more compatible with uh changes in life style so i suspect that that may have had more to do with uh changes in society than anything else the number of the women in the work force um i think it depends on which positions and perhaps the personality of the women um let's face it there are men executives who have gotten there by uh rather [unsavory] means you know [trapping] everybody up along the way um when uh they might not necessarily be liked but if when a woman does that she is [ridiculed] up to the [inth] degree where it's almost expected of men so some of that is [stereotyped] i think huh_uh i think i have although at the moment i mean i know a little bit about it yeah right huh_uh huh_uh i think the educational opportunities have made some difference uh because at one point i know my mother in law talked about when she went to college she really sort of had to do her own way because although she was one of three daughters um and while her parents were um very supportive in many ways they didn't really seem to have the um the uh the understanding that that daughters should go on for a college degree had they been sons you know that would have been expected but for daughters it wasn't as necessary um and see i don't think that's so true anymore i think people expect both daughters and sons to have whatever opportunities are available uh i know we have three sons and one daughter but the differences are [negligent] in that area and in fact they were in my own families as well um it was never considered that my sister and i wouldn't go to college you know certainly my brothers would but but we were included in that so i think those things do huh_uh huh_uh oh yeah right right that's changed so much i know it's always appalled me because i did not suffer that same problem fortunately uh because i went into biological research when i first got out of college um and so you know i was not in a situation where i would but i know that even now many young women getting out of college tend to find themselves in that position of of having to be sort of the secretarial pool it might not be called that but that's what it is until they work their way up and i don't think very many young men are ask to do that although they are asked to do some what less uh technical jobs or you know too perhaps you know start working their way up but i don't think it's quite as as low on the [totem] pole huh_uh huh_uh huh_uh yeah i do know that there are plenty executive secretaries whose responsibilities are greater than the c e o uh and they may not make the money they have a lot of prestige many do make the money actually huh_uh and sometimes those are men too sometimes secretaries are men too i'm glad to see that change uh oh yeah and they go to the hospital and one parent i guess the the uh father was killed and they get to the hospital and the doctor comes in to work on the injured child and says oh i can't do that that's my child yeah i mean but see it's so obvious i guess the first time i heard it i immediately thought of a doctor because that was what i originally wanted to do so it's it's amazing how many do you know for a minute stop and think yeah yeah i'm sure we're all victims of this sure we've we've been brought up in the society that perpetrated that problem yeah yeah right i suppose my feeling is it doesn't matter male or female uh at least if they're given the same opportunity then that's good although they can't always there are certainly differences between men and women i guess the other thing that was asked in this for us to discuss was um what kind of changes this has brought about what do we see in the future and uh just because this past sunday was mother's day of course there was some articles in the newspaper about the uh mothers in the work force and that that has certainly made a tremendous difference in society but what is interesting is at least in the washington post there was um a report of a study that suggested that there were more women now who regretted the necessity for having to work and leave their young children and that more if given the opportunity if financial if it were not financially necessary would stay home you know would have the choice would make the choice of staying home while their children were young and it's interesting because i don't know if that's a switch if somehow maybe that is being [revalued] or reevaluated or not i was fortunate enough that um well it was a decision when we had children to make that decision and we determined that we would live on my husband's salary when we first got married so that when we had children we would not you know fall in that necessity of my having to work and so we made that choice we didn't live as well but we lived well enough sure but you see for me that was the more important i know of plenty of friends who did not were not able to make that choice and that's difficult because i think in the long run uh part of the problem in society and maybe part of what happens to the bad the negative attitude of women working comes about because children remember the [traumas] of their mothers trying to work and run the household and some of the things that has not changed and i think that's a serious issue exactly yeah oh yeah it's very difficult so that needs to be done and perhaps education will eventually do it but uh the idea that all those uh things that were traditionally thought to be the housewife when she was home as a housewife are still hers even if she's out working i mean that's a serious problem uh wow that's nice yeah huh_uh and can take care of the child if the child is ill or something huh_uh huh_uh right actually i have a few friends who who uh have a [nontraditional] family in that the husband is is home with the children and the wife is out with the more uh uh kind of job and then the husband in one case is a musician so he does guitar lessons and does a lot of uh profession playing you know for weekends and so on but essentially it's his wife who is the primary money provider there it's an interesting situation they have three children uh so it seems to have worked very well but um but those things are rare i must say they're still not no well um i'm in my i i i've seen the changes i think in my generation most of all because i'm a early baby boomer and uh i was brought up uh to sort of get married and raise children and uh be very domestic and uh when i went to college or went to high school i did very well i was [urged] to become a secretary or a teacher because those are typical roles and uh things have changed and uh i i've ventured off in all sorts of areas and so have most of the other women in my generation and we're all in business or the professions and uh and uh heavens we're we're uh astronauts and things like that who who would wouldn't have been imagined in nineteen sixty eight or something how about you yes yes another thing that happened that i found is that you know when i got married i didn't know anybody who had ever been divorced or or when i was younger i didn't know anybody who had ever been divorced in this day and age people are as likely to get divorced as to stay married and very often the woman has to be able to earn a decent living and uh so there's an additional reason for her to be capable of holding down a good job yes i i agree with that and i also think that they're taking a lead in in the arts and in business too and uh as the years go by they run surveys to see how many women are c e o or on the boards of major companies and the number is creeping up very slowly but it's definitely increasing so that probably ten years from now yes it is i mean fifteen ten fifteen years ago there were no women on the boards or or or c e o of major corporations unless they inherited the firm from their father you know that sort of thing but right if it was a family owned business but now they're they're in the board room and they're trying to get ahead and make it in the business world and of course to some extent the laws are helping them but uh uh you know there's no no no holding back their ambition on the other hand what it does to the fabric of society and the family remains to be seen i i i well i think that in a way they're they're being tested right now we're going through a testing period where capability is is everything and if they succeed then the the the generation of girls that are growing up now will have it much easier because there will be a precedent they'll have had role models whereas you know the generation that grew up in the sixties and seventies sorry yes yes um i guess just by virtue of living longer in a way you're right because they do it does come to them but they've got to be young enough to enjoy it i mean if they're just old ladies sitting around waiting for the end to come it doesn't do them much good yes well i'm in the middle of the country and and it seems to me it they start their from start from both [coasts] and work their ways [inward] uh one of the one of the things that that i'm finding is that um i've lived in texas i've lived in new york and uh i have i've done a lot of visiting out in california and i know that we're [lagging] behind here and yet i really do see uh women's roles have increased and they're gaining new respect in fact i believe that the mayor of the top five major texas cities are all women and that goes back to your original point about politics so uh uh you know it's going to get to a point i some men are going to wonder if they're falling behind yes i think the young people today do have an open mind it's just not as much uh type casting by by gender uh you know uh a little girl can say i want to be an [astronaut] or i want to be a fireman or a policeman or it um i'm trying to remember exactly how the question was worded what what change in the last generation or two well one thing and i don't know how how long a span a generation is considered whether we're talking you know twenty years or or whatever but it seems to me there are more and more women it's obvious there are more and more women working outside the home some of them of course are finally climbing corporate ladders uh whereas when i was growing up it was either secretary or teacher yes i work at t i so do i right well and probably probably he hasn't seen any female doctors probably not but but on if he watches television if he gets a [coloring] book the doctor is is frequently uh portrayed as a male and the nurse well i'm just i'm just thinking of pictures that i've seen and and you know uh uh i i suspect no no message was ever intended to be while what you have to be this gender to do this job but it does sometimes come through and when i said um that those were the only two professions folks seemed to do it wasn't necessarily that that was what i was told to do or or whatever it simply that's what i observed growing up was about the only women you know it a woman at that time could uh clerk in a grocery store or any other kind of store yeah and i went into teaching that was what i started out doing early on and left that when i decided to get married and leave texas for a while so and i've never gone back to it in the last in the intervening nineteen years it's just uh i i love to teach i don't want to have to deal with the discipline problems and so forth so that's a whole another story oh okay [undying] [admiration] comes from me that's that's for sure uh_huh uh uh not by that term anyway oh very interesting very creative well i hadn't thought about it but very likely i went to a seminar a conference just uh friday afternoon that was put on by by t i but it it dealt with um the minority issues of promotion within the business and they had invited three speakers from uh one from xerox and one from [pepsico] and another company out of denver and these [gentlemen] were all uh v p or higher were from minorities but in addition they were also addressing um women or including women in in the entire focus of the minority issues and so uh it was a very interesting discussion in the afternoon uh the questions and so forth that their three uh uh speeches [engendered] uh just talking about well how how does your company deal with this and and and so forth and it was refreshing to hear that uh companies are beginning to address the issue of uh so few women beyond a certain level so few in the board room and so forth and so they they shared some of the ideas they their companies were had uh instituted as far as uh giving a leg up [mentoring] processes and so forth that they that they had in place and then one of our v p shared what what are some of the things that t i is doing to um come up with some similar results i'm beginning to find more and more female engineers although not um not many of them yet have moved into manager positions but that'll part of that's because so many of them are are still real young and they've got to learn the business first and then they can move up um she can pick whatever she wants to be and if she would like to be the traditional cinderella and find that prince that's okay too but there yeah but there are other options that are available i'm sorry uh_huh okay we're supposed to take talk about the changes in women's roles i guess you want to start oh really uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um uh_huh yeah yeah that's true yeah well they don't give them a whole lot of incentive i mean you look at the pay a teacher gets versus some of these other professions and and and society's saying you're not that valuable you know and that that sends a strong signal uh_huh wow uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh of course not uh_huh well some churches have that's for sure oh i i guess about about the same as mine i don't see a whole lot of [barriers] except that the women are still stuck with the problem of how to handle children and i mean it's companies at least the companies i work with aren't helping and they're not recognizing that that's a real problem um just basic things like having a day care center on the premises they don't understand what it costs the company to have someone have to you know go to the day care center every time the kid is sick or hurt or whatever or you know just there's a lot of lost time there and i think that they'd find people a lot more productive and a lot more willing to maybe work long hours or do whatever it takes if they would help taking care of the children because they're not doing that at all so you've got you know an extra problem that it doesn't seem like the men have to deal with very much some do and some don't that's the biggest problem okay the change how women's roles have changed well i think we've moved out of the stereotype of the homemaker uh and i think it's been necessity with the economy and with the dysfunctional families well uh possibly you know if if they're doing it simply uh for the money i think you know that if if it's something that they need to fulfill themselves then that's something different too that uh they should have the opportunity to do it and the quote [homemaker's] role should be divided equally between the partners uh_huh that's right and of course now women can be anything they want to uh one thing that has not changed is is equality of pay among the sexes and uh i don't see any great hope for that being changed in the near future quite frankly but if you look at the people who make the decisions uh the senate and the house they're primarily male and uh you know the big decision makers are still male until we get that changed you know i'm a single parent well a single person my children are are grown and married but uh i still have to support myself and i you know i personally i don't work because i want to get out there and do it i work because if i want to eat i'm out there working well i did i didn't work while my children were young and i was married because i did want to give them the background that they got at home i did find afterwards though you take the children whose you know in a in a healthy family which i don't know how many of us have healthy families any more uh but i did find that the children of working parents or working parent uh were more independent and maybe that goes to where it break it's breaking down the family bonds but i don't know of too many families that the women really work because they want to uh most of them are working and it's not to buy the t v and the new cars it's to survive well even you know here our teachers are paid so poorly and i don't know of any teacher whose wife is not having to work so it's it's not just the men without a college education it's our economy is really bad right now in oklahoma it's real bad yes well oklahoma is certainly in the recession uh we've been there we've been here for about three to five years now and it's really hurting but uh you know i don't i don't know that any woman would choose that a married woman would really choose to work because when you're working and you're married you're holding down two jobs one at home at home and one at the and women's place in the workplace huh uh to quote my father a woman's place is in the stove i have to disagree my wife works so what do you do are you well i guess as far as roles in the workplace they've uh they've made some you know pretty serious uh ground in the last thirty forty years well my sister is a she's a medical professional and you know she says that in in order to get paid the same as a man you have to do twice the work but fortunately it's not that tough yeah yeah i i grant you that well that hasn't been true of any of my companies yeah because well the women that i hire are ones that are capable if they're capable they can do anything they want to do yeah yeah well i hope so yeah well for your sake sure but uh i think that as long as the american society is inundated as it is by the commercial market you know the [television's] commercials in particular uh progress is going to be rather rapid but [shaping] role models is going to be a problem because you know they don't want to rock the boat with anybody and you know i don't know how you perceive life but i know that people are prejudiced and they bigoted and they carry their their convictions all the way to the bone no matter what they say and uh you know i'm the first one well i [flunked] the the m c p test big time yeah you know what that is oh uh uh a man and his son were driving along the road in a convertible and they have a car wreck and the the father's killed and the boy is rushed to the emergency room and the doctor walks in looks down says i can't operate on him that's my son all right you passed believe me it's not that easy for a lot of men to understand that you know and i have a woman doctor yeah really well actually we go doctor [garcia's] office and we started going with him as soon as he got done with his residency he was a guy at the emergency room when we went there and then he got his office well we just you know stayed with him and he's hired this other lady and uh my sister says that she's a better doctor i don't know you know i see doctor once every six months you know but uh yeah yeah well getting into medical school is no no mean trick either but uh as far as a you know the the the role of women in the workplace i think texas has come remarkably far considering the the high density of [rednecks] that are there around i'm a i'm a transplant i'm you know we came from out of state when i was very young but it was too late i was already formed yeah well you know i was like uh i guess ten or eleven you know and we came from uh a family that was my mother is strong to say the least no not outside the home no she was a she went to college you know correspondence courses and whatnot but my parents were my dad was in the air force and all the time that uh you know he was in the air force well she's never had to work you know he always provided the the financial support but she has worked uh [therapeutically] you know so you know something to do what do you think have been the most significant changes so lawyers yeah yeah well i think that's a big contributor i think women have uh really uh begun to [penetrate] a lot of fields that were dominated by men for centuries oh yeah uh_huh well i think uh one of the best things that has happened in the twentieth century has been the uh [penetration] of a lot of these fields by women and i think it's going to continue uh and even though it's pretty difficult now for some men and and a lot of women i think uh it's going to bring very good things and uh we're going to be a lot better off as a society as it continues but it's a painful transition yeah yeah well i think there are a lot of attitudes that have to change and i guess that's the big thing you know as people change their attitudes that's going to make the biggest difference women uh participating as equal partners in our society is one of the best things that will ever happen and history will record that but a lot of people really don't like that idea and uh no i i'm not look at what happened with the [anita] hill testimony before the senate subcommittee and uh now i'm not surprised by that at all we have uh we have a two year old my wife uh works out of the home uh and uh uh i think just looking at how her uh views differ from those of her mother a generation before so it's it it's really changing attitudes and uh the economic necessity and the political changes as you pointed out are going to make a big difference i think uh it's a painful transition but a really important one and yeah i think it's a big step for [humankind] and i think uh it's it's real progress but there are a lot of people with attitudes that have to change and i i guess in answering the question that's what i would say i'd say that overall it's just the attitude of men and women toward equal participation and equal pay and equal political influence and all sorts of other things for women because that's really going to be better for everybody but a lot of people are threatened by that as is reflected in what goes on yeah i well i think i think both yeah both attitudes have to change and i think uh uh it's it's evident to me as i look at all the television shows that now focus on the relationship between men and women uh watching roseanne last night watching uh the show that [preceded] it home improvement all these television shows which reach the american people are beginning to reflect new attitudes and those well and not only i mean the the fact of the matter is that women have have carried more than their weight and are still doing that and uh i see i think this is part of the problem for men as well as a guy i recognize that it's uh it's men who have suffered from this too because men need to uh yes i do full time no i don't have any children no uh_huh uh_huh oh my gosh uh_huh do you think it's gotten easier on you personally you know as far as at work uh you know other people how you interact has it's gotten easier on you uh_huh oh uh_huh right yeah yeah right yeah i'm an engineer and so so i uh i have uh uh problem even when i was going through school i found it to be a man's world and i got a lot of static from that and it my first few years at t i i found it to really be hard but now that i've been there for a while it's it's kind of a deal you have to prove yourself and after i've been there for a while now you know the guys i'm just kind of one of the guys i'm um you know respected and and and i do the same things they do i'm not necessarily sure i get the the same pay but i'm pretty sure i do and and i feel a lot better about it i have a friend that had just turned forty five that's an engineer and she tells me horror stories of what it use to be like you know you know always getting uh [belligerent] comments like you ought to be at home having babies instead of doing these [blueprints] and things like that things that would just make her cry at work but she couldn't cry in front of them because they'd do it more you know so she's she you know builds me up and says be a strong woman and and present yourself professionally and you know builds my confidence quite a bit so that's why i ask you that if if you thought maybe times his changed made it easier on you at at work uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that is so strange yeah right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah this little young girl yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah well let me ask you this how have um did children do you feel like children set you back or kind of went off track a little while you know this this is an issue i'm on a women's subcommittee women's initiative subcommittee and we were discussing this last week matter of fact that certain women have taken career kind of jobs you know and and decided to go in and have one or two children and then got back on track and they didn't see that as a setback but uh_huh in other words if you wouldn't of had oh yeah that's what they were saying before they had children they were working like crazy people uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh right yeah uh uh right uh_huh i'd be okay yeah yeah right right and a fear uh_huh yeah right yeah yeah yeah yeah i i hear that uh there's all men in my group i'm i'm one of two women the secretary is a woman and these men a lot of them have uh small children either just one or or two you know babies because we're all fairly young and and i hear the men saying that a lot you know and i think that is a culture change that you know their lives have changed since they had children you know they don't want to work that sixty hours anywhere they want to hurry up and get home you know i can't wait to get home so i can play with my son so and they have the same concerns as not necessary an abuse guilt but you know thinking well you know if i i could spend more time then they could learn so much more you know yeah yeah uh_huh right right uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah yeah yeah yeah that's right their nannies and you know right day cares that's really interesting yeah i was going to say if uh when i get to that point i'm sure i will know it i see it from day to day like i say the men are experiencing this you know a lot of them one of them just had a child within the last year and he has totally changed from this seventy hour work person to somebody that goes god i ready to get out of here you know i need to go to day care and he routinely calls the day care during the day you know like can i talk to my daughter you know and and uh yeah uh_huh yeah that'll they'll me too and my family they'll go oh my god you've well how do you think women's roles have changed uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i i uh just in my lifetime i know that the role of women has changed drastically also my mother when she began having her family she quit her job and stayed home until i'm the youngest in my family until i was uh in junior high school old enough to care for myself when i got home for from school but i think that uh the changes in the next twenty years will probably be just as drastic you you'll see more women c e o and more women holding public offices oh i agree yeah yeah yeah it it's probably all it it's the role of women is is in an evolutionary stage so we i'm sure it will eventually evolve to where it is equal it just hasn't reached that point yet because women uh haven't been in positions similar to men for that many years relative to how long men have had those types of positions uh_huh yeah no it's not fair well there's not much you can do except for yourself individually and and stand up for your salary i mean for what you want in your own job and if if it's not going to work out go find some place that will do what you want to do uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh yeah well i think it during this in this evolutionary theory that i have here that men will eventually evolve around to where they participate more in the home because when it gets to the point to where the house is dirty and the kids are dirty and and mom's not home she's at work men are going to gradually learn how to do those kinds of things well at i the the the generations that are being raised now by working mothers i i are are a little more in touch with the household chores and duties and what has to be done so i think over a couple of generations time it will all change because it's really been uh my generation i'm twenty five and and my generation grew up for the most part with mothers in the home but again my generation plan of women plans on working and not being at home so it will be my children who really make big changes i think because that they will probably the majority of children now are at home without their mothers well or in some type of a day care or something because so many women work now uh_huh yeah yeah yeah how do you feel about women in public office do you think that that's going to grow and how far do you think that's going to go in the next ten years or so uh_huh yeah uh_huh i don't know any statistics either but it's it's probably going to be the same type of situation that that uh the black people have gone through it took them well black men a long time to to get up to the pay scales of the white man and now i think it it's feasible for a black man to be president uh_huh and since this evolution or this this [progression] of black male salaries and all that was all before women were heavy in the work place i women will probably go through the same type of deal it's just further down the road yes uh_huh no i live in san antonio we have a woman mayor yeah yeah well texas had a woman governor a hundred years ago or whatever ma [ferguson] yeah yeah i think it was ma [ferguson] i know texas had a woman governor i think she was i'm not sure it was a hundred or so years ago so i i don't know i'm not real up on past history or anything i i'm thinking it might have been the kind of deal where her husband was governor and he died or something i'm not sure yeah yeah i wouldn't now because i don't know of one that's that's equipped to handle no i why i didn't but uh uh_huh the the problem i'm sorry go ahead yeah i uh i just i don't think a woman president is anywhere in the near future if not just for the just for american prejudice but the world several major countries in the world that we deal with all the time don't respect women as business people so a woman president would be laughed at by other countries because they wouldn't respect her as a business person she was but i don't think that england deals as heavily with with like for instance the arab countries i don't know all the details of it but i i know that for instance in saudi arabia women are just and in uh my mother has done business in germany and it was very difficult for her going over there because they just don't have very many business women and and the men basically see a business woman and ask them to go get coffee or something it's just it's very difficult to be well respected okay i uh i think in general that the the uh one of the biggest change in in uh the role of women in the last two generations is the fact that because of the uh probably the national debt as a matter of fact but the uh [impossibility] of of uh making ends meet even in a family that which has a two two parent family that many women work out of the home now and probably that is the biggest uh change of her role that she now has to uh not only be uh mother uh [nurturer] or whatever but she also has to to help earn the earn the income that comes into the home and uh and it has right it has uh uh has a lot of effect on a family and it can be positive and it can be very negative uh and uh i think a lot of the problems that we that we have in in school in education a lot of the problems we have in drugs a lot of the problems we have in in uh uh [juvenile] delinquency whatever probably can be laid right at that door because uh uh a child who does not have the kind of [underpinnings] that you can get uh with uh with a parent in the home whether it's the father or the mother uh it just does not have the same kind of opportunities as the one who does that's the kind of uh what would it be uh uh [calming] influence or whatever uh i think another thing it gives them the feeling of of uh the importance of their position as a child you know and and course most of their problems come from uh lack of ego as opposed to too much ego most of them uh do things because they either want attention or because they they feel that they're not worthy and so they they do things that they're not not what the the norm would like them to do so that it is always kind of negative what do you feel about how do you feel about the role of women uh being a man that that gives you a different right um that's right yeah i think that's yeah i think so do do you have children oh okay yeah i i think that's probably true i think one of the problems is that that government in their [meddling] tends to encourage that instead of discourage it instead of giving you a break so that maybe a wife could stay home and do something satisfying in another area you know i i think there are women who need to do things other than just be a mother but i think that's possible i mean i don't think that education or anything else starts at school it starts in your head and and any anyplace you are you can educate be educated and so it doesn't mean they have to stop doing all the things that they might want to do and uh and so but but the environment no no nor do they have to stay home all the time there are lots of ways that they that you can do this but the but the problem is that they have so little choice yeah yeah i think that's right i think that would be good right and have and have and and if if anybody is going to help them decide about uh about day care or something maybe it needs to be something worked out in uh in uh in uh uh a workplace so that they can their children can go there so that they can see them so that they can have this uh you know during lunchtime or whatever some kind of a better uh contact and more uh a better feeling of of the fact that they are the important thing in this household as opposed to the work schedule being the important thing in this household uh_huh i would imagine that's right that's right that's right it's not and and and the the problem is you see it isn't just the stress of the work but they had plenty of stress before now they're just doubling their stress and that's really uh really more than you can take sometimes i think that's true that's true i i think that uh uh there are a lot of really positive things about the changes about uh uh more women going for for uh better educations and uh all these things i think in uh in a person's life there are a lots of right and there are lots of of stages of your life where you can do things that you didn't do uh at some other time uh if you're better prepared you're going to be able to take advantage of those things maybe later or or maybe during sometimes right right yeah that's right i think so too with someone needs to do it that's the thing we just we just came from our son just graduated from uh from in his master's degree and his wife is a nurse and he had just graduated in social services work and uh uh when she went back they just had a a baby in january and when she went back to work she says okay i'll work i'll work five days in two weeks but it has to be the times when he's home and so that one of them is taking care of this baby all the time but it's a neat thing to watch because he's as adept at it as she is and and equally as comfortable and i think that is a neat thing it it'll be neat for the children too if you can get a relationship like that but where the where the husband is comfortable doing those things because children badly need more of that badly need more of that that's right well hey it's been good to talk to you yeah all right have a good day okay well originally i guess women were uh in the house cooking and uh cleaning and all of that good stuff oh yeah uh actually the children they they don't have as many children these days because they've gone out to work and they're uh uh well the families are shrinking the divorce rate is up uh they're still trying to get the pay that uh the men get uh i guess even farther back uh they uh used to not even have sports for the women and uh then the women starting wearing the tennis shoes and playing sports and going out to work uh oh sure uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah well it's kind of ironic they're also these days they're trying they're working their way back into the house and they're trying to have the best of both worlds and they're just now figuring out in the nineties that it's not quite working and they can't have both so uh i guess they'll have to make a choice right they'll just have to allocate that time uh_huh uh_huh well i guess the men have definitely figured out that women are as smart there's a considerable amount more uh there's a considerable more amount of doctors these days than there used to have been and of course you like you said they're more educated and uh we've we've uh brought quite a bit to the world uh_huh well some women are actually leaving the husbands home with the kids and well i don't want to talk about the husband's changing roles but they're all they're learning to cook now and to do the laundry and uh all of those good things uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah it's no surprise that uh movies like dances with wolves have come out in the nineties and the influence uh with the men and uh the changing of roles actually uh that was a very good example of women in the nineties and what's a real man and a real woman you know they uh they do a little bit of both uh the hard labor and uh you know the smart the uh all [brawn] and no brains on both sides okay well it was nice talking to you okay thank you bye yes i'm twenty how old are you oh um huh um i just think it's more acceptable for women to um be in the workplace than uh i guess it was a long time ago um that's like i just think that they were expected to be at home more before and now it's more prevalent i guess oh really huh uh_huh right uh_huh so you just don't think that is says do you think that's good or bad or uh_huh right and why do you think why why do you think that is just uh_huh do you think it's because they have the qualifications or because not at all oh huh they just are willing to take the back seat or uh_huh oh really are you really so you're pretty um liberal as far as well um yeah i i don't know i'm more of a i guess i'm more conservative in my viewpoints i mean i think it's great if they wanted it if you know women want to do that and i'm planning on being a nurse so but i don't know i very few very few but because they think it's a woman's job probably i i don't want to earn more money i don't huh right the you just don't think that it pays off i mean like i i found out like the all the doctor comes in and does is the like end delivery is come in and deliver the baby i mean all the [preeverything] is nurse nurses but the doctors get the bucks yeah uh_huh oh definitely i i agree okay i think although there have been some i am still of the opinion that we're second rate citizens in most areas uh i believe probably world war two is when you know the thing started that caused women to be more [liberated] because the men were at at war and they needed women in factories and things have never been the same as far as the as far as the job market women started working outside the home then but it has taken a long time and think we have got a long way to go yeah i agree with that uh_huh right right no no and i think it's a good sign i do see one of the reasons i also believe there is a lot to be ahead of us is i returned to college and i see girls in their twenties so they think there is no problem they don't realize the struggle that just in the last few years for them to simply go into professions especially they have just been laughed at and it can't be done any more cause legally it can't be done yes and things like today maybe people that don't want to be in a certain profession they can't say that well i don't think the change has come like from the men's side they can still feel it you know yes yes right right uh_huh yeah right yeah i wasn't aware of that either until uh just a year ago when i took a sociology course that even existed that is how indoctrinated i was but then i am forty six i grew up with the generation the guys my brothers went to college and i am now struggling through no and well wasn't important you know you go be a secretary or be a [beautician] that was my point and uh but yeah i didn't even realize there were societies like you say where women were important right right right well i find myself looking towards what i am doing and i am leaning towards education and that is still another area of women but that is what i want to do you know have i have made that decision that that's what i wanted to do even if it is the traditional thing it is still what i want to do and i know it's like right yes yes some something through that too yeah i was very seriously okay yes and uh let me tell you this is a really neat thing to do too that they did i didn't do it some of the other people the older people organized it and what they did they had uh a book made up and it was like when our ancestors first came over and then what they did was they asked every family to write something about their family and like how many kids you had and who you had married and you know it went through like and it showed who my uh well who my husband's parents were you know and who he married and then how many children we had and then like his brothers and sisters and it went through the whole family and stuff and it was so good yeah but it it really did you know and plus it's got a lot more people interested in it because you got to participate sort of right uh_huh right and everybody got a book that came to the reunion and it told like uh you know where the first [connally's] came over and um it told what happened when they got there and how many kids they had and it just kept coming on up through the generations so it was really that was really neat and well he does he does i don't but uh he has enough relatives to make up for me not having any uh_huh yeah that's what that's what happened when i when i first uh met my husband i said this can't be you know nobody can have this many relatives because a lot of them lived in like a group you know down one highway and there was a lake and they all lived down there by it and so we were going down the highway you know and he kept saying this is where my uncle lives and this is where my aunt lives and my uncle and i kept thinking this guy is putting me on nobody has this many relatives you know so but they really were all there and another thing that's really good about uh family reunions is having everybody just cook whatever is their specialty and bring it at because nobody it seemed like liked the same thing but you had a choice and then you got to taste a lot of new dishes and stuff too and get a lot of good recipes where if you said a certain thing and say okay we're all going to have fried fish or we're all going to have fried chicken everybody might not like that oh yeah yeah they came from all over um they just stayed with different ones of them they just came down and like say okay this aunt and uncle [kip] uh all their kids and their grand kids and everything and then they had it it had gotten so big that they had it at the church and they had a church service ahead of it you know and then they had uh uh then they ate out on the ground uh_huh yeah uh_huh but you know what you can do a lot of these lakes and things if you could find a centrally located like say about the same distance for all of you all to come they have these places where you can rent them and it you know like on a lake like uh it's a big place i mean you know it's got little rooms that separate off of it and stuff and it's not very expensive that way right it's like a they have like a a convention type thing and then it has little rooms off of it where you know you'd go and sleep at night time but then it has like a kitchenette and things like that but you right and another yeah but they had that was you know that what you can do is you can write different places the chamber of commerce tell them what you're interested in ask them what they have you know at area lakes and all if they have something like that because now every time we plan anything just about we write to the chamber of commerce of where we're going because you can find out so much easier that way than try to locate it you know calling different places can really run you up a bill but if you can find a centrally located place where everybody would have to come about the same distance i mean you can't get it exact you know usually but uh and then everybody goes to that place and that is not bad at all but they have lot of times they'll have like uh little cabins and three or four or five families can stay in those cabins because they have you know just the single bunk beds and stuff and they can all stay in those cabins and then you know you can have [cookouts] and stuff like that that doesn't cost you as much yeah but that's uh you know that's the best way i found because whenever you have something where you go and now we had one this was before i lost a lot more of my family but it wasn't any of my immediate family anyway because i didn't have any of them left but um they had uh uh thing where you could everybody could come and meet and go out to eat but i didn't think that was as good because it was like you know you couldn't really talk and stuff like you could when you were at the lake or somewhere you know where you were out this was like everybody came into town and went to this restaurant yeah and it just i didn't like that much no what they did was well see what they did was okay they uh they wrote to all the initial people you know the the oldest ones okay then those in turn got a hold of these other ones and they had like i think there was four or five different people that would call you know some of them if they didn't have their addresses and all on them and you know they told them that what we had to do was when we sent back in our information we had to tell them how many people were going to be coming you know and then when they when they talked to us or when they sent us the letter it uh you know to get the information and all it asked you know will you be willing to bring and you had to check off what all you would be willing to bring and so really there wasn't any problem with that's the reason it ended up in a church because i mean there was just so many of them but it turned out so much better like that because everybody knew they knew ahead of time how many people to expect now if there was a sickness or something like that i mean you know you're not going to lose that many right okay well well see then okay if you wanted them both to come then you would put you would have put that down on the list and you would have sent you would have been the one that sent their invitation to them and ask for their information to send back to those other people right because once it went to the the oldest people and then they knew who they wanted to invite then they sent their little things to us okay it was up to me who i was going to you know whether i wanted my kids and you know my any of my family to come so and then you know it never did like if i didn't want somebody to come then i just wouldn't send them one of the [questionnaires] so there really wasn't a problem that way well but i tell you what that's the neatest book we've got course we've got we've still got it and they charged us i think it was like it was like five or six dollars i can't remember exactly you know that we paid for the book to be printed and it's not uh it's not a hard back book it's just a oh like a you know [folder] type thing but it has the entire you know it has everybody that you could ever imagine and some you couldn't and it will be something my kids will have you know just like yeah because if you stop and think i don't know if you're like me but i know very little about before my grandparents i mean very very little about it yeah maybe what you could do if you couldn't get into a full family reunion and you wanted to go back some but then usually when you find out some information from like your parents then you can find out from you know you can find somebody else that can tell you something else about these well have you ever uh had a family reunion oh uh_huh oh no kidding huh uh_huh oh that's so neat oh great uh_huh yeah so so did everybody send in their information and they made a book up about it and then you could get it at the reunion oh nice uh_huh uh_huh wow that is neat so do you have a big family oh he does yeah that's kind of how my husband and i are i have a kind of a big family and he just has himself and his brother and his parents and that's it so he had to kind of get used to us when we first started going together uh_huh uh_huh oh how nice oh my gosh yeah how funny uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah yeah yeah yeah not be able to do it so did people come like from out of town to the reunion or they did did you put them up in other peoples houses or did you have hotel rooms or how did you do it they did uh_huh uh_huh oh really how nice and they just brought food with them did they just have like over a weekend is that how they did it uh_huh well i'm real curious because my family it didn't sound i don't think my family is as big as your husband's i don't think we'd need a whole church but um the problem is we are all really scattered around there isn't any one place where most of us live so if we ever had a reunion we'd kind of all have to stay in a hotel i mean you know there would be one person who lived there that would have a house but they couldn't put everybody up so it i think it would get kind of expensive huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh you mean so oh i see so everybody could stay together yeah a house or something uh_huh oh see that would be great because then you could spend so much more time together than if you all were in your own hotels or something and then every time you wanted to go eat with somebody you'd probably have to go to out eat or something it would run into a lot of money so that sounds like fun uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh you get a yeah yeah oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that would be great that would be really nice yeah that sounds good uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah yeah right and you have to sit at a table and just yeah well um did you was it hard to decide who to invite and who not to invite i mean did you have to draw a line or did the people that had that reunion have to draw a line like they just whoever wanted to come uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah right uh_huh oh i see uh there yeah yeah yeah right sure sure no that would just be a few but how about like because of divorce and stuff like that like my parents are divorced and they are both [remarried] and you know there i mean there's i don't know yeah yeah yeah so then i i'm kind of like in control over who comes uh just from my family yeah yeah uh_huh right right i see i see that's a pretty good idea to do it that way uh_huh right right right well that's a real good idea yeah i bet uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh how neat yeah i know that's really neat that's really neat i was just thinking of that what you could tell your kids uh_huh uh_huh i just the thing is i know a lot of stories but i can't remember who it was about my grandparents told us when i was growing up and even when i was an adult they still tell all kinds of stories about their parents and their cousins and their best friends cause they all grew up in new york city but i can't you know i remember these stories but i have no idea who it was that was in those stories so i mean i couldn't give an accurate i couldn't tell my kids what you know those people were like i just remember they had some funny stories but i don't know who it was uh_huh yeah okay what are your suggestions in making a family reunion successful well i guess so have you had any in the well how old are you okay so you you have been to some family reunions perhaps now how long in advance do they uh let them know uh_huh so they all know it uh_huh uh_huh yes well that sounds like fun do they all have the small children too that come so all ages well my husband has uh on one side has an extended family and they don't ever plan it as like you do i think if you can count on it every four years then people have it in mind so they have to start talking about it or getting their act together about six months ahead to get in touch with everybody because they're rather socially active too and so it has it seems by doing it about six months ahead they can pretty much get everybody there if they don't you know they'll say oh we're planning to go so and so that go to to a certain place that weekend with somebody else and we're already locked in but six months ahead has seemed to be okay for them my family uh my parents are the youngest of very large families therefore they don't have many people left and uh the few previous ones i've had uh i haven't known many of those people but uh in the last few years it really has just been our immediate family and that's been very nice with uh i have one sister and three brothers and they're only three out of five of us who have children so uh we get to spend a lot of quality time with each other and that's kind of nice because my husband's family reunions are so large and they don't see each other very often we don't really know many of them it really is they're fun they're a lot of fun but uh still uh they're not done on a regular basis and uh you kind of forget what happened and who they were from the time before uh those are the ones that are in texas or you go to indiana on that uh_huh where in indiana lafayette i don't know where i used to live in indianapolis yeah yeah it's very pretty country in there i think it's gorgeous well i uh when is your next one uh scheduled now yes well and do you think you'll have a baby to take back with you maybe i mean you need another [milestone] you know yes well i'm sure and then all of your family probably has not met your husband oh is he and and he's living your both living in sherman do you work to t i uh_huh and does he uh_huh well we don't either but uh i have a friend who uh is working on this project yes and well i don't know uh i i have a hard time getting uh people on the telephone uh_huh getting through to anybody sometimes i call off and on all day but anyway uh i guess we're supposed to be talking about family reunions aren't we but i got off that yes well um i think we have been talking probably about four and a half minutes and uh uh we both look forward to going to our next reunions i'm sure but it has been fun talking to you thank you okay good bye bye have a big family i guess that's a start twenty five so i just got married right every four years on one side of my family they plan on having uh like my grandparents and all their brothers and sisters and then all their kids and grandkids well we plan on it it's like the third weekend in august so it's every four years and so yeah and then you know arrangements are made like during the summer for you know um food and whose whose staying where because a lot of people are from down here in texas and uh a lot of my family is in indiana that's where i'm originally from so um we usually meet like at my [uncle's] cottage in the um at the lake and uh make a couple days of it yeah pretty much yeah and uh you know there's some my age and then there are some a lot younger an about four generations i guess uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh yeah that's kind of bad yeah yeah it's it's fun getting together with immediate family a lot of my cousins are real close and we always get together during holidays and weddings and stuff like that so uh no the ones in indiana uh_huh lafayette yeah it's a little north of indianapolis about an hour uh_huh so well it's like the last one was my high school graduation the next one was when i graduated from college so i guess about two more years uh maybe i don't know two more years i don't know probably yeah i guess that's that's what i mean i've been married now for about nine months so that was another [milestone] i guess um yeah he's from indiana so they all met yeah yeah uh_huh no he's trying to get in med school so oh really are they getting all the data they need oh really huh well we've kind of exhausted everything i guess oh okay oh yeah well you too and maybe i'll talk to you again okay bye bye okay uh no i have never organized one but we are we have one uh we are going to have one on memorial day i guess they have had one the last two years we go out to the my dad's farm and uh and you know it is just a picnic and spend the night go fishing and stuff like that oh about ten huh_uh it uh_huh everybody yeah uh_huh uh yes yeah my my uh dad has a house out there anyway uh_huh uh no it is it is it is like a country country home uh_huh yeah the grandchildren just a few it just depends uh uh all my grandparents are dead so uh there is there are not you know none of them are there and and uh then an uncle is dead so the the big family is a lot smaller that it used to be uh yeah we are in we are all uh like they live up in sherman it is near lake texoma and uh all of his children live in the dallas area too so uh_huh yeah uh_huh french reunion yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah meet in the middle uh_huh right yeah and they do not have to clean up afterwards yeah uh_huh i am i am sorry uh no he does not really have any any uh uh domestic [livestock] anyway but he leased uh to his neighbor for the cattle to feed on yeah pretty much he has a garden and uh a lot of fruit trees and blueberry bushes and things uh_huh and then there is wild blackberries there too so he gets huh yeah it is kind of they're kind of off and on it seems like depends on the rain uh it is uh it is uh eighty acres uh_huh yeah yeah yeah and uh and most of it you know you just spend time on maybe ten acres of it and uh because that is where the ponds are and where everybody fishes we kind of have a an informal contest my uncle uh put some bass in uh his pond a few years ago well he put some crappie too but the bass we have not been able to catch any of the adult bass yet so they are in there but they are real spooky uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh never saw the bass oh oh it is probably in there just [burping] goldfish yeah yeah they really do uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah they there is a uh you might put some like some yellow catfish in there i do not know if they would live very well up in new york but they get huge and uh they routinely use them for bait for uh goldfish for bait for yellow catfish uh_huh yeah they live in the mississippi river all the way through minnesota and up into canada uh_huh uh_huh uh uh_huh uh right uh_huh yeah that is what happens yeah and uh we feed the catfish they feed the catfish like uh every couple of weeks and uh and sometimes that is the best time to catch them yeah because they will just they will just come after anything then and you could catch a couple anyway during that time uh mixed [purina] uh it is uh cat food uh catfish food yeah but yeah well i do not know how much different it is from dog food but you know it is uh it looks like [purina] high pro yeah but they come up to the top and it is the best time to take pictures because they come up to the top and you can see their [whiskers] come through the water and they're the the big catfish just kind of vacuum the top of the water uh_huh well they are really funny fish when you catch them they make a kind of a a [burping] [growling] sound at you and they try to hit you with their tails oh well the channel catfish get up to uh i think the world record is fifty some pounds uh that that is only about three and a half feet long yeah they get real fat uh from the time they they stay [slender] until they get to be uh eighteen inches long and then they start to [widen] out uh my daughter we were up there one time and my daughter was fishing and i think that was when she was three and she caught a catfish by accident she was fishing for sunfish and she said here and she handed me her rod and reel and and uh you know it was just pulling drag out and it [swimmed] wherever it wanted to okay it was nice talking to you okay bye bye yeah have a nice memorial weekend bye have you ever uh organized a family reunion uh_huh uh_huh how many people usually show up oh it is not that big because uh we have had sort of weekends like that too but i never thought of it really as a reunion i sort of think of a reunion with my uh all the extended family yeah that would be hard for us because most of the family is out in california and some is in new york and north carolina and it gets it is kind of hard to get get everybody organized uh is there someone do you all just sort of chip in and help out with stuff when you are there or and there is there is uh he keeps a uh food out there year round so so he does not live there though vacation home yeah it sounds nice uh are there kids that are there too or mostly adults uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh are you all located in texas uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah that to me is yeah dallas i know of houston i know of and that is about it in texas the rest of it is sort of a big void to me but uh you know we have uh well we all got together it was about two years ago for i was i had graduated from college and uh i was going to live in france for a year and so my parents invited it was not just family it was friends too but uh we all got together for just a party and that was kind of fun nice to have everybody together at once and things like that well not quite french but uh it was sort of a reunion before leaving it was fun it was on uh new year's day so it was almost a celebration of the new year too at the same time yeah it was kind of fun but uh but who was it a friend of mine had a big family reunion a couple of years ago and you know everybody flew in from all over the place for the weekend and it really sounded like it was fun but i am not quite sure what i would do i think it would be fun to like rent a big mansion or house someplace and have everybody meet someplace where they do not really know and have different areas to explore and things like that so that would be kind of fun yep where nobody lives but at least that way it is at nobody's house so nobody one no one person is responsible for everything yep that is for sure the cleaning up can be a mess but uh do you have horses or anything at your dad's farm does does your dad have horses there uh_huh i see so it's so he really does use it as a vacation home it is not like a farm that he has somebody else run for him or something like that uh_huh well that sounds nice do people actually pick the fruit and things uh_huh yeah i used to we used to go pick wild blackberries at my friend's property but we never got enough i used to make jam but i never had enough to really make you know more than a jar or something so it was not so worth it uh_huh that sounds is does he have a lot of land to go walking around and things there well that is pretty big i do not know how they do scale down there you know here it would be a huge amount of land yeah because they is this house here that has a lot of space is three or four acres as opposed to tens of acres uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i think my dad put some we have a little pond at our at his vacation home too and i mean really little and they were having problems with too many goldfish because we had put some goldfish in and there were too many little goldfish and so the big ones never got bigger and uh somebody suggested to get a bass and so they went fishing and caught a bass near some place and put it in there and never saw it again no so we do not know whether it is living or yep we still have lots of little goldfish they [propagate] pretty well those little fish yeah because we started we have got hundreds in there now and we started with i think ten or twenty little [feeder] fish that i picked up for a dollar you know no matter how many it was for a dollar and and some of them are probably eight inches long but he wants your really big ones you know the ones that get to be like a foot and a half long and it oh okay well we would want to put some small ones in so they do not eat the big guys the goldfish too but yeah we could see i do not know if yellow catfish live up this way but catfish do i think uh_huh so that you mean well we could try it that is a good idea because he was trying to catch them you know using little uh i forget there's little uh nets you can use to catch fish to use as [feeder] fish and things like that [minnow] nets or something my father was taking those and trying to catch the goldfish and it was really funny because uh one time he left the net in the pond and he like would put some tuna fish or things in the middle of it to attract the fish and uh he left it in the middle of the pond and that night he came out and the trap was gone and it was a [raccoon] that had taken it so it was really funny and you could see that you know you could see where the trap the trap was dragged and things like that and so but do you guys have fishing competitions while you are there uh when they are feeding uh_huh what do you feed them really and it is especially made for catfish uh_huh that is funny uh_huh uh_huh i have never seen catfish you know except in [filleted] on a plate i think maybe i think i have seen once or twice in like the museum but i have never seen them just alive someplace that would be fun to see uh_huh uh_huh how big do they get okay but how long in feet do you know that is pretty big though yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah that sounds amazing i will have to see them sometime but all righty nice talking to you too enjoy your uh weekend okay you too bye bye do you all do you get together with family reunions or oh that will be fun if you have not done it in a while uh where is your family from oh is it so you are going to have to go there yeah oh yeah my family is from kentucky most of them is down there i have got an uncle in louisiana and another sister here in texas we did when i was growing up it was every summer we got together now my grandmother just passed away this last year so you know she was uh_huh yeah well it it sure does well we in kentucky it wasn't hard because everybody lives so close together we just did it word by you know by word of mouth you know and uh my uncle in louisiana he is the only one that you know had to travel and now i have got a sister in germany and we are just scattered all over the place so it is going to be hard this time but we have got a huge family yeah because it is so fun i mean we my mother has got like thirteen brothers and sisters yeah she has got a huge family and every one of them have five or six kids and most of them you know have got kids yeah it is we just we had two baseball bleachers full of people and there are still about eight or six eight or ten people taking pictures yes and it was just the last time we had one it was so fun yeah yeah well i we have always had ours in a park or something but it has away been the same park and there is nothing really special there only thing is it is big and it is open uh_huh uh_huh in missouri well that was part of the problem with the ones we have now the kids would sneak off and we were just being kids and we found what we thought was just an old water hole so we was going swimming and like i said we was just big kids we was like eight and ten years old and our parents came and caught us we had been playing in the [sump] it was part of the [sewage] cleaning system kyle don't i have got a four year old yeah but if we could have gotten it by a lake or something i thought that would have been much better yeah well they there was uh i am sorry there was uh i remember now there was like uh a baby pool just about a foot deep yes i remember my little brother riding a bicycle through it we were all kids anyway oh but i love it all the different foods because that yeah that's the yeah so how long did you say it has been since you all had one yeah well i have been married almost five so i guess it has been seven years since we have had one and since then we have lost oh well just our grandmother that is surprising uh_huh oh if i can ever get down to kentucky it has been like four years since i have been home yeah that is the reason that is the reason i don't i would get on a bus any day by myself but i won't do it with the babies because uh i have got uh a four month old and a four year old so i am just starting and i just quit too uh i won't be adding any more to the family reunion yeah they are good kids though so uh i am not too upset anyways i have enjoyed talking to you all right all right you too bye bye yes we try to uh we have not in some years now and i think we are going to try to have one this summer my aunt is planning it uh missouri southwest part of missouri that will will be where it is uh if if she gets it planned i have been out of town so i do not know what she has been doing but uh they are all getting very very old all my aunts and uncles so we need to see them soon so uh_huh right do you all get together often or uh_huh right i think as we get older it is more difficult to uh when all my aunts and uncles are in their eighties now so it is uh i have to uh i will probably have to take charge and do it one of these uh one of these uh days but uh i still have elderly parents alive so uh it takes a lot of effort to either get everybody called or written and settle on a date you know that and if they are right uh_huh oh my gosh yeah so the yeah and we need to have more and more of them i i think i hope that is not a lost art that people getting together as they do spread out all over the world yeah it is oh i see uh_huh sure that makes a big crowd yeah is that is that right that is wonderful i hope well we need to have another one i hope my aunt is successful as uh later well it is probably not going to be done because i have not heard from them i it was supposed to be this june so i do not imagine there is anything coming this is hardly almost june so uh_huh yeah that is we have it usually at this uh at this one park because there is a pavilion there in case it rains and uh you have to have it uh fairly early in the summer or it is too hot up there in missouri yeah it is too it is not it is just uh very humid and the old people cannot take it anymore uh_huh uh_huh isn't that great yeah yeah yeah well that keeps you busy yeah yeah it would have been something for the young people to to do but uh_huh yeah every family has all that going on i am sure so uh oh i do too that is the best part of it everybody bringing something for a [potluck] picnic and oh grand yeah i do not know i think it has been uh four three or four years or five even uh since they have had it tried to get everybody together they are just spread out so much and and we really need to uh no matter what kind of crowd they get i hope uh_huh yeah well time flies so fast it may have been that that long since we have one it is hard to remember but i think it has been about four or five years so uh anyway i i hope both our families get to have one soon yeah it is difficult with little ones i know when we had had our uh_huh sure oh lord oh i am telling you that is uh no i hope it i know it takes a lot of effort right with with that with two little ones like that yeah enjoyed talking to you good luck in everything bye bye do you have annual family reunions or uh_huh all local were they like all in dallas oh uh_huh uh_huh just from city to city then uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh do you go back is it choice or just business or uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh do you have brothers and sisters uh_huh uh_huh and is your mother still living oh so so you go back and visit with her anyway would you not i mean either way there was family reunion time or not relatives right uh_huh uh_huh right right the next generation uh_huh why do you think that it's less close than it used to be uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right right right uh_huh is that just family's lack of priority anymore maybe yes we get so involved in our work lives and just social lives and so forth uh_huh right right it really makes an effort on to do this anymore right right right right do you [correspond] with anybody other than your mother and brother that's in that group on a regular basis not just christmas cards uh_huh uh_huh right right right right in my my uh father's family we get together every year at a different location either dallas or oklahoma city they had chosen santa barbara california for this summer and and did not get enough people that were willing to go that far because most of us live either in the midwest or like in the texas oklahoma area and uh so they [cancelled] that one and uh are looking next year bringing it back closer but we have a letter a family letter that [circulates] and it usually goes through me twice a year and what you do is take out the last letter you wrote that's on the bottom and put the your new letter on the top and then that's the way it's kept in order and then about twice a year then you are kept up with what is going on and when you meet them at the reunion you do not feel like i do not know anything about this person you have read something about what is going on and about their children and so forth so you are kind of half way acquainted that way and that that's been a that's been a nice way of keeping us all aware of each other i think we tried to start that in my husband's family his mother's side decided they were going to have a reunion a couple of years ago and i said well let's start this letter and it just never my husband's sisters started it and sent it to us and that's as far as it got i sent it on to the next one and and but we are going in a couple of weeks to the next one in [scottsdale] arizona for that family we are real glad we got together because since that that time there were only like two of the one sister and one sister in law of the original family left and the sister in law died and the sister is in a nursing home so we are glad that we took that opportunity two years ago okay uh uh yeah uh our the my mother's side of the family is quite large or well was quite large at one time and uh they uh for as long as i can remember have had uh a yearly reunion um back uh early on they used to to rotate them from from to to different people's houses in the family and uh no no not no this was well i am actually from mississippi and so that's it it was around there generally uh that's where the family grew yeah and it was not only in mississippi in some other places as well so it was uh it was a big deal but uh they tried to to [centralize] it in one spot so in the past couple of years they had it at a state park every year we rent a pavilion and and do that and that's usually works out to be pretty good and uh they will rent a pavilion on a weekend and uh i have not gone back lately in fact uh this past sunday was the was the reunion but i did not get to go uh i have not getting to go uh just uh the distance involved and uh just not i have a younger daughter now and uh i it's kind of hard to get her get her there and everything but i am going to to uh hopefully next year get to go back cause uh a lot of the family has not uh on her side my mother's side has not seen you know my daughter so i have one brother so yes right yeah right i i usually see her a couple times a year so that's no no big thing but uh i uh i do i do enjoy the reunions the only problem is that now uh originally when we had them uh they were mainly my mother's uh father's my mother's father's family had quite a few uh brothers and sisters so it was a large reunion of of of that group uh from that descendants and uh a lot of those people have and at time you know they all knew one another and now it has gotten uh that uh a lot of those people are have uh have died off or you know what we are left with is the the relatives of of of that group and so uh it's not quite as close as it used to be so i think people feel less of a desire to really go i know that well i i just think that uh you know at that when when they were you know the those were all brothers and sisters a lot and or they were all in the same geographical location you know back around you know in the twenties and thirties when they were growing up uh you know they were all located together in one small community and as as time grew i mean when time went on the family grew and moved away and so forth and now when they come together it's it's generally you know like say the kids of those people who are not you know anywhere near one another and i do not think they feel the the closeness that they used to be there which is a shame but that's just how it is my mother was complaining last year about you know it's dwindling down every year you know that's just i think that's just well yeah yeah that's uh yeah i think that's some of it but you know i have uh i i it's just the way you know i think society is now is that we are not we do not have the extensive family we used to it's more of a you know a smaller smaller unit and you know we we tend to try to do things i think with our immediate family as opposed to the extended family of people that we may or may not remember or know you know very well uh right it requires a lot of effort to to to do that sort of thing i mean i i used to enjoy going i mean i still do kind of enjoy it but uh it's it does not it's not as many people there that i really really enjoy seeing you know i it's going just for the sake of getting together i think for the family and uh um um no not really in that but then again uh well i you know i have some aunts that uh i i i do that's about my mother's sisters you know but i feel closer to them because i kind of grew up with them but but uh as you know for the rest of that group no not really uh you know and and generally when i was growing up a lot of those people the only time i ever saw them was at the reunion so uh you do not really feel that that really close to them uh_huh uh_huh that's a good idea right yeah right yeah uh_huh well on my father's side we've really there uh on my mother's side we've had several not it's not really on a regular basis but usually sometimes every few summers well all see all the family lives in once place except for a few of us are scattered about so they're pretty much just [reunited] always so it's it's just once in a while we get the special gathering with everyone together i know that's do that that's true how about your family wow you're a pro at this oh that's good and then where do you meet okay okay do you have relatives in vernon then okay right oh right oh right okay so this town hall that you meet in is that like a um okay potato salad and uh oh that's good right right oh that's nice right do they always have the the one person in the family who knows or everyone thinks they know how to make this the best so that's what they get to cook well that's good well i had a professor in [anthropology] at school who studied family reunions so i learned a lot about them i haven't been to a lot but we talked a lot about the the [rituals] you all [equated] the family reunions as with the protestant it was the protestant version of the catholic pilgrimage it was it was an interesting theory she talked about the uh the catholics all it's a home centered you know it's all family centered anyway so you usually are living where your parents live and it's all your you don't have to come home so the catholics would make a pilgrimage in older europe but when the protestant ethic happened in america there were people who ever went out and you know went away from the family to seek their fortune and then had to come back home for their reunion so that became their version of the pilgrimage but she had it was interesting you know i don't know how valid it is but she talked about that and how the the big picnic table was the symbolic [communion] of the people gathering together and um you know about the bread and the ritual placement do you have a a certain way that everything is placed out on the table every every year is there kind of a you know salads go first and things like that right well that's pretty sure does that's wonderful yeah i wish we'd right right wow you're just uh oh that's incredible right right have you have you done this [repetitively] or just once oh see that's we've we had a problem with that oh right that's our was our problem we had uh the first reunion or the first you know major reunion was probably six or seven years ago and then the second reunion people who maybe you know had sacrificed things to come to the first one thought oh well it's not that big a thing this year and so it kind of wound down and then finally you know you're lucky to get you know you get the shreveport relatives there but no one else so that does your family normally have a reunion do you have one that's been uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh well it might be a good time for you to to to start a tradition you could be responsible for that yourself sure well in my family let's see last october was the forty fifth annual uh reunion the first sunday in october the jordan family gets together and all of the descendants of the civil war i mean yeah the civil war veterans come together and they come as far away from california and there's usually oh between a hundred and fifty and two hundred and fifty people uh there's a big community hall in vernon texas and uh that seems to be sort of a middle ground for all of the texas family uh_huh right uh_huh a lot of the older family lives in vernon um all of his direct descendants descendants have now died and the grandchildren are in their seventies and eighties so we're talking about second and third great children here uh i take my boys well i took them up until this year they're grown and gone from home now so they they take their family but uh let's see that would make them grandfather great grandfather great great grandfather okay so it would be the second great [grandchild] and so they well it's a community center it's a community hall it's a great big open building that has a wonderful kitchen it in and uh you just bring the covered dishes every every family brings a a dish of some kind and you get all the wonderful old family recipes that have been handed down for years well we try to stay away from those things which might have uh [salmonella] in them and we choose to bring [congealed] salad you can bring a [congealed] vegetable salad as opposed to potato salad and we are very conscious of most of us are very conscious of of uh sanitation aspects whatever you've got to carry for any distance i always take home baked bread uh that happens to be my specialty for that family i do other things very well but there are others in the family who do them better uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right well it's uh we have uh uh kind of a core group that that serves as quote officers of the organization and they plan the reunions the organize the you know who is going to see to it that the coffee pot gets there who's going to rent the tables who's going to see to it that the [silverware] gets turned back to the [caterer] uh and each year it's done a little bit differently because different people serve in those roles we have a [biographer] who who continues every year to save clippings on any family member and they're entered into a a wonderful uh scrap book and pictures of new babies and new people who have been added and and [obituaries] to those who are gone and it keeps the family alive even you know even though it's very fluid and they're very dedicated to that and uh it's been really wonderful it helps you hang onto your roots and it helps you feel a strong sense of belonging my husband on the other hand was not very close to his family his family was very scattered and very diverse and i asked him i got to talking to him i said well how is his nephew doing well i don't know i haven't talked to my brother in three years i said well how's your brother doing i don't know uh you know my son keeps in touch with him i think but i don't i said hey wouldn't you like to know what's happening with these people yeah but i'm you know it's too much trouble so i got busy got together and put a reunion together for his family and [succeeded] in getting all of his brothers and sisters and all of their [offspring] but one to our place down at lake tawakoni liked to kill me because i it was i didn't have that group cooperation i did it by myself and uh nobody brought covered dishes we had a great big fish fry and you know i fixed a salad in a number three tub and and uh it was an enormous task to bring all of those people together with just one or two people helping and uh we had to provide sleeping arrangements for all of them and i told him we did it that year and then the following summer we did not have all of the family there we sent [invitations] we said please let us know if you're coming it was when uh his mother his step father had died the year before and it his mother was alone and so they came to support her and then one by one his you know his sisters he began to lose family members and it was difficult to hold them together and then of course he died two years ago so you know that family has gone down to one brother and one sister now and uh it i think that's what happens when they get scattered the the family unit you know falls into [disrepair] uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well see we manage those people who are at that core group manage to keep keep the [vigor] alive they'll send out news [bulletins] two or three times a year you'll get a news hey guess who got you know elected to the legislature or guess who our local sheriff okay well this is a very timely topic [inasmuch] as we're going to a family reunion this weekend yeah down at lake texoma lodge yes this is one that's uh the baker family reunion and this has been going on at least uh i would say at least twenty five years or thirty something like that maybe longer than that i'm going to get back into the fifties sometime first time i i married into the family and the first time i went was about fifty seven i think but uh this one has been well organized and in fact it used to be at lake brownwood and now it's lake texoma because that's more central location for people from oklahoma and texas to come to very important because uh you'll start losing people if it's too far to go yeah never get them at both places right well listen they've uh they've had this one well it just of course over the years it has uh built up as far as the organization is concerned but now they uh have a golf tournament on the saturday and then they have generally a show or an auction or something on saturday night to help raise funds to cover the costs of such yeah and uh everyone uh they get the community building there at lake texoma lodge and everyone brings in food and then for the saturday night dinner they bring in like kentucky fried chicken from durant and uh it really uh has worked out uh generally uh i think it's been as high as about a hundred and twenty people i think [normal's] about sixty or seventy oh oh yeah right yeah well our family reunion started out my wife and i were the kids the newlyweds so to speak and now we go our children go and our grandchildren are going now so it's uh wound up that uh we're the old folks now but um they have various organized they have generally a volleyball net set up and [horseshoes] uh to pitch and they organize a baseball game for the kids and several people bring boats and there's a place they they take the kids up to the lodge and go swimming up there in the afternoon so it it's a full day some of the people come down on friday afternoon and spend the whole weekend and some just come in for saturday so it uh has worked out quite well and it's a chance to see some of the relatives you don't see all year long except that once a year yeah my side of the family is from back in ohio and west virginia and i think we've been to one in thirty five years or something like that so that's just too far away yeah it's an all day drive just to get to this area yeah yeah yeah we have each year of course they elect officers of the family reunion and a number of years ago back in the early eighties my wife was president we discovered how much work it is just to organize and get it together and it takes a lot of planning and [assembling] of stuff right that's correct yes it is i tell you i don't really care for her to be president again but that is uh it's it's a lot of work but it's a lot of fun we've enjoyed it and the grandkids really enjoy it because it's the only time of the year they see all their cousins from oklahoma yeah and this year they're all excited the show this weekend this [weekend's] going to be a rock and roll show my two grandsons and one of their cousins are are going to dress up and [lip] sing to a rock song you know in jeans and t shirts and such so it's uh it's going to be exciting for them and for us too oh yes there have been some really wild shows put on there they uh really get uh into it yeah well oh that generally happens yeah yeah well we've uh had various things over the years uh to raise funds for it and again it's not it's not cheap to rent the lodge up there or the meeting room down in the cabins and such but uh they've come up with they've tried passing the hat and they've had [auctions] and various things to raise funds and uh some people do and some people don't excuse me but um anyway that's the family reunion story okay been nice talking to you bye yes oh are you really where is it going to be oh uh_huh oh that's marvelous uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i'm sure [location's] really important as far as figuring out where one ought to be uh_huh we have factions when it's one part we i have one reunion on my mother's side and we found that if it's in a certain part of texas some people come and if it's elsewhere other people come we never get them at both of them it seems like so i think we need to find a new place uh_huh um oh that's a neat idea uh_huh uh_huh how many people jim are involved wow yeah well i guess um ours probably isn't that big our family is dwindling for one thing and i often feel funny because i'm in a branch that's all but died i just have one aunt and my family so sometimes when these other families get together they're really pulling in aunts and uncles and grandkids and we're kind of off on the [sidelines] but it does remind us that we have family and roots so we keep going even though we're not a real big part of it uh_huh oh that's great uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh so there's lots to do uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's true well that's neat i think think they're really fun we go to mine regularly and then we go to my husband's occasionally down in temple and he has a large family so it's it's fun when we go to that one oh yeah yeah that that is a problem with the distance the people that we have that don't come are out el paso way and it's just too much for all of them all of that group to travel right but then we have the same attitude when it's out there although this year we're going out they're going to have it at fort davis and we thought that would be fun to kind of tie it in as a vacation time as well as reunion uh_huh uh_huh and choose some place that everybody's going to like as far as food and all that that's a heavy burden no uh_huh well i think yeah and it's it's good for kids to know that they have other family oh boy oh what fun uh_huh uh_huh probably lots of laughs uh_huh well it sounds like you really have a good structure and have it going along ours ours is still kind of [loosely] organized and the same people usually get stuck with doing it and they do it as a labor of love so the officer idea is a good idea uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah and it's not fair that everybody not contribute uh_huh well thanks a lot i enjoyed talking to you bye yes just this last summer we went back to utah and we met it was my we usually go to my family reunion but this one was my husband's and they're usually quite similar i think no he's from here but uh most of his people are from oregon so we kind of met halfway and so this was one and they um planned it up in the mountains and got a cabin and had you know things like that have to be planned like they had planned that we went to the reunion in end of june and first of july that part the fourth of july weekend but we had to plan everything like clear in december january to reserve that uh_huh no this was everybody oh i oh i jeez i think over um three hundred were there it was quite a large it was a great big lodge and so we had plenty of room and everything and some of them live in that area so it wasn't too hard for them to come in the day and leave but um that was a great big thing and we do that with his family about every five years a great big one and then like immediate family we do like we try to do one thing once a year well he has eight brothers and sisters so that's big by itself yeah so we have a little [shindig] with them um they're close in a close [proximity] um let's see there are four of them who live here in texas and his mom and dad so um the others live in close neighboring um states like nevada arizona i think like that yeah so it's been fun how about you uh_huh uh_huh that's hard yeah yeah uh_huh yeah it really is fun and my mom's family does it once a year just like you said once a year um they have a a a wednesday through a a saturday type thing you can come and go as you please type thing and they do that once a year i kind of missed it this year and felt bad but you can't go every year you just cannot do that um um basically they just stay with each other brothers or sisters there are enough in the area to to just kind of span yourself out whoever's mom and dad it is you usually go and stay with them like i go stay with my mother and my cousins they just go stay with their mom and dad you know kind of thing and so it's not hard in in that respect because they all are pretty centralized in one utah area so that's not hard but the real planning that's the real key and they send out my mom's family now this is the first reunion with my husband's family i've really been involved with but my mom's family each brother and sister takes a turn one year and that's how they divide it up and then um she has ten in that family and each one of them take their turn and then the the parent who's turn it is the child whose turn it is her children help her like if it was my mother's turn all of us children would help her put it on kind of thing yeah and um the thing is that um the the real part is there are two mailings that go out and the first one is to just kind of give an [approximate] date and time so you can start making hi [clarice] um have you had a family reunion recently uh_huh are you both from utah originally oh uh_huh uh_huh oh how nice uh_huh uh_huh sure sure now was this his entire family cousins aunts uncles like that or his immediate family oh wow oh wow how many people were there wow wow uh_huh oh that's wonderful oh now how many how many people are in his immediate family oh wow wow it really is and you get together once a year wow are they all here in the area or are they scattered uh_huh uh_huh oh wow that's wonderful well we don't really get together i i would love to and that's why i checked that i wanted to do that because i would love to plan a family reunion sometime um i have a sister in colorado and uh a sister in upstate new york and a sister in connecticut and here i am in texas so we're kind of scattered right now and uh my my cousins have a you know they put on a family reunion um once a year but it's always like the second week in september so it's the kids are already back in school and so and that's back in the and that's in new york and there's no way i mean there's just no possible way and it's not really a weekend it's just like a day kind of thing because most of them are you know um my family moved to connecticut the rest of the family stayed in new york and uh on long island and so they're all kind of local and close and so they just have a you know a day picnic and uh i've always thought it would be so neat even if it were just my immediate family to have like a weekend type thing that would be so wonderful uh_huh oh wow yeah yeah yeah and do they they have a hotel or where do you stay take everybody yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah oh that sounds so wonderful isn't that nice yeah uh_huh but then one brother and sister from each family uh_huh oh wow uh_huh uh_huh oh i see uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh wow how would you go about organizing a family reunion oh gee oh my uh_huh yes with all of you living so close together oh well i come from a very small family and we planned a family reunion this spring uh where we are from texas and my family is from ohio and we met in florida so the seven of us went on a cruise and then went to disney together so that's all the family so planning our family reunion was very easy you know yeah well we had a wonderful well for i grew up in the deep south like south alabama so whenever i think of family reunions my family like got together almost every week and there would be like thirty people so people talk about you know big family reunions and i think like i have a friend who just went to like wyoming to some big ranch you know where like there were four hundred people for their family reunion and i so i mean how i would go about doing it is i would just call all my relatives because i since i came from my father has uh five sisters and two brothers and my mother has four brothers and two sisters so i both of my parents had big families and we always we always got together just always now it's different because i live here and i you know when i go home i try to see the families as much of the family as i can but it's real different and i grew up in a real not i think not normal setting right i mean sunday dinner was at my grandmother's and you know like i said there would be thirty you know thirty people and everyone would just bring things and my grandmother would cook and cook and cook and uh_huh yeah i guess so it really sounds like it was fun okay um do you participate in family reunions uh_huh did you uh were they far away were they close uh_huh oh how neat uh_huh oh that would be fun yeah well we uh we have a family reunion on my mother's side of the family that's uh-oh it started probably about forty years ago uh because i remember going as a teenager before i was ever married and then my husband and i went uh while we were still dating and it's still going on and it used to be held at lake brownwood down at brownwood texas but now we hold it at uh lake texoma so that the oklahoma group doesn't have to drive as far and uh we have had as many on a saturday night it starts on friday and goes through sunday and we've had as many on a uh saturday night as about two hundred and fifty uh_huh yes and we took uh our family all brought in food and everything oh uh_huh uh_huh well i know on sundays we all elect now to chip in and we go get kentucky fried chicken and bring out and uh but we kind of take our food for three days and uh now our grandchildren are participating in it and just love that they have all this little batch of cousins that they get to see about once a year enthused and with it and our children you know thoroughly enjoy it so it's been kind of nice it started out when i was a youngster and watching my mother now i'm to the mother was and uh i am uh now the older generation and doing more of the cooking and watching my daughter you know more and everything and uh oh my word oh uh_huh oh are they get together any more uh_huh uh_huh i think i do think now we have noticed a [waning] of interest and i think as as parents get older and start dying off i think sometimes it is hard to keep the interest going uh_huh uh_huh yeah you probably do good just to get your immediate family together uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah they're a lot of fun well my i have a sister and then we have a son and a daughter and we have three grandchildren and our son and daughter are both married and uh our son's not as interested in it as our daughter but our daughter our daughter is really interested and uh i beg you pardon oh a little bit i i wish that our son was you know and uh but uh the cousins are closer to our daughter's age and than to our son's and just totally different interest group and plus and he's just he's newly married and doesn't have children and you know i'm hoping that as they you know are married a little bit longer and have children that they may be more inclined to want to go you know to it i know that well talk to them about it and you know tell them some of the things we're doing now when he was a uh a young oh preteen you know when he was like ten or twelve he loved going he had another cousin he was close to and went but that cousin kind of quit going and as he got to be a teenager uh he wasn't quite as as interested he was more interested in rock and roll and this is more country western group and uh just lack of interest i did for years i don't have enough family left to have them but well i come from a family that was very large in bell county and and my grandfather came to bell county on a covered wagon and had ten children and so sometimes we would have a reunion with that group and then sometimes we would go to arkansas where they came from and have a reunion with the entire group you know yeah it was a lot of fun uh_huh um now we would have group like that in arkansas we'd have two hundred and fifty or three hundred well so many of us came from a long way that we we'd usually at a motel and we bought food there uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh well it's something i really miss because i had twenty seven first cousins and you know we were very close family but our father's generation was enough older than i my father would be a hundred now that they're all dead and in fact many of my first cousins are dead and of course they have their own families and grandchildren and all that so we really very rarely all of us get together and and we're a long way away and and the younger generation the next like my cousin's children i don't know very well you know but it so it's i doubt that that will come to be again but as long as my oldest aunt lived we we got together once a year well and and folks have gotten so mobile i mean like i have a son and a daughter and two nephews that are grown and a brother who has a new marriage and a younger son but my brother and his wife live in nevada my daughter lives in colorado one of my nephews lives in new york city one nephew lives in memphis and my son lives here but i think it's very unlikely we'll have a family reunion you know yeah and i'm divorced and really only immediate family i have left is my my i have a son and a daughter but my family's really all dead but it was great pleasure while we did it you know uh_huh does it bother you if your children are not interested in it does it bother you if your children are not interested in it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well what kinds of things do you do to try to get your children interested just talk to them about it uh_huh uh_huh hi i'm carol and i'm calling from garland texas oh okay because yesterday i talked to someone upstate i'm not even sure where and my husband talked to the people in utah so um anyway let me press one okay um let me see i think we've only planned one family reunion in our life so we don't do this too often um most of my family's in california but my husband's is in san antonio and so we did this in san antonio and um it was an experience that i i won't do again um well it wasn't that big of a family but um it just got out of hand and um so many people were coming that we were trying to figure out how much food we were going to need and and um how much um [beverages] we were going to need and this and that and oh it just grew and grew and grew and um when the time came only about half that amount of people came so it wasn't you know you have to really just get an accurate amount and but overall we all had a good time we saw people we hadn't see in a while so no it was all in the san antonio area but it it just kept growing and growing and growing and growing and we're going oh my gosh so uh_huh basically yeah yeah uh_huh i think you're right yeah your family's from where oh no uh_huh oh those are nice and i'm i'm sure they're a lot more organized too because they've done it before that's great oh yeah that makes a big difference too i know everybody's real eager to participate yeah well that's great uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh yeah more people want to come back again yeah that's good my uh my grandmother in california is um this is my dad's part side of the family is planning a reunion um this spring but we won't be going because um i don't know how they thought of this it's going to be on a cruise and um it seems like most of the family is uh going you know all the nieces and all the grandchildren and all that are most of them are going but it's too costly for us but anyway they're going to go on a cruise and um it sounds really neat it really does uh_huh yeah and a friend of mine um she plans her family reunion um every year and they go camping and she says they have the greatest time and she says usually everybody shows up in exception to maybe one person but she said they all go camping and they have a really good for the whole weekend so that's yeah yeah right now we only have two children so i hi yeah this is i'm in dallas okay i how big a family do you have did you have people coming from far away well sometimes well you have you have the family lives too close together they see each other too often they don't take that kind of thing seriously and if uh uh they come from far away it's uh it it they take it more seriously and yeah my family's not very big but uh we're kind of well i have a a a brother lives in indianapolis a sister lives in chicago and my folks live back in buffalo new york uh i guess we have reunions about once a year or so we got together over christmas my wife's family they're they're all in most of them are in upstate new york they have regular uh regular family reunions every summer yeah it is yeah and it's it's just something that they they plan on doing every summer they just have a weekend picnic and every year everyone asks when is it happening and where is it happening and they just plan on being here yeah they they had a family reunion for uh well for my mother in law at her seventy fifth birthday and they managed to get just about everybody everybody into town uh last november including a number of people from out in california so it was a it was good it uh it worked out very well one interesting thing that they did at the time is they um they videotaped the the whole [shebang] which it made a nice [remembrance] of of the entire party yeah they want to come back so so that that works pretty well that way yeah i i can go for that what what do i guess interesting if you had a a a very extended family that that kind of involved a lot of people that cousins and things that you don't really know that you've never met it'd be interesting to meet a lot of those people uh i don't know how you would go about uh getting them together but that that would be uh yeah i kind of wonder what what kind of tradition we're going to establish for our family i had hoped that our our kids get together at least regularly your family have reunions on a regular basis once every five years yeah uh you have got a pretty big family oh yeah yeah we have a pretty big family but most of us well uh uh i am originally from west virginia most of the family is right in the west virginia uh uh what they call [tri] state area uh northern west virginia eastern ohio southwestern pennsylvania most everybody is right in that area yeah yeah they put one together for our family about once every june it was on my grandmother's birthday but she is she is gone now yeah uh oh pardon well no there is kind of a set pattern to it there is uh so uh the day it happens is ninety eight percent of the planning usually yeah uh we uh get together at the uh the park uh the uh the park and playground area of the church i was raised in and uh everybody brings lots of food and some put up the volleyball net and sit around and tell stories and catch up and play volleyball all day and get really fat oh gosh yeah schedule vacation time and yeah we uh sat uh sunday afternoon or uh sometimes it has been like on a saturday afternoon usually it is like sunday afternoon and most people do not have more than you know a couple of hours drive at tops to get there and back well where i am calling from is southern mississippi so we have got uh uh my wife and i have uh a bit longer ways to go than most uh actually we we have only made one of them since we got married about four years ago one of the family reunions but we are both in school so that makes it kind of tough they usually uh they have been happening uh just after the summer semester starts usually not we managed to get to one that was before i started school and she took that summer off but uh oh goodness yeah yeah yeah i understand where is home for you yeah yeah yeah well maybe this year you can find a more central location oh okay then the majority of them are still in the missouri area okay you know our family right now uh the most of it there is only a few stragglers uh with any distance there is one cousin out in colorado uh uh some cousins over in phoenix uh i got a sister over in in uh washington state uh the rest of them are within you know a couple hours drive that is pretty much it yeah it is going to be such and such uh weekend and uh you all come that is about it and you know this is the standard pattern it uh everybody brings their favorite dish and somebody brings the volleyball net somebody brings a whole lot of ice for the watermelon and am i related to you yeah i married your cousin's brother's uncle or something like that uh yeah every year and uh still you wind up meeting people you uh you never knew you were related to let alone and oh yeah okay probably once every five years uh_huh yeah and that is the hardest part about getting the the stuff together and everyone is spread out all over [timbuktu] and you uh_huh yeah that makes it a lot easier a lot more convenient that is why we only do it once every five or ten years because it is always that hard to get everyone together yeah see that is kind of what happened with ours that is why we have not had one in a long time so so to make one successful i mean i mean what do you all do do you all just start planning real far ahead of time uh do you all start planning real far ahead of time oh really yeah eat a lot it is a lot harder for us because we are like i said we are spread out and so we have to plan anywhere from six well really probably a year ahead of time so that everyone can uh start their uh vacation time uh_huh yeah yeah is that one of your uh i mean uh but you also manage to make them yeah yeah you can't really get away well now that we have been talking about it i uh i am kind of getting home sick now because it has been over three years since i have been home to see my grandparents well my my grandfather is the only one that is still around and see my grandmother is the one that use to plan this stuff basically so unless the aunts and uncles really get on the ball and put stuff together it is kind of like she was like the glue so originally uh i uh was born in missouri but uh you know we have relatives scattered out all over louisiana mississippi uh here in texas but it is harder for everyone to get in get home well but the majority of them are in like just like how you said in close close quarters so it is easier for us few stragglers to go home yeah well uh how do you all communicate like to plan it and every thing do you all just call each other up on the phone and say this is the weekend we are going to do it or do you all like mail out stuff yeah well uh uh i guess probably the last one i went to i met so many people that i had not seen in probably ten over ten years it was like don't you remember me and i am like no yeah i know do you i mean is that since i mean do you have them every year yeah well i think that is probably why our is probably so interesting is cause we don't have them that often and then when we do and everyone finally does get together it is like after the you know yeah i at first i it took eight times to find you so i told my husband uh you know what should i say and then he reminded me but uh uh in his family uh what they usually do on his dad's side his mom or uh the aunts will send out little [postcards] like two or three weeks before reminding everyone where the the where to meet and you know just to bring anything and so they just [notify] everyone by mail and then they just meet at like a park or something to have like a a short uh or a small uh dinner type thing uh they come from well they all meet in portland and they come as far as oh seattle and and sometimes we've gone and we were we were living in utah at the time and uh the his his dad's family is all around the area and his mom's side of the family they all uh have their family reunions in southern utah and people would come from seattle to there and uh let's see nevada and in that area washington and nevada to southern utah and they would uh assign a different person each time they had a reunion they'd assign a different person to be in charge of [notifying] everybody yeah yeah and the people who are down there like they'll assign one person in the utah area one person in the washington area and that person can call you know beforehand and just make sure everyone knows too and then they just sort of do like a little program or you know something like that so that everyone's sort of involved oh well that's my husband's side and my mom my mom's or my family uh we all live in southern california so we just have to either or give a formal invite and we're all there so yeah well i mean l a orange county area i mean everyone's you know mostly not farther than an hour away uh_huh oh wow well you know that's interesting because one thing that always brings to my uh husband's mother's side together is uh they talk about the genealogy of the family tree every time and uh inevitably everyone is just very interested and and they always have you know two or three new ones to add to the list you know someone's been born or someone passed away or you know something like that and so everyone has to update their little books or whatever uh i do but not to very much compared to my mother in law um oh really is it your your [grandma's] own [sibling] and she oh i see oh so well maybe uh they just moved away and then sort of lost contact well this is an unusual topic what do you think about it well that sounds great ellen how far away do they come from oh okay oh okay that makes sense nobody's out of a lot of trouble more than once uh_huh yeah that's interesting you sound like you've had a lot of experience with this then southern [california's] still pretty large i see yeah well my experience uh has been limited pretty much lately to my mother's side of the family uh years ago there was a big dispute on my dad's side and uh they haven't had a reunion since then they just show up at [funerals] and weddings it was pretty serious and lot of yelling and all that but anyway my mother's side we had our our first real reunion that i've ever gone to last summer and they had people come in from out of town and they took some rooms down at a holiday inn and uh they had some activity they had a nice dinner planned and all of that stuff and people got up and talked about various parts of the family tree and you know a lot of that sort of thing since it was the first one that we'd had that you could do that once now next time we have one we'll have to think of something more creative to do oh well have have you do you have an interest in genealogy not a passion huh uh i suspect we'll do quite a bit more genealogy and i i suspect we will do more of it uh i found out some about some of the relatives i didn't you know i i didn't even know their names some of the two or three generations back and some of the aunts and uncles and uh there's a lot of things there you have to stop their really kind of fascinating i found out my grandmother was one of a twin and we don't even know where the twin we have virtually no no background on on her on the twin my grandmother's uh sister who would be somewhere in in west virginia i'm sure she's you know dead now because my grandmother died in about twenty years ago i'm i'm quite a bit i'm probably a lot older than you are uh i don't know i pressed the button one so we're recording right now i'm sorry okay and i'm [melanie] from [harrisville] utah yeah um okay bill we're talking about family reunions okay um have you ever had to plan a family reunion oh uh_huh and how did you feel it went oh all this planning and and getting together and such um oh let's see what else uh_huh oh boy uh_huh oh my word well what did you find was most helpful in planning the birthday get together uh_huh oh uh_huh oh oh that's good uh_huh and then did you have a main meal or did everyone just bring it was just pot luck uh_huh yeah yeah show off a little bit oh oh now how old is she oh goodness is she pretty [spry] is she you know pretty oh wow uh_huh oh oh that's neat that she's in good health and that at that age yeah really well that sounds fun well i i had a real challenge of planning a family reunion a few years ago and there were we sent out five hundred uh [announcements] because our family is quite large like your your family there and so that was a real challenge and i was president of our family reunion for two years and i wasn't very at that duty for two years in a row but i found that advance planning was the key to success uh_huh oh that's wonderful though oh oh well that is that is helpful yeah our family ranges from oh goodness well australia i have a brother lives in australia to uh boise idaho and and uh all kinds of places we are oh in oh uh_huh boy oh my gosh they must really like it there yeah oh oh you're ready to move on to hello that's okay i'm bill from raleigh oh another one from a different state besides texas right uh yes and no it wasn't really a a planning one but it was kind of uh it was a birthday and i brought a lot of family together then it went pretty good i'm i've worked in hotels so i i kind of know how to do these things i used to you know usually when we have kind of our family reunion it's my grandmother's birthday and and it's all of like she she comes from a big family she has like seven sisters i think they show up and all their kids and then all she has uh i have like uh let's see she has four sons and two daughters and they show up and all their kids so it's a pretty big reunion it's about two hundred people maybe um the probably the biggest challenge was getting a place where everyone you know could eat comfortably and and everything uh i guess probably the most helpful thing was that um for the rent we rented like a a rescue squad building or something like that and uh each one of the everybody that showed up donated some money for the rent and for for like soft drinks and and so nobody like really got stuck with the bill and each person in the family you know brought a dish or something it was kind of pot luck you know everybody brought their specialties i guess you would say yeah and of course my grandmother's food was as always gone first because she's such a great cook uh she's eighty six now she does she looks probably like she's in her early sixties and if she didn't have arthritis she'd get around better than me as a matter of fact oh yeah my [nickname] for her is honey woman that's what i call her uh also one thing that's helpful and i don't know if your family's spread out or whatever but most of all my family lives like in the same county so but it's just kind of like get on the telephone and it's so and such days from such and such date and everybody just shows up i would say you're spread out then uh my immediate family you know my my parents and my brothers and sisters i guess we're the ones that have the [gypsy] blood or whatever because my dad was in the army and we're we're pretty strung out all over but since they've moved back to carolina's we still are the only ones do not live in in [yantsen] county i live in raleigh and then my my parents live in greenville and i have one brother and his wife live in greenville and uh another brother that lives in outside of fayetteville so i mean we're we're spread out but everybody else is centralized in in my home town [waynesboro] so nobody moves away except us yeah i got out as soon as i graduated just like this town is too small for me good bye okay have you been able to enjoy some family reunions in the past that you'd like to discuss or wow that's a that's great uh_huh i imagine it would be with seven seven brothers and sisters we oh how nice oh okay uh_huh uh_huh oh dear oh dear i hope not uh_huh i bet he really enjoyed that well that's fantastic that's fantastic well we uh we're all scattered around the country i have a brother in chicago one in cleveland i have two in germany and my sister we're from a large family also my sister is pretty close to my parents and uh my wife and i luckily came from the same hometown and her her family is scattered all over also so what we try to do when we have family reunions we schedule at the same time every year and we all kind of [migrate] back to where mom and dad are from which is in uh northern utah and so we kind of make sure that we schedule it the same time and we all head back about that same time and things that we do to make it memorable are that we go to a a resort either go water skiing horseback riding we make it a week long affair and uh have a real nice vacation another reunion we do is uh at christmas time this is something that a tradition that my grandparents started and we all get together around christmas time the first the saturday right before christmas unless it's either christmas eve or a day or two before and that's uh the week prior to that and the the amazing thing is we've had the same santa claus and his wife have come for the last twenty six years and so you know growing up as a kid that was always santa claus and he was the same santa claus year after year after year and it really made a very very pleasant and memorable and we all [exchanged] gifts as as family and and we got to a point where we were all growing up and we decided to have white elephant so excuse me i think one of the the main thing is just being able to get together and coordinate everyone's schedule that uh i find somewhat frustrating and and hectic but as long as we've uh announced it ahead of time and sent out [flyers] and let everyone know when we're going to get together and what we'll be doing is it's always been very very fun and i've always enjoyed it and uh we're very family oriented people and uh that uh makes it more special or more interesting especially when you have family from you know scattered all over the world then you can get together and discuss how their lives are and the different parts of the country too so uh_huh wow wow yes yes it's it's not always easy but it's it's very memorable boy i bet that's hard because i imagine that as a large family you were very close and and uh had a lot of fun as family so now we're ready yeah i had a a family reunion this past year first time in many many years and i had uh three of my sisters there with their family and we all got together in [gatlinburg] tennessee and spent the week there up in the mountains and rented a little little little house and sort of visited and got to know each other we hadn't been been around each other for quite a while over the years so it really was sort of nice well it worked out fairly well you know as a kid i don't know about yourself but we used to have big reunions and it's so nice and and you know it's just something that you don't do anymore and uh we had such a good time that that we're already deciding to have one in two years say in disneyworld or somewhere in florida just get together and just something you need to make time for yes we are we're sort of uh we're in texas and i have sisters in north carolina west virginia virginia florida everywhere so we're just so we don't get to see each other very often sure well that's great uh_huh oh that's neat which you're in a great area for it uh a lot of people do that but we're just not that well organized everyone's heading different directions so it's very hard to get together sure that's the important thing just to the important thing is to do it and that's great oh you bet it's been mostly my sisters and brothers right now but as far as cousins we haven't done that like i said before it's god in just forever i don't know how we'd ever get all of our cousins together you know it's like it's like high school high school and college reunions uh i didn't go i i just turned fifty years old recently and didn't go to the many reunions until i hit my twentieth i believe and of course i haven't missed one since then because it's just so enjoyable you get to see all your old friends and what's going on and it's a neat deal i look i look forward to them oh yes yeah kids kids getting older getting married and graduating high school and college and whatever just lots of things to catch up on and and we spent that time to do that no this was this was just for the big guys just for the parents it was sort of neat though in fact we uh we had a little rule that we would we would not take the kids with us this time but all of our kids are a little older so yes all of our kids are in middle and high school and college some are married so so we just all got together and it was sort of neat you bet because mother and dad both were there so it really paid off yeah it was neat and and and her four kids were there and their spouses so it worked out real well the last family reunion i did not plan i only participated and enjoyed about two years ago how about you it often depends on how far you want to go back on our particular family reunion they went back to my great great grandfather so that it was quite uh spread out and there were many families uh and there were many people we didn't know i think the total participation i don't know how many were invited but there were about two hundred and fifty people there and some of the families one of the cutest things that some of the the families did was to get t shirts that identified themselves as that branch of the family it was fun actually he was not he has gone but they decided to go ahead and take the family reunion back that far so that it wouldn't just be people meeting third cousins but people meeting i guess whatever sixth and seventh cousins and the other thing that i thought was particularly fun was uh the huge they had a huge family tree uh that was posted so you could sort of everybody could sort of see who married whom and so that was fun you know in every family there's usually one person that is gifted to do these things i have a cousin who never married who is a librarian sounds like a bad novel uh and she did she was she's always been interested in genealogy and she's kind of kept track uh i think she just started out writing to key people in the different branches of families and asking them to contact everyone and i really on the family tree there really was everyone except there was just some one group that had sort of gotten lost in missouri but this is was in indiana and it was a lot of the people had kind of stayed in one area so it wasn't like they were necessarily from all over the country but we're a good catholic german stock and so yes the original family that i [eluded] to my great grandfather had twelve children and they had some pictures of that was another thing they did that i thought was fun sounds like the twelve twelve tribes of israel or something actually they remember most of the games they had lots of games and competitions which were fun well are you planning a family reunion no do you how your you're from you're in san francisco sometimes when you've moved perhaps your family reunion if there ever would one would be back in michigan where your roots would be um this is little off the that sounds typical i never knew that i i always i thought the like the children of your first cousins i always called those second cousins and my children and my [cousins'] children i called third cousins that's how i've always named it some people have this once removed stuff i don't know what that means they'd just be your great aunts great aunts your [grandparents'] [siblings] would be your great aunts and uncles so but it it is interesting sometimes a little sad when families branch out quite so much but i don't know that's the american way i had two distant relatives who lived in the dallas fort worth area that i never had met and didn't know they were here and we we all laughed how it was funny to go back to indiana to meet people who lived ten miles from you so that was sort of funny in fact one of them i don't know remember how this was i guess it was actually just my father's cousin so it's not all that far away yes we have several we do extended families have you do you have you participated in a family reunion um i i know that when we've had ours they set a date and they have them every um year and it's mostly on my mom's side of the family that does it but um they send out [invitations] and it's the very same weekend of every year and it's in july and they always bring um family history information and they have and the saturday is all involved in people getting together um going over there's all these tables set up and they've got all this family history that you can get information on different people and their childhood and pictures and put together your own history of your family and your ancestors and that's really fun and then on sunday they um they have a big dinner and everyone's supposed to bring something and it's more of just a time to just chat and get you know [reacquainted] with your cousins and things like that that's the very big extended one that's over two hundred people that go to that so right right i know on more of a smaller scale my husband's mother and father have bought a condominium that's in a ski resort in utah and um they have it a certain week each year that's set aside for the whole family to come home in july and um everybody tries to go there and stay it's two or three big condominiums that all hook together and so everybody tries to go up and stay and um all be together on in his immediate family but there were seven children and by the time you get their spouses and their children all there right uh_huh the money yeah oh yeah now that one's a fun one that that is fun i know that sometimes i've the one that's been hard for me is the one that the [skidmores] used to do at [christmastime] and i i think it's just because it was it seemed to always be bad weather and uh just going over the you know the yeah it just right after christmas that one was kind of hard i think that was a hard time but well they haven't since his grandmother died and i don't know if you know they they just continued it kind of while she was still alive and and uh just nobody has done anything about it since she passed away but i don't know i mean it was always nice but it was just kind of a hard time i think yeah uh yeah my my side of the family usually has let's see i went to one it was at my uh actually it was in [layton] and it was at my father's grandfather's house where his mother had been raised a little bit of the time they they've still got this old home in their family and and that it was really a fun one that was nice to get to know a lot of the people that that we don't know and we just well a big uh they had big grill that they cooked chicken and what did they have chicken and i guess ribs and then they just did they had a little program and they made a quilt and gave it away uh well they they uh i think they drew names is what they did people well no they did auction it well people bought a ticket that's how they did it and then the person with the winning ticket got it and things like that and that was kind of a fun one yeah no we just goof off just fires oh uh_huh now is that the same time of year no okay because i it's is that kind of a family reunion too yeah yeah oh i see oh and uh_huh yeah oh that's nice yeah we have they've organized a uh like a family i don't know just some family organization on my dad's side and we do we pay dues i think this year we just paid like ten dollars and and then they sent have started sending out a news letter on people and and uh you know somebody's gone to a lot of work and they've they're doing a real good job and and so oh yeah i'm not good at things like that so it is it is and i know there has been a lot of years we haven't gone and then when we do go it doesn't seem like we know anybody and so i think it is good to keep going and keep those family ties up yeah oh yeah yeah but that's that is kind of sad when uh nobody does want to do it yeah oh it is it is oh well and and so you just you have the two on either side but you didn't have the one this year is this the first year you didn't have it on your husband's side oh i see oh huh uh_huh oh huh i don't know i've never heard that one before you you does this give us a signal i guess not okay um we have family reunions about every year with my husband's family and generally it's held in the summer and we have it in the state park which has worked out pretty well uh over by [clifton] [forge] uh [delford] have you ever heard of that right uh_huh well it's pretty good yeah uh there's quite a few children in the family so we have to try to find a time when everybody can be there and we've been pretty lucky so far uh_huh uh_huh oh where in new hampshire north [hampton] uh_huh i'm from maine originally i said i'm from maine originally i'm i'm a [maniac] in other words oh uh_huh well uh we're we're some of the older ones in the family so the ones with small kids usually have ball games and kick ball things like that uh one of them has made big banners to put on the oh we have one of those isn't that awful shelter a covered shelter and they've had big banners to display across the front of that and it's always a [potluck] everybody brings food right get all those good family favorites drum them out of the family uh_huh oh i see oh that's great oh yeah that's great what time of year do you do you have it in the fall like after yeah at football games it is it's wonderful uh my next family reunion with my family will be a wedding in atlanta this month so we're looking forward to that uh it will be quite a few because one brother has five children and they're all going to be there with their children golly so that's that's pretty good yeah uh_huh do they do you organize things or get or do they just right they just have a good time probably a lot of things to do huh uh_huh right always bring one huh yeah uh_huh oh uh_huh yeah that's interesting that's a good idea yeah uh_huh is her family in texas uh_huh yeah right well i have two girls and one is in texas and she's a t i uh employee right now and uh the other one is in new mexico right uh_huh colorado is beautiful that's kind of what we found she's uh in the northern part of new mexico it's pretty it's up in the mountains yeah it's beautiful right right yeah oh great uh_huh oh that makes it great doesn't it uh_huh right well we go to maine every fall i have a brother who lives there still and i have a sister in law and nieces and nephews so we always have a family reunion up in [farmington] and it's usually out on a farm one of the girls has a farm and no i haven't huh_uh oh uh_huh oh uh_huh that's pretty interesting yeah right uh_huh yeah uh_huh um well we uh uh this will be uh uh the reunion for not my grandfather but my great grandfather and then my great and then my grandfathers so it's a couple of generations uh and these were pioneers who came across the plains and uh the families were are quite large and so we've we spent a lot of time trying to gather up uh names and addresses of all the tons of people that are involved and so it takes a lot of time and planning uh good activity the what well interesting enough we're going to we're going to do it over an eight day period uh they will not everyone won't be there for the whole time but the families can come in during that eight day time and kind of meet on the on the living family level like i will come there kind of early and my brothers and sisters and their families will come so that we can get acquainted and then uh it goes back the the generation before will join us and they may meet kind of individually in this camping area and then uh toward the end of the week there will be two specific days when we honor these two uh groups my the grandfathers and the great grandfathers uh so it's kind of once more [combining] the whole group again but uh it's it's it's uh it requires a lot of uh logistics for food for the people who will have to meet and a lot of uh [arranging] for activities uh well uh course you want to do some kinds of things that which will help them to get to know the [ancestor] that you're [honoring] but besides that if you have a lot of children and and different ages you need to try to find things that uh that they will just like to do together so that the next time somebody says reunion they won't run like the four winds so it has to be pretty fun too i think uh we're we're going uh going to utah to uh uh place near park city and uh and it's a a pretty good size area where there'll be hiking and and then there will be uh-oh just uh general kinds of things like uh swimming and whatever during the uh in the area [roundabout] which they will do during the days when they want to when they're not uh uh [rehearsing] or whatever for a part of the the play and then we'll kind of get together and and uh work out some small oh [vignettes] or or uh acts or things like that musical numbers and the fact that we're together early during the week will help us to get together to prepare those things for the for the programs at the end of the week so it it we're real excited about it now always before we have only had my grandfather's family and uh we only did it for one day and uh the last time we we were doing it every two years and we decided last time we would wait a third year because it came across so often that it was kind of hard to get there and uh some people come from back east and course i come from texas so there's some of us come from quite a ways uh and so we we had a little longer and decided to try to hold it uh in a situation that was a little longer like a camping situation something that wasn't too expensive but uh could be more of a vacation situation for families to come and participate in while getting to know their ancestors and relatives uh so that maybe they'd be attracted more to bring their families now i've never gotten all my family to come before but this year i have uh several married daughters and and sons whose families are coming [en] [masse] so it it it looks to be a lot more interesting activity well uh the ancestors came from there and uh and we we were holding them there because there were some living ancestors up until uh fairly recently at this point in that generation that we're [honoring] there's only well my mother is ninety three and she won't go this year because it's just too hard on her but uh and there's one other wife but all of all of the children are now gone they they've passed away in the meantime and so uh at that point we were going for that reason we were going there but it just there just more of them there still than there are other places the rest of us are kind of strung around some but you know if you if you're talking about convenient for the biggest majority it still is there also we had a we had a the member who was in charge of it in general this time had some access to this park which was a big factor whether we'll be able to do it there again but there are other kind of arrangements like in in uh in some of the areas in colorado you know where they ski in the winter time you can make some pretty good arrangements for for uh for group uh activities and things like that so we might do something like that also sometimes universities will will rent out uh areas for doing things like that but uh well we knew generally the time of year uh that we wanted to do it in three years ago but we could not set the date until the first of january this year because this park where they have it uh they allow people in the vicinity to make their arrangements ahead of time and so we kind of had to take what was left and uh so we we feel pretty fortunate to have gotten in at all but uh uh i think you need to plan on you need to be sure and plan uh at least a year ahead of time or you're going to lose people you know they have to plan their vacations that far ahead a little bit if not exactly at least know generally what they're going to do well it's kind of important to to know quite a while ahead of time uh the last time we had one uh i was in charge of it and my goal was to write a history of my of my father and his brothers and sisters there was a history of his father and mother but there was no history on them so i spent the two years before that [compiling] and and writing the history and then we gave it out at that this year we're not we're we're [combining] it in the and the parents before and so we're going to do some uh uh acting out of of these groups and try to help them get better acquainted and mostly it's a different kind of thing so we're we're just kind of playing it by ear and seeing how it goes i think yeah we're kind of like we kind of uh well we like each other and we liked our families and so we figure they the little kids ought to get to know each other and and we are scattered enough there i have several children who live here but i also have children in in uh nevada and arizona so it's it's really neat to be able to get get around with them you know and you're younger you have any family at all uh_huh not very many huh do you do you enjoy your do you enjoy your your wife's large family though was it is it yeah yeah yeah you don't feel quite involved huh yeah well you have to try it you'll like it it really is quite a lot of fun and uh uh uh uh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah cousins get really get really close sometimes almost closer than brothers and sisters sometimes right especially if they live fairly close together so they get a chance to see each other it's kind of special um uh_huh yeah i go to a family every year religiously well i come from iowa my mother was one of nine children in the family uh seven of those children are still living and uh the family has grown of course and we get uh about a hundred and fifty people a year that show up at this family reunion i had come from a large like i said a large family i have forty four first cousins on my mother's side and we all know each other pretty well and and uh so it's a wonderful occasion when we get together and we don't see everybody each year but you know alternate years we get to see most everybody oh well you have to go with the right spirit of course uh i think what makes our family reunions so good is that we there is so much love that is shared there uh well yeah many of us do actually uh i'm in my fifties now and my mother came from a generation where the only option was writing [postcards] letters whatever uh and she used to [correspond] with her sisters religiously and they with her so and of course that older generation still always sends all of us christmas cards and it's wonderful so uh but it it ours is the type of family if i had no place to be i could call anyone of my aunts or my cousins and they would say come and stay with me for a few weeks uh_huh it's oh well uh these attitudes are projected down to the kids that this is the place where we really want to go and and we can have a good time it's not a boring thing uh i guess once in awhile about thirteen or so maybe it's a little boring for them if if they haven't been there enough years to have formed friendships but my kids went every year and therefore they knew you know a lot of the other kids so then you kind of look forward to seeing some of these second cousins once a year we do go to uh it's clear lake iowa where we hold it and we make every effort in the world to get the shelter house so we have a facility where we can be inside but yet the kids can go and be in the lake if they want to oh and that's set it's going to be it's always the first sunday after the fourth of july oh it is but you can't find any time in iowa when it's not hot in the summertime oh yeah uh_huh well okay but iowa is very agricultural and spring is not a good time to try to do anything because so many were involved with agriculture so so do you have a reunion oh uh_huh well you know with as many people as we have we're all over the u s too but uh oh my what did you say your first name was ralph a ralph shouldn't act like that oh okay oh i see okay there's difference yeah uh_huh all right i guess our we're in the process of a home repair right at this point because we're we're painting the outside of our house i don't know i guess you would consider that a home repair certainly uh uh and interesting enough this time we're changing the color which makes it an addition what is your most recent you did that recently too uh does it make a big difference huh_uh that's neat isn't it i was really really tired of the color that it's it's helping we're not quite through but it's it really is looking good uh we went through a process of of uh home repairs on a on a rental house we had probably the most extensive and uh the interesting part of it was how much we learned about what we could do um we didn't have very much money and so we had to do it ourselves in kind of a slow process but we learned how to do uh [retile] [bathtubs] and uh-oh just all kinds of things that are unusual huh_uh yeah huh_uh it's nice to not have a drip through from the roof isn't it that's awful um howard and i were talking about home repair the other night and uh in connection with scouting we've got a scout coming up and uh uh i think it's neat for young people to learn how to uh take care of their of a household you know like uh fixing [faucets] dripping [faucets] and putting in [panes] of glass and stuff like that huh_uh how does the paneling it looks lots better than do you like it better yeah huh_uh that's nice nice to have it come out positive and look look good well we have a lot that needs be done we have uh uh carpeting and and we did have a new uh floor put in our kitchen and um i have my mother living with us and so she was in a room with a carpet and of course she's quite aged she's ninety three now so that meant she had problems now and then and it was really good to get the carpet out of there and put a linoleum down so it was easier to clean and see where the dirt was and so that was a really positive uh uh it was fairly expensive though i i was impressed i think that uh we had somebody do it and it was it seems to me like it's probably more expensive to put down linoleum almost than it is to put down carpet kind of depends on the quality of carpet i suppose but uh in the case of the linoleum they have to rip up everything and and fix the floor so it's uh i don't know what ever but they have to put stuff on the floor and it's uh kind of a process well it sounds like you have some pretty good experiences with uh with uh uh home repair yeah all right happy home repairing bye bye huh_uh we just did that too yes oh yes we have brick on the outside and uh the colors that were there changed the and the colors that we painted changed the entire look of the house completely yeah that was really exciting it was fun huh_uh so the other thing that we did was the roof of our house and uh we did that a different color also of course uh being a woman most of these things were done by the men and uh so i wasn't directly involved but uh they really were helpful i know to our house yeah yes huh_uh as a matter of fact one thing i have a young son and one thing we did was we had paneling on the inside of our uh front of our house or the hall way of our house rather and we were repainting the the front room in the hall there and we took down that paneling and he helped me and and uh he was it was fun to work with him and uh and uh help putty up the holes together and and do things like that oh i like it so much better it makes it so much lighter you know it really does you know and people that have been to my house before and then now really have liked much better too it's been fun yeah yeah exactly huh_uh huh_uh yeah huh_uh we have it's been really fun okay you too bye bye are you going to tell me what you've been doing lately in the okay oh my you you are experienced i would say well i agree i have done something uh like that too only not nearly as extensive but it must be interesting now trying to do something to a basic ranch style home uh after having a one that was historical looking yes uh_huh well maybe you can uh make that one [charming] and and make a little bit money uh yes well we just moved to charlotte from enid oklahoma so i know of what you're talking about as far as the market was concerned and i'll tell you uh we we had kind of a [charming] house it was a cedar shake house and very [weathered] and uh it was about fifty years old but not not really uh traditional looking particularly and uh so i tried to make it after i sold my business i in in i spent almost three years redoing and i considered it a full time job and when we did uh we kind of had planned this uh trek to the east because we're both originally from this part of the country and so i think some of the things that i did paid off for instance one thing that i did that might even be a good suggestion for you uh was something i did on the outside i love old estate estate sales i happened to go to just a little estate sale that just a little white frame house where the couple uh was very old and had gone into nursing homes and uh all the men started going down to the barn and so i well shoot i'm going yes i'm going to the barn too they uh [auctioned] some tools and things like that but then they went over and started uh [auctioning] this big stack of bricks and so well i thought gee i've been wanting to do some brick uh walkways for a time anyway it ended up after some pretty uh heavy [bidding] that i got all those bricks for forty dollars and so my husband and i loaded bricks in his pickup truck for days but what we ended up with was about four thousand for forty dollars and so what we did we had built a deck on the back of that house but it needed and it was quite large out to into the yard but on either side of it to the ends of the house it just needed to be all tied together so we made brick [patios] and walkways and so for and he he did the digging which was about six inches but i figured the sand and all had that delivered and leveled it and and placed most all the bricks and it turned out beautifully yes well it nearly killed me i hated to leave it uh_huh no we well i well no i i didn't have that trouble because uh we laid the i did get some material and studied every bit of material that i could study but we laid those bricks about as close as you can get them because when you start and we put them on a base of four inches of sand and then we uh we swept sand in between but but it was an error to to leave like an eighth of an inch or whatever you just put them together as close as you can uh_huh yeah well and i also used a rubber hammer a lot to uh you know if it wasn't quite level or something i'd just get that rubber hammer and uh and and you know i think that they could if they have problems with uh sand bugs of some kind i think all they need to do is probably put some [insecticide] down in there on a oh a fairly regular basis for a while anyway well i think i think she needs to take them to the extension agent and ask him what they are and yeah is it diazinon or what is it that will uh dursban or something like that dursban i think in this area or most all areas they use you know for ticks and fleas and you know they're awful hard to do anything with yeah i bet dursban would do it yeah i think uh you probably just need to make sure that it dries very very uh well before she lets her cats out or something like that well gosh [deb] we could talk all day couldn't we yes wow oh oh good uh_huh yes sure uh i'll offer anything that i can on the subject uh my husband and i just bought a just moved here recently and uh we bought uh this house about uh i don't know year and a half ago what we have here now is just a basic three bedroom two bath brick house which is uh completely different from what i had had before when i was working and before i married uh i lived in a little town south of here that is just full of old homes and uh historic old houses and things like that so i uh tried to i was in the process of [renovating] a house and uh that was about seventy five years old so uh it had to have everything done from top to bottom to having it leveled [jacked] up uh new plumbing new wiring wallpaper paint everything you can think of that house had to have well i i really did enjoy it uh you know it was amazing what i found out i could do on my own if i just put my mind to it yeah uh_huh it is it is yeah that's that's true when uh i met my husband he was living in an apartment at the time and and uh the town that i was living in only about eighty miles from here so uh you know i we really it was just the market was so good we hadn't really planned on buying and as you probably heard from the in the dallas and texas area period the housing market is just unreal i mean you can get things for such a song so that's that's really why we ended up in a house like this this is not what we you know what we want to stay in forever because i have to have my i've found that after doing this other house i have to have my hands into stuff and you know i'm always just wanting to paint and and wallpaper and redo and redo so uh you know i i'm ready to get ahold of another one that i can have a little more input into so yeah that's that's the key you know the thing is uh when we moved in they had just uh painted we're you know [wallpapered] new carpet and everything so i feel sort of uh you know like it's sort of [defeating] my purpose to go rip everything out now and do it over just because i'm in the mood to do it so uh we'll see we'll see how much longer we're here uh_huh oh oklahoma of all places yeah uh_huh right oh yes uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah oh it is yeah uh_huh uh_huh i see uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yes yes uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah uh-oh that's where i need to go exactly yeah uh_huh oh uh_huh work right right uh_huh uh_huh oh my word oh no oh my word for forty dollars oh my uh_huh something uh_huh uh_huh right oh how fun oh how nice uh_huh uh_huh right right uh_huh oh i bet and what satisfaction to know that you did it in such an inexpensive way yeah but but you did [stagger] back and say oh doesn't this look nice well let me ask you when you laid those bricks i know my parents bought a house about ten years ago they're fixing to sell it again but and move again they're kind of my mom's like i am she's a [renovator] a lover of old things and you know they have to be doing something constantly and the patio that came with that house uh was not laid on a like i don't know if you can put some sort of a plastic [sheeting] or something on on top of the sand and then lay the bricks but they have they have a problem with these little like sand bugs or something that drill in between all these bricks and of course you know you have the uh the weeds that come up in between the bricks or and things like that uh_huh yeah i see okay yeah uh_huh as tight as you can that's probably because they had you know every spring my mom says we're going to have a a barbecue and tell everybody guess what we're going to we're going to redo the patio you know we're going to pull up all the bricks but uh they just they just haven't brought themselves to do it so uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh yeah right right well the thing that's funny is they've done uh they've done things like that you know i'll catch her out there spraying around and then it's like in two days time they'll come home from work and those little things are back it's just they're the most [resilient] little characters and so i don't know what they're finally going to do she may just hopefully they'll sell the house and go somewhere else and then she won't have to worry about it what are these things right yeah what it what it is that'll that'll take care of them yeah right oh that's true that's true but my my dad farms and you know she's always telling him isn't there something that that you can bring home with you that kills everything that you spray you know out in the out in the field that you can get rid of these bugs but uh it might it might do it yeah she's got so many she's got just a gorgeous yard so many uh flowers and her her four cats you know so she's sort of uh real funny about what she sprays uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah i know i i was just you know it just seems like i as i said when i heard the what the subject was i thought oh gosh i haven't thought about uh what i went through at that other house in so long i've been so busy but uh i don't know of everything that i did i guess i enjoyed probably wallpapering the most and i thought that would be the hardest thing to do but uh gosh you know i ended up wallpapering every bedroom in that house uh up the [stairway] even you know i just had a ball with it it was so much fun yeah and i've [sworn] up and down my mom's uh my mom's great grandparents had this huge victorian house in paris texas and the one thing that she ended up with is was the old door that was that was on the front door of that house and she has that up in her attic and i have [sworn] that it i'm going to find a house to put that door on before she does so as far as looking toward the future you know that's my plan i'm going to have to move fast i think though because uh you know as a you've done well how did it go gee like starting over i guess uh uh_huh boy that sounds like uh course uh i don't know once you get it done then you probably won't have that problem again um you've got an older house they are built a little bit more sturdy than right oh is that right yes and just start at square one uh well and then if you do it wrong everything went all right that's the type of thing you cross your fingers and are glad when that happens right yes right all worked out all right huh well um well probably the last thing i did was uh paint and wallpaper kids room and uh i learned to i used the wrong kind of paint this wasn't must have not been a very good quality because it just hasn't stood up very well it was a latex paint paint it was flat and i wonder if maybe i should have used a gloss uh but they say you ought to use your gloss mainly in your kitchens and things like that yeah but i think maybe uh i don't know if it was just the well it it is a latex paint but it just kind of is is so you know so it's supposed to wash you're supposed to be able to wash it but it um just looks dingy i don't know how else to explain it it's pink it's kind of got uh-oh just kind of a worn look to it i don't know even how to say just didn't turn out quite as nice as i would have liked but i we put two coats on it and it's a small room but i think it only took one uh can no we did uh-oh you do mix the color as far as you start with uh white and then they add the color you know what i'm saying but yes right and then i wall [papered] a couple of walls and uh well that was the first time i've ever [wallpapered] and uh that's an education in itself but uh the dye lots uh must have been a little bit different from first of all it takes quite a few rolls even a small room if you're trying to match a design yes that's what i needed and i didn't think about that i got a mickey mouse print is what i got and so a lot is wasted so you know how see i didn't even think to look for that and then the one of them was just a different color different color pink is what it ended up being and no i didn't is that how you're supposed to do i started at one edge and went over then you had to cut around the closet and cut around a window but uh and start right there do you seem to get it [straighter] is that the advantage or what's the our most recent series of projects i guess was inside was uh we remodeled a bathroom recently well it went pretty well uh other than the fact that we encountered some uh problems that you run across in older homes with plumbing which one thing led to another and eventually we ended up replacing all the pipes from the sink clear back to the main drain which meant you needed to take the wall out and start all over it wasn't one of those it started out as a sunday project and by by the next sunday it was done it wasn't a one [dayer] believe me yeah it's good for another thirty years yes well that's the thing that surprised me because once i got into the plumbing everything in there was copper and it was all [soldered] that's what drove me bananas because you know i'm going to the hardware store saying give me plastic pipe and and cement to fit them together and nothing wanted to go so it was like i had to go all the way back to the main drain and start all over really that was an all day job just to get it [plumbed] fortunately i was very fortunate uh in the fact that uh when i made the installation of the sink and everything [bolted] up and we turned the water on nothing leaked everything worked and i just said that's marvelous i appreciate it well i expected something to leak you know left a fitting loose or didn't use teflon tape on one of them or something like that but it all came together so i i felt pretty fortunate about that how about you uh_huh what kind of paint uh_huh yeah that and semigloss for trim work and usually flat for walls was it not [washable] paint uh_huh what color is it pink okay did you uh require more than one can of paint you didn't have to mix paint then right okay uh_huh yeah yeah but you only had one can of paint that you did the entire room with how'd that go kind of fun isn't it really repeating patterns is what you have to check for when you when you buy your paper yeah normally it will tell you on the roll how often a pattern repeats yeah um when you did your [papering] did you start in the middle of the wall or did you start at the edge uh_huh uh_huh i've had my best luck in [papering] when i start in the middle of a wall and i'll start with a [plumb] line and start in the middle of the wall and and go from there and go all the way around the room well you you so uh what kind of home repair work have you done been pulling them up huh or just loosening them until the rain came in are you in the section of texas that's been getting so much rain oh okay yeah but you're probably what about halfway across the state from san antonio though aren't you yeah yeah okay but you're still getting a good bit of the rain though yeah yeah is it asphalt shingles or or ooh that should be a lot of fun did you put them up originally or just going up and stopping leaks in them yeah uh we're in uh campus apartment buildings with flat top uh not too much they're just tar and [gravel] treated flat top roofs have you got pretty well pitch on that roof or is it pretty steep what do you use to keep from sliding off that rascal yeah i imagine i imagine yeah yeah that would be just too much of a fall for me um have you been uh was was the house reasonably new or you been doing some remodeling work on it that's pretty new house yet yeah yeah it's settling [unevenly] yeah uh_huh uh_huh well that sounds like a lot of fun um what is it like uh stucco walls or oh drywall wood framing okay they [plastered] over drywall i remember my parents home is [drywalled] and then they uh almost like a small grade stucco type [plastering] over the drywall to give it a textured sort of a look and made for kind of a hard shell on the on the drywall yeah that's good yeah yeah that would that would be in terribly terribly [exasperating] to have the the slab floor like that [swelling] and giving like that well um done a little uh repair on the uh shingles on the roof recently we've had a lot of wind around here yes it looks like i'm going to have to get up there again because we may have a leak we've been getting quite a bit maybe not quite as bad as some of the folks down around san antonio but uh well i'm right plano's just north of dallas and there are parts of downtown or near downtown dallas that are under water right now i guess i saw on the news well we're up uh we're north and uh-oh about uh i don't know uh eighty to a hundred miles south of the oklahoma line i guess uh we did have a little bit of rain yesterday so far we haven't had any today and uh i suppose that means i should be uh getting up there to look at that uh shingle but uh i had something else planned today so i guess i'll let it go awhile they're uh no they're uh wood shake yeah no i uh as a matter of fact we've never had a leak actually yet now this we just bought the house last year and uh uh just before we took possession of it we had a fellow go up there and do whatever needed to be done on the shingles so i've just recently had to start looking at it myself so it's a small problem so far but i guess you just have to keep on top of it what kind of roof do you have oh then you don't have to do too much with it uh_huh oh it's pretty steep uh parts of it are [steeper] than others well uh you wear uh shoes with good traction and and and try to remember where you are at all times and remember to yell [geronimo] if all else fails it's actually just twelve years old now yeah it uh this part of the country actually they say that when the house is uh fifteen it's already old but just take good care of it thing is we've uh the main thing that we've had with this house recently has been some uh [squirming] i call it of the foundation we're just on a concrete slab you know but uh the soil right under this is a clay and it uh well it uh depending on it's moisture content it either [swells] up or [shrinks] and uh of course the soil right under the slab [retains] it's moisture a lot longer and so during the dry season you have to water the foundation to keep your foundation from uh from uh [drooping] and uh but anytime there's a change in the weather like the temperature drastic changes in temperature or in uh moisture uh you get little spider web cracks all around uh windows and doors well usually what you do is just wait until you think it's stopped and then you patch them up uh well this is all uh it's all drywall uh i think with uh yeah right but uh somehow or other that does manage to uh show these little cracks i don't know quite how that works maybe it isn't drywall i don't really know yeah i think it is i expect that's what it is yeah yeah i think that's the way this is done fortunately we haven't had any real big holes in it yet so i yes well the previous owner had a major problem with it because uh-oh probably a variety of things his neighbor used okay you were helping your parents uh_huh so you're remodeling okay well i i just live in a i live in an apartment now i uh two summers ago i went to massachusetts and i went with a friend of mine and we [undertook] a building house and this was a a lincoln log house where you have the wall partitions and it's [preconstructed] you might say and we started in uh we started from an empty lot with uh trees and stuff on it and we had to cut them uh down and clear the lot we had to call in the [excavators] and have them dig the basement pour the basement and uh went from the ground up our one of our main problems was well in massachusetts i thought i was going to well it was a a fun time but i thought gosh summer time you know well all it ever did was rain and thunder storms and one thing is that we're we had we were going to pour the basement foundation and we're in the process and it started pouring down rain and i guess we had most of it done but the end was result what happened was that some of the the a lot of water settled on the top and it really didn't give a very good finish and some of the it was sort of sandy and and not uh a very good finish but it turned it was okay and it's only the basement floor so it was okay but uh it kept us pretty busy it was only uh there was well me and my friend and then we just had like two [helpers] and uh sort of a a family type it wasn't you know like a commercial project or something it was sort of just you know uh gets your get his you know my my brother and well maybe you know my cousin's coming over today to help us do that kind of thing so that the scheduling and everything was kind of hectic sometimes and and then materials coming in and so we're we're hopping around pretty good but overall yeah we got it done and it's a three bedroom two bath house and it's pretty neat yeah so well it was uh for my friend's parents they had some property there and they'd lived in this this old it's sort of like a farm you might say and they live in this old house for something like thirty years or something and his mom just wanted a a new house you know that has been her dream and so we did that and uh she was really pleased with it so it came really great so so what why is it that the weather in atlanta that gets very hot where you live it gets very hot and that's why you and the windows have you what type of windows are you putting in because the windows are something that is conducive to temperature changes in uh you know the solar game have you what what are you putting in triple glaze or double glaze or oh okay okay uh_huh okay oh these so you have the [sash] windows in did uh did it go up and down oh i see uh_huh yes there's a problem with those those are uh they usually most of the time don't open very well uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh and they also there they they a lot of vibration and it causes the glass to crack and it's a never ending problem so so i haven't uh i haven't been in any really home repair things lately i one way or another we're now recording um um oh yeah home repair right i still am really they're uh sort of remodeling a house out in downtown atlanta in [candler] park and uh we've done lots to it we've taken out the glass and most of the windows and the [sashes] and replaced them and uh_huh how about you uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh wow wow uh_huh uh_huh huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh wow uh_huh nice nice so uh i mean what was it for you just uh_huh uh_huh that's great wow huh yeah it does huh right no we just we just went into a building supply store and bought plate glass my parents do not have a whole lot of money to put into it and uh but it see in a lot of the windows uh it's the house is eighty years old and it's had several owners and stuff and uh they have put plastic [plexiglas] kind of stuff in some of the windows uh_huh uh_huh yeah and so uh and and so we wanted to get all new stuff in there so yeah ours didn't and the ones that would open uh wouldn't want to stay open they wanted to slam shut uh_huh uh_huh yeah are you in the middle of anything the whole thing did the framing and all huh maybe you and i should get together because when i had my last big project i had the contractor do the framing and i did all the [sheetrocking] and the interior work yeah my wife wishes i hadn't done that i think it takes about three or four times before it gets easy yeah did you you framed it in uh on on you framed in new square footage or was it stuff that was already uh enclosed brand new and you knew how you knew how to do the framing uh_huh do do you build on [slabs] down there or did you build it up off the ground on the piers did you had those poured or you did them yourself you just put forms in the ground and fill them with concrete huh well the last thing i did completely myself was an outside deck which i was pretty proud of no i designed it from scratch and did it did a pretty good job those are nice they're pretty forgiving you know you can always tear stuff out and redo it it's a right yeah i i built it two levels and with a big toy box and some [benches] and uh a [backrest] and all that stuff i yeah i had a friend with a tractor who dug the pier holes so we could pour concrete and support it with a a nice firm four by four posts and uh and then the rest of it i just did a a contractor friend helped me uh with some of the uh foundation work but uh it was pretty it was about four or five hundred square feet the same size as the addition that i just put on so yeah it's uh not that expensive i think it cost me three dollars a square foot and uh you know no less than that cost me about five hundred dollars six hundred dollars all together yeah i'd be surprised if it wasn't uh cheaper where you are well yeah it probably comes from where you are most when i drive through that area that's all i see is pressure treated pressure treated lumber yards uh_huh right east texas huh yeah my current project is a [walkway] which i'm building around the house and out to the backyard to uh you know digging it out and laying sand and putting uh [pavers] on top of that so that's a lot easier no i'm not in the middle of anything i've just about the last thing i did about maybe oh close to a year ago now i guess i i helped my dad add on another bedroom on to his house so i guess that yeah that that was fairly large undertaking a a it's a bedroom and a walk in closet and a bathroom all on one side of the house oh we did it all except for the [sheetrocking] that was the only thing we didn't you know putting the ceiling up and things like that we don't we we weren't sure how to do that and yeah that's the exact opposite we did all put the roof up and did all the roofing and the put all the interior walls up we just didn't do any of the [sheetrock] wall work and that's it because you have you know get those joints to go together and whatever you have to put in there to get the to take the gaps out between the sheets and on the ceiling and all that i we didn't know a thing about any of that and so it's it looked very hard to do so we figured well just i didn't think we could do it and make it look professional so we left it left it to somebody who does it for a living but probably so and i we'd never done it so we just left it alone but that's i guess i'm only twenty one so i my my vast experience of home home owner's knowledge is not very much so it's just what i have to do more or less around the house you know for my parents so it was brand new we started with the backyard and turned it into part of the house so it was uh well my dad knew how to do most of it you know he he'd we'd gotten a couple of books and then he just started doing it i don't know he well he did all the [flooring] himself he put the whole the whole floor in and then i just started with the walls and the roof and started there and then we were put a like a not not necessarily a garage but just like a off the side of that after we had the house part made we just decided we'd carry the roof out a little bit farther and put a [carport] more or less it's not you know it's not enclosed it's just somewhere to drive another car to to park and it's uh it's off the ground uh_huh it's on about uh twenty two inch piers something like that so uh no those those are we did those ourselves so yeah exactly so it's yeah those those are we'd i've done one i helped somebody do one of those before those are those are you know you can buy them in kits but we didn't do that way but it's yeah yeah yeah that's not near like building a house or anything but yeah those are nice especially when you get done you've got something you know i don't know i like them you just sit down on on the deck and do whatever have a barbecue or yeah that sounds nice all done by yourself huh designed yeah yeah that's pretty that's a good size deck so yeah that's yeah that's not yeah that's good that's not bad at all didn't have to the wood may it got surprising as to the fact that how much wood is you know to get to get good lumber it costs i don't know about dallas but even in this little town it's it's not cheap at all i was surprised it's probably more there yeah yeah that it probably does i i'm not sure but yeah it's nothing but woods up here down here yeah i don't i haven't i mean i haven't i used to live in dallas in arlington actually and but that was just when i was a kid so i don't really know what the cost of living is even like in dallas anymore but it's i don't know we're a college town so that doesn't help us out any we have gas is a dollar dollar twelve a gallon so that's probably about what you're paying so yeah you've got something going all the time okay so what is your latest home repair uh_huh right oh yeah any kind of upgrade uh_huh oh yeah and your house didn't have it on there before uh_huh huh i figures that was something they put on all houses i don't know oh really you kind of have to dig a trench right yeah i remember i've i've i just got married so i've only lived in an apartment and a duplex so i've you know have not owned a home yet but i remember my parents built their home and they had to they had a lot of lot of work in fact it was fifteen years ago and they're still uh trying to finish the basement and up you know it's a never ending process uh_huh yeah right where are you moving to uh_huh yeah and it's a buyer's market now right uh_huh have you ever bought an old house or rented an old house and then fixed it up uh_huh um uh_huh oh cool oh wow yeah wish it was that way now don't you everybody could build each other's house for dirt huh okay i've been [sneezing] all day so yeah um uh_huh that's always nice to have to know somebody like that that can that's handy you ought to have him come down for a visit when you get your new house uh_huh um uh_huh oh i'm looking forward to owning a house or getting a a small house that meets our needs and then fixing it up uh_huh um yeah yeah my parents have one of those they do and they get really hot uh_huh huh i live in sherman now i'm from indiana so i've lived in sherman three years work for t i and uh like i said i'm looking forward to maybe buying a house while the interest [rate's] still cheap and fixing it up yeah seems to be a lot of that uh_huh yeah uh not even a year yet oh really yeah my parents just got done fixing the house up again because for our wedding you know and then my brother's graduation they finally finished the basement after like living there fifteen years they had an occasion to finish it so it was kind of neat to see it finally all come together uh_huh i i couldn't get used to the fact that houses down in texas don't have basements because i love like big rec rooms you know and yeah that's that's something um yeah we have it's a very timely subject i think in the spring everybody decides that they're going to start over and do something with their house and we started last year an we have a little i guess it's a sixteen hundred foot house and it's just my husband and i here but um we decided that uh we wanted to build a sun room and um it's a good thing we got a contractor i mean this is not something you need to do by yourself so we ended up with a contractor and went through that whole [schmeal] with um the contractor saying one thing and then doing another and and uh anyway we ended up with uh a really neat sun room on the back of the house it's beautiful it's like two hundred square foot but that's not um something we did by ourselves if you talk about home repairs um [tom's] real good at mowing the grass and doing the garden so that's about it isn't that amazing yeah yeah all those little details that you you don't really understand you know like we had some water leaks in the um well in the sun room there was a part that was [fiberboard] and you know tape and bed over that and when it did rain of course the only way to tell if this place leaks is to see if what happens after it rains and of course it leaked um which is no big deal because they said they'd come fix it well that's true but you know fixing the tape and bedding to make it look nice again it's it's it's a chore and a half without tearing the whole thing out and repainting and doing everything again oh yeah i don't know i guess you get this idea that everything should be perfect and you know what this isn't a perfect world it but you do oh i know because every time they send somebody out they have to take them off a crew that's making money doing a job and they have to send them back to you where they're not making any money trying to repair something that you know should have been right in the first place yeah well i was real happy with our contractor um actually i wasn't happy with the contractor i was happy with the job [foreman] so i think that made all the difference because he was pretty um you know concerned about how it looked and and you know how it should be done the right way and he gave us a lot of [clues] you just wish you knew all this stuff going in that um it was funny because we didn't understand a lot of things that we had to do in addition to this you know like the tape and bedding and and doing finishing off this wall and that wall that wasn't in the contract you know kind of thing so that was kind of interesting oh neat oh yeah yeah well we've taken this another step further this year we're going to build a deck we've got some people building uh a deck out in the back you know to complete sort of the back yard kind of thing and um oh yeah oh uh_huh okay i was wondering about that yeah uh_huh you [soaked] it oh yeah the color is what you're yeah sometimes after that's that's what we're doing is just the redwood and we're doing it where they use the screws that are um they're not nails they're the screws have yeah those and so they're not going to split and and i was really concerned about bugs really when i when we were considering other types of wood because you know termites can be a real hazard around here uh_huh yeah yeah that's that's the end part that's where you you know get the uh that's the part we have to do we got that up front we figured it out you know we need to know what we need to do uh that's not included in this and that's one of the uh details but that's fine as long as they tell you it's so funny because tom is getting more and more adept at doing things it's just things like painting just always used to really scare him he didn't know where to start um you know with a paint can you know an it sure is uh_huh oh and do the water seal before uh_huh okay i got you covered there kind of like marinate them yeah and that's just a water [sealing] what happens if they aren't water sealed yeah will deteriorate yeah yeah yeah they did tell us that we'd have to you know every couple of years just you know do brush up on the color um uh_huh oh really huh well that's a really interesting tip and uh definitely something tom could handle doing that yeah he suggested just getting uh um a uh um a [mop] like you would use paint it yeah uh_huh you couldn't tell oh well that's definitely interesting because here we go with another home project it is well like i said tom does great with his garden i i always uh enjoyed working on the crew in the plays and building stuff so i'm i'm really in [infatuated] with building things and and making things but there's nothing like getting a uh i guess i i've rented most of the time so i i haven't done much home repair uh i do small little little odd jobs yeah i i worked uh with a guy uh it was quite a few years ago uh and uh he built his own homes stuff like that and i i helped him quite a bit as from from everything from the carpentry work right electrical plumbing just about everything so it was kind of fun to do that no no that's uh well i had have a kind of [delves] into uh construction a little bit where uh we worked on wooden railroad bridges and uh some of them uh in the country uh get pretty high and you're overlooking uh uh a small body of water mostly rocks down there and you're just yeah so uh it's not fun to work too high but uh you know the uh i think more what they're talking about is into the the home basically most of that i you know i've done some minor repairs electrically and minor repairs plumbing stuff like that yeah yeah i i enjoy doing a lot of projects like that but not alone i i prefer having someone that uh has some knowledge in that and and i uh help and learn and that route but if i had to tackle you know building an addition totally by myself uh i wouldn't enjoy it at all yeah um uh_huh um sounds like quite a project there yeah i guess a lot of times when you're when you're pressed for time and have to do it and want to get it done then it doesn't become fun any more i think the the smaller projects tend to be more fun something you can finish in maybe a week or something yeah yeah well uh especially on stuff like roofing when you're doing it in ninety to a hundred degree weather and yeah for sure yeah and then it always seems like a lot of that uh tile up there is is almost starting to melt in your hands it's real hard to handle well i don't know about you but i'm i'm about out yeah so i think we'll just end it short well i need to find out from you how the last remodeling project you [undertook] and if it was successful and you you were pleased with what happened have you been doing any remodeling lately uh_huh all right did you like the results uh_huh all right yes it does what kind of molding is this uh molding oh uh_huh well that's a lot of fun we oh yes decorate a nursery or something huh oh okay yes get some uh get an extra room there for the new baby what's that no uh we've done uh some painting and put up some wallpaper in uh in the boys' room we needed to to paint because the paint was uh getting dingy or or grain plus there was a lot of [markings] on the on the paint that well on top of the bunk beds the boys got up there and uh started drawing on the ceiling and that was kind of hard to get off so we decided rather than uh uh wash it all off and clean it up we decided to paint over it and the walls were were textured and there was a lot of holes from the previous owners and so we [patched] them all up and painted and and put border and wallpaper along the top and it looks really nice now and we we're quite pleased with it and and uh it uh it looks pretty good there's a lot of other things that cheryl would like me to do but it's just finding the time well good good uh uh_huh well good you uh you put on a dick deck there recently too haven't you or has that been a couple of years uh_huh yes i imagine it would be wow you painted it wet well good yeah we have one yes i yeah they are they they make a lot of noise but they're good we haven't used ours yet we'd like to use ours no i haven't yeah so it doesn't jam up yes i have it was my dad's and i i used it with him and was able to paint some things and uh and he said he didn't need it anymore and he he gave it to us and we haven't had a chance to or need to paint anything down here yet i i'm kind of leery about using it inside um because it does put a lot of particles and mist in the air that i didn't want to get all over the carpet or yes uh_huh it it snowed huh that's about the only snow we can get down here in texas if it if it were a white paint you probably used a a uh redwood color or a stain didn't you oh it was yeah that's right that's right oh yeah uh_huh oh good uh_huh well the the weather i understand was pretty good at that time yeah the weather the weather is beautiful down here real nice real nice it got up to about seventy five degrees down here and that's kind of the right temperature to be painting things but yeah it's uh we would like to like to do a little bit more we'll probably do some we were working recently out on our spa so have you remodeled your house recently can you do that yourself or do you have it done and then you put putty around the edges i'm i'm impressed that you did that though we uh live in our current house about three years and we've only done minor repairs like painting and we did put a new roof on but previously we had owned a eighty year old house in another city and that's where i got my real experience at repairs and so i've replaced many windows but they had wooden they were wooden windows and uh i don't know for some reason it the putty seems easier or something because it blended in well we had a lot of it done i can't claim to have done much of it it had wood floors that we had [refinished] commercially so that they were all uh even i forgot what you call that where you skim the top and then [revarnish] and we had it had real plaster walls so we had a lot of [plasterwork] done we bought when we bought the house uh most of the walls were covered in fabric and although it was sort of pretty when we went through it once that the previous owners had their furniture out it looked pretty bad so we then we took down the uh fabric to find huge plaster cracks not unexpected i suppose so we repaired a lot of that and then uh we didn't do any real major we moved just a couple walls and we put in new bathroom fixture not we kept the fixtures but we put in like a new we did put in a new [bathtub] and then we sort of bought the antique looking you know the brass plumbing type thing although it was new i like old houses but it just everyone talks about it it's true small bathrooms and small closets and plumbing you have to know a lot about plumbing that's right you know we had we ran into an interesting [complication] uh our house it had fifty six windows so we decided you know with an exorbitant heat bill we decided one way we would attack that we put storm windows on and then we put insulation in the attic a a lot of it because we didn't have very much the problem and we never [anticipated] it was in the summertime the humidity it it would rise and in the [stairwell] at the top of the [stairwell] it literally would uh the humidity would [condense] on the walls so this the walls would sort of sweat and when we had an engineer come out and talk he just said that we had over [insulated] our house so it quote couldn't breath and so the humidity when it would you know the the highest point would go up there and then and then would [condense] and it was it was really a problem well not you could i don't know i'm sure over the long term it would and it would kind of cause sort of [streaky] pattern in the in the paint uh we put in the first thing we tried we just put in a fan in that area so that we could [circulate] the air and hope that that would help uh we actually took a screen uh window off one of the windows to try and allow a little [ventilation] in that area and then the truth is it then became cooler weather and then we sold our house and i never i always hope that the owners didn't have the same problem next year it's all those things you don't necessarily want to tell them i don't know i mean we weren't trying to be dishonest or anything you just we gave it our best shot but it was kind of ironic that we thought we were being so energy conscious and perhaps we [overdid] it its prettiest features it had beautiful wood molding high ceilings and the and the floors were beautiful but it much like the swiss avenue area in dallas i don't i only have friends there i don't think i have the energy or the money for those sort of beautiful old homes now that's yes sir well uh you mean that i did or had done either one well actually um this whole past summer i've had my whole outside of my house repainted and a lot of the little minor wood things corrected and just prior to that i had a a bathroom totally remodeled and rebuilt and uh so i've i'm bringing my house up to date really we built the house in nineteen sixty no that's right they they do change and and the bathrooms you know if you have any water [leakage] anywhere can uh slowly deteriorate things and so you got to plug those leaks up uh_huh is that right is the water level high there uh_huh oh well we just got about a an inch inch and a half last night i see i declare uh_huh oh i see are you doing this yourself i declare oh well uh_huh that's true these lot of fellows are are really want to work pretty hard so they're willing to come at little bit more reasonable prices i'm sure of that i just had some [guttering] also replaced on my home uh i actually replaced all the other [guttering] last year and the piece that i did this year seemed all right at the time so i left it alone that's what i put up this last time it's one solid piece about thirty feet long no it was uh brought out on a truck so they i it was i have seen these things done they uh they come on great big large wheels i think of material and they roll it off yeah well as i say this was already uh they had come out and measured it and brought out the two pieces at the correct length and all they had to do was mount them and then uh seal one joint where the two ends came together uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh worked all right huh that's very very close i as they say down south you done good yeah well that sounds great yeah well i've got this as we were talking earlier about my house i've got one more bathroom to rebuild and uh we also had a a a porch that extends out from our master bedroom that we want to rebuild it's uh taken a beating over the years and um now we're afraid to walk out on it because some of the wood is [deteriorating] well let's see my last home repair i put an office in my garage i uh took down one of my uh uh two car garage doors and i uh i made an office out of it and uh the funny thing was uh i i didn't think i needed a permit you know because i wasn't yeah i wasn't changing the the looks of the of the outside and my neighbor called the uh city on me yeah he turned me in and i i was halfway done with the office and uh so oh well what they did was i i called i'm a contractor myself and i'm i'm a roof contractor so uh i went down and got some permits from some uh roof work that we were doing and i uh i talked to them about my you know my garage and uh so they said well you need to get a permit for this and that and you know electrical and all that kind of stuff so thing is the funny thing they they uh they wouldn't give me the permit because they needed a a pre inspection okay so they came to do a pre inspection and they they didn't pass it because i didn't have a permit on site oh we're i'm still in my office and i still don't have one and no huh uh yeah yeah so it's it's quite comical in fact um i'm starting in my i'm actually not starting my bathroom but i couldn't help but start in my bathroom by uh taking a shower one day i i uh put my hand on the on one of the towel walls to support myself and put my hand right through it well um yeah i think i yeah here in in plano that's uh yeah it's pretty strange uh_huh is that right well here you know even uh even just putting the little uh uh patio walks you have to have a permit yeah it's it's pretty strange yeah yeah you have a i i think things you know are are different from city to city or from state to state but oh well i i think my neighbor was a little bit uh [putout] because he came over to you know he he asked to to help me and he's a pretty busy guy i thought anyway and i said well i've i've got my guys from work they're going to come over and do most of the work you know i said i appreciate your your asking but it was funny because right that just the day after he called yeah you know i i guess i should have let him come over and and did my garage i mean i wouldn't have mind but i you know i thought he was he was pretty busy and and wouldn't have time to do it but that's how things are no actually um we do um yeah well we don't install we we do mostly repairs we do some uh [reroofing] built up roofs and uh but we do repair uh metal roofs yeah uh_huh we do that yeah uh we do work we do mostly commercial stuff uh and we do work on a lot of metal roofs but we we don't install them we just uh uh repair them uh_huh uh i'd be real careful extreme temperature changes uh effect the metal roofs it it expands and [retracts] and um just see i don't have much time myself for that kind of thing but uh i have my father was uh quite handy he died recently but uh uh i have done limited things like for example i've built uh uh tree house for my kids and uh i really enjoy doing it i just don't have the time uh so uh uh_huh um absolutely well have you ever done any remodeling you know it's very interesting my uh father and i built a a home a new home for ourselves from basically from the ground up when i was a teenager and uh it's amazing how these things work one of most amazing things is to me is that what appears to be the major part of the work basically putting the structure up happens very quickly but then you know comes the inside and the trim and the electrical work and the fixtures and the appliances and it seems like ninety percent of the time it was very frustrating takes a long time to get that house done i see yeah um um um do do people change out these things before they fail or uh_huh they can cause a lot of damage i know uh_huh yeah the small those small projects are [manageable] you know i i fix toilets and things like that but when it comes to major uh projects putting in uh in extra [stairways] or putting on an extra room or something like that i just absolutely do not have the time to do that the the frustrating thing is that i enjoy doing it but uh you know i work you been doing in your house yeah where you live austin okay great well we yeah as soon as it stops raining a little bit huh yeah yeah great have you done much uh much in the way of home repairs oh yeah great how old a house do you have uh_huh oh yeah yeah great oh well right now we're not we're living in a travel trailer but uh we've we've just moved here to dallas uh recently and we're living in that until we can find a place but uh we lived in a brick homes in uh in louisiana before this and did some uh various kinds of things uh made some storm windows to put up and uh uh really did a major [rejob] on the inside of the house uh put up some walls and uh put in a bathroom and stuff like that so uh_huh oh yeah wow that's pretty good oh yeah uh_huh do you think it was worth uh the ceiling fans on your resale uh_huh yeah sure well so you think you'll do it again some time is that right yeah um uh_huh yeah it sounds like you've got a good bit of experience in that uh_huh sure we're thinking about possibly building a house now we aren't real sure whether we're going to be able to do that or not but we just talked to a builder today as a matter of fact that you know just uh beginning to think about [sketching] out some plans and talked about some of the different uh ways to go on you know different things yeah it sounds like you're uh really into uh remodeling what you get yeah okay uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh how far away from austin is it oh yeah well as as a matter of fact about two years ago right now uh i've completely and totally remodeled and restored my kitchen yeah i uh i tore out the uh walls all the way down to the [studs] and started over we had had a uh the kitchen we've we had was um it had a paneling in it dark paneling and and the cabinets were sort of old and it was just dark in here and old cabinets and uh counter tops at first i we were just going to paint the thing and you know how everything just sort of grows and uh so i ended up just just tearing out the whole place and uh putting sheet rock in and building my own cabinets with ceramic tile on the counter tops and just everything new floor well uh i'm fairly good at it not not not enough to be professional or anything but i can do my own yeah uh_huh i love that it's it's really pretty we had just uh [formica] and when i built the new cabinets uh i looked into this tile deal and i thought well you know i think we can probably do this and um it was uh it was not not hard at all um it just i just followed the instructions the basic instructions that you use with the tile and uh they're not hard at all really it's just about anybody can do that no not at all um uh what we what i've been doing is just using some like [bleach] and it uh gets it clean but it does it has [browned] over the the couple of years you know but it really don't look that bad even though it has gotten brown you know what i should have done now that i think about it was used brown colored [grout] that's right that's right you know because it does stain some you know you could [whiten] it but i never have um about three months probably three or four months yeah yeah well it was for a while the worst part about it was we had to do it when i got to the sink part over here what i did was i left this cabinet just about this one wall where the sink is to the very last so we can keep the sink as long as possible and then we we were without a sink about a week or a week and a half or so and uh what we had to do was just take the dishes and uh put them in a big dish pan and get water from the bath tub and then rinse them in you know with the bath not not in the tub but you're just letting it run under there you know really yeah we did eat out a lot not a thing not a thing i almost thought i had cut through a water pipe in the wall but i didn't i just [nicked] it a little bit it wasn't all the way through and now that was about it yeah well have you have you done anything like that or or anything smaller or uh_huh oh no no there is nothing like that here either uh_huh oh yeah yeah sure right right oh sure yeah it does that's right you are and you're half and half yeah oh oh i understand yeah a little latch like yeah right well yeah yeah everything is still so brand new yeah uh_huh oh i see well yeah sure no yeah now something like that i would probably have no there's really not very many when i went to school there was probably three you know with various ages but you don't you don't find that name very often uh we just got through having the ceiling in the kitchen touched up the roof we had a lot of rain and the roof was leaking and it went down and had a big spot on the ceiling and we intended to to fix it our self and that didn't work so we ended up hiring just uh a handy man and it turned into a huge project for him and he couldn't he tried to match the spot he couldn't match it and ended up having to do the whole ceiling over uh_huh yeah i think so but we tried just at first just kind of spackling it it's one of those type ceilings this is an older house and we trying to just repair that and match the the uh texture and couldn't do that and then it's i'm not even sure what it is it's not like the kind at my mother's house is a blown texture and this is an old older house and it's kind of a sponge is what it looks like to me that they took the uh plaster and kind of [sponged] it but it's a different pattern and he had so much trouble trying to match it and the paint and everything he finally just had to redo the whole ceiling repaint the whole thing uh_huh but he uh i was surprised he stuck with the price that he had quoted which was just a couple a hundred dollars to fix the one place and then he found out that the beam there was not support to attach his stuff to and it turned out to be a mess he finally finally got it finished it does i was cause it took several days and i work so he would go on and on during the during the day and then i would just have to come home and call him at night and say excuse me this doesn't look good because he was going to let it go if i hadn't said anything at first when it didn't match and stuff he was just going to go with that and i am sure no body would notice if they come in and they don't look up immediately but i noticed but when he fixed it but this the house it belongs to my father in law and our deal as far as living here and each month we fix something and we put a deck in and we landscaped the yard and we put new carpeting in and we put new linoleum and then we had the ceiling fixed and put a new floor in the bathroom and wallpaper but just as soon as you get finished with one job it's time for another oh well see you chose a good job well congratulations when is your baby due uh_huh well that good well what's the last home improvement you did uh_huh oh uh_huh yeah well i repaired the back fence it's a well of course they get old you know after about ten years anyway but uh well the the the [alley's] on a kind of a slant and it makes all the fences [tilt] or or slowly you know yeah somewhat right uh_huh um had to replace the the ridge row the shingles on the corners of the the roof from all the storms and everything and uh right yeah uh_huh weather [proofing] and yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh right and then it's that it's that white paint i've forgotten what it's called [ti] bond or something like that and those bricks are very [porous] and it [soaks] into those bricks really well and it seals all the water out just a little bit yeah they use it all the time yeah it seals the water out right uh_huh uh_huh yeah right yeah i'm from dallas uh_huh right uh_huh and it's set into the earth so uh_huh right uh_huh yeah okay did you vote in the last uh national election oh that's good i voted in the last national one yeah i'm not sure if i got the last local one yeah you're not sure where to go and vote and all that right or you don't know what they you know where they stand or anything like that yeah i think you're right yeah or sometimes they don't like either of the choices for the candidates so they think well you know why vote yeah really especially in texas it really was yeah yeah did they get the serious problem that half the people don't vote yeah yeah it also seems like maybe another candidate that nobody wants could slip in if you know not enough people are voting yeah it's kind of like in louisiana where that uh guy that's like a [ku] [klux] [klan] member something got elected kind of scary when you think about that oh gosh yeah yeah people will sit home and assume oh that guy would never get elected next thing you know you've got him yeah right yeah yeah right yeah he sure did yeah i think one thing that maybe would help people vote is if the polls were either open more days or you could mail it in or something like if you have if you have real strict work hours and you can only go like at seven in the morning or after work and you have to stand in line for so long i think that [discourages] a lot of people uh_huh right uh_huh yeah i'm in dallas and they're long here too yeah i voted absentee one year i really was going to be gone so i did it but uh it was nice i would be tempted to do it again right yeah i think they should change the whole system so that it's easier i think more people would do it if it wasn't such a hassle uh_huh yeah that would be i usually vote a lot of times i'll vote a straight party ticket just because i don't take the time to find out what every you know other than the major candidates what they stand for on what issues so i'll just trust well the party kind of goes along these lines so i'll go ahead and vote uh_huh yeah no i guess it'd be best if you knew each person and what they stood for and why and everything right and try to determine if what you read was objective or not yeah yeah yeah yeah i think it could affect the outcome you know could make it unfair oh yeah yeah the press has a lot of power yeah oh but boy you try get into that you'd really open a can of worms yeah seems that they should regulate themselves a little bit and i don't think they ever care to well i can't think of anything else really about the polls or voting to talk about well it was good talking to you bye yes we uh uh i haven't missed a one since i've been eligible to vote did you get to vote at the last one oh uh_huh yeah and sometimes the the local ones aren't as publicized it seems that uh they should be right and uh there's usually nobody running against you know the incumbents right so uh but i i feel that uh a lot of people have gotten lazy about voting and it's it's they're and also they're fed up with the system and they say well why should i even vote right right the lesser of the two evils is how we usually look at it oh i know it the last gubernatorial race was oh it was awful so i don't know i i it'll be interesting to see how the next uh few years go yeah i think well it's it's definitely a problem and i think it could get worse you know we get this [lackadaisical] attitude and say huh you know why should we vote then you know it could uh it could lead to some serious things uh_huh right uh yeah we can get uh yeah if we get someone in there like that then you know they could make all sorts of changes that they were you know had enough pull yes uh_huh yeah and uh who's the other guy [larouche] that uh is sort of the uh socialist not socialist but he's so off the wall that uh he's gone in and tried to get into city elections and uh but he's got he's been put away for uh credit card fraud i believe yeah [lyndon] [larouche] that's it and uh yeah uh_huh right if you don't go and vote then you know very good chance that they they will because a lot of the people like that they'll strike a [chord] in something you know in some of the people that so will say look you know this guy's got everything together you know i like what he says and he'll be so far off the wall that they'll elect him and uh i think that's sort of what happened with louisiana because because um the guy did get elected correct that's what i thought and uh but you know they can always fool us you know he might do a good job oh yeah what we do usually is uh vote uh [absenteeism] and uh i know here you know you don't have to have any reason you can just go and vote and the polls are open what was it a couple of weeks the hours are good and they're even open on saturdays and a couple of sundays and so we've got plenty of time to go because down here in houston it's uh the lines are long so uh but uh well uh i recommend it because you just walk right on in and there's usually not anybody in line and uh you know that [vote's] just as good as you know the one on election day uh_huh yeah um yeah i've been involved with uh some of the campaigns and the state conventions of the of the republican party and it's really interesting to see the process as far as what goes through as far as the voting and the uh how the uh the not the [ballots] but uh my mind has gone blank i've been all evening how they develop uh what the candidate stands for you know the views and uh you know everybody gets to vote on you know well should he be for this and on and on and on and uh it's it's interesting uh_huh right there for a while that would that worked we've uh i know i have um i'll stick to uh to the you know sometimes i'll stick to a certain party depends on the guy but uh if it uh gets down between two then i'll i'll vote for the party because i know you know something about the other guy or you know they're both just as bad and i'll say well i know what this guy stands for as far as for his party and um but yeah you know that's not the best way but but it gets to the point where i mean you've got to have the find the time also to read about the guy and and be able to find the information about what he stands for right or what you've heard on t v which i think is just outrageous i i don't agree with how the media handles elections i you know i'm tired of hearing about the polls you know you know this is how he stands such and such a day the way they break it out it's just it's just ridiculous uh_huh it really could and uh then how sometimes how the media will blow things out of proportion and will run an issue into the ground which is good and dead and they keep dragging it on and it could hamper the outcome of an election for the guy that should have won yeah so uh they really do i i sometimes think that that should be limited more oh yes or they i agree with the freedom of the press you know and all the [amendments] but sometimes it's for the public's own good that we don't hear things no they don't well i enjoyed talking to you all right bye bye all right we need to discuss the voters on a national and a local level why do you think the apathy exists i blame it to apathy why should i go out of my way when it doesn't matter oh i think so too and i think the other thing is the news media puts such a [blitz] on it that they had it [predetermined] with a half of one percent voting you know and i i think the you hear the news you know you start out in the morning and all day you hear the news and by time say you get off work and go to vote you feel like it doesn't make any difference due to the [overabundance] of news we have available to us what do you think on the local elections though oh i think so too absolutely uh i think another thing and uh i'm making a judgment here that may or may i think it is totally wrong well i think that the people that are have um a lower income which you automatically equate with lower education tend not to be registered and they don't register and they don't understand that you can't go and vote and register all at the same time or when it gets down to the point of someone saying are you going to vote today they say well i would and i believe in this but i had an interesting comment one time a thought that would never have crossed my mind i had someone tell me that i will never register to vote because i don't want to serve on a jury i just i they i just wandered off from that one i was just so surprised and amazed with the statement that they say only registered voters can be picked for jury selection so they if they don't vote they don't have to be on a jury there is [convoluted] logic for you yes oh i just right right there are so many other ways but that one it just defeated me i didn't have any answer for that one that one was just beyond my imagination that's a good point you're probably right which and that was what i was thinking exactly about because in the soviet union they had an election and they had what like a ninety eight percent turnout a massive turnout at last someone wants us to vote they were standing in lines to vote and their vote didn't count or any one shows up total [indifference] you know what difference does it make back gone the full circle oh certainly there's a message there even if they lose oh and i think women turn out to vote for women too yeah i well i know it's true you see a lot of that you know rally behind the female she may lose but by golly we're going to make a statement here you know oh okay was was that the time no that was eighty four that's too soon she said something about uh ginger rogers did everything fred [astaire] did and she did it backwards in high heels she said that i didn't said you know don't tell me what women can do i think i did vote for her as a matter of fact i'm pretty sure i did well and some of the issues are so emotional you know some of the really the really emotional ones have you followed the dallas elections on [zoning] i everyone has made so many statements i don't live in dallas county but i've heard so many statements that i've lost track i honestly at this point it's it's just too blown out of proportion for everyone you really even the news you cannot follow what the the actual facts are at this point i don't i don't really know if some of the poor judges that are trying to decide how it should be divided i wonder about them at some point that's correct and that's and that's another interesting question should judges be elected or appointed are they politicians sure or you want to take the other side of it you can argue that's one of those you can pick either side and we could spend a lot of time on it because it's it's difficult it's [situational] really uh uh oh um well this is true this is true i was worrying along the lines of you get every time someone puts in a ballot in a ballot box a dollar bill comes out the bottom that might work in some places yes i i yeah um i i suspect the apathy is due to something like people just feeling that that their vote doesn't count anyway i mean why why bother voting if um if your vote won't make a difference so for instance in um the last presidential election i'm sure a lot of people thought oh bush is going to win either way why bother voting that's right i think that's and and the other side of the coin is um people saying well if i really like the underdog candidate i still think they're not going to win so are only the same two [caucuses] certainly not going to win why bother voting for him so i i think that's a big uh a big a big reason for it how um that's true actually i never thought about that that that's a good that's true that's true uh_huh i think on the local elections it's actually um i think um i think people vote in the larger elections because they feel like well you know the country's real important and you know if i if we help elect a president who's going to save us then then the whole country will be saved but they figure local elections don't mean that much i suspect so people don't really worry about their local mayor or something figuring that you know and i think wrongly figuring that that well what good is another mayor going to do anyway because our federal taxes are more important right now and you know and stuff like that so people think that that that they don't have um that that it doesn't matter as much whereas i think it's probably just the opposite is true i think it's probably the case that people could have more effect on a local level uh right um right but yeah that's that's possible i still think that a lot of those people are the ones who really think that their votes don't make a difference though as well i think it's those same people who don't know any better about how we vote are are are a lot of the people who think that well look at me i'm just a little nobody my [vote's] not going to count anyway you know and i think that's probably a portion of the population that massively under i i i would guess that that portion of the population is massively under represented um what do they have to do with one another oh so they didn't want to wind up being a juror ever oh i didn't realize that actually that yeah there is there are much easier ways to get out of jury duty just go in and say oh i want to be a juror i can spot a guilty person a mile away well that that just seems to be a person who just doesn't care about much of anything around sort of you know doesn't doesn't sort of likes rights probably but doesn't like responsibilities i mean that's what it boils down to is people like to people say oh i don't want to be on jury you know i don't want to serve on jury duty i don't want to vote i don't want to do this and that well then they could you know put them in the reverse situation in the place where they don't have the right to be on jury duty and they don't have the right to vote i suspect their opinions would change very quickly yes yes they were they were doing that unfortunately what what they they had no idea what they were voting on it turns out that's right but but it's the thought they all got out but you wonder if you know if if now the next election they have if only half of them are going to show up or how many generations it will take until only half of the voters show up in russia right that's that's true right now if things go the way that that that they are there i think that they'll keep voting but i think they'll wind up like us at some point where people sort of only half of them will end up voting and sort of caring enough to really make a statement so you know i think i think that that the people who most need to vote sometimes are the are the ones who who are really out to make a statement because you know when when when you've got an underdog candidate who represents something and even if he doesn't win a large number of people voting for that particular candidate does i think make a statement to everyone else yeah i think and i think that's real important that's probably true um that's good that's actually really good well actually the female who i would most rally behind right now right i don't know much about her politics by the way the way she makes speeches is a local person for you is ann richards i don't know her politics i just know that uh i saw her speak in the eighty four democratic convention and right then and there if they said to me vote for someone for president i would have slapped down my vote for ann richards that's very good that's that's that's that's very good that's i i like that so i would uh i would vote for her and i suspect she could get a large voter turnout say i i i would think that um that that people like that i think [inflammatory] politicians are um or or emotional politicians certain very [vibrant] politicians tend to bring crowds out i think i would hope uh_huh no i've heard of it but not necessarily the i've heard it's very controversial though uh_huh um yes that's what uh_huh um uh_huh well they were elected as well so so so they're going to be that's true that's true well well in some sense they should be politicians in that you know you want them to respect the people and you don't want them to have you don't want a judge to be appointed because you don't want someone's friend to be a judge but on the other hand right that's right uh_huh so how do you think we can get people to vote i've had one idea that i think is is is completely [undoable] but but i think but i suspect it would work and the way to do it is to get an absolutely atrocious candidate who you never expect to win to go out and make [inflammatory] and ridiculous and stupid statements so that a large population of of voters will go out and vote against that person for someone else so given a choice between you know so that so if you have so if if imagine a world where you have two real candidates and one idiot who goes out and makes you know anti you know sort of um anti women statements anti [semitic] statements anti black statements et cetera et cetera well then i suspect a lot of people would go out and choose a candidate to vote for just just to spite that person but i don't think that that would actually ever work uh_huh that's an interesting notion that that that that would be interesting yes i think that would work in some places yeah okay um what do you think about the war recently uh_huh uh the economy the our soldiers going over uh just everything yeah yeah yeah that's the first thing i thought of i don't know right right right and i know that uh i've heard people say that you know when people that went to world war two you couldn't become a political figure or president unless you had served in the war but then in vietnam that was totally different you know you couldn't be a political figure if you were in vietnam probably and now if you've served in desert storm you probably would be a a good candidate exactly exactly oh torn apart oh uh_huh right so it that's also a good reason why it it or good that it ended as soon as it did uh_huh exactly and it seems like everything is raising everything that can be cigarettes not that i smoke but cigarettes um uh stamps i mean it seems like exactly everything single thing that we do is higher you know and they just raised the minimum wage today but that's not like you know as much as they should have raised it i'm sure but uh right right right yeah i don't i don't have any children or anything right now i'm uh i work as a news reporter in waco and so i get to see i got to see a lot of not [firsthand] but uh probably a good part of the war um as far as what people thought about it and a lot of things like that so it was kind of amazing people were coming to me to ask me you know what's going on you know like i knew or like i sat in on the meetings or something yeah yeah so i got to hear a lot of what the people thought about you know changes in in the war and everything so that was pretty interesting yeah exactly be everything be [supermom] exactly uh_huh right and whereas it would have been exactly um right the roles are changing a lot right and even you know i think a lot of the movies we see now kind of kind of play a good part in our changes because you see that they have the three men and a baby type movies and i think you know that yeah and then you have the women uh detectives now and you know different roles just in what we see and so we probably want to do that even more now you know since the women's movement in the seventies and you know we've come a long way but i think it's still a still have a good ways to go so uh_huh right yeah exactly exactly it's just not as exactly but it's i mean like i say we've come a long way but we have i mean twice as far to go still and i don't think a lot of people you know realize a lot the plight of a lot of people you know and you may be in good standing and everything may look [hunky] [dory] to you but there's so many more people exactly that you don't even and that you don't even see or know about oh oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah i grew up in in brooklyn new york and so i was just i was just surrounded you know by black people because i'm black and so you know i lived that's where i lived and so now i i feel lucky actually because i've almost lived around everyone i've i went to u t to college and so they you know they have a lot of different people go there different kinds of people and so i feel really [enriched] in that a lot of people don't get to see you know some people have lived in lewisville all their life you know and so they don't get to see exactly and uh_huh uh_huh exactly it is oh my god well there's so many people who have never you know even gotten to do that so that's great my sister was telling me she met a she's going to the university of pennsylvania in in philadelphia and uh she just met a girl from um i think [barbados] or jamaica or something like that and i mean this girl she had like two outfits that she would just wear all the time and everything and she got some kind of money from her government like five hundred dollars so my sister had to take her shopping and you know show her what to wear show her how to match up colors and i just thought that was so very exciting you know to go and and just witness you know this girl just coming to america type thing you know so you know i would have loved it the opportunity to do that but oh yeah uh_huh the latest cereal about you know yeah that's ridiculous too when i first moved here i was only thirteen but everyone had a car in school you know and i couldn't and i just couldn't you know i was from new york and so you know we road the bus and if you had a yeah exactly and if you had a car there was nowhere to park it anyway or you know it's just you just didn't have a car but then we came here and they had parking lots in the schools and i couldn't understand it you know all the kids had cars and they you know have to have a car so that was yeah yeah right really or live really close to school and have them walk but uh yeah a lot of changes so i think so okay well it's good it's good talking to you okay bye bye the war you mean in terms of the economy or oh i thought we were going to talk about social changes is that is that what you're kind of directing it oh okay okay well um well i think it's caused a lot of you know big difference between when people had gone to war before like compared to vietnam because i mean i know that there was so much more support for the soldiers going over and even people that didn't agree with the war still seem to be able to separate that you know and support the soldiers so yeah yeah yeah yes it would be like a bonus for your image or something yeah it i'm sure it caused a lot of changes in terms of how many families had to have their income just drastically [altered] we had people down the street that the guy was in the reserves and he was just about ready to go and they have a just had a new baby and uh they would have she would have had to go back to work and i think she said their income would have dropped by like two thirds yeah yeah i think the biggest change that we've seen um in in my life or whatever lately is the economy and things are so tight and like my husband hasn't gotten a raise in two years and you know yeah even dog licenses i mean yeah yeah going to effect too many yeah yeah so that's the hardest thing for us and um we've been trying to kind of maintain traditional lifestyle in the sense of meaning home we have a three year old and a two year old and i'm trying to stay home as long as i can but you know every week it gets harder because i could go out and be making money you know so that's a big uh stress i think you know for the social changes in our family oh i see uh_huh yeah yeah well yeah you have an inside track or something yeah yeah let's see what other social changes in the past ten years oh i guess between men and women i've seen a lot of changes in terms of women feeling like they have to have a career be mom be everything [superperson] yeah because i know you know i i really get pressure from because i have a career also and i get a lot of pressure from people that you know my colleagues that why am i staying home you know whereas before that never would have happened people would have said why are you going to work so that's kind of a difference for us i think there's more pressure to um not necessarily a negative thing but on my husband to be more involved with the family so he's yeah he's gotten a lot uh you know you see all kinds of men being involved in the housework and taking care of the kids and all but in terms of his amount of hours at work nothing on that has [lightened] up so it's now he has the pressure too of being [superdad] and [supercareer] and yeah that's true mister mom and uh_huh yeah yeah that's true yeah yeah i think there's still i i know that um i grew up in chicago in the sixties and was part my family was real liberal and i think there's a lot of um kind of myths that we've come a long way just in terms of our society and race relations and things like that and you know i think there's so much prejudice still there and it's kind of more [covert] now people used to be more clear and say you know well i believe in this or i believe in that and now you know i think there's still tremendous amount of prejudice but people think oh we're in the nineties we're beyond all that you know yeah yeah yeah but there's so many more people that are homeless and yeah yeah it's real easy to get isolated in your own little community you know because when i was growing up in chicago um we were in a real ethnic neighborhood and there were people from all first generation chinese german you know all different nationalities and everything and now we're kind of like in lewisville miss white little [suburbia] you know i mean i don't even know anybody that you know from any place other than texas hardly you know oh boy yeah yeah oh yeah yeah yeah and they they think the whole world is like that we lived in a dorm my husband and i met in graduate school at indiana university and i was ours was uh international you know co ed dorm and there were twelve hundred students they're graduate students from all over the world and once we came here it was like gosh i just miss that because it really is exciting to be around people of different cultures and different backgrounds we got invited to one guy practically [roasted] a goat in his in his dorm i wonder if he was from iran or some place i don't know where but um you know yeah yeah oh uh_huh oh yeah yeah oh god yeah yeah yeah really that is part of the change i think that i've seen probably you know in the past twenty years or whatever is now kids have to have so much i mean i even get caught up in it with our kids even though i buy most of the things at garage sales for their christmas i mean people you know think they're kids have to have five hundred dollars worth of toys oh yeah it's just it it's oh gosh yeah me too in chicago i didn't even date a guy that had a car until i was in college yeah yeah yeah oh gosh my kids are going to be [hating] me i'll give them a bike and say here's it so you can afford to pay the insurance you know yeah no kidding yeah well did we cover it everything betty okay i guess i'll get back to my laundry you too good luck bye bye so uh tell me about changes from say twenty years ago since you were an adult twenty years ago well you're you're able to you're able to uh vote and go to war and things like that so oh that's right that's one of the changes uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yes uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh huh uh_huh uh_huh and is the company now uh well represented uh [demographically] at the higher [echelons] did it work uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh so there's less you think now there's less of a a social movement and more individual lots of individual movements in a sense the me decade uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well that i've been aware of i've at least in my own circles i've been aware of an increasing from my generation i don't know if i can quite call myself a distinct generation from you but half generation off i guess um i've noticed uh a certain increase um [pessimism] with america no longer being sort of on top i had the impression well i mean there was the quote unquote losing of the vietnam war which was a blow and it was right around that time when i started becoming socially you know a socially conscious adult and i realize that people of my age have no um no major success in the sense that uh you saw the passage of the civil rights act and um major social change in that sense and i and all the changes that have happened in the last uh even during my [adulthood] have been more [incremental] they've been continual perhaps and good gains have been made but there hasn't been the same sort of [fiery] speeches of martin [luther] king or whatever that has really uh [galvanized] the population and there's just instead there's been sort of an increasing oh i don't know japan [bashing] and things like that and uh a lot of i see among some of my friends and even more among some of my students who are you know maybe twenty a real sense of you know america's losing it and losing it in the competitive market and a real uh a lack of understanding how that could be in the sense that how could america have gone from being number one to possibly being number two to you know our former enemies and things like that and uh so i see i see a lot of uh a lot of [pessimism] growing um and at the same time i think there's there's there's a growing [environmentalist] movement and sense of corporate increased corporate responsible towards uh you know environmental safety and things like that and that might potentially be sort of the civil right the equivalent of the civil rights act in in the near future in terms of you know some real landmark bills passing and things like that such that you know people the thing about civil rights is people take it for granted now i mean my generation doesn't can't rest on the the [glow] of having achieved civil rights because we were born into an assumption that you know yes there's still some racism but you know basically things are the assumption things are basically kind of taken care of and there's a notion of [fairness] that's um while still far from perfect is much more established i think uh_huh oh of course it's human nature yeah yeah uh_huh yes uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right and that's a real change except it sort of brings back to the nineteen forties more than anything else i mean all this recycling used to be in tact or not all of it but much of it did i mean recycling was a was a wartime thing yes yes uh_huh a perceived decline anyway yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah well i'd i'd say actually i mean as someone who's involved in education i'd say that maybe one of the changes is that the role of the teacher has [incrementally] gotten lower and lower value and society i mean relative pay which is a major way we value people has been poorer and poorer over the years uh you know that there's been cost of living increases but not quite in proportion to cost of living and you know it's just more and more uh a real low income sort of job and very low prestige i mean there's that that old saying those who can do it and those who can't teach this is the way of let's make fun of the teachers those are the people who can't do anything and if you have that kind of social attitude it's hard to get sufficient numbers of people who are going to [overlook] all of that work for lower pay work for low social prestige just because they care about good education and you get more and more people and up there because it's uh it's the safety net of those of you know average intelligence or something they can always teach uh_huh uh_huh well let's see well we assume i was an adult twenty years ago um yeah definitely able to go to war twenty years ago but not vote not vote that was one of the changes that came about in the last twenty years um yeah twenty years ago is nineteen seventy uh nineteen seventy i had been married two years um we had all the great civil rights legislation of nineteen sixty eight and uh around here on the uh east coast uh we were heavy into affirmative action and uh that was a uh a great shock for a lot of people and uh a great disappointment for some people like myself um i was [gainfully] employed by safeway stores incorporated and uh trying desperately to uh get ahead with the company uh the problem was that my hair was too long and uh you weren't allowed to have a uh [mustache] or a beard and uh you know jeans just flat out weren't allowed unless you worked on night stock and if you wanted to get ahead with the company well if you were a uh black female you were [destined] to be store manager in six to nine months if you were white male you're talking six years and that's basically where i ended up i uh i just flat out couldn't get hold you know get ahead with the company because they were dead in affirmative action um on other [fronts] um um i think so i i i i stopped working for them in uh seventy eight seventy nine and uh it's i think they're they're like all companies well represented and uh you know everything seems to be fine i i've kind of lost touch with the company we had a falling out but uh as far as uh as their management goes um i'm not sure they're any any better off than they were were before management wise but uh other changes um just people seem to be more outspoken now individually rather than [collectively] um back in the seventies we had uh a lot of uh [protests] against the war and uh bring our troops home and things were more organized and uh i've noticed that now more and more individual people are speaking out for their own rights rather than [massing] together um yeah i'm not sure if that was because you know eighties was like the uh the me decade and uh everybody was into me and then we are getting back into us but um it it it's i've seen uh uh a great deal of change as far as um corporate responsibility and things um and people's response to that you know at first not trusting and now expecting more and what what about the last ten years that you've been aware uh_huh yes yes but even uh i think uh along the line of the uh goals of civil rights um there always seems to be some prejudice to someone by anyone i mean you know you know don't like the way you look don't like the way you dress don't like your hair don't like you know it's just something that always sets people off you know you either like someone or you don't like someone or you're just completely indifferent and the problem is that ideally you they you know the world would like you to be completely indifferent so um but i i i understand what you say about the environmental movement um it's it's been a long time coming um and being a uh a very old hippie i mean you know if you had long hair in high school in the sixties you got labeled a hippie and you keep that image your whole life no matter what you do and i i just i've seen a lot of changes i mean from the original earth day and um i'm heavily involved in you know my own personal recycling we recycle paper and cans here at work and you know i do the newspaper and cardboard and paper and you know all that stuff at home and i'm starting to see more and more recycling centers [cropping] up all over the place here on the east coast yeah like yeah and then they turned around and called them [junkyards] and started making profits off them after the war and now we got to the point where the [junkyards] you've got to pay them to take something there so things have really changed a lot i think the uh the other part about uh america's decline i think has to do with yeah the perceived decline has to do with uh um the attitudes and the educational system uh i have children in in i have three children in school right now and i'm not impressed with the teachers that are teaching them uh i had when i was down in dallas for two years i had uh my children come home from school with papers that were corrected by the teacher that had words spelled correctly marked wrong and words spelled wrong not marked as such and this person's teaching my children you know i had a real problem with that yeah yeah um i'm not sure if your familiar with the movement they have here in maryland but they're trying to get a uh a uh a merit system here in maryland rather than a uh tenure system for all the you know elementary middle school and high schools so that the teach here we go well the changes that's occurred like it how was it maybe ten twenty thirty years ago as opposed to what it is today how we're living socially in comparison to maybe from that time period from ten twenty or whatever you remember it to be yeah we are uh somewhat conservative but as far as the uh socially our crime rate has increased and although it's more publicized as opposed to what it used to be it seems like violent crime is on the increase from what i've seen and um our prison population has significantly increased i would say um our economy too is really it's just not what it used to be in the sixties or even fifties from history from what i've read and uh even the well it started [spiraling] down i suppose in the seventies and uh our recovery uh economically has not been like it used to be to me also our nuclear family is not the same because more people are living together that aren't married uh i don't i don't know if uh can't make any [judgments] of that nature but uh i don't really want to either because i have no problems about it either way and um kids are i i suppose have been raised by single parents more than they ever used to women are more on the rise too so far as getting their careers established and uh they don't no longer feel dependent upon men that's probably true i mean they they are a lot of them that have to put their kids into day care or having more with baby sitters and especially if they don't have boy friends or husbands and uh i guess that's why you always hear these stories about kids being neglected uh in fact uh there was one lady in this area she was caught going to work and leaving her daughter in her car all day not a baby she was old enough to uh i would say she was five to eight years old somewhere along that range but that's just an extreme example i would imagine you know the situations are out there um i agree there yeah um i could agree with that because used to [conservatism] was inherent at a much younger age uh_huh that's an [agreeable] topic there um what else considering beside family economics um our transportation system has changed for us i mean we can we can now travel around the world in no time it's just a hop skip and a jump to get into a plane to go from the east to the west coast and uh well i i think what's happened too is just our technology is just advancing so rapidly that and there's so much information available out there that folks out there just have a hard time keeping up aside from just going through their daily routine of living to get from day to day and to keep abreast of the knowledge out there we got to constantly read go to school uh t v watching has sure hasn't gone too much out the door because t v is still well the cable system and the satellite dishes has made it to where a lot of people can just leave regular t v programming and watch a lot of other a variety of programs out there as well as use of the v c r so that i don't know if it really [hampers] or it helps our education system do you watch l a law i like that uh_huh well that's good at least you're hitting the books right uh_huh well that's a change then oh of course going to school too it's different from the home environment um i agree with your parents because uh t v kind of ruined me because that's that's all that we had well not really but i mean it's uh for the top medium of entertainment even at your age uh_huh uh_huh i see uh_huh oh is there anything else um work ethics oh it's it's maybe getting better um a little of course we're having to weather through the savings and loans all the other scandalous items that well the greed that overwhelmed us in the eighties and uh i think i think it's going to have to have it's [patchwork] put on us because we have so much to pay for now it's going to be really passed on to your generation and maybe a few others including what's left of ours well it was nice talking to you and uh what are majoring in okay um now we're supposed to talk about social activities right uh_huh i think um well i guess it would be like your generation compared to my generation i think your generation is um what do i say uh uh they're they're they're polite they have more respect for other people just in in general i think and just just towards people and property and um i i guess they would would be more conservative some of them i guess uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yes i agree with uh_huh well well do you think that that maybe i mean uh i've heard different you know like um like i know my mom and like other ladies they complain because they think that um the women now are too busy with their own personal life and career that they really don't have time for their kids uh_huh yeah oh my gosh just a baby oh my gosh uh_huh yeah well um um well i think the education like our education has um increased dramatically but then i think also that we're forgetting like basic things like we should know like i i think well um in the morals and values of like my generation for the most for most people are totally different from the morals and valleys um values of like per se your generation but i think as we get older it gets to your you know what i mean i think the kids now are are i would say louder now until after they reach like twenty five and then i think they really have a strong decline and start to settle down and realize things uh_huh yeah because i think we're given more now whereas you had to work for everything and kids nowadays are just given so much that they really don't have to work and you know and they they don't have any intent to go working until they have to uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i don't know because i know i don't watch while i'm up here at school i don't watch hardly any t v like thursday night i like to sit down and watch a few shows but i no i don't watch that i used to but i don't any more but all i mean there are even though there's a few up here we call them couch potatoes they love to sit in front of the t v i but for the most part i will i will well i live in an all girls dorm but for the most part we're all between the ages of eighteen and like twenty one and there isn't really a lot of t v watching they're either hitting the books or something else i don't know what but i know oh well i guess they have their crowds like during the soap operas you know like in between classes or something but i can't say that there's really that many people that like sit in front of the t v all day uh_huh but then um like i know this girl she's doing her student teaching or she's just working like within the school and um yesterday she was at the kindergarten and there's this little boy he like didn't want to do anything and he said i'm not doing this i don't like it and he sat at his desk with two [pencils] in his hand and pretend like he's playing nintendo you know so uh i don't know how i mean i never really watched that a lot of t v when i was younger but my parents really didn't allow us to watch that much t v so i don't know uh_huh yeah well we watch a lot of i guess we watched a lot of t v in the winter time but in the summer like right now my mom well like she doesn't let us watch t v until like eight o'clock at night you know well like my younger brothers and sisters at home like when it starts getting nice outside in the summer and everything she'll she makes us go outside even now when i go home for the summer she makes us go outside and we're allowed to come in and watch t v until it's dark because she doesn't like the t v herself and if it was up to her we wouldn't have one so you know she feels that kids are too dependent on it also um what about in our work ethics i uh_huh uh_huh um yeah well i really can't think of anything else it was nice talking to you too okay so um how do think how do you think we've changed in the last ten to twenty years uh_huh really uh_huh well yeah really where'd you live up where'd you live at oh did you i'm from illinois so how long how long you been in dallas oh really yeah uh you know uh as you're talking like police and stuff like that it's definitely a tough job to do oh yeah i agree yeah i i definitely think that has gotten a lot worse and you know i i think there's to me there seems to be a little bit of a decline in the family values so but uh yeah yeah yeah i think there's more pressure like on both parents to work and things like that than there used to be and so okay but uh i don't know that's just that's one thing i see i see a lot more you know double income families and a lot more like baby sitters raising the kids and things like that i guess yeah that's for sure yeah without it hardly that's right yeah yeah just because they can't get into one yeah that's right yeah the ways our tax laws and stuff are structured you can't ever catch a break until you can get into a house in a lot of ways so yeah that's that's a good point so i'm trying to think of anything else that's changed over the last ten or twenty years oh yeah i agree well i hope so you know at some point but i don't know at what point yeah yeah it's uh yeah that's right do you work at t i do you what uh department do you work in are you i'm in semiconductor division too so how long you been with them since you moved down here um i'm over at the center one building are you really what floor i'm on the seventh floor how about that well it's a small world so so let's see second floor you work with uh [linear] do you do you uh do you know [alec] morton oh you do huh well he comes up and pushes us around so uh so i'm pretty familiar with huh yeah yep you must know him his reputation [precedes] him yeah well uh he uh boy he comes up there and gives us all kinds of grief they they say it's what makes him happy is to give us d a d grief so i can believe it but yeah let's see if you've been in dallas eight years i guess that's about how long i've been in here about eight years too i guess um been with t i like twelve but i started out in lubbock lubbock is i don't know i guess if this is the only place you've lived lubbock is a lot different than dallas yeah yeah but the people all seem to be a lot more laid back too i mean here in dallas everything is just real rush rush oh yeah well i got some friends that uh seems like he went to school at like [devry] is there a [devry] in [akron] oh oh i see well he went to school somewhere in ohio and he's from that area and uh he works over in the park park central building i think but uh i haven't talked to him in a while but um yeah he he misses it he used to go back twice or three times a year you know because he missed it sounds like you haven't been back there in a while you still have relatives back there or oh really well let's see how how long are we supposed to talk here yeah well my kids are probably needing me to go so all right well it's nice talking to you talk to you later bye uh i'm at a little bit of a loss you know i don't know ten years ago see i'm what i'm about uh twenty eight now so when i was eighteen things haven't changed a whole lot people are being a little more oh i don't know a little a little less bigoted in some ways i don't know seems to me i guess i'm like my parents the younger generation gets away with hell but uh well it seems to me that civic freedoms are more restricted but that may just be because i've changed you know i used to live up north down here dallas seems to me the police are [militant] but uh i lived in [akron] ohio oh oh about eight years in fact in the eight years i've been here it seems to me it gets more and more gets to be more and more restrictive place to live i think yeah i think it's crime has gone got a lot worse in the last last ten fifteen years and maybe that has a lot to do with it yeah that's true that's true i'd say my own personal lifestyle has improved but that's more a matter of you know i'm no longer a teenager in high school hello somebody's at the door hang on just a second okay yeah that's true it's getting more and more expensive to live you can't you can't make it i guess when i was growing up it was it was still the ideal to get a get a home and buy house and these days you see a lot of people living in apartments forever you know you just don't buy a house yeah yeah for me it's kind of hard i don't know i think i don't know i think the middle class is shrinking and the uh lower class is expanding and sooner or later there's going to there's going to be a turn around but i think it's going to be at the expense of the middle class uh so usually is i think it's hard for me to say i hope it happens because i'd be one of those that gets caught but on the other hand there's a lot of injustice that needs to be be changed yeah yeah i'm in semiconductor yeah about eight years yeah yeah so am i two well yeah yeah i've probably seen him around are you d a d or something up there are you d a d or something yeah well seventh floor t a d well yeah flat dry and dirty yeah i lived in the country for several years and living in the city is a whole different uh social structure but uh i don't even know i haven't been up there in years no i haven't been back in ten fifteen years yeah i do i just haven't had a chance to get back catch them next year probably i don't know i think we ran out of social social changes to talk about so okay yeah all righty bye um i think life uh now i grew up on a farm i don't what kind did you grow up in the farm uh_huh i see i see well little bit different i think though it was much slower and uh much more self contained uh_huh yes unreal unreal by comparison yeah i think that's right i i can remember as a child you know nobody ever worried about me wondering out at night and going where i wanted to go it wasn't it didn't occur to nobody to worry that anything would happen to me they were no no it's not all that long ago is it uh_huh uh_huh yeah we were living in new jersey uh in twenty years ago in [allendale] and uh i use to have to go over to patterson when those riots were going on at sometimes um i don't know though it's it's kind of hard to really know because of though the news media had those riots uh kind of blown up out of proportion because i went there many times and i never i never saw a riot did you that's what yeah well uh_huh uh_huh i think that's true i think that's true i think the other thing is that uh we have taken some rather drastic turns in our in our education and the way we approach things as of maybe starting back when when i'm number one you know and uh uh uh worrying about self and not uh seeing the consequences of the [disintegration] of the family and uh and there have been many things that have happened that have not encouraged closeness of families and uh support for young people that the kind of support that they need to help them take care of the things if you don't have some kind of of basic believe or something down inside of you then it's very difficult to uh have anything to turn to when you got when you've got something facing you like that uh_huh like right yeah exactly yeah that's right that's right no that's right oh no there's so much more then that it starts very much deeper then that i think that too i see some [flickers] of of uh of good directions turning but whether they're soon enough and fast enough i don't know it's just right uh_huh yeah that's right right and there's so much so so many people on the lower end of those who who are going to be the the drop outs and the and the poor and the homeless and whatnot yeah that's just another yeah it really is it's just it just is almost overwhelming sometimes when you think of of the jobs that is out there to be done in order to flip things back around the way they needed to be uh not that i really think that they were perfect ten twenty or thirty years ago but uh yeah just the volume makes a big difference i think as uh as uh mother you know i use to think sometimes it's not so much uh it's not so much the kids it's just the volume of it to try to keep all wash done and all the things done and you know and everything right right and and children's lives were simpler because mother was there somebody was there and and when there's nobody there i always thought too that you know people worrying about going to work when their child when their children are little and i and i think that's sad if they have to because they miss so much but i i believed after having a few teenagers that the worst time you could go to go work was when they were teenagers right it's not so much that they come to you every minute but it's that you are there when they need you yeah yeah yes i think that's true yeah that's yeah well but that helps a lot i have a daughter who just had a second job she needed to work and he opted to go into a day care center where she could have her children with her and uh and looked a long time before she found one that was laid back enough so they she would be able to interact with them and uh and so i you know good kind of experience as well but uh i think that's really important i don't think people realize how important it is yeah uh yeah yeah i think that's right what was what was your name again linda okay well i think probably that we've just about i'm going to change the world but uh yes it's nice talking to you too bye now i grew up in um well at that time i was in a uh trenton new jersey so and it was a suburb of trenton so i really had mixture of suburb and urban living yeah i think you're right it's interesting i'm um i work in a high school so uh i'm comparing my life when i was in high school thirty years ago to what i see these children doing and the pressures on the children uh you know you hear this as an excuse but it's true they are so much greater oh i cannot believe uh what they're doing uh academically the demands on them and uh and i can see why children do drop out i can see i can see the uh you know uh_huh uh_huh and you you didn't you didn't have to lock your door and uh a some of these are urban worries but uh it's uh it's a lot different all though i guess twenty years a go now in this area things were um similar because twenty years ago let's see it was after yeah to twenty twenty five years ago is when we had the washington riots the first rights we've been having some problem now and it reminded me of that uh_huh whereabouts uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well the washington riots weren't because the washington riots weren't because i lived right downtown washington and uh and what you saw is was what you got i'm telling you yeah but you know it's it is interesting uh they're so many they're different kind of [dangers] that face young people now and social pressures uh the pressures of drug is so much the [prevalence] is so much greater the the kinds of diseases that you've got out the uh um i mean the consequences is so much of what's going on is so much more serious then when we were younger uh_huh uh_huh yes and uh_huh that's true i also being involved in the school system see so many of the problem children coming from their parents um children who will lie and cheat and you approach their parents and their parents are constantly justify them rather then to uh you know they're constantly [excusing] their child and you can see exactly why the child is that way you can as a teacher can't hold a child accountable if you're not going to get reinforced by that at home and you can't make up in a classroom of one hour a day what's not been done for fifteen or sixteen years at home and you're you get mixed signals so it's it's not always the school's systems i think a lot of it is the families the way you were mentioning yeah no of course life is a lot more complicated too in ways um the kinds of jobs that people need to be trained for now uh you know with farming being so [mechanized] uh people working on the family farm which was a traditional american way that becomes less and less likely factory jobs are so much more um uh sophisticated and the kinds of knowledge that uh you know it it's requiring an increasingly sophisticated labor force and some people just don't have it and you worry when you know these the sex and drugs on the young children and the [unborn] children uh in terms of what it's going to mean to a society in the future it's a some ways it's rather frightening it certainly is well it sure is it sure is it was a little easier though wasn't it yes yeah and all the things demanded of the mother too i mean uh i look at my mother's life i mean she she didn't work um um for a long time when i was very young she didn't drive uh she learned to drive i think when i was um a teenager and her life was a lot simpler and i sit here that's right that's right that's right they need you more as a teenager isn't that true that's why i'm working in a school system so that i'm home when they're home um that's isn't that that's so true uh uh i find working in a high school is very helpful because it let's me be a little more tolerant and understanding of what people do and it keeps me from being the old [fogy] so but at the same time it also it prevents kids from try to go pull the wool over your eyes as to what's but that's the same i'm home in the summers i'm home with the holidays i'm home at three o clock when the children are at home or where home one is now a senior in high school and the other's in college and uh it's uh it uh it does uh_huh uh_huh that's right well i that's that is that is so true and it's not that always that the children always say something but every once in awhile they'll come up and make a comment and you realize it's important that uh and yet you know we have to make that choice i think twenty thirty years ago a lot of women just didn't have to make that choice well i linda lee uh_huh and your name was well i enjoyed talking with you well i enjoyed talking with you okay bye bye it seems to me that one of the biggest differences is the computer revolution and i can very clearly remember ten years ago i was just beginning to explore [computerizing] my office and and trying to find out what kinds of computers might be useful and we did end up with uh i b m p c which i now would not have chosen but that was before the macintosh and twenty years ago i was uh in graduate school [pecking] out a dissertation on a manual typewriter so i would say that's one of the largest changes in at least in my life uh_huh uh_huh right yeah thirty years ago i i had a college job uh working as a programmer and we had to write code in binary and uh have it [punched] in on those little cardboard cards which i don't think exists anymore you never see one of those punch cards anymore well very possibly uh i'm not sure in the last ten years it's been very different from before uh certainly in the last thirty i would say there have been significant changes even even the change from black and white to color television thirty years ago i guess there were color t v but i sure didn't have access to one and uh but twenty years ago practically everybody had a color t v and now i think they're as almost as many well there are more t v than households so it's close to getting uh one t v per person they say uh_huh yeah certainly ten years ago uh v c r were just coming on the market so that's made a significant difference in the way i watch television for instance because uh now i almost never watch a t v program when it's on i tape it and then watch it when it's convenient and that way i don't have to worry about being interrupted i can just put it on [pause] right uh_huh yes you can watch a program in forty five minutes instead of an hour you skip the commercials wasn't the decline so much i think they just said the changes in uh social social changes in the united states how was life different ten twenty or thirty years ago so yes yes that's certainly a difference yeah that's another one yeah car phones is a good point and uh cellular phones of all types and [beepers] uh ten years ago i was working in a job at a medical center and i had to carry a beeper around and they were kind of bulky and all they did was just uh make a beep noise and then you had to go find a telephone and call in to find out what they wanted you for and who you were supposed to call these days they have these tiny little things that are only about the size of two or three [pencils] and they fit in your shirt pocket and they have a little display screen that shows you a message and either tells you a person or a a phone number to respond to and yeah those are pretty neat and they have the kind that just [vibrates] so you can shut them off in a theatre or something and you can still get your messages but let's see social changes uh uh i haven't the [slightest] idea i was just thinking though about a a huge social change in the last ten years is aids it was just beginning to be recognized and noticed ten years ago i i know that because i was writing a paper about it i was writing a a journal article uh and they still didn't even know what caused it or anything and uh there was a suspicion that it was a virus but nobody had identified it and they were really just going on [epidemiological] uh uh [guesswork] uh because the way it was [transmitted] made it look an awful lot like uh hepatitis and then from from the spread pattern of hepatitis they could work backwards to the transmission by uh blood and [semen] and then i well i i was in english as a matter of fact and medieval studies uh but i went to work as an editor and writer so uh uh the ten years ago i was working in the medical center uh publishing a journal and writing about medical topics and let's see twenty years ago i guess we're were just beginning to get into what they were calling the uh the sex revolution where uh after the pill and uh uh freed people up from worries about uh [illegitimate] pregnancy and i guess in the seventies is the the time when that was supposed to have [exploded] thirty years ago there was no pill yes i do i really do i have uh four kids in college right now children and [stepchildren] and i know that the expectation for them was uh to have sex and much earlier than the expectation when i was in college in my day we talked quietly behind our hands about people that we suspected might be sleeping with their boyfriends but they certainly didn't expect everybody to and it was really only uh acceptable if you were engaged and planning to get married in in the relatively near future and i certainly know from talking to my stepdaughter that girls in high school were under a whole lot more pressure nowadays and i guess the answer is is stay flexible because nobody can predict what's going to happen in twenty years i certainly wouldn't have been able to twenty years ago tell you what uh my kids were likely to be like course one of them was just a a a brand new baby twenty years ago so i sure wouldn't have been able to predict for him and some of the other ones weren't born yeah electronic mail i just got on that this past about a year ago and that's made a difference in the way i do my job because it's so much easier to get hold of people and get quick answers to things even when they're on another continent yeah even you know that reminds me federal express was around ten years ago but it was used as kind of an extreme emergency and nowadays people use fed ex all the time people do seem to travel more it's much more common for people even teenagers to be going to europe and south america and asia uh i was almost thirty before i got off this continent and uh both my kids had been abroad when they were still in high school uh_huh yeah yeah really yeah oh i know it yeah i i've seen that just in the last uh even five years how much they've uh increased in use or probably eight years when i was a freshman in college uh my degree was in computer uh technology originally and it seemed like it would they were just getting out with the you know the disks and all that getting away with the cards you know doing away with the the programming cards and uh i know no uh i think t v has a lot to do with the changes too don't you in like people's attitudes yeah oh yeah and now everybody uh has v c r and two or three v c r and that kind of thing yeah i know yeah and you can you can flip through the commercials so you don't have to watch the commercials that's always convenient uh_huh so what was our question about decline in yeah well i can't really remember back that far but ten years ago uh i don't know i'd say like in the nineteen seventies you remember how kids would walk around with a m what do you call those little a m [radios] and now people have jam box with c d players in them you know and hand held t v and car phones yeah uh_huh those are cool yeah yeah where do you think it's where do you think it's going to go in twenty years yeah uh_huh wow uh_huh yeah i'm curious what was your uh graduate study in oh wow uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh you think that's caused a lot of pressure on like younger kids today to make choices that they probably shouldn't have to make yeah uh_huh yeah yeah yeah uh_huh oh yeah it's kind of scary when i think of what will happen in twenty years you know when i have kids and they're grown and uh just kind of some of the changes that will happen even more so seems like it can't get much worse yeah uh_huh um yeah so sounds like america's going to become even more communication society with [faxes] and cellular phones and worldwide communication and yeah yeah it's pretty wild uh_huh yeah sure do huh yeah yeah yeah i know that's what uh what my family was talking when i picked up and moved to texas from indiana and they were like well you know thirty years ago we wouldn't have done that you know and uh especially come home every couple months you know and well what kind of music did you all listen to uh_huh no now well then you was in the uh or i am sorry i am going to make you sound like you're eighty something okay woodstock what was yeah what was you doing during woodstock uh_huh you would have had a ball i i kind of liked would have liked to have been there yeah don't you wish you had been able to though oh that would have been such a great memory yeah yeah you went and planted a tree or something uh_huh well well growing up with when i grew up it just was not we did not have any causes to me it didn't doesn't seem like we have got much you know what i mean yeah well i do remember demonstrations over [busing] yeah yeah yeah well right by the time i was born even now you know women's rights uh we just we are totally equal now there is not really a lot to fight over now i saw something on t v last night on twenty twenty you know men's uh fathers or daddies now wait a minute daddies are people too it is about a lot of men you know all right going through divorces the judge will usually uh give custody to the mother ninety seven percent of the time because they go through the female uh yeah something like that but it does seem you know yeah it really does yeah they are well i thought about that i thought well now men you know have to fight to be equal and i think that is only right though really he one guy said the judge looked at him and said well now mister so and so he says i have never seen uh [calves] follow a bull they always follow the [heifer] that is why i always he said that is why i always give custody to the mama and he said well he said does that mean you are going to shoot them if they break a leg and you know butcher them if they get fat he said my kids are my cattle you know but that that is the way most people feel that women should get custody yeah i am married and i have got two kids my husband is not a [conformist] at all he is still back there in the seventies well i mean he is still wearing bell bottoms not bell bottoms but [flared] pants and he well i do not like them but you know to him yeah any day now well he just you know he is he is his own person he you know he does stay with it as far as music and stuff goes but he wears what clothes he wants to which we are both that way if something is out of style i do not really care if i like it i am going to wear it but uh my husband is not a [conformist] at all uh_huh well uh we are trying to keep away from that my husband works for the railroad we have got it real tight but i have got a four month old baby and i do not want to work i want to tend to her i want to raise my kids uh_huh well right well when he grew up he grew up with his we both grew up with single mothers and my mom had six kids so she had to work and you know i was raised by my sisters and stuff and i can i can't see the difference but i know that it would have been better had mom been able to stay home with us right right and my husband was the same way and we just i want to raise my kids i do not want a day care or an aunt or anybody else raising them i want to be there to make sure that well they need guidance and they do need parental guidance twenty four hours a day do you stay home with yours uh_huh they raise them well but see now yeah okay sweetie let mommy talk well i think that's neat right uh_huh well i know the family is really going through changes but now we are trying to go back to about the sixties when the parents you know when the mother was staying at home unit or that what do they call it the nuclear family yeah but uh uh well my family is kentucky now my one of my sisters is down here her husband happened to get a job at t i they moved out here but his family lives here and my husband was in the service when i met him and so we we've been all over okay kyle then i he got a sunburn and he is [itching] so i am keep having to scratch his back see uh i would love to get a business going out of my home outside of i mean going yeah i would rather work at home if i could yeah that is the trend yeah they are bringing offices i mean i mean big businesses into their home bringing their computers home and working from there well i think i think one that would be uh it is uh kids could see their parents you know how hard they work they would understand more when uh we first moved down here i was working i was working a twelve hour shift and it was three and four days a week and uh oh my little boy just he went wild you know i mean because because he had been used to me being there all the time yeah and he is just now well when i got pregnant i went ahead and quit work and decided just to stay at home and it was costing too much at home than more at home than i was bringing in so uh_huh uh_huh no it seems like it is totally different of course i do not have much to compare it to to me our causes do not seem as important as you all's were do you know what i mean you you what okay we passed them on to us uh_huh no okay yeah well oh my goodness now see we think of classic rock that they you know have on all the easy listening stations now as our heart and soul i mean it was that is a really good question because that was everything from the rolling stones to the beatles i mean we were there yeah i was well i was i was in seventh grade when the beatles came out i was fourteen years old woodstock well i wanted to go i was in chicago and i guess i was close to eighteen or something i i it was like i think the summer between my uh high school and college somewhere around in there i can't quite remember the year and uh uh yeah we could not we could not get it together to drive i mean you know we had never driven outside of you know ten miles out of town at that time and here we were all [hep] to go to woodstock you know i really do you it would have been incredible i i think of uh you know all the social changes that were going on around that time and and the sixties as being so [revolutionary] in a lot of ways in terms of raising people's consciousness everything from well i mean i remember we had the first earth day back then you know we got out of school at at uh the university and we celebrated earth day yeah planted trees and stuff and we did not realize you know the implications of all that then and a lot of the stuff that goes on today well well you do you'll i mean there there was no name to it it was everything that was started in the sixties you had you had to fight for racial equality and [busing] it was like just a [continuum] you know everything sort of had a seed in the sixties and women's rights i mean things for women were totally different for you by that time you just assume yeah yeah well we learned from [kramer] versus [kramer] didn't we it seems unfair but it see men are coming into their own now too yeah well are you married and do you have children two kids and and how does your husband respond to all the new social uh changes well see bless his heart you know they are going to be back in style any day now oh yeah oh well see that that is the spirit of the sixties and whether we are talking about the rain forests i tell you you know the situation you have right now and and all of our generations is what to do with the children because both mother and father have to work now oh okay that's that's see that is your commitment you do not know what you are changing when you do something like that you do not understand the total commitment it takes to be a parent uh uh_huh that one person that you could always count on being there well they definitely do they definitely do i uh well see i if i had some i would i i have not i had an unfortunate thing happen and i am you know and it is not going to happen that way but my my uh friends are having babies right and left so i get to see the different ways that they uh all raise them and and one gal she started a business in her home and she she hired an au pair which is a college kid to come in and take care of her two boys while she works in the other end of the house and the guy lives in with her you know i mean you know it is a family sort of unit sort of thing and the and so so that is a different way and then my other girlfriend just you know tears her hair out and goes at it you know twenty four hours a day watching both kids all the time and i think there is a point where you just have to get away and it is good for the kid and it is good for you to develop you know your interest so you do not stop growing at the same time yeah yeah do you have any uh do you have your mom or anybody around you that helps you yeah uh_huh oh right well that is well see and and that is uh the sort of the thing of the nineties is women working out of their own home right and i think you know the more we try to you know shape that the more input we have into what that whole system is going to look like because that is that is our choice now too that is that is our cause yeah uh_huh um being there all the time yeah yeah see the economic situation on the whole thing and then uh well it is see we do have things that we are concerned about here this generation i don't know social change is always going to go on but i think we have taken a big leap in the last you know twenty thirty years and uh nothing is the same well yeah but we we grew we passed them on to you you know i mean i said we passed them on to you i mean you know because it takes a lot of hard work it takes writing letters to congressmen and and you know just being very very politically [astute] about how to shape and mold the future and and uh you know um did we make the right choices we do not know we will never know i mean you know i i think we made a wrong choice when i look at the children of today yeah i think we made some big wrong choices and i think business got in the way i think the greed of the eighties got yes what what major changes have affected your life you mean yourself or women in general uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's interesting because that relates to the thing that that strikes me the most and i'm sure you've you've [labelled] the cause because what strikes me the most in the changes in society is the way kids behave and that's right that's right and you know i mean i was thinking it just you know my complaint would would be um that i think that you know the kids in the neighborhood run wild and they they destroy property and they you know steal each other's toys and stuff and there's just no respect for for people or property and i guess you know when you stop to think of it these kids have probably been deprived of a lot of attention that they've needed all their lives scary uh_huh but for how many years uh_huh oh that's great uh_huh right uh_huh no i agree a hundred percent a hundred percent i guess i was lucky because i was teaching and so i was able to just go to a class and teach when my son was little and so i'd be gone you know an hour and fifteen minutes or something at a stretch and then yeah very soon he was old enough to just go and sort of stay in my office and you know nobody seemed to have a big problem with that so that's an interesting issue though um yeah right i've actually another one that i a question i would have is i guess i'm being you know beyond the age of thinking of this this problem i had an argument recently with my boss i think it was about the need for women to work but i think you put your finger on it when you said that they're not respected if they don't work because it seems to me that a lot of people i know women i know are doing very menial jobs in a certain sense certainly financially and i mean when i see the amount of clothes that they buy and and how much it costs them to buy fast food on the way home i'm sure that they're not making quote making money for the family on this and and probably you're right well no even families that don't have child care i mean you know when i think of this one friend who makes probably twenty thousand dollars a year and i'm sure she spends at least that in clothes plus you know fast food every day and out to lunch every day and exactly and i mean you know even though they don't have children they they have relatives and you know the husband would certainly like a lot more attention and and she wouldn't have to hire somebody to clean the house and do the gardening and so i i guess you're right it's it's our society demands women to work if they're going to be respected really sad oh that's true uh_huh uh_huh so that might be a positive change in society uh_huh uh_huh i guess i haven't seen that as much in this area although every now and then you hear about it uh but among you know people i know i don't see a great you know there are those people who have have had serious questions all along and you know are sort of pursuing it but um the churches here are growing leaps and bounds and i thought it was more because of the the very transient nature of the area and that people were going basically just as you said as a social to meet people and that but um it's hard to judge and there are a lot of things changing i suppose just you know the whole the whole environment i find um sort of you know i wonder with with all our chemicals and and that and and the foods we eat and you know young people that i know are getting very serious diseases and probably well it's just it's maybe it's more unusual now when you know somebody quite young gets certain kinds of cancer and in the past maybe the same percentage got them but we didn't know it or i don't know well i guess we've sort of run dry a little bit it was nice talking to you okay bye bye well i think that uh women women working is the one that really affects me most strongly right now um well women in general and and also myself but um it used to not really make a difference to me um or at least i didn't think so but my mother worked and i kind of now wish that that she hadn't that um that she had um stayed home and right now i'm kind of stuck because i'd like to have children but i'm not ready to do that because when i do have children i want to stay home so i'm having to uh try to figure out a way to be able to do that and in in our society right now that's really something that's that's um not respected and it's not it's not um it's not easy to do at all i mean there's a great deal of sacrifice that has to be made on the part of a family if the if the wife is going to actually be a mother uh_huh i think that that they have to be related uh_huh uh_huh i think that that's probably true i just wish there was a way i know that in in you know in sweden what they have there it's really their medical plan but it also deals with this subject because if a woman uh is working and i think even if she's not and has a child the government [subsidizes] her to stay home and raise the child i don't i don't know until it um i'm sure until at least school age and maybe longer what this does is it allows the government to subsidize her to be the mother of her children rather than to subsidize child care to raise the child for her and i think that that's a real a much much more viable solution really oh yeah that's great uh_huh um goodness what else oh there's been so many how do you just uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah really i don't see how they could be especially not if they have to pay for child care uh_huh you're probably right if she sat down and looked at it she'd be like god what am i doing this for you know uh_huh yeah religion has changed too um uh some people now it seems like are turning back toward actually trying to find out what they're in it for instead of just um it it's it some places still it seems like it's a social club you know it's just a place to go to visit uh to wear your nice clothes and and to sit around and talk but um i think a lot of people are really you know searching now to find find out who they are and who god is and what all that really means now yeah oh it's it's um it's beginning i think uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh oh yes well i guess that's always happened maybe not as much as now but okay nice to talk to you bye bye uh do you want to give a start on it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh uh oh definitely uh_huh uh_huh you can relate to that now see we didn't we don't have any of that because well like we live in the country in clarion county and uh we really didn't have things like that going on that we you know uh ran into so we kind of uh i guess when i think of social changes i think think more of uh uh visiting habits of families and such uh yeah that there's less visiting done i think on a whole than there used to be used to be that you took the family whether the kids wanted to go or not you went visiting and uh today you know people they do visit but it's not quite the same as uh what it was say twenty years ago thirty years ago uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh well they're so spread out i think has a lot to do with it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right right that's right yeah the majority yeah probably because when you work you don't really care to go out and visit as much and uh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh no huh_uh they don't do as much uh_huh you have to make arrangements or have an invitation or yeah yeah well that could be part of it i don't know for sure what it is i know our children mostly are scattered out at a distance so we really don't have that even we don't oh really oh that's pretty good uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well apparently there must be work available for those that are uh_huh because around here there's really nothing for the young people no good i mean there's jobs there's minimum wage jobs but uh to make a good living there really around here there just isn't too much uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh so well there's the main things i can think of i really tried to think of some other things and i couldn't really yeah definitely some good and some bad uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh they'd rather get their life started first before uh_huh yeah well even to get school finished i think a lot of times it's better if they do finish their schooling before they settle in because a marriage takes a lot of effort and concentration and if you're busy with school it's i think it's really difficult for a family uh_huh uh_huh right right yeah i know my my daughter that lives in pittsburgh she has two little boys and they they've been in day care since you know one's four and one's one and they've done well now i wouldn't want to do it that way but uh she's quite happy and the children seem quite adjusted uh_huh that's right yeah yes uh_huh that's right yeah uh_huh now i'm going to baby sit my granddaughter she's just eight weeks old so this will be new for me so uh but the others i'm too far away to help them out at all uh well i have a son and daughter that live in pittsburgh one in maryland and one in connecticut a son in connecticut no but like connecticut takes eight hours to drive home and uh it's too far to you know really go too often pittsburgh's not quite so bad it's just a couple hours maryland maybe five hour drive uh_huh that's worse yet oh are you really do you uh stay overnight on the way or you you're young how old are you okay well you're young enough yet to uh_huh it's work to get there yeah yeah uh_huh now my son they they flew he rebuilt a [aranca] chief airplane and they flew down last weekend they came down in it and it still took a long time because it's not a fast it's not a high speed airplane but they enjoyed in thoroughly so i'm not sure but you have to change phones you have to call from another a different well i think for me i i'm from alabama south alabama and so i grew up in the [midst] of civil rights movement uh in a pretty liberal family for for that area at the time and so i was very much a part of all the uh you know what was going on there uh my parents are pretty active and uh it was very scary and but now we've seen you know uh black people have a lot more civil rights in that area and i guess all over than they did you know twenty years ago there's still a lot to be you know to be accomplished but for me when i think about social change that's what i first think of because i can remember you know separate public [restrooms] and separate water [fountains] and sitting in the back of the bus and everything uh_huh uh_huh yeah well that's true that's a good one right there right and i grew up in out in the country too basically in a rural area and with lots of family and so we were always at family in different family [members'] homes but even now you know they don't even do that well and they're so busy people people's personal schedules are so busy mainly because i a lot of it has to do i think with more women working in our family you know twenty years ago not that many of the women worked and now uh almost all the women work and so that means you know a lot of a lot of the social visiting and all was i think probably [instigated] by women at that time right and now that's right and now uh i mean my mother does not work and and she you know she's finds herself pretty alone a lot because most of her friends are working women but even just social visits people don't do that anymore you're right and people don't feel comfortable just to drop in on people anymore there's a real right you know you don't want to you want to make sure it's okay or i guess we don't not to make invade people's privacy or whatever well out of out of fifteen grandchildren in my family only two of us don't live within fifty miles and and most live within ten or or twenty so but that's you know that is rural it's a rural family and most people didn't go away i'm just one of the two out of fifteen that don't live in the you know even in the same state yeah there is in that area uh_huh and i guess you know that would greatly affect social i e social change probably the job market has and the the economy has always affected uh social change probably well i think just also you know the women's movement too has affected a lot of social change uh people marry yeah people marry later i mean basically i think now again where i'm from in in alabama that's not necessarily true because people do still get married right out of high school but now out here in texas where i am now that's very unusual most people get i mean get go to college or at least get a job and even you know people are seem to a lot of people seem to be engaged for a long time before they get married because they do want to be financially set up right but probably uh you know more women being in in the work force also greatly greatly affects social change because it affects child care and uh right well and they're you know they're they're saying right now we don't know what we just now are seeing the effects of day care on the generation that's just now coming into the work force and in their twenties they are the first generation that basically grew up with day care and so you know it [remained] to be seen exactly what that what that does uh_huh where do they live well they're not too far though uh_huh well i live like fourteen hours from home in fact i'm i'm driving i'm i'm driving home tomorrow so to go be there for the fourth of july no i can drive it all it's just me so i can make it i'm thirty five although it's it's it is pretty i don't know i don't enjoy it that much it's pretty much like get there and it's just not that pleasant even with other people i basically just don't like to drive that far uh_huh when you say you're in the second phase of this project what is the second phase of it oh hello my name is nola i'm in plano texas not too far away i've had some from plano too uh_huh okay um let's see social changes that sounds like not as recent social changes too like back to the sixties or fifties i guess think we can handle that okay uh shall i go ahead and push one okay you want to go ahead and start oh that involves a lot of different areas i think yeah there is a a big difference in the uh economic um status of uh people although i think that has been true uh always um perhaps there's less of the middle range then there was uh i think uh in my situation i have three children and we're uh home schooling so education you know things that relate to education um are things that i think about a lot um i think that and i think that involves social changes a lot uh for instance i think the schools are having more and more problems because of uh things that are happening socially in the world around them and in in because of their parents and things that are being taught in the home are not taught in the home rather more not than are and children being put in day care centers from very early and and i think that a lot of these things that have been happening such as the day care centers and things are having a big effect on the social changes because of the way children are being raised they're not learning the values they need to learn and they're not um they don't have the self esteem that they need to have and they don't have the um a solid family life that they need to have to confidently and deal with the things in the world and uh i think we're seeing a lot of rebellion and things because of that and the things like the gang gang things that are happening and and um yeah yeah oh it's that's really sad i think that a lot of people and they think they have to but i i think that if they really tried they wouldn't have to and i i think that if they didn't that and it became more of the standard not to that uh i don't know maybe companies would start paying men more so that their wives could stay home you know and have a more solid uh foundation for the kids that's right it's already it already costs society much more because of it you know it trying to do all these programs like [headstart] and things like those you wouldn't have to do that if mothers would stay home with their children and do things with them you know um there's and i think uh a lot of it is [selfishness] people have become very selfish they don't want to stay home with the kids or something like that there are a lot of two parent um situations where the woman goes back to work because that's what she wants to do you know rather than that she has to have the money particularly or maybe there's a small need for money so she does it partly because of the money but partly for herself too you know home school yeah no i i have uh one going into fourth grade and one starting kindergarten and then a [preschooler] and one on the way yes yes and i think uh it's becoming uh more popular then it has been for a while i think home [schooling's] always been around but uh i can see more and more families going to it because of the problems in the schools um and a lot of it is discipline problems a lot of it is and you can tell which kids have been in day care centers it it's really obvious to look at them and watch the way they act and things that um they've been raised in a day care center well i think it's going to change in the homes before anything changes anywhere else the home is the base it's the basic unit and that's the where it all starts and if we don't start making changes in the homes and maybe part of that is educating parents better and educating uh you know i know they do do some they do have some classes in um high schools and things for kids to uh give them an idea of what family life is like and the uh you know and uh that kind of thing but uh hello hi nola i'm steve i'm in dallas texas no that's unusual seems like usually oh yeah i think all mine have been east coast people so far so social changes what's that mean yeah yeah yeah i definitely i mean there's plenty of things to talk about there that's a yeah sure uh i was hoping that you would but oh in social changes is that uh it seems to me that uh does that yeah like a lot it seems like the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer is even more true today you know yeah it's like people are starting to give up hope and they start out very poor let's see that's a bad [tangent] to get on what else has changed between the sixties and the eighties and the nineties no yeah yeah it seems so that yeah that is a pretty big change it seems even not just single parent families but with no guidance but it seems like some of these even ladies that that'll work and have a baby and then you know after two or three months go back to work you know well that that i mean that's very young for a baby yeah yeah yeah yeah i mean they're going to like you said i mean there's they might be saving money i mean even if they had to pay more now i mean in the long run it's going to cost society more to force two people to work even though it's higher productivity is short term yeah yeah oh rather than she needs the money just she wants the stimulating environment huh it yeah it's interesting how uh home study is that what you said home school is that uh is is it like uh a preschool level then or through grade school or oh i oh well you sound busy so you're teaching them completely huh yeah yeah yeah that's pretty sad because i mean i don't know something's got to change with the schools that's what it all boils down to in the end usually anyway when they're young yeah yeah changing people's expectations uh well i guess social change takes in a a big category but uh i guess the the one aspect of it that i took in uh consideration is more economical i i know that the amount of or how far your dollar goes probably more than anything has has greatly changed i know they they did a it was on a talk show they took uh the parents and then the uh the son and they compared income at different points in time when the when the father was you know was a little bit younger and more in his heyday and they and they compared to the son's that he was making now and even though the son was probably more successful you know higher up in the the management ladder uh his he was actually making less money when you when you go by costs of living yeah i know just uh just with me ten years ago i was comparing the i think i i was living better ten years ago than i am now even though i'm making more money now but my dollar went a lot farther yeah yeah well i i know gas prices have definitely jumped uh from uh i know i used to pay twenty five cents a gallon and now it's over a buck i don't know what it's uh by you around here minnesota wisconsin area it's uh it's dropping but i think it's about a dollar fifteen on an average okay well that's uh that's most of the people i talk to are texas so yeah oh i suppose this will be one of my towards my last one pretty soon so they'll stop me but uh i'm uh i'm pretty much out to the things to say yeah okay yeah i i i don't think they they consider like i say it's a broad category it's just i'm not economical but uh even attitudes on on clothing and stuff uh i know yeah i i i know a lot of the things that that we wear men wear nowadays were would have been considered uh feminine uh many years ago but i know it's been it was hard for me at first but now i kind of like you know a lot of the bright colors i mean like i used to be more uh conservative and just your basic colors but now i i do like some of these uh brighter [fluorescent] colors yeah yeah i i i guess the the best thing i like to see from the sixties and seventies is of course is the mini skirt of course one of the nice things but uh yeah i don't think that there's anything as original it's it's all based on uh one of the past styles they just um make their uh circle and come back again so if you hang onto your clothes long enough uh they'll they'll be back in style in a few years yeah well i think thinking back i think the only style i hope doesn't come back is bell bottoms i guess when i look at pictures of myself in the bell bottoms i say god um yes i agree uh_huh right um right uh_huh and it's depending on where you live though too yeah that's true ten years ago i was eleven oh i remember though like buying candy and stuff that was a lot less expensive than it is now and gas and i used to hear stories from my grandpa and you know he could see a movie for like a nickel and things like that yeah yeah i'm from wisconsin yeah oh yeah i spoke to a person from texas too this is only my second phone call so i'm waiting for mine um oh like like social changes um um and i don't think this would have anything to do with it but like clothing and styles lot of those changed yeah uh_huh definitely towards each other uh_huh yeah yeah yeah but they styles come and go all the time though it's just ridiculous fads in and out and even um clothing from the sixties came back i see a lot of um girls wearing sixties clothes yeah yeah that's true maybe some day i probably won't be alive to see it but prices might go down lot more i don't know though doesn't look good yeah i remember that i do yeah i didn't really care for them either but now i well um since i'm in college uh i mean uh i haven't seen that much change i'm kind of young still i don't know how much it changed in the last uh twenty years anyway but i don't know do you do you have an idea of of how much uh_huh oh okay yeah right well i can remember are from from my childhood were the disco days and maybe that's changed a lot uh the way the way people dress and uh more lax uh_huh maybe a people are a little more open minded than maybe they used to be uh_huh right right uh_huh especially with like a lot of the different organizations now like you know pro life and and uh choice in in the special interest groups maybe um like amnesty uh yeah maybe people are a little a little more uh free to express their opinions socially free oh yeah right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right right just wasn't socially acceptable yeah uh maybe maybe too a big social change that's that's maybe for the worst is uh is is how um the people's uh views on on relationships has changed you know and now we have now we have several you know we have to worry about aids and we have to worry about uh maybe people are becoming more aware more more afraid of relationships uh_huh right yeah yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah right it used to be that we were that we were trying to protect [morality] now it's we're protecting our lives it's a it's a much different we have you know you can't just just hope for abstinence yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's right yeah right uh_huh uh_huh right right yeah i i i imagine you're right i i teach swim lessons a lot and and to see what see what kids talk about when uh you know they're they're open about well you know kids are a lot more educated now than i think that that like we were uh at that age um about a lot of things you know besides what besides what they learn uh from from our social environment is uh their education is just amazing kids are kids are learning uh you know their math is just every year uh algebra goes down a grade you know and and uh students learn it earlier no i'm not that old either i'm only twenty nine so social changes aren't that much for me either well yeah that i think attitudes are more lax now than they used to be uh_huh relaxed and laid back and stuff and i think so i think so and a lot i think people are are used to now saying what's what's on their minds more more up front than they used to be right yeah i think so i think women have come out more too on on like child abuse and and the wife [beatings] and and like you said pro pro choice and whatnot i think that's become more outstanding than it used to be where women i think used to be a little bit afraid of coming out and saying something no huh_uh right well i know like when i was in high school and junior high and stuff and sitting down and having the sex talk with mom you know and all that stuff and you know we didn't have to talk about well basically her thing was just don't do it you know but i'm not i'm not naive to think that my children are not going to not do it it wasn't that long that i was that young and i've got a ten year old and you know he thought he knows about [condoms] and and he knows about aids and it's just different things you have to talk to them about now that you would never even have [dreamt] to have to say anything about uh_huh no i don't i think that's stupidity on parents' part i mean that's sex is rampant and it always will be and and i think too noticing the kids that the fourth and fifth graders which is what my son is and stuff they they're just they're more they're very open i mean the boys are very open because that's that's all i have is boys so that's all i'm around basically is boys but they talk about things that i my brother didn't talk about until he was in college you know and and they sit down and they look at you right in the face and they expect a [truthful] answer you can't get them give them the oh you know cabbage patch answers and stuff they they that just does not go and they can tell me basically some things that i don't know but it it's interesting listening to them i think i think the social changes in them i think i see it more with that generation than i do with like our generation yeah i do too i know well my son the my fourth grader he is uh what do you think are the major social changes what age uh if you don't mind me asking oh well you're you're young i'm in my early fifties so you should take my word you're young every day yeah i can believe that that's that's social change well what do you think is is the major social change right now okay i think probably the big major change is the role of women i think one the women uh in the work force and i think the fact that they're becoming uh more uh how do i want to say not necessarily politically inclined but they're more apt to be in political offices now i think you know we've made great strides in that respect i think that it thirty years ago when uh i was newly married family was very very important then i think we [veered] where the family was not as important a unit and i think now it's [revolving] back full circle i think the family unit is becoming much more important than it was that's true that's true well i know that economically uh a wife almost has to work anymore and yet i'm also noticing uh in the areas that i'm working and stuff more and more women are wanting now to stay home with the children where fifteen years ago they didn't i mean you know they wanted children but they still wanted to be their own person out in the work force but i see i am seeing women now wanting to stay home more at least until the children are up to you know school age and uh i find that very interesting that that it's sort of [reverting] back uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh probably uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah it is it uh i i note that i had taken care of my grandchildren recently while my daughter and her husband had been out of town and i do not envy these mothers or these fathers that have these the children that they have to rush home from work and pick them up at day care get them through their homework get them to their soccer practice get them to their piano lessons i mean that's tough i don't envy these young parents that's true that's true i don't know and and i'm finding you know running into these uh women that are wanting to have their children at the age of thirty nine forty i'm thinking at the age of fifty two you're crazy you're going to be doing your worst running around when you're fifty and you're absolutely nuts well you can be go getting but you can also get gray hairs and have a nervous breakdown i just know it it would absolutely exhaust me maybe it's because it's my grandchildren and it's not my children maybe that's well well i'm i'm uh thirty one yeah right oh i you know i've seen a social change yeah it's definitely for sure and it's uh uh and besides that i came from california where social change is like you know yeah i mean every second you know social change in california means it takes another two or three minutes longer to get to work and uh when i started work there in it started you know actually going to work in eighty two i guess that's when it was between eighty two and eighty five uh it started out taking me an hour and fifteen minutes to get to work and then it became you know an hour and a half to you know some days two hours to get to work that's social change oh yeah that's that's a that's a tricky one i'll let you go first uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh i think it's that's probably for two reasons uh you know the number one is women wanted to get out of the house and the second reason was is everything costs so much more that if you don't have you know equal rights so that your wife gets equal pay you can't make twice as much uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah i i've i've i've found that too you know where the wife is married and and i mean not not married sorry wrong word where the wife has gone to school you know and gotten a degree spent five years out in the work force found you know the the their husband either at college or whatever but still you know after five years it's like first kid and then they're out of the work force for another ten years but i think most of those people are still out i think that generation they're all at home right now and and we won't see them back for another two or three years uh i'm very rarely do i meet anybody whose children are are you know past that age when they've been away for a few years but uh it's kind of different uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i uh i'm an assistant scout master and that's that's it's like uh yeah parents uh even rarely see their kids for weekends which is you know kind of rough too especially now yeah yeah i i know two women that that uh let's see one of them's forty nine and the other one well the other one i don't know what her age is but i know she is she is somewhere in that [hairy] age of half a century up there and uh boy i'll tell you these are the the go [gettingest] happiest people i've ever met you know because i'm thirty i'm getting gray hairs already um do you see as uh the changes that have occurred in the last beverly huh yeah that's a big one well i think that society has come to a point where they're not responsible for any of their actions somebody else uh made them do it uh that's what i seem to see a lot of that uh no one is willing to take responsibility for their life and their choices it's rather sue these guys because they made a uh a seat belt that didn't work right or uh that's what i think is a big one uh_huh sure yeah and another thing i think has changed quite a bit is uh the roles that men and women play that's really in the last thirty years has changed significantly well both you know there's some great things that uh have come about with more equality but i think that also i don't know what's causing society to have so many broken families and things like that because i think that's bad for us uh_huh yeah i would agree with you uh i think one of the thing that i notice a lot i know it's touching social changes but uh to me what becomes socially acceptable and i i don't know if it's a factor of me growing older and seeing things through different eyes or if it's a factor of our society actually moving in that direction but i notice things on t v being more um open more i believe uh they portray things on t v obviously that they never would have years ago and you know and specifically nudity things like that uh i don't know i i've said several times to my husband that i feel like gee in ten years they'll have just full nudity on t v and nobody will think anything of it and to me that's surprising to me that's that's a big change to accept it and it comes across i think [subtly] you know a little at a time to where you get so used to seeing a little change that you know when they go one step further you don't notice it that much that's one of the biggest ones i've seen what about you uh_huh i tend to agree with you and i think there's a lot of that um yeah we have become lawsuit happy any little thing it's like let's see what i can get don't you think that maybe a lot of that came from um oh you know the the the era we went through that was like you know hey if it makes you happy do it you know kind of like disregard to others do what makes you happy and and yes we should take care of ourselves you know and we should see to our own lives but not to a total disregard of others um i don't know i think it's come to that a lot i see it a lot in my daughter i have a four year old and hers isn't a social thing as much as it's a stage they go through but whenever something happens it's you made me hit that you made me do this and so i try to tell her everything isn't always somebody else's fault you know you have to watch where you're going and and so it's what you just said kind of hits home to me just through her so i think you're right um in your opinion good or bad or both i do too i think part of that i don't know i think the role of women changing has been good in that women are feeling like in terms of their self confidence their self worth you know i can do something i can be somebody you know if i put my mind to it i can accomplish things too and i think that's good but um i think when you push you know maybe i think when that was first trying come about with you know what we know as the women's [lib] movement i think it was too extreme um i think you can be feminine and still be all those other things too you know and i think there's definite roles and i think you know part of the break up of the family maybe it's because of the the the social changes i don't know the fact that uh during their early changes where you know women did come more speak maybe speak out i was going to say come more out of themselves but speak out i think a lot of men were threatened by that i think now less men are you know because they're used to it it's around them um but i i don't know i i i don't know why the families are breaking up i think that may go back to what you said a minute ago about people not being responsible for themselves or their actions because it's like they don't go into the marriage with a commitment that this is going to work they go in and say well hey you know i'll stick with it while it's good and then i'll get out and i i i think that directly affects the effort that you put into that marriage or that commitment okay you ready to discuss the the topic okay the topic is social changes and discuss social changes in america and how they relate or how they differ today than they were ten fifteen or thirty years ago you ready for that okay pardon me okay well there's uh it's kind of an interesting topic and one that i think is quite fascinating because uh couple of years ago i guess uh not very not very long ago seemed like the whole world not just the united states but the whole world was kind of in a [standstill] where everyone was basically in uh you know a very comfortable position so to say even though the the cold war was was in full swing you know you had the the russians against the americans the communists against the free world and in the last couple of years things have changed dramatically not only on the political front but also on the economic front where uh couple of years ago we had uh america was one of the leading powers and one of the [strongest] nations in the world as far as economics were concerned and now we're having a very tough time in a [recessionary] period we're also have a very [humongous] trade deficit and uh and that's kind of frightening also you know a couple of years ago ten fifteen ten fifteen years ago an individual going into a career could expect to have that career basically throughout their whole life and thirty years ago that was that was basically it whereas now we're expected to have a career change every you know every couple of years and possibly four to five career changes throughout our lifetime and so i think uh you know things there's been an awful lot of social change lately and and uh uh_huh uh_huh true uh_huh yes yes true true uh_huh well do do you think that's good or bad you think that's great that's some yeah because a lot of people seem to [stagnate] once they get into position they they're very comfortable they lose the ability to learn and they in a sense become [unteachable] they think they know all there is to know in the area set path and you know come in and put my time in from nine to five and when that's over with that's that's it without even giving a second thought to advancing their education or getting extracurricular um education and and i think that's an excellent opportunity for us to expand ourselves also uh_huh right i agree with that i agree with that but i believe that uh an individual should really learn how to to learn learn how to adapt learn how to grow in the in their college or whatever education they might take well that that's good that's good uh_huh yeah i i read a few articles off in the newspaper and some publications where stress uh for those people that are laid off and also for those people that are not laid off but were threatened with a layoff and threatened with a reduction in their company is extremely high right now that stress is a very [prominent] factor in the work place and it affects what's the topic okay you bet i'll let you lead out i'll let you lead out i think one of the things that's interesting to me is if you look particularly at the political changes is that the they seem to be social they seem to be economically driven also so if you look at russia and what's happened over there i think the change in communism was as a result of the economic problems that they were experiencing and of course i look at the economic problems in the united states right now one of the things you wonder is what that's going to do to us i think the other kind of changes like job changes and those kinds of things i mean i think it's great to even have three or four different careers in your life i think it must have been terribly boring to go through your life doing just one thing for fifty years or forty years some of that opportunity for job change in the fact that that aspects changing and the uncertainty of whether you're going to have a job is not as good but the fact that you really can make major changes in your life and jobs i think it's great oh yeah i think one of the problems with with education as it relates to this though is that i don't know that education is prepared to help people make those changes it just seems a lot of the training and education that goes on is [gearing] people towards a profession and not giving them the skills and whatever those skills are necessary to make those job changes which i think is going to be a hard thing for for people to face yeah there probably needs to be some training on how to to to adjust to these changes as they come about i mean if you look at the the high unemployment rate right now and you look at people who are in those situations i don't know that they have good coping skills or a lot of them even ideas of how to make those changes now so it seems to me that while those changes are taking place maybe we're not well preparing people to make the changes with them uh_huh uh let's see how about uh let's see about ten years ago uh what do you think was different ten years ago from now uh_huh uh_huh we well uh actually ten years from today seems rather short uh but i do agree that uh generally it's society has sort of uh let's see rushed everything ahead and uh i don't know it leaves leaves a lot of time out for family and things like that in other words they just [prioritize] their lives differently but i think that has a lot to do with economic situation uh um it depends uh it's hard to say because i think people were busy ten twenty years ago too uh i just i'm twenty eight yeah yeah i just i think that things were a bit were have been busy all along it's just a matter where priorities are at placed and that uh usually as far as families are concerned there used to be just one person working and usually the other parent was home and now uh it's pretty much an economic necessity of for most in most places for both parents to work i think that's part of it too but i do think no no i don't no i don't think that but then there are a lot of people that that don't have that but that really do need to work i think maybe those people that really do need to work both parents just to survive and then there is is that other group that is working to maintain a standard of living that uh they think is is surviving which is really more luxuries uh but i i tend to think that it's less those people that have the two cars and everything than it is the group that is just trying to survive i'm saying that the uh the group that is just trying to survive from day to day where both parents are working is more of the majority than the than the people that have the higher standard of living because if you look at economics across this country and statistics on who has the money and who the decreasing uh middle class in this country i think that that's in my opinion the case so i mean i have met people that uh both that that just want to maintain a the standard of living and those that that really need the job uh_huh uh_huh right well i would say as far as social changes go uh i think families were more together they they did more things together uh they ate dinner at the table together uh the parents usually took out time uh you know more time than they do now to come with the children and just spend the day doing a family activity uh although i'm not a mother i i still think that uh a lot has changed since ten years ago uh what do you think about that yeah uh_huh yes what about like as far as uh social changes in the individual do you think that the individual has as much time as they did let's say ten twenty years ago uh_huh well how how old are you twenty eight okay i'm twenty three so there's maybe a five year gap between us so uh huh yes uh_huh do you think it's an economic necessity or do you think that we're we're uh all trying to keep up with a certain standard of living i mean do you think people really need two cars and a house in the suburbs or uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh okay uh_huh so you think it's which group are you saying is the one trying uh_huh uh_huh okay okay and then sometimes i i often uh find that maybe there's so many different things available to us a microwave a v c r a answering machine a you know a special a dishwasher uh a refrigerator and some of those items um for the for the uh well i guess we're sticking more to social changes but uh people want all of that and not all of those are necessities so they're trying to it has become a necessity what do you think uh_huh i can be but go ahead right right we fax everything we don't even wait for the mail anymore right right uh_huh uh_huh right right you're expected to exactly and i recently read an article on just this that said stress today is so much worse it should be less because we have a microwave and our grandmothers had to bake brownies and we can throw them in a microwave for two minutes but the more conveniences we have the more that's expected of us and we have no down time like we don't stop and wait for things to happen because we don't have to so we keep moving we don't stop and wait for the things to bake and this to happen and that to happen we just hit buttons and keep going to the next thing so we have no relaxation time in between so they say that's really a bad thing that you need to learn a lot of ways to to deal with that and get your your time in between things so that's good that's an interesting point but i just think our our family lives have changed drastically and i think that's of course a part of it is technology i mean our kids where would they be without nintendo and you know their t v shows and some of that is really bad i think but we have all single families so many single families now uh a lot of working both parents are working so there's a whole big effect on our kids and not very many of my daughter's friends really are on their original mother and father you know i'm wondering what this is going to do in ten and twenty years you're probably right and i'm an o b nurse and that's never really occurred to me but that's that's interesting i never really thought about it that way yeah yeah that's true when is this good or not good we don't know that yet yeah i don't know either that's true right right yeah yeah that's kind of scary huh well that's true but i it's just very very different and i guess every ten years it's just been very different so and i don't know what's going to happen uh i know what i'm seeing here at my job is that people are having their children much later in life so that they're establishing careers and they've got their homes and they've got well uh i can't be terribly [authoritative] on what life was like thirty years ago uh because i'm not that old yet um uh i know that uh i mean obviously you look at at the technological aspect of of social change i mean you didn't have uh you didn't have video games you didn't have home computers you didn't have xerox machines i mean uh you you try to you go into a a business today and you you try to imagine the whole thing except running off of carbon paper and it's almost [inconceivable] now because the xerox machines and and everything have become such you know such a a a part of the way we live and yeah uh_huh yeah uh a business associate of mine was was talking about how it used to be where you would send things through the mail and you had to do something this was concerning the s e c and so if they had business to do they had to finish it you know three days in advance so they could get it through the mail and now it's the kind of thing where you can work up until the last minute because you can get it there you know in in a matter of minutes you know through a fax machine and because of that these quote unquote convenience type items have made work that much more intense and that much harder because you're expected to work on stuff up until the last minute uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh well there's that and there's the fact that you know nowadays fewer and fewer couples are deciding to have kids which generally tends to happen i mean the u s would be actually [declining] in population slightly if it weren't for the fact that we have continuation large scale immigration into the country yeah yeah i saw that the numbers on that awhile back and i was like uh_huh so well uh in terms of the long term effect effect on on america in terms of the culture and everything i don't know uh most of the of the next generation is going to be in or or an extremely large part of the next generation is going to be you know second generation uh from immigrant parents and they're going to be really struggling and i don't think that america is currently the type of environment where struggling up from the bottom is necessarily considered to be good i mean it's no longer the the uh the accomplishment that it that it once was and not that many people are really trying i don't think yeah yeah i know remote control was a great big box that was connected to the back of the t v uh_huh yes you got to well let's see you i guess you grew up in the you were a teenager in the seventies right okay did you go to like woodstock and all that you know like that one little girl that wrote who did she write uh they showed her in some kind of airplane crash seems like it was an eleven year old girl wrote gorbachev or noriega or someone uh_huh uh_huh but it's just not safe anymore uh_huh well how old are your kids okay right well we used to ride around well i guess it would be a city block my mom didn't mind i wouldn't dream of letting my little boy take off uh_huh uh_huh huh_uh well no but back even when i was growing up it wasn't drugs wasn't as now drugs was pretty bad but they weren't near as bad as they are now and this child abuse wasn't as bad as it is now either and there's so many missing kids uh_huh well yeah that is because even in my time smoking was just cool all the cool people did it went outside but my [stepdaughter's] getting like that and that's pretty hard because her granny smokes and we smoke so oh yeah have a smoke free really yeah they do what about two dollars a pack now well who is the major enemy now i don't know when i was growing up i was scared of red china now everybody told me that they had the biggest army in the world which i guess they still do because yeah because [china's] real [densely] populated yeah i think it's pretty amazing i think um that my grandparents especially have seen a whole lot of change in their lives but uh well technology but also morals and things like that i think even even in the last like four years you can still see things falling so fast and that can be for me that's the biggest change it's so frustrating um to see everything [disintegrating] and losing your your losing control it seems like of the moral fiber of our society uh_huh uh_huh i think you're really right i think like well even with computers um you can there i mean there's so much that's happening in in that field and it it just has forced us to go so fast and um even the way we write it used to be if you read a book like you know thomas hardy he takes two chapters to establish the mood and and just describes the scenery and what's been going on and stuff and now we just chop all that out and say well let's get to the point and yeah yeah exactly yeah you feel out of control yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah it is it's really frustrating and the way our families you know our nuclear families are [disintegrating] and stuff it's just a real you don't have the the social networks we used to have to to protect the family and protect the people in the family and things like that with everyone moving you know every five years you lose your contacts you lose trusted friends that you know they'll do things you know in america it seems now it's independence is the thing and you know heaven forbid if you ask anyone for anything whereas we used to be able to depend on each other and trust each other and you'll help me and i'll help you not and not in this [corruptive] sense but in the sense of you know when you're in trouble and you need you know someone to babysit the kids sure yeah exactly yeah uh_huh yeah yeah i think i think because it's a necessity as as as human beings we need a network around us of people we can rely on thing is that right now it's such a um temporary thing that how far does it go how far can you depend on them and uh just about um it would be interesting to discuss the social changes of the last ten or twenty years and um i guess for me the most obvious is women in the work field that uh of course when i was growing up not very many women went to work at all most everyone was at home and some of my friends whose mothers were teachers or something seemed a little bit embarrassed that their mothers weren't at home yes and uh but nowadays it's just so common a necessity and that when i am uh at home now that i've had children i've stopped uh working that it's kind of embarrassing when i go to the store and they ask uh when i write a check out and then they say can i have your work number please and then i don't have a work number to get give to them and they begin to think um i wonder if this is a good check uh_huh right uh_huh yes that's true uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh right yes that's true right no and it wasn't like my parents always watch the clock carefully when they make any long distance phone call and it's it's pennies but for them it's just a socialized behavior uh_huh uh_huh that's true that's probably true uh_huh right me too well that's good in in in our homes we all have a uh much more high tech compared to the people ten twenty years ago right unbelievable and everyone has uh multiple televisions probably and uh_huh uh_huh right we load up on all of the conveniences and they're not special to us anymore just a necessity and they're the people who don't have televisions are are uh you know unusual in our society uh_huh yeah i do and like even even little kids who watch like sesame street and everything's really fast paced and they don't have to to sit down and concentrate on one thing for a long time yeah yeah yeah just the other day i uh some a m station or something had a um like a radio show just like the old days you know it was like from the old days and i was thinking gosh that's i mean because you have to imagine what everybody looks like and you don't understand it until you actually hear it and have to do it and it's i mean you know it's just too bad that everybody has everything fed to them yeah yeah i mean now we always have to do something new or better or more exciting can't just sit around and talk for awhile you know it's too bad yeah uh_huh yeah it really is um just well i'm fifteen so oh just a lot of times we do sit around and because like uh i'm really glad that i'm in like uh the classes like honors classes and so it's like what's really good about that is that you meet people who really are interested in in talking about things and discussing world issues and it just and it makes me sick to go to school and know people who just that's all they do is like go out and you know try to go find a new guy or something it's just so immature and oh just [futile] you know no i'll be driving in a few months yeah yeah yeah uh_huh yeah it is yeah yeah yeah uh_huh yeah yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah it was it does sound corny but it's so much fun yeah yeah you really can it's awesome yeah yeah yeah i know everybody's i mean everybody's always busy and worried and so many problems people don't just sit down and you know just talk and know everything's going to be okay yeah yeah things go in cycles you know maybe oh yeah uh_huh oh yeah oh that's the truth yeah nice talking to you yeah talk to you later so what do you think yes yeah right that's true i mean i'm twenty six now and i came through high school with about the first generation that had computers in the classroom and all that and it certainly has been good for me because i see myself you know when i learn a new system a new program or a new computer language that it is much easier for me than for let's say my colleagues who are a lot older but just as intelligent and whatever uh_huh that's true uh_huh and what do you think that's just a question of becoming more aware or has it become less safe over the years yeah i would agree with you um that's right uh_huh yeah i don't know i think a lot of what causes it is just economics naturally uh_huh uh_huh yeah i suppose it has uh right uh well let's see i think that the mass communication that we have in the world now is in general a good thing and i think it has its good points and bad points but in general it's pretty positive uh more or less yes i mean it is we have the global village you know like [mick] [lewen] was saying but it doesn't i don't think that it really means that we have a sense of community yet as a world which which hopefully may be coming we'll have to see uh_huh right well yeah that definitely right i mean when we're well with things like the war in iraq we were dealing with other people's affairs for our own interests certainly is what i believe our community doesn't really have any organized recycling drive i live in san antonio uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah there's there's been no emphasis on recycling at all in san antonio i used to work for the power company here and there was discussion for a while about uh building a garbage burning uh electric generation plant but it just wasn't cost effective at the time and there's there's a little recycling trucks and things throughout the city but there isn't any uh advertising campaign there's just not any push to recycle i recycle my newspapers and uh my aluminum stuff but uh they make it as hard as possible it's not very convenient to do uh_huh yes uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah yes yeah where i work now we recycle all the computer paper but that's about the extent of it yeah yeah and i'm sure that the uh driving factor for recycling the computer paper is that we get paid to do so we sell the paper back to the uh to a paper manufacturing company well it it [defrays] the cost of buying the paper i think i not by much but it does [defray] it some enough to make it worth our while to have several bins through out the building yeah yes yeah well the last time uh someone moved offices in my building and uh the uh properties people came in with all with the good cardboard boxes not the cheap ones of course and packed everything up and moved them and left them lying around i i took several home because i'm moving pretty soon and they're good boxes and they were just going to throw them away yeah huh_uh right and and these boxes are you can [unfold] them so you know there they don't take up much storage space yeah yeah i i felt a little guilty about taking the boxes for about two seconds until i realized they would be thrown away so i thought well i was doing them a favor by taking them yeah uh_huh yeah the ones at the grocery store half the time they've pulled the lid off so you can't use it anyway those and the real sturdy boxes that copy room paper comes in with the nice lids those get thrown away and i am constantly scouting out the copy room for those boxes those are perfect boxes to put files in what what i've done in the past i don't have any now but i would buy some cheap wallpaper from somewhere and cover those nice boxes with the lids and you can stack them up and and leave them out and put things in them even uh_huh yeah yeah well you know it's cheaper than going and buying the kind at target that are all ready with the little design on them or whatever uh_huh yeah yes yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah i live near a walmart and there's a big uh uh huge dumpster looking thing sitting out front in fact i think there's two of them that have several openings and it's for recycling and they have aluminum and newspaper and plastic and some other category i don't maybe there's two for aluminum and you don't get paid but it's real convenient just to chunk the newspapers in there yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh it gets to be uh i guess you have to make it a habit i mean you have to get so used to doing it that it's a habit uh_huh oh and someone else isn't going to take the time to put it in two separate bags uh_huh yeah well i've enjoyed talking to you well i thank you bye bye where do you live san antonio well uh i live in garland and we're just beginning to we we just built a real big recycling center that recycles everything [imaginable] but as far as uh trash pick up and stuff that a lot of the communities are doing they're testing that so they're really not full full force into it but they're trying so we're attempting it but i wish we could do more uh_huh oh huh right that's what i do right when they put centers and stuff like that yeah well we have those uh which i think is one of the best things is those cash for cans i don't know if you all have those things around and i really like that because that makes it real convenient because they're in almost every shopping center and you can just stop by now everything else like the uh paper and plastic and stuff you still have to go to the centers but but for aluminum that's real nice and i started doing that at work um i put out a a trash can and and for people to put their aluminum cans in and that's really helped a lot i mean everybody's pitched in and you know it doesn't bother them to walk little bit farther put their aluminum in a can rather than just throwing it in their trash can so i really i really like that but people are really concerned it's just that sometimes it's not the right people which is really really sad because i wish we would do more at work we started uh all the recycling stuff they're really trying i think what started it at work was that planet earth thing we had last year and uh that really started a lot of stuff off but you know sometimes it [dwindles] down that's good well that's uh at least your trying something it's just yeah it would be nice if it could be more oh do you really well that's a neat idea right well that's that's really good i mean at least they're trying yeah i know a lot of companies that waste so much that i'm even trying you know that was one thing we noticed last week that we had some new people move into our building and you know the nice cardboard boxes that you move packing boxes and they were just used one time and thrown in the dumpster and i thought i don't understand this you know we're trying to cut cost and everything like that and and recycle and all that stuff and and here we are wasting and i don't understand sometimes the way the thinking the logic behind it uh_huh that's exactly what i did exactly what i did exactly because i didn't want to waste that and it's hard enough to find good packing boxes right exactly right well that's very good right right i found about five uh about nine of them that had not even been folded into boxes that were in the dumpsters oh gosh so many people need so many people go to the grocery store and stuff and get those boxes when you know these are perfect so right right right uh_huh right that's exactly what i do uh_huh they're good for storage and stuff like that that's what i do with a lot of my daughter's things is i'll store her you know like her out dated or out of out of season clothes in them and they're just perfect uh_huh and they look just as good that's a smart idea i think i'll have to try that that's really cute they're the exact same thing that's all they are they just made them look fancy you saved me some money and you're recycling well that's neat well do you all have uh we have places that uh pay for paper to recycle i know you do yours at work but for newspaper but ours are real hard to find that's the one thing that really [discourages] me i saved you know i recycle paper but they it's almost like they don't want the paper because they don't pay at all i mean they're real hard to find the places that pay and that's really discouraging i mean i just go ahead and take it to the the regular place where it's you know they just accept it but they uh i think they should yeah if they want people to recycle i think it's uh you know like the aluminum you know it gets people to uh doing it you know you might you don't have to pay them a lot uh_huh uh_huh well that's that's good i the one thing i don't like about the newspaper also is uh like at work we have two different trash cans at your desk you have one for paper and one for just your normal trash but in uh in the paper one you have to separate you have to make sure you don't throw away any of the slick paper like magazines you can't throw any of that away and you can't throw certain file type things away and i just think it's such a hassle it seems like it would be it would be easy to take it all i don't know of course i don't know all that about recycling so it probably is a hassle but i do get tired of having to separate paper you know right right and we had uh a write up in our paper uh this last time at work about um they come and empty your trash every other day they do your normal trash and every other day they do your recycling trash and somebody was writing in complaining that the people had uh dumped all the trash in the same bin and when they were questioned about it they said well we're running late or we didn't have time to do those bins or something and that's real discouraging thinking you're sitting there working to separate it and then they right right so they're they're really trying to start keeping an eye out for those you know talking to the people again about you know separate them because that is discouraging when you when you do that it was hard to get used to those two different trash cans but luckily that will all get straightened out and and they'll they'll start separating them because i don't mind doing that i feel like i'm doing uh doing something for the community when i'm doing that but anyway you too bye where do you live uh_huh well i used to i lived there for a long time but i'm now in palo alto california which is i think the recycling capital of the world so we have many recycling activities and i'm and in full uh support of all of them uh_huh well that's something but it it seems to me that we've gotten a whole lot better um cooperation out here uh by setting it up so that we pay just a little bit extra uh actually i don't think we pay very much extra at all too but the uh garbage men come by uh on your regular garbage day and pick up the recycling out at the curb yeah we have [burlap] sacks and they give us one for aluminum and uh steel one for metals and one for glass and then you can either bundle your newspapers or put them in grocery bags so we have we leave three little piles that they need out on the curb every thursday and the garbage men come by and uh collect them and leave us new bags when ours get old and ratty or leave the ones if they're still in good shape and the it really pays for itself because oh then the city gets the money from the recycling yeah the one thing i wish we could recycle is magazines but they claim that because of the way they're bound they uh it's too expensive to recycle them at my office we have two big cardboard boxes in the library where everybody goes to pick up their mail and they're uh one's for white paper and one's for colored paper so anything like manuscripts or computer paper or things like that goes in those boxes but we get tons of catalogs and things like that and magazines and there's no way to get rid of them it just seems like such a waste uh_huh well that would be a help i wish they would do that here we have got so little landfill space left that we're going to run out before the end of this decade and it's really going to be a mess when they have to start hunting for places to put the things we did have uh another novel uh experiment start this year now we can put all our yard clippings out you can you buy these super giant heavy duty paper bags they're about four feet high and you get them for i think it's about fifty cents apiece at the grocery store you um usually buy them by the dozen and then you put all your yard clippings and uh leaf [rakings] and anything that will be [compostible] and those and they the garbage men also pick those up on thursdays and then the uh they take them to a special part of our dump where composting is now in full swing and at the end of every year uh they sell all the [composts] to [nurserymen] and to local people who want to put it on their flower beds yeah if they make it so that it's not a horrendous inconvenience i think most people would right no i think it's it's to me more of a convenience to have them come pick it up then to get that two cents when you take it to the store we still have bins at the grocery stores where you can turn in bottles and cans for cash but so few people uh have enough to make that worthwhile you'd spend more in gas getting down there then you get back now do the grocery stores in houston have recycling for their paper bags and plastic bags uh_huh yeah well we can get a nickel apiece for any paper bags that we bring back to be reused they just take it off like they do a coupon they can just subtract it from your bill and they have a giant bin by the front door for the plastic bags and they say as long as it's clean they don't want a plastic bag that's full of [goop] here they don't want your rotted tomatoes but they want any clean and dry plastic bag so i keep and the thing is i hardly have room now for all the things that we're saving it to recycle so right outside the back door i've got the two [burlap] bags hung up for the cans and bottles and there right outside the that place where the garbage can is we have the bag for the newspapers and now we've got the bag for the plastic bags oh yeah well how nice that's great uh_huh uh_huh yeah well that's they just put all our christmas trees in the regular uh compost pickup so they did say that you had to put it out within i think it was uh three weeks after christmas and uh otherwise you would have to treat it like you would any other lawn refuse it would have to be cut into four foot lengths so you know if we have branches or something they have to be cut in four foot lengths but otherwise uh they have to be in one of their paper bags and they even picked up our uh styrofoam packing materials they brought uh the week after christmas they left a plastic bag on everybody's front [doorknob] with a little note on it saying we're trying something new next week only if you have any uh of those little uh styrofoam peanuts that any of your christmas presents were packed in put them in this bag and leave it out with your recycling and we'll uh take all of those back and try to recycle them but i that's not going to be a regular feature that was just a one time thing right after christmas well those things must take up a huge amount of space in landfills they don't mash they don't [compress] at all and they stay forever uh_huh yeah i do too the difficulty with that is that very few people have enough to make it worthwhile it they really have to rely on businesses that generate a lot of that stuff uh because otherwise uh you know they're not going to go house to house collecting it and you're not going to bother if you have one bag full to drive all the way to some recycling center to turn in just your little plastic peanuts yeah now we quit that about two years ago no three years ago when we got china [mugs] for everybody so and the only difficulty with that is that we're in the middle of a five year drought and so it's a real difficult choice whether we want styrofoam cups to fill up our landfills or uh china cups to use up our water but at the moment we're using the china cups and everybody gets one at the beginning of the year and then uh your supposed to keep it recycled every day yeah well let us hope that everybody's going to be paying more attention to this and that we will get uh better reuse of things because yep it sure will well good to talk uh in the houston area oh that's great oh we are too our community is uh just starting to get organized about it they just opened up a recycling center where we go and donate our our things and dump them off ourselves and uh it uh_huh i think that's great there's a few places in houston where they're trying that out i don't know if it's the if they've done it [citywide] yet or not where they have the color [coded] uh bags and uh bins oh uh_huh oh that's great uh_huh yeah we're we're all for it our um we've got several bins in our on in our garage where we uh you know sort things out and and take it to to the appropriate places yes uh_huh oh it does it does but i'm sure that they can uh find some sort of uh use for them if you know you know there i've seen talk about uh using garbage for uh energy and so you know you could also apply the magazines toward that yes oh i know it oh uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh oh that's great right well that's a great idea i wish we were that uh involved in uh or that our city was so involved in that involved in recycling like that because you know i've talked to many people and we wouldn't mind going its extra effort to do it uh yeah oh yeah you know and i don't mind you know at first it was the the little extra money that you got you know returning the cans in and stuff like that but now you know i don't mind as long as things are getting recycled you know that we don't get reimbursed uh_huh oh i oh i know it uh_huh right yes and then the plus the time that you waste standing in line is valuable also we have i know of one that the one that we use uh has uh recycling for the bags and uh and they're promoting the cloth bags you know the reusable cloth bags oh that's great oh uh_huh yes uh_huh i understand uh my husband about once a weekend he'll go uh to a couple of areas where he knows that the people just throw cans out and he'll go pick them up because he just can't stand that he he and uh it's so you know he we have all our piles of of recyclables also i remember at christmas the the only thing that i'm when you were talking about the composting the only thing that our city did that was they uh provided a place for us to take our christmas trees uh to for them to mulch for for city use uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh well that sounds like you all really have a a great system worked out there uh_huh uh_huh right well see that's one well the but uh something does need to be done about the styrofoam that uh oh yeah i mean they don't uh uh no right and i've seen where some places have taken a plastic and uh they're recycling them into other plastics and the styrofoam also into insulation and things like that and i think that would be great if they could get something organized along those lines right uh_huh right oh i was thinking about you know like the uh the styrofoam used at uh the fast food restaurants that if everybody uh and so yeah i know like our cafeteria here uses a lot of styrofoam but uh huh well that's good that's a they should last awhile i believe we are i i have to believe everybody is starting to pay attention and take heed of what is happening and so it will it will be good in the long run well i enjoyed it well since you live close i don't know if you know um about what louisville is doing with recycling or are you familiar with any of that huh_uh yeah you know i read you know when they first started doing that in the paper and i read about that i was just praying that that would be in our area because we've been recycling for quite some time and you know we separate everything out and then have to haul it up to a [metco] you know which is a real pain so if they would come up curbside recycling well now have they moved them behind wal mart oh god oh that's really nice to know because we were doing the same thing because to take it to a [metco] you have to take it when they're open you know which is always a real pain and so when that thing came up in wal mart parking lot we thought oh this is great and we started taking them up there and then all the sudden it disappeared you know i didn't know and we're going oh no there goes our recycling place that's really nice to find out that it's behind there well we pretty much do um plastic milk cartons and um um um newspapers i couldn't even think of what you call them plastic milk cartons newspapers and cans and glass i guess is the four is really the four things that we do yeah yeah and really that's about that's really about it is there anything any place else that really takes anything other than that that you know of oh really i know i know i know we're kind of the same way you know at first you know you at first it was a real it was a real hassle and i'm wondering are we really going to do this but you kind of get i guess into a little routine you know where it becomes is automatic now to throw different things in different places you know so i just go you know we have a pretty good size [pantry] in our kitchen and i've just got three trash cans sitting in there you know we just kind of dump things in each one if you know if we get them so oh they do too and they're impossible to crush i mean you can't get the down to any size you know if you get four milk cartons and that fills up trash bag you know pretty easily so you know oh really yeah yeah oh that will be good sure let somebody get something out of it yeah ha ha well i was kind of hoping with you know do you work for t i no yeah there was a t i has got this organization called t a d which is t [i'ers] against drugs and you know we're recycling aluminum cans up here and uh just what you would buy out of the machines and drink here and there was crushers out in all of the hallways you know and that's they use the money from that to fund this t [i'ers] against drugs program it's you know t i doesn't give them any money all everything is made from that and they had talked about having a thing like one saturday a month you could come and drop your aluminum cans off from home you know and i'm kind of like yeah i shall they would do that because at least somebody was getting the money out of it you know that was going to use it for good so sounds like you have a little one just like i do yeah mine was two in december well it was good to talk to you oh do they really curbside pick up i really hope they do that in louisville it would make it a lot easier on all of us talk to you later bye bye well i know that we have some relatives that live around like the area in there i know they're doing some curbside recycling as a kind of a test there huh_uh they'll help you recycle because we there is some bins like behind wal mart that take some things yeah because i finally asked because you know we had all of those milk cartons and there was nowhere else to take them and they had it in front of wal mart and i ask in wal mart and they said they moved it just behind huh_uh yeah yeah like aluminum cans that's about what we do too well i guess um down in kind of in north dallas there is a place that will take almost anything uh i don't we just don't have the room to store all that much you know i don't want to be running down there every week or whatever yeah yeah those milk cartons take up so much room i guess we kind of started recycling after i moved here about a year and a half ago we were using baby food and there was so many baby food jars kind of what started it some of our neighbors were doing it and so you know when i found out some places to take it and um like um they also take some things at the flower mound dump behind the fire station there and i know that they're going to use you know the money for that to build some kind of [multipurpose] field and that type of thing put lights and stuff so you know if i'm not going to get the money for aluminum i would just assume give it to the city of flower mound to do something with you know yeah that's true and they won't raise our taxes yeah no i don't i have a friend of mine told me about this program is the reason that i'm yeah sorry she'll be two in july oh well it was nice to talk to you i know they've started over in richardson where my dad lives they pick up newspapers i think yeah okay okay we we can uh be recorded while we talk about it no we don't have mandatory we actually we're kind of slow up here and we've just started doing recycling probably last summer and it's all voluntary so that's interesting cities have a mandatory recycling yeah when i was a kid we used to collect newspapers and bring them to a recycle thing we got like a penny a pound for them oh my oh i didn't realize you would think now up here i i suppose they send it all back to the mill and there are paper mills within a couple of hundred miles of uh actually there is one in northern vermont so there's probably a paper mill that's sixty miles from here i didn't think that you know in the large city that if the next recycling if the next mill is more like five hundred miles away it's a lot of money to transport do you have to buy metal like copper is a very good one to collect even aluminum yeah so uh we do the recycling and our city will pick up our recyclables they have these little blue bins um i don't recycle personally i i'm saying i want to do it but i don't get a lot of magazines i don't get a i don't buy the newspaper but i do have a lot of uh my trash has a lot of tin cans and a lot of a lot of different papers and [cardboards] yes but we have a bottle return a lot of the northern states and a lot of the eastern states have bottles we've had five cent deposits on our bottles for years oh they should definitely get um the nickel [returnable] it's great for the kids because see a lot of the kids get the money from it and it's great for the boy scouts running around they knock door to door and the collect the bottles sometimes yeah and recycle oh yes i see that but it takes away employment from the resource and its i do too they don't either yeah like i say it's not a very controversial thing everyone thinks we should do it it's just that we're so lazy i mean like personally i don't want to clean my i just have can cat food i don't want to clean the can and take the label off it and put it in a separate bin you know i'd just rather get rid of that thing and throw it in the trash yeah i think i would be like when i bring my bottles back if they're pretty clean and stuff so they can sit in my cellar for a couple of months and i get a whole bunch of them and bring them and bring them over now if i had a recycling center and i kept it clean like if i washed all the cans and things i wouldn't mind if it sat around too much but if if it [stunk] or something i wouldn't like doing it but um i produce quite a bit of trash my you know house and i see it but i don't see so much that i can recycle like i say it's a lot of different type paper and cardboard i'm not a real plastic person user but a lot of paper um pretty much and i don't know how they sort that but if if i used a lot of can goods and i do use a lot of laundry [detergent] and a lot of plastic bottles i would think that i i would have a recycling center but now it's just me and my husband so i don't know yeah i know what you're saying but we have we have a very aggressive recycling at work and i'm the one who will pick the newspaper out of the trash and bring it to the recycle bin see some people it's the recycle bin is on their way out instead of carrying your newspapers when they get done with them at the end of the day they throw them in the trash um no we don't but other other offices do they have a box for papers yeah oh well that's that's a really good idea because um like our uh fruit juices for some reason when they're in a can don't come with a deposit and they're thinking about putting a deposit on them because pretty much you have to you're having a whole separate recyclable bin just for these fruit cans where they're so much easier just to put a deposit on it because most probably ninety percent of the aluminum cans do have deposits because they're beer and soda but when they sell juice it's some strange [quirk] in the law you don't have to have a deposit on it and even like the a very fine juice jar does not have to have a deposit on it but if it's got soda in it it does so it's a strange yeah they should they should clean clear that up it wouldn't take them much to put a stamp on the uh juice cans as easily as the soda so but [redemption] centers are a big thing up here they get a penny a can they handle they give you five cents when they return the can to the distributor i think they either get a penny or two pennies a can yeah is is bottle return down there a heated debate oh yeah well we well here you can't drink well yes well i know i was in atlanta and you could walk out the bar with your drink in your hand but here let me put that in a paper cup for you so that was strange but i think if some people they have they say well we're not going to start a can deposit because you have to get all these um the the recycle center you have to deal with the can and then you have to to recycle it and their [problem's] already solved because they can just come to states that do have bottle deposits see how they handle it and see if it's a good way and then do it that way because as like i say people are making money on it the cans do are worth something okay well is your does your city have mandatory uh recycling um there there're some places that are strongly encouraging it and that they city will pick it up that's been one of the arguments here i'm just sitting here looking we've got four bins of glass and [plasticine] stuff but we have to carry it uh some distance and some places um you can sell your uh recyclables and for example our church was collecting newspapers well it turns out that so much the problem in texas is that uh they've got so much paper now from people recycling that they've got no way to uh [reprocess] it it requires an it requires essentially a paper mill to recycle it and so the value has gone down it turns out it wasn't worth for the church to do well yeah well see that's in in dallas there no plan to build i think there there's some in east texas there's some [pulp] mills but uh you have to go to houston and it's interesting and then there's places that will buy metal and they still buy aluminum can and likes that well do you do do you do recycling oh well do you drink soda and such in aluminum cans oh so it's worth taking them back well see we don't have we have we have most of our soft drinks are in plastic liter or two liter bottles oh that's it you'll you'll there is a down side to all this you know about no good deed going [unpunished] that uh my mother sells um trees that they make paper out of and so every time i recycle newspapers in fact there's a there's a uh [kimberly] and clark the makers of [kleenex] and such has a uh a big paper mill in fact i almost went to work for them i was offered a job and turned it down because my mother got it for me it's twenty or thirty miles from my house every time you recycle that's one less tree my mother can sell and uh so it's a question should i be diligent and um and and recycle and put my mother out of her livelihood but it's an interesting point though that you know everybody's so anxious to recycle and i suppose it does provide some [gainful] employment but well but in general i think it's a good idea because like the glass you can't argue that the glass it doesn't [biodegrade] and and uh the plastics obviously so we might as well recycle those yeah well that's what we've got we started about new year's we decided we'd get ambitious well we took one load over there and now we've got these containers filling up with stuff and you know it's not a very high priority thing to go haul these containers over there yeah but every little bit helps right well do you have separate trash cans at your desk well we have we have one that's recyclable and and then for uh lunch sacks and waste food and they gave us a list of things that aren't and it turns out it's not so bad i i get a lot of reports that that are covered in plastic or like saran wrap or something anyway and then uh cardboard there's a few it's interesting that we're we're recycling computer type paper and and uh one day they'll pick up uh the cleaning people come through and they'll pick up recycled paper and then the next day they'll pick up the other so depending on how much you know and there's a lot of actually it works pretty well and then we have a uh waste uh cans for aluminum in the in the break areas at work yeah yeah that's an interesting [distinction] yeah well see well see those of us that don't have state income taxes yet that's the big debate here in texas that the legislature wants to put one in and it's interesting what people get upset about uh it really is well no the the big issue was is is when we moved here a few years ago is whether it was okay for you to uh drink beer while you were driving your pickup truck and throw it out at the in uh we're not civilized now you can no longer you cannot drink beer and drive but but it was it was actually legal yeah well you know the other well the other thing is it also is is a is a a good habit uh to uh just to conserve resources you know where they you know because you get in the habit of that you think in terms of of uh of of things like saving so what do you think about it how are we doing in recycling are we uh_huh yeah i do a lot of work with the boy scouts and we try to do a lot but there's still a lot more we can do you know i don't recycle my newspapers myself but i noticed in one of the sales catalogs this weekend they have a like a a clothes hamper kind of thing that you know you lay your string in then you put your papers in there tie them all up and bundle them up so i figured i might get me one of those because we don't always read the newspaper sometimes it just sits around for a while and then we just chuck it yeah yeah yeah see and yeah see and here in lubbock everything's so close i can imagine what it's like up there yeah see i went out to payless cashways here a couple of days ago as a matter of fact and got me one of those little can crushers that i could put on the wall and then i put me a little five gallon bucket and it's just outside the garage door so every time we drink a coke or whatever we crush the can and just drop it into the bucket yeah i got one from payless cashways and it's actually metal it's not plastic i didn't want to buy a plastic one yeah but payless cashways has them and they're metal and i don't know what affiliate of payless cashways you have up there but it was only like seven dollars not too bad yeah yeah i don't yeah i don't think it would crush steel cans it's pretty tough no you could probably just you know yeah they won't yeah they won't take any [lint] free paper or see i work at t i we do a lot of recycling out there now we recycle all our computer paper and our cardboard but that's just now come on board you know we've been throwing paper out there away for years and we're just now getting on board to recycling ever since this big earth day thing came out you know yeah i'm sure they are t i is doing it pretty well nation wide i'm sure oh yeah yeah i bought a i got one at work that i bought for one of the guys there at work it's his birthday we're pretty good friends and what it is is a recycled paper bag and it's just got happy birthday printing on it and a cute little phrase inside and it's just a paper bag you know and it's really cute but i think we're doing better and better all the time still don't no there's not going to be any room shortly i don't know what new york does about theirs i guess they still ship it out on [barges] somewhere yeah so but i think we're getting better at it i think there's quite a bit more we could do but you're right sometimes it does seem like it's more trouble than what it would be worth yeah yeah it sure is yeah yeah well they'll get at it sooner i guess the schools will get into it too sooner or later you know they have we tried to have an aluminum can drive with the cub scouts that i have and we just don't have any place to store those kind of cans you know if we go out and pick up a bunch of cans from people sure they'll save them for us there's no problem there but what do you do with them in the meantime now i don't want a can a garage full of cans you know no they're just not they're not prepared for it yeah yeah they do you know the more trash you have laying around the more bugs you get that's for sure so yeah yeah myself about the only thing i really recycle around here is aluminum cans so well if we all try a little bit a little bit goes a long way if everybody tries to do just a little bit and a little bit more then we'll get there well thank you for talking to me sure no problem all right bye bye well i think we need to do more i mean i know i need to do more they have programs around where you can reach the uh they come and pick up your newspapers if you have them bundled up but i have a hard time of being able of separating you know having a place separating my trash and get all the cans from the paper and you know i just haven't gotten that dedicated yet so uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah well i don't i don't get the paper every day but you know i get it on i try to buy you know the early edition for the coupons you know the sunday edition so but then i just you know bundle it up and put it on the front you know the front walk you know every monday or every other monday and have them pick that up but that's the extent of what i've done i'd like to be able to do more the problem is with a lot of it is you have to go you know it takes a while to drive to these places where you recycle it you know it's not always convenient to do it yeah i'm not exactly sure where the you know the can thing is but you know sometimes it's just so seems so much easier just to take it and throw it in the trash and have them pick it up than it is to [smash] the cans and drive it some place to have them uh_huh uh_huh do those can crushers work good uh_huh yeah because those things i think would just snap you know oh i'd have to check into something like that because i mean we don't drink a whole lot of soda around here you know but um you know occasionally we have some around but you know for other kind of cans just to it'd probably only take aluminum cans like that don't they yeah so i don't know i don't think you have to crush the other ones for them to get to take that but i need to look into it more you know it's you know it sometimes even with the newspaper they say they'll only take certain types of paper you know they won't take paper that's shiny yeah so does my husband yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i don't know what you know i haven't i'm sure they're probably doing that here some uh_huh i think it's necessary i i like it you know it makes i think it's good that you see these you know like boxes cereal they're now starting to make them you know the packages out of recycled paper and and i've bought you know i've bought [greeting] cards that are made out of recycled paper and i think they're just fine uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah i think we're getting becoming more conscious because we just can't stick everything in landfills any more so no no the office yeah it's probably sitting out on the barge somewhere yeah girls put that away now yeah i just wish it was a little more convenient to do you know seems like you're so busy anyway and then that's just one more thing to have to worry about so i think if you know the cities locally you know they'd get more programs going so that you could do that it'd make it a lot easier so yeah yeah get the kids interested in it too yeah uh_huh that's right that's right who does you know people don't have room for that kind of stuff no and in texas they're just get things like that they just get bugs in them so so you don't that's right so i'm pretty lazy about it right now everything goes into one thing and goes out to the you know pick it up so uh_huh well i need to get get better at it so yeah that's right that's right that's true that's right huh well thank you for calling i okay take care bye bye now i'm sorry excuse me and uh i do that we recycle uh newspapers we take you know the dallas morning news daily and the plano paper daily and you know after a month of that you got a ton of newspapers it really does i do recycle newspapers and uh glass we don't really have enough plastic to mess with we don't you know like we don't drink milk and we don't have children so we don't have you know six thousand plastic milk jugs a month you know yeah right but there is you know there is a place you can take those also you know at the same place just put them in a different uh container and uh plano has plans i believe it's [tentatively] scheduled for sometime in may of this year the city is going to leave uh receptacles at people's home and they it certainly would and they can separate it and then the you know trash guys will pick it up which would really be handy you know for people like shut ins or people who can't or don't drive you know they can't get to the these centers and i'm sure rather than try to uh ask someone to take them for them they probably just pitch them you know but i think that's probably a good idea uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's right uh_huh yes yeah uh_huh great i bet it was uh_huh uh_huh sure uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh yeah it's just a matter of education i think uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah that's right i think basically it's a good idea you know i hope it works absolutely absolutely right uh_huh right uh_huh sure absolutely and there's just you know the two of us my wife and i and it's amazing how much stuff just the two of us generate you know i can imagine a family of you know four or five it really does as far as new stuff to recycle you know i don't really i don't really know i really hadn't thought about it to tell you the truth that's right i was uh_huh uh_huh that's right uh_huh yeah uh_huh i see oh i'm sure it must yes you know i'm not personally involved because i don't you know i don't have any children that wear diapers but i'm sure it creates a large amount of you know uh refuse that's right that's right absolutely that's right absolutely absolutely uh_huh i think they're made out of aluminum yes there are there is a [receptacle] you know at the centers also for aluminum but again we don't we don't generate that much so we don't yeah that's right that ninety nine percent of ours is newspaper and uh you know uh glass uh_huh uh_huh that's right car batteries uh_huh i don't you know i don't change my own oil so i don't i don't uh don't have that problem yeah uh_huh yeah well we do to as a matter of fact right yeah yes we have one of those in town uh_huh you know our church each year has a one of their major fund [raisers] is you know a garage sale and there's a ton of clothes always you know left over and i take those down to the uh it's called the clothes closet that's what it's called here in plano right uh_huh and they distribute them to the people that need them uh_huh yeah no i can't either i really can't um no i i really can't either okay well it was nice talking to you okay all right bye bye ready to go okay right oh i know it builds up really fast yeah yeah uh_huh yeah we do with two a two year old and a three year old and so it really builds up with us yeah oh yeah that would be much more convenient yeah yeah yeah or it just builds up so often yeah yeah yeah they used to have several places um that were a little ways out in the community that did the paper and all and they stopped doing it because they said it wasn't profitable so finally um they the people put so much pressure on the city they did a survey of everybody and they took a big huge bin that has paper and plastic um and put it in front of the wal mart store in town and they it just really every time you went by there it was just over flowing and so wal mart complained so they moved it behind the store and nobody knew where it was and so people kept piling stuff in the same place where it used to be oh it was just like a dump there and so finally you know i called and they said you know it was behind there and i started taking my things behind there so we do that with because we have milk cartons you know constantly with two little kids and the paper but it just builds up it would be so nice if they had it you know at your home where you could just turn it in so they they final had enough of a response that they decided to try a small target area in one neighborhood and they have pickup there it's uh i think once or twice a week and the first couple weeks they did it nobody got their stuff out so they had not much participation and they were going to cancel it but then finally people started getting the message yeah and i think that you know if they can get enough going they'll continue it you know throughout the rest of the city but it's not i think originally people thought it would be profitable for cities to do this and it's not going to be i don't think yeah yeah i do to because it's amazing how much you know trash we can generate i know this year we took our christmas tree they had a place in the park where you could go have your tree shredded and they gave you a little um [seedling] to plant you know you could take the the mulch home with you you know and take buckets of that home so that was really good idea i thought yeah oh yeah it's really it adds up so fast yeah yeah well they're working on diapers which would be great i've read so many different things about diapers and now their saying that originally they thought the disposables were just awful but now their saying that they're really not that much in comparison to the others because you don't have to use the water to wash them and you know all different kinds of things too so the diaper service trucks apparently the fuel that they use and the fumes that they produce to deliver and drop those off so i don't know what's the you know right thing to do but i really would hope that they would come up i know there was a brand just briefly on the market that was recyclable but the landfill have to do something special you know for those but that just generates a tremendous of volume of trash too so yeah it does and you just feel guilty if you don't do something with them you know because you hate to contribute to the problem but on the on the other hand the alternatives aren't to great either yeah i don't know what else they could recycle more of i guess we don't really use that many tin cans i guess there's some places where you can recycle aluminum but i don't know about like cans that you keep vegetables and stuff in i don't know if those are recyclable or um yeah yeah we don't either we usually use frozen vegetables and things so we don't really have much of that yeah well now when we lived out in california they actually had places where you could recycle if you change the oil in your car or for aerosol cans and things like that because they say it's not safe to put those things in the regular trash yeah yeah yeah yeah well other than that i'm not really sure we we try to recycle old clothes our church has a place where you can take them and they you know pass them on to other families so yeah yeah oh uh_huh kind of like a [goodwill] kind of place yeah yeah yeah yeah that's that's real helpful too well i'm not sure i can't really think of anything else that we could recycle yeah okay you to take care bye bye okay uh_huh uh_huh hm uh_huh uh_huh oh oh that's a good idea uh_huh oh that's good um i know we um we we are kind of getting into recycling now i'm in college and i live in a dorm and we recycle paper and i know that there's a glass plant up here and they recycle glass and you know we recycle old aluminum cans and all that kind of stuff uh_huh uh_huh yeah and then when our dorm whenever our bins are all filled up we take them and turn them in and then we get money for that yeah we just put you know we just keep it with the dorm well we buy things for the dorm whatever the dorm needs you know like we have access to a microwave and an oven if we want to cook things and then we buy like cooking equipment and stuff or we play games like board games we buy board games you know it's just different things whatever you know we vote on it and whatever the dorm would want that's what we buy uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah no oh uh_huh oh that'd be is that what this target is what you're no huh_uh oh uh_huh oh i would like let's start up a target no um i don't really know any other recycling that they do no no huh_uh we have to take it to a recycling place uh_huh oh oh i didn't know that um i never heard of that um not that i know of no oh my gosh um yeah uh we have places where we go and we what we do is we unload our cans it's like a conveyor belt and the belt separates the aluminum ones from the steel ones because it has a [magnet] on it and then they weigh uh your aluminum cans and then you get money for your aluminum cans no but now they're going to start giving us money for the other ones too before they didn't but i know they're going to start now uh_huh yeah yeah yeah well that's all i really know about recycling oh really we have kroger but not a skaggs oh uh you guys are getting into it more than we are uh_huh huh_uh i've never seen any you know places that do i know um we reuse our grocery bags now we take them back you know and use the ones that we have you can like if you have grocery bags you can take them and use them instead of getting new ones yeah yeah but we don't have any place that collects the grocery bags uh_huh uh_huh oh my uh i'm a finance major oh really uh_huh what do you think the outcome will be yeah yeah oh yeah we've had one as long as i can remember yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh um i can't think of anything on recycling no what do we think about them oh i don't know no i never really thought about it what you think about [pennsylvanians] oh really i don't know i really don't know anyone from texas or anything i've never been there um yeah uh_huh oh well oh oh oh is it like a foreign exchange type student well i just got back from taking my little girl to her brownie meeting and then we had this whole can uh a bag filled full of cans and they've been recycling at their school well she wanted me to just wait and let her dump them off tomorrow but they were filled with beer cans and i hated to take a big old sack i mean one time i mean like a lawn bag full of them like i no we'll just taking them up there and put them in the bins anyway they had tickets at their school that they recycle either newspapers or cans and i think that's all okay and they're taking the money that they earn to plant trees yeah and they've got their bins that stay there and they've decorated real cute you know with a bunch of big old flowers and stuff so they're getting into it i don't know what they get for the tickets though what do you get for the tickets if you bring stuff oh the class that gets the most tickets gets a party it's not bad yeah uh_huh so in each of the dorms you have a place for that that's really good for the dorm and who decides what you do with it and what do they do with it uh_huh well i graduated from college in nineteen seventy two and we were just um not aware that this was a problem that we ever would need to recycle of course you just threw it away so a little different and i wanted to do this thing that you can get through target to recycle i had my school do it but my principal said since we're doing this thing called operation desert shield we're sending letters to all these servicemen and making video tapes and all that the whole school you know it was just this big project she didn't want to get into that and i could do it in the center and i just never got around to it but it's like a club you know about that a little boy that had died of leukemia i think and he had started this um save the environment club and his mother is carrying this on and you can get the information to set it up you know and join you don't have to join it as a group or anything i don't guess but you could start your own anyway get a pamphlet do you all have target stores up there no that's a department store kind of like k mart except it's a little better than what k mart sells i think so you're not you're not having it picked up at your houses or anything huh now in some of the towns around us they're already picking up the newspapers well they're doing that here too now that i think about it once every so many weeks and you have to pull out all the [slicks] and you have to wrap them up with string and i think that's all they're picking up but you know like in minnesota they've got their bins where you put plastics and your bottles yeah because my brother in law lives in minnesota and they're are just nice plastic bins and you fill them up and put them out with your other trash and they pick them up do you all have can banks no i a big old bin and you just feed your cans slowly into the slot and your money comes out you know every once in a while for however much [poundage] you've got and if you keep feeding it until the light goes off and you get instant cash but they had one that i was putting my stuff in and i went to take some today and it was gone i don't know but i located another one today on the way to work but they don't give you for the other uh_huh well they're certain places you know where down there you can take your leaded cans but i don't know where they are they publish it in the newspaper if you wanted to get into it i don't know i'm trying but i just can't recycle everything i'm not that dedicated but me too if they would oh i know we're saving our grocery bags now yeah they're taking those up you can take them to the stores um like [kroger's] doing it and i think skaggs do you have those up there and we they're taking our milk cartons and our plastic coke bottles there too so that's pretty good isn't it it sounds like it you'd think you would be you mean where you sack your own groceries huh and i don't want to go with those canvas bags right now i'm sorry i'm not that european but you know they do that like i went to europe nineteen seventy three and you know they go all the time it's like they would go almost every day to the store and they had their little bags way back then and fill it up and they had this little bitty old teeny refrigerators that's why they couldn't put anything in it hardly but well what are you going to do when you get out of college well that's why i did what i did i went into teaching here in texas it's a real mess right now oh definitely there's no let's see we've had the funding we've run out of money we've frozen the money right and they had until the fifteenth of april to come up some formula that would be more equitable to different districts according to finances because the poor districts were getting less money so not as good an education right and now they're trying to take some money away from the richer districts like the one that i'm in in dallas and make us pay our money to the smaller ones and make it more equitable and if they can't come up with something by the fifteenth then the state's supposed to decide the courts i think they're maybe going to give us a state income tax do you have one i'm not looking forward to it but something's got to be done well it's going to hit us and i don't know doesn't seem like it work to take it away when we're using it but maybe i know we're not using it so [wisely] we have too many administrators in some of these big districts but other than that well can you think of anything else we need to talk about me either anything else what about people from um pennsylvania what do they think about texans uh_huh have you thought about that probably a lot more civilized more um refined than a lot of the people would be down here i would hope so i mean you've been together a little bit longer than we have no well i've never well let's see i think i have too been to pennsylvania gettysburg yeah we went up there now that i think about it on one of our long trips we take off on [shboom] what are you saying holly oh my little girl is in the second grade told me to tell you that [shboom] means good bye in the israeli language is what you say it is holly in israel in israel see she's got this little girl from israel in her classroom that she's [befriended] so she's into this huh_uh you know we've had a lot of the jewish people and she's expecting the end of this month and she's the only one that lives near by so the rest live in one lives in connecticut and couple lives in pittsburg and one lives near d c so uh yeah yeah yeah we see them once in a while a couple of times a year at least and the ones in pittsburg of course we see more often so uh all right i'm ready to go well they've been trying different things one one of the biggest problems seems to be we don't they don't have anyplace to put some of the things that need recycled right now we've recycled glass for years because we have a glass industry in our community owens owens um so glass has been recycled for a long time uh we have a cycling area set up here at our house the boy scouts have and they've done that for years uh the stores are recycling their plastic bags now you can take them back in and they have bins to collect those uh the aluminum cans they try to do the uh newspapers and uh they had to close their area down because they couldn't sell it they were what they were doing was [shredding] it and trying to sell it to farmers for bedding for their animals and that type of thing and that didn't work but but somebody told me that they were charging as much for it as they did for straw which is why they couldn't sell it you know because the farmers would buy the straw if it's a you know similar price and let's see is there anything else okay i think by this fall it's going to be required that the town of clarion which we'll live nearby will have mandatory recycling started so uh mainly the glass the aluminum the plastics uh well we're working hard on it because we're fighting also in our area a large hazardous waste incinerator which we do not want built and uh we would like industry to do more before they build these big huge [incinerators] and uh we we just feel they should they should offer industry some incentives to do more reducing of their waste products and [reusing] them because some of those companies that are doing it have save money eventually at first apparently it costs more to get started but once they get established then it's a money saving thing and what is t i oh okay gee my my son works for no not for that okay excuse me go ahead well my son works in uh for the federal government he's he works in a computer laboratory and uh it was through him that that uh uh maybe you could tell me what is the difference between office paper waste and just like newspapers um oh really um um yeah right yeah right yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well it would be inconvenient to in other words to right more areas where they would pick it up yeah yeah um uh_huh oh well knox is just over the hill here yes uh_huh they they no longer are you know active yeah oh for heaven's sake yeah oh for heaven's sake well we only live probably about fifteen twenty miles from knox yeah uh_huh i'll be darn yeah uh_huh uh_huh i think people are getting more interested and they are more concerned and we're just we're just real concerned about this incinerator because we really they want to put it right in uh in between two of our main water sheds that feed the clarion river and uh we we just we just don't want it anyplace we feel that we that they should give businesses more incentives to do more recycling and more reduction and and more reuse and all those things that could be done we we just don't think we don't think some of the politicians are really interested in our best interests and uh it's it's been a real struggle and a hardship for a lot of people in our area that we've have you know have been fighting against this thing in trying to have things changed to make them more more right but uh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right right uh well we're we're going to pay for that that whether we pay industry or pay we we've already paid industry for like these super fund that's cleaning up we paid industry for it we pay all help to pay to have them haul it away from their place and where they put it now they found it's not a safe place it's leaked and now they have to clean those up and it's our money that's cleaning this stuff up and now they want to put it in they burn it and that will make another hazardous dump and eventually they'll have to do something with that we'll pay for it again so why not pay industry this is my feeling why not pay industry a little more and reduce it you know and and not have as much of it oh definitely huh_uh huh_uh no but they think and probably they're right people buy it easier yeah yeah and i know people would be willing to do more like saving their newspapers and that if they had a place to take them we don't have anyplace right now that will take them uh_huh probably yeah oh well that will be nice though but still sort of up in that general area of the country so you can probably see them sometimes yeah yeah okay well uh what kind of recycling do you have in your area uh_huh oh what which one is that oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah sure on just particular things or uh_huh well it sounds like they're doing quite a bit uh yeah uh_huh right well our company does some things all of which i couldn't even tell you about i don't know all of them but uh texas instruments yeah well i i was just curious as how you got hooked up with this this speech type of thing oh and he yeah well here at work um each one of us has two trash baskets in our office and one of those is designed for any kind of paper products that um they want to use you know for recycling they can't deal with every type well i guess i don't know specifically except that uh for the paper that they want to recycle they do not want any newspaper um and things like candy [wrappers] or uh that type of thing let's see i have a list here um they don't want lunch sacks or brown envelopes uh phone books so there are you know a lot of kinds of things that they don't want but then any kind of computer paper letters uh booklets they'll even take things that are bound um and it doesn't all have to be like white they'll take colored [folders] and and uh even some of those can have plastic tabs on them so it's it's hard to kind of figure out you know which things are the right ones i mean i i'll frequently have to look at the list if it's something that i don't throw away all the time but um they do that and then we use uh different chemicals and things and i know that about how they take care of that sort of thing i i don't know all the details but they're really on top of that and there probably some other things that i don't about because we're a real large company and i just don't have contact with them but in our uh city well i live in a suburb of dallas and they have initiated a newspaper recycling whereby they pick it up from your alley uh one day a week and all you have to do is bundle it uh all around dallas there are a lot of recycling centers where you can take things sometimes for money um but most of those are real far away from like where i live at any rate very inconvenient and um it's just you know hasn't been very practical to get into a lot of those things if they would make it something where they you know would pick it up at the curb or at least make it you know down the street and at the corner type of thing uh yeah that wouldn't be so bad um our grocery store like yours will take the uh plastic bags and they'll also take the the paper bags back but um uh you mentioned the uh glass type of stuff the reason i ask you about that is years ago and it it changed names somewhere along the line but um my dad used to work for knox glass in knox pennsylvania oh really yeah it's yeah they were taken over by glass containers years ago and but he worked for them for like thirty one years and he used to travel up there to knox quite a bit and and i even did once when i was a child you know so oh really yeah we i was looking through our photo album not long ago and they had had some pictures and things in there of knox but uh i guess that's about it you know as far as what goes on that i know about um yeah yeah that's uh_huh well i think probably more people you know would participate if they just made it a little easier and like you say make it um better for companies to do these things and get involved in it without huge cost to them because obviously no one wants to spend a lot of money just to deal with trash you know yeah that's true that's right uh_huh that's true uh_huh also probably look at packaging and that sort of thing we don't we don't need three quarters of what we get i uh that's their marketing well yeah i i'm guess our city you know in picking them up must take them somewhere else and get something for them but i don't that it's a big money so jan how do they recycle in texas uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah is it is it all voluntary right uh_huh yeah uh_huh right yeah there's a lot of projects where the the boy scouts and things and that will collect your cans and it's a good fund raiser for the kids uh_huh i guess i you see i guess it depends on your landfill space i know i we're in maryland but my i from pennsylvania and my parents how are forced recycling uh yeah all plastic they all plastic has to go into a recycling bin all cans have to be recycled all newspapers has to be recycled because they're um they're just running out of space and landfills uh pennsylvania ohio and new york are some of the uh they're using their landfills up faster than they can get new ones so it's really uh it's uh really hard on them now up here in maryland though we're just in a voluntary recycling stage right now so uh so my wife and i you know we save our bottles and we save our newspapers and we save all our plastic and all of our tin cans and just like you say we go to uh a community area where they have it set up and we dump them off there yeah it's still voluntary though i think i think we're supposed to have something implemented by nineteen ninety three though where some aspects will be mandatory uh_huh mostly just the cans and i and most of the time like i said that's that's a sort of like fund raiser things that the schools do or that the boy scouts do or whatever yeah cans are the only thing i think you really get money for uh_huh right uh_huh yeah i think that's mostly well you know we even before as soon as the community said you know we're going to put up bins for recycling you know we automatically started doing it it was it's one of those things you know and just going and taking the time to go and read the signs and the brochures on what they accept and how it should be separated you know that's no huh_uh yeah uh_huh yeah right yeah how much how well they're doing we do i um i i work in a uh speech interface lab at a at a at a college and we do basically the same thing the state of maryland has lost asked all the colleges and universities and some of the large organizations you know if they would definitely recycle their office paper and the same thing you know every almost every college in maryland is recycling office paper but you know in the giant bins around and it's surprising how much you never realize because that janitor comes around and [empties] your garbage can every night you don't notice until you start leaving you know they don't pick up your recycling until it's full and you just can't believe how much paper that you uh [reams] of paper come out of an office every day that took us to recycle uh_huh right yeah so i think hopefully if you know i guess a lot of the large organizations probably t i did they advertise on television how successful they are yeah yeah uh_huh internal uh_huh yeah right yeah that would probably be true yeah because i know that some of the large industries here will advertise on television you know they'll come up and say you know they'll show you to encourage to encourage recycling they'll say and here those of us that [dumavra] power which is our power company that we now recycle forty five percent of our solid waste and they and that we do this for the community they put those on so i so i think you know we're probably reaching a successful stage and and just with voluntary i think uh_huh right yeah i think so too yeah right yeah we weren't concerned yeah that's true huh uh_huh yeah i i think really probably what hit peoples you know i know that here in the up in the uh uh the the new [englands] area and also in in pennsylvania ohio and new york the just run all of a sudden we're out of landfill and and they're saying we estimate this landfill be will be full in two years unless we cut back and even then you know we're really running out of space so i think that that became that all of a sudden really hit home that there's no longer landfill space in some of the more crowded states so what you know and no other state i'm sure texas probably still has some landfill space they're not going to voluntarily say hey ship your garbage here so you know realistically you know we had we really had to start we have to start recycling in some some uh geographic areas it's really tough uh_huh uh_huh right yeah but well well in some ways i guess it it doesn't become really cost saving until you have an industry around it you know because i know that like in pennsylvania they require them to um put their newspaper for recycling but the de [inking] process that they have to they use to take the ink out of the newspaper so it can be reused um is very expensive and also it it produces a a waste a um a liquid waste that they don't know what to do with yet so even some aspects of recycling they still have cost yeah cost efficient yet yeah so but others you know like tin cans and plastics are are really uh efficient you know they they melt on quickly and can be you know just because of the heating and things getting glass yeah so it really is surprising that people haven't noticed it before uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah i i don't know either that's i know that though i all those petroleum products though are so terrible for your um the water table you know they really pollute quickly and you know one i was reading some place the brake fluid you put brake fluid normally comes in just small little pint containers that one pint of brake fluid can [contaminate] so many gallons of water you know like hundreds of gallons of water so it's one of those things that they really um and you wonder you know with all these oil spills how how terrible that is yeah how terrible that is so we'll have to we'll have to keep our eyes on all that i guess uh_huh yeah i agree uh_huh i do too uh_huh yeah it well you know if they're forced to do it it becomes sort of a habit you know i know that it's really funny my parents are forced to do it and they well i the biggest uh way it's going right now uh lot most of the grocery stores have got uh things set up where you can bring in your uh plastic and your cans and newspapers and then they've just got different barrels setting out i shouldn't say barrels like big john doors or whatever they're called [gondolas] um they've got them set outside and uh yes it's all voluntary now they do have some places where you can take things and get cash but i think the lot of people don't really want the cash you know they just want to uh help recycle which is what we do you know we probably the only thing sometimes we'll take cash or the cans in and we let the kids get the money for that but uh right right yeah that's true but but that's really the the biggest thing around here is the grocery stores participating you know but uh_huh oh really oh wow yeah so it's you say it is all voluntary do they will it be mandatory is it all um is there any place at all where you do get cash for this stuff or is it all okay yeah and that's right right yeah that's true that's well they do have places around here where you can get money for your newspapers and stuff like that but you know i think a lot of people like i said are more concerned with you know right now you know the aspects of saving the earth um uh_huh right uh_huh well i tell you it's kind of funny now at even at t i i don't do you work for t i okay um at t i they're doing recycling i mean for a long time they didn't do this but now they're they're recycling cans and paper we have separate bins uh separate [wastebaskets] in our offices for paper you know and they i mean it's tremendous how much money they have saved and even saving all these trees and you know it's really i can't believe that you know because they've got it all posted all over the place how much they're saving and how yeah oh okay uh_huh uh_huh yeah right yep so you don't think about it right i know yep yeah well you think about the waste even i mean you know cost wise and and you know like you saving trees and stuff like that i mean it's just amazing you know the difference i haven't seen anything uh but that doesn't mean that they don't i don't watch much t v but i haven't really seen anything advertise [publicly] and then like i said they do a lot of internal advertising on that kind of stuff but i haven't seen anything but see i don't see a lot of t i advertisements on t v anyway i think they advertise more um other places where they're not located you know so so i don't see a lot of advertisements for t i right uh_huh right right well even i mean in the kid's schools i mean they do things to try and recycle and i know my kids um like if they see litter on the ground they pick it up and say oh look at that somebody is not saving the earth you know so i mean the kids i mean they really try to educate all ages you know and it's good to start the kids real young on stuff like that because i mean when i was a kid they never did stuff like that i mean it's like nobody was concerned about it you know and it's like you know it's like all of a sudden when there's noticeable things saying hey you know we're ruining the earth you know and now everybody is doing something about which is good but how come we weren't doing this say twenty years ago you know uh_huh uh_huh well yeah this is right yeah that's true i think that it it really surprises me because of the cost savings i mean this is such a tremendous amount of cost savings i mean why i can't understand why nobody saw that before i mean even even not even the aspects of not saving the earth i mean it's so cost you know yeah uh_huh uh_huh oh oh i see okay is not real cost efficient oh okay okay oh i understand that though uh_huh right and glass right uh_huh yeah that's true and even i i noticed that a lot of gas stations are telling you to recycle your oil and i mean that kind of surprises me i mean you know because once oil gets so you know thick and yucky you'd wonder how they could you know clean that up enough to use it again but they can um i don't know how cost efficient that would be i guess uh_huh uh_huh wow yeah yeah i know really i know i really i don't know i i think that i mean i think that they really are doing a good thing now and i hope it keeps well i'm sure we'll keep up you know i think it's really catching on you know i i think that i'm not sure if it i don't know i think it's a good idea to make it mandatory um it because like we were asking some people that live in um north dakota well are you saving your you know are you recycling and they said well we're not forced to do it yet so no you know so i mean i don't know i think that if people are forced if the people are not forced to do it they may not you know i mean i don't know i think a lot of people still will but right start um well right now they've got a kind of a central location off of the main highway and they've got some great big bins there for newspaper um plastic um i think three bins for glass white green and whatever other combination there is and and i think they've got a uh some kind of container for aluminum uh_huh yeah um uh_huh um well that's good well rowlett had sent sent out a survey not too long ago um in terms in how many people were interested in having a a pick up i guess on the days they do trash or something like that and apparently a lot of people [responded] to it [favorably] because they're going to do it i don't know how how soon they're going to do it or how organized it's going to be but they're they're supposed to initiate that sometime in the next couple of months um i've never noticed that we don't have a a whole lot because we're in a hospital setting so most of the things we have are through our cafeteria um um no there's there's only one pop machine and it's not accessible to the cafeteria now so uh mainly what they serve in there is juice and coffee and tea no not not really uh_huh um uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's good yeah i i guess [rowlett's] done a lot for the size town it is and i think they're trying to to make some changes i i noticed at the library or someplace this past uh month month and a half ago they were having a speaker um talk about doing lawn work and how important it is to to cut your lawn without a bag just to kind of mulch it rather than bag it up because of all the the grass that's being bagged and being hauled away by the garbage trucks and stuff and it's uh i guess a lot more [ecological] to just mow the grass and let it work it's way back into the soil i saw part of that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah um yeah well there are a lot of things that aren't i'm that's uh one of the things i wonder about uh one of the questions was do you think more should be done or something else i i wonder about some of the products that they don't take like some of the plastics and things that they don't take uh why why they couldn't do more recycling with those um yeah true yeah i noticed that about things like i i seen a lot of adds recently for organic [fertilizers] and and lawn [additives] and that type of thing but the cost is is like double or sometimes triple what the regular things you [fertilizers] and things you buy so in in terms of that it's you know and for the environment it's it's there's a good reason to do it but the cost is kind of prohibitive uh_huh yeah it's a good idea uh_huh yeah true um yeah i i'd heard something stranger talk about bottles the other day on uh on the radio station i think it's k l t y they were talking about the i think it's in canada they're using oh recyclable milk jugs plastic milk jugs as a a reinforcement for roads for road repairs and apparently they they don't break down very easily and they don't expand or or contract when the weather changes and this is kind of an unusual use for that type of thing uh_huh huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah well i think the the more people are aware of it the the more they'll do i think that's just the biggest problem is keeping it in in front of the public so they understand how serious the problem is and how important it is to do that uh_huh yeah true uh_huh what kind of recycling programs do you have in rowlett plano's doing real good on that they have uh they start off putting out great big huge garbage cans which we're supposed to put all our week's garbage into it and of course it doesn't fit right now but now we start in may breaking it down and they're picking it all up so they're going to by and we have to separate our papers and our glass and then uh they have one day for like um oh everything you picked up from your yard and we put that in disposable bags and they pick that up on monday so it's really great i i'm really going head you know completely for it i think it's marvelous well does your uh where you work do they also have aluminum cans pickups and things like that well down in the cafeteria do they have any place where you can put your you know pop cans and things like that so you don't have much choice there well i work at uh j c penny and last week they brought they have a sign up that says for one full week you bring in your old wire [hangers] and they're going to recycle them so it's getting people clean out their closets and such and then like the week before that they said go through your [cupboards] and any food that is still good bring it in and they brought it down to the shelters and they have one two they have three i think that i know of for cans for people have pop and they put them right near where they have the time cards and it works great and they have one in the room where the snack machines are too so they're really going at it and i think it's marvelous because well uh_huh well did you watch the program the other night on um was it save america it was good the only thing i thought um that i haven't been trying is when i you know go to take a shower to save the water and to put it on my plants which i had never thought about before but i've already gone to oh i started years ago i guess not years ago but yeah i would say five years ago turning off my [fountain] i mean my water [faucet] in the sink when i brush my teeth but i didn't realize that was the biggest waste of water that was surprising to me i missed that question totally i mean really bad i'm trying to think i didn't miss too many i can't remember what my score was but i did [exceeding] well i was surprised but i didn't realize that our garbage isn't being [decomposed] that was a [shocker] to me well i was in uh [bizmart] the other day and what i don't understand is there is recycled paper in there and it cost more than regular paper and it was only i think uh forty cents more you know fifty cents more but it upset me to realize that hey the recycling that they're going through the expense of recycling but people aren't buying it so the cost of it is higher uh_huh now see that's recycling you know companies that do at least go into it i'd like to see subsidy by the government or something or tax wise or something heavily enough to where they could get their prices lower than regular so that people would use this stuff over again it's like when he was saying uh which one was recyclable which was reusable and the recycle ones are better to use but lots of times you don't even see the signs on the bottles and if we're going to really do something they ought to put that stuff out bigger for people to see it i had to put my [bifocals] on to see it that's hard when you're in a grocery store and you're short anyway you have to get enough nerve to ask somebody to take something off the top shelf you haven't got enough nerve to say well put it back it's not recyclable uh_huh oh really oh you know they're along that same line they said they were using um what is oh i know it was toilets you know the old ones [smashing] them up because they're that stuff there is great for in road work and i thought well that's good and then i saw recycling on tires between uh well hoses were being used and uh uh [soaker] hoses made out of old tires what else something else was made out of old tires i was trying to remember what it was oh i can't think of it now but i was i was trying to get my uh kids you know to see different things that we could come up with for recycling purposes and just anything to you know recycle rather than keep throwing it away but my biggest problem is i take the bags out of the store buy the bags to bring the back and then i forget to bring them in the store i'm forever going back out to my car to pick up my bags to bring them and take my garbage back out i wish they'd really push this recycling bit because i never realized i really didn't realize how much stuff i actually throw away you know what i'd like to see a little more i don't have any little tiny kids but if they get the little tiny kids saving it now in five years when they get bigger it'll work a little bit more too because it's we've all got to do it right now i just i really amazed to find out that what is it eighty per cent are filled now in in garbage fills in five years we're supposed to be at max i don't think i can keep my own garbage i mean i might not have that much but i wouldn't all right uh how long have they been recycling there in virginia yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh hello yeah okay you're okay okay uh_huh have you have you [cycled] recycled plastic also we we have out here uh up until just this last year in on you are town there wasn't any really good way they had some [bends] around that we could find and put them in but not all that many it wasn't very well advertised but recently uh the refuse department has has uh is working on getting a system going where we will actually have uh a bend that we put things in for recycling these other things so it it should be good uh i think it's a marvelous idea when you think of uh when i just think of the papers that i dump out i mean there just it's such a i waste i just hate to think about it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh yeah that's neat yeah yeah that's right i guess one of the things i think that needs to happen is we need to be better informed about about it there's needs to be more public uh service of programs or something that would let us know had a happens to it and helps us to become enthused about it because of what is happening and there's i've seen a few things but not very much really and i i think that's a shame they need to uh do a little more i'd like to know for instance when i when they say uh plastic all plastic what kind of plastic can you put all together or is there some reason not to uh now maybe they just sort it after they get it and throw out what they can't use i don't know but i i'd be glad to organize it if that they'd tell me what it is i'm doing because that would that would be really helpful uh_huh yeah uh_huh that's great now that gives you a little bit of incentive there uh_huh saving them for you uh uh_huh i think that's right i think i think helping us be more enthusiastic about it helping us maybe maybe using the money for something special that would be like paying off the national debt making sure but i i think that's right i think they there needs to be a little bit more in the area of of uh advertisement and letting public letting you understand more of what it is you're doing why you're doing it how you're it's done and what what happens to it because i think that's that would help a lot yeah yeah i yeah yes i i'm glad to see some of these things i think people are becoming more conscience all the time that it's necessary to do and that we need to somehow get away from the fact that we have to have everything individually wrapped and all these things that i think that's true well i think i'm that's about my uh some on recycling but i i enjoyed talking to you uh_huh all right bye now um actually quite a a a while um i've lived here for six years and can you hold on just a second hello oh i'm sorry i must have got the other line cut off uh so they've been doing that it for a while now and uh it i live in an apartment and my facilities there it is hold on okay sorry about that yeah uh anyhow they have facilities here in my apartment complex for recycling paper only uh i've been recycling for maybe about two years now and at another public facility where they have you know recycling of glass uh aluminum and paper now no and that's what i i don't understand exactly why they don't have that option uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah now an additional thing is uh where i work they also have recycling there of uh all white paper and of you know cans also so i mean a lot of people you know right at the [vending] machines they have receptacles that you know you can just pop your cans in and near the xerox machines they have places you know for your paper you know i keep a little box at my desk you know and i just throw as i'm using the white paper you know i just throw it right in there and then you know they have someone that comes around and pick it up you know every afternoon which you know is an excellent idea at work because i know the amount paper they go through there because uh_huh yeah i would agree with that uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh exactly uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh yeah i agree with you there another thing that i like here which is i do with i have to actually go to two different recycling areas because one of them is that uh their aluminum cans is for uh children's hospital for a burn fund so all the monies are donated you know for the recycling to children's hospital which i think is an excellent idea there you know because the other public right right and before even at work before they started the recycling plan which at work they've only been doing since january first of this year i had had everyone in my department recycling and you know i would have them drop right drop their cans off in my office and then i would haul them you know here to this place for the children's hospital fund which got people really going into it but uh_huh uh_huh that there you go that's for sure uh_huh uh_huh right right uh_huh and i'm sure you know in the near future i would think they would be coming out with more you know i've seen a definite trend you know towards more recycling everywhere you know even at mcdonald's you know with their their use of no foam containers anymore right i think i think it is getting more you know advertisement right uh_huh right yeah okay well i did too okay bye bye okay have you participated in anything like that uh_huh uh we we have a pretty nice recycling center uh in our city now and we take the newspapers and plastic and glass up there they're open like two days a week and you can just take it up there and drop it off it's kind of fun and everybody up there looks pleased with themselves when they're taking their stuff in like they're doing something good to help the earth i guess yeah yeah my husband was complaining the other day because he said every time i turn around you're telling me some new rule about recycling like yesterday i was tell him you have to you're supposed to squeeze the plastic jugs before you take them up there every time he turns around i'm giving him some new rule where you're supposed to squish up the you know like collapse the plastic jugs instead of taking them up there solid and i wish that our recycling center took paper bags they won't take those we like to put our just put our newspapers in a paper bag you know and then carry them up there that way and we have to bring the paper bags back every time because they won't take them do you uh take your papers somewhere or does someone pick them up uh_huh we um we don't take our cans up to that center though our aluminum cans we like to take them to one of the places where they pay you for them uh_huh yeah it takes us about a year to save up enough to be worth you know worth bothering to go in and do but do you um have any ideas on anything that would make uh_huh right yeah that would be a good idea yeah right yeah that would be a real good motivation for people right yeah my father was telling me about some program he read about where you buy your bags like you buy your garbage bag from the city and you pay more than just what you would pay for an empty garbage bag but then you don't pay any monthly fee or anything so how ever many bags of garbage you throw away that's how many you have to pay for yeah yeah that would be a real good idea i'm trying to think if there's anything else i could think of they are talking about going to curbside pickup in our in our city rowlett texas do you know where that is and i don't know if they decided to do or not but i think they said it was going to add like either a dollar or three dollars a month to your bill to have them do that although i think a lot of those programs can operate at about a break even break even point without charging people yeah i don't know uh i guess it just depends on how they manage it i don't know how much they get when they sell all that stuff the center that they've got now where you take your stuff in i i think that should be making some money since they just have to hire someone to man it a few hours a week and they sell i guess they sell everything to some waste company that comes and gets it but i wish that uh more of the cans you know like the cans you buy vegetables and fruit and stuff like that in were recyclable i don't a lot of that's that recyclable steel and i don't know anybody that takes that my husband likes [pepsi] and those cans are steel instead of aluminum so we can't can't ever recycle them i think it's a good reason to quit buying it yeah that's what we buy the most of unless we're going on a trip or something where we want to put the cans in a cooler but well that's all i can really think about for recycling it was good talking to you uh bye well a little bit we mostly do our newspapers we keep our newspapers and stuff like that and we keep our newspapers and stuff like that and we take them to be recycled uh_huh yeah and a lot of people complain because it's really not convenient for them you're supposed to what but what are you supposed to do with them oh okay uh_huh yeah we we usually collect a you know collect a quite a bit and then we take them take them in yeah we don't we don't um use aluminum cans so we generally don't have those to do you know they they charge you you know it's like a flat rate i think for picking up your garbage and i know a lot of people it would would solve the convenience problem if they had curbside pickup and some communities are trying to do that now and i think that maybe if they only charged for the garbage that you did not sort and have set up for recycling they they charged you by by weight of how much trash you were actually sending to a land fill that that might be a better way to do it and then people would would know that it was going to cost them money to not sort their trash you know because then it would then it would make monetary sense to them you know to say hey you know if i just spend the time to to sort this out where this stuff can be recycled then i don't have to pay for them hauling it off uh_huh oh yeah that's about the same kind of thing where do you live oh okay yes it seems like they would be able to uh_huh yeah yeah yeah that's true um now i didn't know that cause we just usually if we're going to uh buy sodas they're in the the two liter bottles yeah okay okay all right bye bye yes um i i think that plano has really done a fantastic job i mean at least their plans have are good um however i was maybe you saw in the paper this morning that um they've had some problems with the recycling on plastic uh_huh i thought that was most interesting yeah yes yeah that's right yeah i guess that's going to happen yeah a really good effort that's right yeah well i was thinking about the other day um when i when dick and i were oh many many years ago when we were first married and he was in graduate school in missouri um i went oh i was probably this was probably see it have been like nineteen sixty seven or sixty eight um we i went to a meeting and uh one of the the speakers at the meeting was a woman who was recycling and um she was from saint louis and she had this fantastic um family effort in in recycling and she was [dividing] her colored glass and her plastics and her aluminum and i thought wow i mean how one person is doing that you know but my my thought was it's a shame i mean it's wonderful that she's doing it and it but wouldn't it be much nicer if we all did it because her effort would have really um really uh been a good example for all of us and yet you know and we were just sort of talking about it at the time and here we are you know now we're doing it on a city wide basis in in communities so it's wonderful that we've come that far i think but um i think she was i was trying to remember it seems to me that she was doing it on her own and living in saint louis there were places where she could actually take her uh things herself uh and so it wasn't you know something that was being picked up or um and i think she was encouraging other people to do it if they would but i remember her saying yes i have a trash can for this and a trash can for that and a trash can for the other thing and i thought wow that's that is wonderful that somebody does that yeah uh_huh right yes sure you do uh_huh yeah uh_huh isn't that amazing well you know yes people i don't know they find fault in everything rather than say this is a good effort yeah i don't know it's it's i i know what you're saying kind of people like that and well sure it is yep yeah it's on down the line right yes yeah i agree when uh_huh yeah sure yeah right yeah well i know um i guess i got a good example from my mother because she was always very very conscientious about recycling things and she is to this day and you know i mean she'll even um if she for instance she she would take the [waxed] paper out of a cereal box and use that for you know when she made cookies it would go on that or if she needed to wrap something for needed uh sandwich paper or something she'd use that she just she recycles everything and i have done the same thing i recycle like zip lock bags and things like that my kids get the biggest kick out of that although they do the same thing i mean they i think they give me a hard time but i think they know that that's it's the right way uh_huh yes and they appreciate how much it costs to do that yeah that's right that's true yeah well i don't know you know i i wonder how how you instill in people the necessity for doing just a little bit extra to to make this whole thing work i mean the extra like washing out bottles and jars or the extra of actually uh making sure that uh you take stuff over to you know some people are now are complaining because the stuff isn't picked up at the curbside you know and i think golly [moses] you just do your part you know people are not you you you can't be waited on all your life and expect things to always work out no that's right uh_huh right yeah yeah yes uh_huh yeah yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh no uh uh_huh yeah yeah right do those little things yeah that make a lot of difference uh_huh yeah yeah it's i you know and i think you're right though i think that it has to really hit home before the message sometimes or you have to grow up with it being important in your life um oh oh um before the message really takes hold sometimes and um i don't know it's uh it's just really interesting to me how now more aware of things i am than i even myself than i used to be a few years ago i mean like i i'd go to the um to the u t d um cafeteria for lunch sometimes and they use styrofoam plates when they wouldn't need to use styrofoam plates you know and i think to myself that's that's crazy i wonder if you know maybe i need to bring that to someone's attention you know and and uh i'm seeing more and more of that and and i think it's uh just mcdonald's effort to reduce the number of of styrofoam uh boxes that they use for hamburgers and stuff i think is a good good example you know that even industry is willing to do it yeah well i think that may that's kind of what it's coming to i'm sure yeah oh yeah that's right yeah uh_huh wow that doesn't wouldn't surprise me uh_huh yeah yeah uh i know it and unfortunately with the plastic well i just i thought it was sad that they it started out as a good program but then people started dumping trash and the wrong objects in there and i and that concerned me that people were using it as a way to get rid of things they just didn't want to set at the curb or take to the dump and and uh i it's too bad that people have to ruin a good part thing but uh um oh doing it what did she do with if if she was she like a group that was doing it or was she doing it on her own and what did she do with the uh_huh you you have to really want to do it though this is even even what you recycle because we we do the the plastics and the and the aluminum and the glass and the paper and um and of course then you know you try to buy right too but um a lot of our neighbors say well what you have to rinse out this and you have to make sure it's that and you have to it's uh we we had neighbors that complained when we got the new garbage cans and i thought what are you complaining about when you're only going to get picked up once a month you know or once a week and rather than work with it yeah well it's for everybody's benefit i mean it's it's not so maybe we don't realize it in our lifetime but we you have to think grandchildren and great grandchildren and what kind of quality of life are you leaving them and and the and i have a real concern about that uh we've never had much trash because while i was raised in a big family and and gene's family wasn't big but they weren't rich and they had to to recycle and and you know the well they didn't they just used things they didn't throw things away before they were used up and uh_huh yeah right right right they've picked up the well they do and when they actually get out away from the home and have to do their own buying of things and then they say well hey you know mom used to do this and dad used to do that and pretty soon they're they're figuring out that's not such a bad way to go but right well see this this is what concerns me you over in europe they don't have the kind of waste we do here you you've got to be in a country even in in mexico you don't see things thrown away like we do here i mean what we throw away is is a [ransom] a [king's] [ransom] to most people and i and even to people in our country who [scavenge] for food and and and i i think you have to get into a period of need you can't tell a person that lives in a hundred two hundred three hundred thousand dollar house that have all that they need and all that they could want that they've got to be careful this is uh i this is why i thought jimmy carter was never very very you know people didn't like him because he tried to say turn off the lights conserve this do that and and uh the i nobody wanted to hear it it's uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh um right uh_huh uh_huh right huh i i think the big question too we're looking at is would you be willing to pay more for a product so it can be recycled that's that's right and and uh do we have to wait until all the landfills are full and there is nowhere else to put our garbage or and i don't with the mind set of the american public i think what they will do is start paying mexico to take our trash that isn't that isn't harmful or they will go dump it out in the middle of some ocean that's the way we solve problems and it's sad hi good morning do you have recycling in [sachse] do oh really and it's twice a week really we have recently started uh a bin program here in plano where uh used to be we we put all of our trash in green bags and the trash men came out twice a week and picked up and now they have uh these large green containers and you have to put your trash that you don't recycle in there and then they haven't started curbside recycling yet but they're but they're planning on doing it very soon apparently the trucks that they had um lined up they needed the parts for saudi arabia and so that put off the program for a while but uh do you recycle do they uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh well that's great well that's the way we started too my daughter was going to camp [goddard] um which is through the plano school system you know in the fall couple of years ago and she had to earn money for it and she was too young to baby sit so that's how she started she started recycling cans and from there we now recycle glass and newspapers and uh aluminum cans and plastics uh_huh uh_huh no the only thing we get paid for are the aluminum cans um the rest of it we just do because my husband has become hooked on recycling and so you know we don't get paid for that but that's okay you know it's it's not that much of a bother really you just have to rinse out your bottles or whatever and we use a lot of two liter bottles um and like milk cartons and things like that it's amazing how much plastic you generate yeah yeah uh_huh yeah it really is well all that stuff and how much how much we have reduced our waste you know that we we're [generating] a week um i know our neighbors when we first went to this bin program said oh there's no way you know we're going to have to have pickup twice a week they were real upset but they weren't they were only picking up once a week and we said to them if you recycle you'll you know you'll go two weeks without having to put out the green container and uh it's it's really amazing the other thing he does that my husband a real [stickler] about is we don't collect our grass clippings no he he got a little [mulcher] thing it's just a little attachment for the lawn mower and we mow once a week you know no no more often then that and then the clippings just get mulched up and then just lay on the on on the uh the lawn and it's amazing it's amazing we don't collect any of that and that that has cut down a lot in what we throw out uh_huh yeah yeah sure it does sure it does it really does and it actually they say that you're wasting fertilizer if you're not uh if you're catching your grass clippings that that's that much fertilizer you have to use because it does fertilize the lawn it's amazing yeah yeah uh_huh that's true that's true that's true well i i really think you're going to get hooked on plastics and paper before you know it it's it's really not that much trouble we keep a large plastic uh just a you know a garbage bag in the garage and as soon as we use something you know we crush it up and put it out there and then you know every few weeks we have recycling a recycling center like near wal mart they're they have the containers that you can just go over there and drop it in and it's really no trouble and uh i feel like at least we're doing something you know um i read a book one time or a a magazine article and they said something about how you don't realize even just your small contribution it seems like a small contribution but it's not if everyone were to recycle just their newspapers they would save thousands and thousands of trees a day a day just from not throwing out your newspapers and uh when you read that you think well gee maybe it is a big deal you know uh_huh uh_huh yes yeah yeah yeah yeah and that's and that's really not necessary it really isn't if everybody would do just a little bit it would make a big difference it would make a huge impact so i'm excited about the recycling program in plano i i can't wait for them to get it started um because it'll be that much easier for us you know like i said now we have to take it over to to wal mart it would be real nice if they just came by and just picked up um now what what do they pick up it's just oh they do uh_huh and do you have to sort that or do you just put it all in right right so you're doing that now you're doing the newspapers and the glass oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh my husband would come home and go through the trash and say you threw this away he would get he would get all upset and i'd say it's just such an automatic reaction and now we think before we throw anything away i mean it's really funny we we really once you get into the habit of it it's okay it's just it's just making it a habit that's hard uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's fun yeah yeah yeah oh that's a lot of fun that's a lot of fun well that's great well i'm to hear you're doing that i my sister was here recently from connecticut and they have a deposit on all their bottles and cans good morning yes we do we've got uh a pickup twice a week that they come out and they have their own special bin that they hand it out to everybody and they take it uh_huh uh_huh oh um my kids do put it that way they they've been recycling cans for extra money so that's that's been their summer money and they're fixing to go to disneyland so so yeah uh_huh really is is that the same way as with the aluminum cans where you go and they weigh it or whatever and um yeah yeah i was amazed at how many cans that we got because when the kids first went down i said that you know that's great and i was thinking you know maybe i'd help supplement it you know when they turned them in but it's amazing how many cans you go through and how fast they accumulate uh_huh yeah really uh_huh yeah we don't we don't catch it either mainly because my husband rarely has time to mow the yard so if it mows gets mowed i do it normally and i can't mow the yard with the grass catch on it it's too heavy so i just i just mow it and leave it it just [soaks] in uh_huh yeah oh i like it better doing it well one it cuts down on my mow time anyway and you zip through it quicker we probably will yeah uh_huh yeah really what what makes me sick is is when they show the dump sites you know and and how big they are or like in new york the [barges] that that go up and down the the river and they don't have any place to put it and it just floats in the it's like ugh no yeah it it's it's convenient out here for them to do it they pick up the the plastic the glass and the newspaper uh_huh and they will do the no you just put it in the one bin and and i guess they do the sorting but um they'll do the aluminum cans too but we don't give them those the kids keep those so uh_huh well we don't we don't take the newspaper to begin with when neither one of us are home to read it so we don't have the newspapers but the the plastic and the glass at first when it first started it it it was hard you know because you're just used to throwing things uh it is oh i know well the kids have even got to the point where they if they see anybody going in the trash can with a can you know they they're oh no don't do that and they go to the sink they rinse them out and they put them upside down they let them drain and and then uh after a couple of days they take them all outside and i put them in a big bag anyway and then they dump the bag out and then they crush them so that's their activity thing to go out there and crush so yeah oh really okay well let's see well we keep our paper paper bags lined up in the garage for glass and glass and uh plastics and uh we make the dump over to the wal mart bins there as soon as they're full i guess we collect milk cartons and whatever other plastics are acceptable no no i didn't think that anybody had those at all yet right well no i haven't seen any so i i thought that it all had all been delayed several times so i have no idea what they look like and i'm kind of anxious to see them oh right right right oh oh of course that they did you know actually we had milk delivered to our house in glass bottles and we had a milk shoot at the side of the house you could just leave the [milkman] a note on what you needed and so you just put the empty ones back out there and he took them away and put you know put another gallon of glass glass bottle in there so uh yeah right right it would be nice it would be nice to see it take a good turn here it seems like it started to take a turn and then it went away so i hope that this time it it stays just to see stacks and stacks of newspapers just to the trash is just amazing so uh you know we when we go dump actually when we go dump our things oh we collect newspapers too and then take them seems like there's a pretty well there's a pretty continual flow of people coming and dumping glass and dumping plastics so that's kind of encouraging i didn't know you know i didn't know if we started to do that i didn't know what to expect right well i guess they will shortly i uh oh right yeah right do you know i saw in tom thumb yesterday i saw the return to the uh the small coke bottles and i don't know if there's a deposit on those or not they were glass they were the glass uh well let's see they'd be i don't know maybe ten ounce or six ounce or ten ounce sort of a small size sort of a small size and and we anyway we just we didn't stop and look them look at them a long time but and they were packed in the old sort of six pack stick them down you know uh sort of sort of a basket type thing right right so i hadn't seen that in a long time yeah yeah well no he doesn't like the paper sacks and uh but he but you know he likes to pick the grass up too he doesn't doesn't right right that's nice i guess they dump it the same place i wonder where they dump that yeah yeah well they must they must keep it separate if they have this date in they have this day now that it's you know separate from the other trash pick up no are you in the part of town where uh they have gotten into the other containers yet for recycling well maybe they don't i i know that was supposed to be in may and i couldn't tell whether some parts of town had started it or if it was just everybody was was waiting for the delivery of whatever those containers were yeah that's going to be interesting because it's uh we've gotten so convenient and [conventional] in trash disposal which is uh i look at our big green containers and i say well they work fine and i keep mine outside the garage so that i don't have any [odors] but it's clearly a place where uh uh it will be interesting to see how well that works and i am i'm glad the community is doing it uh it's one of those things that kind of has to be forced on people uh i don't know if where you grew up in your what you saw back uh years ago but for me the thing that strikes me is i uh growing up in rural south dakota where hey the farmers brought their eggs to town and the local [hatchery] would candle them and package them is that uh in the fifties uh you could say we had the recycling going on then that we should have now which was all the milk bottles were glass and you got a nickel or dime which in that time was a lot of money when you returned them pop bottles all had a deposit on them oh uh_huh yeah yeah so uh you know i look back at at uh my childhood and i'd say you know they were doing things then that we should be doing now and so it doesn't bother me at all that we're we're uh kind of starting to put the pressure on people to get away from all this uh [throwaway] society that got developed in the sixties and seventies yeah uh_huh yeah well i'll have to say i'm i'm the only one i'm good at at this point is the newspaper uh taking that to the boy scouts and my aluminum cans uh getting rid of those but on the plastic i have uh i don't have any habits there yet and i'm guess i'm waiting for the city to to push me in that direction but but it just seems like on the larger scale that you know the we always talk about in our society is that economic strife things and i think if uh if we just start to put you know the nickel deposit on things like uh was the case years ago that uh it would have more immediate effect uh than because i remember searching [ditches] for beer bottles because they were worth money and it seems like beer [drinkers] are among the worst for throwing things out the window and so outside my little town we would uh go out and look for long neck beer bottle because they were worth something yeah i well that's interesting because they're back to glass you're saying uh_huh yeah uh_huh the carton the paper carton yeah well i mean the you really look and say a lot of the things we need to do we were doing and we had all the mechanisms in place with the fold up paper cartons the wood uh racks which now basically you could turn them into the plastic ones that would hold uh twenty four bottles and and uh uh i'm not really say going back to good old days but certainly we were doing things the way we think we should do them now well it will be interesting to see how over the next year this all works out because like on the uh grass i'm i know your husband uh doesn't really like the paper sacks yeah i'm the i'm the same way because otherwise uh oh i'm i generally listen to neal sperry on saturdays and neal uh [neal's] a person who says i like to pick it up but i don't believe in throwing it into the uh the landfill so i have my compost pile but most of us don't have the uh sufficient lot size to uh to do that uh so i'm glad the city's willing to take that on well there's someplace you know if it's because really when i look at what my grass does in in actually about twenty four hours uh knowing what the farmers do in rural areas they just take their hay and just build a big mound of it and it naturally uh [composts] or stores and uh so all you have to do is just place it somewhere and [churn] it and it will naturally decompose uh so you just have to kind of keep in separated and then uh who knows how they process it from there and what they turn it into but it's certainly [usable] material uh_huh right but i the thing i don't understand about that is like when it's one thing to send grass there but i've trimmed trees and other things which uh end up being something that clearly won't decompose nearly as rapidly seems to be a a topic that's going to probably take about a generation to uh catch on it seems or maybe a generation to two and we may have to do it out of necessity as far as moving that time schedule up uh it does seem to be a lot of habits to break i uh wasn't raised as a kid on it but my kids are and so they they tended to want to grab the aluminum cans when that was one of the first things to do and we were doing all right there until uh the price dropped out and they weren't worth anything anymore and we it took us almost a year to get a garbage sack full we just don't drink that many so as far as at home use uh we'll pick up a six pack every once in a while or for whatever occasion of doctor pepper or something and and by the time we gathered up enough [crushed] cans to take it in uh at the time it was still oh about forty or fifty cents a pound and we came out with about a dollar it just really wasn't worth it yeah so they they realized you know well of course to them a dollar was a dollar at four and five years old that wasn't uh that was a big deal but we decided it wasn't worth us keeping it and then uh t i started keeping up with uh cans there so occasionally i'll bring whatever i've got laying around the car or the like and throw them in there least it gets back into the system but as far as a habit at the house uh i haven't started on anything other than just whatever the city wants to pick up have you all got the individual containers yet um right yeah it seemed like uh if if i recall it's been a long time they're way behind schedule on that particular part of it they were fine on the green big green containers but uh seems like they said they were just going to have a bin and all different types would go in there and then that they would sort it as as needed it it seemed that there was at the time anyway it the thinking was that there was too much not getting sorted properly and that at at the collection sites where everything's clearly labeled and people that happen to go to that kind of trouble to do it happen to do it pretty well uh those are okay to have the general public doing the sorting but when it comes down to just general purpose trash that all the houses uh the success rate of getting it sorted properly seemed to be poor so they felt that having one guy just sit there and run through it real quick was better than than having a household try it but i i don't know that sounds like an awful lot of labor to sort the entire week's worth of trash for a house yeah yeah right that's true right yeah they don't do that we live next to a set of railroad tracks and it seemed to be a very popular thing for people driving by that highway there by our tracks to throw the bottles at the tracks and try to crash you know break them but uh they weren't that successful so there were a lot of bottles to be returned and we just walk about a half a mile in each direction and gathered up enough to buy whatever we wanted for the day and yeah just a little bit of begging will right well i wonder yeah right yeah where do you take your cans uh_huh and a lot of hassle all year round and cans laying yeah no i read in the paper this week where maybe i don't know if it was i guess maybe this week someone may start getting them if the truck that picks them up is [outfitted] in time but it it should be starting i would stay probably in the next month if if everything goes that i'm not sure all what we're going to have to do whether we have three separate containers i really don't understand that part on what they've told you to separate everything uh_huh oh uh_huh well it would get messy too i i i know other places when they recycle they have to like wash out their glass jars and whatnot and uh which we're not in the habit of doing i was brought up uh you know long time ago that they didn't even have cans they had bottles and you'd return them to the the grocery store and you'd get our money back and that that was all well and good they don't seem to still be doing that if they could just eliminate the cans and use glass but i guess this day and age they don't uh_huh uh_huh yeah and they uh i i think kids don't appreciate maybe the value of money that it's so little that they don't care they can get more somewhere else uh for a good right they're the [nickels] the [dimes] or what i suppose it might be quarters fifty cent pieces in these days that they would get they the kids just don't seem to to care that that much about a small amount of money but we we did buy a can crusher and we are [crushing] cans and when we buy the soda when it's on sale for ninety nine cents so i would say in the last three years we've probably used a lot more cans than ever before uh it was just easier to do that than to open a large liter bottle and then have it go flat so that's the main reason we're we sort of are into cans at this point rather than the liter bottles well as you say it takes a while to build it up since we've had the crusher all summer we i guess we just now maybe have a bag full that we haven't oh i think the kids when we were on vacation they said they did take them to a a recycling place probably at one of the uh_huh that's okay that's okay it's more uh concentrated so they know where you are uh anyway i know here in here in plano some of the things that we do are um kroger and some of the other stores too have said if you bring your bags back to to the store to recycle then they'll pay you a certain amount of money and that's one thing that started in the community uh_huh uh_huh yeah i know kroger will do it and i think albertson's does it sometimes i'm not sure um and and yet i know that uh some of the stores will actually help the community not pay you the money back but will pay the the uh community like through the schools or things like that so um that's always helpful and i know that we we have the the can the can different can banks around the city that you can go to and do that um one of the ways i don't know uh if this would be helpful it said on the the computer what do i think would be helpful and i don't know if it would be helpful or not but i know on monday the the garbage men pick up like just um any limbs or any extra trash that you might have and that might be an extra day to put out things that might be recycled if we had a a certain colored can to put them in or something in the city to put like either glass or newspapers or whatever yeah yeah yeah uh i know getting a newspaper everyday i know i could just you know do that because i have to pick it up and it just goes out with our trash and i guess i'm not as um recycling minded as i should be but that goes out with the trash and it really could be recycled did you tell me don't you have to take like labels off of those jars yeah take them off yeah soda both liter sodas can you do that okay right right i i know with our family that we could really be helpful if we could find a way to just um get it into different categories like that and i i don't know what it would take to to get my children to start working on it i have two older ones that probably would go along with the if i had it arranged so that it wasn't a big project you know okay yeah uh_huh oh all set actually i'm in plano too i say dallas area when i'm talking to people elsewhere yeah they actually pay you money for that um um [brookshires] up in uh allen uh you bring your bags back you know they uh the plastic bags back or the paper bags you put them in the receptacles there but i didn't realize some people are actually paying you for that um uh_huh interesting right right yeah i think they already do that out east um they have to it's a little bit more difficult because people have to remember okay today's glass okay [tomorrow's] plastic and all that but i think that's the way we need to go it's uh it's pretty bad all these years we've been especially in this country all the uh the plastic and the paper and everything we just used to throw out uh_huh yeah about six months ago i started yeah and uh so what i do is uh it's not bad you just have to have a place to keep everything but uh it you'll be amazed if you ever start doing it just put your paper in the same place every day and it'll start [stacking] up take your glass um you know pickle jars or or whatever uh liquid jars you know just rinse them out a little bit and put them all in a place and uh plastics no from what i understand uh you can leave the labels on um although i rip rip them off i don't i don't scrub them or anything i just tear them off throw the lids and everything out but uh put all the glass in one place and plastics like milk jugs uh orange juice jugs things like that yes those also um and then of course uh cans coke cans whatever but uh i haven't been down to the recycling center yet to find out exactly what they need or what they take and all that i've just read a lot about it and i'm keeping these big piles of it right now i going to try to dump it out this weekend in fact but uh you'd be amazed how quickly it all stacks up there's a lot that we throw out uh_huh it's yeah it's not a big deal you get used to it one let me tell you one interesting thing when i went back to the store and i said hey um i understand you all are taking these bags back uh you know what do you do with them and they told me they look through them all and throw out the ones that don't belong there and then you know go and recycle the rest and i said what do you mean the ones that don't belong there and they said well people come in and put anything in the receptacles and what i found out is if you look at the bottom of those bags kroger or whatever the plastic ones they've got numbers on them yeah and if it's got the little recycle symbol and inside it it's got a number like bags from drug [emporium] have a so do you have any recycling programs there uh_huh oh uh_huh yeah we've [progressed] a little bit farther than that um actually they have uh parts of town it may have even spread all over the whole town and um they will have these green bins and it's just as standard as a a regular trash can that they come by and pick up and dump and uh just along with a trash can you have this this green plastic bin and you put your bottles in it and paper and uh you know all those things that aluminum you know anything that can be recycled you just put in that bin and uh i guess you can and a lot of the restaurants they just have uh places where you can throw away especially beer places where you can throw away green bottles and then the brown bottles and uh-oh i don't know i guess they're you know clear bottles so um you know a lot of people do have those separated and of course they have the um dumpsters uh the the [igloos] uh and they have those [strategically] placed around the city and uh they're they're actually going to extend it i think one of these days maybe to apartment complexes and uh yeah things of that nature so i guess when you live in a bigger city it it really becomes uh necessary oh yeah uh_huh yeah oh really huh yeah i remember my grandparents and i used to always get out there on the road and pick up beer cans and uh uh_huh yeah they're doing a real good job of uh separating it here and of course there you know you have a specific place to put your paper and uh they try to get you to go ahead and separate it but they actually have the door to door pickup um and it's uh i think it started out to be um just kind of a test a pilot project and it went over so well that they just extended it and it's almost uh i don't know if it's done by a private company or not it may be but uh they just go around to each uh door and pick it up yeah let's see oh and every year of course the phone books um they tell everybody across the city to uh put all their phone books in uh the uh recycle bins because you know phone books are pretty well for a bigger city they're pretty thick and sometimes you might have two or three so uh that's that's a big savings right there in itself yeah huh uh_huh uh_huh well the thing about newspapers and paper recycled paper is actually very expensive so when you see something that's on recycled paper they've actually gone to a lot of expense to do that it's uh they're not coming out ahead at all it's uh it's really a cost yeah i mean it it sounds good to the public but there's really a big cost [incurred] when you do recycle something now aluminum i don't know they may be coming out ahead but i know for a fact that the paper uh on that end they're not you know it's just good to recycle but it's uh not to their advantage and it costs less i can't think of anything else okay uh_huh well i hope you all um uh come along a little farther in the future it was nice talking to you bye bye um i don't really think we have anything in the works as of yet uh we're a pretty small town and uh the closest thing we have are bins like out in front of wal mart that show you know plastics paper liter bottles et cetera et cetera yeah uh_huh yeah oh yeah huh yeah yeah oh oh that would be good yeah see it's not anywhere near that uh we you know as far as our little pitch in to it we do recycle our aluminum cans but that's as far as we go because i take them to a girl at work and she goes and [cashes] them in because you know i just i can do that for her and and i don't want the hassle because we have to go to another town to do it yeah see we don't have anything here in [belton] it's it's a pretty small little town yeah so you know that's about all the that we're doing here uh they're uh getting a little bit more on they need to a lot a more community awareness of just what is it mean to recycle and what can you recycle and what you can't because you know not a lot of people do really know what you know what it's for yeah uh_huh wow that's excellent that's good yeah oh yeah they are exactly yeah see ours just goes in the regular trash it just you know there's not a whole lot and there are you know some places that will set up you know for old newspapers and stuff but usually it's it it hasn't caught on yet i'm hoping it will soon yeah huh i wasn't totally aware of that so yeah yeah huh well i can't either because we're we're at a very you know beginning stages so we look forward to it to get better yeah me too you too bye why don't you go ahead and say what you feel and then i'll respond yeah well how long have you been here well yeah yeah i think that's a good excuse you need to get into the the system a little more and know where to take things we've been here probably two and a half years and and we didn't recycle at all before we came so i think we're doing well we we save most of our aluminum cans and glass and newspaper right now well the um glass and the newspaper we usually take to walmart they have um in behind walmart they have bins and then we usually save up our cans and and change them in for money uh_huh um there's a place on parker road um it's just over the [overpass] before you get like to k mart i think there's a a service station there there's usually a semi truck that has a a person there that will weigh them and now they aren't worth much right now but it's better than nothing so and what i hear a lot of neighborhoods do have the the pickup now and we hopefully we'll be getting them in the month of october yeah and i think it's been delayed i think it was originally scheduled for february but the trucks that were supposed to do it there's been some problems with from what i've read in you know the mail that we get and i can't wait for that that will be easy i get tired of newspaper [littering] the garage i feel guilty we don't recycle our our milk containers because they seem like a big waste yeah yeah they fill up the whole kitchen garbage can so i'll be glad when the bins do come and i think that's when i'll i'll start doing the plastic too yeah i've gotten used to washing the you know the um salad dressing bottles and things like that it's not that big of a deal and it's nicer to just throw them out but we can do our part take an extra minute or two oh when we first were were here it was like we'd take maybe a oh a grocery sack full or maybe two grocery sacks full and it would be like two dollars but since last time we've gotten more like a dollar yeah which is understandable i think more people are are recycling that's something we we don't really make any effort to and whatever pop we drink we used to take the boys out for a bike ride and pick up the litter you know the the cans and that was kind of fun but we haven't done that for a long time so well the boys think it's fun plus you get your exercise and you do get to stop once in a while when there is a can to rest so but well hopefully the bins will be here in this month and that will spur you on so all right well it sounds like we're doing our part and at least starting trying that's all you can do so um yeah you can do it as long as you want they you know if it's been long enough five minutes is is when they cut in and say say we don't have any more room for recording so we can say good bye now it was good talking to you and maybe we'll get on line again thanks sherry bye bye all right well i'm uh i'm very guilty of of not doing my part with recycling i'm afraid we um recently moved here from north carolina and they had curbside recycling and it was very easy to you know to put everything out there but we don't have it in at least in our neighborhood right now and uh so i've been very guilty about not making the effort to to take things where take things where they belong well we've been here since january so we we still feel very new but uh it's working up to a year now so i guess we're old timers compared to some people right yeah uh_huh uh_huh well where do you take those things uh_huh well where do you do that because we've been saving cans for my daughter's choir um but i didn't know where to take them oh yeah better than nothing right yeah i it seems like ever since we've moved here we've been hearing that you know it's coming in a couple of months but oh right yeah it gets to be a bit much to haul it off but well they yeah they they're a lot of bulk anyway yeah right yeah it was real easy with the bins it really was it was just no effort at all um no more trouble than taking out the garbage so um right yeah well how much do you earn on the cans i i didn't know what kind of an idea to give her for uh_huh yeah so it's gone down yeah right yeah uh_huh yeah well that sounds like a pretty good project oh well i'll have to keep myself and and get on it my neighbor across the street um is so careful about recycling and so i keep telling myself i'll i'll get it organized but may maybe they'll beat me and and do the city wide first right right i won't have any excuse then that's for sure thinking about it anyway yeah but well um have you do they time this thing for us or do we you can't chat all day huh okay okay bye bye okay we're on uh recycling and uh i am not real well informed on exactly what richardson does i know that we uh they ask us to bundle our newspapers and we do that and we recycle our aluminum pop cans and stuff but now plano has quite an elaborate system don't they uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh okay okay and then they they separate it oh that's a neat system oh uh_huh well i know our son and daughter in law live in plano and i know they have [commented] on the system i don't know that they know that it worked that way but they have the two separate containers and stuff oh that is interesting because i wonder if that means that if you don't do it do you suppose they will come and knock on your door and that that is interesting you know will you be penalized if you don't will you uh right right that's true except that it's hard to imagine you know when you have uh cans you know from the the market and uh you know vegetable cans and et cetera oh they don't take vegetable cans this is just their aluminum cans well then yes so they have that's interesting i wonder uh uh wouldn't you really like to know i'm sure you know if nothing else call the sanitation department say okay what are you doing reading you know i think it's a very good thing i think that uh i think it helps if the city is giving you a [nudge] to do it because i think there are a lot of people that don't do it and i can't say that my husband and i are real real conscientious we got started on the aluminum cans because our uh grandson was collecting them uh to raise money and stuff for an organization he was in so we started collecting them and now he's through so we've just we've kept on and it's interesting too that we have to drive we drive to plano at plano road to uh just inside your city limits to you know turn them in to dump them in i'm sure there's bound to be some here in richardson but we just haven't really seen them advertised or you know something well that's interesting uh_huh well i haven't noticed uh i haven't noticed richardson you know making that big a yes uh_huh i see yeah they do uh it started out several years ago when they put these uh collection sites they uh near a walmart near a football stadium and the like and they just couldn't believe how many people were going out of their way to fill these things up these huge dumpsters were being filled up in a in a matter of a week so they knew that there was something going on here so they started looking into programs and what we have now it they changed the whole way that they do garbage in plano instead of collecting plastic bags of garbage two days a week they make a collection on monday for yard waste and the yard waste has to be put in a special bag that's a [decomposable] paper sack it's a pretty good size it's maybe the size of two or three um grocery bags and we put that out by the street and they collect those on monday and then on wednesday we put out two containers that they gave us one [container's] a huge green monstrous thing that a uh uh a special truck comes by and hooks onto the side of it and [flips] the container into the back of the garbage truck so and that's where you put your regular um garbage and trash and then also that same day you put out a small tub it's maybe two feet high and three feet by two feet wide and you put just throw in your aluminum and your milk jugs and newspaper and then the exactly they have a big truck that has like not ten maybe five big doors on the side of it and they throw the different stuff in the different doors yeah it is and apparently it's you know it it went off pretty much without a hitch the trucks the special five door trucks were a little tough in getting because of something to do with the persian gulf war that the trucks were being the engines or something were being shipped over there for something or other but it does work pretty well oh yes uh_huh i noticed something interesting last time i guess two wednesdays ago when they were picking up i happened to be out there in the morning when they were picking up the that tub stuff and the man who was doing the separating when he was done [emptying] the tub he took a little electronic reader device off of his belt and he read the bar code that was on the side of the tub so they must be collecting information about who does it and how often yeah uh_huh i i don't know but i think that's a really interesting question yeah that that seems farfetched only because it it there's no law that says you have to buy a newspaper or pop cans or milk jugs so there there's it's possible that there is a person in plano that doesn't buy any of those three things and therefore wouldn't have right no they won't take vegetable cans just just the aluminum pop cans yeah yeah what they're doing with that i would someday i'm sure we'll find out uh_huh so tell me your feelings on recycling is it do you think this is a good thing or silly yes yes yeah dump them off yeah and that is interesting right yeah well the yeah the plano newspaper each each day in fact has a a little list of all the recycling centers for all the different things they publish it every single day yeah and phone numbers and and that kind of stuff okay jerry i guess tonight's topic is about recycling and i'd like to tell you first of all what's happening in our community here in plano right now we have a pretty nice recycling program where a lot of the recyclable materials can be picked up by the by the collection agency or the the city along with your garbage can uh you can put out newspaper you can put out glass you can put out aluminum cans you can put put out certain types of plastic material and that is on a roll out effort right now not all the citizens and the people in plano can go ahead and uh participate right now but uh that will be rolled out to everyone i hope in the next year or so and those that aren't participating they have the specific drop off sites where you can take glass and newspaper and aluminum and i think uh overall that's an an excellent opportunity because i hate to see our landfills being filled up and uh growing bigger and bigger and bigger where they are becoming a big problem for not only the people that are living today but for the future also so how about your community dye mound uh_huh sounds like a place where i grew up well i like it uh_huh well good oh okay uh_huh oh well let's hope not you can be uh get in trouble for that uh_huh well it's quite similar to a [hydraulic] jack isn't it okay okay yes until you release it all right i think yes oh yes i sure do uh_huh uh_huh oh yes no well great that's excellent well uh if a lot of people did that then we wouldn't have a lot of this junk mail that's a great idea i hadn't thought about that and we might be able to incorporate some of that one thing right uh_huh right oh yes well that's a great idea that's a great idea products yes uh_huh yes they will exactly huh well that's a full time job yes well i've found out too that uh you know a couple years ago we've always been recycling newspaper for the last twelve years and at one time we could get a pretty good return uh with the boy scouts we could take and collect the newspaper uh_huh all right yeah uh i was my community that's cute i live in a place called dye mound or dye community and it's not a city not incorporated my nearest neighbor's about a half a mile at least i can't even see their house and uh yeah i mean uh i'm out in i'm out in the wilderness literally and uh well give you an idea it's three and a half miles of dirt road to the concrete i mean to the asphalt we're out there and uh we i do some interesting recycling things i'm building our house right now and i'm going to incorporate into my uh garage area a weight activated uh crusher so when i drive the car in the in the driveway in the afternoon it it will just drive it up on a [ramp] that actually puts me on top of the the uh pressure side of a uh [hydraulic] cylinder and the weight of the car will crush what's ever in the [disposer] hopefully it's not my wife well i thought i'd you know i'd use it as a an [escapement] type thing i don't know if you're familiar with that operation but what you do is you just build up the pressure and then you go over and release it and then it just it just drops you know very similar yeah well what what it will be you just you drive up on the jack but you it won't go down until you pull the pin yeah anyway i have another uh recycling method i use you know all that junk mail you get the glossy paper that says buy this and send off for that and you have won and all that well anytime they send me a return envelope i put all that stuff back in the envelope plus the other stuff that i you know happen to gather up because uh well like i say we live a way and when you throw trash away you throw it in my yard and i don't like that so i don't do that so i take it and i send and i mail it back to them i've had four companies actually stop mailing me stuff yeah well i think one of the the best ways to eliminate uh or help the recycling problem is to eliminate non reusable items for instance uh i saw a thing on uh nova i think it was the other day this guy has designed recyclable materials i mean recyclable items whatever he makes it's all out of the same thing see so plastic it's all out of plastic if it's metal it's all out of metal it's he's a design he's a engineer designing stuff and and [incorporating] you know reusable materials into your uh you know your assembly line into your actual scheme of product operations is is the only way to really do it on a on a broad scale make it financially uh attractive to recycle and somebody will find a way to make money at it and well there is a guy in dallas that's all he does he collects trash you know and yeah well he's he's out for cardboard i guess we're supposed to talk about what's being done about recycling well lots right finally well we have saved our newspapers for years and years because the uh boy scouts our boys have been involved in have uh had a huge recycling bin over at [resurrection] [lutheran] church and uh so we've done that for quite some time but since the price of paper has gone down like it's about a fifth of what it used to be so the boy scout troop quit doing it when the city took it over so now we just put ours out for the city of plano do you live in plano okay yeah right yes although just just about a week ago some of my volunteer mothers that uh work in the library for me said they hadn't gotten theirs yeah yeah yeah uh_huh right yeah we used to take ours there i know right right i'm really glad they do it uh yeah i do news mostly newspapers and uh plastic two liter diet coke bottles and aluminum cans some but i don't use as many of those i guess the ones that are hard to convince yourself to do are the ones that you have to really that are really dirty that you have to wash out uh ha wasting all your time and effort and putting it in there yeah yeah got your routine down yeah well i guess there are some places uh in the north in particular that uh have a real definite way of encouraging you to recycle because they charge you let's see they charge you for your garbage pick up by the weight so if you recycle things of course then you don't have all that weight in there right that's right yeah yeah um right yeah right probably going to throw them in your trash well there are places that take car batteries but i wonder if they would take i mean not that it would kind of a pain to you know drive over somewhere special just for that for two little tiny batteries but yeah that's true right that's true uh when i was home those few days around thanksgiving and the uh the truck came by well we all ran out to watch it because you know we'd never really seen it pick up our stuff and one thing i thought was interesting was that the driver had something on his belt that he uh scanned across the little bar code on our bin as soon as he took the stuff and he just pulled this thing kind of out of his pocket and just you know scanned it so i don't know why what that was reading it for but uh they must be trying to keep track of you know who is doing it or what i guess i don't know another ooh for those who are really cooperating now that would encourage it sure sure but the garbage uh now there is just one garbage man that comes on the truck instead of two so that's interesting uh also slightly off the subject but our our big green garbage thing got stolen uh_huh and we we called the city and uh they they brought us a new one and they did not charge us and they said that between three and four hundred have been stolen isn't that sad you know and just oh and they must be yeah really expensive i mean of course we were hoping we weren't we weren't going to have to pay for it you know but i mean what would somebody do with them yes right really what what do you do now uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh really okay yes i do yeah and i'm so glad when they brought out those recycling bins have you had yours now yeah oh that's why i asked you i guess it you know it does go in cycles and not everyone got theirs right away and i i was so [relieved] because i've been making a real [concerted] effort make you know recycling the aluminum and the newspapers and even got into plastic because wal mart collected it and uh my garage was just getting overwhelmed and of course i didn't go weekly so it became quite a big thing and uh yes yeah uh_huh yeah well i found out after washing out many a peanut butter jar that they're not a recycling number one or two uh ha so it was wasting a lot of time yeah thinking i was safe in buying those jars as far as the environment was concerned but uh you know but it it's not that hard now that i've got this system under control yeah uh uh_huh yeah i do find that i don't have as much to throw away because all the bulky things are are being tossed in with the recycling and uh i don't know what they could do more of exactly around here right now other than uh what are some of the things they don't recycle oh one thing i thought about the other day were batteries just everyday regular batteries supposedly you know leak and and [contaminate] the landfills and yet what am i going to do when i have a couple double a batteries to toss out and they don't take yeah that's what happens because yeah yeah yeah but i think the city one could possibly look into that or something uh if they've got these bins for all the other little items i'm sure if people will have batteries uh you know quite often to to toss out uh_huh oh oh is that right huh registering our garbage yeah wouldn't it be nice if you could get a credit back at the end of the year yeah well except i know it would just not be cost effective they've already got all this money out on hiring uh getting the trucks and hiring people to work them i'm sure they couldn't afford that but uh yeah oh yeah oh it did gosh oh my goodness it is sad you know they paid for those things anyway or our taxes do uh_huh uh we do here uh see what do we recycle we they recycle they have bins and they also have centers where you can take aluminum cans and uh plastic bottles and i think that's all they have what about you guys uh_huh really for smashed cans uh_huh oh can you can you hold on for just a minute i'm going to try pressing one again to make sure that i pressed it hard enough because okay just succeed oh okay well i guess i guess yeah okay well anyways you guys only get a penny a can well when you buy like uh canned drinks and stuff like that do they charge you for the deposit yeah exactly and so it's like they charge you for the deposit so when you turn in the cans unsmashed you're just like reimbursed type of thing that's sort of nice though uh_huh yeah so you guys can actually get ahead but uh they have sort of like uh things that you you're not like reimbursed for or paid for like we can recycle uh clear glass brown glass green glass uh and milk jugs and uh newspapers you know everyone does newspapers but that that kind of stuff but they they said they can't be smashed or else uh it doesn't fit in their little containers and they're not reimbursed by the the people who are over them or something yeah exactly yeah send it to this address no but uh let's see they said that how ways can encourage recycling uh yeah that's uh_huh as likely to do it yeah yeah that's true uh_huh yeah yeah exactly uh_huh yeah uh_huh oh that's good uh another thing i thought of i guess to recycle would be like clothes because i mean everybody gets rid of their clothes sometime or other and one way that we do it sort of in in iowa is that we can take some of our clothes to the [consignment] shops and that way you know you don't get near enough as as much as you bought it for but you you got the use out of it and what you're going to basically donate to a [goodwill] or whatever anyways you can get a little bit of money for and so that's something that i've never i we're we're new to iowa so that's something that i hadn't you know looked into before but that's one way to sort of get money and still recycle i guess well do you do any recycling yeah oh well we uh there is a lot of things that you can recycle down here although the only thing i guess i wind up recycling religiously is uh aluminum cans but uh we've got a we've got a couple of different things uh places uh they're like [unattended] aluminum can [smashers] and you can go up there and and uh redeem we've got one that gives you like a penny a can so if you yeah well actually you have to give put them in there unsmashed and uh when you do that it it basically [crushes] them and then drops a penny down a little shoot sure okay okay well i heard it that i heard it that time uh no you probably get charged like a nickel or something like that oh okay okay no they don't charge us that extra nickel yeah it it really is really what happens is we just get a penny a can back off the off the price if you want to think of it that way so when we get like uh uh a twelve pack then that's like twelve cents back yeah yeah yeah yeah everybody does newspapers yeah well shoot maybe what we ought to do is start sending unsmashed uh [pepsi] cans and whatever up there i i i tell you what what really works uh at least down here is if there is if there is some even some money basically to take care of the gas to recycle it you know what i mean then people tend to do it uh in other words taking care of the environment is is all well and good but if it's going to cost you to take care of the environment they're not quite as uh likely to do it as if uh if you get something back for it you know and uh so you know if there are some energy savings or if there is some significant savings anything that they can pass on to the consumer you know it kind of reminds me of using an a t m card you know to get money or doing your banking you know if it's free people will use it if it costs them something then they're not as likely to use it you know but uh i know we had a problem down here with uh oil people taking oil out of their cars and just putting it down the you know the the drain sewer and uh all that because there was apparently a lot of people you know every time they change the oil they just dump all the their old oil down there now they're starting to recycle that stuff yeah yeah yeah yeah i know a lot of places they uh uh set you you got the topic right okay uh well where in dallas are you oh okay so you do do recycling there uh_huh uh_huh are they going to later do you know uh_huh um well i'm i'm in dallas proper in the city of dallas and i know they do have you know a pilot program going on but it's not here so they're not picking up anything so i mean we we collect everything we've got all these boxes in our garage for you know green glass and clear glass and plastic and everything well there's there's a couple places unfortunately we can't find a place that will take everything uh there's a lot of places to take like the plastic uh shopping bags like most of the grocery stores and there's a wal mart nearby that takes almost everything i can't remember what it is they don't take and the library will take glass so we end up you know on the weekend we pack it all in the car and and as we go places we oh wait we can drop the glass off you know drop things off one at a time but uh and it's kind of disappointing i mean i would even be happy if they just had one you know one place where you could do everything you know it would still be more convenient than what we have now um where is that oh i'm pretty far north i'm not i'm i'm i'm just i'm north of addison actually so i'm i'm really i'm i'm in dallas but only technically uh_huh yeah yeah i've seen those yeah yeah well you get something uh we used to do that but again that's another stop and it doesn't take plastic bags and and all that sort of thing but uh i think that you know i heard that it was going well in the pilot area wherever that is and so hopefully they'll do it soon that would be good because we have two trash pick ups a week and where i grew up we only had one a week and that was certainly sufficient so if they just do one of them will be trash and the alternate time would be recyclables that would be great so uh_huh oh um right yeah do you have to uh sort the paper and take out the glossy pages and that that sort of thing or do they take the whole thing oh okay uh_huh let me guess you work at t i right so do i yeah um yeah yeah well and they take cans now too which is great well our department used to collect the cans anyway for the christmas tree project and in fact we got this past year we got all of our money for the christmas tree because we saved cans for the entire year and it worked out really well uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah because we would get it okay yeah i'm in richardson yeah richardson has uh well they have a newspaper pick up once a week supposedly if it's not raining and they also have a couple of areas where you can take uh cans plastic and paper to uh you know dump them off there if you don't uh want to wait and have a pick up least of paper but they don't pick up the other items they don't pick up cans or the plastic i'm not sure they only started to do the newspaper uh late last year just kind of like a trial basis and see how it goes so i don't know if they're going to pick up the other things what about you uh_huh um oh where do you take them um uh_huh uh_huh um um one of the people from my department i think used to take a lot of the stuff to a recycling center that was for the benefit of the dallas shelter i think it was closer to downtown uh she's not here anymore but uh yeah oh yeah well sometimes we take our uh we always keep our aluminum cans and a lot of times they take them over to one of these can banks you don't get too much money back i figure it pays for the gas to take my cans over there but normally i collect oh like three trash bags full and i take them over to that can bank and it's more fun just to kind of like crunch the cans in the can bank don't get too much money for them but yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah uh i'm disappointed sometimes they're not always consistent in picking up those papers you know i seem to put them out there on wednesday and like sometimes they come by sometimes they don't i'm not really sure why they're not always consistent in that but i could certainly have uh three bins out there for you know plastic and and tin and paper whatever they were going to uh separate into and and have them pick it up on on one of the two days per week that would be easy you're not supposed to have like the coupons in there uh or you're not supposed to put magazines in there and you can't take newspapers now at work uh you know we have changed our recycling at first they were kind of [finicky] about what kind of paper you could recycle and not too long ago they finally decided if it's anything that's paper and tears you can throw it in there because at first they said yeah at first they said they said no telephone books you know well that's stupid and then they said no newspapers well in the my department everybody gets the wall street journal there was like a lot of paper coming out of our department that wasn't recyclable so i thought that was pretty good to expand upon it say yeah i still put my cans in with the cans i mean i don't want it with paper somehow that just seems weird to me oh ooh well we had the one person who used to take things to the dallas shelter i think that's what that was called she collected she used to collect from the whole department but she took them all down to that dallas shelter place i wish i could remember the whole name of that place but it's a charity for the benefit of this shelter and yeah she she used to collect them from everybody in the department she'd go up and down with her little bag collecting from everybody i'm from dallas okay uh_huh uh_huh um well i don't know dallas in richardson does um they started with newspapers and uh of course aluminum cans and and bottles and plastic i didn't know there were different types of plastic though uh_huh oh oh okay yeah it seems to be made out of something different yeah uh_huh yeah that's right yeah uh_huh lunch bags right yeah they do yeah uh_huh uh no yeah yeah wow uh_huh um yeah they'll run out of space before long uh_huh uh_huh right right yeah they don't even know that paper comes from trees now so how do you grow paper uh_huh and how do you grow aluminum um right uh_huh um are you from this area okay i'm in garland so well i'm in dallas right now but i live in garland um well i don't know if you know but garland has got a real big recycling center that in fact we went to it yesterday you drive up and you take the stuff out of your trunk and they have different bins for the different materials like clear glass and colored glass and plastics and uh they have all the different plastics separated by those little [symbols] on the bottom that's pretty neat my my daughter is four and she's real interested in recycling so we're we're trying to promote that because she thought we just put them in a special trash can and threw them away but we went to the recycling center to show her what we actually did with them uh does dallas have a curbside recycling program yet oh okay yeah yeah um like soda bottles are one one type of plastic and milk jugs are one type of plastic you can it's got little most of the recyclable containers have the little symbol on the bottom with the with the arrows around it that tells whether it's a one or a two or a three it's it's just different kinds of plastics like the clear plastic is different from that [milky] looking plastic and that's that's what the different types are yeah yeah yes i i know there's a long scientific name but it's like [polytechnochloride] and all that fun stuff um i i don't know if they do it all over but our kroger does a newspaper recycling every saturday you can drive up and they have one of the [clerks] up there no the bag boys out there um that will take the papers newspaper out of your car and they'll put it in their little bin and they do the recycling i mean they collect the newspapers and their their plastic grocery bags which i think is pretty neat that's something since we all seem to have an abundance of those plastic grocery bags i know we use them for trash can liners and a lot of other things yeah in fact i have one today the only problem with those is sometimes they get holes in the bottom it's like whoops there goes my chips okay fine now i in fact did you happen to see twenty twenty the other night they did a program or one of their articles was on recycling and uh it was actually on a town that has a dump that they charge other cities or towns to come in and dump their trash there they have made so much money from that that they built they bought a brand new fire engine and when the fire engine was delivered the fire house wasn't big enough so they bought a new or built a new one and paid for it in cash with the money that they've earned from this landfill they have built up one mountain they call it mount [trashmore] they built up one mountain covered it with grass and put ski [lifts] on it and in the winter they put snow on it and they charge to ski on it so the city gets the money from that they built a golf course at the bottom and they get the money from that i's like that's it's a it's [riverview] ohio or some place up there but it was i thought it was a pretty neat idea they i mean their city hall looked better it was nicer than [dallas'] and they only have fourteen thousand people in the city and they like the trash so well okay but i thought it was pretty neat it it would be nice if more communities could do that but you have to know from beginning and you have to have the space to do it and yeah see that's well they're already planning a second mountain so they're going to get going to be called the twin peaks i was like uh_huh go back two t v shows this it would be nice if more communities could get really involved in recycling it i know i've got a two year old and a four year old and that's my daughter thinks that any time she sees newspapers bundled up they're being recycled so it's like well no honey so that like so that was one reason we went to show her what people did with their their stuff when they recycled it and try to explain well yeah you melt down the cans and you make them into new things and you get the paper all wet and you make it into new paper and that's fun trying to explain that to a four year old um so do you all go ahead well yeah she that was her next question was how do you grow paper was like well from trees um that's why you have to cut down trees and why you have to plant more trees yeah exactly well let's see um we really don't but and then she was like well what do you do with the glass well you crunch it up real small and then you melt it down well what if it breaks well okay it it it was an interesting weekend trying to explain all that fun stuff to her but at least she knows that that is something that people need to be doing and she got our baby sitter to start recycling her newspapers and cans because that's all she talked about so i guess what well i definitely think that we need to start recycling i think it has got to be an individual responsibility until i think if we wait uh which is happening until somebody says we have to do it it is going to be to late i have heard reports around here that the landfills will be full by the year two thousand and that is not too far away but i don't know how it is there it is very difficult here even if you care like i do to do much i take my paper i can take plastic and paper bags back to the grocery store and i can take plastic like milk cartons or if they have water in them and there are some fire stations i can take newspapers to and that is very inconvenient cause i have to wait until i have enough of them to make the trip worthwhile uh_huh yeah it is real hard to find a spot and then i don't know if you note even doing that the amount of trash we throw away is incredible bottles glass that cannot be it could be recycled but there is no place to no we have a pilot program in arlington going on i think in the north part of the city where they are have people people separate the garbage as the trash as they put it out and i think that is what it is going to have to come to where we are just forced to yeah i think so just because they have to you know right uh_huh and i think it is going to come to that because some people will just not go to the it's it's trouble for me to do what i do i mean i am willing to do it but yeah yeah it is very difficult like our garage is always full of sacks of newspapers and so i don't know i think there needs to be more places and also i have a real strong opinion in iowa the state i am from uh i believe it has gone up to a dollar now every time you buy a container no matter what it is whether it is glass whether it's a beer can or a fifth of whiskey or a pop or whatever you pay ten cents for it and then you take it back to the store and you get it back you are forced to and uh you also don't see the litter there people just it makes it worthwhile to take it back and i've just started drinking a new water called clearly canadian i don't know if you've tried it and they have on the it's five cents that they pay five cents and it even shows the states that yeah well some of them are five some are ten cents i am looking at it right now texas is not one of them see so i have to throw them away cause there is no place to take glass uh_huh do they save like the paper they they use at the office paper good because there is a lot of waste there isn't there right right right yeah something else i think we do can do is support companies that encourage like i have decided downy fabric [softener] now has where you can buy a little carton you add well i image everybody else will start doing that sooner or later but i am going to stick with [downey] because they were first and i want them to have my business and i think packaging could be done much better there is so much plastic but yeah yeah and i think that it's just people have got to be aware unfortunately there are a lot of people that just don't care and they don't want to think about it and uh i just look at it i don't want my grandchildren looking at me and saying why didn't you do something you know i want to feel like i at least tried and i don't know it just may [overwhelm] us here when we run out of places to put it then we will be forced to it may be too late very little that's another thing that see there were no i know amway i use a couple of things from amway that it says this is [burnable] material well that doesn't do me any good because i don't have any place to burn it yeah and then just like the glass bottles that it says on the bottle i can get ten cents but not in texas and there is no place i can take glass to so i still throw away a lot of glass yeah and then the packaging thing really grips me you buy some and it's got a great big piece of cardboard and a great big piece of plastic okay so now what are your opinions on recycling yeah yeah i have heard that too uh_huh well see i started saving newspapers and i would take a ton of them and uh that's i can't remember where i went to take them but they wouldn't take them oh i know there is no really recycling facilities i think that is a good idea besides well like a law or whatever that's how it is in new york isn't it uh_huh and you get [ticketed] if you don't do it right yeah plus you have to have a place to store all of it and see i live in an apartment uh_huh yeah uh so that way it kind of forces you to recycle yeah that's true yeah i have seen them uh_huh that take them back is texas one of them yeah no i don't think that there is enough being done now i work at j c penny at their corporate headquarters and we have a paper recycling program that uh is company wide and i do the recycling for that yeah yeah and i know there is a lot of computer paper that you can't use but uh we use to have uh i mean i don't even remember how much money that they've uh i mean the money that they've made from the recycling program they have donated it to [charities] i mean they have made a substantial amount of money from it yeah yeah well i know you see some of the stuff and then when they come out with the new things you are like well why didn't you think of that before yeah that's true yeah do they not ever i mean i don't know that much do they not ever burn trash or anything like then that's pollution yeah i know i guess you run into the pollution factor yeah uh it is really sad what do you do there in lubbock as far as uh recycling is concerned uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah what would be more efficient about it what uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh i see yeah i i i uh was going to say cause i know i have right here a trash can for trash and a trash can for for paper on it you know and uh if if i have a if i i printed up something that i don't need it just chunk it in the in the paper that's true certainly that's a good idea yeah uh_huh well uh as far as t i is concerned i'm not sure uh and i have heard you know uh in residential situations i live in a dorm and i have heard in residential situations uh like in plano uh that they are doing uh stuff like having recycle picked up where uh the city uh i guess the sanitation department uh as part of their responsibility picks up uh the recycled items as well you know the plastics and the paper uh and aluminum and uh the only responsibility of the of the [patron] is to separate them and then the the uh i guess the department takes them and and does what they do with them and it doesn't cost the [patron] anything doesn't really cost the uh department right they don't pay they don't pay for the recycled items uh_huh uh_huh well what kind of services do you have there in lubbock as far as uh where can you take your recycle items i i lived in abilene for a uh i went to school there at abilene christian and i it was so hard to uh you know if you you wanted to recycle you newspapers it was impossible um uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well that's good yeah uh_huh uh_huh do you tend to buy more recycled items that if something uh the pack says recycled and something else doesn't do would you tend to chose the one that does or uh_huh um uh_huh sure yeah well you know they actually started and i assumed it was t i wide uh they they started putting out at least recycling bins for the paper uh i've you know either computer paper or different types of paper i've had some ideas on how i think they could probably do it a little less [expensively] and accomplish the same purpose but i i guess i need to put it on paper and turn it in uh well the way they have you know they have boxes located at certain areas throughout a [module] or down the hall or a lot of people aren't going to get up walk out of their offices and go there you know where i use to work we had what we called tree boxes that's just what we called them and they were recycled cardboard they were eight and a half by eleven and you set it by your desk and you know as you got rid of a piece of paper you stuck it in there and when it filled up you called you know facilities whoever to come pick it up and they brought you another box so not only is it you know i think more people would take advantage of it and use it uh i think you save a lot of the cleaning [service's] time and effort and money that we are paying for them to to empty the trash cans and combine it and bundle it and things like that now when it could all be done in one step kind of type thing so right if right but somebody still has to collect all that and bundle it together and whereas if you had a box that pretty soon it got full you close the box it's already bundled it's already done for you so you're saving a lot of time and effort i just need to put it on paper and i guess recommended it to somebody and see if they thinks it's feasible so uh what else do they do in the dallas area uh_huh um anything extra that sounds good there's i i've been wanting to put like two of three bins like right out my garage door where you know from the kitchen where you know you can throw cans in one or the glass in the other or the the even uh there are areas that can recycle the the tin cans like your you know vegetable things come in and uh so i i've not done that but that's kind of what i want to set up so because we do go through aluminum cans you know that's probably the one we use most uh but find a place well uh uh they they do have facilities for recycling the newspapers aluminum cans those are the two major items you know we can take oil like car oil recycled oil to they have uh uh dump areas like at the fire departments throughout town uh i don't know that they yet have the facilities here to do the tin cans uh i think they can do the plastics like the liter bottles things like that uh but i i don't know i know for sure though they have the newspaper and the aluminum can and then the oil at the fire departments so i do that i think people are becoming more aware you know of of the waste and you know i i like to see you know you drive through burger king now and the bags are recycled paper and you know so you know i feel like people are more aware of it or becoming more aware of it you know maybe it's making an impact i'm not as good about searching something out like that but if i am there and the choice is there i would probably take the recycled product so you know that's just where i probably need to be a little more responsible citizen wise you know looking or searching those out because you figure if we as the citizens do that then the manufactures and [producers] will start packaging it that way so uh you know they are getting away from the styrofoam hello ann uh the other day i attended a conference here at utah state university on recycling and uh i was kind of interested to hear cause they had some people from the e p a and lots of different places and uh they had basically decided that there is going to be a real problem here within a few years on solid waste well it's not too new oh they really didn't propose any solutions actually they were the guy was pretty negative about the things that the government was doing even though he was from the e p a but he had a lot of uh facts to to give and uh things like how many solid waste plants were being shut down and and uh one of the most interesting things that he was talking about was recycling of of news print he was talking about uh the city of new york and how they went and collected all this news print and they could sell it for a while they were able to sell it for some amount per ton and now at this stage of the game where they have gotten into recycling they've collected so much news print that they have to pay to have it hauled away yeah we're doing some here in in cash valley the community here there's uh we've actually got a kind of a nice set up we've got a couple of plants here that actually take uh recycled paper and shred it and spray it with chemical treatment so that it's not a fire hazard and make it into insulation and they can actually use as much recycled paper as the community can get to them because they are actually buying it and shipping it in from outside so one of the real keys it sounds like to getting recycling for uh paper or something like that to go is to get some sort of business to actually want it once you have collected it uh_huh and there was a paper presented at this conference from a guy from alabama and he was kind of hired to do a study by two departments for the government one was like environmental protection and the other one was oh i can't remember what but the basic idea it was presented to him was how can we [maximize] the amount of energy that we can get back from recycling and minimize the volume of stuff that we are putting into our landfill and uh the solution that he came up with for plastics and it was really quite amazing he says well the best thing to do with plastics is to burn them he came to the conclusion plastics is actually one of the biggest problems in landfills cause it's it's low weight but it's high volume so it takes up a lot of space and there's almost no energy there's very little energy value in actually doing a lot of the recycling but there is a lot of energy in it if you can burn it and use it produce electricity so his solution was to burn plastic collect it and burn it yeah and it's more than even paper or something like that there is more energy in it per pound or whatever well that was he didn't deal with that he just said burn it he didn't talk about cleaning it up or anything like that so it's not very practical yeah well real interesting uh not too much uh i got a bit actually hello chuck uh_huh uh_huh uh i didn't think that was a new [revelation] right so what what is the e p a recommending now uh_huh yeah right that's a that's a common problem though that it seems that has happened in dallas as well as new york and i try to recycle all of the newspapers that come to my house and after a while i just quit taking the newspaper because i couldn't recycle it anymore which isn't good for business on the other end either i suppose uh_huh right well that's good right there has to be uh a reuse for it i mean that's why they recycle the one i think is the most interesting is with the recycled bottles and all that uh the industry seems to be doing with the recycled [polymers] uh everything from uh waste baskets to carpet to the no stick i mean the sticky slide rugs under the carpet and uh i think they are even putting it in the [roadways] these days and they're making clothes now that are recycled like the recycled plastic coke bottles and and milk cartons and things like that uh_huh oh really right huh well it's carbon so that makes sense like a carbon fuel of some sort but what what about emissions oh okay no well it's interesting i bet that was a good day at the yeah conference then did it change anything for you uh_huh well here in saskatoon uh much the same thing there is no curb pick up of uh any of the recycled products uh we're in a community of about one hundred and eighty thousand people uh there are areas where we could uh actually we have a couple of the uh handicapped societies types of places where the uh one they do as just a recycling operation and then others they collect the paper and ship it to other [retailers] so uh we are able to uh have drop off bins for news papers and cardboard and that kind of thing and then there are there's a uh deposit program on plastic and glass containers well primarily soft drink bottles and so we are able uh to take it to one of the uh rehabilitation centers and then they recycle the containers they refund the deposit which is anywhere from five to fifteen cents a container and then right on the on primarily on soft drink pops and that kind of thing and uh so they [induce] recycling of plastic and glass soft drink containers uh we do have one of the scrape metal dealers that will accept tin and aluminum cans as well and actually the recycler there is a deposit on aluminum pop cans and beer cans and so the recycler uh with the handicapped group will also accept those so uh it's fairly fairly extensive but then again it's uh it's the initiative of the individual person because there is no coordinated pick up by the city well actually there's there's the opportunity for both generally the uh the handicapped group takes care of the things that actually the government has placed the deposit which is the [inducement] to recycle the bottle so that you get your money back and then the recycler run by the handicapped society pays back the cost of that deposit and then i and then they in turn will get some money from the [bottlers] and from the the people that do the canning of the pop and the beer as as well oh yeah uh i guess partly because of our climate here in saskatoon at least the majority of central uh well i want to say central canada but central canada tends to referred more to ontario and quebec but uh we don't have much of a situation where we might call them homeless people we certainly have a fair number of people that are on welfare and unemployment insurance and that kind of thing uh there's psychological pressure against [employing] people to do that kind of thing although uh scouts and hockey teams and ball teams those kinds uh regularly do bottle drives where they go around in various neighborhoods and collect the bottles at individual homes they have done it some uh but we have actually quite an extensive network of collecting news papers they are actually at virtually all of the shopping centers like the shopping malls there are several containers where the group called cosmopolitan industries collects or people can drop their used news papers and other papers in the bins and then the bins are collected uh some of the hey steve uh they just uh they just started a recycling program here i think actually this is my first experience with recycling program but uh instead of just like tossing everything away which i always felt bad about uh i am starting to split split stuff up the only disadvantage is that they don't pick it up at the curb they make me drive it like a mile down the road and spit it out down there what are they doing up there the the deposits only on like drink stuff okay okay oh okay so did they you're giving are you giving these products to the handicapped group and the handicapped group is getting the uh the money or or are you or are they some home distributing the funds back to you oh okay that's very cool you know there's a i heard about a similar program in new york city where uh a thing called like homeless incorporated or something like that but what they do is employ uh homeless i think mostly men but homeless people to uh go out and collect all the recyclable cans and and i think it's mostly cans there may be bottles as well but like beer cans soda cans and what not and they uh bring them up to a one one centralized location and uh are able to collect the money from the various beer and and soda manufacturers and uh and get more money to these people that desperately need it yeah do they do it with news papers as well huh i don't believe that we're the recycling program here is just terrible i mean it's hard to find places to go i mean kroger does a couple things they i don't think they do they do newspapers yeah the one in florida is so cool because they pick up everything they pick up newspapers and uh you know milk jugs and aluminum and tin cans you know like soup comes in and stuff they pick up everything uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh i know it i know it it piles up i just don't know i just don't know and now they have like bins and stuff that are a little more convenient because mean until seven o'clock you got to pay to park at the student center you can't really unload all your stuff uh_huh i know it i know it oh yeah the uh_huh well i mean it's real you ought to because the the the farmer's market recycles absolutely everything and since we go there all the time i mean probably at all oh by the way may name's julie hi i'm from atlanta neat i just think that everybody ought to do it the only thing i know that you can recycle is milk jugs yeah oh yeah they have uh uh what i what i used to uh now that i don't go to the grocery store much it's kind of [moot] but i used to just save up the ones that i got one time and then go and hand them to them the next time and use them over and over but also most places like big star does and i'm not sure if kroger does or not but yeah and they they have like little little boxes that you can put your old bags in can bring them in i know it i know it it really is a small [hostile] planet did you know that no really not did you know that like something like fifty percent of the world's landfills is like paper filled with paper huh well it is it is though it is because they well they do treat paper with chemicals like yellow paper you know takes something like twenty times as long to decompose you know you can bury a piece of yellow paper it will still be there in a couple of weeks yeah it will be whole you'll be able to read off of it yeah um well white [paper's] bad too they they treat it too i'm sure that's fine i'm sure maybe we ought to just start [carving] in stone again maybe yeah you think i don't know well i mean i think we've kind of you know i mean everybody everybody everybody has a computer we would no longer need paper at all i would love that so what do you think about uh recycling programs in atlanta julie i don't know there's there's big bins out there i don't know if they ever get i i really don't know what the details are there should be someplace where you could call and find out as a matter of fact i'm pretty sure there's a place you can call and find out the closest you know thing to you but i think there should be some kind of curbside service that's the only way i could really uh_huh during the summers like the around where i live the uh homeless people i mean they all have like shopping [carts] and stuff and they're go around and collect cans and aluminum and stuff and so we used to just save them up and then they'd come around and we'd give them to them but when during the winter time i think they they move south or something so i don't do that anymore and the the recycling at georgia tech like that uh outside the uh student center they never empty those things they just overflow so what's a guy to do you know i asked myself really huh oh yeah that's true hadn't thought about that that is very inconvenient inconvenient even but uh so you do recycle don't you yeah i'm kind of i'm kind of bad about it if i if see a if i see a pile of cans or bottles or something i'll throw it in there but i don't really i don't ever take anything uh_huh but wait i've never seen you before who are you yeah my name's bill well hi me too crazy uh well is there anything else you'd like to share me about your recycling philosophy julie do they do like what about like uh what kind of plastic stuff can you recycle do you know really what about like those grocery bags uh_huh uh_huh they'll ask you whether you want bags or paper or plastic uh those petroleum products are going to kill us the [hostile] planet i think julie the petroleum pretty much i mean those petroleum products i think are the big uh you know the great [satan] of the recycling um paper just seems so [innocuous] paper doesn't seem threatening at all you know it comes from trees how can it be bad they treat it with chemicals or something why can't trees break down i don't get it yep oh really huh i'm going to switch from those yellow legal pads then i'm glad you told me that because i use those at work where i work and uh but i can just forget that from now on i'm going i'm going to switch to the white ones well what about uh [papyrus] you know made out of you know [bamboo] stuff from the from the banks of the [nile] you think so [tablets] i think we should just abandon the you know the written word altogether you know what do you think kind of radical i know but that's true everyone had a two way wrist watch t v on their wrist like uh dick tracy okay so i guess it starts recording now okay i don't know really know that much about the recycling in this area that we're in we live in the [saginaw] area uh_huh and i'm not real familiar with uh anything that i fact as far as i know the school doesn't have any kind of programs or anything out here and uh or the grocery store or anything in this area yeah uh_huh really that is pretty good i'm we're originally from another state and i know in the state we were from that they did that similar type thing the city brought ought you know set separate trash cans and you separated your stuff and you put it in there and they took it you know i don't really know i don't really know they they started after we moved down here and so i i'm not really familiar i just know that uh my in laws up in up in oklahoma that's how they do you know they pick it up but i don't know if they get a get anything back on it or do you get money for it oh really right right and now now most of them are [throwaway] i think now they're a lot more expensive than that uh i bought some cokes the other day in the the little bottles you know and i think the bottles were like i know they were at least ten cents apiece i started to see at home i was like god how much were those bottles you know and it was they come in like uh eight and and eight and ten packs you know instead of six packs and uh and they were like it was like two dollars and something for the bottles you know i was like god [almighty] it costs more for the bottles than it did for the cokes in the right oh really of green glass well out in this area they really don't have anything now i know that like [minyard's] and places like that around like arlington and fort worth and a lot of those grocery stores they have like four different bins out front uh different colors for different things and and things like that but i i do know some of these places were doing that and they discontinued them because people were coming and dumping their trash in them yeah yeah more than it's worth right well who wants to clean their junk before they throw it away right uh yeah it was nice talking to you i have no idea how long this is supposed to last or anything is that it okay well it was nice talking to you and i i guess i'll do this for i was doing this for actually i was going to do it for my son so that he could uh he he's in high school so that he could make some money uh but then it has my name on it so i'm like okay i'll sit down here and call it oh are you oh that's interesting that's nice well thank you bye okay [saginaw] really the we live in plano and they started off recycling by uh putting the i think at each wal mart they had some recycling dumpsters and things like that which now i guess the uh city is has bought the big green trash cans and uh we they have a recycling truck that comes around now and you separate your glass and paper and uh aluminum and you set it out and they pick it up and it it works real neat they seem to be having a real good response so did they did they like on bottles did they give you a so many cents back for for cans even or yeah no i just i noticed it iowa and other cities like that it's a nickel per aluminum can so you don't see too many thrown out around the streets or even bottles you know all kinds of bottles they they they really charge people to i guess when you purchase them and and then when you turn them back in i i remember the old days as a kid where bottle was a nickel right so maybe that's one thing they can do uh_huh yes right that was my brother's first job in a grocery store he was in the bottle area it's pretty dangerous out there you know when they fall over but but it's uh it's quite they say that the green glass now that there's a big glut of green the green glass yeah it's amazing uh_huh right right yeah it's i notice the plastic have sort of [faded] away the milk jugs it it's people just they they really don't uh there's too much labor involved i guess to separate the stuff it's i don't know it it can be it's not as easy selecting you know clean junk as they say that's right that's right it's like washing the dishes before you put them in the dishwasher we all do it well it was nice talking to you oh i think i think two or three minutes is fine yeah right well we're doing it for a church choir so yeah so well thank you bye bye okay what is your uh community uh currently doing with regard to recycling uh_huh well that's more than we have up here in massachusetts some some local communities are very active in that uh in that respect and they do have bins set up but i live in a a metropolitan area and uh they're not uh too inclined to do something as aggressive as that uh_huh i i know a lot i think a lot of uh the the issues with regard to recycling are that uh people have to be motivated to do to do something like that because it does take extra effort whether and and i think that and i know massachusetts has a bottle bill was passed and we have had a bottle bill for quite a few years now and the majority of the incentive in recycling bottles probably believe it or not is just to get the extra nickel at the uh the store and not uh that's the majority of people that i know of anyways where people aren't really you know [eco] conscious it's just the fact that it's something they have to do and i'm not going to throw a bottle away it's like throwing a nickel away that type of thing but uh people need to be more conscious of it yeah it didn't it it took awhile for that bill to be passed up here as far as recycling bottles and cans uh and and matter of fact i think it took like three tries for it to go through but and it's been pretty successful and people notice it as far as uh highways being uh you know people would have a drink of soda instead of throwing out the window they they keep the bottle so it's it's been a ecologically sound policy and you know as as far as recycling your bottles in terms of trash and so forth but more importantly it's recycling reusable materials back into uh manufacturing and that's the big thing i think that they try to promote yeah that's a good idea yeah there definitely has to be a motivation factor and i know that at where i work i work for a defense contractor and there's a big push on for recycling uh paper materials you know computer output paper and also to decrease the amount of uh styrofoam usage because of the uh the process involved in styrofoam and and the whole [eco] issue and that and and they're very proactive and uh matter of fact they give you discounts if you use uh china wear rather than uh styrofoam stuff so so it's incentives like that that get people people more conscious of it i think that's that's what they need to do be more proactive like that yeah they they just matter of fact that that reminded me of an article i saw in the the local schools you could send your phone book to your uh to with your kid to school and what they'll do is they'll recycle it because there was an article or a story done awhile ago that uh trash uh the telephone books are the type of thing that don't break down over a long period of time a guy went to a a landfill dug down five feet and and pulled up a phone book from like nineteen sixty because they don't they don't [degrade] over such a period of time yeah yeah yeah okay uh basically they're just uh having various recycling uh bins uh located for uh trash pickup well here they and uh live in an apartment complex and they only have one set of recycling bins one or two sets as opposed to a set at each of the dumpsters so a lot of the people who live up front don't bother to recycle because you know it's too far to carry the stuff to the other bins right they here they're trying to push through a bill and a lot of people are against it and it's going to create a lot more work for the uh the stores that sell you know sodas and stuff because they want to implement a refund on cans and on plastic bottles and everything right i think here if they uh instead of just you know requiring that you put put out the trash and stuff if they could get some kind of rebate those people who do put the stuff out uh you know and separate it have lower collection fee or something may encourage people to separate uh i know uh i believe it was last year that they actually collected the old phone books uh usually have them come from you know projects to collect old ones usually just get dumped out with the trash and phone books are a large volume of annual trash well part of the problem with recycling them in the past has been the covers are made with a clay based paper they contain the glue and stuff and they used to have to take out all the uh pages and then cut the spine off to be able to recycle them now i think they've come up with some way of uh pulling the glue out well they just kicked it off down here in in sarasota county uh they had been doing it they started first in sarasota city uh you know which makes up a pretty small portion of the county actually and uh they've got these i don't know what if you're familiar with sarasota county at all they've got these it's it's county wide program now and what they've done is they've broken everything down into garbage uh yard trash plastic cans and glass and then uh paper which in the paper it's just uh newspaper and [corrugated] cardboard is the only thing you're supposed to put in there no [slicks] uh yeah uh_huh yeah yeah yeah right well you know uh i talked to this girl who uh she's a an an [acquaintance] of mine and and she's involved with uh-oh what is the name of that company it's not amway but it's the other big vitamin company [shaklee] okay and uh and and she's just [shaklee] crazy you know because it's her business and everything and uh you know and she asked we were talking one day and and she asked me a couple of questions you know and she and and what she said that that generally the problems that people have with being environmentally conscious is number one they don't want it to change their lifestyle and and like you know especially make it anymore complicated or any extra work or anything which that's that's what recycling at home sorting does you know i mean it's a little extra work and uh it can actually turn out to be a lot of extra work because what they do what they do here in sarasota county is they've got okay you put your garbage in a garbage bag and you set it out by the curb if you have yard trash you put your yard trash in some kind of container uh or you can have [bundles] up to a certain weight and certain [dimensions] tie them up and put them by the curb well the plastic cans and glass they give you this little tub and it's about a foot and a half deep and it's about one by one and a half foot wide and long this is a little container and then they have another one the same size that one's red then they have a blue one the same size for the paper goods and so like you know you would have to rinse out your pop cans otherwise you got bees and ants and you know and and if you've got uh food containers or anything like that it's a big problem so not only do you yeah uh_huh uh_huh this is true this is true uh_huh yeah they've got these large garbage cans that you can rent from the waste management company here uh if you want to have a nice garbage can you know and it's on wheels and it's big yeah yeah i think in i think in the city they do but out here in the county you have to rent them and they just add it on to your water bill or something east of sarasota uh_huh yeah yeah yeah about an hour about an hour south of tampa uh yeah well i listen to this talk radio station down here and it's really they i don't if you ever listen to talk radio but those guys they just kind of get into to [stewing] up trouble you know with the callers and things like that but they get into some really good conversations sometimes you know and some of it sometimes it's serious and they have some good feedback and all that stuff and from listening to that i kind of got an idea that i thought would be good with and this kind of fits into the uh the aid program the welfare program that's going on right now and it's like uh uh anyway we're supposed to talk about recycling basically what what your personal opinion is on it uh this is this is really for a speech research project they're doing so uh i don't know florida is pretty good about recycling isn't it oh they did uh_huh yeah not quite no uh_huh uh_huh okay okay yeah okay oh that's that's good let me ask you this do they require you to [presort] it okay see that's something in minneapolis they're really strict on in terms of you got to put everything in its own little bag and really [presort] it really you know [tightly] but when i lived in orlando it's like you could put almost anything in there and they'd just sort it out for you it was really pretty good if you're lazy like i am so oh okay yeah yeah right uh_huh it can yeah right yeah you got to tie them up and everything right uh_huh uh_huh exactly it is you know a big hassle yeah that's true i mean up here they give you one one of those containers and you put everything in it so it's like if if you use a lot of stuff you it's like well you know if you're a partying kind of guy and you drink you know like a couple of twelve packs maybe over the weekend it's going to be hard pressed to to put all your recyclables in that one place you know so it's kind of a pain in the butt but uh i don't know that's definitely one thing they could do to make it easier is to just you know you have have those garbage people that make how every many make twenty thirty bucks an hour have them do a little bit of the sorting you know and and maybe come up with a better system make it a little more convenient but yeah oh you can actually rent those okay that's interesting yeah up here the the city provides them kind of like oh okay so where exactly are you in terms of of like sarasota are you north of sarasota or east okay and sarasota is on the west coast okay like south of tampa right okay i'm yeah that's okay um occasionally yeah yeah uh_huh okay uh let me see unfortunately we are not much into recycling we don't we don't do enough i know we don't so uh although lately i've been uh a friend of mine that i spend a lot of time with does recycle quite a bit and it's it's it's uh interesting to watch some of the things that she does and then she's almost had an impact on me uh where she doesn't say anything to me when she comes to my house but i can kind of tell it bothers her so just unconsciously i've i've stopped buying a lot of uh uh paper plates and paper cups and i don't do that anymore i don't know why i just don't i just just from socializing with her so it really it there's not a whole lot there really isn't uh i know in my mother's neighborhood in san antonio each each house has they're they're given three baskets and they put them out on a certain day of the week and each uh home does participate but we really don't have anything uh close in this area that that do anything and and some of the communities that do the residents are having to pay to participate in it which really doesn't make sense yeah that's good yeah yeah that's another thing you have to go to different places to do that uh_huh but i heard that most homes that do participate in that are having to pay a monthly fee to do that which uh i don't know it just doesn't make sense to me yeah yeah yeah that's good that's good uh_huh huh no oh i didn't know that yeah uh_huh well that's good i i'm you know unfortunately garland doesn't have doesn't they don't i don't know they don't do anything like that or i you know i read those little slips that come in to your utility bills or your uh garbage collection and they haven't you know talked about doing something like that she lives in garland and i'm not sure where what she does but she's uh-oh she's very heavy in that and she takes her own bags to the grocery store uh she has i i really don't think she has any paper products in her house uh and just a lot of things i've learned off of her that to start doing and she does make a lot of sense just her whole house is like wow yeah yeah yeah and uh my little boy has watches a program that was really neat i sat and watched him you know the barney you know the little i don't know if you know the little character barney they had one uh on that kind of type of thing and how children can can do that and how to save water when you brush your teeth in water and it's really caught on and he's only four and he's really caught on and keep the refrigerator door closed and that kind of thing he's really caught on so that's really neat uh_huh how do you how uh is recycling done in your community is uh_huh right oh right over here they uh have several private companies that you can take uh recycled materials to but uh if you want to take them all to one place they have uh the first saturday of every month they have certain places that you can drop them off that's what i do uh and i i recycle aluminum glass uh newspapers so it's nice to have you know one place that you can take them all to instead of driving the glass to one place and right right so it's so that's nice it would be it would be really nice if they uh came to the house to pick it up and they just were talking about a bill in [tucson] about that but uh uh it didn't go through right i guess what they what they were talking about here was uh was reducing the garbage collection in order to make that up or something you know uh so i guess that's one option i guess one thing they're working on now is recycling plastics too like uh have you noticed that on the bottom of plastic goods they have this little number now that tells what kind of plastic it is yeah i guess the problem with plastic is there's so many different kinds that you can't recycle you can't just throw all plastic into one recycler yeah so now they're like marking uh they're i don't know there's six seven eight different kind of plastics and they they mark on the bottom what kind it is so i guess that makes it easy to recycle and then they're they're uh trying to make plastic goods that don't have a bunch of different plastics in them you know that are that are only made out of one kind of plastic so that that makes it easier i guess right where does your friend go to to recycle uh_huh yeah yeah i guess that's how it gets passed on you know when one person you hear from another person and then uh and then you and then you pass it on it seems to be catching on uh slowly but surely i guess uh_huh uh_huh wow that's cute that's neat yeah when you well when you start early i guess uh around here we have a program where uh we we put out the the we separate the bottles and the cans and the plastic stuff from the newspapers and we keep the newspapers in a in a they're collected twice a month and the trash and and this bottled stuff that is put in a in a little blue bin that's picked up and sorted out into a truck so they actually have about three passes at this collection one for the regular trash one for the uh uh you know the bottles and cans and one for the newspapers no they they do that on the truck they separate them as they as they you know dump them and you know one guy comes around with his truck and and dumps it all in there and i think they're they're running out of uh you know the [sanitary] landfill i think uh is you know running out of course uh you being from new mexico you've probably been to washington especially if you're your present location you must have come to washington at least once my you've got a lot a a lot of nothing out there you know they got i mean there there's got to be a [crevice] between two mountains that nobody gives a doggone about that you could you could use for landfill well what other what uh what unique things you think uh that you can do about it in in what in los [alamos] uh other other than nuking it well isn't that a that's a that's pretty uh upscale uh trash uh uh situation i don't think anybody around here would understand all the all those exotic techniques you know getting rid of the heavy metals huh huh well that's certainly uh you know uh getting into the swim of things i i think it should be it should go to the to the heart of the matter though and say okay guy you everybody gets you know five pounds of garbage that they can throw away you know uh but more than that every week uh you've got to pay by the pound i i think i think people would be would get very very you know they'd be very careful about how they bought stuff uh_huh yeah uh_huh well of course that uh you know those big trucks can can probably are far more efficient in packing than any kind of little household [compactor] sounds but i gather you do not separate uh the bottles and cans uh_huh yes yes i know not only have i come to washington but uh i find it very amusing that uh the thing that was just instituted here is very similar that is we also have blue bins we also separate newspapers from all of the other stuff which goes into the bin and gets separated in the truck and uh landfill space is in deed the driving factor here and in fact uh despite all of our open space out here landfill space is still uh very hard to come by ah but if somebody can make a regulation about it they will well uh yes other than nuking it um in fact los [alamos] uh has uh done a fair amount of research uh in recycling things in general um it it involves for instance uh creating biological [organisms] which can remove heavy elements like [selenium] and [barium] and uh other things from uh waste material in general and uh and [purify] the waste of specific uh uh nasty elements and the thing that just was in the local news bulletin was somebody has uh made some special uh [polymers] that have the ability to uh make certain [actinide] elements [adhere] to them uh uh they've uh looked at uh [plutonium] and [uranium] and uh some other similar things to try to remove those from radio active waste and again this is driven by all of the documentation and uh e s and h uh uh considerations that uh people are uh worrying about i think much more than they should actually i've been involved in recycling for long before it became [fashionable] back when i was in graduate school i did all of the recycling of the uh paper from the computer center and uh in fact i think i was the first person in our department to have my thesis published on recyclable recycled paper i think that's a wonderful idea the only alternative i would see is uh and this would actually be a little more workable since [weighing] everybody's garbage would be a real pain uh if you did it by volume rather than by weight it would uh speak more directly to the space needs and the landfill and it would also cause people to compact their garbage more uh and uh and limiting the volume is probably a little bit closer to the real problem than limiting the weight well in our area we just introduced the um [citywide] uh clean king sport campaign and we have a recycling [mascot] called [kleanaroo] he's a [kangaroo] and uh we're setting up curbside recycling bins for the city home owners and several of our local businesses also have recycling stations set up in their parking lots and how about in your area uh_huh and so have we we've been doing the computer paper and then we've also been doing our aluminum cans i that's the one thing i don't know i i don't know if they take them to the local aluminum uh recycling plant uh just locally or or what i assume that's what they would do i would hope yeah i i think that's what they do i think they they give that to charity okay oh for each different product oh okay yeah i was going to say i've seen in some of these um local mail order catalogs they've got trash can [dividers] for for home owners who don't have those it it it like cuts your trash can in half so you could put cans on one side and and other on the other side so so i think i think a lot of people are jumping on the band wagon um as far as you know should more be done i think there's i think there's always more that can be done yes i've even heard them talking about uh recycling freon from refrigerators [refrigeration] systems yes there are there are companies that recycle their freon and um i'm sure there are a lot chemicals that that can be recycled that there's a lot of uh_huh now that's we we don't have that that's neat uh_huh but you'd think that uh garages could do that that would be great no it's it's really bad to not break down i uh saw an article the other day in ann [landers] that talked about how long it takes like a cigarette butt to decompose and i think it was between twenty and thirty years yes i i was i was flabbergasted and i think plastic was um plastic never totally total breaks down that's the one that never did yep plastic took fifty years yeah they they have here yes i used to get my egg [mcmuffin] in one of those little styrofoam cup uh cups like and now they wrap them in paper yes so i was really glad to see that they they are good i think they recognize their their position as a community leader and really work to keep that going so and and the only other thing i've seen has been the setting up a compost [heap] in your own backyard but that's that's hard if you don't have a big yard or if you live in an apartment that might not go over real well so let's see has it i think have we been our five minutes i know the last time i did this they came on and said you have exceeded your ten minutes hang up within the next thirty seconds so um okay and and i think we just hang up i don't think we have to do anything else but it's been very nice talking to you the topic is how we can how what is our and how and do we have any ideas to encourage more recycling well it is to me uh because we're our particular little household is hot and heavy we have our glass bin our tin bin and our uh papers that we accumulate and recycle plano texas yes they certainly do they certainly do where are you oh i see well our [libraries] and then the uh wal mart stores have the bins in back of them and when you recycle glass that seems to make a lot of difference and you have the colored glass and the clear glass and the paper and the tin cans so when you get all of that going it is it it occupies a space in your garage but you very quickly get use to it and we do not sure well you know we haul it off once in a while and we also do not bag our clippings on our lawns we let the wind blow it off we do not fill well this is texas it doesn't set it blows gives lots of grass give it twenty four hours and the whole things gone there's no problem someone else is worrying about and we have somebody else's but uh the problem that bothers me more are uh you know i think the communities will do as good as they are supported by their local government you know if there's if there's enough need and they have a responsive local city management it will happen what upsets me there was an article and i'm sorry i was reading a book at the same time it was on our texas beaches and they are our texas beaches are suppose to be the [dirtiest] beaches in the united states and it's not because of litter it's because of boats the if you could think of the basin the texas gulf coast as a large [swirling] vacuum things that are thrown from ships swirl in and swirl in to our beaches and it kills some of our animals there's there's a professor down there that has texas a and m has a nice size facility at port aransas and he's got all these collection of animals that he's frozen that were killed you know by plastic it's horrible it's a gross collection uh_huh yes whatever those nasty things are that's right or they starve to death because they they can't swallow or drown yeah terrific well they showed one baby turtle that had been caught up in some uh plastic and it starved to death it couldn't it couldn't swallow it was pitiful well they're suppose to be working around that uh_huh oh really sure so trust us it's our nets everything is great go back sleep and don't worry uh_huh oh that's just [sickening] well and the other thing uh we have an endangered species turtle a [ridley's] turtle that's on the texas gulf coast and their our shrimp nets are suppose to be turtle proof so the turtles can swim through huge fight going on uh the [shrimpers] just say great you want us it put a big hole in our nets is that what you want us to do this makes sense to us we're starving to death anyway and you want us to put a hole in our nets i can see their point i i guess if my family was terribly hungry i wouldn't be as [humanistic] as i am because i don't have that problem so it's it's really a hard hard issue to say what's right and what's not oh this is like they raise catfish now well part of the problem there is so many of the fishermen work for so little money we have a lot of vietnamese fisher people and they support their whole family on less than than i had for lunch anyway and of course they don't have the money to make an investment like that and it it all goes back to the government spending enough money high enough priorities on things like that that they it would have to be government owned or financed if not controlled because the financing simply isn't there because it's one ever those cottage industries that uh the very poor keep going but can't do anything to change sure well and you know they could they could be terribly sorry they're killing the turtles you know probably are probably are well they may do it whether they like it or not they may do it you know that's correct turtle is very good that's the other thing wrong with the poor turtles well in my [unreformed] days i have had turtle soup in new orleans and i can tell you it's fabulous but of course a boot would taste fabulous when they finish with it well it's no telling what the turtle really taste like well it maybe it wasn't you know who who knows what i had but it was fabulous great sure it is charge fifteen keep moving as long as it's french oh dear well i don't have any my big solutions all go back to elect politicians that are more sensitive because i think we can't do it ourselves you need clout it'd be great but the problem with that is you have all of these little branches off the main problem and everyone is very concerned about one thing you know like the woman down the tip of texas that that calls her turtles and kisses everyone of them everyday she's terribly interested in her turtles she could care less about shrimp and on she goes you this kind of thing everybody's got such a [splintered] interest yeah that's exactly it and there's no way to to make one group more interested or sensitive to the other group but they can be but they're not sensitive on the bottom line which means money that's why i keep going back to the politicians it has to have some focal spot we we need uh we need an environmental ralph [nader] type which okay well do you have any formal programs in your area oh no somehow that doesn't surprise me yeah yeah what i i don't know we we there are some [beginnings] of formal programs where we are though they're not in our town i mean jackie and i uh recycle cans you know we just we just fill up a we have a trash can set aside for [aluminium] cans and when it gets full we just take it down and drop it off at the recycling center but that's about the extent of ours uh i don't it seems to me like if if they really wanted to get serious or you know the government and the uh other private industries that could benefit from it would make uh perhaps more permanent uh exterior fixtures which you know wouldn't be hassle to drive to or carry stuff to you know that that's kind of one of the thoughts that i had about it uh_huh yeah yeah they've switched to that [paperboard] the [pressboard] stuff is that right yeah isn't that something yeah i saw a sign at the local wal mart here back there in the baby section talking about wal mart does not buy disposable diapers because they don't decompose as rapidly as people say they do so they just buy the ones that don't decompose at all i thought that was interesting like like compost yeah uh they are yeah they are like i said we've we've just recently i guess in our part we're like right in the middle of the state and you know we're not in some of the more metropolitan areas like dallas or houston or something but that you you are starting to see more big large uh recycling like dumpsters or oh no you messed with texas uh_huh well you know they have got these adopt a highway programs they have to give the convicts something to do you know yeah i must say i don't typically well i'm i'm happy to [oblige] not happy that you did it but you know yeah right right yeah well of course they're they're trying real hard to [devise] ways to sustain life more comfortably down there just so they can get at some of those resources yeah well there's already oil there isn't there uh_huh yeah huh oh boy there there's such a higher level of consciousness about that now that that's got to be i mean if you could come up with something like that just to the the marketing advantage would be phenomenal yeah i well i think we've already seen that i mean just in the the the few products that have uh plugged that is a is an advantage you know it costs more and people have jumped on them yeah right and then as soon as something comes along that is that you need and all of a sudden it's available and in a environmentally conscious package i i tend to agree and it sure would be nice to see something like that yeah that's right i sure enjoyed it i'll think of you okay we have recently the city of plano has started a a situation it's pretty much volunteer as far as separating oh paper and bottles and you know cans and that sort of thing and it's not exactly curbside yet they've got these little [igloo] like things sitting up in various parts of town where you can take that stuff in if you want to the biggest thing that they've done is uh for forever we had been on the plastic trash bag business where everything was just uh put in uh plastic bags then set out in the alley but uh they came through with these big green uh plastic dumpster kind of things uh where you put everything except lawn trash and then they we got these uh paper sacks to put uh lawn debris and stuff in supposedly uh you know it can all be mulched at once the paper sack and everything only problem is you can't get anything in the paper sack yeah they're too small on the top and they're they're smaller than most grass [catchers] and that sort of thing so they just started this uh-oh maybe a month or two ago and uh they uh the local folks you know they're just starting to use them now that the grass is starting to you know be cut and everything we're getting a lot of complaints about them but uh you know i i realize the whole the whole recycling trash thing is a is such a problem because the landfill and all that uh i don't know what are they they're probably doing more than that up there i'm i guess you all started this sort of thing long time before we did uh_huh oh oh yeah uh_huh yeah um uh_huh yeah we uh we're coming to that here you know in the metroplex is getting big enough that uh it'll happen i i grew up a uh kind of a a rural area of of west texas and new mexico where that just wasn't a problem matter of fact till recently we burned trash you know we had the big barrels out in in the alley and when it's filled up you just put a match to it and burned it well course that's that's almost unheard of anymore yeah yeah we used to burn leaves and burn grass you know and all that as far as what to uh to do to encourage recycling i guess a lot of states i have noticed on uh on coke bottles and and whatnot we went i've got some relatives in iowa and uh there's a big thing up there what is it nickel for every bottle or some such thing yeah people people actively go out and and uh seek them you know i guess that's one way of doing it you know is to make it worthwhile um uh_huh yeah well course there's uh people will go after aluminum cans and stuff down here because it's just uh there's not a per can value on them but there is a just in the metal recycling itself i've i i'm not sure what it's what a can is worth now it's couple cents you know you've to get quite a few of them to really make it worthwhile but it turns out that uh on a a sunday morning after a dallas saturday night there's enough aluminum cans and stuff along the road to make it worthwhile uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah our soil situation down here in this particular area we're in a real hard black gooey [gummy] awful black clay situation and uh oh yeah you could lose a small dog in the cracks on it sometimes so i uh_huh yeah there was a thing in the local news here yesterday there's a little town down south of fort worth called [mansfield] and there's some tire recycling outfit wants a permit down there they say out of every tire you can get a what amounts to a gallon of diesel fuel and like you say several pounds of this uh carbon black and uh material for for making roads and anymore there's a couple pounds of [stainless] steel in most of the uh the tires yeah because the steel [belted] tires and uh it's a totally gas fired operation they say there's no exhaust whatsoever you know most people think of tire yeah those burning tire uh see there was what was it massachusetts i remember here a couple of years ago reading about one that had been on fire for long period of time you know it just [smolders] and the black smoke [pours] out of it yeah over in fort worth they had one catch fire here a couple of years ago and they had an awful time putting it out but our big problem down here course is is uh tires laying around down on the ground and stuff uh collect water and then of course that becomes mosquito breeding area and uh that can be a real um yeah uh_huh yeah what happens to us anyways as you can imagine in texas you've got urban areas that are probably as compact or as you know [densely] populated as just about any place in the country but then then you run into uh areas you know they've we've got a statistic they like to use you know you can take the population of the world and pack it in the state of texas about the density of houston and then you'd have the rest of the world to grow crops in because there wouldn't be any people in it uh yeah uh the panhandle the the there's well there's several counties in west texas and new mexico too for that matter that are bigger than rhode island but uh we had a our well as a matter of fact uh it's it's funny they i chose this subject because uh uh the city of raleigh about six weeks ago has just uh put in a city wide recycling uh regime in which uh bottles and newspapers are recycled and a truck comes around uh once every couple of weeks and they separate your bottles for you and your newspapers and uh and they give little uh or actually fairly large green plastic uh containers to put out curbside and all that so i think this is a real sign of progress here in the city of raleigh they do all you have to do is you put all your glass in the bottom of this thing followed by your plastic followed by the newspapers and when they come around to pick it up they do all the separation so you only have one place to put stuff so they've made it uh they've made it convenient it used to be if you wanted to recycle you had to drive to a uh a central location in the city and then do all the separation yourself and a lot of people didn't do it just because the recycling location was so [unpleasant] because you know when you have all that amount of stuff pretty soon you have various kinds of [vermin] running around and women seem to have something against having mice running across their feet when they're trying to recycle right uh_huh yeah i wonder what happens if somebody just misses with a bottle and it hits the asphalt i would think you'd just end up with a lot of broken glass unless you swept up every day yeah yeah but uh it it it sounds let's see you may you said one thing that uh uh you know just for the the sake of argument here um that that i'd like to bring up and that is whether it's the function of government to do the recycling rather than the individual consumer and i guess my opinion would be that that's maybe one of the few functions that government ought to do i can think of a lot of things that they shouldn't do that they do do but uh it seems like recycling is something that uh that the government ought to do and that everybody ought to pay for because i think in the long run it's one of those things that's that's of universal benefit to every citizen in the country right right right right they well they provide these big plastic uh boxes actually they're a good size box maybe eighteen uh inches by uh thirty inches in size and uh you know maybe fifteen inches deep a good sturdy plastic box and it's got uh some uh uh [bungy] cord uh kind of arrangement so when you put your newspapers on the top they don't blow away in the wind if it's windy and uh and then they they apparently built these rather uh uh fancy trucks that come around and have and have the various bins for the various colored glasses and a bin for the plastic and a place for the newspaper and they're kind of these high sort of uh high tech uh uh trash collector trucks they're big things too they must be as long as at least as long as a school bus and uh i'm sure it's costing the city of raleigh money but of course i mean that comes out of the taxes and so the people are ultimately paying for it and i think that people ought to ultimately pay for the convenience of having newspapers and bottles and and plastics and all that well i think that they that they do attempt to uh that that that they they sell the the glass and the newspaper my understanding is that they don't meet expenses with it but that they offset a lot of expenses one of the problems with newsprint especially is that virgin newsprint costs about twenty five or thirty percent of what recycled newsprint costs so a newspaper company is not is not going to buy recycled newsprint when virgin newsprint is available at a third of the cost and i think one of the problems there is that is is the cost of virgin newsprint is not being accurately reflected because that cost ought to reflect the cost of recycling and and what the government needs to do really in a good capitalist society i mean capitalism [thrives] on there being a fair price for a product and and that price ought to has to include uh the cost of its disposal and it also has to include the cost of of any damage it [inflicts] on the environment and that's really where we as a capitalist society have gone have gone [awry] we have not really assigned costs appropriately for example the real cost of a barrel of oil if you take into account pollution and all of the other side effects is probably a hundred dollars a barrel now i'm just guessing but i bet you that that's an accurate guess and but we're we're paying twenty so the the cost is wrong on that thing and somewhere along the line you have to pay the [piper] that's what adam smith was saying hundreds of years ago as far as capitalism is concerned if you don't charge the right prices you're going to eventually that price is going to make itself felt but the way to make the system work is to is to put the price on the commodity and have the people who use the commodity pay that price and the role of government in a capitalist society is to see that that happens and the way government uh does that is through taxation so with newsprint for example the government should tax virgin newsprint to the point where its uh its price is pretty much the same as recycled newsprint and [earmark] that money for the recycling of newsprint you see what i mean so that the people who use the newsprint are ultimately paying for the entire product not only for its production but for its disposal hey i bet you didn't think you were going to get a lecture on it well the the um of course most you know you can't recycle oil in the form of gasoline because it's destroyed so there's not a question of recycling there but there is a question of of uh environmental damage oh yeah yes we're doing several different things uh and i haven't kept up to date on what's happen lately but they have uh the [igloos] around and they have various places for different kinds of recycling uh_huh and uh uh i understand in the future we're supposed to uh begin a curbside pick up as well but that hasn't started yet how about you curbside would be wonderful i'm ready uh they're also doing uh a a recyclable bags to put the grass clippings in uh_huh you can't put them in plastic anymore and uh so that seems to be helping a little bit too oh that would be great i i am not sure how a mulching mower works does it just chop it up [finely] or what and you don't see the clippings lying around then huh well now do you recycle plastics also uh_huh i've heard that that's uh something that can be started oh is that right right oh that's a good idea that's great well no you've got to do that oh how funny well old habits die hard they say and and it's the whole issue of conservation and everything is i you know i i talk about it all the time with my kids i'm a teacher and i we talk about it a lot and yet uh there are often times i find myself doing you know going ahead and throwing a way a plastic bottle instead of you know separating it and so forth i and i just forget so it's a it's a effort on everybody's part i think to begin to do this keep it up yeah oh good that's right that's right and my kids help a lot my son uh tried to or helped build a a little recycling center for us here at the house you know put to put the cans in and the papers and uh plastic and so forth so we have a little place that he built out in the garage uh so until we get curbside service we cart it all over everywhere somehow but they're real good about it uh they're real responsible much better than i am really about uh sorting things out so so they've done a real good job oh that's great and you can put it back in your copy machine and just run it on through can't you yeah uh_huh i bet huh well we just need to do more and more right more people doing that yeah uh_huh is that right huh i've never heard of that either interesting well and that the other issue is disposable diapers uh and i i guess some companies are beginning to do some things uh to where part of the diaper can be recycled or [degraded] uh but did an interesting thing in my classroom in [calculating] the number of diapers that were used for my class of kids just in the time that they would have been the age to wear diapers and uh the kids were just astounded and then we [calculated] according to the number of kids in the school and that kind of thing and but so that you know that's a real eye opening uh activity to do because you you begin to think of the thousands and millions and billions of diapers that are still there oh it that's incredible uh_huh that's right yeah the whole idea oh and i you know i with my first i was all gung ho well we're going to do cloth and everything and then part way through i i just okay uh_huh aluminum cans do you recycle newspapers or anything uh_huh i think they would right how about glass jars those are recyclable huh uh_huh i'm on the phone long distance had to yell had to yell at my kids well i have four and we try and recycle my husband is in the packaging business and um they use recycled newspapers shredded up for the [filler] for uh it's a pad that they put on top top of apples [boxed] apples when they ship apples and it absorbs some of the you know the when the apples get the shipping you know oh he does for what company what trucking company oh that's great well he may have some of our apples then probably [washington's] a very big apple growing place especially yakima you have to look for yakima washington on some of the box labels and c v c [weyerhaeuser] that's us that's us well so they have a recycling actually they it's called central washington recycling and they have a a whole center and they have it set up like a circus where you know the green glass goes in this [clown's] mouth and the tin cans go up to the [alligator] and and so we we don't recycle as much as we should but we do recycle newspapers and cans and bottles right right right i think that'd be a great idea we're going to right right i would like to see them i would yes you do you sure do in fact i put mine in my garage and i'm sick of them but we take them my little girl she gets to collect the money you know since she has to haul them down there every day so i let her keep the money um i was thinking the other day about um plastic gloves that the dentists and doctors and everybody has to wear now that'd be wonderful if they could recycle those you know as it is now they can't well i think they're [nonrecyclable] right contaminated is what they are you know they but that you know plastic just doesn't [disintegrate] and that that's a major thing i mean how many pairs of gloves they go through in a day right and i'm just thinking about the [orthodontist] where i take my child you know for his braces yeah yep yep everybody yep well it's too bad that they have to but be nice if those somehow could be recycled you know that'd be better for everybody and then the baby diapers you know i don't have anybody in diapers any more but gosh i used my share of disposable diapers well that's good oh yeah yeah but that's uh_huh yeah i used them with my last two uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah it get real expensive yeah i think if people go back to cloth diapers that's better for recycling i mean that's better for the environment sure well i see in the future i see people uh being more conscious of we're going to be forced to recycle you know i see even plastic shopping bags there's you can return those and our grocery bags our paper grocery bags has a five cent refund on them if you bring them back to the store do yours there oh they do well that's oh well see and i always forget you know with four kids and you know six people in this family our grocery [bill's] pretty high and you know i get you know thirty or more than that yeah i get fifty yeah that's right well in our community we recycle everything oh yeah we recycle plastic we recycle aluminum we recycle paper we recycle everything well my wife does i'm not real high on it myself how about do you do that do you realize glen that the latest forbes magazine pointed out that it actually costs more to recycle than it does not to recycle well newspapers for example for recycling papers to get rid of the ink it costs about thirty two percent more to recycle paper than it does to have new paper yes well it's uh it's a problem that uh is probably at the moment [overemphasized] because there is apparently more landfill available than it's a matter of economics and economically right now uh it's more of a scare [tactic] it appears that we are running out of things and in fact in some cases are particularly paper which trees obviously by being a [renewable] resource and being a crop no more different than corn in effect it's a situation that of economics where it's less expensive to have new newspaper than using and recycling old paper right those are uh plastic is very recyclable and uh should be uh that's something that just won't go away when you [dispose] of it and uh plastics and and your metals are very worthwhile being recycles it's uh what what city do you live in well in i live in plano and uh they have a very big recycling program where uh for your grass clippings for example if you don't put them in a paper sack they won't pick them up they have special pick up days for for uh leaves and debris uh you know clippings type thing and if you put it in a plastic one they won't pick it up yeah that's what they're coming out with here matter of fact i haven't received ours yet but uh that's the plan in plano also they uh bring out these [humpty] bins and you're supposed to fill it up with well i i well as a science teacher i've been encouraging recycling for a long time and uh we collect things at school such as foil and cans and glass to a certain extent uh i coach an team and we save everything the kids at school bring some things in but not as much as i'd like and i have [recyclings] bins at home and we've had a uh we've had a foil which i think a lot of people don't realize they could sell along with their i mean aluminum cans well one of the women has this these big balls of foil competition thing going and i don't know where we're supposed to turn it in another science teacher at school is in charge of that and got all the materials on it but we're saving foil and accumulating balls of foil in our room not yet it it is in some communities but it isn't here and it is experimental in some areas at this point they're trying it out and deciding what they're going to do with it that's true my husband gets irritated sometimes because of the you know about recycling bins and we keep our cans in one thing and glass in another and paper in another it once it gets full getting it loaded into the car and taking it is a pain and uh sometimes you go to those recycling places and like with cans often times there's a long line uh you know if it's one of those where you get change for your cans now if it's just a [donation] type of thing like at the library or some places like that sometimes people just dump their stuff right at the front they don't go to the back of the like if it's a truck or whatever for paper and then everything just starts getting piled outside which is a pain because that's not what's supposed to be happening i think so too i i am in hopes that that will be successful and that they will decide to go ahead and and spread it to our neighborhood as well uh_huh that's true some of them are recyclable and i started trying to save those but we couldn't find a place to dump them and so we just had to throw them away um well i think i was talking to someone who lives really almost on the other side of town said she knew of one place where you could go and so once a month they made this trek with all their recyclables but they also have a pickup uh and they would take everything but that is used to be such a pain and it's so far away from us and that's the only one she knew of so i guess what we decided is that we're doing our part by recycling three and going out of our way but to have to go clear across town to do plastic and there's a a little booklet called uh fifty fifty ways you can save your have you read that yes well i read some of those to the kids from time to time so that they get some of the ideas from that but they are a lot more into recycling than they used to be um the uh children uh_huh because i teach middle school and it's uh surprising some of them aren't but that probably goes right into their families but there are even groups of parents that uh a recycling coalition type deal where they're really making speeches to the p t a and the dad's club and everything trying to get more parents involved so it's uh it it's on its way if we could get more support through the public utilities well it certainly would would help things out uh i don't see a terribly lot of it going on here i was actually quite surprised i went to uh san francisco uh recently out to berkeley and and uh they actually have mandatory well uh no their is not mandatory i'm sorry uh but you know it was just incredible to see everybody with you know with tin bags of things and they they have a community recycling center uh where rather than than having monetary incentives for the the people that actually bring stuff into recycling they are just doing it to help out the city and then the city can use that money you know any money that they get from goods recycled yeah no i would i would be glad to but you know we have no place convenient at all i mean i am not really concerned about making money off it uh you know i mean that that the amount of money that would come out of it is not really enough to make it worthwhile it's just recycling per se uh we do very little we recycle newspapers but other than that it's kind of a shame uh_huh uh_huh right yeah i think you know i think that they would have sort of neighborhood or semi neighborhood recycling centers that is what i saw in berkeley it was really nice it just had uh [bunches] of bins and and uh in in each particular thing they even had a pacific of course being in wine country they they even had wine bottle recycling so you take the wine bottles and the [wineries] would actually buy you know take those bottles back directly yeah and not not to have to melt them down they just use them uh but they had things for different types of paper and they had things for the aluminum and then for plastic apparently yeah there there you know there is only a matter of maybe ten fifteen blocks away from where this friend of my lived and they just gave everything up and took a trip over there and they they didn't get anything for it but but uh you know the thing is that a center like that i am sure it would be self supporting if uh you know just off the [proceeds] of the recycled things yeah that is what i am saying you know they could pay for it you know if they have to have someone there occasionally to kind of keep an eye on things or do stuff you know that that salary could easily be paid out of the money that comes from uh selling glass or aluminum or whatever and uh you know they even had uh they even had a little little shelf area for recycled books where people brought books they didn't want put them on the shelf and take come take anything you wanted off the shelf it was quite quite an operation yeah no uh_huh yeah oh oh i haven't seen those now i i think i have seen them actually going with like a sack on the side where they are picking up aluminum cans people put them on separately and they will toss those in a bag on the side of the truck or something but you know yeah yeah i think that there is a little bit of you know of i think that they the emphasis on making money from recycling is is a little bit wrong certainly there is money and value to somebody but i think that the average consumer probably doesn't want to spend the time and it is not enough money to make it really interesting anyway and so uh you know i think they they ought to make more of an emphasis on on convenience as opposed to uh to uh you know trying to give people money for it no now that we do where i work we we recycle the cans and bottles and but there is a lot of computer paper generated so it's you know generally clean white paper and uh well uh i think it's a really good thing because um of all the materials we use and things like cans and bottles and stuff like that it's just a complete waste uh you know make them and then throw them away and bury them out in a dump somewhere when you can just as easily melt them down and reuse them and uh there's a i mean there's so many products that are like that it's just too bad that they can't find more that we could recycle yeah you're right there but then there's things like the uh newspaper market where they try and recycle as much as they can and then they no one yeah or it ends up costing a lot more to recycle it than it does just to make it so oh yeah uh i go to indiana university here and its real big and all the buildings are recycling bins for all kinds of materials yeah those are the uh well the [university's] really big about they have contests in the dorms and stuff to see who can uh recycle the most stuff yeah within the school and also the city here has uh yeah monthly curbside recycling uh_huh right right right but then you do don't you get paid when you take your own uh uh_huh right sounds like you are an avid recycler are you uh_huh right yeah we do that at work too right uh_huh right well aren't there pop cans that are like that also because they have mixed metals or something uh no not really right words to live by okay you too we have been working hard to get a program of recycling going the best we've been able to do is an area that has uh storage bins uh for um bottles and uh plastic but people need to drive it there we don't we haven't moved to having uh picked up with the garbage yet here uh they don't take uh lawn debris to the landfill any more we need to load it into cars and take it to a general site where it gets recycled uh but i think they're they're not making it easy for the uh general public to do it here i mean they they you have to haul everything yourself which can be a mess when it comes to uh yard waste in particular well we've got enough people we've got a community of about eighty five thousand but they're just very reluctant to to get moving the way in which i would like to see them moving um did you tell me you're recycling newspapers boy you're you're far ahead here most people are recycling aluminum soda pop and beer cans uh for the money that they get out of them and that seems to be the only incentive on that side yeah it really is but there are a few people who who they will manage it what we've done at the church is to have uh people bring the stuff to our church and then there're couple of people who who crunch them down and then uh take them to recycling center and then the money is used for uh the [outreach] program to provide food and so that has been an incentive uh within uh our our particular church but newspapers the city doesn't want and none of the uh recycling places want them because they say that they're it costs them more to recycle than than they get out of them so well i mean in d c there's a law that was recently passed that like uh you have to it's a law i think that organizations have to provide recycling i guess recycling bins they have to recycle it's a law to do it right it's like uh i mean personally i have never been a recycling nut in terms of i don't i don't go out of my way and i think that they put uh receptacles around campus and the dorms and that makes me uh more apt to do it because there it's more convenient right yeah i am looking right here there's a waste bin i mean for waste i don't know i guess they i guess they can recycle normal waste i am not really sure and there's trash cans too i mean generally when i'm right when if i go by the waste bin i'll put something in there if it says they've got cans and bottles uh and bins for paper no no not really i mean yeah i mean when i am in uh our student center studying and i'll go out my i'll walk i'll get up from my table and walk out of my way i mean they're right near the trash can so i'll toss it in the bin but uh as far as if i'm walking the street drinking a soda i finish it i am going to toss it in the nearest trash can probably i mean it's convenient it's there if the recycling bin is not there i'm i'm if it was there i'd use it yeah exactly i mean in in my dorm it's in the basement but i've found pile much in a giant bag a shopping bag and then uh take it down in the basement and toss it in the uh recycling trash can uh but yeah i mean more receptacles uh around on the streets even would would uh make people do it if it's there they are going to do it still i mean some people won't even go that far out of their way there are people who are pretty ignorant and i mean or are really set in their ways yeah yeah yeah i am sure they will i mean with uh the way things are going i mean uh it's going towards a more green type of thing green thinking you should call it people more aware more aware they need to save the environment and all that right oh definitely i mean there's been plenty of up [roar] about the uh marriott using uh styrofoam cups and styrofoam plates and that kind of thing yeah cause i mean yeah the paper ones are uh plastic coated and they are probably even worse i don't really know harder to recycle yeah well i think it's possible to recycle styrofoam but it's more expensive uh they do have reasonable cups that people can uh i mean basically you've got carry around this cup if you want to if you want to be uh environmentally conscious and they i believe they give discounts on on drinks if you have this cup so it's kind of an incentive you have a discount on your on the drink instead of the regular price or whatever oh oh that sounds great well it's sort of a mixed bag up here uh some of the communities have started off with volunteer recycling uh one of the towns near here [cambridge] uh had a couple years of volunteer recycling i never saw it but i know i fellow who was involved in the effort who said that it was amazing just hundreds or you know maybe even more than a thousand cars coming in on the one recycling day a month and they had [dozens] of volunteers sorting things and when the volume reached a certain level the city's department of public works finally decided to do a curbside program uh my town arlington has had a uh a similar volunteer program and they just got the department of public works to do a uh a daily drop off at their yard where you know people can bring in glass and and uh paper and and whatnot and aluminum and tin and some of the other towns around here fact just about all the towns that border arlington where i live have gone to the curbside recycling and i really wish we'd do it here it's just so much easier for people i think it's it probably results in a larger volume of stuff being recycled if all you have to do is put it out by your curb once a week as it is here i sort of resent the effort to you know collect everything until i have a chance to get down to the d p w yard and drop it off you know it's not a huge inconvenience but it's just one more thing to do um yeah uh_huh right oh boy boy that's a real problem i really hate to hear that just regarding the newspapers the one curbside thing we to have in my town actually is every other week they'll pick up newspapers which is nice and the rule is that anything that comes in the newspaper even the slick uh ad [inserts] they'll pick up and that's great yeah yeah i i guess it depends on the facility it's going to the thing that i guess the flip side of that and in our town anyway is that they won't pick up plastics now and even when they were here and in other towns around here they won't take so called injection [molded] things which i guess basically is containers that are bigger at the top than at the bottom like yogurt containers typically and uh you know i don't know about dallas but i think people around boston eat a lot of yogurt so there's just a lot of lot of containers that uh that wind up getting tossed you know without being recycled and i don't know what's going on with in terms of capacity it's my impression although i haven't really read anything about it that so many towns and cities have started recycling with there might not be enough firms out there that are willing to take the uh or you know that will pay decent money to take the materials i once well that's makes sense ours seems really crazy because well we've had places all the shopping centers i mean the local shopping centers where there's a grocery store and a you know drug store and so on have bins around where you can leave papers or aluminum cans that type of thing for uh-oh the [kiwanis] or some sort of groups pick them up and make money for their causes and those are fairly popular and work fairly well and you can also take your own stuff to a recycling center and you know get the few pennies you get for the papers or cans i know some people who do that but to me that too much trouble for the few cents the uh so i just drop it off at the local place when i go to the store and let them you know some good agency make some money off of it what little they get and uh that works for me but now as i understand it from reading the paper the system seems totally backwards uh they are starting a thing where all of our garbage bills are going up like a dollar and a half a month and that's because they will give us containers you know certain colors of bins and stuff to put cans and papers and so on in that all makes sense but if you don't want to recycle you can say i don't want to recycle and save a dollar and a half a month which the theory is that if you don't want to recycle with the city who actually has a private contractor do it uh if you don't recycle with the city then you're going to take it yourself and you know make your money off of your paper and cans somehow it seems to me like people will just say i don't want to pay the buck and a half and i'll throw it in the garbage so it sounds to me like it's messed up because they had i guess so we'll have to see what happens they're just supposed to start distributing these blue plastic containers for cans and bottles and different kind different colors for different things uh you still could so it doesn't make a lot of sense to me and i think i understand it pretty well from both the paper and t v and we'll see what happens uh oh supposedly the majority are it's pretty ecologically conscious here oh i think so plus a lot of people will probably just pay the buck and a half and not even notice the difference or care but uh it seems strange the the university where i work it's uh strange too because they have places you can leave cans and some campus organization recycles them and uh there is a campus recycling bins not bins but like i work in a library well uh at my workplace they are we have uh places for aluminum cans and we have a everybody's been issued a separate trash can for uh recyclable paper let's see them get that word straight uh as far as the community goes uh it's pretty much voluntary nothing has been done uh i don't where i live i live in an [unincorporated] area and we don't have any uh we have just private uh garbage services and uh uh as far as i'm concerned i i guess i should do it but being lazy i don't if if somebody made it easy for me to separate my trash and pick it up i would more than gladly participate uh uh huh have the garbage police looking after you i guess uh well i used to live in california and uh just before i left they were uh some communities were making that uh mandatory and uh uh fortunately i was in i was in an apartment complex and for some reason we just threw everything in the dumpster that was all right yeah you know and most people probably don't want to carry a couple of bags worth of garbage in their car a few miles uh i mean it's all it's a good idea we should all do it uh but uh if you from a practical viewpoint from a selfish viewpoint if communities made it easy and convenient for you to do it they would have a lot more participation in my opinion yeah right uh_huh oh gee you haven't gee kids around here i don't think would pay well wouldn't pay any attention to it they'd the dogs would get to it before they would i would imagine wow oh is that a city or state law that uh requires it to be recycled or huh gee well i i guess if you can buy in bulk it so to speak well i bet that's resulted in a it would seem to me that's resulted in some cleaner highways i would imagine surprise surprise well um starting with my work um we're in a uh aluminum can and paper recycling um i work for t i and there's a uh a lot of paper that gets thrown away here so we've started recycling our uh plain white paper and we have a a company that collects it and takes care of that for us uh in the community um baltimore county that i that's the county i used to live in um they just started experimenting with uh trash pickup where uh one day a week they pick up recycled items and then another day a week they pick up the other trash and uh they've uh contracted with a company here that has a special truck that has different containers on the same truck you know one that holds paper one that holds plastic one that holds tin one that holds aluminum and uh so they've they've started experimenting with doing it um on a very large scale also in baltimore city they've started doing it uh there's been a lot of awareness um especially here on the east coast because our landfills are you know so filled now that uh there's just not enough room for all the garbage that we uh that we create that's right and the barge from new york that went around the world and uh_huh yeah that's uh it's been a problem that i've noticed a lot in print that uh um once you have collected this what do you do with it because there's not a whole lot of companies that are taking it there's a lot of people that want to participate and given the facilities will participate and they've proven that time and time again and uh i was just reading some figures this morning that seventy nine percent of the people [polled] considered themselves to be [environmentalists] and so uh you know it looks like there's a lot of people there who want to do it there's just not a lot of companies out there that know what to do with it another problem that that's uh is plastic milk cartons they've got a way to recycle them they've got places that can recycle them into products no problem the problem is that they can't there's no facility to get it from the people that have the raw material the empty milk cartons back to the guy who can do something with it and uh in order for this company to survive they've had to uh in their area start [sponsoring] their own recycling centers in order to get the raw goods but they you know of course they they're limited with what they can do they can only do so much and uh you know it's it's a matter of i i don't think you know i hate to get government involved with anything because it always costs more money but um you know it's a matter of they're going to have to pass stricter laws or start making the garbage collection um more costly and once they do that then people will be more interested right now it doesn't matter how much garbage you put out to the road it's a flat fee a month if they started billing people by the pound things might change drastically that's right yeah well actually there's a gentleman down in atlanta who has invented a process using a certain acid and he can take a tire and turn it into immediately [burnable] oil it has less sulfur in it than processed fuel oil for the house it does nothing to hurt the environment and the heat generated by the process is in turn used to run the machine so it's self sufficient and very efficient i mean it it you know it it controls its own process it burns it reduces the amount of fuel that's required in order to get out the fuel at the other end um so far they've demonstrated it on a uh garage size unit that this guy invented they're currently looking for funding to build a larger scale and i saw this about three months ago well if you think about it if um uh i remember that when they used to take uh they used to pay you to take the tire you know get the to turn in your tire when you got your and your your husband probably remembers that better than i do i remember there was a time when they'd give you one or two dollars for your used tire now they charge you two dollars for your used tire uh_huh yeah yes i saw it on the evening news and um the guy actually took the oil that came out from the process in a measuring cup turned around and poured it right back into the uh tank that he was using to fire the process in order to run it and you actually um with this process by putting in the tires end up with more energy from the oil than you put into the process so it's a way of of making a profit off of the tires and when you stop and look at the you know something like eight million tires a month that are you know [discarded] you know there's a lot of tires out there that that could go through this process there's not a profit i the the problem is that there's there's always a payoff to recycling but it's hard for people to see it because it's hard for them it's hard to explain to someone that look it's costing us you know [umpteen] thousand dollars a year to bury this stuff in the ground and then what is the long term effect of us [burying] that in the ground if that stuff yeah it it's going to leak into our water and then we're going to have problems with our water and then it's going to cause health problems and so there is a long term effect and when you stop and think about it every just about every single thing that's produced can be recycled i mean if it's if it's uh you know if it's stuff you scraped off your plate it can go into the compost and you know and so it's i mean it there's a way to recycle everything and and um if your husband just retired then i've got to believe that you've got to be old enough to remember that back during the wars hey recycling was the thing to do i mean you didn't that's right if you if you didn't recycle you were un american i was at the point i might have had it sitting there somewhere okay okay it's it's supposed to be on the instruction sheet but i didn't see one on mine um okay zero three two seven okay okay oh okay okay that will work okay let me hit one now okay uh in my community they are doing a lot as far as recycling goes uh waco is a pretty small city and so a lot of the city people i guess they want they take they take care of the community more than i think a big city does or they can because they are smaller and so they are doing all kinds of recycling projects and the school kids are doing all kinds of things and i'm a i'm a news reporter and so i report on a lot of the recycling things that they do and just last week they opened up a new recycling center uh so now they have two uh in an [adjoining] community uh hewett they are doing uh curbside recycling which is something a lot of cities are starting to look into but for some cities it's very expensive uh_huh right uh_huh right uh_huh yeah that's a form of the curbside yeah um uh i know even wal mart department store i don't if they do it there they have the recycling bin right outside the store and it's got glass aluminum plastic right the plastic bags uh_huh yeah wow do you recycle yourself at home uh_huh uh_huh uh it's kind of rough doing the newspaper i understand because they can't recycle the uh i guess it's the sale papers that have the color on them and so it's kind of hard for them to i guess uh separate all that uh_huh yeah i don't think anybody would you know i don't think they put the colored paper on there so that should be pretty difficult i don't recycle myself i live i'm single and so i guess if i had a family i'd probably be more aware now that i am single but uh yeah yeah especially on my job i'm hardly ever home so you know uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah you just go in and you don't know when you are coming out so let's see what else they are doing uh jeez i'm all out of recycling uh_huh uh_huh um right my mother before all this recycling stuff started i guess well not before it all started but she would collect the cans and you go like in front of the [supermarkets] or whatever and you put the cans in this bin thing and it [spits] out money yeah yeah that that [freaked] me out when it first did that i thought okay we got like eight cents or something yeah exactly at work we do recycling we have a little recycling our cans and bottles and those go out uh_huh um uh_huh uh_huh wow wow right uh_huh just regular paper right uh_huh uh_huh oh so that so that gives you kind of an incentive well that's great if you know like a lot of things you pick up today almost everything says recyclable or this is made from recyclables or something it's amazing it really is it's amazing to me how fast i'm sure recycling has been going on forever and it's just i guess everyone is picking it up now you know but it's just amazing to me how much it's come in the last year since last earth day you know everything i mean everything is recycle recycle everywhere you go uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um i remember my mother used to take the coke bottles in and you get like ten cents or something like that i guess that was a form of it but now it's just like perpetrated into the into the you know society like if you don't recycle you feel you feel almost uh i don't know like you're doing something wrong or you feel guilty almost yeah wasteful people uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah you throw it away that's it we're spoiled right i know i'm doing the beat i'm covering now is about our landfill here and uh what was it i think twenty four million tons of garbage that we throw away every america could be recycled like twenty four million and i think that accounts for uh i think one quarter or half of the landfill space so i mean i just learn all these little propaganda things oh yeah not at all um um mount [trashmore] huh i never heard of that one that's like the big stink around here this landfill thing they are wanting to expand it and a lot of the people that live around the area don't want it expanded because you know they say it uh uh it poison their water and you know poison the air and there's an elementary school right across the street and all kinds of stuff so it's a pretty big issue exactly uh_huh right that's what a lot of people are saying that it may not hurt now but they are looking in the long run and they are saying well forty years from now we'll yeah uh_huh okay i'm from dennison plano great are they doing anything down there for recycling uh_huh yeah well that's neat uh_huh do you separate your trash well that's what they should do that uh_huh i thought about that last last this last couple weeks ago when we bagged up our leaves it was sixteen or eighteen bags of leaves and yeah and it takes forever for that plastic to [dissolve] uh_huh and you use it as mulch they won't let you right paper okay uh oh i can't think of anything milk cartons and soda bottles well that's good oh that's going to be a lot of hard work though for them well i know everybody's throwing away millions of dollars worth of plastic and stuff everyday just to be buried uh_huh yeah uh_huh yes yeah uh_huh the only they think i've heard of them doing down here in dennison is wal mart let's you put there you know uh milk cartons and two liter bottles those clear plastic bottles that's about it uh_huh carry okay well they're doing that but every time i get paper bags at a grocery store i bring home bugs yeah and i can't do it okay uh_huh yeah well they ought to do that around down here uh_huh uh_huh right real environmentally conscious aren't you small did you use diapers disposable diapers goodness you've got five kids well i've got a three month old i used disposables on her for about a month and a half just to keep her from breaking out so bad oh she had reactions to cloth diapers it was from staying wet more often and yeah they have are they or more biodegradable i heard they're the worst things because they stay forever yeah they do i don't mind using cloth diapers i really don't it's not all that much more work it's not all that much more work for disposable i mean for cloth yeah well cloth i mean disposables do look better they look they're not quite as bulky she looks like a little mushroom but i used disposables with my first little boy uh_huh right well well i know to with disposable diapers though if you use cloth diapers your polluting with more soap and using more water and all that right yeah you're right yeah you're right i didn't even think about that with a cloth diaper oh yeah right and they are the best [dusters] yeah it's really it's building up for a few years i remember this going on when i was a teenager for about the last ten years five years and i've got two children um i haven't not until this year it's really starting to yeah well they've really started you know i wish they would do that um with uh the buckets here instead of the trash bags here the city sends us trash bags i've lived in this area for about twenty six years yes i am uh_huh uh_huh oh well let me tell you what we have i live in a very progressive county and uh it has we have for the last uh year i suppose had um newspaper pickup but there's always been you know scout troops and that sort of thing interested in doing that because it they earn a little money and also you know they were helping the environment but the um the county government then got involved and decided to uh [mandate] newspaper collection and although they're still we still give ours to the girl scout troop at our church uh they do have curbside pickup in over the entire county for newspapers uh and then in addition to that they uh we we can put it in paper bags that's that makes it okay um they used to only let you do it uh tied with string but now they do it in paper bags and they do say that it is paying for itself now in the actual [municipality] of [rockville] we moved just outside of it five years ago uh they've been doing newspaper recycling even longer and they were they had their regular um garbage or you know the the people pick it up on a separate day and they said that was paying for itself it was paying the extra salaries for those people as well as paying you know the city for doing it but the whole county now and it's a large county this is montgomery county right outside washington d c um is has begun a program to over a period of the next year to um have all well not all waste but um plastics um aluminum and other tin cans and uh glass of all colors and it's they they will you will they will also be picked up at the curb and it can be put together at one point and we've been doing it in my family for a while by at at first we were doing it um separating it because most of the facilities that would take it were uh required it's being separated but they've got this wonderful new facility now that separates it and they had a drawing of it a [diagram] of it in in one of the local papers and it works um it's like conveyor belts and some of it works by gravity and of course you can imagine the aluminum because it's very light weight um you know falls in one place and the glass goes another place and other and tin that would be picked up by metal is just picked up you know some other way um and then the plastic um you know go because it just kind of doesn't fall i mean i guess it keeps going on the conveyor belt or something i can't remember the the design right now but it's wonderful because you don't have to separate yeah well they do try to control that by giving a little instruction they do try to say you you know you should have it certain way but um on the the slick newspaper print that comes in with like the sunday papers and so on they haven't really [protested] magazines shouldn't be as a rule should not be put in but there are always a few of those pages and they must have a better way to do it now because they they haven't gotten too upset about that in general as long as it's the newspaper because there's not you know volume wise maybe it does have to be you know significant volume um percentage before it's a serious problem in the plastics um the the county recycling where we take ours now because we don't yet have the curbside pickup um the the you know just solid waste transfer station they uh have indicated they only want the two liter plastic soda bottles and or i guess any soda bottles that are plastic uh caps removed and uh milk cartons um but in fact there is another facility that will take other items the the you know there are little codes on the bottoms of these things uh for plastic and they look it's a triangle with arrows uh and that [indicates] it can be recycled but there are different grades of plastic and that's probably what you're talking about sometimes some of those plastics cannot be reused in certain ways some can now even our grocery stores here we have two different large chains that of the plastic bags but you see i'm i have a problem with that i'll take them occasionally but i've decided that i will only use paper which we are we do get a choice because i know that's biodegradable plastic isn't they can reuse it but it's really not biodegradable so yeah yeah huh yes i am surprised yeah oh not very convenient then well what part do you actually live in charlotte proper because my sister lives in matthews which i think is a little south of charlotte yeah well actually it's called charlotte now they used to be called matthews where she lives they incorporated it but um i i was thinking that you know i i don't know what she does with hers either uh_huh well it's it's not taken on there as well although the young people i work in the school system so i teach in in the high school um the uh we have an environmental club which has just begun at our high school this year and i think maybe the young people are becoming more conscious of the need um of course it's going to get down to if it's not made easy as i just described the way they're going to do it in this county uh they're making it so easy that you almost can't miss uh doing it but because you don't have to separate and all that but that seems to be the only way that it'll ever really take off is if it's not too complicated because people in general are just lazy and in the schools they are trying to make students more conscious and uh but i think the adults are the ones that have to lead the way and they have required the the students in the cafeterias to recycle but of course you know it doesn't go all the way they they make the effort they try but i think as the younger children come on maybe they'll be a little more conscious of it and eventually yes yes it does uh because they they recycle the styrofoam because that's what most of the uh you know the little trays that they have their you know we used to use those heavy uh plastic or whatever they were metal even trays in in the cafeterias in our schools but but now they have these plastic these styrofoam ones like they get at mcdonald's kind of and um and those are being isn't it awful now but do you know that um um mcdonald's is phasing them out and uh they're supposedly going to try to recycle those that are still left we're talking about two [jillion] i'm sure so it will take a time but um i i just worry about what's going to happen to the next generation um well many of them do i know oh but yeah exactly that does seem a little bizarre um i i find that there is a percentage of of uh the student body uh that is a a aware active and interested there is uh a much larger percentage still that it hasn't quite you know taken yet um but i think they're becoming more aware i think what will make the change is um enough of those who are aware and making an effort to do something about it those are going to have to [ridicule] peer pressure or something yeah to to kind of make the effort um but i i'm hopeful well i enjoyed talking to you and i i wish you luck there in charlotte oh you are you're you're into uh recycling uh_huh what materials do you recycle uh_huh uh_huh so so you're trying to take action to have that changed uh_huh right so economically it's not a situation where you're going to be able to attract a lot of attention right uh_huh well i think um that is kind of becoming one of the drivers now is the fact that with all the recycling that took place the price per pound has [declined] i know aluminum in our area one year ago aluminum was forty five cents a pound and now it's twenty last time i went it was twenty two cents a pound so it uh there's not a lot of money to be made but it's just a question of trying to help the environment uh_huh right um yeah where uh where i work we recycle paper that's about it yeah any any um non [noncolored] or [nonfilm] type paper just white paper and that sort of thing and uh oh we don't use that kind of paper any more no we have [perforated] for personal printers and then like laser jet type paper we don't use the green bar type paper any more right uh_huh well i would guess that your church is probably at a point where they're not really breaking even on their recycling i mean unless they get volunteers who have people who have trucks and that sort of thing uh_huh uh_huh right well there are neighborhoods in the atlanta area where uh you have specific trash bins to put recyclables in and then they're collected on a regular basis right right just like [roadside] collection well now down here we've got you know collection bins in the parks and things but there's no you know there's absolutely no that's right well i've seen you know i've seen examples of uh communities where they they take the other other approach you know you have to do it or you're fined and you know i'm actually all for that i don't i'm probably not the best person for recycling but i'll be damned if you know if they they didn't uh charge me an extra ten bucks for garbage collection every month i'd be sure and recycle i mean it's not that much trouble it's just different different communities that pass the laws that say you have to have to recycle you have to you have to you know on mondays they pick up glass and on tuesdays it's you know plastics or whatever and if if you don't uh if your garbage is just out there in a bag and it's not sorted you know they mark you down and fine you for it it's kind of like it's the same principal when there's a drought they fine you for using water you know they just you don't do what they say and not that i promote government or anything but you know the the world's in bad enough state that you know i people being the way they are you kind of need some incentive yeah right that's true yeah no deposit no return i always listen to uh karen [denard] the other night on the way home from school you know she's got that talk show and uh k r a and they were talking about you know a lot of the plastic bottles you can't just throw all plastics together and they were talking about you know you need legislation to uh identify what kind of plastic it this is so you know you know you know what can be recycled as what because you know say [shampoo] bottles i think was the example they gave there's no they don't even give you any occasion of what kind of plastic that is and you just can't throw that in with your two liter coke bottles or whatever yeah so did i that's that's it was news to me too i thought it was kind of interesting though yeah they yeah that or you know things need might be identified and there needs to be a means a convenient means for people to to recycle i know for me now i've got to drive a few miles down the road to do it if i want to do it and a lot of times it's the difference between doing it or not doing it you know is whether you can like take it out the back like stick it out in the back back alley for the guys to pick up when they do or having to throw it in the back of your car right right yeah way too much well i know just as an individual you know i know how many times i haul out a bag of trash and it's like incredible you [multiply] that times everybody you know on my block and this city it's crazy right right you're t i right yeah yeah so am i yeah it is i guess there's the other side of the issue that uh there need to be facilities for processing all this stuff and a market for recyclable goods and that was something they brought up on the show i listened to was uh you know there's all kinds of you know recycled paper but you know nobody's wanting to use it you know how many people are using how many people do you know that use recycled paper in the office you know you can you can buy your your [moore's] computer forms for your computer paper or whatever you can buy it with regular paper or recycled and i'll guarantee you in my building i haven't seen recycled paper yet so at the same time we're we're doing all this effort to throw it a way and recycle it we ought to be working on the other end and paying the extra dime on on a dollar for that recycled stuff well i think they actually do some of that but again it's the cost the cost of processing that it just it [intimidates] people you know it's easier to buy something that's you know the the cost of building is already yeah for it it's easy to say but for a lot of people to do you know if you were building a house and you were going to spend you know fifty thousand versus twenty thousand on materials because you're you're going to you're going to pay for uh technology that's not mature yet what are you going to do you know you're going to spend twenty thousand and yeah you you're going to do what you can but uh i was surprised i thought this thing was shut down but i i thought this whole switchboard thing was shut down i was surprised to get the call great all right okay uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh what about glass do they have glass huh so they know uh here they have uh they have trash sorting uh i mean uh not not right here where i am but in the in the town next door they have uh they have trash sorting and you know they put out aluminum and glass and newspaper in separate bins and uh_huh i guess there's a lot of [raiding] by homeless people and that kind of thing because they go out and it's like they they pay for this by the by the aluminum they collect uh_huh uh_huh i see so so uh do you actually live in in atlanta uh_huh yeah i know the cities are uh i think decalb decalb yeah decalb and [fulton] i thought i thought i thought it was a k i always thought it was a k well never mind uh and uh isn't [fulton] the other county that's uh uh_huh huh now where's the city the city limits it's kind of odd that a city would actually spread over uh more than one county the city limits would actually fall into more than one county uh_huh uh_huh yeah in fact san francisco is entirely within the the limits of san francisco county in fact san francisco county and city have the same city limits so that's kind of a weird thing but uh huh yeah that's an interesting term because i mean if you if you think about it the garbage truck well is it really garbage if they are taking it off to be recycled and somebody's will to pay for it huh huh uh_huh right huh huh you you have a very [distinctive] accent uh where are you from originally okay so uh around here we can recycle almost anything uh we have paper and cans and uh newspaper i guess uh and then i guess plastic and glass it's a little harder to do but we can recycle those as well there's curbside but uh for items like glass and and plastic it's only like once every three weeks or something crazy like that so you have to know what night they're doing it and you're not allowed to put anything out any other night so right yeah so you don't have to split anything up oh okay uh_huh right well i the last place i lived was really it was in new jersey as well but it was uh it was really a lot hard harder to do it because uh it's different depending on what town you're in basically every town is different which i think that that's crazy that it should be coordinated by the state or something but yeah uh_huh right oh yeah are you living at school or are you outside of school oh okay so it's not just the school that's doing it or okay right right oh okay i thought they were afraid of putting them out of work or something okay right uh_huh yeah well not for individuals but like my company uh started doing recycling because it became mandatory in the state i think it was mandatory in the state but they did it and they started a recycling program just of paper i guess and in two years they saved like four million dollars uh they that's how much money they got paid for their paper they uh_huh uh_huh right right so um what do you do about recycling in raleigh is there any public program uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh well one of the um where i used to live they had a they had just started a program but apparently it wasn't city wide because i moved over to a different neighborhood and they didn't you know no one had ever heard of this and um the one nice thing though is i'm is i'm is i'm pretty close to downtown so um aluminum cans be recycled just by tossing them out in your yard and the [bums] come around and uh no they don't have any deposit but um you know there's a there's a [thriving] industry of homeless people that collect aluminum cans and turn them in for you know the waste aluminum uh_huh uh_huh yeah unless i i don't i think they only carry one bag when i've seen people out there yeah uh_huh yeah yeah that seems like it would be you know very labor intensive to actually you know go through it all and pick out the different things uh_huh yeah you know they have the cost of the cleaning equipment to clean the bottles and and things like that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i've heard that you know a lot a lot of the you know more popular recycled materials like aluminum and um paper especially that because you know everyone's become much more environmentally conscious and you know has moved to recycle that the you know that that that that the systems basically has this very large backlog of of material to be recycled and processed and apparently in a lot you know in a lot of industries you can't just you know take a bunch of stuff and recycle it you generally you mix it with with new material and that and that you know with you know [coupled] with the recession that there just isn't you know the demand for you know recycled product uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah i think it depends on like the little number in the circle that they have on them because that i have a lot of friends that you know are very into recycling you know and say you know just about they try and throw out as little as they can you know and and uh_huh there is a group in town called nacogdoches recycles that will meet i believe it's once a month at the park and you can take plastics papers or bottles but it's up to you to collect them it's up to you to get them down there and then what they do with them i don't know there isn't any somebody had talked once before to city council meeting about maybe having different colored waste cans uh_huh so they do that in [palestine] and nobody wanted to go for that they were going to charge a little extra on the bill and nobody wanted to do that and i save aluminum cans and to take those to the to the closest place is about it's about thirty minutes away yeah and it and the last time we took some things the price is not really worth it yeah yeah cause by the time and you save them and squish them and they're just they were everywhere and that's the bad thing about it and newspapers we we started saving newspapers and stuff well they just packed up and i have cats well they had a field day destroyed those mine have some kind of paper thing oh yes any any kind of cardboard and paper and they just tear it up uh_huh both i don't know what it is i don't know what it is and you can't leave the mail don't don't leave the mail on on the coffee table or it's chewed up and it was just really one i've got i've got several and one in particular but then she kind of showed the other ones what was going on uh_huh so now it's just a big play play time yeah i think if they would make it a little more convenient for us everybody would that's true oh i know and we take the little plastic bags back to the the grocery store uh_huh but but as far as bottles and things go there isn't any place any any close yeah yeah uh_huh it really is yeah i i've started saving like you said the plastic knives and [forks] and things and i save all the little [condiments] and things and i yeah things that i normally threw out because they just give you ton now i've got a big basket full in the refrigerator exactly they'll say do you want any no i do not but i i try and we have a lot of of newspapers and magazines and things like that but that's yeah and i've got a tiny little kitchen so the option of you know some people will maybe have four bins one for your garbage and then i have no room yeah i have i have room enough for one garbage can and that is it yeah uh_huh so do you recycle up those products uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah probably well they're uh out i'm out in uh california recycling has been in for a while i mean it's yes it's very important now i think it's actually always been important we're just recognizing it now that things are starting to run out um it's um the main key to making recycling is to make it more convenient for people i think and a community i was just in not the one i just moved to uh had basically whenever you took your trash out you could just throw another bin of recyclable refuse out and not to be very you know you could have cans and aluminum cans and tin cans and bottles and everything and apparently they sorted these out which increased their labor costs tremendously but uh that sure made it easy i mean there was like no excuse not to recycle you just need two trash cans and if it's recyclable you throw it in one and if it's not you throw it in the other and take both out um so that seemed to have been working quite well um seems like the other thing to make recycling more viable is to make it more economically uh you know increase the economic incentive uh like news recycled newsprint isn't worth very much right now because there's a lot of it available and trees are still cheap so from a purely economic standpoint i'd say one way to to increase the [viability] of recycling is to increase the cost of the raw materials uh through selective taxation or whatever currently most things like aluminum will only cost what it costs the company to produce them um without any charge for you know long term effects on the land or you know with with minimal taxation for [replenishing] the land after the mine is gone or health costs or all sorts of things like that or for that matter anytime you take aluminum out of the ground you can view it as you're stealing if from future generations and and no one ever pays them you know basically you run out of these things and uh and then you have to start using something else yeah it seems like we're using up a lot of the [abundant] minerals right now i mean petroleum will be gone in about three decades at the rate we're going and it it just seems like increasing the raw cost of those would uh through you know more [sensitivity] of what the long term costs would be rather than just the [extraction] costs would yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh well things are changing i mean i've been really encouraged i've i mean i come from a family that's been recycling for thirty years and uh has always been you know concerned about these things and i'm just now starting to see you know significant social movement towards recycling um the community the [berkley] city council [coined] a term called [precycling] which i liked which is the idea of well you can recycle all these little aluminum cans and all this and that but you can also purchase products in the first place which uh use less resources you know not buy those styrofoam cups not buy individual aluminum cans if you're going to buy soda but get some you know larger reusable cheaper container and things like that uh they call it [precycling] in other words keep recycling but minimize the original consumption too well it's funny because plastic is incredibly recyclable um the problem is there's so many different types of plastic and they can't be mixed together but any one type of plastic can be recycled just about easier than anything because it melts down real easily and so forth can be [reloaded] um there are a number of laws about that some things can't be recycled back into the same products for health concerns even though they're not [scientifically] valid health concerns i mean because some you know anything will get killed when you melt down plastic uh but and other things made to be uh can go back you know glass can go back into glass bottles and stuff but if it's mixed plastic it can only go to certain uses it can make actually plastic lumber for like uh park [benches] and things like that out of mixed plastic uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah although there's far a lot more could be done there are just there are yards just [heaped] with mountains literally mountains of tires which they don't know what to do with so if we can do more things with those that would be helpful yeah yeah and more efficient pickups and everything uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh sure some kind of recycling [chutes] or something well that would be [admirable] i i think that's wonderful well great uh oh the last thing as long as i've got on audience is the uh i really want to see more recycling of batteries because batteries have all kinds of toxins in them and they're quite recyclable and most people just throw them in the trash or they leak into the ground water or all kinds of stuff but most people aren't even aware that batteries are something you shouldn't throw away in the trash i mean like japan it's illegal to throw batteries away in the trash well those are the worst [defenders] it's because they're biggest but even some of the small ones need to be disposed of properly just your basic ten cell batteries um once they rust out there's some pretty nasty things in them especially the mercury ones but um it's it's it's a regular trash item in this country um despite the fact that if you were if you were a company throwing that kind of stuff away the e p a could give you a major fine because it's a [toxin] okay nice talking with you well the first thing for me is i wonder i see a couple of different ways of talking about what privacy is um if privacy is something that disturbs your private state i mean an invasion of privacy is something that disturbs your private state that's one thing and if privacy is something that comes into your private state and [extracts] information from it in other words finds something out about you that's another and the first kind of invasion of the first type of privacy seemed invaded to me and very much everyday in this country but in the second time at least [overtly] uh where someone comes in and uh finds out information about you that should be private uh does not seem uh um obviously everyday that's right uh_huh right it turned out to be uh uh an invitation from from personal parties or from these um phone answer phone uh commercial things oh that that's a remarkable number i get them rarely and i'm still astounded that that one they let anyone do them and two that they have any effect in this whatsoever um because i'm usually so insulted by them i just hang up as soon as i recognize what they are i think they [prey] on people's um inherent politeness on the phone even with the machine i find people being kind of polite and waiting for it to finish what it has to say and then they feel an obligation to respond even though there's not even a person there uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah well presumably those who find out such information if they are doing it i would prefer to not to be known and i mean you know the classic oh i don't know c i a conspiracy theories or whatever would have such parties trying to do it without your knowledge so there's things that invade that second type of privacy where you do know about them and possibly things that invade that second type of privacy without you knowing about it and i can't talk about the second one other than to to to generate paranoia it's a [surmise] and i'd like to think that it's quite low at least in this country i don't think i'd like the k g b is monitoring my phone or anything like that uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well you must have a relatively clean conscience then yes yes more harmed or something yeah yes i did i was just about to write a letter when i heard they canceled it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh they had you [pegged] yeah yeah yeah and um one of the problems with the lotus data base was um that it was [uncontrolled] access to who would have that information i mean they said they would give it out to only select companies but um you know just like software is only given out to customers i mean you can't believe that it would it would be [pirated] and they wouldn't bother to check that carefully anyway to someone who's offering you know full cash price for it i mean you know you can't tell it what a company really has to do with it and there's something rather [ominous] about having virtually anyone any hacker being able to know what your income is what your spending habits are and you know and and that hacker just has to get in to in touch with the sneak [thief] and suddenly and then what started as an invasion of privacy can be an invasion of your actual home yeah yes exactly uh_huh i also thought about it was of uh waiting to talk to you that another thing that occurred to me is there is not so much invasion of my privacy because i know how to behave such that there isn't but i realized i have to behave in a certain way in order to not have people invade my privacy if i deviate from social norms of behavior if i run up and down the street yelling or something someone's going to invade my privacy very quickly and i realize that that i mean i can take that for granted but i used to i used to live in india and things are quite different there in terms of that there's less of a sense of privacy in fact it's said that no indian language has a word for privacy certainly the language i know doesn't but just says a word for [loneliness] [loneliness] is the closest you can come which is really quite different yeah it's it's generally being alone is not a very desirable state at least officially um so there's not i mean doors don't have [latches] on them people don't tend to knock you just if there's a door closed and you open it because it's in your way you people walk in out and as a as a [westerner] in india and i was often surprised and felt my sense of privacy there was quite invaded you know it very much is but on the other hand i realized i could go out on the street and act like a complete [lunatic] and people would leave me alone whereas in this country where everyone respects the closed doors very much if you go out and then act like the [lunatic] you you [violate] the uh the norms of social of um public behavior um people start paying attention to you very much and they start asking questions and in the sense are invade invading your privacy although if you know what the social norms are you know quote unquote you asked for it but it does mean that you have yet another reason to follow a set of social norms and which isn't of always the case in all cultures and it wasn't until i was thinking about it just now that i realized that's actually something that's culturally relative uh_huh uh_huh and that's really um well i mean i i wonder how people have sex and things like that i mean they you go to india and it's obvious you know the results of sex are quite obvious as the population goes up an extra hundred million every few years um but i i just don't quite um there's hope i actually for of the time i've spent there i still don't quite understand how certain things that i assume and require privacy and require not just that you be alone but actually that you have a sense of privacy because anyone can be alone for some period of time but for me a lot of what i do requires a sense that there's this invisible barrier around me which people will respect and if that's gone um i i really don't know how to live very well and i wonder i really do wonder how people do that all the the other classic examples the [jehovah's] witness or or [mormons] or someone knocking at the front door um which is more [intrusive] because i have to really tell someone to go away and there's that sense of i have now opened my door they now see what i look like what i live like and and they're doing something that normally i really only invite people to because i any anyone any friend anyone i give my number to is welcome to call me but no one is just welcome to come by my house so that is more of a sense of invasion i i think i agree with that i think in a good example on the typical thing that happens uh when the phone rang and it's t i calling my immediate reaction is that it's some sort of strange phone message and then i realize oh no this is something i [solicited] so my immediate reaction was one of that sense of invasion but after that i realized no i i really wanted this and it was sort of exciting and so that was almost an example of an invasion that turns out to be not [invasive] exactly uh and at the same time i think that i receive on on the order of uh probably seven or eight a week calls of the nature where one wishes that there were a convenient way to just hang up on it commercial solicitations primarily yeah and i think that's what makes one feel invaded is the fact that there seems to be little control and you one's feeling obligated because of some sense of of the way the ritual is played out and and uh that that then ends up being the the most common example for me um i guess i'm not typically feeling invaded in my privacy relative to this second this one that you raised and i don't think i would have thought about that i think that's a good idea on your part i don't typically feel [intruded] on on the things uh the sense of finding out information to to [surmise] it is there well i guess although i well that's a good point where you said that how does one define what invasion of privacy is because uh if that's the case of a tree falling in the forest and i'm not feeling invaded then maybe my privacy hasn't been because i have no sense of my privacy state having been invaded uh if your [defining] it in terms of information gone even if it's something you don't know about it well then i guess one could assume one was invaded but i don't feel invaded by it i don't have a sense of threat in general from those sorts of things i'm not sure why uh i guess it comes from a sense of fact or facts and if someone finds out something about me that is true i i don't have a sense of loss from that um the the other side of that might be if if someone found out something or [surmised] something that weren't true then i would feel probably more invaded in the gossipy sort of sense right because you don't have anyway to turn it off did you hear about this lotus data base that was being put together that would be an example where my sense of threat would be high because i would find that there be a good possibly that their facts were were fantasy and then i would feel not only invaded in the sense that someone had obtained information from a that i would rather they didn't and that might be the sense of the spending pattern for instance that that i would have thought to be private but then if it turns out to generate incorrect things that's even worse so or if my call rate of of eight or so a week went up even higher because uh someone had had right and the person who had takes [unsolicited] phones calls and pays money and then all of a sudden you get your thirty a week because now their advertising you right exactly right right right uh_huh and i guess that turns out to be the basic problem with any invasion of privacy is whether or not you're feeling threatened as a result of of it so maybe that is a a little bit of what privacy is uh_huh oh that's interesting but but no concept for wanting to be private okay oh that that would be that would be culturally shocking uh_huh uh_huh yes that is true i haven't thought about that and and that it's fascinating to to think a lot of someone who doesn't know how to say private yes yes that's interesting are are there any other specific things that that you feel like where where you feel your privacy to be invaded on a day to day basis or either on a growing frequency okay so that's another example of the invasion because of the not so have you ever gotten one of those calls that is either generated by a computer or somebody going down a list and their either offering a service or they're introducing some new product in the area and normally when they call you're either in the shower or you're in the middle of cooking something and you have to stop everything to run to the phone that was the big one i'm talking about i work weird hours and invariably just about the time i'm going to sleep the phone tears off the wall and you are trying to crawl out of a half [unconscious] sleep and answer the phone you either hear the as soon as you say hello you hear the click of the recording coming on or you hear somebody all ready starting reading off a list of stuff that they've read probably a thousand times that day already i've even had some of them the they're voice activated and you've got to say hello twice before they'll do anything what i would love to see done to stop all of this we've got a thing in this country you can have your phone number unlisted and i think a law should be passed to where any of these people i think it's great that you know freedom of speech in this country and everything but if they're going to offer these services or these recorded message everything they ought to be stuck working with the phone book like everybody else instead of using a computer to go through and just go down every [sequence] of numbers for this certain area code and call them that's about that as far as any other everyday occurrences i put a stop to some of them as far as the door to door either religious groups or people [peddling] products if i wanted their products i would have either gone to the store to bought it or i would have called for their salesman to come out now i agree with their right to uh pursue their religion of choice in that whatever manner they want to but i think they should also respect the [sanctity] of the american home whether it be in a house or in an apartment i'm on my turf if i want them there i'll call for them otherwise i don't want to know they exist now the part about where you said the apartment complex puts up signs that says no soliciting i've even gone so far as to put that i've got a storm door on the front of the house and i've put in i don't know how much clearer it can be it's a red sign with silver letters saying no soliciting i should have i guess i should make another one that says religious or otherwise cause i still get i wonder if there would be some way we could get these people to do this get their names their addresses and their phone numbers and then reverse it and do well that would be technically illegal it would be harassment but i consider an invasion of my privacy a harassment in itself i believe we've pretty much [summed] everything up i'm drawing a blank uh pretty close to it well i've enjoyed talking with you and take it easy now good night yes yes is is that one that you're talking about uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's true or the ones that are are generated by a computer it's just a computer voice that comes on the line those are the ones that i really really hate too uh_huh uh_huh yeah sometimes i i get them on my uh answering machine at home so and i hate that when i've got a whole bunch of messages and i go through them and most of them aren't from anybody at all uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yes see i have an unlisted telephone number but i still get all of those calls and then some of them are speaking in a foreign language that i don't even understand so yeah i do i really feel that's uh an invasion of my privacy i agree with you on that particular subject there let me see uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's true living in an apartment complex though you know you can't um you can't really stop those people from coming around even though they put up signs out front that says no solicitations uh but they still come up to the front door and uh you know walk around so usually what i do is i'll call the apartment manager and tell them hey there's people coming around you know and they're trying to sell something or or they're from a religious organization and i really hate that i really really do i had somebody come to the door about two weeks ago and uh gosh it was about nine o'clock at night too it wasn't even what i would consider you know family hours time to you know start going to bed and uh and it was somebody from um oh what was it the uh jesus christ of latter day saints and uh i've read a lot about uh that particular [sect] and i don't particularly care for it so i especially don't like for them to come up to my door and and try and talk to me yeah yeah no i i agree with you there if they want to choose that particular religion that's fine with me too you know as long as they don't try and pull me in and drag me in and and i don't like the way that they do it either and and it's their mission that they do it they go door to door and they go out into the public and they actually have the uh teenagers serving two years like you would say like in an army and two years in going around and doing missionary type work and uh i don't know i just um don't particularly care for that at all and that that's one thing that i feel really strongly about though is uh you know people coming up to my door and especially religious organizations and wanting to uh you know to try and get me to join or you know become interested in their religion because i have my own yeah yeah that's true yeah no i don't uh i don't have i didn't go that far but uh yeah i probably could do the same thing uh you know i don't have a storm door but i'm sure i could rig up something but you know i don't think that that would stop people i it's like they see that word and it says go instead of stop oh goodness oh gosh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that's true that's true um well what else i know but i remember you you talked about something you started off and said well let me think you talked about the telephone calls and people coming and soliciting and selling things at the door you said something else i can't remember what it was and i thought yeah that that kind of touched a nerve right there but we got uh we got to talking about the uh uh people coming to you at the front door oh goodness okay is our five minutes up pretty close well it was nice talking to you too jim okay thanks bye okay where to start uh_huh uh_huh that's true i didn't think about that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i agree yes i get some of these things in the mail that i wonder where in the world did they get my address or where did they get my name and in fact some of these things i get some of these [questionnaires] it's funny because i'm i was in the process of filling one out when i decided i would make this phone call but uh i haven't got to the end of it yet where it asks all that salary information and everything but when you have to send that back in the mail with your name on it your salary information i i just have a real hard time doing that uh and they ask you what type of household items do you own like [stereos] and t v and v c r and and you hate to send something off with your name and address and what types of things do you own and what kind of money do you make and you wonder well who's going to get ahold of this and think um that's a nice place to go rob right uh_huh uh_huh i got one tonight about six thirty when i sat down to eat dinner carpet cleaning uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh um uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh no right yeah i think i dislike the phone number part the worst i mean it's it's one thing to get junk mail because you can you can just put it right in the trash but it's the phone calls and you know usually when they call you it's going to be when you right when you sit down to dinner because they know they pretty much know that you're at work all day and they call you right when when you've just gotten home from work the last thing you want is a phone call unless it's you know something halfway enjoyable but if it's a salesperson it's just something you don't want to have to mess with and and i've gotten a lot of them lately or i'll sometimes i come home from work and there's a lot of hang ups on my answering machine and i'm just assuming it's probably a salesman that called during the day and i wasn't home and they'll probably call me up and you know call me back and bother me when i sit down to dinner later on but i find that very annoying the uh mail stuff yeah you know it's kind of irritating but it's not nearly as obnoxious as the phone calls uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh-oh right uh_huh i agree with the phone too in that i'm single but when i come home from work there's times i need to pay bills i need to balance my checking account i need to do all kinds of different things like that and even though it's friends calling sometimes you just feel like this is my quiet time i need to get things done and the phone ringing bothers me but that's that's where answering machines are nice because if it's really important they'll leave a message and i can call them back but uh at work i have so many phone calls from customers calling in sometimes it is just i just want to get away from the phone ringing because it it really does annoy me and uh if i've had a lot of phone calls during the day when occasionally when we have uh like this past week we have to do a lot of [troubleshooting] when the [programmers] have installed a new system and uh phone rings like crazy and you come home and the last thing you want to do is have to answer the phone and if it's some salesman that just makes it even that much worse and uh it just i get to where i i turn the answering machine on and just let it pick up the phone but now with this thing i'm participating in i kind of have to answer it because you never know if it's the switchboard or if it's uh you know somebody calling that you really don't want to talk on the phone uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh a ring at all oh huh that's an idea right uh_huh yeah ours is that way too uh_huh well yours is probably the same as ours it's uh tigon isn't tigon uh part of g t e or vice versa or something like that seems i read okay okay that's it that g t e had purchased tigon and yeah that's what we have aspen huh i couldn't remember in tigon had purchased g t e phone mail services or if g t e had purchased tigon i knew there was some type of a tie in there i remember reading in the paper a few months back but okay uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh no i think we did that's good i didn't think we could go too far on this privacy thing but uh i guess it's close enough sure good talking to you jim all right bye bye well i think uh i haven't had that much of course i just heard but i haven't had that much time to think about it either i guess the uh biggest thing i find is the financial aspects uh particularly the ability of people to access you know your financial records or for example your credit uh rating almost at will and uh of course flying uh using your social security number of course permits people to do that and almost anything you do now a social security number is required and uh of course there's another aspect of this too uh in terms of invasion of privacy i just thought about it being a professional and of course you probably belong to one or more professional organizations and that is that some of the organizations sell their mailing lists which i think is a is an invasion of privacy uh_huh and not only that it it opens you to phone solicitations and i i've noticed more and more i would say over the last six months i am getting more at home phone solicitations for a variety of things from i've had them for carpet cleaning i've had them for of course for you know real estate investments you know you get uh please send in your uh you know this particular card and you get uh a free trip or something along those lines and so that uh that bothers me because i of course i enjoy being at home and i do not enjoy getting called by strangers uh particularly you know soliciting so having your and i know that a lot of these of course are random phone calls they just you know start going through the phone book or going through a series of numbers but some of them are sold and i know you talking about mailing lists the i there is one particular group to which i belong and for some the reason they have three different names for me now the address is the same you know my my office address but they have one under you know my first name james they have one under my first name and initial middle initial then they have a a third one under my just my two [initials] and and i get mail here at home under each of those names so i know that they have sold their mailing list and uh i think those two things bother me more than anything else as far as an invasion of privacy and uh i can't really think of anything else offhand that uh uh_huh i think i think you mentioning the phone calls during dinner i know when i sit down with the family and want to have the opportunity you know to talk and see what's going on and all those things even if friends call it irritates me so i try to i actually during that period of time from you know usually from six o'clock or six thirty whenever i get home until eight or so i will shut off the phone and uh my daughter gets irate when i when i do that because you know she's a teenager so she'll you know why are you cutting off the phone i might get an important phone call but so i guess those three things are the uh uh most irritating to me that's right well i have now we have a you know voice mail system at uh at the office now what i have done is i have [forwarded] my home phone to the answering service at the office so that i do not have to have a uh a ring at all if i if i want to do that and uh or i will just let the phone ring three or four times and know that it will forward to uh to the office and so it's you know it makes it convenient but at the office when i you know we can uh on our system and i imagine on most systems you can just route it directly to the answering service and when i when i want to be you know not bothered during the day that's exactly what i do and so uh uh yeah well tigon is part of g t e uh_huh except we call it aspen yes and uh we yeah g t e purchased tigon and so we had had been using a the aspen service before they purchased tigon so i imagine we will be uh shifting over to that service uh for a while or if in a while as soon as we determine what we're going to do with [contel] after we bought [contel] yeah oh dana i think we have probably [conversed] long enough well all right all right well thank you for calling i i i enjoyed talking to you take care well on this subject of invasion of privacy yes it's very easy for anybody to find out about you your yeah uh the special on channel thirteen that was broadcast i think last week or so ago it detailed how this one person went about finding out this particular from this particular person his home mortgage how much he pays for it what his payments are uh his uh social security number driver's license any kind of records he may have uh their credit card and the status of their credit it was just as a demonstration to show those who were watching it how easily [obtainable] information is on any single person and it was mostly it dealt with uh marketing companies these uh direct marketing associations that was the primary subject that's how they [obtain] information about segments of society and group them into age brackets uh their habits their hobbies their income and they're able to do that through all the [manipulations] of the computer uh_huh the open office yeah not insofar as maybe making conversation with somebody i suppose because it you can easily be overheard and they get i suppose any items that you have laying out can be easily seen yeah there's there is uh_huh uh_huh do you work with uh mixed company male and female or well there are a few out there it's i suppose it depends on who you're working for and where at but um my own environment is open totally there are no [cubicles] there's nothing to block anything so yeah but um i guess we're changing ever so rapidly in the devices of communications that anything can be obtained from anybody's record or the computers the the big advent of that i believe because it they can all hold such large data bases on anybody that all you have to do is touch a button and it appears in front of them and you don't have to i i know the government sells information to private companies about individuals or families that's no secret and it shouldn't be that way i don't think i mean it's not really government for the people and by the people i'll tell you that so uh the only way it can change is um if if everybody bands together it's just like we need to get rid of these [clowns] that's serving in the office the only thing really that can be changed is for us to everybody to say we've had enough of you out you go but uh i don't see anything like that to occur unless everybody bands together to do that it has to be one common ideal goal for that to be done um i don't know it's it's still a a free i suppose country insofar as we're we're able to [obtain] information and i wouldn't be for total banning of uh all information or it's mostly the private information that we're all concerned about but it's it's hard to define uh a lot of those boundaries uh_huh uh_huh so you've received a lot of uh flack um uh_huh uh_huh is that usually what you tell them in the letter uh_huh uh_huh good idea uh_huh well that's good uh any other problems yeah i i guess i've just about run out of i i can probably go on but it's it's uh i'm [clouding] up right now well it's nice talking to you maybe again bye bye well i don't really like that very much what was the reason why somebody was trying to find out all that stuff oh oh yeah uh_huh um well that that's not really good i don't know i guess that's an invasion of privacy i'm not sure that that's an everyday thing though at least not for you know an individual something that i feel is a is a pretty much an invasion of privacy is something that's really so common that it's accepted as the norm now is the the open office concept uh_huh where they have the you know the little [partition] [dividers] throughout a a large room and and people have little [cubicles] well that's all fine and good but you don't really have any privacy at all right yeah and and it's not it's not just that it's uh the whole thing about you know if if you're trying to concentrate well it's rather hard sometimes it's almost impossible to do because um you know you're uh you're time you're space is is not your own space and i work in a situation like that and i i really kind of have a problem with that oh yeah is there anybody who doesn't um yeah um yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah i don't i don't think that's that's quite right either yeah hum what do you think could be done about it uh_huh yeah it really is it's something that something that i've just had a a dealing with is like a credit bureau well they take they take my name which is a very common name and my last name is even more common and they they check that name against uh their list and they find several and without even bothering to try to match up any other information at all they just report everything under that name they don't they don't even check my social security number and companies are paying them good money to report accurately and they're not they're so lazy they're just not doing it i mean they just find your name and they match it up you know and that just drives me crazy because they're and then they want then you know to get it removed they say well you know you have to write this write this long detailed letter and everything like that to them you know and then it takes three weeks and all and i'm like baloney you messed it up you fix it no what i've taken to doing lately is calling the company that they report like uh uh recently i was reported as having j c penney accounts and i don't so i called j c penney and i said uh i just wanted to let you know that the credit agency you're using is incorrectly reporting the information that you're providing to them and they say uh_huh because they really don't want to pay for a service that's not being done properly either so then they can call the credit bureau and say hey you know we're paying you good money to report this properly and you're not doing your job so that's what i've taken to doing lately and it seems to work pretty well so far not that i can think of yeah oh yeah i probably better let you get back to work okay all [rightie] bye bye i'm actually at work i'm in facilities and happen to have uh weekend duty here i'm in the south building we we pull mostly evenings we are having there's three of us uh [facilities'] managers are covering the off shifts just to have somebody here uh from management to uh see if they need anything oh the how many calls have you made okay i'm uh getting close to twenty this is the yeah hopefully you have a lot to talk about in this one but i don't really have a lot in this one usually i can talk for hours on most of the subjects they pick go ahead you first okay good okay yeah right yeah i the worst one i guess is like you when it's a recording i i don't mind so much someone calls and it's a and it's a salesperson at least you can chat or whatever and say okay now we want to go and then when when they actually start off with a a computer and expect you to talk to a computer uh that's where i draw the i just hang up immediately you know uh shut my other radio off here uh i guess they get their i'm i'm amazed the question about that the my concern would be everyone seems to have an answering machine and i have one too and they say that they can tie up your answering machine and just have a big long if they catch your answering machine yeah they they can erase all your others you know because if you have i think that's the way it is no mine i guess if it's full it will not take it i'm not sure but they can certainly uh block your answering machine so someone else calls you uh and your answering machine is full you know it won't erase but your right that was a good one uh_huh uh_huh yeah i've got one it's not really an invasion of privacy but it's uh annoyance for me in the office with uh speaker phones you know i they're great for an office but this one guy next to me who's not here just so i could talk about him he uses his speaker phone all the time and it carries over and so not only would you hear it seems to me that you talk longer from you kind of yell into it uh and so he [yells] into it and you hear the other person too so it's kind of a double annoyance he actually uh ruins my privacy you might say because the the t i offices are so open anyway uh that i'm amazed that the fact that i'm about ready to say something uh if he's even thought of that that's a real [uncourteous] thing an an invasion of everyone else's time and and concentration to just be loud i don't know whether that's an invasion of privacy just being loud and and annoying you know uh that's perhaps not quite an invasion of privacy but i think it is and we both picked phone items there go ahead do you have any more oh yeah that's that's a good one too yeah i heard something about not that exactly but go ahead yeah uh_huh uh_huh well i uh heard something similar to that i listen to i'm a uh uh talk show person and there was when i when i do my chores up at the i'm a radio person i guess is what i mean and so i listened to was it five seventy which has continuous talk on the weekends and neil sperry and everybody i mean the lawyers and [veterinarians] and all that and uh i don't know if it was a lawyer or whatever it was talking about when you make out a a financial application all that information on there is really not necessarily even a your social security number you know they you should just put down the basics and put n a where you don't want to answer whether it's your personal salary or whatever uh if your just making out a credit card application you don't need to put down and i was curious as to you know what specific things you you did have to put down but he says social security you don't need to put that down there which i thought was surprising so maybe there's something along that same line where you know in all these financial uh applications that you make out you don't have to put all that stuff down there it would be nice to know what's what was of course of course they could say well i can't give you a card and you could say fine but you know some things will be private you know but he said just put n a and he said usually you'll get approved anyway because they just want your money they want your card but if you don't feel like putting it down just put n a you know yeah yeah yeah i haven't i don't have any friends down at the the austin plant but i heard that they were really upset about the drug thing and we seem to up here have just [breezed] through that and apparently some other companies are having trouble that i don't have any trouble with it uh it's kind of unusual here we are in dallas you know the biggest location and and it just [breezed] through and wasn't really no one was i guess was really too concerned about it uh yet in austin there there were whether it was a class action or how far it got i don't really know because t i only had a few things on t i news i think about it that they were [objecting] to but the some people object to that which i don't mind no problem at all you know huh yeah right right i know i know yeah i served my time too yeah yeah oh did they object too uh_huh yeah well i'm i'm all for it i uh it doesn't bother me that whether they do it in high schools or you know carry it to wherever you want to carry it really uh uh of course that would really be a big thing in a public school but uh i'm saying certainly at work i have no problem with it uh uh and i think it is they they found that it's been very low really i guess maybe at the locations though i don't know if they have it done but done it by location i don't really know if uh they need to publish that really right right right but i think that was an actually a good thing that happened uh i never considered it i guess it's an invasion of your privacy but it's something that is for the good of so many people you know to have everyone uh take the test right away and uh and hopefully maybe some people will convince other people that are on drugs that well uh i might as well get off you know if i want to stay so you know if that was an invasion of privacy maybe it was good oh sure right uh_huh right go ahead you got me more i this is this is a tough one i don't really haven't thought about any of this they had gardening yesterday and all the repairs and boy i could oh oh okay what building do you work in oh okay okay oh okay okay i've only made a few um okay our topic for today is invasion of privacy so i got a good one when the phone rings and you've got a recording and this always happens like around five or six o'clock at night it rings and you get this recording and then it won't go away and any any of the type of solicitation that where they call all the time you know there are evenings especially friday nights thursday and friday nights well we must get in the neighborhood of anywhere from three to six calls about that time of night more people call that's where you want to jerk the phone out of the wall you know your sitting down to eat and the phone rings and it's like i don't want anything thank you very much uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah yeah that's that's real irritating to me uh_huh they can leave their whole [spiel] on it huh yeah i yeah that's that's a high [irritant] for me drives me crazy and it doesn't matter if you have an unlisted number or not because a lot of times these computer things will just make up numbers at random and just call them and so it really really doesn't make much difference as to whether or not you know you have a unlisted number or not and they pass around uh cards that have everybody's name on it like if you order something through a mail order catalog you know then you'll start getting a bunch of stuff in and a bunch of stuff and a bunch of stuff because they sell their customer list or they sell their catalog list of people to different companies and everything right right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah oh yeah let's see i'm trying to think oh have you heard that that i'm trying to think of what company it was there was a company that was going to uh be giving out information about your financial status well um i work in the computer science center and so we hear a lot about things that are that computers are capable of doing and uh this was a software program that a company was developing that was going to have x amount of million peoples financial history and information on it and they were going to sell it to companies who would up in turn [solicit] you for business et cetera et cetera and uh they finally uh stopped production of it because of all the [hullabaloo] it caused because it was such a big deal and i wouldn't have been too thrilled about it either i mean there was a lot of stuff going on about it okay uh_huh uh_huh huh uh_huh huh uh_huh well that's real interesting i know that a lot of times they ask for information that they don't really need on several things and you know your credit [ap] and all all they ever need you to do is give them permission to to pull a credit thing on on yourself and there it is that's all they really care about they just want that credit history to see if you're a person if you're going to go ahead and pay your bills on time and things like that uh_huh oh i know that there's several people i've talked to that really have a problem with it and i'm former military so you get kind of used to to going through stuff like that you know you don't pay any attention to it i mean once you sign over your soul to uncle sam you know you just kind of kind of blow it off but so i think i think the people who have who have been down that route or have had it to deal with anything like that have learned you know it's just one of those things you just do it and be done with it and don't worry about it but i do know that there are several sites i didn't i wasn't aware that austin was one of them but i think johnson city was one yeah there's there's several of the cities that have been having real trouble with the issue and the but also on things that i'd heard too from a [stockholders] meeting was that there were people uh there were the same places where they had a real bad problem with people fighting it were also places they had a big bad problem with the drug usage too uh_huh uh_huh oh i don't think it's a necessary thing to publish it they just need to deal with it and on an individual basis i mean if they're going to do it just deal with it and be done with it uh_huh oh i oh i think it's a safety factor too because you know when people are [inebriated] whether it's alcohol or drugs or whatever they are very unsafe for the their co workers you know it's like you know my father was a fireman and i can just imagine if you know you know some guy being on drugs they go there and and you know you've got somebody that's supposed to take care of you and they fall they fall out because of the drug issue you know i mean you can forgive somebody because all of a sudden they maybe get hurt or whatever that that you can understand but the use of drugs or anything like that will uh be a problem uh well i mean i've had time to think about it because uh we've had uh there's been a great deal of difficulty in finding someone to talk to so so um i i was thinking about a couple things uh and whether they are serious some things are serious and some aren't i guess the biggest thing that bothers me is is uh not the biggest thing but one of the things that bothers me is the credit information uh situation that you uh that you find yourself almost [compromised] into giving if you want any sort of credit extensive checks and and things of that nature when um i i i mean i i don't know if that's an invasion of privacy simply i i do i do feel it is but i don't know whether some of the questions they ask are legitimate uh because they are the ones who are making the profit out of your uh_huh well i guess i guess then it's just the big brother concept of the fact that once you give your social security number there are people i guess who are who are uh actually collecting all this all the time and and [profiles] are given i understand uh i read the other day that uh these [telemarketeers] when someone talks to you on the phone uh all all they need now is your telephone number which i guess is involved in this controversy of whether they can reveal your telephone number or not i i i feel that is an invasion of privacy but it yeah yeah exactly yeah my god yeah yeah i i have a particular subject that not everyone agrees with me uh uh well by uh i make my living by uh flying airplanes for for a company and uh as a as a uh an airline pilot i have to take random drug testing i mean it seems to me the public [outcry] was for that at the time so i when i finish a a certain flight on a random basis i have to uh have a a drug test and and and that's without uh probably cause and uh and in the end now i mean they've tested they've spent forty million dollars and they've found uh i think uh in pilots anyway of something like uh uh eighty six thousand tests there's only been two guys have come up uh three guys have come up positive and one of them was a bad test so yeah yeah drug test yeah yeah right yes i am yeah yeah i i can understand the public's alarm to it but i guess having done this all my life i knew that there wasn't a problem and and it indeed it has proved out that way but now try to get the damn thing repealed you know i guess i feel bad because uh not only that but in some of the instances like you just [cited] where you have to give your [fingerprints] i mean what what happens if you say no if you say no then you're excluded and i doesn't seem the courts yeah that's right it's my feeling also that that that although i i don't know if it's that serious but that was part of the question i do feel the courts have have held up a great deal of of our privacy i mean particularly look in in some of the in some of the uh i notice in some of the sexual cases they've held up a great deal of privacy which i support of course but it i guess with our fear with crime and maybe airline [crashes] and things like that it does seem that we've we've slipped and that's [eroded] or at least those in the market place their everyday life seemed to take that as a signal that you know it's fair game you you have to answer these questions of course uh i don't know i i feel there has been an erosion and i don't really know how serious it is except i don't like it um um uh_huh yeah what was that oh yeah yeah yeah right well i mean it it just take that that step now where where now we feel there's a need to do that and the next thing you know then uh there's always the need to to go and inspect [lockers] of high school students yeah i guess so i mean well uh good luck to you you just moved to texas from minneapolis uh i don't i don't hold out much hope for you i think they'll be a cultural shock i mean i was based there a lot uh several times in the service and i was absolutely flabbergasted at the in in at least in criminal law some of the some of the [latitudes] that the police had but oh yeah yeah um um yeah well i mean i don't understand if you if you don't if they don't make a criminal check why do you have to be [fingerprinted] oh i see oh the state doesn't require it well that's kind of that's rather that's rather unusual isn't it well i guess i guess the extension of that is why why not the next thing you know we'll just stop a random amount of [motorists] and then if we really think that drugs are a problem we can randomly stop anybody on the street oh they do yeah well there's there's all sorts of scare [tactics] i guess to to invade our privacy and yeah i just going to say nineteen eighty four is come is come and gone but it's here and the computers of course helps that the computer abilities store that information oh okay uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well what's scary is uh uh about two three four months ago on a in the sunday edition of what is called the morning paper here the dallas morning news they showed a reporter and a um and a copy editor how they went out and they just took um a fellow in john q public in dallas and all they had was let's see they had his they had something like his birth date the street address um they weren't even sure of the correct spelling of his last name excuse me and it was um very scary to see what they found out i mean they were able to find out what [liens] he still had against you know two or three houses through a two divorces children's names locations um it was really frightening uh_huh yeah uh_huh right uh_huh i do too yeah i don't the other thing i don't like is um in terms of uh like we just moved here from uh minneapolis and uh to get the the very nice townhouse that we're in you were required by the property management firm that was [representing] a private you know husband and wife owners um who had never done this before they um asked us for again an [astounding] amount of information and what we really didn't have the same opportunity you know and i guess that's when i also get upset that if you're going to do it then i want to do it too um in terms of the credit yeah i know um we're also going through adoption now in for an adoption and i mean after we gave our [fingerprints] to the f b i you you look at each other yeah you look at each other and say well it's too late now um so i mean it's it's a matter of anybody can get it any way and how if they really try um uh_huh go ahead uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh it isn't positive for anything see yeah see uh and i just started working well for an electronics firm down here i used to be a reporter and then now i'm in corporate communications and uh part of that excuse me was as a new hire that i had to take a drug test and i had never been asked that and i thought um i really didn't like it um i i have very mixed feelings about it i don't disagree or agree with you um i think i think that it's well and you're in that field so i don't know but it's you know we lived in uh minneapolis when the northwest airlines pilot in the [dakotas] yeah that hit the fan like uh you uh you're obviously aware of that um i don't know there should be some happy medium in terms of if they're going to do random um i i don't agree with random i guess i would look for a standard in consistency you know in terms of maybe at set [intervals] so that everybody knows what's going on um i don't see a problem with that i do think i see some level of necessity um in something where people are transporting other people uh only because of the things you've heard about the problem is the reason i feel that way even to a low degree is because it's the old story the minority make it bad for the you know majority um yeah i'm not [alarmed] you can't yeah i know it's um right right it's a matter and that's um exactly what it is i mean that that kind of screening in general is a matter of [exclusion] um if we didn't give it we wouldn't go to romania i mean if you hate to say that but that's the way it is uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh in terms of the privacy yeah that in it and also i agree with that and in the in terms of the question um in terms uh i worked in medical public relations for almost a decade and that was pre aids and all the other um things that were probably there but just not excuse me labeled and i have a real problem with medical professionals um it goes back to the things like drug screening but if it's in any level even with the potential to [endangerment] um and i think this is much stronger than you know pilots or uh train engineers being screened um the transmission of the aids virus um that's a real ethical problem i mean i don't i don't have the answer i i you know i mean i think of the young girl in florida who well yeah that's was she from your part of the country or was she from the young girl that uh contracted aids through her dentist allegedly and then they proved it yeah i don't i don't know um i don't know if it's the old story that we are killing ourselves in general or what um uh_huh oh yeah the i guess the question is uh the the thing for me is who sets the parameters or who has the control you know yeah yeah oh it's it's i'm uh very seriously more than just seriously i'm more than likely going to be going to law school in the fall and yeah if i figure out that's still what i really want to do and the things i'm finding out are the in terms of things like privacy the way the law is interpreted presented um it's no better than journalism um except in journalism it's words um this is very frightening in that uh-oh and in uh in texas they they they do not require for instance for [prospective] [adoptive] parents whether it's domestic or international they're one of only five states that do not require a criminal investigation check yet if you're caught with let's just say um that somebody who's in not us but somebody who's need of [carting] um aluminum beer cans around they haven't touched them they haven't drank them they picked them up off the street and they want to take them to a recycling uh resource for money or whatever um they've they've been going through a lot of bad publicity here in the last three or four months again um because they've been [arresting] people like that you know because um in our case one is at the state and the other one is at the federal level because you have to because you have to deal with the i n yeah because you have to deal with the uh immigration service yeah it is it's uh the whole thing is i mean there's again there's no consistency you know like in your in terms of you being a pilot and being tested randomly um i can't see why after a certain number of years or after a certain time frame they can't do it at an [interval] or you know i mean they they do that in texas they don't do it for drugs what they do is they check to see if you've got uh current insurance or they check to to see if you're permits are yeah i know and it's kind of um what's the word i want i don't it's to me it's just frightening you know i mean the old uh i'm old enough now where george orwell uh way past time yeah yeah it's exactly true i mean i well look at what we're talking now i mean it's look how we're talking now i mean you wonder ultimately what a network of stranger you know there you go oh well people that call on the phone all the time to try to sell you something you know that that try to sell you the newspaper and uh carpet cleaning and uh what else roof repair and enough well i think it's a waste of paper the people that always leave uh junk mail and because um you just end up throwing it away most of the time probably eighty percent of the the junk mail that you get is is um something that you don't need and the same way with those calls what is it oh m c i m c i really does even when you tell them no they keep calling back m c i it's the long distance telephone company uh_huh well they they won't take a no for an answer here for some reason they just keep calling back uh_huh uh_huh uh yeah uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh you can't force them to be no uh_huh oh yeah because they follow them around twenty four hours a day and you know they do ted kennedy of course he's breaking the law all the time so it's a different story then you know but but ed mcmahon i mean you know who cares about ed mcmahon he's probably hasn't done anything interesting in the last thirty years that they've been on the air you know and he has a chauffeur maybe he drinks but he never drives a car either you know it's not the same with johnny carson uh_huh without your and without your permission uh_huh right oh good uh_huh uh_huh that's right uh_huh well you have to have the telephone but you can't you know and and it's sometimes it's hard to screen out all the calls that you don't want uh_huh um uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh sometimes yeah some days it just rings off the wall no no uh_huh uh_huh right yeah even if i guess it's for coupons they they have a survey they run and it i guess it one of them is supposed to be a smokers survey but the questions go a lot farther than having to do anything with smoking and they ask you know they start out and they ask you even even to your income level i think that's you know whether you buy a t v dinner or not i don't think it has anything to do with what do you think invades your privacy m c i what's that oh now see i i really don't have much trouble with i just say no thank you and hang up i had a carpet service call up three times all within in an hour but i uh i do telemarketing so uh i'm very polite and i just say no thank you and say no thank you very [politely] and i hang up and don't bother me after that so i think the only thing that really bothers me is if when somebody contacts me and they try to get information out of me like the census bureau united states census bureau that bothered me i didn't feel they had a right to know how many bedrooms were in my house even that i think is my invasion privacy because it's the government and i don't understand what their need to know is and i think that is my biggest objection to anything as far as invading my privacy if somebody wants personal information out of me but telephone calls i figure they don't bother me one way or the other uh i know when i do telemarketing um i'm a soft person if if someone says i am not interested i'll just say fine and back out and i make very good sales but i'm not uh as i said i'm not half as pushy as these people because i don't really care i mean if if they're not interested fine you know that's it right and i'm not pushing something down their throat that uh i don't think is a good item anyway that i don't think i could do anyway but i feel like oh movie stars or sure it's part of their i guess they're portray being a movie star they get themselves in these rag sheets but uh i think they go too far i think that's invasion of privacy yeah oh yeah no i think my seriously my [classification] of of invasion of privacy is trying to get personal information and putting it falsely out or just [bombarding] me for the answers right this to me is is my invasion of privacy anytime i can honestly say no or throw the paper away or but you can always write to uh-oh i forgot the name of it and stop the junk mail that i've done because i don't want junk mail anyway so i wrote to them when it came on the air so i don't get any of that bull it works by the way but uh the telephone doesn't bother me because i leave it half the time on uh you know answering service anyway unless i'm home so i figure i can turn it off one way or the other but i think that's the only bottom line thing that i dislike because it does other than the u s census um what was it oh the the carpet place that called me three times that i felt was invasion because it was the same carpet place and called me three times i mean one should be sufficient but if people don't use the telephone it's like i don't know when the police has their project going and i don't know when the other ones have their project going and when they want to pick up down my street for things that's the only way i know and uh that's well see there's no way of knowing that's you know that's the problem like the product i sell uh i sell mostly to older people which can't get it in a normal public situation the only way we'd get to them is by telephone and uh most of them like it because the company i work for is nationwide and uh reputable and they know that hey we're backing it one hundred percent but if we were denied the right to call people up these people would never be able to get it because your normal companies that offer it do not offer it in the amounts that we do and they'd never have it then at that point because we offer it in a very low you know quantity so i mean i i don't know what to do as far as that's concerned but it is nerve [racking] i mean it is nerve [racking] to have the telephone but at least as i said you can always say no thank you i gather you get a lot of telephone calls yes yes yes in other words you own your own home i think that's where they hit most of us like i own my own home and you just know about what time like some days i hate staying home because the phone rings all the time but uh i don't know i haven't been able to figure that out something else to do about it when they call up and want to say well tell me this this this this and i'll give you a free something or other my answer is no thank you i don't need it and they say well don't you want to know what's free and i no if i have to give them so much to answer the questions to get fifty rolls of film or something like that they're taking something away from me and i don't like that uh_huh do you have any i have i have one and it's a real pet peeve of mine it seems i i do work during the day and when i'm home uh you know i'm either cooking or running doing things or uh laundry or stuff and i hate when the phone rings and it turns out to be a telephone salesman and it's real the two pet peeves that number one i really feel that that's my private you know my own home and i and if i want something i will get it i will go out and get it myself and i will never i never buy anything from a telephone salesperson so i really feel that it is a real invasion they're invading my time and my space by you know interfering in whatever i'm doing and i it really bothers me um it's a little bit like junk mail but except you can't you know ignore it uh quite as easily and i i try to be polite but at the same point well i just say thank you very much for calling but i'm not interested and then i hang up before they can say anything yes and it works very well because you don't hear you know how they can say anything they want it's just but i just feel that's my big thing on the invasion of my thing on invasion of privacy and um i have uh i sort of have a sort like you can prevent yourself from getting junk mail by getting yourself off of mailing lists i wish that there were a way that you could um get your you know submit your telephone number to the phone company and have a penalty for anyone who calls you to sell things from a uh you you you you do that by uh um the postal service has some information which you fill out and they send it's for every company i mean you can't do it for any you know but you can then send it and they can they tell that company is not allowed to sent it you any junk mail if you get junk mail on a regular basis from any particular company you can yeah yeah you have to go to the post office and ask them for the form that you fill out to not to get you know junk mail from specific companies and i wish there were something like that where you can call the telephone company and you could say that uh have your your number put in a [registry] and then anyone making these calls have to check that [registry] for that area and could not should and is not allowed under penalty of you know being reported or something to call you so that would be one way of doing it uh_huh oh i'm guilty of that sometimes because i've called and there really wasn't any significant message and i and i wasn't going to be available to be called back and it was sort of like oh the hell i'm not going to spend the time giving leaving a message and uh i'll call later if i'm available the other thing that um that there is recourse to and that's another thing is when you you use your credit card and then they ask for a telephone number well legally now they're not allowed they're you do not have to give a telephone number yes and i don't really like [announcing] in public you know when you're sitting there my telephone and i don't like the way telephone numbers can be used we once had a situation where someone was using a credit card number of ours and he actually had our phone number but it turned out it had to have been my husband's office phone number and uh we were able we weren't actually able to trace it but we were able to to [discard] the charges um but it was uh_huh uh_huh yeah same with my husband it was the charge card and social security number well you should never give the social security number uh if sometimes if you charge sometimes i charge theater tickets over the phone and then you know because they pick them up at the box office we'll call but um that's the only thing i would ever have ever used it for the phone and that was because i initiated it uh and occasionally i do order things from catalogs over the phone but again it's i initiate it not the company the other thing is though you do not have to if you're buying something in a store and they and you pay for it by charge and they ask you for your telephone number you do not have to give it that is one that's a law that went into effect i don't know a year or two ago and uh you can just say i'm sorry that uh i'm not required to give that by law and then they won't a lot of stores will still ask but uh the credit card company you know accepts the charges i mean a the credit cards company's responsibility so in this um well this would this is limited to the privacy issue the invasion of privacy yeah and i guess uh that was my that's probably my biggest one in terms of invasion of privacy for people outside the family of course i've got little pet peeves you know with my family you know but of course i guess that just comes with the uh with the territory with a family that does a mother can do some privacy but uh uh_huh nothing that you felt that you know any experiences you've had at work so many things i think over the years have been um accepted i mean when you uh that are no longer done i mean i can remember when i was very young much younger and i applied for a job they said well aren't you planning to have children well i mean that's none of their business and but of course now by law they can't ask that so i mean there has been i think a lot to done to protect privacy how do you feel uh_huh yeah that's right do you feel that drug testing is an invasion of privacy or aids testing yeah uh_huh yeah i feel that way too i sometimes feel you know sometimes individual rights including the right to privacy have to be sacrificed for a greater benefit you know for example airline pilots i mean i do want my pilot to be sober uh_huh yeah yeah that's right yeah i know yeah i feel you know i think some of the people that oppose you know mandatory drug testing for certain areas say well it's not i'm trying to think offhand i can't think of anything you know okay uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh oh i wouldn't either no uh_huh uh_huh yeah that doesn't always work oh really oh uh_huh uh_huh well how do you get your name off the junk mailing list uh_huh oh really oh i didn't even know that oh wow yeah uh_huh yeah i can't really think of anything that invades my privacy but one of my pet peeves you came up with the telephone is when you have an answering machine and they hang up before they leave a message i can't stand that i think that is so stupid you know because uh_huh yeah uh_huh oh really uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i don't like how they the i i realize that this is your identification but i worked with someone that got hold of his charge cards and his social security number and you know i don't i don't like i don't ever get anything over the phone because i don't want to give my social security number out uh_huh yes uh_huh oh i never even knew that uh_huh uh_huh well is there any like pet peeves that you have that don't necessarily invade your privacy oh okay i really can't think of any that would invade my privacy you know no i you know i i really can't say anything that would really bother me uh_huh yeah yeah yeah especially between women and you know like aids and all that stuff you know with you know your sex you know they've gotten a lot with uh applications and stuff and aren't allowed to ask no because i think it's for the better of like you mean like for working and stuff no i don't because i think whenever and something like that they're looking out for everyone they're not you know i think it's more safety than anything else yeah because i know yeah because i know i worked at a still mill in this summer and i know that um i've covered for people that came in drunk you know on the late shift or something and it and it's dangerous i don't even like having them around i kind of do their work for them because they make it more hazardous than what it is without them you know so what so what gets you uh_huh uh_huh well i mean i that's exactly the kind of thing i would have said although in my case it's my wife and i both work we come home and just as we're preparing dinner or eating dinner the phone rings and it's one solicitation call after another and you know yeah it's it's like you say very annoying and uh why why do we let this happen would would you i mean if you could legislate something what would you legislate yeah it it seems it seems to me that we should have the ability to [designate] with the phone company that we don't want to receive calls like that and the people making these calls would be obliged to compare the their lists that they're going to call against this list of people who don't want to be called uh and that that way those who want it can have it and those who don't want it don't have to have it sort of like an unlisted number where you haven't gone to the trouble of [enlisting] yourself except even unlisted numbers aren't safe now because they have these things just sort of dial through all the numbers uh automatically and right yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh yes and these and these people may in fact be just looking to find an [unoccupied] house to rob uh_huh yeah what about these telephone callers sometimes they're door to door but usually they're telephone callers who who want you to basically help them fill out a questionnaire well i think these people were hired by from from different sources uh with you know and so therefore there's no one answer but but yeah sometimes it's a market basically it's a market survey but they never say who who they're really working for or what you know what what what questions are you know yeah yeah yeah yeah right well and sometimes that's this is just the lead in to a sales pitch too other times it's you know wasting your time to collect the data they want for their marketing purpose for which if they would just pay me enough money i would be willing to consider but but a dollar isn't it you know it's uh and i also sort of worry that you know that sometimes people giveaway personal information uh when when the call comes and and they uh you know sort of [seductive] to you know somebody is asking me my opinion on all of these things and so i start answering and then you you know you go down a path uh and you don't know where it's going to end uh in fact you don't even know what you've eventually you know the [totality] of what you've [revealed] and you know this isn't you know most likely not to going to be used against you but it could and and that seems to be something that should should really be outlawed because it's subject to abuse and it well let's see as far as i'm well the thing i think that annoys me the most is i have i have young children a baby in the house and and inevitably as soon as they're asleep someone calls on the phone trying to sell me something and i think that that is probably the most aggravating uh you know it invades my time i'm the one that pays for the phone uh if i want to buy something i'll take the initiative and and go find it you know and that just really does aggravate me uh what do you think your time is is valuable and oh i that's that's interesting i the the market seems to just be growing too i i guess enough people are not speaking out i'm not speaking out that's for sure i just get aggravated about it and i really don't know i'm i'm not into uh heavy government [legislating] of a lot of different areas but i i don't know i just i do particularly find it annoying uh i'm really not sure i haven't given that a lot of thought if if it should should go you know to be well that yeah that might identify themselves yeah right well that would be a good an interesting way yeah right right you're oh is that right oh that's interesting and they just get everybody oh boy well i i do wish that it would stop on my end because it it seems to happen at the worst possible moments and i i guess the next one is is door to door solicitors i don't mind the children when they're selling things for school i have kids and you know that's just kind of part of it but when it's adults selling a variety of things and especially when men arrive at about ten o'clock in the morning uh that really it makes you not feel particularly safe and it's annoying as well right you just you really don't know so i i find myself being a a bit [abrupt] and a little bit [ruder] than than i might normally be but i do feel like it's a an invasion of my space and uh i've never quite understood the purpose of that yeah i uh just just a survey yeah there have been a couple of times when the the uh whatever the subject was i guess caught my interest and i went along with it and then there have been several times when i just said well i just really don't have the time you know to deal with it at that moment but uh i don't get too many of those i've had just a few uh generally someone's trying to sell me something or right right right yeah that's right oh right yeah well we that's true yeah you just never know i guess that yeah i i asking for information is is i can't really see that i think they ought to if if nothing else they ought to spend money for a [postage] stamp and you know when it [arrives] at your house oh i okay what type of things do you feel would invade your privacy every day yeah that's right that is really an invasion of privacy i i find it very annoying when i've worked all day to come in and my phone to ring constantly the solicitors and the carpet cleaning companies and does that happen in your part of the country i uh i come home and i am trying to get a few things done and i can't do anything but answer the telephone some evenings are worse than others but i wish i could put a stop to it but i don't know what to do to stop it uh_huh they would think it didn't mean them i guess everybody but me oh goodness are you do you live at home with your parents uh_huh so your privacy is invaded probably by other members of the family now what can you do to stop that no just have to live with it i guess try to remember to respect their privacy and maybe they will respect yours and do you have brothers oh okay i was i had two younger brothers and they nearly drove me crazy listening to telephone conversations and i would get in the bathroom and lock the door so maybe they couldn't hear me and then they would go get on the other extension and i could hear them but i couldn't get them to hang up you know even it in the office i uh find that people walk up and and when you're on a conversation instead of walking off or just making themselves busy they'll stand there and listen to what you say until you hang up uh_huh yeah let's see i can't think of anything else i'd really consider an invasion of privacy other than the phone solicitors about the only thing that really bothers me i don't have that many people coming to my door uh_huh and i guess that's really the thing that really bugs me the most i can't think our kids in our neighborhood used to bother me but they've all gotten grown up now and we live in a neighborhood where there is not any little kids to bother me since mine are all grown up but what else would be an annoyance well i guess traffic could be an annoyance do you have a lot of traffic in your area uh_huh some days it's real real bad here and you would like to feel like it's an invasion of privacy because you can't even ride down the road without people all the way around you you know but it really is and pretty noisy it really is i live right on a main [thoroughfare] so when i first moved here i probably did consider that an invasion of privacy because it at first you'd hear a lot of noise especially at night you know when you go to bed and every time a a fire truck or anything went down the road i would wake up but i guess i have gotten used to it because i don't even hear it anymore and uh i just close it out i guess because i don't i don't remember waking up in several years at night when i'd hear a fire truck go by you know i think they would probably have to pull into my drive before it bothered me they would have to chop down the door and get you out i guess let's see what else is an invasion oh well did you have has name all over them that was yours yeah yeah yeah um huh well i don't like it when uh people listen to my phone conversations like if they're outside my door while i'm talking in my room or when people like look through my things in my bedroom yeah uh_huh yes uh_huh definitely right right even uh we used to have a sign on our door that said no soliciting and they would still come to our door and knock and i guess not no yeah yes uh_huh yeah yeah mostly yeah oh i don't know well i am used to it now but sometimes it sort of gets gets to me but there is not much i can really do no yeah well i don't know i always uh no yes i do but they don't live at home oh i used to do that though because i was the youngest i would pick up the phone and listen to theirs but i oh yeah but i stopped doing that a long time ago and they still do it to me oh like yeah this lady does that to me at work when i'm taking an order or something and she'll just sit there and listen like i'm doing something wrong and she just started and she is nice but okay but you know it gets annoying when they stand right over you watching everything you do but no right well occasionally we'll have a person here or there but not not as many as the phone calls you know so but uh oh oh yeah especially when you're in a hurry um it can get busy yeah usually in the week i'm yeah uh_huh yeah i've traveled quiet a bit and i've been through dallas texas it's pretty busy yeah yeah uh_huh oh yeah oh yeah i suppose you do uh_huh yeah yeah i am a real solid [sleeper] though so that probably wouldn't bother me i'd sleep right through it yeah it takes a lot i had an old boyfriend who looked through my notes one time i was mad because those were mine no it was a a letter from a girlfriend of mine i i just i was upset because those were mine and you know i thought he right i thought he would respect me more than that to look through my things and not trust me so that was upsetting i was mad about that and my privacy there uh invasions of privacy uh what most annoys me are all sorts of phone calls trying to sell me things all sorts of hours calling and telling me that i want investment advise and i want this service and that service or the other thing um my sense is that something may just have been done about it by congressmen just what went into the something about the random [dialers] that just dial phone numbers i guess in some cases they just consider pickup your your phone and and and not let you use your phone for a while whether you hang up on them or not um but i thought i saw something about it having some kind of [provision] that people could [specify] that their phones were not for commercial using and uh and uh people businesses would be prohibited uh from calling for for for business selling you things i'm sure that's true uh some of did too i think i think government can do that now is that right and uh especially with with possibly children around uh that could could be useful protection so uh i used to deal with what are [dialing] services oh oh where people just just call you and you know and then what those problems has been eliminated those problems used to be when i used a credit card they'd want to have my phone number and i did not like giving it out i gave out my work number but i think i'm not sure if it's by law just otherwise i think the practice has basically been eliminated asking for a phone number how did radio shack work yes that's that's that's one solution but you you you nonetheless often get get people calling you despite the fact that your number is unlisted and you actually have your number or are they just calling a number that happens to be yours uh_huh uh_huh yeah and they have a whole list of addresses and list of phone numbers i'll be thinking in mind the address is um is there anything you can do about that like give out a phony phone number huh yeah i don't know i think it's gotten much worse the last few years maybe that's just because i've gotten on more lists yeah sell you magazines uh_huh i guess whatever is i just don't give my t v down okay i'm sorry uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yes i hate those canned messages they put on my recorder uh_huh uh_huh i have through the phone company uh no nine hundred numbers can be [dialed] from my phone or received uh_huh uh_huh right yes and i don't have children around but i just don't like those nine hundred numbers so i've excluded those but isn't it does not stop you from the uh [dialing] services where they uh intend to sell you things uh_huh uh_huh and leave again that canned message on the uh_huh uh_huh right well that's the thing i hated too about uh radio shack if you go in and buy anything they want your phone number and i don't think they're going to call me and ask me how it's functioning and and i don't give that out i have an unlisted number so i don't sure uh_huh well anything that you buy um you you may get put on the a uh preferred list that is purchased and and companies can purchase this list and what that is is people who buy from the mail uh_huh uh no not really um no uh some of that unfortunately is legal so they can't stop people from uh advertising and that and that's what it falls under it falls under the [guise] of advertising so i don't care for it but is it a legal uh solution for some companies so that that's the way things are uh_huh uh_huh well they you know that's that's the telephone is not the only invasion of privacy you've got the holy rollers and you've got uh all kinds of people knocking on your door and who want to uh either direct you to the right path or or want to uh sell you uh paper routes uh whatever so um you know it's not just the telephone okay uh what do you consider an invasion of privacy uh_huh it's very easy now i've never i've never had that happen to me either what do you think about places like i was in michael's the other night and charged something and they asked for my home phone even though you know the charge had been approved what do you think of that does it bother you to give it you know that they they now have a uh i believe it's a federal law that you do not have to give your phone number on charge tickets security number uh_huh oh uh uh_huh privacy yes yes i can see you know where that was i i don't mind my phone number and address or work phone being given you know when i have to cash a check i don't see any need for it when i'm charging something but i neither am i a person that has the guts to say no i'm not going to give it to you either you know and uh yes yes uh_huh uh_huh right right i discovered with uh charge cards uh i feel like that i don't know whether it's the stores themselves that sell the list or whether the uh uh credit report bureau sells it but i get catalogs from people i've never even heard of and i know they have to be coming from my charge cards you know from some list you know that knows that i have a say a charge account at at [neiman's] or something because then i'll get catalogs that you know are within that range that i would never order from [ordinarily] and uh you know and i get i get tired of that i because i look at all that junk mail and i think of how inept our post office is and how that's taking up you know all their time to sort and they're not even paying full [postage] you know and if you did away with some of that our postal service might give better service right uh_huh no no well you know let's face it computers can be gotten into very easily if you if you really have the the know with all if you're you know so inclined to uh-oh what do i want to say have the smarts to be able to tinker with something like that you know and have a basic knowledge they're very easy to get into to tap into a system uh_huh you know and uh which is scary i mean you know our lives are on computers and uh and i don't know i kind of i resent the calls of an evening trying to sell me something uh we are constantly it seems like i don't know why you know either wanting to clean our carpet sell us storm windows uh i was just now told that's what the topic was and uh i guess invasion of privacy uh to me for example would be unauthorized use of credit cards for example and uh i guess recently one of the t v stations here uh ran a series of uh news [casts] on unauthorized credit card usage and how easy it was to get a person's credit card numbers and use it and i was quite surprised at that i guess i can consider myself fortunate that uh it never happened to me i don't know what i'd really do if it did uh no not really because i'm listed in the phone book if i was the type of individual that uh had an unlisted number i i think i would be hesitant to give it one of the things that upset me when i lived in california was uh they did a lot of things with your social security number as a matter of fact they even went to the point of printing our social security number on your driver's license and they would not cash checks unless they had your social security number so we had our social security numbers [imprinted] on our checks and i was really you know unhappy about that situation i think that was an invasion of privacy right one of the biggest things i think that's going on in this country right now is the selling of uh mail lists and things like that you know uh recently we uh i purchased some magazines u s news and forbes magazine and every since that day i have been inundated with you know uh subscriptions to this subscriptions to that uh this news letter this investment letter uh even to the point of people calling me at home and prior to me ordering these magazines i never got those kind of calls and uh_huh from some some list yeah uh_huh right all their time sure i think the general public would be you know uh tremendously upset if they knew how easy it is for uh let's say the criminal individuals to to get access to people's records uh their credit cards driver's licenses checks things like that uh i don't think anybody really knows what to do about it computers caused a lot of this i'm sure sure seems as though they are yeah unfortunately fortunately i haven't uh haven't uh been inundated with that situation yet well what do you think about the everyday occurrences that are that are an invasion of your privacy oh right yeah i think that's that's the only thing i wrote down also because that's just a it's terrible today i mean my wife and i seems like we get home at five thirty and the damn phone starts ringing and rings up until ten eleven o'clock sometimes yes i know that's true yeah that's true but you know people it's like your name must be on a list or something because i know at my office i get calls i mean i must get at least i probably average at least a call a day and a lot of days i'll get two and three calls from from people selling insurance you know to the small business man and uh you know i think dunn and bradstreet puts your according to what i understand dunn and bradstreet puts your names your name out to people also as far as [brokers] all i get calls from [brokers] in new york and uh california always trying to sell something oil oil investments or stock investments or whatever and now i'm getting the same calls at at the house and they get your and they get your name from dunn and bradstreet and uh credit card companies they sell your name i know yes american express does that by the way yeah i understand they sell it you know they sell names because it's quite profitable to them and that is an invasion of privacy you're right i know that's true exactly magazine companies uh uh from from subscriptions do the same thing it's the way they make additional money but it's uh you know i guess it uh you have to be a certain income holder to uh have an american express card so your name is valuable to i guess x amount of solicitors calling so i don't know what what do you where are you from oh okay well so yeah we live in the dallas area richardson okay did you yeah i got i've talked to people in utah people in new york and a lot of times i'll call eight or nine o'clock in the morning and i'll get people you know from out of the uh out of the state i'll be darned where you from not from texas new jersey right yeah my wife's from new jersey yeah from uh saddle river she okay well that's nice too really yes my wife's been away for twenty five years so she's been away for quite a while her dad was from little rock arkansas and her mother was from new york so they just they over there in new jersey uh and anyway this topic is is a good topic as far as invasion of your privacy but that's the the biggest one i can think of is just just all the solicitors calling i know that's a that's a good suggestion i might start using the answering machine more because it's so hard to not pick up that phone when it rings right sure yeah you're probably right i understand i mean i it's hard to believe there's that many [deputy] [sheriffs] associations and i know they call you one time to send three kids to the carnival or circus and right there's always a and i my my pat answer now is well you just called me the other night well the uh what i really i don't like is the the constant calls people selling things people telling me i want things you know people trying to [solicit] for different you know organizations you know that's what i really never stops ringing right that's right well you know the the great uh thing for that it's uh is is an answering machine i mean this is this is the one of the best [inventions] ever you know you just switch that thing on and uh yeah um even in an office uh_huh right uh_huh right right uh_huh i know oh yeah uh well you know these people they sell your names i mean you know i that's also an invasion of privacy i think it the whole thing is uh oh they do well sure it is that's right well you know if you've ever gotten anything you know in your life your your name is somewhere i mean one magazine and boom they got your name forever uh_huh that's right yeah that's right oh i'm from texas oh we're in plano well you know the only call i really got that well was out of state i got one from oklahoma city and one from california and that was uh california i was thrilled to death because that's you know the furthest i'd gotten any call from you know and um oh really oh yeah see well that's uh the there was another call on saturday saturday that was also from uh that was the one from california i don't know why i ask people on the weekends from out of state or uh i don't know you know but uh originally from new jersey yeah oh really what part oh that's nice over there yeah we're from more uh from sort of towards the shore central new jersey you know we're like uh yeah oh yeah it was beautiful that's why i i really miss it i i don't really like it here at all uh_huh yeah so they yeah well yeah i mean yeah yeah and then of course they call you know before i got the answering machine it was ridiculous you know i said this is absurd i you know i the minute i get home the phone would be ringing oh it's great i mean well you know in fact i've been missing calls from the t i switchboard because i i always have it on you know and i'll get that that message that says uh to uh um you know uh end this call press three and i assumed i you know it was from the switchboard you know yeah it is because one day i listened you know and it was you know but um i i just got totally disgusted and then you know people asking for for money for everything you know i mean exactly and you know the [policeman's] associations oh i used to do that yeah i used to do that i'd send or three kids to the movies or something afternoon doug it certainly is uh going to be a pleasure to chat with you and i'm uh certainly was surprised to uh to hear from you normally i talk to people in plano texas how did you get on this list well okay all right well now what would you say about these everyday invasions of our privacy what ideas do you have on that doug in what manner uh_huh well the thing that i thought they were uh concerned about was was people calling on the phone from all over the country to sell you something and in reality in many cases they knew or they had information about you that was purchased from some other organizations and i thought was uh beginning to invade the privacy of people because the things about where you live and and maybe what you purchased in past months is then put down and sent to someone else in the same business and they in return come back and try to sell you something with this additional knowledge to me that's an invasion of privacy uh_huh you mean your history in regards to uh the charge card company or something like that do you consider these serious uh problems uh_huh well what should we do about it or what could be done about it do you think to correct it well i would think that uh information held on records uh by any company or charge card dealer or person should be absolutely private and and not be allowed to be uh to given out by those companies i mean it should be made a a uh national or a state law to protect people so that uh you would then feel more free to deal direct with these companies in other words if you call the company yourself directly uh and then know that what you tell them will be on their records but will not be available to anyone else uh you know from the outside so to speak then you would you would feel more free to uh to go into detail with them but but we have no control of that now and then uh you you're when you're talking with them you really don't want to tell them everything that's on your mind because you you feel that it someday might be used against you uh_huh yeah me too uh through nancy [dahlgren] she um she had somehow gotten the information from t i and was distributing it around um see i'm not sure that i don't think they're necessarily widespread in this country but i think that the opportunity is definitely there for um people to invade your privacy when they want to i think it's um well it's certainly not that difficult to tap a phone it's completely trivial to for instance listen in on someone's car phone or walk around phone since they're just radio signals it's um and let's see well what's the first thing that comes to your mind uh_huh yeah i agree with you there for sure um and i think that all that information is quite easy for anyone to get it's possible for almost anyone to get information about your credit history for instance if they just um twist the right arm or claim to be from the right organization when they're calling the credit company it's you know possible for a thirteen year old hacker with a modem to find out almost anything about your personal history not to mention change it if he wants to well um well yes well for instance yes um and they'll probably goes into other things like you know your records with the government or utility companies or anything um uh not not yet anyways because i don't think they're widespread enough but i think they have the potential of becoming serious problems um i'm not really sure because the i mean society is going more and more electronic and there are certainly benefits to its doing so and it's hard to hard to say whether the um risks have potential of [outweighing] the benefits or not and i'm not sure what can be done to ensure that they don't why do you see any out for us uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i uh_huh so do you your privacy being invaded at any time well right yeah yeah now that you can still yeah i've always done that i started once i found out that that's really not necessary or legal then i just refuse and i say what are you going to do you going to say you don't want to sell me this product then that's fine i'll just buy it somewhere else or not buy it at all and then ultimately they say no you don't have to put it down but uh really it's part of this [compliance] thing uh the thing i don't like i know that certain states actually sell their uh their lists like uh motor vehicles that really burns me because hey you're required you have to do that and nowhere does it say you asks you whether you have permission or not to sell your name or information regarding that to anyone and i think that it it's one thing to uh voluntarily give it because someone asks you can always refuse but it's another thing where it's required by law and then they go ahead and take that information and sell it to somebody you know i don't think i don't think they have the right to do that well that's easy whenever you donate money to someone they you become put on something like a sucker list and you start getting millions of calls or solicitations and then you it kind of makes you feel from doing it again like uh national public radio or any of these the public uh stations you know i i i i think i sent in in money for once to uh to public uh t v and i started getting calls from all sorts of diseases and [syndromes] and everything you could imagine i it's like and it just started soon after i had done that one and i just said this is this is terrible uh and that's also happened to me where i've given money to my old alma mater in college and uh it's one thing they don't sell the list but the thing that makes me mad is uh then they start getting uh other people the people do these [phonathons] and they call you up and they actually happen to be people who are graduated in your class or something like that and and they say oh we we know you you uh had uh contributed x amount last year can you do better this year and you know like hold on here who how do you know that why why you even telling me this is it any of your business i mean it's one thing that i and the college knows that that's just our business there's no need for someone who is soliciting should know at all just uh and that was very offensive too i and so uh_huh right well uh one of the things that uh that i found to be uh an invasion is when i pay for something with a credit card and they ask me to put my telephone number on the on the uh credit card bill that is something that is not required and in fact uh it is actually prohibited but it doesn't stop many people many people from uh from doing it and it's one of the things that it's used for primarily is for demographic uh research and to get your your phone number on uh uh lists for phone solicitations uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh right uh that i agree with you there that's something that uh people have seen oh here's an easy way to make some money but uh i don't know if that's been challenged in the courts or not i i've heard fairly recently uh some talk about that in this in in my state uh the budget problems up here are are pretty tense and people are looking for alternate ways of uh [enhancing] revenue is the uh phrase they use and they were talking about selling the d m v lists and there was a lot of uh a lot of uh [consternation] about that and the last i heard they'd backed down from that idea but it really makes you wonder what other lists you're own that have been made uh public that you don't know about uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh huh right uh_huh right how do you know that uh_huh last year the uh lotus development company the uh company that puts out one two three was planning on marketing a uh c d [rom] with people's names sorted by number of different criteria so uh what things do you consider an invasion of privacy oh i don't know i had a little bit more time to think about it i was thinking of like uh i don't know i was started to think about all the big you know data bases they have with all the information about you on them like the credit reports and all those you know demographics studies that they do that um you know have who knows how much you know stuff about all the purchases that you've made and everything kept tract somewhere and i don't know i don't know how much the stuff actually what they actually have in there but i know they use that i mean they sell those yeah that was that that was the other one i was thinking of i think that's uh i mean i know drugs are illegal huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i i think the i think that you know a person's [competence] should be more determined by you know their actions and their behavior and if they're you know if they're on some kind of you know controlled substance then you know it kinds of takes away from the job of you know the supervisor or manager type person you know who is able to evaluate them i think they should be evaluated that way rather than with a you know a chemical you know these people that are [carriers] and don't that don't reveal it yeah that would be kind of an extreme i mean i've heard of things like you know making them you know marking them somehow or you know or something like that or you know putting them all someplace like in a kind of yeah i guess it kind of borders on where i mean what do you value more the invasion of uh the person's privacy or the possible danger to you know other people yeah i guess that's that's been the big role of government i guess i mean generally yeah yeah well that's kind of a difficult one to go into i mean that that particular case because i mean there's a lot of people that uh i mean they could require you know obligatory aids testing for everyone because i'm you know there's a huge part of the population not a huge part but a you know the aids population i guess that have it that don't know they do are spreading it but again to require you know such a test and and then to make make it is to subject them to to [discriminatory] practices and other things i don't know uh i don't know how exactly i feel about that ooh well i don't know what do you think uh_huh uh_huh huh well what about uh required drug testing uh as a uh condition of employment it thing actually uh i uh have worked at texas instruments and uh they instituted a drug policy there drug testing policy where they randomly would test uh employees and actually to tell you the truth i really did not think much about it i i hadn't you know it really didn't relate to me but there were some things that people brought up like well what happens if they they get a false positive you know what recourse do you have and also uh uh this is against the law for the government to do this kind of thing this kind of big brother activity and yet uh a lot of these large corporations such as texas instruments although they don't admit to it it's actually oh a drug testing policy comes about as a result of government pressure so what that means is to me that really it's the government that's requiring this although they don't actually execute it themselves it's really the government that so in that sense it at least [philosophically] it's really borderline legal well what about this uh aids epidemic now where you find that uh uh you know certain people are actually are are criminal in their disregard for others yeah and and uh of course the ultimate solution is to operate on their brain so that it doesn't it uh it destroys their [libido] now uh you know if they ever so what about that as an invasion of privacy so really it gets to balancing uh personal freedom against uh the general welfare of society well it it's supposed to have been no it a growing part uh_huh maybe chop their [weenies] off i guess i guess by what you said you're you don't feel you're uh privacy has been invaded anytime recently uh_huh right uh no i wouldn't call it invading my privacy by any means uh you know i would there there's a lot of times though uh you get those calls and you know when you're sitting at home wanting to relax or or whatnot and you know next thing you know uh someone calls and wants to sell you this or that and it's real hard to to tell them you know that you're not interested or you do tell them you're not interested and they still keep asking you you know and keep [badgering] you about it and that aggravates me but i don't know that you could call that invading of invading my privacy because you know if we don't want that to happen all we have to do is just call the phone company and say look you know i want my name unlisted or want my you know it doesn't uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh huh good grief well let me ask you about this here's something that uh has been kind of concerning me lately my fiance received a bill from a a lord and taylor company uh you know they're a they're a department store she received a bill from them uh that she had visited some and and i think it was there in florida maybe it was in miami that uh she had visited a store there and uh they had this bill uh that she had bought such and such amount of merchandise uh over two hundred dollars worth of merchandise uh and the date that that she supposedly made this purchase she was in denver with me for thanksgiving uh and apparently what had happened is someone used her social security number uh and and i've i've heard recently that uh uh that this is a common occurrence where people are using you know they use joe [blow's] uh social security number uh and can uh potentially ruin someone's credit huh uh_huh yeah yeah well yeah yeah well we got it cleared up eventually what happened uh no not really uh uh the only thing that annoys me is when uh people call and they uh you have solicitation calls that's the only thing that bothers me that's not really invading my privacy uh do you feel that yours is invaded but but that doesn't work uh no because they a lot of times they dial [sequentially] they get your name from uh if you enter any type of contest or anything uh you know you enter a [sweepstake] in the local department store for a shopping [spree] or something you put your phone number on there they pass your phone number on to another company uh or you uh or or like the newspapers they just dial randomly or and stuff they even call the newspapers here even call people who already subscribe and uh while i was subscribing to the paper i got so upset at them that they you call me one more time i'm going to stop subscribing and the local local papers ask them to remove your number from their list and uh yeah you call up their regular during regular hours their uh they have a special department they'll take your numbers out of their lists uh but the uh orlando paper uh yeah they they refused to take it off of the lists and they call every month and when you have more than one phone number you get a call on each number you have uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh if you know a person's social security number and their mailing address and their mother's [maiden] name uh you can basically become that uh person uh if the purchase was made mail order they should have a record of where it was shipped to and since it wasn't shipped to her address she could prove you know that it wasn't her uh if it was some you know coming into the store and stuff then she would whoever made the purchase would have had find some kind of uh you know document and uh the signature uh they should be able to provide you a copy with that signature and if they can't provide a signature you know they'll have to eat the charge but if the has you know their social her social security number i'd be real concerned that they uh that she's not uh [blacklist] on uh what is it it's [telecredit] or something uh because she won't be able to cash checks because most places verify through there she probably won't be able to open a checking account or anything without a lot of hassle well what i consider invasion well maybe it's just invasion of my private time is we get a lot of those computer generated uh telephone calls where they just you know go through the list and whenever you pick up the phone it's a recording and there you're supposed to hold on for a very important phone call and i feel that if it was so important that they would uh be there instead of putting me on hold yeah we uh i don't know why it is but there have been so many of those that um instead of the the usual sales calls that you get that they um will just run through the list and i guess wait for someone who's going to hang on to talk to them but uh yeah we get a lot of those almost sort of like these t i phone calls no right right no these these are beneficial too too uh for personal uh benefit here uh_huh uh_huh right right [swampland] in florida yeah we get a lot for uh aluminum siding and uh but yeah do you all have what do you consider your invasion of privacy right right that seems to be the prime time they call is is definitely well between uh six and eight o'clock i guess uh_huh right uh_huh right i'm surprised they don't though uh i but i'm sure if they did that uh there would be a lot more uh public uh uh voice about it that uh we wouldn't go for that uh_huh right and what's so bad about it is um and they don't i mean all it is is they just go through down a list of numbers i mean they don't know who they're calling it didn't seem like uh it they're just a [haphazard] uh at it so i don't know right right uh no not yet uh_huh now we've gotten several of those letters as far as trying to uh sign us up for you know like you you've been uh approved for a you know for a credit card and all this and uh i've always wondered how and uh why now we had a problem not too long ago our uh my brother in law recently moved and uh somehow or another we got their new address on our credit reports because the uh i guess the credit card companies or whatever sort of keep up on some of them and uh had uh picked up the new address and was sending all our bills over there so it was like okay now wait a second here so it'll be interesting to see how that works out how messed up things will be yeah so uh that was a mess but uh yeah it the there was a report not too long ago on the news here on uh they were going about how easily it was to get information about anyone and uh you know they got a credit history um you know went through all the moves that they made you know their uh it was just amazing the stuff that they got and it was so easily you know it was all public uh information it seemed like uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh yeah we're in one of those counties and uh it uh you get lots of interesting things in the mail in fort bend county in southwest houston the seems to be the the up you know the uh the new generation or whatever the up and coming people are all are moving out this direction and uh the new it's funny to see how the different stores are now changing uh to the um new demands and uh or trying to get the different uh people in and so uh but yeah i do you know you brought a good point about the uh the credit histories the credit reports that uh i feel is an can be an invasion of privacy if it's used wrong and uh should be so uh_huh um that's right because isn't it uh about fifty dollars to get one oh is it oh okay i was thinking uh maybe i got some wrong information somewhere right but it it's difficult to change those or or to correct though right right oh i bet his wife was like okay come on what are you not telling me here right the second life here oh oh well i enjoyed talking to you and uh uh you i guess have a nice day define everyday occurrences every time you use a credit card every time you log in to a computer terminal particularly where you have access to a to a network anybody can with the right kind of skill and tools get very much involved in those things which are on your system that you don't particularly want exposed that's why we have such security measures for our corporate information if you absolutely uh_huh that's right when was the last time that you used a credit card that they didn't ask for your driver's license as well really um uh_huh well most of our checks are even printed with our address our even our driver's license numbers are printed on there because they require that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right but we're talking about people who are interested in invading your privacy people who have a reason to do that people who are interested in building data bases of information about your financial background your educational background uh one of the biggest fraud scams that i've heard of recently is people who have access to such information and they find out who's a widow and what she's worth uh_huh uh_huh there are very vulnerable people though older people are very vulnerable to such things and they tend to to uh_huh uh_huh well on the other hand how can you be savvy with so much out there today there are so many clever scams and and many of them are computer based and they're based on information that's available in the public realm uh_huh that's right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's right uh_huh uh_huh did you have you registered for a conference recently okay did they ask for your fax number okay i registered my people for several conferences in the past six months and they'll ask for your telephone number and they'll also ask for a fax number you would think on the surface that that is for rapidly sending you [confirmation] of your registration or your hotel or something like that not at all those fax phone number lists are being sold in exactly the same way your street address numbers are sold and you now get solicitations over your fax and you don't expect it from that source therefore you're not as uh you know you're not as leery uh some some cases but it it exists is what i'm saying those avenues exist uh_huh i heard a story not long ago this guy saw a really attractive young woman and he said hey i'd like to know this girl more so he wrote down her license plate number and he called a friend in motor vehicles and got her address and her telephone number and then he called a friend that he had in the credit bureau and he got her financial standing okay from that he also got her social security number and certain social security information is uh a matter of is it is accessible if you know somebody in the government so before it was over with he knew that she was divorced she had two children what school they went to what her average income was he knew that she'd gotten a boat in the divorce because he was able to get those public records he knew all about her and he yeah i don't really remember that and i mean you know he was relying on her not remembering or or not being willing to admit that she didn't remember him and just moved right in on her sure uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's right uh_huh uh_huh that's true i'm still getting lists from many many years ago or getting junk mail from a list that had to have been made years ago uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh of course no you can't stop them from selling your lists although some of them really are honorable organizations and they will say if you prefer us not to put your name on a mailing list then we will not uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh and you have to really do some research or you do not find out who is legitimate and who is not and sometimes finding out who is legitimate and who is not is more difficult than finding out public information about people uh_huh uh_huh absolutely that's right uh_huh oh yeah you bet you bet and with computer technology now look how spooky it is for how accessible these things are uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh sure uh_huh uh_huh way to go neat that's great uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah they don't put as many of those [prepaid] envelopes in there anymore not as many as i've seen in the past um uh_huh yeah um that's possible i really don't understand that either but my stars some of it sometimes it's very difficult now the gasoline credit cards require your license plate number as opposed to your drivers license although some of them have a blank on there for it they don't generally enforce using it um i've not seen one of those okay what do you feel are everyday occurrences that are invasions of privacy in your opinion i i agree one hundred percent especially whenever it's like they keep stuff on your record like for seven years and they don't bother like i know at one time i was unemployed or something and and they they kept it on my record for like seven months even though that i seven years even though that like you know i i uh they sent a letter in but they didn't bother to include the letter for the explanation why i got behind or anything like that well that too well that happened with me i um i had had a a doctor's appointment at at uh university of chapel hill hospital and there was two william [parrishes] and they were charging me for this other person and i went through like six months of you know because they kept billing me and billing me and billing me and i was like you know i'm not this person i'm not seeing you why are you charging me and i mean they turned me in to the credit bureau they even held my taxes yeah i mean it went a long ways my refund you know and it was it was a mess and finally i got it straightened out but it it took me almost a year to get that straightened out and it was for something you know another william [parrish] that wasn't paying his bills or either else they wasn't you know charging him but it was really weird i think the biggest thing i think that are is not just well not for the average person i i think like the media is is getting a little bit overboard on the invasion of privacy on like different on public figures yeah that some of the stuff that they're like like the [tabloids] and stuff are are saying it's like really like i think [joan] collins i believe right now is having a lawsuit against i think it's the national [inquirer] for taking pictures of her when she was getting [undressed] in her bedroom and published them and i some thing i think should be private i would hate to know if i was getting [undressed] in the bedroom somebody was taking pictures of me and i believe they've got something now i read in some science magazine or something where they have a [infrared] camera that can take pictures like with inside your house to see if you have any drugs or anything like that i think that's kind of an invasion of privacy too yeah oh yeah to see if you've been drinking and driving well i i had something like that happen to me too um i worked for the hilton for a while as a [banquet] waiter and um one night whenever i got off work you know it was like two or three in the morning because it was a big party and you know i pulled out of that little road where you pull out of the hilton on the wake forest road going home and i looked up and i seen you know blue lights on and i thought god i just pull on the road it can't be me so you know like i pulled off the road and i you know pulled off the side road and the car followed you know the police car pulled me over and the next thing i know there was eight cop cars and they all got out with guns and everything and it it really scared me really bad well they they said that it was suspicious behavior and i looked at you know the highway patrol and i said how could it be suspicious behavior of me waiting until a light was green making a left hand turn in the correct lane what's to make you know and they they went all through my car and and you know while the highway [patrolman] pulled me back there and i i think they gave me a ticket for driving without my license they did yeah without my permission so i thought i was really offended by that i thought that was a severe invasion of privacy and i think some of the laws that they're trying to pass right now um especially in north carolina uh i mean life is yeah well you know there's something that um i really find kind of maybe it's not an invasion of privacy but it's kind of annoying um you know phone calls uh automated you know i mean i i find that really [offencing] or offensive yeah and they don't stop i mean they you know you call and it could be any time of the day and what happens is is they'll call especially those computer ones they'll call and and they don't you can't get them off the line you'll hang up and you pick it up a minute later and they'll still be on there yes i just had you know that just happened a couple day of i guess it's kind of fresh in my mind because this happened a couple of days ago i picked up the phone and it's you know they started talking giving me all this [spiel] and then you know you try to hang up because there's there's nobody to talk to there's only just a you hang up and then you pick up to make a phone they're still on there i know i know that is yeah but as far as uh invasion of privacy i there really you know i guess i'm kind of like you i don't really find things a whole lot that i feel like it's a invasion of privacy um oh i know yeah yeah well i guess you know there's um i i guess i don't think about that very often because it it has become the norm you know um yeah and you they find i mean they find out everything about you they want to know your you know where you live what you do what you know and some of the questions yeah and some of the uh_huh yes you know sometimes it does happen you know sometimes they would you know somebody would call on the phone and and uh you know you think it's just regular type questions but really they are kind of [prying] into your your life you know you they want to know uh where you live how long you been living there do you own do you rent you know what time of the days they're usually home what uh you know and sometimes you know you just kind of go through the routine of giving it out and then you think about it afterwards why did they need all that they don't yes uh_huh right oh yeah oh yeah yep but uh i guess it is i'm i'm in that area so it's uh well i'm yeah i'm in sales so i you always kind of uh you know i know that when we when i sell a product to a new customer that's always the first thing that i ask you know is about their credit and you know would they have to fill out a little credit application with with us and sometimes i feel very uncomfortable in in doing that uh you know but i know that in order for our company to survive we can't you know uh don't want to take the risks so um i suppose some of those uh you know this that's the funniest thing is be rare i mean maybe one out of ten do we check on it yeah you know but it's kind of a routine type thing where you just do it and and you file it away and uh you know at random we'll we'll go ahead and check on it but um it's not no huh_uh so you know i just gather the information and and somebody else uh you know at their leisure time uh will check on those credit references yeah most of them are yeah most of them are but they're not all you know they're not all you know they're not all done at the same time and uh you know i i wonder about credit uh i feel that the mail is also it's the telephones and the [mails] that get me i think the [mails] all these ads and things that they send and there should be a limit on that also not only financially but it's costing me and us really in advertising we're paying for all that junk that we throw in the that's right and they have a and then you get your list there of privacy you know out of that comes the um and then then being able to use your name and that's invading your privacy to me now that is one of the biggest another big one taking your name from lists uh_huh i know it is it's outrageous how you get the piles of it and uh and then it even gets to the point where they um oh they can mess up your credit bad with it you know as far as your with your um when you get on all these lists and all they can invade that part of it and i know there is a number i think that or uh the post office you can send in a number and i don't have it myself in fact i thought of getting it my sister has it and said we she'd give it to me and she lives in ohio and uh there is a number that you can send or a place that you can send to the post office and give them your address and tell them you don't want anymore of this and i just haven't done in fact she was just telling me about it recently so i thought i might check with her on it and get that number and and have a lot of that junk mail stopped because i really that it's a big [irritant] to me uh_huh we are and door to door soliciting can be another don't you yeah it's a it's as much as a phone call you know invading your privacy and we do hear a lot of it in richardson there's quite a bit of it i did have to laugh though they had the um they had the invasion of privacy law uh for weekends now here in richardson they signed me to see uh on saturdays and sundays there is no soliciting allowed and they even stopped the little brownies and girl scouts from selling their cookies and that really got us and we laughed about it because with one of the um editorials on it was it was great the guy went on about how the little brownie or girl scout came to the door and the police arrested her for selling their cookies and it was kind of a cute pun against that part of it but you know where do you stop it's true really oh really uh_huh oh well that's good uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh now that's true and it is an and each time it's a breakdown of our system you know each one is a breakdown of our systems of your your own privacy that can be very [irritable] okay it it's i i'm i'm not sure if there's anything i could really term invasion of privacy that happens regularly except maybe like [telemarketers] and things you want to buy some light bulbs yeah [pens] boy they they they're [tugging] on a few strings at once aren't they yeah yeah i i got some call last night i'm trying to remember oh this was like this is kind of an invasion of privacy where uh i went to a wedding [expo] because i'm getting married and uh there are like you know uh these places where they say you know sign sign up for a free whatever you know for a drawing and you do it and you know all of a sudden this guy is calling you and saying hi we want to call you know and talk about video taping your wedding when shall we set a time up and i couldn't get the guy to get off the phone it's like how many what what part of no didn't you understand you know yeah same here family right yeah i did they they fixed it so you had to give some information out but right yeah they i i think in general you know technology as nice as it is is causing a lot it's just too easy now to it's like you know pay banks used to be you know you could do anything over the phone you had to know your pin number but i could i could just say to it empty my whole account out if i wanted transfer things and there there's a lot of of risk involved there because you know it it's like you know the best example is probably credit reports now where you know god knows what goes on those things i mean [thankfully] now you can get your reports for free at least from t i w but it's like it's this anonymous thing where anyone can dump any information they want about you in there with no real opportunity to [rebut] unless you want to go and get the report and then you know then you find out you can go for a house or something all of a sudden you find out what all these people been you know dumping information about you in there and i've heard of cases where it was just done [vindictively] yeah yeah yeah when i when i applied for my gold mastercard they said well you have to close this other mastercard out you mean the one i closed two years ago and i had to get a letter from this other company saying that i had closed it oh it it's very [slippery] though because you know it's one of the things you do when you when you sign those little credit applications is there's all sorts of [disclaimer] at the bottom about how you know you're permitting them to do credit checks of you and to make your information available to other people and by the time you get through reading it you've basically permitted them to you know broadcast on the evening news your credit rating right right well you know there's much more subtle kinds of invasions of privacy like every time you call an eight hundred number you're giving them your phone number yeah we probably both signed up for this in the same place a n i yeah but to some extent i'm not as worried about that because yeah you're getting a value for that you're getting to call these people for free wendy how would you like to start off and everyday occurrences that uh_huh uh for an invasion of privacy i feel like uh when i use write a check then they want my driver's license and they write down my number or or when i use my visa card they want my phone number and they put that into their computer then they can look up yeah and they look up where i live and uh then they mail me stuff and you know what uh we have is we've got our credit card number on our uh guarantee card so they have to write down it's a card that says this check is good for up to a hundred bucks to the [merchant] on ours it's just on the back of our visa and it says guarantee and you might want to check out your visa it might have that on there already uh so do you like computers what do you think about the uh caller i d when you call in like on an eight hundred number or something or a to buy something and then they know who you are and uh where you're calling from and your address and all that but see most people don't know that that information is recorded yep you seem well informed no that's kind of a a bummer i'm looking forward to the time when uh my phone at home can tell me who's calling and then i don't answer it if i don't want to talk to yeah we'll see another invasion of privacy uh everyday occurrence i can't sure gosh they want to tell me i look great you know as a consumer we have to be wary of all that type of propaganda oh what a bummer that would be a kind of a [deflator] let's see i took something back to one of the stores today a christmas gift and uh i had to show my i d and uh blood type and because i didn't have a sales slip and it was interesting yeah uh uh no they were and uh i guess the time to do it i talked to the with the guys at work is right after christmas because they're too busy to give you a rush yeah well i don't have anything else to say well it's been a pleasure wendy right yeah i guess the telephone solicitation is the one that comes to my mind to me that's uh it's inexcusable if you want to come and want my money come and convince me don't call me on the phone yeah i just keep my phone number listed under a separate name and when someone calls for that name i know that they're soliciting and i just tell them no they got the wrong number works pretty good right right no i don't have a cordless right right i guess a lot of the data that's being taken with you know the advent of the computer a lot of the data that's being taken on everybody you know your social security number is tied to just everything about you and i think that [constitutes] an invasion of privacy not so much the fact that the data is there but the way that it's being [compiled] and i think the government uses is quite a bit you know if they they want to do a background check on you they've got everything on you from the time you got that social security card and to me that's an invasion of my privacy they know to where you've worked where you've been what you've done you know any any kind of uh you know you name anything that's ever happened to you is going to be tied into either your social security number or your driver's license right okay okay uh_huh kind of like a domino's effect oh no no uh_huh no i don't think it was really corruption that caused it or within i think people just started you know not being as careful with the loans that they were making whenever you know whenever they gave them out i think maybe they didn't check into them enough or maybe because everyone else was doing they figured they would just go ahead and approve it also so yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i'm not sure uh_huh i know well i'm uh i know a little bit about it but i don't as much as i should know about it i'm a finance major here at clarion and um i do know that one of the reasons that caused it is the fact that the federal reserved backed any loan that the savings and l made with a a hundred thousand dollars so they were kind of insured with that hundred thousand dollars and i think that's kind of why they they were making the riskier loans because they were like oh well we have a hundred thousand dollars insurance on it no i don't think so and uh plus where the fact where they were allowed to make loans in any almost any type of loan and like some banks you know they're limited to the types of loans that they're allowed to make and i think the s and l were more open with the types of loans that they were allowed to make and i think if they would be more bound to certain loans and not as high of insurance by the reserve then i don't think this would have happened uh_huh um i think that people just basically got tired of hearing it and it wasn't making it was wasn't as good news as it was i think it's still you know i adding up and i think it will be for awhile no i i don't think they do i don't think how i don't think how they could find that big how much was really lost or how much they were going to lose because there still are some s and ls still open and it's it's very possible for them to go down in the future because of this uh_huh uh_huh i i don't know i i think it would be harder but i think there are some regular banks that will go down with it uh_huh oh yeah um in some of my classes now i was just reading i think it was in [venezuela] i can't remember what company it was but they just wrote off like millions of dollars because they know they will never get it back you know and they just they just wrote it right off i think i think we've lost a lot of money and you know like we every never going to get it back it's impossible to get it back uh_huh uh_huh yeah cause we're you know we're talking about some [peens] that have just like even gave up on like getting it back and trying any more they just totally wrote it off their book oh uh_huh um yeah i think is it necessary to have um the backing um it it's it's just for you know safe purposes you know in case something would happen um yeah i don't i yeah as long as there's enough little companies we're going to have to have something uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh i think it could happen yeah i think it'll happen again but i think it will be a long time in the future before it does happen again because i think like the bank people in any kind of people like that are going to be worry enough not to let it happen again in the near future but i think later on they're going to start and forget about and start making the riskier loans because i mean you're going to have to take some risk and as long as their backed i think they're still going you know start taking on riskier loans and i think there is a chance of it possibly happen again but not until you know late you know in the future uh_huh all right uh feelings on what caused the s and l crisis i guess i don't have a real technical knowledge for what happened i gather that there where large numbers of situations where loans were made that appeared to be a good loan but in a speculative since and with have little regulation going on because of deregulation during the reagan eight years uh more and more s and l simply began to take riskier and riskier loans and then when they began to collapse one after the other i think almost like an [avalanche] of of property values devalued right i don't have a a field for whether or not this is the equivalent of what was called the [teapot] dome uh scandal are you familiar with that from your histories lessons or whatever uh i vaguely recall but i've never gone and done any study on it since the s and l thing that [teapot] dome scandal is when i think during the [hoover] years where [gobs] of land was was sold at really [inflated] prices on the theory that there were natural gas [beneath] it and that that appeared to be corruption within the [hoover] administration i don't have a real since of of like corruption that caused s and l all though i have a feeling that people look the other way when things began to go [sourer] maybe uh_huh yeah it seems like there were on awful a lot of people making loans and business decisions on a get rich quick is the wrong phrase but if it [captures] some of the the feeling i have from the people making business decisions that if they failed it's sort of well no skin of my back i'll move on to this other company or i i just since that they didn't have a commitment to the stability of the organizations they were were making the decisions for and i don't know whether that's because they had other opportunities to which they could move you know that it was that easy for them to find new work that they didn't weren't stuck to where they were and things begin to collapse they just moved on or whether they had [extracted] enough money in a percentage base that they that they didn't care any more i just i'm rather puzzled about the whole thing okay well they didn't they didn't have a since of risk oh okay uh_huh okay okay well do you think we there's a final accounting yet not in the since of pennies an [nickels] but do you think there's accounting on an ordered of magnitude or or that that they really do understand how much money it is for awhile it seemed like every time i opened the paper up it was [escalating] in terms of damage uh did is your since that we now understand how bad it is or is there more to be heard yet so you don't think necessarily they don't have a complete grasp yet or whether uh_huh to be caught in the do you think to possibly is that it will help with the regular banks it seems that i recall reading for the last oh let's say starting three years a go but not so much in the last year of bank risks of relative to the loaning funds to third world countries like mexico [venezuela] uh and argentina based on oil loans and then the price of oil had had gone south [resulting] in those loans being very [risky] and i guess i read articles of various banks that have done the right thing to contain their risks given that they had made multiple billion dollar loans i have this [vague] since that that could happen that that there are still monies loaned out to third world countries that could end up being totally lost uh_huh and so you think that it's just gone okay do you think it is necessary to have the federal [guaranty] program like my since is it was there to try to protect small [investors] but it ended up protecting big [investors] which i don't think what it was meant to do so i guess i i feel like as long as we have the possibility for this large numbers of people to be protected the possibility exist for these sorts of problems um so your since is that the that uh the loan [guaranties] which really were accounts [guaranties] so the so that the account [holders] that if something went wrong they would have their money and given that the s and ls have had disasters then those account [holders] are are their money is still being protected and that is it's million of people with anywhere from thousands to tens of thousands i guess of of dollars being protected it it seems like um there was a lot of money being protected in multiple accounts uh it's if if you take ten million people and protect ten thousand dollars it still only a hundred billion dollars and we're taking about monies way in access of that now so it's obvious that we've protected large accounts and perhaps multiple people in multiple s and ls and and it seems like maybe that needs to be thought about [rethought] you know that the for i guess i'm content with the need to have protection on on accounts but i feel likes it's on an individual basis someone whose got accounts in thirty five different s and ls or thirty or forty thousand dollars and they're all protected by the government seems to me like they've gotten around what was intended to be the issue there uh_huh i guess i don't have a personal since of v on it since i was not a heavy user of any s and ls and and let alone any of them that went bankrupt and i guess that means that from my perspective it could happen again because that means i'm not worried enough uh it's kind of thing where maybe we'll survive and then i then it will happen again because we don't pay attention to those kinds of things uh_huh well perhaps if there are [regulatory] uh constraints put back in place it will protect that maybe we have learned a little bit of a lesson here about what happens if you remove a little of the regulation uh oh right up in uh t i out there oh right yeah i just hit one then uh it i got to uh this is going to be fun are you republican or democrat okay well i'm a i'm a democrat so i was going to say if you're a republican boy we would really have a good time well i uh to answer that one before we get to our subject you know i always get a kick out of republicans who take credit for all the military hardware that was bought for the war and how successful it was though when it comes to the budget they say well the democrats control all the money and they're the ones wasting all the money and i always wondered how they can play the money either way they want you know i get a kick out of that but anyway the subject go ahead you first yeah i uh i don't think it's over i think that uh so many other things have taken over uh in the media but i think it was just plain greed and i think it was deregulation really when they said do anything you want banks go ahead loan your money out you know yeah i was talking to someone i can't remember who it was but he was a small [businessman] and he said that the banks were calling he borrowed some money and the banks were calling and just looking for people to give their money away they just got totally carried away with buying property and reselling the same property and uh yeah there there should be thousands of people in jail as far as i'm concerned not just a couple right well i i agree a hundred percent oh yeah it may have started with hud too i noticed that hud was in terrible shape and that was property and uh they lost a lot of money there and then some of these big these rich people started to even [murchison] here who owned the cowboys had a lot of property down in florida this was several years ago and he lost you know all all of his money before he died not all of it i don't know how much he lost but uh they were just buying property and buying all kinds of real estate and thinking that there was a [bottomless] pit and it always would it always would increase you know it always would uh uh be more than what you paid for it and they just never even got conservative with our money at all right yeah well now the reason that i said that is because i was going to blame all uh reaganomics for you know you spend your way to prosperity and when you opened up the bank deregulation without any controls i thought well that was the philosophy you know just keep spending until taxes are lower and i thought that's not going to work you know and i knew that it wasn't going to work originally and it hasn't worked now right no doubt no doubt oh yeah i i i agree with that but there's got to be some control and apparently there was you know yeah yeah yeah yeah i know uh oh no i right and and not high quality ones at that you know well i do have a lot of confidence in the the american people and the economy and everything else i i feel bad when i see the inefficiency even here at t i you know and i think that the it it still a lot of the workers don't understand that uh they need to put out the best that they can because it comes right back to them you know right i know and i when i of course i'm in facilities and i work with a lot of mechanics and i just cannot understand why they're just happy to spend their time here rather than produce you know and they think that well i'm paid anyway so it doesn't matter you know right right yeah oh really you don't sound like a nonexempt jim you don't sound like a nonexempt uh you're too informed they're they're very they're very uh not interested they wouldn't even talk probably about some of the things we're talking about now i guess i'm dealing with too many texas mechanics here i don't know really i'm being a yankee i guess i'm i'm letting my yankee come out you know yeah uh well that's good no right i mean that's good that you're degreed uh uh your time will come we uh i know a few people oh really what are you in a tech like do you do technician work or something oh quality okay yeah oh yeah well now is is uh really terrible i'm uh management level uh facilities and when the cuts came three of us got uh bounced back and so we're just uh i'm calling you from work i'm i'm covering uh weekends and nights now i'm i'm one of the manager [reps] there's three of us to cover in dallas facilities and just we're essentially [standby] and problems uh all all nights and weekends that's my i only get one weekend off a month right now i call it my recession job uh being basically an engineer and liking uh doing installation work well there's not any i mean there is literally is no installation work going on yeah yeah yeah it it banking i think that not not only t i but a lot of it when they talk about uh there was one point i was going to make i think the last i heard and i i have to admit i'm not as informed as them but there's something like about eighty six billion that they admit well i always double that i figure well if they claim that it's going to cost us eighty six billion it's got to be twice as much because no one admits their mistakes and so if that's true it may mean that two hundred billion dollar category that was that went down the tube somewhere yeah it's amazing really it's amazing that oh yeah i know what you mean course your value of homes up there are pretty good i mean here they're not really that high but are they pretty good up there oh really well we're in the metroplex here you know and uh it it i die every time companies like general dynamics they they lost several contracts and and i don't know if you noticed yesterday you probably don't pay attention to the bell [helicopter] you know they were going to have big uh award and secorski got it which was boeing secorski this which is up in the north somewhere you know and i don't know how bell didn't get it well i i don't they were advertising here that it was bell t i t i was getting the uh electronics with bell and so it was a double one that bell is in the metroplex and two that t i was doing the electronics for them and they they advertised that that it was t i bell t i bell and then all of a sudden secorski got it yeah secorski boeing boeing doesn't need the money something i almost think there's some politics around here because the metroplex here in the dallas fort worth area the uh with t i i don't know if t i has lost as much as everybody else but general dynamics and l t v and bell have lost project after project you know colorado springs yeah did you hit one all right the savings and loan scandal uh kind of neither i do have some republican [leanings] because i am division one you know uh i think it's a stinking shame that there isn't capital punishment for those [assholes] that [stold] our money i agree with you i think it had something to do with deregulation but i believe uh more of it was just greed well you know we've watched and watched t v and seen that a lot of these people were doing things not just playing in the gray and not just reselling property at a profit but financing the same property three and four times you know and the list goes on and on you know of of just the crimes committed much less for criminals that should be [indicted] yeah yeah it everyone forgets whose money it was and everyone forgets that there are several of these people that are wanted by the federal government currently and are overseas where [extradition] is merely a funny american word i as far as being a republican or a democrat i think no american could stand for criminal action well in theory in theory a healthy economy has a lot of spending going on and if people are making money people can spend money and it'll generate taxes well the problem is and the problem with reaganomics is that the people at the top are the ones getting rich and for what they would cost and we weren't producing anything we as americans weren't producing anything it was all inflation and i'm sorry we don't get into a real argument over it we agree too closely but but you you can't say that that was right no intelligent person can say that we could spend our way rich remember all we're doing is [delivering] pizzas to each other yeah well it is a life and death struggle with with the japanese i i'm very tired of it all pays by the hour uh and i'm nonexempt what what what does a nonexempt sound like uh uh that's well i now maybe i'm not the uh typical nonexempt that you deal with the badge is silver and uh i am degreed though nonexempt no that's not good but no i i do not wish my time to come oh no no no i government tool control is my specialty now i did p c protection control work for uh about ten or twelve years uh right now i'm just trying to tool crib and chips times are bad it's they turned all installation up here off they told facilities they could not work i don't care what the jobs are you will not work and and as far as our you know our conversation goes i would really be interested to know how much of t i's problems now are related to the banking structure uh it really hurts me to realize that a lot of people out there are trying to retire on their home values uh one of our senior no our economy in colorado springs fell completely apart right yeah it's northwest seattle seattle and also uh they do some of that in wichita kansas huh secorski boeing well you realize i'm not sure i even know where to begin on this mess i do believe though a lot of speculative buying and investment on [speculation] uh too many large deals with too much risk uh and and associates of friends and on it goes over a long period of time and i think it i think it's a a type of situation where okay the first investment didn't work but if we throw a little bit more money in on it maybe this one you know and try to get our money back exactly that's that is that is some of what some of what i had read is that's part of cause of it now as to the question of what to do about it uh it has to be government regulation i don't either but the other thing this [dickson] that they convicted he only got five years so that's going to leave a message to other people that yeah well yes but he's in very poor health so you know twenty months may mean a lot longer for him but still it's our money it's our taxes that have to pay for this mess this is true this is very true and that's probably another cause of the problem we are looking at right now this is a very true thing i didn't think about that part of it uh_huh oh really that's interesting oh yes yes this is true oh how funny how much that cost us that is scary i didn't think about that they must be getting some on the national level i think i've read various things but i just no names come to mind yeah because that's a drop in the bucket to the taxes we're going to have to pay to to make up for this you know you've got a good point there and the and the other thing is they said the the uh insurance agents the insurance industry is beginning to resemble the savings and loan industry so they they say the next big crisis could well be our insurance as another uh my car insurance is frightening right now i cannot believe how much money i pay well and i just carry the absolute minimum required by law and i'm paying i mean every quarter i'm paying like five hundred dollars a year and that oh my well i you know the problem is who is they and you get they is the government but you get you get into when you start getting them to do things you get into a lot of special interest groups again and you know and and would that make it worse or would that make it better or would that offer new opportunities for other people that's what scares me when you get into that type of situation you know if you are going to change it watch out for the person that's changing it they may put another [loophole] in that that wasn't even there to begin with and i think reading the newspaper for that type of thing is a waste of time because they're there to sell newspapers that's the problem with the news both the on television and the paper well all they're there to sell you know or to entertain even worse and uh not to [transmit] information so what we get is so [garbled] that who knows if we even have the ability to decide anything and whose best interests they represent us or someone else in in a savings and loan or own a or has a brother that owns yeah it's really a scary scary thing well now there was an article in the paper this morning in the business section how tough it was to get a loan approved anymore yeah when you know when you're trying to buy a house how incredibly hard it is to get get a loan approved simply because they're they are [tightening] down so much uh_huh oh yes smart move oh did they oh that's not well but they are hurting their own credit that way oh absolutely yeah because they can you know they write all that and people that write things off as bad debt that lowers their [threshold] of income of what they have to pay taxes on which automatically makes our taxes go up because there is so much that has to be paid and if this guy is exempt from paying it we have to pay more that's exactly right so [shst] yeah that is really sad yes okay i i think what happened with savings and loans is uh is what everyone says is they they made a lot of uh of not well [secured] loans on real estate and when uh the bottom fell out of the real estate market the bottom fell out of their loans right yeah yeah yeah yeah i think right yeah that seemed to play a pretty big role i think because i don't know i get the feeling that the regulations probably needed to be a little a little more stringent uh yeah it certainly has has uh the magnitude of the crisis it seems i don't know it seems much greater than i would have thought it really just seems out of proportion talking they're talking four or five hundred billion dollars yeah yeah right i think that a a typically bad loan is is that the ones that just took place massively in houston when they put up these huge office buildings and spent very large amounts of money and then could simply could not rent them out they couldn't even rent them out for expenses it was cheaper to keep them empty than to rent them at twenty percent [occupancy] yeah uh_huh well i mean just for me to mortgage my to to get a mortgage on my house i mean they investigated me personally to the point where i was insulted and i was putting forty thousand dollars down on a hundred and sixty thousand dollar house i mean i would have thought we're happy to do it just sign here you know but i mean they had forty thousand dollars in equity and i mean they just wanted to see three years of income tax returns and all that [bullshit] which really sort of disturbed me right yeah yeah uh_huh uh uh uh yeah uh_huh right right yeah i uh i also run a little business out of my home on the side what's the nature of yours uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah cat breeding huh uh yeah uh_huh uh_huh right uh wow that's not too great yeah yeah yeah uh_huh yeah i would i would find that uh a little bit [disarming] it's a computer business uh_huh i see where does does he go to school here i see okay what's what's his name i might know him uh_huh okay i guess i don't uh no huh_uh i see uh um i've got a a friend who's in the business who just gave me this application uh i see uh so uh-oh well what of it it's five bucks a shot what the heck yeah um right well speaking of that i think we've probably given them their money's worth oh i see i've never gone that long that's oh i see yeah yeah uh_huh yeah i really do and uh so uh it's nice talking to you dave and uh all right now we have to talk about the savings and loan scandal do you have any strong opinions on that what are yours well i think there's a lot to be said for that point of view i i really think that congress turned on the taps and then there were lots of people there to carry away the water huh well right you'll pay for it absolutely that uh_huh i think that would have been a much smarter way to handle it and the other thing that would have helped a lot would be to make concern that the people who were going to use the money that we were providing should have had their own at stake they should have had a lot more of their own capital on the line when they can [leverage] just a very small investment into millions of dollars worth of taxpayers money and it's turning out to be a lot more than that then they have absolutely no incentive to uh treat it [prudently] they just uh hand it over to anybody who walks in and asks for it uh_huh they have nothing to lose and everything to gain if they uh can keep lending and keep growing then they can take the big salaries and have the all the perks and uh entertainment and so forth and then uh if people don't pay them back it's no skin off their nose they just uh_huh yeah they don't they don't lose anything well uh i don't know what could have been done other than the uh insurance regulations but i certainly think that was a mistake and the uh i also think it was a mistake to reimburse all [depositors] over a hundred thousand dollar when they were told up front that that was uh uh the limit because uh the promises don't yeah the promises don't mean anything now when uh the people put millions of dollars in some shaky operation and they figure the taxpayers will bail them out because they have absolutely uh i would have been in a little danger of uh you know i would have had to be very careful about where i put my money but i certainly would have been alert and i would not have just been chasing the highest percentage return on a c d yeah and i don't think that's any great loss we could do without a few of those they don't seem to be providing very much useful uh service to people absolutely uh_huh yes you would and uh uh i don't see why the for large sums of money why it should be any different from investing in a c d uh i mean in uh uh mutual fund or a money market fund or something like that uh there are no guarantees on them you uh you trust that the [broker] won't sell because certain [brokerage] houses will guarantee at least up a certain point the investments in the funds that they manage but uh then you're uh just at the mercy of them because they can go under that's right yeah uh_huh well do you think that we're heading for another [debacle] of the sort in the uh insurance industry and we see uh_huh well i don't know how we're going to bail them out because if we're already how many trillion dollars in the hole where's the money going to come from and yet the we've got this enormous uh first executive insurance company just sailing out here in california and uh maybe the people who have bought term insurance aren't going to lose anything except a few months premium but all those uh people who have money invested in uh uh [annuities] for their retirement are going to be up a creek and i don't know who's going to bail them out they're there are already a few companies that had switched over from their own private plans to the first executive [annuities] that are not getting their benefit checks this month and they the state governor is saying that we're going to protect those people but how are we going to do that where the state itself is already in [hock] and we're running thirteen million dollars no billion sorry thirteen billion dollars in the hole for the next [fiscal] year we've got to come up with that money because they can't run a deficit the way the federal government can and they're going to have to be laying people off out here in the states some of whom i don't think anybody will miss but when it gets down to teachers and cops it makes a difference well the yeah i think that's absolutely [unconscionable] they keep all their fancy uh perks in the legislature and they uh still do their [junketing] and they still have all their uh i think it's something like twenty five uh people on the payroll per [legislator] you i i came out here to california from texas and i can very well remember people trying to change the texas legislature to meet every year instead of every other year as the texas constitution required and people consistently voted it down it says they do enough damage every two years think of where we'd be if we let them meet yearly and i really feel that way about the california ones too i i i think that if they could all just take about a five year vacation and let things settle down maybe we could figure out what in fact we need and start over but anyway uh_huh yep i i would vote for that well it's been interesting talking to you and i think we're in pretty much agreement on this thanks for talking okay i think we're supposed to discuss our view of the soviet union as a continuing threat to the united states how do you feel about that i'm concerned about them not as a military threat but as a burden they're very large and they can become very quickly a large financial burden as as one more [stepchild] we have to carry around and they have a a problem their their whole attitude uh i i'm not sure which crop it was but they had a crop that rotted in the fields because they couldn't get anyone to harvest it and the people in the city were saying well why should i go do that make the government do that that's not my job absolutely and and i think that they're having a hard time with the concept of you can not go back people only go forward and i think that that is giving them i'm expecting a call and unfortunately i think it's come through i've enjoyed talking to you thank you bye okay i don't really i more i don't know about the government as much as uh the people uh i wouldn't consider to be a threat at all and i really don't feel much like the soviet union itself is a threat anymore i'm i'm worried about them they're in a very uh [tumultuous] state right now with the kinds of uh adaptations that they're attempting to go through uh yeah yeah i think that's that's a real important aspect and that uh as the the the most the let's see the more that we do that we do or that we can do to help them become self sufficient is going to eliminate more of the risk of that becoming uh you know a reality i know that uh this last winter was very hard on uh several areas in the in the the ukraine particularly the coal mining [regions] of [siberia] uh the people there have money that's not their problem but there's no food for them to buy and its you can't eat money yeah right they've got a lot of adjustments to make with coming out of what they've been through now and uh they've been they've been under under the oppression that they've been under for so long that now they have some freedoms but they don't know how to act yet they don't understand that to make that work they've got to take some responsibility for themselves it's not just the government's responsibility anymore you can't just blame it on the government when they give you the freedom to take care of yourself then that puts some responsibility on you as well okay all right bye bye well what is your view do you consider the soviet union a threat sure right it's it's hard to to know anymore if it's a a threat one way or another because uh it used to be so much in the past that whatever the top said the rest fell you know rank and file in behind it and now that with gorbachev is introducing more i guess freedoms or [expressions] of freedom it doesn't look as though you know everybody's following the same pattern and those the people who are you know the [staunch] military conservative people you never know well [gorbachev's] future is like whereas whereas in the past it was seen as you know whoever was the head of the the communist party was seen as you know [untouchable] uh_huh exactly right right well it's amazing just because of the drain that's been on you know both economies that our economy is of course been able to uh [withstand] that a little better but uh the russian economy they you know they i don't know what the percentages are but i heard it one time it's just some [ungodly] number just to support the military machine and finally you know who knows maybe they're finally waking up and saying you know we can't afford this uh the u s isn't the threat that we've always made them out to be you know even if they're saying that [beneath] the doors but it's hard to thing that just one person can bring that much of a radical change in that short of period even if it is you know the best thing in the long run it just steps on too many people's toes who are comfortable with the way the situation is uh_huh right expend uh_huh well it's interesting anymore the world's getting so small that it doesn't seem to tolerate anymore any kind of the [expansionism] philosophy that that was here in you know twenty years ago uh but of course the people who have challenged that or tried to do have have not been world powers so it's easier for us to say you know to an iraq you know uh you can't do this get back you know or we're going to force you whereas you know if the soviet union would have who knows what taking over [mongolia] or or something like that who is really will we have been more just [rhetoric] uh rather than going in there officially or you know physically and try to to remove them uh_huh exactly yeah uh that personally i don't see as gorbachev as being maybe a threat and i think he's actually honestly trying to do some change but i don't believe that he in this first pass around you know being the first one to really turn things around or attempt to is going to be allowed to get away with it either uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh yeah that was always kind of interesting people you know a lot of my friends have a taken us down the stance of you know these people are just trying to be free and trying to get away and i'm thinking more of it from a [nationalistic] you know if i'm a soviet and if part of you know south let's say south dakota wanted to you know succeed am i going to stand for that now i realize that the [origins] are are different and that we all joined under a common direction and a common bond to begin with and that they may have been forced i'm not that familiar with their future but i you know i it's easy to believe that they were probably more forced into a pact than uh a volunteer or willingness to join but uh_huh uh_huh and then just never given back yep well that whole a the whole idea if you look at the russian history and i guess all countries the way it used to be is the only way to truly protect your borders was to have a buffer and that was the whole idea why they had so many [buffers] and maybe you know more and more people are seeing oh countries hopefully are seeing that that buffer isn't going to help you you can well i guess like with uh israel is a perfect example the reason they have the [angolan] heights and the the uh all their buffer area is between jordan and the the [sinai] and and lebanon was just as a buffer but you know as you can see with the the [scuds] go right over there yeah there's there's very little that that [binds] you anymore in today's technology that's probably very true that's very interesting never thought of that uh_huh nobody knows what to do is it real uh_huh right exactly i get confused between all the which is the soviet [provinces] versus which are the the russian [provinces] versus what are uh_huh right oh as a as a vote sure sure died down on that i thought it was interesting that recently here the [warsaw] pact no longer exists as a military force but it's merely an economic now well i mean at yeah exactly uh_huh exactly and and all the well that's what they're saying the whole problem you know with if we were to [demilitarize] europe what are we going to do with all the soldiers over there what's going to happen to the economies that are no longer have a a million plus people in the you know in each country from the u s i don't know that it's so much a military threat anymore as a well you know it's it's real confusing right now to know what kind of a of of a threat it is i guess it it takes awhile to to get used to something you know if if they have completely on the place has completely turned that much around to where they're not you know not what they used to be uh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah i yeah the thing that keeps happening is happening so fast and so uh dramatic that you almost think now wait a minute you know we're getting stuck into something here you know if if somebody's about to to [clobber] you the first thing they do is sort of say well you know we're we're ashamed we're not going to do that anymore and uh um you know i'd i'd like to think that that isn't true but i i you know the evidence is that uh you know he's he's let some some stuff go you know the east german situation it's just the whole thing is so incomprehensible you know if i'd have been asleep for five years and read it in a book i said no no no that didn't couldn't have happened that way uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah i i think you know what i'd have to i i i guess to answer the question directly i'm still just a a little bit you know leery of the whole thing what i haven't seen is the uh you know a great stepping back in the military situation you know it's it's one thing you know to let us go ahead and sort of disarm and you know i even had a thought once that the whole iraqi thing might have been just a a deal to go ahead and let us uh you know expend some some military hardware of course it didn't turn out that way and uh uh that that may have been a a a kind of far out way of thinking about it i don't know uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah or or we can do something about it yeah uh_huh yeah well the the china situation you know the when it looked like that thing was was turning around and all of a sudden it was like somebody in the in the red square or wherever said okay and that's enough and the tanks came in and you know pretty much took care of that and uh_huh yeah well this would be like if somebody was elected president of the united states and suddenly took off toward you know just some pretty hard by the [socialism] and uh you know the the reaction uh you know the the economic well the uh the social structure of the soviet union you know it it's it's coming apart at the seams you know and i've heard people say well you know it's just like the american civil war will there be a union or not well no it's not the same sort of a thing at all because that the whole soviet system was put together under total force you know there was no as as we are seeing now with a lot of those areas wanting out of it you know they uh nobody you know a lot man those people didn't vote to become part of the soviet union they had no choice yeah uh_huh yeah there there was the whole thing was put together you know by force there's there's no no real question about that and some of the countries that were forced in at later dates is the three baltic countries you know came in in the forties and uh it's well it's not that they came in it's they were [conquered] by the germans and then the russians even took it back from the germans and never bothered to give it back you know so that's a a little different situation uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah they don't really pay a whole lot of attention to [buffers] i knew a lot of guys in the service when they were sent to germany they said that's the safest place in the world because if a war starts all the bombs are going to go right over germany and they're going to land in other places you know that's going to be the safest place to be yeah well uh i i guess what they'd have to do to i really don't know you know in in the in you know i hope that what's happening is exactly the way it appears you know some reason or other you know is uh it's kind of a strange thing we've been trying to make something like this happen for so long that when it finally happens you say whoa wait a minute you know what's uh what's what's really happening here but you wonder how well this thing who was it [boris] yeltsin the guy that's running the uh or evidently was elected president of the soviet for the russian republic which is i guess the uh the biggest uh_huh well in the center but you got a the the great big area that's just was traditionally known as russia and then all these little [nationality] groups around it you know that were you know was there nineteen of them or or whatever you know and these were all the soviet [economists] us you know they had some real fancy names for them matter of fact when the uh yeah what i read when the uh uh united nations was setup in in san francisco one of the first things the russians wanted to do was bring in each one of the uh of these you know republics as a separate country you know so there would be there would be nineteen rather than one and uh the united states said well that mean we get to bring in forty eight you know and uh that sort of you know they backed down on that yeah well wonder if that uh what do you get shot by something that's called a an economic force or what is called a military pact you know it's all you can change the name of something but i wonder if it's still exists although i've seen some evidence that you know the uh the russian soldiers are well you the funny thing there is they're not particularly welcome back home because there's they're having housing [shortages] now what do you do with all these troops that have been taken care of by uh [bulgaria] and and [czechoslovakia] and now all of a sudden they're going home and somebody's got to pay for their yeah well that's not yeah well i guess i'm maybe naive but i never did feel that russia was a big threat to us i mean obviously there's the the the possibility of or was the possibility of war uh but i somehow think that war is one of those things that maybe is inevitable but uh i don't look at it as a threat in the same sense that that i think this question was meant what about you yes uh_huh right right yeah right right right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh but i guess there was concern uh that iraq would use you know [nonconventional] [warheads] with with the chemical weapons and things but yet it didn't happen i mean why not uh_huh oh so you think it was fear that kept iraq from using it but yet the uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right right i don't think we've done that to saddam hussein yet i think that's that's that's not very likely but yet you know as as the [parallel] russia is that saddam hussein is using the chemical warfare on his own people and i guess that makes sense what you said that uh within their own borders they feel freer to do what what they feel necessary yeah uh_huh right well or that that it [resolves] anything in the end that that [negotiations] couldn't resolve uh_huh well it sounds like neither one of us thinks that the soviet union is a real threat to the u s right right uh_huh right right okay well thanks bye bye all righty so uh do you think russia's still a threat there you go well i think have you ever read the book nineteen eighty four okay you know like how uh these two there was like three [continents] that were always fighting with each other right and you could picture it as being russia versus the u s during the whole time and what they would do is they would get their prisoners and kill them as soon as they got them because the people there could realize that they were the same as as themselves you know the prisoners of wars were were the same as the people living in that country and you didn't want that to happen and to me it had always been that way i mean what happens is you have a government right and this government controls everything right and then you have the people [inhabiting] the country and these people have nothing to do with the government itself and these people are the same as you are and what goes on is that every time somebody attacks a country supposedly u s or russia attacks a country it's not going to be within the borders of the u s or russia itself like i was telling people i'm really mad because the whole thing in the middle east this was going on in in lithuania they they were announced to be a separate country but yet the the government that's in moscow told its army to go in there and get those people and the u s didn't go in there and try to save those people you know it's like you're not going to go in there and say no listen there's a separate country why because you're going into the border right once you get into the border then there's a threat but what happens is you don't mess with us we won't mess with you but let's mess with the [neutral] countries you know and now it's like you know they're saying other people were were i guess other leaders were still [crazier] about it you know like other people you could think that they might use a bomb here and a bomb there but russia has never been known for throwing an atomic bomb anywhere and the u s has you know it's like they it seems like they can their their army or whatever can can go in there quicker than an atomic bomb can and do do the job with uh you know less suffering you know but i think i think the thing is is that there the thing like they were saying they go you know like libya could start a nuclear war because of whoever is behind the button but not the u s s r the u s s r wouldn't do it because they got too much at stake yeah well my my point of view to that is is that it would have had so much i mean the attack would have been so complete on iraq if they had i mean the first you can imagine the first uh chemical weapon used that would have meant a total attack of the iraq country within you know three hours of when the weapon was shot right and what happens is what happens is suppose they get saddam hussein which they eventually will he's got one less thing to go against him i mean if he were to use that he might as well commit suicide because he's going to be captured and you know but the u s also makes a lot of uh you know [treaties] with other people like saying okay if you give up then you can come live in our country and we'll take care of you like marcos right we'll overthrow you but yet you can still come live here you know uh no no yeah right right and uh you know there's there's just you know like people will go like they like the u s goes and goes into panama and what see i don't believe in war that's my thing i don't believe that anybody should die you know and so then you know you have because what happens is suppose i'm i go to war and i'm holding a gun and i'm just looking at myself holding a gun and whoever shoots first survives you know but that same person also has a family and you know his parents are going to cry and you know life ends there and to me that's ridiculous you know i mean i just don't believe it i think there are other ways to fix it even though sometimes there aren't but it's pretty hard to think that you know people are just going to shoot each other down and it's legal in a situation like that you know yeah yeah i mean i mean saddam hussein lost so much money during the war that it was ridiculous and he all he was trying to do was make money at the beginning so and keep his power but well no i i don't think so i think uh they're getting they're especially getting their life back together now because a lot of things that you saw on tv a lot of uh [inhabitants] of russia would love to stay in their country just as long as they were able to express what they wanted to a lot of like [dancers] and stuff like that they said that they wouldn't leave russia unless russia told them that they couldn't travel anymore and compete so it must be a beautiful country it's just that you know they won't let you get out and when you want to get out of the country that's what you want to do so oh well i got to go to class now nice talking to you bye bye hi my name's ken and um you're in texas right everybody's in texas god i'm in rochester new york everybody else but one has been in texas okay well i guess we should get on with this um did you get the message about what it was right okay go ahead i'm going to hit the button okay um do you think that the soviet union represents a threat to us that's interesting i don't i i suspect they're not our biggest threat anymore i suspect it's probably some crazy man like saddam hussein who's our biggest threat but um i wonder if they're i wonder how much of a threat they are i agree with you that that they'll always be somewhat of a threat given that they have that there's just it's just so big and there's just so much military machine there right but i wonder how much longer they're going to be a them yeah yeah oh i agree i mean if we were to if if something were to happen i'm sure they would all of a sudden band together just for the sake of for the sake of uh of of [unity] against us or something if if if need be but yeah actually i noticed this i mean this this this most recent scare of his where he said or he just decided that instead of having uh instead of having i can't think of the word now if there are any demonstrations for in favor of [boris] yeltsin he decided well i'll just cancel all demonstrations altogether so i i i think that he he he's actually he i think is becoming very dangerous because he's making those people angry at him and he's also i think he's also making um the military angry at him i mean i've heard stories now where the where the um the military is running around and they're sort of getting restless and a restless military is the kind of thing that happens you know like with the baltic states when they just go in there divvy the people up uh_huh that's interesting i i wonder i don't know if he's he he seems the thing about gorbachev strikes that he wouldn't be that dumb i don't know though that's that that's something that really true sort of a military thing i was speaking of before that's that's certainly true i mean his military may just go out and say well we just gorbachev said you can't do it and we're to not let you do it you know so yeah that that's real scary actually i mean i i i would expect their own problems would keep them away from us for a while but it could be real dangerous yeah right we don't need to worry about them yeah but wouldn't it be nice if no one had to fight anybody else yeah well i don't i don't know i think that underlying we're all pretty probably not as as different as everybody thinks right well that's that's certainly true of it that's true i was i was discussing with someone before um this someone before actually one of these calls matter of fact about another topic but it came up one of these calls matter of fact about um another topic but it came up one of these this this poem everything i wanted to know i learned in kindergarten or something you've read that one before that this this is the idea that i think is actually very is is what i think we should all [revert] to the idea that um basically they said everything happened in kindergarten and in kindergarten we learned to share and we learned to um play with each other we learned to take nap and to take naps and whenever we'd start a fight we'd all apologize and hug each other you know and that would be all if we could just do the same thing sort of with with with everybody else i suspect we'd we'd be fine yeah unfortunately because i often i often sort of wonder how having never been to the soviet union um how different the people there really are you know how much yeah right i would i would love to go there i mean like again not now but at some point to go see what what this is like i mean this this is amazing because this is this is an this is an example of an entirely different culture that wants to be like us like you said before so it would be interesting to watch yeah that's that's and the ones i even feel somewhat worse for even um the ones in like the baltic states where they don't have a strong leader then you know at least at least russia has some sort of strong leader i mean they have yeltsin who may who may yet sort of help russia but um i mean the baltic states i think are just sort of trapped i mean they were taken over couple you know not too long ago and then just sort of told well you're here now you're part of our country you be this way it's a i think it's a sad state of affairs but oh yeah yeah uh_huh right uh_huh yeah well yeah and that um um um uh actually it sounds very i mean very similar they're sort of being they were sort of forced and now they just want to sort of speak up and say hey we want our piece and they have like a problem they have muslims to deal with as well as saddam hussein i i mean i think their big problem up there is you know unfortunately not only are they there's more than one group fighting for the same place they all want the you know whereas the [baltics] are saying oh we want our own we just want this little tiny piece of land uh_huh yes yes uh_huh um actually my wife is syrian so i i also i know some of the history and actually the other funny thing is that i'm i'm jewish we're sort of like the middle east peace talks ourselves so we i i know i've been to israel and i know and i sort of toured the area and i know that it really is very lots of different cultures in one place i mean and it's the same thing i it's it's almost the same thing out out in the soviet union right now there you know there are you can't take a whole bunch of people who just aren't the same people and don't want to be together and put them together [forcibly] i mean we did it couple of hundred years ago here but they wanted to do it so that's that's certainly true right uh i wonder i wonder if now the people in the soviet union don't have ideas very different from that hello hi hi ken my name's diane yes i'm in san antonio oh okay yes i think they'll always represent a threat whether or not there's an active cold war or not uh it's it's a totally different economy based on different beliefs and and uh different priorities and uh given the the uh military powers on both sides i think it's always a threat probably not no right uh_huh and and it's recognized that the two great powers are us and them and and the great powers are always [pitted] against each other i don't know they they're going downhill pretty steady but i i agree right now they're not i don't believe they're a large threat right now i think there's always some threat yeah actually i feel kind of sorry for them right now because the people are are are uh wanting things that we have that they're not i mean just some basic freedoms and and their government is not allowing it and gorbachev seems to be going back on some of the things that he's been trying to push uh_huh yeah yeah yeah see i'm concerned that that since he's banned demonstrations altogether that he's going to do the type of thing that happened in [tiananmen] square and he's going to wipe out no telling how many of his own [countrymen] uh right in the middle of red square and uh it's going to cause a more civil war than is already occurring i don't know i mean and it it might be something that he wouldn't be able to control uh_huh yeah yeah yeah we've got our own worries at the moment i guess as long as uh they're fighting each other we don't have to worry about them wasting their time with us well sure that but that's a that's an [impossibility] i think given the differences in the world and people are just too different but unfortunately people people aren't that [insightful] they just see that this guy [prays] differently and to someone else than i do so therefore he's wrong and he's bad and we have to wipe wipe him out uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh no i haven't read it i've heard all about it though yeah yes but people grow up and they forget well that's one of the places i would most like to go not right now of course but at some point i would like to go to moscow and and to just to see all these things that you can see on television now and can read about that ten years ago we didn't have this kind of information and we didn't know what things were like so yeah i and i the the people i just feel so sorry for the people in the country that they can't i mean they they can't do they can't change it they try they and they there's nothing that they can do uh_huh yeah yeah it's it's probably not dissimilar from the uh what are they the the the i'm trying to think of the name of the the something like that in northern iraq who are actually [countrymen] of i mean some of them were split off into israel i believe and some of them are in turkey when actually they they don't they're their own people and their beliefs and their own culture system and they were split up into three different countries and and they're very dissatisfied and they're they're causing wars right now and i don't think it's that different from what the baltic states are are going through yeah uh_huh yeah the the one that i think one of the women that i work for is married to an iranian and so she has a lot of insight because she knows a lot of the history of the countries over there and within five or six countries there are probably ten cultures of people and that's they don't all have their own country and and some of them are mad about it oh oh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah and i don't think the people here two hundred years ago were that different i really don't i mean they had the same ideals and the same basic beliefs they might the baltic states might be feeling the same way that our [forefathers] felt when they were leaving to come here okay this topic is is russia a threat to our security i think they are more of a threat to their own people at this day and time how do you feel about it i believe communism is very much [waning] it's uh pretty much on the way out of the door insofar as the strong hold that they used to have and the russian people are all realizing that the communist system does not work to their satisfaction or their way of surviving in this world and their [rebellions] right now is the result of that if they can get the army or the military to sway to their side i think that uh it will be on the way out eventually it's just a matter of time because in the baltic states they have already [massacred] so many people who [protested] and that hasn't set too well with their diplomacy for the regarding the uh outcome of their affairs what's your synopsis uh_huh i think that it went up a thousand percent on most uh_huh but gorbachev has still not fully convinced everyone that he's moving towards a two to three party system of government that nor eliminating or diminishing the communist power and i guess that's where yeltsin steps in so far as his politics of government goes uh but i don't know how convinced the people are of him yet myself uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh i understand uh_huh i agree what's bad for the soviet system is that they have the resources to grow and produce their food but somehow it just does not get out to the market the way it should yeah that's probably more true than a lot of people realize uh_huh it seems to be headed in that direction too uh_huh well their knowledge with uh better communication processes in this world now that's reached them is more educated than to the uh ways of the western world and uh i think that was a big stepping stone for them to initiate all their [righteous] ways of changing things too they probably not enough but i'm sure i lot of it's filtered down enough to the common folks that they have gotten wind of what they're missing out on yeah i'm sure a lot of them are missing those household items yeah what we consider just i don't normal everyday things to them is real luxury which is unfortunate for them and of course most of us we don't really appreciate what we've got because we've been so used to it yeah i agree yeah yeah i can go with that answer too the only yes i could go to is if uh a [renegade] crew decides to launch an attack or an accidental [launching] or something to that effect to to a nuclear exchange but i don't even see that occurring uh because their internal [strifes] are more important right now than concentrating on any kind of outside affairs that they used to be [adapted] to i guess uh_huh well they do have uh a major internal problem everybody wants to [defect] and i can understand why um i think their biggest problem is just you know [obtaining] food to live so when you have the basic needs uh being [unmet] i don't think you think [globally] as far as you know being a threat to other people in the world so as soon as they get their their own home country taken care of then they'll consider what they can do with the rest of the world well i do i do realize that uh uh the bush administration isn't too happy with with how they're handling their internal uh strife you know as far as diplomacy is concerned i think it's been a good a good positive direction for uh the soviets as far as yeltsin is concerned you know he was uh allowed to what in his in the congress they they gave him more power as far as his republic in russia is concerned which is gives him more power overall which i think is a good sign that there will be some you know politically speaking you know he's going to have more power and i think it's a step in the right direction i think gorbachev realizes that he's got a a major uh uh power figure you know competing against him and i think it's going to be pretty close to his [demise] if he doesn't follow suit with yeltsin as far as uh realizing well he does realize it you know with the fact that they reduced the uh or they increased the prices on their food food and goods uh it yeah that's incredible but they had to uh go in the direction of a market driven economy and and they had to bite the bullet for that so that's a good move on on [gorbachev's] part in doing that so well that's all they got right now that's their ray of hope so you know they'll go with you know whoever comes through for them i it it's just that the weird thing is is that gorbachev is the one that opened the [floodgates] as far as with [glasnost] and [perestroika] and stuff and i think he's got between the old guard and and the new uh [glasnost] uh i think it's kind of escalated to a point where it's out of control and i think he had to pull in the [reins] the only way he knew how in order to keep the peace on peace on both sides so i think that's where you know kind of where he's stuck you know what i'm saying and that's the that's the situation that he finds himself in and you know he's a tough guy i mean he's been through it so i have no doubt that he'll i mean i i think overall he's been a a good figure for the soviet union i mean i think his intentions and his ideals are are uh well [intentioned] and in the long term but i just think that because of the basic needs that the people don't have i think that uh makes the problem most severe and makes him look look worse that what his um what his ideals are personally i think it's i think it's a lot of uh-oh how do you put it bureaucracy and and uh one thing and then all the corruption i think there's a a large amount of corruption on the the have and the have nots you know i i know you're going to have that with every society at least we're more [blatant] about it but it's very secret and it's been going on for years i mean you can't change things overnight and but if it gets to a point where people can't survive i mean there's revolution you know and that's yeah big time major but you know that's that's what happens when you know the [cork] blows and you can't handle it anymore i mean that's that's the way the world uh you know [revolves] that way anyway i really question though how much technology the average soviet is exposed to yeah i think they're starting to realize but i i just don't think they have the resources if you were to compare uh the americans to the soviets as far as home computers are concerned or fact machines fax machines and cellular phones and state of the art equipment that we are so used to i don't think they even realize what's out there and to what extent yeah the major conveniences of life yeah this is true this is very true and we it's human it's human nature though to take things for granted and it kind of you know when you've lost something or or uh uh don't have what other people have that's when you tend to realize you know what's out there and what you know what you have and what you don't have so the original question do we think their a threat to our you know a security threat um yes and no um no well i don't really feel that the soviets really want to blow up the world i mean um we painted them back in the fifties and sixties as as [nonfeeling] machine type people and they're people just like us i mean you know they get up everyday and they put their pants on the same way and they have to eat and everything else and i just don't feel that go ahead um okay i guess i don't see them as much of a threat as they used to be but i think just the [instability] of the country right now is sort of scary uh_huh uh_huh um uh_huh huh huh uh_huh yeah i guess that's what concerns me the most is they're they're so unstable that somebody like that could make uh decisions that would [jeopardize] a lot of people uh_huh yeah it looks like it's come close to that as it is uh_huh yeah huh uh_huh no i haven't uh_huh you mean in the in the most recent conflict oh yeah definitely i i'm i'm a little bit shocked to what the u s has done in terms of selling to iraq in the past ten to fifteen years yeah i think we we kind of shoot ourselves in the foot that way too it's bad enough that the soviets do it um uh_huh yeah it's scary to know that they're supplying that many people with weapons especially when it's to the south of us uh_huh yeah well i think russia is getting to the point where they're they're about to do something to get out of communism i guess i'd would like to see somebody like yeltsin to get more power i think gorbachev has about had his day yeah uh_huh uh_huh true i don't know i sure wouldn't turn my back on them uh_huh at least they're learning a little bit from history i mean uh okay do i still still can feel that the soviet union as such is still a threat to the civilized western world absolutely and my reasons are based upon not only from what i read in the newspapers what i see on the newspapers but up against some of the fun and exciting things i ran into during my six years as a soldier in the fifth special forces group well that's what makes it a powder [keg] the um i'll go back in time a little bit to about eighty one when my first real involvement with the military started um naturally we were at the time the soviet union was considered to be the big military power and the big threat so we got lots quite a bit of information as well as [indoctrination] on soviet [tactics] and weapons i went to lebanon in eighty three before the marines ever got there with the u n peace keeping force and with the training i received prior to going there with captured weapons we kept running up against these weren't these weren't chinese made copies these were soviet made top of the line fresh out of the box a k forty [sevens] as well as a lot of the explosives we were running into in granada in october twenty fifth eighty three we invaded the place sure there were cuban soldiers there but there was also a bunch of russian advisors that were damn good shots the team i was with we jumped in on the western tip of of the island down on point [salinas] and for every cuban there was at least five russian advisors and they were all shooting state of the art soviet weapons in eighty four i was down in central america as an advisor to the [honduran] army again we were running up against [cubans] quite a bit plus soviet advisors and the equipment we were [capturing] and taking from the [nicaraguans] was brand new out of the [crate] soviet made material do i consider them a threat absolutely they have a university in moscow called the [patrice] de [lamumba] university about like a and m or u t where they're [teachings] subjects like that they're teaching terrorism some of the people we went up against in lebanon were graduates from that place and let me tell you they are nothing nice to go up against i'm surprised during this iraqi crisis we didn't have more incidents than they did these guys are top of the line when they when they graduate from there they can pull terrorist actions anywhere in the free world and they are very very good at what they do so until i see the entire quote old guard of the soviet military of the soviet government completely roll over and disappear [preferably] buried i still consider them a threat their military is different from ours to where there are extremist generals that actually control tens and thousands of troops that [irregardless] of what soviet policy is they're going to do what the general tells them well it's interesting watching the different soviet states [albania] lithuania doing their little [revolts] down there each one of those sectors has got a soviet general over the troops that are there so far they haven't run into the real [psychos] yet there's probably five or six which would be an equivalent of our joint chiefs of [staffs] that are in positions over some of these soviet states if [uprisings] happen in their sectors it is it's going to be a total blood bath actually they're showing remarkable restraint they get real nasty the [hyundee] helicopters come out and they would level entire areas okay you're from the dallas area right okay you know basically the size of uh the area around richardson you put five soviet [hyundee] helicopters in the air they can level the entire area and there won't be anything left alive and they can do that in about four minutes and they've got entire squadrons of those just standing by they used them in [afghanistan] did remarkably well considering the terrain they were flying in but on a highly populated area like some of the soviet cities would be with the weaponry that's attached on those things there is no place to hide if the bombs don't get you if the bullets don't get you then then the nerve gas definitely will get you the only drawback on that little piece of machinery is they only got five minutes of air time they drink that much fuel were you have you i take it you haven't spent any time in the military as a civilian that's never been attached to any form of the military i know a lot of this stuff that i was involved in never did make the newspapers but during that same time frame didn't you get some feeling that i mean they're getting all these weapons and stuff didn't it bug you a little bit why they kept coming up with all this stuff in any of them since eighty one it all boils down to whether it's our side their side it's a matter of money to a certain extent the deal the [iraqi's] have with the russians was for oil uh the ones to the south are more regional conflict they're not really that worried about invading north they're more interested in they've got a screwed up situation i'll give them that from mexico all the way down into central and south america the situation down there is weird and it's very screwed up inflation is out of this world and the governments which our government has technically supported for years are corrupt as all get out and generally the people are getting screwed and they're tired of it and they're willing to try anything to get out from under it even if that means going to communism unfortunately [yeltsin's] got too many connections with the old guard that's the only drawback that i see with the entire thing gorbachev has made his attempt and he's had his problems with some of the old guard himself [yeltsin's] in tight with the old guard so it may be trying to choose between the lesser of two evils at this point you mean i understand when they pulled the troops out of uh or they reduced the number of troops in europe after the berlin wall went down i thought that was great but by no means do i [endorse] or approve pulling everybody out it may be a much reduced force than what we used to have over there but you still better have the key players in place if something does go down even if it's a regional conflict if united states is going to flex its muscle and be the super power that it is not only does it it can talk the talk but it's got to be able to walk the walk it's got to have the stuff to back it back up what it's saying if you've only got a token force there you can't hold your ground okay i don't do you have an opinion on that on the u s r uh_huh sure uh_huh sure sure sure that happens uh_huh sure i guess in particular my viewpoint is that they financially cannot go into a war uh they are desperate at this point in time to keep their country together but i could not foresee them [severing] what they have with the u s um because they need us at this current time because of their financial situation um from what i've been hearing is the u s uh s r has been uh almost bankrupt for years and it's people are desperate and there might be a revolution within the people but i don't think the u s would get involved with it because uh there's too close of ties to where i think they understand that gorbachev is trying to make a change and that we cannot run them like we run the u s and that they have to make their own independent decision so i guess i really have no fear at all of the u s s r verses uh you get these small little uh places like iraq and all of that that might be something that i'd be more concerned about with nuclear weapons verses uh a small uh or as big country of u s s r i i i have no feelings that they would ever start a war with us because to them it would totally you know it would totally destroy their whole country because our technology is far advanced from what theirs is at this current time so i mean sure they have weapons to kill us over and over and over but to them that would be a suicide and they and the russian people are not [suicidal] type of people but if you get the iraqis and iran which will do it for the country for the pleasure of you know doing whatever uh for their country they'll do it uh sure sure uh_huh sure i have a daughter that's frustrated she's on a a [stool] that she can get up on but if she can't get down on it it's like get me down right now but anyway it was really good talking to you and you have a good weekend uh_huh thank you bye now well the i think i'm i'm skeptical about the whole thing uh and a still a little bit worried about them because of the the history of russia and they're in a in a state of [flux] right now changing uh uh changing a great deal primarily because of the economic [distress] and even in that situation uh the it seems like to me from what i've read in in the history of russia and and you know different authors uh there has always been a paranoia they've always suspected everybody and and that's why they put you know that's why they put a lot of people in prison for years and years and that's why they put a lot of people to death yes but stalin was a was a classical example i guess of that paranoia because he he probably killed more russians than uh you know the russian army killed anybody else yeah sure yeah yeah you're a i think you're right there's a little more craziness down there uh the russian people i think are not that much different from us you know i think they're that it would be the leadership that i i uh [mistrust] yeah you too thank you bye bye let me ask you do you think the soviet union is a still a threat to the united states uh_huh right uh_huh well i think there's a a struggle within the soviet union um i think the people are are just fed up and i think it's showing and all the republic is trying to gain their independence and i think uh that's making gorbachev and others realize that hey maybe this communist thing isn't working right that's right i think well that that could be you know what i we always we think of the k g b and we think such bad things you know but i wouldn't doubt if the soviet people think c i a and they think such bad things you know exactly they do oh yeah they do you know oh yeah oh absolutely that's part of that propaganda thing and i think if we can get away from that or if we can keep that out of our minds oh excuse me i've got a cold today thank you um i think if we can get that propaganda thing because i'm sure both countries are seeing seeing it you know thinking k g b and c i a and all that but uh just on an economic point of view if the soviet union doesn't do something fast they are they ain't going to be able to feed their people this this winter you know but on the other hand i'm kind of getting fed up with uh our own country and presidency uh always concerning themselves with other [nations'] problems when we have so many at home yet right right that's right you know we've got uh we've got quite a few domestic problems that uh that i feel we ought to be concentrating more on i think the problem is you know on the international scope maybe the president feels that uh you know for long term relations with all these countries it's important and well we'll we'll always have the united states and you know we need to solve these international problems but um i think i heard in the news about last week sometime that uh the president ended up [canceling] one of his international trips so he could spend more time on on a domestic issue because the american public is kind of getting fed up with it right right yep no that's right that's right well i think uh i think in the long do you know i don't know what to think i i uh the person i am i want to believe that it's an honest effort i want to believe that that they really are trying to change that that maybe they are headed for a more democratic society and i i want to believe it's all okay but then there's that side of me that says yeah but they've put on faces before and never to this extent though you know so so it's like there is a struggle within me going do do i be open minded and give them the benefit of the doubt which is kind of my basic personality you know i i trust people i'll do that or do i keep on going well we'll wait and see yeah that's it's not just a or uh western society telling you it's it doesn't work you know they've always said you know the the soviet people were united we believe this and maybe they are seeing that no no hey we don't believe this you know but it's still you know i guess i keep that one part of me that's like well i don't know i want to trust them and i it's like i can't and maybe it's because you know we've had our own propaganda over the years i don't know and they probably do the same things you think the c i a doesn't spy i'm sure they do now the difference is we don't i i don't think we take people and kill them just because they don't believe what we believe you know i think to that extent we don't go as far but i'm sure they lie you know so that's all right i hope you get better yeah yeah yeah that's true and i'm not against them being concerned but i feel like we ought to be spending maybe the same time and effort and and energy into trying to solve our own or resolve our own you know i mean you know any any country that wants to be democratic i'm all for helping them you know because i i understand that you know you are looking at the united states as the biggest and longest supporter of that type of government but at the same time i i agree i don't think we can do it and and just you know turn our backs or or be ignorant per se to the things that are happening here yeah we we we believe in what he's doing abroad but but like you said there's issues here too and but i i am encouraged by what is happening in the soviet union i'm encouraged by what's happened in you know the the iron curtain countries you know in in that block and and i think it's moved in the right direction i i think sometimes people expect it to happen overnight you know it's not going to it didn't happen here overnight and it didn't happen here without a struggle you know and i i think sometimes we forget that but i i i i have to say yes i'm you know i'm encouraged by the way it's going uh uh okay my views it asked for my views so my views on that are yes i do still consider them a threat and yes i do and the reason i do is because um i've with uh gorbachev was raised it was [nikita] [khrushchev] i believe i know it was one of the old old school russian and uh he he is a definite he is a marxist leninist communist through and through and marxist leninist communism is a threat to the united states because um the whole nature of it is to control the world the the whole goal of the marxist leninist theology is world [domination] and i do not believe that it has not they've never stated that their goal is not to you know take over the world and they've never repented of all the [massacres] all the just the you know the hundreds of thousands of uh [massacres] they've killed more [jews] and all this and so no i don't trust them a bit i think it's a big scam yes i do i yes i would all but say i know it's a scam you can't trust him he was the head of the k g b for years yes he was for many many years he was trained in the old school of [lenin] theology and he he's never changed any of his any of the he he deals in that kind of theology he's you know he might say one thing but what he does is marxist and leninist in nature and so that's why the russians are so angry with him right now is because they've they know it's a scam and so you know i that's what i feel i don't know what do you feel do you agree with me or disagree uh_huh right well if he got out of line too much from the old school they'd just knock him off they're not going to permit anyone in that russian parliament to get in power that's going to change anything too much so right uh_huh no because they've taken them from the people because the marxist leninist theology is to i mean it really is its own religion it it could be classified in [theological] terms as a religion because it is but they deny god self is everything self you know everything is um for me for me for me and therefore right but that's not what they really do they say that but that's not the reality of it even the [bolshevik] revolution the whole thing was uh an attempt to uh gain authority without you know having to be [risen] up in authority the best way to get [godly] authority is to you know work and and work your way to the you know work your way up not not being promoted by man because promotion comes from god but when you anytime you see a go in and just [overtake] it and it's take it take authority take control it's a i believe it's a spiritual thing that happens and it's like a spirit of witchcraft it's like a a bad spirit goes over that nation because you have these people that want they're power hungry and they want all this power and they want to control all these people and it's not for the people it's for themselves and the way you know that is because they didn't work their way up from the bottom up they went in and they took power and they took authority and they cut and they stab and and our nation does that a lot too i know it's not necessarily i don't think this is the greatest system either but i just feel like there's just a lot of oppression over the soviet union because of that the authority is there to [exalt] self that's the whole leninist theology they deny god they deny any [creator] they've [forbade] religion for years and years and god's the one that opened the doors for their for for christianity to go in russia it's not it's not gorbachev he will not receive the credit for that because one man saying that could not have done anything god had to open those doors and i believe that the the pressure just got so great from the people because that they you know they god just honored their [prayers] and did a miracle because i don't know we our pastor went to russia and we work with a lot of churches in [minsk] and in [belev] russia and some other places and for russia that's why i think it's funny we got this call because i have a good friend my one of my best friends is going into into the underground church because it basically it's still underground it and so they're going in a mission trip into [latvia] in about six months and so they're preparing for the trip you know and and it was i sat behind her sunday and they had their russia team [folder] so i thought oh that's cool so anyway so this is kind of one of my little pet babies but anyway i don't know i just i think they want a one world order that's what i think i think gorbachev would like to see a one world order a one world economic community and a one world government with him in charge of it and bush is going around talking about it too and it's like all these [pawns] on this chess all these players on this big chess game you know and it's a world championship and who is ultimately going to get the power who's going to get put in [checkmate] and who's going to be ruled out of the game and who's going to have the power over what they want to establish in this one world you know they're always talking about it all the time yeah uh_huh are you a christian you must be to know new age yeah right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah but yeah i think that they still are a threat but yet maybe a different kind of a threat than a military threat but i do believe that they're a military threat i think i mean just look what we did to iraq i mean right uh_huh that's true yeah that's true they did didn't they i know it's it's interesting i still wouldn't want to take them on though you know i still wouldn't want to take them i still think we need to be very careful but i believe that their economic and or an economic threat more than anything at this point in because they because they want control over the i know they want control over the european economic community and that you know that's why i see them [diversifying] their their power and their control that they have and like for you know instead of just being oh big tough russia but i still believe they've uh they've probably got weapons we i mean they they never would sell to anybody else you know so i guess i feel like yeah they probably i wouldn't want to mess with them but i don't trust them i'm not all like oh yeah they're just like us i i have a heart for the people of russia no i wouldn't be surprised if gorbachev wasn't a wasn't a [satanist] i'm not kidding you're right even yeah exactly even you know in our own country i mean bush was in the [scull] and bones the [trilateral] commission and all these groups with [ulterior] motives and so it's like what on earth is you know are these people ever here and involved in in the higher high [ranking] things i mean when you look at their history and what they've done to their own people what they've done it's like man can we trust them have they repented for what they did have they made a world apology we we repented for we're going to start seeking god and we're going to start seeing god to do for our nation what needs to be done and even bush will call a national day of prayer is bush saved i don't know god knows he says he is and i'm going to trust that with him but i mean it's just no i don't trust them you'd be crazy if you trust them but anyway call it what is it [mccarthyism] no i'm not like that i just got enough common sense that nope you know i'll till you come [repent] make a world apology for all the [wrongs] that you've done and yeah we've done [wrongs] but we've not done near the atrocities they've done and we need to maybe do that also you know you know i'm saying i'm not saying like oh america we're so we're perfect over here i'm not saying that either but that's not what the question asked so boy i could i personally feel like as long as the soviet union exists it's going to be a threat to the united states and that's right and i think that we've made a lot of strides in the last several years with them but i don't feel like that we can ever turn our back on them and no i i just think that yeah and i i have to wonder sometimes how much of their dependence is um you know it's it's sort of a false dependence just to while they're building their own uh way of doing things that they're making us think that they depend that much on us so that we don't watch them more closely you know i'm very suspicious of them yeah that's right that's right and i you know they they want to know what it would take to convince us that they aren't a threat and i don't know that there's anything that can be done to convince us of that because you know we just see how if you let your guard down in any situation how you know how quickly that persian gulf situation [arose] um i don't i don't think that that we can ever be convinced as a country that that they're going to change or you know not be a threat yeah and even even the strides that were made toward that though you know gorbachev seems to have he seems to have lost his steam in in that direction and you know he seems to be [repressing] his own people again and i don't think that i think that a lot of the the forward progress that was made came to a halt you know in the middle of that persian gulf crisis yeah see so many of them have gotten a taste of of democracy and they're kind of in between right now they're they're not uh they're not getting the benefits of being a democratic place but they they know what they are and uh the country tells them that you know this is what it's like to be a democracy and they're still hurting so you know they're getting i guess the worst of all worlds right now ugh that's true right and east germany yeah that's right uh_huh right uh_huh it's one of those things that all looks good on paper but putting it into reality is a whole different ball game that's true that's right yeah that's right i you know that's another thing the news media in the in the soviet union i wouldn't trust them either you know i wouldn't trust them to to send send a story about the united states to their people correctly and uh yeah i think our next biggest threat is the japanese yeah yeah yeah yeah and and i have a real problem with the government you know giving away things to the the other countries that have as as much ability to to do harm to us as anyone and you know like giving them plans for the some of the uh top secret aircraft that we have and things like that i mean that's ridiculous that is only asking for trouble yeah that's exactly right nope me either okay same here have a good weekend so i personally uh do consider the soviet union a threat i i i think that although there's been some fundamental changes and that there's uh uh the uh the mood for change that there's a lot of change left to happen and that there's uh still communism which is [fundamentally] opposed to democracy and there's still missiles oh really yes right right right right well i guess that that that brings up a question is it their i think in in the long term we could see a a situation where there are in incredible civil wars and that the the structure of the country breaks down and there's strife and much much death but until that happens be between now and then there's a lot of other uh events that could happen including a [resurgence] of communism with uh violent uh backlash against democracy which is where we could be in threatened i guess you'd say i'm sorry you're right i'm am meaning to say capitalism yes that's true uh_huh but not necessarily enough from the soviet union's people's point of view yeah yeah right that's right that's right right uh_huh i see i i agree with that i don't believe that will happen the um well one thing that's of interest is is if the soviet union's structure does break down and there is civil war at the end of those civil wars or during those civil wars in whose hands will those missiles be and there are a lot of them uh scattered throughout the many many republics right almost a [terroristic] thought come help us or we'll bomb you that's right that's right i know it's almost amazing how little you hear about dan quayle and when you do it's usually totally yeah yeah he still wants to send people to mars the guy's uh lame to say the least oh well so that's uh what what's going to be real interesting is if when they have the next presidential elections if bush is going to run with quayle again or if he's going to run with someone else which i think would be uh i wonder if that's if there's precedent for that where uh there's uh same president but a different vice president is it but without something like death or [impeachment] i i can't recall yeah that's right i guess in the last elections it was it was the lesser of several evils yeah that's right yeah oh well so let's see back to the that key issue uh the the other part of the question was what would uh what would have to happen to convince me and i seems to me uh that the missiles are the threat and so what would have to happen is a complete [disarmament] uh and uh that's you know i'd love to see that happen but i doubt it's going to happen in the next fifty years i don't no personally i i as i said i would really love to see it happen but i just uh_huh i see under the fear that that uh moscow gets bombed that's a good point that's a very good point in fact right yes i see that's a good great point okay well so yeah it was nice talking to you too brian good day all right you don't i don't i don't think they have enough control to really uh to really do anything against us i don't think they're as strong as we think they are personally but yeah that i see i see your point because you know they they feed us propaganda and we never know what they're thinking right sure right right well i think taking you know when we took that went to war with iraq i think we that was kind of a uh display of power and i think we i think the soviet union knows what we have and knows that we're pretty serious and if they ever tried to do anything we would we would be on the offensive yeah but are they going to have the backing from the people you know right right because there's fifteen different republics yeah right right well right i know i wouldn't think we you know i don't think it's a matter of trust even any more i mean it's just okay you lay this down we'll lay this down but that doesn't mean we we're not we're going to stop watching you and making sure you're not you know right i don't know i know it right right right i just you know that that's another thing that scares me is our country you know what are we doing what are they actually telling us and after you know what happened the other day with that uh c i a guy you know how much is what all the wars we're getting into and all the you know the messes we're we're bombing us ourselves with right is that true or you know is it is really a threat right right right right uh_huh yeah really well if it just keeps on going and nobody ever does anything that's fine with me well i am more uh more scared than than ever actually by it because to me if you look at the uh situation in the soviet union and eastern europe it closely [parallels] the situation around the turn of the century with the fall of the [ottoman] empire yeah and there's the the huge power vacuum and no one to control the local economies over there the inner uh trade between those republics and the satellites of or what used to be the satellites of the soviet union and i'm afraid that it's just going to going to have regional [infighting] just like there was before world war one and we're going to be stuck in another war uh_huh right sure right oh really yeah and it's worse now uh_huh rebel you uh_huh yeah uh_huh right sure oh god hey wait a minute the water comes out here it it looks like that too uh_huh jeez uh_huh the wonders of western culture get to shave your legs uh_huh so you did this one year in college where did you go to school south dakota uh i'm an officer in the air force at uh [griffis] air force base yeah so i'm i'm just a lieutenant i'm only twenty four so it's interesting hearing from someone of my perspective i always think that my view is always so much older and uh more conservative but uh i don't know if i've maybe done older spent a little more time learning from history than the average [armchair] uh yeah yeah and everybody's jumping up and down [praising] all this and you you know it's great yeah you know there's i think there's only one thing that's worse than the communist government and that's no government yeah there there really are well i don't think uh uh i don't think you can rule out anything like that and especially when when it gets to the point where things are really desperate then uh then the military becomes a threat as well and uh you know there the military still has a lot of power and somebody has to control all those nuclear weapons it's not evenly the situation isn't even is so much so it's kind of an obsolete question at this point since there isn't a soviet union any more but for for right right we can say the the soon to be former uh common wealth and independent states instead is that um well i i don't consider them so much to be a threat any more in terms of them using it as that we are already starting to see demonstrations in a very cash starved country you know those people the [commodities] that can be sold to people who i i worry a lot more about than the soviet union you know i mean we already have the case where they had those uh guys selling trying to sell [uranium] on the open market yeah and it's i i've been hearing suggestions we set a fund up to get them into alternative areas of research at some reasonable amount of pay so they don't go to libya or somewhere like that right i i think actually you know except for the fact that we have to be due west of them and we get a [fallout] cloud i don't think the the [probability] that we're going to be involved in the first strike of anything it's it's fairly high but you know there's certainly a lot of people arguing there right now who all have nuclear weapons and there is also the concern that some of the [sovereign] uh republics who are a lot of [islamic] some of them have nuclear weapons based in them and if they break off and for instance decide to [align] with iran or iraq then suddenly we are in a very difficult position um yeah yeah right and then of course the other things is you've got them arguing over their nuclear subs and all of that so there's not a question whether one of the uh sub drivers is going to decide to become free lance well i don't i don't want to go with russia so i'm going to uh you know sell myself to the highest [bidders] or something right right you know the the other possible scenario of course is that in in it's going to be hard for the entire area to have electricity between russia especially now there's a lot of hard liners coming back cause the the economic reforms aren't working we could find ourselves right back in the same position again the only thing that i think we have got going for us is we have a very large stick in the form of economic aide and technological aide and a lot of the republics seem to be more interested in getting the aide in than having the nuclear weapons yeah yeah but i i have to say that the overall things are instead of the [unstability] in the area are actually more stable than they before because i think [inherently] our the the chance that we are going to be involved in it and i think it's fairly low i think none of them are foolish enough to want to attack the united states yeah i mean all of them are looking to us for help not for not looking to us for you know uh invasion at this point uh_huh so you know i i think it's more going to be i don't think we're looking at at potential for anything large scale uh you know i think there's certainly some people in in the u s government who would like us to think that they're still a threat uh you know i was listening to m p r yesterday talk about the sea [hawk] submarine and you know i'm saying you know wait a minute here why do we want to build like two or three [multibillion] dollar [submarines] you know and the reason it'll keep people out in connecticut alive but well the soviet union uh now really called the commonwealth of independent states uh is a mess uh i think one of the biggest things we have to worry about is the uh control of nuclear arms especially ukraine and russia right yeah you know i suppose you you say to yourself what will no rational uh person would would would launch nuclear weapons uh but i guess that that wouldn't necessarily hold uh for some radical government or temporary take over even right jeez yeah yeah yeah yeah right i guess i agree with that uh right right well i think that that there's a uh [qualitative] difference that uh russia and and much of the soviet union still has a lot a natural resources that some of those other countries you mentioned just never had so that uh you know the commonwealth states could could easily you know [leapfrog] the uh the you know stepping stone path uh laid out by the by the southeast asian countries right yeah yeah get we're we're still going through a a uh you know a settling period uh you know they're not sure who they want their leaders to be they're not sure how they want the you know uh relationships between the states to to shape so but i agree you know we need another couple of years to to let them uh settle down and uh start cooperating yeah it was yes what did you think about the uh former soviet union yeah it seems that way sometimes you wonder if uh an economic threat isn't going to drive people to do things that would be more drastic than if uh they were a little more peaceful you know but i think it would probably not be uh a threat to the united states if that was the case it would probably be europe uh other areas of europe there well that is what it seemed like even before they uh [dissolved] the union which was becoming less and less of a threat to the united states uh more and more of an attempted uh you know relating on more or less normal basis are you uh involved oh that's true yeah that is for sure are you involved in any kind of uh political analysis or anything no not really we are involved in some of our company work in the soviet union and but not in uh any area of uh endeavor that would be of any interest to uh you know [militarily] or anything uh linguistics primarily and so it's interesting to see uh how things are going there and and uh the people there are facing the same kind of economic [deprivation] that uh you know the russian citizens are but it does relate to much to military situations yeah i read an an article in the recent uh wall street journal interview with a family there and uh we think of how great it is to go to you know a flea market uh that sort of thing and they are facing uh something that most people are not even aware you know familiar with they don't know how to deal with it how do you compete when you're whole you know life has been built on uh working for the state and everything you know right you face the same uh bureaucratic uh [headaches] whether you work or don't work so now they you know so really it must be uh a really traumatic time for the people as well as the uh lack of supplies or anything like that adjusting to the new way of thinking about things uh_huh yeah right taught to understand yeah that is right yeah perhaps the uh if we give aid of some sort you know maybe it will turn them around if it is done done correctly you know sure you mean in our country or in sure oh yes yes very much as a matter of fact i prefer public television and uh i have particularly enjoy the english comedies and the english mysteries yes [vociferously] yes well unfortunately for us at least here in the united states we the only access we have to that of course is public television i'm i'm not a great television watcher in any respect but uh the watching what i do watch is uh usually news and whatever is on public television any kind of i also uh am very fond of great performances in that regard but uh no no no as a matter of fact uh turner broadcasting has been uh broadcasting all of the james bond movies every night this week so i have concentrated on watching james bond movies this week well they're showing uh live and let die at this moment and it is the first appearance of roger moore as double oh seven so no no that's true i was just thinking that today he did well in some of the later movies he looks very [effeminate] in his early movies whereas uh sean connery has maintained the uh how would you uh [ruddy] look but uh oh yes well you know he was when was it last year or year before last he was voted the [sexiest] actor in movies or something i mean the man is sixty two years old but uh but otherwise you know we uh with p b s and so forth and i i particularly enjoy i don't know whether you've had a chance to watch it on p b s but uh the series uh yes minister that was about a the interior minister it was a comedy the interior minister of in england with the permanent secretary and bureaucracy and all that uh_huh yeah yeah i know well i i i'm not much of a television watcher i i read as i said and uh quite a bit i read about two or three novels a week in addition to all the technical stuff what what do you do what kind of work do you do at t i oh i see uh_huh well the last two people who have called both worked for t i and i just wondered i think that's something we all no no i work for g t e in maryland yes i guess not how did i hear about it well i work you know they are gathering a data base for voice processing and that's my field of work also so i i know the people at t i who are doing this and i heard about it so i called them and asked if i could participate and uh you know send in the forms et cetera and uh so forth we could go back to television shows yes i have well no that's uh you could interpret it that way uh i i think what they are trying to say is that there is a great deal of historical truth but the interpretation that actually got into the writing of the bible itself is probably uh after the what uh was is it the king james version when the committee did it wrote the translation that so much was lost in the translation particularly since most of the translations were in greek well for example in greek there are seven different words for love okay so you can have there's one word for love of your brother one word for love of your wife one word for you know uh love of your father and that sort of thing so in as to those types of [interpretations] uh really made a difference in how one might interpret the bible now and what it's at so that's you know you can look at it as though they are saying it's not true but there's too much historical fact involved just from the uh the histories that are were developed around that time that are available to deny that at least the majority of it is true so you know it depends on how you look at it you can look at it you know if you want to say that it's proven that it isn't true then you can very much look at it that way yeah well well you can interpret that the what the t v show in the same way that you can interpret the bible so but uh as as far as that goes i we at least agree on what we enjoy but uh i don't know if there is there is a time limit on this so uh i think so too let's just it's been very pleasant talking to you and have a good evening good night okay uh my favorite show is masterpiece theatre and it has been for a long time but i feel almost ashamed to say that to anybody now because i have never met anybody who likes it do you by any chance you do well wouldn't you know uh_huh yeah yeah i watch mysteries too is that what you're referring to okay yeah that is good i like uh do you read okay well that's the reason why i like both of those programs is because they're kind of based on books and the plots are more um challenging you know than the sitcoms of regular t v yeah uh_huh yeah me too did you stay up late and catch this red dwarf oh that was a scream uh_huh really i used to like him too he was my hero in fact i like sean connery to this day yeah yeah oh he can never cut it yeah yeah yeah he does uh_huh yeah i liked his accent too and he can even be in movies that are not uh uh sexually oriented and he still comes off great he is yeah he had my vote double i don't care yeah oh what's that about oh yeah yeah uh_huh right right i i've seen it several times it's a scream but i have to go to bed i have to get up and and work the next morning i wish they'd put those that's why i say did you stay up late to watch this red dwarf it came on after doctor who on saturday nights here at least and it should of course i really it was i don't think they should show it during prime time but still it was funny uh_huh yeah i'm a payroll clerk just an accounting clerk no uh i have a friend who works for t i and i work for a tire service here in i'm from dallas yeah yeah it could be t i i think probably are participating more than anybody else but i needed the money this is five bucks here yeah really do you work for t i really how did you hear oh we're not even supposed to be talking about this though are we uh_huh oh oh right well you know speaking of public tv have you caught any of this series on the bible i've heard that it's really against the well i mean that it's coming out with the idea that the [bible's] not true uh_huh yeah right uh_huh yeah yeah i guess if you're looking for that you're that uh uh_huh really yeah that's right yeah surely we've made it it was very nice talking to you you too bye bye well do you have any uh television programs that you watch regularly uh_huh no uh_huh oh you will relax well i watch um i like news programs like you mentioned and sometimes i will watch um like the cable news network evening news program yeah i i like that i i watch that a couple of times a week um it comes on like at nine o'clock at night and i really don't have any like situation comedies that i watch regularly i i have seen that um murphy brown that comes on monday nights before and it's kind of cute and but i don't uh_huh oh but uh_huh right i know who you're talking about i haven't i have seen it i think maybe once i like that well i um i we really don't watch too many programs regularly my children like some of the morning children's shows when they're home they um i just have one son who's in kindergarten so in the morning they will like to watch like um [eureka's] castle it's called it's just like a sesame street show but and they watch a couple of shows like that but i don't watch any daytime t v at all and uh uh_huh uh_huh um oh that's nice uh_huh that sounds like a good idea i notice that um since we moved here that we we did get the cable t v and when the newspaper comes out on sunday i sometimes read through the movies that will be listed and i record some and then uh we have just totally cut down and we never go to like a video tape rental anymore because there's always plenty of things that we can record and then and watch and then record over it something else and so that's been really nice because if you decide one evening you would like to stay home and have a quiet evening and watch a movie then you have two or three saved uh_huh well that's probably what i watch most frequently besides like news programs is the movies and they have a couple of channels that are like nostalgic older movies that i have really enjoyed that i'm seeing for the first time like the [marx] brothers and things like that uh_huh right and so we we have really enjoyed that and it's really nice not to be running out some of the video [rentals] can be expensive and uh_huh right going and paying six dollars for a ticket for one person at the theater or something so we i have and it's so convenient at home and you can do it anytime you take the notion and so i have really enjoyed that but but there are i do have friends that watch programs like they want to see a particular program and they are either home watching it or definitely recording it they have some programs that they won't miss yes well and things are repeated so often that you know if if i have seen just a program once chances are it'll be that exact same show if i ever decide to tune it in again the only one i've ever seen and it'll be showing again pretty funny but uh t v is something that we try to not um deliberately try not to get hung up on it like you say uh_huh and we don't want our kids to to grow up thinking that that's what you do with your spare time so it's a little bit something that we try doing and there's there's a lot of good children's programs that you could watch they could watch several hours every day and you could say oh that's a good program for them because it's educational but still you want them to go out and do other things even if they're good programs you don't want them sitting there watching them anyway well yeah that was pretty good i i like that and um i guess it's time to go yes nice to have spoken with you too bye bye oh this is kind of tough i don't too often watch you know shows that are on on a regular bases i don't have a lot of time and i don't really like some of them to tell you the truth i mean i don't thing they have any redeeming value but uh-oh i watch things like uh sixty minutes every week uh ugh it's kind of tough to think of some of the others although i do watch some of some of those frivolous things uh like on thursday nights at nine o'clock when i get home from aerobics i will watch uh knots landing yeah just something like that for you know uh end of the evening type of thing but uh how about you yeah i don't get that so i don't have that choice uh_huh uh_huh yeah but there's a couple of those i've seen once in a while uh i can't think of the name of the one that has the uh military uh fellow i mean he's playing a military part he's the husband of the girl on designing women yeah you know it it was on one time when i saw it and you know it it's pretty cute yeah uh_huh yeah no i don't i guess uh there's some uh things on channel thirteen that i watch pretty regularly on saturdays they have uh a variety of things uh and a lot of times i record it and watch it some other time but uh they have programs on uh house repairs and how to build things and um they have a [calligraphy] show and i do [calligraphy] so i watch that and um they have a lot of cooking shows and oh you know i'll just short of have it on sometimes to just sort of pick up little tidbits from those i don't sit and watch them but but i enjoy some of it and especially if i'm uh cooking on a saturday evening or something and one of those is on it kind of [inspires] me uh_huh yeah yeah we do some of that in fact i probably am more interested in watching some of the movies that are on t v than you know other kinds of things yes yeah yeah those are pretty good i i like those old ones much better than some of the new stuff yeah and boy the movie can be unbelievable yeah uh_huh i'm not that hung up to most things i mean if i miss something big deal yeah that's true yeah yeah yeah yeah we do too too many other things to do and too much going on right right i agree uh_huh right yeah okay well we probably exhausted that huh okay i enjoyed talking to you okay good bye okay well my favorite probably all time t v show is star trek and i would it like that i i like the adventure of it and the idea that that we would survive long enough to get to that point and be able to do these fantastic things in space and then i like the they have a new one now the star trek the next generation which it's an all new cast but kind of the same idea going out to new places and and doing new things and finding out about different people and i've i've always liked that show probably the very best uh_huh yeah those the movies are good too and i i guess all most of the shows i like are are kind of along the same line because they're all adventure when i when i started thinking about this that those are some of my favorite shows mcgyver because it's it's only one person there more than uh you know instead of a cast of people but he's always going out and [inventing] new things out of scrap and grabbing what he can and you know pieces of [baling] wire and and a few tires and all of a sudden he's got a hang [glider] and you haven't uh_huh he's like a [semigovernment] type agent who goes out then to uh works for the phoenix foundation supposedly and uh his big thing is that he can take pieces of little bits and pieces of string and [baling] wire and turn them into fantastic different things he took a car battery and some wire and two washers one time and made a [welder] so he he does all kinds of strange things like that yeah see what we can come up with do you like the uh news shows twenty twenty sixty minutes those kind of things uh_huh some of the little things yeah uh oh i guess i haven't ever had any trouble with that i have more or less i have my favorite shows and i usually make time in my day or my week you know to watch those but for the most part i try i have small kids and i try and keep it on just a minimum amount of time really when they're up because they're i guess that that that falls and one of my other favorite shows is sesame street because of the kids i like that real well i don't think they have that on anymore i haven't seen the electric company in a long time i i remember it when i was younger of you know catching it on p b s but uh i don't think they show it must be in maybe it's in if it was in repeats but they're not making new ones i haven't seen it in a long time but sesame street is still really good yes yeah they still show mister rogers i don't think he's making new ones but they repeat all the old ones so that's still a real good show too i that one tends to come on earlier in the day than i want to turn the t v on sesame street comes on from like nine to ten which is a good time and everybody is up and had breakfast and dressed and ready to go so it's the timing of of it is good besides the what's on yes i have two little ones so they like that they come on both they come on like from nine to ten and then from uh five to six they just repeat over again which is also that's another thing that's good about it when it comes on right in the dinner hour i can feel like i can let them sit in front of the t v and watch and they're watching something worthwhile while i can make dinner and do things i need to do without them under foot yeah uh it didn't hurt them any some shows are good for i think some shows some star trek i for the imagination of it all the idea i i think that's one of the things i like about star trek and is is the even in for kids watching some of it can be a little violent sometimes and stuff i don't let my little ones watch it but the imagination of look what we can do you know in the future this is perhaps this will be possible that kind of thing okay well i think we've covered most of my favorite t v shows let's see how about uh man from uncle that's mission impossible yeah they always have i've i've seen some of them on repeats that uh they always had a good plot it kind of kept you guessing on on uh what was going to happen next how they're going get out of their latest scrape oh yeah every saturday night huh um i'm not old enough to recall that one my t v viewing started sort of mid sixties so my folks didn't my folks i'm not even sure if we had one when i was really little that may be why they probably didn't have a t v until i got to be you know grade school or so and the shows that i like now they wouldn't let me watch i had to catch them all on repeats like star trek they thought that was much too violent for small children so i i i ended up watching a lot of these things on you know repeats in the afternoons or something yeah probably so well i think that's about uh that's about covered it for me so i think i'll say good bye and we'll talk another time perhaps i'm calling from garland texas uh_huh where are you from oh my goodness i didn't know they did it long distance yes well it was nice talking to you bye bye uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh i think i've actually seen a number of star [treks] one way or another over the years uh although i never watched it regularly i'm certainly acquainted with the character the characters and then i've seen some of the star trek movies uh_huh uh_huh i don't think i i've even heard of that show it's called mcgyver and what is what is he uh_huh uh_huh oh great boeing ought to hire him and give him a junkyard and see if he could build a seven forty seven out of it well uh i used to watch sixty minutes as a matter of fact and uh and i used to like the show very much but unfortunately i find getting rid of your t v set you do throw out some some of the baby with the bath water and uh i just decided i had to do that i think in part because it was easy for me to become addicted to it i mean i could just sit mindlessly in front of a t v set for hours and i just realized i was sort of like an alcoholic if i didn't get the booze out of the house i was going to drink so yeah yeah yeah right well when my kids were little i did have a t v set and i did watch a lot of sesame street and a lot of electric company as well well that would be a shame huh yeah how about mister rogers is he still around i see i see uh_huh right i figure your children are preschool yeah yeah i seem to remember those shows being on in the afternoon uh_huh okay okay yeah yeah little with little kids the t v set really is a i mean i used it as a [pacifier] i'm not sure it was that great for my children but they turned out okay so yeah uh_huh yeah yeah well i'm trying to think if i ever even had a favorite one at one time uh i do seem to is that the one where they uh he always got this this tape recording that self [destructed] uh mission that's right mission impossible yeah i used to watch that in fact i can still remember a couple of those they were i thought those were very good yeah huh right right you yeah i do remember that and uh i remember as a kid my parents watching the ed sullivan show that was really the big deal in our household was the ed sullivan show yeah i i guess it was a saturday night and i went to see the movie the doors a couple of days ago and they had this scene uh that portraying the doors appearance on the ed sullivan show they even had somebody portraying ed sullivan and it was very very funny i think it was the funniest part of the of that movie well i don't know was there any i remember the [milton] [berle] show even i was i was well i guess i have to admit that i am i see yeah huh yeah that's that's interesting uh i think it's interesting that parents think that their small children learn violence from tv people were just as violent before t v was invented maybe even more so but i guess that's that's a different topic isn't it yeah well it was nice talking to you tell me tell me where you're calling from garland texas all right i'm in i'm in raleigh north carolina yeah i think they're doing it trying to do it or i hope they're trying to do it all over the country because they need to collect all kinds of different different [dialects] same here bye bye okay so you watch david letterman well see our favorite t v show i i i live in a dorm and our favorite t v show is cheers okay well we try like here they show it like every day and then like on thursdays is the night where the new ones come on but we watch it like every day but i like late night we don't watch uh what we do is we stay up till around one thirty and then they show the twilight zone at one thirty and so we just stay and watch that the what yeah i used i used to live in the house that the guy owned yeah it was really it was really oh well it was all full with uh shelves everywhere and we didn't have enough books to fill it up but but uh so what what do you like why do you like david letterman so the oh do you watch saturday night live what he's got what hey i got long hair wait wait uh i don't know but people the other day i went into a bar and this guy asked me to dance all he saw was my hair and he goes do you want to dance i turn around and go what he goes do you want to dance i go no no he goes oh oh i'm sorry i go yeah you better be i go you better be so but okay so wait do you watch saturday night live yesterday yeah no oh you missed wayne's world wayne's world was pretty cool so uh let's see what else uh see like all we do here is like every time we walk in the room we turn on the t v because we don't want to do anything like study or anything so all the all we do is turn like like when i was in high school i used to do like my homework in front of the t v set you know what yeah well i like i i just i just [bogused] on all my homework so it really didn't matter yeah i know and i did that all through college and it worked so uh let's see what else like the news we don't watch because they're boring yeah especially the war i mean it was like i haven't i seen this episode before you know yeah i know and and in north see the the thing is like here they just they just give you like local news okay like a house burned down in this little town and were here and i go so what happened worldwide you know it's like you know even though two hundred and fifty thousand people died somewhere else they're not going to tell you you know they're going to spend more time on doing a a thing on a on a cross guard who's a hundred and five years old than they are on anything else you know so but uh let's see what else oh we watch like for example uh okay do you watch star trek okay well i used to hate star trek i thought i thought like when it like when i was like in high school and junior high school i used to hate it but then we started watching it and and like the new ones are pretty cool because because they got like uh like special like especially things that like [fuck] with your mind because what happened is like they have this hologram right where you walk in and you can program and everything looks real and you can touch everything and stuff but it's only a program and it's really great because sometimes it's like the hologram makes up all these things and uh i mean sometimes it sometimes it's funny sometimes it's not but uh you know it's something to pass the time till we do and then and then we watch football which basketball college or we got we got two teams of the a c c going there we got duke and north carolina but i mean the i mean there's nothing to do like for example yesterday uh they go some girl goes do you [dares] want to go to a picnic right i hear no we're just you know it's like we just woke up we had a [hangover] and everything you know and so we just woke up and uh we're watching t v and i go no today we're just going to dedicate [ourself] to watching golf and bowling you know and everybody it was like oh god do you guys really watch that no you know i was like a whole golf tournament it's like for example baseball i hate baseball i mean somebody told me like that like you can watch baseball and the actual play time that there is is five minutes because by the play time is when the person when the pitcher pitches the ball and it goes to the catcher or when the when the pitcher pitches and it's hit okay and that's like you know five seconds for the whole play and that's it i mean maybe a home run could last a little bit longer because the guy has to run around all the bases you know but i mean it's it's like that i mean it's was it's just but when i went home that's all like they had on t v so i i watched entire games of baseball and they're going oh my god and t v in [argentina's] really bad uh because uh i wanted to go to school here yeah they have better computer science up here than they than they do down there so and i also uh my father works for i b m and we came up here we well we came to the united states in nineteen seventy six seventy seven and uh we lived here for about seven years then we moved back and so then i said i'm going to move back up there to go to college he goes okay so he goes but do it fast so i did my undergraduate in two years yeah so but it's a it's just you know oh well we've been talking for five minutes that's the only obligation we have and uh well tell your dad that now he owes you five bucks okay all right nice talking to you bye bye yeah uh_huh oh really yeah that's pretty awesome too i watch it every now and then that's hilarious oh serious oh that's cool uh_huh twilight zone rules man twilight zone rules that's all are you serious that's [psychedelic] oh he just like totally sarcastic and hilarious and i don't know i'm a lot like him in a way so and he's got curly hair and so do i so curly hair and so do i so hey cool how long is it that's hilarious no it with the uh who was on the music people wasn't that [fishbone] yeah i saw that it was awesome but i didn't see the rest of it are you serious they're awesome oh really yeah that sucks really uh kind of annoying but that's cool kind of annoying to like in front of t v like trying to do homework you know trying to write an [essay] you start talking about you know like in living color or something i don't know cool yeah b s that's the way to do it cool yeah works for me no unless i watched through the war you know there's only one i know i guess they think that people don't watch t v but i mean if you watch it for like five minutes then it repeats everything over and over and over it's like oh man yeah oh yeah uh i haven't seen it in years but i used to yeah uh_huh really oh really that's cool uh_huh are you serious oh man that's cool sound like uh yeah basketball's cool but football kind of after a while which basketball yeah i kind of like college better it's more [spirited] oh yeah cool uh_huh golf [yay] oh me too uh_huh yeah yeah that's true yeah that's true ooh really oh really so so why from argentina [why'd] you come over here oh that's cool how long did you live there oh uh_huh uh yeah huh that's cool oh really awesome that's cool [groovy] yeah no doubt okay yeah you too bye all right ladies first barney [fife] i guess well so your a homemaker i guess that's the right term nowadays yeah my wife we have a new one in the house and she stays home too also um i guess i have a wide variety i like watching the t v for things that are interesting not so much the things that aren't for example like the cosby show to me is just kind of like a waste of my time and different strokes but i like sixty minutes prime time live of course i have to watch cartoons on saturday morning but not the ninja turtles i like the old [timey] ones tom and jerry there you go right [johnnie] [quest] the good ones um now if i'm ever home during the during the day on a vacation day i have to catch at twelve o'clock the andy griffith show because i usually because he's just he's one of my [idles] and then uh but i don't know it seems like nowadays everything is so electronic you know magnified and animated that you can grab from the old style movies and old style shows a little bit more insight to family [groupings] and so uh now i do with the cosby show i have seen it a couple of times and i do i like the show i just don't watch it because of the timing but uh some of the crap that's on t v nowadays it's about i do watch the special shows that they come out with the nova stuff and and the nature shows but i think there's enough out there to pick from i'm not we don't have cable to the point of of the h b o or any of that stuff yeah but uh huh_uh sure oh me oh no ouch fifteen years bet they hated that oh goodness yeah really i used to watch uh i can recall this might age me date me here uh i can remember staying home when i was five and six and my mother watching the edge of night secret storm well i think they were back to back and black and white i was just a youngster and i was like oh my gosh still be on yeah now they got a lot of other crap involved and so you're right i think some of the [tones] of the the daily prime time is questionable and that could be uh i have to agree with you you know keep them on the channel eleven channel twenty one the nature stuff you know huh_uh huh_uh huh_uh well sounds like you got your hands full there and i do appreciate speaking with you have you gotten your catalog yet yeah i just spoke with jim i just got my in the mail and it inspired me to make more phone calls oh really yeah give them your pen number have a good day bye bye bye bye oh no well i don't find a lot of time to watch t v and a lot of time i find it during the day when when i'm rocking my little girl to sleep so i watch a lot of reruns old shows like dick van [dyke] all those old crazy shows yeah i really enjoy watching andy griffith yeah yeah i guess so yeah i am i stay home with two kids huh_uh huh_uh huh_uh yeah you sound like my husband he likes tom and jerry and uh bugs bunny and all his friends and all those guys yeah yeah yeah huh_uh huh_uh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah well i find myself watching just a whole lot of whatever is geared for children because with two kids and you know i don't want them watching something that i don't think they should watch or i used to be really hooked on all my children and i watched that for like oh ten or fifteen straight years and then i had well you know i'd eat like at work we'd have a t v or whatever and then um as my kids got older and started you know recognizing what was going on i thought this isn't really very good so i gave it up yeah i watched i had watched it since it started so uh now i i don't know who the characters are and um i'll turn it on every once in awhile and i don't recognize anybody so i guess that's a good sign huh_uh oh yeah well see you're probably about the same age as me because my mom watched the secret storm and the edge of night huh_uh huh_uh yeah we used to my mother watched all that stuff too and as the world turns i think as the world turns may still on or not it was not too long ago yeah yeah yeah right yeah we do and it's real interesting too the difference in my kids like um my oldest loved sesame street and those kind of shows my younger one doesn't she's more into walt disney kind you know we watch a lot of movies that we've got on v c on tapes and stuff she's more into the animated stuff where my other daughter liked [puppets] and that kind of thing so but um we do a lot of kid watching sure it was fun no i don't think so oh well see i don't really i've had a few people call me but i've never made one yeah i need to get brave yeah yeah that's what i need to do thanks okay well i can tell you pretty much my two favorite shows and they kind of are in different [spectrums] i think um one of them is quantum leap and the other one is night court and i think i think they're real different i mean i don't think they have anything in common um quantum leap has i mean quantum leap is kind of a comedy in its own way i guess but uh mostly it's it's kind of science fiction and it's um it's adventure and things like that and then night court is just pure you know weird fun you know just it's it's nothing serious about it at all so i don't know why the two of them happen to be my two favorite shows but they that's the way it is so uh_huh he is yeah that's right i mean well they they really have changed him though if if you've watched it this season um he's becoming i mean he still is in his own way degrading and everything but uh he's involved in that charity and uh it's taking up so much of his time and so much of his thought that he really has in fact there was one show that he even turned down a date with some you know beautiful woman just because the idea that he was his mind was on the ozone layer and you know global warming and all this other kind of stuff and he you know was too depressed you know to so that was part of i guess his character building or whatever but which of course he needed uh_huh right right that's a good point so what do you what do you consider your favorite shows okay dede yeah i agree yeah i can't remember what her name is but is uh_huh well but see i read an article about in t v guide about uh about hunter and about his you know latest you know his three girls whatever you want to call them and they say that uh that there was that there was like a conflict between her and him uh that they never really could get her into uh any character that they could use i mean you know uh yeah the second one the blond you know if you think about it they didn't really interact hardly at all i mean they were never partners yeah and and and even even at the beginning dede and and hunter would decide that one of them would go do this while the other one would do would go this but uh it seemed like it was almost two different organizations you know like hunter was the boss and this other girl was not and you know you kind of you're wondering you know well when did this happen so yeah i i kind of agree with that well i'm afraid that's what they they really wanted to do um uh_huh yeah well see there was that spark between dede and hunter for a while but they they like started it and then they'd pull it back and they'd start it and pull it back and that really made it a very interesting uh show to where you never really knew which which one was going to show up you know whether it was going to where they're going to be real close or whether they're just going to be partners you know and that that i kind of thought was good but um you know it's i guess you know you always kind of sit there and you see these two people together and you always wonder why they don't you know get together or whatever and so i guess that's what they decide to do yeah but it's it's always been a formula uh for t v that the minute that two people that the two main stars get married that the show ends up you know dying a a good example of this and you know this is maybe it's not a good example i've been watching [nickelodeon] all last week because they had what they called maximum smart they had get smart for uh ten hours a day from seven o'clock at night until six or until five o'clock the next morning all the get smart episodes you could ever see well the the last day all they did was the last season to where the two of them got married and that was i mean that was the killer the series died right after that because well go ahead uh_huh same thing yeah the it seems like you can do so much more of the subtle hints and the subtle little plays on things before they they before they get married you know the minute they get married everything's supposed to be cut and dried and and well of course another one of their mistakes i think is they have a tendency to change characters or to change the [characters'] uh uh personalities well especially after they get married um couple of examples would be um well like i said this one about max or get well smart the female character barbara [feldon] she had been at the beginning the the intelligent one the the one who always solved the things and and figured out and kept max from getting real messed up well in short whenever they got married she got dingy you know why would they do that it made no sense unfortunately that's probably true well do you you watch um what is that show who's the boss that's uh that's on tuesday nights i think yeah well i i hardly ever watch it but as as i've seen it they've they've done sort of the same thing to where they've they started to let them get together and then they pulled them apart and i think they're thinking about that exact thing about the idea that if the show lets them uh get together then you lose part of what the [show's] all about so i always thought that was kind of weird uh_huh um right do you think that's why most rock stars nowadays keep their marriages secret or at least they keep it quiet i mean yeah no like madonna and sean penn now i don't particularly like either one of them but um uh their marriage was so highly publicized that there was no way that they could stay together or at least that's the way i look at it so i don't know yeah i would think so yeah it's they wouldn't be easy so um well that's kind of interesting so um well i guess that's about all we need to do isn't it yeah it has been becky i really appreciate it well i think i've um you're the second female i've talked to yeah it's kind of nice uh_huh bye bye okay okay uh_huh it's funny that those are my two my husband's two favorite shows too and i enjoy both watching both of them but i used to didn't like night court and i and the only reason i think i like it now is because i've seen it so much and i'm involved with the characters but i used to think um dan fielding was just too too [vulgar] and too [crude] for me and i told my husband that's the whole point but i i just it's i find him degrading at times i guess that is the point but sometimes it just oh i think it adds a probably adds a little bit of depth to his character i haven't watched um yeah i think so which in quantum leap you get even though the person is involved in so many other people's lives you still see a a real person in those situations he gets um he's doing amazing things but he's doing them within the bounds of what a normal person would do and i think that's i like that um i think my favorite show is hunter and i i like the old series better when um dede was in there yeah and um so uh uh and then the blond that they took out the one that got killed yeah i didn't enjoy her i i she was too much of a opposite of dede and i think that's what they try to do but i think we wanted to see dede there or somebody like her uh_huh the second lady uh_huh yeah they didn't yeah she would go her way and he would do his and i think that's what i didn't like uh_huh right and i like the new lady better but i'd just as soon that they didn't have the romance there i'd just as soon have the the police story without all the romance yeah i think most shows were doing that and then they went away from it and now they're starting to go back to it and maybe that's what the public wants i don't know but i just i like the the cut and dry solve the mystery and that's what i always enjoyed about it yeah uh_huh yeah just go ahead and quit the wondering and and yeah oh uh_huh i didn't i was going to say i didn't ever watch [moonlighting] but i heard that's what killed it that uh [interplay] died when they got married and so the show died uh_huh right halfway through yeah uh_huh oh yeah i i'm guess it's falling back into our traditional stereotype which a lot of shows yeah which kind of like in the big soap opera shows which i don't enjoy because of that but i've seen it before but i don't watch it regularly usually tuesday nights i'm out so uh_huh uh_huh yeah it's funny how we uh we we [romanticize] people like for instance where as the teenager you know you romance a [romanticize] a rock star but when he gets married then you don't care any more or something like that and i think it's the same with your characters on t v probably yeah i know it affected me when i was younger i'm not into rock stars too much lately but uh_huh yeah uh_huh it would have been hard wouldn't it i just the the publicity in and of itself much less the i mean when you get married you've got relationship to develop in the first place so having twenty million people watch you do that yeah yeah yeah i think we've covered our time it's been good talking to you you're the first man i've talked to everyone else has been a female so this is a change you've had a little bit of variety huh okay well thanks so much bye bye yeah well i can understand that it's that time of the year we just my wife and i just recently moved into our house so we're spend a lot of time on the house and out in the yard and things but um like to keep up to date too i guess in the since i got out of college which was about five years ago my t v viewing started to tend more towards uh documentary news programs things like that something that's going to keep my up to date i've kind of kind of gotten away from uh being a series watcher having to keep up to date with uh uh_huh yeah that makes a big difference okay i yeah i started too and uh kind of kind of worked away from that i i have a hard time sticking with something like like on t v because it like it gets real aggravating if you miss it for a week or two you feel kind of left out but um right i believe that uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's right yeah i know exactly how you feel that's right i uh when i first moved down here moved into the apartment and got cable and i guess i sort of kind of became [numb] nothing surprised me any more seeing it on the t v you know and then all of a sudden i started paying paying attention to network t v again once in a while right now we don't have cable and it's surprising how much it's changed the whole moral situation everything is just gone one whole complete direction different and we don't have any kids yet but i feel the same way it's really tough to find something that's going to be good and interesting for the kids even even cartoons um you know you watch some of the cartoons and kids aren't aren't even going to understand half the humor that's in there it's none of it's probably damaging lot of times right right oh yeah yeah that's right well that's true uh_huh i'm glad you said it and i didn't have to but that that that's the i feel the exact same way i sit i sit and watch some shows and i'm embarrassed for the people that are even involved in the show you know why do you do this to yourself yeah okay right now there's an idea okay yeah yeah yeah that's pretty good i can't handle it very long i i mean i'm i'm a sports fan but it's well it's kind of it's kind of like reading magazines any more if half of the time wasn't spent watching commercials it probably wouldn't be so bad but uh it it's you're missing an awful lot i'd rather personally rather watch see a game on t v than fight the crowds at the stadium but uh but uh no i don't sit down i'll sit down for the big games the super bowl and the championship you know things like that but i don't follow any team i check the scores the next morning and i know how everybody's doing and that [suffices] me but i like i like good comedy good humor once in a while well yeah uh_huh yeah it works you bet yeah yeah no i don't know if there's any any series that i pay attention to i try to watch cheers once in a while yeah it is in fact it's i think it's on tonight i just got in from outside so i so i'm kind of out of it things like that and i consider that fairly intelligent humor you know you can tell they pick up the words every once in a while yeah i try to yeah yeah you know it was it was just automatic too no matter where you were you stopped and sat down and watched it i think it's come around again it's gone through cycles uh_huh yeah that's right that's right right yeah that's for sure that is for sure well i guess there are a few things around still but sounds like you pretty much agree well been uh good talking to you okay you too bye well i haven't had too much of a chance to watch t v lately so probably everything i going to say is kind of dated yeah oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah i think when you're in college you kind of you have more of a regular schedule in terms of you can watch every week so yeah i i used to when my kids were real little and i was home i watched where i was home where i watched things on a more regular basis but right now the last things i watched regularly was thirty something when it first came out did you all ever watch that yeah yeah yeah right right i know but i tell you what um we're really strict with our kids about television and one night couple weeks ago it was just happened that we were exhausted and they wanted to watch and we said okay well we'll sit down and we'll you know look at what you want to see let's just turn it on and see what's on we could not find anything that had any kind of redeeming value in it so you know it was prime time it was what seven thirty eight o'clock on a week night and we have cable and there wasn't anything on any channel and the stuff that was on the prime the networks you know a b c n b c c b s was it was just um dribble you know i mean it wasn't even funny it wasn't creative it it was the worst i've seen i mean i have not watched prime time week night t v i guess in a real long time because i was shocked you know what i'm saying uh_huh right right uh_huh right oh yeah right it's just it's just uh like a necessary evil i mean when we when our children were younger when they were like four years old three years old five years old we just had sesame street and that was about it you know but now in order to seem you know humane and normal we do allow them to watch cartoons and stuff but it's just one of those things you know you have to shut your eyes or not listen or something because those drive you crazy if you're if you're in the room so but it's such a shame because it could be so good i don't understand why first of all the public puts up with it second of all why the networks think that you know we enjoy that kind of stuff it's hard to believe that nobody can be any more creative than that that can't be the problem it must be the marketing pressures and you know their demographic studies that they do that show you know that everybody's i q has dropped dramatically or something i know why do you do this i know i'm trying to think if there's anything i do you like uh i like stuff that's on great performances and i we used to watch mystery quite a bit and things like that stuff i guess that mostly public on public t v as a matter of fact you know when i was a kid excuse me my parents used to have we had this rule in our house for every hour of regular t v that we watched we had to watch an hour of public t v that was just the rule and if they saw us watching the something they'd say all right what did you see on what's new or there was some other the children's program i think at the time was called what's new so we had to give a little [oral] report before we could watch our program do you do you watch sports on t v are you a sports fan yeah right yeah yeah yeah that's true the traffic uh yeah uh_huh yeah yeah i i enjoy that but what do you where do you do you get that you don't have cable now i was going to say they have a comedy channel now but again you're in a situation where you're watching mostly uh commercials and then you're you know trying to pass the time to wait until the next comedian comes up you know what i did there was a time there where i could tape things and then i'd fast forward through the commercials saved a lot of time that way but that takes too much planning now that yeah is that still real good it used to be real good but is it oh oh okay yeah yeah right right isn't it such a long running program yeah they do have a good they do have good writers for that oh that makes me think do you watch saturday night live at all yeah we try to stay up too it's getting harder and harder ten years ago wasn't so hard to stay up yeah it was we stopped watching for a couple of years in the middle there but we started watching again but it's real different show than it was when it started it's funny now and it's better but it's real different than what it used to be but you can't be so can't be outrageous you know if you keep that same format there's only so long that you can be outrageous so yeah but you have to hunt hard for them yeah i guess so well yeah good talking to you take care bye yeah so uh what are your favorite t v shows oh i haven't watched that very much is that do you like that when was that on on a b c oh oh yeah well um um it may be that um it was recently replaced by actually by um by what may be my favorite t v show of because sort of uh um twin peaks yeah so twin peaks um what happened was i think twin peaks um went went off they moved to a saturday night for a while and then put and then put something i guess gabriel's fire on it and at thursday nights and then they moved um no gabriel's fire was on c b s i think i i take that back i'm not sure but anyway they moved it back and forth and that's when peaks was back in that time slot as well so i don't know no i have no idea i don't think i don't think that was on a b c anyway i don't know what happened to it though um it's hard to say i'm sort of a very big twin peaks fan and beyond that i just sort of watch anything that happens to be on i'm i'm half the time i'm a t v [addict] and the other half the time i just ignore it it's really bad yeah there's some new shows that i sort of like um have you seen this [shannon] field show or uh it's about a lawyer it's one of these lawyer shows you know they seem to be popular these days and there's a lot of those [blair] shows floating around yeah i just like i just finished watching that a few minutes ago um and it and that that's a interesting one i i i like that because there's there are i've noticed that every every major station now has their own law show there's l a law and there's um equal justice some other one law and order or something lots of lots of these things that are floating around now they seem to be popular shows do you like the law shows or that that makes logic also saves a lot of time with commercials oh i have i've i've i watched that late um i guess it's on late saturday nights or something that's entering the day as well have you have have you seen this often oh really yeah really i don't know that i that don't it it it seems like i mean if wrestling is prime time professional wrestling it seems like it's just just just like pros in a wrestling to me i don't i don't see any difference though i i don't understand it they consider it violent i have so ever i have seen it on where we are i live in uh rochester new york and i think a yes where are you you're uh everybody i speak to is in texas oh oh yeah but i'm i'm in new york and uh we seem we seem to have um i think the american [gladiators] is on sunday afternoons actually around here as well sometimes i think it's been on i think i've seen it during the day i know i've seen it during the day in florida when i was at my parents down there definitely seen it on on during the day down there and i don't think it's a very violent show i think it's funny i think it's a real good concept i think it's something completely new well yeah i think so i think because people sort of get through you know um i think that people sort of learn the importance of sort of physical fitness as well as the as well as you know some mental fitness and i think that people sort of learn good [sportsmanship] and so forth well don't they take people who have some sort of um big abilities like and and at least they used to when it when it the first ones i saw they had um a man on who was uh he played college football and almost went pro and they had a a woman who was a black belt in karate and she was the uh she was in the junior olympics or something or they seem to have people who have very very big sports backgrounds to have they leaned away from that sort of oh that's how they do it really yeah okay i just thought they had some yeah i thought they had some sort of i mean i thought they were just poor people like us i guess not that's great but maybe i'll try it one day i'll get on there one day and see if i can uh um what what do they win they they win money i think don't they really wow all that for getting tennis balls shot at you at a hundred miles an hour one little ball here and there yeah and this guy's beating you up so i don't know the beating up part i i actually feel the tennis balls would hurt they look like yeah they seem like a tennis ball but it almost doesn't look like it's almost livable yeah the best i i don't think i could i i could handle those tennis balls so what else to you tape besides american at there anything else huh okay oh okay uh_huh but i'm sure that's fun uh_huh oh okay well they seem to be on later all always right right before the news is when i catch them i i tend to if nothing else is in the town television at eleven o'clock just to watch the news and or or nightline or something just sort of get a good you know a good a good think for the day yes when is yours on oh gosh well i'm sorry i interrupted um yeah ours is on actually it ours is on at eleven it it's um eleven o'clock now here or eleven twenty five now here in new york um i think they they do that i think they put things on at um eleven o'clock here and i think they put it like eleven o'clock um california time like in california but in the middle they sort of um like central time or mountain time they they push things back so i was actually actually i'm not sure i was in i was in iowa awhile ago and noticed that everything was an hour earlier so does your prime time start at seven o'clock wait no no not not even the news but do they have like um do like sort of all the regular sitcoms and so forth start at seven o'clock you so like you know the regular television shows that are that are very popular do they start at seven or or at eight right because that would the eight o'clock here yeah that that would all start at at um that would all start at at eight o'clock here that wouldn't start at seven we have um at seven o'clock we just have um the they'll play you know they have old reruns of cheers or something from seven to seven thirty and then something else from seven thirty to eight but then at at eight o'clock is when everything starts which is which is strange i mean because yours start at seven and end to ten and ours start at at at at eight and end at eleven that's why we i i would actually like it better if everything started at seven and ended at ten oh that's great oh all the time do you watch cheers or there's there's it's at that was actually a big dilemma for me now because um cheers cheers and twin peaks are now on the same time one that i can't find anymore which is gabriel's fire yes it was usually on um thursday nights i don't know it was same time period yes you don't know what happened to gabriel's fire then i don't remember one from one station to another i keep forgetting one station what's your second favorite oh is he the reformed um [gambler] yes yes yes i really don't watch that much t v what i do is i tape the programs i want to watch and then on the nights i can watch i'll pick out something but um you're not kidding do you ever watch american [gladiators] midnight midnight i tape it yeah i tape it because i don't stay up that late to watch it i tape it but i understand uh that in england they play it at normal times because they don't consider that violent and the reason they have it on here so late is because they consider it a violent program and i'm like i don't believe this i don't either you're in new york oh i'm in dallas texas oh really oh i think it's great i love watching a [microbiologist] fighting off with a policemen or something else and competition i'm going oh great you know it's a it's a great role model for everybody oh yes i mean when i had uh i was watching it the first time i ever saw a [microbiologist] on there i thought well it just goes to prove it has nothing to do with your physical capabilities and uh there she was terrific she was really terrific they hold competitions in los angeles in um florida and minneapolis um trying to think of i think it's in four places around the united states they hold competition and the only requirement is of course your skill of passing these tests and that's it and we had a bar man from here in dallas area that made it there is a woman that uh made well she called herself a craft person so i'm not quite sure what she made and uh she made it i mean there is no your occupation has nothing to do with it strictly your skill huh_uh i think the last i heard was it's up to about a hundred fifty thousand dollars uh_huh yeah that's you know just minor just minor little ball here or there you know oh well they they come out with a lot of [bruises] too hey see i tape murder she wrote i like mysteries i like mysteries i tape um father [dowling] because that's another mystery and i don't have to concentrate too hard on them um most of the lawyer programs like uh law and order they're not on the times that i've got that i've watched because i haven't had t got t v guide around here in ages yeah your news is on at eleven ten i was just in the middle of watching it oh that's okay no problem no well they have it at six and they have it at nine and they have one at ten i'm trying to think both um let's see they start um evening shade at seven and then it goes to um what is it after evening um that's major dad at eight i think it is huh yeah it's it's stopped around here at ten and it goes into night programs at that point which could be one of you know many different night programs but it goes into night programs but uh do you ever watch cheers oh yeah oh yeah what are your favorite programs oh how funny i've seen the sign that goes to there i've well i think i've seen it in the distance but i have not even seen it and i have not seen the program so and and uh i know when we went to london it was really funny uh people recognized dallas texas by the the texas uh the the cowboys and by that program and that's that's the two things they associate with dallas texas so i and i they asked me uh several times several times they ask me why are there two bridges and i didn't know what they were talking about it took me a long time they're talking about the [viaducts] is that that is right isn't it because they ask me why are there two bridges going into dallas darned if i know i was blank looking you know i felt really dumb well there's water in the trinity i thought it was to going to oak cliff over the trinity oh do they uh oh i see uh_huh i think that is just a hoot that's one of those few that i do watch when the television is on my husband likes to watch t v it's on i usually read and watch t v and usually i can handle both at the same time you know because i am pretty sure where the t v [plot's] going but that's one of the few that i just actually watch because it's funny i really enjoy that one now we watch a lot of those uh and the ones that sometimes will hook me to put down my book will be the one there was one uh recently about the gettysburg address and they wrapped a [fictional] story around it and i thought that was well done and and it it caught my attention i wound up watching the whole thing uh i guess the awards [ceremonies] and there seems to be [dozens] of them per year maybe i've spent two minutes watching to see what they on and if they make a fool of themselves or not but they could take that whole collection and it would disappear and i'd never miss it for a minute especially the beauty [pageants] i i particularly take issue with those i i really dislike those you know my husband used to just be [riveted] to the dallas cowboys and now we're out running around and if they're if they're playing he'll turn it on while we're in the car to see what the score is and he'll listen but even i've said hey look you're fascinated with this you sit and listen to the cowboys let me run in here and i'll do some things and i'll come back and you don't have to miss he'll say na na na and he doesn't he doesn't watch it he like i say if it's convenient he'll listen to it but he just doesn't watch them on t v like he used to uh oh those people yeah oh how neat well i actually got to go see them win in the super bowl when they went down to new orleans and i i i make the trip and did the whole new orleans before the game and the game and everything and uh that was that was a lot of fun but i don't know i haven't been as i'll tell you what i love to watch and this is not this is rarely on television but what is a lot of fun to go attend is this arena football yeah i like it so much better than straight football it it doesn't it has a lot of different rules the field is half the size and there's no they can't call time and things like that it moves a lot faster uh again i think it may be on cable more than anything else we don't have cable well oh they're everywhere they're on every corner everything you've ever wanted to see well and i like to rent tapes because you can put the thing on hold if you get a telephone call or something like that or it becomes snack time for various reasons you can put you know the only thing this dance with wolves i want to see it in a theater because i understand that that your you'll lose fifty percent of it if you don't that's what i hear too well my husband smokes he's one of the dinosaurs that still smokes and you can't smoke in movie theaters and that has really slowed down the forward progress of going to movies but i haven't really cared up until this point but i we are this weekend going to go see dance with wolves it's that's it we will do it so yeah finally well i tend my job tends to be very demanding and to sit down and to mindlessly either read or just mindlessly stare in absolute comfort isn't as bad as it used to uh it's kind of hard to put my finger on a on a favorite t v program however uh one that i've been watching for a number of years is dallas and uh and uh it's going to be going off the air uh let's see a week from a week from tonight it's going to be its last show so i've i've kind of enjoyed watching over the years i've been disappointed in it and also pleased in it and uh i was uh greatly disappointed uh when i did move down to plano to uh find out that the uh the uh great south fork ranch was really only a one bedroom house uh_huh oh well that's a shame uh_huh yes uh_huh yeah well it's it's uh when you look at the uh you know route seventy five coming down there i mean it's actually a bridge but it's a bridge over top of [roadway] there's no water there i mean uh yeah well there's there uh well they i think when they open the show up they give you two different views of dallas one from the east and one from the west and that's why but it kind of [confuses] people but uh uh i enjoy uh uh a lot of different comedies um i think it's mainly for an escape um you know you uh my job is not the most [thrilling] in the world and uh i enjoy laughing and uh some of the shows that uh are on the air some are just purely you know brain [drainers] and then there's other ones that uh deal with uh in a funny manner uh socially relevant things and uh one show that comes to mind is like designing women uh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yes yes it uh it has been very entertaining and and also uh the the issues they deal with uh really tends to open open your eyes as well as your mind to some of the problems and uh i've i've really enjoyed that one since it came on um i don't like the politics surrounding the program though but i mean other than that you know there seems to be a little in fighting going on between the [producers] and one of the actresses but uh and then uh i've kind of gotten hooked on p b s stuff uh public uh t v uh i like things like nova and uh some of the the special programs they come up with on nature and stuff i just enjoy watching that stuff uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah well i'm one of those rare guys who i i rarely ever sit down and watch a whole sporting event um if ever watch one uh there's just not that much i'm i'm interested in um for a while i i i watched some football but i've just got too many more important things in my life now than to sit around and and watch a baseball game uh_huh well i think it was great when they were you know like world [champs] and they were doing real well i uh i personally i i came from the washington area and so i was a big washington redskins fan and uh when i came down to dallas it was uh you know i found myself rooting for the home team i uh in fact i have a uh a baseball hat that was signed by tony [dorsett] and [hershel] walker the only year they played together on the dallas cowboys oh wow huh yeah huh no i haven't seen that uh_huh uh_huh uh gee i'll have to try to catch that sometime it's yeah that's probably true yeah we don't either i uh i couldn't rationalize paying you know it's like if i pay for a movie channel then i have watch what movies they want me to watch when they want me to watch them and if i you know if i didn't use cable for anything else other than the basic well i can get that for free and well i really don't need c n n i see enough bad news all the time i don't need to see more of it so i i've kind of uh [rationalized] that it's it's probably a lot more economical for us to just go rent the movies we want to see and of course when we were living in texas it was real convenient with tom thumb you know having movies uh back then it was ninety nine cents i mean go yeah um you can see them a lot sooner than you can see them on any of the stations like h b o or cinemax uh_huh oh yes i do too yeah and i uh i've been trying to get my wife to go with me to go see it she she doesn't like going to movie theaters because usually they're dirty and uh you know she just doesn't like them and um she doesn't think that she could sit still for three hours and watch the movie and i've told her you know everybody i know that has seen it has said that the three hours go really quick and uh so i'm i'm hoping i can get her talked into it soon um um that's great yeah but as as far as uh regular t v shows i mean i've got some some shows that that that i would be afraid to admit to you that i've actually sat down and watched and then there's there's others that uh uh i wish i had time to see it's like i enjoy watching cheers it's very funny some of the things in it are [mindless] but i i just don't have time to watch it um i think about the only night that i really sit in front of the t v set all night long probably is on monday night because um i work so hard over the weekend doing other things with the kids and stuff and going to work on monday monday night i'm just worn out so i kind of use it as the time to catch up on correspondence and and look over things and i can sit in front of the t v set and look at you know do go through my mail and and watch t v at the same time uh_huh yeah i've been sitting here [alternately] reading and watching television you were he was waiting for what again that's what this was yeah well let me go a head and push one okay okay well basically i like comedy shows uh murphy brown uh designing women yeah what do you like oh okay that's okay we'll been married eleven years and um we went through that after about five years of marriage my old t v that i had from college when we got married finally went out and we went we made it almost about eighteen months without a television yeah but then all of a sudden when you get one you realize um gee i needed that you know and then you get to remote control the stereo [phonic] whatever all of those things oh yeah and then you never use the v c r and now we have two of them and now it's like we're just glad we never went out and bought a compact disk player cause we wouldn't use it yeah i mean it's cause your never home you know you're working you're at school well i don't know t v shows what can i tell you um basically junk that's on television that's my opinion yeah um i like things like i just mentioned have you ever seen murphy brown or anything like that you don't think so oh that's the one with [candice] [bergen] in it um yeah that would do it right nobody does yeah then uh_huh i know and the uh well i don't you're probably at least ten years younger then i am but i could tell you in school that uh the only thing that ever saw in the dorm was uh the one soap opera all my children and until then i never paid attention to soap operas and to this day twenty years later i'm like i'm in my thirties i'm not that old but i'm going jeez i can't believe that thing's still on television yeah they you know about the only other kinds of things i like um i like to watch a lot of news um don't you miss that with not having a television so far how long has it been since you've had one oh my god yeah you've got about another six months and then you'll get one by then uh_huh yeah yeah my husband is an only child too and he did miss it that's kind of why we got back after eighteen months and i'm trying to think about the only other show i watch yeah i like cosby l a law is probably i've seen cheers more then that i hate to admit but uh cheers yeah i thought it was good i've actually been to that bar in boston it's a nice you know it's a pretty funny show yeah it's just a you know over priced downtown boston yuppie you know tourist attraction i'm trying to think what else is on television i know it's like yeah who didn't isn't that sad uh_huh oh not no i like the pro actually i like pro basket ball as opposed to i watch pro football but i like the n b a play offs back when like the [pistons] were in them and now where are you calling from sherman texas oh i'm in dallas i was just saying where am i calling you from you know well then i don't know if you like the the mavericks or not they haven't been that good this year um we're supposed to talk about television let's see you don't have a t v yeah i'm talking to you from dallas uh_huh my voice you mean oh no that's just because i've moved around and uh i'm originally from pennsylvania so uh actually i'm a big chicago [bears'] fan real big and uh um i always watch them no matter who's on of course you like them too right do you oh okay yeah there you go and then and um i'm trying to think what else i like to watch on television sports wise i like i like tennis so i mean i'm not i haven't played in years but um i just like to watch you know two players really get go at it it gets boring after a while but i don't go ahead oprah uh_huh yeah on the on the tracks yeah is maybe cause she got [chubby] again or something was she was her show big when you where in school since you haven't been out that long was her show big when you where in college since you haven't been that long was it yeah i saw reruns of it i saw tapes of her yeah gee i know isn't that terrible i know i guess with that money who cares i don't know let's see what else is on television oh if you don't have a v c r we just got one after nine years don't even spend your money on it yeah cause you know if you like movies like we do you do it once in awhile and then you know you see it when it first comes out if you really want to see it and then it usually comes on television within two years you know yeah really that's television i don't know in general on this project we're suppose to talk about so i mean that's okay don't i mean i i always yeah oh that's okay i had one lady one time they called in i just signed up my husband had been on this project um and i i she called in and it was all about we don't have children and it was all about um sending your kids to college and why you would advise them and she was from boston and she i shouldn't talk about this but she was pretend she was a television show and she was very [snooty] and uh her kids were going to places like amherst and b u and i said i didn't know what that was i she went oh and i thought um so i know i mean it's like don't worry about it television at least you know everybody's at least seen television during the war did you laugh when they had that man on uh what was his name wolf [blitzer] that guy that was a reporter for c n n his name is wolf [blitzer] did you see it him when he was doing the coverage of the gulf uh no that was the other guy from c b s oh what was his name uh i can't remember his name yeah but just they made jokes about him like on the carson show and all of that jay [leno] uh_huh yeah he's funny yeah saturday night live has changed a lot if you haven't seen it in about a year i mean i haven't seen it in a couple of months but uh yeah actually i think it has i mean they finally like and some of those people they really have funny characters on there yeah they have one character on there they just call it pat and they you don't know if it's a man or a woman and they say well they're trying to [deduce] what he or she is so to see if it's a female they say well do you carry a purse and pat says no i carry a [fanny] pack so you still don't know because a [fanny] pack is man or now days you know yeah it's weird yeah it's yeah it is pretty funny i mean they do some crazy things yeah wayne's world hey man and what's that other one where they where they do the um [skits] well you've must have seen it recently you probably have some friends that have television i said you probably have some friends that have television you know i mean you're not totally out of the loop i mean yeah yeah i mean you really you can do without one but after awhile it will start um you know i mean you just kind of all of sudden cause you're going well jeez you hear about something that somebody else talked about and you just end up doing it but if you haven't been married that long you know you're doing other things is that on tape there you go yeah oh my what else is on i don't know what did they watch in college when you where in where did you go to school oh that's a good school yeah i know about that they don't have a southern accent up there though you must be native texan well your from indiana yeah oh real southern yeah uh_huh deep one you have a deep one yeah it is um at purdue i'm trying to think i went to high school in chicago i'm trying to think what purdue kids watch uh_huh okay do you know that i've never i think other then accept on a commercial or on news coverage or something like entertainment tonight i've never seen m t v that's kind of what i've heard i mean that's yeah yeah no we don't and i wouldn't even i mean i don't even have cable i don't think it's worth ten to thirty bucks a month to pay somebody uh to you know give me a hundred and fifty um channel access to something i'm never going to i mean my neighbor her husband sits in front of the television all of time and they've only been married five years have a cute one year old kids i swear to god he works from eight where you on the phone a long time yeah to he called in to get somebody on the line it took him about half an hour to find somebody okay uh_huh yeah well we don't have a t v i mean we have two t v but neither one of them work so for the last year i mean we just got married and we decided well for the first year we we won't get a t v so i mean i'm totally out of it as far as t v goes really yeah v c r and everything else really yeah yeah i don't think so well see another thing was i worked on second shift for like a year and a half so i would never see any shows any way and then before that i was in college for four years and i never watched t v then because i didn't have time i mean i did watch t v it was soaps and m t v cause the girls i lived with never changed the channels yeah me too i know i mean i i almost got hooked on it cause everybody would took about it at dinner and everything else it you know it was like um well about almost a year yeah well i mean i never really watched it much growing up but i thought you know my husband would really like miss it because he he was an only child and he he's seen a lot of t v and i figured oh no it will never last but i mean i don't miss it that much that's funny i've seen cheers probably five times and i've seen cosby show probably ten times it's pretty cool i like that whenever i watch it oh you have yeah i've heard it's pretty cool yeah yeah i watched a lot of t v when the war was on and then uh i like watching a lot of like college basketball and and pro football i mean that sounds kind of stupid but i do like it yeah uh sherman texas where are you from so are you really from texas though well sounds like you're from up north yeah oh i was going to say cause i wondered if you really you know if had any teams you like watching from up north or something yeah yeah well i'm from indiana yeah so i like the bears i watch uh-huh yeah yeah i used to watch oprah a lot in the afternoons before i went to work and stuff and i see her every once in awhile like if i go workout at t i you know they have those t v right in front of the [treadmills] i don't know she's not as good as she use to be but her [disposition's] gone downhill was what oh yeah it's pretty cool i mean back then and the show did you see the show where she lost all of that fat she she [wheeled] it out on a cart that was so cool and then man she's really [porked] out again i guess but yeah i'd eat too really yeah we got we've got the dollar [cinema] in sherman so we usually see like first rate movies right away yeah i'm sorry well it's hard to talk about something it's like me talking about taxes or something i feel bad cause i mean i should know something about t v shows what was that uh_huh um i might of i forget was he the guy that got captured oh yeah but what about this wolf guy oh you know what my absolutely favorite show is david letterman i love that guy and saturday night live i use to watch that like i'd come home from second shift and watch him like for an hour and a half he's great huh_uh has it gotten better really uh_huh yeah that's funny like when wayne's world i love that well i don't know i've seen it off and on i think uh yeah yeah that's where i've seen it because i've seen it off and on probably yeah we we bug our we you know one friend of ours got rid of his because we motivated him because we you know cause we were getting along out ours so he sold his but the rest of our friends we go and watch them uh_huh is that on tape that's funny oh purdue yeah no why do i do i have a southern accent are you serious i've been here three years oh wow that's scary we watch uh m t v twenty four hours a day and then every now and then they'd days they taped days you know and watch it like four or five times a day that's the girls i lived with and you know other then that i'm sure they watched yeah you aren't missing anything it's pretty bad especially if you have kids don't let them watch it no well do you watch much t v your kids how many kids do you have oh goodness i have got two that is about all i want yeah they do they are still babies oh well we have only get two channels we do not have cable but i am not crazy about t v much it just well it kind of is an idiot box now sesame street is a good program because uh i do have that on videotape and i will let him watch that every once in a while and he has learned to count to twenty from that so yeah uh_huh okay right right but they also have a lot easier time disciplining their kids than real people do yeah oh i love quantum leap um yes that is a good show uh_huh uh_huh right he always got to change history is what it is usually yeah that it is so good i was glad when they put that back on this channel because like i said we only get two channels because we do not get cable and still my little boy he watches [videotapes] he won't um this is terrible i do not like him sitting in front of the t v all day well it but it is a not really a good baby sitter it is really not he needs to get outside and play and he is four years old and he just does not like to go out there by himself and i will let him watch the t v when i am wanting to get my house work done but other than that i do not like him glued to the t v all the time huh_uh uh_huh well we made the right we made the mistake of getting [robocop] and that is one of the worst oh i do not let him watch it anymore because the the pieces like especially where they kill somebody it is just not good i mean it is just real violent i mean uh_huh uh_huh you would see somebody get shot they would just fall down yeah so graphic today it is it is really graphic they try to make it too realistic and yeah now he is watching honey i [shrunk] the kids right now it is it is cute and that little roger rabbit on before that that is cute and they have got the he man uh masters of the universe the movie that is a real cute show he man yeah good versus evil huh oh well it sounds like we have the same tapes for our kids anyway yeah uh_huh yeah yeah they do have like those parental control things on the uh remote controls you know where you can block out what channels you do not want them to watch uh_huh well my my uh stepfather and them have my stepfather my father in law and them have that and uh they do not have any kids but they was told how to use that but still when the kids get older they learn how to break through that parental control huh i think [alls] you have to do is push a couple buttons so it is it is i am hoping that he will grow up not really caring much for those movies because now we have got a lot of western tapes [josey] wells now he loves to watch [josey] wells yeah clint [eastwood] and like the man from snowy river we have oh my husband likes westerns and he also likes star trek now star trek is good movies good shows the uh series we have got a lot of those uh_huh the next generation yeah my little boy is crazy about captain kirk and my little girl has mister [spock's] ears i told my husband he [cursed] my kids they were both born with [pointy] ears not real [pointy] my little boy grew out of it no kirk douglas oh michael landon oh now there yeah like highway to heaven here are some cookies kyle yeah i liked highway to heaven and i and i thought that was kind of neat though but i loved little house on the prairie especially when [melissa] [gilbert] grew up she was kind of like my [idol] when i was growing up because i am twenty seven so it is you know she is about the same age as i am i wanted to be just like her because she is so cute yeah and well i liked it but there that is about the only uh show i have seen where every time they sit down at the table they pray before they eat and i thought that was real neat because there is not a lot of shows that do that and uh they have this little cartoon that is on sunday mornings with jot i remember him in school but i do not it is just this little dot with arms and feet and little eyes and his parents are there they have it like before one of the church things uh you know church that comes on and it is a just this little dot and he will go out and get himself into trouble and come home and the parents will tell him that there is a [verse] in the bible that will help him with that and it is just well it is usually we go to church on sundays but we will miss every once in a while and i will let kyle watch that and he just well i even like jot i mean i it is funny it is on channel well let us see you are in plano uh it is twelve or ten down here oh well this is of the mornings uh around nine or ten i think it is before one of the i think it is before the first baptist in sherman [airs] i think that is the one that it uh comes on before it is real cute you know what he is bouncing around and his name is jot and then he has got a friend named cat and i think the dog is the only one that is not a a dot but it is real cute and like i say they they teach him stuff from the bible and i think it is just a real cute show i am trying to get my little boy into reading uh like church books and things we have got like [noah's] ark and oh lord is my we have got about eight or twelve books for him just little bible stories and he is he is getting to where he likes them we got him a little jesus doll uh about a year ago and he has always kept that he likes it uh_huh uh_huh so it's a a christian songs oh that sounds fun that's something well yeah well i watch in the evening with my kids i have four children well yeah it keeps you busy doesn't it uh my children like to watch sesame street i watch with them every once in a while but that is not my favorite programs uh_huh uh_huh yeah it can be very educational there are shows that i like uh i like good family shows uh though uh i let my kids watch things like little house on the prairie and the cosby show is uh is uh kind of unrealistic as a family unless you live in upper class and have money i think that sometimes the things they show on there though uh the problems that their kids get into are are good to uh show that they do have problems anyway uh yeah i mean like i said real life is not that easy and uh i watch a show that i like for entertainment uh it is called the quantum leap i watch that show every time and uh i i like uh how the how he has to help with the people that he that he becomes uh because it is not a show that he just becomes these people and then he lives there for a while and then he is gone he has to do something positive to help them so i yeah yeah it me too me too uh_huh no that is not terrible i do not think that is terrible at all well uh_huh well i do not think it is it is healthy all the time either uh and my kids like to to go play with their friends and so i guess i do not mind too much when they do watch a little bit now i there are shows i do not have cable either and there are shows that i really put my foot down on if there starts to be a lot of violence i do not go for that i will not let them watch that if there is a lot of language or uh_huh well it you know today i watched and it is like they show bloody you know things and they show it in slow motion and and everything like that and before in a western or something in the in the [olden] days yeah and they were gone and and it was not uh not like today uh uh_huh yeah too much realism i think sometimes i don't oh that is a fun show oh i really like that one uh_huh the cartoon or the oh uh_huh that has good moral values too uh_huh well uh i think uh yeah yeah yeah at least we have the same ideas yeah language too language and violence and sexual you know things i i get kind of uh saying i am sorry kids this is and i i think it is important that i see what they are watching if you mean in cable oh i do not know because i do not have that but uh_huh oh do they they are too smart uh_huh uh_huh well i think that is a good show too yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh i think not even the old one but the new one too i like both of those uh_huh yeah oh yeah oh well oh that is not a problem anyway but it is fun to you know seeing the show anyway uh now i like uh everything oh no not michael douglas um oh i can't think of his name no the the man right now who is having uh who has done uh [bonanza] and then he did little house on the prairie michael landon there you go michael landon i have always liked and thought he did good shows uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh yeah i and i liked that show because it it portrayed i thought really well uh pioneer kind of days you know but yeah uh_huh yeah now what is that uh_huh oh i have not seen that uh_huh what channel is it on uh_huh well i will look and and see yeah we go to church on sunday about one o'clock is when our meetings start and uh it is in the morning okay well we'll look uh_huh uh_huh yeah well i really like now we get channel fifty five although we do not have cable we do get channel fifty five and that is a uh like a a song they sing songs on there but they're uh [worship] through music kind of things but they are up to date uh and some of them are like uh videos like music videos that go along with the songs about church and jesus and and i yeah the it's called the christian music station or something like that and uh i really like that uh i turn that on on sunday mornings and i do not you know and so my kids do not uh have an well i know that uh i have only like two or three favorite television shows i think one of my favorite then is from the guy stephen is it [brochco] who does like l a law uh_huh and uh he also did [hillstreet] blues i like those type of shows uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah me too i know they uh i think they're different than a lot of other shows of which they have like the reruns in the middle of the season and then towards the end when everybody else is showing reruns they start showing some of their newer stuff so i thought that was really interesting the way that they did that oh and so you must watch a lot of uh disney or cartoons then uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh oh that's true that's true well i noticed that my kids are uh older now they're uh getting close to the teenage years but they did we watched all of mister rogers and everything but even some of your uh cartoons can be very violent and you know they talk about death and we were watching uh-oh gosh bugs bunny just last night and um i think it was on i have to remember which channel but anyway uh we were watching that and it was talking about opera and they showed like what they thought an opera would be and one of the things was to kill the rabbit kill the rabbit and i thought oh how violent you know to kill the rabbit so he ended up killing the rabbit in the end uh but then of course the rabbit comes back to life and says well see this is how an opera is supposed to be and i thought gee whiz if a little kid was watching this you know that would be pretty violent even for a small child uh_huh right that's right that's right well i don't think cartoons portray that but like yeah yeah a cat has nine lives but they don't they just have one like we do oh so that's really funny but uh we've gotten uh_huh go ahead uh_huh yes yes yeah that's true that's a good show i used to watch uh dallas i don't i don't know where you're at dallas yeah i used to watch dallas years ago and somewhere in the middle i got uh bored and uh so i in fact i didn't even watch the finale uh you know that's about how disinterested i had become uh_huh well uh_huh yep yep i know i know was it actually based on a book oh but you were just talking about okay okay yeah right that's true that's true stay uh_huh uh_huh you know and if you notice on dallas they lost all the women yes so the men mainly stayed but the women were the ones who left and i thought that was very interesting and wondered kind of wondered about that uh well anyway that's a whole new issue oh goodness so anyway i don't know if our five minutes are over yet but we uh we also have the paid uh television channels uh the only thing i don't like about it especially with teenagers is that all the violence the sex the nudity and the curse words you know and so i know they didn't pick up these curse words from me so uh they had to have picked them up from uh the t v one nice thing though about the cable company we use they have uh they have that little parental uh uh key yeah yeah uh_huh so i i have that at home and i keep the keys with me and that's about the only way that i can that i can do it because their natural curiosity you know to go towards that way and want yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's true well and here lately it hasn't been that cool anyway with the humidity being so high well it was nice talking to you okay talk with you later good bye uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh yeah yeah we really enjoy that too uh i don't get a lot to watch a whole lot of t v we have a couple of young children and so we're usually outside and so it's usually the nine o'clock shows that if we get them in bed we usually watch that and l a law is one of my favorites yeah yeah well we have on sesame street and mister rogers that kind of stuff and i think those programs are really good for children i know that both of mine have probably learned quite a bit from there it's kind of nice to know that they're just going to be seeing you know not a lot of violence and that kind of stuff and they usually uh show a lot of things that really teach them different things about the world so my older son he's going to be five and he's more into watching the cartoons and that kind of stuff now uh_huh yeah oh yeah oh well yeah and you know they especially boys i mean they're always talking about shooting and killing and all that kind of stuff and i don't think that they really realize that death is forever you know and showing them something like that really doesn't teach them that it is no and to get them to feel like that that's just pretend i think is the hardest part you know yeah i was just going to say i know that at least before our kids were born we used to always enjoy watching the cosby show thursday nights usually had pretty good with that and as far as very good comedy i like to watch designing women if the kids are in bed by then we're we're in dallas yes well i did watch it just to see what it was and it wasn't really that great so i think after a while they just kind of you know there's no new stuff they can do they've done everything dirty in the book you know so well no i imagine everything you could think of you know had a hard time and i think maybe with dallas as far as they lost a lot of characters that had been around at the first where i don't know i never watched knots landing but i think they've had a lot of their characters stay around yeah yeah oh uh_huh yeah where you can lock up the channel or whatever yeah yeah and i don't know the way the generations are growing up now i mean i just think they watch so much more t v i try to limit what they watch they aren't sitting in the house watching t v all day because i think it's good for them to have physical activity and that kind of stuff too and especially in the summer time we aren't in the house very much in the evenings it's the only cool time to be outside well true well it was nice talking to you too okay good bye okay what are your favorite things to watch uh_huh yeah we do not watch a lot of t v we try to watch it on thursday nights we usually watch l a law i like that real well and cheers we like to watch that uh we sort of got hooked on la law uh do you ever watch that yeah and i i have watched [thirtysomething] some in the last couple seasons i was sort of sorry to see it go too yeah yeah i thought a lot of the like the problems that michael and hope had in their marriage and stuff i can relate to some of those things just the dynamics of it and everything oh really yeah uh_huh yeah you are too tired to do anything oh it's better to spend time with your kids i think though than glued in front of the t v anyway probably more worthwhile i just don't i don't think there's as many good things to watch as there used to be really right yeah oh uh_huh yeah i have seen parts of that before it is interesting do you watch sports much on t v yeah yeah it's slow yeah we are like that and occasionally we will like on if we do not have anything to do or kind of bored and we just want to sit in the house or something we will watch a little bit of a golf tournament but uh you can not take a whole lot of that either it's pretty slow yeah do you we went to the movies a lot on weekends and watch them at home because there's just on friday and saturday nights there's nothing good on and uh_huh yeah uh_huh do you have cable t v we do not either i thought we were the only ones who did not have it uh_huh gosh yeah uh_huh huh yeah yeah well we had it for awhile and it just seemed like we never watched it any we did not have the movie channels we just had all the normal ones that come and we just never watched any of them we kept a log for a month of every time we watched it and it seemed like we did not watch even half an hour so we decided to just cancel it it does improve the reception a little bit though that's the only thing yeah well i can not uh think of too much else to say since we are not big watchers well it was nice talking to you bye oh uh let's see i uh i have enjoyed uh [thirtysomething] in the past uh now that it has gone off uh some comedy shows uh i can not can not think of off hand but what what are your what is yeah yeah yeah uh yeah yeah we we we try to catch that most most nights yeah it it was kind of interesting uh some people complained about uh uh the kind of whining or whatever on it i i really did not think it it was that way i think it had some some good uh good situations that it presented yeah well i think i think a lot of people you know kind of felt that way but they had a lot of uh uh counseling groups that use some of the episodes as as examples of things that were going on and and uh you know that they called interaction between people and sort of to use as uh as a way of getting people to talk about their problems and that sort of thing uh we kind of uh our t v viewing has uh slowed down a little bit since our our daughter came along so uh that that tends to uh put a [cramp] in your viewing because by the time you get through getting her ready for bed and everything uh it's uh very little t v time left yeah yeah that's right no i i can not uh i don't think there were uh i have not i have not uh uh there are not as many good shows that i that i continuously like to watch as much as i used to i uh you know i uh i used to could be able to name ten shows or so you know that i felt were worth my time to watch but uh i uh you know very seldom like to watch you know those there's a couple now that i tend to want to watch i like uh home improvement shows like bob [vela's] uh home again on saturday morning it's i notice it's like it's like this old house yeah but it's uh it's on instead of being on p b s it's on regular t v but it's uh it's kind of interesting because they [renovate] an old house and yeah so i like to watch that and uh some some things on p b s i like to watch but uh yeah if it's if it's a team or something that i am really interested in i am not one to just watch a football game just just to be watching it or or i am not a big basketball or baseball fan if it unless it's baseball if it's some if it's a team i really like i may watch but uh baseball to me is a little hard to watch on t v for an extended period yeah it's so slow that you just get bored you know i i will switch between something else and and a baseball game going back and forth you know watching it but i usually if if if it's a football team i really like a college team or or pro team that i am fond of i usually will sit and watch that but uh that's the yeah yeah it's kind of like like baseball right i think that that's what more people are doing and i think that's you know as as t v i think the less good shows being on t v has caused a lot of people to do to do that uh you know get more movies and watch i know we we have done that too in the past uh we do not do it quite as much now cause our baby will not let us watch them but uh you know we usually will we used to rent uh two or three movies on a weekend and and try to watch no uh we live in no no we uh the uh development we moved into was they have it on one like right across the street from us but when they built our section they did not did not put it in and we have been there about two years now and they are still still do not have it so i am hoping that that soon they will they will i have contacted them about this and they say that well it's it's they look they every year they look at uh different areas and try to determine where where uh the most houses will be and so they uh they look and they when they when we reach a certain number of people in that area they will put one in put some in or they will at least consider it so yeah um yeah yeah i have i put some put in some uh an antenna a really good antenna and uh it's really helped you know ours and it's not been too bad i have not really missed it that much there's certain things that i have that i want to see you know occasionally like a football game a college game or something that happens to be on cable or some old movie but the uh i i have not been bothered by it too much so right okay alright bye okay so i do a little bit more than i think usual people do because i am here alone during the day and i like it just for the noise um um it just depends on what it is i mean i have my favorite things that i do and then some fun thing to do sometime um what about you right well see that's great yeah well right well i think that well part i think that's partially true too i think you have to have the will and the and uh anyway i think it you are you would be susceptible to stuff and it has to be reinforced at another level too but anyway what would you watch if you had you know this week to watch do you like specials oh oh oh right yeah well we have cable also and sometimes you can um get the h b o specials and sometimes those are really pretty hysterical so i i like to watch comedy i mean and that's something but i am not real up to date on what's going on now i i guess i have my old favorites but i am hooked on you know like bob newhart is still on i watch him and uh you know something on that level i i also enjoy uh i do not know sunday mornings it's channel thirteen i watch a lot of thirteen uh the [mclaughlin] group and i i just laugh i mean i think that's so hysterical these guys it's just so much fun it's just it's just a lot of fun watching that i mean i do not agree with a whole lot of the stuff the they say but it's fun you know so yeah i like to be entertained i really do oh now that was fabulous and that you know yeah yeah yeah i know so you know well there's certain i mean i have got um my t v in the kitchen here and uh you know if there's something like cooking shows i love to watch cooking shows i i really do i know i i yeah and and there's some um in fact one of the water color shows i know has inspired me to take water color lessons you know so you know things like that you get a whole lot of exposure yeah oh uh_huh she got you a yeah oh well see that's but she was probably depressed to begin with you know what i mean yeah [grumpy] to begin with yeah uh_huh i hate that show yeah i i good is not that amazing how old are your kids oh okay so that's yeah i had forgotten about that see it's just my husband and i and so i do not have that you know i that constant influence of the kids shows and all that but uh um i don't know yeah right right and and you know we get it at school too anyway so you might as well not [reinforce] it you know i know i remember going to my parents were a lot like too and of course we did not have any of the variety you know kids have but all the watch [rawhide] and all those shows and my parents never let me watch anything like that i could watch [yogi] bear you know what kind of culture was that and i remember going to school the next day and everybody would be asking oh did you see that did you see how he did that and did you see and i could never participate and it always made me feel a little bit you know a [loner] like i you know but uh but see then my parents i think then you have to replace it with other things you know to uh really yeah that's true or you go rent a video up at the store and come home and sit down and watch it well that's you know that's something people do not do well here we are talking on that subject but that's that's an interesting concept i have got to stick in my uh you know work with kids but uh first how much television watching do you do uh_huh that's right but do you actually watch it pay attention to it or is it more of a company uh_huh uh_huh okay right well actually i work full time and when i am not working i am running and i do not watch a lot of television and i am very selective in what i watch if there's something that i absolutely want to watch i will turn it on and watch it and then turn it off i probably watch television four hours a week max and and uh if if i do not find something that i really want or really want to watch well then i just do not turn it on i would rather listen to music part of it is that uh i think we need to be very selective about the kinds of things that come to us on a subliminal basis and i think that if we are doing other things and these programs come in sometimes they influence us and we do not know where that influence came from yeah uh right right right of course i uh that's right i uh well last night for example i really would have liked to have watched [unsolved] mysteries those are fascinating to me if i have the opportunity i watch it unfortunately i was with someone else who was flipping channels i hate that i do not care a whole lot for some of the contemporary humor in our comedy programs although nobody can appreciate comedy any more than i can but i would prefer to find a good comedian on one of the educational channels or one of the older [comedians] uh_huh that's right and some of those are fine programs uh_huh uh_huh i i enjoy comedy uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i enjoy that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's right uh_huh uh_huh right right well yeah i watch it for entertainment but i also watch it for uh cultural impact i do a lot of channel thirteen channel three some of the educational channels and i watch for special programs that have special a special play a special concert uh i recently watched a [tribute] to three of the finest opera stars uh and it was fabulous i was just absolutely you just held you breath in some of those and uh oh i was just it makes [chills] all over you so i i may or may not even look at the t v guide but if i have time i may flip through and say hey this looks good if i finish this task i can watch that in an hour uh if the hour comes and i do not get a chance to watch it so what uh_huh uh_huh i do too it makes me want to cook and then i eat and then i get fat so i just let other people watch then i eat what they cook oh i think that's marvelous yeah oh yeah i took a lot of my college courses i took some of my college courses on television so that it's very successful for some of those things but i think i really got stung very badly about having influence in your life or at least i saw a very bad example of having television influence your life uh my husband had an aunt who was addicted to soaps and i want you to know that became the most suspicious [cantankerous] contrary old woman ever walked absolutely i do not know who she thought she was but she just got to the point where you could might near you could almost hear those soaps being [echoed] in her voice and that attitude being demonstrated and for her to miss a soap it was a big [withdrawal] and well i do not know well she was [grumpy] to begin with there's no doubt about that but uh but you could clearly see those influences and in my youngsters i know that one day uh my youngsters were watching the three [stooges] and i always thought that was just casual slap stick comedy but when one tries to lift the other one up with a pipe wrench i decided that was not funny any more and i really i really feel very strong about the bart [simpson] show i think that is the kids watch that and that's absolutely the [mouthiest] kid i ever saw and i just i do not like it mine are grown but i have grandchildren and young children around and uh for a four year old to think bart [simpson] is a hero is tragic uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah well i was very careful even when my kids were kids were at home and when they were young i was really did uh watch what they watched i was i sat down with them and i watched it and if i did not like it i changed the channel for them you know i you know i distracted them changed their interest because i just could not tolerate that kind of influence on the [kiddos] i just sure that's right that's right gosh they got they are [mouthy] enough anyway uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah well uh_huh uh_huh sure i can understand how that would happen absolutely well i did i ran my kids to death i said hey i think that's enough television for awhile maybe we need to go outside and we need to go out and play and enjoy some company so i would go out with them now see there's the problem parents do not do that they say you go outside and play yeah i said but but we went on field trips and we did other things and i think that was of course okay i'm back on um you say you watch evenings mostly uh_huh oh so do you have any that you like well enough that you tape them when you're not going to be there which ones oh oh two they're going to change well one they're taking off i don't know what's going to yeah we like l a law we don't watch thirty something but that's kind of young for us my husband and i are grandparents so we don't watch uh that type of show but we like l a law we like that we're just i'm sorry they're breaking the team up because we liked all the ones that were on there i'm not sure i like the new ones too much i just wonder if if uh they just want to go on to other projects and not be stuck in this show since it's gone on for so long it looks like it looks like it might be one of these seven or eight year run things where you kind of can spend your whole career on one show of course i guess that's not bad alan [alda] did it on mash it hasn't hurt him at all so do you do you mostly like this type of like a story type of thing that lasts an hour in one hour like quantum leap that's one of our favorites right which they do at the beginning of the season to grab your attention you know that's always a bummer too sometimes it's better just to tape record both of them and then watch it all in one we we do that sometimes i i guess i'm i'm not into real heavy stuff l a law is about the [heaviest] thing i watch i i'll mostly i'm into it for relaxation so i like things like golden girls or cheers or uh monday night is real good with me you know major dad and and uh northern exposure and and uh oh what's that one with [burt] reynolds that type of show is what we what uh we watch we generally just stay on one channel all for all of monday night just to watch those just some of the times they're continued but mostly they're just little [vignettes] a new one we found we really like is that dinosaurs have you seen that that is it's it's really funny they use like animated it's not like a cartoon but it's like dummies and things that are used and uh it's really um and [robots] probably but there's always a a moral to each story well we watched it the times we've seen it it's been like on or excuse me friday night uh but it's we've only seen it a couple of times but it it's real the first one we saw um they were it it involved a tradition of when a person reaches seventy five and i can't remember what day they call it but but uh the son in laws get to throw the mother in laws when they're seventy five over a cliff anyway anyway it it goes on you know and the son in law and mother in law are [sniping] at each other and all and then when it comes time for him to throw her over well the the teenaged son the night before tried to save her by hiding her and she said no you can't do you know he ran her out was running to in a wheelchair to hide her and she said you can't do that this is tradition this is what old people are supposed to be thrown over the the cliff and uh he said i don't understand it's it's real funny that they give the teenagers the as the one that questions uh the what's going on and uh in the end of uh the son in law when he did get the mother in law up to the cliff uh the the teenaged son throws himself in the way and says no you can't do it and then and then uh-oh well we've got to do it it's tradition and the son was you know why and so in in the end he doesn't throw her over and of course the town thinks he's just terrible because that has been tradition for hundreds of years and he's broken it and then we saw one where this there was a teenage when a teenage boy comes into his manhood they call it the night of the [howling] or something like that and they all go out and howl you know and and the son refused to do it he he did he thought it was not no he wouldn't go howl so all the all the people that worked with the father [ostracized] him it is it it it's it's real interesting to watch the show and and the relationship between the family is is really now now the mother in law lives in the house with them so it's our our grandson our oldest grandson is the one that that got us to watching it but it really is it moves real fast it's a real short and there's always like i say a moral to it and well half hour that that's all there is to it and and uh they yeah it it they they're trying to [liken] the the father in there of the teenage son to like jackie [gleason] show uh the way he talks to his mother in law and so forth and i guess maybe there are some parts of that but i didn't really see that in there but what i've read about it they talk about that but anyway we've we've enjoyed that and and uh i guess mostly i i like the news shows too the news magazines like sixty minutes or twenty twenty or prime time live or something like that you know all all of those shows if i can do it but my husband likes to watch um old movies especially war movies or or uh sports which i'm not no i don't well i i do i like ice skating and i like uh gymnastics and some track and field but i i and i'll watch [snippets] of baseball games and i i just don't have that much time to sit and watch the whole thing and i don't ever no matter what's on i don't ever just sit and watch t v i'm usually either doing dishes or i may be sewing or you know i always have or letter writing or i may be working around in the room somehow but i don't i don't ever just sit and i that's something that comes from your old age you know [idle] hands are the devil's [workshop] no it's it's uh right right right well our yeah if our if our grandchildren are with us that's they have to watch that we don't watch it unless they're here but they uh it's it's um oh and you know the the kids will get you started on stuff like america's funniest home videos we've wound up sending in one that's something i didn't think that we'd ever do yeah my oldest grandson pulling his tooth he's he's he wouldn't let us pull it and i mean it it got to the point he was eating a pear here and he bit into it and it was just hanging by a thread and i and i'd tell him you know it's getting ready to fall out and he walked around the house with his face down toward the floor and his mouth open hoping it would fall out because he wouldn't let anybody pull it and he he wound up pull okay i watch evenings because i work all day i used to watch [daytimes] um mainly like all my children that kind of thing and then sometimes oprah and sometimes donahue but now it's mainly evenings yes i tape thirty something and l a law those are the two i like the best i know it's going to be history i know uh_huh oh well well uh_huh i know i'm amazed huh_uh i'm surprised that i was surprised at the ending of you know with all the funny things happening and different things uh_huh uh_huh i know i know isn't that funny oh i don't usually like stuff that continues that's why i'm surprised i like those two shows because usually i like you know stuff that just ends sort of that you just you don't have to have watched you know yeah i mean you don't have to yeah you don't have to have watched it last week in order to follow so you know i usually don't like that uh_huh i know uh_huh yeah uh_huh huh_uh uh_huh and what night is it on oh great oh huh uh_huh uh_huh oh he doesn't uh_huh so he didn't go howl oh how funny huh it's just a half hour or is it hour oh there's not many half hour shows it seems like that uh_huh yeah no i watch those if i oh see i like sports uh_huh uh_huh i know no i don't sit i know who has time i don't have time to sit i know that's why i don't get to watch that much i mean i watch nine o'clock i do okay because the kids are all in bed but before that i really there's not much time or like at six thirty i'll watch wheel of fortune or something like that uh_huh no i like that no i'll watch game show kind of stuff but yeah did you send one how funny well i almost forgot the topic i was waiting so long for uh for it to find somebody um right well so what is your favorite t v show oh you like that one uh_huh uh i've never really watched that one you know it's funny how you can just get in a mode where you only watch certain shows and uh you know there's so there's only a few that i that i like to watch routinely probably my favorite is um oh well i like shows like growing pains and uh what's the other one now they moved from tuesday night to wednesday night so i don't get to watch it very much wonder years yeah that's my favorite uh yeah wonder years i i guess that is supposed to be put out at a time when i was growing up or whatever i guess i can really relate to it and uh it's just a real cute show uh i i guess i like the shows that really have a real sense of uh i don't know honesty or sort of a [purity] value i guess uh_huh yeah right right uh_huh yeah my wife really likes that show uh_huh yeah yeah well there was but there's a sense of i guess [purity] in the show like one of my favorite shows used to be happy days but uh you know [richie] always used to be so you know just so honest and pure i guess and when he left the show you know that it seemed to be missing that part of it and i never did like it after that so i don't know i i say see the same thing in like wonder years and a lot of the shows that i like to watch there always seems to be that kind of value in there somewhere yeah uh_huh uh_huh so you're going to watch a game tonight so do you do you have a favorite for the series or anything oh uh_huh yes yeah he's a nice guy i take it you live in the dallas area do you live in the dallas area uh_huh yeah i live in garland and yeah i i like steve [bushel] but i don't really like the pirates i'm a big saint louis cardinals fan so uh i'm kind of i'm kind of pulling for the braves over all they you know they they've come from so far down i really would like to see them do well yeah one one year they maybe they'll make it i don't know so but uh yeah i like sports programming quite a bit but uh i guess my my favorite shows are the and you know that getting back to the point that you made that's really true we were watching roseanne i guess couple of weeks ago and her daughter was talking about birth control you know and my daughter was kind of walking in during that time and you know she's only seven years old so yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah well that that seems to be more our values too like the wonder years i i mean it's kind of risque stuff for maybe for teenagers you know or and you can kind of relate to it you know i don't know that's i enjoy that a lot but uh you know i agree with you the and it's funny because the shows like a lot of them that used to be considered risque like [three's] company and stuff i think they they maintained people would watch them because there was that uh you know there was really the period that was going on there i mean he really wasn't messing around with the girls but everybody perceived him that way and stuff but as soon as you know he went to move in with another girl the show just died and it's it's interesting that a lot of the shows are that way it's on your favorite t v shows and why uh major dad i i love it i think it [promotes] good family values and it's funny that's yeah what kind do you like to watch wonder years i like both of those real much also i i think basically they same thing they promote family values i do too i i don't like it uh lot of the shows that that i've liked in the past like uh-oh golden girls and some of them tend to get so risque and when you have children uh watching it that sometimes really starts to bother me and uh that's one of the reasons i mean if you want to go all time favorite show probably one of them was little house on the prairie yeah which i just i was i always felt was wonderful uh and so many of them nowadays like i said i think are just um uh they they go after well they like i said the risque stuff just i guess they think that's what people want to watch yes yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah i i agree uh do you like the sports programming um i i enjoy those also almost as as much to a certain extent i'm our whole house is baseball fans and uh we enjoy that and uh oh yeah oh yeah uh probably the pirates but only because of steve [bushel] i guess otherwise i really don't care that much but uh you know i'm i'm annoyed that the rangers got rid of him and uh i'd like to see him do well like all the way to the bank i guess pardon live in live in plano uh_huh uh_huh well yeah yeah it's uh so i keep hoping the rangers are going to do right uh_huh well it's so many of them now um you know it just seems like they feel like they have to stick that stuff in and and uh you know i'm you know i'm i'm an adult and i have adult tastes now but i don't need that uh i i like things that uh are are wholesome i guess uh_huh yes yes uh_huh yeah what do you like to watch on television yes uh_huh uh_huh well we have cable but we only have cinemax and uh i think our favorite night is uh monday night and we start out with evening shade and major dad and i think that's the one night that we really try to watch television you know my husband's always got it on i'm not always sitting down and yes yes yes i just i love that all those that two hours and uh now tonight i just finished up with that a woman called jackie did you watch did you watch it yeah it it was pretty good it uh sometimes i like a [dramatization] and i like uh u s a when they had their uh uh mystery movies and things their made for t v movies and uh i like those we very seldom watch any uh public television channel thirteen do you watch it much yes yes it is now we haven't watched any of those yes now we have watched some things on that yeah we had uh i don't know my husband loves to uh that male syndrome of [flicking] that channel so you know and he's sit in front of it and and he went by and he said whoops and he backed up and you know there's this surgery going on as we're eating our dinner you know and i'm saying let's move right on but our grandchildren like that discovery channel if they're over here because lots of times it will have things on uh animals and they just thoroughly you know enjoy that in fact i think they were watching something on uh [whales] or killer sharks one or the other couple of weeks ago over here and uh so we have watched that and uh otherwise of course my husband's into the football and you know i will watch that some if i'm reading or doing something else you know with him yes yes and sometimes now we're getting that uh the other football where they play it inside and you know this is a you know this is too much saturdays and sunday this is fine but do we have to carry this on into the summer and the spring you know all of that and uh but he will uh he'll flip around i think the other night we had on uh uh it was a it was car races some kind of car races where they were [bumping] over hills and flying into the air and coming down i don't know what channel he found that on and uh but he will turn that on especially for if again if our uh oldest grandson is over here he's ten and uh they'll find something like that and just absolutely sit glued to it i you know i keep telling them it's the same mentality you know and something's wrong and uh but uh and we very seldom watch television on a friday night or saturday night because we're not home and uh so and sundays uh we usually have all of our kids are over on sunday so you know we don't get into that except that sometimes we'll get into their home videos do you ever watch that yeah uh_huh that are sometimes so dumb but very true to life i mean i've seen our family in several of those situations well i guess a lot of the uh something that's kind of more of a comedy we do have uh cable and we have premium stations like h b o and [showtime] and such and i guess a lot of times when i first turn the t v on i i normally go to those because i pay for them i guess i i want to see if there's anything i really want to see there so i don't end up watching the um prime time on some of the standard channels as much i tend to go to my premium channels first uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah monday night's pretty good with murphy brown and designing women uh_huh uh_huh we had watched it uh i guess sunday night and monday night but we didn't get to watch it tonight uh_huh uh_huh the only night we tend to watch some of that is on sunday nights starting fairly late like i'm talking ten o'clock and maybe toward midnight they have some british comedy that we've we've really liked and there's a variety some of them is uh black [adder] or good neighbors or yes prime minister and are you being served they they rotate those around and um we like that british comedy british comedy is very fast you really have to listen but they're real good but they do come on kind of late but we really do enjoy those sometimes we get to watching some stuff on the discovery channel and i'm amazed sometimes what i see on there but i'm very intrigued i one time i was watching an operation and i thought gee i don't believe i'm watching yeah yeah right right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh right yeah i'm not into watching sports now my husband likes to watch football he's not really into uh baseball or basketball too much but uh football soon as it's fall then he likes to watch college on saturday and then of course cowboys on sunday yeah um uh_huh oh um yeah the you mean talking about the funny home videos and stuff yeah those are pretty good but true to life i mean some of the hello hi my name is leslie and where are you from oh nice i'm from dallas texas yeah so well did you understand what this was for you know what it was for what we yeah okay i i don't watch too many but we can try it are you ready to start okay just a minute yeah okay well i don't really watch too many t v shows other than uh occasionally i'll i'll turn on donahue because it comes on in the morning when i seem to be getting ready around here and uh so if if there's no one else around you know it's just me and i have a chance to listen to something i'll turn that on but uh just for the for the conversation factor i think but and then i think i enjoy when i catch it i don't even know what night it's on but designing women sometimes yeah do you yeah it's fun and then there's a new one that started out that i've caught a couple of times called good and evil i think oh really it is a real different one it's uh it's it's different i guess i watch it more out of the [uniqueness] of it and the time that it comes on more than the fact that i have to see it but no i haven't watched that uh_huh oh yeah sounds neat yeah is that on what what station oh okay what other shows do you like oh yeah well she comes on later and i usually have kids around so i don't end end up watching that one is the only problem i have with it i guess yeah that's right yeah uh_huh that can happen so do you know of any other shows in the even or something that you enjoy oh that's always fun yeah oh uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh yeah well i think i also course like to catch the news during the evening hours but uh it's a little tough because that's when i'm usually making dinner and the kids are wanting to talk all at the same time so usually i don't get a whole lot of news watching in uh_huh yeah yeah so what have you seen interesting on oprah [winfrey] lately uh_huh yeah well i don't know if we've talked our full three minutes or not oh that's right um yeah it is interesting so no no just uh doing this as a fund raiser for our church yeah so it kind of makes it easy you know to do a little something for it hi hi i'm jennifer pennsylvania oh really oh that's neat uh television shows sure that sounds good okay sure am okay i guess we're recording now what are your favorite television shows oh really oh i love that show yes that is great oh i heard they just canceled that i read in today's paper they just canceled that show have you seen the show it's it's new this year called home front oh it's it's really good it's uh i think it's on like tuesday nights from ten to eleven and it's set in post world war two times and it's about how the servicemen come home and [readjust] to civilian life here and the changes everyone's going through it's really interesting it's kind of like a a nighttime soap opera type thing it is it's a good it's really well written uh i don't even know to tell you the truth uh i prefer oprah [winfrey] to donahue oh i did watch soap operas but i work full time now and can't catch those anymore except when i'm home sick and now when i watch them i think why did i ever watch those they're stupid so when i did watch them i was addicted to them every day but not anymore oh uh tonight i'm looking forward to seeing golden girls yes i like that show and if i can stay up late enough i like to catch saturday night live every now and then and right now we're watching a penn state football game because that's where we live so it's exciting we're winning so that's really exciting uh_huh yes we watch c n n in morning while we're getting ready for the day and eating breakfast we'll catch our news that way watch the weather channel so that we know what the weather's going to be like lately i haven't been catching it because of my work schedule uh i can't remember the last time i saw it it's been a while i don't know sometimes they come on and and say well today on c n n they were talking about something like this about uh learning to recognize voices and words and stuff and the research that's going on which is kind of what we're doing helping them get a data base for words it was really interesting do you work for texas instruments oh that's nice sure because we uh we've talked to a lot of people from texas it seems and we thought well maybe they work from for dallas oh you know i used to like [saintelsewhere] that's one of my old favorites um and that's i'm being beeped so i'll just ignore it um and now i i did like thirty something oh yes my daughter says nine oh two one oh we like that one good and how old are you oh so you're little bit younger than i am but yeah i think if my seventeen year old my fourteen year old my other two children like it i'm over forty and i like it i think it's wonderful oh yeah now see i we are so busy with all of our kids are in sports and i hardly ever watch t v but that's one that that we watch and then sunday nights we watch uh life goes on very good did you see the one on sunday that one kid that [becca] likes he has aids right right all the way to north carolina what time is it there oh my gosh see i'm twenty minutes to six here yeah yeah okay what else do you like oh i never i never watched that ever in my entire life uh_huh a small bowl will be plenty oh that's mine that's the only one i watch whenever i oh a small bowl will be better because it's pretty fattening talk to my daughter um um yeah i've i'm sure i watched it for more than that probably twenty something i used to watch general hospital when i was a teenager because i oh right oh that's great well i do like all my children and i and i like it you know i don't know i just i like the people on it i guess you know yeah well [tad's] going to come back i bet do you think he'll come back show up at just the right moment oh yeah like daisy pops in once in a while and i forgot about nina and cliff right oh he is so he's out for good did they marry nina and cliff um oh okay oh see i i i watch it maybe twice a month so i don't watch it everyday like i did when i had babies because i play lots of tennis and i'm gone a lot so i don't get to watch oh no kidding i use to be i used to be like that now isn't designing women don't they have a new [chick] on there instead of the instead of what's her name huh_uh that's a show i like oh yeah oh well i i just know which one she is i don't you know [charlene] was delta [burke] oh okay well see i never watch that one either i really don't watch a whole lot of t v just you know on sunday nights life goes on comes on about the time that we eat dinner and my whole family's home because i don't allow the kids out on sunday night you know because they've got to go to bed and go to school the next day and so we we sit around and eat popcorn and oh then we watch america's funniest home videos those are always pretty cute oh so you don't watch that one instead of sure yeah we like that real well uh_huh i know the kids already know who it is i don't know who it is though let me ask nicole nicole what's your favorite t v show uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's one of my favorites i'm twenty eight yeah it's a good show i like murphy brown and designing women too yeah i like that that's that's a good show too yes it was a uh uh i did miss that sunday no i didn't yeah it's a good episode yeah the the new character on there did uh it is twenty minutes to nine three hours difference uh let's see i like a lot of different shows let's see um i like murder she wrote that's that's and matlock is another good one i watch um then during [daytimes] i like i like all my children all my children i've watched that for about twelve years i quit watching general hospital when leslie got killed so that was a long time ago i used to watch it was in high school and college when [laura's] mother got killed she was my favorite character on there i just i read the reason she got they they killed her off was because they couldn't settle a contract and i said well if they're going to do that to her i won't watch it i i i like it i just wish they'd bring some of the old characters back yeah i'm sure he will i kind of wish that uh nina would come back because she because the story you know just for a brief visit or whatever because it never has been resolved with [palmer] [remarrying] and everything yeah [cliff's] on the young and the restless now yeah he's out for good uh that's how they left the show but not in real life now she's married to some guy in new york and she's happily married and that's the reason she left the show i guess she wanted a private life oh well i i watch i watch it everyday religiously i videotape it when i have to miss it yeah i'm that way about a lot of different shows i'm that way about murphy brown designing women uh yeah there's two new characters on there there's um uh jan hooks from saturday night life i don't know if you know her or not and then and then uh uh the blond headed girl that used to be on newhart i don't like her on it i never have liked her so she's taken the [suzanne's] part and then jan hooks has taken [charlene's] part [charlene] was jean smart the blond headed yeah well murder she wrote comes on opposite of that and so yeah i i pick nights pretty much so on t v that i watch different networks but beverly hills nine oh two one oh i i watch it religiously it be sure to watch it tomorrow night because somebody's getting killed on it who is it ask them all right what is your favorite show uh_huh uh_huh sure uh_huh it really is uh_huh i watch just about anything but not a lot of t v i mean i'll watch you know maybe a little while when i first get home in the evening and i usually watch you know the news and then i'll watch that hard copy or or that kind of thing you know and i like the nine one one and [unsolved] mysteries uh_huh now i do like my husband is really crazy about evening shade that comes on on monday evening and i uh uh_huh and i've got to where every monday i rush around so i could sit and watch that with him because it's really funny uh_huh well his favorite night is monday night so we've got to where we will sit and watch it on monday night because that and then that uh-oh i can't even think of the name of it like i say i'm not yeah and the one with the the sergeant that married the woman with the kids sergeant [mcgillis] sergeant uh major dad yeah that comes on right after uh the evening shade and then murphy brown and designing women so we always he watches that and i kind of i watch the first one then kind of sit in on the others as i can uh_huh uh_huh yeah well you can't hardly watch knots landing with the little kids around though except they probably are in bed by nine did you get your pizza taken care of well do you know i have picked up a show lately on saturday night that i've really liked and that's sisters have you watched that it's really you know it's really pretty good i mean it's kind of like you know um soap opera i guess but it's a so far it i've watched it about three times now and it's really held my attention it's been pretty good some pretty good acting now i watched brooklyn bridge this week for the first time but i haven't i did i liked it now i haven't seen i'll fly away yet uh_huh it's nearly too late for t v that's the way i am i get in from work and i'm tired and i sit and watch for a few minutes so i have to get up and do dinner and everything uh_huh yeah that's us if we are home on the weekend we always watch videos so but there are some good shows on i i really probably should watch more of them than i do but i like i don't know i i'm always in to making things and and i don't just spend all my time and i my husband now he sits and watches t v constantly uh_huh uh_huh i could be around here for hours by myself and never have it on but uh but there are some really good new shows that i have enjoyed and i'll have to watch that i'll fly away this week yeah i never get in in time for any of those yeah well it's nice talking with you bye well i was just trying to think when they called i didn't have as much time to prepare for this as i did some of the others um i love watching some of the uh new new shows basically and we uh we subscribe to c n n and we took that and we started watching a lot of those especially during the war or during anything kind of thing like the earthquake and i have gotten stuck on a lot of this the new shows and the stuff that comes on that that it you know like the uh at night the discussion talk shows and things and we really haven't gotten a lot into the sitcoms that are current uh especially with the kids here because we have to kind of filter it before they get here we have little ones uh we do let them watch nine one one and we think that's kind of informative to teach them how to handle things in situations what do you watch uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's the same thing we do uh_huh yeah that kind that's the kind i like really more than the sitcoms i haven't gotten into many of those i have heard that's real good that's [burt] reynolds isn't it yeah i've heard that now someone told me that and also uh i meant to be trying to pick up on murphy brown because they said that that was really good this season you've got to yeah uh_huh designing women is on that night too huh i don't even know oh okay now i we've never even seen that uh_huh on the others well you know on friday nights especially we like to watch twenty twenty or um it's kind of a competition on thursdays between prime time and knots landing but uh we used to like knots landing a lot oh excuse me just a minute the money is right there on the thing and the coupon oh i know that's the thing and so we uh_huh well they are in fact on [weeknights] they are in bed by eight but we have just gotten any more that where we just keep it off yeah he has gone to get it thank you um but i was to say on saturdays there is absolutely nothing and that's the day my husband wants to no but i saw that advertised today and it sounds like it's not fluff it sounds like it's good uh_huh yeah that's what they said it was kind of a little more drama to it well and and another one now that it's getting darker and you are wanting to cocoon more that they said is excellent is the i'll fly away and brooklyn bridge some of these that are nostalgic did you like it did you well they said that one and i'll fly away are really quality you know and i haven't seen it either i think what i need to do is kind of read to see what is on these days because by the time we get the kids in bed at eight o'clock and then i get my bath it's you know it's almost too late to start something new yeah yeah uh_huh yeah and then we've gotten to where we rent videos for weekend nights so it's like we are kind of tuned out of our t v yeah well we do too yeah i don't know yeah there's a lot more to do with with your time when you get into it uh_huh well my my sister and them and her husband do on weekends they don't have children yet and they just turn it on when they walk in they turn it off when they leave so they are used to that too yeah i understand same here yeah it's real good and then of course in the afternoons if i get in from work in time i watch oprah some of those you know talk shows i like her yeah well it's it's nice talking to you i guess we've kind of exhausted this one but it's nice talking with you thank you bye bye t v uh trying to think i was trying to think of some while they were calling you uh i like friday what is it is it friday or saturday night shows i think it's friday night all the uh the one with the two little girls in it what's it called or three little girls right i really like that what's it called yeah there you go yeah i really like that show oh oh really uh lately i've been getting into talk shows and yeah just you know controversy and just really whatever just as long it depends on the subject actually where where it's more interesting some of them get pretty boring but is he one of the talk show guys [maury] [povich] huh let's see yeah yeah see i don't i don't like those i like more controversial subjects i think but i mean yeah no i'm i don't watch t v that much uh anymore it seems like uh i'm going to school right now so b y u yeah so and i'm working too so everything keeps me pretty busy but oh really my dad taught there for a while yeah uh speech pathology oh wow no way how long have you been there oh okay so you wouldn't know him he uh he taught about a year ago he used to work at uh uh university of texas at what no uh-oh shoot i can't remember what it's even called now but uh he worked there for like fifteen years and then part time u t d at night and and then they stopped funding the program there uh and so now he's at texas women's university yeah uh_huh allen bird uh_huh right uh somewhat and he has he has some like different programs out like i don't know what they're called but they're like and he has like little stuffed animals with them and like little cards and stuff i don't know that right yeah uh i was i am studying nursing but i'm thinking about changing right now i just i don't know and it's really tough to get into the program down here so if i don't do that if i decide to stay in nursing i'll probably come and go to t w u yeah oh really my dad used to teach at [collier] too yeah uh_huh no i'm at b y u in utah yeah yeah so but i get to come home at on the nineteenth and i'm so excited i'm so [homesick] it's in provo actually but yeah i really i really like it out here but i've been i i've been away too long uh how how do you have a do you have any uh major preferences as far as television uh_huh yeah yeah uh-oh yeah the the two twins play the the twins play that one that the youngest girl oh yeah uh i don't know all i can think of is the name of all in the family but that's not it full house yeah yeah that is good i i like uh we have cable i really like watching the old nick at [nite] shows you know where you get to watch [dragnet] and mister ed and uh we we can watch those all night sometimes if donna [reed] yeah oh yeah which which one does which ones do you like uh_huh right uh_huh yeah yeah uh there's that guy i think it's out of dallas his name is uh-oh i wish i could remember his name yeah he's he's black and yeah no he's black and has a bald head and his first name starts with an m oh it's like his first name's like [marlo] or marlin i can't remember his name anyway he always has like really strange shows like uh uh male [strippers] or female [strippers] or just really [sensationalistic] you know like what [geraldo] used to be i don't either uh_huh do you watch cartoons a lot no oh yeah where do you go to school oh really uh_huh uh_huh i'm going to u t d here in dallas yeah oh really what did he teach oh that's what i'm majoring in i'm a graduate student in speech yeah yeah uh this is my first semester yeah who who who who what when did he teach oh yeah uh_huh oh really oh is he teaching speech pathology there okay what's his name bird b i r d yeah he published a paper uh couple of years ago i think didn't he well one that i read does he publish a little quite a bit uh_huh yeah okay yeah yeah he has a test he has a testing yeah a testing battery he uses real yeah i i remember yeah well that's interesting uh what are you studying uh_huh oh yeah yeah i'm living in the t w u dorm across from [collier] uh yeah and uh yeah yeah that's that's where the speech program is uh i'm living in that dorm and there all those nursing majors i i tell you what that's that's a tough that's a tough uh field though nursing is i i have a lot of respect for those people i mean they've spent a lot of hours studying so you're at baylor oh okay brigham young i see all right oh really do you like it's in salt lake city right oh is it do you uh_huh i'm from colorado so i i've been away from there too long i said arlington texas because the other day i was talking with somebody and he was in arlington virginia yeah that's the only one i've got now for this area well anyway we've got a easy subject you go ahead first if you'd like yeah you know you get so busy oh i know right are they little yeah they're pretty young i don't know my kids are older so i don't i don't know some of those shows now like i used to right well i i like the comedies they're just light too i have to watch murphy brown i really like i make a point of that i love that and i really like coach i think it's when it's good it's just a scream well he's probably playing himself half the time you see these people on an interview show they're they act just like they do in their parts he i saw him on johnny carson once and he acted about the same yeah and uh well i watch more now because well i i had been going to school for years and have really been too busy but this semester i'm only taking one course and so i see murphy brown and coach and the wonder years i just make a point of seeing those oh it's fabulous really you should never miss that it they are just [gems] of shows i mean they really fabulous in every way oh that's wednesday at uh seven thirty oh yeah sure yeah well maybe maybe your husband could tape it for you sometime just so you get the idea it wouldn't take wouldn't take much to get hooked on those so so i watch those well you know i haven't oh yeah we started watching northern exposure well it's not really new but it's still kind of new i like it a lot it's real different in fact they never thought it would be a hit i mean they'll have some things in there that almost almost you know like [supernatural] or something you know i mean somebody will see a figure from the past that nobody else does or i mean it sounds weird but it's very uh unique show and very well done excellent actors i i guess we just it came on after something we used to watch and i guess we just kept sitting there and then now we make a point of watching i can't take all these shows on because next semester i'm not going to be able to watch hardly any television well then it will be mostly reruns i guess and by the end of february the way they do it nowadays but uh yeah yeah i've seen that was she the was she the best one was she the best one on that old show really right right yeah they had a big fight on that show didn't they they were all [accusing] each other of everything in the world well i know gosh you never will probably well i think the latest soap opera for people is the kennedy trial for those who have cable i don't have cable it's just as wild as any soap opera from what i hear on the news and i think he's guilty as the [devil] i know what's in it for her there's never anything for you to go to trial as a witness in a case like that because you know they tear you to [shreds] especially those rich high powered lawyers um i know everybody was saying that and then in the paper said it so it should be interesting well the national [enquirer] says i was reading that in the supermarket line i never have the nerve to buy the thing uh says he no i don't care anything about that i like the ice skating you know occasionally some ice skating will come on on a sunday or during the olympics i always watch that i think it's so beautiful oh yeah that's good oh no oh gosh oh gosh yes we do okay let me think here favorite i haven't been watching much t v lately i used to yeah i have uh i have one favorite soap opera i still watch and i tape because i'm not home and uh let's see that's general hospital and then uh at night uh i don't uh when i sit down i don't usually sit down till almost nine o'clock when my kids get in bed and and uh then i watch uh what do i watch at nine o'clock let's see oh well tuesday nights i guess we try to catch a couple of the shows that the kids like and uh i have a seven year old and a ten year old and uh so we usually catch uh full house and uh what's the one comes on after that it's a new one uh uh_huh yeah yeah uh other than that uh-oh gosh i watch knots landing on thursday nights for pure entertainment nothing else yeah oh now that is a good one that is yeah if i'm home on mondays then i i definitely watch her yeah yeah well he's a good actor he really is good yeah yeah oh god well he could very well be so do you watch much t v or uh_huh now i never see that well i've got a friend that says that is just wonderful show oh nice what now what night is that on now wednesday at seven thirty oh okay yeah wednesdays i i go to church choir so that's my one night out and about so yeah i should get him to do that because i know yeah yeah uh_huh are there any new ones this year that came out that you like or uh_huh uh_huh how's that i haven't seen that huh huh i'll have to watch for that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah gosh well we used to watch a lot of designing women but uh i haven't seen that much lately since they got rid of uh delta [burke] and uh brought on the new ones oh she was just funny she was really funny and her character was good i don't know that it was her in particular but just the character so uh yeah yeah oh that was awful and who knows still what really happened you know yeah yeah so oh i know now i told no we don't have that station either so uh i haven't been able to catch any of that but just what little we caught on the news oh i know it well i don't see how he couldn't be you know yeah that's right oh and they said this lawyer is unbelievable but they said she held up so well yesterday yeah oh god oh shoot well do you watch any uh any sports or anything like that or because i don't either i can't i can't watch it on t v so uh_huh yeah i like to catch the gymnastics sometimes too okay jerry the topic was favorite t v shows and what kind are you interested in and how they and do they differ from like mine right oh do you yeah oh i'm sort of a well i'm different from that i'm sort of a a movie buff i go to a couple of movies a week sometimes but honestly i'm i'm self employed and a lot of times i will uh go out and take a lunch hour go to lunch from like twelve to two go to a movie and just come back to my office but uh i do it it's like entertainment and i'm pretty much of a a junk movie watcher by myself if i take my wife then we see something a little nicer you know but uh and my kids are all sort of movie watchers you know we we've always been to a lot of we've always gone to a lot of movies in our life so but i would just as soon uh be doing something else it's just that my kids are gone now and and my wife's a school teacher and sometimes and she doesn't get home until about seven o'clock so you know i'll come in like five thirty or six and i'll turn on the tube set there and have my coffee or coke or whatever and a little t v and sometimes i set there all evening you bet you bet well that's an interesting channel that's great you know i've i've just never spent any time watching it and you know i like my sports and everything but i watch my dallas cowboys i watched them to halftime before i left and i left at halftime and started driving they sure did they just did an excellent job yeah the eagles yeah luck into it now i think cowboys they earned it on their own merit well you bet as much as everyone you know used the word love tom landry i'm glad that jimmy johnson's there it was i think so too he wanted to go out a winner though i think he would have stayed there four or five more years until he could have gone out oh no it's you know he earned his [stripes] i know oh yeah yeah he's a he's a winner in anyone's book and i hope he's a winner in his own book you know because that's the key there you bet little things that [disturb] me and i know he's being a little [hardnosed] about it but uh you know this ring of honor thing you know he needs to be there because he's earned it he deserves it and he was the dallas cowboys and he won't do that yet so i hope he makes up his mind to do it because he needs to be remembered no no no absolutely not that's true but he needs to be honored let's put it that way you bet i've been here since seventy four and i feel like a native oh did you yeah we came we came down from new york state in seventy four and uh never had any [regrets] at all you bet it's been it's a great place to raise our kids and i've got my last kid graduating from college this next december she's getting married the month before in november so i will have finished be finished with that right well good no not at all well i enjoy my t v programs i like those i like those detective programs i like everything i can watch bill cosby because i think he has a great show uh_huh uh_huh well okay uh most of most of the uh commercial television these days i'm just a little bit sick of uh in fact i don't watch hardly any uh television at all with uh my other activities uh between my family and my church et cetera et cetera well i don't have time i hardly any time to sit down and watch the news now i do watch the discover channel and some on channel thirteen but uh aside from aside from that i pretty well uh turn it off uh_huh i don't blame you uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i well it sometimes if if it's real good like there's more there's been more than one evening that i've uh caught uh every animal show that evening on uh on the discover channel and uh because they're uh they're they're you know they're documentaries and they're oh you bet in fact i'm glad that it's part of our uh basic cable package but uh uh_huh oh oh me too hello well they they they [whooped] up on them uh_huh and they're in the playoffs and i'm not sure that the eagles are not i did yeah that's true did you know everybody or not everybody but quite a few of the folks were kind of down on mister johnson but uh he's uh he's brought the [pokes] uh from a a one and something team to uh playoffs in what three years now uh_huh well it's uh you know it was the time for the passing of the guard i mean and i think tom knew it so uh yeah that's true and i wouldn't i wouldn't have blamed him one bit because yeah but see nobody remembers him as a loser because he's too he's too far he's far too much of a gentleman and a and a practicing christian to uh to ever be thought of as anything but a you know but a winner yeah oh he is he is because he has to like himself before he can like other people uh uh_huh yes oh he will right well nobody's going to forget tom landry shoot come now i mean i'd not a you [betcha] i'm not a native texan by birth but uh i guess if i uh length of length of time i'm in the state now is what after you're here twenty years you're considered native well let's see i came down march of sixty nine went to work for t and i yeah so uh i haven't looked back yet either so right especially looking at some of the weather new york state has had and then look at the weather we have down here huh uh_huh oh goodness well we're well we're finished with all but the last one and trying to get him through his technical school and uh we're uh he's over halfway so you know we're not staying on the topic of television shows but i'm really not too concerned are you no me neither i'm enjoying the chat uh what are your favorite shows uh_huh i've never seen that huh_uh um i like l a law not because it's realistic but it's entertaining um let's see i watch cheers sometimes and mostly just movies when there's a good movie on actually when there isn't a good movie on too i just like to have the t v on if you know if i'm home alone or something have either the radio or the t v got to be on the whole time oh really uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i well i don't because i work all day but um i i usually do if i'm home for a couple of days like you know around christmas or whatever after a while i'll start watching it and then on for a while i'll ask people if they know what happened and then i'll just forget it uh i don't even remember the last time i watched was back in college it was like general hospital or something and i maybe watched it for a week but um i know that people used to arrange their whole schedules around the you know they wouldn't take a class that was in the middle of their soap opera it was a uh_huh uh_huh well you said you have kids how old so you're you aren't a sesame street fan uh_huh uh_huh supposed to be a great [babysitter] yeah um uh_huh i know what time is that on i never see it oh okay i'm not home then that's why i don't see it isn't it strange how people are fascinated by other people that they think are strange uh_huh uh_huh what's that yeah well i guess it wasn't a real good topic for us but well tell me is it snowing up there no uh_huh wow but do you have snow on the ground now oh well that's nice oh gosh we've broken all sorts of records they've got i mean we still have some highways closed and it stopped raining almost twenty four hours ago but um oh just phenomenal i mean i you know you see it on the news all the time but until you've really seen it it it doesn't really hit you but i was driving home from work friday and i saw there were some stop signs i mean [submerged] up to the writing on the stop sign and that was just it was amazing to me so oh there's been a lot yeah it's it's too bad but you know the thing is that this happens in the last three years it's happened at least once a year if not twice but the people continue to move back in the flood zones so i don't know i mean you got to wonder how long they're going to keep doing that for i don't think i would because they just finished cleaning up from the last flood yeah yeah i do yeah have you made a lot of calls or uh_huh oh do you get paid for these five dollars a call gosh i wish i could do that we can't get paid for it well i it's doesn't seem like i get enough time to watch much t v but the ones that are out now i i've watched that sisters a couple of times i think that's kind of a good show haven't you oh i like that one and um i'm trying to think i i don't even know if i have any other real regular ones that i watch how about you oh uh_huh uh_huh i do like that yeah occasionally i'll see that one do you uh_huh oh oh uh_huh yeah uh-oh i do i kind of have gotten into a couple of soaps lately i've well i've been home with a um i have a baby and and so i've haven't seemed to have gotten out as much and so i'll i'll watch a soap occasionally do you watch any of those uh_huh uh_huh oh what what ones do you get into oh uh_huh oh how funny oh yeah oh i don't get into them that much when i'm home sometimes in the day i'll i'll watch them but yeah oh i was really trying to think i don't even know if there's any other shows that i watch or else oh i have a six year old and i have a um he'll be a year old in january well they do they watch it my six year old's kind of he's outgrown that one a little bit but but i've started to turn it on a little bit for the baby and he's kind of he's entertained by it so yes i i do watch that one yeah well they're not entertained for too long with it he's he's still too little but yeah i do turn that on and i i do like um donahue sometimes i watch that i think he has some interesting things on it um that's on at let's see it's on at four yeah i'll watch that occasionally he's got some real i don't know there's some real weird people that he seems to come up with yes yeah oh yeah he does have some real bizarre things i think so other than that i don't know guess i'm not much of a t v person really um no it snowed a little bit um probably about four days ago and they said we weren't going to get any more for christmas yeah there is snow on the ground i i wish it would snow a little bit more i've heard it's raining there oh really oh my goodness yeah oh goodness oh gee so so there has been some flooding and uh_huh oh gee yeah oh boy yeah oh what a mess well now do you work for t i oh uh_huh huh well this has been an interesting thing to do um i've i've probably talked maybe to five people my husband is doing it too and he's talked to a few more than me and but it's been real interesting and kind of fun um five dollars uh_huh uh don't you have to do it as part of its don't you have to do it okay uh some of the t v shows i like to watch are uh mostly evening evening shows and uh like for instance the one i'm looking forward to to tonight is twenty twenty i usually watch those prime time programs uh i like to watch forty eight hours never miss that and uh sometimes prime time live uh and then the week goes by and i don't think i ever watch anything else you know the the sunday night movies i watch those kind of things but uh most but basically a lot of documentary things and you know what's going on and that kind of thing uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah it's hard to follow oh i've never seen that one okay yeah i've seen a uh the previews for that uh_huh oh we never miss that or we try not to miss that oh we think it is so funny oh just part of it uh_huh no uh_huh oh that's right and the neighbor they thought it was the neighbor yeah and then uh it it's it appeared that maybe it probably wasn't the neighbor uh_huh uh_huh i've never seen that program uh_huh uh_huh oh oh uh_huh uh_huh oh okay yeah right oh i do too oh i do too but i just seem to to miss a lot of these programs i don't know why i just if i can catch them i do or if i remember oh yeah i watch one and oh oh okay yeah that's been on for years oh and so you get to come home and watch them yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah well we yeah that's a good idea we did have h b o but it we just canceled it last week because it seemed like it was so repetitious you know it's just oh oh yes if you're up then yeah right right yeah yeah right i i have a few you know favorite shows that i try not to miss l a law is one of them although this year's it's a little easier to miss than last year with the new cast and everything right and uh i like [rosie] [o'neill] the trials of [rosie] [o'neill] with sharon [gless] she it's very good it it's probably very much a woman's uh show but uh and then there's a new sitcom on that is tim [allen's] uh what is it uh handyman that's not what uh home improvement it's hysterical isn't it did you catch the christmas i thought it was you know and it had such a good story too did you see the end of it well you know the little boy the little one was trying to decide if there was a santa claus they thought it was the neighbor he gave the two [doubting] [thomases] a rubber band and a paper clip i thought that was wonderful and uh on sunday used to be on sunday nights now i can't figure out where they've moved it on our uh public television they had a show at ten thirty that was a computer show and it showed the latest uh developments from all the computer companies well you know it's unless you're really into computers you and software you probably wouldn't be interested but i don't know it just really gave me kind of an outlook of what was available out there and uh you know what they they covered everything from entertainment to spreadsheets you know and then they also the hardware so you could see what the new developments were and what to look for and i enjoyed that it was just a thirty minute show with no commercials it's public television course doesn't have the commercials during the show so and i like the frugal gourmet well there's very few that you know my life would stop if i didn't catch but uh now i do before i go to work i tape my soap opera well i watch two but one's a half hour and one's an hour and and they lead into each other and that's the bold and the beautiful and as the world turns and i've watched the as the world turns since i was a little girl so it's just you know it's it's something i've done for the last probably twenty five years yes and i don't have anyone else at home so i have freedom to watch whatever i want but i like i like every i like the uh the information shows and i like the comedies and you know and i i do like good movies i prescribed subscribe to h b o so i can get some of the movies it is but i don't sleep a whole lot and i you know at two o'clock in the morning there isn't anything on regular t v and and uh so that's and you don't get good reception without cable and it doesn't cost that much more to have one of the pay channels so that's primarily why i have it right now i i thought when i got my v c r i'd probably drop it you know but that was years what are your favorite t v shows yeah yeah yeah yeah i i i rather enjoy the cosby show my wife and i both like [commish] uh it's either friday night it's either tonight or tomorrow night uh around here at least i guess it depends on what channel you're getting you know what system you're getting it through uh we we always enjoyed it it it seems to be kind of halfway between uh something like all in the family and uh hill street blues it's a good show you yeah yeah he's tender [hearted] fellow yeah i think that's what first drew us to him the uh the the relationship between he and his wife kind of looks a lot like ours but uh yeah uh yeah uh i know we uh we watch [commish] any chance we get uh used to be a big fan of star trek but that's kind of it's gotten more and more to where they are so totally against uh anything spiritual but uh anyway yeah i i used to be a used to be a real big fan of star trek uh pretty much yeah i always enjoyed the show anyway and star [trek's] in a or the uh star wars set uh one of the first star wars movie i think i watched it like nineteen times uh i did at one time anyway oh i i was a pretty big fan of that sort of thing used to used to read a read a lot of science fiction work too but uh no it uh we don't do a whole lot of t v watching but that uh i don't know if you heard them or not i got a twelve year old twelve week old baby uh_huh yeah that between that and school it's not between him and school there's not much time left for watching much t v yeah this one here is our first and we're both full time students so yeah what are you hoping for a boy or a girl that that's that's the best way you haven't found out yet or anything have you yeah that's the best way i mean it's like finding out somewhere in july what you're going to get for christmas i mean you know it's not as much fun oh anyway oh i'm about half kid at heart anyway i i the new cartoons don't seem to be worth much but the uh well a couple of the uh ones [disney's] doing aren't too bad but oh yeah yeah the the the worst of the violence in the [flintstones] was when somebody gave fred a poke in the [snoot] but oh shoot i mean blowing up [galaxies] and and putting a curse on the whole planet or or or you know or on all the you know everything of this species you know just all kinds of crud yeah everything's [mutations] and and and killing and gone are the days of those things they what was it i uh t n turner broadcasting network used to used to uh do the saturday morning and sunday morning cartoons the old cartoons they used to put between the first and second feature at the theatre those old little ten minute jobs where uh the real ballooned looking art work you know and uh i guess one of my favorite ones is cheers i always liked that one they're always so funny and i also like the cosby show those are probably my two favorites you know i've watched that one time and it was really good but now that's on what saturday night is it saturday night uh_huh i can't uh_huh yeah i yeah i saw it one time and i really liked it but i just haven't uh seen it you know watched it since yeah yeah the episode that i watched uh i liked him because even though he's a law enforcement officer you know sometimes the laws are kind of ridiculous and you need to sometimes break them to get your point across and for a good reason and he seems to do that sometimes yeah uh_huh yeah i thought it was a pretty good show i always like i i like to watch like sixty minutes and twenty twenty uh_huh uh_huh i've never gotten into the star trek era used to be a [trekie] huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah oh my goodness you must have some of their lines memorized wow yeah uh_huh twelve week oh i was going to say i hear a baby in the background i imagine that keeps you busy yeah well we're we're expecting our first in about three months so i know we won't be watching as much as we do now oh wow that must be tough it doesn't matter just a healthy baby well we had a [sonogram] but we told him not to tell us so it's going to be a surprise yeah yeah it's it's not quite the same yeah i agree i'm sure we'll be watching more uh children oriented television shows oh i am too i still watch cartoons sometimes every once in a while when my sister comes to visit so well you know it seems like a lot of them are a lot more violent than they used to be you know i remember like the [flintstones] and the jetsons and those were just kind of good old cartoons yeah yep yeah and they wonder why kids turn out the way they do nowadays yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh okay um i like watching colombo and um matlock and quantum leap yeah uh_huh um uh_huh yeah that one was what about uh_huh yeah oh i well i haven't seen either of those huh_uh um i also like to watch star trek but it's on so late here that i don't always get to see it uh i haven't seen any of the movies because i just barely just like in the last year or so got interested in it and they're you know already out with number six by now but so i haven't seen any of the movies yet but i no uh_huh yeah i've seen quite a few of the older ones i haven't seen really the new generation that much is there one you prefer better the older one or the the newer one oh yeah yeah i do too i have a brother in law who really likes the old ones a lot i mean he almost hates the new ones yeah because he he thinks the newer ones is like a soap opera and the other one isn't or something but i don't oh i think yeah yeah sure well let's see um i like to watch colombo because it's like a mystery thing that's sort of how matlock is but colombo is way tricky i mean he doesn't even try to let the person know he's getting onto them well did you see the one um um yeah there's like one on well we see it thursdays at seven and it was this last time it was about this um movie director did you did you see that really oh i guess i huh oh i guess i've i haven't seen it before yeah yeah on the set or something yeah it was but yeah i like colombo probably the best of any of those mystery things but um there's no never anything good on saturdays though i don't think so well star [trek's] on at five but i'm never home so oh i've heard of it a lot i've heard of a lot of people somehow or something they'll say so and so from twin peaks or something you know oh uh_huh oh did they end the whole series oh oh oh another show i like to watch is mash so what are your favorite shows oh really quantum leap did you see it the other night that was that was pretty good what do you with the [psychic] and everything okay yeah i like uh i like northern exposure and uh home improvement you've never seen northern exposure oh it's a great show really yeah we like it too have you seen the movie oh you haven't seen any of them oh well they're good they're real good they're uh they're getting rid of the old cast for the movies though which ones are you watching the new ones oh okay yeah well they're they're a lot different but i like i like the older ones because at that time you know they were really futuristic you know and the newer ones are i guess the newer ones are real futuristic too but i like i like both of them really no not really it's not really like a soap opera but but it's but that's true i mean you you learn more about the characters and stuff but that's the way all shows are now yeah yeah well it seems like they always show colombo the same ones over and over though you know what i'm saying like that one where he goes to college or is this is there a series on okay yeah i saw that one see that was a [rerun] yeah i wondered if that's see i don't know if that's a the movie of the week or or what but it seems like there's only about four or five different ones and then then they keep showing them over and over he was a movie director and he had that gal killed okay that was pretty good though uh_huh no kidding what is it that there's something i watch something i watch on saturdays and i can't remember what it is now i used to watch twin peaks you never saw that yeah yeah that was a different soap opera but it was it was a different type of show i didn't like the way it ended though yeah yeah they didn't they only did it for i think two years but it's all over now and where are you uh_huh well i guess the only people i've talked to before were from texas so i i was i was beginning to think that was the only people on the network well what do you uh what are your favorite television shows l a law yeah that's a very popular one around my office but i've never seen it never have seen it i well i can go even better than that i've never seen dallas either never once well i think i just sort of uh didn't start watching it and then felt like i would have been way too late getting in on the action to figure out what was going on so i never did get involved in it uh_huh who killed j r oh oh yes yes i remember reading about that thinking uh i would have just strangled them yes i think that's right i think they just lost their uh inspiration for a while yeah somebody said that uh j r is going to die and that will be end of the season forever i mean the end of the show forever well it's about time too bad they didn't kill him the first time uh_huh oh well i mostly watch public television so yeah i'm one of those i uh well i love masterpiece theatre and i love the mystery series oh yes all of oh oh really uh_huh we have uh uh a local station uh on our cable network here that uh is showing all the miss [marples] over again so we got to repeat them i i think it is a and e uh_huh oh they do have some absolutely gorgeous things so uh but they uh the one we just watched that we had videotaped from the weekend was the gardens of the world did you see that one this week uh well we are lucky enough to now be on a cable system that has four public t v channels so we we get things over and over so if we miss them we can catch them later and that gardens of the world was absolutely glorious it was uh [audrey] [hepburn] was [narrating] it and they took you all over uh started in italy went to england france some in america uh also japan anyway it was a really a a visual treat is that right uh well when i was in houston there was one station of just uh it was uh the university of houston station and uh so it had not all of the stuff that people in other parts of the country were getting because each station gets its own mix but when i moved to california and all of a sudden i had this uh this [surfeit] of public television we can get all sorts of things everything from i guess on saturday there you can watch something like eight different cooking shows so i don't but i could if i felt like it uh_huh really i would have thought that was close enough or you got a hill between you or something like that well the about the only things i watch on commercial television are thirty something and twin peaks uh and i just discovered that they uh have canceled both of those so well let me tell you that twin peaks was much better when it just started so maybe it's time for it to quit i they've gone downhill too well the thing i liked about it was that it was so [unconventional] that you couldn't predict what was coming next that's right and this one had all sorts of weird little things and would go off in uh strange directions and it had lots of uh little subtle touches that if you weren't watching you would miss uh that they'd have references to literature and things like that and they'd also just have odd things like they walk into a bank [vault] and there's a deer head lying on the table in the bank [vault] and there's no explanation for it they treat it as perfectly normal and somebody says what's the deer head doing here and they said oh it fell off the wall so why was it doing on the wall and in one case the fellow was making coffee and they said there's a fish in the coffee pot well i suspect that that's a reference to [thoreau's] fish in the bucket of milk but i don't know for sure and i'm not sure what the relevance would be if it were anyway it had a lot of things like that thing to make you keep watching just for the novelty and the surprise of it uh_huh uh_huh um well yeah i'd say probably what i watch the most faithfully is the news which i really don't watch as much as i just listen to it well when i'm fixing dinner or something like that i uh at least know if there's anything i want to read thoroughly in the newspaper i get the headlines off the television yeah uh_huh uh we just about had to get it because the reception in our particular locality was so poor that we could only get about three stations and uh only one was a public station and we had a san francisco station and a san jose station but neither one of them was very clear they were both barely adequate so we decided when the cable came through that we would get on it just so we could see what we were watching if we watched anything at all uh_huh yeah i think i would be inclined to do the same thing if we could see anything without the cable uh_huh yeah they have had some absolutely wonderful shows and they do they have incredibly good what are called production jobs they have really well [researched] uh locations and sets and costumes uh my favorite i watch the most is l a law it seems to be you know it's on the evening time when i have more time to watch t v and i watch that one and uh_huh uh_huh what are those uh_huh i've never seen that one yeah i know what it's about i've just never seen you know saw it is it uh_huh uh_huh yeah that one's a funny one one show i can't stand is married with children it's on i believe it's on sundays or something yeah and it's kind of disgusting oh i know and then they're always [grinding] you know it's just not yeah i don't care for those two but no i like l a law it you know it seems like it i guess because it continues on each time and it keeps you interested yeah almost about it's about what it seems to be like so yeah it could be i don't know that the you know the people that that much so yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i like on sundays i like you know america's uh funniest videos and yeah i like to watch that one i don't care for america's funniest people but i like the other one i can't remember the i'm not too much on uh you know [actors'] names i don't yeah uh_huh yeah that's a good show uh_huh how old is your son oh okay uh_huh yeah yeah well see my my husband likes the simpson's and i don't care for it too much my kids you know sit there an laugh with it when their dad laughs but you know that my i don't care for the simpson's too much but my husband likes it so i don't get the humor sometimes in it so no uh_huh yeah right because it's animated uh_huh yeah yeah i don't we don't have cable so um i don't watch too much television you know uh_huh uh_huh are you you're in dennison then okay i'm in garland so garland texas oh okay oh garland you know where richardson plano okay we're right we're connected to richardson we're right between like rowlett and richardson and and mesquite you know yeah yeah you you garland is a little bit more to the east i believe it would be so yeah uh yeah i do i guess i like that one yeah that's about i you know i don't like too much t v you know i do have a few of my favorites so uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah my kids like to watch you know uh sesame street sometimes but they they're in more into watching their own videos you know uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's what my kids do they have [bambi] little mermaid you know all peter pan all those and then i check some out from the library you know yeah uh_huh yeah so that's what they like to do so we seem to watch more videos for the kids and then my husband's a t v watcher he's a sports nut though yeah yeah see my husband's one of these that will switch from game to game to catch a little bit of every one you know and so oh not him he'll watch a little bit of everything so but i you know and when now he starts doing that i just leave the room and go read or do something else because i can't handle it i'm one that likes to sit and watch one show so uh_huh oh yeah well that's one nice thing about you know not having a remote you don't have to worry about your husband switching the channels so but yeah that's my about my favorite so well it's been nice talking to you it's nice to talk to somebody in texas for once oh rochester north carolina all over so uh_huh yeah it's it's unusual so okay you too nice talking to you it's okay you can get started there oh that's probably what i was going to say okay oh uh_huh oh yeah where where are you calling from dallas yeah i'm from rowlett oh really really i was going to ask you if you've been out to southfork uh_huh uh okay i i can't say i'm that much of a faithful dallas follower maybe it's because because i live here and i know how [hokey] it is i don't know one of my uh uh i went to school out in plano and one of my my [classmates] married one of the uh uh-oh god [duncans] that actually owned southfork that started so and i think she was in some of the shows for a while as extra and stuff so yeah well what are you going to do they're they're coming to the end of their season uh i was going to say there's going to be no more dallas reruns yeah of course they're uh they're probably going to set it up for some kind of sequel or something in the future and uh yeah it's got to come back uh_huh so you didn't need to know the language how about that true and hear hear the weird voices but uh yeah somebody one time was talking about john wayne movies with these weird japanese voices and it's hard to imagine well what do you think about what's going on on l a law this year it's have you seen it the past couple of weeks yeah and she's pregnant did you know that and that they kicked michael kuzak out did you know that no he uh the the i'm trying to remember leland decided to extend [brackman's] uh [reign] as a senior partner and the rest of the partners all got up in arms about it and michael met with them and said and said you know we got to do something about this we need to make a proposal that somebody else be the leader and he kind of elected himself and everybody else went along with it and they they uh gave it to leland and he hit the roof and um he and [brackman] talked about it and and [brackman] decided to try and do away with him so he fired him because he he violated one of their policies of going behind a senior [partner's] back or something so they fired him they chased him off with the security guards they're fighting out that battle now he's formed his own firm he uh what else did he do he did a lot of nasty stuff behind their back yeah he stole grace and [victor] they've gone with him um and um who are the other two he stole two associates [abby] and jonathan he he took [abby] and jonathan with him yeah and he he went to uh he went to the bank and he took um i can't remember the guy the guy he [defended] for murder earl you know they had a lien against his house so he'd pay his legal bills do you remember that yeah uh_huh they put a lien against his house so he'd pay his legal bills because it was like three or four hundred thousand dollars or something well michael reduced his legal fees to twenty thousand dollars so that they cut that out so they they couldn't have a lien on his house anymore so he did away with that and then he went to the bank because the bank gave him apparently some extra credit because they had that lien well since they didn't have the lien anymore they couldn't have the credit from the bank so that that got the firm in hot water and then then michael went to court and and uh [petitioned] that they needed to go into [solvency] because they were so financially in bad shape and uh they all showed up in court um leland was going to try a motion make a motion before that so they ended up both being in court in front of the judge pleading their case and um i think i think michael was doing it on the one hand and the guy that do you remember the guy that that uh grace had an affair with the other lawyer that she had an affair with for a while kind of an older guy no he wasn't at the firm he was like [rosalyn] [chase's] lawyer before it was earlier in the season she had an affair with this other lawyer and and anyway leland apparently has hired him on now and he's and he's defending this case and what happened at the end is the judge um um michael wanted the firm put in [receivership] and the judge wouldn't do it but he said he he's going to give a like a ten day evaluation and he was going to put it in the hands of a [businessman] to to run it and see if the firm was [salvageable] or not and and both parties had to come up with with lists of people that were [suitable] to to run it and he rejected both of the lists and came up with his own person you'll you'll never guess who this person is think of the well it might be hard but think of the the worst person that's been on the show in in the past two years besides [rosalyn] she's dead and gone goofy you'll never get it it's it's uh was it [roxanne] [roxanne] [roxanne's] ex husband david [meyer] yeah i know that's who he put in charge of the firm he yeah but he's going to be he's going to be running the firm for the next i don't know ten days or whatever to evaluate yeah that's pretty pretty strange well they they've already said that um who is it i guess it's susan dey and and uh whoever plays kuzak isn't coming back next year so some of this some of this has to do with why they're not coming back i guess yeah they're going to stay there in fact um susan dey and and uh the wife had had a [confrontation] about it why why they didn't invite them and and the the firm that kuzak founded is just a litigation firm and they said well we wanted we wanted you but we didn't really want [stuart] because he's not a [litigationist] and we didn't figure you you would come without him and and we're going to be fighting against each other so so it's just kind of weird yeah i know i know uh_huh yeah yeah that was kind of a bummer yeah it's interesting to talk about their their marriage in real life because she had breast cancer and that um probably um on friday nights full house it's a family comedy how about you really uh actually i don't have any kids no uh_huh uh how about you do you have a favorite one uh_huh uh_huh see i really don't watch that i i liked it originally when it first came on but i guess when uh diane left the show i i i i left it too uh_huh uh_huh so do you like comedies mostly or uh_huh what kind of sports uh_huh just whatever's in season at the time uh_huh uh_huh um yeah it's mostly like you know comedies and movies um you know movies on cable that aren't interrupted i guess uh yeah i have cinemax and the movie channel i guess uh_huh excuse me oh uh_huh uh_huh um yeah i mean how much t v do you normally watch yeah that that's about what i do you know like around nine or so in the evening i go uh_huh uh_huh right exactly uh_huh but then the thing on cable is that like you'll if you like watch you'll you'll see that movies are repeated so often uh_huh um so you're not familiar with or with uh full house right well it's it's about like a a a [widowed] father who has three girls and he has two other guys that live with him and they're all raising like the three daughters and it it yeah but it's really interesting and it's really funny i i enjoy it eight o'clock friday nights uh_huh uh_huh well and i have when harry met sally on cable on yeah it's a really good movie i guess the other thing i like is like the cosby show i like that on thursday nights really uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um um yeah that's that's really about it i guess uh uh_huh yeah i can remember what was that i spy or whatever that he was in yeah uh_huh i liked that yeah right i know i always liked that yeah that cartoon i always liked that uh_huh uh not really that much lately i used uh_huh oh no no no no you like that one huh uh_huh i never even saw the movie or the second one i guess uh_huh yeah oh really i i like more of the cartoons that were on when i was younger like bugs bunny and you know [porky] oh i never really liked him no road runner yeah road runner [daffy] duck you know all those kind of guys i like those oh i like that uh_huh oh really uh_huh yeah yeah and it's interesting from the perspective of his perspective i guess uh_huh i'm a little bit younger i was born quite i was born in sixty three so i was i'm i little bit younger no i don't really get into the simpsons either no no not really uh_huh uh on occasion i'm usually not home on you know sunday evenings but uh on occasion i do and twenty twenty really i've never seen that one uh well i'm not normally home during when talk shows are on uh_huh oh really well see where i live she's on during the day i live in virginia yeah a lot of people that i've talked to have been like that that you know that they can't realize that i they're they you know thought that was a little strange that i was from virginia but so all the talk shows here are on during the day so the only time i ever catch anything is if i come home a little bit home early from work and see oprah because she's on at four uh_huh but you know that's they tend to arrange though the topics seem to go like in a cycle and it seems like on everyone's show they have the same topic like within a certain range of time at least that i see notice not that i see them that often but from what i hear people telling me uh_huh uh_huh oh gosh that's a little yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um uh_huh exactly um well you know i even like uh entertainment tonight with you know i like that you you learn a little bit about the [stars'] lives you know yeah uh_huh um and i guess that's about it we seem to have gone over the whole realm of all the different kinds of t v no i definitely don't watch those uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well that will give you a lot of entertainment uh_huh oh that i don't i don't really get into watching sports on t v i'd rather be there in person i guess but if you can't be there in person i guess seeing it on t v the next best thing uh_huh yeah i guess i guess you would uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's a benefit uh_huh oh really no i haven't either i haven't either and i do want to see that oh sure it was nice talking to you okay right right yeah sure yeah right i don't know i've i tend to like a lot of the old uh older t v shows like uh for instance there's there's i love watching old twilight zones and um and they've been there's a station here that runs mostly [syndicated] things and that's one thing i like to catch on late at night is the old twilight zones but um for t v that's out right now i i the shows i like to see for one reason or another that i've been catching um matlock and tuesday nights for some i guess are my t v night and i like to see uh matlock and then in the heat of the night uh are two shows that that i like to see after seeing the the television show in the heat of the night i wanted i haven't never seen the movie but uh i think i'd like to check out that movie sometime it's um i don't know it's just kind of interesting they have great characters in that uh t v show and it's interesting from i just saw the pilot to it oh a week or two ago and it was a special two hour thing but it was the first thing like i said the pilot and um the characters in it were the white police officers when the the black guy from philadelphia went down there were much more bigoted and more the [villains] in that episode and now over the time of the television show they're all very much um um not or very more in the twentieth century now or let's say they are very [unbigoted] and they even have added uh this uh other black police officer to the cast so it's interesting how they kind of got away from the i guess the premise of the movie as well as the problems that that uh he had with the police officers and now it's more concentrated on the problems they have in the small town in the south and it's it's kind of interesting because it's supposed to be this little tiny town down in down south but um i live in this little teeny town up here in upstate new york and it's not too much different so people got a lot to learn i everywhere right right i i don't know either i don't know yeah right right sure it's a lot different seeing [carroll] [o'conner] in that role than um archie [bunker] in and maybe a little more versatile than anybody ever gave him credit for but uh right this this is the heat of the night isn't it oh oh all in the family right right right right sure when it was relevant yeah well you've got old [meathead] there and the rest of the gang at the where [meathead] and and sally [struthers] there with the um the liberals supposedly correct view at the time and then uh archie [bunker] with his uh [antiquated] uh red [necked] uh ideas i don't know it the old meets new head on and whatever but now it's all old so you could have another one you could have a new t v show with um rob [reiner] and sally [struthers] in with their kids moving in and um yeah and have them be oh i don't even know [yuppies] are [passe] now i'm not even sure what uh yeah okay well it was nice talking to you all right oh yes oh uh_huh i'd noticed that in the t v guide and i'd totally forgotten all about that looks like it would be a good series oh i kind have a very wide range of uh different shows that i like i mean even the what is it america's funniest videos there's something about that i don't know if it's the [simplicity] of it or just the total stupidity of it that is good and uh i don't get to watch t v that often or sit back and enjoy it i have a nine month old so that occupies a lot of the time yeah those are good i like uh in the heat of the night yeah right uh that that's had some good episodes to it and then plus in the new course you have to have at least one soap opera right there i mean at least [knot's] landing or something on that order right i've been uh i tend to i try to catch that every now and then i mean you still catch up with it you know in a couple of weeks right yeah been trying to catch the last few weeks so i can see how it ends oh no should be interesting right lots of tongue in cheek right he's uh with him producing that it it he hasn't done a bad job we uh sort of get a kick out of the simpsons uh_huh right it it definitely grows on you and you think that it's so far fetched you know with the normal family life that stuff but every now and then they'll surprise you and have a moral to it and they do the right thing right and uh the things that uh bart will write on the uh [chalk] board at school right that's right we do that a lot at work right you know a lot of things come off of saturday night live that get caught up into the normal everyday routine right and oh what was the one that [gilda] [radner] did oh and and i'm real good at it too well no it's not in that special well anyway but you know what i'm saying things will get picked up from it and uh right oh yeah t v is on constantly here whenever we're at home i've seen one of one part of an episode it didn't do anything for me we like look who's talking this just wasn't anything to me like it you know wasn't it bruce willis that did the voice but there's just something with that yes right i've been catching that and that's real interesting yeah the one that fell down the i was like wait i missed that [rewind] there right right uh_huh it's quite it's quite a the last few episodes are going to be good right l a law's getting rid of several of their characters uh i heard that they just wanted to keep it fresh and did not have the same ones there forever and so they would be bringing in new ones or whatever yes yes at the swimming pool yeah i know that those three were supposed to leave and i don't remember about i don't know if he's supposed to leave either or not are you out on the west coast oh you're in texas okay you mentioned the time the time frame and i got confused there yeah uh_huh right on thursdays yeah yeah we've covered a lot of them well i enjoyed talking to you you too this is an easy subject i i guess i watch too much t v but do you afternoon shows mainly then yeah my kids love to watch cartoons and i have to come in the other bedroom to watch jeopardy and and but what are some of your favorite sitcoms or whatever at night yeah pretty good uh_huh uh_huh you don't have a real favorite or they're your favorites huh they're pretty good oh it surprises me that yours aren't the same as mine and i thought i formed mine kind of with my husband so we've been mcgyver fans forever i don't know if you ever watch that it's on monday night we we enjoy it mainly because it i think it has it's full of adventure and stuff like that yeah and we used to like cosby real well but it it's kind of slacked off a little bit it's not one of our murphy brown always is good for several laughs we like that we watch doogie quite often too but the last couple we wondered if the kids should watch with and tonight's or tomorrow night's sound pretty bad too so but uh we we watch and l a law is another one we probably watch if we can and quantum leap we have our our favorites of course i don't know what channel they're all on probably different ones that's kind of fun to watch too are you watching the world series right now too or i have a brother that lives in minnesota so this kind of has been fun to watch they tried to get get tickets but man the [scalpers] that were out wanted a hundred and fifty per ticket yeah i just read in today's paper where the dynasty sequel uh out rated the world series that surprised me i didn't think i didn't care to watch that dynasty at all i guess it depends on if you're a dynasty fan or not it will be interesting to see how many keep with it see if it was really that good or not but yeah yeah they look that that's pretty good oh gee oh well i think i'll stick with the world series let them fight it out i don't no i i watched dallas when it first came on and then i lost interest in it too and dynasty i just never did get into so but well i think that's all we need to discuss we have a few similar not too many and i'll have to watch one of yours and see if i like it so all right it was good talking to you uh major dad the monday night comedies on c b s like major dad murphy brown is one of my favorites for some reason she reminds me a lot of myself it's just the writing i think the writing on that is real good one i miss is uh doctor doctor i we used to when it was on because i i thoroughly enjoyed it uh yeah i understand that i do understand that no uh yeah well it used to be before we got married but my husband's not a real big football person so well he is if it's dallas and if they're on t v but if it's not then we'll watch anything else because he really likes major dad and and murphy brown all those too oh uh designing women yes with the [sugarbakers] i think that's one reason i named my daughter julia well that well and my great grandmother's name is julia so we named her that too uh do you have kids oh okay i was going to say because we also have to watch dinosaurs on channel eight because oh not to mama not to mama well when my two year old starts saying that it's like okay we we know what he's been watching for too long i just i oh i like those that's fun that's normally on thursday nights we just kind of turn the t v off because neither one of us really we usually either watch c b s on monday nights and then the rest of the time it's a b c it's like oh well we don't watch anything else fine we used to when n b c had no that was on tuesday night uh matlock because i got my mom got me started watching that show just because she liked andy griffith so that was fun uh_huh uh_huh i like yeah i used to like it when [columbo] and and all those were on and and [rockford] files but it's like gosh that seems like a long time ago they're fun they're fun yes yes i like that well i guess you probably don't get to see northern exposure then if he's watching football on monday nights that's it's it's a real strange one it's almost well it's like twin peaks but funny we used to like to watch twin peaks for the first season it was like oh this is really neat and then it got weird like real strange uh_huh now who did what yeah because it's you really have to be dedicated we would like tape it and send the kids to bed say okay now we can watch this because you have to watch every scene to kind of figure out what it's doing and it even then it's like huh what uh_huh uh it was a really really strange show but it's like well i'm sorry it's gone but i really didn't got towards the end we didn't watch it at all anyway yeah give give me comedies i'll i'll watch those i like those yeah i'm a i'm a comedy kind of person yeah well because yeah because you can like turn it off you only have to watch half hour at a time uh_huh well unless it's like you have kids and you have to watch full house and you have to watch dinosaurs and you have to watch erkle on friday nights and you know i understand that did you did you happen to see it last night that was cute [pablo] [pablo] it was like it's just a stupid bug yeah but i know i think it was four hundred and eighty something dollars so they went to [citizen's] court ooh ah did you really huh without the glasses and the [suspenders] and but have you seen the commercial for the erkle doll it dances i was like oh boy it dances it talks it sounds like erkle oh no it even [snorts] oh well it these people like they really have lives but it's just kind of strange oh yeah hello my name is uh donna [donoghue] and i'm calling from plano texas hi yes i did okay um let's see um i enjoy watching the today show early in the morning with my first cup of coffee because everyone is still sleeping i have three children and i enjoy watching the news because i probably don't have as much time as i'd like to sit and read the paper um what about yourself uh_huh right yeah i enjoyed that too i guess also that was a nice one because it was at a time when the kids are already in bed um i uh i haven't had a chance uh_huh is it in is it set in a different era is it oh okay i didn't i've i've seen the commercial for it but it's not uh seem to be on at a good time for me i try to stay away from horror movies i just dislike them totally yeah i don't um yeah that's that's right and um with young kids in the house we just really try to screen a lot of the things that they they watch um we watch a lot of sesame street and a lot of p b s and the uh discover channel or lifetime yes it is it is it is wonderful and especially my eleven year old is just fascinated by some of the the things they have on there um what else i my husband enjoys watching a lot of sports which i really um don't particularly enjoy but they're they're on there i tolerate it uh_huh okay and um what else is there's a lot of things that i just can't believe is even on t v you watch it for two minutes and think this is so ridiculously stupid you can change it you know what is a good station too we subscribe to the disney channel yeah it's it's a really nice and they have um you know movies that sometimes we'll sit and enjoy and it's it's really very nice uh that was we dropped um h b o because there was just never anything appropriate on for the kids and now with renting videos so readily i mean you can just rent it if you really want to see it that badly but that's right and then and then they repeat everything so often too and or if it's on at ten at night well i i'm asleep by ten at night i don't think i could stay up that late any more um not to start a movie anyway uh_huh i see i see yeah it does it does seem high but um what other there's a i guess one or two sitcoms and the kids of course like to watch that new dinosaur show that's which is pretty silly but but they yeah yeah once in a while [bryan] watched that but that is more for an older kid than than the younger ones you know so that seems okay for them i do too i had to try to tell my kids that you know we don't really talk to each other like that i hope we don't any way to make sure they don't think well gee mom look what their kid just said say well but um and the kids like to watch that doogie [howser] but uh even that sometimes i have to shut it off and say it's an adult theme we don't need to watch that tonight we'll get out the clue game or okay oh um i like um like shows like um sitcoms i don't really have a favorite i don't watch a lot of t v but i like um like full house is a cute show um and like growing pains and just the cute little comedy shows i don't think i really have a favorite um oh yeah that's a that's a good show too uh_huh oh yeah i don't know oh family matters uh_huh right yeah right oh me neither oh what was that oh oh um yeah i don't really watch that too often oh yeah yeah that's true yeah yeah sometimes they try too hard the t v shows oh yeah yeah i used to watch it the general hospital that soap but oh yeah yeah that's true right they try to get um your interest started of something really good but it ends up being really stupid nobody likes it oh yeah yeah well that's good kids should be watching you know shows like that they don't need to see all this violence there's enough violence in real life you know let alone yeah uh_huh right yeah yeah i can see that probably does that to a lot of people oh um oh you know i like like the the older um shows like they show on the you know the weird channels that are hardly ever on i'm like happy days was one of my favorites and the brady bunch when i was little i really liked those shows and every once in a while you're flipping through the channels and you'll see an very old [rerun] or something oh yeah yeah me too yeah okay now what is your favorite t v show well can't you find anything else to uh to replace so you don't watch northern exposure oh okay you are having to be in reruns for that one have you seen brooklyn bridge that is one of the it is so clean and so laid back and uh i am awful tired of some of the things that they have on t v but this thirty minute story is i would certainly recommend that you try it oh okay well and i think it is a shame that our life has to be i mean so many of the tragedies that we have in the movies or on t v no we need something lighter than that have you seen uh i will fly away yes yeah well uh it is not i don't know it's it's clean it's there again you don't have the violence and uh i am surprised that it is even still on because coming at seven o'clock in the evening that is when the children want to watch and that is not part of it so uh oh well uh let's see i believe texas lost last night is that correct well you don't have to well don't you ever forget that oklahoma is not bad but oklahoma state though is is the better of the two so that is right yeah i am a [transplanted] okie well we've from somewhere is correct so i hope you can find enough t v to keep you happy this winter well i have recently retired and i find that this is the most boring thing in the world is to sit and watch t v oh you don't well well it's oh it's nice to have the noise sometimes it is nice that you don't need that noise do you work out of the home oh hello how you doing hi holly uh my name's lee i'm calling from uh plano texas oh okay well i guess we're supposed to talk about oh it's been beautiful today yeah snow no not over here just a little bit north of us though yeah just a little bit north of it's been beautiful today probably uh high fifties low maybe you know low sixties oh it's beautiful how about there oh good good you've had enough uh water for a while well uh yeah we better let me push one here okay what's that let's see i've got four kids and they our t v are usually are usually yeah uh ruled by the kids so we watch all the [usuals] uh you know cosby kids and uh we yeah we like to watch comedy uh uh we uh our kids are so involved in sports and stuff that our nights are we're not home very much at night so uh what are yours oh is that right oh isn't that a great show that is the funniest show oh that is the funniest show uh yeah uh_huh now they've got one tonight with susan dey yeah that that looks intriguing it looks kind of it would be well we we've got uh enough t v that that whoever wants to you know watch uh if yeah the majority stays in the front room and watches and whoever wants to watch something else can go somewhere else and watch it so uh yeah i think my wife and i are probably going to just stick in our room and and watch that one it looks it looks intriguing to me so but uh yeah how about during the day do you do you watch any of the soaps or you watch any of the talk shows you work okay uh_huh yeah the old shows oh yeah oh yeah yeah you know i was watching uh i took the day off today and i was watching uh donahue and he had uh past child stars yes uh he had uh danny [bonaducci] from uh the [partridge] family he had uh uh jay north you know dennis the menace and he had [spanky] [mcfarland] and he had uh you know three or four others uh and they were talking about uh child stars and how they were mistreated as you know when they were growing up and uh yeah and they were talking about this uh [macaulay] kid you know from home alone what if the kid you know all of a sudden said well i don't want to do this anymore you know and i guess his dad is the uh is also his agent yeah you know i mean if i guess i'm i i kind of put myself in in his dad's shoes if if my kid was making you know twenty five million dollars a year and he came to me and said i don't want to do this anymore i mean what do you do what do you say you know yeah that's right so he yeah so uh it i wouldn't think so you know i guess yeah i'm kind of sympathetic to the to the young kids that are involved in that and and uh but as far as shows uh you know my kids like to watch all the cartoons on saturdays yeah yeah yeah uh that should be really fun to to watch uh yeah my kids okay what kind of t v shows do you like uh_huh i see uh_huh the news okay um i don't i don't care for wheel of fortune very much i don't care for game shows in general i guess uh they're not usually there's usually not that many on in the evening anyway so about the wheel of fortune is about the only one that's on in the evening times yeah yeah um i do like uh well they had a good t v movie on last night called separate but equal it's a general motors hall of fame type presentation uh it's a two [parter] the other [part's] on tonight but it was about the uh the uh the well it's supposed to be a true story you know a [dramatization] the true story of the legal struggle that ended up in the supreme court decision brown versus the board of education which ended up um oh saying that separate and equal is not constitutional as far as you know schools it was talking about and it was interesting it was a it's it's it's really a high one of these high drama type you know uh shows that's also true any of those things i like [hallmark] hall of fame and those kind of shows are always so good i like to watch those right right oh yeah i can watch those national geographic ones over and over again and they're they're good they're they're i like news shows too like uh sixty minutes or twenty twenty uh when i have a chance i watch those on uh i guess sixty minutes is usually on sundays and uh i just like to see you know who they are raking over the [coals] i haven't caught that one yet twenty twenty uh_huh right right right right uh_huh yeah yeah right well that makes it hard yeah that was a good show um what else do i enjoy oh my wife and i have been into this uh l a law have you ever heard of that show yeah it's getting pretty you know it's kind of like a dallas type thing you know but it's more of it it takes place in l a and it's this law office and all the cases they take and the and the uh [interoffice] uh uh politics and so forth people trying to maneuver and get power and back [stabbing] and also helping each other and you know if you know all the [interoffice] love affairs and uh all that all that kind of stuff and you know power struggles to see who's going to be the next uh uh-oh president of the law firm or whatever and that kind of thing and uh and then of course they always have a lot of court cases and they show where they actually have courtroom drama type thing where they're trying to you know you're always sitting there trying to guess at the end of the show you know and they always have the verdicts you know and you're always trying to out guess is he going to be guilty or innocent or whatever and they always put you know twists and turns twists and they throw a lot of twists and turns in like like one of the recent shows there was this really uh young woman who uh was accused of killing her millionaire husband who was you know much older than she was like you know in her early twenties and he was in his sixties and he was she was accused of killing him for his money and she said no she wasn't and the and this law firm took on the case and got her off um and uh and you know you think she's innocent all along you know and just you know because of her circumstances that you know that's why people thought she had done it you know because it just looked so obvious that she had done it and that's why everybody assumed she had and so they get her off and at the very end of the case after it's over he's talking with her and he figures out that she really did do it after all uh after he got after he got her off well that's how the show that's how the show ended it just left you hanging there like you know like you set me up you fed me all this information you know that made it look like this other person was guilty you know and and that's how he basically got her off by by casting a shadow of doubt saying well this other his daughter did it you know and because this other will was had her name on it you know and all this kind of stuff but actually she had done it after all and he figured it out after he made her innocent and then that was right before he was going out to the big news conference you know to talk to the reporters and stuff you know and how does it feel you know to get her off the hook and this and that and they he went out there knowing that she was really guilty so that kind of thing so it's a fun show then i like comedies also like uh there's a show called i watch [rosanne] once in a while uh you you've heard of her probably yeah yeah yeah yeah i don't watch her that often i watch sometimes i watch the simpsons that's that cartoon show bart simpson's or coach is another one it's a sports comedy where the guy is a coach of a a football team a team at minnesota state where they're never have a good team you know but he's always trying to always trying to pull it off and he has his girlfriend the that broadcasts the [anchor] at the local news station and she's always trying to get him out of [jams] and she so you know whatever whenever i have time i just turn it on basically and see what's on it is no no right yeah so but i enjoy taking in a movie when i can i'm going to try to watch the second half of this one tonight yeah yeah yeah yeah they catch you up and the right right do you have like a a v c r yeah it broke down yeah right so little so little time to do that yeah have a chance more chance to relax right there's always a movie on you right right how much are they out there yeah six fifty yeah yeah i think out here they are still about five fifty about a dollar less things are going up all over too yeah right specials uh_huh yeah the all sports station yeah right i see right uh_huh the same yeah yeah well i think we've probably talked long enough about this subject well it was nice talking to you you have a nice day okay uh well what's your favorite t v program uh_huh huh uh well to the to the great chagrin of my husband i i love all forms of entertainment and so i i watch entertainment tonight with [regularity] i tape it and watch it the next day yes right well they've been doing it saturday nights now uh_huh ten thirty um for an hour i mean no that just what can i say it's just a matter of taste and the rest of the time right now there's not a t v series that i'm particularly glued to uh i watch some of the [anthologies] if they've got something interesting on like masterpiece theater or mystery or something like that yeah yes we saw we saw several of those not all of them and uh so we're we're we're pretty watchers we've i've been introduced to the [joys] of star trek so we watch that with with only the new one i i i i never really was interested in the old one and uh and so but i i like the cast of the new one so uh that's what we watch uh saturdays uh_huh true that's true uh i i'm a very selective watcher i i look at the t v section and decide what i'm going to watch and watch it but as a rule i don't sort of stroll around the dial and let things catch my eye yes unlike certain parties oh yes oh yes and also i don't know how old they are but there's [nickelodeon] oh well they would enjoy that uh_huh so would i i wouldn't admit it to anybody oh well yes you hit upon a a weak spot of mine i i i have a thing for the actor who played [cornelius] [hackel] yes i mean forty i'm here twenty years later that's because he's uh he plays the phantom of the opera now and oh yes but i've already got that on tape so we didn't tape it i like old movies i love musicals uh_huh uh_huh right oh i know i know i keep a little a little a little library and if i get stuck i can resort to my little library in all sorts of things it's surprising with all the choice we have sometimes there's no choice not really but uh you know i'm luckily i had i hadn't started dinner yet huh i don't know i got kicked off the other day because they said the lines were busy but i think i uh i i think that's unusual i don't think that's typical me too me too and uh you you keep on watching for those old movies all right all right okay what do you like do you watch t v much oh really oh yeah okay no i don't watch that in the i did watch it in the beginning when it was new and it was kind of funny a couple of times and then i don't i don't watch it yeah yeah yeah it's just for kick i know yeah but look at the soap operas yeah i do too i know yeah i'm not a t v person i haven't been a t v person and i really didn't even know what was ever on and then this year for some reason i have a twelve year old and for some reason we've just gotten real comfortable with these little sitcoms at night oh just the little funny things we love full house and you know i just yeah it's mine too and i it's nice and wholesome and there aren't very many of those you know so we look forward to that and i love i just love that little bitty girl on there she is so cute yeah uh_huh did you see it a couple weeks ago when they had her fifth birthday that was so precious it was and i hadn't realized that she had been on the show that the show had been on that long but she was so tiny oh i don't remember yeah right right right yeah yeah i don't watch it i don't like it very much yeah i just never i never got into it and it might be the time that it's on and i'm not sure when it's on but uh_huh i don't know why i don't know why i never watch it maybe because it's the weekend i'm not home a lot but really i never got into it very much and my daughter loves quantum leap and i hate that show oh he's so it's such a strange thing have you ever seen it it's he changes he has a little buddy that's sort of like a conscious or something i'm not sure and he goes to a different time you know a time in the past it's sort of like a back to the future thing and he goes back and he changes things so that they're not like somebody doesn't die but he becomes that person i mean he's already been a pregnant woman and had a baby it's a uh i have trouble with it it's just a really ridiculous show i just hate it my daughter looks forward to it she likes it yeah i guess so i don't know but i just i like that kind of thing and i like brooklyn bridge that's a new one to see uh brooklyn bridge it's a new one that just came on this year and i like it because it's the fifties back in brooklyn well being from new york i relate to when the dodgers were in brooklyn and i mean back you know and so it's like that time and the kids are little when i was kind of little you know and it was it's sort of like that so it's a little bit nostalgic for me and the things that my father taught a lot of them are in the show you know so that kind of thing yeah so i like that oh can we do that we don't have to tell them i mean they don't tell us when to hang up oh i didn't know that oh okay well you better pull your little paper out you better pull your little paper out and keep going then it's not over maybe they will oh it's been fun to talk to you me too well probably my favorite t v program is murder she wrote i happen to be a mystery fan and uh programs such as perry mason and [ironside] and murder she wrote and [columbo] all of those are my favorite kinds of programs uh_huh well yeah no i don't think we get it here oh oh what kinds of things do they uh show oh my word uh_huh oh my word uh_huh probably things that that they happen every day and we don't even notice them until someone [videotapes] them is that right uh_huh yeah i saw that for the first time yesterday in the evening uh_huh yeah i have never seen her show but after hearing her sing the stuff the star [spangled] banner [anthem] i will never watch her show uh_huh yeah oh yeah right uh_huh do you oh yes that's a good program uh_huh oh okay well i think that they uh they seem like they are friends with one another and with all of their guests rather than just interviewing yeah did they uh_huh uh_huh well great of course i have to admit i i love uh when the fall comes i love uh football and i watch all the football games monday night thursday night and sunday afternoon well and not everybody is yeah but uh i can't get too enthused about it yet it seems to me i have to feel that the fall weather to really do something uh with regard to football yeah i of course i always hate to see it end in january i'd like to see it go on for a couple of months but football to me uh in real real hot weather it just doesn't uh doesn't click now i enjoy going to baseball games but i don't enjoy watching them on television and i don't enjoy watching basketball on television they're they're both well baseball's so slow and uh basketball seems like all that you can really see is run and shoot run and shoot run and shoot and uh because the average person doesn't get to see enough of the entire floor to see a play get uh develop and so uh uh i don't usually watch them i'll listen to baseball and i'll listen to uh like the indianapolis five hundred i would not go and face all those crowds for anything in the world but uh but no i won't watch it i'll listen to it on the radio yeah while i'm doing something else but i won't sit still long enough to watch them go around and around and around to me that is very boring but i i don't watch i don't sit and watch for long periods of time anyhow yes we certainly do are you sure right i guess so oh with the dallas cowboys although they haven't done very well the last couple of years but uh they'll be back up there yeah they'll climb back up again and that texas stadium i've been there that is a phenomenal place well and i think that's maybe what i like about it in that so many of them are totally enclosed oh i well i have and they're very noisy and uh then of course i've been up to cleveland ohio where the cleveland browns play and that's just a wide open stadium and that cold wind comes off the lakes and it is miserable oh but um now you go down to cincinnati and they have a nice stadium down there but it's it's all open also two yeah yeah and then of course indianapolis which is only a hundred miles away from us has the colts yeah so they got a lot of sports going on around here uh_huh oh yes oh yes well i uh i'm retired from education i worked thirty four years as a teacher and administrator in the dayton here this the dayton school system and uh some of my players uh players some of my former students uh play with minnesota vikings and then with the cleveland browns yeah it was it was fun because uh they would call when they were with the browns they would call and say we left tickets at the gate for you all come on up so we would hop in the car the next morning and drive up and we had tickets waiting for us yeah yeah oh sure one of them was grown up and was chief of police here yeah right when you see the ones who are successful and there are many of them around and uh makes me feel good to know i played one small part in their rearing well i i uh when i first started out teaching it was at college level and then uh after we moved here to dayton then i went to the high school level and i really enjoyed that more and so then i taught the physical education actually with the i was the specialist in water safety and so i taught uh the the physical education and swimming um on the high school level and then they just kept pushing me into administration and and i wound up as an assistant principal and then i went down to the central office and was part of a team to to to develop a program to evaluate schools and to uh try to resolve problems within schools yeah sure i was also a [gymnast] when i was very small in a [czechoslovakian] turner society anyway so what have what have you been into did you watch l a law last night uh_huh uh_huh yeah they they they get first crack huh well i usually i guess a lot of the sitcoms cosby cheers uh uh uh_huh yeah a different world a different world what else did i get in uh uh but some of the other ones like i've been getting into l a law and uh no i don't make a point i i guess i really never make a point to to watch anything i'll just end up catching it but uh yeah you know if i'm not doing that night uh you know which i guess is usually most nights no but uh oh speaking of twenty twenty you didn't see the one in with the [exorcists] uh_huh yeah i did oh well the girl that supposedly was possessed uh had actually uh you know seen uh you know uh some medical the medical side i don't know if it was a psychologist or what all but um you know it was it's interesting uh and uh you know i'm from you know i'm was raised catholic fairly you know fairly strong with my mom and dad so but it you know that's kind of interesting um but the bottom line it you know they did the [exorcism] it wasn't real major you know she was fairly you know you know obviously there she you know she something was wrong with her but uh it wasn't really uh you know extraordinary as far as her actions and she had done that and she felt like that helped her but at the same time shortly after that [exorcism] they also started um um uh giving her medication for like a split personality type of so uh she's doing better but and and the girl herself you know believes that it you know that she was uh you know possessed but and you know it it's hard to say yeah i'm i'm not sure you know who knows but uh anyway it wasn't uh you know it was uh it was you know well i i can't say it wasn't just because of the fact that that it's pretty unusual for something like that to be nationally televised uh or or have anybody come in you know who who would want to have that televised you know if that was happening to your daughter and her parents are right there you know doing it all you know so um uh_huh yeah i'm in phoenix arizona right now are you in dallas oh okay yeah yeah yeah yeah i i never got caught up in twin peaks either so yeah uh i don't know i don't hear people talk at work you know as far as uh you know what what people are getting into but uh um you know some of the top sitcoms obviously do you know always in the top five you know the cosby or i think a different world is real strong and uh well that's the one it's the one right after cosby and it's produced by cosby and it's about it's basically about uh college uh you know and it it it's you know since it's kind of promoted by cosby it's you know mostly blacks but uh but it's it's a pretty good show it uh have you ever heard of [jasmine] guy okay now she's one of the main stars of that and now she's just come out came out with an album and uh and which is fairly successful she's got one or two singles that have done very well so but she is a very strong personality in that show in fact they just had a show covering aids so you know they try to get their messages across i should say uh_huh um not sure yeah yeah uh that one is is it still competing with cosby such a brat honestly i'm indifferent i probably i probably will watch a little bit of everything uh i i i i get into movies i'll uh i'll see you know i'll watch twenty twenty or i'll uh you know i guess i'm only mostly into sitcoms i guess my you know one show i'm really into is arsenio hall and uh and then you know i've been watching him for a long time now and i i needed a break and i watched johnny carson last night a little more level you know and so it's like i'm just think oh what do i feel like today you know we're getting our options on different talk shows and i always liked watching letterman but he starts so late yeah well the the talk shows with the personality yeah and uh but uh letterman starts pretty late out here about twelve o'clock but i'll still watch it once in a while well i i tend to be a a uh sports news and uh not very many of the modern sitcoms what about what about yourself yes uh_huh well what i find is that outside of uh well sports because i'm a sports fan is the the ones that i do watch is uh saturday night live except i i wish they didn't have so many reruns and otherwise we're caught up with uh because we are pretty good at sitting down to dinner in the six to seven o'clock period uh good ole wheel of fortune which is uh an interesting combination of a a lot of luck and uh the it's probably as good a program as any for the audience to play along and see if you think you're smart or smarter then then those folks are uh i have a family that is very much into sitcoms and and i have to at six o'clock uh fight getting the news on versus uh having the channel changed on me because they want to watch cosby or one of the other ones that are running on one of the uh the off channels uh_huh yeah certainly more educational then wheel of fortune uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i find that it seems to me and uh maybe this is as you get older i'm in my mid forties now but uh uh i guess from my vantage point i think the quality of t v has gone down or else my interests have changed because there were there were various series over the years that i would always make sure that i watched and yet i find that now uh there's hardly anything that that except saturday night live that [draws] me to say i want to try to watch that i may watch something just because it's on but i uh i tend to go more to the educational channels if there's uh something that seems interesting there i just uh as i say don't find the modern sitcom very uh well just very appealing to my interests yeah do you get a and e because that's one we don't have cable so uh there's a few things i miss because i don't have cable and a and e is one whenever i'm on a business trip and they have it i find that it has things that are uh that interest me they have a lot of series uh i guess i'm into uh i'm a history buff so with all their reruns of uh the [aviators] over the ages and uh who built what planes and all that was uh that type of stuff interests me huh yeah i guess that varies from place to place being in the dallas area because we have we have about seven without uh cable and then with cable who knows how many you can get seven seems enough uh i've read a little bit about it but uh i haven't i don't even know if it's running here in dallas it kind of shows the level of interest i have in looking at the t v schedule what time's it on there uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well they do but it it's amazing these days if something isn't making it the word of mouth uh of people talking to each other can cause a program which gets bad reviews to uh to uh not last for very long and even though they did invest money in it that they uh it's i think the comparison is like baseball managers this year they seem to uh say two weeks in uh you've had your chance time to uh since you aren't making it we're going to find somebody else well what's your favorite shows huh that's one of my favorite yeah mystery and uh masterpiece theater yeah uh_huh yeah i don't not anymore i don't there's just nothing on it i got i got sort of hooked on that uh dark [shadows] yeah i when i watched it originally i didn't know it was a i don't know it was going to be a series i thought it was just a movie and so i started watching it and all of a sudden stay tuned next week and i went what and then it blows into this whole series thing so i sort of had to stay with it not really it it it's it's gotten to the point it's getting ridiculous now and they they just had the uh season finale and i don't i don't know what they accomplished but i think the writers just figure well let's just do anything and we'll we'll have a couple of months to come up with some new ideas yeah yeah yeah i don't like programs that i can figure it out um the only one that i watch religiously is l a law i really like that yeah that's that's my favorite well i'm i'm a struggling law student and i the reason i like it is because they give you good law in there yeah it's not like these other programs where they just make up anything they want and they they throw little tidbits out that are really good uh_huh of course i mean it's got its bad side so it's limited by the format obviously you don't get into court as quickly as they seem to make it out that you do i mean they're they're in california and they're they're waiting list is about four years four or five years for a civil case so uh i mean you know it's very difficult to yeah it would yeah no not at all you know the wheels of justice grind slowly yeah i'll agree with you there i'll agree with you i know i know the [shortcomings] too oh well not in that that's not on my that's not on my list of now there was some of the some of the classes i'm in i think i'm in sesame street but uh some of the professors i think imitate big bird that's it i mean big bird would make a good judge better than some of the judges i've seen yeah i've got my own pet peeve about judges but uh-oh well we're stuck with them sort of like lawyers you know um let's see what else is oh i like a and e they don't have a and e on cable in dallas oh oh oh yeah i'll tell you the um uh a and e and discovery and c n n i couldn't i couldn't live without those oh yeah i i just leave it when i'm home during the day i just leave it on just to listen to it yeah the best coverage yeah uh the networks got sort of ridiculous with they they they felt like they had to interrupt normal programming for all this but they didn't have anything to say oh yeah yeah yeah well the coverage was a little bit ridiculous anyway i mean it it it got far more coverage than it should have i it was it was beautifully played out thing i mean it it [roused] the [patriotism] of the of the country and all that sort of stuff and yeah exactly i mean and sometimes they they would now i like jeopardy and jeopardy comes on here at seven o'clock and for i don't know it much have been two or three weeks there they were doing this expanded nightly news you know and i'm going i will never get to see jeopardy again yeah i'm saying what are you telling me that you didn't tell me in your first half hour nothing yeah oh well there goes a patriot missile oh well that's good that's good yeah oh boy golly gee yeah we are yeah well it was it was no i mean there there was nothing to it i mean i mean yeah i'm happy for that i'm happy for that but but unfortunately i sort of had the inside track because i'd been in the i'd been in the military for thirteen years and i worked in intelligence and and there was no yes another one of those military intelligence ha ha that's what that's just like justice for all but i mean my goodness there's they're sitting here making all this big deal out of the iranians and i'm sitting there thinking to myself uh_huh sure i mean they've poured billions of dollars into this stuff but the stupid people can't read comic strips i mean how do you expect them to operate tanks yeah i mean they can't even read their own language yeah a it just totally ridiculous i mean the israeli's could have fixed the whole problem years ago if they just sent sent their guys in there and killed saddam that's right i mean the israeli's they're not afraid of anything see what happens when they when they take a plane load of their citizens down in that doesn't uh that doesn't that situation doesn't sit around and develop very long all right i i i think everybody's jumping to conclusions i don't think anything's going to change no first off i don't think that the middle eastern situation's going to change i don't think that they're not yeah they're not going to come up with a peace plan or any of this kind of crap uh_huh yeah well they they they get [oshmid] [aukomo] you know the janitor for the u s [embassy] and you know yeah really and it was it was it was even worse here in north carolina because because a lot of the matter of fact all the units the marines and and uh the f the f sixteen squadrons came out of north carolina so every night on the local news they were down in fayetteville or they were down in [goldsboro] and they were talking to the military wives you know and and i and i understand the way they feel about their husbands and wives being over there and all that but to get on camera and just oh this is so terrible i just i don't what we're going to do i'm thinking to myself you know what do they people think they were getting into when they joined the military you know i'm going it what did you think it was a paycheck you know run around and then play soldier well the [reservists] sure do we had a [reservist] here in north carolina who who who's unit was ordered up and he refused to go i hope he got busted yeah the this this guy did too he ended up going to leavenworth which is good i'm glad huh_uh that's right and then she didn't want to do her obligation yeah well i uh you know i'm not i'm not racist or anything but one of my one another one of my pet peeves is they had a lot of black on the news talking about how unfair it is because the blacks are poor and therefore they don't have a choice but go in the military so there's more of them getting killed than the whites uh probably l a law i don't know i like all the court cases and uh the romance between everybody and what about you oh okay my fiancee likes that yeah yeah she likes that too we always have to tape all those on fridays oh yeah america's favorite home videos yeah that's my yeah that's all right i like the price is right too but i never get a chance to watch it no huh_uh yeah i'm always gone at eleven yeah or i just miss it yeah i used to watch it all the time though i never missed it no i never heard of that oh wait is that on like at nine or ten or something yeah yeah i've watched that before it's all right oh okay i've never seen that oh so i'll have to watch it tonight yeah i usually have the t v just for background noise all the time yeah i don't i don't think it's ever off yeah i just turned it off when the phone rang no i can't stand those oh wow that's that's odd two people actually don't like them yeah i think they're the [stupidest] shows yeah yeah that's all right sixty minutes is okay oh really oh that's a good idea so [television's] actually useful yeah it seems like we have cable and there's never anything on we just have more of nothing oh it comes with our apartment so you're not huh no huh_uh i'm in pennsylvania oh huh no we asked to have cable clear up in the mountains and you can't get anything and but there's nothing on t v ever hardly oh we we can't get anything we can get like one without it it's all right i don't think it's that bad but there's never anything on it's just background noise again oh right in the middle yeah center county yeah we don't have any t v stations in this city so they're all from other cities yeah i guess we watch a lot of c n n too yeah but it always repeats like every half hour so we watch the same thing every half hour yeah yeah yeah after like an hour or so you just watch everything again and again and again yeah yeah then you get sick of watching like man not this story again you don't pay attention to anything no i like [laurel] and hardy though yeah i never got into them much yeah i like the road runner cartoons yeah yeah they're not on that often though least not around here yeah i guess no one will be watching that anymore yeah that's what he started doing anyway yeah yeah i wasn't too surprised either didn't look like him though all the pictures yeah i've seen that show twice and it was the same one both times well my family moved to texas about eight years ago my husband was raised here by i i have never lived here so um when we came back to texas i was really kind of excited there wasn't a state income tax and there wasn't a tax on food that we purchased at the the grocery store and things and all of that was new to me because i'm sort of feeling like we're getting a better deal here than what i was accustomed to well i lived in missouri and then in utah and them um both places had pretty good state income tax and um we've always paid tax you know on everything we purchased even food at the grocery store so i thought it was really you know kind of a pretty good deal not to have to pay tax on your groceries and but i think i mean i don't enjoy paying taxes and it's hard but um i think that is what we have to have you know have our streets and have have our government and excuse me and have and have the services that we need and we have to pay for them and pay for the employment of the people that run them and and things like that and i think i guess what i feel is that most people um they don't like to pay taxes because they feel like there's some people that aren't paying their fair share and um that makes you feel bad right and you know when um when last year the elections were going on the governors election and state and you know i i didn't have anything against [clayton] williams personally or anything but um it was kind of hard for me to think here's someone as wealthy as he is didn't have to pay any income tax that he said that year he claimed he had he didn't have to pay income tax and he thought you know there's some people are living pretty pretty good life styles but they're not paying income tax and that's not fair to me and there's you know some people you know who are abusing the systems that we pay taxes to support and all that makes us feel bad but i think all in all how i feel is that um i'm willing to pay the taxes because i think i like our country compared to the other countries i've studied and visited and i'm willing to pay extra to live here and to enjoy the services that i enjoy how do you feel huh_uh huh_uh huh_uh huh_uh oh no huh_uh huh_uh huh_uh right yeah huh_uh yes well it is and sometimes i think um well for myself that income that we have we pay a certain salary but i think the employer keeps in mind this will be deducted you know so so many taxes will be deducted from it and so i think you know our salaries are a little bit higher because we have to pay taxes on it and so i think you know in that way we're compensated um just by our society um yet you know they don't pay you um what just what it would take and if you pay taxes on it you wouldn't have any money left over and and um but some of the people that make a great deal of money and everything i wish that they would i guess because i'm not one of them i wish that they would you know realize that they they couldn't make this kind of money they couldn't live that kind of life style anywhere else in that even if they made that kind of money there's some countries that have like fifty percent income tax you know that have socialized medicines and things that they um they wouldn't be able to enjoy the in that so that you know they need to be willing to pay a little bit more for it yes they've earned it and yes they have such great fortune here but they need to pay for it too because they couldn't do it somewhere else um i like texas um not having the state income tax and i hope that because um we've had enough industry here that i guess it is that why we don't have industry here is able to to fund the state because we have oil here and things i mean that's what i've always heard is that um big boom yeah there's something about um the industry in the state that um there's enough i know we moved here from houston and the city had enough money it was really nice that they had um that they began to cut back because of the oil problems but um they would have um so many community outdoor theaters and and like uh community country club type things that the it was such nice services to offer the residents in the city and i really liked that huh_uh yeah that's true and i you know like the property tax that we pay is so much higher than my parents pay in missouri but um i'm i'm comfortable at least in this year with with we have some good schools the school thing might be changing but i'm willing to pay for that for my children and i'm willing to sacrifice i guess i'm not going to be the type of person that's going to [grumble] about the taxes even though we're paying a pretty high percentage i feel like you get what you pay for and i want to be here and i enjoy i enjoy living here in this country and having seen other countries i'd much rather live here and pay taxes than live somewhere else and not anyway well i guess i better let you go yeah it was nice no no they just define it to you and so you get what uh get luck of the draw but yeah anyway well good luck to you bye huh_uh yeah did you move from the northeast yeah i think yeah people that can really influence the government have all the money to throw no well yeah i agree that you have to pay taxes for the services you get and and i think that you know i don't think that there's any really any system that everybody would think is fair as far as being taxed so i guess in texas with we live here also and that it's mostly sales tax so it's really the people that have money to buy things are paying the more because they're paying the sales tax on the larger items that they buy and stuff i've lived in texas most of my life we um lived in kansas city for a couple of years and we were kind of in for a rude awakening they had personal property taxes on like cars and the first year we were there it was kind of like eight hundred dollars and we're like my husband says i used to complain to pay sixty dollars to get licensed in texas and now you know so i mean that was kind of different and then to file a a state income tax was also kind of tough too i guess since we've been married we've moved a lot so it always seems like you know we're always paying taxes for something and it was kind of nice this year to finally be able to get a little money back but i um have a accounting background so i then have also done tax returns in the past for other people when i worked for an accounting firm and uh you know it is kind of sad to see how the people that have the resources to hire somebody and have the money to spend to put there money in places they don't have to pay taxes or to buy something that loses money so that they can offset the income that they get or whatever so you know i think if i can understand why the rich people don't want to pay you know a large large percent because you know that's not really fair either if they've earned money by themselves well you know people just kind of given the money it's kind of depressing sometimes i think yeah well yeah that's true yeah yeah yeah they must have enough other stuff because the way the oil has been the last few years that that really has not been the industry that is bringing in the money for the taxes i wouldn't think yeah huh_uh don't you have to why people decided to expect certain services then they don't really think they should pay for them maybe i don't know yeah huh_uh well it was nice talking to you i haven't ever i need i've never initiated one of these phone calls do you call in do you get to pick the subject or oh i see yeah okay you too bye bye okay let's see i think uh i guess if i call i'm supposed to start i think uh that's the way everybody has done it so far but anyway i think that um we are paying a lot in taxes but i think that we have a government and we have a lot of freedoms and we have a lot of things that the governments do with our money um we're probably one of the the only countries in the world that has all the things that we have the you know as far as the quality of the streets the school systems um the hospital stuff that the government gives money to um the you know all the things that the government does like that i uh i think they need to manage it a little bit better but i don't think uh anybody is just going to come in and fix it in a couple of weeks because they've been messing it up for many years now so yeah huh_uh right i think it's seven here seven point something huh_uh yeah right where are you at what state oh really yeah there's we're still we're still one of few that don't have the uh state tax yeah that's true yeah i do i've lived in in the dallas area here since i was like four so uh it's i don't know an urban area i guess whatever i don't know yeah no no i've just lived here but i don't know i do i can think of all the biblical things about it too where what did they say to uh i can't think of the [scripture] render unto caesar's what is caesar's so you know even even in the story where they had to pay the taxes the [disciples] and uh jesus said the money in the fishes mouth or in the fisher inside the fish and uh i thought of those two things when i was i was holding for a long time yeah yeah right right right yeah oh sure sure right yeah are no not really i've i spends a lot of time with our income tax though this especially this year and last year um i have been married for just a few years so i've had to really switch around from the e z form to the uh right all the deductions and all that yeah it really did i i saw that too right right we're looking at buying a house and that was one of the main pluses that we have about buying a house yeah right yeah there's a thing i just i've been trying to learn as much as i can about it if you pay i know i get paid twice a month every two weeks that's once a month well i get twenty six paychecks which would come out to be in thirteen months so if you pay your rent or your house payment every two weeks instead of once a month you'll come out paying a uh one month extra every year and it will if have you a thirty year note it will take like seven or plus years off of your note oh yeah right yeah right and that's going on the principle it doesn't pay any interest or usually it doesn't yeah huh_uh right that's what we're looking at fifteen or maybe twenty we're not going to go longer than twenty but we're taking our time we're going to try to make our decision by july well we just started two or three weeks ago and we're not going to just kill ourselves just two or three houses a week at the most yeah absolutely yeah credit union has nine percent interest yeah so that's i don't know we couldn't think of a better time to buy than now but anyway well um i can't think of a whole lot more to say yeah me too yeah same here my wife uh she went to uh the school out there in lubbock she was there for two or three years before we got married i guess before i even met her okay but anyway she went to school there cathy walker yeah yeah thanks a lot you y'all work at t i you do oh really that's interesting i work in the [waiver] oh really yeah oh wow yeah yeah yeah i'm uh turning in a capital request right now yeah that's funny that's where you're from a machine that puts back grind tape on and off the waivers yeah i'm i'm sort of an acting process engineer not officially but that's pretty much what i do yeah right and uh-oh i like him he's hard but we needed that yeah he's yeah that's that's what he said here he's gotten us into a [linear] flow that we've never been in before that's been a real big plus he's broadened our um the devices that we're making too which has made us as lot more stable anyway well it was nice to talk to you they're are going to interrupt us any minute now i can tell okay yeah me too you too bye okay i have to agree that and you're right we i mean we you know we do have a good government we do have a lot of things that you know that you know the taxes are there to support but i do think they're [mismanaged] and i think that sometimes it's too easy of a i don't know to easy of an answer it seems to say i'll tax them if you can't get enough money instead of trying to figure out how to cut budgets or cut spending or or you know get all of the waste out of the spending uh i don't know what y'all are paying in dallas but you know it seems like we pay the state you know there's a the taxes set by you know the state and the city can add theirs and the county adds theirs and you know we're paying almost eight percent sales tax right now which seems to me nuts i came from california and you know when i left there we paid six cents on the dollar and that was like one of the highest in the nation yeah yeah ourselves is seven point seven five whole state it drives me crazy i'm thinking you know everybody is sitting here screaming about we don't want a state income tax but yet they allow the sales tax to go up and up and up and up and they don't do anything about it you know i'm in lubbock texas yeah that's true and i did pay state tax in california but my goodness that that the what did you call it the sales tax is just getting outrageous to pay you don't sound like you're from dallas where do you do you come from originally texas oh okay you just you just managed to escape the real texan accent i thought maybe you had come from somewhere else and had some experience with taxes there yeah that's right yeah oh were you really trying to find someone at home well you know um back then what they tried to do you know the would always try to stump jesus try to give him something that would [contradict] himself and so that's what they were trying to do with the tax situation and of course that's when he said well you render unto caesar's what is caesar's you render unto god what is god's and uh you know of course there i don't think they really cared about the answer they just wanted to try and catch him in something but but i believe in paying taxes and i mean yeah like everybody else i try to take as many deductions as i can you know i don't want to pay more than i have to and i get outraged when i feel like they go up for useless reasons but i believe that they're necessary so i really do do you do you deal with taxes much in what you do when you work or schedule a well yeah did you notice that when they passed the new simplified tax act it seemed like it made everything harder i didn't notice anything simplified about it except that they took away the deductions the interest and other things yeah and it will help tremendously we bought ours five years ago and it's the one thing it seems like you make those payments every month and at the end of the year you've paid all interest and no principles so that will definitely help in taxes and what you will get back huh_uh huh_uh that's right huh_uh that's right that's right my parents uh bought a home in san diego about four or five years ago and they did that they thought their payment was automatically taken out like every other wednesday and that's exactly right everyone though the note is thirty years she said it's going be paid off in twenty or twenty one years or something like that just because of exactly what you said you're making one more months payment every year yeah so that's a good way to do it and when we bought this house we looked at doing a fifteen year note because it added more to the payment but not significant amounts you know it was a good payoff for being able to pay it off sooner yeah yeah well that's good though yeah well that's good though is it kind of a [buyers] market down there well that's good that's pretty excellent that's good well i can't either i appreciate the call though i enjoyed talking to you in lubbock just a second go ahead so she was at school out here well what was her name no i didn't know any [walker's] well good luck in your house hunting i do yeah i'm in human resources yeah do you really because that's i work with [elma] yeah and i used to work i i did all of their capital and financial planning for about eight years and then i have been in human resources for the last two years and i work with those same people all those nine years so i feel kind of part of the staff you are what are trying to get oh okay so you work in back grind oh okay that's what you do uh and do you well good deal what did you think of sam well that's good he was very good for lubbock when he came to you know it was the same kind of thing he had a lot of good results good well good good oh okay well that's good well you too and well i know they will and besides my daughter wants me to put her to bed well have a good day bye bye okay well uh what do you think about taxes do you think we're paying too much uh_huh yeah yeah how true yeah well gasoline especially in this part of the country we all use it all the time you know it's that's not what i would consider a luxury yeah well um i i think that we probably are paying a little too much tax considering what we're getting for it and how it's being managed and so forth i mean i i think there could be a better system and we would get more for our money it's totally out of our hands so we don't we can't really do a whole lot about how that money is spent and where it goes and uh but not really yeah well i think too one of the things that rubs me the wrong way the most is those programs that are funded by congress and uh that don't seem to have any validity at all i mean they're always far out and uh you know they're studying some obscure bug you know in some other part of the world or some such thing and our tax money pays for those things and i think that's wrong i that's right yeah and i think here lately they've been saying quite often and maybe somebody's coming to realize we're the nation in trouble the war uh_huh yeah and i think that's a mistake somewhere you know we have to realize that we can't just keep giving it away we know what trouble they got into yeah well i i think another thing too that um i've had a little contacted with uh in regard to taxes let's say that uh you have something that the i r s [disagrees] with or you know says hey we're not going to allow that well i think they're very unfair in the amount of penalties and interest that they can attach to that because you you will not only [payback] that that you wrote off but you will at least double that amount and yes and that's to me there's something wrong there you know yeah i mean i can see paying the interest and some small penalty but they really stick it to you big time uh_huh absolutely uh_huh yeah that's a lot well i haven't counted i i would have [guessed] eight even but you might be right i don't have any idea yeah wow yeah yeah yeah well i i have another thing that i thought about too for instance when you try to save money and you earn interest on whatever your investment is and you know we're not typically talking about big dollars but here you feel like you've you've done something good you've you've earned your interest and then you have to go back and pay taxes on it so the real amount of your savings on that is is not much you know it's kind of a vicious circle there and then at a took that away as far as being yeah huh_uh well you can come over to my house and spend it i wish i had some to spend no no i just don't have any yeah that's the way it goes well i guess we probably talked just about long enough yeah yes uh_huh uh i don't know you too okay good bye there we go yes and no income tax no i uh i look at it this way uh you've got to pay for the privilege of living here but uh being a uh a rec vehicle owner well in fact i live in a motor home i'm a what they call a full timer and uh it burns gas like crazy i only get seven miles to the gallon i really resent this fact that they keep adding on gasoline taxes and they call it uh uh what's the word they use anyway a a luxury tax they add it on on to tires and gasoline cigarettes liquor it doesn't bother me any because i've quit drinking and i quit smoking so that doesn't bother me but i don't think it's fair it's too um um it's attacking just certain people even with the gasoline tax no uh fifty years ago the automobile was a luxury but it's a necessity today and uh as hard as they try to get these public transit things going i have never seen nor heard of one that really got of the ground or that accomplish what they set out to to accomplish what are your feelings on it yeah that that's that's so true i mean they say well you voice your opinion uh uh uh on election day no you don't look what happened on the last presidential election read my lips and what happened they turned around and double crossed us so uh i mean you can't believe what you hear oh uh yes i agree and and uh i i also think we extend too much help to other uh countries we need enough help here in this country they're still people starving people here why should we help starving people somewhere else absolutely now i can't wait for uh i i could just picture what's going to happen here in the not to distant future we keep hearing well we're going to receive uh eight billion dollars from japan for the uh uh_huh the the the big war over there in the mideast and uh so many billions of dollars here and there and everything and uh the next thing you know we'll be turning around just like we did to poland and say well just forget it oh definitely well another thing now they keep [decontrolling] different things first it was the airlines then it was banks and and uh um savings association and whatnot exactly and the same with the airlines back in the days when they were uh controlled and and uh [transcontinental] or um um interstate uh trucking i mean as soon as the federal government gave up control on all that they just went to hell in a hand basket prices went sky high then in in the case of airlines of course they became highly competitive and they cut each others [throats] until they're they reach the point where they're cutting their own throat and uh well of course that's getting away from taxes isn't it that's government controlled but uh oh by the time you get through with the uh the penalties uh i agree i think the i r s is uh just too powerful there should be some sort of a control on it and they should be a little more humane uh the uh typical bureaucratic i guess that's that's one of my pet peeves i came up with a brilliant idea how we could reduce the the budget very simple give uh uh uh government employees the average number of uh holidays as the uh private industry i mean you think about it now they they get about sixteen holidays a year it sure is and i think here at t i we get what is it nine or ten well i remember uh uh thinking i think it was the last time i did hear that we get about the average maybe even a little more a day or so more than the average but uh government is ridiculous just think of the money they could save i mean they're they're paying out this money anyway why not get the work out of the people and well anyway that would of course eventually come back to taxes but uh as far as income tax is concerned i can't complain too much about it uh i'm single i have no uh dependents or anything my children are all grown and they're out worrying about their own income taxes uh very true that's and then they tell you to uh well invest it in uh is it i r a or something and and when you turn when you turn sixty five why then you pay the tax on it and the tax is a lot less but in the mean time you've got your money [tide] up in a low relatively low interest bearing investment i mean it's not making ten fifteen percent like a business is today uh me i'm a firm believer in that if you got it spend it well you well do you do you need some help spending yours oh uh_huh well that's my problem too i'm i'm trying to figure out from one payday to the next whose going to be the lucky one this month that's going to get paid uh_huh uh let me ask you something did you get a catalog or something from these people you did i've everybody i've talked to has received one but i haven't gotten mine um well anyway ellen it was nice talking to you and uh until next time bye bye i think we're [overtaxed] to the [hilt] yeah i mean we're we're taxed on taxes and um uh most all government [entities] are just trying to give us a state income tax for those who don't have it that is i mean we don't have one yet but eventually they may try to push it through no no state income tax uh_huh yeah i think what needs to be done is they need to control their spending habits right yeah well we're really [overburdened] from federal state and local that it takes such a size out of your paycheck that there's not a whole lot you can always do with your paycheck uh_huh well they're kind of put into a trap of being out there to please the special interest groups as well and uh i think the only way that can be changed for us to get a a better tax revenue that's [fairness] and all is for us to limit their terms and by doing so they're not obligated to anybody and uh i don't know how we're going to do that right away though but what what in general though that taxes are doing to us is it's just taking uh a bite out of our savings yeah and i believe the social security tax is a great scheme yeah it's uh you know right now they're robbing from it to pad the federal deficit yeah that's illegal see if uh most company uh c e o were to do that within their private company they'd be in jail so how are we letting them get away with it right yeah a lot of people have become too complacent and believe everything is just the norm as to the way things are going and feel absolutely [helpless] to oppose a lot of the situations going on in the taxing system yeah yeah uh_huh well there's no quick solution or no sure fire easy answer it's just going to take uh uh really uh uh uh a combination effort i think of the majority of the american people to come to a [decisive] answer or vote to limit the way it's spent see we we're we have no say so as to where the money goes in the first place right and they are controlled or pretty much do what they want to do well they feel [invulnerable] to uh any [wrath] or uh it's it's occurred so many times that they figure people will usually forget and don't think about it when the election time [arises] and generally it does work out that way uh_huh yeah uh_huh well when you get out into the real world then you'll know yeah bonus time you have a bonus oh uh_huh so you're taxed on the bonuses too right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh sales is lucrative but then you're paying really high taxes when you're doing a lucrative job uh_huh yeah well i have i guess about said what all i can think of to say yeah it's a rather touchy topic at that but well that's great you too and uh have a good day so uh what do you think yeah oh really so they have i didn't realize they had no state tax in texas oh that's great because they don't have it in florida in new york they have it i mean you know like i say i'm in new york and we have a state tax as well so that just cuts even more right i i think that i i mean i wouldn't be so upset about the amount of taxes paid if it weren't for the fact that they don't they don't go to any place you know you don't see it going to any place where it belongs i think if it were to be uh if it were to be um if it were to be hold hold on a second please someone just walked in the if if it were to be spent in the right way i think i wouldn't be so upset about it but given that it that it's not spent properly i think it's a major problem uh_huh well that's certainly true well what is it they were just talking about um sort of middle income you know how how middle income people what winds up happening is for instance having kids you know they wind up having kids as a deduction and after but the deduction is so little for kids that they wind up having to pay more in taxes than it costs to raise a kid for the year or something i think so they want to you know try i think they're trying i think i think that most of the politicians understand this they just don't they're just not very good at doing what they're supposed to be doing right uh_huh i agree i agree right exactly and then and then uh i'm i'm just not sure if i see you know if i see it going like i say to the right places i mean it'd be it'd be one thing if it were taking a bite out of your savings and then you were getting it all back when you got older you know but i'm not convinced that's that social security is doing as well as it should and you know and and and uh and and that you know those people who need it for welfare and so forth who really need it for welfare not the eighty five to ninety percent of them who don't need it but i mean the real people who really need it you know should be getting it but instead i think it's going to the wrong places you think so i know and that scares the hell out of me yeah yeah i don't i don't well because they're the ones who make the laws so who's going to yell at them you know it'd be nice if we sort of as one band together and and uh and an performed a citizens arrest i guess to see if we could sort of clean them up and you know but i don't know if we can do that or not uh_huh i agree i agree but um yeah like like you said i wonder you know if if it's certainly not going to be a slow change process and i wonder if it'll ever be a change process i sort of i sort of get discouraged when i think about all the things that i think are wrong you know all those things that really could be changed that aren't you know that that aren't and tax is one of those things that just sort of sits way up there on the list so i don't i i i have no idea what to do about it yeah right we don't i mean the only say so we have is supposedly by [electing] people who we think are going to vote one way of another right i've never quite understood that i've never uh you know even though um i i've never been uh sort of politically minded but it's never been clear to me as to sort of um you know how congressmen an can can just sort of go ahead and vote their own conscience as their own ideas when clearly their constituency doesn't back them up on anything you know and often times that will happen right right they do forget it's true because everybody think of what happens is whenever the whenever the one who made that supposed mistake turns around and uh his his or her opponent can say well look they did this and they can turn around and say well my opponent did this so it becomes uh a general battle of the sort of the election of the lesser of two evils i think so i don't know i just uh i'm unhappy with it but and well i'm i'm sort of [semifortunate] right now i'm a graduate student so i don't make that much and what i make isn't taxed very highly because i'm still in school but it's my my my wife has a real job and you know when i get her job um you know we we look at her paycheck i'm just [floored] when i see how little of it we're actually allowed to keep especially around bonus time bonus she no my my wife does my i no graduate students don't get bonuses we're lucky to get paychecks the way i figure my my wife is taxed on her bonus as well and that's a that's usually a big chunk of her bonus check actually i mean her bonus isn't that much but they tax it as i i guess they tax it as if that were her weekly check or something so she gets destroyed on her bonus check so she works with in in in sales so a good portion of her you know her salary is is [quarterly] bonuses yes well yeah she's not entirely sales so it isn't it isn't as lucrative as one would hope but it it keeps us supported temporarily until i can get a real salary and then get taxed more so i don't know i i guess i guess at this point in time we're just sort of going to have to live with it and hope that it gets better same here tough topic so i i i i do agree with you most most wholeheartedly it's been a pleasure talking with you thanks for call you too bye bye i pay a good deal of taxes i guess because i i make a fair amount of money and uh the taxes that i pay um i guess as a as a general statement i feel i i guess i get my money's worth for i'm not sure though whether i feel i guess i am sure that i feel that in general though uh the [allocation] uh of the taxes in certain areas isn't correct well i i lately i guess um uh or at least for the last twenty years or so i've felt that the expenditures of our taxes into high cost uh defense items at least in the last ten years have been uh there's been and extraordinary amount of money spent there and i'm not really sure that that we've gotten our money's worth there uh regardless of the outcome of the desert storm uh desert shield uh situations uh i guess my particular beef is that having participated in the military off and on over the over the years of being called back and things of that nature is uh i've found that you know there's an extraordinary amount of waste i take that as a as a given in any military operation and yeah and i i i should imagine that that that what the what the problem why i i'm i'm a little concerned about today is that this uh rather uh quick and and easy i don't know i shouldn't say easy rather quick [victory] in the in in the uh mideast uh uh over the uh iraqis uh might lead us into uh a false sense of security that we can do that against any other foe i'm i i don't know what other foe that would be but uh i i'm just getting nervous again now hearing the voices come up that there has to be increased expenditures in that area yeah but it it it would that be uh well let's see two thousand out of eleven thousand that's about a little over twenty per cent uh i i should imagine that that would be to keep it at a level those levels i guess that that were originally [appropriated] was when the soviet threat i guess was perceived as being a greater one i don't think there's very much of a threat there today i do worry about what nuclear weapons are left in the territories uh in their territory over there and who's controlling them but i i don't know what amount of what amount of our hardware would stop some fanatic i guess from doing anything uh that would be irrational right yeah yeah oh what is the name of that yes yes yeah well uh i'm what i'm uh i guess uh it concerned about talking about the taxes in general and that that was an area that i i perceive as not being the best expenditure for the amount of dollar that we're taxed for uh in the area of defense or perhaps we have paid too much there i don't know it just seems to me that over the years now the and and it's it's a cliche i i but i see it myself i see where the infrastructure is sort of breaking down the roads the highways i i i don't know uh i i'm familiar with some some upbeat school areas so i don't totally agree with the the great uh uh with the with the great expenditure of effort and time there but i guess overall because i guess i'm not associated with what ghetto schools and and uh and uh rural school systems are like i i should imagine that would take an enormous expenditure uh_huh they they don't have a broad based income tax that funds the educational system or is it all funded out of local taxes yeah sounds like the way the federal and state system works now yeah uh do you mean a a complete [reversal] because i guess they can't raise that money in those those poorer districts huh yeah yes i see what you're saying uh i uh i i do i i guess i am a uh a strong and [staunch] supporter of some subsidy for any forms of education i mean by that i mean i'm a product myself i have uh a a a a background of uh being uh getting my college education through the g i bill what but uh when i look at it to me uh it doesn't really make any difference it was a marvelous opportunity that i couldn't have done i don't think i would have gone on unless i had that financial uh [easement] made possible and i i don't really care what it takes to qualify whether you're uh an an whether you're a veteran or whether you i don't even know if you have to perform community service or unless uh or or you promise to even do something in the future i think that uh the that that the subsidy itself or i guess the [enactment] of that form of legislation would give many people who i i think i think i perceive the fact at least what i read is that some younger people feel that education is priced out of their uh out of their uh budget i know in the state of florida just today uh the the legislature uh [adjourned] and uh they had completed a fifteen per cent increase in the in the uh state land grant colleges which which isn't i mean to me it doesn't sound like a lot of money but i guess it would be for fifteen hundred dollars a year they went from eleven to fifteen hundred and uh for an out of state student the tuition went up twenty five per cent i don't know what that would be but that uh i guess that goes along with the general idea that the federal government had to uh was [expending] so much money on defense uh that that the program now is a uh program now is uh fees that that fund these things i guess that's [trickled] down to the states and the states now establish uh don't have enough money so they they must charge fees uh i i'm not too sure of that reasoning but i guess to get back to the main topic i don't know whether i pay too much taxes i i i travel extensively in europe and see enormous uh people pay uh a great deal in taxes they tell me when i sit and talk to people there they tell me they they some states they pay uh in germany or in in england in some cases people in my income level at least [allege] that they pay up to fifty five percent of their gross income in taxes but but i'm not too sure when i put my property tax in my car tax my income tax and these myriad of uh now it costs me money to leave the country some sort of a tax to leave the country some sort of an airport [departure] tax uh uh a tax a sales tax which is getting to uh quite high levels i'm not sure that i'm not up fairly close to that you really think so but i mean what's what's happened here is is is i feel that that in the last ten years uh my taxes have gone up they haven't gone down i pay uh quite a bit more taxes and and and but that's been a republican government for the last ten years well i yeah okay uh i guess i just push something here push one again right just hang up okay don good talking with you bye bye okay well i'm sure that uh probably every person in this country would agree with you on that because everybody has a different idea of where the money should go uh_huh yeah oh yeah no argument here yeah well of course uh a lot of uh a lot of missiles and things were expended in the course of fighting the war and the and the [inventory's] going to have to be [restocked] uh on now i work for t i and one of the things we were told is like they had eleven thousand harm missiles which t i is the sole supplier for and they used up two thousand of them in in the war so they're going to have to do another contract to [restock] that to get ready in case something else is needed that's true that's true well of course now we used up twenty per cents per cent of that inventory in a matter of just a few weeks and uh uh uh t i also makes the missile which was the the t v laser guided bombs and and a big percentage of that was expended as well that that that was just a matter of uh it's called [paveway] and uh a big percentage of that was used up during that conflict also so those are two areas in which t i stands to to gain some some short term business to [restock] that oh no doubt yeah as a matter of fact in texas um we've had our school funding system declared unconstitutional by the a state judge and they and uh the legislature just passed what they called a robin hood bill which basically what it does is it takes extra money from the more affluent school districts that are that are you know come from local taxes and send them to other parts of the state that are not so affluent uh well okay to to give you some perspective this this town that i had lived in for sometime in nineteen eighty three was funded sixty five per cent by state funds then we had a number of education reforms that the legislature said hey we got to do this we got to do this we got to do this but they forgot to put in the state budget the money to pay for it and they dumped it all on the local school districts so really so so what ended up happening was was a was a shift we went to sixty five per cent state funding to sixty five per cent local funding in a matter of four years and uh i mean oh complete complete it's all shifted to local districts and now even the money that's been raised for the local districts is being is going to be [siphoned] off and sent to other parts of the state that's right and and i have i have no problem with uh a certain uh floor level minimum level that's a standard uh that everybody uh ought to be able to have uh but i am opposed to any attempts to restrict um local communities from taxing themselves above that to provide above the minimum so did i my masters anyway yeah that's right uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah they had to they had to raise uh community college taxes here a few years ago uh_huh yeah oh oh i can believe that yeah yeah well i guarantee you you'd be paying a lot more in taxes if uh the democrats had more say yeah i really do yeah everybody everybody is well what what what they've been able to do is slow down the rate of increase to keep it to keep it from becoming even more obnoxious well this has been really interesting and i've enjoyed our talk no you just uh we just say say good bye and that's it nice talking with you too bye bye all right uh i guess what i feel about it is that it's so [mismanaged] that it there's got to be something when when we pay so much for the for the debt instead of using the money for where it ought to go it it's just it's ridiculous what kills me is when they had a chance to to uh put into action the the the what is it uh the act where they had to cut everything across the board they kept doing they kept putting off doing that why did they do that that's exactly what they needed to do to get their act together oh yeah i think so too yeah well things like mailings they don't use any kind of restraint on some of these things they just think once they get there that they can do just anything no they don't they don't try to uh to conserve and of course here at home we end up [conserving] and [conserving] and i mean when i don't have money i don't buy something they sure don't seem to there are a couple of things i think we need to really work for and i don't know quite how to do it but i think we need to have the one line uh uh veto so that they don't have to spend so much time doing everything if it's a good idea it can be done again you know and if it's not so what at least you haven't thrown out all the work they've done for months and months and months and months yeah this is that's right yeah yeah that's just an awful lot of that kind of thing going on and the trouble is you don't you have so little input about it you don't know enough to know what what to do about some of this stuff i yeah that's right the other thing about is i think uh limiting their time in office would be good i i just can't believe there aren't other people out there that could do just as well as what we've got yeah yeah i think that's right yeah wouldn't that be too bad well that's right i think i don't know i think uh people in general the the the idea of what you need to to exist is so outrageous that it's not hardly you know it starts at the courts it starts everywhere until we can't we've just lost control of of any kind of perspective about what is acceptable and what is not acceptable you know no you can't even can't even conceive of what they're talking about yeah yeah i mean it and and you just the other thing is it's it's all very well to give money to help people other people and i think we need to do that but there are they need to put more limits on them they need to restrain about what they do yeah i i you know i think that's probably unless we can afford it if we pay off the debts then we can give it to people again you know i don't really mind helping people but you you need to get rid of this thing that's that's just uh eating us up you know and get things on a on an even if it were if it were a family we'd be up before the the [magistrate] for for doing all these wicked things you know but the government does it and it's all right yeah that's true well sounds like yeah it's good to see them doing some things there anyway yeah well i think we have to accept the fact that whatever happens we're going to have to bite the bullet and we're all going to have to do it i it just isn't fair though that when this happens in some places it needs to all come off everywhere that's why i thought well you know this is the time they need to put that into into action and show they mean business that they've got to cut they've got to cut costs yeah i think that's right well i don't i don't really mind paying taxes for for positive things that are helps like roads and making sure that uh that water is safe and some of these things but um you know it you just feel like it's out of control you feel like they do not have control of it and that and so then it just aggravates you you know you think i could spend my money i could help the poor people better by myself than they're doing so it's yeah well i think that's right if they don't do if they don't if they don't pull it in and start doing something i think they're really going to have to i think yeah yeah yeah in some ways we're awful lucky i guess there a lot of lot of places where it's worse than it is here but still you don't want it to get that bad good heavens no we need to get try to get hold of it and and have it be things be honest and i guess in the fact i don't really mind paying taxes but i would just like to know that they're not being [foolishly] spent that they're doing something that's positive for for somebody i don't really feel like uh i don't really feel like i use taxes very much i don't know maybe i do more than i i guess i do i use them in the in roads and lot of things but uh yeah yeah they've done some good things the state actually did some good good work on that in that a couple of years ago uh sam johnson came out and talked to us about that about what they had done and they they really had done some good some good work yeah yeah there are a lot of places where they're in real trouble and and i think it would be easy enough to be in trouble here too if they don't take if they don't take that early stand yeah that's probably right the growth is fast enough so that they can't afford to just [dawdle] and wait until something til they need them well it's good to talk to you oh about nine no i just just a housewife i just heard about it and found it fun guess i like to talk that's all right uh_huh bye now yes i think we're terribly taxed i i think the republicans have taxed us just as much as the democrats and i don't think there's a change between one party than the other uh i think we get a lot back but not as much as we should right the gramm the gramm rudman act yeah yeah well i think they spend too much they they spend too much on themselves too the the a lot of the the taxes gets back to the members of the congress and everything all running for twenty years rather than no you're right yeah no i think uh it is the congress and them just don't have any interest in saving us money uh the national debt is terrible uh right oh yeah i saw one on twenty twenty about a month ago i guess whereas one i think that he was a senator from pennsylvania or something like that maybe it was uh connecticut i'm not sure one of the small states up there where he had a bill through for another uh a drug agency that would be located there and he was the only one that wanted it was going to cost millions of dollars the drug agency didn't want it and he was going to build it in his home town and they were going to hire a lot of people and it was ridiculous you know the whole thing and and you know they asked him about it do you really need this this is going to cost a lot of money oh yes we need it but do you know that the drug agency doesn't want this and they do things that are you know just like the uh yeah that right right they're supposed to do what we say but they do what they they want to do with it absolutely absolutely we need to get that through we we have said that i've said it several times on different subjects about the government that two two terms is enough for all of them uh whether you're mayor all the way up city council the works i think certainly president that uh two terms is plenty and then we get these professionals out of there and they have to learn how to earn a living again themselves you know rather than living off of us uh_huh right well it's so much money and you can't even add it up you know that's why they think yeah when you talk about the trillions of dollars on this and that our national debt in the trillions of dollars you know foreign aid yeah foreign aid means to go down to almost zero unless it's absolutely necessary they they've given that away for fifty years i agree i agree uh_huh right yeah i i know we're taxed to death on every every thing i don't know what's the best way to do it but uh they don't even talk about that they just raise it they don't even consider it like you saying to cut something back you know they are at least doing something now with the the military you know they're cutting some of that but of course now you know t i you know that's hurting us but although but t i has gotten a lot of good contracts from the war and everything else and if they'll get a lot of programs in the future because of their exotic uh weapon systems but uh that's the only good that i've seen congress do you know and everybody and all the congressmen and the president and everybody uh yeah yeah yeah the only taxes i think that are well spent well not the only but uh i think the now i i don't understand the present school thing but uh i have two daughters one's in college already and one's about to be in high school but uh i think that paying for school schools is the schools is the only answer really to get rid of crime and so i don't mind paying for school taxes even though my kids will be out of it you know yeah yeah the spending is out of control yeah oh i agree with you i i think that's a wide open subject what you said people need to take a stand i think the people will here shortly uh i think the next time we have an election we need to try to get some of the ones that have been there forever out too that what they did last election and uh ninety some odd percent of the same old boys got back in you know so we need to try to get people to two terms so they respect our wishes you know they're supposed to represent us that's what they're called but they don't may may may maybe we can change and get us rid of some of those guys that are in there guys and [gals] whatever they are i know but it no that's right you don't want to you want it to stay as good as it possibly can be right yeah that's you're right well i think one of the good ones in the metroplex uh in the last say twenty five years or so maybe longer they've built all these [dams] you know the corps of engineers have uh soon as they finish a lake they'll go at get another one and that we haven't had we've had [droughts] here in long summers we've had good water supply and that's due to the corps of engineers building looking years ahead and building all these reservoirs for us you know yeah yeah yeah i think anything for water supply like that california should do more of that too right right they just finished joe [poole] lake over here and they need to start another one i think every time they finish one they ought to just have another one in line the water's critical right okay yeah how many calls have you made oh yeah i'm up to twenty are you a t i oh well great great okay well it's been some interesting subjects yeah thanks for calling bye bye well i think we pay too much in taxes how about you excuse me yeah that's what i think too i don't know how you feel um we moved here from another state we lived here before went out and came back and that particular state had an [occupational] income tax but no sales tax and what you find out is there's one evil is the same as the other here you don't there's no [occupational] tax but it's a heavy sales tax so they get you coming and going yeah it's really i know it's just um yeah it is i was shocked i went we bought a new washer and the man said and that's eight percent i said eight percent what so it's really kind of sad yeah and then i don't know how you know in terms of when you all do your federal but it just seems like if you're strictly middle income it seems like you get hit the worst is that what you think doesn't seem quite fair does it because they have the money to shelter things and i don't know somehow get a huh oh i thought you were going to say something they somehow seem to get around these the things that we can't you know that make don't make that kind of money i don't know uh_huh i know and just somehow it doesn't seem you know and then i you mean you look at like uh that country singer uh what's his name willie nelson i was reading about him in the paper and i said well you know he knew he was making money some he didn't look that stupid why didn't he pay his taxes you know in a way it's almost like he had so much debt that uh filing bankruptcy was a way to get out of all of it you know so do you file federal or joint income tax or do you and do you feel like you get hit by you know too much uh_huh and we right now we don't own any property we lease so we're in the same we don't have children so we're in the same kind of it's not as bad as being single and divorced but it's sort of like if you have like x point five children and earn you know you kind of get hit with you know i i mean it doesn't even pay for me to earn a good wage because doesn't that sound stupid but i mean there's actually less tax [implication] if i don't work full time compared to what my husband does you know so it's kind of hard excuse me uh_huh right yeah otherwise you're just you know and if you have kids you get like seven hundred fifty dollars or something oh it is oh my well that's not too bad uh_huh oh my goodness yeah i guess that's my call i guess i better go okay well it was nice talking to you uh_huh bye bye yeah well i think they waste what we pay i think they waste what all the money that we pay uh_huh uh_huh now it's even it's even higher in dallas county so was it it's eight and a quarter i think uh_huh yeah yeah because it's at some point it goes up to thirty three percent and then the people that make you know five hundred thousand dollars and and and higher than that they don't have to pay and sometimes they have to pay even less taxes no it isn't what huh_uh right i mean if they're in business and and they're making money i could see if they're losing money but they're making money then they should pay taxes then uh_huh right uh_huh right i just file federal income tax every year yeah i just got divorced so i'm single again so and you know it's it's a lot worse for single people because they pay the same amount as as the people that make the same amount of money and they're married uh_huh uh_huh right whoever works less they can get a tax credit for that if both of the both of the spouses work then you get a tax credit for that uh_huh well it's two thousand now yeah for everybody uh_huh then you get a you get a child care [exemption] but it's not enough you know i mean you pay from fifty to a hundred dollars a week in child care and and they only give you like i think it's about five or ten percent of that you know it doesn't even it's not even oh okay nice talking to you yeah oh definitely seems like yeah i think that uh we probably will have to have have to uh have a state income tax because uh texans don't approve of such things as [lotteries] uh well i i come here from new york and new york had a state lottery and it really raised a lot of money for the for the state uh although we in new york we had to pay a state and a city uh tax and it was really a great relief when i got to texas that i didn't have to pay that city income tax though right it sure does make a difference uh_huh do you live in dallas oh you do oh i do too okay and then you know too that um taxes are are less like if you live in mesquite you know some people will go shopping in mesquite at the malls out there uh uh_huh eight point five uh_huh is it the is it uh less in collin county than it is in dallas county uh_huh uh_huh yeah it sure did and then once you could deduct at least some of that um off off your income tax and you can't do that anymore it really hit me yesterday i had uh air conditioning service for my car done and i had a little little uh coupon special that was twenty two dollars for um air conditioning service where they uh checked it and [recharged] it and put one one pound of freon in and if you needed another pound of freon they it it was like seven dollars and something and then with the with the twenty two dollars and the seven something it all came out to i i ended up paying like thirty four dollars and i couldn't believe it and the tax you know really hits you uh_huh and then oh it's been i've been here for nine years really where did you come from oh uh_huh uh_huh well uh i did visit uh michigan i visited [kalamazoo] once my sister used to live there uh_huh that's true i tell you what hit me the first year i was here uh christmas eve in new york there used to be stores open the department stores wouldn't close uh well i'd say they closed maybe eight or nine o'clock department stores on christmas eve but uh there were stores that you could go to uh you know like discount stores and stores down in the village and just all over the place where you could go to and you could shop until like twelve or one o'clock that night and that was like that was really the only night they were open that late but it was christmas eve and when i came to dallas i thought i was going to do that christmas eve and i couldn't find hardly anything open after five o'clock in the afternoon an i was oh i was i really i really was stuck and i think target was the one that stayed open later than any anybody else and uh i was able to pick up a few things in there but boy i was i was really shocked and then another shock i had well when i went to um to buy a slice of pizza and found out that i had to buy the whole pie yeah now but they back then they didn't when i first came no anyway right right uh_huh yeah and talk a talking about alcohol and beer look at the taxes on that and the taxes on a package of of cigarettes i used to smoke you know and uh that would have been enough to to make me me give them up the price of them now but i gave them up a couple years ago because i had some [sinus] problems well well they're like two or i i believe they're hitting two dollars a pack now a little bit a little bit more in some places uh well i believe it's a little more than twelve dollars for a carton i think it's maybe thirteen or something um because i remember we went to to oklahoma to this bingo place this [choctaw] bingo uh a couple weeks ago and somebody that went with me bought a carton for uh ten dollars and something and they really thought they were getting a big discount well because it's you know the indians i don't think they pay tax in in oklahoma and uh it was a indian well it's a bingo hall for the benefit of the indians there although i didn't see very many indian people in there there were just bus loads of people that come from everywhere else to play that bingo because it's it's the stakes are higher and payoffs are bigger and so forth i won a dollar yeah i had fun uh a couple on the bus won some money one one guy won well i always think i'm paying too much taxes how about you although at least texas doesn't have a state income tax yet i mean you know they keep threatening us that maybe there will be a day that they're going to uh [enact] this i think uh the um other means of providing income for the state have been dwindling so they keep trying to say we may need a uh state income tax uh_huh yeah makes quite a bit of difference in your uh well your income level you know because other states quite a a chunk out for uh city and state taxes so you're uh looking at your yearly salary it makes quite a difference a little more take home here yeah richardson area yeah i work at well mainly the expressway site is where i work oh okay yeah or up to collin county somewhere that you're getting out of the um dallas county area because what do we pay like eight and a half percent something like that for the uh sales tax which yeah that really is pretty high i think so although i really i don't go up there too much i mean i i normally just kind of go to richardson square mall or valley view mall just kind of for the convenience or i guess maybe if i was going to buy a car or something maybe i would consider where i was buying it to try to you know save a little bit on that sales tax because on a car that really kind of [mounts] up yeah uh_huh yeah yeah that's true although i i wish you know overall they'd try the lottery again when did you first come to texas okay well that's about the same time as me i came down in eighty two um well ohio kind of my parents live in ohio i had lived a little while in michigan but you know basically i went to high school and college in ohio and lived there uh more years than i ever did in michigan oh okay but you know when we first came down here i really thought this place was somewhat backward i mean i was just shocked that we couldn't shop on sunday remember that uh_huh uh_huh were you shocked like oh no i'm stuck i need to buy stuff uh_huh oh few places now seem to do it by the slice but right well the the uh there was other things too i mean i think it's taken us [yankee's] influence down here to get them to uh come to the you know the correct decade here and century um i couldn't believe that you could have open containers of beer alcohol whatever in the car i mean you could always um uh be careful about that back then because uh you know if if a cop stopped you then you would um you know get arrested or what not and people would just drink openly uh_huh oh i don't smoke so i don't really know what the taxes are and stuff on it um so you end up about paying about twelve dollars for a pack and two dollars of that is taxes huh gee they're cheaper there oh oh i got you okay uh_huh well how did you do a dollar oh well but you had fun playing right well we uh taxes everyone thinks taxes are too high i'm sure but uh i think we do get quite a good value for the tax dollars we spend in most cases what do you think at this stage it's hard to tell well at this stage i think we've taxed property almost to the limit because like the the property taxes on the homes have reached the point that it's [precluding] people from being able to own a home because of the cost of the taxes on them i know i live in richardson and it's up over two thousand dollars a year for taxes on my house but now we're getting public services the schools the hospitals and if it weren't for the taxes we're putting in there uh look what the schools could cost you yeah then again the the community college system here is excellent for the dollar spent and the public colleges also the tuition has got to be among the lowest in the country uh one of the uh i believe i don't know which one it is uh down there whether it's hobby or uh the other ex governor down there that are proposing doubling the tuition well if you double the tuition it would still be considerably less than the public school tuition in most other states yeah that would provide uh possibly some relief there to utilize some of the property taxes for other things see the so called sin taxes on liquor and the cigarettes and such as that generate a considerable amount but i eventually i think you may tax people out of smoking even yeah well i quit ten years ago so i i couldn't afford to start again i know uh my children would give up eating before they gave up their cigarettes i think but all the various taxing authorities that come through i think the one tax i resent the most though is the additional sales tax for [dart] which is probably never going to be in existence in my lifetime well this this is a thing i think it's like uh back east you had to start your public transportation when you started your cities you can't come in afterward and really be successful or economical at it if we had been like a chicago or a new york city or philadelphia or someone like that and had a public transportation system starting in the horse and [buggy] days and when land was cheap and uh construction costs were cheap you could afford it but now digging tunnels under central expressway and things like that becomes cost prohibitive absolutely yeah yeah just take like in chicago where the people depend on the public transportation system to get them everywhere new york and some people don't even own a car and know how to drive a car someone made the analogy uh with texans as being like the old cowboys and their horse an old cowboy would jump on his horse to go across the street well most texans will jump in their car to drive across the street and i'm just as guilty as anyone else i drive to work every day by myself uh without even even any thought of car [pooling] and uh most people are that way because they're used to not having public transportation so but i here again i think i resented where they were collecting the sales tax for five years before they turned a [spade] of dirt so and doing all these studies and the things we saw about them traveling to san francisco to see whether they wanted ten foot wide or twelve foot wide cars or something i felt that was a little uh wasteful use of the tax dollars that we were paying you know well that's about all i can say at this time okay it's been real nice talking with you bye uh yeah i i think so i i'm uh i think i'm i think i'm uh a little out of the ordinary in that that i i uh i think i'm more worried about the deficit the national deficit than than uh a lot of other people are and think that we need to we need to either raise our taxes or or cutback on something and i don't know what to cutback on to to get to get that to get that settled and and uh and uh i know i'm a real a real uh out of it in terms of taxes so i'm i'm uh think that the we really ought to seriously consider what an income tax might do that uh for texas and and yeah i think so yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah now i'm uh uh-oh i we'd when we moved to richardson one of the reasons we chose it was for the uh for the schools and and realizing that that that that quality of schools might well have higher taxes than other places but that we were willing to uh to go for that because we supported the yeah yeah yeah i think that's right yeah i i don't i don't know about that i i i see okay no uh yeah well that that that would be true that would be true but huh yeah and and even if it is isn't going to uh uh provide you with any any services in that it's not doing to provide a route from your your home to a business for instance you know yeah yeah and yeah and the other thing is that when it when it's the public transportation is established that early on then then the business uh business and residential patterns develop to take advantage of that whereas in in uh in dallas here we've we've got uh those patterns were well established before before we really tried to tried to do the [dart] and uh for instance all the all the the uh office buildings and stuff that are out here in in uh north dallas as opposed to downtown uh to try to to try to provide efficient transportation from everywhere around the the metroplex to to uh both those centers of of business plus everything else that's scattered around here and there as opposed to having a concentrated business area you know like new york does yeah yeah yeah right right yeah oh yeah yeah yeah right yep yeah yeah yeah a little bit much oh yeah yep yep oh the yeah i i think so i think that will probably do it so good enough bye americans like me and whether i night uh uh not i think that we're paying too much taxes um that including taxes in general or income tax and um the other thing was do we get what we pay for i mean what what is our what is our opinion on that so are you prepared to talk let me push let me push one here okay um well i can just tell you a little bit about taxes in texas it's most interesting because we're one of the few if i don't know of any other state um does not have a a state income tax so we don't have a state income tax but we certainly make up for it in other ways here um for instance the local um sales tax is eight and a quarter percent isn't that awful how about you what do you have there uh_huh and you have state income tax also uh_huh yeah well it's been people here have just have this um they've been really holding out in the legislature and it's starting to show um in a lot of ways as far as things that are just totally under funded and and i don't know if texas is ever going to be able to to um totally avoid having an income tax or not i think eventually they're going to have to do it but um do you think you pay too much there or how do you feel about that oh really interesting uh_huh yeah yes uh_huh um yes we do have tax on clothes uh_huh how interesting i guess i didn't realize that um we don't have tax on groceries for instance uh yeah right yes yes i should i should have um [delineated] yet your absolutely right it's the food the [consumable] food parts that you know we don't have to pay tax on yeah yeah and you really have to watch your your um bill sometimes i think um it's real interesting to look to see how many things that i buy in a grocery store which are not really [edible] groceries and that's when it really starts to add on and um so um that's that is sort of a help but um i don't know it's just eight and a quarter just seems like an awfully lot of of tax on uh any sale as far as i'm concerned um it's real interesting this last um tax season i'm a student and the last tax season i had a just a part time job helping out in a tax office and the woman that owned the office was saying she'd had this business for oh probably seventeen or eighteen years and she was saying as the years have gone on there are fewer and fewer things that people can uh take off of their income tax and you know if you're not a home owner or if you haven't sold property or uh have something major like that it's hardly you know it's just not much else you can do and she said it's really taken the fun out of doing taxes for people for her because she used to be real creative about helping them find ways of you know accumulating receipts can't do oh really can't do it any more so uh_huh how interesting oh gosh where did you go to school uh_huh uh_huh well you are you are the same age as my daughter because she just graduated from college this year too i'm a graduate student having gone back after many years so um nevertheless i am a student and poor so it's uh um you know it's been i guess as far as people like uh our family we can feel like sometimes we pay more than our share as middle class people with americans with um college age students you know and and i there just i don't know i guess as you say you just have to look around and decide that most of the other people that you know are paying about what you are and oh yes absolutely yeah because it seems like they still come out okay um you know yeah i kind of have my doubts uh_huh that's yes seems that way yeah that the higher they get the you know at least i don't know it seems like um they must feel like they're paid for all of the years of experience or um or something or just the title sometimes um and it it doesn't seem fair and i i know a lot of people do make money um you know in in good investments and things like that but i think that's a lot of luck and a lot of gambling and not a not a whole lot of work yeah right uh_huh right probably not yeah yes or what's left is not going to be worth anything you know in terms of how you can actually use it yeah right but that's well and that's right yeah yeah that's i haven't heard much in recent years um about social security i mean for a while there not too long ago they were they were saying that the whole system was going to be bankrupt you know before very long because so much was going out for programs that were it that originally it was never intended to be used for or you know programs just weren't in existence and then um i it sort of calmed down i haven't heard much lately but if you have talked about that in your classes you know in the last few years i'm sure that you have heard yeah well um i don't know i guess we complain about taxes but i guess you know you have to be sort of yeah you have to appreciate yeah what what you do get for them sometimes and um i guess it's it's worse you know i'd rather be able to control my money as much as i do with what's left over taxes than to live in oh england or um some countries where so much of it is socialized that you don't see any of that money at all and so you know i guess it's all relative that's exactly right that's right yeah and i okay oh i guess so go by ear okay right oh wow uh we have a six percent sales tax yes uh_huh i don't mind my taxes as much as my social security yeah yeah um the taxes i don't know i can deal with that because i know everyone else is paying in too i guess you know but uh-oh i don't know uh the one thing that we don't have uh tax on clothes do you that's what i thought i know new york also has a sales tax on clothes and i know a lot of kids like going to college with me that lived in new york or out of state and a lot of them would buy their clothes in pennsylvania just for the simple sake of not paying that uh_huh no well we don't have it necessarily on food but then there's other things that they nail you for it like health and beauty products you know yeah yeah that deduct yeah uh_huh uh_huh and see i take it she was an accountant yeah yeah uh_huh i know well i i i also was a student i just graduated in may and um i graduated with a finance degree but that was the big joke the [accountants] or the people who found ways to cheat on your income tax that was the big joke clarion university uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh i think they should go back i i realize you know that we have uh graduated tax brackets but i think they should still go back and instead of putting the burden more on the middle class i think the burden should be put more on the wealthy yeah yeah you know they always have the argument well you know well who's to say we don't work harder to get that you know well i don't care how much they take off of you you know you're still going to be above on top and i you now like you said i've worked in different places and the ones that get the most pay do the least work uh_huh i agree with you i do think it's a lot of luck and i don't like that part of the finance you know whatsoever i don't know but like what i was saying about the social security that's real you know it never bothered me until we started talking about it in my classes and then the more i think about it the more i think i'm paying in to something that i granted you know i'm paying for my grandparents but i'm never going to see that social security is going to be gone before i ever get any uh_huh right they're going to pay me fifty dollars a month right i'm sorry i put in much more than that you know uh_huh right uh_huh oh yeah yeah yeah you got to look to what they put you know you have decent roads at least yeah uh_huh that's true uh_huh it's how you look at it too i like to instead of thinking how much you know that i'm paying out i like to just look at it and say oh well everyone else is doing it too you know are are we paying too much in taxes and are we getting what we pay for what's your opinion okay i i tend to agree with you when it comes to government spending there are so many studies done that don't mean anything but we'll spend hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars on and it's nice to know something doesn't work or something doesn't exist but it could be put to more practical use that is true i agree with you in that area uh i have a tendency to i'm in from texas and i read you know how our politicians voted each week in the paper and it's you know it's interesting how the votes vary and what they ran on in platform don't necessarily come true in their voting in the senate or congress whatever right that's very true what what state do you live in okay what do you think about robin hood that's true what school district do you work for okay i work for plano so we're comparable as a matter of fact i just paid my richardson taxes because i live in richardson and [supplemented] the robin hoods very thoroughly i think our taxes went up tremendously yes yes i remember there was about four five years ago yes yes well did you read in the dallas paper where they increased the the [administrators'] pay by thirty three percent after they laid off all those teachers right but you know i'm not going to complain because plano got we all got a pay raise this year you all got a pay raise this year is that correct okay are you on the early retirement oh are you enjoying it well it's interesting you know because when you look at what richardson has done with the early retirement you well it's kind of a broad subject uh i i think there are some areas where we where we uh pretty well you know get our money's worth but i i also think there are a lot of areas especially in uh big government federal government uh where we're short changed uh lot of money spent for uh things that are not used and uh i was i was in the air force and i was at there were there was equipment at every base i was ever on that was just going to waste it was just sitting and rusting and you know and yeah yeah yeah and i i think that uh it's a a tone of our times that politicians uh are into themselves more than they are into you know doing something worthwhile for the people they represent which is really unfortunate yeah uh_huh and don't really respond to uh people who write them and call them and uh you know unless they're in the [limelight] and under pressure so yeah i think we get short changed on that texas that's well i work for school district and uh it's it has hurt us a lot uh there has to be some way i think to [equalize] education opportunities but uh you know our we we tend to think i think especially big government tends to think that the solution to everything is to throw money at it and i don't you know that's just not true i don't think the you know i don't think money is going to take the place of intelligence or uh problem solving skills uh i think there are there are too many things that money can't uh that that money can't buy that that are important as far as education is concerned richardson oh great okay yeah yeah i think we've uh yeah we have got it on the line don't we and it's not going to get any better you know i mean it's going up and up and up uh i used to live in the plano school district and uh there was a an organization a taxpayers organization that uh finally communicated the message to the i think to the people in plano that you know we didn't want our taxes raised yeah but this you know this uh i think living in richardson we're kind of spoiled because i think we get we come closer to getting our money's worth as far as the city is concerned i think than probably any any city in the country is that incredible that's that's the biggest mess i've ever heard of you know how can you how can you justify raising anybody's salary if you you know if you have to lay people off yeah yeah well yeah i think the teachers uh did and i don't know about administrators i i'm [semiretired] and i was i was an administrator so i you know i don't get a raise anymore i just i i work part time and just get uh you know my pay doesn't change yes yes very much uh course i i still work two part time jobs so it's not really total retirement yeah they just raised our taxes up here about a year ago oh right indianapolis got that didn't they yeah well it seems like a big politics game like up here last year the governor was up for [reelection] so he said the budget was fine the state didn't have any money and then right after he won the election he said we owed a lot of money so they raised all our taxes and now it's election time again so they're trying to lower them so they're just talk about lowering them but they never do they just keep raising them yeah me neither well actually they're going to here because they didn't have a budget for so long so they raised the tax rate real high for the last three months of this year and they're going to lower it for next year i guess they figure they're going to make up for all they didn't get when they should have had a budget yeah yeah they say they're going to lower but i'll see yeah so do i i mean i'm a a middle class barely but uh i don't think the rich are paying less not enough i think they're paying too much yeah i mean if you're in the the three three percent bracket and they take a third of your check every month well that's ridiculous why bother working well they should just tax everybody the same amount no matter what you make that would be fair yeah no loopholes or anything everybody pays ten percent or fifteen or whatever right yeah that's the way our state tax is here i think it's pretty fair uh_huh oh oh great so you ought to be saving up some every month to make up for all what they should be taking out uh_huh yeah i guess you have to check yes or you come down to the end of the year and you don't have it to give it to them yeah really ouch yeah i'll say is well they've uh statewide raises they raise ours it seems like constantly we just uh passed a new one uh fortunately or unfortunately it doesn't go into effect because we did not get the united airlines right and uh we had passed a a [provisional] one that if if it did if they did locate here we would raise our taxes but uh at least we thought we'd get something back from that uh how do you feel about taxes oh i've never seen taxes really go down oh i hope they put that in writing i feel like the middle class people are supporting the nation and uh that the rich are not paying their share and of course the poor can't afford it either but uh i really feel like and and i feel like you know i'm a middle class person income wise anyway and uh i get tired of supporting the whole country you think the rich are paying too much well i don't know many rich that don't have enough tax breaks to i mean i'm talking about the really rich right now i'll go along with that you know right now i think that would be fair and i you know no no [ifs] [ands] and [buts] you know no big elaborate laws that say uh you know call for a lot of enforcement or a lot of review it's just you know you make this you pay ten percent if you make a hundred dollars you pay ten percent if you make a million dollars you pay ten percent our state taxes are somewhat based on the federal and uh they have not gotten it where the withholding is accurate so and and you withhold no matter what you do they withhold what they're supposed to and at the end of the year it's not enough right so now you know when you sign your w four form or whatever w two whatever that is then they always say do you want a extra amount for state which is ridiculous but it's been that way for the last probably ten years right unless you have a lot of deductions but you know if you have a lot of federal deduction it ends up hurting you state wise and you end up owing you know you may get nine hundred dollars back from federal and you're going to owe fifteen hundred in state and uh it's it's just ridiculous but i i don't know i've they just came up with a twenty five percent increase on personal property in in oklahoma county and that is a chunk i mean twenty five percent increase uh i guess my personal opinion i i don't mind paying taxes necessarily i i just sometimes wonder if our money is being used in the best way uh sometimes when i hear what what they're even what even what the politicians are making you know when they're getting a hundred and fifty thousand plus benefits and that uh i think that's just a bit too much to be paying them uh and that's all tax money when you figure out how many politicians and each one getting that much it's just billions of dollars that's i think is just being thrown away yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah well i know any time there's there's a big uh budget cut you know i work with the state and any time there's there is a budget cut or [crunches] it's always the small guy that that gets hurt it's never the uh the person that's making a hundred thousand there it's always the person that's making the least amount and uh and sometimes we're running around there i see these these uh supervisors running around uh having meetings i i really don't know what they do i sometimes wonder are are they really doing anything or yeah yeah well they got so many hidden taxes that it's really hard to figure out how much you are paying because go to a grocery store something like that and you're paying a little tax here and you so gas i don't know about you guys but there's probably at least about twenty five to to thirty cents of different taxes on on our gas and you don't realize yeah yeah well i know they say like with reagan they say no new taxes but they changed the uh deductions on you and that just raises your taxes you know they just get it a different way so i mean to me it did uh raise my taxes yeah i heard someone say that uh if they would just something about with the uh the defense budget all that extra money they're throwing back if they cut back by so much percentage it could throw back about six hundred dollars on an average six hundred dollars right right right and then when you read about that they're spending all the money on you know these studies that have no relevance whatsoever that kind of ticks you off too but uh somebody somebody was telling me the other day that they heard some senator say that what we're paying it's not that we mind paying taxes it's that we're paying too much for a lousy government and i i i tend to agree with that i'm not really into what they're doing per se and i think there's just too many too many levels of bureaucracy i think it can be can be managed by less uh less levels right right right right well i think we're going to see a streamlining in the government i just you know i i don't know what kind of uh i don't know what what level or what how long it will take for you know our country to start the public in general to start saying hey this is too much we're not going to pay any more you know we're not going to pay for this and you're out you know i think we're starting to see it a little bit now but i think uh i don't know what what kind of input we're going to get from the public and how they're going to go about doing it because i think i think we're just getting taxed way too much i mean right now we're getting taxed probably probably around thirty five percent or more and that's that's you know that's me not making a whole lot of money right right yeah we got a sales tax our sales tax is like eight percent and i don't know what our gas tax is i think it's somewhere around twenty five cents a gallon so i mean they're hitting us up and they may not raise it you know federally as much one year but then they'll raise it somewhere in the state or the sales tax or property tax or whatever it's just i mean you can see that you're money is just not going that far right right well i mean you could tell just by just by how much money you have left over and all of a sudden i don't know it's just it's eating me alive yes um i guess my initial view is our tax burden hasn't gone down in recent years despite our total tax burden despite tax cuts but among [industrialized] nations we have one of the lowest in in the world and in of the matter you get what you pay for if we're going to have national health insurance which seems likely it's necessarily going to involve more taxes uh i suspect i take the view that cutting income tax rates has been good for the the economy that most other countries have a higher share of the tax burden in various kinds of sales taxes uh energy taxes particularly and that to the extent we need to raise more taxes that's the direction we should look where's it all going well one one one of the big tax that has gone up a lot in this year is the social security tax which in principle is going into into a big trust fund but that is a particularly regressive tax uh it's a tax on the first dollar earnings and senator [moynihan's] uh proposal to to to cut there i think makes a lot of sense i think senator [moynihan's] proposal to to cut the social security tax which isn't really going to going to beef up up up the social security program could make a lot of sense uh_huh oh yeah i think japan i think japan is probably about equal to ours and other major countries are higher our friends were amazed that the sales taxes the cost of things when they went to canada not so long ago and as a whole most other countries have a higher level of cradle to [grave] government services and it's a real real they're they're real trade offs there uh i that's that's a scary thing that there's no no real knowing about uh the the there's a lot of inflation risk that isn't taken care of in most private pension plans no i'm at the national institute of standards and technology uh part of the commerce department here in [gaithersburg] maryland well well i i i didn't pick it uh i mean um i like i don't really recall i may have filled out on the on the form but i i certainly certainly have the feeling i've been given topics different from the ones that i mentioned before yes yes when you place a call topic is given to you oh you should try it uh many of the subjects are uh taxes taxes especially um one thing that has kept our tax burden high and this will change somewhat in the next few years is the is the level of of the defense budget and that's that same subject uh_huh right well i guess i kind of have mixed feelings um you know you always sit there and out of each pay check so much comes out of it and you wonder you know where's it all going and we have such a huge uh national deficit and and i guess a lot of times there's questions wondering well if it's doing a whole lot of good i know there's a lot of social programs out there that need help but you kind of always wonder well where's where's the money going uh_huh i'm sorry i couldn't right right yeah i agree with that as far as other countries i'm not um i don't keep up on it too much as to far as what you know as what they're i know we were in ireland last year and i know that the tax there is extremely high much higher than we pay here but but as far as other countries i'm not uh up to par on uh_huh uh_huh right right yeah but and and you sit there and wonder um i guess this doesn't really have to do with taxes but just money in general and and um wondering if you're going to have enough when you retire to live on uh_huh yeah that's true but um are you involved with the legislature up there or which uh_huh okay uh_huh i was just wondering since you said washington d c and you and you picked this topic i was just kind of curious oh you didn't oh did you see i haven't placed any calls did they automatically assign the topic oh i didn't know that i thought whoever made the call could choose what topic because i haven't made any calls yet i've just received some oh i didn't realize that okay yeah because it's kind of a it can be a rather controversial subject depend on who you're talking to exactly okay you think you're getting your money's worth well that's probably the next year's agenda oh yeah they're finding a way to tax you every time you turn around and i i think one way or the other we're going to pay for the bureaucracy i guess uh it's one area that is really i i think hurting the economy more than anything i think the taxes have just every time you turn around they they have taking more bite out of the dollars that are available for spending for any kind of products and i i i think that is probably as big a item [fueling] the recession as anything right now that's right that's right yep that's right well i think that uh that the problem with the sales tax of course is it's an unfair tax across the board uh as far as ability to pay which allegedly allegedly taxes are supposed to be directed towards but uh now people with the lowest income pay a hundred percent almost of you know taxes on everything they buy and where people that make you know two hundred three hundred thousand dollars a year certainly a portion of that they aren't going to be paying taxes on you know and uh that's the unfair equity [inequities] of sales tax as a main source of revenue but i don't think it is anymore not in texas anyway that's right that's right that's right that's right and that's the [unfairness] of the thing but uh i think taxes generally are unfair so well you know like other things if they don't affect you you don't worry about them too much i have trouble buying a twenty thousand dollar car still so it doesn't i i think uh you know generally the prices of cars have gotten out of line which is uh you know and uh i guess if people got thirty forty thousand bucks to spend on a car uh that's their [prerogative] you know i i i don't have a whole of sympathy on that you maybe you buy that you know and i don't mean to be knocking uh yeah there are there are and the idea of that kind of taxation is to have people think twice on putting their money into that i guess you know unless they really want it buy something that you know more well it it's just like having taxes on or exemptions for kids you know it's a way of increasing the population that that was one of the initial ideas of you know giving exemptions on kids on on federal taxes and where you exempt things like uh uh one of the best things i heard on taxes to [stimulate] the economy someone brilliant [deductor] probably [lloyd] [bentsen] said that all you know if they gave back the deductions on credit cards on your federal taxes people would probably be you know spending more money using their credit cards now i don't know if that's true or not but if you look on all interest things not just credit cards but on your cars and you know any kind of interest that you're paying from a personal point of view that might make certain sense in stimulating consumer [purchasers] so that's a lot of the games that politicians play on where they want to go you know tax things that they don't you know to a degree well like booze you know example they keep raising the taxes on booze it gets to the point you know it makes [drunks] sober you know they quit buying it uh never uh the only thing i'm i'm thankful of is that we don't have to pay any income tax in in texas yeah boy i tell you what i sure hope they don't pass something like that well i i tell you um i remember every time it seems like we turned around they're adding another nickel or a few more cents onto the price of gasoline and actually that one the the the taxes on gasoline don't don't bug me as much as uh uh what are we eight and a quarter percent sales tax and every time you go to buy anything now uh even you know they they tax food that's the one that really kind of bothers me oh i got you because people that uh don't make very much money wind up spending it all yeah whatever they spent it on they have to pay tax on what do you think of that new luxury car tax anything over ten or thirty thousand dollars oh sure no uh no i haven't but it it to me it seems really interesting that they come along and add another ten percent tax uh on top of it and there's an awful lot of cars that cost more than thirty thousand yeah right right sure well what what about the taxes on cigarettes uh go ahead tell me what you think do we get our money's worth yeah did you see sixty minutes last night well they did a thing on the thirty five billion dollars we waste every year just on storing stuff for the military we don't need and uh it's staggering well there are a lot of things that people i think general well i think it's interesting to look at uh where the money goes and it goes a lot of places where it probably ought not go and and i don't think generally i think what's interesting is that we probably represent the majority of people in this country in terms of their feelings about the government and how it serves us given the extraordinarily large sum of money the government has to operate with and that what i think is going to be really interesting is what we do about it i mean we are going to have to change the people who represent us i mean and i think it's going to be real interesting to see and and then force upon them uh yeah right that's i think that's the only thing that's going to change it our anger is going to have to to give rise to to more activity on our part uh i've i've said for years that there's full employment for the politically active and in our society uh there's very little full employment most people in this country are getting worse off not better off eighty percent of the public according to bill [moyers'] uh recent uh piece for uh public broadcasting which by the way is a very good use of government money i think p b s is wonderful but this special focused on the fact that eighty percent of the people in this country are are seeing their real incomes and thus standards of living decline and twenty percent are seeing theirs improve that's not a formula for a better society and the government really plays a role in this i mean well they are the people whose strings are pulled and by i guess powerful you know and it's really interesting to see how that affects people because essentially more and more people in this country are not likely to revolt in the way that people used to think of of the voter [revolting] but people are pretty much getting the picture that some people get taken care of and others don't and they think it's unfair and when they recognize that it's their tax money they're going to do more about it i i'll tell you one quick uh one thing very interesting c b s after the state of the union address is going to open up a telephone line an eight hundred number and people can call in and say what they think about what's going on in this country they expect opening it for one hour that they'll get three hundred thousand telephone calls and i've thought for years it would make a lot of sense to create an eight hundred number for voters to call and and [vent] their frustration with government like one eight hundred capitol or something like that you know just a number you could call from anywhere anytime i think that's coming and i think once once people really start to communicate how they feel things are going to change until then i think you know it's going to be really painful so the question is how soon are we going to start to get our money's worth and as you said it's how soon we get involved and i think we need to create mechanisms to allow us to get involved like allowing us to call a toll free number and say hey look do it this way not that way or i like this or i don't like that or this is how i feel about your spending my money on art that i don't think is art well that's the good thing about what is happening because i think more and more the news media which takes a heck of a beating and and deserves some of it is telling us you know about the problems so the more we communicate hey look we want a change here because you know as it turns out we've wasted a tremendous amount of money on our defense spending in this country over a very long period of time uh and uh right yeah well you may be right what i think is really going to be interesting is to see how uh we as a society deal with it and i and i think it is what you say it's it's a hey listen if i had my way i wouldn't pay my taxes not with the not with some of the things that i hear that our tax money is going for some ludicrous things no i did not i well how does this grab you how did this grab you uh this i i mean i'm i'm a lady but this i heard this on a christian program and it was uh about the n e a and that's the national endowment for arts and they fund they funded this thing this act on a stage and did a study on it between two [lesbians] and two [homosexuals] and wrote a report about that with our money and then it just [frosts] me terribly absolutely i believe that's true yes that's correct heavy involvement from the public uh_huh yeah heavy involvement from the public yeah absolutely no it is not it's [lopsided] very much so uh_huh that's right they pull the strings right the yeah uh_huh i'm sure they will uh_huh uh_huh yes i understand that but hopefully that the people that are listening to what our comments are take some action on it oh absolutely right absolutely we only see the tip of the [iceberg] only you know there's so much of it going on that it would really you know uh set us into a deeper depression if we knew the whole picture well jackie uh on taxes i i guess i would have to say that i that my opinion is that i do think american's are paying too much in taxes uh what's your feeling about that right uh where you live do you have a state income tax and a sales tax both uh uh_huh in new hampshire we have uh uh no no what we call broad base taxes no income tax and no sales tax uh we tax business uh eight percent businesses are taxed eight percent and we have what we call the five b s uh for our taxes booze uh butts cigarettes beds uh hotel room tax bellies a meal tax and [bets] gambling so uh we do have a very low tax rate but you know combined with the federal income tax i think that american's generally do pay too much in taxes and uh_huh well that's nice nice nice to get a refund uh_huh do you think that uh for whatever taxes we do pay that uh we are getting value for it yeah uh my my opinion of taxes is that we just send money to washington or to the state and they say they are going to send some back it's like giving yourself a it's like one arm giving the other a transfusion you know what i mean uh it it really uh i should say one arm giving another arm a transfusion through a [leaky] tube because right because uh there's an old saying in amongst taxes and politicians that there's a fly paper effect and that is that money tends to stick where it lands first and when you send it to washington or send it to your state capitol uh a lot of it stays there and not that much comes back to you uh_huh that it uh_huh well it does it it does seem that the more taxes that are raised the more the politicians spend uh it's almost like they will spend as much as the they're allowed to collect you know uh there is an interesting proposal that's been going around now for a few years of having a flat tax uh ten percent or thirteen percent there would be no figuring i mean you would take your income tax you would have a certain amount i mean you would take you total salary those who made under a certain amount wouldn't owe any taxes and then there would be a set amount for however many people you know dependent you have and you would just pay a flat tax no exemptions no deductions or anything else after you know after you figure up who's in your family and that would eliminate a lot of the bureaucracy in the i r s and it would eliminate all these loop holes that the fat cats get away with yeah i i'd like to see something like that i think it would be fairer and it would put a you know a lot of the tax attorneys our of business and i am sure they will fight it tooth and nail but i really think a flat tax would be a lot fairer for all americans i mean it doesn't seem right that somebody that makes twenty five or thirty thousand dollars pays four or five thousand dollars in taxes while somebody that makes two hundred and fifty thousand dollars might pay nothing in taxes it doesn't seem fair to me right i think your taxes in wisconsin are pretty high i i if i am not mistaken aren't they i mean for your state what is do you know what your state income tax rate is twenty percent just you just pay it huh you're like you're like my daughter who is in college down in massachusetts and uh she works as a waitress and she is attending college full time also and she sends her taxes to me and i figure them up she really has no idea she gets a refund check and i agree i think taxes are high oh yes uh_huh huh uh_huh oh right yeah i i agree and i think it's about the time of the year when you just start getting well if you do get money back from like jobs i'm still a student so uh i only work part time so i i get a check back so from from taxes but yeah it is but it's not much so no yeah yeah yeah there you go right yeah i don't know i don't seem like they are doing much with it i mean there's plans there and now that they are voting and people you know getting into drug and that stuff they have nice plans and uh but they don't always work and then you know they try to raise taxes more and i don't what happens with all the money because if their plans don't work you know but taxes get raise so i don't know i'm not really into politics uh i don't really understand it but it's just you know right uh_huh right huh yeah the could be nice huh right yeah right huh yeah it isn't there is not much out there that is fair that's for sure huh i will agree to that uh um no i i have no idea i just my dad does it all for me i use uh_huh think about uh taxes you spend what you have and yeah i think that the general idea is to you know spend uh during a time of recession that you know for the deficit spending to help pick up the economy but they're running under the you know the way they're running it now they're you know running it under a deficit spending you know while we're not under a recession so there's never any [surplus] coming in to counter the deficit that we're running so that's kind of a basic thing of economics i guess keep spending keep going into debt you're not going to payoff what you owe but so i guess the the question was more like uh do you get what you pay you know get what you pay for yeah there's uh_huh i agree with that i guess i'm i'm a student right now and i don't make a whole lot of money and so i i kind of don't pay a [proportionate] amount of taxes to i guess uh compared to what i get because i you know all my my education is state sponsored i go to a state sponsored school and uh my education all up through high school and stuff so i guess i'm kind of in debt i i suppose because i don't you know been paying taxes all that all that long my parents i guess however have contributed to that you know for the education side of it and everything but uh i usually end up getting money back i will this year anyway from a yeah i am i need it too otherwise uh_huh uh_huh more taxes you pay uh_huh isn't uh_huh uh_huh wow uh_huh well isn't uh_huh there's a lot yeah lot of hidden taxes uh_huh the taxes that people don't think about that yeah the the the income tax is a lot more visible portion of the taxes you pay i guess uh_huh there was that which was it jerry brown one of the democratic candidates had a proposal for doing away with all the the tax codes they have now and implementing a i think a flat percentage something like that uh_huh right exactly that's because until like eight up until like eighty five or something was the well i think they're a necessary evil uh i wish the government would operate on the same premise that uh businesses operate on and that is uh you you don't spend more than you than you bring in well i it just depends uh uh roads are very expensive uh commodity and so is uh utilities they supply and police and fire department uh you know they need to make a living so i think for for for many years uh we've paid teachers and police officers and firemen who are uh to a great extent public servants uh we have not paid them really what they're worth in what they contribute to society but uh then again uh it's the hard to justify with all the [wastefulness] of money that the government spends on all levels of of uh government including [municipalities] as well as state and federal governments uh you're very fortunate we just try not to pay any more in than we have to uh we pay in a substantial amount uh we don't regret paying taxes we do think that uh sometimes uh we have a reverse of a regressive tax a progressive tax and progressive tax i think uh does not give people incentive to make more money and what i mean by that the more income you make the more tax you pay it should be i think a flat percentage and uh that percentage ought to be an equitable amount uh last year when they passed the tax laws for the uh nineteen ninety ninety one whatever nineteen ninety one uh i added up all the taxes that we were going to pay on all these different specific luxury items and travel expenses and everything else and i totaled them all up and basically uh we were going to be paying seventy or eighty percent tax now that was the assumption that you spent that same dollar for every for every item on there even though there's uh taxes on different things but you know there's there's a lot of taxes you pay that you're not even aware of that you're paying uh like when you buy a tire you pay a federal [excise] tax you pay gasoline taxes every time you pump something into your your tank but you probably pay more percentage wise in other taxes yeah if you implemented a flat percentage it would encourage people uh to make more money and the what people need to understand in my opinion now this is just my opinion okay uh is that businesses create jobs and jobs create income and income pays taxes and so if they [penalize] businesses business people are smart enough to say here's my break point i'm not going to work any harder and make any more or create any more jobs and so based on that who do you think you're talking to you're talking to an employer um what's our topic taxes right right um what do you do i guess that i mean it all depends really on what kind of bracket you're in uh_huh right oh sure uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh right uh well no i can't really complain i'm a student um and i i work as a co op at uh georgia tech research institute and uh i'm going to get back most of what i earned i mean most of what i pay in taxes and uh and uh one of my parents is still claiming me huh uh_huh i'm sure i went well i did work um just very for some time but i didn't make enough money to really make too much of a difference right no no i haven't uh_huh uh_huh huh oh really uh_huh uh_huh oh sure uh_huh wow uh_huh taxes uh_huh huh yeah no no i haven't uh i uh my father pays for my my schooling my tuition so uh i'm i haven't made use of that physics uh_huh everybody says that huh um i haven't i haven't gotten too terribly much into my major yet actually um the the degree i'm getting is physics there's a different one for applied physics so i guess you could call it more straight stuff than applied i doubt about that are are is america i mean are we pretty pretty steep compared to most countries no i don't think so either uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah taxes do we pay too much well do we um my tax bracket is is pretty high up there i pay the i generally pay the maximum tax bracket and uh i think that we're paying too much because i don't have any children and i pay a lot of property taxes i don't have any um i don't you know i don't use an awful lot of city services it it you know it's like i have to work i have to work all the time just to make enough money to pay the taxes and um there's so many people who want a a [dib] of the federal money or the state money or whatever it is and i just sometimes many times i end up feeling like i'm paying too much in taxes how about you do you pay too much well when you when you go out into the uh when you go out into the working world it it changes quickly um you look at your paycheck and you go oh my gosh where did it all go um what kind of what kind of uh well have you pay a lot of in have you been out working and then gone back to school or are you did you go directly from high school into into college to worry about it have you have you been active in in politics trying to concerning this have you like worked on political action committees or something like that i uh i haven't done any of that type of work myself um but every once in a while when i hear up here at at uh in d c area um one of the radio stations has been talking about the the congress um congress has added too towards the members bank there you know there's a bank that they all bank with and i guess it went [defunct] recently and one of the congressmen has has written in the last three years about a thousand bad checks and we we the taxpayers float him a loan for all all those bad checks no interest no repayment schedule and um it's causing quite a stir up here because we're so close to d c anyway it's really kind of curious to watch this thing occur um i i i think we pay too much and i've i look at my paycheck and i make well let's see they take out in state and federal taxes i think i pay forty two percent forty two cents out of every dollar i make goes to the government and then they charge me sales tax and they charge me gasoline taxes and they charge me all these others and it's just too expensive i can't believe that i i'm just thankful that i don't get all the government that i pay for you know what i mean do you have you used um student loans and things like that that were guaranteed by the government what are you studying down there physics oh that sounds like a fun fun field scientific heavy science are you like in the [particle] [particle] research or anything like that or is it more um applied physics okay well maybe maybe you can figure out how we can stop this [inertia] that's come rolling towards whatever it's rolling toward actually i don't think we are um like like europe um england i know the taxes are a lot higher but they do have socialized medicine and things like that and um i know i was reading in the paper i believe yesterday that um they're talking or maybe it was on the i don't think anybody pays too little do you get hit up for local taxes there oh so you get the whole [smorgasbord] well i i actually live in new hampshire tax free or die uh_huh no actually there's no sales tax in new hampshire either no what there is is very high property taxes because that's how they fund schools and everything the only problem is i work in massachusetts so they they hit me up for the five percent there yep but it well you know we it's only a state tax here no local we've got a five percent sales tax but uh the problem is that so i'm paying state tax even if i don't live here but at least on things like stock options and things like that they don't tax me so that's not too bad oh i i mean i i'd consider twenty percent lucky because just on i mean you know when you figure out just on feds you know i actually hit the thirty one bracket this year which was no fun right and also you know then you figure out seven or eight percent for f i c a which is taxes where you most people forget about them because you've you know you can't always get your f i c a back at the end of the year but so you know and then you know like a five percent [surtax] i'm paying forty percent tax yeah well i i mean i think there's some people there certainly are some things where you need infrastructure and you need you you know there are things government does better you know i think government does a better space program than you're going to get out of private individuals but you know i think you know you look at things like you know tax subsidies to tobacco farmers because jesse [helms] wants it that way or you know and and just tremendous amounts of you know so much of it is now just going to service debt or you know is going in into into programs that you know yeah they are they are a fat you know i think the military is really fat i think that a lot of the the h e w services although they're providing necessary services have too much fat in them you know like we yeah i mean we we spend a fortune for things like v a hospitals and you know then you look at how well they're managed you know i don't think we're getting our money's work out worth out of there i think it's all going into into [bureaucrats] well between him and reagan yeah the great [communicator] oh oh yeah they think oh yeah and then they go and say i'm not congress they're the fault for it but you know the other thing is it's tricky though because like in new hampshire they say oh all right let's cut the military budget well yeah then you lose half your jobs in new hampshire you lose [grotten] connecticut goes so you know it's like you know it's very tricky to balance that stuff off because then you hurt you know if the if the if people lose their jobs then they become a load and they're not contributing taxes so you know it's it's very hard to say you know this is what we should cut who aren't contributing right yeah and uh in our right but what's very funny is in our town meeting they were this this guy had both for our school district meeting and our town meeting had this proposal which unfortunately [violates] new hampshire constitution for our local town to do it to uh have you have people line item their taxes they say i want to pay for this and this and this and this and this course the only problem with that is then nobody paying for the necessary services they don't use yeah no i would tend to agree very highly i think that we're all paying a little bit too much taxes and not seeing too much good come out of it yeah we sure do here in indiana we pay uh we pay county income tax state income tax we pay five percent sales tax uh you name it they tax it that's right we uh_huh right which is probably pretty nice but i'll bet that means your state sales tax is pretty high there's no sales tax either uh_huh right [taxachusetts] uh_huh right right uh_huh no i uh i really think that here in indiana at least we pay a a whole uh just too much tax i worked in a factory uh last summer and on the average i was losing twenty percent of every paycheck to taxes and i don't feel that i really get a whole lot of return from that i mean i don't utilize all you know it really any government welfare services of course i drive on the roads and i you know went to the schools and stuff but i really feel that that i'm just getting [overtaxed] uh_huh no that's that's not any fun uh_huh right right yeah which is just outrageous and a lot of it and if you look at the way the government is run these days it just seems like a lot of it's going to waste right right right that's right got to keep those farmers happy uh_huh right there is just way too much bureaucracy and so much of that tax money is going just to keep that bureaucracy running keep the paper [shuffling] around instead of real you know good programs right and a lot of it's feeding that just i just i really especially in the election year i mean i'm really thinking a lot about this the economy and questions like that and and just the whole it seems like everything is really [screwy] right now as far as the economy uh the government goes and our our whole economy in general and our taxes just are going to keep rising no matter what happens and especially when you've got the bush administration who has increased government expenditures uh beyond what any other president since world war two has done and yet he supposedly right right yeah i mean i just read something that two thirds or three quarters i'm not exactly sure of our national debt are was created during the reagan bush era who are supposedly [fiscally] conservative right right uh_huh that's right yeah it's really that is the especially that defense cuts in the defense is really a catch twenty two double [whammy] because like you say if you cut defense well that's great that's going to lower our national expenditures but then you're going to have people on welfare and they're not putting taxes in so that's that's really it's i'm glad i'm not the one who has to come up with these policies uh_huh right that's right steve uh with the election year and whatnot coming up do you think we ought to cut taxes raise them or or or what do you think uh_huh see i never thought really it's uh i never really thought that that the the question really had to do whether or not we're paying too much or too little i i always that the the real question was is are we getting a reasonable return on on investment for instance like social security tax or uh i mean that's that's tax we're paying money and and supposedly this money is going into some kind of fund so that when it comes our turn to retire the money will be there for us so that's yeah you know when i when i see that money taken out of my paycheck each each week i or each every other week i i really think that money's history and you know so as far as return investment that's not that's nothing and we're not even going to get the exact same number of dollars back uh someone was telling me that there is a uh uh there's still an office in uh you know staffed with with people there and in d c that are [researching] to find a cure for polio which i may be wrong but i believe that the cure for polio is already founded but but supposedly once you have an office in d c or you know and and staff it with people it's really tough to close it down and and they just haven't yet uh_huh well that might be the difference i don't know uh the other thing that uh i remember seeing on t v lately is uh had to do with it's like seventy five percent of the historical sites in america are in the home districts of very powerful people politically that that for some reason historical sites with you know the the full federal money and everything seem to appear as as almost as like political favors to to very strong politicians uh_huh so it sounds like you uh you think that that we'd be able to save some money by uh passing the line item veto yeah uh_huh yeah pork barrel politics yeah but massachusetts wasn't when dukakis was there anyway wasn't in that great shape financially uh_huh i mean i don't know i it's uh i mean it's it's tough i mean there's there's two ways you can kind of go to get out of tough financial situations i guess you can like raise taxes and then create like job programs and whatnot or you can hope that if people keep their money that they'll spend more and create jobs and and whatnot well that's that's a really hard question i do know that uh politicians always talking out of both sides of their mouths uh i let's example uh our friend the president right now says no new taxes we should and especially if anything be cutting taxes now because of the recession and at the same time the budget he sent to congress has tax and fee increases so uh i know the politicians uh aren't aren't straightforward now in terms of economics i'm not it's hard hard to call it really is right yes uh well yeah i'm not exactly sure uh about polio in particular i know we have a polio [vaccine] come will prevent somebody from getting polio i'm not sure if we know what to do in terms of [curing] some who has already gotten polio right yeah it's it's it's funny because uh it was one of the things that bush is trying really hard to get ahold of is the line item veto where uh you know congress is able to attach all kinds of uh funny [amendments] for individual uh congressional districts to the to the main budget proposals and the poor president has has to uh either accept or reject the whole thing oh i i think the line item veto is not not is not necessarily a bad thing assuming that the uh the the president uh uses it to get rid of uh this kind of waste on the other hand uh it it assumes that you have lots of confidence in your president not to veto important things uh and just to get rid of the [unimportant] things and whenever there's that kind of subjective judgment there's always going to be a dispute as to uh where the where the [boundary] between waste and and necessity is so i'm not i'm not sure that that that will help solve our problems but there definitely is is a problem with uh i forgot there's a political term for this stuff pork barrel or something uh pork barrel politics there has to be some way to do it i know state governors usually have line item [vetos] and uh i lived in massachusetts for a while and uh when dukakis [vetoed] certain things there was a big uproar and wasn't necessarily so popular at least at the end yeah they were very good at first they were in very good [financials] at first and uh that's part of the reason he became a [nominee] is because things went so well and then of course the bottom fell out and spare the economy yeah it's really it's a hard balance it it definitely is even not for government even just say for a small business uh i know some well actually i don't think they're out of line devil's advocate possibly but it you are trying to avoid paying taxes and whether or not you agree with that law you're still [circumventing] it you are legal in in your [circumvention] of that law really i i i don't think that's a valid argument i think that most people are quite aware they're not paying that six percent sales tax um naturally some some things you just can't find in your local k mart or or uh [bryn] [mawr] stereo dealer uh but then why not pay pay the sales tax corporations have to why should an individual just because it's just because the state can't really find out about it be able to avoid paying sales tax yes i i'll agree it it's not your responsibility but is it also legal for you to do that from what i understand from various net [readings] it the federal government is going to try to legislate a more aggressive enforcement of state tax [schemes] uh in into place in the next few years it is it is a lost revenue stream right now and states can use all the revenue they can get with some with something like that do your arguments still apply which is exactly what businesses do at the present and i i i was actually talking about businesses purchasing something mail order and then having having to pay sales tax on it that's my understanding of the way uh the way it works usually the the person ordering doesn't pay but the accounting department will uh suck up all the bills at the end of the month and realize how much they have to pay and there there are some substantial nasty penalties um if you if businesses try to avoid that no businesses uh if purchasing things mail order if if i'm a computer consulting firm and i see these this great deal on forty six mother boards uh from from say utah um i i might buy the mother boards from utah but then still have to pay pennsylvania sales tax my accounting department will at the end of the month i think that i think that's the way things work in pennsylvania and i know they work that way in uh say here in d c yeah that's true a a big hole does exist right now uh in that consumers can just say oh i i forgot that there there is no well defined mechanism at all and and that it is a a loss i i think is that the federal government will try to establish a mechanism just to do just that in in order to gain the revenue that's being lost uh i mean i i don't know if i agree with that but it but so let's talk about the uh wonderful abuses in the state of pennsylvania of personal property taxes whereby you can purchase something mail order and after the fact the state of pennsylvania can find out about it and send you a bill for the sales tax appropriate to that item that you purchased as well as interest and penalties from the time that you bought it what do you think is pennsylvania kind of out of line there what what if you're not doing it in order to [circumvent] the law though i mean what if you don't even realize that you're subject to paying uh income tax on something that you purchase mail order well i mean it seems to me that generally at least in my own experience when i purchase something mail order it's not to [circumvent] paying sales tax to the state of pennsylvania it's because i'm sorry the commonwealth of pennsylvania uh it's because i i can't find the item that i want at a competitive price anywhere in my local area so i go outside the area for that and i think that it's not my responsibility to police myself and pay pennsylvania what they believe they are owed even though you know the revenue stream went to another state i don't i don't think that that's my responsibility as a as a conscientious consumer well i think that if if policy is established and if a mechanism is put into place to promote the collection of taxes in this fashion then i don't argue with it because it's not a burden on the consumer to remember that oh i bought this out of state i need to xerox the receipt and make out a check for six percent and send it to pennsylvania right but the point is is that businesses do that the business that you purchase the thing from is responsible for collecting the appropriate sales tax and [forwarding] it to the state in question that's a cost of doing business the burden shouldn't be placed on the consumer uh uh do you mean businesses from the point of view as of of selling things to a consumer and then being responsible for the sales tax or purchasing yeah see i'm unfamiliar with that because i don't i never see that end of the business so my only experience has been from the point of view of a consumer uh but if that's the case if the business is responsible for [policing] themselves then i think some well defined mechanisms need to be in place so that uh the opportunity to forget that you owe sales tax for something uh can be avoided uh taxes do you want to go ahead uh_huh i agree uh_huh well i think uh you know when i look at uh all the things that are coming out now about over spending and spending money that's not there and buying things that are extremely expensive where they could buy it at a at a better discount uh when you when exactly exactly that's exactly uh the whole thing when you take a look at all those issues of where our money is going and it's just as long as the person that's spending the money uh doesn't think about oh i can go out and spend anything that i want to it's just unlimited right an unlimited source so they they think well i'll go out and buy a four hundred toilet seat and i could have went to k mart and bought it for you know ten or fifteen i mean that kind of thing and uh exactly exactly and i know a lot of uh corporations now are looking at their amount of money that's being spent and they're looking at what's the best buy it used to be you could go if you had a company you had to go through certain people and you didn't care what you paid i mean you just got it done now people are putting in [bids] for things and are looking at things going to actually shop at best buy for best buy is one of our electronic stores for fax machines things like that instead of going through these office supply companies that mark up their amounts and say you know i'll give you a legal pad for five bucks and you can go to another shop and get it for maybe sixty cents or or ninety cents that kind of thing so except for everything keeps going up you know and i know as a middle class uh you know and also i have one dependent has my daughter and i keep looking at well where's the tax so called tax uh relief for having children i mean there is none i mean i think i paid just as much as when i didn't have her so uh_huh sure exactly uh_huh exactly yeah that's the whole thing now they have gotten this wonderful idea of not taking out as much taxes but you're still going to owe the government as much money so by the end of this coming year what's going to happen is all these people are going to find out that they owe the government and it certainly isn't going to be in their savings uh account they won't be able to pay it and there'll be a lot of problems because of that you know put people into you know january or february which is always suppose to be the month after christmas is supposed to be high spending because everything is on sale nobody's going to have the money to spend they're going to be paying on their taxes so they're going to have to just cut back so i don't know where the answer is and yeah yeah no no well that's the whole thing i think people are getting so fed up with it now we go through another election and listen to all these lies about the no no well i don't think people think they can make a difference and when you've got candidates as you do it's candidates that have money and it's backed by big business and big business says well we don't care about the little person and uh you know you're not going to get anymore abe lincolns around uh_huh well who knows uh yeah generations from now we might uh set back in our little uh rocking chairs and watch our grandchildren go through an entirely different system of things and say you know this government itself isn't working just like the communist government of uh the old u s s r and maybe that's going to happen to america where they'll say hey we're fed up maybe it'll have to be just individual state tax and each state take care of itself and no government type of uh you know where you have to pay out to federal or whatever i don't know who knows but uh_huh yeah yeah everybody is in fact i'm not sending in my check sure we pay far too much in taxes well far too much for what we get i mean it's just i don't know it just seems too much of the money is just lost um you mean like those you know twenty thousand dollar toilets sure it's real easy to spend other people's money right right i don't mind them getting what they need it's just when they pay so much for it it takes you know very little to just shop around and that's true yep right yeah i'm also wondering why our taxes are still so high considering like the world's probably in better shape now than it has been in the last fifty years uh_huh yeah i know oh i know i mean i don't even you know i don't even get to see half my paycheck between four oh one k and and the thirty four percent they're taking out for taxes let alone what i end up having to pay sure nope they won't be able to pay sure none i don't in the first place you know there's also like taxation without representation well i don't feel represented anymore in our government i mean it it's certainly not a government for me it doesn't take care of my needs and people don't care anymore either people don't want to go out to vote yep no but but that that's going to backfire because little people who buy everything so yeah yeah i wonder though yeah i'm not i don't know i can't think of any easy answers to it but something has to happen i mean i'm certainly fed up with it i went i turned mine in about twelve hours early at noon are you eating no it's say what tell you what we can do is uh i can punch the uh one and then after five minutes when the uh uh voice comes on we can talk all night if we want uh i love the [irony] of uh talking about this subject on april the fifteenth but uh i'm afraid i'm i'm probably in the minority i i actually don't think that we uh pay too much in this country uh uh particularly uh in this part of the country uh i guess i do have a a bone to pick with uh uh the way taxes are distributed uh i just finished [fuming] at the fact that we pay an eight and a half percent sales tax and no income tax when the income tax could have been deducted from the federal form and the sales tax can't i think that's regressive and uh uh it's kind of dumb well i mean nobody taxes groceries where is that right right right but i guess when i hear when i see the comparison between the united states and uh any other western country uh their their rates are like uh forty one forty two and ours are like thirty six thirty seven you know if you [compute] as a percentage of total income all taxes [lumped] together we actually do pretty well there's no other country that's that is taxed as low as we are yeah uh_huh i'm i'm not sure i understand what you mean right oh you mean lowest end of living in spite of lower higher taxes yeah i suppose that's true yeah uh probably less so now than it was ten years ago or whatever but yeah right right right yeah yeah since uh i send my kids to parochial school that it's not it's not quite the bargain that but i mean i pay them gladly that's a decision i think it's a dumb decision on our part because countries like canada and england and germany do perfectly well with a uh two tract system in which religious schools [coexist] with [secular] schools with the same tax money but uh i mean that's that's the way americans want to interpret it i guess that's all right but yeah i and if i were uh when i was single and again when i'm retired i will not mind paying uh what it takes to keep the schools good that's always been a high priority i do yeah that's true i think in places i think in places like california people are beginning to find that in in areas that are fairly well off if you add the uh uh people of various sexual [persuasions] and those who never intend to marry and those who are retired and those are uh just looking for fun people with families turn out to be such a small minority that they can't get a tax bill passed no matter what happens and uh there are big sections of the country where people with children of school age are such a small minority that they can't get anything done that seems a a like a cultural [lapse] i mean people always used to be willing to [ante] up for the schools they right yeah people would rather uh increase the fire department and cut down the schools because it means more to them but i think it's sad selfish and [shortsighted] yeah well not very good it's not been a good day i don't know i finished mine up about eleven and left it here with carolyn so i hope she's turned it in uh i go ahead i'll stop eating i just barely got home from the university i just barely got home from the university okay go ahead fire away i agree with you huh i hate the eight and a half percent sales tax but on the other hand i don't mind that it's only on you know things that aren't like groceries and that it's not on that oh yeah they do in arizona uh_huh but we have a pretty low income i mean pretty low tax rate here oh i think the the sales tax they just got to do something about it but that's the [politicalness] of trying to not create any new taxes well and i still think that having lived in europe for awhile you know difference in living conditions are certainly well worth uh what we pay for it well i mean i think i was in germany you know for several years and i'd a lot rather pay taxes here and have what we have then have to live there higher taxes yeah [still's] that way to some extent i think the other problem is you know it it's easy to complain about taxes because there's something you theoretically can do something about but i look for example and you're not quite in the same situation but like school taxes for me biggest bargain in the world i wish i didn't have to pay any more to my physicians in a year than i had to pay for all of my school taxes yeah that that's probably a little tougher on you no i think that's just you though yeah of course i think with the [graying] of america we're going to see that problem in lots of places or build roads regarding uh taxes i you know taxes are really a necessary evil and in a civilized society but really people get upset at taxes because you it's more efficient to do things yourself and uh and so as as a result uh you know it's it's a trade off you know for the common good you know for for the benefit of others you know how much of your resource should you dedicate to uh making things work for others have you uh you know ever thought you know just how much of that money should should go to other people that really don't deserve it well the thing of it is if i wanted to just uh you know permanently become a book reader i guess i could just uh you know uh go on public assistance uh you know look for uh look for people to uh take care of me and uh probably a good woman right just you know just just con somebody to take care of me and then you don't have to be on the tax roll but uh but taxes are are very difficult kind of thing and everybody really hates it it was very timely i i i always over pay my my deductions so i wind up with my getting money back on my uh from my uh withholding so uh you know that that's always a smile but of course you know i've i've paid it in and i should calculate it better no i i i work for the f b i so i i'm a federal employee yeah guess i don't sound like it huh yeah i belong oh i i've got all four feet in the trough you know being a federal employee and and so but but i can understand that uh that you know the uh who gets benefits like every every time there is a a bond issue you know i vote no on every one of them i'm i but there this is this is tax not tax revolt country i mean there's too many every one of us most of us have our have all four feet in the trough you know plus our [snout] right up to our ears so you know it's not exactly that kind of a place that that you want to you know get into a tax revolt situation but uh uh the uh the local taxes here i i in this particular area uh you know i've uh i think i pay about uh-oh thirty five hundred for for taxes on my four bedroom house you know and which is a lot of money and uh and so as as people get older and older uh you know they think about retirement and that sort of thing and and they they're building old peoples homes uh you know at tax expense well i think you know the old people ought to just bail out of here and go where it's cheaper at thirty three hundred dollars or thirty five hundred dollars i'm paying in taxes why i i could go down to [bulverde] and probably rent a rent a house for that right you know in in instead it's it's the taxes here so course i don't know whether i want to go to [bulverde] or not you know or [seguin] or someplace like that but uh there's certainly lots of inexpensive places where the services are poorer and and i think really the only place you can really reduce the amount of taxes you pay is to move to an area where the services are poorer if you're not going to use them then you want to be in in environment that's a strategy i think that the people have to have to take is is how to be able to to [lessen] their cost of living you know i'm i'm five or six years before i'm eligible to retire and and i'm saying well you know i really can't stay here uh as a [retiree] it's too expensive i'm going to have go out and you know in you know east fork someplace and and do my thing you know right they they redecorated in nineteen seventy five you know and they're not doing it again you know so well it's certainly uh uh you must be a t i employee you must be a t i employee you're not a t i who do you work for you you're right uh well yeah i know it's it's a lot you know that uh that i feel like you know just like you said that there's just so much that you can do yourself that you take care of your own self that you don't need the money for but they're giving it to other people that don't really need it either but yet they accept it like so many people do uh_huh right right uh_huh right you are you in business for yourself right uh well i no i think that people that work for the government are just as against taxes as as everybody else you know unless you work for internal revenue yeah uh_huh right yeah right right uh_huh yeah that's right yeah yeah yeah after you retire yeah yeah right my parents are in the same situation you know they their home is paid for but still their taxes are so high that you know my father doesn't feel like he can retire because they couldn't pay their taxes and they have no children in school or you know anything now they don't use any of those services that a lot of the taxes go towards uh yeah yeah you must be what no i'm not i i don't work i'm a student i go to school i'm in nursing school okay uh well we just got our income tax return and i'm perfectly happy what about you uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah but as far as writing checks out and paying taxes i think it's pretty high but i i'm you know i i guess it's where we have to be where it we have to keep raising them for to keep some of the things that that we have and it's just scary though about you know how high are the taxes going to be when my children are my age you know that that's that's scary too because it's not anything like the way it was when i was young and small and a child so you know that that's a scary part too that you have to think about uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh yeah and then you find out about all these things about are your taxes you know taxpayers are is your money going to where you want it to go and there's going to a special this week i i can't i can't if it's twenty twenty or one of those things where uh i think it's one of the local news i think they're having a documentary something about that about their trying to catch some people that not spending your tax monies right and fraud and that kind of thing you know and that's kind of scary too and uh so that would be interesting to see i wanted to see that program oh i know yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh huh well you sure do know a a lot yeah yeah uh_huh yeah yeah that's true what do you think about these items that are going to be uh taxed even more like uh tobacco and that kind of thing uh_huh uh_huh yeah right oh really well let's see i haven't got mine yet because my parents are getting all that stuff at uh at home in the bay area so i'm not sure how much i'm getting back but i'm pretty sure i should get back a little bit since student so it's not too much not too bad though yeah it it's one of those necessities of life that we all have to you know pay taxes but although it is kind of a pain sometimes though uh_huh uh_huh yeah and and like as time goes on you know things get more expensive and because we were increasingly complex society that day by day things get more uh things get more expensive as well as more complex and you know taxes are one of the ways to help pay for a lot of the things that are needed in this society i mean everything from you know from medicare to uh to social security to uh to feeding the to uh to you know feeding the homeless to maintaining prisons to maintaining [polices] or fire departments and things like that and it's now there's more and more things that need attending to and that sort of thing and you know it's it's becoming a larger responsibility but someone has to pay for it and that's us uh_huh yeah and and even even today it's like the amount of taxes that you know we're paying for but you'd think that we're still in that this this uh deficit state that we're still not able to pay off things just because the budget's not big enough as it is and makes you wonder when there's you know countries out there that have you know tax rates of like close to fifty percent or higher you know it's like fifty percent of everything you make is already gone before you even get it and that that's kind of a scary thought i hope it doesn't come down to that but on the other hand they also while those countries that have high taxes also have things like uh socialized medicine things like that too which are nice fringe benefits of it so everyone has everyone has the access to medical facilities as well as the doctors that sort of thing and it's good but it's it's the price they pay i mean it can be [argued] one way or another whether economically it's actually good for the country or good for any given country to have that because those countries tend to be uh as far as cash flow a lot uh have be tend to have a much slower cash flow and don't generate a larger a a large amount of revenue because there's so little uh currency flow through out the economic system well just keeping up with the times that's all as as it turns out you know it's one of those one of those interests you know i kind of like to keep up on because well it's nice to know that when i'm actually you know i do start working that i like to know where my tax dollars are going too work hard to get you know i like to know where it's going to uh_huh i think in a in a way it's good in a way it's not uh but i think in general it's probably good i mean a lot of things like tobacco and alcohol and things like that have been have been in the past uh have been not taxed because there's been such a large lobby against them against the taxes for them sponsored by the alcohol and tobacco companies and it's things like tobacco are uh they're they're a proven health hazard to smokers as well as [nonsmokers] and it's as far as the safety thing in like in san [luis] [obispo] for example there's an [ordnance] which states that uh there's no smoking in any public areas and so if you walk into any restaurant or any hotel there's no smoking allowed anywhere [arch] how are you doing tonight oh yeah fine kind of tired where am i calling where are you lewisville okay i'm in garland um have you read anything about how they propose to uh come up with the taxes to increase the funding for schools what do you think about it equalization of funding uh_huh uh_huh but we're not funding them like other states either though you know it we're not funding our schools like other states either that's right but just because we've got a lot of money doesn't mean that's going to solve the problem i mean i think there's a lot of waste in in schools i'm a teacher i feel that yes i definitely feel that way all this money that's being paid for it's administrators huh_uh i can well they're already talking about freedom of choice you know for schools that's an idea that's true but like in garland you can choose the school that you're going to can you tell this is past bedtime um like in garland they get to choose the schools that they are going to go to but they got to have the transportation to them if it's out of their district you know out of their area i mean so and i like that because you can find out the good schools in your area so just distribute it equally and not raise taxes yeah what do you do oh so you picked a good field then you picked a good field well yeah but that's not a bad one yeah what do you think about a state income tax but didn't they pass that thing that we were going to have a lottery or not oh so what about your income tax think they're hitting you too hard no huh_uh this just keeps accumulating i don't know what else do you think about them let's see state and the city tax the sale tax they used to you really didn't even think anything about it when you bought something but now you do what is it seven point i don't even know how they figure it really i'm glad i don't work in a store because i wouldn't want to have to figure this seven point something percent i guess they got a little table though and it's all written out all right so you think federal taxes okay state tax you can see the logic of it but you don't think it would be economically feasible for your family and ours see both of us are teachers and we got four in our family too we don't need anymore but we can do this tax sheltered annuity that's the only thing that's saving us right lots and lots of people before they get it but still i work in southeast dallas and a lot of my children are from poor you know socioeconomic areas homes and it's just like they always have money they they always are dressed nice you know most of them are fairly nice not like you would think a a poor person would be and i mean they've always got dessert money or they've always got you know dollars on them and everything and i'm thinking you know this isn't right because my children don't have that yeah and you give them you know they get their free lunch and they throw most of it away but then they have their money to go buy desert and that they eat you know it's just you see garbage pans i mean [pails] just filled and we pay people to haul them off right and then like a guy does it and he has his own pigs that he yeah it is oh well is that you got anything else to say i don't think i do okay well talk to you later then now dealing on the federal level two percent is a good choice but as far as to increase tax revenues coming in you know need to [redesigning] of the entire tax structure itself corporate america is getting away with bloody murder where as people out here are having to pay such a high amount of their actual bring home salary into taxes the corporations are getting off easy because they're actually paying in less than five percent of their gross national product profit right if they made a straight across the board everybody pay five percent if their gross national profit was say a million dollars then pay five percent of that but the um overall it just seems like they've modified the tax laws so bad just the last five years the rich it's a definite case that the rich are getting richer and the working people middle class and you know the lower middle class and the upper middle class are having to carry the entire burden as long as you got congressmen and senators that are getting kickbacks from these different companies that are getting awarded for the defense contracts that's never going to happen the one thing that i had thought about to help correct that problem you've got career politicians that spend thirty forty years in washington that's all they have ever done after they've been there that long they're so deep rooted with their the old boy network i think by limiting the number of consecutive terms a congressman or senator can hold whether it be a state congressman or senator or at the national level limiting the two terms and then they have to sit out one i don't think we should ever give them a lifetime income unfortunately and they're the ones that have screamed so much about that don't want to increase taxes and they don't want to do this but every year they vote themselves in a very healthy pay raise eventually it's going get to the point where there's going to be a majority of the american people that have had enough of what it's finally come to we're getting so far down to where you're being taxed so far down where you can't even afford to change your mind it's going to come to a point where the average american citizen is going to say we've had enough well in the form of capitalism that we've got apparently that's not working real good either maybe not a case of everybody being selfish [everyman] carry their own fair burden but not somebody else's i never put anything beyond as far as when it will happen that i'm not real sure of if it will happen i have no doubt it's the best system that's right now but it does need some fine tuning at this point uh i don't think that i'm paying too many you know too much tax myself uh i uh as far as uh you know federal and state uh the uh the state i live in has a five percent sales tax uh it's quite a bit different than uh texas i don't know if you've ever been outside of texas but uh when i moved to texas i was told oh well there's no personal income tax well they nail you on property taxes in uh texas and then that's how they get their money to take care of the schools and things yeah i i found it interesting uh when i moved to texas the fact that uh the reason people wanted to get their kids into plano was to go to the plano school district because it was the best because it had more money than you know other places and uh i i just uh in the uh like here in maryland uh i just bought a uh a house for a hundred and forty one thousand it would be about sixty thousand down there and uh the tax basis is actually uh less than the full price of the house so you end up paying property taxes on what they value the house at i think they only have the house valued at probably about ninety or a hundred thousand dollars whereas when i was in texas i notice that they put the tax basis at at almost the uh full price and so there's quite a difference there uh i think that the way they they levy taxes is a little bit uh uh crazy i think if if they uh people and and i'll use plano as an example uh house prices in plano were falling and so they decided well in order to get more tax revenue we're going to have to raise the price uh you know we're going to have to raise the uh the the uh tax per hundred dollars of value of the house and same time they were [approving] new starts in homes hand over [fist] well when you start having a large supply of homes then of course the price goes you know the value of the house is going to fall and the existing family homes were the ones that were falling the new homes they were building cheaper and and able to sell cheaper and so people weren't buying the existing family homes so they were shooting themselves in the foot and you know if they just would have thought well gee if we don't you know if we put a freeze on new home starts that will bring the price of houses back up our tax base revenue will go up and we won't have to increase taxes and make it more of a burden on people that are living here no no they do have state income tax yeah that's and they uh they divide it up by uh you know you pay a state income tax and then fifty percent of your state income tax is a county tax which is collected by the state and [redistributed] to the counties that is correct uh yes i did i only lived in texas in eighty seven and uh eighty eight and uh part of eighty nine no uh in texas i was oh i believe the uh sales tax was somewhere around seven eight eight percent here in maryland it's only five uh it was nice to have that uh you know deduction when it was available uh but when they revamped the you know supposedly making things more fair uh i've heard a lot of different arguments uh pro and con about whether we should allow deductions for sales tax or even uh maybe we should put more emphasis on sales tax because when you think about it the people that purchase more items are the ones that are better able to pay the taxes you know people that are out there barely struggling to pay their uh house payment and buy food aren't going to be out buying you know anything else and the people that you know have the uh disposable income that are probably more able to pay the income tax uh or pay the sales tax are the ones that are really you know have the money and they're out there buying the items maybe they should be you know paying more of the burden uh there there's another crazy thing that gets me it's like the more children you have the less tax you pay and to me that is completely crazy and i have five children so i mean you know i uh i you know it it's kind of odd when i talk about this with other people because it it just doesn't make sense to me you're getting more services you know your children are going you know you've got five children in school instead of somebody that only has one or none and so you they're paying more income tax to pay for your children to go to school it just you know doesn't make sense uh_huh yeah now the other side of the question is about are we getting what we're paying for um for the most part i think we are but there is a lot of inefficiency uh both on the federal level and on the state level and uh hopefully you know as we start to go into [computerization] and all the processes maybe we'll be able to [streamline] it uh i haven't kept up with uh the texas politics other than that dirty little governor fight but i mean uh we have a a governor here in maryland who's uh pretty hard nosed and uh he's you know we're three hundred fifty million dollars short and every time he comes up with a plan to cut the money everybody starts screaming and yelling and uh every time he wants to cut one budget or do something else or try to do something you know they start screaming and yelling they won't let him raise the taxes and and they they won't let him cut any programs and he's like what do you guys want me to do i mean uh_huh yes yeah yeah that and i think uh putting more emphasis on local handling of the problem i think this is something that that bush came out and said in his uh in his address uh to the nation at the beginning of the year uh you know it used to be that communities would take care of their own and that you know the states would take care of the communities and then all of a sudden everybody starting looking to the federal government and uh you know once you start up at the top and try to get those dollars on down to the hands that need them you know there's a lot of places the money stops and [disappears] along the way and uh maintenance and overhead and you know and and those kind of costs uh_huh yeah yeah i think i think we're always convinced that we're paying too much in taxes without getting back necessarily everything we'd like to but so far i don't think i've paid enough taxes to be too too awfully concerned about it yet yes right right do you all pay state income tax neither do we and and and i agree with the yet part they've just started talking about introducing a state income tax and right now we pay an extremely high state uh sales tax almost eight percent wow right well that's good that's i think that's the biggest problem i have with the tax system is there there is such a disparity between between really the haves and the have nots and i i think the things that they use as a basis for distributing back the tax dollars needs to be looked at again i know that would be a definite b v r m i r i think a lot a lot of times it seems like the classic can't see the forest for the trees i i wonder if if they realize the magnitude of some of the red tape you have to go through and i don't i don't think they're getting their money's worth and i i i definitely don't think that the added steps are are getting the benefit that they would like them to i think it's just causing most everyone else more problems because if somebody wants to get around the tax laws they will find a way if they want to badly enough they'll either find it themselves or they'll find someone to do it for them right right and that makes sense but like you said i mean it it seems simple and i think in a way it's so simple that people would be afraid to try it yeah yeah even if you didn't invest in necessarily the best thing you would have so much more to invest you would still be ahead and that's something that's something i need to learn a lot more about is is under the current structure what is the best thing to be investing in for the future because that's a that's a scary thought you always hear that social security won't be around by the time we're sixty three or sixty five and and need it and that's a scary thought no we still look pretty good don't we okay it's been nice talking to you okay have a good evening yeah i am uh_huh in the front end the [wafer] fab where do you work uh_huh oh great oh wow you going to [motorola] oh oh yeah oh yeah were you happy with your return this year were you happy with your tax return this year was it negative okay i think my biggest gripe is the gigantic federal income tax i came from a state that paid uh state taxes three years ago and that seemed to be relatively small compared to like the uh the tax you pay on sales sale items and um i don't know i think uh my biggest gripe is with federal indiana right yeah it's a percentage you divide that well you uh how much you paid or something by your federal right there's a lot of tax breaks for like you know a lot of things if you're involved in the state like giving to colleges and things like that then they'll break you for um not even sure because i was a student so i didn't pay that much but uh right and what percent would that be uh_huh uh_huh i know well you can't deduct for credit card interest that type of thing yeah right oh yeah uh_huh oh wow what happened oh my gosh oh man uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh fifty cents it's incredible uh no i don't i just got married i don't have any children three years uh_huh yeah i think what would cure that problem is to consolidate some of these schools and they wouldn't have so much money going to so many different schools yeah yeah i heard that really sounds like t i i was getting ready to say yeah and then all your money goes to overhead uh_huh right yeah right in dallas it might be a little less here in sherman oh really oh wow oh really well now if they propose if the if this you know state income tax goes through are they going to lower the sales tax oh man think it was like five and a half percent yeah purdue no purdue uh_huh oh yeah yeah oh great oh yeah they well it's just been the last three or four years actually they had poor seasons before that but yeah yeah they've been exciting to watch supervision yeah lot of theory um it's pretty it's pretty broad took some engineering courses some math a lot of uh a lot of theory lot of practical like personal um problems and personnel problems and that type of thing yeah yeah the boss course well i i've lived overseas you know it's in the army and i see what kind of taxes they pay in other countries it just seems as if from the time i've been following politics which was i guess about seventy five really got interested in politics and keeping up with it it just seems since that time the bureaucratic machine has just gotten so out of control and then they scream about that that or the uh politicians scream about they're going to try and not raise taxes but they vote in a raise for themselves every year i i have trouble understanding the entire concept of foreign i understand going into countries where they've had natural disasters and going in and giving relief aid that way but paying for their these countries to run their own governments i i've got a big hang up with that it just seems like they keep saying we're helping this country or we're helping that country out wouldn't our money be better spent helping here at at home that's something i would and that subject in itself i'd love to see that entire thing [revised] something's got to change and turn drastically well we've got it's not like this country doesn't have the people with the knowledge we've got it we've got people that are willing to make change but as long as you've got career politicians that spend twenty five to forty five years in washington playing power [broker] they're not going to do anything to tap out the well now that's something i would love to see happen not only in all the states but in the federal legislatures too two terms then they got to sit out one and i think the thing about the ones that are really up there doing what they were elected to do it doesn't matter if they're in that office or not if they have to sit out a term fine they're going to be able to do things behind the scenes either in the capacity of the [lobbyist] or in working within their party of of the state or national level to get things [enacted] that's not going to slow them down at all i think compared to the other systems that are out there without a doubt we've got probably the best system it just needs some fine tuning well the question is who's ready to put their hand on the first wrench and tighten the first bolt trying to get the um politicians to actually [truthfully] report what they did vote for what they didn't vote for when they were actually on the floor at their desk is almost is going to be impossible to do there is no accountability of them i don't think i've ever met anybody that thought they were paying too little taxes so so i assume that we're going to agree that we all pay too much taxes but then the question is are we getting what we pay for and and i think we don't i think we pay far too much for [bureaucrats] and pork barrel projects right well i lived in texas for a long time so i was really hit hard by the nine percent california [tacked] on to the government's yeah i know texas uh just raised their sales tax again because uh i was visiting in houston over christmas with my mother and uh i bought a few things and i think your sales tax is higher than ours now yeah well i really do believe that there are huge quantities of money wasted on unnecessary uh bureaucracy and on just flat stupid things we have uh hundreds of thousands of dollars going to uh people to supervise people who supervise people who supervise people and when it all comes out they don't do much [supervising] anyway well actually as a matter of fact that sort of research i think is worth spending some money on because the uh basic research really is what's made our country uh get to where it is in its ability to compete no i don't mind spending on defense for things that work but i mind having people spend money to create five thousand pages of documentation to order something this is crazy yeah exactly yeah i think the six hundred dollar toilet seat is probably a legitimate expenditure given what the government requires of the manufacturer the manufacturer's probably not making very much profit on that but probably five hundred dollars of that toilet seat is going to uh ridiculous kinds of of paper work and supervision um are are you familiar with the grace commission well i don't remember exactly when that started but it was back in the early eighties i think uh peter grace of w j grace and company was uh appointed by i believe reagan to um create a commission to investigate government purchasing and expenditures and see if there wasn't a way to save money and he uh he and his group of course he didn't do it but he got people to do it came up with a a whole [book's] worth of recommendations for making the government run more like a business and he said that you know the the kinds of things the government does even in renting space would drive a business bankrupt and uh people purchase things because of the rules that require them to buy certain kinds of things in certain ways that are totally irrational they buy more than they need or less than they need or many times as much as they need in little quantities when they ought to be able to um you know deal like a business and uh get things in quantity that will uh give them a discount they ought to pay their bills on time one thing the government does is is stretch out the payments so that they end up paying penalties for things that the government could have paid for the minute it was due and taken the five percent uh credit for early payment anyway there was this whole book that came out and i read some excerpts from it and every single thing they recommended was so [eminently] sensible and it just [astonishes] me that we have not put more of that into practice and right and every time the uh congress changes and people move offices they redecorate the whole office they spend half a million dollars on the speaker of the house to [renovate] an office that had been redone less than three years earlier and then they come up with these crazy projects to do things like spend seven hundred thousand dollars to make lawrence [welk's] birth place a [shrine] i do not need a national park around lawrence [welk's] birth place and i can think of a whole lot better things to do with seven hundred thousand dollars well i don't think it does much good but i write my congressman all the time i've got a congressman who is very concerned about uh uh irrational expenses and who is a real [fiscal] conservative and and so one of the things i do is donate money to his campaigns and uh write to him when i see things that outrage me and uh i don't know that it's going to help any but if he got if if a lot of congressmen get that kind of input from their constituents maybe they'll do a little something yeah yeah well i'm in favor of spending money on a strong defense but not of wasting it and some of the things that we do uh like have three different kinds of [incompatible] computer equipment for the three services it is just dumb there is no reason why we shouldn't have somebody take a look at uh all of the things that the various services use and make them [interchangeable] then the same spare parts can be used in air force planes and navy planes maybe oh oh yeah uh_huh um well that's good but that's that's small comfort because it doesn't bring you any income until you sell it now we don't have uh property taxes going up as much as you all do because we had proposition thirteen that says once you have had your house appraised then they can only raise the taxes i believe it's two percent or maybe it's three percent a year uh until you sell and then it's reevaluated oh and that's that helps people on fixed incomes and older people who have houses that have gone up in value a lot but who don't want to move out of them well the prices are so high i don't see how they could keep going up yeah well i'm in [silicon] valley and they have the the reason that the prices have gone up so high is that there just isn't any more land left to build on most of the surrounding land is all uh in [preserves] of one sort or other and it can't be developed so there's very little property that hasn't already been built on and one of the problems our city is having is that uh with all of the environmental requirements and the anti development people taking over the city council we've driven out some corporations which were paying a lot of our taxes and so now they're going to have to [assess] us because they we've driven out the businesses that were paying the [freight] yeah for instance we have the [stamford] shopping center which was uh paying oh i think it was about a quarter of our uh city budget because of the sales taxes that were collected there and in this recession a lot of those businesses have had poorer receipts and so their sales taxes have dropped and we're about a million dollars below budget primarily because of the sales tax drop off and that uh and also hewlett packard was uh [headquartered] here and go ahead what do you have to say on the subject and then they're going to tax you on that for or they're going to give you an interest on it i know somebody that it happened to now see believe it or not i'm one of these honest guys but i get to the point that last year we took a transfer and so therefore we had the boost in the income due to the transfer expenses when i sat down when we were through and i sat down with our accountant and we did it if i'm not presently working outside of the home if i return to work believe it or not with our state income tax our city income tax city we live in and city we work in i would have lost and with social security i would have lost forty eight cents on every dollar that i earned and well easily just as you said and i sat down and thought about it and i should be in a pretty good position because i don't have little kids any more that i need sitters for or anything like that if i go to work it would be for our fun money and we realized that how it would disrupt disrupt our travel routine and things like that and my husband gets five weeks vacation and we said it's not worth it i'm not working any more it just isn't worth it and you get frustrated and yet i don't know what the uh the texas rules are do you pay a state income income tax you don't um they start with one percent uh sales tax we pay seven percent you're so you're higher but you get out of [towners] on that then you get everyone on your state uh sales tax which is good as the income tax what's not fair is paying in the city you live in right now we're living where there is a [reciprocity] so if you do pay more in the city you're working you don't owe your city anything and this year my husband's actually keeping track of all his time out of the city of cleveland so that we can get the difference because our city is a little bit less right oh and much less they don't pay you an interest right well and it is now to the point that it has gotten so um so complicated i can do ours in a normal year i have always done our income tax and i've done it with [transfers] and sale of property but this last time it was so involved that i just threw it all up and said forget it let's go see a c p a well that's what i understand this one seemed to do well and uh she did go over our last three or four years and she said i have to [compliment] you you have excelled she said i cannot find one thing to pull out that you haven't already pulled and i said well i do keep records all year long as i go one on twice a month one on well that's what she said i went in there and i had all my books and i said what do you want to know and i keep every single thing as i write the checks twice a month i enter it uh in either donations wherever it goes i do keep good records uh_huh yes absolutely uh_huh uh_huh yeah no i agree with you there um i've gone to other states where there's no food tax you know some things that aren't taxed at all and i think that that's really nice i think they that's what texas needed to do also is to [discriminate] as to uh which should be taxed and what shouldn't be taxed so uh_huh no they do they do uh_huh yeah but i have lived in other states in which they don't uh tax uh food clothing items personal things like that and um so that was that was really neat but i guess the way that they get around it though is that there's no quote state income tax but then you pay ten fifteen percent taxes um you know i know that that's only eight and a quarter or whatever it is but uh but yeah i really think there's it's way too much whenever you buy an item especially a large purchase item it's it's something in which you you're paying and you've always got to add in that about ten percent tax in the last what oh the money that we pay um well now for the city of plano um i really like the the things that they offer here um i and i can't say that for all of dallas or all of texas um but for plano i do i really think that i get my my money's worth uh we seem to be ahead of any other um city in in the things such as uh you know separating out your glass and your paper now and having the great big you know gallon drums uh keeping plano beautiful and i think that they really do a good job at it too so yeah uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh well and i think you get spoiled and you expect it whenever you go to any place else and it's just not quite up to standard or par and it's just like oh gee whiz you know it makes you really appreciate i think uh you know your city and what it has to offer now as for the state you know i uh uh you know i guess the the highways outside of what metropolitan dallas and houston are okay yeah the outside i mean the state highways i i think you know are pretty uh adequate but gosh you get into the cities and might as well forget it um uh_huh right right yeah so um i i don't know i'm i'm really glad that they didn't go to the um the the state income tax um i'm hoping the lottery is going to uh take care of it uh i know that there's a lot of religious issues and et cetera um but i i'm hoping that uh in a way people can can see that as a contribution then to the state um i did live in ohio for a couple of years and i know that's how they kind of got around um you know having to uh taxes or increase in taxes was was by the lottery yeah yeah and and i know the people are concerned that it's only going to be the lower you know income people who are actually going to you know be the the biggest [participants] in this um right yeah yeah absolutely and um i only saw it as being you know really positive and of course it you know was just a fluke if you won because i really never expected to win and and i never did the big big lottery we're talking about uh but you know every once in a while i'd come up with two or three dollars or something but i felt good in the sense that i was really putting my money the way i felt it was back into uh the taxes and it went actually most of it went to the schools and uh to school reforms things like this so uh yeah i i felt really the positive thing yeah uh yeah right well because i was looking at some of the services that i actually use now i did um uh way back when i did use government uh things such as uh uh food stamps sure i guess i'm trying to think do we pay too much taxes uh uh well i it certainly seems like it i don't know you know i i i'm not up in the uh in in the high end brackets myself and so i can just imagine how bad they would hurt i remember at one point where my dad was paying uh nearly nearly sixty percent tax bracket and that was just you know it was killing him yeah uh i mean other places pay more and you can look at some place like sweden and you know they they almost all give like seventy percent of their income to the government um they get some different things out of it though i don't know i i'm not i'm not terribly pleased with the distribution of of of it and i think we we spend entirely too much on defense um although i work in in through a hi tech industry type thing and and which in large part survives on on uh on defense [contracting] you know so so i mean i kind of you know biting the hand that feeds you if you really want to start cutting it hard but um i don't know you know it seems like it seems like we ought to be able to get a little bit more uh things ought to be a little bit more efficiently run and i i i and i think that we could get by without continually raising taxes you know i mean i think i think we're at a point where you know it's taxes are a burden but services come out of it and uh and things are important but on the other hand you know they just can't continue to rise forever they can't continue to grow you know there's there's got to be some point where people sit down and say okay you know this is enough income to give government services at and we need to make sure we give good government service at this point and you know uh_huh yeah right right you know that there isn't there isn't the business cycle where where government gets uh gets chopped down you know i mean they they don't they don't go through a restructuring even i b m going through cutbacks right and you know government just doesn't do it you know and and and it's because of in part you know necessary [protections] for the worker but on the other hand there's you know you you you got to plan them in the real world also uh_huh yeah right uh_huh right yeah i mean i think i think you know in general i'm i'm pretty pleased with the government you know with america and and a lot of the things that work here i mean there there's lots of things that don't quite work right everywhere things don't work right and some places that really don't work right and here they they pretty much work right you know um but i think you know i mean if if things are going to things that need to change are things that need to be sort of restructuring you know maybe market orientation a little bit more and things like what you're talking about um you know putting a little bit more of the of the of the business pressures that are that are on everybody else on the government and uh so that we get a little bit more out of the tax dollars and a little bit yeah yeah i i think my wife's from brazil and i've spent a fair amount of time there and and you want to see a government system that just doesn't work you know i mean it's just is incredible it's just entirely corrupt they have uh you know something like uh seventy five percent or sixty five percent of the able body workers are employed by the government you know and so that leaves everybody else you know this other small well i could do with a lot less than that i live in dallas oh good well i live in plano in that case oh yeah i do yeah yes uh_huh i know and you know we had no sales tax here about oh i don't know maybe ten years ago we had none at all and that's how it started with uh four percent five percent and all of a sudden here we are now and it's horrible well it's true but they did without it all those years and they keep talking about the state tax and they'll probably put one in and they'll have this too so yeah uh_huh yeah yeah well i hope it doesn't but you know how it goes so uh_huh yeah raise them oh oh it will probably the first season it's a bit funny about things like that here they really are when i came here you couldn't buy beer couldn't buy a drink nothing was open on sunday not even a grocery store i mean nothing nothing you know so it was a lot worse and as more people come in it does get better but they still have some real funny laws yeah yeah uh_huh oh that is oh yeah it is yeah oh yeah that is uh uh they well they do a little bit but uh it's it's like next to nothing i've seen it it's on my when you pay your registration stuff like that there's a little place uh_huh it costs what yeah yeah huh really god yeah so you haven't been here very long you haven't been here very long two years uh_huh yeah yeah no i don't i'm a nurse i work down at presbyterian yeah oh it is you know they're supposed to cut you off at ten calls at least that's what i heard that you could get to do ten calls and this is like the seventeenth i guess my basic feeling is that as a middle income tax [payer] i'm not paying too much if i'm sure that i'm getting value for the dollar i mean that i guess sounds like a cliche but uh looking around at a a lot of the infra structure particularly in the northeast here uh you know bridges and roads in terrible shape and i don't know i'm sort of overwhelmed by it all yes it's entirely possible certainly anything that's been discussed over the the last dozen years or so or maybe even longer in terms of tax reform or or revenue [reallocation] seems to be concerned with just that you know who's who's going to start getting more and how fast um i kind of came of age in the sixties and it seemed to me seems to me that the general attitude in the entire country is a lot different then than now i mean i think there was more a a general sense of prosperity even yeah although my oh excuse me yeah i i've never been able to [reconcile] that fact which which does seem to be true and the fact that the typical middle class family today seems to have you know and expect some what more in terms of uh material possessions and vacations and what not but back then uh i think there was more of a sense of because there was a feeling of prosperity people didn't mind paying for social programs for instance or public improvements and today there there seems to be uh sort of a jealous [guarding] of resources by each generation uh_huh yeah pretty much i mean i i paid whatever something on the order of four thousand dollars a year for tuition and room and board and [comprehensive] fee and uh for those those figures have been [dwarfed] today certainly well let's see uh yeah i think taxes are high but uh yeah maybe in some cases they're not high enough for instance uh here in my state uh yeah we do yeah but the reason the sales tax is high is because we don't have an income tax and uh you know we don't have an income tax because uh basically nobody wants any new taxes but the [upshot] is that we can't properly fund uh education here yeah so like the amount that we spend on education here in uh in the state of washington per per student is is actually in the lower percentile uh i mean is is as long we are ranked fairly low but per fifty states yet uh yeah we expect a lot out of the schools you know we've got because the seattle area we've got a lot of uh uh high technology industries we've got microsoft here well microsoft [expects] well educated employees but uh you know microsoft is only paying property taxes towards uh toward uh towards schools so and there are those that argue well they waste too much money in schools or those or there there's you know more money doesn't solve the problem but i feel like in public schools that they uh that they really don't fund it they don't basically fund it very well well it's cheaper to to educate uh people who are in the top ten percent than it is to have to educate the handicapped and the [developmentally] disabled and all that stuff oh okay so uh where are you from just in general state new york okay i am in new jersey okay so uh i guess we're talking about taxes uh so what do you you pay too much uh_huh oh are you like a small business or something or oh okay is it feel like uh income averaging or something like that oh okay oh uh so why do you think you don't get anything enough for your value i mean oh are you a single uh i know singles pay more than married people i am single i know that and i pay quite a bit higher than a married person where if you don't happen to buy a house or something like that and you don't uh that's that's the only uh tax uh write off you can get these days well yeah buy a [yacht] or some but i guess they took away that and they're yelling and screaming about that uh_huh yeah well it depends if it's you know a regressive tax or a uh progressive tax well no yeah borrowed time actually could be could be borrowed time it's like yeah uh i know here in new jersey we have taxes for uh just the necessities and i think it's uh regressive tax which is worse uh progressive uh it's like uh you know a graduated tax which means you pay more money as you earn more money so you have a greater ability to pay you don't really need that extra income to survive you know and so the idea behind that is to to uh that's why we have higher tax rates for people who have higher income right at least suppose you know that's what progressive tax regressive tax is you can have a flat percentage tax uh across the board and uh and even tax people for things that they need to live so if you tax you can tax uh you know medicine or food and uh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah sin taxes you don't need cigarettes or uh alcohol to live well to to a degree if uh you know if you're addicted it's not going to matter but uh certainly if the tax i mean here are in new jersey you have to pay you pay thirteen percent tax sort of value added tax on your utilities so the things you need to heat your home the things you drink your water you tax water it's crazy uh you know you you see what you have to go somewhere so you get taxed for that every utility is actually uh mine's real straightforward uh basically uh you know i take my standard deductions uh on my house which i have a mortgage on and uh that's usually the big the big payoff part of the year for me because i get a couple thousand dollars back usually but uh actually i uh i don't really [begrudge] uh the uh the government their due i i do think that uh probably just like just almost anybody else that you know there's a lot of inefficiency in how they distribute taxes and i don't think that they uh do a very good job of distributing them to the people who really need them but uh generally i think they're pretty necessary and life would probably be a lot worse if they didn't have taxation so yeah we we actually had a situation here where uh our house was appraised you know every year by the county and we have to uh pay taxes on the basis of what that appraisal was and first year we owned the house uh that appraisal was something like twenty five thousand dollars higher than we had just bought the house for and so uh despite you know a lot of [kibitzing] by our neighbors and stuff i decided to go in to uh talk to the board of equalization uh in prince william county and make sure that you know a mistake had not been made and all that kind of stuff and so i just sort of made my case on the basis of uh you know analogy to other to other houses around us that were similar in terms of square footage you know and size all and and you know general property size things like that and just showed that you know our for some reason our property had been valued much higher and uh they bought it uh they didn't raise my [neighbors'] yeah they actually reduced mine to be in line with uh a more reasonable appraisal so i you know i i realized well the you know few instances you can fight city hall on things like property taxes but uh yeah it was it was an interesting experience because the guy before me went in and he had a really kind of poorly organized discussion you know i mean he was sort of mad at the world and uh he he had sort of that mad at the world attitude right off the bat which you could you know see a mile away and then he uh then he started talking about all the things that were wrong with this property you know like you know the leaves hadn't been cleaned out in two years and the [gutters] are falling off and you know a lot of really minor stuff that just didn't impress these guys at all and they sort of gave him a hard time but uh you know when i pointed out that that our house was appraised at this and all these similar houses in the subdivision were appraised at you know twenty five thousand dollars less i mean yeah so it it it worked it was actually pretty uh pretty satisfying experience it was the it was the county but it wasn't the council they have different people on this board of equalization i don't know i don't even know how they get on it you know i i'm just guessing they're appointed uh one of the guys is actually a kind of a well known realtor around here so you know i i figured if anybody gave me a hard time it would be him yeah but other than that uh i haven't had too much too much problem with the taxes actually when i was in grad school i lived in virginia also i went to school down at uh [charlottesville] and uh uh i had a you know one of these graduate [fellowships] and fortunately it was not [taxable] at that time because they actually [hassled] me over it though and i had to i had to go to some length you know i actually got one of these letters that that said you know you got to show up at the local you know i r s office and explain yeah and actually explain you know what was going on and you know i just i said hey i mean it's tax free i mean that's my understanding of things so anyway eventually they they accepted that that it was but actually i work with a guy now whose i i i guess he was i agree i'm particularly worried about social security since i'm at the end of the baby boomer generation and there's not going to be any money left when i get through so i kind of feel like i'm supporting a lot of people and that it's just going to go into a hole i don't think that i'm going to get anything out of it when the time comes from it other than that yeah yeah right everybody there's not going to be enough people to support us when we get our age up that way but we'll be supporting we're they're we're a lot of people right now supporting a few people and then when the time comes and it's a few people supporting a lot of people it's not going to even out very fairly that way i don't have to i don't worry about the other i don't have state taxes really because i'm from texas so i'm happy with that i'm worried about it though because every year they sit there and try to put more taxes in you know and they're trying to get property tax in our county but yeah there's so much administration and nothing when it when it comes right down to it the overhead is it everything gets eaten up in overhead and doesn't actually do much yeah i was thinking the other day you know it was like no taxation without representation and so long ago and now we're just eaten alive by all this government that can't pay for itself and goes into debt more and more and more and more and we don't have much say about it and the government doesn't seem to do a be doing a whole lot of things i like either they're going yeah and then this national endowment for the arts thing where they they put [pornography] up in the in the name of art you know and make me pay for it my you know i i don't exactly appreciate that either and i really get frustrated when government starts to do things that are [immoral] and then expect me to support them on it first you get to the point where it's like you feel like protesting by not paying just to make them understand that they can't do this just because you know it's our money they're using for it they can't just think well it's ours now we got it we can do what we want with it it says that i'm standing it it says i approve if i sit there and pay it and i get kind of upset about that well that's good yeah you start to feel real [powerless] but on the other hand at least we're we're [powerless] in a lot ways but then there's so many other countries that i'm glad i'm not in you know it seems to me like the minute you starting putting in the radical changes in anything you end up with something like uh [liberia] or [czechoslovakia] you know i mean it seems like i'd rather try to work from inside the system to change something than to throw away what we've got now it would be pretty frightening the other way around it's kind of scary now seeing the way it it it's the type of thing of what exactly am i getting out of the taxes and to some extent there is definitely you know you can say all right i'm paying this money for this and this is what i'm getting back in terms of roads and highways and you know i guess quote unquote retirement if it's actually there when we actually end up retiring there seems to be some you know some question on whether there will be actually money there or not what i don't like about the taxes is i was looking through the i r s forms like uh the other day i noticed that fourteen percent of the amount of money that we pay in for taxes each year is just going to pay the national debt that that is the interest on the debt ourselves uh to a large extent i mean one of the i think i'm not sure if it's the largest but i know a large segment of the national debt is uh you know things like savings bonds and other government obligations well not not just private but there's you know lot of public institutions that are holding money as well as a lot of uh foreign companies and foreign persons that holding that but yeah non governmental yeah you know treasury [certificates] and u s savings bonds and whatever right well it's actually uh you know also looking at the same form they had that we are the u s is borrowing eighteen percent of the amount of of of whatever it's spending every year yeah so we're borrowing eighteen percent and fourteen percent of what we're paying out is going to pay the eight the uh debt so so we're borrowing money to pay you know fourteen percent that we're borrowing goes directly paying out to the debt yeah so we're you know net we're doing a net borrowing of four percent each year and then we're doing a borrowing on top of that a fourteen percent that just goes to pay interest on the debt that i don't know i don't know if uh other countries work as a deficit or not i from what i can understand it's only recent within maybe the last fifty years or so you know except for [wartimes] that the u s has had a [peacetime] debt yeah yeah i i think if you look at some of the uh government spending [curves] uh you know the the [curve] always went up around wartime and then dropped back down after world war two it never dropped back down or it was world war two or uh korea i think it never dropped back down well you know definitely one thing is to say hey we have a year to year balanced budget yeah so you know you know maybe raise taxes for a few years until that debt gets paid off and then say you know unless there is a tremendously bad circumstances like a war or something we should not be running a deficit economy you know it's i mean if you look on the individual level if i were to borrow eighteen percent of what i was spending every year year after year i would very quickly get in trouble with [creditors] uh yeah well that's you know the post wartime germany they just kept printing up money and you know became worthless so that's one danger but you know it's that that's a very large chunk of the money we pay in for taxes each year oh really yeah kind of curious because i'm some people found about it on the computer network others yeah yeah on the uh uh there's a network like around the world and uh there's a telecom digest yeah taxes right yeah hold on a [sec] i'm on a i'm on a cordless it's giving me some trouble jeez that make it better yeah yeah uh-oh you you didn't press it yet did you no okay uh i don't know see uh i'm a student i don't pay much in taxes except for when i work that's a little bit yeah uh um a broad base tax in terms of okay i have an answer for that i have an answer for that okay go ahead yeah okay uh i think a progressive the way it is now is is good uh taxing uh those people with more money uh taxing them a little more i mean those people can afford to pay it out i mean it it wouldn't be fair to uh like say lower class people who don't make as much money to uh pay out the same amount of taxes as someone making millions of dollars yeah okay yeah so you're saying uh ten percent let's say a broad base ten percent tax uh without any loopholes or right is who yeah right um yeah i see the i see the logic behind that yeah right to yeah promote borrowing with tax breaks promote investment yeah right personal tax right i think that think something like that luxury tax was a mistake did they did they repeal that yet because i mean yeah you're uh trying to get back at trying to sort of maybe punish i don't know the rich and make them pay some more but it what happened the the result was that uh sales went down in [yachts] and those kind of things we're supposed to talk about if we agree on if we're paying too many taxes or if we're getting our monies worth out of the taxes we pay no yeah i think here in texas they're even running an a a series right now on the news one of the news channels at night about they were like secretly uh [supervising] people that were supposed to be working for a county here and they were hired by the state so they were being paid with our tax money and they weren't even doing the job they were out working on other sites not doing a thing on what they were supposed to do right right yeah yeah i think that we pay enough taxes and i think that if if everybody would be honest with how they dealt with the tax money if we could somehow get the same uh ability to get work done and be honest about it with our tax dollars i don't think they'd need to raise it and i think they'd be able to handle with what we've got i feel like here in texas we pretty much get our monies back out of what we pay i feel very pleased with what they do they've put in you know as far as the state taxes go i don't know about our federal money i think that's all pretty i hope that they're doing better with not spending so much more than what they've got but you know you just never you can't control that but in the state here they've put in bike trails they've got really nice parks here in texas they keep their their their lots that they own that are green and stuff they keep them really nice uh their schools here are really good and updated they've got computers in the schools i'm very pleased at least with the area that we're in with how they spend their money their their they don't tax us outrageously and they seem to really give us a lot for our tax dollars they offer community classes for our kids to go to that are just very minimal costs you know just cover the instructor and uh there is lots of opportunities that you can take advantage of there are community colleges here you can take for just practically nothing uh they just offer so much for i feel like what we pay in our taxes that i don't mind paying them at all uh_huh yeah right right so you're not as pleased with your tax dollars and what they're doing in new york yeah that could be i don't know all right uh excuse me yeah okay all right so uh yeah yeah oh you think that we are paying too much in taxes uh_huh yeah it's even higher uh tax rate over there on income right are you you're a you're from the united states but you worked over there for a couple of year yes right you talking about special projects in the the u s in the u s you mean now okay yeah it's true i feel that um you know i don't feel that we're paying too much taxes provided we get the right services for what we pay for but i think we've kind of gotten away from that um for what we get we're paying too much i would say right or if if things i didn't feel that things were wasted for uh you know through uh red tape through waste you know a lot of money is lost and how much effect are you getting out of your dollar and how much goes to just waste right right typically um you don't get a whole lot well right a lot of federal money goes for highways but speaking of um people who are on welfare i know one of the presidents patrick buchanan has a idea that says that if he's president if you don't get a job within two years then you're taken off welfare so to eliminate people who continuously uh kind of [leech] off the system you know you you have you get to spend your time but then you're off yes well i i guess i'm not i don't like to make hard and fast rules that you have to live by because there's always exceptions but i think something has to be done some type of reform measure yeah right um yes yeah uh_huh yeah i don't know what's your situation i live uh i'm a property owner in the city limits of atlanta and we get taxed tremendously on our property taxes and a lot of that money doesn't go for what the original intent of property taxes was um i pay for a local hospital uh [grady] hospital where a lot of indigent people go and get free care okay ray what do you think about taxes uh_huh yeah i agree oh really uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh oh so you've got you you have a little [graft] and corruption huh yeah um yeah you know the waste you know that's i think uh i i think that's a big problem uh uh i don't do you think you get some good services for your taxes do you have a good school district do you have uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah around fifty percent yeah yeah that's that's pretty much i think nationwide it's you know the average is about seventy five percent uh complete school you know twenty five percent dropout rate throughout the country for school districts i'm not sure how they figure that out if they do per [pupil] or if they look at just averages per school district and things like that but some schools uh i don't know see i i live in a small community and um we don't pay much in taxes i don't uh this sets this is a farming community and the farmers control your property taxes basically and in the sense you services we have uh probably what's considered the third worst maybe the fourth worst school district in the in the in the state other than the city of baltimore itself probably you know which is always i guess a low a low streak so actually i think for the return on my taxes for my my my uh state taxes that go to my school district and my services and whatever i think i get a pretty good return but my employment tax you know the federal i don't think i get a good federal return at all i think locally i think property taxes on my house were twelve hundred dollars and that was that included state and local taxes so that was school district and snow [plowing] which isn't probably anything like that you have and that included my water and sewer um but i didn't think that was too bad uh_huh do you own a lot of property just a or a small lot uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah oh do you see we don't do that uh_huh uh everything on top of that yeah see i yeah uh_huh right yeah you mean you have a full time fire department is that what you have now though in your town oh how many about how my goodness see that's see that's down here um being a member of we have we have a couple full time firemen but basically you know they train the guys and they run the show and they live in the [firehouse] and you know and then most everybody else is volunteer so there's like a core of like each station has like two or four full time then everybody else is volunteer yeah um yeah oh that just federal taxes just more and more and more and less and less services you know uh_huh right uh_huh yeah such it's just out of hand i you know the the whole idea like around here um you know after desert storm or whatever we have a plant here that feeds one of the military contracts that should be cut you know that they [advised] on cutting but because of desert storm now they said well we can't cut it so they put it back in action now granted everybody around here was happy because it keeps two or three hundred people employed but you know if we don't cut some of these nationwide you know some of these expenses just have to be cut if we don't need such a large army and we don't need if the military comes out and says we don't need all these planes then why does congress say tough take them anyway you know yeah right uh_huh right with a one thousand dollar [antitank] weapon yeah and you know million dollars do you know how many people that would feed and clothe and get off the welfare rolls and get and keep in school and you know if we uh i just in some ways i just don't uh_huh that's right oh i agree with you a hundred percent you know our direction has really you know solar energy uh you know there's been some recent great discoveries in solar energy surprisingly because there's there's no money invested in it yeah a big thing uh_huh yeah a flexible solar material that it can be [woven] over top of something it could be it could be put on the top of airplanes to help power the plane you know it uh it just it could be put on the top of automobiles too right god they just keep yeah it's that just uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh right and highways see that's a big problem we have um i'm originally from pennsylvania and the biggest problem we have in pennsylvania is that almost every bridge that in pennsylvania was built during the eisenhower administration uh within was in the city of pittsburgh and there yeah because see they eisenhower put through money for uh though it probably didn't affect boston it went uh a highway from new jersey west oh i've i always felt i was paying too much for everything that's part of my problem i wonder if we wouldn't be better off uh with a little more free enterprise than having the government do some much for us that's one of my i don't know those are some of my feelings i think free enterprise does it for a better price yeah it doesn't it doesn't seem like we really get our uh i don't know i don't think we get the best for the buck if that's that's a good way to put it but uh uh did do you live close to uh you know to a government installation of any kind or uh i guess you know it from the contract side yeah my father worked uh for the government uh here in utah at the hill air force base for uh you know that was the occupation that he had all the time i was growing up and we got a good living out of it but i know just from talking with him there were it was like you said there are a lot of things that go on that just make you wonder that they don't really even get the best out of the people that are working for them so it makes me wonder where we're where we're going with that yeah well uh they provide a lot of services that we don't that you know we don't really fear no others i guess but it just seems like if if we had you know some kind of uh private enterprise system uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh i think that's a really good point i think you know welfare is one one of the big problems and it's interesting that and uh anyway interesting to me that like in the foreign in russia and most areas where they are having their struggles right now you know they are going to have to have a welfare system in order in order to improve their life over there and i hope they don't pattern theirs after our uh_huh um your monthly taxes will be as high as your monthly payments yeah that is the huh that that is scary cause that really makes you wonder what they are doing with that i uh uh_huh and what what do you think you get out of your taxes your property taxes taxes right you think you pay too much is what they said and do you think you get what you pay for yeah right well i really feel in some areas that uh i agree i don't think any of us like paying taxes i think in some areas we could do better in the private sector i think it just i've done some reading on this and and in some areas you know you're lucky to get back a a dime on a dollar on some programs uh but i also know that people to me won't do what they should do to help each other and they wouldn't have so much government if we did and uh we get you know gets forced into it i think socialized [medicine's] coming which i hate to see but i think because there's so many people without insurance that's what's you know it's coming uh_huh so uh but no i don't probably feel like i get back what i pay now you do you pay state income tax in yeah see here a lot of people think in texas we're lucky because we don't pay uh state income tax but they get us in other ways you know um yeah yeah i think that's another problem yeah well that's where they got us here i mean every time they need something they up the quote user's fees or the sin taxes you know on beer and yeah so just because we don't have a state income tax they get us proportionately higher in other areas so i don't know no they get it somewhere and and the problem is with that if you have a state income tax you take it off your federal but we can't take our any of our sales taxes or anything off anymore because of the reform but that's what they up it they up it on gasoline they up it on uh say beer and cigarettes uh user's fee driver's license license plates it all just keeps going up and up and up and they tell us it's not really taxes you know but it is and uh no i don't know i don't know what the answer is to all this i think uh i don't know right right right well that's really unusual right right that we've learned a lot yeah i i'd have to agree i'm uh right now i'm in in atlanta but i grew up and am from uh [utica] new york so uh i understand and i agree with the new york situation right right right right well uh it's kind of tough to tell i haven't really got no good feel for it yet the uh i've been down here for only six months so uh they're not i don't think they're quite as bad as they are in new york state i guess is my opinion right now uh there is like there are there is a tax on food here which is you know a little bit different because they don't have that up there and other than that right now they're starting to realize that their taxes are low but they also realize that they still have to make sure their roads are [paved] and so on so they're starting to talk about uh raising like instead of registering or uh getting your license which costs five dollars now they decide well maybe we should charge forty dollars for it right yeah yeah that'll right of course of course no that seems like we're in from your state you're pretty much your main concern is yes you sit there and to allow um you know taxes like crazy and all you do is see all the money go in a big [funnel] towards new york city oh yeah uh_huh yeah they've been talking about doing that here too but they haven't they've almost been able to push it through but people started complaining and yeah yeah right right yeah yeah that's down here they're uh i'm amazed at the one cheap thing down here is gas i'm not sure what the price is up there but that down here it's only like eighty nine cents per per gallon yeah i was home over at christmas break and it was i saw the gas prices and thought boy what a switch yeah oh sure yeah yeah well as soon as they get near memorial day people start traveling and everyone knows it so we've got to raise the gas prices so yes i know i and i just i actually had filed earlier and got my refund tonight actually small but small but uh i got oh oh yeah yeah yeah well it's pretty frustrating when you see the whole situation all right amy how are you doing today all right i think we know what we're going to speak about uh i tell you what i'll start off how's that um i personally think to set a mark with the judicial system and we're talking about criminals criminal cases that they should bring back hangings on weekends in public places there is one state that does that by the way i want to say oklahoma i saw something the other night about it they don't do them real often which is obviously the death penalty um but i think if we quit uh building these [taj] [mahals] with the color t v and sixty sixty thousand a year to keep an inmate in there on a on a on a life sentence we should start hanging them and get it over with and let's just screwing up the system that's pathetic that's pathetic this is true an and the way the law reads uh if they sentence you to life in prison then he's available for parole if it's life and a day then he's not eligible for parole so what you know let's quit b s with the system exactly a life for a life the old charles manson case i mean the guy is really just shouldn't be allowed to to even even live uh about the issue about sentencing by the judge the the judge presently has an opportunity to [intervene] uh when there's a my understanding when there's uh a verdict and it for example there's a hung jury here in fort worth today in eight to four and bam bam the guy got off uh he was he was a veterinarian and killed two a father and a son okay uh it kind of gets back to the second request we've been asked to look at is most criminal cases requiring an unanimous verdict in a situation like that i'd say no let's just go like a regular vote eight to four tells me that there were eight there's a certain percentage of the people there with sixty percent of the people uh seventy percent of the people said hey they guys guilty exactly exactly because it's not next day they have the start the trial it's x number of months and just [prolongs] the situation that much more i think that that if it's if it's not a split decision go with the highest number and let's just get on with the program but as far as the sentencing by the judge i would have to vote against that since there is a jury because that's what the juries are for is to make the decision uh what are your feelings um yeah i get back to [price's] comment when he uh was found guilty he said well he didn't have any blacks uh you know from his neck of the woods well give me a break you know exactly yeah yeah i mean you're you're in dallas so everybody i can't believe they can uh like in a murder situations they look for juries who don't know anything about the system well or know anything about the the occurrence you'd have to be pretty dense you'd be you'd either have to be in a cave not to know what's going on or moving it to lubbock or somewhere possibly is not the answer this is true so true well this has been an interesting conversation so you're at the house you're not at the plant oh that's good that's good i thought i heard a holler there in the background but i wasn't sure oh goodness well i'll let you get i enjoyed it bye fine fine yeah okay you go ahead uh_huh in public places really what is that um yeah yeah yeah well the sentences are so unbelievable i just saw on the news last night that they said the average time a sentenced murderer you know is in jail is two years before he's paroled and a rapists is like six months and a burglar is like two months because they just say there's either no room in the system you know in the jails for them or you know it's just that it seems like the automatic sentences if if a judge has leeway on what he's going to you know sentence someone for between you know two months and fifty years and you know what's his whim to decide it should be two months you know it's crazy yeah well even if it's life like you say we end up spending sixty thousand dollars a year to keep some you know [joker] in there for life we could spend that money you know for children that are starving or twelve million other things would be more useful than that so to me if somebody has life you know beyond a reasonable doubt they should that should be it you know particularly for some of these really i mean there are so many just major major serial murders it's not just like one instance or something it's just uh [horrifying] some of the murders that go on yeah an yeah there's just everyday you hear on the news of another one like that yeah uh_huh right yeah i heard about that on the news right rather than have to retrial the whole whole thing and spend all the money for people to uh you know go back to court and all the lawyers and i mean it just winds up costing the taxpayers a you know a fortune to keep doing that and the victims you know the family of these people that have been murdered they just have to have it dragged on for years and years before they ever get any resolution right yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah well if i i saw on one of the talk shows this woman judge i believe from florida and she just has just really stiff penalties and i saw that in in the hands of a judge that really was conscientious and really you know took the pains to give a sentence for what was [deserved] it could you could have a a judge that would really make a good impact but likewise you could have the flip side and have some judge that was paid off or you know had a good old boy network or for whatever reasons you know politics just let all kinds of people through so he he would have a heck or she would have a heck of a lot of power you know if used wrongly so at least the jury system does something to prevent that you know or help it with it anyway i don't know if it prevents it but seems like the jury system does have it's advantages but i also i've also heard on trials that sometimes they go through like three hundred jurors before they hand pick these jurors that they think are going to be the ones that are going to be the most lenient you know and i don't know how much they're getting just a jury of their peers at that point they're really getting a select group it's not just random people it almost should be the first twelve people that they you know have on a list are the ones that are on the jury and that's it he'd have to have his whole family up there for him to feel like he's got his peers or something yeah yeah yeah oh they'd have to move it to taiwan for people not to know about it practically yeah yeah well really this is breaks up my afternoon from changing diapers and [mopping] floors i mean what can i say no i'm at home with two little preschoolers my husband works for t i oh yeah i've got the dog and two kids waiting here i'm just locked up in the laundry room okay thanks a lot bye bye here we go i sure was two years ago i spent some fourth of july to labor day on a jury that was uh a change of [venue] from columbus ohio for aggravated uh murder and kidnapping yeah it was quite a session that disrupted my whole summer of course five days a week but it was an absolutely fascinating experience uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i think that there are many cases where uh the judges probably do make the decision rather than the jury our situation was somewhat different uh in view of the fact that uh we haven't we were a landmark case it was the first time in the state of ohio that um d n a testing was entered as evidence and they were being the judge was being especially careful that everything was done correctly so there couldn't be a a mistrial of any kind uh the um uh the interesting thing was the tremendous selection of jury process uh that we experienced that took one full week uh to get forty three people qualified to sit on the jury and then it was a matter of the selection of uh twelve people after that actually it was fourteen because we had two alternates and the judge was extremely concerned for our welfare if we were well if we were comfortable and uh things of that nature which made us feel good uh and we were sequestered but the makeup of the jury uh was truly a cross section of uh you might say a cross section of a country there was one other person besides myself we were the only ones that had ever been to college um one was a former student of mine a few years before who was out of work uh two others were ones who had never finished high school and were out looking for jobs yet um a couple of them were housewives who had never worked and then some are people who did work so we had quite a cross section of black white and women and men and uh it uh it was interesting just to listen to the rationale uh being proposed and the logic of some of the people uh it was also extremely difficult to stay awake sometimes because there was so many witnesses and we were not allowed to take any notes of any kind uh and i thought that that was a failing because uh from the standpoint that it was difficult to try to remember everything and and yet the judge said well um if you're taking notes you're missing something and he was right there also but uh i certainly um i think it depends upon how the judge handles the case and if the criminal chooses to have a three panel judge uh a three judge panel i should say i think he can have that rather than trial by jury uh_huh you're kidding yes and money yeah yeah i do think that that uh i do think the jury system works but i'd i also feel as you said that the original concept of the jury as it was originally setup uh back uh in a hundred years ago was fine but that it needs to be more refined for today's standard of living and the the uh level of education of them of so many people now uh by the same token we had um uh some people who wanted had vacations planned and one man in particular had reservations made plane tickets made everything and the judge called and had it all canceled so he could get his money back and then he wasn't selected on the jury and then another young fellow had to meet with the judge and the prosecutor and the defense attorneys on three different occasions before he was finally excused from the jury because his wife was about to have twins and they had he had to go through all of that if in three days to get excused from that jury to be with his wife on the birth of the twins and uh you know some of it just seemed rather extreme yes right uh_huh right well i guess he'd have to be careful whether with [entrapment] or some of those things but uh i don't i assume you have seen on television recently as probably the whole country has the beating of the man in los angeles isn't that terrible and uh you know and that certainly uh cannot be said to be uh something that happens everywhere but the fact that it can happen that it probably does happen in many places it's it's horrendous and it's just a stroke of luck that someone was able to get it on tape and then uh to listen to the tape recording uh at the police station of the whole conversation afterwards yeah absolutely well we get a few other case uh like up at the end of last year where one police officer it was on a drug [raid] uh was trying to extra extricate um a confession or information from a drug dealer and did so by placing a hot a hot iron on his chest his bare chest burned him they wound up paying him uh the officer of course was fired but they paid the defendant uh three hundred thousand dollars or something to drop the lawsuit and then last week someone shot and killed the former policeman so uh as some of those things uh are absolutely horrendous and we do need an an overhaul and we just need more discipline country wide it would then we'd need it on that yeah well it's been very nice talking with you yes and uh good luck on on calls uh_huh bye bye okay um have you ever been involved in any trials wow sounds like it oh it sounds like it i haven't had any actual real life experience but uh my father in law's been involved in uh several trials including uh a couple murders and uh you know talking to other people who have been there and so i don't have any real experience with trials but i do you know i i've i took a little business law in in college and and i've you know try to keep abreast of things but uh i think that the uh trial by jury is is a great idea at it's [inception] back two hundred years ago um right now though it's it's so difficult because there's so few courts to to get anything really done as you know you spent you know a whole summer on one trial and it's just that i think they're just [tieing] up the um whole judicial process um there's a lot of things they could do to uh make things easier and uh you know like uh the suggestion that uh maybe be uh a judge should be the one who decides on what the sentence should be rather than the jury uh_huh uh_huh jeez uh_huh uh_huh gee uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh yes yes i agree uh would surprise me that uh when i was in texas i had the uh [displeasure] of getting a uh traffic ticket and um i went to court and you can even get a trial by jury for a traffic ticket no and i thought my god talk about [tieing] up things for for yes i mean that's extremely expensive i mean the first thing you had to do when you came before the judge was waive your right to a jury trial i'm like god this is ridiculous uh_huh oh my god yes i i think they can probably come up with some ways to insure that uh you know people would get a fair trial and not have to go through this process i mean some things are just so cut and dry um in the in you know the the level of evidence that they come up with now i mean you know when you start thinking about well they've got video tape and and audio tapes and they've they've got you know they've got ways to nail people to the point where they they really shouldn't even be going to trial yes oh that was horrible that it yeah yes i know i mean i only heard portions of that but it's absolutely terrible and you know if you beat a dog like that they'll put you in jail you know jeez huh yes i i believe that too well it's been nice talking with you okay thank you you do the same bye bye what do you think about uh the way the criminal justice system handles trials yeah uh_huh yeah yeah yeah well i think the six is called a grand jury and that's mostly to decide whether or not the person's actually going to stand trial whether they're [acquitted] or whether they're actually going to be accused of you know and held over for trial yeah i don't know i i think that uh i know that judges aren't supposed to be crooked however yeah it seems like if you break the sentencing away from the jury and give it you give it to one person you're letting there be a whole lot more of an opportunity for something to either go wrong or for you know if if if the judge is not of high moral standards he could be bought off much easier than twelve people could uh_huh it's not so much that i that i haven't seen a lot of really bad sentences passed either by trials or by judges what bothers me is that uh they really don't mean anything someone could be sentenced to thirty five years and yet you know the the parole system it's going to let them out in in three years for good behavior no it's not uh_huh oh i think they're all overcrowded they've uh i think i heard fort worth that uh they've been ordered to do something because their jail is so overcrowded they're not allowed to accept any new inmates now what are they supposed to do well no i mean they're not allowed to accept any new inmates so what are they supposed to do with people that they need to put in jail you know there yeah uh_huh something that is working and i i really like the system of house arrest where a a someone's wear someone wears a bracelet like a ankle bracelet that's a monitor and they are not allowed i mean some of them are even allowed to work they can go to their regular job they come home they have to be home by such and such a time they're instructed uh so that this this electronic monitor is turned on at at a certain time and it [connects] them up to a system where they know their whereabouts and uh they can put a they usually install a video monitor in the house and when the parole officer calls to check on them they're instructed to turn it on and stand in front of it so that they can see that this person is actually at home in their house doing what they're supposed to be doing and that's working rather well that's a good system that allows people to actually continue to be productive members of society while they're you know paying back for whatever crime they've committed oh yeah yeah uh_huh i i've really i could go on for hours about the criminal justice system and what i think we ought to do about it but something that i really don't understand is when someone goes to jail and they have a job in jail and they work that they should i and this may sound cruel but i do not think that they should be allowed cigarettes i mean they're in jail for crying out loud what do they need cigarettes for uh_huh uh_huh oh i think that's a wonderful idea more than that more than that i know the thing that the thing that gets me is that while we're supporting them they're working when they get out of jail they get handed all that money that really ticks me off i think that while they are in jail and they are working their wages should go like i don't know they could some percentage like eighty five percent of their wages should go toward their room and board figured on a whatever basis how much it costs to actually support them for a year and when they get out they should have a i don't know you know some reasonable amount of money to start like a couple of thousand dollars but there should be a limit over which they that it all goes back to the state anything that they've earned while they're in prison should go back to the state except for that you know there needs to be some allowance for when someone gets out that they have some money to start with exactly absolutely that's the part that i really think we need to change has nothing right absolutely yeah uh_huh i think it works much better if it's if it's the actual jury uh_huh uh_huh yeah in some cases it would work that way in some cases it would work the other way the jury would would slam them and and i think that that the jury probably has more of a right to sentence than the judge all the time uh_huh yeah i think that's probably a much fairer way yeah yeah it might be more it would be more work for the jury but it would be a more responsible way to deal with it the thing that i i don't really like i i don't know if uh a lot of jury selection processes that i've seen have been a well you know they tell you that you get tried by a jury of your peers but you know it's pretty hard to try let's say the man down the street that's living on social security or somebody that's on a limited income to be tried by a jury of his peers if most of the people like the juries that i've served on are businessmen okay now they don't understand that you know maybe he needed fifty dollars so he held up the seven eleven okay they don't understand that because they have fifty dollars all the time so you know i think that it a trial by your peers should be exactly that someone in your own age bracket someone that you know you can't really do it [ethnically] you know but you could do it you could probably get it a little closer but then there's another thing that i disagree with in texas is sometimes you have a jury of six and sometimes you have a jury of twelve and i don't know why they do that do you have any reason do you know of any reason why they do that okay see okay i don't know much about the grand jury how do you feel about the in texas i noticed since i've been here in twelve years that they they break up the the trial and then the sentencing part of the trial well we know there's a few out there uh_huh yeah it's yeah would be pretty hard well i don't think you know i don't think that if i was the criminal that i would like the judge passing sentence on me if the jury found me guilty then they should be able to decide at the same time what my punishment should be and i think it's not only that it's a waste of our money we have to have a trial for this person then two weeks down the road we have to excuse me set a sentencing date so now we're back in court again and that's more money spent no and it's not working either it seems that we have more and more repeat offenders i know i don't know how you all are there where you're at but where we're at now our jails are overcrowded we just built a brand new one two years ago and it's overcrowded so now they start turning them loose they turn them loose yeah well the way it seems the way it's been working here's go ahead it seems the way it's been working here is they let those out that have spent two or three years out of their five to twenty sentence or five to life yeah that yeah and they they keep yeah all right all right yeah it would allow yeah instead of being completely [penned] up and that way it would give you know the probation department and parole department they've got to be overloaded with as many criminals as we have here in in lubbock and that would give you know at least they don't have to drive all over town trying to find one guy or trying to see six or seven people sometimes it's pretty messed up isn't it uh_huh yeah well see and there's another thing about the justice system that i don't like and there's a lot of people that tell me that that maybe my thoughts are wrong i came from california and when you're in jail they take you out just like they do in alabama or anywhere else what they call a chain gang and they clean the city parks and they clean the city streets but you know we have criminals in jail that do nothing but sit on their [duff] all day and here it costs us seventeen to eighteen thousand dollars a year to support a prisoner and i know yeah but i know families myself that have three and four children in lubbock that don't make that much and they're not you know they're not doing anything to support themselves while they're there yeah yeah yeah yeah well uh_huh see now yeah yeah but at least they would at least that way they would be helping pay for their own and something else that i would and something else that i would like to see is is uh victim reimbursement you know because they you know like you say these guys are in jail and they're working they're getting paid but the guy that they messed over to get there or they stole something from or beat to death or has nothing you know our our victims are victimized period and the law has no no uh regulations to deal with that they they know how to deal with the penal system and they know how to deal with the criminal but they don't know how to deal with the victim because we as citizens i guess haven't laid anything up there for them to deal with on that aspect but it's but i sure don't i i strongly disagree with any judge passing sentence on a person himself there that yeah because well see the jury is dealing with the seriousness of the crime the jury gets to see the whole trial as does the judge but you know if if they figure there's maybe [litigating] circumstances or something like that whereas maybe the judge does just doesn't care you committed this crime so i'm just going to throw the book at you whereas the jury may have a little shall we say sympathy you know he did this but you know why did he do this is there is there a basis for it yeah in some cases where the judge says okay i'll give you you know two to three years and yeah well they have a stronger debate too because there's twelve people there they have to decide whether or not he's guilty and then they can sit in at the same time and decide what his punishment would be and you'd have more than one person's input on it and you know we're supposed to be and i quote in a democratic society so you know if you can find me guilty then you ought to be able to pass sentence and a lot of jurors not that i know of but you know a lot of jurors may just sit there and say yeah he's guilty but i don't have to deal with it from here you know so the judge takes care of all of that yeah it would yeah serving on the jury would be definitely more you'd have to be a definitely more responsible person okay uh let's see i i believe in the trial by jury i think if it was up to the judge alone that there would be real possible for uh payoffs you know [briberies] uh [unfairness] one [sidedness] you know all those kinds of things and i also like the unanimous decision because you have to persuade everybody to be a hundred percent absolutely sure before you convict somebody i i really agree with the uh innocent until proven guilty theory i think that's that's a good way to do it that's about all uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh really uh_huh right yeah right yeah that's that's a good idea maybe this pre group of people could decide you know which kind of uh you know where they could go from there do they need a big [lengthy] twelve person jury or do they need a six person jury or you know those kinds of things and the degree of the of the you know the seriousness of it you know how is this open and shut you know like you were saying or do you need somebody to go off for three months and try to figure out what really happened you know a jury like that they could be a good idea to that could work yeah uh_huh good idea yeah yeah right that's right that's that's a good idea i in the bible it says uh if you have something against somebody to go to them first and if that doesn't work then to go get somebody you know a little bit more wiser and older and take them with you and go to them and if that doesn't work to take it to the whole church so that's right off that same kind of principle that's a that's a good idea yeah that's true that's true too but uh you know that whole biblical concept like that that's true in a lot of our um you know the the way the whole judicial system and the government is based on that it doesn't work on that but it's based out of that and uh so that you know that could work um what is that called the judeo christian ethic judeo christian ethic yeah right right right uh_huh yeah that's that's really really really yeah mine too yeah mine too yeah same here what what part of the country are you from oh okay in in texas okay i was just being curious okay yeah well i'm from the dallas area oh okay well that's that's neat oh are you really wow okay well i'll let you go and it was nice talking to you you too bye well i think i think basically we're in a lot of agreement uh in that i certainly agree that for any case involving serious injury to another person then maybe that needs uh some kind of legal definition but for anything involving that trial by jury certainly should be mandatory but there should be with our overworked uh judicial system it seems to me like there ought to be a means of of um not having to take everything before a full court you know maybe there ought to be some kind of of uh isn't there a type of word called a jury duty now and maybe instead of of uh just kind of blowing it off just spend a day or a day and a half like most folks do maybe we should commit to spend a week and during that week you're kind of an ad [hoc] let's hear about it group of i don't know twenty five instead of twelve and each case is presented to that group of twenty five and those cases are uh lesser degrees of magnitude you know the guy was caught [burgling] and he had his pockets full of stuff you know when he was caught you know that kind of stuff you can just turn to the judge and say your pleasure your honor and there's not a lot of discussion about that kind of thing but the way our system our court system works that guy is going to have to hang around in jail or out on bail or something like that for an extreme period of time i just think our system is overworked and we're starting to stretch the true meaning of of right to a speedy trial you know we you know kind of off what we've been talking about here uh i believe that our we've become almost a litigious society where we everyone is very quick to sue or to threaten to sue and that kind of stuff and although we supporting a whole segment of society called lawyers maybe we don't need to do that you know maybe instead of being so quick to sue you uh if you have a disagreement with someone instead of tying up court and time and that kind of stuff maybe you maybe you and if you want to your lawyer or your your opponent need to go face this group of twenty five or a judge like they have on t v and let either he or that group decide whether or not you have a real case and let's you know let's get rid of some of this harassment suing you bet and if if we could all deal with those kinds of beliefs we wouldn't have half the yes i'd forgotten what that's called there's a a real name for that like the [judean] law or something like that well that may be right it's in there some place i think we both know that we're talking about the foundation of our legal society uh and too the that was sort of the beginning of [ye] shall be treated fairly uh i guess the lord started out with we'll treat you i'll treat you fairly there as long as you do what i say uh that's sort of the old testament version i know i did a sunday school lesson one time on the difference between the old testament and the new testament where where there's a [vengeful] lord in the old testament and there's a loving lord in the new testament but that's a whole different subject okay well i i think we have exhausted my [pitifully] small knowledge on on the legal system but it's been a pleasure talking with you i'm living here in texas well that's quite all right well so am i in fact i'm at work out at lewisville my pleasure have a good day bye bye okay have you ever served as a juror uh_huh i never have either well i think it's a good idea i think our justice system needs a major overhaul and i'm not sure what needs to be done to fix it but i think they've got a lot of problems true yeah i think that's true yeah do would you prefer all trials by a judge yeah i would agree with that i think you're i think they sometimes get carried away by the circumstances and make huge settlements thinking well it's only going to cost the insurance company and uh_huh if they give them all the information i don't know when it comes to sentencing phase i guess they tell them if a guy if the person has a previous record and stuff sometimes it seems like during the trial part the jury's not you know misses some of the best evidence because they make them leave and the judge decides whether or not they should hear it right yeah do you think the verdict should be completely unanimous by the jury uh_huh uh_huh oh some of them disagree i mean some of them said one way and some the other i think it does have to be unanimous i know they can poll a jury make sure everybody agrees with what they said the verdict was but i thought that they all had to agree or else they it was a hung jury and yeah i i don't know how i feel about that i think maybe uh majority might be sufficient it's hard to say though oh yeah i hadn't thought about international trials at all right yeah yeah yeah i think maybe they'd need to be more knowledgeable though than just your average joe off the street for something like that because of the cultural differences things like that yeah what about uniform sentencing right yeah like if you're convicted of a certain crime you automatically get so many years it's not a discretionary thing uh_huh yeah i wish that when they sentence someone if they're going to sentence him to five years then make him serve five years yeah i yeah and sometimes those people are are young enough they can still get out and cause a lot of trouble yeah i don't believe that very often happens i don't think so either in fact i think they end up worse because the conditions are so bad yeah i think i think maybe they ought to just be punished with some some kind of real punishment like hard labor for a shorter length of time you know actually make them do something that's not pleasant and do it and get it over with and get back in the you know world and not spend so much time sitting around letting the bad influences of the other ones rub off on them and yeah yeah something besides license plates and [tiddlywinks] yeah yeah well i think that covers it nice talking to you bye you too bye never i've never been served on the jury never been called up in a jury although some of my friends have been jurors you haven't huh if you were uh what do you think about the whole concept of a trial by your peers i think the major thing they need to correct is how long it takes something to get to jury and to get to trial and i don't know if that's just a pure volumes number or or what but uh sometimes i think the jury is ignorant in the facts of law and how things should be determined and they're too easily swayed by their emotion [hence] is possible error as you can see in all the [ironsides] t v shows no i think there are certain things that uh the jury can determine as far as uh guilty or not guilty but as far as the [affixing] of punishment and [fines] and things of that nature i don't know if that is best left up to the jury to to award you know two point two million dollar kind of settlement versus a judge knowing you know it's true that you know this may be sad and all that thing but uh the jury i think is best in most cases suited for determination of guilt and innocence but not the award of of penalties and [fines] and punishment uh_huh that's true but uh i do like the idea of the jury being the the people who decide in the matter of uh if it's a jail term versus life and death you know the death penalty and such uh_huh right yeah uh it it it's kind of difficult and i guess the whole system is set up to rather let uh some guilty people go free than to put an innocent person in in jail although you still hear about those occasionally um i don't know i you know i heard a very interesting and maybe it's just the t v show or movie i was watching they were going through a trial and i think it was like on one of the the documentary t v shows where they ask for the the verdict by the jury and they went by each one saying guilty or innocent guilty or innocent and they took it more as just like a majority so i i exactly but they took you know whatever the majority was so i didn't know if that was just something for drama or that's truly the way it is i always thought it had to be unanimous but uh rather interesting uh_huh i did i did also uh_huh what about in international trials do you think they should have a jury there i think that would be kind of interesting i guess the the problem with that is there's no true authority in any kind of international verdicts like you know the old day with the rack we they're going to say okay you're guilty and you have to pay kuwait four million dollars well whose going to really make them nobody so but i think it would be kind of interesting to incorporate that concept of you know people from different countries uh in as international law also uh_huh right i don't know how what it would take to be come up with a true perfect system or if one exists but uh is that the crime and it's already some [chart] and determine the punishment or uh_huh i think there should be a core minimum that they get but uh i guess there should be some flexibility because every situation may be unique that the judge can either increase that or keep it just at its minimum things of that nature but yeah that serves a kind of if they're i guess uh if you sentence someone to life life is only forty nine years something like that and i guess you're eligible after twenty seven for parole even though you're in for life yeah although i guess it's you you want them to rehabilitate and become better rather than sitting in there and being a drain all the time no because uh inside the jail there i don't think there's no real rehabilitation yeah it's another war zone but who knows i agree get them out there sure they should have them go out and doing stuff cleaning up or picking up dirt or weeds or who knows what something for the for the state since the state is paying for them they should get some kind of kind of work out of them exactly trading their lives for cigarettes those kinds of things well good i think so nice talking to you also have a wonderful easter bye do you uh_huh sure well i do think that the cases like the uh-oh say something like texaco versus [pennzoil] or or the texaco [pennzoil] problem uh is ridiculous for people just taken off the street to understand and really should have some better way where people who understand both the circumstances and the complex issues involved should handle cases like that oh is that right yeah okay boy or uh or there should be some way where it could be opted for them not to have a jury uh i was only on one jury ever so far in my life and uh it really was a pretty trivial case and it seemed to me all the time i was thinking of all these people in the courtroom over the case that involved oh a couple thousand dollars i think it was it was really just uh uh terrific waste of everybody's time and money and it finally ended up that uh even though we had reached a verdict before we were allowed to give it they settled the case they they had settled while we were deliberating now the one thing i did approve of there was that we didn't have to be unanimous because it was a civil case and uh we were split uh ten to two so it was uh a good thing that it wasn't a total waste of time to have a hung jury on a case that trivial well i think that the trial in a sense is kind of a threat to hold over people to try to get them to reach an agreement out of court because it does cost so much money uh_huh sure yeah yeah i was a witness in a case in a criminal case and it was absolutely [horrifying] to me how that operated because so much evidence was excluded and that the jury was never allowed to hear and they convicted the defendant i on as far as i could tell very [flimsy] evidence and two [perjured] [testimonies] and i knew the people involved both the people who d and the people who uh were [defendants] and yeah i think that was just a a horrible [miscarriage] of justice because of the uh you know staying by the absolute strict rules and not allowing things to be presented to the jury that uh were highly irrelevant to the case and could i thought have established the defendant's innocence so uh i do although i'm a lawyer's daughter and i have lawyer's and judges on both sides of the family and uncles and cousins and things like that i really think that we have gotten into much too [legalistic] of society and that we we spend far too much on the fine points of the law and far too little on [achieving] justice uh_huh well and then in a lot of yeah in criminal cases uh for instance you can't bring up prior convictions unless they are somehow directly related to the case and it seems to me that a jury can make a much more rational decision if they know somebody had fifteen convictions for a similar crime now it's possible that he didn't commit the but the likelihood certainly [tilts] it with a record like that and that was one of the things that we're not allowed to was not allowed in the uh trial i went to though uh one of the two people who gave the [perjured] testimony had a long criminal record and had been you know a real [sleaze] bag and he came in and was presented to the court as a standing young man who had uh been in [seminary] to become a priest and you would have thought the guy was just pure as the driven snow but i happen to know his background and i know that he would have sold out his mother for uh uh shorter sentence and you know it's it's really annoying when the i asked the defense attorney later why he didn't bring up all this other trouble the guy had been in he said that that was barred uh by the court so we do have some problems and it seems to me that uh maybe it's time to just scrap all the case law and go back to general principles and start over and then make a legal system that carefully protects people but uh where you yeah yeah that would be [wrongful] sure would um um and you think that would be relevant right uh_huh uh_huh yeah right uh_huh i think so and i yeah that's something i thought would be a very good idea of when juries come in they are told just to shut up and listen and it seems to me that you'd get a lot more uh information if your questions were heard if you were allowed to ask the witnesses things or if or the lawyers things or even the judge but particularly the witnesses or if they would allow them to uh give broader answers they it's really kind of uh [choreographed] it's like a script has been written when people testify they aren't [testifying] really in their own words yeah i can remember uh friends of daddy well this is kind of ironic because i work in t i legal department and although we don't have any criminal actions here we do have other um lawsuits that do go to trial from time to time and uh when was it a couple weeks ago i was asked to go to uh jury duty i i wasn't selected but um for some of our cases in particular we have um very technical cases from time to time because of like our [patents] and such and it's very difficult for lay people for somebody who might just you know happen to be selected in our jury to understand what we're talking about uh_huh uh_huh right yeah you know some i don't you always have the option now in criminal i guess you always have a jury but in civil cases you have the option of whether you want a jury or not yeah and in some incidences i think they ought to ought not to have a jury um uh_huh uh_huh um oh yeah uh_huh yeah well um i've never fully served i mean i've been asked twice to go down but i didn't get elected on the panel but i know that um for a lot of the civil cases it's rare i mean if your a lawyer um there you could be a lawyer who never actually gets into the courtroom there's a lot of attorneys like that that never get to the courtroom some their kind of law doesn't get them to the courtroom but even in um litigation which is doing lawsuits is a lot of times that you never get to the courtroom itself and yeah but it's a shame that oh it's not so bad for the court system because the money there isn't being spent but there's awful lot of money in time and effort spent in preparing for trial only to then finally get scared enough by going to the court and usually it's the scare kind of of the jury because you really don't know one way or the other how that jury is going to feel you could feel that you really have a very strong case and that you're very much right but the jury may or may not see it that way so you get a little you know anxious there and go well you know i don't feel that sure and who knows what the jury will say because sometimes you know the juries come down with a result and you go gee uh_huh um oh really uh_huh yeah oh really yeah and it seems a lot of times that uh especially in criminals that their rights are so protected but what about the rights of you know the rest of society i mean we're protecting this person's rights who has broken the law um and we protect him so much but what about the rest of the society you know what are we doing for them we're kind of you know forgetting about them and i think sometimes that a criminal should kind of if he breaks law especially it he's a [repeater] the law shouldn't just always cover for him that some of his rights as should be taken yeah yeah yeah um jeez um yeah i'd even go for for trying to get some truth out of the witness stand if they come up with some pretty reliable uh um lie detector tests that we can see right then and there whether they're lying or telling the truth yeah you know yeah i witnessed one trial many years ago when i was first um studying to be a paralegal and uh uh they barred [priors] on this uh person and they never then told us i guess because [priors] had a reason as to why these two people were very much in hatred of each other and they never told us why these two people had such a [vendetta] against each other and the crime was uh uh attempt to commit murder you know but they never told us why these people were mad at each other and gee you know that's yeah you know because they they told us in school that you know crime has to be an intent you know has to be not just the act but you have to intend to do it because there could be accidental kind of things you know but they never told us why these two people hated themselves or if one had done something to you know really aggravate the other there was never any motive given and and i had a tough time with that and and being a person who saw what the jury didn't plus what the jury did because we were just [observing] you know there in the courtroom at the end of it all i still didn't know i still have a lot of reasonable doubts and i've seen everything presented and you know they just haven't done a real complete case here to my thinking i don't know that i want to sit on a jury like that and you'd still you know i want ask some questions here uh_huh uh_huh right right yeah allow them to uh go back and and deliberate and uh you know after each days [proceedings] come out with some questions that they want answered like the next day bring those people back right well i don't i mean i don't know what you think about the subject i'd the i had never really thought of what they said before about allowing the the sentencing to uh to go to the judge instead of the jury and allowing him to do that i've been kind of sitting here thinking about that a little bit while i was waiting for them to phone somebody and i don't know that that's not a good idea i agree uh_huh oh yeah i agree yeah i don't like that no i don't like that at all i know my husband served on a on a jury a few months ago up here in denton but uh it was a guy it was it was a drug conviction and i don't remember he had some cocaine and it was accused of selling it and i don't remember exactly how much he had but uh actually not selling it there's a difference [couriering] it is what is supposedly a difference from selling then being a courier and he was a courier and uh they he's he sat on that jury and they found him guilty and they went through the sentencing phase and everything and uh you know they were told that you know during the trial that this is this guy's first offense and he's got this clean record and and they ended up the jury you know decided hey it's time to [crackdown] here you know and it was time to do this drug thing and let's [crackdown] and let's really and they sentenced him to fifteen years you know which they thought first offense okay this is they thought that that was that was a good thing and they sentencing him to fifteen years and um after it was all over uh the they sit down with the judge and with the other two lawyers let me come over in just a second okay and sit down with the judge and with the other two lawyers and they were told that uh he would probably serve three of the fifteen and that he had three previous convictions however they could not tell the the jury that during the trial because all three of them were in appeal so the jury didn't know about it so here they based their sentencing thinking that this was this guy's first offense and so you know we'll give him fifteen which will teach him a lesson but it's not just you know horrible since it was first offense and he'd been convicted three times before you know and and the jury was very upset and my husband came home a home very upset i mean he felt like that that they had been [tricked] you know and so something i wonder if a judge didn't have control of that if some of that would change you know that's true that's very true yeah yeah obviously what we are doing is not working you know no yeah and there's you know there's people in our prisons that are not being rehabilitated in any way shape or form and either they're in there forever or when they get out they're you know it's a matter of a few months and they're going to be right back for the same thing so the system that's very true yeah i was talking to a friend of mine about this the other day and i said you know i understand that there are a lot of countries that rely on the united states to and and the and the people in those countries rely on our money to survive but i really believe that we need to take care of ourselves i mean we and and i know people say oh it would be cruel to you know pull our aid from these other countries and and maybe so so tell them you've got five years to work out a plan to make it on your own and we will continue funding you for the next two years after two years we'll cut it down seven to seventy you know seventy five percent and after another year we'll cut it fifty percent and in five years it by then you should all should have a plan worked where you can make it on your own without our help and then we'll have all we'll have we will have the money if we would do that to to work on your own system because we've got some serious problems here and we're trying to heal the world you know it's just not it's just not working i look at the i look at what you know what the aid presented to the kurds and i i feel sorry for them and i know they're suffering and i know they're dying everyday but we've got you know kids here in the united states that are dying everyday too you know and being abused and neglected and you know i don't know i just have this problem with uh trying to heal the world when you're so sick yourself you know so yep i think we should try it like you say if it doesn't work we can always come back but i think it would be a good idea to try it so anyway well we all agree you too bye bye that's not a bad idea i um uh that you know they probably need to change it somehow uh the whole system needs changing we've just got too many people in there and uh are putting too many uh people in jail that probably don't need to be there and it's another form of sentencing but on that one thing i i still think it should be a unanimous decision uh i think we're getting to the point now where they're going to eventually let it be um majority vote and that's not going to be good no right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah sure yeah oh right yeah the judge might know or at least it it wouldn't hurt to switch over there and see if it worked any better if it didn't we can come back for something else or or or what we've got so well we definitely need a change in the system and uh it's not working too it's just piling up on us right right we're just not willing to set a society not willing to spend the time or the money to do what it takes so yeah uh_huh right right yeah uh_huh sure yeah very serious yeah oh yeah your right sure oh you bet right well we seem to agree on the jury thing and uh but uh we'll need an unanimous verdict and maybe let the judge have a opportunity to make a decision yeah i do too well good good to hear from you bye bye uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i think i agree with that very much i do you do you think a lot of people when they are listening to a trial put themselves in a position like that and say i would never do something like that and it's for them to believe that somebody else could do the things that have been done uh_huh i never have either is there a reason why you have never uh_huh my husband works as a police man so i always assumed that that was why i was never called uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh do they have such a thing now as a six man jury somebody told me the other day that there is what they call a six man jury and i had never heard of such thing and i wondered if it was true i never had either but i just wondered uh another question was should a criminal case should the jury be unanimous on their decision and that i wasn't sure on either whether it should be unanimous or not that would mean they all would have to decide one way or the other uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh bring some of these things out uh_huh un apparently there are i i i since my husband worked as a policeman i can't believe there are very many people that come to trial that have are not guilty of something some part of whatever they're accused of i have i still have a little bit of a problem with that uh but i would suppose there are circumstances you're in the wrong place at the right time or know the wrong person at the right time uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh they still found him guilty when people said he was at work uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh for heaven's sake so there's nine years of that man's life gone uh_huh no huh_uh yeah i guess that's where a lot of the problem lies we're we bend over backwards protecting the guilty people the one's that are on trial and and we often forget about the one the injustice has been done to because i bet they still say our system is the best in the world yeah it's the best one that exists i guess oh i think a lot of people are i think they've lost sight of some things that are very important to our country uh_huh yeah that bad huh i wouldn't like it but i don't know if i'd go that far uh_huh uh_huh yeah well i think pride in our country and our flag is so important it's important in so many [facets] of our lives and uh i i feel like if they don't people don't like what our flag stands for they're welcome to go some place else there's nobody holding them here right they'd soon be back i'm sure yeah uh_huh yeah i don't know about the judge making the decision if that's do you think that's good you know like if a jury uh_huh make a recommendation do they sometimes make a recommendation that's what i was thinking they they sometimes do and they recommend yeah and then the judge has the final decision on what does really happen yeah uh_huh well i think that's where a lot of people think boy they're getting put away for a long time but actually their chance course when a lot of times when they come up for parole they're denied it depends on you know what they're what they'd been guilty of and a lot of different things i guess uh_huh a lot slip through the protective whatever they have to do and there are bad ones that do slip back out and end up hurting somebody again uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i always thought there was there was wrong it seems sometimes that like somebody who is stealing a loaf of bread to feed his family got more jail sentence than somebody maybe that killed somebody it seemed like there sometimes there's not a good the balance isn't right it doesn't make sense uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah right so let's put up with it i guess improve it if we can if we ever get a chance so well it's been nice talking to you jack and i hope you have a real good day and week i hope not you too bye bye there you go well jean the subject is jury trials and should the jury recommend uh sentencing now my personal opinion i don't know uh uh here lately it seems well up until a few years ago i guess there just too many liberals about and permitting too many oh they just broaden the human rights to to cover just about everybody and i don't think those guilty of committing capital crimes should be permitted to go spend a few years in jail and be turned lose on parole it's just not right and therefore i think juries should be able to recommend sentencing yes very possibly so many of us have led sheltered lives that uh when we go into a sit in on a jury i've never done it myself unfortunately i wish i could have i've just never been called up well now that's possible but uh i was called up as an alternate once but i never made it to the jury not that i know of uh_huh uh i've never heard of it uh well there again uh i suppose it should be exactly is it guilt or innocence but then again so many times you get one or two [holdouts] and and it permits the criminal to get a retrial and there that's not too bad in this sense because you might get someone in their that's a victim of circumstances i mean that's happened and giving them another trial might give them additional time to uh prove their innocence yes we can't [overlook] the fact that there are innocent people that do get involved in jury trials uh_huh uh_huh oh that's it and you just might resemble somebody uh out here in texas we had a a a great [miscarriage] of justice it was finally after nine years it was finally uh taken care of we had a black man was accused simply because he resembled uh someone who who held up a seven eleven i think it was and even though he had witnesses that said that uh he was at work and he had all sorts of character witnesses and what not they found him guilty well they said it this this happened during lunch time and he could have gotten away at lunch time and committed the robbery but after nine years well as a matter of fact they made a t v show about it after nine years they finally came up with evidence and proved to prove that he was innocent exactly now that just was not fair so yes unfortunately that's what happens well it's not the uh uh it's not the best system but it's the best one in the world uh_huh and unfortunately we just have to put up with a lot of things and they try to solve them and everything but uh i don't know the supreme court well i'm i'm i'm still [rancled] about their decision to permit burning of the flag well it the the the first amendment definitely says freedom of speech not freedom of action and uh uh well that just [rancles] me no i swear if i ever saw somebody to uh burning a flag i'd i'd try to kill them i would well i happen to be a flag freak i served i was in the service i was in korea and uh well i saw what the red in the flag represents uh_huh yeah see what they see how they'd like it under another flag uh_huh well jean we seem to be of the same opinions here i hope they get something out of this oh passing sentence well uh uh yes but i think the jury should be able to recommend yes oh yes yes i don't know if that's a regular procedure or what but i know i'm always hearing that uh well the jury came in with a guilty verdict and they recommended twenty years or something yes of course now the jury may not be completely aware of all the ramifications of a sentence they may not know that if you give him twenty years he can get out in five uh_huh yeah but too many times they they are permitted to go out on parole and yes they just go out and repeat their crimes well there well they say after three offenses its automatically life in prison but i think they ought to make it two offenses uh_huh yeah very true well here again now there is where race seems to rear its ugly head so frequently race or [nationality] even but uh like you said it's it's not the best system but it's the best one we've got uh_huh sure enough jean it's been awful nice talking to you well let's hope neither one of us ever has to run into this subject we were discussing take care now bye well uh i don't have strong feelings about changes to be made in the uh jury system do you uh well then you must know a lot more about this than i do uh_huh uh_huh well what about the idea that one is only guilty uh when proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt i thought that was the point of uh a unanimous jury was the idea that if everyone agrees then there shouldn't be any reasonable doubt but if there are some people who don't agree uh then there must be it seems to be there must be at least a reasonable doubt for some people really have you served on a jury i never have either but my friends my few friends who have uh say just the opposite they say they're uh remarkably [incompetent] and uh don't know what they're doing and say one thing in the courtroom and then as soon as they get in the back room they just start letting all their prejudices hang out and to to air and all that right they don't want anyone with anyone with particular experience or knowledge of the legal system and they tend and since anyone can get out of it who basically says they don't want to do it i mean you know it's it's anyone can get out of jury just about and uh so it it's uh it's not really my peers that if i were let's say i were arrested falsely or not and put up for a jury i wouldn't feel that uh i would be being tried by a jury of my peers i'd be i mean i'd be tried by a jury of you know people who had nothing else to do and weren't very knowledgeable about certain sorts of things and uh i don't know i i get a little bit nervous about it and uh yeah i i was called once but i was out of the country and apparently i apparently they thought i served so i didn't i didn't make any noise about it i came back and they said the record showed i served but i was out of the country at the time so i'm pretty sure i didn't uh yeah well i i i don't know i definitely feel like we need to keep it at least unanimous because uh you know there's the classic sort of to kill a mockingbird kind of story where you get you know jury which can have all kinds of prejudices and things that a judge at least officially isn't supposed to have though of course they can too and uh it seems to me that if you could just have a simple majority or something you could pretty much you know [browbeat] the jury a majority in the of the a majority of the jury that's hard to say uh so it's it's uh you know saying well look we don't like the way he looks and let's uh let's throw the rascal in jail and stuff and you also get a lot of uh juries are extremely uh and from what i hear i i have i have some friends who do expert witness testimony and they say that uh juries are extremely vulnerable to uh sort of emotional pitches you know the prosecutor will want to oh i don't know show the show the [mugging] victim you know show what the nice person he was and what a family life and basically get the jury to be very sympathetic with the victim and uh or or uh if it's a corporation that was uh you know harming some individual or something like that they get very much well you know it's just a big [faceless] corporation let's let's make them pay as much as possible things like that so not i i mean i'm the problem is i can't guarantee that a judge would be necessarily be much better than a jury but i'd be real nervous having a jury not at least fully agree on what the settlements would be things like that yeah uh_huh well how about having a jury and a judge work together on it somehow i wonder if that's possible i guess the [judge's] time is worth too much though they pay that judge they pay those jury members very little money compared to that judge he makes more money in an hour than all twelve of them put together uh_huh uh_huh oh of course it's it's political [maneuvering] the the one side is looking for someone whose face they think will you know want to hang everyone and the other one is going to look for someone very sympathetic they're not looking for someone whose going to be the most [reasoned] or sensible or rational juror neither side wants that they want to find a juror that's going to uh be most [persuadable] by their arguments you know uh i wish it were a little bit harder to not serve on juries actually i mean i know it it it's tricky because i know you know an awful lot of intelligent people who just well i'm too busy to serve on a jury so i'll tell them that and they won't or just you know just answer one of the questions the wrong way because you can do that you know they just say do you believe in such and such uh right course they'd be they would be barred but uh_huh yeah well it sounds like we both need to get out there and serve on a jury i hope we're called up before too long they will they will eventually okay well it was nice talking with you bye bye uh not at all in fact i'm graduating from college in about a week and this past semester i've taken two criminal justice classes and have discussed a lot on trials uh i think i think uh the system right now you know should you know is fine i think it should be by a jury i don't think the judge should have i mean he's just there kind of like the [referee] uh i don't i don't even think that it should be unanimous either uh uh_huh right exactly uh_huh uh i don't know i uh you you rarely hear you hear of course there's cases where someone has been put in in in uh prison uh falsely accused but uh more than likely the people that are on the the jury know what they're doing uh i mean you never huh well you would think that they would get that in the uh when the prosecution and defense are choosing the jury you would think that those would come out and i i know they automatically when you go through uh when you're chosen is you're automatically like a a a professor in criminal justice or something like that that you're automatically no they don't want you on the jury exactly uh_huh exactly uh uh_huh uh_huh i've i've never i've never even been called to jury duty yeah i uh i don't know i think the i guess there's a lot of problems with the legal system uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh i uh i i i don't think the judge should just make the decision alone least with the jury you have twelve people you know that are going to decide you know you're the the person's fate judge right exactly probably yeah yeah but uh no it's it's sad though that uh that the people though that you you somebody's life is in twelve people's hands and sometimes those twelve people could care less and uh or they fool the the defense in thinking that they're you know because when they go through those processes they kind of pick out who they want exactly uh_huh oh yeah well i guess it's just that maybe people are you know upset at court you know if it was if it was a a family member of theirs though that was innocent and then they'd want to be on that jury but uh if everyone would take it i think if everyone took it seriously and uh i mean something you have to do yeah i would love to be called i'm ready to go they just haven't called me up yet it was nice talking to you bye bye so what do you think of our trial system yeah yeah i have noticed that that that kind of stuff does seem to happen quite a bit um yeah i don't i don't i don't even know what to do about that sort of thing yeah i think trial by jury is very good i actually they said i think the tape said something about changing uh changing it such that the or leaving sentencing up to the judge only i think that's actually good idea just just sentencing not the trial itself um because i think that that that judges are probably more informed as to what is how serious the nature of the crime is and stuff like that an right right so he'll be able to give them the maximum sentence in some cases there oh yeah the the they give that as as an example of something that that might happen oh yes right or just you know there are two people who say well he just looks guilty um that's actually that's a wonderful way to get off jury duty you know someone says to you you know when they ask you if you uh if you want to be on you know when you're called for duty say oh yeah i want to be on jury duty because i can spot a guilty person a mile a way they quickly let you off jury duty i hear um oh yeah that that that that that's that's the way it works there um anyway i think that probably for for having it what about you know about being unanimous i mean that's sort of a strange case because i wonder what happens when eleven people thinks someone's guilty and one person doesn't one person thinks that that they're not guilty and they can't decide for hours unless they convince that one person you know i believe it does have to be unanimous actually yeah i think they either have a retrial eventually or or they call it a mistrial or something i haven't been to law school so i don't know much about that i just know that um i wonder because sometimes i think about it actually i think well what if i were that one person and i was completely convinced that that that that this person wasn't guilty you know right uh but i mean what if eleven other people are saying one thing you know and you're you're the one person saying the other thing you know would you give in yeah saying yeah yeah i wonder about those things you know or even if it's you know i i guess if they were to say well it doesn't have to be unanimous what's the cut off number seven five you know six six you know how do you decide is it you know how do you decide what number of people have to say that yeah yeah i've never quite understood that um okay right and they can't do anything about it yeah i often wonder about that i wonder if if maybe you know i i i don't i don't i don't know the law on that but if they have new evidence can they can they [retry] or can they you know bring you back oh actually that's true i've seen the same thing on l a law as well yeah so i and then i wonder why that you know there there must be some sort of deep [seeded] reason for that you know something like something like well you can't be tried for the same trial because that would bias the the the the jury or something or you know yeah uh_huh in in of the defense yeah well well there's also the issue of for instance you can't um you can't very often you can't um when someone is is on trial for something you can't bring up prior convictions which right that's completely beyond me i mean that's i wonder yeah i mean if this man is is accused of [raping] someone then i think that something like sex you know the fact that he sexually assaulted someone is a [crucial] bit of evidence that adds to the fact and i i i i i often i never understand you know again having i'm sure there are some deep seated reasons you know to i mean often times i wonder about rules like this and i'm sure that that that there are some reasons for good right then right then then then they should be yeah i mean that's what i think but i don't um but i don't quite understand do i vote oh yeah i vote yes yeah oh yeah well that's that's that that's very true but then again often times they don't as well often times they don't uh they just go you know they're you've got people like who are who are you know lame lame ducks and they sort of don't care about anything and just want to go ahead an that's true that's true i often i mean that that like you say that's another discussion but i have had that discussion before as well where you weren't i i wonder about the politics of it all so yeah well even in the courts well well they're all appointed i mean that's even another issue you know should should should judges be appointed you know and or or um often times i look at friends we had uh a serial killer around here who killed eleven women oh and and [choking] them yeah uh his name is [arthur] i'm not sure if they had one yet but i'm sure they will um because he was he was on some sort of news special though he was he was uh he killed because he was just on trial like maybe a year ago um he was [strangling] some of them oh no usually they were [prostitutes] actually because he was he was actually this is a very sad case the man was let out he was in prison for um sexually [assaulting] two children right he he they let him out and then and then he he wasn't allowed back in the town where he had done this so he came to our he came to rochester instead and they they they realized later he he had killed about between eleven and twelve women at least and oh really way up north here huh oh okay still way up north sort of um yeah won't get out exactly yeah this this this man was sentenced to i think like three life times but he was you know it was just horrible because um his his his trial was you know was it it was televised and this and that and what they were pleading was um they were pleading insanity i mean it's clear to me the man is insane and and he should be just locked up for life right i mean i don't know what you do with them at that point if you're that crazy but what what struck me is you know they had a psychiatrist [testifying] for hours and hours and by the end i realized that maybe it would have been better if they had it wouldn't have been a jury of his peers but if they had a jury of [psychiatrists] instead to sort look at it you know i mean i don't think it's feasible but it would be an interesting thought if you're no or right right exactly but give them a bunch of [psychotics] but at least have a have a have a bunch of [psychiatrists] you know just to look at him and decide from then i mean they would what's yeah they did they had a regular trial by jury for him and and huh i don't really know what to think about it but i do know that they're not you know they'll give somebody twenty five years and they'll serve what eight months have you noticed that uh_huh and uh but i think trial by jury is it's a lot better than leaving it up to one person leaving it up to the judge oh okay yeah well right because the general public doesn't know that if if they're sentenced to life that they won't serve life course the judge will know when he'll be up for parole and all that so yeah okay i must not have understood the whole thing because i didn't hear them say that but yeah uh_huh but i think if the entire trial was left to one person i've got a four year old you can hear but uh i don't know you too many people can take [vendettas] out on people and everything right but that's true yeah right because they they know that you're biased does it have to be unanimous well then they consider it a hung jury i i think and then they uh have a retrial or do they uh_huh no me neither well you don't have to be really convinced that he's guilty it's just if they can't prove he's guilty because yeah i would hate to be that person because you would be uh you know bombarded by all the other eleven jurors to you know just say he's guilty so we can get out of here and go home yeah uh_huh yeah i know it's too bad one of us don't have some knowledge on this huh but but um i don't know i just hope if i ever go to court that they all unanimous on not guilty well you've seen like these t v movies kyle i'm talking hush but uh well how they'll you know the through the whole movie you think this person's i don't know but one thing that i thought was pretty weird is how somebody can't be [trialed] tried uh excuse me twice for the same crime well i just think it's it's weird because i've saw well of course soap operas i'm an soap opera fanatic this one guy had uh framed himself to make it which he really did kill the person but then he set it up where it looked like somebody was trying to frame him and he was on trial for it and then you know it came out that he was being framed so then he was found not guilty and then directly after the trial they found out he really was guilty and he couldn't be tried again yeah no i don't think they can you know i saw it on l a law too yeah about that woman right and i'm sure that you know it's the lawyers uh after the uh defendant defending oh the defendant's lawyer and the prosecuting attorney i'm sure the prosecuting attorney could make a real good case if he you know knew all the details of the defendant's you know case right right like if they're on uh trial for rape you can't have any you can't bring up the sexual assaults and stuff or whatever yeah i know if it's related if it's related to the crime they should be able to yeah right yeah but they're not allowed to do that well that one does seem that one does seem out of it though because it's it you're allowed to show their character do you know what i mean and if it shows that their [character's] you know capable of lesser thoughts like that and stuff right that led to that tell you what we need to do is go into law and then we'll be able to or vote do you vote yeah do you vote okay you'll help out a little bit putting the right people in the office that's a lot to do with it too a lot uh a lot of the politics will pass laws and stuff that the um general public wants so they'll be [revoted] and all that right right right they sit on the fence so well oh i talked about this the other day they won't say yes and they won't say no to just certain issues just because they don't know what the public wants or the public's split on it yeah right because most of it is politics even in the courts right uh_huh now was that the um uh green oh i don't know some guy that was attacking women jogging no well did they have a t v movie about him well well how was he killing the women were they jogging on a oh okay oh see that's what i mean then they let them out and then they're able to do it again i think my sister is married to a guy from rochester yeah yeah way up well uh i'm originally from kentucky yeah i i'm i was up north too but uh that's one of the reasons i think judges should be the ones to sentence people because they do know you know if you sentence them to three life times then they probably won't get out on parole uh_huh well of course but they just need to do something with him he needs to be [annihilated] yeah well it's supposed to be a jury of your peers they couldn't have a a bunch of [psychotics] up there uh_huh did they have a trial by jury for him huh well well uh it seems to me that uh that i do not know whether the jury system uh i i should not say i do not know i do not feel very uh stronger that the jury system should be changed it seems to have worked uh time [immemorial] and when uh difficult decisions uh are made uh uh uh they generally prove out to be right by things that occur later on uh i know in some cases now in some states depending on the criminal code uh a unanimous verdict is not required and indeed some juries are no longer twelve people they are down to as little as small as six people in i think in petty in in uh in uh in minor felonies and uh and misdemeanor trials uh i think that the judges should be left to do most of the sentencing simply because uh there is always uh there is there is always a jury that might be swayed uh by the moment uh to either to be too lenient or too [vengeful] i guess yeah but i mean is not that uh is that a reflection then of what is really happening in the real world if if if they keep giving everybody hundred year sentences and the people in various states it does not seem that people want to be taxed to build more prisons or even in for that matter uh repair the uh the lack of judges and and and other uh yeah yeah you know that might be it i mean they they certainly i do not i don't know how it is in virginia but in florida now uh uh uh at eighteen years someone was just sentenced to eighteen years i heard it on today uh without any specific recommendation for uh uh uh uh uh uh waving the normal uh procedures and the eighteen years will uh translate into something like uh four point seven if every if the if the prisoner is a model prisoner and indeed the present overcrowding conditions uh [prevail] plus i guess there was some credit for time this guy had already spent in jail waiting for trial so uh yeah you might be right about that i i i do not know it just seems to me that only about uh from what i read only about ninety percent of the only about ten percent of the cases come for trial anyway and uh only about uh four or five percent of uh in the in the very end or less than less than half the trials that go to uh less than half the cases that go to trial uh end up with uh with the jury actually making the verdict that most of it is plea bargained uh half way through or or most of the cases are plea bargained anyway but uh uh how do you feel about the uh about the jury system itself do you do you think that should be changed or do you do you know in virginia whether it is if they have smaller juries or yeah yeah well i guess we yeah i guess we always focus on criminal trials with with the jury but i know you have a right to ask for a jury in in any sort of a case that even where damages are are are uh are the result of some sort of a uh an action that you are bringing against someone else you can ask for that to be heard before a jury takes a heck of a long time i guess to get there in some states i i i do not know uh i should imagine virginia from what i read uh uh is like every other state it it is faced with uh uh enormous costs to maintain the jury system and the prison system and the entire trial system because i guess everywhere i read that there is a shortage of judges not that they won't [appoint] them but there is no budget for them i guess or and the [courthouse] that goes with them and the [bailiffs] and the clerk uh court [clerks] so it seems uh no i i i do not think i would change it the more i [verbalize] it i i do not think i would want to change the system i do not know what we would replace it with yes uh and yet there are there are so many there are so many people in prison i mean the prison population uh as far as i i uh you know my impression of it is that it has that it has doubled in the last ten years and [tripled] in the last twenty i mean it so has our i guess our population has grown some too but there there definitely is uh uh you know to me the one of the worst things that could ever happen uh from what i read and see and understand i mean i do no think i could handle prison i mean it would be very difficult well there must be a a a a very great degree of that but but there again i i do not know if the the jury system itself uh comes in to play there i would think that one of the things that sort of bothers me is the ability of course it is a constitutional right that the press must have here is the interviewing of jurors after the trial i mean that it seems to me that that that when a jury makes a decision they should not be asked uh before television [cameras] and newspaper reporters how they reached that decision i mean i do not i imagine there is a certain certain right of the press to have the ability to ask that but i i would think i if i did anything i would protect the juror from from any sort of an [inquisition] after yeah yeah oh yeah well i do a lot of business up in washington i was there during the during the trial actually yeah yeah yeah yeah oh i felt that way i felt i felt no but yeah i always balanced in the in the situation i remember the jurors uh i thought to myself how did how did they only i think they only uh found him guilty on one count which was uh not even which was a class something felony which was not even punishable uh uh to the degree that they thought it but i do not know maybe when you are there in the in the courtroom yourself and you are sitting there and you have got to make a judgment on somebody and the [prosecutors] do a lousy job or maybe the evidence was not as sensational as the media presented it i mean i i am not making excuses for that might be it i think i am getting a call coming in all right nice talking with you thank you uh_huh uh_huh yeah on the other hand uh attorney uh uh [justices] are more apt to uh understand you know the the prison crowding problems and things like that and have that sway their decisions one way or the other you know yeah i think that is what is happening i think uh the judges are trying to save the people from having to the cost of new prisons they they are saying oh well you know the the people cannot afford it yeah right right with a conviction oh okay right uh i do not know exactly what the size of the juries i know one of my friends was uh uh brought up for jury duty for and he only heard very you know piddly type cases most of it was uh robberies or things like that you know it was not any serious crimes so apparently even for the [smallest] crimes they give the person the you know any felony anyways they give the person the option for a jury uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right right huh yeah whatever right uh i do not think i would either yeah i know it uh does seem like the the the the purpose of getting people in jail so that you know the the i cannot think of the word i am looking for anyway the deterrent for people to to commit the uh to not to commit the crime is sort of gone away people have i do not know they just do not care any more the benefit i guess of crime [outweighs] what the deterrent is you know people that um yeah well i would be interested in finding out what the uh percentage of drug related type things are and uh yeah yeah well i know uh on the other hand though when after the barry trial up here you know the big local trial as well as national yeah and the opposite was true of me uh after the case was over i was like somebody get ahold of these people and find out why in the world did they vote the way they did you know it was like well a picture is not good enough we want to see i do not know what they wanted honestly did they want the guy to i do not know i mean just because you feel like he was being kicked on which he certainly was you know i think i no doubt in my mind the federal government picked him out and selected him to be [prosecuted] but it does not matter the guy was obviously guilty one one count yeah yeah well yeah i think we are getting oh okay well it has been nice talking to you uh_huh bye bye i guess we are just to discuss trials and and punishment if it's to be given by the judge or not did you did you catch your explanation of that okay you mean the crimes or the punishment should fit the crime okay yes i did also right could you hang on one minute jim thank you i am so sorry to keep you on hold are you at work okay i am too um oh it's insane it's insane yes yes right uh_huh oh yes yes it seems like that's correct and there's too much leniency there's too much uh um [underhanded] uh things going on that the public are not aware of and it seems as though we are uh giving the criminal the benefit more than the victim the victim has been victimized twice not only by the [perpetrator] of the crime but also the courts that try to do the justice i do not have any i don't have an ounce in my body of credibility toward the the judicial system in the united states isn't that terrible well to punish him for the crime but also to try and [reeducate] the man's thinking to get him out of that uh uh criminal mind that he has and to direct him into a more productive life uh_huh oh yes how sad uh_huh oh right well if yes if enough of the public [responded] to uh the the uh parties that are involved and if enough they will listen to the voice of the people i have found that out that if enough people respond and rise up against the [injustices] being done something is going to change people have to be involved yeah that's right that's right you were yes uh but and i'm not making an excuse but we our priorities are a bit backward that's correct yeah yeah well i am too i mean i i just can't i you know i served on a jury for a lady that was having a mental problem and we found her not guilty because the lady obviously was not in their right mind so if the person is not in the right mind i mean they had to uh put her away but for her own safety and for because she didn't know what she was doing and we couldn't we just dismissed the case you know and and she was uh taken care of by the proper facility yes that's true yes i did it's it's uh the uh maybe i'm a hard [liner] but i think that there should be some [preset] penalties in criminal cases rather than uh degrees of sentencing right right uh again having participated in jury duty myself i know i know how such a diverse group of people get together the different backgrounds different ideas that sometimes you can have one person or two that can hold up what i consider the proper sentencing of the person yes ma'am no problem yes yeah um i think what you have is the way the the justice system works is they bend over backwards trying to protect the guilty so many things in their back pardon yes i know my wife participated in a jury trial several years back [wherein] the individual after it was over and they had came up with the maximum sentence in the jury form they found out that uh the gentleman involved had a long history of the same type offense which was theft of uh property and yet the the attorney for the prosecution could not enter these uh the good man's background into it it was like this was a first time offender whereas uh i think that's those that should be in jail should be in jail yeah well i think this is one of the reasons that also that attorneys have such a a [unsavory] reputation shall we say yeah well what you got is the situation [wherein] uh if you ever get in trouble you want to hire the [smartest] [crookedest] lawyer you can find and uh that's not the idea it's the idea is not to get the guy off of the crime that he committed but to punish him for the crime he committed yeah yeah well we have uh a situation again that i am familiar with where uh the son of an [acquaintance] of mine was killed while trying to stop a robbery and the person that killed him was a young woman who had left the house with full intent to commit crimes carrying a gun in her purse and anyway it'd get to the she was sentenced to jail but then due to technicalities she was going to be out of jail within eighteen months after she was sentenced of course it took eighteen months for the thing the trial to happen so then uh there was a letter writing campaign that went in and the parole board received approximately a thousand letters protesting putting this person back on the street within eighteen months after killing someone and uh fortunately it worked they uh they corrected the technicality and the person now will have to serve three to four years of the seven or eight they were sentenced to right this is it and most people don't take the time again the only reason i took the time is because i was personally acquainted with these people i'm just as guilty as the rest in that respect oh yes well they again the and i'm not knocking the civil rights program or anything like that but we've gone overboard to uh protect persons from being having their civil rights violated to the point where the person that is damaged is not protected it's again the victim gets worse punishment then the person that commits the crimes yeah okay i think we're both in agreement on this subject yeah yeah yeah well another side of the coin that with our justice system there are a lot of frivolous cases that go to court there are a lot of things that could be settled out of court which uh or should never have gone to court and then the amazing thing of course is how uh some cases can come to trial in thirty days and others it takes eighteen months okay well i uh i guess because i work quite a bit with lawyers i'm not a lawyer uh that i find a lot of things are so specialized that i'm not sure and i i look at it more from the civil side of things that juries have any sense of of the value of and worth so that they have real problems when it comes to uh uh they can find guilt or innocence uh but then when you [quantify] things and that might also hold criminal trials for how many years is appropriate uh that they might leave it to somebody else who uh has expertise in that uh_huh yeah because i find that uh i've been on a few juries and uh as a say i i tend to be around uh civil cases because i've been an expert witness some and uh many matters are so complicated that it's so hard to uh come up with the fair value uh or the fair sentence and one thing that you get if you have some expertise is uh you know the range of of possible values or terms or you know how heinous was the crime uh that uh when i only do something one two or three times i'm hardly an expert on it and most juries over a period of five or ten years you might sit on three and so how do you relate as to whether this particular armed robbery was a you know worth five years or twenty five uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh well one of the others things that gets me on on the juries is that often in the newspaper i i tend to hear two things that well that go on one is you often see in the headlines the big numbers uh and many of those get overturned or get reduced in terms of sentences or get changed by a judge or an appeals court and that never makes the the press and so when uh you or i as an individual gets on a jury we tend to have certain mental [images] of what's what because we see the headlines uh and we don't have again a lot of knowledge so we don't know what is really going on what is uh really the range of sentences or awards that are uh are actually uh in the end applied uh_huh uh_huh yeah well that's where uh the role of juries is is restricted and i'm not sure i'd want to change that aspect of it one is it's restricted in the sense that juries only decide the charges that are actually uh brought you know if it's first degree rape second degree rape or whatever they only get to decide on that well okay this person has been charged with first degree rape uh and you can decide guilt or innocence on that uh such like maybe in murder they get to choose whether it's uh premeditated or one or two of the lesser degrees the other thing that juries are restricted on and and at least to me this has been one of the frustrating things in my even in my own experiences that you usually don't get to hear all the information it's what information is presented and uh i don't know that juries have a right to know more because in a sense we call those [safeguards] but often juries hear only a fraction of the of the story when they have to decide guilt or innocence uh_huh yeah and the truth that's brought out is uh as i say when i've heard about you know the [oath] is to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth is that they want uh they don't want uh the whole truth i mean you can say yeah the because stories look very different when you hear different parts of the of the truth okay right right i agree too i don't think the jury should be the ones that that put the [sentencings] down i think the judges should or even a panel of of lawyers if if it got to that point might be better at than just regular civil people not knowing you know exactly what things are from from murder on up to like tax stuff you know right yeah and right that's yeah and and most people that do sit on juries some people just sit on them once in their lifetime you know if they're that lucky sometimes or you know what whatever the case may be and and may not have any idea of what what the standard punishment would be for it and it they may have some different idea i mean it might be more important for them to put a sentencing down that was uh longer you know that didn't fit the punishment didn't fit the crime or not long enough or you know whatever the case may be i i think the judges do have that that better knowledge of it the only thing i worry about sometimes is if if you get somebody in there that that has a name that is the defendant and you know sometimes might have more pull which that does happen i mean we can't say it doesn't because it does happen i mean not everybody is you know has has the right morals sometimes people can be paid off or politically or whatever the case may be and sometimes that's not real fair either though so uh_huh right right right well well also what i don't think is fair either is when you have like a say a rapist come in and and his attorney gets his sentences sentencing reduced because he's gone to a lesser charge like i don't know what assault or something or but which that doesn't make any sense to me either i know it's hard to prove rape and whatnot and and and the person that was raped or whatever doesn't i mean it's embarrassing and all this other stuff and they they're put on like they were the ones that caused it or whatever but to me when you do the crime then you should pay for whatever you did and and you shouldn't be able to go on the lesser charge i don't i don't think that's right because all's that's going to do is say oh well you know that was a breeze i can go out and do it again and you know have the same thing happen that's that's not right right uh_huh yeah and to me how can you how can you make a decision if you don't have all of the evidence in front of whether it be whether it [pertains] to the case or not somebody thinks it it had because they've got it there so the lawyers the two lawyers are the ones that have all the information don't they they only put part of it yeah right well that's just like that old witness game well it's a game kids play too but uh somebody did it just for your train of thought where they they showed something and they asked they there were uh like four people okay do you want to start uh_huh now that do you do you agree that they should all be unanimous or even even in uh like they said you know lesser you know trials you know lesser convictions do you think that they should be all unanimous still uh_huh uh_huh well the thing is they stay until they all are unanimous i mean if one is determined that it's you know that he feels that he's you know going against the other eleven they all stay until everyone agrees so i don't know if it would leave anyone getting off more unless someone just gets tired of fighting you know just gives in and they have to stay in until they all agree yeah i don't know i'm not sure if they go i mean to twelve new people or what they do exactly but i do know for sure that all twelve have to agree before he can either you know either he or she can either go free or to jail either one uh_huh that's that's just it i don't understand you're supposed to you know go in if you have you know like if you've never heard of the people before or anything but i don't understand with [racialism] and the way religion is and everything else how you can get people that are total totally impartial to it uh_huh uh_huh yeah i agree i don't think it should be left up to the judge alone not only you know that they have to stay in there but hey how many times have you heard of judges being bought over you know so it it's i i think i think in in the end the judge has the [presiding] you know uh vote i think he can be you know i i don't know if it's the way it is in real life but i've seen it on t v where the juries go one way and the judge totally finds it obnoxious and he completely you know goes the other way now i'm not sure if the judge is allowed to do that in everyday life or what uh_huh yeah oh oh my god if there were more than twelve can you imagine how long they'd be sitting i i think it's just i don't i mean i think it's as fair as it can possibly get but i just think it's really you know i mean some cases go on for years you know uh_huh yeah i i don't know how it could be more fair course i don't know maybe maybe they should be asking someone that's been on on trial before uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh i know i don't know that much about it either i just i don't know i i guess maybe if they'd go and they'd ask someone in jail you know how they can make it more fair for them or not but then again maybe they should be there so that is fair i don't i i don't think anyone's going to come up with a better way uh_huh yeah oh i think we can hang up anytime no i don't what else to say so it was nice talking to you too bye okay uh i haven't i don't know that much about the what the possible choices could be about [reorganizing] the trial by jury but uh i think it works better than many other systems like having a judge decide i can't think of many alternatives that could be more fair than having twelve people decide although it's difficult because they all have to be unanimous i don't i don't know i don't know if i feel i don't feel real strongly about that if the uh the thing is though i i didn't think even if it was a lower conviction i didn't think that you could uh i didn't think that you really had to have a a jury unless i guess if you request one you can but i think yeah making it unanimous sometimes might uh let the only thing it might let more people get off i don't think it would convict any more people and we have so many people already you know the jails are already overloaded yeah well if it's no but they they what if they never agree doesn't it just uh do they have to go back and do a whole new trial or agree yeah and that maybe on the lesser crimes that aren't too severe that's a little stringent especially because there's twelve the thing about it is i think jury selection too a lot of times uh the lawyers are able to pick and choose who they want on the jury and they can sway them that way too i know i don't think well i guess you really can't but the other thing is when they have the sensational trials how they get people who aren't swayed by the news either so uh but then again you know they the one of the questions they asked is should it just be decided by a judge and that's kind of tricky too because a lot of positions the judges are in they they can't be fired you know they have to they stay till they retire and sometimes they're pretty partial in their [judgements] too i know yeah i think in some cases they are but they know they get to decide how severe the sentence is if it's you know so that's another thing where they have the power but maybe juries could be less than twelve people or would that be more fair or less fair maybe there should be more than twelve people i don't i know i don't know that's true and i've never been on jury duty but they have to keep going and going and going and lose their not lose their jobs but not go to work it could be really i've never seen one in real life either so i don't have you know i don't know that much about it but i think it seems that we have a a pretty fair system compared to other countries i don't know how we could make it more fair i really don't the unanimous vote is questionable though and and how how many cases get juries might want to be reviewed too because uh i don't know if you should really have a jury for a small [infraction] but i'm not sure who gets them i don't know anything right no whoever came up with this was pretty smart because it was pretty uh unique i think when they started it so how long do we need to talk do you know okay uh in uh what do i do now do you know anything or just wait for someone else okay well it was nice talking with you thanks bye bye okay uh it's not such a bad idea to think about judges uh you know taking the idea of uh uh sentencing into their hands versus you know the jury especially if it's a highly publicized case such as uh you've got cases right now that are going on that everybody's very well informed of or have read uh certain uh things in regards to cases like the dahlmer case in milwaukee and stuff so it's it may be an idea to think about you know cost trying to find a jury so you can get a jury as far as uh they may say they're not biased but deep down they are against this person or whatever so uh i don't think it's such a bad idea to think about so exactly uh_huh yeah catches you off guard doesn't it uh_huh i didn't think they were either i thought the sentencing was done by the judge i mean it's either guilty or not guilty changes uh_huh oh sure yeah yeah exactly exactly yeah yeah uh_huh exactly uh_huh yeah that's kind of how i you know in certain cases i can see them going uh uh just basically with a judge guilty or not guilty verdict uh simply from a judge in highly publicized cases versus the small uh maybe you did a crime that was uh burglary or whatever and it goes into the court case or whatever and it's not highly publicized but when you get into these highly publicized cases where everybody knows details whether it's through the national [enquirer] or whatever uh it's the idea that person might initially have this thought well jeez this person's guilty no matter what i'm not going to listen to the facts or and and con their way into uh getting past the lawyers and getting through that but uh also there's aspect of cost and i i'm not quite sure how much cost it does take for uh the judicial system to try and call a jury whether it's very costly or if it's something that's not costly or what you know being that i'm not in the that area i really don't know but i wonder if there is some big expense in trying to call a jury to trial and then having to pay whatever they have to pay if there's something that they have to pay i know companies have to pay for these people to be off from work or at least give them the time off from work uh whether it's i think it's with pay if i remember jury duty is with pay and it's not uh_huh paid right uh_huh some that may decide not to yeah right that it that it i a judge would be more consistent from one case to the next and not not and and uh not depend so much on the on the emotions of a particular case but be able to put it in overall perspective well i i certainly haven't thought much about this but yes yes some of them some of them do and some of them don't but uh this one uh i was trying to remember back it seems to me that that you know when i studied civics in school or stuff that this the juries being involved in the sentencing wasn't wasn't so much and i'm i'm trying to figure out whether that's i'm remembering wrong or whether that's a by state yeah yeah and uh i i guess and i don't know whether it's by state or whether there's been some supreme supreme court decision perhaps that said that uh that uh as part of the trial by the peers that had to include the sentencing or too or whatever i yeah but i yeah i certainly wouldn't be uh uh worried about that i guess in terms of the uh you know having a judge do it would seem to me to be more more fair and and uh unbiased uh in terms of doing away with the with the unanimous jury i guess i guess i uh would be a little more leery of that kind of a change in in the trial system that that's just a such a tradition that it's a that it's got to be a unanimous jury that uh i don't know where you'd where you'd draw the line anywhere else uh you know uh two thirds or three fourths or whatever but uh and and i i i certainly wouldn't feel comfortable with just a just a bare majority uh yeah yeah yeah whatever yeah yeah yeah yeah well and and i'm i i'd i know it is i know it is where i where i work but i'm not sure that that's that that's necessarily required uh you know by law that it has to be paid uh i suspect that's a that's a benefit of a bigger company but but there are certainly some some that some that wouldn't uh yeah that's it what do you think are possible changes in the uh way trials are [conducted] these days do you like the way some people in there for instance really take over and uh we have no way uh of knowing whether they are [legitimately] right or wrong and so forth what do you think about these things so you're saying you think the judge should actually have the final say huh yes i know what you mean well i hadn't uh thought of it from that point of view before i have been in a fairly important trial and uh what bothers me is i was concerned of the ability of some of the people in the jury to adequately understand what was being presented so that they themselves could make a proper and uh accurate decision that's the part that bothered me about it um i really think that the the the jury ought to have more say so in the selection or in the determination of whether they are guilty or not but i also think that the jury should be uh very very uh carefully more carefully selected to make sure that they are entirely intelligent people and that they understand some of the details that are involved so that they can make accurate decisions i hate to see people brought in who basically have lived out in the country and don't know much about any of this stuff and and they just make a decision based on whether they like the dress she wore that day or whether that guy [smiled] or [growled] all the time that's no way to make a decision on some terrible problem that would be certainly nice let's say we we would have fifty percent of them law students anyway yeah yeah uh_huh that's a very neat idea and they would learn a lot about being lawyers later in life when they see what it is like to be in the jury side of a trial that would be a a really good thing to do so it's huh huh for goodness sakes uh_huh oh they saw the husband get yeah uh_huh they would find something wrong with it did they really uh_huh that is a shame you'd think there would be enough uh people who saw the accident other than his wife to to also uh make statements and they have nothing to gain one way or the other so if they say a certain way then why not believe them yeah uh_huh yes yeah well as i look at our trial systems i think they've gotten to be quite a joke the way the people can appeal and file for [mistrials] and they've taken a lot of the things that were set up to make it be a fair system and used it to their advantage i think that a jury should listen to the courts uh to to the hearings and to everything but i think they should only weigh fifty percent of the decision i think the judge should hold the or maybe even forty nine and the judge should be able to rule one way or the other i think he should and i think that there should be more than one judge there should be maybe two at least that sit in and listen so that there's no way that you could have like a crooked judge do you know what i mean um and i think that there it's important to have a jury but i think the way that they go through so much time to get it a fair one that's okay too as long as it's not used to delay the trial so much they need to have a fair jury but they only you know would cover forty nine percent of the decision or fifty percent and then the two judges would go ahead and make the final decision how do you feel about that right right right right well what if they used you know i just had a thought come as you were talking what if they used law students and had that be credit hours to sit in trials yeah at least at least on the jury and that would give them experience in the courtroom and it could count as some aspect or hours going into their major right that's right that would be a really good thing to do i have a girlfriend that just went through a three year trial and what happened was her husband was uh involved in a motorcycle accident where a drunk driver ran the [stoplight] and he ran into the motorcycle but the reason the actual reason that the motorcycle person her husband was killed was because his brakes went out on his motorcycle he was just taking it home from the place it was brand new and his brakes did not work and this expensive big company that owned these motorcycles um railroaded this into three years worth of trials for this lady and she had a son that was just only two years old when it happened and they were following him home in the car saw the whole thing happen that's right they were following him home from the motorcycle shop and they railroaded this whole trial into [mistrials] um this and that and the other every time she'd get a verdict that would be in her favor of her of a settlement until finally they won and said that it was the drunk driver's fault and she would have to sue him which i would think it would be some his fault but i just felt like justice wasn't served because they had the money the big lawyers and she didn't right right and i don't know all the details on that but i certainly think that we've come up with a good idea with the the the students coming into the jury and i don't think that it would be such a bad idea even if the judge didn't have the final say i think that uh one uh advantage of having uh the unanimous verdict is that in a criminal case you want to make sure that you don't uh convict someone who uh really shouldn't be convicted um and i think that you know a unanimous verdict uh helps to ensure that i guess maybe one drawback of it is that if you have one juror who is very unreasonable in some way that uh you uh would have a problem uh you know that you wouldn't convict someone who maybe should be convicted have you ever served on a jury before oh okay uh what sorts of cases were they so were they criminal or civil oh okay what uh what was the verdict did the did the jury have trouble reaching a decision yeah so did it become yeah uh uh but since it was a civil case it really didn't matter right you just needed a majority what was what was the other case that was also civil yeah oh didn't really even count yeah i'm i'm a college student so i haven't been you know a jury eligible age for very long um and uh i did get one summons actually at one point but i [declined] it which i'm able to do because i'm a student because it was uh a very bad time yeah i mean i i really i would like to uh to do at some point um but i i haven't uh one one thing that i i think is um you know maybe is a problem is uh i i think that the criminal jury system works pretty well now but i wonder if maybe in some civil cases it doesn't work as well especially sort of how uh you thought it turned out pretty well yeah oh so it was just kind of a zoo and the jurors just sort of someone had to figure out what was going on um that's interesting did it did it work out pretty well in the end i mean did a couple of people sort of gradually sort of assume uh sort of a [moderator] role in the trial or so it it did end up working out pretty well the one thing i sometimes wonder about um in civil cases is uh whether especially sort of in uh maybe like product liability or medical malpractice where there's um sort of a very technical decision to be made sometimes you know it's not just a matter of um of you know did this guy rip off this guy and it's just a matter of interpreting a contract it's sort of a matter of um you know sometimes getting into very technical issues and i wonder if uh if there's really um if the system works adequately in in educating the jurors about uh whatever um you know issue is under discussion in in the case you were involved in you said it was just sort of a bank matter of some kind so yeah uh oh so the deal was that he had uh borrowed money from the bank to buy it and he hadn't made the payments yeah uh so they were suing to get it back uh yeah uh definitely uh_huh uh i have twice it was a pretty wild experience they were just you know small time cases where uh trailers and banks were involved you know they were civil they weren't they weren't any criminal uh the jury it was uh let me see i think it was ten to one on the jury because they only had to have eleven people so it was they and uh the one changed his vote at the end so it became unanimous you know after they turned it in and then he changed his mind after they turned it in but it then became unanimous right the the other case was just traffic the and you know it was seat belt law and it it didn't even hardly go through so yeah yeah well you learn a lot going to the juries like that though i wouldn't think that it does i mean from from my from what i experienced in them it didn't you know it didn't turn out the way i planned it i mean the way that i would think that it would go yeah but it was you know it was jury was [unorganized] and it was it was just wasn't organized enough for me i'm not used to it not being organized and i just assumed that it would have been that's about what it was yeah they well they picked one person and then he finally you know [moderated] everything and made it turn out the way it should have yeah it ended up working all right yes i i don't think that they they they educate them enough to to really know what's going on yeah the the bank was suing them for uh because they went to get the the trailer that which was uh seemingly their property it was on his property right so they came to get it and then when they came to get it well it was on the [landlord's] property and he wouldn't let them take it off so and they are it was a double wide so they'd already taken it apart so they left it there and then when they came back to get it a couple of days later it had rained and got all in it so they were suing him for the money and you know there's no way they could because it it was the moving company okay i guess it took so i guess the recording has started now uh i served i was in the air force and served on a court martial uh board a couple of times which is very similar to a jury a lot of the same rules apply have you ever served on one uh_huh was it civil or criminal a grand jury or uh_huh i see uh_huh uh_huh uh did did the judge uh hand down sentences or did you folks do that uh_huh um no that that's a science in itself uh_huh i see because you'd probably be uh too [puritanical] and uh_huh so uh were were the uh sentences that the judge handed out what you thought to be fair or would if you were deciding do you think that they would have been different huh um wow i bet that made him happy right uh_huh yeah oh how many members were on the jury was it a six or twelve member jury uh_huh that's kind of curious to me i didn't realize until the uh wayne kennedy smith trial uh a few months ago that they had six member juries i thought that they you know it was always twelve twelve men tried and true so to speak but uh apparently for some some crimes it's [permissible] to have six people sit in judgment i know on a getting to this unanimous thing whether you know a jury should be unanimous or not or not in a court martial case it doesn't require the jury to be unanimous it's a simple majority you know rules probably on capital i don't know we weren't we we the two that i were on had to do with drugs and uh we were uh unanimous is [acquitting] the person even though we in our in our uh gut felt that the individuals were both guilty just because of the friends because of various things the government really failed to prove its case and you know being fair to the person if the government doesn't prove its case no matter how you feel you have to go by what's offered as proof and we had to [acquit] him in both cases uh yeah it was yeah in some of the critical things like the special [investigations] at one time in one of the cases had videotaped this person but something happened to the camera and the tape and all they could do was testify yeah so have you ever served on a jury yeah i finally served on one last year i've um been voting for years and i couldn't figure out why i hadn't been called yet and i finally was so it was an interesting experience i was kind of boring uh it was uh uh it was uh well let's see it was municipal court so it was a combination of uh and i was in the pool for a couple of weeks so it was a combination of criminal and civil and they had uh well most of the time we we spent sitting around in the jury room and getting to know the other potential jurors and then it was always exciting when we got called to to to go because then we thought we might be able to do something else besides uh just sit in the jury room uh yeah the judge did uh i uh i had a hard time getting seated on a jury i kept getting uh i'd be questioned uh for [empaneling] the jury and they kept uh [dismissing] me course they don't have to give a reason but it's just whether the prosecutor or the defense attorney feels like you know they want to get the best uh mix for their case so they ask all kinds of wild questions yeah well i kept getting called up for drunk driving questions and i think part of it was they didn't uh they didn't like the fact that i don't drink any more so yeah that was probably it although in my case i might have been more uh sympathetic with the person who got caught i don't know well i was never there never there for any sentencing uh i finally got [empaneled] on one case uh on my next to the last day and uh we got into the uh jury room to uh decide the case and there was one guy on the jury who announced to everybody that he didn't need to deliberate because he'd already decided that the guy was uh not guilty and he would never vote for guilty so uh they appointed me jury jury [foreman] and i uh didn't think that uh going in without deliberating allowed us to reach a verdict so i told the judge that we weren't were unable to reach a verdict because we couldn't get one member of the jury to deliberate so the whole thing had to be tried over again yeah yeah it was uh it was funny the uh i i i don't know i uh i didn't uh uh i didn't like not being able to deliberate i uh i i wanted to vote guilty for the guy and the other people were kind of mixed so uh the guy had to go through the whole thing all over again cost him a lot of money i'm sure uh it must have been six yeah um um yeah well let's see is it on uh capital crimes that they have to be unanimous and uh_huh uh it was too circumstantial um well how do you feel about trial by jury in what way oh do do you feel they are swayed more toward are you talking about with criminal or civil suits so do you think that i mean the the stereotypical bleeding heart juries where they feel sorry uh_huh the other thing the only thing that really bothers me about that is i think you know that a judge can be i i like the idea of juries of your peers uh in that you you you get more personally more than one person making the making a decision and second of all you get a wide variety of background so that uh_huh i'd agree with that that's definitely a problem uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah i guess i i definitely agree with you but the well what i don't like about uh sentence the jury doing the sentencing in that i think it becomes a lot less the the same crime gets [unequal] sentences i uh i think there is more of an ability of you know you know for selecting a jury two different juries that would most of the time come up with the same idea uh the same idea versus you know whether he is guilty or innocent but i think i think there would be a large variation in in trying to [gage] the the [severity] of the crime and an appropriate punishment and have that that measure stick across the board uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh of course a lot of that's also the ability of of the defendant to uh get a good lawyer uh_huh yeah i agree uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah i i agree with it yeah they will admit to you that they don't have the benefit of being able to you know of of letting allowing themselves to believe their clients that are guilty it's more of the game plan of how do they convince the judge or jury through argument that the uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh this is a little bit of the subject but one one thing that i really dislike uh also that's that's new is the uh is that i have heard that there are federal sentences i feel very uncomfortable with trials by juries recently uh in that it seems to me that they are swayed more by emotion than uh by evidence that's presented i have uh very little regard for the law presently practiced i was thinking primarily criminal cases yes uh_huh that's a concern of mine uh i would feel more comfortable in many cases i think with judges uh you know doing the sentencing uh_huh yeah my question i guess are they really your peers uh uh too often i think they are not and uh when you when you are selecting a jury and you are doing it partially if if not entirely on the basis of which color representation you have you know that is a matter of concern to me too uh i think that uh in such cases uh they are not really looking for unbiased people but rather for biased uh now i happen to know several judges and there is one that i would feel uncomfortable but has doing sentencing without the jury i would feel a little bit uneasy about but the other two i feel uh would give either you know the [plaintiff] or for the defendant the the full benefit of the law and i guess that's what i am concerned with uh_huh this is very true uh_huh uh_huh yeah and you do see such uneven sentencing you know evidence of it in the newspapers and such i mean where uh it would appear the crimes were very similar but one individual got twenty five years and the other one was sentenced to life so uh isn't that the truth there are times when is it uh oh goodness my mind has gone blank it's uh [othello] you know where he says kill all the lawyers every now and then one is tempted to see what what but i it's taken me a long time to understand that uh lawyers are concerned with the law and not with justice as we think of you know as as [novices] tend to think that uh attorneys care about justice uh_huh and they are very effective too uh even i have been involved uh just slightly in a case where i know the person is guilty but uh his attorneys gotten him off uh the city has dropped their charges against him because their the attorney has presented enough evidence of doubt to convince the judge so i don't know okay so uh with the issue of trial by jury uh i actually found the whole question about whether you need a a a unanimous verdict in a criminal case to be somewhat interesting i don't know if it's even true that it's always unanimous because i thought there were cases where uh i don't know if it's the difference between felonies and misdemeanors but where it was okay for a state to have it like eleven out of twelve yeah well i'd be curious as to what the uh requirement for a an [acquittal] is and i i don't think it would be wrong to say that eleven out of twelve can convict if there were something [corresponding] saying that if you know six or seven voted not guilty then instead of it being a hung jury that was an [acquittal] but i don't know whether you need an a unanimous uh vote of not guilty to [acquit] yeah i'd agree with that but i've never had the the opportunity to serve on a jury although i've been out here and registered for i guess about five years but oh well the people i know who have served have said that usually what ends up happening is that you know after initially finding out where people stand that the whole [deliberation] usually results if there is a you know something like a nine three or or more severe and and the people in the majority trying to convince the minority that they're right and in fact i'm not sure that that's any more uh liable to get rid of the reasonable doubt than than anything else uh_huh yeah i'd read one book i think it was calls trial by jury of all things that uh went through and interviewed a bunch of jurors in some of the big cases and in many cases looking at what had at the evidence afterwards as to whether the decision was right went back to the jurors uh based on the deliberations some of them did say that you know when they were the only one left [opposing] the verdict uh you know everyone was getting on them so so heavily that eventually they just gave in knowing that nothing they could do could stop it from either being the verdict everyone else was trying for or a hung jury because the one vote doesn't mean anything except the ability to not have a verdict uh_huh yeah once hi yeah actually i i agree that that's an interesting thing i i believe that's a for for civil suits it's not unanimous right but for for criminal suits it's unanimous by federal law yeah i actually thought i'd read that too and that's why i [phrased] it that way i wonder the difference yeah the difference could be that for uh state if there is such a thing state felonies versus federal felonies that federal things that are under federal jurisdiction require the unanimous vote and things that are under state jurisdiction even criminal don't require but i don't know what the the laws do you think that that's an unreasonable uh requirement that they be unanimous yeah that that would be an interesting change it was also allow the uh idea that if you had one person who was uh very [disagreeable] that i mean it it [fundamentally] changes the way the processing [occurs] because uh the fact that it's the the principle is that the fact that it's unanimous [insures] the beyond a reasonable doubt uh [criterion] that it uh increases the the likelihood of getting the proper judgment so i i think if anything it would have to be a very close to unanimous decision yeah actually i i thought that that would be very interesting thing to do i would like to do that i've been out here twenty some years and i've been called uh three different times but i've never actually even made it into the the jury box and because there have always been a number of people and and i've never gotten up there to answer any of the questions uh i yeah i also think that would be really good i uh_huh well the the one thing that i know does seem to happen from people i've talked to on this is that in the situation you just said where it's nine to three or some such number that there's an effect starts being that there's starts being a lot of peer pressure going on and that that uh peer pressure and in some cases if it's a long trial the desire of people to get out of there and not be stuck in there for a very long time that people are changing their minds for the wrong reasons uh uh_huh yeah i i understand you you would hope that if you were in that situation that you'd have the moral [fortitude] uh to hold out if you believed that that was really the proper response i think of the movie uh twelve angry men you ever seen that movie uh yeah it's it's it's exactly that situation where uh it's henry fonda and it's eleven to one and he's the one i i believe he was opposed to the conviction and uh and he held on and well anyway i uh i uh-oh yeah i did forget to ask you what is your name by the way oh you're ann hi but uh anyway i uh lot of lot of interesting [procedural] things i think would be a good be a good change if we're going to be talking about the subject tonight which in some i guess criminal courts the yeah the one of which was uh something something that's been going on because of the rodney king trial here in town and that is uh and that is the [exclusion] of jurors because of or in spite of their race uh yeah well they they uh the the people that the uh the jury that's trying uh the officers in that case is is an all white panel and there's been a lot made in the local papers of that fact they have they have they moved it up to the county north of here um it's in [ventura] and there's there's still quite a bit of publicity obviously and it's kind of it's kind of debatable whether you could get a fair trial almost anywhere because that uh that yeah it was everywhere so you know and i i think it would be very difficult to find someone uh find a panel that would be not have seen it and and known of what was going on exactly you know um the you know i i'm kind of torn on this issue it's like they're saying well on the one hand they're not he's not getting a jury of his peers which is in some ways i think true but on the other hand it's it's also saying that white jurors are not going to are not going to convict uh you know they're not going to do their job which is the whole the whole point of being on a jury is to convict or or or uh let go based on whether or not the person whether or not the evidence says that there's enough um they well i guess it depends on who you talk to i haven't talked to uh i haven't talked to a whole lot of black people on it but i i rather imagine there's there's some [snickering] about it and a lot of the usually [fatalistic] uh here we go again folks kind of stuff no no i you know on on on one hand you know on the one hand you almost hope that they convict them because it's they have that very strong piece of physical evidence showing these people beating the heck out of this guy um uh_huh well yeah um i don't know you know and and again there's something else you know there was a uh something else along those lines there was a girl out here named [latausha] [harlins] i don't know if it's it's got it's got as much notoriety but it's rather almost as [infamous] here as it was as it was with uh the rodney king problem um a girl walked into a korean owned store and uh they she had a dispute black girl she she had some kind of a dispute over some orange juice with the with the owner of the store the owner of the store popped her yeah and and oh of course they you know the criminal case went up and and the judge gave the woman who shot her shot the girl a uh uh practically a suspended sentence i mean it was it was just she gave her no time in jail you know all of these things and then oh there's we have these we have people wondering around with petitions trying to get the judge yeah yeah yeah it would make it would make life easier yeah but uh i'm ann criminal courts yes oh really uh_huh i see i can't i'm a little surprised they didn't get a change of [venue] on that one oh well that videotape was just horrible yes oh i agree with you but i can't imagine that they would do an all white jury without having some sort of of discrimination or or you know uh appeal on not having a jury of his peers and all of that kind of stuff right exactly based on fact right how interesting oh so what's the [prevailing] thought within the community i mean you know what the news media is going to make of it but what about the community uh_huh oh my goodness that can't be good for los angeles either oh exactly unfortunately that kind of thing is not limited to a big city like los angeles you're going to have it just about anywhere there but that's that's interesting what about the judge who's hearing the case is he going to be impartial is he going to be a a good [adjudicator] uh_huh oh really oh my goodness to get that judge [recalled] i would think huh that's almost when you kind of wish that there where standardized sentences it would uh you would know the whole world would know what you were facing and then it's a matter of of deciding okay so uh mike what are your opinions on uh trial by jury uh_huh yeah that that seems to make sense but leave it up to the more experienced person who knows how it fits into the uh kind of the rate for different uh_huh right right they right well how do you feel about setting like well for example a car type accident where uh or some incident where someone loses a limb do you think the jury should have a dollar figure for losing an arm a dollar figure for losing different body parts uh_huh huh uh_huh yeah right yeah that's true huh oh out of as opposed to the insurance paying the bills uh_huh well we're who who do they get they get insured they get insured from other insurance companies or how does that work oh okay your talking about sure okay well but in some instances you're going to put companies out of business by taking that stance if they have to take it out of their own [retained] earnings that for oh uh_huh uh_huh right that will huh sure okay well i work for an insurance company so i see a lot of uh verdicts that are pretty [crazily] decided um by juries particularly and i know in england the judges set all of the awards you know juries will decide the guilt or innocence but then they leave the awards up to more learned people and i think maybe that [avoids] some of these totally ridiculous you know like millions and millions of dollars oh exactly each individual jury really doesn't have any perception of what um the going you know if you will the going uh award should be for a certain type of case you know within some kind of range when you get one way out like that but then really doesn't wind up penalizing the person that they went after who it really [penalizes] is their insurance company which then [translates] into higher rates for all of us if they get some of those mega awards against them you know they're not going to sit there and lose money if they are losing money then they're going to raise rates so it all comes filtering down to us all individually and uh granted some people need to be compensated if they have really been [wronged] you know i don't know you know some of the health insurance is written that way you know that uh if you buy an accident and death or [dismemberment] policy you know it pre specified in the policy so much but i don't know that you can necessarily put a a value on somebody's limb uh [arbitrarily] that is always going to fit in all cases i think maybe you look at uh the age of the person and their station in life and and uh how much longer they have of work years that they would have to put up you know with with that i mean maybe you don't award an eighty five year old guy the same thing that you would award a twenty one year old i i think it has to be some kind of common sense applied there and there may be where the [judiciary] is a little more learned about that type of thing because they can be schooled in that kind of thing and that can be part of continuing education maybe for judges i don't know you know to get into the economics of things uh because if they wheel somebody into a courtroom and the jury's heart goes out to that person and they do one of these mega awards it really you know ultimately is not penalizing the person that they're trying for get away if it's a company you know that they're insured unless the award is so staggering that it goes all beyond their layers of insurance which is another pet peeve of mine when they do award [punitive] damages i think those should be [uninsurable] i think those should have to be paid by the corporation itself that that did the damage yeah yeah for for honest mistakes where they've done something and and something happens one of their employees causes damage or something sure that's what they buy insurance for well i was just talking about any company uh let's just say a lumber manufacturing company and uh somebody is on the premises and one of the employees actually is driving by with a [forklift] and he pushes the wrong button and he drops a load of lumber on somebody and it [injures] them sure insurance should pay for that well i'm not talking about any loss i was talking about only losses that are judged for a [punitive] damage which is another category of the juries are awarding damages these days based on the person's actual injuries and what they are due and then they are awarding a second amount as punishment to the company which is a usually a lot less but it's an an amount their designed to sting them a little for their [negligence] for gross [wanton] [negligence] in a claim and unfortunately the the lately the courts have been deciding that those could be paid for by insurance too so again it never really [penalizes] the company doing the wrong they can go right on doing the same old thing they always used to and if if they know some practice is wrong you know i'm not talking about your isolated occurrences i'm talking more about the you know the thing that they know maybe they're [willfully] manufacturing something that they know is hurting people out there and they continue to do it even after they become aware of that then i think they ought to have to pay something out of their own pocket well have you ever served on a jury well i was called and then i was not chosen oh really well uh could you give me an example of a case where you think that well i mean i think are you just trying to say that criminal cases are more uh tangible or well do you think that that in a civil case if there was majority rule that it would be easy for someone to be set up no i'm not well i mean i think that there are many cases in our judicial system where justice is not served say but uh and i also think just like you were talking about before why you were chosen to be on a jury that uh the just the process of picking jurors is not always objective no i've not i've been called but i had to beg off from the duty and you um well i was i was uh originally chosen primarily i think because i was a young fellow and they tend to view the younger fellows as more likely to hand down a guilty verdict i don't know why something i picked up in a psychology class some time ago yeah it's that the younger they are they tend to be more conservative for some statistical [oddball] reason and they kind of liked me i looked and all that stuff and they i don't know what they saw in me but they saw it but uh back to the issue is uh i don't know at times i feel that a unanimous decision is warranted especially in cases in which there's no smoking gun but there too there are also cases in which i feel a majority rule might be acceptable particularly i think in civil cases in criminal cases i'd like to see the [unanimity] remain but in civil cases i think a majority rule by by jury would be sufficient well in a criminal case say one in which you know there is like say assault or some such i think there ought to be a unanimous uh vote because by law and by constitution there must be proven beyond a shadow of a reasonable doubt that the person in question did this and in civil law there you know is such a thing as like let's say uh [misappropriations] or misuse of financial instruments or something like that a majority rule i think would be more in line as there is no real smoking gun in the civil cases i don't know if i'm making any sense or not yeah often there's more [incriminating] evidence like for instance say uh and also too i think i'm i'm [tempering] this and the fact that the consequences are much more uh serious in a criminal case um well i really can't say for certain truth be known uh as it stands there's there's many ways and means by which a person can be set up both uh in a civil uh civil and criminal case i mean the uh documentary the thin blue line pretty much demonstrated that you know i don't know for if you're familiar with that or not a uh fellow when he was much younger uh was tried and convicted and sentenced to death fortunately in his case the death penalty was revoked and uh so he served out his his sentence until it was discovered by a fellow who was making a documentary called the thin blue line that this guy had basically gotten railroaded through the judicial system the case was [reopened] and he was [exonerated] yeah many laws but little justice oh certainly not certainly not and you know they like to think that they're getting someone who's objective in all this but they're really looking for someone who will pretty much fulfill the [lawyers'] desires you know the because you get up and and they ask you a few questions both sides do and then you you're either challenged which is you know each attorney can use that as much as they like or i think it's a limit now they probably have a limit now but they pretty much go through that and then you have to give a reason to the court why you can't serve for me it was financial hardship so but onto the thing uh i was never aware that juries had any say on recommending sentencing it was always my impression that the justice himself or herself had the final say right uh actually i lived over in europe for a couple of years i lived in germany and in germany they don't have the jury system what they do is they have uh three judges basically and you get up there and the prosecuting attorney presents his evidence and your defense attorney presents their evidence and those three guys take the evidence go off figure it out and then come back and say whether you're guilty or not uh_huh wow well you know it's it's one of those things i mean uh uh i would have to look at it if they did it with the uh just the judges the police have to do a lot better job of making sure that their evidence is [airtight] because the judges sitting in that kind of stuff day after day they know all the procedures they know what's good and what isn't they'd be able to say i'm sorry you can't use this as uh evidence you know because it was either [illegally] obtained or whatever and you know you wouldn't have this uh uh [theatrics] where the lawyer jumps up and presents it to the to the jury and then the judge says oh no disregard that come on any jury's not going to disregard the evidence you know that may very well be uh yeah that's true you well how would you go about changing it leave the details up to somebody else huh yeah well you know uh talking about the lawyers you know what might very well do uh cause a uh a drop in the number of lawyers and things like that is to set the fees for cases it's kind of like do it do it in the similar vein similar like uh v c r or television repair if you take your t v in a lot of these t v repair places will say well i'll repair your t v for a hundred dollars and if he gets in there and starts rooting around and finds something in there that's really tremendously wrong with it then he eats it he he repairs it gives it back to you and takes your hundred dollars now if he comes in and says you know i'll repair your your v c r or somebody else's v c r for a hundred dollars gets in there maybe it's a blown fuse takes him two minutes he fixes it he still charges you that hundred dollars so maybe if we did that with the lawyers so that you know whether it's a murder case or a you know a civil uh somebody suing somebody else you get x dollars for that case and that's it none of this oh yeah yeah that's true yeah um well you you know you're talking to part of them that's paying for that that's right you know that's it it's it's amazing and and when you stop and look at it i mean the judges they're all former lawyers our judicial system is in such total chaos i think what they need to do is they need to somehow take the money out of it i mean when you have a man that's signed a a a statement saying he's guilty we have a a family called all day family they were all murdered all the people signed [confessions] they went to a trial by jury they been trying these people now for twenty two years ever since i was a child and what they've done is they've bought mercedes after mercedes after mercedes is what they've done has nothing to do with justice whatsoever uh that's true i i i think our judicial system is attorney welfare myself i i hold it in the [utmost] [contempt] the uh my favorite is the police department they're not aimed at the criminal the judicial system is aimed at the citizens because you and i we have work schedules we can be called at work we have social security numbers they can trace us down we have telephones then we have checkbooks criminals have none of these things they're real difficult to catch and if they do catch them they don't get any monetary gain out of it whereas us we write a check so where do you think they target their efforts they target their efforts toward the citizens not the criminals you know that's a i've [nailed] the problem down but i yeah i'm going to have to leave those details like what would you do about i think to begin with you would you would have like here in atlanta area our crime rate is just astronomical yet you go out on the streets and they're giving speeding tickets i think somehow you have to separate the revenues from now i firmly believe in that because when you get the most heinous of crimes have you ever noticed you always get the most [renowned] defense attorney and here's this bum that didn't have a job and he's got a attorney that you and i could never afford who's paying for that yeah and you're talking to the other half that's paying for it yeah well that's another problem i think to really correct the judicial system you have to get the lawyers out of it i mean they're they're totally and morally bankrupt without any ethics whatsoever and with that type person running it i mean you you could expect that you actually to tell you the truth i think uh jury selection is a uh prime uh discussion topic in terms of possible improvements on uh uh finding of uh guilt yeah i think there's a limit on that the uh the uh [peremptory] challenges are limited to i don't know how many but you can um yeah it seems to me i'm always challenged [peremptorily] also when i go to these things i think i have a severe [demeanor] or something uh but typically you know uh typically uh everyone gets involved in uh the jury process and i suppose an elitist might say well you really want someone who is well educated to be able to to [winnow] the facts from the from the prejudice right so so if you're a [nincompoop] on trial you'd you'd have to have [nincompoops] to uh um uh_huh um uh_huh uh_huh um uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i suppose you may be right on that matter of fact i've heard that i've heard that some of the information uh is prevented from reaching the jury like uh mitigating circumstances or or [preceding] uh criminal record or things of this nature that oh is it oh i didn't realize that okay right uh_huh uh_huh so you what you're saying is this if there is the second offense then you execute them um what about uh white collar crimes like uh theft of trade secrets oh really like what uh i certainly can't argue with that definitely does need some improvements uh and the lawyers can throw people out for no reason whatsoever just because they want to i think it's four or five i can't remember which i was on a jury trial last year only i got kicked out as uh the last selection that the uh defense got um that uh right but it still has to be a group of your peers see so if it's your peers and you're not educated then you want you want a [nincompoop] jury because they'll sympathize with you a bit as well as hopefully being honest people and do their best to comply with the facts as they were presented to them so that's why the defense is there picking through them whereas at the same time the uh the prosecutor sitting there picking through them because he wants somebody who will give him uh a guilty verdict if the facts warrant so uh i think the jury selection process is pretty neat but i don't think that the jury ought to be the ones picking the punishment afterwards i think that should be left up to people who have some knowledge in the subject and more knowledge than a jury would have you're talking about the person's already been found guilty right and many times i've seen on trials they have on t v the jury will make a recommendation as to leniency or as to the death penalty or whatever but i think that it should be up to the judge and the uh lawyers to make the decision as to what the actual penalty will be maybe just the judge because they're the people who know what the system is and what it's all about and believe in the system uh and i think that would provide a more fair sentencing procedure as opposed to an emotional sentencing procedure also may be a more consistent sentencing procedure well [preceding] criminal record according to the judicial process has nothing to do with the current crime but when it comes to uh sentencing for punishment of course if the person's never done anything bad before according to the judicial system then they're going to lean towards a slightly more lenient side and the jury's supposed to be [notified] of criminal records when it comes to sentencing by jury at least in california they're supposed to be not during the trial during the trial as to whether they're guilty or not has nothing to do with their background but when it comes to what kind of sentence you're going to lay down i think that uh that they should i don't i don't know that they always have because i never sat all the way through a jury trial they get too boring well if it's a second offense the punishment should certainly be more severe than a first offense because obviously the rehabilitation process did not work the first time so you got to give them either more time in the system or a different process that will hopefully work better when it comes down to things like alternative sentencing i'm all for that for uh small crimes [infractions] and misdemeanors or parking tickets or traffic tickets that have gone to warrant you give them the option of working off their time doing civil service sort of things i think those ought to be punished a whole lot worse than they are yeah well uh say [embezzlement] right you get a guy down the street who comes up uh carrying a okay i see a a good a good southern solution uh_huh you'd have to say that uh i don't know the the things they asked to talk about were whether the uh whether the judge should be the one that does the uh sentencing and seems to me that that's i think that's the way it's done now uh at least my understanding of the law which isn't very good uh it seems to me that the judge does it and i i think that's probably all right in that they you know maybe know what the the norm is for a particular thing right uh_huh that's right and i think that may i that may be an exception as well because i think that doesn't the jury decide on the death penalty rather than than the judge yeah yes in fact they're going to execute somebody at the end of this month and uh there's a big uproar going on right now uh the uh governor you know has been trying to decide whether he's going to commute it or not you know it's someone who had uh killed two teenage boys here in san diego as a matter of fact yeah uh_huh something inexpensive yeah i think this particular case has been like ten or fifteen years but i guess there have been several cases where people have been executed by mistake and you'd hate to be one of those the other thing they asked about was whether uh uh the verdict should be required to be unanimous which again i think is the way it is now that all the all verdicts well maybe not i don't know at least in capital cases i'd think they'd have to be unanimous uh_huh yeah the paper here tonight had a thing about the noriega trial and that there's one juror that is is uh different than the other eleven and uh they've only [deliberated] four hours or something and they say they're [hopelessly] [deadlocked] and the judge told them they weren't [hopelessly] [deadlocked] yet yeah six months so far they said so maybe they could go with a with a nine hundred number and have people dial in and give their uh vote right oh really that's interesting well have you ever served on a jury uh_huh i got called but i uh never uh got selected for a jury i sat for ten days in a court room while they went through the selection process and they had some guy that was uh defending himself i say they uh probably the best things to do is is tie them with a rope and throw them in the water if they sink they're innocent right yeah uh so uh how do you how do you feel that's of course being facetious but uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh and i guess also what the system will absorb probably more tuned in to that possibly though on uh capital cases like maybe the death penalty uh i'm kind of [undecided] on that whether the judge should have the sole i mean he could have like a personal prejudice you know judges are people like everybody else even though they're they're supposed to be impartial but maybe uh i i think that's i think that's the way it is uh whether they they decide whether or not they uh the accused or whatever would get the uh get the death penalty do they have a death penalty in california yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah i something like that i've got no problem with it uh i guess the way i think about it is not it shouldn't necessarily be thought of as revenge it's just like if you've got like a dog that's running wild and biting people put it to sleep you know just get it out you know it's not able to fit in you know yeah yeah exactly uh i guess kind of the way i think about it also is they just if somebody gets the death penalty they're they're judged guilty they got the death penalty they should have one year and one appeal cover all their bases with one appeal and if not you know don't don't let them sit up there on death row for you know fifteen years uh_huh yeah that yeah oh i'm sure yeah uh_huh i believe it is in capital i think in like uh lesser cases it's like ten out of twelve or five out of six whatever how ever many is on sitting on a jury i i believe that's the way it is but i'm pretty sure you're correct on capital cases uh uh_huh yeah oh no i'm telling you go one way or the other that that's probably an expensive trial uh yeah probably yeah probably you know i'm not sure there's a number it's probably like thirty forty thousand dollars a day you know worth of all the free for all yeah yeah that's that's been so long i've practically forgot who noriega was you know that has been going on my uh cousin is a f b i agent down in miami yeah so she follows that stuff pretty closely but uh yeah she's not involved in that that case but she does no i haven't i never have my wife has but i i haven't uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh why don't you go ahead and start so you think if if trials were held by judges or experts that they they would tend not to uh admit not to convict people on circumstantial evidence you know i i attended a trial in uh germany when i was a student and uh that's the sort of system they have the trials are held by a panel of three uh three or four judges who are well they're like lawyers i guess they're experts in the law and uh there there really isn't a jury and uh uh they do the questioning also the judges do the questioning and uh they uh i think it's a lot harder to get off on technicalities also because they uh uh the judge is also sort of a jury uh but i'm not sure i like that i think i prefer the jury system myself uh well actually i think in most criminal cases it wouldn't make any difference whether it was a couple of judges or jury what what i worry about is cases where it's the government against the individual that's where you really need a jury of peers because uh anytime the government uh is the government against the individual you need you need the protection of ordinary citizens i think that's really the only thing i guess where i would like to see the system change is uh uh there ought to be a a well i guess i don't think that uh uh juries need to decide sentencing all the time i think maybe a judge is a better judge of that or uh yeah well if you drag twelve people into a courtroom i trust them to make the right decision as to whether someone's guilty or innocent that's usually a matter of who to believe and what facts to believe but people who don't have day in and day out life long experience with what prison is really like and what the options are to ask them to decide for one case on one person based on what they see i think that is maybe uh a little bit naive in texas here people tend to get whipped up into a frenzy and slap long sentences on people uh it's kind of uh uh a hanging jury atmosphere but in a lot of places i think people bend over the other way but i guess i guess i like the system that they have in some places where the defendant gets to choose whether he's goes before a jury for sentencing or whether the judge gets to choose it some some cases in some jurisdictions they can do that i kind of like that system yeah yeah yeah right and lawyers blow sand in their eyes i would like to see most civil cases tried before a panel of experts instead of ordinary juries insurance cases and things like that where and uh there would be more honest settlements instead of this uh [tugging] of people's heart strings and uh making them cry and feel like they're doing somebody good by giving them or giving them two million dollars to make up for the pain and suffering so in i think in criminal trials you need the jury as a defense against the government but okay well i think the court systems could stand some improvement uh trial by jury is good but a lot of time a lot of cases uh is circumstantial evidence that that convicts a person which i don't think is all the time good because sometimes it's hard to get all the facts and to prove a person innocent i mean prove a person guilty if you don't really know or you don't really have an [eyewitness] and how can you convict somebody on circumstantial evidence is beyond me i don't know i think so uh_huh right uh_huh you think you prefer the jury you think your chances are better well that's true uh_huh well sometimes the sentencing is still is not fair i mean even if well the jury i guess they do decide that but but i'm like you in a case like that most of the time its i don't know maybe i'm too too uh uh conservative when it comes to that the sentencing is really light compared to what i think they should be in a lot of cases you know uh right yeah uh_huh right oh really yeah that's that's not a bad system but i i do think it needs to be [shaken] up a little bit but the thing is too maybe they need more of a i don't know more of a expert types to to be on some of these jury cases because most time you just pick you know joe blow or whoever and a good citizen or whoever and call them in exactly right exactly yeah uh_huh putting on a act or whatever uh_huh exactly exactly well the question was talking about the juries and uh one of the things i thought about was a lot of the drunk cases that they were having that especially for repeat offenders that uh maybe there should be [stiffer] penalties for those people who come back again and again uh so that uh a judge i think would be the most appropriate person to uh to be able to sentence somebody since they do it over and over again every day right right uh_huh yeah see i agree with you uh one thing i heard was this where they have instead of going to the regular court they have a a mock court i mean it's supposed to be all legal and everything uh you go and you present your case the other side presents their case and you're done with it it's almost like the night court we see on t v uh and uh but it's not that we have uh such it didn't backlog or all of the uh the cases that are uh all ready [pending] uh so i that was one thing i thought about that would be really neat if we could do it that way yes yes now uh_huh uh_huh sure oh yes and and i wasn't i didn't mean that i i didn't mean that no because i mean gee whiz if i was uh uh didn't have that right you know not to have a jury that oh yes i would feel uh you're right that my civil rights had been violated but i meant for some when both parties agreed that yes we're going to have a judge here we're not going to have a jury you know let's get it over with sort of like car accidents you know yeah right right uh_huh right giving a different sentence uh_huh the take right well i i we're at liberty to to talk and and [meander] as long as it's all on the same theme uh_huh right right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right right yeah well you can tell i haven't been in too many juries judges chambers or anything like that well i was called once when i was nineteen and uh but i was doing so many other things that they took [pity] on me and i was doing school and things like they they let me out i've never had to it since and that was almost twenty years ago uh_huh uh_huh huh how interesting uh_huh uh_huh right i i kind of agree with that because i think in some cases uh the jury may not even have the information about other crimes the person has committed uh i i think that in some cases that's considered to prejudice the current case so a judge you're right should have the whole [dossier] of the criminal there and if they're judged guilty would probably be in a better position to give an appropriate uh sentencing uh_huh in other words not not there would be some types of crimes for which you're not guaranteed a jury trial i i i don't there's a point on which we don't agree i would tend myself to say that we should continue to guarantee a jury trial for criminal cases anytime a anytime a one of the parties wants one and i usually it is the defendant i guess that wants to have the jury hear the case so i'm not out for streamlining things to the point where we uh take that you know that would require a change in the bill of rights i believe and so oh oh okay right well i think that's all ready possible i think that you can waive the right to a jury trial uh yeah so i agree that that should be encouraged people should know that that's an option just in case they feel they have to have a jury trial but i think most lawyers do a pretty good job of making that evident to to clients unless they feel they can you know [tweak] a jury into giving a different sentence or possibly if it's a civil case giving higher uh you know awards of money or something since usually the lawyers get a percentage of the the award yeah and i suspect it in cases like i guess we were supposed to be doing criminals though rather than civil is that right yeah well uh in the case of civil uh things i think maybe the the use of the jury is very often to the lawyer's advantage and i think that may be where jury use is overdone i mean there are cases where they could be settled maybe out of court a little more efficiently but the lawyers are really uh it's to their advantage to play to as big an audience as possible so uh i was wondering too if they were thinking of about the judge making awards in civil cases not just sentencing in in a criminal cases uh i'm not so sure i'm in favor of that but i am in favor of it for criminal cases so there's a difference of my view there for those two have you ever had to serve jury duty uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh it isn't sort of amazed me they first caught up with me for the first time in uh that would have been about uh twenty years too uh uh just last year and uh the case i heard was a criminal case and it seemed it really trivial it involved two bicycles we didn't do the sentencing the judge did so we we [rendered] a verdict and then the judge was the one to do the sentencing and that was here in wisconsin so i i don't know if that varies from state to state or if it i'm [nevin] from [sunnyvale] california pretty good yep okay well i definitely think like decisions have to be unanimous it's probably the safest thing yep no and even like you know two thirds majority i mean it's yep yeah yeah like gives them a little too much power plus you know you may be you know doing you know a a guilty verdict but it may not be you know it may be for technical reasons yeah i know yeah it there would be much more of that no but i i tend to follow it just to just to know what's going on yeah i do too so no yeah i know a little more about civil cases when than criminal cases which is it's more in how you present it versus you know who's right yep i know when i was a couple of years ago involved in some [pretrial] stuff and like you know you go say okay we can't bring up this point because then they're going to you know the opposition will say this this and this and yep and it's like the the truth isn't really important anymore it's yep that sounds like a little abuse of our system but yeah but it's for the more general people don't want to take responsibility you know it's yep uh yeah well originally from chicago but i really uh_huh yeah yeah i haven't either other than yeah i'm not really sure how we could change the legal system to make it better i know yeah and if it's criminal cases we you can't put them in jail because there's no room left yeah huh not at all hi this is jim [bliss] from minneapolis minnesota how you doing good uh i guess the topic is trial by jury and how we should change that or how we would change it uh i'm ready whenever you are so uh what are your what are your thoughts on the subject there yeah yeah i think that's probably a good thing yeah i mean it's to easy to get a [quorum] and simple majority won't do yeah that's yeah [quorums] are to easy to get and there's always that that chance that one or two people could be playing devil's advocate for a good reason you know so it's it's definitely but uh i don't know i could i couldn't believe they suggested that judges should be doing the sentencing yeah i i know of a couple of people at least who would be arguing with that or arguing against that pretty [vehemently] but uh yeah about the only good thing i would say about that is it that it would uh hurry the process up a bit but i mean even now we've got i know we've got plenty of cases out there where people have been wrongly convicted and things like that and that's what the trial by jury i mean jeez if if the judge was doing it himself without any checks and balances whose to say yeah no doubt are you involved in the legal system at all okay yeah yeah i've got some friends that are lawyers so one of them just got his law degree but uh to tell you the truth i'm not real familiar with uh the system of jurisprudence the way it is right now i really haven't studied it in depth yeah i'm sure of it because a lot of those things it's all it's in it's largely a matter of viewpoint and who can argue their case better uh it's kind of weird i don't know you i always think about watching the people's court or something and how weird those cases get it's just yeah uh_huh and it's like boy the stuff that they can twist around is it's pretty amazing yeah it's not and then you get people who who bring in cases just because they want to bring them up just because like this this friend of mine's pretty obnoxious and he really gets into suing people and so he'll he'll sue just about anybody just for the chance to get into court and argue his case you know it's like it is it's it's wasting people's time and the taxpayers' money and everything else but uh yeah and and most of the time they're looking to place blame uh and stuff see you're from california is that right oh okay i was just thinking i wonder i wonder how how the civil system or the court system must differ between there and say where i am in minneapolis from what i understand it's all pretty the same except when you get to louisiana and louisiana is completely different cause it was based on the what is it it's based on common law and the rest of the country is not or something like that pretty strange but uh fortunately i never have had to go in even even for jury duty but uh that friend of mine's telling me that i might have to go in for uh as a witness he may [subpoena] me so we'll see what happens but uh yeah it's there are too many big problems you know there's there's such a backlog of court cases right now you know to try to get them all in in a good time and we already have too many lawyers as it is yeah yeah that's true and in fact they're even letting some go i i i'm originally from florida and it's like it seems like every year they let out more and more just cause they don't have room for them you know that's not a that's not a good solution either i'm not real sure what the you want to go first okay uh one of the things they talked about was uh did we what do we think about a judge making the decision and i really don't agree with that i think that the trial by jury is better uh you know than having a unanimous decision rather than to have one person be responsible i don't think that they could be objective in every case every time you know what i mean yeah right that's it well i i feel the other thing too uh they were saying uh you know what new ways could could it you you know change the system i i really think that uh we spend a lot of time uh going through appeal after appeal after appeal after appeal i mean if you go to a trial by jury and especially if a person has confessed if they have been caught you know point blank in the crime there's uh no question it's beyond a reasonable doubt you know all these things i mean you know we've gone through this over and over again and it can go on for ten twenty years i i think this is a little ridiculous i think the only people who benefit from that are the lawyers i i'm serious and i think that the lawyers have caused a lot of the problems that exist in the in the criminal system today with plea bargaining you know if someone is ill well well i know that's what i'm saying but i think a lot of all of the whole criminal system is messed up in in that regard i mean you know people who commit uh crimes that they i don't know how it works exactly but you know they get lesser sentences and i understand that the jails are full of people you know uh and that they have to do something but i think that the reason they are full is because they know that they can get away with it you know what i'm saying that we don't have uh well a lot of states don't have capital punishment and uh i i think they should i and i think if a person is guilty of taking someone's life and like you say it's it's there's no doubt whatsoever like drunk drivers that kill people and uh you know all they they're caught dead to rights i i just think that that's they've they've taken a life and if they should pay for it with their life yeah uh_huh oh really it uh yeah i know that that uh_huh and i don't know uh what would you do to change it to make it better oh yeah i i i don't agree with that at all imagine the guilt that person would have i mean burned out there's there's no possible way that you could uh you know feel good about yourself if you had to do something like that day after day no not really well do you think people should have a trial is they're caught dead to rights like i mean [supposing] i come up to you and i just point blank kill you in other words you're saying that you have to find out whether it's premeditated or what the circumstances were yeah yeah well i i no you can start uh_huh right right there's there this topic is kind of [mute] uh there there's no way we we couldn't survive in a in a juror in a trial system without a jury uh one man can never be one man one woman can never be [objectionable] in every case uh every person has their opinions and that's why jury selection is often very difficult uh right right they shouldn't allow an appeal yep uh_huh oh that's right i work for a law firm right well plea plea bargaining is a different story plea bargaining is something completely different that that actually prevents trials or at least [speeds] them up right right huh right we do right right when you're saying as far as the appeal uh procedure was concerned we just have the case i'm i'm sure you've probably heard of marion berry uh his last appeal was was denied two days before his sentence was up so i mean his appeal was denied and two days later he got out of jail for cocaine possession but uh that was absurd there is never there was no reason the appeal process should have dragged on that long for a six month sentence well uh the the only i can i you know the appeal procedure is the only thing i can possibly think of uh like i said as far as removing of the jury and having the judge sentence that's absurd there's no way that could work uh but oh exactly exactly right no one would want the job uh and you know like i said the you know everyone has their opinions about every case oh yeah i i feel that everyone is everyone is uh entitled to a trial by jury that that that right well i mean were there witnesses right right that you can't you can't remove the jury regardless of the case i mean you could have fifty people in audience watching a murder take place and you you'd still there's still mitigating circumstances uh with regard to uh to jury trials i you know i i really feel as though uh jury trials are are uh whatever system has been been used historically in particular jurisdiction you know is really the the only kinds of things that you can use because the the jurisprudence is you know based on on uh you know on accumulated body of law and if if you have a situation where you change that body of law then all of sudden they they start they could start going back and digging up all these cases that uh that would be handled differently were they judged by today's standards so i i really don't think it they can really do much of anything to change it what do you think well won't well maybe they used a little bit too much force with stuff like that but then then you know the defense lawyer addressed each and every one of those blows apparently and you know the other two guys sat in the car and they didn't get beat up you know rodney got beat up because he he you know he you know he involved himself in some sub self [destructive] behavior and uh uh just like the burning and [looting] is self [destruct] everybody says well this is the nineties and they're going to rebuild and it'll be even better hey what do you think you know some some black guy with capital is going to come in and invest in that area with everybody with that mind set they they're they're going to that whole area is going to be turned into residential ghetto you know and you might even be able to to use it for for a bombing test site you know well everybody is saying this is going to be a new era and we're going to [reexamine] this thing hey the the average person is going to take a look at that and say [suspicions] [confirmed] they're a bunch of animals you know how can you really deal with an environment where you're going to lose everything forty deaths i mean there are forty people that are dead as a result of that and i'm just trying to determine you know how you address how you weigh you know rodney getting getting the hell beat out of him against you know forty deaths yeah and there's no other i'm not exactly sure uh what the circumstances surrounding the deaths and i'm very upset that the news media has not identified those deaths and and pursued it you know because i'm interested in the circumstances surrounding this thing is it a [looter] that got shot by a store owner i you know no tears yeah and and so i but i i suspect a number of them you know you you see film of people being pulled out of a car and shot you know in in the street and and my reaction is i would have run over fifty people before rather than stop and uh and there there would have been just nothing but [carnage] after after after if i'd been at the wheel no one would have stopped me right i'm inside the beltway you know how capital gang they always say well inside the beltway they think thus and so and i say well wait a minute i'm inside the beltway and i don't think like that i'm a government employee i'm with the f b i yes and so uh uh and and the reason i'm doing this whole thing is because rick whose another government employee wanted a segments of my speech that that were done a year ago and he wanted another collection a year later and so this is my seventh call a year ago i did eleven calls and so that's that's why uh uh that's why i'm religiously getting on the phone because i have a unique you know i have a unique situation here in that if i don't participate uh i i don't think so possibly in the jury selection would be the only just for example what we're seeing in california i guess it makes you wonder uh had the jury been a different group of people what would have happened with that outcome uh and and the problems that that has come that has come from this decision that that jury came to after all of us witnessed what we did with the video tape beating uh just makes you wonder i guess whether or not they uh_huh that's that's bad uh_huh no it uh_huh uh_huh oh yes that's right they're only going to suffer they're only going to suffer they they've defeated themselves with with their [looting] and violence uh i understand why they were upset by the verdict just because even those of us that aren't black or uh don't live there or whatever we all saw the same thing on the on the tape and uh i know yeah it's really ridiculous against forty other people being those deaths uh_huh or just a an innocent bystander or somebody got actually beat to death or what um or or beaten um right that's that's exactly how i feel too i wouldn't have uh they wouldn't have stopped my car for any anything had i seen them coming but i was just wondering since you're you're in you're back east uh and a little closer to the the bigger cities than we are in idaho here oh uh_huh oh in what uh section of the government do you work oh oh that's interesting uh_huh oh oh i see right yes i i have my primary experience has been as uh an expert witness and uh and two murder trials and uh in each case it was a retrial and the sentencing was the same each time which happened in the state of florida happened to be uh death but in terms of i well the question also was in terms of mandatory sentencing or mandatory sentences for uh certain crimes i think depending on uh in certain crimes i think that they should be mandatory for example uh armed robbery uh if we have convicted i think uh plea bargaining should should be uh a thing of the past uh certain types of uh you know homicides yes in in homicides related to other than i guess what are called uh crimes of passion uh for example you know as you as you very well know the great majority of homicides are people [murdering] other people they know mostly people they know so in those instances uh that's uh i think that there is some leeway there what is interesting in this regard is the recent case in new hampshire the schoolteacher and the life sentence uh she received yes and it came very quickly surprisingly uh i guess it was uh they brought in their verdict and sentence at the same time did they not uh_huh um well in answer to you know answer to the question though i still think the sentencing should be in the hands of the jury even though as you say there are some uh people who are reluctant i do not think again in the matter of uh uh that that judges should have the uh the upper hand or the only hand in that sense because i think if but i i've never served on a jury you probably know this better than i uh if the jury does their job and of course there are those on the jury that do not i'm sure but and ask the questions and uh correctly and then one of things i've always wondered is uh the ability of jurors to to ask questions well that that that and that's an interesting point i've never i you know i've thought about it i've asked myself you know this question before i've never taken the time to do the research to answer my own question but i know that at least during the deliberations of the jury they can ask questions uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh may i ask you a question why does your voice sound familiar to me that's that's probably why it does i work for g t e your your voice when uh i didn't recognize the name but the more i listen to your voice i uh i know i have heard it somewhere and i was trying to place where i had heard it that's very interesting but now back to the topic but uh because i work for uh hal [ammon] yes i am on staff to hal [ammon] to g t e so i i will and which will probably be uh monday as a matter of fact okay bill i recognize the name now i and uh my name is jim moscow and uh so i've heard the name and uh well back to the topic i guess we've talked long enough bill but uh all right well thank you for calling and nice and have a good weekend yes well explain this to me why do we have sometimes a petit jury isn't it and a grand jury all right now when do we have them just in big criminal cases when you have both like i was called for a murder trial a few weeks ago and they had had already had one trial and determined that there was enough evidence to go on and have the second one so is it just murder or what where you have both both juries no they didn't they had had one and decided that there was enough evidence and then say huh_uh i don't know and like you said maybe it was just with the judge i don't know yeah yeah well i'll tell you something i think ought to be changed well they sent out eight hundred summons and about four hundred people showed up right all the others had gotten out of it then the judge went on for several hours explaining to us how the law goes and some of the [particulars] of the case and then all these people got to stand up if they wanted to get out of it well that was about half of us right stood up and tried to get out well i mean that took like an hour and a half at least for him to listen to everybody and then he he didn't let hardly let anybody off you know it was just like we wasted a prayer i didn't go up there because i knew i didn't have a leg to stand on yeah i've been getting out of it the last few years because i was going to school you know you can plead that and i had small children but then i found out that you're not supposed to plead that unless you're the care taker you know and i'm not because i have to go to work and then they were going to daycare so i shouldn't have been doing that but anyway punishment uh_huh well i i believed in it in some you know cases but i would feel that it would be very hard for me to impose it on somebody i think well okay oh uh_huh uh_huh well this guy that was sitting in in front of me said that he was a private investigator and he had been [tailing] the woman that was murdered and as far as he was concerned that this guy was [guiltier] than hell now listen to what he supposedly did he supposedly stuffed paper [toweling] up this women's [nostrils] and down her throat and strangled her now how this happened was this rich little [socialite] in plano down here in texas decided that she was going to bump off her husband's girlfriend because he didn't want to divorce her and she wanted to get a stab at more money right by knocking him off so she hired four guys to do it and this guy actually did it now she uh in the mean time took off with one of her lawyers who was also under [inditement] for attempting drugs among them yeah among them cocaine right so they split anyway they got the lawyer and he's now going to side with the [cate] with the state so that he'll get a lesser sentence yeah pretty interesting huh well now they're going to call people up after they gone through this five page thing that we had to fill out and decide to call in people two to three at a time they're going to do this let's see all through april and may and the trials not supposed to start until june well that's the beginning of my vacation i don't want to be picked i can't i'm a teacher it's then or never anyway i'm not going to be [summoned] i mean out of four hundred i'm not going to be one of the twelve especially see i put that down that that guy had told me that but then i've heard that won't make a difference either yeah uh_huh well what do you think can we change the system but something ought to be done because if you have money you get a good lawyer and you get off but if you've got a good lawyer he's going to be able to get more [persuasive] evidence than a poor lawyer would to present and a lawyer that's you know chosen by the state that really doesn't even want to do it right i have never served on a jury i have been called like only twice in my life and and uh at the time i've been a legal assistant and nobody wanted me on their jury so i've been excused but uh i uh i don't know i look at the people who get excused and and it's supposed to be a jury of your peers and i'm not sure it always is uh and it is a it is a huge burden to put on people who don't know the law uh you know that especially in criminal cases when you're deciding someone's life i i'm not so sure that you know that that's something that is that you can really really have the knowledge to do as as just a lay person well a lot of states i mean they do set the penalty you know the the judgment at once it's [rendered] guilty you know the sentencing is done by the judge in in a lot of the cases uh some cases it is up to the jury but you know you're told if you find them guilty then this is the choices that they have to make it's either life or death you know but uh i i don't know it just it it seems like in some of these cases i don't know that you could really have an impartial juror because of the media given and i don't you know in today's age of television the coverage like it is there's no way that you can be [shielded] from it uh_huh well i know when i've been you know called to jury duty they had to stand up there or stay you know until they dismissed me and i look at the people and the reasons that they get dismissed uh before they even you know the selection is is even started is is your profession you know nine tenths of them are your professional people who are out in the world you know the rest are retired or they're housewives or uh you yes we're going there well uh this is a good topic for me because i just got off a jury on friday yeah have you ever been on a jury before uh_huh really what kind of a trial was it uh_huh oh really what what did you think was wrong with it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah wow yeah uh_huh huh that's interesting really wow that's well i've been on two actually and the first one i was on was also a civil trial but it was real apparent to all of us what what the situation was so it was real simple uh and we only [deliberated] as maybe three hours and we weren't really deliberating we were reading through the whole charge and and trying to understand what the judge had written but i mean beyond that we really didn't have much debate uh but the one i just got off of was capital murder trial and uh that uh uh i don't know if it's fortunate or not i was an alternate so i sat through five days of the trial and it's sort of like seeing five days of a movie and missing the last couple minutes because i don't know what happened yet and that's right that's right and they also they can't report it on t v or anything so i don't know you know until it's completely over i won't know what happened so it was it was really interesting and and i i i was leaning one way or another but i really needed to look at some of the evidence to make sure but it it you know it was fairly clear and i talked to the judge afterwards and you know and knowing what i know know now which the other jurors didn't know i'd definitely convict the guy because he was he was found involved in two more of them and he was caught on the scene at the third one so it was was fairly obvious you know that he had done it and eventually i'm sure one of the in one of the three trials they'll probably convict him if not the first but uh this is the first one they tried him on yeah so it was it was uh i'm in north dallas where are you oh okay well this happened in plano you'll be thrilled to know excuse me uh well the one i was involved was at uh warehouse [beverage] it's on uh i think it's fifteenth and avenue k and the one he was later involved in was the texaco one and i don't know what the third one was but the texaco one yeah on friday but that was just the guilt and innocence phase and i don't know you know then there is the punishment phase after that uh well all they can decide they don't really say we want capital punishment or we want something or life imprisonment you know if they find him guilty those are the two options for capital murder but they had six six choices what he was guilty of uh but all they can do there is three questions that they have to evaluate one being could he be a future threat to people well he's already proven that but you know a couple questions like that and your answers are yes or no and if you get i think it is three [yeses] it's capital punishment or you can decide if there is mitigating fact or something to that effect but it's not like you go and say you know we we recommend this punishment you just say we answered these questions this way and it leads you to the punishment yeah so it was really interesting and i wish i knew if they were still in deliberations but i don't friday they went into deliberations but i don't know if the press can report at the end of the the guilt and innocence phase or if they have to wait until the whole punishment thing is over because that will take another couple weeks so but it was it was really interesting well i it i learned a lot what i didn't enjoy was not being able to plan anything in my whole life because i mean as far as i knew this could take months some of them do and that was the thing you know with christmas and everything and i couldn't make reservations to go home but uh you know now that it's over it was really interesting uh uh we usually do it uh the jury comes to the verdict and then the judge does the sentencing um i think the jury can recommend something but in you know in some cases like uh murder in the first degree but i the ultimate decision is the is the decision of the judge once the verdict has been reached the jury is dismissed and there's a separate hearing for sentencing uh_huh well i think it's curious that the sentences that are handed down are usually not served i think that's a big problem with the criminal justice system but yeah well i i understand the jail overcrowding issue but i i think in in that case as in so many all they ever do is discuss the problems and they never do anything to solve them i think that's why this country's in the shape it's in now but i i don't really believe that a jury should do the sentencing i think yeah i just don't believe that jurors have the the knowledge the scope and the knowledge to to handle the sentencing whereas the judge does that's that's certainly true i just i i don't agree with juries doing the sentencing but i do agree with trial trial by jury i just think that's critical right well i think that can that makes sense too because it looks like it would be awfully hard to pick jurors that could follow something as in a civil case i mean that was really complicated and had a lot of technical issues in it but they there are a lot of criminal cases a lot of murder cases that that are really very complicated and they seem to be able to get through those [blanche] taylor moore yeah yeah we have you have you heard about the trial that we've got going on now with the uh the man that's accused of molesting twenty three children at a day care center well that's the uh that's probably one of the biggest child molestation cases in the in the nation's history this man and his wife it's a trial by jury but it's really going real [ragged] i don't understand how they're doing it and they he had a hundred and seventy eight charges against him and his [attorney's] managed to get it reduced to ninety three but the jury in that case they've just absolutely sequestered them nobody even unless you were paying attention at the very beginning you don't even know their names and they uh from what i've been reading in the paper they are the ones who are going to do the sentencing in that [arsenic] is uh this this [blanche] taylor moore woman was very clever she did it very slowly over a large period a long period of time at least it was it was done very slowly over a large period of time and since the jury has found her guilty now the judge did the sentencing in that and she's appealing but i'm assuming that she's guilty because i really believe in the jury system yeah hopefully they're smart enough not to be [hoodwinked] by legal [ploys] by lawyers and [prosecutors] do you have any thoughts on uh uh uh our jury system oh really uh_huh what parts of the of the system would you change uh_huh right right sure yeah and right does the system not provide the system provides uh compensation for wages but they don't provide compensation for like say day care they don't oh that surprises me i didn't know that sure yeah uh_huh uh_huh right sure yeah huh that's curious i i i never even thought of that before i i did notice that uh most of the time the juries are males uh but i'd never thought of any reasons why or why not uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh where where did you begin uh_huh a okay all right right yeah right right yeah um uh what are your thoughts on uh leaving the sentencing to the judge yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right right that's curious uh i'm i'm currently uh i have been asked to appear in court in denver county court uh for a a traffic violation which i kept uh i i tried to uh plead not guilty by mail and uh for some reason i really [hacked] the judge off and so now i'm supposed to appear in court and and so i've been thinking a lot lately about first of all what i'm going to do i don't know if i'm going to just go ahead and pay the ticket pay the plea bargain or fight this thing to the end i i wasn't guilty but it's almost impossible uh you know what what really aggravates me is it's impossible i'm in graduate school and they set the court date on a wednesday so to go from dallas to denver uh to fight a ticket on a wednesday would mean i'd have to leave either monday or tuesday and be back yeah and i go to school that misses a full week of graduate school well you just can't survive uh missing a full week of graduate school uh and uh it's it's completely absurd first of all that they that i got the ticket and it's completely absurd that i should appear on a wednesday at court you know i could appear at spring break uh you know theoretically and i wouldn't mind doing that but so i'm trying to figure out what uh what action i'm going to take if any or if i'm just going to go ahead and forget it all and just pay it to ease my uh ease my pain but but you know there's there's a point uh i guess you and i being younger uh tend to be a little more idealistic uh uh but but i see uh i i definitely see an instance now where maybe i won't be as idealistic where i would be willing to give up my ideals for a little peace of mind and tim and i were thinking about trials by jury and uh i i guess i thought more highly of it until the uh recent william kennedy smith case where they were telling about how they used uh what they consider scientific methods to choose the right jurors to get the right results you know for their chance what do you think about that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yes right right uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh right right yes well i know uh fairly recently when that uh one of the court sessions for john wylie price i remember that uh and though i had to agree with some of the things he did i i [disagreed] with that particular case because he uh they made they got a lot of mileage out that they that that was not a jury of his peers that uh they decided you know that he was found guilty and then uh then they made note that none of the the jurors were uh black or african american and and it seemed to me that if he wanted if they wanted that uh i mean they chose them deliberately i mean because of all of the publicity that he got from that and i really thought well you know one of their points that they made on purpose was they chose people who they felt were not their own peers in order to make the case against him weaker and it just seemed like it wasn't very fair that that you know that was something that should have been said at the very beginning and not cost the tax payers the money for that court uh_huh uh_huh right right it's lee uh and you are bob uh i have been uh thinking about the topic and i think it's going to be interesting to see what happens at the criminal justice system's response to the tremendous i guess over load in uh cases they say that these drug cases alone are [swamping] the criminal justice system i have heard that i have heard that uh i have even heard that the other end of the [continuum] are some judges who are arguing that uh because the system is so over loaded that they recommend [decriminalizing] some of these things because the courts can't possibly handle all the cases i think it is going to be very interesting because it's uh it's really become a major expense for us and society yeah well you know a the other thing i think is interesting about this is that they have been experimenting for years in the civil justice system with alternatives to courts where you can rent a judge and i am wondering whether we will eventually go to renting a jury uh and finding ways to uh like people's court to try some of these cases i think uh the expense is is enormous have you ever sat on a jury yeah well it's uh it's it's a major undertaking i mean people have to give up their work and a lot of their time and uh i i just think it can [overwhelm] us pretty easily when i hear what people are saying about just the sheer volume of the cases well there are a lot of people that think that that works pretty well and it will be interesting to see what uh what we go to because it's uh it's push come to shove as far as i can tell in terms of the sheer volume of the stuff yeah oh yeah it is well known and it is consistent with what you are talking about in terms of the uh approach to uh the uh you know the people once they get through the trial then i guess you know were are going to see more and more of this kind of thing i think the jury trial system uh it is going to be interesting to see whether or not it becomes more [streamlined] uh because of the cost involved in that the uh the topic is an interesting one because of the uh uh price you pay for freedom i guess you know uh the requirement that that people be given a trial and and then then the issue becomes what do you do once somebody is found guilty i suppose yeah yeah yeah have you uh uh in dallas uh see in the newspapers ever print the names of people who were uh uh picked up as johns uh in under cover operations they they have done that in san francisco and uh you know it's going to be interesting to see how all these things change as we look at the cost of it because uh that the well there was a guy who won in pennsylvania uh this senator harris [wafford] who said you know and in this country everybody is entitled to a lawyer but not everybody is entitled to a doctor and we must spend i don't know what the figure is but jury trials are just so uh no i've never been called for jury duty which i am kind of glad for i think it would be kind of nice to actually experience it uh but no i haven't i have never how about you really uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh right so uh when you did it does the jury actually uh determine the sentence uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well it seems like the whole process i don't know a whole lot about it but one thing that i would think is is when the attorneys actually go through the selection of the jury process it seems to be me that that would that kind of [biases] i mean they have control over well we want this person and we don't want this person here it seems like that could kind of bias the case toward you know their client right yeah right which an equal balance i i don't know the the whole process i it's a good process i mean it i our country is based on trial by jury yeah i really do also i mean the [forefathers] who whoever came up with the idea they were surely thinking a lot harder than i can think but uh it just it seems to work pretty well in most cases then in some cases like the [manuel] noriega i don't see how they could have found anybody in the country who didn't have some opinion on that case yeah it is that's that's one of the things that's the reason why they will often change menus of court and stuff like that to get a jury which doesn't have any any uh bias towards the case and it it uh just seems like sometimes the people they are going to end up with have got to be just your basic you know [shmucks] yeah it's to not know anything about you know or not have formed any type of opinion about some of these large major cases that we have been having lately it just seems like those i guess that's the one thing that i think is wrong with it i don't know what you do about it but those people are are not going to be i mean if they haven't formed some sort of an opinion i uh i don't know what i am trying to say really but it just that's right be because having not formed an opinion to me says something about the people themselves well either they sit in a little hole you know for all their life and don't hear about anything going on in the world and i don't see how somebody like that is going to be a very good uh uh i don't form be able to form a very coherent opinion about it yeah right and that seems to be the opposite of what they they actually have to look for so uh_huh right uh_huh right uh_huh right and uh as far as the i don't think that the uh something should be left up to the judge because that just that gives too much power to any one person right yeah that just uh i mean for for one person i am sure they have studied the law and have been involved in it for so long but still i think it's this is suppose to be a system of government by the people even though that's kind of a joke but it still seems that the people ought to be the ones the crime was against society it ought to be society as a whole you know as represented by the jury to uh trial by jury and whether it works or not is yeah i expect it's uh about as good as one can expect uh i suppose you get an [illogical] verdict now and then but uh the the jurors you mean the people yeah i just got called to my first jury duty uh i never been on a jury how about you and were did you did you show up and do it or whatever it was my brother was on some real complex business case where they were uh asked to decide the exact amount to the penny of fraud in some credit card case you know for well they went over it in the trial but they didn't give the stuff to the jury afterward it was really bizarre uh yeah but they have to ask for it and then the the [bailiff] brings it and they can look at it then the [bailiff] takes it away again it's not like they can just spread it out in their jury room and then you know get out a bunch of calculators and pocket computers and add it all up it was yeah right would you give me an i i i d m s system or something like that dear judge you know it was it was a very peculiar case i guess that one was didn't work very well uh uh but no no i don't think so either uh yeah yeah uh i guess i guess nothing else but uh well for sentencing i don't know does that make any sense i mean depends on i i don't know what the offense is i guess that's why we have juries just to take each case on a case by case basis and that's fine anyway uh yeah or an [organizational] problem you know where where you know the you know it's possible to imagine a corrupt judicial system where you know all the judges are are part of the system i guess that happened in chicago once so yeah yeah i guess they do anyway i guess the only trouble with the jury system i see is it's really darned expensive and and you know time consuming and you know and and all these systems of where you can like ask the jury ask each juror what they think about something then kick them out you know i guess they get manipulated a little yeah yeah it's true beats me uh yeah in massachusetts it's the judicial system they're buildings are all falling down well i guess that gets them a sample good night sir take is so uh what do you think about uh uh how trials in america are right now with the jury of nine or twelve do you think that's fair um uh_huh uh_huh so you think that uh majority majority rule is good enough for uh deciding on a verdict of guilty or not guilty uh_huh uh something that's kind of interesting is uh i lived in europe for a while and uh in germany they don't have trial by jury they have trial uh by usually three judges and uh i've discussed with people and it's it's kind of interesting uh kind of an interesting concept it sounds strange at first not to have a jury by your peers but then uh the argument for it is that uh you know people off the street really don't know much about law and yeah and and then uh i guess the argument is that they're easily influenced you know bye bye tricks by lawyers you know who do do more psychology than trying to teach them what's right and wrong or the law they they use uh you know techniques to sway their feelings whereas professional judges uh you know know the ins and outs of the system better uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh no i couldn't right yeah definitely i don't know i think the that the uh alternative is something interesting to look into uh if you know instead of instead of juries just bye bye uh uh peers juries by professional judges uh but i guess uh that would take a major constitutional change here right uh i mean i see also how they were you know when they made the constitution they were uh afraid of that kind of thing that you know that uh if the government has all the power to decide who's guilty and who's not they wanted to make checks and balances against that right exactly right yeah it's uh does carry an [implicit] danger with it that way right that's true too you know how does how does that work right exactly i think it was i think it was more of a danger you know in the seventeen hundreds when uh really you know like the king of england could decide who's guilty and who's not guilty i could see how they would want to protect against that so i think the danger is less today be less of a risk of you know uh corrupt judges and the government forcing uh you know someone to to be guilty for uh even though they're not or vice versa you know uh but it's definitely something that would have to be watched very closely if they decided to do it way exactly uh_huh right right and and uh you know what what does jury duty mean not not many people really uh right that that's a really interesting issue too and uh you know most people the another interesting thing is you know most people try and get out of jury duty right so the people that actually become juries are not really just a random sampling of the kay uh i i'm not to familiar with the topic because uh i haven't been in that situation i guess but i watch a lot of the documentaries on the t v and that kind of thing it always kind of interests me and oh okay about uh penalty and trials and that kind of thing if it should be left up to the judge or trial by jury or to the people that kind of thing yeah uh and i think the topic was like uh should it be that way or should it be uh up to the people or uh i think that yeah i would assume it would take more of the taxpayers' money for it to go through trial by jury but sometimes it seems like it comes out the outcome comes out the best in in most cases it comes out the best when it's trial by jury but i i could see where it could take up a lot of uh the [community's] money that way rather than just leaving it up to the judge i'd say for the most part not you know it it's it's hard it really is but i yeah you can you can but it seems like when when it's trial by jury it's a little more detailed it's a little more slower and uh i don't know you it's just it it requires a little bit more thinking uh requires a little more research that kind of thing that's why i say it probably in most cases i would think it would the outcome would be better in most cases not always but uh uh_huh oh really huh right right yeah i heard about that yeah yeah that's that's real scary you know i i i just think things are there's a lot of changes right now that are going on and it's getting to be where it's really it's just real scary uh i don't know but then again i guess it takes up a lot of your taxpayers' money and time and uh i don't know it's just it's i don't know that's a hard one you know yeah uh_huh do you feel that that's yeah right i they had a a documentary on that on uh do you ever watch forty eight hours they had something very similar to that and uh and that's real scary too you know i mean to really think about it really is hello hi nicole i'm mary ann uh i'm in mckinney i see okay no not at all and yet long enough if we were calling back and forth it would be a toll call uh if if i understood correctly it was what what changes we might uh suggest or whatever for the justice system is that perhaps above my head sentencing and would all the jurors have to agree on okay that would be a good place to start all right have you ever served on a on a jury trial was it was it a criminal okay oh oh oh my huh uh it really does sound like it was a self defense kind of thing no i served on on both a criminal and a a civil uh jury and in my criminal trial he [pled] guilty uh to the first to to kidnapping and so we went through the second part of the trial because in texas there are two parts first of all to find if they are guilty or innocent he already said he was guilty so then then we go through the trial to determine what uh punishment should be meted out so we still went through three days of of uh testimony and so forth and and witnesses saying oh he's an [upstanding] young man just weak and was led by another guy and so forth so we were the ones that that came up with the sentence and the judge gave us some parameters and said you know according to the law it can be no more or no uh no more or less than and he gave the the number of years and he said it would also include a a possible fine up to ten thousand dollars and and we had that that took us six hours just to agree on what we thought was appropriate for this young man uh it wasn't the easiest thing i've done but no nor was it hard to us the young man had kind of taken care of it when he said he was guilty so we did not we didn't have to struggle at all with that it was now what's fitting and and we'd gone through all that so i i don't know i thought that was easier than than trying to decide his guilt or innocence yeah i i probably would not mind letting the judge do the sentencing as long as the jury of of peers were [determining] guilt or innocence for one thing we didn't know that the others involved in the trial had uh i i mean had i mean involved in the crime had already come up for trial we couldn't know what had come of their uh sentencing and and we couldn't know that until after we had made our findings so it turned out we had done about what the other juror had done and so it you know we felt a little better but i think if that could be in the hands of of someone who knew the law and could be [privy] to that information seems like it would be fairer since it's state uh laws yes it now it may be on some federal laws you know it it this was a we were dealing with uh with the state laws not necessarily not necessarily federal that may have something to do with it and it may be too that if it were um a capital crime uh capital murder or something like that that it may be different yes it would i had a friend who sat in on a or who was on a jury recently for a murder but the man was not being tried for capital murder and so that was not even an option uh the death penalty was not an option so in in this case everyone on the jury felt that it should have been and they were very convinced the man had no redeeming uh qualities and couldn't be rehabilitated and they were they were really upset that he was getting off so lightly for the heinous crime that he had been involved in i'm real glad that i don't that i don't work in that kind of a a back background i'll take my job any day right i don't work with perfect people anymore than anybody else does but i can handle the [imperfections] that i'm around i i could not work in the in the uh criminal area for very long as a as a police officer as uh someone who works for the court system or whatever so anyway back to the original question i really think i if if we were still allowed to choose guilt or innocence i'd be more than happy to let the judge determine the uh the sentencing um i do too oh i bet i see okay big deal oh you make eight dollars now in dallas county huh it's only seven fifty here in collin it probably is which is about what it costs you to park your car right oh do they oh okay yeah oh i can see how that would be difficult oh that would be tough what about the other suggestion that they had that uh about the all the jury agreeing on the sentencing do you feel that that is a requirement that there should be agreement i think i do too uh_huh it's it's it's so easy anyway for everybody to just kind of become a yes man and get carried up along with the emotions and so if there's somebody who's strong enough to stand up with a specific doubt i would a whole lot rather go through the expense of another trial because of a hung jury than that a justice not be meted out correctly so i agree with boy it's really easy to discuss something when you both agree well it took us six hours to reach agreement yeah yeah apparently you all were successful in uh convincing him at last really no i have not have you i am still here good grief yeah impartial well well the you know on the suggested topic was to talk about whether uh verdicts had to be unanimous decision and i thought that was that really got me to thinking you know and i think we really need them to be unanimous i would hate to think that that you know if if i was charged with something that i was not guilty of that i got convicted on a you know seven to five verdict you know yeah they are i think i think they need to stay that way yeah right it's absolutely up to the jury i know it but then if if you give him too much power you know who knows i mean we got crooked cops i know it so no i did not is it i have been trying to and it's just never there yes that that kind of stuff ought to [scar] us to death i mean well i know that he goes for the murder right i just that would be awful good grief that's that's what bothers me the technicalities and that's where i think the judge maybe ought to have more say you know because i can not believe that that we can let the people off that we are letting off because you did not tell them this one statement before you took them to jail you know yeah it's just i am sorry he was doing it i mean [entrapment] i am sorry you know no there's no blacks and whites it it's shades of [grey] and i think i am like you i think it would be really fascinating i do not think i would want to be on a highly publicized case though i do not think i would like that at all i am sure well you know they had uh a big drug trial in [roanoke] virginia a couple of years ago and my my husband was called for jury duty on that and he said that they had guards armed you know guards posted everywhere and he was really glad that he was not called because he said that this would have been too much so i would not like that at all yeah a real simple [uncomplicated] thing yeah we could start out small and work our way up so absolutely the the [nuances] that yeah you know it would be split one way or another and and that ends in a mistrial so they have to [retry] them they have to bring in a whole new jury they have to absolutely start over again so and i do not know how many times you can have a hung jury i do not guess they have to go back to trial i guess you know they could drop the charges if they did not think they would ever convict him no i did not uh_huh oh that's nice oh my gosh yeah we are yeah i will bet he did oh for and it was her fault that he killed her do you have an opinion about civil stuff right uh_huh yes well i do too okay you're you're you're self employed so you're not reimbursed by anyone okay uh yeah that's that's an interesting point i i i'm not an [enthusiast] for juries particularly and i think especially in in civil cases i doubt doubt the effectiveness of it i hadn't thought about it from terms of the cost point of view to providing the jury i think we may be the only major country today that still uses juries in civil trials i'm pretty sure britain has has uh given up juries in civil cases well probably judges would be the people you mean the decision about whether to use juries or decision i i i think it would be better to have them have judges trained professionals deciding such things uh i don't know there's any way to do that other than to change the constitution uh no i don't i guess different states have different rules on that i because of not who initially comes in but who's selected out of the panel uh okay certainly both sides pick criteria by which they want to uh judge jurors and and uh veto lots of those and i suspect that uh well see likely get off that way although it it will vary uh i mean i guess traditionally juries are supposed to do findings of fact as opposed to findings of law and deciding well that that varies by state and locality as to whether the uh there's little basis for comparison what do you think i agree i really agree with that right right right right yes i do i i have been thinking about this you're about the tenth person they tried to call for this so i've had lots of time to think but yes i do because uh otherwise why have a jury that's the point right right i think that you get a much fairer deal with a jury than you do with a judge and that's that's been my experience and and i really think that i think that judges are very prejudice to just their own idea and they want to get it over with uh_huh right yeah i would feel much more confident if that were me so well it does but i think it's because people are trying to be conscientious where a judge it's their job and they just want to speed it along and get it done and i don't think they stop and think about that individual as much as a group of people would yeah yes yes yes yes yes i think that we're having a lot of problems uh with just everything and the whole the whole system is [bugging] me it really is our jails are over crowded with people like [leona] [helmsley] who is seventy two years old and with a blank check in front of her i don't think should go to jail i think the punishment should fit the crime i think that the jail should be filled with real criminals that are dangerous and i don't think they should get out on parole in three years i think they should stay there they did it they stay and people with traffic tickets and that there's another way to handle that i think so well yes but if you look at it in relation to the amount i mean it's one million dollars which to you and i sounds exorbitant but compared to the six hundred million that they paid in five years that's like one dollar when we owe six hundred so they paid six hundred million in taxes over that five year period yeah so if you look at it they don't say that very much in the newspaper well possibly you know i don't know but if they're willing to correct it i i don't i don't see that she belongs in jail the same as somebody who goes out and kills and walks away i mean there are worse things that people are getting off with you know that kind of thing yeah well yeah get them out of society yeah i know i agree with you agree and i do too yeah it has to be a consistent thing yeah uh_huh yeah yeah i can see that yeah yeah yeah i heard about um is is there true that there's a if a lawyer takes a a case to court and it's what do they call it um frivolous is that is there still a frivolous law that they can yeah but do you think he would fine the lawyer oh yeah i never i didn't realize until recently that there was actually a fine they could pretty interesting though yeah yeah uh_huh oh really oh really oh gosh yeah oh that would be really tough yeah you really do yeah i mean because seems like i don't know i mean there's so many different different types of cases that come in i mean it seems like just general people i mean who are live in the community and do different things you know you have different opinions kind of just one judge who sits there and listens to cases all the time would would get it start thinking a certain way and go go nuts yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that is hard to say uh_huh oh i had never thought of that really yeah yeah yeah it does so yeah all right well [groovy] it's been cool talking to you see you around okay do you have any uh ideas on universal health insurance do you have any strong opinions you do uh_huh yeah right yeah yeah i feel like there should be some kind of coverage made but i i'm really leery of a kind of a government administrative health insurance or medical plan because i just feel like everything that the government takes over is just going to be run much poorly and it is going to be about six times more expensive uh_huh right and they have that in england too but i think that it's a pretty poor they get a lot lower quality care than we do now i know some people don't agree with me but uh i know you have to wait real long time to get for certain surgeries that aren't emergency and you don't have the kind of choices that we have here and uh i've worked a lot in doctor's offices and hospitals and i really don't want to give up having those choices i think i mean there is a night and day difference between good doctors and bad doctors and good hospitals and bad hospitals and in england at least at the time when i was familiar with it about ten years ago they just told you what day you had to show up and where you had to show up and who your doctor was going to be no no i mean that yeah it's getting worse isn't it yeah right right uh_huh right that's exactly the problem there's just so many such variation and it's but see i guess what they had in england and i guess in canada is socialized medicine so maybe that's like the extreme of it do you think uh_huh right right really want to right right or that yeah exactly or people also get the feeling that well jeez you know you don't have to worry about you have a lot of job security there and it's more of uh seniority i would imagine kind of thing instead of having a skill or or whatever to advance so you don't necessarily get the kind of quality control or the kind of i don't know i think we have to have something we really do yeah yeah i know i i don't know i having worked in doctor's offices and stuff i see it from a [physician's] point of view and i i think the problem with the [skyrocketing] cost right now is the insurance companies because i don't see doctors getting real rich and i think hospitals do make money but not nearly as much as insurance companies i think they are really making a killing and nobody is talking about it nobody's uh_huh right right right their mistakes are made right sure yeah so yeah i think that's the legal part of it coming into it to i wonder if we should have a limit on how much people can sue for or or i don't know because then that's where the insurance company then if people weren't having to spend these huge amounts of money on getting insurance coverage you know yeah are you okay at where oh okay uh_huh i what i'm in texas yeah yeah uh_huh oh great yeah oh uh_huh uh_huh okay yeah uh_huh oh no that that that can't be legal oh my gosh how can they how can they make you pay for insurance coverage how how does it keep the cost down oh so they just use the money for something else besides your insurance policy okay okay so you're subsidizing the hospital uh_huh oh good you are you are i know and see that's the thing that is the thing now that i'm in my thirties now and i have three kids and i mean i'm very liberal i'm extremely liberal and uh i but now i just in the last couple of years i have gotten to the point where i am saying i just cannot afford to pay anymore to help people out i i want to keep helping people out but i need for the government or the agencies to find a way to do it on the amount of money you know that i can afford i just can't afford anymore it's it's just outrageously it's just starting to get me angry and for the first time in my life i am starting to feel like i i well i guess it has to do with a lot of the stuff that i find out i am paying for now you know i mean if i can't afford to have some kind of optional operation for myself because our our medical coverage has gotten increasingly worse over let's see the past five years to the point now where even if we need surgery our insurance only covers eighty percent of it and right and so no matter what happens to me if i get in a car accident this afternoon i have no way of you know no way of being able to afford the outrageous medical costs because my insurance is now only eighty percent of whatever it's going to be and uh so on top of that uh then what if i what if we decide to have universal health insurance i'm subsidizing and what if they are lucky enough to get into a doctor and a program that's going to say okay well you really need to have those [varicose] [veins] fixed or your teeth fixed or something like that and i am paying for it you know stuff like that has happened with education and with other things that you hear about and it's just wait a minute you know my kids aren't getting that how come their their kids are getting that and i know it's only in a few cases and i don't want them to uh to cut funding for welfare programs or anything i don't want them to do that because i know a lot of people they live right on the edge and they need that but but uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right well yeah that's and it's uh it's funny because a couple of years ago i heard a quote from [winston] churchill let's see if i can remember it anybody who's not a liberal in his twenties has no heart and a person who is not a conservative in his fifties has no brain it was something like that yeah and i don't know i guess that's what's happening to me but i i think it's just starting uh it's it's i i don't know maybe other people i do you think it's a sign of the times that people are starting to say all right we really mean it no more taxes or maybe this is just my own personal yeah no no income tax yeah oh oh wow yeah yeah but i tell you uh we have incredible property taxes down here yeah and we don't have the services either that other states have yeah i think it's probably a good ideal uh i think given uh given well given that there are so many people who don't have health insurance it's probably a real smart thing at least to have some basic coverage for everyone i mean you hear these horror stories of people homeless people going to the hospital and and being thrown out because they have no insurance and having to go to someplace else you know it would be nice if no matter where you are or who you are what happened you know what happened to you you just go to the hospital and they say okay just just take him and we will worry about who he is later so that would be a nice thing yeah i know that that's certainly true but i wonder about like like in canada in canada where everybody uh everybody automatically has insurance in canada yeah that's true that's that's true that's true that's true oh you so didn't get any choices at all oh that's a problem yeah because i know i know even among even now the way we have it now there are still yeah i mean like we have an h m o allows us to pick our own physicians i mean i picked a primary care physician and just didn't like him you know i had to switch because i just thought he was a [quack] so yeah yeah yeah that is the extreme and what that what that i think that tends to do though is i think that tends to it probably has two a good and a bad side for young people wanting to become doctors which again a lot of people who are motivated because the money isn't i guess as much for doctors anymore so you wind you wind up getting the people who really want to be doctors being doctors but then again you know you don't get those people who would be good and are real smart and decided hey i want to make a lot of money so i will go into medicine you don't get those yeah that's true yeah it would be nice to see something where at least i mean even something that says you know look free major medical for all you know everyone and then beyond that you could work out on your own if you want uh_huh oh yeah oh right no yeah they are the ones who make i mean they are the ones they have you know the although i mean it's the unfortunate part of that is that the people i think tend to forget that doctors are humans as well so that insurance companies have to charge a substantial amount for certain people or certain types of of doctors given that you know someone decides to have a malpractice suit against them well they could take you know it could be millions i mean unfortunately and if the doctor whether it was you know i mean i'm sure there are those cases where where the doctor is wrong or malicious or something but you know their you know mistakes you know everybody makes mistakes unfortunately it shouldn't be a billion dollar you know industry it should be i made a mistake and this is this is their compensation not yeah that is a big problem that would be nice uh_huh it would be a lot better yeah i mean i'm sort of in a in a government run medicine program sort of i'm in a well well i'm a graduate student and uh at university of rochester in rochester new york i'll bet you are in texas i was going to bet that okay uh yeah and as it as it turns out my wife has pretty decent coverage through her company and can get me coverage as well but i yeah which is great and because the university the university offers me two plans they offer what they call the mandatory version which is basically major medical and they offer the portion which is which is you know sort of everything else you need sort of your your your basic care beyond major medical and stuff and they don't and even though my my wife's insurance covers me for everything i still have to pay them a hundred and some odd dollars a semester and that's for the mandatory portion of the insurance yeah i'm not actually sure if it is or not but people sort of keep fighting it and i'm and i mean to keep fighting it but you know it's just one of these things where i just don't want to spend my time well the reason their rational is is they make everyone pay for it so that it it keeps the cost of university health services down and everyone can use it you know it because everyone is now forced to pay for this and there is like an well no well yeah well what they use it no what they use it for is is is university health services we have a we have a hospital here and a [subportion] of the hospital right obviously we're paying for the welfare state now as it turns out as it turns out uh my wife and i have chosen to use the university as health services as our primary care facility we can do that so in in but in effect i'm paying twice for one service so uh_huh yeah yeah yeah well that's that's certainly true right which is ridiculous yeah everybody else right yeah exactly i don't i don't uh uh_huh yeah it's it's one of the strange i think it's strange that as you get older i think i think the tendency is that as people get older and gain i don't want i don't want to say more responsibility but you know things like homes and kids and so forth they tend to lose that [liberalism] they had when they were younger that's probably very true no i think i think people are starting to really mean it i mean everywhere you you look you are getting something new i mean you start off you know especially uh you guys i believe in texas you don't have state tax do you right we have we have federal income tax state income tax local income tax we have state tax on gasoline uh you know because our our so on top of the federal tax on gasoline we have state tax on gasoline so we are just oh that could be uh making up for the difference uh i guess my feelings are that uh we almost have a universal health care system uh to a great degree except that now i read where we've left out about thirty four million people and uh i don't know exactly how we're going to cover many of these people because i'm sure that some of them don't uh don't have the wherewithal to do it themselves so uh i i have a feeling since i have just about as good a health care coverage that anybody can get that this uh then becomes an obligation of the government because it's going to become an obligation of either state local or federal government anyway well it seems to me that that i'm paying anyway because when i go or my insurance carrier anyway when i pay something the bills seem inordinately high and the reason that they're inordinately high is because that has to cover the costs for the indigent people who apparently don't have the money or the wherewithal to do that it would seem to spread it out a little better if the employers who uh employ these people and pay them uh you know [subminimum] wages or whatever were asked to share their fair burden of this too just as my employer is and myself i guess well well who who else is going to do this then i mean it's worked successfully in europe i've heard all these stories about i travel extensively and spend uh maybe half a year in europe every year and i find that the health care programs there uh are administered with uh at least people i talk to with uh a great deal of integrity and uh people don't seem to be reluctant to use them to any degree as a matter of fact if i'm injured or have an emergency when i'm say in germany or france uh that i'm automatically taken care of i mean i don't even have to pay well i uh uh i know it i have a solution you see my solution even though i'm rapidly approaching the uh the age when i'll qualify for medicare and medicaid i i my mother and father both uh uh well my father's not living but my mother is and they are um of an advanced years and when i see the money that's poured down the down the drain on medicare and medicaid i mean the absolute uncontrollable situation that we find ourselves in and the extraordinary amounts i know that because those people vote i mean they're the ones who get out and vote that's what's robbing a poor mother of the prenatal care the young people aren't getting the proper care that they need and nutrition i think and we're spending on these useless many times useless and inordinately complex unnecessary tests in hospitals for older people that's right i mean it does seem like we're now i noticed just the other day in the paper that that medicare will be based payments will be based not uh just on cost but on cost effectiveness so i well i don't know uh we'll see how that goes i think that was just a regulation that was up for comment but we'll see what happens well listen uh i think i've i've exhausted my uh self on at least i've blown off steam of the way i feel about it okay see you next time bye oh yeah because when people can't pay they end up going to [clinics] or you know to public hospitals and that kind of thing and you know oh definitely right yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that sounds like a good idea my only concern is what happens when you turn things over to the government i don't know do they wind up with more red tape and more problems then yeah yeah uh_huh oh yeah wow yeah well i think part of the the tremendous benefit of that is that there's so many people who wait now because they don't have the money until you know they have no preventative measures people um you know just go on and on and on i mean so many people don't even get prenatal care or and it just extends with if it what would be a minor problem to deal with if they had a help available early on becomes just this horrendous you know burden on the taxpayers they're saying now that one out of every ten child born in public hospitals is addicted to crack well you know uh_huh yeah yeah yeah oh it's unbelievable how much you go through when i just had a problem with my neck and they ended up doing a seven hundred dollar cat scan and i mean a [chiropractor] got it in one time it was just strange oh well that should help yeah oh i see oh gosh okay well okay thank you bye bye you want to go first yeah like the if should the government make it universal or something like that yeah uh_huh you you would be in favor of it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh do they have options on who they uh you know like choices of doctors and that type of thing do you uh_huh uh_huh that's the way with me i don't know a whole lot about it i that's the only concern i would have because i think personalities plus the type of doctor it is has a lot to do with the care and if you didn't have any choice on you know in who you go to uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh or to change even like if you didn't approve or didn't think you were getting good service uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh there that's one of my main concerns i i have a friend that has their boy has been sick for several months and they just have found out what's the trouble and they have gone through uh one two three four five doctors and then a team of doctors and they finally determined what the problem was it took that long and that that something like that you know i thought if you couldn't change or look elsewhere you know for help if you i don't know how that program works you know if you can do that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i guess that's that's primarily was one of my thoughts you know because you know how government is uh_huh for them to have a choice on if they're in favor of it or not it it would uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i know where my son works they have uh an option right now where they can have their own physician or they can choose one that their company has elected and that costs them less if they take the doctor that uh that the company has selected he well only to the point that he could go to somebody at his own expense otherwise he you know he has to take the physician that uh and the hospital that the company has chosen as their you know the one they have taken and there again i mean he's gotten good service he took the less expensive one of course uh_huh uh_huh uh right right yeah uh cause that's the first i've really known anybody that you know works for somebody that they had that option you know to make the choice of what kind of insurance policy they what kind of hospitalization they wanted to take uh_huh uh_huh oh if you have your health you're wealthy you really are yeah yeah uh we live in a rural area up here uh are you familiar with any of the area that all where oh well that's that's a ways away but we live in clarion county uh we have a cousin that lives in philadelphia and uh yes uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh that's a nice state that's a real nice state uh_huh uh_huh so i suppose really our situation here is even different that it is in you know like more populated areas as far as uh the doctors that are available of course we have good physicians here too we've been pretty fortunate we've had some of the most outstanding doctors in our area for some of the different fields so uh we've been pretty fortunate uh_huh oh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh it sure is i still wish they could do more with the cancer situation though they uh they just don't seem to be i know they're making progress but not like that i would like to see yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh but a a lot of them don't do these things even and it doesn't seem to matter so uh it well they say second hand smoke and that is worse than smoking so so what do you do you know yeah yeah take their rights away from them they say i never had the desire so i haven't ever had that problem as far as that goes so i can't take any credit for not smoking even so it's hard to break it's a hard one to quit yeah yeah yes very nice talking to you too and you have a good day right okay bye bye well i believe that the um the voice that uh [initialized] this call asked about uh if we thought that it should be something that should be put into action yes i i i i would be committed to that oh definitely yes i know that there are many countries that uh are very successful with the operation of the government uh providing that plan um i'm not sure how their program is run but i know it has been successful and i would really have to uh read the history of probably i uh the country that has [fared] very well with it and i'd like to see the uh the data on that well i yes i think that's primary is if you have a good relationship with your doctor that you can feel free to discuss anything with him and uh oh absolutely that the choice would be yours yes if you felt that you weren't being um given the proper guidelines for your health that you should be able to make um a choice there yes and the expense of that yes well i would i would think that they would have that as part part of the benefit to the health care program that you would indeed have a choice that you could select that individual yourself and i'm sure that they would have a history of each doctor and hopefully that they would have their um [accreditations] there too yes um but those guidelines have to be set up and i think they should be voted on by the public and uh uh_huh uh_huh right yes and of course they would give a full plan of what their intentions would be and um i think that's primary uh for the health if they were going to have a universal health care plan that uh they would have all the facts and the figures and uh what it would mean to each individual family or an individual perhaps being single um i'm not sure what else that uh we could address uh on health care uh other than the fact i think uh the eyes and the ears and the uh whole self should be uh uh included in all of that uh dental eye care and uh our body as a whole should be included in that because there are so many avenues that needs to be um [undertaken] in a program like that um i wouldn't want to have to go for a private doctor for anything and not be covered by the program uh_huh and does he have an option uh if he doesn't care for the personality oh i see well if he's pleased with it i guess that's uh the bottom line so but i i would be afraid of what would happen if you had a personality conflict or something yeah cause there's always that opposite story there uh_huh it's quite different from when i was uh under doctor's care that's for sure i'm i'm very thankful that i'm not under any doctor's care that's right yes uh_huh what part of uh pennsylvania do you live in well i have a brother that lives there uh near uh philadelphia okay are you a native [pennsylvanian] okay so i'm a former [michiganian] so yes it is it's very lovely it's a very lovely state uh_huh uh_huh i'm sure it is uh_huh uh_huh that has broadened so much also that is the fields that you know are opening up are um just phenomenal they i mean look at the aids uh case you know i mean they that's a whole new field in itself it's just it's an auto immune [deficiency] but it sure is a [dilly] one yes i do too to [eradicate] it entirely yeah well there's guidelines that people have to follow and if they're determined to uh have their cigarettes and the other uh [carcinogenic] causing items then how do you teach them i guess you that's true too it's i i i really believe our environment have a lot to do with it yeah well you just have to ban the smoking to their to their little room that they want to uh_huh uh_huh well it's a bad habit that's yes it's they say that it is well it was nice talking with you and well you do the same and uh we'll be i guess talking around the country okay you bye bye uh national health insurance i think is a problem [inasmuch] as the quality of health care that people would receive yeah because uh the articles that i've read regarding national health service in canada and england has indicated that uh what stay stay in line for uh four hours to get an [aspirin] from a doctor um i see yeah well i i think that uh again having gone through a period when i was out of work and had to buy health insurance on my own if you don't have a company supporting you in the uh picking up the major portion of your health insurance the cost is almost prohibitive yeah uh we're currently where i'm working now under blue cross i don't know what the total cost of the program is but for dependent coverage i'm paying a hundred and seventy dollars a a month or something like that so i assume that probably the total cost is probably three fifty to four hundred they're probably picking up about half of it and that's a pretty good policy but if you had something like one of these uh health maintenance programs or one of whatever the type name is h m o uh where the uh where you go to the doctor and it only costs you ten dollars and the insurance picks up the rest if you tried to buy something like that i'm it would probably be five or six hundred dollars a month for just the cost of something yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that's right oh goodness delivery room and everything yeah yeah yeah yeah as to a company's benefit to have a program like that because it keeps their employees healthy and on the job because they don't have to worry about going in and and paying uh seventy five dollars to have the doctor look at you for ten minutes that's a yeah but here again the the doctor's practices in hospitals have become fairly [sizable] businesses under themselves now uh you take a hospital uh the physical plant itself you have to pay your share of the operating of that eight story building uh when the rooms are empty so they spread the costs out over uh all the patient costs and uh that's how you come up with [aspirin] that costs four dollars apiece and things like that the horror stories that you hear about people going into the hospital for a week and uh it being a four thousand dollar bill right yeah yeah yeah my daughter and son in law had a baby here about uh what he'll be three in august and uh their insurance plan that they're under encourages you to shorten your stay in the hospital and like she went in she had the baby and she was out in two days time and it was treated almost like it was an [outpatient] visit to the hospital the the deductibles didn't apply and so that's one way one way the insurance companies are trying to hold costs down is by uh okay if you'll shorten your stay then we will uh waive the deductible right right yeah i'm i'm sort of mixed on this i think that the the answer may lie in uh not in so much a uh national kind of medical thing that like england has but more of a um national insurance uh sort of [clearinghouse] or whatever i think that uh too many uh the problem with with right now is that we've got too many different health [insurances] that people have to go through and and i think that i think you you mentioned canada i think that they have a system where uh they the government deals with the with i mean you you go to whoever you want but file through one one particular uh setup and that way they they are able to reduce prices because they've you know it's it's all one one centralized thing uh_huh right uh i i was listening uh on the radio the other day and they were talking that something like this i think they were talking about the fact that um the money that could be saved um in administrative costs and so forth nationwide by [consolidating] into sort of a national insurance provider um could uh could they could make it provide health insurance to to people who couldn't afford it just by the money they would save right right yeah h m o yeah and they're they're fairly expensive i i um i i was on an h m o uh up until last year and uh through work and it was i forget how much i paid a month but it was much you know is at least twice if not more expensive than the regular health care and uh the reason i i quite was because of uh not because i didn't like it i i really kind of did uh the reason i quite was just because the the doctor a a certain doctor that we enjoyed going to was no longer associated with that h m o so we my wife decided she wanted to to stay with that doctor so we went to the to the the medical insurance that we have at here at work and uh i uh i like the i like the convenience of the h m o in in a certain respect because it uh even though you're once you find the doctor that you like it's not a problem you know a lot of people complain saying well i don't want to uh have to be told who i need to go to but you know if you don't have a doctor anyway normally it doesn't really make much difference because you can you know if if you find someone you really like and then we did find several good doctors and um like you say it's uh five dollars an office visit and um my wife was in the hospital had our had our daughter and i think her total bill was around three hundred dollars for everything uh that included uh you know the doctors the time the the hospital everything delivery room and everything including a private room because there was a little extra that she had to pay but that was that was still included in that that cost so it's really nice because they you know their their attitude is different than than a regular uh insurance uh health insurance uh the in in a h m o you know they're trying to prevent a problem by by keeping the cost down at the front end you know and have you come in you know they they charge five dollars a you know pop you're more willing to go in and try to take care of a problem before it grows big yeah right yeah i i uh i i really liked it we both my wife and i both did you you don't have to worry about filling out forms uh you know for reimbursement and all or you know getting paid eight percent of of whatever you just pay the the five dollars right then and then you're done with it uh_huh right right well they and you know they're also they're taking up the cost of people who can't pay you know they they get a lot of uh a lot of uh people who are just have to be there and can't afford it and so they they know they're not going to get you know get money from them so they have to absorb it somewhere else uh_huh right right right right right our our insurance is uh is doing something similar where they're also going to okay the topic of the conversation is national health insurance and the pros and cons and do i do we think that the government should finance it what is your opinion you say yes i have heard someone else uh say that uh the canadian health insurance is absolutely excellent and one of the ways that they're financing it is they have an exorbitant tax on their cigarettes this is evidently this is one of the ways that they're paying for the program plus discouraging the people to quit smoking so they don't have to pay out as many uh benefits on like lung cancer and things like this yeah we oh my word lynn that's horrible well we're fortunate in that we so far knock on wood most of us have been real healthy so we don't have a lot of medical bills yeah but what worries me is the fact that i don't like the government telling me who i can see and who i can't see uh_huh are they well i know that james had it i beg your pardon yeah yeah i know that when james was with continental steel mccullum was part of that and and that's good but i also heard for instance like uh my friend's daughter was on it through texas instruments and she was on that kaiser [permanente] and they had screwed up her appointment and when she went in she had to take whichever doctor was available and they she would have had to wait like two months to get the doctor she wanted but then again i guess you can even do that in mccullum uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well that's true and that still goes on uh_huh right well you know it uh how do you think we're going to pay for it more and more taxes i know that it's getting to the point that the insurance doesn't pay that much on [catastrophic] illnesses they don't pay anything on uh [implants] or [transplants] and you know people are needing these and the average person can't afford you know a heart or a [kidney] on just their own uh_huh good grief uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh very true well i know they have the medicaid you know for those that have trouble and i know that like we have the uh prescription cards which that's helped [bunches] and wonder if the insurance companies are fighting the national health or wonder if they're wanting it that they are wanting i say yes yes mother lives in florida and there are in her subdivision there are fifty percent canadians who won't give up their canadian citizenship because of the health insurance it's wonderful oh well well even if that's so you know really when you look at it they have full coverage they have h m o which you know after you get used to it it's not too bad and uh everything is covered and we have so many people in the united states that we spend well in my family alone we spent four thousand dollars in july on medical bills insurance didn't cover a penny yeah yes it is horrible yeah but uh if you're healthy it's fine but i had two kids in the hospital in july yeah but you know richardson school district has the h m o and ninety percent of the doctors you would choose are on that list yeah mccullum is mccullum is uh_huh well but that's that's a screw up in an appointment you know i'm going back to the days when i was pregnant and i had two doctors and one was my favorite personality wise but when i delivered [ronnie] he was not on call the other guy delivered him you know and that and you know if um i go to townsend he's got a new partner i go to both of them now you know i have no choice because when i want to go if doctor [howe] or whatever his name is is on duty i go to him well no we need to cut some of our [spendings] cut some of the fat off the top and [whittle] it down to the rest of us no no yeah but you known [ronnie] in austin went to a program and went to a social worker and at the same token there is something because he can get his pills for two dollars when i'm paying fifteen on my medical insurance and he can get free medical care but he has to go to the city hospital instead of seeing david and so again you know we went through it [ronnie's] home tonight and we talked about it and said you know is it worth it yeah you know he pays forty five dollars a month for his prescriptions where he could pay six dollars so there are programs you know if you get on medicare or medicaid or one of those yeah that's what i read okay as far as uh universal health care um i guess i'm all for it i think it's time that we start looking at uh getting into that um health cost has continued to rise and i think uh there's people that to me it's the fundamental uh life of a person uh it doesn't matter if you have money or no or all the money in the world um you would everybody should be able to have surgeries that will save their lives or things that will make their life more comfortable verses than just the rich people that can afford to pay or to work for corporations that have wonderful health benefits um i think if uh they looked at it as a way of business helping out financially for universal health care and uh individuals um helping out in some sort of way whether it be taxes or some how but uh the expenses right now for health care um are just unreal yes uh_huh oh sure and your constantly exactly yeah the only i i know that um uh i know a little bit about the uh european uh universal health care and there's some pros and cons one of the things of course is everybody gets health care but uh sometimes health care uh when you get into a universal system [lacks] in uh what would be considered uh how can i say it um over like in poland uh where my father in law lived for years there their health care system is um because no financial gains are available for doctors uh they may just go into being a doctor just clearly just to be a doctor for the full reason but most people that go in to being a physician here in the u s do it for financial gain they say well jeez if i get into this area of [dermatology] i don't have to do this i can do this and i can you know yeah or plastic surgery or uh if i become a uh heart specialist i'm going to make this kind of money uh and there's you know financial gains toward that and in a universal system i don't think there is a financial gain for the doctors the quality i think goes down uh_huh when you have a universal system um the only way they could do that is by having a real good quality check um and also offering some kind of because i think uh all physicians well anybody um likes the ability to kind of uh get themselves financially uh [situated] uh i guess that's the whole u s concept is to come here and yeah and i don't know if you can have that with a universal system maybe you know there's a way of working that out but i know that in poland in particular the doctors just go to do their job and that's it that's what they look at it as there's no uh and that's sad because if that's the case if doctors aren't going in to be doctors to help people then maybe they shouldn't be in that area anyway but that might be one way of weeding out those that are greedy for the money and those that really want to help [mankind] so but i i think we have to head toward that way uh_huh i'm worried when i get older you know and uh let's say for instance you uh get fired or not fired but maybe laid off from your job you no longer have insurance i mean and you're sixty some or fifty some years old you try try to find insurance i mean you're [uninsurable] unless you want to pay five hundred six hundred dollars a month and i know people that are paying two hundred three hundred dollars a month for insurance and how they can do it i have no idea um i know working for small corporations and health insurance um myself um it would cost for a family and this was back three four years ago to put my entire family up and this was working for like a med center uh health plan um it was like eighty dollars out of my paycheck so see yeah well we do the same i mean it's i think uh people are changing their viewpoints of you know it's getting harder and harder to survive and uh and that's why uh if they don't go to a universal system something is going to happen we're going to have uh a larger amount of people dying uh_huh you should still be well they really are even for even when you're not talking about surgery if you're just talking about basic care we've we've got four children and you know in the past month they it just they pass things from one to one and it just can devastate your budget you know um yeah can still make big bucks do you think that the quality um it would would be as high yeah yeah right more motivation yeah right yeah that's true yeah i uh well we're going to have to do something because there's just too many people in the country that are uninsured and and you know you cannot i mean it's just oh sure right uh_huh oh yeah that's right yeah yeah well our ours is three hundred for our family and i mean we that is we pay that instead of a car payment you know i mean i'm driving a piece of junk you know right right yeah in in the light of what has been happening lately with the doctors that i know and lawyers and whatnot i think national health insurance is a way to throw a lot of money at a very small problem why well if you took half the money that they would spend in the state of texas for health insurance and gave it to qualified students to so they could become doctors the problem would go away i think the problem is that the doctor doctors have [conspired] to limit the number of doctors and that the lawyers have [conspired] to make sure that if you are a doctor you are going to pay high premiums on your uh i mean on your liability oh uh_huh and you think there are plenty of doctors uh_huh it's astronomical no people don't sue lawyers sue if you put a ten thousand dollar cap on the amount of money that a lawyer could make from a law suit against a doctor they wouldn't sue a one of them you know well sure but you know when you think about [reasonableness] now i believe that a law suit should have some foundation in the tort theory you know what tort theory is well a tort is when you do something wrong well it uh an o b g y n doctor cannot control the [fetus] in the [womb] a hundred percent if the baby is born dead well that happens if if they have complications and well i know i mean there are guys that are real [slobs] but you know there are also people out there that are really doing their job and the people that are really doing their job are paying for everybody else you know just to prevent a a law suit yeah yeah uh_huh see i believe that there there is a system already in place for health care you know they have indigent health care you show up at parkland bleeding and they'll fix you you know yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah i think that if you just wrote the lawyers out of the [equation] the problem would pretty much evaporate yeah well i i happen to know a few and i even claim one as a friend he's a divorce attorney but i think he'll go [nameless] for the for the purposes of this conversation but i also know an uh o b g y n who has stopped practicing uh he just said yeah i mean he's not going to deliver any more babies ever his malpractice was five hundred thousand dollars a year and you know he said i had to he had to gross two million to take home as much as his malpractice yeah this this guy is catholic yeah i mean you know yeah i know you can be human and catholic but you're not likely to find somebody who is going to you know have a less conscientious effort i mean well you know who is getting rich insurance companies you know if you were able to write a malpractice insurance that would [negate] any financial obligation on the part of the doctor over and above the insurance say say you have malpractice insurance and a kid dies or is [malformed] or do you why you think the problem is not enough doctors gosh i really have a different point of view on this well because i'm a nurse for one thing oh yeah i don't think there is a shortage of doctors and i do know that o b which is my field the doctors' health the doctors' malpractice insurance is over two hundred thousand dollars a year that deliver babies now they can't doing anything about that i don't think they're in a conspiracy i think it's our fault because we as people just sue them people are very sue sue conscious yeah well that's probably true too but people are very conscious of how much money they can get real fast these days and so no right that's right well it depends well that's true they are because doctors are performing many more tests many of them are unnecessary they are doing so many c sections just to prevent because they have all these monitors now and if anything looks even a little bit funny their only safety precaution is to go in and get that baby and so it's costing more all around in health insurance for tests for surgery for longer hospital stay so it's terrible uh_huh you'll get it that's true in fact you'll get it at presbyterian if you show up there too and we have that happen we have patients that go through parkland through the clinic and at the last minute they come to us well uh we can't turn them away so yeah i'm for that i've been through a two year divorce where the only one that came out ahead was my lawyer so i'd like to wipe them all out he better not be mine yeah some they do they stop their o b at least right right that's incredible yeah and most of them are very [sincere] most of them do the best they can they are human occasionally something will go wrong well you can be human and catholic yeah no most of them do i really believe that from dealing with doctors dealing with lawyers there is no doubt in my mind who is more conscientious yeah they are okay what do you think about uh the self insurance business uh_huh well i uh i understand what you're saying and there's probably some truth to that i think that uh generally i don't welcome added government responsibilities however when a anybody can't police their own profession it eventually leads to that and i think the costs and the uh the way the medical profession has every year i being in my own business uh in the last six years every year there's been at least minimum twenty five percent increase in health insurance costs and i think eventually the number of people that can afford health insurance as as it is now getting squeezed and squeezed tighter uh i think they're asking for it i i think the medical profession is just just pushing until there's no option but the government take it over and uh well i i think a lot of it is uh i i don't disagree totally with that but uh my wife this last summer uh when we were on vacation tore up her knee and uh uh it was ligaments uh in her knee as it turned out uh she came back that uh we were out at cape hatteras when this happened and uh she got home and the leading orthopedic man who has handled football people for years and is as good as they come i mean he knows knee problems okay i mean if anyone does this guy knows it well she goes in he says well i think this is what it is but uh you better go to the hospital and have one of these m r i things a thousand dollars for this uh-oh [magnetic] uh [resonance] [imaging] type thing and my wife said well do i need that and he says well uh you know it it'll help me diagnose this i mean uh you know i i suggest you go have this thing insurance won't pick this up unless you're in the hospital now a thousand uh uh dollars for thirty five minutes i mean doctors routinely send people in for anything now for years they didn't have this and they solved these problems and you know i said to her well look you know if you feel you got to go go but i i think a thousand dollars these guys i don't know what it is but there's no doubt they get kickbacks to fill these machines up night and day and even if they cost a hundred two hundred five hundred thousand dollars at uh roughly a thousand dollars every half hour uh that's ridiculous i i don't care what anyone says you know the costs are not it's a picture it shouldn't cost more than thirty five bucks for something like that you know [reasonableness] but they aren't reasonable fifty a hundred dollars they don't have to pay them back in three months time you know well i think that should be that that's a another problem but that's part of our [legalese] problem and that the government eventually will address too just you know because it's out of control i i agree with you you know uh i was on a jury or i i didn't make the jury but there was a deal where a doctor was going to be sued for malpractice on the death on an infant like it was three days after it was born and he was the one that delivered it and they got four attorneys one guy out of houston he introduced himself as snake so and so and he says well anyone have trouble awarding five million dollars and i says yeah i got problems with i mean you know five million bucks isn't going to bring this kid back you know i mean as [sorrowful] as it is uh you know if the doctor is wrong you know he should be pulled from his license but five million dollars and away he goes because insurance pays for it you know it it doesn't make logical sense to me but uh uh that's well i watched something on t v a couple of months ago by uh general ex uh surgeon general [koop] and he talked about [canada's] system and it appears to work fine for the normal colds and things like that but the expensive stuff heart uh operations and things they have a managed [scarcity] and they said that in canada there were as many heart uh trauma centers as there is in san francisco so in one city of in america there's as many uh hospitals that are equipped to do uh heart operations as in the entire area of canada and that's kind of spooky uh_huh do you think that it's just uh medical guys what about you know you know how expensive new equipment and technology is that's where i think most of the cost is coming uh_huh uh_huh oh great yeah uh_huh no yeah i'll have to agree with you there but there's another problem and that's the how litigious our society is if the doctor makes a mistake he can be sure that he's going to be hauled into court uh_huh no it doesn't hi well providing universal health care insurance for the whole country is a pretty big task and i uh personally i don't approve of it for two reasons number one is that i think that uh the federal government has a problem with the deficit right now and if they were to administer this they would uh get us more and more into debt further than we can ever get out ourselves number two i think that the quality of health care would go down because the competition would would be dried up and really no one would be would only answer to to the government to a big bureaucratic mess and uh i've seen what it has done in other countries and so i don't think uh i don't think we should head in that direction although that we have problems right now and i do agree that they exist because health care insurance for for everyone is [skyrocketing] and it's become to a point where basically no one can afford it anymore how do you feel about the whole [ordeal] uh_huh uh_huh okay oh yeah but what what you're yeah so what you're saying though is instead of having the national government uh government administer giving health insurance to every man woman and child with throughout the whole company you see more of them as regulating the high costs uh that people are forced to pay for it right now is that is that correct or do you think that well with the with the costs as they are right now do you think that the government uh because what that would require is for us to pay uh more taxes and the the the people that can afford taxes the middle income and the upper income will be paying more taxes to to pay for health insurance for everyone whereas right now the the public themselves get health insurance and they provide their own health insurance you think it might get better huh i i kind of disagree the reason being is uh we have i don't know i guess it's my my fear of the national government and also because the bureaucratic rules that it would take to administer it and uh the the health insurance companies right now pretty much regulate and are pretty picky and and uh don't allow cases where they might throw them out of business whereas the federal government if they took over everything they wouldn't care because they'll never go out of business people would still have to pay taxes the money would have to come from somewhere and so you'd i i feel that the cost would increase dramatically also but in the same sense the the care and the the attitude of the doctors and the professionals within the medical uh field would would [diminish] uh well what do you think uh_huh well i agree that it's a big task but i think that i think that the u s should move toward some kind of national health care plan at least as a long term kind of goal and possibly just starting with more regulation of health insurance and that sort of thing but i think that ultimately it would be a good idea to uh and not have a completely socialized medical system in the country maybe something about halfway between that and what we have now it uh just because it seems that uh health insurance costs are sky [rocketing] well as fast as the national deficit perhaps and so that and that's a that's a vicious cycle of course because um well i uh well i wouldn't exclude the possibility of the government actually [administrating] it ultimately i don't think that that would necessarily be such a bad idea and uh right the well as it is now the middle and upper classes are paying more than their share for the health care of the whole country because they're the only people that can afford health insurance and so that the other people have no health insurance and you know they'll get medical care anyway at least in emergencies and somebody winds up paying for that and basically the people paying for it are the people who are buying health insurance so i don't see that anything that this situation would get any worse that way it might get better uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah well i think okay that's right what would we like to say i think uh_huh i think that's what the subject is about in the dallas the morning times i guess i did not well it's been interesting that we yes so we live in a society though where everyone if you ask them on polls will uh say that they think that everyone has a right to health care and yet i don't think we've ever quite decided who's really supposed to pay for it which is why people are talking about we ought to just admit it perhaps and then try and somehow subsidize it in a way that's more fair you have health insurance through your company oh my goodness that's must have been hard how was your care at parkland but yet parkland is not free either is it affordable so you did have a good experience is your wife better i hope i'm real sorry sure it does happen but it's very sad well so am i actually uh i'm a pediatrician and i feel very strongly about uh children and uh developed very strong feelings about this during our [measles] epidemic last year where we certainly proved that we're not doing a very good job with [preventive] health care among children and particularly the children who need it most so uh i'm really quite active in trying to uh be proactive at least for children's issues it's very complex very complicated but uh i strongly believe that all children have a right to [immunization] glasses hearing aids basic health benefits um well and the costs have so much has gone up so much the cost of [immunizations] for example uh and just the legal the legal benefits uh that has really forced people into doing a lot of things [unnecessarily] et cetera so well i don't know it's it is interesting in case you didn't know texas leads the nation in uninsured children thirty one percent of all texas children do not have insurance and are not on medicaid so uh one out of every three children has nothing to reimburse them for their health care and i work in the children's parkland system and it's pretty overwhelming to me but uh it's pretty hard to be indigent and to be dependent upon indigent health care systems in dallas county okay universal health insurance right uh well i think universal health insurance like national health like what canada has is that what you're you're thinking the subject is about did you read uh the article in the paper today about this particular subject yeah uh the state of washington and the state of minnesota is uh going to begin testing a program a state funded program for citizens of those two states and there's fourteen other uh states that are considering it least according to the article in the paper this morning i think it's a trend that's that's that's uh probably may go nationwide eventually because i think national health is something that we all need it's getting to a point that you have to have it you have to have some form of health insurance extremely expensive though uh_huh well that's the thing you know uh unfortunately the ones that currently pay and pay the premiums for health insurance are are paying for the people that don't have health insurance yeah i don't think you uh yes i do uh through my company yes but i have been in a situation uh recently where i was laid off from a position as a sales manager of a company and was off work for about a year and my wife developed cancer we didn't have any insurance and it was a go to parkland type situation uh because it was a life threatening situation it was very good uh as it as it turned out one of the top uh people or one of the top doctors in the state that is involved in cancer treatment was at parkland no it's not free but uh it's it's a situation that because i didn't have any insurance and i was on unemployment it was paid by the county i had a bad experience as it turned out uh i was fortunate that there was parkland uh no she passed away that's all right that happens yeah but in any event uh i'm in favor of national health if i had to vote for it oh is that right uh_huh uh_huh well i when i grew up and i grew up in south central kansas uh we had and my mom worked for the health department the county health department and we had x rays every year we had a dentist come to our school and uh check our teeth once a year at least uh we had all our flu shots taken care of our [measles] [mumps] [rubella] and all that other stuff and uh when my children were growing up we didn't have that we had to pay for it which i wasn't opposed to paying for it i had the money to pay for it but i'm sure that there were people that don't uh_huh did not know that uh_huh okay lee tell me about your ideas on this uh the u s government supporting health insurance and so forth well what is this going to do the insurance companies who are supporting this work now and hopefully are doing uh a good job yes well this is what's bothering me lee another question do you think that there should be some control uh [innovated] such that the doctors are not allowed to charge ridiculously over priced things we realize that for the individual person some things are very important uh matter of fact in some respects their life might depend on it but by the same token some of these charges they make for well minor endeavors shall we say on the parts the doctors are really out of line there should be some control of that yes and that is what is giving the local uh insurance companies hard times that is the one thing we have no control over are these charges that happen when you go to hospitals and you get something done and they want to charge twenty thousand dollars for it yes we have had several of them my wife and i both have had that recently yeah see that that bothers me about the government see uh my do you think that that these insurance things should be covered on a state basis or u s government basis well i think it's inevitable that we are going to see national health care and the reason is because the market place doesn't seem to have performed adequately uh the invisible hand that which adam smith wrote has uh provided some very good health care and uh much i think inadequate health care uh and in some cases the [absence] of health care has resulted from market place forces and i think uh it's inevitable it is just a matter of uh time and mistakes and they're both inevitable well it's going to make it tough for them and it's going to be a difficult transition i don't know uh how it's going to uh play out in terms of the [particulars] but i don't think that society will be willing to tolerate the current health care crisis for too long our uh physical and mental and spiritual health uh it's really uh very costly and uh as a society we are paying a staggering price for this my right uh_huh yeah yeah there are they're abusive of privileges right well this i think is one of the things that national health care of some sort of evolutionary process over the next ten or twenty or thirty years will address because i know this is addressed by uh in canada i i have a good friend who is uh a physician practicing in canada and they made the transition uh and i think that the uh for example the [duplication] of [magnetic] [resonance] [imageries] uh i've i've had one myself and uh they're wonderful technology but cities have three or four more than they need or three or four times the number they need so i think that what the market place doesn't do because of the way the system has worked and it doesn't allocate resources [oftenly] because there is a tendency uh at least there has been a tendency to drive up the price of medical care primarily because the insurance companies could pass on the bills but it's begun to change all of that the people paying the bills uh employers ultimately have begun to [squawk] because they have seen their health care cost rise two hundred percent in the past ten years so i think the evolution will be interesting uh hawaii has a system that is apparently working and uh it will be interesting to see how how uh much more attention we pay to that i do think though that it is inevitable primarily because of the pain uh that people are feeling uh under the circumstances uh i believe that it will contribute to something that we would at this point call national health care whether it's [subsidized] by the government and and operated by private [insurers] uh i don't know i like that idea i tend to be one of those people who believes the market place can under varied circumstances with the profit incentive work very very well uh i we would be a lot better off if we if we contracted our national defense to a group who rather that operated as a government entity because we would probably have much less waste well that's that's the problem with government uh administration of these programs and that is one of the things that we as society are going to have to deal with government is going to have to change in this regard you know that is really a tough one for me to answer i don't uh i would like to see the greatest improvement in management my my my field is the cognitive sciences and i recognize that a lot of these things that are done are done uh as a function of the operating systems in place and those operating systems have to change and and as we become more efficient in developing machine operating systems we're going to develop more efficient human operating systems and so a state or federal application uh could work uh it all depends upon the way you structure the environment we may have to deal with okay well what do you think about the government providing health insurance for everybody i think they should i know i had a job until let's see a year ago this past december i was working for p i e and they closed and naturally while i was working for them i had health insurance but um for me to try to get it now it would cost me like over three hundred dollars a month with the same company that was providing health insurance at at p i e right it really is and i think you know i think uh god the government should come up with some kind of a health plan or stop these doctors and hospitals from having their prices so high well the thing is you know jobs are so hard to find you know and then what you can get out here in anyhow in the valley where i live at now they don't want to pay anything for health insurance at all no benefits you know um yes i mean you get a job now and the wages are really low and uh yeah and they don't want uh to pay any benefits so you just you know pray to god that you don't get sick uh_huh uh_huh no i don't understand that either uh_huh uh_huh yeah well i know the plan that i had with p i e i could go to any doctor and i could go to any drug store and get my prescriptions filled you know then i just sent cards in and then they would have like a ten dollar deductible per year for my medicine and then they would just send me a check for what was ever over that you know uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um yeah that's true that's true there well yeah right uh_huh but there's just so many people that can't afford to pay anything you know that people that's on unemployment i don't yeah probably so i don't know but it is it does seem to be a big problem you know i don't know what they're going to come up with but um i sure wish they would come up with with something and uh like i say and and i'm at the age too where the i'll be fifty seven in june and the people don't want to hire people this age any more and i worked for my previous company for twenty six years you know so it's kind of hard you know so yeah they'll be calling at my door huh but anyhow yeah now i i do think the government though is going to have to do something uh with this problem because it you know even to go to a little doctor out here just to ask him anything costs you forty bucks you know just for the visit and then he then that's not counting what medicine you're going to buy and everything else you know and he might tell you well you know now you're going to have to come back in a week and then that's another forty bucks plus whatever else he decides to do to you good grief that's just almost [unaffordable] isn't it well i wonder if they couldn't just provide uh interim health insurance for people who are between jobs like that that might be a step in the right direction i don't know uh_huh you mean the uh the employers uh_huh because everybody's competing for jobs well i used to think that universal health insurance was probably the right thing to do i i have to think about it some more now because my doctor is uh actually he's canadian and uh he told me that there're a lot of uh lot of counts against the canadian system which is basically the one people are talking about for here i don't understand the arguments exactly he says it [restricts] your choice of doctors and and so forth i'm not quite sure i understand why government health insurance would restrict your choice any more than private insurance does i mean we're on a private insurance plan right now uh actually i have my own business and and we our health insurance is through my wife's employer and uh and every year we get another list of what doctor's we can go to and where we can buy our medicine and uh it changes every year it's always so confusing so uh_huh well yeah of course the restricted choice in this case is because only certain doctors agree to accept the uh the limits of uh compensation but of course that is restricted choice so i don't think that the restricted choice really uh has to do with the difference between uh public and private health insurance i think it has to do with the the the uh attempt to limit cost doesn't it and everybody agrees that we need to limit cost some way so well um i guess the most sensible thing i've heard about this is they say people are trying you you have to recognize that if you're going to have the very best health care possible and uh available on demand whenever and wherever you want it then it's going to be expensive and if you want to pay less then you're going to have to settle for a health system that is not quite that uh lavish and uh yeah what happened to [reagan's] safety net anyway did he take that back to california with him using it for a [trampoline] now yeah they'll be needing you in a couple of years because they're running out of kids down that the other end and well if they're smart uh_huh right yeah so uh what do you feel about the universal health insurance issue uh_huh i guess my my initial reaction would be that that i would be for it mainly from the standpoint that that i find uh my health insurance not very effective and very expensive and so i you know am probably being very naive i'm hoping that that by by [centralizing] it it might get better and be cheaper uh_huh what about things like in sweden isn't isn't that sort of a centralized or in lots of places in europe uh_huh uh_huh right i you know i guess i can certainly agree with that but uh you know like i said i feel like being being stung every time oh i see uh_huh uh_huh yeah i knew they had one but i just i guess i assumed it worked which is is uh not good uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh maybe i don't know much about h m o but my impression is maybe maybe some h m o are sort of a low form of [centralization] uh_huh um uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh is that because of of the cost or or government wants it you think uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well that's well but that's interesting because you know it's it's i don't know that much about it but my initial response would be more favorable and and perhaps i need to to learn more about it so that i'm not so naive on it uh_huh right well it was nice talking to you okay let's see um have you heard anything in particular about the universal health care uh health insurance program that they're talking about yeah yeah and it'd probably be cheaper to go ahead and pay a percentage of the local plan yeah especially for major corporations yeah yes well oh yeah they keep uh the a m a you've got to go through the a m a to get accepted into medical school and they keep a tight [rein] on how many people get in but uh now dental school that's yeah if they've got a glut on the market of dentists um i i i don't mean to be ugly about it but uh costs of dental work are pretty high and if there's something i don't necessarily think it needs to be driven down again but to keep it from shooting up of course [dentistry] i don't think has near the problem with like malpractice insurance and such that's probably the worst thing about health care right now is the unlimited capacity for suing for malpractice and it seems to be the burden of proof that on the doctor that he didn't do something wrong rather than proving that he did and if he doesn't prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he did everything just right then suddenly he's got you know two or three years wages down the toilet but uh yeah uh_huh yeah there are physicians getting away with murder yeah yeah yeah yes yeah yeah uh from what i've seen the better physicians are quick to ask you to go ahead and get a second opinion well i haven't uh i haven't thought a lot about government universal health care i've uh uh worked for a you know private company that that provides uh health insurance although i you know they're like many are are increasingly working on uh cost cutting things so that at this point i'm not very satisfied with the kind of things that they're doing they're going to network doctors which doesn't include our uh doctors and uh only certain hospitals well network hospitals where they will uh same deal as the doctors that they will pay a higher percentage and pay more of the costs with if you use their particular ones that they've negotiated with but uh uh i don't like it seems to me that we're that that's kind of going towards the the socialized medicine in terms of of not having a choice in where or when you want to have have your health care uh without the government being involved it's just a private form of it but the same kinds of of drawbacks i think to it uh what about you what what's your situation as far as okay uh_huh huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah amazing yeah yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh the company i work for is big enough that they can then they've got clout but i you know feel guilty and resent a little bit the fact that that for instance people like your father that just leaves them worse off cause the the health care providers end up making up what uh my employer doesn't pay them uh by charging more for uh other people you know so that that that doesn't seem to me to be a fair thing either and uh from from what i hear canada has a has a really a a pretty good system in terms of of universal government health uh insurance depending on who you listen to while there may or may not be longer waits than here for some elective surgeries but but uh in terms of the per person health care that they spend it it's on the order of half as much uh as the as the per capita average in the united states i think and and very nearly comparable service and i you know i'm i'm willing to accept some some limits in terms of i think it's oregon that just gone through a uh passed a state uh health insurance scheme where they had a commission draw up a very uh you know very detailed and stringent priority list of what uh of of the uh different procedures and the and their costs and [prioritized] in terms of the of the cost effectiveness and then just went down the list and said okay here's the [cutoff] point if if you're below this point then it then the the odds of it doing you any good versus the costs are just not enough to be uh effective and we'll uh we won't pay for those things alright um how do you feel about the health insurance problems uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh wow oh my gosh what a terrible thing for her to go through oh yeah well no i i i had never had experiences like you did which sound terrible to go through uh_huh uh_huh right right uh_huh oh uh_huh oh right that doesn't give any incentive uh_huh uh_huh yeah i guess so i just joined an h m o i just got a new job and i haven't heard i haven't been i haven't even actually paid for it or actually started my coverage yet but that's what they have is h m o and uh_huh well what they told me at at work they told me that uh they said that once you get to know the doctors well you get you get your choice of doctors but there's huge waiting lines for the good ones and there's no waiting lines for the bad ones so you don't really get the good ones even if you choose them you don't get them for years and years if at all so yeah how would they decide who get's which doctor oh i see local uh_huh right it's the same as an h m o and and because the doctors work for the h m o the people i work with are telling me you know h m o's are great if you're generally healthy and you just go for the checkup every year or whatever it's just three dollars but if you have a problem then it's real hard to get the doctor to refer you to a specialist because they're told you know not to because they cost the h m o money um you know i uh i'm a speech pathology major and i see quite a few advantages to uh having uh some kind of public uh health insurance where a lot of the maybe a lot of people who couldn't afford to pay for insurance would be guaranteed some form of insurance anyway oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh wow oh sure uh_huh wow uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah right right exactly uh_huh um well i i'm kind of lucky i have a i'm in graduate school right now and so i have a job waiting for me when i get out of school and they're covering my they're paying me uh uh a little bit a month to go to school and then they're they're paying they're also paying my uh giving me insurance full insurance uh so that makes yeah yeah i'm twenty two yeah exactly uh_huh right exactly uh_huh right what concerns me especially are the um i remember when i was an undergraduate there were a lot of uh families that i i worked with their kids you know they couldn't afford insurance you know to to pay for uh a lot of the services they receive they they receive some from medicare but um boy they they just they just weren't the you know the funds weren't sufficient to cover everything that the that the families needed uh_huh uh_huh rather take the risk uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah uh_huh do you think that do you think that uh government um insurance is the is the answer for all of that uh_huh right uh_huh yeah yeah exactly yes uh_huh right uh_huh the only thing that well shoot i think they ought to have it i think they ought to have uh uh you know a health care for everybody my my only problem is uh uh i don't want to pay for it well uh they've had some really [startling] discoveries recently as to how much things cost that the uh at a hospital and health care i think the health care the costs have really gone crazy well yeah wow really what uh what what bothers me is uh my wife was in just for a little bit and she went in to the emergency room they charged they had two needles one was like twenty seven dollars one was twenty eight dollars for a needle and that stuff just uh is just completely out of line yeah yeah yeah now we we were in uh my wife went into the emergency room and she was we were there for about four hours and it came out to about fifteen hundred dollars that was just just for the hospital that wasn't a doctor whoa i sure hope you had insurance yeah so it's like an h m o wow yeah gee wow six thousand dollars wow for a day i'd want to stay in there that whole day uh_huh yeah jeez probably even the electricity yeah no well what uh jeez i wonder what they would have charged you if you had somebody else's blood jeez what'd they charge you for that yeah how many how many [pints] okay i'll let you start first okay well in my case my husband is not a carpenter but in fact he's in electronics but he knew the only way we'd ever have a new home is if he would build it so it took him about two and a half years but uh he built us a house it's uh we have thirty two hundred square feet and it's a brick house and price wise it was great because he did it all himself you know so that way he could we could kind of control in control it and uh we live in kind of a small town and i mean it's nothing fancy you know it's it's a house it's nice and it's real pretty and we're all comfortable in it oh you can because that way your not having to pay the middle men and everybody else you know but uh of course my husband did everything except my brother's a trim carpenter and he came in you know and did the inside for us and that helped and uh yes and uh we had to hire of course the plumbing and the brick and everything else nothing you know he did everything else we've been in it six years no we're well uh our kids are kind of still small now and we had thought before maybe a lot older we don't need such a large house that we'll sell it but he will not build a second one himself because he says age wise he'll never be able to handle that again yes yes oh uh_huh yeah oh uh_huh yeah but uh like i said otherwise you know the expense but you know we could not have one as large as we have if you know we hadn't did it ourselves yeah i mean it's not an eldorado house or anything like that but you know it's ours that's right that's right apparently the [appraisers] likes it because our taxes sure is high isn't it it really is because i i'm always shocked at about you know what they have it appraised at i think oh my goodness okay and it was nice talking to you okay bye bye okay we um i'm presently living in a house uh first time uh we had the house built and so this is our our fifth year in it i guess and uh um it was a real excitement to uh to go out and select the house and have one made and built and like you wanted it we were the fourth to build out of three hundred and forty houses and um as we did with probably ninety five percent of the people here in dallas fort worth we bought a fox and jacobs home and they're good for about five years or four years and after that they start falling apart so i would uh not recommend f and j house for my dog to live in uh because they're overpriced uh but they're a cheap house if you can't afford something good you know they're good for that and um you can call it a home because it's a place to go home and keep the rain off your head but as far as the costs for what your getting uh the longevity of the house is not uh is not worth it how about in your case uh_huh uh_huh well that's great that's great that's uh i've heard i have another gentleman friend of mine who uh who had a house built as a matter of fact another guy is building one now he's been doing it for three years and the city's a little upset with him but i understand you save a lot of money off uh by doing that and uh nothing wrong with that uh i'll vouch for that um that was a big savings well that's great uh have you been in it long oh really well have you any plans to uh maybe uh expand or move [onward] i see well first one is always a bear we're having a an architect friend of mine design a house for us and that can basically be be put on any lot in any state any you know so that's kind of we just got with him and told him what all we wanted and he's charging us about a buck a square foot to design it and he's certified and registered so at least we know we're it's not going to fall in or something if it's built but uh i have heard that your approach is is right you can actually go out and sub it if even if you don't want to get hands on you can even just sub it out to concrete and those kind of things and and that's kind of the plan i have so i'm uh everyone i talk to uh i file in my little book and do other things with it that's great that's great sure i can imagine if your happy with it that's all that counts that's all you only have to uh satisfy yourself and no one else oh that's uh that's uh an encouraging sign if you ever want to resell i guess well that's great well yeah i guess that about does it nice talking with you too bye uh what kind of house do you live in oh yeah with with a yard and fence i'm in an apartment in uh plano yeah they are if uh kind of depends on what you're looking for mine's just a one bedroom place that's uh uh it's hard for me to tell because i haven't rented in uh probably twenty twenty five years and uh just i'm getting back into apartment life and it's yeah well they vary from place to place it's hard to tell you know how well they've been kept up how old they are and these are probably oh one of the nicest that i found and uh they're almost five hundred a month for a one bedroom place yeah it does considering that you know uh house payments are not a whole lot more than that yeah wow that's a lot for a townhouse but that's what happens when you get up in this area you know you got all these companies are up here and these and i guess they know they're going to get it yeah yeah that's true you just take off your mortgage interest and that's about it yeah i've owned uh several built several well and especially around north dallas or at least in plano area they they basically all look alike because fox and jacobs isn't it i can remember i've only been here eight years but i can remember coming to work from i used to live in wylie and i could see downtown dallas and now there's this brown haze over it and it's moving north oh yeah yeah yeah it does how long have you been in this house ten years no you really don't were you said you were out of state for a while was that a smaller town than dallas area how was it how were the house prices up there yeah wow oh yeah well you know a lot of these people that i've talked to that are coming down from uh like what i call the back east especially from j c penney uh are selling two and three hundred thousand dollar houses up there and buying a hundred and fifty hundred and seventy five thousand dollar houses down here and they've wound up getting better houses here than they had there so in a way i guess it works both ways yeah that's a fact i guess that's true and they don't have to worry about yard upkeep if they don't hardly have any that's true there's not too many basements in texas yeah gosh i remember when i was little uh we didn't have a i lived grew up in southern oklahoma and uh people across the street had a cellar and we never did and it's just like dallas area it was tornado alley up there and every spring mom would drag me up at three o'clock four o'clock in the morning and [pajamas] and teddy bear across the street and we'd go into the cellar and i to this day i don't care if i go or not you know if it's going to get me it's get me yeah you ever thought about building a house have you ever thought about building a house yeah that's true especially when with t i it's like anybody else you never know how long you're going to be here be in one place you know yeah do you work do you work well how do you handle do you have kids so you got he's working and working to get this big house to take care of how do you manage both of those yeah you basically can take care of everything yourself yeah yeah what about home repairs and stuff do you have to do all that yourself or oh you too yeah oh yeah sounds like you've already got the [makings] for being a general contractor if you don't wall paper it well together you should probably not build a house together yeah i built three houses in my life and oh they the building process was a lot of fun but puts a lot of strain on things yeah you bet oh you bet oh yeah well to some of them i guess it doesn't matter you know that maybe they've got enough coming in to take care of it are they they as far as they're concerned they've come to the promised land you know they've got it made oh yeah because you're uh confined by space you know i had a i came out of a thirty one hundred square foot two story house and i had room for everything in fact i had more room than knew what to do with i don't know just seems like room stuff always expands to fill available space but uh yeah you can you know you you adjust you figure out it's not as bad as i thought it was it's not as bad as i remembered especially going to college and living in apartments there you know how noisy that can be uh there seems to be more a mature crowd in uh apartments at least where i am uh even though you know there's kids all around and there's there's traffic and there's people running up and down the [sidewalks] and stuff like that but still uh yeah pretty much and uh there's never really any oh i remember in school there's just seem like there was a fight or a party or something going on every night you don't run into that up here i think i think because there's so many uh professional people if you want to call them that that go spend all day at work and they want to come home and they want some quiet you see a lot of activity outside people riding bikes playing ball or jogging or they're doing this and that and they they're trying to to [unwind] oh yeah it's a hundred and what eighty thousand something like that oh yeah oh you bet and the thing that that gets me is uh you never really catch up you never really finish doing things and uh you're always paying for something oh you are constantly there's always something going wrong uh we live in a one story just like a style home you know the standard texas uh fox and jacobs how about you guys are you in a apartment or a home well they say those are easy to or difficult to find how are [rents] doing i haven't looked at [rents] in a long time uh_huh what's a what's a one bedroom are you in a um well plano most most complexes in plano are pretty nice so you're probably in a you know uh_huh ooh that does get high yeah i mean yeah i was going to say our mortgage is is between depending on you know it drops um seems like in the last six months we um got lucky and we [refinanced] and it but it was like eight hundred and something but it went down to like seven hundred and twenty so that's really not i have friends that pay about nine hundred dollars for a town house in yeah in actually they're near plano in north dallas too but i couldn't believe it but you know yeah and then i think that um nobody was really buying houses there for a long time there because of just i mean we've been in ours for about ten years but uh there's no investment in it you know all it allows you to do is itemize on your on your taxes yeah that's really about it it's uh have you ever owned your own home so you know what it's like yeah it's like when you first this is our third one it's not um and it's not that exciting after a while yeah suburban tract yeah we uh we lived out of state for a while and came back and uh we lived in a smaller city and now we say gee dallas really is big and polluted uh_huh yeah it's really it's really sad because they're not doing anything well we're getting off the subject i guess but just like with housing i mean they're not doing anything about pollution they're not doing anything about it's going to look like have you ever been to houston you know um i used to think that dallas was better than houston because their [zoning] for where you can put a house next to a now it looks just like houston to me we've been in here ten years yeah so we've got you know got some investment in it but you really don't get anything out of it yeah smaller we were up in pittsburgh pennsylvania my home town the prices actually a lot better because pittsburgh is about the size i've been trying to think like a louisville or minneapolis that type of size and the prices what you get here for about a hundred thousand you could get there for about seventy five eighty yeah it's really and we didn't think it was that clean but then after you're gone for a while it looks cleaner you know uh yeah saint louis whatever really i guess it's yeah but and here i guess it depends on what you want you know here i got a lot of people that work for j c penney in marketing and a lot of the people that came from that area probably like what you're talking about they had no um they had a lot of property but not a lot of house and now they have a lot of house and hardly any [yardage] around it but but they love it i mean they they they think they're getting you know you say sun room to them and you [enclose] and you can sell it yeah yeah and a lot of them i know a couple women that work there and they don't miss in public relations and they don't miss having a basement to run up and down to you know and i said you haven't heard about tornados how about those you know uh_huh yep that's exactly uh growing i grew up in western pennsylvania near pittsburgh and uh we used to call the basements actual cellars so it's funny to hear that word because i never hear it you know it's like the back porch used to be a [stoop] you know but uh um the housing is just we like the older houses and i don't know if we're going to stay here or not depends you know i mean pardon me yeah actually when we were up north um but some family things changed so we ended up come back down here and all that because it helped my husband's work but um we really would like to but we don't know if we're going to do it unless we stay here you know yeah it's real tough i mean the economy any more i mean i think everybody just lives under an umbrella the uncertainty with housing and everything you know it's pardon me yes i do no we don't uh how do we take care of the house well i don't have a i don't shouldn't say that i don't have an ethnic maid i don't have we have some friends that live near north dallas off of campbell road and they have like a four thousand square foot home and she's got a uh a live out nanny um but any rate i don't have any of that um i don't know it's really not too difficult with no children and just two people you know we have a yeah we have a dog and we're pretty i mean we're not [fanatically] neat but um we keep things up you know not like where there is three feet of weeds or anything in the yard by the time you need to um get around to fertilizing and cutting in the spring um no we're pretty much um we we've been around long enough as a couple that we learned a long time ago not to wall paper together and things like that uh we pretty much hire we [subcontract] mostly everything i mean other than anything that's not a um i mean i know how to fix a running toilet he does what he needs to but mostly if it's something major um you know cleaning out the air conditioning [ducts] or something like that we just hire out to do that yeah no thanks i have you ever done that i mean you sound like you may have been a couple one time and how'd that go uh_huh getting to agree to things i'm sure and i also think that once you get to be um you know certain when you get to be thirty something and thirty something gets to be a little bit older you start um the dollar value on things i you know i think people that own homes a lot in north dallas are very [materialistic] i know i'm supposed to talk about homes but people that the people that own them are the homes themselves and you know um spending sixteen dollars a yard for custom [draperies] for custom drapes just doesn't yeah that's i mean and and you know you see a lot of these people that came east from uh west from uh from new york with exxon or j c penney and it's just a hoot to watch them right right exactly so well was it hard to adjust living in an apartment after being in a house oh my goodness yeah uh_huh yeah well in a way you can travel light how is how is apartment [dwelling] living in terms of general privacy and noise and things like that uh_huh yes i do everybody pretty much keeps to their own turf so to speak yeah uh_huh relax and try to go to sleep really yeah i think plano in general is getting a little more well it's gotten so big it's almost a town in it's own right or something yeah the price of home now we paid oh we paid um about seventy eight nine for our house like i said about a decade ago not even about nine years ago and i'd say they appraised it it's gone up you now maybe like five percent so it's an investment but it's something that you know when you're first married or starting out you think if you really have something but you really it's just real nowadays with the way the income tax i think housing is strictly to itemize yeah exactly we yeah and even you know i mean like we had i called them [prefabs] just a tract home you know i mean we we had one of their homes that was nicer in pennsylvania but um it was an older home but then you buy an older home and you're always fixing things up so you know my home all right my home is about fifteen years old it's a two story house it it's our first home and it looks like it's going to be the last i think we're going to [demolish] it we've got two children and it's they have scraped the uh plaster off the walls you know with riding their little toys through it and stuff you know put dents in the tiles just [multitude] of them i mean even places it's it's past the dent stage we're talking some of it's been peeled away you know i don't know what they yeah dents in the hole right we've got two one of them's eleven and one of them's seven and then the carpet you know we need to replace the carpet i mean it sounds like it's just the pits but it's not all that bad i guess but you know they're just real hard on it definitely i can see why people wait until they get like in high school or maybe junior high and then they get another one i know there's a lot of them yeah because they're always because they're always ruining something how old is your child well some appliances breaking or something and you said you were in colorado springs are there a lot of trailers around there and is that what you're in well then that's why you're doing this then isn't it oh okay well i'm not in t i i had a friend that had a roommate that worked for t i and she saw this come up on the computer screen and ran it off and passed it to the people that were interested i know i've been talking to people in ohio and uh virginia and i think california yeah it is how does she get to work uh_huh i had a and i wish we could down here well sometimes but i tell you i'd sure like to be able to get on a bus or something and get to work but if i did it it would take me an hour and fifteen minutes i would have to get on one and drive or walk to a you know there's one terminal close to us and then they'd drive me to the main terminal here then i'd have to go to downtown dallas and then walk over couple blocks and get on another bus to go to my school so that's too much yeah but there sure are a lot of people that work down there definitely and i went down there a couple maybe three weeks ago for a trial and i mean all these people were standing up that was you know during the [workday] all along the streets you know just all around these vacant buildings just a lot of vacant buildings and they're just being demolished and and they stink and beer and wine bottles all over the place uh_huh you know i think it might be up to two hundred and fifty thousand it's gotten big i think when we moved here it was like a hundred and twenty something like that and i didn't realize when i moved here that it was a separate town from dallas i know now but i didn't i'm from kilgore texas it's in east oh where you from are you so why did you move up to colorado well it's real pretty up there i have a friend in denver what do you what they're not owning homes period uh_huh it wasn't such a bad idea so have you got uh land i did that one year i lived with two other girls and we all taught and it was a two bedroom so we took turns you know having sharing the bedroom i got to where i decided i wanted to pay more rent and get a private bedroom and then we had two baths it was just one the little bathroom were the thing that really bothered me because i felt real closed in that was in the seventies uh_huh i'm sorry uh_huh so have have you got it under are you required to by law we were down here yeah well i bet it's not bad okay but how much is yours when we bought ours we were paying uh three hundred twenty nine dollars for how many years oh so it was still a lot cheaper so it was still a lot cheaper than what we gave because ours is thirty years and we bought one of the cheapest houses you know a tract house which probably didn't make much difference have a in it in the price gee nice huh that sounds good so if the economy gets better are you going to get another one another house no but you wouldn't take that mobile home right you would it would be cheaper to move that than buy another one t i would pay to move you so how many years you been up there do you snow ski it's real pretty i went rock climbing one time my friend talked me in that i'm a real um [scaredy] when it comes to heights but once we got on top of the rocks it was quite so tell me about your home all right yes we talking from from dents in the holes i understand we've got i've got a daughter kids are hard on houses yeah yeah uh we live in a mobile home and that's probably not typical america but it's what we have it's all we can afford and uh seems like we're always working on it as i'm sure it is with your house yeah ten girl so you know just like yours ours is always you know we're something else goes wrong always you know it's no appliances we had a couple plumbing problems we've oh who knows you know it's always something with homes yes yeah there are there's a big military constituency oh no no i'm i work for t i oh yes what division are you in oh it's not a hobby you know it's something to do i get to here about texas again a bit and get to talk to people all over the country you know that i've talked to someone in maryland i believe it was it's interesting isn't it you know the gal i talked to in maryland didn't own a car she's never traveled anywhere she's never been anywhere she you know i talked about one of the biggest problems in the united states being our roads and she didn't understand she doesn't drive uh she uh lives on campus she's a college student buses and and uh public transportation her her parents live by the public transportation well it would be nice but i kind of like the freedom too don't you right if it's anything like uh dallas always has been no one wants to be at downtown dallas much is the crime rate still bad huh huh yeah huh that's terrible so garland how nice is it now it's been a while since i've been there yes it has well yeah it is where you from kilgore i know where kilgore is i'm i'm originally from lubbock yeah seemed like the thing to do at the time oh i love it the mountains i love the mountains uh back to the topic it seems that uh more and more people are not owning traditional homes these days yeah yeah uh everyone says you know when i bought this several years ago when our local economy was good everyone said no no you're crazy to buy a mobile home but now it seems that uh with the local economy bad and t i and strange it seems that uh oh they're doing some back [pedaling] no i'm renting at the time so gosh yeah well mobile homes have changed a lot probably since you had one ours is wood ours is wood sided and it has a traditional v top roof and uh it's nine hundred and eighty square foot what two bedroom one bath rooms are nice sized well you can imagine nine hundred eighty square foot broke up into two bedrooms one bath it's it's comfy yes i don't know whether it is or not it was already setup when we bought it oh yeah it's wood sided it has [sheetrock] everywhere and uh you know so it's quieter than you remember mobile homes to be oh our payments are like two twenty fifteen and uh what yeah oh yes a mobile [home's] a heck of a lot cheaper and well actually whenever we got ours we picked it up used you know three or four years used and uh well yeah it did no no no what i meant not in quality what i meant was four years equity costs five hundred dollars so you know there's not that much time left on the loan and i don't know uh to tell you the truth right now it feels kind of comfy to have our mobile home and have it so close to paid for you know it's like me to pickup and move somewhere else somewhere else is easy sure sure absolutely oh absolutely when i you know when you talk about the deal like i got yeah yeah it would be cheaper uh especially if it were a paid move or something you know there's some paid moves occasionally i don't know but they did when i when i moved up here so they might want to move away uh six or seven uh a little bit little bit mostly i just love walking in the mountains driving in the mountains oh that's exciting okay what uh go ahead and tell me about your home oh is that right oh that's interesting okay yeah no that's okay okay oh that's neat wow that's large uh_huh oh well that's not too bad that's still fairly new well oh you're kidding well do you mind if i ask what it's worth down there i mean what it's okay it it sounds like i mean from the way you described it a home like that here would be at least two hundred and fifty thousand i mean dallas is a very marked up area although right now it's a lot lower um because of all the layoffs and everything the economy around here is real poor well no not really um the area itself uh the fort worth dallas area um has become kind of depressed because there's been so many layoffs with big companies including texas instruments um there's been tremendous amounts of of uh layoffs so really housing is real bad the economy itself around here is not too terribly bad but housing is still real bad yeah yeah this is oh uh_huh oh wow so do you think it was [overdeveloped] then wow um um yeah yeah well right now we're just renting but it is a home um it's a four bedroom home it has about i guess eighteen hundred square feet it's on one floor uh we have no basement i don't know okay i wasn't sure most of the ones you know up north and everything do but um anyway it's uh it's pretty also pretty typical for the area most of this area was developed this house was built in seventy four so most of the it's almost twenty years old and most of the houses around here were built pretty much the same style uh we have a friend that lives two blocks over and his house is almost identical to us except his is three bedrooms and ours is four but otherwise the [layout] is pretty much the same so i i think most of them are there was it like most areas that are built um there were probably like two or three styles you could choose from and and uh that's pretty much all the houses in the area for probably a square mile i'd say at least maybe even a little bit more than that where are you in relation to sevren are you close to sevren okay well i just i have a sister that used to live in sevren and they bought their home in i i want to say like around nineteen seventy five or something like that and they paid like they they had it built from you know they they designed it and everything and to have it built they only paid forty thousand for it and when they left the area they sold it for a hundred and twenty thousand yeah so i just wondered you know if the whole area was like that or uh_huh um yeah sounds like a lot of money though sure yeah right oh yeah wow yeah wow wow that's really that much of a difference wow yeah wow why is that do you know i mean uh_huh oh oh my goodness wow well my home at the moment is an apartment yeah i work here in germantown but i live in pensacola florida so i own a home in pensacola and uh let's see we are to compare homes correct uh my home is well is typical for the area i live in a development uh it's a relatively i would say well god it sounds like sounds like i'm bragging but it's upper middle class uh kind of an environment it's a two story colonial which my wife and i designed uh it has around thirty two hundred square feet uh five bedrooms and so forth and so on and it is i would imagine in terms of of size and so forth it's relatively typical for the area it might be i would say it's probably [midsized] for the area there are some smaller and there are you know several larger and uh but based you know in terms of you know in in pensacola in that area of florida it uh it's what now it is uh probably ten years old yeah and so it's in terms of cost and and and size and so forth it uh the you know housing there is extremely affordable and uh compared to other parts of the country you know let's say compared to maryland that same house here would probably cost three quarters of a million dollars but i really haven't i really haven't uh when we built it ten years ago it was it ran around a hundred and forty thousand dollars so i i would have really i haven't really priced you know in the market so i uh_huh uh_huh i thought that was on the [upswing] again now uh_huh yes uh_huh well pensacola has it's really is a buyer's market there now and it isn't because of the well there has been a lot of speculative building uh i don't know perhaps not in dallas but uh i'm sure people in uh you know in uh galveston and so forth would be knowledgeable about it uh pensacola is a navy town and home [porting] was a possibility a few years ago they were expecting an influx of something on the order of fifty thousand people or more from the navy a new carrier was coming in and uh the uh [attendant] uh support [vessels] well that's no longer the case oh it's it is i mean the the number of single family units on sale is phenomenal compared to the population and so [overbuilding] is has been a real problem there so you can still get a get a a good house for a very very reasonable price and i mean good i would let's say typical say three bedroom uh two and a half baths on a half acre or so of land uh reasonable construction would probably run you uh right now anywhere between somewhere between a hundred and a hundred and forty thousand dollars and probably perhaps cheaper depending upon the neighborhood what about your home uh_huh uh_huh nor do we but uh_huh uh_huh right well the housing here in maryland is just atrocious and in in the entire d c area i'm i'm only about uh twelve miles or so from the uh border of washington d c and montgomery county maryland is probably one of the most expensive places to no we are west sevren is east near the eastern shore if i had uh_huh oh that's not unusual yeah well that's that area over there is not as expensive as in the the immediate you know washington area and so we uh i was just looking for example there is a uh condominium complex next to the apartment complex where i live and i was over there recently looking at the possibility of buying a two bedroom condominium and ninety two thousand dollars for a two bedroom which is essentially a two bedroom apartment now it was very nicely done i would have thought yes i i can't i can't envision spending that much money and on on something along those lines so you know it's i guess you pay the [piper] but plus the the the taxes around here are [phenomenally] high uh for the and so you on that it's not unusual for example for somewhere around here on a on a on a what we would you know what you described as your house and what i would describe as my house say for example in pensacola florida on that house with the homestead [exemption] and so forth and so on might pay three or four hundred dollars a year taxes maybe you know maybe a little bit higher than that now but that same house here you'd pay almost six thousand dollars a year taxes on it so it's uh so the question of whether to buy here or move to another county say drive twenty more miles north buy a condominium for approximately uh the same price maybe a little lower but the taxes would be you know perhaps maybe one third uh of oh absolutely yeah so it's it's really sad this is one this is one of the most highly taxed areas in the country well they it the their they do have an extremely good such things as extremely good school systems for example it has one of the best school systems in the country uh and because the cost of living around here is so high public employees make great salaries around here i was reading just recently where the typical administrator in the montgomery county public schools makes and i'm not this is uh the figure he makes eighty thousand dollars a year that's and i by administrator i i think i mean i they didn't they did not define it but for example a curriculum supervisor or principal or someone you know in that uh in that range okay jay where do you live in texas in dallas what's that the i thirty and central express okay yeah right yeah oh is that right oh how about that it's a new home about eight years oh uh_huh right uh_huh well we we live in a brick story and a half uh cape [cod] style i guess you'd call it and uh have a big sun room on the back of it no it doesn't have with openness and light i understand that i would love that too uh_huh yeah this is very traditional oh uh_huh uh_huh do you have children at home three oh boy you still need space plenty of space uh_huh huh uh_huh well it's uh-oh about twenty five thousand twenty five hundred square feet i guess it's four bedrooms and two baths and that it has one wing built on that's a kitchen family room and then the big room on the back uh uh_huh two and two uh_huh right uh_huh i was just reading an article uh that there were nineteen thousand properties available in texas uh for sale by the resolution trust corporation [repossessed] i i guess so uh_huh that's discouraging if you own property few years uh_huh right well our daughter and son in law moved up back up here he's from texas but course she's from here uh about a year and a half ago and had their house on the market down there and they never did sell it so they stayed six months and she got her job back and he got a job down there because huh_uh nope they live in rowlett have you uh_huh uh_huh what college are you teaching at oh uh_huh the only one i know is richardson garland uh_huh yeah well i enjoyed talking to you i hope so right okay thank you same to you bye bye i live in dallas uh right at the intersection of the [busiest] highway in the state and a uh it goes east and west and a north south tollway it's no it's called six thirty [five's] the highway it's the [looper] that goes around the city and then uh the tollway is called the dallas north tollway just moved here about uh-oh uh one about a month ago after twenty one years two miles to the east so it's a very different house from the typical dallas uh house it's about eight years old it's uh it's a duplex type thing uh very modern and uh very open and [airy] light so it's different than the than the long texas [ramblers] uh_huh what's your house like oh great yeah so it's got a lot of openness and light also oh it doesn't well that's what my wife really wanted and so uh yeah that's uh our our last house wasn't too bad but it was just too traditional and so if uh the the next time uh probably a year and a half from now we're going to try to build so make one really uh contemporary and and very modern and very open and very light no i have three in college they they usually get back for the at least two of them for the summer so but still need a little bit of space we we have a lot less than we had uh recently already cut back how big is your place oh that's good size yeah we we had yeah we had four bedrooms two and a half baths uh in the place we just left so down now we're down to two and two uh_huh so it won't be terribly wonderful when the kids are home but it won't be that long because we not for sure you know how long they're going to stay or whatever so oh yes yes and if you get in the if if you can find one in the right area you can really pick up a steal uh we we really didn't go that route and didn't look uh but uh the planning of them and the the housing market probably still going to even go lower there are many many houses for sale just by the regular route so uh yeah and we just decided uh uh sell and we got we got a pretty good price uh for for what we had uh not as good as it would have been say three or four years ago but that uh that was just the timing uh_huh oh yeah they're not moving very well for sure and that's a good uh example of it oh yeah i know where that is i've been we've been here for twenty five years i'm from missouri and my wife's from kansas so i i teach at a college here so it's uh it's sort of home now so i'm at uh one of the uh it's called brookhaven college it's one of the community colleges and it's just about two miles to the west of where i'm living so it's very nice very convenient yeah now richland college is out it serves richardson and uh garland and that's about nine miles to the east of here so uh anyway well it's good to hear from you and i hope we hope we did them some good uh on their little computer [dealy] and uh have a good life the rest of it bye bye okay yeah i'm originally from new york and i go visit a lot and their real estate up there is i mean ridiculous absolutely ridiculous an apartment here like i live in an apartment and my apartment is three fifteen a month and it's just the one it's a one bedroom which is still kind of expensive but i prefer to live in uh in a nice part of town because i feel safe here and i i i pay more to feel safe you know you mean in a one bedroom oh nothing huh_uh i mean just nothing no microwave we've got i have ceiling fan i guess that's something it's real cute it's got a little [vaulted] ceiling and [mirrored] uh [mirrored] uh it's wood uh listen to me i can't even think of the name of my own apartment [woodhollow] right next to village green it's on yeah kind of far north waco oh okay yeah far north like on lake shore where all those apartments are it's right up there so uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh right uh_huh that could have been used as yeah yeah um uh_huh so that looks good when you all get ready to sell you'll probably do really well my father used to live in dallas uh now he he went back to new jersey we're originally from the east but he oh really he uh well actually right now he lives in rhode island he lived in new jersey for a while now he's in rhode island and uh he used to like to go and we used to go just every weekend just to look at houses for no reason we weren't buying one every weekend but just to look at them and so i got a pretty good feel of you know what i want when i do you know get my house whenever that is um what was i going to say about that i completely lost my train of thought um but we we enjoy going looking at houses and and uh we now i kind of have a good idea of what i want i know i want a big family area uh yeah fire a fireplace i saw this awesome house the other weekend it was a great big family room and it was circular and the other side was the patio and the backyard and it had a built in uh grill and every i mean it was it was just an the ultimate party room you know i was just going i could have a party in here but that's pretty nice uh_huh right yeah i like a lot of closet space i don't like because i don't like to have a lot of things out you know just all over the place i like to have them kind of tucked away uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh my father had uh i keep talking about my father because he owned a house uh he had the kitchen kind of a kitchen and a very long family room it's just kind of one room and what he did he put uh a bar right in the center and put some uh a glass rack down so you had like wine glasses hanging from the ceiling and then the bar and it just kind of it kind of separated it it was still you know together but it just looked a lot better because i personally don't like the combination rooms uh_huh uh_huh yeah i'd like a big backyard oh really a little hot try to do it early in the mornings uh_huh wow uh_huh well that's good yeah yeah that's true they do throw those up are you all planning to move anytime are you looking for a house or not uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah really to find it uh_huh you knew that was it uh_huh i'll probably i'll probably move but i'll probably move to another apartment or something because i'm i'm i'm really uh what's the word i move a lot anyway because the job i have i only work like here i'll be here for like a year and then i'll move off i can move up and so i'm a i'm a news reporter i work at channel six and so this is like my first job so i won't be here very long so i'm not even looking to buy anything as permanent as house you know so i'm staying in an apartment and i'm not married or anything so it's no biggie uh_huh yeah yeah yeah yeah like i'm amazed at how much stuff i've accumulated in my apartment because up to this point i was in school so i'd go home every summer and i could take all my stuff home because i didn't have a bed or a couch or any any of that but now i could not move back home and i just realized this you know the other day i'm going wait a minute i can't go back home for the summer or anything i have too much stuff so it was just like a weird transition out of home so i have to move in apartments just because i have so much stuff no it's not it's not yeah oh my goodness yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh there there are tons of apartments down here i mean and it m c c yeah yeah i i think they're called lake shore [villa] or something um and it's a nursing there was a nursing home or something right there uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah how often do you all come through waco uh_huh depends on what's going on uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh all right you think uh_huh uh_huh um um waco to me seems seems like it's pretty steady i mean i'm not a real estate person or anything but it it's a real college town and so you know you have these apartments and then the the houses are all most of the houses are pretty nice and i don't i don't you know really see a lot on sale or anything and people are pretty stable here you know i kind of see this as kind of a retirement community as i always call it yeah uh_huh nice and quiet so i don't think i could live here much longer but i'll deal with it well it yeah really okay well it was very nice talking to you okay you take care okay bye bye oh and how big is it yeah right well what's included in that like washer dryer or nothing wow yeah which one is it where is oh okay okay yeah i i used to live in waco so yeah yes yeah yeah uh we live in a house here and uh it's a three bedroom two bath and uh i it's it i don't know i got two numbers today actually we were talking about mortgage insurance today with my agent and uh it's about sixteen hundred square feet which is fine for the two of us but it it you know we looked at a lot of houses that were had more square footage but they didn't use it right you know it was a bunch of empty you know hallway and stuff that yeah yeah really so we've used every bit of it and our house um we bought it for sixty four and uh the neighbors house next door to us sold for seventy five so you know i think we were you know got a good deal on it yeah yeah yeah oh really my husband's from new jersey yeah that's what we were looking for the first thing wow uh_huh yeah but that's what we had uh uh that's what we had looked for was our main concern was a big living room you know and big closet space you know yeah yeah and uh so that's that's what we went for first and and it you know we we don't we just have a big living room an and a dining room is separate and you know some places have like the house next door to us that we looked at had a living room a dining room and a den but to stick a wall between two rooms didn't do anything for us just so we could have a living room and a den so we opted for the just the whole wide room that went from one end of the house to the other just about yeah oh yeah right i but i i think for where we are um i think we got a real good deal on it and we you know we have a uh the backyard is just huge it is just really i think another house could fit back there and uh we really liked it of course when you have to mow it you know in uh middle of august it's it's kind of a little hot yeah but uh it's it's nice and that was you know a big selling point too and i think another thing that was really nice was that our neighbors on the other side of us bought the lot right next to us and they've lived there and have it all built up you know they've got a whole garden and trees and everything so it's not like we're uh kind of [secluded] you know we don't have a neighbor's fence coming up to ours you know right up to our bathroom window or whatever it is like a lot of the little model homes that they you know throw up in three days and uh no no not at all in fact uh we we talked about that just a little bit you know we were [joking] around about uh winning a [sweepstakes] and what would we do with the money and steve said we'll i'll buy a bigger house and i said no i would just fix this one you know there's you know cause we i like where it is and i like how it's laid out and it took us forever to find it but when we found it it was we knew it yeah yeah where oh okay oh okay right right um yeah and that's and that's one thing is once you you know you get into a house it's like you get more stuff and to put it all back into an apartment would just never work god i can't believe we moved out of an apartment and had this much stuff and it actually fit you know of course we got it on a little bit of more furniture and stuff but it was just unreal yeah yeah yeah yeah and that's actually three fifteen over there's probably not real real bad for for waco and and for as many gosh as many as apartments and [condo's] are over there i mean it it's just and and especially around lake shore area that area's picked up quite a bit since we were there and uh yeah because i i had lived in the gosh i'm not sure what they're called now but they were lake shore apartments that are like right next to the baseball field m c c baseball field but no the ones next door to those there were lake shore there's a i don't know what they look like now yeah there was a nursing home and then there's an apartment and then there's another apartment and we lived in those those third ones and they we moved in when they were brand new uh you know we drive by now and think gosh you know look how much it's changed an oh every now and then it just we it's uh yeah and it's not really now that it's sixty five it doesn't take hardly anytime to get there you know run to the mall or run to sam's or or whatever we used to run to you know red lobster but now they've got one in killeen so we don't have to run that far so that's that's about how things are and the seems like the market here's picking up yeah i really think it is just for the fact that the you know it's it seemed like as soon as we bought this house we saw all these houses for sale you know and i think now a lot of them are selling and a lot of [sellers] are getting close to what they want instead of you know just having to give it away yeah yeah yeah yeah i i saw i see that a lot too there and it's nice too i liked living there well i guess we chewed up the house market and apartment market for a while you too tanya all right bye bye okay tell me about your home huh_uh that's pretty tough what area do you live in oh okay i see is that pretty typical for your area yeah huh_uh that sounds real interesting i live in a suburb of dallas and uh i live in the basic three bedroom two bath home so at least i have two bathrooms that's not so bad but uh it's pretty typical for the area as well uh i've always been interested in older homes personally so i think you can end up doing more with them it seems like what about yard space do you have lot of a big lot or anything like that oh i see huh_uh oh that's nice because i have just like a very small you know those basic tract houses like that we have a very small yard and um i do have garden but it's extremely small but uh it seems like though for your area that that is sort of different in a big city like that most houses i would think would be sort of like what we live in just a you know basic tract house yeah that's exactly right that's the way we are we have uh one thing we have that we really enjoy here is we have a hot tub in the back so we have we have quite a few parties and uh seems like everyone that lives around us ends up you know hearing every conversation that goes on outside with everyone so uh that's true that is one thing that i don't enjoy about it is the houses are too close together but uh you know it's fine for now hopefully eventually we'll move in a larger home the only thing that i don't like also is the rooms are so small you know it's very difficult to arrange furniture and things like that so are your rooms in your house bigger since it's a sixties home because it seems like then that they built the homes much larger is that true yeah yeah yeah that's really it that's a plus at least we do have like three walk in closets here so that's that's maybe not so typical but uh yeah it really does except when you have to fill them up and then you get those visa bills in and so anyway um anything else about the area about um you know can you compare yourself to any thing around there yeah so it's it's yeah yeah that's nice that is nice but you know too the only bad thing too is that then you have to keep up you know you have to the yard to deal with and do you you must have more time than than i have i'm sitting out here right now we had this terrible rain and i'm looking at the yard and seeing how tall the grass has gotten and it seems like now that's that's i almost wish i was in an apartment or something you know yeah well um i don't know do we just terminate this or do you have to talk for a certain amount of time do you know okay okay well can you tell me anything else about the house are you working on it i mean do people around that area seem to do a lot of [renovation] yeah that's that's nice yeah the town that i came from is uh is a uh older town it like the typical the typical homes there are like you know early nineteen hundreds late eighteen hundreds and i renovated a house there and that was so much fun i mean there if you don't live in a house that's at least seventy five to hundred years old you know you're just nobody practically and that was really that was a good experience for me to learn a lot of discipline and uh was considered typical for that area so uh it was quite a change for me to come to a house like that now that's just you know a very square little box and you know there's not a whole lot you can do with it but uh anyway yeah that's true oh really well i have lived in a small town for you know this this town was like less than ten thousand people and it was about sixty miles south of dallas and you know i didn't move out of there until i was you know twenty seven and that was just you know so i love the big city you know i had lived in a rural area for for so long so i've enjoyed it but uh it can it can get kind of tough its like a rat race sometimes yeah yeah yeah it sounds like you enjoy working outside as well i i yeah i really do enjoy that but i haven't planted anything yet or you know i usually have gotten flowers coming out the [gazoo] but i i haven't done that yet i've had finals this week so uh you know i'm just kind of trying to trying to stick in with that but uh since that's over with now maybe i can i can get this yard in shape do you do a lot of gardening yeah yeah yeah i never have much luck with tomatoes i do plant a lot of beans because it seems like the uh bugs get on them so easily and i have a real problem with anything like [pesticides] or anything like that so the only thing that i use is soap i water you know spray the plants because they say supposedly that will keep the bugs off them but uh i don't have luck with that tomato plant so i hate to spray them with anything um what do you do do you have any tips you could give me yeah yeah that's true that's true my dad is a farmer so i've heard him talk about that forever i guess it works but um you have to really wash your vegetables after that so it won't make you sick let's see what else do you do to your house yeah oh really do you plan on like adding any rooms or you have enough space you could probably do that or is it yeah i would think so if you only have one bathroom for three bedrooms that's tough do you not like have a half bath yeah yeah that's rough the house that i used to live in had one bath and a half and that was even just with two people that was a pain that's good really that could account for a lot of [marital] problems i think you get to know each other very well if you have to share a bathroom no that's right it does not make for a happy situation that's true well do you have any children one child and they enjoy where they're living oh so he doesn't know right i guess he's a big help out in your garden right that's right it's healthy why not yeah no it won't hurt them i was a big dirt eater supposedly when i was a child and i turned out okay so don't worry about it just let him enjoy himself so you think that you want to move away from the big city uh yeah so you're just the opposite from me you want to go back to that uh yeah yeah so are you from texas you are so it's not you know that's true houston in itself is a pretty tough place well it's an older home it was made back in the early sixties it's a pier beam house got three bedrooms one bath and that just makes me scream i live in houston well for the neighborhood i'm in yeah this is one of the more established neighborhoods the whole lot i'm sitting on is roughly half an acre about half of that about a quarter acre of that i've got a garden well in the uh newer neighborhoods and development communities the houses are so close together if your neighbor is having an argument you can here it blow for blow yeah and they've got better closet space new houses that i've seen it helps a bunch yeah most of the neighborhood i'm in is pretty typical this whole neighborhood was built between sixty and sixty five everybody has got a pretty good size yard i mean i got probably the biggest if not the biggest yard i've got pretty close to it in the entire neighborhood well i i enjoy that though it's rained no we can after you go to somewhere between five and ten minutes they'll get a little master recording on this yeah this entire neighborhood everybody keeps the places up real nice wow living in the city has some advantages if given the choice i'm getting out that's just something i'll never adapt to i don't i don't want to be a part of the rat race i want to be basically just kind of left alone if i want to sit around and mess with my garden i'll mess with my garden if i want to work in the flower beds very much huh_uh uh landscaping is more than the gardening in the garden i've got my beans peas i've got some onions out tomatoes i'm not real sure what they're going to do this year um my favorite one is putting on the um tomato plant is to put uh dust and that stuff has been around since the beginning of time well i've done some rewiring on it eventually if we stay here i'm going to have to [rewire] the entire house i've talked about adding at least one more room and definitely adding another bath on not even a half bath the only thing that saves it with the schedule i work and the schedule my wife works we're getting ready to go to work at totally different times so that it's not like we're [tripping] over each other in the morning it doesn't work if you're trying to shave and she's trying to put her [eyeliner] on and you're both fighting over the mirror i've got one we'll he's nine months old he likes to dig around a little bit his mother comes in and says why did you let him play in the dirt i guess he's enjoying himself he was eating the dirt i wouldn't worry about it well that's what i've always i was raised up in a town that was about ten thousand people after we got married we moved ended up moving to the houston area yeah okay sorry oh it's uh it looks like a little shot gun house almost it's got three bedrooms going along one side and the living room and kitchen on the other it's uh an older home it's not new i like it though it's big oh i wouldn't know i measured it one time because i was uh we had saw some termites and we thought about getting it sprayed i think it was like i can't remember i'm sorry it's big enough for us though we kind of need maybe one more room we've got two children okay see that's north okay i live i live in plano so it's north to me i say down i'm really from kentucky uh_huh right oh okay that area that [dialect] uh_huh that's what i want to do how many kids do you have do you have enough bedroom space then uh_huh that's kind of like what we'd like to do we just had a baby a couple months ago and we've got a den it's more or less a spare room we rarely go in there except for to play chess we want to make that a bedroom for my stepdaughter and my daughter and uh we need the one extra room like like you said our rooms are too the bedrooms are too small the living room and kitchen are huge but the bedrooms are too small where you've got to leave the furniture just one certain way you can't [rearrange] it at all yeah yeah we've got two great big windows in our back bathroom no privacy well we've got at least two windows on every wall in the house it i'd hate to clean these windows i really would ours are those too yeah you must live in an older home too then uh_huh ours has too when we moved in the man that sold it to us had said that he remodeled it and he did it [hisself] so most of that by now is falling apart you know well i mean it's not just horrible but like this tiles come loose off the wall the whole bathroom is covered from ceiling to foot in tile and i don't like that at all with that uh the great big tiles square tiles like that you put on the floor the the huge one yeah instead of wallpaper i wouldn't mind it if it was like short tiles for that you put right that you put around a [bathtub] that would be prettier but this looks like floor covering on the wall it just doesn't look good right there's one big one that has come off and short of putting nails through it we can't get it back on so and he [rewired] the house and it's [shorting] out here and there and uh_huh um yeah yeah we've got power [surges] on the west side of our house we've got our stereo hooked up well that the power makes it run it's never ran it's always ran just fine the clock and stuff but it runs about ten minutes fast except for about a month for about a month the the clock ran normal and then the power went off again lightning or something knocked it out and we hooked it back up and now it's running ten or fifteen minutes fast again but on the east side of the house it runs fine he put new wiring in it's all new wiring up in the attic or i guess crawl space but uh-oh no he didn't know what he was doing he really should have hired people right he'll end up killing himself end up killing theirselves my husband he'll change out a light switch but that's about as far as he'll go yeah uh was a what uh_huh well he put which i heard it's a law that you're only allowed to have three layers of shingles is it three or five your husband probably knows well he's got seven layers of shingles up there and he told us it was a completely new roof like i said he didn't know what he was doing uh_huh oh no and uh uh a house full of snow uh_huh uh_huh oh no that yeah uh_huh my neighbor or a friend of mine when i lived in louisiana her we all lived on base my husband was in the army she woke up about three or four o'clock in the morning water dripping from hers the neighbor's uh washing machine had uh over done something i don't know but it was leaking just pouring water in and it all went through to her roof and it was coming out of the lights fixtures the fire alarm went off for some reason it shorted it out or something so she woke up with about six feet of water in her house no not six feet but yeah you might as well so did you have carpets and stuff uh_huh your house sounds like mine because mine's pier and beam too yeah uh_huh that's right that's right well you got to redo it the way you wanted it in the end are you finished with it now uh_huh uh_huh how long have you lived there you all did it yourselves the home improvements uh_huh wow that's okay so tell me about your home uh_huh oh really what kind of square footage uh that's okay that's okay uh_huh uh_huh okay so where do you live at i mean what part of town in here in denison or down here in denison yeah okay up here then i was going to say you didn't have the typical you have a southern accent but you don't have a texas accent well i'm originally from uh ohio cincinnati so i'm uh familiar with uh right right also i lived in georgia for about four years so the uh there's a difference too between east and west in the south and uh the way in which people speak anyway my home is um i guess it's about twenty five hundred square foot and i have uh four bedrooms at the present we're [busting] out walls and things like that we have two we have two yeah we'll have enough bedroom space it's we're [rearranging] our house because the bedrooms are kind of small and so we're going to [enlarge] our master bedroom and take out a couple of walls and [enlarge] it and then [shuffle] the rooms around a little bit uh_huh uh_huh right right there's they uh i know what you're saying there ours is the same and they tend to put windows in the strangest places you know we have windows in our bathrooms which really makes it difficult for uh_huh you're kind of limited in what you can do there and everything so no we don't have a lot of that yeah uh_huh i figured i'm going to have to hire somebody to remove our windows and put new ones in that are easier to clean ours are the double [pane] and you can't really clean them on the inside you know right i do the house is about um i'd say almost thirty years old so it's not a new home it's it's seen some wear and tear you know uh_huh oh um that is awful uh_huh he did it in that the normal tiles right uh_huh oh and also they're very heavy and so they tend to come off a whole lot easier um oh wow i that's one of the things we've been fortunate with is our uh wiring is okay we don't have a we don't have enough power um or our [breakers] aren't aren't powerful enough to take to to really help with the load in the house i mean we need to redo some rewiring ourselves but our plumbing is awful there is there is a shut off valve that's outside that doesn't work and there's no other real shut off valves inside the house so if something breaks we have to shut it off from the main in the street you know and oh it's it can be really bizarre and we never know where it's going to flood uh_huh uh_huh um um oh boy you do have a strange wiring problem there uh_huh uh_huh well that's something my husband's in construction and he won't even touch electrical stuff he i mean he'll do a little things but he won't do any major rewiring he says he'd rather pay the [electrician] to handle it pardon that's right well that's the way mine is you know i mean he he well he said he went up in the attic and looked around and he was like oh my god he says looks like a bunch of spaghetti up there and we had squirrels in our attic when we first moved in because the roof was so sorry the roof was really sorry i mean when we moved in we had no idea how bad it was it was a wood shingle roof and we the first year we were living there we had to replace the roof he probably knows i don't know what it is off hand yeah he must not of we stripped ours we stripped ours off we didn't put it over because we put composition roof on and we completely completely stripped all the old wood shingles off put decking up put the paper down and i mean just started from scratch unfortunately when we were doing that it decided it wanted to snow and hail and rain and we and we had we had almost i'd say about half of the roof off and it did this and a house full of snow and rain and it came down it did this in the middle of the night we have plastic you know just tied down on everything you know as best we could real thick edge stuff i mean and the wind came in from the north and it just blew everything off in the middle of the night and we were asleep and and i woke up and i got up and it was about four o'clock in the morning and i heard all these these [drips] drip drip drip drip drip drip i had water coming in every light fixture i had water coming in everything that was in the ceiling everywhere and i mean it filled up my light fixtures because they're the old kind and i would go in and i'd turn on a light in the room you know and the light would come on and the whole thing would be full of water and i mean the light would still come on it didn't blow up or anything uh_huh oh oh yeah that will happen oh my lord but it's quite a bit quite a bit you know that oh several of our rooms got ruined we have um we are on pier and beam we don't have concrete slab underneath our house so it it got into the carpeting got into the floor the carpeting was already awful anyway but it got into the floor and rotted the floor and made it stink oh really yeah they came in and they had it one room they completely cut up the floor in and removed it we had to call the insurance company i mean the insurance company was paying for the new roof but they also ended up having to pay for the damage when the roof was being repaired you know which really wasn't our fault i mean we'd done everything we could to keep out the weather you know and stuff and oh yeah it uh the roof oh yeah yeah it's it's been done for quite some time we're really glad with all the rain we've had in the last couple of years that we have a really good roof uh see it's three it's just been at three years we've been in the house just the three years we've been doing a lot of remodeling i mean it's it had [detached] it had a [detached] garage and my husband's built a [walkway] across and we're going to brick up the garage to match the house and things like that so we what uh the walk oh yeah yeah he see he does this for a living i mean this is what what part of the country are you in oh you are east or west i'm from pittsburgh yeah um the south hills area beaver county well originally beaver county and uh where are you from oh okay i know where that is yeah that's pretty out there what well oh okay yeah i got my brother and my whole family there i'm i'm talking to you from dallas right now uh_huh no my husband does and who how about you place that that needed this well that's okay i guess it's an easy thing to do so you're you have a big do you have a rural house or what do you have oh that's a those are beautiful uh_huh yeah is it a is it a working farm or is it more more i can understand that that's probably what i would uh yeah i can hear the accent now i hear the i hear the western pennsylvania um we live uh we lived in minneapolis for about five years we we originally lived in dallas and we met and got married and then um actually married in pittsburgh and that's that's not what they want to hear on this call uh at any rate we came back here with my husband was transferred around uh up to minnesota and now back to texas with t i and we're leasing a uh two story town home in a section of dallas they call north dallas and it's uh near a little town called plano well it's not little any more uh yes that's out near the airport that's about forty five miles from us it's yeah that's why we not sure we we're not sure we want to uh buy down here because we actually we lived up north long enough to appreciate the um minneapolis saint paul is very clean you know in terms of and in terms of housing down here um you really have your pick but it's just everything's overpriced for the economy it really is i mean we're we're in a leased town home and it's uh you're probably your teeth will probably fall out [figuratively] speaking it's nine hundred a month but you know what if you if you get anything under five hundred you get into what they call high density living you know the big apartment complexes and and i just have no tolerance for that no i that's right yeah but like the town home we're in i don't know how i mean we this is it's like a duplex like a two by two they call it like in pittsburgh and it's nice but it's i mean the girl bought it for a hundred and ten and now she can't sell it and our neighbors yeah i mean we'll our neighbors the attached on the other side they're very nice thank god they paid fifty eight for it that's how bad it i know that's right uh_huh yeah i have some friends that live in [westport] and it's really really bad i mean you uh_huh how far where is clarion county in relation to actually because we're considering moving to pennsylvania that's not too bad that's north are you going up toward uh uh i'm trying to think of the name of that town that starts with an m [bradford] no that's too far north so you're you're not that far north then okay well you're really not too bad yeah um was it a home that you've had for quite a few years or that you've oh then you have yeah do you have a lot of land or oh my well then there you go did you have a hard time getting used to do you feel like you live in an isolated area or yeah i think that that's um i can remember in pittsburgh when this has to do with homes uh indirectly but i can remember when upper saint [clair] was out in the you know the rural end of washington and now it's it's a terrible connection oh well that's okay um but but yeah [substantially] you know um do you like living in an older home and restoring it like that how big is it how many square feet do you have well how many rooms do you think yeah uh_huh uh_huh a junk room yeah i understand we have that too that's that's large if your children aren't at home any more that's large if your kids aren't at home any more uh_huh it's enough space for two people yeah oh okay yeah right that's okay well we've got um this town house is pretty big it's about eighteen hundred square feet it's got three bedrooms two and a half baths um it's really nice yeah it is i mean i would never buy it but leasing it is fine um but it's just again the the privacy you know um we had a house in minneapolis that was on three acres and my husband was raised um on a working farm near right near dayton ohio and he said you know he's he's slowly getting me to um not feel isolated if we move to where there's more land right uh_huh that's kind of what like his parents have uh land that they retired to um about a hundred miles out of atlanta and in georgia and it is too far south for me but um um but i mean they have one of the um when they said log cabin i just laughed that they retired to but they built one of these i mean it's just beautiful it's like a custom you know it's not like what i would think of when i think of old log cabins you know i mean it's modern it's right right it's modern it's beautiful it's country it's you know um but uh i don't what else about housing except it's uh well pittsburgh's housing economy i think it's holding it's own what part what sections are they in yeah that's nice great uh_huh uh_huh that's yeah a really good friend of mine lives in penn hills and they've been in their house oh probably about twelve years now and um it's it's you know they're going to start to see their return on their investment very soon um but it's a beautiful home and i mean my brother lives is it called [baldwin] or [bebble] i mean he lives all in that same area going from mount lebanon um it's real pretty up there it's just and the neighborhoods are stable you know it's uh when you come to this part of the country we've been away from dallas long enough that you see the difference in housing oh my goodness uh_huh that's what it is here yeah that's why we're at a point now we've uh we're adopting and we have been married ten plus years and what happens is uh you just realize that once you get to a certain age the next house that you get we'll be staying in so yeah that's kind of like where we're so we're considering pennsylvania and we're just kind of you know [toying] with what exactly where we want to be you know a lot of people say it doesn't matter where they live if they have a nice house and but i disagree with that i uh_huh i know and it and the economy here in dallas i mean it it's steady but it's still not going up and i um i just refuse to buy it um if i know i'm not going to be there for at least five years uh you you know oh i'm sure yeah there i mean you can go down a street and here he told you this every other house you know if it's been [foreclosed] on or you know even big executives um it's really i mean and and it's hard to sell the properties people from j c penney's from new york came here about a couple of years ago and they thought they were getting a great deal um because they could get a five hundred thousand dollar home with they call it zero lot lines no property jean and it would make you ill to see this i mean it would probably be like your house on uh you know a half a city block in pittsburgh or something yeah i know and that's you know like i can look outside right now and look into the next unit you know it's across the way and it's landscaped and all that with azaleas but it's still it's still not that private yeah but you have a rider no and your kids have to tell you the truth um i think that if you can keep that that way you know kind of like a homestead uh pennsylvania yeah oh are you really what part of pittsburgh uh_huh uh clarion county i we live out in the country yeah we have we have two children that live in pittsburgh oh oh you are do you work do you work for texas instruments then oh uh_huh no i'm just my son works for a a computer uh federal company you know so yeah uh we have a big old [farmhouse] that we've you know remodeled it had been you know of course a farm it's a farm community and we ours is not a working farm yeah i have a garden but you know we have a garden but we don't farm uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh uh grapevine do you know grapevine yeah my brother has a home there he's trying to sell he he's living now up uh in in maryland but uh he lived in grapevine for a long time uh_huh uh_huh oh it's terrible i oh i'm not surprised uh right right right right yeah yeah it's not good and the people think the income is really great in some of those areas but when they sit down and look at what it costs to live and uh of course most of the homes are you know fairly nice they're uh done up fairly nice uh right uh_huh right uh_huh well prices have come down on the homes the duplexes uh_huh oh my heaven well i know up in connecticut the same thing happened and uh it's people are devastated because they paid so much for their home but we like our area it like i said it's it's an old house and everything but uh well we're about a hundred miles from pittsburgh north and yeah and it's it's really not you know not that far [bradford's] north of us no no uh_huh well we've been here since sixty six uh we have fifty acres oh pardon me we have forty we gave ten to one of our children no not really and and towns keep creeping closer and closer you know uh_huh uh_huh yeah it's ours up here we have our rural connections are real bad but we but we live about ten miles from probably three or four not large towns but you know reasonable uh yeah we're tired of doing it though we we don't want to do too much more uh-oh golly i really we have uh uh four rooms downstairs and a [pantry] and upstairs we have a bath a bath oh we have a half bath downstairs too we have a bath upstairs and one two three four bedrooms and a sewing room and a junk room and uh pardon well it really isn't too big yet we we a lot of people say that but um it's we just like it real well and yeah we had five children so and they've all moved you know on they're all out on their own now uh_huh well it sounds like a good buy uh_huh oh that makes a big difference uh_huh you really aren't isolated because it's the advantages your home is far enough away that you're not bothered by being too close to people but yet you can have your friends uh you can have them in you can go out you have more of a choice you're not pressed upon as bad uh_huh uh uh_huh uh uh_huh more luxury uh_huh uh_huh right yeah uh they're yeah i suppose they are now we both of our children who live there have just bought a home now uh in the mount lebanon area and uh the one the one boy the house they bought is completely livable they didn't have to do much to it the other one is uh uh has you know needs more work done it's twenty years old i think and but they have two children too and they they bought what they could afford uh_huh uh_huh they are beautiful homes uh_huh uh_huh it is it's real nice uh_huh oh my you you do when you when we first got married uh my husband works for the state and we moved once a year usually and then after they had to start paying to move us that suddenly wasn't necessary any more right yeah you have to stop some place yeah yeah uh_huh well i do too i've heard too many people say i hate it here you know they buy a place and they just hate the area uh_huh uh_huh yeah well my brother they're having trouble selling their home see right uh_huh oh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh yeah i i couldn't handle that uh_huh uh_huh i get tired uh sometimes mowing because we mow you know a good bit of ground around the house area and i do get tired of that but uh i don't know i don't think i'd want to change it okay i live in plano in a four bedroom two bath house which is the area's [dominantly] three bedroom two bath so i'm just a little bit different than typical uh and of course the plano area is basically with [alleyways] so everything around here is set up that way which i think is a little bit different than most areas in the houses the way they're constructed and it's a brick house with uh some wood it's real nice i like it how about you are most of the houses in your area three bedroom two bath yeah to the only thing about mine um i think there's probably about oh when i go down the street i can just pick out houses that are that are identical to mine and usually they are the four bedroom um but they're spaced out oh i'd say maybe three on a two block period because it's all different builders up here so it's kind of hard at that point to you know classify some of the builders but most of the builders all built three two but the one thing my house is a little bit different and i can pick it out again because it's not typical is i've got the oh what do you call a uh double ceiling double high in one half of the house so like the den and the living room are all double cathedral ceilings and uh the kitchen is norm and the bedrooms are norm so it just goes down the dining room the family room and the living room that way and i love the space it just it's uh luckily i came from a house in colorado which had the cathedral ceiling and i just lucked out and walked into this one and of course i felt the same [airy] feeling which i liked it real well so it's a nice thing to move into but again it's not typical in this area you can just spot them because the the roof is so much higher but uh yeah well it's like when my son goes up into the up into the [furnace] area over the garage he can walk and he's six foot and he says oh come on up mom i'm not going up there i'm not going up there but he says there's plenty of room up there for a room so that means if i knock out the wall in my family room i could make another room overlooking my family room from upstairs with no problem but um i'm not that ambitious i maybe someday when i feel really ambitious and get angry i'll start [poking] holes up there but until that time but uh i've noticed the houses around here are basically it's one story and they're all basically two uh bath two uh with three bedrooms and we're ninety i would say about oh about ninety five percent no i guess probably a hundred percent of them all are mostly brick uh with some wood but it's it's basically all brick the next subdivision over from me is total brick and the one on the other side of me is about the same as mine but uh the one on opposite the street now they're total brick and they're basically almost all three two they're all three two but of course they have a little river going down their area too which is kind of nice no it's a creek they've put little [fountains] in and such oh do you have a lot of property i mean a lot of yard around your house now in denton yeah when you get down closer in to the newer tract homes you find almost like there's no lot line at all they're built practically on top of each other i know i was uh_huh well this subdivision here has got oh there's enough to put oh i'd say uh what twelve feet between each house on each side well i've got more on one side than i've got on the other but i'm like you i came down from colorado and there was more land up there around a yard with a big full back yard which here i look out my back yard and i can see the gate i mean the fence is right there i mean just don't run too fast or you'll hit it and i'm not used to that either i mean i could see people putting swimming pools in the back yard all around me but to me you put the swimming pool in your back yard and you've lost your back yard i mean uh sure i mean you've got a little place on one side or the other but uh to me their not that big enough for a pool but you know they're going up so but it's uh it's great for mowing but yes i'm used to uh walking out the back yard and you can play catch across the back yard and you've got plenty of room to even play a small game of baseball but don't do it around here i hadn't thought about it that way it well see now with our jobs mainly hitting downtown dallas we couldn't go too much further but we we went that way it was the schools and the cost of houses so we kept going out until we figured we hit a point where we need the traffic time to get into work and that's where we stopped it was the same problem but i think plano's i got [layed] off by t i oh i no i was working at the dallas site my ex husband was working downtown but i have uh no t i as far as i concerned they've been great as far as layoffs is concerned so i have no problems but as far as the housing i would like personally i would like to move out of a four bedroom house and go with something smaller but prices in plano there isn't um there isn't a section in plano you can really move to without getting caught and uh it my price right now for what i pay well carol since today's subject is our homes why don't you tell me about yours well i i certainly hope so we have a a classic ranch up in denton ranch style home i i would hate to think that anybody thought uh the lot we live on as a ranch uh it's in a subdivision and one story it started out life as a three bedroom house and now has no two car garage and has uh the two extra rooms enclosed i suppose we still only have three effective bedrooms but we gained a playroom for the kids and an office out of [enclosing] the garage almost a hundred percent i i can't think of any four bedroom houses in the subdivision ours is probably the closest to it you know how [realtors] are they'll say oh this could be five bedrooms yeah if you had two people that don't have any clothes it could be a five bedroom house don't need a closet uh cathedral ceilings well i hadn't thought about it in that sense of the high roofs we have cathedral ceilings in uh two rooms in the uh family room and in the master bedroom and those are are pleasant yeah right if it's the kind of river i'm thinking of better them than than us you know are you talking about a a real river creek well that's nice uh i came from mississippi recently and the rivers that we had there were the ones that came with the rains and they didn't pay any any attention to banks and that kind of stuff so you're just as likely to wake up and discover you're in two inches of water uh it's a third of an acre i don't think that's a lot uh in fact i have been real disappointed in the six years that i've lived out here about lot sizes i'm more accustomed to a one acre lot being a standard and the two acre being what most people have that's true an and while while there are some advantages to that there's less time spent outside making it look nice and taking care of things uh i just feel [hemmed] in by that it's not as comfortable a living for me entirely from that aspect you're right and and it doesn't take nearly as long to get out there and weed it by hand and that kind of stuff no the one that's sort of what drove me to denton when i first came out here in eighty five i started looking and it seemed like the further i got away from dallas center uh the more lot came with the house and and the lower the price at the same time and it just seemed like there was a ten thousand dollar drop for each city so moving up thirty five i stopped when i got to denton uh you all both you all both work downtown oh well this is a wonderful thing that that you're doing here still helping them out uh but you were working downtown oh yes i live in dallas yeah i think right now it's it's kind of bad uh i don't live in a house i live in an apartment are are you in a house okay uh_huh well i guess the best i can do is is uh compare apartments if it can compare the one that i have now with the one that i had the last time the one that i have now uh has a lot more amenities i guess is the right word than the one that i moved out of uh this one you know gave us free cable and uh ceiling fans and uh it was practically new when i moved in here and the carpet was new and no it's not a high rise it's just a a two story building uh but there's you know there there are a lot of buildings but it's just two stories uh on the second floor they have they don't have a patio but they have a [sunroom] instead of the patio on the first floor um where i am there's a patio yeah the rooms are nice and large and let's see i have i have two bedrooms and uh well i i i have a washer and dryer area and i i did buy the washer and dryer but they didn't provide it the one that i moved from didn't didn't have a place to put them and that's one of the reasons that i did move yeah get tired of dragging clothes to the [laundromat] so tell me yeah uh_huh it just it's a real good yeah it's a good time to buy if you're in the market uh_huh oh so you want a bigger one uh_huh one thing about the houses in uh in dallas they don't uh utilize basements the way they did in new york my parents in new york had uh a uh three family house actual a two family house where the the um the downstairs and the second floor they had and then they rented the third floor with the whole apartment you know and uh they had a basement and they you know they finished the basement and they were able to rent that out also but uh in dallas i i just i just haven't seen basements in houses and i've looked at a lot of them you know no it's right i haven't i haven't i have yet to see a basement in a house and uh well no no no no you know i don't see that kind of sand here um there are some areas though where where they have a problem with uh the houses kind of sinking a little bit into the to the uh or the foundation is sinking or something you know just a little just a little bit some more than others but you you have to know the right spot to to pick where that doesn't happen and uh uh_huh yeah i see huh where did you say you're at colorado virginia virginia that's right anywhere near uh virginia beach oh uh_huh well different areas in dallas have different kind in uh in texas i'll say because down in east texas there's a lot of red clay and uh in the in the dallas you know fort worth city areas you don't see that yeah well uh_huh yeah huh well i see uh_huh so is your house in an area by itself i mean it's not connected to another one oh but it's not they're not connected are they yeah uh_huh uh_huh all right so uh you live in dallas now i understand that um the the real estate market out there has really gone crazy up and down up and down oh yeah uh_huh yeah we have a single family home in northern virginia just outside of washington huh do you live in the high rise uh_huh oh okay so so you just you have one floor all to yourself oh okay oh that's nice do you get your own washer dryer oh yeah that is nice yeah yeah i've always uh been pretty lucky the real estate out here's been pretty good it uh the the prices of well the prices came down last year we've we had sort of like a dallas syndrome the past uh uh year and a half prices have gone down which is totally new for northern virginia it just never happened before so it's really surprising everybody all the [developers] don't know what to do yeah we're uh we actually have our house on the market because we have two kids and we have a three bedroom house and it's pretty much filled up right now yeah uh_huh get an extra bedroom or a basement right now it's just a a single level [rambler] uh_huh oh yeah yeah yeah a friend of mine was thinking about coming down there and that's what he said was that you know it just wasn't something that people had down there they put pools and garages on but uh no basements huh maybe it's all the sand is there a lot of sand in i always think it's like a desert i don't know dallas always uh_huh yeah well out here we um we live in what used to be uh like a prairie or whatever a natural you know natural [grasslands] and uh they it's just you go down four inches and you get to well fourteen inches you get to [sandstone] and so any place where they put a basement in they had to blast it's just solid [sandstone] no virginia yeah it's sort of unusual really most of virginia is clay oh yeah uh_huh yeah my uh my folks used to live there back before i was born they lived there uh_huh yeah well uh texas is a big state so i imagine the the type of houses and uh things like that are truly different from area to area but uh that's the same way out here because um well we for example and we live fifteen miles from the beltway that surrounds washington and anything instead that beltway the highway the real [estate's] forty thousand dollars more expensive so you know you really can't afford i i i could never afford a house inside the beltway that's why we came out here this is called the the the country you know with only you know maybe twenty miles total from d c twenty five from the city but um it's considered the country since it's uh you know that far out but um yeah we live out by dulles airport yeah and uh that's one of the few places still in northern virginia they have trailer parks that are down around the corner from here and you know it's it's still pretty rural uh not too much of northern virginia is like that anymore land has gotten so expensive they just can't afford to have low income housing like that no we're in a development there's uh yeah there's another one half an acre away or a quarter acre away rather oh no huh_uh you have to uh stay in one single family home i sort of got spoiled with that when i was growing up uh my folks um had an apartment for a while when we were kids but um for the most part they they always had you know and pennsylvania always had a single family home and so you know as soon as we could we we got a single family home and that's all i ever knew growing up so i stayed in a townhouse for uh two years and then uh saved up enough money to to get a uh right well we try i mean it's a big mortgage in the sky and someday maybe we might even own it but um for all practical purposes i guess we hold the mortgage yeah right no one else has offered to pay for it yeah really they could move right into the spare room uh_huh right yeah oh five years ago yeah yeah it well i mean just recently i would say i would give it two years back when it was i think [bottomed] out but maybe not in your area see it was just different areas that's a really nice area besides it's you know it's not it's not richardson is it it's still considered garland oh ok yeah there you go write that one down it sounded good to me right uh okay oh no oh gee i i kept thinking of [omar] [sharif] every time i saw that name somewhere so uh oh wow right oh great well yeah probably eighty sixty eighty well because i know our our little house over here stuck in the middle of you know the subdivision is i think fifty five so i think the high end is definitely you know somewhere there yeah well yeah um the ones that look like brick houses right yeah i think those are awful i'm sorry i just don't see the [designer's] i just see him as trying to squish as much space you know as much house into the space as possible yeah uh well see that's the house that we got is small enough so my husband and i because there's just the two of us and the two cats um can yell at each other from one end to the other and be heard and we thought that was important instead of getting [swallowed] up in something that you know yeah that's true oh yeah oh that's amazing right now in fact even as we speak we are having a deck put on in back and these guys are phenomenal they just they they are doing such a terrific job back there i mean you know you pay for it too but it's it's like really worth it they are putting in a deck a redwood deck and it's just they are doing such a fine fine job i'm really excited about it uh_huh great yeah uh looks like the george town [brownstone] yeah must be a dream yeah oh i can't he has no insulation probably oh my gosh what a trap huh and you ask the right questions and can research yeah yeah oh i do too but still um it's worth it for the area and for the school and things like that there you go first question do you own your house our name is on the till so that [implies] ownership that's right i would not object if anybody did yeah well we have we have had this one for five years now before that we lived in garland uh probably about you know four blocks away liked the area chose to stay inside of spring park it's a uh i don't know if you have been up here but it is a residential homeowners association so there's a lot of you know activities a lot of pluses and common land but uh we thought we were buying at the bottom of the market you know it could not possibly have gone any lower and so we were wrong yeah i think what it bottom out about a year later oddly enough two years you know i uh i think that not in in uh this area cause this is about like the yeah no it's it's richardson it's richardson and hold on a second paul i can hear you perfectly perfectly well i don't want to hear you you are being rude whatever you ask or scream when i'm on the phone the answer is no do you understand how does that sound yeah there i go yeah well i hate to say how long that will last too no this area up here is uh all custom homes and it's i don't think that many by the builder that built this house and we were not the first people the first owners i think we are the third owners it was built by the architect for himself who never moved into it who sold it to a couple who had no idea that homes ever needed upkeep oh yeah [caulking] windows was a great mystery to them so they just watched the water pour in on the carpet but it's a [sharif] [myneer] homes if that means anything it did not really mean anything to me except i liked it he builds eight hundred thousand dollar houses now i think he got out of the lower end market and decided but the houses here in in this class of housing never dropped below two hundred yeah well but still i know that this one was built for two ninety nine which is nowhere near what we paid for it and i think somebody told me it's also on a creek side lot heavily wooded off the golf course yeah and the guy around the corner is being transferred so he said uh well he did [comparables] that it's about eighty dollars let's see what i don't remember if he said it was sixty dollars a square foot off the creek and eighty on the creek or if it was eighty and a hundred i think it was sixty eighty i think well try and think if it was a hundred dollars a square foot no it could not be because this house has around thirty four hundred square feet and it would never sell for three hundred forty thousand dollars just never now maybe you know that's pretty close to what it would have sold for uh brand new or that's pretty much what it was built for it's got an awful lot of nice things in it but you know i don't think i think it's going to be a long time if ever when nice things and really quality construction and all the other additional amenities are really uh desirable it's seems like people go for square footage only now and uh cause have you been back to the perry homes back here the one that looks like monopoly apartments they are huge when you are inside them they are very [spacious] they are you know i was i was in one today it was forty two hundred square feet yeah uh_huh see when you have kids you like to be able to send them some place where they can yell and you won't hear them but i have been watching these houses go up and i i don't well somebody was telling me i know somebody who lives back there i have always questioned the quality of construction and i i don't think they exceed more than twelve nails per house when you watch them go up you are just amazed that they do not fall over and it takes them something like thirty days to complete a house uh_huh we have got three different levels of decking because this lot [slopes] way back down and uh the house is built around the trees and with these decking that a corporation and a large area for the trees to come up so it's real real shady but that's one of the few things that really uh immediately pays back on return but what i was going to tell you these perry homes back there when the people from m c i come down and they are you know they are used to the virginia area metropolitan d c my god they come down here and those houses that that look the colonial look what the right and uh the idea of ever owning anything that has four thousand square feet in it for less than two hundred twenty thousand dollars which is probably about what their equity is that they got out of selling their house because those things are selling like hot cakes but one of the people that was living back there was telling me that there is his air conditioning bill per month last summer was in excess of five hundred dollars a month and i thought and he was talking about how you keep up with the utilities here and i was thinking well you know i know why your god damn bill is so high it's because there's not a there's no insulation insulation in those things yeah any yet you know they they show very well they show very well unless you have you know lived in a lot of houses around the area or looked at a lot of houses around here and i think that makes a big difference but i like i like this area and everything that i have been saying says that it's i think if we had to sell now we could come close to breaking even you're in you're in the well basically uh did you want to go first then okay right uh_huh sure uh_huh yeah i think as far as like our home it's uh in a small residential area we're out of the cities quite a ways so it's kind of more of a country setting and uh it's just a typical uh three bedroom type of home it's it's nothing you know elaborate where it has uh this or this or you know it's it's just a typical home with uh three bedrooms uh two story type home uh and i think as far as if it's for put it into standards of uh what other homes are around here it would be just about fitting right into the middle part of where the homes are uh there's a river across from us which has more elaborate homes and yet there's where we can view the river from that distance there's still homes within our area that are you know pretty typical of what our home is so it's uh pretty much that uh type of uh home so uh uh_huh oh really sure uh_huh yeah oh yeah yeah yeah uh_huh so it's the [rambler] style uh_huh yeah yeah it's kind of like what ours is uh one of our bedrooms is really small and we've made that into a den because we only have one child so that was our best way of going with uh the small bedrooms because they are making bedrooms smaller and smaller it seems like they get incredibly small uh but uh anyway but okay so that sounds great and uh i don't know if we need to talk any more or whatever the t i uh yes uh about three times before i'm fairly new to it but it seems to be going okay no huh_uh no i'm out of state i'm in wisconsin so yeah yeah so it's uh other than that sure yeah is this your first time uh_huh i'm always the one that [initiates] the calls because i kind of like it because it's like i can get it done with i don't have to wait until somebody calls me even though i have a feeling what's going to happen is i'll probably get tons of calls you know so sooner or later uh_huh yeah yeah yeah sure yeah okay well you take it easy gail bye now uh well i can i i don't own my home uh i mean i i live in a nice area and i rent my home and uh we aren't sure we're going to buy a house yet because we don't know if we're going to be staying here in uh texas so uh_huh uh_huh yeah well our our house we we're renting it from an individual who bought it and he lives in korea and uh he's recently moved here and he's owns eight or nine properties uh near here and uh so but the houses around here there's five five houses on my street for sale right now which is just uh in trouble to me and they're not very expensive either it just seems like we have a three bedroom house ours is one level only uh but we yeah we have two two living areas and a dining room and a big kitchen and the bedrooms are a little bit small except the master [bedroom's] a little bigger so yeah have you have you done this before uh_huh oh have you yeah are you in texas no yeah oh really oh sounds interesting no huh_uh i've well i've gotten several calls uh but uh yeah yeah yeah well they've i've talked to some people from cleveland and i did talk to someone else who lives here in the same city i do so that was kind of interesting they're they're sure getting their people out so well it was nice to talk to you anyway and okay thanks bye bye all righty what type of home do you have in dallas uh_huh oh good and it's probably typical of your neighborhood i'm in plano just you know north of where you live and uh we live near coit and legacy in a relatively new development that just has gone in about two years ago so my home is typical it's a a brick home a two story brick home and it's typical of of the other homes in our neighborhood too yes yes the the one thing we did do instead of having a twenty foot living room ceiling we're from the north and we just couldn't stand the wasted space so we had them we have a high entry hall and then we had them level off our living room and dining room ceiling to um nine feet so we could get bedrooms above so that way we we sort of have the [entryway] that looks typical of the area but we don't have so much wasted space and we could get more bedrooms per square foot that way mine are actually the lowest in the neighborhood yeah yes right i know our air conditioner during the summer we it's over three fifty a month yeah just to air condition it so i have uh a master bedroom and a den on the main floor and then upstairs i have three bedrooms and i have i'm a writer and i work in my home so above the garage area i have a studio so it's not really a bedroom it doesn't have a closet and it and it's the size of a three car garage so that's where i work yes yes so we this is our dream home and we just absolutely love it i yeah we're we're really proud of it i just hope we never have to move again this is uh detroit this last time we were there two years and oh we love it yes and they're much much better constructed down south than they are up north too the uh_huh the quality of the [workmanship] we noticed a tremendous difference up north they just kind of throw them together because we had homes built in in detroit also and they just didn't care if the trim work didn't line up it's just that's just what you get oh yes well the carpenter and painter and you know everybody the marble man were just there in the house everyday when we would come to check on it as it was being built and they'd say just look at this and you know they seemed so proud of everything they did and it really made a difference to us yes oh yes uh_huh that's important too uh_huh oh yes yeah ours is pretty much level in the two years that we've been there we're hoping it takes off again but i don't know with the e d s building and [penny's] and everything going in up on legacy we're hoping that brings in more people that's what we're hoping because we're we're just real close to to where that is so uh_huh i hope so too yes yeah yes i'm sure for that reason it can stay the same but but we love being where we are okay we have a uh four bedroom split brick home in in richardson actually and uh we bought it back in about nineteen seventy three so we've seen it go up in value wise real well yes yes yes it it looks like all the others it's uh uh_huh oh i know where that is yeah yes you're in the the styles that they have started building in the last couple years with the real high ceilings and uh_huh those are lovely oh oh nice yes have you um found in talking to your neighbors that your utilities are quite a bit higher with those high ceilings are they uh_huh well i would expect so i have wondered about the cooling and the heating especially the cooling wow uh_huh well how many bedrooms do you have in your home oh uh_huh oh how nice huh uh_huh that's a pretty good size room that's neat well it sounds like a real nice one right where did you move from oh uh_huh uh_huh do you like the dallas area and i would imagine that you have found that the homes down here are uh a much better value down here aren't they than they are oh really now that's interesting uh_huh that's interesting because i've heard so many people down here say that they don't feel like the quality of the homes you know are that good down here and uh so that's interesting well that's good well i know as i as i said our house is about seventeen years old and uh we've been very pleased with it we've had no major problems with it knock on wood and uh you know it is with uh with the you know two children growing up and now three grandsons [roaming] through it all the time so and we like our neighborhood it it has has grown and the majority of the people you know keep up the neighborhood and that's very important and and as i said it it has [risen] in value but we bought back when housing was so low and you know and now you know then it started jumping by leaps and bounds it seems to have leveled off and actually dropped back down a little bit but we're still fine uh_huh uh_huh yes it should bring up your property values a little bit your pricing uh_huh i think once the economic situation in the dallas area [improves] i think the housing will go up you know right now there's a lot on the market for sale because of people having lost their jobs and everything so that's you know that keeps prices down and value down and i'm sure the packs uh or would like for it to go up that's right that's right okay so you said that you live in coppell so what is your house like oh well that's neat uh_huh is it one you're renting or buying yeah yeah well that's kind of neat that you can even though it's a duplex you can still buy that's good do you have any children yes i have two children and our home is really too small for us right now yeah we moved from an apartment that was really small and at the time we just had a little baby that was five months old so we moved into this house in garland it's in one of the older areas of town and one thing i really like is it has big trees everywhere you know lots of shade and squirrels and birds and real pretty but the the house is real small it has less than a thousand square feet yeah it's real little yeah and now i have a daughter now my the one that was five months old is seven years old and the one i have another one that's three and a half and have all these clothes and toys and stuff that we're just trying to find places to put well they advertised it as a three bedroom house because it has a built on addition room you know but the room that's built on doesn't have a closet so um the people that lived here before us did use it for a bedroom but we have always just put like our computer and extra toys and books and you know it's kind of a catch all room but it sure is nice to have it when the kids come over to play they all go out there to play with the barbies and that kind of stuff so yeah that works out good and i'm thankful i have two girls because they're in bunk beds and so you know they can share a room and uh make for more space that way she's three and a half yeah so um and right now we have their clothes on uh like double racks you know in the closet we made a higher and a lower and it works out fine but they're just about to get too tall where the dresses are beginning to drag you know and um we're going to have to figure out a new idea but we're we're kind of looking around and wanting to move into a bigger home uh hoping to be able to do that within a year or so so that would be nice yeah is coppell a nice area to live well i think i've heard a lot uh about coppell schools that they're real good that's neat do you do you hope to have children or are you not planning on having any or i see well do you have any pets oh yeah uh_huh well do they stay inside or well that's that's neat yeah well what are the colors in your house oh i bet that's pretty uh_huh oh that's neat i like cows too yeah well our house was uh our house is very old also it's like thirty seven years old yeah and it was redone before we moved in which i'm thankful for that but the it was redone at the time probably when earth [tones] were in everything is like the [carpet's] kind of a tan and brown and has um paneling in the living room and lots of lots of [tans] and lots of browns but the good thing is you can bring out other colors from that you know so uh that's worked out good in the in the kitchen they put real pretty blue and tan um wallpaper had done it up with blues so that's nice but yeah yeah we've enjoyed living here it's close to my uh oldest daughter's school and that makes it really handy too and she really likes her school so and we are so close to shopping and yeah how about in coppell i've always imagined it kind of out away from everything oh really oh well that's nice oh wow oh yeah yeah but it does sound like it's definitely growing yeah oh uh_huh uh_huh oh i see well when we first moved here we moved here from lubbock and we almost moved to lewisville that was our second choice yeah behind garland we at the time we thought we might buy a mobile home uh_huh it's a two bedroom two baths duplex brick and uh no we own it yeah well our side uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah no huh_uh do you ours is too we outgrew it when we moved in uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um yeah oh wow you all are cramped uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh how many bedrooms is it uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh how fun uh_huh uh_huh and how old's the youngest uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah that's what we'd like to do oh it's a wonderful place to live and they i don't have any kids so i don't really know but they say that we have wonderful schools uh_huh um i don't think so no oh of course those are my kids i have two dogs yeah they're inside dogs they're my babies uh um kind of a [mauve] and gray uh_huh and then the [kitchen's] kind of a a country pink and country blue and it's all done in cows i'm a cow nut uh_huh so uh_huh wow yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah yeah uh_huh oh sounds pretty oh uh_huh uh_huh good that's an important factor there well you know now we have that new mall in lewisville and that's just like a mile or two from our house but when we first moved to coppell it's what six years ago we didn't even have a grocery store and now we have four and [coppell's] not really big enough to support four grocery stores so oh much very much in fact it's about the size now i moved down here from chicago what twenty three years ago and to lewisville and [coppell's] now about the size that lewisville was when when i moved down here uh_huh oh really okay what kind of house do you live in uh_huh well it sounds like ours are pretty similar i live in one i don't have a swimming pool and mine's about twenty seven hundred square foot but the four bedrooms and all the rest of it sounds just about about alike i think it's pretty much typical for this area i've been in the house i'm in here right now about twelve and a half years uh_huh oh really uh_huh uh_huh well i bet you uh_huh uh_huh well that sounds interesting i bet he's enjoyed having it that way because kind of hard to find one [prebuilt] that's kind of fits those specifications uh_huh well then most of them don't have a three car garage they're kind of rare uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well that my we've just got a two car garage but my husband's got a big space in between the where the cars are and the house where he has a big work shop you know [workbench] and everything now mine does not work on cars he just [piddles] on this and that but he likes to have a spot to keep all of his his [piddling] things it really is because you know they have a lot of things of their own and i you know i wouldn't mind having and i at one time was going to fix up when one of my daughters left a bedroom to where i had a room to just put all of my craft stuff and sewing machine and all that kind of stuff but i someone i don't know it ended up i got some furniture back that one of them had moved out or something so i didn't end up with my vacant room like i had thought i would uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i still all three of my daughters are married but i don't know i just still have need for the four bedrooms just having company from time to time and some of them coming back home and things you know and we've got grandchildren now so when they come they have to have a place that's right you sure don't at times i keep thinking though that might be kind of nice uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i don't blame you for that well i have the three girls and then we ended up with four grandsons and little boys are around the house a whole lot more than girls and uh i enjoy them coming but for short doses it feels after they've been here ten minutes they have already explored the entire house they know everything but they're fun well i just watch them i i never did put things up when my kids were little and i haven't with them i try to teach them not to get into things i think that once you do that your children kind of develop the same attitudes at least my daughters have they try to teach theirs not to get into things instead of having to put everything up so it's worked pretty well there's i don't really think anything's been broken every now and then we have to kind of go and say now don't bother this you know but all in all they mind pretty well but i guess most of the what kind of roof does your house have here i'm getting off the subject well uh we live in a a brick home in far north dallas and it's uh four bedrooms and three and a half baths and swimming pool in the back and it's about thirty five hundred square feet yeah it is have you been living there very long so you've been there longer we built this one about uh it's been let's see it's been six years six and a half years ago and we [subcontracted] it out ourselves we bought the lot and uh had an architect draw the plans based on our specifications and then we [subbed] it out so we've been here a little over six years now and uh have really enjoyed it because we built what we wanted to have to live in my husband got his big garage he we have a three car garage that he has a big work area in and he likes to rebuild cars and redo engines and so he has all the work space he needs he it is and that's why we decided to build we looked at things that were already uh built and the garages were always if the house was large it seemed like the garages were small even if they were three car garages which is what we have uh_huh so we put a three car garage in but even if they had three car garages they didn't have a work space all of it was taken up with just car space and so he has a big landing area that's between where the cars are in the garage and where the house starts that he can work on well sounds like our husbands have similar interests oh i see uh_huh well that's nice that it's not in your house uh_huh uh_huh right well we still have a a son and daughter in college that come home and the other room we use as a guest bedroom because my husband's family come his parents come and also the kids have friends who come and stay and so it seems like it's always used as a bedroom right oh i understand well we that's true and you don't want them to not be able to come because there's no room well i i haven't reached that point yet i've heard people say that but uh my middle son is engaged my oldest son has been going with the same girl for a while he's out of college and has a good job so he could afford to get married but is not engaged yet and my daughter's been going with the same boy for a while but she's still in college and we're just as happy for her to finish her education first that's what she plans to do so i hope so oh ho ho a whole new world uh_huh i can understand uh_huh so you're all back to the safety catches and the whole nine yards or either watching them every minute yeah well that's the same thing that i did i hope i'll be able to do the same with grandchildren um uh_huh well we have so what kind of a house do you live in uh_huh well our home is uh probably for our area it's probably one of the lower income homes out here uh most of the the homes that they're building well i shouldn't say all of them but most of them now are up in the millions of dollars oh yeah there's we have got about uh twenty i'd say about twenty four hundred uh we've got five bedrooms because we built onto our garage a a bedroom for my mother and uh oh oh that's great well this this house is very comfortable we've got two living areas and that that's the thing i probably like the most about it it's just one story yeah it's a fox and jacobs home um we've been real happy with it of course i'm not a carpenter or anything like that they could probably come in and say gee this is not straight and this is under something but no no we haven't had a lot of problems with it at all no we've been real lucky so yeah oh yeah yeah i i've heard a lot of people say that that's for sure uh we have an attic that we've just put you know plywood over the [beams] and things up in the attic and so that has replaced it to some extent but certainly not uh in parts i mean you couldn't you really couldn't use it for a room yes yeah yeah we uh we've got you know i'll store all our christmas stuff and whatever else junk up there two living areas we have a living room and dining room at the front of the house and then we have a the uh family room kitchen and playroom at the rear of the house which has been really nice in fact i really enjoy the playroom that you would think that would not be a real bonus you know to a house but of all the rooms in the house i'd say that was that was the one that's been really nice to have i think that's true yeah probably our family room is the the biggest uh yeah yeah well that's kind of the way our living room and dining room is but it is nice to have it because there's uh with our size of family it's nice to know that there's one that's always straight and clean if you have someone come just on the spur of the moment so seventeen years uh_huh oh wow oh uh_huh yes it is uh_huh well that's interesting yeah uh_huh well my husband wouldn't do that anyway that's his that's his worst thing in life is to have to repair something so well uh that's great we just kind of save everything for when al uh for for when his dad comes to visit and then he does all the repairing you know he does i'm in a uh in a ranch a uh it was about uh sixteen hundred square feet when i bought it and uh it's about two thousand square feet now but it's one of those typical uh ranches that you find around here oh it's uh built in the probably built in the late fifties so it's not um what you would find uh where you live but uh for the older uh ranch homes it's pretty typical i guess really how many square feet do you have four bedrooms five bedrooms uh_huh i made a i made a fourth bedroom out of uh a made a fourth bedroom out of one of our out of our living room and then added a uh what we call a [sunroom] to get the you know when when we added four hundred square feet to our house so that how many stories just one how are they built yeah i've heard that i've heard the construction is pretty good on fox and jacobs but i mean it doesn't give you trouble uh_huh no cracked slab or anything like that all right and is it um a natural gas and you know what i miss though basements i i sure wish they could build basements in homes in texas so you can you stand up in it so you have a probably a more pitched roof than is typical around here ours is pitched so shallow that you uh don't get much room in the attic so five bedrooms and two living two family uh_huh uh_huh isn't it funny how families end up living in one room in the house most of the time you right some people i mean families seem to [migrate] towards one one room and carry on most of their activities there and uh uh some rooms we have one room that we never use i mean might as well not even heat and cool it strange uh_huh right right uh_huh so you've been fairly happy with it how long have you been in it wow boy it doesn't seem that long but it is because we uh came to this area about the same time we've been fifteen fifteen years in the in the house that we're living in and we the the principal feature i like about ours is that it's pier and beam yours is a slab i assume yeah ours is a pier and beam which has allowed me to go under it and do a whole lot of different things that i could not have done if it was slab i've done a lot of electrical and plumbing and other work that by myself and saved a lot of money that i couldn't have done if the house was on a slab but that's because it's so old it's thirty five thirty six years old when they used to build like that and uh i know he's not a handy right i on the other hand uh do a lot too much of it and uh i've gotten good at it which in a in a way is bad because then you uh you start to take pleasure in it right my dad is actually uh hi my name is uh donna donahue and i live in plano texas oh okay um do you want to start or should i start okay um i would say that our home is a very typical home for the area that we live in we have um three children and um they attend the public school here and are very active in a lot of the sports soccer and baseball and well my little girl goes to tap dance and my little one goes to preschool and um i'm home with the children just do a lot of running around it seems like a lot of my neighbors kind of have a similar type i don't know life um what about you uh_huh uh_huh okay uh_huh uh_huh was sort of maintenance free yeah oh yeah well um that that sounds that sounds pretty good for i know my husband takes an awful lot of time on the weekends not so much now but to um maintain the lawn and the edging and the flower beds and it's a lot of work owning a home with a little bit of property attached to it it's sometimes i think um it would be nice to have a town home with not having all that responsibility right oh that sounds lovely uh_huh uh_huh so in in your area then there's probably a lot of um career type people that have those type homes and uh_huh and um the area that we're settled in is um definitely young young families with with kids they're still doing um a lot of building in the neighborhood so the people that move here seem to move from all over the country which we're from um the northeast and um seems like a people just don't or also don't have any family around so it um also gives you a common bond when you don't have a lot of relatives visiting your neighbors and you know um but um uh_huh right right uh_huh now it's um is it very wooded around where you are there lots of pretty trees and yeah oh how pretty i do miss that around here in plano there are very few trees and it's pretty flat and and kind of [barren] and that's the only thing that we don't like about living in texas is we miss all the beautiful trees and the fall and and um uh the landscape is much different here in texas than it is you know in the north um or even where you are a lot of leaves to rake up too i bet does that well see that's another plus that's right that's right they are i'm going to get the kids to get outside with the other neighbor kids and do the little bit of raking that needs to be done we just have a few trees in the front and a few in the back but not not much just just a little kind of just in more of a make a little bit of a mess for a few weeks and if you didn't do anything about it then they'd probably the leaves just blow away it's not too bad okay do we have to speak for a certain amount of time okay okay it was really nice speaking to you okay and have a happy thanksgiving bye bye hello hi hi my name is lowell and i live in raleigh north carolina go right ahead i'm i'm single and i i live in a town home here in raleigh and it's pretty typical of the other town homes in the area we we have a lot of town homes here as well as single family homes and at the time that i bought this one it was just a a much better arrangement for me personally i'm not home a lot i travel a great deal with my job and so it was easier to have a home that didn't exactly that somebody else looks out for the maintenance it certainly is well if you ever get one be sure the walls are good and thick because if they're not you can hear i that's the main thing when i was shopping for one i wanted to make sure i could i couldn't hear my neighbors and that was so i bought one that's more like living in a once you're inside you don't know you're in a town home it is they're kind of built on a [catty] [cornered] instead of like side by side so you don't actually hear anybody next door to you yes definitely well we also in this area seem to have a lot of retirees people who don't want the heat of florida but don't want the heat of the the cold of the northeast so they settle sort of in between yes as a matter of fact this is a uh this particular community that i live in is very wooded it is nice uh we definitely have a lot of trees here yes but fortunately the home owner's association does all that yes i don't have to worry about that and this is the time of year we're starting to lose they're all falling now right no i don't think so it was good to speak with you too thank you you too bye bye okay i'm in dallas texas what about yourself okay uh_huh no i've lived here for almost five years now and i'm a uh before that i was at school in rochester new york and i'm originally from boston that's right but i like it well i missed it at first but now i go back there and i'm a real [wimp] about the cold so i like it here it's nice uh_huh uh_huh i know uh tell me where that is uh i i probably do know but i don't know it by that name okay sure oh okay yeah i know that area that's a nice area uh oh that's quite a range uh_huh yeah well i am uh i'm gosh i'm barely in dallas i'm just north of addison airport up on the tollway and i guess we have a similar situation i mean we've got houses two streets away that are probably around seventy eighty thousand and then we've got bent tree right across the street so i don't i don't even know how high those go but some of those are pretty big yeah so it's that's the strange thing about i guess dallas because back where i'm from you wouldn't have that sort of a variation at all they'd all be pretty similar to one another within a a couple miles so yeah uh_huh yeah i've noticed that uh_huh uh we've got a house let's see we moved in about four years ago and it was it had previously been [unoccupied] but it had existed for three years this is a whole block of homes that uh a builder built all of them and i guess he he did some crazy thing to get some extra money from the bank and then ran away type of deal so the whole block was all [foreclosed] and so some were vacant for quite a while before they you know they finally sold them because there were so many yes no the only thing that we were worried about was the air conditioner because they'd have it just running constantly with the doors and windows open but yeah so we just you know we bargained to get an extra [warrantee] on that and uh we're really we haven't had any problems and you know we had originally thought we'd have to get a fix up special or something because being from the northeast we figured we couldn't afford anything but the prices are much lower here and this was definitely not a fix up special but i'll tell you it takes all my time between we put in our own sprinkler system and i just finished repainting the exterior and you know making drapes and buying furniture it's just a money pit really is so uh_huh uh_huh oh no okay i guess we're ready to start well i guess what part of what part of the country do you live in oh okay well i'm also in dallas the reason that i ask is the two conversations i've had have been out of state but uh have you always lived here in dallas and i see oh well you are seeing quite a different climate and quite a different neighborhood you probably have enjoyed getting away from the snow yeah well that's good i i have lived in texas essentially all my life around in texas and uh i have traveled up in the northeast and around and have enjoyed it but uh i don't know i'm not sure i would want to take on those winters i'm getting older and uh not sure that's something i want to do i live uh over in the lake highlands area if you're familiar with that okay uh you this is pretty well where l b j and [audelia] skillman cross we're just north of uh white rock lake well we have some very nice homes here in this area uh my particular i guess they want us to describe the area so uh my particular area the homes run anywhere from about sixty five eighty thousand dollars on up to probably half a million yes uh the homes that were here earlier were smaller now they've gotten larger and larger as as they have developed the land and of course it's pretty static right now and all the values over here have dropped off because of the economy how about you okay okay uh_huh okay yes those are over a million well we have suffered from real lack of land use planning in dallas not as bad as houston but exactly what you're describing is what happens all over well now do you live in a a home or zero lot home or okay oh well your was your house in good shape was it damaged oh it was oh i see yes i am familiar with that i where i live is a house that's seventeen years old when i bought it and we bought it from someone who was in it but before they had it i found out after i had been in the house it it had sat empty for the better part of a year and i'm not sure what happened but i do know the folks that we bought it from had done virtually no maintenance for for about four years i i i found a lot of things but well tell me about your home uh_huh uh_huh yeah huh it sounds nice oh yeah yeah well you know these guys that [gambled] high lost big you know and uh i'm [insulating] myself from that problem i'm building my own house and as i look out the window of my trailer i can envision all the insulation that's going up today yeah yeah i used to be a builder and i retired about five years ago and started college and now i'm a college educated builder there's still no work you know so uh you know i decided this summer that uh you know we had enough credit on the credit cards to buy the materials so i did and uh see the the the state has a law that says you cannot borrow the money to build your own home you can borrow the money to pay somebody else to build your house but you can't borrow the money to build your own well it's to protect the the banks from guys that say yeah i want to build my own house and go out a build a [spec] home and then it doesn't sell and then the [bank's] holding the bag well as as you know anything that involves the government is works half as well as it's supposed to costs three times as much right [hence] the savings and loan problem we have but uh you know my home is uh fairly simple it's designed to be added on to yeah well i figure it's just me and my wife but you know i like to do stuff with my hands and whatnot so i want to have a shop ten acres well yeah it's really nice too because i can't see my nearest neighbor he's on the other side of a hill and my second nearest neighbor is a dot on the horizon seriously well in the winter time i can see see another guy but you know he's i can just make out his place you know i've got a thirty mile view to the east and about ten miles to the north and uh yeah well i took a lot of time in choosing this site because the the house has no heating or air conditioning well it's got a a very small [furnace] and a uh we'll use a wood burning stove as well but in the house itself i've been working inside you know these these many months and i have not had to use the heat because it's all [geothermal] and with all the see i've got on the south side is all glass well as much as i could get in it you know and uh the east side is glass i've got one two three four five six windows in the east side on forty eight feet so it's almost all glass and uh oh yeah i mean you know there's no place in the house where you can stand and not see four windows so uh well not really it's uh it's on the side of a hill so the first you know the the the what i call residential level at the side that's in the hill is about four feet deep and the side that's on the uh the other side is about six feet high so i've got a pretty good grade there and then when i put the [verandas] which will be twelve feet out all the way around on the north south and east sides that will define the shop exactly uh_huh uh_huh okay uh right now we're living in well it's me my wife and uh two young boys and uh right now we're in a uh i guess it's either a zero lot line or a garden home which you might call it so we don't have a a big yard uh but uh when my wife and i first moved in it was just the two of us so it was enough uh and it's uh i guess what they call a story and a half because it's not a full two story where you know everything on top is on bottom so it's got real high ceilings on half the house and the other half is just standard sized ceilings and uh it's about a five year old house now it's uh pretty nice unfortunately the builder who built it went out of business already yeah it was a landmark is the one who built it yeah that's true exactly what happened to them oh that's nice oh really are you doing it yourself wow oh that's nice oh i see huh yeah that's great is that so i didn't know that well that sounds kind of dumb uh_huh yeah yeah huh that's right yeah that's true uh_huh that's good yeah how big a lot do you got it on wow that's nice that's real nice oh god that's pretty good uh_huh yeah yeah oh that's pretty good uh_huh oh you you you don't plan on putting any any of that in uh_huh yeah uh_huh wow yeah that's pretty good yeah wow my wife would love that she loves lots of windows that's great is it a single story oh i see uh_huh um i see oh yeah uh_huh yeah that's kind of like like a victorian style yeah i i've always liked that the you know i we don't have much yard but i built a small deck in the back but you know i i see these magazines where you know dig your your own deck i i kind of wish i had them those size property and and uh one with a grade on it so i can build a real nice deck okay uh do you live in a home uh_huh oh did you uh_huh we've lived in ours for about six years we had it built actually and uh uh it's our first home too yeah um well before we built our home we were managing some apartments that we were living in and um that was quite an experience i i much prefer having my own home and and uh just the space and and more privacy yeah um it's uh uh it's like twenty four fifty square feet it's a two story yeah how about yours is it small oh really oh uh_huh do you do you have children just one oh oh uh_huh yeah oh yeah yeah well like um how does it compare to the ones in your neighborhood oh uh_huh yeah yeah uh yeah it it it it does it it seems about oh probably average um but our neighborhood has a just a wide variety of of um people and you know there's older people here and and um people that are our our age we're in our thirties and um there's a lot of kids a lot of kids people across the street have eight uh_huh yeah their home just burned down matter of fact and um last summer and they're just rebuilding and um their house is going to be really big it's yeah they're building a lot bigger he's uh um uh-oh not an [obstetrician] an an orthopedic surgeon and um so since the house did burn they're they're going it's quite different than it was before and it's it's a lot bigger and um but ours is about it's you know it's a nice home it's definitely not one of the the smaller ones and um it's not the biggest either but oh yeah yeah you you know that's interesting you say that because we do have we have those [architectural] codes here and when we um put out house in um they wanted us to have there was one we have part siding on on the two story part and then on the back and they there was one side where our [chimney] was and just the [chimney] was going to be brick and they wanted us to have more brick so we ended up having to go halfway up which it does look nicer and you know we would have like to have had all brick but of course at that point we couldn't afford it and but it's funny that you'd say that because there were homes in here that didn't have any brick at all so it's kind of like they were yeah yeah and i and so it was kind of like it's they ours is the last street that they built on so the houses actually on our street are a little bit they're kind of gone a little bit nicer yeah i mean just they you know it's like the second phase and and so they've kind of changed the the codes a little bit and so that's kind of why i guess they stuck us with more brick when there were other homes that didn't have any oh uh_huh yes we we it's a house we bought uh about two and a half years ago now uh_huh first house uh_huh uh_huh so what do you think of of owning a home as opposed to to renting somebody else's uh_huh uh_huh do you have is it a fairly large house oh that's pretty good size yeah uh_huh it's tiny it's not much bigger actually we had an apartment two bedroom apartment that was about as big as this house is so yeah it's uh it's only like eleven hundred square feet just one yeah but it it uh all the rooms are small i mean but it ends up giving us three bedrooms which we wanted and uh use an extra one for an office which is handy i'd rather have have more rooms and less space in each one i guess rather have lots of rooms and lots of space but uh that ends up costing me well they're it's pretty typical i mean it's a very very middle class neighborhood uh lots of lots of young couples with you know oh i'm sure that virtually everybody in the neighborhood that's their first homes and uh lots of kids and stuff and so it it fits well in the neighborhood it's it's certainly not a real upscale neighborhood but on the other hand it's clean and kind of suburban little bit more than i want is is yours also pretty much in [conformance] with the neighborhood or is it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh wow eight kids oh my gosh ooh i'm sure with eight gosh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah new ones i mean they they tend to to be real tiny but that uh especially in newer neighborhoods my my brother just built a new house he lives in wichita kansas and the um the neighborhood actually fought him on it because he he was um the house was going to cost less to build than any other house in the neighborhood now that's because he was he's doing a lot of it himself and you know for example landscaping and and lots of the other stuff and his house actually ended up being nicer than lots in the neighborhood but but they were they were pretty touchy on it he was a little surprised uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right kind of depends on when they get in you know oh they have it's gotten yeah yeah oh uh_huh um well see my sister kind of got in the opposite end of that because they they moved into a neighborhood and bought a a real nice stone house down in south austin and uh and the what the builder apparently plans to do is they they do phase one and they kind of give it a very upscale and very [tightly] controlled uh codes and and and stuff and then they come back in and and then they sell did you hear our topic it's in regards to discussing homes yeah i'm settled in a place i've been in it for twelve years since nineteen uh actually thirteen years since nineteen seventy eight and it's in richardson texas which is north texas or north dallas and we've lived in two houses in richardson we moved here in seventy four and uh changed locations in seventy eight how about yourself yeah it's a nice area are you finding it tough trying to find what you want or oh boy right sure no we're settled and uh we're uh i'm probably older than you i'm fifty two but anyway i my youngest is getting married this year graduating college so i can board up their rooms and look forward to retirement maybe oh gosh so we're looking forward to retiring in about three years and maybe relocating to florida or somewhere closer closer to our families no from west virginia but everyone's uh my wife's parents are from the new york new jersey area so but everyone seems uh has seem to relocated down that area seems like a nice place to go oh i understand you need very minimum four and probably five right it's tough to find a five and six room bedroom house isn't it oh i know seems like you get in that category you're in the three hundred thousand dollar homes or whatever and it's that's an awful lot you know right just matter of looking right lot of people will buy in your situation will buy a four bedroom house and convert maybe the garage or something or the or do something i had a young lady used to work for me at my office from the high school and she had uh there were seven kids in her family and they converted the dining room and did this and that but they always seemed to get along fine you know oh sure oh i know and it's there's nothing harder than that i always just sort of a assign my wife that chore then i would let her narrow it down to three or four then i'd go look because women seem to like to look a lot more than men do yes why certainly i understand that i'm in the uh sporting goods business i'm a manufacturer's rep i represent fourteen different hunting and shooting type companies what who are you with uh_huh well great how how was the uh you say you lived in the denver area before how did that compare with this area as far as housing prices no kidding homes yes sir uh_huh what are are you settled in a place right uh_huh okay well we uh left here in seventy six uh we were here for a few years then we uh have come back just this summer right now we're looking for housing uh somewhere down in the duncanville and cedar hill area are you familiar with that yeah it is the kids are in school here in duncanville we're in a temporary place right now and uh so they've enjoyed the school so we're kind of trying to stay here but well what the problem we got is that we've got five children and so uh we really want four or five bedroom house and uh you know everybody says you know how many houses are on the market and all that kind of thing so we uh we look at the paper we look at our talk to our realtor and you can cut you know the listings uh in about a third when you go from three to four bedrooms you know or five are you looking or you settled i mean having oh great that empty nest syndrome is going to set in i guess great okay okay you are you from florida originally yeah oh yeah yeah yeah we've got five and the oldest is uh ninth grade and the youngest is second grade and i think they're going to be uh with us forever i don't know if that's true but it's sure you know we're not anywhere near looking to uh uh cut down in size we're we're trying to find oh yeah in fact six would be real good my wife and i can share a bedroom either oh i don't think it's possible unless you you know multimillionaire something like that uh oh yeah yeah it is yeah uh we're having actually if we find something for uh i'd say less than a hundred and twenty thousand we'll be doing all right you know that's uh but i think the thing's out there it's just a matter of uh you know looking you know finding the right place uh wow oh yeah yeah i think once we get into a place it will be just fine but you know it's until then it's uh-oh a little stressful you know just looking all the time and that sort of thing oh yeah maybe that's the case at least she's got more opinions you know there's uh seems like there's more constraints more things that she thinks about you know openness uh the size of the kitchen and all this kind of stuff that i would probably gloss over and maybe even ignore you know so what kind of business are you in oh yeah great uh we're with an organization called uh wycliff bible translators it's a a missions organization and uh doing uh translation linguistics that sort of thing uh it's got an office down here in uh in near duncanville and we just moved down to be on staff down here so right uh we were uh really surprised to find that they're higher here uh when we moved from louisiana to denver it was [astounding] you know to find that prices were oh i guess almost two or three times as high as we'd expected and then uh to come down here we thought things would be lower and they're not i guess uh really prices for housing are just we just bought our first home after being in school and so we're just first time homeowners we've only been living here about six months oh boy uh_huh oh so you're an old pro then uh_huh well what do you find it having to be like out there i've always heard that it was expensive oh really uh well we uh when we graduated from school in houston uh my husband went to school at rice and got his p h d so that that's what brought us here and um we had um heard a lot about richardson being a good area and the homes there being really nice and but we kind of just got the impression that it was out of our price range really um yeah well that makes sense uh_huh uh_huh oh that's good uh_huh well do you have a lot of homes out there that have uh foundation problems that seems to be the pretty much the rule out here uh_huh yeah so did it looked cracked to you i mean that's how you knew it was broken oh so that's that's how you knew well since like i say we're first time homeowners i'm still scared about everything like that going wrong and how do you know it's going to happen and all uh_huh we really like our school out here but we um we were scared to buy a house in our neighborhood because all of the homes did have these foundation problems and we didn't know uh you know if we were afraid that we'd be living there and all of a sudden the house would crack in half and split open or something uh uh_huh well that's good well that's really good well our house is older it's like a nineteen sixty three house that we bought so i'm not it doesn't seem like it uh i know so much has changed in their technology in the last few years it's slab well that's good yes my grandfather was a builder and so my parents always lived in houses that he built and then they knew they were getting a good deal so well i uh appreciate that information about richardson i know it was um it's got a really good reputation and fourteen years that's pretty good well thank you and well uh you good luck with this program then well at the moment i have a little vacation house back in the woods and it's brick and it has it's pine [paneled] well kind of because it's temporary okay and it but if you know if you want to talk about other kinds of homes my uh uh son is a builder in oklahoma city and he was visiting a couple of weeks ago so we went around to see all uh the homes that how they build homes in charlotte what kind of materials they use yeah kind of originally from this area uh from virginia uh area but yeah but moved here from oklahoma city well no but we spent twenty years in oklahoma we're a mobile society yes it is to love it in the immediate area because we're in the county with the uh uh farmers kind of farmers they're about you know around ninety already eighty nine or ninety but their children have grown up and they have built then more contemporary or more uh kind of some [ostentatious] homes but all traditional they're they're uh they're some are temporary but mostly traditional well how about your home are you interested in uh oh gosh uh_huh uh_huh yes uh_huh that doesn't work these days uh_huh oh my yes yes uh_huh yes uh_huh sure my goodness you are multi talented you are multi talented oh uh_huh sure sure well if you were to do it uh again today what would you have done differently name things say uh_huh is that like a [galley] kitchen uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yes how does that work in the winter it burns it up i'm a plant uh former plant person and uh business uh_huh so uh you know oh my yeah yeah well do you not have shade so far uh_huh well yeah yeah yeah uh_huh well great yeah well come south and uh you will you will be watching the azaleas bloom and they are just about gone this time of the year we're all no uh uh everything's green all the leaves are out and all that so it's pretty my spinach really well for not summer crops summer crops it's uh it's really not time to plant okra not quite the ground isn't warm enough but uh some of those uh_huh uh_huh yeah right get that out early sure yeah no no you don't want to be on ladders do you you don't want to be on a ladder uh_huh well it certainly has been enjoyable talking to you this morning and uh hope to hear from you again sometime if they do that good bye okay we're talking about houses and if they're typical for the area um well i don't live in a house i live in a duplex um it's typical for the area i would say uh_huh um it's it's stone and uh and wood it's a combination which is very typical for austin oh well when you talk about that this is a really um i lost my house because i divorced and couldn't make the payments and long sad typical divorce story well i haven't gained myself back financially yet and um we went from a four bedroom home to this two bedroom duplex and um i found a very nice area usually when you're talking rental property and duplexes you're not in with nicer homes but there are beautiful homes in the area and they are it's not like tract housing at all not a it's a um i don't know if you're familiar with where northwest hills is in austin but that's where i am uh_huh just to visit your sister uh_huh oh okay are the homes in your area what what square footage are they okay uh_huh uh_huh well that's that is really nice i like that and the maintenance is low and it always look good uh_huh what about the thing that i noticed and liked very much and hadn't seen it often from the twin cities in texas it's so common to have one of those pretty wooden front doors with the iron uh you know the the pretty window in it not stained glass but you know i i don't know what [bevelled] glass right or [frosted] is that common in your area oh uh_huh that's what more more typical around here uh_huh uh_huh it sounds like you're in a very pretty area uh_huh well that that was my that was my plan uh_huh right do you work for t i i don't either i i had been working there and i left t i to see if i could uh find something that would pay me a little better and that was in january and so far it hasn't proved to work out that way well i guess i'm not one to go back it's maybe maybe make another another step or another direction i know the day i left it was real funny one of my past bosses looked at me and said when i told him good bye and i was just talking to someone seeing whether or not i couldn't hire you back which made me feel very nice it was a pleasant way to leave absolutely oh no no i don't believe in that well thanks so much what do you do uh_huh oh okay oh i understand that's where i was from um i'm terrible at staying on the on the subject so if you want me to stay on it i'll try um that's why i'm struggling so so much to uh i'm paying terrible rent in this duplex i can't buy in the area um but it i'm trying to keep my daughters in the schools they were in and so far i'm i'm managing it so that's it it means a lot uh_huh right well we're definitely checking out our options uh to get back to your how many people how many houses in your area have pools oh and do you have one that's well i've i understand that just to keep the filters running keep it clean keep it warm or cool or whatever right right uh_huh you don't you you don't really tend to use it as much as you anticipate you will either but um i have to i have to share this talking about houses in the area just this morning i i saw a for lease sign went up in front of one of these beautiful duplexes in the area and i i had noticed it before the sign ever went up thinking oh that's really lovely and i'd love to be there and the location is great and it said four bedrooms and you know i'm living in a two bedroom with two daughters and it's horrible and then and then it also had the sign on it with a swimming pool so me being the [eternal] [optimist] that i am i'm going to work saying okay i've got the number i know it's going to rent for a lot more than what i'm used to paying but you know with the pool and the extra bedroom it was going to be so nice maybe i can do it so i called and found out how much it costs to rent this place per month and i could not believe it nineteen hundred dollars i could not believe it uh_huh are they [intermixed] very well or does it seem to be streets that are exactly wow oh my goodness yes yes well that is that's great planning oh that sounds nice is your no go ahead uh_huh uh_huh oh that's that's kind of what i left it's not quite as wasn't quite as big as that but it was wonderful uh okay do you live in a single family [dwelling] as they call it okay what sort of house is it yeah garage is that an actual closed in garage or is [carport] type of thing okay never actually be out of the house yeah now around here they tell you if if the advertisement for house for sale says garage it could mean anything from a uh part of the house all closed in to a uh uh nice [corrugated] [fiberglass] roof hanging in the middle of the yard somewhere no and most of them are [carports] you know they will be attached to to the house but it will just be an extension of roof to uh over you know one or two parking spaces yeah yeah uh you all are not quite getting all of that flooding that texas has been getting have you you are getting part of that uh okay uh_huh yeah so there are areas that are so bad about flooding that they just don't cover them huh yeah come to think of it it is that way around here too i mean you know there is nothing even vaguely [resembling] hills around here which was real confusing when i first moved into this area well actually right now my wife and i are living in campus housing yeah they are apartment buildings one and two and three bedroom places uh we like you know uh excuse me like uh twenty five or thirty units per building or something like that twenty five or thirty buildings about half of them are one bedroom places there are a pretty good number of two bedroom places and then there is like uh fifteen or twenty three bedroom places but uh they are not really too bad they are basically cinder block places yeah just graduated in in what physics wow sounds like fun i have got a couple of physics classes facing me this this summer so yeah and from what i have seen of it i mean you know there is a lot of things that kind of dabble in the edges of physics before you actually get into the class yeah yeah i remember a teacher in high school saying that uh he enjoys physics because it uh improved his his uh pool game but anyway yeah uh well once we get out of school we are hoping to get into the mountains somewhere probably out west uh yeah more than likely the rainy side and the mountains somewhere but uh uh originally i am from west virginia the appalachian mountains so uh uh long since fell in love with living in the mountains um yeah we're about six years yeah carol uh_huh um well it's about six years old we've lived here as long as the house has been built so i guess it is new in some ways although we're learning it's falling apart no that's [exaggeration] but we had some problems yesterday so um some plumbing problems so it damaged the carpet and we're going to have to do something we're not sure call insurance or something so uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah yeah i wouldn't think about the painting uh_huh yeah yeah yeah huh yeah yeah because we're kind of thinking of uh trying to find a used home and uh the ones we've looked at have been really nice um but you know there are some things you don't really think about looking at in a pre owned home that that you do in a new home so uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh really yeah yeah uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh huh yeah yeah yeah yeah oh no no huh_uh yeah yeah from scratch everything but we're trying to look for a bigger home right now and and right now we're in um seventeen hundred square feet so it's were looking for something a lot bigger because we have two kids and uh but i like garland i love garland i really want to stay in garland if i can but uh you know there's there's other places too like [sachse] and that and that area out there which is really nice i've been to some friend's house out there and there's just okay okay uh what's your house like uh_huh um uh_huh uh_huh your city's a big city oh i guess it is big uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well my i have also have a four bedroom house uh we have three bathrooms two upstairs and one downstairs which makes it nice because uh it's right off the garage so when gene's working on his cars he can come in and take a shower without going through the rest of the house and then uh i have a it's in a small city of like uh eight thousand people and i don't know if you've heard of modesto that's the closest big city yeah yeah and it's on a cul de sac uh which makes it nice because there's no through traffic you know about all the cars that come in here are people that just live right in here and uh yeah it makes a lot nicer specially i i imagine you have little kids right oh okay well i have one also but he's he'll be thirty seven in uh february so but anyhow i have lots of little neighbor kids and they all love me and i just just [worship] them they can come in my house i have candy for them and cookies for them you know so i'm just like their aunt [rosy] uh_huh oh yeah it's but anyhow as far as decorating my house and everything too i've uh stenciled uh practically in every room in my house which uh it looked like it would be very hard to do but it ended up being really easy and it just really just makes the rooms you know i stenciled right above the right below the ceiling line it looks something like a wallpaper border but it's actually a [stencil] uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well you can't afford to have it done you know plus it's fun i enjoy you know going out and working in the yard and you know just doing everything decorating the house up and changing it in fact i just bought a a large bird cage i had seen in magazines how they were decorating them that not that i want a bird i don't want a bird but i have decorated it up with flowers and i got a little nest in there that looks like it's got two little birds in there and i've got some dolls sitting in there it looks really really cute uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah it's kind of fun to change too isn't it a [fudgesicle] color oh yeah it probably goes with a lot of different colors too uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well you are the first man that i've talked to how did you all get tied up with this uh t i system yeah i just dial one yeah yeah but what uh what did you uh are you with t i or how did you get tied up with this uh i guess a typical home here is without a uh uh basement i guess that's the classical uh yeah uh we have something here we have something here you may not have up there which is a well we we were phasing them out is the wood shingle roof i don't know if you had it when i first got here from new jersey uh right no i i'm my [accent's] gone i've practiced a long time to get rid of it uh the the wood shingle roofs are phasing out here they're very they're good for air conditioning you know they they it's you it's very shocking when you look inside the attic and on a dry day and see a hundred little or thousands of little light [wholes] you know it it's very strange and then when of course when it rains then it then it then it [stretches] and does a pretty good job but uh the the fire hazard has is phasing that kind of construction out it it's so oh it's a rent it's a [multistory] uh last year uh luckily no colonial is not the word had they use here uh that's a multilevel it's called multilevel it is not it's not really that typical it's a custom home uh i live in arlington actually this i'm working tonight actually in dallas uh at t i here oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah your right your right how many calls have you made uh have you oh really everyone everyone's higher than i am yeah that that i ought to know those words from the east when i was there but that they don't use that word here do you have a basement oh yeah that's typical up there to you know oh yeah no the land is much cheaper here yeah yeah yeah the lots aren't very big here either in the dallas uh fort worth area uh but the basement there just aren't any basements i don't know of anyone ever even thought of putting a basement in here uh it used to be a pier and beam where they would drill piers and and the first you would have a crawl space underneath your house but that's [phased] out in the last twenty five years where it's all slab yeah and uh they say that the the reason they don't put pier i think it's cheaper like you say but uh the soil does move a lot here and they say that you just couldn't uh put a basement in the soil but i'd think they just to me i don't know really know why it wouldn't work i think you can put a basement in anywhere it's just not not popular yeah really no no it's not very high some of the water here yeah this is dallas there the water's down two thousand feet yeah i guess it's the style i really don't have an answer here because of the tornado i always thought tornados uh i thought people would build a lot of storm cellars you know or shelters you know but even that is not uh popular at all i don't know i don't know of anyone doing that uh uh i don't even see it in the newspaper where people advertise that they have storm cellars or anything they just don't have them period yeah it's it's multilevel yeah like my garage i have uh uh a bedroom over split level yeah right right exactly right right right yeah yeah what's your typical heating up there in maryland gas or uh_huh yeah oh really well heat pumps nice up there it would probably work pretty well yeah that's true well they should yeah because it's warmer in the winter or you have less of a winter down here of course it's a short winter but it does get down to five degrees uh occasionally but uh i don't really know if heat pumps are that popular yet i guess uh i don't i haven't been that close to it in the newer homes yeah we we have heat uh some have air conditioning units i i i'm having an all electric house but uh it's fifty fifty there's a lot of gas houses here uh because it's so popular oh yeah people i think probably prefer natural gas for for heating uh i don't i'm an engineer and i don't like the danger of it i've seen too many houses here [blowup] and i think yeah and i just think when i i had uh a gas uh uh fireplace you know i had and i saw the way it was yeah it went over my daughter's bedrooms you know over the garage i thought and there's there's just too many fittings in this thing to leak and so i just i never did hook that sucker up so i just took it out completely although people love gas here but i i'm [ultraconservative] on safety and i just don't don't want it yeah well i've heard yeah i've heard people say that i i yeah yeah right oh yeah no i i've i've known people love it for years and uh but uh we've done without it for twenty years here and and uh yeah yeah no i i haven't i haven't really noticed uh i don't miss it you know with our of course i'm against i'm just i'm one of the a million people that uh is against uh gas no no there's not much in front there's no sitting out front you know there's no like like in the east when i was young of course it goes way back we used to sit out front i have a porch up front but no there's not a porch yeah yeah oh yeah i i i wish i had that you know right i i think the old ways in a lot of uh ways should come back uh but no the yeah no that there it's not popular here either screens in screen in is not that that's so that's uh not like not like you have up there no it's too dry it's so dry that it's uh dallas is super dry uh three hundred miles yeah yeah our our weather is like we have a we have a the raining season is now is april and a little bit of may an then it goes into super dry all summer then you summer with a hurricane season but yeah yeah they have everything no public there's essentially no [septic] not in dallas fort worth though you have it in the out lying areas but uh two two no not [carports] uh it's essentially garages yeah no dallas uh fort worth is you know the two car garage and certainly all air conditioned and uh uh uh two thousand square feet is probably i don't know if that's average or not yeah uh i i think so too there's a lot of swimming pools here i don't have one okay um what area do you are you in what area of the country oh in houston okay i'm up in plano near dallas do you live in a suburb or uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh is it uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah what fixing it up or keeping it up yeah yeah uh_huh yeah yeah yeah oh yeah yeah oh boy yeah so you don't well we have a really large house we have three kids and we bought a five bedroom house when we moved here and um it's getting to be too much too much work to keep it up three three so we have a bedroom for everybody and then we have an extra playroom for them to pile all their toys in and an extra t v up there and the ironing board and well yeah i that's the other thing is i was working uh full time i just started back about a year and a half ago and um my youngest one got to be three years old and so then i went back to work and i decided after a year of being a secretary that what i really wanted to do was go back and get my master's degree and um so then i went to part time work and i'm going to school part time and uh it's getting to be too much financially too without my full time income so we're we're just decided to put last week to put our house on the market and um get a smaller house not too small though with three kids so so that that was kind of a hard decision to make but i think uh i it's just been an awful lot you know financial is one thing and that's kind of concrete but also it's just there it the house is just really big and there there's a lot of kids and a lot of space and it all gets messed up so and with cleaning out to you know to sell the house we're trying to clean things out in closets and the playroom and the garage and everything and when you have this much space you don't have to be as careful about throwing stuff out you just put it in the garage or put it in the playroom or something we just have massive stuff that you know is we just accumulated too much stuff i mean not that we have a whole bunch of things it's just little [junky] you know old toys that's it yeah right right uh_huh there's no place to put it yeah to put it uh_huh yeah you know yeah you have more control over it it seems almost like it's taking control here but right yeah yeah it's just because you have to physically go out there and go through it i guess when you uh_huh right yeah get yeah it's crazy yeah yeah i think well i don't i really have uh really relaxed standards about how well organized and cleaned it is i mean it has to be basically clean because you have to be organized enough to know where things are to be able to find things if it gets too messy you spend your whole life going through trying to find what you need so i learned that it has you have to maintain a certain standard of cleanliness but i mean organization but i i mean compared to the other mothers here on my street that don't work i mean my house is just it looks horrible compared to theirs but i mean you have to decide what you're going to do you know if you going to uh what's the most important thing yeah and so that's what slides for me right exactly yeah and uh we this house was new when we bought it and it's all white walls and so we put up some wallpaper and some drapes you know but we just never got we didn't have the money we didn't have the time to really decorate it and i said to my husband if we had a smaller house it wouldn't take you know hundreds of dollars to decorate one room it of uh you see we did this one huge wall that we have and it was like three hundred dollars worth of wallpaper and i didn't even buy that expensive kind you know that it wouldn't even cost that much but it was it's a real long wall so if we had a smaller house everything would be smaller and it wouldn't take it took us two weekends to put all the wallpaper up you know and uh but i have a feeling it's going to be hard uh we have we have driven around in the neighborhood we don't want our children to have to change schools we want to try and stay in the same school area so we've driven around the neighborhood and we've looked from the outside but um i still trying to find time to get this house this weekend we're going to finish up the garage and we're going uh do you know i have a few other things i need to do here and then after that i hope that this house will be good enough for people to come through and look at it and then i want to start going to some open houses and and um you know look at some but i've talked a lot with our realtor about it and she assured me we could get you know a four bedroom house in the price range that we want in that area she said you're not going to like it as much as this one i said yeah no kidding but um yeah for this house it's it's just in this area of plano it seems the the houses are moving really quickly i they said my realtor said about three to six months and maybe closer to the three months because we live half a block from the elementary school so that's real nice yeah and it is five bedrooms she said you you it's really hard to find that and most places places have four and there are people that really want five so that's another plus so it might be closer to three months and you know we'll be if we're real lucky we won't lose any money you know we'll we'll be able it's mostly the closing costs that are going to that we can we'll be be uh asking for more than we bought the house for three years ago but the closing costs are going to eat out just about all of it so yeah then we'll feel really we'll feel good about it so before we can look too much yeah right that's what that's what our realtor wants to do i've talked to some other people who have put [contingencies] on their houses and um but our our realtor just doesn't really like to do that she doesn't even want me to go out and look and fall in love with something until you know i yeah well i'm going to i'm going to i'm going to tell her you know when i have the time that's the hard thing i have finals right now because i'm taking two classes i have finals and papers and stuff so in um two weeks from now i should be pretty well set and uh i'm going to go out there and look i'm going to tell her i i want to know i want to have a feeling before i sign saying i'm going to sell this house i have to see what exactly it is that we're going to be moving into so but i trust her pretty much in that you know she knows what we're looking for and she knows what's out there so so how about in houston how is it down there is it getting better uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh oh come back up oh good yeah right that's true i didn't think about that that's right uh_huh oh good oh that's really nice where do you what area do you live in oh okay i live in uh rowlett uh_huh oh that's really nice oh yeah it probably will yeah we have that uh_huh right i guess that's just texas though you have to live with that uh_huh really well we bought uh our first house at the end of eighty six and like i said it's out in rowlett and it's it's real nice it's four bedroom and it's kind of a tract area too we've got people behind us and on both sides of us i don't really like that too well i keep telling my husband that our next house is going to sit square in the middle of at least ten acres of land but uh it's a it's a good size and it's something we can stay in and grow in for quite a while i guess uh hopefully till the real estate market turns around like you we we bought when it was down a little bit but we've had so many [repossessions] in our neighborhood that we couldn't sell for anywhere near what we've got into it so it uh hopefully it'll turn around sometime yeah oh i think it will eventually out here they're building more new houses all the time though and people can go and buy a brand new one that's never been lived in for less than they can get a used one so i guess that's what they would choose but there uh as a first time home buyer i know what you mean there's a lot of things you're not sure about what to look out for the only really trouble we've had with our house is the seals breaking between the double [panes] and moisture gets in there and you can hardly see out of them now they've got so much and the [builder's] gone bankrupt and the glass company's gone bankrupt so we don't really have any recourse and just hope they break or something yeah but other than that we haven't had any problems oh uh_huh yeah we had a our insurance our home owner's insurance actually covered some of it because i told them it looks like something is eating into the glass it turns like a [milky] white you know so i said well how do we know it wasn't some kind of chemical or something that's eating into that which would be covered under a glass rider so they replaced like seven of them and we just had to pay the deductible but they wouldn't that insurance company went out of business in texas because they had so many claims that they couldn't make a profit and so now none of the other insurance companies will will consider covering that which i can understand it's really not damage oh yeah but i bet we've got at least seven more now that are bad just about every window in our house i guess eventually is going to have to be replaced yeah well what they did is just they came in and just cut the glass out of the frame and put more glass in that's over a year ago and it's it hasn't had any problems yeah seemed to somebody told me that they thought that too was caused by just a little bit of shifting in the foundation puts a little pressure on that seal and makes them pop open right okay well it was good talking to you i live in uh richardson area just close to uh richland college do you live in the area too oh okay uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right oh uh_huh um uh_huh well what kind of a a house is it now are you still in oh okay uh_huh right right well we uh rent a duplex right now and it's only like a couple of miles from where i work it's a little bit further for my husband we used to both work at the same building at t i and it was only like two miles from the uh duplex now he's moved but he's going against the flow of the traffic so it's not too bad of a commute it only takes him about fifteen minutes no he can get on the highway and he's going north whereas most of the people are like in plano going south so he's you know in a good situation because the traffic is not as heavy in his direction but we've been looking for a house but the first consideration to us is location you know they keep building further and further out and of course you can get more house for the money and stuff but you know to me i'm the same way that day to day commute i don't like uh_huh uh_huh yeah and i think too we both have a little bit older cars i mean both our cars are over ten years old now if you get a house if you buy a house more for your money further out you're going to have to have a pretty decent car and put a lot into uh your car payments and your gas and stuff i mean you know if you've got to drive it sixty miles a day you're going to go through that car a heck of a lot faster than what we did i mean that's not something people think about is the car the car payments and the gas uh_huh um well how how do you feel about the immigration laws yeah well i'm not real sure why i got this topic because i don't think i checked it off on the list because i know very little about the current immigration laws oh uh_huh huh no that doesn't make a whole of lot sense uh_huh yeah well uh my uh my family is from uh europe from well from england and ireland and uh have been in this country for oh more than a hundred and fifty years almost two hundred years so i don't have any any uh relatives that i am or or uh several generations back that i am familiar with their names and how they fit into the family they were all they were all born here so i don't have any real strong ties with any with with the immigration laws i don't because i don't i don't have any personal feelings about them and i haven't taken the time or effort to learn what they are um uh_huh yeah i i well i agree with that i i think if immigration was entirely unrestricted uh not only would would the united states become over populated well more over populated awfully quickly i think it it would bring in a lot of uh people that are run out of other countries or in trouble in in other countries i think they'd come here trying to find a new market for their their brand of crime i was not aware aware of that uh_huh yeah i think so well i've enjoyed talking to you okay thanks bye at currently i think they are a little restrictive uh particularly for uh certain ethnic groups or from certain countries um i think we should permit uh more immigration from eastern europe for example uh particularly the uh the jewish uh uh people from russia i think we could permit more of them in than we have permitted in the last uh several years and i think we have uh uh too much restriction on the uh on the orientals also but of course that's just my opinion uh_huh uh_huh well we seem to uh to favor certain uh uh countries particularly south american countries and uh there is no uh uh i have nothing of course against uh the uh the south americans or uh or hispanics in that sense but i think we uh are more restrictive of the uh so called eastern uh european countries than we uh we should be of course that's from my own bias since my ancestors from eastern europe so and uh so i think uh you know the uh [embargo] we placed on the uh on the russian [jews] although we of uh spent years and years uh lobbying for their release and their ability to um immigrate from russia as soon as that occurred we simply said that uh instead of the uh hundred and fifty thousand or so who wanted to immigrate to this country we cut that by uh two thirds so i do not quite go along with that but no and i still think you know again kind of having uh uh within this century come from a uh an immigrant family or immigrant families on both sides both my mother's parents and my father's parents were immigrants so i'm a little touchy every now and then about that uh_huh oh my uh_huh well i think in a way though uh uh i also have uh an opposite point of view which is uh although i believe we should uh permit uh you know constant immigration into this country uh i think we should uh primarily for economic reasons i think we should have um some quotas of course my family and i again again that was you know my grandparents came over during the time when uh there were quotas so they had to wait uh you know in uh certain parts of europe for years before they were permitted to come over so you know but uh i think unrestricted immigration i think is not uh is not best uh uh_huh well you know there's another aspect of this too they're also uh uh diminishing the uh health restrictions which well yes there are were some uh regulations over i don't know whether they're laws passed or or whatever they're called uh just recently where uh people with certain diseases cannot be excluded uh from uh immigration age is one for example and uh recently uh [tuberculosis] which at one time if you had [tuberculosis] you could not get into this country uh they dropped that also so i think in in some some ways we are uh becoming a little too [egalitarian] in that in that sense but uh i think we should be a little more [circumspect] about it again my opinion think we've talked long enough all right i i i have talked long enough thank you good bye hello well i think it's a very very complicated and i sort of i see perspectives on all sides um and i've have no hope for solutions but uh i do keep myself somewhat abreast of the issue i have worked with uh uh a little bit with refugees from southeast asia uh who've come over uh you know to escape the [genocide] programs that are over there and seen you know heard about some of the problems that they've had and i'm also fairly sensitive to the issues about how open should the borders be because i in general like a smaller rather than a larger population to the land area and uh i'm in california which has a lot of immigration probably more than any where else in the country though i'm not sure if that's the case uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah sure well texas used to be part of mexico or most of it huh i i don't either it's a really delicate uh moral issue because if you have well i guess the one thing i do see that is is that needs to be a solution is that if you do let people into the country i do feel you have a certain obligation to to get them on their feet because otherwise what you're doing is you're letting people in and you're you're [dooming] them to being underclass people you know you're [dooming] them to ghetto life or whatever and i know that that the southeast asians the [hmong] people that i've done some work with uh feel very quite hurt and and [unsure] of themselves when here because they're coming from you know from the [slash] and burn [intercultural] society you know they're coming from the middle ages basically and they're being [plunked] down [plunked] down into america many of them had been promised by the c i a during the war over there that because they co operated with the c i a and they helped the c i a out that when they came here the c i a would help establish them in america and the c i a of course isn't doing that and uh so they come here and they don't know what the heck they're doing and they're finding themselves [adrift] in the big cities and of course there are people in the big cities who would do like nothing better than to take advantage of them and they're they're incredible victims of crime and part of it is this lack of lack of basic information being [dissimilated] and i'm not saying it's easy to do and i know there are a few people who are trying but but the funding isn't there for very much work to be going on uh yeah exactly i mean these are people who don't have the foggiest idea about what america's like um and it's it's i i couldn't really [conceptualize] how hard it was to understand that until i until i met with them and i realized that they some of the information that i just you know don't even realize and know is information they don't have and i never thought well i guess that is something you need to know you know people getting into trouble because they come here and so they start farming on uh available land you know like the [median] strips on [freeways] because no one's using it but then someone comes along and says you can't do that you know why can't they they have no idea why not some some of them you know the ones that have been here longer and have been in you know understand now but when they initially come over yeah because they're farmers these are all farmers coming over and they're being put in the middle of the city i mean they're [nomadic] farmers you know they're people who farm on the hillside and then leave the hillside to another hillside and farm on that hillside these are people who've never seen flat ground before and people who've never seen property rights before you know these people who've never seen any machines other than those used in war and uh they have you know so i i i do have a lot of sympathy for them and i feel that america could try a little bit harder to to help people adjusting to the american way because if they don't you're just going to produce you know you're going to produce an underclass you know you're going to get a situation that i think a lot like what happened to the blacks being sort of led out of [slavery] and then then many of them ended up just working the same jobs they were as slaves then and there was no real up [upward] movement and not being you know um well i i wasn't helping them i worked with them not to help them but for my own purposes i'm i'm a [linguist] and i was uh doing a language trying to learn their language a little bit and i actually um i mean helped them them in the sense that they received money for working with me but i didn't i didn't i wasn't a social worker or anything like that i do have friends who have tried to do more social work you know by explaining to people how the language and what the problems learning english might be and such because all the models of teaching english are based on teaching english to spanish speakers or to other european language speakers and people don't realize how different some of the languages they speak are oh you are uh_huh well you that's that's been my impression yeah it's it's not they're not withholding information they just don't have that information they they haven't the foggiest idea yes and spanish is pretty close to english really and spanish is a lot like english yeah yeah yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh i'm sure it would uh_huh uh_huh yeah it would be a good experience and you'd be helping people i'm sure very much and and i mean not to put not to [trivialize] the problems of any immigrant group but i do know the asian groups are having a lot of trouble i mean and part of the problem is that a lot of chinese and japanese immigration from you know decades ago has been very successful because they valued education and so forth they became a very successful immigrant group but and but a lot of people coming over from vietnam right now coming from worn torn countries are are not having the same success i think some people have just assumed well why why can't you be successful the japanese were or the chinese were or something and it's really much more complicated yeah the times are different yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah i i think it's a wonderful thing to do and there's a lot there's a lot more i guess another possible solution is since taxpayers aren't going to start paying more money for this and and other budgets aren't going to be cut to pay for it uh more of the volunteer network service because everyone gains from it would be would might be really useful uh and if it's you know uh just people helping people i think makes makes the community so much happier uh_huh yes uh_huh uh_huh yes yes i've known people with effectively worthless degrees in this country i mean and they're highly educated people but of course if you're educated and you don't speak english no one thinks anything of you uh_huh uh_huh yeah i do too well it's been good talking with you uh okay okay it does sound like you have some children to take care of uh okay bye bye hello i was i was thinking about our topic for the night um immigration problems we have immigration problems and what do do you think about it huh uh_huh uh_huh where are you see well we've got a lot too i'm in texas in garland right outside of dallas so we're getting a large oh gosh i don't know i think there's like twenty six different languages now that are spoken in i the i s d dallas [innercity] school district [cambodians] uh asians vietnamese we we're getting a lot of uh mexican americans you know we've had those for a long time yes oh yes no i'm busy right now steven steven wants me to do popcorn right now okay and i don't know what the solution is to get them on their yeah right um uh_huh and there's a lot of [graft] like people trying to tell them oh giving them information that was free to them anyway if they just knew how to get it yeah right you mean really trying to plant something that's what you're saying farming oh oh that's terrible uh_huh and not being cared for yeah that's true well what did you do when you helped these people how did you what did you do all right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i'm an e s l teacher yes i got my certification but actually they did not teach us very many things about how really to go about helping people to learn another language i mean it's like people don't know what they say it's not step for step yeah but anyway i enjoy it they they the kids i've worked with so far have been spanish speaking and but i'm applying for what yeah it is a lot of our words are the same like you know they just change the [pronunciation] a little bit but i love it i love the culture uh the way that they uh they respect education and their teachers their parents so much more than than my children do you know and i like it and what i've been thinking about doing is volunteering for this uh asian center that a doctor [falk] has started that works with the school district and doing what trying to get them set up [inculturated] into the system i thought that would be good experience for me and i've applied at another district where many of the children are asian and i think that would be wonderful too right well the times were different too my neighbor let's see is jewish and he's going through the i don't know the jewish league or something and helping a family that's come over from russia and he spends well right now he's down to like once a week but he was going over there several times a week to be with the family and help them with the language and he thoroughly enjoyed it no uh_huh uh_huh what's so sad about this is both of the the man and the woman had a degree having to do with computers but their training isn't what we need in this country and because they're so [deficient] in english they haven't been able to get jobs so they'll have to go back and get a degree here you know almost start all over no no and this woman was uh [stocking] the shelves in a [drugstore] i feel sorry for her well thank you have a good night okay yes i do okay bye right actually my son once said that that perhaps uh what we should do is is buy a little square of land some place in the midwest and and that might be the solution uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh no i don't i don't know i lived in the middle east for sometime and i i do believe there must have been some sort of quota system because uh i know a lot of people that were in a sense not qualified is the wrong word but certainly were [deserving] to come and it seemed to take them a long time or or there was a lot of uncertainty as to whether they would be able to come and so i would guess that you know there are quotas for different places you know i i i think there's something about being able to to claim um [imminent] danger or i'm not sure what the terminology is maybe political yeah there there you go you got the term and maybe that's a an issue with a a lot of people i don't know but yeah i i guess i haven't been in a situation where it's it's been threatening to to me uh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i was going to say i'm not i i would guess that it's not that they are any brighter but they just maybe work harder or right right but maybe part of that's the problem that here we've we've let this value slip and they need to have some competition uh_huh well that's too bad uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh that's really sad uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well and it sounds like you feel that there is need for change maybe the uh you know the there is too big of a concentration coming all at once to to allow for adequate melting into the society right exactly oh uh_huh um right right right right uh_huh uh_huh right i would i would suspect that they have well i guess um i don't have much much more to contribute to the topic yeah uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh goal directed goal directed oh i see uh_huh sure sure uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yes up in the [gaithersburg] area uh_huh well no i think i think there as i recall in my son's class there were were an an awful lot of minorities and uh of all of all varieties and with the same you know some of the some of the same problems that you've mentioned but uh i don't know i guess i wasn't involved enough to to uh really stop to think about it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh exactly exactly right right well it was good talking to you and i okay and have a good weekend all righty bye bye well i'll tell you why i feel so i feel strongly about this topic i don't know a whole lot about the immigration laws but i do know that in the where i live and i teach school there are so many orientals that have come here and there's a lot of mexican people too which is not neither here nor there but the fact is that all the orientals that are here are very affluent uh very wise in money matters and have have taken over a lot of businesses and have really it's kind of scary because they're so bright they're all the kids that i have that are oriental are really far above the american kids and they and the the parents are unbelievable because they are just on the way up and money is their main goal and it's it really is kind of scary because there's there's just [oodles] of them and you can not believe the businesses and corporations that have been taken over by orientals and it's it's kind of scares me not that i don't want them here and not that i don't appreciate the fact that you know that they have rights too but on the other hand you feel like almost they're they're invading us to the point where they're going to take over i think probably that's a good idea because i lived in iowa for for about ten years before i came here and i was born in ohio so it it really and there is there are a lot of mexican people here because we're so close to the border and and they are wonderful people and and i'm not you know i don't want to deny them their rights just that you you feel like when you were born and raised here and you worked very hard to make this country what it is uh it scares you when you feel like somebody's taking over and a lot of these people plan one day to go back you know to to vietnam or to you know taiwan or wherever they're from and take with them a lot of american dollars plus a lot of power in american companies and it's kind of scary and you know i don't know i don't know the immigration laws that uh that well and i do not and in fact i don't know them at all i don't know how many people they allow in the united states per year or if there's even a i don't even know if there is a number that they allow in anymore do you know anything about that oh uh_huh yeah i would think so too it uh_huh uh_huh asylum of some sort uh_huh well well i teach in the suburb of dallas and and uh my kids go to school in another suburb of dallas and with very very good school systems and they're considered you know one of the top three in the state both of them you know and it seems like a lot of the orientals make sure that their kids go to these schools and they're head and shoulders above a lot of the kids here and the kids in this area are very bright and come from you know parents that are professionals or [semiprofessionals] and and uh very interested in their education but uh i think in the last year i'm not if i'm not mistaken in four of the six high schools the graduating class [valedictorian] and [salutatorian] were uh half or more oriental and you know they're just extremely bright kids and also they value learning well i i think things come easy for them too but i do think that they have that work ethic that we somehow have missed the boat in with a lot of kids in the united states i don't they uh don't want to work for anything they want it to come to them but and be there but they don't want to work hard and these kids work really hard and and they have yeah i know i agree with that but what i see is the competition is there but instead of meeting the challenge they're starting to resent them and it's causing you know i think some some problems it really is because we see a lot of racial problems in the dallas area anyway especially in dallas and it's mainly black and and and hispanic but uh there is some there has been some resentment with orientals in the black community because they've started businesses there and the blacks resent them coming in and taking their money and there's been some violence because of it it is it's it is very sad so you know i really i i've i've always [prided] myself on not being prejudiced and being you know uh welcome [welcoming] everyone that wants to come here and even when i was younger when i was in college i was a member of the n a a c p because i lived up north and i was very into that the human rights part of everything but i i've i've become very cynical in the last three four years living in texas uh_huh uh_huh well and exactly that's exactly true plus the fact that these people do come for a short period of time two two three four maybe five years and then go back and pick our brains which is wonderful and take all that back with them and and uh plus a lot of american dollars but in in the long run maybe that's going to make a better world too you know you just don't know and yet you know with uh with uh there's somebody on my other line but i'm going to ignore that uh anyway i just you you kind of you you really don't know what to do and and i don't i want my kids to have values where they're accepting and so forth and both of my children are really more tolerant of blacks and hispanics than they are of the orientals for some reason they feel you know like they've taken over they feel like uh you know they're taking some of the the rewards that they should have and i really don't want that to happen but but it's happening and i think a lot of their friends feel the same way too so and i really do wish i knew about quotas and really wish i i really do wish i i knew more about immigration laws because i have no idea any more because they've changed a great deal yeah i don't really either i wish i knew more probably if i did i might be a little bit more uh tolerant perhaps and i and even if i i really wish i knew the situations they were going back to or coming from you don't know any of that and you feel you know you can't put yourself in their shoes or really understand them unless and for some reason orientals are very uh my good friend calls them pushy but i call them very that they know what they want and they go get it and in stores and so and so forth it's pardon me yeah but in stores and things sometimes they can be very [impolite] because they can they get in front of you or they uh they take something that you had in mind to get before you did you know just going for it they take it quickly and uh they don't think anything of that and i don't you know that's makes people [resentful] too and so and yet they have they have a right to be here and i know that but it's it sometimes it's gets touchy so and i'm sure it's a lot different you're from maryland you said what part of maryland are you from oh okay my sister used to live there in that area and i i'm sure that it's a lot different there uh it's a lot different in than in iowa than it is here is that right uh_huh well i you know since i teach i see see it and and i feel and i love the example that most of these children give the our american children and yet you know i can see why some of the parents are that are fearful too and and it's a kind of a touchy situation and i wish that we could all just learn from each other and not feel threatened but it doesn't happen that way all the time so anyway it was good to talk to to you too and have a good trip in california all right well thank you bye bye i know they have a waiting list and a quota on immigration now yeah um well i know that they're they're real cautious about letting middle eastern people into the country now because of all the terrorism what what what all do you know about it yeah uh_huh that's right uh_huh there i don't think there's much of much of one because i'm sure all the people from cuba have been released from that camp that they were in and uh most of them it's just like australia most of them were criminals from cuba and i think that was just an attempt that that fidel [castro] to [undermine] you know the united states to some extent so he just released and got rid of all his criminals and sent them to us and it's almost the same thing in in uh from asia because a lot a lot of them was put out of business in vietnam after the war and uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh yeah and a lot of the mexican people just cross the border during the daytime to come over here and work and they have green cards and uh then like you said a lot of i run into people every day that can't speak english and uh and and most of them you know are working in [janitorial] positions so so i i don't know like you said i don't know how much how much they're taking from the work force you know uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well that's i yeah i took spanish in school and that's you know one reason that i did it is because because whenever you travel anywhere near the border you know there more and more people speak spanish well yeah well it's basically on the well i think it's mostly concentrated toward the borders and uh it's more um the immigration is tied in with uh drug trafficking so they have to watch out who comes in and and they're always finding drugs on you know on the most um innocent looking kind of i forgot what they found but a dog found it the other day you know on the border uh_huh that's right well yeah and one of the one of the things that really gets to me uh about the mexicans is that um once they have children over here their children are american citizens then yeah and then they'll ship the parents back and that leaves the children without any parents so and they you know and and they just follow the rule no matter you know so that doesn't seem fair to the children right uh_huh yeah and then they granted them amnesty if they could prove when was that it was in the eighties some time if they could prove they'd been here five years and uh a lot of them had been you know some of them some of them moved back and forth but uh most of them don't ever want to go back to mexico especially the way it was then uh_huh i think most you know like especially the celebrities and everything they just have a uh well they have to get a green card if they going to do any kind of work you know in movies and and such but most of them have temporary visas as long it's like well it's a kind of a bad a bad bad example but when [rafael] [septien] took the job with the cowboys they had to offer his job to any other [applicant] that could do it yeah so that you know and that's the thing with the jobs and of course no one beat him out so you know he just ruined his own career so yeah uh_huh yeah i think so because there are other i uh job opportunities in europe that there aren't here you know even um like orchestra players can find a job sometimes in europe when they can't find one here and i'm a trumpet player uh no i uh i don't any more i just went to school and i was a music major for a while but i had a trumpet teacher that played in the mexico city symphony so so he had to have a work visa there and of course they had a lot of musicians from from other countries and uh in the mexico city symphony but i think um like three out of the four other people in the trumpet section are from mexico now but i think the conductor i don't know or one of the conductors is is from another country it's like any other symphony you know and then and [eduardo] [mana's] from mexico so he had to i've lost track i don't really know i i do have some opinions but go ahead uh okay i hadn't thought about that uh uh well i just have an opinion now i didn't think i thought the terrorism thing was [overstated] i mean there was nothing over here in fact even this is not our subject i guess but uh maybe it is or isn't i suppose my wife when she talked about the middle east and everyone's afraid you know of how the war was going to go and everything i said i told her no it's just not going to happen there's not going to be any terrorism over him and there wasn't you know they just didn't have an organization but uh i i i'm concerned that we're letting too many that we don't have enough controls i think that uh the asian [gangsters] that we've let in here and if and the guys from uh cuba you know there's a lot of criminals down in florida that we've let in from cuba that fidel pushed off on us and uh and the last you know out of all the asians we brought in there's a tremendous criminal element that we let in from from asia and i think that there's got to be some sort of controls over that i mean this asia [mafia] thing is getting out of hand i don't i don't i didn't know what i don't even know what our controls are i don't even know what uh if we have any guidelines at all uh on immigration um i always thought that we did but i don't i don't i don't know what they are right now yeah yeah yeah the yeah because we i i do have some sympathy with uh you know of course we have this big mexican problem not a problem but i think that we need to do something with uh the immigration of back and forth across mexico uh i i'm sympathetic i don't know what the answer is i guess i'm sympathetic certainly with that that that they want to come over here and they i guess hundreds of thousands come over every year to work and if if they have jobs you know i hear the story that they're taking away american jobs but i don't know uh i don't know how many american jobs they are really taking away so i i'm sympathetic but i don't have an answer i don't uh i think that we should have good relations with with mexico but that's not really exactly immigration it is and it isn't i don't know to what degree we owe the people who come across before they're citizens owe the children education and all that uh although the idea of education is an answer to a lot of problems in the world so i guess it's what they their the mexican kids get a good education along the way and maybe that's a benefit to everybody you know uh_huh oh yeah yeah and that yeah i never thought that they were much i do cringe when i hear some of the problems we've had um uh of course you mentioned the language i feel so bad that we here in texas or certainly the southern part of the united states uh california texas and all that why our kids don't speak fluid spanish uh by junior high you know as well as us you know so that we could wouldn't have the language barrier certainly that that that is a shame that we have this tremendous border of mexico and then in europe you know they speak their french and all and they try they go out of their way to try to speak their neighbor's language so they can understand we we we don't really even make an effort to speak spanish and i feel bad about that go ahead yeah yeah i guess it's never too late i i do have some spanish books and i've always uh every year i say i'm going to try to speak some [newcomers] language you know i don't know if it's costing us any money or how much money they're putting into it uh that's always a factor i mean how much my wife says how much the federal government is putting into it immigration yeah oh yeah oh yeah i i i think that certainly is a problem i guess our immigration history that's a great subject they uh didn't say to talk about that but that is i mean on [ellis] island they you know they're redoing that and going to make it a museum a national museum that certainly was interesting since all of us had uh ancestors that came over that way or not all but i guess i guess if you go back far enough you came over on a boat originally you know but uh a lot of us have parents grandparents my grandparents came over in about eighteen ninety or something like that and i'm sure they came over you know through [ellis] island you know so we all immigrants one way or another well we certainly are coming from europe oh yeah those were laws are unusual yeah but i don't understand whose rule is that you know yeah sometimes common sense should take over rather than yeah that's a law doesn't sound like it makes any sense at all that you would do it that way you would think they could at least get a a a visa or something until they uh get citizenship i'm sure they want to oh yeah i heard something about that yeah yeah yeah oh no oh no i i could see you could see why i don't know how much immigration we have from europe and everything what the controls are yeah yeah i guess you can get work visas pretty easily uh yeah oh really yeah yeah oh well yeah yeah well it's still interesting after all this time that we're probably one of the one of the few countries that people are still desperately trying to immigrate to uh although i guess europe now that the communism is falling apart that maybe there'll be won't be that much of a rush to get out of all the communist countries uh i guess poland now now is [noncommunist] so maybe not maybe immigration from europe to here will you know slowly uh change maybe it'll be even out like trade you know so many people will immigrate here in the twentieth at the year two thousand so many of the people will go back overseas you know maybe it will average out i don't know it doesn't has doesn't seem so far uh_huh uh_huh are you a teacher oh really yeah yeah oh uh_huh uh_huh oh really uh_huh yeah well i found it interesting that they started off with a problems of immigration in america and then went back and said well if there is a problem what should we do about it do you feel there's a problem with immigration in america okay that's interesting i was i was wondering what your response would be i'm a first generation american so i'm from immigrant parents or an immigrant mother anyway uh poland and that was you know prior to world war two but it's interesting that you know with the topic i think i agree with you there needs to be more of an open policy and you know we have to remember the chinese came here and were our labor you know for the railroad [transatlantic] railroad and our [irish] came and you know built the towns and did labor but what do you think are you from texas or pennsylvania okay well that will be interesting because we have just had a [naturalization] act where the mexicans that were residents in texas i'm from texas and have become citizens now what do you think about that well i agree with it wholeheartedly the only thing is i've got to share with you my background is from new jersey so when you were giving your answer i was thinking is this a texan i'm talking to because texan philosophy is a little different uh_huh yeah well we oh well then you have first in the experience on immigration well that is interesting yeah well i wonder you know even with those that were involved with [tienamen's] square you know did we really protect them yeah that is true that is true well what do you think about we have in texas a large vietnamese population that has been brought in what do you think about that and these are not the [brightest] i mean we we're talking boat people we have a lot of boat people in texas you're a true liberal heart to heart good for you i was ready for a fight on this one no i agree because um interesting my when my daughter was in high school one of the [custodians] was vietnamese and with his limited english they found out you know that she was in student council and they found out that he was a medical doctor so what do you think about it right yeah i guess that's so um uh i think there's some problems but they're not really big ones i think that um in general the whole immigration policy isn't quite as open as it should be that it's really pretty hard for people from other countries to get in here even if they're educated and will be a good asset to america it's often hard for them to get in and get on the track towards citizenship unless they marry a citizen or something like that okay uh where did you come from okay okay so where did your parents come from okay and uh_huh yeah uh_huh yep uh_huh i'm from pennsylvania yeah right and uh a lot of uh_huh yeah um i think that's all right i um at least on the surface it sounds like a good thing do you have an opinion about it uh_huh uh_huh no okay right well a lot of the experience that i have with this problem has to do with my brother in law who's chinese and [immigrated] from china and um you know he um got a green card is and is in good standing in america and china but only because he was always nice to the chinese government and all that and he was always on pretty good terms with them but um their my sister just had a baby and they're trying to get permission for his mother to come to america to like help care for the kid and that sort of thing and it's turned out to be sort of a horrible problem it's just very difficult to get a woman who doesn't have a lot of assets or whatever out of china even temporarily to visit here yeah uh_huh right yeah that's and i think that's pretty crazy because i mean those students who were in america when that was happening are almost certainly going to be in trouble if they go back and aside for that they're the best and [brightest] of china so it's certainly in our best selfish interest to keep them here if we can yeah uh_huh yeah um see these are [refujees] you mean okay right okay right well um i don't have any problem with that um yeah i guess so uh_huh right uh_huh yeah and you say you have some strong feelings about uh the issue uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh right well i'm a little bit ambivalent the problem with uh and i think one of the problems with immigration policy is like any other political problem is that people are not willing to discuss it uh in in terms of what uh really is driving it they're not willing to tell the truth the same way with uh issues of uh race and things like that i mean right now uh i believe there are two policies that uh that the government uses to [modulate] immigration three actually one is at the high end uh they always want to be able to uh do some brain [draining] they always like to be able to attract the uh [einsteins] or the professor [chou] or you know they'd like to be able to get the top people in any field and so they can almost always find room for someone like that at the bottom end they uh are always willing to uh let in cheap labor if it lowers the cost of doing business in some particular area and has strong support from the powerful people in that area those are two things that i think are going on although they i i don't think the politicians would tell you that and then the third thing is uh the political aspect of uh uh letting steam come out from under the lid in mexico they cannot close off the mexican border not because it's physically impossible but because the explosion that would take place in mexico would be uh uh would spill over to this country so they keep allowing uh the pressure cooker to let off steam uh that's one of the few things i guess i found myself in agreement with pat buchanan i think they're a very difficult group to [integrate] into uh society they're very difficult uh group to find jobs and uh and uh places for and so uh uh i don't deny that we may have been involved in causing the problem that uh in that they're pretty miserable where they are but i'm not to sympathetic about uh letting large numbers of [haitians] in yeah right but if you let them yeah if you let them in a million at a time it wouldn't make that you know it wouldn't make that big a bulge in the population but politically and economically yeah well i know about it uh i mean it's it is now with [haitians] the way it was with [cubans] uh twenty years ago on the other hand you know the ironic thing about this is that there's nobody more full of the entrepreneurial american spirit than our first generation immigrant so there's uh there's a lot to be said for having a steady stream of people who know how it is someplace else coming in right sure right uh_huh uh_huh uh yes i do as far as uh as far as uh as far as immigration as a whole goes i think that uh we simply must start accepting everybody in the world uh i there just is not going to be room for all of us we don't have jobs now i i think uh i think when we come to a time of recession that it's particularly important that we shut our doors at that time uh i hope you're one of the employed right now i am one of the unemployed right now i was a systems analysis and programmer for an oil company and uh i applied for one set of jobs with a company here in dallas that they had two hundred openings but they had two thousand applications and i know that there are a lot of foreigners uh here you know doing my line of work and of course i'm not perfectly happy about not having a job so how do you feel right okay and i think you're right in both cases and i think probably it's pretty important right there how do you feel about [haitian] immigration actually actually i feel that if we accepted these people that we would eventually have almost the total population here and it would have nothing to do with political situations it would have to do with poverty oh my gosh have you been have you been to southern florida well i mean and the two of them together i mean we can it's just as well you know it's hardly america anymore but there's some differences in the immigrants that that we're getting now well i particularly have a problem with the illegal immigration i think probably your a great deal of what you say is true about the [legals] but uh the majority of the illegal immigration we're getting now they do not come here to blend into america uh they they don't bother to learn our language and uh first of all they i'm sorry this i really feel strongly about this we send a lot of money to mexico uh yes i do believe that there is too much immigration now and do you well it's not just that are there enough jobs for people here now and yet they're letting more people in daily yeah it i wasn't talking about just mexico i was talking about europeans the eastern block uh it's terrible there's and there's nothing we can do about it the government seems to do as they wish when they wish yes living under a bridge so to speak now it's true though that the bulk of of immigrants are successful uh i saw it on the news yes the bulk of immigrants legal immigrants to this country are successful you know they pay to end up as tax paying citizens making uh above middle class incomes whatever that is in the united states now well yeah you work for t i uh they say that's due to their work ethic now i don't know if that's true or not it just might be a matter of luck but then america always has been for the immigrant huh none of us would there you know there's only a very few native americans here yes they are well most of them you're right but then i drive through [ruidoso] and i think well not all of them have it desperately bad you know you've you've driven by you know the mountain gods outside of [ruidoso] haven't you oh it's beautiful country up there in the mountains of new mexico oh just just gorgeous and that inn is huge and but now uh like i say that one tribe is the exception not the rule you know most tribes were treated [dreadfully] and still are yes oh a native texan oh well i'm i'm i'm a native born texan but uh you know how it is we go where the work is uh in lubbock in seventy four so yes i am i am a [longtime] t i uh the ones we see are americans by marriage a huge number here in colorado springs there's an air force base and an army base so there's people that marry g i korean americans german americans uh a few japanese a few chinese you understand yeah well that's not really immigration yeah yeah you can't stop them and once they're here to some extent we support them i don't either but uh what i suspect is that [illegals] were hired for a hundred and fifty years of texas history i don't think they can stop it by a federal [edict] i don't think the federal government can stop it by by waving their magic [wand] and saying it will happen no more it's just too [inbred] in the culture you know i grew up in dumas and lubbock and uh every roofing crew was illegal sure see uh still some migrant labor is legal you know it is in texas too yes yeah during cotton harvest and whenever the the uh tomatoes and all are well well the truth of the matter is i don't know what your home payments are but you couldn't make a living on what they earn you could not have you seen how those poor people live migrant labor camps oh my god they live in cardboard boxes and these fine americans take care of them and i yes and i don't hold it against the people they're hard workers trying to make it no no they'll they'll ask for a [handout] first no no what they're doing is they're asking for [handouts] because if you took them into your home to to work in your yard or whatever they'd know where your house is and how to break in then or now that's not true of all of them there are i don't i don't know but i'm sure that times being as hard as they are and times are hard not everyone's that way you know good people are being put out of jobs now from t i oh so you don't oh and you got transferred to a different right yeah i've i've i've noticed uh rumors still [persist] i try not to believe them and listen to them but they still [persist] that the plant will close yeah so you're in division what now corporate corporate okay yeah that that must feel somewhat safer well you're probably right up here in rochester we uh we don't have uh much controversy about immigration you know being on the canadian border there's not a whole lot of people you know dying to come across and live here sometimes i think they ought to uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah i think it's uh i think it's a real shame but on the other hand you know it kind of even with all the tragedies if you step back and look at it the fact that people want to come here must be that there's something better here than or at least they think there's something better here than there is uh wherever they're from yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah that's true but i think that's probably always been true throughout uh history of the united states uh i think anytime you have uh you know immigrants coming in who perhaps you know don't have the ability to communicate with a large percentage of the population that's already here i think they're bound to to push the social services a little bit do you think it's worse today than it was maybe fifty years ago uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah yeah yeah uh_huh okay uh_huh yeah that's right that's right it's really interesting to me because as as as as you pointed out at the beginning here in rochester uh now we don't have it immigration we don't even have a lot of immigration but on the other hand you know it's we do have uh a large influx of uh people from say jamaica or other parts of the caribbean that's you know and puerto rico we have a a large population from there people who have come over you know maybe in the last you know ten or twenty years have moved here no why somebody from jamaica want to would want to move to cold rochester i'm a little uh i'm a little hard pressed to understand but they do it so so you know i don't blame them to each their own but you know if you look at at a place like rochester now now we have a large population of like second and third generation americans of people who you know whose parents or grandparents came to uh the united states you know people from italy uh people from poland people from the ukraine uh and i always you know i always wonder whether you know was the situation any different back then i mean how did the people who had been in the united states for for a while feel about this large amount of immigration uh it's fairly well known that at one of the major companies in rochester who i won't say their name but i'm sure you've heard of them uh back in the thirties didn't want to hire the italian immigrants because it it was it was a [discriminatory] practice and uh you know it just makes me wonder you know you know i look at what what made this country great and a lot of cases it was the immigrants who came over and worked and i and sometimes i wonder you know whether you know just how different is the situation today are you a native american so you are real so all the rest of us are uh immigrants it's kind of interesting that they would do how do you feel about the idea of letting all these foreigners in well do you think there should be restrictions on uh who you should let in well what about if somebody was uh is sick say they have aids or something yeah yeah that it it's really sad that uh but apparently they're they're i think there are some rules that won't let people in who have yeah yeah yeah that that can really be a problem i know in in in new york there's a problem with the koreans that uh that that the uh black community is complaining that the koreans are taking over well i have a friend that's married to a in fact he went to korea and married a korean and brought her home and uh the problem was that that she is a real hard worker and has started a a couple of businesses and now she's started a korean health food store and she's really a go [getter] that uh and she started off uh cleaning uh houses and uh then she found out that these automobile dealerships needed and so she got some people to help her and she had one and then she was doing a good job and she wound up having eight or ten automobile dealerships that she was cleaning and and apparently uh her her husband is sort of watching the money for her but apparently she's a really a hard worker and willing to do the hard work and has been able and now she's made enough money to start this health food store i don't know how she's doing but it i you have to admire the people who have come in and work and don't you know don't take money from the government yeah no it it it's also kind of well and the problem is that the jobs it's it's like the minimum wage everybody saying well i made the minimum wage but my i have a seventeen year old son and he's saying well he'll go out and work at minimum wage well the problem is minimum wage is not enough to live on yeah no and and and that's what i think is so sad about the whole proposition and if you've got all these people who come and work for for nothing and uh yeah yeah yeah why do you do you do you think that has any anything to do though with uh yeah what what about cars that are that well what about the what about the fact that it is right across the border in mexico well but no i'm talking about the idea of the that the company set up uh factories right across the border right across the texas border in mexico well you you you think you think that's worse than than having the mexicans come across the border and work in the factory of the united states and take jobs away from americans well but but what you think of the of of the big uh the big companies that uh that that set up factories in mexico and basically move jobs out of the united states down to mexico yeah it's in anyway but but do you think but the thing is if they put a factory down there that means that there's more jobs for those people so they're not crossing the border but do you think do you think that's why there's so many people that want to come to the united states cause of freedom or do you think that's the main reason or do you think the as opposed to well yeah yeah yeah yeah but what about the do you think that's fair for for people that come in here from say like the i know i know a lot of koreans that's why uh and and you think it's fair well yeah we were yeah well we had uh we knew some [laotians] and and uh the job they took uh you know basically are cleaning jobs and uh course there's a lot of money in cleaning you know if you get a good business going you know there's there's a lot of money to be made for cleaning but they uh uh_huh yes uh yes yeah yeah it is and i found that uh yeah and that's interesting though i yeah yeah what they were saying is that these uh people come in and they are uh they were uh live on say twenty percent of what they make and and they'll put four or five families in in one apartment and uh and yeah well that's another thing no but the idea though is if you could put two or three families in a in a together they'd be a lot easier and apparently they all just save their money and and uh and buy a bunch of things well most of us like our freedom you know we like to be left alone and we like uh you know we like to have our own room the subject is how we feel about immigration would you like to get started or would you like me to uh_huh yes that's happened to me too oh my well i have i'm really torn on the subject i'm not a good candidate for this one i see what you see and i agree with you well the other side i see because we have mexico as a neighbor and i can tell you right now that if i were living in mexico and trying to raise several children and i could see across the border where the good life would be for my children would i swim that river every night twice if that's what it took you know i don't care whatever it would take i have real sympathy for those people i really do probably they don't have birth control they have no concept of it it's against their church well but they don't have if you know if i had to put myself in their shoes i have to do it one hundred percent their church doesn't teach birth control they [preach] against it i understand what you're saying but i'm saying i feel real sympathy for them so i really and and and by the way i feel the same way when i i just got back from florida and boy i tell ya happily i can i can understand just a little bit of cuban english just a little bit which was about all i wanted to understand uh but i it's amazing because they're they're bilingual everything is is spanish english in florida and i didn't particularly enjoy it quite frankly yes that's right and i'm sorry that business of making it mandatory i don't like mandatory anything because it just doesn't work all the time it doesn't fit there are circumstances that are different but i do think if you come to america and you're going to live here and you're going to go to our schools and do all of this speak our language i really do and it's only fair to the children i think making giving the children an out that they don't have to speak english is just encouraging them to drop out later on because they'll never make it through high school and if they do it won't make any difference because there's not a job for them that's exactly right and that is the wrong message i just i don't know i feel so sorry for them but at the same time well i would if it were if they were my kids i would so i have to sympathize with the people that come over here and work and send money back you know it's it's right on the survival level and we do what we do to survive oh i'm i'm that's that's one on me too i mean there are too many children that are just [conceived] and produced and dropped on society without a thought these crack babies are so sad doesn't make any sense well we had there's a little background here but it it builds up to what we're talking about our church had a long long discussion group and basically the question started out that as at the time when there were starving people in india i believe and the question was should we save these people and our bottom line answer was no because we cannot save the world we cannot feed the world and we should not please the world this and the other thing is we can feed them today but they'll be hungry tomorrow [what'll] we do with them tomorrow do we feed them again tomorrow well how long how long can we continue to feed the world we can't do it are they starving to death yes and that's very sad but we cannot save them you know okay we can save one and that's good but what's you know i just back to what you're saying if you want to save somebody there's plenty in the united states that need it too so they're taking the world viewpoint uh_huh but by profession i negotiate for texas instruments a lot and i'm somewhat cynical about humans and their behavior because i have had many interesting examples of human behavior when you're talking about money you'd be surprised how human we all get very quickly uh_huh um well what do you think in terms of uh benefits absolutely well i have to agree with that you know i was thinking about uh importance of benefits and that kind of thing other than salary while i was waiting for uh the system to find a a [respondent] and i started thinking that over the years that importance has changed and i suspect that that's probably true for everyone when i was much younger it was uh less important to consider retirement and less important to consider medical benefits but as i grow older and my family grows it the medical benefits are more important and the retirement is more important i think they have uh one that we need to recognize that we're going to have to supplement ourselves and that's certainly one of the reasons that i'm sure that they've begun the uh coda plan it's certainly a a supplemental way uh and i suppose if maybe in in your instance if if you're started with t i in your early to mid twenties and happen to stay with them until you're sixty five then you'll have a very good retirement plan but i had another career first and then came to t i a little later so it's not uh all by itself it won't be adequate for for my situation so i have to find a way to supplement that i understand though it uh believe me i do that myself and i disagree with you i don't think it's the worst investment in the world well it's in terms of guaranteed return on investment and maybe you don't start looking for that word guaranteed until later uh it's shown a history that uh sure beats anything else over many many years i understand that approach that's what that's exactly what's happening in my family except that mine are a little bit older and and i've shown them the numbers and said this is what's going to be available all this is going to do is give you a little spending money while you're there you better make sure that you've got a scholarship i know and boy it gets really scary when you start talking to them uh i have a an eleven year old daughter now who's saying gee dad i want to be an [allergist] and i said that's wonderful i [applaud] that let me explain to you how you get scholarships to do that and then her little brother's only two years behind and he says well i don't know i think that i probably want to be a veterinarian and i said that's great let me explain to you how you get scholarships to do that well that's fantastic and on whole i would say that they're equal to uh most of our competitors uh i can see some some potential changes that probably are are would not cost very much but might uh make things a little easier such as offering a a [smorgasbord] having a larger variety of benefits but but here's the amount that that t i is going to pay for it now it's up to you it's menu selection so to speak well i could certainly personally stand seeing them go to a a standardized [compensatory] time for overtime and i don't believe any of us would have to purchase any extra vacation days if they did that uh and and i would certainly support something like four to one or five to one or or you know maybe they want to get generous and make it three to one uh as a repayment for every three to five days that i work overtime there they should give me one day but it should be a standard and and not left up to either the whim or the current overhead rate uh that's running in each department well that's for sure oh i'm sure personalities always come into play uh just in this size of organization well personally you know i think you know of course i'm sure we're familiar with the exact same benefit package and i think that uh we've probably got one of the best around you know besides they tend to offer adequate vacation i guess and the paid time off is wonderful and uh one of the things that we were just talking about as a matter of fact this week at work was the coda plan that is offered and i think that is just a a fabulous one so i don't know if you participate in that or not but isn't it great it's just a it's just a miracle that how fast that adds up you know uh_huh uh_huh yeah i had never really thought of it that way but i guess that's true i guess that's true i'm still young enough that that uh the [vacation's] real important to me and the paid time off is real important to me and and that kind of thing but uh you know i was just as a matter of fact i just uh celebrated my fifth year at t i the end of last month and uh kind of started looking through the the book because of that you know now that i'm a hundred percent vested you know you kind of look through the book and see well what exactly what does that mean and what is the pension all about and you know when you're when you're you know in your i'm only in my late twenties now so you tend not to think about retirement but uh it's i guess now is the time to think about it so does t i have a pretty good retirement package do you think yeah uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh it's not going to build up quite enough yeah yeah well they just they seem to make it so easy to save you know one of the things that we're doing which is probably the worst investment in the world but i've got money coming out to buy savings bonds just coming straight out of my check and it's probably not a great investment but if i wasn't doing that the money wouldn't be being saved anyway you know i kind of have to trade off you know if you never see it you don't spend it so and it's yeah do you yeah do you really not i i you know i i debate about whether it's really good or not you know yeah yeah yeah that's true that's very true we went uh and did a a thing through i b s which is a like a financial consultant type thing here in dallas and uh one of the things that we talked about with the counselor there was you know they work up this whole big you know proposal profile for you that all the things that you need to work on and you need to do and then one of the things that we talked about with her was you know the need to save for our son's education we have a two year old you know and and you know we can't start saving for college when he's sixteen you know we have to do that now and and uh they have a way that they can figure you know what you know and he's two now in sixteen years when he's ready to go to college this is how much it'll cost you know and it's just really scary the thought of how much it's going to it's what it costs now is ridiculous what it's going to cost sixteen years from now is just really scary and they sat down and figured up that we needed to save like between fifteen and seventeen hundred dollars a year at a oh you know six percent interest rate to be able to have you know money for his college and that's exactly what we have coming out in saving bonds is is you know about fifteen hundred dollars a year so i guess it you know in that way at least we know that that's taken care of you know we we can worry about other things so yeah yeah is it really yeah uh_huh that's right that's right well that's what she said to us she said now do you all want him to go to a a state college or a private college and and our answer was that you know we will have enough money available for him to attend a state college and if he wants to go to a private college he can get a scholarship to attend you know and that was kind of our view on it it just costs too much you just can't do it you know so i don't know it's it's i don't uh it just amazing it amazes me how much the the costs are going to go up over the next ten or fifteen years i just don't know how anybody's going to do it oh goodness yeah yeah exactly exactly that's right that's right well you know t i you know t i offers some good stuff and then i think there's i mean i think there's some negatives but there's going to be some negatives anywhere you know no matter where you go i have you know all this is the first really large company i've worked for i've always been involved in little small you know [privately] owned owned firms and so i've never had the the big benefit package so i really don't know how to compare it to other big companies you know it when i came on it was great because i had never had anything even close to what what they offered so i've been real pleased yeah think so uh_huh yeah yeah and you can pick what you want and yeah right that sounds really good i read a thing i don't even remember if it was in the [dallasite] or the [insite] one about uh companies allowing you and they said that t i was looking into it to purchase extra vacation days which i thought sounded like a good idea you know if you've been there you know under five years and you get two weeks of vacation but that's really not enough and you want an extra week then you can purchase an extra week of vacation by saying okay i'm going to want an extra five days this year and they'll take a set amount out of each paycheck you know and they're [deducting] it all along so you you can have an extra five days off and be paid for them at the time you know you're really not being paid for them the money is actually coming out of your own pocket but it's coming out a little bit at a time instead of all at once you know so that is kind of an idea that that a lot of people sounded like that they were really interested in and t i said that they were looking into something like that so uh_huh uh_huh well true true uh_huh yeah yeah yeah uh_huh well and yeah and and a lot of that is left up to whoever your supervisor happens to be and what type of relationship you have with that person and you know i see a lot of differences but from one group to the next you know about who gets it and who doesn't get it you know but that's and that's that way with a lot of things you know there it seems like it depends on what what group you happen to be in what what you're going to get and what you're not going to get so which is the same but but then it's probably that way anywhere you know that's uh_huh hi how are you doing i said how are you doing yeah we've been doing that too we're trying to retire in our fifties good luck on that one then i said good luck on that one then huh_uh so you work for it t i then you can't say yeah yes you do well i work for d i s d and i don't know what your talking about when you say health insurance but dallas doesn't pay it pays most of mine you know now after you work i think five years they begin to pay most of it but then for the the family you know i put my kids on my policy it's like two hundred dollars and it's gone up quite a bit and they predict you know of course it's going to keep going up i wish they could go on and pay for all of our coverage at some point and benefits you know i'd like to see child care paid for or on site child care sometime i think that would be a and it would make women go to work sometime if they knew their kids were being taken care of they could go visit them during the day what well we keep a shelter also monies that we're going to pay in for child care too you know go on and pay a lump sum and as long as you pay that amount you're okay but if you paid in more than you actually used and the same thing for insurance what you predict your going to be paying for insurance as long as you pay actually pay out that amount of money you're okay but if you pay out less then you lose that money i don't like that part but you don't have to do that option if you don't want to and then we got that cafeteria plan do you have that no you can uh well you let's see it it shelters you're money that you pay for for insurance it takes it out of your salary before taxes okay yeah but we call it the cafeteria plan i wonder why i said i wonder why cafeteria maybe so let's see what else can we do changes what uh_huh you mean like for health insurance yeah well that's easier done in a company than it is in uh school teaching thank you i said thank you we're both school teachers but it's hard to get rid of a teacher if they're not good it's almost impossible huh_uh um huh_uh huh_uh right well they did away with tenure in teaching along time ago you know in the public schools it makes you more at ease you know you knew you weren't going to lose your job unless you really did something horrendous right well they don't in some places they don't do they yeah yeah what did you get your degree at and what's your job now huh_uh maybe all right what else could we change oh i'd like to see flexible hours and teaching shared job sharing more of that well see we've got a little bit of it but not much it would be nice if you had full insurance coverage if you were doing job sharing what else i'd like to be able to to evaluate your boss and it really carry some weight and you get to choose your boss huh_uh well so you get to evaluate him though yeah yeah huh_uh what i couldn't hear you i'm doing fine i'm uh just editing a spreadsheet right now i'm trying to figure out how i can retire without having to work until i'm ninety five yeah this is a very appropriate topic for our uh conversation today because what i'm figuring out is that i'm going to have to put in a lot more money than what i'm making what is that well we've got a pretty good situation my wife and i since our property is already paid for you know the main things that i like about the uh the job benefits would be the uh the availability of the health insurance and the availability of uh you know being able to transfer around inside the organization without having you know when they cut off a system and they don't just can everybody that is working on it like some companies i know of you know they give you an opportunity to either transfer into an on going on going project yeah what huh_uh huh_uh yeah that's uh something i hadn't really thought about because we don't have children but i can see how it would be a a real benefit yes i do um well that could be i could see where that would be important no i don't know what it's about oh okay yeah yeah we got that [pretax] insurance yeah um oh it's probably what the first guy who did it called it yeah he was probably in the cafeteria when he thought of it i'll tell you what we could do we could prohibit people from being hired that are historically going to cost the company money you know do a little bit better research on who gets hired because you know well not only just health insurance i mean for the whole benefit of the company see i look at it this way if the company [folds] i got to go find a job okay now if we got somebody in a position to affect the way the company performs just about anybody in the company and they're not doing their job or they're not capable of doing their job then we should find a a place to put them or b you know boot them out well frankly i think school teachers ought to get about ten times what they're getting paid what oh oh i'm i'm i know well there's two schools of thought on that you know i i'm looking at trying to get into a university job position as a a professor i got about eight years of education ahead of me before i can do that but once you get that job with the university you've got ten years of probation then you have tenure and they can't fire you well you know in a situation like that i don't know if that's good or bad i do know that i've had tenured professors that were just sorry and i've also had tenured professors that were the best things on two legs but in addition well they they really can't fire you without cause you know the governments taken care of that but um what i'm looking at is you know there are a lot of teachers that aren't getting paid what they need to be getting paid and there are some teachers out there that aren't worth having around as [janitors] you know and i could see a point protecting someone's position but on the other hand i don't think it you know that someone that teaches uh say shop for instance should have to have degree at all well in some places that don't but you know you you get specialized education now for instance take computer science we've got kids twenty years old right now that could beat any computer professor at micro computer applications i know we could and these people can't even get jobs doing anything besides digging [ditches] because there's no [comprehensive] test that they can take that would allow them to to step into that position without having to go through the [rigamarole] of college you know i went to college late on in life and i realize that hey it's nothing but four years of endurance and you might be [teachable] you know what i mean i mean my agree is absolutely worthless it's my experience and and my knowledge that that is beneficial but then you know like i said i came in backwards industrial marketing well actually i'm selling computer software but the two are [mutually] exclusive because the the experience that got me the job that i got now was my experience in the construction field prior to going to college not my degree which is i think kind of bizarre well uh we've we've we've already got that well yeah supervisor [evaluations] have always been a tough one especially in my line because you know my supervisor has nothing to with my job except to make sure i get my check well not really you know i mean there's what's to evaluate about him you know i mean my my supervisor level is like practically zero i run the whole show and when i need something i tell my boss and he gets it for me because he knows that i know what i'm doing you know and uh that that is something that i think needs to be expanded on specially in the large market place you know the major corporation because so often you know you get a guy who's got eight or nine or ten people working for him in separate areas so to speak you know it's it's hard for me to you know especially since i'm in marketing sales you know i make more than my boss because he's salary and i'm not i make as much as i earn you know if i don't make a sale i don't make anything yeah well it's tough but uh you know there are requirements and quotas what not for me to make but um the bottom line on on that kind of thing is you know we have a lot of people especially in major corporations who aren't doing a damn thing they're just there you know the work they do could be totally eliminated and not that they aren't worth or not that they aren't trying or anything but it's just that their jobs are useless take for instance um a large construction company i used to work for ed [swampers] [swampers] is a guy who's in the union he's a [laborer] and he's assigned to hi kay i uh was thinking about salaries and benefits and uh was wondering what's the most important thing to you besides a salary in a job yeah uh_huh sure yeah i don't ever want to have to worry about that that's real important to me um you know we have that that aetna that's what we the insurance that we have right now when we were in colorado they had um a different type of h m o there that i really liked a lot it was um not that kind of h m o where you have to go to their their sort of like [clinics] you know but this was just an h m o where you could go to private practice doctors and to the regular hospitals and all that but it was with a certain list of of doctors that you know participated in the h m o and um you know then you only had to pay the for us it was a five dollar co payment every time you went to the doctor and uh three dollars for the prescriptions and uh i especially liked the prescription especially since my children tend to have ear infections all the time that those prescriptions can be very expensive oh i know especially if you get what is it [seclor] i think that that just about breaks the bank right there uh_huh do do you have the basic plan or do you have the the other one right the one that's like you get additional they'll pay a little bit more i think for the different procedures we just have the basic right now and for most things it tends to cover it we don't too many major um expenses at this point but we have been able to find dentists that will accept pretty much whatever the basic plan pays a couple of times we've had to pay oh i don't know three to five dollars but that's not that bad uh_huh no we don't like that either is his office in plano uh_huh uh_huh oh that's not bad right oh yes you're not kidding that's right well those are some of the things that are very important to us too um we we'd like you know other benefits that are provided um the athletic facilities that you sometimes take advantage of i think that's that's pretty nice but i have to say that since we've come here we haven't done it too much though we haven't enrolled in too many of the classes or or any of that but that's that's a nice benefit to have right yeah that's that's one of i think the hard things right now i mean they're going through some tough times to say the least i know many of us are thankful that he still has a job uh one of the drawbacks i think of working for a big company is often times you do have to follow pretty rigid um guidelines um if if an employee is especially [exemplary] i think it's often in a smaller company it's a little bit easier for them to say hey you know this person did a wonderful job give him a big bonus kind of thing a lot of times smaller companies have bonus plans where i think in a large company it's hard to do that because there're just so many people to deal with and you have to have guidelines you know for salary increases and things like that that's one of the things that that happens when someone when you're dealing with a large company but uh_huh right how long has he been in his present position uh_huh well i was going to say it sounds like you you picked out a lot of good things you know for him to to uh to choose in a position and have a lot of thought put into it in a big company though you also get moved around a lot he may be having to drive over here to lewisville some time or we may be having to drive to plano you never know uh_huh right yeah we're very we're very far from our families and it's really hard i have little children and um they were the only grandchildren and so our our families are are really far away in fact this is a little off the topic but yesterday my mother happened to be on a train going from phoenix to back to chicago and it stopped in dallas for half an hour so i loaded the kids in the car and we went downtown and met her train for half an hour and brought her a little snack and an easter basket and i think it it made her trip a little bit nicer yeah and it's it's hard i mean just for us to [snatch] a half hour like that is a special occasion for us so um it's nice it's nice that you can have your family close like that yeah sometimes it can be that's good okay well i have too okay you too bye bye hi uh_huh well um i we just recently graduated from rice university and uh we were going through a lot of job interviews and things and some of the things that were important to me uh when my husband was looking for his job was um hours you know we he'd been in graduate school so i was used to his not being home at all so i was you know didn't want him to have a job that would make him kind of be on call all the time and have to go in at any time and you know even on the weekends and um and things so that was important to me and also insurance for the our family because we'd like to be able to take care of our medical needs and not be thinking so much about whether or not you can afford it uh_huh uh_huh us too uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well that's nice uh_huh that's good uh_huh oh i know we just went through that ourselves we just you know are like fifty dollars for this series of antibiotics and things uh_huh yes yes it's pretty bad well yeah and we um we were interested in having dental insurance too because um having been in school we kind of put things off and only went in when we knew there was a problem somewhere and stuff and we wanted to be able to go in and have our teeth cleaned and just checked all over and we have um you know we're at aetna with an uh we have like the the dental insurance is separate is that what you mean i don't think it's the basic i think it's the other one uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh no that's great yeah we need to go shopping for dentists and things like that too yes and let's see besides insurance other things that we looked at um well my husband does not like to commute very far and and we don't like him to be you know having to drive an hour to work or something so we kind of looked for where where the uh his office would be located and well he's at you know he's at the one that's at um seventy five at uh six thirty five and so we by living in plano we're just about fifteen minutes away um especially when they finish all the construction out here and we didn't want him to let you know to like we had some job offers in the new york area and we thought well you know he would be really commuting and not only is it you know trouble to have to drive but it takes time away from your home and your family when you're out driving and um so that was something that was important to us and because like i say we kind of felt deprived that he had been in school and been away from us for so long that we were anxious to do everything we could to have you know made us be more together and and what other can you think of another thing that you guys looked at and uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's true that's really important um also what um opportunities there would be for advancement i think we looked at besides just you know what salary you would be having now but when when could uh your salary increase um is there was there somewhere to go uh_huh yes that we can make our mortgage payments and yeah that's really true uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh but we also were interested in um you know being sure that he felt like he liked the people that he would be working with and that there would be some opportunity for friendships that way so that you would feel happy going to work every day and rather than thinking oh i really i can't stand these people but so that's something that was important to him in thinking he could work under oh just since last summer it's only been not even a year yet so yes well oh yeah you never know we're hoping that that won't be the case we i think one of the most deciding factors of why we chose um this area is that um my husband was raised in irving and so he we have a lot of family here his side of the family and being when we were down in houston we were isolated i mean it's not that far but people would we didn't have anyone in town that was our family and although we had really good friends and we had church and school support and things um we were anxious to move close to family members just because we wanted our children to know their grandparents and things like that so that really made a big difference i think in why we chose t i and chose to move this way uh_huh oh that's nice yeah and it is i think it is important to you know want to be close to your family and uh_huh yeah that's the same way we felt we're really enjoying it i wonder what it would be like i mean i wanted to be close to family but i also thought it would be harder to be close to family but it's turned out really good and i think that you know we're really satisfied with that choice and we you know kind of felt like um it was worth it to us but anyway well i my children just ran out the door so i need to go check on them well i've really enjoyed the conversation and uh nice to have met you and you have a good day bye bye about how many calls have you made on this system oh okay yeah i uh i only started doing it after uh i started getting calls and said oh heck that's right i'm supposed to make a few calls so i started about a month ago and i this is getting close to twenty here which is i think is about all uh our little gift book goes up to but i don't really know i've got about twelve tickets in the mail do you have you've a few okay medical go ahead i'm i'm medical that's mine yeah i i'm benefits go ahead you first uh_huh oh yeah the one it's kind of like uh automobile insurance the ones uh that i think are the highest and important to me uh i hope i never have to use them really per se although i've used medical a little bit that well that one certainly is high i i worry that it's [weakening] rather than strengthening so i like to reverse that trend and say i'd like to get those to strengthen you know be better and better then salary [continuance] i've never used that one i hope i never will but that's kind of like an insurance thing i sure like that one that's like automobile insurance you never want to get in an accident but it you like to have it there uh_huh right with t i or somebody else uh_huh oh right yeah um yeah right and outside consultants didn't they have an outside consultant too did they have an outside consultant like a the yeah right oh really yeah they seem to be doing a good job of that i'm in facilities and our organization built builds those facilities over in park central now and i guess they've been using them for six months now and i've known several engineers that got laid off and they said it's like getting a p h d almost they the much they learn over there you know after they've been laid off uh one engineer said it was really an education he he just learned like you he said he learned a tremendous amount that he never would have able to pick up on his own he was very thankful for that too to have an office yeah yeah well he said he learned so much and how he thought he thought he had a p h d in how to get a job after he was through the whole process for for several months he did eventually get a job yeah apparently it's very sophisticated and i guess it may be one of the best uh that anyone's doing right you're absolutely right that's a good one what do you think about pensions anything on that or yeah uh_huh right what do you think of a pension that goes from one company to the other like an account like a four o one account i i've been thinking about that for years uh i know that's what i'm saying that that pensions you see just like you were you're saying you've only got uh so many years say you work for two three companies you take your pension with you after you're vested and then just add the money together like you do with a four o one account you know uh it's your account period it doesn't matter where you go or anything that's your account to roll over no no there isn't i i'm saying that's the question what do you think could be better and i'm saying that pensions say in the year two thousand or more when social security goes away which it probably will i think they ought to have a pension at least that you'd never lose so you work for a company seven years uh well social [security's] going to go to way i think and you can or you can invest your own money you have no control over your social security and it's not paid for by the current like when say we retire after the year two thousand social [security's] paid for by the twenty five year olds you know they may rebel and you won't have any social security where if your money was in your account i mean you can never lose it it's there you don't have to depend on anybody to be putting that money in for you you know that's just a thought i mean i if they say which yeah yeah and instead of having a a socialized pension it just would be really money that you and your company maybe you had to put some money in it too i don't really know but i i can see where they'd need to do something on that because the statistics are you don't work for a company twenty years through no fault of your own you know you work for five six seven and a lot of people i know guys yeah i have too but not not quite that often but uh yeah i've only got uh i've got i guess fourteen now here at t i and i hope to make twenty five which say if something happened to me i mean you know they lay me off so you have a pension but then you'd have to try to get a pension in another one it would be nice if they could get them together i do worry about medical though again knock wood that uh i haven't used it i guess you i'm sorry you really do use it throughout the year because you get your teeth fixed and all that i mean i but i'm not i'm talking about major items i haven't used it for anything major i'm glad it's there though yeah i have the regular i again i just i haven't i can't complain about it because i haven't used it and every time i needed it it it it's uh you know fallen right in line for the the minor things i guess i'm the one just supporting most of the others uh yeah yeah i think it's two seventy five for a family but the dental is right away if you exams uh okay yeah the medical you have to have a deductible yeah right well drugs are okay now i'm on that uh plan where i take blood pressure medicine if you take an allergy medicine so anything you need a prescription for for more than six months you get it for used to be six bucks they just raised it to twelve yeah that's a typical that's a typical one that's in there the forms are right in personnel fact you may be able to take care take advantage of that it's through [baxter] labs uh maybe you still can do that do you do you buy your pills one at a time well turn in your forms go right to personnel i don't know whether you have to about an h m o i don't think so you turn you get your doctor to give you a more than six months prescription and uh they're twelve dollars again they just were six they just raised them to twelve this year twelve dollars for a three months supply or whatever whatever the the amount is uh i don't want to say three months but it's a lot cheaper allergy [medicine's] really uh expensive and that blood pressure medicine is fairly expensive i take two go right to personnel they got the forms in personnel and maybe maybe i'll tell you go something you didn't know about in benefits i do it yeah you know it's a very common thing it's through [baxter] labs tell yeah yeah what else i'm sure we're getting close to our five minutes whatever here what other benefits yeah salary continuation i think that's a great one but again a hope i never use that one that means you're really sick if you have to use that one i'm satisfied with the vacation i don't know what else you know you say say you get another week and i'm well i only got fourteen years so i'll get another week when i hit fifteen so that's that's fair i mean it's reasonable four weeks is a lot i think i know some people who have twenty five years and thirty and they want more but uh you know uh uh_huh well the way things go i think i'm going to have to work till i'm seventy five whether i quit and uh uh or when i retire get a part time job uh i've [originated] only a a few but i've received quite a few uh_huh oh yeah yeah i've been getting mine uh you pushed the record button we're supposed to be discussing the subject yeah uh well i'll tell you i've been around for quite a few years and worked for a lot of different companies and uh it's hard to beat any of the benefits that or salaries either that we get from t i i'm quite pleased with it course there's a few things that uh i think i could do better if i was sitting up in the c e o's seat but uh i think [jerry's] doing a pretty good job as it goes uh_huh well oh yes uh_huh well uh like i say i worked for several different companies and there's nothing to compare with uh t i here now i really got caught up back in eighty five i got caught up in the oil layoff uh i wasn't with g s i but i was connected with uh uh oil uh exploration no with t i but i say i wasn't connected with g s i and i got caught up in a layoff now uh course you get six months uh unemployment from the state but what t i did for us is is uh i've never heard of it before they fixed us up with an office with uh telephones access to long distance uh computers a secretary to take messages for us or type uh letters for us uh they had out of town newspapers and then i beg your pardon uh yes they did have uh seminars every once in a while uh course that was not uh restricted just to just us but the most important thing was that uh they had made up the difference between uh unemployment pay and seventy five percent of my net pay and they then t i paid me that so uh i was able to uh not just exist i mean i i lived just as comfortably as i did before i was laid off uh_huh well this was not a learning thing by any means it was just a uh an assistance trying to find another job oh uh_huh well course i went through this uh what about five years ago they may have improved it considerably well that's one of those little uh uh little extras that you don't see in the uh the the the [handbook] you know it well now i have uh uh i'm getting close to retirement and of course i've been looking into it but uh since i'm only a yellow [badger] i won't be getting a whole heck of a lot from t i as far as retirement is concerned i've never heard of such a thing uh_huh uh yeah i that that sounds like a hell of an idea i didn't know there was such a thing yes by all means well what would be the difference between that and social security yeah yeah uh_huh no i i like the idea course that's that's something like an i r a uh_huh yeah that that's what i've done i i've bounced around about every ten years i change uh_huh uh_huh well knock wood i haven't used mine for anything major just doctor visits and well i i have the uh the h o m a i use h o m a and i like that uh a lot better than aetna uh_huh well doesn't it work you don't see uh uh anything until you spend the minimum don't you have to spend the minimum of two three hundred yeah well now i have the same dental you have uh_huh now see i don't have a deductible i pay a straight five dollars for anything a doctor visit or drugs oh that one i haven't heard about uh_huh yeah i have high blood pressure problems myself yeah thirty days at a time um uh_huh uh_huh yeah great yeah i just might do that well thanks thanks for the tip jim i shall look into it yeah uh let's see we discussed uh uh medical and dental uh retirement uh_huh what about vacation uh yeah that's right uh_huh well i'm uh i'm here i've got just eleven years and i don't think i'll ever see a a silver badge i won't i won't be around that long well i think health care is real important and dental coverage but i guess medical insurance is probably what i consider the second most important uh_huh right right i know no matter what you do about that yeah unless you're like a senior v p or something which i am not yeah i know it's um i don't know and then when you interview for a job or something sometimes people um expect the benefits to take the place of a certain salary level you know they'll say maybe we'll pay you x amount annually but then we you know ten percent to fifteen percent more are your benefits and if you're like are you married um like my husband works and i do so i don't take some of i have certain things that i take and he has other things he takes so i mean in that kind of situation it's really almost [redundant] you know you know that some of the benefits i would rather have um money yeah more money actually um or flex time or something that was a little more personal you know you don't use you don't use the medical insurance you use your your company's where does he work if you don't mind me oh you're kidding what's the name of that company what do they do uh_huh are they a big company or uh_huh that's see that's probably why cause canada has the the um government run health care systems social medicine and you don't pay them if you live there it's like europe you don't pay a dime you know sounds wonderful yeah if i were him i'd tell him make sure he stays there oh my goodness yeah yeah i don't work at t i my husband works at t i but um i work for e d s but it's like um you know they're both basically e d s is a little bit better than t i but um and we take my dental my dental his medical and the medical is just i mean i think it's terrible you know twenty but they're then they're getting ready to change it again for aetna um i don't know i just don't think companies um they want you to feel responsible and don't abuse the medical system and you know um t i just did the thing where with the smoking premiums we don't smoke but did you do you know about the smoking premiums yeah do you guys smoke oh yeah but then you know like a lady in my office said she said her husband works for t i too and she said what about the people that are walking around and i hope i don't you don't sound like you're in this category but i mean for extremely [obese] people or something the kind of people that can't sit in the airline airplane chair you know you know who's going to [croak] first the people that smoke or you know seems like an unnecessary penalty yeah i mean i'm not all for smoking at all but i just you know i don't how they can do it [carte] blanket yeah uh_huh uh_huh or something yeah it's like stupid but that's why i'm not a boss i guess i mean i don't know um what other what other type of benefits do they have that i mean canadian based companies they have to be a little bit different than the american um uh_huh yeah t i is at least five years yeah yeah oh my goodness uh_huh that's kind of nice yeah t i has that but that's a pretty standard thing anymore you know um um your husband's company probably matches more than t i though oh they do yeah it is that's still pretty good though i mean the fact that your vested that quickly in the pension yeah i know um e d s has eight years i think e d s has seven to to eight years so it's like t i in that respect you know and and i mean and i'm working for a company that's making money you know e d s has a cash flow problem as they say but um not e d s t i um but i i don't know i think everywhere they just need to sit down and hire some people the [grunts] as i call them like myself to tell them yeah i mean i don't know but if i were to rank them i guess i would say next to income it's really just health benefits and then um for most people i know it would be day care like t i has no day care uh_huh uh_huh oh i don't i would think so yeah because yeah they really should because they're big enough um and the other thing i think is really good is that e d s is much better than t i at i think right now than that we have day care um they uh the health the health program like t i has texans but it i don't think it that it's developed as much as it could be for the size company as t i i mean if you ever walked into e d s health corner court health clubs on site and you walk into spring creek well spring [creek's] better than the one on dallas parkway but i mean yeah oh it's really nice yeah you know instead of like six um [treadmills] you've got like twenty and e d s can't even compare in size in terms of the number of employees so i don't know i guess it's just where they um and like e d s [reimburses] you for adoption and t i doesn't have anything like that you know so i guess i i wish the companies like t i and a lot of others were more progressive in that respect so yeah yeah and there's i mean they have some strange things i mean they have very strange like dress codes and you know um you can't wear slacks at the corporate site and that kind of thing unless you're in a you know but it doesn't there aren't manufacturing environments because of the type of company it is um i don't know i i guess i also wish that uh companies would look more at cost of living increases instead of just merit reviews oh yeah exactly i know i know uh_huh uh_huh and i mean i mean i don't know how you and your husband are too but i mean we have friends that laugh at us and we i clip coupons and i said hey i'll probably do this even if i'm a millionaire which i won't ever be but i mean it's like because you just can't i mean it seems like every time you try to get ahead and take a vacation or something well the car insurance is due i mean yeah i know i don't know what we're going to do about yeah you want to rob a bank no i didn't say that i didn't say that on this line i don't know what else about corporate benefits i can't think it's probably been too hot today for either of us to um kind of nice to talk to somebody in dallas usually people are all over the country this is true uh_huh and that doesn't definitely make it any better it's just something you have to keep telling yourself you know that um that's what i want that uh you know people are lucky to have jobs and people are lucky to have any kind of benefits when you see people that don't have um anything but h m o or you know i mean really can't even afford to get in a job that costs like we had a guy fixing our air conditioner and he said he didn't even make ten dollars an hour and he has three kids and i went oh you know that has to be rough um but benefits i don't know i guess i guess one thing i'd like to see too and i i don't know how t i is about this but i'd like to see um employees rank and file be able to contribute more to their um the execution of their job you know right yeah that's a good word for it um how is t i in that mode uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah all part of a good old boy network yeah uh_huh e d s is oh they're better but they're a little bit too um stiff [collared] in terms of you know what you want to do they're pretty much put the if that's where the [widget] goes stick it in the hole you know they're kind of formula oriented yeah and and you can't really argue with them because they've always been successful so you know what can you tell them really well i guess that's what i know about benefits okay good talking to you and keep cool okay bye bye yeah i agree on that and you know it seems compared to what we our salary is versus what our health care is our health care keeps increasing increasing increasing and not to the same rate as our pay right me either uh_huh yes right uh_huh yeah money instead yeah right i feel the same way actually um we don't use any of t i benefits other than i i buy bonds and and um that's it because not at all my husband's yes we use my husband's he he works for [bramalea] company and they pay one hundred percent not one dime is deducted from his check [bramalea] it's a security company and and building they own a lot of buildings and lease buildings and yeah actually they're from canada they're canada based uh_huh right right yeah it's all taken care yeah but our prescriptions and everything our visits to the doctor our hospitalization the only thing we pay for is if if something happened an emergency and we had to have an ambulance it's twenty five dollars i mean that's nothing really yeah well t i was getting for the both of us it was like seventy five dollars a month you know deducted for an h m o uh_huh uh_huh okay uh_huh oh yeah yeah we don't either neither one of us do uh_huh right yeah uh_huh exactly yeah uh_huh yeah exactly you can't charge more for a person who's on a flight just because they're larger yeah i don't know yeah yeah they are as far as their like pension plans they're vested a lot earlier i think at t i it took five years five to seven and they're vested after their first year totally vested and they have the four one k and the usual benefits like that uh right right no they match the same amount yeah well they match four percent which is the same you know fifty percent or four percent uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah uh_huh right it's right yeah that and i know that's a big issue because i i belong to a women's [forum] group and some of the questions we're getting are are on site day care and things like that that they consider a very serious benefit and i can't tell you anybody right now at t i that's uh considering that they should be though uh_huh right right uh_huh yeah a lot better e d s is is better than spring creek oh man yeah oh yeah people yeah oh i see right yeah that's good that's a that's a fortunate benefit you know that they're so active for their employees um uh_huh right uh_huh yeah me too me too because you know with utilities and and homes that are uh price of homes have went up drastically like an average house is now a hundred and thirty thousand and that is unreal because we've got people out here that are just poverty level but then we've got these million dollar homes so you know where do you find a happy medium and how does your salary deal with that it's not it's just not doing it yeah yeah uh_huh that's true that is exactly where we are it's so strange common problem yeah really uh_huh right yeah and i think dallas as far as um economic uncertainty is better than what most of the country is so somehow we're better off than a lot of them no uh_huh uh_huh yeah [empowerment] issues right well very well um it's slow though at least they're making the effort to put it out there and make it available and and cultural change within the management first and now it's kind of filtering down to the [peon] level but uh i think they're really trying it's going to take years though i mean it's just it's that mind set has to change yeah yeah yeah doesn't want to change right yeah yeah okay yeah me too good talking to you thanks okay bye bye what do you think about the benefits in jobs uh_huh yeah and a lot of times they turn down your claims so that leaves you paying for all of it uh_huh yeah right the health insurance i have is met life and if it's the type that if you go to a certain doctor then uh you just pay ten dollars and then uh the insurance pays the rest of the bill or if you go outside you get uh seventy thirty uh_huh right and and they're probably doing it to their benefit anyway so uh_huh well i work for sears and and um that's about the the only real benefit you have is health insurance yeah yeah but everybody gets vacation i mean like uh t i and some other places you know they have recreational facilities and they have a driving range and weight room and you know i think they even have a swimming pool and i don't know if they have any tennis courts or anything like that right uh_huh right yeah well i don't know the the working conditions you know if you could include that in benefits some places aren't very safe to work and and some places don't compensate you for the hazards that you that you have to work under right uh_huh yeah i think so uh_huh um workmen's comp is a big thing now in in texas because um um how much it costs the employers and a a lot of them are going to their own insurance now and it reduces some of the length of the benefits and uh and i don't know besides that but i i noticed right off that was a year less than what the state was allowing well well they still have to pay it but they buy their own instead of going through the state so apparently it costs less that way uh_huh yeah that's what i what i think they should be able they should be able to judge their benefits on how happy their employees are and how much profit they're making instead of trying to cut everything down and then have everybody be unhappy and and have a constant turnover of people yeah the productivity and the training costs if they have to train the same employee a new employee every six months then i don't see how they can save money you know and once they once they get somebody good they ought to hang onto them okay it was nice talking to you yeah bye bye um i'm i'm relatively satisfied with the benefits i have i think that um our health insurance is terribly expensive i'd rather that we got a bit more coverage for a lot less money but um you know that's that's my major complaints i guess what about you uh_huh or or maybe that it's not understood what should be covered and what isn't yeah i i see now we i have just the regular insurance so that any doctor is covered but what i found recently is what they've been doing is they they poll somehow the area and then they have what they consider a [justifiable] price for the area where your doctor is located based on zip code and so recently when when we had a claim um they didn't pay the eighty five percent they paid much lower and when i called they said oh well that's because your doctor is charging much more than the norm for the area and i was really surprised because either there aren't that many of that type of doctor within that zip code so that you know two doctors could balance each other out or their you know their statistics aren't very accurate yeah i would assume that you know whatever doctors are willing to do the paperwork and send it in but it's it's difficult what about other other benefits are there others that you're dissatisfied with well you have vacation i huh yeah i'm not familiar with that sort of thing but you know to me vacation is is an issue and i mean different places have different amounts of vacation i would assume and um you know the leniency with which they let you take leave without pay perhaps or um i don't know i suppose um sick days some places count the number of hours and some places just sort of believe you um ours is based on number of days and you know people try to build them up in case they really do get seriously ill right but um otherwise i'm not aware of any problems with the benefits around here so maybe that covers the topic then uh_huh uh_huh or maybe a uh not really a benefit either but would be the allowing you to use the telephone for personal calls um but you know i suppose some places are are more stringent about that than others and and maybe arriving late or something like that you know how how they enforce the rules but other than that i don't have much feeling for for the benefits since like i said um i don't have a big problem with with them uh_huh oh i i didn't know that somebody could avoid workmen's compensation oh i see uh_huh uh_huh i suppose that whenever companies can avoid um benefits it's to the to to the benefit of the company and at least you know financially in the short run but i would think they would get a much greater turnover and that people would be dissatisfied working for them right i mean sure the payroll is lower that way but i would assume that the productivity is way down also uh_huh uh_huh that's right no i agree well thank you for calling bye bye bye bye okay now you can tell me what you do uh_huh oh great uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah well the one john works for seems to have a you know good benefits and the pay is decent uh_huh uh_huh uh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh great i had i had a granddaughter right uh_huh do you have major medical benefits that that helps some if it depends on what your deductible is how high it is each person yeah that's pretty that's pretty high right that's that's right and five hundred dollars is a lot to come up with for each person to be able to start using your major medical too yeah i know where my daughter works now she she course we live in a a rural sort of setting and where she works she has no benefits at all and her wage is not not very good but it's it's the type of area we live in of course living expenses aren't as bad either though which makes a difference well she has to pay for it herself you know they have to pay for their own insurance but uh uh well from what i've seen from my aunt and uncle really from florida up to here they're not that much different uh_huh is that right uh_huh wow that's a big difference uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah should be yes uh_huh and it would be much more convenient yeah it would be more convenient too oh yeah my other daughter works and has they have to take their two children to day care you know and uh it it's i don't know how they do it i really don't you know getting them there and then and going to work and then picking them up and all the [preparations] uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh i don't know i think those benefits you mentioned sometimes they're even more important than the wage itself if you can get those benefits even uh they they come out to much a much better benefit than than an increase in your wage a lot of times uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah oh yeah it would make it a lot better uh_huh uh well and if it was there you would really have a little more uh knowledge on what's going on probably you know with your child right yeah right yeah i don't know my daughter one daughter works for m c i and they don't they where she works they don't have anything like that uh pittsburgh pittsburgh pennsylvania uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh oh so they were very flexible and that that would be great yeah uh_huh uh_huh they say you're going to do it this way and that's the way it's going to be yeah uh_huh yeah yeah yeah true well that's true in any any company i think i've i've never well i can't say i've never i've maybe worked five years out of our married life out of the you know out of the home but uh the rest of the time i've been an avon lady and a lady uh_huh uh_huh and you have to take care of any benefits you want yourself yeah uh_huh uh_huh usually consultants make very good income is that right oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh a consultant really is should be more knowledgeable than everybody else you know so it stands to reason they should really have more benefits uh_huh uh_huh um uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah and they'll do it uh well i work with computers just like your son and i actually do research in speech recognition part of the reason i'm participating in the project is to see how the stuff goes but um i was working well actually i haven't worked for any large companies per se uh recently but hopefully the job that i will have will have lots of benefits [namely] lots of vacations not real good salary but lots of vacations yeah the uh well actually where i was working the company one of the companies i was working for actually had very good health care benefits which these days i think are really important because health care is so ridiculously expensive because we're we're paying our own insurance right now but and i'm we actually had a little baby so i'm taking a little bit of a time off from work oh congratulations and so one thing that i'm very concerned with now is first of all health benefits because it's more important with a family and you know our doctor's routine doctor's visits covered my health insurance only covers um the emergency care right yeah but i don't right well my our [deductible's] five hundred but it's for each event right but you know so it covers the emergency things but it doesn't cover if you get sick it doesn't cover doctor's visits things like that oh yeah it certainly is uh uh_huh wow uh_huh and probably the medical care is less expensive too uh_huh so i think that in general the doctor's fees are probably lower there and so the insurance would cost lower well i know that friends of mine had a baby up in boston and their costs were about fifty percent of what it cost to have it in manhattan and they were at one of the better hospitals you know and you know good doctors in boston and i was at one of the big hospitals in new york but that's a huge difference just between you know and it's two big cities that i think of as somewhat comparable so i was pretty shocked at that but the other thing that i'm really concerned about and most companies don't have some are starting to have is day care because it would be really nice to be able to have you know someone that could watch my daughter at work and i'd go to work and if she were sick i could go down and see her if she needs to be fed whatever and i it would be more convenient more productive i think uh_huh and and your hours are much more [constrained] and things like that and that to me well that you know those three things the health care vacation and day care are probably the most important benefits i suppose i should be concerned with life insurance and uh retirement plans but yeah right because you're you know certainly something like day care at the work place would make life so much simpler that it's worth paying you know having a lower salary i would certainly accept a lower salary for that you know everything else being equal because your life would be so much easier and there's a question of quality of life also yeah right and you you you don't feel like you're a half hour away if she something happened and you're less [preoccupied] with it i think but unfortunately there aren't i think i b m has started having that in certain locations uh_huh is that locally uh_huh yeah because pittsburgh's a big enough city too but you know i wouldn't be surprised if thing's like that didn't happen more in smaller communities before they happen in bigger ones just because people might be more flexible in smaller locations and things like that because many times small companies offer better benefits in terms of quality of life than larger companies like uh one company had proposed to me that i could come back to work after having the baby um any where between ten and forty hours a week and um call my own days call my own hours yeah and which many times at a large company it's almost impossible to do things like that right and if you get two weeks off you get two weeks off and you're not allowed two weeks and one day so it all depends on what your position is there too yeah uh_huh uh_huh was that when you were um well those have its pluses and [minuses] too i've been a consultant recently and so i don't have any benefits at all and right and the same thing my husband is unfortunately being paid as a consultant and we tried to argue that he should get more salary for that than what he is and um they they they right and they they refuse to give him more salary because they say they can't pay more than this and that and they're not allowed to pay him more than what his previous salary was and things like that and you know times are rough now so it's new it's harder to get the uh you know increases and things but um yeah well he's right well he's been doing a long term he's being called a consultant and he's really sort of a temporary employee at a place and they they pay him as a consultant but he doesn't get any health benefits he doesn't get well we don't care about retirement benefits he doesn't get um vacation benefits and he does a lot of things that get [factored] into somebody else's salary so really his salary should be you know twenty percent or thirty percent higher just based on that not including the fact that you know it's a less long term commitment for the company and all that sort of stuff okay no no uh my fiance works for the computers for the government and that's how he got it i just graduated from college no or what i'm looking for no huh_uh no um oh yeah i've heard of that uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah it can uh_huh oh i like to think about that uh_huh uh_huh not always safe yeah uh_huh oh that's nice yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah well um i can just tell you like you know from my dad and my fiance like my dad well there's twelve kids in my family so the the dental was very important you know to my dad but um i think they took the dental away now he worked for united telephone system it's you know it's just another you know telephone network and they took the dental away but now i think they're going to start getting into eye yeah uh_huh yeah and now for his pension he pretty much just has the stock but my fiance he's on that same kind of pension as what you said only for everything he puts in they'll match it up to a certain amount like if he puts in a dollar they'll put in a dollar you know and then he's only allowed i think i don't know if it's maybe five percent or something like that that he's allowed to put in and they'll match it so and um he works for the did you ever hear of the national bureau of standards okay well he works for them they changed their name now but that's that's where he works and um he his vacation is really nice he's going to be there three years at the end of this month and he'll be getting three weeks vacation yeah yeah you know of course it's a it's for the government and he has all all the holidays off right right yeah uh_huh he has it really nice it's nice where he works and um he seems to be very happy you know like his hospitalization and you know he has all that and with his doctors and stuff they have um a list of doctors that the employees can go to and it only costs a dollar as long as they go to that doctor you know and i think it works the same way with his prescriptions and stuff if he needs any but you have to go you know to certain ones but still that works out really nice you know it that's not bad either uh_huh are you a t i no is somebody in your family a t i oh okay so who do you work for so you don't have any benefits at all to talk about you're just going to have to imagine what you would like as benefits oh okay okay well in in interviewing have you ever discussed benefits with some of the potential employers didn't get that far you normally just try to sell them on your uh aptitude and not you know well how much vacation do i get oh well well i'll tell you a little bit about what t i has as benefits we do have uh like most companies we have medical insurance although they're tending to try to really cut costs more and more um what they started with a few years ago is that they only would allow you to go to um set hospitals in the area they call it network hospitals they're yeah they're hospitals that they're uh agreeing with uh t i that they'll be a certain rate you know for rooms and care and all that kind of stuff to keep you know costs down now they're going to start to do the same kind of thing with doctors so it's almost like a um uh an h m o you know kind of thing that uh only certain doctors are you going to be allowed to go to and get the full coverage if you go to a doctor who isn't in the network then it will be less benefits that you get we have some dental coverage now um but you have to pay a little more to really get something worthwhile like i've had a couple of [crowns] recently and if you didn't have the extra dental plus um you only get like a third of your cost which can be kind of expensive with a crown so i i pay yeah i pay for the extra dental plus so much more per month because it always seems like if you're going to have a crown or something major done it pays a little more um we do have pension although i've realized recently that the pension doesn't seem to be too good and i know when you first start out working you're not thinking about that after you've been working for a while and you look at your pension account and you go is that all that's in there i don't think's it's going to pay too long when i get out um we do have a new thing that they've started a few years ago um it's not an i r a it's called a four oh one k plan it's kind of like pension you put in so much money and then t i um meets you half way up to a certain maximum so like i put in a dollar they put in fifty cents so that grows pretty good and i think that will be more of something i can see of a pension than the regular pension plan of course you can buy stock in the company but you know that's not always a real for sure kind of thing yeah especially with this one you know it kind of goes up and down i don't know if it's any different than other companies but you hate to have it [fluctuate] and like you know last year it was forty dollars a share and now this year it's thirty six dollars a share and you go gee i'm losing money doesn't quite feel as good and we you know vacation normally after you're here for six months and you start to get like five days every six months is kind of how they [accrue] it to you and it's one nice thing about t i is after you've been here uh for five years you get three weeks which a lot of places make you work like ten years or so before you get that much and we get some we get uh decent holidays um at thanksgiving we always get the two days off which is nice to make a nice long weekend and at christmas we always get two days at christmas they float it around depending on which day of the week christmas falls on so that's nice so you always get two days at christmas a lot of people just take you know that week i normally take that week somehow you know you only have to take three days of vacation and you get the whole week at christmas time whoa okay uh_huh um uh_huh oh yeah yeah i think uh um i don't use the services but yeah i think sometime last year or just recently they started to give some kind of eye coverage you get discounts on uh glasses and i'm not quite sure there's certain places you can go to that have uh discounts for people that work here so you can get glasses and contacts and stuff through those particular stores or something like that um uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh yeah gee that's pretty decent right and you get some extra ones federal workers always seem to get you know you get columbus day and veterans day and those ones that you couldn't really care about so much but you get the day off anyhow oh yeah okay yeah we're doing an h m o right now um and when we go to get prescriptions it's five dollars but you know sometime sometimes when you go you know the prescription like my husband always takes which is kind of like you know contact stuff only better um you that's like a buck a [capsule] so if you've got thirty in there it normally comes out to about thirty four dollars so when you pay five it's a pretty good savings then there's other times that you know maybe the prescription wouldn't cost more than like seven or eight dollars and you pay five anyhow so it isn't a okay uh do you work outside the home okay wow have you yes uh_huh okay well yes i do in fact i am at work right now uh and so let me take the lead uh [angela] uh i think what is really important uh of course salary is very important because that's why you are working for your for the money but job satisfaction to me is also uh very important in having a job and uh one of the things that uh she asked us to discuss was benefits uh i'm assuming that you are married and have a husband that supports you okay and so we could we could talk about uh that path you know how important you think his benefits are and and and uh how important you think they are and if what would you like to see increased in his benefits like uh perhaps uh he has uh the benefit of having [eyeglasses] for the family uh uh and how much coverage uh it provides and also your hospital coverage and uh um probably dental how important you think that would be because they of course if you did not have them you would be pulling from your salary of course right right and they always have surprises for you with children you know and so it's it is uh we could not do without the benefit package from from any company that we worked for whether they be a [conglomerate] or just a small uh uh business you would still have something right yes uh_huh they are getting a handle on that in fact uh my oldest daughter is uh is uh a nurse and she just received her masters degree and she is now into consulting and that's one of the areas that she is working on to have uh uh a day care center for the the children of the of the nurses that are staffing the facility and that is true in many many areas of you know uh job titles and professions uh_huh sure would it would it would be just [futile] and they would not have the quality and they would be deprived of their mother yeah no i understand that totally oh i hear yes that's true right uh_huh yes do you do you think that you should fund that if they have that as a benefit if you would fund that somewhat from your salary that you are getting do you think that would be acceptable i do too right that you right that's right with the company than than having to go that's that's right yes i agree with that that would be fair yeah uh and how how do you feel about uh let's see eye care okay vision i guess it's called vision care it depends on who [examines] your eyes if you have an an [optometrist] or an [ophthalmologist] there's a vast difference in those two uh professionals [glaucoma] oh oh okay so yes uh_huh yes they are uh_huh right that's critical because she's in need of it so often yes and you know we have uh needs in our life that are unique to us and uh you know people have needs in their life that unique to us to them i mean we are all different so well no that's my other phone so that's it that's okay my that phone is ringing to an empty desk and she's on vacation so it's okay uh_huh that's very expensive yes that's true orthodontic work is terribly expensive especially when you have a lot of problems with the children teeth and and you have to really get them when they are young in order to have uh not uh a decent smile when they are fifteen sixteen years old i know two of my daughters had to have that and they started having [extractions] at age eight uh because they just had too many teeth for their size mouth and we [footed] the bill because there was not any such thing and when they were young oh uh_huh uh_huh major uh_huh well i tell you i i just read an article in the paper about what they are doing i think it was an ad in in our [publication] at texas instruments where they are breaking the [jaw] and and [lining] the [jaw] up with the teeth it's it's less painful and less expensive yeah i i know but it it's it's uh easier on the patient in the long run which amazed me no i do not do you have i uh no not actually okay right okay right i i think that job wise benefits are just as important as salary is exactly exactly especially when you have a family with children and you are always going to the doctor for exactly they always do yeah i think any any even if your insurance policy is not the greatest exactly you you would not be pulling it out of your account all of the time just by yourself also for working women uh i think a lot of the companies should start providing for day care in the in the in the building right yeah like in may case i have three children from ages nine to two and it's just [unfeasible] for me to try to get a job because all the money that i would be making would be going to day care and it would be just basically be me working to pay for them to be at a day care center exactly besides which it would be easier uh there's a lot of single mothers out there now from divorces and a lot of women are starting to have babies without a partner and to go to work you are worried about your child besides which you have to get up earlier to take the child to day care and if they were in the same building then you are going to the same place and you could go for your lunch hour down and visit with your child or you know and take your breaks with your children or something i think i think it would be fair i think if if the company could not provide it all on their own for the for the people that would be using it you know a certain amount of their salary would go to it but it would still probably be cheaper with the company helping our if everybody you know pulled their own weight in it i think it would be really really great yeah i do eye care is good i do not i am not i do not think we have that on our policy but uh we yeah it would be great i mean uh the glasses that the exams themselves are not expensive it's the glasses yeah that's true right now like my right well like my mother she has to go for testing cause she has got well she does not have it but she is like on the verge of it or something her eyes are changing and she has to be tested periodically and and those are expensive tests now i think your insurance covers her on that but you know for something like that that's just as bad as a medical you know that's right right now i would like to see better dental insurance to me was that our beep oh huh okay but with the three children um orthopedic care um not orthopedic orthodontic care because on on a lot of the dental insurance they do not cover that well for the the [orthodontia] stuff yes it is uh_huh right yeah right my middle child needs to have uh orthodontic he's because his his [pallet] is [squared] not rounded and it affects his speech a little bit not not anything you know right but just enough that his bite is off a little bit and it's like four hundred dollars and my insurance is only going to cover like fifty of it oh really that sounds like it would hurt more oh gosh i i would much rather that do that to myself than make my five year old go in and do it that would kill me there we go uh so uh what do you consider the most important benefit besides salary that week right um well uh i right now i'm in sort of a weird situation i'm a graduate student that uh i don't have that many benefits per se uh sort of get yeah yeah my wife has a real job and i can see from her angle uh uh i think health insurance is real real important i've i've i've i've discovered i mean even in my case it's sort of they're really uh a pain in the neck about it up here because the university makes me buy a small they they have a mandatory they have what they call the mandatory portion of their health insurance they offer insurance to everyone but then the basics that are major medical they they force you to buy here now i'm covered by my wife's anyway but i still pay them a hundred dollars a semester for uh mandatory so that's sort of annoying that i'm paying for something i'm not getting in that case i'd rather that that went to something else right i mean uh and and and it turns out that actually uh the benefits they you know that that hundred dollars sort of would would [entitle] me to go to the university health services here you know and and use them and it turns out that i do think they're they're excellent physicians there so through my wife's h m o we've registered for them as our primary care physicians so we go there anyway so they're they're so if they were to bill which which i believe they don't but if they were to bill the h m o for my business they could in in theory be getting paid twice for the same thing but they're not thank god uh but anyway uh otherwise i would imagine uh good vacation is is important although i don't know if that's really a deciding factor for many people on a job i don't you know oh wow so that's really yeah i mean i don't you know i don't i know my wife uh i think she gets you know about two weeks a year i guess but they're pretty good about it if she wants other time off they you know usually let her yeah oh really just yeah yeah that's well that's a that's reasonable i think yeah weigh all sorts of other things yeah i think i was watching something the other day about that actually on uh a news special or something like that and they were saying how in some sense that that's good because that makes health care affordable for everyone and makes you know lowers the cost of everything and all insurance and in other cases it's actually bad because it winds up people you know don't get to they have much less of a choice in who they can use and stuff like that so uh_huh right least off who decides right right you want to know that that that when you pick a doctor you know you you could pick one who you could have some sort of a feeling about yeah that that's the boy i i don't know that's a that's a a tough one uh uh and it's uh i suppose it's it's changes as uh as my perception changes of of what uh i'm getting [gypped] on and this week or this month uh uh uh we're just uh going through uh uh well there's a couple of changes to the to the uh our health plan and uh and i guess right now the one in my mind is health insurance but uh if i step back i'm not sure i'd i'd uh say that what what about you oh okay yes okay but but on the other hand one of these days you'll be out looking for a yeah yeah right okay and and yeah and the benefits you're getting for that hundred dollars a semester uh you you never use because you just use your wife's uh yeah i it uh the the that that's a a negative about uh where where i am in that uh well i came out of uh i worked five years civil service and there it's uh if i remember right you well they they accumulate it as hours per week or something like that and or hours per pay period or something but anyway it works out as i remember basically to uh you start at at uh two and a half weeks or something like that and it at three years uh it goes to four weeks i believe and i i'm coming up on i've been at t i now uh uh coming up on fifteen years and it and it just uh this year is going to go to four weeks here so uh uh yeah that's a that that is a a a negative but uh but not probably not at probably not a deciding factor but uh yeah well that that yeah that's that's the thing is how how flexible they are for comp time kinds of kinds of things and uh uh that's the the the uh yeah that's a why it hasn't made all that much difference is because the with the civil service that you could take you could take your vacation in [increments] of one hour and uh and but uh there wasn't uh anything as far as comp time so you tend to dribble away a week of it a year uh you know an hour here a couple hours there kind of a thing uh whereas uh here i uh things are free enough to that uh the the actual vacation time per year probably isn't that isn't that much different but uh but uh yeah i think the i think the health insurance i think that's that's going through changes everywhere to uh the they've uh uh gone through a couple years ago here where they uh will cover you much better if you go to their designated hospitals and now they're in the process of developing a list of of uh designated doctors uh so that just routine visits uh they will compensate much better for if you go to their designated doctors which which uh my assumption is that that will not include my doctor since uh he keeps real busy without having to to uh yeah well and and i think in the in the in the much bigger picture than uh to some extent hospitals and doctors have some uh fixed amount and if if you don't work for somebody that's got enough clout to to uh uh give you you know give you these rates and make this agreement then uh you're not covered by that and and the added costs get passed on to you so uh i'm not i'm not sure it my uh one of the [phrases] i use is that that it's moving towards uh private socialized medicine that uh in terms of the negatives of of always heard in terms of socialized medicine you have no choice on who you who you go to for a doctor and things like that uh where it's the government that decides here it's it's uh yeah uh and but it but it's the the same the effect is the same as the you you uh get left out of the loop more i i i know that their uh idea is that uh if if you have to pay a bigger share you'll you'll be more careful about spending the spending the money and and helping hold down the costs but uh i i i don't know in terms of in terms of uh the health care i uh find that that uh although i've i've been lucky enough to never have any big problems but that that uh the cost is not a a big factor i want to i want to know if the doctor's doing the right thing to make me get better yeah yeah and brian in plano texas how are you doing today great nancy you're in plano also huh well good to hear i was just talking to someone the other day from pennsylvania really all right well good to hear good to hear which one oh yeah the utah jazz yeah they're they're pretty good they've got some good good some good uh good players out there well you ready for new year's eve good should we uh start this so we can what was your name again nancy that's right and i'm brian just a moment okay nancy then i guess the today's subject is benefits in the job other than salary what uh what do you feel are important to you or other people as as [crucial] benefits uh_huh oh uh_huh right uh_huh to to compensate for some of the benefits oh yes well that that's an excellent so actually that is a benefit uh yeah right right well i guess that's a good point uh i do belong to a a large corporation or my that where i'm currently employed and there's uh there's some different things uh one that you've already mentioned is is health insurance i think through our health insurance that i can get better rates as a through a group plan as opposed to going out and getting health insurance on an individual basis because i had to do that at one time when i wasn't employed with a large corporation and that got to be somewhat expensive so i i think one of the benefits i i see is the uh is the group uh group discount yes yes and that's that's one thing i do have if i didn't have a family i don't think i would have as as a male or as a as an individual of in this stage of my life i don't think i would have insurance uh other i don't think i would go through that expense one other benefit that you mentioned is the flexible work hours and in my previous job i really enjoyed because they had what was called flex schedule where i could go and i could work uh nine hour days and have like friday only work four hours or i could do uh work four days a week at ten hours a day and have a you know three day weekend and make uh make my job flexible in that case well basically yeah i had to do that uh the same uh for about every quarter of the year i mean uh because i was in a in a position of management i had responsibilities over people that uh i needed to make my schedule uh so that if i was not there i would have coverage by some other management personnel so so i i think that uh that was a that was an excellent benefit that i really enjoyed and i don't have that in my current operation but uh you mentioned uh flexible work schedule and that's that's good and uh what other benefits do you think are important yeah yeah that's true well and that's an individual thing yeah with uh with our current uh organization we do have a nice retirement package and also a a nice thing that that we have in our corporation is a uh is a profit sharing plan where we can uh participate in the the profits of the company if we're you know if we've been there a while and we're vested uh which means that you know we have a an interest uh in the company that we can uh get some of the benefits of the either the profit high times or or in a sense suffer during the low times and uh also uh in one of my wife's uh companies where she worked they'd had a real nice profit sharing plan that that hi fine i'm nancy how are you i'm in plano also yes we're not too long distance today oh that was good utah i've had a couple of but that was it yeah learned about their basketball team uh jazz yeah yeah that's what i heard yeah yeah i am okay nancy right right right uh_huh well i'm a little different than other people because i don't have benefits with my job i'm a nurse and i work i float so that i have no benefits except higher pay for doing that so i find that it makes up for what i pay for insurance and i i make enough money by the hour to make up for that right uh_huh yeah it's cheaper for me to buy insurance by the month than to work staff someplace and then i have my freedom i can work seven days in a row and take a week off or whatever i want to do well it is to me most people prefer the security of nine to five and weekends off and knowing that their insurance is paid and their retirement and i'm just really not interested in all that uh_huh right yeah right and especially if you have a family then i think it makes a big difference yeah right oh yeah right could you change that as you felt like it or did you have to do it the same every week uh_huh yeah yeah oh well i guess retirement that kind of thing which i don't worry much about so i just prefer to worry about today probably not a practical attitude but that's who i am so uh_huh right hello how you doing i'm lee with uh uh i'm over here in plano texas oh sure oh where are you calling from or where are you at arlington well there's a lot of stuff going on in arlington these days are you involved in any of that no well uh what benefits do now do you work oh you are okay yeah because i i work for myself and so uh there's a lot that i that i guess i do miss uh a lot of benefits from working for a big corporation i miss uh insurance and uh the steady paychecks that come but uh oh is that right uh_huh yeah i uh i own part of a roofing company in the in the dallas fort worth area and uh you know unfortunately we we were part of a of a bigger bigger company and they uh you know we we had all the benefits there and and i do miss that you know but uh on the other hand i i uh i enjoy having the the time that i have with my family and being able to you know work when i want and uh_huh oh is that right yeah it's yeah it it yeah i'll tell you what that is the single most uh benefit that i that i enjoyed and i do miss because i looked into picking up some uh medical insurance for my just for my family you know just and it is unbelievable how much you have to pay for it and uh yeah oh yeah even at a group rate uh it's it's unbelievable and uh the amount that you have to pay for you know for kids and and if you want to add dental to it i mean that's that eats even more so yeah i guess what the other benefits that uh that i uh that i miss i guess is uh you know some of the bonuses and stuff that that goes on with just being involved with a big company you know and course these days you can't count on that because uh you know i feel bad for the people that are involved in that uh g m deal there in in arlington and i'm sure it will be you know quite a few people are affected by that so uh_huh oh really is that right the union yeah is that right yeah well really the yeah really the ones it's going to hurt is is actually the the businesses around in that area you know that's the ones that that that's going to hurt because they depend on that uh oh yeah yeah uh_huh well i'll tell you i i've had my fill of unions i oh yeah hello fine okay let me ask you something can i run a minute and shut my radio off okay okay arlington arlington texas yes yes not all good stuff no no i'm not not personally i'm going to school right now i can tell you about my last job or whatever you want to talk about that or my husband's or what i think i've got a lot of uh_huh yes right yes yes i've been in my own business mary kay in fact i'm selling in out now to go to school full time and i enjoyed the freedom of having that you know go to work when i wanted to or not but you know the benefits weren't there so oh do you uh_huh uh_huh yeah right yeah uh_huh i think today the thing that i uh would appreciate the most uh because my husband gets his medical through his company but we have to pay for mine and we're the only one i'm the only one that's being insured and and we pay the same amount that someone over there that has four children has i mean so it's kind of and i would i really and the way medical expenses are i think that's probably one of the biggest benefits to you need to have right it's out of sight right it's out of sight even at a group rate i couldn't believe how much is our right it goes up right uh_huh right right right it's going to hurt the city although uh i will personally tell you i used to work at a bank and i would see the g m people come in when they were they would shut down to [retool] they were paid that whole time and i don't know if you're aware of this yes they come in there just they go off fishing and stuff and come in and every friday and go to the safety deposit box and i'm sitting there making a hundred dollars a week you know and and they had all these i i really believe they have done this to themselves in a way because of the unions being so [stocked] and right now anybody's that's laid off from g m will have a full year's paycheck i just read this in the paper the other day plus probably an additional six months through the the [worker's] stuff that they have at at uh through the company so i'm you know i'm sorry it's happening because it's going to hurt but i don't feel as sorry for them if my husband were laid off tomorrow we'd get one more check and that would be it yes oh yeah that's already hurting but i think there's a case where benefits have gotten they voted them in and they got so good i mean like two dollars for a prescription no deductible on the medical all these things you know and it made the prices of cars go up and and you know the i we i believe in unions but they went too far i mean i can't make eighteen dollars an hour i mean i know someone out here that makes eighteen dollars an hour okay bill um as you think over the plans and so forth that the company you're working with now who do you work with at this time you own the company all right my goodness yeah i guess you do well what what do you think of the let's put it this way what do you think are the most important benefits for those working for you other than other than their present salary uh_huh a profit sharing plan that's interesting uh_huh yes because they they have a specific reason to do so because they themselves benefit from doing a better job uh_huh and it's a contribution well bill uh that idea fits me exactly i just retired from uh the university here and that's been the goal in my life was to contribute and to the work that i was doing in my research and that's what made me happy and uh that's the type of goal i think most people ought to look for and i'm sure a lot of them don't you can't stand in front of a counter and do that kind of stuff all day and feel like that you're contributing something to a scientific level of knowledge or so forth you're a financial planning firm how many uh uh_huh uh_huh well well what what changes would you have you considered uh in doing it to to your company that might benefit the employees or perhaps the company itself better when you say bring in do you mean that they negotiated with people to to come in and uh ask for your support oh okay uh_huh even though they didn't bring it in they help it once it's there yeah uh_huh yes but it it might not be necessarily because he did a good or bad job but it might be whether the locality there those people want that kind of support uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's true uh_huh well i own the company i'm the president and c e o of the company so uh i guess uh i determine what the benefits are but uh so what are you asking me what what benefits i think are most important um i'd say in today's economy besides basic benefits uh such as um health insurance and life insurance and the some type of retirement plan i'd say that uh most of the employees uh um that we have really like a a profit sharing plan they like to participate in the profits of the company like they're you know because they feel like well we're contributing to it so we'd like to participate in it and so that means i make a little bit less but the thing is that really you make a little more because everybody has a interest in in it working right i think most people uh don't want money um it's been my experience most people want uh to feel like they're participating in something that uh that is not a [drudgery] you know that they enjoy and that they can get some benefits out of right yeah well uh our people get a lot of satisfaction um we're a financial planning firm yes you said you retired i just happen to have a person that i happened to do some planning for this morning but anyway uh uh we do we deal with a lot of people that are retired or trying to retire and uh it's real important uh that their benefit plans that they get from their companies and from their work that where they were that uh uh that it take care of them they don't none of them really want to be rich but they like to have enough to be comfortable well um we considering instead of tying a profit sharing plan to a a salary is uh is tie um uh a percentage um of business that uh that a person would participate and bring into the company uh pay them uh based on the percentage of business they bring instead of based on their salary and the no not necessarily um it can be in house people who help you handle x amount of dollars right well see we have we have marketing people and then we have financial [planners] and uh then we have uh staff secretaries and administrative assistants and these secretaries and administrative assistants um you know if we don't have their cooperation and they're not participating in the profit of the company they they can get very dissatisfied very quickly and so uh we're thinking about paying them instead of a percentage on salary paying them a percentage on the business they handle so administrative assistant that would handle two million dollars worth of business is a lot more valuable than a person that handles a hundred thousand dollars worth of business and uh well and and but to see the thing is that they give support to the financial planner that they're the assistant to or that they usually have several people they report to that you know that they work together with it encourages them not to uh complain when they realize that they get a part of the of the action based on their efforts and not based on being sitting back saying well make me do it see we don't want anybody around here that says make me do it i don't think any i think most people want to be lack of better terminology they want to be self employed but they don't want to take the risk in other words they like to control their own future but they also want to be somewhat content to go and come as they please without some real strict [adherence] which that's what we have okay um i guess we're going to talk describe uh job benefits and so what do you think next to salary do you rank is the most important job benefits uh_huh uh_huh well um does your company have good benefits in that in that regard uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh i see uh well i'm my medical coverage is with an h m o um so that's in my opinion that's that's [bordering] on a health clinic but it seems to be a good way to maintain costs and still provide a good amount of coverage um uh_huh right yes that's right yeah i'm i'm fairly young myself i've only been when i first started working which three years ago is when i first got into full time employment and uh at that time i immediately joined the h m o and i never really so the only doctor i i've kind of consistently had has been through the h m o and uh you know for me it's worked out real good uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah um like you you mentioned you work for a school system i work for uh georgia tech in the research branch and i guess another one that that i rank up there high is the uh kind of job flexibility and time off um i enjoy as a benefit right yeah getting a lot of breaks between quarters and that and having a lot of vacation uh_huh uh_huh right well um i'm not actually on the teaching faculty but we have a large research organization associated with the university and that's who i work with um and we're given you know a good bit of flexibility in what we do we can kind of pursue our own interests in terms of the research areas that we study right right uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh are there are there any things that that you'd like to see changed in terms of the the benefits uh i would say the medical uh group insurance area as far as uh covering medical costs for yourself or family members yeah i think i work for a public school system district and uh so it's different than a company where most companies fund almost the entire thing where the school district does um the employee must pick up a greater figure in the way of uh costs but overall um i've been pleased with it over the years i think the biggest frustration is because of the cost of insurance going up every year our district has had to [alter] uh you know change companies or now we're on a managed care thing which has stressed a lot of people out although it has not disturbed me any how about yourself uh_huh right yeah our district did that for the ninety one and the ninety school year or calendar years and i was in the h m o and um i was because my my same doctor you know agreed to be in it for uh they usually sign a contract or something and um uh i did have surgery last summer and i paid ten dollars when i went to see him that first day and i've never seen another bill so i i have to say it really works but again i was fortunate because my doctor agreed to be in it uh if you've been going to a doctor for you know ten years or something and he [elects] not to join it can be very stressful for you know those people uh_huh yeah right but if you you know have a family and and um everybody's gone to different doctors uh it is hard to give up somebody who you feel knows you and your body and your just has you know all the medical history and you feel comfortable with it i i'm sure it would be very stressful and my husband and i have just elected that if that happens i will go and just pay you can continue to go to your own doctor but your benefits are not as you know good so uh oh all right i do too are you talking about like spring break and right right it it really um i don't think most of our teachers now i'm not a teacher i am a secretarial executive assistant but i don't think the teachers could stand the stress all all year long frankly it is just texas has really um you know they want everybody educated no matter what it costs uh and it it would be just we all look forward to like in two weeks we have spring break and i don't know who looks forward to it more the students or the teachers and the staff what do you do there okay well that's good yeah i would think that that type of employment you're you're one day you might be really tuned in and the next day oh a little [luke] warm or something and um it's good that they allow you that it um as i say the schools now we do have to work you know the day but we do get many days off and uh we all look forward to it that's the only reason i work there is that my children now have graduated and graduated from college but at the time i worked there because my hours and days were the same as theirs and uh i've just continued to uh stay there okay should begin uh i can begin this um basically i work for honeywell in minneapolis and the the benefit program we have here is really quite good i'm i'm pretty pleased with it they cover uh just about everything vision dental medical uh you name it and for me this is the first job i've had where they've covered that much so i'm pretty satisfied myself um what's your situation oh uh_huh are you a professor there oh i see okay oh no doubt right well that's good yeah that's one of the things i guess i would change about honeywell is uh i used to work with the army research institute and being a uh a government organization you got quite a few holidays off but here you don't get that you maybe get two or three a year so it's really unless you unless you have some vacation time or some some sick leave or whatever um you kind of have to [finagle] your way around to get that time so that's that's kind of a drawback i think but uh i don't know what do you consider most important you think in terms of of the different benefits uh_huh yeah yeah i don't know if you saw on twenty twenty the other night they uh they basically reviewed [oregon's] plan or the oregon plan toward uh [nationalizing] health care and that kind of thing it's kind of an interesting plan it's kind of cold though they've essentially made up a list of uh-oh all the different uh medical [maladies] that you can have and then basically made a [cutoff] about six hundred and eighty seven and below will not be covered by by uh [subsidized] health care and the ones above would so it's kind of like drawing this line and and if you have it great if you don't you're kind of out of luck but um it was kind of an interesting show i think you're right i think health care is probably the the most pressing uh the pressing one but i'll tell you i i don't mind having dental you know sometimes dental costs can be um just about as expensive if not more and i know historically a lot of companies i think carried dental as a rider along with the medical but i'm not sure that's that's widely followed any more i'm not sure how how does uh university of new hampshire handle it um great is that uh let me interrupt is that the same for both uh professors and and also staff and administration is that generally across the board do you think or right uh_huh uh_huh oh okay right yeah i'm kind of interested because i'm actually that's the route i'd like to take when i finally get my degree is to uh is to teach in a university i'm a doctoral student in florida right now but uh yeah that's that's interesting that's one of the things i'd like to think about is in what kind of benefits they would uh they would cover and things like that oh is that right okay all right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i work for the university of new hampshire and uh our benefits package isn't uh isn't quite as good in some ways uh you know overall i'm satisfied with it we don't have the vision care we do have the health care and the uh and the or the dental uh no i work in i'm a on the professional administrative and technical staff and i effectively i run the telephone switch at uh at the university of new hampshire uh so the uh the benefits uh probably the main thing i like about the benefits is the uh the uh very generous vacation time and sick time we get fifteen days a year sick time and uh we get twenty four days a year right from the day one when you start work you get twenty four days a year uh time off yeah right uh_huh uh_huh well i think uh the the health care of course is an important and has to be the single most important benefit and uh the rates that we keep paying seem to keep increasing uh you know i'm i'm a little disturbed about that but i think that's a national trend and i don't know that uh i don't know what the solution is to it it's bigger than just the benefits part uh_huh right oh yeah um uh_huh um right uh_huh well we have two different plans that we can subscribe to under dental uh depending and and the cost between them is very is very little i think it costs me something like five dollars a a month for the dental plan but it pays uh a substantial amount i mean the [examinations] and and uh checkups every year or every six months are free and uh it it covers the bulk of the dental expenses uh yes it is the benefits plan is different for operating for what we call operating staff which are considered to be uh clerical personnel [accountants] things like that as opposed to what they call the p a t staff which i belong to but the main i think the the health and all that and the dental is the same for everybody and the retirement plan but the main difference is in the uh the way sick time is [accrued] and vacation time is [accrued] uh for the operating staff it's on a seniority it's you know based on how long they've worked there that determines how much uh vacation time they get uh_huh uh_huh oh college programs belong to this t i a a uh c r e f retirement fund right and in the case of the university of new hampshire uh okay karen you're first uh_huh okay yeah i guess one of the differences i see is uh working for a university uh there is room for advancement but not so much so our in uh quite a highly [unionized] environment and then also in the administrative association so there is a progressive path but not being in the say the commercial sector the motivation isn't there for a lot of people uh like really yeah somewhat that but then also there just isn't the ability to in one sense have uh a broader scope for rewarding people for their performances uh so that's in our situation where we are dealing with an institution uh it's a little more difficult to recognize an individual's performance and i suppose that's maybe a disadvantage of being in a larger institution perhaps somewhat even with the business uh but i agree you know the uh medical benefits and those kinds of things are one of the big pluses of working for a large organization and also the uh security aspect for long term employment uh job security yes uh_huh yeah we are seeing that here as well like in some of the large oil companies there has been massive lay offs uh so i i think there it's probably a major [distinction] between institutions and the corporate world in uh institutions are slower to react both on the growth side and then also on the reduction side where the businesses we need to cut back that's what we do but yeah and [institutionally] like here at the university oh if there is a cut back well gee it's not where it necessarily where it's needed it's where it's most expedient which well in one sense for us it's where it makes the least noise which means it's often the lowest support type roles so we it's very easy yeah right because it's support people that are providing the speed for it well the uh that's maybe the majority of the importance i guess yeah because my perspective is from an institution uh the there is not much incentive for [innovativeness] because the limitation for reward is very severe but if you're in the corporate world i think there is considerable motivation for i guess innovation although he you know the more complex your structure the uh less difficult it is to kind of carry some things through but uh i think there is uh it's a long term type of process where in a small organization it's uh things can happen much more quickly and so you can see the reward of the efforts right yeah you end up being your own person and uh if you do your job fine and if somebody else is messing it up well then that's their problem and you know you really yeah yeah it becomes the organization instead of person being you know a part of the individual themselves okay i was just going to say i think one of the biggest thing for me is room for advancement you know not to get in like in a dead end job and plus for me it's uh i mean like medical and you know uh benefits and dental they're also important um um are they like pretty much train for a specific job and that what i hired for and then i just very little variation from that uh_huh uh_huh well you know that's interesting though because i don't know if that's necessarily the case anymore i use to think that you know after you work you mean security job security uh that use to be i think a couple of years ago but i don't know if it is so much anymore in fact they we just had a lay off in what november i guess but uh it wasn't necessarily i mean you know some people had been there a long time uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh no doubt yeah expedient yeah that's exactly it yeah where the most dollar where where you know it cuts back the most oh oh see yeah yeah i think that's one of the things too you get too many management people you know yeah and it's very easy for them to say oh this is the best way when they really aren't aware of what all it took to get the work done you know and then they wonder why it doesn't get done in the same amount of time well those people aren't there anymore yeah uh_huh yeah but so what else do you think is important uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i think probably in a small yeah i was going to say more it's more personal for one thing you probably have a better team uh cooperation or team playing atmosphere probably where as in a bigger corporation i think you're just a number you know uh_huh uh_huh whereas yeah in a smaller i think you would be more willing to either help that person or help it get accomplished you know uh_huh uh guy uh some of my things i i'd like to have a short work week you know and and we need you know better health insurance and you know okay okay okay so i just press one then right okay ready okay well well right now i i'm just a student i only work part time but i've work in the job force before and forty hours is just too long you just don't have any time to do anything it seems like saturday you get get off but sunday you're getting ready for monday and if we get have a if we could have a thirty two hour work week with that happen is that for every four people we could give another job and then that way everybody would have a three day holiday okay and that way that more that would make a bigger market we'd have uh more recreation people would have time to do it there would be less of a stress level we'd have we'd have less crime we'd have to we'd have to build less prisons you know less police force it it that's that's a possibility one one of the problems they're facing now a lot of people now is that the health insurance is that the small business can't can't offer health insurance and it it's too costly and what what is happening is that they're on a policy where they have x amount of users in it okay so they get a specific rate well what happens is that if people start becoming having chronic illness and and things like that what happened and where they really have to spend out a lot of money for one particular it's called a a group well what will well what happens then is that they cancel because they just can't cancel an individual so they they have to cancel just like life insurance they have to cancel everything so what they do is that that they cancel the insurance and then all the people don't have any insurance coverage but i'm i'm you know i'm i'm satisfied with my job i'm i'm an engineering student and i work for my instructor and i'm i'm not a typical student i'm i'm older i'm i'm in my thirties okay and so i have a lot of job experience and my instructor [thrives] on that because he can just tell me what he wants and he can give me access and tell me what to do and just turn me loose but in in the same token it's a very really enjoyable for me because i don't have to have you know nobody breathing down my back and and one of the things that i i really hate about jobs i don't i don't like bosses that that you know want to yell at you and you know are down on your back and all this and that i i just really can't deal with that so what kind of what kind of jobs have you done uh_huh yeah that's just great you have what you might call knowledge power you know when when you work at a company whether you know it or not is that you're [categorized] some people can be let go and replaced like uh say uh a typist uh somebody who does data entry or answers the telephone or receptionist but if you're a person who that's doing computer type things and you have the you have the knowledge you know what the system you've [revised] and revamped the system well then you're you're vital to the company and you get more benefits so that's where i i i'm like i'm into computers too and that's one of the things that i've found in any one one of these jobs and anything i've done is that to have knowledge when you have the knowledge you're you're not going to uh you know be let go be one of the last ones to let go anyway so what i oh okay okay we can start off there let's just get started if you don't want to you know uh talk about it now and then be bored when we get to it right yep so so you think uh i think that a short work week is real nice uh i have a thirty seven hour work week how about you uh_huh uh_huh right yeah it all makes sense to me although there may be more crime i mean if people have more leisure time it's not clear and that yeah uh_huh right uh_huh right so right yeah yeah uh_huh yeah well well i do uh research in computer science and i've just been doing that for a few years now so uh i my job has most of the benefits i want uh what i really like is i like being like they send me to conferences for instance but probably not as much as i'd like but uh you know that's just nice being you know having a company being able to give you time to do that sort of thing and sort of uh they also a really important thing to me is when they uh they pay for continuing education like i i get night courses that they they'll cover right now and that's really good yeah right uh_huh right um are you working right now uh what kind of what kind of work do you do uh_huh oh is that how you heard about this thing uh uh_huh me too i work at uh the georgia tech research institute um i'm a co op student so i work and go to school about halftime and uh i really don't have any job benefits to speak of we're kind of um i don't know they just kind of forget us on that end we don't really have any vacation or you know sick days or health care or anything really so exactly exactly what about you huh yeah uh they do that i think if you're uh research here then i know of some of the people that have gotten their masters and i think that um they might you know pay for that pay for the classes and stuff but i know they let you they'll let you decrease how many hours you work by kind of percentage you know they'll let you work halftime if you want to if you want to finish you want to yeah they'll let you work decrease your number of hours by any percentage just just about so if you want to get your masters and then i think of course you get like a with your extra degrees you get a pay raise due so that will probably help out but do you get any kind of health care type stuff uh_huh yeah yeah i think i mean that's pretty that's a pretty important uh part of it there because that that can be really expensive if you ever have any health problems my dad i think my i'm still covered on with my dad's uh health plan at his where he works but it would definitely be something to look into once i get my own uh_huh they have well the only i think the i guess the only real um benefit i guess you could say working for me working here besides i mean i'm learning and stuff because i'm at you know in school but there's there's some weird law where uh uh student employees working for the government don't have to pay social security tax though that's about five percent right there so that's about the only real bonus i have so i have to take that into consideration when i evaluate like how much i get paid real you know because if i was working somewhere else i'd have to you know pay an extra five percent or so huh yeah oh yeah uh_huh yeah help a lot yeah see around around here it's like uh we pretty much work from project to project on well you know with different sponsors there's not there is not a whole lot of you know funded research from uh yes i am i'm working in the computer science department here uh at c m u uh i'm doing basically system system design work and uh [implementation] work for the speech for the speech group uh here yeah actually through electronic mail uh_huh right so it's pretty fair they've got you [slaving] away at at this point yeah well um i'm research stuff here now so what they they have uh um okay benefits package it's not quite as good as industry but one of the significant um benefits here is that you can take uh up to two courses a semester um and they pay for you know pay for the classes so carnegie mellon that works out to be um a reasonable a reasonable benefit uh_huh if you want to do it quickly uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah so i i don't know in in terms of other things other benefits other than sort of monetary i'd you know i yeah we we do we have to contribute a certain amount uh to it and it's kind of split between c m u and and you know the employee right yeah and it's also right now it's uh the like everywhere else uh here in pittsburgh the health care uh rates are are going up pretty quickly that's a whole other topic to begin with too but yeah but it's you are right i i i really agree that that that's pretty important right right uh_huh oh now that's a big win yeah yeah that's yeah yeah i figured for and they've just raised the um income caps on social security to the point where you have to be pretty you have to be pretty well off before you stop paying paying that as well yeah well if you could call it a benefit that c m u i mean the other thing that they allow you to do here while you are working is is [consult] for um you know other companies um so that's that kind of helps out in terms of you know keeping up to date with contacts in industry you know in case you know in case you ever need to bail out uh_huh so uh do you happen to be working for a large firm uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh i work for a fairly large company it's got eight thousand people and uh we do have health insurance we don't have four o one k plan stuff like that but we do have like retirement they kind of match up to you if you put six percent they match up to six percent and then the rest is whatever you want to put in if you put more than that or something like that it's not bad god i don't know it's probably a long time i'm sure it's not till like twenty five years thirty years yeah huh well i guess what we have is like a what they call a flex benefits plan where you you get like a certain amount of dollars and then you spend it on a cafeteria of whatever you want or need otherwise you can uh guess you can put also put money hold money back and then either use or lose it and that doesn't get taxed or can just have that money you know put in your paycheck yeah well it depends on which company you work for i know that like the the the one plan that everyone seems to be in in my place is uh you know you uh think you call it plan d deductibles are really high it's like fifteen hundred dollars but if you go for the other ones you're paying too much money for them because it's unlikely if you're relatively uh healthy then it's really unlikely that you'd use that much amount of money you know so it you know someone did start a cost benefit analysis and ends up the best is to take a high deductible and and take a loss whatever it happens to be if you happen to be a healthy individual um really you mean not even your your your car insurance oh that's too bad yeah uh well i don't know i think other than health insurance i think uh you know an extra week of uh time off would be nice i only get two weeks oh that's nice we don't get them till till your seventh year of service till you get an extra week yeah it's uh uh with the [telecommunications] type of company supposedly you used to be much more stable it's a lot less stable than it used to be they used to have job security crap but now they don't yeah it's the bell corps which is uh yeah so i don't know it's it's uh no longer so that's what i think it's still based on the old model of and and now they don't uh yeah yeah but they no no longer i don't think so uh hearing a there's always they're always laying people off which is another benefit that you can have other than salary is trade that off for security oh i don't know we don't we haven't been doing layoffs we've been doing uh down [sizing] with uh getting rid of extra layers of management and uh i don't know what they do for those people some of it yeah there's too many manage too many chiefs and not enough indians but well it's about three hundred and fifty people i guess that's not large compared to some but it's big enough and they have a they don't have any kind of pension plan where they contribute anything and i wish they did you know they have a four o one k but i put all the money into it they don't add anything what about you uh_huh oh that's a pretty good deal now how long does it take for your contribution to [vest] yeah the place i work [at's] health insurance is kind of expensive it's like hundred bucks a a month or something for a family yeah we have one of those use it or lose it plans too where uh they'll basically pay for uh you know child care type uh expenses i can send in a uh can send in a request for payment and they'll uh and they'll send me you know a check for the amount they withheld that's pretty good you know it's uh it saves a third off on taxes or something yeah i guess uh on the other hand you know i i had a similar had a similar health plan and uh one of my kids was in a car accident and uh i had wound up having to pay for you know a bunch of doctor visits and stuff out of my pocket because of you know no no insurance policy happened to cover it which is well it it got all screwed up because i had a high deductible on the health insurance no fault here and and i had a high deductible on the on the uh on the car insurance and then you know we just goofed up the medical insurance and the car insurance and stuff and blew it oh well yeah yeah my place you get two weeks when you start and then every every year they give you an extra day until you've got four weeks aye that's a long time yeah especially in the kind of engineering job i'm in you know companies don't stay [afloat] that long and and they so you work for bell or something like that right right a lifelong job security telephone pioneers of america all that stuff huh right is it i mean does it they must have pretty good [severance] though huh mean the the the management they get rid of um oh they they put uh so uh what are your benefits like at your job and how do you feel about them oh that's good uh_huh what kind of a degree have you got oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh how long have you been with them uh that's good uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh but for all practical purpose you are almost a hundred percent covered so that you've got small small things to gripe about wow well that sounds like you must feel really good about it wow uh_huh uh_huh wow well i uh work in washington at the naval research laboratory i also have a part time job at a law firm and i get no benefits from them at to the part time work although they pay better per hour than my my sort of quote real job does uh and benefits through the government are uh really uh they just uh they're not the greatest uh i before i i uh uh got my degree i'm uh a computer scientist and before i got my degree i had uh done paralegal work for law firms here in washington and uh at that time i was in gravy city uh the law firms in this town are not you know for a long time were just rolling in the dough in the early eighties and uh benefits were just amazing and we had everything paid for and uh anyway with the government it's not uh quite that nice a deal uh but it's you know it's it's okay what we have to do is we have to pay uh about twenty percent of our uh uh our costs and it's deducted from our check each month and that sort of thing and the plans that are available to us uh range from kind of mediocre to really sweet and uh so i i think i'm actually involved in a relatively good plan at this point uh but uh it could be better that's for sure and uh but you know there are other things that you get when you work for the government uh in in terms of uh more relaxed atmosphere it's really nice to be for me anyway to be able to work in uh a research atmosphere uh where i don't have to uh uh you know worry about uh academics or anything like that and so i'm i'm really kind of happy about that end of of things it's uh uh_huh uh_huh wow that's fabulous you see now that's that's interesting because i have a cousin whose husband works for hewlett packard up in the massachusetts area he he lives in [andover] and uh the work that he he's uh specifically an engineer and and does work with uh the hewlett packard machines that do uh uh [sonographic] [imagining] and uh i've been over to see his complex over there and it's amazing it's it's all ecologically designed and and uh he seems really really happy with the the set up and uh_huh uh pretty good actually i work for hewlett packard and they have uh a pretty good uh benefits package in fact they're they're kind of known uh for having good benefits the pay isn't fabulous although i saw a survey recently and i'm actually making just about as much as you know i'm making actually over average over the average for my career my experience and all that stuff which kind of surprised me i've got a bachelor's in electrical engineering so and i'm not like a [hugely] advanced degree or any of that stuff uh anyway the our benefits are pretty good we've got stock purchase program and a that that's pretty generous although you have to hold the stock for two years before you get the company contribution which is kind of a a pain but uh there's a four o one k plan uh for uh [sheltering] some [taxable] income uh there's i've been with them for seven years yeah and the best thing and a lot of the stuff the best thing is like four years or five years it's pretty soon you're completely vested in the retirement plan and everything so uh it's not but there's full uh there's several medical plans to choose from uh that cover pretty much everything i don't get sick that often so i don't pay much of it and i pay five dollars every time i visit the the hospital that you know for a checkup or whatever uh they don't cover eyes though and i i have contact [lenses] so that's kind of a pain but you know i i can live oh yeah yeah right and yeah yeah and and the dental plan is fabulous the dental plan i pay absolutely nothing because uh i i guess they would charge a little bit if there was some [orthodontia] or something for one of my dependents or something like that but that's not the case so i guess nothing it's fabulous uh the what about you uh_huh uh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah yeah one of the things with my company is that they've uh got a reputation for a lot of job security and uh there's a lot of different things that they do lot of different divisions even this area in the san francisco bay area that they do so there's i myself have moved around quite a bit within the company and it's and i and i haven't had to move my residence to do that you know i still live in san jose and yeah it oh yeah yeah uh_huh right right uh_huh yeah yeah in fact i know a guy who works at [andover] who used to work who i used to work with out here and he moved his family back east a few years ago to to take that position kind of interesting uh anyhow what sort of company do you work for do you work for a big or a little place uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh huh well i i work for uh actually probably similar kind of place i work for uh lincoln laboratory uh yeah we actually do some work with some people down at georgia tech uh and uh so we're we're part we're actually part of m i t so it's very much the same kind of place and uh the technical institution uh while i was sitting here waiting while they tried to find somebody for me to talk to trying to think of what uh uh what things were important uh besides salary and a and a job i guess uh list i had [scribbled] down was the people you worked with and maybe the uh the challenge of the work and uh the working conditions things like that i don't know what are your uh what sorts of things would you consider important uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh now how do you mean that i know it uh_huh uh_huh well you you think it's better than to to try to spread the the effort equally among all the employees of the company or uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah i've heard of a couple of companies that have done that i think uh back about a few years ago when things were tough hewlett packard did that for awhile they went to a uh a a four and a half day work week rather than cut yeah just cut everybody back ten percent and uh have to give everybody a half day a week off and i think you can do that for a little while but i'm yeah uh i work for georgia tech yes sir i work for the research facility uh and it's it's kind of small in a sense but it it does have about uh i guess two thousand civil employees and on a a scale i guess it's still considered small it just have a lot of different laboratories the area i work in it it primarily have maybe a hundred people or so so that's make up most of the laboratory so from from that standpoint it's pretty small it's pretty small what about yourself oh okay oh okay i see oh okay right uh uh_huh right well those and probably the security aspect of it because a lot of time nowadays even though you're working uh you're treated and it may not be true in every place in a lot of cases i think you're treated more like a number instead of a a person because when it come down to layoff they don't really consider people and and you know their well being as far as you know how they going their next dollar going to come in how they going to pay their bills they just lay them off and i was reading this book one time about this guy that had uh i think the company still exists what they use to do is they used to cut the number of hours for everybody as opposed to just laying people off you know that way that you know one person wouldn't get one big [blunt] blow at one time and uh you know i think if they had programs that set up to subsidize people that do get laid off a little bit better you know other than you know something like unemployment is good but i mean the company as a whole because you as an employee even the company is making money they paying you a salary but you are responsible for that company growth you're responsible also for helping that company get to the point that it's at at making profits so there should be something in there or some kind of [clause] that will subsidize people if they did lose their job other than you know uh neglect or something like that you know because it's not a person's fault that you know people not buying or businesses are are not on the up and up all the time you know i don't see how one or two people maybe more one or two but you know a number of people can can be the downfall of a company situation well in a sense that say how do you make a a conclusion that you're going to lay off these ten people uh for the bad times of the company what about the the work effort those ten people did when the company was doing well you know in that standpoint yes i do i really do i think it'd be better that way and even at that it would at least give the person time to look for another job because they know that that there are problems and you know there are reason to look for another job instead of just dumping it on them all at one time you know that's just that's my views you know right right right well at least that would give a person a chance to look you know because the way it is a person really don't have a chance well uh preferred benefits uh i worked for a large corporation in the past and i think large corporations can give better benefits than small corporations because right now i'm working for a very small corporation where the owner is right there and uh there is a lot of profit that's coming in but when it comes to uh small corporations they seem to pocket it a little bit quick quickly or whatever or however you want to say it and uh the benefits aren't as great when i worked for a big corporation because the big corporations seem to look at its employees and say okay we've got this amount of money let's put into this plan this plan you got four oh one k plans you have uh better vacation plans uh you have just in general maternity leave plans that kind of thing big corporations are able to do that versus small corporations uh you know they just don't have the money or just feel that there isn't the need for it so i've worked for both big and small so i've had a chance to kind of take a look at uh the pros and cons of both sure uh_huh sure uh_huh huh sure uh_huh uh_huh sure uh_huh that's pretty good for you know being a a school district type program uh_huh wow that's extremely good like the small corporation that i work for there's no pension plan there's no type of uh savings of any sort that the company will reimburse you for there's really i think you're allowed so many times uh i think two or three days a a year it's not [accumulative] type of sick leave uh you know things like that so i've been looking at big corporations and saying the big corporation that i've worked for in the past had the pension plans had the big health health care uh you had your insurance and you didn't have to pay in as much as if you go to a a very small place uh they don't have as good as insurance packages as big corporations and uh_huh sure no yeah yeah yeah uh_huh sure sure yeah yeah uh_huh is it a union uh_huh oh that's pretty good uh_huh sure yeah uh_huh yeah yeah i know what you mean and that's true i mean it does end up being quite a bit when you have to hire somebody for that position sure yeah uh_huh sure uh_huh well that's it you know and and i've kind of looked around uh at that uh too because uh salary wise i don't think i'm making as much with a big corporation because i think when you look at big corps or large i'm talking like hugh companies like three m uh i'm uh honeywell uh texas instruments i know people that are that have vacation times and benefits that i wouldn't even dream of in a small corporation you bring it up to the owner and it's like come on you know partly it's because the owner wants to keep getting richer and richer and and of course when it's a small corporation it also wants to expand so that money is spent uh_huh right well i've worked for uh well i worked for h and r block here in massachusetts for awhile and the only they even hate to give out unemployment at the end of tax season because they you know they're fairly even though they're a large scale company they're very the offices the individual offices are very small and now i work for the framingham school system because i'm a teacher and uh we have much better benefits you know in the system we have a good pension plan uh let me see we have a profit sharing plan to a degree right and we have the eye glasses the health care and the whole kit and [caboodle] because what they did is they threw all the town employees in together yeah really oh right the only trouble we've had here in massachusetts is the town and state employees have run into problems especially the retired ones my father's retired from the town of framingham and he said that they haven't gotten a a cost of living raise in over five years and he said that's the only thing that really stinks as far as being retired and but i hear that bill is in the senate right now and it's hopefully will go through but uh you know i think the schools are at where the schools isn't just the school system and not just the teachers they took in the whole town plus all you know uh we have the teachers union which helps out a lot but the town of framingham pays the benefits and that's all the town workers water and sewer and where it's a very large town it's actually should be a city but they kept it a town uh where it's extremely large they were able to offer a little bit more which was really great because we don't have to pay a mayor right because of most of our you know the town employees as far as uh electoral positions are part time so it works out good because we reap the benefits of it and uh but as far as shopping for a job i'd rather shop for the benefits than the salary right right okay what would you rather have or you want salary too plus what what's most important to you right uh_huh uh_huh well i'll tell you i think that is the most important thing i've uh i'm not working right at the moment but the company that i did work for excuse me i had health benefits you know dental vision all that pension plan uh now i don't have that although i do have a pension that i'm drawing from them which thank god i had but uh man i think those medical benefits are the most important uh right uh i should knock on wood i haven't you know had any serious health problems or anything i've only probably been to the doctor a couple of times since i left work and it was only for a cold you know and they can't really do anything for you anyhow so you might as well not even go yeah right oh you've got a cold go home and take uh [liquids] and uh rest but uh that is definitely the most important uh pension i guess is next uh thank god that i had one i don't know what happened to the salary employees when uh the company went bankrupt but i was union so mine was being put into a like a trust fund you know so but i don't know if they ever got anything or if they lost all of theirs or yeah that's what i was thinking too i really feel sorry for all those people that spent all that time there you know so where what company do you work for um uh_huh no uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh no i i worked for a trucking company p i e nation wide you probably heard of that oh does she really oh how about that well you did well ryder and p i e went together you know and then then that ended it it really did it's it started i think a little bit before that but that when p i e and and ryder went together why that was downhill from then on you know right right yes it was over three hundred fifty dollars a month if we wanted to continue our own benefits we could do that for eighteen months but three hundred and fifty dollars a month god that's terrible you know so but anyhow uh and jobs aren't that hard to find to get another one that does pay your benefits you know and a lot of them that if you do get a job they don't pay benefits uh_huh uh_huh huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah right but you know what's happening is the disability plan you know so many people are lying about their things god there's been big articles in the paper about that uh you know they claim a back injury and then someone goes out and [spies] on them and they're lifting refrigerators into trucks and and everything else you know so i don't know what's happening and what's going to happen but uh well as far as tangible benefits go i would say that uh health insurance of all forms is probably my next most important concern i feel that a company that can provide good health benefits such as health care dental and vision as well as good long term and short term disability plans uh goes a long way toward satisfying my needs right you you really don't realize how important they are until you find yourself on the other side of the fence without them and having to cover your own medical and uh you can quickly see where they become a very important part of your your compensation package yeah they look at you say well you're still breathing so uh yeah right i suspect that it just disappeared right uh i work for a little start up company here in pittsburgh called [trans] ark uh have you heard of them they we do uh [distributive] system software for unix based [workstations] so ah yes yes in fact my mom drives trucks so yes so yeah i see uh after the merger uh you see a lot of ryder pie stuff on the road so did did ryder get out of the business is that what happened or right huh so that the merger pretty much ended the whole thing yeah and the the problem with that is you know when you leave a job you can continue your benefits for some finite period of time but when when the company goes bankrupt i mean the they're just cut off completely and you're responsible for your own and and that's exceedingly expensive right it's definitely excessive true yeah they're starting to to cut back especially start ups i know here at [trans] ark we get uh we get health care and that's it i mean there's no dental or vision and the the short term disability policy is is a ninety day policy and there is no long term disability policy so you know at least in the case of this particular company they tend to [scrimp] a little bit there and you know of course they can use the excuse well we're start up right well that certainly doesn't help matters any i mean you you get people who are willing to put their neck on the line to get you you know these additional benefits uh i think uh actually i'm fairly pleased with the benefits that we have at the uh working for a large corporation and for me there's absolutely no question what's the most important benefit i think it's health care it's what i think everybody would say that right belonging to a group is the belonging to a health group is probably the most important protection you can have after you uh the uh sometimes i think it's more important than salary yes and uh i don't know if i would rank that second but uh since i have three boys uh it it can turn out to be important yeah you know in a in a given year dental dental expenses can really kill you right right it's uh right uh and then uh uh if the cleaning doesn't get you the [orthodony] will uh i guess that would be up there uh i'm not sure if i would rank uh how i would rank that next to say compared to retirement or uh uh uh [pretax] savings was another thing that i think is a a great a great benefit and i i think it's really something that the uh the government ought to encourage more because uh there are all these complaints about how we're not a saving country and where the average savings rate is something like four percent in this country and fifteen percent in uh germany and japan uh right when you have the when you have the uh the economy to scale and everything that a large corporation has and you can uh offer some incentive and if the government goes along by not taxing it when you put it aside you can really build up uh the savings and the that you wouldn't otherwise do and leave you know i i don't think so yet they may have uh just plain parental leave which either one can take uh i their uh i know their maternity leave is on the order of six weeks which i think is too short uh uh uh i really think that we need to get into the mold where we talk about years rather than months or weeks right and uh there there ought to be uh uh some compromise that could where uh where the person would be guaranteed a uh career type position but not necessarily a continuation of exactly the same position uh in exchange for a longer period of time it's uh it's so important to families then and uh and yet anybody whose gotten far enough to get a good salary is really reluctant to give that up uh that yeah you're right i think you've put your finger on the one benefit that i that i would most like to see uh changed uh the uh parental leave right right they do it by [shortchanging] their kids there's no other way i mean uh unless they're part of some extended family which is unlikely uh people moving as much and uh they just it's just a terrible choice you shouldn't have to make it uh you're right and uh oh right boy would i like to have that yeah oh listen i have friends in a lot of different cities if you just fly me there i'll take care of that right so and uh i guess the right oh and if you try to get it outside of your corporation you're going to pay an arm and a leg right uh do you also get dental oh i know now my husband is with uh northwest airlines and he gets uh you know the full health and dental and uh we have four children and what you pay just to have teeth cleaned is outrageous and i don't know how people that don't have it can afford it or maybe they don't that's right that's right uh_huh right right well it's a lot easier to to save it when you don't get your hands on it first right uh what about what about uh lesser uh benefits perhaps for you but for for the women in the in the corporation for example uh-oh yeah do they even do they have father leaves or anything like that uh_huh oh i do too oh i think i think it's just a crying shame uh for a mother to have to go back to work at six weeks she isn't [recovered] and uh the infant needs her desperately at that point and time uh_huh right i agree oh sure especially in this day and age you don't want to start over again anywhere well i think they're at they're they've come a long way uh at least some companies some of them uh my girlfriend in particular that works for a a rental car agency and uh as manager and uh they have a very very poor leave policy and uh i just don't know how how women do it particularly single parents who don't have the support at the other end uh that's right that's exactly right right uh_huh one of the benefits we get of course is travel it's wonderful the only trouble is that you can afford to go anywhere but you can't afford to stay once you get there that's right you have to have an awful lot of fun just just getting there is has to be half the fun see when you're with a big company or a big organization a lot of times uh you know the benefits are good and and you know the pay is regular but uh you know sometimes you don't get tuned in to what's going on and i i think the biggest benefit or the biggest benefit other than wages that that uh that anybody could get in in dealing with a large company is to be in a situation where you you get to know what's going on and maybe that's that's probably the toughest thing in the whole world to to do what's what's your feeling about benefits what sort of benefits would you like to get from a big company uh_huh uh_huh well i i well i work for the government and uh actually i work for the f b i and uh and so you know we we don't there's lots of things that we don't get told for good reason but uh but basically uh there's lots of things that that we should know about projects i'm an engineer you know i'm i'm a [cotr] and and i i worked in the same lab with a guy and we didn't really know that much about each other's projects for two years and we should have you know we're we're now [collaborating] and for two years we didn't and we which was a kind of stupid but uh but our organization is doing something else on monday uh we're having a for all [unclassified] programs we're we're having little tables put up in front of lab in the hallways and every all the other employees are going to come around and see what sort of things we do which i thought was kind of interesting and but uh but that that sort sort of thing but if you i think you can tolerate a lot of problems if you understand what's going on and and but of course most time most of the time management has a hard time distributing or getting the word out to the people who must know and you know if you don't really count if you're not part of the program you might not get told for months or you might you know if it doesn't impact you directly or if your management doesn't think that but but regard to benefits you know most companies have most big organizations have decent you know benefits like retirement and that sort of thing in the private sector i would think that one of the major uh situations especially when you reach you know the the mid fifties is keeping a job until you retire and engineers are uh are baggage to most uh uh as they get older to to most companies and uh it's very much like the military it windows out you know you you think well boy i'm getting more money and i'm getting more responsibility i'm doing this but as you climb up that tree pretty soon you're the the branches get smaller on the top of the tree and pretty soon somebody falls off i i've fallen off twice in the private sector and uh and you know i can get up uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah he may be retired well since i'm kind of on the the older side you know i i i just feel like uh when i start talking about benefits i talk about i'm concerned about medical benefits uh my uh my husband works for mcdonald douglas and so his benefits his medical benefits are so excellent you know that's really great you know i work for uh a bank western financial and uh they don't let me know really about anything that's going on even some of the immediate things that i need to know i don't know it until the next hour and all of a sudden we know we've got changes made we're changing departments we're changing policies we're changing doing other kinds of things which to me is is disturbing i mean i feel like if i i don't necessarily need to uh be involved since i'm pretty much on a low level you are you are right there you know i'm pretty much on a low level as far as uh the company is concerned but i i do kind of like to know what's going on and what's happening and i think i can be a better and more effective employee if if i had a little bit more information along that line oh my gosh uh_huh oh and it it yeah that is interesting exactly right uh_huh oh i know it it seems to be be kind of kind of scary you know because you think of uh see my son's eighteen right now and he he's uh he wants to go into engineering and the the the branches of engineering that he wants to go into is now kind of open and he's interested in basically three different areas but uh it's difficult for me to try to give him any kind of advice or to advise him or anything like that he needs to do his own course of investigation and and see what he can do because who knows what's going to happen in another thirty years and in thirty years it becomes pretty critical i mean my uh brother in law is like uh i mean he's sixty he's not ready to retire but his company is is uh is uh closing up and because of the defense cutbacks and all that kind of stuff and all the nuclear and stuff which is what he what he was working on he's getting cut back and he's not ready to retire okay uh i just currently quit my job and so i really don't receive any benefits right now but my husband does and uh i think one of the uh my first of all always salary and the second thing is uh because we have children so it would be uh health benefits and medical benefits and and uh right now we have probably some excellent benefits right now we have with aetna and uh i don't know if you're familiar with them but we're real happy with them uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah yeah yeah huh right yeah uh_huh yeah yeah right uh and and and another good thing is with the health benefits when they give you more than two choices on who to go with and that really helped us out a great deal so but my husband does get vacation and it's worked out really good for us too so but yeah uh_huh uh_huh well that's great that you all can work that out that's really good right uh_huh yeah yeah it's the same with my husband cause he's got pretty flexible hours if as long as he puts in the hours he needs to do worked out really well for us too uh well is there anything else that you look for or you've hit pretty you've put a lot of the main points in uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah and that does make a a person want to stay right yeah yeah definitely yeah yeah i've had a variety of different jobs with a various types uh in the computer field and so i've seen a variety of types of benefits uh i've worked for for for awhile and they are you know a really academic type of place and then i've worked with regular you know industry type places and then with others that are kind of half way between and stuff so i've seen a wide range of both you know [nonsalary] type benefits and other stuff you know like health care that's either fully or partially paid and you know some have like bonuses and others have had lots of vacation time but not much other types of benefits and so yeah i would i'd say health care is way up there especially anybody with kids uh and that's one of the big things that we always look at you know when we when i think about changing jobs is you know you know what kind of health care they have and does the company pay for it you know all or partially or how does that work and uh also uh vacation time too is a is a big one for me uh and i guess support for whatever whatever other you know kinds of professional activities you have at you know work uh cause i've been at places which offer a lot of support and others that don't offer any and some that sometimes that's [coincided] with a place that offers more vacation time though so that's not so bad you know you know it's kind of a give and take kind of thing i think uh i say that health care is probably definitely number one though want to just you know all your salary can't even begin to pay for what you can wind up losing you know in a major illness or something uh yeah uh_huh yeah flexible hours are are pretty important to me as well uh cause that makes a big difference my wife works part time and she works uh as a assistant manager in a fabric store and so she works a lot of evenings and weekends and so two days a week i uh manage to get home early enough to meet the kids on the bus so she you know goes in early those days and works like you know noon til close uh so we have yeah and being on a you know rigid schedule wouldn't there wouldn't be anyway to do that at all and i think it's kind of neat to be able to spend the afternoons with the kids occasionally too i mean usually you know you go to work before they're awake or as they're getting up for school and you get home and it's already dark unless it's summer time you know and even in summer time sometimes you get home so late that there's you know you can't do anything with them and especially in the winter i mean you get up in the dark and come home in the dark you know it's like it's like a [vampire] sometimes yeah uh a lot of i guess is yeah i think some of is how the uh you know i guess it's not really a direct benefit but how your uh performance is rated and stuff like that at work cause i've been uh especially in large corporations you can really you know wind up getting having you know real problems i've found out i've worked for a few you know several thousand plus you know type companies and it and especially if you're doing like professional work where you know it's kind of [ethereal] as to what you're doing you know if you're like i've i work with uh computer systems a lot so it's kind of hard to say you know if you're you know a brick layer somebody can look and see you know well yeah you laid you know fifteen thousand bricks today and they were all straight and your building didn't fall down you know yeah you did a great job but if you build computer systems like well you know what does that computer program really do you know or especially if you write like papers you know or do design studies or something it's real hard to rate something like that it's like get a painter you know or something a artist it's like well you how do you really rate you know [michelangelo] you know how would you tell if he was you know really good or so so or whatever what kind of um besides besides your salary what's what's the most the thing that you would consider to be most important as a benefit oh have you ever worked for a large organization oh okay okay uh_huh yeah yeah probably because you said retirement and that really has not even occurred to me once uh_huh yeah that's true that's true uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh no what is that um no i hadn't heard of that um is that something that you should change from year to year that sounds like it might be a really good idea uh_huh uh_huh yeah well i think of uh you mean as far as retirement i think the the most important thing for me right now is really the medical coverage uh i am in uh uh in uh involved in a four oh one k but i'm uh contributing such a such a small amount right now just to go ahead and have the account open because uh uh i just let's see i've been with this company for about three months and before that uh we were we're we're still in the process of trying to catch up we were we were way behind financially and so haven't really uh quite managed to catch up yet exactly and we're also trying to buy a house which [complicates] matters even further yeah no no that would complicate things even more yeah yeah that's probably uh_huh yeah that's true well there's lets see what other it seems like everybody has it used to be that they used to give like two weeks a year and now they give one week after the first six months most most of the time now they do the first week after the first six months so that if somebody really needs that time they can go ahead and use it then or they can just wait the full year and then have two so it it would work either way probably five years i think or seven uh that's kind of far away okay um i've got another call coming in okay all right anyway uh uh well i did uh and i'm currently uh consulting now so i'm with this you know a smaller organization um so my benefits are pretty basic uh medical i don't get any profit sharing and stuff like that so yeah yeah what uh the current climate is i saw a little [flyer] and uh i thought it was interesting uh is they are now offering you know flexible benefits where you have more control and allocate uh like you can uh pay for uh vacation time if you want to take more vacation you can just buy them out or something like that so i can can do other things and uh they actually have a software package that sounds like where you can manipulate different things to see what it costs to you for those benefits so it sounds like they're going to get more flexible to meet individual needs which i think is the most important thing because everybody is got quite a few different objectives yeah are you single okay uh but no i i'm uh single right never been married no i said i've never been married i'm only twenty six so i've still got a few years right so what are the most important benefits to you uh_huh the but the medical stuff itself the the health plan you're with it only covers fifty percent ouch that's the worst i've ever heard it's usually the basic eighty twenty besides your initial deductible that's what varies the most i guess uh yeah co payments type stuff yeah well i think uh obviously i think the the medical is the most expensive or it's the most important coverage uh of the you know you may not even go in to the doctor for a long time but you know if something came up obviously to get covered is important yeah uh_huh how about any matching programs have you ever you know what i mean where they contribute like a hundred percent of up to four percent of you salary into a four o one k is it is it is it a hundred percent or is it fifty percent okay yeah but that's a nice i think that's an important benefit uh i don't get that option i i i was at a company that had that and i didn't make enough to be able to put anything in it so i had to leave so but uh uh_huh with an annuity yeah the only reason i know a little bit about that is when i was in school still i was down in florida working and uh during the summer somewhere i got a hold of involved in a marketing organization that [marketed] uh replacing those whole life policies which aren't very good insurance policies people are losing you know they losing money or not doing as well as they could and uh the whole organization was [targeting] to replace whole life policies with a term life with an annuity and uh they would you know analyze a person's current policy and get a computerized you know statement of of what would happen you know at this age this age this age you know what your benefits would be and uh the difference between you know the term life with annuity and the whole life was you know there's fairly big [discrepancies] you know so they could try to replace those so i got involved uh on that end and picked it up but i never did tell anyone back at school and i never i never uh did anything with it but uh so i know a little about right now i just do a little basic life thing on my benefits but you know i don't know what i get out maybe twenty or something just to cover me and cover some expenses and maybe fly people out that i know you know some family that but uh i'm not worried about that i don't have anybody to yeah i like the idea of having that chunk of money to help anybody cover my end you know you don't want to be a burden to anybody else and uh so i think yeah i mean i'm not looking to leave anything there may be a certain amount and you know that's fine but uh you know to get that coverage and know that i'll get you know uh you know flown to wherever i need you know already i need to go i guess i haven't made any decisions like that i guess you know my family and father would do that but uh see i've i've kind of moved around from my home originally and um and my family's out in florida now most of my family and i'm out here in phoenix so but uh anyway as far as benefits um what else is important uh obviously i think uh profit sharing is is uh is a important benefit especially in the long run for the long term um yeah smaller companies it's either the smaller company you're you're you're in into the consulting side and they'll you'll finish up a project and you'll get the little bonus that type of thing um i guess you could technically consider that profit sharing um but uh most you know most medium or small probably don't do that much profit sharing and while i was at this other corporation they never had any profit so yeah they couldn't share any and i guess they had a little bit one year but i wasn't qualified for my first year something you know have to so little over three years now that's true and you get sequestered or something you know half a month when you get sequestered and you're there for months that's true yeah yeah right well as as you say the the um the benefits are the biggest part of it i think that today with costs are up for medical insurance and [eyeglasses] and dental and all that it is a a a a plus to have that as far as your uh salary goes you know along with it because it's not out of pocket money and they also have good life insurance policies good retirement [decode] the um jet funds all that stuff i think you know the i r a's uh the profit sharing the stock options there are they offer a lot of ways for you to save too if you have any extra you know that like the uh code over the two for one type of thing well they match half i guess it is and um i think that a lot of it's the personal recognition that the company gives people if they do a good job uh the incentive you know to want to do a good job and the uh m i r awards [banquets] and things i think they do a lot as far as trying to motivate people and they're uh meetings to keep you full informed you don't find that much in small companies because you can kind of interface but when you get a big company like ours i think it's great that they take the time to you know give us a monthly meeting to tell us what's going on that type of thing um snacks uh we interface kind of like uh on the tip teams and things i think that's a good deal it gives you a chance to feel like you're a part of a group or the organization and that you're heard and you know if you have ideas that type of thing oh i use it up do you have a mandatory do you have a mandatory shut down oh that's why see you you can you're able to do that but we haven't got much choice that's the if i had to say one thing negative that would be it because i feel like you know you earn your vacation time and you should be able to take it when you want to but we're not allowed to we have to take two weeks when the company shuts down you know and i can understand it from there point of view on the one hand because they have to you know consider the customers that their supplying but it makes it very hard especially if a husband and wife work at texas instruments and one has vacation one time and one has vacation another time you know you're not in the same area so you have to take a two week shut down and it's not at the same time so that isn't too nice uh this year they were going to try to do something different about that too they were going to try to schedule the whole site to go down at the same time to eliminate that and your talking about five thousand people so that's quite a [feat] in itself uh_huh uh_huh well that's great yeah really that's excellent yeah yeah yeah yeah well they're doing a lot with um [automation] specialist also that's what i do uh where you have to go to school to or run the new automated equipment it's all computerized and and stuff and uh there's a lot of job security in that because it takes so long to come up to an experience level where you're able to you know you have to be able to maintain them do the maintenance uh diagnose what's wrong with the machine and you know do whatever it takes to get it started again and things and interface with the technicians in the [toolroom] so you're kind of like your own boss as far as the machinery goes and uh it's about a two year to three year experience before you're able to really um i would say [payback] you know and do the job well and you're still learning after all that time because they're very complex machines exactly that's right yeah and they offer um a lot of uh opportunity to go to school that's another good benefit that t i has and they'll pay for ninety percent of your schooling with no commitment to them you know like a lot of companies will send you to school but you have to sign a paper that you'll work for them for five years or uh to that affect and you're kind of locked in so that if a career move comes up where you could take advantage of it you can't if you're you know signed in a contract whereas at t i they don't do that oh oh oh yeah well this part of the country there's no shortage of uh good schools you know like m i t and and uh boston's only an hours drive from here so a lot of the the people can go you know to a good school and right in rhode island there must be some nice colleges too rhode island uh reasonable uh the company i work for is t i uh so uh i think t i uh likes to live in the middle of the road yeah uh yeah well i i i'm serious i think they really do uh if they can stay about mid way between the the companies who have excellent whatever and uh and the ones who have very poor whatever that's where they want to be right about the middle of the road yeah and there's no reason to i don't think they consider it to be any uh particular reason to go out and have the very best in the industry all they want to do is make it acceptable which uh probably from a business standpoint is is what you want to do i guess uh_huh yeah yeah yeah that's true i'm i have i have used the dental plan several times for myself and also my family so you know i'm glad to have it but uh uh i was there also before the dental plan was in place and and we we stayed on our our personnel people at the plant uh continuously for for years literally i mean trying to to get a dental plan in place because it it had it had started becoming a thing that a lot of major companies were doing getting dental plans and it took us a a long time well i mean we didn't have anything directly to do with it i'm sure but you know we had talked about it and we were aware of it for a long time before t i finally got on the bandwagon i guess yeah the medical yeah yeah uh_huh yeah i i think they're they're finally heading that direction uh you know because they now have some some cancer screening tests that they will pay for so they've also got the you know preventative uh the well baby stuff which is good uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah uh no it's well like i say it it's slowly coming uh it's i guess it's just you know with insurance rates and medical costs being what they are i guess it's you know i i guess they're really trying to to hold the costs down yeah but it's it sure is hard i mean it's hard on the employee because you know the the cost are going up and the benefits are coming down you know they true they may be coming down at a slower rate because of the cost [managements] things that they're doing but you know the benefits are coming down oh yeah now i yeah and i love the coda plan i i haven't yet figured what the uh exactly what the uh catch is but i oh yeah yeah yeah well i participate uh you know i've i have participated since they installed the plan but for a long time i was leery about you know i just couldn't figure out well what's the deal you know why is the company doing that yeah that's right yeah uh_huh yeah and i guess i guess in a way that is the catch you know for the employee but it's also the benefit for the company because they have uh an amount of money there that that i suppose that they invest i don't know exactly what they do with that money but i'm sure they invest it some way and i'm sure they're making money off of it yeah uh_huh yeah it's it's great i like i say i use it and i'm i'm glad they came up with it uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah the t i does have some good benefits but like i say i i really do believe that they [strive] just to kind of stay in the middle of the road well yeah i guess i guess in a way they're they're are they really are starting that now with the uh the smoker premiums that they're going to be starting so that's you know in a way and uh i'm just wondering you know how far it will go over the years you know will will they single out people who are susceptible to heart disease or overweight or or any other you know [recognizable] high risk i guess you know that's i guess that's i guess that's the way it should be i i'm not sure it it's different from the way it has been i don't know i'm i've wondered that myself i'm not a smoker so it's it's not going to affect me or my family but i you know we we've talked about it at work and wonder about that i guess you're just strictly on your honor i guess oh yeah i did too uh_huh yeah well in a way i feel like uh you know the smokers should have to do that you know because they are bringing it on themselves even even though it is a habit that a lot of them you know may have a problem quitting you know t i has seemingly bent over backwards to help them quit with the stop smoking programs yeah well like i say since i'm not a smoker i really don't know uh there there are quite a few guys in in my i work in a lab environment and there are quite a few guys in there who at one time did smoke and uh as a matter of fact all of them have quit but they've all done it on their own none of them enrolled in any kind of program they just i guess just looked at the cold hard facts and just quit cold turkey i i wouldn't be surprised uh i never had heard a number of how many actually signed up but i i do know that they were trying to get people to do it uh you know which is good because it is uh i guess more of a hardship on people who you know who are have been used to smoking in their work area just you know light one up whenever they want to now they've got to get up and go to a designated area but that's uh times are changing you know as it has it's different now than what it was fifteen twenty years ago in in in the benefits and insurance and the whole works oh retirement i mean i'm yeah well i'm i'm still a long way off but uh you know the retirement and profit sharing the profit sharing is really a sore spot with me because about the time that i hired in was about two years after i hired on was about the time that the uh the profit sharing plan changed over we went from the old plan to the new plan yeah and oh yeah so you're you never were familiar with the old plan i don't guess well i you know i never participated in you know in the old plan because i uh didn't have enough [vesting] but uh i worked with a lot of old guys who really really got were disappointed after the new plan had been in place for a few years they said it just was nothing like the old plan so it really is it it's it yeah it's it's it's crazy well yeah that's that's kind of a uh_huh uh that's that's kind of a standing joke that uh anytime you see any big projects coming up you say well it must be getting close to time to figure profit sharing uh_huh yeah it's it's well like i say your account even if you don't draw anything out of it is is just not even hardly worth the effort yeah i'm i'm likewise uh you know i i think basically t i has without saying it is trying to tell you that hey we're not going to or not going to be able to take care of you at retirement so we're going to help you do what you can for yourself and you better take advantage of it if you want something to to look at uh fringe benefits are very important in the in the company i think to provide the employee with a sense of security do you agree with that or yes at the rising cost of health uh care now it's uh if you have to go out and buy your company coverage you probably have to spend three four hundred dollars a month to get anything that even came close to it yeah we uh we've just got dental insurance after the first of the year it's been i think probably oh about eight or nine years since we had dental coverage and it it sure makes a difference yeah i think the in the insurance area one of the things that we also got that we didn't have what we haven't had in about eight years is the card for prescriptions where you go in and just pay a minimal amount for prescriptions and uh we have some that are fairly expensive sixty seventy dollars well now we pay eight dollars for them uh no that's just all prescriptions uh yeah and it's a i think it's five dollars on generic drugs and eight dollars on a name brand drug so no matter what they are in fact you have to pay the certain basic cost for them you don't have to meet any deductible or anything but uh uh yeah that's uh just vacation and some sick leave not very much though uh really depending uh on what you need kind of it's a case that there if you need more than a couple weeks or eight days or whatever it may be then they they will consider it so that's been with the companies i've been with generally at a a executive position they're a little more liberal even though they're not supposed to supposed to treat everyone the same still rule more liberal with time off due to the all the extra hours executives put in but uh the uh i think pension costs are making it more and more difficult for them to provide print pension benefits too it's uh yes because it just keeps going an up up and up there too but uh there's yeah the older you get the more you start thinking about the pension right yeah yeah uh my son has worked for a company for about six year he graduated from college what in eighty six so five years this fall and he started out with they had a four o one k plan and he asked me if he should get into it and i said well very small amount uh you can put in there and you keep adding to it and they're going to match it or so and all of a sudden at the end of last year he had a [sizable] amount saved up in his four o one k plan just with the matching funds that the company is putting in and any earnings on investments so no no he can't but he's only uh twenty seven years old and he's already got a good start even if he changes companies he can you know roll that over into another plan yeah yeah um i wish i had a company that did that but there's oh there's various [intangibles] also like uh you know taking pride in the company you work for being able to say i work for such and such company or i hold such and such position with this company and that's one of the [intangible] fringe benefits i guess a certain ego level there well it not the one i'm working for now but one i did in the past did so i i just felt you know at a i need to find a company like that again yeah uh_huh pay tuition and books or a portion [thereof] yeah oh what you can find there is so many of these things like uh working for a company some of the things they really [enhance] your experience in case you do have to change companies yeah i mean it's a just makes you that much more [salable] shall we say if you do have to go and search for another position it's right that's right yeah yeah the company i used to be with also took care of things like professional dues and subscriptions to like the wall street and other professional man's magazines in the financial areas so it uh there are there are more than just insurance and pension there's lots of other things that come up back in the heyday of the economy before this recession then of course there were other things available to other people i never even took advantage of them of uh like [memberships] and clubs the people that uh have to entertain and such so there's all sorts of fringe benefits yeah that's right it keeps your mortgage holder happy having to salary again be uh uh being able to acquire the the nicer things that you want not just have to live at a a certain level being able to do things or purchase things that you want that aren't really necessary so um that's about all i have okay fine been nice talking with you well i'm a contract person and uh so i don't have a lot of benefits and uh uh i do think they're very important my husband has medical insurance and he has a life insurance policy his company does not really have a retirement plan and i think that's something that's very important and uh i believe medical insurance and retirement are probably the two [strongest] two most important uh_huh yes right uh_huh yeah you sort of take it for granted oh i know isn't that a shock well we uh kind of discovered it when uh the company my husband was with uh was in real estate and he had some nice benefits with it and all of a sudden when the market dropped out up here of course and you know everything kind of went downhill and then he went with a steel company and they they folded but he was still under the uh [cobra] plan on the medical insurance and then all of a sudden the people that had taken it over went bankrupt well that ended [cobra] plan and everything and uh then we discovered and our medical insurance for three months was running us uh i think it was nineteen hundred dollars yeah our age and uh i had some arthritis and stuff and man they [socked] it to us and you know but now fortunately we we're back we have some medical insurance yeah yeah uh_huh what did you do consulting work oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh benefits uh_huh uh_huh well i know that my husband the company he's with now has excellent uh hospitalization and prescription card and dental insurance but they have no retirement benefits and you know we definitely you know miss this i grew up in a family that had their own business you cannot pay me enough money to go into business for myself and my husband has watched my family and i don't believe you could pay him enough uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh you're always uh_huh well and you think you know okay are the employees going to get paid this week you know are we going to meet our things and that's right that's right i can remember my dad saying somebody saying they wished you know beef wasn't so high you know they could only afford chicken and my dad said if someone doesn't buy some beef i'm not going to be able to afford the chicken you know and they they really are they really are okay go ahead and uh tell me what you're looking for in a job now okay a what okay okay so you like having the flexibility to be able to take off time when you want to that's important to you does uh recognition from others and a sense of contributing to the [organization's] success does that rank pretty high for you yeah that's that's kind of a rip when you feel that way hey david what is your doctorate in sure so you're kind of interested in this thing that we're participating in then huh and so you're enjoying all the benefits that a professor would at the moment is there well i meant as health and uh oh yeah okay uh david is one of the things that i i suppose so you don't want to be out in the weather and uh the environment like construction workers for you it's better to be inside air conditioned warm okay you know what happens is i've tried i was out because of surgery last week so i tried calling a couple of eight o'clock calls and i got a person from utah and a person from new york and a person from new jersey so i thought sort of neither calling really during the morning out of town so that's why that's why i've been making it a habit of calling in the morning but anyway uh the topic was the most important benefit of your job today besides salary and how satisfied are you and everything i'm sort of self employed so i really i'd be at a a little loss for words on this as far as i'm concerned most definitely uh the most important benefit today would be hospitalization and of course retirement and things like that uh_huh well that's very true i can understand that because i'm a just a small business person i run a my company has five people but uh they're all straight commission [salesmen] so they all provide their own insurance and it's been that way since nineteen seventy four and my office is just a one person office i have myself plus my secretary and she comes in at nine and leaves at five and uh she's on her husband's insurance program and i just uh yes yes oh that's great oh that's neat are you married okay well i'm married and my wife's a school teacher so i'm on her they have pretty good insurance so i they she carries me on her insurance program which works out real well she's in the plano school district in plano and it's not cheap it's like all insurance insurance just keeps on going up more and more every day and of course they the prices they're charging today and because of the problems they have oh deductibles are high oh you bet supplemental anything is important today i'll tell you whether well that's great well that's super well just uh i carry my own [keogh] plan as far as benefits and i've been doing that since nineteen seventy four or seventy five or whatever and that's more or less my wife's and my retirement i'm fifty years old my wife is forty nine and she didn't start teaching till she was forty so we raised our kids first and she went back and got her degree and started teaching so it looks like we're going to retire in a couple of years and she'll uh she'll qualify for a little something after ten years of teaching but not a whole lot but it'll be certainly be useful and needed i'm in the sporting goods business i'm a own a manufacturer's rep firm and uh we represent eighteen different hunting and shooting type companies and that's all i've done since i graduated school years ago sold really oh it's neat isn't it okay so you were with t i huh well any stay any place that long they got to be doing something right right i uh work for myself i sell uh metal fabricating equipment and tooling and uh-oh [cad] cam systems and things like that and uh consequently i can't really discuss big time benefits at the moment although i had worked for [univac] and [pitney] [bowes] and some big companies once upon a time but uh i think most people don't necessarily realize the cost of them and they're somewhat probably getting out of hand well i think uh-oh the way i right well no it didn't necessarily say other than salary but what would you consider to be kind of important i guess such as well i i imagine that's what they're referring to you know like uh your health insurance and pensions and all that kind of good stuff uh and they grew up around you didn't it uh_huh yeah well i think that's one of the keys that most people uh probably put above benefits that's why i work for myself basically too i want to do what i want to do uh_huh uh_huh right right well i think as long as it's comparable with you know the job or can that uh you aren't being picked on in the sense of being the whipping boy dollar wise in the corporation you know you know you got to i yep yes yes right well i i wouldn't say they aren't motivated by money but i would say that there are other things that are equal or greater important i i guess if you make enough money uh if the money were really big bucks i guess some of these other things you could uh live with for a while anyway until you had enough to do what you wanted to do but yes right well i i think uh so far they've been pretty good except the medical uh not not the medical the dental insurance yeah yeah i think uh i know i went to have a tooth pulled and uh it the [cavity] had gotten really bad and they they wouldn't uh cover it because they said it it was a pre existing condition you know how you wait you wait as long as you can sometimes to to lose a tooth and then to for them to come up with something like that it i i just thought that was that was pretty bad and then one time i had a tooth [capped] you know one of my caps fell off and uh they paid for the the cap but they wouldn't pay for the build up and i didn't understand that either uh well uh it's it's a part of aetna uh_huh yeah well i had an h m o up to this year yeah i went to regular aetna uh i thought that the h m o was really great uh yeah it's gotten expensive because right now i'm i'm i only have myself so i don't have to pay anything for aetna the kaiser uh premium got a little higher than it you know uh_huh really uh_huh right right right uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah that was a problem that i had with them toward the end of the year i was i was really in a lot of pain and i went there and and uh they they gave me an appointment for about a month away and so i went to the health food store and got some [teas] and stuff and started drinking them i got okay but uh and i didn't go back uh_huh yeah that's what i thought about later i would have probably uh been better off if i just went to emergency and you just bill uh_huh yeah right yeah yeah after i really thought about it some more and i i really could have done that but i was hospitalized uh uh about three years ago i had some surgery and kaiser was really good for that because i didn't have to pay any of it at all uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh wow yeah well my uh my kaiser premium would cost me like forty something dollars a month starting this year and t i will cover uh whatever they would have covered for aetna but the premium is still forty dollars more than that yeah so i went back to aetna because i i won't have to pay anything and uh although they do have a deductible that forty dollars a month will add up to that pretty quick you know yes for because most people are getting older and the uh benefits are going uh i mean the price is going up everything seems to go up yeah see well here where i live all the benefits have been going up lately up on health and the hospitals have we have a one cent tax and then now bush is coming up with this health plan so i don't know much about it then yes yeah one illness will do it yes yeah i i would think so but that's one of the main i would think one of the main [securities] that you would need is health benefits yes well we i have my sister died she had some benefits that helped through her well they had her hooked up and everything but that helped her helped us through it really uh_huh just just with the benefits going up it's just there's not a whole lot you can do about it really yes you're not going make it very far no i don't think that would uh the older the older probably you would probably need more help because you know a lot of most of the elderly people don't have the money and the ones that do well they have insurance so it's just a i think that they need to extend them because we're we're paying here a lot and i think the elderly needs it more than anything yeah no really have they got have they already signed that or that's i guess that starts it uh so uh i guess right now what's most important for me uh doing given it's come up is we have a real good stock program uh where i work and it's going to give me about a three hundred percent return this time around on my uh investment which is definitely helping since i am going to buy a house yeah what they do what they do is it's it's a purchase program where you get stock it's on a one year cycle and you get it at eighty five percent of the lower of the beginning and the end price for the year so like the set price at the beginning of the year last may was five sixty four a share stocks trading about fourteen now so and you so get to buy it at five sixty four and turn around in same the same day the only down side to it is they do it as a withholding off your uh income so you got kind of you know be willing to squirrel it away at whatever you want to do yeah yeah that's with [interleaf] [interleaf] uh desktop publishing thought but uh you know yeah benefits other than salary uh_huh yeah that that's definitely a good thing to have especially these days right what's that like a uh like a key craft type thing okay yeah it's like no no so it's for retirement yeah so you have to wait until like around fifty five or right yeah we we've got a four o one k here but uh i chose to go in the per stock program because you can't lose on it and you know i can always take the money off of that if i wasn't saving for the house i would be putting money into a four o one k but you know i had much rather get the eight eighteen percent minimum return on the stock and use that for the house but yeah you know medical is good you know we get a good program here what's basically a hundred percent coverage for about twenty bucks a month it's like your yeah it is it's a very good company as far as benefits go they've got four o one k's they've got uh the health coverage they've got you know the stock program they've got uh one twenty five k selling it for twenty bucks they do put in the you know dental is like you know eighty or fifty percent depending on what you are doing uh and you know the one twenty five k they can pay that to you as pre tax money rather than post tax the only problem with the one twenty five k is you've got to say at the beginning of the year i think i am going to have a thousand dollars expenses this year and then you have to be willing to have that money deducted from your salary and if you don't use the thousand dollars it goes away so at the end of the year if you haven't used it all up it's you know the feds take it or whoever takes it it just [disappears] but you know if if you know you know so you want to under estimate a little bit so you know i know i usually have a thousand dollars five hundred dollars a year of dental and miscellaneous medical and deductibles so i just have them pull five hundred it means i pay like you know as opposed to paying like you know eight hundred dollars i pay five hundred i pay like three hundred cause it's on pre tax yeah i am here yeah i think it depends on how flat the organization is if you know hand on my computer is talking to me uh you know it depends how flat it is if it's uh i don't like working in an organization where you're really deep in the tree cause then you start to feel like you've got no real you know power to change anything right that's true unless it's a large corporation that has a lot of different branches uh it was important for me to pick a job uh to choose a job that was in the northeast uh because i like the region and my family is here at one point i'd interviewed for a company that wanted to send me to boise idaho and that really seemed like a negative benefit to me uh_huh uh_huh i agree with that uh i found though that that uh it it will benefit both the employee and the company i work for a firm that does have a very flexible schedule and i can't remember the last time that i just worked forty hours a week so the uh it works out that if i have to go in late for a reason or i have to leave early for a reason no one raises an [eyebrow] but because of that i'm not a clock watcher if i if i knew they were expecting me there at eight thirty every day and i couldn't leave until five i i think i'd be uh uh have a greater tendency to wait until the clock hit five and then saying out of here right yeah that's correct well that's correct right another uh_huh wow uh_huh right uh the company i am working for now starts everyone out at three weeks vacation and i i thought that was great except during the first year i ended up only being able to take about a week and a half of it yeah we get uh i have i have good health benefits actually yeah i have uh all of them and they're cheap per month and they i get to pick my own doctor and they have really good benefits besides uh no i have uh some a little bit of uh life insurance benefits uh no the the uh no optical the dental is fully covered uh except unless it's major but anything minor or checkups that's all covered no that's just me but they can be i have that option but it's more money but they're not they have their own oh no me i'm single it's just through me it's it's uh so it's and that makes it cheaper too since i'm single no no yeah yeah not much not for the good but it's really good the benefits are good uh_huh yeah yeah they have they uh it does yeah uh_huh yeah do do you work where you have benefits like that oh really yeah uh_huh yeah really well that's good uh_huh see that's see i wear glasses not all the time but when i read and stuff and uh i wish we had some kind of optical coverage but there's there's none whatsoever and it can get expensive yeah uh yeah for the uh actually if you're i believe i i read up on some of it if you're pregnant they have really really good coverage they have uh like well baby care it's it's pretty much covered uh_huh especially when they're younger yeah uh_huh and the and the pregnant mother has uh full coverage for well mother care uh that's what i was trying to i think there is i don't really remember how long it is but they do give you a certain amount of time to be home and get adjusted i guess and uh most of the benefits are pretty good the hospital benefits and and they let you pick your own doctor you have your choice actually if uh it's better they give you a list and if and if your doctor's on that list then most of your benefits are better because those doctors are in a chain that works with the insurance company yeah but you can have your own doctor yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah and and a lot of times because we just switched my my uh company just switched insurance companies and before it seems to me that the the benefits of working for a big company tend to be the the same things that that are to their [determent] they aren't as as responsive both to like bad economic times you don't have to worry about your job all of a sudden disappearing but when you see a job when you see a a job that needs to be done sometimes you have to fill out the five forms in [triplicate] in order to to get it done do you know what i mean oh wow right there is that i mean well and then i guess again i i like i said when i when i started off that the advantages tend to be the same things that the disadvantages i mean if i don't show up for for work there's probably somebody else that could fill my spot but um i imagine and and that's nice but uh it's it's also nice to be able to uh know that that you are the person that that makes things get done you know if if you're not there it doesn't happen yeah oh wow oh wow uh_huh you know one other benefit that just occurred to me i didn't take it as much advantage of it at least not yet in sometimes big companies will pay for like education i had some friends of mine uh get sent up to stanford for a year for uh college or for like for grad school and i guess getting stuck in california for the summer is is not such a bad thing you know but uh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah but i would think that a a smaller company you would have a i mean if if if a small company hits some niche in the some niche market that that it is [uniquely] qualified to um take care of it has a chance to to grow really fast and if you can get on top of it before before it goes up i mean you know if all of a sudden the company expanded to like you know three thousand people you would probably be one of the top people of course i guess if there's only the two of you you'll i mean i guess you're one of the top two people but you are also in the bottom half so so uh um the only other thing i can think of is uh stuff for things like uh like if if there's some kind of child care if if someone were married and had kids bigger companies might have something like that and uh um like like it's their i guess another advantage might be that uh if if it's a big enough company and it has multiple sites um if you wanted to you could stay with the same company and decide you wanted to live in another part of the country which i guess i being with a small company you wouldn't get forced to move but do you think uh do you think it was good to to move around or not oh you had family in san antonio oh okay see i'm trying to decide my dad was in the military which is i guess if you figure companies the military would be a pretty big company a number of people but uh although it's getting smaller every every day um and we moved like oh man we used to move like every every three years at least and like i don't know i mean there's well there's i i've kept in touch with some people from college but but i don't i mean i don't really know i i wouldn't i couldn't i i definitely agree on that uh i'm i'm working for a law firm right now the benefits are not bad the only thing i think that they're desperately missing is we have no dental plan whatsoever uh but as far as what i would really like to see is i live close enough to the city that i would be able to bicycle in if i could if there was some sort of provided facility for that uh maybe a [locker] area a shower area to to take a shower before work and some place to lock the bicycles up and i have heard of a lot of other companies providing that now it's something to look forward to uh let's see well a lot depends on the job though what do you do oh okay right yeah that would be nice i suppose that does depend on the type of job type of environment you're in uh i'm right now also a full time student and uh but i work in the evenings for a law firm so it's rather yeah it's a rather interesting uh rather interesting set up work full time go to school full time but how come well they do yeah yeah i have friends that are in the military and they do get quite a lot of perks right right right uh what a lot what a lot of companies do is as far as their health benefits are concerned the insurance provides uh coverage for the spouse and or family in a lot of cases i know that's the case in my office at least they will provide minimum benefits for your spouse and [codependent] children not like the case applies to me but uh it is nice that they offer it definitely and health insurance costs you you're not still covered under your parents oh wow when you said you were going to school full time oh well that's different uh_huh right what school does oh wow wow right now right now the company that my company picks up the insurance they pay i think it's thirty dollars a month so it three sixty a year and that's basic uh group health coverage i do but uh they're pretty slanted i want you to know uh my company was bought by another company and the majority of us were laid off uh_huh so you know uh what i would like to see well the really sad part of this is that i'm fifty five years old beg your pardon oh my chances of getting another job are just really slim i was a systems analyst for an oil company and you know they just i mean [sprint] had uh two thousand jobs i mean i'm sorry two hundred jobs open they had two thousand applications for this type of work you know it's just uh and i guess that's that's pretty farfetched as benefits go but gosh you know i saw it i was fixed for life so uh it really is it really is but uh i i think uh i guess my feelings on this are that the one of the most important benefits we currently have is our health insurance and that if there were some way to get that to follow you from job to job or so that you would not lose it if you have to leave a company there is uh_huh and and that's fine but you know i'm still unemployed after about fourteen months okay and when you switch yeah when you switch over the the premiums are really quite high and [additionally] i've had a heart attack so it's going to be really tough for me to do this so you know uh in in my very personal way i feel that insurance is just one of the most important benefits we have now now with the political situation the way it is i think that's going to change i think we're going to have to have something of that sort so that will cease to be as important a benefit what are your feelings what do you feel well i agree with you but do you know that's what makes this such a tremendous benefit if you can possible get group rates oh yes uh_huh yep they they don't have time well you've you've approached it what is their thinking on it have they said okay have they said we cannot do this because no because okay uh_huh is uh let's see are they paying a part of the premium oh they are and have you offered to come in have you offered to come in and pay the whole premium and they still won't let you that's crazy so what do you do about insurance okay i work for a temporary service and so our benefits are a lot more limited than what you would have if you worked a regular full time job we have to work a certain number of hours and then we get holiday pay and vacation pay and they if you um i could if i wanted to i'd i'm not right now but um i have yeah like you have to work twelve hundred hours um within a year to get holiday pay and fifteen hundred hours within a year to get vacation pay so if you're not working enough hours to get that much time in in a year then you don't get the benefits yeah yeah you don't get anything at all uh_huh right yeah my husband has good benefits too or i probably wouldn't be able to do the temporary work i think medical is probably one of the most important things to have wow uh_huh yeah those must be pretty good benefits i've heard that usually they average about thirty percent of your salary so it sounds like maybe his company's a little bit better right yeah uh no fortunately we still have the it's just regular [traveler's] insurance that my husband has so we can go anywhere i guess that's good i don't know uh i can't decide oh yeah uh_huh really yeah my husband works for a psych hospital and i know that they sometimes have to [discharge] people before they're really ready because their insurance won't let them stay any longer it frustrates him because they'll just be getting somebody to the point where they can really make some progress and then they're gone yeah really right yeah yeah do you uh does your husband's company have any of the new like a cafeteria plan where he gets to pick and chose any of his benefits right yeah that's one thing i wish that we had was like a four oh one k plan or one of those things were they matched what you could save those are really good deals yeah that or retire i don't think we can plan on social security taking care of us so yeah with what they say about how the [population's] changing i think attitudes will have to change to go along with that and that will probably change the insurance benefits too as people get older and still work and they'll need more health care oh yeah does that just supplement like medicare or yeah yeah that's good see i my husband's been self employed and he's worked for uh like a small companies and now he's in a little bit bigger company so we've seen a little bit of every kind of benefit you can have right yeah when we when he was self employed and we had to get our own insurance to get maternity benefits was just ridiculous i mean you you might as well have saved the money you paid every month and paid your own hospital bill at the end of the year or something right yeah yeah it's scary well it was good talking to you all right benefits yes i do i work for the school system richardson school yes it is and uh [retirement's] one of the good benefits and um health care has been a mess and that can be with a large corporation it used to be but i think that's a mess for everybody now isn't it pretty much it keeps yes for the best where it used to be one of your you know you got the whole package with your larger companies and you didn't have the problem yes i think i do i've never worked for a small one so i can't tell you you know but yes i believe the benefits and the pay is much better than you would get in a smaller system right uh_huh uh_huh right right we do have very good resources they're excellent well it's an important aspect of it i feel you know it is it is an important aspect as far as um being having having everything available to you the uh counseling and the whole um uh_huh well probably the major one would be the medical i would like to see a better package for the money you know but i guess we all would and they keep cutting us from the you know they keep cutting from the medical into the dental is so expensive where we used to get it and you used to get the eyes and the whole thing and you don't get any of that any more you know it's all separate and it's all so very high if you do get it and that's very frustrating and i can't imagine how the younger families do it yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i i was just going to say the retirement is fair for teachers but my husband has retirement too and it's not good though we've had to i mean we're building our own you know you have to any more you can't count on companies on that any more that and that's another thing that's changed the the medical and the retirement benefits from large corporations it's kind of it's it's like it was set you know you were really set for life really uh_huh yeah you have to yeah i remember my mother talking in the forties for her father was cut you know they went through this same thing in the forties that they're doing now they were cutting in at forty five and fifty years old and that's what they're doing again it's like a recycle of the whole when they see they're going to have to pay all those benefits and all or it's getting close to retiring they bring in they bring in the younger blood that they don't have to pay as high and oh i do too and the wisdom behind it all it's yeah and you know that's got to that's got to add in all their production the whole works uh_huh yeah yeah well it's cost again go ahead well uh i'm i work at a large company and uh we have quite a quite a few benefits and uh we have uh the best benefit i like is the uh amount of vacation time especially after uh working working there for a long time it really builds up to the amount of vacation time i i think that's one of my best benefits well one thing that i i uh wish uh in a big company there's more bureaucracy and uh less support of uh what you're doing i think and that something that uh is uh probably a benefit of a small company you get more support from the people that you work for yeah you're really thinking of the future yeah yeah i work for the state of florida and uh it's pretty good retirement plan uh we don't get paid very much but uh retirement plan is pretty pretty good yeah did you say you worked for a credit union okay yeah my wife used to work for a credit reunion group they they had a newsletter that went out to all the all the uh credit union c e o and people like that so she was really into the keeping up on what's going on with the credit unions uh it was it was a company uh i think it was called credit union news or something it was based out of uh i think it was [boca] [raton] florida yeah it was pretty uh pretty glossy kind of uh newsletter that comes out uh not too much no yeah just i get what they give you uh that's uh not not uh we not too many choices yeah yeah yeah i guess yeah yeah um okay well okay okay uh well i i work in a actually it's sort of an odd situation right now but uh i have until recently been working in in a uh in a large organization and i currently maintain an office still at at the place even though i i officially quit there a few months ago but it's it's not really a large organization but uh nearly five hundred people how yeah how about you are you that's uh_huh huh yeah not lost in the in the crowd huh oh yeah i i think it it probably the thing is that it's always fairly obvious in a small one right because uh yeah everybody knows what everybody else is doing and and knows that it's it's generally important but uh_huh what what about what about uh advantages of large organizations i mean benefits and things yeah yeah when when i've worked with a with i mean the small things i've worked with really haven't had any uh any consistent you know or any any kind of quality package they just kind of leave you on your own yeah i've i've had my own little business and then i've worked for small businesses and yeah the only ones that i've had large uh uh i mean i've had health care and and and other kinds of benefits with have been large organizations also i worked at the university and that that's a is a very large organization and uh i you know relative to nothing of course you know i mean it i think so uh the question you know i mean it's it's it's handy to have them i just had gotten used to just not having insurance benefits and things uh uh typically let's see uh typically the myself i i was covered myself but my family wasn't you know i had to chip in for them to be covered but it was pretty economical uh especially relative to just buying your own health care package yeah and so you know so that's that's handy uh you know i think that i'm amazed that uh at the one place i was working uh what they calculate to be their overhead uh because of benefits they figure uh i mean something like thirty five forty or fifty percent of of salary and you know which which is pretty amazing uh_huh uh_huh i i think so yeah it really does uh do you get other benefits besides health do you have life insurance and things like that uh_huh right oh uh_huh yeah that's i i just had uh dental insurance for the first time uh from from an employer which i thought was was pretty handy really took advantage of it i think uh do are you finding that that uh the packages uh that your benefits packages are shrinking uh_huh oh uh_huh [copayment] uh_huh right yeah i i mean i all right do you work what do you do oh well do they have good job benefits huh uh_huh no i don't uh i said my husband works on the railroad they've got a lot of benefits but it's expensive uh the insurance is a kick in the tail every month uh_huh well the insurance is good we only have to pay like a hundred dollar deductible per year it's just it's uh it's like a hundred dollars a month yeah well i mean well that's just well this is uh like retirement benefits and it's a bunch of different benefits in one it's not just it's not just medical insurance that's great yeah that's good uh_huh whoops i'm sorry i'm sorry they do i don't know a lot about benefits most of the jobs that i've had you know i don't have a degree i quit college when i first got pregnant with my little boy i plan on going back just i want to wait for my kids to grow up now and uh uh i'm sorry so all i've had is mainly fast food jobs and i worked at a toy store and i worked at t i for a while but it was for manpower so i liked working at t i oh you're in florida oh okay uh_huh [sh] uh_huh well that's great what did you say you did again a a data huh well i took data processing in college instead of computer data well that sounds great though what did you do at t i right right i always hate to feel out of control of anything yeah you played it by ear um uh_huh well me and my husband are we've talked about it we're having six dollars a day taken out of his check for retirement well that's at the t i in sherman or okay well uh um that's about the only thing we're doing for retirement now when i worked i wanted to go to t i i was wanting to become a t i that way i could get some benefits because most the jobs around here you can't get benefits especially if you well if you don't have a degree or something but i'll go back to school one of these days and i will get me uh_huh well i was eighteen and i went and got my g e d i quit the high school i just couldn't stand it and then course i hated it two years after i quit i wish i'd never done it but then i i went and got my g e d and i went to school and i loved college i was making a three point oh average i wasn't having hardly any problems except for with my computer class i did have problems there but uh now i was then i was old enough to know you know well i'm paying for it i've got to you know do something with it but then i wanted to stay home with the babies so well we're having a hard time right now too but it's just who if the kid if kids don't have direction if their mother ain't home directing them through the day kids are growing up wild nowadays my mom had to work and i i can feel the difference um a lot of well my husband had somebody to push him his mother was able to stay home with him more and you know he got his life straight at an early age which i'm not a i never went wild or anything but i still don't know what i want to be when i grow up and i'm twenty seven years old yeah huh uh_huh yeah that's what's important isn't it you have while i when they start going to school now my baby's just three months old and i'm not having any more so i'm going to be there for them at least until they're in the second well until the baby starts to uh kindergarten not preschool which it don't take long it seems like just yesterday that my little boy was born and he's fixing to go to school next year yeah they're all growing up yeah he sure does yeah their medical and dental is real good and like i said they do make it easy for you to that's where a lot of our money is going is toward his retirement but i want we'll like that once you know we get older and we'll need it and like i said that's six dollars a day and oh i haven't really sat down and figured it out guess it'd be pretty easy three times six is what eighteen yeah so it's a hundred and eighty a month yeah no well it's it's like this we don't see it so we don't really miss it yeah now i wish they had that bond here i know that they had that at t i hello okay uh do you work at t i yeah what company are you are you working at all oh okay yeah uh_huh what oh yeah don't ever think of those as a benefit but they sure are yeah what is their sick leave policy is it paid uh do you get penalized for taking it off the reason why i ask that is um t i uh the hourly employees um they have i'm not sure up to five years they have a certain number of days and after five years they have um unlimited uh personal time off but if they miss more than say ten point five hours in a three month period they get penalized for it so really they don't ever huh huh_uh the problem is with that is that we work eleven or we work twelve hour days so no one could even take off a day for pay you know p t o um because they get penalized for it and they lose their certification pay which is like fifty five cents an hour for three whole months so it's really not a very good benefit yeah yeah that's the biggest thing and people come to work sick but when their kids get sick it's like well i can't afford to take off but i have to uh_huh that's true it is it's not really uh consistent yeah i really wish that somebody in big companies or any company would take a hint from like that movie nine to five did you see that where they had the child care right there on the that was so good and that would help the morale of parents i think so much because i hate to see that i mean probably ninety percent of the people that work for me are single parents and they have to you know use child care at least for a couple hours a days so i don't know i i really think a big company needs to take responsibility for that yeah uh_huh yeah yeah that's good i know it's real i don't have kids yet but it's tough um what kind of uh how many vacation days do you get a year that's great for how many years you been have you worked there oh wow that's great uh_huh huh yeah t i isn't doing very well so like i'm i'm negative vacation because i've only worked there three years and i i get five days every six months well every about two three months we shut down for a week because you know there's no demand for our product so yeah and so we've shut down six weeks a year whereas we used to only shut down two and so it's kind of hurt yeah and luckily my boss has maybe you know allowed me to work it off but a lot of people you know go in the hole and uh take you know weeks without pay and it's tough um i don't ever but the people that work for me do yeah i mainly the reason because i'm salary so i don't ever lose pay i mean i just go in debt for vacation so yeah um yeah mainly because i haven't had really had to use it much i mean yeah i have to pay for my husband which is kind of expensive for him i mean it's like sort of yeah um the reason why i don't know much is because i don't real uh i haven't really had to use like my medical i know they increased the deductible last year which kind of hurt and oh and after that they pay like eighty percent and the [dentals] the dental covers quite a bit but like i said i've never really been sick or anything so i've never had to use it huh is that like match savings yeah it's fifty percent matched some companies i know are a hundred percent matched yeah like harris [semiconductors] in florida huh really ours is only up to four percent though yeah because i mean i only put in like a real small amount because it's four percent you know after that you put it in and you get like interest i mean i've saved quite a bit it's helped me a lot but you have to roll it over to an i r a if you ever quit but you know that's still a good deal huh yeah it teaches people to think of the future i think really oh wow that's kind of a rip huh t i didn't even give raises this year so no they gave uh a few bonuses but for the most part no nobody in t i got raises yeah yeah really uh actually it turns out to be an interesting topic because i am now in the middle of a job search graduating here and realizing that one of the things that's not really well represented in benefits often is flexibility because my wife will have some set of benefits where ever she is working and the ability to mix and match in a useful way particularly with things like medical and dental it's something that i've been uh looking for that's amusing yeah yeah we have a similar thing in california and i think that at the moment you can't issue health insurance that doesn't have coverage for substance abuse and certain other mental health issues and the result is a lot of people won't provided at all or over charge yeah uh_huh the other things is they do seem to be willing to spend money in strange ways for instance i know where my wife works she can get for something like five or ten dollars a month sole health insurance but it would cost her an additional sixty or seventy a month to include me on that policy well assuming that we both work at places that feel this way we may very well miss out on the convenience of going to the same place because those two places will never get together and agree okay one of them will pay for all of the uh the dental and optical and the other one will pay for the medical instead it's just very much designed towards self only insurance i don't know if all employers are that way but a lot of them i've seen are yeah well that's pretty good uh_huh that's something this university at least the graduate student negotiated plan was very bad about this idea of low cost alternatives i know in one case there were doctors around who were affiliated with the university who you can go see and all your lab work is covered under their research so in fact you are saving them you know hundreds of dollars in [billings] by going to a research uh physician yet at the same time they will only pay based on eighty percent of the [customary] reasonable charges for the physicians that the and won't take into account the fact that by seeing that doctor you're saving them you know a couple of hundred dollars over going to somebody else and a lot of things like that so one thing i was wondering it was something i have noticed that they don't publicize much a lot of companies in particularly organizations school and government organizations have is legal uh services of some sort huh okay what are the benefits well i i mean i don't even consider like salary a real benefit it just it's kind of a like a side thing i'm really here for you know working with lots of creative people is what i really like about my job that's true yeah you don't don't want to have worry about it you know if if you're worried you don't work as well i know and it just gets worse then people don't don't spend any money right yeah i i just noticed that yeah yeah i know i know exactly how you feel but how can we get people to change it i mean it it kind it kind of requires you know a company taking a risk and they don't want to do that that's true i know i mean our c e o is is you know quite frankly stated that you know we're here to make [stockholders] happy and that's not why i'm working here oh definitely right yeah we're just kind of like losing and it it just seems to be a snowball effect i mean you know we keep losing more right but yes things aren't that secure in software right now either it's kind of a i'm also a also a hardware manufacturer i'm at apple so it's like you know we we notice our product just becoming a commodity and that's really bad we're trying and if it works that'd be great for us but what about you know the rest of the industry yeah well we go on that subject i cause i looked at h d t v but i don't like standards that are on still on a fixed resolution which means it will be eventually outdated also uh_huh everybody's separate uh_huh i'm i'm a co op student at g t r i uh i go to school at georgia tech and we don't have benefits to speak of we don't have health insurance or paid vacation and uh_huh undergrad uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well that's a good idea i had never thought about it that way uh_huh uh_huh yeah right right that's that would be a wonderful idea uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i didn't know that really uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh wow uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh wow [yipe] right oh i'm i'm just not entirely sure i have only been working here for one quarter this is my first quarter here and uh i'm not really all too sure what kind of jobs are available and uh haven't gotten them yet i'm doing it in a few minutes uh and i i i'm going to be doing research for a professor next quarter and see how i like that see uh if research for a school would be something i would consider oh uh it's the georgia tech research institute it's affiliated with the university uh and uh we do research uh the one i'm in the lab i'm in does research in microwaves and antennas and uh we do a lot of research for the federal government yeah i wasn't in central america but uh talking about latin america i kind of i consider latin america to include central and south america and i did live in uh san [polo] brazil for four years uh realistically i yes i don't see the the panama canal that hasn't had a whole lot of [usefulness] to us recently since it's not not really big enough to uh accommodate the the shipping that it once did and uh maybe it would be better that we let the panamanians run it however i think we're certainly justified in uh our actions dealing with uh noriega in this uh_huh no i haven't i have a a little bit i can't say that i'm i would be an an expert on on the region but uh certainly uh i it it gets it there your you've got this this toss up or not not so much a toss up but a a dilemma when when you want a country to have its its um own uh [dominion] or its free [rein] over its its own people and then on the other hand uh the uh the government in power that under what seem what seems to be popular support uh the sandinistas had to a given extent popular uh support um starts making [overtures] to the soviet union and and into what we consider our [sphere] of influence and now we're we're in this dilemma over uh united states is believes in democracy and and self determination where but that on the other hand we believe in self preservation and uh agree with the or not so much agree with but are terribly concerned about uh soviet influence in in what's considered to be the united states [sphere] of the world which is not only you we used to see [spheres] but now we're in a situation where the united states is looks like we're it now uh_huh right well he doesn't care as long as he's feeding his uh his family yeah well in looking if you look at the region in in uh to their [detriment] they came from uh this uh hundreds of years of spanish control and the and the [spaniards] have uh horrible history of corrupt uh government greedy uh [rulers] who have been uh [manipulating] [manipulating] their public for their own their own good i mean if you go back to the kings and and the the [conquistadors] coming in and and the incredibly horrible things they did to the uh the native tribes i mean they make uh they make the things that custer did look like uh like trivial and uh you get oh absolutely and you know we set up an i mean ted teddy roosevelt didn't have the reputation speak [softly] and carry a big stick for uh for nothing and uh right the only the only thing i see about cuba though is uh after fidel [castro] dies i don't think they'll be a communist power anymore i i can't see communism in that country carrying on past him yeah right well i i don't know if maybe communism is the right the right word for it but what we would there would have to be some kind of there there may be a point at which at which you've uh you might want to consider some kind of [socialistic] uh organization or [socialistic] set up to to deal with the problem and then be able to gradually [transform] back to a democracy right right but cocoa leaves sell real well right now it seems yeah absolutely i don't it's going to be hard to um we if you you that that's where your absolutely right is we've got to do something in that region to encourage uh or to make to make him growing bananas profitable again i mean right i've got to watch what i say here i never know when the d i a may be uh listening on my phone right yeah it's tempting it's got to be it's got to be horribly tempting for those those [peasants] yeah yeah you it's not it's not just a matter of uh of having an extra car or having a better car this is a matter for them of of feeding themselves their wife and their family and and you there's a certain degree of honor in being able to feed your family and there's [dishonor] in not being able to do it and no no uh_huh right okay i guess we're on central america have you ever lived in central america do you do you think that that we should have given up the panama canal well there are those that that that think that that that the panama canal has some considerable [strategic] importance particularly for the military interestingly enough my father was who was in world war one and as uh as a civil engineer they they they offered him a commission as a captain if he would uh go in and and uh help with the [defenses] of the panama canal he had worked for united fruit company there and they uh they in fact they had this was in the the late twenties and they in fact used some of the equipment that had been left over and uh he turned them down it it's interesting that that most people don't realize how small the canal is have you ever been there it's it's really i i haven't been there i've been to been to salvador and and uh in fact we went back to visit some friends of of my fathers that we went in fifty seven i guess and interestingly enough the canal is quite small and and realistically could be [sabotaged] quite quite easily the thing i find interesting though is that uh is the whole colonial approach and and and do we do we support the sandinistas or or do we support uh you know when they thought uh they thought that nicaragua if you gave them a free election they would vote for the will you uh did you ever studied the the political makeup there in in in nicaragua well the interesting part about it is that if realistically it was economic i don't know if you read any of the history on where the panama canal but there was an option to build it across nicaragua uh and uh there were uh there's a big there's a big lake and um from a technical standpoint it wouldn't have been a lot more difficult to have built it in nicaragua but the the united states uh had some and i've forgotten what the political influence was but there were economic ties then the issue of of if if it's in the economic interest of the united states uh do we go in and and [prevail] and and uh in other words do we make the world safe for democracy but if there's no economic benefit and i think particularly if you're if you're looking at the at the at the [peasant] uh whether he's in central america regardless of where he is is his life is his life better off under communism or or uh or democratic government you look at salvador where the yeah and and the question is does the government make a difference if they'll mostly leave him alone uh and i think that's the difficulty they that that we have that uh it it reality doesn't make uh doesn't make any difference if he has no income and apparently even some of our [alleged] uh central american leaders that uh are mostly democratic have done some pretty terrible things so it's uh it is it is interesting that that you know we we look at the [exploitation] and and and then we accuse some other people of exploiting them and and americans have uh have a pretty good reputation of exploiting you know we basically the panama canal we went in and and took it and we stole it fair and square i think is uh well what's going to be interesting is to the see what the economic impact of of uh of the the region uh you know at the moment it the tremendous drug traffic through there but uh the idea of of uh what's the what's america's role there and it it uh with with other things going on it it seems to have lessened but you've still got uh cuba that accepts [exerts] some influence well when you take a a situation where i think in particular in salvador where there is a significant under class excuse me and that uh you know having a a lot of difficulty uh surviving uh the question is would they you know would they be better off under communism and i wouldn't don't know that i would advocate communism but uh the question is can uh can you can uh can a democracy uh afford the it's like the street people that are starting to show up all other the u s is that that's essentially an underclass and when you get enough of them uh you know communism would feed them all well that yeah if the guys got some incentive if he's got uh you know if he if he can raise enough uh coffee and bananas to uh where he's got something to protect other you know whether he can [export] or at least uh set up trade and all then democracy of a considerable interest yeah as well as some other various things that are growing in tropical environments yes but the but the question is you know if somebody offered you you know a thousand dollars a day to to grow something in your backyard would you do it well not that we could be bought but uh well of course everything we're saying is being recorded and of course of course particularly if you're hungry uh starving to death is not a not a whole lot of fun either and that uh and and you know when somebody comes in an offers i think that's one of the real problems particularly when when the uh religious organizations you know the catholic church has been accused of a lot of things in reality i think what they were doing is basically going in and trying to feed some people and help them protect themselves not that they i'm i'm not sure the catholic church is is is particularly political but you know if good morning no no go ahead oh very good because actually um when i was in college i visited mexico several times i was in the peace corps and um peru but but recently i have been following the middle east rather than central america right right uh_huh uh_huh did that have um so you don't you don't feel that that we were um exploiting in the sense of we were [benefiting] and they weren't uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh did we tend to um change their attitudes like sometimes when americans go into foreign countries they tend to [flaunt] american things [americanism] um consumer products t v the whole works uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i was in peru but um i there weren't as i recall or at least i wasn't aware of that many americans there except for a very heavy concentration of peace corps volunteers this was when the peace corps first are started and it was one of the big targets and um i don't i don't think at that time at least peace corps was uh an obnoxious group in the sense that that we were very controlled regarding number of days off and and you couldn't just take up take off and leave your group and go explore and and things like that but and i was working actually in the savings and loan program so that was quite specialized although i was living in the [slums] i was really working with the middle class i was up in [arequipa] and um uh_huh so i don't have any idea um probably not i mean there were i was uh peru thirteen which meant there were twelve groups before mine that had gone in and and some of them were quite big in the sense they were community development and they were building schools and doing co [ops] and things like that health um [inoculation] and and things no no i believe they did because um some of some of the the peace corps uh that i knew of did marry [peruvians] and have been back and every now and then some news filters in that they went to see some of the old things and of course the savings and loan program um that was that you know that that just continued to grow in fact after my group i mean we were just a very small specialized group too to get that going and spread and then of course peace corps [bowed] out of that because that's uh uh something that [nationalized] very quickly and the same with the co [ops] right uh_huh yeah i've you know some of the programs i would have concern about like um the language teaching you know i mean why should we push english and a lot of people were down there teaching english and when they talked about [hungary] or someplace one of the eastern law countries [requesting] peace corps to teach language you know to me that's a little bit [marginal] i did teach economics at the university one night a week and the textbook was in english but basically i taught it in spanish because i mean i really didn't see the point in their knowing stuff [rotely] and writing it on a test good morning uh okay go ahead yeah i understand the topic this morning is uh our policy in latin america and you know what we've been doing down there so uh as you indicated you don't have too much input into the area it it just so happens that uh our daughter in law is panamanian and uh we have been in panama and i have worked in el salvador and uh we visit mexico occasionally so yeah we we do have a little information on it here but uh oh uh_huh yeah yeah it does seem to have quieted down there just a little bit that's that's for sure no i the u s policy uh towards central america as far as uh well i kind of go back to to the el salvador thing because texas instruments had a a plant down there for a while and i worked in there for a little while and at that particular time let's let's see that was seventy three seventy four kind of before the the uh the civil war really picked up down there and u s policy at that particular time there was of course military assistance to uh to the government itself you know anything that's that's anti communist you know we kind of had a tendency to be pro it don't matter what their [excesses] were and i believe at the time that i was down there that uh the government uh the [salvadorian] government you know really gotten out of hand yet the uh right wing death squad type situation i believe that that was beginning to form but i don't i i wasn't really aware of it's being you know terribly uh you know at the time that that i was down there i think that really kind of developed a little bit later on but uh our policies seem to be pretty much one of uh you know trying to setup businesses down there and use the one resource anyway that salvador had plenty of and that was people we didn't seem to be going in and taking anything out of the country other than just it's it's labor because everything that t i did anyway we we shipped in and it was worked on down there assembled and then sent back here so i didn't feel that we really exploiting them any no uh in the particular [incidence] that i was aware of now t i wasn't the only ones in there [playtex] was in there was uh several other companies and uh of course we kind of concentrate on there wasn't much to take out of the country i felt like we're going in and taken all their um their gold or oil or bananas or coffee or anything like that because uh it just the only thing that they had a great abundance of was uh you know human beings and uh yeah i understand what you say there was a uh the time that i was down there i stayed quite a a bit at the uh uh one of the big hotels san salvador and at the time i thought there ought to be a law against american tourists because they for the most part tend to be the most obnoxious as a as a group and i saw this in panama also uh-oh you know it's it's the uh the almost stereotype you know [flowery] shirt shorts camera hanging around their neck you know demanding this that and the other thing you know we're we're here and we want this and we want that and that sort of thing that's that's the stereotype that's very strong down there you know the the the you know that sort of thing i i i believe those of us who were working down there got a little bit more [appreciation] for you know the local uh culture i really don't believe that we were quite that bad but yet they were having to deal directly with uh you know with the uh the local people and uh but boy there is a there is a bad uh uh you know the old [brash] or ugly american type situation and i saw incidences in the hotel where i just wanted to go over and crawl in the corner and say oh my god those are those are not americans they can't be but there are and uh of course now i i do have to i remember one case where we had some canadians in there who were every bit as bad but i mean it i think it's just kind of the north american situation in panama they've been used to americans down there for so darn long but i didn't see quite as much of that sort of thing as panamanians are just about as as uh as as americans as far as uh creature comforts you know they're uh they're they're every bit uh i i know when my my son was in the air force and he was stationed in panama and he married a panamanian girl and when she came up here uh you know she's except for the language situation some of the cultures she's just about an american you know is as far as t v and and you know the the [moneymaking] part of it and all that matter of fact if anything she's worse but uh uh it it just there's little [enclaves] down there where you know americans have a lot of influence and the local population kind of um you know sort of accepts that but i've also seen the other side of it too well you were in peru uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh what uh what area did you live in oh okay yeah i've heard of it well is are they is peace corps still active down in there uh_huh oh has those influences lasted do you know whether the the things that that you and your groups before you did did those did those live on or were they [reabsorbed] or how uh_huh uh_huh well that's that was kind of the the aim wasn't it to get it started and then have it taken up by the oh okay so you know well that's i had wondered sometimes i knew that there was a lot of a lot of effort and a lot of work went into a lot of that and i just wondered if if it lasted and if it took you know like uh uh_huh oh yeah my brother in law teaches at uh northern illinois university and they were in china here a couple of years ago and he was over there at uh the university of [shah] and and teaching well we haven't really heard that much in the news lately about uh u s involvement in latin america since uh all this middle east crisis began so i haven't really paid that much attention like since back in august when all of the news and all of the media began to focus in on uh iraq and the so the last thing that i remember hearing that much about is the iran [contra] scandal that happened in the reagan presidency can you think of anything else that's happened recently uh_huh well the only uh references that i have seen lately has been uh in part of the [overmilitarization] of iraq was due to companies selling them arms and things and and they made references to in the past how we have given arms to uh nicaragua and to other places in latin america and that those might turn around and [haunt] us someday i mean not not to this large scale as iraq but that whenever we give arms to people as we did and as we sold arms to pardon me to iraq when we wanted them to fight iran and then uh and then it turn around and uh_huh uh_huh and i know when i spent the time that i've studied in mexico uh spanish was one of my majors in college that uh there was a kind of a lot of resentment there towards america about uh like you say using them our interest there is you know what profit we could make off of any kind of relationship with them and that we weren't normally very interested in them and they have in other in most latin american countries they there are a lot of the kind of problems that we've fought for in other countries you know that they have corruption and and they don't have uh i mean there's just very few really modern cities uh_huh well that's right because that's just so much of the way that they make their money and so many communities have uh have to have that for farming and they don't look at it so much as you know uh_huh that's right and i think it's really very sad that north of the border you know the united states and canada is so different from the from south america and central america there's really a disparity between the uh what a i would call civilization of the countries you know uh_huh yes it's really kind of sad and that we would go all the way to iraq and that we would be very concerned with the situation between jerusalem and uh israel and the middle east arab countries and and when we have when we have a lot of problems right in our own back door um so i guess we've kind of neglected latin america recently yeah fairly recently well that's really sad i hadn't thought about that in a long time well i guess then i will go but i made me stop and think a minute about not worrying so much about the middle east crisis i know that it's not settled but there are other areas that we could focus our attention on well thank you you have a good day bye bye no i would agree with you we haven't had too much but uh historically we've always uh almost been like a big brother to in and to the latin american area and uh almost used them i i i feel uh i think something will have to be done down there very soon about uh about mexico and and uh some of the other areas but but with the persian gulf as you said it's just uh been very quiet i i keep pretty close tabs on the paper and you don't hardly see a unless it's there and we're just not seeing it uh_huh well that's uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i i agree we're the largest [munitions] [producer] in the world and so uh there's a lot of money to be made there and it's uh be very difficult to to cut it back to a a level where it should be and and uh it will come back to [haunt] us it seems to come in cycles uh_huh right right and the probably the biggest problem down there is that's where the that's the drug entry points and their economy is of several of the countries especially columbia is so built on the on on the drugs that uh our our little war on drugs has really been [laughable] it's just a you know such a small amount and it it just it uh cuts off just a [trickle] and uh if if we can't get a handle on that through some through some uh method i don't know where that will be another big problem right right and as long as we're the largest uh consumer then uh this is the market if we can cut back the usage then uh maybe it will have to go someplace else uh_huh uh_huh yeah right yeah we're just so much wealthier and uh and uh there has to be resentment built up and that's where uh leaders can use uh use that whenever the opportune moment [arises] yeah that's right our own hemisphere but we've that's been uh that's been the way it's always been so uh very much so except when we need them you know when they found oil in mexico then we got very friendly with them again yeah um okay sure did always yes ma'am you too dear bye so how do you feel about our policy in latin america yeah well do you think that's do you think that's right do you think we should direct the government yeah yeah well i have a friend that's uh his descendants are from uh uh nicaragua and uh very i mean it's like his mother his mother came over and uh he you know i just get sorry feelings for people that their family came from there and how they feel about you know our intervention and their government and stuff like that and he he was all for it because it's just like you say uh there's so many people there that that get the kind of control that's bad you know and that their governments can become so corrupt and it's like well you know i use to feel like well they they should work their way you know they should should be able to work their self out of it or you know why why why [intervene] in another country's you know problems and things like that why why should we be the ones that have to do it and things like that but i think just a lot of times if we don't then then it then that influence will affect our country too for one and for two you know that it does help i mean you know i think the people in those country do want our help the people that are under conditions that are you know not favorable to this their rights so yeah but uh i wish we didn't have to i mean i'd rather even if a country chooses a government that's not you know exactly the kind of government that we have you know or or as in complete opposition to it at least it's their choice as long as long it's one that's that that makes since so to speak you know it is a government that stays in power that can stay in power but it seems like most of them don't you know oh yeah so you think like c i a influence and our money over there yeah or or government aids and stuff well then how can you how can you say as far as like in uh europe as far as the the [toppling] of those kinds of governments you know like i mean uh_huh yeah but we don't we're not intervening in that or do you think that we are to the degree that we are causing are and yeah see i i agree with that yeah i i agree that that the communication that now that communication has become so much more widespread and you know worldwide that people are realizing hey we don't have it so good and let's stand up you know uh this is ridiculous we're living with these kind of conditions in a world that's advancing as fast as it is that uh i think people are just saying no way we don't want anywhere of this yeah yeah well i mean i don't mean to well i guess i do in a way sometimes i think a religion has a lot to do with that i think that that uh because of those countries a lot you know where such catholic influence and i think the catholic religion itself was was such a dominant factor as far as keeping the people down so to speak but uh but but see but i don't agree with that because the catholic religion as far as through the ages has been the rule so to speak you know they are the ones that set that set a lot of the rules and they are the ones that do keep the people down i mean when you a religion that most of the people go to church and they don't understand when anything is being said yet they're yet they're expected to bow down to it i think that keeps people in sort of line you know well when when it use to be latin i'm just saying that the old church yeah which it's not that way now but i think that there is just that i think that it's just latin countries are slower in coming around well latin uh they still didn't understand it though i don't think because i i [descend] from that and i you know i don't can't i don't understand latin and i'm of spanish descent so um i i just think that has something to do with why [latinos] or tend to be you know the the more [meek] you know they tend to be more like not stand up for their rights as much they're not really sure of what they are i don't think well i mean how can you contrast the europeans and their [vocalism] on their rights to to say the people in latin america i mean why are they why are they not as vocal or why do they not you know stand up so to speak for their rights uh_huh uh i don't agree with that i don't agree because i think that they are pretty vocal about it in in uh africa i think they've made a lot more chances they they've their very vocal so what's the difference yeah so what makes the difference between say south america and the rest i mean south africa and it is rest of africa yeah yeah i think it maybe has to do with a a lot to do with education because you look at the uh european countries i think they tend to be more educated much more educated than than africa or the latin american countries uh_huh well i know that russia they're they're [comparably] more better educated than we are in our country yeah yeah in our country yeah yeah well that's just it though good education is it good education it may be free but is it good education and that's just it are we willing to pay for it you know i mean a lot of people [bitch] and [moan] about the taxes and all but so are they willing to pay for you know quality education you know so you know and yet they yet people get very frightened when they see the japanese moving in and the russians moving in certain areas of technology you know that we use to dominate and it's like well you know they're educating their people to higher degrees than we do so you're going to have to expect it so what you are you willing to compromise a little and and pay pay some take some of that money out of your pocket and pay for good quality education so i don't know but i i oh i'm all in favor of it yeah no i uh i think we've been doing a pretty good job you know not uh not taking advantage of our you know of the financial dependence that most of the countries have on us you know uh i mean we could direct the government even more than we have been i don't think we've been doing too bad um well i think that uh as a whole that the being that the drug problem the drug industry can uh bring so much money to a country i think that if it wasn't for the united states government matching that the the drug uh [cartels] or whatever would control most the central and latin america just that uh money is power and uh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right exactly yeah but uh yeah well sometimes that's that's america doing that too you know we we fall out of uh [agreements] with certain leaders and then amazingly enough the country starts turning against our leader you know it's uh that and uh that and yeah america starts talking then about removing bases and and whatnot and stuff like that and people right yeah i think that has a lot of things to did with uh um yeah that was uh i'm i'm really wondering whether that's going it settle down or not because on one hand you have you know that the you know the soviet government of course [mistreating] a lot of the uh [slovak] countries and then on the other hand you have well they they were feeding us you know so uh i don't know really what's going to happen oh yeah i think we're getting quite a put it this way i think no i think the people are [revolting] themselves and we're uh allowing it to happen yeah right uh_huh yeah i think uh central america has always been one of those places where people are more passive you know where it's always the minority that are are trying to make the country better i thought it was the other way around they were always having to meet in the [catacombs] and all this so all the [persecution] that they're sort of use to it it's been sort of like you know i don't quite understand that do they even understand what's being said oh yeah the old church yeah well they actually understood it is in america where it was hard latin you know is very very very close to spanish yeah uh yeah uh i never really thought of it that way i don't know could be the the economic still you know the there's the poverty level is certainly uh you know much worse in the latin american countries i mean you can say that about africa too i think it has something to do with the poverty level because africa is certainly not a catholic uh country and yet you know they have the same problem where you know where kings and such well in south africa yeah in south africa i think they are but yet you know [idi] [amin] was you know in power for so long uh racial i think or like you say maybe communication of knowing that hey up in other english colonies or previous english colonies everything is equal and yet down there it's not you know i think communication does have a lot to do with it you know in education maybe i don't know about education because the black community is still not very educated down there so i think it is communication it's just [oopsy] uh_huh yeah that's true you know that i don't know whether uh actually i i've always wondered whether how the education system works in the russian countries the republics you know really that's good in a way you know uh something we compete with uh and i've been sort of disappointed how that they they say literacy rate has gone down you know that's sort of upsetting to think that we're richer and yet everybody is intellectually poorer in our country yeah that is really upsetting and and considering it's free you know i mean good education is really still free uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh uh_huh uh okay [dee] are you familiar with the latin american policies really yeah it's not mine either but uh i know i know our policy like in nicaragua i am familiar with that because we have uh some friends that live on the [nicaraguan] border and they are missionaries there and they they live there and they have to travel by boat forty five minutes to get to their car and stuff and uh i know that they helped a lot of those [sandanistas] refugees coming across the border and they [housed] them and stuff they have been down there about three years now and they wrote that it's kind of weird they have bats in their roof but the bats eat the bad [spiders] so they leave the bats you know so uh_huh yeah i think their policy with them that though is uh i don't know i think i wish we would have just i'm not that up on the policy of ways i know that's kind of old but i don't know i just i'm glad that the [sandanistas] aren't in power anymore because i think that they were very wicked and uh probably some of the biggest drug dealers that the world has probably ever seen and i feel like most of the leaders in latin america are probably you would be safe to say that they were just very very you know big into drugs right uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah they need to have more checks and balances in their government to get rid of the corruption but i think first though i don't know they need to i think they need the repentance on the leadership of the different nations for all their uh you know the atrocities that they commit and the drug dealings and in the just in the drug crimes because i feel like a lot of the leadership in those nations are so engrossed in the drug crimes that until they [repent] or they are moved from power that you know because there are so many of them that the next one to come up if you just knock one off and then have another one and i know a lot of those nations there's uh brazil i know is like forty percent [evangelical] christian not just go to church but you know really on fire for god and they are just [surpassing] america latin america by the drugs you know it's just incomprehensible and uh so i just think that i think that god is going to honor that and that he is going to put in some good leadership and i know the president of i believe costa rica is a christian and he goes to no guatemala because he goes to [virgo] church in guatemala city the church is in real close relationship with him and he is a former president of guatemala he's an [elder] at [virgo] church and you know that that god is doing something and he is raising up some leaders and the people want him back as president bad but they have a rule in guatemala that he can't have another term and so the the people are trying to [override] that i mean not just the christians but all the people because they see when a [righteous] man is in authority the people [rejoice] yeah right uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh i know that costa rica they don't allow anybody to come that uh to come any uh what do you call what do you call immigrants they don't allow anything like that like i could not go to costa rica and live as an american citizen they would not permit me to live there to work they wouldn't their jobs are there for costa [ricans] they don't allow people to move in like less nations you know take the job no they don't take any i mean i couldn't even go there my husband had to receive all this special permission to go so even with uh you know in uh inner company you know transfer or something and i have another friend in uh costa rica that she was born there she's costa rican i guess i do know a little bit i went to mexico city one time and stayed i have been there twice and stayed and that [aw] that was just really sad but a lot of it though is their debt i think that we should not loan them anymore money that if we still want to give them money give them money quit loaning it to them you're not going to get it back don't be indebted to anybody don't be the [loaner] or [borrower] it's just not good we need to if we feel like we need to give them money then give it to them but quit loaning all the money out which i don't think we are loaning anymore now but that's how we got into a problem if we got the we have we went in the hole by us loaning them all of these billions of dollars that's common sense you could just look at it and say they're not going to be able to pay us back uh_huh right uh_huh yeah we we are it's like we are partly responsible for their problems by loaning them all that money that was really stupid on our part to even loan it to them you don't loan money to people like that i mean if you feel like you need to give them something to help them out fine but you don't go making billions of dollars of loans in to people that you can just look at the situation yeah and know that they are going to be capable of paying us back and that puts a [bondage] on them it makes you know pressure on the nation and on the people and on the leadership and makes their inflation go up and it's just a big mess no but i knew people i was there before that but i knew people i got a letter from a friend of mine that i had met there that who who the apartment building was destroyed and they were living in a tent so it's kind of weird you know to these people who were on u s dive the mexican diving we went to the pool together and watched them dive and all this so they were you know just normal people weren't [squatters] or poor people or anything that uh i did i knew all of my friends there but none of them that i know of got killed in it but uh they're all christians though god really protected them see that broke out a [revival] in mexico city that c b s news and a b c never told you about there's been a real [revival] in mexico city since that earthquake because there's a lot of you know there's a lot of sin in those nations and a lot lots of witchcraft a lot of witchcraft a whole lot of witchcraft so a lot of it in the name of christianity oh yeah there's a lot you know they call themselves christians but you know they are over there doing witchcraft and stuff and just a whole lot of the generational things too like the [mayans] and the [incas] you can't find a trace of them because god totally destroyed them for how wicked they were and yet they are [revered] and honored and almost [worshiped] by so many people even now in america you know we wouldn't know the truth with all of indian groups that were totally removed from the face of the earth because of how wicked they were i've been down to the [pyramids] and i have climbed to the top of the [pyramid] where they used to take a beating heart out of a young thirteen year old boy and they hold it up to the sun god and that's pretty of heavy duty i don't think so the little box is black on the top of the [pyramid] in the sun it's black so yeah you can't really tell but it was kind of weird you know you think wow there is where they did sacrifices to false gods uh at that time i kind of did it really impressed me just you know feeling but i wasn't a christian when i went there but uh i think that a lot of those those you know generational things i think that god sees i'm praying you know that keeps the christians that are beginning to rise up there to be able to pray because that does affect that things you know in your background yeah to a point it's not my best subject yeah it's a whole whole different culture or it it's weird down there because there's always lizards and things running around that people live there they just they take it for granted and it's like we go down there on vacation it's like oh how can these people live with these lizards and like bats in their house very very corrupt like the panamanians are were very corrupt the thing about it though is the panamanians is a lot of servicemen down there a lot of a lot of american servicemen are involved because i guess there was a big big uh scam that that all these guys up thousands of servicemen got caught for running a drug ring so it's it's like everybody is into it it's just greed human greed interestingly in honduras it's very pro american and we have i my girlfriend used to uh be in the navy and she was based uh based in panama in honduras very uh uh pro american and there's a lot of men i don't know how many american uh soldiers are there but there's a lot i mean they uh and you can't the american government you can't trust them either because you think you don't know how corrupt they are i mean they keep people in power like the [shah] of iran and things like that i mean it's the lesser of two evils they will probably say this is the lesser of two evils but i don't know how corrupt the [honduran] government is but the yeah good see that's the thing that it's going have to that's the [undoing] of everything and it's the we have no morals when we talk about the crime and all that in the city it's just the kids have no morals that's the thing that will eventually you know if anyone is going to be saved it is having a good moral background and it's funny you mention costa rica because they are just they are one of the most successful and peaceful countries in central america so i was reading an article in the uh national geographic and i don't know i don't think they have any more money than any of the other countries they don't have oil or anything and they don't have big tourism so maybe it is their faith that enables them to keep the crime out they don't they don't probably take a lot of refugees from other countries either yeah also uh uh mexico uh we will loan the money in uh a lot of the higher the higher people were just stealing it and building these beautiful homes and nice ranches and things so we are we're suckers they know they're not going to pay it back did you go to mexico city uh anywhere near when the earthquake hit oh i can imagine oh really yeah is is there still blood [stains] on the [altar] or has it worn away through the years do you get [spooked] you feel or do you get [butterflies] in your stomach when you go there because well thanks for being home uh on the weekend i uh i'm actually working at night and uh there very few people that are on the list for calls uh on the weekends nights are are you part of the school system out there uh the reason i said that because i've had about uh three calls and my daughter had one too from different students out of north carolina i guess they pass the names amongst your computer students or whatever oh is that great great oh is that right that's wonderful oh yeah i talked to one we're not on the subject of course i talked to one i think he had a whole bunch of calls he had a roommate that had calls and everything he had way more twice as many calls as as i've made uh and i i'm of course we at t i just hoping it works out that the new products that they come out will uh sell like gang books [busters] really okay you first on the subject what do you think about latin america latin america yeah oh really t i had a place i'm not too sure i don't think they do anymore down i think it was [campinas] i'm not sure and uh i guess we were selling parts to the automotive industry or whatever and they had quite a few uh locations not quite a few several in latin america i think the one in new mexico is closed and i think the one in in brazil is closed but i i don't know why that is a problem down there and i guess the crime rate is terrible up here too and uh an some people say go to new york but i don't i don't have an answer to the crime rate it's sad that is a sad situation i i'd like to go down to mexico you know and i keep hearing that you know the government and and the crime rates pretty high too that that is sad uh not that we can uh sell any great program we have with crime but uh i think uh i'm kind of like you i don't have any strong opinions on it i guess maybe that's our biggest problem we have with our our neighbors down there is that we don't have any we have more i guess ties we in the united states have more ties to europe and everything and we don't really aren't that close to everyone in south america i don't really know why though right right yeah i know that i saw in a book i was reading a spanish book uh not that i read spanish you know i just you know reading some spanish words and there was a comment in there about the mexicans don't really want us to say we're americans they would like to say that we're north americans because they're americans too you know and i guess that's true we don't think of any one else but i guess we're kind of uh the smart [asses] in the world i suppose uh or of america anyway we think of ourselves as the only americans when they're americans too as mexicans yes that that no no i know yeah no i mean they were saying that of us that we're the north americans and they're americans they they we always say we're americans and they they want us to say we're the north americans we're not americans we're north americans and they're south americans yeah whatever i i don't want to make i read it somewhere though it's not my point i guess so no no they they were lucky enough to have some oil what ten years ago an and they they blew all that and borrowed more money than they can pay back now and uh uh so they're not exactly business men i do think we should deal more with them i don't i do have a lot of sympathy in that we're here in texas uh for the language you know is very foolish i'm relatively familiar with texas school system and we should teach spanish at least in uh grammar school you know four or five grades of it so that we can speak spanish i think that helps when you certainly can speak their language uh and there are problems with you know the wet back problem you know for everyone knows what we're talking about say wet back problem and then we should somehow uh and i think the governments are working on that to try to have some uh businesses uh at the borders of both sides so that you can you don't have this problem of them trying to come up here an to to get the jobs you know there there may be some organized way to do this i i do feel for them uh they are very envious of us or they wouldn't be coming up here you know risking a lot not that they're risking their lives of course but risking a lot uh getting thrown back i guess is all that uh happens you probably don't see that where we see it you know once a month i'm sure in san antonio they see it more often than that okay well you see it saw it out there then too uh_huh yeah i think a a common factor to a lot of problems both whether it be crime if if you want to jump on that is mostly uh poverty uh and i think a lot of their problems is poverty if we could uh uh the problems we have in this country is is a lot of it's poverty whether it's the people aren't trying hard enough to get out of poverty i that's another story but uh uh it is sad there there's so much down in all of south america uh so much potential you know we're t i of course is is really pushing world markets in their products and they're they're mostly in in europe now and in in in the [orient] japan and singapore now just announced building a plant in singapore uh they're in taiwan and japan and they're they haven't had what that much luck in south america and there's got to be a lot of potential for business down there for the products certainly that we make and everything and there's got to be trade i guess that's some of the answer i guess is business uh uh and i try to be an [optimist] and say well that that's one way is to help any problem whether it be crime or certainly poverty obviously is to is to get some business going between each other and we need we need to do more of that uh somehow and encourage more business between us they've got to have a lot of resources i would think an enormous amount of of well potential that way a lot of it of course is hot and [jungle] and all that but uh there's got to be a lot of potential down there what are you taking in school i didn't ask you that what are you taking in school oh you're an instructor yeah you're an instructor yeah you said that's great are you teaching computer science you said what were you saying you were teaching there great great right i of course i work at t i and i'm a little puzzled as to why when they get my voice one time why that isn't enough i mean i'm i'm i'm getting a kick out of the whole program but uh there's going to be i guess thousands i don't know how many thousands or tens of thousands of these recordings and i wonder how they're going to analyze them whether it would be listening to them or analyzing i they've got to be analyzing with a a voice recorder some how uh_huh right oh yes i know they change with age i know mine changes uh has changed uh although you you never found your your voice echoes in your own head which is makes it different than what it really sounds to other people uh i'm sure singers and professional people know that and you always hear your own voice in recordings and say my god that's that's not obviously that's not me you know but uh i know your voice in your own head [resonates] a different way uh go ahead you comment on it yeah i'm glad that you're in the business that i t i gotten with their speak and spell and everything i've told my wife that one of the reasons they're doing it is because eventually you'll be able to talk to your computer you wouldn't have to have a keyboard you'll be able to just give it commands and i'm sure they have some of that now and not not in computers but a lot of potential of course for handicapped people uh_huh yeah well sometimes i'm home and sometimes i'm not but if i am it's always fun to talk i am as a matter of fact i'm at uh north carolina state yeah i think i was the one who did that actually yeah i had a uh i teach a course in voice i o systems so i know uh you know i know about this project so i got my students to sign up and uh apparently a number of them have been participating uh_huh yeah uh let's see the subject is latin america i don't know whether i have any real profound thoughts about that i actually was planning a trip to latin america and i got warned off by some people they say peru can't be traveled to and the crime rate in brazil makes it not a pleasant place to go and so on and so forth yeah yeah i i don't understand it either although i i think a lot of south americans regard the united states as as [bullying] and uh that's certainly from a historical point of view would be true i mean certainly we took far more from mexico than saddam hussein ever dreamed of taking in in his [wildest] dreams from his neighbors yeah well i think they're going to have that's a tough row for them to to hoe because i think most of the world is going to regard uh citizens of the united states as americans and citizens of mexico as mexicans and they can stand on their heads if they want too but i don't think that they're going they're going to change that and and and really i mean north americans i think are when you say that even i i mean i tend to think of americans and canadians i just don't think of mexicans as being north americans although i guess strictly speaking they are oh i see i don't know yeah well it's it's so interesting i i just don't think [mexico's] problems are going to be cured by [semantics] yeah yeah well i grew up in los angeles and uh in fact i drove a cab when i was a graduate student so i i knew uh the hispanic part of l a pretty well and certainly you know knew that problem knew you know knew about apartment houses that would have eight or ten or twelve people living in them sleeping in the same bed in shifts and all that and uh it was it was pretty wild yeah yeah yeah yeah uh i'm sorry well i am actually yeah yeah i'm the i'm the teacher i give as it were yeah i'm in computer science and uh very interested in voice systems and in speech recognition but of course this project is really one to collect a data base of of uh of casual speech uh in an attempt to get some kind of a model of what speech is like yeah well they record these and then somebody [transcribes] them so that they they have uh they have a speech signal and what and what is said and they have a they're able to average it over a number of different occasions because peoples voices change a lot even from morning to evening and that's uh a big problem in speech recognition yeah yeah right well what do you know about latin american policies uh_huh huh are you uh relating this uh to the uh affair we've got going on in haiti right now right that that's just it right i guess my concern you know no matter which no matter which side we take we're going to have [supporters] and we're going to have uh [antisupporters] i guess for lack of better term and uh like you said they're such small countries that we're bound to upset somebody but we seem to be lacking the ability to take a stance right right that's true sure yep that's about the lump sum of it well um i was speaking with a a woman from i believe she was from the honduras or guatemala or somewhere in there no she was from el salvador and uh she was from a relatively wealthy family and when uh the [contras] came into power of course with uh-oh gosh darn what's his face he's in in florida jail now marcos uh no he's marcos is philippines well you know who i'm talking about yeah i i know it uh anyway when he came into power he basically just took everybody's property you know just assigned it to himself right right and uh so she's been a real strong supporter of the sandinistas and has been trying to back the u s government in that respect and in that respect i have to agree that i think we're taking the right stance uh because they were a democracy turned uh yeah right basically a dictator fascist sure well what do you think of uh this uh u s free trade agreement we're working on with mexico uh_huh uh_huh mexico they're i know they're trying they're really trying the mexican government is trying and a lot of the larger mexican businesses are trying to oh make themselves [americanized] i guess and uh which is great because that's what they basically need to do the big problem with the united states is we have our basic nine to five schedule you know and we don't have the [siesta] and there's the cultural differences is what's is what's kind of it's what's really hurting uh the mexican people because they've had their way of life and we've had our way of life and uh well i think they're kind of ambivalent really uh i just have a feeling that we've kind of talked out of both sides of mouths down there like we do in some other situations you know we we don't know half the time we don't know who to support that and you know maybe it's maybe it's tough for a big powerful nation to deal with with uh countries like that that depend on us so much without you know just telling them running their country for them but it's got to be tough but i mean uh uh you sure you still have to you know let them know how you feel yeah it worries me that uh the economy of so many countries in in south america and central america depend on something that damages people like the you know like cocaine from columbia and uh you know of course i i'm sure we have some enemies down there who wouldn't care what happened to us but but that is that's a tough deal and it i don't think that maybe i maybe it's you know i'm reflecting how i feel about it but i have a feeling that we that we really don't understand basically the the the competing factions in lot of those countries and i mean they've been [hammering] for the last you know ten centuries and it's still going on and uh we we dabble in it just enough to make both sides angry at us some how some times yeah yeah yeah yeah um well i'm blank on it i can see his face forget his name yeah kind of [nationalized] it for himself yeah dictator yeah and it seems like those countries are so easily susceptible to that kind of thing it just you know unstable well i think it's long [overdue] uh i just you know there's so much difference in in the economies of the two countries i'm not you know i have a problem uh with whether it's going to work or not you know there's uh it seems like there's and i this may be unfair to mexico but it seems like there's a lack of honesty in in foreign policy a lot of the times yeah yeah yeah i think their their version of the good old boy network going that uh you know has a lot yeah uh so the thing is i traveled to uh i traveled all over uh south america a few years ago when i was in college and uh picked up a lot of history and uh and uh a lot of cultural knowledge from that experience uh have you had any experience with it or have you read or have you any interest in it well it was interesting for me i hadn't taken much uh history or any classes or anything on it at school and uh the person i was traveling with knew a lot about it uh and she kind of explained a lot of things that were going on there but uh uh it was interesting to to see a lot of uh the history and how they've sort of developed into some of the patterns that each of the countries have been through when i was traveling around down there uh_huh yeah there was a perception particularly in brazil and argentina that the united states had was really to blame for a lot of the economic oppression that was suffered down there because uh something like after the war we gave all sorts of special trade preferences to europe to help them recover and completely ignored the south american beef and and what other industry they had down there it was sort of the united states that was kind of choosing their fate you know who would make it and who wouldn't yeah yeah huh yeah yeah uh in fact a lot of those same sort of stereotypes [impressions] i had before i traveled around down there and one of the things i learned was that there is an incredible amount of diversity especially from country to country but even within countries you know you you've got uh uh different races uh in in the [andean] countries you have a big uh indian race you know and mexico has a lot of that and that's why you know you get sort of the spanish mexicans who who aren't really as common that you see in the united states and and the uh the the poor uh ethnic uh you know indian uh uh races and cultures and everything and there's a there's a big mixture and then like brazil has a lot of people of african descent and all different races and then you you deal with a lot of issues that are sort of even a [microcosm] of of the racial issues in the united states where like people in argentina all right you know like you said i haven't been keeping track of what all has been going on in central america myself um and uh huh_uh yeah yeah yeah i know what is it your talking about um i've i've listened to a lot of things going on i mean the [manuel] noriega panama thing i think was probably the right thing to do i mean the guy was just blatantly going out and shooting americans and and uh so i think what they did there was right i'm not so sure about what they're doing in some of the countries where we're supporting [guerillas] that are fighting the communists you know that are in there because it never seems to really work you know we end up throwing in money and a lot of people getting killed and when push comes to shove we seem to back out on the [gorillas] like we did on the kurds like we did in the late seventies and so that kind of thing concerns me um it's the things that we're not doing that we should be doing like right now there's a big [outbreak] of uh of course it's a little further south in south america but there's an [outbreak] of uh what is it [cholera] peru and all it's gotten into columbia now and it looks like it's going to be pretty serious uh thing there they're talking about it lasting for ten years yeah and it's already gotten into brazil a little bit and it has to do with the fact i mean in that part of the world they just dump raw [sewage] right into the rivers i mean things that we don't do here anymore because we know how bad it is for you yet they're they're you know they're steadily doing it now they actually don't have [filtration] systems some of the major cities do um but for the most part most of those countries flat out pump it right into the rivers and let it float on down and pump it right out into the ocean and that's that is how they deal with it and you know they're just steadily polluting that part of the part of the world that way um the other thing is the economic assistance right now we're starting we're starting to have free trade with mexico and my god this is something we should have done years ago and mexico is our closest neighbor they've been in financial trouble for years and i think we've [exploited] them i mean when i was in texas i noticed that you know you think uh of texas and you have good meat and fresh vegetables and all that well most of the vegetables they sold in texas came from mexico and so did the meat the meat that was raised in texas they sent back east to sell because they had get more money for it and uh yeah the marcos huh_uh right huh_uh huh_uh that's great huh_uh yeah yeah that probably has some bearing on it um there is always a tradition of just doing enough to get by they're not as motivated as uh as we are and people farther south now you know once you you get down into [chile] and argentina and those kinds of areas their climates are pretty much the same as ours yeah yeah and while we're sitting here talking about it i'm thinking you know we know every darn thing that goes on in europe you know i mean we know what's going on in poland we know what's going on in [rumania] we know the [germanies] are getting back together we didn't you know we all know what's going in europe but we never here anything about what's going on you know in south and central america or unless we're sending thousands of troops down to kick somebody's butt yeah we just don't pay any attention to them it's it's you know it's it just doesn't make any sense i mean we're in the same hemisphere so to speak i mean you know the same side of the earth i mean yeah yeah yeah yeah i mean it doesn't it really doesn't make sense to me i don't know you know it's i mean they've never really been a real force in the world i mean uh we heard about argentina only when it tried to take over the [falcons] and england had to go down there and kick their butt um so it's it's like really strange that we never pay that much attention i i you know i just find myself lacking in a lot of knowledge about south america i'd like to think i know a lot about a lot of things but you know i have something is [amiss] here as far as as the amount of information that's available okay uh why do you think it uh sounds do you think we should adopt it you don't uh_huh yeah yeah right yeah i i agree with you i don't think we should either even though i know there are benefits to the metric system i don't think the benefits of the metric system [outweigh] the the disadvantages that would happen to the people in america and also the uh i don't know it seems almost like there's this it's a peer pressure thing is why we keep wanting to do it is so we'll look good to the other nations because i think they that's an area that the other nations especially europe look down on us like oh we're just backward [wayward] children who still use this backward system who haven't really [attained] it yet and i feel it's just pride of why they keep trying to push it on us and it's like hey we're content with this no it's probably not as accurate probably you know intellectually doesn't it's not as sound intellectually but like you said i mean come on i had six years of college and i don't know the metric system and i don't care to learn it and i'm not some kind of an idiot i just yeah uh_huh right there's a lot of people like you're educated i'm educated my husband is but i mean a lot of people are flat not educated and if i have a hard time you know putting that into my life can we put that off on the other eighty percent of the population that doesn't have any college or i don't know how much of the you know but a large percentage probably over half of the rest of the population they don't have any college probably much at all and if we can't take it and use it easily well how can you put that on like elderly people and you know just people that maybe just aren't blessed with as as much [sharpness] and mental [acuity] yeah yeah uh_huh right yeah yeah i think it failed too because like what you said of just you know hey this is ridiculous the thing americans have so much stress on them right now i mean if you look at the average family it's like man they barely have time to stop and get gas much less to try and figure out how much gas they're really getting and do all this it's like i mean come on let's take the pressure yeah and it's just like another thing the american family doesn't need any more pressure just leave them alone let them measure their drinking water in cups and leave them alone yeah uh_huh that's and and if they don't like the way we do it just get off our don't worry about it and i think right it is because it is another language yeah that's funny well that's good i think we kept it at real good is that all we need to say you too i think that was good that was the best one usually i get distracted off the topic you know what i mean and we'll end up one man was telling me about his grandfather in lithuania and we were talking about something income tax or something and i just anyway i appreciate it have a good day no i don't like metric system i i i think the country is is uh too [ingrained] in the inches and and just the general uh background the history of our country has been inches and i don't think there's a big advantage in going to the metric system it it's going to [disorient] and [confuse] a lot of people for years and years and there are going to be people who die because of it because they don't understand uh you know simple things from the amount of medicine they should take to how fast they can drive and you know how far away something is and it's it's not in our national consciousness to do it we've always measured things in the english system and you know everything you know our land is in acres our people aren't going to understand what an amount of something is yeah yeah and it's easy to we have a computer for just about everything now and if it's necessary to translate back and forth between them it can be done because i'm a mechanical engineer and i've had to work when i was designing packages for people i mean i had to to work both systems back and forth and it was not hard and you get you can get a cat cam system that can take any design you want and you can push a button and it'll convert every measurement on there you know from one system to the other in seconds really yeah absolutely oh yeah it's just or or even have had the ability you know the chance to to go to college or to to to learn about i think it's still good they do cover the system i think it should still be taught in schools and they do i know now because i even when i was in elementary school years ago they were you know we learned what a centimeter was and a [decimeter] and the various you know basically the other alternate forms of measurements things like that and and that's acceptable yeah really you know you need twenty gallons but do you need how many liters yeah yeah and it it just doesn't it just doesn't make that much difference in the average life and the scientific community and places where it's needed you know that's fine and the rest of the world i mean we are it's not we may not be the top i don't know if we're the top we're one of the top [superpowers] of the world it may be arrogant but i mean let them come to us that's kind of the way i feel about it we can convert yeah it it's kind of like expecting everyone to suddenly speak german you know yeah and and instead of saying the world speak german we found out that we can translate and that's what i think we ought to do with the metric system okay yeah it's been nice talking to you okay yeah all right well good talking to you bye bye so how do you feel about the metric system yeah and it's i forget how many [millimeters] so you used the metric uh yeah yeah uh yeah yeah uh i work in metal fab and tenths of inches are are normal and you know you know it is broken up in you know the inch is broken up and has been for quite some time for in tenths [hundredths] thousandths ten thousandths of an inch yes i am i i have a suzuki motorcycle and and i've had motorcycles japanese motorcycles for years and years and the metric system comes easy to me but my right yeah yeah yeah to go from from eighths to [sixteenths] to uh thirty seconds and remember where it falls it yeah i drink beer yeah whiskey is in liters and and the next yeah point seven five liters and then liters and then one point seven five liters yeah yeah yeah i i always wondered about that myself and and they had quarts at the same time though yeah it's liters yeah it it's like i say i work in a machine shop and uh everything's still inches everything's still fractions of inches or or tenths or thousandths or or yes it is a mental thing it is a conversion thing right yeah yeah but what really annoys me is the way we in the united states have been converting to metric we have a eighty nine chevy blazer and before that we had a horizon uh you know plymouth horizon and both of them were a [mismatch] of both american and metric uh okay the engine itself was mostly metric because it came from canada and the starter was [bosch] american so yeah yeah it was it was annoying one one half of the starter you know three bolts on the starter and two of them were american and one of them was metric and uh you go from the uh water pump up to the radiator and on the water pump it was all metric and and on you know the factory fittings you know the factory uh screw lock uh uh radiator hose [clamps] yeah right it's it's not a problem either way like i said my only complaint is where they mixed them on the same car and you go to look at it and you don't know which set to reach in american or metric and and you're never quite sure well is that a metric bolt right right it it can be annoying and my other concern is is the american government going to force us to go oh absolutely yeah yeah they're not going to change that to [meters] it will always be twelve yeah there's twelve troy ounces to the pound yeah and and is that going to change too uh i don't remember i i read it and are we still going to maintain [drams] for perfume it's all metric all ready and what will a shot be will a shot be an ounce and the other one's two point one [kis] and and you're you're lost oh yeah the economy uh what i was thinking about is an economical issue concerning it uh a [machinist] has a huge number of dollars invested in tooling personal tools to be able to do his job uh tools for set up and for measurement uh you got to have a one tenth indicator it's a hundred dollars uh five tenths uh usually two one tenth [indicators] at a hundred dollars each uh five tenths indicator at about a hundred dollars you got to have uh six inch set of [calipers] at anywhere from sixty to a hundred twenty dollars you got to have a zero to one for sixty dollars uh one to two inch [micrometer] for sixty dollars a two to three for eighty dollars a three to four for eighty dollars real fast real real fast edge [finders] and well i know because okay your end mills will be measured in inches or fractions of inches you know what size hole as in metric size hole or a or an american sized hole yeah yeah well and thread oh i like it i i i have a foreign actually i have more than one foreign automobile and i i i find the uh i find the the [nondecimal] system with all the [halves] and quarters i was trying to build a shed and they give you these measurements like forty two and three eighths inches and we had to go a little less and trying to figure what's less than three eighths uh well no what we did was wind up using and you just go you just go down and and you get out the the so many inches and and we just marked a little bit less than that uh which is somewhat awkward but had it been [millimeters] you could have done i think what's interesting the way engineering people do is they they in essence have gotten around it by by listing uh decimal inches do are you involved in any engineering drawing stuff that well have have you do you are you involved in any other uh metric type things like i think it's interesting you you know when you go out there and you're looking for a wrench and you want the next size larger i've got i inherited some some stuff like fifteen thirty seconds well now that one's fairly easy because that's probably slightly under half an inch but some of them like like twenty seven and and there are some thirty seconds and some of the things that that uh don't translate yeah and and you've got to go over there and try it and i suppose you know i need a larger one i need a smaller one i mean obviously you can look at it and say well anyway i think the other thing that's interesting is that a lot of our stuff is already changed that we haven't i don't know do you do you drink adult [beverages] have you noticed that um that a lot of the um a lot of yes it's like a fifth like fifths of whiskey i thought was always kind of strange what's a fifth of whiskey it was a marketing ploy yeah but the idea was is that by with five fifths um they could uh they could uh they could sell five and and um it was simply a ploy to to get people you know to buy to buy more for it's uh i find that interesting but it's like you know the the the the soda and this kind of things coming in one liter bottles and um i i think it's kind of generational although i must admit that that i am not i i'm not [conversant] in saying you know that's three centimeters away i mean or or or yeah yeah it's it's hard to think though it's like a mill you know we we do uh um well we use a one mill bond wire or one point five mill bond wire on on semiconductor devices and well what's a mill and yeah don't you find that interesting uh that they that that they're doing that uh in any field for why why why pieces could you could you get any connection on which was metric and which wasn't oh okay the bolts were were were were english then now that's strange yeah uh_huh yeah essentially they do that though because if if you look at general motors the size and and and of course ford and chrysler if they all went if they all went metric but in a sense um you know it's like when a measurement though when when you put uh you know one point four three two inches when you're [milling] something uh you simply set your uh equipment or or you or you got your [calipers] there and and you measure you know you [mic] it to see if it's accurate and no yeah yeah you get you a pair of metric [pliers] right and you beat on it and a metric hammer oh i think i don't think so i i think that uh i think they've now just taken the attitude that well if it happens if it because it there a lot of things that that uh um like sports you know it's a hundred meter and uh uh but automobile races if it i don't think they'd ever it's still going to be the indianapolis five hundred they're not going to yeah and and it i i don't think it i don't you know i don't think i don't think it's particularly [bothersome] because in reality uh you it's like troy ounces in ounces of gold how many ounces of gold you know i was trying i was trying to figure up gold content on something it had has uh gold [plated] uh [header] and and they're trying to think of what's a troy ounce yeah now that makes you know well i mean and and then there's a metric ton and then there's a ton but what's a metric ton i don't know yeah and and then but then the medicine and and some of these other things and and the chemistry in those kinds of areas [milliliter] yeah and and so um but but when you go to order a drink um you know say they they i don't know it's uh i don't know and and but you know when you go to the store and and you're trying to figure you know well this box is is uh is is twelve ounces and and this one's uh uh three pounds um and you that's right and and i don't know i i think that i i think i think the federal government is going to more or less leave it alone i think they've got i think there are more pressing problems yes yeah but but are are the tools that uh if you're cutting are you talking about cutting equipment or tools for for set up huh so you've got thousands of dollars or so i mean you get a thousand dollars worth of tools yes but i was thinking about though that that when you actually get to the [milling] equipment though when it starts turning yeah but you when you when you simply [drilling] a hole i mean a real simple thing like gee i need a hole there yeah yeah and and what but the thing is then you've got to with screws and that's the other issue uh the pitch and well uh what what do you think about the metric system uh do you uh find it [useable] have you tried much with it yeah uh_huh to use you mean uh_huh yes yes uh_huh uh_huh we well i've lived both in the united states and and in a country where they do use the metric system and uh so i've i've lived with pounds and inches and found it really quite easy to convert over um the secret seeming to me to be to not bother ever converting inches to centimeters and pounds to uh uh kilograms and i think that's what hung people up the most is they went now wait a minute an inch is two point fifty four centimeters how on earth am i every going to do the math and the problem is that we tried to convert everything from inches to centimeters preserving basically the inches but expressing them as centimeters rather than saying no a centimeter is about the [width] of your thumbnail or whatever and you know and leaving it at that and uh you know a [kilogram] weighs about this much and get used to it from scratch cause i still can't convert back and forth from inches to centimeters but i'm perfectly comfortable using either and i think the real problem with this this weird conversion you see signs that say fifty five miles per hour and you know whatever it would be one hundred six kilometers per hour you know people you know it's hard to take it seriously and as long as both were given you basically just don't read the kilometers per hour you just say well look read the miles per hour one the other one must be for someone else uh i don't know i mean even britain has converted over and we inherited this mess from them and uh well i mean it's more our fault than theirs at this point because they they saw the light um i don't know why they um were more able than we were except i think that they probably just said well we're just going to start using the things now and you sort of have to force people to change since they don't want to that's true that's that's probably true and america does have a long history of sort of doing things our own way rather than adopting you know some other model i've never heard that one that's very nice oh so i'm all for the metric system and converting over and i think i guess my feeling is the way to do it is is to just start giving weights you know have a very brief transition period and then just start giving weights and kilometers er just as in kilometers and weights and kilograms and everything like that and uh just have people start using it rather than having people constantly trying to convert remember me getting a package of something that said one pound this is a package of dates mind you it's was presumably something you weigh fairly [precisely] it said one pound and then in parenthesis it said four hundred fifty four point six grams and as near as i could tell seeing that was basically anti metric propaganda cause anyone who would say well look i can either buy a pound of something at four hundred sixty four point six grams which of course they couldn't weigh it out accurately anyway um every time i see something like that i think well that's that's an anti metric argument you don't uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh oh that's what i was thinking by quick transition i didn't mean you know i didn't mean like sweden going over to right hand drive or anything you know at midnight tonight we all switch over or anything uh i believe so yeah and i think they did it overnight cause you know you can't do it gradually that's an example of something you can't do gradually yes it does a quantum leap from left to right hand drive and they but you know that must have taken uh that was something that had to be done quickly you know because of external circumstances but they decided to do it to make themselves in [sync] with the rest of europe or the rest of continental europe and you know but that must have been tremendously difficult to [orchestrate] um so i i i i i think it's essential that it's done and i think the real trick is to avoid the you know a little more attention to human psychology and whereas people want round numbers and after all the whole reason to go over to metric is to have round numbers so they don't deal with thirty seconds of an inch and so what the exact the thing that was best about metric was the thing that was most poorly represented really i think uh_huh i saw that i saw that the other day i don't drink soda pop but i saw a two liter soda pop bottle so yeah things like that are a good start and if you start expressing one liters and one kilograms and then the pounds come in the the you know the odd numbers you know two point two pounds or something i think people will start getting a sense of gee the metric is the sensible one yes well get back to what you're doing and i'll do the same i enjoyed talking with you too okay bye bye well with an engineering degree it's of course it's a whole lot easier because uh yeah if if somebody is totally unfamiliar with it uh human nature being what it is we don't like to change uh it just absolutely makes perfectly good sense to me because it's all decimal and it's so easy to convert from one set of units to another right that's right right right uh_huh oh yeah that's right that's right it's all their fault of course being part of the european community if everybody else did it they they were probably much more is much more necessary for them than for us there's an expression for that with eyes on the past backing confidently into the future right right yeah well uh i i don't think it'll it could ever happen with with a quick transition no i i think that would be the easiest way but human nature being such as it is i would think it would take probably two or three years before people could completely cut the cord did they switch well that's true it it has to be kind of a [discreet] transaction interesting oh yes yeah yeah i'm sure exactly exactly well we do have the two liter soda pop bottles yeah right yes that's true well sure have enjoyed our talk okay god bless bye bye okay the topic was should the united states adopt the metric system and if so should uh and why didn't it work last time yeah well i i am too i wish uh it had started a long time ago is the problem because we're so wound up in the in the system that we've got that you know trying to convert over and i guess what'd they try they tried what'd the call it soft conversion and hard conversion one of them is where you just take whatever's already standard and you give it some sort of a weird metric number like six point two eight seven instead of six millimeter i i don't know uh well don't most of them doesn't just about everything now have both metric and english oh yeah yeah i kind of remember back when gas prices started up you know pretty dramatically when they started getting toward a dollar a gallon range somebody had uh i believe it was exxon we were living in lubbock at the time they started marketing it in liters and it was only like twenty nine and thirty cents a liter so they could put this sign out front that said you know thirty nine cents a liter and nobody had any idea what a liter was so uh when we finally out that liters was about a quart there's about four liters in a gallon so you can figure out what you're actually paying for it uh_huh yeah oh the uh i think maybe there's where the problem came in you know we've tried to instead of learning it's kind of like learning a language you know when you learn one from the other you always end up in this conversion thing all the time so you it's almost like uh course this country isn't a [dictatorship] but you know it's like somebody said okay as of such and such a date you know anybody caught talking in the english you know will be shot or something like that you know but uh yeah i read that what [uganda] and there's one or two others that just uh_huh yeah uh i yeah i do too and one of the things that we've run into a problem course you're familiar with the t i drawing well with any drawing system you end up with you end up with things in inches in parts of inches you know half fourth you know this sort of thing and then you end up with a decimal where you start getting into mils and that sort of thing and then some of them are done in you know purely metric uh_huh yeah oh i can imagine the uh the one that uh uh have you ever lived in a country where they use metric i was with t i in el salvador for a while and i had to get used to you know purely metric system down there because they didn't understand anything else you know if you start talking about miles they'd look at you like what so i had a little bit of experience with it and also i noticed in canada they uh you drop a quarter fifty cents whatever in a coke machine up there and you get this funny looking coke you know it's in a can that's that's taller but not as big around you know i guess that's some it's not a liter it's like a half a liter or something like that it's a strange looking can but my daughter in law's from panama and she has they have had americans down there for so long you know that they're kind of into both systems but uh she gets real confused on [distances] and temperature is the big thing the centigrade for which she says [celsius] well i had kind of gotten used to centigrade temperature you know if it's between zero and ten it's cold and if it's ten and twenty it's not too bad if it's between twenty and thirty it's pretty warm if it's more than thirty it's just hotter than all get out so but uh the big problem is not having the uh the resolution between temperature you know between a hundred if you're talking about a hundred degrees or what thirty zero you know thirty four degrees whatever that is you know you don't get all the little differences you know the differences between seventy and seventy two or seventy five degrees isn't much but the difference thirty and thirty five degrees is quite a bit yeah five yeah something like that uh_huh yeah though we call it the english system but i'm not sure what they do in england now they're they're on metric aren't they yeah except they've got a now okay we run into some problems once i remember they've got a nut and bolts system called wentworth and this thing was was even different than you know s a e standards and stuff so this this okay my dad bought one of these little nash [metropolitans] here a few years quite a few years back and the thing had a austin [heeley] type engine you know it was austin motors engine and running gear and the body was built by nash or who you know that was even before american motors but nash essentially in the u s somewhere and that thing had the [darndest] combination of metric and wentworth and uh s a e he ended up with about three sets of tools in order to work on that fool thing because i think the wentworth and the s a e bolt sizes were the same but the threads were different and uh it was a total mess and on my chevy van that's a couple of years old part of it's built in canada matter of fact the thing is i always say it's built off shore you know because it was assembled in canada the only thing that was in it was built in the u s was the uh [differential] and it was built in buffalo new york but it's got the hardest combination of uh metric and most of the body parts seem to be metric and most of the engine parts seem to be s a e so it's just crazy yeah i thought maybe they would convert to uh metric back when they went to the fifty five mile an hour speed limit because what is it fifty six or fifty seven's a hundred uh a hundred kilometers and you know yeah you'd have hundreds on the sign looks lot better than fifty five you'd have people going you're right a hundred miles an hour and so i don't know i'd kind of and the other thing too is you know between here and el [paso's] what five hundred miles but it's almost eight hundred kilometers you know that'd sure seems like a long way yeah i guess that's it well they converted all the road signs to fifty five miles an hour you know they [could've] converted it to metric just about as easy yeah not all that common i know the only other place that i was ever at where they really had it mixed was was in panama where's a lot of the road signs and everything are in in miles per hour and some are in kilometers and you got to know where you are because anything that was the old canal zone is going to be miles per hour how should they do it why didn't it work last time well i'm all for it yeah yeah they tried the yeah yeah direct conversion i think they just ought to you know start uh just go all the way on new products introduced or whatever you know start your packaging go to liters instead of quarts and you know people if they have to are going to learn to think that way they do but things are generally packaged in the english sized packages you know you buy a quart of milk and sure it has has the metric equivalent written on there but it still a quart but if they started putting it in liters liter of oil and you know liters of gasoline people are going to learn to think in metric as long as you can still buy a product in the english units that's how you're going to think of it it figures right that that's the problem right it's kind of hard for me to believe that this day and age i don't know when i was growing up we were talking metric system in school i mean not not at first but by the time i was in fifth or sixth grade anyway i would expect people with any kind of buying power over the age you know under the age of thirty or so to have some idea what it is anyway a [liter's] about a quart yeah well thing is it's a global global market place these days and you know we're like what one of two backwards countries in the world as far as something i don't remember what the other one is but it's just time i think for for us to go over because all you end up doing is if you're in business or you're in any kind of international i don't you know i work for t i we're all around the world you have to perform this conversion anyway and right mils and microns right right right yeah i remember that stink came around in the design area a few years back when it was all overseas designs were in microns and ours were in mils and it got to you know somewhere down the line they went standardized they went microns but uh you just you know you end up with all kinds of problems with converting your designs so no yeah yeah about half a liter yeah i would have more problem more problem with the temperature except that you know working in engineering we do everything in centigrade or [celsius] it's getting warm right yeah it's about is about twice as much what it works out to one point eight times as many points yeah so i i think as long as people have a choice they're going to stick with the american way and until we have to have to learn to think that way we won't yeah for the most part i think so right right he just get one more oh that would be a mess right it just gets bad now you got to you got to have one and not mix them up because you're never going to get to one one system if you still got a got a mix and of course here that that would involve changing road signs all across the country you know miles per hour to kilometers per hour and the whole nine yards kind of hard to do gradually yeah hell you'd have people doing a hundred miles an hour yeah yeah but they'd need they'd seem to be [ticking] off faster too every road sign you come to is like well i don't know it that far yeah i think they you got the problem with all your cars are still yeah you still got cars on the road that don't have both at that time anyway that was still when things were the metric system was still not you know now cars they have both sooner or later they'll start putting the miles on the inside and the kilometers in big numbers so people start thinking that way yeah okay do you uh think we should go metric yeah yeah i think that the i think what i mean i don't know what happened last time i remember they tried it in the seventies at one point or something and yeah me too right and and i don't quite know why it failed um i would bet the push i it i bet the push just wasn't big enough you know they didn't sort of encourage i mean businesses and things to use it so you know what what i think they'd have to do would be to have both things on there for a while and then and then start phasing things out so yeah right i was just thinking two liter bottles are what you buy and one liter bottles you don't buy quarts and gallons anymore of soda right and and and even though the car says miles and kilometers you don't say i went a hundred kilometers you know yeah i would i would be total loss i think i think though if there were some you know sort of government incentive program or something people would begin to switch over you know and i think there would be the hard core older people who would get really pissed and pardon my expression there but uh who would get really you know upset and start to complain and get all cranky and stuff but i think in the end it would make life a lot easier for people coming up yeah right well what i think i think the difference between now and then might be this is just a might is we were the first generation that was in elementary school and if they kept it up so let's say imagine they had kept going you'd have you know two or three more generations that all now are are familiar with the metric system not like could use it comfortably right now but i could convert you know i could carry around a little conversion card or something and i could handle it for a while and then and then eventually i'd learn and i think that before it was just you know just a bunch of little kids using it and now i think there are enough people you know sort of as we get older i think others that will bring more generations in on it eventually they'll be able to make the switch and we're not going to start going crazy and yelling and saying what are you crazy we can't understand you we'll say oh it's a pain in the neck but it's for the better and we'll sort of deal with it i think i don't know i i i would hope it would uh it seems like it's a reasonable system i mean everything seems to be based on the same thing right centimeters yeah but i wonder if if but yeah right yeah but i wonder if that's even something that you know they they have to change immediately they could just you know sort of phase that in so start you know from now like from now on all licenses would have that rather than going back and changing everything you know all new licenses as of nineteen ninety two would have it or something that's right i know the and oh yeah i know though at the uh at the amusement parks they say if you're under forty two inches or something you can't walk in here you have to be under well i guess what what i bet what they do in that case they uh see what some of them is like you know they say if you're not taller than this line that's right it would be a neat case where like where kids taught the parents i think you know but i don't know england is not oh yeah but i mean but but virtually the rest of the world is i mean it seems like like like like sort of stupid i mean we are of course we are americans and we're supposed to be you know that's right and and now we're backwards no i i i would think i mean a a a base ten system as compared to a base twelve system makes a lot more sense no actually no um let's see it's i don't know oh yeah i i always forget i don't even know how many ounces are in a pound i just sort of make it up right those those wouldn't be a problem let's see how many cups equal that i i have no idea i just uh i know things like you know a pint is a pound the world around or something that's all i know i i learned that because uh a friend of mine i i had two friends and i had more friends than that but two friends of mine in college i had a lot more than two i promise um we opened a jelly bean business and we sold jelly beans and we had uh no idea how many you know we we didn't we didn't bother buying a scale we'd go out and just buy you know five pound bags of sixteen different [flavors] put it in plastic shoe boxes and and and then sell them for x amount per pound or quarter pound or something and we we didn't bother buying a scale and one of my friends was a physics one of these guys was a physics major and he said well just remember a pint is a pound the world around and he got the measuring cup and just measured i think a cup or two cup whatever is a pint gee i think i think he the calculation at home and it turns out that he was actually pretty close if anything we were actually in favor of the consumer so so we were giving them a little too much but that was our general tendency anyway yeah well we were you know we were in it was it was almost like we did it for the hell of it in school we really didn't make you know i think we were only making seventy five dollars each profit at the end of the year you know after after an entire semester but we had a hell of a lot of fun doing it yeah we we we tended to eat a lot and our friends would just sort of walk by and just put their hands in it and we had another friend um the physics major again he wasn't he wasn't aware of jelly bean [physiology] i guess and he got into a snowball fight with the jelly beans nearby and he just and and some snow fell into one of the cartons so he brought them into the bathroom to wash them off and basically what we had sort of non coated beans at that point uh it's just uh it's just the the same they're like an outer [coating] and there's just sort of this stuff you see you know it's sort of like glorified sugar i don't know but when you rinse them off all you get is uh is uh the [coating] well i i oh i don't know it's kind of a tricky question because i think it's it's a practical system obviously if it's all compatible and it you know tens and things make sense um it's it's a switch the problem would just be the switch over right that's when i was in the elementary school years and we all we all learned that metric and they were ready we were going to be metric and right so i think that's what they did at first was that they had metric and and i mean and there's things that we've gone metric we have metric cola now you can buy that and you can so that you know so that we have little things that are metric but no one talks about you know uh you buy nine by twelve frames you don't buy centimeter length frames and cooking pans uh_huh right fifty nine kilometers per gallon yeah that's right uh_huh yeah it really would it's i i it's because i think they had a good try there when they started with us in the elementary schools trying to you know get that in our minds so that we could i mean because i think our generation could make a change it would be difficult but it would not be as difficult for people say fifty years old now who are have never been exposed to the metric system other than you know buying a two liter coke that's right right right right that's true that makes sense well i was trying to think of what kind of things you'd have to change and you'd have to change your height on your driver's license when you wouldn't be five foot eight anymore uh you'd be a hundred and seventy centimeters and then you'd be lighter in kilograms than you were in in pounds so all the [dieters] would be happy i only weigh sixteen today that's right and they'd have to change that little ruler that's on the door of the seven eleven that tells you how tall the [robbers] are when they to hold it up right right this line which is seventy three centimeters just so you'll know but that would be good that i don't know right because isn't it pretty much everywhere in the world i know england is not metric i i don't think they are because our um our measurements started in england all that began back there and i think they're the only part of the continent that hasn't changed over to metric right we're the trend [setters] in the world i don't know why we we haven't changed to the sensible system i don't know right well and it's not even base twelve for everything is it it well pounds i don't even know what that see and i don't understand liquid ounces and fluid ounces it's i mean i don't know that i have that much concrete knowledge in the current measuring system that would prevent me from it's not like it's really [entrenched] other you know a lot of stuff right i don't i didn't even know that well that's good oh right right did you ever check it to see if it really was a pint um right well that's you all are nice business right right probably ate all your merchandise too uh_huh oh yeah it's a little problem what's inside the jelly bean uh-oh for n i s t the national institute of standards and technology i suppose so let me push the button okay uh i guess i'm supposed to be all for switching to the metric system but uh i sense that it's not going to happen anytime soon uh_huh you're now in what acoustics uh well i guess that is the policy but it's been the policy for a long time and nothing ever happens uh i suppose things some things well happen slowly simply by having it taught in the schools more to the extent that that's happening having a new generation come up that's more used to it they have to for international trade but i guess it's it's easier to switch back and forth than it used to be uh because of of uh of computers coming into everything everyone wants a wants a conversion of that before kind of recognizing it as a as as as as a concept to hold in mind uh i i i don't see that it it it can change it very quickly i mean we're not the kind of society that that uh that something can be [posed] upon uh by government will uh the the the public is just very conservative that way in [refusing] to change measurement systems uh money dollar coins anything like that and and and it it obviously makes no sense that we're practically alone in the world in in using the old system well i mean i think people like you are relatively rare who are coming up against this problem every day uh i mean there are things you could do uh we have signs up on the n i s t campus here speed limit twenty five miles per hour forty kilometers per hour uh but that hasn't been adopted very widely but i mean and no one will will go a step further to remove the english signs uh yeah or you have highway signs saying speed limit uh eighty eighty five whatever would be the appropriate number hundred car is going sixty two yeah so it would be more like uh like ninety i guess car is going fifty five uh you suddenly have a have a even worse problem with speeding than we do now do do do you know where you are do the schools emphasize the metric system no i i i meant i meant down like in the elementary schools i mean i think yeah i mean i think my children learned the metric system but it doesn't get get emphasized over the other oh okay so it's right up your alley then all right yeah i don't think it's going to happen either but i wish it were because i'm a i got my bachelor's in mechanical engineering i'm at grad school now in acoustics and all we do is metric stuff acoustics yeah so everything's metric and then you go to read some order book or something and it's all confusing so i don't understand as much so i think we should get one adopted permanently yeah a lot of industry out there is doing metric stuff because they have to yeah uh_huh yeah i don't think switching back and forth is that big a deal i think people need to understand more like what a meter is instead of how many feet in a meter or something just get used to using all the terms because someone says a [kilogram] no one knows what that is yeah yeah no one seems to be adopting it metric system no one's very uh no one wants it at all seems like yeah yeah i it's pretty tough when you get everything confused though i think two systems is worse than one though because i know we do a lot of problems and things and they're half english and half metric and you you make more mistakes doing all the [conversions] than you would doing the problems just get one i prefer metric but even if it's english they should just have one yeah yeah i think so your your average guy jogging down the highway wants to know how many miles it is to his destination yeah yeah they have some of those in ohio there's this one [sign's] kind of funny it says uh metric signs next hundred miles yeah that would force everybody to use it or to quit selling tape measures in inches yeah i guess a hundred is sixty two yeah you have a bunch of people trying to do ninety yeah in the engineering they all do pretty much oh in the elementary schools i don't know i wouldn't think so i remember a ways back we did like [conversions] but we never actually went out and measured anything or did anything on one system yeah they learn how many centimeters are in an inch and that's about it i think my daughter talked to somebody in carolina what is that is it a school up there that uh oh great great that's wonderful yeah is that right yeah we uh we thought the opposite we thought well it's going to be t i people and i think they went to customers you know people that use t i computers and everything which is fine uh_huh actually they don't talk about much uh of what it's for but my wife keeps keeps ask asking me and i'm saying well your computer is eventually going to just answer your voice you know they're they're of course it's very obvious for people with handicaps but in general i guess it would be faster than typing and everything so oh yeah it's it's uh around the corner right well i mean it's so uh t i's uh been the pioneer on a little advertising for t i not that i know that much about the uh voice synthesis but they've been working on it for years and years you know they have the speak and spell and all of that of course but they're they're going to take it much further and i guess in aircraft and all that a lot of it is going to be like you talk to the computer like two thousand and one or two thousand and ten when you talk to the computer hal right that was great well what do you think about the metric system you well what do you do out there are you a professor you say okay yeah well we're not going to have much to fight over because i do too uh being an engineer most general motors have pretty much and i'm not too sure about the rest of the cars i'm sure all the japanese cars i'm somewhat of a car buff almost all of it is metric uh_huh right right well i i work on g m cars only and i haven't noticed that that much usually the metrics will fit they're so close there's an overlap uh you know there's something funny that i haven't really resolved with metric i've got to really go to the store and see if it's true i can't remember the size i think it's uh eighteen or something like that i have a set of metric and and the old [wrenches] too and i think that's an exact size of the three quarters and they don't make it in metric they just skip over it and it right and i was thinking i've got to get an eighteen because i don't i don't like i'm so used to when i'm grabbing tools for my car to grab for the number you know because i don't even bother with the unless i'm working on a bumper or something but the engine parts and all are all metric you know i haven't noticed it mostly being yeah well i mean well on general motors cars it was all metric i use my metrics essentially when i work on the cars i don't well i guess uh in changing the oil i guess that's uh i don't even know a nine [sixteenths] or something like that i don't even remember uh but i was thinking i just had a cheap set of metrics in fact uh i thought well i guess either i lost the eighteen and then i i started to see it in stores and i noticed that the cheaper sets again i'm calling it cheaper sets [minus] the eighteen i thought well i've got to go to an expensive place go to sears and get [craftsman] tools there and see if i can't get that eighteen i want a full set you know i still haven't checked out to see if they do make the eighteen i i'm sure they do well i guess they do i don't know why they wouldn't oh you haven't really i just thought it was my set so i just didn't have a a good quality set you know uh i think it's what number did i just say eighteen something that is the same as a three quarter and it that i i'd rather have it all metric right uh texas instruments makes equipment for the semiconductor business you know we make not a lot of but we make we were making a lot of our own manufacturing equipment and i bet they have a lot of metrics there i think that uh the only emotional part might be in miles you know mile signs but that's that could be last anyway maybe pick a year two thousand say okay we'll slowly change but i think right right well i think the [speedometers] don't the cars have them both now am i not mistaken i i i look at mine i don't even know i read it upper and lower yeah right oh no i don't think so either i don't even know how many businesses are actually doing it without an order i'm not too sure that the government needs to order it although i guess they would have to in again mileage signs but uh it yeah yeah right uh_huh oh yeah i think that i i guess it was uh five years ago or more than when they it failed and i guess people just got tired of talking about it i'm not too sure i guess there was no one really pushing it and no one saying that it was going to mean business to us i think nowadays we all would say who are in industry and everything we'd say hey this means business we ought to uh make everything metric and i just and i see no problem with it at all uh uh_huh right yeah right well i i i'm ready to convert i i we probably all thought it was strange you know again five years ago but i don't think there's that many people with reservations anymore i don't know if uh sure right in fact they said it failed and then i guess it has failed but i in in general there was still a lot of people that i i i'm not sure it's a total failure because so much has converted you know and i'm not too sure that it's actually not a success more than a failure you know i don't know what percent has actually converted uh_huh oh you're absolutely right you that that's a pet of mine too i just wish we all and us down here in texas of course should all speak spanish we should have six and eight years automatically of spanish and i i push my daughters i've got two daughters and uh one is taking latin and one has taken spanish but not enough of it and uh i think we we down here especially should speak and california new mexico and all that really right right oh yeah yeah they're working they're out they're studying harder and they're working harder uh_huh yeah what are you taking in school by the way you say you're in school yeah oh well you know my wife's uh a well i have a daughter in college you know and uh who's got down at u t university of texas i mean and my wife also has gone back for a teaching and english and english as a second language uh which is you know just teaching kids that are have have their native language and not english and so she's going back for that and so i i i've got three people i'm supporting in in school now and i guess i ought to go back myself i'm getting enthusiastic because they they're having so much fun you know oh that's great uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah sure politics and everything i'm an engineer and even when i was going through engineering school halfway through they said up don't need any more engineers we've got too many they go through this phase all the time but i think you still should do what you want because uh if you're good at whatever you are well uh i i was just talking to my dad about that just uh a couple of weeks ago and i think i think it would be great that we went to it and uh the one thing though that i think we should do if we go to the metric system then we should do away with the other system and and have only the metric system uh_huh right yeah yeah yeah yeah well that's true yeah yeah yeah that's true you are right you're right there's no we're losing we are losing our culture of our area sure yeah yeah well i uh i work in a hospital and of course that's all we use and and every thing we do is metric you know and uh you know weights is in kilograms and uh you know whatever whatever happens to be the thing that we are measuring it's in metric and uh yeah yeah right right yeah yeah yeah yeah sure right well uh uh what one of the things that really i really think that would be sort of weird is is the uh cars the miles per hour instead of having not having [kilo] kilometers per hour cause it it's hard to imagine you know i well i think the problem with us our generation is that nobody even if we did go all the way to the metric system that we are still going to think in terms of how it relates to the other system you know no matter what that's right that's right because it's hard to it's just like uh another language i guess and when you learn another language uh i guess what you have to do is try to think in that language and not think in terms of [translating] it to english you know but yeah yeah i think so too and i think that uh that it was pretty much optional wasn't it at the time and and uh yeah that's right see that's why i think it is i think they used both systems and everybody as long as they had inches they could just [transpose] back and forth and it made it difficult for everybody thought well this is too much trouble but uh of course if you didn't have anything available but metric i think it would be a little easier on you you know that's right that's right you you would just quit thinking you wouldn't worry about how many ounces is this you would just say well how many how many uh grams is it you know yeah sure yeah yeah and it's uh like weight you know i weigh about a hundred and sixty five and that's uh somewhere in the neighborhood of seventy something kilograms you know and it's hard to imagine well only seventy something you feel like you don't weigh much you know but i guess if that's the only thing you knew well you would just know well i weigh seventy something kilograms and that's it you know well that's true yeah i understand that it's that's true that's very true that's very true yeah that's right it's funny that uh i guess all that started in england i guess i bet you are i bet you are i don't know you know when i was in uh when i was in high school several years ago you know we did probably two two or three weeks on the subject you know and tried to teach you the whole thing in two or three weeks and of course when you're that age you really don't care anyway and i didn't get into it very much but then i took a just a basic math class a couple of semesters ago and we uh we were pretty heavily into the metric system and and before we started i just thought oh no i don't want to do this you know this is just going to be so hard and once i really realized how easy it was uh it was wonderful i mean it was just incredible how much simpler it is than what you know i guess we just all have this mind set that oh this is so hard and we can't do this and it's really not hard i was surprised at how very easy it was i think most people just uh you know automatically have their minds set against it and don't give it a chance you know so oh sure exactly exactly uh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh it just don't work i bet i bet right right well you know i think that the that the only way that we are ever going to get this country switched over to metrics is just to start other with with the kids right now you know you you you're going to have to start with the kids who are in that are in when school and you're going to have to teach it well not like i was in school and do two weeks on it in a math class and that's all you ever hear about it you know they're going to have to start with the little ones and teach it right now and then when you know those little ones are our age you know that's what they're going to know and that's what they're going to use there's no way you're going to get you know most of the united states adult population to automatically [relearn] and switch you know it's just not going to happen that way but i do think if they would start with the kids now at you know in you know twenty years from now we could be switched over you know uh_huh yeah yeah i agree yeah very good idea yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah i think i think it's going to take that but i you know i i think it's going to take a lot more than that too you know it's going to take it's going to take this education with with our kids i really believe that but you know we we knew that we weren't going to have to ever use it again we knew we were going to have two or three weeks of it in math class so why take the time to really learn it you know i mean you would you know learn enough to get by on the test and then you forgot about it because you knew you were never going to see it again in the rest of your years of school you know and and that that's not the way to convert over you're going to have these kids teaching it [dually] even you know teaching both systems which is a lot i know a lot more for the teachers to have to teach but that's the only way they're going to get switched over you know oh yes yeah yeah yeah that's true too that's true buy a whole knew metric set yeah well i think you know it's something that's going to take quite some time to happen but i i still don't think that they're doing all that it's going to take to make it happen you know it's going to happen slowly no matter what but there's going to have to be a lot more education involved than there is right now to get it to to get it to switch over oh yeah yeah uh_huh even they have switched yeah so yeah we're not uh we're not necessarily cutting edge in everything are we just like we think we are so well i think eventually it will happen you know it's just going to take it's just going to take a lot of education and a lot of time and like i said i was just totally amazed at how at how very easy it was you know i i just couldn't you know i just when i going into it i just had this block and i went there's just no way i'm going to be able to learn this and when i sat down and really said okay just you know forget your old prejudices and really look at it you know and once you look at it's so really simple you know you there's really nothing to memorize there's nothing to learn it just all works the same you know you just you know [transform] that little you know dot from one place one way to the other you know and that's about all you have to do so anyway i think it will happen eventually uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right right well you know i think uh i think it's going to happen i don't know i don't know what else i could suggest to them you know if they ask me what should we do i don't know i wouldn't know what else to suggest to them just education start with these little kids you know and like you said you know start making it practice you know start showing all the street signs and all the of course i think all the cars are manufactured that way they aren't they aren't all of them most of the new ones i'm seeing are are made with miles per hour and kilometers on them oh really right uh_huh right is there really huh well that's interesting yeah well oh that's interesting too i had never seen that yeah you know you look at most of the you know like the bank clocks and stuff like that it tells you you know [fahrenheit] and centigrade and it's going take those kinds of things you know so sure you know getting us all accustomed to seeing both you know but most people don't pay any attention you know it's going to take some education right along with it most people don't know what that means you know so that's right because that's what they're familiar with right that's going to be hard to do it's going to be very hard to do you know you you know i'm so used to saying oh my babies got a hundred and three degree fever and you know just say it's thirty nine is not just going to sound very bad that's right that's right your baby's still alive with so yeah it's going to take a changing lot of our old prejudices and you know just making up our minds that yes we are going to do this and we're just going to forgot this old way and we're just going to do it you know and i don't think the older generation is probably ready to do that you know well um you know i i agree with the the ease in the use of it and uh the it certainly it's so much easier to do your do [computations] [calculations] to measure things with it to in every every aspect of it is simpler except there is one big [stumbling] block in it and in the united states and that is all of the tool and die equipment in this country that has been here for the last hundred years is in the english system and tool and die equipment doesn't wear out too often so i think that's the the one place where uh they will have a hard time uh getting people to change uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh sure uh_huh uh_huh exactly right right i uh lived in brazil for four years from when i was seven to eleven years old and so by the time i got into high school and took some physics there and then into college um where i was a physics major in college so i'm more than uh familiar with the metric system and uh but i think that initial period you know from way made it familiar for me so i wasn't afraid of the metric system and and and i knew how much it made sense and how much easier it was to do things that way so i i it's too bad that more americans can't don't have the opportunity to to really use it to to get to a point where it it's something other than something that causes them fear and confusion because if you just the in the initial stages of anything no matter even if it is something that ultimately will be simpler are going to be confusing and it's getting over that [hurdle] that will finally get us into it if we ever get into it right right okay yep right right right that may be true also i don't know [chemists] seem to okay no i mean can you imagine how ridiculous it would be to try to do i mean it boggles the mind to try to think to do all the chemistry or physics in the english system at this point although gosh all those uh_huh uh_huh right it's interesting in the in though the work i'm doing i'm uh the kind of things i do is manage uh research and development contracts and we do everything from basic research all the way through uh we have a couple of systems that are actually um places where they're producing a product and what i've noticed is that the places where they're kind of doing fuzzy thinking and uh doing the initial uh development of an idea use the metric system and they talk in terms of metric uh uh units in turn around the people however that have the engineers that are actually producing a product do most of their carry [conduct] most of their discussion in terms of the english units which i i find it's interesting that it's like the guys that are still doing the work that are actually making the stuff are using the english system but the ones that come up with the they're doing these [theoretical] analysis and the number [crunching] um are doing it in terms of the metric system i i it kind of seems strange but [sao] [paulo] uh_huh no kidding uh and do you fly into [camgonias] or the other one down there down south yeah okay the international yeah uh_huh sure sure uh the air force academy uh i'm one of those no no i'm i'm still in the i'm still a second lieutenant i just graduated in eighty nine uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right right right oh yeah right well the whole yeah i don't or the whole number system is digital so how can you have uh or it's it's base ten rather and so how can you have how can you have these this is archie have you seen dancing with wolves have you ever lived in that part of the country have you ever visited it i think it was the black hills of south dakota well i lived in omaha for five winters and that rolling kind of uh yeah is is fairly the thing that i thought was interesting was that the critics apparently it's going to win everything uh and i had been told you know you wouldn't notice that it was three hours long and all this kind of well the interesting thing was is i had heard that and i i i tend to i think [overreact] occasionally when somebody tells me it's that great and and it was the thing is it was it was a good story and and and i guess that's what i really like although i must admit i did look at my watch after about an hour yeah no i've heard i've heard that's really great though no you must really keep up well isn't isn't sleeping with the enemy isn't that a is it is it a terror movie or is it just suspenseful do you do you listen to gary [cogill] is uh do you know who he is he's a the movie [critic] um oh you've oh okay he's a movie [critic] on channel eight in dallas and he does uh he has a talk show on the k l i f anyway it's on from seven to nine or something and and and people call in and it's if you keep up with movies it's kind of interesting there's a certain a mount of dribble that they do they've got uh they've got a couple of kids ten or twelve years old and they call in and they review movies but it's uh he anyway he it's interesting you listen to him and then you you go watch the movie in fact they had people had just seen i was listening sunday night a little bit when i was going to pick up my daughter but anyway it was uh the it it's interesting though the the difficulty with with dancing with wolves is that when you make a movie like that and you produce it and then you star in it uh the question is did he did he really know it was going to be good or did he just do it do you know who the guy was that was playing the uh the the wagon driver a little piece of [trivia] you know the guy when he first headed out from the army post he he plays on murphy brown yes he's he's [eldon] her [housepainter] can you believe that that's that's one of those interesting pieces of [trivia] that somebody said did you notice that i thought no it's really funny but i thought it it you think back and yeah it was him but with a you know with the beard and all that stuff i mean it's uh yeah real [scruffy] looking and it it was really funny it's uh that that he winds up playing in the movie but i thought it's good that you know it was a lot of fun i don't know how long this conversation is supposed to go but we're at about five minutes i should think we've done enough well i don't know why do we end this thing i think it just says hang up why don't we do that good bye sharon hi archie i'm sharon yeah i've seen that that's uh that was a really good movie probably one of the best things about it was the scenery and uh i thought the story was pretty good too i i think kevin costner did a really good job with it no i haven't um i've visited the wyoming area i'm not sure exactly where dances with wolves was filmed could be i i haven't been to south dakota have have you been up to that oh okay terrain really that's true i agree with that um i i noticed yesterday in the paper something said that it i think it's been [nominated] for twelve awards and and all the critics initially said that you know it wouldn't go anywhere that it was just going to be a [dud] so it it has surprised everybody uh_huh right did you have you seen sleeping with the enemy you have to go see that one and how about silence of the lamb go i do i go every weekend i i uh those are two definite must see movies i think it's suspenseful i don't think it's very i mean there's not really any uh blood and guts in it or anything like that it's it's more suspense um the other one silence of the lambs is kind of a a gory movie if if somebody's not into that kind of stuff it's it's pretty graphic at points but uh i think they're both excellent movies no huh_uh yeah somebody in south carolina told me about him yeah oh uh_huh i think that i think he really his heart was in it but i i don't think he really knew it was going to be as big as it was i think it was something that he really wanted to do he wanted to direct it he wanted to to star in it you know he he enjoyed the story line and i think he just really he really wanted it and whether it whether it won all kinds of awards or whether it just was okay at the box office i think he would have been happy because i think that i think he did a good job and and the self satisfaction he got out of it is much greater than any awards that they can give him um yeah who no i don't know who that guy is oh he does as a [recurring] character every week oh no now see i'd i'd a never put those two together huh_uh yeah yeah real [scruffy] looking yeah you think so i mean i haven't been watching my watch um i guess yeah does it usually cut off is that what it does it used to it used to just automatically cut off but it says when the conversation is over just say your good [byes] and hang up so i i guess so okay good talking to you archie yes oh how awful i wonder how [truthful] all of that was or whether there was fiction yeah well they keep it rather [secretive] yes well the most recent movie i saw uh i'm afraid was uh well two two of them actually uh the rain man was one wasn't that fabulous and and driving miss daisy oh you need to see that that is the most heart [rendering] story of relationships between two people two [diametrically] opposed people from the stand point that one was jewish and one was black and this all took place in the south and uh normally never the [twain] shall meet yes right and um uh it it really was a fantastic movie the acting was phenomenal oh yes [jessica] [tandy] won best actress and uh yes it did yes it did just as rain man uh with dustin hoffman uh that that was tremendous and tom cruise yes uh-oh that was that was uh what the much of the hype was that tom cruise learned so much from dustin hoffman yeah and a good bit of that was filmed right in cincinnati which is just forty five miles from from where i am where i actually live in a suburb of dayton oh we do have kmart here you better believe it isn't there a kmart everywhere yes right right yeah oh yes yes yes well you know there are people uh referred to as [savants] also uh who can do most phenomenal things and everyone feels they are totally retarded that's right it's amazing yes yes and the right well the [warmth] that developed between them and again it i think was a picture of relationships again the relationship uh between the two uh that uh never would have occurred uh by accident did you yes uh_huh well that's tremendous that it's good because it does make you think about your own family and see it did bring out a lot of thoughts between you and your brother uh_huh well he at least saw it one time just think of what a phenomenal actor dustin hoffman is he will do that to research it and to be able to [mimic] a person uh uh with the kinds of problems that he had yes well i'm sure everybody that saw it was believing it right along with them well it's just uh been delightful talking with you absolutely i'm ready for it but they're predicting some more snow for our direction take care now bye bye okay mary um the uh the latest one i've seen uh had to do with a uh uh the uh basically a [manhunt] um and it was uh it was called [manhunter] actually uh the uh the guy uh apparently had a a mental [disfunction] in which he needed to go out and just [slay] people uh just uh kill them with with as much blood and and guts as possible it was true it was truly awful it was not one that i picked but uh uh it it did show some some uh some interesting things about the f b i because they were the the uh the characters trying trying to get him were f b i people and uh uh of the of the few good things that were in it it did show uh a lot about the f b i about the training and and how they go through training and how they try to to develop uh uh a mental picture of who they're looking for before they go out and do it and all the different ways they go about doing that and it was uh uh it was pretty telling about the the the f b i and their procedures yeah i i imagine a lot of it had to be [fictional] just to keep the f b i uh going i guess yeah yeah oh that was great one oh i loved it you know i haven't seen that one yet and i need to go see it yeah uh_huh oh my you bet especially in the south well as it as i recall it got some academy awards didn't it oh yeah that's right it it might have one best picture too yeah that was yeah i i think it was more a lesson for tom cruise than anything else in terms of uh of how to act from dustin hoffman but uh yeah it must have been great just being with him on on a daily basis and seeing how he [prepares] for his for his lines and all that stuff oh is is the kmart there that was that was so funny he had to or was it kmart he had to buy his underwear at kmart that was hilarious the the i guess the the first the first uh scene in that movie that really got my attention uh concerning the the disease and all that was when he uh dropped the the uh the toothpicks and he was able to count the number of toothpicks just by a mental image unbelievable yeah yeah because that's the way they they might seem [outwardly] but boy there's a lots going on in there yeah yeah and i the the i think the the best thing about rainman was the uh the way that they put together the the real [awfulness] of the of the of the disease only an and then they balanced it with the [wonderfulness] of it you know and and and you need to to work with it uh you know certainly on on a daily basis but then then again work with it toward a good end not not toward winning in las vegas for example yeah right right i was uh i was so impressed with that movie i saw it three times i can i can tell you oh so much about that movie just because it it really rang uh rang a lot of my uh my personal background i i have a a brother myself that's that's older and uh he's not you know nothing nothing of course serious is wrong with him but uh but we have gone through these these [lapses] of of a relationship somewhat sometimes and then you know uh for for for no real you know direct reason i guess uh we we get into uh uh a really good relationship for a while and then you know back and forth so i i was really able to to relate to the the relationship aspect of the movie between the brothers that was neat yeah a lot uh_huh no question he the he was he's one of these guys though that doesn't really like to go see movies like that he likes the bang them up and shoot them up things and and uh it it was like pulling teeth to go get him to to see it but uh-oh boy he was uh uh he he gave the the best response that i've heard him give of this type of movie for rain man i mean he certainly didn't he only saw it one time and he didn't go back for more but uh he he said he enjoyed it and and yeah yeah and and he really i don't know he he's kind of a dustin hoffman fan anyway but he but before he saw the movie he was like disappointed that dustin hoffman would do this i'm like oh come on yeah and to make it believable i mean i was i was believing it i don't know about any body else but i was it was great he did great yeah yeah you take care up there and uh let's hear it for the summertime no oh no oh well take care bye bye uh the last movie that i saw i i don't go to that many so i'll just have to talk about the ones that i went to see but uh it was awakenings with uh robin williams and uh peter deniro have you seen it it is i just have to take my hat off to peter deniro he is one of the best actors i've ever seen it's there's a point where the uh the show is about these uh [catatonic] type people that this doctor [discovers] a drug that brings them back to the the living more or less but it wears off and the way it wears off is he goes through all these [spastic] you know uh it starts off with like a [tic] and then it gets to where he can't you know control his movements at all and it was just so realistic the way you know you have to just keep reminding yourself that he's an actor no it was very serious very he's good he's he's talented boy he is i know me too but uh well what was that show um uh i want to say [garfield] but that wasn't it yeah the world according to garp he wasn't always funny in that show was he i did too that's why i was thinking it couldn't be just a totally funny part yeah right well what have you seen oh i saw it yes the whole way where did you cry uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah i cried when the horse got killed and when the wolf got killed oh when he was riding back to the settlement and they shot his horse out from under him and then he uh the next day he looked out there and saw those [buzzards] you know and that horse has been such a [pal] to him when he was alone you can tell i'm an animal lover you can hear my dog yeah it was a beautiful story it really was uh_huh uh_huh oh i thought it was awful and so graphic i mean i hadn't even imagined it you know i think we all heard the story of the slaughter of the buffalo um i had a friend who had fixed some uh chili buffalo chili and about a week before went to see the movie of course they raise them now you know to eat but she we were both feeling so guilty about enjoying this chili after seeing that no it wasn't oh yeah yeah really and to think about how it just changed the whole landscape you know you could follow this this beaten down path and it sounded like thunder and [earthquakes] and that sort of thing i know yeah yeah uh have you seen any of the behind the scenes uh of of that movie it was they tried to keep it you know as very close to real i mean like kevin costner did all of his own scenes and uh they had to teach a wolf how to to howl that's the part they had trouble finding was wolves yeah what they just don't howl that much anymore i could bring them in with my dogs and set a [siren] off and that's all they'd have to do yeah well i think we've made it i don't know is it five or three i'm not either okay me too well thank you yeah you too bye bye okay yes uh_huh no unfortunately i haven't i heard it's really good but uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh what does uh is [robby] robin williams does he have a funny part in it oh how does he do serious i've only seen him in funny stuff and so yeah uh garp the world according to garp i didn't read see the the movie i read the book but i yeah in fact it got some pretty serious deep parts in it so yeah i think the last movie that we went out to see was dances with wolves good we've both seen one did you cry through it it was telling a friend i i said i only cried twice but each was about half an hour long so um let's see when i each time that i thought that the indians were going to get killed i cried um i cried the first time when the um the wagon man got killed when they attacked him and uh i think from there on all the way through the movie let's see what else did it um what other parts i can't remember any of the other parts right off now i don't remember when the horse got killed oh yeah uh_huh yeah unfortunately we don't have any animals so uh it there was a lot of pretty scenery too in that movie what did you think about the buffalo scenes that was yeah uh_huh oh oh uh_huh yeah it's not uh_huh well at least you know that it wasn't same situation that the buffalo died in um i thought the scenes when the buffalos running though were beautiful like that was great and there were so many of them i didn't know that that many [buffaloes] alive much less in one place so that was pretty yeah i wonder how they kept up with them though it seemed like the [buffaloes] were moving so fast i guess they [graze] though that wouldn't be a problem no huh_uh uh_huh oh i guess they're just not [domesticated] or or uh that'll teach them in a couple minutes huh well that's funny oh is that five minutes is that okay oh i'm not sure okay well i think we're we're we've done okay though well thank you for calling and i hope you enjoy some more good movies bye bye [cindy] have you seen dances with wolves oh that is a wonderful movie no oh goodness no you don't even you don't even realize it you know really oh i thought it was great yeah well yeah and i heard a story about there's a there's a certain scene in the movie where there's um where they're they're on a buffalo hunt and they have a particular child actor uh who's who's being supposedly run down by a buffalo and when they were trying to film that the buffalo that they used for that scene was neil [young's] buffalo i can't remember what they said his name was but he has a [fetish] for [oreo] cookies and he got him to run like he was running down the kid by [luring] him with [oreo] cookies i thought that was really funny oh yeah oh yeah yeah the wagon the wagon driver yeah and uh the [costuming] yeah was the only thing about the [costuming] my husband [remarked] that it didn't that that um the indians all appeared to be wearing new things and they should have taken them out and rolled them in the dirt a little more probably to age to age the material so they they did very authentic [reproductions] of the of the actual stuff but they didn't they didn't age it quite enough it seemed but it was a very good movie what have you seen lately oh i didn't see that i don't i don't like stephen king really i wasn't sure because uh just generally you know that kind of scary stuff i i just don't want to have anything to do with it yeah i think i heard somebody talking about that she cuts his foot off or something you know um ugh yeah it still just seems a little twisted to me i'm not sure i would have enjoyed that at all yeah uh_huh yeah oh yeah i know we don't see movies at the movies a lot the last we did go see dances with wolves and we went to see not without my daughter but mostly we wait until they come out on video tape and then we rent them oh yeah that looks really good too and silence of the lambs i'm i'm intrigued by it but i'm not sure i want to go see it yet i think uh well now we had some friends that went to see it and they said it was okay so it might not be as i think they may be playing up um some aspects of the movie that aren't the main aspects now we went to see the jagged edge yeah so it's it seems like you know that kind of the thriller suspense and not not real um strange in other ways okay maybe we'll talk to you again alright bye bye no i haven't have you uh_huh it's not the length isn't too long uh_huh uh well we all heard different opinions about it uh uh_huh one that you know yeah it was too long and they thought that you know at certain points that it was going to end and it didn't and it kept going on and uh_huh really now i've seen you know some different clips of it um and it it looks good it's just i haven't had the time to go to the movies lately uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh hey that'd work for me let me tell you uh_huh uh_huh now i've seen another clip of um the guy that plays in murphy brown i don't know his name but he played the uh the the character in it that was very like gross i mean very dirty oh i saw the one clip of him and ugh it was first i guess he was taking kevin costner to like the site where he was going to be or whatever that was rather um gross yeah yeah but other than that i've heard the the you know the um the scenery in it is absolutely beautiful uh_huh really oh really uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh the styles uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i guess i will have to see it then um actually have been to the movies um i think the last movie i saw was misery oh very suspenseful i really don't either but i went with someone and once i was there i couldn't believe i mean it's an excellent movie yeah it's not necessarily it's not necessarily scary as it is suspenseful i mean it's not no in in the book apparently she cuts his feet off but in the movie she she [disables] him but not by cutting his feet um she she breaks both of his ankles and that i couldn't watch and but you know you could tell when it was coming so yeah um that was so that he couldn't leave her cause she yeah yeah i mean yeah well as far as that goes yeah i mean you wouldn't like to see anything happen to anybody but it was just how she got so caught up her emotions and you know and and she feel [madly] in love with this writer and there was this but she was a killer and the the character was you know prior to that had had been someone that had killed other people but no one knew that so but so yeah we just haven't had the time to go to the movies lately uh_huh right right now i want to see sleeping with the enemy uh yeah that looks good and there were a couple others that i just haven't had the time now see i yeah i don't think i want to see that either i know i don't think i could really really uh_huh oh i liked that movie yeah uh_huh uh_huh um well i guess that's about it it was nice okay it was nice talking to you bye bye okay oh i hadn't seen that but i've heard that it's real good uh_huh oh yeah oh well last week as a matter of fact my children was on spring break and we went to two movies we went to see awakenings with robin williams and we went to see kindergarten cop and i really liked both of them i really did awakening was it was kind of sad to me it really was and it would it would be to anyone because you know they really don't know that much about it yeah yeah yeah uh_huh but the drugs didn't work for long and they started having real bad side effects and this is about nineteen sixty four i believe or something like that and there still hasn't been any you know new development in prescribed drugs that can help it but yeah there you know it it was a big breakthrough but in time you know the all the side effects started showing bad yeah yeah they was actually went back like they were you know yeah all it was they wasn't mild you know they was just bad side effects but i really enjoyed it though you know oh yeah that's strictly for entertainment that was just it was yeah he sure is he is as a matter of fact um sylvester stallone is that his name i really believe schwarzenegger is really going to be a variety player more so than he is because he really played the part good you know he could be this rough tough guy and then you know this substitute teacher it was really good oh i've seen that yes it is it is isn't it yes yes yeah uh_huh oh yeah yeah i did too i really did i enjoy a lot of movies now as far as let's say heavy violence i can't handle i'm not into that you know i like rambo and all that i that's just something i just don't want to watch oh oh my goodness yeah oh uh_huh yeah uh_huh oh i guess i'm a little too scary for that oh uh_huh yes yes yes it is it really is yes yeah watching yes oh i don't want to go home yes yes oh goodness yes oh yes i know uh i have two children i really try to watch what they watch i really do because my youngest one he watches something you might as well just plan on staying up all night because you know he'll come in mama i think the ghost is in the house mama i hear it don't you they're eight and ten so they're you know it's just a movie you know i try to say it's just a movie but no mama i've seen it oh uh_huh oh oh oh die oh oh it's funny how your little minds work isn't it oh oh i guess that's why the actors and actresses make millions of dollars people like us you know oh goodness well well i've enjoyed talking to you and maybe we'll run across each other again do you well as far as we could not call in last week you know from where i'm at we couldn't call in they said it would be up friday the march the fifteenth before it was prepared so i missed several days because i was getting quite a few calls oh uh_huh oh yes oh well my husband sometimes you know he'll receive a call and he's at work and if i you know if i know the topic i'll go ahead and accept it as mine but the other day i got one about fishing and i thought oh my i don't know a thing about fishing so i'm not even going to try because when they listened to that tape they would have really had a good time believe me yeah but i'm really not for sure though if well i'll let you go and we'll talk to you later bye bye all right last thing i saw was um i think uh sleeping with the enemy with julia roberts my husband didn't like it that much i thought it was okay it was a little strange you know this woman supposedly is um being mentally abused by her husband you know he keeps her pretty much [terrorized] to stay in the house and she figures out this way to um to leave him secretly you know she fakes her death kind of thing and he tracks her down so the the end scenes are are kind of suspenseful you know when she realizes he's in the house you know after her but uh kind of had the feeling along that uh why didn't she just tell him to straighten up you know why didn't she just tell hey look [bucko] you don't get away with this nonsense but anyhow um what have you seen uh_huh um uh_huh yeah uh_huh so this is where the people have been kind of i don't a better word to say than like asleep or in a coma for a long time and the drugs let them come back oh um well how bad were the side effects oh oh um um um well how about kindergarten cop you know arnold schwarzenegger is getting to be uh a bit of a variety actor you know at first he was just a big muscle man but he's kind of [branching] out uh_huh um well there was a movie out it's been on cable i get cable and there's this thing with uh danny de [vito] called twins i thought that was just great i even like some i mean some of the original stuff like i like the terminator at first you know it was kind of strange but i still like watching him in the terminator and and some of the other things um total recall last year i thought was really good last summer guess it didn't last too long at the box office but i thought it was pretty good and um um yeah yeah and i i have some one person at work i know gets really into those goofy horror [flicks] and i just keep telling her how can you do that and i told her when she had her her little girl i said now you better get out of the habit of watching those you shouldn't be watching them with your little girl and she says her little [girl's] into it now and she she watches these really gross things you know like the nightmare on elm street and the you know that kind of junk i don't go for that at all i remember when i was real little i we all went to some kind of scary movie and it was like this big house had a basement and there was all these weird things going on in the basement you know and i was scared to death of our house had a basement for years you know and i got a lot of really weird ideas from that goofy movie you know they tell you that kids can you know be impressed by all that stuff and it's true i i had a lot of things that i i nobody told me that it was all fake i was just sitting there watching it going oh jeez but i think a lot of kids it's funny get the same kind of fears like there's somebody under the bed where do we get that from um how old are they oh but i remember i was with a friend of mine had uh three kids and the little boy must have been oh maybe about ten and we rented [charlotte's] web okay and he just [bawled] at the end and just uh she's not going to die and we were trying to say kenny it's okay and he didn't want to listen to it he just was beside himself you know this is supposed to be a nice children's movie [charlotte's] web he just couldn't stand it that charlotte was going to die at the end oh yeah she's so nice she can't die oh it was oh you too yeah this is kind of neat i haven't ever initiated a call i've just been called you know by the switchboard and uh well the first week i think a lot more people were doing it but i normally get a call like every other day um uh_huh um how weird i don't know and they they do have a variety of topics my first one was the toughest it was something like discuss pollution it was discuss air pollution causes of it and [cures] i was going oh well uh_huh say well i know it takes a fishing pole and some bait and some water all right bye bye yes i saw home alone with some friends just a couple days ago i wanted to see it uh because there was uh much recommended for months and months and months and it was a a genre that i wasn't in the least bit interested in and i usually when i hear about a movie that's supposed to be very good even if it's in a genre i don't like i figure well i should go see it because if this is you know the best of the genre and i should know about it or something like that and i usually come away thinking no i really don't like this show yeah yeah yeah well the the problem i had with the movie was the problem i've had with a lot of uh i guess hollywood movies which is they are it's a formula movie and they're making the movie according to certain formula that's a good formula but they seem to fall short of of being really creative with a lot of things i mean here's the situation of this kid at home you know it's a classic slapstick situation with these [bungling] [burglars] trying to get in and you know he did some clever things but given the size of the house and how clever the kid was it seems to me they could have done a lot more i mean you know basically stepping on things and yelling in pain and it seems to me they could have been a lot more creative stuff used uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i guess it was a uh a very successful movie financially so we may see more slapstick yeah it is it is and i guess you don't have to but you know if you look at oh have you ever seen any of the movies the french movies that um no i'm not with you so far uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah they have they have a yes they like your lewis much to the chagrin of sophisticated of sophisticated american everywhere but they have this one guy who does slapstick comedy and there's something about it that's so innovative you know he'll have trouble picking up his hat or catching his umbrella blowing in the wind or something but there's something about it that just it isn't just slapstick there's something about the human character in it and that's what i find lacking in a lot of you know like home alone there was a lot of the human character when he was home alone and he was trying and there was a lot of human character there but when it was the real slapstick moments him versus the criminals kind of thing it just sort of lost the human element and became purely a [caricature] does that make since to you yeah yeah did you go with kids though did you go with kids did you take kids along oh i would have liked to have a kid with me i think [preferably] someone seven or eight just just to get a sense for you know how how it affected them especially to come home and you know i would have gotten in trouble the next day i'm sure oh teenage mutant ninja turtles uh_huh and your cousin's a kid uh_huh yeah isn't it amazing yeah yeah it was all [bloodless] and the good guys can get hit all day long and they have to shake it off they don't they don't you know get uh [epileptics] that sort of thing from getting hit on their head you know it's a little disturbing the violence in these films partly it's supposed to be a little bit more okay because it's comic book on the other hand it makes it seem like i read an article one time talking about even the quote unquote realistic movies don't have very realistic upsets of the violence the violence can seem very realistic but the aftermath is usually not there so you see people who are severely injured very very badly lose control of body functions they [thrash] around they scream you know uh it's just a very very bad thing and they never present that even the movies that want to show violence as real they don't really show you what happens with that real violence and i'm not really sure how i feel about that uh on the one hand i'd like it to be a warning on the other hand i wouldn't want people who currently get sort of enjoy their violence fixes from these movies to start thinking gee now we want to see the aftermath all the time either but yeah teenage mutant ninja turtles was sort of the same way they i guess they figured i mean they know what they're doing and they make the movies good enough i guess i'm a bit of a [snob] they make the movies good enough to be successful and then they don't and they but they could make them better you know they could try to make i mean as far as i was concerned teenage mutant ninja turtles could have been a classic of world theater it could have been you know it was it was innovative uh a completely new approach to making a movie in a lot of ways and yet it ended up not being anything particularly memorable because the the story was stupid and and then things like that and they built up i remember feeling annoyed again i didn't have a kid with me and i remember feeling annoyed that they had this whole thing about the master and the passing of wisdom the from older to younger generation it was it was a classic greek you know you know a sort of european mess going back three thousand years that they're playing with um and he had to and he told them remember remember you were united you can succeed individually you will fail and then there was a big [climactic] fight scene and they didn't remember that they didn't fight together they fought individually and they failed individually and then that was it then they had to have the master beat him and the master should according to the classic myth the sort of [joseph] campbell type myth he the master should have died at the end because the the lesson was passed to the young generation and the older generation is not needed and is [reborn] to the younger generation and on and on and on and all this wonderful mess and it still would have been every bit as accessible a movie for the kids if they had included all this stuff that i anyway as an intellectual adult would appreciate it wouldn't have hurt the movie to do that and it would have make it uh broadened the audience that it could have been targeted for i thought but i uh i'm truly enough you know i'm truly an intellectual [snob] to be going to these kinds of movies i realize that i mean to go to these movies and expect them to be you know other than just just good entertainment kind of thing yeah yeah i i i i'm very i'm very critical i i i'm actually originally from hollywood and then then then and my father works in films and such and i tend to tend to be [hypercritical] of these things and then perhaps perhaps it's unfair because i i i must admit i enjoy these movies and that's what they're for but i don't don't remember them and i think it's i think i can think of movies i have less fun during and then after the [movie's] over i remember it so terribly well because it it had some some meaning to me or something uh_huh yeah yeah they leave yeah they leave they leave some songs with you i don't know what it is but it just i mean i don't know if this is old [fart] talking here or something because i'm not that old you know those old movies seemed to have had something that uh that was memorable somehow i don't know what it was okay well um thanks for hearing me rap i guess all right nice talking with you no i'm in california yeah there must be texas people as near as i can tell well okay well i'm from the all right bye bye uh_huh yeah right uh_huh yeah i i i i feel that way when movies are like blown up out of proportion you know usually people tell you how good they are and you always you know end up with expectations too high or whatever right uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh right yeah yeah i was very surprised that did do a slapstick movie because that's uh not really the way comedies are right now you know all the comedies are more like jokes and you know [gags] and stuff like that there's not as much slapstick anymore uh_huh yeah well that's true it's very cheap to make a slapstick movie excuse me no not really the last movie i saw i guess uh was uh uh the one about the french the frenchman that leaves and comes back and he's someone different um he's uh well it's about a man uh that uh leaves his home and comes back to his wife and his wife's all excited but the guy that comes back is not her original husband but um [o'gear] um i'm sure you've heard of it it was a very famous uh popular movie norman gray norman gear oh shoot i'm going to hit myself after i hang up i'll remember the name but uh anyway that was a french movie it was um that was the last one i saw downtown but i live in d c well actually falls church virginia outside the city and uh so a lot of times they have the the the international films downtown but uh so this uh french i guess are into the i guess they would like jerry lewis too right oh uh_huh right uh_huh right yeah uh_huh yeah i see what you're saying there's less character development rather just the the the [funniness] of the [gag] rather than and how it fits with the character right excuse me no we went uh without the kids it's was a night out away from the children oh uh_huh yeah that that's true i i was thinking about that too i saw that um that's why i watched another silly movie um um with my cousin was uh uh the one about the um the turtles right yeah i saw that with my cousin just to see what you know what the kids are into and that is yeah he's a little yeah he's anyway and that was just [excessively] violent i was worried it's like golly if kids start [imitating] that they'll knock each others blocks off uh_huh uh_huh yeah right uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh you're right uh_huh yeah it's true uh_huh uh_huh really uh_huh yeah right right right right uh_huh uh_huh right that's true yeah there's not too many that are uh that are good just on their you know that that you wouldn't want to change something and there's always something that uh uh_huh oh really uh_huh yeah right uh_huh right exactly yeah there there there are several movies that hit home like that of course the ones i always remember are the the older ones i always like the musicals and uh those ones that just stick in your head uh_huh no it could be uh_huh um okay well i guess i got to get going got to go take care of the children yeah nice talking with you are you calling from texas by the way oh okay the first person i've talked to outside of texas yeah okay well thank you very much bye bye uh_huh uh_huh no no kids was that the animated version even better than roger rabbit insofar as animation yeah yeah that was made in a few i don't know several years back i guess latest latest one i've saw which was a mistake to go see was [lionheart] had claude van damme he was he's of course uh i guess he's trained in this uh martial arts of some sort but the plot was bland the acting was bland it was just mostly centered upon his abilities to yeah chop them up exactly and yeah or he's [singular] i guess you know you know how they can make any of any single one of them in a movie to be a super [superstar] of any sort you know but chuck [norris] of course could be just about equal if not more or and all of them i guess could be in that fashion or category it was about uh a french foreign [legion] fellow who deserts to go help his brother's wife who got who became a widow because he was selling drugs and he got killed so he deserts and goes to new york and he starts out by fighting to make money and then he moves on to l a to where that where she is to just help him out it was really i mean the hollywood really must think there's some real dummies out there or something i don't know well it was worth the buck i guess a lot of uh_huh yeah i i [absorbed] all of that movie in one sitting uh i guess what made it so good was the cinematography yeah and the music and uh well it had an excellent story line everything about it was good um i thought an excellent one too was misery with kathy [bates] and james [caan] i'm not a james [caan] fan but that was a well directed and acted movie i'd recommend it it's a little on the violent side but then what movie isn't anymore well i have no objections to it it's just uh and it's a matter of your taste uh yeah and even on those type they don't show what you expect right yeah that seems to be the norm of most movies but what the hey this is america yeah yes i have that was pretty good i always wait for the movie i don't have time to read the book uh_huh yeah they that's the magic of hollywood special effects i hear this movie f x part two coming out is uh pretty good did you ever see the original one it was uh you ought to rent the uh f x part one it doesn't say part one but it it's f [slash] x a uh special effects man who somehow gets involved in this um oh i'm not sure i can't remember it's been a while since i've seen it but he he gets involved in some sort of bad dealings with somebody and he has to go underground and he uses all of his special effects knowledge in doing what needs to be done and uh right and using makeup and using the all the [props] and whatever to get to where he needs to go but you need to rent the first one first uh if if that is that the second one follows the first i don't know if they have the uh original actors on that first one to that one oh i expected those i mean hollywood i mean they were doing their dealings with that before they even got over there i think uh_huh actual names will not be used eventually i'm sure they will come out with the the the proper names latest story uh_huh kevin costner i understand is supposed to be play schwartzkopf supposedly i don't know that's just one of the many rumors that floats around or what you read pretty much used up the tape i guess same and uh we'll talk to you on the next go around [adios] okay movies i haven't seen too many lately i have kids and we went and saw the [rescuers] down under under over the the break do do you have kids you take to movies or yeah it's a walt disney movie and it didn't get as you know as good a reviews as like the little mermaid their last one and got all kinds of academy awards and things last year but this one was i thought was excellent the yeah it's animated and i can't believe how good they're getting with their animation now it's just just the special effects you know and in this movie this there's this boy and he [rescues] this uh bald eagle and uh and it's a huge eagle you know wing span of twenty feet or something like that and the boy actually rides on his back and he rides through the clouds you know and you see him coming out of the clouds his head coming out and then the bird coming out and it you know they're flying all over with it and i mean i know they there must have used been computers or something for animation this day but it was just so real realistic and [lifelike] and good animation it was a good show well roger was a [composite] one there's one there's a movie i've seen roger rabbit that's not a recent movie but uh i enjoyed that show yeah yeah uh_huh chop them up huh this is supposed to be the the guy that's uh replaces bruce lee or whatever or or the next chuck [norris] type of guy uh_huh [superstar] uh_huh uh_huh hum uh_huh uh_huh really uplifting huh uh_huh yeah i haven't heard i hadn't heard much about that movie i other than it was a chop them up movie but uh well i guess that's one i won't go see oh you went to the dollar movie yeah yeah they show up at the dollar movie right after they get come out you know they're usually not not that great or didn't do that great anyway let me see let me see another movie i watched uh i want to see uh that new one uh that won all those academy awards this year dances with wolves i haven't seen that have you seen that one yet what what what the the wide open the spaces uh_huh is that right uh_huh right right yeah our movies today it used to be x and you know and p g used to be r and seems like the rating system you know is kind of switching that way a little bit yeah yeah oh yeah it's just that yeah it's just that the rating system seems you know instead of having x now they have what n c seventeen they just changed it because x had a [connotation] with it you know so right a lot of those are really violent type movies really gory yeah let me see one movie i saw i guess it was a while back red october have you seen that one yeah i read the book before so i knew the story line going in but they changed some things in the movie it wasn't the same i thought the book was better than the movie but i thought the movie was really good as well yeah i don't i read about one or two thick novels like that a year you know that's about all the time i can i can spare but that was a good show i thought you know i read about how they did uh an article on how they did all the special effects with the submarine you know that wasn't a real submarine you saw in the water it was it was all done in studio with smoke and mirrors and all the hollywood magic all those underwater scenes i thought you know it looked to me like it was a real submarine that was in the water you know yeah is that right i didn't huh what's that about hm to to fool people and all the tricks uh_huh that sounds like an interesting concept to understand what's going on in the second uh_huh they're supposed to be coming out with all these desert storm movies this summer too yeah yeah well they had some in some of those you know they i guess they [retitled] some movies that were going to be about lebanese and and you know and and americans and they decide oh make it iraqis and americans you know and they just change the title and uh and [reshot] a few parts you know where they yeah you know where they could i guess they figured we wouldn't can't tell the difference between an yeah right yeah right it was such a it i guess they they'll probably come out with a lot of movies you know it was it was such a [rout] though you know i don't know you know they probably do the story of someone who was shot down early in the war or something and how he survived or or about or about those two newsmen or whatever that got captured is that right yeah uh_huh well i think we've probably yeah yeah it's been about five minutes it's been nice talking with you keep on watching those movies huh okay bye bye okay so what kind of movies have you seen lately i guess obviously you have kids i haven't seen that one yet um the last movie i saw was uh sleeping with the enemy uh see i'm not a big julie roberts fan but i was a lot i was a lot more impressed with her than i thought i would be it turned out to be a better thriller than i was expecting it to be yeah it was a pretty good movie i i'm ready to go it just it's you know hasn't worked out that way yet you know it's uh it looks good you know if you like [thrillers] anyway in fact people i've talked to said that they hadn't slept real good for a while afterwards so yeah uh_huh uh_huh well what other movies have you seen then lately other than the i assume you were talking about the new ninja turtles is that any good i mean i'm sure i'm going to be seeing it because in a week to amarillo where my sister lives and she's got two boys that i took to see the first one so i'm sure i'm going to see the next one here real soon oh well then it won't be too bad you know it wasn't impressive necessarily but it was better than it could have been yeah yeah i think that's important if you're going you know if you're going uh kids are going to uh parents are going to have to go you ought to make it at least you know semi for them too yeah uh_huh i's about to say you're not going to take her to that one i'm sure do you take her or do you go to a lot of comedy movies or to what was the last comedy you saw the last uh in fact i guess this was the last movie i saw i said that wrong the last movie i saw was the hard way with michael j fox well that really wasn't too bad there were you know he's supposed you know he's this actor right and he's playing a cop or he's hanging around with a cop trying to pick up the stuff i think he did an excellent job in not being too much of a cop i mean there there were times when he was like he'd be running with a gun or whatever he didn't look like a cop when he did it and i was so impressed with that because you know usually oh yeah because i mean everybody grows up looking at these cop movies and trying to you know to imitate them or whatever and uh i thought he did such an excellent job of not going that far now by the end he was looking more like a cop but at the beginning of the movie and all through the middle part you know he was trying to trying to get it but he wasn't there yet and you could tell it and i guess that i thought was a real good acting and writing job both you know because i think or directing job i think they did a real good job of that and james woods i think is who it was did an excellent job as the cop i mean you know he just yeah and there were there were some definite um should i say tense moments with him in there yes i i i had seen it before christmas but i took a date to it uh about a month ago so i i i've seen it the second time not too long ago so i really enjoyed it of course the bad thing about it was uh the second time i saw it i didn't really enjoy it as much and i was kind of surprised at that i thought that would be one of those that i would love to watch over and over but before maybe it's just the idea of my reaction to the first time i had laughed so hard i was [hoarse] i really was i was [hoarse] getting out of there and maybe i just laughed so hard the first time that i didn't have it i mean it just wasn't as funny the second time because i had just gone overboard the first time i don't know but yeah i mean it was it was a great movie though i loved the movie i love those movies oh yeah well you have to see them more than that i i i still catch things in airplane that i didn't catch i mean it's amazing i love those movies i really do yeah oh yeah uh_huh oh isn't it though you know but that's at least the good thing about the texas organization letting you buy the tickets cheaper that's exactly what i was going to say i keep not doing it until after i'm there and then all of a sudden i'm saying i wish i'd bought these things easily yeah yeah and then if you want popcorn and stuff it's just i mean uh it's incredible no no nowhere near that expensive and it it's just the idea that these uh these actors you know live in such lavish style i mean it's as simple as that yeah and as long as we keep paying the money for it they are going to keep paying them yes oh yeah oh that was that was an excellent movie no don't don't that needs the big screen it really and truly does because to get the feeling of like when the buffalos are when they're chasing the buffalos and everything you've got to be where you feel it you really truly do i would i mean i guess my first instinct was to wait for the video too but i'm glad i didn't i really and truly am i mean that that was one movie i came out impressed i really and truly did i mean i have absolutely no problems with them winning seven oscars none at all normally i'm one of these people that i don't like one one movie taking all the honors i wanted him to win best actor on top of it he was like i said i wouldn't given the supporting actresses either one but even though they were okay the girl in it they somebody made an interesting [observation] now that i think back on it i'd say yeah i can't believe that either she was the only indian to have her hair done at all times you know what i mean you know it was just too perfect at all times that was a mistake that they made they shouldn't have done it now the best the supporting actor he was good but from what i heard the guy who got it was better so i you know i can see that but oh oh well there are there is one spot that was just a little bit on the gory side but um it's it's okay no problems it it's just the idea that there is this one spot where the white man has come by and killed a bunch a buffalo and just stripped its hide the [hides] so there's yeah but well and and of course and well yeah that and plus i mean part of it is the idea that he goes with them on a buffalo hunt so i mean they are killing buffalos in it but they don't stress that very much they really don't and i think it's an excellent movie for if if she enjoys movies i think it'll work pretty good it's it's it's a long movie oh yeah i may have to see the video i hadn't even thought of that uh_huh yeah well yeah i kind of like it when they do that because the video like i said there are certain things you can't do with a video and the idea that they may put a little extra in it i think is a good idea because i mean when you rent a video videos of course are not cheap either and so the idea of getting a little extra with it i think is a good idea because they they make [bundles] of money off those things oh i do too yeah but not enough yeah i'm getting to the point where you know i watch well i watch nick at night um a lot well the last movie i saw but it wasn't my choice was the ninja turtle movie that's right yeah but my preference is the one we saw before that was silence of the lambs that's an excellent movie oh was that good i heard oh okay well that's good yeah silence of the lambs kept me on the edge of my seat right yeah it is right and i do really oh i love them like that i'm not i mean i i like all ranges of movies but i like that where they run tense i really enjoy they keep me guessing the whole time it's really it was really interesting oh yes the new one of course oh amarillo i didn't see the first one my husband said it was um about the same lines so yeah right right and i was impressed with the fact that um it wasn't that [childish] you know what i mean it wasn't my daughter's five i mean she understood everything she goes to almost all movies with us except you know r rated and she really enjoyed it but it was on a higher level you know where there were some things that kids didn't understand that adults did and i liked that right that's right that's right it's pretty good but we take her to just about every movie and she uh she does really good we've taken her from real young and she does real good like i said we don't take her to r so if and when we ever get a baby sitter like we did with silence of the lambs we go see it oh no no yeah yeah oh gosh what was the last comedy we saw huh huh huh good question good question we don't get to go that often but something on the tip of my tongue and i can't think of which one it was uh gosh i can't remember uh_huh but that that sounds good uh_huh right oh okay that's neat the part was hard to do that right yeah right right uh_huh yeah i like him probably the last comedy we saw now that i think about it is home alone it was really cute yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah right maybe so maybe so yeah i did too i'm looking forward to this summer uh naked gun two and a half is coming out i do too i mean they are just slapstick it you have to see those twice to catch everything yeah yeah yeah i do too i do too so i'm looking forward to seeing that because that looks hilarious as they all do well we we try to go a couple times a month i guess to see a movie it it's just getting so expensive but normally we don't think about it until i know because we can go spend fifteen dollars just getting in the three of us yeah i don't understand why they charge you out the [kazoo] for both you know popcorn is not that expensive so they get you at the ticket booth and then try and get you at the popcorn and coke yeah we just keep breeding them i guess so now have you seen dances with wolves i haven't seen we're waiting for the video no really oh uh_huh uh_huh oh really oh uh_huh right yeah yeah yeah oh yeah yeah yeah yeah you think my daughter would like it oh okay she doesn't mind when we cover up her eyes see that's the one that is the honest to god the one reason i don't want to see the movie is because i love buffalos for some weird reason and i know they're fake okay okay oh that'll be good we really need some my husband keeps wanting to yeah and i heard the [video's] even going to be longer they did a lot of stuff that they cut out yeah that's true they said yeah they said there's a lot that had been edited because of the length and that they wanted in so they're going to put it in the video and that way you can watch it at your leisure yeah yeah yeah true i know it isn't that ridiculous we have cable which helps a lot yeah we keep holding out you know all right what have you seen that's i knew you were going to say that i wanted i want to go see that gosh yeah i i i watched uh costner on the academy awards i was really happy that he got i was hoping he was going to get best actor uh but he he he did pretty good on that one yeah yeah i'd i bet yeah there're several of them that are out right now that i want to see uh dances uh silence of the lambs nay nay that's what people said yeah yeah well you know they they that's what they said about the [exorcist] you know no no it's terrible you'll have nightmares you know i watched last weekend me and my roommate we we laughed about it well i'll tell well i guess i i guess it was because i'd read the book before i saw the movie and the book to me was far more frightening than the movie was yeah he's a very good writer and he had a way of putting you in that scene you know it was yeah and of course i was i was living alone at the time and it was late at night and scary and you know you start hearing noises you know and there's rats in the attic you know uh let's see there was a couple of others that are out and i can't remember yeah i i didn't i didn't even like the previews on that no i i don't much care for michael j fox anyway yeah i saw the original back to the future and then i i know i hardly ever go see a sequel i mean i think i think the only i've ever seen a sequel was two thousand and one uh two thousand and ten was far better two thousand and one was a good movie if you had read the book yeah no nobody could figure it out i mean the the book was so much uh there's just things all you can do is put it in words you can't put it in pictures you know a lot of that stuff that was going on in the film you say what is this you know what's the significance of the [apes] you know oh the book is really good i mean i i keep a little library of books that i just like to read over and over again and that's one of them it's it's so well written oh you're right i haven't huh oh those a real dog and cat huh huh sounds sort of like the incredible journey uh_huh huh yeah that sounds a lot like a walt disney film sounds a lot a like a walt disney film oh yeah not anymore i mean i i i was raised on walt disney films you know old [yeller] uh big red yeah when i was a little kid i saw the incredible journey on christmas eve and it was so good that i had forgotten that it was christmas eve i mean that's something for a kid and that was something for greedy old me at christmas time i'll tell you no is it yeah i didn't much care for the first one maybe that's well i i'll have to go get that one i guess yeah it's it's yeah i get so tired of you know these you know sequels number nine number ten number fourteen yeah you know yeah you know [freddy] eats a nuclear [warhead] you know i i'm just i'm so sick and tired of that i just can't believe it it's like rocky films i i haven't seen a one i can't stand stallone yeah and i i was afraid that rambo was going to do the same thing that rocky was going to do you know go into fourteen hundred episodes now i don't i hardly ever watch t v if i ever get the [hankering] to see something i've got i don't know maybe about thirty or forty movies and i just yeah i don't even rent them you know i i figure if i find a movie i like i'll buy it cause i just watch them over and over again yeah i yeah my my very favorite one that the top of the [tick] for me is uh [excalibur] i i loved that film um it's just so well done and i lived over in england for four years that was the first place i ever saw it and it was just gosh it was so good it was it was filmed in ireland and they got pretty scenery in ireland yeah it's nice and i i've been down to the south of england where supposedly king [arthur's] castle was yeah it was yeah it was [unimpressive] to look at i mean the whole thing was about the size of a a medium house yeah it wasn't oh yeah yeah yeah yeah there's some nice stuff over there to see i i spent four years traveling around and didn't see you know hardly anything i just i need to go over there and stay about twenty years so i can just travel go around all the places stonehenge of course you know every everybody makes the obligatory trip to stonehenge okay big deal here's some rocks sitting out in the middle of a field okay it's boring you know something i come to think of it i don't think i went to the movies one time i uh where i lived uh it was a little town called [newmarket] about seventy miles north of london and there was another town called barry saint [edmunds] about twenty miles away from us and they had a little uh theater company there and we use to go go out to that about once a week yeah a really nice place you know amateurs but really quite good uh but that was interesting course go to london quite a lot and see shows down there uh but other than that i just didn't have time to go to the movies you know never any anyway anything that i ever wanted i rented a lot of videos cause the closest movie theater was barry saint [edmunds] and who wants who wants to drive twenty miles to go to the movies a lot of a lot of people did but it would have to be a good show yeah yeah i i they they they have all these neat [phrases] you know you know you know like [critically] [acclaimed] that's what they when the thing hasn't won any award you know they can't yeah yeah yeah from love canal [waterfront] property here at love canal you know but you know [critically] [acclaimed] oh good grief give me a break that's i mean there's a lot of reasons why i don't go to movies and primarily i mean i now i'm probably going to going to upset you but people who bring kids irritates the heck out of me okay the latest movie i've seen that i thought was fantastic was dances with wolves oh man i i just finally ended up going to see it uh and one day my husband had the kids and i just went because we couldn't we could never get to go see it together because it's so long by the time we had a [babysitter] for that long so i finally just went to see it and i just thought it was fantastic yeah yeah that was quite a the buffalo scene in that thing was so real it's like i mean it just blew me away yeah uh i'm i'm afraid to go see that one that one looks so scary just from the previews i thought gosh i'd probably have nightmares for the next six months it's supposed to be good though i know some friends who went to see it they said it was really [riveting] well you're not a thirteen year old i don't know i saw it when i was a kid and i thought oh man oh uh_huh oh really huh gosh oh boy gosh call the crisis line yeah i bet oh gosh i saw one i thought was crummy with that new uh michael j fox movie the hard way where he plays a a actor that's uh like huh oh i know it was well i ended up at the theater and there was didn't seem to be anything else on i wanted to see so i'll try that but it wasn't worth anything i didn't care for that at all yeah well the last two i saw him in one of those back to the future part three deals and that was crummy also i didn't think that was any good so yeah oh boy yeah yeah well i hadn't read it and i couldn't figure what was going on half the time so yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i should probably go back and read the book now that i just saw the movie again not too long ago wow huh huh well i have one i bet you haven't seen if you don't have kids [otis] and [milo] oh that is that is the most precious movie it has to see it on the big screen because it's just the most gorgeous nature scenes you've ever seen in your life and it's all this it's the story of this little cat and dog and it's not like [cutesy] it's just uh it's just so realistic everything they do you wonder how in the world they ever got them to do some of these things and it was a real dog and cat and all the other animals they initially start out in the [barnyard] kind of setting where they're raised and then the cat gets um on this [treacherous] journey he [climbs] into a box and ends up floating down this river and he winds up all over [creation] i don't know where in the world it is somewhere in china somewhere i think that it was filmed but uh it's just really an incredible thing yeah it was pretty wild and of course the only sound is dudley moore [narrates] it but there's no you know nothing else to keep it going but it really keeps keeps me going i i've seen it twice now huh yeah it was like the best of the walt disney ones walt [disney's] kind of gotten worse in my opinion over the past few years yeah yeah all those old good ones that you you know wish they had on more now but oh boy huh that's pretty good really let's see what are some other ones i've seen lately i'm trying to remember i can't oh i just saw one on the video oh um have you seen the gods must be crazy part two that is a riot yeah the first one was really good but the second one is really good too i was really surprised no i thought it was funny but that's my sense of humor it's hard to find movies that aren't terrible violent or terribly bunch of sex going on anymore and i'm just i guess i'm just middle america or something i just go to be entertained and and not really interested in some of the like the terminator or some of the schwarzenegger stuff i just yeah [freddy's] revenge part twenty five or whatever yeah i've never yeah yeah i've never seen any of those yeah i can't either he seems so macho i just yeah yeah yeah when they're so cheap too at the video stores that you can you don't that's like my husband does that he can watch them over and over and i'm there's very few i would want to see that many times so he he once he has one he likes he likes to watch it over and over oh yeah that was a good one i haven't seen that one in a long time yeah oh boy uh_huh oh gosh huh yeah i bet gosh oh boy so that really has a lot of meaning for you to see that oh really well when i was in england years ago and i went to to like [shakespeare's] and you know [stratford] on avon and all that and it was like you couldn't stand up inside of it because it was so short the ceilings were so short but yeah yeah oh boy yeah yeah yeah did you see any movies over there i remember i went to see don [quixote] over there when it came out it came out right around the time with [sophia] [loren] and that was a riot to see that yeah cause when you're [touristing] you probably don't want to take the time to go see a movie huh oh boy uh_huh oh boy yeah that sounds great yeah yeah uh_huh oh boy probably some of them did yeah yeah it's hard to know what the good movies are anymore because sometimes the reviews you just can't go by yeah oh i see it's kind of like [waterfront] property or something if you're you know if you're two miles away from water water view yeah uh_huh okay well actually what i do i haven't been to a movie theater in probably eight or nine months so i haven't really seen any movies in the movie theater but i rent probably four or five movies a week we've got a good video place out here and uh uh-oh gosh uh i'm just trying to think of all the movies i've recently seen uh oh air america have you seen wild orchid well it depends do you like uh [steamy] movies oh okay what type of movies do you like okay yeah do you like suspense movies or do you like uh just action or oh jagged edge jagged edge was a suspenseful one or uh fatal attraction oh well i hope i don't run across them what was your favorite all time movie i i have to say that probably the one movie that really threw me back the most uh that i was really the most in shock with was probably uh star wars when that first came out i really did not expect the special effects or anything like that i mean i guess uh out of all the movies i've i've never been as excited to go back i was ready to go back and see it again you know now i i also liked uh-oh gone with the wind or some of the classic like the lawrence of arabia oh you haven't oh yeah no that's uh that's a that's a real interesting movie and it's got a good historical perspective to it oh yeah actually i just saw a movie uh called the lost [capone] and it's about al [capone's] brothers primarily one of his brothers and i won't give the the whole plot away but it's it's really a good movie uh al [capone] had three brothers and one of them was lost for many many years and uh he actually he turns out to be a law man yeah it's really interesting it no that's okay i didn't give away the whole thing i just gave away just enough to get you interested yeah it is and a lot of times what i wind up doing is picking say an actor or an actress and seeing like all i've seen all of james [dean's] movies uh all of [mae] [west's] movies and just kind of kind of go out and uh rent all the movies and uh uh you know just kind of go i guess you could do that you know get all of david [carradine's] movies or uh uh segal to what's his first name i can't remember his first name is it david segal i don't know he was on uh on uh uh arsenio just recently it was really kind of interesting because arsenio was asking him about uh what he thought of uh one of the other action guys god i can't even remember the name he said well he wouldn't really talk about it didn't want to talk about him because he didn't think he was such a uh a good action guy it wasn't stallone it was uh i can't remember shoot i can't remember the guys name but i like all the the rambo movies yeah [yo] [adrian] no we we actually rent uh probably a good combination of movies with the exception of horror films don't watch really very many horror films at all you know i don't know there's something about people coming up through the sofa to get you or something you know coming out of the t v that just doesn't make my day you know yeah yeah i just saw uh uh a really interesting movie called uh flatliners yeah yeah it was just crazy enough for you know students might try to do it you know i mean and it's not like there's a lot of scientific data on it yeah yeah oh yeah that was a great movie yeah uh have you seen shrimp on the [barby] yeah it's got no no uh [hogan] no no it's got uh uh [cheech] [marin] yeah it is it's kind of uh kind of a poor man's pretty woman in reverse but it was kind of cute actually did you see dirty rotten [scoundrels] i though that was a really cute movie i enjoyed that no i haven't i hear that's the one that you really need to see at the theater instead of home video yeah well my wife uh has got a uh a picture from kevin costner and he signed it it's from dances with wolves yeah and he signed it he he happens to be uh a friend of one of her her business associates and or not not a friend a cousin a cousin so uh uh but anyhow we got uh we got a nice uh picture and it came in an envelope that says dances with wolves so we've got to uh try to get out there and see that one huh now did you see uh driving miss daisy okay okay what's what's your most recent one that you've seen uh_huh really i used to do that too but i haven't been doing it lately but no see i haven't seen that one uh no is it good uh no not i know that sounds funny coming from a woman but usually i don't um action i i guess one of my favorite well two of my favorite movies is probably like lethal weapon and lethal weapon two and those are those are like two of my most favorite i mean they're just really good movies and i liked bird on a wire and movies like that um yeah some i guess like what do you mean like like are you talking about movies like die hard two okay yeah i liked that that was pretty good um that was okay i i don't i guess i thought it was too far fetched but so many people said oh no it wasn't you know but i guess really that's true because i don't know i just didn't find that one to be real i i just thought it was too far fetched um oh gosh i i can't think off my head do you know which one yours was oh yeah well that's right really yeah yeah you're right about that but that that's really like an all time classic i mean i don't think anybody anything could ever beat that see i've never seen that no should i rent it should i go rent it tomorrow that's probably something i need to see right now because i'm taking history in school so it'd probably be a good thing for me to see oh oh really uh_huh really oh you just gave it away i guess i can't go see it no that does sound good is it one i guess it's a rental okay i may have to do that go see it or go rent it yeah uh_huh uh_huh um it's not david is it oh i don't i don't watch that um really huh oh see i didn't really care that's that's one side of the action i guess that i didn't really care for but see i don't really like sylvester stallone i don't think he's really a very good actor i know that sounds awful because so many people think he's so wonderful but i just have never been a stallone fan hey that's pretty good no i guess like i say i just have i don't know i just have never seen any interest in him but oh yeah i don't either yeah you're right well it's so i guess i'm a real i'm a [realist] and so when i watch movies like that it's like this can not happen so i just don't enjoy it you know because it's just like come on give me a break you know i mean i just and so many of them are done so poorly you know that it just doesn't even give you the effect i mean some of them are done good and they do scare you but um so many of them are just done real i don't know i'm not really into those oh that was one of my favorites yes i thought that was a very good movie i was really impressed with that one i mean it was what i liked about it was that it was a new subject nobody had ever touched it before you know and it was just it was done so well you know it was just right well that's probably true but it was a very good movie it was done real well too i mean there wasn't any part of it that you really felt like no this can't happen it seemed it seemed real you know it was really good that that was one i mean it's not my all time favorite movie but it was good it was really good and um i don't know if you like this kind but i thought pretty woman was a really good movie too yeah i've we've seen that two or three times we waited and we rented it you know but but it was really good no i haven't i don't know if i've even heard of that one it must have uh what's his name in it no it doesn't really yeah paul [hogan] no really i'm surprised oh really that must be pretty good then was it good oh yes yes yeah it was twins was good too because when i thought of that i thought of anyway um oh there was another one what's the one that just oh dances with wolves have you seen that yet oh you've got to see that one it's really right that's probably true that's probably true it's it's very very good very good that's another one that i was really glad when it won all those awards because it really [deserved] it really oh wow that's impressive oh neat oh yeah it's really worth it i mean it's a very good movie and yes i would suggest seeing it at the theater i know that they're still playing it and they pushed it back to playing it in the theaters until like august i think because they were they were scheduling a video release of it in july and then when it won all those awards uh they pushed it back to august so but yeah that one is definitely worth seeing it's really good yeah and you know i didn't think that one was near as good you know i guess it was okay i mean it was all right but um when i compare like the winners of this year and last year it just i don't know maybe it's it's not yeah i'm trying to think what i've seen lately i well we just finished watching uh teenage mutant ninja turtles on tape you know yeah we we've seen that yeah yeah it was great have you seen it yeah i um we we saw an we liked it but you know i didn't think it was as good as all the uh hype was about it yeah i i i couldn't see it worth getting a nomination for uh best picture yeah yeah and so we just uh it depends um you know it depends on i'd like to see those i keep you know um you know there's like three movies that i i keep telling myself that i should see one of these you know some day that i haven't seen you know that that are classics you know because i've never seen citizen [kane] and never seen i've never seen [casablanca] and never seen gone with the wind uh_huh oh i i we saw part of the african queen on on t v a couple of years ago and i've i've i've been wanting to see all of it but we just you know we walk into the video store and we're like well why don't we go see this now so but um i one of the movies we saw recently we saw uh misery that was good um oh it was great and it you think you know for a stephen you know it because it was by stephen king it would be really gory but there's only one well there's a couple scenes at at the end there's there is you know some blood and everything and there's one really bad scene where it's i mean there's not blood but it's pretty graphic but it's um it's a really good movie um yeah yeah he's a writer and um she's his biggest fan and she's also a little a little on the [nutso] side no we haven't um oh it wasn't i i got i heard like mixed reviews um of that we that's that's on our list of things to see our big thing is um you know movie prices up here i think it's like six bucks now in the theaters you know so it's like you know a lot of things we try to catch like at the dollar theater or [matinees] and then a lot of other stuff we just wait until it comes out on tape well one movie we saw in the last couple of months that we really enjoyed was uh edward scissorhands yeah have you seen that oh it was great yeah it was no no it's um it's an odd film and it's really interesting that i like the director a lot um a guy named tim [burton] did you ever see the movie beetlejuice oh oh yeah well if you if you liked beetlejuice you'll probably like edward scissorhands if you didn't like beetlejuice you'll probably won't like edward scissorhands yeah it's um [burton's] kind of uh he's a very odd odd man but he's i think he's very interesting and uh i liked those two movies of his a lot he did batman also which you know it was good but i mean he was um yeah oh yeah oh yeah um don't really know i like costner a lot but uh i'm a big i'm a big baseball fan so you know after bull durham and field of dreams you know um although you know which one yeah field of dreams was good um and i i think i liked the other movies he's done no way out was really good and did you ever see [silverado] um let's see danny [glover] scott glen kevin [kline] um brian [dennehy] jeff [goldblum's] in uh john [kreas] is in it if you don't blink it was it was a big western i mean i think roseanne [arquett] was in it too another one that if you blink you'd miss her uh it was and i think it was like a three hour movie or two and a half hours and and it was one of those ones that could have been four hours if they hadn't cut a lot out um but it was it was really good um uh_huh no i didn't is that any good oh okay yeah we were in the video store today and somebody was recommending it to somebody you know the the people who run the video store was recommending it to somebody else huh well i'll have to catch it one of these days you you you said you seen no way out yeah that was very good um he was in the [untouchables] too yeah it was on um no it was on one of the networks i think last weekend uh or two weeks ago yeah i um i wish i i mean i'd seen it when when you know it was originally in the theaters and um i saw it you know i saw part of it again i mean i like you know i like costner i like sean connery and uh there's this one there's this one actor it's really silly that i enjoy him a lot but i i've really enjoyed him in everything i've seen him in a guy named charles martin smith um you've probably seen him and just an you know oh that's who the guy is do you remember did you ever see american [graffiti] oh did you ever see the movie star man okay in star man he was the guy chasing after um jeff bridges and karen allen or nancy allen you know short [nerdy] guy with glasses he's he's just i i don't know why but he's always a lot of fun in every movie he's in he was in the [untouchables] he was the accountant yeah no no you're thinking of rick [moranis] he looks like rick [moranis] but he's not yeah yeah uh a little of a review usually won't make me go see a movie i hadn't already wanted to see no it's uh i want to see it um we want to see godfather part three also but my my girlfriend's seen part one and part two although she saw them years ago but i've never seen either of the first you know of the of the godfather movies so we're probably going to like rent those some time and then try to see godfather part three somewhere yeah oh okay i haven't never read it uh_huh we just rented um a couple weeks ago a movie called the freshman with um it's got matthew [broderick] in it and um uh [marlon] brando and brando like does a [parody] of the character he played in the godfather um yeah it's it's one of the reasons why you know the [godfather's] been on our minds lately um but uh there's a bunch of scenes from uh uh from the godfather that's used because matthew [broderick's] going to film school and uh in his classes they're using there's a they're running a bunch of scenes from the godfather and then he's running into [marlon] brando who is playing you know this you know this uh organized crime head so it's um it was it was a fun movie uh i liked rainman i thought i thought it was interesting that he was doing yeah well i'm being from baltimore of course i'm a big barry [levinson] fan since uh he he's you know he's done a bunch of baltimore movies um barry [levinson] did um diner and [tinman] and [avalon] which are all set in baltimore uh_huh of the three of those [diner's] probably the best i mean they're they're all pretty good but diner is really worth seeing uh late fifties yeah okay and uh do you want to start did you watch dances with wolves did you see the movie did you like it i thought it was very well done how about ghost right i feel the same way about that too it was okay no no and uh let's see uh the most recent ones that i've seen are those two ghost and uh dances with wolves but i rent uh uh videos do you you you watch many do you like the classics like uh gone with the wind and uh you know the older movies yeah that was good i think i've seen most of [humphrey] [bogart's] movies but in in you know a long time ago and uh like the [maltese] [falcon] and all those uh uh yeah that was good yeah yeah yeah it's true oh i didn't see that one really yeah really is that the one where uh the guy gets captured by that women okay yeah yeah right uh_huh did you see pacific heights i saw that one that one wasn't that great either well i didn't think so no how about silence of the lambs i know i i wanted to see i i was curious if you had seen it and that uh yeah that's us too yeah yeah true i know it's too bad that they've gotten so expensive oh really no really i thought it was kind of maybe for kids more than uh_huh uh part of it i i never really watched the whole thing oh really uh_huh yeah that was pretty good though really when you think of what it takes to make some of those kind of movies you know you see it for uh you know a couple of hours or an hour and it really there's a lot in it when you look at the scenery and the cars and all the different stuff like that you know whose your favorite actress or actor uh_huh yeah that was good i saw that movie too that was very good field of dreams oh yeah yeah [silverado] uh who who was that with that the the the title sounds familiar i'm trying to oh really i i might have seen part of that because the name sounds familiar although i i would remember i think in with him in it how about revenge did you see that with him with uh anthony [quinn] i thought it was i like everything he's done so far you know it's uh one of those movies that it's not a great movie but it was okay yeah it was it was not a bad movie yeah that was excellent now that's another one i wanted to see in fact that was advertised not too long ago cable okay i know i saw yeah something about it uh_huh i don't know him no i i don't think so yes okay okay yeah yeah oh oh i know who you mean he was in uh uh honey don't [shrink] the kids wasn't he oh okay all right yeah that's the one i was thinking of but i have i've seen quite a few movies i i enjoy them i think that uh it's it's kind of like uh good entertainment an uh an escape type of thing how about some of the ads do you go by the ads when you look at them or the reviews do they influence you a lot yeah did you see [goodfellas] that that was pretty good um and uh_huh i was just going to say you should see those uh first if you can if if you read the book it's uh even better the book was excellent yeah and uh i was a little disappointed in the third it's godfather three it was not bad but i expected more i think oh really uh_huh how about tom cruise do you like his stuff [cocktails] or uh oh yeah that was good i liked rainman too uh_huh yeah they sound familiar i probably saw parts of those you know a lot of times i'll i'll start watching a movie and i'm tired and it next thing you know it's it's especially if there's commercial in it and then the titles might sound familiar but i really don't know what they're all about is that the one set in the fifties or sixties late fifties yeah i think i saw that one how about meryl streep uh i don't go to the movies a whole lot but uh i went two or three weeks ago for the first time in a long time and saw dances with wolves which turned out to be an extremely good movie yeah it's it's something that uh my brother lives over in fort worth and i was telling him about a couple of weeks ago and he said well i'll wait until it comes out on uh tape and rent rent the video and i said no this is not one that you want to do that with it's uh the scenery and the landscape and the country that they're in needs a big screen it's just beautiful country with the hills and the trees and the buffalo and the whole thing it's just uh just amazing amazing picture no it's one i think but you know every now and then you find one that you say yeah this is my favorite movie well this is the one for me this time yeah what have you been to lately yeah oh yeah is that right yeah uh_huh how's his karate well well they do they get i remember when we used to go to see well i remember when grand prix came out when i was a kid and some other movies like that we wanted to jump in the cars and race and i suspect today what they see is bound to be what they want to do when they get out of it is that right i did see ghosts yeah i think that ghosts was one of those that a lot of people didn't think was going to be any good and it turned out to be an excellent movie i've forgotten the guy's name who was in it who had the lead role yeah and i especially like him he's a really good guy other than that dances with wolves seems like to be the only thing i've seen in the past several months to have any is that right i've i've seen the ads for it but i'm not real sure what it's about yeah that is a strange combination yeah oh yeah both of them oh yeah years ago oh oh yeah and then defend it well i guess that's where the title comes from then yeah it is it's funny we've got a couple of movies out recently ghosts and defending your life that have to do with uh after life i guess and it kind of makes you wonder i'm also besides working at t i i'm a graduate student at north texas and working on master's in communication it's the behavioral science part of communication and i think about these things and people trying to define their own world view and uh what exactly do we you know do we see about this world or why are we so fascinated with the other world is it supposed to be better sometimes i think we think it is we like those things that way well it has all the way through history there's i guess if you want to call its [mysticism] or the [occult] or whatever it's always fascinated i guess because we don't know and there's no real way of finding out there's only one way of finding it no i did uh did not the girl next to me saw it and she really liked it yeah it is yeah yeah they said she said that this was almost believable that could really happen you know you get the medical profession doing these kinds of things and you never know yeah yeah i like it when they will do something and not get too silly i've been disappointed in some movies that they don't know how to end it it seems like so then they get crazy and and it doesn't end like the story has been going well i guess that covers our topic nice talking to you bye i haven't seen that yet i i i hear we a whole bunch of us were going to go see it it's playing at school actually in about two weeks i guess so we're going to go see that but you enjoyed that that's what i heard yeah yeah i've heard it it it's not one for the videos really um let's see well uh this is almost sort of funny i was just um friend and i went to see out for justice which is steven segal because uh we're both big karate fans so we wanted to see what this is like and uh impressed with actually yeah i wasn't i mean i've seen his other movies and i just think he's pretty good but uh this movie i'm convinced now he can act oh his his his karate is pretty good i think in this one it wasn't so good i generally um movies like that scare me though i'd be just fine without them because you know kids come running out wanting to beat each other up fighting right yeah yeah well that that was number one for the week actually too so so it was a little bit uh i was thinking wow people must be into crime movies again but but in the middle of that conversation we sort or picked an um an interesting point last year's number one movie for the year was ghosts i don't know if you saw ghosts or not yeah and and and that was that that helped us sort of feel good about you know about ourselves and about one around us in that at least at least if everyone's running around seeing karate movies and stuff like that at least they're still going to see the real good movies you know yeah yeah it was it i was absolutely enthralled by it oh patrick swayze yeah he's very good really i'm trying to think what else i've seen recently what else have we seen recently oh you know what's pretty cute actually um defending your life have you heard of it yeah um i actually hadn't heard anything about it and some friends called up and said do you want to go see this movie and and they said it starred um meryl streep and mel brooks at first they told me and i thought what a strange combination mel brooks and meryl streep well actually it starred that that it's actually [albert] brooks so it's lot better mel brooks you probably know i know so it it was a strange combination but it turned out to be a very cute movie i mean the whole premise is that they go out and and they die and they have to right both of them are dead and they happen to meet in this this town um this this sort of city where you're set up you know they go and they decide if you can move up to the next level i don't know if you've ever read jonathan livingston [seagull] but it's something like that they sort of move up to levels and and they have to decide whether or not they're good enough and as it turns out you know they meet there and fall in love and stuff like that so you can guess the rest of the plot it actually it's it's really funny because they run through you know what they have them do is sit down and see scenes of their lives and that's pretty good actually yeah and it's you actually have to go up there and you have a they have an attorney for you know attorney for you and attorney a defense and a prosecution and you know the [prosecutor's] job is to make sure you don't move up a level and the [defense's] job is to make sure that you you do you know it's uh it's a neat little story actually i was i was i went thinking it'll be okay not great and then i actually came away thinking it was really pretty good so yeah um the other world yeah um i'm i'm sure that it seems like it certainly would would explain the [preoccupation] with but i suspect it's always been a [preoccupation] with that sort of things right well well did you ever see um flatliners that's that's that's probably one of those ones that you know it's on video now i think probably probably worth seeing on video actually we really enjoyed it but it was also right along the same lines i mean they they would go ahead and kill themselves for three or four minutes to see what happens almost yeah i i it's a little far fetched to find a bunch of medical students doing it but but it was um it was it was odd enough you know and they didn't just sort of make it silly it was you know it was done fairly well i think so actually i actually enjoyed that as well the story sort of keeps going and going yeah great well it was nice talking to you bye bye okay okay um the last movie i saw was the five [heartbeats] and i liked it a lot because it had a lot of music in it yeah it's it's it's uh robert townsend movie um i i don't know all the actors or anything but it was just it was a lot of music a lot of old songs things like that um it's still out now uh it came out i guess about a month or about a month and half ago something like that it's about a black singing group it and uh it was called the [dells] and uh it was kind of like just about their their life and their uh history and things like that and the way they went from from how they went from stardom to [nonstardom] and uh that was pretty good i enjoyed i saw dances with wolves have you seen that yeah yeah uh_huh yeah right now kevin costner i mean he's starring in everything he's doing the kennedy movie that's coming out um and there's one yeah yeah starring kevin costner and let me see what else um he's doing some other movie i can't i think robin hood that's it the robin hood coming out and he's going to be in also and let me see what else have i seen what have you seen oh i know what you're talking about my it's called [reviewing] my life or something like that yeah i didn't get to see that yeah that's it okay uh_huh one of my favorite movies it's not one that i haven't seen i it's not a late movie it's uh fatal attraction it's probably my all time well not all time favorite but one of my favorites that i can watch over and over no i never did i i heard it was really good i've never just haven't gone out to see it was that pretty funny yeah yeah somehow just never made it to see that but i need to see it yeah fatal attraction that i don't know why i like that movie so much i guess it was so much suspense and i like suspense yes uh_huh yeah on that order certainly is and i liked the woman that played in that i forgot what her name is now anne [archer] she's the one she was the wife in fatal attraction yeah and she played in uh narrow margin which was a little more recent and that was kind of another suspense type [alfred] [hitchcock] type thriller that was good uh god i guess i haven't seen too many movies lately i need to yeah uh_huh somehow i mean it's hard for me to get to movies now because it's getting so expensive you know i'd i'd rather rent yeah yeah and that's just for a a bucket of popcorn you know yeah yeah god forbid you should want something to drink with it but uh uh_huh oh yeah easily and you're usually going to do you're usually going to go to a dinner go to dinner or something with that yeah it's almost more fun really yeah it's almost more fun really to rent movies you know just kind of stay at home maybe yeah that's true too yeah but then you can make your popcorn and you know be comfortable uh_huh well that's about all the movies i've seen recently uh_huh no i never did was that arnold schwarzenegger yeah yeah there's a movie i do want to see uh i haven't seen it what is it oh kiss before dying it looks it looks pretty suspenseful are you looking in the paper oh oh yeah that was great yes that was that that might be one of my all time favorites too that was an excellent movie it was pretty scary because i was visiting a v a hospital uh near to where i live and they were saying that some of the patients there you can't leave by themselves because they'll make a weapon out of anything you know out of a piece of paper they can kill somebody you know and this guy in silence of the lambs [hannibal] [lector] he was he was that kind of person and you they couldn't leave him alone and that's that's what was so scary about the movie you know because he was such an awesome character you know it was it was really he was very dangerous but you were kind of on his side because he was so fascinating but but they couldn't leave him alone at all and they found out what happened when they did leave him alone one time but i won't tell you that just in case you see the movie uh_huh oh very good oh yeah oh yeah i'm not sure when it will be hitting video stores it should be a while yet though oh i haven't heard anything about it i but i don't like steven [seagal] things uh so he's had out for justice and there was one right before that with a similar title like uh i don't know some i don't know some macho title that's why i i just don't like the yeah it is i i don't like that a lot i don't watch a lot of arnold schwarzenegger or anything like that either yeah yeah that might be good though that might be good uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i guess i'm not fond of the action packed movie where they're always chasing or fighting or you know i like the more movies that make you think no i haven't seen that yet and that's something i really should have seen was that good did you see it uh_huh yeah a friend of mine saw it and she said it was okay you know it wasn't anything spectacular yeah the previews looked so good that i wanted to see it but i never did uh well i saw half of it and i remember i was in school i saw half of it and i fell asleep and everyone else watched it uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah i really need to go see the original one i'm sure it was a good movie i just i probably had a test that day or something i don't know yeah uh_huh yeah i think i think though that movies are losing their [luster] i think movies are losing their [attractiveness] just to a lot of people just i think i don't know because of the cost and i think it it's just losing its [originality] or something i don't i can't pin [pinpoint] it but it doesn't seem like it's as big uh rage to get the movie theater as it used to be uh_huh yeah exactly right uh_huh right right uh_huh uh_huh well let's start with you five [heartbeats] who who was in that okay when was it out uh_huh yeah yeah i saw that one that was pretty good uh that won best picture i think and costner got best director another kennedy movie huh one comes to mind here and i not sure about the name has meryl streep and um what was the name of that anyway the the premise of the story is that uh uh uh you go to a after you die you go to a place called judgment city and um anyway uh i can't the other the other actor uh yeah and uh defending your life defending your life and it's it's an excellent movie uh it's pretty entertaining uh let's see what else have i seen lately um home alone okay yeah well did you ever see home alone that was a that was a good one too yeah it's pretty good and um i can't believe i'm just drawing a blank because i've uh_huh that kind of reminds me like uh did you ever see this is going way back uh jagged edge that was a good one too yeah but uh yeah that's oh okay uh_huh yeah i haven't seen a whole lot either but i know i'm drawing a blank on what i've seen i know it's it's obnoxious because you go in there and you spend six bucks a ticket but then you end up spending another six dollars on food and a pop you know so it's it gets pretty yeah like if i so if i take a date it it cost me you know twenty bucks easy and uh i don't know i was going to say you you know you can find certain restaurants that are nice and have good food for eat for thirty dollars yeah the problem is you always have to wait until they're out so that's what you're you're uh dealing with that's true that is true well i ought to open the paper here because i know i've seen a few that have have played but um i just can't come up with any names here haven't haven't been to one for a little while but um did you ever see kindergarten cop that was pretty good yeah uh_huh but um yeah whose in that uh_huh another one i saw is called the object of beauty i don't recommend that as much as uh defending your life but it was it was all right kind of funny um but um what else has been on and about yeah i'm trying to i wanted to get to the silence of the lambs i hear that oh did you see that uh_huh uh_huh huh yeah i'll probably try to go to see it in a little while here but it's been out for a while have you heard anything on like out for justice has he had has he had very many other movies out because it's a macho movie speaking of that i think terminator two is supposed to be out i don't know i've enjoyed a lot of his movies uh they just they're action filled and a little bit of humor and uh yeah yeah did you ever see um um sleeping with the enemy i haven't i haven't heard much lately i just remember when it first came out that it had kind of mixed reviews yeah you expect more out of uh julia roberts though did you ever see the original f x movie oh okay because i was going to say i always enjoyed that i i uh i remember that movie and uh it was i mean i got in to it and uh they have f f x two out i don't know if yeah it was one of those that has a lot of twists in it yeah it's it's it's it's uh i can't put it exactly on the lines of the jagged edge but it you know kind of on that end you know you get these twists and it's usually pretty good but uh what's that yeah yeah that's probably true i i i just you see the same story lines different characters and um i don't know it's it's it's hard to say an and i know i don't you know i don't keep up with it you know but uh i don't try to just for that reason it is a it does cost a lot so why go out and see something right away you know you kind of wait and if something gets really good reviews maybe you'd finally go spend the twelve bucks you know to go to it but um you know i haven't been to a to an opening for oh you know ages just because okay well what movies do you like oh now i i like the turtles my little boy's four and he loves them oh that's okay how old are you all oh and you just don't have any yet okay well i've got two yeah my little girl is three months old and my little boy just turned four i had his birthday party yesterday but he's a turtle fanatic he even had turtle cake yesterday but i've been wanting to see turtle two is it as good as they say it is good ghost now ghost yeah i love tearjerker movies but that wasn't too bad on tearjerker but it was oh it was good movie though i can see why it won so many oscars because that was just so good and i like demi moore no but i've been hearing a lot about it i we don't get to the video store very often and we don't have cable well we don't really want cable it's just you know glued to the t v all the time anyway so we get two channels down here i'm from kentucky originally and we used to get five channels without cable you know forty well i don't think you all have the same channels but here in texas we only get two channels and that's um do you watch soap operas okay you work then okay well we get the channel with young and the restless on it and then uh i think general hospital and that comes on different channel but that's all we get and that's no cartoons for my little boy but we've got a v c r and a lot of tapes and uh my husband is a movie fanatic oh what about total recall have you seen that that's good yeah it was violent i try to get away from that my little boy oh he loves [robo] cop and that movie i have to i'll fast forward it every time they come to the part where there is have you seen it the part where they're shooting mercy that oh that's horrible that is horrible and their their the language on that's filthy yeah yeah yeah yeah i know um my husband bought me like um uh i think pretty in pink for my birthday with a wait a second i will in a minute kyle sorry uh he bought me pretty in pink just a second sorry now you're glad you ain't got a four year old it this is the first time he's interrupted my phone calls molly [ringwald] yeah it was cute but it wasn't i like the um sixteen [candles] or [sixteenth] birthday or yeah oh that was so good of course i was a teenager when i seen that and i loved it oh well if you like love stories it's sweet oh it's sweet it really is and that's a tearjerker it gets you i mean it makes you feel really sorry for her but it's hilarious too especially with that uh little guy in it oh he looks like little i don't know he looks like a little boy next door but he's sixteen oh it's a cute movie i can't remember his name he kind of looks like doogie [howser] don't know either he's got curly blonde hair he just a little [freckly] little boy yeah if i could remember the name i know you'd know his name because he's played in a few movies but uh okay i've heard about that but i can't remember it okay yeah julia roberts is good uh_huh wasn't it a murder mystery like sort of oh okay the yeah that's the one i wanted to see where he was on she was on a carnival at a carnival on a [ferris] wheel or something well did that come on t v or did it come out in the oh well i i think real good i want to see that yeah i seen the uh previews for it on t v down here but it's just been down here a couple weeks i think yeah a month well i know it hasn't been that long since i've seen the previews for it but yeah i wanted to see it her husband was a dark haired guy with a beard and [moustache] or no he [shaved] the beard off yeah oh i'd like to see that what about oh there was a we got one back here a while i want to see war of the roses too have you seen that you didn't i know well the only reason i know why it ended is on arsenio hall one night christopher reeves told that you know i can't believe they killed them or or who was it christopher reeve or mike douglas yeah christopher reeve wasn't in it at all okay well arsenio hall is the one that jumped up and said that i can't believe they killed them and christopher reeve or mike douglas went after his throat you dummy so i know that they die but i haven't told my husband we've both been wanting to see it well we was uh teasing about you know splitting our house down the middle they did that didn't they and they marked off routes that they could go or something we've got two bathrooms but well actually if he takes my house kind of looks like two trailers put together and one bathroom is at the end of one side and one's in the middle of the other so we could do it no and he could climb out the window and we our whole house has you know every room leads to three rooms so we can you know yeah you can get around you just can't go out the front door honey sorry yeah that's coming back on too uh_huh huh i eerie feeling or i want to see it though i'd like to see that and uh the never ending story came out on disney this month i think i wanted to see that the never ending story it's a child's movie but oh it's good i enjoyed it yeah i do too and yeah yeah and uh well it's about this little boy who uh i think he's up in a attic or some part of school he got locked in the school and he got scared but he starts [dreaming] and then uh he's saving the land of uh-oh it's been so long since i've seen it all i know all's i can really remember is him flying this great big dog this great big huge sheep dog sort of looking thing it flies through the air and he's trying to save the land from some [ooze] but it's really good i mean it sounds it it had uh fred [savage] in it no no no no no did you see that movie with fred [savage] in it though with uh-oh he had uh uh oh it was the princess [bride] you didn't see that that was cute that was real that was a good one i i like i like slapstick comedy yeah well i heard a friend of mine told me she got naked gun last night and she said that was hilarious two and a half it yeah i want to see that she said she rented it last night and said it was real good an now i seen that was that with that blonde she [pretended] to be the boss or something yeah i rented that one night by myself i was home alone did you see home alone gosh i like just about anything we i think the last one we saw was uh teenage mutant ninja turtles part two well we don't have any kids but we like them anyway um we're late twenties no oh gosh oh it was it was actually better than the first one i thought what's the last movie you saw oh we were just when when the topic came up we i was asking my husband right quick what's the last movies we saw he said well ghost and turtles i really liked it not too awful bad yeah did you see pretty woman oh gosh yeah uh_huh yeah uh once in a while when i'm home yeah okay yeah it does yeah i think you would really like pretty woman it was it was really a it made you feel really good it was just a happy movie yeah i saw that one i i was disappointed in it just because of how violent it was yeah i don't like that i don't see why they have to do that i mean i mean everybody knows that it that the the language is there so they could just ignore it and you know use different words instead i think but i i think lately pretty woman's been my favorite i went and bought the video i've probably seen it about fifteen or twenty times that's okay that's okay now now i haven't seen pretty in pink that had um does that have molly [ringwald] i think i think sixteen [candles] was the name of it i haven't seen it either i do oh gosh oh huh i don't know probably know him if i saw him i was just thinking another good one i saw not too long ago was um sleeping with the enemy that that's that's julia [roberts'] new movie yeah she's this one you know pretty woman was kind of a light comedy and a romance and and this one was a lot more dramatic well it was like uh it was a it was a mystery she disappeared from her uh husband who was abusing her yeah yeah no it came out in the theater and i think you know around here it's all ready quit playing but i don't i don't know if it's still playing any where else but it was it was it was one of those that kept you on the edge of your seat oh okay because we saw it probably four or five months ago yeah he's uh he was a real psycho in the movie it was it was scary oh yeah boy i i didn't like it no it was i didn't like the way it ended uh_huh might have been michael douglas oh that starred in it yeah it was michael douglas huh_uh it was i i it was it was weird it was a different movie from anything i've ever seen yeah yeah that would be kind of hard for us we've only got one bathroom i don't know that wouldn't be too bad get around well did you see fatal attraction i know it's going to be on on the on c b s tuesday night an and that's kind of what in a way you know how it kind of bothered you the way it ended and stuff that's kind of how war of the roses was parts of parts of war of the roses was funny but then other times it was like it was just deadly serious and it just left you with this kind of uneasy feeling you know i i've heard about that but i don't know what it's about yeah i love disney movies i mean they're some of the best of that are made oh i don't think so nope i didn't see that so do i and a lot of times we'll go to rent a movie or something and and you're not sure whether it will be any good or not so sometimes we stick with the stuff we've heard more about than yeah now we saw that and and they're coming out with a sequel to it it was funny and and working girl is really good that was good yeah yes i did that that just reminded me of that did you like it so what movies have you seen uh_huh yeah i saw dances with wolves and uh home alone and yeah it is it is about a little kid that that his parents go off to paris and they they forget all about him the oldest daughter they take a head count and the oldest daughter counts one of the neighbor kids instead of and he is up in the attic asleep because he got in trouble so she made him go sleep upstairs and there is there is a couple of [burglars] uh breaking into the houses in the neighborhood and uh yeah and he sets up traps for them all over the house uh he does uh_huh right uh_huh well it is six dollars and then but you get um matinee prices but uh_huh well i think they are a lot better than they than they were well like um in the early eighties or the during the like the smokey and the bandit era when it was they i do not think they were very good during that time at least there were not as many good ones uh_huh uh_huh yeah and it was shocking at the end too so yeah yeah that is right uh_huh uh_huh yeah especially jaws uh_huh right uh_huh yeah just more of the same in one of them they have a mother shark uh destroy a whole uh [marina] and aquarium which is kind of far fetched yeah uh_huh they hardly ever play music when a shark attacks somebody yeah yeah well uh every once in a while i go but it it has to be like somebody that i like or you know i did not i did not go see field of dreams when it was in the theatre because i did not know it was any good and then when it was i i found out it was kevin costner when it was on um i guess a b c the other week then i yeah and then i really liked it uh_huh huh yeah it was really and then and then uh shoeless joe jackson really was a player i thought they made him up and then i found out you know after i saw the movie that they they started talking about that scandal and yeah when the when the anniversary came up that was around the time of anniversary you know and then it was on the news uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah and i wondered who it was too huh uh_huh uh i what is that invisible man uh no huh_uh uh did they make the movies after that or uh_huh right uh_huh oh yeah okay it was nice talking to you bye bye uh well i have uh seen dances with wolves which is probably the the best movie that i have seen lately uh i do not go out to films very often so as far as out of the house so we do get a lot of videos that we bring in uh and i see some that way but uh i am not real current on films how about you i hear that is really good but i have not seen it yet yeah uh_huh oh cute oh dear uh_huh oh oh and he hears them or something and who wins oh great great yeah i had heard people talk about it and they say it was really cute but i had not seen it uh we usually wait and eventually it comes out on video and then we get it and see it that way and that is it movies are very expensive uh movie [theatres] here they are six dollars uh for evening performances and that is kind of steep i think i don't know how much is it in dallas yeah you can do that but it is difficult if you if you work or you know uh that is taking the middle of the afternoon and if i am looking for entertainment usually i i have more uh time in the evening than i do in the middle of the day to uh see things what do you think of movies in general as far as the as the trends uh_huh yeah did yeah the quality i think maybe has improved in that respect uh the only thing that disturbs me is that now they think they have to add just a little bit of sex and violence in order to get a a tougher rating which [suggests] that that you know it will be more [enticing] to the to the public and a lot of times it is added for no real uh valid reason uh which does not make and i think smokey and the bandit was a little bit like that uh but dances with wolves did not seem to have anything added it was just all legitimate kind of uh film and that is where reason why i suppose it won so many oscars uh because it really was good even though it is such a long movie you know they said oh people won't won't be interested in a three hour movie but it certainly gotten good [acclaim] everywhere it has gone oh oh yeah absolutely uh but much more true to life and i think that is that is the point uh they do not have to keep making up stuff if they want to make something good i hate sequels too i hate these uh you know number one two three four usually if a movie is good once is enough right that was on prime time television here uh recently at seven thirty in the evening and uh it was kind of shocking because that is a scary movie and children young children could see could have seen that movie uh at that hour and i thought that you know that would not have been the sort of thing i would have wanted my children to see at that age uh i mean when they were young and here it was quite easily seen by anybody that turned on the t v uh which was a it was a good movie i mean it was well done but uh that is one reason why it was scary so but i do not know that i have seen any of the uh sequels to that i think one is enough uh yes uh_huh that is what people say oh yeah it just a touch well the whole movie is kind of far fetched but i mean the whole idea behind it is far fetched not not too often that has gotten to be a whole camp idea now though you know if you hear that music you know everybody knows what you are talking about it's funny well it sounds like neither one of us are real movie [buffs] yeah uh_huh right yeah i saw it then too yeah it was good it was very good but uh um uh see i have uh teenagers in my house and of course sometimes they rent movies and you know have friends over or something and sometimes movies are here that i did not i am not even aware that i could have seen you know because my family tells me that that that it had been actually in the house before but i had missed it but i did see it on t v and i thought it was good oh really uh_huh no kidding oh i did not realize that yeah uh you know the character that uh james [earle] jones played uh uh i teach in school and we are doing a book called invisible man by ralph ellison and i wondered if maybe he was patterned after him uh i do not know i had not heard anybody talk about it but uh he certainly could have been uh which was kind of interesting you know someone who uh who was a real [activist] but then took up the cause uh kind of gave up you know because he did not think anything was happening and so uh it was kind of fun i do not know for sure but there are certain uh qualities that suggest it could be he because they were uh they were suggesting that this ben was something of a [recluse] that he had stopped writing and had stopped you know and that is true for ellison he he wrote that one book and a few [essays] and that is about it and uh has pretty much dropped out of public life but he is still alive and that you know that is what makes it so interesting and that book have you ever read that book invisible man invisible man by ralph ellison it is an incredible book it uh really is very very interesting i highly recommend it uh the yeah the movie the in field field of dreams came out after uh that novel so it could easily have been patterned after him but the the movie did not have anything to do with with the story that i am talking about but i just thought the the uh author could have been patterned after that uh i mean that character could have been patterned after him or someone like him certainly sort of interesting so well i guess we have talked probably our time limit haven't we okay very good it was nice talking to you okay bye bye okay so tell me about china cry uh_huh i see uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh huh huh huh huh uh_huh oh uh_huh huh interesting story i uh i don't even remember seeing that advertised and it was probably here and gone fairly quickly oh that recent oh i see what you mean uh_huh well uh i guess what i what i saw most recently and luckily i saw it only a week ago so i'd remember remember it well was uh sort of light by comparison uh my husband and i had this great desire to go see a comedy and and uh we ended up going to see green card green card and uh he chose it and uh it's got this wonderful french actor who's it was his like his and he's been a star in france and a wonderful actor who we've enjoyed for years but he's never made an american film this was his american film [debut] and he speaks very broken english and basically he played uh a frenchman who married an american girl uh in a marriage of convenience so that he could get his green card which is what an alien needs to work in this country and uh because she could claim she was married she could get uh an apartment or a condominium in a very exclusive building in new york that had a garden an an an outside garden which is very unusual there so she was a [horticulturist] and that was sort of her dream of course you know they got married and they never saw each other again except except fate through them together and the immigration and [naturalization] service uh started investigating so they had to get back together and get their stories straight and and she was a very [svelte] sophisticated urban new yorker and he was a a poor frenchman who had grown up on the on the streets and sort of pulled himself up by his [bootstraps] and claimed to be a composer but there was no proof whatsoever that he really was he'd been working in a restaurant when they met and uh they had to learn all about each other basically in a in a weekend and uh it was you knew what was going to happen of course that they would fall in love well they fell into like at any rate and and when they went to the [query] or [inquisition] or whatever uh they did perfectly and then he said something because his english was so poor on for the most part he he was so proud of himself for giving all the correct answers that that on the last one he said oh i never remember that answer and that [clued] the investigator that he had memorized a series of answers so uh okay okay china cry was basically the the true story written by this this lady who had uh was a native a native chinese uh uh who was raised by christian parents and her her time frame was prior to the nineteen forty nine revolution although she herself had never really accepted jesus or gone through any of the other uh christian uh portions of of the faith repentance [baptisms] et cetera et cetera she had always felt a very strong uh leaning in this direction and whenever the cultural revolution of nineteen forty nine occurred and most churches were either banned or their all the [clergy] and so forth were killed or or imprisoned or and the property [confiscated] she was safe because she had you know not officially joined the the christian movement so anyway she as she grew up towards maturity her parents well her dad was a doctor and and he was rather well you know rather well to do in the old regime and the the the the communist chinese didn't like this at all you know the [bourgeoisie] was was was definitely out of uh style then everybody was back to a [commonality] of one and so they kept picking at him picking at his at her mother and uh finally uh started picking on her and getting her to you know they were starting to uh accuse her of of of uh crimes and atrocities before the the revolution and and had her write her own story over and over and over uh and the uh the major point of the movie was that that she had uh married this this chinese fellow and was with child when they started this mass court now i think i'm leaving out a portion she she went through college and graduated very high up in her class and had uh gotten a job as as an instructor and they had her teaching or were starting to have her teach history for the soldiers when the they decided that that she needed to start [recanting] of all of her pre uh regime crimes as it were being a child you know so they kept on and on at at her and in the meantime she and her husband uh were were expecting a child their own child and uh the the people kept [harassing] her over you know over a period of months and finally they uh carried her uh out into the [courtyard] to to either really to shoot her or to go through the [motions] of of shooting her uh with by firing or you know executing her by firing squad and uh the lord just said no this is not going to happen even though this lady has not really you know she's she's one of mine she is not going to die and uh the the soldiers were [blinded] when they shot and she her life was [spared] and this this frightened the the uh the [commandant] and so he called this kind of stuff off and just put her in the labor camp well uh and course here's this this woman who is heavy with child dragging rocks around well she she put in for going going to uh and her husband had escaped to hong kong uh and then she put in to go see him and over time she uh uh finally through her [perseverance] and writing enough letters to enough different people embarrassed enough of the the middle uh bureaucracy that they finally let her go and of course she had to walk you know they they stripped her of everything practically besides the the clothes on her back and uh so she so she went across the border to her husband and another and other child that they'd already had uh to freedom and they knew that she wasn't going to come back but yeah she did years later when the uh [liberalization] you know in real life [liberalization] of china happened and uh she was not [persecuted] or anything else like that yes it was uh very moving too well it was within oh ninety days yeah no i mean it's it was it was advertised over a period of about ninety days but it wasn't uh they didn't have it in uh too awfully many movie houses but it was it was in the it had large uh uh uh press release okay uh_huh green card uh_huh oh i see uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh oh i see uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh just then uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh so what movies have you seen lately oh well see that's something i want to see that's on my list to see oh okay oh did you oh see that's also on my list a disturbing movie how do you mean right a [switcheroo] huh right when the shoe is on the other foot and see how it oh because that that just reminds me of you know like back in school and you know the girlfriends just taking off for a day or something just getting in trouble and probably not that much trouble but um yeah before we found the shopping malls that's what we did yeah well i'll have to put that i'll have to keep that on my list then oh scandalous i can imagine i guess she does it for the social value of showing you what trash is huh huh you just had to find it you had to wade through it and find it you never quite got to all i know about that woman is that she's an incredible [marketeer] yeah and she's rich and she yeah so she knows how to twist this around huh well okay see we're getting back to last year that's probably the last movie i saw um dances with wolves i just adored it how can i tell you um a couple years ago i guess well maybe ten years ago i i had read bury my heart at wounded knee and so you know just the general theme of the whole movie was um pretty i mean i really liked it a lot i mean it was a real consciousness raiser i guess um and i only bring up wounded knee because that was what ten years ago you read and and understood you know about the american pop indian population and then everything went away for a couple years and now it's back again and you know it's sort of a popular view of um what happened way back then of course no one will ever know really i don't well who knows i mean it it it sort of showed like two different types of tribes like one was a [warring] tribe and the other one was uh vegetarian kind of you know feel good tribe you know sort of thing so there possibly were because you know you always have conflict in the world nobody can get along [peacefully] oh i see yeah huh well i think so i um i have come to respect a little bit more the uh you know what went on here but but who knows how it's supposed to all end you know on the on the broad scope i mean um like if uh it it it had a much bigger thing i meaning to me i think about you know just the meaning of um the freedom of this country and and what that really meant and that was taking over somebody else's freedoms and sort of [trampling] that and uh so you know it it meant something bigger i think but still it was a i loved the buffalo scene and i thought kevin costner was just i got a little sick of his mug on the screen every three minutes but he's the director you know um but yeah i i just thought it was a really interesting intense film intense i think is the word for it because three hours went by really fast yeah ate a lot of popcorn did it really huh it made you think maybe well maybe that was um but there are no answers you know that that can make you [crabby] yes really that's true but it it's they sort of candy coated the western story for many years and um you know when the truth oh well it always balances out one way or the other once you get the whole story but have you seen any other movies because you sound like you see a lot oh okay oh there you go oh oh really oh oh i'll have to write that down wow i'll have to write that have you have did you see texasville are you into larry mcmurtry yeah um i i read a lot of larry mcmurtry books and texasville is just like that it's like very peculiar circumstances and very peculiar things that people do with each other it's it's you know and it's just sort of a well i saw um lately i've seen soap dish which was a and that was a lot of fun it was kind of a silly little film about soap operas and things yeah yeah it was it was okay it was not um not a wonderful film but it was i mean it was it was cute but not the biggest laugh i've seen i saw thelma and louise a couple of days ago and really liked that actually i saw it twice because i liked it so much and it's very it's really disturbing but a good movie well it was um let's see the um it's it's different it's kind of it's an action adventure kind of you know shoot them up kind of film but it's with women in it instead of men so that's kind of a that's kind of a twist on the normal thing and it made me think a lot about you know you would [applaud] bruce willis in die hard if he was doing this but you might not be so you know so encouraging of susan [sarandon] and then gena davis when they do it so that was kind of interesting i've but i really enjoyed it so i yeah that's kind of what it was right they had started out with that then they got into lots of trouble uh_huh yeah i also saw that madonna movie it's truth or dare and that was pretty scandalous yeah it was kind of yeah madonna she's pretty trashy and so it was it was interesting well i think she kept saying that uh they talked about her it it was a film of her concert um tour she had taken through all all around the world and they were all to her at the [vatican] city and wouldn't let her perform in rome and she kept saying that her show was not garbage it had a social message to it and right we never quite believed that so i thought that was pushing it a little bit but she she is she's rich she's smart at what she does she knows how to do that yeah what did you think about dances with wolves when you saw it really uh_huh right right uh_huh right i know i was i wondered if uh the tribes that they represented the tribe that was the the evil tribe if they were really as bad as it made them to be right uh_huh yeah but i wonder i thought because they made a big deal about how this this film was such a big leap for the the people who who were the ancestors of the this indian tribe and that you know that was so wonderful that they done that and they uh uh i wonder how the ancestors of this [warlike] tribe if they were offended by the film if it you know you didn't hear any press about that i thought it was a very interesting movie right uh_huh right right uh_huh i know the well that's good that was that was it was it was good i looked at my watch only a few times which is a good thing but it put me in a really it put me in a really bad mood i don't know why yeah we there were three of us who went we were just all really grouchy when it was over so we decided that may be the mark of a good film it made us think and so we were grouchy we felt guilty for being i know and we we had nothing to do with it we were not responsible but we still felt the thick blame for what had gone on we could have right uh_huh yeah well i do i'm just out of school so i've seen a lot of don't have a job so i shouldn't go see movies all the time um i rented a good movie um called [cinema] [paradeso] which is an italian movie which is probably the best movie i've seen ever it was just wonderful it's uh story about a little boy in a italian a little italian village and he um owns a um or he works in a a movie theater and it it helps the [projectionist] there's a little oh an old man who's the [projectionist] and he [befriends] this old man and then it just tells about their friendship that lasts through all these years and it's just i mean if you don't mind reading subtitles i thought i had to kind of get beyond that those little you know reading the little words at the bottom of the screen but um oh i just laughed and cried and i really loved it that was a a great one and other than that i no i i hadn't i had read um the last picture show and but that's out on video now and i haven't seen it but i was interested in reading texasville before i saw the movie did you like it right uh_huh what was one of the latest ones that you've seen actually uh right the last two years i have done more theater movie going than i have actually watched videos at home i've uh uh become available to come and go more often so i said hey it's worth it i'll just go at the matinee hour and i can see what i please it's no more costly than renting one the last see i went about two or three weeks ago and saw f x two and that is a really good movie if you like special effects kind of gory and lots of you know action um do you know that i don't follow [performers] i don't follow actors some i know some i don't uh and he was the guy the guy that played in it he was not the star but the one that played in it that i liked best was the one who was in uh-oh the one about the old people cocoon uh_huh he was a blond haired [heavyset] alien in cocoon i don't i don't know what his name is yeah at any rate i also saw not long ago once around that was with richard dreyfuss and that one was just a very [poignant] story it it it had people it was it was you know a lot of people said it was a really funny movie but it was a very it was a [poignant] humor and there was it was like uh uh steel [magnolias] the characters played very well off one another and there was humor involved but the story was a very dramatic story and i enjoyed it very much what are some others that you have seen lately oh whoa yes that's one i can watch over and over and over again it sure was and you know the second time you see it you understand more [subtleties] in it there are a number of good movies like that uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh right you don't work okay well you are going to have to find a mother's day out and have him call in sick one day that's right there's nothing wrong with that go in the early hours it's a matinee it's not crowded and the price is as reasonable as renting a video and that's the way i do it and i go quite frequently if you are going to be planning on doing that now i was [warlock] too which is supposed to be the story of a uh [witch] hunt that is you know [magically] shot into the present time and the first five minutes or ten minutes of the movie was i was very well persuaded to walk out very well persuaded there was more gore than i was interested in seeing but as the movie settles down to a comfortable action uh i can't really that it would have gotten more than a star and a half from me either but uh the action was comfortable and of course i enjoyed those good guy bad guy type conflicts things so i enjoyed that movie after the first few minutes of gore and there were some others but they were done a little more [tastefully] but uh in the first scene the [warlock] chopped off a guy's finger because he wanted the ring and then bit his tongue out and spit it off in the [omelet] and i could not handle that i said whoa i'm glad i have not had dinner then uh i saw awakening that's a wonderful wonderful job by robin williams and peter de niro i uh i uh robert de niro what did i say peter i said robert de niro and he has done a really good job of [characterizing] the uh disabled person and of course robin williams always just has a an air about him that you can't help but enjoy what he is doing even when he's sad you know you great faith that he will get happy again and then oh let's see there's a couple or three that i would like to go see before they go into videos i guess i can wait another month and they will be videos one is silence of the lambs i've heard a lot about that one they say if you really want to be uh you really want some suspense that's the one to see and i understand that's a sequel to an earlier movie that showed about two weeks ago on television uh uh_huh and then thelma and louise i think it's time we had a lady abuse the guys movie it's about time for one of those i want to go see that and i'm going to try to get in dances with wolves uh_huh i've heard it's wonderful too but i it's just that they are both very long uh movies and the matinee starts before i can get away from work and after after that i get involved in other things and don't want to don't want to go back uh_huh you know i saw that and i really i cannot remember too much about it uh_huh uh_huh oh that's right i remember now yeah i remember uh_huh well i've had a hard time enjoying harrison ford in anything since the indiana jones movies i think he ought to stay indiana jones i realize that he would like his career to develop but i don't want to see him in other things but uh i tell you sean connery in the hunt for red october i i never did care for him as in the james bond movies i don't know he was too yeah i didn't care for the type of movie but he was always slick and greasy and seemed to be [conceited] and had more women than he needed and i didn't like him but he has really developed into a marvelous character actor as he has come older oh yeah yeah he does and there is just a there's a i don't know uh i think that beard gives him a look that he is always [grinning] whether he is or not and he he has that merry look about his eyes that looks like he stays in [mischief] all time and i enjoy those and i enjoy some of the michael j fox movies i didn't care too much for the last one either it just was not enough to it uh no no no it was called uh hard way where he was an actor trying to portray trying to portray portray a policeman and that oh i i think we rented pretty woman a couple weeks months ago uh_huh yeah uh_huh i have not done that one i don't know if i have even heard of that one oh uh_huh yeah cocoon okay oh okay uh i think i know who you are talking about though okay uh_huh uh_huh oh i'm trying to think uh just the other night on h b o we watched the hunt for red october again and that's one that yeah i was going to read while it was on but then when it started i just couldn't you know read that was a really good movie yeah there's quite a few uh movies out now that i would like to go see my husband is not a real big movie [goer] and i guess more than anything that is why we don't go plus by the time you get a baby sitter and then pay to go to the movies it just gets pretty expensive no i stay at home yeah go during the day that's right yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah uh robert de niro i think you said peter yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah well you know i think i read about that too yeah oh you haven't i've heard that is wonderful yeah oh yeah yeah i've heard that's we uh we uh rented the other one i was trying to think of the other one that we had rented lately uh was presumed innocent with uh harrison ford i guess he's in there and i thought that was really good it was the one where he was a defense uh not defense he was a and there was a murder of one of the women that was in the the d a office and then he ended up being accused of it yeah so i mean it really kind of had a turn at the end when you found out who it was i was never into those movies either yeah i thought he looked real good with a beard too yeah what was the last one i'm trying to think uh the last like back to the future then was the last one oh okay trying to yeah okay um the last movie that i have seen it's been it's been a couple of months i saw um sleeping with the enemy and flatliners those were the last two that i've seen flatliners oh oh it was just well someone had i had seen the advertisement for flatliners on t v and i thought i'd like it and then uh one of my friends who went to see sleeping with the enemy and she told me to go it was good so that's why i saw that one no i haven't gotten to see you know any real recent ones i like comedies better than i do dramas uh_huh did you care for sleeping with the enemy uh_huh uh_huh well i didn't care for the movie myself i didn't really care for the movie either yeah uh_huh well okay on likewise then did you see pretty woman do you enjoy that one uh_huh oh i haven't even heard of that one uh_huh yeah well i really liked pretty woman you know i just well you just kind of went with it like you said you had to accept the beginning of it and just kind of go yeah but um flatliners now it's a drama and i don't usually like them and i really enjoyed it i um i don't know it was kind of it made you think a lot i think did you see ghost okay now did you care for that one uh_huh see now i didn't i thought it was an okay movie but it wasn't something that i would enjoy seeing twice or three times i didn't think so um i really didn't care for the ending of it i thought it was just of like you didn't know this was going to happen when you know but um i don't know you know well of course uh a bunch of girls had told me and warned me and they said oh it's a real tearjerker and da da da da da meanwhile i sat through the movie and said well when are you when are you supposed to start crying you know i didn't really uh i didn't really find it to be a tearjerker um if i see them more than once i see them on video i never pay to see one more than once you know but like you said i i enjoy the comedies a lot better in fact that's where i've seen most of my movies have been on video you see it on video just as soon as it is on the movie screen uh_huh yeah uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh no i saw one it was a drama also and i can't think of the name of it now that um it was a book before it came out in a movie and it was it it was a drama it wasn't a comedy uh no i wanted to see that i didn't get to oh really uh_huh well um what movies are showing down there now yeah that's pretty much what i do i i know for sure that that one about what was that one about bob i think it's just yeah i think it's just playing now up here yes i saw that one what was the second one i didn't see that one did you see those because of uh julia roberts or for uh the subject matter of the two uh_huh well i've uh i saw sleeping with the enemy and i um i've seen uh well just recently um what about bob well that one is uh it's cute but kind of far out comedy yeah i uh am not one for the uh i don't need the suspense movies or the the movies with lots of uh the horror movies with uh trying to shake you out of your chair um i'm not sure i uh i saw it and uh because my wife wanted to see it uh but on the other hand i'm not sure i would have gone otherwise and having gone uh well it really wasn't on a theme that i was uh uh that into or as i say i prefer the light movies that uh my style of entertainment is is comedy uh primarily and then into action films what yeah you kind of have to like to be uh drawn to this point where you aren't sure what's going to happen uh yes uh it was interesting but i felt that one was a bit farfetched uh in that well i'm trying to think of the other one i saw recently the one on um defending your life well that was one where uh it's kind of like to me it's somewhat like pretty woman the the story line um if you accept a few of the basic starting points i guess the rest falls in place uh it was hard to accept that uh this uh multimillionaire [wheeler] dealer would uh would you know find himself and allow himself to get into that situation yeah it's sort of a modern cinderella type of story uh_huh yes uh that was i enjoyed that one i in that i i guess i i hate to be too surprised in a movie and in that one you could you could pretty well guess where it was going to end up you weren't sure exactly how it would get there but you knew where it would end up uh_huh yeah well whenever she starts crying well do you go to many movies more than once uh_huh uh_huh well these days it's uh well if you don't with some of the movies if you don't go to them within the first four weeks the movie may have uh left town never to show up again until it comes back in video so uh unless a movie is popular and stays around uh you probably will see it on video these days more likely than at the movie so we have um well i think just most people have v c r now and we probably watch twice as many movies at home as we do at movie theaters did you go to dances with wolves i at least what i hear on that one that it's coming out a second time in a in a longer version even though it was a long movie it's sort of the [uncut] version at least that was some of the rumors we'll have to see because it's uh there was some talk about that i maybe it will come out this fall there we're sort of in the middle of the summer um season of a lot of new movies coming out but then there's these um periods like early fall before christmas or early spring when there's sort of a quiet period where if you bring something out again it uh will increase the revenues from the movie oh i i'd actually have to get a newspaper out my approach to movies is i kind of hear about them uh i keep track of them a little but you know ask me to name the ten that are out there right now and i'd have to say uh i uh i don't know i i just look at the newspaper before i decide to go and uh it's kind of where's bob or what about bob yeah because some of them they uh they'll start in one area of the country and if they it's well what movies have you seen recently [valerie] oh we haven't seen that one yet oh it wasn't that good the most recent one that uh my wife and i have seen was the city [slicker] that was excellent it was just a really a really funny movie at the same time it had a story line about people trying to find themselves there were parts that were sad i mean it just ran the gamut of emotion and but it was just all around entertaining uh it's still on to the best of my knowledge oh uh it's i think it's less than two hours we we rented one recently that seemed to go on forever yeah but this one it was fairly long i i'm guessing probably an hour and forty five minutes maybe but excellent acting by billy crystal and [bruno] [kirby] uh who was the oh jack [palance] had an excellent part in there as the old cowboy so we really enjoyed that yeah i think that uh i can highly recommend that movie this to see yeah uh we generally rent a couple a week uh in order to get a decent movie to have on a weekend you've got to rent it on thursday they get they get taken up at the store so we will rent two or three movies on thursday and uh with luck you'll have one or two that are good most of them are a coin flip yeah yeah well quite frequently we have our grandchildren on the weekends and uh we'll try to rent something that they can see as well as something else that we can see and uh uh generally try to stay in the at least p g range the uh the oldest is nine the youngest is three he doesn't really pay attention the five year old doesn't have the attention span either but the the nine year old will watch anything that's on t v so yeah my wife took uh i think the kids to see that one but we can generally find something at the store for them to watch the uh-oh we saw this movie presumed innocent was the one we rented uh last weekend harrison ford it's uh he is a prosecuting attorney and uh another prosecutor in the a woman prosecutor in there is murdered and he's trying to find it but course it's one of these with a twist where it looks like he's the one that wound up killing her so it's and it's an extremely long movie it's it's over two hours long which uh my wife she likes the suspense movies i enjoy them to a degree save that for another day yeah yeah i think you it's uh it's something i think you would enjoy yes it it's like most suspense movies what was it was on t v recently uh fatal attraction it's one that once you've seen it once and uh the suspense there is not really you really can't see it again so you know all the story and who did what and when it happened so once once you seen one that's a suspenseful type movie like that then it's it's not good for a second watching particularly at least i don't think so i don't know we've watched weekend at bernie's any number of times it's just slapstick comedy sit there and laugh and my one grandson and i my wife can't understand it but we like bill and [ted's] excellent adventure which is another funny one yeah we like to laugh i i have a theory i like movies for entertainment i don't want to uh go away depressed from watching a movie life's depressing enough well i've certainly enjoyed talking with you okay bye have a nice weekend okay bye let's see the last one we saw was thelma and louise well don't bother well oh from a woman's point of view and it was very uh [chauvinistic] as far as women go uh it was it was entertaining but yeah i don't think the general audience would would go for it how was that that is one i've been dying to see uh_huh uh_huh and how long did that movie run but i mean time wise how long was it two hour or uh_huh okay okay that always seems to happen when you rent them you know uh_huh uh_huh and uh it was it oh good uh_huh oh great oh well i'm looking forward to seeing that one that was next on our list so uh okay okay good deal good deal do you rent movies very often or right right that's exactly right uh_huh uh_huh yeah right right oh gosh yeah yeah and we usually have oh we don't get out as much as we like we have two children so we occasionally get out to the movies but uh it's it's fun it's a fun thing to do to get out and be entertained for once uh_huh uh_huh what ages are they have you found trouble finding movies for them or right yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh-oh uh oh yeah they have been doing that we've been waiting for a a good movie out this summer for the kids to see the last one they saw was home alone and uh they enjoyed that but uh i missed that one my husband took the kids to see that one so uh_huh yeah yeah well that's a good deal okay let me think if i have rented that one harrison ford and how does the story line go oh okay we haven't seen that one uh_huh uh_huh oh gosh oh gosh uh_huh i think that's the one i wanted to pick up the other day and then my husband wasn't going to be able to watch it with me so i thought i better save that one for another day yeah because i think he'd like that one you enjoyed that one then uh_huh okay well that's a good one to put on the list uh_huh right okay uh_huh uh_huh okay uh_huh uh_huh i don't think too many of them are anymore it's it's a shame but uh i know oh no oh oh gosh yeah we've heard about that one but we haven't seen that one either so well it sounds like you and your grandson like the same kinds of movies oh god right right right i agree i agree that's for sure well you too jim thanks for [punching] in and uh i hope you see a good movie soon okay bye bye yeah well uh it's funny when i tried to make the call the other days i thought i hadn't seen anything since dances with wolves but today i went to see regarding with henry it was really good we uh jeff [wariner] just got out of the hospital and uh jeff and [deeanna] went and another friend in the neighborhood and uh we all liked it we had both moms and uh fifteen year olds and a twelve year old and everyone enjoyed it and uh yeah well my son had gotten to see a lot of movies this summer on choir tour and visiting friends and one thing and another a lot of the ones i had wanted to see and so since he had this friend up from houston uh and his friend had already seen so many and i thought they decided on this and i thought well i want to see this one too so we uh i finally it's my first summer movie yeah oh was that good cause yeah well i want to see that and city slickers both i love comedies but that's what i was oh was it oh oh well good i'm i'm glad to hear that because they uh_huh well i don't i don't know if you got to see weekend um at bernie's that was out a couple of year's ago they had a free showing at the berkeley um united artist and i don't know who was here or whether jay called a friend and we didn't think we'd have much chance of getting in but we thought we'd try it you know free movie it was so funny and it sounds like uh what you were just describing soapdish too i mean we just we hurt by the time we came out and the whole theater was hysterical and it's just it's just goofy i mean it's uh if you have a chance to rent it at least or it should be out on t v i would think um cause it's it's just a fun summer light comedy make your [cheeks] hurt laughing especially in the theater it was contagious you know i i imagine the way soapdish was but with everyone laughing well i'm glad you did that before your surgery yeah yeah oh gosh oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah no that was one uh jay got to see with a friend and so i and to try and uh try and find time it's hard uh with [jim's] schedule too just to get a time that we can both go and uh i'm holding out for city slickers for the two of us because uh we had friends that went to see that and said you know it's just perfect for our age group and because i think he he needs a comedy too uh and that's what he would have liked to have seen regarding henry too but knew that uh we've we've got a lot of company this summer which is wonderful we're really enjoying it but some of the different things we're doing uh there's just not a time enough time to do it all and he said well realistically you know he knew he couldn't get them all in but uh jay really liked robin hood um when the choir group went to see [backdraft] and they thought that was uh it was funny cause he sounded like the critics he said you know the plot line and the characters uh you know aren't real big but the the fire scenes and the you know that action part is fantastic but he thought robin hood was great it was real different then you'd expect but but he enjoyed it and so yeah me too and yeah i really uh like him a lot which is why dances with wolves was the last movie we had seen for several months but it was i uh in fact uh a friend from germany was visiting in march and we wanted we didn't ran out of time we wanted to take him to see it we were going to sit through it again cause we really wanted him to see it too uh i just thought that was terrific and i really enjoy harrison ford which is one of the reasons i wanted to see and he's very good in regarding henry that's not an easy part to play i i don't think yeah that's at that one won't your sides um it was this the first time you got to see one hundred and one dalmatians or uh_huh you ready okay what have you seen lately oh i'm dying to see that oh uh_huh oh my goodness oh well i am just dying to see it i went to dinner with some friends last weekend and they said get a baby sitter and we'll all go see regarding henry and i said ooh i want to see it so bad oh yeah oh my well let me see was it well we went to see one hundred and one dalmatians last weekend and that may be no right before i went in the hospital my girlfriend said come on we're going to the movies and we won't well she goes all the time but i go maybe once every couple of months and when i go i go see two at a time so we went to see soapdish and oh hysterical we laughed so hard it was just you couldn't hear half the [dialogue] because everyone in the audience was laughing so hard yeah that's the other one that we went to that night and my face hurt so bad from laughing because i love billy crystal and course growing up on on the back of a horse you know and being on ranches and stuff so much of that was so true and i was absolutely rolling in the [aisles] it was so funny both of them were great oh they are are we just laughed so hard and like i said with city i mean with soapdish it is so [cornball] and it is so [overacted] that you're just hysterical you know just they just carried it off to the tee no how neat shoot yeah oh yeah yeah i think it is i think it is yeah oh gosh i never laughed and people were just screaming and [applauding] and you know it was just hysterical oh me too because i don't even know if i could live through it now i mean i'm getting around real good and i'm just still real sore and today i was i course i went back to work two weeks after uh but see i don't have permanent work i right now i'm working with a temporary agency and so the second week i was out of the hospital i went up and worked half day on the computers cause you can learn all the software for free oh so i went up to do wordperfect cause that seems like that's what everybody wants and i was up there half a day and came home and collapsed and then they called me to see if i wanted to work a day and i said yeah and i went and of course it took me the whole weekend to recover from that and uh i worked about three days a week ever since two to three days a week and so i went to my doctors last thursday and this was my fourth week checkup and he said well gosh you're just healing really well i just can't get over this he says in two weeks you can go back to doing your crazy normal things if you want to play ball you can go play ball he says now i'm not going to say you're going to feel like playing ball but you can if you want to and uh you know he was teasing me and he says yeah you'll be out there [waterskiing] i can just see it now and uh he says so you just take it easy for two more weeks you've only got two more weeks i said okay fine i i will i will whatever you call easy i'll do it you know but and i've been out trying to find a job because this is just not cutting it and so i don't i'm real glad that we didn't go see those funny ones when i was when i'm still sort of on the sore side but well what's your next have you seen robin hood yet uh oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh oh really well i went course i am a kevin costner fan supreme uh_huh gosh was that wonderful oh yeah i do too i think he's really good i wouldn't think well my kids are going to their dad's tomorrow night so i sort of think i may go do that good i my parents took me when i was probably somewhere between [ashley] and [jamie's] age and we went to the i really haven't seen any movies lately so when the computer picked this one i was a little bit surprised but i think i haven't been to the movie theater here in about oh six months but uh you know the last movies that i've seen were probably on video yeah uh_huh yeah now i i haven't seen the terminator movie but and that's kind of blood and guts isn't it i don't particularly care for that sort of stuff yeah right yeah he [maims] them pretty good doesn't he yeah uh_huh i i saw uh sleeping with the enemy uh uh i saw it uh oh couple weeks ago i rented it and uh watched it and i was i was pretty disappointed in it because i i was told by several people that it's pretty scary and intense and i was pretty disappointed in it now it's a good movie but i guess that they built me up too much for my expectations in it there uh_huh uh_huh yeah now i haven't seen it either but uh i've heard that it's real long that it's a good movie but it's long like three hours that's right that's right oscar uh_huh yeah i know my daughter saw that and she liked it so yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh and of course i get to watch all these movies like look who's talking and who's look who's talking too and because i have a ten year old so we we watch a lot of movies around that category you know that she that she can watch yeah we seen the little mermaid too uh_huh uh_huh and there's some i think there's some good disney movies fixing to come out on video uh [shipwrecked] uh_huh yeah it's fixing to come out on video and boy i can't think of the other one that's fixing to come out but uh_huh right uh_huh well i'm glad to know that there's somebody else out there that doesn't get to go to the movie theater yeah uh_huh that's right and then they go to the dollar movies uh_huh yeah that does sound fun right uh_huh that's right uh_huh uh_huh golly i don't think that i've ever heard of that movie oh that's the that's the one where they burn down the house or something the house [explodes] oh okay okay yeah another movie that i want to see if it ever comes out on video so i can see it without my daughter around is uh-oh i just forgot the title of it uh-oh it's supposed to be a real scary one uh darn well here here's another one that i've seen i saw uh i can't remember the title of it either oh well that's we rent a lot of videos too uh we saw i have two little babies and we saw one movie recently and that was the terminator movie uh which i didn't like after all well i don't either it on all the the advertisements arnold schwarzenegger says he doesn't kill anybody in the movie he doesn't he [maims] them so uh_huh he he uh i think he shoots off their knee caps for the most part in the movie so oh i haven't seen that one yet uh_huh oh yeah well with all the commercials and everything i haven't that's one we want to see i i want to see uh dances with wolves but we haven't seen that one yet either yeah that's what i heard too yeah we've got to get it at a time when we can put our kids to bed and stay up late to watch it so we saw uh the the uh movie with uh sylvester stallone oscar supposed to be his uh his [debut] in comedy which was an interesting movie but not very funny did she well it was it was an amusing movie it i guess maybe it would have been better if we'd have been at the theater as opposed to uh just at the house watching it with with no one else around so oh uh_huh my son just turned two and so the little mermaid is now our favorite movie little mermaid and peter pan i think are are his two favorites that we've got oh i haven't i didn't hear that was coming out well they just had uh the [rescuers] movie that was a disney movie wasn't it i think i heard that was just one was just out he's uh he doesn't sit still for the whole movie yet but he likes to uh to listen to the music and stuff if there's a lot of that in the in the movie well i tell you ever my my kids are just small babies and i tell you we really want to go a lot and uh there's so much out on video now that it's almost you know the movie comes out quicker than you can go see it sometimes so uh_huh that seems to happen i noticed that dances with wolves was playing at the uh granada theater and uh someone said that was a lot of fun to go do you can have dinner and everything while you watch the movie i thought that might be kind of fun to do and of course you need a baby sitter for that definitely but uh no i'd really like to get out to the movies more often course it's so expensive now too that you can't hardly afford it i i know we get discount tickets where my husband works but other than that it just seems like it's so expensive and then the popcorn and everything else you almost can't afford to do it no matter what although we did actually get we went on vacation couple months ago and we got to go see what about bob that was kind of a funny movie with uh richard dreyfuss and bill murray that was fun oh he's a richard dreyfuss is a uh psychiatrist and bob is his patient and bob follows him on vacation it's uh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's the one must have left an impression okay well what movie have you seen uh_huh uh_huh it's one of my favorite even uh_huh yeah yeah yeah oh yeah a whole lot uh_huh kind of dark uh_huh good well how is he young yeah okay that makes sense well my kids' very favorite and yours may be too young for it was home alone they uh well we do too but they just want to rent that one that is their very favorite they think they're so cute i guess so i guess so i guess so we're not real big movie [goers] ourselves but we did try to go see about a month ago that um dead again that black and white one and i was not real impressed with it in fact we kept sitting there all through the theater going now what what did that mean wait wait run that back and we couldn't run it back uh_huh but we we just kept trying to figure it out until finally toward the end and we thought we were being very quiet this man turned around and said could you all please save that for later and i'm sorry we're just not real big movie [goers] yeah well that's us too that's us too yeah i thought that was cute too and my husband's name is bob and he wants to see that yeah he wanted to see that i thought the funny part in home alone was uh that's good for kids is kind of coming up with how they can deal with problems on their own without [panicking] and i thought they could learn a lot of lessons from that the little guy is so cute and he's terribly rich by now yeah me too oh that's right that's right that's right uh_huh awakening is supposed to be wonderful yeah awakening is supposed to be wonderful my mom saw that and she said that was an excellent movie yes yes i think that's supposed to be good and i uh we have some doctors at church who said that doctor was just wonderful uh_huh uh_huh oh dear uh_huh well on uh back to your movie you saw that ten thousand uh hundred and one dalmatians um did you all ever think about purchasing that one when it comes out uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i understand that too i understand that too now they had uh_huh they had home alone offered for like i think with the rebate you could get it for nine dollars and i thought well now that's that's close enough to being several you know you could rent it more than more than four times and watch that well i i understand i understand oh yeah of course uh_huh yeah oh sweet but that's in her plans well it's hard it's hard to find a movie any more these days that you can take your kids and even the ones that we rent at home the trouble with some of them i know we rented adventures in baby sitting thinking that would be so cute and it's a precious movie but the language in it is just for no reason has to stick in uh_huh well you watch it differently when your kids are in the room you know and i was just sitting there going oh my goodness and i'm going to have to stop and explain and they go i know mommy i know uh_huh yeah it's it's a little different because you see things from a different different angle uh we rented this summer before we went on vacation we rented chevy chase and that family vacation and those are just absolutely hilarious but you just really can't watch a lot of that we had to fast forward through a whole lot of it for them to see it i think the last one that we actually went to go see well there's two i took my kids to see a hundred and one dalmatians of course they wanted to see it they had the disney book and they thought that was wonderful and they loved the dogs and so yes we went with some friends of ours and i was a little worried about my son he's about two and a half and he's going through a stage right now where he's kind of afraid of dogs barking if he can hear them and can't see them and he did real good through the whole movie except the part where the dogs are sending the message you know that the the the puppies are missing and it shows the town and you can hear all the barking but you can't see the dogs yeah so that kind of bothered him but after that he did fine yeah he'll be three in january yeah i loved that movie probably gives them ideas of what they want to do right yeah wasn't that good oh no well i like to watch the movies but it's gotten so expensive that we wait until they come out on video and we rent them and now we did go see home alone at the dollar movie and that was just hilarious i died and we we did also we went to see what about bob one night which is a funny funny movie it's a funny movie that's true i hope he stays cute not spoiled you know you get to where the money goes to their heads or goes to something you know they grow up too fast so but uh there's a lot i want to see you know what i try to do when they come out is just make a list of them that look good so that when they come out in video you know i'd like to see green card i want to see awakening uh i'd like to see silence of the lambs yeah and see i've had somebody tell me that regarding henry you know the harrison ford movie is supposed to be really good i'd like to see that i've heard that's good yeah so i think there's a bunch of good movies coming out my kids want to see [rescuer's] down under so i'm going to my v c r went on the [blitz] about two weeks ago so i'm getting it fixed right now because they have their little movies their little you know disney movies they watch all the time and stuff and yeah you know i look at those like cinderella came out was for sale and i don't buy them i now i will copy them and rent them and keep them at home but i just have a problem paying twenty five dollars for a movie that i can go down and rent for a dollar you know they don't last that long oh that's pretty good yeah yeah that that makes it worth it uh but a lot of the disney movies it's just too expensive and i can rent them or i can make a copy you know my daughter's in love with the little mermaid and i have a copy that's just about worn out she's four so she just thinks the in fact she told me mom if we have a little girl and she has red hair we're [naming] her [aerial] now i'm not pregnant mind you but this is she's planning ahead yeah yeah oh i know now see i remember thinking it's a wonderful movie but it's been so long since i watched it i don't remember the language was it bad well that's true oh and see my kids weren't in the you're right i watched it without them huh huh yes yes yes some of it just isn't do you or your husband work for t i or oh are you oh i see well that's neat uh_huh so i've worked for them for several years like twelve now i guess right i try to i try to think of myself as young but uh well have you seen any movies recently oh did you no i haven't i have have a hard time with movies that are real long i don't know yeah yeah well i've heard a lot of good things about it was it uh we my wife and i went and saw a couple of funny ones we saw the naked gun two and a half and that was that was pretty funny and then we saw what was the [spoof] on top gun it's oh i can't think of what that was called we saw that too i was pretty disappointed in that one yeah but uh so you know through the summer we have small children so we don't get to see too many but we've seen i guess two or three movies this past summer uh_huh right have you seen ghosts yet i really i enjoyed that movie really uh_huh oh yeah well yeah yeah uh_huh uh van damme yeah i think right right uh_huh oh silence of the lambs yes i did yeah i really enjoyed that a lot uh_huh yeah well it's amazing but really i mean when you stop and think about it anthony perkins didn't have that big a role in the movie and yet it was his character that was so intriguing yeah yeah i do too i really did you know jody foster was good too but i think i think anthony perkins was the one that that really made the movie i agree with you oh hopkins i'm sorry hopkins yeah i always get those mixed up well i well i haven't been i'm i saw her in the keys and i thought that was a pretty good movie but i thought she that was that was pretty interesting movie and uh but you know i i did i really liked the silence of the lambs that was really intriguing and it it didn't scare me all that much you know and i i don't like to go to movies to be scared that's not why i go so right and that one was oh he didn't see it oh uh_huh oh really yeah i've seen it uh_huh uh_huh yeah i've seen that it's pretty it's pretty cute i guess you know as far as comedies go probably my favorite is young [frankenstein] i love that movie yeah so yeah well gene wilder doesn't do that much for me but i'm a big uh mel brooks fan all his movies i really really he does oh is that the one with that's he's starring in oh yeah that came out like early in the summer or something like that yeah i haven't seen that one either oh blazing [saddles] yeah uh_huh oh uh_huh i like i like that one too but i thought young [frankenstein] was better yeah that that was just you know had all kinds of things throughout the whole movie i just really enjoyed it and uh um i'm trying to think because we saw another one that we thought was really good early this summer that was a suspenseful movie i'm trying to remember what it was because it you know it's i'm a contract person at t i in fact involved with uh data switchboard and uh do you work for t i uh_huh oh you sound very young like just out of college uh i'm trying to think we saw uh dances with wolves and uh have you seen that one that was excellent well so oddly enough i do too i get tired of sitting there and so does my husband but we both just thoroughly you know enjoyed it just really liked it and uh i'm trying to think we went to see a uh a real funny one i can't think now what the name of it was i've gone blank oh we have not seen that we want to see that one oh i haven't seen that one were you my husband doesn't enjoy the shows as much going to them he likes to rent them and so we watch a lot of them you know at home as they come out and uh yes yes did you now i i was real disappointed i'm a real big patrick swayze fan and uh i was really disappointed in it it one i don't think it was as funny as what i was anticipating and i guess i was expecting it to be kind of funny and uh and it wasn't you know at all it was it was more of a love story and uh so i was really disappointed in that because i like him real well we just got through watching one with uh uh is it claude van damme yeah and uh enjoyed it i can't think what the name of it was a uh of course one of the typical you know kicking fighting lots of blood and guts and all that type movie and and we enjoyed that and uh the uh uh the one with jody foster did you see it yes wasn't that excellent yeah that was one that that stayed with me you know for a month i just i kept thinking about it you know no oh it was excellent and and of course he's such a uh very good actor anyway and i think he made the movie yeah is it anthony perkins or anthony hopkins hopkins uh_huh i know i know it uh well i'm not a real big jody foster fan but i thought she was good in that now i didn't see that one no no i like a good suspenseful story and that one very definitely kept you on the edge of the seats in fact i want to uh rent it when it comes out for my husband to see because he didn't he won't go see that no i went with uh our daughter and uh so you know saw it with her and uh enjoyed it my all time favorite is weekend at bernie's did you see it oh i've seen it you know we saw it at the movies and then we've rented it several times and we just love it in fact we have a ten year old grandson that he and my husband and i we just sit there and [cackle] you know just get hysterical uh yes yes my husband liked that uh he's a big gene wilder fan uh_huh uh_huh he has a new one out yeah uh_huh uh i have seen it advertised i don't know what the name of it is uh_huh uh_huh yes yes yeah my husband wants to see that one and uh did you see that one that he made years and years ago about the uh the sheriff blazing [saddles] oh that's my husband's all time favorite i think did you well have you seen a new movie lately uh_huh okay i uh i haven't seen either one of those uh what what are some of the shows that you have been able to rent though well maybe you uh you have seen dances with wolves okay what did you think of that one uh_huh yeah i uh i just moved down in fact from south dakota in in june and that's when the movie was filmed and uh we when when the movie came out we went uh my dad lives in the state capital which is pierre and it was filmed right outside of pierre in fact the buffalo the scene the big buffalo [herd] scene that was that was a live scene uh there's a guy that has got a a buffalo farm and he has got over ten thousand head of buffalo and and uh we my dad has got a little plane we flew over it all looked at the buffalo it was really neat but uh so we are watching the the movie in the movie theater in pierre and uh just every time i would start to get into the movie and it was getting good someone in the crowd would yell hey there's john red eagle you know or you know they'd start recognizing people yeah so i kind of i think i enjoyed it more when i when i watched it on video cassette than i did uh in the movie theater because my attention would get diverted every time they'd say that i'd go now now which one could that be you know and i'd i'd start trying to focus in on people instead of of picking up the overall right exactly so but i i thought it was a good film but you are right i think i think it was very one sided sure right in fact i was watching wild wild west last night and it was a similar uh situation with the [iroquois] indians attacking a an army fort um but it was an interesting movie uh have you seen pretty woman now i thought that was a good show yeah it didn't uh it didn't have any real social bearing or uh and it wasn't really a comedy but it was an enjoyable movie it was it was kind of like the star wars series you know just something a little different yet believable uh now are you are you going to see or do you are you much of a star trek fan are you going to see this next one that's coming out have you seen the rest i think i've missed one i'm not sure but i think i've missed one was that here in dallas okay because we had one here in dallas uh_huh well uh i am a student and i have uh been actually watching more movies on video than being able to go out to see uh movies at the store or at the theater uh i i want to see the fisher king and and uh catch robin hood uh let's see uh i'm trying to just think of the ones that have come on uh white palace which i thought was over rated over [hyped] um recently well you're catching me at it uh uh at minds end here what have you seen recently yes yes enjoyed that quite a bit um i thought the uh the the cinematography was excellent uh the story was uh though it tended to be a little one sided uh it was good uh it was it was believable uh_huh uh_huh wow uh_huh uh_huh they knew they knew the extras or the uh_huh scope uh_huh it it was but it's a side that hasn't been told uh as far as you know telling it from you know the indians as the good guys and the the white men as the bad guys i i really thought about uh all the the westerns that we have seen for years and years and it's just shoot the indians and they are always the [savages] so uh_huh yes yeah that was that was a good movie um it was just kind of a get away movie kind of uh_huh right yes you're bringing it i don't know i had a i sure did have a mind lock about the movies i've seen but yeah i've seen pretty woman and dances with wolves and uh oh definitely yes i actually went to the star trek twenty fifth anniversary [marathon] that happened about a month ago and they showed all five in a row oh they had it everywhere uh every major city had one theater that did it and right and they did it in houston they did it well they did it everywhere and it was it was really good to see all the movies and how the story developed and the thing that i didn't realize is that if you watch the movies in a row uh time wise they happen one after another and just no no time between them but you can watch the characters develop so so what have you seen lately that um you think is worthwhile no i i saw the previews does does he does it have a happy ending or uh_huh oh that was funny wasn't it yes and and and and the regular naked gun and airport and you know yes right so now these are for two very different movies one one uh absolutely slapstick comedy and one clearly you know serious subject yeah i i guess i have similarly broad tastes um my most recent um movie that i that i liked a lot not my most recent movie was henry the fifth i only rented it you know maybe a month ago and it's been out for a couple of years but have you seen that well it's it's a it's an [adaptation] of the of the shakespeare play and it's beautifully done um i believe that all the language is as shakespeare wrote it except it's been [shortened] a little bit and there might be a word or two changed uh but it's it's it's a glorious movie um and i like as you know these these these silly movies and i also like just some strange movies do you have any well the the one that comes immediately to mind i um is the the cook the [thief] his wife her lover um but there are also these various um david lynch movies um i got i got hooked on twin peaks that made me go out and watch every david lynch movie i could lay my hands on oh um well i don't i don't especially recommend i mean you have you have to just sort of like this thing you have to like did you see twin peaks no so okay so if you weren't if you weren't drawn to watch that you maybe you wouldn't be drawn to these movies either they're they're just strange well uh i think suspense is the right word uh and but but a little bit strange and [esoteric] and uh in the case of twin peak a little there's some elements of the [supernatural] in it too that was the television show um there's also a a a [producer] of movies in baltimore called um john walters who who puts puts on even [weirder] movies uh his most recent ones have actually been fairly mainstream like hair spray um but back in his early days he he he had things um um what what are the titles i can't remember the titles any more but some really weird ones uh with quite a random crew of of characters um it would have made you know these [fellini] movies look normal i do i do like movies a lot do do you rent them or yes yeah that's what my wife does too um i mean she falls asleep so we have to we have to pick just the right kind of movie to to to to appeal well well it was good talking to you take care okay bye um the last movie i saw was regarding henry have you seen that yet it's really good i loved it um it's um yeah really good ending um uh it was the it's one of the best movies i've seen in a long time i generally don't get into movies that much but i saw that one and then before that one i saw um oh naked gun two and a half yeah did you have you seen that one yeah it's exactly like airplane wasn't it but it was silly yeah yeah uh_huh i haven't seen that yet right um such as uh_huh oh really i haven't seen any of those they're really good huh_uh no uh_huh are they i mean is it like mystery or suspense or oh really um right so do you like um movies a lot see i don't do i don't right see i don't do that i don't go to movies that often but just recently i've been to a couple um no we i just go to like the dollar movie theater around here generally but i don't know i just i usually fall asleep or i get bored pretty easily so uh_huh yeah right that's exactly right yeah it's good to talk to you too uh_huh bye bye all right i i like keep forgetting to make these calls i've been on this list for two months i think i've made four calls right well there are some kind of nice prizes and it's worth doing it i so mad i think i've had this for two months and like i've said i've made four calls and lot of times we don't answer the phone probably when i get mine early in the evening well we're supposed to talk about movies have you been to any lately uh i haven't really seen one since probably august because uh every weekend in in the fall we go to our high school football game on friday then we go out with friends after and that's kind of the our social for the but oh i saw uh robin hood which i didn't care for no and my husband dragged me to it i like i think kevin [costner's] a nice fellow and he's nice looking but he just to me is not a very [dynamic] actor i guess because he is good looking i don't know i don't know oh i saw city slickers did you see that was a that's the last one i saw i think i did too i thought that was so cute and oh i do too oh i i really enjoyed that right which most of them probably aren't i don't know what my kids see any more my kids are twenty and sixteen so they've probably seen about everything at this point oh uh_huh oh i know it that's the way it is we can see some pretty [raunchy] stuff on on just regular t v without cable or anything you know there's no way to protect them any more so no it'll teach a great lesson because she ended up so in so but it was a fun movie to watch oh the scary one oh i didn't see that but the oh really oh i like scary ones that are realistic they say is really frightening too the new one that came out they say it's really [horrifyingly] scary but uh i'd never get my husband to that he doesn't like to be scared oh and my kids both saw that they liked it and it was still scary oh no gosh oh no that one sounded gross i know my husband wouldn't have stood for that he he likes mary [poppins] and things yeah i do too i i really like a variety where are you from oh i was going to well my husband's from new jersey and we lived there for five years when we first got married and so it sound kind of nice it was familiar your accent oh right i don't know up there just uh different uh_huh well see the accents up there fascinated me because even in his family alone there were several different accents the way they would pronounce words differently and and his family they lived in the same house there most of them were twenty or so you know yeah uh_huh and they lived you know they never moved into apartments when they were young they always stayed at home until they got married it seemed to be the custom up there or they went in the service and so they were together for all that time but they still their accents [differed] a little in the family so and it uh in the sixties i finally oh yeah i converted him to being a texan i i just thought life would be i knew it was easier back here well sort of i'm an air force brat but i was real familiar with texas i went to college here and everything and i just thought you know we could probably get a better house and life is a little slower a little easier he loves it he he really would never want to leave so it worked out not hard when you first came was it hard when you first came oh my oh i know oh compared to new york oh yes were you all transferred um i have a friend down the [street's] from new jersey and they were he got a oh really i just oh i just got mine last week and i haven't started yet because i wanted to get one first see how it worked really yeah i have i was trying to think of the one i went to a couple of weeks ago but i forgot it already oh that's your weekend yeah really really i didn't see that because i didn't think i would care for it oh yeah i think that's why a lot of people go to see him though right yes i did see that and i really enjoyed that yeah i thought that was appropriate just for everyone yeah it was great yeah and my daughter went to see that one too so it was fine for her so yeah right well that's right probably they have well my daughter is twelve and we had a sleep over one night they wanted to watch pretty woman which i have and i was hesitant and they all had seen it anyway all twelve so yes they do yes they do right but i i love julia roberts movies but i didn't think they were great for my daughter no really really oh i love pretty woman and then i like that one after that where oh what was it it was like a fatal attraction thing yeah i don't remember the name of it but that was so good that was really excellent yeah that that was that was what was oh i don't know really oh the last scary thing i saw was misery that scared me to death and i watched it at a friend's house on video and i was just oh yes it was horrible it was so awful really i like that too i like funny movies and i like scary movies yeah i'm from new york is he really oh yeah yes it's so close i'm from long island so that's close you know that's more related to new jersey than it is to like rochester new york those that kind of thing yeah different it's it's different yeah i guess oh really really and they were all from new jersey um really um when did you live there oh yeah i was in new york in the sixties are you from texas oh yeah oh yeah it is it is yeah i'm used to it now so i like um oh yes it was because we're here eighteen years and you can imagine what plano was like eighteen years ago it was very difficult yeah it was very very difficult i didn't even want to talk yeah yeah all right i think that gets us off to discussing the topic for tonight that is correct are you a movie buff well i have a v c r and i see most all of mine there what have you seen recently that you enjoyed no i haven't now i i live alone consequently i don't like these psycho things oh okay have you seen the if do you have a v c r have you seen the movie class action with gene [hackman] i saw it this weekend and it is uh to me an outstanding movie i thoroughly enjoyed it he is uh an attorney and his daughter is an attorney and she has a suit against his company you know it's one of those things but there's a lot of well it's just it's something that anyone can watch and enjoy beg your pardon yes he is yes i've seen [hoosiers] saw it just again the other night for oh did you have you seen the movie um crossing [delancy] now that's one i have watched oh six or eight times i always feel so good when i get through with that movie i do too dirty dancing and crossing [delancy] are two of my favorite so well what business are you in oh in new hampshire all right oh all right okay so is everything going all right up there oh well that's that bad then half an hour we do that just going to downtown dallas so that makes a lot of sense but um we are you a native of that part of the country oh uh sounds wonderful did you have damage this year with hurricanes i happened to be in nassau and we got the backlash of that thing and they had record high waves thirty year high waves come in there and it was quite an experience so well what movies are you looking forward to seeing now okay have you seen green card that's a real warm movie it it really just turned out nicely so i would recommend that if you have a chance well if you if you can get green card go for it i have been working at uh as an accountant at the medical school here in dallas and i have watched uh gross [anatomy] have you seen that one okay and i don't know i can associate with some of the people in that movie because of the young students i see over at the medical school but i hope you have a very merry christmas i'm looking forward to it well which is movies correct okay um yeah i don't like going to see them in the theaters but outside of that rent a lot watch them on t v mostly uh i don't know um actually earlier tonight we were watching to live and die in l a have you seen that movie it's a kind of one of those psycho ones oh it's not too bad one of those cop [thrillers] but yes we do uh no i haven't yet yeah that he's a good actor though um gene [hackman's] a good actor i think do you see [hoosiers] yeah actually i we saw her just the other night too yeah it's one of our favorite movies i i live with um a roommate and my girlfriend the three of us we've seen that movie probably six times in the last six months yeah yeah i like those movies that you watch time and time again i'm i'm an electrical engineer i work in massachusetts actually um it's only about um half an hour i live on the border that's right see we live up in tax free new hampshire and drive down to massachusetts to work yeah i grew up in new hampshire it seems southern town it's called [portsmouth] it's i don't know fifteen minutes from the border and five minutes from the main border we live right in the corner that one little spot in new hampshire we have ten miles of coastline i live on one of that little ten mile spot not up um where i live but further down the coast in massachusetts they got hit pretty bad um well i'm i'm only twenty seven years old so the doors movie that's out on video i want to watch that that would be pretty good no i haven't seen that one i'm in for it we rent a lot of movies so we we often sit around and say what movies should we rent and we don't know all right we'll try that one yeah i did you too i think we're going to have a white christmas up here just like the song says okay uh i guess our topic is about movies and uh what is coincidence we got a baby sitter and we went to the movies that past weekend and we saw cape fear it is it's really good oh how was that i heard that's a movie that uh you really can't take children is that true oh oh yeah yeah because uh the little boy dies yeah oh oh oh uh_huh oh i want to see that one well cape fear was was more suspenseful it was really suspenseful so that that's that's a real good movie to see uh no and it uh it was kind of i don't know it's kind of both i guess but it's not it's not as bad as silence of the lambs but uh it's just as suspenseful i think and it it was a real good movie and then we saw beauty and the [beast] because we have two kids and [fievel] goes west but uh those were those were okay so and then oh boy it's been it's been so long since we've been to the movies but i we've rented some videos and i think the last one i rented was uh [mortal] thoughts with demi moore and uh that that that's okay that's pretty good oh and uh what about bob yeah yeah we rented that one and uh uh i guess that's about it have you rented any movies lately oh yeah that was good we rented that one too uh_huh yeah yeah so do you go to the movies often or uh_huh yeah yeah well we have two little kids so it's hard for us to get out and go to the movies we have to dig up a baby sitter and and that's only the only time we can go out so our time is [scarce] but uh we we we we you know we're we're big movie people and we try and do and i don't i don't know about the last movie i've seen on t v that was real good uh oh yeah uh [bertinelli] or what's her name i can't yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that was real good i saw that one uh two part series and i heard it was a true story yeah i think that was probably the last movie i've seen too and and then i saw that other movie about uh mother mother wife murderer did you see that one yeah did you see that one that was was really good that was supposed to be a true story too yeah guess a couple weeks ago or something like that boy we have we we see all the same movies yeah uh_huh i know yeah yeah huh well we sure do have a lot in common if you're ever in town we'll go see a movie but and we don't really do you all have do you all still have drive ins up there or um well we may have just a couple over here uh_huh oh so did i oh i heard that was excellent is it uh i wanted to see that i was deciding between that and uh my girl and uh my boyfriend and i went to see my girl oh it was excellent it was a really really good movie i'd recommend it uh i heard the opposite that uh you should take children to see it uh there were quite a few uh kids in there with their parents yeah uh i don't know though i i've heard that and then what you just told me so right yeah it was sad it was really sad but uh his it kind of shows how his uh best friend this little girl deals with his death and how i think maybe how children should deal with death maybe but it was really good it was sad very sad yeah i heard it was uh sort of like uh not uh too violent but it was kind of like uh gross kind of like uh silence of the lambs like oh really oh oh yeah uh oh i've seen uh previews for them on t v but i yeah oh yeah i like to rent movies too oh oh i i didn't see that yeah i have seen that at the [theatres] yeah that that was cute uh the last movie i rented was the hard way with michael j fox and uh yeah i liked that i like michael j fox a lot he's one of my favorites i like his movies no not too often i i hadn't been to the movies for a really long time since last weekend but uh there's been movies out that i've been wanting to see i just you know don't get a chance to get out and see them oh i see yeah oh yeah oh i watched that movie with uh barbara uh uh what was her name oh that uh her sister got killed and uh she had a baby the husband was a dentist and he had murdered her that was that was pretty good yeah uh_huh oh [valerie] [bertinelli] that's it yeah yeah uh_huh yeah oh uh with uh judith light uh yeah i did see that yeah i did that was on a while ago wasn't it yeah i saw that yeah that was pretty good i yeah i like uh the true stories they're more interesting and it's hard to believe that you know this really happened some of them are pretty bad but yeah okay yeah uh_huh yeah do you have them there uh which ones have you seen lately thelma and louise yeah i haven't seen that is it good is it yeah i i'm not familiar which which billy crystal movie oh city slickers that's a real good show yeah it's great uh it says a lot about uh uh you know i i'm young but it says a lot about middle life you know and uh uh it's a really good show yeah yeah uh yeah i'm not too familiar with thelma and louise uh uh uh recently i i've seen uh the fisher king have you seen that it's a really good show uh has jeff bridges and and uh robin williams uh really really good yeah yeah uh_huh uh well i like to be entertained once in a while but i i really enjoy watching a movie that uh where they don't really try and attract the you know the great audience but rather put out a a real good movie uh it always my my favorite movie of all time has been uh uh the mission did you ever see that uh it's a a i think it's put out by landmark [productions] the same people who put out [chariots] of fire uh it's a it's a has robert deniro in it uh he plays one of the main characters and uh it's about uh jesuit community in uh at the [inca] falls in in uh south america northern argentina uh really really good show yeah it's it's something that you know it's it's really [stirring] the cinematography is just beautiful and really beautiful scenes and real good music oh yeah oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh i'm much the same way i i i i have a fiance and it it gets very difficult to uh uh yeah yeah oh really uh_huh uh_huh yeah they are sometimes you're in the mood for it even uh_huh i found when when i get when i get with my uh old college buddy we we usually rent uh good [gladiator] movie or two uh i still enjoy watching those you can't just watch them by yourself or else it's not [bearable] but it's it's fun to oh yeah yeah yeah that's that's the ones where they [dub] in [dub] in the english that's great uh uh on foreign films did uh did you did you watch are you uh [fluent] in another language or oh you don't i don't either i i feel foolish sometimes because i i don't speak another language [fluently] but i do enjoy watching you know subtitles oh i just sort of [blanking] tonight i just got done saying i just saw one uh fairly recently uh-oh gosh oh i know uh uh the one with the two girls that take off from uh uh across across the country on a crime [spree] thelma and louise yeah yeah it really is it's it's interesting oh yeah i enjoyed it i was going to go see uh the billy crystal movie also which was i'm a little bit behind i usually rent them oh this is the uh just the one oh gosh it was the uh city slickers right have you seen that uh_huh yeah i i i've heard lots of good things about it and i would have would have liked to have seen it but i was with my wife and i figured she'd like thelma and louise better so and i'd heard it was really good too so no okay uh_huh yeah there's there's been a a fair number of of pretty good movies out recently i mean it kind of runs in in [batches] i mean for a while sometimes they come in a whole bunch of them that just i don't even you know doesn't even sound like something i want to see what what kind of movies in general do you like to watch uh_huh no in fact i'm not even familiar with it i don't think uh_huh oh uh_huh no in fact i i i'll i'll look for it because i actually yeah my wife's from down in that region around the the called the the seven missions which are which are right down in this where i'm sure where it was filmed at and uh i'm sure that that would make it worth worth her watching she my my uh my movie watching has has severely uh has has changed a lot since i got married yeah she she likes uh action movies and uh and and comedies and so anything that's has anything little is a little little bit less than sort of mainstream hollywood is is boring to her and and so i i i i really i used to watch a fair number of foreign films i used to watch a lot of sort of the less the less popular films and i find i don't do it anymore or else i have to watch them on my own find something both of you will watch she it's funny because most women aren't really she's sort of schwarzenegger fan type of yeah she really likes all these gory shoot them up films keep her on the edge of her seat i'll watch them you know they're kind of fun to watch in a way but uh so it it it varies i don't seem to get you know as much variety these days lately as i used to well yeah on the other hand you know given that my wife likes those i i say i occasionally like to watch them and and so uh you know so it's you can always count on her to watch something like that and she'll even watch things like karate movies and stuff like that you know which most most women now won't they won't come within ten feet of all the all the ya all the sounds of the karate chops flying through the air a [cha] i yeah i speak several uh but i i don't mind watching [subtitle] movies uh no i i yeah i mean for some people that's just you know that's out of the question you know you give it subtitles they won't watch well uh city slickers and star trek five yeah yeah yeah i thought i'd better see that one before i go and see six no i found that out how about yourself how is it oh i can't wait now does the old star trek guys meet the new guys no it's just the old guys still you know that i read in people or somewhere no it was u s a today that they said they weren't going to do anymore that was it but huh i'm not sure what the difference in light years between the new generation and the the old guys was huh oh that's right is that right he was a doctor still well yeah he didn't look too bad did he yeah that's amazing but did they have some pretty good special effects yeah five was the script was bad bad bad no i don't why oh is that right uh leonard [nimoy] he does a lot better in search of [spock] or no journey home i think that was are you're a real life [trekkie] i really like them i i wouldn't go so far as being a [trekkie] but uh oh really huh did you get to talk to him it was crowded no yeah wow huh they have some good management principals in this new generation oh right so he kind of was a cowboy type too made all the decisions but uh jean [luke] does more of a a committee type of management what other movies have you seen oh how was that lots of little funny spots huh did they have thing and really how did i've always wondered how he gets around but he's in a box right didn't he used to oh oh that's yeah that's okay yeah that's what i was thinking well let me see what have you seen lately five only only five well no didn't need to i just saw the latest one it was fantastic yeah it's the lines in there were just perfect i mean it was classic trek no huh_uh yeah it was just a rumor that that would happen this time however the rumor is is that it will happen next happen next time so uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh except that the rumor is is that they still might but it may not include the entire crew and it will be a next generation meets this generation so i think it's a hundred years somewhere in that range considering that [spock] was on an uh you know couple weeks ago and that the the very first episode of next generation they had [mccoy] and uh_huh yeah well you know he was rear [admiral] whatever you know and he just kind of [hobbled] down the halls real slow [vulcans] age a lot better no huh_uh matter of fact he looks just as about as old and the uh next generation as he does in the latest star trek imagine that oh excellent excellent special effects but i think the script was you know just incredible compared to the last one well you know why uh william [shatner] wrote it and even worse he directed it oh yeah he in fact uh he didn't direct this one he produced this one but he directed the one before uh i think star trek four something like that yeah uh_huh i think so uh_huh well i've gone to you know one for real live trek convention but yeah i saw james [doohan] you know the guy that plays uh [scotty] no not in a crowd like that huh_uh it was like uh want an [autograph] want to stand in line for about four hours it was a pretty crowded place oh yeah yeah i it's it's kind of funny i uh was reading in uh a book uh trying to think i can't quite remember the name of the book but it was it was saying don't do star trek management style and they were referring to you know captain kirk every time he left the enterprise everything went to hell and nothing got [righted] until he got back up on the ship uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh it's definitely a lot better a lot more realistic really uh saw the [addams] family last week it was pretty good uh there were a few things different than the old series but on the on the whole it was pretty similar and a lot of fun oh yeah yeah oh yes in fact thing has a big much bigger role than he does in the series i mean you know there is lots of areas where thing saves the day and he runs around a lot uh you know just finger hopping no no no in fact it's funny he never did does come in out of a box i don't think yeah he was just kind of walking around not really he was always in the box before yeah what kind of movies have you been seeing lately oh it's an excellent movie silence of the lambs what was that anyway okay uh_huh let's see who was in fisher king that was um robin williams and uh and uh i can't the last name uh we've not been having many opportunities to see movies lately um we really enjoyed um dead [poets'] society um several years back one we saw we saw we really really enjoyed was uh ordinary people with uh [timothy] [hutton] and uh mary tyler moore and uh uh who played the father anyway excellent movie yes we have oh we loved it i know what you mean i know what you mean yeah i'm pretty impressed with stuff he's done uh he made kind of an odd sounding robin hood but uh i mean you know basic thick western u s accent for a robin hood just doesn't seem to fit oh no it's a good movie well um they did a real good job with it um they didn't try to make him super human or you know [invincible] they just just he worked hard at it no i haven't not an opportunity to see that uh yeah yeah yeah it sounds kind of like one uh we saw at home here on the rented it um [clara's] heart um [whoopi] [goldberg] and she played a uh the uh she's a housekeeper yeah she's a housekeeper she she was a oh now i can't say it a [haitian] anyway she uh she seemed to be that sort of person that seems half crazy but then again she's got a whole lot on the ball and the movie had the whole lot of philosophical content more than more than you know it wasn't a mystery it wasn't you know blood and guts and violence and and car [chases] type thing it was just a good movie a kiss before dying and yeah yeah that that takes a good bit to make one that's predictable that's still worth watching oh okay uh it's been probably a month or so since i've been to the movies course my my favorite now is is dances with wolves uh silence of the uh of the lambs was good uh_huh oh it's a i guess it's a mystery you'd call it it's with uh [jodie] foster and it uh it's pretty good another one that i think i really liked was uh the fisher king right how about you what are you yes right that was that was an excellent movie have you seen dances with wolves what'd you think of it i don't think i can see it enough times course i'm a kevin costner fan no but you know it wasn't a bad movie it got such bad reviews really and and i thoroughly enjoyed it but i then i wasn't expecting any classic either i thought so have you seen the fisher king uh it you you know i guess it it really isn't for everybody it's it's pretty deep and uh uh philosophical but i thought it had a wonderful message to it it's the kind you came out and looked at somebody and said you know i think i liked that and then the more you got to thinking about it the more you thought you know i did like it but when you first came out you weren't real sure haven't seen that oh yes i did yes i did uh the nanny type housekeeper uh_huh i saw one the other day that was a kiss before dying uh_huh i had not heard about it when it was on the movies but was out on video and it's with sean young and it's a it's a mystery it was very predictable i mean you knew you knew when the murder was going to happen or something but it was still so well done that it was enjoyable that's right i had uh uh i like the i think it's called the uh [razor's] edge but no no the jagged edge the jagged edge with uh uh well let's see i think the best one i saw was probably sleeping with the enemy have you seen silence of the lambs oh what no but i've heard it's really good no i haven't seen that did you what did you think of it huh yeah uh_huh oh really yeah well i saw a few of the uh little coming [attractions] you know it looked really cute but yeah well i've never been to california i've lived in washington but not california so oh i didn't even realize that that's interesting um yeah i guess so did you see home alone oh well i was kind of disappointed in that one i've heard so much about it that you know it's such a great movie and you ought to go see it over and over again and uh i thought it was just kind of like a spoiled brat staying at home and causing a lot of trouble uh_huh yeah yeah i was kind of disappointed but uh are you intending to see silence of the lambs have you yeah it's pretty intriguing yeah it's it's a very unusual movie kind of keeps you well the first part of it wasn't as scary and intense as i thought it was going to be but toward the end it got got more that way yeah yeah it really does the only way they can get any information is through someone who's so crazy and bizarre it's hard to tell what he's going to do next so yeah it was a good movie and then i thought sleeping with the enemy was even [scarier] but that's because it was about a man chasing a woman and that's my big fear so i was trying to think if i've seen any others lately but that probably pretty much sums up i don't get to go to the movie too much no i haven't as a matter of fact it's on at the dollar movie around here i was wanting to go yeah i heard that was really good yeah yeah uh_huh yeah yeah that's the way i as a matter of fact my sister believes in uh ghosts and she said that she thinks that's a real uh true [portrayal] of what it would be like yeah yeah i i want to see that as a matter of fact i intended to go one night and didn't get to so hopefully we'll go soon no i haven't as a matter of fact i don't know anything about that movie what it it is that it funny or huh uh_huh right huh oh really huh yeah oh oh huh uh_huh oh well that is interesting yeah huh yeah oh yeah well that sounds pretty yeah is it something that uh that you could take a child to oh i have a six and a half year old that probably enjoy that yeah huh oh well i'll have to have to take her to see that uh_huh huh oh really huh wow that sounds like that would have been a hard movie to make yeah i can imagine no i haven't huh i don't know anything about that either uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um um uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um well it does sound interesting i have never been to the [inwood] theatre uh_huh yeah do you go there often um yeah hum yeah well it sounds interesting well does this um however this is set up tell you when you talked for five minutes or do you just oh really oh that's interesting oh okay well i didn't know this the first call that i've made so i wasn't real sure if you if it tells you when you've talked long enough or let me think if i have seen anything else that's interesting lately uh_huh yeah silence of the lambs uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i'm sure i haven't seen either one of the other films she was in but uh my husband said that he thought she was playing a real different role in this show yeah yeah yeah i i one of the things that i was really impressed with uh she has to have an accent that she does a real good job with i it sounds so real that she sounds like she's from that area of the country yeah uh i think it's like in the i don't know alabama georgia south carolina area or something it's and she does a real good job sounding like she's from that area but uh i thought she did a really good job yeah oh anthony perkins yeah i didn't remember him from anything else i i'm sure i've seen him in other movies but he looked so his his face the entire movie just [haunts] you and uh he did a real good job yeah yeah there was a big crowd there i think it's uh definitely getting some good ratings uh_huh no i haven't oh really um oh i didn't realize that well i thought it was i really enjoyed that movie i mean it scared me more than the other one but it was real intense to me i enjoyed it yeah yeah it was it has a real eerie beginning and the man that she's married to is obviously crazy but at the first you don't really know about that and it's real interesting the way it starts out so uh i thought it was really yeah yeah it is it's a lot like that i thought fatal attraction was a good movie did you like it i didn't like the ending though oh really um i didn't know it was based on another film um uh_huh oh i see huh huh well i liked it until toward the end i i didn't care for it too much but yeah yeah and it's kind of unbelievable too the this woman can live through everything she lived through yeah well i can't think of much else to talk about yeah i think so well thanks for calling uh_huh i liked it i really did actually i saw it twice my ex roommate and i were real into psychological things we we think people with mind problems are really interesting i mean you know real psychotic people so we were dying to see it so we went and saw it and i had to see it the second time to get it all because i kept my eyes closed through so much of the first part well it's it's not that it's that scary it's that it's so graphic because uh well are you going to see it i don't want to tell you how it ends okay so some time later much later huh oh okay well it's uh what is so weird about it is that it it's a real it's based on real people and i read the story in people magazine about where they got the characters in the movie and they're a combination of a lot of different serial killers in real life and so a lot of things that happen in the movie the only thing really scary about it is that it could happen to you it really does happen in real life you know normally in movies you can look at it and say well it's a movie right right but in this you're going i i would have done that i can see where that would happen and it gets really scary but it's it's a real interesting movie very thought provoking there are so many things to discuss when the [movie's] over if you're one of those people that likes to discuss things and think about why it happened i i still talk about it with we'll call each other now and then and go remember when in the movie this happened well i was just reading today and things just keep relating back to it i thought it was fascinating i don't know if you want to go to dinner maybe just go out for a soda or something i don't think you want to eat it is real good though it's it's i liked it i liked dances with wolves too though that was a real good movie yeah i didn't think i'd like it i don't normally like the old west type movies things like that they don't normally interest me but that one i really really liked because it it i didn't know so much about the indians and all that that happened in that part of the war i had never heard anything really about that before and this was a whole new idea to me anyway i thought it was real good um i'm about a quarter italian and my grandmother on my mother's side is a little bit of everything typical american little bit of indian little bit of this little bit of that and that's about it what's do you oh really which one were they [sioux] indians or what were they oh neat right right uh_huh that was awful oh i did too i did too yeah uh_huh it makes you realize how really ignorant some white people are people who have no ethnic background no heritage anything other than just typical americans a little bit of everything and they don't really know they don't know anything about the indian people they don't know anything about the europeans that came over you know it really made it seem like we are so in the dark on so many things right exactly uh_huh and i still really other than just basic ignorance of prejudice i don't understand why we didn't why them why did we not listen to them yeah yeah isn't it sad to think that that much that greed can do that much to you or to a person i mean they we wanted the land and we didn't want them to have it so just screw everything they're going to think and teach us and tell us and we could just like wipe out an entire people like that that's sad right right right right right right right that is that's a good way to look at it a [consolation] prize well that's about all it was that's really sad that things like that can still happen today after all this time you'd think we'd a learned something by now yeah that's true he with the most toys i guess that's right who's got more hotels i really did like silence of the lambs though that was really an interesting movie i liked dances with wolves but it was an emotional like you get real involved and you cried and you feel sorry for the people and all this but in silence of the lambs it was kind of like fatal attraction did you see that it was kind of that feeling through the whole thing on the edge of your seat wanting to tell the people what to do next it you're like no don't go in there don't give him your name you you start acting it out for them no believe it or not the whole theatre got involved yes i can't remember which scene it was but at one point everyone in the theatre [clapped] they were so happy it was and i thought i was just there and i heard other people crying when i was crying there were certain parts in there that were real sad and you hear people when you know the actors are doing things that you know are about to reap some bad thing and everyone in the theatre will go uh and everybody does it it's like the whole theatre you get this big uh sound it was i think everybody felt that way through it it was real involved and all the girls were crying when they walked out and all the guys were just kind of staring straight ahead like that didn't bother me and you know it did right i remember the first time i saw it was with my boyfriend and he was [joking] with me about how i wasn't going to watch half of it i was going to close my eyes and there were quite a few scenes where i did but this one scene i knew something bad was coming i could tell so i [ducked] my head and about that time i heard the audience go uh and my boyfriend jumped he literally jumped and he [swears] he didn't do it and i felt him jump it really was to this day i tell him he was scared and he says no no you just didn't watch it you should have watched it it wasn't that bad i'm like yeah right that's why you jumped yeah really it is a great movie you got to see it it is so fascinating to think that there are people that are so so smart they're such [geniuses] that they cross that line and they're they're psychotic and it's amazing it really is i mean to think that it could be anybody we know i mean you could be walking right next to one of them and not even know it because they look perfectly normal i mean this man was a doctor and he had patients in fact they were the people he killed you know and you think right now your doctor could be [wacko] he could be some psychotic killer and no one would ever know it's just strange that was what was that was what made the movie because it's so real i like movies that are based on things that are real and what movies have you seen recently i don't blame you we're the same right there's been inflation all the way along uh_huh right uh_huh um well i know that my kids have gone to things that i would never set foot in but they haven't gone with me and i haven't paid the bill so there's there are an awful lot of movies that i just think are uh [unconscionable] to be shown on especially to kids and i have had to hope that they would enforce the r ratings and not let kids under eighteen in excuse me we're having a pollen attack here and i'm having hay fever excuse me uh but anyway um my kids are now twenty one and twenty four so i don't do anything now but once in a while what i try to do is try to [entice] them into something that i think is going to be useful or educational or something so the two recent films that we have seen where i've been able to drag them along um are the uh henry the fifth the kenneth [bronoff] version and [rosencranz] and [gildenstern] are dead which were wonderful both of them were just [outstandingly] good excellent acting wonderful sets costumes and really worthwhile um i'm a bad one to ask i don't oh yes yes i know the one you're talking about hunt for red october yes uh yes well uh my husband went and took his son and he enjoyed it a lot but i've never cared much for war and spy movies so they let me stay home and work in the garden but they thought it was a good movie and uh i like sean connery so i said if it comes out on video i'll be willing to pay the two dollars to rent it and then if i'm bored i don't feel like i've lost a lot and i can turn it off uh_huh well i um uh_huh um well uh i have to tell you a comment that the man whose office is next door to mine goes to a lot of movies and uh he will come back with his [capsule] review and he had said well it has absolutely beautiful scenery but you wouldn't like it because of the [cruelty] to animals and any movie i have to say i where i notice the scenery means i didn't like the plot so um yeah uh_huh well i keep telling people that i don't go to movies where there's lots of blood and uh shootings and i certainly don't go to horror films if they are trying on purpose to scare me then i don't want to go absolutely not oh i'll tell you one though that i heard such good things about um oh let's see what was it um it's a david lynch movie and it's about sailor and [lula] they're the two main characters i can't remember the name of the film now but anyway got lots of just wonderful reviews and i had heard that it had violence in it but i thought well i'll go give it a try and the first five minutes of that movie were so disgusting that i went and got my money back i did i told my husband i've got a book in the car give me the car keys you can stay and watch this if you want to but i don't need this and i just got up and left and in about two more minutes he joined me and we asked for our money back i said you know i i realize that this is advertised as an r movie and i had heard that it contained violence but i had no idea how disgusting this was going to be and in the five minutes i watched there was no let up it was it was just filthy and now i don't mind uh nudity and i don't mind [suggestiveness] if it's appropriate to the story i'm not a [prude] and i'm not a [prig] but i do not see any reason why you should have one string of filthy language with no intermission in it and uh graphic violence and blood and uh it total disregard for human beings oh yeah and i think that's got to be true if you look at what they produce what they think is the ideal normal person um yeah and most of us aren't that [seedy] at least the ones with the money to go to the movie right uh i heard that was real cute uh_huh yeah uh_huh there's a theater here in town that has uh been renovated by a foundation to its heyday of the twenties and it has the big old organ and everything and the big screen and they show only movies made before nineteen fifty and it is just great we go to that probably once a month or more uh at the very beginning when they were having film [festivals] like a [katherine] [hepburn] festival and a fred [astaire] festival and so on we were going a couple of nights a week and it's great for one thing it's not well it's not full of [rowdy] teenagers who are uh [spilling] their cokes and throwing their popcorn and talking all the time mostly middle age folks who are pretty [decorous] and sit still and listen to the film and they've got these absolutely terrific prints that are from the uh film [archives] in los angeles that have just been specially restored and sometimes they are made from the original negatives so they're really crisp and good like they were when they first came out and you can go to a movie like that yes i thought it was good as a matter of fact uh i was the generation that i didn't think i'd like it because you know i had seen the original and i thought did you too well i just thought oh if i go and you know see this one i'm going to be disappointed but we my husband and i went and we thoroughly enjoyed it yes well did you know that the uh what was it you know where they did the arrow through the air was supposed to be a [promo] and they had just done it to promote the movie for a t v ad and they thought it was so good that they included it in the movie itself yes yeah won several it was it was it was really good i'm impressed with kevin costner i really am yes oh he likes to show his rear he did that in uh dances with wolves if he doesn't keep getting a tan he'll be in trouble no no those i saw terminator one and my husband went on his own to see that one did it oh how neat oh how interesting where do you oh we can't talk about where you work uh i'm trying to think of what else i've seen no no not well see my problem is uh i teach school and so those movies that by the time the kids finish telling me about them i don't go see them yes uh i'm trying to think of what else i've seen uh-oh what was the one with the guy that had amnesia the lawyer uh-oh it was so good now it's my names escape me uh oh gosh i might try to look through the paper and see oh let's see what we have it was about a doctor who had amnesia not doctor lawyer and he was a real [hustly] [bustly] kind of person and then he got amnesia and sort of slowed down and nobody was used to him he had servants at home and very very rich and when he went through his thing his whole personality changed and i'm trying to remember the title of it yeah it was regarding henry okay yeah i'm pretty sure he was and he was like out for everybody's you know to get everybody and to swing deals and do things that were borderline he never did anything illegal but yes yes well he wouldn't defend a case because he knew they were lying and he was the one that set up the lie for them and i don't think so because we you know doctors and amnesia case too and then i had seen something on television so i think amnesia was in this year what was that again yes yeah that was called the doctor and that was released after regarding henry but i didn't go see that because i felt like i had enough of one theme i haven't seen any of the new ones though i don't know if we've gotten five minutes in i didn't look at my clock three let me check my sheet then she's going to hate us when she has to [transcribe] all this okay let's see yeah well i'm looking at the paper and i don't see anything okay but you said you saw robin hood yeah i sure did of course i'm a kevin costner fan as are a lot of women yeah have you are you planning to see his new one the j f k yeah i usually wait for the reviews too although sometimes i've gone and i disagree you know with them not usually the paper as much as the ones on radio and t v i don't always agree with them uh_huh oh like the man on the uh i think it's k r l d that reviews movies gave uh star trek the new movie uh like a four or five and i was surprised because everyone that's a star trek fan that i know that has seen it just loved it uh_huh so don't you think again it's a matter of opinion uh i don't like always to listen to what someone else says uh because i think sometimes they just don't happen to or if you know if you're real tired sometimes something doesn't appeal to you that's right i've seen a couple like that uh you haven't seen cape fear yet oh it is very very frightening i mean i think it's more so than silence of the lambs it's a little bit like that did you see silence of the lambs yeah well it was pretty gory and so was cape fear real kind of gruesome but you know that's kind of like when is he going to die and probably never which one is that hook yes again i've heard mixed reviews on that you know i think this morning k r l d had a gave it a a six or something which for him is probably pretty good i guess there will never be another e t i know that was a classic and i'm glad they didn't try to follow up with a sequel sometimes it ruins it well i think so uh it was on what thanksgiving i was in florida and i watched it again have you seen the [butcher's] wife uh_huh uh_huh he does put in a real good it's a real lighthearted movie if you are uh in the mood to see something just kind of lighthearted you would like it it isn't a real [thoughtful] picture just kind of fun you know once in a while it's nice to just go see something that's just lighthearted and fun that's true you know and you have to start thinking about is it is it worth spending the money to go see it or shall i just wait uh_huh they really do and i've never been a star trek fan but i have friends and relatives that wouldn't miss a star trek movie um yeah well and sometimes you know you miss all the crowds if you don't have to go the very first day it opens yeah yeah i think so i don't think you need to be one of the first uh do you belong to any of the fan clubs or you know the uh_huh oh my goodness well we don't go to the movie much but we see quite a few on t v uh well let me see uh i guess the last one we saw at the movie was probably pretty woman did you oh i thought it was too i thought it was a real good movie uh oh uh_huh oh i uh uh_huh oh uh that's great i remember that movie and i remember that it was very good i don't remember if i saw it or not uh_huh oh uh there is one that uh-oh let's see my son likes with tom cruise it's a an airplane movie uh top gun yes i thought that was a good movie yeah there is a lot of action but i thought it was an excellent movie and let's see oh well now i love all those uh_huh oh well that's good uh i remember that movie i don't remember if i saw it i saw everything i could see when i was younger and i remember a lot of them and i love seeing them again but i don't think anything will ever top gone with the wind yeah we taped it uh_huh it really is anything course with clark [gable] i like and uh-oh i don't know let's i like the older movies because they were just so much more [classier] than what you see today uh_huh oh right uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah well they could leave out a lot of that stuff and the movie would be just as good now uh let's see i saw that dances with wolves it was good yes no i didn't think so and i told everybody that if i had made that movie i could have made it shorter because there wasn't any need to go into that much detail you know show me one thing and i get the picture no right but it had a good story and it was a little different but it was a little too gross for me yeah right where are you calling from okay well we're pretty close then well you know i've been pretty lucky i've called sometimes eight o'clock in the morning before i go to my office and i've i've talked to a lady in utah i talked to a man in new york and i talked to uh a lady in kansas or somewhere so anyway our topic was movies yeah i i'm a movie buff i can too i'm a junk movie watcher so but i see them all i see the junk ones by myself and i see the good ones with my wife i go see all the shoot them up bang [bangs] and all the uh strong r rated and my wife and i go see the the my girls and the good ones what kind of movies do you like yes i'm sorry oh are you okay so am i well i sort of well i like them all but i'm a you know i'm an arnold schwarzenegger fan sylvester stallone fan and i like detective type uh mystery dramatic types police all did have you all have you seen cape fear have you okay yes that's tremendous that i'll bet that'll be equivalent to uh silence of the lambs or something like that yes that was great they yes yes it was a great movie no i didn't i missed that one that might be a neat idea yeah bet that was good oh no it's a tremendous movie right yeah i've seen it two or three times it's such a a great movie yes they uh everyone my wife's a teacher and all of her teacher friends are saying we need to go see beauty and the [beast] they say that's quite a nice movie right we see them all see i'm such a movie buff i go out i'm self employed so a lot of times i'll just uh i just have a two person office myself and my secretary and i'll just uh go out for lunch at noon sometimes go to a movie and come back at two that kind of a thing oh i probably average at least one and a half to two times a week oh i enjoy yeah i enjoy it lot of times uh my wife will have to stay after school until seven and i'll just uh leave the office at five go to a movie and come home at seven and i'll be here when she gets here no i will see that though hook does look like it would be good uh my wife and i saw my girl and that was a good that was a good little movie yeah it was cute sure you bet that was a little that was a little slapstick you know yes but uh my girl will sort of it'll bring a little tear to your eyes or something it was cute really oh i understand we uh yeah we see quite a few our daughter and uh son are [moviegoers] and future son in law they're all [moviegoers] so we we just all go to movies oh i think so too absolutely that's what my wife and i do on fridays you know we uh meet at five thirty and uh go to the movie and then go out and go to dinner somewhere and come home you bet well it's expensive to go to a movie oh i know we take uh my wife and i take my son and her intended to the movie you're talking uh between tickets and popcorn and everything probably forty bucks because we go we go visit them in lubbock texas that's where they're at going to school and there's nothing to do in lubbock texas but go to the movies and you better do it before nine o'clock right okay well i don't see many of the current movies i usually wait until they come in the second run theaters but um what what ones have you seen lately uh_huh yeah oh you did uh_huh did you like it i'm not but my husband is and he went last weekend to see it too yeah he did huh okay i saw that recently yeah in fact i saw it twice uh actually once we were on an airplane and then the second time it was at a um it's interesting it's an old uh theater not a movie theater but like a play theater that and they've put in tables and chairs and they show movies in there so it's kind of neat yeah uh_huh uh_huh yes yes um yeah it's one of these lighthearted things it's it's not very serious but it's it was cute i really i enjoyed it no huh_uh oh i haven't seen that i saw hundred and one dalmatians yes no i went with my next door neighbor our husbands both said no way it used to be my favorite movie when i was little so i don't think so i don't know but you know we went for a dollar it was fun and we enjoyed it i didn't get bored or anything either yeah we have a real nice one it's brand new and um i i suspect it'll be a full priced theater when this highway goes in but right now it's almost in the middle of nowhere so it's not very crowded and it's real inexpensive and it's brand new so it's it's a really nice place to go yeah uh_huh uh_huh no huh_uh i don't know i think my husband will want to see it so i'll do the same thing i'll wait until it's less expensive because he said when he went to see star trek he was out in california with a friend he said it was like seven fifty a person i think it's about six dollars yeah yeah well i think you can get that maybe on a matinee here but you know about six dollars is what they're running and that's why i don't normally go to them yeah yeah yeah that's right yeah yeah we usually go usually every weekend we go to one yeah yeah well we never used to do that until this other theater went in and it's you know it's inexpensive and it's entertainment for night and um the only thing is that when people at work talk about the current movies i don't know what's going on but you know about four weeks later i will yeah they have been lately used to be you'd have to wait months and months and now like i was just looking at the listings now this week they started showing all i want for christmas and that's a very recent release yeah oh i don't know i don't know um let's see have you seen john f kennedy no i wanted to go see that one i was hoping my roommate went and saw it and she liked it what about um the hand that rocks the cradle it's supposed to be kind of scary well let's no well i mean um let's see well actually i have seen one i'm trying to think of the name of it um it's got bruce willis in it and um yeah but i can't think of who's in it but it was real good no that was horrible um it's the guy from the in living color oh you like well you know who i'm talking about i'm trying well i can't think of it but that was it was really i thought i liked it because it was funny and they had so many it was i mean it was really action packed and it was bloody but they had a lot of um like one liners and stuff i cannot think of the name i'm so bad with names of movies oh really do you have children oh i hear you well leslie there's um a ton gosh that's been out a long time no what was that like oh really uh_huh i remember the name of that now it's called the last boy scout with bruce willis and and i can't think of the other name the guy's name yeah it was good i'm trying to think well uh we liked city slickers since you watch um that's the same same with me okay well um let's see well i want to go see that one i'll probably wait until it comes out on video because i don't think i can get any of my dates to take me well i told doing it well yeah that's true well um what about did you see dances with wolves i saw that two or three times and then what's the other one kevin costner was in robin hood okay yeah i've i've probably seen it about three times uh_huh yeah but i like kevin costner i only watched that once yeah and i cried uh i could probably tell you more that i want to see than i have seen what about um fried green tomatoes yeah well a friend of mine went to see is it what's the name of it father of the [bride] with steve martin and she said that was real cute uh_huh what about the one with um arnold schwarzenegger or whatever terminator two well that's good i cried at that one too yeah at the at the end i won't tell you but yeah that i saw for the first time uh probably about two weeks ago uh_huh that's cute then there're some what are some other ones i wonder i haven't really seen that many new ones no it's too late now oh well um trying to think what else i've seen that's i guess if i see them it's because they come on h b o or whatever oh really well see now edward scissorhands has been on there like every week now and then well what about the one with tom cruise in it that's an old one days of thunder really it well it's okay probably have to be a tom cruise fan oh really uh well i like uh i guess i like all kinds of movies but the ones i don't like are kind of like monty python that type of thing but i like all kinds of movies i like to see movies when they come out and uh i generally prefer watching movie that is have the stars that i like like arnold schwarzenegger and that type thing yeah i mean those are kind of rough for me sometimes but i still like him as an actor so i like watching those movies uh_huh yeah i saw it yeah yeah yeah uh_huh i don't really like the tear [jerker] type either surprisingly even though you know just seems like i don't know they try to make things sad sometimes that really aren't i don't know why did you see the movie dad that was a movie that really really was good and really got me it was the guy from cheers ted [danson] i think was in it that was so good yeah uh_huh um uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh really uh_huh see i haven't seen many of those but i do like them i mean no yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah what was the latest movie you've seen yeah i've seen all those those are pretty good i liked the first one best i think yeah uh_huh i've seen like all the movies that come to the dollar theatre there's a dollar theatre in town we don't really pay uh five bucks to go to see a movie because they have pretty good movies you know not too long after they've been out at the dollar theatre so we go there we used to go there quite a bit we haven't been there lately very much but i think the last movie i saw was awakenings have you heard about that it was more like a it was a true it was based on a true story about a about a disease that that caused people to go into like total what do you call it i mean kind of like a coma yeah and then they came out of it i won't tell you the rest no that was ghost wasn't it wasn't that ghost i didn't see ghost but i've it was based on a true story yeah yeah are are you thinking of uh flatliners that was uh life yeah that was good that was real good right well they uh they almost didn't make it back in a couple cases but uh they came back and their lives were different after that and all this it was it was pretty it was pretty neat have to go see it yeah uh i don't like real scary movies though at all was it see i'm not i'm not really into scary i mean i uh_huh um yeah yeah i've never even seen any of those part one or zero or ten yeah and they have seven movies playing at once so it's pretty good selection and they're always you know top top rated movies i mean i've seen you know quite a bit i just saw kindergarten cop there i guess that was the last movie i seen it was good i liked that kindergarten cop arnold yeah that was a [softie] movie for him terminator oh uh what was that [flashback] or something like that total recall yeah that was tough good movie huh well i'm going to have to get going i'm going to have to get going but have we talked five minutes okay well it was good talking to you thank you go what have you seen oh mine was too scary go ahead oh was it good uh_huh uh_huh yeah have you seen [paradise] with uh [melanie] griffith and don johnson no i haven't seen that one either i was hoping you well well i rented we rented my daughter and her friend i have teenagers rented silence of the lamb have you seen it oh it's yeah well i probably shouldn't have yeah i i don't know that i don't know my husband chose not to watch it and he slept all night and i prayed really hard that my kids wouldn't have nightmares and i had nightmares for two nights oh it's just it's so interesting but it that is the last one that i saw on home video well i probably shouldn't have let my younger ones watch it they are um uh nine and eleven years old but and especially after this jeffrey dahlmer thing really had my eleven year old going you know and it was and he had lots of questions and i had to do a lot of [reassuring] but my kids made some really interesting [observations] about how [hannibal] the [cannibal] you know was uh playing with this [gal's] mind you know which was something he was supposed to watch for and i mean it was very awful and you know it teaches them to um be careful of strangers and and oh yeah so that would but i have bought [fantasia] for my kids and myself actually [kosco] those kind of places kind of discount places yeah oh yeah but you yeah you can just buy now the one i'm buying is a used one which i don't get until december so people will be using it until december but i got it for nine bucks so you know yeah well i hope it will be okay that's the one movie of all movies that i'm going to buy no is it wonderful oh yes yes i did see that oh uh_huh oh yeah sure oh angel at my table okay we'll keep an eye out for that one nope so you like foreign films yes yeah more than washington i'm afraid right uh_huh right right oh oh and ghost was your one of your favorite oh uh_huh and it was called what truly truly [madly] deeply sounds wonderful oh i see oh it sounds wonderful uh_huh his friends oh oh well that would be [comforting] in a way you know yeah yeah yeah sure uh_huh god i don't have to say kind of caught me off i'm more of a looks good in the paper commercials look great on tv uh i did see red october uh this is going to be i've seen a lot of video lot of lot of video v c r stuff uh man oh man i have to say uh chevy chase uh christmas you know the vacation christmas thing was one here recently we saw at christmas time uh god i haven't been in a movie since maybe [superman] batman maybe batman might have been one it's been i haven't seen any of that stuff well i love it we uh got a new baby in the house and and and she just turned a year old so it just kind of put the [clamp] on things uh yeah stop by and get them at you know for ninety nine cents and bring them home but comedies and the p g and the no skin uh we're uh know like we saw sally and uh well billy [crystals] in it we saw that one and which was video that's that's probably the last movie i went to see yeah that's probably the last one quarter [promenade] yeah sure i mean fifteen bucks to go see a movie with with with a couple's a little ridiculous yeah and some of them that turned to [flops] we saw other other other night we saw uh lady in red okay which is not that old but you know it was bounced around the v c r cabinet there and uh but yeah we i used to really you know i'd just pick up the paper and we'd go see a couple you know three or four movies a month but no we haven't i haven't been to a movie in it's been four or five months uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh really kind of [drab] yeah it's got to be something fun you don't have to think yeah sure uh_huh is it a good movie great let's see uh_huh probably [overcompensated] a little bit uh_huh i think the now it's all coming back to me what was the one not the deep but the [abyss] last year i think uh_huh yeah i'm not much of a [rotocop] man [robocop] you know myself this one it wasn't heavy hi [sci] you know hi fi because it was a lot of it was actual stuff that takes place and they had of course the breathing [apparatus] which was liquid and and then all a sudden you know when you actually met this thing and and that that was you know towards like the last third of the movie only really got strange but it was uh you know it was cold in the theater and it's wet in the movie and they kind of just it was it was comfortable it was easy to go in you didn't have to think a lot and and uh you know there is nothing worse than going to see a movie where you have to follow a hidden plot and it and then you leave the movie like with your brain you got a headache trying to follow this damn movie yep specially those intermission movies yep course those those dollar and quarter movies you might catch a spring too so you got to be careful great okay thank you sir the ghost yes yeah i saw it on campus that's very good yeah uh um right demi moore and [whoopi] [goldberg] right uh i don't remember his name uh yeah right yeah i thought that it made you think about um you know what happens when you die and everything and are there really [angels] and ghost and things yeah right maybe it's really maybe i should take life more seriously and and be a little bit more careful but uh yeah um so let's see what else have i seen i saw uh uh have you seen one lately oh i used to that's a very good show is that still on um um yeah got married gary yes right the [longhaired] guy he did oh an image of him oh like a ghost oh that's weird yeah yeah well yeah i know some of those some of those shows are very moving um i know i really liked some of them there there's one about someone got divorced um uh one of the partners right oh they're back together okay i've no i've i've been out for years uh i didn't think it was on anymore um but yeah yeah yeah well yeah i don't have much time to watch t v i'm a grad student just trying to uh just trying to get a p h d thesis out so uh right right but we go out occasionally and um there's some there's some good um sort of [artsy] movies i saw a computer animation festival it was all about computer generated or else um actually it was just sort of animation in general some where computer generated and some were hand drawn um cartoon like things um and there's some really neat stuff they can do now with computers and and some of the cartoons are just hilarious um but uh no it's just there's an annual festival i guess where they they collect the best [entries] and they make it into a full length movie and each each cartoon is completely independent and separate from everything else and laugh you know a few minutes uh but some tell stories you know some are serious and some are funny um but uh there all there all fun to watch uh they're they're for you know they're for adults they're not just kids cartoons they're they're genuine stories and things so anyway uh_huh okay so how does this topic get picked did you did it just get picked at random or i don't know oh okay oh okay oh okay oh okay yeah all right well nice talking to you got to discuss movies you seen a movie recently mark i've heard that was real good and enjoyed it huh who's the star but it was good is it it's not a comedy is it oh i know uh yeah i know the movie you're talking about yeah that guy and his wife star in it [brannigan] or something yeah yeah where they were married years before or something yeah yeah i know what you're talking about kenneth [braun] oh really i didn't know the story but i knew it got a good review uh_huh uh_huh i bet that was interesting sounds interesting well i had the i i read the post reviews don't see too many movies we rent a few of them we don't go to them but i do enjoy the movies i guess the most recent one i can think of that i saw was uh on the on the you know rental was home again did you see that home alone i mean well it's been a little longer than that since i saw it but it was the first time i seen it and i thought boy about three fourths boy i thought what a i can't believe this movie is so highly rated until about the last ten fifteen to twenty thirty minutes of it then it then i was just rolling in the floor just hilarious but i was really bored with it for so long that would make the movie yeah it was just hilarious but i did enjoy that well what else have you seen lately i never have seen any of those they must be good i like some of those kind of movies was this one pretty good it wasn't uh_huh oh really i can't believe it was so short uh_huh uh_huh and it truly is supposed to be the last of that series isn't it maybe it's a good thing they bury it huh oh really so he's moving on uh_huh well it's been well that but if you you know if it's probably made him a extremely rich man too if it's successful i guess just keep with it go to a different different territory seem that's sure done wonders for old stephen king hasn't it writing all those horror yeah isn't that crazy i don't think he did do you that and he's too successful and and too too warped a mind yeah and they say oh that's mine he stole they're trying to get some money that's all basically all they're trying to do i i would think anyway but uh but i can't let's see i'm trying to think of another movie that i've seen lately and i can't think of one isn't that funny you see you see them all the time and when you try to recall uh_huh well it's good entertainment and it's it's so easy to do uh yeah [blockbuster's] so successful i we don't go to them we just go we don't watch that many but when we do we just go up here to [grover] because on tuesday they're ninety nine cents each for all their movies if you get down there in the morning you know you can get some pretty darn good movies but uh but boy [blockbuster] lot of people do go to them don't they uh_huh oh one one doesn't work at all of them got to have oh uh_huh yeah oh i see well and it's successful the way they're running it so can't knock it uh_huh and you live in richardson well let's see we're supposed to talk about movies i don't uh i'm trying just to think i have not gone out to a movie we rent a few but i haven't rented one real lately so you name a few that you've seen and see if i've seen them i have not seen it i have not seen it but i've heard a little bit about it oh is that right well i i was just reading about it though and it's uh it's been a [sleeper] hit it's already [grossed] like forty million dollars so it's it's actually becoming a pretty good hit across the united states so they are liking it and uh it's just i think just a silly entertaining movie from what the articles i've read about it which you know you go just to be entertained and and people are liking it for that uh_huh uh_huh yeah did you right oh oh you went out and watched them film uh_huh uh_huh i bet that's true a lot of wide open spaces out there i've never been up that direction i'd like to the main thing i think about is that it gets so cold in the winter up there wow and and will occasionally up until thanksgiving probably well we'll we'll have some cold days you know like uh in in uh october and september you know we had some pretty cold nights but uh but uh up until thanksgiving really uh well we usually get our first frost middle of november somewhere uh_huh do you have them three hours that's the only complaint i've heard about that it's so long uh_huh passes fast huh jeez oh i like him everything i've seen him in i've liked real well yeah uh field of dreams yeah that was good i saw that no i haven't i bet it it is uh i've not even i don't think i've even read a i usually read the uh critics in uh time and people and i pretty well agree with their thinking on most movies and uh but i i don't believe i've read one about robin hood yet it's already it's just released isn't it yeah maybe that's why they'll get to it shortly but uh is it on the video yet uh_huh i need to get that dances with wolves i would sort of like it at first i thought uh i don't know you know i'm tired of having these indians everybody pushed down our [throats] how we mistreated them so and all that i'm sick of all that uh_huh right pushing a little too far yeah yeah that's that's the very reason i have not even rented it from the video i i every one that i talked to said yes you'll love it you'll love it and i'm sure i will but uh and i'm sure i'll see it before too long i bet it is uh_huh uh_huh that's true that's true you know uh just because our ancestors did certain things they did it i think as a matter of survival and not to be [brutish] to to some other people you know yeah uh_huh uh_huh yes i like julia i like her i uh i'm trying to think what my favorite with her was uh-oh what is it well i guess i feel much more comfortable with with judges bye bye okay uh_huh uh_huh well why was c n n the only of course i think saddam hussein only allowed c n n to broadcast it is that not true it was unusual not to have the different sources you know of news coverage yeah well i know even if you watched a b c n b c or the other i mean what's the other one uh c b s they all were were tapped into c n n uh uh that's the only thing they broadcast and like you i listened to radio on my job at work and all this week they have been having this uh a discussion about that is why uh why c n n was well i listen to a christian radio station and they were saying that c n n is definitely a world uh news service and uh they it was you can't really be sure of the quality of what you've got you know uh we had some uh some people from our church went to israel uh just for a uh tour sort of thing and i was watching on tv they they broadcast this terrible riot supposedly that was going on in jerusalem so we got all fearful for our people come to find out they came back and said they weren't even aware of it and so it really made me question as to what how do we know you know uh if the news we're getting is any good so yeah right right yeah uh_huh well i i find it depressing to watch our specially tv you know it's just uh local news [concentrates] on murders and things like that i'm from dallas and uh we have a lot of bad stuff uh it just really gets me depressed even to watch it so then you wake up one morning and you are in war with somebody you don't even even know about it so uh we have the dallas times herald and the dallas morning news but i don't i don't read newspapers huh_uh uh_huh i find it hard to uh follow from one page to another it's just something i have never developed uh an interest in and i live in kind of a bad area where if i have the paper delivered it's stolen before i can get out and get it you would be surprised they just come by and pick them up even if it's just for the tv you know uh selections of the day i don't know it just wouldn't be there whenever i tried it so you're right who would steal a newspaper but they do what part of california are you from oh okay huh you work for t i huh yeah well i boy current events is not a good subject for me i don't keep up with it that often this is your first call oh really yeah yeah well i i got into a conversation last night with a lady and they interrupt at ten minutes so if we've done our three minutes let's just let the conversation end and say bye nice talking to you too bye bye the topic is to discuss the uh sources where i receive news and uh for me that's mostly newspaper and radio i almost never watch television as a matter of course so i don't get news from television except during the war i watched a lot of c n n because it was so good um yeah um i don't know i guess uh i don't even know why i watched c n n i guess i just wanted more news it's one of the few times i wanted more news than c b s were they yeah uh_huh uh_huh huh uh_huh right yeah i guess the news just [focuses] on major events that probably don't affect ninety nine percent of the people who are right there when the news is being made but uh i i'm from california and i can remember being in uh in these [earthquakes] and i mean they were they were very minor kinds of things from my point of view and it seemed you know from anyone else's point of view but they get all blown up in the news um uh_huh uh_huh yeah right well what newspapers uh do you read in dallas don't you how come huh gosh that's that sounds pretty bad to me i mean who would steal a newspaper huh i see yeah yeah uh from los angeles but i live in raleigh north carolina right now that's where i am speaking to you from but i grew up in l a i work out here no i don't i work for north carolina state university but uh i know some people at t i and i have a couple of students who have graduated and gone to work for them so i'm in the computer business well let's see i've i've i've never done this before i mean i've never this is my first call because i just got my [password] so i don't know are we suppose to it seems to me it says you are suppose to talk for three minutes but i think we've been talking for three minutes and nobody has interrupted i see uh_huh well all right nice talking to you all right bye how do you usually keep up with current events do you yeah i don't usually have time to read the newspaper everyday so i try to listen to the radio in the morning and and try to catch one of the morning talk shows and then i usually end up flipping through c n n and headline news during the evening i always try to read the sunday paper just because it usually gives a summary of the the week's hot events so i try to i try to catch that if nothing else for for local news i think we do real well where it's we live in a kind of small town but i think we get excellent local coverage um and i like the national news that we see we we watch n b c and i think they do a real good job so i'm i've been real pleased with the quality of the news we get how about you right uh_huh yeah but i think there's enough news out there that they could pass on more [factual] information to us and like you said save the commentaries because i'm going to listen to the the news and draw my own opinions i don't really need their help to do that i don't think radio is as bad to do that as t v is uh_huh right i used to but i don't anymore maybe once or twice a year uh_huh really yes yeah well i had heard a couple of people you know that i had talked to about certain programs say that you know they had read other things besides what sixty minutes presented and that they didn't present it nearly the same way as the you know news articles or whatever they had they had already been familiar with so i started questioning just how how bias they really were so huh no not really you know in the last few years just his kind of informal segments i've seen but i never got to see his actual nightly news i liked i i did grow up with david brinkley uh uh_huh yeah we we used to watch um him and i guess john [chancellor] and i always liked david brinkley and and i used to enjoy john [chancellor's] style of reporting but on the nightly news now he goes into his commentary and that's where i get get into the problem with with him i frequently disagree with his commentaries so right what did you think of the news coverage of the war uh_huh really did that help you understand a lot what was going on your your prior experience with the military did i wondered if it would help you sometimes fill in the gaps or recognize [discrepancies] that other people people like myself might not pick up on okay what weekly um magazine do you look at is it uh_huh sure does that give a pretty good [overview] of everything or like does it give um i guess little [encapsulated] reports and and then a few big stories yeah that sounds good if you were short on time you could get a summary real quick right right well we're working on a newsweek uh for the last couple of months we got you know an [introductory] subscription so we decided to try it because prior to that all we got were things like [glamour] or sports illustrated so we decided to try to bring one in that was a little bit better for us so to speak it can't hurt no i i even i enjoy reading t news i try to catch it because it's another example they just they just show you the words and the facts and they they don't offer any commentary and it gives me a quick chance to to be caught up during the day because you know we don't listen to the radio at work at all so i don't like to go the whole day without hearing anything yeah and the other thing we have that i like to check sometimes is um talking fingers do you have that you have different telephone numbers that you can dial and then you dial in an access code and it will depending on what topic you called in to hear about whether it was the news or the weather or a soap opera update it will give you um updated information so that can give you you know current news updates current weather updates things like that and it's it's offered through the local phone company free of charge so that's an interesting alternative occasionally that i like to use it it really is yeah it really is nice i mean because it gives you a wide variety of things you can call and talk and find out about so that is something you might keep your eyes open for i think it's it's catching on throughout the country normally i listen to c n n or headline news about an hour a day and then i supplement that with uh radio news from my car radio and from a news magazine once a week and a newspaper if i have time that's true and and how do you rate the uh are you pleased with the news coverage that you're receiving on the whole i'm pleased when i have an opportunity to hear just the facts i would much prefer that they keep their analysis to themselves um since i don't necessarily agree with it or it tends to be extraordinarily trite uh i think i'm fed up with trite there seems to be more and more of it and i understand the void that uh comes naturally with both radio presentations and television presentations and as expensive as they are to produce they certainly don't want any dead [airspace] i i we're certainly in agreement there radio seems to have a full platter or full plate of different things that they need to get done they're maybe they're a little more efficient or have more to do over that same time frame i don't know which that answer is uh i think the my greatest complaint about news programs is programs like sixty minutes do you watch that well i used to watch sixty minutes until they did two programs uh that i knew both the people and the incidences and i knew that they had presented an extremely slanted viewpoint that was in my estimate nowhere near truth but was much better for ratings and it ever since that time i just don't watch uh so i guess we have the the same reaction whether we came about it from the same place or not i don't know i don't know how old you are but it seems to me like the last uh newscaster that presented news in just the nice simple [factual] way that i wanted to hear was walter cronkite so i don't i don't know if you're familiar with him or not well brinkley was sort of trying to be in the mold of cronkite and he did a a pretty good job the [huntley] brinkley report was quite excellent over the years well once they've reported the facts all they can offer is an opinion anymore well i almost felt like it was too much indeed i found myself restricting my viewing to a couple of hours a day one in the morning and one in the evening uh i spent a number of years in the service as an intelligence analyst and i don't need their fill ins you know yes but i i think it helps me everyday in trying to review the state that the world is in and try to guess where we're going well i i think uh my background is probably what absolutely turned me off with sixty minutes i like u s news and world report at one time or another i've taken them all for a year i believe in giving anything a chance uh but i keep coming back to that one so i that's kind of my favorite it's primarily um a few big stories and then lots of high level reports uh here's what went on in asia over the past week and there's maybe a page of that little brief [paragraphs] unless that was one of their the focus of their main stories uh it too is one those in the interest of efficiency we all have to find ways and i do most of my reading in the bathroom um and it's one of those that i can read either an article or a couple of pages of those brief excerpts in the time frame that i'm going to spend in there and it just seems to fit nicely so that i can get it read in about three days well to broaden your horizons make you think about different things anyway well anytime that we stop and think it can't hurt oh i'm with you i have to check t news every everyday it's my [noontime] dose of facts no huh well it does sound very interesting maybe our phone company out here will get around to offering something like that well i really enjoy reading the newspaper we get the daily uh dallas morning news and i try to look at it if i get busy i don't get a chance to pick it up like this week i noticed several copies have been haven't been touched but well not in the morning but uh if the well i have two children and if they uh go out to play or something i like to keep my eye on them so i'll you know maybe go outside and read the paper while they're playing or sit in a chair by the window or something uh_huh well we i don't take like time or newsweek or anything like that but i do like to watch uh c n n i have several chores and things to do so it comes on at like the nine o'clock p m and so i will turn that on while i'm doing some work and i can hear the news not have to sit right down and listen to it well he didn't have too good of opinion of it no i mean yes i did hear that and so uh i do try to keep that in mind that whenever you're reading a paper it usually has a particular flavor uh_huh uh_huh um uh_huh well i wouldn't think i would really say that that's not true because uh it seems like certain newspapers always [espouse] certain candidates and so uh news stations always tell the story from a certain angle and that's why it's a good idea to get a wide variety of coverage so that you get a lot of different opinions you may never get the truth but you'll have a variety to choose from uh_huh yeah i do too do you ever listen to the radio or any uh_huh no i don't um i really uh have gotten out of the habit of listening to the radio from any kind of even music and uh yeah my husband does and it's how come he usually calls me sometimes and says oh i just heard on the news that such and such happened you know if it's something really interesting and and then i'll know to to keep an eye out for it but i've got out of the habit of listening to the radio uh_huh uh_huh do you have a particular local channel that you watch uh_huh um well i am we're fairly new to the area and so we're still shopping for a favorite channel uh_huh well i really think so i noticed on channel eight that there's all of the uh anchors are seem to be like white anglo [saxon] protestant type people and they all seem to be you know fairly similar and i kind of prefer a you know some females i don't recall that they have any female anchors and i like different i like the anchors to be different kinds of people uh_huh yes i have and uh i prefer you know to have a little bit of variety like that because i think you're you're more likely to get uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh oh really well we you know like all of the stations seem to be pretty good it's just we haven't found one that we've [snuggled] into houston so we had a a favorite or i did have a favorite channel that i usually tuned into for local news i guess because you get use to you like the anchors and you feel comfortable with them and uh_huh uh_huh that's true their job that's true so that really effects how they report the news is he the sports yeah i guess it is time to close now so i can run go help put the kids to bed yeah bye bye well do you have time to read the paper in the morning you know a lot a lot of people don't take newspapers at all we we took the morning news for a while and then uh well we've been taking the times herald for ages and then uh dog just ran off with my shoe that's off the subject went outside picked it up and ran off anyway uh and then we switched the morning news but we found we couldn't read enough of it and by the time i got home and had time to to read some but but i guess the the issue is uh beside the newspaper do you take any news magazines did did you did you hear what schwartzkopf had to say about uh pete [arnett] and uh the the news coverage well any you know time magazine and even the news that sometimes that that's why i like some diversity the idea that i we have time which which we take from time to time and we the problem is they call up and make this deal you know and well we're taking that and and we also hit the garland garland daily news i guess it's it comes out [sporadically] like twice a week or but i think what's interesting is that if you're that there uh that as difficult as it is or as as much as they try they put some bias i had the chance to hear tracy rowlett speak to a group and it was interesting that they think that they're basically impartial and that but and and you know people accuse them of controlling the news he says you know we don't control the news we just report it the way we the way it is and yes yeah and i i thought that was particularly interesting in the the gulf war that there were pieces of information that that were apparently uh leaked just as a as as uh a ploy which was uh i i find that fascinating that uh i listen to k r l d and uh uh k l i f the news talk radio and i actually listen to c n n radio do you know it was on radio now it's on eleven ninety well when i go to work i listen yeah well with with your you know if you're around the home though and and and can watch t v and read the paper the problem is is that about twenty minutes of news radio or thirty minutes is and then they start repeating everything and and so it's kind of a oh that's what's interesting is the c n n uh i don't think i'm trying to think if it's much local i listen to a little of that and i listen to a little of ninety point one i i'm i'm [inveterate] [switcher] that and ninety eight point seven i'm eclectic approach well i watch channel five but that has to be that's another bias that has to do with the weather reporting i'm not sure that actually i think channel eight is probably but i know dave fox he goes to our church so well the channel eight when they came here thirteen fourteen years ago dave fox and tracy rowlett came together uh from oklahoma city and apparently channel eight was way down and now they have turned it all around and done a pretty remarkable job and then they've been some people move around and uh john [chriswell] is anyway the i i don't know do you do you do you seem to can you tell much difference between the local radio t v stations i think that adds to the diversity i think that uh i like that uh there i know you know john wylie price i don't know if you kept up but he's been protesting yeah and i think he has legitimate argument i mean you can uh i i i grew up in alabama and so i i have some prejudices but i think that i think that that from a a justice standpoint because we have the option of not watching that station uh i'm not sure i i'm totally in favor of affirmative action in some of the programs but i think that uh in some cases this should be some real opportunity and and some diversity and and this kind of thing and i think that dallas it turns out though from what i understand has quite good i occasionally go to saint louis and uh there for a few days and watch the news and and think dallas really does have have quite good news i think channel eight is the number one uh a b c affiliate in the u s i think tracy rowlett was saying that he course he pumping his own where'd you move from yeah it is interesting though it becomes a little of personality in fact the the guy that was on the [weatherman] on channel eight worked for me oh long time ago twenty years or so even longer than that twenty one twenty three years ago or so twenty four anyway long time ago and and shortly after i got we got here fourteen years ago and uh they had they had fired him uh because he was too anyway didn't he didn't have the personality and wasn't drawing the crowds and that's interesting that's that's what the t v stations do they're trying to get ratings and i think if we remember that that they're out after the ratings well it's like the the dale [hansen] on channel eight is a sometimes a little too [cutesy] but i wonder if we're coming up on ten minutes have you talked have you been on the conversation when they beeped you at ten minutes okay well good talking to you [goodnight] okay my major source of information i guess is t v news excuse me i uh wake up to it in the morning this is my i guess my prime time for news first thing in the morning while i'm getting ready to go to work oh i quite frequently glance through headlines or in the newspaper but uh primarily mine is t v news how about yourself huh_uh true huh_uh well that's true but i my personal opinion is that the various network news [medias] were trying to interpret the news to the best of their abilities since they were not very well informed by the military now i can appreciate that especially after what happened in vietnam uh let's face it today's uh means of communication we could a newscaster could very well giveaway a piece of top secret information and uh pat himself on the back for for uh making a good scoop very true i find t news very enlightening too and i check that everyday of course with that goes along with the stock price of t i of course t news is more or less headlines uh i don't think much of their sports coverage only give the scores but uh that's all right i'm not outside of pro football i'm not too interested in other games other sports anyway but the uh t news is a good way to keep up to date i think they do a pretty good job of selecting the most important items huh_uh well i spent twenty years in profession commercial broadcasting radio and t v and i know what it takes to get some of those little bits and pieces of news on the air i mean there there are times where uh the reporter actually will risk is life life and limb i've seen it happen time and time again and uh well i remember one time up in nashville tennessee one of the fellows got mixed up in a riot that was going on down there but he was lucky he got out of it for some reason because he was carrying a camera uh they left him alone huh_uh nice to talk to you too jim no oh well i'll be looking for it then is that right well good you too uh tell you what um i'll let you start yeah i have to have to agree with you um i normally don't have time in the morning to to watch any type of t v usually catch it going to work on the radio or when i drag the paper in from the front and it catch the head lines which is normal what you see the night before on the evening news so i've i've kind of we have a one year old in the house so it's kind of hard sometimes to watch t v during the night but i usually try to catch the ten o'clock or um those type of i have to say during the war we're the american public was probably flooded with too much information and as far as the sub question about the was am i [satisfactorily] covered i have to say yes but when it came to the war issues who's telling the truth between the channels there was uh the casualties the amount of missiles [launched] were different and it was almost too much information over communicated true i agree with you yeah which is a joke huh_uh yeah that's a good point um but i would have to say across the board i'm satisfied with the way uh the news is spread um of course here at texas instruments uh the rumor mill runs rampant the [secretary's] probably the best resource of what the layoff status is yeah yeah i agree you i think i'm glad you mentioned that because i think i have to since i don't have the opportunity in the morning i'll probably catch the head lines on t news that's a good point huh_uh yeah true kind of yeah huh_uh yeah they do surely do uh anything else crossed your mind i guess most of us go by the audio which is the television or the radio um but you need to continue to read so you people learn to read you know huh_uh huh_uh ouch everybody got excited that's tough that's tough well i've enjoyed speaking with you did you get your catalog on your your gifts really i just got mine in the mail so it kind of sparked me to keep calling there not to [shabby] they're pretty good yeah have a great day bye bye where do you get most of your news where where are you oh yeah no i'm in san antonio i get my news from a combination of sources i take the paper every day and i read it on the way in to work on the in a carpool uh_huh and uh and i watch the uh actually i watch the morning news before i leave for work and then you know usually over lunch there'll be a big topic of conversation on something from the news uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah um one of the women that i work with her husband is iranian so here lately with all the middle eastern news we've had some very interesting conversations over lunch uh_huh uh_huh well i i uh i like the print news much better than the television news because television news tends to sensationalize i understand that the macneil lehrer probably doesn't uh_huh uh_huh they don't report on every murder and shooting that happened in in every little town yeah i've been getting a kick out of those lately although um i'm only twenty five so i've never actually been through a period of war and i don't know anyone in the military and i don't have a lot of background knowledge in uh military strategy and and weaponry and and all that kind of stuff and i thought the generals were very interesting now when they started to [speculate] i i saw that for what is was and thought all of these guys don't know what's going on but i thought they were interesting and and they shed some light on what was going on for me uh_huh you know one of the best television news shows that i saw during the war was a show on a saturday morning on a b c and it was for children and it was [hosted] by peter jennings and it was so interesting because they were relating the war to these children in their studio and they also had children calling in live from all over the country and asking questions and they they had all their [correspondents] in the different areas in saudi arabia and israel and and all they had them all uh on i don't know what you'd call it other than on line they had them all on hold and if a child asked a question that the person in jerusalem could best answer they would cut to that person and that person would answer the question it was just very informative and interesting and uh i was real impressed at how a b c handled uh [translating] the war for children uh_huh and our local h e b stores here i don't know if it's h e b statewide or whatever but they have videos that uh i don't know if they still have them but they were free rental videos that had something to do with the war uh it was right it was something for children that they they had several advertisements on television pushing parents going and uh getting the video and watching it with their children and discussing it and that kind of thing well back during the viet nam conflict that no one will will have the guts enough to call a real war uh the that type of technology just wasn't at people's disposal so i don't think there's ever been a war that's been so thoroughly covered by the news yeah i tell you what the first three days i was glued to the television and i yeah i tell you what the uh the war let's see was it a wednesday or thursday must have been thursday uh and friday night i was i stayed up until two o'clock in the morning sitting right dead center in front of my television just watching practically with my mouth hanging open because i was watching c n n and they would they would switch back to one of their israel bureaus and the people would be standing there in gas [masks] and you'd be hearing the sirens and it was just i was amazed oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh no there are two and they're pretty close uh the one that i picked is more similar in format to the newspaper i grew up near houston and there are two major newspapers there that run pretty much neck and neck and the one i picked here had the same format as the one that my parents took as i was growing up i mean the same type of [typeface] on the headline and that kind of stuff it's piddly stuff to pick a newspaper over and i enjoy the comics are better in this newspaper this newspaper has the far side and the comics that i enjoy and the other one has some weird ones that i've never heard of so do you yeah and my my fiancee takes probably six sunday papers he takes both san antonio papers an austin paper both houston papers i guess he takes seven the san marcos paper and the new [braunsfel] paper but he's a football coach at southwest texas state university so he's getting all the sports sections and so you know he has these stacks of sunday newspapers that go [unread] i watch the macneil lehrer news hour and i subscribe to the paper on the weekends i'm in dallas are you in dallas also oh really okay uh_huh oh really uh_huh i normally find that uh i'm probably the most um news hungry of my friends so i don't we don't normally talk about the news at lunch i i find that i have to only subscribe to the paper on the weekend simply because i used to get it during the week but um i would always end up arriving at work late because i would always end up [skimming] the headlines spending too much time reading it in the morning so i have to cut myself down to the weekend plus after work um the macneil lehrer news hour is on public television and i enjoy that quite a bit uh_huh i will admit i work with uh someone who's iranian and he definitely has a very different slant on the news he's very very skeptical of the news media and i will admit i'm reasonably skeptical also but he's i don't know uh he's much much more so it's sort of interesting though because he does bring a a much um different perspective with all the gulf [goings] on um he was always speaking in terms of you know american [imperialism] [reasserting] itself um i suppose it's a different attitude that we normally don't hear in the country uh_huh true um the they um tend to spend quite a bit of time on one story they will have maybe two or three main stories and just spend a very large amount of time sort of like the uh what is that a b c's nightline well i guess they only normally stick with just the one um story but they they can do a much better job since they don't have to chop it into little two minute stories no no it's very much national interest news a lot of times they end up um with these panels of experts and they go back and forth where everyone's giving some opinions and sometimes that i don't know the value of that because i saw plenty of jokes and and um oh editorial cartoons about all the retired generals making a living during the the gulf war uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i will admit it's interesting i'm twenty six so i don't have any more experience in that than you um it it it was very interesting that it seemed like some of the commentators had their [axe] to grind you know there were some that were screaming for air power there were some that were saying the air power wasn't going to do it and they seemed to mold the events to their view of the world which i suppose just about everyone does but these guys had a a uh national soap box to stand on and and express this view uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i didn't see anything like that although i did uh i guess one thing that i found sort of interesting this is getting a little off the topic but there was a a a big push with the local t v stations to have little hot lines with counselors to to help parents learn how to talk about their war with their children i thought that was a really unusual thing uh_huh with the children's aspect uh_huh i suppose that is a valuable service again not having uh lived through another war i don't know if that's a common thing that people thought of or if that was a new concern with people uh_huh that's true that's true and probably more importantly one that lasted short enough that that people's interest didn't flag too badly i will admit the same thing and i would come home and flip on macneil lehrer and they would run these extended two three hour versions of the program and i i was just i was horrified and fascinated by what i was seeing uh_huh uh_huh i i didn't have that experience i i don't have cable so i i'm pretty much limited to p b s which i thought i thought they did a very good job um i've got one question for you i you say you take the newspaper um i i found the newspaper situation in dallas very interesting we've got the one fairly well relatively weaker paper the times herald and then the morning news which has a very strong subscription does san antonio you said san antonio right do you have just one paper or do you have several uh_huh uh_huh i i actually take both newspapers on the weekends i figure i'm only taking on the weekend and i can afford that i i find the news reporting in the morning news to be better but i sort of have a liberal political slant and the morning news just has an incredibly conservative editorial um outlook i get the times herald just to balance that out a little bit uh_huh are you a t i or oh really that's great uh my daughter talked to a student uh in general most of them uh people doing this are t i but i guess customers too huh yeah t i got uh a lot of advances in it really uh hopefully this will turn out to be a good program for us we sure need uh the business okay current events uh you you've got the question you can go first there since i called huh that you're the opposite of me i drive an hour each way to work and so if i just use time and not say one which quality is the best i guess that would be two hours roughly of talk shows and news on radio and then newspapers and t v would be tied after that because maybe i'll catch the the evening news like ten o'clock on t v and i so that's a half an hour roughly the same with newspaper i really of course you you're in a different part of the country i i really listen to a lot of the talk shows i don't mean the [gossip] ones but there's a lot of on the weekends when i do chores or whatever i'm a radio hound i guess i take the radio with me when i'm working on my car the lawn or whatever and turn on they have everything from lawn work lawyers news uh [veterinarians] all kinds of items uh so i'm i'm a real radio buff especially on the when i'm doing chores yeah i find it surprising because a lot of times it here you know i'll talk to some people here and i'll mention someone's some talk host and i'll expect them to have an opinion on why i don't like him and don't listen they don't even know you know what the guys name is uh bruce williams who does financial work all over the united states most people haven't heard of bruce williams you probably haven't either unless you're a radio buff he is in new jersey and is [entrepreneur] and kind of a self made millionaire and he has it i well it's five seventy here i'm trying to it's on cliff i don't know what the he's on all stations you might remember the name bruce williams and he he is again national and talks about a lot of financial things but the here i just get a kick out of uh well we do a lot of gardening here so there's we have an excellent gardener here has three hours on sunday and three hours on saturday of course that's not exactly current events but i i'm i am kind of a radio buff for music yeah oh yeah that's good actually oh that's good my wife always wonders about that she says look at that person he's driving and reading at the same time yeah right we get go ahead good point that's a good point oh yeah it comes and goes yeah local you mean yeah yeah don't they have city council meetings and all that are you into any of that what what's going on in the city council and the and the school boards and all that we have that addition to our paper okay you get it from people then yeah right my wife and i you know as mentioned the question was uh do you get it from people too and and i can say the same thing you do that uh my wife is uh she reads the paper from front to back and so she'll tell me some stuff and she'll always get mad and say you didn't read the uh well i always read the sports uh what am i thinking of uh the commentaries i can't even think of what it is offhand and she's always reading something and she says why haven't you read that and i say i never have time to read it like you do but i always get a lot of my information from the newspaper through her uh so i guess we do get it from people too oh you mentioned c n n of course i mentioned radio and the c n n t v news you know it's the same thing that's on the radio word for word yeah it well it is c n n exactly uh because uh and it because uh we have it here at work as a matter if fact at t i we have it in the break area c n n and but the reason i say that is on the radio they'll say and look at this you know and when i first heard c n n it only started about uh since the war you know or right before that and they would always say and look at this and there would be a [pause] you know would be music and stuff and i realized that it's the exact commentary that you have on the uh the news yeah yeah but it's still good it's still uh uh you know you don't really miss anything but i do do enjoy since the gulf war listening to c n n radio too as well as watching c n n on t v here at work i don't have c n n at home let me turn this radio off i'm actually at work right now believe it or not uh where was i i'm go ahead your your turn yeah i've i've heard that yeah right right oh yeah yeah i never get home early enough for those five and six o'clock okay no i'm not and i think a great number of students who got word of it and participated in general and [voiced] who heard about the program i rely primarily on uh newspaper combined with television uh okay that's rather interesting i'd i'd have to say i haven't either i listen to the radio uh probably five or six hours a week but almost inevitably to a station that is a classical uh station here for music purposes we don't use the radio as a wake up we have our a television connected to a uh uh electronic alarm uh system that [kicks] in and it comes on with c n n in the morning that we we wake up to television news and uh uh shower and dress and whatever to that and then because of the fact that my wife and i ride to work together uh in a car we we chat at each other rather than than something else uh and occasionally what we'll each do depending on whoever is driving is have the newspaper sort of on our lap on the way in in the car so we have the advantage of being able to uh read and drive although there seems to be from what i've seen on the freeway recently that a fair number of people are reading and driving so we we rely pretty pretty heavily i think on a combination of the of the two i also uh use uh newsweek magazine uh we tend to alternate between newsweek and time and whatever happens to be the the uh news magazine of the year for us and uh i read [sporadically] of commentary and a couple of other you know trade magazines and uh uh such as that uh where i might read the the occasional social and even current event commentaries and and everything as diverse as a c m to uh uh some of the uh some of the other [tabloids] i get so uh i guess i use about eighty percent written is probably my input and twenty percent uh television i i think i respect the from a [journalistic] perspective current events i've always said that it it's really not interesting unless it's three weeks old and found its way into a news weekly headline uh other than that it was a at best uh we're probably not thrilled with our only newspaper that we have in raleigh there there are other uh uh i'm not sure what you would call them they the small uh competing independent sort of newspapers little small weekly things but there's only one daily uh called the news and observer [fondly] referred to here by some as the uh uh sometimes the noise and observer uh it depends it it's has decent national coverage but has an extremely focused political coverage probably [steeped] in the southern history and the fact that this is a democratic state and uh consequently everything is filtered through that uh republican democratic sort of glass almost [unnecessarily] so yeah we we have that is uh as a matter of fact they update it once a week with a special section we and we pay it sort of [glancing] [nod] we uh have a very good friend who is uh tapped into the city planning structure uh our [developer] architect friend and right so i think we find out what's happening in the city uh on a fairly frequent basis over a over a gin and [tonic] sort of thing uh and that probably gives us a better insight as to the city of raleigh than than the paper would have anyway uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh is that right i i'll heard there was some stuff on the on the radio that was equivalent to c n n okay okay oh that didn't uh uh_huh uh we probably were listening to c n n fairly heavily before the war broadcasts began uh we almost live and and [breathed] it for because during the war itself to the point where we began to sort of have household pact of lets turn the war off and get something done uh almost an addition uh and and and we could equate or relate [relay] well to some of the newspaper and television articles about the fact that people where having this problem in in [unhooking] [uncoupling] from the events and going on with their so instead of being watching the missiles and being glued to the tube or whatever uh and because of that we began towards the middle and of the war i guess about two and a half or three weeks in we began to restrict our news almost deliberately where we would uh watch uh fifteen minutes before fifteen minutes after six our time which would be national news or our local news we would watch c n n until six thirty then we would watch uh a rotating network news of either uh a b c c b s or n b c and we we sort of just [rotated] around the dial each night a different one and we would watch the first fifteen minutes and then we would turn the television off and we were sort of limiting or [dieting] ourselves on on news that way and then we would do a similar thing uh at uh ten forty five because uh c n n would be [wrapping] their hourly coverage up and then we would get the local coverage uh and then i think the local coverage we would tend to watch the same station that would would have better state coverage rather than local coverage uh three of the networks here on their local news uh that if if you wish to listen at eleven o'clock you can find out who raped who murdered who or stole what from whom and that was the sort of thing that i would say is the best and not news unless there's some trend or something that says jesus this neighborhood has been hit forty seven times or whatever uh that's that's sort of more of of a pattern news go ahead uh_huh yeah i guess that's the way i am too i sometimes i hear some things on on the radio i only get the newspaper on the weekends so uh_huh i i guess occasionally i'll hear someone at work say something though uh_huh yeah uh_huh well i i guess it's pretty good and and like the dallas area and i i guess when you're in a big metropolitan area like this there's i guess a lot of pressure in that business to borderline at that uh_huh yeah uh_huh true i'll bet that was the case of the the war in the middle east uh_huh true trying to think what else is is current well um i don't know what to say uh that's a bad one they uh looks like we're going to have an income tax in texas uh_huh yeah that's true i would think they could find a better way to fund it though but they haven't for well they're struggling with it uh_huh true i i'm not sure there's a positive solution for that trying to think what else is current well the other thing i can think of is uh what is still going on in iraq and the [kurd] refugees uh_huh yeah it begins to make you wonder why we didn't go ahead and go on in and finish the job while we were in there uh_huh seems to have helped him though popularity wise hm yeah were were they in any of the areas where they some of the [scuds] um um hum yeah um uh_huh yeah i'll bet i don't know anything else that's current other than the weather and have have you all been getting rain storms down there we did we did last night uh some real massive thunderstorms apparently i i don't know if it was just the strong winds or some small tornadoes up this way too caused some damage we may get some more tonight uh_huh well the the ground here is so flat and it's all [saturated] now we're getting some flooding hm goodness yeah it's a lot more humid down that way in fact miserable yeah i think there were places around downtown fort worth last night they got three inches in a real short period of time like an hour or so just a bunch well i guess that's it that's about as much as we can do with current events good talking to you [michelle] bye bye oh um uh i usually don't get to hear any of the current events probably until about the ten o'clock news uh you know being uh i mean by the time you get off work go by and pick up the uh baby from the baby sitter it's you know after six and by the time everything is settled in it's ten o'clock before i can catch up on anything uh_huh oh yeah oh uh_huh oh i don't even have time to read the newspaper except in passing you know i'll look over my husband's shoulder and see what's going on but uh yeah we have uh a news thing on the computer that uh that i'll i'll try to look at every day and uh it it's pretty much headline news which isn't you know pretty much what we look for anyway but uh i do you think that the quality of the uh the you know the news events that you get are what do you think about it uh_huh yeah well you know there's a lot of competition in the media and sometimes i think it too much trying to figure out who's going to get the best headlines and that they'll run a topic into the ground and uh you know they try to play public's opinion which i think is awful because it usually works yes uh_huh that uh lots of new uh newsmen were created during that so it will be interesting to see what happens right uh uh yeah i hate to see that but it's uh that you know if what it's going to take well you know we can deduct that from our income tax our federal income tax but uh you know but we need good schools uh we're more involved in that now and i i i i think it's better for everybody if we had better schools so no you know i wish they could have gotten a lottery yeah i think you know the lottery could have helped with that i mean it wouldn't have been as painful as what we [would've] paid in state income tax i mean probably would have paid the same amount but you know it's not the idea of your paying uh income tax so no it'll be interesting to see what happens i you know i haven't seen the news in a couple of days so it uh i'm a little behind on things yes that's that's sad yeah they uh yeah they had to choose between the better of the two two bad situations and uh i don't know what i've would have done in the situation yeah right but i understand why bush you know doesn't want to go in and and uh take sides i mean because that would definitely look like another korea and he'd have all these people jumping down his back even though i'd agree with it i think he ought to [should've] gone in there and blew them away yeah it it it did a lot he did a real good job i believe i have uh in laws that live in saudi arabia that stayed there during all of it too it uh it uh you know we so we kept very much abreast of what was going on yeah they were on the the near uh [dahran] on the on the east coast they were just north of it probably about a hundred fifty miles hundred miles from uh the kuwaiti border uh and they stayed active was the uh the military there taking supplies out to them in the desert it was it was a new situation i don't really have much more to say you're right and that's that's awful in texas we got some awful rain uh the other morning and today's just been real [drizzly] yeah uh_huh it did oh well we we've just got slight chances of rain but uh we had the we had the hard thunderstorms the other morning course while everybody was getting ready to go to work making nice traffic [jams] so oh right uh when was it last week we had all the rain but uh we i think we had about eight inches it was between six and eight inches here where we are and uh it you walk out on the ground i mean you i mean it's awful it's just so [soggy] yeah well today it was i mean the air was just so sticky so damp goodness right well it's right well it was nice talking to you all right bye bye well [myrna] how do you get your news news uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah i'm pretty much the same i uh i find that uh i'm a graduate student and i i read a lot for school and i find i have no patience to really read a newspaper because i just i'm reading so much all the time and i really enjoy just sitting down and watching a news broadcast uh_huh yeah that's true uh_huh that's right yeah yeah that's right i i agree that's a lot of times i eat while i'm uh watching the news yeah the same thing is there any uh what did you think about the coverage like over in the uh persian gulf yeah i thought so too it was it you know for a while when we were really interested uh we saw it all the time some of the stations i guess carried it for twenty four hours for a couple of days there and then you know the special reports and the extended news coverage i thought was really good yeah yeah right yeah just news that's right yeah uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh huh well that's great uh_huh yeah or if you have a break in the middle of the day you take a coffee break you can always stay informed yeah that's really good that's um i've found that when i i don't have cable television anymore uh when i moved went back to graduate school i just didn't have the money to buy rent a cable t v line or whatever you know so i don't get c n n uh which was a big disappointment i used to watch that was my if i wasn't home i'm a college teacher and sometimes i teach in the evening so i'll miss the evening news and uh you could always catch a good news program at eight o'clock or nine o'clock on c n n i think that's that really has changed the way uh i look at the news uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's uh same yeah that's when i had it i i watched it you know religiously for half an hour and then you could go on you know to do what else you wanted to do yeah i find i i read very little i don't even get a regular newspaper and uh because uh i i don't drive that much i only live about a mile from where i go to school and work i uh i find i spend so little time in the in the car that i don't really listen to the radio you know i don't so so television is my main new source uh_huh oh really to commute to work oh yeah i can the van pools i know that and i'm in the baltimore washington area and i know they do van pool a lot here from some of the outer areas but if you want a nicer home you know beyond the suburbs you know i that's necessary yeah i am i am right outside baltimore i am less than a mile from the baltimore line and i go to a a campus of the university of maryland that is just less than a mile from my house so i i'm actually in baltimore yeah you could say i'm in baltimore oh really in baltimore uh_huh uh_huh oh that's that's that's a really nice area bethesda area uh_huh it's um it's funny there's a big difference between baltimore and washington even though they're so close there's only an hour less than that between the two but there is a big difference in things like property values and um the closer you get to d c the more expensive it is and um the the uh different slant washington it really is a uh uh an international city where baltimore is hometown baltimore you know it there's really uh most people have relocated to the washington area you know yeah that's i i like it i like it a little bit better too it's interesting though um to meet different populations i i'm just now being uh from pittsburgh originally i'm just now meeting different populations like chinese students and things and i find that really interesting you know to imagine here is somebody that was in china two years ago when all that was going on in in uh beijing you know that that's an interesting uh interesting perspective but i i really much much like the hometown area yeah and i think that also goes it's funny you you can watch different news i can watch washington news or baltimore news and i really do watch baltimore news you know that really makes i don't really bother with the washington station because i just it's so far removed from what i'm interested in uh_huh yeah they in fact they just it was just a big thing recently they've had some terrible problems with hispanics um they had to impose a [curfew] that uh in two of the areas in uh in the washington suburbs the mayor they've gotten rid of that really bad mayor and then uh brought in yeah and then came a woman that's um she's big in the democratic party so that's good so she has good national ties but she also was um something like a uh state auditor or something like that before this position she was a state auditor i guess she was an auditor general or something like that for the district of columbia at washington and then she left that to get a position with the democratic party and now she ran for mayor so she's uh [fiscally] she's pretty tight and uh she's cleaning house an and it looks like hopefully she'll do a nice job uh for washington you know which is you sort of feel sorry for a lot of the people there you know from what i pick up on the news uh it's a difficult process you know to get rid of a a bad mayor right uh_huh yeah yeah but those are germantown is a nice area it's a nice area yeah well they might be car [pooling] too do they car pool in are they driven by themselves uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh they didn't call you for mother's day you weren't home yeah oh that's good well i guess we should stop now uh_huh oh good uh uh so do i i've become very aware of different political views because some of the things we have to discuss are very politically motivated or whatever i i really enjoyed it it's it's so funny when you live in one part of the country you only see that perspective it's interesting to see the the wider world so i enjoy it hey thanks a lot and and bye uh most of it is from the radio uh and also from the news programs that we watch in the afternoon we usually watch the local news and the the uh national news both well you can always get up and leave that uh i i just don't seem to have time to sit down and read the paper either by the time i get home from work it's already you know time for the news to come on so it's so much easier to sit there and besides i can be doing other things and still listen to the news yeah i think they did a great job uh_huh and you could always find some channel that had something on but you didn't necessarily have to watch the same thing all the time yeah i noticed that one thing that that t i did you know they had uh uh they used to have well they do have television monitors stationed throughout our buildings and they used to have a program called t news and just updates of of different things that were going on within t i well when all the the mess with uh uh in the persian gulf came about they started carrying c n n well now they have had so much good response from this that t i now has c n n on all the time so we can always run upstairs and you know get a quickie update on what's going on if we really want to yeah yeah yes yeah we don't get it either we live out in the country and we just don't have it available out there where we are but when we did have it uh we that's what we usually watched was c n n and sometimes we'd watch the weather stations yeah oh i get that too because i i'm in a van pool and i'm in the van you know uh two hours a day an yes yes and in the in the morning i try to sleep because it's it's dark thirty but in but in the afternoon uh i try to read so i can can uh not pay attention to what our driver is doing yeah are are you in baltimore itself um yeah i have two kids over there well no in in d c area yeah one works for the state department and uh uh the other one is uh uh her husband is in the navy and he's stationed at bethesda an uh_huh uh_huh oh no i'd i'd rather have baltimore with the home town atmosphere well most of what they're talking about in washington is is the crime problems that they're having there uh_huh i heard about that yeah well i know both of my kids didn't want to live anywhere around the the downtown areas they both moved way out i think one of them lives in germantown and i can't remember where the other one lives uh_huh yeah it's means they have to drive a little bit but uh well now i i think he carpools because he's got fairly regular hours since he came back but uh now my daughter they have probably been carpooling together in fact because she had been called back up active duty and then she was supposed to have gotten out of active duty as of last friday so i haven't talked to them this weekend i don't know what the situation is but she was we were gone uh no we weren't home but she had she had called and left a message on our recorder but i had that from all my kids except for one so well i thank you for calling i have enjoyed it i really do like this program because i get to talk to people from all over the united states yeah thank you bye bye okay um i get my current events basically from news uh just because i watch pretty much a lot of television um uh i watch a little bit of everything i like to tune into to c n n because uh you know you can tune in like any time of day and pretty much get the update on everything in about five or ten minutes i think news today um it's kind of losing its importance like on in on radio if you hear any news at all it's like two seconds you know really quickly on regular stations yeah that's good too uh_huh i like k r l d uh_huh yeah where do you go to school oh okay i went to u t at austin but uh i'm a news reporter so i i should get all i can my news from the from the t v but um yeah i usually don't intentionally although i should i don't intentionally turn on the television to watch news or i don't intentionally turn on the radio to listen to the news if it comes on i just happen to hear it now i will intentionally buy a newspaper to to to look at the news but other yeah that's true that's about it the sunday paper it's so full of stuff but you pick your favorite section and the rest you throw away although you paid what almost two dollars now to get it but uh_huh yeah is it is it pretty good coverage on there yeah yeah um because i find like on k r l d i like to listen to that but each story is like no more than two or three lines you know yeah uh_huh yeah that would probably be better especially when you look for the like popular radio stations like mostly the music stations news is is pretty much nonexistent they have little little teeny [weeny] news breaks you know yeah yeah basically yeah so let's see um uh_huh the only reason i get trade journals is like if i'm looking for a job or something which is what i'm doing now but um yeah trying to get out of wherever they are but um i think i think news is i'm wondering where it's going you know how i think it will be pretty much nonexistent except maybe through the paper i know the newspaper used to be kind of the only source for news and now it's it's kind of your final choice you watch first you go to c n n then you go to radio or something like that and i think it yeah yeah yeah so much more effort yeah yeah but i think that soon the paper may be kind of the only source again i don't well just because i'm i'm thinking that it it's getting so short on radio you still you have two or three i know in dallas you can probably get two two all news radio stations out of i don't how many popular radio stations and then on television you have just the news at six and ten and i just i just see that dwindling in in true yeah true that's true too yeah than sit down and take the effort to read the paper one thing i like about the paper um as opposed to television is that uh when i like when i report because i'm in television i have to get the basic the main facts and that's it that's all you have time for whereas in the paper i like to read the articles because they get every side every single side and and every point they make you know and and it's all there uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah because that's what we do i mean it's like each story is thirty seconds you know so it's like you really have to tell as much as you can which is not much in that amount of time so and it will probably get shorter and shorter as the years go by i think i don't know uh_huh oh yeah i think that is one good thing one great thing about news and we saw it during the war just now is that we got all the information within minutes you know whatever happened we knew about it about the same time that they knew about it yeah yeah uh_huh yeah because even though we do get the story right away they were [censored] as to what they could tell us so all we had to sit here and and ask is well what aren't they telling us you know so that that was pretty scary but we i talked to one woman and she said that she didn't want to know what was going on because if she had a son over in saudi arabia she wouldn't want to know you know that they're bombing or or this and that's going on and at the same time i talked to another woman and she was so happy to know because she lived through vietnam and she didn't know what was happening at that time and she was so happy to get the information you know so there's just a lot of different opinions on that but yeah and then too a lot of times i think uh especially on television they blow things completely out of proportion like you know like this kennedy thing it's just i mean everywhere you turn kennedy kennedy kennedy you know what kind of shoes did he wear on the night and you know it's just like okay this is ridiculous so but what are you doing sitting on a computer i heard the little [clicking] oh okay well it was nice talking to you okay take care uh_huh bye okay i guess we're set current events television news is it uh c n n or headline news or just local news or right right right well on commercial radio i guess i i tend to get more of my news from national public radio of the morning on the way to work or evening on the way to school so so i don't uh i don't see much t v mostly when i'm in school but i do here uh university of texas at dallas right really i do tend to throw on headline news when i'm doing things around the house and just let it play and listen but uh right yeah all i ever get out of the paper is a sunday paper so i read the comics that's about it yeah right right i like to listen to uh national public radio on the way to work because it's i don't know it's variety and now they're throwing in a little news and a little bit of other stuff it tends to get like headline news if you listen to it for an hour yeah it usually is they throw in a lot of you know a lot of interviews and commentaries it's kind of like getting a newspaper there's a lot of sections to it and they they present different sides of things oh well they spend a little more time you know they cover the headlines and then they go into a lot of the issues and things where they they spend five or ten minutes discussing something and interviewing people and it's yeah yeah and only in the morning i guess there's a little bit i haven't listened to a top forty radio station in so long i wouldn't know so and i guess i get some kinds of other you know business related news through trade journals and things but uh right yeah a lot of people are yeah where nobody wants to sit down and read it's it takes a lot more time to read something and you've got news [bombarding] you from everywhere now you know you turn on the t v turn on the radio why is that yeah i just i find it hard to believe that people will go back to reading over television i mean just given the way society is and i enjoy reading but most people would rather turn on the tube and and and flip through the channels you know and get the headline news at thirty minutes of right and they don't have to go get one you know right right right well that's why i like uh national public radio because they get on one of these little things they give you headlines that are brief just they touch on what's going on and then they'll get into something and really explore it and it's it's informative it's a lot more informative than you know quick half hour news shows that they tell you what they want you to hear right yeah there's so much going on in the world communication you know expands the world now there's too much going on you can't afford to give more than a couple of seconds here and there yeah and the question is how much of it or how some of it i guess there's a lot of debate about [censorship] and and what we're really seeing is it is it the true story or is it a little bit biased right right i i you know i like to to know what's going on sometimes i think there's just a little bit too much you know you get in the habit of like i say turn on headline news and it will play over and over and you just tune it out because it's the same thing but yeah they tend to [dramatize] things yeah like who cares really well yeah trying to do some c programming okay take care bye bye well i i do about the same i guess but in a different fashion i i i'm from new york originally and now that i live in florida i live in the florida in the winter and then go back up north in the in the summertime and i i feel that the the only legitimate paper although it might sound a little elitist is the new york times i've always read the new york times when i was younger and i try now that it has a national edition i read that i also read uh i i i guess i do watch uh mcneil lehrer on p b s because i i lean to that coverage and and i guess i'm yeah well there it's a whole hour show actually it's an hour show each evening and and we we turn it on when we start dinner we seem to start dinner around six and finish it up i find that i'm leaning on uh i travel a great deal uh even overseas and i find that i lean on uh c n n quite a bit for [concise] and quick stuff and i'm i i'm quite satisfied with the way they put it out i mean i i don't believe everything they say but it's it's coverage you know yeah yeah uh well yeah i i i uh peter [arnet] was reporting direct from uh iraq i think this is scandalous the way everybody's picking on him i i think that what he he reported what he saw and if you didn't like it that was just too bad you know yeah oh yeah i mean uh no that that's right i think so and and i guess when it comes to um to magazines i don't read i used to when i was younger i subscribed to time and u s news and world report i i have seemed to slide away from that and rely more on the local paper or i i i also subscribe to something called world press which is a magazine that only talks about other excerpts from the world press which sort of gives you a different slant than it's not as slanted as the new york times or as biased perhaps as the local paper but uh that i guess and the radio uh i listen to p b s radio a lot and i also listen to uh these twenty four hour news stations when i'm driving i yeah do you read are you from southern or northern california so well yeah is that what is that the san francisco paper out there is uh the major paper yeah and that's a terrible paper is that pretty good oh the what is that the chronicle isn't it oh oh yeah they they really are probably the worse papers i've ever read i uh uh yeah well can you get the l a paper up there that's a pretty decent paper isn't it or yeah yeah yeah well that's another one i read i forgot that i read the wall street journal not as in depth as i used to because they their articles seem to be getting even longer and longer but yeah i i think i i agree with you that the problem seems to be they don't have enough time to do all the stuff i feel pretty well versed in in what i'm doing because i i do spend more time on that than i do say on sports or although i watch that i spend a lot of time reading about these things i'm quite interested i find it very exciting to for the coverage we have now today if anything they i think they well i don't know i i hear a lot of [criticism] about listening to these the dan [rathers] of the world and and and taking their word for it or their comment actually they i think they slant things but no kidding oh wow i didn't know that yeah yeah yeah was was he yeah how do you feel about it i guess i i got to say if that's the subject if the subject is do i feel that we're well enough equipped to i don't know if if it said that i feel i'm well enough equipped yeah to yeah yeah i think i do too i think you have to let you got to [segregate] some of it well that's about all i have to say nice talking to you bye bye i think i get most of my news uh in headlines from the radio and then i follow up by reading the newspaper and news magazines about things that attract my attention uh_huh uh_huh i like them but they take so long i don't always have time uh_huh yeah i think c n n does a pretty good job i had not watched them very much except when i was abroad until the gulf war and they seemed to have the best coverage they had more information sooner than most of the other networks yeah yeah well uh i know that the coverage he was allowed to present was slanted but i think they said that frequently enough that uh you shouldn't criticize the man for giving us one perspective uh uh_huh yeah yeah we have a c b s twenty four hour station that i listen to on the way to and from work and northern i'm from uh the peninsula palo alto well it's horrible the san francisco paper is just [wretched] so i subscribe to the san jose mercury news palo alto is about midway between well it's a whole lot better than that san francisco paper and yeah there's the chronicle and the examiner but they're uh both run by the same they're just [horrid] so we read uh we can but i don't like it so we subscribe to the new york times and the wall street journal and uh mercury news yes well again i read that uh two columns on the front uh_huh yes and i think we do get pretty good coverage i don't feel that the american people is being [shortchanged] by the uh the news coverage we almost have too much well i cannot stand dan rather i remember him when he was a local newscaster in houston and i hated him then and i would not watch that man for money and he and barbara walters just really turn my stomach so i watch peter jennings and uh and tom [brokaw] sort of [alternately] do we get enough news or something like that do we get uh do we get the news that we want and i do i really think yeah okay well nice to talk to you bye bye well i usually keep up with news by watching a b c news on television and reading the papers here the local dallas morning news and then i also take the wall street journal yeah well i well i at the office i generally catch the wall street journal at lunchtime i use part of my lunch period to uh read the wall street journal then uh i read the the newspaper at home generally in the evening i'd rather sleep the extra thirty minutes in the morning yeah yeah that's uh what we do to it we're never in home in time to really watch the six o'clock news on television so we catch the ten o'clock news but i catch the news on the radio coming to and from work but radio news is is rather short uh most of the news stations most of the stations here that are not all news stations you get about five minutes on the hour and if you catch the news stations uh you don't catch that much in the car yeah but uh yeah i have the same situation i tried the news magazines like time newsweek u s news and world report and they'd just stack up i wouldn't find time to read them you have to have time to sit down and concentrate on on the stories or all of a sudden you look and there's three uh three weeks worth laying on the coffee table and you wind up throwing them out without reading them because it's too much trouble to try and catch up so have to depend i guess we're becoming more of a television oriented nation in that i don't think that uh my children even read newspapers other than the t v guide section there's is all uh strictly television news oh yeah yeah right it's the same thing with the news magazines like time and and the other magazines it's hard to uh to celebrate to separate the news from the comment because in the way it's presented their opinions is print or presented as being the news and so then you have to try and sort out what really is the news that's right right well so many of them also come through and they have discovered that this is the most popular issue of the time whether it be the homeless or uh cancer or whatever and then they devote uh an [inordinate] amount of time on the news cast to their personal [ax] to grind and uh uh particularly the local television uh i know the the [wednesday's] child bit and they'll take up ten minutes of a [newscast] and leave out something i'm not saying that's not important but they leave out a real news issue to devote to one of their local pet projects yeah that's yeah that makes sense we uh again like i say by the time i read the newspaper it's the the it's that [morning's] news from the day before and i'm reading it in the evening so i'm a i'm about a day behind most of the time anyway yeah yeah yeah we we yeah yeah my wife and i feel that we never have a moment that we can call our own it's always there's something going on all the time uh you don't really have time to sit down and and thoroughly read a newspaper as a matter of fact i read the sunday paper this evening we had such a busy day yesterday didn't find time to even read it yeah well that's about all then nice talking with you same to you bye do you get a chance to do it at home or do you mostly like catch up while you're at work do you have a chance to look through the wall street journal i'm not sure what you do um well i understand that well and you have a little bit better newspaper the dallas morning news is a good paper lubbock is kind of small and the a j uh kind of dominant there's no competition so what you get is what you get we used to take the paper every day and i finally quit taking it because it stacked up i never got around to reading it and so i try to take you know weekend papers and then during the week i catch up you know on the radio on the way to work or if i'm traveling around at lunch or on the way home and hopefully i'm sitting down by the ten o'clock news to where i can kind of get a [recap] on t v uh no yeah it is uh_huh oh i see uh it's frustrating to me because i really wish that i did have more i don't know uh what do i want to say i wish that i was around more news it's frustrating when i don't know what's going on i feel like it's hit and miss and i haven't found anything yet that keeps me there on a constant basis somebody will say oh did you hear about this that happened last week and it might be local and it might be national and i'm like no i missed that one yeah uh_huh yeah that's true that's true uh-oh no a little bit that worries me because i feel like the news is so biased and yes they report facts and yes you can get an idea of what's going on but you know it's an and i wish they would just report the incident and then leave the commentaries out but so many times you get well uh this is my opinion of what he meant by that and i'm like who are you to judge you know just report the facts uh_huh yes uh_huh and i feel like they sensationalize things that shouldn't be [sensationalized] i feel like they focus too much on things that i don't know you know so much during the gulf war they would ask questions that uh you wouldn't want broadcast it's like if you tell us the answer to that you're telling our enemy what your strategy is but they keep asking these questions and i thought it was really well i don't know [asinine] actually stupid uh_huh yes i agree yeah yeah that's true that's true and it's frustrating so i guess i guess when i get to listen to the news it's it's probably television or radio i see very little paper but i i don't get to see that as much as i want and when i do i'm wondering why i wanted to see it so bad yeah exactly exactly well i'm glad it makes me feel like i'm not alone though in the world i i used to think that i was probably the only one that just i don't know was running around so much i look at other uh women workers or men at work that have kids and families and i'm like how do they seem so together all the time i always feel like i'm running a rat race so i guess news is just part of that rat race for me yeah exactly well yeah that's incredible too well i appreciate talking to you have a good evening bye bye wondering how you keep up on the news uh_huh i guess the i get the washington post and that is a pretty big newspaper and i think that's almost exclusive me my first of the news though i have the radio on when i go to work i don't think the news usually hits because i'm not going right on the hour you know right uh_huh right i think that you know we we've resolved the issue and that's what we were asked to do right right oh okay well thanks for discussing it bye bye primarily with our local newspaper and t v i listen to the radio but not um not like i did when i was working i am recently retired to that means i have a lot of time to watch the news on t v how do you gain your news okay oh i see well that's that is one of the handicaps with both t v and and radio if you're not available on the hour or half hour then you lose out on an awful lot well what is your newspaper that is the washington post is that correct i have read that when we were in that area and it is a [splendid] newspaper so what more do we need to discuss tonight that seems like a very short one well i can discuss a lot of the news that we have but uh i feel that that's not part of our responsibility so thank you for calling all right good bye okay um i very seldom read a newspaper i get most of my news information from t v mainly um if i'm really wanting an in depth thing i'll watch c n n and i find it one of the best and uh otherwise it's just one of the regular uh channels eight or five and uh where do you get yours uh_huh uh_huh well i take the dallas morning news and and my husband uh he reads it cover to cover and uh if he thinks there's something that i need to know about he'll say you know here you need to read this and uh i don't know it i kind of quit reading it oh i don't know several years ago when the kids were teenagers it just seems like i was so busy all the time and if i wanted to read i wanted to read something light and relaxing and and uh things like that and so i and it got so depressing seems like it wasn't anything but bad news yes yes i i will pick up if there's something really gruesome in there i'll go through and read it uh but i find that i do better with oh remembering it and everything if i watch uh the t v you know and and they kind of [capsize] it and everything and watch and i think sometimes it's you know maybe a little biased you know something and sometimes you don't you get the [sensationalism] as opposed to just pure facts you know yes yes you found some members of your church that had been murdered oh the same type of church uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i used to uh or i didn't used to but uh when my grandchildren had uh have stayed over before and even maybe when our kids were younger one of the channels used to give brief [inserts] of news at a child's level and i thought that was very interesting and i thought that was very important for kids like they brought down something that had happened like if there was something going on uh in the war they would bring it down to a child's level in words you know that they could understand what was going on and uh i noticed that my grandchildren seemed to kind of enjoy that the oldest one he's nine and uh he would particularly enjoy this been a couple of years ago and uh i thought i think that's really interesting actually i even understood it better yeah yeah you know and uh but as i said uh i you know i i have kind of a [blase] attitude about uh news and news reporting which is is not good you know nobody should get that way about the news and what's going on in the world yes we like channel eight we like it it's the best is that been your favorite uh_huh yeah i very and i thought it was very interesting uh channel nine watching it when the murders were in killeen and and going on they were having news coverage and no it was channel nine and you know they have that hour that nine to ten of an evening and so we had the t v on and we were trying to catch all of it and they were showing some and i was watching my husband and i were watching it and then we switched over to channel eight and the difference in coverage was unbelievable i can understand why channel eleven is uh you know why they're kind of behind did i say channel nine to begin with no okay no channel eleven i meant i was thinking nine to ten but channel eleven uh_huh it uh but the coverage wasn't near as good as when we you know switched over to channel eight and they didn't uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh mostly from t v too i usually start watching the news at five and watch it at five thirty and six sometimes and and then again at ten maybe just the headlines um we do take the dallas morning news and uh once in a while i'll sit down and read read it you know but not very often do i read the whole thing quite often just scan through the headlines and uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah if there's something you know that i want to know more about or might be the killeen murders i've been kind of intrigued i guess it's kind of the [sadist] in everyone you just yeah yeah right oh yeah yeah that's true i wanted a little more detail like you know they would tell more about the people that were killed where they were from and how old they were and i guess you just you know you you just want to know and with interest you know i found some people that were members of our church which was different and that made you even feel a little more [kin] to to what was going on well you know of the same same type of church that we belong to uh_huh yeah so that made it a little more and that they were from utah also so so that was interesting but i enjoy the news i i think our seven year old even once in a while will sit down and watch it with us so no uh_huh huh uh_huh right yeah yeah that's nice sometimes when they they pull it down a little bit like that right right oh do you have a certain station you like to watch when you watch it or do you um channel five for some reason has always been the one i watch i i don't know it's probably the anchors they just kind of catch you i don't i don't know uh_huh the c n n is that what that is huh oh yeah yeah yeah that's why i wondered i don't get that channel yeah yeah yeah that is if you if you want to go to bed early it's nice to to to watch that early news sometimes so well you keep up with current events not is that right yeah where whereabouts in pennsylvania where in pennsylvania oh do you well great how's uh well no we're not supposed to talk about that we're supposed to talk about current events well i'm a current event junkie so i i watch i try to watch the news and i read the newspaper and i like to read time magazine and people magazine to keep up with what's going on in the world well i just pretty uh little you know about everything and not and then again not everything but you know i like to know pretty well what's happening political things don't interest me a great deal except i do like to stay informed enough to feel like i halfway vote [intelligently] you know but uh other than that uh i just you know just the events that happen around the world interest me stay in touch with it and know feel like i know what's going on now i have to say all three of my children none of them are too interested in current events but i always have been and i stay up with it but uh how do you how do you uh stay aware of most of the current events uh newspaper t v news or what uh_huh uh_huh right yeah that's good well you stay up with it pretty well then uh_huh uh_huh yes uh_huh oh you've been there well you would be interested in it then yeah uh i follow it you know i don't just read everything about it but i'm always aware of what's going on like that and uh because it is it's interesting and uh i don't know i feel sorry for those people down there they've just been so terribly mistreated for so many many years you know i mean through [papa] doc i mean he was a terrible [tyrant] and i think it's been better since he died but it's still been bad but uh even that priest that was in control there for a while that they [overthrew] uh i've read some things about him that he was he wasn't too good himself yeah he was pretty pretty much a he didn't mind having people bumped off for certain things you know but uh it's one of the reasons the u s wasn't so you know didn't do more than they did at the time because they weren't all that excited about him although he's probably better than a lot of them but uh but then again who you know those people are so used to it i guess it's the only thing that works i think it's pretty darned good i think we're lucky to have as good a coverage as we have i really do now i they sometimes they jump on it and and and go a little to the extreme the media does but uh but that's kind of understandable because you know of course if you watch it more more than once a day i mean it's the same thing over and over and over and over and i listen to the radio so i you hear so much you get a little tired of it but then again so many people you got to understand only catch it once a day maybe but i think the quality of our uh our news is just uh i don't believe it could be better i really don't i don't think so i don't think our news could be better i i mean i mean what else could they do to make it better i don't see anything that they could do well you always want to think everything can be improved upon i understand what you're saying but by trial and error over the years i think they got it about as good as they're going to get it uh nothing is perfect uh_huh well that's true i understand what you're saying and then again i understand why they can't dig too much deeper that's why we have c n n c n n has the time since that's all they do is news to dig deeper um somewhat yeah somewhat not as well as i would like to probably but that's the way it goes what um state college i go to penn state yep right exactly uh i see well what particularly are you interested in uh_huh uh_huh yeah i see uh_huh um uh well some of both i read i read the newspapers sometimes and i watch c n n that sort of thing occasionally and i read magazines and such well yeah i mean not not that badly anyway so i am i am interested in what's going on and i'm particularly interested in certain things of course like all the news about haiti recently because i've been down there and yeah right exactly yep uh_huh that's true they've never really had a good leader uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh yeah uh_huh i see uh_huh yeah so what do you think about the quality of news coverage in america uh_huh right right yep uh_huh yeah well you know i think it probably could be it always could be better but i would agree that it's pretty good yeah um yeah well i think that um i don't know the um right right i think that well that may be so yeah i think that i'm not always satisfied with how dig they deep into the how deep they dig into things and such right uh_huh right all right i guess tonight's subject is to discuss current events and how we keep up on current events and if we're satisfied with with the uh coverage that we receive um thinking about it some of the ways i try and keep up on current events is uh i enjoy reading the newspaper but uh quite often don't have time to read all of the newspaper and so uh i enjoy watching some of the t v highlights and also uh some of the news periodicals uh weekly magazines and uh at work i also have uh management summary reports that uh give basically a lot of the current events uh how about yourself uh_huh right right oh yeah okay you think that that's uh pretty adequate coverage and you get uh_huh it's historic events huh oh okay yes yeah um i found out too that uh quite often if i see something on television that i want more in depth uh understanding or or get want to know more about it that the the newspaper or uh i read newsweek can give you a better and more thorough coverage of what i've heard on t v but uh um i found out that also on on t v that you can scan through a whole lot of different things on c n n and and like you said the the news shows that are that are happening and you can read some more about it if you want to um i found out though that or i feel that a lot of the stuff on t v and the newspapers is negative there's an awful lot of negative news or bad news or or bad news and it'd be refreshing once in a while to hear some good news and uh yes we do true true uh_huh i've heard an interesting comment also that uh with budget cuts and uh expenses the way they are that it's affected the news media whereas before they would be able to have a in depth analysis or uh [investigative] reporting on certain topics and issues but that takes time that takes an awful lot of money and commitment and and quite often it's a lot easier to listen to the police [scanners] or what they call ambulance chasing and go after you know it's lot easy to go after and follow a fire department or a police officer and uh find out news from that as opposed to going out and finding good things so i don't know i guess the economy is is effecting also the news media and we have to pay that price but uh i don't know i don't know it's interesting and i think that nowadays with communications the way they are also that we can see global events happening as as they occur all over the world like the exactly we saw yes you know twenty years ago thirty years ago we wouldn't have been able to have that privilege or or luxury to to view that so oh yes uh_huh oh yeah yeah right that's right well i'm like you i don't i don't i like to read the paper but i basically don't do it every day and i um i usually watch uh either good morning america or the today show every morning while i'm you know whatever i'm doing i watch that i usually watch the news either at you know early evening or at ten o'clock so i get it from t v a lot i get time i read time magazine um that's one i read pretty regularly and uh the thing about it you know now that i've found is that we get such good coverage on t v or at least such i don't know attempted [thoroughness] of coverage by the time you get the time magazine there's nothing in it you don't know right then you can just sort of have pictures to go along with it or something because really i've thought lately there's nothing new in the time magazine you know it's it's basically you've heard everything and uh you might you might get a little more thorough uh account of something but really um i don't know so i get most of mine from television i would say right and i i think there's an attempt to do that you know i think people there's a mild attempt for that but i think basically we basically associate news with bad news or or [catastrophes] or problems or [crises] or uh you know i think our concept of news isn't necessarily events that happen it's more negative like you said but i think people try to on on t v i think they try to throw in good stuff but it doesn't uh it doesn't sway the vote uh_huh uh_huh right you know the war last winter was certainly a good example of that because we saw every single thing practically i mean you know i remember well just the things that are covered i remember watching the world series during the earthquake and just seeing that happen i mean you know that was just so phenomenal to see this stadium shake and the and the [announcers] you know grabbing i mean it's like that was just something because that was like live and real like you said and then of course one thing i think too is with so are you a news person yes yes great show yeah so so the real the real current news and the hard news is is not there is not really enough of it there yeah i've had i've had that frustration too i end up switching stations from time to time uh in general uh i watch a lot of c n n uh and c span uh i i subscribe to three newspapers uh you know i sort of can't get enough of this and and i when i travel elsewhere i'm often amazed at the local papers how little they have of world world events and national events well in in dallas what are the what is the newspaper situation was was that the the better paper or uh_huh yes uh_huh uh_huh but if you if you were to look at the front page of today's morning news morning times rather would you would you see things about what is going on in europe oh whoever troy aikman is okay yeah yeah i guess it's current events but not the kind of current events that changes the world yeah yes a lot of them i i rather like the washington post but i also get the new york times and the wall street journal uh and uh each of them covers different things in in in different ways and so it's you know if i only looked at one of them i would have a different clearly would have a different perspective on the world that that is certainly true uh they will they will have articles like a few days ago they had a a nice article on einstein you know theory of [relativity] you know that started on the front page ran in into the full almost full page inside now these are feature kind of articles all the all the uh you know the bulk of the paper certainly is about business kinds of activities but but there is some very good other articles uh you'll find in the in the journal uh i wish it were in more depth uh that doesn't mean to say longer just more facts would be nice uh c n n has has you know was was pretty good during the war uh and they were you know sort of had a unique vantage point for for doing that reporting so but you know it's not it's never quite uh i really am i enjoy i enjoy listening to the news and getting as much as i can although you know i'm a full time student and i work full time too so or not full time but i work quite a bit and so so i mostly depend on the radio you know on the way to work i like i like to listen to national public radio uh all things considered yeah and i like to listen to that and catch you know i don't get i don't get a lot of uh sometimes i don't get the current events you know because that show kind of has feature stories that might not directly deal with uh you know some important issue on the day but yeah right that's right yeah yeah yeah you you you like n p r uh programming yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh yeah oh yeah well we we we have a a big newspaper situation uh because we used to have two newspapers up until uh last sunday and a uh major uh a one of our major papers just closed down they closed shop and said well we can't put any more papers out we're done yeah i thought so it was a it was a more effective paper as far as i was concerned it it had uh uh it got to the news you know and gave you the dirty facts pretty quick and easy uh which i like i don't i don't like to you know i like to save the editorial information or the the politically uh [weighted] information you know for the for a different section i like just to get to the you know find out what's happening pretty quick and i feel that the other newspaper uh the the dallas morning news is the one that's still here the times herald is the one that closed up and uh the the morning news was was is okay but you know you have to wade through a lot of editorial garbage as far as i'm concerned you know many times it doesn't doesn't reflect my own opinion and uh_huh no no that's the problem but you know you see you see troy [aikman's] knee surgery on the front page you know yeah a a quarterback for the broncos or for the for the cowboys uh you know you know you know what i mean that there is uh local news that uh that really a lot of times doesn't doesn't change change my life one way or the other so uh right right yeah not something you'll you'll uh be interested in ten years from now by any means you know how how about you uh i guess in washington d c you guys have several papers that are pretty pretty effective don't you yeah uh_huh right right yeah uh i i have a question uh does does the wall street journal uh i i've kind of gathered lately that uh maybe their information is not just only related to business is that is that a correct assumption uh_huh oh oh uh_huh wow right uh_huh uh_huh do you find that you're uh uh disappointed or pleased with uh uh the performance of like network coverage of news uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah definitely uh_huh well uh until recently i was taking the wall street journal and i thought that was a good way but i have about five different magazines that i get that keeps me up on things you know it's a week or two late but uh that's how i'm staying up uh do you like how it's presented on the news so it it makes you feel like they're uh wanting you to take their opinion yeah i've noticed that too and it's kind of [distressing] isn't it and they just i've noticed that they do it just with subtle little words uh usually uh just that sway the whole uh report that you know by just a couple of words so communications huh were you looking into becoming a reporter or uh_huh i bet that's a interesting job yeah there's one that i'm reading right now it's information week it says a t and t to account for the the benefits that the a i c p a now says you have to show as a liability it's going to cost them seven point five billion after tax charge in ninety three to account for that and it'll drop their earnings by a hundred million a year forever more yeah it is and yeah you have to stay up on stuff and i bet in your your job that you have to do you read the wall street journal can you think of anything that could be done to make our news media more accurate and objective i guess they do that so they don't get [scooped] you know so they have the big story what what how do you get your main source of current events i either watch the news or or occasionally i'll read the paper um no i think the [media's] a little bit too [manipulative] they allow you uh they they try to lead you too much i believe and sometimes they're not very open i i don't know i think they're a little bit biased sometimes like for example the kennedy the kennedy rape case the coverage on that was you know when it first happened it was he was guilty he was guilty he was guilty you know they try to have you form opinions or whatever and then i i didn't like the the things that were going on when we had desert storm and stuff like that you know basically i i i think they don't present the the whole sides of of everything right it's it's it's instead of reporting the news it's more like an editorial i believe on a lot of issues yeah well when when i was in school i um i was a communications major so i i i'm well aware of the little subtle words and [persuasive] speaking and and so forth i was and um i i ventured off in a whole entire different field field i went with the state and uh i um went with the department of state treasurer in retirement disability calculate benefits yeah so the so and you know working you know working for state government you hear all about current events about things going on within the state itself so that that's another source that i i where i keep up with current events and it's a lot of money it's a lot of money no well no i i i primarily deal with the state employees but i i find interesting tidbits in what the news reports as far as the like the state of north carolina's budget and stuff like that and i really know what the budget is and and uh uh when they were saying we were so poor and they couldn't pay taxes and pay people their income tax [refunds] and things like that and you know i'm well aware of the billions of assets that the state has and it it's just funny you know so that's that's that's so i don't have a whole lot of faith in in you know the news course it's they they get what they hear from but you know it's not always i i think one hundred percent reliable i think they need to do a little bit go into a little bit more depth uh before they would just report like somebody wants to make a statement or something like that because i mean another example is the uh aids issue or whatever you know someone said oh i found a cure they immediately the headlines on the news or whatever is someone says they found a cure for aids and then two months later it's discovered it's not you know before they before they come out with something like that they need to to research the matter i believe a little bit more well that well yeah i i it i think the um no i don't watch much t v sometimes um usually the reason i will turn it on is to hear the news but i don't think of that every day even um i think i get most of my current events well i get them from everywhere i sometimes watch t v if i i guess i watch t v if i haven't read the paper that day we don't get a paper but i work um at a i teach a college class and uh there's a the library has a paper and so i often drop in on a break and and read it and i keep the radio on quite a bit when i'm home and then i i figure if there's big big news i'll hear it from my husband when he gets home or someone else you know uh_huh uh_huh yeah what's your favorite news do you get a news magazine or uh_huh yeah yeah we've got uh_huh yeah yeah exactly are you satisfied with the quality of coverage yeah it's kind of hard to know uh_huh yeah yeah well i do feel like a little bit like being from california and wanting to hear like i've heard through the grapevine sometimes that there's been an earthquake or sliding or something and i don't ever hear it in the news here um yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i sometimes feel like um the dallas paper and the dallas news um the top headlines are always a murder you know that that's because there's a high crime rate yeah yeah yeah yeah i'm sure uh_huh yeah really that's true we certainly get enough coverage i mean we we can get news you know i mean there's even the c n n channel where we can get world news twenty four hours a day yeah yeah often times so yeah well no i guess we can end yeah it's just whenever we're um yeah have you always gone until the recording uh_huh i guess we're not supposed to yeah uh_huh uh_huh oh really uh_huh uh_huh interesting yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah yeah well i guess i can just say i it bothers me that i hear a lot about um you know on the news that well it seems like i don't know some things are [sensationalized] or some things are um you know you'll hear one report and then you'll hear that it you know they didn't um okay what um do you watch much t v or you know the news yeah uh_huh oh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah yeah now i also i get it from all over i watch the news every day and i we have a news you know we get the newspaper and uh um magazines anything you know i'm i read a lot so i get um you know i'm i'm really up on uh current affairs i get you know the news and and everything um well i'm not getting no i'm not getting any news magazines but um you know as as i said i do it's uh it's easy to keep up on current you know on you know especially when you um you know you get a paper every day and uh uh i don't know is there anything missing i you know and i don't know you know what what's i mean what are we supposed to uh compare it to you know i mean the quality uh whatever they tell you you know i uh i guess i i you know i'm satisfied i mean i uh you know they they're supposedly covering everything that happens so you know oh really oh well uh sometimes it's such a you know it's it's so um slight you know like the [tremors] are so slight that they don't even bother putting it in the paper but most of the the times i find that even if there are you know they do have like [tremors] out there you know there'll be a small article in the paper about it but uh oh well that's what sells papers that's um that's been like that since they the first newspaper you know you know but um i don't know i i guess i'm satisfied i don't uh i mean what basis you know of comparison do we have really we don't get a you know oh yeah i was going to sure yeah sometimes you don't even want to be bothered with the news because it's all so bad it's all so negative you know but well we have to keep talking i guess oh oh is it really well yeah i don't i don't uh i don't know we're i guess we're supposed to wait or i don't know i you know like one uh well was it last week we were supposed to talk about gardening uh and it was really funny i i i mixed it made the call and it happened to be my friend who lives a few blocks away yeah and it was really we were laughing i mean but you know we don't really do any gardening so like that took like a minute and then we just talked about you know whatever i mean you know i mean some topics really now you know now this topic this is i mean there really isn't much to say after you know you uh you know you you tell the person what uh news there uh you know where their where they find their sources of information from and then you know if it's uh if they're satisfied and that's about it really it's hard to talk for five minutes on this so um so how do you get most of your current event information uh_huh right uh_huh i would imagine going to college though your professors and different things you keep up on what's going on yeah right well i'm a housewife i have three kids and so um i get most of my information probably through just the news at six o'clock and then um talking with people and just hearing what's going on just the regular channel just channel eight that's our channel here that's the um [eyewitness] news so oh uh_huh yeah right and i think even in the elections they choose who they're going to follow and who they're not and basically you know if a candidate can get them to follow then the news will you know kind of publicize his name i don't think that the way i get the news is the right way to get it i think you get a very [lopsided] picture of what's going on right right and the news too it just doesn't um cover that many stories i mean it just covers your basic you know violent crimes and you know and and your [catastrophes] with weather and stuff but other than that you really don't know what's going on um i will read our current letters that come out on elections and i guess i do read that and i do study who's running in our area and i do study what's going on in the economy it you know and i guess i do read other magazines um too to get my information right i used to read every month a reader's digest but um now i guess i just have friends that clip articles or if i you know am interested in something of course during the when we were in war i read up on that just a little in the newspaper to find out what was going on but a lot of the times i you know i wish i had the time to read all the stories in the newspaper but i just can't seem to find the time if they put it out in a video or on not a video but a cassette tape or something where you could just listen to it i would do that while i was doing other things but right well i um they even did a story on our news here in texas on what people wanted to see more of and people said that they wanted to see more on outside of texas news you know we just don't want to hear every night all the [killings] that went on here in dallas that we want to hear what's going on with the economy what's being done to help it what's going on in other countries what's you know just more information yeah well i guess we'll get pretty good news coverage in a couple of years when you host the uh summer olympics i know we're trying to get tickets to it right now yeah yeah right right yeah they spent a lot of time that's another thing they spend a long time on sports and i think that um that's fine i would like to see more time spent on other things but well see i'm going to school right now and uh while i'm working i don't get a i don't get a chance to read the paper a lot and i don't watch t v as much really either because uh my free time is kind of and i do like to do other stuff with it while i'm at work sometimes i on the computer network um i read the news sometimes and that's kind of helpful that's true i mean my [roommates] and stuff you know people around me talk about it and the people i work with are pretty you know up up to date on that kind of stuff so uh_huh yeah do you watch do you watch the network like major network news or do you watch like the macneil lehrer hour oh really uh_huh oh see channel where i am channel [eight's] um like public t v so it's kind of different i think i think the uh i think a lot of the commentators on like the major networks like right it's kind of appropriate right now because of the election stuff going on but um it seems that um they kind of get to throw their opinions into how they you know report on the news yeah yeah exactly uh_huh because they can they can only report on i mean they give each candidate perhaps you know ten second [blurbs] in which to you know to say you you just can't get a full picture of you know their message unless you have time to sit down and and probably read something on it yeah yeah what kind of see i subscribe to like science news and that's that's real good because it gives like a brief summary of or like the updates like of what's going on in science without getting into a lot of detail that would you know bog me down that i wouldn't know about but other than that i don't really read i don't i don't really subscribe to anything else uh_huh oh yeah yeah yeah well i remember back during the uh during the war everyone here at work always had the radio or the t v on because that they were going constantly with that stuff but uh yeah if they reported every if they reported every violent crime in atlanta it would take it would probably take the whole news hour but uh oh yeah that's they start already they're having like um in the newspaper they have a section i think every now and then on the olympics you know and they've got like a [countdown] it's like sixteen hundred days or something oh really that's going to be crazy that time of year here but uh i can't believe i mean they're they're stretching out the olympic news for that much coverage over i guess people want to hear about it also big in the news right now is the braves because they're uh they're in you know spring training or whatever and they did so well last year yeah it seems like i don't know they way they do the [newscasts] i wish they they kind of separated it you know if you wanted to watch one thing you could turn to some channel for it but i don't have cable okay how do you keep up with current events yeah what what channel do you watch or what station that's the one i watch i usually keep up with t v i don't i am a student so i really don't have much time to like read the newspapers and stuff so i get a lot of stuff through the grapevine which is really isn't too great sometimes yeah the radio doesn't really have much news sometimes the stations i listen to are just mainly music yeah do you think that t v is uh pretty accurate i mean sometimes do you think it gets pretty commercialized or yeah yeah it's they mainly go with like popular topics just not like basic news huh yeah going they're looks like they're going more for ratings than for you know actual news i think you know the probably the best source of just plain journalism would be newspapers they typically have a better i am from a small town too here in texas and so that then like local news is really who grew the biggest tomato and yeah farm report and oil reports that's pretty pretty sad or who killed who yeah well in uh in dallas i don't know if you heard about the killing where the guy drove into luby's and the story was uh yeah and the news covered it right you know hours after it happened and they were taping people who were crying who had everything and then like three days later this uh local news station was using as as their [promo] to promote themselves i just thought that was really that's kind of cold yeah and it was just they were showing like these dead people and they were showing people crying i mean just taking advantage of you know yeah it didn't seem like there was much coverage of the story but just the play on people's emotions it's just gotten so i mean somewhere there's it's lost a lot of the quality that they use to have like in walter cronkite that if you know and everything yeah yeah what did you think of the coverage of the war did you yeah they kept just showing you know how great we were doing and it never really showed what actually the damage that really happened that's a lot of times like the news coverage showed all the you know the guys who didn't get hurt coming home and all the big parties and they kind of you know if they were going to show that why didn't they show the guys who you know got really hurt and everything um well actually usually uh in the mornings i am getting ready to either go to work uh usually catch the news in the morning uh n b c uh_huh yeah yeah i usually tend to just you know rely on you know t v uh again you know just through the grapevine just just to know like you know like what today's stories are and i usually like go out an buy a newspaper if you know i'm interested in any particular one yeah i think you pretty much have to listen to all news station to get any news at all well what i really don't like about t v especially local news as compared to like national news is just uh it seems it seems like everything is very spoon feed and you know it's it's more like the news shows is now is now you know an entertainment show like a sitcom or like the news because they would always have like the wonderful [investigative] reports you know is you're kids bus driver smoking crack on the way to school you know uh_huh yeah also also i have the [observation] of uh with the press is that like any any stories that i had any first hand knowledge of that i see in the press you know which only happened like ten times in my life you know first thing you know for anything of you know or anything that actually had had more than just a blurb about it that the press has managed to just mess up some aspect of the story it's something wrong uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah the farm report uh_huh also i have found that newspapers probably aren't as bad as television read the story and just found it so incredibly watered down and was that like he started shooting people people in this cafeteria or something uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah i have seen that happen lots of times you know uh channel x gives you the best coverage you know we were on the scene with our team players and uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh they are trying to get the you know most emotional response for yeah yeah yeah you know i've pretty much stopped watching local news totally you know uh you know even the national news i just find it to be you know very watered down very uh i i found it very one sided uh you know it it just seemed to lack any sort of debate uh you know not saying that we that we actually should have been there or shouldn't have been there but it just seemed like you know uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah and i really think that you know in the involvement that the press states you know that the the military basically sets the press uh i get most of my news uh from newspapers really i read the daily newspaper uh the houston chronicle and sometimes i'll read like the uh wall street or the new york times i don't subscribe to either but sometimes i get a hold of copies of it uh how about you do you uh mostly get things from t v or oh oh that's interesting you said computer networks uh what uh what sort i am fairly knowledgeable of uh okay that's interesting oh is it is it the a p news wire or is it something that is uh a little bit different from that uh okay so that's that's interesting okay yeah i've had i had access in the past to uh uh the a p news wire and i thought that was that was pretty a pretty good way to get news uh i've never used the dow jones news wire but uh yeah it uh do you get any uh do you read any news magazines or anything like that for sort of like a broader like more long term [analytical] sort of approach yeah in what way in like in sort of like uh uh quality or sort of an orientation in terms of like view point or the way the news is presented or whatever yeah well you won't offend me so go ahead and say yeah like a liberal type of bias yeah yeah yeah they they generally make mistake on anything technical at least yeah yeah do you by mistakes do you mean just like honest mistakes or do you think they are deliberate sorts of things yeah yeah yeah yeah huh huh that's disturbing i haven't really noticed them doing that but whatever again i don't watch t v news that much now if i had access to c n n i would watch t v news more uh i don't you know but i don't usually yeah did you did you think that c n n well the gulf war coverage would be kind of uh an [abnormality] i just i guess i would be curious to know what you thought as to how like say c n n t v news compared to the three networks uh you know whether you thought it was more of a biased or whatever but i i guess you wouldn't you probably if you just watched it during the gulf war that probably wouldn't wouldn't tell you much yeah yeah yes i actually get most of my news coverage off uh computer networks however i do also watch television news uh usually in the morning once a day and i read the front page of the wall street journal most every day uh well well dow jones for example have the cause the uh news wire and it's picked up and actually available uh at my office so it's no fee or subscription either to read at my leisure and it's sort of by category for example so i can read a certain business or topics well uh it's similar to that but it's dow jones which is uh the wall street journals news wire uh well actually not uh i do uh follow uh uh uh i don't know how to how to describe it so i'll say a religious newspaper which which talks about issues that are relevant to me in a more broad sense it's a weekly but uh but not uh not like business week or news week or one of those kinds of things i'd like to say that however uh that i'm [overwhelmingly] disappointed with the media in general except for the raw news wires uh i think that it i think that it has to do with uh i personally think uh i i have a problem with their viewpoint and i personally think that uh that there's a strong there's a strong bias in the media yeah absolutely uh after all who who writes people who are [journalist] who are trained to write and they're that's a liberal uh a liberal field at least from [academia] and uh the other thing that i always notice is that whenever they write about something that i'm an expert in i find their [descriptions] to be wrong and it that's right well even if it's not technical if it's uh some social thing or whatever it doesn't matter if i am an expert in it they usually make mistakes which makes me believe think i'm not expert in it they're telling me lies uh i think both uh by deliberate i uh i mean mistake mistakes of [omission] or uh or uh biased toward a particular view point a particular liberal view point that they have so uh uh to give you an example uh we will go out of the printing media i know of cases where uh we have one television media where they will show clippings from one event and describe another event but with the the attempt to give you the impression that what they're talking about is the same thing they are showing you which is sort of like a deliberate bias which is which is rather disturbing i mean he does that yeah i don't have access either although i did at one time and it was i did during the gulf war and it was addictive yeah well during that small sample i would think that everyone was just about just about the same except the three networks radio television programming so if at a particular time you wanted to get the latest and greatest news you could do that by uh turning on c n n and you jimmy so how do you get most of your news oh wow so when you say the morning news or evening news or national news is when oh okay well i would probably be a junkie or watch c n n a lot but i don't uh i don't uh subscribe to cable because of the poor service and also uh because well i uh i give to the united way and so i figured that amount of money i just donate to that yeah i take away a uh addiction oh something well i oh what what uh newspapers do you read uh_huh for a while there i i i uh subscribed to new york times actually a couple of newspapers because uh you know my fiance well she was unemployed for a while so she you know really needed to look at the the help wanted ads and so often they they the newspapers are trying to compete with a lot of other sources of uh news and i don't know new york times is okay but uh and when you read a lot of this stuff the the quality of the writing has definitely gone down in the last ten years or so but uh i mean they they say it's like the sixth grade reading level but i swear it's at least second or third grade sometimes but i don't know uh i think if you listen to like n p r or something like that's pretty good uh and i like listening to that on on uh when i get a chance when i'm in the car a long enough time to to listen to it because i uh well mcneil and lehrer i guess he's leaving one of them is leaving uh they're they're pretty good too uh i guess a year ago you're probably watching c n n a lot right had that invasion or whatever it is uh but i i don't know i guess a lot of it's still a lot of hype look at the the smith trial i mean that was a joke oh yeah the n p r doing that yeah i know i had uh some [visitor] and he was just just i don't know [fixated] on that you know just listened to it constantly uh and i guess that's good when it's live if you if you'll really want that but that's not really providing you news it's it's more like a media event rather than reporting oh really that's kind of boring to me i think yeah yeah i guess that's true but one of the ways that i get information is uh every day when i log in on the computer i subscribe to this this thing it's free inside the company it's called [intellect] and and they basically uh type out [abstracts] which are really literally i've i've actually read the actual articles they're pretty well i kind of uh i watch the uh national news every day for one i also read one or two papers a day and i'm a i'm pretty much a news junkie and i tune in to c n n a lot uh every evening at six thirty i believe i watch the national news uh_huh uh_huh as opposed to paying for cable yeah uh overall i i the quality of the news you get off of most uh sources i would say is pretty low it's usually you get pretty [incomplete] coverage and that's one of the reasons where i why i try and get as many sources as possible because if you hear the same story from three different sources then you get a much clearer picture of of what is going on you would hope but still you know hard to say that what you've heard is what really is well i read uh the local newspaper and i also try and read one of the uh major [dailies] like the chicago [tribune] or the new york times or something like that uh_huh right uh_huh right pretty low right i i really like n p r a lot right yeah i miss n p r a lot also i really like them because they give uh instead of being as your newspaper or your t v news where you get a five minute blurb or a ten paragraph blurb they go really in depth on topics which i think is good and they also their editorial stand point seems to be a lot better than say your major network news and that kind of thing uh_huh right yeah sure was uh_huh yeah that was but then you also have things where you uh where they broadcast the [clarence] thomas hearings basically the whole length of them which i thought was really good uh uh right well but the but the news news that you would get from any other source is being generated from that event which is something that's good also about c span which i i tune into every once in a while yeah it it is really kind of boring but you know that's if if you don't watch it there then you're going to hear somebody else's canned uh report somebody else's view about it and that's what you're supposed you're supposed to if you watch the news you're going your opinion is going to be formed about on what somebody else thought about it as opposed to actually watching it yourself and forming your own [pinion] opinion which i haven't would be much more in favor of forming my own opinion as opposed to following someone else's hi so do you think you get good coverage from the sources that you have do you watch a lot of t v to get the news then um well i read uh i get a bunch of different things i get a newspaper every day and i try to at at least have a few minutes to look through that and i look through uh i get a newsweek every week which i i pretty much read that cover to cover and i as far as you know that [satisfies] most of the short term news i get uh don't watch much t v don't have enough time and uh don't listen to the radio too much especially the news channels or anything like that you know they might give you a little [blurbs] like this happened or that happened and that's about all i ever hear of it uh but most of my news probably comes from newsweek and for the longer term i i read uh like scientific american and and uh [readers'] digest and some of those other types of magazines that come out which they the news isn't like immediate what you'd generally think of as news but it's recent material yeah it is it is more in depth less broad well actually it's probably isn't less broad but it's just more in depth and uh it is it is more it is more just significant information you know it is the big events not the little events not the fact that there was a big auto accident down on the corner of broad and main you know yes or they're making making time because they to fill in an hour's worth of news uh i get kind of bored watching t v actually when i watch the news on t v because it goes so slow and then there's nothing that you know really is like oh so exciting yeah that that's about what it ends up being listen to the news to hear the traffic report or something yeah i think they're about the same i you know they they certainly have a very similar uh [charter] at least in my mind and uh uh what what kind of uh what kind of news normally interests you i mean what do you what what do you find interesting versus what do you find boring uh_huh i think it will uh they they keep claiming it's going to have a big influence but we've yet to see it and it's real short term yet though i mean it's only been three months or something like that since that happened so but they like to tell us that it's going to be important i think it is too yeah i i think that's a possibility uh it we might also be helped though because it it will be easier to do business over there too for the companies that already have a presence over there and uh i know of at least one company that specifically went over there and established a presence before nineteen ninety two so that they would have it when it came time yep because once you're in there then you can easily expand but getting in after nineteen ninety two is more difficult yes and there's already a lot of evidence that they are being very protectionist even amongst themselves they're being somewhat protectionist you know like england doesn't want to do one thing and and sweden doesn't want to do other thing and they're they've all got their own reasons which have to be resolved yet and some of it i mean is i'm sure within those people's minds it's quite justified uh_huh before they open up their borders to everyone uh what is the uh do you watch anything like with sports or anything like that against your will yeah at least you guys have a remote control it's sometimes better to not have one of those course you can always [mislocate] it or [misplace] it i mean not [mislocate] it but [misplace] it and uh actually no because because i'm in school i i kind of miss out on most of the current events i just catch the major ones off the news or if someone starts to talk about it uh i don't watch a lot of it but that's the basically that's my only major source of information what about what about you yeah and it's more in depth yeah i know where they're just trying to fill in yeah i know i do i do too yeah you may find one little uh news item interesting so you have to wait twenty minutes to to hear about it yeah actually you mention newsweek i i i do like uh u s news and world report i don't get to read it as much as i like but that's i think that's a good magazine well right now trying to keep abreast of uh what's going on in europe you know with all the u s s [r's] satellites breaking off trying to become independent and you know european community coming together that's going to affect our uh economy quite a bit oh yeah yeah i'm i'm pretty sure it is because uh once once europe becomes [unified] and uh their economy becomes one big economy we're going to be uh kind of hurting yeah definitely oh yeah so they have a toe hold i good toe hold yeah because when they first start off they're going to be highly protectionist so yeah yeah uh_huh yeah i i can understand their viewpoint they're just they're starting off their economy's a little bit weak so you want to get established before they yeah totally actually i'm not really into sports my [roommates] are so unfortunately i forced to watch quite a bit of sports yeah we have to fight over the remote control so how do you uh so so it sounds like you've got a television going on there so i can assume that you probably watch the t v news is that really wow i uh what what station do you listen to cliff i see so uh it's not affiliated with anything is it not it's not a network station okay yeah because i i listen to uh public radio a lot and they have they have k c r w which i i i saw a thing recently they may be trying to start their own uh cable tv outlet i guess they're getting a little getting a little feisty now uh yeah so you have a paper or something or uh_huh yeah how do you like it it's been it's been a while since i read the dallas news i uh fact last time i read the dallas dallas news i was in arkansas i uh oh yeah well that must be pretty bad so how did that happen anyway no not how i mean when did it when did they yeah oh really um oh me i uh good grief i read the times los angeles times there's quite a task if you've ever run into one they're uh yeah they're thick uh if there's something you want to know it's it's in the times and then and in detail uh they uh we we used to have two papers here in town and then the herald examiner collapsed about two years ago because of oh i don't know just nobody was buying it really yeah pretty much uh there used to be fact i think there still is the uh the daily news which runs out of the san fernando valley and uh they're not bad as far as a uh you know as far as a local paper goes in fact it was kind of weird because i met the uh i met the i met the editor uh while i was on uh while i was doing jury service in santa [monica] one time it was like we just sat around and talk about newspapers and stuff he was a really cool guy uh you know went to columbia university and all this stuff and uh it's it's a pretty good paper but uh you know it's not it's not the times although i you know i'm sorry to see some of their uh there's there's a daily news uh news rack right around the corner from where i live which means that they're they're expanding i guess but uh and occasionally i i pick up like time magazine or something i think uh if they've got an interesting lead story but you know it's i i don't have time yeah that's that's kind of a problem for them there's a lot of people who fall into that category uh_huh i see yeah the big [dailies] don't like to don't like to step much out of their uh out of their home turf i have to admit the times is kind of [provincial] too it's basically anything that's south of downtown they don't bother to cover uh_huh yeah i know i uh it was it was a big discovery when when the times when the times found out there was a place called orange county i mean the way they i mean the way they've been handling it before they practically they practically acted like their reporters needed to shots to go south of the l a county border oh really yeah yeah i i i find that attitude kind of arrogant though it's like you're taking our money but you're not bothering to cover the things that are interesting to us i almost never watch t v news i get most of my news driving back and forth to work listening to the radio uh it's a local radio station it's called uh k l i f cliff no no well this has this station has a lot of just ongoing news and occasionally in the morning i'll pick up something like uh c n n or that but i hate watching the like ten o'clock news or yeah we have a well we have uh dallas morning news which is the big paper in dallas we read i read it pretty much from cover to cover the times herald went out of business here and so we really only have one dallas newspaper and one fort worth newspaper uh financial trouble oh when did it happen i guess they closed down about three months ago so how do you keep up yes they're very [voluminous] so there really is only one major l a now yeah i used to read time magazine a lot but i don't read it much anymore and then we have a local rag here in town that i pick up periodically and read just to see what's going on in our little community because we don't get an awful lot of coverage in the dallas morning news now they have started here running a three day or three times a week plano section and it's just sort of a you know four or five pages that covers what's going on in plano but it's still not an awful lot of news oh i would imagine in uh you know in in dallas they have plenty happening in dallas to cover that it gets hard covering all of the suburbs and of course they tend to cover the county and we're not in dallas county so they tend to ignore places outside of the county yeah no we don't have the uh national public radio in in my area i can hear it at the uh uh-oh the college town nearby when i'm in [stillwater] which is about an hour away but the f m signal doesn't reach this far uh i'll listen to shortwave quite a bit it gives you a whole different perspective on the news uh when you hear it from say a european point of view or from the country of [origin] uh i agree with you too on the uh uh the cable channel c n n and headline news uh i'm not too satisfied with our local newspaper uh which is why i rely on shortwave and and then the cable cable c n n i think a lot of it is just uh the fact that in the u s you're so far removed uh in a lot of cases from say conflicts or or it's not happening in your backyard so it's it's more of a it's not as a personal uh the news isn't as personal in what we receive [domestically] than than what's on shortwave it's b b c is uh-oh i don't know the right word is is almost uh they almost take all emotions out of it when they report it and it just they seem to give more of just the facts than opinions uh very much so very much so and i i think a lot of it is uh especially t v news they don't really have the time and a lot of them don't have the education and the background to uh-oh to really [decipher] the news and to really explain it i mean i you know i think it's important to interpret it but a lot of times the person doesn't have the experience to to do the interpreting oh i like the straight reporting uh and then i i hope to be able to form my own opinion of it it's it's nice to hear someone's interpretation of it uh i always think it's humorous when when the president gives the state of the union and uh for thirty minutes and then for an hour and a half you hear different commentators explaining what you just heard and a lot of time i don't hear exactly what they what they write into it so i overall i think i would rather hear just straight reporting yeah i i think people are people have that opinion they they want to sit down in front of the tv and uh or at a read a magazine or u s a today and read in four [paragraphs] uh and and find out i uh get a lot of my news driving home from work listening to all things considered on national public radio uh that is one of my big sources for current events information uh i really like that coverage my wife uh on the other hand is home most of the day and she watches a lot of the cable news network have you seen uh have you uh ever heard of all things considered uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i'm uh interested in the in the shortwave aspect of it uh how do you find that the the coverage from other places in the world uh [compares] with the american coverage of how do you think that uh the viewpoints differ uh_huh uh_huh do you think then that uh the american media is presenting an opinion along with their facts uh_huh which uh which approach do you find to be uh more useful the the [interpretive] approach or the straight reporting uh_huh uh_huh one of the things that i found interesting last year during the uh the gulf conflict was a [sentiment] against uh peter [arnett] who had stayed in iraq and was presenting uh some of the things that were available uh there was a there was uh a piece where he was showing a bombed out building where there was obviously a [crudely] uh uh [hastily] [erected] sign saying baby milk factory and while he was being severely uh [censored] and could not make any judgment call on this it was fairly obvious that it was a piece of propaganda but people were really down on him for reporting the fact that you know this isn't a baby milk factory how could he say it was uh i i think that that to me showed that the americans were really getting used to having the not just the facts but also the conclusions and opinions spoon fed to them hi uh uh i i should say something that i'm the uh least informed this is totally accidental that i have to talk about this topic but it's i'm the least informed person in the whole united states this has not been determined yet but i i i've never read a newspaper in my entire life and i've i i never watch t v news nor listen to the news on the radio unless i'm just happening to be listening to music and they slip it on in the car radio before i can turn it off but well no i i've i've explored that with lots of people uh they've tried to lock me up and uh things like that but uh uh i'm basically not interested and i also find the uh everything is so slick and superficial and [misguided] and and off the uh uh what am i trying to say uh i do learn about things largely from friends and i occasionally will read something like the new york review of books you know someone will write a book about something and then i'll learn all about this thing that was in the news two years earlier but it and somehow and anything i participated in or know about when i read about it in the paper is always so uh covered from such a funny and superficial perspective that i don't have much confidence in it but i mean i don't think it's just that i'm lazy uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right yeah uh_huh yeah right doesn't want let me ask by the way just for the record i i'm i totally [concede] that intelligent people read these things and intelligent people write them so i mean i'm not being elitist in that sense i hope uh yeah what yeah by the way when you say most people think it is i think it's like ninety nine point ninety nine think it is percent oh you don't right yeah uh_huh yeah uh i did on the uh the supreme court hearings the for uh uh the whole business of uh see i actually have a a yeah the thomas and [anita] hill business i i mean that's that's the closest thing i deeply cared about that uh and i sort of had planned to have dinner with a friend of mine and when i arrived at her house she was engrossed in that we ended up watching it for a couple of hours [zooming] out and grabbing something to eat and then [zooming] back and watching it some more and i thought that was terrific because she actually helped me understand what was going on but even then i didn't end up doing it on my own uh uh uh_huh right right yeah uh_huh yeah do you ever read hi uh_huh any particular reason uh_huh huh uh_huh i really don't i i i like to refer to this as sort of consumer report phenomenon which is everybody that i know reads consumer reports so the people who do feel that consumer reports does a [wholly] inadequate job in their area of particular interest but assume that they do a reasonable job in other areas uh without thinking that there were people in who think each other areas area of of specialty and uh i guess you could explain it two ways and and the cynical view is well these things aren't doing a very good job at all and the view that i would rather take is that there's a different amount of information you need when you're particularly interested in a topic or uh particularly interested in buying something as a you know as a hobbyist versus when you want to go out and buy a blender because you need to mix things and i think the same thing is true with news if you want to just have an idea as to what's going on most papers and especially the better papers the the times the wall street journal the washington post give you a reasonable idea if you were deeply involved in it then you immediately realize that what they print is stuff that you probably knew already and the stuff that you want they're not printing because the average person doesn't need or want to know that much well i mean there's there's a reasonable question as to whether it's worth the amount of time it takes to keep up on things and most people think it is and i can i can you know accept that some people think it's not and can find better ways to use it i don't think it's that high i know a lot of people who may watch the t v news in the evening but don't spend the time to actually read a newspaper and i think they're saying well if something's really important i'll at least find out that it happened and and that's a that's is a reasonable start and for awhile i didn't read a newspaper when i came out here because i didn't find one that i liked uh and if something important happened it was covered on t v and i could then go and and pick up newspapers if if it were important enough to read about and i imagine you get the same level of something that you cared about happened you'd find out from friends or other channels [clarence] thomas or right uh_huh yeah i stayed as far away from those as i could i decided i didn't want to waste the time i had i guess five years ago now wasted that kind of time with [oliver] north hearings and afterwards decided that what i had gotten out of it just wasn't worth the time i put in and that these things are just very slow in seeing information come out uh i basically uh listen to the news from the t v that's probably the only time i get a chance to uh uh take a look at it is the evening news and and then if i'm lucky i might be able to hear something through news wise but uh other than that that's probably how i get my source unless something really tragic happens and somebody tells me it about through uh uh you know uh through conversation or whatever but uh most of the time it is through the news in the evening so that's about the newspapers no i'm not too much in reading newspapers uh not that i don't enjoy newspapers or anything like that but uh part of it is because i just don't feel like i need the need to have them uh with watching the t v or whatever we get our weekly news around the area and i might look through it real quick if there's something that catches my interest uh in regards to what's going on around the county or little bit of the state but the majority of the time now i don't get a daily newspaper where you know i get tons of uh news coming in that kind of stuff oh you do you read it in the morning then uh_huh sure oh sure to see if they did it or if they uh criticize you or put something in there wrong sure sure uh_huh sure sure exactly uh_huh sure well that's that's kind of like you said then we we are kind of on the opposite where i get home and uh while i'm cooking supper the t v is on and watching the news or trying to catch up with what is going on and uh very seldom do i catch the ten o'clock so by that time you know old news is probably what i hear through the grapevine or whatever but uh unless there is a big issue going on like when we were at war then i think everybody was glued to the t v to find out what was going on but uh other than that no it's exactly exactly exactly sure yeah yeah uh_huh yeah yeah well it brought kind of uh more of a [vivid] uh look at what was going on when they were dropping the bombs and just a lot of different things but uh yeah that's true you know you know a lot of people that read the news to newspapers to get the news of what's going on and uh other people that you know do it differently or don't even watch any news at all so but exactly happens sure sure that's oh sure a clip you know a sentence or two and that's about it of what went on and uh they have so much other information to cover in such a short period of time sure makes sense yeah yeah yeah uh_huh so you're right on the coast line you're not uh further up you're uh_huh sure sure i suppose you watch for hurricanes coming in and things like that sure yeah that's about the only time in the in the summer uh if you're watching t v for the weather even though it's very hard to predict what's going on they'll kind of say well there's a [thunderstorm] warning or whatever this is the what is expected but a lot of times things happen and change here so drastically uh so fast you know where movement that was coming in has shifted or whatever so uh_huh uh_huh sure to take off sure yeah that's sounds pretty good so anyway i don't know if our time is getting up here or it's got to be fairly close to that you don't get any newspapers i'm kind of the opposite of you i get all my news from newspapers we have we have two newspapers yeah two newspapers in the morning and uh i'm uh in in a government position that i'm in the news a lot so uh i i kind of look through to see see what uh i'm quoted in but uh how how bad the quotes are every day yeah or uh sometimes there's uh letter to the editor about me or there's a even uh editorials for and against what i'm doing but uh but t v uh the t v i i don't really watch even if i'm even if i'm on it but just right and that's c n n had the uh everybody was watching c n n that seemed to be the place to be to find out what was going on on that at that point i was watching the t v on something like that well the thing is with with t v i i uh a lot of times the the news on uh the local t v is so brief you really don't get the full picture of what uh what's going on and uh that's that's a problem that i have is not getting just a little brief uh idea of what's happening but right but i like the weather report so i i [alway] always i always turn that on that's one part i watch because of uh i go [surfing] down here and i always want to watch the weather for when the waves are going to be good yeah no right on the south florida coast where the weather is still warm here yeah yeah weather [channel's] good yeah i mostly look for the storms out in the ocean uh hundreds of miles out so i can predict my my week and where i'm going to be so i can be at the at the beach when the waves start coming in okay how do you get your news mostly uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i can hardly wait for my morning paper to come so that's the first thing i want is the headlines it's really funny because because uh uh my sister grabs the sports and i grab the headlines but uh and then when five o'clock comes around i just want to get in the house and turn the t v on to watch the news it's really weird uh i don't stay up late to watch late news because my eyes won't stay up that long but uh i love to watch the five o'clock news and i makes me angry when my paper boy's not there on time where i can read my paper uh i do have my radio going most of the day though so about every hour it breaks in and gives me news too you know but no uh_huh i just have a channel that has music except for like every hour you know say eight o'clock nine o'clock they come on for just a little bit of the news but as far as the actual news i get that from from the can you hold on just for a second just a minute hello sir yes i'm sorry to keep you waiting uh i was calling from work so and that was a call waiting yeah that's true too uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah well you're right there is a lot of it that's that's just garbage as far as i'm concerned you know but i just like the more or less the the daily news you know just uh especially the weather i like that although they're usually wrong uh_huh but uh like i say as far as as actually listening to the news it's mostly t v five o'clock to six thirty uh that seems like a long time for news but that's how long it is and uh seems like they have the local news and they have the world news and then uh my morning paper i can hardly wait for it to come and uh oh yeah right once you get to work i wouldn't either huh_uh but i've always been a morning person to get up you know but i can't stay up late at night to watch the late news so i guess that's why i watch it at five o'clock but anyhow well listen i guess that's about it then it's been nice talking to you tony oh really oh well that hasn't happened to me yet so you never know it might this time okay tony uh_huh bye bye generally i get most of my news from uh the radio and then sometimes uh if i've got time i'll be reading the front page of the newspaper and just fall off on the articles that i like uh also since my wife likes to watch t v sometimes uh having just being there i get uh you know i have to watch the news late at night with t v how about you uh_huh uh_huh um um okay do you get like one of the talk stations the news stations sure right sure yes okay right it sounds like you uh like the news a lot more than i do me i figure if it's something really important somebody will tell me about it but uh you know i the thing is if if i catch the news all the time it just makes me depressed because they tend to produce a lot of bad news or that's what comes on first and uh you know also late at night you know i don't like watching the news late at night but my wife is usually up then and so i can't go to sleep with the t v on i uh but you know i i wish i had uh more news on things like that i consider long range things like science and medicine uh i'm more i guess i'm more into science and science fiction and uh there's you know not that the news is science fiction but uh uh i'm more interested in that things like uh is nasa ready for another space shot uh you know how hot are they on the trail of a cure for such and such cancer and uh uh you know a lot of the news isn't that interesting to me uh_huh yeah me too yeah georgia here they're usually wrong too we have weird weather systems yeah uh_huh yeah i'm you know i i just uh i would i i i'm not a morning person so i would [begrudge] the time it takes me in the morning to catch my morning news i get up just barely in time to get up get ready and get off to work and then at work i have no time to read the news no uh_huh yeah okay nice talking to you i'll probably talk to you again i had a friend who was in this and he said that he got calls from the same caller sometimes yeah that's right take it easy bye bye okay uh let me see i've been sitting here awhile i almost forgot the topic but uh it seems like i get most of my news from television i'm we only get the paper on the weekends and so i'm not much of a of a paper reader or but i i and i'm don't rarely listen to the uh radio so i get most of my news like from documentaries like forty eight hours twenty twenty you know the news at night news in the afternoon that kind of thing uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh are you in the car quite a bit or oh oh uh_huh oh i see uh yeah i i i pretty much am and i watch the news at least twice a day so uh if i've missed something and and i've just recently decided to stay home with my children and so it seems as if i catch the news right as it happens you know there was the [explosions] and that kind of thing my husband will say how did you know about that yes it happened at such and such time and that's so that that's different for me so i usually find out exactly when it happens and that kind of thing uh no it just seems like since i've recently stayed home that is what's happened you know it's just that uh now that i've stayed home i'm i'm usually aware of when these things occurred and it happened and right right uh_huh uh_huh huh right right it kind of gives you the whole story or more of the story that kind of thing so uh yeah yeah uh_huh yeah i know what you're saying yeah but i try and catch most of those programs on [wednesday's] and friday's and if i miss them i try you know i try and and tape them if i'm out that kind of thing i try and tape them and so i can sit back and watch them and it's pretty interesting uh_huh well yeah plus i find that i have to video tape quite a bit of things if i don't want any interruptions you know that kind of thing uh it seems like ten o'clock at night unfortunately but that that's what it seems like ten o'clock at night uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i get a weekend paper as well and uh in addition to that i get a local weekly i i live in suburb of milwaukee and they get they have community newspapers around here so the local their extremely local stuff uh is in the local paper that comes out once a week and then i get the sunday uh milwaukee journal because i don't have time to read a paper uh mostly that's my difficulty i uh i get my news pretty much from the same sources as you do although i do listen to n p r which has very good and that's national public radio which has very good uh coverage of the national and international news i feel and does a pretty good job of analysis as well no i'm not actually uh but i can run my radio in my office i i teach at the university and when i'm not teaching if i choose to have the radio on i can listen to that station so how are you are you satisfied with the twenty twenty and forty eight hours and the things that you do watch uh_huh uh_huh is that the aspect of the news that you're most interested in is is the timely [noting] of the events as they happen is that what you feel good about in the news coverage uh_huh well i myself uh the reason why i listen to n p r and the reason why i watch macneil lehrer rather than the than the network news shows at night although i do watch a local ten o'clock in the evening news which carries over a lot of the national news stories uh is that quite often it seems to me the national doesn't do a very good job of analysis the local doesn't either but i feel that macneil lehrer get a little more deeply into some some of the issues that are really current and perhaps newspapers do that but as i said i don't have time to sit down and read a newspaper and frankly when i have read a newspaper i haven't noticed that kind of analysis either so uh there's there is some danger to that of course too because if the analysis is [inaccurate] or biased or whatever then you know how good is it but uh i like a little more indepth coverage and i think that's what you're maybe appealing to you too on something like twenty twenty or forty eight hours uh_huh yeah i'm more interested in trying to understand what's going on in the world rather than simply being aware that you know there that an event has occurred i i like to stand back and get a slightly bigger picture maybe because i'm easily confused by detail i don't know so when you have young children right so those evening shows are probably also at a time when you're at liberty to take some time off and be in front of the t v set for awhile without [interruption] oh you do uh_huh uh_huh when is your good watching time uh_huh yes yeah that's what i have older children and getting dinner on the table i come from the east coast and i was it amazed me when i got out here to the midwest and found out that even though they're an hour earlier in time they still watch the news when okay uh generally i get uh you know most of my news uh in the you know weekly magazines like time newsweek and and uh u s news and world report with with occasional [smatterings] of of uh you know the wall street journal and of course the local paper but uh my my only complaint is i really don't enough time to to look at the articles every day and and go through a paper you know exhaust the details so that's why i concentrate on weekly magazines well yes i i well i i don't think i have the time to really become a student in every article and and so i i i like the weekly magazines uh because it gives me you know the high points of what's going on uh but many times uh you know the the local uh the local news kind of [suffers] you know but here i am you know cheek by [jowl] with our nation's capital and yeah yes exactly well when when the capital gang always talk about the people inside the beltway i'm saying to myself hey guys i'm inside the beltway but uh it turns out that uh that that the c n n is i think is great and for for things like hurricanes and fast breaking events but generally they're they're they're more sound [bitish] you know kind of thing and and i don't really uh you know i don't really feel as though i've a gotten sufficient uh you know dose of news that way uh_huh yes well the mercury and the and the and the chronicle are the only things that are really can stand up there uh redwood city i use to work at [anteks] [anteks] [amdahl] and places like that yeah uh_huh yes i i've i enjoy see they have uh we have two the both c [spans] here but but really the on the public t v you know macneil lehrer is one is an hour's program that i always if if i watch any news program it will be macneil lehrer and and occasionally c span i i like a i saw the uh the uh the the tapes that were that were run of marion [berry's] drug bust was the whole thing was was run on that and and and also they have the uh the uh uh [parliament's] question and answer period it when when it first uh you know when it first tuned in on that i you know it's one that's i think it was somebody was just [scarcely] just just ripping the hell out of another person and i and everybody was you know making noise in the background and then yeah here's this [dude] in a [wig] and i said to myself it's another monty python that i didn't know about and then and then up jumps margaret thatcher off her green bench and i said oh it's parliament yeah so i i thought to myself i can't wait i'm going over to to britain in mid you know in mid may i i i'm going to uh you know you know approach my uh you know this is how i discovered you know the the prime [minister's] you know question and answer period you know yeah uh_huh do you think that the weekly magazines provide you with as much detail information as you'd like uh_huh uh_huh oh that's right you're very close actually it's almost a uh bedroom community for the capital uh_huh yeah a lot of my information comes from several sources probably pretty high up on the list is national public radio uh which i like uh i i think it's fairly objective and i always like the letters that they read which tend to accuse them of being too liberal and too conservative and while there's an inherent uh filtering process going on just by the letters they choose to read uh i always figure it's a good thing when any given group is being accused by each side of uh [favoring] the other side that's that's potential indication of balance and generally i really do believe they are pretty balanced uh i also read time magazine and we get one of the daily newspapers around here where we go through various sections of the uh various uh of the articles and the front section and uh oh oh you did you use to live around here oh okay oh yeah okay i know exactly where that is yeah we we get the mercury which i generally think is actually a pretty good newspaper the newspaper i really been impressed with it when i've read it at times at well the los angeles times which i've found to be a uh a very good quality uh newspaper and i like a lot of the articles there the other thing when you said we don't have cable t v so but the other thing that you referred to that always sounds really interesting to me is is called c span both uh_huh uh_huh oh i never say that that would have been interesting yeah i i think that's always fascinating i wish i wish we had something but it's usually the prime minister right thatcher major which could be another of monty python i i have seen that and uh a aside from the level of [wit] which is much higher than generally in american politics uh which i really enjoy i really like the fact that they have a chance to ask hard real questions i think and it's unlike the fairly controlled uh press conferences that presidents of the united states have here where they they always seem okay well let's see right uh we don't get that in uh straight fashion but you know the other major channels have been carrying a lot of it so i've seen a good bit of their coverage uh_huh right well they've really done uh good job of keeping everybody informed of what's going on sometimes i've wondered if it wasn't almost more than we needed to know uh_huh well our uh newspaper does a pretty good job on most things but you know its uh not totally in depth and quite frankly i didn't read all of the war stuff you know it was just there were too many long articles and i try to quickly read through the paper before work in the morning so i don't don't get to spend a lot of time on everything uh i'm at work yes uh_huh what about your uh radio stations do they uh provide much in the way of current event stuff uh_huh well i've lived in a small town before and was quite aware of the local radio station at that time and i know how they are well ours uh that we tend to listen to most um i like the way they handle news type things because in the morning and in the evening they'll have you know five minutes worth of news every half hour but in the middle of the day they don't just drown you with the same old stuff and they won't interrupt unless it's you know really important and and of course they did a good bit for some of the war stuff but they didn't just over do it yeah i think so i i don't really think we need to know or even sometimes care so much about all the little nitty gritty things they keep asking over and over i think think the reporters sometimes ask the [silliest] questions yeah things like that are just kind of absurd or once in a while they'll they'll keep just uh [hounding] someone that they're interviewing and there seems to be no purpose uh you know the person has stated some opinion or fact or whatever and that should be the end of it and they just keep on and on and on uh_huh yeah well you too oh well we're having sunshine and i think it's going to be up in the seventies today so you too where do you get most of your current events uh_huh yeah yeah i was i was uh we don't have cable so we were watching c n n a lot and then trying to switch thank goodness for remote control we were switching from one station to another and in between keeping the radio on it was extraordinary yeah we um um and then you know couldn't wait for the newspaper reminded me of when i was younger the uh the time of [watergate] and just couldn't get enough of it but yeah um i it was the first couple of nights sitting up and watching t v late into the evening and you just wanted to get the latest news what was happening huh yeah yeah you just couldn't you couldn't put it you couldn't put it down it did yeah it was like you know that what was it two steps forward one step back and uh but occasionally you know you'd stay in tune just long enough to get the latest different [tidbit] or a different angle and uh you really became addicted to it for a while i try to um the newspaper comes uh in the morning and i leave for work at seven huh yeah yeah and i usually don't get a chance to sit down until after work and at that point i at least try to get through most most the front section and maybe you know one or two other sections where what what newspaper do you get uh there how does it how does it compare can you like how does it compare to the post yeah that's funny because every once in a while if my husband and i have traveled or something um and we pick up a local paper we're really shocked even in a major city at how local it is it's really [provincial] is it really i mean that's that's maybe because we get so you know we're so [jaded] with the post uh which is really international and and i keeps reminding me you know that this we're we're really in an in an different situation here and i keep saying no wonder the rest of the people in the world vote for in the country vote the way they do i mean but uh i probably do watch more t v because i get home and in between say cooking dinner or something if i can catch a five or six o'clock news i watch that usually uh before we settle down uh depending what time we get to bed we'll usually watch the ten or the eleven o'clock news we have a ten o'clock news here at night and that's ideal because by ten thirty i start to [fade] so uh what are you studying yeah i remember when i was in school yeah yeah yeah no i can remember way back back in those days when i was in school the i think the only time we only really watched the news and this tells you how old i was was during the cuban missile crisis uh i we could just we were all centered around that television that's exactly right yeah although i do worry that how easy this one was might be a bad lesson uh to to the younger people um you know than there is the other generation oh that's true yeah that was probably the best part of the news was the uh some of the human interest stories yeah yeah does it does it bother you that uh at this point in your life that you're not getting more direct news or what are you studying okay yeah um i guess how old are you okay then i'm see i'm about twenty years older i really do i do rely i do miss it i do rely on the news and uh i i guess i regret i don't get enough really local we get some local papers but i guess i'm more interested in the national or international news news [overload] yeah but well it's i'll i'll tell you though it is hard when you go to vote i mean there are so many issues and there're so many people running that you know unless you have some way of [evaluating] it and i guess the news does help well it was really nice talking talking to you okay i hope so take care uh generally the most of my information i'll get in the morning with my newspaper periodically updated through the day i try to catch the news at least once before i go to work either on t v or on the radio most days it's just catching it on the radio on the drive in to work uh for world events i'll take c n n any day but for local local coverage or statewide coverage i'll take the local news a lot more indepth i extremely so and there's no [midground] anywhere in it with what i'm involved with doing is kind of a controversial job anyway i work with the uh state prison system so i'm always kind of interested i look at the what the liberal view is on the inmates need more rights and i hear the more conservative lines that we need to get back to making the punishment fit the crime but they never do go far enough after four years with the system i've got an extreme almost an extremist view on that end of the criminal justice system because what they got now sure isn't working yes that's i'm a inside guard i also work in the [segregation] department for the ones that mess up so i get the real [sweethearts] but i get a aside from that i i'd almost say i've got extremist views on gun controls on personal crime uh personal crime prevention there was a thing recently in the paper there was a bill in front of the state legislature that was going to allow the average citizen to be able to pack his own weapon again concealed or [unconcealed] i'm all for that i don't know if every citizen does or not but just you having lived in houston you know what it's like out there when i go to a shopping mall if i i feel under dressed if i'm carrying less than two blades from the training i had in the military i'd rather take somebody with a blade at close range than i would with a pistol because i know they're going to go down i know i can keep them down but if the if the option came up to where i could pack a side arm in the open i i don't worry about carrying it concealed i want them to know i'm packing it and given the option of that i would definitely when i went shopping to the malls i would definitely be packing all kind of firepower wisdom city okay that's where the only [stipulation] i'd like to see [tacked] on to the legislation saying that there had to be some form of formal firearms instruction n r say n r a certified firearms instruction you can't train somebody how to shoot in a combat situation until they've been there i've seen it in lebanon i was in in the granada invasion in eighty three i was an advisor down in central america in eighty four i'm very accustomed to knowing when i pull a piece out whether it's a full sized firearm or a handgun when it clears leather the [shot's] going to be fired you don't pull it out for show you pull it out to take care of business the same way with the blade it it comes out of my back pocket or it comes out of a [sheath] on my web gear it's coming out and it's going to draw blood you don't pull it i'm trying to think it was the uh in the [gurkha] forces out of india had a legend that went along with their [legendary] side arm the [kukri] which is their blade you never drew that thing out unless it was going to draw blood which is a good mental training aspect for it that or any side arm whether it be a blade or whether it be a handgun or whatever there's also a moral aspect to it a lot of people have not either mentally sat down and gone over the moral aspect can i take human life even in a life threatening situation to myself or to a loved one and when it actually comes down they don't have time to think about it in that fraction of a succeed that they're caught i don't know if i can do this there's a bullet already on the way to them or there's a blade already cutting them somewhere because they they had the time to react but they [hesitated] and that's impossible to in a classroom setting explain that to somebody they've got to on their own have made that decision long before they ever decided to carry a weapon of any type whether it be a fighting staff up to a forty four [magnum] any any of them in the correct hands they're an absolutely fantastic weapon but if you haven't made that moral decision can i take a human life even under those situations where either my life or a life of a friend or a life of a family member is threatened can you do you defeated the purpose of even having the gun so how do you keep up with the news um do you read the newspaper um what daily charlotte observer um is that there in your city uh_huh so um so um do you think you get anything from your local newspaper um yeah i don't i'm not exactly sure how good the national news is though how accurate exactly fear yeah it seems like they're not really trying to report the news they are trying to report how the news affects them or where they're at with the news or something along those lines um yeah a little bit of color or something for the lack of total information that was given on the t v lack they give immediate for the lack of total well rather [biasly] i i believe huh very [procity] um for the city fathers but uh it seems almost as though they don't care about how the national news affects the local area yeah and then they give give you just the local [obits] and that's it and well hell you don't know know those people that died or or what from well what i mean is do you if your in a strange city you certainly don't know them i work for texas instruments uh yes and yourself yeah i understand huh that's interesting i've always considered myself um how is this best put um the charles [bollfield] trash grew up in west texas thank you yeah um so do you think our local do you think our national news tells us anything important um yeah i i i watch sixty minutes almost religiously well and and more importantly than that i wonder how the other side of the story is and of course they're not going to tell the other side of the story and they're not going to tell it accurately uh we don't we don't have cable yeah we've watched little bits here and there during the gulf crisis and we i wasn't exactly sure how accurate it was either and it seemed as though during the gulf crisis it might have been under pressure from the incorrect side i i'm not sure how to phrase that uh [delicately] yeah it is i i didn't feel comfy you know i you know you always hear about the warm fuzzy feeling i kept watching that be it c n n in a bar or or or or local news at home or federal news at home or see um we don't subscribe to our colorado springs paper we subscribe to a different paper and um but on occasion more than occasionally we'll buy the local paper and that warm fuzzy that we're talking about i never could get that warm fuzzy feeling in the pit of my stomach about are these people really telling me the truth or more importantly all the truth well i'd suspect that to be true but you couldn't prove it to me and and most importantly i couldn't believe any of those people they didn't seem believable oh all four um well we have the independent here and we've got the three majors and p b s and we watched all four of those and on more than occasionally i went to a bar that had c n n running around the clock and still i got this feeling as though from these six or eight news sources i had that something was missing and oh [stormin'] norman oh of course and you've got to expect that but i had the feeling that no matter who i listened to it wasn't that they weren't telling me the truth i felt that someone was lying to me and there's nothing there still at this state that i can put my finger on and say oh here's where they [lied] to me just a feeling yes wouldn't it be wonderful if there were no more wars oh i guess mostly uh really i get the i guess the headlines on the news and then i read the newspaper for a little more detail uh i used to take some news magazines but i found that i just didn't have enough time to really read them yeah yeah to get my money's worth out of it you know i'd i'd oh i was taking newsweek for a long time and i'd read it a little bit and put it back for a while and you know first thing you know i'm reading a three week old news magazine that got to be kind of silly so i cut that out but i do read the paper just oh just about every day uh_huh yeah yeah yeah i'm i like to watch the news uh if i really know that something's going on because like i say you you can kind of get the headlines and a pretty quick thumbnail sketch of what's going on but then i i like the paper because you do get more detail oh it i tell you yeah i think it does i i tell you it's it's really interesting when when you are personally involved or or personally see something that happened and then gets reported on later it's it's you know i've i've kind of been in that situation a couple of times and it's it's interesting to see how the how the reporters and and how the other people yeah how they saw it as opposed to how you saw it and and sometimes it's uh you know sometimes it's just like i saw it and then again sometimes it's not yeah yeah but uh it's i don't know it's you know the problem is you really don't know i think so many times if if the coverage is accurate or fair and that's that's the problem i guess uh uh_huh yeah oh yeah yeah it's uh it's interesting to to hear from the experts you know the so called experts but i think sometimes they tend to go a little overboard uh_huh yeah yeah it's kind of funny we were we were kind of discussing that at work one day and you know the the introduction to the expert that they have you know this is mister jones he's been working on this project for thirty years you know he knows all there is to know about it and we just kind of looked around at our project at t i and you know we've got people that have been on the project for a long time that you know don't know the first thing about what's going on so we're kind of uh [quoting] those guys and you know and everybody was having a good time with it so that just uh you know that's a a little lesson on how the experts can be but uh oh yeah yeah yeah yeah the the the media was more [mobilized] than the military was i think uh_huh yeah yeah yeah well you know the the situation the way it was there for a while you know you had uh you had t v reports coming out of baghdad and that's to me that's unheard of you know that's that's crazy you go no huh_uh yeah because here we are at at at all out war with a country and and we've got our own people right in the heart of that country you know right in area that we're trying to blow out yeah oh yeah some of them uh uh you know almost give the air of of [arrogance] you know oh you can't touch me i'm a reporter you know you don't want to touch me i'm a reporter but sometimes the crowd you know or the people just don't really respect that no huh_uh yeah i mean there's not much we can do you get yeah yeah oh yeah really like i say you know it they've had enough enough [ample] time to get out and then they don't then you know that's that's their own problem you know whether it's yeah that's yeah yeah that's exactly right you know because that's exactly what we're doing they're they stay over there long after they've been warned to get out then they expect us to come and bail them out which of course we have to do you know but uh no it's there's a lot of lot of sources for news and i guess a lot of sources of news there's just oh you know news people every where all over it's just amazing i guess the i guess the american public probably more so than anybody else i know just has this this need this [thirst] for news you know i'm the same way i i love to read the paper i like to read the editorials i like uh_huh yeah yeah it's it's you know some of the stuff i don't i don't feel the need some of the news items i guess is what i'm saying i don't feel like are really [newsworthy] the personal tragedies and that kind of thing but you know but uh-oh the big disasters and the big natural disasters and stuff yeah that's news but yeah yeah that's yeah oh yeah that's just that's strictly national [inquirer] stuff you know and i i don't care a thing about that i haven't read anything about it or or even watched anything but yeah yeah all right all right you too we'll see you later bye bye okay i will i guess i will start and say that i keep up uh with current events mostly from three or four areas and i'll tell you what they are and uh then you uh would you please uh tell me how you do it i think i keep up better with what's going on in the world from the newspaper but i usually am introduced to subjects by television exactly in more detail i also take uh time magazine and i enjoy that a lot and uh i get a lot of uh i think pretty good detail there and uh i'm pretty i'm pretty satisfied with i think those and some friends who are who are very knowledgeable and how how do you yes yes yes yes wonderful of course no i think that's right too well especially the wall street journal don't you find though that it's hard to find time to yes to the reading is the wall street journal if i don't read it the day that it comes in then if they start piling up on me then i have to just forget about about it usually yes really it really is and especially if you're trying to save papers for recycling just terrible job but uh i think i enjoy uh time and i i get insight and i don't like that magazine very much it looks like a little time but it is not written as well as time staff uh writers do but i i like some of those magazines because they just choose certain subjects i guess and deal with with a a well yes right i guess you have five children well uh oh well of course exactly well you are passing good information on to them aren't you yes right they've heard it though sure it is it has been nice talking to you enjoyed it a great deal there really is it's beautiful it really is beautiful you will i know she will enjoy it oh yes like the news hour or something yeah i think that's that's helpful i think that's right i i i listen to the evening news you know to get the kind of thumbnail things but i try to read the paper each day uh covering the the headlines and then the in each of the sections and then i think i enjoy the editorials about as much as anything yeah yeah that's right that's right or or to help you understand really how you think i think sometimes um we're very divided about about our feelings about things and uh sometimes the editor will help me focus uh you know somebody who has thought about it at great length in order to write something about it usually has a kind of an uh an approach that maybe i hadn't quite considered and i find them very interesting and helpful i think to uh settling my mind about things um yeah i think yeah i used to listen a lots when i drove but i don't i have eye problems and i don't drive now and i i don't listen to the radio very much just because i don't i'm not where it is uh that's a good idea yeah that's a good idea yeah yeah that's true uh uh_huh uh_huh i think so too yeah different point of view yeah i think you have to be very careful in with the media in for that reason because they they are not because they are very biased most of them have very biased feelings it's hard to hard to get one i'll tell you the the we take the insight magazine and i find it to be as about as unbiased as any i've found yeah yeah yeah huh that's interesting to be biased yeah isn't that interesting kind of a sad commentary though when you think about it it is right right and it's such a valuable tool and and their should be some moral uh you know there's so many people to be [duped] yeah yeah that's right that's right that's too bad yeah yeah that that's true that's good source of really good information usually yeah yeah i think that's right i think that's true yeah yeah yeah well that's true be awful if you couldn't read isn't it i i've learned to appreciate that i've had some eye problems in the last four or five years and there are times when i couldn't read for one reason or another and it's a it's a it's awful the so the printed the printed or whatever word is really a valuable thing to us even though sometimes it may be slanted i think you need to learn to think and understand that you have to interpret and stand up for yourself decide what you think and make decisions all right good to talk to you okay normally i watch uh t v uh usually twice a day oh basically network news was it once in a while depending what i think's going to come on when they put on the previews yeah that's about what i do but uh usually i hit the headlines when i walk by book stores or anything else on papers but i normally don't buy newspapers fridays and sundays why friday oh okay sunday's usually my big one yeah i enjoy just point blank reading basically the headlines and i go especially if i've seen something one way or the other and i hit the t v to find out actually what's going on around here oh it's same way here what about when um desert storm was on yeah well see i had the radio going on that almost all the time especially between jobs on that and that's when i hit the radio but when they stopped i stopped but uh now i like see i usually i hit the six o'clock and usually the ten but uh sometimes i have to search on ten because they get boring they pick up the same thing on six so i usually have to search to see if anything is come up or not right do you ever discuss at work now see usually when i was working at t i we hit about eight o'clock in the morning we all just what was news and coming up and all so we hack it out between all of us one way or the other but uh well ours was kind of strange because we'd hit um since we were all females and uh we'd hit either the blacks because two of us were black one two three four of us are white and so it would be a cross between all of it going in together and uh i really enjoyed that i really enjoyed that because we got a cross section of viewpoints and it was fascinating in the morning so we ended up getting there well we were all there usually by seven thirty it it was fascinating it really was i really enjoyed it and i think everyone else did otherwise we wouldn't keep doing it every morning no oh that would be interesting i'm not uh i don't seem to find time to read too much except of the stuff i'm studying right now but uh news wise that way no but i have realized most of mine uh from the t v i think has increased watching the news since since the war um well see i'm like as i said i pick up on sixty minutes or twenty twenty usually my favorite is sixty minutes and i'll pick up on them and find out what they're going to see and then i'll pick up the rest of the stories like that and get into like that but not uh most of the time if a really interesting one thing or another i'll go a little bit further but usually it's i just don't have the time but i can understand now why some of the [newspaper's] circulation has gone down because it's so much easier to watch the t v and keep at least ninety percent abreast and watching you know reading the newspaper and forget it well i got tired with newspapers because i seem to stack them up without reading them that's why i stopped i found out when i got the newspaper that it i'd read the headlines front page and maybe through a couple other sections and then i start packing them up and i'm going i never read this what am i you know why even subscribe to it when i'm not reading it well see like when they have that recycle program on was it save the earth save america i think what it was i watched that twice i recorded that because there were some things in there i wanted that i hadn't written down so i had recorded that but you can't find that in the newspaper but see i take that as far as my concern that's news to me because i enjoy something like that but uh i wonder about the rest of the world in itself how much they get or how much i talk to people that i work with at night now and the younger group they don't watch too much they don't even see it but i think they're being raised watching t v more than newspapers so i wish they'd put a little bit more depth in some of their stories i think they could use a little more of it a little bit wiser and put a little more positive in some of their stories than complete negative all the time well that's too true to a degree if they can put a complete half hour t v program on of what police have done to um or fireman you know off handed when they go in and find people or going down all all sorts of things you know what i'm talking about sorry about that right i've seen parts of it that's one of them um there there is lots of stories out there about people what they've done out of you know stop on the highway and stop someone uh just because there was an accident one way or the other to me that's positive see so you wouldn't see like that's a cop show fine but there's positive in many different areas all right [patricia] and yours is [charley] right well i i listen to the radio whenever i can i watch t t v news at night but i'm really a big reader so i read that paper from front to back but i don't think either of the papers i get here in the metroplex are that great especially the star [telegram] i get that one it's it's not the highest quality i don't think and i get the dallas morning news and it's kind of fading no not the morning news i get the times herald what do you get oh where'd you move from oh yeah i think it's the better of the papers uh_huh yeah i do too oh yeah i love that i think that's so good once you've listen to that you can't believe the regular radio news uh_huh yeah i like i like that too oh i don't think any of our papers in the area are great papers you might have had a really excellent one but you know you have to get a local paper or you won't know what's going on that's why i get the fort worth one which i didn't do for years before we moved over here but it's the only way i could find out what was going on in my own city of arlington so i had to subscribe to it finally oh really oh yeah well the editorial page is pretty good of course they you know they follow things they get from other places but uh i'm not real thrilled with with the paper yeah i listen to that quite a bit when i can yeah you really get a whole story you know the news on television is probably i think the worst source because it's like eight minutes of top news out of the whole half hour by the time you take all those you know the ads and the sports and the features and the the cute little talk you know uh i'll catch the ten o'clock sometimes or if there's a story that i'm really interested in i'll i'll try to oh i love nightline yeah i like that yeah it really is if you have to do something early where do you work do you work at t i no you don't work at t i do you where where where do you have to drive to oh yeah you go against all that traffic i guess on l b j or something oh yeah well my husband drives from here in arlington to t i on central yeah he listens to a lot of news but yeah um well just time as far as news i mean we get a lot of magazines but that that's the only news one that i get oh yeah uh well i didn't like it this week it was just all about california and i don't care that much about uh did you get it this week the whole [issue's] is oh uh_huh well that's true no we do get time and um i i read it pretty well you know i especially read the political news uh um i like to keep up with that but um like you said i think the best source of all is the public radio and well [nightline's] great especially when something exciting is going on you know then i then i'll really make a well you know it used to come on at ten thirty which was better but then they put that silly entertainment tonight right oh was it yeah i know i wish it would come on earlier but obviously the sitcoms make more money or they you know or they wouldn't have it on at eleven but uh uh well i guess we've exhausted that subject well who do you think's going to run for president next year since you're up on all your news guess we've got bush again but right patrick buchanan supposedly was thinking of running against bush or he just announced today i don't know if he's announced or he's thinking about it but it was on the news well i would think but uh usually uh either t v or radio it it seems like uh we get the weekend paper but uh even then it just seems that sometimes you're so busy you don't want to take an hour or so to sit down and read the paper so it's so much quicker just to you know hear it on the radio or watch t v uh_huh oh you do uh_huh yeah oh yeah not quite the same yeah and a lot of times when you have two different uh papers you get two different stories yeah right oh excuse me oh i do too it's just it's so much easier just to you know listen to the radio in your car it seems like or just to sit down for a short while and watch the news than it is to sit down and you know i mean i'll read periodicals and stuff too but uh usually those come out after the fact and course they give you more information so if you want that then that's fine right right yeah uh_huh right yeah i know that when i'm on vacation i am like seems like i am totally out of it i don't know what's going on and i don't really care it's kind of nice to get away from it all right yeah oh uh_huh right right no we don't so we don't watch c n n oh okay right right oh is that right uh_huh so you figured might as well get the cable huh right now that will be nice uh_huh right yeah oh is that right i bet the kids were happy yeah well we had uh i don't know if your son told you but we had two papers here in dallas and now we just have the one oh okay so that will probably make a difference in the reporting they are uh on the weekends gosh uh let me see i've got this on sunday it's a dollar and during the week i'm not really sure how much it is it's probably i guess you know seventy five cents or so i would think uh_huh but you get it every day don't you oh so that's that's really good then right uh_huh yeah that must uh do you have a hard time keeping up with it reading everything oh well that's good so the question is how do we keep up with current events as a matter of fact as you called i was uh taking a look at uh the san francisco examiner yeah uh i watch the macneil lehrer news hour fairly regularly and uh network news less often and will watch some of the talking heads programs on p b s uh and that's pretty much about it we don't get time or newsweek uh and uh as a matter of fact i don't get any of those sort of of magazines anymore yeah do you watch the network news yeah out here they're moving it to a seven o'clock uh well they're moving the prime time schedule up from uh eight to eleven which used to be eight o'clock at night till eleven o'clock at night now to seven to ten and i guess the network news which has moved up in time out here uh will move up on all three of the local network [affiliates] i was just reading as a matter of fact about the news coverage of the movie j f k yeah it's really interesting to listen to how different people uh approach different topics uh it the i didn't realize this but uh dan rather at c b s was the first person to view this [zapruder] film that was actually made of the assassination and he viewed it the day after and uh got it completely backwards in terms of what had happened that was significant because of the obvious [contention] that there were two [gunmen] at least not one and uh it's really and he rather later admitted that he'd gotten the key piece of uh uh evidence backwards that he'd [argued] like a lot of other people that kennedy had [lurched] forward after the shot and he'd in fact been uh forced backward which [lends] [credence] to the two uh to the two [gunmen] conspiracy theory have you seen the movie i haven't either yeah it is uh you know i uh are you one of those people who believes that it was uh not a lone [gunman] that that we just never really got the full story yeah i i haven't seen the movie either but i i think most of us in this country believe that it just doesn't make sense that it was one guy and uh well that's what [oliver] [stone's] seeking to do and i i think it's really interesting to look at this because i think it kind of gets at the question of how people get their news sometimes really important news comes to people through movies through television yeah and and i think that's really interesting i know that uh my wife and i were talking about how uh much uh attitudes toward women uh and and the relationships between men and women husband's and wives uh are changing and i think people get more of that information through television sitcoms than they do through reading the newspaper uh that was the topic of [yesterday's] t i conversation and and uh i think it's really interesting because i think all of those things wind up carrying the message and i think uh uh it's going to be real interesting to see where we go with all of the selective channels that people are going to be able to get [via] cable television and computer services so much uh so much more than we can possibly consume in the way of news uh i came up here i was uh working for uh a unit of a t and t and was promoted i came out to california to go to graduate school and and was hired out of the p h d program uh in southern california and went to work for a unit of a t and t and they promoted me and moved me up here and we liked it my my wife is from san diego live uh right out by the park right uh right off uh [lindley] [meadow] in golden gate park yeah yeah what took you to texas yeah oh yeah uh_huh and you grew up in walnut creek yeah how long have you been in texas that's do you like it that's a i hear a lot of good things about texas it's probably more affordable housing yeah well i say uh a good question uh i read the newspaper obviously and and watch watch t v and uh uh we have one here at at six o'clock in the evening to seven where we have local news followed by i i can't name the c b s i guess it is who is the gentleman that m c that program yeah i think i think it's dan rather yeah i i've just retired recently so i have had very little time really to watch t v and uh to get the news so all of my time that was available wasn't until about six and seven uh obviously i scanned the newspaper and uh i think no i get mine at the end of the day at least i use to and now i am beginning to read it about noon since i have just retired i retired from penn state and i just uh now i have some morning time available and it use to be that we got our newspapers in the evening which i liked because that's when i could read it and i felt like it was fresh and for the last two or three years our newspapers have been coming early morning and it has been six or seven o'clock at night before i got to read it and i had already heard all kinds of [conflicting] things during the day before i read a newspaper yeah uh uh_huh well that's like normal time six to seven uh_huh how do you feel about the [authenticity] of these various uh methods of uh presenting the news yes i always wonder about the accuracy of their source of information that's what bothers me particularly you know when we had this business of the of the war over there in europe i mean i always wondered about uh did they base what they said on whoever told them well whoever told them might not necessarily have the accurate news and know know the the overall uh story yeah uh uh_huh well there the only thing that you can be sure of that has gotten it straight from the horse so to speak is uh did you hear president bush's speech the other night well at least we know what he said and we we don't have to uh read in the newspaper what they think he said or what the democrats think he said we know uh what we heard him say yes that's when you find out of all the [disturbances] that are in the background that know one else knows about that's the problem when you are in uh politics there's always somebody working behind your back who just doesn't want you to get your way simply just because you are on the other team well that's ridiculous really uh_huh do you actually read all those magazines every week uh_huh well i uh i i keep up with what's going on by listening to the radio in the car and reading a newspaper a daily newspaper and i i pretty much hardly ever uh see news on television yeah right oh so you can pick up radio moscow or that sort of thing huh that's pretty much like u s radio huh yeah that uh the b b c world services broadcasts on the f m band in near the boston area by our public radio station still uh_huh right or here's uh one presidential candidate saying rude things about the other one's girlfriend or something yeah right well they they uh they have a pretty small vocabulary don't they they yeah that's true it's pretty tough to find objective straight forward news i mean the the b b c got their own slant i mean their basically you know they're they're i think they're addressing their u s service to to [brits] living here yeah they do they do good stuff on [nepal] and south africa you can get good stuff on and you know india and but it's not necessarily close to stuff i'm looking for they tend to make fun of the u s a lot i think well maybe they're right what the heck yeah do they uh do you use any electronic type news services like a you know computer network news services anything like that service then well most of my reading tends to be professional reading so uh [scanning] headlines in the paper or reading over my wife's shoulder tends to be about the only newspaper stuff i do uh and the newspaper is pretty much the local news anyway uh when it comes to national or statewide things uh i keep uh the national public radio station uh that's available here uh on all day and uh that's pretty much where i get my uh both uh statewide and and national news coverage together with a little bit of t v news in the uh in the evenings but primarily from from radio uh which is you know that's a [dosage] of about uh about two two and a half hours of news a day well i it's on in my office and i can i can hear it as i'm working when i'm here my commute is is about fifteen minutes uh so i i you know that's not an issue but that's primarily you know where i end up getting it from and and that for me is as much a a a choice because i find it to be a good way to do it as it is a response to limited time for doing reading and stuff it's probably more because i just enjoy the coverage than it is because i don't have time to read the paper you know well they do to some extent i i hear some some repeats between uh uh the morning edition and the all things considered in the afternoon uh i we do also have a an intentionally repeated coverage they start at five thirty in the morning and uh uh they play the first you know hour again over at the tail end of the broadcast so that people who aren't up that early still get to hear it so some of it is intentionally repeated and and so once in a while i hear the same story twice or in the afternoon i'll hear the same report from the same [correspondent] in [yugoslavia] uh that they played in the morning so there is to some extent some [repetition] uh like that you know but uh for me it's better than trying to read uh time or newsweek or or u s news each week i tried that once and uh if i have something to read i feel obligated to read it and uh then i felt guilty because i never had time to read everything that was in them yeah that was that was about it you know uh so now i'm saving trees and and uh by by not subscribing to the magazines anymore but uh uh well how do you do it you see here we're in in mountain standard time and uh the few times when i've run into shows like good morning america uh they've really been at the wrong time for me they seem to start very late for us and i've got to be at work you know i'm leaving the house at like seven fifteen and so uh uh some of them seem to be you know like they don't come on until seven or something and and so there's not enough time uh to to watch it but they have so many other things that are thrown in that you know i really don't care about you know how to make baked potatoes or or whatever uh or or or weather men with funny uh wigs you know well yeah but they all the morning ones have a tendency to do a little bit of that and all right you know it's mostly just the timing they seem to be on so late in the morning that i i started wondering myself you know so who is it that watches these things but i think it's because of our particular time zone uh it we don't go on daylight savings time and so everything is shifted by an hour that may have been when i you know i looked in on it uh what time it it just uh you know for me a lot of what i look for in news is as much analysis kinds of things or uh sometimes human interest kinds of things that are a reflection of the news rather than just here's the events that happened uh i'm a real history nut and so well how do you keep up on current events uh_huh that's right you usually probably more adept at more at depth at the news uh than most people are i would assume i uh i don't quite have as as [regimented] of a ritual as you do i get up in the morning if i don't have to go to work and then i'll grab the paper i'll usually pull out the sports section and the business section and try to read those two first and then after i get through those i'll turn to the front front page news and and uh if an article catches my my eye i'll i'll read it otherwise i just flip through the paper and and like i said if if nothing really sounds interesting i'll just skip over it do you do you guys have a pretty uh pretty thick paper there in houston on sunday okay that's that's a that's a good sized paper well there's a couple hours project right there uh_huh uh_huh right right is that peter jennings yeah okay i uh [admittedly] don't really tune myself into the into either the five thirty the local news or the six o'clock news i uh it usually ends up being a repeat of what was in the morning paper or else if it's early enough it'll be in the next [day's] paper and uh the local news is to me isn't that interesting because it's generally not too much human interest stuff it's more the you know somebody died here or we had a fire here and uh i don't know i i when i was growing up i used to watch it all the time and maybe that was because i i grew up in a small town where the local news meant something to me because i could relate to the area or to the town or to the people but you know in when you have a dallas fort worth market i really don't care what happened in fort worth or arlington for that matter well um most of what i do is um listen to the news in the morning when i'm heading to work um we get uh we have two different stations here that run uh national public radio and i really enjoy the format in the morning and the evening when i'm driving home from work so that's where i get most of my stuff uh yeah we we also subscribe to the newspaper of course so we get the washington post here and it's a pretty interesting newspaper and uh so it's you know it's it's uh between the two i generally do okay every great once in a while i manage to uh listen to the evening news but not very often how yeah i don't blame you it's it's uh it's yeah and it actually well no i it's i guess what is it it's um it's kind of a talk radio station it's run by a university here called american university or at least that the the general program that i listen to national public radio itself is um a uh uh a [syndicated] thing that's run by a group that operates here in washington uh but if you have any public radio stations in your area chances are pretty good especially in austin come to think of it uh that you're going to be able to get it down there uh you know well i don't know whatever your you know it normally the public radio stations are going to be down at the low end of the dial and you know around eighty eight and uh and so forth and and uh this uh the two radio stations that run here one is a classical station and the other i guess if you had to [categorize] it it's kind of a bluegrass station or something um but uh yeah that that's i'm i'm dead certain some station in your area carries it because every once in a while they'll do little special features on austin it's a real interesting radio program because they they don't just uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh huh well that's very interesting well this comes on right in the evening as i'm driving home and um what they do is they they give you uh about a five to ten minute news uh broadcast and then for the rest of the half hour they usually divide it up into two or three segments where they they cover um topics either of current interests or every once in a while they'll just do kind of an indepth reporting on on some uh particular thing like yeah like for instance how a particular city is doing or something along those lines yeah it's uh yeah it's real good and it it it uh the other thing is is my politics are kind of liberal and and uh so they have a tendency being public radio to sort of take a look at things from the [populus] point of view as opposed to being terribly sympathetic to the government although the you've got to give them credit they do a great job of showing both sides of the story and uh they aren't afraid to poke fun at themselves either uh which is something i really admire so if you watch the evening news which of the news commentators do you tend to like the most yeah yeah i'm the same way but the the evening news on t v it's it's really it's so short that you just uh i don't feel like you wind up getting enough and yet have you ever watched the uh mcneil lehrer report on public t v i sort of feel like that news program drags on too long you know with their little round table discussions and all that sort of stuff and i must admit i i used to try to watch it and it used to make me feel like oh well this is uh something i should be watching you know yeah exactly uh_huh which way which which way does it lean is it conservative or uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh wow that's good yeah well that's well i was just looking around my house and thinking about the painting that i've done and the last time that um we tackled it i did the kitchen and i had gone through a period of depression at one time and painted everything a dark it was called a sassafras it was kind of an [orangish] brown it was not real pretty anyway so the kitchen was one of the rooms that got hit with that color so i tried to cover it with white and it was quite a a [feat] getting that dark a color covered and then just the hassles getting around the cabinets and know if i look underneath my cabinets i'm not satisfied with the jobs i i did on it because there're [splotches] but i'm glad it's done because it's brighter oh lord uh_huh oh yeah so what are you going to get it off with if you get it on and it's dried uh_huh and it's not [scratching] your floor because it's so thick oh that's pretty good we painted every room in this house some of them like two three times we have two children and they just they ruin it's just terrible what they do and then i have been [coloring] my hair and i'm real [haphazard] when i do it so i've got dye on my bathroom door and i haven't figured out how to get that off i guess i'll have to take that door down and really get it good and then we have a two story we did the outside of it one summer that was horrendous i mean i i couldn't stand the back side going up that high on the ladder i could get up on the roof and do that but i dread that the next time uh_huh no i wouldn't think so have you guys tackled your ceilings yet oh we got to do that this summer we're [dreading] it it's like they're dark everything else is white now have you thought about this that wherever you buy your paint you need to make sure that that [store's] not likely to go out of business uh_huh oh but i still feel good the minute i put that paint on even if it does got a dent in it i do oh what else can i tell you about painting oh and i get it all in my hair too do you do that spots in it are you having to repair the walls at all um that's smart so where do you live i'm in garland did you try to call this weekend to that switchboard did you keep getting that it was down you didn't yeah well i've never tried any other kinds of painting besides on a surface like the house like to paint a picture or anything i don't know i can't think of anything else to say about painting it hurts your back and it hurts your arm yeah but you're glad you're doing it right uh_huh do you have one of those [straightedge] things to put underneath when you're doing the [baseboards] on your [baseboards] you don't have any carpet down in your house see we've got carpet and i haven't figured out how you're supposed to paint it on down so that you won't see where you stopped off and still not get it on the carpet because every time you move that [edger] then it gets the carpet into it you can't hold it there until it's dried uh_huh okay yeah uh_huh i see yeah yeah yeah that's for sure well we uh i just got married about six months ago and we bought a house at the same time so we're i'm sitting here in my forty year old house and we're about halfway through the painting process so uh the only uh i guess the the big discussion just kind of what you were mentioning has been the color we ended up with our our living and dining room are now uh kind of a a light peach color with uh and it's got all the old original hardwood trim and stuff so we've got the trim in kind of uh kind of an off white and this is really the first uh interior painting project that i've attacked and it's it's been uh it's been something else to say the least we we had the same type of situation uh the walls were uh uh well they weren't the color difference wasn't so bad but uh there was semigloss underneath and we put a flat over the top and everywhere you'd miss there'd be this little bright spot you could see it seems like you could see it through about three layers of paint every time the sun would come up in the morning i'd see another spot and have to drag out the paint can but uh we've learned we we uh we worked we've worked our way back into the hallway and and we're in the middle of the bathroom now but uh it's it's been quite an adventure the other the other thing that makes it uh a little more difficult we've got all hardwood floors and uh we we've learned to be a little more careful about covering up the floors since the since the first time we spent a lot of time on the floor with a tooth [toothbrush] and what not cleaning up well it's it's not too bad it it uh the floors are finished with a [polyurethane] and it's really not to bad to get off it it we're just using latex and it's not too bad to get it off once it's dried even it it it uh comes off with like a mild [abrasive] pad like a [scotch] [brite] pad or something like that and and soap and water so we got pretty lucky on that no not really but okay yeah yeah oh gosh yeah yeah probably so okay yeah yeah yeah i uh yeah we uh our house was painted as part of the purchase contract so we didn't have to mess with that this time but i've i i grew up on a farm so i i've i've messed with outdoor painting a little bit uh but most of that it was done with a [sprayer] and uh up in the bucket of a [loader] tractor or something like that so it took a lot of the hassle out and then they're we're not you know you're not nearly as concerned with a barn or a [grainery] or something like that as you would be with your own house uh a little bit yeah yeah yeah yeah oh gosh yeah just just the opposite of what everybody's uh working towards now yeah yeah absolutely yeah we uh we [stocked] up the first time around but we've definitely got all the [formulas] on file and uh we're they'll be there for a while we're we're pretty comfortable with that but yeah it it i'm i'm real nervous every time i i open a new can i'm wondering if i shouldn't buy about twenty gallons at one time and keep it all in a in a [washtub] or something somewhere because i'm i'm always afraid that the next coat is not going to match but uh it's gone pretty well it just it it takes it takes some time my problem is while i i'm not overly proud of it but i'm a self [proclaimed] [proclaimed] [perfectionist] and it it takes me a long time to do trim and things like that and i'll find i'll find something as i'm going along something not related like like uh i've gone about changing out all the outlets and switches because they they really didn't match they were a few of them were broken and things like that so i always pick up these little extra tasks as i'm doing this and and the painting actually takes probably uh a fourth of the time and i'm always doing all this other stuff and my wife's hollering at me and wondering what else i've come home with from work this time to to put in a ceiling fan or something strange like that so uh it it it always it it it gets you to look at everything real hard when you start putting a coat of paint on everything you start to notice where all the dents and scratches and things are everywhere yeah yeah it sure makes a difference yeah yeah it's it's been uh we we bought this house with the idea that we were going to spend you know spend a lot of time working on it and uh it was part you know part of the excitement was was getting a good deal on an older house that just it really hadn't been taken care of very well it it was actually it was rented out for a couple of years and things like that so we uh we ended up getting a fairly good deal on it but uh there just isn't enough time i i i find myself going to work knowing that that there's a job about half done at home and i really if i would if i'd just stay home and finish it i'd feel a lot better but uh i'm i'm starting to learn that there's always something else once you get done you can always start over and and you make up all kinds of excuses so uh uh not a whole lot it they're they're in pretty good condition um as far as uh major repairs you know a lot of little filling holes and nicks and things like that but uh the only the most major things have been uh-oh i guess i i moved a couple of outlets and er uh switches i should say for some reason they put a bathroom light switch in the hallway and uh yeah and i i didn't like that very well so i i moved that but uh most of it most of it's in pretty good shape uh live in dallas okay okay uh no no i haven't uh i hadn't tried in fact we were we were planting flowers this weekend so uh i was pretty tied up but uh_huh yeah that uh yeah you know it i get a i get a sore neck from looking up all the time yeah things like that but uh no that pretty much covers my experiences oh yeah most definitely it it just it makes such a difference i like i say the overall appearance of this house is what really devalued it so much uh i you know i i don't want to put a price on it but i just feel like we're every every gallon of paint adds a tremendous amount of value to the house you know every time i do something aside from that it just makes me feel a whole lot better to come home an you know the walls are clean and they match and all those kinds of things yeah yeah we do it uh it sometimes works and it sometimes doesn't it's a uh when i start doing trim i i've gotten to where i i tend to [freehand] it because there's so many layers of paint on this house after forty years that uh it it's so hard to tell where an edge is anymore and uh yeah yeah they no there's no carpet in the house right now um well you know um yeah i i've i've seen uh they're they make some plastic edging stuff that comes in like three foot lengths and you can uh you can tape them together and and and put hi you didn't try [rewallpapering] you just uh did you use a textured paint or um well did you get good results yeah but it just didn't it didn't it didn't cover it well we did a uh we moved oh last august and we're getting a house my house had this dark wood paneling at the end of the den and we decided we went to i've forgotten one of the paint stores and they just said oh you can get by and i forgotten what it was you put down and then you can just paint right over the dark well more or less after about uh half dozen coats it looks reasonable but it kept the the dark it was uh just a real dark uh wood grain type paneling and it was smooth and uh and we would we put this stuff on and and it supposedly textured it or did something to it and but because of the dark behind it it was really hard to cover and yeah it was something like that although we sort of when we got through i wished we hadn't done it because we were you know we were trying to make the house look nice to sell it and we were painting it and trying to do uh you know make it and it it really was you know the advice they give you is uh the job was considerably tougher than we thought uh particularly when you try to i was talking to somebody else who who had a lot of wood [panelling] and uh they had gotten somebody to come in with an estimate and it seemed like there was it was a good sized den with a lot [panelling] and the people quoted thirty thousand dollars to paint it or something have you have you tried getting outside [estimates] to see what it costs to have something painted yeah yeah oh that's quite reasonable um problem have you have you tried matching paint lately my wife we we built a shed over the long way actually it took this is not on the topic but i did finish it but my wife went to the uh home depot i think it was and and took a uh a copy took a piece of brick and she wanted to paint the shed it's it's a wooden shed uh and she took it and they've got this machine that matches the color of paint and uh they got and uh and in fact she put some right she got they mixed uh a gallon of it and uh it's just remarkable how close it will match the paint uh and it does it uh-oh electronically some something magic yeah you know they but it's electronic uh you put your sample under this thing and it looks at it and uh and determines the and it it's really remarkable uh the problem they had and then they wanted some gray to do the to do the trim and uh but they didn't didn't occur to them that um that they could have taken a sample um from i forgotten this is [sherwin] williams paint or something but anyway it's it's remarkable that's one of the problems though when you start painting to try to get the you know you want this you want this to look like this and you want that to look like that and of course if it's all white you're all right but when you start getting into colors have you had problems getting colors to match um so gosh so you so what's your what's the solution then oh my well at least you'll get very good at it right you could go back and and paint the whole thing over that's uh this is an interesting topic that they would bring up painting because it uh it seems like everybody has a you know to go in and do i'll just do a little bit here and a little there although the uh it's uh it we almost one day we painted the house to uh we painted we painted the whole inside and it had all this dark trim we thought uh you know we did the one wall but the other trim i'm trying to think i think i think we left most of it because it gets to be uh they don't do that in the newer houses now we don't the mold everything is white in a new house everything is white oh good luck we wound up selling the house actually i i don't know whether it made actually it does it's interesting that the white um makes the rooms look bigger one of the in our down stairs in our dining room we have a formal dining room it has molding uh like picture frames i don't know what you call that that actually that are along the walls you know up a couple of feet and my wife painted those the insides of those dark blue and uh it makes the room look remarkably smaller the trim is still white the the molding but by and she did that all the way around the room which makes it look very attractive but it makes the room look smaller which is uh uh which is it explains why they why they have everything white but i you wouldn't think that i well maybe maybe that understands colors would know all of that stuff but uh not particularly because the house has so many windows uh it has the the the living room has four uh good size windows and uh well of course at night but with the we have we have a soccer field that's um oh about a hundred yards from our house and the lights shine right at our house it's kind of we didn't know that when we bought the house but yeah we have a lot of light yeah and well it it it um well it's just uh i think it's just the the the dark blue to about three feet and then above that we left it white so anyway it didn't it didn't change but the the interesting thing is that paint we wound up having to go back and scrape some of that away it didn't it kind of [bled] under the masking tape which i guess is probably the topic we're we're really on to that that the masking is you have to do that very very carefully that's right you can work yourself to death well i'm sorry to hear your color didn't come out so good over the weekend it's kind of frustrating well i've got to go to a meeting it's been good talking to you okay good bye hi uh as a matter of fact this past weekend since we had a long weekend i uh took on a painting project in my bathroom and i had wallpaper up i had to completely strip the wallpaper off and then [spackle] holes and then paint that and it took me all weekend because uh the wallpaper getting it off i had to wet the walls down and that had to dry and then the spackling had to dry a day and then the painting took another day no i i just painted uh no actually the wall behind the paper was smooth so i just used a like a semigloss and well no not really i need to it it looks so bad you can see where those spackling marks were i need to uh either paper back over it or do something yeah it covered the spots pretty good but it didn't excuse me it didn't uh uh it just didn't look as smooth as i wanted it to uh_huh uh_huh was it like a [primer] yeah oh my goodness that's an awful lot not inside now uh when we bought the house that we live in right now we had a company that came out and painted it that was one of the requirements from you know f h a that the house be painted before we bought it and it was fairly reasonable we have a brick house but all the trim around the house was uh if i remember right it was like five hundred dollars yeah yeah so that wasn't too bad no i haven't uh_huh uh_huh oh so they did do a good job yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah as a matter of fact uh what we've got ours painted now is kind of a light creamy color and a uh a blue and the blue even so many years two years later or so it doesn't match you know it's the very same type of paint and everything so oh i have no idea i repainted the whole thing yeah yeah yeah yeah white yeah that's what we're trying to get ours to look like yeah uh_huh uh_huh oh i see huh she painted the insides dark blue and then the trim what color okay white uh_huh yeah yeah yeah yeah well uh what about the [lighting] did it make a big difference oh uh_huh uh_huh so that uh you get some the color doesn't really matter for because you have that light i see uh_huh and it takes a long time yeah really no kidding it is a lot of work a lot of work nice talking to you bye so what is your latest experience with painting uh_huh right isn't that amazing it it looks so easy just [slapping] paint on i had an addition put on and um we and i decided because my inner room looked so dingy because i put these beautiful french doors in and so i decided okay i'll just you know have them paint this little room you know a little ten by ten dining area it took four days and even the painter couldn't give me a good estimate he said well i'll be done this afternoon you know and pretty soon before you know it you know he's run into so many problems and it's just there's nothing there to be a problem i thought but um it just took him so much longer and and he was there to paint the french doors also um and if you've ever painted french doors which my husband just finally said he wasn't going to do because it looked so [formidable] um then then just we we got this painter and i just called him because i got a little ad out of the you know the [adcose] or whatever in the mail and uh you know just got this painter person over here and he said yeah i can finish it in a day oh right so the whole project basically took a week funny and i go what makes you a professional you know how much you know more do you know than i know about this whole situation but he just kept painting on those french doors you know and each little um paint stroke you know the paint wasn't going on right is what it was so he had to redo them like three times before i was happy with them before he was happy you know that they even looked halfway decent and so it's just been painting yeah i mean hire a professional but that doesn't guarantee anything right oh no oh and that can make a difference too i mean and they bring the uh you know little samples and you've got like maybe five hundred well that's an [exaggeration] but there are just so many tints upon tints upon tints and you don't know what you to want to put up there and by the time it's on i i selected a what i thought was white and it was like you said you know it was blue blue cast to it and it looked awful on so that was the next problem he had to redo that too i this was a and it was a major project getting the money together to do it too by the end of the whole project but you know we worked something out because he was kind of [apologetic] that it took so long he really came over here to paint i think because he kept offering to paint the outside of my house i don't think he did the interiors very well and yeah no uh_huh it wasn't a big deal for them i don't know i think my husband's really glad about that for sure you just you just get in there and do it yourself yeah uh_huh yeah well it's it's not that easy it's like it's uh i don't even know if i you know i would not even recommend this person again to anybody i don't know a i guess you i i don't know if you get into the mind set where you just say well i'll accept something or you just really have to get on their back i mean about things and and working with what they say are professional painters i mean i tell you what the fumes that the the paint gives off makes you wonder what these people do i mean the fumes are amazing and i i don't think i could stay sane you know and working with all that so i mean i know it's not lead based any more paints but my goodness i well yeah i think so oh it does oh yeah right well maybe there are some professionals out there it makes you wonder really it does uh for all that well um i hope you have a nice day today and you take care okay okay bye kay well i don't i haven't done any painting since i was a child and my father would be painting and i'd ask him if i could you know take a turn or something but uh when we bought our home it was recently updated they did that maybe improvements so they could sell it and things so we didn't have to do any painting and the condominium we moved in before my husband went over and painted but i the experience that i've had is that um whatever time he gave said oh it would take me about just about four hours because it was only about like eleven or twelve hundred square feet over there and he said oh it's going to be just about four hours well he was gone the whole day and he said well all i got done was the taping around uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh i know it's just awful [pane] uh_huh um no and it really like you said always takes way longer than anyone um is able to guess because i know my husband he he painted when he it was just the preparation time was so long that when he actually got down to the painting part he it was like ten times longer than he already thought he would be done and and uh he did part of the in the at night because we were trying to hurry up and get it ready so we could move in and um and he didn't notice until the next morning that the shades of paint between the two paint cans he had finished one can off and started another one and then we went in there you know one was they were white but one had more blue to it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah right oh boy well i don't recall my parents having that much trouble i mean you know they painted our rooms all the time and we had a a wooden we hardly we just had brick on like as accent on a certain area of our home growing up and so he had to paint the outside all the time and um i just don't think you know that there was that big problem no but to us you know we're going oh we're so glad we have a brick home all we have is like trim around the windows or something and no uh no painting to have to do i i don't know that like uh say we're freshly graduated from school and things so we haven't gotten to the point where we're hiring professionals to do too much of our needs we've been trying you know we've done that the whole time we were in school like trying to repair our own cars and so i i want to get to the point where i could feel like i could just hire someone uh_huh uh_huh that's true no but still it's harmful and they have to live with that every day in in their clothes and everything the only painting job that was really painless for us was in this condominium that the um association that manages it they have to take care of like the [structural] damage there was a roof leak and that was not something that we had to pay for so they sent their painters in to to repaint a corner of the ceiling and then you know repaint the whole ceiling in a certain room but they came in and um they came in and did it and left in just no time at all and i think it's because they you know they were accustomed to working in that environment in those particular condominiums and i don't i didn't watch them but i couldn't imagine that they came in and painted it the whole ceiling you know just within a couple of hours and uh uh_huh um well you too i guess it's getting to be lunch time i need to go take care of the kids but you have a good day bye okay we're [energized] um painting interesting uh the guy called me when she called me the computer called me i thought that they were reading my mind i'm in the middle of um going out for [bids] to have my house painted uh painting is not hard to do uh as long as it's not in not to the point of where it's uh needs to be scraped and peeling and our house is not but it's starting to [bleed] through and burn through because the [paint's] real cheap and it's just a hassle to go through it so i'm looking for the easy way out it's easier to find painters but you have to be you have to be aware of what uh how messy they can get and are they going to put on a good a good two coats and are they going to [caulk] exterior yeah uh [interior's] not so bad because it's more fun it's more but yeah outside you have high [peeks] and those kind of things it can be a real issue uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh here they some of the home builders are they don't put brick on the side of your house just to save money so they put up uh a quarter inch [masonite] basically and they painted it kind of like a spun of a sorts so it's real cheap and uh uh i've had thirteen hundred dollar bid and i as low as five hundred and forty dollars so it's just a matter of it's oh there one guy [brags] about his piece of equipment he's using and the drop cloths and all that kind crap and i'm so much worried about that as what i don't want it all over the brick and windows and oh sure so y'all you haven't had any any jobs painted in your house or recently that's fun uh_huh uh_huh uh that's not very oh they just painted over [varnished] wood oh my um uh_huh sure oh no um i wish you good luck thank you very much bye bye okay oh no right yeah uh i know is easy to find uh painters to do this for you are you talking outside or inside exterior yeah yeah yeah well when we've painted um right now our house doesn't have to have the same kind of exterior painting there it's more trim because it has some of the old [asbestos] shingles on the back and there's some sort of stone or something in the front so there isn't as much wood that has to be painted um but it the problem is that it hits the sun hits it so preparing is a real problem you've got to prepare it well or else it will flake um wow that's quite a range yeah yeah which might be a bigger problem than it would be uh yeah absolutely no we've have uh done a little painting ourselves um we painted the bedroom uh well within the last couple of months and we have we have some more that need to be done but the the problem that we've we've owned this house almost five years now and um when we bought it the um it had been vacant for a while because the family will retired but the daughter was a real estate agent and she was selling it and it's been lived in briefly by her before she bought her town house so she told us that the house had been uh professionally painted recently and it looked pretty good you know the uh the interior walls all basically white but they obviously had been done without to much uh wear afterward the only problem was when we started having the [movers] move the furniture in we identified various rooms by pieces of masking tape on the uh the door frames when we took the masking tape off half the painted came with it big long strips so what had happened is that professional painters had not prepared the surface properly and some of still has to be redone yeah well no actually it had been uh it would have been it had been a repaint job but they had not either they had painted with the wrong kind of paint over top or they hadn't really roughed it up or whatever they because it was woodwork so it looked as if it had been painted correctly with you know uh an enamel or something but um it had not either that or it had not been prepared underneath and it was greasy or something it comes off in strips i mean not even little bit so we still have some of that trim work to do because we put it off all this time we know what a job it's going to be because you almost have to strip the whole thing in order to do it again okay thank you bye what kind of painting are you planning to do uh_huh uh_huh oh what would be interesting uh_huh yeah i've never done any of those fancy kinds of paint treatments but they look very interesting and you get some beautiful effects with them yes yeah i've seen that done where there's uh-oh i saw one that was kind on an [ecru] [undercoat] and then it had a little bit darker sort of [peachy] color and in between there was a sort of a rust uh put on very [sparingly] and it gave the impression of very old [weathered] stucco uh_huh oh yeah that should be nice uh_huh well uh yeah i was about to say you ought to experiment on at least a small part of it before you just tackle the whole thing because you might find that it's beyond uh what you're willing to put into it although i think it could turn out really nice i haven't ever done fancy painting but i sure did my share of just regular painting uh i've painted several houses inside i never painted the outside well uh we used a latex uh wall paint and then a semigloss enamel for the woodwork and my job was mostly the woodwork my husband would paint the walls and ceilings with the rollers and i got to do all of the masking tape and then all of the little fine uh trim work where i'd use a small brush and uh try to keep the paint from dripping on the windows and things like that uh_huh well i was going to ask if you planned to paint over it or try to strip it i have heard that they've got these [steamers] you can rent now which make it much easier to get wallpaper off um i tried to get wallpaper off once twenty years ago oh with a just a [scraper] and wet sponge and it took forever i would not recommend that method uh if if you can rent a steamer if it's modern wallpaper it should come off without too much trouble if it's really old you don't know what it's put on with yeah uh_huh could be yeah um if it's vinyl it should be easier to strip too if it's paper it will probably shred um uh_huh well the wallpaper that i was trying to remove was black this was in a bathroom too and the the tiles were sort of a [mottled] [grey] and had a little trim strip of [maroon] and white and the the wallpaper in that bathroom had a black background and then it had [vivid] uh almost neon colors of hot pink and [turquoise] and [lime] green and silver and uh a little bit of yellow that looked like [coral] [sands] and sea horses and things like that oh it was awful it was absolutely [hideous] and and we had a dinner party before we started [renovating] it and a a guest went in there and he said it's a good thing i went to the bathroom before dinner because if i had had something to drink and went in there i would think i was having [hallucinations] uh_huh uh_huh well i'd say tackle one project first and see how it goes and if you discover you like it then you can always upscale sure yeah well it's not hard to do if you get everything prepared ahead of time because if you uh use drop cloths to cover everything and you use masking tape to trim out uh all the parts that you don't want to [slop] over onto you don't have to be quite as precise about how you do it and it can be done a whole lot faster and with rollers and uh modern latex paints you can wash up easily because they're water [soluble] and they dry fast so you really don't have to be disrupted for more than about a weekend if you have some help and then if that if you discover the little tricks and tips about you know how you get through corners and how you do trim and uh how long to leave the masking tape down because if you leave it too long and it dries it can flake when it when you pull it up well not if you leave it on for weeks it will do that if you take it up the next day it should be fine you want it to get dry but not uh just real hard you don't want the gum on the back of the masking tape to get dried to hard that's the problem it will come up a lot easier if you don't wait too long and i've i was told i always used the nice wide masking tape but i've heard from people who tried to get by and [skimp] on narrow masking tape that it was more trouble than it was worth because it it [rips] as you pull it off for one thing and then you end up [tediously] scraping these tiny little [shreds] of masking tape and the whole point of using it is to save yourself work you can do a little faster painting and much easier clean up if you use the masking tape but use use good uh stuff and buy it at a paint store where they have the right brands that will go down and come up easily well i wish you very good luck with it and i will tell you that i have retired from the painting business the last time i had something done was my kitchen cabinets and i decided that was too much to tackle i'd hire a professional well if i were closer i might oh well i hope your project turns out great and i really think that it's exciting that you're going to try the sponge painting i think that could give it a really a well of course that's the other advantage of paint if you don't like it all you do is put on another coat i guess we'd better go because our time looks like it's about up okay bye bye thank you well i have wallpaper in both of my bathrooms right now which is really pretty disgusting and um it's a rent house and i decided it's too expensive to [rewallpaper] so i decided i'm going to paint and i've been buying some magazines and stuff and looking at different ways to paint and i'm thinking about maybe sponge painting them either that or maybe rag rolling to give it kind of a country look yeah uh one of the books that i bought where it's describing the sponge painting said you can like layer different colors and uh_huh ugh yeah um what i what i'm trying to do is i've got yellow tile in both the bathrooms so i want something that's going to tie that together and i'm changing the like the towel racks and stuff the the fixtures out to make them wood i'm going to put wood in there so it's going to have kind of a country look um and i haven't even decided as far as um what kind of paint to buy i don't have an actual instruction book so i'm really in kind of the beginning stages right now um it's going to be a big experiment yeah yeah yeah yeah i've uh_huh inside what what kind of what kind of paint do you normally use okay uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well we only have only one of our bathroom has a window in it so i'm hoping that um it won't be too much of a a problem um i'm wondering if my bigger problem is getting the wallpaper taken down first because i i think no i'm i'm planning on taking it off um okay well that's something that that's worthwhile checking into then because i it it's hard to tell it's the patterns look like they're nineteen sixties style and i know the house um was built around the mid fifties so it may be the original wallpaper um in one bathroom it's um it's probably paper uh it's silver silver and yellow and white um that's kind of an odd color for a bathroom really well i i've also been thinking about after looking at all these magazines um these design magazines and stuff i'm thinking about maybe painting the bedroom walls too in a color that will kind of um tie in our um our um our uh [comforter] with a color that's kind of a um burgundy and green and yellow and blue and [beige] [floral] design um and i'm not really quite sure i don't know if maybe i'm biting off more than i can chew yeah well the bedroom would probably be the easier of the two because it would be just plain painting it wouldn't be any kind of special um special effects type thing it would be just plain paint um okay uh_huh um it it [peels] the paint off when you take it off yeah yeah okay yeah oh really okay um okay well i really appreciate all the helpful tips i think you are just made my project a lot easier if you were if you were closer i'd i'd i'd tell you you could come over and supervise well we'll see how it goes i may just be flat painting over it yeah yeah i i need to go to the dentist so it's was nice talking to you [kathleen] bye bye so have you done any painting projects lately oh really what kind of painting was it uh_huh it was it yeah oh uh_huh uh_huh oh well what kind of paint did you use for the um [bookends] uh_huh so you can't use oil on wood oh so you had to go around with paint all over you temporarily anyway oh oh is is that what you usually use in the house is latex um uh_huh yeah i heard about that i guess a friend of mine had a uh well she she just started up a day care center and uh the one of the real strict uh restrictions was the fact that she had to have a special kind of paint that was fire proof and lead free and all that other good stuff so uh she had that done but uh well um so to speak i had to paint this uh the inside of this warehouse thing that you keep some um farm equipment in and um what i had to do is just coat this bare wood with a [sealer] and uh i had this big five gallon [jug] and it was like paint thinner i mean i you know it looked just like it was the [viscosity] of paint thinner but uh you just took a roller and put it on there and uh if you saw that the wood was getting wet you know that was that was all you needed so yeah it was it used all of it i guess it was about three hundred yards worth so well i guess it worked out it was pretty easy actually well what about the trim in your house did you have to do that uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah did you have uh one coat or two uh_huh yeah that would be really time uh a time [saver] uh_huh oh me i would have had to have taped the whole thing and then brushed around the edges and and then i'd have probably rolled it on i'd it would have taken me forever yeah well the first time it'd probably would have taken me forever so well how long did it take you all uh_huh so there was two of you all well that's easy enough um i think i could probably do it uh as long as the hardware store told me what to buy then i could do it uh_huh yeah this is a great topic for me because i just did my first two painting projects ever was not not a big deal two little deals the first one um i helped someone repaint an apartment and it was very easy yeah and i've never painted i always thought it would be so you know you'd have to hire someone if you needed to paint inside your house or something but i know i can do it and the second one was i bought some toys at a um at a craft fair they're unfinished wooden book ends and stuff for a little girl for christmas and so i decided to paint them and that wasn't as easy as painting the apartment well it's uh it that's half the problem right there is that it wasn't it was a oil base so i had to get and when i painted them i didn't realize that we didn't have any [turpentine] or paint thinner or anything in the house so i had it had it all over my hands at first i didn't realize you know i had never painted anything so i didn't realize that i needed that i mean i kind of knew in the back of my mind well no you can use it on wood but i just had it all over my hands and i went to wash the brushes out and uh wash my hands and you can't wash it off with water you have to get the uh a solution and yeah i had to drive to the store yeah i had to drive to the store with paper [towels] all over my hands to go buy some paint thinner and and everything like that and then um downstairs in the apartment i just we just used a latex base and so you can drip it on you know if you [dripped] it on something as long as you wiped it up it was real easy to clean yeah and and it it just like the same with the toys it's just important to look for one that doesn't have lead in it you know it says safe for children and all that yeah have you painted anything recently wow was it huge uh_huh yeah wow yeah i think though um we're lucky that we didn't have to do any detail work because i don't know if i could you know i don't know i don't know must be difficult no it was it was really easy i just like what we had a couple of different size brushes you know real easy i went around the trim and if it and there was wall paper like i was do just doing just the trim outs that around the doors and windows and there was wall paper and if we got it on the wall paper a little bit we just wipe it right away before it dried it came right off so there was no major mistakes there was uh two actually um and it there was um you know around the windows if you got it on the glass we let it dry and scraped it after that but that well yeah if you just you know we didn't tape anything we weren't that careful but it wasn't you know i don't know it's it's funny it's like if you just go slow you don't get or at least i didn't get that many mistakes i didn't make that many mistakes why just because you'd be afraid to do it or have you done it before well it wasn't if it was my own i would have but my friend said oh just go ahead you just go ahead it's easy i said okay it's your place well a couple of week ends we would go down two or three hours on the weekends and no there was they were doing all sorts of repairs and there was i was just painting because i don't know how to do anything else so there's a whole bunch of people so now i feel like if i ever buy a house i can probably paint if nothing else yeah but you know i went in to a hardware store to get paint for those toys and the guy said oh get this it's a nice shiny gloss which was true but i didn't realize what you know pain it is to clean the brushes and everything if you don't have latex i don't if it's worth the shine okay mike i guess we'll be talking about painting recently any kind of recent painting you've done uh yourself have you done any recently uh_huh wow wow that's that's quite a chore yes i imagine it did did you have that done professionally or did you do that yourself did you enjoy that oh that's that's fun we just recently uh had our boys' room our two oldest boys share a room and they're uh the paint has uh kind of [faded] and deteriorated and so we decided to paint their room and put up wallpaper and border and so forth and uh looks quite good we were quite pleased with the result yes it's a project uh that i did yes and and uh well i don't think it's sun exposure but uh boys will be boys and there there were [crayon] marks on there and we had to to scrub the [crayon] marks off of course try and get it clean pardon me yes it was it was latex paint and that's uh what we put back on there was a latex paint plus uh they had bunk beds and the boy one of the younger boys when he was younger about three years old got a uh got a nice [marker] and got up on the ceiling and decided to draw pictures yes on the ceiling and uh you scrub and you scrub but you can't it all off and so that's one of the reasons why we painted and uh we used a flat latex paint and in the bedroom as i understand that's uh one of the better type of paints to have because it's not so reflective and and [glassy] colored and it uh turned out real real well uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh you had to prime it and and cover over it huh well i like to use this this sears uh the ten year guarantee or the fifteen year guarantee yeah and the reason being is once i painted i don't want to have to go and do it another five or seven years later but uh and uh we're quite satisfied with that and and occasionally you can watch for it and get it on sale and we do do that in fact i was just reading an article you mentioned painting your bathroom i read an article recently that uh you have to be very careful on the kind of paint you put on the ceiling in your bathroom because it does tend to to peel or come off because of the moisture high moisture content in your bath bathroom and uh did you have any problems with that or oh good uh_huh oh good neither have i oh good uh_huh yeah do you uh have you ever used an oil base paint uh_huh why do you use that i'm i'm kind of learning at this new at this but it [adheres] better or lasts longer oh okay uh_huh right well that's good that's good uh have you ever done any painting outside well we uh remodeled a bathroom and which required uh completely repainting the bathroom and the other project we've done around here is uh we've remodeled all our all our closets which required quite a bit of painting no we did it ourselves did it myself yeah is this a project you did yourself what what brought about the fading of the paint just sun exposure oh okay yeah latex paint latex uh_huh on the ceiling yeah no that's true did you go what kind of paint did you use on the ceiling okay uh_huh seems like uh i've we've done some remodeling of some uh rental houses that we have and it appears as though that uh-oh in the fifties or sixties when some of these houses were built uh they used a lot of uh semigloss type enamel for ceiling paints and that was a little difficult to cover with today's paints it seemed like we had an occasion uh where we had to do some [sealing] of uh the of the this type of paint before we could paint it yeah right you had pretty good luck with one coat type paint you use a particular brand or anything weather beater type stuff yeah understand uh_huh uh_huh yeah it's a lot like uh wall paper that's true well the particular bathroom that we did is a half bath so we didn't have a problem with that uh i have had i've uh have never experienced that type of a problem uh with a latex paint so you shouldn't have a you shouldn't have a problem with it they're they're pretty well refined today a lot of the paints and sears is one of the better ones i've used uh many a gallon of them myself uh used oil base paints for trim you know like around doors and and on doors things like that uh primarily because it it seems to be a little more uh well let's say well not so much that it seems to hold up a little bit better towards the nicks and [dings] as opposed to uh a latex type paint and uh it just you know it it gives you a a [variance] even though it's the same color so it's worked out pretty well for us uh quite a bit painted a couple of houses uh recently this summer we painted a uh out building which is a shed that we have on the okay what do you do artistic painting oh you do do you do a lot of it i i took one class about i guess three or four years ago and i've done a little uh but it takes a lot of time do you sell your projects uh_huh uh_huh where do you work at now do you ever send any of your stuff to the boutique uh_huh that keeps you busy uh_huh have you tried any of the well do you cut out your own projects huh do you uh ever spray your projects with the i mean a base coat first or do you brush it on uh_huh i just bought a spray gun one of those [airless] uh not [airless] high volume low pressure spray guns and i do a lot of woodworking and that's what i bought it for but i haven't used it yet yeah yeah uh fine furniture yeah that's why i brought bought the [sprayer] is to finish my projects that's my worst worst part of my woodworking i get so sick of making yeah but spraying does put on a nicer finish for woodworking uh let me see table saw scroll saw band saw lathe [routers] and about it yeah it is yeah the band saw is really nice i have an [inca] i don't know if you've ever heard of those but it's nice to have the right equipment uh_huh uh not mostly i do like you do give it away as gifts but making my own furniture uh just in junior high and then i just kept on through high school and then got my own equipment kept up with that yeah yeah like the shelves and for your tole painting good well i guess i'll let you go now oh they do okay so this is my first one you're probably a veteran at this uh_huh yeah sounds fun where do you buy your tole painting paints at around here i am not well we live in roy but we is it on nineteen hundred i know where fifty six hundred south is is that ben [franklin] then uh i do tole painting uh_huh i really love the tole painting uh i haven't done any of the oil or watercolor i would like to learn that someday but right now my passion is tole painting uh_huh oh it does it is real time consuming and uh mostly i have just given them away as gifts uh i've done uh perpetual calendars and cookie jar lids and oh on and on you know just things like that but uh i would eventually like to make enough to sell and quit my job i just work at stop and shop out there in in ogden so no i've wanted to do that uh but just haven't just haven't mass produced enough to do that so i have five children of my own so it's they they keep me busy and tole painting is just a you know something i do in my spare time so yes uh_huh i have my own saws and so i really enjoy doing that i brush it on yeah i haven't tried a a spray [varnish] i use just a wood [sealer] yeah oh uh_huh do you oh oh well that's that'd probably give you a [smoother] finish wouldn't it oh now what type of woodworking do you do oh do you oh oh but it's hard to finish it huh oh well that is interesting so what kind of equipment do you have uh_huh boy it sounds like you're really into it that is nice yeah i i just have a scroll saw and a jig saw and i am really anxious to get a band saw and a router oh yeah that is that makes it easier doesn't it well have you sold any of your furniture or just uh_huh yeah oh that's interesting do you uh did you take classes to learn how to do that uh_huh oh so yours is mostly just a hobby too then oh well that is interesting oh i would i really would love to go take a class in woodworking and learn how to i don't know if i necessarily want to do furniture but mostly uh just do more uh_huh the woodworking uh yeah yeah so it's fun well they come on we're supposed to talk until they come on and tell us yeah well it has it has been really fun i've enjoyed this uh like i say i've made a couple of calls to texas and just talked to all different kinds of people so i think you'll enjoy doing it it's fun uh you know there's a shop in roy that i really love uh and it's there by the copper mill restaurant used to be the [hayloft] uh_huh uh let's see i'm trying to think of the name uh i don't right off ben [franklin] okay yes so what have you painted recently well my kitchen ceiling has needed painting for uh four years now and i'm having painted the apartment that i left in syracuse i i really hesitate to do ceilings because i get more paint on me than on on the the ceiling but now that they redid the roofs all of our ceilings need it because it popped a lot of nails so i think this summer i'm going to take on the kitchen first and then try to do the others because i want to pull up the carpeting and put hardwood all through the house so i think right i figure by by doing it before i put in the carpeting you know the carpet is so bad whatever i spill it's too bad right right oh i would hope not because it seems to me that it would get too thick uh and start peeling maybe i don't know my my impression is it's more like four four years it starts needing it and people usually get around to it at five or six years oh exterior that long that would be uh_huh but that's just trim right yeah right uh_huh right oh okay okay um i know i was going to say what a mess right right yeah well very good but small world anyway so uh and then you're pleased with your your jobs once you're done i mean you don't feel you should have paid somebody to do the same job you did anyway but this isn't masking tape oh uh_huh oh great uh_huh oh great do you ever use these pads i pad the paint on yeah right yeah right yeah uh_huh uh_huh right now even with tape i think i was just thinking of using the pads instead of a brush but for ceilings i did try it and and uh i got a lot of paint on the kitchen table i was trying to to just patch the the kitchen ceiling there yeah and so i have to learn how to use pads but i have a friend in syracuse who who paints everything with pads and she does ceilings so i'm going to have to ask her what the trick is she'll probably say hire me to come down and do it right right right that's why i want to do the kitchen first i figure i can stand on the kitchen table no i i'm happy with it but i just don't do it very often or very much because it's so time consuming and because i am tend to be a [perfectionist] about it and you know what i figure is first i have to scrub the walls and i mean if you hire a painter they don't do that just the rest look yeah but you feel good about it when you have done it yourself and you do save a lot of money but it's a mess and it's hard to find the time uh_huh oh yeah oh yeah it does yeah i've painted inside i haven't painted outside and that's what i need done now um yeah that's the work yeah yeah i don't think i'll attempt that myself i i know i won't yeah i'll hire somebody to do that but in fact i had a [workman] here for a leak that he had to fix and for ten dollars he was willing to paint my daughter's ceiling so i said go ahead you paint the ceiling and then i'll do the walls and that was that was nice yeah for ten dollars he was saying he was chatting and we were having a good old time so he just said all right ten dollars i'll do the ceiling yeah it is right well hers didn't it was just a smooth ceiling but yeah yeah oh yeah i have that in my living room and dining room but we had a leak and the insurance company's going to pay to do the whole area so that's going to be a good deal i won't have to worry about that white oh no oh no yeah i guess i i think i'll go with an off white i'm changing everything so uh_huh yeah yeah it's all challenging that's for sure i've the whole year it's taking me to redecorate my bedroom and my daughter's bedroom but it's pretty i love it i've upholstered walls and made curtains and i did yes uh_huh and it looks so nice because you just take sheets and then everything can match and it looks really pretty i love it it's just real feminine and just real pretty oh it's easy oh if you can do all that you can do walls oh there's nothing to it you can do a wall in half an hour uh uh staple gun is all it takes i did i put the batting uh_huh and just staple it up there and staple your sheets up and then yeah and then you can glue a little edge around if you want to like i took some [eyelet] lace and i just hot glued it around the edge but it's nothing and it's just beautiful i love it it's just beautiful i love it i i find it so relaxing and i do i'm get beginning to like country music more and more since my boss has it on all the time but um but my very favorite is that new age i like my favorite recording artist is yani and he's not he doesn't make you [yawn] um i yeah i've heard of her in fact i was watching the [grammy's] and i i saw her on the [grammy's] uh_huh uh_huh yeah she's not too wild oh oh yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh oh oh oh oh uh do you have a pet randy a poodle miniature or uh full size uh_huh i read somewhere that the poodles is one of the the most intelligent dogs uh around oh uh_huh so you you've only known the dog how long did you say oh well uh is it uh uh how old is the dog oh it's still just a pup yeah i have a uh well a mutt myself i call it a uh uh chowperd it's uh part chow and part shepherd and it as i understand it uh both sides of the were [thoroughbreds] so she's a genuine chowperd she has the the color and the black tongue of a chow but uh she has the the shape of the uh uh shepherd oh she weighs in at about fifty pounds so she's a medium size but she's big enough to be [intimidating] it is a fixed female by the way and right from day one she was teaching me she's the most intelligent dog i've ever seen course i'm a little prejudiced of course you know the first time i brought her home she was only uh was it six weeks old and i spread the newspapers out in the kitchen area but uh next morning she let me know in no [uncertain] terms that she wanted to use the bathroom so on next night i spread the newspaper in the bathroom and she used them there but it wasn't too long until she uh found out she could wait until i let her out in the morning and since then i i live alone and uh i live in motor home by the way i'm uh an r v full time r v and it's it's such a pleasure to come home at night and you can see her smiling from ear to ear she's so happy to see me and uh i don't know if you get that kind of [greeting] or not uh_huh well my dog's an outdoor type she does not like to be indoors uh she'd rather sleep outside on the the cold ground at night but uh i do make her come in and i feed her indoors that's to lure her in but during the day i have her on a uh on a leash which is uh on sort of a run i have a a thirty foot cable running from one stake to another and then attached to that is a uh twelve foot leash so she can cover quite an area and uh she's the best uh burglar alarm going oh yeah she uh it's the strangest thing though uh children no matter how strange they are or how new they might be can walk uh right up to her but adults if they're strange to her or or they look suspicious or something boy she acts like she wants to chew their leg off and i have not discovered yet where the the line is between children and adults but uh she is a great comfort to me uh_huh oh uh_huh you mean she didn't appreciate all that attention uh_huh what's her name by the way what what do you call the dog [mitzi] mine is gin as in uh [martini] actually it's gin two because uh when i was a teenager in high school i had gin one but then when i went out in the world i couldn't take her with me uh_huh oh yeah oh what a shame uh_huh oh well well randy we've just about used up our time here and i must say it was interesting i enjoyed talking about pets with you maybe we'll get together again in the future take care now bye uh yeah currently we have a poodle yeah uh it's uh miniature yeah well um i wouldn't uh i definitely wouldn't dispute that it it's actually my wife's dog uh i i became part owner six months ago when we got married but uh it uh definitely [responds] to uh to authority and i've had dogs in the past and uh it seems it seems to uh respond real well it it she's she's picked up a lot of things uh just just by uh teaching by force i guess is what i'd like to say well about a year i guess it just turned two i believe pretty much yeah yeah okay oh that sounds interesting oh that's that's neat how about how big then yeah yeah most definitely yeah oh i wouldn't doubt it yeah well that's understandable yeah it's uh uh_huh okay oh yeah okay yeah definitely yeah i can honestly say we do uh we uh just recently put a security system in our house and so now uh in order to uh to accommodate the motion detectors we have to keep her uh uh locked up in the the master bedroom during the day and then she's got the the bedroom and the bathroom to for free run during the day but we've always got uh got a nose and tongue pressed up against the window when we come walking up to the front door she's definitely ready to get out and run around really oh wow yeah okay okay okay most definitely yeah yeah yeah that's uh definite security involved in uh in a dog like that uh_huh wow yeah that's interesting yeah i know our dog has had uh some different reactions she's never really been around children and uh if if the child is is pretty straight forward um she's fine if if a child is a little intimidated she'll jump around and and [yip] and bark quite a bit and if the child gets scared uh she's still trying to play but she doesn't completely understand what's going on and we've had a little confusion with with uh with younger kids but uh you know that's it's a matter of exposure really um we uh took her home to uh my family's place in south dakota and she was the one that was intimidated then there was about seven kids [ranging] from about uh three years to ten years running around the house all at one time you know come to visit grandpa and grandma and the dog kind of kind of felt out of place then because she was she was being fed and everything else from all directions she really didn't know how to handle herself she really did she just uh she she was she was just inundated with with all the attention uh she she kind of she kind of sat and it all in for a little while and then she'd go get back in and try to play and and what not but uh it was it was just such a such a new experience for her she's only been around one and and sometimes two people at the most so uh uh pardon oh it's uh [mitzi] yeah oh okay yeah i i see yeah yeah yeah i had uh a similar uh experience i i grew up on a farm so i always had uh outdoor pets and uh the dog i had when i moved to dallas about five years ago was a uh springer spaniel black lab cross and he was a real a real [lovable] type but uh definitely not an apartment type animal so he uh he had to stay home yeah yeah it really was he uh apparently had a tough time with it for a little while and then he he got he came to accept the fact that mom and dad were his company from then on but uh yeah okay most definitely well that's great that sounds real good you too you said you have four cats how old are they oh gosh i haven't had my oldest one quite nine years i've had him probably five years oh yes i love my cats i lost one one time uh the first one i got he jumped off the balcony actually of a second story apartment and he'd never been outside like you know by himself outside and it started raining and i was hysterical i was i was i mean you would have thought a child had died i called everyone i knew i had every friend i knew in the apartment searching for this cat and they laughed at me they thought that was so hysterical oh yeah the cat was here first so i know it's hard oh how funny that's sweet i have the two the other two cats i have are outdoor cats and they didn't used to be actually but they got kind of wild and weren't doing very well inside so i put them outside once i got a house and they're doing great out there they love it but the other one the first one i got he doesn't want anything to do with outside unless you're there other than that he gets scared to death if you shut that door he goes into hiding i think it's from the time he jumped off the balcony and lord knows what happened to him he's probably been through all kinds of nightmares probably are they oh no oh my gosh oh i imagine i wonder how many of his lives he missed when that happened oh i can imagine what did he shoot him with oh my gosh people are crazy oh lord oh man i imagine they usually are after something like that happens to them it seems to mellow them or something no oh yeah i i keep talking about getting rid of my outdoor cats because i feel like i don't i can't take care of them as well because they're outside and it worries me that one day one of them won't come back and i feel like they need a big home a nice place where someone can have the time to play with them and things but i can't give them up i just i go hysterical when they don't come home oh oh yeah and every time you see one hit on the side of the road you say is that my cat and you go crazy thinking it might be yours uh_huh ugh really it's here now we have to keep it yeah my my first one that i got i had just moved away from home and got my own apartment it took me about two weeks to realize that was real lonely so i found this one and uh actually it was on a sign at taco bell drive [thru] that said free kittens and i thought well that's interesting i'll call them and he was the only one left and his mother had been killed coming back across the road to make sure she'd gotten all her kittens and he was the last one she carried across you know the whole big sad story so of course i had to take him i felt so sorry for him after that and he is uh you can tell he was weaned too young because he'll nurse on your ears and your fingers yeah he i asked the vet why he did that and he said he was probably weaned too young which he was because his mom was killed so but he is the [lovingest] cat everybody people who don't even like cats like him he never [meows] he he doesn't have any front claws i had him declawed but he doesn't bite anybody he's just he's just kind of there real friendly and [docile] oh yeah yeah we do we call that doing biscuits it looks like their kneading bread oh i just love cats i like dogs they're okay i had i had a dog when i lived at home but they're a lot more trouble than cats actually oh yeah they do oh they are i love it it's so funny to get more than one cat together because it brings out their personalities and they just act so funny really uh_huh a train of cats running around oh how funny i can imagine yeah i wouldn't give anything for my cats i love them to death what are your [cats'] names oh how sweet i have [xanadu] and precious and rascal precious and rascal are brother and sister and they don't look a thing a like nothing precious is a medium hair yellow cat and rascal is a black and white short hair they don't look a thing a like and they came from the same litter and everything oh so ugly she's cute right really oh is she the oldest one really oh i know it's like the end of the world i know that's how i am about [xanadu] oh definitely yeah you can walk a dog and that's okay for weekend but cats are good all the time it wouldn't have no that would be a problem have you seen those uh do you ever read [cosmo] there was cartoon in [cosmo] about a year or two ago and it had this man sitting on a couch with his date and there were cats hanging all over him hanging on his clothes you know they had ripped him up and the couch was ripped up and down at the bottom he said of course i love cats and they were just all over him and sitting on his head the whole nine yards it was so funny watch me definitely oh i wouldn't either there'd be no way oh really oh well that's life that's how life goes i know i love mine too well it's been nice talking to you me to bye bye yes i have four cats well they range from let's see about a year and a half to nine years old yes oh okay you get so attached to them oh oh no uh_huh yes uh_huh yes i understand oh no i understand we uh we've gone through the same things with ours we've had you know they've been ill i mean i take off work to take care of my cats you know my boss thinks i'm absolutely crazy and then we had a baby and its like all right who comes first the cat or the baby and and then when we go to sleep at night you know it's like my husband and i have to try to get any space on the bed because we have all four of them up there with us it's like all right whose corners is this one oh uh_huh oh uh_huh oh no yes uh_huh that's it right [traumatized] for life here oh yeah we've all four of ours are house cats we started out with two with two outdoor cats but our neighbor decided he didn't like cats and shot one of them oh well he lived through it oh i couldn't believe it we went through like twenty two hundred dollars worth of vet bills the the cat almost died and but he turned out to be such a wonderful cat oh he loves life now and he's like oh thank you so much i know we wondered about that but uh-oh that was a traumatic experience for us too uh well uh from what we can tell it was a [pellet] gun and then he started chasing him with a bull whip oh yes absolutely nuts but uh luckily enough you know we found the cat in time and uh rushed him to the vet and it took us about six weeks of in and out of the vet and surgery and i mean he started off as a stray and then we did all this for him but oh he's been a wonderful cat oh yes but uh we wouldn't we wouldn't have them i mean i don't see us without pets without cats there's just uh there's this they just fill this void uh_huh yes oh no right and you worry about oh who's taking care of them uh_huh right well i didn't realize my husband was such a sucker for animals until i brought one home one night we i had one that had we had we had to put to sleep he got so sick and uh well i fell in love with this uh it's a [chinchilla] persian and uh brought him home and oh my husband just died it was like we can't take it back you've got we've got to keep it now uh_huh uh_huh yes oh uh_huh right oh uh_huh oh right right oh no yeah oh oh uh_huh oh that's good oh we just uh just love them they uh you know get to feeling so [lovey] and [dovey] and they'll come up and just start kneading in our chest and it's like oh your claws need trimming oh yes yes oh it just drives us nuts um yeah they really are the cats are so independent and they have so much more personality than a dog and but oh they're so much fun to watch them play yes oh we've got well the two that were outside they're like brothers i mean i've never seen two cats so close and uh they uh will get to playing chase through the house and it is hysterical i mean and then the other two cats will follow in pursuit it's like this train i mean it sounds like a train we have wooden floors and so it just sort of echoes through the house oh no they're just they're they're just uh they're wonderful uh uh we have uh [bonzo] bear [poindexter] and [felix] and what do you have oh uh_huh yeah nothing not a thing goodness gracious we have uh uh [tortoise] which is a black and and orange and she's so ugly yes uh_huh i mean you can't help but love her she's she's the oldest one and but uh very [possessive] i mean it's like nobody messes with her mamma and uh i mean it comes bedtime and she's right there yeah she's the oldest and she well in fact i got her when i moved out of the house also and so yeah it's uh wouldn't have i mean oh if something happens to her it will be oh goodness you get so attached to them my mother has dogs and i'm like no this is nothing like cats right i'm so glad my husband is a cat person because if he was a dog person no it wouldn't have worked oh that's one of the requirements i asked him i said now you do like cats right we don't yes uh_huh oh yeah oh the whole time i was pregnant they kept saying are you getting rid of your cats are you getting rid of your cats you can't be pregnant and have cats i'm like uh no no no right the child will learn to like cats and deal with them i'm sorry we are not getting rid of the cats the whole family was so disappointed right right uh but yes we just just love them to death well it was nice talking to you too i enjoyed it bye bye okay do you have any pets oh boy sound like us we have go ahead oh what kind is it oh so you oh he's got a blue tongue oh we have two [chows] and a miniature schnauzer and recently added a guinea pig which wasn't by my choice but i was out ruled so but the dogs are mainly mine and my but i just love them to death daughter yes yes as if the dogs weren't enough had to have a guinea pig so anyway she's she enjoys her though so that's that's what matters but um our [chows] we've had them i'd say right around six maybe seven years and they're um registered and we've been breeding them she's had about four or five litters oh right uh_huh oh man goodness it's telling um you know when we had um we had a cat when we first married no took yeah we had the cat first and then we got uh the chow and bring um bringing them in as puppies they got along just fabulous with her and uh you would think you know that they were all dogs the way she would [prance] around them and and [paw] at their face and they'd just play and they were never they never harmed her so uh they got along great now i don't know how how it would be bringing in uh like cat to a full full grown dog yeah right i think so too five she's a real right and i was not really concerned about um them harming her uh i think i think a lot of that that that we hear all the time is how you bring them up and ours are real friendly they're protective but they're very friendly and [lovable] i mean you think they're [lapdogs] you know they'll just come jump on your lap and want to be have their bellies rubbed and everything and uh the [female's] red and the male is black yeah he is he's a big old thing and um i was concerned about the female mainly and as luck had it uh she had puppies the same week my daughter was born so it was kind of like she had her babies and understood about you know yeah and that yeah i think that really helped and um my daughter you know since since she's little has been playing with them and they let her tug their hair and and get on their back or whatever and she's she's grown up with them and loves them to death and they love her so i do too yeah yeah exactly that or or uh the other extreme they're they're terrified of them and i hate that and they shouldn't be i mean some maybe but but um like our miniature schnauzer she's just she's just like um a little hyper thing and just [prances] around and jumps all over everybody acting silly and a lot of kids are scared of that and which i understand because she is you know a lot of movement and everything but when she [calms] down they're so scared of her it's it that bothers me because she's the [friendliest] thing she wouldn't you know harm them at all and and and that's mainly people that have never had pets around their children so i think i think it's a good idea to have them we've had um in the past we've had birds too uh like [cockatoos] and parrots and the big white birds with the the orange crest on top we've had those and those are neat they're messy very messy yeah and loud oh a lot louder than a dog you know a dog you can tell stop barking you know or whatever but the birds you it's hard to keep them from [squawking] or whatever but but they were neat enjoyable animals to have uh_huh yeah with a lid oh yeah they yes yes they are and in your the luck of keeping them alive through those first you know few days i know they are no right i don't blame you there i think the saltwater are a lot more attractive than i don't know those fish are just beautiful just so like you have a little bit of ocean with you or something rather than just little fish but i don't mind having [wren] my daughter had a like a little goldfish a about a year or two ago and it finally died and that was neat but and they're you know she can't play with it you can just look at it you know you can't roll around and [tussle] around with it like you can a dog or a cat and yeah uh_huh oh no oh no yes yeah and that's hard that's right and they're so independent i love having them for that reason sure uh_huh uh_huh that's right that is hard oh yes uh_huh oh fun oh no oh oh no oh no i guess you didn't get your deposit back did you oh good oh okay oh no bless your heart uh_huh sure yeah yes it is no no i wish it was i wish they were in that instinct but they don't our only problem with our schnauzer she's an indoor dog most of the time and uh we found she's right at a year and we finally got her you know house trained and everything uh her only problem is trash if you do not pick the trash up you know the container and put it on a table or chair or something she'll knock it over i don't care how full she is so it's not like she's hungry it's just she wants to get into trouble uh_huh yeah yeah oh i hate that yeah you shouldn't have left it there i just hate that when she does that i just oh and she knows it's wrong you'll walk in the door and she'll [cower] and go hide under the table so you she knows she does wrong but she uh she continues to do it so uh_huh oh is he yeah i have three cats and a dog um um we just got the the dog less than a year ago so he's still a puppy he's a mixed breed he's part collie part shepherd and part chow more collie and shepherd than chow the only chow he's got is is his tongue yeah he's got little spots on them was the guinea pig for your for your child really oh my my husband's always wanted a chow but i'm kind of concerned about um with having cats and how how they socialize with cats um which is one of the reasons why we got a mixed breed um because we thought they would socialize easier um my husband had originally wanted an and his brother has an and he so far he's [bitten] ten people so and the people that he got the from used to have cats and they no longer have any other cats so uh_huh yeah i wouldn't want to bring a cat into a full grown dog but i i wouldn't feel um hesitant about bringing a puppy in to adult cats i think they would socialize easier um how how old is your child five so you had the dogs before you had the baby uh_huh uh_huh what color are they oh i bet the black one's pretty about your baby yeah i think it's good for kids to grow up around pets as as long as they don't have any allergies to them or anything but i think it really helps them to understand when when they go to other people's houses and they have pets i see so many times kids just you know they mean to animals not really understanding that the animals have feelings yeah yeah huh uh_huh now the the [cockatoos] are those the big ones yeah yeah are they yeah well we've thought about getting an aquarium partly partly for the cats i think the cats would really enjoy it um yeah yeah of course um but so far we just and starting up an an aquarium we we're thinking about getting a saltwater and they're so expensive to start up yeah yeah the the saltwater fish have so much more color and they're so much more beautiful um the freshwater [tank's] just really to me they'll there's most of them really aren't that pretty you know i really i really don't care much for them yeah yeah uh_huh yeah yeah yeah i wouldn't i wouldn't dare have a a goldfish here because it would probably be in a small bowl and then my cats would knock it over i have to be real careful about where i put things if the cats will will jump up on things and knock things over all the time they're always up where they don't where they're not supposed to be that's just like kids you know they know that they're not supposed to do it but they're going to do it anyway because they know they're not supposed to yeah yeah and until we got the dog um it was real easy to to go to town for three three day weekend or whatever and now it's like a major production trying to find somebody to take care of the dog while you're gone and i we knew it but we never even thought that about when we got the dog we just saw him oh he's so cute let's take him home you know and then the first weekend we had him we had we were in a apartment in a two bedroom apartment and my husband went out of town and left me with with the brand new puppy and i had to work twelve hours that day and so i left the dog locked in the bedroom and i put paper all over the floor well when i came home i opened the door and there were chunks of carpet [padding] everything all over the place and he had tried to dig his way out from underneath the door well i had the carpet fixed um i yeah i didn't even tell the apartment manager who got it but that that was my first real experience with with a puppy when when we had our family dog growing up i was eleven or twelve i think when we first got him and i wasn't really involved in the the paper training and you know teaching him commands and stuff so this was and to me a whole new experience only it wasn't like cats at all so uh_huh uh_huh my cats do that it if i through anything away that's any kind of meat or anything like that anything that that they think is good they'll get into the trash and then it doesn't matter where you put it and where you hide it and how how tight you have the lid down on it they'll get into it i've come home many a days from work to find trash all over the kitchen floor and the cat's just looking at me like sorry i couldn't help myself uh_huh yeah the problem that we're having with our puppy right now he's not he's actually not really a puppy anymore he's like sixteen months old um but he's still chewing um the last thing he chewed up was uh when we okay well you um we got two cats yeah and uh um yeah we had cat you know my family had cats when we were growing up the whole time until my mom developed an allergies so i mean i'm used i'm used to having cats around i like them oh see i'm not uh i'm not a dog person at all yeah probably i was allergic to dogs when i was a kid in fact i may still be um we that um i wonder sometimes um but we um we house sat for a um my um my wife's boss a couple weeks ago and um uh he has a dog and everything we were you know we were sitting the dog and everything and uh i felt like just miserable all weekend and it really didn't [dawn] on me until sunday it was like hey maybe you're still allergic to the dog it was like oh that could be it yeah well dogs are real high [maintenances] you got to take them for walks and you've got to pay a lot you know you need to pay attention to cats and everything but it's not quite the same thing um and um um you know it's it's just nice that cats you know cats yeah you don't have to let them outside you know all cats are indoor cats so you know they're not you're not worried about them running all around the neighborhood and you know they you know they they make their mess in the cat pan which is yeah it's you know it's a pain to clean but you know we used to i mean they got great stuff out now for cleaning [cats'] pans they didn't well when i was you know when i was growing up i had a clean the cat pan all the time and i hated it because i had to carry everything upstairs and you know and use this thing to you know scoop the take the stuff out and put it in the toilet and everything it was really terrible but now they have like this you get these liners that is garbage bags you know and you and you you know the yeah the cats do it in there you pull it and take it out and throw it away and that's it uh_huh same idea everyday oh okay i see uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh so you don't have anything right now oh except the kid huh that's uh i don't i don't know because the cats pretty much um yeah we can leave them for a weekend as long as we put plenty of food out and um uh it's not a big deal really i mean they're they're happier when we're around but you know they they're pretty much okay by themselves um and i don't you know we couldn't do that with a dog well that's that's um [pampering] the the petals uh_huh but they're not that much fun you know you can't take them for a walk you can't you know they they don't they can't [fetch] you know they they can't do anything so i've never i think we had fish when i was a kid but i don't oh oh oh uh_huh uh_huh no it's like i just i don't know i i just never understood why what the attraction i mean they're you know they're pretty and everything but i've just never seen the attraction of having fish it's not as much fun an eel oh now we really get sick yeah like i remember a friend of mine at work telling me that at his [frat] in college that they had a tank of [piranha] and uh you know used to drop mice in this is not these aren't cats you know this is gross yep yeah well yeah well a cat will do the same trick i had a friend in i had a friend in college who had a um had a pet rat for a while um i forget how she got it but it was um it was the same kind of a deal i think she got it i think she was a psych major and she got it from the psych department whoops uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah i mean you know if you get them young and everything before they go kind of nuts so yeah rats are not my favorite animals in the world but i could see getting one from birth and everything yeah yeah i i i have friends with hamsters and gerbils and they they tell me the same thing i just again it gets into [vivant] much fun you know what i guess they can be i okay right oh people i don't oh plus i mean the [pooper] [scooper] one new york so you know yeah uh i was living in northern jersey when that law came through remember hearing all about it we were wondering if they uh they had any special law for the horses in central park of course not hit the bags oh god i can't haven't been up there last time i was there was fall so probably wasn't that bad not this past fall but i mean fall a few years i mean it it was in the yeah it was almost like october of eighty five i think was the last time i was up up there and at center park um i had a friend who went to [colombia] and i used to go up and visit her um so no they're just mutts yeah my wife got them from uh um friend of hers at work and everything you know you know as kittens and it was before i mean this was before we even met um she's had them for a couple years and um you know they're really cute they're they're sisters one of them is a lot bigger than the other one and she pushes the other one away from the food apparently i don't know all the details but they were born around christmas because one of them is named [tinsel] and the other one is named holly you know the both yeah both females they're both spayed um or whatever it is neutered you know um and they're they're both declawed at least on the the front claws do you have any pets two cats uh_huh yeah i like having cats around or pets around in general i i favor dogs over cats actually but oh i'm i'm a dog person i had i guess it depends on what you had when he were a kid right uh_huh but not cats uh_huh the thing i don't like about dogs sometimes is that the house will just [reek] of the dogs and constantly yeah that's true uh_huh limited oh really uh_huh oh that sounds so easy what i did yeah i [housesat] from cats for a friend of mine which she was finishing up her thesis and what we used to do was just put um newspaper on the bottom and then put cat litter and then i would just take the whole thing to the garbage can and dump the whole thing then i would do it you know everyday or two days so i would clean that pan very very rarely and so it wasn't so bad two cats and just as easy it just never started smelling i would put just a little bit of cat litter in there because if i put a lot one of the cats would have been all of her animals that she ever had were adopted i that true yeah yeah she's even got she's got one dog now and the two cats and her dog there is is basically a reject somebody had bought him and wanted him it was her ex boyfriend and you know just was not mature enough to keep the dog didn't realize how much work it was and now she's stuck with it and she's just so [kindhearted] that she just takes all the animals but i think that for me well my husband just has completely [nixed] the idea of having a dog or a cat because that's all there is to it so you know no we don't have anything right now oh right now we have a kid but he was no completely against having a dog or cat he said they're much they're as much work as a kid and they're harder to get rid of for the weekend and uh_huh that's uh yeah really true but like the friends other friends of mine have cats they have four of them and if they go away they have they hire a pet sitter to come in twice a day and pet them and things like that and their cats you know their so used to the attention that if they don't get it they get really upset and you know they sort of cause trouble around the house and things like that i i tried to have um figured something having so i tried to have a goldfish and um i killed that one within a very short amount of time right my brother had fish when i was a kid i remember that and one of his fish jumped out of the um gosh what do you call it fish tank and fried itself on the radiator behind the dresser i'll never forget that because i remember my brother he came home and he counted the fish and one of the fish was missing and they couldn't find it anyplace they couldn't figure out what had happened and then they found it fried on the radiator behind it was not gross i didn't see it but um got them trying to remember we had a dog for a while and i don't know if we got rid of the dog because my brother was allergic to it my brother had asthma and some allergies which i think he's outgrown now but because of that we didn't have very many pets afterwards and then he had fish and you they're like you say they're not the most exciting pet to have well a friend of mine had um an eel and then he had a um i forget what type of fish it was it was one of these fish that it would eat it ate a big other fish and things like that there would be sort of moby fish in a tank yeah and it i i couldn't see having fish like that i could see some having maybe some of the tropical fish that are really really pretty but uh_huh yeah yeah no that would be what did they do everyone come around and watch them i mean i guess that's fine if you have a mouse problem at your [frat] house and your things destroyed the mice but let's see i had a pet rat for a while and it was a live rat and um this woman just offered it to me while i was in in graduate school and she was actually a very fun pet uh_huh yeah mine had been a a a how did this work a mill rat had been bought and the people in the lab one day called in my friend and said you know this rat is acting really strange i think he's sick and she said i don't think he's sick i think she's pregnant and they had [misclassed] the sex of back there and so um she asked me if i want to one of those babies and i took the baby and i got her when she was you know just this [tiniest] little thing like half the price of a mouse and then she grew to be you know i had pictures of her when she would sit on my hand and then she grew to be pretty big you know like a pound or something i don't know how much and i had her for over two years and she was very affectionate she would you know crawl on me and she would sit like on my neck or my shoulder while i was working and things like that yeah much more than you would think yeah and yeah i sort of weird for me to have had one too but there it was a convenient little pet to have because it stayed in it's cage and you know it was easy easy to take care of and but uh_huh actually it was more fun than you would think yeah starting from the beginning but um yeah we live also live in the city now actually in manhattan and so it's almost impossible to it's not fair to a pet to have a pet here or certainly certainly not a dog i mean people do but it's not oh yeah you see all these people yeah these [stately] people and well dressed people out walking their dogs with their plastic bag or their piece of paper for them it's really kind of funny uh_huh right no they don't i should make you they have um the bags behind them but i think they're actually supposed to keep them yeah keep them clean but oh gosh i can't even walk by central park yeah when summertime just the smell is so bad of the horses oh well it's not that long ago it was oh twelve times of the year uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah that's not too far from were we live do you have you said you had two cats are they um just what you call it are they breed cats or anything or are they just uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh they're both females uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh okay this is really ironic that this would i would get this subject today because just yesterday our dog ran away and it's just been tearing me up all day because we have just been looking all over for him we've been to the pound we've been to the humane society we've been to the adoption center we've just been all over the neighborhood we've been calling neighbors so this is just really strange no this is the first time um he's gotten out before but he's always stayed right here you know he's never gone away and so this is just really strange you know because um he's part golden lab and part uh let's see [alaskan] no not [alaskan] i always forget uh australian shepherd and yeah he's pretty big that's why it really surprises me you know that he hasn't come back because like i said he's never gone away like this before and i would think you know he might i mean he might could get hurt by a car or something i don't know that he could really get killed that easily because he is so big you know but i don't know thanks i do too oh about two years so he's yeah it's really gosh anyway that isn't that funny how we do i mean we just really yeah well they're companions well do you have any um how do they get along together um oh yeah that's what are so neat about animals i mean they are you know like i said they're they're really companions you know and they're friends you know i mean they you can love them all you want and they love you right back and they don't no i know it's just so neat you know it's that's i don't know this is just so hard it's just it's like i said we've had him for two years and he's never i mean he's he's gotten out but he's always been right there he's never been gone for at all you know he's just always been right there when he gets out you know it's the first time he's ever been gone like this uh i i just knew today uh you know that we looked at the pound and that we just went all over the place and i knew we were going to find him you know and when we didn't it was like oh no so i don't know yeah we keep you know they told us like at the humane society and the adoption center you know don't give up hope you know and then well not yet we were talking about that tonight since you know he we just he just got out yesterday we were just talking about that whether we we were trying to find some pictures of him recently we've got so many when he was a puppy you know but we just don't have a whole lot we have him on film you know on the video camera you know but you can't put that on the you know so so i don't know i we will probably will put some things up some posters and stuff up and hopefully that will help you know maybe around the neighborhood but we know a lot of people that live in this neighborhood so that helps too you know if they can keep yeah so i think that if somebody else picks him up i think that uh if he gets out he'll come back you know i really do because he knows exactly where he lives so i know it's just like it's it's just so ironic that this would happen and i would get this this kind of a call i know it's very strange but well that's good that's one thing about cats though they're so small and you know they can get hurt a lot easier you know they can get hurt a lot easier you know so that would make you really tend to worry about them you know if they're not right there is that right huh that's really i i guess i really don't know cats that well because my mother never liked them so i never had them growing up so you know i never really had them around me you know so i've never owned one you know since i huh huh yeah that's true i i like the way they come up and they'll they'll put their head underneath your hand you know that and uh most dogs do that i mean i don't know any that really don't i mean you know they know exactly how to get that attention you know they just you know come up and they put your you know or they'll rub their their head against you you know well no well well he's outside during the day and then we get home at night we do bring him in uh_huh yeah the backyard it's really big too for him to run in and stuff that's why we couldn't understand why he would want to get out you know because he's had all this room to run in and but he dug a hole under the fence well see he did he did it a couple weeks ago dug a hole and you know we we filled it back up put him back in there he did it again so we chained him up you know but we really didn't want to keep him chained up because you know we feel like that's just too restricting for him so uh we got we we put dirt in the hole and then put some chicken wire around it you know so that he couldn't get out well he kind of ripped through the chicken wire so i can't i i i just have not i don't understand you know because it's like he's got a good home you know he's got i mean we have two kids you know that just love him a lot you know it's like we can't understand why he kept wanting to get out you know we just couldn't yeah i guess that's yeah i guess that's probably true i don't think it's anything we did least i hope not no i i know i mean he's always you know he really does have a good home i think that's what really bothers me the most about it you know it's like well i don't know if it's quite hit him hit them i have two girls and they they just been real uh i don't know at first you know they seemed to be upset but now it's like uh well if he doesn't come home can we get another dog it's like wait a minute you know poor buddy you know i said he's only been gone a day and you already want to replace him buddy uh_huh is that right oh that's funny yeah oh i didn't know that i had i had no idea i did not know that oh no oh i bet oh i guess so have you lost him before uh_huh what kind of a dog is he yeah oh boy he's a big one yeah oh well i hope he comes back that's too bad how long have you had him oh that's tough yeah you get very attached to animals don't you yeah well you know they're always there for you and they don't talk back to you and uh it's kind of pleasant yeah sure sure yes we have a dog a little white [lhasa] and her name is angel and we have a cat who a white cat he's he's just a tabby just a and his name is [dominique] we call him [neek] but pretty good uh we've we had the the dog first and uh she's kind of a [wimp] and and the cat kind of rules but uh she likes him all right he we had another cat about two years ago it got leukemia [feline] leukemia so we had to have it put to sleep and uh then we got this new cat so uh i have two children and they really enjoy the animals and then my mother who's very elderly lives with us and she's really good friends with the dog they're very good buddies that's right that's right they don't care what you look like or what you act like they just love you [unconditionally] it's wonderful oh i know it has to be uh_huh uh_huh oh oh that's really too bad that's awful well well i i'll i hope you'll find him you most likely will well have you put any posters up or anything like that uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah no you sure can't oh dear well that's good they can keep their eyes open yeah that will help well yeah yeah yeah he will i bet he does i know that it's hard on you i know that i'd be worried too yeah isn't it though that's you know i know sometimes our cat will will stay out all night and when he's not right at the door in the morning i really worry that something's happened to him that somebody he's got in a fight or you know somebody's hit him and and uh if he doesn't come by mid morning then i really get scared but he's always come back eventually so yeah yeah yeah they can yeah yeah well but he's a real feisty guy he fights with other cats in the neighborhood because he doesn't want them on our property he's cats are really almost more territorial than than dogs are they just really do not want other animals on their property they're very very he he just any cat that comes near and even a dog he won't he won't jump at them or anything but he'll sit and he'll watch and i think maybe he would if it came real close but he's very protective of our property uh_huh yeah well they're really a lot different than dogs because they're not they're very independent and they're very he's very affectionate when he wants to be but if you want him to be and he doesn't want to be he'll just he'll you know either scratch you or run away but when he wants to be uh he's really affectionate he likes to lay next to you and have you scratch his head and and and [snuggle] up to you and but if he's not in the mood you'd better stay away from him but dogs seem to be always in the mood they're always you know right there and like like you to pet them and loving yeah yeah oh yeah they do they sure do yeah now do you keep him indoors most of the time other than to go you have a fenced yard or uh_huh yeah well how did he get out oh boy uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right right uh_huh oh yeah yeah well you know that animals are like that they like to roam and investigate and see what's going on no no i'm sure that yeah yeah how are your kids handling it uh_huh uh_huh yeah that sounds like kids oh what's his name did you call buddy we that's was our cat's name that that that died oh yeah we named him uh we named him buddy after uh buddy bell uh the ranger baseball player that used to be here and we used to we were really into that when we got him going to the ranger games and we named him buddy [beaner] for some reason but buddy after buddy bell so but he was he was a good cat too we miss him a lot and i i feel real guilty because we had him like for six years and one year i forgot to get him his leukemia booster and he got it and i just felt so bad i it's real contagious and it's and the vet said it runs rampant in this area and if they don't have their booster any kind of [saliva] or anything from another cat if they get in a fight it automatically like they get it if the other cat has it so oh oh it was i just felt terrible i knew something was wrong with him because his appetite was he was just getting real skinny well uh i think she's mostly german shepherd uh she was uh uh a person lives across the street from me uh brought her home from work because a [coworker] of hers uh had this dog appear on its front [doorstep] somebody somebody abandoned her and she's only about oh between six and eight six to eight weeks old and uh uh i can't understand why anyone would abandon this dog though she's i mean she's that this young and she's almost [housebroken] i mean she actually asks to go out and uh yeah i was amazed really good temperament and very [playful] and affectionate good personality i don't know i can't imagine what uh would have been wrong with this dog so uh_huh oh really uh_huh oh yeah i had a uh last year i had i had another german shepherd now this one was purebred and uh he when he was about seven months old got a [gastrointestinal] virus and was just about on [death's] door but uh managed to get him to a veterinarian in time and uh and on huge doses of antibiotics and he actually got over it with seven hundred dollars in vet bills um but he had actually was able to get him over that and then he was gaining weight again was just getting healthy and uh he put on about fifteen to twenty pounds after the thing and then he got hit by a cadillac so i couldn't believe it that was that was really hard and that was even harder for i was on a business trip at the time and the dog was being house sit or dog sit whatever by some friends of mine down the street so they just felt absolutely awful and i felt felt probably worse for them than than for me because oh gosh they the uh this [fellow's] wife who was uh watching the dog she i think she loved that dog more than i did and uh she was really attached to it but uh it's unfortunate but now i've got another one so uh see he it it was just over a year uh it was in march of last year so uh yeah it'd been didn't didn't have one for a whole year yeah right my dad's like that he uh he had a beagle that he loved and uh when that beagle passed away uh he didn't want he wasn't going to have another dog there's no way no how and then uh the he the beagle died in i guess about october and by christmas time we went down to the pound and got him uh i or i humane society and got uh got another one a stray and she she turned out to be a great dog and we had her for six years until she just passed away recently and again dad went through the whole thing but mom went an yeah yeah it is well hopefully this one here cocoa will live a full life uh_huh yeah right oh uh_huh yeah that's not too bad golly the golden [retriever's] are good dogs too they're kind of like get that permanent smile to them they're always always happy i don't think i've ever seen them not look happy yeah right this this friend of mine has well it's the same guy that was watching uh my german shepherd when he got hit but uh went fishing with him on friday and took he's got a full a pure bred golden retriever and then i had uh the puppy a little tiny puppy and we went and took the two dogs up fishing and this they just they had a ball [romping] around and you know you can't get a golden retriever near water without it jumping in and uh this golden retriever jumped in the the really fast moving uh river current and uh well no actually he had no trouble at all he first jumped in and i he's he's just about a year old himself and never had really i don't think he'd [swum] before but he jumped in in the the river well the puppy jumped in the into some of the pools but not into the i was careful to keep her away from the the fast moving water because if she fell in then i'd of been had to go in after her and up here the waters probably about forty degrees right now and i would not have been fun trying to [retrieve] her but uh this dog dennis jumped in and got this look on his face like what do i do now as he's floating down the river then finally discovered that he could swim and uh actually [paddled] up against the current and uh made it back to the shore and climbed up and then he he jumped in again and he was swimming for quite a bit all afternoon he loved it cocoa didn't think too much of it though she jumped in and then started screaming and made me pull her back out i pulled her out and uh then had to wrap her up in a sweatshirt because she was [shivering] so bad and so but uh she got over it so uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah i've i live right across the street from a a big lake here um it's on [oneida] lake and i'm wondering if uh if she'll want to go out there and go swimming next year i mean i've got the yards all fenced in so she doesn't run loose but uh she could go in sometime when if i'm watching her so oh really yeah no no oh really oh okay my my dog last german shepherd it was a real chore trying to give him a bath too and that was the thing i couldn't figure out because he would go in the lake it wasn't like he didn't normally i mean he didn't seem to have a problem with getting wet but if you wanted to get him wet forget it yeah right right obstinate obstinate uh_huh i'll have to check it out i saw the the uh previews for it and all and it did look like it'd be a good movie but uh really haven't had a whole lot of time to get out to see the movies lately but i got to do more more fun things yeah yeah well i'm uh i'm a second lieutenant in the air force and so i travel a lot and yeah i'm a engineer at uh at the laboratory [rolm] laboratory [griffis] air force base up here so that's how i got into uh into the switchboard project and all that so but it's nice having a dog here uh the uh what's the what's the word i'm looking for uh lots of affection no unconditional affection from the from the dog yeah yeah no no yeah well it's been nice talking to you we seem to be [degenerating] here so okay what kind of puppy you got uh uh_huh oh wow that's great yeah well i i have a dog that god gave us too yeah she just appeared yeah my husband calls her street dog but we've had her now for about three years and i just you get so attached to them uh_huh um wow uh_huh oh no oh gee uh_huh oh i bet oh gosh yeah yeah how long has it been since the first one uh yeah yeah well i had i had a german shepherd before this one and when she died it just it just absolutely destroyed me i mean i was just you know i couldn't even talk about it for months and so i decided well that's it i'm not going to do this anymore and then god gave me this dog so uh_huh yeah okay yeah well you just do you can't help it's like it's like a kid yeah well when uh my my [doggie] uh that we have now uh she's she's mostly golden retriever the vet called her uh a golden mix like who knows you know but she's uh she's that sort of strawberry blonde [reddish] color you know and uh and her nose is that pink you know she doesn't have a brown nose and her she's sort of [unicolor] you know eyes are the same color and everything so i named her [rosebud] and uh a friend of mine said she that she this friend of mine grew up on a farm and said that she had uh a pet cow named [rosebud] and she said there's a lot of longevity in that name said my cow lived seventeen years yeah right and she's so easy going and so sociable you know she loves everybody and little kids can just you know [maul] all over her and she just you know thinks it's great uh_huh getting in yeah oh no really did puppy go to oh that's good yeah ugh ugh yeah yeah well the german shepherd that i had before we we had a little pool and uh she was she did not want any part of swimming but she liked to to get in the pool on the first step she'd just get on the first step and lay down you know in the summertime when it's really really hot and she'd just lay there on that step and just you know cool off uh_huh yeah well the one that we had just didn't want any part of that yeah and she oh baths oh gee she hated baths worse than anything it was it was just really a fight to you know get her clean have you seen uh [canine] the movie oh you've got to see it especially since you have a german it is so cute yeah and uh an part of the the movie is where he's trying to clean this dog up and it's it's just hysterical uh_huh yeah well that's how [cleo] you know she'd lay on her step but that was that was the only time she wanted to get wet and she didn't want you getting her wet yeah but you really need to see that movie i i we bought the movie and i i don't know how many times i've seen it and it came on t v the other night and i was watching it again and my husband heard me laughing and he said i can't believe that you're still getting such a kick out of that movie it is great yeah well we always wait until we can rent them you know oh really oh uh_huh oh yeah there's just right that's it really not critical at all yeah they're really wonderful no i don't an my kids would love a pet i had a pet when i was a girl i had a cocker spaniel and i think one thing about pets is they're a lot of company you can you can tell them anything and they won't tell anybody right as a matter of fact i was thinking that same thing unconditional love they just give it and don't expect too much anyway do you have a pet oh oh i'm so sorry but that's good that you're going to get another one i know some of my friends who have pets uh and they just are really you know the ones that have dogs are very uh protective of them and i think that's one reason they have them especially older people that i know that have pets but they just um really take care of them or uh are protective of them yeah an and my my kids um they really want a dog badly and they've been looking and looking and want you know they'd take anything i think but um i don't know do you like i guess your cat was an indoor cat it kind of traveled around travel yeah when i had a cocker spaniel it it was an outdoor dog and uh i think i liked that better yeah that's true yeah that's true take them for walks right yeah i see all the people on on sunday going for a walk with their dogs and and i i'm kind of skeptical with my son getting a dog i'm like i know it will be fun the first week maybe and then mom gets to take care of it or something so i oh that's exciting yeah yeah i think it's really important to that that if you get a pet that they're either spayed or neutered so that you know we're not just going on with this pet population and having to just get rid of them that that kind of [gripes] on me some but but i don't know more and more people are right right but uh i think that's really true yeah yeah exactly exactly i think our community is a lot more conscious now though too and and that's good too well i think that's all i have to say okay have a good night all right bye bye so have you got a pet yeah that's right that's like unconditional affection yeah i had a cat i've had several cats my pet uh was hit by a car new year's eve but uh i'm going to get another one as soon as i get back in town i'm going out of town this weekend when i get back i'm going to find a cat so yeah i work and go to school and it's kind of nice you come home your your [pet's] there for you and wants a little food a little attention and that's it's kind of fun yeah no it was an kind of indoor outdoor it it was well yeah i don't i don't care for the smell of the litter box so my cat was trained to go outside other than that it was inside when it wanted to be it was outside when yeah i i think you know i like dogs but i think that uh i'm kind of like big big dogs and you have to have room for them and dogs take a lot of a lot more care than cats do cats are pretty independent you know you feed them and they keep themselves clean and if you if you raise them right you know you don't have to worry about the litter box thing where with dogs you really do have to let them out and take them for walks and things like that yeah yeah i got to take care of a friend of mine's dog he's just got a puppy and he was out of town last weekend and of course the dog is not trained for anything yet so it was go over there and clean up after the dog and that's that's a major chore you know if you don't if you don't keep up with it and uh kids kind of they want the they want the fun part and not the not the work yeah well if you're if you're going to have a pet and not have it neutered or spayed you need to be willing to you know deal with the consequences take care of the [offspring] and and i think you know when i was growing up we had cats and you know just seeing the cats you know the the miracle of birth you know put that in quotes is that's a that's a neat thing to to experience as a kid and understand and and it was a real positive thing but on the other hand you don't want to you'd be one of these people that dumps the kittens off on the side of the road you know they're they're getting old now and it's time to get rid of them so yeah okay well good talking to you bye all right uh you have pets i understand a couple of them what are they pets get like that don't they they think they own you okay these are cats i remember one time uh i used to get a [chuckle] out of out of [pogo] that dates me quite a bit you probably don't know yeah he when [beauregard] was talking he was the dog remember and he used to say pets can be most as much trouble as as kids if they work at it a little bit and even more when they work at it a little bit and i think that's true oh uh_huh just good company huh that's neat you know it's funny how pets get to be so uh they really you really do [mourn] them after when things happen now we don't actually have a pet right now but uh but we have had some and and i i it's always hard for me to believe how close i've gotten to them we had a little uh uh-oh dog it was a little uh i got it so it wouldn't wouldn't shed one of these french poodle a little french poodle yeah and uh he used to i used to come down stairs in the morning to feed him you know and i'd let him up out of the basement where he was sleeping and he would just dance around the floor and i just got and we only had him about three or four weeks before he was hit by a car but i cannot believe the whole family just he just got in to us so quickly i could not believe it i i have to tell you about our most interesting pet though uh we had an iguana living with us for about uh about two years two and a half years i guess it was about uh-oh three feet long about three feet long it was a beautiful animal name was clyde clyde the iguana and uh my son dan went to uh to uh hawaii for the summer and when he came home uh he didn't bring the iguana with him but for some reason or other he had a thing for them i don't know whether he'd i think there was one in the school uh [zoology] department you know or biology department one or the other anyway uh and anyway he just he went and found this guy in in dallas somewhere who had picked up one in i guess in in mexico i don't know where but anyway he brought this home and i looked at him and i said you've got to be kidding i'm not going to live with a [lizard] but you know i visualize that animal racing about and you know like you think of lizards doing but they don't do that they're very much like uh well the thing about them is that they hold so still you don't notice that they're there and then they move and about scares you to death sometimes no he had full run of the house he just loved to sit on the back of my dryer where the air the heat came up out of the dryer you know it was he was really a neat pet and though i you know he'd when we'd have family home evening and everybody would sit in the living room and the fire would be burning he'd walk across my feet sometimes and it it was a long time before i could really pet him and but i fed him and he he knew how to get me to feed him he'd come out to the kitchen just kind of look at me until i went and got him something out of the refrigerator but he was really a neat animal he he'd lay in [dan's] lap you know and just uh when he'd pet him he'd just stretch and you know you could see him just enjoying it like a cat does it was kind of interesting but he did a lot of interesting things and uh dan carried him around and he liked to ride on the back of his up on his head you know with his tail wrapped around his arm so he wouldn't fall off an and scare everybody to death and kids loved him kids just loved him kids just came from all over to come and see clyde and visit with him and and he [tolerated] them you know he'd even tolerate him petting though he didn't like them too well at first but he he got tame you know so that uh people could go in there and dan was a drummer and he didn't he the only thing he didn't like very well was the [drumming] when dan would drum he'd sit there and [scrunch] up you know like he was trying to protect himself and then he'd leave the room oh yeah they really are they're interesting well they take on human characteristics like uh our other animal the next year our our son ken went to hawaii and well while dan was in hawaii ken decided he wanted a dog and he and he looked around a long while and he found a norwegian [elkhound] and he just brought this norwegian [elkhound] an home and he was so funny uh for a while they built a a run for him out to the side of the house you know he'd been on the patio but they put the run out there and he didn't like this run because there were no people that came by and sometimes he would just make a [racket] until you came and got him and one night we'd forgotten to put water out for him and and hal and i were in bed and all of a sudden there was all this noise out to the side the house and and he'd pick up his dish and throw it in the air and then bark and march around you know and then he'd pick up his dish again and throw it in the air until we came out and gave him some water did what no he didn't eat flies no they eat uh they eat greens uh we fed him the outside leaves of lettuce you know i'd get lettuce at the store and he'd eat the outside leaves and then in the summertime you could put him out and he'd eat outside except you had to keep him away from the garden because he liked to eat the little peas as fast as they came up you know it was really it was s really a of things that were fresh [sprigs] you know he liked that well yeah when uh when dan went up to college up at [ricksun] idaho he took him with him and uh everybody was used to him and they just loved him and what not and this his roommate put him out one day and dan didn't know it and it got dark and he didn't get him in again and they searched and searched and searched for him but uh uh it got too cold up there and he he died in a tree they found him the next day in a tree but so you you have to be pretty tender with them we had a he had his own heat [lamp] and uh and uh hot pad he laid on you know that was another funny thing he had a hot pad and it it burned up one time and boy it was that was funny too watching him kind of burned up but anyway an we got him a new one he had a blue one before and when we got him a new one it was brown and he wouldn't lay on it until we changed the covers no he wouldn't lay on it so they really are they really pick up things he was he was a clean animal uh we he went to the bathroom in the bathroom well we put some papers on the floor underneath the john and he went there to go to the bathroom you had to be sure you left the doors open you know he didn't like to go anywhere else he'd he'd scratch and do all kinds of things to get you to open the door if you happened to close it on him or something you know but but even when he went when he had an accident or something uh if you just let it dry it dries kind of like uh especially when he was inside and just eating lettuce it dried up a little bit like [ashes] and you could just vacuum it up in the winter time there was no smell at all no odor at all to it and in the summertime when he was outside and eating outside the smell was a little bit like a cat you know but uh yeah he is he was a really interesting animal i i just uh we just really and you know to this day i still miss him and that's been years ago yeah he was just yeah yeah i think i guess so but it's it was interesting well what do your cats do besides sitting and [purring] and letting you pet them yeah oh and you just kind of took them over huh uh_huh uh_huh a little bit easier to have cats in this kind of country though isn't it uh i think yeah that could be could be oh pretty ones newhart yeah i i well i have uh these well i don't know if they consider themselves animals anymore they actually you know sort of take over the place an and we're kind of their pets don't they really they own the place and naturally these are cats so oh [pogo] sure uh_huh i agree i don't know i i i think that um my husband and i are in such a situation that uh um i'm kind of um not able to do a lot i'm i'm kind of in a wheelchair i mean i kind of am but uh yeah i've got these two cats that hang around with me all day and i don't what i'd do without them it is and okay oh my oh really oh oh that yeah that's okay oh uh by choice clyde the iguana uh_huh yuck did you have him in a cage oh no oh no oh no uh_huh oh uh oh no i mean you don't argue with an iguana do you oh no oh my goodness uh_huh was the [drumming] and cover his ears isn't that funny the way we put you know um human characteristics on an animal like that an an it's i guess they do oh he used a classic [illusion] i forgot to ask you did the iguana catch flies for you did the iguana catch flies for you he didn't eat flies oh oh i bet well can we ask you whatever happened to clyde oh oh oh my uh oh really because that was like what he was used to how did he do that okay oh no oh my goodness oh yeah but that that's incredible it's a different little things oh that's well see i guess it's because you lived with you know him an and [overcame] some fears to get used to him yeah oh my goodness these guys they well actually they're my husband's pets well well actually it's like he's the cat person you know and i've i was always kind of [nondescript] in that category because i always liked dogs and they've kind of taken over and and uh you know maybe it is i they're so independent well i'm glad we have two of them otherwise i think they get neurotic if there just one of them they get real crazy but there brother and sister from the same litter they look totally different they are they are well they are siamese cats but one is one is uh um they're both registered you know one's a seal point she's the little girl and then uh newhart is the uh the the he is something he's like a dog he really he just he just wants his belly [scratched] and that's it you know and he's just the [warmest] thing in the wintertime he just sits on your lap sits on your lap but they're like seven do you have any pets now joey the dog is joey the cat is oh my goodness oh my i beg your pardon oh well did you all catch it or uh uh_huh no did no did you catch the fish uh_huh and it's all alone in that aquarium well at the present time i have two dogs an english [setter] you know that's the white dog with the feathers and it has uh yellow spots on it which they call i think uh liver spots and that's a male and i have a wonderful female lab black lab quite a long time uh probably five or six years and unfortunately the black lab that's a female it it's it's the most wonderful animal we've ever had an when she was about three years old we noticed that she was having uh problems [limping] and so forth and she has hip dysplasia and it's in that breed but now i think there are tests that can be [conducted] uh to tell whether or not the puppies have the have it but i think i don't know apparently they've been so in well i don't know [inbred] or what but well i'm not sure that's the situation but it um for those dogs that are registered and if if you should have one uh that also has hip dysplasia you cannot breed it uh uh_huh but she's wonderful um like what are the what are the symptoms uh_huh yes um well uh i have had just wonderful luck with this lab uh when uh let's see winter before last we would bring her in and uh when it was cold and she wouldn't i you know the next morning you want to take them out and she wouldn't i couldn't get her up without picking her up and which it was pretty hard to do at eighty pounds um until if i allowed her to not get up on her own it'd be two o'clock in the afternoon anyway i uh met my son's uh college roommate is a vet and he said um let's give her some race horse shots and you know in i'm i'm kind of glad to be able to tell people about this but you because you all the time you know run into people with problems anyway that's when we lived in oklahoma and uh so he gave this dog a series of it's they give it to race horses uh to get rid of uh [cartilage] and it's called anyway it's a series of six shots once a week and then i noticed after two shots she was well i could have but i can't give a shot i took her from enid oklahoma to oklahoma city every week for six weeks and uh after the the second shot she was significantly better then i didn't notice any improvement till the after the sixth one and ever since and he said uh a booster uh every year or two i mean maybe every six months or or something like that and when i notice in the winter when it's worse you know it's cold weather and so forth then i have uh gotten a booster for her but not many people in this part of the country know anything about i've had to get it from oklahoma they've heard about it but they've really never used it so dogs that get down in the hips like i think german shepherds do it and probably large dogs and uh it's just wonderful uh um um well we're living now in an area where we we we're in the woods and we take walks i just don't let them uh uh go away from me but we take walks through the woods twice a day and uh i can over do it on her but anyway at least she can go and she's not [limping] along and all that tell me about your cat and is um stripper an inside cat or outside uh_huh yes well of course that's nice they they well he just can well he has been trained and you've you've kept it up haven't you yeah it is wonderful i i have some neighbors across the field and um they when we first moved here uh when the dogs and i didn't we have a very nice kennel and everything but but since i i didn't want to i i just wanted to let them be able to be free for a while so i kept watch and never let them get away but now every couple weeks they one would slip away and my neighbor said to me oh i noticed those dogs dogs are so well trained anytime they hear your voice they come so that made me very proud well have we been talking five minutes i'm not either but yeah well um so it sounds like you keep your pets for pleasure yes oh really uh_huh no they don't no i i [glanced] at the clock when um we started and i think it's been probably about five and a half minutes or something but one day i was talking to a lady about gardening and i'm i love gardening and she did too an and after after about twelve minutes or something the recording came on and said that was the end of the tape uh_huh but it's been so much fun too uh talk well my best friend in [virginia's] daughter is a part of this project in texas and so she knew that i had the time and would be would enjoy it um so but i have a hard time getting anybody because i guess do you work yeah and probably just got home so um during the day i i and i understand also they want men yeah my husband does yes yes i think so too and i haven't helped them out on the on men particularly but my husband had been in fact he's been probably has made a few more calls than i have because i tend to not make them around dinner time i try to you know make them do during the day but nobody's home well good yeah it so much fun to talk to you you too bye oh i sure do i have a cat and a dog named joey uh_huh he's the little boy [pomeranian] and we just got a new addition to the family so to speak we also have a fish it's a mud dog it's a mud dog it's uh a cross between a catfish and uh i don't know what a [salamander] uh_huh we have a cat stripper oh the mud dog uh we had a friend give it to us yeah we'd like to get him a friend but um uh we haven't found one yet so how about you do you have any pets oh really what kind uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh how long have you had them uh_huh oh no uh_huh uh_huh oh is that right huh i had no idea i hadn't didn't even know that um our dog joey has uh a back problem uh he he's got a bad back but he's seven uh i guess he's almost eight years old um he just uh he doesn't he uh he rolls he doesn't like to roll over um you just when you touch him a certain way on the back but otherwise he can jump uh you know just as long as he doesn't bend a certain way uh_huh i bet uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh do you have to give those oh i believe me i understand uh uh_huh uh_huh um uh_huh yeah i've never heard anything about it either uh_huh does he get is he an inside dog also or does he just run out in the backyard is he fenced in oh yeah uh_huh oh that's nice oh yeah uh_huh oh stripper well he started out being a little [orphan] and we we took him in and uh he's about two years old now and he loves his treats uh both uh joey and uh stripper get treats and uh let's see oh well he's outside and uh he's got a way to get in he's got free access of a window we like to keep open so he gets to go in and out whenever he wants to joey on the other hand is a little different he has to go out whenever uh we ask him and when he when we ask him he uh he barks he'll either bark for food or he'll bark to go out and he'll tell you which one he wants he's been through obedience school oh definitely uh_huh oh yeah i'm not for sure i think maybe we have but oh definitely have you ever done this before oh okay um i haven't ever called i've put in the paper work i just never made the call yeah so i didn't know if they stop you when the time is up or uh_huh oh well at least you know you did your part how did you get into this oh i see uh_huh that's true i mean i um yes i do uh_huh right i was going to tell you the same thing they're really looking for a lot more men to participate does he yeah i need to i've got some applications i need to hand them out but uh this is a great project that they're working on and it's really going to lead the way uh for a lot of um applications and and development in the voice area uh_huh well this is the perfect time for me well maybe i'll get you next time all right have a good one bye okay do you have any pets oh oh instead of being carried yeah really uh_huh huh yes i've seen those they're cute uh_huh oh she's about four she's not completely pure we got her from the uh humane society when she was a puppy she looks like a she looks just like a golden retriever but she's a little bit smaller she's like fifty five pounds is it uh_huh huh uh_huh oh huh yeah she's perfect well she's got a brown nose instead of black too which makes her i guess [unshowable] even if she had papers which she doesn't but but we love her anyway she's just a lot of company to us we didn't we haven't had any kids and we're expecting a baby this summer but up until then she's been our substitute kid and she was a lot of fun right oh i bet it had a pretty coat too huh_uh yeah yeah right oh yeah we have some friends with a brother and sister golden retriever and those dogs have been having [seizures] and i wonder since both of them are having them if it's some kind of breeding problem huh_uh oh yeah yeah they did i i had never really had a golden retriever before we were going to get a shepherd and something mixed because my husband's family had had shepherds and all the other we looked at some of the shepherd mixes and the puppies weren't very uh social and stuff and we went to a pen of a little bit bigger dogs and all the others were standing there barking and jumping up and down and one dog would stand there [wagging] her tail and smiling and that was mine uh_huh oh really oh uh_huh oh huh uh_huh huh uh_huh uh_huh huh huh wow huh yes i've had i have had a number of them in my lifetime and i've i am a golden retriever fan but i had to replace it with something that the kids could carry yes yes yes well they were they really wanted something teeny tiny and i uh really wanted that [retriever's] disposition uh the ultimate to tolerant trainable disposition so i called four or five dog [trainers] because i don't like the little dogs and and i asked them you know these are the ages of the kids what do i get and they all said golden retriever and i said okay put it under twenty pounds and the only thing that they could come up with was a bichon [frize] which is a do you know what that is they're cute they look like an air headed let me tell you they're calm they're not yuppie they're trainable they're uh very [personable] in a different way that a golden retriever is they're not [dignified] like a retriever can be yeah so how old is your retriever well actually you know that's the breed standard for females what you yeah what you see shown and bred now as golden retrievers this you know plus eighty to a hundred pound range that is not breed standard fifty five is the minimum but they usually run about sixty to sixty five and the ones that are shown they are inside that weight allowance you cannot show your retriever if it's you know a hundred plus pounds so don't say she's small just say she's perfect uh_huh yep well they are they are the ultimate dog to have around kids so long as your kid is not scared of a big dog because i had a retriever actually i had a retriever [irish] [setter] cross which is a really nice animal and fortunately it was just like a retriever and then i've had a retriever it was gorgeous it was just gorgeous i mean just gorgeous um and they both you know both the half breed and the pure breed had the uh what i consider the the the perfect disposition but you know what you know what scares me about golden retrievers since they've become so popular you get what i call backyard breeders which is probably where yours came from people that don't know what they're doing and they breed them you know for a certain [characteristic] and in the retrievers it happens to be they like them big for somehow big is perceived as the better and when you start doing that you really [tamper] with you know the all the the years of uh [culling] litters and and uh you [tamper] with what the dog [innately] is we when i was when i bought my last purebred retriever i mean i looked all over because i wanted one that still looked like a retriever you know the short to the ground [stocky] golden uh trainable [tractable] quiet animal that could hunt and still be in the house and i ended up getting one that uh came out of a a a hunting stock because i wanted one that could still perform like a retriever did and i've seen an awful lot of lately really dumb dumb retrievers and i'm and i really fear for the breed because i love that breed but i really figure right when it becomes really popular that it's going to be ruined oh yeah you bet you you bet you you know how they came up with the retriever don't you the golden it was bred out of several different retrievers and they bred it for companionship and uh uh disposition and and ability to hunt it was kept only by kings but they [selectively] [culled] those litters i mean for many hundreds of years and since it slept in the castle with its master i mean it had it had to be of a disposition to make it you know an animal you could keep around that closely but they would go through all the litters and destroy the puppies if they were anything other than perfect now you know that seems like a cruel thing to do on the other hand you sure you know they sure created a a wonderful breed i mean a wonderful breed uh_huh well i tell you you know the the german shepherd is the classic case of what i'm talking about because in america that's called a rin tin tin phenomena only in america is there a dog called a german shepherd that dog is bred out of three european dogs the [belgian] [tervurien] a german skutzhund and a i always forget the third one i can see it uh uh but the third one is a children's dog and there are distinct breeds in europe now what happened over here was is that people saw the the first um which would actually have been a skutzhund which is what rin tin tin was and everybody wanted rin tin tin and it was known as a german shepherd here so they created a breed standard the american kennel club did that said anything that is a skutzhund a a [tervurien] and uh alsatian that's the other one alsatian any inner breeding of that can be called a german shepherd here and what happened is is that people wanted this shepherd to shepherd and protect and they bred a dog that i it's called a an [animal's] critical span which basically [translates] to how much shit will it take before it bites you that german shepherd the american german shepherd here was a a a such an [unreliable] animal that the american seeing eye institute refused to use them because they would turn on on their [handlers] and even um uh police corps which started you know finding other breeds to use because this thing this this thing known as a german shepherd here its personality and its [dependability] and its reliability was just terrible so about fifteen years ago the german shepherd club of america decided amongst themselves that they were going to change this so they went back to europe and brought back some good examples of each of the three breeds and bred to a standard what they wanted an american german shepherd to be which is a very heavily now skutzhund and alsatian and it's the alsatian that's the kid's dog it's just you see them in europe and they're just lovely but you'll see i mean if you ever start looking in papers now and you start seeing these ads for german shepherds they will say on them bred for disposition a k c [conforming] which means that their advertising that this is no longer an [indiscriminate] dog this is bred for and they had to go through and destroy a for a while there about seventy five percent of their puppies that they bred because they were looking for this disposition and nowadays you you'll get you'll get a dog trainer to recommend a specific you know [breeder] [handler] they will recommend their shepherds as a children's dog but okay uh well right now we have one dog inside she goes out but i mean she's an indoor dog and two outside cats male and female the the dog is probably about about thirteen fourteen years old and the cats are they might be as old i'm not sure yeah uh_huh uh_huh oh is that right what kind of dog do you have oh that's what ours is yes white oh uh_huh i'll be darned uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh well that's to be expected at their age yeah well everybody always says no more but i i think animals are really important in the family i uh yeah we have five well we have had we had had a a dog before she was fifteen when she died and uh this one we bought by accident a farmer called us and wanted us to call the animal shelter to or the dog catcher or somebody to come and get this puppy that somebody people drop things like that off up there and i said gee she sounds like a cute little dog i told the kids let's go look at her go get her so that's how we got her quite by accident uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh oh she picked us uh_huh oh oh uh_huh oh for heaven's sake no but they say it's real important for children to have pets because uh well they can go and talk to them any time they want to and tell them anything they want to and nobody is going to you know [reprimand] them or know their secrets or yeah yes and the nursing homes now they're finding that it's real important to take a pet into a nursing home uh_huh our one our one nursing home in has one permanent he he kind of has free run of the place and there is or somebody takes care of him but he goes out people and real nice dog uh and uh uh_huh uh_huh oh really oh yeah is that right yeah because most campuses don't allow pets you know they just do not allow them that's that's kind of great yeah yes yeah uh_huh uh_huh um oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah we've ruined them they say ruined them well we've had a lot of different pets we had the kids had rabbits for pets and we also raised them for food at one time and we've had it we've had a skunk for a pet for more years than i want to think about she was in the house well don't ever get one for a pet they're okay but like she uh they don't ever learn their name uh you can't you could never call her and she would come to you you had to go chase her down and uh their [eyesight] they can't see very far either but they before we got her everybody said oh they're just like a cat you know and uh they're not i mean they use the litter box that's about it oh my how how long probably seven or eight years and finally my children are the ones who said mom you've put up with that skunk long enough so we moved her to the basement and i don't think she was there a week till the men moved her built her a pen outside and i thought i put up with that all those years and we've had we've had cats stay in the house we had we had two siamese cats different times uh one of them ran off she ran off once or he i guess it was a male he ran off twice and the second time he never came back and we would see him uh several miles from our house he kind of moved into a woods down there and he got huge down there he really grew but he he never came back well he wasn't a whole lot he was in the house most the time but uh he did go out sometimes and uh they it makes a much nicer cat if they're outside yeah the the cats my son has a cat and the vet had told us they get strange if they're kept in the house all the time and their cat was not a friendly cat it was it was not a good i don't know it got it was just did get strange and since they've moved to where they are they let the cat out and it has improved the personality yes uh_huh yes oh gosh and how long have you had them yes kind of lose track well that's interesting because we have a we don't have cats but we do have a dog who is an indoor dog and she is going to be thirteen this summer so yes uh_huh um she's um a mix of cockapoo cocker spaniel and poodle is that right isn't that interesting what color is your dog oh well ours is black so definitely different yes she's a female and she's um been she's been a really a really good companion for me um she's like a little shadow you know kind of follows me around all the time and and um she's [slowing] down considerably she doesn't hear very well and she doesn't see very well but she's yeah at this age i guess so but um she's been a good dog to have and i don't know once she's gone i'm not sure if i'll get another animal or not yeah yeah i agree yes um did you get yours as a pet for your do you have children uh_huh uh_huh oh well i was wondering if you got your dog originally as a pet for them or just because you'd had dogs before or my goodness uh uh_huh yeah uh_huh oh yeah isn't that yes so that often happens that way well we had um intentionally um planned to get a dog we had just moved into this house and um decided to wait about a year and then went then we went out then and found one she was in the litter and um she was so cute because all the other little puppies in that litter were just crazy i mean they were all over the place and she was real [docile] and came over and just kind of sat next to us and i thought that's the dog for me yeah so she and it what was funny was that um our daughter must have been let's see she must have been about eight at the time i guess and um she just loved this little dog to pieces but i think she loved her too much because the dog has never been real comfortable with her i think she was always a little bit leery of her our son on the other hand who was about eleven at the time was um not very interested in pets but as it turned out he and this dog have gotten to be really good [pals] so you just never know how that works out uh_huh yes yeah that's right that yes they're very [unjudgmental] oh dear yes i have been i have been reading and seeing about that on television uh_huh and how uh_huh is that right isn't that amazing uh_huh yes it's funny how um how pets can kind of um oh take on a certain status in certain areas i mean um that made me think of uh when our daughter was looking at colleges we visited a campus in um saint louis and um there were several dogs on the campus and and the what was interesting about it was that they were very friendly but they didn't appear to belong to anyone and um i'm sure someone you know fed them they were healthy looking dogs but um our guide that day said that the one woman many many years ago had given a huge sum of money to to the university on the condition that there be um dogs just kind of left to roam around the campus which is the strangest thing i had ever heard i know yes i know yes it really was it was just a nice touch and it kind of made it seem more homey too but um i thought that was most unique and it just you know kind of goes along with what you were saying about the dog having sort of free run of the the nursing home so um but uh i this is the only pet we've had you know in all our years of marriage um and it's been uh sort of a a change for my husband because as a a a boy growing up his father had dogs but they were always hunting dogs and so they were never allowed in the house you know they were always kind of yeah right that's what he said yes so having a pet was a little bit different for him uh_huh yeah oh yes oh my golly oh gosh isn't that interesting i don't think i've ever talked to anyone who's actually had a skunk for a pet oh oh yeah i'll be darned how interesting uh_huh i guess i've heard that uh_huh uh_huh isn't that interesting that's that's really something um how long did you have that goodness sake oh my gosh isn't that funny yes and this is what it took finally that is uh_huh yeah uh_huh right my goodness uh_huh i'll be my goodness that's that's interesting i i wouldn't picture a siamese as being an outdoor cat uh_huh yeah is that right uh_huh well yeah so that that was right uh_huh carolyn i have a little schnauzer little miniature schnauzer what do you have you know those make the best animals uh best pets my uh son has a uh-oh it's a real mixture it's part uh [doberman] and part husky yes and they [gentlest] dog you ever met and they got him from the uh humane society here in oklahoma city and she's just turned out to be a [jewel] my my little schnauzer is is my friend she is so spoiled she's a year and a half old now and being single she's become very important in my life it's so nice to have come home and find something or someone who's really so happy to see you sometimes i wish i had not gotten this one it's a puppy because i work and i'm not home and unfortunately she's not as well trained as as i would like her to be and i realize it's my fault i'm not doing a really great job as a [disciplinarian] but uh it is it is she's you know she's real good i can leave her all day in the bathroom with her toys and her food and everything and and not one mess does she make and then we go outside and she'll stay outside for oh thirty minutes to an hour come inside and use the restroom i just want to kill her at those times but she's a doll she's a love she really is you know i i we always had a pet when i was growing up oh always had a dog my mother did not like cats so we always had a dog and and then course when my children were growing up we always had a dog and always said it was because the children wanted the pet and i find that i'm enjoying this one far more than i ever did when it was the children's dog i uh in fact my children gave me this this little puppy for christmas yeah i think so oh my goodness two babies huh oh that that is really probably bad timing oh yes do you and patience and you have to you really have to be just like your children when you set a rule you have to stand by it and be consistent and oh well it's kind of a mixed breed that we got from the humane society oh my oh uh_huh well my children are the ones that wanted our pet and this one is probably the best one that we have had um as i say we got it from the humane society and uh we had lost a pet and we really went there looking for the one that we had lost it got out under the fence while we were on vacation and we just looked all over for it and couldn't find it but uh when we walked in to the to the humane society this little dog was uh in the office and would sit up and beg and just oh he was so cute and the kids just fell in love with it we just couldn't leave without it but it's um whoever had it before must have trained it real well because it's just you know it's uh a good house dog i've never had one that i could keep in the house before and tolerate it uh_huh uh_huh it's hard to do that when you're not there constantly um oh um oh about the only time we have well i shouldn't say the only time but most of the time when we have problems with restroom is in the night and uh she usually stays inside at night we try to take her out right before we go to sleep but uh sometimes it doesn't work uh_huh oh what a cute idea well we got one one year for christmas and uh i had a baby the next day and uh so that one wasn't really well trained oh i just didn't have time to take care of baby and train puppy at the same time so yeah i it was it really was the older kids had wanted one though and you know we thought well that would be a fun time for them to have it you know get it at christmas time it was a little spitz a little white fluffy and you know looked like it came right from the north pole and that was fun but um i i sure wasn't good at training it i think you have to have time you know to do those things that's right well do you have any pets oh oh i used to have box turtles um well years ago when i was growing up i i really like them oh yes um we have one dog a bichon [frise] um our friends in houston bred the dogs i had never heard of them they're um they're all white and they're small and um and fluffy they don't shed i guess they're [distantly] related to a poodle but they're not very well known in this country and they're not um high strung or over bred um ours is uh on the small end and she's about ten pounds and they range from probably ten to sixteen pounds and they love people um and kids and that was something we were looking for um our our love is golden retrievers and that's what we had intended to get in houston but we had a small yard and a pool and knowing how they love to dig and love the water um and we thought that was kind of a tough climate so uh we ended up getting this and uh my son would rather have a golden retriever though i think now he wants a a good size dog oh yeah well they really are um they're really sweet dogs we've uh we thought probably our neighborhood in houston had more of this breed than any other place just because of um the family that had them and and bred them they had five litters of puppies and and a lot of them stayed in the neighborhood because um it's b i c h o n f r i s e bichon [frise] yeah they're uh and they don't shed so they're they're good dogs for people with with allergies and they love people and they're um no not really ours um ours barks more than um than some because she spent a lot of time at our friends house we used to [swap] back and forth dogs they have three dogs they had a cockapoo and and two [bichons] um and she didn't bark at all until she spent time there and uh now it's funny she's she's a good watch dog and if there's she'll bark that way but she also talks a lot she um has a definite personality and so if we're leaving her she barks at us because she doesn't want to be left um no no and they're um they're very smart dogs the circuses in europe used to use them um for the acts they uh-oh they'll dance on their [hind] legs each um but they're very easy to train and well they range i'd noticed up here they're a lot more expensive it seemed to me from the ads in the paper they run anywhere from two hundred to four hundred dollars i think which i thought was a lot well she's no longer breeding them but um because her dogs um the the second one that she has was one of the puppies from the litter and uh the one male that she used had a tooth problem and so she only bred that dog once because it had the tooth problem and did them strictly as um pets you know they weren't weren't show quality oh but yeah takes a lot of time yeah um but she might have some contacts here i know i know that the dog's grandmother um was from plano oh that's where i live too yes i do i have a dog named [grisly] who's a ten year old uh mixed breed between golden retriever afghan hound and chow and i have a pair of box turtles yeah oh yeah i do too lucky and spot that's their names and they live in an aquarium without water in my family room and my dog thinks he's a mother turtle and always has his nose all around my turtle box so do you have any pets now no i haven't either oh and how big do they get oh that's interesting the water yes yeah oh uh_huh well we've got a good size dog and we were considering getting a puppy a small house lap top dog for him because he likes other animals and for me because we used to have a miniature dachshund and i miss having a little one you know around the kind you have sounds very interesting though oh uh_huh and how do you spell that breed f r i s e and how do you pronounce that okay i'm writing it out [phonetically] yes do they bark a lot uh_huh oh uh_huh yes oh does she ever mess in the house oh uh_huh oh gee uh_huh and about how much are they and how about the and how about the person in uh houston oh uh_huh oh yes just pets yes that's what we'd rather have is just a pet instead of we used to show saint [bernards] when i was a little girl we did that every weekend yes and it's very expensive oh that's where i live yeah i'm at coit and legacy sure i have a springer spaniel and her name is thumper she's about seven or eight years old i got her for christmas from my family and uh back when we lived in nebraska i like to hunt and uh so i thought that if i had a good hunting dog like thumper that boy i could just go out and get all kinds of game yeah except we live in plano texas now so do you have a pet now oh what kind of cat is it uh_huh being born outside you didn't have any problems house training him that's good sure and older well we went to a cat show at the plano center here in town and uh we thought that we have a cat now but we thought well if we ever get another cat you know we'd want something kind of unique so we kind of looked around and they had everything from [hairless] cats to siamese cats and persian cats and we sort of fell in love with the uh maine [coon] cats they're huge oh i'll be darned i didn't know that well that's interesting we kind of like well my family didn't necessarily like like them as much as i did but the [manx] is that the one that doesn't have a tail it sort of has a bob tail i kind of like that too but well i'll tell you an interesting story about how i got my dog and then i suppose our five minutes will be up i work for a university and i went to uh omaha nebraska to recruit students and i had some time off in the afternoon so i went to a a pet shop and i saw these little springer spaniels and so i decided well you know this would really be a nice dog to have so when i got back home to carney nebraska i told my wife about it and i said you know this is just a i i i can just hear the dog crying for me now and christmas is coming up hint hint and so i had to go back the next week as well as a bunch of other people from the university and one of the people uh that we went with uh they were friends of ours and so we got to omaha and i decided i'd take my friend over and show him the dog and so i got over there and she said oh that's too bad the dog has already been sold and i didn't realize it but this guy had somehow worked it out so that he got there a little bit earlier bought the dog and she was in the back room and so that night we had a reception for some of the uh potential high school students or college students and and uh he had the dog the whole time in his room and and i had no idea and so we headed back to carney that night and the dog rode in the car and we stopped along the way and had a bite to eat and they left the dog in the car and i guess while we were inside eating thumper just tore the heck out of the inside of the car and uh finally we made it back to uh to carney and do you have any did it work no right i um i had a for many years i had a dog that was part springer spaniel i just love them her name was molly but she isn't alive any more we had her for um fifteen years i think my family did and just loved her she was the greatest greatest um went through two generations of children in my family and was always very gentle yeah i have a cat now he just turned seven also and he's i um got him in arizona and when i used to live there and he is huge he is eighteen pounds just um i got him he was um he was born in the wild like in a in a shed and had never been in a building when i got him so he and he's he he must be part cross part with some kind of desert animal because he's very long and [lanky] but he's a very tame spoiled house cat you know now that i've had him for seven years no no he's yeah he's great and uh he's uh he's really spoiled though so but he's really big so lots of times he it he seems to get in fights and when he was younger i think he started them and now i think he barely makes it i think he gets beat up even though he's big because he's pretty much overweight and comes home with a few scratches now and then yeah oh i've seen them i yeah i have seen them they um weren't they they were actually i can't remember they were used to be used on ships and in for for [mousers] you know so they're very [nautical] too yeah i just uh i think i'm i think i'm being accurate in the in the area of [folklore] but i'm not sure yeah yeah yeah i'd love to go to a cat show i'm real a real cat lover i'd have a lot more cats if my boyfriend would let let me he doesn't really like mine let alone another one yeah okay um i know what you mean okay what kind of pet do you have gail oh you have children have you uh what have you had oh well you're going to have lots of pets with your children growing up well we had a a schnauzer that we lost this summer and he was fourteen years old and uh we've had two schnauzers and before that we had all dachshunds and i think my husband wants another dachshund and we're trying to debate because our children are grown and and uh i don't know whether we really want to be tied down to a you know another dog and we do have a very loving cat that's you know kind of our baby and uh and we like pets we like them around we have grandchildren that run through and they think we should have a dog and that's because they have a great [dane] they're just huge oh yes yes yes i have never wanted to that's why we've never gotten a female you know in anything and uh uh and our male cats you know we had uh neutered right away and of course it he doesn't know it he's still out partying but um you know i do think that maybe we'll get a female next time and just had her have her spayed you know and uh yes yes yes which i think is a good thing it just breaks my heart to see these poor little old dogs wandering the streets looking starved and you know it uh plus uh you know the safety factor and stuff well we enjoy having pets we uh you know i think they're a lot of company and and when my mother lived with us uh the cat was really hers and and he was kind of wild our our daughter found her and brought her to us and uh that cat walked in and walked right up to my mother and jumped up and [curled] up in her lap and she was the only one at first that you know could really hold him you know because he was really [skittish] but it was like he knew you know and he would sleep with her and so he was a lot of company to her you know and and just love her and he's cats are usually so independent but this one you know he comes up and he [crawls] up next to my husband now you know he's you know before the dog died we have a queen size bed and the dog would sleep on my side and the cat would sleep on my husband's side you know and when everybody turned we all four of us turned in a row uh_huh did he uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i think that's one of the reasons our because as i said our our schnauzer was old and so he was becoming [incontinent] and so then i would just have messes in the house and i think that's one of the things that both of us are not wanting to start over with you know and uh and it was new carpeting and you know it just really you know upset me no end and uh oh uh_huh yes you will you will you know we were trying to decide to you know about putting him to sleep he was just you know he was getting so old and had a other problems too and and fortunately the decision was just taken away from us which made it a whole lot easier you know and and again going through that because our our animals are almost like our kids in some ways you know and and you grieve just as much over them when they go you know as you would a child and and you know our son and and his wife and our daughter and her husband and the grandkids all say get a dog get a dog you know little thing be quiet be quiet and i can tell my husband you know deep down he you know he well i don't i have children i have little children both of my kids are under two so right now we don't have pets but we've had lots of them in the past uh_huh well we had a dog before we moved here uh and we couldn't bring her with us we came from colorado and we've had hamsters and fish and birds okay i've uh_huh uh_huh huh yes definitely well we you know if it um if it were just more peaceful you know with the little ones we would definitely have a pet i just think it's nice to have around we had a cat that had kittens so any pet that i get from now on will definitely be spayed or neutered because uh i did that experience was awful uh_huh what you doing oh well a lot of times now when you buy them from like the s p c a or from the humane societies or whatever their adoption includes their [spaying] so uh_huh oh uh_huh yeah my husband that's one thing he hated was our cat used to sleep with us our dog wasn't interested in even coming in our room but our cat would sleep with us and he hated that uh_huh he just thought that they belong and when she'd walk on the couch along the back behind his head he hated that so i guess it's probably probably if we get another animal it probably wouldn't be a cat even though i love cats i think it would probably be a dog and it would definitely be an outdoor animal uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh oh that would greg uh my husband's grandparents have a dog and they just it needs to be put to sleep but it's [grandpa's] dog and uh he's really getting too old to take care of it but the dog messes all over the carpet and my daughter is just nine months old and so then she [crawls] on the carpet and oh the smell i mean it's just really awful and that's that's one real drawback but you know i guess you'll do just about anything for your pet if you love them enough uh_huh okay well do you have a pet two cats you're lucky your two fish well my husband you know how sometimes when you marry someone that you get along on everything except one major thing my husband is a hunter fisherman [outdoorsman] [marlboro] type person who had to have a sporting dog so we have a black labrador beautiful gorgeous black labrador but to me he belongs up in the field you know in the ranch in the farm and well because we finally negotiated that i was losing my mind uh he sleeps in the laundry room and then he goes out for the day but this this is a beautiful dog and he is wonderful with our little girls and he is he's comes from a purebred line and there's nothing you could say bad about him except that i was more of a cat or a small dog person that you could sit in the chair and cuddle and this is huge you know course when he runs around the yard he just [digs] he doesn't know that he's tearing up things but he does and the worst part that i had with him he's he's three now was when he was uh about eight months old and i did not know what to expect from a dog having not had one and i left him in the kitchen with the little baby gates up while i was gone for about an hour and i came home and he had ripped my wallpaper off my wall and it was in the floor and i just about lost it and i called and i said come home and get your dog and so he said well puppies just chew when they're nervous and i well i wish you had told me you know and it was about eight months later he ate a piece of the linoleum he kept picking at it and i didn't the the tile in the kitchen and picked a hole in it so the last thing he did was when i had sat out a whole lot of [begonias] in the backyard and he dug them all up and brought them to the porch and i told my husband i said you know it's either me or the dog and he looked at me like well you know he loves this dog and every night when he comes home from work he [hugs] it and talks to him and he's a good dog so it's one of those things i'm just having to get used to and that's why i laughed when they called with the topic i thought oh boy do i have a pet but i i grew up with cats and i'm very comfortable yeah oh she's old isn't she oh i started to say then you broke your heart oh oh bless your heart that makes me feel so bad yeah oh no oh oh no oh that's awful i never heard of that before uh_huh or the smell or something uh_huh well now does your cat sleep in the house they are they are house cats yeah oh yeah good oh but the cat doesn't [destruct] does it see it doesn't do anything see oh no yeah oh oh no oh that is they do wreck things well i'm not either i'm not either and it's just been he's beautiful but it's just one of those [concessions] i just had to make but i kind of ignore him now today's the first cold we've had in texas and it's really cold and [drizzly] and it's freezing and people are doing their fires and i brought him in because he's just a wet mess out there and he's in the laundry room with this little carpet square and he's just [huddled] up like if you'll be nice to me i won't make any trouble you know and then my daughters both have hamsters and i i they're eleven and eight and i gave in at christmas and they have they keep their cages real clean it always smells of cedar and they just sleep and eat bits of apple and carrots and i think they're cutting us off oh oh okay okay oh okay i understand okay well they'll cut us off pretty soon yeah i know how does in the salt water salt water or yeah i have two cats and do and oh and two fish and what do you have oh no ooh right does he sleep in your house right right yeah yeah uh_huh oh my word oh dear good bye i love my cats i had one cat for eighteen years i got her when i lived in hawaii before i even got married i had my cat well she i had to have her put to sleep last june oh it was awful it was just awful but and she just sat there on my lap you know she just just waited and oh it was awful but her hair but the bad thing was though she would pee in my husband's shoes you know and she just liked his shoes and he'd have these dress hundred dollar shoes oh it was just bad and my closet and it was oh something oh it was terrible and once she did it you know then she would i mean she wouldn't if our shoes sat side by side she would pee in my husband's shoes she must have known he didn't like her or something oh anyway i i and i would shut i would bar the closet doors and would uh clean the carpets and oh dear it was just awful that was very funny i uh well i have two cats right now and of course they sleep with my kids my kids my my fourteen year old son has an extra pillow on his bed just for the cat oh no i i'm not going to have a dog we've had two dogs and uh they both got ran over after we had them for several years just nice little outside dogs but were just my kids' friends they would go they would go with me when i would go running and and the last one got hit uh as she was following my one of my sons across the road to the school it was awful it was just and it just it's too heartbreaking but they do dig up and they just they just wreck things and i'm not a dog person ooh i wouldn't want a lab it sounds beautiful but um oh and how old are your girls oh yeah sure no that's somebody's trying to cut in on my line and i don't want to answer i'll just wait no i've i've got incoming calls and i don't know why calling i i hate to cut it off i think they would cut us off so we'll just wait whoever it is will call back well it's somebody calling for my kids you know jeez actually it's my son i know it is my older boy he never likes to come home from school anyway that's what we have and i have i've tried to start a fish tank and i keep losing all my fish no just regular water hello lynn okay do you have any pets oh what are their names which is the dog and which is the cat uh wife and i we have we have two cats uh one's real nice but the other one is a well she's pretty wild yeah are they um just house pets yeah that's that's what ours are too oh really oh well that's a nice nice story um sure sure yeah wow uh_huh wow um do the skunk uh was it kind of like a cat to have around the house yeah yeah uh_huh right uh_huh and the skunk oh yeah um oh uh i had i had a dog one time and uh he chased after a after a skunk and got sprayed so we had to we had to give him a tomato tomato juice bath and uh get him cleaned up uh_huh right but i suppose it was still in the instinct of them to to back up and get ready yeah why i don't know i i think they're kind of nice to have they're kind of you know just relaxing to i don't know to pet and to i don't know when they like sit up on your lap and stuff like that just kind of enjoyable to you know have like i don't know something giving you some affection as well what what do you think oh yeah yeah yeah um do you like big dogs or or little dogs uh_huh really yeah uh_huh almost cruel for him to to walk wow yeah sure yeah yeah we've got a [calico] cat too yeah yeah she's the she's the nice one we uh we used to live in an apartment and like our cats never went outside but um the neighbors used to let their dogs out and our neighbors were i don't know kind of slimy and uh our cats wound up getting fleas uh from the apartment that we were in so we had to we had to flea bath them and it was uh it was an experience that they didn't enjoy at all yeah really really oh yes yes i have a dog and cat now [tibby] and liberty [tibby] is the dog and liberty is the cat oh oh ours are pretty calm uh_huh yeah our cat we got from the pound the day the night she was going to be put to sleep so that's why we call her liberty do you want to hear about my other animals i've had i've had a skunk i've had a burmese python i've had rats i've had mice uh let's see i've had gerbils i have i had a son he's now gone from the home that was an animal lover so at one point i had a snake skunk dog and cat running loose in the house yes it was litter trained and we had it [perfumed] and uh it was very aggressive but all the all three of them dog cat and skunk used to chase each other all through the house and the only thing we have with the skunk he was very very protective of his territory being the sofa and the blanket on the sofa nobody came near it when he was there oh yeah they um ours would still back up to the dog or cat when he got mad and try to perfume them but the [glands] had been removed so right one other question we had is why do you have pets yeah i always said if i well i always said if i died i'd come back as a dog that'd be the best way to be well we had a german shepherd and he had dysplasia and he had it for about three or four years where we just about had to lift him and carry him every place he went so when he died we got a little one but our shepherd was almost thirteen years old and it just you know was almost cruel because yeah he just he couldn't get up he couldn't walk so he was a hundred and twenty pounds so it was a chore so we said the next time around we'd get something little that if something happened it would be easier to carry and then we've had three cats in our married life and we've got a [calico] now do you um yeah well don't even talk to me i when i was single i had gone away for the weekend and my husband then fiance was to keep my cat and he let her out and my house was loaded with fleas i mean you walked in and your legs were just black and we had such a time and never got the cat back yeah i found it you know in the street i was a social worker at the time and found it okay um do you have any pets now yeah oh okay um that a matter of choice or [compulsion] yeah yeah yeah yeah well right now i'm a student and campus housing does not even allow thinking about that no we almost got chased out of here for feeding a stray cat yeah they're very strict about it oh i love animals i was raised our house when i when i was growing up there was almost never uh at least one cat in the house it was almost always at least one cat sometimes you know like fifteen or twenty but uh always cats in the house oh yeah how old are your kids okay one our first he's about eleven weeks now yeah yeah uh originally west virginia um i don't know how familiar you are with that area of the country but charleston west virginia okay that's pretty much the south end of the state or the southern quarter of the state anyway okay in the north end of the state you've got that little narrow strip of west virginia going up between ohio and pennsylvania right at the base of that northern peninsula is my hometown yeah yeah it's well um my parents' house is like three miles south of where the mason [dixon] line would have hit the ohio river had it continued that far so oh it's beautiful uh well from my neck of the woods it's hilly um you know uh maybe three hundred four hundred feet elevation uh type [variations] from the valleys up to the hills the [hilltops] um not a lot of [farmland] there mostly it's uh i mean you know there's you know individuals with their own own uh growing their own food uh most of the agriculture it's more in the way of uh sheep and cattle and even that's you know small time mostly uh the biggest chunk of what's going on there is is uh industry it's coal mines and chemical plants and power plants uh aluminum plants there's like two aluminum plants computer engineering uh just finished up my fourth semester yeah yeah it's a big change i spent twenty years as a mechanic so yeah yeah i'm working on a bachelor's degree i'm working on a bachelor's degree it'll be pardon uh it seems to me from what i've been able to find out that's considered a pretty good program it's nice and small which means you know if you don't get the class this semester then you've got to wait or three or four you know anywhere from two to four semesters to get it again but uh it's worth it once you get it oh yeah yeah most the class are pretty small that works out real well uh well um first off we'd probably wind up with a a cat or maybe a puppy i i i'm partial towards the larger dogs um our last we've we've had a couple of cats before we moved on campus uh had a hamster or two and they they got to be a lot of fun uh it's amazing how much character well we don't right now no we've uh i grew up with uh with pets my folks and i always had a dog and a cat some birds but uh right now we don't have anything what about you well we've just uh it seems like we've always been at a place where we'd have to go away for the summer or something and uh it was never convenient to have anything we were thinking about getting a dog if we get into a house uh someplace where there you know we can take care of it and everything we've got some children who would just really uh enjoy having an animal you know a dog i think and what about you all oh no is that right but you like uh you like pets and things oh yeah uh_huh oh yeah we we enjoyed them we like we like pets but uh you know you've got to deal with uh taking care of them and and feeding them and everything like that and our kids are we've got some children and they're not not used to it you know on a daily basis they they uh oh from fourteen down to seven you sound like you've got some small ones in the background is that right oh great congratulations where are you from uh_huh okay i've been to charleston yes uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well that's yeah that's interesting so it's really up north in the country really i guess so gosh i see it's pretty nice country up there hills or what uh_huh uh_huh is it [farmland] oh yes sure uh_huh okay what are you what are you studying there at [heidelberg] oh yeah what year well great yeah i hope that works out well yeah what's oh did you well you've got some experience behind you in the work force yeah are you uh shooting for a bachelor's now or a master's or what oh okay good hope it's a good program there hope it's a good program there yeah good huh well yes that's good and probably a good uh student teacher ratio and things yeah good well i i was wondering what if you all were to get a pet like if you were to move into an apartment or a house somewhere what would you get uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh a hamster oh yeah you bet they tell you our topic you've got it yes we do uh my wife and i have a dog that soon be eight years old and we have a a cat which is uh i guess about five years old how about you guys three dogs and two what kind of birds do you have no kidding enjoy them you let them out and let them fly around and everything okay you know this is like a [cruelty] joke and i apologize if you're a bird lover but uh we had a parakeet and my fault put up our first electric fan and never thought about it knocked that parakeet right out of the air it killed him oh that's well it killed ours i'll be darned well speaking of pets i'll tell you my my kids are older now my both of them are either in or out of college but but we had for years about five years i guess had a my son had a burmese [boa] [constrictor] and that thing grew to be seven and a half feet in in length and finally my wife wife bless her heart got rid of it because i didn't really like it we also had a one year down in florida on a vacation for father's day my kids years ago maybe uh ten years ago go bought me a skunk from a exotic pet shop it'd be like it'd been like [deactivated] as far as smell and everything and we had that darn pet skunk for about five years and and my son left went to school we finally sold his [boa] [constrictor] but my son needed some money and we we sold it for about two hundred and fifty dollars so when the guy came over he was [infatuated] by that skunk so i made him a deal i said you take that skunk and he said i'll sell that snake to you for two fifty i said otherwise i'm going to give it to this other man so he took the skunk too and the skunk was a good a decent pet but you know does his little [jobbies] in the litter box and is is and it was sort of a neat but they just stink too much that was sort of fun you know i tell everyone this story because my wife is a real pet lover i use to visualize my wife many times my wife would be lying there on the sofa and this snake honestly would be stretched across the top of her body and with his with his head right on her neck and the skunk would be sitting at her feet but the cat would be on the back of the sofa and a dog would be running around crazy oh gosh oh my son bought this snake uh someone gave it to him when he was in junior high school and it was just a small thing then but it got to be pretty big and you know you'd feed it you'd feed it you put feed him small mice to big rats and things like that it's just uh too much that snake used to watch our cat walk around i always told my wife i says you know your friend's going to get our cat one of these days oh me neither we're down to a simple dog and cat now and that's the way it should be and haven't had any parakeets for quite a while birds uh customer of mine has a parrot and uh gosh sticks in my mind he paid eighteen hundred dollars for a parrot and that was just mind boggling are you uh_huh yes oh gosh that's neat why sure come to my [menagerie] uh pets do you have pets oh my goodness we have three dogs and two birds at this point parakeets oh have a ball with them well no because my dogs chase them so in order to have the birds not stuffed i have to keep them in their cages uh_huh uh_huh well we had that happen once um my son had the bird back in his room because it's his well the first one that we had was his bird and i had a ceiling fan put up and it the bird got away from him one afternoon and i mean that sucker hit that fan and went flying up against the wall i thought oh so much for the bird no he's still alive and kicking no i guess we didn't have it high enough or he didn't get hit in just the right spot but it threw him up against the wall you know and he [slid] down the wall oh gosh oh i hate them oh my goodness you're kidding oh well that's pretty good oh yeah oh yeah oh you're kidding oh oh my gosh i can not i just i don't in fact my brother has a uh a exotic pet shop out in california and he keeps threatening to send a snake through the mail you know i'm going don't do that because they won't come in my house uh_huh oh my gosh oh my gosh that is wild oh i just can't do those and the lizards and the all those those things they they need to stay outside far away from me yeah oh yeah they are so expensive well my son was just dying for a bird and i'm really allergic to them so i try to stay away from them except i've gotten real attached to this one and and uh we went down to canton one time oh gosh two or three years ago now and he'd saved up his allowance you know and picked him out a bird in a bird cage and and that stinking bird when i brought it home tried to take it out of the little box that they give you [clamped] onto my finger and would not i mean i had to literally shake him off to get him in the cage and he has tried to bite me for two years and all of a sudden this bird and i have become wonderful friends he gives me kisses he talks now and it's just hysterical i'm the only one that pays attention to him and i'm a substitute teacher and one of my fifth graders last year came up to me and said my mom's making me get rid of the bird we have too many pets i thought yeah right come tell me about it you know they knew the sucker when they saw one so now we have two parakeets uh we have a sheltie collie a miniature sheltie yeah it's about oh about six months old and we're we live in an apartment so we don't have a yard so it has to stay inside and we're having a difficult time trying to train it it's about six months really but they're supposed to be real intelligent dogs but i guess every one one one one of them or every once in a while you get one that's not so intelligent because this one it uh_huh yeah so how'd you all how do you what's the best method right stand outside with them until they well we're hardly ever at home so it's kind of difficult and you know you don't want to you don't want to spank it or scare it or anything like that so yeah we we try to take it you know it gets it gets frustrating when you take it outside and you know and then it runs right inside and it does it huh yeah a lot of times and you know it won't it's little job outside and it comes inside uh yeah we've tried that and uh you know there's certain spots in the house where he likes to go so and he [chews] on plants and all that but you know that's natural for a little puppy huh oh really oh that's sad how old is it man that's sad oh of course not i couldn't that is really sad what what's the deal we we try to we're trying to take it on walks now you know and we can't because it's not accustomed to being on a leash and so it i mean this dog really feels like it's being killed or something when you try to you know tug on it to walk it i mean it just goes like a mad dog i mean it just jumps up and down and starts [yapping] and it's you know i mean it's not even close to even being trained on a leash uh_huh well we've heard bad we've heard some bad things about some of those you know they sometimes misuse their license or whatever you know they treat them bad oh really oh really uh_huh how long did it take every what oh really well sheltie [collies] are you know [timid] and they don't really unless they get used to something they're really nervous and yeah yeah and uh if they're not accustomed to something they they're really scared so do you how old is it uh you you're you're in the [roughest] stages of pet ownership i think well i don't i don't know if that has anything to do with the intelligence really the the the training bit uh i've had dogs through the years right now i've got two and three cats but uh and my son and daughter in law have kind of a sheltie mix and we watched it this summer for two to three months and it wasn't trained quite fully either and uh but it was a sweet and an intelligent dog i don't know i i'm old fashioned and when i got my my dogs when they when they did something i [hollered] at them and threw them outside they say that's not the way to do it now you're just supposed to no just just put them outside i guess unless you catch them in the act yeah no no you don't want to do that but uh does does it just want to sniff around does it just want to sniff around and play when it's outside yeah have you praised it and given it a treat maybe when it does something outside yeah that's nothing huh well it it it'll it'll catch on pretty soon i'll i'll bet you i i have a sixteen year old almost sixteen year old golden retriever and she's gone the other way because she's so old she doesn't have much control so we're [battling] with that problem and she still feels good uh she can't hear worth a darn or see very well but she's got a great appetite and she knows we're there by smell she'll be sixteen in may and yeah but we can't bear to do anything because she's been our friend for all these years so we're putting up with all her accidents and the two nights ago she had [diarrhea] and so that was a bad one but uh i think we're buying a carpet [shampooer] this weekend uh_huh yeah does it oh uh_huh you know maybe you you can get it signed up this spring or summer for some of the dog obedience classes oh well you know we went we went to the junior college richland and we took my my daughter was living at home then and she took our golden retriever oh not the golden retriever the norwegian elk hound over there and it it it's a pretty good class and they did pretty good except this dog is she's just pretty she's not smart so she didn't learn a lot but it i think it calmed her down a little bit and she's used to being around other dogs now i think it was like a six week program uh i think it was one night a week for like six weeks and uh you know it was a group class outside it was fairly reasonable too yeah they're they're usually a high strung dog aren't they um our our friend has a okay um chuck do you have any pets there at your home and what kind do you have uh_huh uh_huh well we have a cat um he's probably oh a good two years old big old fat and [sassy] tabby oh uh how's the disposition of your siamese cat uh_huh uh_huh well yeah he's uh he has been really aggressive uh especially towards my little girl for some reason he's uh been so mean to her we've had him for about two years and he was so mean to her um right after we first got him so we had him neutered and and declawed and now he bites her he can't scratch her any more he bites her yeah yeah he has a couple of times so but he's a very [possessive] cat he he loves my son it's his cat and he's the only one that allows him to touch him or pet him or love him and he's so funny he just follows my son around just like a dog he won't even let my son shower he [meows] and wants to get in the bathroom and while he showers it's so hilarious so he's quite a animal yeah yeah well we we did uh actually take him to the pound a couple of times you know because we just couldn't have him being so aggressive towards the girl but uh he seems to have [mellowed] out a little bit and we do keep our daughter away from him so were it not for my son the cat would not be in this house it is uh_huh we we tried a dog about four years ago and we ended up with uh-oh malamute and some other kind of mix anyway it was it ended up being just a huge huge dog that ate us out of house and home so we gave him up and tried yes uh_huh we're in a house but we're in a subdivision where we really can't allow the dog we couldn't allow him to run free so he was just chained up all the time and it was it was unfortunate so have you tried any other pets oh oh uh_huh oh my word oh my word and do they they just paper train it or something yeah well rabbits are [darling] that would be fun if you could get them trained otherwise they're pretty smelly oh huh_uh we don't have c we don't have cable oh oh is that right oh uh_huh well i'd be interesting to watch yes uh_huh elton we live out here by it's by ogden it's north of salt lake city utah and we really love it out here it's uh kind of country we're we're only about ten minutes from ogden so we're kind of country but not too no huh_uh do you oh well see i'm getting so many calls to texas oh well great yeah i've been doing it for about two weeks and uh no my no my yeah i do i've got a male siamese about a year old here i live alone in an apartment and uh except for the cat how about you uh_huh well it's uh you know they're just uh aggressive by nature and uh he's been neutered and declawed so he's an indoor cat so uh that kind of [calms] him down for the most part how about yours huh and and you say you've had him how long two years huh does he bite her enough to draw blood uh_huh yeah huh yeah yeah boy i guess well as long as he doesn't get too aggressive i guess with the daughter he's all right you wouldn't want him to carry her off or something uh_huh sure yeah yeah is that the only pet that you have well do you live you you in a house or a place where you uh i see sure no no i i live alone in an apartment and uh it's it's not that big that uh although i've heard rabbits are pretty good you know i saw something on c n n or on cable here a while ago that showed some people that had rabbits in apartments and in houses and they apparently uh especially when they're young when they bring them in uh i guess i guess yeah and i would imagine that they don't have many more than one to start with either yep that's right did you see the the c n n the the dog show uh i see well they have uh uh a they call it the [westminster] dog show uh i think it's in new york city at the at the gardens there once a year live and they had that on last week and that's really kind of something to watch uh it's on i think two or three nights for maybe an hour or two and some of the weirdest animals you ever want to see in there some of them are really beautiful too so so you live in utah do you goodness uh_huh uh_huh well do you all work for t i or for yeah yeah yeah this is the very first one i've i've talked to uh_huh dave what kind of pets do you have one rotten cat i heard a laugh in the background don't you like cats oh yeah that's odd how does he treat the other people wow did he raise him or something uh_huh huh that's interesting huh we have a a mutt well we we named it [hooper] because that's where we got it from uh some lady she uh a lot of people uh uh drop off abandoned abandoned pets at her house and she use to work for a veterinarian so she would uh [neuter] them give them all their shots and we saw an ad saying it was free so we went down there and picked it up and it's been an excellent dog but it's my first dog i've had and we got it because my wife stays here at home alone while i go to work so that's mostly why we got it to keep her company while i am away at work uh yeah right now it it is it's kind of good training i mean we have been trying for kids but right now we haven't had any but it's pretty good training i think really keeps her on her toes uh my brother has uh we didn't do a lot with them uh i never felt like it was mine or anything you couldn't do anything but i mean that did did more responsibility when it's yours and not your brothers but uh_huh that's what we found ours is uh like a cockapoo i think it's half cocker spaniel and half poodle but it's a really good dog i don't know they seem to be i mean listen better or something is your cat a purebred uh_huh would you ever want a dog in the family uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh wow he just needed a lot of time oh we have one rotten cat yeah it's my son's cat yeah that's the boys they know i don't like it well i like cats this this cat is a uh more like a dog yeah he's uh a one owner he likes one boy in the family and that's about it just uh stays away or runs usually but he follows he'll follow my oldest son around you know when he is in the house he will come up and he'll jump on his lap but if anybody reaches over to pet him or whatever he'll just kind of look at them like what are doing he's he we bought the cat for him and so he's uh been the one that you know spent the most time with him but i i've never owned a cat like that i've had cats growing up all the time and you know they are usually either that way with everybody or friendly to everybody so it's a weird cat a mutt uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh so that is that is that kind of your child right now you feel like oh uh_huh have have you had dogs before uh_huh yeah well i just uh we've you know when i was growing up i had we always had a dog and we had mostly mutts well not mutts but mixes you know like one or two mix and those dogs always seem to be the best dogs uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh no no it's just uh an accident from a uh from my my son's friend down the street they're they're cat was an outside cat and just end up with some kittens and so uh we i would we uh we had a dog that was a uh mix between an alaska malamute and a labrador and uh i should say a pup and he was just too big for our kids when we got him and we when we moved into our house that was the first thing we wanted to get was uh you know was a pet and it was a dog that we gotten and he was he was just too big uh the kids couldn't handle him and i was still going to school and my wife was working and i was working and so we just didn't have time to really train him so he was kind of you know he was too big for the kids to handle so he was just tied up to a post so we gave him to uh i don't know if you've there is a place out here uh called [shorties] lane out here in [harrisville] and they have uh i guess it's kind of an animal shelter but he just takes a few the animals in and some he destroys and some he keeps so we took him up there and he ended up keeping him uh cause he has had him for six or seven years we we've saw him just about a year ago and uh i thought boy that sure looks like that pup we gave away and so we asked him about it one day and he said yeah he's been the best dog i've ever had in my life just goes everywhere with him i he would have been a great great dog do you have any uh_huh all right yeah oh that's good you don't often find that i don't think right uh_huh sure there's a okay uh that's interesting yeah the only pet that i've had uh i'm a i'm a doctoral student right now and in my in my earlier days as a student i kind of time shared on a dog with a a good friend of mine and uh it was an amazing dog it really was they had he had gotten it from the pound and uh it it's a spanish [pointer] named domino kind of looks like a a dalmatian and we trained it from a pup and basically it right now it it's fully trained and it can do a lot of things it will get beer for you out of the [fridge] and it will get the newspaper and do all kinds of stuff so it's really it's it's kind of a show piece and whenever anybody comes over we all have to show him domino you know yeah it's uh she's been a real good a real good dog and uh just it's kind of a shame that i'm i'm i'm away from it now i i i actually live in florida but i'm on an internship up here for a year and then i go back down but uh yeah domino's a real good dog uh what uh possessed you to get the dog yeah uh_huh sure sure learn a bit learn a little bit of discipline and how to care for it and things like that that's good that kind of builds some character a little bit uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's something that's important for sure i think uh do you live in a in a in a fairly rural part of the uh or oh i see um yeah it's not that big of a problem with domino she was full grown i would estimate seventy pounds and you know we lived in [oviedo] which is a small town it's a suburb of orlando but there's not there wasn't a lot of room for her to run around and she was a dog that loved to run so that was the biggest problem i saw and i think that's one of the uh the issues people need to think about before they get a dog is you know do you have the room for this dog to run around or you know i guess you can't really say for cats me and cats don't get along too well uh but you know that whole space issue i think is real important right yeah that that sure and that's all part of of keeping your part of the relationship you know showing the maturity and responsibility to recognize those uh those issues you know and also the whole whole thing with noise my mother oh she freaks out because she's got neighbors that have dogs that don't train them and you know we we had a neighbor in nebraska when we lived there that had uh brittany spaniels and they're very high strung animals to begin with but uh yes we do have a pet we have a a dog that we got from the uh well we call it the s p c a it's the uh from an animal shelter uh he'd come in there as a stray uh he's a [pomeranian] and sheltie cross uh well he was very well trained when we got him uh he's no uh we suspect that he was hurt in an accident you know got away from somebody traveling through and hurt in an accident because a dog that looks as good as he does and is trained as well is someone that has lost him and not have been able to locate him and uh if they were local people they would have been able to find him uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh oh i think so uh_huh yeah well i guess in one sense we felt that it it's nice to have a dog even though there are you know complications come with it and then with our children uh at the time they were oh grade five and and grade eight so it was an age where it was uh we thought it was be good for them to have the discipline that goes with with having a pet uh yeah right so well that's the idea i think the reality of it is that they perhaps uh it depends on the on everyone's discipline and uh from that aspect i'm short on the discipline because i don't uh enforce that the kids look after the dog and uh we've had him about four years now uh but i think it does it it you know it's necessary that individuals have the discipline to look after the animal properly uh yeah uh actually no we live in a in an area that's oh probably about two and a half miles from the university uh we live right might say we live right in uh in the middle of a residential area and uh so that is not as good uh you know this dog being a small dog it's uh more you more acceptable but again yeah uh_huh yeah it's uh that's one of the biggest concerns it's like uh there's a lot to be gained from a relationship with an animal but the same time one has to recognize the reality of physical requirements of of the animal and the larger they are the more room they need to exercise right well uh_huh you have any pets yeah two dogs what kind schnauzers is it a miniature or a standard schnauzer uh i'm going into all this because i used to i just got done working at a pet shop actually yeah uh yeah oh yeah that's good they say didn't expect that would happen yeah that's cool that's nice uh let's see what was the other dog you had oh a sheltie yeah they can be [nippy] yeah [shelties] are nice everybody seems to be really happy with them they're good temperament they put up with a lot schnauzers in particular probably oh yeah yeah i it seems the smaller the are the the worse off they are yeah they're bred down so much it's they aren't the best pets yeah yeah i mean some people seem fairly well suited for for uh miniature poodles and such pit bull they might they're actually very friendly dogs uh they're really nice i i've dealt with quite a few of them people uh customers that bring them into the shop and ask me like they uh fit [collars] and stuff on them and they are they are just really nice really friendly uh kind of like medium intelligence uh well because some people uh want to train them as yeah you really can't get a pit bull from birth that's that way yeah it takes a lot of training and a lot of abuse to get a dog to really respond right yeah they aren't they aren't by nature really nasty critters they are very determined critters and so once you get them going it's not good to to deal with but they i i really like them i was i was impressed by them they're they're real sturdy little critters and they aren't that big and uh just really friendly i was i was overwhelmed yeah yeah right now they picked up a lot of bad press lately well yeah but any any any [pet's] going to can can be bad if you train it to be that way well yeah it's when in my hometown they just outlawed [ferrets] because they had one incident of a ferret uh attacking a a child in a house i mean these people had left this infant in the same room with this loose ferret the the ferret is used to running the house and was kind of wild and you know they should expect something like that to happen and so now it's like [ferrets] are outlawed in the town yeah it it bit him and that was that was not a good thing but i think it was probably a an individual ferret thing because it was it was a fairly wild ferret hadn't they hadn't yeah i mean they really should have should have expected it and taken the precautions they didn't it's too bad it happened though right do i have pets yes i have a cat and i have two dogs i have a schnauzer and i have a sheltie it it's a miniature uh_huh oh okay well the schnauzer i'm i'm watching for one of uh the managers where i work and he's been transferred to germany for a while and i'm taking care of his dog and uh and i had just got the kitten when he asked me that and he says well my dog doesn't like cats and i said well we won't tell him it's a we won't tell her it's a cat because it was a kitten and you know they just they just love kittens they just are fascinated so she doesn't know that this is a cat yet and they get along real good i said if tom could see dog [lick] this kitty he'd flip so that was interesting it's a sheltie she's real sweet little dog she's got a very nice temperament uh they're not as aggressive as a schnauzer you know the schnauzers are a little aggressive uh_huh they're a good temperament and they and they just uh they i think they have a good head on their shoulders i think they have a a higher level of intelligence than other uh dogs that i have encountered well yeah but also some poodles uh they're kind of there are some smart ones out there but there's some also some uh not so smart ones yeah that's that's maybe that's there's uh some [credence] in that statement uh_huh i i'd i really don't know what the best pet is i guess it's up to the individual and how they relate to their animal um and bull dogs but i don't know about these uh these uh uh these [pincers] these now what are they called pit bulls pit bulls that are so vicious are they really i don't think i've ever seen one well how do they become how did they get their reputation then oh they train them to be that way then oh okay oh okay oh dear so the the poor animal is doing it in self protection oh dear uh_huh uh_huh well that's unusual i huh well i suppose you were surprised after the reputation that you know they have quite an uh uh [notable] reputation as far as you know yeah they're banned from in some areas i understand uh_huh you know that they must have just targeted that breed and said boy we're going oh okay oh okay uh_huh uh_huh oh did it attack the child then uh_huh well the the people that owned him should have been on the lookout for that um sure yeah yeah because then the the [animal's] in trouble and not the person uh right now i have um uh two [longhair] miniature dachshunds i also raise uh [peacocks] ducks i have three different kinds of ducks and i raise [geese] and rabbits but the uh uh the dogs and the [peacocks] are pets the rest of them we we do those for food yeah yeah we live out in the country so what do you have uh_huh yeah that's that's always nice when you have an animal that the kids can play with like that how old are the kids huh you said your from d c oh okay i have a my i have a daughter i think she's in spring field i'm not sure she's around there somewhere she just got her a new apartment and my other daughter and son in law live in germantown so there yeah yeah so it's it's interesting to talk to somebody from that general vicinity yeah i wonder what he'd do if he ever got a hold of him though uh-oh next time you'll have to try a bigger bird we have some friends that in fact the ones that we bought one of the dogs from they also raise birds and they have uh uh two or three different kinds of of parrots and then they raise [finches] and parakeets and he was showing me his parakeets and and he calls them an english parakeet and he said their marking is a little different have did you know that there was a difference in the parakeets yeah you might check uh some of the ads in the paper and see if anybody has an [aviary] that you might be able to buy from there that seems to be an up and coming business i know out there where we are there's there's uh a person on each side of our county that now have [aviaries] one of them is right out there close to us they're in the process of building it up right now i know uh_huh yeah that's the problem with buying them through the pet shops we have that same problem here too yeah but we've used it we just have two rabbits right now we have one doe and one buck and she ought to be due sometime toward the end of this week on a litter we just got her we had uh one doe that we'd had her let's see it was her second litter i guess the first litter she had she lost all but three uh babies and we raised those and then her second litter she wound up killing all of them and it took her like three days i guess before she killed all of them so we've we had to get rid of her so i i wouldn't tolerate that yeah well this is the first time we've ever had one like that we had been down we had gone from having one buck and and three does down to one buck and just one doe but that didn't work out too well so now we're we're trying to build it back up now that's a good idea no that one would might get you in trouble yeah unless you called it dog we have been known to do that in the past we've we've got a couple of wild cats out there in our general vicinity and you know they're they're tame enough that they come up and want you to feed them but they're not tame enough that they want to stay around or come in or anything so you know those are just big cat and little cat huh i bet it was they do that you know they they have kittens out there in the garage or out in the barn and the first time you try to get around the kittens you know it's you'd have to catch them with a uh a fish net or something because they [scamper] away so quick did you in well it's been very nice talking to you i appreciate having the call and uh maybe we'll speak again on this little test that they're trying to do okay thank you bye bye well i've kind of resisted having any pets because well i had some pets as a child but now that i have two kids they're sort of like you have to take care of them a lot and they require a lot of time and um [neatness] and plus you know now that i'm married i have a husband that i do some things that you know help him and so it seems like i have plenty things to do and so i thought that if we got a pet that that would be just one more person well the kids you know the kids wanted the kids love all kinds of pets you know cats and dogs and things and i know some kinds of pets are more independent and as a child i had um you know like a we had a dog and we had turtles and we had you know small lot of the small things like i know we got a little bunny at easter a little baby chicken and all that but they say you shouldn't do that any more but um oh yeah uh_huh yes they can take care of themselves especially cats are pretty good about being independent uh_huh oh yeah well we just last week we got a [gerbil] that's a thing that i picked for the kids because they were wanting to have a pet and i didn't want to have one i picked gerbils because they apparently they aren't like you know they don't smell as bad yeah oh that's awful and i don't like that odor and um they don't require as much but we'll see how it works out it wasn't as it's not something that um i had to like learn to something that's going to be running around your house that if you're [unaccustomed] to that you wouldn't like such a big change and they stay in their little cage and you throw a few things in there well we're just getting used to them right now we're kind of just letting you know touching them and we've picked them up before but that was kind of scaring them pretty bad right now well they they seem like you know they were smaller compared to some of the other ones but we we i did that i let the kids have a pet because i wanted them to have practice in caring for someone else and you know not being so selfish they're four and five and i thought it would be good for them to just practice you know having someone else to care for and everything i know that a lot of pets a lot of people have pets because they make good companions and friends and uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah expensive to maintain and keep the flea powder and the flea dip and that's true they are a lot i guess that's the number one reason why i'm not really ready to have a pet too much i kind of consider these gerbils just kind of something you forget because they don't really [acknowledge] that they know you you know it's not like a pet a pet is someone that comes up to you and is happy to see you and that kind of thing uh_huh um a long time yes and they they take up a lot of you know good space you know kind of like a [bookcase] no yes and i noticed um that's kind of what i was attracted to these gerbils for is that they they have a certain area that they use like their bathroom and you can just um you know rinse that out it's kind off to the side it [unscrews] and and so you can just take it out with a garden hose rinse it out and you supposedly you don't have to change all of the the bedding and everything except every three weeks which is not very often uh_huh oh no it's something awful oh um well i'm hoping that it'll be a little bit of diversion for the kids and a little bit of a they do and they're anxious for us to be able to hold it but i these just aren't going to be as tame as the book i got a book first they just don't seem like um well i guess we've have them about a week now and they're just not kind of two well we hope that we got two females so that they're supposed to get along better and they won't have any babies i guess we won't know unless they never have any babies well you know the people that sold them go well it's hard to tell but we think and we're going oh great so if they have babies then we'll have to get rid of one of them yeah that's what i hear so i'm hoping i think they have a really quick [reproduction] cycle of only like thirty days or something so within a month i guess we'll know well i guess i better run now yes nice what i was doing at at home is like i work nights here so that's another long story that we will talk about it's funny that i got you though uh i asked my wife to hand me the other phone because i was just i was busy and i uh had just gotten a call and i couldn't answer and i said well i will punch it on this one and uh it's a walk around phone but it's not a it's not the other kind you know so it didn't work okay no i'm using a regular phone now uh if it's a what kind of phone do they it's not a dial but if it's a [touchtone] it's okay i realized that once i used i should have i was going to go in the kitchen and and punch one on the [touchtone] and i realized that i had screwed up so it was my fault it's funny that we had gotten it uh i guess they want us to talk about dogs dogs or cats i'll switch over to birds you know we we don't really have birds as pets but we should because we have cats we always wind up with i haven't yet uh a bird or two in the summer because the cat will catch one and usually we will catch the cat because the cat doesn't seem to kill the bird right away we wound up with a lot of birds over the years and there are organizations we drop ours off at fort worth if they are still alive and you keep it alive which is hard to do for a couple of weeks if you take it to an agency they'll send it back in the wild somehow and so we we wound up because of our cats with with many birds over the years again they are not pets exactly but uh yeah the lady next door across the street from us just lost is it a [cockatoo] what's that one that's white it got loose i've forgotten what how she did it she had it in a cage of some sort and what they were doing i don't know but it flew away you know and they called it and everything and they drove around the neighborhood looking for it but uh yeah three i'm surprised that a bird uh i guess they can find their way back but i wonder exactly where a tame bird would go no no she never got it back i've heard stories like this before with parrots and all this uh because people let them out in their house you know and fly around and no i know uh but uh i've forgotten she had it outside somehow and somehow they they mixed signals or something and it got loose and of course again the animals are so much faster than we are in one way or the other uh you know i was telling you the story about fencing i do like dogs i i would i've always had dogs my whole life as a kid uh well yeah i do i yeah i do i think that all the animals have personalities i'm not the cat person i my sister had cats when we were little we always seem to have a cat and a dog together which again when you bring them up i do notice that they get along and my wife was the cat lover when we started out as a young married couple we just had an apartment so it's kind of easier to have a cat and then she just never wanted a dog and then we got here to texas and she's from texas again and she had this thing with the fence and i i guess i have so many interests i don't really quite have the time with two daughters and everything and all the activities to personally train a dog but i would i would i guess i'll have to wait until both of my kids are out of college before i can have another dog i i certainly saw your point with the [greyhound] that there there is a limit to a pet uh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah no i think so too uh my wife she keeps convincing me because my parents my parents are dead now but my parents and my brothers and sisters always had dogs and when we would visit them she said you can smell dog all over the house i said well you're really right and so i never she always had a good argument why not to get a dog and we haven't since we've been married oh yeah uh no i know you're right uh people are surprising are allergic to cats too we do have some friends on and off that will i guess it's the the cat the short fur on the cat is uh one of the allergic reaction things like uh cedar trees and all of that other stuff i guess the cat has a real fine not the real short hair [dandruff] or whatever they have people do get allergic to cats in their eyes you know they just walk in the house even though we lock up the cats and they're crying and so some people unfortunately of course i wouldn't have an animal if i was allergic to it either uh my wife at one time said she was allergic to them i was going to tell you a story well i think the animals is good for you just because uh it gets you out and everything i uh oh yeah oh yeah right i have some friends uh uh that have horses you know and when my daughters were a little younger you know i thought well maybe that's a good maybe i'll get them you know this is texas and i'll get them a horse well we went over and we rode their horses and everything but and and just listened to the stories and the money the horse was sick all the time i don't know if you if you have any friends with horses but they get all kinds of eating disorders if they don't if they don't eat the right kind of grain or if you if you give him an orange or something you nearly kill it i mean it it the stories he would tell it must have cost him a couple hundred dollars a month of course he had several horses we were shocked at different things i thought my god and i just saw something interesting in consumer report they talked about animals and they compared you know whether you should have a bird and the pricing and it had a comment on a horse something to the effect of you don't even want to know what it cost to keep a horse you know and i well i think the best thing in the world is to rent them i think that uh that and boats probably the same way i'd love to have a boat but i think i'm not too sure i i would get that much use out of it you know my goodness what my goodness yeah yeah plus i'm not too sure yeah i think they are experiments too and they don't know that much my sister spent a lot of go ahead huh huh my goodness yeah oh yeah they're they're a problem the different rainy seasons here i don't how long you been here in in the area oh so you were here before okay oh really yeah oh really oh oh you don't have one i have a cat and a dog both yeah yeah no i have i have a house that uh has a a fairly good sized yard and i i also i'm here at by at night by myself because my husband works at night and so i i wanted a dog for protection and we got a dalmatian yeah and he he's wonderful because uh he's really protective and uh that was probably our main reason for getting him but oh he loves the cat the uh sam our dalmatian loves the cat but the cat just really doesn't care about the dog at all you know he'll flap at him and [hiss] at him and everything and the cat stays in all the time so that's a uh you know barrier there but huh yeah it is friendship yeah yeah oh sam is very loving if if one of us are out in the yard you know he wants to jump and play and [lick] a typical puppy type atmosphere although he's almost two years old but um yeah the cat is a lot of companionship he just he's real old and he kind of [lays] around just wants you to pet him and and that kind of thing no not at all not at all no my mom has a cat though that does that and that's kind of weird we haven't figured that out yet yeah just [intuition] or something instinct uh_huh yeah i've i've never had any of the ones that you just mentioned i have had a rabbit it was pretty interesting and it was like a cat it stayed in the house all the time and it used a litter box so it had free run of the house uh not not to strangers not to strangers at all matter of fact it would run and hide but after it got to know you it was funny because it would jump up on the couch and sit right next to you you know and it kind of pants i didn't know a rabbit [panted] but they pant kind of like a dog and it's kind of funny because you can just sit there and pet them and my rabbit got real large i think he was thirteen pounds so he was really big that was kind of funny looking but he was a good guard yeah at he heard every little noise and you could tell when a car drove up or anything oh no no no i don't think so no nothing like that okay thanks okay one very old fat cat [prissy] and that's why pat won't ever let me have a party at my house that's right she does shed a lot of fur she's we've had her for a long time we used to have a spitz that kind of got deposited on us when a cousin was getting a divorce and we were supposed to keep her temporarily for about twelve years usually we've had dogs or cats yes yeah i'm reaching that point too uh_huh uh_huh well i'm thinking of a next time about going back to a dog though because the cats really do shed a lot you just never get rid of the cat hair and i know there are a lot of dogs that are pretty clean and don't shed so emily wants a dog a lot of her friends have little house [mops] kind of like yours uh_huh but do you have to let him outside for all his business and all yeah you see that's what would be hard for us since we're not there a lot uh_huh yeah i think jay would go bananas over that though he likes for our house to be as secure as possible uh_huh uh_huh that can be so [therapeutic] though when when i really want to just crawl into a shell i think wouldn't it be nice just to lay on the bed and pet the cat uh_huh uh_huh yeah and i really i i don't think i'm prejudiced since i've had both but i think cats are more prone to really have personality i mean they own you rather then the other way around and i really do believe that i get a kick out of seeing my seventy seven year old aunt with her animals and she had a cat get killed not too long ago and she said no more you know i just i can't go through that again and it wasn't three months before she had another one and just [adapting] to it just like she always had and it's really neat for people living alone like you say with your friend uh_huh yeah growing up it was so funny because mother would always have a soft heart for [strays] and we never back then you didn't [spay] and [neuter] your animals that much you just kind of put up with whatever happened and she could never get rid of them fast enough before the next litter came along it wasn't usual unusual for us to have six and seven cats and i remember my first camera experience as trying to put cats up on a porch and take pictures of them that were going to be award winning type photos they've always been a part of my life oh yeah we had a cocker spaniel growing up but but the cats were the things that i loved and especially with just being around kittens and the babies and all no no dad never would have allowed that so they always just kind of showed up and came and went and had babies and we played with them we we used them as dolls sometimes we'd dress them up and put them in [carriages] as much as they'd tolerate it so it was always fun oh yeah that was traumatic wasn't it yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah that's exactly what happened with ours and my brother really took it hard because he was the one who that had left the gate open so he blamed himself personally although you know there were so many things that could have been different but it was hard for him to cope with it being his fault so i do hate that i that's one reason i like cats and critters that can stay inside because you don't face that it's hard especially if you really do get attached to them i'm i'm already kind of preparing for [prissy] dying because she's pretty old and fat and oh i just know it's going to come sooner or later so that's one reason i've been letting emily talk about dogs because i think we we say that's going to be the end but i think when it really comes to it we'll want another pet she's at least thirteen or fourteen we don't know exactly because we got her as a young kitten or a young cat and didn't know that much about her she's a neat cat i mean she owns us all the way but it does require a little bit of work and [housecleaning] yeah yeah uh_huh and you have the trouble when you travel too we always we board her now and that gets kind of expensive yeah yeah uh_huh where'd you all go no i guess not it's not pet related oh boy yeah oh how neat but the puppy survived and you know my aunt says they do drug them i just went bananas when she told me that that was a fact that she had shopped [kennels] and vets and that they all very lightly sedate them so that they sleep a lot and that just gave me the creeps because i you know i just hate to think they did that to anything or anybody but she said every [vet's] office okay good morning now do you have any pets three dogs my goodness what kind of dogs do you have heinz fifty seven my goodness gracious that uh gives you a lot of work doesn't it uh_huh well i my dog uh was just sort of a mixture of two and i can't tell you the kinds any more died about uh six or eight months ago and uh her name was gena and she was a very very sweet dog we loved her very very much but the pet that is of great interest that maybe uh you would enjoy hearing about about um twenty five twenty six years ago my brother in law showed up in my front yard pulling a trailer and in this trailer he had a pony which i didn't know he was bringing and so over the weekend i had to go out and find some wood and and put up some kind of a structure to house that pony because he a [stall] because he brought the pony to my children and that pony lived with us for about twenty five years and uh the his name was sandy and he was a champion [jumper] in chicago it turned out that my brother in law's daughter had had ponies in a at a certain place out there and it caught on fire and they they got out there and got all the ponies out and these people were so happy that they gave her this pony for saving the rest of them and as i say we had sandy for about twenty six years he has his own little house back there and um two acres of ground to no he died about a year ago he was thirty one years old which is very old for a pony you know he was a medium to large size pony and uh i used to know the different uh [breakdowns] yeah and uh he was really a nice guy i really can't complain about sandy you have two horses well tell me what what what things do you do with those those horses to enjoy them oh okay you you ride them uh_huh uh_huh my goodness you are a busy lady with two ponies and three dogs i'm afraid the cat would be scared to death i'd i have i have a cat a pony a cat pony i have a cat also whose name is babe and it used to be in the old days i had uh mothers and father cats you know and then we'd have a of six or eight in the litters around and so forth and this is the only one that's left from the whole big batch that uh lived through the years when my children were at home now the pony has died the dog has died and the three children have moved out and have their own homes and so my wife and i and babe are the ones left on the farm now we are so busy right now trying to take care of ourselves that uh i don't know how we can handle any other pets right now if things ever calm down why we'd like to have pets again i i enjoyed uh gena she was a very sweet dog but i hate to have her she was an outside dog and i hated to have her on a chain all of her life but that's basically what she had to do we could let her loose and let her run oh for an hour or two every day but we had to make certain she didn't get off the property or get up to the highway and uh_huh uh_huh well mine mine have always slept outdoors and well they had their own house uh_huh yeah they certainly depend on you but uh my dog gena as i say she had her own house and she was warm and comfortable in there and other times why she could go in the in the barn with the pony and they got along fine so they had their own great big house back there i have several acres of ground that i normally planted corn so i have a big enough building back there i had to build a new building to put the pony in the little one i built only lasted about two years and so he had to move into his new castle yes and he had the works so i'm sure that uh sandy had a a good life he was fed twice a day and had his own two acres to i have uh just uh one dog she's a ten month old puppy um cocker spaniel and uh just has been real enjoyable although i think it's just as much work having a puppy around as it was a baby i think really at times i know i can just pick up and leave when i need to you know which is one thing you can't do with a baby but um you know she's had to be potty trained and and the whole work and uh it's just been it's been nice though because uh we used to have a an older dog and she died at about the age eleven and was our first real baby as such because we didn't have kids yet and uh so she was our pride and joy and when she she got sick and died it was kind of like an empty hole was in in our family because the our two girls that we now have got real close to her and so it was um hard though to replace her i think it took us a couple of years before we replaced her yeah uh well we were in the middle of moving uh shortly afterwards anyway and we both just didn't feel my husband and i didn't feel like we could take on the the time that it really takes to raise a dog right to the first you know few months of their life is just as important like it is a kid if you want a good dog afterwards so we waited and it was about two years before we were emotionally ready to get back into that kind of um realm of life oh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh well it takes our vet probably said seven to nine months uh is the real time you really want to put into them for the training as far as the initial training and he said if you give them just that much then the rest of their life with you is just going to be real nice and no i never have um she could do better i'm sure on some things and um i know it's still not to late to do that if i really feel like i need to but i just need to give her time um you know working with her and i know how to do that pretty much on my own it's just a matter of disciplining myself on making sure we cover a few things but she knows the real basics she's potty trained and she uh comes when we call her and she'll roll over and she'll sit and she'll put her foot up to shake hands yeah so i mean she can do some of the basic things that kind of are needed and some for just for frills and uh but i don't have her trained when it comes to staying real good yet and uh not real well about keeping her from jumping but i think some of that's just [puppiness] too that um i'm kind of working just waiting a little bit to make sure i don't push something too too hard on her yes yeah yeah yeah just started doing it with little pieces of cheese and boy the dogs really even at the age of ten i would just still be teaching them new tricks just as long as you give them something to look forward to i mean they love the [hugs] and kisses but the the food really seems to [meld] it all together real fast and um i have for just bits and pieces i've never seemed to be too long with a cat when i was a kid they'd always run away and then when i was a [grownup] i was with living in an apartment as a college student and uh then i got my own first and only cat and she was precious but when i needed to move back out and back to home i had to leave the cat behind so um i've never had a cat for very long oh really uh_huh yeah yeah that's right that's right uh_huh that's right that's right and cats do seem to have the realm the roam of the world so yeah yeah so um well i think you should go back and try to take in a dog again you could even go and adopt one that's already past [puppyhood] and uh if you well what kind of pets do you have are you're married newly married oh so what else only we started off ours with we had we had pets before we had kids that's why i thought when you were saying you know we're going to have one in two months or something perhaps that you were newly married hm that's easier are you going to get a dog that's what that's what we have is two dogs big dogs well our first at first they were our child [substitutes] before we had our children and we got one right after we got married we both decided we needed a dog we went to the pound and we got this mutt and he's been it was alright before we had our kids it was he's just he's a real hyper dog he barks and and jumps a lot so we had him for a year and then my husband decided after we had him a year that he'd wanted for his entire life to have a siberian husky and i think why didn't you tell me a year ago when we got the other dog that this was your dream of your life to have a siberian husky so we got the other one for him and to keep the first one company when we were at work all day so we have the the the older dog's a male and he's oh gosh he weighs about forty pounds and then pepper is a year younger and she weighs about seventy pounds so we have two massive dogs go through lots of dog food absolutely i never wanted my husband wanted indoor dogs because he'd grown up with them but i can't stand it indoors i don't they shed and you know the mud and oh yeah for me dogs are meant to be outside goodness oh my goodness they're going to run you down goodness and all of them were in the house hm i see oh when i was growing up my folks we had fox [terriers] which are little bitty they weigh about ten pounds and so we had we had one for a long time and then oh gosh when i was about ten or eleven i guess my parents decided that dogs would be a good way to teach [reproduction] so then they went out and got a female and then we started having puppies and she had she had four or five litters she always had to look we always kept them in the house when they had the when she when the babies were little and the rest of the time they were outside they had we had a big uh kind of a play house and part of that was their dog house it was kind of [cordoned] off so they had a place to stay out there and then they had the yard and they had a little run that uh they kept them in when we were trying to do stuff in the back yard and didn't want them out but we had the same kind of situation at one point in time we had the mother the one of her last her next to last litter we kept we had one one we never could get rid of he was a real dumb dog nobody wanted him the puppy was just one of these dogs just as dumb as a stick and we have him and then our she had another litter we didn't think she was we thought she was too old to get pregnant again turned out she wasn't and uh she had her litter i guess her last litter had like four and two of them survived and then she didn't make it two days after they were born she had a she died she had some kind of an [infection] from it all she was just too old we had to feed the puppies we had to get up night and day with just like with a baby yeah and bottle feed them weren't they messy too well did she did the mother survive so you could still feed it but she kept them clean oh she didn't oh no that was like oh boy they are so messy when they're little too we were giving them a bath about every other bath at least once a day but they were so horrible they would roll and everything and oh yeah and crawl through it i guess i had fish for a while when i was a kid too i had a fish tank and i had a few until well it wasn't really an aquarium it was an old you know how you used to have these um this was a box and it was originally it was made like an aquarium i guess except it was smaller it was its original use was to put in the refrigerator on the shelf had a little [spigot] at one end that you could get water out of it you know keep cold water we outgrew the need for that and so i used it for an aquarium it worked except the fish could swim it wasn't tall enough i kept if i didn't keep the lid on it the fish would uh swim out and flop on the floor sometimes flip out of the thing yeah those have been i mean and our dogs now our dogs with our kids i have two little kids three and a half and one and a half so we built the dog run down the length of our uh back yard because the kids were i mean we couldn't even let our older son until he was about two i guess he was two when we built the dog run we couldn't let him go out in the back yard because it was we have a deck with a rail and he could go on that but the dogs were so big and he was so little you know they just even walking by him they'd knock him down and the whole back yard had [poop] in it all the time it was a mess for the little one so now we have a back yard and a dog run oh that'll be nice yeah back and forth three and a half year old yeah yeah or probably he or she is old enough to where they won't tease it too you know poke on it too much yeah course our kids have gotten over it with the dogs behind it they have the run it's kind of like a wire run so they go the first thing they do is they go out there and play with them but boy the little one still he just wants to poke my older one our older son's pretty good about it he'll pet the dog you know and and he's three and a half like you're saying and he he's pretty good with them and with other people's dogs and cats that he runs into but boy the little one still just wants to poke and and see if the dog will back off you know and yeah yeah i think it is too yeah i think if we didn't have pets if we didn't already have our dog and cat now we wouldn't get them because the kids are so little i think when they're really little like the eighteen month old it's not fair to the animal the kids are so miserable to them if they're out very much yeah and not get mad at the kid that's the other thing too that i i always felt pepper the siberian husky is really sweet she can i think the kids could walk up and they could literally probably stand on her back and she wouldn't even she'd kind of look at them like what are you doing now she's real good [natured] about it yeah well i think that's about all my pet stories right now so okay well it's been nice talking to you oh really oh what kind was he okay yeah i got a dog and uh-oh she's about she'll be three in february yeah yeah well her name's sam because it's like short for [samantha] and everybody calls her him really how about that same names yeah yeah she's about forty five pounds or so yeah she's about medium sized dog oh yeah oh yeah yeah you get up from your chair and she [hops] in and you never have the heart to kick her out because she's too friendly yeah yeah she loves to go in cars she's pretty good too yeah she just [curls] up in the back and falls asleep yeah well she sheds a lot so we're we're constantly sweeping well she doesn't like to be brushed though yeah i know you brush her and and she walks away so we don't brush her much yeah that's what i hear but she doesn't yeah she can play frisbee pretty good though yeah she loves to chase things frisbee or balls or anything yeah did he ever go into the lake yeah i don't think sam would she's afraid of water yeah she hates baths and she hates the rain yeah i've never tried that with her there's a couple like parks around here with lakes but they don't let pets in so she's never had the opportunity but i don't think she would yeah well it's like the first time she might not knowing it was water but then she'd learn she's a shepherd and husky yeah uh brown and black yeah yeah it's like that's that's she looks really puppy like too and the top of her is all [blackish] and then she gets lighter as you go down yeah i'm in an apartment now too and i'm the same way but it's kind of like out in the middle of nowhere there's big trees and fields so we can go out and run yeah oh yeah that's got to be hard yeah you've got to have one yeah this is like one of the few apartments that takes pets everybody here has a dog or a cat or a rabbit or something yeah so they always play together yeah yeah but she's worth it she's a good little dog oh really oh i bet they stained it all over ooh yeah we've never had a problem with sam because we'll go to work in the day and leave her and she'll just sleep all day and not make a mess so i guess we're pretty lucky in that way yeah yeah i guess if you care about them they'll be better pets uh yeah that's too bad though too a lot of people with pets need a place to live yeah it's getting there pretty cold yeah i bet it is oh oh we got the wind and the cold up here ooh sounds like here except colder yeah i'm waiting for it to snow some because uh sam really likes the snow we take her outside and throw snow balls at her yeah she doesn't like when it's raining she hates being out when it's raining but if it's snowing only one time before that's right i sure do i was just feeding them all i have a a large aquarium and excuse me yeah it is no i've got i've got a lot of fish in my aquarium and i've also got a dog who is sitting out there in the rain [wishing] i'd let him in but i yeah it's raining here uh real far north just north of addison yeah oh yeah it's raining out here and i just steam cleaned my carpets today and i really don't want to let the dog in he is a a mutt he's part [shipperkes] and part chow and he's he's real cute he's a he can turn me into a real sucker sometimes uh yeah he has a house well he usually spends all his time with us the whole time how about yourself do you have any uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh you're kidding huh ooh yeah that's not good uh_huh oh uh_huh so you're a dog person huh really i i used to have a cat and he he died this summer but uh i had him for thirteen years and when we got this dog i didn't know what to do it just i never had a dog before in my whole life and it was it's really different to have a different type of animal yes they do they're very self sufficient and they don't demand nearly as much attention or care yes that's right that's right no huh_uh he's been neutered uh yeah he's just a pet and he he actually turned out to be a great watchdog too so no uh no i haven't well i certainly don't need another one i know well you know i went before we got this dog we were looking around and we went to uh some humane societies and that sort of thing and they would not allow us to adopt a dog because we both work and they required someone to be home all the time and quite honestly i think probably some dogs got put to sleep that could have had a good home i mean yeah that's right yes and i was too and and also there you know they come out and inspect your property and make sure you have a fence it has to be like an eight foot fence and our fence only happens to be six feet i mean no no that's a yeah we end we ended up we got him it was sort of a flea market that they had a pet store had a little shop setup and yeah we ended up buying a dog which isn't you know really what i wanted to do but i couldn't pass the requirements and i yeah and i'll tell you my dog is spoiled huh uh_huh yeah i guess we should have tried the pound but the humane society uh wasn't interested in giving us a pet so yeah i thought it was too uh it's usually like five minutes not too long no you just sort of decide when you're done talking and that's it yeah i work at t i yeah well i just found out about it through a different department do you have pets three cats i see oh really that's interesting what breed do you do you deal in i see oh my uh_huh yeah uh_huh sure yeah yeah i've never never done pets you know as a for breeding purposes i've just you know usually always had a pet of some kind around we're uh currently we have two cats i've got a big old seventeen pound black male alley cat and i've got a little seven pound tabby cat that we got from the humane society she's the cutest little thing then i have a twelve year old dachshund that's gosh she's one of the family absolutely yeah she's twelve years old that's right the little dog loves to travel of course she's dead asleep before we get to the end of the block and she never you know she sleeps the whole time but she loves to travel cats of course don't care too much to travel uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's amazing we've never had a cat of course like i said i guess the only time i've ever had a cat in the car has been in a carrier maybe maybe if we didn't put them in [carriers] maybe they would enjoy it more i don't know probably so uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh could be could be yeah that our little tabby cat is the only cat that i've ever seen or had that she absolutely hates to be picked up she would rather just do anything than be picked up more normally you know you can pick up a cat occasionally anyway she just absolutely hates it i don't know if it's yes she does that but she yeah when she wants to of course uh_huh uh_huh that's right yeah she does that that's true that's true uh_huh yes uh_huh just tense yeah absolutely yeah we've had our our two cats uh declawed because we keep them in the house all the time well actually the little gray tabby [wanders] out in the back yard occasionally i have an eight foot uh security type fence out in the backyard she just kind of goes out and rolls around on the patio and comes back in but our black cat has never never once been outside and has no interest in going outside you can actually leave the door open he'll come to the door and sit down but he never goes outside uh_huh they love to watch the birds uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah they enjoy that uh_huh that's right just [hypnotized] yeah yeah yeah yeah our little cat just wants wants out maybe once a day that's about all huh huh uh_huh yeah my wife's a cat person until we married i'd never really oh we'd had a cat occasionally you know and left it outside most of the time we lived in kind of a rural area my wife's a real cat person one time not when we were together but at one time she had a total of like seventeen cats yeah boy i try to keep her away from the humane society she always want to bring something home you know yeah uh_huh yeah that's what she does yeah that's right yes it really is uh_huh uh_huh get a kitten yeah uh_huh that's right that's right or move off and leave them oh gosh uh_huh good grief may have been [poisoned] or something yeah uh_huh could be could be no not if they've never been out in any weather i wouldn't think so especially yeah could be yeah that's that's too bad it really is it is absolutely yeah uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh [bloodhound] yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah they they are smart they really are right next door or my neighbor across the street has a couple of labs they're really nice dogs they really are i see uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yes yes i've seen that yes i had a german shepherd that did that one time uh_huh i bet she did uh_huh uh_huh that was cheap entertainment wasn't it it really is our kids are all grown and gone and away from home so our our new family is the you know our two cats and our dog we never really well we had we did have some time to devote to them you know but not nearly as much time as we have now so they've really become children well all of them are oh yeah they are uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh they keep you entertained they sure do we have a my wife's uh mother is uh-oh about she's seventy seven i guess she really gets a thrill when we go over to see her and bring the dog i think she's more happy to see the dog than she is us i can't get it can't get her convinced that she really shouldn't try to feed my dog chocolate though she always wants to do a little [hershey] kisses you know you really shouldn't feed chocolate to a dog especially a small dog so i kind of have to watch her when she's around the dog yeah i guess so yeah for some reason she just really thinks that little dog needs some chocolate of course the dog thinks so too they do as a matter of fact they do uh_huh yeah they love it they really do no oh yeah absolutely i think they can read the price tag on the cans of food uh_huh uh_huh yeah now i think i've experienced my first cat here that will not eat tuna we have a cat that will not eat tuna uh_huh yeah that's strange yeah i thought yeah that's true uh_huh yeah that's right that's right yeah i believe this is the first cat that i've ever had that would not even consider eating tuna oh yeah absolutely and even beef as a matter of fact in small quantities uh_huh oh yeah they love love chicken uh_huh uh_huh that's right well jeff it's been good talking to you yeah yeah take care of those cats we do actually we have a a golden retriever uh dog and we have a cat and we have we just got two uh russian dwarf hamsters which dwarf hamsters lucky us huh real small they're maybe about oh two inches long they're real small they're real tiny they're cute they really are cute uh my son's baseball coach uh had two and then had multiple hamsters that he was trying to get rid of and so that's that's where we got them from now we've been assured they're both males and they're in two separate cages so we don't want any we don't want to go into the dwarf hamster business how about you uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh is are they very small uh_huh oh uh_huh oh really yeah oh no kidding uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh are you yeah uh_huh really boy that's real unusual for cats usually you just put down a litter box and that's the end of that yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh really really huh huh oh uh_huh really really um yeah really yeah yeah oh that's too bad sure sure sure yeah yeah well we were real fortunate with our pets um when my husband and i were getting married we we had both been married before and so we were [blending] families and we had taken this blended families course through uh t i s c you know how they have the effective parent parent training effectiveness training and uh so we took a blended families course and linda [hitts] the person who was teaching the course said sometimes when you have children on this side and children on this side you have a you know a mutual child that brings the family together and we looked at each other and laughed and said we'll get a dog and uh so i had always wanted a golden retriever i just think they're real neat dogs that's a nice breed you know they're real calm and gentle and and whatnot so my husband thought well for christmas he was going to surprise me with a puppy and he was looking around for a puppy and then um he saw he decided just on a whim i think i'll call the s p c a and he called the dallas s p c a and he said you wouldn't happen to have a golden retriever would you and they said you won't believe it but we had one dropped off last night and he'd they said he's a k c registered he's two years old and he's going to go fast so we thought okay what's wrong with this dog who would give up a two year old golden retriever you know that's a nice dog something's got to be wrong with this dog nothing is wrong with it we have had him now for three years and just love him to death he is wonderful yeah he is he's a great dog he's he's he makes a real lousy uh watchdog though because he he just loves everybody and he [wags] his tail and you know he's he's great he's great we think he's wonderful and our cat just kind of you know pays us the time of day when he's in the mood and otherwise we don't see him yeah he is he comes in and he goes out he's he's kind of you know is just around we we don't really don't see him except for feeding time you know or when he wants when he's in the mood for a little affection he'll show up yeah yeah but so that's our family and we just you know uh everybody seems to get along real well the kids the dog and the cat so we're okay yeah the hamsters actually it's the dog that is enthralled with the hamsters because the hamsters are recent you know they were just last week and the first night we had them somebody knocked over the cage and we thought it was the cat we really did we blamed the cat and we thought the hamster had disappeared and had been eaten but we found him he he just he [narrowly] escaped with his life but he was found but since then we have discovered the dog sits and watches them for hours on end you know they'll get going in the little wheel and he'll sit there and just stare at them so i'm wondering now if it really was the cat who knocked them off the shelf it might have been it might have been the dog but the cat doesn't seem to be too bothered with them it's it's the dog that just sits there for hour after hour and watches these hamsters it's it's funny yeah yeah uh_huh really out really yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah well we warned them the kids you know we said you know with the cat in the house you know these may not last too long but he doesn't seem to be bothered with them you know he's real content you know chasing flies and birds outside so you know he's he's not too bad but so are you going to try again with another cat sometime yeah yes we have two too many at the moment well we have a um a dog is a golden lab and a um cat and they're both driving us crazy actually yeah just a lot of work and the kids seem to be in so many activities that the reason for having the pets were you know for them and they don't seem to have the time to to care for them so we're at a frustration point with our pets how about you oh yeah right yeah that's for sure well they're a big responsibility they're really fun for especially for the kids if they have the time to enjoy them but boy uh it's a lot of work it seems that's true well i i enjoy mine if my husband's out of town i enjoy having the dog just for you know he'll he'll bark if anyone comes around or that sort of thing so it is a comfort from that standpoint yeah they do they um they get along fine but the cat doesn't get along with anyone in the family she every time you walk by she attacks your leg and just hangs on and we've had cats before we've never had one like this so i i don't know what the deal is with this cat no it was a gift someone gave it to us for my daughter's birthday so um and we you know we had been looking for one so we were hoping to get one but this this one has kind of been a problem we live across the street from the vet and he just can't quite figure it out either so it was um from the um [wills] point i don't know if you're familiar with the town you know just outside dallas and they knew somebody that lived in the country so we're wondering if maybe if they were kind of a country outside breed you know um maybe they're just a little too wild or something yeah but um no no he's not a hunter he's always liked having big dogs but um it doesn't work real well in the city with small yard when we um got the dog we lived out in the country and she could just run and that was fine that that worked real well but now that we're in the city it's kind of hard um we've moved here in january so just not quite a year but you said you're going to school what uh_huh oh good oh that's good well i i bet your your kids do you have pets in your classroom or you don't a what yeah yeah seems like our kids have mostly had um guinea pigs and that sort of thing in their classrooms and that's kind of neat you know the whole class gets to take turns taking it home and and that sort of and well visiting pet you can you can uh have the fun of it without the total responsibility but that's worked well right really but uh no um let's see i'm trying to think the last time i called in was probably um a few days ago it was cooking or something cooking yeah yeah get tired of gun control this is true yeah so do you have any pets oh i oh i guess we have one miniature dachshund oh i don't think i could cope with that many how how do you uh avoid having your house smell uh_huh uh do you let your rabbit run around loose okay i i knew somebody who said they were easy to uh litter box train but she had trouble with its chewing on wood uh how what kind of a dog do you have uh_huh do they get along see we our dog hates every other animal and our we have a couple of children that are are grown and on their own and every once in a while they will come home for a visit with an animal and our our dog just about has a stroke well uh_huh well we we kind of joke that that our our dog's about eight years old and but one son was between jobs for a couple of weeks and was here with a golden retriever and uh when he left you know we swear our dog's [muzzle] turned white and then uh our our other son is in the navy and was being relocated to go to school down at college station so he was here for a couple days in between waiting for his household goods and stuff and with a beagle puppy and we swear after she left the dog got gray on the front two feet i don't know but a visit from uh one of his cousins cousins who uh really yes well i think they're i think they're good company i have been trying for years to convince my mother who lives alone that she would like a dog she loves it when she comes here and our dog sits on her lap you know and she'll just sit there and pet him and pet him and i'll say you need an animal and yeah well and i i think they're good for kids in that they can teach the kids responsibility you know if if you if you have a a kid who wants an animal badly enough and agrees to take care of it i mean it's a responsibility cleaning up after it and um feeding it make sure it has water and uh you know just just all that kind of stuff that's that's good also uh but we just have a we we in the past we've had great [danes] which were probably the best pets we've ever had oh they were well the first one we had was wonderful she just finally died of old age but she was just so the greatest house pet and uh we were asked when she was probably about ten years old when our our youngest one was born and she would totally ignore this baby i mean the dog could be laying there sleeping and somebody could carry this child into the room and the dog would just kind of sniff and walk out of the room and would have absolutely nothing to do with the baby until uh she got old enough to sit in the high chair and throw food over and then all of a sudden the dog decided she was okay but my husband decided it might be nice to have a lap dog for a change and now he just really likes having a dog that [curls] up in his lap i'm ready whenever you are jim no no i do not i uh i live in an apartment well well not really most of my neighbors have pets dogs of course i agree and how they you know the uh the uh health officials let him in the country i always had pets when i grew up oh i had uh i started with a cat an old you know alley cat an old tom but i had dogs primarily and uh mostly [purebreds] but uh we had a large yard and uh we did not have the pets in the house uh they all they were always outdoors but i had a cat i have a i had a cat uh uh when i was living in in uh pensacola florida uh we had a uh cat that i got from again from a friend it was born in a barn uh it was they had a a small farm so there were lots of cats around so i picked out one and got it for my daughter and uh had it uh spayed and declawed and we did keep it in the house restricted to the uh first floor and it was uh not a bad experience but for the most part i'm i'm reluctant to have animals in the house i just i just do not feel that particularly dogs uh i do not feel that they fare well uh in the in the house uh_huh well i yeah i had a malamute at one time and uh stayed outside i was raised in southern west virginia so the winters would get fairly cold the only problem with it is that the bloody thing would sit outside my window and bay at the moon at night and the it's uh wolf [origins] uh came to the [fore] particularly during the full moon and but i always had uh dogs i had a [terrier] first and then i had a uh let's see i had a [terrier] then i had a cocker spaniel then a then the uh malamute and then the last dog i had was a uh [basset] hound but they all stayed outside uh_huh uh_huh um right uh_huh yeah i bet you know the you know the last one we had the uh my uh my father owned a plumbing and heating business and my brother and i frequently worked for him during the summer when my brother was in college and i was in high school and so uh this was the only dog that we trained to ride in the automobile and so we used to take it to work with us when we would go on a job pack it a lunch and it would you know get out of the car and find a nice cool spot to rest and my brother and i would go work and we'd come uh break for lunch and and the uh [unpack] the dog's lunch and so forth and the other workers the [carpenters] and so forth used to get just a hell of a charge out of it because you know here are these two guys you know walked in with clean clothes you know every day my my of course my mother wouldn't let us leave the house without clean clothes you know with a dog bringing a dog on the job and they didn't realize we were working for my father so that uh it was uh but the people around here they're you know as i mention them the uh the neighbors a lot of the neighbors have uh pets of course they you see them out walking every evening but they range you know the couple upstairs that above me has a long hair dachshund uh the lady is german but uh there are some huge dogs around here it's really phenomenal i cannot see i mean i've seen everything from you know great [danes] and german shepherds and just really huge animals and how they keep them confined uh the apartments are fine they are relatively large but to stay there all day is you know fantastic uh_huh it's you know it's amazing how they get conditioned and it really is well he might be [canvassing] the neighborhood you just might be the last stop on his uh on his route during the day okay well yeah when i was growing up uh we had dogs all the time so i always had at least two dogs i think at the most we had three and uh then when i met my my wife she was more of a cat person and she kind of more or less got me converted over to cats and that was the last pets that we had uh but we we went ahead and gave them away to uh another family you know put an ad out and had had them take over the pets uh because we had uh we started our family and and you know cats shed a lot and plus they were kind of rough for the babies playing with and stuff so we decided to not have any pets for a while uh_huh oh no yeah yeah well we are thinking of maybe as a matter of fact my wife was telling me that when she was out christmas shopping that uh they had a display in one of these pet stores they had a uh cat there it turned out to be an older cat about two years old and uh it was really good with the boys i i have two boys four years old and two years old and she said it was really good with them and uh real real tame cat and she was asking me you know well do you think we should go back and get it now or should we wait a little bit longer and i told her well we should probably wait but i you know she is kind of wanting to get at least another cat but i think i would like to go ahead and get get them a dog i think you know i really do think that a dog is more of a a children's pet and a cat is more of an [adult's] pet cause uh i know i i when i was younger and uh growing up with dogs i didn't like cats at all i didn't want anything at all to do with them cause you know they just don't respond to you the way dogs do and uh you know i feel that is something that that a kid looks forward to you can tell a dog to do something and it does it or you throw a ball and he [chases] it that kind of thing and you uh know it will play with you but a cat pretty much just keeps to himself and you know how cats are uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i agree i agree i know that uh you know your yard is always a safe [haven] and uh and really if you have got a dog back there you are really protected because they will stand up for you and i i guess i kind of miss that my dad uh well our our the pets that i grew up with all either ran away or died uh a long time ago my dad just recently got another dog and it it ran away it was a real small dog and he is thinking of getting another one i don't know if he will or not but he wants to get another dog my mom mom can go either way she doesn't really care too much as long as it is clean yeah uh_huh yeah yeah yeah i think probably i would be happier with just an ordinary mutt you get a dog that is show quality and you know you got to be real careful with it and uh_huh yeah yeah that you know i don't want to get into a thing where you take him to shows and and all these papers and stuff and you have got to be careful and all this and that not that you wouldn't take care of it any less but that is just something you know i don't want my boys to have to uh get into that kind of thing sure basically a companion and that is it uh_huh uh_huh i can can agree with that well it was nice talking to you alright you too hi yes we well we have a cat yes named bounce actually it's bounce the uh about third yeah uh that's because when i was little i had a [storybook] about a cat named bounce and and the cat was uh gray and white in particular had to be gray and white so all the [bounces] have been gray and white we also have a rabbit named [coco] bunny right the rabbit is in a cage outdoors only year round and this rabbit has been with us for uh-oh six seven eight eight years one rabbit no that's for sure and uh that's actually all the pets we have at this time how about you uh_huh uh_huh yeah right oh oh yeah cute uh_huh oh boy right yeah does he live indoors or outdoor yeah that's kind of uh_huh um uh_huh yeah ooh how nice uh_huh he's just in the fenced backyard yeah well how nice yeah that sounds like a good situation that's about how i would like to have a dog if i had a dog see our cat is also uh well outdoors and in the garage at one time she was an indoor cat and then she started to do things in the house that i didn't appreciate no no oh well no because she's outdoors so if she's outdoors i don't want her declawed uh but she uh she was kind of a feisty little character when she was little and as she has gotten older because she's about seven years old would she yeah yeah well they're so independent a lot of people don't i that's true it could just stand there and stare at you in a strange way in fact my cat right now is just [rubbing] up against the the wood on the door here with a look of don't you want to feed me or to pick me up and love me yes you sweet thing uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh so he is sociable even though he even though he's outdoors yeah yeah my boys and uh my husband have been talking recently about having a dog but we don't have a a fenced in backyard and we don't want a fenced in backyard we're on a corner and we look out at a creek and a park and we just you know one reason we yeah i guess it would have to be and we yeah that's true yeah well that's right yeah yeah that's for sure uh_huh well pets pets really are hard on houses i mean there's just no doubt about that we've my husband was in really estate for a while and you know he had more problems over pets uh in both rental houses and houses that people owned and other people looked at it and didn't like the way it smelled and so so that's my main objection yeah i mean even the best trained one you know is going to have problems from time to time and you just can't really get that that smell out and uh_huh oh that's good when we moved into this house both dogs and cats had been in it and uh we did not realize that there was a problem and after we moved in it was so bad that we had to go ahead and uh [recarpet] the entire house and when they pulled the carpeting up it was so bad on the back there were so many spots you just wouldn't believe and uh they we had to have a [exterminating] company come in and they had to treat the concrete slab and they had to wear you know gas [masks] and stuff so we moved everything from one half of the house to the other half and you know then just took took that well actually both the uh took that part of the carpeting up and then treated that and we had to stay out of the house for you know ten hours or something had to do it again yeah no they usually don't well well so anyway we've had that that was very bad experience so i don't really think we're going to have any more indoor pets so they'd have company right well it really is fun to have two pets together uh_huh yeah yeah yeah but they must really have fun together it's it's cute to see several at a time like that oh yeah uh_huh kids well you have do you have any pets uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah do you have any children or oh okay i see yeah uh_huh so whether uh why do you have a dog uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh well mainly because it's just uh at this point in life i've had to be available to travel and we live in an apartment right now so uh they're not even allowed here but uh when i was growing up i always had cats and and then uh later i guess uh the last few years that i was at home my mother and father got a dog and i learned to really appreciate dogs as well they're totally different types of pets but uh i see how dogs are really faithful friends uh_huh uh_huh yeah okay yeah that's true yeah my dad i think finds that he really enjoys his dog he says he's the best friend he has but uh i don't know that's kind of sad though uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah well i've seen that there's there's a lot of uh you really have to appreciate their good qualities because there there are problems they leave a lot of hair around and uh_huh uh_huh yeah but obviously you find him worth it or you'd get rid of him yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah well not this one i it's not allowed here but yeah the thing i like about cats is they're more independent you can leave them and they can take better care of themselves than a dog it seems like you know depends oh wow yeah yeah yeah they'll do that sometimes so uh_huh oh really uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah oh i had goldfish but i didn't think much of those they they don't have any personality uh_huh yeah yeah do you well maybe i better let you go and go solve the conflict there uh_huh oh really uh_huh uh_huh uh well you have do you have any pets uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah do you have any children or oh okay i see yeah uh_huh so whether uh why do you have a dog uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh well mainly because it's just uh at this point in life i've had to be available to travel and we live in an apartment right now so uh they're not even allowed here but uh when i was growing up i always had cats and and then uh later i guess uh the last few years that i was at home my mother and father got a dog and i learned to really appreciate dogs as well they're totally different types of pets but uh i see how dogs are really faithful friends uh_huh uh_huh yeah okay yeah that's true yeah my dad i think finds that he really enjoys his dog he says he's the best friend he has but uh i don't know that's kind of sad though uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah well i've seen that there's there's a lot of uh you really have to appreciate their good qualities because there there are problems they leave a lot of hair around and uh_huh uh_huh yeah but obviously you find him worth it or you'd get rid of him yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah well not this one i it's not allowed here but yeah the thing i like about cats is they're more independent you can leave them and they can take better care of themselves than a dog it seems like you know depends oh wow yeah yeah yeah they'll do that sometimes so uh_huh oh really uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah oh i had goldfish but i didn't think much of those they they don't have any personality uh_huh yeah yeah do you well maybe i better let you go and go solve the conflict there uh_huh oh really uh_huh uh_huh uh hello yes do you have any pets oh what kind okay i bet what happened to the rabbits uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh okay well we have two dogs uh [chasta's] the small one that we kind of inherited and then we have lady that gene has been wanting for a long time it's a collie and she is a sweetheart and we have two cats and one of them now lady can go up the steps she goes up the steps really really slow and she kisses nikki and they kind of you know look at each other and everything and then then uh lady will turn around and come back down stairs but she knows that if she moves fast that uh she's going to move you know yeah yeah and uh by the way my other big pet here said he's going to call you tonight and you have oh you're kidding uh_huh oh he doesn't have any pets um uh_huh oh um uh_huh uh_huh oh for crying out loud well uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well we don't have that problem lady hardly ever barks at all unless she's outside playing and uh [chasta] only barks like when the paper boy delivers the mail she might bark for a little bit uh_huh um i'll be oh that's too bad uh_huh yeah that would that would really be upsetting with me too if my neighbors didn't like my dogs you know and uh well of course two of two other neighbors have dogs you know and they get to come over and play uh_huh um uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well some people have dogs but they really don't like them i don't know why they even keep them you know really a lot of people have pets and oh yeah god mine are like my family at night they sit out here by the door by the patio door and look in you know sit side by side till every night i think for two hours every night and then we let them in and they come in they just lay down but just i guess just the idea that they're in the house with us for a while you know uh_huh so well well that's a shame you know and you i know you can have their [barker] taken out but [who'd] want to do that that would be awful you know well that's too bad but anyhow we don't have that problem like i say uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well at least you can still get some right well that's good well let's see isn't it funny though what was your name oh i'm nola and i'm in plano texas it's plano it's just north of dallas uh-oh pets yes yeah i didn't quite understand what you said i'm sorry we don't have i grew up in new jersey but it's been a long time since i lived there did you already push the one okay uh yeah we have fish that's it yeah it's uh neither my husband or i really wanted to take care of cats or dogs or anything like that so and the girls kind of wanted something we have uh well now we have four girls when we got the fish to start with we had two or three but uh for some reason i just decided to start a fish tank and set up a ten gallon fish tank and it started with a we had a real hard time getting it established tried the goldfish and they were just filthy could not keep the tank clean uh eventually i took them back to the store and started all over again and i had another couple of kinds that ate each other so that batch didn't work either uh there were some [neons] and a couple of other kind i can't remember what they were but but they didn't get along very well whatever they were yeah huh well these were not supposed to be an aggressive kind like that but they were and uh i could see them picking on each other yeah yeah anyway i finally got rid of those all killed each other off and i cleaned the tank up again and got it all fixed again and established and i got about half a dozen guppies from a friend and they just bred and bred and bred and they're there must have been a hundred guppies in that tank and i i i must have taken thirty or forty of them at a time back to the store two or three different times because there were so many of them i couldn't keep them down but they took them back and gave me a credit of about a dollar each time so i yeah helped to buy fish food and filters uh_huh but uh then i i went for a while where uh while i was pregnant with our new little baby we uh i just kept forgetting to clean the tank and it was really dirty for a long time but those fish still lived in there and uh finally i cleaned the tank out and most of them had disappeared uh and i don't think i've got any males in there anymore so they're not [multiplying] anymore yeah yeah i need to get a new uh [algae] eater though yeah they're still there's about a dozen guppies in there right now so but that's the only thing we've got yes you may i know sorry and so you have fish or do you have but you don't have anything right now yeah it's kind of a problem moving them you feel sorry for them yeah uh_huh you'd have to do it an awful lot though oh oh does your cat try to run away at all uh_huh oh three weeks oh well that's great we have a dog we have a three year old dog about medium size and she's uh an indoor dog and she is yeah she's like our baby not technically we consider her a puppy i she still acts like a puppy but yeah oh very too active sam [samantha] oh oh that's neat yes she's a mix between a german shepherd and a husky yeah she is really pretty and she's a good watchdog we live in a one bedroom apartment and she will [growl] and bark at strangers walking by or if she hears any [footsteps] yes it is good it's nice to have yes it was hard to find uh apartment out here we live in uh penn state university and it's hard to find apartments that take pets so we're way on the outskirts of town because and we have a ground floor apartment with like a private yard and we can just open up the door and we play frisbee and ball and so she gets some exercise we go for walks uh_huh that's true oh that's a good bird name oh wow oh oh no how many oh my goodness oh my gosh oh they all did okay no i had to press one sure uh_huh i think we should have stayed longer uh i think what we did was good but i think we just should have stayed there longer and continued doing what we did do yeah i think we should have stayed and kind of helped the people in iraq out now because it's kind of like a civil war going on now and it's almost like they're killing each other off and there is not going to be anything left of iraq at all well i think i don't think it would be good if we were to completely lose it um well no i just mean that that the world in general yeah um i don't know i think we should have helped the the innocent people in iraq out a little bit more than rather than just quitting where we did yes but i think that's almost impossible next to impossible oh see i haven't really been keeping up with them so i really don't know what he said what did he say about it uh_huh we don't have the money for that it would be really nice because i'm kind of tired of driving in pot holes i'm sorry i dropped the phone yeah uh_huh oh really uh_huh oh i didn't realize that no huh_uh only in ohio i've never been past ohio no huh_uh i've never seen anything out i never seen the great i've seen i've never seen i've seen pictures of it but i've never been there i've seen pictures i just i'm a college student and um i'm paying for my own education and i'm i come from a large family and we we we're never able to take vacations because there's there's twelve kids in the family so oh my uh_huh uh_huh really yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well um i'm i'm originally from butler and that's about an hour away from where i am now i'm at [clairon] and um it's it's pretty like windy and hilly oh i couldn't even tell you it's not like a mountain it wouldn't be like a mountain it's uh oh i don't even know i have no clue i would say it's closer to sea level uh_huh oh well see um uh_huh um uh_huh uh the farthest away from home i'd say five or six uh_huh uh_huh oh my oh my gosh uh_huh oh yes now see for me that's a long ways uh_huh even well like i i'm in like a little town right now it's smaller than butler and um butler butler is about an hour north east of pittsburgh so that will give you some idea of where i'm at and i'm about i'm about two hours north east of pittsburgh and uh i mean just this this little town here is basically a college town the college without the college here this town would be nothing it would be absolutely dead because it's completely made up of fast food restaurants and and in the summer when we uh my fiancee's family lives up there we come up here in the summer and it's i mean there's just no one around um well i go home in the summer and i work in the summer and between what i make in the summer and student loans that's how i go to college finance uh_huh uh_huh um well like i said my fiancee no no no no um my fiancee works down in d c and i'd actually like to work for a company rather than a bank or a something i'd rather work for a company and um like be their financial advisor or something uh_huh oh really uh_huh take a boom a little bit well well what would be the unemployment rate out there see that's what it is here too uh_huh yeah it's even getting hard for the four year people to find jobs i know people they are out of school for two or three years and they have a job that has nothing to do was i supposed to do something good uh let's see so uh were we right in the middle east should we have been there did we do what was correct there should we have fought them harder used more weapons equal to their chemical weapons that weren't used oh you agree with schwartzkopf who says uh drive on into baghdad would that be so bad was there anything there to begin with it wasn't ours we've got to talk so it's just just as well we argue i agree wouldn't it have been wonderful if we could have freed the country yeah so other political things that's going on i heard mister bush say excuse me president bush say that he uh wanted to improve the highways oh he wanted to take the current secondary highway system and turn it into [interstates] like the rest of the country but wouldn't it be wonderful and back east you all drive at fifty five don't you what's that oh okay um i say back east you all drive at fifty five don't you see out here in the west a lot of our secondary roads are fifty five we drive sixty five oh yes well i uh last weekend went home to visit my parents my dad's in the hospital and uh between here and west texas there was probably three and four hours at sixty five miles an hour [nonstop] have you ever been out here how far west have you been oh you've never you've never seen the great american desert the rocky mountains yellowstone uh well my college uh thirty six worked for texas instruments for seventeen or eighteen now uh know virtually nothing else uh yeah i got my four year got my b s in general science yeah i know it's a funny degree anyway uh i know nothing other than the west in fact uh down in east texas where the company's located there's streams and water and things i don't understand trees and the gulf and it's really interesting so tell me about where you live uh how high is the highest elevation like uh probably three thousand feet close to sea level okay uh right here in colorado springs where i live it's over six thousand foot um yes when i lived in texas every year i had to drive you know i drove every year to the gulf and you know so i could have a [feast] of fresh seafood six eight twelve hours away you know just just for fresh i i'm really interested in the basic concept differences between west and east coast and the central parts of america how many hours have you been from home yes oh yeah uh now when i was growing up in the panhandle of texas look at your map later and see the the town of amarillo fifty miles north of that up in the panhandle to just go buy a pair of jeans we'd drive an hour when i was growing up now things are different and people buy jeans in town but uh we thought nothing at all of wake up waking up in the morning hopping into your car grabbing the fishing poles and driving four hours yeah it is i imagine okay okay i'll look at my map later wow how neat so are you working your way through college well how neat what's your major finance well that's interesting so uh what do you plan to do with it savings and loans uh oh that would be great that would be neat let's see uh so we're all excited in colorado springs apple computer is coming to town yes the uh new employer is in the city so we're expecting our local economy to well maybe not a boom but uh at least recover to where we can all hold regular forty hour jobs still uh unemployment runs approximately six percent but now under employment i would suspect to run closer to eighteen or twenty percent and the problem is that there are no good permanent full time jobs for people without a technical four year degree yes it is okay do you have you noticed any new uh trends in politics oh really no i didn't hear that uh i think sometimes it's good for people outside they get a different uh perspective on an issue and stuff so yeah i don't see any problem with outsiders going in and getting a little bit involved i think though that it should still be uh sort of up to the majority in the area i don't know on something like that they wouldn't really vote on it or anything though uh probably so just because they were under his authority and he obviously failed somewhere along the line yeah oh um i think he's got good intentions but i'm not sure if the way he goes about what he does is really right right uh_huh oh i think that they should go ahead and go to the uh fourteen one i to me it's just fair you know an equal it seems like every area should have an equal voice no yeah diane [ragsdale] yeah yeah they really make themselves look bad and i don't know why certain groups are fighting so hard to keep the ten four one no huh_uh yeah yeah i okay okay good talking to you bye well the one i think is interesting is the california los angeles police chief who says he won't [resign] and did you hear yesterday that mayor [bradley] said that uh he should i think it's i think what's interesting is that uh the political [activists] jesse jackson and a lot of other people went out there and are [demonstrating] i find it interesting that uh outsiders would bother to go in how do how do you feel about people like jesse jackson getting involved well do you but do you think gates should [resign] well well speaking of that kind of issue have you kept up with john wiley price what do you think of him he's an interesting person i was talking to someone who said that uh for all his obvious attention to efforts to get media attention that he actually is a worker on the uh i guess he's on the county uh-oh board of supervisors or and the the the uh at those meetings he really comes quite well prepared and is well informed and is a hard worker and is really quite [agreeable] uh and that this stuff we see in the you know in the media is uh well he's really just trying to make a political statement i i find that an interesting element of politics that we don't that that most people would not know that john wiley price apparently is a is a you know of course he's got in this this deal of racism and the you know name calling and all this but apparently he's a a worker uh you may disagree with him but i i i find this whole what do you think of this uh fourteen one and ten four one in dallas i agree with you but did you see the map they drew up on uh on how they were going to divide up the districts it was it was the strangest i'm i'm not sure it was [gerrymandered] but the way they drew these little patterns and stuff i i i guess i'm a little cynical of the of the power base i i i and i don't quite understand why the power base uh doesn't uh why they don't go with fourteen one i you know and you know the it seems to me that what happened in the in the election that a lot of the people they said particularly the the uh i think it's hispanics don't vote because they don't think that they have any affect and it's i i guess i am disappointed with dallas in that uh the fourteen one it i don't know you can you can disagree with al [lipscomb] and uh what's what's the [lady's] name yeah you can disagree with uh what they're doing and what they're saying but in reality i think they're they're trying to represent their constituents and i think dallas is doing itself a [disservice] i think they ought to get on with something important yeah and i but i think even i even those people are it's like [pauken] and box and these people i think it's it's kind of interesting that everybody's so busy [politicking] that the question is are we getting anything good done it's like this whole school issue are you involved in the schools at all public schools this whole thing down there where they're they're trying to um uh you know devote all our money and raise our taxes and better schools and and it all seems you know like everybody's trying to one [upmanship] on everybody else so i i have got to run to a meeting it was good talking to you i don't think we've gone our our ten minutes but i think we've we've talked long enough okay good night okay uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh no huh_uh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh we'll probably never know how much it actually cost uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh it's never a pleasant thing that's true yes that's yes yes that's really unfortunate it really is i don't know if we stopped too soon i don't i don't i really don't know what we need to do about that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh i've been hearing some talk too of trying to bring hussein up on you know criminal charges i don't know if that will ever happen or not uh_huh which is very difficult to do uh_huh obviously he's not going to turn himself in uh_huh true yeah uh_huh yeah true uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah obviously human life means nothing to him oh yeah that's true past a point it doesn't make any difference yeah that's really really unfortunate it really is uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh seems like the prices never go down to where they were originally though before before the increase started uh_huh uh_huh true uh_huh yeah about the lowest i've seen gasoline in the dallas area is uh i guess about ninety two point nine now ninety two oh really well there's still a lot of dollar five places here but you can find some that's under a dollar but not not a whole lot that's the lowest i've seen uh_huh uh_huh right i think [mobil] was doing very well too well i i assume all the major major brands are uh_huh that's true yeah yeah that's true uh_huh yeah something like yeah yeah uh_huh yeah yeah sure uh_huh uh_huh i'm not sure either uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's true uh_huh yeah sure [dead's] dead that's true so well i don't guess we resolved anything but it's interesting to you too take care bye bye okay so i think i think what we should talk about is uh the war the war that just went on see i i don't agree with it first of all i don't believe in war and then the united states has this attitude by saying you know thank you for keeping us our freedom and stuff like that and i think it's all independent because it's it has nothing to do with the united states you didn't gain anything from it and it wasn't our freedom that you were saving it was just the thing the thing that that that i saw was okay iraq wants to raise oil prices kuwait wants to take iraq out of the whole system by leaving them independent and so when iraq you know saw this they said let's take over the country which is a good idea right then the united states says okay our our oil prices are going to go up and like for example see okay like lithuania right they declared themselves an independent country with a president right russia goes in there well the main government in moscow goes in there and they kick everybody's ass and the united states doesn't go in there and say listen they were you know named an independent you know state with a president and everything but we're not going to go into your country but these countries here which you know are you know like in nineteen eighty four have you ever read that book okay nineteen eighty four there are like three big [continents] and uh there's just this area like around egypt and stuff that everybody's fighting over now the problem is is that nobody's going to invade anybody else's boundaries right like their immediate boundaries like you're not going to go you know it's like the [army's] not going to go straight into russia because there you're you're invading their border right but all the other countries you can fight about and so the thing is is that you're wasting so much money to send you know it's like how much money did the u s spend when they could have paid so much money for each barrel of oil that was being and you know it's it was basically all based on oil because nobody actually like for example if uh let's say if you know brazil took over you know [surinam] i don't think anybody would care you know and uh that's something that that has been you know very because see the thing is is like every time that i see a war i see myself on the front line and on the other side i see myself again and i've got to shoot myself you know i got to shoot somebody that's got the same family that i do you know the same relationships that i do and just because i was born here i've got to shoot them down and uh but at least it was it was over quick and there weren't that many deaths now the only problem is is the aftermath that you're having so many deaths in the border with uh turkey well there's something that that the u s did right which is say say you know okay let's kick him out of kuwait which was our basic goal and uh now indirectly let's try to overthrow him you know and they're not going to do that directly but the thing is is that they they didn't go into into iraq and say you know because they have the force to go in there and say get out of the country you know you can seek seek asylum here and you can go there but no way are you going to rule ever again well the thing is is that first of all they got to they they have to get him and and there's no way that you can get them unless it's by force you know and then you can put him on trial no no i think i think he'd rather commit suicide than turn himself in because there's i mean there's like it's like there's no hope you know like what hitler did you know you know like if you were going to put on trial you get to live the rest of your life but where you know and so um the thing is is that once you've done something wrong which is you know [internationally] recognized then you're going to try to get out of it and the there's no way you know and especially since he's got inside iraq for using you know chemical weapons and stuff and you know like he sent planes over to to shoot the people down that were on the border with uh that were on their way to turkey he had a couple of them bombarded huh_uh but uh you know he's got uh millions of dollars like i think it was like i don't know if it was fifty billion or fifty million which is really doesn't make any difference yeah but it's just it's just that uh you know you know like the we just put our goals in different you know levels is like saying you know it's like yeah sure we need oil you know and we need it desperately but the other countries that you know that have oil but not as big you know like they say you know like when the prices went up and then they went down when they took that big dip it was because they discovered another big oil well somewhere in saudi arabia or something well it its an advantage you know it's like you're saying okay i can bring my prices up to a dollar fifty a gallon and i'm not going to bring them back down to you know ninety nine cents why because people are willing to pay a dollar fifty a gallon so if i leave it at a dollar ten people are still going to pay you know i went down forty cents but i went up ten cents yeah ninety eight oh god here it's like it's like a dollar five yeah but still the i mean have you ever checked like uh the most money makers in uh in nineteen uh ninety uh you can see that uh exxon and [amaco] and uh other companies oh god i forgot their names but uh exxon was the number one money maker and that was just because of of the last quarter yeah and uh that was i mean and what other companies are went up four hundred and some percent and that's practically impossible to do now a days for a company to to shoot up in that way and uh it's just that you know people people take advantage of that you know like the the companies are saying we're trying not to raise our prices but when you know when we get a barrel coming in at more than what we're selling it for we've got to raise our prices you know but still if you realize that uh one barrel has like how much was it like um forty gallons it's got forty gallons and they're selling you know you know you got to pay forty dollars at least and you know for uh for one gallon and it's it was selling like at twenty five or something so you're making uh you know fifteen dollars profit easily and uh everything i mean and and the expenses you know of the war you know it's like uh it's like who's gaining on this okay because uh does does the u s government own any gas companies like like you know gas stations and stuff i because see like for example i don't know if the british government owns shell i'm not sure about that but the thing is like the u s government got nothing out of it because well you know it's like the other independent companies the gas stations you know they did and uh then the taxes go up and then everybody else loses but um you know they're just they're just some things that might not be worth it you know and and first of all how many how many people had to had to die before the war you know it's like transporting stuff and things like that before you know it's like yeah sure you know like to to a couple people that died there their families don't feel it was necessary to do that yeah yeah you you could you could never bring them back oh well yeah so okay nice talking to you bye bye i just pressed my uh i got one that's interesting not too not too controversial i you know not doesn't matter whether you're democrat or republican i i do get somewhat of a kick out of because schwartzkopf or the other generals who i admire how everyone wants to make get them in politics i think that's kind of an interesting recent thing that i could think of recently that uh i was wondering what you thought about that making the general uh getting a general into politics right well i've i've been thinking about it and i uh i kind of get a kick out of they always want the hero those we're looking for a hero well time magazine was saying that in essence the [general's] staff was comparing to corporate presidents and they said in general generals are more familiar with training that they believe in training more they are much more educated than the average corporate president and so they really were very positive on a [general's] staff person having a a very much better education than the average uh corporate president so i thought well maybe well that too that too and uh you know they talk about the army and because of the war and why did we win and all that and they talked about how the training was so important and that's so important in industry so you know they're liable to be right that generals generals in the service and schwartzkopf uh you know might make a good uh politician whether it be governor or whatever you know yeah it's interesting how they say that when they're usually the top dogs you know everyone has a boss of course yeah no that's true that's true uh you you pick one i just thought of that one when when they brought up about politics that was uh pretty easy you don't have to pick democratic or republican you can pick anything you want go ahead well i have an easy answer for that oh i wish they would do it is that limit it you know to eight or ten years max you know whether that's two five year terms or whatever oh you know you're not yeah yeah yeah i don't know i do like the limitation of the president and i think there is a needed change i think the same thing should happen for congress i i'd you know that would be my answer of an easy way to get these guys out of there for twenty years my god it's ridiculous you know we had i think voting is is a i think i had one of the subject about voting and uh voting apathy or something like that and i think that uh the voting rules need to be changed where you have a little more time i can't believe that a country our big votes for a president from seven o'clock in the morning til seven o'clock at night you know of course they have absentee which is getting to be more a lot easier and i i vote as often on absentee as i can because it's so easy now but i think gee whiz you could make it a couple days it's just if you really want the majority of the people to vote then give them a couple of days yeah yeah are you in dallas boy i i i live in arlington i am so happy not to be part of dallas when i see those folks there i mean i don't know if you like the mayor but i think your mayor the city council the what is the woman's name whose us not the mayor but the yeah the city manager all of them need to be thrown out i mean they're just awful just awful uh_huh i know it's so awful that politicians always spent consulting money that we put them in office and then they go out and spend a couple hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy consultants and then they don't even do that recommendation you know i mean it's amazing the money that they spend once they get in well you're right there you're right there uh uh people are uh uh politics uh the voting is still not as much as you think in all kinds of issues really yeah it is uh hopefully people will get more involved oh yeah but those are the ones that are complaining i i think a lot i see it here at t i the guys that don't take any interest in and and constantly on the negative of everything and uh is that right ooh right you're right you're right i think they could do more about uh voting what are the issues i i'm a democrat i want to just say that i'm so sad that there isn't a strong democrat i don't even know i could go out and debate george bush better than i see any democrat doing it you know i mean at least i'd like to see because i like competition you know i think rolling over and put your belly up and play dead i'm so disgusted with the democratic party i can not believe it you know yeah yeah but i still think in the last ten years you know of course that's not a recent event that's only my opinion i guess i really shouldn't talk about that but i don't know whether they're recent events i guess they on this uh speech thing they want us to use a variety of words how many times have you called by the way oh really i i i yeah i've already got twelve cards you get any cards in the mail i don't know i'm amazed by of course we're not talking about politics but i am amazed by people say they got thirty well i wonder why you need thirty [renditions] of the persons voice but i'm not in voice synthesis but i'd sure like to see a summary of it we'll get to politics i'm sorry yeah right yeah yeah bye bye we're supposed to talk about recent political developments uh_huh yeah they want him because he's popular not because he can do the job uh_huh i i think they probably have a better education than the average congressman he he you know we know he's a good leader we know he's a good [organizer] the question is you know can he be the man who's ultimately responsible you know like what he said is you know a lot of times in his interviews he was talking about you know people asking why are you doing this why are you doing that he says i'm following the orders of my president i'm not the one who writes the orders i'm just the one who follows them you know schwartzkopf was ordered to get iraq out of kuwait and so he went to the president and said okay here's how i want to do it but he wasn't the one that decided iraq needed to get out of kuwait uh_huh yeah well the thing that i'm wondering about is how we get a new congress how do we get some of these guys that have been in there for so long how do we get them to not get reelected over and over again yeah i yeah yeah that may be our only answer but i don't really like it i don't like the fact that the president is limited in the number of terms he can serve i think if the president be him republican or democrat i think if the president can prove that he's popular you know that he can do the job then the people should be allowed to elect him as often as they want i think the reason why we've got these guys in congress is because of the fund raising rules i mean how many of these big campaign contributions that they're running on this year did they get after they were elected just you know just after they were elected two years ago basically the people as soon as they get elected the people dump all kinds of money on them and say yeah yeah you're my friend you're my friend and two years later he remembers that and what they done is they've bought this congressman for two years yeah well that's that's the easy way i think the harder way out would be to make the guys that are in there and the guys who are trying to get in there run on more level ground that's what the financing rules and the uh the mailing rules and the size of the office staff and all that stuff yeah yeah well i think a lot more people could vote if they were somehow persuaded that it's something worth caring about you know like you know the the recent election about how the dallas city council should be made up that election last december yeah i'm in dallas city limit yeah it's an ugly mess the manager well what get's me is this thing it went down to [defeat] last december by how many votes by just a few hundred votes and if it if it had passed if these people had gotten out the vote it would have passed and there'd be no more argument but they're still fighting about it because of the way the election went last december uh_huh yeah but but this is for supposedly to benefit the minorities and all the minorities had to do was go out and get a couple more hundred people to vote and they would have had their way yeah it's pretty sad my my position is people who don't vote don't have any right to complain about the way the government's going uh_huh and and you ask them why they don't vote they say well they don't want their name on the uh jury duty list that that's where they get the jury duty list is from the voter registration i think they could uh_huh yeah in presidential races that's about what they've done but they've got a pretty good lock on congress and a lot of local things right actually i haven't made any calls but i received about a dozen i think yeah i have to make these but i get distracted and get to do something else and all of a sudden my phone rings and go well what the heck we'll talk for a while yeah we got a whole bunch i can't remember how many well i think we've used up as much time as we're supposed to anyway we're supposed to do five minutes and that was three minutes ago hey well thanks for the call yeah bye yeah i think um this is a tough subject because uh when you come from two different parts of the country uh the political views are really different i uh i i guess i've had to discuss a number of what might be considered controversial issues i guess like like they're nothing i guess nothing is as awful as abortion but like gun control and uh day care an things like that and there are some very different views uh of the people connected with the program which i thought was really interesting you know yeah well being in in baltimore see maryland is um is sort of um is as as a [hub] of [liberalism] you know compared to the country uh you know very uh in in many ways uh very liberal very somewhat to new england though pennsylvania and new york uh i aren't actually as liberal maryland is a very liberal uh state so so where here we have um we have gun control laws we probably have some of the [strictest] gun control laws in the nation and most people in maryland vote for that you know so it really is a different um yeah that's that's right talk to i had to talk about gun control with somebody and i talked with a woman who actually you know had just purchased a gun that day and was going target shooting you know and it was very different it was a whole different view it's really um this has opened my eyes to thinking you know at one time i just sat here and thought well how can anybody believe that because i'd really never met people that did and now i talk to people that do so that's it's really interesting uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah isn't it funny uh_huh uh yeah yeah well you can [possess] them here too but they have to be they're registered and uh like uh the the brady bill that's currently being discussed nationally and whatever is very well supported here in gun control avenues and um you have the seven day waiting period yeah that's uh that's yeah yeah that's true that's very true that's and that's the way i guess most of the um the political organizations work you know the same i know the abortion issue with right to life and right to choose and and both of them are both want the extent of extremes so that they don't give anything for a balance you know there's there's always that difficulty um i would say i'm probably liberal yeah yeah sure well i'll tell you i i think you know if they if they didn't give as much coverage to these [idiots] that burn the flag it would never happen do you know what i mean it's only because they make a big stink over it but i i guess actually i believe that if somebody wants to burn the flag i guess that's their opportunity they're they're they're right in the sense of freedom of speech but i would never yeah yeah well it's that they i think the idea of freedom of speech goes back to and i uh uh the the the whole aspect of being able to display your uh your ideas you know the what the country stands on america stands on is that they can do that uh though i would never even consider it in a million years to do it myself i i i think uh you know but i i still what the flag stands for i guess to me is that if somebody wants to voice their opinion or display their opinion openly and if that is a a way that they can show their opinion then they should be allowed uh unless the burn unless the actual fire [hinders] somebody's health and well being you know but i i think that's i guess that's i that's my opinion yeah i guess you feel differently uh no but i think that's that's uh it's that's [taxpayer's] money if somebody buys their own flag and and burns it that's fine but that that's you know that's [destruction] and of uh public property and whatever no i don't know i guess the [symbolism] oh i think what america stands for is the right to be able to disagree with the government uh i think that's what's made democracy yeah uh_huh yeah well that's that's true yeah but i think i i yeah i i i guess the idea you know they always keep saying like the framers um there uh one of the republican the [appointees] for the the judicial bench and they always talk about they feel that this person believes in the framing of the constitution what the original framers the ideals the original framers set down and um i believe that the idea of burning the flag is is in my understanding of how it was framed is that you this the thing about this country is that you can disagree with its government and you can display that uh i yeah i and and so that as a freedom of expression and speech and whatever i i think that that's viable um as long as it's your flag and and you've made your your point i think yeah because realistically like for you for you you don't think it's right and i would never do it i i love this country too much and that symbol means a lot to me um but i guess it's just one of those things where if they if that's what's something it's a need for them you know yeah yes no right yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah i agree there too i agree with you there too i i the um i i it's i find it you know personally disgusting but i don't think that i don't think that uh we have a right to stop somebody from that you know the same i don't know i guess i get i get uh all mixed up inside when yeah it when it's uh it's an emotional issue and you sit and you try and think about it logically and and and you know you try to say to yourself now emotionally this is a disgusting thing uh but logically um even you know for instance the pro life pro choice movement uh you know i don't know anybody that actually supports abortion but they would vote pro choice because you know that's just a disgusting thing you know somebody an abortion means it's somebody's in trouble and that it's an awful thing you know but yeah but it that's uh that's what i mean see but but realistically when you think of it it just sounds like such an awful thing and it [evokes] an emotional response i think that's the hardest thing i don't know if i could ever be a judge because some things emotionally just aren't you know no no i think the um sometimes i guess what did i read recently the um the uh christian uh point is is always the point of well it's at conception but then um a friend of mine's a doctor and [argues] with others that conception is a biblical term and there's no concept of conception in medicine or biology so then that so that throws out that idea makes it a religious discussion then so it's i don't know it's very it's it's uh you know it's a it's a [topsy] [turvy] world and it's really something how um political ideas and viewpoints within one country can vary so much and also within um within a yeah and how yeah how it'll sway from one one extreme to another uh i think that uh you know i i just read something i think in time magazine uh about um protest uh_huh well now you you say two different parts of the country what are are are you referring to yourself or uh_huh uh well of course you talk gun controls down here in texas and you're asking to be [lynched] uh_huh well it's very true now i'm a uh new yorker by birth although i claim florida as my home now uh i have two sons living down there but i also have two sons living elsewhere one in tennessee one in mississippi but i lived in in florida for ten years and i kind of like it down there but they had a gun control law which went a little bit too far i think uh well in your words they were a little bit too liberal i mean they they i believe if i'm correct i believe they permitted their carrying concealed weapons but they uh quickly did away with it i think in the next session they they uh modified it but it's still legal to own or [possess] weapons in uh uh florida the the one week uh seven day the delay uh_huh well i don't mind that too much i'm i'm with the n r a myself and uh uh really the only objection we have is uh you you give a little and next thing you know somebody's trying to take more yeah well then tell me do you consider yourself a liberal well let me ask you this then how is your what is your feeling about uh uh expressing yourself by burning the american flag huh well now wait a minute there you just said it it's their right by freedom of speech what does speech have to do with burning a flag now uh well i i still go back to then would you [condone] the burning of the capitol building uh then you don't draw a line between public property and uh uh uh what a public uh symbol uh yeah but here again i go back to the second amendment you can disagree by freedom of speech which has nothing to do with action now i am i am [adamantly] against that uh_huh huh yeah uh_huh no uh_huh well here again we uh even though you uh physically you agree with me you you wouldn't do it yourself nevertheless you maintain that it's it is the right of of any citizen to burn the symbol of their country uh um so long as it's their possession ok you're you're that's fine up to there except that uh what that flag [symbolizes] is uh uh is this country and i used to know as a boy scout but all i remember was the red in the flag represented the blood that was shed to to create this country and to maintain it and to me that's uh uh black eye to every man that ever uh carried a weapon or killed for his country uh_huh it's it's very easy to do uh uh_huh well i think it should be permitted under certain circumstances uh_huh huh well tell me has it ever been decided when when is a uh [fetus] a human huh or they on their within the own uh society it can vary uh_huh well let me just start by asking what you think of this middle east affair we've got going on i have to agree with you there i uh i think that uh for once we should we shouldn't even be at at these mid east talks because with the exception of our hostages we really don't have too much of a uh real we shouldn't have too much of a real interest in deciding who's land it is just let these people fight it out you know we've got so many domestic problems and and what does it cost these people over there you know oh so how about the soviet union what do you think's going to happen there the break ups uh_huh that's right that's right well all i've seen reagan obviously wasn't too concerned with the domestic side of of of his political affairs i i think bush's kind of followed suit um international is important but uh we've got a budget deficit that just won't go away unless it gets seriously addressed uh you know and then there's the homeless issue and there really is a lot we could be doing [stateside] without uh hurting our international aspects or [straining] any international relations i think and we wouldn't have to spend the billions and billions of dollars each year that we're spending right i agree we've been writing off way too many bad debts uh country bad debts exactly i know it right that's right you're either liberal or you're conservative well i think uh it wouldn't hurt and i know the independent [party's] been trying for years to get a a a real force in in the uh in congress but uh you're right there's just too many issues that come up that uh our senators and our congressmen vote on simply because it's a democratic issue or it's a republican issue and if they would vote with their conscience and with what their constituents feel i think uh we might have a a lot better a lot more efficient running government and a lot better laws passed he's one of the two huh well let's see senators are in for six years right and uh when did you guys vote him into office oh you're stuck i think that it's time that we concentrate more on what's going on within our own borders than what's going on in the middle east i agree absolutely i think that's great um i'm glad to see that but i again i don't want to see us pour a whole lot of economic aid into the soviet union without a uh well uh a whole lot under any circumstances because i i don't know i'm i'm a believer in the old [adage] that if somebody earns something it's worth more to them than if you give it to them and so i'm i'm not much in favor of it but i'm glad to see us [advising] them that doesn't seem to cost a whole lot of money but i'm ready to have a president elected that at least has some sort of a domestic agenda even if it doesn't work at least he is somebody who who is working on that problem and i i haven't seen that in the last eleven years so they don't seem to have a clue oh i agree i just i think we got once we started economic aid overseas we have really set ourselves up to be sort of the the world bank and as far as aid is concerned and i think there's a limit and we passed it a long time ago yeah that's another thing i don't understand is is is things like selling technology and uh even military hardware to foreign governments and then forgiving their debt to me that just doesn't make any sense as as much in debt as we are i just i don't know i think it's definitely time for a change but i don't see anybody i don't understand too why we have to have democrats and republicans and it's either one way or the other this it seems to be we're turning into a black and white society you either do it this way or you do it that way and there's no in between and that uh it obviously isn't working oh yeah oh i agree with you well of course you know we have the national [embarrassment] in our state [jessie] [helms] and uh as soon as as we can get of course it seems to me that every time he opens his mouth he he just lines up people against him so it's not too it's not too often that you see him [swaying] too many opinions he's uh usually on the ninety eight to two side he's the one of the two that votes yeah he's very [ineffective] i think right oh unfortunately nineteen ninety yeah we're stuck with him for a little while longer but uh unfortunately for him but maybe fortunately for us his health is not great so i hate i haven't uh talked to anybody outside the metroplex so i didn't even think of saying arlington texas this is a real first are you at work i i i've been trying to get people at five thirty and six thirty in the evening and i thought well i'm not having any luck i'll try the middle of the afternoon i am too well do you have any uh opinion on the subject democracy oh oh sure we uh we hear a little of the news uh yeah i have heard about that the last couple of days how how big is the ukraine the area do you know or a population or anything i'm really [uninformed] uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh i see oh i i didn't really know that i know a lot of their oh their countries that they had [overtaken] or wanted to be independent or several of them right and uh what about [astonia] are they right i thought they were but but the the ukraine is especially significant because it of the agriculture uh so there were probably really fight to keep it in if they could no they don't and bush has already given his opinion on it right didn't i read that so now uh not that they may that may matter i don't know anymore i uh fear for the russians from what i read you know i wonder how they're going to get through the winter food wise or any wise sounds to me like they'll start [rioting] soon or not that that would do any good but i guess people do that when they're desperate well that's true since the depression i guess when the veterans went to washington and well you know the war riots of course let's just hope we don't get to that point things are not so good in texas job wise well we do we have lots and lots of uh layoffs here lot of companies [folding] lot of layoffs and it's pretty scary well i don't understand economics that well i don't know i i know that we have a terrible situation with foreign trade and that other countries put a lot of restrictions that we don't and so i assume that that has some effect or a great effect and i do uh i mean they said during the way reagan bush years the rich got richer the poor got poorer the statistics prove that so uh i i guess well i really don't know i think maybe they uh maybe they contributed to it maybe they should pay more attention to these trade or you know to the more equalization of the trade of course if somebody in in china can make something for ten cents and we have to make it for ten dollars because we have unions well i don't know what's going to happen then right and child labor right well i don't know what do you think has caused our horrible situation one thing right well they say too that having a democratic congress and republican president is not good i mean i've read that is a theory well i hate to say it but i i'm tending to go straight back into my original democratic party uh oh i know it used to right well you don't want too many democrats anymore and for a while i kind of [deserted] the party but now it's looking better to me oh do you oh i'm glad to hear that well i think so too i i just admire her a lot and uh i i really hope she does well but she's uh you know probably more popular out of the state than she is here although she did manage to win but look who she was running against you know he shot himself in the foot so many times how did you get on this t i thing yes yes yes i am well i'm i'm happy we got through well i'm i'm especially interested with what what's happening in the soviet union uh the the move to uh the the the [ukraine's] vote to uh basically to [secede] and set itself up independently uh is quite a remarkable counts is that is that reported in the texas papers uh as an area it's not i i'm afraid i don't have the statistics in front of me it's a it's not a tiny area uh if i was looking at a u s map i would say it was sort of reminds me of of a uh it's not as big as california proportionately but but but it's it's more significant in the sense of it's a great agricultural region yeah they're completely out now yes the three the three baltic uh republics got out as quickly as they could right it's it's very important for the economics of the whole of the soviet union right uh except they can't fight it's done [democratically] uh yes yes uh that that's true uh hasn't happened here for a while but it uh uh_huh no i've i've heard they're i hear you have some problems do do you do you blame the the government in washington for this yeah yeah uh_huh so then you think it's it's you think it's reagan and bush have done this or is it just coincidence it was during this period uh_huh oh the chinese use slave labor too that's that's one of the ways they get away with it yeah uh i don't think there's any one simple answer to the whole thing i mean it's that's very complicated so which one are we going to throw out uh_huh texas texas used to be a democratic state didn't it i like your governor she's an impressive woman yeah right well yeah anybody could beat [claytie] in texas oh i i know some of the people uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh huh yeah i have not even heard believe it or not of that person i'm not kidding when you when you said it it was kind of like a surprise yeah i think mainly because i haven't been watching what's politically going on uh in that you know in that aspect i as far as like now the new house bill that went to minnesota uh being that it is their neighboring state and that i lived in minnesota i'm more familiar with the politics that involved with that and that being passed but uh as far as politics in the [grander] uh part of it as if you want to look at uh election type things i'm not quite sure even if i'm going to vote uh it gets harder and harder each time an election comes up like that to make the decision on who would be the best to run uh uh_huh sure exactly uh_huh sure uh_huh sure he might be a a one of those sure uh it it's kind of when you think back of the old politics where a dirt farmer uh when you think of some of the best presidents we've had in the past have been people that have struggled to get to the top i mean they were not rich in in any means and it has been kind of in the past uh i don't know maybe fifty years that in order for a person to get involved with politics they've had to have money and you had to have the views of the people that were going to be paying your way uh so it makes the common person uh not to say that a common person couldn't run for government and do a fabulous job because he's got people that are quite intelligent and i don't know if we'll ever see that you know where a common person could ever get in there that has good moral standings and uh has uh you know you think of abraham lincoln and you know just the background of abraham lincoln you know teaching himself to read he didn't go to college he didn't you know do all the other things that uh you know you would think that was real popular to do and to get politically involved in and have money he didn't come from money uh and now it's uh_huh sure uh_huh yeah so you really know a lot of his background it was the big one it's the one that everybody wants yeah whether or not i you know you look at all these candidates that want to become president i really have to ask them why you know uh it's the toughest job in the world to do and not only that you don't have that much freedom to make choices i mean you have to go through so many different you have to go the house the congress and all of the other things to get a bill passed and sure you can veto veto it at the last minute but then it's not like you have all that power and i think long time ago presidents did have a lot of power so interesting political trends or events huh well i guess the uh most interesting one that's uh going on right now from my perspective is this uh phenomena of uh uh ross perot uh caught his interview last night with david frost and it was the the first time i had you know heard uh his views expressed by himself i had heard other people talk about what they thought he believed in but the whole phenomena of him coming out of uh literally nowhere and no party uh at least no apparent party support on either side is pretty interesting uh_huh like out of nowhere yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh well it seems that the decision so far has been filtered by uh you know party politics so much that when the candidates finally get party approval party support and therefore get presented to the public the the candidates are already beyond what uh most public uh feels is acceptable behavior you know the one of the common [criticisms] of clinton is uh gee he'll say or do anything in order to get to the white house and and up and to the point of uh perot being a serious candidate it seems like that that was a requirement of being a a contender within the party is to have done all those things i mean here's here's a guy who for twenty years has been working toward you know getting the party nomination and and preparing himself for the presidency and now it seems like both he and the [incumbent] president are you know pretty seriously threatened by somebody who comes out of a whole [nonpolitical] arena uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah and and yet even he was a a [consummate] politician in the sense that uh not only did he uh fail in business twice with bankruptcy and failure but he lost some eighteen elections before he finally won one and the first and the first and only election he won was uh the presidency he he had lost every other office that he had you know he was appointed a couple of times to like uh uh state [legislator] yeah then then when he finally you know did win an election uh you know it was the presidency yeah yeah but yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well just any any political event or view or anything well uh in what way i don't think he ever told them to to rise up against saddam hussein well unfortunately the the united states as a government can't get involved in a civil war in another country because it's not it's well that's i'm i uh the uh the kurdish in the northern part of iraq unfortunately when the the uh mid eastern countries were when the boundaries were adjusted and changed and all the kurdish were basically forgotten because there's a group of kurdish in northern iraq there's some in uh western iran and there's some in southern turkey and uh uh_huh yeah it it's just unfortunate that the kurdish people didn't get their own uh well their their own government or their own something originally uh_huh yeah they've they've got plenty of problems without the iraqi problem the the iranian borders are still open uh from what i understand um the iraqis the kurdish are going into to iran and into syria i know that the the uh that saudi arabia has some pretty strict uh yeah and i doubt that they're letting too many iraqis in unless the people have proof that they're leaving that they're not going to stay then the saudi [arabians] will just shoot them well they it's a it's all the countries over there are very wealthy and so most of the people are wealthy and and they don't have some most of their basic needs for for food and shelter and clothing are met so they don't have any uh any need that's going to drive them to to petty theft or or to that type of crime yeah but those uh those countries are so extremely wealthy but from what i understand though that it's it's the same type of wealth distribution where you have a the very few are very wealthy but since there's so much more to go around that that leaves the the lower classes with more yeah so you think that that george bush's foreign policy is poor because of because of what's happening to the kurdish people something else done here that would would solve the problems in the mid east or or no other than than [reestablishing] the [dominance] of the united states another thing that was good if you're looking at the balance of the super powers between the united states and the soviet union you know the united states went in and led the battle and and solved the problem and the soviet union is is a [whimpering] is a [whimpering] country right now because they they've got so many problems that they can't even yeah yeah a lot of their their civil problems where they've got their uh baltic states rising against the the uh the leadership in in the russian state uh is the same type of deal as what occurred with the kurdish people it's the same type of situation where where where ethnic groups were split up and and our and don't necessarily have the same uh social structure or value systems as the government it's i it's it's kind of fortunate that that the united states was founded in the way that it did because it's such a mixture of people with with for the most part with the same ideals yeah and and yeah and and when the when the united states was founded the people the people who founded the country all had the same value systems and beliefs and so immigrants coming in understood that and and it wasn't as if it was forced upon them they chose to come to this country it wasn't as if a a new government was established when they were already here so well i think we've taken up at least five minutes i've enjoyed talking to you well there there's been some interesting stuff going on locally but i suppose nationally the big thing is probably uh the reaction to the war in the gulf trying to cover themselves yeah yeah that's true there there's a lot of talk over there i don't think anyone imagined that it could possibly be as as successful and painless as it had been so they figured a little bit of opposition was safe but it didn't turn out that way well that's why that's why being strangers is safe we can that's true that's true that's true i i've been democrat for since i've been voting which isn't that long but i'll agree with you there that there's not much organization going on uh_huh well that's true but i suppose it's hard to judge from the eighties because uh reagan was just so overwhelming to them i think we're seeing some of that [unraveling] these days but well they've already got uh-oh gee there's there's already one candidate that i know of on the democratic end and i keep thinking there's a second one uh paul yeah uh out of massachusetts i think uh_huh i've i've i've heard the name but that that's the extent of my my information about him uh_huh try to get the conservative candidate for once that that would be interesting i i must admit i haven't been really enthusiastic about the democratic [entrants] in the last couple of run [throughs] but completely [unelectable] and true it's it's probably their their troubles probably stem from the fact that they're such a diverse party and the [nominating] rules these days are so um [pseudodemocratic] i guess you can't have the people in the back rooms deciding well who could we really get elected instead there's so much uh_huh true i suppose being on the other side of the [aisle] it probably made good comic theater yeah that's true that's true i i must admit i'm i'm i i still find him a little [uninspiring] he he seems like a reasonably competent person to sort of do do some [caretaking] um true sort of set the agenda and and let let people do the work it's it's unfortunate how how little domestic agenda he he worries about true but uh so many of his campaign promises were on the the domestic promises true that that's that's what just amazes me though is that that so many people do uh take the campaign promises seriously well the the one thing that just amazed me in in texas here there were a series of um ads saying don't vote for dukakis he's going to take away your right to own a gun he's going to close down defense plants he's going to do this he's going to do that half of which is coming true here's my chance to [giggle] boy i i know that the the massachusetts miracle has has gone by uh_huh oh i i guess i didn't hear that i didn't go over it really true true i suppose uh_huh yeah that really disappointing it's it's sort of uh_huh uh_huh that's incredible oh oh there's there's one thing i've got to ask you about the the dump quayle movement i find that interesting i i find him such an [embarrassment] and i mean the the idea of collin powell well he's so uh he's so popular now i i don't know if he's the the right one to replace him he'd probably be a perfectly competent replacement but really i i i i would probably find him an order of magnitude more capable than quayle it's it's interesting to hear that bush has in instead of just making bland [pronouncements] about having no plans to change the ticket has just really [emphatically] come out and said no way uh_huh well from from some of the things i've heard about bush he he didn't want a vice president that was any competition for him uh_huh uh_huh well it uh uh i'm i guess i'm the i'm cloudy on the timing but there there was quite a while when his certain [victory] wasn't certain at all i'm i'm not sure how that timing related to the quayle [announcement] but he was [trailing] at at times or or just neck and neck i guess uh_huh uh what topic would you like to discuss political topic well i think it's marvelous they finally figured a way to get them out of there huh well what they wanted of course was one money and two the release of all the palestinians held by the [israels] you know the the jewish folks and uh i guess they're going to get a lot of those released and probably a lot i probably a lot well i think the developments in soviet union are rather interesting i'm not real sure how they're going to all turn out i hope they turn out positively and not turn into chaos but certainly sounds that way doesn't it well i think that's one of the problems of being a mister nice guy and i think that's what he was and is you know i i think he tried to accommodate too many people uh and in a structure like that apparently it's a difficult if not impossible task i don't know europe is whether we like it or not when the u s s r was together the peace was kept in europe relatively speaking and uh there might be a big void there and i uh it's certainly a fence sitting situation i i i hope it's not a i hope it gets resolved properly let's put it that way with all those nuclear weapons floating around you get the wrong person there i think we could have major problems i don't necessarily mean we in the u s alone but the world yeah well of course there's a number of [rednecks] in texas that i'm sure would jump on his band wagon but uh but i'm sure the vast majority would think it of him as he probably is uh well i think the south is not the nation certainly still has many racist type people that would jump on his band wagon and uh being a springer [splinter] operation i'm sure it wouldn't you know it it raises a lot of noise and everything but i don't think it would probably go very far in a overall scope of things well well i think it's a i grew up in uh milwaukee wisconsin and uh i think uh you know it's definitely a different philosophy of how you look at blacks up north as you do in the south and you know i growing up uh where i grew up in a high school you had one black that was from out of the area to start with and you know we had three thousand kids in our high school so we weren't really you know even you know when we played football against a couple of black teams and you know in that part of milwaukee uh you know they were nothing you know i mean now it's all the blacks that's all in basketball i i i don't know what uh times have changed and i i think that's one of the reasons the [packers] will always have problems having a getting back to the status they were during [lombardi] years and uh green bay being an extremely small town yes um i'm more of a liberal or at least uh in between moderate more of a democrat um the economy is is doing badly and bush isn't looking good as a result well the recession started a long time ago question is is when whether and when it's going to end or has it ended yet but it's the economy's really not healthy yes that's been one of the areas for for for problems in that we've had it more lightly in that respect but not without without uh without significant problems uh perpetual savings bank went under here one of the biggest in the area oh oh it's part of the recent merger uh i'm not sure what what um what that's intended to mean uh um as a whole i'd rather avoid government regulations and controls uh uh some are some are necessary and i mean in some ways what we're going through now is reaction to to all that developed during the eighties yes that's certainly true i'm not sure whether it's bad or not um my sense is that that airline costs costs of flying are still are lower still lower today than they were before all this began um but we can maybe reach a point where there the number in the field is too few and uh where where government [oversight] uh is needed i guess i don't know either but i there is a role for safety regulations likewise in airlines and i think for the most part though that's uh continued for the airlines and the safety record today is as good or better as it was in the seventies uh well i guess the feeling as much as i hear by is that uh gorbachev is is is done for or unfortunately in a way at least everyone [admires] him uh but uh the future is with this this coalition this whatever it's called infant uh commonwealth uh with with [yeltsen] things would be different well it would have made a difference had there been violence uh just about the old regime still wouldn't have survived but it was to have been [bloodier] than it's been to this point the rumor is that much of it has been expended yeah i agree i been interesting to see how gorbachev has uh been releasing the power to [yeltsen] including including the uh button for the nuclear [arsenals] yes uh i agree it's uh that's some things that nobody may ever know for sure yeah he may but it'll be interesting to see how this sort of loose commonwealth uh works from the standpoint of uh being as one political entity or whether it's really just going to be kind of a loose [confederation] also uh did uh did those baltic states did [astonia] and [latvia] et cetera did they did they pitch their lot in with them or it may be interesting to see how when they start talking about border defense whether they're going to i think most of those independent countries are going to decide that they want to defend their own borders well i think the what russia's going to bid for is the seat on the security council but i suppose that all of the other eleven can or the ten others or however many there are can be admitted as regular members of the u n yeah could be it could be yeah could be could be although they a lot of those existed as states prior to uh to their being a soviet union so i i don't know yeah that's true i don't know what uh currency things are going to be done too whether each one will have to completely establish a currency based on whatever system or whether they can rely on the [ruble] somehow and uh well that's true probably for any of them well there's only four states that have any though only the ukraine and [belorussia] and russia themselves and then that one middle asian the one that starts with a k [konespan] or something whatever that is uh they're the only four and two of the four have said they would like to destroy them it's only that fourth one that worries me a little bit but they don't have any [intercontinental] [ballistic] missiles down there either they have short range nuclear capability and presumably not very many of them judging by where that is russia had ninety percent of them on russian soil so they're still going to control the by and large the large amount of those he's been offered a position in the united states in colorado to teach yeah i imagine he would because he'd have to move over here lock stock and barrel and he's still got children and grandchildren there in in russia so or how i survived the august coup but really didn't survive it let me think a political event that happened this year well there's david duke and then there's the [dissolution] of the soviet union yeah well if i was a mind to i might burn a cross on his yard thing what scares me is some of the things he says i agree with you know i just don't agree with his methods you know i think that the way to you know cut out the welfare poor is not to cut out welfare it's to provide an equal opportunity for people to make a living and protect them from themselves basically you know i've i've seen this very close hand a kid twelve years old can make about three thousand dollars a day dealing crack if he lives to his twenty first birthday would be a miracle so we're we as a nation have an obligation to our future generations to yeah to make dealing crack a a crime punishable in such a way that nobody would want to do that and and our constitution [expressly] [forbids] that kind of punishment yeah i i'm considering doing it you know and i got a job today anyway well right or wrong rarely has anything to do with politics uh what i'm seeing here is that the real problem see david duke addresses symptoms the real problem is if i work for a man say i work for a guy as a matter of fact i'm going to work for a guy friday new job and he sells kelley tires now if i roll in there in a brand new set of b f [goodrich] tires week after next should i expect my job to be there see what i'm saying you know if you drive onto the ford manufacturing lot in a datsun i believe that not only should you be fired all of your assets should be given over to the government because you're [crippling] the very economy with which you're trying to survive now i believe in free choice don't get me wrong and i'm i figure i'm allowed to drive any kind of car i want because i don't work for a car company i drive american made that's just because i'm an american i believe that that's the way you ought to do it i mean sure having a mazda or a nissan or whatever they're called these days sure that'd be a real status symbol but you ain't going to impress my neighbors my neighbor's driving a thirty year old pick up truck you know now the last time i bought a calculator i bought one from texas instruments because my wife works at texas instruments and the next time i buy a computer it will be a texas instruments they they do make better products the scary thing is we finance their research you know the t i came out with with the [transistor] they didn't make beans off of it right exactly you know i i have a real fundamental problem with people who drive a mercedes and have a [sony] t v and scream and holler about the welfare poor i really have a problem with those guys they're as a matter of fact they're [exacerbating] the problem they're making it worse i used to work for a guy this summer he drove a b m w i i quit him i say hey you know no it was in construction um i i i i am a dealer for construction software well you know there's uh the one that's burning in everybody's uh in everybody's mind the uh break up of the soviet union and it's a yeah its it affects here at home i mean it's going to have effects all over the world and uh of course you know i expect uh in the next few days when uh the president gives his uh state of the union address he's going to have to uh pull some uh real drastic changes in what he's doing to to promote some some movement and enthusiasm behind his [reelection] race yeah yeah well they they focused all of their economic capacity on on the military i mean if they had focused the same capacity in their uh commercial stuff they would have been a lot better off as a society probably yes like the japanese right yeah uh_huh well you know five years ago could you have imagined in your in your your [wildest] dreams that something change as rapid as this would have occurred uh it's just you know it it's almost [unthinkable] it it is i i still wonder whether you know that it's going to be stable and then what's going to happen there i don't think the shelves bare anymore i think there's now you know i think all the time there were goods to to be distributed that were being held off and uh you know i i think that uh there's but but you know the the people don't have a lot of money to pay for them there there's a tremendous uh gap in their ability to to supply themselves that could create a tremendous amount of political [instability] in fact they said tonight on the on the radio uh that uh some some leader and and of the parliament in russia is calling for yeltsin to essentially throw out all of his [ministers] and replace them because of this tremendous supply demand uh type gap that they have there uh i don't know it it's it's hard to imagine managing such a rapid change well and i think that you know we we stand uh in in the possibility of of of being confronted with a similar kind of thing here uh everybody is calling for you know this this uh peace dividend and with an election year coming up there's the uh there's the the possibility of everybody proposing something radical to to appeal to the voters to to to get elected but you know how how rapidly can they change and um so what do you think of um the way that the government has has moved towards you know getting involved in people's individual uh lives um yeah he's a [commentator] isn't he uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh and so you sort of lean towards like the libertarian view uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah and it means a horrible time to have tax cuts at this point i think you know as far at least as far as our [deficit's] concerned you know every one and every all the candidates just seem to be you now have this bread and circuses policy of you know we'll give you a dollar a day if you vote for us yeah yeah i mean your kids won't be happy but you'll be able to buy that that extra six pack of beer at the end of the week uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh it really wouldn't surprise me if that happens in the next twenty years and we we are still considered the best credit risk in the world supposedly uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh we we've been known to spend a lot of money for expediency in things um well in it um i think if anyone but the japanese had made it if if if an american had said the same thing people probably would have agreed with them oh yeah yeah yeah um you know we we our companies are have definitely become top heavy um in management um you know we you know we we you know you know the trend of over consumption since world war two um you know being that that's what what what would be required to make our economy to thrive the best you know that that we you know that the workers just been given that just moved for better and better standards of living and where a bunch of other factors i think you know is just you know it's it's uh we're we're unable to keep on increasing that you know when when you know when you combine with the [mismanagement] that a lot of american companies have had and yeah i think that you know that's really when he says that they were i think lazy probably wasn't the best term to use but i think you know you know um probably not anywhere near as much there have been a couple of articles uh which i basically [glanced] at uh but that's about it i just find it interesting that somebody with that much money uh would be interested in the presidency in the first place i guess it's it's as much you know just the sense of power and the sense of being able to accomplish things uh as much as anything else i don't know it seems to me that if i had that kind of money i would feel like i were more [influential] as a private citizen than as the president uh_huh huh no no i i hadn't really paid that much attention uh_huh wow uh_huh what kind of i mean this this obviously says something for his uh you know something for one aspect of his character what kind of person is he in terms of uh_huh be kind of a change yeah he's he's already won uh_huh uh i honestly don't think so uh not unless he really puts a lot of effort into it and i don't think he wants to i think it's uh i think being a seriously being seriously considered as a presidential candidate is something that uh it it just takes a really hugh investment in personal effort not just you know i mean i'm sure it takes a lot of money as well but uh just in terms of the number of personal [appearances] that you've got to make and all the the the [hoops] that you've got to jump through in order to get the media sound bites and get people paying attention to you i mean an occasional newspaper article will show up for for any variety of things but being considered seriously i think is you know may take more than he's willing to put into it huh yeah well i don't suppose he'd have to do a whole lot of fund raising or uh worry a whole lot about where the funding was coming from so he'd have that advantage uh_huh yeah yeah i've i've i've heard it in the billions i didn't hear specifics i figured once it you know once it reaches that point it doesn't really matter how many numbers are in front of the b you know it it's passed it's passed any kind of reasonable [imagining] in the first place right well they've been independent candidates but uh never as as popular as he seems to be and i mean it seems to be doesn't really matter who who it is it's just that fact that he's not in either party that uh seems to be why he's so popular i guess huh uh well if we i mean sticking with this topic uh i would just say that you know it's it's interesting that it doesn't really seem to matter what uh what his views are you know i mean he seems to have some views which are pretty conservative and which are pretty liberal i guess he hasn't really outlined a platform yet you know and people keep asking him you know what what do you feel uh is a plan to deal with the budget or blah blah blah and uh he really doesn't have any answers i guess but that doesn't stop his popularity from [swelling] you know people are just sick and tired of uh everyone else i guess it seems to be i don't know it's kind of like uh people always people always blame you know they always say how can uh-oh dogs outside uh people always say how how can these politicians be in power and stuff but i guess they forget that they're the ones who put them there in the first place you know they're always they're always trying to find third third alternatives like uh you know limiting limiting number of years in office for instance but you know all they have to do is vote him out of office you know it's almost like they want to be forced to vote the way that they could in any case you know what i mean it seems strange right exactly right right as long as he brings pork back my state then uh what do you think his chances are what do you think uh how much of the vote do you think he's going to get and do you think he will take it more from the republicans or the democrats uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right exactly uh_huh personally i have a i have a problem with with [electing] someone who is that rich uh i mean they're all that rich anyway but but uh what are your thoughts yeah uh_huh no no uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i uh uh on sunday night i was uh listening to uh the radio and they had they had [speculated] that uh there was some rumor that tsongas was thinking of running again uh_huh uh_huh well doesn't that seem sort of uh uh it doesn't seem seem like it's useful for him to uh doesn't it seem like a waste of money though for him to come back into the race this late uh what are his chances of winning at this point exactly uh_huh uh_huh sure yeah what what did you think about the buchanan this term uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh right right well yeah i i agree with you it does seem that he came in and kind of [fluffed] the pillows uh you know uh for for the campaign anyway so we didn't have to hear the same thing again uh we didn't have to uh we didn't have to ignore a lot of uh bush's success because you know he really did a lot in the last term he uh with the gulf war and all we could have we could have had our [judgement] [clouded] just by his his [accomplishments] you know i i really do think i am going to vote for him again next term but but uh i wanted to know exactly everything that happened you know a lot of times maybe i forget oh sure uh_huh uh_huh right right uh what i mean is though the strong sense of uh [nationalism] that occurred you know right after the war uh sort of [heroized] george bush you know whether or not it was you know a success for us or whatnot he tended to come out of the out of the experience you know as the great american hero and uh yeah yeah so i i i i'm glad that uh he can't get into office this time without at least uh addressing a lot of the the home front issues and uh well [todd] uh it sounds like uh we may have covered a uh a [miniscule] portion of politics today what about libya i have no idea what to say about yeah i i don't know uh if if you had asked me the same question about uh uh kuwait you know at this early in the game i don't what i would have said then either i i don't uh now of course the last time i listened to anything was on sunday uh and they had still refused uh the [concessions] by the security council so did you see in the newspaper or on the news when uh president bush [fainted] at a dinner was that in japan um well i thought it pretty scary i i missed it uh i mean when when they were [rerunning] it like the next day or something i mean i didn't hear about it on the day it happened uh it was interesting you know that uh when he [fainted] and every one kind of jumped up on the table it's really amazing that that would happen and then of course all the dan quayle discussion comes up again that is true that is real good well he you know for as young as he is he seem to uh have several health problems you know health incidences if not problems uh right that's right well i uh i guess i have not really been i have been trying to tune out a lot of the political issues right now when because the [campaigning] is starting and uh so uh_huh right it is scary yeah uh_huh right the foreign students uh_huh well they think well that is really true uh but i have noticed from uh my associations with teenagers in high school that they are really motivated by how much money they can make and when they hear on the news about people being laid off and uh you know corporations and things i mean i feel like they don't want to make the effort out of their own personal interests to follow a particular field or they want to think you know how quickly can they make money and they are not attracted by the work that has to be done to achieve uh you know a position like that uh_huh right uh_huh well you are right when you say that uh the important issues need to be not as much what is going on other places i mean that it is important for us to do i mean we can't be isolated here but uh you know we do need to pay more attention to our own economy and our civilization because we have seen how quickly and it is almost unbelievable the fall of the soviet union and the uh berlin wall and all of that it is almost unreal to me still well uh longer term trends i think that uh like past oh ten or fifteen years uh there seems to be a a trend and maybe it's longer than that of of politics is is strictly a what can i get for me or what can i get for my group and not what's best for the whole uh kind of a thing uh does that make any sense or i mean the yeah political action committees that and i think it i think it ties in with the the budget deficit that uh the congress and the is they they get reelected by what they do for their districts uh in terms of bringing in and bringing in money and and uh in order to bring in money for their district they've got to vote to spend it in other districts and and uh the heck with the overall uh deficit it's what what you get for your constituents one way or another not what what's necessarily good overall yeah yeah like texas yeah yeah yeah okay yeah yeah and uh yeah but let's see you you do have uh long time uh long time power people there in terms of i mean well the other ones got uh powell and been in the senate forever and uh yeah yeah yep yep yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah well i guess i guess i'm a little more cynical than that i'm not i'm not sure that it that all of it has to be done even but uh but i mean in terms of of not necessarily all the planes that the government buys they really need or not necessarily well in in particular uh planes and i you know i see this here in in texas that that uh got uh-oh i can't even remember which of the companies it is but developed for the defensive department and defense department is saying well no we we don't we don't really need it it's going to be too expensive and it's not going to do what we need and the the texas people are fighting to have it built for just to just to keep and create jobs here rather than because it's uh you know they they they certainly use the words well it's needed but but uh yeah no yep right yeah yeah yep i i i think maybe so and i think that or yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah right right right you know that's true too but do you see any other trends or particularly interesting events that come to your mind yeah yeah certainly did when he first did it can't yeah huh yeah yep yeah i've kind of gotten out of the habit of doing this it's been down this weekend in the school systems that's right what school system does he go to okay okay my children go to garland and i teach in dallas and my husband teaches with plano in the what well yeah yeah yeah no no they're still in elementary so yeah uh_huh i'm definitely not are you kidding no no i want that i think it would be better for the teachers and for the children because we would do away with so much of the burn out that we have i know when you get the kids that have gone the summer being out of school then it's like they've lost so much ground we spend at least the first six weeks just backing up [reteaching] what they had the year before you know well we're starting pilot schools it's dallas is doing it i know i think plano don't they have some and richardson's supposed to start some pilot schools going to school year around and then we you know we investigated this by flying some people out from dallas to observe some of the schools in california that already had it yeah it seems to and one thing it'll save us money because we've got the buildings sitting there right and we might as well use them well air conditioning what's and and heating isn't air conditioning less than heating because we have to just up like if we get in the thirties we raise it up to the seventies right that's forty degrees isn't it less and it's not like the kids are going to go a lot longer really if you go year around there's not thirty days difference there's different ways to do it like i i think going two six weeks and then having two two weeks off each after a two six weeks period is one way see i don't know because i've never seen it in action no the school system in dallas has sent people there to do that no but i think i'd like it and i know a lot of teachers that would like to try it the principal's their hands are tied by all the administrators and i heard that in dallas it's one out of every three is actually in the classroom of the educators that were hired it's just you don't even know who all your bosses are it's ridiculous [marvin] [edwards] well you know he did supposedly cut administrators but what they've done is create other offices for those same people and just [renamed] their jobs and you know opened up other other things one thing we've got going is called reading and initiative and they've hired all these administrators in on that you know pass or no fail what is it no play no play carter high school yeah and all the things that dallas fights costs thousands probably millions of dollars i bet you yeah i know and psychologists and stuff that's right no we do not no we need more of the tax money to actually get down to the students because it's pretty frustrating when you see you don't even have paper and you're trying to [ration] it you know now that's sad when there's supposed to be what you know one thousand what sixty five dollars something like that spent on each [pupil] um it's it's wrong anyway i was thinking about one thing that's wrong with schools is that we're not teaching to the children's [modalities] and i think in nineteen uh ninety three we're supposed to begin that if if a child is a visual [learner] we're supposed to present him with all these visual things and if he has to learn just by [kinesthetic] we're supposed to teach whatever way that that child has to have it learns the best way and that's going to be quite a problem but if we could do something like that i'm sure it would certainly help i don't know no telling i don't know and you know at [nongraded] schools they've had one in [gladewater] for years and years and years if we could just let these kids go at their own rate i have children even i i teach chapter one and it's for kids that have fallen behind in their reading according to like i t b s scores and some of the kids really they shouldn't be in there and they're you know they're not being challenged and they're not being challenged in their home and we always have to teach toward the middle of the road uh_huh right my children's parents aren't even there at night most of the time to do anything with them yeah i know it i know it i went for a couple and i didn't know that there was even a cut off or anything oh another things that's wrong with schools this is big there's too much emphasis on test we're spending the first hour of every day teaching for the test at my school and we're going to do that until at least the first part of may but see they're not in dallas yeah we're not working with the same type of students that most of these kids in garland are but see what we're doing is we're turning these kids off to school even more than they are and we're not teaching toward the test we're teaching you know i always [objected] you know it's like there's not a whole lot of you know fun time like we used to have in school like our principal says i want every child to be on task all the time and you can't do that as adults but we're expecting kids to and like after after recess play we don't get that okay if they finish before their thirty minutes is up then they can go out and play for like maybe five or ten minutes probably be the most but we always got that didn't you yeah well i haven't tried but this is i haven't called in a couple of days but education in public schools i have a son who's graduating uh in may and there's some interesting problems of of of how you how do you challenge the kids today and i have some real hang ups i think that uh if your if your kid's not ambitious he can sure get lost yes in north garland he goes what school system are you familiar with oh okay well i have a daughter that's in the in in the i b program at garland in the are you familiar with the international [baccalaureate] program uh do your kids go to garland high you said oh okay well there's a it's um she went from austin academy when it opened up over to uh to north garland for ninth grade but at north garland the the difficulty i see with the education system is that uh is that you can you can you can get some masses but unless if the kid's really dedicated it seems like they do all right but if if if your child is just pressing along uh i i'm firmly convinced that teachers aren't being paid enough would you argue with that well you know the the the thing that i don't see and maybe you would take issue with it is that if if we went to if there was an opportunity for teachers to teach year around well would well how do we how do we get that yeah does it work well out there well what about the what about the issue of air conditioning isn't that a an area of concern in the cost of air conditioning oh yeah yeah yeah it's it's less degree days you're right but i think i think yeah well how do they do it do they put uh long do they put two or three week breaks between is that from from what you've seen is that the desirable way to do it oh you said you had some people from california oh i thought you oh okay but you didn't go well the the other issue has to that i hear that the local [commentator] i listen to some the idea that the numbers of administration and the fact that the principal do you see that the principals aren't really in charge well i had heard that one of the comments when they when they brought it um then why the the one they brought in the new [superintendent] for dallas schools the um can't think of his name but the idea yeah that he had suggested that that maybe they could reduce the number of administrators and and some of the people who were administrators saying that that uh that's not what he was hired for but they resented the fact that he would try to save some costs there um well you know the other thing that bothers me is the amount of money that it that it took to contest the the football um issue yeah but the i can't think of the name of the school that that uh but in any event they they they kept arguing yeah and they went to court i mean you know guess i i'm sympathetic with the kids but but how much money did that cost dallas to to to fight that in court but just think of all the the all the lawyers you've kept employed see that's right and and all these other people are out running around i guess that's the only problem with jobs being relatively [scarce] so but you need to keep all these people employed right and and you mean you mean we need a little more of our tax money like maybe uh yeah oh that's um that's interesting and how many administrators is that going to take yeah yeah well that's that's part of where my son is um would like to go to rice but i don't think he's well the the difficulty is is is the people that get in are are are [overachievers] and he's not an [overachiever] but the same time everybody can't go but it the question of of you know of how far should you take a kid in the motivation i'm not sure i think maybe there's too much responsibility put on the teachers to motivate these kids i had a a friend that was administrator in richardson said if the parents read books then the kids probably would read books but that a lot of the schools i would think the kids you're talking to question of of how much reading do those kids' parents do well well but that's the point as i would say uh and that is that's what makes there's a lot of problems but anyway um i'm trying to think how much longer i had a conversation week or so ago and we got carried away and they cut it [beeps] in at ten minutes so so anyway huh well see that's in the garland schools the numbers they i don't think they have to do that because most everybody passes well opportunity right if you get graded on percent improvement but see that yeah and unfortunately the uh that's that's tough that's a real challenge though but uh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah well yeah you know our son had that he was had an attention deficit [disorder] and they were keeping him from recess and in reality that's uh that's one of those really tough situations i think the kids need some time to play but people like if more people like you though that understand the problems get in and and change some education so uh i got some background noise there but i guess it's it's hard topic because is is is it doing a good job or a bad job and you got to divide it two different categories whether you live in the city or whether you live in a more rural place like i do well public school all the way up kindergarten all the way up to uh uh high school yes well yeah i am oh actually i think that i higher level education i don't think there's so much of a problem there it's pretty much funded well there are small colleges that i'm sure are struggling but uh it's the job that the the high school and the grade schools are doing that i see in a area like ours our school even a bad school is a good school up here where if i lived in new york city or washington d c uh i would seriously consider moving if i had a child i wouldn't let them go to a public school system there but of course people are trapped economically and they can't do that well that's really too bad because it it's giving some people unfair advantage i mean we our high school up here is like a junior college in florida what we learned yeah yeah like they have that down there that yeah it's like if if your father owns a grocery store and you're really interested in that there's no reason that you should take college prep courses when you can get some general business courses in high school yeah that's true i was fortunate i'm a i'm a technician and we had a [vocational] uh electronics in our high school so when i went to my first year of tech school i had a very easy time because our high school had a a good program yeah i find that that the that in the in the cities it's more like the kids go there so socialize not really to learn and the parents send them there because they're supposed to and plus it gets them out of their hair and i also find that that you can send a kid to school but if don't work with them as a parent i think you're putting your child at a big disadvantage yeah well i could i could see if a kid doesn't have any [encouragement] if they're you know come from a broken home and they're parents are more concerned about trying to work and or maybe they're unemployed and they're mad at the world i can see where that wouldn't be very good for a a kid you know he's coming up will you help me with my homework and they're no get away from me i've had a terrible day so it's got a lot to do with economics in the area that you come from yeah are they going to move to uh mexico uh_huh on the yeah maybe the maybe they'll bring their good schools with them you know if the industry comes hopefully they'll promote good schools because i know the town that i come from the the uh the large i b m plant has something to do with the top rated high school because of their tax base for one and plus for for the type of student that's going to that school it's going to raise the level of the school because your parents are engineers or [chemists] they're they're you're most likely to do better in school they're going to help you yeah you hope well i think i i don't know i just think it it's it's a duty of the parent to do that i mean jeez my parents always helped me and i don't know it's just like you say it's the way you're raised and the economic situation you're in i can see some lady she's twenty one years old and she's got four kids a kid in her first grader i don't see where she's going to have much time for them so i don't know it's just like i don't know actually i think it's i think it should be a civic level the city level and a a system level really to find out and to see what they need and not [overinflate] it like if the teachers are getting six percent raises every year when people in industry have been getting cut back and you're getting raises every eighteen months you got to go now hey wait a minute we're in a recession here we uh our town didn't pass the school budget this year and for the first time in many many years just because people are are in the recession and they're even though we've uh enjoyed very good employment here for the past ten years now we got eight percent uh unemployment when it used to be four or five people are going whoa so yeah but i always see it's all it's all money this like a couple other topics we had talked about was crime it it's it's all money based and what you can do unless you just get down to the parent level and and then if you're in a bad situation where you have to send your child to a bad school who knows maybe we do we need some more catholic schools support the church instead they seem to have done a the good job in the past in uh some places uh you couldn't go to a public school it was miles down the road and the only school you could go to was the baptist school or the catholic school so yeah i don't yeah i don't know if i would do that to my child though but so pretty much though see i don't have any good ideas or or anything that would contribute see this isn't a subject that i think a lot about because i'm never faced with it because our school system in vermont it seems to do a really good job is it well that well so you have to go to a lesser engineering school we have a very good public school up here and a degree out there means a lot it's a very good school it's it's university of vermont uh we also have some two year college well there's a four year colleges they all have a pretty good reputation but like you say you yeah and are you talking about public schools being lower level high school level or state school okay but you're [excluding] high level education okay yeah i know down here the school's are you know i don't know they rate i moved to arkansas and texas after living in ohio and the schools down here rate you know bottom ten percent across the country and having been through grade school up there and coming down here to high school i can understand why because they're so far behind and so poorly staffed half the time the teachers don't know what's going on right well that was my experience going through junior high up there when i came down south for high school i was just repeating what i'd already done because we were so far advanced and uh you know i'd been in a parochial school before junior high and you know even the public schools are behind the parochial schools so you know i i like the concept they've got now where they have more directed education you know you you pick a career path or you get counseling earlier and then you you learn the things that help you rather than spending four years learning the same things over and over well they talk about it and there are a few in some of the more like in i live in a big metroplex and some of the the better parts of the metroplex the the suburbs that are richer have those kind of target schools but uh you know right or if you're going to go the science route you can go to a target school that specializes in science or art you know there's no point in you know i'm an engineering student and if i have to go take art classes you know i'm not going to use them and through high school i could have gone so much further if i'd gone to a school that was directed right in high school right i think the schools today you know the public schools are just they're just [overrun] you know they don't know what to do there's too many kids and not enough teachers and too many of the kids don't care and right yeah and you know there's some kids that you know want to go learn but most of them just want to go play yeah that's true i'm wondering with the boom down here it's well not at the moment but a lot of the industry's moving [southward] so uh i don't know about that but a lot of the industry up in uh you know the northern states is moving south and i'm wondering if that's going to have any effect you know on what you see now we're we're we're behind down here i say we because i live here if that might not turn around in the next you know fifteen twenty years yeah right you hope i guess you just have to wonder is it up to the is it you know who whose supposed to make the change the the state the the federal government you know where's the money supposed to come from is it you know what what do you advocate more taxes or better management of what they got yeah yeah starts hitting closer to home yeah they're a lot more strict you uh have to learn you aren't given the chance to you know screw off all the time well i know i'm in the you know the only reason i asked about secondary schools or you know advanced education is because down here you know going to the university of texas the education i'm getting i think is kind of shoddy for a public school i i don't think i'm getting what i should but you know in texas it's next to free because they pay so much of it it's state supported but at the same time it's really not it's not like going to m i t my engineering degree will be nothing like somebody coming out of m i t and that's it's really too bad but that's i don't know i think it just builds on the foundation that they've already built you get people out of high schools and junior colleges that don't have the background for an m i t kind of curriculum so i i i assume you have kids oh well she she doesn't have to worry about public schools yet yeah well we have a little bit of a basis for conversation i was a substitute teacher for about a year yeah i uh thought i wanted to be a teacher so but before i went through all of that i wanted to see how i was going to like it and and they uh in alabama where i came from they they allow you to substitute if you got a four year degree so i went out and played substitute for a while and decided nope not for me yeah it was i just took grades one through six i thought i was going to be smart and get the good kids wrong um yeah uh_huh well i i sometimes wonder if i didn't mess up i maybe should have taken the higher grades because at least you can if you have to you can get mean with them those little kids don't understand it uh_huh yeah well that's a nice way of putting it exactly and too most people don't have that option you know and plus it also depends on the district your in as i mean on the i've seen some districts where all the schools are lousy it doesn't matter what you do uh accept for the private ones of course we're talking about public i don't know back when i was going to school uh you just didn't get away with the things these kids get away with now i mean you you pulled [stunts] like that and you were down at the principal's office and uh usually bending over to get five of the best um but now nowadays they can't even they can barely [scold] the children for something you know without getting sued oh yeah well the thing that really did it for me i was [subbing] in a fifth grade class and uh this kid comes to school with his lunch box and inside this lunch box he he's got easily two i'd say two hundred to two hundred and fifty dollars in one dollar bills and i asked him uh what are you doing with that and he says my father gave it to me and i didn't believe it for a minute um so uh but uh you know the not a lot i could do about it can't stop the kid from bringing money to school if he wants well i have i i i've i think i understood what the what the kid was doing he was a uh well let's just say he was one of those types that you wouldn't doubt that he was selling something but not a lot i could do about it uh_huh yeah because uh uh that just that doesn't do a lot for them i mean it [alleviates] your problem but it doesn't do anything for them uh i don't know guns and i don't know it's something uh_huh oh yeah oh sure i mean it's [indicative] across the board that we we've done something wrong and when you see uh koreans and chinese and japanese who are taking all the uh science jobs all the engineering jobs all the [mathematical] jobs and you know here we are we can't we can't balance a checkbook without a calculator um i don't know uh_huh yeah no yeah that's that's a great deal what law schools like yeah yeah and uh i did the same sort of thing they just you sit there and read hundreds and hundreds of cases and then you get one examine for the whole semester and it's how well you can remember it all yeah and i found that a particularly useless way of studying i never did i always tried to understand things not tried to memorize and consequently some of the very best students were had excellent memories but they couldn't put two and two together as far as the law was concerned so it didn't show me anything a year and a half i gave it up i wasn't really i didn't want to be a lawyer anyway just wanted the degree so well i don't know what can we do about it money money is not the answer yeah yeah i mean they're throwing more money at it now than ever before and things are getting worse uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah well i don't know i uh as much as i didn't like school when i was going through it from my perspective now i can see that it's a lot better than what we have now and i think part of it is that they've got to give authority back to the local school you know i mean it's it's silly that these that these people are [handcuffed] when it comes to discipline yeah exactly i mean i i mean teachers are so afraid now of even saying something to students because they're going get they're going to get complaints or they're going to get sued or something oh yeah well lawyers help create that well i think i think i i mean what we've turned the school schools into now are just day care centers you know somebody okay we're going to send our kid here for seven or eight hours a day and he's out of our hair and the other part of it is parents have quit becoming parents you know they're just oh sure i i you you can you can have the best school system in the world if you don't get anything at home then it's it's not going to help either so i don't know i don't know i don't know what the answer is it's an interesting interesting thing you want to do i how is texas about keeping your children out of public schools do they allow it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um that's interesting i remembering reading a few cases about that when it when some people first tried that and they got sued got taken to court by the school system i'm glad the parents won i mean it seems silly that um we started that's that's the way you got your education in this country and then um uh we have one she's only nine months old right well my degree is in teaching so oh really uh_huh did you teach in all subjects or in all grade levels or uh_huh well my degree was in fourth through seventh grade but i taught junior high and i expected it to be a lot of trouble but it wasn't that bad i taught remedial reading kids and well they don't call it remedial reading these days they call it something else but but anyway at the time that's what i taught and um you kind of group your behavioral problems together that way when you have your slow readers but it it wasn't too bad we we got long real well yeah i especially with the real young ones i started out wanting to teach lower like primary and then top primary and thought well no i don't like this as much and ended up moving up and got up until about the sixth and so that's what i got my certification in but i had decided long before i was even married that i wanted to if possible teach my kids at home and not put them in the public schools um and my reason for that was i don't like the uh what's the right word the varied inappropriate influences that you find so much in the public schools you can find a lot of good public schools if you if you look real hard but i don't think they could cover everything that you could teach your children on an individual basis yeah uh_huh right uh_huh yeah and the the um the crime is just escalated and the drugs and even in the the the lower the lower schools um uh_huh right crazy for him to but uh_huh yeah well we had the problem when i was in with teaching um i was eighth and ninth graders that i worked with and if we did have a a student come in and they were drunk or they were on something you had the option of calling the police and have them taken out of the schools or trying to teach them something while they were there and you don't know if you were reaching them or not but we felt like you know maybe just going ahead and try to teaching them was trying to teach them was better than have them taken out yeah right uh most the time if they were they were some of them were even better behaved i've only had two instances where i it was really noticeable but they were better behaved when they were um i don't know if was alcohol or something else that they were on but it ended up better but i think there's a problem too with teachers trying to um to be so versatile that they do loose sight of the basics you know they've been a big drive in especially in the seventies to return back to the basics and uh and i'm not completely just you know just teach the basics in schools but i think there does need to be a [reemphasis] of those because of our our lower grades in the standardized test and such right uh_huh well i spent a year and a half in japan also and i've seen how their school system works and i they go by a complete [rote] system you just memorize everything and then at the end of the of a certain time period you [spitted] everything back out and the better the [memorizer] you are the better your grades are going to be so i don't completely agree with that either but there there definitely needs to be a balance somewhere oh is it is that what you ended up going into oh uh_huh how how much can you stuff in your brain yeah uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh yeah yeah well good question probably taking no there's plenty of money in the system it's just i think it's like a lot of things in the in the united states we've got so much built up in um in the in the uh bureaucracy and in the politics of it and in the the power plays that it needs to be pulled down and started over again and there's no way that that can be done not without [wiping] out a whole generation of of kids in the school system so maybe on smaller smaller scales uh_huh yeah uh_huh right into the classroom it needs to be be able to be enforced uh_huh it's like doctors in lawsuits you know they're kind of fearful of everything that's that's well at least i've heard that i i i haven't fortunately been in a situation where it's been applicable to me but uh_huh right uh_huh oh yeah it has to be reinforced in the home yeah right uh_huh yeah they allow it under certain circumstances you have to to prove that you're teaching them something you have to follow a preferred curriculum um they try to encourage you to follow a specific curriculum although you don't have to and then if you have particular religious beliefs they have to be they're kind of monitored you know they they will allow you to i can't think of any examples but certain religious groups don't want their children in public schools because the influence and maybe they were a group of [mennonites] or something like that i don't think they're were in this area but um they they are monitored by the um by the state school board so uh_huh uh_huh all righty um well i uh have a four year old who will just be entering public school next year so i'm really just starting to get involved in uh in what's out there and how they do things um as far as the system as a whole i really don't see a problem with it i do see a problem with graduating people that that can't read and are not you know productive in society or productive to themselves and uh i think that's the main problem at this point how about yourself uh_huh right uh_huh that's true uh_huh yeah i think they get bogged down in a lot of small issues that people you know special interest groups can blow up and uh and not really get down to teaching what's important teaching these kids you know how really the basics is what it comes down to is that right huh i remember and talk yeah huh yeah then it comes down to what you said before though about them being some of the lowest paid public you know public service employees that there are and yet they're so important uh_huh right well you know it's hard though because then you start talking taxes and that's a bad word there's an idea run on that then no income taxes in texas huh i'm in texas too so well me too i uh i think we both agree there's some problems there but we'll maybe do our small part to fix them up all right you too bye well in the in a normal route of way we do things how about the ladies go first all right i'm live in plano texas and uh uh today we're not even suppose to be in school because the uh the way the taxation and all that crap is there really legally isn't any funding for the school systems in texas today so uh i mean when you when you take uh uh professionals and put them in situations they have to make decisions based on money to fund public education and they can't get their finger out of their ear long enough to to get that major subject in line something's wrong so i think here in texas mainly that the the they're not serious they're more serious about what the salary should be for senators than they are for what how the level of education should be for children i have a one year old so i'm not i'm more opinionated about the [observations] than than the true facts but it's just a shame to me that that the our firemen our policemen and school teachers are the three least paid utilities um that have the biggest impact to our well being i have i have a real issue with that um i think that if from every year when they when they pull in the the the uh test that the last three years you know ten eleven twelve year uh graders take and and then you see that their education is below the norm throughout of all fifty states they're not saying that something's wrong with the educational system here in texas i have a real concern about that um as a matter of fact i'm very content to spend my daughter out of state to college in virginia uh verses having her go down here and not learn anything and then uh so i'm my opinion i think there's a big concern hope hopefully the new uh education secretary of education will do something to fix the problem but uh i don't know they've got to quit worrying about uh the uh religious uh [overtones] in our textbooks and get on with teaching the product uh_huh exactly i was [astonished] to find out that that across the united states in all public schools it is not mandatory for them to take [phys] ed they don't even a lot of the school systems don't even uh the kids nowadays don't even know what what the president's fitness education program is all about they don't have to do sit ups and push ups and all that crap we had to do when we were going to school and yeah and uh i talked to a thirteen year old last night who's uh goes to uh one of the plano high schools or junior highs i guess and she said that she had a choice she could either have taken tennis or weight lifting so she choice to take weight lifting over the regular gym i mean give me a break i mean the kids sit there and they and they drink cokes and eat popcorn for for lunch and then go out there and lift weights and don't learn anything it's just a real i have a real problem with the whole system they need to put some [sternness] back into the into the teachers and let them be able to uh get the old whip out and get some discipline uh_huh i used to i used to date a girl who taught english at ninth grade level i mean i was absolutely flabbergasted at what they what she was paid true she was young you know but still it's the principle of course if she got her masters degree it would all be different but uh oh taxes lord lord forbid taxes goodness gracious if we would uh plan our [expressways] a little better that ten dollars for the bridges and the roads we'd cut that in half and get some teachers we might have us a problem maybe i should run for office huh that's true that's funny that's funny well that's about all i have here yes ma'am surely i've enjoyed it bye bye first of all i want to tell you i have two little kids but they're not in public school yet i i get i get that experience starting next fall with kindergarten yeah no but uh being one of these late in life mothers i've listened to everybody else's you know complaints as to what's the matter with either their kids or the school system so i've been surprised do are do you have school age kids oh such as uh_huh well i heard a a frightening thing actually i didn't hear it it was told to me or suggested to me uh that to work as a teacher in the public school systems in the state of texas and i think it's similar in in many other states if you have a degree in a technical field you do not need a teaching certificate because there is such a shortage of uh people to teach math and sciences and somebody said well you know you could go in and and substitute teach at seventy five dollars a day and there's always going to be you know somebody having a need for a math or science teacher i thought christ they're letting me in to you know this would be this would be frightening i don't know anything about it right right and even if i knew how to teach the subject matter i don't know if i'd know how to handle that kind of a a group of kids i tell you what i'm finding frightening and this comes from you know the the aging hippie near forty mother so i went through this period of supposedly you know [cosmic] social [enlightenment] i'm on i'm in the plano school system and living in richardson and there is a real [dichotomy] in terms of educational and economic background of the kids that are going to be attending this school and i used to think well that's wonderful you know they can get a real life experience what i'm seeing now uh in terms of kindergarten [preparedness] just from in in in different preschools it's like day and night and i wonder how do they handle a child who is obviously very ready and another child who doesn't even speak english let alone know her colors and they're in the same classrooms and i guess also you're going to see the first of the uh crack kids starting kindergarten my god i think it would be next year is what i'd read i thought well how do you how do you weed those out when i was listening to n p r the national public radio and they've quoted statistics that i just about my throat just about fell into my toes they said at the bottom of the s a t scores of graduating college seniors are usually those people that go into education yes yes and i and i i got to thinking back when i was teaching college chemistry the people that took you know the lower level courses i sometimes wondered you know are they really even [educatable] or trainable and it my god you know are the rest of us who went for the big bucks you know staying out of you know where maybe we should be kind of socially obligated to spend some time teaching or something with these kids i don't know well you know you you sit here and you think about that at the same time you think god i hope i don't sound like a stage mother because right now if you ask my friends put twenty mothers in a room and ask them how many have gifted children you're going to have twenty hands you know up there oh no nobody has nobody has a [nongifted] child and i keep thinking you know gifted is is einstein or you know uh musical [prodigies] it's it's not a kid who's you know [precocious] you know what has you know has has the educational system been watered down to that anybody who's above average is now gifted i don't know oh don't say that uh_huh well you see i think that that [harks] right back to the elementary and junior high years because i have a stepson now who's twenty five and uh i was just absolutely shocked uh the first time that i saw his [schoolwork] uh i remember being you know taught and i think you know you have to teach how to write an answer and you know how to [construct] a thought process and you know they can get a they can grasp the points can they [convey] the data [verbally] or in writing and that's what's you know really scary to me uh i would really you know there's such a a push among young mothers these days to make sure their child is computer [literate] i would really think that they should be [stressing] more can the kid write a thought and at an early age and if they can't i mean if they have missed that training then somebody you know before you're you're start penalizing them with bad grades for not being able to communicate what they're thinking teach them these basic skills well my stepson you know i he went into the navy or air force i just really get my military i married into a military family and i don't know i address them all as generals so i don't offend anybody but uh you know fortunately for him he wasn't dumb but boy he sure had trouble you know putting things on on paper and one of the things that that they did for him they tested him and they said that he's you know great in electronics but he you know he's really does need the basic skills and they put him through six months of composition writing in addition to all his electronic training and at that point he has now graduated from warfare electronics school with honors this is the kid who who really you know barely made it through high school and i keep thinking you know it's not it's really not too late at any point to do you know yes yes and i kind of have always pooh [poohed] military educations but i think that for this kid it's going to be you know his [lifesaver] otherwise he might have been driving trucks or framing houses you know from here to [eternity] so i don't know you know it does make me nervous there is a whole lot of stuff going on out there and and part of me says i just would like to you know shut my eyes and pretend it doesn't you know go on or send them to private schools and then the you know the old social conscience says you know i'm not working i don't need to work maybe i should volunteer to you know teach what i know maybe adult literacy maybe you know composition writing maybe you know uh volunteering you know on a tutor line or though the even through the elementary schools for help with homework or the other part of me says is god i've had enough kids do i okay well ah yeah so you haven't really uh dealt with that in a sense yeah yeah uh mine are both out of school and uh you know i i've in [hindsight] seen some things that i wished that you know i had done something about that was you know within my power or uh you know wish that in some ways we as parents had more control over what's happening up there you know type thing uh well just over the years there were situations that uh uh came up that i didn't think were fair or handled correctly or the teachers didn't seem to be teaching anything of course it's a little hard to tell from the information that you get from your child you know they they bring things home and i was never one to believe everything my kids said you know about something but uh still i i questioned the ability of some of the teachers to uh really do a bang up job and yet others i know are just wonderful huh yeah that's pretty interesting because just just because you know a subject matter doesn't mean you can teach it oh yeah in fact i think that's that's one of the big problems today is the the way the kids behave or act and and the way they are sometimes disinterested in what's going on in the class and disruptive uh_huh uh_huh yeah yes some of those certainly have a lot of difficulties you know with uh all sorts of things and i would imagine their learning disabilities are quite large in some cases oh wow that's encouraging yeah well that's you know that's an idea maybe there need to be some radical changes made do some things that are totally different and unheard of oh you're kidding yeah huh that's interesting i don't know mine didn't did not fall into the gifted category nope and i would never had said so either uh but uh they managed to get through although not always with flying colors uh in fact one of the incidents i was thinking of that my son had uh he was struggling with senior english and i had a meeting with the uh vice principal and the english instructor and uh she showed me a paper that he had just handed in and she told me what she had requested and i read it and while it had you know a few little [grammatical] problems it wasn't very long and so forth i thought it had some nice well thought out uh parts to it she gave him an f on that paper and i thought well now here you have a student who is trying to pass who is struggling with your subject and you give them an f on something that doesn't seem that bad to me what are you telling that student you're telling them that hey you might as well forget it you know uh_huh yeah it's pretty sad to think uh about those who even today are graduating from school and they are telling that they don't know how to read you know yeah oh yeah that's interesting that the military saw that and did something about it you would have expected them to be the last ones to yeah well i can see why if you've got little ones just coming along there's a a whole lot of stuff going on out there yeah okay uh_huh yeah that's true yeah yeah that's that's very true um i guess i can relate to that because i have two kids that are [opposites] like that uh one picks up real quick and the other one doesn't and you're right they do get bored uh really fast if they already know what you're talking about what do you propose that they do what what is your suggestions uh_huh out of each child each individual child right yeah that's that's true the only i think the only thing that they would argue about that is that you know every child needs to learn every subject i mean that's that might be the only thing but i mean i i definitely agree with you uh right right that's true uh yes i definitely agree there's no doubt about that i uh i i mean i can relate to that because i'm i'm going to college right now and i feel like i mean i'm taking this history class and i mean it's so boring and i just hate it and i think why do they make us take this stuff i mean what does this have to do with getting you know a computer science degree or whatever you know uh american history we have to take um like this is like early seventeen hundreds through i don't know i think like mid eighteen hundreds and then we have to take another one that's mid eighteen hundreds on up to basically present yeah yeah that's well that's basically what they're doing yeah oh yes definitely i agree yeah there's yeah that's true yeah any way this this um school system thing i i tell you i saw something on the news oh i don't know maybe two weeks ago and they were talking about i don't know where you're from but i'm from the dallas area and they were talking about the plano school system that they had one school that uh if the students did something wrong i mean whether it was behavioral or uh you know they weren't learning properly or something they took these students and put them basically in a closet with no windows they had a a table or not a table but a desk in this closet and they had to sit in there by themselves well parents were getting really angry about this because they said why is my child being put in this closet well how is that helping my child you know and uh the the thing you know they said well we're giving them isolation time and this helps them to think but a lot of kids i mean if a child has uh [claustrophobia] i mean that's just going to [terrify] him you know and uh that's true that's true but no i mean they were uh i mean i definitely agree with parents i think that is a very wrong way to handle uh disciplining a child putting them in i mean they were they were they called them their quiet rooms or their isolation rooms they didn't call them closets but they showed these rooms on uh you know on the news and i mean they looked like a closet to me you know with a desk in it a real small but they said that one of the solutions they came up with was to take the doors off of these isolation rooms i said now what good does i mean how is this helping i mean either way you know i i definitely had to disagree with that i think that is that's not the way to handle a child you know discipline a child by putting him in a closet right right yep uh right well right uh_huh i i don't yeah that's true well um i have to i think one of the positive things i mean one of the things that can come out of uh is not just discipline okay but okay for instance one of the things they do at uh my kids school uh they have what they call uh caught being good slips and when the kids are in halls and stuff and if they're being really good i mean just being excellent they're not you know cutting up and so on they're just standing in line doing whatever they are supposed to they get one of these caught being good slips and then when they collect them at the end of each week they get to go to this little what they call their caught being good store and then they get to spend these like money well see to me that's positive reinforcement is much better much better than trying to find ways to discipline kids because they're going to be good and try and earn those things you know to get the positive part of it i mean they'd much rather go in the store and buy something than be spanked so they're definitely going to work towards being good you know rather than trying to act up and be bad you know yeah well that's true i think i think really though i mean that's one thing that i mean my kids definitely get spanked when they need they need to be spanked but i really do try to use positive uh reinforcement with them at home also and it really helps and i mean they they don't get spanked very often but they they do when they deserve it you know but uh i don't think any kid should be exempt from being spanked i mean i i think i wouldn't mind if a teacher spanked my child but you know that's just my personal opinion and that's not going to i mean i don't think that law will ever change they are never going to let a a teacher spank a child again but i don't think i mean some kids don't get don't get spanked at home and some kids need to be spanked at home i mean don't you think but i don't know right right well there's so many parents that say you can deal with a child without [spanking] them which is true you can but there are times when a child needs to be spanked i mean they do things that they need that right the public school systems well everybody's has known they've needed [renovation] for years but never really had a clear direction on which way to go with it the first direction that i can see or i wish i would love to see them go with kids learn at different rates and for too long they've kind of [lumped] everybody together you'd learn at this rate and that's the only way it's going to happen you've got some kids that'll pick up on it in the first three minutes you're talking about it and the the other fifty seven minutes you've been talking about a subject you've bored them the educators need to be a little bit more open minded as well as innovative in dealing with uh the various students to get the maximum potential out of the person out of each child some kids are going to be great with mechanical stuff other kids are going to be really into math some are really going to be heavy into reading instead of pushing the scales too far either direction i mean it's great to be well rounded and be exposed to all this stuff but why not hit the points the kid's really interested in because if he's interested he's going to study it and he's going to learn it and he's going to remember it they need exposure to every subject they don't need to be masters of it everything i learned about ancient rome has not helped me anywhere in my adult life what what type of history class is it that you're having to take well the early ones they could actually combine two two levels of it the one from seventeen hundred til say the end of the civil war combine that into one and then from eighteen sixty five to present and make that your second step because to a point to a point the bottom you know the early parts of it you're giving the [foundations] of the nation and but even then they're [skimming] over they're very almost trivial with it you know i mean if they really wanted to get to the meat of the matter i mean there's they make all these people out to be oh they were great men and they're the father of the country and all this he had just as much dirt on him as anybody else if not more the man was not a saint if if the isolation concept really works that good why are our prisons overcrowded the as a part of the [revamping] of the entire education system on that the public school system i want to see changed too when i was brought up if you crossed the line and you broke a rule bad enough you were going to get spanked well then the extreme came in and now we can no longer spank them so we now isolate them okay we've swung the pendulum both ways let's find a middle ground instead of there has to be some sort of discipline and there has to be some sort of punishment short of physically [isolating] the child and short of physically hitting the child let's put him into a situation where okay you crossed the line you broke the rule you're going to have to pay for it but it's going to tax you physically have i mean instead have them pick up around the school yard have them weed a flower bed somewhere on the school do something to [beautify] the school property but you cut you know the the kid's having to give up his quote play time to pay his debt for what he did wrong but he's seeing something [constructive] come out of it i think that not only applies inside the public school system but in society itself we've been too long there's been too much negative reinforcement how much like the caught being good slips how about just the john q citizen out there on the street i most wholeheartedly agree i mean there's a point of over kill but somewhere in you've got to find an even line need that shock effect where they equate the shock of being spanked with the actions they did to get spanked uh_huh um i think that there is something definitely wrong with our school system just because of the results that you see coming out of the school system as far as uh people dropping out of school uh grades on test scores being low uh more and more people taking g e d trying to get out of high school instead of just going through high school you know something must be wrong as far as uh not just the teaching techniques but just motivation within within the schools themselves uh_huh oh it's okay uh_huh yeah uh_huh right and i know uh i work around you know a lot of teachers and i i understand how uh supportive they are of their students and how excited they are but some how i don't think the students are getting excited oh yes definitely uh_huh uh_huh right right uh_huh progress uh_huh yeah not not even that much probably yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh and speaking speaking of doing what you want uh just in society today being that it's nineteen ninety one um a lot of teenagers and young people have a lot more freedom as far as what they do as far as you know even even something as simple as staying up late um watching television late um going out late start dating you start dating too early you know just little things like that that do start in the home that can that plays a big part because you spend eight hours of your day or more in school and so any other part of your life that's going to definitely affect your school life because you spend so much time there uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh right i talked to a guy the other day and he is now in in a program that's trying to get him out of high school because he he fell back several years ago and he's going to he he will have gone to school five years um and the reason that he was doing so badly a couple of years ago was because his mother died and he was having to uh support his entire family take care of his brothers and sisters you know and all that had an [adverse] affect on his school life and yeah and that and that's a perfect example of how your home life you know plays a definite part and you know any other aspect of your life an but now now that he's in this program and you know he's i guess okay he's he's making straight a and you know it just it it was there it was just i guess school was not a number one priority for him at that time uh_huh uh_huh right exactly uh_huh exactly um uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh when people start talking about programs that help for me i don't care if it's socialist or i don't care as long as it's something that's going to do some good or that looks like it could be beneficial i mean that's the point i'm at now i mean that's the point we all should be at is like finding some solution i mean you know nothing totally radical but if it's something that you know might help you know because there's not a lot being done uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh take them out yeah not very far at all uh_huh i mean it's it's almost like right right right an a lot of it a lot of the parents now are so young you know that they're they still they still don't know what's going on and how are they supposed to you know teach their kids that are coming up you know what's going on i mean it's just it's a vicious cycle that we're you know dead smack dead in the center of and we have to try to swim out you know kind of like the bermuda triangle we're just sinking and it's almost impossible to swim back up but um yeah there's definitely problems its just the solutions that you know they're going to be in our political system they're going to be on everyone's mind for quite a while too long uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh um uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right yeah there's there's right there's definitely too much leeway as far as i mean i've only been out of i've been out of college only two years and you were saying that you don't appreciate education until you get out and i i already you know i really didn't i really don't see myself going back to school or anything but i appreciate more what i had and i had all these classes and all this knowledge and this big library across the street from my dorm and i just didn't take as much advantage of it as i should have no i went to u t at austin uh_huh so i mean all kinds of resources and you know just there and i'd give anything to have that right now in my in my regular i mean you you have everything given to you i don't see why people wouldn't want that i don't know i but then if i was young i wouldn't see it but you know now that it's gone i right uh_huh uh_huh right yeah i did a lot and i experienced a lot and i i feel like i got a good college education but just when i got out i feel like i should have spent more time in the library i should have taken those continuing educations classes or whatever they were you know the informal classes that you don't get credit for you know that sounded like one uh_huh yeah yeah yeah excuse me just a minute uh i'm on the other line karen i'm sorry okay uh she uh yeah well the the results i i hear what you're you're saying about the results and uh it's what to do about it i guess is the the big thing i'm i'm in a kind of an interesting situation in that my my wife teaches school here in plano and i know that uh the results that they get out of the system sometime is is certainly not you know up to what the effort they put into it you know i've seen that for years yeah uh_huh yeah i've often wondered if it doesn't come back to the the home environment and uh it if uh no matter what they do in the the classroom if they go home at night and you know it's all totally [undone] uh the the thing that uh uh that karen my wife has has run into so often is that you run into a group of kids that are going to succeed no matter what no matter how bad their teachers are no matter what a lousy system they're in or anything else these people somehow manage to uh you know push on through and are successful it's uh unfortunately probably what maybe twenty five or thirty percent of them do that well that would be be at the absolute most and uh you know those those that you know come out you know fall out of the system that are are real trouble i i wonder whether that's just a uh uh a part of the system you know if you know in a democracy where you know people have kind of uh a freedom to sort of do what they want you know there there's an inefficiency there and you've got to let those you know those uh_huh oh oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah and sometimes in some systems they make everything so competitive you know you from the minute that you walk in until until you leave your your competing against somebody else or your competing against uh a system or or something you know and then a lot of there is a personality type i believe that is really [noncompetitive] they're cooperative rather than competitive and when they get into a real competitive system they just say oh well what the heck and uh tend not to you know do too awful well yeah uh_huh uh_huh i would think so yeah yeah yeah yeah it uh right survival becomes more of a priority than than education and unfortunately you know there's uh there's and old joke about uh you know [education's] wasted on the youth anyway you don't you don't really appreciate it until you're much older anyway i know when i went to school uh my attitude was kind of one of you know these people are you know taking a tremendous amount of my time you know and i've got better things to be doing than sitting here listening to this stuff over and over again i guess today that would be uh some how or other there would be a program of some sort that would take care of that sort of thing but the uh the cure some of the [cures] that i've heard for this that that sort of make sense uh most teachers after they have taught for a very long especially at the the lower grades can spot a problem almost immediately and uh it's kind of these intervention programs now a lot of people will get to looking at these and say hey that's [socialism] and that's communism and that's you know and then it gets political but uh boy uh_huh yeah um yeah well you know the the radical programs in some cases are just totally unacceptable there are kids families that should just simply be taken out of the homes you know and uh uh you know uh just removed from those situations or they're never going to get anywhere but yet politically that is not a very popular view i'm sure that if you you know ran on a platform of you know we're going to find the kids that are having trouble at home and we're going to take them out of the home yeah you know how far you're going to get with that uh but unfortunately it's it's something like that in lieu of that you know is the intervention programs in school where the these kids are are [spotted] fairly early on and uh you know there's well that's get to be a problem in texas you know because different school systems have got more or less money to take care of that sort of thing you got counselors and all that but you know you can counsel a kid eight hours a day and then he goes home and and uh you know in the in worst cases he's got parents either on drugs or or something like that or they don't care you know mamma guess what i did in school today well who cares you know true yeah yeah yeah i'm i don't know if you've ever had too much to do with uh-oh especially asian japanese families coming here in plano we've got uh quite a few uh engineering types people who have come from japan and they put their kids in the u s schools and they're appalled you know not so much at what the schools are teaching but what they let the kids get away with you know they they see most uh they're they're quite upset about the uh the disruptive influence of school most of them would say you know those people should be removed from the school system and in japan they would be you know but uh here again you get back into a political thing where uh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah were you at baylor yeah did you go to baylor oh oh okay i'm uh yeah uh_huh well that's that's it you you don't have uh you don't have the view i graduated from texas tech more than two years ago i guarantee and you know i kind of look back at it sometimes well that was a lot of fun but you know i'm not sure that that i took the greatest advantage of you know what i went through there uh_huh i'll let you go first uh_huh yeah i uh i spent a couple uh years down in uh plano texas and uh i was one of the home owners down there that got taxed to death for the uh plano uh school system and uh i you know i know that texas doesn't have a state tax and so all the things come out of the the property taxes and i was uh really shocked at the amount of taxes i ended up paying i was i was better off paying a state tax back in maryland where than i was uh paying the uh property tax down there uh what they did in maryland to get around that is they uh they developed a [renters] tax solely for the purpose of paying for the services that the [renters] were getting including the uh educational services and uh the tax was administered by uh the uh rental company that actually was managing the apartments so when uh long long time ago when i used to live in apartments i would pay a rent payment every month and a tax payment every month and the tax payment went to pay for the services that i was getting as a a resident of that particular county and uh that's the way it worked here in maryland we have uh a certain portion of your your property taxes uh goes to education but also a portion of the state tax that you pay goes back into the county that you live in to pay for the educational system and so it it works out nice it it it makes it so that the uh whole county now i i know the concept of counties in texas is quite a bit different than it is here in maryland uh like collin county uh would only equal about maybe an eighth the size of baltimore county here in maryland i mean the the counties are much larger you know in the the whole state of maryland i believe there's only like uh fifteen counties and so uh you know each county has their own school system an and it works out real nice um the the flip side to this is are we getting what we're paying for and i don't believe so um a lot of things have come to head recently and i heard a report because of uh uh the emphasis that the president was putting on education you know uh him running as our education president and then finally a couple of years later getting around to doing something um they said since they [imposed] the federal regulations on education in other words they came up with this [federalized] system where everyone in the third grade would be taught basically the same thing and then at the end of uh school year they would be tested and then they go into the fourth grade and everybody in the fourth [grade's] basically taught the same thing so when they came up with these this nationwide system of public schools uh they gave some figures out and since it's [inception] uh they've the price has gone up per the prices paid by the federal government per student has been thirty three percent and so they're actually spending thirty three percent and that's real dollars you know adjusting it back to to the days you know when it started uh probably you know seventy years ago and what they've said is that we haven't had a thirty three percent improvement in education we've actually gone backwards yeah yeah well they they've been having some problems uh even here in uh like baltimore city which is a a pretty good good sized city uh they've been putting a lot of uh stress on it and of course speaking of stress the teachers are all getting stressed out from trying to you know do everything they're supposed to do and of course they've uh been cutting the teachers salaries because they say we don't have the money to do it and all the services are costing more money and and everything uh but uh a lot of now is being put on you know when children used to be taught you know like uh uh each child is individual you know they're not all the same and some students do horrible until like eighth grade some do horrible you know until they get to like tenth grade and then all of a sudden everything [clicks] in you know and then there are some students that you know read well at five years old and you know seem to excel and so that the you know one of the things i heard proposed on uh one of the public radio stations up here was that we should go back to teaching children at their own speed some yeah and and uh and on top of that they they make the child feel inferior because he's not as good as another kid his same age i mean it's like you know that's ridiculous yeah and uh you know i have uh i i have five children total and i've got two out of the house already and i i have two that are in uh eighth grade this year and prior to their um when i when they were in elementary school they were identified as being slow and so they put them into special programs and then we actually held them back in fourth grade and it wasn't until the last two years um last year my uh they're they're a set of twins um a boy and a girl last year the the uh boy twin started doing real well and it it everything started to click in for him and he knew what he needed to do um and this year it it happened for uh for the daughter she just has been really doing great this year and she has the right attitude towards school and everything and i think it's just a matter of everybody has to find their own path i remember when i was in school i did horrible up until about yeah about the seventh eighth grade i i i started to to come around and realize an and basically i got interested in math and uh never really did well in english but you know once you got interested in something and things started to click in place then after that you take off uh_huh yeah gee yeah it is um my children had a uh real culture shock uh when we lived in plano i guess i don't know if you've heard about the plano school district but they're uh they really stress academics there and uh god if your child is not an honor student well then you're something wrong with you as a parent and that's kind of the way they are there and uh when we moved back to maryland um i moved to a uh a baltimore county which is a northern county in maryland and it's basically a rural county once you get above about the half way point and we lived you know in the northern part of the county uh we went from a uh middle school in texas that served fifty five square blocks to a uh middle school in maryland that served fifty five square miles and it was just a complete culture shock because i mean they they're riding on the bus in the morning with uh other kids that you know are a sleep because they got up at three o'clock and were doing chores and they you know it's and they had uh ag they had an ag course uh i forget what it was called uh but it goes along the the lines of industrial arts but it's agricultural and where they had to raise a small animal had to learn how to drive a tractor they actually had to take a driving test on the tractor i mean they just couldn't believe this and it was great they loved it i mean they really enjoyed the courses um and it you know it made school fun for them again because prior to that school was just a big pain a drain yeah and it was you know it was like kind of like the way we feel about going to work but uh up here they seem to have made it uh a lot of fun for them and they they seem to really enjoy it well i think i don't know how your schools work back there but we support our schools here with property taxes and the land owners or home owners are the ones that pay the school tax so if you're renting a house or doing anything else you're not actually contributing to the education of your children and i think that's wrong i think everybody should contribute to the education of their children even if they had to raise the sales tax by one percent then everybody going through the state would be supporting our education system so as it turns out we don't really have a tremendous education system because they don't have the money they need to run it uh_huh yeah yeah no huh_uh yeah yeah yeah you would be oh yeah oh gee yeah yeah oh well that's pretty good oh yeah yeah gee whiz yeah uh_huh yeah yeah yeah [yow] yeah no huh_uh well they say that texas schools are some of the lowest in the nation that our high school graduates can't even match the national average so you know our school system down here is no where near perfect but they keep complaining they don't have the money to do it yeah oh yeah yeah yeah yeah they need to take things at their own speed yeah uh_huh yeah i think it'd be a lot better you know each child has to learn at his own rate they can't keep force feeding things to each other and or you know at the kids uh_huh because he can't do it and it's not that he can't do it he just can't do it quite as fast or yeah all right yeah um uh_huh all right um all right jumped on out there that's good yeah i did too up until ninth or tenth grade yeah yeah and see when i was a kid growing up and going to high school if i wanted to take a little electronics course i had a electronics course i could take but we lived out in the country and we didn't have all that fancy stuff to worry about you know we had our auto shop out there and our ag shop and and you know we had just about every thing that we needed but they don't have it anymore there's a lot of things that they don't do in school anymore our oldest boy goes to lubbock high down here and they go to school four and half days a week so that's pretty weird no uh_huh gee yeah uh_huh yeah yeah i can imagine yeah that would be quite a shock uh_huh oh like four h then all right all right yeah just something you do everyday yeah yeah just something i have to do everyday that's good our oldest boy went into school politics and made vice i certainly do uh i think i think we have a lousy school system and i think a lot of it has to do with the fact that we don't train our teachers very well and then we put the schools in the hands of professional educators instead of the teachers and the parents and then oh we don't uh we put too much uh responsibility on the teachers for things that are really not education they're social services well i as a matter of fact i just finished editing a book on the topic so i have some rather strong opinions and and i'm sure they're colored by what i've edited yes i do and i was not very happy with the results well i think i would start with a with getting rid of about two thirds of the administrators and all the [auxiliary] personnel the school bureaucracy that exists mainly to [perpetuate] itself and then i would provide uh use the money that we've paying them to uh provide some special help in training and particularly uh [mentor] teachers to work with the beginning teachers and the teachers who may have been at it a long time but have been making the same mistakes for a long time and then let them try some innovative things and see what works and then uh have some sort of mechanism for passing that knowledge along to other teachers who could benefit from the same sorts of things and then from the parents side have the parents support the school get involved pay attention to what's happening talk to the teachers uh talk to their kids about school and support the institution and instead of becoming [adversaries] to the teachers so that the uh the teacher's in the middle well i've done about all i can do which is get the [manuscript] in good shape so that it can be published and read by a lot of people oh well that i'm not so sure about i've got a lot of things to keep me busy have you done anything like that anything political uh_huh uh_huh that's more than a lot uh_huh yeah i think that's absolutely right they the thing that worries me about that is that if you just raise salaries across the board you're going to be uh rewarding people who've been doing a lousy job and instead of getting the uh improvement that we want so we'd have to have some way to uh reward and recognize the teachers who are doing a good job and give them a a pat on the back and respect and some honor and more money uh_huh yeah it's it's hard to tell yeah yeah now that's a very good suggestion yeah i don't think student i don't think student teaching is enough i think that at least what i used to observe in student teaching was that some college kid who might not be all that bright to begin with was thrown into a class room with a teacher who was [harried] and overworked and uh had too many kids to handle and too many things to do and too many interruptions to pay much attention to the student teacher and then the student teacher didn't stay but about six weeks so there really was no time to try much of anything and get significant feedback that would help the the student teacher improve very much there are lots of things that could be done in that line including things like video taping because it wouldn't be hard with all the electronic equipment that's around these days to video tape uh either a master teacher teaching a class so that then students could watch that and uh criticize the methods used and and analyze it figure out what worked and what didn't work and then also to video tape the student teachers so they could correct their own performance huh i don't think that's going to work yeah well another thing i think would be helpful would be to have some sort of of say a national curriculum because one of the problems with getting good textbooks is that we have such a [fragmented] system for uh curriculums that the textbook makers produce a textbook that will sell in texas and california and then everybody else is stuck with that regardless of what they want to teach because it well that's the two states that adopt on a state wide basis uh and so it uh i used to work for a textbook publisher and it was absolutely clear that if you could get your book adopted by texas then you had a built in market because there were only about three or four textbooks in each subject and all you had to do is just get your share of those adopted in the individual school districts and you know a third of the texas market with its millions of kids is a heck of a lot of textbooks and then the states that either don't adopt on a state wide basis or don't have as many kids just have to follow along and take what texas gets california is the biggest for elementary schools but texas uh [adopts] state wide all the way through the [twelfth] grade yep sure is and i hope maybe we're going to get somewhere with a little more attention being paid to it with uh [reagan's] uh new education secretary and uh you know trying to do some uh trying to produce some new programs anyway excuse me i have got to go i've got another line calling thanks bye well [kathleen] do you believe that there is a problem with our public school system and what do you think that problem is huh that seems like you've thought this through quite a bit before that's interesting do you uh yourself do [youself] have children who are or have been through the public school system i see so if you were to improve it what would you do to improve it uh_huh right uh_huh sure sure uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's uh some pretty good ideas why don't you do something with those uh_huh well you should uh run for a school board position uh_huh that well my mother was on the school board as we were coming up and uh that basically is the extent to which our our family has been directly you know they've always been involved my parents through the the p t a organization and my mother was on the school board for eight years but uh that was that's the extent of which i guess that's more than than some people less than others i would uh tend to agree with you that there is a problem the methods of correcting it i haven't thought through quite to the detail which you have but i believe that there's definitely a basic perception and image problem with the fact of even being a teacher and if there was a way to through the public mind set that image to be a little higher esteem a little uh uh a little more prestige to being a teacher and with that of course you know you have to pay them a accordingly if we paid them more it would attract more the the higher educated people to to either move into that field or to continue in that field and then if you paid them more you'd also be able to demand a higher quality product out of them sure sure uh_huh it unfortunately it's a and it's a business or an occupation that the results are not as tangible as other ones so it's very it's very difficult to say that this teacher is doing a better job than this other one other than i guess how you how a person scores in the beginning before the class and then after the class you know if there's some gauge that they could make uh also i've i've thought around about the idea of making teaching and the before you can get a certificate you have a a certain residency period so much like a doctor maybe not the four years definitely but some certain type of of position where you're [overseen] to begin with uh just something to rather than throw someone in into that environment uh you know it i thought that maybe something uh_huh right uh_huh sure sure uh_huh sure sure that's good as a a a teaching aid but more you see these commercials that have jimmy walking into class late and it happens that the teacher is an instructor who is in new york while [jimmy's] in rome and you know the whole electronic classroom idea i don't know if i i'm in favor yeah in favor of yeah i think especially in the younger years you need to have more of the the person contact rather than just the fact that your machine being fed information to to learn how to learn huh is that because that's where the two biggest markets are or i see uh_huh huh sure sure right i see well definitely is a national problem if that they need to address definitely is right right well i've enjoyed speaking with you all righty good bye do you have any particular thoughts about the school system i say agree with you a hundred percent there yeah yeah yeah it's interesting because uh we're just having conversation on this uh with a couple of people yesterday and i was expressing my frustrations that uh some of the so many problems i work in a high school are that kids don't have a a degree of self discipline which may be reflected in society at large uh and you can't expect in a classroom for a particular course an hour a day to [counteract] uh sixteen or seventeen years of influence at home um and it's seen more so because when you call parents up many parents won't even recognize that there is a problem and i'll say they'll say oh well our kids my kid i've never heard anything about this before this is the first time there have been problems and and you wonder don't these parents know that teachers talk and you know we do check with other teachers and other teachers find the same things in this child and you know how do you tell your parent's the parent hey wake up and smell the coffee but um it it is a problem and i'm not sure just uh how how the school system could operate in a vacuum on it whether maybe through a commitment of the p t a uh and the parents being informed better that in fact that the problems that are nationwide are problems um of society and that that the school can only do so much on it uh_huh yeah yeah that's right uh_huh you know what scares me too is that we have yet to see other the biggest effect of the crack children uh in the school system these are children that are born with low deficit attention deficit and gosh what's going to happen when these kids start coming into the school system that's really scary but there are i think there are a couple of areas where the school system can improve and this is something that i see too many times students get diagnosed as slow [learners] and in fact they're not they're behavior problems and so they get put in in in our school system in a class that's limited for skills children that have really have to master skills and that's not their problem um at the same time i've seen we we have a an international population there's no bridge area for students coming out of the e s o l which is english for speakers of other languages program the once they're past e s o l they get out they got thrown right into the total mainstream and uh there really needs to be a bridge some sort of transition for that so the school systems can improve both in standing up for splitting classes you know having learning learning slow slow children in slow classes but not mixing them with behavior problems and then you know the case where they put the behavior problems in the average classes you get these kids that are average students but highly motivated and then you throw in kids that are not motivated maybe bright but they're discipline problems and you sometimes the average classes really are problems because you've got such a mixed bag there you know the gifted and talented are fast classes there's really not that much of a problem with but it's uh_huh that's yeah i remember i had a college professor who once said that genius is one percent inspiration and ninety nine percent [perspiration] uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah i guess kids do mature at different ages too that's and you know as a teacher you you try to make be understanding that you know there are different ages kids are is this a got a kid that just a question of maturity or is he a problem child but teachers are asked to diagnose so much um there i mean i mean we're have to be we're [alerted] there's all sorts of systems where suicide uh [predisposition] i mean we're [alerted] to what the moment we see something if we see a child that we have any reason that's on drugs such as if he's got a beeper or if they're if they're [flashing] lots of money around we've there are certain things to do i mean so the school system's asked to do so much but you can't operate in a vacuum this is a we're in a rather wealthy suburb of washington and a student with a beeper immediately gets sent down to the uh principal it's for drug use they can't imagine for anything else yeah you know it's it's amazing but uh you get all sorts you get all all sorts of things uh in the schools uh uh and it's and you know as a teacher you're alert you're alert for the kid who's very [drowsy] you're alert to the kid who suddenly has a um behavioral change and you refer them to the nurse and so i mean you have to find out whether there's a legitimate reason or whether this is a warning signal and parents frequently resent when you ask them is there a problem that we should be aware of uh_huh uh_huh yeah the denial mechanism is really strong and so many parents are [facilitators] i mean they're manipulated by their children i've been fortunate i have uh a son who's a sophomore in college up in massachusetts at uh amherst and my other son is a senior in high school and he's going on to williams and i mean they're really super they're both national level [swimmers] and where we've been very fortunate but you know they had to be held accountable too i mean you know at some point a parent does help their kid but in in some ways but but you have to say at what point isn't the help becoming negative and i think this is where the school system at is suffering and not through any fault of the effort of the school system but gee it was good talking with you yeah so there are people throughout the country that feel the same ways that you do and and are connected with the schools uh_huh well we are though listen good luck take care bye bye well um i i think that in in uh recently with the i'm not sure if it's more a problem with american families or a problem with the school system they seem to be [burdening] the school system more and more with problems any problems that a child might have whether it's actually a school related thing or not and i yeah and and well it's gotten to a point where the schools are expected to take care of everything if uh you've some kid who doesn't have uh who's from a broken family the schools are supposed to fill that void it's gotten way beyond teaching uh you know teaching classes and maybe providing extracurricular sports activities or something like oh were kind of traditionally the school's roles right right right yeah yeah well then then again when you have uh a society where a certain percentage of the parents are uh doing drugs in the home uh either unemployed and don't care about a uh just a have their own problems how how do you expect the school to um or how do you expect the you can't really expect that parent who's quite frankly a loser in life as it is to to care about the the situation with their child and right right yeah right uh_huh uh_huh right right right right uh_huh right well i i've seen more uh incredibly intelligent [underachievers] than than uh i personally i will i would take a person who's motivated and a little uh less intelligent than the person who uh is one of these very intelligent people who just kind of isn't motivated to do anything yeah well i not to [toot] my own horn here or anything but i i was graduated from my high school i was the [valedictorian] and i know that there were a lot of kids that were an awful lot smarter than me and they proved out late when it came time to take the s a t mine were good but they weren't great and uh when i got into college i struggled i struggled just to uh get my degree in the in the field that i was in whereas i knew people that in high school were kind of lazy and all but they got motivated in college and they did a lot better than i did and when it right uh_huh right you actually have students with with [beepers] uh_huh i mean where what are the what could they possibly be thinking i mean how yeah right yeah can you how can you how can you expect to oh yeah i i i was uh sitting in the [barber] shop i'm an officer in the air force and i was having my hair cut and the [barber] got a call while i was there uh from his son's school his son's in high school and his son was failing gym and uh and having trouble with a few other things but you know it's like uh this guy was like why now there's no problem with my kid my kid's a great kid and all this the kid had missed all these classes and basically he his answer was oh i gave him permission to to miss yeah right uh_huh sure right sure right it was good talking to you too yeah yeah i've had interesting conversations on several subjects not uh not just this but different the different things it's amazing how the you know people you talk to have some interesting conversations and uh it's too bad that all this stuff is just being thrown into a data base and that none of the ideas or thoughts are being used at all yeah that's true yep bye bye well i guess um i'll start out and that is um i don't know what section of the public school system they're talking about whether it's the first eight grades the high school or colleges i have mixed views on all three of them well i i i should imagine the lower grades what would what what's what's certainly drawn everyone's attention to that is the fact that uh many of the inner city and uh i guess what we'd call uh ghetto or poorer districts including rural districts don't seem to be able to produce the students that indeed many uh manufacturing and other [enterprises] want they can't seem to they can't seem to read properly do math properly and conform to what employers want so that's got everybody excited high schools i'm not too sure it seems that high schools at least produce candidates although i have great [misgivings] about the s a t that go on to a variety of colleges it seems a great deal of our public colleges have foreign students in them uh from um a myriad of nations and uh and also um uh i think that uh a certain percentage of uh the colleges produce a fairly uh public colleges produce a fairly decent student or fairly decent graduate i should say oh i didn't realize it was that high wow yeah well that's what i was going to point out i think it mostly is that technical yeah wow yeah yeah yeah that yeah that must be an inner school i just read a an amazing article i guess in this [month's] this week's new yorker about baltimore uh which uh went on to talk about i don't know i thought it was rather slanted in favor of the mayor or or or the politicians in the in there i i do i do know a few people and have been have done some business up in baltimore but it seemed to me that the inner school system there was the one thing that didn't the inner city school system was the one thing that didn't flower too well they talked about individual cases of people trying hard but it was very difficult i i i i think if i was going to fault it now if i'm i'm looking to carry on a conversation that way i there's a couple of things that really bother me i think when i learned the other day uh uh that uh the average american the average american now watches seven point two hours of television a day and that school children are not far off that mark with six point eight now i don't know what school children what year that is i mean that's a hell of a lot time to be sitting in front of the tube well i yeah really oh so you're close to the subject and yet you know i have grandchildren i have ten uh nine grandchildren in various parts of the country and of course you know i can't speak to the rural or poorer inner city schools these kids go to a they live in a fairly nice upper scale neighborhood and they seem to be doing extraordinarily well i i i mean i [quiz] them and i talk to them and they they read well they do everything well but i i i mean i think that's a that's part of the environment yeah that that that that could be very well true yeah right yes really yeah no kidding oh i i i yeah i guess i could i can understand that however i'm a product of the new york city public school system from fifty years ago uh maybe not that long ago but and um and so i i always felt i didn't get a real good education in the in the grammar schools and part of high school so i lived in new england at the time i sent all my children to prep school i was i i didn't have that much money but we struggled and we did it and i thought it i thought a great deal of it was a great deal of the success that they had in their education was due to the low student teacher ratio and i i i think that could that's a formula that could be applied everywhere except it must cost a heck of a lot of money if you do it in public school yeah yeah yeah yeah well that that that's that that must be then then if that's uh i think we both agree on that then then then then a parent parental involvement has to be there and i guess you got to take them away from the tube also another thing that i have another problem i have is uh i don't really know how to resolve this but is the incredible at least in the high school and college level emphasis on sports where enormous amounts of money are spent and it seems to me that money could be more well well spent somewhere else yeah oh yeah yeah right right right right yeah yeah yeah right but i mean uh right to to what uh to you say other things than sports though yeah i know but i mean they don't just send it to the new stadium or really i well i guess they're right right right yeah well i never thought of that benefit yeah yeah well i i never thought of that benefit but the consequence then i my i guess what i'd have to say about that is there can only be one champion isn't that something though i didn't realize that no yeah yeah yeah well mark spitz made a lot of money on it and he and he came back this year didn't he but he didn't make it no yeah yeah yeah well right right right right well i read i i also read i we're getting off the subject here a bit but i i do want to add this to that because i i was quite interested in that myself but i read where the reason that he had to do this in the [sprint] events is that national television wouldn't pay for the distance events and they didn't think they could capture the excitement to get sponsors if you brought just the here he comes down the finish line right so it had to be it had to be where they could put it in one segment and and and i guess capture the whole thing for some sponsor let me ask you another question yeah well if you teach uh college and and i know when i went to college i i went to summer school and i thought that uh in fact that my idea of it was uh rather than rather than finish early i just enjoyed some of the subjects that i was taking and i had the ability to to go in summer school and i i did take those subjects so what that leads me my next thought is i understand there's a lot of talk now about [extending] the school year which seems inordinately short anyway compared to the japanese or the germans well how do you think that would work in grammar schools and yeah yeah that's right yeah uh_huh what do you think about what do you think about the the lower grades you know k through seven uh_huh right uh_huh yep i uh uh_huh yeah i i i just read some things recently where um uh colleges now uh graduate programs in general now train basically they're fifty per cent foreign uh yeah oh just about yeah but when you consider um when you consider uh especially in technical areas science engineering and computers yeah especially in those areas it's um i it's it's almost fifty per cent foreign like forty eight per cent and that involves both canadian and uh uh european middle eastern and and far eastern yeah i i think um i think i have similar views that's you know where our elementary grades um it's amazing i have a friend who's an who's an elementary school teacher and she said that they recently you know they have to go through they have to they have to pat the kids down because they bring guns to school she teaches in the city of baltimore and that uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh right yeah and it's uh uh it's really you know kids can't read um it's really they you know by the time they my wife teaches uh middle school yeah and they can't yeah by the time they get there they can't read they they can't read anything uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh yeah i think it's it's probably the work that your your children your children are doing uh um she she's yeah she can tell she can tell you know when they have kids come in for they meet with all of the parents and she can tell before a parent comes in normally you know give or take eighty ninety per cent you know what the parents are going to be like when they come in and the [responses] the parents will give back oh yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh right i think i think it's probably very true uh_huh uh_huh but you know surprisingly i i because you put such a commitment on education um your children probably could have gone to schools with uh uh a higher student teacher ratio and still done well because when they would come home you and your wife would say you know what did you do today if we let's sit down and read together yeah uh_huh yeah oh it's parental yep uh_huh yeah but you you know what's really funny is that they there's been some research because i'm a i'm a college professor and um uh and and a lot of the research shows that like georgetown while [hewing] was playing at georgetown basketball georgetown and they were winning endowment to the university in other words money that could to everything everything and normally gets directed away from sports realistically a lot of the was uh was probably two thirds i guess it's now two thirds of what it was when they were national champions in other words while they're national champions people donate more money average human beings like you and i average [joes] that make a decent salary that are a graduate of the school send big bucks like couple hundreds of dollars but thousands of people because no normally it's because of the sports right right but see the sports brings in the money because when georgetown was number one their their their money that was donated to them from companies from from from business people from graduates whatever was up into you know like twenty million dollars and now it's down to like fourteen million during that time period in other words their income has their their [alumni] giving and other funds have slowly dropped since then uh_huh yeah yeah that's yeah it's it's amazing the way but now that's big time yeah but but uh smaller schools aren't like that uh only only the big time schools show that but you're right i i think the emphasis on sports and as a see i'm a i'm a i'm a former athlete in a sense i swam um but swimming never gets much glory so it really doesn't matter but that's true that's true but you know they still he didn't make it no i i would have liked it if he if he would have though but i think uh realistically you know you read the the research studies and uh i don't think he would have made it simply because the the event he was trying to swim they even the research shows that distance running so i would assume distance swimming might be similar that and he was good at distance spitz as a swimmer you know at i can remember that but the distance um the the distance strength and endurance or whatever sort of starts to peak at about twenty eight twenty nine thirty that's why some of your long distance runners were in their early thirties and but he's was trying to make it in the [sprinter's] event and most of them are under twenty five uh_huh yeah uh_huh oh you're kidding jeez huh and that as as an athlete i just hate that go head yeah what were what were you saying yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right yeah i think i think i think uh in in some sense um what i would do before i would extend a school year is i would make it better before i would continue the [agony] and something you have to consider too um because i know as a as a as a former high school teacher i know that from right now uh_huh now is he the elementary school uh_huh uh_huh but he is being helped uh_huh oh great no that's something new to me i'm oh i think i read about that in the paper doctor [haggard] is is heading that up uh_huh oh right so you worked you learned how to solve your problems on your own has has he had this since kindergarten or is this something that maybe learning [phonetics] and then he just didn't learn the right way uh_huh okay you're right right right good good that's great for parents to be involved oh how great so she she was able to zero in oh huh uh_huh uh_huh right oh no uh_huh uh_huh right but that's something that parents i think are able to help the gifted child in the home more than they could help the learning disabled child so because that's something you can do by just enrichment types of things in the home but learning disability unless you are schooled in the types of things and ways to help a child like that then it makes it real difficult and this is this to me is the benefit i see in public schools is that that uh you do have government money to fund the kinds of programs that these students need and i'm not sure that the private schools or parochial schools address that problem they test kids before they take them and if they're a behavior problem they're out that and and uh this is kind of a [rejection] type of thing and and we get it even at our level in in i work a nine ten school and we get students that come in that have been kicked out of the uh parochial and and uh private schools and uh they come in and their attitude is i'm a bad boy and [proceed] to prove it so i i really hate that for them i i would rather they not have that attitude but that's right that's right uh_huh no that's right they can be selective right right if you choose the select top group out of the public schools and tested them and then compared them to the to the private school group then i think you would have a more equitable way and i have a problem when they compare the kids in japan or germany to the kids here in in in uh honesty the kids in japan are they have to try out to even get into to which kindergarten they're going to get into and then after uh and if if you only the in fact they've had cases in the past where parents have committed suicide because their child has not gotten into the top kindergarten which means they probably won't get into the top elementary and and high school and if they don't then when they reach a certain age they just that's the end of their schooling and and uh they don't ever really go on it's only their top ones that go on like ours do and and uh so that that creates a problem and and you can't compare because they go so many more hours the other thing is that the priority in the family is that child's education and is that child that's right that's right that's right better coping skills yes right right well and you don't you don't see the parents uh encouraging those students to get on athletic teams or drill teams or band it's strictly stick to the educational and it's interesting to see them as they get older uh then that is the type of adult they are um well we've talked a little bit about the plano school system um i i really have been pleased with plano i have a child who uh my son is learning disabled and uh i thank god every day that i have the resources that we have tapped into he's in elementary school and he's not severely learning disabled i mean you know he just he's being helped he he was in resource from second grade till fourth grade in math and they recently released him from resource which i'm i was thrilled i really was i i just thought that was so neat that they got him over that hump and um he's in the [herman] method of reading i don't know if you're familiar with that it is something new and basically what they do is they start right from the beginning [relearning] the sounds of letters um it's wonderful yes and it's wonderful he didn't have a problem with reading as a matter of fact he's reading on level the problem was his spelling and you know in in watching the way he has struggled it's interesting because i'm convinced i have the same learning disability or had that was ignored and that's right and and so it's you know it's not an intelligence problem it's just a problem with learning well you know it's funny when um when he was in first grade he had trouble with with spelling and i would say to the teacher you know it's amazing he will be able to you'll say to him spell cat and you know he'll say c a t and then he would go to write it and he would write c o t and i kept saying to the teacher something is wrong here something is wrong here and the teacher kept saying oh he has a may birthday he's just immature well second grade it was i will these teachers as far as i'm concerned are absolute saints because in second grade it was about the second week of school i went up there and i i requested a conference and because all year long they kept telling me i was crazy well i was and i and i went up there the second week of school and i said you know something is wrong and thank god the the head teacher the team leader was a special education major it was it was and she had picked it up yep she had already picked it up and she said you know we we were going to call you if you hadn't called us we think there's a learning disability and we think he needs to be tested immediately because you know once the first report card comes in they have all these people being tested and she said i think we can get him real fast and sure enough they tested him and you know he qualified for for the help and it's been great and i and i thank god i'm here because i i know i have a sister who has the other extreme she has a a child in connecticut who is extremely gifted and because of the cutbacks in the economy they have nothing for her and and to me that's the same thing it's it's like having a child who has a learning disability that's being ignored this poor gifted child is being ignored that's true that's true uh_huh uh_huh yes right right exactly and they don't take them that's right right uh_huh uh_huh really really yeah well when comparing test scores i know recently i was in a discussion and they were comparing test scores between private schools and public schools and that was one of the points that i made is that you're not comparing apples to apples you know you can't say um you know i know steven probably would not be accepted because he has a learning disability and into a private school and um which is which is too bad but on the other hand i i can't necessarily blame them you know they they are a private school and they can do whatever they want and they they that's right they have the ability to be selective but you can't say then well public schools are are not as good perhaps they are because they're they're you're right oh really uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah right well you see that with the foreigners that come here um i i was talking to somebody recently or read somewhere where they where they said that you know these children they they had to be the best and they put off all social life all everything you know well is that good yes the child is very bright but on the other hand i feel like my children who are kind of middle of the road have are more rounded you know sure sure i think it's real important to have friends i think it's real important to play sports i think it's real important to be part of a team and so that's why i said their childhood is extremely different from mine we didn't do all that you know we certainly didn't carpool and run the way i do um no right right uh_huh okay what do you think is the biggest problem uh_huh uh_huh yeah is it the do you think it's the values that they're teaching in school or the values they get from home right yeah i i i i think that the biggest problem is uh with the uh with the home environment being part of it you know if i think too many parents expect uh the school to teach uh the moral aspects of of things to the to the kids and you know while we're not going to worry about uh teaching you [manners] or teaching you respect for anyone or anything like that you know and then expect them to pick it up at school you're not going to do that you know you're going to carry carry with carry to school uh out into the world you know what you learned at home and uh uh i think that that part of that showing up now you know with with things because kids i think have probably less respect than for for people than in in other things than we may have seen in the past uh and part of it's the the family i think and part of it's uh the living conditions of certain people are subjected too drugs is a big problem now and i think that's that's that's another root problem uh_huh right right well i think it's like you say it's it's the socioeconomic mix there you know the they're you look at the schools like that where you've got a lot of kids who are basically uh that might be more well well off you know going to a private catholic school or whatever uh and and they're not all that way but you know some that are um that they're they're not quite the same as the kids that are going to the inner city uh you know public schools yeah yeah well you know in a lot of cases like that where you know if kids are going to a public parochial school like that it's it's because the parents are more interested in them receiving an education it shows i think it shows that the parents have some uh desire for for the kid to do do well you know and that may be passed on down to the kid as well and uh maybe they pick up on that and then from the other aspect um maybe the uh school itself has has has more emphasis on uh trying to do a good job because the classes may be smaller uh they may be able to to give the resources that's needed to uh to do a good job uh that's a tough question how to fix the school system uh with uh i would try to i guess to see about getting parents more involved with try to to come up with more ways to do that uh uh uh stress the importance of education to both both the parents and the students and uh more more classes that i think that are and i think this is happening some around the country in terms of um morals trying to teach the kinds of things that that aren't getting taught at home and uh and and respect for other people uh i think that's a big part of it you know people you know if you don't care about property and people you know you're not going to care about uh about learning i think you know you're not going to really care about yourself right well you know and i that's not an but that's not an easy task you know that's why i say it's it's a tough question what would you do because you know even trying to instill those values is kind of hard when uh when when you're growing up in you know in a home which may be uh just the pits and uh you don't have any any kind of a good environment to live in you know it's kind of hard to say well you need to take care of other people's stuff as well when you're when you barely have anything yourself so i could see where that would be a problem and i think that's i think it's the biggest problem well like in this part of town seems to be the attitude and the atmosphere in the schools that uh you know you can throw money at it but it's i don't know to me it seems like the schools are reflecting society in a bigger way you know because i mean the general values that we're teaching kind of conflict with what we expect out of people in school i mean uh well the values more or less at home and the t v just a general i mean learning is not a [revered] endeavor really i mean it's a lot more it's socially well i won't say socially unacceptable but whereas like in uh a person that uh they put a lot more emphasis on athletics and things like that are a lot more glorified generally in society and i think that carries over to school a lot so yeah yeah yeah you know i wonder if that's a root problem or not because i think about that a lot and it's just like everybody likes to blame everything on drugs now but i wonder you know do you get the oh that's kind of side [tracked] but uh i just remember seeing on the news the other night they had the thing about how catholic schools are doing so much better i thought well you know of course they're doing better and not so much when i was growing up catholic schools are generally considered a little bit easier than the public schools but uh they still had a a better success rate simply because they started with a lot better raw material i mean everybody that went to a catholic school had uh at least the parents did at least had education as a priority like you said and kind of had a whole conducive atmosphere to it and i wonder if not so much that uh yeah yeah this is interesting because in my mind i don't have the stereotype of a catholic school being a suburban kind of environment but uh this this was actually inner city people were sending i mean just because their kids had the ability and the and the drive to do try and get an education they didn't send him to a public school you know like you said you have the drug problem and just the general atmosphere where you're [pressured] not to learn in instance yeah yeah i mean and what do you what would you do to fix the school systems yeah yeah yeah that's what i was going to say it's the chicken and the egg thing i wonder a lot of times you know people i mean a lot of times people literally tear apart their own schools vandalism wise and you get i mean it's been a while since i been in high school they're even in grade school when they do that but i can't remember exactly what goes through their head when they're doing that but you got to think in a way it's kind of a [outward] showing of that they don't think they have a chance of doing anything and take it out on the school yeah okay i guess we're supposed to discuss the uh school system that shouldn't be too much trouble for the two of us right right uh_huh uh_huh that's really sad isn't it right well just recently in the paper here were articles about students uh working high school students that work and the percentage of hours that they work and how that affects their grades but then the follow up the next day was i was kind of glad to see because it it said that you know yes but for those students who are determined to do well anyway that you know handling a job was very possible you know and that it seemed to have more to do with other factors you know like what are their plans after high school you know and what's their home situation you know that right right right sure but there can still be an attitude of you know this is a [stopgap] measure because we need it right now but but that the most important thing is still you know getting your education well when they meant said the the topic you know of what's wrong with the public schools my my first impulse was it isn't really what's wrong with the public public schools it's what's wrong with families and society in general right right right right yeah huh yeah well we've got uh you know at our school we have over a thousand elementary kids and last year was the first year that we ever had more than one counselor and that's just really not enough and i was talking to somebody that teaches in a middle school and they said oh but we need more in the middle school because that's when kids are you know at a tougher and [rougher] age and all that but you know part of my feeling is that if you solve help them to work through their problems while they're littler then they won't have as many problems up there really yeah uh_huh they they do that here uh_huh uh_huh to change yeah right yes it certainly is yeah that's right yeah right i'm on that um campus [strategic] planning committee for my school and uh one of the uh you know oh they have all these different names for things strategies and all these different things but anyway one of the key things was that that we believed that the public education is the best economic value then i think they decided to strike economic anyway you know the point was what happens when public education fails you know will then people go to private schools you know well what kind of a situation do they get there and what are you know and what kind of state are we in if if most people are going to private schools right right uh_huh that's right that's right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah and one of the plano school [district's] you know goals is that they will graduate every child that uh that is here in the ninth grade i believe it's something like that it's worded and uh i don't know right that's so important oh gosh well that new movie that new movie out i um really really a frightening situation i guess we're both lucky to be in situations and schools where we don't see that my folks talk about it a lot in illinois my mother was is was teacher for years and years and uh they live in [peoria] illinois and their talking a lot about the you know the school situation there too so well shall we wrap it up i think we have to so i'll see you when we see you uh_huh the reason that i wasn't at church and we went to hear uh james wind ensemble concert they left this morning for uh england isn't that wonderful uh_huh and uh the university no as many years as we've been involved in one i really feel fortunate in that there even though there are problems they're not a lot of problems where i teach but from talking to people in other districts there are some major problems uh with [dropouts] uh when i was in minnesota last summer there was a teacher who said that uh on a given day she didn't know how many of her students would show up and sometimes they didn't even show up for class and she taught in high school in inner city uh minneapolis and uh they just didn't come to school and i cannot imagine being able to do much of anything when they don't even come to school uh_huh i think so too the home is the key i think really is because if the home does not place a high priority on education and uh the main goal is making money now and it may be a survival thing for the family which you can understand so uh right your education that's right it's what's wrong with families and if if children come to school yes [insecure] and their biggest concern is survival both at home they don't know what to expect at home they don't feel secure there they don't know what's going to happen just out front of their apartment complex for example that child that was shot uh how can they concentrate on schooling i agree with you i think that's the main problem and school's now are supposed to solve social problems uh mental and emotional problems as well as educate the kids and try to provide them with some security and that's overwhelming no it isn't true i think they there has to be at least a counselor and we just recently had a counselor at elementary we didn't even have counselors in elementary we have always though had three at middle schools because we had about a thousand kids and they divided them up between three counselors but for a good while every year they'd have a different counselor and they decided that didn't work so they started uh [dividing] the kids up so that a counselor stays with her group of [counselees] through you know through all three years of middle school and i think that would give them more security in going to the counselor if they have a [rapport] with their counselor now if they don't i hope they have the flexibility to be able to change a child that really is in need of counseling help if they absolutely refuse to work with them and occasionally that happens but it is frightening because uh education is the key to our future and uh if we have children who are not getting their education for one reason or another then what are we going to do with them what's going to happen to them are they going to be able to uh work at other kind of menial jobs or are they going to be the thieves and the people in prison and our prisons are filling up faster then we can build them that's no good uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i think uh one thing that we'll see is that we won't be educating everybody there will be a lot of people who will not get even a menial education like in other countries of the world where they don't try to educate everyone that's one of the things that we do we try to educate everyone we're the only country in the world that does and let everyone have an opportunity to reach higher education if they're willing you know to work and have uh some ability they can do that uh_huh well you know if we can keep them in school uh_huh then that that helps a lot i think the gang violence is scaring everyone to death too it's scary to me i we are uh i would imagine that we've talked the amount of time necessary okay alright we were in uh austin yesterday oh oh how exciting oh that is wonderful what an experience okay let's talk about schooling okay well i have a boy and he just went into middle school and i have a girl and she's in uh grade school and then i have a little boy who goes to uh they have something just before kindergarten and it's called early childhood and i have a young a young boy in that so i i have a lot of children in in the school system down here and um i think we have excellent teachers here i am really uh like the like the way the teachers work with the students uh i've not been so um happy with the schools themselves i guess like my last year my son and daughter were in the same grade school before he moved up to middle school and it was just packed i mean it was a a fire hazard if we had any kind of assembly there with parents and it was just a real problem uh so we had to do a bond issue and and um vote to take money and either have students bussed to different schools if that's what the prefer to do or to uh work on the work for another school to be built which is a good idea but in the meantime the school still has lots and lots of kids in it so um i think one thing is that would maybe we don't have enough schools and secondly when we have enough schools sometimes we can't get the the support for the teachers that we need to pay them to keep good teachers oh uh_huh oh great we see through the out the country uh_huh i think that's right yeah the home yeah i think that's right it is so hard with a family system um either divorced or or just one parent or just and then if both of them have to work even that is a a hard situation for the children uh to to have a supportive system around them to make school work for them and i think it's real important that the parents work with the school um i think what you said is is really a [pinpoint] though that the student and the family life really adds or [detracts] what's happening in the school so um what about your wife is she she happy at school or i bet she does uh_huh yeah right right uh_huh yeah right yeah uh what what contacts do you have with the public school oh okay uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah well i think that's i think that's uh true i i've got a little different uh contact but i've i've got a one son that graduated from high school last year and another son that's a a sophomore this year and uh my wife teaches kindergarten here in richardson uh but in general i i think the the you know one of the reasons that we we uh the chose to live in richardson when we when we came here was the was the schools and i think that plano and richardson in terms of the uh things seriously wrong with the public schools are not nearly to the extent that uh right right and i think i think part of that is that is the the uh a big part of that is just the demographics the population in those schools are are typically uh people that very much value the education and support the the school systems and and uh although there's still some still some problems but uh i you know i when i was when i was going to school i grew up in iowa and and in my family school was certainly valued but if there was ever any sort of a uh if if i was ever in trouble in school i was also in trouble at home even more so and i think that part of it is is not exactly with the schools but with the with the uh the culture that doesn't doesn't value the education and doesn't value the schools and doesn't support uh what the schools are are trying to do yeah that's true uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah well uh she she works very hard as a kindergarten teacher she has she has two half day classes so she has uh you know on the order of twice as many students as as the teachers in the higher grades and uh uh but her her background is in is in uh child development and and uh so forth and so kindergarten is as high as she as she wants to teach and she's she's teaching rather than something else because that that that's the jobs that are available and that the schedule matches uh you know with our kids and things like that so yeah uh and but uh the do you see anything wrong with public school systems i agree yes and i taught for fourteen years before we moved to texas and the the one thing i see is changing is i was held accountable so much i had to document and create a paper chase for all of my students and instead of spending my time coming up with creative learning stations and things like that i was filling out all these forms for all the children everything had to be [documented] and i had file cabinets that weren't filled with neat stuff for kids it was filled with documentation yes me too i think so too they're so worried about lawsuits and the scores the children get on tests now and teacher competency you know and it's not like the teacher can just get in there and do her best she's always worried whose looking over her shoulder and that's right i know that's right do you have children in the system oh yep are you in plano yep i am too and i have one in ninth grade at clark and one at [hendrick] this year and he my my uh sixth grader came from an open classroom at matthews and the very first year i taught back in seventy three we had open classroom and it didn't work then and when we moved down here i was just appalled that they were still doing it here partitions or just to face the children different directions or to do something i know last year my son had to eat in the classroom because there was no cafeteria at his school so he spent all day in this one large open area so i didn't really care for that it seems like the schools in michigan were much better than they are down here that was our last tour in michigan oh uh_huh oh wow yes yes that's right we heard wonderful things about it until we actually got in the system probably so on publicity and letting [realtors] know and key people how wonderful the schools are so as a freshman yep yeah my daughter seems to be having a good time she was absent with [strep] throat the last three days and i ran over and picked up her report card and she did very good so and she seems to be studying and has just about the right amount of home work i would expect for a freshman to have she's not bogged down but yet she has some every night yes you always hear how good now my son's at junior high and says that his grades are going to be wonderful but who knows what he's going to bring home well yes i do um i think i'm concerned about the large number of children that each teacher is expected to to deal with in some quality way i think maybe we've given our teachers a almost impossible job do you do you have children in the public school system is that right you were a [bookkeeper] oh oh no well um i'm i have three years toward a teaching degree and am trying to get headed back and and i'm just really in a dilemma if that's what you know i love to work with children and to teach them but i'm really having questions if if i can deal with that system and and have a good conscience about you know what i do i don't think i don't think it's the teachers i think it's the system but um right what child's going to say something some parent's going to [overreact] to that's that's true well it's it's hard on the children too i think you know because the um the teachers are overworked and just like a mommy that's overworked you're not at your best you know um i have two i have in the system one is in ninth grade and one is in seventh grade and them um i'm home schooling my [kindergartner] this year we um live in a district that has open classrooms and i wasn't particularly comfortable with that for her yes you too oh still at it well the explanation i was was given about you know they they seemed to admit that it wasn't working but they didn't have the money to [restructure] but looks to me that it wouldn't take really that much money to at least come up with i mean some kind of partitions you know just yeah oh goodness oh were they well we were from north um carolina and of course north north carolina has a terrible reputation as far as education i think they rank about forty ninth but our children got a very good education there they were in the [magnet] school program and a lot of their classes from the time they were about third grade they they changed classes several times during the day which has its pros and cons but a lot of their classes there were only eight or ten children in their classes and it was wonderful so you know i'm coming to to plano thinking well gosh it's going to be really great it's ranked so much better isn't that interesting i i i don't understand how they get this this reputation unless it's just that they spend a lot of money i don't know i guess so well my son is at clark this year too so uh we're yeah and uh he's pleased with his classes i i i don't guess i've been in the high school long enough to to know what to expect really you know how to judge it well that's good yeah well eric seems to have quite a few nights where he doesn't have any so that's interesting but he his grades i haven't seen them yet but supposedly they're good so that's right well what i believe is one of the major uh things that is wrong with our public school system is that um we do not have enough discipline and the parents do not let the teachers discipline the children the way that they need to be disciplined right now uh when i went to school i know i was scared to death about being disciplined and the discipline that my daughter receives now in going to school is just totally different you know you just you did not see i did not see anybody in my classrooms when i was going to school act up the way that kids do these days in the classroom yeah that's right that's right my my daughter's in the um fourth grade and um there's children in her classroom that just totally disrupt the classroom where the teacher cannot teach and when i went to school that just wasn't put up with uh_huh well they they just don't do that any more but the school system's afraid of getting sued and um all sorts of lawsuits i'm sure because of things like that and i also believe we don't even though i feel like i pay a good share towards the school system that the teachers are still underpaid and we still don't have enough money towards put in toward public school and um i think that if we had enough money and paid the teachers a little bit more that maybe that could solve some of our problems yes supposedly that's what it's suppose to go for and you know we'll just have to wait and see whether that's approved or not you know i don't know your feelings toward that i guess we shouldn't get into that but um and what else um i think in some ways that they need to be more careful of the teachers that they hire i have heard stories uh from other parents that i know of their children are in high school that teachers are out there giving drugs and selling drugs oh yeah i've i've heard some horrible horrible stories about high high school teachers and you know to be be more careful of the teachers that we place in our school um that's basically about all that i know that may be wrong with the school system i think with what they have to work with i think they're doing a pretty good job right now uh_huh so you don't have any children in school don't have any kids yeah okay so this is probably a real hard subject for you yeah okay well i guess um we can [discontinue] our call now it was a joy in talking with you okay thanks bye uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i agree with that you were uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah from what i understand they act up pretty bad what uh grade is your daughter in uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh no uh_huh they always had a paddle in our school i know uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah wasn't that what part of the lottery is going to go for if we approve it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh no really ooh uh_huh uh_huh um oh i do too i think they're doing real good job but then what do i know i don't have any kids no none at all oh yeah okay well it was good talking to you too we'll see you bye bye uh well i i guess it's a subject i haven't thought too much about uh i don't know if there's so much wrong with the public schools uh as much as we're expecting too much out of them minnesota wisconsin yeah uh_huh yeah well it's it is getting very expensive to run schools so they've got computers now that you got to train on there's just so much uh more and less money to do it with right yeah yeah yeah i i i guess that in uh talking on a lot of the things as far as the discipline in the schools i i think they're expecting schools to discipline the kids and uh i think it should go right back to the parents if you don't train your kids right then right yeah yeah yeah i i know when i uh was going to school it wasn't uncommon for a teacher to strike a student that was [misbehaving] i mean they do that now and they could probably lose their job yeah yeah right right yeah it seems that'd be a subject that i i don't have much to say on yeah uh_huh yeah right right yeah i don't know maybe they should sit back and and kind of uh decide on where the money's best spent i know in a lot of cases uh different districts like to have nice fancy schools and maybe they should be a little more uh uh concerned with paying the right people to teach and and be uh satisfied with maybe a little older school uh_huh yeah yeah well i i know uh where i came from we didn't have a very uh rich community and uh high school that i went to was very old and uh as far as i know it's still there they've expanded on it but they've never built a new one and it's probably fifty sixty years old or or better and i don't foresee them uh building a new one for a long time because they can't afford it uh that might be a lot to do with it i know a lot of it here in my state i'm from mississippi i'm not sure where you're from minnesota okay well a lot of it in mississippi here has got to do with funding problems with our educational system a lot of it's due to money and they're trying to spend money where we don't have it and there's a lot of things we need that we just can't afford well it is right that's true and a lot of it lot of it has to do with uh salaries too speaking of money cause if you can't pay the right people you know they're not to be able to do they're not not going to get the people that can do a good job right right i feel the same way a lot has to do with how the kids were raised at home and then when the kids get to school they try to take away a lot of things that they can do to discipline the kids i mean they've so severely limited what disciplinary action you can do exactly right lose their job and big lawsuit and all that i feel that's got a lot to do with it people aren't as afraid of [misbehaving] as they used to be really we we've talked some about it in my state because we've had a lot of uh our governor that just got thrown out of office was trying to be real big on education but he wasn't and a lot of his problems had to do with money mostly i know a lot a lot of if you have more money it's just logical that you can provide a better school system and unfortunately there's not many places to get that money then if you don't have qualified teachers in the different i know one of my physics professors at college has addressed this that most of the teachers at the elementary and high school level aren't scientists they're teachers and they may not know a lot about what they're teaching where they may have just had a teaching major and then had some social studies courses and they're trying to teach social studies and they don't know a lot about that where maybe a physics professor he my professor was a physics professor and he said a lot of teachers teaching physics today have no background of physics at the high school level so therefore they're teaching from a teacher's point of view and not from a [physicist] point of view and that causes a lot of trouble right exactly because i mean here in the town i went to high school one of the there were four high schools in my county one of the high schools was blown away by a tornado so when they rebuilt that school they had a a top of the line high tech school there and the other schools were built back in maybe the fifties or early sixties and then when uh the evaluation committees came through they praised the school that had been rebuilt while they were down grading all these other ones telling them what they needed to do to fix up this building and this and this and this and so it kind of would make you think that we'd all be better off if all the schools were blown away by tornadoes and we had to rebuild them right exactly okay what do you think of the public school system first off do you have children that are in it oh okay well then you should be a good one to know because i my children are grown now i now have grandchildren in the school system so uh i don't have [firsthand] experience right now with it so what do you think right that's right right yes it is i i agree with you that they're starting children so much earlier on things because our grandchildren we have a uh fourth grader and then we have one that's in kindergarten and and i know the fourth grader is doing stuff that our children was doing were doing in the fifth and sixth grade you know it's amazing to me and stuff that i didn't do until i was in junior high which of course shows my age is that scary right now yes correct are you finding that uh since you're doing substitute that you're wanting to do full time um i have a friend that's a teacher that one of her complaints is she can't teach because she's so busy filling out all the forms and and are you do you find that uh_huh uh_huh be uh_huh coming up uh_huh right well i i know that this again this this friend uh is in the plano school district and she teaches uh uh it uh emotionally disturbed children and she says she has um six graders in there that are reading on the level of the second grade and she says she's getting very frustrated and very depressed because the school is [pressuring] her to pass them on even though they're not ready but because evidently you receive a certain amount of money when they're passed on or something i didn't quite understand it and uh i have children that are in the plano public school systems and i am a substitute teacher at this point looking for a full time job in the public school system so oh uh_huh uh_huh well i think the public school systems are doing a good job i think they have a long way to go yet but i think that um they are starting to head towards more technology and getting the kids computer [literate] earlier you know my kindergartners were on the were on the computers and i think that with the way the world is today that's got to be done and i think that uh the schools now are starting to teach thinking strategies more than just giving them you know skills you know you don't just add one plus one you figure out why you're adding it and what you're going to do with it once you've got it together and i think that that's something that is drastically needed because most of these kids cannot think they literally cannot come in out of the rain you know and that just i don't care how intelligent you are if you be cannot make it function for you that intelligence is being wasted and uh this has been one of my pet peeves and probably why i went into education so i think you know they're they're trying to head them into teaching them to think and use the education that they have and i think that's very very important oh yeah oh yeah i tutor a girl that's in eighth grade and her pre algebra book is higher then some of my algebra two when i was in high school and it's like oh i going to take this home and study it before i can help you you know so they're really they're really moving them along but yet at the same time you know they are stopping and making them use it and function with it like they would need to do in everyday life and that's you know a lot of the things that we did in school i've never used and never will use and uh so i think that it's it's appropriate to teach them you know why they are learning this not just because the teacher says you have to learn this yes that's a well filling out the forms and also all of these uh statewide and national wide testing things so that they compare and you know you can as far as i'm concerned you can make a survey or test scores say anything you want it to say and it's just a matter of how you're going to interpret it and you waste so much time quote unquote teaching to the test to make sure that your scores are the very best they're possibly going to be you know that i think it's uh i think it's crazy personally you know the the whole first nine weeks of school is is used as a review but more than a review they're getting those kids [primed] and ready for the tests that are coming up in october so that you know your school district shines throughout the united states and i think that's totally useless i think you know there's a place and a time for all of the tests and [comparisons] but i think they've taken it to the extent now that it's just ridiculous it's like bragging on your grandchildren you know and everybody's kids are the best kids that have ever hit this earth and nobody else's children are going to ever live up to this and that's great but that's what they're doing with the school systems and they're wasting too much time on that i think uh_huh uh_huh yes yeah there's a yeah the bottom line is always money how big is provo that a little town or or a bigger city oh i talked to someone that was only a couple of thousand in her town i think yeah i forgot the name of the town i thought maybe it was you oh well anyway we're supposed to talk about education i certainly have some ideas since i'm studying it now in college i'd say first of all they need to go back to spending more time on the basic reading writing [arithmetic] in grade school because they really teach you about forty percent less than they used to and it shows up that's one idea do you have any uh_huh yeah it's plano uh improved greatly in the last twenty twenty five years that's for sure it used to be the pits and arlington is excellent now but i'm just speaking overall across the country something is definitely wrong and uh one thing they don't spend as much time just teaching reading and writing so a lot of kids are just being promoted from year to year and they truly can't read so i don't know how they expect them to uh pass history when they can't read anything you know even read a word problem in math so um that's definitely a problem another problem is you're going to keep the smarter people in the system too long paying the wages they do but um that is good about well it depends on where you are they're all so different that's another thing about the united states there's no national curriculum you know i mean what they'd be teaching in an arlington school they may not be teaching in a plano school and in the same school district you may even in an arlington seventh grade for instance you may have an english class you may have half literature for the whole year whereas in another one they're going to concentrate on grammar and give you a little literature it's up to the teacher in other words so that's kind of you know that's kind of odd to me it depends on uh what school you're in and who your teacher is actually or is how you end up overall arlington is good one of the better ones in the state so i guess we lucked out when we moved here uh_huh of course we have a slight problem in that uh the number of the [illiterate] in america is [mushrooming] at this point and uh you know where our kids might be in a great school we're still paying an awful lot of taxes for people who are on welfare and unemployment because they can't read you know so i don't know i just read about that the other day and i had never even thought of it actually it makes sense to a certain extent because sometimes like a third grade teacher will get kids from second grade that didn't even learn what uh they should to do the work that she is supposed to teach you know and according to her plan so i guess if there was a national curriculum we'd at least have a certain amount that all kids would learn but uh we actually rank forty ninth in the world as far as just plain literacy goes you know that's that's pretty low that there's forty eight countries ahead of us that have more more citizens percentage wise that can read and write so um unless we want to keep paying paying for these people that can't make it in society we're going to have to do something i don't know obviously nobody's smart enough to have figured it out yet so i probably can't but i do think that we have to cut out some of this [folderol] stuff and go back in the first five six grades and just keep going over and over and over until most of those that are capable can at least learn to read and write because they can't even get the menial job without being able to read something nowadays you know uh you can't you can't even work an answering machine if you're at work and had to get a message or something you know or fill out an application to work at mcdonalds if you can't read so uh i think that's that's a start at least going back to the basics in the early grades and um they say that the average english student nowadays does at least fifty percent less reading and writing than they did twenty years ago and that's a big jump did you go to school in plano through high school um um it's not one of the bigger ones it's probably um i compare it to the size of plano maybe a little smaller plano texas oh really no uh_huh um i don't know i'm pretty i think i'm pretty satisfied with um i i grew up in plano and and my dad is actually on the school board there so i kind of kept up with a lot of things that went on yeah oh yeah uh_huh right right so do you what do you think is good about the schools yeah uh_huh grammar yeah uh_huh uh_huh so yeah that's the thing is just to look at the school system in the area that you move into before you uh_huh but do you think that there should be um nationwide um curriculum uh_huh right um yeah who do you think it should be done through uh_huh right uh_huh yes yeah i believe that i did uh_huh uh okay uh so what do you think about the school system uh why did you choose a private school public school oh has he then how does he like it so he's been there all the time how big of a school is it a hundred per grade that's a good size kind of gives them the you know i get a little leery of the real small ones that they don't get much interaction with kids but uh so they don't that's good uh_huh huh right still enjoy the right uh one thing i think i've noticed is uh my oldest is in kindergarten so i'm in a little different [ballgame] i'm just starting her but uh seems to me that uh kids these days uh can really get away with murder and the teachers don't have as much aren't respected as much and uh they have to be so careful of the things they do and say and uh makes me a little nervous that uh students don't seem to show that respect and no heavens no no you wouldn't and uh the things they can say and do to a teacher and they do from what i understand uh i think that's wrong i think we need to get back to the show some respect and course i guess the teacher used to warrant that but right for other people and well how do you think that that's happened you think our society's just uh stopped talking out or this uh [generation's] just kind of changed a little bit uh right right that just isn't coming through is it no i mean i remember uh well it was a big thing when they let girls wear [levi's] we used to have to wear dresses and then you had to go to dresses they had to be a pantsuit and it was polyester and it had to be matching and yes exactly yes yes so it's really changed it's uh really kind of gone the rounds so i think that maybe that's effected it to some degree they say you kind of act how you're dressed a little bit so i do uh does this school your son goes to do they uh require to wear a uniform or uh_huh yeah there are quite a few of your well i think they're they're having a lot of trouble right now i know my son goes to a private school but uh i think they're big city public schools by definition are having a a tough time right now just from uh probably from budget cuts and and everything else going on well i had one that was needed to be able to be moved along at a at a pace a little faster than he was going to be able to be moved in public school so he's he has been going to private since kindergarten so oh he's loved it he is a senior in high school this year so he's yeah he's done it the whole twelve and uh so many years and it's been uh it's been really good for him uh overall on campus about twelve hundred but in the upper school upper four grades uh about four hundred and something so it's maybe a hundred per grade yeah it really is yeah that was we were kind of looking for one that would be a mixture and he's done he's done really well and just he was just ahead at an early age and i didn't feel like uh in what was available particularly in the first three grades and even in the fourth grade where they started what they called reach was still a pull out one day program and i just didn't think that was going get it i thought he needed to be exposed to a situation where he could push ahead uh every day but yet still be with his peers age wise you're just getting started yeah i know that's a big problem we wouldn't have thought of crossing a teacher when we were in school wouldn't have thought of it and and they'll stand there now with them toe to toe and yeah but a lot of times it's not being taught in the home anymore like it used to be basic respect for for [elders] and adults and particularly in in responsible positions have not uh i don't think have had that basic [upbringing] in a lot of cases and so then you wind up with little [brats] on your hands i guess i well the world changes so i mean obviously kids are not the same now as they used to be i mean they're exposed to a whole lot more things they have a whole lot more uh variety of things they they're that they see and do at an earlier age so life is not maybe as simple as it was at one time but but still i think it goes back to a commitment by the parents to to teach uh basic values and basic uh respectful of uh of authority and i just don't think that this doesn't always get emphasized anymore uh yeah had to wear dresses didn't you and when it was skirts it was like get down on the floor and we hold the ruler up here and it's no more than so many inches above the knee because it was mini skirt time back there at one time yeah i think that probably does have have something to do with it and it's also no they do not do uniforms although one where he was between like second and eighth grade did um serious problems in the public education and what can be done about it uh well i that's funny because i just um quit my job to stay home with my kids and um i was a teacher for seven years in the public schools so i know a little bit about it not a whole great deal well um there there's some there's several it's such a a broad you know topic that you need to boil it down but um one that um i thought was a problem that i thought it was a serious problem that i'm not sure it's being taken care of right now uh was like bilingual education for um different um minority groups and like asians and um uh mexican americans and and just people in general that speak other languages that sometimes come from other countries or coming from different areas and they and in this area and um as the school district i'm not sure how to go about it because it's hard to get one teacher that speaks all these languages and so most of these children are put in um either special ed or a bilingual program and then for just a small amount of time and then they're into their regular classrooms the [remaining] of the part of the day and so the teachers are not sure how to teach them math when they don't read or speak english and so um a lot of the money isn't put into that and so these children are just kind of sat in the corner and um you know there's only so long you can do that and to me that seemed like a big problem in the school districts and a lot of the teachers it it was not the teacher's fault a lot of the teachers were just not getting the [backbone] or support that they needed or the materials or the extra help that they needed for these specific children yeah yeah yeah oh yeah oh definitely definitely and it and it teaches language too which is really good um uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh definitely yeah yeah right right yeah yeah well i know richardson school district has a has a wonderful program in the remedial reading um where you know of course all the children are tested in some time portion of the year and and uh some children who need extra help are put into this um reading program and it is just excellent it is i wish that all the children could be exposed to that program you know and i i know that there are some parents that say how do i get my kids in that and yet they don't qualify but it's unfortunate that they don't qualify because i think everybody would benefit from these programs it is excellent so i have two little ones and that's why i i quit my job uh you know i've been teaching since they were gosh [newborns] and and it just wasn't adding up and you know being a teacher and you see all these parents who are working and working and working and just you know don't have the time time time time it was kind of getting to me where where i'm doing the same thing and so um you know my children are getting older and i was missing out on a lot so i just decided to stay home for a while i don't know how long all right well what do you think oh well tell me about it what are what are the problems with public education uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh right do you find that those parents um i've seen the same thing and heard the same things and at the same time i've heard that it's even harder when both parents are required to work and can't spend you know that that time you know typically the mother was at home with uh the children and and at least could kind of keep up on what's going on and really society sort of [dictates] that uh you know both the parents work and um i know i've heard some people talk about just the fact that even as far back as the you know the second and third grade uh if the kids had you know proper reading skills or learned proper reading skills that that would make a lot of difference yeah well i work at a university and and it's really tough when we're uh uh i i uh work at the university of texas at dallas and uh we have uh some pretty selective admissions requirements for incoming freshmen and you know there are some students who are in the top ten percent of their class even some who are maybe you know in the top ten of their class and their s a t scores are very low and a lot of it has to do with their uh their reading ability you know their their language and it uh makes it tough because you know when they come in with scores that low they may be uh good students but they just haven't achieved to their [fullest] potential and they're going to fail unless some sort of remedial uh education is given to them so and then it then it comes into well who's supposed to give it to them the colleges and universities or are they supposed to get that back in the high schools and the junior highs yeah yeah it sounds like it so how many children do you have at home oh yeah well that's good i uh spent four years as a university professor and yeah oh do you really that's great no kidding i did i did uh well i was pretty young i was uh i had never intended to do it and i was uh uh given the opportunity after i'd started a management consulting firm to teach in in uh uh one of the business schools in the california state university system at any rate uh the topic is fascinating because one of the things i've done for the past few years is uh research the problem from the point of view of uh uh what appears to be working best and how you can explain it theoretically you may be familiar with cooperative learning have you ever well the cooperative learning is a technique that was tried initially to [integrate] the public schools and uh what what it involves basically is the use of peer groups and the uh teacher becomes a uh a sort of a consultant resource person to the cooperative learning uh to the learning [cooperatives] i guess they're called and there are uh some fairly sophisticated approaches that are used in the high schools with point systems and things like that so that people uh gain a [competence] with respect to the material uh i think that the combination of uh technology and techniques like that together with marketplace forces will bring about a revolution in the way we learn uh i think there is a direct threat to vested interest in the public school system uh that will stand in the way of that progress being a little faster uh school systems are in too many states dominated by administrators and uh both teachers and parents uh complain about the uh uh the cost and [ineffectiveness] that results so my feeling is that uh the the problem is is uh significant there are plenty of good people uh available to uh offer people educational experience but that we just have to [reallocate] and [reorganize] the resources to do it and uh i think certain techniques and technologies will influence all of that as well as research uh uh of the sort that people like me do looking at theories of behavior and how they can be used to improve performance particularly uh [accelerate] the the pace of learning and my feeling is that uh those kinds of things will solve the problem eventually i don't know what form it will ultimately take uh uh but i think that the future is pretty bright because people recognize that we're paying an enormous price for uh inferior quality when the people involved really aren't inferior so it must be the way we're managing the process that uh i i don't i don't think it's it's a matter of of uh talented people to do it both as quote unquote students and as teachers but clearly what's happened in this country is the school system's been asked to assume a great many responsibilities in the past thirty years that weren't [existent] uh you must see kids with real significant problems uh in some cases uh course i always see the i don't know how hard how hard is it uh in the public school system in iowa city is it is it uh deteriorated a lot do the people say are they pretty happy with it or right even in utah well utah's a place where you wouldn't think that problem would be very severe yeah you so you saw a fair number of troubled kids yeah yeah oh really i i spent three years i'm teaching in public schools and elementary school uh_huh i taught in utah and uh did you teach in california uh_huh you sound pretty young for a university professor uh_huh uh_huh well you can you can tell me a little bit more about it because i don't think we did that in utah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah i see what year saying yeah i totally agree oh yeah uh_huh well i i haven't taught in iowa but i've taught in utah and uh people there were saying that the way that the schools were going a lot of people were going away and going to private schools or else going to home where they taught their kids at home or you know anything but the public schools and the ones that did have you know the kids yeah well well uh maybe it was the area i was in but a lot of schools had a lot of transient uh families and a lot of families who were on the poorer side and yeah i mean like you said how they were the schools are doing more things for the kids they thought than they were thirty years ago i mean they were the school i was teaching at the the year i left they were considering providing hot lunch for or hot breakfast for the kids as well as hot lunch and our topic today right and now i'm sort of don't know if this an advantage or disadvantage my wife's a school teacher so no you go right ahead because i have a lot of strong opinions on it too my wife teaches seventh grade and you know there is a lot of serious things wrong with the school system today and the teaching system i think the i don't think the teachers get enough support quite honestly but uh for example my wife she has kids that are on drugs and of course like everyone she has kids that get pregnant even even in the seventh grade plano school system but to give you an example uh you know one of her kids will come in and he's you could tell he was just bombed out on drugs and uh she sends him to the principal's office and the principal sends him right back or her right back and says hey your problem you take care of it you're not allowed to send them home you know if you do that then your [allocation's] cut from the state or the feds or whatever your your you have to have a certain amount of kids in your class every day and it's it's it's a numbers game i don't think that's right if they're especially if they're [interrupting] the class and preventing other kids from learning yes sure sure oh yeah my son had such a tough time in uh the school he went to but there was through it wasn't all the school's fault it was his fault also but we put him in a private school in richardson and that that cost more that was five thousand dollars a semester for three semesters that was more than his college tuition was but uh it had to be done at least it took care of him and uh threw him in a good learning situation where he did participate and uh want to learn something but i'll tell you what there's a there there are a few [faults] to say the least in the school systems today yeah i think we have that problem dealing in most areas which is unfortunate you bet you bet sure well teachers you know they have a a tough row to hoe so to speak they just always fighting the system i don't know if it's better than any you know we came down to texas from the uh new york area we were there for a short time but my wife is from new york and she was born and raised there and educated there college and everything and i think you know the schools in the east are really a whole lot better than the schools in the south i don't care where you're from and they they i don't know if they learn more but they certainly uh they have a tendency to learn more and in that part of the country there is all nationalities uh yeah something about the school system here well then i'll uh i'll walk [softly] yeah what school system does she teach in oh wow well i think it's more of a there's a bigger problem here than uh than discipline in the schools i think it gets back to the uh parental participation into the program um to give you an example both of my children are in the academy system in the garland school district and it's a public system however you'd think that it was a private school because i take it the best teachers and the best students they're taking top three percent that have tested out you know in the district and uh put them in this academy system and to get into the system's very difficult but once you're in uh they have they have self paced programs and so you have students that want to learn and uh you have teachers that want to teach and you have parents that are really interested in the children and basically uh there's probably some discrimination if you want to say that uh because most of the people that are in the academy system uh are [caucasian] and because you have to test into the system and most of that's not all true but i'm saying a large percentage of them are and also the other large percentage is is that all the parents just about of these kids uh have college degrees at least one parent does and so there's i think that uh that's my justification for saying that the parents that are that are pushing their children at home even if they don't know what their children are learning they're they're saying do your homework let me see it don't get in trouble at school or we're going to be all over you yeah yeah i think what we've done is um um especially looking at um the south dallas area is that we're trying to bring the education level down to the lowest level so that the lowest level can succeed and um that also probably crosses over into business because now businesses also say that if you're not don't have the proper education uh including uh exposure to high tech fields such as computer technology if you can't use a computer today and do word processing and do uh data base management and do i forget all the other stuff financial management and all this other kind of stuff in your regular job uh you can't function you know so i think that the school system [proliferates] over to the business world and the business world then says we're not going to pay you unless you have the education and then and then then we what we've done is caused a big problem that [proliferates] itself okay well i have uh two kids i have one seven and one five and uh they're in a public school here in tyler and uh i'm happy with it i'm happy with the school it's great good teachers good curriculum uh they learn a lot they have no problems uh but i do live in the better well in the best part of the city though i live in you know the real [richy] part i guess i'm not but everybody around me is and uh but they're i have friends that live in the other the less fortunate or whatever you want to call it part of town and their schools are kind of [rundown] and uh older and they don't really offer as much i don't know as uh the school that my girls are in i don't really think that's fair you know uh but you know i'm happy with what they're in so go ahead uh_huh wow uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh yeah right also uh the the family environment you know you can come to south tyler where i live and you have got room mothers in every room you've got art mothers you've got every every holiday there's parties all these kids have these really supportive really supportive parents always up there for something you can go to north tyler to the schools and the parents might not could even tell you what their kid's teacher's name is you know uh that has a a whole lot to do with it you know as far as their learning i mean if the parents aren't uh you know willing to go with the kids and find out what they're learning and if they're learning you know they really don't have much of a chance at all huh why you asking you they just don't i mean i mean i'm i'm up there at my kids' school i know what they're learning and if they're up i call and find out you know is she having problems does she need help with anything no she's doing fine okay you know uh and i i know kids that their parents could really give a rip and the kids are not motivated they have no motivation from home so they just go to school and you know eh you know i'll get through the day and uh bring homework home and there's nobody to to sit them down and say you're going to do this uh just you know they they take a notion to do it they do and uh that doesn't work either you know they have to have guidance and uh they can't just have it at school and then come home and there's nothing you know uh_huh uh_huh yeah okay you go first uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well yeah it it's it's pretty much what i was going to say is there's a lot of disparity between different neighborhoods and what sort of schools go in uh i grew up in new york and uh the place or not new york city upstate new york and i went to uh the city of rochester school district and a lot of my friends were in one of the neighboring suburbs and it wasn't we weren't too far removed [geographically] from each other but the difference in schools i think was pretty substantial and uh one of the things that probably would have been better if is if the entire county had had had just one school system and that would result in some uh could result in more equitable distribution of money because what was happening was you know all the very rich people went out to the move out to the suburbs and the city had a very low tax base so they didn't have a lot of money to work with as a result the schools were [rundown] there wasn't as many you know of the nice supplies in science class that we would have liked there wasn't as many advanced placement courses uh when i was a senior that some other schools had and uh it it so i you know i think that one of the things one of the ways to to to help schools in general uh and get them all to a minimum level of of of competency almost would be to expand the size of school districts so you get a wider variety of people and the the problem with that is then then then people will either the rich people will either pull their kids out of the public school and put them in private schools or they'll move farther away to get better schools so you know it it's kind of you end up chasing like a dog chasing its own tail sort of yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah why is that why is that right right right uh_huh yeah yeah yeah i know that that that was a big factor for me i ended up coming out of of the public school system very well and was very good education uh ended up getting some scholarships to go to college and which has been you know which is really nice and i think the difference for me was that my parents were you know they were definitely they were always there was like well yeah of course you're going to study and do well and that's the way of course are you i don't know uh i haven't it's been uh well seventy nine since i was at school at high school and uh i've seen things change i don't know if i've seen things change enough that i can actually because i wasn't really like listening to the world go by back then so it's hard to compare you know what i mean but uh it seems like when i i lived in chicago i i've lived down here i hear the dropout rates from the schools and i certainly see how much i pay in real estate taxes every year and i begin to wonder if i'm really getting my money's worth i mean i i've seen so many different things so so many different bad reports coming out of the school system and i recognize that there are good schools out there i mean somebody's getting getting a good education because we continue to employ people but uh i don't i don't understand the uh i don't understand i guess why the schools seem to have such a high dropout rate in the big cities i don't know if i blame it on the school i think i think i blame it i think i blame it on a couple of different things i think i blame it on the school system uh yeah i don't blame it on the teachers in the school i although i think that i do know for a fact that some of the teachers that i know personally get paid an awful lot more than well they do quite well for themselves no not all school districts are well paid but there are some school districts out there that are very well paid i mean i know one family that's got they're both teachers and they both have like second jobs that they work in the afternoons they both work all summer full time and from their teaching job alone they pull in forty grand each i mean that family is making over a hundred grand and i'm i mean okay okay yes i agree that teaching our kids is important however these people who only work eight hours day at it from seven to three and they only work nine months a year and they get an awful lot of breaks in between and that's my tax dollars that i'm spending on that and i don't even have kids uh well having sort of the reason we're going through the school system i seem to be younger than most people who who talk on this thing i'm i'm just graduating graduating from college uh i didn't really perceive much of a of a problem with the school system however when you compare it to school systems like they have in japan and you can compare just about thing to japan and we look like we don't have anything uh it seems to be not difficult enough for students not challenging enough and just not generally competitive enough uh however i if it weren't for our needless uh competition with japan i i'd i'd think that that the school systems system works at a pretty good pace uh_huh right yeah huh right uh well i don't pretend to understand that either uh but i'm not quite sure that it's the kind of thing that ought to be blamed on the schools but then again i'm not quite sure where the blame ought to be put uh because the the dropout rate is in those areas it's high in those areas where also there's poverty and and crime and they all seem to go together and it seems like if you could eliminate one of of the parts of that circle whether where you have the dropout rate and crime and you know general poverty kind of conditions that things ought to get better so uh the other two they're all three social issues and could be addressed by the government in any ways and clearly to me is a kind of government thing to to fix but it's just like i i don't expect them to know which which which part is best to fix just like i don't know it's it's a complicated issue i i still don't think i would blame it directly on the school well that's i meant when i said the school huh well that's odd because i don't think the teachers in my school district uh were well paid uh_huh yeah well it it right yeah well that's true but there's you can always play games with uh talking about whoa look at this my tax dollars are paying for this this is wrong but when you're and there's really not much you can directly do about that i think that that if if there is a problem with the school system uh from it's been my perception that the school teachers and school officials are not that well uh paid that perhaps that might be one area that that could be improved uh you have other professional jobs and this is a profession and as a matter of fact it's a pretty big influence on on recently graduated from high school meaning like uh you know three or four years ago i'm a senior in in uh college now and uh i can't really talk too much about the problems with uh public education in detail because the school system i went to was uh really [superb] even though it was a public school system oh okay yeah i got a friend who goes there by the way i want to talk to you about that afterward okay yeah yeah it was a a it's a more or less a suburban school system yes that that was true for mine too uh although i i'm sure to some extent that money is part of the problem in the disparity but i don't think i honestly don't think that's the biggest part of it you know i think that uh i mean i know that in my town you know most of the most of the parents they're valued education and uh you know and so the students were you know to some extent motivated to learn i mean you know yeah that's true but but uh i think i mean even more than that even i mean if you drop out in high school you should still be able to read you know which it i mean it sounds like uh now i think maybe it's started changing in the past few years because uh they have of these uh sort of mandatory tests if you have to take before you get a diploma but uh but uh certainly before that there were people that you know would graduate from high school and could barely read uh and that's just sort of inexcusable and you can't really i i i mean i just can't even picture how that could happen you know except maybe to someone whose you know really badly learning uh disabled or something but these people obviously weren't yeah yeah yeah yeah and i think that's almost a bigger factor than anything else probably i mean i don't i think you know people just yeah and again i don't i mean they got to know the you know how qualified i mean i think it'd be interesting to you know to spend a couple of days just looking around an inner city school uh you know sort sort of maybe from elementary through uh high school you know just sort of to get a feel for what it's like i think that'd be an interesting experience but uh i haven't done that but i do i do think that uh i mean public education in general i think can work and i think it's a good thing yeah yes yeah yeah i mean i don't i honestly don't really think i could have you know done much better than i did in the school system i was in i mean yeah yeah i mean and and in the once you book junior high uh start junior high starting in eighth grade all the way through high school there were four levels well no i guess it in junior high it was still three then in high school it changed into four levels of uh of instruction in the major subjects uh which i mean actually i think that works pretty well and that that makes uh_huh really yeah i feel that my uh i'm a junior in college now and i go to tech georgia tech and i okay uh i've the high school i went to was uh was a good one also and i well i guess you could say one of the problems with the public education system is the disparity between different schools because the one i went to was you know i'm sure a a lot nicer than you know a lot of the inner city schools and the things around atlanta yeah what yeah that's true yeah and i'm also i mean in the in those places where uh like the economy is really bad they might you know be more tempted to to quit school and get jobs and that kind of thing because they need the you know money to put food on the table and stuff like that more than they would you know in areas where they yeah uh_huh yeah that's true right yeah that's hard for me to say since i didn't i didn't really grow well when i went to elementary school it it wasn't in a great area but i still i mean i learned to read started learning to read when i was in kindergarten you know so i guess i can't really i can't say what it would be like to uh grow up in a really [oppressed] region you know i guess the whole the whole environment and attitude towards school and learning is different for the people so i guess the problem is the the thing to do is to try to uh to get some kind of motivation to learn and uh_huh yeah uh_huh no i i can't say that i have either but uh yeah i've i've heard some i mean i've heard statistics and things that that compare a public education to a private education i mean within like within the same uh income groups if you compare the like the people that could have that could have sent their kids to private schools and the people that you know the people that uh did send their kids to private schools i think they compare you know fairly well yeah i i i my schools i mean there i have a lot of once once it seemed i got into high school they had a lot of uh [accelerated] programs and all kinds of stuff like that that i mean that makes a big difference cause i wondered when they're taking classes with uh with people that are really are interested in the the subject and stuff like that uh_huh think about this i do uh so you see a big difference then in before and now do you or a lot of testing uh_huh uh_huh i do too i oh i think that's awful i know what's the new criteria huh we have all kinds of testing and it's over and over it's i t b s or and uh just everything everything and they test test test i live in plano actually and i don't know if you've heard of plano but it's a very transient community a lot of people from everywhere it's just north of dallas and it's grown in leaps and bounds i we must have maybe a hundred and fifty thousand people now and most of them from other places uh j c penney's come down from new york and of course t i and xerox from rochester and we just have lots of people from everywhere lots of industry coming in and it's a very wealthy community uh not that i am but other people seem to be and i would love to know why but i mean they do they have i i would i really would i mean they just have beautiful beautiful homes and they have everything the kids only wear name brand things to school and it's one of these things well it does you know it really does because i'm a single mom and i have a thirteen year old now and uh you know it does i mean we do it to a point but uh not to where she feels different but some of them are very rich and so uh we just kind of have everything here and we have a very goal oriented population because their parents are and so i don't know how much of it is us and how much of it is texas but the kids are expected to excel in everything and it's almost impossible because you have so many children and just so many activities that everybody can't be first and they're expected to be you know their parents expect it the teachers expect it texas wants very badly to be considered tops in the school system and if you read national surveys they're far from it and so there's just a whole lot of testing and a whole lot of pushing to do well on these tests well not very well they bring home notes that say they have to get a good night's sleep and eat right in the morning before tests i mean they make a big deal to me the paper should just be put on the desk that day and say just do this you know i just feel they do better that way and yeah and and i have older children too that now are out of high school and they've always done this here i mean it's always been the same but it is it's getting worse and worse is more pressure for everything and i just think it's really awful and i i'm with you on that you don't hear too many people say this but i think it's a very long day and my feeling is that you know you're only a kid once and you don't want to spend your whole life in school uh_huh uh_huh and i don't think that's right i think we should do what europe does and include cultural activities in our school system i don't think i should have to pay for dancing lessons gymnastics piano i would like to see those things included in our school system because i think we should have well rounded kids not just book smart kids and so i just find this a real problem i think if they're going to be there all day they should find time one of my daughters once was out of school with [mono] in her junior year i think it was and she had a home teacher for like four hours a week and when she went back in six weeks she was ahead so what does that tell you it tells you there's a whole lot of wasted time and they could be using this time better uh_huh that's a very long day for kindergartners but i think that working parents have kind of demanded this you know because they don't they don't want to send them to daycare that's why they want them there because them somebody takes care of them all day we have them at one school like uh do you have children in school uh i have two that are uh now just about ready to graduate from college but i also have two that are just entering school uh uh well i think they're just pushing them entirely to fast uh well it seems to me that kindergarten is now the equivalent of first grade my son leaves the house at seven thirty and doesn't get home until three o'clock and i think that's such a long day for a [kindergartner] and uh i have a [preschooler] uh i was told by her preschool teacher that she thought maybe she was to immature for kindergarten and i thought well how mature do you have to be and uh there is a do you have the standardized testing now yeah no uh_huh oh yeah yeah you would like to know what they're doing right oh me well that makes it hard for you doesn't it oh me yeah it's hard to explain to them why you can't right oh dear right right how about the kids how are they coping with it huh right yeah rather than anticipating oh it is that's right my son said that came home and he said he said mom all we do is work we hardly ever play and oh likewise right wouldn't that be great uh_huh right is that right oh my gosh oh my gosh well for example in my son's kindergarten they're really finished at lunch time after lunch they have some uh i'm trying to think if they have recess after lunch and then they have naps or rest period and uh i think either send them home or do something a little more interesting i agree i wouldn't be surprised i doubt if they would say it was too long uh do you have the before school care at your school and the after school care yeah i guess uh uh it's an easy one for me i think that's uh there's something seriously wrong yeah uh i guess uh i think they've lost their [compass] and uh i'm not sure they know exactly what uh uh public education supposed to be for anymore but uh i voted with my feet and uh my kids go to parochial school so uh well one hundred percent of the uh customers care that's one thing everybody cares about the education the kids are getting and uh they uh take an active relatively active part which uh i mean if you're uh sending two thousand dollars that way every year you uh watch what goes on and you uh uh pay attention and participate and and you can influence the way things are yeah the [immediacy] just isn't there and uh uh i also think that one of the problems and actually i don't think this i think this is a cultural problem the uh problem with public education is really uh really a problem with the culture and i guess my evidence for that is the school districts in places like california for example where only a minority of the taxpayers have children in school and you can't get a tax levy passed uh people are uh reluctant to pass uh school tax [levies] even uh when the money is needed or would be well spent because it's uh they don't have kids in the schools i think that's a a loss of civic virtue and a loss of uh uh the cultural attitude that we used to have that education was first even if it wasn't our kids i think that's uh that's the principal problem is that uh people no longer see it as uh as their problem and there's an immediate problem right yeah yeah you know i i believe that the original idea of public education in the united states which i guess was controversial at the time of the constitution uh you know it barely made it i think it was added afterwards i think the real the principal was uh education for civic participation the idea was that everybody should have an education so that they would be a better voter and you couldn't pull the wool over their eyes well that's exactly what i was going to say now there seem to be really three reasons for education one is education for civic duty one is education for economic reasons and one is education for civilization i mean and i think that one that's what i used to think education was all about when i was a college professor and then i quit and got [disabused] of that notion but uh the uh uh now the only thing people seem to agree on is that education is uh an economic enterprise to train people for jobs and uh i'm not sure that people in the education establishment really know what their purpose is and i'm really sad to say this i never thought i would have but i really think that uh the educational establishment has become part of the problem and uh that's why i guess i'm sort of reluctantly uh in favor of these uh choice programs right that's what what is it that you are you know particularly upset about uh_huh what do you feel that your kids are getting in the parochial schools that they wouldn't get in a the public school system so you're saying that the taxpayer who also is really paying through the [pocketbook] for the education of the child may not be quite so conscious of the fact that they are paying the tuition for that child in the form of uh real estate or other taxes and and consequently they're not so motivated to get involved and make sure things happen the way they'd like to see them happen uh_huh right right it troubles me too that the priority seems to be with my particular purse strings rather than the public good and by definition for some of us at least the public good includes having an educated [populace] and then idea that uh you can make a sound judgment with respect to small votes in the at the local level or bigger votes at the national level uh it means that you've got to be informed and you've got to have a certain level of education to do the reading and the critical thinking involved to come up with a decision right right it has taken on a more profound and you'd think we'd notice it economic uh [thrust] yeah well i'm glad that you added that one yeah i think that one's significant right well i i agree with everything that you've said so far and the only that i'd want to add is that i'm a little more in contact i think with public school teachers than perhaps you are uh except as a parent of your child and the sense that i get from public school teachers that i know is that they are very conscious of what they feel they should be doing and they are the three things that you mentioned but they find that they are also being asked to do a bunch of other stuff which they think is only [tangentially] related like consumer okay i'm here how do you feel about public schools uh_huh yeah uh_huh right uh_huh well that's interesting i have a sister who used to live in [kennesaw] georgia and uh she has a young boy actually has two boys now but only had one when she was there and she complained quite a bit about their school system there and right right i'm i can't really say much about the schools up here i really don't come from here i'm only up here temporarily on an internship but uh i live in orlando florida usually and the schools down there from what i know are not bad they're pretty good but i know that in some i know in a lot of rural areas they're not that good for example i have a brother in north carolina and he says the schools there are are incredibly bad uh just terrible huh wow that is slow uh_huh what do you think's wrong to cause that yeah uh_huh yeah perhaps yeah yeah yeah that's that's one thing i worry about there you go uh_huh yeah probably quite a few black people up there and and oh is that right oh okay yeah but you know it it's you don't want to seem racist or prejudice or whatever but then again yeah there is no [denying] that that sure you know teachers you have to admit that teachers have to slow things down for people who don't understand especially if there's not a very well developed special education program at the school that's right you can't do that right see i grew up in nebraska and the school that i went to there was fantastic it i i really consider myself very very lucky uh we had a school that had classes probably about the same size you're talking twenty seven thirty kids to to a class but yeah we [zipped] right along you know i i was i was doing [mathematics] fractions and division and [multiplication] by the third grade easily uh uh_huh but you're right you know with all this don't hurt the kids and don't abuse their rights you've also taken something away from the discipline i think yeah right i was going to ask you if there if that was an option well our public schools are are really poor i feel uh i'm not sure where georgia ranks in the nation but uh we're toward the bottom and uh there's a lot of things that i see that are so obviously wrong that you would think it would be easy to correct but the system doesn't allow for the [corrections] how about you oh yes yes and cobb county is better than the county i'm in she was in cobb county uh_huh okay well that's great uh_huh well i feel that we're way behind uh i have a son that is in the fourth grade and uh they have just now taken up division yeah and uh my husband and i go to the store and we buy these math books and fractions and [multiplication] division things and i feel like uh there are several areas that we're just really really slow in and uh i don't blame the teachers as much as i blame the system it is well well for one thing there's not enough money in the school system and the money they do have they're not they do not use it [wisely] uh she my son's teacher has twenty seven students and that's certainly is a lot of students for one person to deal with on an every day basis uh but more than that i don't think that they have the authority to command the attention of the children and when you have two kids in that class that constantly keeps the class in an uproar and you're not at liberty to do something about it other than give them on campus isolation or send them to the principal's office it it you know it can it can really be bad uh also i think we have a lot of uh hispanics and we have a lot of uh the county i am i'm in the minorities are mostly hispanic no we're from a county we're from the county they [marched] in we're in [forsyth] county yes and we and there's very very few blacks uh so so that's uh i i hate to say uh it's not a problem uh because i hate to feel like they are a problem although they are but it is a problem uh especially in the inner schools inner city well and you can't put all the children in special education uh and if the parents do not care enough to take an interest in whether the homework is done you know uh_huh yeah but your teacher had control uh_huh yeah i i believe i was too uh_huh uh well it it really is a concern of mine because if we could afford it my son would be in private school we just cannot afford it uh if exactly smaller classrooms possibly exactly i would when i was in school uh i was supposedly in one of the best school systems in the country in [fairfax] county and i'm i think back and i i don't feel like i i could have learned a lot more and don't feel like i learned as much i've only been out of school high school for four years but i think i could have learned a lot more and i i worry about the children that are in the other school systems that aren't as good uh i don't know any particular ones but you know when when they say that one of the where i went to school was one of the best counties then i think uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i know uh i know with uh i think teachers need to be paid more i have a lot of friends who and myself who thought about going into elementary education and to teaching and then they looked and saw how much money they got and said well there's a lot of other things i could do making a lot more money uh_huh exactly uh_huh uh_huh and and i mean that their their day doesn't end you know when school's out uh_huh uh_huh i mean they they uh go home and grade papers lesson plans prepare for the next day i'm an interior design major yep so exactly in may yeah uh_huh uh_huh i think that's about it you too all righty you too thank you yeah yeah what what do you said you think there're some improvements what do you think the improvements have been uh_huh i think the problems that i see in the system uh are i i tend to see more in uh large inner city school districts that uh and i've i've noticed that uh suburban or rural schools tend to have much fewer problems at least what i from what i hear than than than the inside the city school districts and so i think the problem isn't so much the school system as in the things that go on around it yeah uh_huh well my my personal opinion is that so many parents especially those parents who are in a lower income and have to spend more of their energy on work they say well i don't have to teach my kids anything the school's going to do it for me and i think the school can't do that the school can only exist as something to help the parents out not something to take the parents' place um that that can be yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah um that you know kind of goes along it's it's a small enough school where people can know each other and and they work together to [thwart] off problems when you've got a high school with you know three four thousand students um there's just no it's it's very difficult to keep track of them all yeah yeah the i i find that i i haven't seen any cases where that's been very effective and that seems to be what people want to do is just you know put more money into it and i just don't have a whole lot of confidence in that i also you know i consider for example the the teachers the national education association you know they i would like to see them be more of a professional organization rather than a union because we you know we we need to uh instead of worrying about saving jobs or raising salaries i think we need to worry about uh how well the job's getting done uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh uh but you know back to the idea of parents my personal feeling is that parents need to be taking more responsibility i think the way i like to look at it you know a lot of people look at it is well whose job is it to teach the kids well it's the school's job i think whose job is it to teach the kids well primarily it's the parents job because the kids spend more time with the parents than they spend at school and the school is just there to help the parents so i think the number one responsibility is on the heads of the parents and and we need to get to the idea well if the kids are are doing poorly in school then the parents need to take some sort of responsibility and take some sort of action instead of just complaining about what the school is doing or not doing and sometimes if the parents don't like the way the school is being run the appropriate action is to have the choice to take that kid out of that school and put him in a different school yeah that's in small communities that's a difficult choice but then the small communities are the ones with fewer problems yeah it's it's the big cities that have these kind of problems and there i like to see the parents be able to have a choice saying i don't like the way this school is being run i want to send my child to some place where they'll be properly uh properly taught and properly uh trained some parents are but some parents don't have the opportunity to do that as easily you know people that are working two jobs or single parents uh that sort of thing uh_huh yeah uh_huh and you know what it feels like to come home after a long day at work you you want to rest for a little while and maybe the children uh don't want you to rest yeah and it's it's a difficult problem and it's one that basically i think in large measure it's it's it's up to the parents to take the responsibility for what's happening to their children's education i think uh_huh uh_huh yeah and here in texas if you don't like football you're considered a [heretic] yes that was going to be my guess uh_huh all right well thank you for the call uh well we don't have children but um from what our peers tell us um most of them do are not in favor of the way the dallas public well i shouldn't get specific the way the public education system is run here um they just don't feel that um the quality of the teachers and the quality of the uh curriculum and they actually send them to uh the suburban areas i i guess it's okay if i say the area plano um and i think one thing that the state's doing right now about the [refunding] i think is completely unfair it's not that i yeah yeah is that the basic reason you don't agree with it yeah yeah and they're already paying for it i mean i you know um i know we used to live in garland and a lot of the people there sent their kids to private school because um they just didn't like what was going on uh_huh i know it i mean i look at high schools like um what was the one in richardson j j [pearce] high school that just won the national academic some kind of um uh championship or tournament that they had for academics and that richardson is one of the school districts that would be hit by taking away from them that's a good way to say it the robin hood um approach yeah you know i used to work at e d s and ross perot you know the big joke sometimes um about him but the one thing he did a few years back in testing the competency of the uh faculty i still think that's a good idea because i don't i don't know did you go to school in texas and i went to school in chicago so i can tell you it's probably the same type of thing that um i had a really good education but it wasn't where i went to high school it was an inner city but it the faculty was very good right uh_huh which is understandable i mean i'd go where i would be compensated the most yeah i mean it's yeah in texas i don't know i don't if it's because of um the influx of minority uh in terms of that they're trying to please all people and their not [pleasing] anybody you know i don't know if that's what it is i don't know i'm not really yeah i mean i don't know if that's exactly it or not but it seems to be a little bit more um well i don't know schools in wisconsin i'm trying to think of some of the things i know about the schools up north compared to down here it just seems like down here that unless you're in a suburban entity their s a t scores their reading comprehension levels they're just not as high uh_huh uh_huh and mine was uh mine was completely um hispanic in terms of puerto rican uh [caucasian] and eastern european um it was very eclectic um but the teachers were what did curriculum i mean they had things like philosophy and journalism i mean but there wasn't a uh real for people such as myself that knew they wanted to go to school and knew they wanted to um go to a fairly competitive undergraduate program it wasn't what i would call a uh a career a academic [preparatory] path for college prep um as opposed to suburban schools like evanston illinois which has one of the largest you know uh student bodies in the country and the and the money base to go with it um i don't know i just look at high schools like plano east and west and the ones in richardson and i think well you know i would send a child there uh_huh uh_huh yeah i mean my high school did have honors programs and i was in it but it really you know in terms of i'm wondering how much different it was compared to in terms of city now there is a high school um is it w t t white or is it jefferson i don't know that much about the dallas high school system um but i have heard that the of one or two that are very good but out of how many you know fifty to sixty high schools it's just um and then i read the other day that plano was going to be the site for a possibly new um parochial or catholic high school something like to be one of the largest ones in the southwest or something yeah uh_huh do they see and are they in plano or are they in dallas okay yeah yeah that's one of the more um yeah i have some friends that uh have younger children and they send them to the montessori system um and when you hear what they're paying you just oh my goodness yeah twelve years and you add more than one child to that and you say oh my goodness yeah i this is true yes i can personally relate to that yes uh_huh i don't know i think one thing the united states does um my [stepfather's] from england and one thing they do their at least in in the section of london where he was from that they um they actually they call them [externships] but they actually the child's um they go by forms they don't go by grades and i guess i guess what would be the equivalent of our early high school nine tenth grade they call it the tenth of eleventh form um they actually are forced to take time off and pick an area of study it's [proctored] it's you know regulated and all that sort of thing um but they actually are supposed to go to the library and do their own thing on a particular subject and it doesn't matter what it is it has to be academic but they it's free of their choosing right in that one just for that one particular semester quarter or what ever you know that one quarter uh a study unit would be and i don't know i don't think we do enough of that here in terms of getting children to think independently uh_huh oh my uh_huh see yeah that's kind of what i'm talking about i mean um uh i mean we can only speak from personal experience and i'm not bragging either but it's the same thing i mean i took a p or advanced placement classes and there were things that i probably knew about in other segments but they just didn't offer them i mean they offered them in things like english and chemistry two things that were obscure to what i was interested in in terms of um a career um i think part of the thing about schools today is too is the way the families have gone down the tubes the structure that now teachers play police officers you know their parenting their [disciplinarians] you know and i'm doing all this second hand we don't have any kids in school or anything so i can't uh_huh isn't that something i mean are parents i mean my folks were divorced too but i can't remember ever i mean it was sort of just like uh you knew you had to study or you just didn't oh goodness i mean i wouldn't want to be growing up now a days that's one thing um but i don't know how you solve that you know those are social problems the academic problem i don't know i think of two or three things in my mind i think teachers should be tested and they probably would shoot me if they heard that and i know a lot of teachers um two i think that they should leave the funding or the money where the proven programs are and three i do think that parents need to be more involved i don't know i just it's probably easy to say because none of us have children but um i just yeah association yeah yeah mine too i mean and do they have those anymore i mean i don't even i don't have any uh but you know just the other day we were somewhere actually on saturday we were in the park cities ordering in a we were in a specialty uh food shop ordering something to send out of state and the man we were all upon the topic of adoption which may be in our future um if we're real lucky at any rate he was saying how he was glad that his two children one biological one natural um this had to do with the the adopted one which biological i mean one adopted one natural um that's irrelevant but he was saying that uh my husband said and what does your son is very good looking what is he well he's nineteen he graduated last year um but he's interested in theater and he's just going to richland and he said you know he said i'm not calling him stupid or slow he just he said he did really didn't want to study and he goes and you know he leaned over to my husband and he said well you know so and so he said when you have them if you get one what you'll understand is you'll just be glad if they don't you don't get a call from the police and he said our son mark you know blah blah blah um he may be have only been a c student but we've never had trouble with him he said and when you raise a child in today's society he you're just glad they make it through school is it see i don't even know that okay what do you think about the school systems uh_huh right okay what do you see as being a problem with the school system uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh yeah well i don't have children in school and it's been so long since i was in school myself i'm not really sure how to answer that when uh i don't know it seems that they're you know that that the difference is between each school i think if it was if it could possibly be standardized a little bit that it would be much easier to to gauge you know how uh a particular group of students was doing uh the curriculums differ so much and i'm not saying that that's bad necessarily but i think it makes very hard to tell where an actual problem is you know you can't really tell from a group of students if it's a if if it's the the teacher that's got the problem or if it's the book that's got the problem you know what the materials that they're using and everything that could be causing a problem uh_huh what kind of school is that oh okay yeah i think that's kind of a good idea because you know it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't divide people by by anything besides what they're interests are and it's a it's a learning environment if you're if you're interested in sciences and you're [grouped] with other people that are interested in sciences it seems like it would it would uh it would help yeah uh_huh okay what do you think about about sports in high school and about uh the competitiveness i've i've know i've seen in plano that there's a lot of really vicious competitiveness between the children at the different high schools and do you think that's healthy uh_huh yeah uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh oh okay uh_huh uh_huh now i didn't even realize that at all um right huh well i know they've got a lot of elementary schools well now what is [shepton] going to be okay okay okay uh i guess uh you know i really i remember what school was like when i grew up and uh you know back then i believe i really do believe people had more respect for teachers back then uh_huh uh_huh yeah i agree and i don't know you know i think some of that stems with the parents but i i think some of it also stems with just society in general because teachers aren't looked looked upon as you know like with as much respect as they use the to be because back then you know if you were a teacher people used to think oh you know that you know that's great and nowadays if you're a teacher it's like oh you had nothing else that you could come up with to do so you decided to go into teaching you know it's like yeah that too that's true that's true yeah that's true yeah my wife's a teacher but she teaches preschool uh_huh uh_huh that's right that's right and it seems to me like now it's just the opposite in in in a lot of cases you know uh right uh_huh yeah i yeah yeah and i also don't believe that you know uh you know physical punishment is is really the answer either uh uh because you know a lot of kids and you know they get that at home you know they don't need it at school either they need some other way of of discipline that's you know it's going to uh more or less you know snap the child around and and get them you know just just earn some respect i mean anybody can beat up on anybody else yeah yeah i guess it really would it doesn't matter what age the child is you know anywhere from preschool to you know teenagers you know you take away what they what they want and enjoy then they're going to pay attention to you that's true uh_huh uh_huh yes yeah yeah ooh you're brave uh_huh you know i i think maybe it might not be too bad of an idea i don't know if you've seen the movie where the the principal cracks down on the kids and he says okay let me know who all the trouble makers are and they're out of here and i'm wondering how practical that is to apply to you know to all the schools i mean i wonder if that would work or not or what kind of alternative they could provide for these you know troubled kids and trouble makers that type of thing uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's right yeah that's true right right yeah it it's getting to the point where you know where well you know it's kind of with both parents having to work it's really hard to uh to have the strength yeah yeah and then when mom and dad do give notice at home then you know they're too tired from working all day long they just as soon let them do whatever they want and don't bother me i'm tired and that doesn't help either that's true yeah that's true especially i think at the younger ages uh elementary you know i think maybe you know i hate to even say you know one teacher teaching a certain grade is is higher priority than another teacher but there's so much of of what they experience in their early years sets the pattern uh_huh yeah uh i'm also an education major i'm still in school and uh but i want to go into teaching special ed and uh i think there is a lot of problems in that area and i think there is problems all over with the education system whether it be uh elementary you know or even colleges you know have their flaws but especially in the learning disabilities because uh a lot of times you know teachers think oh this kid is dumb and you know they just not too many people have knowledge you know about this area of uh type of kids you know because there are going to become new and and they are starting to find out more research about uh this type of learning and so uh_huh that's right that's right they're they hire teachers who aren't even qualified to teach those kind of kids and they burn out so fast they don't want to teach them and there is not enough teachers who want to do that and they are starting to find out you know oh this kid might have a learning disability they test them and find out that they do and then it's just a growing field because more and more kids are being tested into that uh_huh right right and like everybody not just people with problems uh learn differently i mean you know one teacher can go out and learn how to teach but they only know one way and a kid might have problems you know learn that [comprehending] well what does that mean i think it's i think more teachers should uh find different ways be creative on their teaching so right uh_huh yeah exactly the grading system uh well uh i think uh well in a sense it's probably too easy but if it wasn't uh these kids you know i mean nowadays a lot of kids they just you know don't try they don't get the grades that they could and uh i don't i don't yeah i think well the field i want to go into grades to me doesn't mean much it doesn't tell you how intelligent you are how bright you are you know uh because i know somebody who is very bright and very intelligent but just doesn't get the grades and that's just because they have a learning disability uh so yeah i think you have a good point there where they don't focus enough on uh how they learn and what they are learning you know not on the grade right uh_huh yeah right and that's hard with a a large class you know with thirty kids you can't give them all your full attention but and i i wish there was a way i'm not sure that okay what do you think right uh_huh yeah well the class sizes are too large and uh they don't pay the teachers enough like in dallas they have too many administrators they are top heavy and uh they uh yesterday on the news they had some problems with the the texts having uh mistakes in them and uh a lot of them weren't like the history books are not historically correct but they covered up a lot of the bad things that have happened well i think they need to do whatever they can like uh i think uh massachusetts put a priority on education and uh bringing in industries recruiting and they made a lot of difference in that state and in texas i think we are like twenty ninth in spending you know and they put through this robin hood bill but it doesn't change the amount of spending overall it just [distributes] the money more evenly and so they need to do that they need to increase spending they need to uh make it so that the teachers want to stay in teaching because most of the time the teachers spend disciplining the the kids instead of instead of teaching the subject now so uh_huh uh_huh yeah and uh i think they changed the way the ladder is now that it takes uh longer time for you to qualify for a higher salary and uh it's it's uh more subjective than it was before so uh i don't know you know i don't know what incentive a teacher has to stay in teaching i just have uh one daughter she is six now she is going to richardson public school uh_huh right right but the worst school districts are dallas garland carrollton uh coppell really doesn't matter much it's it is not at the bottom and the best is uh highland park richardson and plano she is six yeah uh you know she is learning to read some and she can do a little bit of math now oh uh [valleyview] mall yeah you know all the calls are supposed to be from a different phone so that is where i am and they have a lot of pay phones here and i don't know uh i don't know they cut on the uh since mark white passed that bill about cut back on that extra circular activities that may have improved a little bit because uh i was talking to a lady the other day and that is the first thing she said her both her children were in band and they quit and she said the band teacher acted like band was the only subject that he was taking and he was suppose to spend all of his time on band right and he he was taking honors classes in all his other subjects he goes to the lewisville school district and uh you know it is just ridiculous so he just quit simple as that everything should be equal you know and there is no reason you already spend all of that time in band there is no reason that he should practice more than an hour a day outside of band if he if he even has the energy especially in marching band uh i don't now my children are all grown but they did go through the texas school system yeah i guess it is a little bit do you uh yes but it was in a smaller town and uh it was in a town where i knew uh an awful lot of the people and kept track of them and i think that made a difference no uh they grew up in uh a town in north texas in sherman do you have children here well i think plano has a fairly good system because uh uh well just looking by the uh some of the scores coming out uh my children well we did not uh they did not go to school until uh uh junior high but they were in sherman texas and one of my cousins was the principal but some of the problems i see now is i think uh some uh as i said my children have been out for quite a while but a lot of my friends have children and i can see a difference from between when my sons went through and what their children are doing and it seems to me that uh they they're spending less and less uh uh well my children had to have a lot more respect for their teachers than i think the the the students now days do and i think there's the uh that respect hasn't uh carried over and uh uh they they're not being taught respect uh unless and i don't know what you can do about it other than you know that is one of the the one of the examples i see no i think also too you're you're right in the fact i think parents there is a lack of participation among parents it's uh too often the school is used as a dumping ground yeah uh but you're right i hadn't thought about that but uh well also you're they don't go to the open houses to the the parent teacher you know there is just a very small minority of uh parents that do that that is i think uh one of the things that i see of course this is uh uh again an [outsider] view is too often that the school system is set up now uh based on the way it was for the last two hundred years on uh a [gregorian] society uh culture and the life styles now like you said there are too many two parent working parents and uh a lot of them work uh there is not your nine to five shifts there a lot of shifts and it's a shame they cannot set up school systems that uh are not based on a monday through friday uh kind of you know a job or uh i wouldn't mind seeing evening you know uh utilizing the schools uh opening up an evening uh you know a morning school and an evening school that way the the buildings would but now i am looking at other areas where they're having problems with over crowding and uh of course you you'd have to have more teachers for that also but you could utilize the buildings just as well and it would be based on the life styles of their families so that's uh you know that's just a possibility and again i think also a lot of times they they there needs to be more emphasis on some of your basic education uh reading skills especially [brigette] this is maureen yeah if there is something wrong with the school system sure right oh are you there okay well you know i was listening to uh sixty minutes i think the other night they had andy [rooney] on there and one of the comments he was making is that uh you know part of the problem is uh parents and uh their lack i guess of uh interest in the kids in school and stuff basically until we change that uh we are not going to have the kids uh get any smarter because uh you know they're not encouraging their kids to do well in school so otherwise we are not going to ever achieve a good education system unless we really get the parents involved uh_huh yeah right um yeah oh yeah yeah that's kind of a shame that uh we don't put emphasis and money where we really should and we have never really paid teachers real well we have never paid uh other public servants like the police and such very well it is kind of a shame uh there are some times that i think that uh you know the quality of teachers may be improved upon i think what they did a few years ago was kind of a joke about testing the teachers and all uh i think i think that there they made some changes you know into uh the kind of courses that should be involved in education curriculum and uh trying to improve upon them uh somewhat but uh they've never really paid you know real well and and you know people have to pick an occupation that's going to support themselves it can't be all sacrifices and no you know salary you have got to live on something but uh_huh um yeah uh_huh yeah that's true and you know some people are much better test [takers] than others uh some people you know uh just really clam up when it comes to a test and they are so nervous about well is there is this a trick question and instead of being real straight forward and just trying to answer it they uh get themselves you know worse grades because they were so anxious about it and then other people you know aren't that upset about it and they test very well so there has to be different ways of of testing sometimes you know because uh that isn't always a real good reflection of if the persons learned it or not yeah you know uh i i wouldn't want to be back in school now i think it uh it's a real challenge and you know uh i think maybe the kids need more uh i don't know counseling or well they they don't seem to discipline the children like they used to now when i was in school i'm i'm only twenty nine and i i hadn't been out of college that long but when we were in grade school we you know if you got in trouble you definitely got [paddled] or you know something something was done and now they can't touch the children well it's really a combination the fact that so many parents refuse to let the school discipline their children and the fact that they let parents or or people file lawsuits for one thing i have a friend that is a teacher in houston and she says the kids can hit you kick you stab you and you cannot touch them and if you touch them then they can sue you and they can sue the school system i i think so i think so and i you couldn't pay me enough to be a teacher in a bad in a bad city and and and our town we're you know maybe thirty thousand people there's not a problem oh really yes it's unbelievable the things and of course the sweet little kids uh_huh uh_huh well yeah and the fact that they're not putting enough money into the schools you know and they don't even have adequate facilities is well isn't that the truth uh_huh uh_huh and and let the schools give them a little more you're right give them a little more support and a little more to work with and as these you know as the kids get older it's it's even harder yeah because then you know their minds are made up as to what they're going to do by then oh yeah yeah they see no point you know we've gotten away with it this far yeah oh yeah yeah and it just frightens me when i think about having a child and sending them to school where they're they're selling drugs in in grade school i can't imagine i mean we wouldn't even have known what they were talking about let alone take something or you know sell it buy it i i just can't imagine it has has come so far that there's little kids dealing drugs and older kids dealing to the little kids and yes oh my goodness um and when we were little when we went to grade school we lived in waxahachie and little bitty town you know little bitty school and there was i i i just it is beyond my comprehension to imagine grade [schoolers] with weapons and and and gangs and it's just you might as well just have a police file on them you know because you know you you learn who the leaders are and you know what they're doing and it's you can't do anything to them uh no i don't i'm a college student actually no kids yet uh_huh right uh_huh pretty expensive right uh i think that there's a lot that could be done to improve them i uh being i am in college and stuff you get to college and you see you know it just seems it seems like that we ought to be doing a lot of the things that that are done in college i guess should be taught a lot earlier in school like in math and science and stuff like that i mean i uh am a math major and when i was in high school you know i i think i could have handled a lot of the work that i've been doing here in college at a much younger age i believe that that's the way that it use to be in this country a long time ago and that it probably is in a lot of other countries too because your your math professors or what whatever will always go yeah i was doing this stuff back in high school and you're like well you know then why the heck is it you know my third year in college and i am just now getting to it it just seems like that they the curriculum in the public schools is just too soft or something right right uh_huh uh_huh right right right work at his own pace right uh_huh right right well i agree very highly with your point about the the uh public schools have gotten away from the real sort of hard core curriculum and into areas that are more should be dealt with at home or in the church or somewhere else well uh i think that uh the majority of the problem with the school system uh is similar to the majority in a lot of other areas in it's a question of economics and school system is not designed to be successful uh by that uh it's not really profitable for good teachers to be in the school systems uh if there are good school teachers good really qualified people as school teachers it's because they're dedicated not because they're rewarded for doing so uh the the public school system uh needs to be viewed i think kind of like the highways and hospitals and everything else it's part of the infrastructure it's something that has to be and has to be you know highly maintained in order for the nation itself to be successful and when you uh when you neglect part of the infrastructure be it the roads or the schools or whatever then everything kind of follows with that it's just a question of how long before you pay the price huh huh yeah i'd heard something as a matter of fact uh kind of along those lines with i think it was the new york school system where they suddenly instituted a sort of market system where uh basically the kids were allowed to take whatever classes they wanted to and go to whatever school they wanted to and it was up to the schools to attract the kids uh and offer stuff the kids wanted and what turned out happening this was like area of the country with the highest drop out rate and all of this kind of stuff and what ended up happening is people didn't just take fun classes or anything like that uh it ended up that uh the rate of of graduating students went way way up and they ended up taking real courses but it was because they wanted to and cause they chose to instead of were being forced to and and the the people were forced to compete and and the good teachers were getting the students and that kind of stuff sanitation engineers yeah and i uh_huh yeah i think there's something to that yeah yeah i tend to agree uh well i remember now it's been quite a few years since my kids were in high school i'm getting that old but uh i remember uh being a little surprised at the uh the catalog of courses like instead of taking a survey course on american literature you had you chose from uh it almost looked like a college catalog and uh the courses were too specialized as you said and you just read you know they they take a whole semester long course on uh on one writer or something uh that's fine for college but it seems kind of silly for high school you'd be about the same age as my sons yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah i taught college for awhile not recently but uh yeah i remember i i was quite surprised at uh i mean you start [rejecting] things on that basis you end up [handing] uh everybody's papers back that's probably what we should have done uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i i guess the class sizes are bigger now i guess they must be uh_huh no right they need smaller discussion yeah uh_huh well i've been reading about some successful school systems and it does seem that parental involvement is the is the common uh factor and everybody's doing anything that works these days so that's probably uh one of the big keys okay um the one of the things that i've heard uh many people complain about the school systems was that they didn't feel like uh people were dedicated to teaching their children or their heart really wasn't in it you know so what they went and got a degree and and everything but it wasn't their not doing it just because they want to the teachers the teachers you know how do you feel about that yeah you shouldn't be doing yeah oh really right yeah what do you think about the the recent bill that was just passed you know where they're taking the money from especially the dallas area oh oh yeah i'm in dallas texas okay yeah they're taking uh the money from our schools here and distribute it uh some of the other [outlying] and and especially like west texas what what do you think about that because it's it's you know the money's coming from us here that live here and work here and uh_huh right uh_huh right excuse me yeah i agree you know yeah yeah it is plano yeah uh_huh oh really uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah yeah they call you all the time uh_huh yeah i agree right well i i i believe that the school puts a big demand on the on the teachers and the students for for the fact that they expect the parents to go out and a lot of times chauffeur or lot of times you know buy a lot of things that might seem unnecessary but it's unreal on the cost of sending a kid to school because of you know you spend your time voluntary and plus you buy a lot of extra arts crafts aids things like that [notebooks] for reports right projects oh my goodness so you really do yeah like uh all types of projects little bug things you know that uh_huh oh my gosh yeah right that's amazing because if every child does that what are they going to do with all that yeah uh_huh right uh_huh how do you feel about the plano school system you feel like it's pretty good compared to the others around you know richardson and allen and right oh really yeah money an real demanding basketball right yeah that's amazing that's uh that's a big difference uh_huh uh_huh right right that's wild well it's been good talking to you thank you i guess we're ready well i uh well it's been a long time since i've been in uh involved with public school systems uh my youngest girl has graduated and she graduated in eighty nine so uh_huh well i don't know if uh you mean they keep the children they want the teachers to keep the children longer hello uh what do you mean by that statement do you mean they want the uh the teachers to keep the children longer than they're supposed to or are they to train them in all [phases] of life really you mean just well the discipline starts in the home and carries over into the school when they are school age and and and i think the school i think oh that's well well it's just gotten uh completely out of hand as far as the violence in the schools and i don't know what the solution to that is at all i mean it's just uh to me it's [utter] chaos i don't know how some of those teachers function because uh they are being violated by the students and i know that there are some schools that are patrolled by um private police and even public police and and and they're not getting any satisfaction from that effort i think uh i don't know what the solution is if the government doesn't know how are the um there's somebody that needs to rise up and have a plan that is going to resolve the many issues that are facing the public school system and i wouldn't know where to start since i haven't been involved in the public school system that much when my children were in school they were in a in a private school system so i mean we just i mean they just knew that they had to toe the line otherwise they would uh suffer the consequences and and that was enough for them i mean they just were very responsible kids and i didn't have any problems with them and i believe that uh that starts in the home and then if the children are influenced i guess they're influenced by their peers and uh monkey see monkey do a lot of times and it kind of well i guess that's the bottom line if the children do know right from wrong oh really that's great so much more complex yeah great yeah i've been hearing about that goodness um hum oh oh goodness that can be a disadvantage to the kids oh no get it that's a good idea well great um hum that's right yeah um i remember i mean during my i went to a private school during the junior high years which was uh you know really during the development time of my life and it was a small school we had like maybe twenty people in junior high i mean in my class like in seventh grade we had twenty in them and whenever we moved up to the eighth grade we had like twenty or twenty five in the whole eighth grade and we had two different classes so the ratio was real good um as far as the we had real good teachers and i learned a lot i feel like that if i had of gone to a private school during junior high i probably wouldn't have developed such good study skills because um i thought the private school was difficult i mean it gave a lot of homework and everything and it really helped me develop my skills my uh my [memorization] i can memorize things real well now and things like that but and then whenever i got to high school it was kind of a disadvantage to me to the fact that i was going from a class of twenty to a class of five hundred and uh and i do feel like that i was socially [withdrawn] to a certain extent because i didn't know anyone and i was a freshman in high school you know and i was the [peon] but uh it probably took i don't know maybe the first semester to get to get to where i was really comfortable with school because um i hadn't been in the public school system for so long and it is just it's really different it uh the children there are a lot a lot wilder than what i was used to i grew up in a very protective home and then whenever i got to high school things were just so much different especially nowadays i mean even the high school that i went to just recently they put up these little metal detectors at each door when you walk in to make sure you don't have a gun and things like that and i mean it's it's gotten worse i graduated about two years ago and even in the past two years it's gotten i mean it's just increased the the crime and the the drugs and the violence and everything have just increased enormously so um um hum golly um hum oh goodness oh no okay well i have one child that is in public school now i have three children that went to a private school and then we put them into public school system and i think we did them a big [disservice] by putting them in public schools um i think that they my child now is in public school and we're getting ready to put here into a private school because of it i just don't feel like they're getting enough out of it you know for yes yes i just don't think that academically they're and the school systems here is supposed to be really good they have i don't know if you're familiar but texas has uh oil money that finances their school system and there there's no state taxes paid here so the money from the taxes from the oil go to pay go towards the schools and the running of the schools so they're supposed to have a really good program but uh i don't know i just feel like my daughters are in college now and the last three years of their life they went to public school and they made straight a and they're really struggling in college now and uh i think that has a lot to do with it i i don't know where where you can fix it you know what you need yes well you do that here too you pay higher uh property taxes for the area that you're living in depending on the school and the area you're in no it it supplements the schools that therefore there's no state income tax that goes towards uh the school systems because of that you know because of that but the property taxes that you have on your home depending on what area you are you know like they're higher in certain areas than they are in other areas you know but uh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh exactly yeah exactly well there's no disciplinary actions that you know can be uh taken against them at all yeah being friendly being friends with the kids uh_huh right i think that that's right i think i think a lot of that right there and and i think that that's where you come into the private schools the private schools have more power you know i mean because in public schools these people really don't have any authority to do anything or to really punish these kids in any way i mean they can't even hardly give them [detention] you know without having to call their parents and have their parents come in and all this kind of stuff i mean it really is a major thing no really exactly yeah to stay home is like oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh they send uh it because they send the report cards and failing [notices] and stuff home in the mail progress reports well see up in oklahoma now they do that but here they don't do that they give these progress reports to these kids my son is a senior and he failed a class this last six weeks and i'm like kevin how could you but he didn't even tell me you know and so i called the school and like i didn't even know that he was failing this class and like but we sent the progress report home with him well do you think he's going to give it to me i mean you think he's he may be failing a class but he's not an idiot you know right right i know i well they have to have parental support you say you taught school for a while oh what grades did you teach okay uh and what general subjects okay okay uh not yet uh my first son is uh about two months old now you know but i'm presently going to college um do you see anything in particular do you see you feel is wrong about the school system the way it's running now yeah yeah yes uh_huh uh_huh yes yes uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yes huh not even a g e d was required a g e d wasn't even required or was that available yet huh uh_huh uh_huh yes huh so teach a concept uh_huh yes uh_huh oh yeah yes well tom what do you think about our public school systems today uh_huh uh_huh no i don't so i am a little bit out of it i can look back to when i was in school which is getting further and further away and also i have a niece and nephew that are in school out in california and i hear a little a bit about from my sister about things going on yeah yeah they are moving to that out there yeah uh_huh i hear that they that in at least in the system that is going out uh in california where that i am familiar with that they do put families on the same schedule so seems like that could get a little difficult to do that but uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh yeah yeah yeah well i hadn't thought about those things but those are problems uh uh_huh uh_huh right yeah yeah there is no need for it anymore uh_huh uh_huh right yeah uh_huh yeah i did right i know of a lot of people that are home schooling their children you know just teaching them at home and and for lots of different reasons you know yeah yeah i know that a lot of them uh they hook up with like a home schooling system and they get together the kids get together for lots of activities outings and stuff like that yeah i think that helps yeah i wonder too i have mixed feelings about it but uh i know that uh you know i thought when i thought of problems in the school system it is not really the fault of the school system but there is a lot of uh you know it's just uh i know kids are exposed to a lot that uh you can't shelter them eventually but uh it's hard at a young age some of the pressures and yeah yeah okay well that's a pretty loaded topic well here in uh hang on just a second the dog is barking here in oklahoma we just went through a uh major educational reform we're uh that was a hot topic uh part of the problem had been there wasn't enough spent on education the classes were too large and we recently well we're we're through a proposition now where they're limiting class size to about twenty two i think and they've increased salaries and just done a major [revision] yes yes just about all oh well actually actually it isn't just i said yes and it really isn't we also well no we have a uh an [excise] tax on cars our car [tags] are very expensive average taxes are very low on real estate probably in the five to six hundred dollar a year range right yeah right yeah i i do have to tend to agree with you the only other problem with that is that it's difficult to attract people into the teaching profession huh yeah yeah i think that's that's the other thing here the benefits are very good for teachers where right right uh_huh yeah yeah that does i i think though you hit the the nail on the head when you when you said it's the attitude more than anything of the teacher profession the teaching profession uh and that that's something you really can't change even with money uh_huh yeah right right it's a it's a pretty big responsibility i mean to to teach uh_huh uh being a former drug user i uh i i guess i have to say at this point that i do approve of it uh because i know that uh in using drugs i was not a good employee and so i can see from the company's standpoint that there uh whenever you are an employee of the company you are using it's assets and uh you are also under their liability under the workmen's comp uh on my job we had a lot of workmen's comp cases and i work for a tire company modern tire and uh it's also a [retreading] plant and that's where most of our uh injuries occur and what we do is we'll have a drug test if an if a a break or a man uh has an accident then he's automatically uh given a drug test yes when he goes to the doctor the first time and so that kind of uh i don't know if it's been a deterrent or not because we have uh just started using it oh for the past year or so now we've let some people go uh that we was found that drugs were used in their system now i don't know how t e c would handle it they haven't pursued it you know uh if there's some uh problem i know there was one guy that we tested for [preemployment] for drugs who absolutely swore up and down that it showed that he was using amphetamines and he went to a a separate drug testing firm and they showed it negative so i think the tests themselves are not really that cut and dried you know uh_huh really and then i also had a friend who was just around some people that were smoking cocaine and he tested positive on cocaine now then you always wonder well is he just saying that yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah because you're endangering everybody's lives if you if it's something like that uh_huh you're kidding the executives right the executives yeah wouldn't that be awful if you were if you were using and and oh lose your job and everything i can't believe i was so [brazen] before i like i say i'm a former drug user but uh i i well i i accepted christ as my lord and [savior] and so i don't use drugs any more uh marijuana cocaine and amphetamines um yes uh_huh and all on the job too you know it had gotten that bad really it's it's life is so much more enjoyable uh_huh and i was losing jobs just from doing a poor job you know i mean you know there's all kinds of drawbacks much less the drug testing uh_huh that's right yeah that's right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh goodness yeah yeah oh my gosh yeah uh_huh right i would think there would be but they weren't isn't that awful uh_huh uh_huh yeah huh yeah that reminds me of uh i have a friend who was telling me about her brother who gets high all the time and i have just casually asked her what he did for a living and she said oh he's the supervisor of this chemical land fill you know where they go and dump all this toxic stuff and i just you know went oh where let me move as far away as possible yeah but i'm proud though that that um you know i grew up in the sixties and back then it was popular you know but people have really [wizened] you know become wise about drugs and they really have a good campaign for the young people you know they know it's not smart so so i guess it was just a generational thing that's right and that's good that's the best way to stop it yeah well i think we did it so it's good talking to you yeah bye bye whoa uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh where do you work oh uh_huh right do they do it like you know within hours of the accident or is it yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah huh yeah yeah i think that's probably true too that's that's that's sort of scary yeah yeah yeah really really yeah that's that's a bad situation i think that probably i think most companies now as far as entry you know exams require that i think they should i'm a t i employee and and and uh i'm i'm really gung ho for it in fact i you know some of the places now um like i b m don't allow them smoking you know in in the plant we we have designated smoking areas but um i work in sort of a building that's that's not really well it's on the campus of the t i facility but it's a little bit you know separated we lease the building and it's it's a factory environment and uh they they have designated smoking but it's just wide open it's not [ventilated] properly and i think that's bad but as far as the drugs you know being in the factory kind of environment that way i think it's a it's a definite i think it's essential yeah in fact we've had the policy on just the random testing now for a couple years and uh i i was giving my boss a hard time because i kept waiting for my name to came come up you know they never they never called me they never you know and finally the day we declared war was my time no and so and and my boss has has gone for about like three times i think and i told him he's obviously in a high risk group right right and of course you know they did specifically single them out when we started you know that they were going to do all them first uh_huh which i thought was interesting oh man yeah ooh yeah uh_huh oh what kind of drugs did you use if you don't mind wow really well it's really lucky that you got away from that cause that's really [downward] [spiral] yeah yeah that's that's it yeah just life in general yeah well well i'm definitely for it plus you know you you want to think that that you're working with people who are not only putting out their fair share but that are not endangering your life in some cases like uh my husband uh several years back worked for [motorola] and they had you know i mean it was a chemical handling type yeah i mean and they have they have some serious chemicals out there you know like they have emergency shower where you just run in there and strip off and dump water you know that kind of thing and they had people out there using all sorts of drugs handling those chemicals and that's really that's really frightening so i think some place you know places like that it should be like mandatory like you know on on a on a greater frequency than maybe just you know paper pushers like like i am well well you'd think so but uh i don't know if they do it till yet because when he was at course now it's been years now because it was before it was even before they had the the designated smoking type stuff you know at t i i forgot what i guess it was like eighty four eighty five something like that and they at that time they had no testing whatsoever so that's scary oh lord oh yeah should we move ooh that's awful uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh yeah yeah peer group is the other way now instead of uh_huh that's yeah that it really is okay well i enjoyed talking to you cathy well i i don't think that it's it's wrong for a company to require drug testing for certain types of positions for instance jobs that require use of heavy machinery and things like that where there's where there's uh [endangerment] to their own life and other people's lives uh_huh yeah well how do you how do you feel about uh companies drug testing prior to hiring uh_huh uh_huh well what about random testing though do you feel like that's an invasion of certain people's rights if not everyone is tested i don't know that you do if it's random then it's random and that's not necessarily fair uh_huh yeah well i i know that for instance in the n c double a they drug test and it's not random uh well i think all college players have to do an initial drug test at a certain point prior to the season and from that point on uh at the n c double a does have something to do with it but it's almost discretionary on the coach's part of each individual institution to identify the ones that have the problem and and the ones that test positive have to retest after a certain period of time well not being a drug user i don't have a problem with that personally but i think that might be a violation of someone's rights if someone's having personal problems for some reason that's causing them to behave differently and their manager assumes they have a drug problem i mean if someone assumed that of me i would be upset it's an [accusation] and and it's and it's based on on a perception that someone has as how a drug user would behave when some drug users behave uh normal uh you know right exactly i i don't the i think almost the only way that drug testing can be done fairly is if it's across the board from from the [janitors] to the executive management what type of job do you have uh_huh well does your does your job require you to drive company equipment or to operate any type of machinery that might [endanger] someone well that doesn't i mean i uh_huh that is odd i was drug tested uh not for the job i have now but for the prior job uh but i know that they sent that the job i had before that well the job i have have now requested my uh uh my uh medical record from my old company so i don't know if i wasn't drug tested based on that or because the man who hired me didn't request the drug test because i know that my company does drug testing on occasion well no i don't think they can they can force another company to not drug test me just by saying that i i didn't i mean they don't know that i don't use drugs they just tested me once but i used to work for a power company so it was very important that they make sure their employees especially [linemen] uh were clean and since i was just you know one of the office folk i guess it wasn't as important to them that they test me regularly but i know they test most of the service people fairly regularly uh just across the board no they're all of them are tested once every three it's a rotation but it but again it depends on what job you're in the men that are out there fixing power lines are tested a lot and the men that drive the trucks with with the guys that fix the power lines aren't tested as much but but see they make that clear to them as they hire those guys what what the drug testing schedule is they say we we're testing you tomorrow and we'll test you every three months thereafter while you work here yeah it's it's made very clear upon hiring well have we spent our at least five minutes okay okay nice talking to you bye bye uh i agree with that people that are uh driving like uh truck driver's and things like that i definitely think they should be tested and i'm not i'm not opposed to any testing i mean because i know i certainly wouldn't want to to uh you know be endangered by somebody in a company that accidentally dropped something on me or or you know because he was on drugs while he was there uh oh uh i was tested uh within my company i think it's kind of a push to uh weed out drugs in states and because i don't know of any other countries that are doing this and i i feel like it's really just within the united states it's uh it's okay i think your record should stand for itself that you know if you've been tested at other companies and you've always come up negative or whatever then i don't see what the big deal is that they have to go to all the expense of testing you over and over and over and once you've established the fact that you're not a drug user and especially if your personality [proves] that you're not i think they could uh save money by not doing that you know every time say if you change jobs you wouldn't have to do it if you'd just been tested at your other work place oh uh not if it's done fairly and that's probably my question is how how do you know it's done fairly yeah well they might tell you it's random but then you know it's kind of like a a lottery somebody in their lifetime may win millions of dollars where another person doesn't win anything and tries and tries and tries you know oh i see how'd how did they how do they pick their people uh_huh oh i see so do you right well do you think that should be implemented in the work place you know as like a manager or supervisor thinks or has suspicion that someone is using drugs do you think they should have the right to send them to be tested right right right right yeah it it would almost be like a a uh uh_huh and then how would you feel afterwards when you came up negative and you know your supervisor has accused you of using drugs right i agree with that because i know personally myself i've been in the same job for three years it will be three years in august and i've already been drug tested three times well i'm an environmental engineer and i've been drug tested three times and i know many people that have never been tested in their lifetime and the company i work for is sixty thousand people plus so see i for some reason i've come up three times that's pretty high statistics no no not at all it's a legal job you know so see it's really strange oh uh_huh right well does your the company say for instance does the company you worked for before have the right or do they have the ability to say hey we've already drug tested her and she came up negative yeah right right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah and are they tested random they're oh okay i see yeah uh_huh uh_huh oh i see uh_huh okay so they know that and that's uh_huh okay well yeah i think so yeah seven twenty five okay nice speaking to you bye okay so uh what do you think about it privacy right well there is always the uh the possibility even remote as it is of uh of mistaken uh of yeah and see that bothers me i'm i'm a i mean i'm i'm very much for drug testing uh i really am i mean i'm going i'm going to take the negative side just for a second just to do it um see i have to take uh medication for a uh for for [kidney] transplant and i'm going to be taking that the rest of my life now you i don't know how that's going to affect uh right i mean i haven't had one yet um t i i work for texas instruments and and uh we you know we do have the random drug testing but i've missed it so far but i mean it in the back of my mind it always bothers me and what happens if it you know if it if they catch it they think that i'm you know i'm on drugs and they send me and and have me uh you know go through this this thing you know yeah uh_huh right uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh oh yeah right uh_huh right well i you know i'm like i said i'm i'm very much pro testing um and and this is why uh number one is i i'm i'm kind of i know this sounds like a slogan for the government but i you know we are in a war against drugs i mean it's it's horrible i mean you don't know whether the person sitting next to you anywhere is on drugs or not and it takes some drastic steps at this point and i think personally the drastic step has to be that um that you can't work if you continue taking drugs i mean it's as simple as that i mean make it so well make it uh not necessarily difficult but make it so that it's not glamorous i mean it's glamorous taking drugs or at least it seems that way yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh huh right right uh_huh well then let's let's answer the second half of the question what limits ought to be put on it do you think uh_huh uh_huh treatment before for dismissal type thing yeah uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh personally i think that's what i was about to say is that everyone needs to be tested it you know that it could happen uh_huh right well there's yeah there there's going to be some measure of incentive uh reward or whatever but the reward ultimately comes down to what you want so i i've got to agree with that so um um yeah i think so i think we i think we did pretty good well all right well uh i guess that's about it all right it was it was talk nice talking to you too all right bye bye well um i guess i i'm more concerned about public safety than i am about the um the concern for the private uh the idea of preserving privacy for the individual um because i can't really see why anyone um who has nothing to hide would object that's of course that is certainly true yeah uh_huh sure uh_huh sure if you had to have a drug test yeah uh_huh uh_huh checked out or whatever but it seems to me that there are ways to accommodate that um i agree that that some innocent person might be victimized by a false test but i would think that um that some guidelines could be set up to avoid that for example that one uh positive would not be uh accepted as an automatic um reason for whatever they might be going to do if they found a positive uh dismissal or treatment or whatever but that that what it would do is it would trigger perhaps uh one or two more stages where further tests could be uh done because um there are there must be people like you or in other circumstances that could come up with with uh false positives for certain kind of drugs on the other hand um i think there's certainly some professions that ought to be tested because of the of their responsibility for the public welfare and certainly people in uh industries well the transportation industry for uh you know specifically but um in many many cases whether or not an individual has a problem with drugs it's not even going to effect anybody but his uh you know himself and his own family perhaps um depending on the kind of drug he might be on but um and eventually that's going to show up anyway in the way he works and so on but there's so many things that it would make a difference i guess i i uh i would not want to have anyone in my family uh victimized by someone who you know a a bus driver or a train engineer or something like that who um you know hadn't been tested yeah yeah sure uh_huh uh_huh yeah make it difficult enough yeah yeah yeah according to what you you hear the people who um have serious problems i mean we have um really i guess we're kind of lucky we really only know of one uh young man who uh who's a they go to our church and it's the son and so on and he was friends with my children um and he's really the only one that i know of personally who got himself really messed up um having been involved with drugs but i know of a number of other people who have you know gotten all messed up most of these are young people i work in the education system and so i have a little more contact with that but um the effect that it's had on this young man's life is so dramatic that it's heartbreaking and he may never really be a productive member of society but [sadder] than that he may never be able to have a normal happy life because it has strung him out so that he has [anxieties] now that are are almost uncontrollable i mean he he puts himself in the hospital fairly regularly thinking that you know he he's not sure if he's going try to commit suicide or not i mean he's you know he's so messed up and um this was a nice sweet young man who teenager you know and he's now a young man about twenty i guess who um just got really down the wrong path and uh you know i don't know that that his problem would ever have been [detected] by drug testing but seeing what drugs did to him makes me see makes me realize what it could do to people you know in the work force as well um it's horrible well the limits uh uh would i think have to do with what i'd [alluded] to before that there needs to be a further um that that one positive on a drug test would not [constitute] uh dismissal or grounds for whatever the company or agency might uh have set up for those who genuinely have a problem in other words there needs to be um more than yes right there needs to be more than one test and there needs to be some some measure of uh [certainty] before anything drastic happens there are lots of things that are involved there um such as perhaps insurance uh you know denial of insurance for someone um and undoubtedly there are people who would be victimized by this um that would that you know it would be unfair and people who are on medication for example or um even people who might be of the gay community and i'm not an advocate for that particular segment of society but um i think that there doesn't need to be fuel to the fire for discrimination because it makes a bigger problem um so it seems to me that that um there needs to be some ground you know some rules that protect i'm not sure though when we talk about what rules if any that we should say well certain segments should not have to be tested i really don't see why and yeah yeah i don't i don't know why it would be you know uh bad to test just and it may be you know it's not feasible to do everyone but certainly random testing the fact that people know that that they yeah would be some measure of protection but the bottom line is that that if if you're going to stay clean and straight then um you're you're going to do that because you want to really yeah that's very true well it sounds like we agree anyway yeah i guess if that's all we've done and i guess we've talked long enough it was nice talking to you okay bye bye are are you a t i er oh really oh yeah oh yeah yeah yeah in fact with me this is it's not much to talk about i'm so much for it i don't really have much to comment about it [there've] been some interesting subject that they've called about how many times have you called or have you been participating in this oh you got ten well you you've passed me up this is about six times yeah no i think it's good in fact i don't know what the statistics were but i think that they were surprised to find it so low i think they were expecting to find uh like the national average at t i and i think it was tremendously down yeah as far as the number of people they actually found that were drug users but i think that when i was at t i of course we had all the information before they started and they said that a certain number of people that the heavy drug users would either quit or go in rehabilitation programs and i think that's what helps you know that in the warning that you have a drug program the people that are worried about it or are taking drugs actually go and then usually a lot of them [partake] in some of the benefits of rehabilitation and everything yeah and our numbers have been way down i don't know what they were yeah oh really oh you're that's a good point but at t i they before they had the testing i've forgotten seems like it's a year ago september something like that they told us that the agency that did it was the one that did it for the government and of course that's critical just as the point that you brought up that whoever does your [testing's] got to be you know have a lot of quality control that they keep track of everything they don't make mistakes that would be terribly embarrassing for someone to really come back positive and they were not and i haven't heard of any now i'm not in personnel or anything but uh they say that there it's almost down to zero where people come back and say they are positive and they're not in other words there's very few mistakes and that of course has got to be critical it's got to be if you have a drug testing program it's got to be with a very very good agency you don't just have some local group do it it's got to be a highly qualified agency no you don't want to do that it's got to be a laboratory that does quality control and double check and i think that t i is [latched] themselves up with an established group and that would be good for any company that does it and not to have just a very casual thing it's got to be with a you know first class totally independent agency not local of course ours i think well i think it was in the south somewhere but it wasn't even in dallas you know the one that did us yeah oh no they're not fired they are they have one chance to then go in a program you come back positive you have one chance to go in and go into they have a lot of uh rehabilitation both for alcohol and for drug use and they have uh a lot of uh they have an agency where you can go for personal problems financial or whatever and so they they they don't no it's not firing first it's uh definitely trying to encourage people to rehabilitate in fact again before you go you know that's why i said when they first started it they had a rehabilitation program in effect that said if you worried about this and you may have taken drugs go ahead and get rehabilitated first and they won't say anything about it oh sure oh yeah no that's not right it's really an illness or whatever you want to say that it is you know it's a weakness and all and who all of us have weaknesses of one kind or another and i think that those people that have that and however they got into it i have children i always worry about the the classical thing that you see on t v where the drug pushers give it to the kids for free you know and get them [sucked] in and then they sell it to them you know the classical thing is to give it away i always worry about my teenage daughters going to some party and they slip it to them i don't know i don't even have that much knowledge to know whether that would get them addicted or not you know that's a real worry oh you know a lot about that uh_huh yeah yeah i know i'm glad of that and i have knock wood pretty good luck or very good luck with my daughters so far that's my conference call i have one daughter still at home one's at u t and one's at home gets dozen calls a night no no i don't care about that she'll be on the phone all night right do you have children oh great fantastic experience i've got two as i said i've at u t now in austin and one at home and i always say that i've learned so much more from them than i ever taught them it's a fantastic experience oh yeah yeah the key thing that i think that we try to do is that bring all the friends over here have our house as a place where they can come at any time so that you always see their friends rather than make them not welcome and they're always over in someone else's house so our we've been lucky that our house is usually the place where the kids could come you know and then you can keep an eye you can make [judgments] and make comments or whatever you want but at least you see what's going on and you always have your house welcome then your children think that you know you're cool parents and all that well good luck with your expected baby there my wife was yelling was talking in my ear she said reminded me to say that they're very cheap until they get to start driving and we have one of course i say in college driving and one going to drive this summer so kids are cost you practically nothing because you always get so many things from your relatives and everything but you wait until they go and get a car insurance that's when they get expensive as they get older you know they cost practically nothing from one to five and then slowly but surely starts to creep up when they start to take lessons but it's well worth it and everything be a be a great experience really you still there okay i thought i was cut off there you know i don't have much to say about drug testing so you've done this ten times did you get the booklet on how to get the gifts and all oh okay i didn't know what they were going to do they sent us a little booklet i just got it a week or so ago saying you know so many calls will be something a prize and everything well that great well what kind of cash i've forgotten what they going to do was it five dollars a call well hope they follow through and everything right yeah alright bye bye now no no i work there as a temporary but are you at t i so you have to do the random drug testing oh about ten or eleven calls right oh as contract person we have to do random drug testing too it doesn't bother me i don't feel like it's really a violation of privacy or anything as far as the number of drug users you mean huh right right yeah so that's real beneficial for the company and the employee when i worked for the temporary agency as a permanent person and so we had when we sent [temporaries] to t i we had to have their drug tested and we did have a couple of cases where we really the person said that they hadn't used anything and their test came back positive and normally we didn't retest them but there were a couple of people that we really thought that they were telling the truth and we [retested] them like the next day and they came back negative the second time so that that's the only thing i think that might be a little bit of a problem right yeah right yeah not just some doctor's office somewhere oh really huh do they have a policy where they counsel people if they come back positive or do they fire them right away right right i think that's really good i know some places just fire people on the spot if they come back positive or something right yeah some of the stories you read about cocaine that's like people try it one time and they're addicted my husband is a counselor and he works mostly with adolescents so yeah i hear a lot of horror stories about things like that but most of the time it's they get into the wrong crowd first and then they start a drug problem it's usually not a one time accidental thing i don't think oh well i'll let you go if you want to go ahead and take that yeah it seems if you watch what kind of crowd that start running around with and kind of keep up with who their friends are that's best way to avoid trouble from what i can gather no not yet we're expecting a baby in july so we're starting yeah oh we're really excited about it you know one thing my husband believes is if you suspect your kids are having any kind of problems he believes you should take your kids in for a random testing like on a saturday morning if they've been out at a party friday night if you're not too sure what's going on he tells parents all the time haul them into the doctor's office and get them checked right uh_huh yeah i think that's a really good thing to encourage right oh well thanks uh_huh yeah yeah uh yeah i think it'll be neat [yea] no i can't think of anything else to say about that either yeah no i don't work for t i so i get cash right hm yeah five dollars a call well technically we're not supposed to talk about the phone calls while we're on them so i guess we better get off it was good talking to you bye okay well how do you feel about uh drug testing yeah yeah i am too a little bit i mean i i don't want to be around people who are really on drugs and that sort of thing and and you know obviously they're probably not going to be doing a good job and so forth but i don't really like having to do it it and i don't like the idea of it it's it's makes too much of a big brother type of thing yeah huh_uh yeah yeah i think so too but you know it's one of those things yeah plus i guess if they are in problem enough to be [jailed] or something of that nature for any length of time then the company has lost what they've put into that employee and their expertise or whatever yeah well do you think that um it should be like we have this sort of random spot testing type of thing or do you think it would be more [palatable] if we had some sort of regular schedule or would that just allow everybody a chance to get out of it well you know if if they have time enough they can stay off of it yeah yeah i think so too uh i know the the group i was in at the time this all came up they uh were quite vocal about it through electronic mail boy they just really you know let them have it from one end to the other [vehemently] but uh it has quieted down but i don't think they probably feel any differently and some some of them did quit the company true uh_huh yeah i wouldn't like anything of that nature you know don't tell me what to do you know yeah yeah well i guess too if i thought that this would help really and truly do away with the drug problem then that would be one thing but i think it's too minor and too you know in in the whole scope of things this isn't going to to have any real affect on what's going on in the street yeah well yes that yes i i think that could be a big problem you know i would just be irate if they said it was positive and i knew it wasn't you know that just really rubbed me the wrong way yeah yeah right no i guess the one that really got me too was that uh let's say your spouse is on a particular drug and you know what that is and then you end up with the same problem and you take their leftover medicine that's not allowed you know that's that's totally out uh_huh oh that's interesting well i guess we've exhausted that one enjoyed talking to you good bye um personally i don't have a problem with it uh i think uh as far as uh protecting fellow employees protecting their reputation of the company and the quality of work that the people do um it's justified on the other hand um i do agree that it's it's a it's an invasion of privacy as far as a person's involvement outside of work um i would never i would never have a problem with anyone testing me but i can understand why people would object so i guess uh i guess uh i'm kind of mixed on it still at this point uh_huh that's right that's absolutely right it it uh i guess it all comes down to uh you know a a definition of uh how much out outside activities affect your work and uh uh granted you know that any any kind of drug use on on company property and whatnot is is definitely not acceptable uh uh i don't think anybody would ever argue that or uh any any after affects carrying over into the [workday] but um you know i don't i'm not particularly concerned with what people do um after they leave for the day especially if i don't if i don't uh see any results of it the next day well it it is it you know on the other hand you you've got uh you've got the uh the possibility of people oh you've got some people could be arrested for uh drug use drug dealings and things like that and uh if their if their employers name hits the papers and that it's it's it's a mark against them the company and uh you know what kind of people work there what uh that's right that's right right even if it is you know a company policy of uh immediate termination or whatever they still have to replace them and uh there's there's a lot involved there i think i think the regular schedule stuff um that when you say everybody get out of it that's a good point i never really thought of it that way yeah if they really can um i think the the biggest problem i've got is is forcing it on someone after they've already agreed to the terms of employment um as far as the new hires i i hired on just early enough that i i missed it um where the new hires were concerned but uh not nobody no i don't think anybody questions that um testing someone as a as a [precondition] to being hired but um for the conditions that for our employment to change while you're on the job that's i i don't know that that's where i think that most people get upset it's uh you know it it's changing the rules in the middle of the game basically and uh it's just it it's a really tough question and it you know it people have have really quieted down after everything started but i still think there's a lot of there's a lot of resentment uh_huh you bet no that's right yeah i i know of some people who did uh it was it was indirectly related you know they could always come up with other reasons but it it had a lot to do with it just the the whole attitude because it's really uh it's just really it it seems so t i you know with the the whole relaxed atmosphere that we have um to all of a sudden uh search for attitudes and whatnot you know there's not a lot of pressure to to vote the right way or anything else around t i like there like there is in some companies or at least you know from what i've heard but uh yeah uh_huh no i absolutely not you know it's it's it's you know if you hired me i'll be you know supposedly your grade was a little majority of my views and my qualifications to begin with so uh you know let's let's stick with that original trust i guess but uh it's it's still it it still remains a tough question and it's there's a lot of you know the whole the whole department of defense uh reasoning behind the original plan and whatnot there's a lot of different things that uh come into play but that was i think everybody everybody pretty much knows that that was kind of a smoke screen to implement it throughout the whole company uh_huh i really don't think so yeah i really don't because some people are going to are are going to risk it um it may prevent i i guess i guess what i'm trying to get at is if it if it if it does help a few individuals maybe maybe it's worth it um you know it may prevent somebody who was was [teetering] on the edge of experimenting or whatnot but uh i don't know if you know the it's it's a needs of the few and the needs of the many type situation i don't know if everybody should have to sacrifice quite as much there there's still a big question in my mind that the the absolute [refusal] to accept the possibility of of mistakes on the testing is something that still bothers me it it's uh_huh uh_huh absolutely and that i i don't know if uh i don't know if everybody understands all the implications on that too even if you you know if you take uh a a drug that was prescribed for you but the the prescription has run out you still had some left and you happen to take an extra [penicillin] well [penicillin's] not on the list but you know yeah i i think you understand what i'm getting at it it can still show up and it can still flag as a positive and and those kinds of things obviously that's not the intent and uh those are the kinds of things that still can show up uh_huh that's right that's right i even had friends when i was going to college who were in uh pharmacy school and they could legally um provide medicine to their family family members and friends certain medicines were were legal now i i i believe you know any of the any of the ones we would we would be tested for wouldn't be on those lists but uh um there were certain things that they could provide without a doctors prescription based on their qualifications and that can happen but uh yeah yeah i think so you too good bye well i personally don't have any problem with uh drug testing employees or potential employees do you i mean basically okay i don't i really can't disagree with it uh_huh uh_huh i think that's really the only fair way to do it i really think it ought to be you know [junkins] all the way down right as a matter of fact i want to think they took the top managers first isn't that a fact i've been retired from t i about a year but the program you know was still fairly new i guess it had been going on maybe almost a year before i retired so i was not uh ever called upon to do a drug test i certainly wouldn't object to it and i think random is probably you know the only really fair way to do it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh i absolutely yeah uh_huh i don't think they'll have much choice do you especially if they have anything do with you know government contracts or anything as matter of fact i want to believe that the uh defense department more or less [mandated] that people you know who work on defense contracts you know do some sort of you know drug testing i think that's really what maybe [prompted] t i to do it i was in the uh defense electronic division when i retired i know it was a you know it was a real hot hot item there i think i want to think maybe they you know really got some [nudging] from you know d o d to do this sort of thing uh_huh yeah so you you know the atmosphere then so yeah uh_huh uh_huh right i agree i that's right that's absolutely yeah i i just can't disagree with you with you know the basic premise it's to as far as i know it's you know seems to be a fairly accurate program as far as uh you know the testing goes and uh that's right that's right and offer you you know help if you need help yeah i do too put you out on the street yeah that's right no that's right oh absolutely not to mention alcohol yep yep uh_huh that's right that's right oh gosh well it's it's a real problem i'm sure i'm sure uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's right uh_huh uh_huh yeah right yeah i know a lot of people who when it first or at least began was in the talking you know everybody knew it was coming it just a matter of time everybody was screaming you know invasion of privacy and all this stuff but a lot of people i think after they thought about it for awhile and you know weighed the pros and cons decided you know it's really not a bad idea unless you're doing drugs of course that's right uh_huh that's right yep yep that's right or yourself or yeah that's right uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's true uh_huh yeah assembly people that's right that's absolutely uh_huh oh absolutely yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah sure right uh_huh sure [trickles] [trickles] up and down sure does yeah affects a lot of people yeah uh_huh uh_huh i think they probably will you know if if they i'm sure it's a very expensive program to administer i'm not sure every small company could do it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah it's got to help them too uh_huh yeah i do too that's right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh no no but it'll save in some areas yeah right that's right that certainly could happen that's a very very very competitive business yeah i do too i just really can't disagree with you okay well it's nice to talk to you and you take care okay bye bye um basically no um yeah i i uh uh the policy that t i has i think is uh uh very fair um i they first had a policy where they uh would test new employees and then since i've been with them the last four years uh there's been in the last year year and a half um they're doing random testing of all employees yes and it is it and from what i understand it is jerry [junkins] all the way down uh_huh uh_huh yeah um i like it because um you know i i i grew up in the sixties i mean i graduated high school in sixty eight and and uh you know i i saw you know i know my friends who were you know [druggies] and friends who weren't and and uh you know it's i think it's a real problem and i think it and i think it's causing us a lot of trouble and and a lot of problems and so i'm hoping that uh a lot of other companies will will follow the same path um probably not uh_huh yeah i used to be in d s e g myself um a p d as a matter of fact yep very aware of it but i i'd i'd i really like the idea uh in fact i would like to see uh a lot more uh people uh adopt it uh like you know school systems and that kind of thing i mean i'd like i'd like to know that my child's being taught by a teacher who's not on drugs or or uh who might be at a point where they're trying to sell my kid drugs yeah and i like the idea that they have a uh system where they allow you to uh be [retested] if for some reason there may have been a problem or something did show up yeah yeah yeah rather than just uh put you out on the street and let you fend for yourself that's not going to help anybody get over the problem i believe it is a a a medical problem um of course i also think smoking is the most addictive thing in the world too yeah so i mean there's a lot of things out there and things that uh i'm just glad that they uh decided not to uh tax drugs otherwise they'd be legal and they'd be getting tax money off it the same way they are the alcohol and tobacco yeah i have friends that work in other companies that are just now adopting the policy and and stuff and i uh uh i moved to a t i facility that um had never had uh random drug sampling before because they were outside of the military sector it was uh an industrial company and you know that t i purchased and so the people here a lot of them are real opposed to it uh they were really opposed to it and you know there was a few of them that obviously were doing drugs and that's why they were opposed to it and uh it resulted in in a few people leaving you know because they just flat out weren't going to put up with the policy you know they had a life style and they weren't going to change it and it's yeah i mean uh you should have no objection to it it's like uh going down to get your license and checking your eyes i mean you know why do i need my eyes checked well we want to make sure you can see you know it's like why are we doing this well so you don't kill people on the road uh it's a i mean it's the basic premise with you know drug testing especially some of the jobs um luckily i've always been in the engineering sector and it's very little that anyone could do in the engineering sector as far as uh you know hurting someone i mean it's hard to imagine somebody [misusing] a computer and somebody dying from it but uh in the manufacturing sectors and over in semiconductor and down in some of those labs and stuff yeah i darn if i'd want somebody down there that i'm working with side by side you know that could kill me by doing something incorrectly because they were not exactly all there because they were on drugs so there's a there's a lot of sectors where i think that would would help out and i think in the long run we all benefit i mean if you have uh you know if you're not working with someone on drugs well then you're going to have less accidents and you have less accidents and you spend less money on medical and you spend less money on medical then the company's more profitable the company's more profitable then maybe they can pay you more if they can pay you more you can buy more and then and it and it goes around you know to everywhere yep all over and uh it certainly does and i i just hope that uh more and more companies uh get on the ball and and and start it up well a lot of companies are are coming down in price and i think that the insurance companies are starting to give uh benefits you know reduction in in medical costs if you know they yeah so i think everybody will will benefit from the program and i think if if a lot more insurance companies get on the bandwagon and say well if you impose uh mandatory drug testing we'll reduce your insurance costs by you know twenty per cent and of course you know the company's not going to reduce the [employee's] cost of insurance twenty per cent they're going to reduce their own yeah and that'll cover it and maybe some insurance companies might start offering it as a uh as part of the package yeah so it i i think i think all around it it's going to help out a lot course yeah it was great talking with you you do the same bye bye all right um that's a good question um i had a job i had to go get a blood test for um and and they did a full blood screen on me but they didn't call that a drug test so i think they checked for drugs they just don't tell you they did uh_huh uh_huh yeah well i guess it depends on if you got something to worry about well i i i come from kind of a biased opinion because i'm a a therapist and a drug and alcohol counselor and i've done employee assistant work and i i know the kind of cost businesses go through in terms of accidents on the job that are specifically drug and alcohol related and it's like in the billions of dollars every year um and the only way that they can prevent that is is you know making sure that the employees are drug and alcohol free and you know the the problem in the work place is that that people are like if your boss is your drinking buddy or whatever i mean you can come to come to work drunk and get in an accident and he'll cover up for you and nobody knows about it but you know ends up costing the company lots and lots of money so you know uh_huh yeah yeah true uh_huh yeah yeah well there it's i i think one of the problems with it is it affects a lot of other folks on the job if somebody else is [impaired] because generally you know it uh you find out one way or another if somebody's got a problem on the job and if even if like you say even if it's just the secretary if her work or abilities start affecting her co workers then it it's still a problem so well yeah i guess it comes with the turf yeah man and in terms of drugs they're illegal so you're you're breaking the law anyway probably the the biggest problem with those is they don't do a real good job of of [assessing] for alcohol and that's probably the biggest problem there is yeah uh_huh well i guess that's one of the positive things that have come out of it some of the employee assistance program if you do test positive for something they will give you an opportunity to go get your life straight rather than to lose you're job and i yeah i think the the company benefits in the long run what what kind of testing do they do when you went urine screen yeah uh_huh well that happens it happens a lot there there are people that pay other people to to help them out yeah yeah yeah it depends really on how how strong a test it is they've got different degrees as far as as how far back they can check they got some unusual things besides blood and urine tests they've some companies that are doing uh hair tests yeah well that they'll pull out one of your hairs and they can apparently test um back a certain period of time because some of the the [residue] ends up in your hair [follicles] you know it's kind of hair [follicles] i guess are just dead protein and they and it it's apparently almost like a a calendar they they've got it pretty precise now they can go back and look at in terms of growth in a in a hair when you used and and that type of thing so yeah so i guess if they perfect that is not quite as cumbersome as having to go fill a bottle or give blood or something like that uh_huh yeah well i did too uh_huh bye bye have you ever been drug tested uh_huh yeah i had i've had uh two or three drug tests that i had to get before i could start working at a job uh different jobs i had one at t i and then one at another engineering company and really i mean i don't mind them i don't do drugs anyway i guess if i did maybe i would but um i don't know i know a girl that she's a nurse and they get drug tested randomly i've never been randomly drug tested but that would probably bother me to wake up one day and find out halfway through the day that you're going to be drug tested and you didn't know about it yeah i guess so i guess so do you think that it's right uh_huh right right that's true right that's true i believe it's right especially for certain jobs i think anyone in a in a public job like bus drivers and cab drivers and police officers and things like that i think they should be randomly drug tested i believe full force in that i don't know that i believe every secretary in every company needs to be you know secretaries aren't aren't really going to cost the company that much money if they fall face forward in their typewriter or something so i don't know i i'm kind of biased too because i don't do drugs and so i really don't care one way or another if anybody wants to pull me up tomorrow and test me because i have nothing to worry about so i guess that's kind of biased yeah it does yeah that's true yeah that's true but what do you do about the occasional user that may have gone to a party three days before and you know it's it's been the whole weekend since they've done anything and they happen to be tested monday morning and they could be fired for that you know that that's kind of unfair also yeah i guess so i guess if you're going to do it you need to suffer the consequences that's true that's true that's true yeah i think so more than drugs and i know a lot of companies that will put you in an alcohol rehabilitation before they would put you in a drug rehab they would pay for an alcohol but they don't always pay for drug rehabilitation yeah that's true i think that's fair yeah that's true that's about all i have to say on it uh it's a urine test and they uh it was really very official you have to go in a room solely by yourself sign papers that say you were totally alone sign papers that say this is yours and and you have to seal the bottle yourself and label it yourself and all of that so that they're sure that you haven't borrowed anybody's i guess or something yeah i know i it's hard to believe but i guess it does i know i'm amazed at the things people will do it is amazing i guess there are people that do that and they are those are expensive tests i'm glad i never had to pay for one yeah i guess so oh really how weird i didn't know that oh that's weird yeah that's wild it's amazing the things they can find out from different things on your body yeah that's true that's true i'm glad i never had to do it by giving blood i can't stand the thought of giving blood i can't even do it for [wadley] even though it's a good cause well i enjoyed talking to you thank you bye bye okay uh i really haven't thought about the topic of drug testing but uh just off the top of my head i i don't think i see much wrong with it um if i owned a company and i wanted to make sure that it was run smoothly and that the people that i had uh coming in uh were trust worthy et cetera and so on i think i would i would uh probably do the random testing just to insure that my company uh runs safely and smoothly huh_uh yeah yeah that's true i didn't think about that like for instance uh if someone's working on heavy machinery or say driving trucks or buses city buses or something like that then that is something that affects the that affects the community you know if you're you're drinking or on drugs or whatever you're driving a city bus you taking several lives in your hands yeah and for me i think that drug testing it follows the path that society is going in if more and more people are using drugs then i think that some people have to guard against people that are using drugs i mean it's just it's just where society is right now and you know something we have to cope with and i think the drug testing is something that the drug users have to cope with yeah yeah i think that may be that means one of the points of it of course i think um i'm not sure you know what the time span is but i mean if i used drugs last week and i had a you know job interview that i wouldn't use drugs the day before or something and they wouldn't even see it you know what i'm saying they may not be able to trace it i don't know how far they trace i don't know what the you know limits are yeah um oh really something like that yeah um yeah i mean i don't use any drugs i don't really drink or anything so i'm pretty uh uh i guess [decisive] about that just the fact that since i don't use drugs i have no problem with taking a test yeah yeah yeah so the only thing i would hate is if i were to go and uh i mean it's kind of the same thing with the lie detector test if you don't have anything to hide you're not going to mind it you know but people that you know don't have anything to hide and then there are some things that just aren't peoples business that come out at that point so i think that a lot of people have trouble with that i can i can understand that huh_uh huh_uh yeah huh_uh right right yeah yeah i mean i took a lie detector once and i didn't mind it but i was just offended by some of the questions i guess i mean there was one question do you like your mother you know i said yes do you hate your mother no have you ever killed your mother and i was going you know what in the world is that what it was oh okay huh_uh huh_uh kind of get kind of get something to measure my [responses] by yeah yeah yeah they ask why i was going what in the world are you asking me about here you know but i guess i don't know some people have probably killed their mothers i don't know yeah yeah huh_uh huh_uh i never thought about that that makes me feel a little better of course that was years and years ago and i i don't think that some i mean there are some people i mean because in society a lot of people are taking drugs there is also people that are getting off drugs and trying to do better with their lives but they take a lie detector test or a drug test or whatever and the stuff that happened to them you know five years ago comes up and it [spoils] their chances for just making it a little better you know when they might be actually trying to improve their lives huh_uh huh_uh huh_uh yeah yeah i would probably do that and i would probably bring something in showing that i had been to such and such hospital for help or you know whatever the twelve month program or whatever it is that they do huh_uh yeah yeah i'm not sure what they are either yeah yeah the other day we had talked about uh capital punishment and i really really hadn't thought about it i mean i think about it because i hear about it but i hadn't had to sit down and and well what do i think about it you know and that's kind of like today i'm not real sure what i think about it i'm kind of you know in the middle on that one huh_uh really really okay it was very nice talking to you okay take care bye bye yeah um i i also haven't thought too much about it uh but i suspect it it very much depends upon the job maybe there are some jobs where i guess it doesn't really and it's it's it's if it's not affecting someone's performance then i'm not sure if it's a problem if if it's a position where it could potentially affect if if if right right and then if you're a computer operator and uh there's really no big deal i think you know that maybe it's not necessary huh_uh yeah well i think it may it may that's in in that respect i think it may help a lot i think it may be pushing people hopefully push people away from drug use if they no that you know if you use drugs you won't get the job i mean yeah i don't know i don't know that would actually be an interesting thing to find out i think i don't i don't actually know how long those things stay in the blood in the system i've heard some i've heard some things will stay there for six months some stay for less some stay for longer things like l s d i guess stay forever in some ways you get [flashbacks] for uh forever i i i guess so i mean there must be some some something i mean people get these little [flashback] things you know of some sort so i don't really know right well see if you actually used drugs at all and i'm i'm at at most a social drinker so it's never a problem right right that that that but that's a fine line to draw i mean uh that's really do you uh do you worry about you know this or that i mean you know what about the rights to privacy what if they're doing something legal but they would rather have it private you know like especially in the case of drinking you know if someone is something more than a social drinker shall we say yet they're not an alcoholic what do you do so well those are just yeah those are just to get probably to get some sort of those are to get the shock value out of you or just to see shock i do some i'm a graduate student in psych and we sort of you know figure out um i know a little bit about that kind of stuff what they're trying to do there is they want to sort of get a base line measure for you you know how is it that when you see these things and you know and and and yeah but with them they have no idea if you're just sort of jumping around and being [fidgety] maybe it can be shocking and shock you yeah yeah well i guess so i mean i guess i don't know how what actually happens if uh if you have killed your mother big jump there you know but yeah i think it's their way of saying how well you do in a shock situation without worrying about stuff like that so yeah yeah and i don't think that you killed your mother though i wouldn't worry about that yeah yeah that's uh you know it it could blow things right away for them you know unless they say well look unless they walk in they could walk in and say look i did do drugs a year ago and i'm off them for a year now i'll be happy to take the test but it will show up positive versus yeah yeah because i mean then although then they can't legally [discriminate] i think on the basis but i don't really know i don't know what the laws are [pertaining] to this my wife probably does i don't i don't but it's an interesting topic that i never actually thought about oh i yeah well these are tough i sort of like that stuff it makes you think so i think that's real good nice talking to you to bye bye well i i feel in light of some of the accidents and so forth that have happened lately that i think there are some occupations that they should such as the health field the transportation field uh they're already doing it in the armed forces where they handle weapons and so forth uh they do it to prisoners so i i uh i i i feel like it should be mandatory in some professions and i think if if uh an employer feels that he wants to to drug test employees and they don't like it then they should not be employed there that was you know i would not mind it right uh_huh unless an employer has a reason to believe that his uh the work competency of of the employee is is hurting the business i mean maybe it's uh number one because generally if if they are involved in that type of thing they are into theft and as an employer i would think that would be and the first it's not going to be wholesale because of the cost there's no way but but my concern is uh school bus drivers um i'm not even i'm in education i'm not even opposed to it for that uh i'm concerned in the medical field i i i think they should screen for alcohol in these areas too because i consider that a drug right right right but when you consider they could be driving an airplane or driving a bus or a train um and it doesn't take that long they don't have to be totally [roaring] drunk just a little off on their timing could could mean life oh okay uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh my word control right well as long as you accept that it is a random a random testing uh you know to to alleviate that way you can't feel like somebody's out to get me if it's almost like being selected for jury duty you know so your name came out of pot when they spun the wheel that's that's just the way it is i would i would rather have it that way to know that i was chosen at random by a computer than to think that somebody turned me in because i i think there's when you let other employees turn in people right right so i i i would really rather know however there's got to be some backup to say that if if somebody does observe you at say at a party uh using drugs i would think that it would be their obligation to report that personnel or something right right right i don't know what kind of work you do but there there would be even be a situation where you were at a machine and working with somebody that was that way right right right it's it's i i just think employers have to have especially given today the drug abuse that goes on i just think employers have to have some kind of way to see that they're not being put at risk because they're the ones who are going to have the lawsuits the insurance claims et cetera and and i'm not sure but what some of the insurance claims aren't due to uh illnesses brought on by drug abuse or alcohol abuse right right uh uh_huh uh_huh huh to see how that's is it is it uh just a small group of the employees that are concerned they they just don't want to be drug tested you know we've never my husband and i have never been in a situation where somebody said you have to be drug tested uh my husband's retired from i r s agents however this isn't a problem that we have either alcohol or drug and so we we in our minds we're thinking what's the big deal right and and then they say well if you give them the right to do this then they're going to take some other right away from you but i i i think that an employer has the right to ask you to do anything and of course the big deal one of the big deals now too is to that when you come into a company as you sign a paper saying that i will go take a what do you think about it yeah yeah i i especially agree that if it's an area where they could cause somebody else you know harm or injury absolutely and i don't have a problem at all with employers uh testing in the hiring process but i i i don't i don't have a problem with them too much testing even after the fact but i do a little bit where it where it wouldn't hurt anybody i don't know sometimes i think they carry it a little bit too far but yeah right and then it's not a problem yeah oh absolutely oh yeah the train drivers yeah i wish they would i wish they would and that i think is even probably more widely abused by you know the masses than than drugs so to speak so oh i know and no just uh yeah and now t i has the random testing policy and and you know our names or our employee numbers or whatever are in a in a pool so i've already been tested once when i was hired and and once since they initiated this random testing program but i work with one girl who was tested her name got got randomly selected three times in six months and i think that's the only reason i have a problem with it when there's no you know there's no reason to suspect someone you know that that's getting a little bit that's enough to make anybody paranoid yeah right yeah either just the lucky or the [unlucky] one depending on how you look at it oh absolutely there are so many people with with their petty [axes] to grind it could really get out of hand yeah to report it and i guess you'd report that to a supervisor maybe [anonymously] or something because i i would feel very uncomfortable working with someone i knew was using either illegal drugs or abusing alcohol i'd just i'd feel really uncomfortable yeah we have we have a lot of people who work on the line i'm in accounting so it wouldn't you know they couldn't hurt me with their ten key or something but out on the line they've got people working some serious equipment so put at risk i agree totally and in the long run we're all paying for that so it i mean it protects us in the long run hopefully when they do that i i was trying to remember there was a court case uh here where i live just a few months ago the city workers they wanted to um the city government wanted to institute the random drug testing and the city workers uh took them to court to protest saying that it invaded their i guess first the the search and [seizure] amendment and it's still tied up in the legal channels they haven't ruled on whether they can test them or not so i'm curious especially since t i a local you know employer is also already doing it seeing what they'll say about it especially since well it's the whole it's the whole city seems like the whole group of city employees that's raising a stink over it yeah so yeah uh_huh right yeah that's the way i looked at it if i had something to hide it's one thing but i'm you know you know you don't so it's not as big a deal and you sometimes wonder when these people protest so much whether they're really concerned about their rights or whether they're really concerned about something else i don't believe that well basically i think it would be a good idea myself i uh i think if somebody's not on drugs they have no reason you know to be afraid of it uh i do think that there has to be some controls uh like i don't think one test positive should uh be uh the end of it you know i i think they should test more than once it uh_huh that's right uh_huh uh_huh there's so many jobs that uh really have other people's lives in their hands or even their own life and you know and it's uh uh how can you do anything about a problem besides if you don't know about it you know and i just um i i think there definitely needs to be some control to it i guess it is possible to have a false positive report uh_huh uh_huh or somebody's test gets mixed up with somebody else's i mean those things do happen uh i certainly wouldn't want people's lives ruined uh wrongly uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah and you maybe need to look for some other type of job to do that uh doesn't require the testing uh to me it's to me it's not an invasion or privacy i think it's people have a right to know if if uh their their life [maybe's] in jeopardy or uh yeah their work the work they're doing for their company uh those things are all affected if not immediately it certainly does eventually i think that's where a lot of the problem is at first it doesn't seem to uh bother the quality of work but eventually it does uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh course i feel the same way on the aids problem i i don't think that's an invasion of privacy that's the only [communicable] disease that they're not allowed to test for you know and it's destroying a lot of people's lives yeah and it's you know it's it's destroying people's lives and i i think that person plus anybody in danger should should know about it and be aware of it i don't know it's it's kind of hard to i guess the gay movement has had a lot to do with considering that that uh an invasion of privacy of course that's not supposed to be what we're talking about today i guess so i kind of get off on a [tangent] here uh do you work for uh texas instruments uh_huh um oh that's probably why my brother did live in grapevine texas that's near dallas uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh it's pretty hot down there probably yeah oh did you really oh that's great uh_huh we we need rain real bad up here it's uh everything's really getting dry it's uh yeah it's kind of at a dangerous level here people hauling water and uh it's getting real bad so so um so do i uh i can't think of anything else uh uh_huh uh_huh uh i can understand i know if somebody is using drugs and doesn't think there's anything wrong with them i can see them [objecting] you know there's a lot of people that think that there's nothing wrong with uh_huh uh_huh um uh_huh uh_huh oh i'll be darn yeah yeah the different cultures and that too uh no no i'm sure it would have to affect you the same way i i can't think that would make any difference whether it was legal or not it it would still have to affect you the same way uh_huh oh yeah you can't you go by their laws the same way our people have to go by their laws when they're over there that's why a lot get in trouble because they have to follow their rules and uh some of the countries are very much against drugs and you use them you pay for it yeah a lot of them yeah where where is it they lose the if they steal they lose a thumb or a finger is that where it is i thought wow you know that's quite a deterrent yeah yeah yeah so i guess you know we we have so many freedoms over here we sometimes forget about how great out country really is uh_huh uh_huh they they abuse it is what they do yeah yeah so well how do you feel about spot spot testing for drugs uh_huh right yeah it's it's it's refreshing to hear somebody that has a similar opinion as mine i mean all these people that are against it that may you know they may not even be on drugs they they call it an invasion of privacy and i don't see that to me that just doesn't sound like a valid argument because this company is paying you good money that you're working for and they i believe that they have the right to know if you're using a a dangerous substance but uh_huh right right yes no i i i agree that you know you there needs to be a a well thought out sane approach to how to administer that program just because you you something can get mixed in the mail or uh the chemicals could react incorrectly than than what you would expect them to and yeah you you know right yeah right and you know i've the the the company that i work for uh has just recently well you know within the last couple of years instituted for all new hired employees they submit to a urine test and they they say that there's been you know they they they've also implemented random testing and it hasn't happened to me in the couple of years that you know it's been in progress but uh i i fully agree with it and there's you know there's all these memos going around about folks that are disgruntled and feel it's an invasion of privacy and i i agree with you if if if you feel it's an invasion of privacy you've you've probably got something you're trying to hide yeah right or the quality of their product yeah uh_huh right because it usually requires more and more of that substance that you're [misusing] to get the same effect um and then and one of the few that they don't have a cure for yeah yeah yes i do and i'm i'm down in the the central but i don't know how familiar you are with texas but i'm in a we live in a town uh near a town called temple which is right in between waco and austin on the freeway right we're probably about two two and a half hours south of him so oh my it's actually we got about two inches of rain in about three hours yesterday and it's cooled things down somewhat it's getting more humid now but uh_huh yeah it's been about three weeks since we've had any um wow how about that well i hope you do get some rain up there i yeah i i guess being in agreement kind of tends to limit the conversation you know one of the things i found interesting it it's funny that you mentioned that t i is pretty much a worldwide company and we have manufacturing plants all around the world including some places where the use of certain drugs that are illegal here are not illegal yeah they don't have to submit to drug testing like like they do here in the states and some places abroad yeah i thought that was kind of interesting too yeah i mean uh uh from a quality standpoint that's not i mean just because it's not illegal doesn't mean it doesn't affect you the same way yeah right yeah but like if you're going to do business in another country you've got to respect their rules i mean if if you know that that's the trade off yeah huh right usually with you life in some places that's right yeah from the middle east yeah iraq iran in that area yeah well in saudi arabia you know using uh alcohol and drugs and something like that you get the death penalty so it's pretty strict over there well people tend to take the first amendment out of context which which means you know i could do anything i want to and you can't stop me and you know yeah yeah yeah so that's i don't know i'm i'm glad to see more and more companies implementing the policy okay uh well since i initiated the call i guess i'll start off first uh number one i have absolutely no problem with random testing uh i spend an awful lot of time traveling on the job and i feel i would be very comfortable if they would do drug testing for particularly airline pilots and the such i'd feel much more comfortable than i do now based on what i've been hearing in the newspapers so i really don't have a problem with it uh_huh yeah yeah i well i happen to be uh my job is i'm supervisor of personnel safety for the world's largest paint company so i it's very near and dear to me when we start talking about drug testing for random sampling and testing for cause this type of thing and even in our field we have people that are in very high risk jobs and we at the present time do not have random testing and i am pushing towards that i i honestly feel if people have nothing to hide they shouldn't have a problem with it and if they are trying to hide something then i have to know that because we're we're talking major [liabilities] not only with themselves but with other employees and i really you know they they're talking about sports and sports personalities and all this stuff that i i would much much prefer having doctors and airline pilots tested on a random basis i i have a real fear but that at some point something's going to happen and they're showing it with aids so why you know they they ought to start doing something with the drugs so i really have no problem with it uh_huh yes oh really well that scares me because if that's the way they are i if i were a dentist i'd want to be protected too uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh well you where you're located i i do know texas instruments has random drug testing and i think they've had it for several years and they're program they had i don't think had a lot of uh problems associated with it but uh my brother in law happens to work there and it it sounded very positive and i i think it's great i i would like i would encourage it i'm pushing our company towards that right exactly uh_huh right ours is changing yeah ours ours is changing it's increasing i live in a i live in a very nice suburb and it's it's it's unbelievable what what what's going on and the drugs the selling of drugs it's just it's just too loose it's too free uh_huh really yeah uh i don't either i uh i've never i don't work at home right now i stay home with my children uh but my husband works and they do have that at his place of employment and neither of us have a problem with it we've particularly like you said with the things that the airlines and and such it's uh it's a scary thing to know that uh you just don't know what people are doing uh before they go to work so and the the advertisements on television lately have been so uh there have been so many you know there's uh just about like train train [wrecks] and things like that that i feel like probably just for our own safety when we're traveling and things that would be something i'd like to know that's going on um right uh_huh yeah yeah well it's it's unfortunate i think that everyone doesn't have that opinion uh some people just uh i've heard some people just talking in our group of friends that they just feel it's an invasion of privacy and things like that but uh in the long run it seems to me it's kind of like what they keep talking about the uh the aids testing with doctors or dentists and things and how that you know they feel that's not fair and whatever but you know those kind of things i'd like to know myself it wouldn't be in my opinion i i've had a lot of dental work done and the last dentist didn't even use gloves at all so that kind of yeah and uh so that kind of thing really kind of concerns me well you would think so that is because well and i worked for a dentist and that's uh you know you you come in contact with a lot of of blood and things like that and it's real real dangerous i i would think but with all the accidents just with with uh everything happening with just airlines just drive me crazy people are afraid to fly now you know just because of they don't know what their [pilot's] been doing and and things like that and i don't know uh_huh well and you know if they do find someone who who is uh having a problem with drugs and they can get them the help that they need as opposed to just letting the problem go on with without any uh support and whatever because a lot of people seems like would probably obviously are trying to hide that uh from their employer and friends and family and things and too many people are just dying particularly in our area i don't know what the crime is like where you are but the crime rate here is just astronomical uh_huh i just got a piece of paper the other day uh that now they have these i have two little very little children under two and i got a piece of paper from from my husband's office it's talking about these uh drug [tattoos] now that they have got that look like it looks like a sticker and it's for kid uh i work at t i and we have uh of course started drug testing uh random drug testing here and uh i haven't gotten called yet but uh i feel that it's probably it's pretty good if if they feel like there is a vast majority of the people at the company doing drugs uh i think that they thought that there was a lot of drug usage here at t i but i think our latest statistic said something like ninety nine point nine eight percent were uh testing negative on all the on on all the testing uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right right right i at t i if you get called in and you test positive for drugs then you're put on a program and uh you know you go through the program and then you're called like six months after you complete the program and if you test positive then you're [terminated] yeah uh_huh uh_huh that's right uh_huh oh and of course they can also cause injury to other people if they're if they're not uh you know fully functional mentally while they're doing their job they could cause you know serious injury to another people uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's right oh yeah uh_huh so right right uh_huh uh_huh oh yes uh_huh that's right uh_huh you know i think personally i'm for it there's several reason why i i could think of right now why we shouldn't have it such as drug testing they say runs approximately a thousand dollars a person every time you do it and yes and oh yeah it's very expensive and uh uh_huh it's not like a normal urinalysis it's very expensive to run them and uh i didn't get a raise this year because nobody in our company got a raise but yet they spend all the money on drug testing and if they weren't spending all the money on drug testing people could have got a raise so see there you know there's different i don't think that that's that i think that's more of a personal view of mine other than a a yes sir we should have drug testing because there's really a problem and i know that but then i have other views to it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh [their's] might not run a thousand dollars our from what i understanding here at t i they run close to a thousand dollars an employee uh_huh uh_huh but no for all the the oh it's do they feel that way uh_huh well i i think it's a good idea just because i'm opposed to to the drugs i think it can cause a lot of problems even though they think they can handle it it's uh i don't know i don't really [liken] it to alcohol but yet that can be carried to an extreme too so i think it's a good idea and i think just the idea that you know that you may be tested might keep you off of them or get you off of them because you're i don't know that their job would be at risk because i think they may put them into some sort of a program to get them off of drugs i would think that is that how they do it at t i maybe that uh_huh well i guess i i draw a hard line but you know i would i'm i'm in favor of of that type of thing that uh you you have people out there that are responsible for certain things and you expect them to do their job and it it is possible that you know that they can't do as good a job uh as they might do uh_huh right and you never know they could just go off the deep end on on a on something uh that whatever they're taking at the time and and it would be uh you know out of the question also i guess you can you know get the wrong kind of stuff and kill yourself just by having a wrong mix of or watered down or or whatever all kinds i sub in the schools so i've you know had a they they talk a lot about drugs there and i think it's good that they're trying to start some programs down in the elementary schools but you know i think they can test all they want for drugs you know and if they need to do that as a condition for employment and i know many of them are doing it i know my son has had to do it for both sam's and wal mart and i don't know how many others are doing that and and i think that's good because so many of the kids that are on them are sort of [bums] that they need to get their life straightened up at an early age and uh i don't know it's just a problem that no one is sure just how to handle i think really it's that high oh i didn't realize it was that expensive uh_huh uh_huh just lucky to have jobs uh_huh i just i didn't think it was that expensive because my son was in probably a week and a half period and sam's and wal mart are are owned by the same people he took one for for uh wal mart for job hiring and then sam's called him and and he took another one and i you know i don't know why they both made him do that since it was so close together i can see if because you know if it's a thousand dollars that's a thousand dollars they wasted well maybe they run i don't know you know that's just guessing it maybe they run a lot of other tests or maybe it's under a health type program that it it it would catch a lot of things i i just can't imagine them screening all these employees paying a thousand dollars to get them well how did you like that topic do you i don't no i'm pretty opinionated about that and many other things as you well know i agree with it i think uh i think a company should be able to test at any any employee any time they see fit i just i just don't think there's a place in our environment you know in the work force for drugs or alcohol either right uh_huh uh_huh you did uh_huh well i can sort of understand that uh but not being a teacher as you are you know i i was not quite as sympathetic as you know as i probably would have been if if kay were a teacher or something but uh uh_huh uh_huh that's right that's right uh that's right and i think it is a big problem with them using drugs from what you read you know but uh yeah i think so too i i agree with it uh i know [kay's] company you know they started it couple of years ago and so many of the people even the professional people were boy they were so against them doing that you know and i thought jeez to me it's quite simple uh you either need a job or you don't the the job is what provides all of your needs and uh if they say hey you can't do this work i'd say hey i agree i don't i won't do that and i think most of them have agreed to that now although they didn't like it at first yeah it is i can see where you would think yeah that is [belittling] you know i'd probably feel the same way if i had to do that yeah that's true you bet oh gosh they they would really raise a stink if that was to happen right yes i agree with that i i i wouldn't be opposed to it at all it's just our bleeding heart liberals that would fight it tooth and nail you know but uh well lynn i've enjoyed talking with you i don't know how long we're supposed to carry on a conversation do you oh well we'd better keep talking because i've not heard it have we have you heard it anyway we both sort of agree on it don't we about random testing well listen yeah yeah if you agree that uh yeah is that right you just don't think of that happening with teachers i really don't when i think of drug testing i'm thinking of the you know outside of education sure sure i know that but uh you don't think of that first hand normally isn't that isn't that mind boggling goodness it it is it's mind you know well you know i agree with you i know teachers are just like everybody else same problems the same uh good qualities as anybody else yeah yeah you you think the benefit would be greater than the uh_huh and that was in your children's high school isn't that amazing if it if it's if it was true there i'm sure it's true with just about probably to some degree every school there is you know because they represent a pretty good no certainly not certainly not they don't need that example but uh i don't know i've got mixed feelings about the topic no okay well well i don't believe in drugs or alcohol but if you'll remember when the teachers had to take the t cat they were talking about drug testing us and we were laughing that we'd have to go to that [examination] to prove we could read and write with a [specimen] of urine and we found it [belittling] yeah that's true but then you know at the same token i'm not against because i look at airline pilots bus drivers you know people that really have other [peoples'] lives in their hands truck drivers it's supposed to be a huge problem with truck drivers using drugs and alcohol and you know in those areas i really you know do believe that maybe we should clean up our you know house yeah i think it's just like anything else a new concept you know as i said if i have to go to a testing area with my urine [specimen] i was insulted but at the same token in education we can't do drug random drug testing on kids you know i mean their rights are protected what well but why if you're going to do teachers or professionals why not do the kids when we see them and they're you know under the influence that's true it's three minutes and the [clicker] comes in when it's time to yeah no well do we agree or unless it's not me you know here we go again i mean yeah you know i believe that truck drivers and people that have even though teachers have other kids lives in their hands and if they come in stoned or they come in drunk and there was an incident in my children's high school where a teacher stayed drunk uh_huh and he uh well no you know we are as susceptible a society as anybody else and uh yeah well did you hear on the news where the teacher of the year was up for child molestation it was on the news tonight yeah then i think you know if if it came push came to shove i'd probably be drug tested you know because it does you know yeah because you know as i say i'm sitting there [fussing] and [fussing] and yet i know of you know one teacher who was an alcoholic in school as well as you know i presume out uh_huh and you know my children brought it to my attention i never was there to see it uh_huh and that's not giving a good example to students so beverly what do you think about drug testing yeah we've we got a lot of mistakes here uh in the maryland baltimore area because of uh train conductors uh on drugs i think we've had two terrible accidents here recently and also on um just like i bet you within five days a truck where the uh a dump truck where the driver was uh high on marijuana i guess he smoked marijuana for lunch and uh drove his truck up the back of two small cars in a tunnel that goes underneath the uh a river that leads into the [chesapeake] bay and it would that would tied up traffic for a long time everybody died the fire was terrible it was awful so yeah i think you're right i i think i if it's if you're in a field but then you know who would test all truck drivers you know right yeah i think i think looking at athletes being drug tested i don't know even i think the random drug testing i don't know in my own mind if it has reduced the athletes from taking drugs because they're still being caught that make sense yeah and then uh i think yeah i i i think in the long run i think it's it would be good i think in the short run they think because so many of those tested have gotten away with it you know the the test hasn't come down hard on anyone i don't i don't know yeah uh_huh right uh_huh yeah get rid of him right yeah yeah right i i think that that that's a terrible you know it's really funny though um i guess my dad was hit by a a drunk driver who was also high um when i was probably eighteen my senior year in high school and um though he's alive today and everything worked out fine it it it happened about two blocks from the high school and a friend came and got me and i was there and i could smell the dope and i could see the beer cans from the guy that hit him and nothing ever happened and from from that point on i became so anti drunk driving now i think people should be allowed to drink i think that's an adult responsibility whatever but i really uh i'm so anti drunk driving and and drugs have uh long lasting effects and i guess when i younger i was um probably a little more liberal on the subject yeah but as i've as soon as that happened i guess when i was eighteen years old if you'd have asked me i'd have thought it was fine but by the time i was nineteen my opinion had totally changed uh_huh right um traction and all that terrible stuff right right yeah i don't think somebody yeah you don't you don't you don't have the right to interfere in somebody else's life i can't even say you know i wouldn't even say ruin somebody's life you don't have the right to interfere in somebody's life uh_huh yeah uh_huh right i think in some professions it's uh essential things like pilots and things that involve the safety of other people particularly uh_huh oh my goodness they that's that is a problem and every time before they get into a vehicle i mean uh_huh right yes uh it may make a difference for some of them because they don't want to lose that lucrative uh career uh_huh right uh_huh however here in dallas uh we had a a player roy tarpley on the mavericks team and he had been suspended a couple of times because of drug testing and was to the point he was on probation he was to the point that if he was caught another time that he would lose his contract and they wouldn't have to pay him and the mavericks wanted to get rid of him but they couldn't afford to replace him and still pay his contract and uh just recently he was uh missing from practice and whenever he missed like that usually he had some kind of problem and so a mandatory drug test was done was positive so they were able to get rid of him and not have to pay his contract and so in his case he lost his whole career he's been in the paper in jail and it's just been awful and talk about a terrible role model um oh my goodness uh_huh oh that's terrible uh_huh uh_huh i think most of us are uh_huh yes if you know someone for example we have uh some friends whose son was driving home from work was hit head on by a drunk driver the drunk and his wife in the car were killed and uh bobby missed his whole junior year of high school he went through surgery after surgery and for a long time they didn't even know whether he'd be normal again and he as far as his athletics he's lost all of that he uh has been [tutored] and he'll catch up in school and everything but he's still not back where he was he may never have all those motor skills back no another thing that we saw here recently one of some of our high school kids were out [goofing] around in a park area that a a train track ran through and one boy who had been drinking decided for some stupid reason to try to play with the train well he the train missed him but uh a big mirror type thing sticking out like a metal thing sticking out hit him in the head he was in a coma for four months he's out of the coma now and eventually they think he will come back but you don't know that and but he's lost he was an outstanding football player um i haven't given this a a lot of thought i'm uh that that's a whole pleased with the practice that is they i uh i don't you would favor invasions of privacy on the other hand that's [arguable] but that that uh people who's jobs are critical to public safety should have to meet special standards uh i haven't given this matter enough thought no uh i'm in the washington area i work for n i s t uh_huh and now okay and how do people feel about it well okay that's that's a very different issue and um does the testing cover alcohol as well as illegal drugs well so they ask you to declare beforehand what prescription drugs you are taking okay well it i mean it's i guess that in fact they don't test for for they don't routinely test for very many prescription drugs but that i but they don't say in advance uh so the ones that would kind of [constitute] controlled substances or something anyway so what they are asking you to tell them is all the prescription drugs you are taking which are controlled substances is contact a okay is contact a substance okay okay uh_huh uh_huh go ahead do you work for t i oh oh okay oh all right well see we have the testing already here we've had it for oh about five years it used to just be for new employees and now it's for all employees they uh randomly select employee numbers and uh the day that they select you is when you have to go and and be tested so we're familiar with it oh we have a lot of um people upset about it at the beginning some not all but what was happening at t i is that they found certain parts of the company there was a lot of drug abuse um mainly the areas where they were doing a lot of um manufacturing type things and what they ended up doing is uh kind of like doing a little bit of an [undercover] agent to watch what was happening and we had people using on the premises and actually selling and dealing you know on the premises well yeah it was you know combination of of uh both activities and uh and using too so they developed this uh drug policy so that uh to eliminate there's some parts of the company that we do uh government contracts and i think some of those require the drug testing but now t i thought well we'll just do it for all employees that um not just because of safety issues but because we want a totally drug free safe environment for all people to work in and that we shouldn't have um people on drugs within our you know offices and such i haven't personally ever been tested but i don't have a problem with it no but one thing that to to me was um going on stretching it a little too far was that they also check um if you are taking somebody else's prescription drug you know it happens a lot of times like some member of the family gets the flu or whatever and you know then they give it to everybody else in the family and don't always go back to the you know doctor and get another prescription well according to what they do at t i if you take a prescription drug it has to be in your name it you know it can't be in your [spouse's] name so they will look i mean the testing will look for i guess any kind of drugs and you have to tell them what they are taking a prescription for right yes yes when you get tested you are supposed to tell them you know everything that that might be there and then if they ever um question you or something you may have to show proof that you do have a prescription in your name well what they be testing for are the ones that would have like you know [barbiturates] or [codeine] things like that in them right right i guess that's what they wouldn't be looking for [penicillin] and antibiotics and stuff they would be looking for the yeah controlled things [barbiturates] amphetamines right right you pretty much you know put down what you remember even if it was just contact or something like that but afterwards uh maybe if you had a controlled substance well you you probably put down you know you had [drixoral] or contact if you would remember that you did it no i'm just saying you probably put down on the sheet anything you have taken but if they had a controlled substance maybe they would ask you then to show that you had that prescription in your name i know i had one contract employee through manpower was not a t i person but was a contract person and they test them too even if you are not a real uh t i if you are a contract employee here they test you too and he had taken some kind of um oh you know uh just he had some kind of flu or something he got a real bad [migraine] and he took his mother's uh i think it's a real good concept uh drug testing procedures would have to be refined from what i've seen on the news there's a a pretty good size problem with poor accuracy poor procedure in uh drug testing yeah uh there have been people who have been turned down for jobs because there was a drug showed up in their in their uh test but they didn't know for sure what it was but it was a drug so they got turned down and uh turns out it was a prescription or people getting somebody else's blood test same sort of problem that happens sometimes is these some of these uh like aids tests and such yeah oh yeah yeah uh_huh yeah yeah yeah i not very long ago worked for wal mart and about a year and a half ago they instituted a uh a uh drug testing program uh well drug and alcohol testing program it's it's not a random through the it as each employee comes in part of the hiring procedure is a a blood test uh but i think the big problem though is is they send these off to large labs and then they have thousands and thousands of samples that uh going through it in a day and bottles get mixed up things like that it's yeah yeah yeah yeah sam's is part of wal mart yeah oh yeah company's that was a great place to work uh_huh yeah they got to had two or three years in with them you can start buying stock and you have a have a little taken out of your check each each payday to put against uh uh stock [portfolio] uh not [portfolio] just you know against wal mart stock but uh you can build a pretty fair amount of stock after a while uh you're supposed to get five minutes uh do you have any idea uh let's see you were you were tested for drugs as you got into t as as you got into t i yeah uh now uh were you asked to wait before starting to work until the drug test came through or okay yeah yeah yeah they they it was after i was already working there and they weren't testing any of those who were already working so okay all set then uh what do you think about it uh_huh oh i didn't realize that uh_huh okay uh_huh yeah that's right i have heard uh i don't remember what they call it sort of like a positive negatives or some some kind of word they use when a uh you get a uh a positive indication of drugs but there's not really there weren't really any there uh every now and then there's an error and people are really upset about that when it comes to their rights and their rights being violated yeah i i work here at texas instruments so uh we we do a let me think do we yeah everyone coming in i guess i did three years ago everyone coming in uh goes through the drug testing procedure and they talk about it as a you know as as better for the country and better for the working conditions so if they uh they test for drugs i i'm i can't even remember if we do random sampling anymore i know we did in the military but i don't know if once your in they continue to do it but i guess you're always on call for it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right so your big beef with it is the uh is is it's a good idea but like you said the drug testing procedures need to be defined a little better make sure it's a lot safer because a couple of people are going to be discriminated against [unfairly] or whatever yeah i i i tend to agree with you david yeah my brother uh brother used to work for wal mart and then i don't know if he still does or what because i don't know if sam's is actually part of it but he you know is working at sam's now okay yeah then he's been working for the company for a while too he uh good company uh you all uh have some he's telling me about good profit sharing and all that so it's good news uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's what my brother was telling me that's good good good deal well uh how long were we i haven't done this in a couple months how long were we supposed to discuss for okay we got a couple more minutes then i guess uh think what else i can say about that uh right uh everyone coming in gets goes through the drug test uh no well let me think about that yeah it was after i i had already been hired uh yeah you get hired then you come in the first i seems to me i remember that uh i was hired came in and went through some orientation and i thought i boy i can't remember that would seem strange to already be working here in the first week of the drug test maybe it was during the interview i came up a couple times for an interview so it's hard for me to remember where i was when all that happened but uh i guess just like other companies other friends i've been hearing about that have been moving around it's it's before they have to wait for the drug test to come in before you actually get employment so i'm sure that happened to me too what what about oh they just instituted it there at wal mart so right what do you think right uh_huh yeah i think that the corporations should uh do all that they should uh have drug screening before they hire an employee and uh any time that an employee like if they're coming to late work all the time and uh if they if they're especially if there's they're on the line or any kind of sensitive job where you know if they can if they made a mistake it would cost a lot of money or or people's lives then they need to be watched carefully so right yeah yeah but you got to have a a safe work place that's all there is to it uh_huh uh_huh i think it's it's more frequent now it's probably like forty fifty percent yeah because uh all the jobs that i've applied for have uh mentioned some type of drug screening you know uh i work at sears and i just do warehouse work uh not they hired me in nineteen eighty four so yeah but now they they uh they issued a statement about that about three months ago uh not that i know of it was more about uh all the people's problems like they've been laying off a lot of people and uh and uh they sent out the employee assistance cards for anyone that had any sort of drug problem or work related problem family problems you know they kind of covered everything but i know they have a lot of drug problems so yes i do because because a lot of them are you know they're [hypocritical] they they talk against drugs and then they get caught you know in [stings] in washington whether it's drugs or any other kind of uh like the the money [laundering] scams all that was drug related so and that cost us the country you know billions of dollars so well uh this is this is about drug testing right well uh i'm i'm certainly under the uh uh the influence of the idea that that the government needs to have less control on what uh what the citizens do although i do see this as a uh something that definitely needs to be taken care of whether that whether that should be put in the hands of the corporation or the the hands of the hands of the government is a you know a a different question i think as far as i'm concerned in in other words i am in favor of drug or or or drug testing uh i was drug tested when i came to my job here at t i yet but but at the same time i don't think uh that should be [governed] by by the government uh per se i think it should be more by the private institution how about you uh_huh uh_huh yeah sure uh_huh yeah i i agree with you i you know i would even think that uh uh i could in theory take that a a you know a step further and say anybody in any job you know if the corporation felt like uh and this is why i mean uh drugs are the biggest problem i think to face america today i mean it's what drives crime it's what drives uh uh any sort of of uh uh pain and [discomfort] in the world or in america i think is is somewhat uh uh driven by drugs and i think that uh were corporations and uh private industry to take uh take command in this situation that maybe maybe we might have some some control over that we you know if you can't work then you can't be a little bit harder to take take drugs or whatever i don't know course that might up crime you know when uh people go in and steal your television and and sell it just because they can't they can't work anymore you know definitely you you're definitely right that uh you can't you can't have it any other way uh you know whether whether in in the case that you brought up you know whether uh you know if it's a policeman and he's working with uh the public and he has a and has a gun in his [holster] or or even you know if it's a guy at mcdonald's cooking a burger i think they're dangerous in either situation uh i what what do you think uh what percentage of of corporations and uh private industry do you think use uh drug testing oh really uh_huh right what kind of work are you in uh_huh uh_huh and did they give you drug testing oh okay uh_huh oh so are they going to uh begin [spontaneous] uh drug testing uh_huh oh yeah sure uh_huh uh_huh yeah what do you think about uh you know something that kind of concerns me is uh you know you and i are tested for for whatever work we happen to do do you think there should be drug testing for political officials yeah i do too yeah uh_huh yeah oh yeah sure sure yeah i would agree with you i i can't see i can't see how we can expect the you know uh uh people working in the in in america to uh to put any trust into our political officials if they don't you know uh just doesn't make sense to have them to to worry about legislation unless they're doing that themselves drug testing in the work place um i've been tested a few times just before drug employment but that's about it i've never had random drug testing oh really uh_huh oh they do with alcohol they do it with alcohol oh i thought it was just like marijuana or cocaine huh that's interesting what type of field of work are you in oh in the oil business okay and you work in the office around uh_huh yeah see i work in the automotive air bag industry where we make the safety bags for the cars and we work around a lot of explosives yeah so that's you know i'm all for it because the well the type of environment i work in you know they're working with explosives and so they could blow up the whole well they have safety features with each of the explosives they use but still it can be dangerous yeah now do they fire them or do they uh_huh uh_huh oh wow huh that's i think our policy is that all right it's probably the same thing i'm not really sure what the that's right but i know they do have counseling and that they do give you a second chance but i'm not sure if if it's if you get caught or if you turn yourself in uh_huh uh do you think it works very good with that random do you think it limits uh_huh uh_huh you could time it just right i know one employee i know when i was working with he had alcohol on his breath and i'm not sure if our policy covers that or not that'd be just as dangerous huh that's true uh_huh do they give any limits on alcohol or is it oh uh_huh pretty good pretty good so we're talking about drug testing in the work place huh yeah we have random drug testing at in my business but i've never been uh never had to do it yeah yeah they started that about a year ago and i think it's mostly for the the field people that you know drive trucks and heavy machinery that kind of stuff but uh they they have done some testing around our office mostly after lunch looking for people drinking uh drinking beer and stuff at lunch time at least that's pardon yeah yeah they they they'll check for alcohol no once once you start doing that stuff you sort of you're sort of stuck into uh checking for the whole the whole thing yeah it's a i'm in the oil business yeah yeah i work in the office so uh it's pretty pretty safe environment uh_huh uh_huh well that sounds like kind of an important job to be uh straight on yeah yeah well i i i agree i think that uh you know under certain circumstances especially when you're working in in high risk uh uh industries where you can really hurt other people that that you need to have that kind of stuff you know if it's as long as it's not abused uh you know random you know as long as it's random and and the individual's rights are uh are protected i don't have that big a problem with it well see this is it this is where i start having my problems with my company i work for a private company and and the policy is something like see if i can state this correctly now if you turn yourself in as having a drug related problem then you're eligible for company counseling but if they catch you if you test positive for a a controlled substance then you get fired so it you know it's sort of one of these little catch twenty twos yeah really it's one of those things that you read once and then if you if you're not worried about it you just forget about it yeah yeah yeah our company's a little tougher on the second chance i mean if if they're going to give you the opportunity to turn yourself in then they ought to you know go out of the way i think a little bit more to uh to help you get help get you rehabilitated to you know to get get back at your job but uh when you're not when you're a private company the rules don't always apply well it's it's hard for me to to evaluate it because everybody i work around is in an office environment and you know it's not i guess i haven't run into anybody that's that's had a problem that's that's been a problem uh so i you know i guess it works uh much like uh well shoot like any lottery i mean everybody's got an equal chance to get picked so uh i'd rather have that than you know say well this week the a and b are going to be in and next week c and d are going to come in yeah right right yeah well especially around uh you know equipment machinery and stuff you know i've i've gone out and had a had a beer at lunch time but not to excess in any case uh i don't remember to tell you the truth i don't think they do um well they must i mean gee whiz that just shows you how much i've been paying attention because i i really don't know i'll have to go into work tomorrow and ask well you know you can take some of that that testing a little bit too far uh there was a company in houston that they did uh an [unannounced] drug sweep of the of their company oh it was it was it was an [unannounced] sweep of of it was not only drugs well yeah uh i guess i basically agree that uh do you think it's okay for a company to reject somebody knowing that they'll take drugs i mean suppose they found out some other way yeah yeah yeah but have you ever been in a situation where you you were drug tested or yeah i once too so yeah yeah i had it during a job interview and i just thought it was dumb of the company at a point where they were trying to convince me to to want to work for them to do this and i'm just like well uh i'm not even going to think much about it if you're going to treat me with this much respect even before you've gotten to know me uh_huh yeah well like you say i mean if it's not a critical kind of job where someone could get hurt then really what people ought to be doing i mean the the employer ought to be judging you on how well you do your work rather than on these other factors and i mean if you are doing drugs and it's causing a problem then they'll notice it for other reasons yeah well do you think it's should be illegal for an employer to do this or yeah i tend to to view it even though i don't think i'd work for a company that did that i sort of want to defend an employer's rights as opposed to an uh in addition to an individual's rights but an employer really i think has the right to hire someone on any basis they want to and if they say they don't want smokers i sort of feel like an employer should have the right to decide whether they want to allow that uh and i don't really well uh i myself am not in favor of drug testing in the work place except in in specific uh very specific in this uh very specific examples such as uh transportation workers as in uh air traffic controllers bus drivers and that kind of thing um i don't really think that it's uh too many i think it's a severe invasion of somebody's privacy to say well we're going to look at your urine and then decide whether you're uh you know worthy of working for us i really don't see that that's a very very valid uh thing for a company to say and i personally i don't think i would work for somebody if they were going to reject me on the basis of what's inside my body well i think i think we i think the problem here is is that a a drug test does not necessarily [imply] that someone is taking drugs or not taking drugs there's too many cases where it can you know there can be false positive results and that that sort of thing i don't think there's any [definitive] you know okay this person is taking drugs so we don't want him here uh like i said some industries though i think it'd be very necessary i wouldn't want any air traffic controllers high or anything like that when i'm flying in an airplane but uh i i just i find it to be pretty offensive that that it's such a a big deal i mean if your employer's not going to trust you or you know it i just i think it's a whole trust issue i just can't see it uh yeah i have been i i mean i was very offended by by the whole process i mean it's very humiliating and i mean i'm not speaking in favor of drugs or against drugs but i uh i am totally against that sort of a uh i mean it's it's a pretty personal thing when somebody says i want to look at your urine before i'm going to talk to you right yeah right right that's that's basically my opinion on it right there is that it's just you know i did i i was in the same sort of situation as it was a job interview and then you had a physical where you were drug tested and it's i just and i know people who have been drug tested and who have not you know been hired by a corporation which uh you know i really the other side of it is is besides its being an invasion of personal privacy as in my it's my [bodily] fluid and i don't really want you to look at it or or something pretty basic like that just to the fact that i don't know that it is a company's business to regulate what it's employees are doing when they're not at work i mean during the eight hours during the day when they're supposed to be there i think they have every right to say this is these [behaviors] are acceptable and these are not but when it [enters] into what they're doing when they're not at work i find that to be fairly offensive also right right that's exactly right and also i just think it it gets a lot i'm a big uh supporter of personal freedoms and personal [privacies] and i think that it just moves down along a line that that i really would find bad if if most people went down that line into regulating [employees'] lives outside of work you know there's already talk of people well we're not going to hire you if you smoke well you know i i can see how they can say in the work place we you don't want them to smoke but when somebody leaves work i don't think that it's the employer's right to regulate their life style at all uh i really think it should be except as i've mentioned twice now in the specified industries or or jobs because there are certain things where it's just vital that a person is clear minded at all times and other than that i think i do not think it should be [allowable] i think it should be illegal for them to to want to do that it should it's kind of the big brother syndrome i mean i just anything like that just kind of scares me right right well uh does the company you work for test for drugs huh uh no we're not being tested for drugs at all uh our policies and procedures manual uh the furthest it goes about drugs is in the kind of the miscellaneous section or it's reasons for immediate dismissal it says use of [narcotics] on company premises so that's pretty general but uh i work for an environmental management firm and i'm an engineer there but i do go on a lot of hazardous waste sites but i don't operate any machinery now people for our company that do operate machinery like drill rigs and things like that are under a a medical monitoring program because they're at a higher risk of exposure and blood screening is part of that and i i think that drugs they do test for drugs in that capacity but it's not their exclusive it's just part it's just something that turns up in the other parameters that they test for but i think it's got a little more relevance since they are around dangerous equipment and things like that and do have to exercise some quick judgment in the field what is the nature of your company's business um oh really right we that's been an a an issue uh in our company even though we don't have the random or even regular drug screening in fact they'll have these little parties and people will just get i mean i've my brother lives where i work and i have many a time called him to come get me you know and uh uh but you know they don't think twice about serving beer by the [keg] you know but uh i think drug testing and i i don't know i guess i i think it's got some relevance but i think its relevance is pretty limited i mean i think you know in your case i don't think that you should necessarily be subjected to drug testing i think that's an interesting policy your company has about testing immediately after an on the job accident uh_huh oh right actually uh they just recently started a policy of testing drugs which was kind of interesting because when i went to work for them uh they didn't do that but uh since then they've they've started a drug testing policy not because of their own uh convictions but because the clients of our company are [requests] that we do that how about you uh_huh um okay yeah uh_huh yeah well it's actually uh we do oil well services so a lot of our clients are oil companies big oil companies and they go out to we have engineers who uh go out to the oil well to the to the [client's] oil well and and work with a lot of heavy equipment and put tools down the oil well and stuff so the clients are very concerned that you know the engineers who go out there are [adhering] to their drug policy because they're on their their you know territory and everything but the thing that's interesting is that i i'm an engineer and a software engineer and i work in the software uh house and everybody there you know are all software engineers they've never you know they never go out to the the oil rigs or anything and yet we're getting we're subjected to this policy you know the same one that uh all the engineers have to to well a little different actually but uh you know we have to go through the same thing and it's but it's uh it's a little different i guess than than a lot of drug policies in our case it's like when you hire on they'll test you and then if you get injured on the job if you like trip and fall or something uh they give you a drug test right away other than that they don't have random testing or anything like that but a lot of people were really upset with the policy at first particularly like uh we have a lot of parties and stuff where they serve alcohol and they didn't find any problem with that you know but uh yeah yeah yeah it's really it's really bizarre uh particularly like where we are you know i i there was a story of a woman last year who who actually did slip on the ice and and like [sprained] her ankle and she she was a personnel secretary and she had to get tested and i don't know i'm ambivalent about the whole thing i you know i have a lot of mixed feelings about on the one hand it's like if you know they're they should be able to make it as a continue of employment in some sense and you know it's like you're i mean [employments] are [contractual] by nature anyway but uh i had an experience when i was interviewing for a job that where i had to uh uh do a drug test and and it's it was kind of a long story but it was it was just an incredibly humiliating experience what i went through and it [amounted] to uh going in uh before any of these interviews i'm not even working for this company i'm going in for like interviews and they flew me out to chicago and and uh before i went into any of the interviews uh they took me to the doctor to give me a physical they said it was going to be a physical you know and uh actually beforehand they told me they were going to uh do drug screening but i had forgotten about that and so basically i'd already [peed] off in that morning and and when i got in there i didn't i wasn't like able to give a full sample and so they made me sit and wait for forty five minutes drink a whole ton of water before i went to any of the interviews and go in there again and the and the the procedure is utterly humiliating you go in there with the doctor he makes you take off all your clothes and then he [examines] you okay do you work with a company that uh gives drug testing oh they do uh_huh what uh did they do that before you went in or what oh they will huh oh okay well i've i worked i don't work right now because my company i worked for p i e went bankrupt but uh they was getting a program set up that for all new hires they was going drug uh give them drug tests but uh they didn't hire very many new hires because all the people that usually work there you know just stayed there because it was they had been there for a long long time but uh actually i think they should do it you know uh i don't think anybody needs anybody that's to be working for them that's on drugs of any kind you know but uh i don't know whether i believe that they should just randomly do it i think they should kind of [warn] them like you know well we're going to do that or maybe tell them before they do get hired you know that this is what is going to happen and then if you don't like it why then you know you'll have to go look for a job someplace else well i suppose you are right there too you know uh personally i uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh huh uh_huh well i suppose they fire you and everything right then huh or what do they do with you guys if that you guys get oh i oh i see yeah well i don't either i wouldn't even think about it i think anybody that does them are dumb you know yeah really you're so stupid god and you just watch it on t v and see how it just burns your brain completely up you know you don't yeah really dumb huh but uh let's see what else was i going to say here yeah i think so i think they all should test really you know uh it just seems like there is so much more of it going on anymore that i don't know what's wrong with the people uh but i think that the the government should do something about stopping it completely about it coming into our country you know they just slap somebody's little hand and you know well don't do that again and and then you know they'll get out and they're right back at it again yeah uh_huh uh_huh but uh other than that why i don't know like i say maybe one of these days i'll get a job because i am looking still for a part time job you know since my company went bankrupt and i'll see what they do you know but like i say i i wouldn't care because i i don't i don't even smoke so they can test me all i want i wonder what if you take medicine if that would effect it yeah see now that that would be really unfair then huh you know yeah find out what you know if you have been taking some kind of medication and you know if that would effect it and everything but uh well i guess that's about all we can talk about i think our five minutes is about up anyhow okay lewis and maybe i'll talk to you again [alrighty] bye bye bye hi sort of i'm a i'm a student but uh i'm in the national guard and they do a little bit of drug testing yeah uh they they do it before you go in and occasionally they'll have a a random urinalysis yeah so you can't be smoking marijuana in in the military anymore oh oh uh_huh yeah i i believe they should too uh_huh yeah definitely oh uh but after you you have to do randomly otherwise people will cheat yeah they i know when i was doing my uh basic training in a i t there was guys who would fool around and then when that urinalysis came around they would be all scared so it does work it is effective the only problem is you know if you have done drugs but you've stopped and uh you do get caught it is kind of kind of harsh yeah uh we get counseling and uh i think part of our pay is [docked] if we're first time offenders i really don't i i haven't i don't do any drugs so i don't know crazy yeah yeah yeah wastes your future yeah uh what do you think about our uh like uh other government agencies testing do you think our government agencies should test yeah yeah oh i know yeah they aren't yeah right now it is it's too lucrative for the drug dealers so the risks are worth it for them yeah yeah yeah oh see that's it is a problem sometimes some medicines will give off a a false positive i've heard of i've heard of that yeah yeah i believe you should have the testing but they should be like if you get if you get a positive they should double check you and still give you the benefit of a doubt uh_huh yeah well it was nice talking to you rose okay bye bye go ahead uh no i haven't but in my job i'm a nurse and we are allowed to be i mean you know this is the rules that they can do this anytime uh i don't know of anyone who ever has been picked out and been tested they can if they choose to right have you well have you had any experience with it at all uh_huh so what do you think about that right right see i know of that too and i also know that things like [antihistamines] [sudafeds] things like that can really throw it off and you cannot get a job because of it and they may not tell you the reason why uh_huh see and so it really is a dangerous thing that way because i know of somebody that tested for an airline and didn't get the job and they weren't told why but a lot of people say the reason why after you take a physical will be because of the drug testing or they would tell you or this person never use any drugs uh you should because you should be given another chance or at least be able to justify it or something i have real mixed feelings about it i don't know the accuracy i don't know i don't know but i know there are a lot of things that can influence them and i think that a person deserves a second chance with it or something because most things will stay in your system for a long time and if you could show that i i interviewed for a job recently and i was taking [entex] and my doctor gave me a prescription for it and he said this way if it were to make the drug test positive you have proof that your doctor ordered this for you you know and it didn't come up that i needed to do it but this could happen to anybody and if they would just say oh this person's drug test is positive we won't hire them you know then you could lose out on a job when really you didn't do anything so i don't know yeah i'm not sure either the only way i can see it is that if they really suspect a person of using it then they have the right to go ahead and prove it because they say they can spot check yeah well it sort of is and this is it this i'm not real sure how i feel about it because i can see it from two ways you know as a health professional i wouldn't want somebody to take care of me that was using drugs you know so as a patient i feel well yeah we probably should be protected but on the other hand there's a lot of things i should be protected from that they don't test my patients for too so you know i guess you sort of you have to have trust some place along the way you can't go around testing everybody for everything so i don't know and i i think it could be used to hassle somebody if someone was out to get you i think that a company or a boss could use this you know they could keep on doing this to you or something i guess i can see where it could become a problem really oh wow but maybe you shouldn't be held responsible for something you did several years ago that's the other thing i mean a lot of a lot of people as kids or you know young people get into some things that they get out of later on and i don't think they should really have to pay for that forever yeah i think that's true yeah yeah so that probably wouldn't be too good either uh have you every been tested for a new job or anything so it's just sort of uh they can if they oh okay uh not really but i've always worked on a university level but a lot of my friends had to be tested before they got summer jobs and stuff uh i don't i don't think they're very accurate because i mean i know their lifestyles changed prior to the drug test and i know they changed afterwards yeah i i had a friend it didn't cause her any problems with her job but it came back that she tested positive for using a [hallucinogen] but what it was was she had been she had been uh in the [jungle] and it was some [malaria] medication and she tested positive for that see i always i thought they got you got called back if you tested positive for more tests how do you know how wrong they are are they i mean is there a margin of error yeah uh_huh yeah yeah and i i'm not so sure they are that needed i mean if you're using it while at a job i can see a problem but the occasional person then it's almost like it's almost an infringement of your privacy yeah yeah yeah and it it's like it seems like now they have tests i guess they can test your hair and they can find out if you use drugs up to several years ago so i know yeah there's a lot of things you do as a kid that you wouldn't do as an adult but you can't say it was wrong at the time okay well i can see it in certain cases where it might be uh somebody's in a position that uh perhaps a lot of lives are involved like maybe uh pilots that uh you know fly [jets] and uh maybe people that have a lot of responsibility over a large mass of people i could certainly see it being done but in general uh you know whether companies want to do this and i know that companies do like factory workers that have lots of accidents are now being drug tested i know a couple of corporations that are doing that uh so you know they kind of have gotten into the idea that let's drug test them and let's put them through rehab but there's got to be like a limitation do we drug test everybody that comes in and or do we kind of say well you can be drug tested and you look okay because you look this way you're you're very conservative and and there's just no way that we would think that you would use drugs but the guy that doesn't fit the stereotype of uh the conservative or whatever could be drug tested and uh you know whether legal rights and of that person i don't know there's certainly a lot of things to really consider uh when you get into drug testing people just at the work place unless of course like i said they have a large responsibility over a mass of people uh that's about it uh_huh uh_huh sure sure and i think that's what companies are doing uh more and more because there are products that are out there uh_huh exactly sure sure sure exactly the only thing is exactly exactly the only thing is uh the one issue that i would take stands with is the fact that the drug testing itself can be done on a person that is actually not on drugs and come out positive if they have had like uh medications in the past let's say once a month or twice a month or three times a month or maybe that week they take an advil and the advil will apparently come out positive as if they smoked marijuana uh and there's [poppy] seed type things i think that everybody is aware of that but uh where's the line where you where you say to somebody i'm going to drug test you tomorrow so please do not take these medications or where's you know how can how you can do it exactly uh_huh sure sure exactly and the only thing that i would say on that is it could [blacklist] an employee later on let's say uh you've taken medication of some sort even though they usually have you at the time list what medications you've taken uh let's say you do come out positive and you've taken advil or any of the [ibuprofen] products out there or you've had a cold and you've been on medication or whatever you come out positive is it then the chance that the employer will look at you in more of a negative fashion and say well you know this is kind of iffy you know are they really on drugs or or they on drugs you know what i'm saying where there might be in the back of the mind of the employer that this person uh is on drugs or make up they may make up their mind that let's get rid of this employee you know what i'm saying uh_huh exactly and it's a they can that the if it does come out positive the first time they need to go back and find out what medications did that person take you know what i mean it it's kind of like uh i think most people are aware at least now common knowledge is that so what is your opinion on on drug testing well yeah it it it's just not the you're talking about company's liability if if uh if the company is liable for something that that a employee does while under the influence of of a drug you know then by all means they should have the right to to to to to minimize their liability and there's also the case about just uh uh health health and welfare of the uh employees if a company has a healthy work force their insurance rates are low and not only not only low there's all sorts of a of a benefits uh financial benefits associated with having you know having people file fewer claims being sick there there's the whole question that that a that a work force that is known not to be on drugs is going to be more healthy i don't think anybody would argue with that right right well the right the question becomes what do you do about somebody who tests who tests positive that's where the real sticking point comes in it's not i don't think there's any problem with testing people it's what do you do with the information right right well yeah i think clearly the person who is the line the line manager the employee should not be [privy] to the information of drug testing that should go to an entirely different uh agency within a corporation uh uh a lot of companies now are are using uh drug testing [paraphernalia] and drug testing situations to to root out the the either uh elementary or intermediate or advanced uh drug users and uh i know the the government is uh you know gives drug tests to all new [entrants] all new [applicants] coming into government and and i quite frankly don't see anything wrong with it i i'm i guess i'm not a good civil libertarian and and i i feel as though uh that uh uh you know that if you you're a drug user you have a hidden agenda that's difficult unless you really go into a deep background of course we're we're being involved in my organization uh we we have deep background checks and and so uh but but sometimes you know drug use can can escape that and uh i have absolutely no [compunction] about uh using any and all means to to uh uh you know work out figure out who has a drug program or who has a drug problem and uh and putting that guy into into therapy to whatever it is to to you know break this uh activity of course if he's fallen in love with drugs and there isn't anything but getting stoned or high is is the only thing in life that seems to be meaningful then maybe there is no hope what's your uh feeling uh_huh well i think uh the the laws on uh uh uh the first [morphine] laws were were like ninety or nineteen ten or nineteen five something like that yeah well the thing of it is the the that that is uh uh in in many respects uh uh you know just just i think an over [simplification] i i think there there's so much criminal activity uh that people go into to to support drug habits yeah you know they they support drug habits with uh with uh you know with things like uh you know burglary or or [prostitution] or stuff like that yeah i i i must admit that yeah yeah i i must admit that the production costs of of these drugs are are [zippo] compared to the street market costs and and the costs to society yeah but i i i i think that that the that you know the being in law enforcement you know they i i probably have a kind of a [draconian] [philistine] attitude toward it and but but the uh uh i i really feel as though the [interdiction] effort is is as soon as you you get rid of one [goon] that's that's that's involved in drugs and yeah and then another another one will jump up but we we see yeah as soon as we wind up uh uh you know for well if we can just destroy the market by destroying the demand but but people want to get get stoned and i i don't see that yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh sure sure huh uh_huh yeah uh well i guess i i guess i'm probably a little more to toward the other direction uh well i guess mainly because uh it's i well like there's two sides to it i guess uh one is that uh if you're coming to work under the influence of any sort of drug alcohol whatever or you know even if it's smoking [inhibits] you know your ability to function then i i think that that you know i don't have any problem at all with testing that individual you know on the spot uh but i guess i feel more like whatever you're doing in your own private life is your own private business uh and i guess part of the reason there is because of the fact that uh things like drug laws seem to come and go you know we had prohibition for awhile and then we didn't have prohibition uh you know we've had i guess laws against uh you know various other forms of drugs for the last what sixty or seventy years i guess maybe a little longer yeah so eighty years or so yeah uh so i you know it's it's hard to i guess for me to justify what seems like you know basically a [breach] of the first you know freedom from uh search and [seizure] you know uh on something that may or may not stand as a law you know fifty years from now or even twenty or ten who knows i mean prohibition certainly didn't last well but you got to look at prohibition though you had the same problems there right oh yeah sure well it goes back to that again if you look at prohibition i mean because it's illegal it costs more if it was legal i mean face it you can buy pharmaceutical grade cocaine for what ten or twenty dollars an ounce and clearly if you're into coke and all you want to do is you know [snort] your brains out all day long if it was legal you could do it real cheap and you know you'd be a menace to nobody but yourself as long as you stayed at home and did it but yeah get uh oh yeah well that's why there's you know people dealing it because there's money in it you know there's ridiculous amounts of money oh yeah [interdiction's] hopeless i mean there's no way you're ever going to win that the tighter you squeeze the more the price goes up the more incentive there is i mean that's a losing fight yeah yeah well yeah it goes back to you know what right what can society impose on people i mean can you force somebody to be a good productive citizen i don't think you can i mean you know i'm you know was raised with being a very strong bible work ethic so you know i'm one of these you know ten twelve fifteen twenty hour a day type people so you know yeah i can really relate to yeah everybody ought to do their own share you know i don't have any you know love lost for people who are on the public [dole] just because they're too lazy to get a job or that kind of stuff but you know been on the line for awhile i almost forgot what the topic was uh but i know what it is uh let me see i i i i i'm kind of i don't you know i'm i'm kind of in the middle i i think it's a great idea but when it comes to me it's like almost an [insult] you know so it's i i've come from the teaching field so so it's just like i don't know i i guess i guess i'd have to go with uh i i i'd be for it you know but uh you know i i i don't know it's just kind of a kind of a delicate subject i guess but i i i would i would probably go for for going ahead and doing it you know if it's got to be done for everyone right right yeah yeah yeah yeah you kind of goes into your privacy and you know but i guess if they you know you know there's uh i guess there's some companies that aren't that are doing it and it it seems to be working out so yeah right see that's hard yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah then i kind of hear it goes into like uh this is just something i've heard that it kind of goes into like uh just your off the counter medication that you could be taking for a cold that it kind of affects that too oh i didn't know that um yeah see things like that so yeah right right uh_huh see that's yeah that's where i kind of get into cause it kind of gets into your personal life you know and what's kind of next the what huh oh yeah right yeah right so do you think they'll kind of push into the teaching field eventually i kind of think they will yeah yeah we haven't either yeah but i i i just kind of think it's heading that way though you know it's just because it's just hitting to close to home with the kids and stuff and i just i just kind of think it's going to eventually head that way yeah right right yeah okay uh based oh okay good uh_huh right so do i uh_huh right i think if it's got to be done for one person in the company it should be random testing it should be for everybody you know when they answer the company i think it'll make it a lot easier and they'd run into less problems because uh i don't know i come from the teaching field too and it sort of uh it's a pro and a con i don't know where to stand on it i'm more or less if they told me i had to well then fine but if you know if they made me then i'd probably if i had my druthers i'd probably say well no you know just this right uh_huh yeah i think it's it's what they're basically trying to do i don't know up here in massachusetts anyhow what they're basically trying to do is uh-oh gosh uh any people who had tested positively getting them into a drug program or rehab program and uh anybody who uh gee is you know doesn't accept the rehab program then they're more or less getting laid off i i think that's really hard to because you know you never know i don't know it that's a it's really weird issue i'm sort of on the fence about it but i you know that that's what's they're coming across as is some of the companies anyhow oh we can get you into a drug program but then you wear that stigma you know where uh like a lot of people are saying well i only smoked a joint last night i don't have any problems you know or something like that yeah right anything with a you know if you drink a lot of [caffeine] or yeah somebody was saying telling me if you drink it in you know an awful lot of [caffeine] that that can show up as a positive test i know i'm an [epileptic] so i'd probably test positive and and then i'd have a heck of a time explaining what drug is in my system you know and a lot of times those are the things i don't like to [disclose] to an employer because then they don't want to have anything to do with you you know it's very personal i wouldn't want to have it [disclosed] because then i'd always wonder if they fired me you know why did you fire me uh_huh yeah it it hits me as the orwell thing big brother is watching orwell and you know his book [brig] big brother is watching you know you're being controlled that type of deal and i i don't really you know i don't know seems awful strange i'd hate to have to if i had my choice between a company that did testing and a company who didn't i'd probably take the company who didn't because i feel there'd be more trust in the employee but i can understand why they need it with all the you know train accidents and everything else i think they will too because uh you know it's just going to follow i don't know i we haven't had any of it in our school system so uh you know hopefully we won't right well and eventually it's going to be not only the you know the kids are going to be under [scrutiny] it's going to be the teachers and if they can test the teachers that gives them the full right to test the kids and then they you know caught everybody so how do you feel about it yeah i i myself almost uh am in favor of it uh i work at honeywell and i went through a a pretty i don't know i went through a standard drug testing thing before i i was brought on i think that's pretty standard at least at honeywell it is uh i think it's important to insure the quality and and uh i don't know almost the goodness of character you know that kind of thing where do you work oh okay oh okay huh oh great right uh_huh yeah yeah and that that definitely happens you know i mean those the drug tests sure they're accurate but there's always that margin of error and that's that's something to be aware of another thing is a lot of times you know they aren't that accurate they aren't that sensitive like if you're on a prescription drug of some kind you know what are they going to do about that you know i was on a couple of different prescription drugs when i was tested for honeywell and uh uh you know i know they didn't catch that or else they would have said something uh i'm sure they screen for just a particular few types although the literature they give with you says yeah we do this and then they list about five thousand drugs they try to test for uh i don't know what what program are you in over at carnegie mellon oh okay great uh yeah i'm a graduate student at u c f in florida university of central florida and this is actually a an internship up here but uh they uh even for [interns] they they do the whole random drug or the whole drug testing thing so right uh they essentially no i sure don't uh they essentially uh they essentially uh made me the offer and then and then uh did the drug testing thing after that so uh it was one of those things where you go through the the general battery of all their tests and and then they essentially give you the offer and then at that point they'll they'll ask you to go to a drug testing and things like that so uh there's some noise on this end i'm actually in a mall calling so you probably wondered huh but yes that's a good question i believe from what i remember of the literature they gave uh if you fail i believe they give you one more chance they probably give you a chance to explain yourself and then maybe give you another chance to go through it but uh you know once again those things are not that accurate so there's undoubtedly a proportion of people who do fail you know but uh are you working right now anywhere or okay oh okay great yeah that was the first time i'd ever gotten any kind of drug screening you know was was going to honeywell a friend of mine is also a doctoral student down there and he's doing an internship with i b m and uh they basically uh did the same exact thing uh we both got our [internships] at the same time and we both had to go through drug testing at the same time so one of those things where we went through a kind of an identical process but uh no no that's one thing they don't do is is drug testing while you're on the job uh i think i think the [unwritten] rule is yeah expect it but they don't do it you know so that's good i guess i don't know i mean i uh i have gone to a couple of parties since since that time and while i don't do any drugs myself i've seen some people who work there uh you know smoking a joint or whatever and uh you know that's the kind of thing that would definitely come up you know but no they don't they don't really do that so yeah uh i i don't see any problem with with testing for random drugs uh_huh yeah uh well i'm a graduate student right now at carnegie mellon and i i just came from saint paul uh interviewing with three m and uh they have a policy for uh testing if you if they make you an offer then they'll test you right before you start and i guess the only drawback i can see to to drug testing is in in case you are on some sort of medication that might give some uh sort of false positive result then there could be some sort of problem but yeah yeah right uh electrical engineering oh wow they test you uh before they before you start or before you even interview or uh_huh oh oh yeah what happens if you were to fail then do they give you like one one more chance or two more chances uh_huh uh no i'm just about to finish my master's in may and uh just interviewing with companies right now uh_huh oh did do they test you at right now at work too okay oh uh_huh wow is it formal policy that they said they might test well uh yeah i i'm employed by a company that does do uh random drug testing and i've got some very definite uh opinions about it uh you know which haven't changed all that much from my first reactions from from when they when they announced it but uh developed a little more i guess but haven't changed that much what about you are you uh involved at all yes yeah right yeah yeah yeah it uh that's that's mine it it you know i i go back it to me no matter how much the our company claims it's not a constitutional issue that because this is uh between a company and an employee it is not it is not a government it's not the constitution doesn't apply but i it it seems to me that it still should i i our company's doing it because they're a uh government contractor uh and so it's it's required for certain some form some form of drug program is required to get the government contracts and i'd i'd yes okay and our company has taken that and gone all the way say okay uh first off we don't we don't have enough courage to uh pick out the people that that have some sort of indication of possible drug usage uh because that would offend them uh if they if they weren't so we'll just accuse everybody of using drugs and make it all even uh and and uh then uh but and they so it's a a complete random testing well it's random in the sense that you don't know when it is not random in the sense that they have said that within three years everyone in the company will be tested uh and uh you know i i sit at a terminal and and write software all day it it uh certainly has no life threatening uh capabilities uh you know in in my job and and uh yes i i agree that there are there are uh jobs that are definitely life threatening and and and there needs to be a line drawn somewhere at reasonable and proper you know well yeah i that that i that i will give credit to to our our company for in that that i think there's there's a couple of levels of tests in terms of of uh of drugs and essentially the first thing is is on the order of paper in the urine and uh or some you know it's not quite that simple but it's fairly simple [coarse] kind of test and then there's a a much more uh uh refined test uh uh [spectrography] or whatever it's called the [chemotography] uh to determine exactly what the what the things are and uh no i i've been with this company for uh for sixteen years now and uh no and it and it and it has it has you know they did that three or four years before they did it with everybody and i uh at that time i could justify it in terms of someone new coming in you don't you don't know but on the other hand uh someone new coming in that knows they're going to have a test okay well uh i'll let you start i guess uh no i mean i'm not my employer does not do that uh although uh i had an ex employer that uh the previous job i used to have uh they after i guess a few years after i had started with them they made it a condition of employment that you pass a drug test uh i i don't know my feeling is that certain jobs that when there's immediate threat to life and limb uh if should somebody be under the influence of drugs i i'd be willing to support that for example uh uh well uh uh train engineers because it you know uh like there was an incident several years ago where an [amtrak] engineer you know he [crashed] and killed some people because he was uh smoking some marijuana and i guess air traffic controllers i wouldn't want them to be on drugs and airplane pilots but where it's not necessary uh in that regard where it's not an immediate threat to life and limb or property uh i i'd i would seriously question it uh so so it's the government that's [mandating] it to a certain extent yeah well huh right and yeah yeah i agree i mean it's well there's also the issue of uh out here i remember hearing a year or so ago that uh a lot of there was a high error rate in the analysis of drug results or i shouldn't say high i mean several percent kind of a [coarse] kind of test is that done right now let me ask you this uh at the time you hired on with this company uh was that prior to any okay so that this is obviously not a condition of employment that you subject yourself to this um i have mixed feelings about it um i don't particularly care for people who take drugs and uh it's a possibility of having accidents in the workplace but uh i also feel like it's an invasion of privacy right uh_huh right right yeah yeah i have a lot of problems with it um i have been tested also several times and uh in fact it has always come up negative i mean but that's no problem with it coming up negative but uh i take prescription drugs and i'm always afraid that those were going to come up and show something on any of the tests yeah right right right yeah but i agree with you though they are trying to they are saying that you are guilty until proven innocent and i don't really appreciate that at all uh uh_huh right no no because this can follow you uh at other places too i was reading this morning in the newspaper where they have companies or organizations out now who will go and do background [searches] on employees before they ever hire them and if you get one of those false negative [reportings] and you're fired from your job that's going to [carryover] into other jobs um no matter uh if it's truth or not so yeah it can stick with you a long time right uh_huh well uh cause you work for t i also right yeah because uh i think what they say that they'll take your name out of the [hopper] so that whatever is left in the [hopper] you know it's it's that's when you'd be tested and then when you were tested you would be taken out of there so that's that's how they said they would do it over a five year period uh_huh hm well it's only been what a year two years huh_uh yeah it hasn't been i know i was called up right away it didn't i was called it let's see we started testing in january and i was called up right away in january uh_huh uh_huh right right right you're right it wasn't a very pleasant experience because i felt like there was a camera watching what did she say yeah on a continuing basis too you know that was that was a really interesting because it was a great big room the bathroom was it was a great big room and uh and i remember the [vents] you know just right over the top of the toilet and i just knew i was being [photographed] you know i'm glad i don't have to go through that experience again yeah right yeah yeah well uh i guess growing up in the sixties i don't know that particular era and generation i think about it though i have some friends who are occasional uh marijuana smokers and you know it's just a [hangover] from uh from that particular generation and you know but yeah they're just adamant that they're not going to be tested and they're going to fight it uh and try and see what they can do that it's an invasion of privacy but i don't particularly care to you know care to get into drugs or anything else so it's not a problem for me but i i can kind of understand from the other point of view right yeah yeah uh_huh oh yeah yeah i could really see that uh so they'll have to find other means of relaxing and but the one thing too that that i have a problem with is that well if marijuana and cocaine and the other so called uh illegal drugs you know what about alcohol uh_huh uh_huh i think so yeah yeah but you know alcohol destroys so many families now so that's that's what i thought was interesting that there are still drugs out there and there are those socially acceptable drugs uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah yeah yeah because you would be strongly into denial it's just like well we know you take it we've got the positive test results and you are going i don't i don't right right right i think there's some flaws in it i think their main objective is is good you know to make sure they have a drug free workplace but i do think that are a lot of flaws in there and i understand the government will not use that particular drug testing agency that t i is using yeah because it's not as reliable as the government wants them to be no well i heard just the opposite so i don't know it could just be rumors that are just spread around uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah i find that hard to believe too is our five minutes up okay well it was nice talking to you good yes yes we do right here at the at the very building they have a [nurse's] office i haven't my name hasn't come up yet how about you right right yes that's the the major issue i guess i have a a similar opinion at first i wasn't sure but then i thought it was a good thing for the company as well uh uh we had couple of people in our group who one who wrote a huge letter to the editors saying that it's a violation of my rights and this and that and the tests aren't accurate and but i think they've got that testing down to a real science where you know they don't you know i'm i'm sure you saw the video on how they do the testing and it's almost impossible i think to uh to make a mistake right right who were involved right and that that's a lot of money and oh oh taking drug testing oh sure i think that's that's i feel that you know for certain cases that i that i am willing up to give up my rights to secure the rights of others i guess is what i'm saying uh when the public whole is at stake then i'm willing to you know personally i can't speak for others but for myself i'm willing to say okay you know uh if i see this is a right to if to privacy i'm willing to give up that right because i can see that it's uh public good is at stake and the company good is at stake and you know if they can get this thing under control you know it it's going to save us all money as far as benefits and everything else you know insurance and and everything else in this country right right you don't work in an area where there's chemicals or machinery or or things like that and um they don't have any of that up here but you know um i guess it's just the productivity and the the number of uh uh sick days i guess uh that they that they [accrue] right well well i i think they would you know someone on drugs probably misses more work i guess that's why this smoking thing came out too right and they and that's why why i guess the car insurance has no non smoker rates or whatever as well yeah oh yeah uh non at least down here in texas they have non non smoker they call them discounts they give you if you're a non smoker i i guess there is some kind of studies that show that if you're smoking you're not you're not as you know when you're [lighting] up or something you know your hands both hands aren't on the wheel or whatever yeah i guess that takes effect in uh when june july yeah right there was a lot of uh controversy about that too i'm not i'm not a smoker myself i do yeah i'd probably get upset yeah yeah right right right right right i i i assume that they they i guess they're saying with the cigarettes though that they've been able to show that it's the number one leading cause of preventable preventable death in this country was a half a million people a year or so dying with smoke relating smoking related right right right well right well that's all well that's all what i always felt if it if those studies were true about smokers having higher medical costs and we do have one smoker in our area who and he he seems to miss a lot of work but um um forty eight maybe forty five forty eight yeah but then there is people you talk to and say i've never been sick a day in my life so i guess in i guess you know the studies show as an average not specific cases and uh i thought well with you know if that's really true then then i guess i agreed with the extra premium if it i mean if they can come along and prove that french fries were the same deal then they have a right to charge for that too i guess that it's a major cause of uh early no well it depends if they're cooked in yeah right right right it's the honor system isn't it it's the honor system i know it will be an interesting experiment to see how right right well well i think the same way with alcohol too personally it you know that would probably be the next the next thing i mean but you know there's a difference because uh they say you know i guess they say tobacco is addictive i guess they say alcohol is addictive as well oh yeah there is oh there is right right right well it's part of the business world too when you make deals you know a lot of times it's a three [martini] lunch or whatever they say right yeah yeah makes me feel better right [nicotine] addiction yeah yeah my in laws are both smokers and uh they've tried to quit numerous times and i think the longest they've made it is about three months and then they go to a a friend's house or something and there they're all smoking and and they just break yeah they just can't stand it you know all of a sudden they get it's overwhelming and then they break down and then they say i'm a failure and then they just give up you know were known yeah yeah so well i think we've probably talked long enough well i can tell you're from you've got that new england accent does that mean you're you're you're in uh uh new massachusetts okay what is your feeling on drug testing not even yeah not even on the way home while on the job well i personally think that it should be done also uh my feelings are the same as yours from that standpoint i spent thirty four years in education as a teacher and administrator right and uh so i saw drugs from um the early very early fifties absolutely coming into the uh the community more and more and the uh children being introduced to it and giving it you know to get them started on drugs they give them for nothing and uh you know and then i see um um the uh the problem with testing uh now they test athletes they test horses uh they test uh for steroids right and yes yes yes well now just stop and think of of uh um nasa for example all the people who work for nasa are uh of course here in dayton we have uh [wright] [paterson] air force uh base right here or where there's so much research going on if these people uh are on drugs uh it doesn't the test results uh the results which they are striving for could differently be in error or [misconstrued] or [misread] or any number of things which could mean peoples lives yes uh_huh that's right that's right it can and it does it most most differently does no we we do not have uh we um no i spent the first eighteen years on in between two schools on the west side of dayton which was primarily black and the last fourteen years i spent um doing nothing but [resolving] problems with schools that were assigned to me that couldn't be resolved on a local level which could be a complaint on a principal or teacher or a riot a bus action [stabbing] taking parents to court kids to court and what have you and i was on the east end of dayton which is primarily appalachian and uh i could by see a tremendous difference between it but we would see uh children um taking uh a product called [toil] which is a [toluene] which is used to clean automobiles motors and what have you and they would put this in they have they'd steal a whole gallon of it and we finally found the chemical company from where they were stealing it [tapping] through the bottom of a a [semitrailer] because it's so volatile the uh companies could not keep it inside a a uh building and they would tap it from underneath drain off a gallon put a gallon in an abandoned house and the kids would go to the abandoned house wet a cloth with it put the cloth in a plastic bag and then [inhale] the fumes and they they they do this like on lunchtime they come back to school and they'd have red marks all around the nose and mouth and we knew immediately what they had been doing and then would have to try to take appropriate action but uh you know there are a lot of things we think in terms of drugs we think of crack we think of heroin we think of marijuana we forgot that there are other types of of uh [habituating] drugs that are used that are just as dangerous as as the others so uh it's i you know it's it's terrible um of i think so uh i i see nothing wrong with that i think that that it should be uh better accepted than um uh forced testing of everyone uh it uh perhaps people would accept it better and then they know perhaps of a of future years down the road uh that uh uh mandatory testing if everyone could uh would come about just as small [pox] [vaccinations] were for years and some of the other types of [vaccinations] for [syphilis] and [gonorrhea] what have you yes absolutely and i think it should start right with our legislatures yeah and you know yes absolutely yes that's right but but we we do uh legislate uh things now like uh children in the seats in car safety seats seat belts we can legislate them we can legislate say children cannot get into school without having certain [immunizations] to protect them you would think that we would you know taken another step further than the we'd have uh some other kind of protection for them uh uh in for the staff the people you know and i understand they they fear as i'm sure your wife will tell you of age oh absolutely it helps absolutely right right well that that's very true and it is an [immense] problem and i think that that perhaps they uh money is spent in the wrong spots uh i i uh am very much in favor of the types programs we're having in our schools here now with uh teaching children we have a program called uh dare um i wish i could remember what all it stood for but it was against uh ways to uh say no to alcohol and drugs and the police departments in all the communities in and around the dayton area have teams which go into the schools in the first second and third grades and they their talking with the children on that level and that's to me the level where you need to have it you can't wait until their already in high school because they've already tried it long before that and uh but you [implant] the idea that this is not what they need to be doing for themselves and here's how to um she asked if i i guess they went ahead and told you we're supposed to be talking about uh drug testing and what do we think about the policy of most companies and government agencies and of course that's something we're familiar with you want to go ahead or um personally it was something that uh i mean i know it presents an emotional issue morale issue people feel like maybe my rights are being violated but i work in human resources so i work with a lot of folks that um are in accidents or where safety considerations are concerned and i really feel like that t i decision to go with drug testing was good you know because i i feel like that you know all all it takes is one person coming to work under the influence of some [narcotic] um truly into a lot more of our workers are you well now the thing you know course they've always said separately that um you know we have we have a policy on alcohol course if anybody's under the uh influence or if you have reasonable suspicion then that would result in [corrective] action for them also and that of course has been in place for years but it's not specifically tested for that yeah yeah uh_huh how long does alcohol stay in the system i mean like if somebody went out and had some drinks the night before is that going to be there the next day okay uh_huh yeah they do we had i didn't get a lot no not like i expected um we had you know one or two that were extremely outspoken you know felt like it really violated their rights and and um and it was not the people that i would have expected um it's one of them stands out in my mind as an extremely uh just a super person in management you know and he's he's very family oriented his family's very close he he also [opposes] in the schools like for his kids because he says you know we are a good christian family we do not do this type of thing it definitely [violates] our rights and he was very outspoken but for the most part people were like well i don't like it uh it's not something i prefer to do but i understand the reasoning and i think part of the attitude is that i think t i went to really great lengths in communicating and tried to prepare them and and tell them why and you know they didn't just announce it without really any [forethought] and uh i i think they don't go far enough uh kind of on a different vein and that is that i think every time we have any type of industrial accident at t i i think somebody ought to be tested immediately and you know maybe that's just me personally but i i feel like you know i feel like if something happens uh that causes an accident you ought to test the parties involved immediately just just if nothing else to rule it out um yeah yes uh_huh i guess what makes me think of that you know you hear them doing that like it's a or like [amtrak] you know if if they have a [derailment] or or transportation industry it seems like if there's accidents train accidents things like that they test and i think well why not because we do have some large industrial accidents sometimes uh you know if you have a large acid spill you know well gee maybe you better check this person who's handling all these acids you know i work with a [wafer] fab so we do a lot with chemicals and acids and uh things like that but i i do feel like companies are justified and i do feel like i mean i i guess i hate as an individual that anything like this has ever become necessary in our you know in our nation but but i feel like that it's a good thing to do that's true uh_huh sure uh_huh uh_huh now that started in january of last year is that right well i've been lucky i've been called twice well i no i had to test once um when they did the key personnel they test all human resource folks and so i i i was once there and then in the general random sampling last year i was i contacted yeah and that you know i have that same uneasy feeling that other folks have you know i know i i mean i don't drink i don't smoke i don't do nothing you know but you still walk in there and go gee what if something i ate what if something i've done what if something i've eaten shows up uh_huh yeah well now if the lab is making on error on the sample then when they retest the error should not be there uh yeah but the error is on the part of the lab not on the sample in other words if somebody makes a mistake in what they're reading then they're not going to get the same reading the second time if they do then you have you always have the recourse um you know before we do anything we sit down and talk with the person about is there any reason why this should have shown up and a lot of times you know uh they'll go oh yeah i was on a prescription for this and they can go get it and bring it in you know in which case they're fine obviously those are recorded as negatives if you're under you know legal qualified medical care um if if we're talking marijuana if it's in the system uh then yeah you know that would be grounds for uh if it's their second positive it would be grounds for termination if it's their first positive then they're setup with e a p counseling we had a couple no no in fact see t i actually sends uh test samples from time to time uh just to check the validity of the lab yeah and uh so that's kind of an ongoing test process for the we do for [compucam] and you know they don't know which ones are test samples yeah i don't think so i think the whole company uses [compucam] which is over there on the east coast somewhere and ours actually are mailed there uh they're the i think the largest and they do a lot of the government contractors they have an excellent excellent rate um and just okay jay i was thinking about um this topic and i was remembering that guy that does an advertisement on the radio about drug testing and marijuana whether or not marijuana causes any trouble or not and he was saying how the train had wrecked because the guy had been under the influence and he said whether you think you know you might think that it doesn't effect anybody but it does so i think it's a good idea is what i'm trying to say yeah i can see now when you've been there a while they were talking about random testing it seems like if there's no reason to suspect you that i might be offended if they asked me to come in and be tested you know what i mean and how often are they doing it uh_huh you mean in a year's time or what uh_huh because they'd be suspect or what uh_huh well how do you feel about that what if they did it on their own time and it still you know it stays in your body for such a long time oh that real good that's real good drug rehab and they'll send you to it so if they did have a problem they can get over it i agree with that uh_huh hm did you see that special about all these people that work on the road [crews] are putting these bridges up and so many of them had tested positive for drugs and they haven't been putting these bridges together correctly and like yeah and then uh on the lines for putting your automobiles together same thing they're under the influence and they're not doing the job right now that's scary isn't it uh_huh uh_huh well i've got an eleven year old son and an eight year old daughter and my son says i don't understand this drug stuff why don't people understand all you have to do is say no you know and he doesn't realize the pressure that he's going to be under later when his friends start doing this uh_huh uh_huh well i teach and last year a student that i'd had the year before so he would have been in third grade came to school with ice i don't i don't know what it is it's supposed to be real inexpensive i know that and anyway he's he's like a special ed child you know and i could see he was probably selling it for these other people and we were doing these posters for drug anti drug campaign and all these little first graders were always drawing these pictures of ice cream truck and the teacher started talking to them and they said that they were selling drugs out of ice cream trucks now uh_huh uh_huh do you think we should do this in every profession uh_huh uh_huh i don't know some jobs it seems like it would just maybe be a waste of money because who cares you know i mean like i don't know what one would be an example like should i say postal service or not are they going to screw up on mail do i think they should well see i don't really see the need of it you know how many elementary school teachers do you think are going to be on drugs you might feel like you need it i don't know it would cost so much money and i think we could use that money in the schools you know to buy paper and well now that's true and in teaching you don't get rid of a teacher very easy you know all right wasn't the mayor of new york arrested for cocaine abuse or was that somebody else d c i couldn't figure out if well [koch] is new york isn't he okay yeah berry yeah oh i am too yeah so we have nothing to disagree about they should test everybody right right and most of your work places can be dangerous if somebody is using drugs especially school i don't think there should be any kind of limits set on any school officials being tested but you know that commercial with the you know they show a woman doing cocaine or something and then you think it doesn't affect you and then you see her she's driving the school bus huh_uh i know it well and like at t i do you work at t i okay well at t i you're messing with all those chemicals and stuff and if you mix the wrong chemical whatever it can put out toxic fumes um well i worked there for a while manpower employee and i was tested you do where are you working at then oh okay huh_uh huh_uh well i quit when i found out i was pregnant i was just really scared of messing with the chemicals and uh t i is strict on their chemicals but they don't really i don't know i just didn't feel safe messing around it oh yeah yeah manpower did it so what is that what is that oh the film i'm sorry huh_uh can they spot test you okay huh_uh yeah they'll do it anytime i'm not sure what limits they set on it but i know that you had like eight hours to go in and do it between the time you were told and the time you had to be tested huh_uh right [acquitted] that's political well in that uh book that kitty whatever wrote saying president reagan can you see the president being tested no he wouldn't be tested which i don't know how true that is but i thought that was kind of yeah well but well even office workers i mean you could play with computers and lose what all kinds of information if you're just not careful i'm not i'm not even uh all that great with computers but i know just one mistake you can lose the whole record i can't even remember the word program yeah when i first started looking for work there wasn't any drug testing and i'm twenty six now and it seems like they've always every every job you go for you have to be tested so i think that's good see i've never used drugs personally so and i don't really want to be under the influence of somebody that is especially i could see a supervisor going nuts because well they do go freak out over anything you know huh_uh right he did i didn't know that right well most of the kids growing up in entertainment business do have troubles because they're in on the fast lane or whatever yeah yeah but even if you don't have the money people that really want drugs will finds the money some how while i was in college i did a paper on that just how many people mostly criminals have got drug problems it's one of the major reasons they're out to break into peoples houses or whatever oh yeah but that's always been going on well from watching t v the women the women will put it in their [bras] or in their mouth and kiss the men or whatever if they get a touch visit or whatever it's called it's wild i wonder if they get drug tested in prison now i know in the army my husband was in the army for awhile well he's in it for seven years they had urine tests all the time yes but they get people to do it for them all right say just per se my husband's friend knew that a pee test was coming up he would ask my husband to do it for him not that my husband did it oh yeah well yeah because well because most of the time it was one of your [contemporaries] heading it up because my husband was like with his acting sergeant and he would uh i'm not saying my husband did it but he's told me it's went on but his buddy would be coming through the line hey ken i can't do this can you do it for me you know and like i said it's all his [contemporaries] and his friends there so he just he was in command or whatever so you know that happens i mean sure that happens a lot yeah it's not a lot of them because not all of them have the nerve to do it yeah well yeah most of of the time if they fire well no they do fire on practice ranges but there's usually lots of room for it too but if you get caught you get busted out of the army and they can send you to leavenworth so leavenworth that the huh_uh it i think it's a government prison for like treason or the base my sister was on had a prison of their own which they they they're pretty strict in the army well actually i'm all for it even though uh for instance like in the area that i work for you know there's no danger you know of someone getting hurt because of you know being on drugs or something but uh uh i think because of ethics involved and uh things i'm just i'm in favor of it i i realize that that's putting a lot of government control in effect or or control over people but uh oh definitely well it's just like uh i can't remember now where it was what two three months ago there's that there was that bad train wreck and uh one of the uh engineers running the train was on drugs you know and people were killed in it and and yeah when it comes to safety and people being killed i definitely think it should be a requirement you know you're uh you know to heck with their rights you know they're interfering with people's rights to live you know if they're in that type of position and have that much control over people uh_huh yes uh_huh feeling like that if you know then you can look into a situation and in case there are children involved uh_huh yeah i can i can understand that i i think it is you know i think it's so sad these these crack babies that are now coming into you know grade school elementary school you know that are so uh-oh you know they're so messed up themselves and you know in talking to teachers i have several uh friends that are teachers they uh uh you know they're hard to control they're hard to deal with and yeah i think that would be a good idea being i'm a contract person with texas instruments and before i could even go to work here i had to be drug tested you know and they do a random drug testing of their employees uh but so far uh they don't require everyone to do it they just go through randomly and pick someone and you know and go do it so t i has an excellent uh assistance program if you're you know found with drugs they actually give you i think uh three tries you know to to quit it or get off of it or or whatever before you're you know dismissed i mean they work with you and they they have a program uh uh that you can go to that the company picks up the [tab] for and also it's really an excellent program i it seems like the older ones here are in favor of it the younger ones you know course are still they either you know doing some marijuana or something or they're very idealistic you know and uh i don't know i think sometimes the older that you get i think the more ramifications you can see of so many things is it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah this this program you know [encompasses] everything but you know i thought you know it's not an instant dismissal if you are found to be taking drugs which i think you know is good and is good on t t i part as i said i think they give you three chances you know to come to grips with it before you're dismissed uh_huh uh_huh hi i'm rita from garland uh we have quite a in depth subject here don't we why couldn't we get something simple like movies or books something more more fun yeah well we will we'll just give them lots of talk about won't we yeah that's right okay well uh i have a business of my own and i feel pretty strongly about it i don't mind being drug tested and i don't feel the employee should now you know no i i you know i think sometimes that when you fly for example you know pilots and things like that or people um that are even using uh automated equipment of some kind where another person could be injured you know you know and uh well a lot of times i think it depends upon the occasion but you know i've never had any problem with being drug tested and i wouldn't think that other people should have either i guess that's sort of a personal opinion uh_huh well i have a private high school and uh we get permission from the parents before the children the students [enroll] to allow random drug testing because i've seen what can happen to youngsters who were not on drugs being around it and getting influenced by their peers who are and there's a lot of it in the public school system yeah and of course good kids try to stay away from it but i've seen kids start out not being on drugs and end up being there because it was being sold right out under their noses you know so uh you know i feel pretty strongly about it i you know i know that there are people that say we're [violating] their civil rights and what have you but they don't have to [enroll] you know they don't have to take that job if that's the way they feel about it yeah that's right they're [violating] ours you know well they can be more productive and more useful yeah i feel that way too we don't uh kick them out we ask we call parents in if we haven't had one test positive yet but if it did we call parents in and uh you know get help for them before it's too late oh he just uh_huh and uh you know it's just really a shame that he couldn't get enough help to keep his career going yeah i think so and uh i think that youngsters who look up to the roy [tarpleys] and uh the other people that have gotten into drugs i think they're going to be more conscious of the effect it can have and they get you know look at what he's thrown away you know a wonderful career a tremendous amount of money uh because he couldn't get enough help to overcome it and probably wasn't early enough either but i think they can influence the youngsters in a good positive way when they're good role models now i think so too and i think it's important you know i i have never been against being drug tested myself and so i feel that the owner of a company you know you set forth policy and you follow through with it too you know and it doesn't exclude this one or that one it's everybody's it's all [inclusive] i know t i does that t i you know they never know who's going to be called you know uh_huh it's just a random thing that they'll get a call um but don't don't you find that that sort of [imposes] a uh i mean it i yes i think so i mean i well probably not as often as as as you'd like to think and and when you when you take and i mean it's like would you like to have somebody would you like to have the police able to come to your house and search for for let's say weapons uh twice a day without telling you uh would you like to have them come and find and look maybe for uh-oh uh illegal books and and could they come and and and just knock on the door and walk into your house and say i want i want to find illegal books yeah well um okay well would you the at work would you like them to be able to search your purse and and every time anytime they wanted to just come and and check to see if you had anything that was maybe against the company i i i'm it's not that i'm in favor of of you know that i think people should be allowed to take drugs at the job or or you know anything like that of course but on the other hand it's it's it seems a little bit nasty to me just to have this uh uh you know it seems quite an [imposition] on on personal freedom to have uh you know the the the vast majority of people that are at work aren't aren't taking drugs and have nothing to do with them and yet they're being subjected to the to the same kinds of of [imposition] that everybody else is and and i i think that that's just unfair if you put it in a different context you see the same the same you know it it it becomes a little clearer of course you know i my assumption is that that you don't take drugs and and and you of course would never have have nothing to hide in that sense and so it that doesn't doesn't hit home very close right but when it's something else it it does hit home and and i've you know it it gets more like a police state uh and it's a lot less like america to me and i and i find that uh i find it pretty offensive to have you know to to be you know i mean to to subject everybody to that kind of of of uh how you know random search yeah uh yeah yeah uh you know and and again you know in my case i have nothing to hide and i'm not going to you know it's not going to hurt me but on the other hand i'm very uh it it [perturbs] me to have the this issue yeah i mean just to to to be able to walk in and say you know now you have to show us this or you have to do that or you have to and uh it it seems it it seems like it's an erosion of of of a lot of what makes uh the the united states what it is and and i i i strongly dislike that uh and so yeah now actually actually i i don't take a a totally strong position on it i mean i think that i think there are certain certain positions no no no i i think that there there are certain positions where the the benefits of it [outweigh] the the the disadvantages of it and and like you say you maybe airline pilots or or uh you know people who who whether yeah i i suppose you know i i i kind of wonder about sort of random testing in general i i guess random testing is a way to make people not not feel like they're being [singled] out right because you know it seems like that that uh you ought to be able to tell who who has a problem and and uh and be able to deal with them uh but but i suppose that has uh some some negative side effects too right i mean people [persecuted] or something right yeah and uh and i suppose that the random testing i guess the logic is that if as long as you know if if if you're not involved then you don't have a problem then it shouldn't it shouldn't be any an issue for you and and and eventually the people that are actually doing that and causing the problems will be will be caught at it but uh i don't know uh_huh yeah yeah i i you know it's it's sort of like you know i i don't i just disagree with your position in general it's it's well i i think my feelings on it are it depends i think if it's necessary if you have the kind of job that requires you to always be you like police officers firemen doctors anybody who has you know who's whose decisions are important and all you know that's what i think as far as you are required to not only be at work when you're not at work as it were you know what i'm saying if you yeah people who who could be at work at any time or whose decisions could be [clouded] if they had to make a decision when they aren't at work but i don't see the point in it if you're if you're putting something together down at the local pizza place or whatever then i i just don't see what merit you're going to have from gaining what you do when you're not at work in those situations is your own business i think i think that's an infringement upon your personal rights that's an invasion of your personal privacy that's if they were to decide that you shouldn't be drinking would they just you know i mean you have to draw the line somewhere i think and give people the right to do what they need to do and what they want to do yes i okay i'm i'm i'm i i think that's fine i think if you if it matters to you that much then you should you know i mean if you want to weed out those kind of people right from the start i have no problem with that because you don't you don't want somebody who is a drug user starting work for you but i don't i don't think that they can just come back and get you anytime you know i i don't think it it could be surprise at your door here we are you know or or come to show up for work one day and then just say here you go uh uh i don't know it's kind of a yeah it's really you know yeah exactly yes uh_huh it's yeah it's kind of a do you you trust me do you not trust me you know it's i don't know i i don't really it's awfully it has it's points it's good points and it's bad points and it kind of makes us look like we're going in the other direction as far as the way the rest of the world is going almost you know i've walls are coming come down in berlin and we and here we are we are going the other way yeah it does i don't know it's kind of a [perplexing] problem oh yeah yeah yeah who am i harming as long as i am doing my job yeah yeah yeah exactly you don't want your doctor coming in hung over if he is going to be cutting on you that day that's for sure so i you know that is difficult you are going to you can't but then that just kind of comes back to personal responsibilities you but i guess that's more or less forcing you to be personally responsible for yourself it's basically all that they are trying to do with that and if you want to after you look at it that way because you would think your doctor wouldn't be out drinking at night before but if he thought he could get caught doing it then he certainly wouldn't do it as opposed to well it's not a big operation tomorrow what the heck yeah it's just a [gallbladder] and you know no problem i guess that's just that's basically what they're doing then just forcing you to be responsible but i guess some people have to be forced so that yeah wasn't yeah that's i don't know i i kind of think well it's partially because we have the technology now but it's also because i think moral standards have gone down hill quite a bit since earlier you know i mean it's it's just reached that point where society accepts you know you don't think about seeing your doctor our at a bar anymore so what do you think about uh employers screening you know job candidates for drug drug usage right right you think it [infringes] on personal rights to have that type of screening but a lot of times people who are on drugs don't admit it right yeah i don't really have that much of a problem with drug screening i think uh if it's effect their job performance uh i think it's reasonable for an employer to request a drug test but uh right yeah it always should be mandatory for some uh positions such as those but uh that's true that's true you there has to be that's that's the key i think is what happens when you find a person who is on drugs you got to just that's when you have to be careful you know you can't just fire every person something needs to be done to help these kind of these people right they can go and right there should be some sort of program they can go into to try to clean themselves up and to be given a second chance uh_huh true right right right yeah that's true yeah i don't know i am thinking if from my perspective let's say you owned a business and you would want to have the opportunity to screen any uh candidate for a job within your own company and if you put yourself in that situation you don't want to hire someone who is on cocaine no but i i could it's something i may do eventually so uh from that perspective i can i can see the need for drug testing uh_huh right well uh right yeah you can't really do that you could be hiring someone for uh uh a [managerial] white collar position in your company okay well uh i guess since i called i will start out with my feelings about it uh i think it is absolutely essential that some at least some employees of government agencies and companies be tested especially when it effects public safety i mean the military obviously uh people that run trains airplanes and the like uh for others i don't know i don't feel as strong about it uh i really don't have any objection to it but i can't really say i am for it either what's your feeling uh_huh yeah right or northwest i think northwest has had a lot of problems with that i uh i have been in two two situations where i have had to under go drug testing drug testing i was in the military for a number of years and then i worked four years uh as an uh electrical inspector uh in a nuclear plant that was under construction and in both cases uh you know we were subject to uh to random testing for drugs and i know a lot of people refused to a lot especially the nuclear plant or would uh you know strongly object to it but you know i can see the need for it so i i went along with it i think if i were a clerical worker for instance though uh and really couldn't effect anybody else i'm not sure that i uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right huh uh_huh uh_huh right right probably alcohol has more of an effect for for a shorter period of time uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh so they were doing it just to uh they wanted to make sure that their employees were productive probably that's that's probably why they justified it no i am just trying to imagine why they would want to test you right right yeah i i think that people who do something that could hurt somebody else so you don't oh uh random drug testing is kind of tough because it it involves this kind of uh trading off of of our individual civil rights for some kind of concept of uh [furthering] a common good almost you know there's a there's a there's a trade off of our civil rights against i guess our employer's right to to having a good job or something uh_huh yeah uh well that's a good point the only uh the only thing i really disagree with is and this isn't this isn't exactly disagreement i'm not sure that drug testing is strictly aimed to catch people but i would think that it also acts as a deterrent if someone if someone knows that there's a threat that that they might get caught it might be that much more of an [impetus] to to stay away from whatever the drug is they're they're on well i mean i would think that uh if someone knows that there's there's an even greater chance that they're going to get caught uh having drugs that that that would act to discourage them that it would uh you know if you know dad's in the other room perhaps you're going to be less likely to steal the the cookies out of the cookie jar because he might be coming in any minute you know uh_huh well the the uh the mayor of baltimore is a rhodes scholar and i i forget his name but one thing that he suggested doing was taking the money taking all the money that he gets for uh uh fighting the war on drugs and use it for like drug education to to open up the [methadone] programs to get the people off drugs that that want to be off drugs uh in thinking that that it's we're not doing a good job of fighting the war you know in in trying to crack down on people that are using drugs maybe [legalizing] them and and trying to help those that you know having the resources there to help someone uh would be a better idea but and i agreed with him somewhat i could see his point but uh switzerland opened up a uh uh a park and and for years it just kept getting worse more and more people kept coming to the park and it just kept getting worse and worse and worse until finally the swiss have decided to close it down so uh i don't know i mean it sounds like it sounds like there aren't going to that there isn't a perfect solution good point it's a good point and although although alcohol consumption did jump right after prohibition it did come back down yes you do ever uh hello yeah okay so we're started i guess i'll press one again there uh i'm surprised it's not telling us that that uh we're going but at any rate uh had do you have such a program uh where you work well i'll tell you the truth when it when it was introduced at texas instruments there was a lot of hard feeling now my initial reaction was [benign] i uh really didn't feel as a matter of fact i was sort of sympathetic in the sense that uh uh you know we we want to stamp out uh drug use uh and uh the it's certainly no good for the company to have employees who are on drugs uh and i don't really consider it uh an invasion of privacy because uh drug use is uh a dangerous influence on other people in society uh there i was in with a group of fuzzy heads however who uh were [rabidly] opposed to it and i i gradually became [proselytized] uh by this group and the to me the big sensitive thing is well the there couple things one is the is the [insult] of it perhaps as a uh pre employment test is one thing but to come in post [facto] and say to uh employees who are tried and proven uh that they've been asked to do they're going to have to submit to drug test is sort of a slap in the face and of course there are problems with doing that you realize because uh this requires a very strong minded management and uh uh a supervisory it requires the supervisor to be brass [balled] in a sense to go to a an employee who appears to possibly be under the influence of drugs and say you've got to take a drug test uh as opposed to randomly requiring it of everyone right was that on a need on a need basis or oh i see all right uh right uh i guess the other objection that i was exposed to at texas instruments was the uh [unproductive] nature of it that basically uh drugs is not a problem at texas instruments and the corporation i think are going through this exercise mainly to remain in the good [graces] of their customer the government uh rather than to improve their productivity by [stamping] out drug use because the the likelihood of finding drug users in the t i population is very very low okay uh so we're talking about drug testing on and how we feel about it in the in the work place yeah yeah my my gut feeling is to probably side uh on the the bill of rights side of this and say that it's an unfair uh uh invasion of privacy i i uh i have to say that i from my political point of view i tend to be i tend on sort of fall in the liberal side of a lot of issues but at the same time uh part of my own picture of the way politics should work in this country is there also should be uh [regulatory] controls on things and i think that when you have situations where uh in uh a working individual uh could do damage for instance a an airline uh you know or or somebody who's driving a public carrier like like truck drivers and stuff like that i think that there is a uh far more substantial issue uh at hand but i think there are other ways uh other than than doing things like drug testing to monitor the way uh people behave uh i think a for instance a good manager should be able to tell that somebody's got a personal problem uh in in like a clerical environment or a a work environment like i'm i'm a computer programmer so if i were [indulging] in activities like that or one of my colleagues were uh it would seem to be pretty easy to to tell if their performance was suffering for it how do you feel about these things uh_huh uh_huh sure sure and that could ruin somebody's life even if they were [vindicated] sure uh_huh well i have to say i'm i'm a child of the sixties and uh it it you know i grew up and when i was young i [flirted] around with some of that stuff like a lot of my friends did and i saw a lot of my friends ruin their lives or not not really i don't know i guess i saw a couple of friends ruin their lives and that sort of thing but i didn't see most of them ruin their lives with it in fact most of them went through it like a phase like you know most teenagers will drink for a little while and then when they you know have to start you know working and that sort of thing they tend to cut it back to drinking on the weekends or whatever and and they become adults about it and uh in fact my attitudes about the kinds of drug problems that we have in this country uh are are that i think that the government should [administrate] it in a you know in a completely different manner i think it would be a a good source of revenue i think there's some some evidence about the way this [stuff's] been handled in europe that shows that it can be controlled in different ways but that's sort of moving off the topic at hand here and i you know the the fact of the matter is is i think that issues like this really really are i mean to a certain extent they involve the whole question of liberty and a person's right to privacy and that sort of thing because uh uh you know i mean yeah and and uh it it i you know the fact of the matter is is i think that that an adult responsible worker doesn't want to have this kind of thing in his life if it's going to uh have an impact upon his ability to make a a a living and and you know and and keep his livelihood coming in sure and and uh and and so you know it's uh i so anyway i guess that we're we're largely in agreement in that uh case and uh and in fact i think that uh because you know i mean i it's it's literally i you know i'm in my late thirties now and it's easily been almost jeez man maybe twenty years almost since i last had any of that that sort of stuff uh around me but at the same time i don't think that that necessarily gives me a right to i'm a little uh i'm a i i think that that i do i i'm not sure that uh that i think it should be like a normal practice all the time i think there are certain circumstances where it's important but it it kind of touches on on on privacy and so you know i have kind of a a feeling that that it's a little [invasive] but then again on the other hand you have to stop and realize that uh a lot of people are are uh are are trapped in that in that addiction thing you know and it's bad for them but that's not necessarily going to mean that they're going to get the help they need and and get cured or anything you know and some jobs uh uh require you to be straight and with it to do a good job and protect yourself and things like that too you know so how you think how you feel right there you go that's right uh_huh uh_huh wow yeah right yeah well well the problem there is that you know a lot of people that have worked for the same company for so long uh that company decides well if we're going to hire new people you know well we're going to have to start checking it because we've had a problem in the past well their problem in the past is with past employees and so the new people are saying well if you know i mean i'm sure this could happen you know if you're going to if you're going to uh test us you should be testing the old people too and so they get into a to a discrimination problem probably or something like that yeah see there's one of the big problems people are are in that situation they need that job uh and uh then they have the choice of either take the test or don't get the or or don't take the job and if they know they're going to fail the test you know they're kind of in in uh between a rock and a hard place there so it's uh kind of a bad situation oh really lucky you uh_huh right he was going to fail right because you're not going to get the job if you don't yeah huh i don't know i've heard people using somebody elses you know [smuggle] it in making a whole new element of society out there you think that that spot testing for drugs is is well like it said you think it should be done [permissible] and where do they draw the line yeah what's really bad is you know that i work for t i and t i does it that's no problem i'm i don't take drugs anyway i don't have any problem with that but our own defense system doesn't do it the government doesn't do spot testing for not only for you know the f b i and defense systems and everything else but they impose it upon the on the standard public and i i really don't care one way or the other i think it it prevents a lot i think guys aren't so willing to take drugs at work anymore or do drugs and go to work but yeah yeah there well there even at t i there was there was quite a change when they come out with drug testing i think it's a great deterrent and uh i know a girl that works for town and country and she had they just they go around and they just pick a store one store in the city a month and they go down and did do drug testing on all of its employees from the manager all the way down so there's no [discriminating] there you know they're not they're and even like t i now t i if you go out and they test you positive for drugs first they send you to drug rehab they don't just throw you out the door and fire you so you know they're not out hunting heads but i think it should be done across the work spectrum i don't i don't disagree with it i think it's a good thing to have but i think it should be done across the whole work spectrum i don't think that one company should do it and the other company not i don't think that t i should necessarily need to do it when the federal government doesn't you know and it it ought to be standardized somewhere somebody has to you know and and they we got into a big discussion about it at work about against being unconstitutional and against somebody's privacy rights but that you know i don't want some guy hopped up on drugs next to me working on a machine i might get my head cut off you know yeah yeah yeah i seen that too but i agree with it you know i think it should be done i think it should be done everywhere i don't think it should just be done one company or another you know like you said not at mcdonald's but you know there's nothing at mcdonald's except a deep fat [fryer] full of grease that somebody can stick their hand into or you know i don't think drugs have if if i have no [qualms] if they want to take drugs that's their problem it's not mine but i don't want them around me or near me or working with me or you know not while they're hopped up i don't want a drunk there either i don't want some guy in there that's drunk working next to me either so and they're all drugs so i agree i think it should be done i think it should be done all the everywhere i don't think it should be done in one place and not another i think it should be done i think it should be done every time a person needs to well you know changing jobs you have to to get into t i you have to take a [urines] urine test anyway and they won't hire you if you test positive but once you're there and they they they test you positive they'll at least send you to drug rehab or some kind of counseling anyway and i think it's working i think it's doing pretty good job so uh_huh yeah most of your major companies do now well that's good you know i it prevents a lot it's a great deterrent whether or not it helps in the long run nobody knows but it works pretty good all right uh_huh yeah you woke me up but that's okay see you later yeah matter of fact it's sort of interesting because they do have drug [testings] at the company i work at yeah uh_huh uh i don't know i was uh for the most part the people that it's effected have not exactly been the most valuable employees so i personally think that you know it doesn't hurt the business center the work atmosphere you know yeah it's basically new employees yeah um existing employees are too but they for some reason they don't uh uh do anything about it you know they don't uh exercise it they supposedly have it but i've never heard of anybody getting randomly tested um electrical engineer hold on for just a second my ninth month old just got hold of one of my three and a half inch [diskettes] i think uh that won't last very long write protection just doesn't uh doesn't have any eat protection on it right yeah uh_huh yeah they they i think the way they figured out with us is basically just they can [globally] say if anybody comes for you know an application white black educated [uneducated] everyone has to take it and that way you know they're open um and i guess you know our company has a fairly good turnover so i guess they figure that they'll get the majority of employees that way now i do know of two employees that were fired because they couldn't pass and i don't know exactly why they were picked out to do the drug testing because i know i wasn't but um that's right interesting yeah oh yeah yeah ours is for security reasons we're government contractors and they don't want secrets leaking out right yeah there are requirements matter of fact i think [levied] upon the company to have some sort of drug testing but uh oh yeah there was a a big thing saying that it was you know invading people's rights and things like that you know but then again it's against the law so it's like how can they you know be invading your rights [verifying] that you've just been invading the law uh_huh uh_huh well they you know they said that um i don't know if it's ever been proven for sure but they were saying that some prescription drugs could show up as being drugs but yeah as long as they give you another shot yeah right um virginia uh_huh where are you calling from oh okay oh okay well i'm um up near the capitol up near d c oh yeah yeah yeah i missed it this year but uh you know we've we've seen it a couple of times and it's really nice but didn't get to see it this year there are so many things you take for granted when you're in here you know year round d c yeah every now and then we've been down there haven't uh taken the kids down yet though we uh took them to the white house for easter egg roll and uh down in the mall for fireworks and things my oldest is uh two so she's just getting to the age where you know she'd recognize the [whale] and everything like that but uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i did too thank you how do you feel about uh drug testing bob okay uh how do you feel about people that are subjected to having to have the drug testing done uh_huh oh uh what recourse do you think a company would have then if they had people using drugs and were jeopardizing the company structure protection uh you mean uh uh the test to oh the [polygraph] uh_huh uh_huh correct do you uh_huh uh_huh right i guess uh they feel because drug use is so widespread and there's not any uh [deviation] so to speak between an executive and a lay person as far as drug use goes and uh i feel and just looking at it on the surface uh that they wouldn't have much of a choice uh in picking somebody uh sometimes drugs don't uh the results of taking drugs don't come out until after something tragic has happened and in order to uh resolve it before it happens that they feel that this is the most direct way and painless way of uh [scanning] their uh employees i know that in our company i have not known a woman to have the drug test yet but of course the men i guess it's more and i don't know if this is true if it's more popular between men drug use than it is women because i know there are a lot of women that do use drugs but uh_huh as there are men uh_huh i don't know anybody uh in even a random uh friendship that uses drugs uh_huh uh_huh a casual user of drugs or uh_huh just to try and see what it was like and then yeah that were experiencing different things uh_huh sure uh_huh well i i would be uh i don't have any desire to but i would be awfully fearful because of all the uh um [illicit] drugs that are around and the methods by which they're made and some of them are very deadly and it's kind of playing russian [roulette] with drugs so it uh_huh well it doesn't bring anything but chaos uh_huh uh_huh do you think a rule against a certain uh uh substance is in violation of their civil rights uh_huh i wonder if uh now in their applications when they hire people i know it wasn't in the application that i filled out years ago but if now they uh are very up front with saying we are going to test you for drugs and if it's then knowledgeable to the uh [applicant] uh_huh uh_huh so they know that it's not a right uh_huh well i don't know how you feel about drug testing but i'm dead set against it uh_huh yeah um i think about the only candidates that are out there that are you know anti anti war on drugs or [vis] a [vis] war on rights is uh pretty much to your libertarian candidates which um i personally have some doubts as to whether any of them can get elected uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well it just i mean really seems the ridiculous because um the um u s department of labor i'm not sure might be a different agency requires um businesses to post this [poster] that has like minimum wage laws and a bunch of other laws and one of the things it posts is um on the [illegality] of um lie detector tests and um you know i feel that lie detector tests are well it means that that that there are limits there are definite government limits to you know how an employer can use lie detectors on its employees and i think that uh i mean i do i i agree that the lie detectors are inappropriate but i think you know that it's hard to justify being i don't understand how our government can encourage drug testing and discourage lie detector tests because it seems like they're testing the same sort of [nebulous] character uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah and and you know i i agree with with a lot of people that you know claim that instead of having random drug tests for continued employment have um motor [impairment] tests uh because you know they they they would not be any more they would they would be similarly priced um and you know if someone if some guy goes to work and he had a fight with his wife the night before and you know he has that on his mind and isn't going to be able to function properly you know i i just as you know i i it almost as much you know have as much uh fear of him driving the bus i'm riding than yeah or maybe more yeah uh_huh uh_huh and also on the question of you know just getting employment i'm you know i'm i'm a senior in college and i'm applying for jobs and i know i know a lot of people that are doing it also and i know some of which that few [indulge] in certain um non [sanctioned] um hobbies and their basic attitude toward drug testing is is just um moving away moving away from you know the relatively [harmless] drugs like marijuana which uh you know [lingers] for about thirty five days to things like cocaine and l s d which you know one they don't test for well l s d they don't test for and cocaine which only stays in your system for about a week and i used you know i i just you know wonder what effect this is having you know yeah yeah i mean that's you know that's entirely [anecdotal] evidence i know a couple people you know that have moved in the direction but i just you know wonder you know overall what the trend is uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah and just the feeling that you know okay uh no i sure haven't huh_uh uh_huh what kind of test do they do i mean just for urine tests uh have you heard that they can test so far back they say six or seven months whether you've done drugs by uh taking some of your hair oh okay but is that possible though oh okay uh_huh well no i've never been tested for uh drugs or anything like that work place uh i don't think it's really necessary it's just dependent upon the type job it is if it's a job that's uh dealing with say uh like a pharmacy job or something like that maybe you know a certain amount of testing should be done or in the field of a doctor or something like that but uh as far as just yeah an every day job i would say no just certain categories i would say right yeah uh_huh really um that is unusual um but the thing is that do you think at some point you know probably about everyone has has experienced drugs of some type do you think that it's possible that uh about every individual have experienced some drug of some type uh_huh oh that's right is it a pretty so it must be a pretty large percentage still that experiment with drugs right oh okay uh_huh right right right yeah uh_huh yeah that's true what what do you think the chances of of drug every diminishing uh because a lot of it i feel that they catch the people that are handling drugs but they're not catching the people that bring drugs into the country uh_huh uh_huh um um that's interest uh_huh well that's true it sure was uh okay well hello frances um yeah i guess when i uh first i guess i had mixed feelings about this uh subject when i first heard about it um i thought it was kind of a neat way of uh screening uh screening for potential problems good way for companies to weed out people with drug problems but since then i've been hearing uh well i read an article in the wall street journal last year that talked about um the different results that they get from uh different labs and that uh many labs will give uh false positives especially some of the less expensive ones and that people have been denied employment on this basis uh_huh yeah there's a i know some employers have have been able to uh reduce some tremendous problems they've had with employee turnover health problems and accidents and theft and i understand that certain jobs like if you're driving a train or plane or something of course there'd be increased need for it one thing that always kind of bugged me about it was uh there's they most of them don't test for actually the number one drug problem which of course is uh alcohol abuse and of course that you know everybody talks about all the other drugs but uh i understand alcohol is really still the number one health problem and the number one abused drug in in our country so it seems kind of too bad that that one's [tolerated] while other ones are are you know are the ones that they focus on well see now in texas uh didn't they only recently ban open containers in in vehicles a few years ago oh really oh man yeah uh_huh right yeah yeah i expect possibly in texas it's uh you know an attorney knows they get in front of a jury and the jury will be thinking well i've done that before or he's just a good old boy you know yeah right what else how else do you drive in your pickup down the highway uh_huh um uh_huh uh_huh well same here i'm doug from pennsylvania yeah okay so anyway now we're talking about drug testing and all that and you ready okay so what do you think about it right i agree with you basically so it might be a boring conversation but um but anyway i agree that um only when there's any question of safety does the employer have a right because otherwise i feel that the measure of whether someone should stay employed or not it is just performance whether you're able to do the job up to par and that and if that can be done it shouldn't matter whatever the employee might do in his private life okay yeah yeah that well probably at least on the average uh_huh yeah uh_huh right certainly and certainly in any case people who drink alcohol a lot are probably not as good workers i think that most drug testing programs don't include that they're really interested in looking for illegal drugs it seems to be more for the purpose of law enforcement than for the purpose of the employer's best interest for the job yeah um oh gee um well we're supposed uh that's miles davis yeah uh right exactly it's on the radio um so anything right okay yeah i guess not and i think we've said about what we have to say sure thing bye well i'm i'm for it based upon my experience uh in taking uh drug tests my uh my past experience in the military plus uh my current occupation working uh for a defense contractor here in massachusetts uh i feel that it's uh there is some opinions whereas the uh people of the mind that uh it's a right to privacy that you know it's a it's a [bodily] function involved and that uh uh people should have a right to protect themselves and so forth but i don't agree i think that uh it's important particularly for some jobs and some jog job occupations that uh people can be screened for uh should be screened for uh for drugs through your drug testing uh_huh right yeah so i think we're in agreement that that uh uh that it's a good uh it's a good idea in some circumstances the one [reservation] i have though in that from my and i've taken many many drug tests some of them random some of them uh scheduled and every time you take one of those tests you know when you're [submitting] a sample there's always in the back of your mind well how are you know people [conducting] the test the labs that are performing the test how adequate uh are those facilities and uh is is always is it always a chance i know that what they call uh the i think it's called the chain of custody of the uh the [specimens] themselves i know in the in the military particularly they there's a they they go to great lengths at protecting the samples before they get to the labs but my concern is and i think that that that what needs to be further investigated is the uh the [standardization] and to have some hundred percent insurance that the test that's given uh the the the lab that performs the uh the analysis is uh [validated] in some way you know some [standardization] because i've heard some horror stories you know sixty minutes did an article on this whole subject a few uh a few years ago and there was a air force captain who uh you know took the test and it came up positive and the guy swore on a stack of [bibles] now in the military for for a staff staff n c o which is a a non [commissioned] officer but it's a certain rank i don't know if you're familiar with military rank structure it's a it's a high level of [enlisted] personnel and officers for those people who show up positive on one drug test they're immediately [discharged] now for certain ranks and below like sergeant and below if you're found positive or come up dirty in a on a on a drug test you can be reduced in rank [forfeit] your pay or if it's a repeat repeat uh offense then they get [discharge] but there's this this this air force captain he swore up and down that he didn't do anything and they went back and you know few months later to try to investigate the lab and the sample that he had given was destroyed so i i think you got to be careful with stuff like that that's that's my only concern about the whole issue i think yeah uh_huh uh yeah because there's a big thing in the in the here on the east coast the boston police department uh the [policemen's] association took the uh the boston police department to court because they were uh trying to institute drug tests on the cops here in boston and uh they won the police the the police association won and it it was a right to privacy type deal that they approached it and the courts agreed yeah oh yeah definitely well you know the thing is is in all these transportation accidents i'm kind of ambivalent myself uh oh we we have that kind of a program at uh at work but uh i'm not crazy about it myself uh_huh right oh right um they they require it before uh employment as as a condition of employment and then uh they have random testing i don't know about after accidents because industrial accidents i guess are relatively rare at t i yeah i really i guess you could view it that way i tend to be more concerned about uh where it will go from here and uh also i not convinced that the at least the kind of people that i work with i'm not convinced that that's really uh doing much for the for the uh drug problem uh_huh yeah for cause for cause i just um i'm not convinced that that wheeling all this machinery in place and testing a lot of uh uh people who as far as i can tell uh i i think the [yield] is very low uh it's uh a lot of expense i know for companies that aren't doing well uh_huh no yeah yeah well i haven't been uh selected for random testing yet but i'm not looking forward to it yeah i understand that but i'm more something of a civil libertarian i guess and uh i think uh i'm just worried about what what they'll do next yeah particularly if there uh i'm worried about this business of uh [detecting] everything that could be possibly wrong with anybody and then adjusting health insurance accordingly they're going to start there's yeah yeah right i'm afraid they'll start uh picking out people with every possible type of risk factor and trying to exclude them from health coverage yeah so that that right drug testing could uh could be the first step towards that so i hope they do it very very carefully and uh uh except that's it's to what okay well um let's see i i think there's a lot of people that don't vote because they don't really think their their uh opinion is going to be heard and you know there's such a small voice and such a huge number of people in the united states and that you know their votes not going to make that much difference and whether you vote for one person or the other person the issues is what you know what you believe in and that person is going to have a lot of uh since there's so many issues this one person can believe a lot of different ways on all of them so it would be really difficult to have that one perfect person that believed exactly what you believed yeah right yeah that's good yeah yeah there's uh a lot of extremes on the parties too with the you know the real uh far side of the democrats they're real liberal now and to where probably fifty or a hundred years ago um the democrat party being liberal like they are now you know would never be thought of it would be the other way that the republicans were real liberal minded as far as like uh moral standings and those kinds of things but uh_huh yeah yeah that's that's true i think in uh the texas governor elections i think more people turned out to vote against somebody than for somebody this time oh really right yeah that's true yeah that's true that the different places in america that uh you know different issues would be a lot more important than say in another place uh_huh right yeah and it's uh real true that uh you know they'll say one thing to get elected and then once they do get elected they don't have the power or the authority or the willingness to do those things that they promised you know beforehand you know maybe it just wasn't possible at all in the first place you know like the no new taxes thing you know that's uh with the economy going the way it is and everything that was nearly ridiculous thing to even try to do right right after the war that really uh uh that's true yeah right yeah uh_huh right that's you know neither has mine as a matter of fact and uh that's true they i think they look at it as well everybody the majority of the people think this way when that's not necessarily true because you know that's what the media says well the majority believes this way so uh they don't even bother turning out to vote to express their uh opinions so that's that's true yeah do you hear the dogs in the background here okay they're the children next door just opened the fence and they went off yeah but anyway that's i guess we've uh talked long enough and uh that was sort of interesting what part of the country are you from are you really wow this is i'm in from this is dallas where i'm at the outskirts of dallas yeah do do you work for t i in any way wow how did you how did they get you oh oh okay right i work for t i so we saw it on the uh t news one day and i thought wow that might be interesting yeah yeah yeah central standard time is what they're doing it by yeah i still haven't figured out what the zero through six days which day is which yet but i didn't study it that hard so maybe i'll figure it out but anyway it was nice to talk to you and uh sort of meet you and that was an interesting topic okay i'm i'm kyle hunt too if you ever come to to dallas area we live right by the airport oh okay yeah okay bye okay i don't know which end do we push but okay right yeah that's true you know a lot of people uh uh i think the that it ends up the people that uh vote every time uh elections come around are more the the polly uh the party type [followers] the guys that uh you know follow the party lines you know and they you know just go in and if they're republican they vote republican every year you know and uh the people that are independent you know are the ones that don't uh don't really uh show up every year because they can't seem to to decide which are the good aspects and which are the bad aspects of a candidate yeah i always thought it was back when anderson was running i was hoping that things would change and he'd actually get elected and party politics would start going down the tubes but um that didn't work uh_huh yeah yeah that's uh and then and then people always get upset about it too because you know every year the the the politicians are the ones that are usually pushing for more people to vote they they each think that uh if more people vote they'll get more votes huh i'm always amazed at that that each candidate thinks it's going to be the people that come out that will vote for him you know yeah well that uh i know that there's certain issues that can really motivate people because we live in a [predominately] catholic type area and when things start uh when when abortion comes on the issues and people just get all inspired you know and uh still on the other hand we're also uh this particular community is a catholic community but uh uh down in d c where where things are a little bit different uh you know it's it's women's rights and the and that sort of movement and so it's uh quite the opposite so elections start getting very uh the elections where they have that topic seem to be a little bit better attended than some of the other ones but uh yeah i can understand why why some of the the rural areas the voter turnout isn't as much because it does seem sometimes like the lobbyists in d c are like controlling things for the the midwest and uh it doesn't matter who they put in office they're going to fall subject to uh the pressure that the lobbyists can put right yeah yeah well i don't think he's going to have to worry about that next year i think he can probably raise taxes and still get elected uh uh_huh unfortunately that will probably even drop lower the voters [turndown] even more because more democrats will think that they don't have a shot so they won't even bother turning out they'll just say oh well you know the republicans have this election we'll see you in four years hope some of the local well that's what they they keep saying that it seems like people with old fashioned values are the ones that aren't turning out at the at the [booths] they they say that these older voters that uh you know they they feel like the kids are running the the country so they they don't come out turn out to vote and they're the ones that uh you know really know what's going on have the experience and seen you know how politicians can you know [screwup] or what ever but i know my grandmother hasn't voted in years yeah wonder if they're going to take into account this computerized conversation that there's little children you know bouncing in your knee the whole time your talking no i can't hear them oh yeah yeah uh washington d c uh_huh oh okay well i figured with texas instruments they'd probably have a few uh texans on the line now and then no huh_uh um they they went through engineering companies and uh we're communications i i work in a communications company yeah sort of different they called me at uh ten o'clock one night that was very strange i guess they were doing eastern standard time i was like i don't know how long it takes whether it takes five minutes or twenty minutes yeah uh_huh okay yeah okay well if your ever in uh d c come look up wayne sherman you'll say oh yeah talked to that guy oh okay yeah yeah so do we yeah right next to dulles all right i'll talk to you later bye bye okay i think it's somewhere really close to that cause i think a lot of people believe that their one little vote is not going to make that much difference and they really don't listen to any of the issues anymore because they feel like so many of the politicians are like crooked you know and so they figure why go out and vote you know they're going to do what they want to do they're corrupt anyway and i think one of the good ways of solving that is to like everybody likes to come to a party so have a voting party and uh you know like in communities and have the issues there and then everybody go vote together and then maybe come back over and have brunch or something i mean that's the only thing that i can figure out because i've heard so many people say well i'm not going on voting on that one you know i i'm going to go fishing today or it won't make any difference if if i don't vote and i think it does we vote every time right right and maybe let them have some mock i mean uh you know elections and stuff and vote for different people in their classes and start really young that's a real good idea right um god right yeah well i don't know how it is up there but down here louisiana has a bad reputation for their politicians and all i mean i'm sure you heard about some of ours and uh people are just i mean it's like they're turned off on voting and that's the reason i said maybe if you had something like a block party okay we're going to have a block party everybody's going to get together we're going to discuss the different issues and stuff and then we're going to go and vote you know we're going to go vote like maybe they could give something like uh the top neighborhood if you had a hundred percent in your neighborhood or something like that you know i mean it doesn't have to be it could be like a a sign that they would put down at the end of your block you know or anything like that but it it's really bad here i mean to me it is it seems like people just don't care anymore they say huh well it don't make any difference you know one [crook] is as good as the other one and they don't bother to listen to what any of them have to say and uh i know my husband now we go vote every time i don't care how small the ballot is i mean if there's one thing if there's one issue because the way i feel is if i don't vote then i don't have any reason to gripe right and i hear so many people saying well i wish this would change i wish that and you know but they didn't go vote and uh maybe if they like you said if they would start when little kids and start letting them vote and learn how to vote and all then uh and the importance of it because okay if you don't vote for your friend over here well your friend's not going to have a chance he needs your vote just like he needs everybody elses you know maybe if they were brought up that a way like you said it would because i know here uh until you get into high school now then they had the voting machines and you voted for like [cheerleaders] and different things like that but they should start that a lot earlier right yeah right right right definitely you know a good idea for the young kids like that too is to have like a a mock one and okay this this candidate tells you some things that are going to happen and this candidate tells you some things okay then this percentage of the voters i mean the kids in that class they are not going to let them vote this time but they have to do whatever these people whichever one the other people elect do if they did something like that and started kids out real young and showed them okay now you're not going to get to vote but you're going to have to do what that person says they would understand probably by the time they were in high school they'd be ready to vote yeah right uh_huh yeah i think that sounds great well you know they'd have to start when they're real young i mean you know it would have to be a child that is just coming into school because well i'll tell you another thing too now whenever the first time i voted i never voted in high school because there was never anyone that showed us how to use the voting machines now this sounds dumb but i did not know how to use those voting machines and nobody ever showed us or anything so i didn't vote because anybody that went in there and they asked a question all the other kids laughed at them they thought that was funny ah she don't even know how [wah] [wah] so there wasn't any way i was going to go in there and vote and it took me i mean it took such courage you wouldn't believe to go vote the first time because i was waiting for somebody to laugh at me because i didn't know how to work the machines now that's bad and i mean i was out of school i was a married person and uh i didn't know how to work the machine you know and it really scared me really bad because i thought all these people are going to laugh at me because i don't know how to work this machine where if they'd if they'd had a class or something or just to a short time you know to said okay this is the way right it's this is the way it's going to be and my son was exactly the same way that i was and i didn't realize it until uh his senior year i asked him something about well did you who did you vote for for uh [cheerleader] and he said oh i didn't go vote he said uh there's no way i'm getting in that machine well then i realized it so when we went and voted the next time i asked the uh lady i said i want my son to come in with me and she said well uh why you know he'll have to come back out i said because i want him to know how to use one of these and i said i won't turn any of the buttons down but i want to show him how to use it so that he'll be able to vote and uh so he went in and now he's a registered voter but he would not vote before then and i mean i think that's bad you know here i was and and even of course there's a lot of years between the two of us but even with that many years between okay well uh do you believe only fifty percent of the people actually vote huh uh_huh well well it uh there's no question it does make a difference uh so far as having a party and then all voting uh when you have different [precincts] you would have to have a party in every [precinct] because people have to vote in different areas and uh not everyone votes at the same place uh i personally think that we need to do more along the education lines in the schools and the children from the little ones on up with the idea of the the value of voting and the purpose of voting and that one vote does make a difference but absolutely absolutely and and they are are doing that in a number of schools however probably not enough of them uh country wide but it's going to take at least a whole generation of people uh to get across the idea of voting uh just like it's taking a whole generation of people to finally uh realize the [harmfulness] of drugs and uh hopefully to uh now with the many programs throughout the country on how to resist taking drugs how to say no to it and what have you that uh perhaps we'll finally get the youth weaned off of it but uh i know i i spent thirty four years in education here in the dayton area and in nineteen fifty one the police were telling us about the drug dealers outside the school and how they were just giving away their marijuana giving away their heroin and what have you to get them started and you know that was in fifty one that's forty years ago that it was already a problem so it's now uh to the [forefront] and people are finally taking some action against it and the thing we've we've neglected the value of voting and uh and what it really means to vote and we also don't make the uh the issues perhaps in language that people fully understand them uh_huh sure right uh_huh uh_huh yeah right uh_huh right to complain about it right right that's right that's right yes uh_huh yeah i it's the same way with everything in education though it should begin and right down in the first grade uh and your very best teachers in my [estimation] should be first second or third grade so that the children develop good learning patterns and you have some success and want to go on learning and continue learning uh and not wait until they're in high school and then it's too late to try to change them around at that point but uh everything should be started on the lower levels and uh certainly if the youngsters had that opportunity that you know they they understood that the principles of the country were established so that everyone would have a say and everyone would have a vote and what that vote meant and uh but it but you're right from the standpoint that people do have a negative attitude towards politicians and perhaps it's because our campaigns have become so terribly expensive to run uh that only the most wealthy can do so and they're not always the best person for the job but they have the money to be able to do it so uh so that there are a lot of problems along that line also and perhaps the government sure right uh_huh yes right that's right and i think you know that's an excellent idea they would put them to realize that that their going to have to do what someone else says even though they didn't vote for it and that maybe they need to think twice about voting now some people object during [primaries] having to declare a party whether republican or democrat and you do that in the primary uh and i don't know that uh a lot of people vote in [primaries] for that very reason uh they can declare anything they want and they can actually rig it if they really wanted to vote republican they could go in the primary and say they were voting democrat and then stack the ballot for someone that perhaps the republican could beat but uh it's uh it's just a sad situation and uh i do think more needs to be done along that line to help to uh teach the people uh uh everyone uh more about what is going on with voting and with [nonvoting] so that uh we can make they're making some more intelligent decisions and it's going to take these young you know it's going to take the uh a whole generation of my feeling uh before that's going to be accomplished that's right uh_huh yeah right uh_huh sure right well sure it is uh_huh well just the just the opportunity to try the voting machines yeah right yes uh_huh good yeah sure it is absolutely well do you think uh i mean i wonder the assumption is that it is a problem uh and i've never actually had too many people explain to me why it's a problem though i have the same [instinctual] feeling that it's a problem and uh but it's not clear to me that it is um it's a problem if those voting don't represent the population [demographically] or in terms of their opinions but if those who don't vote if you made them vote and it those who don't vote would have voted exactly the same way you know in other words if forty percent had voted for that person and sixty percent for the other just like everyone who did vote it's not clear to me that it is really a problem um i mean i i assume that those who don't vote i mean if you look at the break down of those who don't vote they tend to be you know poor blacks for example vote very little and things like that and i assume that they would vote differently if they were voting than your average voter but i don't know if that's the case in fact i've heard of studies that suggest that that isn't uh i guess not i'm i i vote religiously i really do um i guess i guess i'm a fan of democracy and uh wish i could vote on more things frankly but it's funny because here in california things are getting uh increasingly [democratically] oriented in in the sense of people being able to vote for things i mean we have these [initiatives] state [initiatives] now the first really popular you know wide spread one was uh proposition thirteen which was a uh tax revolt against property taxes uh and you know now we're and that was whatever ten years ago and now we're up to proposition a hundred and fifty or something like that i mean we've just there were apparently voters who just threw up their hands after the last voters pamphlet because they were asked being asked to make decisions on topics that would have three different competing proposals and you had to vote for you know yes or no on each of them and no one could make heads or tails out of some of them and it was incredibly complicated and difficult and a lot of people [revolted] against that they said we don't want to have to decide all these things you know that's that's that's why we hire people who uh you know to to make these decisions for us yeah i do uh_huh uh_huh yeah i wouldn't mind having oh more votes than i get to have frankly anyone who doesn't vote it's fine with me as long as i can have their vote that would make me happy though maybe not in a in a deep philosophical sense but in a selfish sense it probably would i don't know it's interesting uh some countries voting is obligatory uh it is in australia for example yeah yeah i don't know how i feel about that well australia [considers] itself every bit as much a democracy as the united states and it's not for me to say that they're not um they they feel i mean here you have the right to vote and they simply define it as a duty there you know we have just as we have a a duty to pay taxes you know is that democratic i mean we don't have the right to pay taxes in this country we have the duty to pay taxes and in that country it's a duty to pay taxes and it's a duty to vote on how those taxes are spent and it's not clear to me that that's so much less democratic um i don't know but part of me rebels against that but then i'm an american yeah and some people don't vote i mean there is like three or four percent of [australians] don't vote and i think they're eligible for a fine i don't know if they actually are fined or or what happens but you're eligible for some sort of fine if you don't vote uh_huh yeah i was sort of well i that's how i feel i mean if if you vote and your guy [looses] well you you least tried and you can say something but if you don't vote i sort of feel like part of me and it's kind of a nasty part of me feels like well if you didn't vote you get what's coming to you you know and certainly that's true in the overall i mean no one individual that's true for but for the population as a whole i sort of feel that way when they especially when someone they they don't vote for someone because they don't like any of them and then the person gets in and they don't like him and he turns out to have been worse than her that they might have voted for or something like that and you know i say well you know voting for the lesser of two evils is still important yeah yeah i mean you i mean it's it's funny because technically you do i mean you have the right to do a write in candidate but of course that's that's not really a vote um yes it really doesn't and so it's it's a complicated situation but i would like to see i don't know i i i'm i'm thinking of actually moving to australia and and perhaps i'll call you back and let you know what how the australian system works i mean not because of the i mean i'm not thinking of moving there because of the voting but just because of a job opportunity and uh i no i'm not and uh so i'm i'm really quite quite curious how that would work to have both i mean you know and i believe in the in a certain uh soviet [bloc] countries you are are obliged to vote too in fact it was even pretty much spelled out who you did vote for up until fairly recently and that's what i think of when i think of you're obliged to vote but when you actually really are given as much choice as you are in this country with its two party system um i don't know i kind of part of me is wary and part of me likes the idea of having it be more of a duty um uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well that's a thought or certain privileges come from voting which aren't that important but are nice to have i don't know the right to write your yeah that's see that's an example of a right not a not a actually that's considered a privilege not a right yeah but technically people most people technically it's a privilege but most people think of it as a right i mean in other words if the government [denies] you driving [denies] you a drivers license people get very upset but actually it's a privilege which is allowed to be revoked and fortunately voting isn't that except well except if you're a felon if you're a felon it is taken away from you i mean they will take away your right to vote under certain circumstances um so gosh so we don't have a great solution yet do we but i i also i also i don't know if you've uh read any of the um oh what do they call those the uh the early republican uh republic documents uh when they were arguing through constitutional law written by hamilton and all those people um oh i think it was hamilton who wrote number ten or something where he was arguing for a republican not in the sense of the republican party now versus a democratic uh government and arguing successfully why the united states should be a republic not a democracy which indeed it really is a republic not a democracy where he [defines] democracy as everyone votes for the issues and republic is people who vote for someone who then in turn votes for the issues in other words you vote for representatives and the whole idea was um presumably those who get voted in would be wiser than the average person and and a specialist and able to make more informed decisions and can protect against the tyranny of democracy because just as you can have a tyranny of a single um you know bad ruler or something you can have a tyranny of the majority and uh he makes a very uh [passionate] good argument for why you don't want some things decided by democratic process because anytime you have a majority um they can change the law in a a fully democratic process and there are cases when you don't want that to be the case um oh you know a if there's some minority that people don't like because of you know racial hatred or something like that the majority can just simply vote vote against them and cases like that he [argues] need to be [constrained] and and actually i agree except that i don't trust the people who are appointed to vote yeah well i i mean i feel that i feel that yeah well their job is to be reelected by in large and so they work on that job and there's also an [antigovernment] mood in the country you know where government is [misspending] your dollars and and they're all fools and you know throw throw the [bastards] out that kind of thing and there's a notion that somehow if someone isn't as much as a government person they're less corrupt and they're more likely to be good which is really strange because i mean if i'm hiring a plumber i want a real plumber i want someone trained in uh um that's that's interesting because i had thought i feel that it's a problem also but i see your point on that uh apparently they don't think it's a problem that's right um oh right i i i kind of feel the opposite though i wish we were given an opportunity to vote on more things i think our elected officials say they are speaking for us but they're not speaking for me that's true well is that true i didn't know that i was that is one solution to it but i don't that's not really democratic not what i'd consider truly democratic as uh_huh uh_huh it's a duty right uh_huh i it's that's it's complex question when you start thinking about it isn't it uh_huh that's interesting i have people here that i know that have never registered to vote and i think i think they feel they can criticize if they don't i told them if they don't vote they don't have the right to criticize that's right i feel i think it is too sometimes it is a difficult choice you don't feel as though you have much of a choice but it doesn't really gain anything is that not oh i see i'm are you a t i employee i'm interested not okay i just wondered well uh maybe they should perhaps that would be a solution if they were required to vote at least for their first three or four years after they become of voting age required to register and vote for four years and perhaps they would be indoctrinated that this is their duty maybe it should go with a drivers license that is a privilege right it is that's correct maybe it should maybe it should be uh_huh that's right don't have a great i i think i checked that as a question i'd be willing to discuss too oh no no i haven't right uh_huh uh_huh right sometimes i think we have that right now with congress i think they're looking after their own self preservation more than they're actually looking after the good of the country right okay do you vote regular every one well see that's me i've never paid any attention to voting huh_uh unless you have something to do with it right oh liberal by what do you mean by liberal um well see i don't know anything about politics uh what's the main what's the main difference between republicans and democrats uh_huh uh_huh okay and you vote for the democrats or usually uh_huh uh_huh huh okay no i never have huh_uh i'm twenty six i know i i well i don't know that much about it i don't keep up on it and i don't feel like i have enough knowledge on it to even you know to pick the right person so that's what they need well it uh they said something to improve voting if they could make it more oh easier to find out you know what's going on do you know what i mean like uh like to me i don't i didn't know what would have been wrong with i can't even remember who ran for president against bush i think it was uh that woman wasn't it a woman dukakis okay didn't he have a woman or wasn't or was that reagan there was a woman that was running for vice president for a while ferraro okay well that's what i mean like i didn't know what the difference between dukakis and bush was you know i didn't know anything about bush or dukakis okay i don't remember anything about dukakis but well they're all saying that they're going to do you know whatever is best for their campaign anyway that's what i mean if they had some kind of public programs where you can just go out and i don't know like you know in school they didn't teach you about uh the government not really huh_uh yeah well i'm not sure they're yeah i know how they do it it like with the abortion issues and stuff right right and like i said most of the the politicians i'm also the politicians put out what makes them look good anyway and everybody's got you know stuff they don't want known well anyway i'm sorry i didn't i didn't have much knowledge i don't even remember this being on there incentive i guess that would be good now i'm sure they've got it at the library you know i mean if i get to the library i've got two babies so i don't yeah but i i don't know oh i know if enough people think like that it you know would make a difference if people stopped thinking like that um well a lot of people they'll vote the way their family votes you know if since you're what democrat then like your kids or whatever will follow you and just vote democrat right i mean no all split right i lie huh i don't know if i did understand politics i probably would vote more but like i said if i voted for bush or like when uh gary hart was running a lot of women would have voted for him just because he was nicer looking not that i think he was good looking but he was young and then i didn't think that was right because he may have been a good president or whatever but because it what he had an affair and it just threw him out of the whole running and a lot of people go by their uh personal life when they vote and which i guess if you got [turmoil] in your personal life you're going to let it come into work but i'm sure there's a lot of people that have had yeah well well criminal or something like that's different but if him and his wife weren't getting along i mean what is what effect does that have on him running for president do you know what i mean it's all so [secretive] see we really don't see the the true person anyway right right uh_huh well what did you think of reagan as a president do you think he won from carter because of the um the hostages that were held at that time uh_huh i thought carter was good too and that was yeah but i think i wasn't well let's see that's been about ten years ago right okay so i was only fifteen or sixteen but i remember carter and i liked him no i sure don't yeah i do i try and vote in every single election but uh that's just since in the past say about six years before that i really didn't pay any attention at all oh you haven't yeah i didn't use to but now i really because i get so angry about what goes on and then i feel like i can't really complain too much unless yeah but the problem is that i am very liberal politically and so i hardly ever have anybody that wins that i vote for liberal politically i'm you know like pretty left wing democrat so oh you don't okay well there's a lot of them um it depends on what issue you're talking about but democrats are on a lot of issues are more liberal than republicans and well it used to be it's kind of hard to say now especially after desert storm but um i think back in the times when uh my political opinions were being formed like in during the vietnam war and stuff the republicans were more you know what they called [hawks] which is more like aggressive in war and more pro war and pro aggression and um the democrats were the [doves] they were more for peace and i'm not sure how much that holds true anymore i think you know the issues are yeah yeah and democrats usually are more supportive of public assistance programs and and programs to um the big republican thing is that they don't they vote for less government they want less government involvement in society and so they're more less apt to vote in you know more aid to people or more uh they're less apt to vote in programs that involve the government running things so so have you ever voted at all you haven't how old are you oh gosh well uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah well uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah no it was dukakis from massachusetts oh yeah that was yeah ferraro that was a while ago that was a couple elections ago yeah yeah that's okay uh_huh so what do you think about uh what do you think about what you see on t v about them like in the news or on the ads do you kind of just you don't uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right you didn't get any government classes yeah it's really hard too because before they used to have um a lot of it seems like the stuff that they put out now it i mean i doesn't just seem like it i know for a fact that the any kind of stuff that if you wrote and asked for material well what do you believe in what do you believe in they don't take any stands on anything they kind of say well what do you want me to believe or they word it so that it's really hard to tell where they're standing on certain issues uh_huh uh_huh yeah they have to kind of take a stand on some things like abortion and things like that so that's kind of how i judge there's a few things where they have to say yes or no like abortion or gun control or let me see i try to look at what if some of the newspaper articles or the i don't trust t v as much but newspaper articles can show how they voted in the past and but you get you know it all depends again on whose writing it and who they're for because they can slant that too uh_huh yeah yeah right everybody's got a secret so well that's okay do you think do you think um i mean what would it take like god this is really good actually for to talk to somebody who hasn't voted i mean what kind of how would it how what kind of stuff would they would you like them to do so that that you would know more about it like send stuff in the mail or have it at the library or uh_huh uh_huh oh do you yeah that will tie you down a little bit or do you just not do you feel like it's not really going to make that much difference if you don't vote or yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh well not in my family we're kind of we're really independent but a lot of families do that i know a lot of wives feel like they have to vote the way that their husbands vote and that kind of keeps from getting a lot of issues resolved golly but well uh_huh hart uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh yeah yeah yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh i think everybody does it just depends on how well you can hide it you know and i that's very true i i think that doesn't really have that much to do with um unless they've done something really horrible you know or something real [abnormal] yeah right but otherwise uh_huh yeah yeah that's right i think that's that's having a big effect on how poorly that the country is being run is that um the the election the people that want to get elected are turning it into a popularity contest by advertising the things that you know that really don't have anything to do with how well they do the job but see they're trying to find an excuse not to deal with what you know the issues that people really want to know about because on those issues you have to say yes or no and if they don't say yes or no then maybe somebody will vote for them that wouldn't have if they had come down on the wrong side do you know what i'm saying so they just try and make it a personal thing i mean if you remember any of the t v commercials from the last presidential campaign they all had uh pictures of bush with his grandchildren walking around with his grandchildren and even from reagan it was all just like looks like a mcdonald's commercial you know that's about what it looked like i just thought he was really inept i don't think he did anything at all he they just kind of sat him up there like a [puppet] and the people that were well i think that was part of it i think there's a lot of the economic problems that the country was having at the time and the the recession and stuff people just had a picture of carter as not being real capable but he actually all right this i thought he was great did you i always liked him i thought he was great at the time and i i just couldn't get over the fact that reagan beat him i you know that i just couldn't believe that he got voted out uh_huh yeah you did have you heard stuff about him lately do you know what he's doing well he is just he is really active still politically he's been overseas you remember when he was in office he did a lot of stuff for the middle east for well i i've been uh i have probably had more time than you have to think about this subject so i'll tell you is it a serious problem yes i do believe it's a serious problem however there are solutions to it and foremost uh where we compare that we are now doing fifty percent of our uh people are voting uh we're probably making a comparison against uh some european and uh and uh uh say newer republics that uh that have very high percentages uh so uh one of the reasons uh that uh one of the reasons that we could get uh one of the reasons that it is lower in the united states is that mostly we hold it on tuesdays god knows why we hold it on tuesdays and then we further complicate it by saying you know we will keep the polls open until eight o'clock most people uh a great number of people now work at various at different jobs that if a third of the people are shift workers they won't be able to get to the to the polls in any case if they uh have to work late into the evening and not get up my solution to that is that we hold it on sundays as do probably sixty to seventy percent of the european countries now they hold it on the no they hold it on a either a saturday or a sunday or at least a day when when uh a great number of people are not working in america that is not true because a a great number of people work on sundays but that is one of my solutions uh have you absentee voted in in in texas well i have absentee voted in uh new hampshire and it is a fairly fairly complicated process where you have to go pick up the ballot i do not say that it is that complicated but part of the process also is that you must register [preregister] at some particular point new hampshire is fairly easy but other states you have to register every couple of years and uh well to vote to vote to just vote so [registrations] are perhaps a a problem also and we're the mobile mobile society uh people are always you know one out of every seven people moves every year uh that is almost a fourteen percent turnover every you know if you [compound] that that uh eh if it is difficult to register to vote that would remove your [eligibility] to vote well well maybe that is another factor the motivational factor the motivational factor is probably i well that's [diminished] by we have noticed this in particular i i'm just read two books one of them is whose stars and [stripes] now the uh trivial pursuit of the presidency in nineteen eighty eight it's a fairly decent book i mean it's uh it's [preceded] by uh several other books by these guys uh wake me up when it's over was about the eighty four elections and i forget what the other books were but any case uh it is uh uh the uh uh there was uh blue smoke and mirrors was the one in eighty two uh they these guys uh have taken the place of [theodore] white on reporting elections in any case they say that uh there's a definite trend uh well you know toward candidates using negative voting it is the only way that you can use television effectively no the public would rather hear something negative about the other guy uh than than a positive factor and and you know to if you if you go on the attack and put some sensational thing before the public as mike dukakis learned in the last campaign and it is not [refuted] people will you know uh believe it if you don't refute it as he didn't there must be some truth to the matter see well he didn't refute it til the last two weeks of the campaign he didn't believe anybody would believe that and indeed his trend started [upward] well they do well don't give too much credit to the american public for their motivational ability and and and it well it uh well i don't know is it working i mean that's that's the question i guess the question also is that we discovered is that they don't throw [rascals] out everybody seems disappointed but they don't throw the rascal out their own rascal uh my my solution to to part of this is is to to make it an an economic incentive for people to vote that sounds rather crass i think because then then you are saying well uh you know y y it could be [convoluted] in many ways where people would actually uh by paying them i mean you know you would take a certain amount off their income tax or property tax or whatever but it would be very difficult to administer because i am sure that any time money and votes are involved it just the whole thing just stinks yeah but the idea is to get the individual to the polls and we have to make it as easy as possible for him to get to the polls oh you mean the special interest groups well read my lips and and and no new taxes and yet bush did that but i mean but but he's excused from that generally people i've read polls now where they've excused him because there was a a definite necessity to balance the budget oh he he he gave it he did he did he promised the best he could and he is the president and he should he should address those problems and if there needs to be a change in a period of time what was so funny about it is that i guess that it happened so rapidly you know he knew it he actually knew it and being associated with government he should be held up to the light for that and maybe he will but i think it is er r r i mean i think you you still have a view that the american voter is different from other voters and he is motivated because we happen to be the cradle of liberty and all that i think voters are motivated uh well i don't know if they have higher turnouts overall i don't think england has i think england has about a seventy percent sixty five percent turn out i think that we just discovered in this in in the indian elections is one of the greatest greatest and massive things in in the world uh just it was got more violent every year they went down almost fifty percent in this election before they blew up [ghandi] but simply because people were so concerned about their [inability] that to that their vote does not count any way and the corruption of politics in in in that situation there but but you know everything is relative to when uh eh you know we had higher turnouts because at that time we talk about the turnout relative to the eligible voter right i mean is but but before these enormous before this voting rights act what we had was a a great deal of our population uh mainly the blacks in the south and the hispanics were [precluded] by by uh voting laws uh from from their [eligibility] to register now everybody is available so if you really [computed] it they probably when we said we had a seventy percent turnout in nineteen fifty we really only had a fifty percent turnout because all the eligible voters you know it was [skewed] by the eligible voters being less than the total population of no i think the there's a higher percentage in in certain black areas of voters i don't know about hispanics you know i just i i mean i haven't studied the statistics well enough to i mean i think in this sort of conversation we can only do our own reaction uh_huh what do you mean you know karen i wonder if we are recording i did press one but usually by this time they tell me that the time is up uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh what right right oh really they hold it on the weekends sunday uh_huh huh well uh i i know here in dallas that they have just instituted in the last couple of years a uh a real long period of time that you can absentee vote before the elections and they i do not think they have seen a really high improvement no no i always vote oh really huh to absentee vote specifically oh uh_huh uh_huh but i do not think it is difficult enough to prevent people who are motivated in the first place who or who are not just motivated who really believe that their they their voice is heard i mean and the people that i have talked to right i think that is the biggest one that's the biggest problem i uh_huh oh really huh i don't understand that why do uh is that just because they have such a low opinion of the public and the public's uh [gullibility] well he did refute it he he [refuted] it it just was not effective enough to well that see i i didn't believe anybody would believe that either i i i guess i have a hard time coming to terms with the the fact that the american public really was you know so well then how can a democracy work then how how can it work right right what huh well how about how about the reverse of that when i have heard about [england's] elections they are allowed to run for what a total of six or eight weeks even for the higher offices in the in the land what if we totally took money out of the eh just severely limited the campaigns so money wasn't so much of an issue i feel like if if we did that people would have a lot higher confidence that their vote was counting rather than their contributions would count i don't i don't care how easy it is for them i do not think they are going to because they do no think that their that anybody listens to their vote they think whoever has the they really think that the packs you know no matter what you're promised during a campaign and these days we are promised hardly anything of substance right and eh and eh no matter what a a candidate promises during the campaign which isn't very much any they do not promise anything specific these days but whatever you are promised they just they just reverse themselves depending on who pays them what once they get into office i mean i think that's the yeah yeah well then why did he say that during his campaign then he it was totally yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah well what about what about voters in the other countries that you were talking about like in the european countries where they have higher turnouts and well the newer [democracies] because it's going to be totally different but you do not think so uh_huh oh right oh really yeah huh yeah uh_huh oh oh oh i see because right weren't were [disqualified] but isn't that isn't that kind of a blanket racist kind of thing to say the blacks and hispanics and other minorities just don't vote or is that just the the truth yeah well right right but you know that just made me think of something that happened down here in dallas last year they have this huge fight going over [redistricting] here and at one point they they took another vote on it and they uh the minorities could not get enough of a vote out to to pass their plan and this is something that had been going on for months it was on the news every night they and they have had lawsuits over it i mean it was it was a major issue and there still wasn't enough minority vote to get to pass the plan that they were backing so that's you know i think that you have really hit on something there to say that uh those well with the minorities and we are saying we have lower voter turnout maybe it is is uh now that we have minorities included in the why did you not press one well well pat did you vote in the last election oh you did oh that's great well why do you think people don't that makes sense too and then does yeah i think i think that's a lot of people just indifferent i know that i've moved around a lot in the past um three years i've had three different addresses each time i change jurisdictions or whatever so i just haven't because i mean graduate school or whatever so i haven't kept track of it i did when i lived steadily in one community i always i voted but this past time i didn't well actually i voted it for the presidential election but then i didn't vote uh i guess in the two year for uh some legislators and things and uh_huh right uh_huh right yeah and that's probably one reason why i voted in the the last election but not really this one because this one really didn't matter that much yeah it's probably true well you know they also say that most people vote their local politics that that local is far much more important than uh national issues uh_huh right oh i definitely think so uh_huh right uh_huh yeah that's true yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh no most now that's true prepare them to be victims yes uh_huh right side of the tracks yeah uh_huh did they uh_huh yeah did um did you think i know that texas's last gubernatorial uh election probably brought out a lot of voters did that did that seem to because that that got national attention national attention i guess having a woman governor running against a man and whatever uh_huh yeah well you know what's funny up here uh i live i see a lot of virginia news and i guess uh senator [robb] and governor wilder are active right here and they have some type of wire [tapping] problem going on and the people in virginia are complaining see [robb] is married to [lynda] bird johnson and the people in virginia are complaining that he is he's using texas politics in virginia and they're really complaining big time because they said that we don't have that type of trashy politics up here like they do in texas all the time so you you guys were getting yeah you were getting [slandered] i think uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh do the most good yeah that's true i guess that's why i know that um i'm previously from pennsylvania and dick [thornburg] who's now the attorney general is going to run for senator because uh john heinz a senator from pennsylvania died in an airplane crash and i know that they're expecting a gigantic turn out to [landslide] dick [thornburg] into as into the senate because they don't like the the [governor's] political [appointee] or whatever and they're almost expecting [landslide] out uh turn out right now for for that election uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh what in texas was that when you that's that's true right uh_huh that's right that's perception that's true because the those were big political that was a big um turn out election uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh well i think that also happened with ronald reagan he was he was [landslided] in and people really saw that was most [assuredly] yes ma'am i've voted in every major election since i turned twenty one don't always vote for somebody i sometimes vote against somebody i think that a lot of it is uh i know that my late husband was simply indifferent he didn't feel like he had any say there was too many people too many other votes for example you know he'd say well look you and i see different sides of the fence if i go vote you'll cancel my vote i said i sure will he said so i just won't vote i said then mine counts because you could cancel mine too uh_huh uh_huh sure uh_huh uh_huh well [characteristically] in some in the local elections typically those people who vote are those who feel very strongly about an issue if i do not feel very strongly about an issue then i see no reason to go vote uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well of course of course listening to government the instructors you'll find out that everything matters but then you could go crazy worrying about everything well that's the way you get to national and that's the way you make changes about your neighborhood uh i know that i have been involved in preparing and in in uh carrying out a lot of the local petitions that take place even something so simple as getting a street light in between lights on the end of the block but it makes a big difference when it's the difference in having a child run over in the dark and uh it took a close call to wake us up and cause us to take that kind of action and that's completely unnecessary in another particular case they were trying to put in a um senior [citizen's] home in in an area very near our neighborhood but if you just cross that major street the character of the neighborhood changes and it's less [savory] okay and that i was just very i felt very strongly about that those people simply did not have access to safety to security and they were at risk and it was for elderly people who lived alone and they were going to put a cluster of of houses there for them but even [clustering] together for the elderly does not ensure safety and all it all it did was to in my judgment make them easier targets uh_huh yeah easier targets and so we we did get a [petition] together and we very strongly resisted it and it was placed in a actually it was placed clear closer to my neighborhood but it was on the right side of the street and uh it it i think that they're they're much more comfortable there uh i haven't seen too much crime in my neighborhood although we have a good crime watch program but it's it's very serious just across the street well well no i don't think it had to do to with woman running against man i think it had to do with dirt running against [dirtier] and that's it it was a dirty election people were calling each other uh names and every bit of the trash it was a it was a dirty campaign it was a dirty mud [slinging] campaign uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well of course now that's not all the time we've had some pretty we were having some pretty healthy uh campaigns that were based on issues there for two or three of the gubernatorial races but i historically texas has had mud and [muddier] campaigns i mean it's just i think that eventually you know the better people have [sensibilities] and they vote on those people who are least likely to do damage unfortunately that's not always the way it should be you don't want to vote for the person who is least likely to do damage you want to do the one who can do the most good and uh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh okay so you so you see that's very negative motivation isn't it isn't that too bad we really could use a little positive motivation hey we think this guy can really make some changes and we're going to support him that was true in a lot of cases in in a couple of the older sixties campaigns uh no i'm talking about national campaigns yeah uh even when john kennedy was elected there were so many strikes against him but there were people who believed he could make a difference now that's not to say what has [transpired] or what really was i'm saying that's how it was perceived and uh oh yeah absolutely and and it was people going to vote for i think more than those who voted against i know i know that in my own uh area of people whom i knew and how they were going to vote they didn't go to vote against uh a politician as they did a little bit later when [nixon] was running they went to vote against the less of lesser of the two evils in certain cases but i think that one was one that you had some very strong feelings among people and they voted their convictions absolutely you're right yeah are you there okay do you know the question for today and what is your feeling do you think this is vital important okay do you i it i have worked in some campaigns and it's the most discouraging thing in the world i'm originally from oklahoma and up there if they miss three elections then they have to [reregister] and i have often wondered if if maybe that would help the situation i don't know well can you come up with anything else that maybe we could do to these people oh that's all right well i'm i'm not the only thing is if they don't vote they have no right to complain it is um i don't know why we are so complacent but i'm going to vote each time right or wrong i'm going to cast a ballot and then if i'm unhappy with it i have the right to express my opinion so uh there was something else i was going to and i'm like you i've just lost a train of thought that i had but they have been more little more effective in oklahoma with having this program that you vote or you lose it no three you have to you have to skip three and uh of course those can be they can be oh a long time apart but um of course what do you think and this is not one of our questions but what do you think of this no excuse absentee [balloting] okay i'm sure all over the state of texas now you have three weeks to go for absentee [balloting] and you don't have to be sick out of town or anything they there is no excuse anyone can go and vote do you but that is an excuse and that would i could live with but this idea of anyone i i am so [bitterly] opposed to this if you're busy that has always been a legitimate excuse if you are incapacitated ill health but to have the expense of let's see they have five six people at my [polling] place they can come from all over the city and i don't know why we couldn't have duplicate voting on some of this yes i know but is there is every list checked as thoroughly as a you know we back in when i lived yes uh yes it's about why there aren't more people that are voting and participating in oh absolutely um i think that uh it's kind of discouraging to uh i have been involved in some political campaigns and that kind of thing and it's really discouraging to be in a phone bank and call people and not a lot of them are so ill informed they have no idea you know even that there's an election or and these are people that are registered well that's a thought huh i don't know i i like that idea um oh i had a thought just a second ago but it slipped my mind um one thing that that i think probably one of the reasons that people don't vote more is because they don't know the candidates and i think sometimes you know that's one thing that i have learned in working in elections and things is you know sometimes even when you work for someone you don't really know what they're like i know there's been a couple of people that we voted for and worked for and when they got in office it was just a disaster uh and and i'm not sure how you go about really finding out what people are really like before you vote for them absolutely that's right now if you just lose if you just skip one election three uh_huh i think that's an excellent idea because then people really have to think about it no excuse uh i'm not sure if i'm familiar with that or not uh_huh oh i think that's great um actually you know my husband has run for office before and sometimes it's nice to be able to go ahead of time and vote because you know if you're going to be tied up that day uh [campaigning] or whatever it might be um that kind of just kind of takes that load off you know you can just go ahead and get that taken care of and uh_huh uh_huh well hopefully once they have uh you know once they've checked them off the list they they do have to check them off a list when they vote so hopefully they couldn't and i have to admit that we just moved to plano recently and that i hadn't voted in an election yet and although i did go down and register and i that's the first time i've ever done that has what's been your voting experience well do you feel like uh i mean i uh_huh uh_huh yes uh_huh that's really true that's kind of the way i have felt i i also feel guilty uh not knowing and not going the extra mile myself and studying out the issues and studying out the candidates course we only have mostly the representation given in the media but uh i have felt since i've been here that i haven't known what the issues were and that i because it was a new community uh_huh it does yes uh_huh uh_huh no uh_huh no right uh_huh yes and uh and uh i also feel especially in the presidential elections that uh since we're back on the old system of electoral votes and or that and that you don't necessarily your vote doesn't necessarily elect president right and it's kind of it's awful and and it's hard to feel like one person but i know that it's important and i feel guilty that i haven't done that here haven't taken the time and i know that you know people can make a difference but it's hard to to face the corruption like you say and uh and to know what you're up against and it makes me feel bad that i'm glad i mean i am thankful for the uh nineteenth amendment is it that gives women the right to vote and uh i'm glad that that happened and everything and i hope that i will become a better make a better difference in but i haven't done that so far uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right right right uh_huh right yeah and it's not very likely i mean it seems like my voting experience i i well personally i've been very diligent until recent years when i felt my vote was absolutely kind of washed down the drain for the issues that you know that i felt really strong for uh i think apathy has set in to a lot of people because of the way our politicians are and the way our country is being run you really do have to study to get yourself uh up to par with what is truly going on and that takes a lot of research and and people today are very busy and uh and that is an excuse because we are we are always uh i know i'm heavily involved in other things and and to take time out and uh study the issues in depth would take quite a bit of time and i don't have the time to devote to that and uh you hopefully find that you want the candidates that are running to be honest and [aboveboard] and unfortunately they are not and uh it's really a dilemma uh that we find ourselves in i believe uh so i kind of just have taken a back step away and uh hopefully that someone will clean up the mess that's there take it because it is a task that is to me kind of overwhelming right they just want to see how close the electoral votes are with the public votes yeah yes well i know that when you're in a smaller community i live in mesquite and uh when we have uh a local election say for our mayor and so forth they really uh give a lot of information in the local newspaper not in the not in the bigger city dallas newspaper i mean they they just give it a small portion of the newspaper but the local newspaper really goes into uh quite a bit of history about the candidate and uh and then they have they raise a they raise two sides and uh there's a pro and a con side and uh you can really uh feel comfortable in uh [evaluating] that uh candidate by uh that method uh i feel pretty confident about the way it's put forth now i wouldn't say that about the larger cities though and the and the country on like the presidential uh i mean they've got people that are running that are admitted uh criminals and admitted crooks you know i'm sorry but i don't believe in them turning a good uh uh a new leaf unless they have the lord that has done that to them and uh without the lord they can't do it twenty minutes that's it i don't work nope i'm just one of those housewives my husband and my father both work at t i in sherman so oh goodness oh i i can't really say i haven't listed them or anything yeah i've enjoyed them so it really yeah okay by the way you don't sound like you're from dallas that's why i didn't think you don't sound you sound like you're from the north that's why i didn't think you oh really well that's why i picked it up yes you have you have a northern accent well not i didn't say new england but i could definitely tell your from the north yeah well you never i don't think you ever lose that that which you begin with you're still i myself am a native texas you can never as a native texan you can never become a texan unless you were born here where was i i was born in dallas so i've been i've been in this area for most all my life oh yeah they have much more of a twang down in that area okay well yes i have um i was in the military for a while and it really bothered me to think that people that are affected so you know so closely by you know that it comes so close to home as far as the government you know because they are so directly connected with it and yet so few of them were registered to vote and and it really really used to bother me and then and then i'd hear complaints about this and that that was happening to those of us in the military the cuts and things like that and i would be like well are you registered to vote have you you know made any uh changes you know as far as your voting habits on you know who you're voting for and what you're looking for and uh no they'd say no and i'd be well then shut up you know you don't really have much you don't have much that you can say yeah you vote absentee yeah you vote you're still connected to your state legally you still are responsible for paying those taxes they withdraw taxes for that state if like in texas we don't yeah but if you are they withdraw that from your pay and uh you can be you can be uh have suits brought against you as if you were from that state yeah so you are attached to that state from which you came from to voting uh_huh uh_huh i think i think sometimes that you um you pick you become more aware of what you have and how important it is to you you become more [loyal] so to speak to the things that you don't have at that time and you realize hey my you know we really have a good thing there so i think you hold more dear the things like democracy and your rights you know as an american citizen but i think uh the people that i've talked to as far as voting because i've worked you know in trying to get people to vote when i was in the military i was a uh represented uh people as far as voting from what i spoke speaking with people it was mainly that um they felt frustrated that their one vote wasn't going to do any good you know that uh and and it was really hard to get across to them that it didn't matter you know it's a matter of that's your right you should go and do it you know and that your one vote can count when you get a whole lot of if everybody says oh well my vote doesn't count you know then then what do you have yeah yeah well you can make a big difference in those and it's more to home a lot of the time yeah isn't that ridiculous yeah but don't you think anyway that's kind of a cop out i mean it still is your responsibility and and nowadays they do have more information that you can become aware of and there are things like the league of women voters or some of the other groups that you know put give out uh [nonbiased] information just general information on how the candidates stand on certain issues that you know you can make a decision on how you feel about certain issues and who you want to represent you and so i really don't i don't agree that you have too many choices that you know it's it's too hard and i think that people are just lazy i think they don't want to get out oh really yeah yeah yeah how many times have you called or or participated okay i i'm a little less than that i was going to call this week i forgot about it just until i was going to do it tonight uh i have i was i called i think every day last week and i forgot about this week i got so tied up with some other things i got about ten i think voting oh yeah i'm sure i would think they would talk about people who are already registered and and uh you know the ones that are on the rolls already you know i'm amazed myself sometimes i've got some ideas and they've tried a few things but yeah you've heard yeah yeah yeah i i'm kind of with you in fact i even think that the there's a i wouldn't call it a conspiracy but you know if you really wanted you know hundred and hundred million people to vote why would you have voting from seven o'clock in the morning to seven o'clock at night for a national election to me you need to have two what's wrong with having two days uh thursday friday or three two and a days thursday friday and saturday or something you know where people can vote uh i don't think there's a i don't think there's a lot of politicians want a heavy vote out because uh i can agree in local elections which usually are on saturdays and i'm not too sure that's the best idea i think maybe you should have it you know friday noon until saturday so that people who i like to do things during the week and i might do it and i i really think that they don't try you know i i really think it's obvious the answers to me is just to have longer you know have at least two days for a national election my goodness right right right well yeah the seven o'clock in the morning to seven o'clock at night is is usually the average time that most workers go to work you know and i'm amazed by that that uh the only good thing they've done lately is have these uh uh elections uh what do they call it when you can vote ahead of time uh uh absentee and i've done that and actually we've got some high turn outs here in arlington on some of the absentee because you can vote like two saturdays before or something like that but i think it's amazing that they they keep complaining about people not voting and and national elections should be more than one day i mean i don't see how you can have tens of or hundreds of thousands of people that you know just can't quite make it on that particular day for one reason or another you know two days to me doesn't seem to be too unrealistic for a national election right yeah the bonds we had some here in arlington recently but yeah i i don't really know why you have uh uh you know in a small city or whatever medium size city you have a couple hundred thousand people eligible you know and you get ten thousand to vote i don't have an answer for that i think that uh it is apathy without question uh we are we are not taking it as serious as the people who have lost their rights and everything overseas and everything and i think uh i don't know how to change that i always try to vote for those and but i and there are some that if when they have them on saturday i'll say all right i'm going to work i'm going to go vote this afternoon and then i'll get busy and if no one reminds me then i will forget so i'm not too sure course i guess that's part of being apathy too but i do try to vote in every one but uh i don't i don't have an answer for the local elections and why you have ten percent of the people voting that's really so low i'm amazed oh that too that too yeah yeah but i think in national elections uh again it should be the time is definitely against the people i think you ought to have two days you're voting for president uh why is it so [sacred] to have it on tuesday and uh why couldn't it be friday and saturday i don't know what the ideal day is if you're trying to catch a weekend or maybe just tuesday and wednesday i'll bet you'd get a lot more people i think the news media has really they jump in there and they uh tell you the the that who won before seven thirty and before the before the polls are closed and i think they jump in way way too early i think that ought to be restricted somehow uh they will not restrict it but they just ought to not release i don't know i don't know what districts are releasing the numbers to these newsmen that they can predict uh i i thought the polls had to be closed before you were allowed why would you release it to the newsmen first i i don't even know how the news media get these numbers from the polls i would think that ought to be [sacred] and and until it's all over that primary uh yeah i don't yeah well i think you can say you are an independent too but i don't know uh yeah i haven't thought about that much i i've uh wondered about it but i haven't really got concerned about it one way or another you know uh what that holds back or anything but you're right it it that is a funny rule at least uh men and women can vote it's amazing that we can still look overseas and see you know this thing in saudi arabia and all and they still don't allow women to vote it is still amazing of course we we don't have such a wonderful history that you know we didn't allow blacks to vote uh and we didn't allow women to vote until i don't even know what the year was for women nineteen nine or something like that when was that so well we're changing at least at least we're trying and and maybe this absentee thing will will take ahold and uh get more people to vote um hum yeah i don't know why well i think it ultimately i could see why you wouldn't register necessarily when you're eighteen or nineteen because you don't get around to it but i i think that people should register you know after a year or so i don't it's not really that hard uh i haven't thought that people don't vote because they're not registered i really think uh course that's apathy too you don't bother to register uh i am amazed i don't have an answer for why the numbers are so low yeah i think you've got to have a good fight you know you have to have a lot of controversy right or if it's close you know you like to see them close you don't like to see someone just totally run away with it and in in a football game or anything even if you're for one team or the other you always like to see let's have a good game which means you want to see a close game you know so if there's no controversy if you're not worried about who's going to win if you think it's going to be a [shoo] in then uh you know you don't vote so uh but at least i guess we're so far ahead of some of the other countries uh that we've still got a better system and and we are we have been doing this for two hundred years so uh i guess it's still better that a lot of others yeah yeah it is surprising how uh uh even with low numbers uh yeah well i here in arlington we had this baseball thing and it was a big controversy and everyone was talking about it yet the voting was so low it was unbelievable and they were spending a lot of money you would have thought we would have had close to half of the people in the city voting for this that was going to raise your taxes and it was like twenty five thousand or something like that you know so that part of it is still uh there's something that people for some reason they don't really want to vote uh and maybe maybe absent maybe you ought to be able to do it on your telephone you know i mean i don't know yeah and it may come to that you know with the electronic age yeah you put in your okay where are you from oh is that where you're talking from oh i can tell from your accent i'm from louisville kentucky but i'm here in texas uh_huh uh_huh do you vote regular okay uh_huh well i uh i need to get into voting i've never voted no i've never voted i've never felt comfortable enough with it i don't know enough about politics to know what the right choice is anyway even local candidates it just i talked about this the other day on the telephone with it's uh so many politicians you know they put up a front to me you know they're not showing you the real person anyway they're just showing what the public wants to see uh_huh well that would be nice yeah right right well that's what i mean it's you don't know what's real i guess i don't know much about that at all what do you mean like when you vote for a certain thing not a person i don't think no i've never voted on anything like that either uh_huh well see i've never uh how do you do the do you do that like you're voting just like if you're taking a a presidential election do you just go somewhere and place your ballot or huh well see i've never heard of well i know that sounds stupid but i really haven't i've never heard of that i'm no i'm in denison texas up north in on in the north part of texas right i moved from kentucky when i was twenty one right i grew up in louisville yeah it's a fairly big city denison it's uh i wouldn't say it's large but it is one of the bigger cities in this part of texas right it's about the same no i remember once when i was a working in louisville one of the mayor candidates come up to the uh uh place where i was working and he had asked me i don't know i guess it had been about two years since i'd been eligible to vote and i haven't hadn't been voting well he had uh this is one of the things that you know formed my opinion on politicians he sat there and promised you know the next day we're going to take you up and get you registered to vote and you're going to vote for me and blah blah blah but then he never showed up you know it was one of his aides or whatever but still i thought you know they say what they want to for the time being what sounds good yeah uh_huh well that's i think they need to have a a better oh i need to know a lot more about politics and they need to have something in the community well like in high school they should teach politics or the government i mean i think so uh_huh well i want to know about politics in particular you know just you know what the [workings] of it is everything right in order for me to be able to form a a good opinion on who to vote for or whatever i i need to know about it you know and if i could keep a follow up on the candidates running like right now you know i know whose president vice president and i know a couple of the mayors like [koch] in new york i don't even know who's mayor down here in texas off hand uh_huh so much well what do you think i think you know anybody should be allowed to run for president just even an ordinary guy off the street if he knows the politics right it's it's that's what i mean it's all money and yeah uh_huh what did you think of that whole mess with [ollie] north and all that uh reagan and bush and oh of course he did he should have looked into it right or it should have been looked into more yeah well that's the way i felt when uh carter and reagan was running i liked carter as a president uh yeah but he was a i don't know he was a good christian and everything though well from what i've seen i was only sixteen then but uh when reagan came in i i thought it ran through my head that carter lost because the hostages you know that whole mess wasn't it the day after reagan was elected that they were brought home or yeah shortly after i think a lot of people were disappointed because they had been held [hostage] for so long but is a lot enough people no but if enough people think like that then it does you know well if i knew more about it like i said if they would get some kind of educational program out there where just anybody can learn oh i'm sure they do i don't know i could check into that right well wasn't it i know i can't remember i guess it was when ferraro is that her name when her and uh i can't remember who was running for president with her i just remember she was going to be vice okay how did you find out about this from texas oh yes uh_huh uh why we think there's such a uh low turn out okay well i think there's a uh multiple reasons i think first of all a lot of people are fed up and they think they don't really their vote doesn't count and second of all a lot of people just aren't educated to you know that they should do that they should participate right we had uh city [councilman] that won by like a handful of votes you know ten votes or something so that would have made a big difference if people had turned out for his opponent and i think another reason sometimes it's inconvenient the hours especially in a presidential election i don't know why it couldn't go on for several days or why we couldn't even phone in our vote you know you can you can uh now the colleges you can register over the phone i don't see why we couldn't vote over the phone you know i mean computers and all oh you don't do that up there i mean you don't register for college there they're doing that all over the phone now down here at the big at the big schools now what city are you in really oh my that's interesting right just a difference of five or ten that uh right we could use our social security number or something there ought to be some way that they could safe guard it but uh especially presidential because you know sometimes you do have to stand in line for a long time oh that's a a interesting point i have no uh no idea i wonder uh_huh that's true i know a lot of them that don't vote uh because my i have a twenty year old and i know a lot of her friends don't vote and uh i go to school right now and i i've heard kids say they don't vote i guess well they don't really read the newspaper much i you know at that age i can remember being in college the first time and i was a journalism major and i hardly ever read the paper i mean it's [appalling] when i look back but you know i think that may be part of it too they're not really informed that's true that's very true i've heard people on talk shows say that they feel that that's a statement when they don't vote at all right cop out yeah i think so too i know even if you're voting against somebody more than for someone which i usually am nowadays in the national elections it seems uh i don't know when when i voted for somebody with great enthusiasm it was a long time ago uh_huh no you you punch something out uh_huh oh no i've never seen one like that oh oh right well we have uh where you fill it in with the lead pencil and and the machine counts it that's really fast too well right like a [scantron] you know they call it that goes through the machine i half the tests i take in school now are that way so easy i just stick them in this machine and get the number out you know right right well um in i think what it is in this country is that we have this uh despite all the complaints we have about government we essentially have a great deal of faith that despite uh any election things really aren't going to change dramatically based on any given election and there really no one gets all excited over politics uh over the the you think of some countries where they've changed uh um you know have a a coup or some form of government there may change uh every few years like an example would be the south american governments but here it's it's very stable and uh you there's nothing really to get all that excited over but maybe people should get a little excited and make some changes right right yeah people will vote presidential elections um you know a local election that may have some great import but uh you know over all people don't have a whole lot to to worry about when it comes to politics yeah right yeah well that that's just it i'm i'm twenty four and i'm in the military and uh i'm uh uh registered to vote in pennsylvania and i only voted once it was in uh last presidential election you know and it was just because you know it's too much of a hassle to get the absentee ballot or even to to drive back there which is what i did that time i actually went and visited my folks and voted the same time but uh um in my position i well in addition to that the local political scene i don't know enough about it any more to even feel that my vote means anything because i don't know the the candidates um right yeah right right but i i think um that's all things that it's all my own [laziness] though because first of all i should take the time to find out about the candidates i probably should talk to my mom and dad who do live there and get a feeling for what uh for what they are you know have been doing and uh avoid what they feel the candidates are doing and uh um maybe do a little looking into it myself it's not like any of this is any big secret but it's just a question of taking the time and it's there're higher priorities right right david duke yeah yeah it was interesting there was quite a few people in this area that had contributed to his campaign and i'm in upstate new york and this is kind of a red neck area but the local newspapers um printed they somehow got a list of all of [duke's] contributors and they printed a list in the newspaper everybody that gave money to that campaign you want to talk about getting getting even with them uh that was i thought that was beautiful justice what's that yeah yeah oh yeah yeah you know people you think about having somebody like that in power and uh you know and that shocks them all but then uh flip side is the same people go around um [harboring] their own racist racist practices and you know you ask those same people um how they treat people and all that and you probably would not get a very favorable answer out of them but the idea the merit the thought of somebody who [publicly] was a member of the [ku] [klux] [klan] is pretty [repulsive] being in a position of power like that so what we can do to make it better right that that's hard because um i thought in the last not this last year's election but the one a year ago that they were going that there was going to be some serious turn around of the incumbents and all that that people were finally fed up to do for voting one of the biggest [stumbling] block is at first getting registered isn't that what you have now in oregon you have the booklets yep and each uh party or whatever against and for the proposition or but excuse me uh well back yeah uh_huh yeah i i understand that giving the pros and cons and being informed but i was thinking also uh you can you should have voter registration by phone things like that yeah well you you know a lot of places do it by mail but a lot of people don't get to the step of putting it into the mail you know and uh if you can do it from the phone and pick it up at any time twenty four hours a day and do it that's that'll make well well actually there's there are ways i mean if they can get the speaker identity [verification] those kind technologies out there it would help uh you know in terms of [verifying] who they are and what they're saying and and uh you know people could uh use that you know where do you live yeah all that stuff yeah they don't that which is a problem and uh i don't know i think uh that after you can also the problem is also uh motivating people to do it seeing that their voting has an impact on the process and people frankly don't see any connection with what they they vote and what happens so they very frustrated and they don't do anything so there's learned [helplessness] type of you know no matter what i do it's not going to help so why bother uh uh_huh uh_huh i you know what i think also they should do is build in the process the election process is not just vote getting i mean to get the candidates saying that not that their votes aren't any good unless they also motivate so many percent of the [populace] to vote they could be identified by them so put it in the political process that that you know not only you have to get petitions in order to get on the ballot but you have to attract you know you have to attract so many people just to come to the polls they don't have to vote for you but they have to come to the polls and actually vote you know those something built into the system to motivate people to to bring them into the process especially the people who want to hold offices i mean that's what uh this this year uh i think it's interesting uh we i mean there's so many candidates still that uh we well there's uh we have uh uh clinton and uh uh brown of course yeah and then uh i don't know if you've heard much about this other guy the independent perot that may be drawing some uh republican votes and uh so it doesn't seem like george bush is completely locked up the republican although i think i don't well i guess he has but uh i don't know i think that's i think that's hard to say i know uh clinton and brown are both trying to go after what whatever the block vote whatever that's supposed to be and uh i don't know i i think it will be interesting i know a lot of people have you know are are starting to are are more you know with the uh recession and everything i think a lot more people are starting to uh become more politically actively i i think there will be more why what do you think uh_huh oh right right yeah right yeah yeah i agree yeah uh i yeah i definitely agree with you there i mean it's people i mean that that don't care much about uh uh like federal things or you know things you know uh like the deficit people who don't who don't really care about stuff like that really don't have any [clues] to what's going on like right right in their own towns or counties or state or whatever so yeah i agree with you yeah i think people are even you know yeah yeah you you'd think people would be more i don't know because they're more in touch uh they're you know i mean uh [geographically] huh exactly sure yeah and i mean most of them are even you know you'll see them you know however many times a year they're actually in your city you know in your neighborhood or whatever but uh yeah i yeah it's interesting how that works and people just i don't know they just uh yeah yeah yeah i do vote uh i know if i when i first registered uh i guess with the last election uh i was uh in my late teens so i only really registered and voted for the uh who was that that was dukakis and uh yeah dukakis and bush i guess it was the last time that was i guess that was the first presidential election i voted in but uh at that time i was really a political i mean you know that like you say about uh local uh uh local politics i was just you know not in in touch at all yeah yeah that's that's that's true yeah no no that's true uh campus yeah yeah yeah that's that's that's another that's another thing too yeah well i'd say so sure i i know i've never voted in any of the just uh and why i i don't know i just don't see any i know uh i don't see any importance at all in my vote in the you know and that and that even that smaller uh uh arena of politics i don't even see uh you know any kind of influence or anything or any you know uh uh but uh federally i i think everybody should be you know uh should definitely be uh uh aware of uh you know the presidential elections they should be you know uh yeah yeah they they should participate uh you know uh yeah but but i i i think it'll be interesting to see you know uh i think the people that vote are the people who uh [gees] now that's hard to say it's hard to say who votes and and why uh yeah i mean yeah oh it is it is and uh alright what do you think about it like well you can go first wow i dropped the phone that was loud sorry uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh really i think that that's a big part of it i think that's probably the root and then also that added with all the pressures on the american family today it's a real it's a real pain for us to go vote i mean i remember the last time that we had to go vote it was like man just to get up there and do it was major effort you know and we ran in there it was like right at seven and my husband had worked late and i was going to go we wanted to go together to do it and take our son but it was like we ran in and whew we were the last people in there and i thought you know kyle gets off usually about oh by five but we live in [tarrant] county and he drives from dallas so you know it's a drive but he still had a lot more cushion to be able to go vote a lot easier than most people you know what i mean and because he doesn't hit the north dallas traffic and all then he might have worked an hour late it was just like ah we had so many things to do and we just couldn't get them done and i i remember us thinking that man it i'm a christian and i really feel like we have a responsibility to vote but i tell you what if i wasn't a christian i would there's no way i would have gone to vote just because of the pressures the you know just the time factor and just the anyway and i felt like i was listening to [dobson] this morning and i i guess i even thought that then this morning so it's funny i got this topic because there were talking about how the congress it pays the congress to make you know legislation that encourages women to work outside the home because then you have two people you can tax and you put both of those people in a higher bracket and that it's probably not going to end anytime soon the pressure you know to work and just the pressure it puts on the american family and um i i thought about that and i said yeah that's funny you hardly have time to go vote for this congressman because you know women are expected to do so much now and i just kind of laughed and i thought god i never thought of it like that you know so anyway i think that's the other side that yeah but i agree too with what everything you said and then you put those two things together and you're going to have you know no one going to vote but then um i don't know [disillusion] what's the solution i know now come on uh_huh but i think that uh_huh uh_huh yeah there's yeah i know they're i know you can't even spank your children these days without you know with this you know i don't know we don't have we don't have a little child but i know that when you go in a restaurant we had some foster twins and it was last year and it wasn't through the state but boy [howdy] man these kids needed a whipping sometimes not to be beaten not to be abused but to firmly be told you are not going to do that and you are not going to spit in my face i said no and if you do that this is going to be the consequence but uh you couldn't do that even through the state even the it wasn't through the state but even though um the mother really would given approval but because of the situation we just didn't think it was wisdom you know you go in a restaurant and they start spitting their food out at the table now come on but you know you couldn't do really a lot because of the state's control so that's that's a good idea there too i like that but anyway you know have you ever had a two year olds twins start spitting their food at you at luby's you know i mean you're like going uh_huh uh_huh you could go in the bathroom at luby's and take care of it yeah i did i stood there and i did take care of it it took forever though and i think god just had some grace there because i don't think if it had been my child i don't think that would have worked what i did in order to get them to eat that food you know but it took like twenty five minutes but it was the whole thing was the state but i don't want to rewrite the constitution i just wish people i wish it would be interpreted like the [founding] fathers wrote it to be interpreted by right our society is so messed up though it's like no wonder they interpret it wrong we were in dallas last night and we ate dinner at [meadow] road and seventy five at a restaurant there and i couldn't believe it it was like this kid was like saturday night live we were the only normal seeming human people in the whole place almost and i'm not kidding and it's like these it's this it this i told kyle i said if this is reflective of our society no wonder we are in such a mess and you know these were the rich people these were the you know these were i mean just the things that happened we had a [bulimic] in front of us she just looked crazy but yet she had money and um she was so friendly and i asked the manager as we checked out i said is that lady a [ballerina] or what and he goes he said no she's a [bulimic] because she was so skinny and then all these other people are coming up around us and uh this one man they went to check on their ticket and the other man at their table started taking their plates and and in fear just piling their food on his plate and [shoving] it in his mouth i mean this was in one night and i was just sitting there thinking now i he did it's like uh no he was sitting at the table with them another couple right but he took their plates up and made sure they didn't see him and i think he was the one i heard him mention about the tickets were messed up so they went to take care of the tickets he took their plates and began eating his eating their food i'm not kidding my husband was like totally [freaking] out he said i can't believe it look at that but and i you know what i mean they were right next to us and it was obvious that they didn't know and so and he ate it all before they got back and everything and so i just thought no i don't know if there's an answer to the people not going to vote when they when our society is falling apart like it is i don't know if people i know yeah i know and they you know these are probably some of the lobbyists in washington i can't help but think that either is it no seriously because these were this was a nice north dallas this was not we weren't over on cedar springs or harry [hines] or anything you know so anyway i think our society is just worse off than i realized that's what i felt we live in euless now we don't see that in euless too much but you know that's what it i mean it was just absolutely maybe it was just that night right but i don't think so i have a feeling that's more reflective of our government and everything then well there's your another call well i think we had a good call and so today as i understand it is less than half of all eligible voters participate in national elections and less than that in local elections and do you think that's a problem and do you have any or do we can we can come come up with any solutions for that so if you're ready we'll start i participate in all of the national you know elections and the state elections that you know that affect me i'm sometimes not too good in local elections i do i do you know vote in bond matters and uh things like that but i don't i no longer have children in school so school board elections you know doesn't really you know i don't really get terribly interested in that but but i do try to i don't just vote to be voting you know i try to have you know educate myself a little bit you know on the on the issues rather than just voting [blindly] you know uh_huh right uh_huh that's true uh_huh yeah yeah i do too yeah right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's true that's true uh less than half less than half i was kind of surprised to hear that yeah i thought it would have been higher than that do you ever or have you ever or do you ever actively work for a candidate uh_huh well i've only done it one time way back when uh john [connally] was running for governor in the state of texas many years ago my wife and i were pretty heavily involved in in working in his campaign it's really interesting to do it's hard work but it it's interesting to do but i haven't done any of it done any of it lately uh_huh right uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh it really is yeah yeah it it's interesting to do yeah we did mailings put up signs you know and things like that went to a few dinners things like it was interesting it really was of course it was all volunteer we weren't paid members it was interesting to do i don't know maybe it's you know better education i don't know i do believe that you know if you don't educate yourself and vote in this these elections whether it's you know local or national you pretty well you know deserve whatever you get you know if you don't if you don't participate in it i really don't know what the solution would be everybody or a lot of people thought when they ended the poll tax you know many years ago that that would bring out you know a lot of voters i don't know maybe it maybe it should be stressed through you know public education in schools you know or something i don't know uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i don't know really know what a solution would be i really don't you know like you say if you if you do everything but fill out the card for them that's really about all you can do uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah some sort of educational process i'm not quite sure what that's true yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah i don't know either it's kind of a tough question don't really know what a real solution would be for it except like you say some sort of an educational process something to generate interest i don't know quite what i really don't know well maybe some other genius can figure this out i don't know maybe so yeah right yeah well it's nice talking to you take care uh well how is it appropriate to be talking about exercise attitudes uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh you're a student uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh i'm i am a person who wishes i had more time to exercise i i don't feel like i i don't very often do things for the sake of exercise i don't feel well unless i am exercising and i try to do things that involve exercise but i very rarely do things like um i've never done aerobics or any sort of structured this is my exercise time but i do lots of outdoor sports and things bicycling uh you know [mountaineering] a little [mountaineering] this and that and i spend a lot of time and i probably get more exercise than your average person but it's not a a structured sort of thing and i have to admit i have a certain resistance to the idea of exercising for [exercising's] sake and perhaps it's because somehow that [implies] to me it's not fun or something like that uh_huh uh_huh yes yes uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah is that why you like aerobics classes because you're not sort of someone else is doing the counting for you so it makes it less of a chore yeah yeah would that we could uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right you can just trust someone else to give you full exercise and all you do is follow along and enjoy yourself uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um well you're talking to someone from california where it's often swimming weather uh uh_huh so it's the it's it's the the well it's actually it's interesting because there are real regional differences um in california there's uh almost an assumption um unless you're sort of clearly of an older generation or something you know in your sixties or something like that i'm i'm i'm not uh there's an assumption that you do something for your physical fitness and and at least in urban california and maybe not i don't know about rural california too well but in urban california it's just you know for all i know aerobics started out here i don't know where they actually started but they you know the craze really picked up big here and before that there was the running craze and they california gets you know tends to be a bit [faddish] but the remarkable thing is how well the fads catch on elsewhere so there must be something to some of them and uh uh_huh yeah well there's a sense of it being a package i think there there is a sense of you know whole there's a lot of you know you'll get organizations like [institutes] for the whole health or whatever and uh-oh the the the university of california at berkeley puts out the [wellness] letter which is uh turned into a fairly well subscribed to uh newsletter monthly or [biweekly] newsletter or something like that and and it doesn't deal with just exercise or just stress management or just diet or anything it it's on fairly solid scientific ground uh it's just [dispensed] with these [distinctions] it says all sorts of factors go into health and there's no reason to talk about one rather than another so that they they combined them all together and uh so it's had that orientation for quite some time um there's been some progressive medical schools out here that have taken that approach and um boy yeah that there's a i i can say there's a correlation but i couldn't say which which caused the other they sort of you know each developed a little bit and then would feed off one another and develop a little bit more and a little bit more yeah and yeah yeah exactly and part of it is california you know in back in the sixties had a lot of alternative movements and some of them [fizzled] out and some of them were disastrous and others of them um had an impact on the society around here and one of the ones that had an impact was uh people becoming interested in alternate practices i'm not sure if it was a [meditation] practice or if it was you know which is similar to a stress management practice or alternates to uh a m a approved medicine uh you have you know major um [acupuncture] schools and things out here and and you could have them around long enough and more and more people start believing them or wondering how to combine them with other things and before long you you get this this whole kind of [gestalt] this whole package of of health of health care and options and uh and exercise is is strongly considered one of them the [irony] is is its people in the cities in my experience that are most oriented towards doing the exercise and i guess because they spend all day in back of their [desks] the average person out on the farm at least traditionally now they drive fancy tractors as much as anything but at least traditionally the [laborers] last thing pardon me oh like everything else yeah yeah the rat race to exercise uh_huh yeah well i i think so i mean you you've if you look at if you look at other cultures like i know a little bit about people who were considered very healthy in china and they don't do very much [vigorous] exercise at all but they do a lot of low keyed low impact low stress exercise and they combine it with a you know [meditation] or whatever some sort of relaxation and they seem pretty you know they don't have the hard body they don't have that perfect look and an awful lot of exercise is sort of image conscious but they you know they live to a hundred and ten some you know and that that's and a lot of that is diet that's true yeah i mean they eat they eat a lot of [carbohydrates] and not much fat um for economical reasons not for preference um yeah am i actually i as am i yes it is in the urban areas yes most for example most restaurants in an urban area will have a little vegetarian section now well most most sort of modern looking restaurants will you can i was wondering that because i was actually applying for a job in texas and and and uh it occurred to me uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh we uh well uh my my husband is right now teaching an aerobics class he's an aerobics instructor and um is going to be uh entering north texas for uh a [kinesiology] program there and um the the how i met him was through uh the aerobics class that he used to teach yeah so i'm i'm an avid aerobics uh person and just very very athletic enjoying a you know uh anything dealing with sports so and how do you feel about it uh_huh uh_huh yeah well i i've my that's the way my mother stands on it she feels like if it's something that you have to do you know if you look at it as if you have to do it then it becomes it becomes a chore and and she doesn't enjoy it when it's a chore so um and i feel that way too as far as you know just sitting and doing you know to the idea of doing fifty sit ups or something you know to you're a you know [calculated] down and do your [calisthenics] you know three times a week or but but i do try and um i do try and regulate how much exercise i get a week yeah and it's got and i've always enjoyed dance so it involves you know i i can't get out to dance all the time and yeah and it's and it's more regulated i mean you're you're using different parts of the body so it it is like dance and it's structured like that but you have the music and someone like you said someone else is counting so it makes it easier for me and someone else is telling me okay you know let's move this way let's move that way instead of me having to think about it so much yeah yeah but i'm like you i also um like to participate in uh things like well we just went to the uh [myererson] symphony run this past weekend and and that was a lot of fun and you get to meet different people and um just get out you know out and about and it's it it's something you can all like our we did it as a family so it was it was quite a lot of fun and biking and i i i love to swim so i love it when you know it's swimming weather and uh oh i didn't realize that i'm sorry well i'm in texas i i just assumed that i had this is the first call i've done and i didn't realize that they were going to reach out to people from all over the country you wouldn't know that oh i uh_huh well i think people are are more um um people from california seem to be more health motivated all around i mean as far as the diet and everything uh the diet and uh just your health consciousness and i mean it just seems like uh a lot of those ideas generate out of california not just exercise but health health related ideas and i it's curious i don't know why don't know if it's do you does california have a uh_huh uh_huh now do you think that's because they've realized that for whole health that the you know you have to have that combination or that people are motivated that way so that they've incorporated that into their program do you think the program came first or the yeah the more money they put into it i can see that and cause i knowing from [institutes] of learning like that i know that they've got to get their money somewhere and somebody's got to be willing to pay for it and believe in it so uh_huh uh_huh yeah or they're older well don't you think they tend to be older in the rural i i sometimes think that it's almost [frantic] effort on the part of the people in the city i live in a rural area so you know i see that it's yeah it's it's like it's [frantic] to you know to uh achieve something that that a person in a rural area uh almost doesn't worry about it to such a degree but stays you know almost healthier you know as a fit person uh_huh yeah well don't you think a lot of that is diet too yeah uh_huh yeah and as we can see well i'm a i'm a practicing vegetarian so uh i've read a lot of information knowing that to be true what's that oh are you also well that's that's good as far as the is that is that um pretty [predominant] as far as california in the urban areas uh_huh oh that's wonderful yeah that's great i mean we uh it's such a it's such a trouble here i mean you just have to eat at home basically well of course in the cities yeah well in the cities we live close to dallas so uh which you know you get uh an influx of a lot of people from all over the country so you're going to have a lot of more choices but but in urban areas it's you know steak places an and it's not a you know it's uh it's definitely it it's it's changing to a degree but um it's very frustrating and even even with health food stores and stores where you can buy natural products or uh organic you know materials and foods and things you don't really have that i mean you would think well i uh before i was married i used to play a lot of sports and uh but when i got married and had children and everything it seems like i keep all my activity just chasing around fulfilling my obligations so i haven't done a lot of uh exercise on purpose what about you oh really uh_huh oh no that can be awful uh_huh oh that's good uh_huh do you work out on like is it the weight machines or aerobics or what is it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh i bet uh_huh uh_huh um doesn't sound like low impact well well that's good so are you well i like i am [undisciplined] in the sense that i can't just go and do exercise but i like to uh play tennis and play racquetball i i like to get exercise when i'm playing a game of some sort and so that's always been the way that i have kept myself in uh the shape that i was satisfied with at least and uh then i have given that up but uh i would really like to start that again because i am now you know not in a position that i like myself i don't feel good and i get you know when you get out of shape and you don't if you're easily tired and so that has made me but i i'm not the kind of person that could go to a spa and work out i just if something like uh i mean i have so many chores and so many obligations every day for to add another obligation would make me feel stressed and i wouldn't enjoy it but if i have something some team sport or some activity then it's kind of like having fun playing and then you then you get some of the uh good exercise and some of the desired results but you you're doing it for fun but i really admire people who can go and work out and uh_huh uh_huh well that's nice uh_huh yes it is kind it is family and it's fun it's a fun thing and kids enjoy that and and all and also the nice thing about belonging to a club is that you can have some of the relaxation you know like [saunas] or you know uh hot [jacuzzis] or whatever they have that kind of is kind of makes it fun and stuff you know you can relax that way afterwards and things well i guess it's getting late and i should take off but uh i appreciate that that helped me helped motivate me think someone can do it maybe i should start thinking about it again yeah i bought one i went to the i bought the low impact first i thought i shouldn't out of the blue just jump in so but i haven't done it but i'm going to try it well you have a good night we'll see you bye bye uh_huh uh_huh well it's funny this week yesterday i started exercising seriously this weekend i cleaned out my closets and uh a couple years ago i too got married i haven't have any children yet but this weekend i cleaned out some closets and i found a bathing suit that i had bought tried it on and decided i really did not like how it looked on me so yesterday i went to uh a spa i belong to a private spa and went in and and got with a trainer and uh he checked body fat content and we set up a program for me to work on and i went back tonight also so i've been two nights in a row and i i'm going to take it pretty seriously i'm going to start going every night just you know even if i i like tonight i only went for thirty minutes but i at least did something last night i did about thirty minutes of riding a bike and a few like three different types of uh uh weight lifting for my legs and and my hips and then i did a hour of aerobics and that was really tough and i was sore this morning when i got up but then tonight i got into a a it's sort of like an aerobics class but it's only thirty minutes and it's for your [abdominals] your [thighs] and your butt so and that was thirty minutes was definitely plenty so no it was a lot of sweat but i've been trying to eat correctly also so have you started exercising at home or uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah well i don't you know a lot of people i have a girlfriend that goes for the social aspect of it and she walks around talks to people and and i don't really get into that naturally i'm married so my husband goes a lot and we'll go and and just do what we want to do and then leave but yeah and swimming is a is a part that i i'd like to get into as far as my you know just aerobic activity they say that swimming is real good so i'd like to try that as well and that's probably something that that you could do you know family included uh_huh yeah right uh_huh yeah i agree yeah okay yeah well try it or or maybe just exercise at home i bought a tape and i'm going to try doing that uh_huh yeah that's me uh_huh thanks a lot bye bye um i try to ride the stationary bicycle every day about five miles and i love to walk so if i have a lunch hour with nice weather i get out and and walk what about you uh very good uh_huh uh_huh yeah there are there are lots of bike paths i know my son is a [biker] and he he's done the whole canal i think it's a hundred and eighty miles with the scouts and so but that somehow takes organization for me it's much easier just the stationary bike you know it's at home i can i can do some of my reading um but no i live in maryland right right and that's it um at work we have a a nice campus so i'm able to um take advantage of of the environment here uh the neighborhood also i mean we're within walking distance of of stores and shops so i do now i think um basically is your motive simply um health or because you enjoy it uh_huh right i think pretty much you [summed] up my my my motivations also oh well that's great that's great uh_huh right and actually in in summer i like to swim we don't have facilities for swimming in winter but um and and that's true when i go home from work at the end of the day if i go up for an hour in the pool i'm much much more awake i'm ready to work in the garden or whatever in the evening so no i'm not no oh really no i don't know that but i i must say that um when when i did do a linguistics course in in school ages ago um the professor had a lot of trouble with my accent and it's probably because i i i was born in the chicago area and grew up in california and at that point that was sort of the limit but since then i've been abroad a lot so it's a mixture in santa barbara oh i see uh_huh well very good i think we've probably know know each other's exercise habits and uh it was nice talking to you oh okay bye bye well do you exercise regularly judy uh_huh well um i uh exercise regularly i work at a university and i swim almost every day [upwards] of a mile but washington is one of my favorite places to visit uh my daughter lives in arlington and when i go to visit her i love to get out on that bike trail and either ride the bike oh gosh you can ride a bike practically all the way to southern virginia or just get out and walk uh or even jog a little although i don't do that regularly but [washington's] a great place to do that uh_huh right do you live in the district because i think there're so many parts of the district where it's not very safe to get out and walk uh_huh well it's uh it's really both i'm certainly driven by the desire to maintain my weight and be healthy and be in shape and uh and most of the time i enjoy it sometimes i don't but i feel that uh that the discipline it affords me when i do it when i don't want to is also worth something and i often find that even when i don't feel that much like exercising like i'll be really tired and i'll start swimming and i'll and i'll actually get energy and i'll be have much more energy when i'm done than when i started i mean i just feel great that happens to me probably one in four or five times that i swim and that's really a terrific feeling because you just go there at the end of the day and you figure god i'm ready for bed and you exercise and then it's sort of painful for a while but by the time you get done you feeling really terrific yeah yeah so can i just ask you are you canadian philadelphia i'm trying to because you have a you have one funny [vowel] that's probably going to drive the t i people crazy say out instead of out you say out did you know that huh huh i see i know this isn't on our topic but where did you grow up in california oh okay because i grew up in north hollywood california went to u c l a and all that yes well same here thanks for calling bye okay do you want to go first fitness and exercise okay um i like to do uh weight training and and cycling and just walking uh swimming i used to do a lot of basketball and running and volleyball until i had some knee surgery last fall and the doctor said that running and jumping isn't real good for my knee anymore so i had to kind of change my life style a little bit thirty eight well the rest of me is in pretty good shape it's just that left knee that just doesn't want to do everything it used to really oh oh i bet that helps uh_huh yeah yeah that's right that's right that's right well i mean if if you know what your routine is you can do that by yourself and you probably do this is true well that i can believe that have you tried the uh the pool at the spring creek fitness center yes it is they keep it at eighty one degrees year round um a fairly a fairly good amount uh more on the weekends uh i try to beat the traffic in the mornings when i workout in the mornings i try to come down to the dallas fitness center um have you done your attitude survey for this year yet you need to put that on there seriously oh you don't oh yeah yeah this is true yeah well it's not now what year are we talking about okay uh things have become much more [enlightened] since then yeah you know we still don't have a day care facility but people are more sympathetic to it yes yes oh my gosh could you hold the phone for one second thanks okay i'm back wow of course it's real easy to take care of the first one when you're on your back really yeah yeah yeah really yeah there you go i i can believe that oh yeah flex time is great i i can understand i can understand well it's been good talking with you oh shoot it's only about ten bucks a month yeah i mean uh to add dependents is is you know maybe another dollar or something it's no big deal yeah uh you do for classes for classes but to i mean to use any of the facilities is is no extra charge yeah it is or or a or a dependent of one really wonderful yeah oh yeah it's great uh well it would depend on when you go it's not it's not [excessively] crowded on the weekends oh i don't think that would be bad at all if you're in richardson you'd probably wanted to come to the to the dallas site oh well then you could go either one the spring creek one is a lot more modern has a lot more [niceties] amenities and you'd probably like the pool there well good i'm glad well thank you you have a good day bye bye well i could barely hear what the switchboard operator was saying as what was the topic oh god no why don't you go first well let me ask a personal question how old are you oh well then you should see over thirty five everything goes downhill flop oh you're lucky then because i've [battled] arthritis all my life i mean even since i was like about two or three then they diagnosed it and usually most people are just absolutely crippled and uh i do water aerobics religiously do water aerobics i used to do it about six times a week and now i'm down to about four but it's about the only thing that keeps my mobility in in there uh i tried weight training and i'm telling you you just i just can't lift the things and the shock on the system is is just too much so i have stuck to water aerobics basically you know the [weightless] thing and trying to keep this shape that way but you know it's hard to find i mean it's really hard to find a place that's going to offer water aerobics because what i'm finding is that if they do offer it you get the crowd of women that are i think they feel this is going to be an [effortless] [sweatless] way to get in shape without having to spend anything or it's the geriatric crowd so i've considered even becoming licensed to teach it yeah but you have to have an indoor pool so to find an indoor pool where either you can do this by yourself without you know drawing a lot of looks means you're really going to do a strenuous workout activity you look very odd in the water that was the one place where i was also able to do weight training and that does look very odd in the water no and you know that's the only place i haven't tried and people have told me now that's the texins facility i have been told that thing is just lovely huh do you use that facility a lot huh do you know if they have child care there they don't i don't i don't work at t i no i used to work at t i as matter of fact i was the only woman that they had in the field in a management position actually when i was working there i was the only woman that was pretty much in the industry and i used to fill out those attitude surveys and uh uh me and the insurance [adjusters] are are very familiar with each other and my husband still works there and um i get my attitude expressed through them but i find it to be very sometimes it's kind of shoot yourself in the foot mentality to save a few bucks uh and never having lived in texas before i starting working for t i and i came down here and you know they did an attitude survey like six weeks after i had been working here and i asked about you know day care for the shift workers and boy i was pulled in by my manager and told that you just don't say that you know it was not applicable to me and i was kind of horrified we're talking nineteen seventy eight they couldn't have gotten anymore in the dark ages i understand i understand that they're now covering women's preventative health care and uh the reason i'm at home is when i had my kids and i was scheduled to go back and i tell you how much in the dark ages it was um i had been rated number one in the field and then i took uh when i became pregnant i also got [meningitis] and then delivered the first baby three months early and they put the baby on a heart lung monitor when i took her home and the insurance carrier was not going to cover this because it was considered preventative treatment sure and then they used to uh and then i had a second one eighteen months later they told me to put them back to back and of course to maintain and i was flat on my back for the last five months with the second one because that's when i go into labor four and a half months and i don't even know it oh yeah very easy very easy and they they put me on twenty four hour [fetal] monitoring then to to try to control the labor and see how far it was going and after the baby was born since it wasn't premature then they said they wouldn't cover the cost of the monitor i think that's kind of when my husband hit the roof because it was a uh thirteen thousand dollar bill but after the second baby was born i was going to go back to work and that was when they had god it would have been the eighty five layoff and i'll tell you how they handled this and i was just outraged i did not know that since i was on personal leave of [absence] that i had been uh [terminated] until i filed my insurance claims about four months later and they didn't have any coverage under my name and i went back and i said what the hell is going on here you know and they told me that uh-oh well you know you know your husband works here and he's got a good salary we didn't think that you'd be coming back anyway and uh you know we've got people here that really you know need to be working and so that we had just you know it was this way we didn't have to layoff an active person and we'd just let you go and it took me about a year of arguing i said you know i've got to put this in writing to me and because until they put it in writing i couldn't get my insurance benefits and i couldn't get my uh termination benefits either i was just pissed as hell that they could do that but i i guess things have gotten better i've been told that this flex hour and those kind of things i still don't think that they after my experiences that they could you know get me to go back ever again but let me ask you this since you use texans how much is it a month now that's for individual that's it now if you if you pay your monthly charge do you then pay separately for classes your taking god that's cheap that's really cheap do you have to be an active t i employee to join texans or or a god i am so dependent these days it's a sense oh seen that my my co dependents have turned on the hose and are getting my neighbors fence yeah so my position for management to domestic [goddess] has been an adjustment but boy i think i'm going to go contact texans i really think i am i mean that beats any offer i've heard in a long time huh all righty when you're there on weekends is it crowded as hell see i'd want to be there in the mornings like from nine thirty to ten thirty oh i'm actually right on the plano line yeah oh god it sounds like i would i might do that then okay i learned something here you can go back to work now thank you bye bye well [patricia] i was just about to get on my tread mill and then i remembered that i didn't make a call last night and i thought i'd make one tonight that's what i did with mine for a long time put it on the [handlebars] so i can hang them up and sometimes she just [flops] them all over the seat i like it no it's just as boring i read a book while i'm doing it but i was doing that on the exercise bike i feel like i'm getting a little better of a workout and i'm losing more weight on this than on the other and my legs you know how okay i'm going to turn forty this summer i was getting all [dimpled] up and those are going away so that's real good we got it at a little bit of an [incline] uh this one yeah this is five hundred i know they get cheaper uh_huh well i hope so yeah i didn't buy it really my husband bought it because we we'd never get out and go walking or anything and we go to the lake and we ski and swim in the summer but besides that uh_huh yeah uh_huh i think your voice sounds familiar where do you i wonder if we talked before i'm in garland you sound like this girl that i talked to about books and we got into movies one night uh_huh let's see education social changes that we've seen in the last ten twenty thirty years yeah that one was the most boring one was about what meal would you cook for a sit down dinner the other woman didn't cook too much either right yeah they do i talked to this old woman that was a retired administrator in ohio one night about education and she was uh_huh retired but yeah and then one night i talked to these two guys no one night i talked to one guy and then a couple of weeks later i talked to the guy's roommate in virginia about different things uh_huh one was about painting when was the last time you painted something did you feel like you did a good job did you feel uh rewarded while you were doing it uh_huh i don't know huh_uh well how'd you find out about it how did you find out about it uh_huh uh_huh i have a friend that had a roommate that worked at t i and she saw it on the computer screen and they made copies of it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh well if you work for t i you're supposed to get a prize is what i heard and if you don't work for them you're supposed to get cash but then on the letter it says cash or prize i don't know [gobs] this is going on my fourth week to do it well like what tell me yeah for how many calls does it say uh_huh no i'm trying not to he's telling me to start the grill so it's not all stuff that t i makes you mean the clocks yeah oh god did they mail that to you or he brought it to you huh yeah so you're bound to find something you want yeah well you know well do you know you have a ten limit a ten minute time limit well that's okay and then they come on and tell you and they tell you got five seconds to say good bye we'll keep talking if we want to come up with something else let's see oh i tried exercise classes and i never would go we [fin] we joined ex they don't either well the first one i joined they went out of business and they transferred it to another one that was really far away and we were going to do it there was four of us together well then forget that it wasn't near me and then the second time i was going to do it at richland college and we i just get with another friend and we'd end up just smoking cigarettes and riding around like we couldn't find the place so my husband's just discouraged me on those things oh yeah my husband said he's never joined a course right and i got one of those jane fonda workout tapes that i [dubbed] from a friend that didn't last long i had a baby i think two oh lord you're lucky well i've got a step daughter she's in college so there's where the money goes where's you two uh where you going to school and what are you doing yes i do i just got my certification huh_uh the test is a [booger] the test the exit test it's hard it is so hard uh_huh see i didn't have to take any other exit test because i've been teaching for quite a while but i've heard they're terrible bilingual is just horrendous i've had friends fail that twice good uh_huh yeah right after you get out boring and they really don't help you a whole lot now see i went to e t and i took one course through t w u most of the training i've got has been through dallas just teaching e s l from chapter one tea well i have an exercise bicycle in my bedroom but it [usually's] holding clothes right well that's not why i got it right how do you like your tread mill you don't get is it less boring than the bicycle or not you watch t v or something while you do it oh well i do that too really are you yeah really uh_huh are they kind of expensive uh_huh they do probably the more you pay though the better the machine you have well you can believe that anyway right during the year yeah well in bad weather you know well you'd have to do something inside do you work at t i really i live in arlington where do you live no uh well oh really uh no this is the first time i've done it uh my husband was just running out the door he's working at night tonight so i decided to do it i haven't talked before uh what subjects have you talked about oh well that's interesting it's more interesting than the treadmill and the bicycle right oh my goodness really have a lot of variety oh a school administrator well that could that would have been interesting really well that's neat hm how long is this going to go on do you know i don't either it's interesting though i never heard of such a project before pardon me oh i don't know i guess my husband got a letter at the office i i presume and they must have been asking does your husband work with t i oh really uh_huh oh so they wanted any anybody don't have to work at t i well that's interesting i had no idea that was just for the employees and i couldn't understand i kept getting these calls i thought it was an advertisement and they just were also called t i you know there is texas industries and different things i kept hanging up on them for days until my husband told me what it was i didn't know ooh oh well the prizes are pretty nice he brought a booklet home and depending on how many calls i think three was the minimum but it went up to i don't know nine or ten how many calls have you had well it sounds like a lot oh my and some of the prizes are pretty nice oh i wish i had that booklet here oh i think i do it's right here i'll look at the end because those would be the best ones okay um well they have some watches that look really nice there's one that's got some [diamonds] on it i haven't quite figured that out i thought it was eight or nine but seems like too nice a prize for nine just nine calls isn't it says when we have enough calls from you you will receive in the mail a [numbered] certificate for your calls and and explanation how to redeem for gifts are you listening to him oh it says three for a b gift five for a c gift et cetera and this only goes up to f so i thought that was somewhere around nine but anyway it's got these beautiful watches on it let me see what else it has a uh clock radio that also plays uh you know tapes then it's got oh some [binoculars] and some pretty brass [lamps] got some oh a food processor oh no i don't i haven't seen anything in here that t i makes the mister coffee the double mister coffee you know the two oh and there's a phone in here that's hilarious it has a button you can push if you get a call you don't like then it makes machine gun noise and then there's an [attache] case and cordless telephone and then there's a card table doesn't have any chairs just a card table oh some more jewelry [suitcases] and have you seen those anniversary [lamps] where the little balls go around yeah clocks i can i'm going crazy my daughter's playing the piano and i can't think it's got one of those and um well it's got a lot i mean pages and pages it's got [wheelbarrows] a lot of kitchen stuff of the mixer the [toaster] a [waffle] maker popcorn [popper] all kinds of stuff like that here's where here's a calculator but it's not even made by t i isn't that funny he brought it home i believe it came in his uh his mail here's a camera and a [dustbuster] and some tools someone a lot of tools a man might like you know oh yeah you're bound to all kinds of phones and clocks and uh here's more jewelry and oh there's even pictures and little porcelain things to put on a coffee table oh here's some brass animals brass [candlesticks] they're pretty so i'm sure you'd find something and uh silver [plated] bowls and stuff there's a lot of stuff it's a big booklet oh no oh well it's been fun this is my first time to do it yeah i went to metropolitan a couple of years ago so i sit and study i sit in class and i have really ballooned up since then and so he's says i ought to join one of those that makes you go but that's a very common experience no that's funny right well if you if you can make yourself do the tread mill i mean gosh that's a good workout uh_huh yeah right each one of those puts on a few pounds doesn't it how many children do you have yeah i do too two a girl one's in college so i don't have a have a baby anymore oh well tell me about it tell me putting two of us through isn't he lucky well me i'm going and my daughter [janet] in austin yeah right so i'll probably have to sell the prize i get u t a right here well i'm um going to be certified as an english teacher teach english as a second language you're kidding oh that's hard oh no really really how are the other ones i haven't taken any of the exit tests oh yeah before they started really really i didn't know any of this none of my friends have failed the english or the education ones i really ought to take those quickly while i still remember some i know oh well [ironically] enough i'm sitting here with a cast on my leg because i [resumed] an aerobics class the night before last i ripped the ligaments in my right ankle yeah so that's what the nurses kept saying as they laughed all the way you know down the hallway do you do anything on a regular basis yeah that's a good yeah i my husband's a t i in the unit here do you when you go to the i have to ask you and if this is getting to we're not supposed to get too particular but i'm just curious when you go over there does it bother you in terms of how things are arranged either at the dallas location or the spring creek in terms of there's so much it's so much of a weight orientation weight lifting et cetera uh_huh yeah well it's not that great and i go to the spring creek one on and off but my husband's working over there and he just goes to the dallas one but i just don't i mean it's just so much weight lifting even the spring creek one has a lot of weights in it or is that what your into or uh_huh yeah i like the tread mill and the stair master myself over there and the pool when it gets warmer yeah i know well what i did was i went to a jazzercise class in a new location in richardson near where we live in north dallas and long story short i hadn't this is really a stupid thing that happened but they have like the [gymnasium] [flooring] and then like they had about three feet of linoleum around the perimeter in the back where i usually stand in any class like that i go to instead of having that level you know they had a [chrome] strip that wasn't level and it was about four inches deep and then about oh a seventy degree angle and as we were jumping around or doing something i just jumped up and came right down on it the orthopedist called it a uh basketball injury where the ankle just rolls under you and it [snapped] i know we went to well whatever in plano and the emergency room was like a bad comedy show and the doctor said you didn't do anything there's only a one in five hundred chance that the [radiologist] will call you that was tuesday night and wednesday night the [radiologist] called me at work and uh i was on [crutches] and he said i think you better call an orthopedist so we went to one and he just put a big old cast on it yeah for about four weeks well i like aerobics but i'm not so sure that no i've never i was off for about six months too just for some other surgery i'd had but i've never i'd you know i was pretty much in shape walking and and you know this is one of those things like this orthopedist said he said you'd be surprised how many how many people come in here with things like that because they are active you know i was real embarrassed but i felt kind of stupid yeah they do i mean i guess i'm glad you know that um nobody really noticed i guess you could say because i got up and started jumping on it again yeah really i enjoy aerobics and i do it because i like it i mean i like the music and that kind of stuff oh that makes my foot how'd you do that in aerobics oh goodness uh_huh what'd they do for that did they have to cast it oh so the aerobics the impact would not be good oh goodness uh_huh oh that makes sense so i mean are you in terms of other things like like not running but playing a little bit of tennis or can you not do stuff like that at all yeah it's been that's probably the safer way because i notice in aerobics a lot of the women that don't look like they shouldn't be doing certain things i'm always afraid they're going to fall over and have a [coro] coronary and there was my ego when i went ahead and i went oh i can do that and half the time though i don't jump half as much as i mean like i'm real tall and you know i'm not heavy but when you go easy a hundred seventy at my height um i'm five eleven you need just take it easy um but when i see some i mean and i just don't think it's healthy all that pounding all the time so yeah that's the other reason and i don't know this was just i guess something freak that happened to me because i wasn't familiar with the oh it was completely i mean it literally the two dissimilar floor floor [coverings] were not level and at first after it happened i thought maybe that's a handicap access and then i said no that's just the way it's constructed and my husband being a t i engineer i said a few things to him when i got home i said who has engineered that but i sounds you like one thing that i like like swimming you like that a lot do you like that what that voice said do you like to exercise because you want to or because you have to that's how i am yeah if i don't do it i just feel like i don't have as much energy right it [curbs] the appetite and helps with the calories and all that stuff yeah but that gravity factor i know like that orthopedist said to me he said don't worry diane he says he said uh you're at thirty something but you're on the upper side he said that don't worry he says even if you weren't doing anything your body would start that would start to happen to you yeah because i was saying to him i said i'm not that heavy i'm not heavy you know maybe ten to fifteen pounds like any other human being i said uh why do i feel like i need to start pushing myself more and he goes human nature and then you know you see these little girls in these little bitty things and they're all like twenty one years of age but luckily at there's a little more diverse clientele except for the guys that lift the weights they do [intimidate] yeah there some things i'd like to try but you know sometime when i ask i just feel like boy am i stupid or what uh_huh i don't think i've ever i think i've there was some girl there i've been there like maybe a dozen times but i actually like that site better than the other one just because of the type people that go to it's terrible i don't know if the dallas location it just seems that um sometimes i feel like i'm in a singles bar no i haven't either and i just uh it's not that far of a drive and i'm glad they did that um you're not missing anything at the dallas renovated site it's not at all anything worth talking about yeah but if you don't live near there that's not worth yeah that's actually where this happened to me out in i say plano but it's all the same to me richardson over on campbell and park hill there's a new recreation center and as we were doing it too everybody noticed that there were all these big guys of [assorted] nationalities walked out i was one thing oh great i have purple [tights] on you know and they're going yes but in general i like to i i like dance a lot so i mean aerobics is something i'd hate to give up but he he kind of said something to me about probably not as bad as your foot but he just said to me maybe you ought to try bicycling or he told me eight to twelve weeks not anything you know i said but you're only going to put the cast on for a couple of weeks he said yeah but that's just they tried to put me in some kind of [immobilized] walker because he doesn't like to put [casts] on when it's warm but i just the more they tried to get my foot in the more i screamed i couldn't you know adjust that you know more about this stuff than i do obviously then no well you're walking okay now obviously and you can well anything else about exercise we can talk about yeah me too me too i need to go actually get something to eat here okay thank you sandy uh_huh bye bye oh no gosh exercise is not supposed to do that to you well off and on off and on right now i've been off but i've been going over to the fitness center yeah three times well i try to go over there at least three times a week and i try to walk um at least five times a week yeah uh well i've been going to spring creek i haven't been to the dallas one now in oh a couple of years at least since they've redone it supposedly redone so i don't really yeah that's true no no well i've used the nautilus equipment and the bikes and stair [climbers] and stuff like that mostly i don't use the free weights but yeah i like those too and the pool yeah that's great uh_huh uh_huh oh my goodness um [woo] put a big cast on it four weeks yeah well not that much though yeah well those things happen though yeah well that did a lot of good i'm sure yeah i like the music but i've been unable to do that because i hurt my foot about five years ago i broke my heel and uh no no actually i was up on a ladder and uh fell off leaned the wrong way and when i came down i hit with my full weight on my foot but on concrete yeah they had well they had to go in and do surgery they put a pin in it yeah as i permanently damaged the the cushion under my heel the normal cushion that you have there i can't do any jumping up and down because it makes it hurt uh well i haven't tried that i don't know it's been i bet it's been thirty years since i played tennis mostly into just walking and stuff like that uh_huh yeah uh_huh um sure it isn't really it's not really good for your knees well the floor was uneven yeah really uh_huh i like swimming uh_huh no i like i liked it because i want to it makes me feel better yeah uh_huh and it's real funny because if you you know it seems like when you exercise and expend the energy that you'd be tired but it's the other way around yeah really yeah and i need all the help i can get uh_huh it does get you yeah thanks a lot uh_huh uh_huh that's true they do yeah i try to go real late or real early before they get there uh_huh well that's one thing i like about the spring creek place at least the fellow that's there one of the fellows that's there at night and on weekends is real helpful and his name is b j uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah that's true and i haven't noticed that up at spring creek yeah yeah i thought maybe one of these days i'll drive over there and check it out yeah i live in richardson but it's about half way between the spring creek and the the dallas site uh_huh uh_huh yeah you probably will for a while because it's going to be real tender uh_huh i know what you mean not fun oh yeah i have a slight [limp] from it but it matches one if i have one on the other side yeah well other than i need to go it's great though i really do enjoy it sure thanks all right yeah i exercise pretty regularly i lift weights quite a bit um i run occasionally let's see what else do i do play golf some and i work out on a on a hanging bag i'm brown belt in karate so i keep up with that a little bit how about you uh_huh uh_huh yeah well that's neat yeah i do walk some too my wife's about five months along so she's been walking quite a bit so that is a good exercise for that uh_huh i i do it on my own schedule we used to try and belong to clubs or the y stuff like that but it was so difficult to go on a regular basis to drive the distance you have to go save the fees we've uh just save the fees and buy some of our own equipment so yeah i've got a weight bench and we got my wife an exercise bike and i use that sometimes too it's a little more convenient but you're i guess you're not as dedicated if you don't drive over to do it uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah i think you really have to be disciplined i uh i try to work out at least a couple of times a week and i think you really have to at least twice a week just to maintain the shape that you're in uh_huh yeah uh_huh sure yeah i understand did you exercise between your first child and your second yeah um gosh uh_huh yeah maybe it maybe it [speeded] up the process and all that uh_huh really well that's good no i don't my my wife has been working with them uh_huh at least its something you enjoy i know a lot of people that talk about exercise and say well i don't want to exercise it's too much work but there's a lot of different things you can do that are enjoyable that you don't have to strain yourself or sweat or be real sore afterwards yeah i think we've talked about six minutes or so been good talking to you as well thanks yours too bye bye okay are you on an exercise program now or uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah um the only exercise program i'm doing right now is walking i've got a nine month old and i'm four months pregnant with my second and so at the time walking seems to be the best it's something i can do with her plus um doesn't tax me too physically i have enjoyed aerobics in the past and i enjoy that because i like the group association you know like exercising with other people and um and that's my favorite way to exercise oh yeah it's nice to do it together too i guess my husband and i use to walk together but our schedules don't [coincide] as well as they used to and so we very seldom get together to walk but when you when you work out do you pretty much do it on your own schedule or do you go to groups or uh_huh uh_huh and then you can do it whenever you want i guess uh_huh i guess it depends on the person depends on how motivated you are because my husband used to work out three days a week with uh at the texas instruments gym and then i would just go on saturdays but since the first of the year neither one of us have been going so i guess like i say we've been paying these fees and not going so it's kind of a waste of money if you don't take advantage of it yeah yeah with the walking i think they said you need to walk at least twelve miles a week for it to be [aerobically] beneficial and we i have two friends that we walk they have babies that are about the same ages as as mine and we've been walking every morning at going when it was cold we would go to the mall because you can't take the babies out very easily so we when we go we have about do about fifteen miles a week but the last little while for one reason or another we haven't been real consistent so it's a little harder when you're depending on other people to do it with you because you have to meet their schedules as well but but i enjoy doing it more when i've got other people with me you know i usually do it because i want to because i know it's good for me not because i don't feel obligated to do it i enjoy it if i feel too obligated to do it i start to rebel and i won't be as consistent with it i exercised pretty well up until i found uh until i was pregnant and i started having pains so i've calmed down everything except i was working out doing aerobic exercises as well as the um walking and i had to stop the aerobics because it was just kind of painful but the t i rec center has an aerobics program for for um prenatal and [postnatal] aerobic type thing and i was going to wait until um about my sixth month and then start that i did that with the second baby and um i went to my exercise class one day and then she was delivered the next day so it would seem to be real beneficial well i think it made parts of it a lot easier and and is this your first that you're having oh okay well then i don't know how much you've been through it but i think parts of it made a lot easier and i've talked to a lot of ladies that exercise with one pregnancy and didn't with the other and they said that they had that the one they had exercised with was three or four times easier and we've i had having both of them natural the first one was natural and going natural the second and and it's it's rough but it's not as bad as i thought it would be and i think the exercise helped so do you work with t i oh okay well then she could go if she were interested i think that's what the class that meets on saturday mornings so she could find out if she wanted to go it's kind of fun because with the first pregnancy all the other ladies except one were on their first pregnancy and they would talk about exercise and just general things relating to the [birthing] process and so for us it was educational as well as exercise beneficial so that's right yeah and sometimes if you get a little [soreness] you feel like well i've done a good job because i got worked myself to that point but i guess that you don't want to [overdo] but well have we reached our limit i'm not sure how long we've been talking but okay well it's been good talking to you okay i hope your baby goes well comes out well bye bye well how about you are you an exercise fanatic me either do you yeah wonderful uh_huh way that's the way to do it i'm kind of like you i've never really gotten into it it's just a it's just a chore you know and i finally decided one semester i'm in college and i'm taking night classes and i still don't have any of my p e classes and so one semester i thought okay that's what i'm going to do and that will get me where i'll have to do it you know and they were offering a a walking class where you you know you have to walk you know that like for every mile you walk and every so many minutes you get you get points you know and then you have to go in once a week and log your points so it's not like you can do the class like anytime you want you know and at the end of the semester you go back in and your like your final [exam] is a three mile walk and if you walk it in this many minutes you get an a this many minutes you get a b and i thought oh this will be an easy class and you know and i did it and i did it for a long time like about the middle of the semester i ended up having to have surgery on my foot and this has been a couple of years ago and you know i had i did that and i just ended up having to drop the class you know by the time the final came around i wasn't even where i could wear a shoe yet let alone walk three miles you know but that was the only time i have ever been able to like start an exercise program and really stick to it because then i had to i had to go every week and log in what i had walked and my teacher looked at it every week you know but other than that i just you know i kind of get in the mood every once in awhile say okay i'm going to start going to aerobics now you know and i'll go for like two weeks and go this is for the birds this is too much work uh_huh uh_huh wow yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah but that's you're amazed at how much that adds up i was on uh [nutri] systems for a while and that is one of the things that they really stressed doing you know when you come to your [nutri] system meeting don't park in the parking place outside the front door park at the other end you know i mean and they stretched stressed things like that too you know during when you're sitting watching t v at night during every commercial get up off the couch go to the living room and get a glass of water go to the bedroom and make the bed go do something but get up during every commercial and things like that and you'd be surprised at how much just that little bit adds up you know just gives you a little more activity so especially when you're like us and don't really want to do it anyway yeah well i can't use that as an excuse because i didn't do it before i had mine either i've never been i just i'm more into you know sitting than i am so but you know i have found that with i have a two year old and i have found really though i'm kind of the opposite i'm more active now with him than i was before because now you know he'll i want to go outside and i'll go outside with him and we'll walk up and down the street and we'll go to the park and i'll run around with him and stuff like that that so i'm getting more you know more exercise that way than i ever did before i had him you know so i think i think that has helped a little bit i don't know just chasing him around the house you know will be plenty for you right right you've kind of gotten out of that little stage there oh lucky you you're getting into even more interesting stages uh_huh yeah yeah same thing huh it repeats the terrible twos repeat at about thirteen how interesting i can hardly wait yeah right that that [walkabout's] a good program it really is you know when they first started it i i got all the information of course but just like everything else i was real gung ho with a friend of mine oh we're going to do this we're going to do this and we did do it for a long time and then i started school you know and like two nights a week i was going to school and then the other two nights a week my husband worked so i had to pick ryan up you know there's always an excuse you know to not do it so yeah oh i'm sure i'm sure yeah here to here here yeah yeah to the mall to the movies to the friends to the sounds like fun well it was really good to talk to you take care talk to you later no i'm definitely i do like to walk yes since t i has uh uh instituted that um [walkabout] i have gone out and started walking even more bought me the you know the proper shoes and everything to get started and uh park out there you know way out there in the [boondocks] it was so funny the other day i took some guys to to lunch and when we came back they said oh there's a parking space real close and i parked way out in the [boonies] and i said you can walk off your lunch yeah um um oh uh_huh um um um um oh uh_huh oh no uh_huh oh oh no yeah um um right uh_huh uh_huh there you go well you know i have noticed too that uh when i started the exercise uh not the exercise but the walking program uh that i did tone up you know like all over but it didn't get the upper part of my body and uh so what i do is i bowl i am a fanatic when it comes to bowling and i used to bowl five times a week so i really loved it and i still bowl at least once a week now on a league on on a and i'm bowling on the t i league um but i've noticed that what i do is that i have my towel that sits on the floor so that every time i get up to bowl i have to bend over to pick up my towel and that way i get the little extra exercise i'm always explaining to people i do little things like that like you know take the stairs instead of the um the elevator and i do silly things like that versus a a regular program that you would have it sure does uh_huh yeah right uh_huh there you go um um um um that's true that's true no i used to i really did uh years ago and uh i was thinking about that not too long ago that i used to walk and not only did i walk but i used to watch all those exercise programs on t v and i would tape them and then i would do them like two times a day but i don't do any of that kind of stuff anymore i think having children everything just kind of everything goes by the wayside yeah yeah me too uh_huh yeah um um um um yeah yeah running oh yeah that's enough well mine are older now doing uh their own things so oh yes yes i have a thirteen year old and an eleven year old so yes yeah yeah we're actually going through the same stages the two year old and the teenager yeah you watch it'll be exactly the same it does it it absolutely does so yeah i i i know i just know you can't but no i don't get as much exercise as i used to but i at least since t i has implemented that program i do i'm more aware of it and you know that i'm need to do this that and the other and uh so i try to do combinations of things but not like go down to the president's health club like i see all these people do it is it is yeah um um oh yeah oh yeah and it gets worse it doesn't get any better yeah because i'm constantly running my children around someplace and that's where i actually get my exercise is running them from here to there in the car there you go that's it that's it well it was nice talking to you yeah well okay we'll talk to you later um um bye bye okay um i guess what i guess my task i usually ride my bike i have uh a stationary bike and uh a regular bike and when i can i like to ride my regular bike outside because it's so much nicer the stationary bike is is so uh boring but i have head phones and i plus i have it uh in the living room so i either watch t v or we have a fish tank so i watch the fish you know whatever i can do to keep myself occupied if i like to have the t v on because that usually keeps me um more occupied it kind of takes the time away and i don't realize really that's really the only time i ever watch t v is when i'm on the bike but and then usually after i'm done riding the bike just to cool myself down i usually take a walk you know and that just kind of gets myself uh gets me you know to where i'm not quite as tired i guess but it's definitely a task i can't say that i really enjoy it i wish that i did enjoy it more but i do it because i have to not because i want to yeah yeah uh_huh really so is it just women that go there see i think that's what's my biggest problem with going to a place uh a a health club because i don't feel like having a bunch of other people watch me exercise you know so i have tried to just do stuff at home and uh i just feel conscious about it i mean i'm not big you know or anything but i still don't like other people watching me yeah right uh_huh that's what really that's that's great how do they have a pool or what is huh i've heard that that's really good for you to do uh_huh uh_huh so you don't really feel like you're really working that hard do you when you're in the water oh wow well that's funny i never would have thought of that like are they water shoes is that oh okay okay okay okay huh that's really funny huh that's so how often do find yourself going um on a if you're doing it on a regular basis how often do you go yeah that's really really i wish that i could make myself exercise every day but i do force myself to do it at least three times a week which i don't feel like is enough but it's it's at least something you know it it i just force i have to force myself to do it like i said because to me i really don't enjoy it but i know that i have to do it i mean it's just it's it's not a question of whether i want to you know but uh_huh oh that's uh_huh uh_huh yeah did you ever well i'm sorry uh did you ever go to texins at all when you were working for t i did you ever try that oh okay um then that would yeah i guess then the water aerobics would be probably the best thing for you wouldn't it oh wow uh_huh yeah oh wow what if you're already on one i mean yeah i mean when you go in there they wouldn't make you do theirs would they okay but they have packages where they just offer the exercise program is that what you're saying i see okay um um wow that's oh yeah that would be really nice uh_huh uh_huh so you really do enjoy your exercise then since your uh_huh that's you know i wanted i wanted to get one of those [steppers] when i bought the bike but i got talked into the bike instead and i don't know i really wanted a stepper i'm considering maybe even buying one of those too but i'm not sure if i'll get benefit out of both of them i mean i don't know if it would really do any good having both of them which one do you feel is better since you use them both uh_huh huh uh_huh oh really um uh hum uh_huh boring you think so i bought a stationary bike but i find that if i sit on that seat too long it hurts and i haven't figured how to get that soft and i tried even tying a pillow to it but two years ago i joined well it's not quite two years it's almost two years i joined the cosmopolitan lady here in plano and i love it i just love it yeah it's totally women i like to be able to sweat have my hair a mess uh feel that okay fine if my bathing suit slips a little bit i don't have to be conscious of it being a little bit too low and i my bathing [suit's] just one piece so there's no big deal all the way around but i don't have to be conscious of what i'm doing or how i'm doing it and it's uh-oh it's just i don't know it's it's a total free relaxation because hey you can do what you want you're a female and no one is staring at anybody else or worrying about what anything else is doing and they've got such fantastic equipment in there oh yeah and i love the water aerobics i love the water aerobics oh yeah they've got a nice one they have two types of water aerobics they call it [aqua] exercise i guess is what they call it it pushes you because you're pushing against the water in itself so it is like double strenuous but you're not being double strenuous on your own body because you're pushing it yourself so you're doing it yourself huh_uh huh_uh the only thing that i ever felt was every time i stop and start going again because i end up getting two jobs once in a while i end up having to quit for a while but i get [blisters] on my toes on the bottom because i really jump a lot well a lot of people wear those little uh terry cloth with rubber [soles] on the bottom especially around the pool so they just wear them right into the pool yeah they're just little terry cloth things you wear for house [slippers] with rubber you know [soles] so that you know no big deal one way or the other but i never think about it until after you go there for about a week your toes you start getting [blisters] anyway so no big deal but it's fun i try to make it at least three times a week for a while i was doing it every day just going uh five days a week well when i was working up at uh the summit here in plano i'd leave there and i'd be at the swimming pool by four o'clock oh actually about four thirty because they start at five to six so i was there by four thirty every night and the only thing that ever bothered me was my hair getting wet because no matter what i did or how i did it i invariably got myself wet but the water only comes up basically to your anywhere from your waist to your oh chest i'd say so i mean it's your choice where you want to go but i enjoyed it higher that's okay i have a i have a bad back so i'm very limited what i do it's like i can walk but if i walk for more than fifteen minutes it's going to bother me especially when you're on cement or anything that's hard it will bother me it will bother me well that what pushed me that way though was basically was the fact that when i went in there is wasn't for the water aerobics i went in there strictly to strengthen my back muscles and uh she said hey go for the swimming pool she says you get just as much if you did the aerobics on the floor she says in fact you get more i said okay because i'm not a swimmer i like water i'm not scared of it but i couldn't i guess i could swim across the pool but i'm no swimmer per se but i found that this worked really well and i came out of there and i saw my stomach going down well i dropped oh i'd say almost twenty pounds just by watching what i ate and they fix you up with a diet which worked real good what a diet oh no they have nothing to do with that see i joined uh when this one down here opened up i joined as a v i p and the v i p gives you uh-oh gives you a diet a computerized diet and they go over all your health and all your history and they show you how everything to do and how to do it and the whole nine yards so it became part of the package so i went through it it worked out well oh yeah you can just go in there and join just like anywhere else too i just went and took the because they were offering it as an opening benefit so it was it's less than what you pay now for going in there after all this time so it's like when i got laid off i went back in there and start all over again because it had been a while since i'd done it so i get all the same treatment again so it's kind of nice like i said i like it i like the heat i like the i jump out of the swimming pool and i go into the hot tub and i love it because i have i have never let me [reword] that i think i have gone home maybe once or twice slightly sore but that's because of my physical condition and nothing to do what they did that's i knew i was pushing too far but usually when i go into the hot tub before i go swimming or when i come out i'm totally relaxed when i go home it's no big deal it's fun it's fun uh i've gotten on the bike and they've got uh the stepping bike where you step and i've enjoyed that watching how well i can walk up and down stairs but most of the others to me are very dull um i get bored very easily uh the one nice thing about the bicycle is you just sit like you said you can sit and do it and watch the t v and not even really be conscious of what you are doing with the stepper you are conscious of what you are doing because you're basically watching each step as it gets harder and down so you have a little you know little you can program the one at cosmopolitan lady so to what your gear is uh i it would depend upon which one you want i think now that i've had the bicycle i would go to the stepper but if i were you i would go apply to either a health club or one of the others and use it for a while because you can buy a [month's] membership and see what you feel is best for you because it all depends you know for everyone their own what they want to do because i jump on the bike here at home mine has its see the handle bars go up and down so i can sit there and read and listen to music like what you said and it has no effect on me so i mean it's boring okay uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i agree uh_huh uh_huh ooh right it's always easy to find an excuse not to exercise i know what you mean um well i try to um i started at the beginning of this year i decided all right i'm going to start exercising again i'm going to be real good and i went through the t i fitness center and registered for the uh aerobics classes there and they run for two months at a time and you have to you do have to pay to take them and i took i signed up for one that was three nights a week an hour and a half so that was four and a half hours a week and it cost sixty dollars and i thought okay that's not cheap that'll encourage me to always go since i spent that much money and i had a friend of mine going so i was real good i only missed it about three times and then oh march came around and i signed up again and i got uh caught up with a class i was taking at t i and then i was having to work some real late hours to get caught with my work after i got out of class and then i went to colorado springs the next week to do some training at the t i up there and so that was two weeks i had missed and boy i tell you what i've been terrible ever since then uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah i think i've been two maybe three times the month of april and this session is about to run out now i signed up for a different one now that's only two nights a week because i am getting kind of into a real busy schedule as far as teaching a lot of training classes and some of them require me to go out of town and and uh that just kind of throws my whole schedule off on doing that so and i've lately uh there's been nights that i could have gone and i've found excuses uh things like i had the flu last week but i'm fine this week i could have gone monday i could have gone tonight and i didn't so i'm kind of finding excuses and now it's kind of like well this is the last week i'll just start fresh next week but i better better do it and i think another thing is that my friend that was taking with me the first two months wasn't the second two months she started taking tennis lessons and so i haven't had that extra motivation of of us forcing each other or not forcing each other but encouraging each other to go so uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i'm the same way yeah uh_huh i do too uh_huh right yeah walking is kind of boring i do have a few friends that live in my apartment complex in this neighborhood and we try to we used to try to get together and i think now that the weather's getting nicer we're going to start doing it again and occasionally go walking there's a real nice residential area right behind our apartment complex and it's not as boring if you get several people and you can kind of talk and and it it makes it pass pretty quickly and the aerobics isn't too boring i kind of enjoy it when i'm doing it um it's a lot more fun than some other things i could do i guess but uh i do i do have to make myself go and of course while i'm doing it i feel pretty good and after i get finished i feel great i mean i can go in there i can be like a friday afternoon when i'm tired it's the end of the week and i just want to go home and i'll make myself go and i'll have headache and everything and i get out i don't have a headache any more i feel great and i'm just it's amazing how much better i feel and then just in general i sleep a lot better and i just feel much better i mean i've been kind of dragging the last few weeks and i know if i would just get around to exercising i'd feel better but my [dragginess] is my excuse for not exercising well i'm too tired or i have a headache or well i just got over the flu and i'm still kind of [draggy] so i better not go yeah it really is right right it's just hard to make yourself go and i i think one thing i don't like about aerobics is that after i'm finished it's kind of late at night and i've been sweaty and and it you know i don't really feel like going in the grocery store all sweaty or running errands so it kind of kills the evening for doing errands so i think a tuesday thursday might be a little bit better of course i feel like once i've done it if i'm sweaty i might as well do an extra thirty minutes because you've already kind of shot your night but um so i'm kind of glad they have a longer class on tuesday thursday now that i can just kill two nights and and uh get a reasonable amount of workout in no it's less expensive this one was only forty five dollars but i'm glad it's not too totally cheap because if it was too cheap i would talk myself out of going more probably since it's more expensive i think okay you spent that much money you'd better go so hopefully yeah yeah it's right there and it's they have a really nice facility at the t i they've got two different aerobics rooms they have the mirrors of course sometimes you don't like to see the mirrors on the wall you don't like to see how you work but i guess sometimes it kind of motivates you to really get going but uh_huh and they have ceiling fans in the rooms and it's it's a pretty nice setup um and of course it's real convenient because it is right there at work i think if i had to come home and then go somewhere i'd never make it and just the fact that i can go straight from my desk over to the the recreation center and do it helps a lot oh yeah quite a few do they have probably ooh i'd say fifteen different fifteen to twenty different aerobics classes each session that are running and they have them anywhere from six in the morning uh they have some during during lunch hour that are shorter and i guess guys can take advantage of that for me i wouldn't have time to do an hour hour of aerobics and then take a shower and get get dressed again but there's a lot more guys that do that one and um they have them you know in the evenings they even have some late night ones for people that work second shift and things like that so they have big variety they even have some uh aerobic uh water aerobics when the weather gets nice out in the pool i've never done that one before but uh_huh they've got an olympic pool and and basketball courts and sand volleyball they've got the full weight room and uh the [locker] rooms with uh a [jacuzzi] and [sauna] and the shower facilities and hair dryers and all the you know everything you'd need just about it's a real it is a real nice facility it's also got a full inside basketball court and i think they're working on building a jogging track and some other things but it's it is very nice i just don't take as much advantage of it as i should i mean i'm just now finally starting to do the aerobics thing but yeah you can get a fitness membership that allows you to use the facilities and it's about eight dollars a month no not at all pretty cheap and then the aerobics cost extra even if you have the fitness membership but i think the aerobics classes are even pretty reasonably priced from what i've heard hm oh yeah in fact uh the t i [er's] families can come in on these things okay uh the question was about uh physical fitness and staying in shape and exercise well uh i i don't do it as much as i should i try to walk and uh last year i would i did it every day but i've kind of in ninety one i've kind of gone down hill and so i'm not doing it as much as i need to but i i can tell you when i do do it on a regular basis i feel so much better and so much healthier but it's just to get motivated to do it and once i get started and and i i i i do it every night it's just to get uh motivated again and what happened about couple of weeks ago i started again and i was walking and it got kind of dark and i was by myself and there was this fellow in this truck that kept [circling] the block and so i i kind of got frightened and i kind of use that as an excuse all i have to do is start earlier but i haven't walked since so yeah it sure is it sure is how about you do you exercise on a regular basis uh_huh oh right uh_huh yeah it's once you get out of that habit you just don't you don't get back into it because i teach school and last year a bunch of teachers had an aerobics class we went in together and hired a private instructor and she came to our school twice a week and i i was i would go faithfully and then i missed once then i went back again a couple times and missed another time and then kept missing and never went back again i think if you you just have to stick with it uh_huh yeah yeah yeah yeah sure yeah that makes a difference when you have somebody to go with and to do the same the same thing like it's misery loves company i don't really love exercise i mean some i the neighbor across the street she goes belongs to president's and uh it's not president's any more i don't know what the name of it is anymore but she loves it i mean it's just it's an automatic high for her she just enjoys it so much and i don't i feel good after i do it but i hate it when i'm doing it you know i just i don't enjoy it at all and she just loves it so even when she doesn't go to the health club she runs you know and it's a daily thing for her so it you know and it's so hard for me i envy her i wish i could be that way but i don't i don't and i have an older sister that loves running too and she runs all the time but at to me it's every [minute's] [agony] and i in fact i don't run i hate to run like when i walk i'll take along a radio or something and that helps you know pass the time uh_huh uh_huh that's right yeah yeah oh it's great afterwards yeah yeah yeah that's right exactly it does it gives you energy yeah it's kind of a vicious circle isn't it yeah i find too that i have more energy when i exercise and you know it's silly not to but i don't know it's just a put off i don't know why i don't do more and i and i know that it's good for my health i know you know from everything that you read and you see on television now exercise is so important to good health so you know you not only you know you're not only doing something to keep yourself fit but you're probably [prolonging] your life so there's no reason that we shouldn't do it but i don't know yeah yeah right yeah does it cost the same for just two nights or well that's good too yeah yeah that's right that's right well do you have a facility right at the where you work no yeah and then they hire private instructors oh that's great yeah uh_huh yeah i can see that would be uh easy they make it as easy as they possibly can for you well um do a lot of people take advantage of it oh yeah uh_huh oh you have a pool there too oh how nice wow that's great now to use well does it cost money like to use the to exercise in the weight room or to uh to to go swimming do you have to pay for that too oh that's not bad huh_uh um i think so too yeah well and people of all ages take advantage of the aerobics people of all ages take advantage of the aerobics do you exercise a lot is mowing the lawn a new exercise oh my i think that's considered exercise whether you want it or not well you're you are so far ahead of me i used to uh i used to walk two miles a day and i really enjoyed it because the two miles went fairly quickly i could do it in twenty eight minutes and that's not stopping and talking to everyone along the way but it's a lot you know it's not too strenuous and i could sort all kinds of things out and make plans and everything but i don't know what i did to my knee i was crawling under a desk hooking up a computer and i mashed it wrong or i did something and the doctor has had me on medication and she doesn't want me to walk she said that's you know while it's healing you're going to mess it up so i can't walk and uh she said you know the most conservative approach you do the medicine you do the medicine again and again before you think of surgery and i don't want her to think of surgery on my knee i don't want anyone to think about that ever that's that [microscopic] stuff you know uh_huh not my [kneecap] so i'm i'm being very good but i miss it i really do and i oh really uh_huh i can you understand that uh i don't really want to i just know i need to i make myself do it and if i do it okay i don't love it but i will do it uh it's not anything i would want to but i can really tell the difference since i have not been able to walk i have got to be so much more careful with what i do it's depressing right right boy hopefully my my knee is a hundred percent better maybe i can get back into it let me ask you a question off the subject though you're in you're living in the castle park area i grew up in oak cliff yes i did uh just close to methodist hospital on candy c a n d y oh in fact i lived there oh until nineteen late nineteen fifties and that area is it changing back again so many people are moving back into those old houses and are restoring them oh i know exactly where that is yeah sure oh that's that's wonderful that is a gorgeous gorgeous place well sure they are hm oh wow i need to go over there and just drive around and look oh i'm sure it must be i'm just we had a lovely little house over there it was like a two story well story and a half really because we had a basement and the guy that built it was weird i mean weird it's one of these really creative houses that i grew up in that nothing was on the same level with anything else and i just loved the neighborhood and i mean everyone everyone had houses like that they were all completely different and so neat oh now why couldn't your wife run around the golf course is that not good yes i i really hear that you know i think you know you're in oak cliff but i'm in plano in west plano and we live on one of those blocks that it's a neighborhood watch block we all know each other and the street doesn't go anywhere if you are on the street you better belong there because it's not a through street and still i want to get up early in the morning and walk before this knee business and my husband had a lot of [heartburn] with that i mean it looked darker to him because he he was in the house with the lights on when i was out walking it was more of a [predawn] type pretty but huh huh he didn't think it looked [predawn] to him it looked dark and even he was real concerned about that so it's not just because you are in oak cliff it's just because you're smart that you don't do things like that that's right there's only one crazy out there you know to make any difference oh it's uh scaled back considerably uh right now my exercise is pretty much limited to uh softball league and occasional ride on the bike but uh i uh i was just recently well recently nine months ago got married and bought a house so my outside activities have been [curtailed] a lot yeah lawn it's a forty year old house so we are doing a lot of [refurbish] work and yeah painting lawn [gutters] you name it all kinds of stuff flower beds yeah that that's true that's true it's there's always something to do and uh and and uh it keeps me going but uh_huh yeah yeah right uh_huh oh gosh wow uh_huh no that that's a tough situation uh_huh yeah oh that it's so aggravating to uh to have an injury like that my wife uh runs or likes to run but uh she's well we moved we moved down to the north end of oak cliff in the castle park area yeah and she started running down there and all the hills and she lasted about two weeks and her ankles couldn't take it anymore she was used to running you know flat tracks and whatnot and uh ever since that it's just been real difficult it's real aggravating because she starts in and her ankles will start hurting again and stuff even if she does get on flat ground so she's kind of in the same mode she was all ready to get back into it and start running uh five k's and ten k's and stuff this spring and she just hasn't been able to stick with the training schedule long enough to really get back in shape and when you want to do it it's really really aggravating you know it it's one thing to get motivated to start doing the exercise and it's another thing to to already be past that and then not be able to because of your health yeah well it's sure yeah yeah uh_huh it is and you know you you don't well speaking for myself i don't sleep as well when i am not exercising and uh it's really it's harder to get out of bed in the morning and all kinds of stuff it your body just gets used to it yeah i i don't particularly enjoy it well i i used to lift weights an awful lot and stuff like that i do enjoy riding bike but as far as the working out and lifting and things like that uh i i can't say i really enjoyed it all that much but once i got used to it it was habit forming it was i felt so bad if i didn't physically i mean i just my body was was was uh tuned into that that mode and if i if i skipped it then it kind of threw the the whole the whole system out of whack yeah yeah that's for sure okay that's right did you really okay yeah right okay okay yeah it is uh we're on we're on a little street called [bison] trail it's only about a block and a half long but it's it's over on the other end it it's over by the far edge of uh [stephen's] park golf course yeah it's it's uh you know where the little bridge is on north oak cliff [boulevard] yeah we are just south of that little bridge back up on the hill in the trees there and yeah uh our street is uh an awful lot of retired people but the other half in fact our one little block and a half there four houses sold last summer and three sold the summer before and everybody in their late twenties to mid thirties are buying and and starting to rebuild and fix things up again and everybody is real excited yeah oh it's it's a lot of fun the people are great there too we've got a real active neighborhood association and uh we have well we've got four regular parties every year and we do a neighborhood recycling program and all that kind of stuff so it's a lot of fun and it is it's a really beautiful area and some some of the people uh some of the higher dollars lawyers and stuff downtown too are picking up some of those great big houses and they're they're getting them at a real bargain you know they're they're getting four thousand square feet for a hundred fifty a hundred and seventy five thousand dollars and uh and they're just going to town with them they're people are putting in pools and and completely redoing the outside restoring to the original you know nineteen thirty nineteen forties look and it it's it's really coming around i guess it's it's worth the trip uh_huh okay yeah okay oh wow yeah uh_huh that's right yeah ours is kind of a little ranch style with a great big oh i guess it's twenty eight by fifteen front porch next door we've got an austin stone across the street the guy it was burnt out about two years ago and and the guy moved in and completely redid it's got oh it's got a rounded front on it it's all brick and he's he's landscaped his yard and he's about ready to put in a pool and things like that so yeah there's a variety you just don't see it anywhere else as far as the different styles in the houses and whatnot oh she could a little bit we i tell you what we got into the fitness center at methodist and they have a quarter mile track there so she has started doing that rather than uh rather than take off the problem is she's a school teacher and for her she can't run in the morning for her to get home and try to run at six o'clock in the night in the winter time it's starting to get dark and you know you don't want to she doesn't want to be out by herself anywhere in dallas regardless whether it's north dallas or whatnot when she goes over to this fitness center it's fenced in and there's somebody in the building watching her and all that so there's a lot of consideration uh_huh yeah uh_huh right that's right that's right uh_huh yeah right yeah yeah that's true it only takes one time it's a hard lesson to learn yeah yeah you know it goes all over well you got the great um currently i'm not doing a whole lot of exercise in any type of program i'm mainly do a lot of walking i have a son that's a little bit overweight and um the best thing we found to do with him is to walk around so my wife and i kind of take turns at one time i had a fairly regular exercise program but in the last couple of months i've changed to a new residence and everything has gotten kind of turned a little upside down all this space that normally would be dedicated towards the exercise area is covered in boxes well i had uh a little routine that i did for warm ups and then i did some very mild say light weight lifting nothing i'm not trying to make big [bulging] muscles just trying to try and stay as firm as i can stay in my old age huh_uh huh_uh yeah that's a plus oh i have a total of five children i have three left living at home and they do take up a big part of my uh my evening and weekend and it's tough being a parent and doing all the things that you should do for yourself too it's something they don't tell you about when you're growing up yes when you become a parent most of your life is going to be dedicated to your children yeah you have to what i found from my experience is you have to budget time for yourself and you can use what ever rationale you want but basically the healthier you stay the longer you'll live and uh you know if i spend a little bit of time each day or a little bit of time every other day doing something for me to make me live longer well then i'll around a lot longer and those people that i'm taking the ten minutes or twenty minutes away from now well you know get the enjoyment of me years past where i would have been if i wouldn't have taken it if you kind of think of it as a rationale like that it works out fine huh_uh yeah oh i've done a lot of study over the years and i found that probably one of the worst things that anybody can [ingest] is [chlorinated] water yeah um the research that i've done and i've actually been in the drinking watering business since eighty three and it's amazing that uh you know prior to like nineteen twenty there were very few heart attacks there were none prior to nineteen hundred well in nineteen three they started experimenting with [chlorinating] the water in nineteen thirteen most of the major cities and after that we we started having the hearts attacks and uh doctor price wrote a book coronary cholesterol and chlorine you can usually find it in a health food store i know they had it in health food stores in plano i used live in plano uh doctor price yeah and it's amazing he makes the you know it's a very small book and the guys very opinionated um but he makes a very good case against chlorine there were no heart attacks before we started using it and he points out that people in uh england and uh or even [diets] that [quadrupled] the amount of cholesterol that we're [ingesting] now and they weren't dropping dead of heart attacks yeah he did some experiments on chickens whose [arteries] are very similar to ours and uh proved that [ingestion] of chlorine causes arteriosclerosis which is the [clogging] of the [arteries] and uh you know he's there's been a lot of reports since then this whole thing about first it was stress then it went to cholesterol and now they're saying what's cholesterol well there's good cholesterol and there's bad cholesterol you know it's amazing what he points out in that book and in fact he everyone there was a [toxicologist] for the environmental protection agency who did work back in nineteen eighty six who wrote a letter to doctor price in nineteen eighty seven and in this letter he praised doctor price for the work he did back in the sixties on this and said that e p a had been doing experiments on [nonhuman] [primates] and proving that [ingestion] of chlorine causes arteriosclerosis and e p a never published that report coronary cholesterol and chlorine yeah yeah yeah there is there is a lot of good information out there uh about health and a lot of the a lot of the myths they've been passing around people are starting to realize aren't true i mean i'm all for having a diet high in fiber and all that because that's that's good for you uh but to believe some of the things you know and i don't think anybody should be going out there and eating a high fat diet but to think that solely alone is going to cause something like arteriosclerosis is is just hard to believe huh_uh yeah i actually eat pretty much anything that i want and i've had my cholesterol checked and uh a few times and i've never been above like you know one hundred and fifty never and uh uh i mean i um well what they tell me but i mean you know everything is like within five to ten percent and all that kind of thing you know they leave themselves wide open so they can't be sued but uh we've i work at the t i site in hunt valley maryland yeah and we've had a few of the health [fairs] up here and um you know i've always come out [aces] you know i'm not really that big on watching what i eat but i do eat you know some health cookies that are high in fiber low in fat and all that kind of stuff but i mean as far as really being concerned about [ingesting] too much chlorine i'm not cholesterol i'm not worried about it okay huh_uh yeah um what did you do when you did exercise regularly huh_uh huh_uh yeah um right now um i try when it's nice out it's been raining a lot this spring but i try to uh i have a bicycle and i like to cycle a lot and uh my husband and i we have entered a few rallies that's pretty popular in texas i don't know if it's up north but every weekend a small town will sponsor a rally and thousands of people come with their bikes and ride over hilly terrain for thirty or forty miles which that's a lot of fun um so we try to ride during the week to try and stay in shape for that and um t i where i work has uh a fitness center so a lot of time after work or maybe on the weekends we'd go over there and lift weights and do the tread mill and um they have stair masters and all kinds of new machine that are fun to ride and workout on so i try to i'm trying to stay in shape on a regular basis i used to uh get into it and get out of it based on my schedule so i'm trying to stay in shape on a regular basis now but it's a big commitment we don't have any kids yet so that's a lot of part of it huh_uh yeah yeah huh_uh that's why they uh really stress at t i they really stress staying in shape like stay in fit overall fitness you know no smoking and all that but it's hard to find uh an actual exercise [regimen] that work for you you know because like i know a lot of people that cycle they take their kids behind them on the bikes and i don't know if that would work for me because i don't know i wouldn't want to pull a kid over hilly terrain but it's really hard to find something that works and you know to find time to do it and stay committed to it like three days a week or whatever i think maybe walking or running would probably work because it doesn't take much time and much money or whatever yeah huh_uh right huh_uh yeah um i've been learning a lot lately about um i've been reading a book by kenneth cooper i don't know if you're familiar with him he was the pioneer of aerobics and all of health really he's he's kind of he's pretty much the [innovator] of the whole exercise thing um he was talking about the three things you could that cause aging smoking are [inactivity] and what was the other one i think was yeah [obesity] if you can control those three areas then are you going to live longer you know cause those are risk factors so anyway it's kind of a tip really huh_uh huh_uh huh_uh doctor price huh_uh that's really interesting huh_uh yeah huh_uh and what's the name of this book again i'll have to remember that that will be very interesting my husband wants to go into medical school and be a [neurosurgeon] so he's really interested in the heart and he's in fact he's a well heart too he's uh he's done a lot of research on like how your heart [reacts] to exercise sorry he made me laugh um so anyway yeah huh_uh if you get a chance read doctor [cooper's] book on controlling cholesterol that's a real good um he talks about that talks about high risk factors and heart disease and all that huh_uh huh_uh you have a good ratio of good to bad cholesterol yeah oh really that's good yeah okay are you on any kind of uh regular exercise plan step classes what's that oh instead of hopping and jumping you just step and oh okay huh i probably couldn't do that because of my knee yeah yeah yeah i've i've kind of gotten out of the habit myself i mean it's i guess what i do now is i play softball right now that's about well right now i'm on two teams so it's four nights a week but uh uh so i enjoy it but as far as you know uh instead of having to join a health club and make myself go out there i went and bought a weight bench and don't ever hardly use it i need to make myself do that what school you going to oh now what's what's toning is that lifting weights oh okay [isometrics] stuff like that yeah uh_huh yeah i stayed in pretty good shape during school i played baseball all the way through and you know working out six hours a day usually six or seven days a week that kind of kept us all in pretty good shape but uh ever ever since i got out of school you know just jumped right into the job and i guess the job that i'm in it's stuff to stay on any kind of a regular schedule because i work some weird hours and do some traveling yeah no i didn't have well much of a problem we i guess i went to a small baptist school and we had about when i was there maybe thirteen hundred people so it's pretty small yeah but i usually get in at least a couple of miles at work just walking around the plant so uh we've got a one story house now that's that's enough i guess i push the lawn mower around that's fairly regular yeah what just because you don't like to or because because you won't be able to oh if you do if you do aerobics you shouldn't have any problem running we've we ride our bike occasionally but again not nearly often enough no you can't forget how to ride a bike yeah now when i was going to i i went to a junior college for a couple of years and played baseball and then transferred well when we were at this junior college uh our coach you know we one semester the whole team was required to take aerobics and the next semester they were required to do weight lifting so they uh i mean it was a regular i mean we had it for course credit but still i mean it was pretty high impact stuff uh_huh yeah and she'd uh you know most of the guys were all in one class so she'd kind of lay it on occasionally you know first at eight i think we had eight o'clock in the morning was our class wake up uh_huh yeah i think my wife has some uh_huh or sand even some of them well no they're elastic so i guess it wouldn't be sand huh yeah yeah so are you going to get into [instructing] well what are you studying oh okay not in the not in the aerobic instructor type field yeah yeah the uh the some of the nautilus equipment that i started seeing at the one that we used to go to was really interesting i mean they they they really know how to isolate each of the different muscle groups with those things but man they are it i don't know to me that was just too much of a hassle to get all geared up and take the time to drive over there and workout and then drive back a little negative reinforcement there while you're going yeah yeah that's that's where i'm really starting to get noticeable i'm just getting real soft in the middle uh_huh i haven't really started to put on a lot of weight i'm i guess i probably put on about ten nine or ten pounds since i stopped playing which was about four years ago but i've just myself i just notice myself just really real soft and i'm sure i don't have near the endurance that i did but i i intend i keep saying i intend to get back into it i just need to put the old nose to the [grindstone] i i i guess at that point it would turn into a task i don't consider it fun doing that but next weekend all right yeah oh no yeah there there's no no question the the end result is great and i i mean i enjoyed you know we when i was playing ball we could like run all day and not be tired you know yeah uh_huh oh i still don't but that's a problem well good luck on your graduation and your yeah you too bye i i yeah i'm yeah i i do aerobics uh step classes and uh toning classes yes it's uh it's a new uh form i think uh it's like low impact aerobics but at it uh_huh yeah you you have a step and you literally step up on the step and move your arms it's it's it's it's new it's fun uh_huh bad knee um and uh i do toning a lot and uh some every once in a while i play tennis i'm not too great at it but i i try to play uh_huh gosh uh_huh uh_huh ha right yeah i slacked off a little because of um i'm about to graduate from college and so this past couple months have been really hectic so i haven't really gone and i've really been faithful these past two months of going to the health club and working out but i'm at east carolina but um no i uh my step classes and toning is about the only thing well i mean it's um like isolated movements for each muscle certain muscles groups you can do with yeah you can do it with certain you know you can do it with weights if you wanted to but you know you leave out of there usually the next morning if you haven't done it in a while you wake up the next morning you're like oh no what did i do to myself and your whole body [aches] you know um i know i'm looking forward to getting back into getting into shape uh i feel like i'm out of shape but i feel guilty for not going because i really i'm i'm so used to going for you know three or four years now but um uh_huh oh yeah oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh no some um i walk a lot because uh you know being in in school we i don't know if your campus was anything like ours but our parking [lot's] in one end of the of the campus and the school the buildings are all at the other end so you uh_huh oh okay that's if yeah yeah uh_huh yeah it's uh i live i live on the second story apartments so i walk up and down stairs all day long so uh yeah that's one of the exercise now i i um would like to start running i've never been much of a runner but i want to start i want to run but i don't i don't know if i'll be able to to do it i'm i'm afraid i won't be able to i wish i'd yeah i hope not um uh_huh i don't even own a bike i think the last time i was on a bike when i was about twelve so uh i don't know i'd be afraid afraid i probably forgot how to ride a bike you know yeah but um no i guess that's about the only form i'm trying to think of of other things that i do that will be considered exercise there are things i should do i know it uh_huh uh_huh those aerobic classes are are tough the the high impact definitely are are tough classes uh_huh uh_huh well now they have those uh those exercise bands now that are better that you can use for like toning instead of using a weight you have like bands i don't know if you've seen them they're yeah they're they're weird they're uh you they're just made of i guess it's different kinds of rubber uh and they get uh_huh and there's some that like the different colors [denotes] how much they how much the [tension] i guess they are and how easy they are to move uh there's like i know there's purple gray and uh green and some of them are real short and they're the ones that are the tough ones to use you know but uh those classes i i enjoy uh i think uh with the aerobic classes you have to get an instructor that's fun if you don't have one that's fun and not enjoy it look not acting like she's enjoying what she's doing the class is not going to get out uh what they should get out of the class uh if the oh i'm an interior design major oh no no no no oh i could never do that i don't think i'd rather just be the student and uh occasionally i do the weights at the health club but low weights just uh_huh uh_huh right well they um i just noticed at our health club they will put on these computerized one these computerized machines and you set a speed on it and the weight and it and it makes you do it and it tells you like if you're going too slow it will say my grandmother could do this faster than you and stuff like a turtle goes faster and um it tells it and the whole place can hear what this machine is telling you yeah so uh do that stuff like that but just i've never used those machines i just use the regular machines and the free weights you know like little five pound hand weights and eight pound hand weights just to do you know some [bicep] [tricep] exercises sit ups of course uh_huh oh yeah i think that's uh number one problem with everyone uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh right yeah i plan on getting back once i graduate next weekend next weekend yeah one week then i plan to get right back into it you know it's it does a lot for you i think makes you feel a lot better uh_huh and i mean you feel so much better about yourself just that you know you don't feel guilty when you eat that cake after dinner oh yeah yeah all righty well thank you it was nice talking to you okay bye bye so yeah i sure do uh i ride a bicycle quite a bit and uh work out with free weights i live right near white rock lake so i used to i try to ride about ten to twenty miles a day but i haven't been doing so well this year but oh that's weird oh yeah so what's your motivation yeah was it for health or to look good i was think it was just a side benefit yeah up to a point yeah yeah so what was what was the other question let's see do you do it as a task or do you enjoy enjoy working out yeah i think i uh i enjoy it sometimes and there's other times when i just get tired of it and and i feel like i'm obligated to do it because i've been doing it so i should keep up and there's some days it's just like it's the hardest thing in the world to to get started i'm uh twenty seven yeah still young getting older yeah but uh yeah right right yeah i notice if you uh if you stay in shape you don't age as bad i think too i was i go to school too at night and last semester i had stopped working out because i hurt myself and started smoking a lot and you just those kind of things age you more right an right an you can't and then you know it just kind of feeds itself you smoke and then you don't work out because you right and so i finally quit because like i just all i was doing was going down hill fast yeah right back to them yeah oh that's yeah yeah i went to health club a few years ago and now i work out at home because i don't really my schedule with school and work i don't have time to get down to one there used to be one that was a twenty four hour that i used to go to but uh i actually prefer to work out alone really yeah i wouldn't mind having you know working out with a friend and and stuff but when you get into some of these some of health clubs where you just stand around and wait you know i like to start get it done and get out of there no i'm not yeah right uh especially having a kid i guess tends to just gain weight because you have to to to uh just have to start all over right yeah some people are a little bit [fanatical] about it you know i well yeah and about working out and fitness you know i like to to work out to look good and stay in shape and you know i know it's good for me but people that live for it and you know eat a bunch of different pills and all that kind of stuff it gets a little bit [obsessive] yeah yeah steroids yeah there's really bad for you hormones yeah it's too dangerous yeah i had a friend whose brother did steroids and as soon as he stopped working out he just ballooned out it all turned to fat and he just really looked bad but uh i don't know if it does to everybody he was it just that's how it affected him and he i don't know just yeah at least you got a chance to out run them that way i don't like to run myself i've thought about it several times and i just it i like to move a little faster and cover more ground it's probably i would think it would be hard on your your legs and your joints and stuff yeah uh i can't yeah no you can't it's dangerous at least maybe some of these mountain bikes you could but a regular ten speed with those skinny tires you slide all over the place yeah yeah well well good luck with the the new kid all right okay do you exercise regularly what do you do okay i love to ride a bicycle oh that's good i went an last year i went an was exercising on a bike for a while and i when i'd gotten back i had gotten some sun that day the sweat had built up on me and built up under my skin and caused me to peel it was the sweating not the burn that was wild but i exercise i don't exercise now i just had a baby three months ago i haven't really gotten back into exercising but i exercised real good for a couple of years it was aerobics and lifting weights three nights a week and it was running three nights a week what what's my motivation a friend of mine always pushing me this was in louisiana and she would push you know she was hey let's go do it and you know she wouldn't take no for an answer oh i i just wanted to look good yeah it wasn't really health related yeah yeah because i'm not i'm not big or anything but i'm not in great shape so but when i worked out i got in pretty good shape i didn't build up muscle though i just got real good and toned i don't think women look good with muscles up to a point no yeah it's just some of those women that come up there looking like arnold [schwarzenegger's] sister just doesn't get it i guess it's a task because i can't make myself do it lately yeah you don't want to lose yourself well how old are you okay so you're still young we all are so it's not hard to stay well if you keep working out when you're young though when you get older you know your [body's] not going to look as bad i seen an old woman today she was about eighty and she looked so good i mean she was standing just as straight and tall and she had a small waist and she didn't have you know like you know how some older women will get the big bulge right in the middle she didn't have that at all she her lips were a little bit wide but a lot of back in her time they liked women with big hips anyway so she may be keeping that on purpose so uh_huh well smoking ages you quick it puts those little [wrinkles] around your lips you get [winded] oh i smoke a pack a day an i can't quit smoking i've tried i was telling a friend of mine that i'd be almost as bad as being an alcoholic i can't quit smoking i've tried i just can't do it i quit when i was pregnant with my kids but you know as soon as i had them right back to it yeah it was like you know that was the only reason i quit i didn't want to and i don't want to quit smoking i enjoy that i said i have very few [vices] i'll keep this one thank you but uh did you ever go to like one of those health clubs or anything uh_huh i like to work out with people i need like you i i need competition is what i need i've got to have somebody to compete with or i don't want to do anything uh_huh are you uh_huh are you married or anything no well get your girlfriend to work out with you a lot of women like that i'd love it if my husband would ask me to work out with him he doesn't work out very often course he don't need to he's small and he works as a [laborer] on the railroad so you know he's building his muscles up all day he doesn't have to do anything he can eat like a horse too and he don't you know he don't gain it like i do but uh yeah you have to well you can gain too much weight i gained a little bit too much but i looked with my first little boy i did gain a lot of weight i got i got about fifty pounds overweight with him and i didn't loose it until two years ago and then i got pregnant and you know ruined that so yeah well actually like i say it ain't as bad this time because i was in shape when i got pregnant i wasn't out of i wasn't overweight when i got pregnant with him i just wasn't in in shape i don't know the difference but about weight exercise well that's what my friend did well she was she was with the wheat [germ] and all the vitamins and everything else and really we was you know even with her taking all those expensive vitamins and stuff we stayed right on the same track with each other you know developing and everything now there you can take those uh what is it steroids yeah i couldn't think i was i was trying to say [hemorrhoids] no i was trying to say hormones yeah hormones but yeah uh steroids but i stay from that crap oh i wouldn't i could just see hair start growing out of my upper [lip] or something really ugh i didn't know it did that yeah but i've been wanting to get me a bicycle or a bike i've been wanting to get a ten speed to ride around i'm scared to run for dogs course i know dogs can get you on a bike too but seems like it yeah well they yeah they've come up that running is not as good for you as they thought it was yeah it's real hard on your legs and it's hard on women and it it just makes stuff move down and uh but i i i like jogging i don't mind that i can get out and do that as long as it's not hot if it's hot you can't do that but in the rain oh i love to run in the rain just you know be careful not to slide but you can't ride your bike at all in the rain can you you slide uh_huh yeah oh i when i did ride my friends bike that one time i had uh i don't know what i was trying to do i was trying to make a u turn and i never could make a u turn in a bike i can do it in my car but i tried to do it on that ten speed and wrecked and i told her a dog was chasing me but i wrecked it into the curb i didn't hurt it too bad i [scratched] it on the the oh she had some kind of [fender] thing going over the back tire i think but oh well anyway it's been nice talking to you and uh thank you she's it she's good anyway have fun exercising all right bye bye all right do you do exercise uh_huh right uh_huh right right well um that's a hard question to answer because i do physical things but i don't always set out for them to be exercise i walk with my parents occasionally nothing's real regular about this because i have a weird schedule and they have a normal schedule and um i play racquetball but i haven't since i've been out of school i don't have anywhere to do that but that's going to start soon again and um i play softball once a week which is kind of more recreation than exercise because i really don't like to exercise i think that's the basic point of it is i'm not i i don't enjoy it if i know that it's exercise but if it's like a social activity or a recreational activity i don't mind so i have to disguise it it's like feeding little babies food and telling them it's something else so that they'll eat it that's kind of the same thing for me i have to not know that it's exercise so i can do it well yeah if it's exercise it's a task i don't want to do anything i have to do i mean i'll voluntarily clean the bathroom but i won't do it if i have to do it uh_huh right i'm twenty two right right uh_huh right right eating right and no cholesterol and all that yeah we i'm sure i will do i'm doing that more and more than i used to i'm getting better about this knowing that i need exercise and doing it but it's still at the task stage is it a pleasure for you or are you right right uh_huh oh uh_huh right uh_huh right that's i never got past that stage right uh_huh right that's good yeah uh_huh right that's it i do the occasional push up and sit up i haven't really brought myself to go to the the gym because that's very stressful to me because i feel i felt real competitive there and i need to find some place i could go and not feel like there's all these people who are just huge and [hulking] that are right uh_huh right right uh_huh that's a good idea but i do have my ride we have a stationary bicycle and a stair step machine here at the house i'll do those once in a while just you know like at eleven thirty when love [connection's] on and i can't sleep i'll get up and stair step for half an hour so it's i guess pretty pretty healthy but i don't have a regular plan that's i need to get started on that right uh_huh uh_huh sleep uh_huh yeah right that'll come some day when i right well i hope so yeah sounds good yeah you too have a nice day bye i do yes i uh uh i guess it actually changes i do a number of different things simply walking with my wife and sometimes my daughter will come along on her little bicycle uh and then moving up i run in the mornings not every morning it probably averages about two days a week and then with my wife i actually go to the gym and lift weights which isn't i understand quite exercising but it's along the lines how about yourself uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right right that's right right so you look at it more as a task right i see right right so i'm thirty two years old which is probably different than yourself and so it's interesting that as you get older you begin to understand that you need to exercise my job at texas instruments i have to sit in front of a computer all day and make phone calls so that i don't get any exercise doing that and plus there's a build up of stress so i need to go out and take those walks after dinner and i need to go out in the morning and run or i'll just get nuts so that's kind of a motivator so even though i can look at it as a task the you know i kind of get the i get some kind of global benefit from the whole thing by saying well i'm lowering my chance of heart attack and thus that type stuff sure that all i i do all that yeah right well it's a something as simple as a walk with my wife is very enjoyable i do that at the end of the day and it takes you know that that during that time the stress from the day goes away i get to share whatever i did with my wife and and vice versa going to the gym is is actually something different than than like oh and the running and i enjoy that too year i've been running since high school on track teams and the like so running i i'm at that point which you probably get to after about six months of dedicated running where you don't feel your muscles any more and you don't think about the pain of it you you you take the time to relax some how and you think about other things during those first few months you have to think about running and why your elbow hurts and why you can't breathe and this and that and that's no fun and it's so hard to get past that for a lot of people yeah the the uh weight lifting on the other hand is actually you know i think i look better i have just a i don't i'm not a huge person i'm just a regular looking guy but just going to lift weights on occasion with my wife and my wife thinks the same thing about both me and herself that get that little bit of definition in your muscles is is attractive so that pays also yeah so so i guess that aspect of that takes away the work the with my wife which is nice i love her you know i enjoy being with her i guess that's one thing but also uh that that long term benefit of a little bit of tone in your muscles yeah oh yeah i don't i don't let that bother me but yeah that's something that comes with time too you know i'll tell you the sit ups and push ups are excellent you know it's your own you you're you're struggling against your own body weight you can have variety by putting your feet higher or lower by putting your arms further apart or closer together by doing them real quick or real slow and you can actually get a good you can i know in the push up at least you can get chest muscles and the back of your arms quite built up just doing push ups oh is that right right yeah right that's funny yeah yeah well you know maybe not i'd say i'd say at twenty two you don't necessarily need a plan as long as you're getting getting the exercise otherwise when your life becomes sedentary is when you have to make yourself a plan and what's real funny about plans is that there's a struggle between uh when you when you add something to your life when you add a plan to your life something else has to go away and that's the hard decision is okay if i'm going to run in the mornings what am i what do i trade it off for well the [answer's] sleep right if i'm going to walk at night what do i trade it off for well star trek or you know it it it's always trade offs and you actually have to as you get older you have to really think what can go and what to to to replace this thing it's i mean not just exercise but anything it's very hard and uh i don't i don't think you should worry about not having a program yet yep yeah i guess if you care or if your wife your future wife uh gives you a reason to care which helps well i think we covered it nice talking with you craig you too good day bye okay uh_huh i am too yes uh_huh oh that's good and how old is your baby yes well i walk two and a half to three miles every night my husband and i were on [nutrisystem] about eighteen months ago and he lost sixty two pounds and i lost twenty one so we've decided to maintain our weight that we will do this exercise walking program and we walk our dog every night and go up around the elementary school we have a little path that we do and uh except if it's raining or real cold which it hasn't been we try to get out uh every every night and he plays racquetball twice a week but i'm not into that so i think the walking is enough to help us stay in shape and toned yes right that's right i know my kids are into sports and a lot of times tonight we won't finish with the football game till around nine thirty so we will just go out after that so my kids luckily are old enough i can leave them at home alone while i go out and walk yes yes no my husband never was either until he lost the weight that was his decision he had arthritis in his hips and his doctor said he needed to lose weight and exercise so once he got motivated now he's ready to walk every night and our dog has lost a little weight he walks every night too so he gets excited when he sees us put on our our shoes our walking shoes yes making time for it yes i know i do too right no i never do either even if i have my dog with me you know it's nice to have another person there but mostly it's my husband and sometimes it's my kids uh_huh me too i did the dance step when i lived up in michigan and it just wore me out i would leave totally exhausted i never lost any weight and i got to the point i [dreaded] going in so walking seems to be a good solution for me and it doesn't cost anything yes that's the one time in the day my husband and i can get away and talk without having the kids jump in and yep yep yep that's all i do too okay all right well i'm not a big [exerciser] but i kind of had to start after i had my baby because i wanted to lose that extra weight and so basically at this point i'm i'm a real walker are you i don't do that oh i guess i'll call it that fancy type walking where they kind of move their hips you know and keep their arms up i don't do that i mostly just take a a walk around the block or with my baby or you know and i have to do that at least once a day if it if it's going to make any effect on since i have to eat the same as i did before i can't neglect that because of the baby either she just uh well she was premature so she's about nine months now though times goes fast oh that's great uh_huh oh my goodness uh_huh uh_huh yeah exactly uh_huh well i think that is just wonderful now as far as i'm concerned i have several other children and so uh i think at this point to fit it into to other things it's kind of a task you know uh it's not to where i'm just so freed up that i i just go oh this is wonderful let's go uh_huh yeah now does your husband usually go with you then oh see now that's really nice because mine's at meetings sometimes and and he's not really into it so i have to uh_huh i think that is so wonderful i bet i think that's really really good and and you know i think this after you've done it a certain amount of time it kind of does get to be a routine it's not like when i first started it you know that was the hardest thing was to get ready and get out there but now if i haven't done it in a day or two or something i really notice that i haven't done it in a you know and i like the time because my kids sometimes they come with me and sometimes they don't and when they don't i i really notice you know how fun it can be when they come so uh i like to have somebody come with me uh i know most of enough of the people that if anything ever happened i could go to a home around this block area so it it's not real dangerous but still i don't like to go alone so yeah yeah you know well i think that's great i and well sometimes when i i take my kids to the playground that's the only other exercise i i really think i do i was on an exercise program before where it was more like an aerobics type thing uh i found real quick that wasn't for me uh_huh yeah yeah right right and it gives me time to think so i think not only does it help my body but i think it helps my mind too so i like that uh_huh yeah need something and they can wait until you get back home well i think that's great well that's what i do for okay hi my name is donna and i'm calling calling from plano texas oh okay um i um find exercise kind of a task i guess i'd say i go to aerobics two days a week but i also have three kids at home so they keep me pretty busy yeah that gives me plenty of exercise but i enjoy um walking outside and bicycling once in a while with the family excuse me that's fine and yourself uh_huh every morning well my husband [swims] every day at lunch which he loves doing yeah he does it every day like a ritual once in a while or if he has a business meeting or if he um someone [invites] him to lunch he'll he'll not go but he goes um every every day and then he he's a runner too he runs three mornings a week he gets up about five and and does his his deal and some days he doesn't but then maybe he'll catch up on the weekend and go for a run and um we oh the the the bicycling is nice especially with the weather around here and i know um uh we we both of my husband and i both do it to just keep the pounds off we're getting up in age i guess in our late thirties so we need to keep exercising just to be able to uh oh i know yeah i go to this aerobics class two mornings a week and i take my three year old with me there's a nursery there and it's kind of another day out for her to um have little friends and um i i enjoy the socialization of it you know getting to see the same women every morning but um there are some parts during that exercise that i think i cannot do another second of this it is that's true that's true well okay well yes thank you for participating thank you bye i'm jay in dallas that keeps you plenty of exercise well i uh i have i walked and run um almost every morning i've sort of stopped here with the weather change but uh it's about a thirty minute exercise every morning oh that would that's fantastic exercise um all right i'd rather get a bicycle but i have an i had an exercise bike in the house but didn't seem to use it enough so somebody sold it in a garage sale and so uh but i'd like to get a bike and just do uh do biking outside yeah it keeps going because i'm fifty five and it uh it just gets worse you still want to eat and uh but you just i think you feel better too if you get on some program like that but uh uh_huh right oh i know it it it some of it is so tough and uh especially when somebody's uh planning lunch for you and they know what what's good for you i think when we do it ourselves we take the easy way sometimes so so anyway thank you for calling all right bye bye well uh guess it's logical to ask do you exercise any i'm about the same way i i do a little bit my job kind of [hinders] me from exercising i'm a night operator here at a industry down here and i don't really get out a lot to because my job to to exercise right it is that's that's the way i feel i'm used to being in pretty good shape because when i was in high school i stayed in pretty good shape played a little basketball and stuff like that but i've got now i'm in college and i go to school during the day and work at night i can tell that i've not really done a whole lot well uh i usually i usually play at home we live out in the country so me and my brother play basketball and have a bunch of guys come over and play or a lot of times we're we're up at the church we'll play volleyball stuff like that oh really oh the sweating to the oldies oh really right right i'll oh really right that's the way i am i just want to sit down and relax too tired to exercise i did i started riding my bike about a couple of months ago and i'd ride about two or three miles a day but but it would last about a couple of weeks and it got real cold for a little while so i gave it up walk around right right i've noticed people doing that down here too i'll be in town or something and people will walk around the mall it it is fairly safe yeah certain parts of it right right i used to do a lot of swimming we have we have a swimming pool but it's an old concrete pool we've been having trouble with it the past few years so we haven't got to use it much but i love to swim and water ski and stuff like that right right you can't do it year round right that's the way ours is oh no it's too cold i could deal with a hot tub those are nice i'm from [laurel] that's way down towards the south not quite on the coast but we're about two hours from the coast yes ma'am it it started about yesterday i believe it started raining and got real cold oh right well unfortunately very little uh much less than what i need to well i uh am an assistant teacher and uh in business technology and i've i think the most exercise i've gotten in the last three to four month is jumping up and down to go answer the kids' questions it keeps me pretty busy but it's not really the kind of exercise that gets your heart rate going and uh you know it really exercise is so important and i realize that when you uh exercise what do you do do you do it at home or a club or i got a hold of uh richard [simmons'] tape uh what is it uh i can't even think of the name of it right offhand with the oldies sweating with the to the oldies yeah and that's not bad that's pretty upbeat so you know i every once in a while i'll put the cassette in and go with it not often enough to have a routine my little schnauzer wishes i would get out and walk with her but uh i don't know by the time i get home all i want to do is just collapse or sit down at my computer and my fingers exercise more than anything now yes uh do you ever ride a bike or anything like that here about the the most common exercise for people is to go to the malls and walk uh because they're enclosed and no matter what the weather is they can walk at a pretty good clip and and not have to worry about the weather summer or winter and it's safe that's uh you know inside the mall may be not safe going to the parking garage i know a doctor once told me it it a friend of mine uh suggested swimming as being the best exercise there is the uh swimming they say uses more muscles than any other exercise with and the water takes the resistance right and you don't get the [soreness] i've i've done some water exercises but our pool is not is not heated so it's summertime only you don't go out when it's twenty some odd degrees go out to the swimming pool hot [tubs] are not uh not too bad but so what part of mississippi are you from whereabouts is that oh and you do have cold weather down there ours started thanksgiving and uh from there just well today was pretty but uh-oh sunday the snow and ice came in and uh there was no exercise okay go ahead yeah don't do it well i tell you i i firmly believe in exercising i think it's a i do it every day on a regular basis i well i just got back from biking twelve and a half miles but this time of year you can't get much biking in uh but every morning i use this president's uh council of physical fitness and it really is uh uh it's worth doing and you can do it anywhere i i travel quite a bit in my in my business and you can do it you know wherever you're at and if you do it i i do it every morning after uh usually after breakfast before i take a shower and get you know dressed going you know to go to work and uh now what i do i mean i've done this for you know like fifteen years so you don't start at this kind of regiment you know i so what i'm telling you isn't something you go out and do and and you'll hurt yourself uh every every uh it takes me about fifteen minutes to do this now because i do it all the time but i uh i do twenty five uh uh where you have your arms above your head and and your body [twisters] touch right you know left and right toe and i do uh ten uh right and left uh trunk [twisters] and i do uh about sixty uh bicycle type uh leg [thrust] type things and i do uh twenty uh leg [lifters] on each side you know when you're laying on the floor and then i do fifty push ups and do a hundred sit ups and uh then i do about uh oh yeah oh yeah and then uh thirty uh now if you did football like the old grass [drills] where you're on your stomach and you you know prone type things where you're kind of rocking on your stomach type thing and that takes about really about maybe about thirteen minutes uh in the morning well uh years ago i used to uh [referee] football and uh to stay in condition i did that uh just as a normal basis and uh uh i tell you just by doing it uh well example this summer i i was about fifteen pounds heavier than i wanted to be so i i increased i do three hundred sit ups a day now but not at that in the morning i do a hundred then and then i do about a hundred before supper and about a hundred before i go to bed i lost fifteen pounds just by doing that because you tighten your stomach muscles and you know you can eat anything you want drink anything you want but you don't you know within reason you know you can lose weight or maintain your weight and your physical being and uh i just you know you're ready to go at a i i i think it's really important good well that's why chuck i think uh if you did it on a daily basis and you didn't need elaborate things you know where you can make excuses like well i i like biking and during the summer i'll do you know at least seventy five miles a week and when i really was doing it maybe a hundred and fifty but you can't you know there's excuses weather or you don't have time or something like that but if you do some basic exercises and you say every morning just like brushing your teeth you're going to spend fifteen minutes or a half hour and you get up a half hour earlier and once you start getting into that one you just feel good and you look a whole lot better unfortunately not and there's no way i can get her to it's a like it's something you either just really want to do it or you can't talk anyone into it if you don't like to exercise you know it isn't going to happen i i sure wish she would she's you know unfortunately overweight and but she's a wonderful woman and you know no sense getting in arguments with anybody about it well no problem at all and uh if you get one of these mats you know go to a store they normally have these exercise things these a b c of physical fitness on them one of my kids got me one of those for christmas one year and uh it it it's just an exercise [mat] that rolls up so you can put it up you know just in the corner well yeah you can do that but but it doesn't yeah it's a foam thing yeah yeah and it's it's just about six feet long rolls up and i don't take it on trips with me i you could but uh i don't mind uh you know if i do like sit ups i'll throw a a towel down or something you know so you don't have the [abrasive] well i i uh we're going to compare notes uh i uh i often desire to exercise often believe i should and rarely do what what what sort of of regiment do you have yes yes uh_huh yes uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yes yes right my goodness you do all of this in fifteen minutes uh_huh yeah now what what keeps you doing that i mean i i sometimes start little much less much more modest efforts but i give up i just find them boring hard to find the time for it on a given day and yes yes uh_huh yes uh_huh yep well i i whenever i do it i feel good i mean good that i have done good because it's it seems right and good because it has good effects but but it's this maintaining a a regular habit that i just can't seem to do yeah uh_huh uh_huh yep uh_huh uh_huh yes yes do you do you does your wife participate in any of this or uh_huh yes yes uh_huh yeah yeah well i i uh i keep saying if somebody else would do it with me i that would be little bit of peer pressure would help considerably but you seemed to have solved that problem without any any external help yeah what what what what's on what's this [mat] i mean is it like the sort of thing you take on a camping trip and sleep on it i mean it's that it's that kind of like half inch of foam or something yeah yeah yeah well do you exercise regularly uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh that is good uh_huh uh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh well i use to exercise regularly and i haven't lately i have goofed off i guess uh i use to also take an aerobics class about three days a week before work but uh i guess my job change my husband's job change and it is just not easy to get up early in the morning any more so uh well the problem is that i am so tired at the end of the day i just want to go home and not do anything yeah oh uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh yeah that is right that is right that is a uh_huh well i know some people go during lunch but you know by the time i get over the gym and and go for my class and shower and get back to work it is probably two hours or more and that is just too long yeah that doesn't really do it does it yeah yeah that is right that is right well that is not much uh_huh uh_huh oh that is not bad it beats [memberships] at some of these clubs that is for sure they are real expensive uh_huh oh yeah yeah uh_huh yeah yeah well we have one through work and its its probably about a hundred and fifty dollars a year which is bad but i uh i don't know i still just don't don't end up going cause it isn't at a convenient time or i don't know something but i need to do something if if its only walk the dog or something i need to start doing that that is right uh_huh okay there is well i am a school teacher and us there is uh uh girl that went through our school district i teach in highland park who uh does aerobics at the y c a and i say y the y w c a turn that off please i am recording my husband just turned on something noisy any way uh she comes to the school and there are a group of teachers and we exercise regularly and uh for an hour and we do it twice a week and uh we do uh aerobics for our cardiovascular fitness for thirty minutes and then we do stretching and toning and cool down for another thirty minutes so it is an hour and then my husband and i take uh ten mile walks uh as often as possible and uh not on the nights that i do aerobics but if if he wants to he [jogs] but i uh i we take the fast walks and we walk a couple of miles and then come back to the house and so we we take it seriously we enjoy doing it i enjoy my group at school it is a lot more fun to exercise with somebody than is is to do it by yourself oh oh uh_huh oh i understand that i have never been able to do it before well i and too i just make myself i get up at five thirty and i am at school at seven thirty school is not over until uh four and our class but it is in the building that is the big difference because there are other people around that uh you had better hurry go get dressed you know there is motivation around there and then uh we we can change right there in the building i don't have to drive and fight traffic and get anywhere and i just go and we uh exercise and until then you know i have belonged to exercise clubs and oh i have gone to uh-oh like uh-oh these gyms you know that the like in plano and richardson and uh where they offer the uh rec centers really where they offer aerobics and i have done that before but it has always had to be late at night after i have got home and after dinner and you are just kind of going ugh and i have tried it immediately after school like try to get some place and exercise from five to six but then by the time you get home and you get dinner you are eating so late it is it is really hard with our life style when you work to uh_huh i have twenty five minutes for lunch that is out for me no i don't think so but uh and they are nice because if we are running late it usually uh if things are kind of hectic at school and people are running late they kind of wait on us you know cause they know we are in the building and coming where as at uh another place you are paying a lot more money and uh it does going to start whether you are there or not so this has worked out real nicely in fact she charges us two dollars a session huh_uh so it's it's we like pay her for six weeks at a time cause that is like a unit in uh uh school uh report card period and so it is like twenty four dollars every six weeks huh_uh you are not kidding i know we belonged uh for a period of time to the signature club for about a year i mean we were paying a hundred dollars plus month for our family membership and at first we used it and then it got where we weren't beginning to get out money's worth and they offered lots of things but we weren't taking advantage of them because we didn't have the time to so we decided to forget that that was just a waste of our our money oh no uh_huh it does make you feel better the hard thing is getting going and if you have somebody who will do it with you like for a long time my husband didn't want to walk cause he wants to uh jog but he decided that uh maybe uh you know of a exercise program you have right well swimming is uh one of the best exercises you can do i mean as far as for uh cardiovascular and and it's least hard on your body i it's the least hard on your body as far as uh impact and right right well i do uh little aerobics oh three or four times a week but it's not enough to boy if i go in the summer time i try to jog jog a couple of miles and uh well you know even doing that three or four times a week when summer hits that's a hard thing to go out and and go jogging for uh half hour or so but so i'm not quite getting the level that i need to i like it i like it uh part of my problem is i have small children so uh to do a whole lot just requires a lot of oh coordination as far as scheduling and that type of uh deal you know uh when you're in college boy you got a hundred things going on of course you got a little different direction going but uh right you don't notice it as much yeah you feel it don't you it's amazing how uh how much uh it changes and i weigh probably about the same i weighed for oh i don't know how many years but uh it's changed places and things don't fit just quite exactly fit the same but uh so do you do uh in texas uh does there probably quite a few facilities do you enjoy it or is it uh if you can have find the time it's just the yeah it is hard it is hard it's uh like anything else whether or not you want to sacrifice another half hour my problem is i don't want to wake up another half hour earlier and do more don't get enough sleep as it is right and uh kind of have if you're having the pressures of school and uh everything else it's kind of course it's really you know as soon as you do it it's really a release you feel [invigorated] and you feel oh you feel in a lot better shape just like eating right foods if i eat very much sugar boy just does something i do i have to be real careful did you makes a lot of difference well there's a lot of fat in meat right and unless you really like uh fish fish is pretty good for you but uh kind of see what happens i've tried to do that with sugar and it's almost impossible everything has sugar in it i mean if you go your ketchup has sugar in it course and i like sugar too that's that's a problem but anyway well it's uh nice talking to you think we've uh covered all the subject okay well you too good luck uh enjoy college while you can let me tell you it's uh it's a little different uh challenge isn't it where are you going studying right well um i have a a a former exercise program i'm a graduate student and this semester i'll tell you what i it's been almost impossible for me to get you know back to regular exercise um last summer i was a a swim instructor all summer and and life guard so it was really easy for me to get quite a bit of exercise swimming and um and since i worked at a recreation center i could uh you know use those facilities quite often but um oh yeah oh yeah uh_huh and there's and there's no jarring on the pardon exactly yeah um yeah fluid resistance uh_huh uh_huh how about you oh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah do you do you kind of think it's a chore or do you enjoy it uh_huh uh_huh sure yeah uh_huh yeah uh i um i used to uh i used to weigh uh two hundred fifteen pounds and now i weigh only about one about one seventy five um so i drastically had to change the way i ate when i when i first moved to college and uh i had started weight lifting quite regularly and so i got my weight down and it's kind of easy for me to forget about it now because uh you know when i'm not fat like i used to be i don't worry about it yeah uh_huh although lately i have noticed you know even if i gain like two pounds i start i start feeling it and uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah there are um i'm living in a dorm right now and so right downstairs there's a facility and i really feel kind of guilty for not working out more than i do because there's a facility right downstairs where all you know all we have to do is is uh run down there and i really do if i have the time to uh_huh yeah i really do because i like to get you know get off alone and just do that for a while but that's hard you know uh_huh uh_huh exactly uh_huh yeah yeah oh yeah uh_huh yeah ready to go another twelve hours yeah yeah uh_huh do you have to watch what you eat pretty regularly uh_huh i stopped eating meat about oh uh must have been eight months ago uh_huh completely i mean any kind of meat or and i and i really feel a lot better now yeah it really does uh_huh yeah that's it i mean that's about where almost all of the fat comes from and so i found that really helps yeah i eat that i think i've eaten fish like twice since i used to eat a lot of fish too but i just tried to cut it all out for a while and see what happens yeah and i like it i don't know if i'm that brave yet uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh okay yeah it sounds good well good luck to you there in idaho well i'm in graduate school now i i i kind of feel like i wish i could have gone back to undergraduate now yeah yeah it is well it's good talking pardon i'm studying speech pathology yeah uh_huh uh_huh they set that up for you uh_huh and uh what kind of running do you do uh_huh uh_huh is is just aerobics or no uh i mean the running you do it you do a mile in about eight minutes or less uh_huh yeah then you wouldn't then you don't get uh out of breath oh oh but i mean it's not pushing it real hard like you know if you tried to make six or something like that right uh_huh yeah i i don't run much any more i did when i was in school right now i just lift uh weights and do push ups and sit ups and and i uh jump rope a little bit and that is about it and i don't i don't lift any heavy weight uh they are about a third of my body weight yeah and uh uh i play the trumpet and the uh the more upper body strength the easier it is to play you have to do a whole lot of sit ups and uh and then uh i hurt my neck uh about three years ago so you really have to build up around your neck and your shoulders to keep from uh hurting yourself when you play high you have to you have to do it correctly you know it is like an exercise in itself but a lot of people uh strain themselves doing it uh i play at church yeah uh_huh well yeah uh well the weather is nice except for when it rains you know i mean in dallas yeah i keep thinking about it but that doesn't mean it gets done i i mostly jump rope more you know uh_huh uh_huh yeah i do a toe lift and [squats] for that but you know it it doesn't uh doesn't uh accustom your legs to the kind of strength that you have like when you are running for a long time they tend to tighten up whenever whenever you have to do something at uh uh great length of time and it also builds too much mass if you just you know so it is like i i lift weights with about the same [curl] weight as i do the [squats] with and uh then it doesn't bother me very much uh_huh right uh_huh yeah that is uh i have started doing more push ups and and it has helped a lot and then i add sets to it so that i don't like you said wear it out i don't try to push it so the end in one set all right uh exercise huh uh as a matter fact i work out in the mornings i belong to presidents and uh i have got a routine for every morning of the week and i don't work out on saturday or sunday but uh i do i do a combination of uh uh running and weight training no i uh actually i just uh joined on my own and i have been thinking about getting with a uh one of their counselors just so see what uh they might have to offer as far as uh alternatives but i pretty much uh worked on my own routine they have got the track on the inside and uh i run one mile on monday wednesdays and fridays and then on tuesdays and thursdays i run two miles and then after that i work out with weights uh i work out with free weights oh uh yeah it is really the uh aerobic work out part uh about seven minutes uh no i do yeah that is that is a pretty good clip and i am pretty [winded] by the time i get done so oh yeah i i uh could probably go faster but then i would wear myself out and i wouldn't be able to work out anything else yeah how about you uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh i see so this uh do you just try and keep them i guess uh firm and uh yeah uh that is true yeah oh i see oh i see uh so you are in uh in part of a band oh i see i see i use to play an instrument when i was in high school but it wasn't the trumpet so i was just wandering if that was what it was or something i think so do you have any plans of maybe running more when the weather gets nicer yeah yeah uh_huh yeah i use to do a little bit of jumping rope uh when i was uh well a while back i was more into basketball and uh i could do a lot of jump rope and other jumping exercises to try to build my [calves] and uh but it has been a while since i have done that right right uh_huh yeah i i uh that is true i have noticed that uh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah huh that is interesting though uh i have been thinking of changing uh i have done the same routine for almost two years now and i am thinking of uh changing it up uh that is why well you know i was thinking to talking to one of their counselors and seeing what different exercises they could get me on to uh get out of the routine because i have heard that you know you get locked into a routine then you are going to get to a point where you just stop developing so i am looking at changing things a little bit uh_huh yeah ok i was watching the soap opera awards and uh it is really making me want to exercise because every single woman in the audience is uh about ten pounds so uh i started [anchoring] last uh [anchoring] uh exercising last about last spring when i uh joined the president's health club and i was really motivated and going and uh i went uh for a little while uh i went pretty regular but it is hard to go regularly for a long time and where i live in waco uh they do not have anywhere here that is affiliated with president's so now i do not have a club and i am uh i do not have any motivation to just go out and jog [aimlessly] or something like that so i am not exercising at the time at the moment so i wish i could i wish i did have the motivation to get out and do that but i just do not like just running with no where to go i just cannot do that so uh_huh uh yeah yeah i think a lot of the times if you have someone to uh work out with or walk with or something it does give you that motivation and you can also i mean you can you know pretty much do it [privately] if you had your own private uh sort of contest you know where you would try and see if you could lose more weight than your friend or something like that and that would keep you going uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh that is very true it seems like you walk quicker you just [perky] is a good word for it when you exercise and i understand that walking is suppose to be the like the best exercise better than running things like that cause it it works everything and it gets your breathing up and it doesn't yeah it doesn't hurt you like i understand running hurt your [shins] or knees or something like that so wow wow yeah uh-oh i guess my my favorite exercise in the uh in the gym is the bikes to go yeah there are these [stationery] bikes that you just ride and if you watch television they usually have television in there or something or if you listen to a [walkman] it is pretty it is pretty okay again that is sort of weird because you you are not going anywhere and uh i use to play racquetball and i really liked that because you know to me it had a point you know uh there were points you could you would make and there was a point to it but running and jogging and just not going anywhere is just i don't like that i just can't understand that so i don't do uh yeah uh_huh yeah i know a lot of people just to be safe like you were talking about walking at night and in the morning or early in the morning uh you see a lot of uh mostly older people though but that uh walk in the malls you know like early in the mornings and things like that i have never tried that i don't know you know i have never even thought about it really uh oh uh_huh and that is a little less ok oh oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i understand that i have been trying to get myself motivated i had gone gotten up regularly for awhile with a neighbor uh she had injured her back and needed a walking partner and i thought that would be the time to get going and so we walked pretty steadily for about three weeks and uh then she had to get back to work and which was traveling to new york and so she is not around and i just don't like walking by myself at night or in the dark of the morning i don't seem to find time in the day time and of course it is motivation that is keeping me from really looking for that opportunity oh yeah yeah yeah yeah well more than weight of course i could lose uh lose certainly from ten to twenty pounds but i think more than that i also notice i just feel better when i exercise and that is something that i am motivated about now because i do need to get myself feeling better just in better shape but uh all the same it is connected to my attitude because i am not feeling as [perky] and good i am also it is hard to get my attitude to uh to get myself up there yeah yeah yeah yeah and you have less chance of hurting yourself yeah last time i tried running with my daughter cause she is supposed to be jogging in p e and it felt good but then i had pulled a muscle in my knee actually i hyper extended it or something and uh boy i was suffering for about three weeks later so and i have never had that problem before but i guess that age just starts to catch up to me it is showing up in the weirdest places oh is it uh_huh yeah yeah well i have got a dog now and of course she needs walking and that is a little less uh [burdensome] or boring to be walking at least with her and i can put on the [earphones] to have something to listen to and yeah oh yeah yeah yeah that is kind of an idea we we have uh over here in plano a little recreation center that has got uh a walking track that it is also for security as well as the convenience of doing it any time of the year but i find it very tedious because i am watching the clock constantly and it there is just nothing else to look at and i actually get more tired doing that than i could walk for three or four miles out in the neighborhood here and feel real good there i could barely make a couple of miles i'm ready do you exercise uh during the day time or go to a gym or anything uh_huh uh_huh well i try to do it at night before i go to bed um it's really weird because i'll get down on the floor and i'll holler and tell my cat nikki i'll say nikki i'm going to do my exercises now and she can be upstairs in the bedroom and i don't know she knows what i'm talking about you know pretty soon here she comes so i lay out there in the living room floor and do my exercises you know uh i had a problem with my back so when i went to physical therapy they gave me some exercises for my back so i just try to keep that up because it seems like if i don't then then my back gives me a problem again so i try to do it every night and uh yeah it seems like it's you know i can tell when i do it and when i don't do it you know so you know it's got to be good for you but um a long time ago i belonged to a gym but uh now i notice that this in this small city that i live in they do have a a gym that just opened up here about a month ago so i was kind of thinking about joining it but i haven't even gone down there and talked to them yet but uh it does really make you feel good and i like to bicycle too so that gives you you know lots of exercise so uh_huh oh my goodness yeah otherwise you wouldn't be able to go very far huh oh really uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah well like i say i just do it at night you know and um do you like you try try to get my stomach muscles toned up you know because boy they seem like they really get out of shape and once you get out of shape it's hard to get back into shape you know so i've just been doing it i try to do it every night you know like i say you just i'd rather do that than watch television anyhow you know so it's just kind of nice and especially when i have my cat that comes down and [joins] me you know so well i guess that's about all i can tell you about my exercising i wish i knew how to swim but i don't so i don't go swimming uh_huh but they do say that swimming is really really good for you you know for every part of your body so i wished i i wished i did know how to do that if they had a pool here in patterson i'd probably you know put my bathing suit on and go down there but they don't have a pool in this small city either so well listen then it's been nice talking to you okay then bye bye all right oh yeah i i used to go to a gym um last summer but then i started school again so it's um so i don't exercise as much as i'd like but i i do enjoy um going to a gym and working out or just like i do sit ups sometimes before i go to bed or when i wake up and i ride a exercise bike a lot so uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh right oh that's good uh_huh right uh_huh oh yeah oh yeah yeah it does yeah i enjoy that a lot i um bike in the summer i belong to a biking club here in kenosha and um we go on a like fifty to a hundred miles every sunday so i try to keep up in the winter with the exercise bike so i you know can be in shape no huh_uh no i go with my dad he exercises a lot more than i do though oh yeah he's always exercising but i'm not that [energetic] i get lazy sometimes yeah oh yeah that's what i like to do uh_huh yeah yeah oh wow oh yeah that is neat yeah um i don't swim much neither yeah uh_huh oh um yeah nice talking to you okay um bye okay martin do you do any exercise uh_huh um so those are more or less indoor sports how's the weather out there in georgia uh_huh oh uh_huh well yeah i'm on a exercise program i'm riding my [aerodyne] bike um half an hour every morning and i'm just about ready to up it to up to forty five minutes a morning and i feel like that's been a real nice exercise in the winter time it's it's kind of kept me from getting cabin fever and um has seemed to be a real nice aerobic exercise no huh_uh i first of all i'd like to get my weight off i'm about fifty pounds overweight and so i'd like to get the weight off and then i'd really like to get into that and uh we have a my husband and i have a a aerobic video that's called the firm i don't know if you've heard of it but it's a an aerobic video with not necessarily bouncing around and jumping up and down but you're using weights and that is the most incredible aerobic workout i have ever done it's it's really fun yes uh_huh uh_huh yes um no i mean yes i am but i have never done it myself have you done that oh that's the big thing huh oh so how is that oh oh uh_huh yeah now if um playing basketball are you knees do you have healthy knees oh dear uh_huh oh that's good well that sounds you sound just like my husband he he injured his ankle about seven months ago playing volleyball and oh he's just had a heck of a time getting that ankle healthy so that's what he does he wears his his brace and his high tops and oh oh wow uh_huh oh dear oh it is amazing how fast you take off the inches and i would once i start my i'd like to do the forty five minutes a day on the bike for a week and then every other day i'd like to incorporate the video and then the bike on the other day but it is really amazing how fast the inches come off and the muscle builds real fast um you can start they recommend doing the video without weights for the first month and then after that you can just start with your five pound [dumbbells] and then build up to your uh twenty five pound [dumbbells] and then you're just doing repetitious exercises throughout the whole video and it's a hour long video so it is yeah i really enjoy that so i'm looking forward to losing this weight and being firm and healthy yes yes now this one has been quite mild um we could have been out walking throughout the whole winter because really we only had about three weeks of snow on the ground it was quite chilly but not yes i do uh i like to uh play basketball and weight lifting those are probably the two main things i like to do yeah um in in in the winter you typically it's it's probably too cold to go out and do things like tennis um i like to play tennis in the summer time or in the spring fall but in the winter it gets pretty cold um yeah so it's mostly indoor sports i think in the winter um how about yourself uh_huh uh_huh right do you do uh any [anaerobic] type weight lifting or weight training type exercise uh_huh huh yes it's it's it's it's similar to aerobics with weights but it's like low impact aerobics just with weights okay are you familiar with um step or bench aerobics uh yes i have in in atlanta that's um most of the health clubs are all that's the that's the in thing at first it was just regular aerobics but now bench or step aerobics have kind of taken over um it they call it a low impact aerobics and it's supposed to burn off more calories at the same time and from when i've done it it does give you a good a real good workout but only thing i'm concerned about is potential for injury to your knees you know that and movement of going up on the step you know that could create a problem they they seem to think that it it won't but you never know yeah i i think my ankles probably are my main weak point but i've i've kind of taken care of that i wear high tops and then also an a support ankle brace which is very stiff and um wearing that i haven't had any problems in the past year or so yeah yeah i uh_huh yeah i did i injured mine so many times that [rehabilitating] became quite easy i mean it would only take three or four days and i could play again on it because after a while you just learn how to rehabilitate yourself to play that way but um so how how successful is your exercise video uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh so it's a good workout uh_huh so in the winter i guess there's a lot of it's quite cold and snow kay i guess we're talking about exercise huh oh i am twenty seven you do what type of exercise do you do oh you do yes are they different from aerobics or is it the same thing and you do that every day or oh okay and this is a club or uh do you belong to a group do you go with friends or do you go alone yeah uh_huh uh_huh oh oh yeah young mothers or uh_huh uh i really don't have a routine i like playing basketball we just bought a new home with a basketball [hoop] and that's what i do every day yeah pretty much when my wife let's me no i just shoot around by myself and uh that's about it i use to play soccer a lot in high school but when i graduated i haven't done much i don't have a problem i know i have to do more aerobics but i don't have a problem with weight i could eat all day and not gain an ounce uh_huh you do exercise you do it uh_huh yeah and i well everyone's told me my waist line is going to expand one of these days but i don't know uh_huh yeah i guess i enjoy sports a lot so that's why i've kept active in that way uh basketball volleyball uh too bad it's not really heavy as far as recreation or hobby i do that uh i use to but it got too expensive so yeah yeah a lot of people do that and but well i just i never find the time i had rather do other things oh they come up here that's in nevada uh_huh oh yeah but there's snow bird or [alta] heavenly huh i've never heard of that one huh_uh do they exercise much or i mean for skiing i know when i went you can get sore easily but oh yeah is one or two timer a year if i do go on them and i am really sore after yeah my legs really really [ache] but that's i am using muscles that i have never used before okay yeah yeah well first of all i i have to ask you how how old you are twenty seven okay well i am quite a bit older than you are but no i think exercise is extremely important and i i do exercise on a regular basis well i do uh jazzercise which is an aerobic uh program that are you familiar with it it's uh you know a national company and we have a jazzercise center here in plano that has classes like all day long so you can no it's really it's an aerobic routine you warm up and then you have thirty minutes of aerobic activity starting you know slowly and then working up to uh you know a high heart rate and then you gradually go down again no i only do it probably two or three times a week the minimum they want you to do is three times a week well it's really a i mean it's called a center and you buy as many classes as you want to at a time and then you just go in whenever you can so like i usually choose to go at nine thirty in the morning or a nine fifteen class or a ten thirty class in the mornings no i go by myself and that's one of the frustrating things cause i can find very few people to go with me and most of my friends that are my age don't exercise or they might play tennis and since i am not a tennis player uh you know i don't get that but i am you know i am between i am in my late forties so uh there aren't many people you know that want to do that most of the people that are in the classes are young mothers you know with with children between the ages young mothers you know young women with small children are the ones that i find well what do you do oh great yeah do you play every day well now who do you play with do you have friends that play with you or just yeah well see that's that's really good and i think that keeps a lot some people from exercising i mean i don't have a problem with weight either but i think i don't have a problem because i exercise you know i mean people are always saying to me how do you stay thin and it's because i exercise but i also watch what i eat you know but you'll come being twenty seven you don't really have to worry about your heart rate and that yet but as you get older you will well it might not mine because everybody's been telling me that too and so far it hasn't happened you know and i i just feel like you know you have to constantly weigh yourself and just keep an eye on it and cut back if it starts to get you know too high yeah but you don't play any other sports but basketball but do you ski being in utah i was wondering if you ski oh did it really cause i know that skiing in utah is is suppose to be great yeah yeah well i have never skied before but i have friends that go to utah all the time and they think it's really and they ski i guess there's a place where you can ski well is it [tahoe] where you ski from no that's nevada to california i guess yeah i am thinking about where you can ski over the state line but there's a there is a place in utah called a funny name but it's like oh heavenly is that it yeah i think it's called heavenly you've never heard of that well maybe it isn't in utah but they said they've skied heavenly and it sounded like you know that they skied really well and when they are actually talking about a place it's kind of funny oh yeah you can get really sore i know you i mean i've talked to people but most of these people ski enough so that they don't get sore and then is it your [quadriceps] that are the worst in your legs and yeah yeah well and it's strange that you can do like i did aerobics you know all the time and then i went horseback riding and still i was so sore and i couldn't get over you want to go first really well yeah i do a lot of exercise right now i'm into jazzercise which i absolutely love uh i started about two years ago because i gained some weight over the past few years and i wanted to get it back off and i was going through a divorce and i just found that running really made me feel good got out a lot of aggression i went to the gym every day and i ran on the treadmill and rode the bike and uh i felt really good i needed to do it and it was really helpful at the time now when i do those things they're boring i would rather be outside then in the gym doing this in one place and so i just recently discovered jazzercise about two months ago and i'm getting to be a good [dancer] from it and i'm just feeling really good i love the class it's real challenging so i'm really into that i really like that a lot it is it's aerobics but it's with dance steps it's an aerobic exercise and it's an hour straight and it's just uh it's a lot of fun i feel like i'm not just exercising because i'm dancing and i'm i'm getting much better my stamina is getting great for the dance floor so i mean it's just there's a lot of positive things with it so it is inside and i've been doing a lot of bike riding outside with the nice weather we've been having and i just enjoy that much more too than inside i have a thirteen year old daughter and so we go bike riding and it's nice we get to spend some time together rather than i go to the gym while she does her homework so i've enjoyed that part of it yeah and at the gym even in the class uh i it's not really a group where you chat a lot everybody's on their way to someplace and so you know i do have one friend who goes occasionally but basically i do it by myself in a group of maybe forty so there are there are it's more motivating that way i think yeah you could get a tape probably and do it at home in front of the t v but you probably wouldn't so yeah yeah yeah i can see it'll be a good break right uh_huh yeah yeah i think you do you feel very good after you exercise i think it's worth making the time for yourself you owe it to yourself and i think you do accomplish more after that and i think that it's just is good for your self esteem for everything because when you look better you feel better and it's just uh i think it's well worth it i just demand that time for myself now i've learned to do that and you know and it's i think it just benefits you all around so you have to because there's always more things to do there is always things that you can make priority to it but i just i don't demand a lot for myself and so you know i just feel entitled to it and i take it so no i've done some walking with friends in the past but i find that when you do that you do more chatting than you do exercise and that's not really beneficial so uh i don't have time like that and i spend enough time chatting around everywhere you know well uh no i i don't get as much exercise as i as i should as or as i would like to uh uh these days i seems to be to easy to get busy with other things uh i have in the past uh [jogged] and and run and every every january and every september i start out again and then it [tapers] off uh what about you uh_huh yeah uh_huh well now that is that uh that's related to the the aerobic uh okay yeah yeah yeah well uh okay now that's inside again right but do do you like to do it with other people i mean like the the jazzercise would be yeah yeah right but yeah right right but still there are there are other people there doing the doing the same thing in terms of motivation and incentive yeah yeah yeah uh that makes a difference doesn't it i i've one thing when when i have run and [jogged] uh i've always enjoyed doing it by myself and and not with the sense that it was uh uh chore or something that i was having to do i i've really enjoyed just the activity and uh i write software uh as far as the job and so getting out and being active uh is uh uh helps out the it's the the the change of pace and just getting out and around and i find that i can often you know often uh when i get around to doing it then i i feel better when i get back to work and uh uh also that that it my [subconscious] is working on things while i'm working and i i go back and i've got new ideas but still yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i think that's uh i think that's a good term demanding the time for yourself that you've just got to you've just got to right yeah well good well good well uh uh have you have you done any jogging i tell you you said you did on the bike and on the treadmill in in the uh club uh_huh yeah yeah yeah well my exercise program consists of uh you know it's it's a opportunity to stay alive really instead of you know wasting my my the you know the trying to exist on the [latency] of my youth the good health of my youth i'm and what i like to do is i like to stretch out and i like to run uh i'm i like to run get my heartbeat up i like to run about oh about two two and a half miles and then i like to work out on uh on the uh the [bailey] life cycle machines up here at the at the holiday spa and and i i think that you know i've had a regiment now for about you know ten fifteen years of of doing that and uh and i i kind of think it's uh it's a lot of work but i think it's uh it's a lot of work but i think it's uh it's the uh the amount of effort that's required to uh to stay healthy you know i have a sedentary job and uh unless you do something like that you're going to get sick well i uh two years ago i started having trouble with my knee and uh you know i've got you know i figured well it'll go away well i you know i'm i've had to reduce my program reduce my program and i've gained fifteen pounds and so uh you know it's you know i need to get back into swimming you know instead of running if i can't swim or i can't run i should be able to swim well i'm such a terrible swimmer and i i i really feel i can i can dedicate about an hour an hour and fifteen minutes to this effort but if it gets longer than that i i it i start not doing anything and so so i got a real problem in that regard uh it do you obviously are are not an exercise buff or else you'd be out there doing it well it's it's always a chore i mean i started doing this when i was about thirty five and now i'm fifty five and uh you know i i know that in i just know that i'm going to get blown away with some some piece of nonsense you know some health related thing is going to blow me away that's the same way i got too much weight on right now i need to lose fifty pounds you know i need to lose at least twenty you know but uh you know it's it's just uh i'm busy i'm doing a lot of traveling and uh it it creates a problem uh you know when you're on the road what sort of uh uh what other programs other than say running have you have you ever done anything at all uh_huh club what club are you with what club were you with oh okay so you're you're down you're downtown okay yeah you're down there on you know twentieth and eighteenth and f g oh well i'd uh well there's a there's a holiday spa down there on on k street i think something like that but uh i i go to the holiday spa here in [alexandria] and that's pretty good but you know evening time it gets pretty busy but generally you know i can i can get in and get a program you know but uh you know i i need to i need to [rededicate] myself to uh to doing this and uh i got a problem uh you know ever since my knee went bad of getting back [solidly] into it i mean i've been doing this for fifteen twenty years and you know and i'm i know i'm going to get i know it's going to bite me in the ass and so i i really don't want to want to uh you know back off on it well no when you're young you you can abuse your your all your systems and you can recover uh when you get to be my age and you start abusing your systems you get blown away and just wind up having to kiss your ass good bye you know and uh and so the object huh right yeah i'm i need to get i'm i'm pretty bad about that i'm lazy i should i know i want i always say that i need to get start running and i'm going to try and do that this summer because i never have time i i always put it off by the time i get back from classes it's late at night and i don't feel like going back over to the gym and running on the track or whatever because i'm i'm getting a gut here i got to get back into shape huh yeah yeah i mean i do it i guess i'm going to do it uh because i want to get in shape i'm not it's not something i really enjoy all that much that i'll i'll probably i mean once i get into it and i if i if i get into better shape then it'll be it won't be as much of a a chore to me yeah huh yeah right yeah i have uh sit ups or also last summer i was doing nautilus or last year i'm uh belong to a club right here got kind of expensive uh to to renew they wanted another fifty dollars that was a little bit too much money but uh doing a mix of nautilus and free weights i like that i'm sorry it's called oh what was it called city sports downtown washington yeah i'm at i'm at i go to george washington university yeah it's uh [plaza] right yeah yeah it's something i think uh i'm young i should get started getting into shape i don't want to i want i mean at one point it's going to be too late to do it yeah huh oh so what's your favorite exercise oh that's pretty good exercise do you drive a cart or do you carry your bag yeah it gets a long ways after a while yeah oh let's see i i play racquetball mostly um i don't play very much anymore because i've fractured my right ankle twice and uh fractured it on both sides and so it's kind of weak i'm afraid to get out there and try it again uh do do they give the employees time off during the day to go a lot of places do that now they'll they'll set aside you know like an hour a day that you can go exercise that's a pretty good idea because people who take advantage of it end up in better health and saves them on health care um yeah i like bowling too i haven't been for a while just don't have the time but uh i guess bowling and [racquetball's] about it for me walking every once in a while but not a great deal of that uh_huh uh_huh yeah well that's my uh i mean every time i've tried to go you know it's always there's always a league bowling and it it's just so you either have to wait or you're next to to league [bowlers] and after a while it just gets to be a pain yeah yeah especially here in raleigh we've got such little bitty bowling alleys got little bitty everything here yeah um a friend of mine works at uh i b m in charlotte and they've got a real nice building down there on a great big piece of land and it's a huge plant i mean this thing's just enormous and that's what they do at lunch time they go out and run around the building i'm not i was never into jogging i hated that when i was in high school playing football the coach was always making us run yeah i just sort of hated it from that point on well yeah it's that's a tough one to play i i used to play it when i was younger but took it out of me then and i'd hate to think what it would do to me now yeah i got to stick to more sedate sports as soon as i as soon as i can find me an ankle a good uh a good ankle brace i'm going to start playing some racquetball again but i'm not going out there with an [unsupported] ankle anymore i'm tired of running around on [crutches] for two months at a time and i'm not lucky enough to just go ahead and break it you know the things got to get fractured so that it never [heals] properly well i've got a pair of those uh that's those are the ones that i wear when i go out there um trouble is i can't get them tight enough to to really give me what i feel is support um so i'm i i i think probably just an [ace] [bandage] would work but i want to get one of those um padded ankle what you call its yeah it's going to cut off the circulation yeah yeah i i think i tried that one time a couple years ago and it did the same did that same thing you end up loosening it up and then of course you don't have any yeah i think i'll probably just have to go with one of those [splint] braces or something well i guess that's about it for exercise us old guys just don't do it very much do we well that's that's good exercise and i don't do enough of that either i sat down to a double dose of spaghetti tonight i um i like grilled cheese too well you know i i wonder though it's i think it really depends on the person i was reading an article in the paper the other morning these doctors are [baffled] about this eighty seven year old man who eats thirty boiled eggs a day did you see that and they're wondering where does that cholesterol go i think it is too and i and i think things like eggs and cheese anything like that i think it just depends on who you are because uh i know people who eat tons of that kind of stuff and they're just as healthy as can be i mean i i'm sort of strange in a way i'm i'm about twenty pounds overweight and i smoke but my blood pressure is about my last reading was just the other day it was one hundred two over seventy nine yeah good and low and uh i mean you'd think by looking at me my i'd have a bad heart and everything terrific heart great blood pressure jeez i'm not worried about it yeah exactly and and and even then you've got to watch the bread and the water yeah you never know what's in the water either well good talking to you you have yourself a good night okay are are you an exercise fanatic oh really well that's way north too i guess you have to swim inside huh really wow uh_huh oh well that's good that's that's one of the best ones i understand no stress on the joints yeah i guess so but as far as the weight bearing yeah that's true plus even if you lose weight and don't exercise it ends up just you know looking unhealthy wow do you swim like at a at a y or oh huh really is it like olympic size wow are you are you a t i employee what yeah well the reason i ask you i i'm a t i employee and uh we have a fitness center you know that's on site that makes it real real convenient because i tend to find that once i get home that's it you know i tend to not want to go anywhere after that but this way you know you can go to the fitness center right from work and they have aerobics and you know all the nautilus machines and all that sort of stuff we're not we're not high rollers like dallas we don't have a pool but oh that's good oh that's great yeah morning is usually a better time to exercise but i usually find that after work is when i have the time to do it you have honey dos yeah honey dos yeah well that's i i like to to work out some in the morning but it's not like you know i usually use the video or something like that to do plus i like to dance you know uh_huh uh_huh and and on saturdays i go to a jazzercise class that's my oh it's fun jazzercise is really fun yeah there there's a lot of energy i i i like to belly dance too but there's not the same you know you don't get the aerobic workout as much it's it's so much fun that you forget you're exercising you know aerobics you don't forget you know you're exercising oh and we started the bench aerobics too i don't know if you've seen that that's that's a fairly new thing it's just like uh one step you know it's like a box and you just step up and down and up and down and up down do different [variations] you know change feet and and you'd be surprised how quick that gets the [pulse] rate up it's a it's a lot quicker and and that way it's completely low impact there's no jumping or you know no jarring on the knee bones yeah uh_huh yeah that will do it yeah we have one of those too but it's boring oh but that wouldn't be boring like walking up stairs yeah right well do you count your [laps] or do you just have a time segment that you jeez yeah yeah well that's neat do you do you look forward to doing it or do you sometimes have to force yourself until you get started yeah yeah uh_huh and then when you don't for some reason you feel real lethargic it seems like like the the the less you exercise the [tireder] you are for some yeah yeah that's true sometimes i find i have to kick myself though to get started and once i get started you know it's it feels good wow do you have time to do that in your job uh_huh of course you probably i have i have waist length hair so you probably don't have that problem you know that's a problem with with getting getting that much wet but oh yeah well gee well that sounds neat and you do that like like almost every day or what about weekends oh water skiing or snow skiing oh uh_huh oh really oh that's good exercise oh really how how old are your kids are they oh that's a good age to start something like that uh_huh really little competition there really did they have a separate uh like class or something for the kids or is it everybody together uh_huh oh uh_huh yeah yeah did you all start this year or last year uh_huh do you all have have you had a good snow this year i guess i'm calling to tell you about my exercise program which is a little bit lacking right now i've slacked off in the last six months but for several years i have walked three miles a day are you uh and that my walking was a fast walk uh to get the heart rate up to an aerobic level and i in fact i was enjoying it so much uh that i was doing it like seven days a week and i i pretty much had to cut that back though to five uh i well it was about three uh_huh and i walked thirty minutes i did the uh slow walk kind of a normal walk for five and the aerobic walk for twenty and cool down walk for the last five but and and it was i was it was so much fun to watch the progress because as i uh went along when i started uh at first i had to uh i didn't have to use my arms all that much to uh you know get the heart rate up but then after about uh four weeks then i had to use them all the time and then i had to i found that i had to raise them above my head and kind of down my back to to get the heart rate up it was very it was progressive yeah i thought well now i guess probably six weeks before i had to do my arms the whole time the whole twenty minutes oh my gosh yes i have the cutest turned up tail you ever saw no no i did notice uh a lot of difference oh gosh yes uh_huh uh_huh well i think may be you like doing it alone you like doing it on your own time too i think so to well and i i was very pleased uh when uh during cold weather and i haven't lived in charlotte north carolina for a full year yet but uh when i lived in a colder climate i had access to one of those [schwinn] bicycles the ones that you you know you have to use your arms also and so on those days i did thirty minutes on the bike now that was a little boring because i did it alone and uh you know you can't read very very well if you're using your arms and you can't put a book on that type of arms but that was i was very lucky there but here i have dogs that i take uh on long walks and that makes it a lot better to have their company but as i said i'm not doing quite as well now because we're in a temporary situation and what i had uh also found that i guess it's like simple addition uh once it well it's easier to quit if you start uh uh stopping shall i say if you skip some days then uh it's awfully hard to get back to a regular routine uh_huh sure uh_huh yes yeah well and i i had support from my husband too which is very nice he felt that i needed to put that first and uh i don't believe a lot of woman always have that kind of support yes yes uh_huh yes yes i've had those and i think they're excellent uh-oh i'm sure oh my gosh yes i i think it's wonderful i've had it and on a regular basis and uh i found it a lot more [fatiguing] than my uh walking program even yes yes well it's been fun talking to you and i we shall you lots of luck with your endeavors okay well basically my habits are totally gone i used to exercise quite a bit and now i have a child and and um trying to do go to school back to college again so it's it's uh exercise is kind of forget it they sure do yeah my daughter yeah yeah uh she's three so three with a i think it's almost like she's got this endless energy i mean it's no longer nap time that kind of thing so yes yeah so yeah exactly so the exercise we can pretty much uh get from her uh she always wants to go outside and do things so i'm kind of uh she's an only child too so it's it's not like you can go out and say go out and play with other kids so it's uh_huh sure sure yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh sure uh_huh sure sure sure yeah yeah that's about what uh basically if we can get out and take a walk it's it's great but uh most of the time we can't so it's uh we're too busy doing other things but that also takes into account walking though when you think about it so it's oh sure sure uh_huh sure uh_huh uh_huh to [loosen] it up yeah yeah that's true so yeah oh yes uh_huh uh_huh so oh boy sure trying to keep up with the nineteen months uh sure they're into everything the baby uh_huh oh he was cranky sure once you lose that sure that's very true it wasn't too long ago where i was doing the same thing and that uh totally gets your mental capabilities thrown off totally when they're uh tired and uh you wake up in the middle of the night and it's my daughter used to be pretty much on a regular basis for that so daddy just came home so the house is starting to [liven] up here now but uh that's about it that's kind of how my exercise is right now is just basically running after a three year old so uh_huh uh_huh it sure does yeah sure sure well it was really nice talking to you then okay uh_huh thank you okay um well i the thing i like to do the most is swim and i was doing that real regularly but i am expecting right now and sick and uh so i have kind of slowed down a little bit but anyway that's the thing that i've found works the best for me is is just doing lap swimming oh do you oh did you play in high school oh uh_huh oh yeah oh well i know my husband likes to do that he plays racquetball too yeah uh_huh he does some he's he's played it since i guess he was in college and then um he plays uh two or three times a week so he's a member of the sports mall in salt lake and he'll go on his noon hour and he still likes to do that so that i know that that's one thing that he likes to do and i think that [relieves] stress too yeah oh well i think i do it for uh weight reasons i mean you know to so you don't gain weight but and also i i know i feel a lot better when i do but i like i said i have just been really sick and and just can't i'm just almost too tired i i was going um in the mornings what well yeah we we also have an eleven month old and a six year old and and so it's just kind of um finding the time for me to exercise is another thing but i really do like to do it but anyway oh gee well like the kids kind of keep me exercising too just chasing after them i guess yeah so you do you have much time to do that since you're in college now and so it just kind of helps to work it in there huh yeah i think that's probably true with anything when you work some exercise in it just seems like things seem to go more smoothly i don't know that should be a part of i guess everybody's daily things oh i know my husband wants me to take up golf that's another thing he does and you know i don't know that i see that as a real big exercise though i don't know i've i've been a few times but that's something i am really bad i mean you know it takes me a million strokes to get it in so oh so you do golf huh uh_huh oh yeah well do you ski uh_huh oh have you yeah you felt some muscles that you oh i haven't been skiing for years huh_uh not downhill we do have cross country [skies] and and i i enjoy that but i don't know downhill i was always real bad at that too and it's just the thoughts of it kind of scare me i was one of these out of control skiers but well you what oh well so you have are you just starting out at school oh are you oh huh oh you are well that's exciting congratulations yeah well good well yeah it's nice to talk to you and good luck in everything okay you too yes i do i uh go on long walks whenever i can and uh well when i when i can fit it into my schedule and the weather's right i like to walk uh-oh three four miles a day uh_huh well that sort of same sort of thing happened to me i used to be a regular swimmer i i taught at a university and i you know could use the pool every day if i wanted and since moving away from the university environment i've uh now it's kind of difficult to find a pool that's convenient and affordable to swim in but uh what university were you at uh_huh did you say you're at the university of iowa iowa city huh i i i visited there once quite a few years ago had a friend who was in the linguistics department there uh_huh well you do you have contact with any of the uh people in linguistics yeah uh_huh well if you ever run into uh to cathy reagan say hi to her for me i think she's still there well how [briskly] do you walk do you think how how fast do you walk do you think uh_huh well a brisk walker can go maybe what four or five miles an hour so if it takes you a third an hour to get in you're probably going oh i would say at least a mile and a half probably yeah the winter of course even here in uh in northern texas we do get a little cold weather but most of the winter i can go walking just about anytime i want to this winter though it's rained so much that uh there have been times where see my uh favorite uh area to walk is a a greenbelt they have right through plano here and uh you know it's it surrounds a little stream over much of its extent you can walk for miles there and never cross a street you you go under the streets you know but uh when the uh when the water is too high uh you'd get washed away they have signs up there warning people to stay away so we've had that uh a number of times recently not to mention the mud of course well you can get you can do the other thing i do is uh i have a little exercise bike that uh wasn't too expensive i got a cheap one but you can really work up a sweat on it yeah yeah i i really prefer outdoor exercise i'm afraid that my favorite indoor exercise is eating apple pie a la mode and that doesn't help very much hi i'm bill from raleigh where's that at west texas okay your the first person i talked to from texas i've been getting phone calls from all over the country yeah washington state and oregon and i forgot where all else pennsylvania new york i i i's i never call anybody i just let them call me yeah sure okay what kind of exercise do you do or do you do any well i am too i'm a couch potato i've never played racquetball no oh i've tried weight training i just i just can't get into it no it and it well i don't like having the sore muscles i like to jog yeah i i used to jog about six miles a day and then i i tore the ligaments in my ankle so i i don't really run that much but i i i jog some about a mile or so now when i have time yeah that's that's basically me i'm i'm i exercise more in the summer and spring than i do um like this time of year because it's too cold here yeah well i i i think forty degrees is too cold so yeah that's that's basically what i do i like i like to um to walk too i guess they said it's a good form of exercise i guess uh if you consider that exercise i walk a lot but i i have such a normal fast pace i don't really think it's right i i mean i i've always walked fast so i don't know i need to get on some kind of exercise program though because i'm i'm starting to gain weight i'm getting at that age where just start putting on the pounds yeah it it it has caught up with me in the past year or so i've put on about twelve pounds so i need to work and get it off i thought about doing a diet but i really don't need to diet i just need to exercise i think when i get off work i usually come home and fix dinner and watch t v and then i'm tired i take a nap whatever oh well i work eight to five so i mean that's right i do accounting and and it's on a computer all day and i'm so brain dead when i get off work it's kind of like just don't even talk to me just let me sit here and [vegetate] well i don't i don't know they say once you get in a routine of exercising it gives you a lot more energy i know when i ran um i kind of got like addicted to it you know you see these people um i never was die hard you know they they had a story on the news about people becoming addicted just like uh people that do drugs it's it's a high for them i've got a uh uh a real good friend that i went to school with lives here too she works for the news and observer and she's the one who got me started running in in college i was never die hard like she was it was we had a sleet storm and she was outside running in that [icicles] hanging down and all this other kind of stuff and i i told her she was crazy but she runs about thirteen miles now she's really training and i when we were in college we both chain smoked like [freight] trains and she would get out and run every day and it never would bother her or it's like it won't bother me and her husband made her after she got married her husband made her stop so so now she's just like home leaving from work uh i don't know if i mentioned to you last time we talked but uh i just recently retired from the army active duty twenty years and of course when you're active duty military you are required to not only to maintain a certain level of uh weight and physical fitness but you're required to take a what we call a p t test physical uh physical training test uh twice a year so we were constantly expected to exercise and be in shape and then we had specific standards we had to meet based on our age group and if you didn't pass the test then they put you on what they called remedial p t and every morning you have to go to the company and jog in [formation] which really did not prepare you for the next physical fitness test but was more a form of punishment you mean what do i do now well as the result of that i really got to enjoy uh long uh distance running and so i i trained quite regularly and i i [raced] quite often i tried to do like a ten [kilometer] foot race uh once a month or so now that i am out i pretty much kept with it until i got a job in virginia and i live in maryland and so by the time i i get up early and drive and hour to an hour and a half here which is about fifty miles work all day fifty miles back on the capitol beltway and of course it's dark by the time i get home and so i have to admit that i that i have fallen off uh slightly or maybe even considerable or maybe even completely and uh so i am not doing much now which concerns me because i just had my forty ninth birthday so i want to keep at it because i know that if you don't uh there's there's lots of problems that you can have yeah and so uh i want to get back at it as soon as spring breaks and uh but what we have done is uh [decreased] considerably the amount of fat that we consume in our diet and uh how about yourself um uh_huh uh_huh um so you have good [sustained] work out oh yeah yeah that's that is a long time to have at it but that's of course uh there's a lot of sudden fast changes in direction and i don't know does that cause you any injuries or anything no uh_huh either an elbow in the eye right uh_huh the nice thing i liked about foot racing was that uh for me it was pretty much non competitive uh i didn't have to worry so much about being a part of a team or anything so i could just compete against myself or the clock or the next guy ahead of me and uh that fulfilled my [urge] to compete while at the same time keeping me fit but i did uh i had the privilege of going to what the army calls our master fitness trainer course which was a month long course at fort ben harrison indiana and i learned a lot from that about uh the difference between aerobic and [anaerobic] exercise that sort of thing so at least from that i realize the importance of it and uh uh not so much that but i have noticed a difference because i am not exercising as much anymore in the uh in my heart rate which slowly creeps up as you get less and less fit and uh i haven't weighed myself in a good while but uh i just had a recently had a physical and they said that my uh [triglycerides] and the cholesterol and all that were in pretty good shape and my wife was keeping real close track of it because she uh wanted to see what effect it would have on her and it she showed a significant improvement through just simple things like you're going for low fat lunch meats for uh when we bring our lunches to work and uh uh matter of fact i've very seldom uh use sugar or salt either uh it takes a little getting use to but uh uh skim milk is what we drink now and that took a little getting use to but uh we have well at least she has noticed a significant change in her cholesterol and uh and [triglycerides] which is which is good yeah me too i guess it's the east coast time you know everybody else is asleep oh yeah yeah i've initiated a few at the office like that and it takes a while during the day uh well it's an interesting topic want to get going okay uh well i exercise fairly regularly i work for a company out here uh in livingston new jersey [bellcore] bell communications research and uh we have in the corporate center where i work a health [enhancement] center h e c they call it and it's about as convenient as can be it's uh just two floors down from me and uh so i exercise regularly during the daytime when i'm at the office and they have oh a bank of maybe six jogging machines they have a a uh progressive weight machine that you know you dial up the weights on it it's not nautilus but it's similar to that and then they have bicycles and free weights but they also have people that [chart] your progress uh and encourage you to come if you slip off a couple of weeks they send you a nice friendly aggressive [reminder] that says hey we haven't seen you for a while and they also provide [towels] and shower facilities and [lockers] and everything i've been through the routine i guess like most people where you know i joined health clubs i've been at the university where you know it was a pretty good distance away you know quarter of a mile walk and uh nothing seemed to work for me as well as having it in my own building doesn't work at at at home you know i've bought home exercise equipment and stuff and uh no i generally go down there uh [midafternoon] uh the time that seems to be best for me is around two o'clock two thirty yeah and that's you know there are people down there all the time you could almost hold meetings sometimes because people tend to set up a regular schedule and go down there uh but the the [etiquette] of the place is that you don't really talk too much business when we're down there uh yeah yeah it just you know works out that way uh and there have been a lot of studies i have friends who uh who work in the recreation field for companies like this and actually uh a break like that increases productivity and and with the [commensurate] uh increase in physical fitness by the people who attend these centers regularly you have uh fewer [absentees] and things like that so the corporation can justify it pretty well and it's not like i'm taking time away from the company i probably put in extra hours because i'm now physically fit and [reenergized] i mean that my routine around two two thirty to go down there for an hour probably makes the last three hours of the day then more productive than i would if i you know just sort of went on through so yeah yeah and that's what the kind of the late afternoon is i you know have a very light lunch because i know i'm going to be working out and uh you know usually then my lunch is just a a quick tuna sandwich at my desk so then i sort of skip that luncheon time and uh you know catch up on reading and then work out so that that's kind of my routine uh_huh yes yeah uh_huh yeah yeah we have the [nordic] machine and i tried it a couple of times it just made me feel stupid and uncomfortable and [uncoordinated] so i don't do that it is used regularly by you know people but uh i i didn't like it this is going to be very boring because i don't no and uh unfortunately it shows i uh i'm supposed to i'm way overweight but uh i've had a problem with uh high blood pressure which of course is directly connected to it and my doctor's trying to get my blood pressure under control before i start in any exercising so anyway i did join the uh uh the texins up at uh uh [springcreek] and i've been up there a few times but didn't accomplish too much because i just run down too quick uh that would have to be mine i hate exercising it's so boring uh i would much prefer to like walk through the woods uh_huh isn't it amazing well we um back when my i have four sons they're all grown now and and two of them are married with children of their own but when they were just uh preteen [agers] we uh we decided the only way we could afford vacations is to go camping and we thoroughly enjoyed it i mean we went whole hog we had the tents and everything else and and pretty much roughed it sleeping on the ground and all and uh i like to think that my children my sons learned a lot about uh the outdoors uh uh being self [sustaining] uh uh i would have no doubt what so ever that any one of them could be dropped in the middle of no where and they'd they'd exist somehow uh_huh oh wow okay that is understandable oh yes i'm very familiar with it very beautiful place i've been up there several times oh what a shame uh_huh well good i'm glad to hear that about the only thing uh i might suggest is uh do the same thing again [introduce] her to a to a spider at a reasonable distance where she isn't frightened and uh and the the nightmare i'm sure was just a a freak i'll bet it wouldn't happen again well you couldn't pick a better way of doing it with your family and an you're certainly all getting an education while you're doing this exercise as far as we're concerned uh_huh oh definitely definitely it was a learning experience uh now we i guess we camped just about every public campground in the state of florida oh yes yes well they used to be but now they're trying to really put it to the the the uh visitors i think they're doing a very stupid thing well they charge extra now they there was a time here a few years ago when they put an extra tax on all the campgrounds and the uh motels and hotels so they are are uh you know really putting it to the visitors and people got a little fed up with it and suddenly the the [foundling] fathers of uh of florida found out that they were losing [beaucoup] bucks people were going elsewhere for uh their vacations exactly so they got rid of that tax in a hurry i can appreciate that uh_huh well the the trick is to stop frequently and let the kids get out and run now uh i'm alone now myself and and i i have graduated from sleeping on the ground to uh going in a motor home well the fact i live in it and there's just my dog and i now my dog is a wonderful [traveler] but i do have to stop for her quite frequently and it works out fine i mean i stop i'm never in a hurry to get anywhere like it takes me two days to get to memphis no it's uh it's about an eight or nine hour drive really but uh i make it in two days because i i don't push it oh definitely oh absolutely [incidentally] oh i can't remember the name of that place there's a beautiful park up there and they do have a uh uh-oh sort of a hotel a lodge a lodge that's what it is and it's just off the interstate and the kids would love it because they have [playgrounds] for the children and all and they have uh several nature trails it's just below hot springs oh it's lake something uh_huh well the next time you go across the state line or when you come back in be sure and stop at one of the texas welcome bureaus and ask them for their literature on the uh state national parks in the state of texas and you'll you'll get a collection from them you wouldn't believe there were so many parks in the state well it it there there are so many for have you ever been out to tyler state park all right there's a place to take them and uh-oh good heavens up there just this side of texoma not texoma uh [texarkana] there are three or four state parks up there and they're all great and and again there's the nature trails for your exercising we almost forgot our subject of the day there but be sure and stop at one of those texas tourist bureaus and get their literature well it's been my pleasure uh [gina] [gina] is that with a g that's uh uh italian heritage isn't it yeah i just started about uh two months ago consistently doing it uh yeah i uh i walk jog three times a week for about an hour yeah so i've just gotten up to uh being able to jog one and a half to two miles and then uh about mile and a half of walking so oh oh okay what kind of work do you do oh okay yeah do you consider that your exercise yeah what kind of exercise program would you think you might want to get into uh_huh maintain it oh well what kind of things do you like to do like uh you like to run or play a sport or bicycle ride uh_huh yeah well it's kind of hard on the joints yeah there's a lot of other things to do bicycle riding is pretty good for you you don't have to put any uh shock you know it doesn't shock your joints or no pounding or anything yeah so you think you might get an exercise bicycle oh yeah yeah that's the problem with with that is like if you want to be consistent and then the weather's bad you can't really or get out when it's cold or whatever yeah so i have an exercise bike at home but i don't use it it just kind of sits there in the corner but yeah and the reason that i'm doing it is because i have a friend doing it with me otherwise i wouldn't have the motivation yeah well it's you know i'm a student and i'm in school all day and i'm really tired the end of the day and a lot of times i just want to go home you know and and eat but knowing that my friend's waiting for me you know i meet her at the stadium where we work out uh it makes me go and then after i do it i i'm glad i went and i enjoy and i have more energy after you do it so and we encourage each other so oh that's great yeah it's hard you let other things get in the way and and you're busy yeah if you have a family and yeah it's kind of hard to it's like you have to schedule a time and stick to it but it's hard when you don't have somebody to do it with you it's easy to just say well i'm not going to do it today but i'll do it tomorrow and then you never do it uh_huh oh yeah that would be tough yeah well uh_huh yeah well maybe you can you can uh i don't know do a lot of walking like you are and do [calisthenics] or something i don't know or get an exercise bike and in the house oh yeah yeah i have a friend that has one and she said it's really really good it works a a lot of your muscles and uh she just does it thirty thirty minutes three times a week and that's not too much time yeah yeah uh_huh see if you just keep that up you know that's not too much time and then i bet it will really improve your you know your cardiovascular system and no no i get enough without having to do it if i exercised i'd be too thin uh_huh i just have one of those [metabolisms] that um doesn't require it really if i if yeah well i think you kind of are born with those type of [genes] uh_huh well i did have a program of walking because i enjoyed doing it in the evening and i had a dog at that time and i walked him and i kind of lost like ten pounds and i said whoa better stop uh_huh uh_huh well my daughter really uh is into uh fitness uh course she's in uh the nursing profession and she knows how beneficial it is even though she says mom you you know you really need to exercise because it does a lot for your body other than maintain your your weight yes and and she has a very strenuous um exercise mode that she keeps herself in plus she has um a family that she takes care of and a forty hour work week so i'm really amazed at her stamina but she um has inherited a little problem from her father's side because he did have a weight problem but he [maintains] his weight now because he [jogs] like uh nine miles a day yeah and he gets that [adrenalin] high and i guess that really i've never reached it um uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i think the old [adage] is quite true in this case with exercise that [moderation] is the key if you know your limits and you stay within those limits i think that you and you're happy with the exercise that you do because i think it's um very [imperative] that you have a happy um attitude about exercise otherwise it becomes a chore and a task and and you you think of it as work and um it doesn't really uh do a lot for you but if you think of it as a uh a source of uh well being and health and uh uh have a positive attitude i think you you go a long way with that uh_huh uh_huh huh yes you're just uh focused then on maintaining your health because if you do the exercise naturally you're going to feel a lot healthier oh that's good that's very good uh_huh well that's marvelous uh_huh wow uh_huh uh_huh well i think the way you're talking now that you're already motivated for that goal oh sure okay i think it does a lot for your mental um exercise too uh keeping um a clear mind i think your mind is clearer when you exercise uh_huh uh_huh yeah you yeah you you've beat yourself over the head long enough yeah sure yeah and it has an effect on your family life too uh_huh and not show uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well one of uh eating is one of the [joys] of life you know and uh yeah well it is for a lot of people and uh you you surely should get satisfaction out of eating you know because you socialize and you're maintaining your your body uh you're you're maintaining all of your uh faculties that run the body your brain and your [flesh] and your bones and all of that and eating is a pleasure that is one of the basic uh [motivators] in life is eating uh_huh uh_huh sure and they've got these marvelous health clubs too that you know you can use their facilities uh_huh uh_huh oh yes uh_huh uh_huh oh certainly well that's fine i think we covered quite a bit well it was nice talking with you take care yes i do but not as much as i used to well i go you know the y is right across from the church so i go to the y m c a and i do nautilus i i lift weights and i do it basically really i do it three three times a week well i did up until like when my allergies got until like august and my allergies got so bad because i walked and uh i needed like you know they have [stairmaster] at the y but i just can't seem to get myself on the [stairmaster] and i don't like exercising at all i mean now you know now you are huh i hate it and you know thank goodness the y is right there i mean if it took any of more effort at all i would never do it yeah i was going to ask you what you do uh_huh uh_huh oh i like to walk too and i like to walk outside i don't like to walk inside to the yeah the parks and rec place it's nice but still it's inside uh_huh uh_huh we have to talk three minutes i think but anyway that's about all i would have to say about exercising anyway i do it but i don't like it and i've decided that exercise has nothing whatsoever to do with my weight it's what i eat because yeah i don't know that that's true for me because i lost all that weight that i lost without ever exercising i had not started exercising and i lost thirty pounds but when i started exercising then i started eating more because i thought oh well you know now that i'm exercising and it just doesn't work you know i feel better from exercising but it doesn't really control my weight yeah it does well they you know like forty minutes basically like months yeah yeah that's true uh_huh yeah and i did too like when i was walking you know the most and i have had a real good program going i had much more energy and i literally would go walk and be a be just a little tired at first but then i would have a lot of energy even right after i walked right because i'm sure you are exhausted too i know yeah well and it clears your mind and you know i'm sure you are real stressed out and tired and oh yeah if you do both if you are at both of them uh_huh uh_huh well if you are there you know so do you do any yeah yeah well it's it's hard to get uh it's hard to maintain a a real level of uh i don't know what you'd call it i guess motivation at least for me it is i mean yeah i actually i lift weights pretty regular now and i have done it for the last oh i don't know ten twelve years so it works pretty well for me but still it's like you say the motivation is not always there especially in the cold weather and i'm not real used to the cold up here anyway just because i'm from florida really so yeah a bit a bit so uh but i don't know it's it's good to get a you get that good feeling you know when you get done and and you're glad you did it i guess but uh right sure uh_huh that makes it rough because then sure yeah that right and that just screws up your whole schedule yeah oh wow you're sounding a lot clearer now oh yeah that's pretty weird uh but yeah i i don't know i i do a lot of stuff or i at least i have in the past done a lot of weird a lot of different activities uh and moving down here is in a way kind of or moving up here is pretty bad because i can't do as much as i used to because the weather just doesn't permit it you know so exactly and and it is you know i mean exactly it's just a hassle at times sure everybody gets off of work right uh_huh sure oh yeah kind of like a [soloflex] or something uh_huh oh that's good yeah right uh-oh learn to take it easy right uh_huh sure right uh_huh right yeah it it would be too much of a hassle yeah oh you do uh_huh alright [ms] kathy so uh what do you do do you do it regularly and so forth uh_huh well uh i have been so busy working i just retired about two weeks ago thank you my exercise basically has been uh walking that i could get in which really hasn't been quite enough but i could very definitely tell the difference when i have two or three hours off and i run around on campus i am retired from penn state university and when i have an afternoon to walk around on campus i i uh very definitely see a difference and it i know that walking is good for you and uh i keep reading that it is much better for you than running because of the actions of the joint and so forth but uh tell me about uh your exercise did you take your exercise because you had a problem or you just wanted to stay young and light or whatever uh_huh how many how many hours a week do you estimate you perform these things an hour a day uh_huh uh_huh do you ever have a time when you don't get this exercise in and notice that your weight goes up or anything like that oh it's so you can tell the difference uh_huh i i understand what you are saying well what about eating do you uh do anything about the the type of food you eat is that uh or do you just eat a normal balanced meal to go with that uh_huh yeah that that does keep you busy so you well uh well there are just two of us now my three children have all moved out so uh diet wise i am trying to keep us on a low uh weight a low fat type of uh diet my wife has high cholesterol so i am trying to keep that down and i do notice that when you go through periods such as christmas and so forth where you eat out more often than normal if you don't get the exercise in your weight weight goes up and uh for me exercise is one of the nicest ways of bringing that weight down and no it's up until now it has been mostly by myself because i would have been downtown and as i say walking around on campus picking up mail and doing things like that and running downtown uh during my lunch period well it gives me an opportunity to get some walking in yeah we have a bicycle in the house uh the kind that you pump you know that you can change the [loading] and she rides that and that seems to be uh probably other than walking that is probably one of the better things you can do have you ever tried one of those uh_huh uh_huh i was thinking with uh didn't you say you have four children with four children and sometimes there may be times you can't get out to go play you need to stay home maybe one of these mechanical bicycles that would be very helpful to you well very good well i wish i could get my weight down i need to get out and get some exercise uh uh as i say i have just retired so i am just starting to have a few days to uh approach that subject and i am considering it i am going to get on that bicycle that we have and uh start doing some riding and i am sure that is going to be the [quickest] way to get things under control no i have one that lives in amsterdam holland and uh one lives in uh near [warrington] pennsylvania and the other one is in new jersey so well i i have done research at penn state i have uh not teaching i have done research in under water acoustics well i didn't yeah yeah i end up being uh we're fixing to go on vacation so i'm running here and there and everywhere and yeah it the recorder came on i went oh boy how do i miss today because i thought if i'd be there right now i couldn't have taken this call so my guilt feelings come [rushing] through but uh usually yeah i try to um go to i have a membership at fitness and figure world here uh_huh yeah well it's it's it's kind of like oh your split level house its got the male stuff on one side uh and then it has a nautilus equipment that male or female can use and then it's got your aerobics room which is coed and then it's got the female side which has all their nautilus that they can use by theirselves and their own [sauna] uh no not most of them most it's mostly female oh yeah the steps i'm still not sure about it yet um i yeah i'm too busy concentrating if i'm going to twist my ankles or something yeah yeah because i have broken both my ankles so i'm real leery about you know stepping and looking and well i didn't i don't know how it could be um i'm i'm thinking it may be just a fad and will pass with everything else oh yeah yeah uh and you know the boxes get pretty tall and i um i don't know i haven't got to the [tallest] one yet and it hasn't the i did uh when i first started it bothered my knees behind my knees that's the only place i was sore and i thought well i must not be doing them right or or something because that i have no need for that muscle back there so so i'm you know i can see where it because it effected my knees and i did regular aerobics like last night with without the boxes and i got more of a workout and it was a no bounce class and i still got more of a workout as far as in you know stamina et cetera yeah now i've been to that i haven't been to that yet it just doesn't move fast enough for me i don't think i've got to have something hyper really i've never tried it so i guess i've i ought to try it before i think it's not fast enough yeah yeah i've never i guess i ought to try i don't know it just never appealed to me as much as as as uh just for real hard aerobics does for some reason and and then the weights and i'm really um like in the the step machines uh i'm not sure what it is no oh when they first started me i had a girl who was training me and she'd only been there three weeks and these guys on each side of me are just pumping it like you know and i'm going there's got to be something wrong here and the guy looks over and says he's got you started on ten so let's turn it down and then i was keeping up with him you know but it was funny because i thought i am like in slow motion compared to everybody around me and i felt like way out of shape and it just happened to be the dial was wrong but yes yeah yeah i am more i used to do i used to run in the mornings and in i'm just much more stretched out by the evening from work and everything because i was really having uh [backaches] and stuff when i'd get halfway through the day i couldn't figure out why oh yeah yeah it could be of course i don't know it could be great for business oh my gosh so well i'm looking forward to it uh we're going to san diego yeah i have family that lives out there so well thanks yeah oh we have a lake party this weekend so i'm really kind of going ugh but yeah i've i've yeah if it's good we've we've been out a couple times and gotten into the swing of it so we're we're ready we go to we stay here ski here lake [beltin] yeah yeah okay thanks bye all right i guess this is a great time to talk about fitness with everybody and their new year's [resolutions] and and going out and getting their record regular exercise program uh do you exercise regularly tell me about that if you would uh_huh yes wow well that's great that's fantastic do you have that set up where you can uh listen to some music or read a book or you just uh oh good so you're good you're using yeah you don't see a whole lot on a stationary bike yeah oh okay uh_huh yes yes well you've got me at a disadvantage i do not have a regular regiment i do exercise periodically but it's whenever i have the time i uh i have a problem in that i don't make the time and i i understand the importance of it and in fact when i was in high school and college i was on all sorts of athletic teams and and regular programs but since i've gotten into a new job and into my uh career and into a young family time seems to escape me right now but uh one thing that i really enjoy is that uh i have bicycles and i have two older boys that they like to ride bicycles with me and we ride as a family and you know uh i actually live in plano but i'm working here in dallas and they have some excellent bike paths where you can go and ride for miles and miles and days and days and not see the same scenery twice which is really fun and uh one thing that i've been doing also is that mind you it's not regularly but uh i like to go out and go jogging and i do that and the boys get on their bikes and uh we we they ride along and i jog along and it's a nice time to spend some some time with the boys too so i'm trying to coordinate you know my family time in conjunction with my exercise time exercise program and uh we really seem to enjoy that and uh there's a couple of reasons for that it's my boys are very sports minded even at their young age and uh one of them's in soccer and the other one just loves to and so we get out and and do this and i i found that it's very helpful to them also in my oldest boy's soccer league that he doesn't seem to run out of breath as much as the other boys do and he can stay in longer and uh and uh so i i don't have a a regular one but i really would like to set my priorities straight and set and set aside time to do that i thought of different things i thought about going at the same time every day in the morning but i'm generally uh getting up and heading off to work around six or six thirty which means i'd have to get up way early in the morning the [wee] hours of the morning to do that and uh i've also tried to set aside time in the afternoon or evening but uh things generally pop up that [preclude] me from from doing that so i just need to get into a habit uh_huh uh yes i do uh_huh oh okay uh_huh well great uh_huh oh okay um well on a daily basis uh at lunch time i take a brisk walk for twenty minutes along with a friend at work i am uh paying for a lifetime membership with president's health spa well i don't i don't get there very often but uh i figure one of these days i will uh_huh uh_huh well i have an exercise bike uh also that's that's in my my house and it just sits there not doing me very much good uh_huh uh_huh well i i'm from new york and i'm a lot more inspired here in dallas than i was there because there is a lot more uh open space and you just see a lot more people doing it you know outside all of the time and huh uh_huh speaking of bicycling i saw a uh a video in uh [blockbusters] and it was something for you to sit on your bike and look at while you're you're uh you're doing your workout have you yeah it's like you're going through hills or something and yeah have you have you watched one of those yeah oh wow yeah yeah uh i keep saying i'm going to uh rent one and maybe i i'll get to to get on my bike and use it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well they have those [steppers] in president's although i haven't i haven't used one of them but i do see people on them and they they're supposed to be really really really a great uh workout uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i've been on the [rowing] machine at uh president's and uh i i like that well well one thing i find that you know once the first time i joined and went in there they they measured me and and weighed me and all this stuff and wrote my name down on a little card and they take you around they show you all the equipment and then you never hear from them again you know you you're really basically on your own you know they tell you how many of these to do and many of those to do and then you you know they never like call you back and say well it's time for us to see how uh_huh right right well isn't that the well i just started going back to aerobics it's three times a week and it just the minute you get off work you got to run over there change clothes do that come home take a bath you know get cleaned up and there's always people at our house and things going on and it it's hard it's hard to fit it in and i'm not one of these that loves aerobics anyway we're going snow skiing in march so i'm wanting to get in shape before we went so that i wouldn't just fall over dead up there but i thought as soon as this is over i am quitting i just no and i you feel good after you you know you work out but it's always a mental chore for me to get [psyched] up to go but once i get there i'm all right oh i know i saw that i want that oh you're kidding it is yeah and the but the fact that all the movements that they do are exactly what you need to but the fact that it's songs that you like and movements that are not so hard uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's the only video i have even considered buying i think so i think they're around twenty dollars apiece aren't they yeah uh_huh i know i have a friend that lives in dallas and she every day goes to some gym and they work out on all kinds of machines and the whole bit and i just thought you must be kidding and then they got to a while they'd go before work maybe work out for an hour i thought you all are eaten up with it just yeah just eaten up with it but they're young and they're single and that kind of stuff uh_huh and i said well that's what's the matter with you get married and you won't care really i don't have any children i all my friends do i've got one that the minute she had the baby she lost every bit of the weight and was right back skinny little thing again and i thought you make me sick but she's young she's about twenty twenty two and i thought well that's what it is you're just you're just a child uh_huh some people i don't know i've got another friend that i'm twenty nine and she's twenty nine after she had her son she said i was just too busy to eat she had a two year old and then she had had another one and she says i just don't have time to eat she says i one i'm fiddling with one and then i'm fiddling with the other one and she said i just at nighttime i think boy i don't think i've had anything to eat today and that's how she lost hers yeah well really uh_huh uh_huh well yeah uh_huh that was always fun oh yeah we're just getting okay so um yes we do keep uh well we started out keeping a budget about two years ago we have a computer here at the house and i made a lotus spreadsheet and went through the year using all of our our checkbook to figure out what we spent each time and whether we were over or under for each month and then basically since then what i've done is is keep track of it through the checkbook so that based on whatever we've got coming in the check coming in then how much i'm spending each half of the month and then trying to also because our house payment is once a month that's our our biggest uh expense so i take half of that amount out of my checkbook each with each paycheck even thought it's really still there so that i can keep uh uh good balance a running total yeah through the month what do you all do is it is it hard to keep track of it or does it work out pretty well and and you're staying within your budget and everything is working pretty good you don't have to go out and borrow it somewhere and do that that's a good choice we've been trying we're trying to uh do that this year we've budgeted the money that we used to spend we were spending on a coda account with t i and then money we were also buying stock with for that year we've taken that this year and said we're going to pay off all of our credit cards and uh we have uh another loan with the bank and so we hope by the end of this year that by doing that we'll be free and clear that's good to be in that kind of shape what are you all trying to do long term uh_huh yeah mostly what we're doing we've worked we've done the uh coda account with t i where they we put in so much a month and then they or so much a pay check and then they match it so that's that's worked out pretty good and then i used to work for t i and i have when i retired from there or left i took the money i that i had in mine and put it in an i r a and we had an out we had an existing i r a so we have both of us have some money in an i r a that we're also trying to figure to put it we're putting it in c d's right now and then we're also looking at it in possibly getting a mutual fund yeah the other thing that we've done that that was really nice to see we had one of the financial companies um uh john [hancock] company came out and their agent did a long term analysis based on salary and uh what we were what what our uh goals were on a long term budget in terms of retirement kids college paying off the house buying a different house um special thing buying land and building our own house and they did an analysis for us based on what we were putting in and the time frame that we wanted to look at and then gave us a good idea back you know some good information back on whether or not we were going to achieve those goals and or not and what we needed to do so that we could achieve them and the money we could put in at what time yeah that that's the other financial thing i guess that we've done is with our life insurance is since i'm at home now is is figuring out uh what we would need if something happened to my husband or what he would need if something happened to me that's a a big thing to think about okay i guess that's most of my um financial plans right now is is there anything you'd like to add well it's been nice talking to you bye bye uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh a running total yeah uh we've we've uh taken how much we have you know write down how much we have coming in each month and then uh we've at the beginning of the year we sat down and determined how much we could spend we sat made up different accounts like you know we've set a budget for each you know household expenses or food and clothing and entertainment and then our our own fun money and just stuff like that and then we write down each each time we spend something we write down in a book and at the end of the month we [tally] it up to see how close we you know we we try to stay within a certain budget so um it takes some it takes some dedication to do it but it it works out real well so uh_huh yeah yeah i stay i have to stay within it so i you know and then we have that you know if you can't stay if something comes up and you can't stay within it then we have uh you know a budget for you know like we call our slush fund or something and an unexpected comes up then you're not you know you don't feel it so [strapped] right yeah because we don't you know we don't charge anything that we can't pay off by the end of the month you've got paper under your table uh_huh uh_huh to be out of that free yeah the only thing we have it to pay off is our is a automobile loan and our house payment and that's the only thing we ever we try to stay out of debt huh oh it's long term we just he you know his retirement plan and then to coda and stuff like that that's all we and you know we just have our life insurance for right now so we don't have any long term you know in stocks or anything like that right now so yeah that's what we're doing uh_huh yeah when ever we get enough saved we stick it in a c d for a while and then uh you know and then when if we need it we wait until it it's expired and then so uh_huh uh_huh or not yeah uh_huh that sounds interesting we've never done we have you know just our our life insurance guy has come out you know and he's set up uh you know determined how much we need to you know we need if something were to happen right yeah you know if i would sell the you know if he something would happen to him i wouldn't stay in texas i would uh sell the house and move back home you know to my home town and and uh i wouldn't stay here in texas so you know i don't know what he would do yeah mine too no that's about all for mine nice talking to you too bye bye well the thing is is that i um since i'm in school i don't like basically have a monthly budget because i'm living off my dad but the thing is is that um i have to keep it under control because for example you know it's like the the beginning of the semester when you go to pay for everything everything is pretty rough but he controls that part but then whenever you know it's like once the semester starts i'm the one who has to control how much spending there is and the only thing that i i basically spend my money on is just food and um so well the thing is is that i live in a dorm so uh what happens is you pay six hundred dollars at the beginning or even before school starts and then the tuition is also the same thing so the thing is is basically that i spend like maybe thirty five forty dollars every two weeks on on groceries and that's about it but the thing uh also is that you know like if you want to go out like if you want to go to a restaurant or something then i have to moderate that because it's like i can't go eat out at a nice restaurant and spend twenty dollars um you know three times a week so i mean it's for for us you know it's like i i can spend i can spend that money but it's not it's not what i want to spend it on you know no because um they don't allow me to work since uh i'm a foreign student and so they the government doesn't allow me to work uh_huh well the thing is is that um i i basically know how much i have right and so the thing is is that i i can tell like uh i i get all my money out of the teller and besides see one of my biggest expenses is telephone calls since i have to call you know international argentina yeah and so the one of the problems is that i spend too much money on phone bills well that's they they want me to call down there every so often i mean i told my dad dad listen if you want to save money i won't call so often you know he goes we want to keep in touch so i doesn't matter about the money because we need to hear from you no because it is more expensive that way any any um basically the united states is the cheapest country to call out of and um because it's considered a luxury in other countries right since it's his money anyway you know no um i got money to pay that too so it's basically you know it's like it's not too much money and it's not too little money so i won't have to you know rush a letter to him or something because um he really wants me to concentrate on my studies i'm doing masters in computer science and computer engineering with those degrees well i can i can work up um here up to a year and hopefully get a job after that um computer communications and data transmissions right yeah you know anywhere from um local area networks metropolitan area networks you know all that and so well you have a family right and does does your wife work oh okay yeah okay yeah and so and you have a monthly budget right so you don't have any problem in um [overcharging] on your credit card and stuff like that yeah yeah well then uh see uh that's that's one of the points which i don't see like i i don't give a lot of gifts during christmas and i you know i don't i don't like to give any at all because the thing is is that you know it's like if i want something i'll i'll ask somebody you know like like uh for uh for christmas my roommate goes what do you want and i said i want a backpack you no i told him if you want to give me a present for christmas give me a backpack right because i i needed a backpack so he gave me a backpack and i i knew he needed an alarm clock so i bought him an alarm clock so the thing was that that right but right but um the thing is especially remember when i was down in argentina it was to me it was ridiculous because you know you have to once a year you go out and you spend all this money on all these people and some you don't care about you know it's like yeah and so but the thing is is that um yeah yeah well for example we had spring break now and i went skiing and i spent around like maybe two hundred dollars so uh but you know its like um yeah yeah because it's like you know say you know it's like we were saying let's go eat out before spring break i go let's not go eat out before spring break let's see how much money we have afterwards and if i felt like i spent way to much then um i won't go out you know and so like my roommate went home i went skiing in over the carolina mountains which aren't anything but um but it was you know it was i guess it was worth it you know it was a nice place yeah yeah yeah especially if you live on campus and you don't have a car you just go crazy so oh well let's see how long have we been talking here six minutes and a half okay yeah all right well nice talking to you all right bye bye what about tuition and rent who takes care of that uh yeah no you can't do that very often are are you working anywhere while you are going to school okay oh okay yeah so all the money comes from home so you got to make uh so how do you keep track of where you are in in your monthly spending right yeah where do you call to argentina wow yeah talk too long yeah yeah so you call him collect what makes you think so yeah oh okay so you just call him direct and then yeah and he gets the and you get the bill and send it to him okay yeah yeah what are you what are you studying and what do you think you'll do with that uh_huh and you want to get into some kind of manufacturing or what's the specialty that your looking for oh okay so you want to find a uh data transmissions you're looking for uh um long distance type stuff yeah i have a wife and two children and um no she doesn't work she does uh well it's kind of hard to say now days um other than taking care of the house she does a lot of sewing herself and she gets paid for that so she brings some money in she is trying to start her own business where she does that full time [alterations] and sewing stuff for the public and uh do that on a on a full time basis here in town well sort of we're probably like most american families i guess that we sort of have a budget in that we know how much we've got at the end of the month and we know what bills have to be paid and uh we pay as many of those bills that can be paid with with the monthly budget so oh sure we're like everybody else you know we've got a several credit cards that sometimes um instead of paying them all off every month maybe you have to slip some and you pay part of it this month and part of it next month especially around christmas time you know that's when everybody goes crazy on charging stuff yeah yeah yeah yeah that's something that you can use yeah that's great [utilitarian] necessary things no frivolous gifts that's true why bother yeah well especially being a college student your i don't know that you need to be involved in a lot of frivolous gift giving you know that effects the budget especially around uh christmas time at the end of the semester you've got finals and lots of bills i would suspect what about when you have breaks like um christmas or between sessions i expect so you've got to budget that though you've got to save up in able to do that right i mean right right huh sure it is any time you can get away and and get away from from the daily grind yeah i know the feeling is that okay all right nice talking to you have a good time bye okay so do you all keep a budget you don't are you being smart or are you serious uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's funny yeah we have a we're twenty eight and he's been working at t i for five years and that was pretty much his first real really major job of any you know professional because he had worked you know part time during school and what not and uh he was a little late graduating so we're you know uh and we have a nine and a half year old son and it's because you know we were eighteen when we had him so we're we're kind of looking at this from the other aspect of we you know we have a lot for to be our age and you know just everything and having the responsibilities we've had on us for at such a young age you know we have a like a nice house people you know are really shocked at how nice everything is in our house but we don't you know live in a brand new house either maybe a ninety hundred thousand dollar house but we're in a thirty year old house that would probably sell for forty five thousand so you know we have trade offs so we're more we have a monthly budget with this this this this but we have no savings which isn't real wise but we just we don't have the income at this time really to have any because we have three debts that we're trying to pay off from both of our student loans we're still paying trying to pay those off and we have one car payment that we don't i think we have about thirteen months left on it and after that we either what we want to do is begin doubling up our car payment um they'll pay our car payment is equivalent to both of our student loans so what we want to do is next year keep driving the same cars and um pay on the student loans split that car payment in half and pay you know double up payments on both our loans and it'll work out perfect no we don't uh_huh uh_huh uh uh_huh really uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh really uh_huh uh_huh does she have to pay to have it [refinanced] uh_huh t i to see we got ripped off buying our new car we both come out of uh drugs and stuff and we became christians about five years ago right when he got home from [terrell] right before he got hired for t i he had gotten saved and stuff and so i mean when you get come out of drugs and stuff you have nothing i mean you know you don't have anything you have the clothes on your back and you might have a car and that kind of thing and so when he when he started working at t i we uh you know we really felt like god told us to buy a new car because he had an older car that was going to need to be fixed and high gas but we got ripped off on it because we wanted it financed at four years and we were young and we'd look about nineteen people still think we're about they ask us where we go to high school when we get our hair cut and stuff both of us and so it's just kind of strange you know so five years ago we probably looked like real [ding] [dongs] you know so we went in and the financed the car for five and we didn't know that we got kind of taken just a little bit so we're kind of upset that we're having to you know pay this fifth year on the car because it was just not a wise thing but we learned a good lesson so you know yeah but they they would have only been about twenty dollars a month higher and he yeah he just told me this last week that he he said don't you remember i asked them to finance it at four years and they came back and they said that they had it figured for five and we'd already signed the papers and i maybe i might have been there i don't remember hearing that but i also wasn't the one in charge of it so i wasn't paying as close of attention but anyway instead of putting our foot down about it we just went okay whatever you know so anyway so next time we'll do that different we want to next time pay cash for our car too we want to pay cash for everything we can possibly do when we buy a house we attended a bill financial seminar and he has a lot of wisdom on that just on biblical you know principles to finance he runs a big the largest real estate company in fort worth debt free and we really believe in debt free living and debt free car buying and debt free house buying and if we do take out a loan on a house in the future what we'll do is pay twice a twice a month on it and because you save a lot in interest just doing that and then right right right right oh really uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh right yeah we we've become aware of that we have a there's a loan officer through our church too that i think could help us better you know he does that full time with the bank you know and so we're going to use people that we're in a relationship with that we know that you know we know are people of integrity so you know that is another thing that you know we feel like our long term goal is going to be benefitted by next time we buy a car we're not just going to go to toyota of irving you know we're going to go to somebody that we know we're going to take someone with us older and we didn't do any of those things yeah really oh my i stopped payment on a check oh that's funny oh this last week we bought a sewing machine at [zak's] and then i found that you could get the same machine better for less locally not much less but it was enough less and i found they locally [serviced] it and we just stopped payment on the check so i hope they don't sue us over it but we never received any merchandise either so i don't think it would hold anyway no we didn't even call them we just did it maybe my husband should call today no we don't no i i make so much money here at t i that that we just spend it and we never have a problem meeting it from paycheck to paycheck it's pretty neat being that independently wealthy and working for a major semi conductor firm you can just spend it well i'm being facetious i'm being very comical uh we have a budget um that works well i kind of look at it for more of a we have a financial uh analyst a finance administrator i guess that that uh i guess the financial [planners] the training now we've had it for about four years here got our businesses and and and our life in line how to manage credit cards how to put away say for you know money markets and this kind of thing and there's some [freebies] out there are you should put ten to fifteen percent of your monthly bring home in some sort of savings account that being money market uh bonds savings uh or just a liquid account which which we do um you should always have three months of your salary in a savings account in case there's a major need for that okay you should always have an umbrella permit that bridges your life insurance and your medical and your uh uh car insurance in case you run into a lawyer and you break his arm he's going to sue the pants off of you these kind of things are about a hundred dollars a year so you know these are all equivalent to the monthly budget things some of them are there to [pacify] situations and some of them are there to prevent things from happening but uh i guess we kind of got away from about the last sixteen months as far as saying two hundred dollars for food and three hundred dollars for this and two hundred for that because we had a child which is about a year old and then uh we've just been kind of working on i've been developing it but it's kind of hard diaper prices are going up you know and formula and stuff you know uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh do you have your uh loans through the texas credit union okay thing about the credit union is it's the way it's set up is if you have two thousand dollars left let's say on on the loan if you go up there and write them a two thousand dollar check it doesn't all go towards principal they take out for the for the finances the finance charge which is kind of you know it's like one of these lose or swim type of credit one of those loans is not really the best in the world but but you know they're uh since your husband is is is um a t i but doesn't have the loans with the credit union they're offering something that might be worth taking a [gander] at i don't know what your percent is on your on your car payments but they are they'll take any t i non credit union loan like if you have a fourteen percent loan for a new car they'll take it and [refinance] it and put it with texas credit union at i think it's a ten and a quarter percent which is not a bad deal one of the secretaries we have down here is paying twelve percent through g m a c or something and she's doing it i mean it's not like it's like i think they even cover that because they want you as a they want the t i to be part of the credit union yeah well five years is not that uh five years is not that bad of a problem only because you're paying more interest but your payments are lower oh really sure uh_huh yes you save a lot if if if if and you need to be very careful if the loan is set up to have [bi] they call it a yuppie loan if it's set up for [bimonthly] payments if you because you'll save fifteen to seventeen years off the end of the loan i'm sorry seven to nine years off the end of the loan and there are there is a local firm that'll actually if if like in my situation i don't have that because the loan was not available i can have this firm will pick up my loan for a six hundred fifty dollar fee so i can cut that much off the end of but i'm not interested because we're moving out of the house next year yeah but uh those are all great the the interesting thing we're getting ready to have a house built it's not a lot of the firms that offer mortgage loan firms aren't offering um that loan you can ask and you can wheel and deal but it's not as open as it should be it's a great idea hell i'd love to cut ours in half but uh man and if you figure get with a financial person and you can figure up exactly when like the eighteenth month of a loan if you make like a four hundred dollar payment over and above your house payment it'll make uh it has a magic with numbers it i it'll shave almost you know x number of dollars off uh_huh sure somebody you trust you know there are so many rip off artists here in this town it's it's uh it's really a sin it really is i got taken on some on firewood i mean uh uh the guy shorted us a half a cord of firewood and my wife didn't know and i stopped payment on the check and he'd already been paid by a [cashing] firm and and they're suing us they're suing me on this and it's for a hundred and thirty four dollars absolutely pathetic oh okay well probably something like that did you call them and tell them you just you just might be a good idea because you're going to get what a a check get us going are are you at t i austin or oh that's great no uh uh my daughter has talked to my daughter up here with us i have another one and she's talked to students uh so i guess they have uh sent this to their customers and people in colleges and things so they're if you're a computer user so my daughter has talked to two students uh that were non t i so i guess oh yeah we're on finances have you have you retired or uh oh oh yeah oh yeah it's uh that's the finances i guess we're on the subject of finances it is tough uh i've been with t i i'm just going to be fifteen years this year and and that's a tough thing uh the salary thing t i doesn't quite always do it right well what about our our our financial budget well you you should have a lot of information on a budget then if you're uh well you you you deserve an honor for that a gold star for that i guess right sure well i guess i do i do have a long term budget i got a daughter in college and one going to be in college so that i've been thinking about that for quite a while now monthly no i'll tell you a funny story about budgeting and i've been married twenty six years and i did you know that the macho thing the man always did the bills for i don't know fifteen years or more and i got so sick of it trying to balance the budget uh one and i always tried to show my wife you know here's how you once a year i'd say here's how you do the budget in case i get sick or here's how you do the checks you know one day i gave her the checkbook and i said i'm not doing this anymore you do it you learn it and i've been happy ever since she does it all now for about ten years and i don't even she complains to me about it she threatens me to give it back to me and i said i've been a happy man since i haven't [fooled] with that checkbook you know so i know it's a big pain to try to do that right right oh yeah yes i think uh that that is a tough uh we all seems to seems to be that way yeah yeah that's you need to do that i'll i'll i'll give you a hint i don't know if you're a a radio talk uh person [listener] do you listen to radio talk shows listen to bruce williams uh for financial advice he's on oh i don't know what he's going to be in austin he's on five seventy here oh he's nationally famous he's a college graduate type guy he's been in all he's an [entrepreneur] and he gives very practical financial advice about cars very you know not not nothing college level basic stuff his name is bruce williams he's on national radio uh i don't know what it would be down there you might want to whatever your radio talk shows are down there he's on that channel it's uh it's five seventy up here and i'd listen to talk shows for everything for gardening and everything just when i'm doing chores and uh he gives a wealth of information very practical stuff and and he will help you avoid a lot of little things uh financially yeah there there's a lot of advice out there for how to get a budget and i i'm not expert again because i don't really do it monthly right i did start a college fund i'm not uh i have one again at u t down there now her first year and she's almost gone through her whole college fund you know sure go ahead sure oh no yeah right they give us ten minutes uh uh the only advice i give you on college would be there's a lot of scholarship money out there my daughter got a little bit not much only first year she got about two thousand dollars worth and you ought to well as your daughters approach the college age uh start finding out about the scholarship monies because there is a lot of money out there and uh uh band she got you know five hundred dollars at a at a clip through bands through leadership uh there's all kinds of civic organizations that will give you you know one shot money uh you get a president's award if you're you're in in high school doing this up by here in arlington uh there's a lot of and of course you if you you score high on the s a t you can get you know two thousand a year you know or more you can get yearly money as long as you keep up your grades she she did very well in school and uh but she only got first year money she got about two thousand dollars it was only five hundred dollars at a clip from this organization we called there were there were two or three people there was some little civic organization in dallas that gave money away and only two or three people applied she applied and got five hundred dollars from that so look into that bit the year that they graduate you know before though you know while they're graduating there's all kinds of little bitty money that little clubs will give away churches and everything and they don't even have a dozen [applicants] because uh uh the kids are going off after the big money uh of course you have to have some sort of record in high school uh of of achievement and everything but sometimes it's just uh like our band gave money away we're a band booster club we gave we give uh two five hundred dollar scholarships just to kids uh who we think were worthy you know so there's money out there go ahead you can talk i i don't want to i want to chew up the whole line here oh i'm an engineer i'm uh in fact i'm working the night because of the cutbacks and everything uh my job there were three managers jobs that were just [dissolved] and so they put me on nights i i call this my recession job and i'm working nights just kind of covering uh [shutdown] equipment and everything and just being available here i don't mind uh it beats being laid off and everything and uh you you got to be a little flexible uh in my old age i'm trying to just hang in there until i get my kids through school and then i'd like to teach maybe [mathematics] or something i'm trying to study for that now right uh uh_huh oh yeah right oh sure well it's tough right now for everybody up here in the dallas metroplex it's awful hey i've got another clue for you for college another clue for you for college money go to work for u t uh we have a friend who works who is a secretary for t c u you know up here they give you scholarship a hundred percent if you're if you work for t c u yes so check that one out you know ask them about it call them and because it's full full scholarship now it's uh not room and board but it's tuition full tuition paid if your parent works at t c u and her her mother went over there just for that okay well i left t i in january but i signed up for this before i did oh i think that's a that's a good idea all right oh no no no no actually i left t i um had basically set my sights to leave t i when they announced there would be no salary increases in ninety one because i i definitely need to make a little more money and uh i haven't really accomplished that yet but i'm trying i wish i did i i hope you're you're a person who does things better than i i don't have a budget that's one of my goals for this year is to try to get myself in a good oh long range planning budget mode um i'm a single mom and i've been just uh trying to get thank you it's nice to have someone understand that how about yourself do you have a budget you live by uh_huh right well that's great how about your oh it really is it it really is you know that was always a a major problem in our marriage what i have always identified is i am basically good with money it i don't really need a budget to tell me not to spend it i think that comes from never having enough you know i'm always afraid of i'm going to need some and where will it be so um no i i've i've finally worked myself into a spot where i can budget when i when i was first divorced i had um i sat down and budgeted and i had [outgo] that was much higher than what i had coming in i tried to hang onto a house that was way too expensive for me and and so now that i've gotten you know i lost the house now that i've gotten past that i can sit down and say okay this is the reality this is how much money i have each month the scary thing is as far as long term i don't have anything i don't know if you have an i r a or uh you know and i've got two girls also and i haven't saved anything for their college and sometimes i have uh_huh well i'll check that out uh_huh you've learned a lot well that's that's good to know how uh_huh well you must have done something you're you're helping your children in school and you're you know uh_huh excuse me jim could you hold on i have someone at the door i'll be right back thank you i think we might have just screwed up the computer but we'll find out oh and and how did your daughter get scholarship money on uh_huh wow uh_huh wow oh i'm definitely going to be actively looking into that uh_huh well that's great to know yeah that's good oh well you're doing you're doing just fine and and uh actually i when i talk i usually like to ask a lot of questions i was wondering what you do at t i oh goodness uh_huh uh_huh oh absolutely yeah oh i hope you can do that what what i did is i was approached and and i've i went to t i just right at the time that uh my marriage was ending i had been a a stay at home mom and and i i was very fortunate in starting and i really enjoyed it while i was at t i but you know the cutbacks were really getting to be rather frightening and i had less than five years and also i wanted to make a little bit more money so i decided i'd like to go out and try sales and uh i'm i'm out trying to sell telephone systems to businesses and the potential there is fantastic the reality of it is it's tough exactly uh_huh okay yes they do i'm going to check that i've got i've got two friends that work at at u t i didn't know that all definitely i will uh_huh well that sounds fantastic so uh describe your family budget well yeah and to some extent utilities i imagine they have that to some extent here but it's not quite as good and uh transportation expenses i guess you own a car and you know how much you're going to drive every week huh yeah i understand that we we have a real similar situation ours uh have [quintupled] at least so there is a real family budget yeah if you're lucky exempt or nonexempt wow must be nice part of the high price spread uh no well we don't we do but we don't have a family budget we have the fixed things we have to pay and we have the things that are extras but it seems that by and large the extras just don't exist and well you know the auto budget car payment sucks a hell of a lot of it dry and insurance is insurance bad there well we've got one eighty nine wow that's not bad four hundred and something a year that's that's that's cheaper than we pay well here in colorado it's even worse because we have no fault do you have that there well no [fault's] rather funny in colorado because it seems that everyone pays all the time instead of just the guilty party pays you're kidding god not at all they don't even try to keep up with it god so you lived in texas for a while huh are where you from originally huh so you just basically went home when you had a chance that's nice god that's great uh i'm a native texan west texan there is a difference yeah well i'm a west texan lubbock midland [odessa] amarillo dumas panhandle a different world from down there so uh [colorado's] been fun but they have a real problem next to every window the state seems to have put up a [turnstile] and every time you look at a look at the mountains or think about looking at the mountains you got to throw in a dollar or so it seems i may just be paranoid but that state income tax is just eating me alive yeah yeah property taxes and yeah well colorado you know they have the state income tax but then they also have property taxes and they also have sales taxes and they just get you every direction they can and i just don't know sir but it seems like they trying to get you every which way oh yeah i've heard of the book legally legally cut money on your taxes huh and that includes everyone at t i well even the you know the [nonexempts] technically yet we haven't had our salary frozen yet but when you're only at living wage it doesn't matter you know survival is a funny state yeah did well i've been with the company for sixteen years now i was a w f for several years and it just never seems to improve it and it doesn't seem to get much better for the [exempts] either unless you're twenty eight or above it's really a shame oh well i've uh for a lot of years i i've pretty much [flied] without one and uh just recently uh we we set up a budget and and we're trying to stick to it we just bought a new house so we've got everything you know pretty much we know what our uh our fixed expenses are per month and then we've got some ones that are variable that pretty much stay within a certain range and then uh then there's the ones that you never know anything about and that's that's the food budget yeah well the utilities are pretty much you can pretty much figure what they're going to be and one of the nice things here is the electric company has a plan where they'll average them out for you uh_huh yes sir well i used to um i used to know uh fairly close to exactly how many miles i drove because i i was very convenient i lived uh nine tenths of a mile from work so so it was you know two miles a day to and from work so it kind of cut my transportation costs a lot but now i've just bought a new house and i'm a half hour and so my transportation costs have gone up by uh five times yeah pretty much um the problem is there never seems to be enough money i have three children and it seems like the more money you make the more money you have the more things that they seem to need and uh of course nothing ever goes down i mean uh i remember i have five children total i have three left in the house and i can remember years ago when school would start and i'd go buy all five kids you know shoes and i could get out of the out of the shoe store without spending more than thirty five dollars nowadays thirty five dollars buys about one pair of shoes yeah so i mean things have just really gone out of sight in the last uh i guess about the last ten years i'm exempt uh_huh yeah uh_huh um i've got uh two older cars there both one's a seventy seven and one's a seventy eight and my insurance is about it was running about four hundred dollars a year but when i moved to the new town i live in because it's a different county which has less crime and uh less you know less highways and so it's a cheaper place to live as far as the insurance company's concerned so my my i think my insurance dropped about sixty dollars a year it's actually three hundred and forty for each one of the cars yeah i was down in texas for two years and i was paying unbelievable rates for both car insurance and for home insurance um yeah they have no fault in maryland also yeah uh_huh yeah it's kind of it's kind of strange here the way things go uh here if you have an accident and no one's injured the police won't even show up nope they say if nobody's injured you all exchange names and take it up with your insurance company well if you i don't know how familiar you are with maryland but uh especially the center part of maryland where i ninety five runs through it is really heavily populated there's just so many people and so many accidents every single day that it'd take a whole another police force just to answer the traffic no not a bit yes sir i spent uh couple of years down there moved down there in eighty seven and moved out in eighty nine uh right here in maryland yeah my family uh didn't like texas and i had a chance to uh transfer up t i bought a company about seven months after i moved to texas right here in so i got an opportunity to transfer back and i took it uh_huh yeah yeah believe me i know there is i lived in plano and i don't know if you're familiar with plano but plano maybe five percent of the plano actually were from texas everybody else was an import uh_huh yes yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah they have a state income tax in maryland but i noticed when i was in the in the in texas they didn't have a state income tax but they sure [nailed] you on those darn county taxes and school taxes and property taxes oh my god ate you alive yeah yeah it sure does um there's uh some good books that i've read um that you might be interested in uh charles d [gibbons] is the guy who runs some ads on light night t v and he's got seminars you can go to and they try to hook you into his organization which costs about four hundred bucks but he's got a couple of books out one of them is called uh wealth without risk yes it's a very good book it's tells you how to cut money on your taxes and on your insurance and then what to do with the money that you save yes yes legally legally cut money on your taxes and on your insurance and then he tells you how to invest that money in order to uh you know be wealthier uh he also has a new book out that i purchased right before i moved and haven't had a chance to crack it open yet um financial self defense is the name of it uh the man uh has a lot of good ideas some of them i already knew about some of them i had already practiced but i suggest it to anyone who wants to be better off financially to read it because uh yes i'm one of the ones that had my salary frozen for ninety one yes yet yeah i know what you mean i uh when i was in dallas i was supervisor and i had four non [exempts] um under me and uh i was appalled at what how they were paying them i just couldn't believe it yeah yeah well i i've this company that they bought they ended up buying a very high payroll and uh the you know i thought i was making a good wage hi maureen how are you well do you have a family budget okay we do a few things and i have to say we're my husband and i are both from financial backgrounds i i'm an accountant and uh he has an m b a so uh we were sort of you know keyed in on expenses and things like that so um coming from that background what we pretty much do is we in our household as far as living expenses we live on a cash budget every month my husband uh goes to the credit union and [withdraws] you know x amount of dollars for the month and then that money is used during that month we have a certain budget excuse me for instance i control all the household expenses the groceries uh the [haircuts] the gasoline for my car any miscellaneous expenses baby sitting things like that and uh excuse me if uh it comes the end of the month and i don't have any money uh we don't buy any more milk but uh we've gotten pretty good at it we've been doing it a couple of years now so we our budgets are realistic and they are not so stringent and you know to make us feel uncomfortable and i i really try to stretch my my dollars here and there shopping uh at [warehouses] sometimes like at sam's and things like that but uh we live we live on on a cash budget and it sometimes it's tight come the end of the month but generally we always make it right well uh most of our medical things we don't uh have to worry about because of insurance and they're they're relatively small uh we've been lucky in the past we didn't have that problem but right now we don't for the other things the things that crop up that we aren't really expecting we have different funds set aside for different things like we have a car fund and we put a certain amount of money into that every single month whether we need to or not so i mean and i i can't really remember what it is it's all part of the savings account we just keep track of it on paper uh you know a certain amount goes straight to the savings account we decide okay you know let's say it's a hundred dollars you know every month fifteen dollars is for car fund you know ten dollars is for vacation fund whatever uh and we just we constantly do that so that there's a [buildup] of money for those things if something does come up like i know that my washing machine is going to go any day so but we have the money set aside so if it does it's not going to kill us uh so we're we're actually we're pretty disciplined so it makes those surprises not so difficult to get through well in uh we have a lot of different things right now we save about twenty five percent of our of our pay it and it goes toward different things it's for you know for vacations like i said for you know emergencies like for car uh breaks down something like that uh and we also put money aside for our kids college neither of us had any help with our college degrees and just this last month we paid off my final school loan so we're starting our kids a little bit early do you uh use a lot of credit cards or your checking account when you go out and buy things sure uh_huh that's good oh and it's not deductible anymore yeah we did we did that for a long time and it got to the point where we had no idea how much we were spending on things and it seemed like we didn't have enough money when things [cropped] up you know so we decided to put ourselves on a cash budget well the first time we did it we just took some [arbitrary] amount that we [estimated] it would be and then we kept track of everything for a month you know how much we spent on food how much we spent on gasoline how much we spent on everything and from that built you know a cash budget so now i mean i have i don't remember what it is now four hundred dollars for the month let's say and uh i mean some months i may spend three hundred on groceries and a hundred on everything else and some months it may be different it's not as though we feel like we have to keep ourselves you know down to the dollar or the penny in certain categories kind of thing but the way we set up you know the amount that we want to save and the amounts that we have to spend for you know uh utilities and uh the house payment and all that those are things you don't really have much control over uh the cash budget just fits right in there like i said if we don't have we also set aside money for entertainment i mean but again it's a set amount every month and uh on special occasions i mean birthdays and things like that we we don't we still have fun on things well no not originally because when we we did buy when we bought our first house it was at a time where you and the kind of loan we got you really didn't have to put down anything so we got into it fairly [cheaply] and then uh after we sold the first house we were left with enough cash that there was enough to make the down payment on this house so we we got out of that one pretty easily sure i know that's how i feel sometimes about my kids' education i mean jeez they are one and four we have got a long time to save my husband he's the real he's the real [disciplinarian] when it comes to that money usually oh no no what do you do with it i know uh_huh right oh yeah yeah it's it's amazing how much we spend on some things my husband cut himself down to ten dollars a week for his lunch at work and that's all he has he has a ten dollar bill and i mean so i'd say at least two usually three times a week he takes his lunch the other times he'll uh i don't know go out somewhere eat in a cafeteria or whatever but but he keeps himself on that i mean he found it's it's so easy to spend five dollars a day on lunch that's a hundred dollars a month on lunch that's that's twelve hundred dollars a year just on lunch when he can take a sandwich you know all right no we probably should but we haven't so why don't you explain to me some good tips about what you've done which you've found useful and workable uh_huh um okay uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh hm uh_huh what do you do for the surprise things that you don't necessarily plan for the you know are sometimes several hundred dollars like uh tires for the car or car repair of some sort or like a a dental bill or something that you're not prepared for oh do you kind of continue call this like a part of savings account or a different savings account or oh oh okay hm okay then so like your pay what kind of a percentage do you basically keep out that you think that you know will cover all of the expenses kind of thing or like what what percent do you then save or something hm okay uh_huh uh_huh oh okay checking account a lot uh not so much credit cards now several years back i used to use uh charge cards and you know all the time kind of thinking oh well it's on sale you know it must be a good deal there have been times that i have been bad about the credit cards and so pretty much now uh we don't use them too much if we travel or something yeah but you know standard we usually don't or if it it is a purchase uh then it's paid off when the bill comes you know so it isn't any extended uh it may be that i picked up something at the store but then when the bill comes we always pay it off then so it's not any you know uh build up on the charge cards at all and but that hasn't always been the case so i'm kind of i feel at least better now that i have finally gotten some of those things uh you know in the past and i don't have you know big [cumulative] amounts due to those charge cards because that interest rate just is a killer yeah well i've never been in the situation of [itemizing] anyhow but uh pretty much when i always i go to the grocery store or something i just always write checks hm uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh we are in the process of trying to buy a house do you know how did your budget work or did you have a budget to uh get your down payment going to get a house huh oh okay okay uh yeah i just keep thinking all the time i mean it it's really rough to keep yourself on a strict budget for a long long time when your you know your priority at least mine is to save for the house but then it's awful hard to really [scrimp] for a long long time and keep putting all the money into that down payment you feel like you want to live a little bit in the meantime uh_huh well i know but there are times when i sit there and i think wow you know we make x amount of money and where is it i mean you look around and you go where is it you you haven't made uh big purchases and that's the easier thing to see if you can see a big purchase and you go okay well this is the year that we bought the couch or the t v or something like that but all those just monthly payments and stuff that just go out the door and there's big chunks of your money to pay like the utilities and the gas and the groceries and stuff that you don't have tangible i mean the [perishable] kind of things that's gone used and gone oh huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah ready to talk okay uh i want to talk about um our family budget and the times that it's worked and the times that it hasn't worked and give you a general description of it and you can help me out a little bit tell me how yours works well at the i introduced you a little bit to it a few minutes ago when i said that we are uh we're on the east coast now my husband quit a perfectly wonderful job and decided that well we both decided we wanted to move to north carolina and so naturally we put ourselves we looked at our budget and so what we did was draw up a budget that we thought uh was realistic and uh so we had to make some adjustments because we really are kind of looking for something that we want to do and he wants to do that's [satisfactory] and we've been here seven months and he's still hasn't hit up on anything permanently so you see well we actually planned for about one year uh that god because it never occurred to it never occurred to us that it would take seven months and uh what we did was just uh decide how we had been spending our money before and then we put that on the computer and then we took about three months and uh and adjusted where we could come down and where we didn't want to come down and we really uh lessened it uh our living expenses uh more than what we thought we would but oh just our own design uh_huh and the so but we've had budgets that didn't work when our uh you know of our first fifteen years or eighteen years of being married nothing worked we spent too much money until our children went to college so so tell me about do you all uh have a budget wonderful yes three and a two year old bang bang uh_huh well i think that's important for your budget to be for it to work though you have to do something of course not well i found uh that in the place that it was harder for me to stick to a budget was not where we were concerned but where maybe our friends were concerned and our relatives and parents uh we we tended to want to keep on giving lavish gifts as we had done before and i really believe that if you're going to cut down on yourself you need to cut down somewhat on your friends yes well i really do i think you have to budget those things though yes exactly although so much per month anyway and uh that really should be in your but if you don't spend it it should be in your bank account at the end of the month oh no no no no you don't want the government to spend your money you want to be able well uh but i do realize that that is realistic for some people and it was for us many years for many years uh and if and if that's the only way that will it will make you save and have a little nest egg at the end of the the year then doggone it that's what you should do uh_huh uh_huh well i was just reading an article in uh a north carolina paper today where a high school student obtained over two hundred thousand dollars worth of scholarships for herself by sitting up at night and typing at uh letters of applications to universities she was she was third out of a class of two hundred and twenty so it can be done where there's a will where there's a will there's a way right well i have enjoyed talking to you oh i know we'll have to stay home and mow the yard bye bye i guess so okay okay yeah okay uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh oh no that throws the budget out of whack real fast oh good really that was smart yeah uh_huh oh uh_huh yeah wow that's great did you have a special program on your computer to do that or was this just your own design of uh_huh gosh yeah yeah yeah well we've been married for five and a half years and we started out without kids of course and found it much easier to save and used to do a lot more fun kinds of of things and uh did really um you know have a real strict but budget but uh the about and to our [wh-] when we first got married we were in graduate school and we were just you know dirt poor then when we got our first jobs after about a year of marriage we decided we'd bank my salary so we could buy a house so we virtually did that for about two years which worked real well and then moved from california where we realized we could never buy a house anyway no matter how much we saved and moved to texas bought a house immediately you know which of course is now devalued with the housing market so i don't know if we we did a good thing to buy a house or not but at least we've got a place to live um so now since uh we have a three year old and a two year old now um uh_huh that's that's that threw our budget really out of whack too an we um have been just forced to budget much more because i quit working to be home with the kids and um we just really have uh i don't know we we've tried different times we've done like a survey of like taking you know the past three months of where all the money went and we really don't spend on anything much of a luxury or anything at all but it seems like there's um times when we just have to get out where we'll go and like get a baby sitter and we'll go and we'll blow you know fifty sixty dollars in one night going out to eat going to a show or doing something you know yeah that's the hard part because when we sit down to make it we try to make it real [spartan] and real narrow so we can put a certain amount in savings every week and then it's not really that realistic because we do find that we want to go and do something or splurge for you know birthday for somebody or you know even we we even do things real [frugally] for the kids we get a lot of toys and clothes and stuff at garage sales or from friends because they don't know the difference at this age you know whether they're [jordache] new or whether they're you know something and they're both boys so they just one year after the other in each other's clothes so but um that's the hardest part for us is that it's really um you know budgeting and some extra things you know that are more you know [nonessential] items uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh on your friends that's true that's true well we have so many unexpected things come up so often it seems with we both have older cars and something will come up and wind up having to spend a thousand dollars you know on the car in two months or something and you know a lot of things like that that really are hard to plan for and uh yeah kind of put in a certain amount per year you're going to have on extra expenses for car yeah yeah yeah our biggest way of saving money is then to stop all these deductions um you know is to let's see now i forget which way we do it we don't list all the deductions and then we get more money back you know at the end of the year so that's not a good way to that's what my husband said so this last year he changed it of course we didn't get hardly and then nearly as much back and it was like oh no better find another way of saving money yeah yeah yeah yeah because we don't miss it we really don't when it's just taking out of the paycheck and stuff so but we're trying to put a little money away for the kids because we can envision the uh expenses for college already you know eighteen years away or whatever gosh i guess that's fantastic yeah well i enjoyed talking to you too good luck and don't spend any money this weekend oh boy bye go ahead so ken how do you do your family budget huh_uh huh_uh oh yeah huh_uh well then you just pay it off at the end of the month huh_uh huh_uh oh that's a real good idea yeah see now i'd never get my wife to be able to follow that before we got married i had money in the bank i owned my own home i put in so much money each you know month towards long term savings you know like in uh mutual funds and things you know and uh after i got married no it just didn't work anymore she spends a lot she likes to spend on anything and everything with body lotion everything so we really haven't we don't have a good organized system yet maybe after awhile i'll rub off on her or something i don't think yeah huh_uh yeah yes so am i well uh in information systems i'm a voice researcher huh_uh yeah so does mine huh_uh yeah see i think we might have to do that of course she looks at what she brings home each week it's going to be hard for her to uh not have her own money because like now you know i put money in the bank and saved to go back to graduate school for two years and now she wants to go back to school but she saved enough maybe to get her through august you know and that's it and i keep saying now laura you're going to have to save a little money i don't know if my [paltry] graduate student fees are going to get us through it doesn't work ken my mother always said now don't argue about money so we don't but you know there goes my savings but you know it's one of those things yeah now see my wife will do things like make clothes one of our one of our big investments that you know i was wholeheartedly in favor of was to buy a sewing machine because she makes clothes and you know a descent sewing machine will really help her out and she's already made you know presents and gifts and things for shorts for me and things for the summer you know so i guess i can't you know we've probably almost paid off the sewing with uh yeah with the savings from that so i can't complain too much you know she's she's good about that and also we we [dine] at home a lot you know she likes to cook so that saves us from restaurants or whatever but but she does have things where she likes to [pamper] herself that just to me seem like money dumped down a drain you know yeah huh_uh you know but you need a hobby yeah that's true i know and those nails are so expensive oh gosh i was so excited when she decided she wasn't going to do her nails anymore i guess she just stopped [polishing] them because they were yellow and then she waits for them to get their color back and then she'll polish them again i don't know whatever so she stopped for awhile boy what a difference they buy nail polish every two weeks it's uh my gosh and lotion oh my goodness body lotion we spend more on soft on on body [lotions] with sesame oil and all these different things than uh she must spend more on one application of body lotion than i do on soap for an entire year yeah it's funny oh i think so she's always soft that's true yeah but i think um i don't know maybe after we're not in school anymore we'll be much better at saving i think uh i think that's uh i sold my house and that's what's really paying for my time unemployed or whatever because the graduate [assistantship] really doesn't cover the ten thousand dollars in tuition really doesn't cover living expenses um we actually live in two different places right now because she has her job so that makes it hard with uh you know we're paying double rent double utilities and that makes it sort of expensive but see i live within my i live within my very menial income and she doesn't she doesn't live within her professional income you know so i just get a yeah and then even if we want to see each other on weekends it's twenty five thirty dollars in gas every weekend and that really adds up too you know so it gets tough i think we'll do much better when we're living together and we're only paying one rent and one telephone you know it will cut our telephone bills you know by five by four fifths you know if she's here so it's actually tough this year but it will be better in june she will move in with me in june so hopefully our budget will in increase then no just since december yeah we're very newlyweds but that's the we we're together probably for um uh very close for about six months before we got married so you know we lived within though i had my own house and things you know we still uh we're still pretty close i knew her spending habits and they're about the same they haven't changed at all you know my mother always said to me tom now the best thing to do is be like you're father never say a word when you're wife spends money and i was like well that's true my dad never said a word you know so yeah i don't argue with her but i just get all it must show in my face must be like must be [cringes] or something you know especially yesterday or this past weekend we met half way between at her parents house and um she had on a new pair of jeans and she'd gotten all new underwear and i was like laura how did you get all this stuff well i just got paid and and i was like oh it was there it was burning it had to be spent you know and i'm like and she said everything was on sale oh oh that's good at least it was on sale that's good honey i'm glad you bought it on sale what else can you say yeah i think yeah you don't notice it i think that's probably a really good idea huh_uh yeah yeah see i was when i had when i was living alone and i had my own house and things uh i put one i was paid twice a month one paycheck went into savings and one went into the checking account that paid the mortgage and the food bills and it and i was even able to you know to accumulate some savings in a sense in the checking account because i'm pretty [thrifty] and you know but my wife likes to spend she enjoys so that's fine but a for savings i'll have to look into that huh_uh huh_uh yeah oh really because of the heavy ice it broke the limbs huh_uh right yeah huh_uh yeah yeah i can see that i can that i keep trying to say to her laura don't spend so much what happens if something happens to a car you know oh well nothing will happen oh well we don't actually have a budget budget per se what we do is uh maintain a normal checkbook you know like everyone in the world does i guess and occasionally it actually balances and um we also we um we have a a u s air and visa card every every dollar we every dollar we charge is a mile for our frequent [flier] mileage it's a real good deal actually if you charge a lot so what we what my wife and i have taken to doing is charging everything in sight anything we buy we charge including groceries and so forth so what we'll do is right we actually maintain a we have a we we we we have a checking account that we treat like a savings scratch that we have a savings account that we treat like a checking account and so what we do is we anytime we do or make or charge something we write it out as if we wrote a check and then at the end of the month all the money to covered already so we just pay it off without having to worry about any interest or anything it keeps us hopping huh_uh well you know you know you know what's always good is sort of a for savings where they just take money out of you're pay we did that for awhile where um we actually still do it with with my wife's salary where we put it we have a separate a third account even a savings account in in an entirely different bank where what we do is take money out of her paycheck every week i'm a graduate student oh really in what field oh okay i'm in uh [psycholinguistics] actually um but my wife has a real job yeah what we do is we take money out of her out of her paycheck each week and put it it goes directly to another account that we don't at an entirely different bank that we don't have access to so easily and it goes there and it stays there and it builds up until we need it for something oh gee right god i got lucky my wife apparently is not a she likes to spend but she's pretty good about things wow that was great with the money savings there that's good right well i guess we all have those feelings i uh i uh i i go to uh i pay what i think is a lot of money to go to a karate class you know right exactly but that to her is sort of like a waste but she does her nails so yeah yeah oh yeah yeah good old ivory um well it's for your benefit though right so that's helpful yeah now do you still own a house you said you owned one that's great right oh wow that's the killer two apartments wow eventually right i mean you're not going to right have you been married for long oh wow so you guys really are newlyweds oh wow yeah i actually encourage my wife to spend money sometimes because i think you know um i sort of feel guilty you know given that she makes twice as much as i do so i say if she wants to go out and buy something i never argue with her because she's real good at you know sort of yeah had some money in her pocket yeah that's right i do recommend the for savings bit they uh they take it out or your paycheck before you see it because it doesn't hurt you know you don't even think about it if it's gone yeah so uh until you really need it and then you realize you've got a couple of thousand dollars built up someplace else right yeah that's that's been our [godsend] you know we've had some sort of major emergencies come up you know where we also own our own house um we had an ice storm up here recently where it was i mean it was horrible i mean half the city owned trees one third of all vegetation in this county is just wiped out yeah exactly we had to our backyard tremendous [willow] tree that just fortunately but it cost us you know a couple of hundred dollars just to bring the tree down i mean just to take off what was broken plus we went with a friend and they said you know and then the whole ice storm cost us quite a bit of money even though insurance picked up some of it still not all of it they don't get you know and that plus and then we had a car expense like that same week one of the cars died you know all of this adds up and that for savings really comes in handy right okay uh well do you uh keep a family budget or do you have some uh_huh oh interesting yes well uh we sort of started doing it years and years ago and my husband started graduate school when we were first married and i sort of just got in the habit i guess and you know never have gotten out of it i cannot really say that it's a formal budget it's more just a a pretty uh a fairly uh accurate uh recording of what i spend and what i think i am going to have to spend and uh yeah yeah yeah right yeah that sounds real similar um oh my yeah yeah sure yeah i think you are right um uh well it must have been sort of interesting to us is to uh it's because since i have pretty much kept my record books for the last fifteen years i guess i can go back and look and it's real fun to just see how things have changed over the years uh for instance my goodness oh dear yes oh yes well as a matter of fact uh my mother was going through some things not not long ago i guess it has been a couple of years ago in an old trunk that she had and she came upon a a budget book that she had back in the thirties uh when they it was the late well i guess it would have been i will take that back it must have been in the forties because they had been married uh probably fifteen years at the time and it was just uh fascinating to see how little things cost i mean it was it was just almost [laughable] in some instances that you know of course it's all relative of course but uh never the less it was fun to see those figures next to you know for a pair of shoes was like five dollars and um oh oh isn't that something really oh that is that is really really something that's true yeah that's that's right that's that's just good old economics working well uh we have tried to uh instill some some sense of uh of budgeting in our kids but our two children are just uh as um unlike as night and day and our son could care less about a budget and our daughter watches her pennies so closely that she almost she almost just sounds like your father i mean she has everything planned so closely that if something goes wrong it just throws her for a loop yes right yes yes yeah i think that is true i uh and i think that is probably what happened in our house because i think my husband was not quite as uh good at saving and so on before we got married and i was i was really diligent about that i was putting money aside and when before i was married you know when i was working out of college and uh that really paid off because when time came for him to go back to graduate school we were in in fairly good shape financially as far as not having any major debts and yeah uh he is an engineer he is uh an electrical engineer and in fact went through uh many years of graduate school and got his p h d so we had a lot of lot of years of budgeting and you know yeah when you uh yes well i'm working i'm working on my masters degree now so in fact this last year we had three both of the children were in college our son has a year left and our daughter graduated this year and i'm just about ready to finish my masters degree so we have had uh once again you know some really a real lean year for us but uh yeah yeah yeah you know exactly what it what it's like then and it's uh which you learn i guess you figure that that is an investment that is uh really a [invaluable] uh_huh yeah that is right so it's it's one that you can live through and i think that that's the way that we looked at it in our [beginnings] when my husband was in graduate school that there was a light at the end of that tunnel you know that that it was worth it to save and to not have uh something and uh in return know that something better was going to be at the end of it so uh it really makes it easier but uh well i have enjoyed talking with you jerry and i i wish i could hear more about your historian part of your life because that sounds really fascinating to me i am interested in that oh oh wow well my my husband and i just went there last year um actually we did not take a tour we we were in england and and uh went to ireland and [scotland] and just rented cars and did it on our own but uh um i that sounds interesting is your business in dallas then okay oh you are kidding well i'm going to be teaching at brookhaven in the fall [kuenzer] k u e n z e r and i'm uh_huh z e r and i will be in the communications department teaching uh english one oh one to i have a couple of sections yes yeah that's the guy who hired me yes fantastic well it's been good it's been a good type conversation bye bye no i don't use a family budget my father who is very old has kept one his entire life and i probably [rebelled] against it i probably should have kept one he keeps every penny that comes in and goes out on a very strict percentage right i think it makes much more sense and i have recently uh gotten out of debt and everything and i will probably start keeping a little better track of it i just uh spent whatever came in and and uh never knew what came in and what went out but uh just you know like about like the government runs huh so i think it is probably better to have some sort of a a at least a record but my dad was so precise that i mean if it said to spend eleven percent on something that's what it was spent and that was put over there and i mean of course he is from the depression and uh so uh you know it's his life but uh i would i think it would be smart if somebody would keep uh some sort of a plan that works for them yeah it is i'm a historian and my father had kept them i think since nineteen twenty seven and uh but he burned the ones from twenty seven to i could not believe he did that but then so i took the ones from fifty two on to the present but to look to have looked back into the twenties thirties and forties it would have been fantastic to see that but uh uh_huh oh i know right i know well even in nineteen sixty three i found a record that i had uh i travel in europe a lot and i what i had paid for hotels and a similar hotel in paris is two hundred dollars a night now and i paid uh-oh between four and five dollars in nineteen sixty and that's really crazy cause that's about thirty years ago oh but of course it's just what the market will bear if people will pay two hundred then why charge ten you know right right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah well then you never know how they will one they may flip flop when they get to be uh older the other one may be very careful and she may marry somebody and of course it would be good because it you marry somebody a little loose then she will have that stability of watching uh you should have one in the in the in the house and i think yeah yeah that's about the way it is here if it had not been for my wife i would have probably been in [debtor's] prison if we had one so but what does you husband do now oh um oh yeah you have to do it when you are in school my wife is still in school getting her doctorate and it uh and i have got um oh i i know we had three in college plus my wife so that was four so we were both in the same yeah yeah that is the best one yeah with education you can't take that away from you right sure yeah that's true i have enjoyed talking with you kathy well if i had your address i would send you i am also in the travel business i do tours and i can take some real great tours to europe so uh if you yeah yeah it's here in dallas in the [quorum] so i i'm jerry [hammond] and i'm out at brookhaven college so you could just holler at me there yeah all right what is your last name k u e n well good i will oh well i know [zack] [miller] real well well wonderful i will look you up in the fall then okay bye bye uh what what is your practice as far as budgeting do you manage the money oh i see that's how kind of i am too are you married you are i think the women for the most part end up managing the money my husband always says he earns it and i have to spend only what he earns it well i don't work outside of the home and he always threatens that when i spend more than what's coming in i have to go back to work so i i manage it now do you actually follow a budget well that's pretty much the way we do um or we did in the past i would say uh at this point our children are grown and so i really don't have the obligations there any more that we have to balance to you know get things together for them and i really just keep very good records and most of our expenses are fairly the same every month with the exception of utilities and things like that and i try to keep my mastercards and things paid currently uh i don't always succeed at that i usually keep one with a low interest rate and i put things on there that i think i'm not going to get to and then i have another one but for the most part our mortgage and our utilities at this point we're in a new home and uh they take a pretty big chunk compared to what they used to so i'm still getting used to that but we make sure that we just do not buy unless we really can see how we're going to pay for it ahead and we do not buy us new cars uh do you get into car we do for us very much so in fact we are in a position that most of our friends why wonder why we just don't go to a new car you know whatever and i said look you guys are all into car payments we haven't had car payments for so many years i love it this way and recently we just created the laugh among everyone because we had a car that we really liked and it has eighty two thousand miles on it and we were kept saying wouldn't it be great if we could find another one just like it believe it or not we did we found one one newer the worst part is it's the same color and so everybody's saying you're kidding you have two cars the same and i said you know how when you have a bad one you say never again i said well we had one and we found one with just seventeen thousand miles on it and it's an eighty five and so i said hey this was a [cinch] we paid for the car and we still know now that we have this car to put all the miles on this is for all the long running back and forth on you know interstate driving and things and we intend to replace our other one with a much newer car in the next couple of years or next year probably generally from dealers and uh it depends because i don't like to sell what we're trading in to an individual uh unless we we have done that when we had a really good one that we wanted to sell you know we were going up to a larger one but we have found that by trading in and going through a dealer and we always make a deal i mean we have walked out of more dealerships saying don't bring us the manager and all of that unless you want to bring him right away you're going to get one shot at us we will you know and they say well you're kidding you know i no this is the price we're going to give you out the door we don't want to hear about taxes well i we talk about it but i'm usually the one that sits down and puts the pencil to the paper and and tries to somehow make the ends meet which uh um yes yes i don't mind the spending it's just that trying to trying to get what you need out of out of what you have that seems to be our challenge i see well i'm i'm at home also so it does get rather interesting trying to survive on one salary uh well we pretty well do um several years we didn't and we found that we just weren't making the most of what we had and so we we um set aside a certain amount each week that goes for things that have to be paid for you know just our bills and then what's left we divvy up we try to save a little bit although we're not always successful and then the rest of it just goes for normal weekly needs yeah right right uh_huh right yeah right well we had new cars um always until about four years ago my husband um owned his own company and it went under and so we could no longer afford that monthly payment and now it just seems just such a large amount of money to spend that that we do have a used car well he has a company car also but for our personal car we have a used car um do you think that it's wiser to buy used right uh_huh oh no uh_huh that's right wow right do you um buy from dealers or from individuals right right yeah okay i'll let you start do you all keep a budget and how do you hold to yours well that's that's good especially for these times uh_huh well that's a lot of it uh i know we tried several different ways one time we tried something that really worked but we didn't keep it up i passed it on to a friend and she won't quit doing it she loves it and that was the envelope system where you go ahead and decide about how much based on what you did last month that you are going to spend and you put the cash in envelopes marked for that so you have one for entertainment and one for groceries et cetera and then for some reason taking it out of that envelope and seeing it in cash instead of in check form uh causes you to realize how much is left and she even writes down on the envelope as she [subtracts] and kind of [debits] on each envelope what she's buying and then at the end of the of the period pay period if she has any left that much is for fun or entertainment and they kind of work it that way we tried for a while and a seems like the problem that they were having of all the of all the things that worked was not planning enough for the [incidentals] that we couldn't think about and those are the ones that will kill you you know the the accidental fee or the car repair or the things that weren't supposed to be every month uh_huh that's what i mean it was a hassle uh_huh uh_huh that's that's kind of hard but do you sort of self budget even i mean you wouldn't like on payday think boy i can go do this and that and this and that you kind of think this is got to you kind of divide it in fourths in a way don't you right right well that's true what we're in the process of doing right now is paying off our credit cards entirely and we're going to go ahead and try to just live on what we earn instead of guessing ahead of what we probably will have next month oh yeah we're not there yet uh_huh uh_huh that's right that's right huh uh_huh same here uh_huh well i could say it's kind of you know that's that's good you you probably have a little extra than you have to have to you know what i'm saying and so that that's the difference there where sometimes like i know if we've had an especially bad month and we're just almost getting down to payday then i think if we could really budget we tried one i know when we were planning to buy the new car and we hadn't had a car payment in five years we had to go ahead and write down each month what it was that every penny went for to see how much was going to be left and that was a real eye opener uh_huh but to to have lived by that every week would have been tough for me because sometimes i'll spend less on groceries but we'll go out so it's kind of hard to say this is how much you're going to spend going out for fun this is how much you're going to spend it's kind of hard do you yeah yeah right right oh how nice uh_huh well that's and it made a big and you enjoyed it better probably yeah i think so too so if you're out like in a department store and there's a sale you're just real careful not to let your [urges] get hold of you that's that's excellent that's what i'm working toward i think you're probably much ahead of me there and i'm working on it same here same here and i think though that we need to have some liquid around that you don't have to go through the company to get you know yeah that came up yeah uh_huh well that's the best thing to do my husband said the other day it was the worst mistake we ever did to buy a new car because it wasn't worth it from the day after so rather frugal well that's that's going to payoff on retirement yeah well it uh i guess we've completed do you think we've been here to no i i never keep a budget my budget or philosophy i guess is spend as little as possible and uh and it's it's sort of always worked uh but that depends you know on the individual if they can i guess have self control uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yes well yeah i i couldn't probably be bothered doing that every month and and ever since uh well we've been married almost thirty years now but uh my husband got paid once a month so you learn to get right you learn to get through you know to the end of the month and uh no no because if you charge things uh you pay all your bills at the beginning of the month when you get paid or you get paid the last day or next to the last day you pay all your bills and there isn't anything left to spend anyway uh_huh well yeah we we tried to to to or we are paying them off now uh there was a time when maybe we didn't take all of them off but you just sort of had to watch what you put in because you hate to pay those finance charges when you see how much it is and for most of uh i mean i'm a substitute teacher and i've only [substituted] i guess for the last fifteen years so there's only been really one working and uh it it works for me but i can't see that it would work for probably the majority of people yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh it it is when you do it that way well we we eat out a good deal at this point i i started [subbing] just to go on a vacation and saved all that money so because i knew that you couldn't you know spending five thousand dollars on a vacation or whatever we were going to go for ten weeks uh in nineteen eighty so i started working in nineteen eighty seven and just saved for three years but the what [minuscule] amount i made but that way you just didn't put it on your credit card and and it was paid for yes and so i think that that's difficult for most people but then my father was very [scotch] and you know you never could afford anything although we could afford everything if he wanted to um yes and i never worried about saving money because we just we're in the savings plan at work and they took it out so i uh uh_huh well we never had too much of that but then we never had any really emergencies that uh and we didn't buy really new or expensive cars i think the most my we're looking at cars now uh we ever spent for a new car was like six thousand dollars and they were mainly used cars yeah so you know we've been rather rather frugal in that in that respect so well each time they used to call in and tell me their space is limited and to please uh do you want to tell me about your budgeting plan uh_huh oh no uh into savings oh well that's pretty good boy that's pretty good sure yeah it's it's tough here too you have to have the contractor sign with you but it's easy to find a contractor for a couple of hundred bucks [who'll] sign it and let you do it where i live that is uh_huh oh bad for him huh um is that right wow well that's kind of handy i just finished james [michener's] texas book pretty interesting texas has quite the history that's kind of what we do we uh we're l d s and so we pay ten percent [tithing] and then you know we put i guess it's like fifteen to twenty percent into a savings account but that sometimes we use for emergency type things but uh and my wife doesn't work we're fortunate that way that i make enough to do what we want to do well that's pretty that's a great position to be in is that right oh what kind of consulting do you do is that right i'm into computers too i i'm a e d p auditor and and p c s yeah i'm just brushing up on well c plus plus uh_huh and three oh oh you got a buy sure melted or just wet or okay yeah our budgeting plan includes me getting a job we're we're at the point now i i quit working about six months ago to start this house and i'm out of cash and i'm not out of project yet so uh i'm going to go back and do some consulting work as far as budget's concerned i'm i'm fairly fortunate uh we've we're right now where if we don't buy anything extra we can make it on what my wife makes so you know the [project's] kind of [halted] until then but as far as budgeting is concerned you know we have uh some pretty strict guidelines that we go for you know we always put ten percent back and that's a never touch yeah either savings or investment one of the two but we don't ever put it in a high risk it's just always going to be there and as far as the rest of it's concerned we don't have any kind of uh what i would call extravagant expenses you know we uh we pretty much live on about eight nine hundred a month you know just travel to and from work and clothing and food and the rest of it you know we pile into the house and uh you know i'm fairly fortunate i mean our credit cards are out to the max right now because i'm a little behind on that but uh we're still making the payments on them it's just when you see in texas you cannot borrow the money to build your own home and do it yourself right exactly yeah and where i live it it's pretty scary because texas is one of those strange states where if you have a contractor sign on your note like that and you screw up you don't get it finished the bank can eat the contractor yeah bad for him but the [homeowner] can't be touched it's a homestead state yeah see right now if i quit paying any of my bills the only thing they could do is cut off electricity they can't take your land unless you don't pay your land taxes period you know they can take your car and your clothes and your anything that's not the tools of your trade but as far as uh you know you're pretty much bullet proof in this state yeah uh_huh uh_huh well you know we're we're not ones to budget much you know we just going to spend it all uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah we're pretty pretty fortunate as far as the uh the budgeting is concerned because you know we don't have any long term debt you know uh we paid cash for car well we bought the car on time one of them but we you know we since paid it off the land is paid for cash so we don't have to worry about that well it's [fraught] with other problems yeah i'm not very motivated uh systems consulting [computerization] for construction firms yeah right oh you into [mainframes] oh really are you really i just got that a few days ago oh [gees] don't get me to lying i bought it at a fire sale this guy's place burned down and he had a bunch of computer stuff and you know i bought it all it was two hundred bucks for everything he had well some of it wasn't worth anything you know you know a lot of the uh [diskettes] were just totally [unusable] well yeah or wet but i did get out of there with uh vermont views which is a huge do you uh have a family budget or how do you work your budgeting uh_huh yeah oh well we don't have a real strict budget uh we have a a low budget to work on but we uh you know for like groceries we say about this much per week and then we just spend about so much we don't i i don't know of a written figure of expenses that we you know keep to or anything but i know that i go to the grocery store that we always stick within you know five dollars between here and there a certain amount yeah oh wow that's great oh oh you guys sound pretty self sufficient huh yeah well that's a good idea let's see the other thing there the topic was talking about was if if uh all i can think of is if you don't keep a real a real tight budget how do you control expenses but uh one another thing that we do is we always fly back to california and washington each christmas well not fly back but somehow we get back there and uh this year we did it by train because it was the least expensive and huh oh yeah and uh you know we could go to both places without having to spend so much for plane fare and so uh we find that if we're careful with our you know just everyday things like grocery shopping and and gas and entertainment things like that then uh somewhere in out in the wash it will come out that we have enough to get back there you know uh_huh that's all right uh_huh uh_huh that's right yeah well whenever i don't know if this is part of the topic but whenever i find you know a dime or something on the ground i i'll probably pick it up uh_huh yeah i have a special little jar that i keep all the money i found in you know just count it up at the end of the year something but yeah uh_huh well for many many years uh my wife and i did have a budget uh we were both working at the time and so forth and uh that we had to do that until we finally got the house paid for and and other big bills taken care of uh we have a a budget but not as strict now as we used to because we don't have quite such a tight financial situation so it it's uh it's helpful i mean yes having a budget is very very important and that did get us so that you know the house is paid for and uh other major things are taken care of and now we can relax a little bit more because basically we don't really require as much on a daily or a monthly basis as we did before so we don't have to have quite as strict uh a budget as we did sure uh_huh uh_huh i think i've i do that automatically myself i mean i unconsciously uh you know stay in a within a with a certain amount because i i have enough food already stored here that i don't have to make any large purchase at any one time all i normally do now is pick up little things here and there if the salt goes out or we need sugar or something like that yeah we have two [freezers] and course we have a large garden here that we grow a lot of our own stuff and we freeze a lot of that so a lot of the vegetables are taken care of in our own personal storage well we we keep a little note pad on a on a wall if anything is absolutely out make a note of it and then uh the next time i go to the store why i pick it up and fill it up so it's it's worked very well that way that way we you know if each of us finds something is missing uh we put it up uh the other person might not know about it that way we keep up to date uh_huh well actually it's more interesting too if you've got the time yeah sure well i think we unconsciously do the same thing excuse me my [throat's] not as clear today as it should be uh we are uh going to be traveling to europe with a choral we sing with a so called pennsylvania choral and we make a two weeks tour of of uh foreign countries and of course that costs money so we uh each of us watches the funds that we spend and make sure that that we gather together over a period a time enough money to to make this trip so that is another way of uh budgeting and i think we just sort of unconsciously do it we uh just live a normal life but we don't throw any money away particularly we save it for this trip which is uh always very very nice i do the same thing i have a whole pile of them saved that i have found by parking [meters] yeah yeah well let's face it the when we're talking budget it is important to to have a budget and uh i i keep track of mine on a more rough basis now by just watching the level of my checking account and i have a money market account also and uh i keep those levels up above a certain minimum and i'm always trying to okay so frank what uh type of uh budget do you or your family have right that's uh sounds like probably a tighter controlled budget than what i have i am single so i guess i don't know if that's an excuse for not having a tight budget but i basically right i don't need to i am the only that i have to keep track of so it makes it a little bit easier uh and also i you know i try to save a certain amount each month as well and uh i try to try to have an idea of what my expenses are and i am pretty consistent from month to month and uh whenever uh i need to uh whenever that changes i am pretty well aware of it without actually having to maintain a budget for it uh_huh uh_huh right yeah that's i guess i kind of do a similar thing more uh medium or longer range i just have a maybe a targeted amount that i will save for like i am probably within a year i would like to buy a new car so i kind of have a an amount in my mind and i am making every effort to to put a little bit away and increase the amount that i need for a down payment or whatever right uh_huh huh right right have you thought about uh leasing i see right but if you are rolling it over every three years it might be advantageous to do that you know typically you if you purchase your own car you tend to make uh the best returns after you pay it off of course the longer you keep it beyond that point the more profitable it is to own it yourself that's right yeah mine's uh seven years old and i think last year was that was a rough year for it i had a number of expenses but uh i am hoping that most of them were just kind of uh you know the as you get to a certain number of miles you have to get everything replaced brakes shocks and all that so i just went through that whole set last year i hope that i only have a slow period before i do that again right right what line of work are you in well uh i don't know that we really have a budget i have a set amount that i that i save actually well actually there is a a way budget our money apparently the uh my wife uh has so much uh gets so much to do shopping with every couple of weeks and uh we allot each of us so much money per week for our personal stuff gas and things like that and besides that i uh you know i have a set amount that i save every month uh_huh uh_huh really don't need to that's right uh_huh uh_huh right well i found that uh you know things as i have gotten older i am in my fifties now but before we use to have to have to have a very strict budget i had four kids and uh you know we planned out how much we were going to spend for food and how much for for this and for that kind of anticipate how much things were going to be uh i guess one interesting aspect of the budgeting i do now is that i set aside uh i kind of fence off areas of my check book for instance there are certain things that i know come up uh every so often every six months i have to pay car insurance uh every six months i have to pay my taxes so i take a set amount i've got a money market account that i do a lot of uh uh saving in and i also have got a checking account besides that but what i do on my money market account my taxes for instance which amount to an average of two hundred and twenty dollars a month i will just take two hundred and twenty out and i put it in parenthesis i take it out of the right line total and put it in parenthesis in there and let it build up every month i add two hundred and twenty dollars to it then when the tax bill comes in i've got that much set aside and i guess that's a way of budgeting uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh cars are definitely something that you have to figure into your budget not only for buying them but for keeping them on the road too uh you know we've got two cars my wife has a car and i like to drive pick up truck so we are on a schedule where i try every uh three or four years to to buy a new one and you know i am constantly making car payments but i figure that's got to be the story of my life anyway is making car payments so uh you know i get one paid for and uh actually i am saving up for another one besides so it's you know it's kind of a never ending thing but you try to you try to schedule those things so that uh you only you're not paying for two of at the same time i guess is what i am saying well uh i have thought about it but leasing wouldn't you know i don't use it for my business my wife uses hers just for pleasure and i use mine just to go back and forth to work which is only ten miles away so yeah i guess uh uh_huh right yeah you're right uh i have uh been know to keep trucks or cars for oh ten or twelve years but i find that after about four years they kind of start going down hill and you got to put put stuff in them you know uh_huh uh_huh those things can really upset your budget when they when they come in uh you know it's nice to have a little bit set aside for the for the unexpected shall we say so that it doesn't uh kill you all in one month okay eric uh are you married and do you have a family okay and do you and your wife have a budget plan for your finances uh_huh uh_huh i see uh well that's basically what we do uh about every every three months or so we [reevaluate] our budget and we sit down and just write from the largest bills down to the [smallest] and then we divvy them up between our four pay checks i work part time at night and he works and my husband works full times days and so we have four checks but that works out nice because we get paid every week and so that does help that helps a lot and then uh we don't have a lot extra for extra spending so it's pretty well ear marked yeah yeah every penny is ear marked but uh it we have found that works the best and and so if we can just divide them up all the major bills up in fact we found it easier to divide the major bills up you know cut the house payment in half and cut the loan payment in half but and divide those up between all uh_huh and so we are not taking a huge sum out out of one and then the next pay check we're real short or that's true uh_huh yeah well it helps you to focus where your money goes and and i am sure you felt the the same frustration before you got on a budget but you're wondering my when you put down all the money that you do bring in and then you're saying my word where did all that money go where does it go uh and also we have found that if we write down and we did this we are not real consistent with this but we did it for about a month and we wrote down everything that we bought when you know every pay check and so we could see where every penny went and it was really interesting to see just what you do spend and like i say we haven't been real consistent with it it's we should cause it does help uh_huh uh_huh just stick to that uh_huh that is yeah that that sounds like a really good idea and it really helpful uh have you developed a savings plan or i r a s or anything like that yet oh uh_huh uh_huh oh that's good that's a good feeling my husband just graduated from the university uh a year ago so finally finally we are getting to that point too so are you still going to school or uh yes i am to uh both questions uh yeah we do we uh uh basically there's the you know the expenses that are fixed during the month you know the ones that come every every month and we uh enter those into uh into a spread sheet and uh whatever is left uh after that we you know we sit down and agree on kind of what what sort of range we are going to generally going to shoot for so what do you do uh_huh wow yeah yeah all allocated out yeah all the checks yeah right yeah we found that uh it's definitely helped uh get a handle on kind of the unnecessary expenses we were before we started doing that kind of a thing we were uh spending uh money for things that you know we kind of tended to eat out a bit more than we should have and it was easy to uh let things get out of hand we thought it uh thought it to be really helpful we have gotten some of our loans paid off really because of this and stuff like that so yeah that's a lot of money but yeah but uh_huh yeah the other the other thing that that we've found that helps is you know we tend to fudge on the budget a little bit it's just to uh uh get up the money in advance and put it in uh uh so long as it wasn't you know [unreasonably] high but for things like food expenses or whatever just put it in uh in an envelope or whatever and that way it kind of forced us to uh stick to that amount and then once that was gone well if the entertainment amount was gone for the month say oh it's gone so we we haven't we our our initial goal was just to retire debt uh completely retire debt for car payments and credit card uh credit card debt and all of that we are just at a point where where we could start thinking about it so yeah well i uh_huh a student yeah i am actually in the in the uh the question was kind of interesting to me because i was just trying to put together a uh long term financial plan and monthly budget the only thing i do now is uh put the data into quicken i don't know if you are familiar with that uh_huh um i've found it's the only reliable way to keep a check book balanced actually because what will happen is my wife will write a few checks and then well uh uh not bother to total it and then it comes in to doing all the [arithmetic] so it really helps with that uh_huh well actually we haven't had to uh until just recently i guess we've got a a daughter who is eighteen months and another one on the way so we needed to start doing more of that just for uh you know saving for college and things like that we tried a way try to put away two and four thousand a year just for that uh_huh um um sounds good yeah i guess we're we're just at the point uh my wife worked until we had a family and then you know now we're just going on the one income so it's a lot more interesting trying to uh find some extra payroll deductions is probably the only way we will be able to uh do it you know kind of enforce the savings but uh it will be interesting to see um um that sounds good but uh uh i was just curious what uh part of the country oh okay uh cincinnati actually i was kind of wondering if they would be collecting people with uh the western accents or something like that i don't know how many people are uh getting involved in this but uh well that's interesting i'm uh uh actually uh i was kind of interested if you found out about the study by uh reading telecom digest or was there another oh okay yeah that is how i got it as well but uh uh_huh yeah it will be interesting to see what it would be interesting to see how the data base so well i guess we're talking about the experiment uh probably need to try to get back on the topic but uh it's hard to talk about finances without without getting to uh dollar figures i guess you know we could talk about some of the long range goals and uh well i think either my wife or i would like to pursue advanced degrees at some point uh i guess we will have to factor that in if we are not working for employers that happen to fund that it seems like every year my employer just gives back you know a little bit your tuition reimbursement i mean they use to reimburse one hundred percent and now it's uh now it's reimbursement depending on the grade you get in class and uh it's a real shame from what we had before uh because we're yeah i have some friends of mine who use quicken and uh i've considered using it once myself but i decided that the amount of information that would have to go in would be a lot of time keeping that up to date so i i kind of gave up on the idea of using quicken at least for now uh_huh yeah well it's similar problems but uh we just have the one check book and we try to keep it up to date as much as possible and occasionally we will get behind like you say but uh it doesn't really seem to be too too tight if we just remember to keep everything up up to date and balanced well how to you handle that the long range or medium range planning on finances uh_huh yeah well that's pretty good if you can do that i know i have a daughter who's ten and we haven't really put much away for her college up to this point but uh we're to the point now where our financial income is enough that we can consider putting some away for college so we are going to be starting a regular payroll deduction in the fall and then the money that i will be making this summer we'll be putting away for the college fund uh_huh uh_huh well our situation is just a little bit kind of the opposite of that cause my wife was not working for some time and was going to school and just recently uh took on a full time job well almost full time so it's only recently that we've had the money where we could start putting away large sums of it for uh long range goals like college and sickness and travel and that kind of thing oh [stockton] how about you uh_huh uh a [colleague] of mine at uh work got some information over uh the computer network called [internet] and he just [forwarded] that on to me and uh it sounded like it would be an interesting project to participate in so i sent back mail uh_huh uh_huh well what other long range goals do you have besides college uh_huh uh_huh anyway uh what do i do uh at the moment it's under chaos uh right now i'm just uh i i don't really have a budget per se i'm i uh it's called living within your means you know which means at the moment paying off the visa bill and keeping everything else under control and hoping the car doesn't collapse uh but uh no i don't really have a budget at the moment uh but i have uh i have a rough feel for how much money i can afford to spend each month and then i don't usually don't exceed that unless i unless the visa bill gets out of hand for one reason or another like if i have car expenses and then that then it goes through the moon so yeah so uh what do so you can afford to get a house yeah yeah so what do you and your husband do are you really um no kidding i see overseas where would you be going really really how long would you be there with with what church oh yes yes i uh i know who they are they uh they have an office uh in in costa mesa as i recall there there was uh you know there was a fairly large building that that was well that belongs to them so uh are you uh are you uh active in translation uh_huh true true enough so uh what what uh what languages do you speak besides english of course uh_huh in france uh must have been terrible the uh was it henry [macon] said that the the uh language was like a man slowly bleeding to death so they [hemorrhaged] him to death without new [infusions] that will eventually die and i it just amazes me that the french don't recognize that free style english is just takes on how about you what do you do with your budget uh_huh yeah that's true yeah that's sort of a problem we're trying we're trying to uh so far we are in the clear credit wise but uh the other side of it is so not much on that side of it to add to it we're trying to think of how to put away some savings and stuff like that but yeah we'd like to do that some day we have this dream but we don't know how long it will be a dream we we're kind of real we're real happy that we don't have any debt but we're at the same time we're real scared about [incurring] it in this uh economy right now so we're stepping real careful and trying to see what's the best way to save what the little bit that we do get you know on top of expenses every month we're missionaries actually yeah uh_huh and uh it will be easier once we get overseas cause we have uh like uh uh support quota and it's cheaper to live overseas than it is to live here and it doesn't get switched very easily once you come home so africa [nigeria] yeah about four years we're career so we we go over [seas] for four years and then we come back for a year we go over four we come back for a year uh we're with wycliff bible translators so yeah they could very well and uh we will be i was over over four years doing language [surveying] which is the first step you're kind of like the scout that goes ahead of the team and [assesses] the need and uh came home and got married and we will go back as translators cause we want to raise a family and it is easier to raise a family as translators well i always wanted to do translation but as long as i was single and foot loose so to speak it's easier you know they really need [surveyors] cause you could you're free to travel anywhere you don't have kids hanging around you and stuff well i have a [smattering] of about ten different ones but there's i'm not bilingual in any of them because i kept switching from one area to the other you know since i did you know complete a survey in one area i'd switch to the other so i know the [greetings] in about ten and how to do market stuff but in about uh about five i guess i can do better in it and my french is pretty good but it's uh french so uh i'm terrified to speak in uh in france yeah because they're real [snobby] about their language and french is street french and i just picked it up off the street and i knew what i was i knew what i was communicating but i didn't know what i was saying i never sat there and got a direct translation and said something here when i came home and french to somebody and he [paled] and said uh i'm not going to tell you what you said so since then i have [refrained] from speaking any french so in i don't know what i said to him but uh i didn't ask him either okay i thought it was supposed to give a recording but anyway uh well i do take care of pretty much all of the stuff for for my wife and for me and uh i embarrassed to say it's pretty trivial all we all i do is uh keep a list of things like debts that are outstanding and every two or three months update that and every once in a while make a list of what we spent that month but i doubt i do it more than three times a year and no i work with them all day i'm in computer science yet i i do everything on paper uh i don't even use a calculator for the stuff i'm doing because it's all pretty round numbers uh_huh yeah that uh_huh yes it's pretty straightforward it's i can't imagine having to go into real complicated stuff and making you know fancy budgets it seems like if you're getting to that level you're not in real good control uh_huh uh_huh yeah actually i mean i like using credit cards for everything but just paying off the bills because that way it's a record of everything and i don't have to worry about keeping records of anything else because they come in at the end of the month uh yeah i guess if that's if that's a weakness that's a good thing to do uh_huh sure do you find trouble keeping the records for taxes and all that or uh_huh well that's good to know yeah i don't understand the idea of paying somebody to to do it it seems like it's absurd the number of people who end up having to pay somebody to do it i yeah just the form yeah yeah and a lot of them yeah i i don't trust myself with using a calculator or computer too much stuff like that because i want to make sure that that i i keep on top of the numbers and understand what's going on i know too many people who use a calculator if they make a mistake they find out two months later because they weren't paying attention and and it seem yeah we have the same thing yeah sure okay uh_huh uh_huh do you use a computer oh uh_huh yeah mine is really simple because i got all our bills paid off when uh he was a [marine] he went to saudi arabia and while he was gone i got all of our bills paid off so really the only bills i have is rent utilities insurance you know so they come in i pay them and that's it you know that's about the extent of it you know i don't really have this major budget or anything i just really i'm real [thrifty] i take care of you know two children and me and uh just real careful with the money you know what little we have so that's what i do no uh uh you know i mean i i i've never liked credit cards and a lot of debt you know you buy something on credit and you pay twice as much for it when you get done you know so uh_huh i don't have too many i don't have too many weaknesses but i found out a credit card was one of them you know it's so much easy easier you know if something's on sale if you're a woman and you're a sale person it's like oh it's on sale let's go grab it you know so uh and if you don't have the money then use a credit card so i got rid of them credit cards you know yeah that was my weakness it wasn't bad i mean i didn't have like thousands of dollars you know and like that just i just learned that that wasn't for me you know so but i self employed you know i have my own little cleaning business type thing so uh i keep no it's not hard i just keep it in a notebook and write down what i've made and uh you know what it's going to have to go for that month and you know it's not that not that hard not at all so i always do my own income tax you know do you huh all you got to do is read a book i mean read the little book they send you fill in the [blanks] and go i mean it seems absurd that people will pay you know some bucks just to get someone to it's dumb i guess if you had some really complicated stuff but i don't so i don't mess with it but i don't use a calculator either you know i don't i don't have that that many you know things to add up so oh yeah and we have a i bank at n c n b here and they have a number that you can call in and i always call in and like once every other week or so and i will uh check off what checks have cleared and do you do that you do too and i always check them off and you know check my balance and my book and you know because i always want to know exactly what i have you know i do that real often i do that so anyway wendy i guess we get to talk about budgets tonight or lack of budgets if uh if that may be the case and any kind of long term financial planning or anything like that uh let me ask you the question do you have a uh budget or a monthly budget or a long term budget that you stick to uh_huh uh_huh i see i see well good i'm kind of in a different situation but i i i went through that too when i was in school but uh i was i was working to get through college and and uh trying to make it through that but uh i'm married and have uh a a couple of children and we have to uh pretty much stick to a budget i'm on a salary so i don't get any overtime or anything like that but we have a fixed income and we have to make sure that uh every dollar we have will is spent accordingly and uh what we try and do to to stick to our monthly budget is we pretty much have you know the house payment we have the insurance premiums uh utilities and so forth and we do sit down at the beginning of every month or the end of every month and write down how much we know we're going to spend and set that money aside and we also try and set aside money for savings set aside money for the the kids' education college education the future and uh set aside money for bonds and and we also set aside an emergency fund because we've uh we've been married for about ten years and we find out that you know no matter what kind of budget you stick on there's always going to be an unexpected car repair or something happen with the house that you have to have money for and uh not enough to go and to take a loan out but uh you have to have money for and uh then we have you know whatever's left over is disposable disposable yeah discretionary income that we use for the rest of the month so and it's worked out very well it's uh it's helped us so that we haven't been you know too long on the month and too short on the money and uh try and stick with that and nice thing about it i my wife is is excellent in that we both work together we both have a budget and we stick to it and there's no surprises in that well actually i have four kids so yeah i said a couple of kids i i guess i should have specified i have four four little boys yeah you bet you bet all right uh_huh yes uh_huh oh well good good uh_huh yes well what year are you in in college you're a sophomore so you have a few more years uh_huh well good for you good for you yeah i imagine it uh is a little difficult to stick with a budget during that during school and so it forth yes well great great and sometimes that's a little hard with books and music and and sheet music and stuff you've got to work on too lab fees and all oh yes oh yes well you're not a starving artist yet are you good well good there's enough of those in the world huh good good i'm glad to hear that wendy who's who's not very well educated oh yes yes that's true that's true i found that out so that's why i'm planning and and preparing for the uh education of my children also try and set that money aside i majored in business administration yeah but uh once again right right now i'm in college and i'm on work study and so my budget comes from my dad's help he helps me out a lot and i get paid monthly so that's kind of hard to have a budget my mother uh doesn't get paid much money so her budget is uh just uh planning for i r a's uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh that sounds good right right well that's good well good with two kids that could be hard four oh my goodness four boys oh my it's just me and my sister and my parents divorced three years ago and my sister had gotten through college but i was still in high school and my mother paid for a lot of my sister's college while my parents were together and then uh before the divorce she had saved for my college but uh when we had the divorce she just didn't get much money out of it and had to spend it all on getting another house so now my dad's paying for all of my college of and financial aid and scholarships i'm a music major so i have [auditions] coming up i'm a sophomore right right i'll i'll probably have about two two and a half years left oh it sure is i i know how much my dad is going to give me every two weeks and i and i don't spend over that oh sure there's there's always music books to buy oh no no no i don't plan on being a starving artist that's why i'm in college right that's usually because they're not real educated they can't afford to have a really good job the starving ones there's enough out there that if you have if you're educated enough then you can make money right what did you major in well good you know plenty about planning a a budget huh do you all have a budget uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah it's uh yeah i usually uh my wife handles a lot of the day to day finances and of course we're like like a lot of people we just scramble through month to month you know and uh uh we have a two income uh family she also works and uh but she she enjoys it and she's good at it uh if it's if it's i am kind of uh uh i'm pretty bad about [procrastinating] and one of these days i am going to do something about that i believe you know how that goes but uh uh if she she handles it pretty well she uh she writes all the checks you know once a month uh sort of on a peripheral she's uh uh an annuity administrator and so she uh she works for an insurance company but but she enjoys it she likes keeping track of all that stuff and uh yeah sort of and we you know we've experimented with with uh budgets you know from time to time uh but if you know you have to keep up with them so a lot of times we just uh just kind of play it by ear we try to keep our uh our retirement and our savings kind of automated so we never see that money just like taken directly yeah and that that's kind of handy yeah because if you don't see it you don't miss it you don't spend it yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah yeah it sounds like you all pretty much do it the same we do just kind of play it by ear but keep the the deductions you know uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh yeah uh about five years yeah uh i've got one little girl she's like uh nineteen months so uh she's she's not uh not not really not too bad uh yeah yeah when uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh i'm uh i i work for i'm an electronic technician i work at a for a university uh georgia tech uh research and uh so i just uh oh well uh_huh yeah okay thanks well uh yeah we we do um we've been married for twenty three years and we have uh three teenage daughters and you know they're very expensive so uh uh we yeah we have somewhat of uh a system uh it's it's kind of uh you know it's kind of hard to explain we've actually gone uh just recently to you know having having two checking accounts we always had just one and now we are having two uh it's kind of hard to talk about this because to me it's very personal so i have to be that's that's kind of the way i feel about it yes do you have a two income family or one income yeah yeah uh_huh yeah yeah so your wife yes it that what her is her career uh related to to finance or accounting oh uh_huh yeah so that's sort of related to her field a little bit yeah yeah it's just taking it out right right yeah yeah we do the same thing yeah if you have something to take it out that's exactly what we've always done and we've had uh they've always had uh where they match your funds you know sometimes if you if you save so much then they will match it uh that you know we've done that too but my husband works for an insurance company and he he has now for about oh gosh how long has it been ten years i guess but he was with another company before that but we have we have i i work also but i only have a part time job and i get paid very little but uh you know i try to use that money for food jim gives me a certain amount money you know we just transfer it into my account and then i use that for food household expenses and then i add my own check to that and then with that i try and handle you know some of the clothes that the girls need and things like that but the expenses that we need and have around the house so yeah yeah we well jim has jim has a budget i mean he works it out every month and breaks it all down uh you know i am given so much money a month so i am suppose to kind of get the food out of that so i try not to you know we don't you know i don't ask for more i mean i just try and make it on that because i think when you go to the grocery store you can just you can go crazy with all the choices that you have and uh you can you can really waste a lot of money that way so uh well how long have you been married oh yeah so you're just really getting started so do you have a family too oh yeah yeah she hasn't effected your budget yet really no not like she will later on you will see that all of a sudden you're paying you're trying to decide whether you are going to do you know soccer and piano and all these choices that they have of activities to do and then you really have to start saying okay now what can we afford you know what can we do here and then you have to really sit down and plan some more and uh but i think when we were back at your age we didn't have much of a budget and then as the girls got older i think we we did more and more of that you know more budgeting as as they got older uh but uh but what do you do do you oh okay oh well good good well we just have you know we have a good friend that's about to move to atlanta i guess we're not suppose to talk about those things i'd better get back to the subject but uh budgeting i found you know i feel a lot better you know we use to work out of one check book and it would be very hard for me because i wouldn't have i wouldn't have any idea how much money i was spending in one month now i have know exactly what i'm spending and it's so much easier kathy so what is your uh family what do you usually do as far as budgeting uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah my husband is a finance major also and uh we kind of have the same plan uh we have one credit card and every month we put uh you know the same amount in for retirement uh and we budget we're our our new thing to our budget is we just had a baby so we're budgeting uh each month uh an allowance for his education starting now so that's in our budget every month now that's the newest addition but we too do the same thing as far as uh we have a set amount we take oh one big vacation a year and then maybe you know three small vacations so we you know an exact amount that we spend on that each year and uh_huh uh_huh i see like you have a separate account for that then oh i see uh_huh oh i see uh_huh i see uh_huh does your husband deal in uh stocks and bonds and mutual funds and all that kind of stuff does he invest in that and for long term uh_huh uh_huh really because you're you've you've sat down with a piece of paper and said well let's see what are we going to so what goes into that that particular thing it's vacations christmas uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh really well you know uh what do you do as far as i i take it do you uh run the family budget as far as uh groceries and that sort of thing uh_huh and how what's that uh_huh do you have a set amount that that you spend each month or or how do you work that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i do too i stay home also uh_huh uh_huh yeah what what as far as like big things like something comes up and you have to buy a t v or a big item like for the house how do you have like a household uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh do you we have a very detailed budget because my husband is a finance major and we have you know we have money that we take out each month that we uh you know for food and and for for gas and things like that and then we put aside so much money each month for birthdays and for christmas and for uh other things then we take our major purchases we want to make during that year and we budget them into what we call our our needs and wants list and so uh the things that like a vacation we have a vacation fund we have a fund for the things we need and then a for the things that we want and uh and we're continually putting into those you know each month how much we're going to need and then we know the month that we're going to have enough to get that particular item so we very rarely buy anything on credit everything we buy is paid for right right right uh we have found that we spend less money if we pull out the money uh instead of just writing checks for things if we actually pull it out and keep it in a safe here and we actually pull out the money each month that we want to put in for birthdays that we want to put in for uh the vacation that we put in for christmas well a lot of that uh i don't know how safe it is i guess uh we keep it all in a safe here at the house and so it's actually pulled out then we keep our we have a savings account for the kids' education that money goes into there each of our we have three children so they each have their own account that money is put into each month he does somewhat yeah he does somewhat uh we have an investment plan yeah i guess he does but uh we have really found this is the first year we've done it this way and we are really saving a lot of money christmas birthdays uh car maintenance dental medical we just averaged out how much last year we used per month on medical and how much we used on dental and uh and so now when we have to come up with that deductible that our insurance doesn't cover rather than wondering where it's going to come from we have it you know and when when we see something on sale uh instead of just looking in our checking account and saying well we've got enough and getting it and then when something comes up you know kind of [scrimping] to pay for a medical bill everything's taken care of and we're finding that we even have more money than we thought yeah i do uh_huh all the money all the money is turned over to me yes i have a set amount it's very generous and i usually have extra and so then that can go uh you know either back into our checking account or i can just carry it over uh you know there are certain months of the year that you'll spend more on food than other months and certain times when that will be left over but that's completely up to me how i do that and then uh because i don't work i stay home and so it's kind of my money and i also get my own money to do what i want to go to lunches you know and do that kind of thing we have a clothing uh envelope for each of the kids and for myself and my husband that we put how much we figure we need each month on clothing it really works out great we're finding that we have a lot more money to spend on things like that and we're yes we have a household budget like we're going to need to buy a bed for my daughter that's coming out of her crib this year and also we need a new bed and so we've got both of those budgeted and we put a certain amount in each month and we know which month we'll enough saved to go buy those and if we find one on sale before then then we can just take that and put it towards your turn well i have to say i really don't have a budget both my wife and i uh grew up in uh families of rather modest means and uh our family income at this point is comfortable upper middle class i guess you might say and uh we're both so uh frugal that uh we really don't need a budget you know we just sort of invest the money and go on vacations and always never seem to have any money problems which i guess is a comfortable thing well we stay within our means but we don't do it uh by conscious effort it just sort of happens automatically although we just moved to california and uh the cost of living here in california is uh i would say rather [pathological] uh housing prices are you know like from four to ten times more expensive than uh uh they were where i came from in uh dallas yeah so uh uh that presents a a real shock actually our standard of living has gone down somewhat since we've moved to california but yeah it's god's country uh and one way you know that is that only god can afford it uh so budget is not a problem for us uh at least it hasn't been it may may be at this point but uh up until this point it really hasn't been when i uh was in uh undergraduate school a long long time ago i uh noted that the monthly salary starting average monthly salary salary for engineers that you know in my discipline was like oh six hundred ten dollars a month or something like that and uh i noted at that point that i was you know if that's what my salary was that i drew then i would be making almost twice as much as my father made during his best year ever so i stopped worrying about money and it never have worried about money since then sometimes uh it's a bit of a a problem you know because i guess i don't really manage my money the way i should but uh i suppose i've lost money on not taking good advantage of of uh investments but uh_huh well i guess we're both lucky in that regard then how big is your family i see so how you once you get ten children though you may have oh all right i have two kids uh one nine and one thirteen and they are beginning to be a budget problem but uh have not been really up until this up to this point i give them a i give them an allowance and they uh i basically give my son ten dollars a week and i put half of it in the bank and i give give him the other half in cold cash and uh he has a teller card so he can uh do what he do what he wishes with the money that i put in the bank but at least it isn't you know burning a hole in his pocket if he wants to use it he has to go get it and that usually oh i i start okay well uh we keep a budget to an extent uh and really we were really forced into keeping a budget because i'm i'm paid once a month which sort of sort of forces some uh uh restrictions and you need to make sure all your bills are paid uh about yourself yeah well i guess that really is sort of uh keeping a budget you know you stay within your uh within your means yeah yes oh you moved from dallas to san francisco that is a hugh difference yeah but you have good sour dough and it's a beautiful place to live yeah uh_huh yeah well that that's a system too well then again you know you said you you are able to take trips and you do obviously have enough to live on so i guess you're indirectly budgeting uh just bye bye the fact that you said you're both very frugal uh in spending the money so i mean that's that's a form of budgeting i would think it's it's kind of a strange topic to to try to for two people who don't really have a budget to talk about budgeting and how they manage their money yeah uh well we're we have one on the way uh my wife and then we're we're having one on the way in uh in uh september no i think it's just going to be one how about yourself oh do they budget at all i mean do you have them on an allowance yeah yeah uh why don't you go ahead first sure uh_huh sure that's kind of uh to what we're doing is budgeting you know month to month is uh kind of taking into consideration what the bills are and what's extra so that's kind of how we do it uh from month to month depending on what insurance is due or whatever uh long term that's a little bit easier for us because uh with our jobs we can take out extra money towards savings four oh one k plans uh that kind of you know retirement plans that kind of stuff so we can kind of put aside some money that actually is better for us not to see versus when it's on the paycheck and you have to try and take out some of that money you always find something a little extra that you'd like to get that month so uh long term probably is a little bit better than short term simply because uh it's automatically taken out so uh that works out much better for us so that's kind of how we do it anyway but exactly and if you can't touch it you can't spend it either so that kind of works out where you get into uh some plans that you know you touch it you're going to get a penalty that kind of thing so it leads you to kind of say well i'm not going to take it out i'm going to keep it and uh keep it in there and let it grow so that someway maybe for retirement you're going to have that money left let's hope anyway so you'll have that so that's kind of how we do it but ours is more like month to month too uh short term is to get things going so anyway other than that uh is kind of how we do it so i don't know if we're our time is up or what they'll let us know uh_huh oh definitely definitely and uh it grows uh it it seems like at first you're not going to see a big return but as the years go on if you're with the company for any length of time then it gets much better and uh so you know you just have to kind of look at it that way and there's other savings plans or other things that you can do automatic you know deposit from checks to where you don't see it and uh you know exactly whatever is in our checking account is basically just about what gets spent it's put into our savings account and we don't see it then it works out to where you know you don't look at it you just look at the checking account and say this is what we have for money and that's it so yeah it it's easy because you do spend it that's for sure like i said you know you kind of look at it uh you better have some other way of uh savings otherwise uh checking accounts aren't the best for you know long term type of planning so and you don't get a good return on it anyway so other exactly right now yeah it's a bad time you know uh_huh uh_huh exactly exactly you know we have some in laws uh that uh had theirs in some money market [certificates] and other things and uh kind of took them out of that because they got so low but uh yeah it's it drops so your better bet is to uh try to get in with something with your corporation if they have some kind of uh savings plans or something like that to where they kind of match the percentage or whatever so or some kind of profit sharing so sure yeah that's great yeah okay yeah exactly okay uh short term uh it works out pretty well because we have just enough to cover expenses with a little left over so budgeting in the short term isn't too much of an issue because there's not that much uh extra to go around uh long term is something we're starting to think about because our older child will be ready for college in about uh gee she's eight now so i guess about ten years good heavens so we're we're starting to think about long term considerations college and retirement but with not a whole lot of discretionary money it's kind of hard to figure out how to do it how about you uh_huh uh_huh right and the old uh if you can't see it then you can't spend it uh idea right uh_huh uh they'll uh yeah exactly we we actually do have some money in a four oh one k i just wish i could afford to uh put more away each week because i agree that it's a an excellent way right yeah yeah checking [account's] a very dangerous place for money to be i'm convinced yeah i guess there other than things like the stock market or mutual funds there's really not much of a return on anything these days yeah the interest is so low i mean it it's nice for people buying homes but for older people who have money in c d or whatever it must be awfully hard to see rates go down to three and a half percent or whatever yeah i'm i'm with a small company now and i hope that uh if we're successful that they'll go in for some sort of profit sharing that'll be very nice well i guess we're kind of running out of steam on this topic here okay yes yeah well i i i feel like uh i am from mars i mean i'm fifty years old and uh i've been divorced for um eighteen years but i've two kids and all but i uh i i've never had a budget and i don't uh do any planning and i don't know i don't uh uh i don't have a long term financial plan i don't try to control my expenses but i'm i'm glad you're a stranger but really i'm i happy i i well i'm curious how other people live uh so maybe we should start with you what do you do really oh maybe they're going to arrest us both wow uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh huh the uh i had a part time job around oh gosh fifteen years ago seventy six and uh uh this was a sort of a career shift at the time and so i was willing to take a half time job to do that and i actually did my bank account would uh i'd i i kept bouncing checks just at the end of the month but i i had [miscalculated] i well i didn't keep a balance it's one of the problems i never had to in the past i always kept plenty of money in my checking account but when you're only earning half the salary even though i wasn't spending much money i sometimes i sometimes would just things would get to tight uh and sometimes what i would do is keep a piece of paper in my wallet and every time i uh i spent money i mean cash mostly i would uh write it down so i could see at the end of a month how much i spent on food so i could do better planning but i would forget to write the things down and it that i i don't know if i ever went as far as three months or not in keeping that kind of data i certainly haven't done that in sixteen years or whatever yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh the uh i i have to say that let's see at this point on i don't run out of money uh and it uh and i don't i mean someday if i were to get [remarried] i might want to buy a house which requires lots of money which i don't have and i i i think my strategy if if i may is to is to not spend money i mean i don't have expensive tastes i don't go out i mean i buy a car well the last car i got rid of i'd had it was nineteen years old people were embarrassed for me i mean it was it was a good car and oh it was great my my mechanics loved it because it was an old it was a sixty five buick and it just wouldn't stop uh and it i i just didn't feel the need for a new car it isn't like i couldn't afford one uh and now i mean i i don't uh i tend to eat expensive food i mean i don't mind buying a good steak but for me i only do that every week or without even i mean maybe once a month i mean you buy a a [tenderloin] steak it costs outrageous like twelve dollars a pound you buy a a less than half a pound so it's six or seven dollars to me i realize if you have eight kids you're not going to run out and do that but but i'm just i'm just saying as a single person that's that's a drop in the bucket and so if you're extravagant on how you buy food it doesn't add up if you're buying i mean if you're not going to super expensive restaurants which i don't care to go to so so that's i think one of the reasons i don't need to budget is that i don't have i don't i don't have to hold myself back from buying that expensive thing because i can't afford it because i'm not interested in that expensive thing how are you you want to go ahead and start talking about whether you budget that sounds kind of like me about the same thing yeah i'm even in worse shape because i have eight children and uh we live from hand to mouth we hope that there's enough money at the end of the month to pay for the bills and if there's not then we due for the next month a couple of times we've tried some things and they worked but i'm not disciplined enough to keep doing it the best program we ever had is at the beginning of the month we took and uh took my check and divided it out into envelopes and then paid for the expenses out of that envelope and when the envelope was empty then you didn't have any more money to spend in that area and that worked out real well cause we didn't have to keep writing down what we'd spent it was just that when that was empty you knew you were out of money and we did that pretty successfully for about three months and then we started borrowing from one envelope to put it in the other envelope and in about two months we were back to doing the same thing we always do uh_huh uh_huh i even find now like with the automatic [tellers] i'll go take money out of that and then i forget to take that out of my checking account and uh so i i i leave a little bit of a slush fund in my checking account and i figure that so the balance showing in the checking account is always somewhat different that what's really there and i figure that gives me room for the mistakes i make yeah but it was still running uh_huh yeah not very often that's right a lot of okay do you have a budget that you go on uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well my bills i usually know approximately how much they're going to be each month they are more or less just about the same you know uh very seldom are they any different and then uh like for groceries and everything we try to put like two hundred and fifty dollars in a little can in the kitchen and then that's what we use to buy the groceries with and then we put our receipts in there you know and usually that's enough and uh but i don't have any you know small children to have anything extra come up you know like uh running to the doctor or something like that with them yeah yeah right in fact i did have to take my dog to the vet the other day yeah that it's worse than having a kid huh yeah uh_huh yeah uh i'm not working right now i worked for p i e and then uh they went bankrupt so i just went ahead and took my early pension but i only get that once a month yeah yeah so yeah so you know i really have to try to budget that i don't go over that amount you know each month uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah right uh_huh and oh yeah right now it's terrible isn't it yeah uh_huh i also like long term christmas club you know i used to belong to a christmas club last year i didn't then so then naturally christmas comes along and that puts you behind too you know so this year now i have them taking out fifty dollars a month out of my checking account for my christmas club so i figure you know that's going to help some yeah right you know right right and i'm oh that's good i'm taking like uh sewing lessons to try to learn how to sew better than what i can so i won't have to go out and buy the ready made clothes anymore i know i even bought myself a surgery you know and i just love it i haven't learned everything to do on it yet but i figure that will help me save you know uh_huh yeah well see some people are some aren't because i have some sisters i have three sisters and none of those are really interested in sewing yeah and then i can also you know do some crafts and sell those at garage sales so which i've been doing uh_huh oh really oh well have you called oh oh it is oh well that that's nice you know uh_huh yeah well i guess that's about all i can talk to about budgets when i was working i uh bought a bond a month out of my you know they automatically took it out of my out of my payroll all [rightie] yeah i sure do uh i have it's pretty much a [ledger] sheet and i just write down all my bills how much i'm going to have to pay and i do it per paycheck for me which is every other week uh i mean i include everything from groceries to insurance to car payments to credit card payments you know everything and it tends to work out pretty well that way i can anticipate you know a little better i usually try to [guesstimate] and then when the bill actually comes in i go ahead and fill in the actual amount that way i know how much pocket change i'm going to have left at the end of the month or at the end of the paycheck anyway so that works okay for me right uh_huh same here uh_huh oh okay uh_huh right luckily i don't either i mean you know maybe my cat would get sick but i mean usually that's not so much that it would throw me off but you so you know what i'm saying yeah i sometimes it can be sometimes it can be i guess the worst thing i've ever had come out is like car maintenance kinds of things but i do try to build in a little extra money each month to to be able to do that type of thing so uh_huh oh uh_huh oh that's tough my roommate only gets paid once a month and that last week's pretty lean generally speaking so right i for for years got paid once a month and and in ways i liked it because i could go ahead and pay all my bills at once there's always one or two stragglers that usually they were for me it worked out that they were the smaller ones but i would pay all of them at one sitting and i would know okay you can go spend this much on groceries now and you get this much a week and that is it and and it worked okay for me i don't know right now i i'm in the mode of trying to dig out of debt i think as everybody is and so it's yeah it's really bad but uh it's going pretty well and i've got a real good plan [mapped] out here so uh_huh oh that's yeah that'll cover your gifts come christmas time that'll yeah that'll be good yeah most people are spending three or four months you know at least digging out after christmas so yeah i i was pretty fortunate this christmas i didn't get in debt so uh_huh oh uh_huh it's so rare you hear anybody doing that any longer yeah my uh roommate does sew some and and uh she hasn't sewed anything in a long time but i i'm sure that she could pick it up again my mother always sewed she tried to teach me when i was young but not interested yeah yeah but that's a real good way to save money though by doing that uh_huh uh_huh well that's a good way to to make a little extra money well this is another way that i'm making a little extra money so that was you know nice that i [tripped] over this opportunity and you're actually my first call yeah i had not uh done i i guess today today's my first day that i could even do it yeah you beat me to the punch here i i was about to call to get to see if i could get on with somebody so so that was great yeah yeah i take have some money taken it and put in a four oh one k well we in in in our family have been pretty [remiss] in trying to uh you know keep track of uh daily finances uh the uh way back what twelve years ago or something when i got my first computer i did what everybody else does which is to put the whole family budget on the machine and put checks and you know checkbooks and all this kind of thing and we kept that going for about a month and it became so [onerous] that we gave up on it you know so uh the only thing we're you know that we do now is uh i keep a a little spread sheet of uh what i call the net worth calculation which is just the the present value of various kinds of investments and so worth uh and i only update that oh i don't know maybe once every quarter or so every three months just basically when the statements come in you know just to see whether or not we're falling you know getting ahead falling behind or staying even or what uh that's really about you know the extent of uh of the kind of uh financial score keeping that we're doing huh oh dear that's terrible uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh i see are you are you married are you living with a bunch of with with people that you're sharing expenses oh i see uh_huh oh dear uh_huh uh_huh i see uh_huh oh i see oh sure uh_huh uh_huh yeah you're the first you know uh my next door neighbor just lost his job in a you know one of these uh his company went broke i mean went you know bankrupt actually it was a [subsidiary] of a of an outfit called u s shoe or something it was a computer [subsidiary] i don't know what a shoe company's doing running a computer company but uh you know they just folded it up and uh uh told him to they took the top management and gave them jobs with the with the corporate uh at the corporate front office and everybody else was sent packing uh hang on one second i've got uh somebody was knocking on my door here uh it sounds like in a certain sense at least at the present i mean it sounds sounds terrible to say but at the present stage you probably are even more in the market for a a [budgetary] thing than than most people probably might be in terms of keeping keeping score of input and output do you have do you have a computer at home or uh_huh uh_huh i see uh_huh yeah have you do you use a standard uh a standard spread sheet or i mean uh_huh that sounds about right uh_huh right uh well it's kind of difficult for me because right now uh like most teachers i'm laid off and so um i spend most you know i substitute a lot so it's a lot it's very hard on a [nonfixed] income because i don't know how many days i'm going to be called in and whether i am or not to try to keep track of finances and but i know how much i have to bring in a month and that's about it that's about as far as we go and then anything extra is you know more or less split up between all of us and just thrown in the kitty more or less for a rainy day uh no i'm a single mother i have three children so uh right now we're on we get you know aid from the state at this point because there's no other way to do it and my ex husband just sort of took off and doesn't pay child support so right now i know what i'm getting from the state and uh i have to balance more or less what i get from the state with my bills and uh you know try to work as many days as possible any time they call me in but i still have to figure out if i work too many days then i lose all my state aid and if i don't work enough days then i don't get enough to meet the bills and it's like a juggling act every single month like this week i've been just holding my breath and hoping they'll call me in but they probably won't because next week the kids have school vacation so you know the four days before they only have a four day week and they usually don't need subs because everybody's pretty good about coming in they don't like to be absent before a vacation but we're shopping around as far as well i'm shopping around as far as trying to get uh that's why i'm doing this to get some extra money and uh getting [pledge] sheets for the boy scouts my kids are in boy scouts so trying to get [pledge] sheets for the boy scouts because every penny i bring in is ten percent to me so it's sort of helps [defray] the costs a little bit but you know we do a lot of robbing peter to pay paul i guess we're in the situation that a lot of middle class americans are in oh my lord really uh_huh oh sure right uh_huh definitely uh yes we do and we try to you know i keep track of every penny and more or less enter it in every single day i'm at the computer and it's like okay what do we have left what do we have to pay what have we paid this month what hasn't come in yet you know okay uh we keep a monthly budget i just recently stopped working so i can be home with my kids so we keep a monthly budget and we try to stick to it yeah yeah that's the kind of things that throw you off uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah oh how nice yeah yeah yeah well i know we do my husband gets paid twice a week and so we pay all of the little bills uh one paycheck and then like the mortgage and the electric bill you know those big bills the second second pay and then again he does have a savings that comes out you know for christmas and stuff that kind of thing yeah that kind of thing but it's nice that it's there you know yeah yeah yeah it's nice that it's there yeah yeah yeah yeah that's kind of how i felt when i was working because it seemed like we spent more we bought more things and it seemed like we spent more then a lot of it was going to uh daycare and that kind of thing so it just seems like with me staying home we had that big cut but we save more i don't know how and i don't know why but we it seems like we do yeah yeah you kind of try and buy bigger quantities yeah that's how i felt too it just you could take a little longer and just watch a little bit more i guess i guess that's kind of like the way we do we i i don't i don't know how it comes out it just seems like we save a little bit more whereas where i was working oh yeah yeah yeah it adds up yeah it is it is yeah uh_huh i have two one is four and a half and the other one's two and a half so yes yeah that yeah i just came back to find jeans for the little one and it does add up yeah but uh yeah yeah yeah well that that's that's hard but i'm enjoying my stay home for the little time that i can for the i know it's not forever and that's what's so sad but i know it it's really difficult here all because there's always something breaking car needs tires or you know something uh uh we do ours more monthly than long range uh we uh my husband gets paid once a month and when he gets paid i pay all the bills and out of his check they take a savings and out of my check they take savings and retirement both out of both checks so as far as extra savings we really don't have that much extra to save uh his check once a month pays all the bills my check weekly buys groceries and gas and you know that kind of thing and it works out real well that way we don't run into a lot of problems but budgets are horrible uh_huh yeah yeah yeah when the car insurance is due and you call the credit union and tell them well send me some money yeah it uh it would be nice if we didn't have to touch the money he has taken out and put in savings but we do yeah it i'm just glad that it is there for car insurance medical bills whatever happens but uh i know but i you it's just really is difficult uh neither one of us has had a raise in a couple of years and of course the cost of living keeps going up so much groceries are outrageous and i keep saying my check does less and less but uh_huh yeah well i uh i know that since i do work i buy a lot of quicker cuts of meat and uh well the frozen things for the microwave and things like that and i'll stop by the deli and pick up uh chicken or whatever where if i did not work i'm sure that the grocery bill could be managed a lot a lot uh better yeah well well i'm sure you do uh i do not well i do not have to pay child care during the winter my son's old enough that he likes to come home uh from school but in the summer he's still young enough that i cannot leave him by himself so in the summer i have that extra and ours is seventy dollars a week plus all activities and that's usually movies one day skating one day swimming one day yes so you usually end up paying close to eighty dollars a week and that's a lot of money but you know if they're going to be in daycare then they need to have some activities other than just being there do you have two children well they're expensive too uh just the [outgrowing] of their clothes so i'm sure the budget yeah and medical bill although the insurance we had was good uh when thomas was younger a lot of the stuff had to be paid up front and then you were reimbursed so it was nice when you'd get a couple of hundred dollar check from the insurance but in the meantime you had to put out the money first but yeah it is oh i would too i would i would advise anyone that could possibly do it to to well you probably wouldn't want to do it forever i don't know though budgeting activity in our household i has is uh uh kind of an informal kind of situation we we you know put actually what happens is uh is my check gets automatically deposited i don't even have the glories of bringing home my check anymore it just gets deposited and and and my my wife you know you know looks at all those bills that come in and you know and all those people are counting on me to have my wife pay them you see and so our our budgeting we really don't have a formal budgeting situation every time i've ever tried one it's uh i've just got wrapped in my [inertia] and uh i've just decided not to pursue it uh what what's your budget situation you know well actually that kind of situation is just wonderful for budgets isn't it uh_huh well my you know my my parents too you you you were born in in the in the late thirties or early forties yeah um uh_huh well that that's good well we we buy what well we just got through buying a twenty five foot refrigerator a new ceramic top stove and a new dishwasher and and we put twenty eight hundred dollars on the charge along with my trip to japan which was was fourteen or fifteen hundred dollars and you know right i mean we just we got a monster you know bill coming in but but we also have zero interest being paid and we pay it off as as it goes yeah so we never really get that much over uh over extended huh yeah we're we're doing that we have you know uh this is our our our big uh we did [redecorating] two you know two new pieces in the in the family room and new carpet i mean we just uh we've just been spending spending spending but we haven't really done anything for a long time because we've we've had two kids in college that just have graduated in the past year so we're you know we don't have that yeah it's uh it's about time that we did that but the the terrible part about it i've looked at it all and it all looks still pretty good to me why why we need to replace it but but unfortunately my my my wife really feels as though it's it's just been an inappropriate uh thing to to i mean that rug is thirteen years old why not replace it i mean uh i say it might go for another thirteen but uh too late we'll never find that out and you know i i i don't spend that much money i just uh we just sort of have had uh you know too many obligations to you know we sort of take care of the kids when they were school and they they got through school and that was the major you know decade of expenses you know so we we feel as uh but as far as any formal budgeting uh you know i i we just apparently have been very fortunate when we went want to go out to eat we go out to eat we never really you know have to program money for that or make choices you know but uh we don't have that [uproarious] a a lifestyle after all we're well actually uh i've i've had a couple of different situations my current one has been the most successful uh at a certain point in life my husband my ex husband was an alcoholic and we got divorced back in the mid seventies and that left me with three teenagers it certainly is but at any rate what happened was that i i just absolutely put away all the credit cards i didn't rip them up i didn't send them back nothing i just put them away because there was one that it was really handy to have if i absolutely had to have something i could go use it but uh mostly we just spent cash whatever we had and if we didn't have it we absolutely didn't spend it but then as things improved you know once once i got them all through college uh it came to the point where uh my parents came through the depression i'm not sure how old you are but my late thirties yeah uh_huh and uh my mother hardly ever spent anything on herself or on the house and that's kind of the way i was raised and so i'm not a very demanding person in in that aspect so for quite a period of time i just flat didn't spend any money now meanwhile i got had a a building bank balance and my intent was that whenever something went on sale that i really had to have i would have the cash to buy it right then and there and not ever have to spend any money on interest and that that's the way i've operated ever since then it and you know if if something goes on sale and i don't have the money i still don't buy it oh my oh my oh my uh_huh and that's the way i do my credit cards now yeah i do almost all my purchasing on credit cards but it's the fact that i have enough of a of a cushion in the bank so that when they come i can pay them in full oh my i'm envious well i uh_huh it's time for you to do these things then right this is so funny that's wonderful but you're lucky to have her because if you're like me and you have difficulty spending money you need somebody to help you spend it i mean certain things really do need to be done whether or not you think they should be or not okay yeah me too i know exactly what no it's really hard to do that i mean it's i don't know i guess um we do kind of have a budget um but it's kind of funny what we what we do i guess is we try to proportion uh who pays what according to the salary that we make do you understand what i'm saying we we pay a percentage um which is kind of strange a lot of people don't do that but we find that it works you know well okay um like i pay a certain percentage of my pay check to the bills and he pays a certain percentage of his paycheck do you understand okay i guess i didn't really explain that too well oh that one gets used up quick is that it that's oh wow that's really that is pretty detailed well but you know that's good too because i've been in the situation in the past where i didn't know where my money was going and that that's hard to you know you can't keep up with it and it really gets you in trouble you know and oh yeah yeah that's easy to do it's very easy to do and it's i don't it do you find it easier to i mean do with a budget do you feel like you're you do i mean i know you said you have better control but do you feel like you're really saving anything i mean oh well that's uh_huh yeah which is easy to do yeah right well that's good i know what you mean about the school because that's what i'm trying to do also and we're trying to build it enough so that i can go to school full time because right now i'm going to school part time yeah so you know trying to budget is again you know at this point we're trying to budget enough so we can save more um you know so i can go to school full time you know it's it's not easy to do oh oh it definitely is and i tell you what if you work hard enough it'll happen because because i can we can see it you know i think it's going to be a couple of years before i can do that but but you know but at least i can see a little bit of light just from you know doing this you know budgeting and stuff it really helps but right yeah it really makes a world of difference doesn't it it really does i know i've been in like i said the same situation you know where i've i've been in a situation where i didn't budget anything just spent money and spent money and spent money and it doesn't work it it really doesn't uh makes a big difference yes oh definitely yeah right yeah well that's a big that's really important because i do have a college fund set aside for my kids you know and my oldest one is um going on nine so yeah it's not that many years you know before she's going to be going so i hope that you know i can continue the college fund because it's important that they go to college when they get out of high school right no that's true i mean you hope you hope that they can but you know you can't plan right yeah right right that's the way you have to do it right no no that's that's an important thing to me and that's why it was very important for me because i didn't go to college out of high school it was important for me to budget in a um college fund for them because it was just so important i said i don't want them to go through what i went through they have to have a college fund right exactly yeah right yes i know exactly i was the same way very good yeah uh_huh you're that's that's that's strange because ours all of their money goes into savings if they need something we buy it for them and all their money has to go in their savings account you know which maybe i'm being a little bit too harsh but if they need something i buy it for them you know i mean if it's an absolute need you know i mean if they want something occasionally we sure do as a matter of fact i do the finances in the family and what i do is take uh entire take home pay and then i like divvy it up into sections into the house into the car into the anything that's to do with the house like utilities or electric or anything like that goes into the house budget and then i have one for the food and one for um an and each of these is allotted a certain amount of money and hopefully we stay within that budget and then uh we have some for uh debt and some for just plain family you know like if the kids need clothes or if uh-oh i don't know you know if something in the well the house one gets the money for the budget if we need something new in the house or something like that so that's pretty much how we do it yeah uh_huh it does uh now the way that we can really get off track is if i start to pull money from something and put it into another into another budget like if i have money put into the house budget and all the bills that go with that and i start [siphoning] money out of that like into the food bill budget um to buy more food and i don't do that usually but when it does happen then i get into problems with you know then i have to take money from somewhere else to pay the bills on the house and i don't like to do that then you can get really into trouble and that doesn't happen very often because i'm pretty strict i don't usually take money from anywhere unless i absolutely have to uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well that's great uh_huh yeah uh it's it's kind of a good thing with my husband's company we can allot a certain amount of money and all of our we have four children each of our children have a savings account and then there's a basic savings account like a family one and what the his um company does for us is we allot a certain amount and like you said uh they they just take that straight out of the paycheck and put it right in the savings account we don't even see that uh money but we can take it i mean it's available to us if we want to take it out but uh we just try not to touch that but you know and so we try not to even take that as part of our budget we just try to put that right away in savings it's very difficult sometimes to to not think and say well god we have a little bit in savings let's you know but you have to be quite um adamant and say you're not going to touch that so uh_huh yeah uh_huh i think that's great yeah right yeah we don't touch the kids we do have this joint one like you said and we do [fluctuate] money in that one if we want to and then there's one other thing that we have and and we don't touch the money in that one so uh_huh that's really good that's good you know and that's so important because today things can be so expensive they really can that's right exactly it's just not possible to do it like maybe we did it when when we went to school yeah it's too hard that's right that's right yeah yeah exactly wouldn't that be great yeah i think all of those things are really important and and uh the only reason i even went to a budget was i found that we um we would oh i can't think of the word like or money would go through the cracks you know and at the end of the thing we'd go what happened to all that money the extra we had the overflow you know and it just [siphons] itself away somewhere into the air and so yeah yeah it's hard to keep track isn't it uh_huh right right i think that's great yeah i didn't used to have uh a money allotted out for debt service until um i just had a baby seven months ago and she had extensive problems and and the the specialists and the hospitals that she had to have you know uh she was in the hospital for like a month and the money that accumulated in those i found i had to make that into the budget to start paying those off and i mean the insurance pardon yeah yeah our insurance was wonderful but it didn't cover everything you know and so find you have to um do some of those things and and when money is involved it can really get expensive so anyway that's about how we handle our finances an and uh that seems to work pretty well for us yeah well see even that i think is a sort of uh a budget uh when you do that right right uh_huh i do we used to it got to be a great big hassle great big mess and i i just don't do that so what i have is uh a paper and uh and i put two columns my husband on one side and me on the other side uh we pay for check or else we take out of a t m services you know a certain amount of money and i write every check down for the amount of money or whoever takes money out of the a t m i write down that amount of money and as it comes through uh on the statement then i'll block it off in in a bright color so we know it's gone and i can see what's left out and what's left over to come through the statement an to make sure that we don't [overdraw] ourselves or anything but uh that's the way i do it uh receipts were a big mess for me i can't do that that was just uh too much yeah i couldn't do that so oh yeah oh yeah i just uh they are such a [boon] to of housewives i know i well right now we don't have a whole lot of money so there's not much to control um basically i'm usually the one that uh handles the money um uh my husband's been unemployed for a little more than a year so we've kind of uh it's been extremely tight but we've managed somehow um we pay the necessities first and uh then from there if there's anything left try and save some of it but uh how you want to go ahead and say what you do uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh so you've already got it there when you've got the yeah that's a good idea yeah you don't just go overboard spending too much of the savings on one particular thing that's a good idea when we have some money we'll do that yeah yeah yeah well some that's there're several things i do to save money um one is to use garage sales and we do a lot get a lot of things used and the things that we do have i try and recycle a lot you know before i'll get rid of something i'll look at it and think what else can i do with this and uh how else can i use this to solve some other problem somewhere else you know and uh that has helped a lot um and i do shop the sales and buy more than what we need so that i've got it ahead of time and i don't have to go out and buy it something not on sale because i've already gotten it on sale then when the sale comes around again go ahead and stock up again um sam's um we have a sam's not too far away but i haven't uh used it yet they're going to they're building a new one that's going to be even closer and i'm i'll probably use it when it's over here even a little closer yeah you have to buy quantity but um that's how you save money you know uh_huh yeah yeah yeah well i think there's an awful lot of things that we spend money on that we really don't need and i think since being unemployed we look you look at things more carefully you know do i really need this or is it just something i want and you have to decide how much you want and and i think uh i've noticed that however much money you have you can spend that much or more you know people people will go beyond what they have no matter what they have if they use credit cards that's one thing we're trying try not to do is to use the credit cards because that just runs yeah yeah if you and i really like paying cash instead of checks even um we got changed to an economy account at the credit union so it costs less to use less checks and um those are just little things you can do yeah i uh having a garage sale yourself helps we just had one this last week end yeah oh yeah yeah yeah yeah when you can't use it any more that's uh i think uh learning how to do things yourself a lot helps too like i cut everybody's hair myself okay i don't have a budget my wife and i i should make that clear i've been married thirty three years and we've never had and we don't follow budgets but i've got the greatest system going i just don't handle any money and i told her when we got married that i am going to earn so much money and she can spend on what she wants but if she ever spends more than i earn she's got to go to work she's never gone to work yet so so it works so it's so you know it's really great so i you know to answer their question i we don't we don't have a budget uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah you live right in new york city uh_huh so your rent is quite expensive as compared to what we're accustomed to back here probably oh i see oh yeah yeah well that's great no i can you know again i can see the reason for and i have i have two grown kids and one my youngest son is ken they both have very very good jobs they live in chicago they have absolutely no problem they have no need for it and my [eldest] son he very definitely has to live by a budget because he just cannot control control his finances but i don't you know i cannot see this which i have a very close sister in law that everything she does at the beginning of the month or every payday she sits down and fills envelopes and i've i find that that's a tedious bore i mean if we had to live like that i'm not so sure i'd want to continue working but for them it works so i mean whatever uh our system works for us we we have a policy my wife and i both that we don't everything we have is ours as far as money we don't [holdout] on each other or anything else and never really had a problem but i do believe in uh retirement investment programs very much so uh nowadays you sound like you're fairly young so i you know i keep telling my kids for god's sakes get involved in it because when they retire they should have a half a million dollars uh_huh i'm fifty eight so uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh right oh those things are great i uh boy i encourage those yeah you're you don't own a house and i'm fifty eight and i just built my fourth home so i just took on another mortgage don't ask me why i really don't but it's a tax i've had no i've had four not all at the same time but this is the fourth one i've owned and this one i built but i'm looking at this as an investment so i hope real estate keeps climbing and it's a brand new area so it should okay [vic] our topic is budgets do you keep a monthly budget welcome to the club uh_huh oh how interesting oh well uh it it's like the money it's hard to keep track of it as it goes out uh i'm a teacher and we're at my husband and i are at a stage in life where we've got one left in college so budgeting is not our priority since we have one in college their expenses run beyond any budgeting [allowances] we've quit yeah okay i see i stopped those four years ago yeah yeah oh yeah now we are you know um well we're at a point in life that we're looking to retirement rather than you know earnings so it's gotten to the point where um yeah automatic teller i only had the card and it was on my own personal account and it got way out of control very fast so i have a tendency now i take an allowance when it's gone it's gone now i'm finished if it's gone the fifteenth of the month then it's gone and uh we have a tendency not to use cash we pay everything by check and so that way we keep control of what we're spending where it's going what it's going for so um you know it's i take a hundred dollars a month that's all i take and you know i mean i don't buy groceries out of that's my own little slush fund if want to call it that and that's for my little [incidentals] or running to the grocery store to get a you know gallon of milk or whatever but um after that it's check only so we can you know really know where our money's going and you know what's happening what about how are you on charge cards good yes okay uh_huh okay yeah well this might help you because see my husband travels as well and we have separate charge accounts he's got an american express and that's only traveling then we both have a visa or mastercard so anything on his american express is his and it's his expense now he gave me one and if i go with him on work i only charge on that card i don't put it on my mastercard so we've separated those two completely and i know what you mean because at first we used to [intermingle] our funds and we weren't sure or our bills were outrageous you know because his traveling expenses were you know i mean he's a traveling salesman so um yes i do well usually works out pretty well um i try to project out um right now i project out six months and i have my fixed monthly bills and i know how much they are and uh i have a percentage of my savings that i attempt to take off the top not unless i have something come up that's unusual that was unexpected and then i may have to go into savings and kind of the formula i use i use uh ninety percent of my check and then i retain ten percent and if i don't use it it goes into savings also well my monthly bills are pretty consistent you know you have your house payments the same every month uh car payments are the same you know when your insurance is due so you budget all that in that's why a lot of times i only use ninety percent of my salary because some months i'll have insurance uh two or three times a year and i need that extra money and to take it out of savings at that point sure a month at a time is not really a big picture of what's going on in your life because it doesn't give you any flexibility as far as uh [unforseen] situations or something coming down the road that you know is coming down the road that you need to save for yeah i do it twice a year and um you know i can adjust it every month that's no big deal but uh i just finished out december and uh when i was done with it i threw it away and i already had january through july made out uh_huh yeah i take the savings right off the top i pay myself first i'm the type of individual that you know i can't i have to put something back for myself to feel like i'm doing my job it's my motivator i save about fifteen percent out of what out of my savings account not as well as the japanese do twice a month uh actually every other week so twenty six checks yeah so twice a year i pick up an extra check also uh_huh how do you all do yours uh_huh spend what's left over huh uh_huh there's really no certain formula that you can say well i want to save this much and i want to spend this much for the house and uh i'm kind of in a situation right now that my our children are grown and they're gone so uh you know and the house is almost paid for so we're in pretty good shape uh we've done it for about fifteen years yeah yeah well one thing we do about the groceries and we just got back from the grocery store and we've been doing this for a long time and we know exactly how much we spend at the grocery store because when we come home we write it down so in a given month we know that we spent two hundred and fifty dollars or four hundred dollars or whatever it is and if it's four hundred dollars we look at it and say well why did we spend four hundred dollars and we spent four hundred dollars this month because or last month because uh we had several christmas parties so but we know approximately how much our monthly grocery bill is you know and you should be able to do that too within ten or fifteen percent of what uh what you spend once you get a track record and once you establish your check record well i sort of i mean in my mind i do i don't write anything down or anything like that i just know what my bills are and how much i need for that and what's extra i'm a nurse and so i kind of figure i'm taking home a hundred dollars a day so when i look at things like to buy or anything i think of it in days if i hear something is three hundred dollars i think um that's three extra days you know something like that so so everything in my mind is by days and that's that's about the extent of my budget yeah oh that's a good one well that's what happens that's exactly what happens uh_huh uh_huh so it's just when you think you might get a little ahead that's right that's what happens so that's kind of hard but no no not at all not at all i i barely get by yeah it's hard it's real hard and uh it doesn't get much better either that's how it goes but i know but you know i just think that you're marked and you're supposed to have x amount of dollars and that's the way it's going to be you know i mean that's how it feels really because there's there's just some people just have more money and some don't and that's it so uh_huh and and i'm lucky i have a very low mortgage payment i've had my house for a long time and i don't have a car payment and you know i i don't have a lot of things so i'm pretty lucky but i have to come up with the money totally by myself so that's hard too you know yeah how is housing there yeah yeah yeah yeah well i'm lucky i'll never lose but you know it doesn't matter if i lose a job one place i'll just go somewhere else so yeah oh oh yeah really and and they get a little picky in one place and i know where i am now there's a whole big new administration and they're they're scaring everybody to death but i don't work on staff i just work on call uh_huh and so i have a couple of agencies that i work for and i make much more money that way and i can be independent i don't have to go to all the meetings and get into the politics and i don't get the benefits but i think it's more than worth it then i just pay for that so yeah it's a great thing but it's [risky] and most people don't want to do that yeah i i feel like it you know and it's much more interesting that way too you don't get burned out so much so yeah i have a twelve year old and so yeah i have to you know take care of her so yeah so we know we've got to cover certain things it's not just me so uh_huh oh well i know what you mean it does look impossible you look around you and i don't know how young people buy houses today or anything i really don't know oh that's terrible yeah gosh yeah well it's not too bad in this area really the thing is there's a lot of money and like i'm in plano so it's a little bit north of dallas but there's so much money in this town and there are things that are three hundred and five hundred thousand and lots and lots of them but you can buy a nice three bedroom home for like eighty thousand going to be a hard one huh why uh_huh uh you know it's it's it's it is a hard one because we don't have a budget we barely have enough to cover what we have let alone keep a budget oh is that right that makes it real tough huh so how do you how do you make ends meet and how do you make sure that your bills are paid and yeah uh_huh huh what does he do a what uh_huh oh is that right well that's tough yeah especially these days when uh the economy is so bad yeah i work on commission and uh and that makes it tough too because i you know you can't you can't always budget what you you know you can't have the same budget every month because uh you know uh i am in the roofing business commercial roofing business and so you know i may do real well this month but uh next month it may you know may not rain at all and we not have any work so it makes it really hard to to set any budget and uh you know so uh i guess it's uh you know each family has their own own way of doing i i do it about the same way you do you know we pay what what needs to be paid so that we don't you know we don't have the lights turned off or have the water turned off or the phone turned off no i don't uh mostly because we don't uh yeah so how about you uh_huh yeah huh no i you know most of the uh most of the financial uh problems that we have you know are things that we kind of brought on ourselves because we kind of overextended ourselves a couple of you know few years ago with uh credit cards and stuff and then the economy went bad and you know i was out of work for a you know for little while and uh you know been on commissions for you know few years and it's just uh we just never got caught up so do you own your own home yeah well we do too and that makes it even tougher because you know we tried to put our house up for sale and uh economy is so bad we couldn't sell it yes well we did too yeah well we got we you know all we asked out of our house was the the note and uh shoot uh somebody came and and offered us we would have lost twenty thousand dollars on our home you know if we were just to sell it and uh so we decided to keep it and kind of just uh yeah try to make things uh work she doesn't i mean she actually she does she actually probably works more than i do but she does sewing and hair and stuff at home and uh so the only you know i guess bright uh uh thing that we have to look forward to is that i own part of the company that that uh i work for and and so that's kind of helping us out you know it's making things a little more uh little easier because i can always count on a check on friday we try to like mothers i'm i'm right this minute [dishing] up cheap spaghetti which is one way which i keep within a budget although i'm trying to raise money for a boy scout cause um actually how we do it is my husband and i both work and we try very hard to live on his salary and my salary goes automatically into a savings account which we try not to use too much although from that we both uh we typically pay our credit cards from that account so that's the that's the uh our household expenses are pretty well covered because they're pretty much the same every month but it's our credit card spending that's always the problem i don't know what to compare it to i lived in indiana and saint louis but i was a student then and you know when you're a student things don't mean much um i think dallas is um relatively high priced homes but then there's not i think energy and some of the other things aren't quite so high and i my my [gestalt] is that our groceries are sort of intermediate there's not as bad as i had seen in big cities like new york or california areas how about you where are you from originally from idaho well i don't know anyone from idaho i'm from indiana uh and i have a great love for the midwest would go back in a minute if i could i married a texan they don't always tell you that they have a [homing] instinct but i our home uh we have a five bedroom home um but it's more in the range um it was around two hundred forty thousand so about four and a half times your home i'm sure they're probably quite comparable or maybe i don't know ours is nice our home is nicely located but i don't think the house itself is particularly extraordinary how about budget wise how how do you do a family budget are you married uh my husband tries very hard to do that for us and we used the managing your money software package with [andrew] [tobias] are you familiar with that one i'm sure there are a million software packages but um he tried very hard and we were all computerized and we our regular monthly checks we printed you know um and i did it for three years and hated every minute of it and still found that about half of our checks maybe a third i still hand wrote because it would be like in the school parking lot or you know at my child's skating lesson or something like that so we had to we had two checks two sizes of checks um my daughter wants to know where the spaghetti cheese is um so we we tried and it was pretty nice one of one mistake i think we made in that is that um for budgeting purposes in terms of putting it in a budget we must have had eighty different categories and so they they became sort of [nonsensical] instead of i always said if we had redone it we should have just put big categories like utilities and you know luxuries and entertainment that sort of thing well see i suppose that's the key um do you does your wife work outside the home oh my goodness well with a c p a and a business person you should be organized yes well we work with both we work with individuals and we work with companies and executives and uh we do business and personal uh financial planning and budgeting and investing for those people how do i handle my own account uh well the first part of of of a good budget or a good financial planner is to uh number one don't have any debt so yes being debt free is very important and keeping a budget uh below your income is important also oh that's great you're ahead of most of the people out there then uh_huh well a budget does not have to be rigid sure uh_huh right well and one thing that really uh helps i find in budgeting and personally in budget as well as a business budget is prior planning prevents poor results and uh lot of people uh have not even considered that maybe that a car payment a monthly car payment that they put it in every month whether they have a car payment or not and therefore they would save up enough money over a couple year period to replace a vehicle when they needed it uh_huh well that is called smart budgeting oh it's real financial planning but we're talking about budgeting so that is very smart to do uh_huh right right well uh uh with the economy the way it is it's very important that uh we don't spend capital we don't have to because we don't know when we will need it and secondly is is that we need to make our money work for us so we don't have to work harder and uh it just takes time to do that and uh if a person has capital resources uh or cash on hand to take care of is all you needed i think just one is all you needed well we don't right now we're planning on setting one up as soon as i can get some you know some better ideas on how to do that have you used one before um oh yeah i've heard of that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh have you put money into those categories or what do you do for that sort of thing uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well do you have any money that you uh specifically set aside for certain uh you know savings objectives where do you put that money uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh that's probably the key part right there is waiting until you get the money that you budgeted i say that's probably the key part right there is waiting until the money that you've planned for is there what about credit cards do have you do you still use those or is that part of the system to [discontinue] that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right yes yes we are i am and uh we've got some children and uh you know we've just seen the need for well we just moved into a house uh that we're renting and yeah it really will so we're you know we're going to have to rent with a hard look at our expenses and things like that and um you know really make the dollars go a bit further if we can oh you don't this is my first one we just bought a house about three months ago and so we had to go on one and um what i do is um just divide up my paycheck and put it in each category i put it in my day planner and i have a certain amount on each column like under groceries or electricity and i put so much in each one and then just subtract the just spend what the amount in each column we're we're allotted yeah if not we're up a creek uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's tough we have an emergency fund that we keep and that was tough to get we try to not touch that under the house but sometimes you dip into it oh yeah uh_huh do both of you work your husband oh you are where do you work at liquor [distiller] oh wow uh_huh yeah yeah that's a thing we try to stay out of is debt um it's hard though when you first get married you want things to live on because i just got married what two and a half years ago and we tried not to do that my wife worked at the time so we brought home no um no it's just me and her right now we have one dog but that's good well she's looking for part time work just to try to pay off our car oh uh_huh what does your husband do uh_huh that's true um i work for morton international and make um i'm a process engineer we make automotive safety bags air bags yeah same thing i don't do you have to up until do you have to go until the voice comes on but i'm not sure okay oh good well thanks for talking wendy so you keep a budget that's your budget hey yeah yeah my uh wife and i we're a new young couple starting out so we've been trying to budget it's getting a lot a lot tighter and we've actually worked out a very extensive year long budget so we know exactly what we're going to spend when and when we're going to have money and we've worked out a cash flow we just bought a house that's another reason why we're really keeping track of the pennies and that stuff and so we have this detailed budget and in some ways it's really kind of nice because there is not much of a worry or not much a discussion or any real conflict over whether we should do this or that or we always have a there's a sense of confidence a little bit because we both know that we're going to have money to do what we said we're going to do yeah we as my brother told me when he he's in accounting and he suggested we do this as we were making these big financial steps and all this stuff but he said well you just do this and you fight once and and that's it once a year and that's it because you've worked out the budget and what you're going to spend oh doesn't sounds like you guys have gotten something worked out and it's going to work just fine yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh yes yeah well we've done see we've only been married three years and i my wife isn't real good with checkbooks and math and all that stuff and so what i did is i just gave it all to her and i said you have to do it everything and then i come in and help her and uh that's been really good because it's you know we've both come to appreciate and understand what's going on and she does most everything now and it's really quite nice actually okay uh_huh okay uh_huh right okay well that's good position to be in i guess if you don't have to worry about budgeting that what's left over goes to investments so you don't you don't then actually plan that this month i'm going to invest five hundred or five thousand or whatever it might be uh_huh so you always put aside at least five hundred dollars okay well i guess that's sort of a budget and at least partial yeah uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh sure sure right uh_huh okay right right sure well that that's true of all of us the uh well my wife and i both work and we do plan uh we try to plan major purchases and we have agreed that we don't spend over a hundred dollars on anything without talking with the other one so i wouldn't just go out and buy a you know a i don't know a new computer uh without well that's true that's true uh certainly when you're single you don't have to worry about consulting with someone else and that type of thing uh_huh sure so you have a committee meeting of all yourself me myself and i okay yeah i see uh_huh okay uh_huh sure so you're careful rather than just extravagant and just grab anything that happens to meet your fancy right right sure sure okay well we do that same kind of planning in that if we're going to get something you know whatever it may be and we're comfortable and have the most the things we need or want the we'd you know certainly shop around before buying the new computer or the new v c r or something even once we had planned that that's what we were going to get yeah go ahead right you make more money but it goes away anyway yeah i have three children and a house so uh it's a it's a serious matter but uh my wife's just starting to go back to work maybe that will take the pressure off but i must i must confess the only control i have over our budget is to try and make as many things as constant as possible like tuition and try to make things monthly so that there are as few surprises as possible i've started keeping a budget on computer i guess each of the last five years and never followed through and about this time of the year is when i get religion i have to do my income taxes i realize that better recording keeping would have helped and uh i still haven't managed to uh uh do it the way i should right right i believe if i had to that i could estimate all the major all the major sources of spending uh on a monthly basis and come pretty close but i'm sure that there are a bunch of surprises in there that uh i would find and maybe learn how to control if i uh kept a formal budget or uh financial plan but yeah yeah the only problem is that if if you have children what you are going to need for them a few years from now is what you need to be putting aside now and that's uh you can fool yourself if you don't set that up somehow right right but you'll find that the kids don't really have a very good sense of where the money is going so they'll ask for things pretty much constantly and i i learned to say no pretty much constantly and uh uh so i would be better if i had a budget and i had a certain amount of uh fun money that had to be spent each month or that was allowed to be spent each month i'd feel better about it so who knows maybe this will get me to do it you don't have children well that's a big change in life in a lot of ways but budgeting is one of them well that's one solution that's an interesting spirit but and i suppose cats are like children they don't take no for an answer as easily yeah yeah the hard part though is not uh the hard part is uh uh setting aside for what they're going to need in five or ten years that's uh really difficult uh i swear i heard that beep but usually you can hear the tape or you can hear it starting uh uh no no i am a very organized person that believes i ought to have all those things and we don't yes i'm married i have two kids uh young four and a half and three and i as far as setting down and putting a formal budget paper and pin you know and following it no we don't do that uh i have a very good idea of what our expenses are and how much we can afford to spend and can't spend and you know so it's not like we just totally don't have a clue as to what's going on but i wish we were a little more organized a little more faithful to a budget right right that's right that's right that's right well it's very difficult my husband is in is self employed he's in uh financial planning and and so all of his income is commission and it's very hard to sit down and budget because you don't know what he's going to make uh you know we kind of think you know he usually brings home at least this much and i can base you know base it from there but there's months that he brings home uh you know three times that much and there's some months he doesn't bring home anything it just depends on where the commissions fall and so you kind of have to you know i in my mind i know the basics i know what we've got to meet each month you know and and my salary helps towards that because mine's set you know but uh i think that we could probably save a little better or afford to do more things for fun that we'd like to do if i did follow a you know pencil and paper budget but well differently i mean do i have a savings account sitting in the bank no but uh we do have you know universal life insurance on him we have uh a four oh one k a coda plan [preretirement] plan on me through my work uh so there are things that we have money invested in you know i have a profit sharing and pension savings more toward retirement now savings sitting at the bank that hey let's plan a vacation no when we decide we want to do something like that we start saving for that and when we get it we go right i think it's more and more difficult i do have savings accounts for my kids at work and uh and i use that for their uh life insurance investments uh but i also pull from that and from mine if we need the money you know if you need it for something or like you said the something comes up on the house and you've got to have it well you go deplete those funds and use it you know oh that's true yeah now we have an interesting arrangement my husband loves golf and i'm glad he i mean it's his release it's his time each week where he's not dad and he's not husband and he's not employee and he you know what i'm saying it's just a release no dad dad not dead i'll have to work on that uh and and i'm glad he has that i'm glad he enjoys it but i used to resent it because i felt like all of our spare money went to his golf i don't particularly have anything i like to do from week to week or day to day or or anything like that and that's fine uh and so what i started doing and he's never said you know if i wanted something i'd look in the checkbook because i'm to practical and say [naw] i'd better not spend the money well he's never held me back you know he's always said if you want something go get it but i didn't feel comfortable so now when he goes and [golfs] i take you know if he takes out ten bucks or fifteen bucks or twenty bucks i take the same amount and i stick it in a savings account that i have at the credit union at work we use a monthly budget uh my husband and i my husband works i don't and uh he brings home the paycheck and we have a budget or a balance sheet is what we call it we have different columns for different areas of our budget and we budget out a certain amount for each month or each pay period and then we try not to go over that and so anyway what do you do uh_huh oh right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah right uh_huh oh my god uh_huh right right uh_huh now that's a good idea uh_huh uh_huh you're set yeah yeah uh_huh huh wow yes wow yeah well i think that one thing that people don't do a lot of these days a lot of people just live from paycheck to paycheck and don't have enough to put away uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh oh uh_huh yeah right uh_huh uh_huh yes uh_huh well i wasn't brought up this way to budget that's for sure my husband was and and it was really an adjustment period for me to learn how but i could see the wisdom in it well we try it's it's not as easy as i had thought it would be but last year i started keeping a total of our expenses and and where they were all going and i have uh a budget book that i use if you have people that have personal computers it would be much easier but uh so then at the end of the year i i [totalled] up what we were spending say for groceries or or entertainment or things like that and then this year i tried to keep it within you know a balance there and then if there is if we are over budget in one item if we want to apply that to another one i try to do that but it's not always easy when you have extra expenses say the car repairs came up this month things like that that you're not expecting i don't really know how some people stay within a budget do you have kids we don't have any cause i thought if we had a child i don't know what we'd do but my husband gets paid once a week and i get paid every two weeks and uh then every three months i have a bonus check and then that's when we we try to put some a side at that time as for as saving uh i take out of each pay check i would put so much into a four o one k plan and a profit sharing and then he does the same thing he puts one into uh a stock plan at his company and also into a retirement plan because to me that's the only way we are ever going to be able to save because if the money comes in it's spent if it's not taken out before i get it oh yeah that's very hard uh_huh yeah they say how old is he he's five they say by the time kids his age are ready to go to college it's going to be about seventy thousand dollars a year for college and it's just unbelievable you know i i'm just twenty nine and when i went it was probably five hundred dollars a semester for the tuition books everything uh_huh where is she going yeah i am sure it is oh yeah has she started having do the uh work at the hospital has she started doing any uh work at the hospitals yeah because i i've got a friend that just graduated and took her test to to be an r n and i i think towards the last year they were working at the hospitals and then they all had to buy all the uniforms and all the things which was an added expense but it is hard i don't know in in compared to say my mother and father living in a budget was no problem it was just this is what we have and this is what we spend but that's in this time and you know i don't know what it is well you know my husband loves to play some golf you know or something like that or or ruins the ball with me in and both you know parent's didn't do that if they didn't have the money they didn't get it and we're not that way uh_huh uh_huh and it's hard and it's hard like you know with interest rates now as low as they are hi no we don't really do anything formal um i kind of keep up with all the finances you know paying the bills and typically i do most of the spending too as well so uh you know i kind of have a handle on it and i just sort of know what we can and can't do and it you know it's worked pretty well i haven't really gotten into any major problems without having something formal well yeah yeah we have uh you know like a typical credit union account for you know just a a basic savings thing and then uh we've got you know i r a and c d and various and [sundry] you know long term kinds of things how about you uh_huh uh right uh_huh right okay i guess we're going to talk about budgets and spending and i don't have a set budget i just know what i have coming in and i know what i have to keep in reserve in order to survive unexpected unexpected expenses yes the things that crop up that you didn't plan for so that's why we always have to have a reserve somewhere so we can not be caught [shorthanded] uh_huh i see uh_huh do you do you kind of forecast yourself for the year or not make a forecast of what you think your expenses and then compare what the actual costs are but you was your shower pan out of [kilter] oh my uh_huh those you know it really is a shame the way they build houses though because you can go over to england and look at those [castles] that are four and five hundred years old and they're like you know so like a rock of [gibraltar] they're so steady and [steadfast] and just [rigorous] constructed and our homes here in the states you know they're made to a good wind would blow them over which is really a shame for the to speak of the building industry like that i mean the well much faster than they did when i was a child growing up i mean those houses were made to last in detroit oh yes solid [foundations] and wet plaster walls and hardwood floors and the whole bit yes well i see i don't have anything to base that on because i was an adult when i moved here i've been in dallas about twelve years and you know i haven't really seen um a quality home even the homes that i see that are that they're building out in north dallas where they're paying just thousands and thousands of dollars for they're using plywood i mean pressed board on the roof if i was the buyer i'd have a fit they're not even using um a pure wood well no not not plywood pressed wood you know where they take all these [remnants] and press them together i would have i would have a complete fit if i saw my new home being built like that i think we should have steel [girders] in our homes and there're not i i just um it's just it's ridiculous i just feel very very [disheartened] about the way i see the building industry go no wonder you know the hail damage is so extensive and and things like that where it shouldn't be and your homes if they catch on fire they go up within a matter of minutes rather than you know uh it takes a long time for the fire really to get a hold because they're they're using inferior [inflammable] material well see they should have known that they should have made uh they should have dipped them and and prevented and made them fire proof they they knew you know they knew i mean you know where are our engineers at our building engineers well yeah there are codes well it's their the building codes and the building laws are too slack that's what wrong they're not stringent enough they're not after the consumer they're after the builder they're protecting the builder and not the consumer yeah i know it yes we did we got caught we kind of oh dear i hope we don't get in trouble but as far as a budget goes i do not have a budget i just know what my income is and i have x number of dollars um dedicated to a savings program and x number of dollars for contribution and but that's automatically in my brain so it's not written down on paper i'm so used to it that um uh_huh uh_huh is that so you okay bye bye well good doing great i had a while to think about it so why don't i start and you can chip in when you feel like it uh when we were first married we didn't think we needed a budget and and i think it was fine with the two of us we just kind of spent as we wanted and seemed like we got paid off enough that it would cover oh it's been about nine years so then when we actually got out of school and employed and we only started getting paid once a month and we found that you really had to budget things or by the last week or two you were broke so that's probably when we started budgeting and ever since we just you know oh i don't know i probably plan what we're going to spend each month i mean we get paid and i deduct all that we're going to you know all the bills at first and then i set aside so much for utilities that we need and so much for this and then we have a certain amount each week to work with for groceries and and lots of times i go over that amount but uh_huh uh_huh this is how much you spent on this you'd better not do it anymore right and that's usually about [schooltime] oh yeah yeah that's great uh_huh right right yeah uh_huh yeah yeah that's great i i break mine down quite a bit i keep what's called a non balanced checkbook but i put all like fifty dollars away for clothes for the month or fifty dollars for savings bonds and you know and then when i feel like it i deduct that or but it's kind of a different way to do it but yeah we do and that uh_huh no we don't either we never we use it to float mainly especially on big purchases there around christmas and yes yeah we i bet we haven't for two or three years or you know once in a while you you have something come up that is more than you can handle or or you thought you could handle and you have to leave a little balance we haven't for ages either so far we've always had [refunds] we you know have we have three children and that seems to really help and we probably don't make enough right now so but yes i think if we did see that we were starting hi [diana] have you all been able to do much as a family these days have you all been able to do much as uh as a full family these days all of you yeah do you work outside the home yeah i don't either it makes it a little bit easier i think that way yeah so you have a break too uh_huh yeah we have family that's far away it sounds like you might too yeah right and phone calls that's about about it that's yeah that's what we mostly do pretty simple things especially since my youngest one is excuse me only fourteen months she she's really getting to the age where she's playing and likes to go places that's right oh that's a big thrill for them yeah yeah that's true have um have you ever been to the science it's called the science place we we haven't lived here too long and we went there a couple of weeks ago and uh oh yeah we i guess there's science place one and science place two we've only been in i think it's science place two the one we went in had uh the thing that sticks out most in my mind is that like a kids place area that really seem they really seemed to go wild in there where's that uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah oh that does sound like fun it's a little bit of a ways that's right uh_huh that's sounds fun too and and you said about plano and campbell is the petting that sounds fun i think maybe we'll try to do that uh_huh yeah because they can just do you don't have to have [tokens] for everything yeah that does sound like fun well i've gotten some good ideas from you definitely well i think i don't know if we've done five minutes but i'm sure that will be good it was good talking to you i really appreciate your suggestions okay bye bye hi pardon me oh yes we've uh been um we've gone other you know all kinds of places we go out to dinner we take the kids to the park and uh you know whenever we he my husband has time off or something we take them to the zoo or we you know we do everything we can possibly as a family no i don't yeah it does an an then uh you know my husband enjoys spending time with the kids you know he'll he'll take them out just to be with them so he they can have time with him an right so and we uh we try to teach our kids as much as we can at home you know we have we try to spend like monday nights we call it family home evening and have our kids uh you know have little lessons with them and you know just see count see how things are going in our family and you know teach them about their grandparents or something like that bring out pictures of them so they get to know them and we just do all kinds of fun things like that an yeah we do so they you know the only way they know their grandparents is by pictures and uh yeah right and uh you know they we you know we go to the park or we go in the backyard and sit down an yeah right uh_huh yeah and with you know me being at home and just having the one income you know you don't have this lot of extra money to to do a lot of you know extra things so you you make more fun than you know you know the kids just think it's wonderful just maybe to go get an ice cream [cone] or yeah or uh you know go get a bag of m and m's or something like that they they think that's a lot of fun so we just we try to spend as much time as we can we you know our our whole weekends are are devoted to our children except for we might go out you know one evening or something but during the day you know it's all devoted to our kids and they come go to church with us and so yeah so yes yes that's what uh_huh the kids thought that was wonderful i is i'm not sure which one we went into it was about a year or so ago when we went uh_huh yeah yeah yeah they had a lot of fun in there and uh there's uh there's some petting you know like uh uh i think it's owens country farms has a free petting you know like a farm that you can go to and the kids can pet animals and stuff that's on plano road uh it's like in richardson you go up plano road it's like a little bit past campbell and plano road and that's a lot of fun they have tours going through there and uh the kids think that was a lot of fun too we take you know whenever we take them to [showbiz] or they think it's wonderful just to go to mcdonalds you know they don't go for the food they go for the to play around and there's another place in mesquite called monkey business and it's a indoor fun park and it has a bunch of different rides for kids and parents get in free and it's like during the week it's like five dollars admission per child all day the petting farm yeah yeah yeah and the one in mesquite is uh [scyene] exit and it's it's uh the kids just had a wonderful time there they you know you just pay that admission and then all the the the rides are free you know of course they have all the little video games and you know those little quarter rides you know to and stuff like that but they thought that was lot of fun you can have birthday parties there an i think that was better than like [showbiz] pizza cause there's more for them to do yeah right so they had a lot of fun yeah i we try to do a lot of things as a family and you know [inexpensively] as possible so yeah that will be good yeah well it was good talking to you oh no problem well take care bye bye okay uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh really okay well see i'm the third oldest of twelve children so like i said i and i'm only twenty one i'll be twenty two next month so there's nine that are younger than me my youngest sister is five and like i i don't have any children i'm just engaged and i'm getting married in october and we haven't discussed this at all um yeah exactly but um now i've noticed that like while i'm at college and when i go home my you know my i'm really close to the younger ones and um like when when like when i do go home they enjoy just laying around me you know like if we do watch t v at night they just like enjoy just like laying on top of me or something they like that but um as far as that goes like we play games i play like old maid and fish with them and we play board games and when it's like i'm from pennsylvania so when it's nice out we go outside and we like to play like kick ball and softball and stuff so we do a lot of that and in the summer everyone is like i think there's like seven of us still at home and all seven are in a sport like also the girls are in softball and the boys are in baseball so all summer we live on hamburgers and hot dogs and sports that's it you know uh_huh yes right yeah we go and watch uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh well it's funny because um well my mom and dad both were kind of athletic they both grew up on a farm but although you know it wasn't them playing i notice like whenever i was playing softball and such my mom and dad got into it more than i did i mean they'd be in the audience screaming and yelling you know so a lot of times the parents get into it just as much as as the kids and i found like a lot of times like when we went on to tournaments and stuff it was really funny because the crowds would like get into you know get into fights who can scream louder and you know everything so it's really pretty funny to see my parents get into it and they're not really even participating yeah uh_huh yeah it's um the the one down thing about having that many people in our family is you we really don't have any privacy when we're at home because you couldn't possibly have a house with twelve bedrooms but um like i say you know i'm twenty i'll be twenty two next month and i'm closer to the younger kids than i am the ones my own age and that's i think that's because the ones that are older all have their own little thing to do and the younger kids are at home and i like to spend time with them so i don't i don't you know we were all pretty close when we were younger yeah now that we're getting older people are you know each one of us are going our own direction uh_huh oh yeah and um we you know we had blocks and stuff and we just did we would make like in the winter when it we couldn't go outside because of the snow and stuff we uh we would um clear out our basement and we would like do just even stupid things like we try [hurtling] our couches and stuff you know and yeah we would just run and jump over the couches yeah to see who could jump over you know we just made up our own stupid little games and like hide and seek well we have a a bigger house than a lot you know our house isn't the average small one so we could like play hide and go seek in our house and even stuff like that yeah well see they're um we're all like we're all pretty close together like my sister that's closest to me we're only fourteen months apart so there was always there was never just one alone you know right so we were all pretty close where we we always had a buddy to play with you know no no not at all not at all uh_huh uh_huh well yeah i'm catholic uh_huh no not at all not at all but see um when i was younger i used to say that i would like to have five well i've even cut that down now and um but to me five wasn't even a lot because i was just so used to twelve you know but yeah it's so it would be really hard now to have twelve children well well okay well like my oldest brother he's he's twenty four and he put himself through college and um there's a sister older than me she's still living at home but she works you know and i think she even gives mom and dad a little bit you know of rent money and i'm putting myself through college and like i'm getting married in october and my fiance and i are paying for most of the wedding and then then my brother right behind me he moved out and he has an apartment and he works and then the next one down is in the marines and he's out of the house so it's kind of like they don't you know i i think they do uh_huh exactly like uh well i find it a lot when i'm up here at college because i've always had a bank account i've always had my own checking account since i was in like tenth grade you know i would work in the summer and there's a lot of kids up here that would have no idea how to even do a checkbook or you know to to manage money like my [roommate's] laughing at you know at me you know because their [schooling's] paid for yeah uh_huh yeah yeah and see and then my mom and dad like whenever like we would go out and we would get a summer job and then we would start blowing money and my mom said well that's stupid for you to be blowing money she goes okay if your going to blow your money on other things she goes you can just pay for your life insurance so then we when we all graduated from college from high school we all got we're still like i'm still covered under my mom and dad's life insurance because i'm still in school but i have my own policy too so i had a you know my mom and dad got it set up you know you know helped me to get it and everything and i have my own policy and then i pay for my own life insurance too and then and then like my mom and dad because there's so many of us and because of the way the laws are you know now if we want to drive we have to pay for our own insurance on our cars because my mom said that's silly to let one of the older one's drive it if we were in a wreck you know you can be sued for anything now and she said that's really not fair to the younger kids if we were [careless] and was in a wreck and they got sued and then they can take everything away from my mom and dad and the little kids would have nothing and i i agree with her you know i just i don't know so if you know if we want to drive we pay our own insurance and uh_huh yeah uh_huh okay i forgot all about that that it had to be pressed um but anyway so so as far as we really we don't want to get in the habit of watching a lot of t v because we both were raised you know that way you know where our parents sort of stuck us in front of a t v to be the baby sitter and we just don't want that we want more communication and interaction you know amongst us as a family and we both like sports so we figured well what what better way to get out and you know be together as a family and also you know have it be good for you and plus we like we both like to cook so you know that's something we spend time together too is you know cooking and uh preparing meals and stuff so uh but as far as that that's about all we've discussed as far as for family oh my gosh oh yeah yeah long way down the road right yeah uh_huh well do you do you so you go if you're if you're not doing any kind of sport thing you go to one of your [sisters'] or [brothers'] sporting events and sort of like be there with them yeah well that's that's good too i mean as far as entering i mean you're you're participating but you're not you know i mean at least you're encouraging them on and stuff and that's because um even if our kids you know get into sports that we're really not interested in i don't i want them you know to know that we're still there so to speak as a family yeah [cheering] you on and stuff yeah well that that would be fun boy so you you have a lot of experience as far as you know different ways a family can interact and and do things together as far as twelve but it's so if you're not what if do people go off in their own little groups with that many i mean did like some people go to their rooms and yeah huh yeah but when you were growing up and they weren't and the younger ones weren't around what did you do oh i see but now that they've all sort of moved off yeah so do you think even i mean what did you do when you were younger did you go do the board games and stuff you still did what you do now uh_huh [hurling] oh [hurtle] oh okay so you you had a lot of games and things you played even when you were kids with the ones that you yeah yeah no not real spread in age yeah gosh twelve is that is that pretty common up there uh in oh okay i don't meet i mean i don't speak with many people that come from families that large any more i mean my my husband's mother came from a family of thirteen but i mean that's his mother you know and and their catholic and i mean that's well that's it then i think probably maybe that that but i mean do you see yourself having thirteen kids or twelve kids yeah yeah but it's so expensive man i would think for your parents it would be it would still be hard even nowadays i mean just to raise twelve kids would be [shoosh] yeah yeah well sometimes i think maybe the larger families create more independence in the children though you know i mean you don't expect anything because there is not enough to go around for everybody so you you kind of have your own independence on going out and getting it yourself if you really want it uh_huh yeah or manage money or know yeah know you know how to get how to even go about getting money you know how to get a job or you know just what you know what when you get a job what your responsibility is are you going to blow all that money how easy it is to blow money you earn uh_huh wow you've really got responsibilities yeah yeah so really i think sometimes there's an advantage i mean sometimes it's good to have a bigger family because it does make you more independent it makes you know that you can't take anything for granted that when you get something you're lucky to get it so to speak you know so um i don't know sometimes but now it it is hard i can imagine on your parents you know oh uh_huh well no would they no well both of mine are boys they're eight and eleven and they're into sports i mean as a matter of fact that's what we're doing tonight baseball has started oh oh yes we start here at uh five up until it's coach pitch until you get nine which my little boy will be nine in may so he's going to be with uh regular pitching and my eleven year old of course you know is pitching uh_huh but yes we're into baseball and it seems like soon as that over with we get into basketball we even have [peewee] basketball here so there's always something both if we're not doing sports we go somewhere oh yeah yeah yeah no usually in the summer time different places every year we no uh_huh you know i've heard we have a couple of friends that goes to washington quite often and that must be the thing they really hadn't either they went to the memorial you know when they go it's on business it's not really just to getting to sight see oh i bet it is too uh_huh oh now my husband and i we go different places but our but when we go with our children we usually kind of stay close oh yes yes yes oh oh uh_huh uh_huh yes oh yes but we try you know i try my husband also we're involved in everything our kids does because uh my dad died you know when i was less than a year old so i always just had a mother so i always thought when i have kids you know i really want to be involved with them material things yes that is yes uh_huh best friends now uh_huh yeah uh_huh oh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah you have to i mean you honestly do now i have friends that i love to death but and they have children but their children does anything we have to take them and you know to do it and that really gets kind of aggravating after a while because you're saying well i work full time too you know yeah oh yeah problem uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah i agree with you very much so now we waited several years before we started having children because we was still in college and we knew time wise or and money wise too would it would not have been a good idea to had them then yeah uh_huh yeah that's right but you can't take this money with us though that's how i keep looking at it oh uh_huh oh yeah if you if you can yeah yeah what are you learning to be what degree i mean what are you wanting to do after you get out of college oh that's my husband's into uh computers uh_huh yeah and you don't want to no no oh oh then you'll never leave oh uh_huh well maybe something will open up for you uh_huh well well i've enjoyed talking to you okay bye bye okay well personally i don't have any children i'm twenty two and i'm doing my master's at n c state so uh uh children wouldn't be very convenient for me right now so what what how do you spend the time with your children um okay and did yeah what what are you doing oh okay do do they play like uh like does the eight year old play baseball okay and and in in his league do they have like a pitcher or do they have a standing ball or a machine or what okay oh okay yeah i i used to play soccer when i was that age up in new york so yeah and how about how about like on the weekends do you do sports or do you go out do you go how about like for uh do you go for long vacations like a week or something when they have school off in the summer or like in the easter time like around now and where do you go have have you been out of the country oh okay well first they always say get to know your country first before you leave i mean i i lived in places like when i lived in washington uh washington d c i never went to the washington memorial and then when i went back to visit i went to the washington memorial right right well it's it's a beautiful city but the problem is like first time i went out of here and they took me to las vegas and that was the most boring place on earth yeah did uh did like did you go to disneyland oh okay so but um now i don't know but um but let's see when i was eleven i went also to the caribbean that that was fun that was and uh then after that i my sister lives in turkey so when i was like fourteen fifteen i went i went to turkey and this christmas i went to turkey but basically it's a for the past couple of years i since my parents are are well i'm from argentina and my parents live down there so all the traveling i do is alone and uh we were never much of uh a very uh family thing you know made like go skiing in vermont or something that was uh that was a lot of fun but what happens is we used to fight a lot so there's never much of a family family thing you know one of those hell family vacations yeah yeah well my dad all he all he wanted to do was get money for us so he could buy us material things and and to me you know it's like now i'm twenty two but i still feel you know it's like yeah we never threw a football or something and the way i was brought up and he wants me now he like he you know like he wants to be best friends now and it's very hard for me because you know it's like you grow up to be twenty years old and it's always the same man and then suddenly he sees that he's getting old and he wants to be best friends but uh you know it's like i can only express myself so much because you know um everything that he taught me you know that my family taught me which is very hard to change that all of a sudden from one year to the next and say i'm sorry you know it's like you know i love you and let's go out and do things together when i don't feel like it you know and so that's that whole thing that he'll say when like like i've seen my uncle and his family you know does everything together and you know his kids are you know when his little girl was five years old and everything they uh they would go to the beach and she could go to sleep at two in the morning you know and uh i was brought up the same way it doesn't matter what age you have just so long as you can get up to go to class the next morning you can stay up you know but his what he does is when he gets home he separates his work from his house yeah yeah yeah yeah but uh it's just it's just something that you know my theory is you know when when you have kids and all you you want to do well what i'll do is you know like i mean you might have problems but it's not your kids' problems you know and you got to try to be with them as much as you can and to you know like thing is is that you know like if if they would ever happen to have a drug problem suppose that they could feel comfortable coming to me and saying i got a problem you know and uh and that would make any parent feel good and bad at the same time you know first of all you're coming to me and let's see how we can get rid of the problem you know and that's uh that's very that's very hard to do because once you're best friends with your parents then i think everything go a lot better yeah yeah my my father was raising four oh well three kids before he had me so it was uh you know you're trying to support uh four kids and it's pretty hard you know and i i told him listen you could have had a lot of money if you would have only had two kids he says yeah but then i wouldn't have you i go yeah but then you would have a lot of money yeah but you know like four i mean four children is expensive especially when you consider like especially for me which i'm paying out of state tuition i'm paying you know three thousand no what is it two thousand six hundred dollars for one semester and you know people say you know it's expensive to think it's college but if if everybody would be a little bit responsible you know it's like what does it what does it cost it costs five hundred dollars a semester suppose now they go to a state college and they live at home you know and well it costs two hundred dollars for books but you know seven hundred dollars a semester a lot of people can spare that if they planned ahead you know like i mean it's like if you plan a year ahead you can probably save up seven hundred dollars you know one thousand four hundred dollars to send your child to college you know oh oh excuse me well i i'm doing computer science computer engineering yeah and and now i'm looking for a job before they have to send me back home because since i'm an international student they want to send me back to argentina well my dad wants me to go back so no no because if you go back there then you can never get out like you don't have any money to to get out so uh and uh i was thinking you know like oh my god you know i go back there and then and i get married there and now i have kids there and then i'll never leave the place you know yeah i know and that's that's what happened to my brother he came to school up here and then when he went down there he was just so bad off you know from not being able to stay up here that his life just went down the drain so yeah i've been calling a lot of companies there some of them are interested well at least for a year and a half i can work so all right same here bye bye uh so you have children i take it you don't so it's not a very valid topic uh yes one stepdaughter ten and uh you know how they are at that age i guess you having been ten once yourself oh we have one a [keeshonden] yeah fuzzy little thing a fuzzy little dog rather rather odd personality he he's fun anyway uh time we spend with our children it seems almost as though children hate it yes time spent with mom and dad is uh next is probably one of the worst punishments spent on earth to them yeah they you know parents are a curse that they just have to live with so it it's interesting but we do spend time driving in the mountains and well do you work for t i you're working then with every passing day we wonder if we will be it's it's better to be employed especially these days where there is not a job right around the corner and that creates family [tensions] yes no no i don't have any children uh well it varies what it is of course but usually mom and dad are a curse you know they they'd much rather be with friends friends are cool parents aren't well i remember well i'm sure part of it is a male female thing you know i i remember whenever i was growing up often times spent with my dad was oh just wonderful you know go go hunting or go to the races or or oh any number of things and we'd have um great times and it seems that well now the [bank's] not available and entirely too much time is spent my wife and i were wondering what if and and what [if's] always rough but you know we do have our trips and we do have our fun and i don't know little girls aren't interested in lot of the same things little boys are or were hunting and and looking for [arrowheads] and uh but they don't like it there there there is a difference there and and well girls at that age video games boys and malls not necessarily in that order and friends of course and that's a little tough for fathers fathers don't even like malls they despise shopping so is that quality time yeah if but there is camping and we both enjoy that somewhat yeah yeah getting up in the mountains and getting away from it all and that's somewhat fun it's so what do you think about child rearing is how how would you spend time with kids oh yeah yeah but well yeah and amazingly a lot of times it's real easy you know a lot of times whenever we head out of town on a trip or something it's real easy to swing in there for breakfast breakfast and run and breakfast is a kind of a funny meal anyway and uh kids eat funny and little girls are worse about it than little boys they or or something yeah go on a diet or they they have a well to some extent the public schools or the schools in general influence them the eating meat kick you know like it's really morally wrong to eat meat or something i i'm not sure of course that's not the way i was raised being raised in west texas oh yeah born in denton raised in lubbock so i understand about bass but it but it is interesting i i will tell you yeah every person out there should have kids at least once or or have some they can borrow for a time because everyone needs some torture in their lives uh but [jenny] is a sweet kid and yeah we do do things and it it's funny it's almost like a lot of things that were available to us as children to go do the money's not available you know we were talking about how much it cost to go to disney land golly a couple three hundred dollars you know for just for just a day not you know a day or two not including lodging and food and all that it's i don't see how anyone can afford it and i understand six flags is real expensive now oh yeah twenty bucks a whack now but at least once you pay your way in there at six flags yeah yeah food and junk to carry out so that's that's not as bad but golly you know disney world or disney land well our problem is that you know a trip to six flags or disney world or uh disney land or god forbid disney world would take forever or you'd have to pay air fare and ooh for a family you know for a family it gets pretty expensive pretty quick rent a car when you get there and all that yeah no i don't no huh_uh no it's not do you have children uh_huh one uh_huh ten yeah once upon a time i was well i have two dogs those are my kids what kind is it oh really uh_huh a what yeah yeah they're cute uh_huh uh_huh do they yeah especially when they get like into the teenage stage i guess yeah i remember when i was that age uh_huh yeah uh_huh oh how nice i would love to live up there uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's what i heard i've always thought about maybe [transferring] up there and i thought if i do that i might not have a job so uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i know it yeah yeah i'm sure it does so you only have the you only have the stepdaughter at home you all don't have any other children around there uh_huh so how does she feel about going out and doing stuff with you all uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah no huh_uh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah yeah um uh_huh oh yeah yeah uh_huh like fishing and yeah my husband will say that he'd like to have a little boy to take hunting and fishing and i said well you can take a little girl hunting and fishing just as easily that's probably right uh_huh uh_huh no if my dad had done that when i was a kid i probably wouldn't have liked it i go now with my husband and i enjoy it but uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh i imagine uh huh no i think not uh_huh she likes to do that yeah yeah well that's good uh_huh uh_huh she huh probably doing [outdoorsie] stuff and keeping trying to keep them away from the t v i guess and mcdonald's i i always said that if i had a kid they wouldn't know what mcdonald's is but they learn from their friends don't they uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah it is this lady in our bass club we had a tournament yesterday and she was talking about her daughter said one week her daughter will uh be on a no meat kick and one week she'll eat nothing but [twix] candy bars you know she just eats weird yeah yeah they're always wanting to go on a diet or something uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah oh is that where you're from uh_huh oh um yeah huh uh_huh that's the kind i like my mother used to put that curse on my sister i hope you have kids just like yourself and my grandmother must have put that on my dad because he got my sister she's just like him yeah i'm sure she is yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i know i don't know how people can afford kids i mean uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh it's uh i heard it's twenty bucks a whack for adults yeah that is awful high oh well yeah or twenty one yeah yeah yeah everything's free except for the food yeah yeah uh_huh really uh_huh oh yeah that's why i lucked out my dad worked for [braniff] when i was a kid so we got you know our air fare free and we got okay well gosh all kinds um mostly between the ages of two and ten um last like a few summers ago i kept two children every day for the entire summer and i mean they became like my children and um and they live in an apartment complex so we swam a lot and we played on the playground a lot and then we would go to a movie on thursdays and um there was always an activity you know they had their favorite t v shows and things like that that we watched and then we took naps and um i don't know it it just seems like there was always something to do children are so full of energy and oh they were they just they just keep you going uh one parent yeah she's just not much at all i mean i would get there at eight o'clock in the morning the children usually weren't awake by then and she would get home at like five thirty in the afternoon and they would have dinner and then it was time for them to go to bed um now at this particular time the children were two and six but then i also i've been baby sitting this child uh for about eight years he's nine now and um you know i've watched him grow up and he's like a little brother to me and it's changed over the over the years um we get along a lot better now that he's older and uh we do different things now we used to play ball a lot but now it's he likes to watch t v and he's into wrestling and um i kept him on friday night we went we went to go see a movie and um things like that but i feel like i don't know when i have children i want to be able to spend a lot of time with them uh_huh i go to l s u uh communications oh yeah i mean i love children um i don't know seem when i was growing up my mom stayed at home with me and my brother until we were in junior high and i don't it would i think it was very beneficial to us i mean like in the summer we were always in the library programs reading books and we went skating a lot and you know she was just always there for us but nowadays if there are two parents to a family the mother works just as hard as the father does and the children either stay at home and get into trouble or they're stuck in a day care and i just i just don't want my children to have to be raised like that all my friends they their parents worked all the time they got to stay at home by themselves and when i was younger i thought they were lucky because they got to get away with things like i couldn't ride my bike across the street but they could because they're mom would never know it but now i realize that it was better because um they have got into a lot of trouble because of lack of supervision uh_huh well i'm majoring in uh public relations yeah yes ma'am right uh_huh well i would like to uh stay at home with my children for at least the first five years but what what i plan to do in the future is um go ahead and get my upper education as far as my masters and work on my doctorate and teach um college and in that case then i'll be i'll be at home when my children are at home but i'd like to stay at home with them until they get in at least into kindergarten where they're at school from what eight to three or something and then i would be at my school teaching and um oh really what grade oh did you what did you teach oh oh i started out as a p e major in education i wanted to be a p e teacher i sure did oh yeah uh_huh absolutely oh yeah that's right they need some attention well see whenever my mom stayed home with us we did without a lot i mean we were it's hard to make it on one income but we did and and we lived in a trailer for eighteen years and um you know we we only had one car we only had one telephone you know we didn't get to eat out all the time but i i feel like that it helped me now because i appreciate the value of the dollar and um i also had the supervision that i needed while i was growing up and i hope that i can provide that for my child too oh we have uh_huh it is it's way too late i agree it is because all the peer pressure it starts in high school and the parent really needs to be there for the child oh great yeah uh_huh well i guess that was good that you were you were hearing it from other students well um does your son work for t i oh oh goodness okay now when you baby sit what age group children do you sit with uh_huh i'd think so uh_huh now was this a one parent or two parent family one parent how much time did she spend with them uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah you say your you go to school and what are you studying well sounds like your getting a lot of experience in communicating with children uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh well that that certainly can happen now if you you say you're in communications uh what base of communications would you be most interested in getting in to public relations so so you would have a job with a company rather than uh radio or television or newspapers or what have you yeah and uh then you'd be willing to give up your job to stay home and with or stay with the children uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well that that's uh is an advantage of being in the education field i spent thirty four years in education yes and so oh i started out with college and then went to high school and then i preferred the high school age level much better than i did the college because you have a closer relationship with the uh students that i taught physical education uh_huh well i uh i found that uh it was a perfect combination from the standpoint of having vacations off at the same time and uh and it worked out fine from that standpoint uh plus the fact that uh when i left uh usually uh my husband was seldom home for maybe forty five minutes or so and then our son he had to get on the bus and he did get on the bus it was his responsibility and he never ever thought of uh not going to school he said in view of the fact that he was certain i had a hot line to his school because uh i uh well i i was in physical education then and i just kept getting pushed into administration wound up in administration and so he thought surely that i or i would have bought a hot line to know if he ever skipped school which of course was not the case and i wouldn't have checked on him however uh there are there are points both directions in that uh from the standpoint of parents working and not working uh i listened to more than one parent say i don't know what this child wants i'm working two jobs they each have their own television they each have their own telephone they each have their own rooms they each have this they each have that i'd say but what they don't have is you absolutely and uh i think out because that is the way of getting attention that's right huh uh_huh right and we certainly uh we need more of that we need more parents willing to supervise though we've had such a breakdown in the family structure from the standpoint of of uh church and school and everything along the way and that i think has contributed much to uh the delinquency that works grant and the poor school results that we're having uh that the students uh parents have just not really taken enough interest in them from the very very beginning and i think my feeling was that the very best teachers should be in grades one two and three to get the students off to a good start let them have positive um uh experiences from the lower levels so they want to continue learning and uh keep going and not wait until they're they're in the ninth and tenth grades it's too late then you cannot reverse that trend at that point right and uh while parents very often will be involved with the school activities when the child's in the elementary school and they get into the high schools so often they seem to drop away at that point and that is just as valuable at that time as to the rush in the elementary yes right right and uh the child needs to take pride in the fact that their parent is doing something uh we were fortunate in view of the fact that my son did play football and i did keep statistics for his team and his dad did take movies of the football team and movies of the basketball team and we tried to be a part of it but not [overshadowing] him or making him feel that we had to be there all the time so i feel that i learned a great deal from my students uh with regard to what their biggest complaints were with parents and a thing such as uh one of the biggest complaints i well remember because i spent a lot of time with seniors uh was um carrying their when i was your age i didn't have this or that and i know i never ever said that because i knew that that was one thing that was really irritating to young people yes and i had to deal with their problems and i could talk about the kinds of problems which they were bringing that they had just in general aspect and our son would share this and then he would have to make decisions for himself along those same types of of uh lines so that i think he benefited from my experiences no no he uh works uh for a different company yeah in the dallas area but when he went away to and he was on the lawns from the time he was in the seventh grade and uh a small and all the way through college and he held three jobs wally was in college and we didn't even know it he didn't even tell us uh that he had three jobs but when he graduated he had a five thousand dollar bank account and uh we had told him that if he ever wanted to go to college he could go if he got married he was on his own if he [flunked] out he was on his own well [brent] i've been um i kind of gave up my career about three years ago to stay home with my children because i thought uh if it it's only going to be another year until the youngest is in school and i thought it was a good sacrifice to make because um it was important to me to to spend some time with kids i know that when i was in school and getting my degree at the same time my husband was it was really hard on our family because i would he would come home and i would leave and then when i would come home and he would leave and um so i think one day one of our kids said you know someone came home and they said well when is dad leaving or something it was like that they thought that's the way life was that you didn't have two parents at home at the same time and so i think um it's become real important to me that we try to spend time together as a family so there's one or two nights a week we have a on monday nights we set aside time where it's called uh family home evening and we stay home that evening all of us and we do things together yes oh you are yes and so you do that and right and then we try to do a family activity on saturday usually in the morning right and then you know sometimes we try to do our lesson on sunday night and then our activity or something on monday but we're it's real important to us to spend time together i have two uh_huh i have a girl and a boy and the boy's five he's in kindergarten and the girl is four she'll be in kindergarten next year uh_huh uh_huh uh uh_huh they are a handful uh_huh uh_huh yes uh_huh uh_huh well no and it's it's just not um it's not as stable for the kids and they everybody decided to come over and talk to me right now but uh it's yeah well it's also important i think um for my husband i i try to go out of my way to to plan things that he can do with the kids because since i am home with them and so i get a lot of time with them he needs to have um some time with them so he when he comes home he um you know it's his job at night he puts the kids to bed and he reads to them and he spends about an hour doing that and that's that's pretty good quality time with them and um but it's hard for him on saturdays he he wants right he wants to run out and get things done and so um i try to say well why don't you go fly [kites] or why don't you do something and if i have something in mind then he he remembers that that's what he wants to do uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yes uh_huh well that's right but i do think um you know like the current trends are that um the family unit is [devaluated] it's not nearly as important we find that you know back just even fifty years ago when people had financial problems the first place they went to was their family and families took care of themselves and um but now you know people don't they don't support each other that way uh_huh that's right and right right and it's not an easy sacrifice for a person to make because you know i you know i have interests that too and it is hard to make uh those interests not be as a major part of my life uh_huh uh_huh right it is temporary it in the middle of it it seems like a long time but you're right it is temporary well i see that we both share the same belief here that it's important that we spend time with our kids and and in spite of uh_huh yes that's true uh_huh yeah well it is the hardest thing i've ever done as much as you'd go out and uh_huh uh_huh well that's good uh_huh no yeah i think so i think it's an investment in your future even if it's purely not not religious you can at least say that it's important to our country that our family unit stays strong yes right uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh you must be a so am i yes what a coincidence yeah i know what family home [evening's] all about uh_huh right and then the family home evening too right well that's good um how many children do you have two what what do you have five and four i have two daughters my oldest is uh four and my youngest is about to turn three two girls and they are a handful yes we've my uh well when we first got married my wife worked for a year then we decided to have kids and uh she she got pregnant and then we decided she would stay home with the kids we would make that sacrifice it is a financial sacrifice to make because we go from two incomes down to one and uh we made that decision and uh so after she had the first baby she stayed home and and we had a second baby and she's still at home and so uh you know at work a lot of people are you know i think well this is not a normal situation anymore in our in our world we live in most of them uh continue to work if they have have kids i only have one other person i know in my in my group here that works where the wife stays home and that's because of religious values as well they're [baptists] and they and they think that's important but everybody else works and they drop their kids off at day care and and leave them and i don't know i just don't want i just don't want strangers raising my children right that's how it is at our house when you're on the phone oh it's open anything goes when mom's on the phone uh_huh right right right with all the yard work and things like that uh_huh uh_huh right we feel that you know just spending time together you don't necessarily have to be doing anything you know that costs money or or you know that requires you to go a great distance or anything like that it's just the kids like to being together as a family like last saturday we went had some errands to run and so we took the kids and and went by the farmers market down in in down there in garland and they had a blast running around the farmers market looking at all the you know the food and tasting all the free samples they were giving out and they had a little pen there with animals in they could pet you know and they liked that and then on the way home we drove by the local high school and there happened to be an f a f a a future f a future farmers of america f f a going on there and they had all kinds of pigs and horses and [goats] and sheep and everything you know all out in this in the in this [schoolyard] there so we just said hey let's stop and and the kids got to go around and you know see pigs and animals and things like that and and for them that's wonderful you know they they thought it was the greatest fun you know and it didn't cost any money and uh you don't have quite as much money when when the wife doesn't work right uh_huh right right oh definitely [motherhood] is devalued in this society if you're stay at home and you're a mother it's like what a waste people think you know you should be fulfilling yourself and and a mother isn't an important important thing as as having a career and and that should be first and and children second but they don't have kind of an what we call an internal perspective of things but that no right uh at this point it's not to say that some day you won't go back to work my mother's a school teacher and when when we started uh having kids she had to work for a little while but then she just started substituting so she would just substitute once or twice a week you know just for that little extra money when we were in school then we would just come home and just be you know go to a neighbor's house for an hour then she'd be home but she wouldn't do that every day but now that my my uh youngest sister's at b y u now and so they have no one at home she's back teaching school full time now again so if you know it's not it's just a temporary thing uh_huh yeah yeah yeah you it's it's hard sometimes at work because you know people say oh we're taking a cruise we're going here we're going there you know because they have a lot more money and a lot of them decide just not to have children it's it's amazing they either have one or none and and the one person i know that has one they they feel guilty she has this continual guilt trip that she's not doing the right thing and so on uh on weekends she would you know spend all of her time with her kids and spend lots of lots and lots of money basically i think they they really spoil the child to try to [overcompensate] for their guilt feelings and and and they don't want to have anymore children because they just don't think you know that she doesn't think she could be a mother at home that's not her bag so she just doesn't think that she could you know the guilt feelings she can't deal with with it anymore so you know uh_huh yeah my wife uh likes staying home uh she works at home some though the place she works with worked with before um worked out an arrangement with her where she can work at home part time and so uh that it's kind of a seasonal thing three times a year she's really busy doing certain things based on that kind of business but the rest of the time she's free she likes to sew and do crafts and things like that so she enjoys staying at home but uh the money part of it is not as rewarding obviously but there's different rewards you know different kinds of rewards right right right and you really have to make uh quite a bit of money the wife doesn't make it worth it with the cost of day care i know there's you know when you adjust your income for what you put out for day care you know you're only making like five okay i'll let you go ahead oh uh_huh oh that's great i always thought it'd be great to have twins well yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh your first ones you mean it was this way uh_huh uh_huh oh right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh huh that's difficult yeah uh_huh it happens that way uh_huh uh_huh um uh_huh texas is much worst for the drugs i mean it was bad enough every place else but drugs is in texas are extremely bad uh_huh uh_huh well that's all you can do well i i was going to ask too does your wife work uh_huh she just recently started working then uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh so that sounds great well uh we also have five children and but ours are all out of the nest so uh as when they were growing up i probably we had a lot of similar things like you had you know having the time when you have younger ones to take care of you maybe sometimes do not take as much time for the older ones but uh we were we're very active of course at church and uh boy scouting and girl scouts four h uh and those activities helped a lot in giving us things to do with the children and uh we try to take a vacation with them every year camping of some sort something that wasn't expensive and uh our youngest is uh expecting her first baby so they're they're all out and on their own they're and we have one to get married yet and they'll all be married uh and they're they're all doing pretty good they uh t lives in pittsburgh you probably don't know where that is okay two of our children live there uh one i like i said lives near in in around maryland d c he works right on the border of d c and one lives in connecticut and our baby lives just a mile over the hill so we'll get to see her a little more than uh what we do the other ones uh_huh well they have to yeah uh_huh uh_huh to go to follow uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh and that does make a big difference uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's that's well none of us are let's face it you know we're not none of us like they portray it on those shows i mean life's much more difficult than that and uh right right now our daughter our well she's our second oldest she has she's the only that other one that has children she has two boys and she works full time and i have mixed feelings about that she's able to do that and i don't know if she'd be happy to stay at home but yet on the other hand i i've got the mixed feelings that i think you should be at home with your children i'm kind of old fashioned i guess that way but they seem to they seem to give uh quality time to those children when they are together and and so it seems it seems for them that it works out all right so i don't know i i don't think i ever would have had what it would take to work full time and raise a family so i yeah uh_huh uh_huh yes it does it it yeah yeah what line of work are you in now since you went to school and oh okay okay a lot of the people i've that's i've talked to work for uh for the same uh uh_huh which your income would be a lot better now yeah uh_huh uh_huh right and it's kind of a waste of a person you know uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh and you you recognized this and was able to you know do something about it uh_huh well it puts a strain on everybody your wife and your family and the only thing you can remember is to try and stay together as much as you can because it's very easy to uh become go your own direction when you're when you're working so hard and going to school too well that's wonderful uh_huh uh_huh it sounds to me like uh you're doing well my husband's retired so uh he's been retired for three years now yeah that's quite a change oh well he made it at fifty it was a magic number for him and and uh he went at fifty and he still works part time at other thing you know same job as he was doing only he's retired and doing it independently but uh nevertheless retired okay i uh i have five children all together uh my oldest two are already out and about in the world and i uh have a set of twins that are fourteen and uh my youngest is twelve uh yeah if you like doing everything twice uh at any rate um my first two children uh i didn't spend a whole lot of time with them um and you know was a a problem with having five children needing to work a uh a full time job that was more than a full time job i worked about fifty one hours a week because i worked every worked eleven hours every sunday and uh so i didn't get to spend as much time with them as i as i should have as i really wanted to yeah the yeah the well it was with all of them but it was uh more an impact i think on the oldest two because um oh about the time i got out of working that long hours was when the uh when the twins were about three years old and uh they never you know i don't think they noticed i wasn't around that much you know with all the children around the house it's kind of hard to notice that dad isn't around very much um so what i've tried to do uh now that i've uh went back to school and got my degree when i was thirty years old and uh so then i came out and was making as much money forty hours a week as i did fifty one hours a week so i've tried to spend more time with uh the children since then um what i'm currently doing is uh taking a lot of time i'm helping the kids more with their homework in the evenings um we just started a thing where every other week we go to uh movies there's a movie theater that offers dollar movies on wednesday nights and so every couple of weeks we will go to the movies because that's how often they change the movies and it's working out pretty well um we're spending more time together i feel like i'm a lot closer to the three that are still living at home than i ever was to the two that were living there before um in fact i found that i'm a lot closer with uh i have one son who's gone and i don't even know where he's at um he's taken off for parts unknown but uh yeah and uh my daughter is um has moved out of the house her and i get along a lot better now that she's moved out of the house and uh so it's it's it's it's been difficult to try to find the time and i think it's important that we do because uh i notice that uh when i had spent two years down in dallas down there they all have a uh a me kind of attitude and i noticed parents not spending time with their children and and going out and doing things and you know i knew like the kids next door were all into cocaine and you know it just you know i saw the family falling apart down there yeah and so i think it's kind of important that i that i you know [nurture] the relationship i have with my children now and i'm doing my best to keep that up yeah what's your been your experience um she didn't up until the last oh six months um she just recently started working uh she worked a job until we moved to our new house and uh she quit that job because it was too inconvenient and uh she starts a new job tomorrow which should take her out of the house about four days a week huh yeah uh_huh certainly do uh_huh yeah that sounds great i've i've noticed uh another thing um when i was younger my father was always working and yeah and uh you know he uh he worked a full time job and a part time job and i never saw him so i didn't have much of a role model to go by you know to learn how to be a a father and a parent and that kind of thing because i i can't ever remember playing ball with my dad or catch with my dad or doing anything with my dad yeah and it if you don't have i don't i it's my feeling that if you don't have a role model to follow then it's kind of tough you know everybody's not father knows best yeah but yeah yeah yeah i mean the the the capability to uh create children doesn't necessarily mean you have the uh the mental capacity to raise them and yes yes it's it's not easy i've uh you know i've helped out extremely uh well i can't say that but i've helped out as best i could at home and uh as you know with five children it takes a lot of work even if even if someone's home all the time there's still a lot of things that have to be done uh well now i work for texas instruments so so i'm in computers yeah and so i've uh prior to that i uh i worked in a food store and uh you know uh right yeah it uh it was uh it was a a smart move to make um i was more intelligent than the position i was holding and uh it was yes i i felt that it certainly was i mean i was smarter than most of the people that i was working for and uh you know every time something new came up i was explaining it to them and uh i had no yeah i uh yeah i uh started back to school in fact i was going to school while i was working fifty one hours a week and that's why i you know if you're working if you're taking twelve credits at night and you're working fifty one hours a week there's not much time left to spend with yeah yeah yeah well it it all paid off so uh you know i got my degree and got the better paying job and and uh you know we i think as a family we're a lot better off uh_huh yeah well my goal is to try to retire by the time i'm fifty five great uh_huh well i'm okay do you have any children uh_huh i don't any children so i'm going to have difficulty with this topic but uh what kinds of things do you and your family do um uh_huh um then your kind family is probably pretty rare now a days i don't see a lot of families fishing and doing things like that that's great yeah uh_huh that's great i think a lot of families now they probably don't spend enough time together you know whether their parents are together or divorced they don't spend enough time together and and i think that contributes to a lot of why society is going downhill right now is because the basic family unit is being destroyed just simply because that time isn't spent just doing things like fishing and uh because that i think that when you spend a lot of time with each other you communicate a lot and the communication helps you build on your uh helps just just build your family uh_huh yeah that's pretty to me that's pretty rare i like that whenever i do have children i i'm going to try as hard as i can to see that we spend a lot of time together you know maybe just even if we just rent a movie and watch it together just to make sure that everybody's not going out and doing and their her own thing all the time you know that's good sometimes because you need to you know get away but um i don't think you you should spend too much time outside at the [detriment] of of losing your the family unit uh_huh yeah yeah and as i understand it i don't know i haven't experienced it but you know kids these days are growing up so much faster and once they hit like ten or eleven or twelve you know you've pretty much lost them yeah so um do you think that you do you think that your family is pretty rare in that you do a lot of things or just the relationship between you and your daughter uh_huh what do you think is the key to to just bringing the american family back together what kinds of things do you think can yeah that's true um huh i think that's the first thing a lot of people do and i know i'm guilty of it like i came in from work today first thing i did was turn the tv on because i taped the stories from earlier today and i like to watch them but i think that's that is a big problem the television and it's it's too static you know it's something that you can do but there's no thinking involved no motion you know and i think think that's another reason why people are uh so health conscious now is because america's becoming really a couch potato society you know people aren't doing anything just sitting around you know no thinking involved and now i think i think people are trying to get out of that at least and that um there's a lot of um it's becoming really health conscious and that people are you know starting to look out for cholesterol and things like that trying to get out and workout more often and jog and walk and different things like that and that's probably good you know if you get your family involved in exercising and maybe playing tennis or something like that that also helps that's also something you know family oriented that everyone can do um uh_huh how how old is she um well she has yeah yeah you've still have a lot of time before she gets up in years that's good that's good um okay well it was very nice talking to you okay bye bye uh yes i have a daughter oh okay um well we go out and fly [kites] and we go fishing and we go to movies and we go out to the farm and and uh she likes to pick flowers and look at birds well i'm divorced but that's what when she's with me that's what we do and we color a lot and i read her stories yeah yeah uh_huh and even even when i was when i was uh living with her with did stuff then too so yeah i know uh_huh yeah that's right because then you never get to know them either they're all grown up and their yeah uh_huh yeah they're out doing stuff by that time yeah i really do because because i don't see many others and when whenever we go to the park or something sometimes on the [weekdays] we'll see other families but not usually on the weekends we don't see very many in comparison well i think they can turn off the t v for one thing and and go out and do stuff you know because she always likes to do things whenever the t v off you know she'll forget about the t v completely uh_huh right uh_huh yeah yeah but when was uh when she was here last summer we played tennis but she hasn't brought her tennis [racquet] over lately when she's five we we just been hitting the ball on the ground she can't hit it in the air yet and then we kick the ball we play like soccer uh_huh yeah nice talking to you okay bye bye okay what do you think are some current trends in uh the way families spend time together based on what you've seen yeah really are you newly married or yeah same same situation here i've been married about ten months so yeah i can i can i know what you mean yeah is he a hunter and a fisher and all that that's that's wild uh_huh yeah um from the people i've talked to i don't know if i should bring this into it but um a lot of the dads said that they would probably choose careers that are more um where they could manage their own schedule and uh they could spend more time with their kids because they look back and you know they're all like um kind of [regretful] i think uh_huh yeah same here yeah at t i is that where you work it's really kind of sad some of the people that i work with they like when i worked on second shift um their their kids go to school during the day and then they wouldn't see them at night because they would be in you know at work and the kids are all ready in bed and so it was kind of like they see their kids for fifteen minutes and the same with their spouses this relative may work even a [weirder] shift like weekends or something you know so it was really sad you know that a lot of families um have to well you know have to have dual income a lot of people choose to which is fine but uh you know then the kids kind of suffer uh_huh huh yeah yeah yeah uh i know unfortunately that's probably true um do you think the the parents spend quality time with their kids are do you think it's more like watching t v and stuff like that not really uh yeah yeah it's always that way until it's too late yeah it's true um what's what are some other questions they have i'm not sure i know my parents are growing up i guess they never spent much time watching t v in fact i've never seen my mom turn on the t v we didn't really have one yeah and and they spent a lot of time like outside with us and stuff but you know my dad had his own business and it was easier for them to do that but i i don't know it was i guess i didn't realize what a luxury it was at the time yeah yeah that's a good way to put it yeah that's a pretty good way to put it if i had kids well if you had kids what kind of things do you hope to do yeah uh_huh uh_huh do volunteer work and be in clubs and stuff yeah i agree i hope that happens in my case yeah yeah huh i know yeah and what's sad about that is day cares end up [instilling] values in your kids that may not necessarily be consistent with yours yeah huh i well i don't even think we had i don't even remember them being around when we were little yeah sure is um well i guess we could ring this off since we we've exhausted all of our ideas we seem to agree yeah so yeah you too i wish you the best okay thanks bye bye um i i think that it's getting to where they're not spending time together um i think uh like in my situation today on a weekend when couples are supposed to spend time together my husband's been off doing his thing all day today and i've been off doing my thing all day and i haven't seen him since eight o'clock this morning so uh um two years it's it's really hard hard to find time to spend together when you both work full time and uh you both have hobbies that are different you know if you have hobbies that are the same then you know you can enjoy your hobby together but my husband and i have different hobbies no no he's a record collector and a hot wheels collector um so he was off today uh looking at at records so uh and i was off you know doing you know household type things you know laundry and um did some shopping and stuff uh_huh yeah i i think i think that would be the ideal situation i think that would be the ideal situation i think that a lot of people like in my case i i do shift work i don't i don't have that choice um i have to be at work at at x hour you know at just at at a certain hour and i can't it's not flexible um it it would be nice to be able to have flexible hours and and maybe after we decide to have kids i i might find a job that has flexible hours i i hope so anyway um but i would i don't know uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah i ideally it it would be nice to be able to just have like back in the old days you know back like when i grew up you know the the mom stayed home you know and raised the kids my mom didn't go back to work until i was in junior high school um so she was there pretty much all my you know [formative] years and that was nice and i liked that and i would hope that i would be able to give that to my kids but i think with the way the future is um economy wise i don't think it's going to be realistic i yeah i i think that i think very few spend quality time i think most of the time the kids are usually off watching cartoons or playing video games or stuff stuff like that i think that um uh most most kids that i see don't really they don't really value quality time until until they're older and then they look back oh really i i think kids now a days are raised on t v i mean that's that's almost like a t v a surrogate parent and not a and not a very good one at that um i i hope to of course be able to teach them right from wrong i hope i hope to be able to spend um their growing up years being in the home you know not having to work um and being able to do i i i know a lot of people who um um i work part time also and i a lot of people that i work for are mothers that stay home um and they they do a lot of volunteer work and they're real active in the community and um they do a lot of things with their kids that they wouldn't [ordinarily] be able to do if they were working and i'd i'd like to be able to do that i'd like to be able to stay home and be able to spend time with my kids yeah yeah but i think that's for the the few and far between i think that uh probably ninety percent of the of the um parents out there are are probably working parents and i i don't i don't really see that that trend changing much if anything i think there's going to be fewer and fewer uh single income families yeah exactly see i i never i don't even know what day care is really all about because i i never went to a day care center i never i never had that kind of experience yeah i i see it seems like that's that's a big trend you know in the last ten years day cares have have have popped up and become a lot more um a lot bigger part of of the kids' lives it's like a home away from home for a lot of them yeah i i think yeah i think this is a good closing point well it was really nice talking to you thanks you too uh bye bye bye yes tell me what are some of the things that you did with your children when they were growing up uh_huh i have two boys also uh my children are um are [swimmers] and so as they were growing up much of uh our um normal life outside of school and everything uh revolved around their swimming so in order to have a reason for being there especially as they got older i became involved in it too so we were always together at their meets uh_huh uh_huh yeah the the boys tried those but they they did go in they started swimming when they were oh seven and eight and they really loved it and they're swimming both they'll be one is in college also [swims] in college and the other will continue to swim in college and they're fortunate they even made [nationals] and so we would drive up to see that when whenever it was reasonably close but we did a lot of things um and we tried to do things both together and individually with the children um we live near washington so we we would always go in for the museums that's always a big uh thing and one of my children is uh also a musician so um one of the things that we did with him a lot was to go either my husband or i or both of us would concerts with him and my other child um uh is in big into tropical fish so our whole family we take family trips to different places to visit fish stores or go to fish shows so i don't think we've we've missed a fish store on the entire east northeast coast of the united states uh_huh yes in fact it's funny our vacations have always been um uh uh as as they've gotten older when they were younger we would go to the beach but as they got older we tried to pattern our vacations where we would travel and do things and that there would be a a feature each day whether it would be going to one summer we uh we went up to new england and we went to the marble [quarries] up there and uh to see that and another day fish [hatchery] and so we did you know we did try and of course we learned too but uh and uh i don't know i uh when they were very young i did not work uh_huh and i i started working part time when they were in um junior high school and high school and now and i worked in the school system and now i work a full school day but that leaves me off on holidays and summers so it was a it was a you know i think they need me more when they were older than they did when they were that's true yeah that's right um yeah that's that's for sure that's for sure what do you do you have any feelings as to the trends that you see uh_huh yeah when they you know it was funny i can remember and my mother and i have talked about it to how important it was when i came home from school it wasn't really conversation but there were always things that just [tumbled] out and uh uh granted the child doesn't always think that they're sharing it but it when they when it's not there they miss it uh_huh yeah yeah no i i i realize that but it's funny they don't always do it but occasionally they do and you want and when they do there's a reason for it that they're sharing it and you want to be at least i've wanted to be available when they for some reason they had they were bouncing something off of me because it was something that was bothering them or they were concerned about and it was uh you just felt gee if i weren't here how or or if my husband that's right yes that's exactly right uh but it has been um it's been interesting and particularly i i think because the society in which we live families are separated you don't have grandparents near by or aunts and uncles um i mean i grew up in a situation where on weekends we were always visiting relatives uh_huh yeah yeah see and we're uh that we i i grew up with you know every weekend there was some visiting somewhere um and it was sort of an italian family um but my children we although we have some relatives in the area that we we see we they don't it's not that constant thing where you are on intimate terms with cousins uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah and i i just sort of think yeah that the trend of of families and time where where parents are spending less time you don't have the families too to take up the gap and so the kids in some ways are are are suffering a little bit in that uh the model the role models that get the the the family issues that get discussed and all these i think are very important parts of them growing up so we we try to to do it as well as we can we keep in close contact with grandparents and talk over the phone and cousins and aunts and uncles and we do but it's although it's not the same we are and that's part of i think teaching too is what a family is like because then how do they pattern their own yeah um that's yeah well we've always we have had this tradition um that we always go out before christmas and cut our own tree and that's always been a little bit of a tradition that we've had now this year it's was hard with our son now being in college so this was one thing that we um weren't able to do this year but we did that for from the time the children were young enough to realize what it was until uh our older son went away to college and we have advent calendars still from the time that they came you know to oh oh yes that's uh_huh well ours is uh a friend uh a friend of mine from denmark hand [appliqued] one for each child and i mean they look today as new as they did when they gave them to she gave them to us and there's a ring and you buy a present and you wrap the present up and i mean the presents have gone from the days when they were very young to a little box of band aids and an [eraser] and things to today where um sometimes i put a little gift if i see something that's uh occasionally a christmas tree decoration which they will save for their their future to sometimes just money uh pieces of candy so i think as they're getting in college i just for my older boy that was in college i put a dollar bill for each day which was the equivalent well it was the equivalent of a christmas present but it was uh and it was and you know it was fun but that's a tradition and they will those will be passed on to them when they when they get married and leave uh_huh yes yes the yes and the broken families we um as i said living in an area of washington d c we definitely see this uh and uh it's that grandmother figure not only raising her own children but raising um children from the streets too frequently uh_huh uh_huh yes well this is a this is a uh this is in fact uh we've been studying this in our school that um this is one of the symptoms or not the symptoms it's one of the ways that young girls feel that they are [maturing] it's a [rite] of passage there we are oh well uh when they were little we did lots of reading and playing and going to parks and things of that sort and i had two boys they were both interested in things like model rockets so we would go to the football field and set off model rockets uh_huh oh well that's good um mine were not terribly sporting uh they both did t ball and soccer in grade school but neither one of them carried on uh the sports after that oh wonderful oh that's great yeah i sure uh_huh uh my goodness uh well we didn't have any uh avid uh activities like that they they were interested in a lot of things but nothing to quite that depth i guess but we would oh my goodness well we did go to things like [aquariums] and uh uh natural history museums and [zoos] and all of those things that one does with kids uh uh_huh uh yes oh really yeah yeah yeah well i started working half time when uh they were at the nursery school but i yet uh_huh yeah well uh i think it uh they need you in different ways you want to be around for the crisis and things like that and but it's not quite so much the hand holding and peanut butter and jelly making well it the one trend i would say is that with so many more women choosing professional careers there are fewer of them home in the afternoons and i don't think it needs to be the mothers but i think it would be nice if some of the parents would be around for a few more hours um yes i think that's true but i i also think that's at least in my experience [truer] of girls than boys even when i was there my boys didn't share all that much with me and certainly not to the extent i did with my mother yeah uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh who would they ask or what would they do uh_huh yeah well i did too we were close to my uh maternal grandparents i mean just a few miles and uh close enough to visit my [paternal] grandparents you know quite often they were fifty miles away but uh_huh um right well when my kids were quite small uh we lived close to both sets of grandparents and they saw them a lot but they don't have any cousins uh or they didn't their uh their cousins are about ten years younger so uh they never played together or anything and there are only two of them and they didn't live in the same town that's right yeah uh_huh uh_huh well everyone makes it's own model but uh it seems that there should be some [continuity] and it's helpful to have uh things that become family traditions and that sort of thing uh_huh yeah oh well that's the kind of thing that they will remember though uh_huh ours finally [disintegrated] we had a felt one that was it was a christmas tree that had uh a little [trinket] for each day that was [pinned] on the date and then you took it off and put it on the tree so at the end you had a decorated tree and it finally got [moth] eaten we threw it way last year how nice oh i see how cute uh_huh yeah oh i'm sure he appreciated that uh_huh yeah well you were saying what other trends are there and one just occurred to me because i was editing a book about it recently and that is the trend in a lot of uh lower class areas for the grandmothers to be raising the children and that's a lot of it is due to the fact that the mothers are on drugs uh_huh right well we had a [sociologist] at the center where i work who was writing a book on uh [multigeneration] um [matriarchies] in a way uh where the tradition in the family has been for a teenaged daughter to have a baby while she's still living at home with the mother and yeah um i'm from maryland and um i have one son who's almost sixteen months old are are you married or you are oh that's good uh what kind of things do you do oh oh yeah um yeah it's really nice uh my husband uh is working you know most of the time he's working long hours but uh i'm staying home uh i'm just working a couple days a month and um um we spend a lot of time at the playground and we go to the zoo and we go and we yeah yeah i'm a nurse so yeah so it's it's it's real easy to work out my schedule you know to uh get in to to still stay in with that an and to have enough time to spend with matthew he he's uh just now really starting to to get interested in a lot of things so um yeah oh yeah that's right and i think a lot of people are um are turning to well i think i think a lot of people are realizing that but still there are so many people that are you know have their careers first and it's uh i think it's really hurting uh the kids you know but i know that's why i like to to to work a couple days i think it's uh it gives me a break most of the time at home yeah uh we had started out like that and um i think that was really ideal uh it's yeah yeah yeah it's difficult but uh_huh i'm i've i've lived here forever so yeah i i live in germantown and uh are you where are you from in dallas oh oh okay oh so that explains well um i don't know i uh we we do a lot of things on the weekends together the family but uh as far as during the week it's it's usually uh you know just my son and i and we're uh he he works for [coca] cola so he uh he manages a plant out here an and it takes a lot of time but um it you know we take walks and go to the library and try to fill our day with things like that but um oh oh yeah right that's good that's good i know my husband was real uh in the beginning when he uh he was transferred to a a larger plant and he uh he works about an hour and a half away from here from our home and uh so it takes him a little bit of time and i'm not able to work during the week uh because of that he was i was working in the evening and he was coming home and i i could go to work but uh their relationship uh when i was able to work in the evenings uh really grew he you know just the time that they were spending together i think it it really it really helped to have that time together uh-oh yeah he has uh he has seven other brothers and sisters and they have we have thirteen grand well his parents have thirteen grandchildren so it's uh you know there's a lot of kids in the family and and he really enjoys it but uh right now it's kind of a difficult time but and and the cost of living here is just so tremendously you know outrageous um it's difficult uh to do it any other way yeah that's right yeah yeah yeah at least i i just consider myself blessed that i can stay home it uh i know i know yeah yeah oh yeah it has i believe that too and i think uh the kids are where they need to you know they need to really focus on the children in the in this country no i didn't i didn't even really think about it that much i mean you know i i was aware vaguely aware of it but um i didn't it wasn't really that important to me and uh oh it it really does i just the whole uh you know seeing how you really are are are forming this you know the mind that's right yeah or or they just put it in the back of their mind and let it slide i i've seen a lot of people just say well you know he'll learn everything when he gets into uh you know but it um i i know even just this first year that i've been with uh my son here um he's i can just see how much of of a difference it makes staying home with him instead of uh yeah that's true well it's nice talking to you too okay where are you from tina yeah uh_huh i have i have two children i have a seven year old and a three year old and uh so i try to spend as much time as possible with them well um we do a lot of things with them you know taylor my youngest is or my oldest is in school and so she has a lot of school programs and things like that was it a big change in your life to uh have a child uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh what do you do during those those days well you said you said you worked a couple days a month though what do what do you do oh are you uh_huh yeah yeah yeah i understand that yeah they really grow up quick especially at that early age but my my wife was uh she worked part time when my oldest was was little and now she's staying home all the time but uh that worked out really well because it's a big transition i think to have children you know to go from you know nothing you know if you want to do something every night that's fine but when you have children it doesn't work that way anymore so yeah yeah yeah i agree with you i i i think that my wife leaned that way and i'm really glad she did and you know i'm glad she's staying home but you know i know there are some days when she she wishes she was back at work yeah yeah well see that's that's why i'm glad my wife did too because she worked either two to three days a week and that got her out of the house and yet she'd get to spend you know three or four days with yeah yeah and so yeah i do to i agree but then when you start having two of them it's you know a little bit tougher because you've got to make a little more money to make that payoff and stuff are are you from the maryland area really um uh i'm in dallas texas yeah so uh i'm i've lived here like eight years or so my wife's from fort worth but yeah i work for texas instruments yeah that explains it doesn't it yeah yeah yeah what's your husband do uh_huh oh oh yeah i'm sure it does uh_huh yeah yeah what uh my wife did some teaching at like uh like a private tutoring place a [sylvan] learning center this year and so that that got me to to be able to spend more time with the kids at night and stuff you know because normally if if they need something they just go to mom no matter what it is i mean i i'm perfectly capable of doing it for them but it's so much easier to go to mom i guess they get used to it so but you know we'd go to the library and do things like that yeah but uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh it really does because i think you know you grow closer was your uh was your husband i mean naturally a child i mean had he been around children or oh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i understand i'm i you know it's it's hard because you know then you're not getting to spend as much time with at home i mean your husband is not getting to spend as much time at home as he'd want to so yeah that that's a tough situation but then then again you know some you got to do what you got to do you know to get along too so uh_huh well like i said my wife normally feels that way there are days when uh i come home and she says here take these kids i'm getting out so she's she's had about enough during those days but but for the most part i you know i've really feel like that's led the way that you know like what you said with the cost of living and everything i think a lot of people can't afford to get by on just one salary an and won't and so i think that's tended to lead to a decline in in families and family values especially and i really think that that's one of the problems the nation's facing that you know we need to do something about but i don't know what yeah yeah would would you have said that a couple of years ago do you think uh_huh uh_huh it's amazing how your whole focus on life changes after you've had a child uh_huh well you know in the next year or so you'll see so many instances where you know he'll [mimic] something that you've done and you see you know everything i'm doing he's learning from and and you think if i wasn't here he'd be learning that from a baby sitter or from a day care you know that's how they're developing their patterns and i think a lot of people either don't care or don't realize it you know that's yeah yeah eventually yeah it's true uh_huh yeah yeah plus plus i think it becomes part of part of you too i mean you get to stay home i mean it's not just for him but it's also for you because you're both kind of bonding together there too i think so well it's been nice talking to you okay good luck okay good bye well wayne i uh feel very strongly about parents doing things with their children and making time available even sometimes when time isn't available how do you feel about it yeah yeah yeah we went through this with our children and now with our grandchildren and i've always tried to do things with them uh like when you're at the little league helping out even though i'm not a good athlete myself i was able to help the coach in in just controlling the kids if nothing else and we've always uh-oh tried to take our children and now at this age our grandchildren to see and do things that otherwise they might not be able to i think that's just part of their overall educational process is to get out and see and do things yeah yeah and so it's uh we have uh lived several places around the u s and we have where we've lived we've taken them to see and do things of interest and of historical significance in the area like when we lived in tennessee we we took them to washington d c to see all the capitol and and things like that when they were small and it's just uh it's helps i think the children to when they're learning in school to say well i've been there and i've seen that yeah yeah so uh that's the type yeah yes yeah yeah we've uh gone through that uh i remember my parents didn't do all those type things and so i made a special effort with my children to do things like that and even now with my grandchildren i feel it's a very important thing to be done yeah yeah well i can remember one of the things i'm most proud of is uh when my son was i think it was in the sixth grade they had to write a a little brief autobiography of themselves and about what they had done and what they wanted to do and i was very proud when my son wrote that he wanted to uh have a family and be able to help coach little league and do things like his dad had done with him a real point of pride with me yeah excuse me it sounds like we both have colds oh oh well we're yeah well i'm sitting here on the ninth floor of an office building on the north side of dallas texas so we're kind of far apart here this is a very interesting program i i heard about here on this and when i signed up for it it uh looked like it could be make a real contribution in participating yeah yeah i'm an accountant presently working as a contractor [liquidating] a failed savings and loan so trying to work myself out of a job but it's been an interesting uh roughly oh nine months here and uh again this is our home area we've lived here about seventeen years and it's uh we enjoy living here it's where we originally started out and we've lived up north for a while in chicago and over in tennessee so wound up back about two hundred miles aware away from where we started out well uh that's about all i can think to talk about right now it's been a pleasure talking with you thank you bye well yeah i feel much the same way i've uh two kids right now one is two and a half and one's nine months and uh that age of course everything you do they're trying to learn to do and so uh it's important for you to spend time doing the things that you want them to learn you know that that they need to learn at the age you know reading and uh reading and playing nice with others and that sort of thing right uh_huh right uh_huh yeah it certainly does because uh you know the things in the books seem so dead to the kids you know unless they've actually been there or whatever because i remember our family well we we we went everywhere and uh seeing new england and uh being on plymouth rock and stuff like that was really made the whole thing more uh visual and we could uh read the things in the history books and understand what they said when it was like we need food we need to raise food quickly because this place gets very cold very soon right because if uh kids don't look up to you or or can't feel they can spend time with you they're going to find someone else and uh you know nowadays there's a lot of people out there that you don't want your kid to [emulating] or whatever yeah that is nice yeah well it's um well it's uh ten o'clock here in falls church virginia so that the only reason i'm home is because i'm home with a cold and the wife says well you need something to do talk to a guy on the phone yeah right yeah i'm an electrical engineer by trade uh here in virginia likewise we uh we do some projects every now and then we like to get support from uh other other companies as well oh yep okay right bye bye okay we can start hi i have four how many do you have okay okay well no because mine are all grown so the topic for me i i can only relate now to my grandchildren i do keep my uh i do take care of my youngest granddaughter uh most every saturday uh my daughter and her husband work saturdays my daughter is uh uh doing a schedule of uh twenty four hours on the weekend but she gets paid for forty and dave is uh in supervisory work and he has to work almost every saturday so uh she's three yes she's she's little she's says how are you doing grandma today whoa oh no no no no she's my baby she's my baby yeah she was a miracle baby yeah she really was uh_huh yeah yes they do uh_huh they really do uh_huh oh yeah that's really that's really wonderful yeah yeah oh that's marvelous well they keep you hopping i'm sure well i know uh that uh one of the ladies i know they are very involved with their little girl and and i think it's excellent because she's getting qualified quality time for uh her musical uh talents her sports abilities and uh i think because she is uh the only child that they concentrate uh they would like to have more but that hasn't been uh possible and uh she's tried many uh avenues and and so now it's just you know that she's kind of resolved herself that yes this is going to be the only one and they're focusing on all of her uh welfare oh okay uh_huh oh how wonderful that's wonderful well that's wonderful oh they are no yeah you're now i think everything is doing doing doing out of the house which can be very hectic yeah it wasn't so uh_huh you have to look on that on the uh positive side of that yes it is it's just a different lifestyle yes uh my uh second grandson is in a [cappella] and i know what you're talking about when he's involved you know the children are involved in that and he's been he has traveled and they have won awards so i know yes uh_huh and i know where you're coming from and it's it's very nice i think uh uh those type of children uh that are involved in things like that their uh goals are going to be set higher than the average child that are not participating in things right going to yeah a a a team effort yes that that's wonderful that's really is nice to have in your background that you know then you can you're you can be very flexible and uh there's less uh friction involved in relationships when you add that skill of [teamwork] and uh i mean a lot of people that are adults are having to go back and learn those basics when our children are already learning that and i think it's a step a a giant step of progress i really do so uh i the best of well uh cathy i think if you look to the word of god and uh think on the things that are pure and lovely and uh keep your mind off of negative things and keep your mind on positive things and and stress that to your children and uh even if they're even if they're discouraged tell them that that's just a passing moment and to dwell on those things that are uh not negative and that are positive things in their life and i think you'll see a lot of growth in uh in their ability to uh control their thought pattern and and when you employ the word of god there's nothing as powerful as the word of god oh absolutely that's right uh_huh right well if she looks if she looks at it as you suggest that that that's that she can give her her talent back to the lord for his glory and she can look at it that way and and uh that's okay hi how many children do you have oh four okay okay well i have two children and uh two [stepdaughters] so we have four altogether too yeah are you are you running [ragged] these days oh they are oh oh well good [impart] me some wisdom catherine uh_huh uh_huh how old is your granddaughter oh so she's a little one yeah yeah yeah oh are you surviving is she your oldest child oh oh was she yeah oh oh that's nice now do your other grandchildren live in the dallas area do you get to see them how nice what a treat you know being from plano you know i know so very few people who have extended family in town i'm real jealous when i hear that somebody has a grandma around because we don't and it is it is and you know just so that they get to know their grandparents but also for help we don't we don't have that luxury but we have lots of friends and and everybody tends to be in the same boat so we we trade off a whole lot with friends and you know run here and run there we're right smack [dab] in the middle of baseball season right now and we have three playing baseball so they definitely do uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah and she [devotes] yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah well our kids you know uh my daughter uh sings with younger generation i don't know if you've ever heard of them there they're a singing group here in plano and they're part of the uh plano children's civics civic chorus and they're going to washington d c next december uh to sing for president bush at the white house at christmas time isn't that neat yeah so so we have been really up to our eye balls in fund raising and trying to get uh yeah it is it is so you know and then she plays softball and my son plays baseball and my stepdaughter plays softball so we we tend to do a lot of running things are very different nowadays than when i grew up and i'm sure when your children grew up you didn't you know i don't remember doing all these things i certainly don't remember my parents running me here and there and supporting me in all these things but we had more i guess family time alone where we did nothing which was good yeah yeah it can be and and sometimes i you know i kind of long for the good old days when we didn't do all these running but on the other hand we just love watching the kids play and getting to know the other parents and we've had a lot of fun with that too it's just different yeah it's just very different yeah yeah uh_huh oh really yeah yeah it is very nice well i think so and and i think they've learned a whole lot about being part of a team whether the team is your singing group your band your your sports team you know you all have to pull together and uh yeah and so i've been real pleased with that too i think they've learned some real good life skills uh you know being involved in all those things and uh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yes yes uh_huh uh_huh give me some wonderful advice catherine what is the best advice of [mothering] that you know besides don't sweat the small stuff uh_huh oh that's good that's real good advice uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh absolutely well i would agree with that we're also real active in our church and my kids do an awful lot with that [allyson] sings in the choir i told her that's a gift from god and you need to return that back and you owe you owe that back to god because he's given you that ability and that talent and and that's real nice i'm real proud of her i'm equally proud of her when i see her in church as i am when i see her performing you know that's that's real neat uh_huh do you have children oh i have one that's a freshman in high school a daughter and a son who's a sixth grader in a middle school and i spend most of my time carpooling the story of my life my kids are involved in sports my daughter has played basketball for six years and my son plays football i my rule is that they can't play a sport the same time of the year because there's just not enough of me to drive them around everywhere yes i know i know the insurance yes my son is in both band and scouts too oh gee right uh_huh yeah we found this oriental tile game called [mah] [jongg] have you well it's really fun um one of my neighbors moved here from memphis and a lot of them played it and she started a group going in the neighborhood and my kids wanted to learn how to play it and it's more fun with four people and it's a game that none of their friends know how to play and they both enjoy it so if they want to play they have to play with mom and dad so uh we play that a lot of them and uh we like to go miniature golfing and to movies we have family that lives outside of the state so we go visit both sets of grandparents and and take car trips so that and my husband and son go camping with scouts mostly my daughter and and i hate camping so we go shopping so that just kind of works out real well and um i'm a writer by profession and my daughter enjoys writing too so a lot of times she and i will travel to writers conferences together yeah so yeah so that gives us special time together too and she's on the [yearbook] staff and things like that so i can help her with that and she gives me ideas for my writing too so yep yeah right my husband has taken us to work with him and we still don't know what he does so we just say he travels a lot so that kind of covers it yes yeah he's been on temporary duties where he's been gone nine months yes so those are the real killers if he's just gone he's gone three weeks right now and that's that's mild compare to the big ones so we just you know i just do the carpooling and and handle whatever needs to be done and something major always needs to be done so you just have to to handle it until he gets home and hopefully he won't have too many surprises when he gets home uh yes uh we have two sons uh one's a freshman in college and one's a sophomore in high school and you okay oh yes yes uh yeah uh well uh yeah we've spend a spend a did spend a lot of time uh it really helped when the uh older one was old enough to get his license and could uh drive around by himself although that brought in a whole other set of problems but uh i uh yeah for one thing uh but yeah we uh we do but our two had had uh totally different interests of but there was not much uh overlap as such the the older one is not was not at all into uh sports for the most part uh he participated band and and uh scouts were his two big things and uh and the yeah younger one is uh uh the sports one and the whatever season it is he's he's playing although football is really his favorite yeah so uh yeah we spend a lot of time uh uh carpooling and uh you know and then trying to be uh up as much as possible with anything that they that they do but then uh we also didn't do spend uh time with them trying to trying to uh you know just family time uh we had a at a fairly young age we started teaching them to play games and card games and so forth and and uh uh but we didn't uh do it as much or as often as uh i would have liked to i would like to do that as a as a family and and some t v watching what about you yeah i've i've heard of that i've never actually never actually played it but yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so do we okay yeah yeah oh now that's neat yeah no we've never had anything like that yeah uh_huh uh_huh oh well good well i you know in terms of in terms of any sorts of trends i you know obviously things are different from for me than and my children than when i was growing up i i i grew up on a farm uh in iowa and uh you know the whole family was around the the whole time and then what my father did was was uh you know obvious to me and i i helped out with it but uh although i have brought my boys into to see where i work it's not that easy and it's it's certainly not at all common and they they just don't really have that same idea so they uh it's a it's a whole different uh kind of thing there then uh yeah yeah yeah well that makes it hard though for in terms of you know family time with with him yeah i've been lucky in that respect that i don't uh don't travel too much oh yeah yes yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah right okay well just to let you know i have uh two uh children of my own i've got two boys uh one four year old and one two years old so i'm just starting out wow wow that's quite a spread that's great well i guess uh in one of the things that that i like to do with my boys when uh when i get home is i like to try and spend a lot of time with them you know they're not very old so they couldn't do a whole lot yet but they like to uh spend time with me we just oh just do various things nothing really they like to be outside as much as possible right uh but you know the weather's trying to turn now so yes i i'm i'm in uh dallas right right right yeah what well one of the things i've noticed is one of the trends i've i've noticed is that uh it's always too easy to just plop your kids down in front of the t v and let them watch movies or or play video games or something sure sure that's okay no it's okay uh so that was the thing that i i noticed that i know a lot of people lot of friends that we have they have a tendency to do the same thing and one of the things we try to do is we try to avoid doing that as much as possible although it really is very easy to do that type of thing just plop them down in front of the t v and let them be uh entertained that way and uh seeing as you've got some older children i i'm wondering how did you handle that when they were growing up uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right right um right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah right uh_huh uh_huh right oh that's nice that's great that's great i know we'd i'd like to get into do more camping and outings and things and i think we probably will soon as the boys get a little bit older but uh you know for right now they don't you know just getting out in the front and just being outside is good for them because they like just being outside uh_huh uh_huh right that's true you don't see many leaves around dallas uh_huh oh yes i have two boys who are twenty eight and twenty four and a daughter who is twelve yes same husband everything uh but uh_huh if it's not raining are are you down here in texas oh okay yeah you know what i meant with rain huh oh okay uh what yeah i i have can you hold on just a i have to answer a business phone i hate to do it on this call good morning a r e this is [arlene] [lister] it was just a recorded message on our business phone anyway i'm sorry keep going uh_huh yeah well there there was not nearly as much of it in fact i i think things were were quite a bit different uh when my my big kids were were little uh you know all the mothers were home you know the the kids got up in the morning and ate breakfast and [poked] around and then when they felt like it they went out to play you know when they were were little like that and uh i i think it's gotten uh very different when my second one was little they were coming out with sesame street which he started watching and other than that i mean there was basically there was not educational t v or uh you know you got some cartoons and that was it but they they were never that interested in it anyway they'd rather i mean they'd take their trucks out in the backyard you know go out and play and stuff but we always did uh-oh just you know to the park for walks and to the zoo and museum we did a lot of stuff like that with uh with our kids and course when they got bigger uh they were both quite into sports and and you know so whatever you know they would do we'd go along with and uh uh a girl is very different we have a girl would like you to spend time with her going shopping so they're very very different but uh kind of the same thing our you know she now lot of time spent with her she's so busy is uh you know going to you know like last night was a band concert and she plays on her school volleyball team and uh stuff like that but uh we we still uh-oh like to pack up you know just go someplace for the day or uh you know just stuff like that one of our older kids now is going to graduate school down at college station so that's uh we go down there fairly often you know for a weekend for you know family get [togethers] and stuff like that uh uh_huh oh yes yeah i i think our kids just always dearly loved that you know play bounce the ball or just uh course when our big ones were little we lived up north you know and this time of the year it it the fun thing was to go out and [swoosh] around in the leaves you know so you know so it's it's very different and and uh you know we also come winter time we'd stick them on [sleds] and uh we had a pond across the street and and from little on you know i'm it's it's so different down here where you go take lessons to learn to ice [skate] or something you know when our kids were little you you got them a pair of [skates] okay my children are all grown up uh_huh i'll bet i'll bet it is what is the favorite thing you do with your children uh_huh you just watch them play huh i i tried it once or twice but i didn't feel like i was very good at it either my grandson got me to one day but different worlds and how do you get to another world you know and i i don't even know what they're talking about do you yeah i know when our kids were growing up our we were big into water sports we had a boat and they all skied and in the summer we spent most weekends on the lake with them skiing and they always took other friends with them and we had a lot of fun doing that but i had all girls so we didn't do too much sports wise i find my grandchildren are very involved in soccer and baseball and little boys do all of those things but uh_huh i'll bet you really are uh_huh uh_huh well when mine were real little they all played soccer but you know that was just for a couple of years when they were pretty small for girls and then they got more interested in other things i'm not sure that they would admit it at that age that it was boys but i think that's probably what it was uh_huh but they but you enjoy them i think the older mine get the more i enjoy them uh_huh and i mean i didn't it wasn't that i didn't like them when they were little but the older they got i enjoyed them as teenagers and now that they're each of course three girls they're each becoming the they've all become women in themselves that it's been neat to watch them how what kind of mothers they are what kind of wives you know how they do things and two of them live real close to me so we we spend a lot most of our time spent with them is they come over to eat and bring the kids and we play with the kids you know but uh where oh we go camp out they camp out and we spend weekends at the in the country with them quite a bit but as far as doing any activity now that the grand kids are here we all just stay around the house mostly it's too much effort to go somewhere with all the kids uh_huh they'll always remember it too i hear mine saying well i remember mother and daddy used to take us to do so and so i need to take my boys to do this or that you know and i remember the year we went to disneyworld as quick as my kids are big enough we're going to go to disneyworld you know yeah they just really can't wait to be able to take their kids where they had fun but do you work uh_huh it really does the time you have with them has to be quality time then i imagine that they have uh some a lot of homework too uh_huh uh_huh well there's just so many things to do with them nowadays though and especially if they're active kids like you say you bowl oh okay well now see i've got two children and uh they're one is uh just turned to be a teenager and the other one is on his way so i uh i'm a single parent so i think it makes it more difficult for me to uh you know find time with my my children since i work and then of course take care of the house and all this good kind of stuff uh so it's a real uh it's a real problem for me yeah uh the the thing that we like to do the most is to watch t v together and uh the kids like to play nintendo but i'm no good at it so i don't like to play that's right that's right me either yeah they talk about these different levels and stuff and i've never got off of level one yes i i know i agree with you so uh but no the other thing i think we like to go to the movies too that's yeah that's a that's a neat thing so i guess we're all in uh you know movie uh [fanatics] or whatever around here so we like to do those kind of things uh_huh oh how neat uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah oh yeah yeah see i have a son and uh you know it's football in the fall and and baseball in the spring and and it's one activity after another i i'm constantly going back and forth yeah and my daughter has uh tennis so it's between tennis and and bowling my i bowl so you know we're pretty active as a sports you know in in the family so it it's really neat uh_huh boys oh yeah i i know that uh my daughter uh even though she goes out with the the sports and everything uh yeah she likes to watch the football for uh the kids i'm sorry uh that was a cat that hit the telephone get away cat gosh i guess it's why they wanted to do it on this type of telephone because there's all kind of activity that goes on but uh yeah my uh my kids are they're starting to grow up you know it's not going to be too many more years before i uh uh you know they'll be gone and and uh there won't be as many activities do you uh yeah i i agree with you i i do i'm so glad they're out of the that young real young age and the babies right yes yes uh_huh oh yeah yeah that's so true well do you do the do your daughters live close where you can go out oh good oh yeah yeah yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh oh yeah that's true oh yes oh yes boy i know especially when they grow up like that so i'm trying to these last five or six years i'm trying to make them really special and uh very precious since that's uh about the only time we've got left yes yes absolutely i i think so too uh_huh uh_huh there we go i know i know they can't wait that's right that's right yeah so well i still got a few more years so i'm uh i'm hanging onto those and doing as much activity as i can with them yes uh_huh i sure do and i work full time so uh it it that cuts into our free time right there that's right that's right and uh vacations are very special for us and activities yeah yeah you know this being a school night and stuff so uh it's it's in the same old you know routine of uh you know doing homework and you know trying to talk between all of that and and uh the other activities that we all have uh_huh okay uh let me see i've got two children one is uh both preschoolers one is two and one is uh four so and uh this is my first year off and i've always worked uh from the time that they were little and so i decided to hold off on my job for a while and stay home with them and spend some more time with them which i hadn't been doing so oh oh yeah uh_huh yeah well that's what i was doing before i was teaching for richardson school district and uh it just seemed like it took a lot of my time with them being so little and it's really hard yeah yeah yeah that's right that's right and that's what was kind of what where we were you know we i really didn't have to work but i felt like i really wanted to work and i felt i also felt like boy i was sure missing a lot and they were growing so fast and you know it's like do i really need to work you know and i and it that choice was there i really didn't have to and you know so i did have that advantage there but it's different staying home too you know it's an adjustment to make also uh_huh yeah wow that's great uh_huh uh_huh yeah wow that's great uh_huh uh_huh yeah kind of goes on they do what they see you know uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah yeah plus you teach middle school so i'm sure that you are really you really boy oh boy i taught early childhood so i had the little ones and uh you know i saw it there too and you you know you just oh it's it's kind of an eye opener so uh_huh yeah i think you're right yeah right right yeah yeah i agree yeah yeah yeah i agree i i know exactly what you're saying uh_huh well i think that's wonderful my children are in college but i teach school and i teach uh middle school age children and so i see a lot of uh variation in what happens when kids are at home uh i have taught school ever since my children were little but the advantage of teaching school is your hours are closer to your children's and your holidays are too so teaching i think is a a good career to have and still be able to spend a lot of quality time with kids uh_huh right well with them being as young it was much much harder when mine were young and uh i really didn't have that much of a choice because my husband was trying to finish his uh college work and his master's degree and so forth and so it was a matter of somebody had to have a job uh_huh uh_huh yes it certainly is we well i think that uh we need to spend more family time together with with children today uh we made a point to spend a lot of quality time and the activities that we were involved in were the activities the kids were involved in you know like uh through scouting or you know anything like that we participated and uh we always made a point to have breakfast together and supper together now when yeah when uh the kids were in high school it was harder to always have supper together but we did always have breakfast together so we we had supper together as much as possible but when it wasn't feasible you know we kind of kept a master calendar and when it wasn't feasible well that was understandable but uh we've always tried to spend time to talk and uh have some time together time and we sat around the table we didn't sit in front of a t v or that kind of thing so i think that's been important because we do have a close family and even though the kids are basically uh grown uh they still like to sit down at the table and us all eat together when they're here and uh have spoken before of they want that kind of you know situation for them when you know and their children when they marry and have children uh_huh that's right they model and with the dysfunctional families today i'm sure with a as a schoolteacher also you see what happens to these kids when these families never communicate or they're dysfunctional as far as the between uh-oh second families uh one parent families or all those kinds of problems that they have and then you see them magnified in the children oh boy yes uh_huh yes it is it is and i think most teachers realize the value of quality time with children and i think we make a point to do that because we see we see all the time the outcome of not doing that and i think if we weren't so interested in children in child care then we wouldn't be teaching anyway so uh i wish we could reach more of the rest of the world i think uh the major problems in education are not what's happening in the schools it's what's happening in the families and uh they expect us to you know have create [miracles] at school and fix all the problems and take over the roles of the parents as well as that of the teachers and you get to a point where it's completely impossible and you just get more and more frustrated and yet you feel for the the kids you do the best you can but i say arlington texas now because i talked one night to somebody in arlington virginia oh do they have one oh i didn't know that well i learned something already how much time do you spend with your children oh what oh yeah well mine is uh down at u t austin at college and the other one is in high school so you do spend less time then they want to be with their friends how old are your kids are they married or what oh boy you have a lot of kids oh well that's kind of nice though you you shouldn't be [lonesome] on a holiday huh well that's true they have to see their other parent i guess too i know what i know that's what my mother said one time right no that's true and if they force them to you know that's not good either well do they all live in the area uh_huh oh wow uh_huh golly how did they end up so far away uh_huh those are the youngest ones uh_huh boy that's those are a long way how uh_huh uh_huh vermont so they wanted to make their homes there my goodness are they are those two married they uh just working up there or going to school or what uh_huh oh they do especially if they if they're meant to i think i mean i've got a daughter that's a sophomore at u t and i'm i'm going to u t a right now myself so it's never too late right especially in some of these schools around here i think they have about twenty percent older students oh yeah i've seen some people that are really quite up there you know they look like in their very late sixties and i say that's great why not you know no oh yeah you're really ready to learn finally i mean i don't know why i even went to college when i was seventeen it was a complete waste of money right right we right and uh no we don't go out drinking beer till three and try to go to class in the morning we're past yeah we're past that age we know what we can do uh_huh what was it uh what do the trends in families and do we approve what other families do that's right a change i was going to say the same thing uh_huh uh_huh right right are going to have to solve some of the problem huh uh_huh oh oh my yeah well and plano texas rather than plano illinois yes they do yeah well let's see the three questions are what uh very little because they're grown they're grown and gone huh yeah because they don't want to know they almost don't want to know us uh yes i have uh two married two and then two almost married and the other two i'm not sure well two two two uh uh for sure are single yeah we have between the spouse and myself we have six because i came with a split family and she had well no there is so much of them are gone and they're doing their own things and and a lot of times they they've got you know uh when the holidays yeah and sometimes they want to do their own thing so sometimes it's just spouse and me and and you know what sometimes that's okay because you know right because who says that they just must got to come over to see us all the time for the holidays yeah that becomes a [drudgery] and well let's see got of the six we've got four around here uh you know well we're talking like north texas and then one is in vermont uh [montpelier] [montpelier] vermont and the other one is in [everett] washington well that is that's the the my little pair and my second marriage uh and uh yeah well the the the the the fourth and fifth child of the of the of the uh six are the two that are scattered like that and well they wanted to go uh j r my my my last son or my middle son excuse me fell in love with washington state and the the the third daughter fell in love with uh uh vermont so yeah that's where they've gone to make their homes no well uh let's see yeah i guess you'd say j r is working going to trying to go to school i wish to god he would go back yeah well i certainly hope so uh_huh well it's oh i agree it's never too late and yeah and when you're saying older we're talking fifty up uh_huh oh my uh_huh yes why not because that's a a lot of times well it's i believe that uh we in that category and i'm not in that category quite yet but we are seasoned minds yes uh_huh yeah it was yeah settle down we know what we're wanting to to uh study and uh we know our limitations and we don't try to burn the candle at both ends and in the middle altogether at seven yeah yes we're we're smarter now yeah right uh so let's see so mine i don't spend a whole lot of time because they're not here and so the second question forgot what the second question well uh the trends in the families were to spread apart do your own thing but i have seen lately yes i am seeing i'm seeing a change that whoops government can't do it schools are not able to and between a person's religion uh their their faith in their maker whether you know uh whether you're christian or jewish or whatever uh and the family those are the two that can that that have the wherewithal and of course judeo christianity uh and of the jewish folks too believe that the family unit is the one that was given the uh uh mission by the lord to do this very thing so when another group of of uh people step in try to do it they're they're [tromping] on our territory so to speak so i firmly believe that uh okay miss nancy we should be in business now did you hear the questions that the lady uh brought up such as how much time well i'll ask how much time do you spend with your children and how many do you have uh_huh well you're very fortunate uh my my uh i have two girls and a son and my oldest daughter lives in amsterdam holland she her husband builds pianos so it's kind of hard for us to visit with them as much as i'd like to because we've we one thing we do have together is we're both musicians i play in several symphony orchestras and she is a a a concert uh [harpsichordist] and travels around a good bit in europe and uh her husband builds [forte] pianos which are harpsichord size pianos and uh that's why they're over there and then i have a a son who lives in uh [warrington] pennsylvania and i get to see him maybe once every three months so i really we've lost you know i'd like to have an everyday contact with children uh as well as you do for that matter and my young my youngest daughter lives in new jersey and so they i don't hardly get to see any of them she works in these um trump type [casinos] she and her husband both do they work uh they're really both um play people who play on stage and uh they're running lights right now and audio and that thing for plays and things that go on but anyhow uh what do you what activities do you do with your children when you are together oh the soviet space exhibit my goodness i am surprised they would bring anything over here uh_huh i'll bet uh_huh well that sounds like you have really wonderful activities that keep you together yeah well that's wonderful uh_huh uh_huh the only problem is it keeps you pretty busy keeping everything going doesn't it uh_huh beautiful uh_huh uh_huh that's great there's a the question now to ask is it difficult to find time and you seem to be making out all right well tell me what do you think of uh of the current trends of how other people spend time with their children and so forth uh_huh yes uh_huh well that's no that's exactly what i was going to say of of course i find now that i spend more time with my grandchildren in detail i know more about them and watch their growth and how they improve and and learn much more so than my own kids when when your own children are growing up you just take them for granted and you go ahead and do your thing and good yes we have two children they're both grown and married and with we have uh our daughter has three sons so we see them at least once a week and we see our son and his wife uh about every other week and uh we baby sit quite frequently so we're a fairly close knit family we're together a lot on special days and uh and of course with the holidays and everything uh_huh oh oh yes uh_huh oh uh_huh pianos uh_huh uh_huh oh you don't get to see any of yours very often yes uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh most the time well right now it's football season and our daughter is a big cowboy fan as is our husband so my husband so she watches that and i play with the grandchildren i enjoy the grandchildren but now like last weekend um there's the soviet space exhibit is here in dallas and it ends uh in january so she and and the three boys and my husband and i went over into fort worth to see the space exhibit and this sunday uh_huh yeah it's oh it's been here for quite uh some time i think it came here in either september or october and it's very interesting very interesting and it's been very well done uh and this uh next sunday they're coming over after the cowboy game and uh uh we're going to go take the boys to see christmas lights and go to a [santa's] village and uh then when our son's over we have a pool and he and his wife come and a lot of their friends and we have [cookouts] on sunday uh and uh we we do a lot with with our kids and we we always have we've taken a lot of trips with our kids when they were younger uh we're very family oriented we um we like being with our kids and the kids seem to enjoy being with us and their friends enjoy being with us so which that keeps us very very young with all these young people passing in and out and eating and seems like i've well it does i'm worried about christmas christmas eve they all pass through and then they all end up spending the night christmas eve night so that we open our presents on christmas day and they go out to the other you know the in laws in between some of this but they're all with us and uh then have christmas dinner with us and then go to other in laws and things so we see a lot of them but we enjoy christmas eve night because they all start arriving by about eleven o'clock and we open presents about five o'clock christmas morning and you know and uh then i go to the kitchen and cook and my sister and and her husband are coming down so there's going to be eleven of us for christmas yeah sometimes i'm a little exhausted oh i i think the trends are going back to spending more time with families i think parents are definitely uh spending more and more time i don't think they're leaving them with baby sitters you know i think i think family quality time is becoming much more important than it was there for about uh i don't know eight or nine years seems like it went through a spell there where families weren't that big a deal parents kind of went and did their thing kids did their thing and uh yes uh_huh do you have any children twelve and sixteen well i have three and uh they're five and three and nineteen months so we kind of got different ball game but uh what uh do you feel like you have any time to spend with them they're probably at an age where they don't want to spend any time with their parents right oh uh_huh right sure oh well that's nice you're stuck together no i would suspect your nights would be pretty quiet for the most part right and so that kind of gives him uh time with his dad then gives him a little bit of that individual time right and they want to be able to spend uh well i've even noticed that with my five year old she started kindergarten this year and every day that she's not at school uh she thinks we need to have someone over and play and that kind of yeah it's hard i think uh i find myself getting my little projects going and not taking the time that i should i'm more worried about oh i didn't this done i didn't get the kitchen needs to be cleaned this needs to be done and and i need to remind myself to slow down and it'll still be there tomorrow but that's kind of hard to do you know you don't see yourself getting uh_huh right slow down a little bit oh uh_huh you can do uh more than than when you travel this is the first year we're staying home too and uh i think it's going to be real quiet but uh that's an opportunity to get out the games and right of of course oh yeah wouldn't take it apart after that that'd be kind of fun right right no no in fact in i think if people would learn to turn off the t v and i think that's a lot of the breakdown of the communication and the communication that would take place in a family usually people are not sitting in front of that yes and you can't communicate while you're doing that right whereas uh i'm the type of person i could not sit well i shouldn't say i could not but be very hard for me to sit down and watch a program all the way through without doing something because they talk so much isn't that the you're kind of like what are you talking about and uh you feel like you're a little bit out of it don't you they need to have a [highlight] in the newspaper or something tell us what's yeah i have two two boys twelve and sixteen uh_huh how about you oh right well that's true you actually of course spend less time with them when they get older but it's of course still really important i have a kind of a fortunate situation i think right now with my sixteen year old um i work two nights a week at a i'm a librarian and i work two nights a week at the senior high school library they keep it open you know for kids to do their work and he um and then they the school district hires an aide you know to work for me well my son is my aide so two nights a week for four hours we're stuck together and there's usually not very much business i mean some nights it's just real real quiet so so we i have sort of a captive audience so i really do spend probably more time with him than than most you know but uh of course i'm away from my other son those hours too but his dad's at home pretty much that time yeah that's true yeah but but it is hard once they get that age i mean their friends are the most important thing there is that's right uh_huh uh_huh yeah it's kind of hard yeah uh_huh uh_huh right yeah that's true yes it is hard to do right yeah well if you're kind of a person that likes things you know organized or neat or you know then i think it it is hard it's um i think one of the nice things about holidays is that you know it does give you the opportunity to spend more time yeah with family we have we often go to illinois for christmas and we're not this year and it's just really nice because we can do you know the things you want to do yeah yeah that's right yeah right see we usually do that my my kids even have already gotten out um my twelve year old got out the [legos] which of course he hasn't touched since last summer but you know but every now and then i mean he's got a lot of those [technic] those hard kind you know and he wants to be an engineer so he still likes all that kind of building stuff and um we have the train and we haven't had that [lego] train together for years and um so he sat down and i told him i really wanted him to build the train and we would put it under the tree and that i would keep it together i wouldn't take it apart yeah and every year i'd have the [lego] train under the tree and um so he worked on that for the longest time ever since school was out on friday and um then his sixteen year old brother started helping too you know you know these are kind of things like during the normal rat race those kinds of things never happen but uh_huh yeah yes yeah which is uh_huh and there's always a few people in the family that when they stare at it you know they're totally turned off to everything else the rest of no that's right yeah yeah me too yeah i don't watch very much of it at all to to the extent that sometimes i feel almost embarrassed at work and stuff like that yeah they talk about t v shows and i huh you know how can you watch that you know it's the best show on i don't know okay yeah donna um you said you have three children what uh kinds of activities do you spend with them is it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah so do you find it difficult to find time or is it pretty natural uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah do you work during the day uh_huh yeah yeah i can imagine yeah uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh yeah so what do you feel are the current trends in the way families spend time in general you know in america uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh oh that's good yeah yeah well families are facing a challenge i know that with i'm a [newlywed] and we're you know thinking about having children sometime in the next couple of years and yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah but i do feel like it's important that you make the time for children because yeah yeah uh_huh yeah okay um we have an eleven year old an eight year old and a three year old and um uh my husband let's see he coaches basketball with brian um so he spends time doing that with him planning and um practicing outside um he's a real sports kind of person so he plays tennis with with the kids we all kind of play tennis as a family except the baby plays in the playground we take turns with her um uh let's see we have a computer and we do a lot of things with the kids on the computer um uh let's what else we do oh plus we watch a little t v together we really don't watch i think as much t v as a lot of people we don't have h b o we do get the disney channel for the kids uh my kids have a nintendo which they play and my husband sometimes [joins] them with that uh my little girl jennifer likes to do crafty things and i'll take some time and do that with her and of course we always read a bedtime story at night and even the the older kids sometimes sit down and and will join in and listen to a story i'm basically the story person because my husband doesn't have he gets home from work late or whatever and and usually once in a while he'll read the story to little one but that's basically my job um it is it is hard because you know at the end of your day you want time for yourself and and it and that's kind of cutting into your your time and with the kids getting older now on the weekends they get to the bed like at ten which really is late but you know on school nights the two older ones get to bed about nine they go upstairs at nine and um now this weekend we'll have a baby sitter come and uh my husband and i will go out to dinner and come home and um probably not too late maybe brian will still be up and spend some time with him but it it's really hard you have to be a very [unselfish] person to to spend a lot of time with your kids i think uh no i don't work i last year um i had a little part time job in a private um high school tutoring um high school students with learning disabilities that was two days a week and even just those two days just seemed like it was a lot i don't know how i admire people that that can do it all but with three kids and laundry and keeping the house the way i want it kept it is hard um even just finding the time to do the grocery shopping and everything and that's another thing i'll take one of the kids with me grocery shopping um usually on the weekend and that's kind of like a special time for just myself and my little girl or myself and my son and they'll be my helper and then they'll get to pick out some of those favorite snacks that they get to pick out so i try to do things like that but it you know it's it's uh and then of course they have a pretty um busy social calendar too you fit it in with all that that i i think a lot of people a lot of people set their kids in front of the t v and h b o and rent movies and and kind of leave them to their own means um i think you know it's very very easy to fall into that trap and i'm not um totally innocent of that because there's times when you just stay here watch a tape but um um i think different parts of the country i think in plano and maybe this area in texas there's a lot of community activities that parents could join in with their kids people are real sports conscious and really get involved with their kids sports activities and you know but um what uh_huh uh_huh and it's it's very hard because when you get used to two salaries it's very hard to to cut back to one and um um but you know if you have the type of job i have a friend that's a nurse and she can pick her hours and that's a a great career i wish i would have gone into uh nursing because she has such a flexible schedule but it's very hard to uh spend time with the children and uh and your husband and do everything at once well i think it's a big it's a big um responsibility you just don't have children so that you can continue the lifestyle you had when you were single when you have children you have to say now this is different and you do have to give things up i i personally feel that it is extremely important to be with your own child um for the at least for the first two years of their lives i mean if you can possibly swing it because they oh yeah i got three how about yourself oh you have got uh young children then oh my goodness that is great what kind of mix do you have a boy and a girl two boys do you know what is on the way yet are you i do not blame you well we have got two boys and a girl also well we have got two boys and a girl yes maybe maybe you will get lucky and get a girl this time well our boys one is uh he is in graduate school at a and m uh he is in the navy he is a lieutenant in the navy and the navy is sending him for his masters in ocean engineering and we have got another boy that is us out in maryland he is a wildlife [biologist] uh and our girl is thirteen she is in the seventh grade so we have got still all sorts of good activities since well she is into a little bit of everything she is uh loves riding horses so she goes out riding as much as she can no well that yeah but maybe that riding place that is north of town that she goes to she rides english and does jumping takes lesson and all that kind of stuff yeah she is into uh well she plays the flute in the band and the [piccolo] and she is into this uh [odyssey] of the mind thing which is uh takes a lot of time for uh it a what they call peace group i don't know if you have gotten into that with your kids but that is where the kind of well it is a program for advanced kids oh okay well my wife is involved and she kind of heads that up for these kids and last year they they got uh the state level they did not win that but they uh got one local and uh one region and they got a new mix of kids this time so it keeps them busy it keeps them busy well uh yes but they well they have well you probably know a peace group that uh that they are advanced type that they are special well uh classes for peace classes i think that uh this happens to be uh uh history is what their peace class is this year but uh so they uh she enjoys that kind of stuff and uh does well with it so yeah yeah always something to do well you will get to different levels i guarantee it uh okay that will be fun oh yeah yeah got to wait a couple years sledding that is what you have got to do tobogganing you have got to go tobogganing and sledding with them well you are welcome to keep that well i grew up in wisconsin i i had plenty of snow and when i was a kid and we have lived here about seventeen years but we use to take all of the kids tobogganing and ice skating and all of that kind of stuff it is fun really as long as you do not have to drive in it i had plenty of snow to last me forever i i don't care if i ever see any well i don't care if i ever see it but keep it off of here yes well you have got you have got five months before you will see that oh yeah out oldest son when uh do you have kids uh we have two and another one on the way well yeah uh we do we have uh a six year old he is oldest and then uh our baby will be a year on monday yeah two boys two boys yeah no i am just about three months and uh i don't think we really even want to find out we like surprises so we will take either and uh does it are the two boys first oh maybe huh we we kind of like our boys though too so oh my goodness oh yeah you kind of got uh a span there huh oh well what do you do with your seventh grader do you have horses she just she knows people that does huh oh does she oh she must really like them advanced yeah yeah i have heard about it our little boy is in the first grade and i i taught school for six years so i do know about that program and oh uh_huh oh yeah i bet huh well so does she go actually out into a different classroom with with uh other kids that are involved in this yeah oh uh_huh oh how neat challenging huh oh well uh as far as our activities we are kind of on a different level here but my yeah yeah my husband is going to take our six year old to the monster truck show tonight they like to uh both boy things yeah but we we do not have any real uh like we don't really ski we have not taken our kids skiing or anything of course the baby is young but yeah yeah the what oh well yeah we we have done that he in fact he just goes right out here we have got quite a bit of snow uh last week we got a lot yeah you would like that huh oh yeah it is fun yeah i no i do not like that i really it makes me nervous yeah yeah yeah well uh i don't mind it but uh uh the winter gets long you know i get ready that come about this time of year i am kind of ready for it to start getting spring and it is too early yet yeah we do we do we have had a few early springs though in the last few years they have not been too bad come about march it gets you know a lot nicer um i have an older son yeah he doesn't have any children yet though uh he's thirty seven and i don't know if he's ever going to have any or not but i do have some neighbor kids lots of little neighbor kids that i go out and uh i play ball with them you know it's because like this one that lives right next door her mother does some work at home on computers and it just seems like she doesn't have any time for her which is kind of sad you know so the kids are kind of hungry for someone to play with them so i will go out and play catch with them or you know we let the dogs outside and they will roll around on the ground and play with the dogs but uh actually i do think that the parents should have you know a little bit more time to spend with their kids no when my son was at home i i did work and then he went to a baby sitter that this lady had about five other kids that she baby sat you know but we always had our days off together and we went camping on vacations so we had a lot of time together that way you know uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh yeah well i am sure it was you know but uh i don't know what the families are going to come to now days because they there just doesn't seem like they do have time for their kids because most most of them the father and mother both work you know so it's really rough uh i have one neighbor that's uh the father is a fireman and he works like four days on and it seems like he is suppose to come home for like three or four days but he can't make enough as a fireman to support his family you know so he's got a second job so he's you know he's not home very often and that's you know the kids i know miss that you know yeah you know and i don't know i i suppose they are trying to get through to them that well daddy is not home because you know he is out working trying to make some money for you know we can buy you this bike and that toy and so forth you know but uh oh i am sure they would you know so are you planning on to having any children or uh_huh um yeah well that's good that's what my uh daughter in law told me that they were going to have kids probably after two years of marriage and they will be married nine years this year so i don't know she's a nurse you know and uh she has brothers and sisters that has got lots of little kids so maybe they just decided that uh if they wanted to have kids around the house they would just you know call one of their sisters or brothers up and tell them to send the kids over for the night you know but uh uh_huh uh_huh so right right right uh_huh right right yeah uh do you plan on staying home after you have your children or do you do you work or what uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh so you have a son uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i would think so when you when when your son was at home did you uh working did you work or were you able to stay at home with him uh_huh yeah well when my mom uh when i was growing up my mom worked too but she worked nights and uh as a nurse and so she was always home for us and i always i really appreciated that having her there when i was you know when i came home from school and when i worked but now when i look back at it it must have been a really difficult thing that she did for us yeah um yeah they really do uh a family without a father it's it's uh a really hard thing uh_huh kids i think would much rather have dad there than the toy anyway oh yeah oh yeah uh_huh but we are we just got married like like december so we are going to wait a year and then we will try uh_huh yeah that's a possibility well we really want to have a family we feel like that that couple you know you are not giving enough of yourself and you should you should be sharing your family and giving your values you know making something better of the world by raising up good kids and letting them know they're loved and stuff give them give them an edge but we feel like like the first year needs to be devoted to uh making the family the couple strong and secure in their love for each other but then a family is is definitely a high priority well well i uh i am in i am in a different situation i am a missionary and i am home on [furlough] it called like i have worked for four years in africa and i come home for a year and then we go back for four years but my husband and i will do the same job and we will be living in in africa and we will be working together so uh we will we will share the job of raising the family i mean as a mother i will have certain responsibilities that he might not necessarily have but still we will share that job but we have then we have decisions that we have to make that are hard about schooling like do you want to home school your kids on a computer program you know that kind of thing or do you send them away to [boarding] school and if you do that when do you do it and that's a okay so you have eight children um what type of things do you do as a family to spend time together uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah we know how that goes uh with lots of kids you don't have lots of money for recreation well that's fun so um let's see uh some of the things we do together as a family we like to play games a lot and you may think this is funny but one of our [funnest] games we like to play together is hide and seek and we just have a hoot playing hide and seek when it's dark in our house and that is so fun the kids just get a crack out of that um we like we do like to go to the park too you uh like your family um we don't do a lot of vacationing have you taken a lot of vacations together or uh_huh and oh oh now where do they live oh so that's a bit of a drive for you there oh so you like to go there for the holidays and uh_huh oh uh_huh uh what are the ages of your kids then oh yeah so you have some in the nest and some out huh we have ours start at twelve and then they go down to four i bet yeah uh_huh yes uh_huh yes and then if you want to play something on the little kids' level then the older kids get real bored and they want to do something else so yeah i can i can relate to that um do you feel that the current trend in families spending time together is a positive one or a negative one uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh that's good oh good uh_huh i think so and i feel like you know like president bush bush has mentioned quite often that we are trying to become a kinder and [gentler] nation and it does begin with the families at home and so i i'm a firm believer in that too yes that's that's true well we see that a lot out here in utah and um hopefully hopefully it's going to spread huh oh um do you have a lot of large families out there in texas or very few you feel like you're in the minority oh dear well out here in utah five is about the the average yeah oh uh_huh oh oh oh i have some relatives out there in texas in fact my mom's out there in texas right now in dallas spending a month with her cousins on their ranch and well uh no i'm trying aberdeen is is that close to dallas oh don't you it's i guess it's out there clear out they have a ranch that has like five hundred acres and oh we spend a lot of time outdoors jogging bicycling uh going to the park um some time watching v c r movies um generally cheap things that's right yeah most of our vacations are to go and see grandma and grandpa we get an occasional one or two day thing but most of them are going and seeing grandma and grandpa in arizona yes oh we don't go very often for holidays generally we try to get all of our kids back home for the holidays and let grandma and grandpa come and visit us they range from twenty four to five that's right how old are your children i think the hardest thing for us has been is to find you know leisure time activities that all of our kids can enjoy together with the age span that we have you know like the older kids love playing board games and that kind of thing but the young kids don't understand it and so they get real frustrated when we try to do that and yeah i think it's improving actually we had an interesting experience the other day we we have pretty much a a routine that we spend we don't have our kids play with other kids on sunday and we just kind of keep them at home and our next door neighbor uh we were at a soccer game saturday and our next door neighbor was there and somebody came up and asked if their daughter could spend saturday night at their house and she said no sunday's our family day and we keep our kids at home so we can spend time with them and i think those kinds of things are happening a lot where we are right now i think it's gone to one extreme where the families were just running all different direction and i think more people are interested in spending time with their kids now yeah i think a lot of people are [panicked] how kids are turning out and how things are going for kids and realizing they've got to start doing something so utah's a lot better than texas very few oh definitely when we tell people how many kids we have they look at us like we didn't have good sense but uh average my wife and i were in utah until i guess we were about twenty four never been back since then but we have kids up there now so we get up occasionally where where in dallas huh i don't have any idea i've never heard of it must be a little town yeah all right okay how many kids do you have right uh_huh no yeah we we've been married for two and a half years we've been trying for about two years but no luck yet hopefully uh_huh she had another call she has just three kids eleven nine and eight uh_huh all right okay that keeps you do you have a lot of activities with your kids uh_huh uh_huh so they're pretty good kids huh yeah well we had growing up i guess i can talk about us we had nine kids in our family we had eight boys and one girl but my dad uh yeah and the time that my we spent with our dad was he owned his own business so we worked with him most of the time so that's how we spent most of the time with him yeah that was a dead giveaway huh uh_huh oh which that i was going to say my sister wasn't spoiled very much yeah that's but uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah it's like you said you know to each his own and we're planning on having my wife stay home and but uh_huh yeah uh_huh right oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well that's good sounds like you're have a handle on it um no not right now right well we just moved down here we used to live up in seattle for a couple of years it's that's no problem here yeah we really liked it up there but then yes i think i think we're going to talk about parents spending time with their children we have three children who are eleven nine and eight so this is the big issue with us although i don't recall marking it on my little things to talk about but perhaps they are little for words to be said like day care and quality time and anyway you don't have children but you're married oh you know i know we're not supposed to do this long distance but actually i'm getting a call i wonder if i could possibly take it on call waiting could i ask you to hold one minute i'll be right back excuse me just a moment they're going to get mad hello i'm so sorry that was my daughter's brownie leader telling me that there is a meeting tomorrow brownie meeting well i don't want to i don't want this to be a [unilateral] conversation but yes we do both my husband and i work and our children are sixth fourth and third grade and the school years are wonderful they're just wonderful the kids they are real people and they are interesting and they they have all their own activities and um i think as parents we really enjoy them in in our personal situation our children have not yet decided to rebel i'm sure that's coming though but they are wonderful kids you had eight boys and one girl are you [mormons] that's what the utah and the large family well we're catholics i came from a family of five i had four brothers the only girl and everyone always asked if the girl got spoiled i never felt spoiled in fact i always thought my toys were destroyed no usually busy fighting for survival well i do think with working parents it is i mean there are some real issues here um that i think um i don't know it's an interesting problem i happen to um i'm a pediatrician my husband is a physician so uh i i i talk to parents about this a lot but children i i think working mothers or mothers who choose to work outside the home um need very early to come to grips with any guilt that they feel and decide what's best for them and their family and i feel when my children were very young i had jobs that helped me be flexible with my schedule and spend time with them and all that sort of thing and i long ago decided i'm a better mother because i work outside the home i really believe that and it has um helped us to afford some things for our children that we couldn't otherwise that i think are wonderful particularly at this age and i think our kids are real secure and have a real sense of priorities and that they can do anything and be anything both male and female a lot so i know it sounds like a [rationalization] but it's i really think it's true for our family and i think it has worked very well there's no question i think that's really the best if if a woman is happy doing that i hate to put it quite that way i was twenty nine when i had my first child and uh i would not have been real fulfilled i really would not have been totally staying home with a young child it's a wonderful it's wonderful to be a mother but uh i like i like the way i did it i sort of worked half time i had very flexible hours i [nursed] all three of our children until they were at least a year and i you can do that despite working very easily which is one of the things i [preach] all the time to to mothers um and i think we choose very very carefully the um alternative situations that we had them in some baby sitting groups again i know it sounds like a [rationalization] but i really do think sometimes they very early on are around lots of other children and they they learn to share they learn not necessarily to be the center of attention but that at the same time we have to be sure they are secure i think that helps well so so so your wife does she work right now she's out you're still trying to dry out i you know actually in this modern day and age it seems like uh uh we have more and more leisure time because uh we have so many convenience appliances and whatnot we don't even have to cook dinner anymore uh but i uh i've heard i don't know this for a fact but i've heard that a lot of families really don't spend a great deal of time together that the kids maybe on the average get uh something like thirty seconds of quality time with the parents it seems bizarre to me i don't quite understand it although i think probably the the worst thing that's happening in the world at least the modern world today is television not so much because uh it's bad per se although there is some pretty crappy programming and i there's also some uh i think uh poorer lifestyles illustrated but simply because it [dominates] so much [discussionary] time it's so darned easy to turn the thing on so i refuse to have one in the house yeah uh_huh well i'll tell you television sure makes child rearing easy on you i mean the kids can be a real [pest] uh and turning the t v on is almost like magic you know it's like sticking uh an [electrode] into their pleasure center and you don't have to worry about them but i don't think it's too good uh so you know i don't know i take advantage i don't have a great deal of time to spend with the kids but i take advantage of um dinner time we always eat together and you know whenever you're with your kids you want to interact with them rather than just ignore them uh i guess our big outlet is music uh our thirteen year old son plays violin and our nine year old daughter plays cello and uh when our son started playing violin i took up violin and when our daughter started playing cello i took up cello so there's plenty of plenty of interactive time in uh practicing although neither kid likes to practice i guess that's not a big surprise but i i imagine with infants you are most of your time is sort of spent taking care of them rather than [interacting] with them although oh you know reading is so good i uh i took great pleasure in reading to my kids when they were little and i still try to read to them although our son is not liking that anymore uh but i read you know there's this doctor [seuss] sleep book have you ever seen that yet yeah it's called a sleep book and uh you ought to get it i tell you i read that book to my kids so many times i almost have the thing memorized uh yeah well i think i think his sleep book is my favorite uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh so how much time do you think you spend with your kids on the average per each day oh that's great oh i see how old are your kids again two and one yeah so you have your hands full with them that's for sure yes yeah really that's what i've heard too uh yeah right i know it i've i tell myself sometimes just sit down after work oh really well good for you good for you a lot of people i talk to a lot of people about that and i've thought about it myself and i though about it a lot but uh i still haven't done it yet well that's good that's true i've noticed that i don't think so either do you keep your kids uh active in sports or anything or oh okay okay no not for kids yeah well i i try and read to them and i take them to the park and stuff and yeah yeah well they get to that stage sleep book no we've got quite a few of doctor [seuss'] books oh really well yeah i like to i like to do it and they enjoy reading i've actually i never read a lot growing up and i never read until a few years ago i just started picking up books and so i've found that you know it's really important to me to get to read to i like to get away in a book you know and so i've put a lot more emphasis on that on my kids to try and oh i probably spend an hour or two my wife works at night so she does uh [tupperware] so she's gone a lot at nights and so i spend a lot of time with them they're two and one uh_huh yeah well i have five right well five are i mean four of them are grown they're in college or just out of college so i really have just a thirteen year old at home well i work at it i try to fool everybody uh_huh uh_huh i think you are right because i was an only child too and that's one reason i have so many because i really i enjoy the big family and my thirteen year old is pretty separate from her brother and sisters and so she is sort of like an only child and it's the same type of thing uh uh_huh yeah right that's exactly how it is you know she's got all these sisters and her brother to take care of her when things don't go right she just calls one of them you know but uh yeah it it's a little bit difficult though i think it was easier when they all had each other and could entertain each other and i was home more and we we really did not my next oldest daughter that's in college in california is a world twirling champion she [twirls] a baton and we did a lot of things together she and i did a lot of things together and flew we have flown all over the world for her to compete and to perform and that was a lot of fun but that that i guess you could consider that organized i mean there is a competition all the time we were very heavy into that other than that they were pretty much and maybe dancing school for a while or mainly school sports and things like that uh_huh well you can't afford to right right that's right uh_huh yeah well i know i spent hours in the gym every day with my daughter and my little one also [competed] because really she had no choice she had to go with me so the three of us just spent a lot of time traveling and and competing and of course the competing itself really didn't matter what it was it was making the friends and going all the places and it was a really neat experience but it took our total time i did not work uh when i did this now i do work full time and it's just my thirteen year old and myself and so we really have to keep it together to get just her activities in and still have time to spend with each other so yeah really well things cost a lot more i don't know how it is in georgia and i don't think our part of the country is particularly bad compared to some is it really right that's what i've heard huh yeah i'm surprised to hear that i've heard very positive things about atlanta how many children do you have now you have five well you do have a hard time finding time then don't you uh_huh you sound so young all right to have them uh i think you're doing a good job i just have one child and uh i don't think uh well there's not much i can do about it my my wife and i are in our forties you know so uh but it's hard to raise one child without them thinking they're the they're the [pivot] point of the universe yeah uh_huh i have a younger brother like that i'm in my forties like i say and i have a brother in his twenties and i was i was the youngest so i understand how that worked and he was treated like he had five fathers or something yeah did you all do a lot of organized things like uh little league uh soccer uh_huh uh_huh yeah you know i think that's probably true the if you have one child or fewer you get involved in organized events or activities and if you have a large number of children or then you don't no you and there's not enough time uh like my son is in uh little league this year he's ten and they practice three times a week and they have a game and it's just uh if there were more than one child i don't know there would be no way to do it you know one parent go one direction and i'd have to go in the other and we could only cover two at that uh_huh uh_huh i don't think although i think a a more than one child probably three children is probably the ideal to me but i'm not sure i could afford three i most certainly couldn't educate three i don't know how my my parents did it i mean there were five of us and i don't recall you know wanting anything in particular uh but i don't know how my father did it he worked at a truck line and he just didn't make that kind of money with five children but we did okay we had a house and a home and but now my wife and i both work and we don't i don't believe we have as much as my parents did and we only have one child uh_huh huh atlanta is horrible yes we have a lot of people moving here from boston and and different areas and from talking to them they're shocked and they you know the housing is so cheap in comparison to boston that they jump on it they sell their house they stash away a good bit of money and come down here and i work with a lot of them they they think they they have really done something then when they get down here they realize the cost of living is outrageous compared to to where they came from the housing is cheaper but that's about it uh i don't know about you but uh i work outside the home and uh in fact uh i'll be leaving very shortly to go to work and i work different shifts so are pretty much a later shift to where i don't have i don't have the family time uh when my husband gets home it's usually he's home with my daughter alone and then a couple of hours later i'm home uh i don't know i'm finding that more and more people that i talk to there's less and less family time available to them and uh it seems that business wise uh in the business community or your employers seem to be taking more and more time away from the family so you know if you do have any time it's kind of like on a rush cycle that you have to get so many other things done uh just to maintain your home and maintain the things outside your home and then plus try to have that relationship with your children and it it's sometimes a very it it's a very hard juggling act and you know i look at my daughter and she's now uh four going to be four and i keep saying oh jeez i don't have that much time with her and she's growing fast and uh_huh uh_huh yes yeah sure exactly uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh sure uh_huh exactly uh_huh sure sure uh_huh yeah yeah sure sure sure yeah i i i think so too in fact uh i spent the first three years at home with my daughter so i i guess i felt fairly fortunate that i was able to do that and i did notice the difference between those of infants being placed in daycare and i thought to myself how can a mother place her child at the age of six weeks or four weeks or two weeks or three weeks whatever the employer says you have to be back at work is basically when you have to be back at work whether it be six weeks or three or four but how these women must feel to place their children into care and you know it's our society saying yes this uh you need this job it's a little bit financial type thing because uh if you look all over in the other countries like europe and that uh their standards of living are a lot less than what ours are and that's part of it too but uh like my husband was saying maybe some of the problems we brought on to ourselves is that these women back in the nineteen fifties uh were staying at home with their kids and then made the decision well jeez you know i'll go out and get a part time job got a part time job and then financially they got themselves into well i'll have the boat i'll have the car and it's nice and really women past generation women have done it to women of this day and age too uh because it is now our financial situations are as it almost takes two people to bring in an income to support a family now and uh_huh sure i did it for three years and uh it cost us a lot of financial problems doing it and pretty soon you know you're at the limit where you've got to say okay you've sacrificed for you know so many years at home and you're not getting any further you know along and you have to make that decision to go back to work part time or go back to work full time and you have to make that decision and it's a tough one and i uh_huh sure i agree yeah i know that i have three children and uh i stay home i don't work and uh i know that it it must be really challenging to uh try to juggle a job and and also your children because i know my husband if i were gone as much as he is we wouldn't have the influence on them that i would want to put on them and i also notice that the children that come over here to play that go to daycare every day they don't like to be around adults they don't want to play around adults they don't want to be around you they don't want you to tell them what to do they want to do their own thing and they're the very same age as my children and i'm finding as i volunteer up at the school i just being uh i'm not educated at all in uh really [detecting] this but i can talk to the teacher and tell them on a pretty good basis after i've worked up at the school for a couple of weeks which kids go to daycare and which kids stay home and you can just tell in their personalities and how they respond to the adults that uh the ones that are are home and the ones even that are at home that are getting the love and attention that they need not that the kids that go out aren't getting that it's just a different they're they are more use to being with their own age kids they're not use to being with adults and to responding to adults uh i think the trend in the united states i feel really bad that it's turned so much to where the children are uh right right it's hard it really is hard i know that my husband and i have to do a lot of sacrificing to keep me home and uh right right i think one of the things that people look at too though is uh how they spend their time with their children i think with working moms if you can get them the bosses to give you almost like a rotation like they're going to do with year round school where you work yeah well twenty seven up and we had five oh yeah and how about yourself oh well yeah well when mine were growing up i did some traveling and but not that extensively but i always just made it a point you know to spend about ten minutes with each one of them so it was an hour you know but whether it was going back and laying in bed with them and just shooting the breeze or whatever telling them stories or reading to them six years yeah oh yeah we look back and wonder how we did it no she never did well yeah yeah yeah well that's plenty though yeah right well you know with kids you're not going to have a neat house and you know it it's tough to find time especially with both of them working and you just have to set the time and say okay this is going to be it right right well that's good too yeah that's good that way too yeah well that they say it it all it takes is about five ten minutes a day and you know and as the kids got older i made them you know help me cut the grass and kind of made that a project too or whatever and oh yeah and uh well yeah if yeah just keep them talking that way but uh another thing we used to do is have family [councils] every sunday night discuss everything that didn't agree with them and we'd take turns being president and everyone would get one vote and i always thought we'd get [outvoted] five to two but it never worked that way yeah well and we could bring up and we could bring up stuff too and that was always good time boy we really got to know the kids well oh yeah in fact they were all in uh over the weekend for easter well we did too and i remember the one daughter saying we had a a friend of hers that used to drive us up a tree and she said hey i don't make fun fun of your friends so why make fun of mine kind of kind of hit us between the eyes no but that that was always good quality time for us and then never attend but if if they missed it they had to [abide] by the rules yeah and boy they they'd show up and we'd usually take notes and you know the younger kids uh or maybe all of them needed help at one time or another and uh but they were usually tougher on themselves than they were on us and they loved it yeah yeah yeah but uh boy i i feel for you and your husband well my my uh two of my uh kids too oh you laugh how many what ages uh you've been through the fun part i have a four and a half and a three so it's i i'm sure there's a lot of differences in the way in the way it's done now and then yeah yeah what was the age difference between the youngest and the oldest so they were all real close that's tough that's a lot of time did you both work your wife too uh well qualify that she worked at home i'm sure but that's uh well both my husband and i work and sometimes i feel like you know by the time i pick them up and get them home and get them fed i have very little time each evening maybe thirty minutes max and well he spends a lot of time with them while i'm cooking and then i spend time with them while you know he's doing other stuff and and of course we try to spend a lot of time on the weekend you know there's a lot of times my house may not be as clean as i particularly like it but it's neat it's straight and i can live with it because i do stuff with my kids you know well i've accepted that too that's true it is yeah that's true well that's true and and we do a lot of that on the weekends you know we try to spend saturdays together if my husband [golfs] you know he'll do it during nap time things like that where they're not really missing the presence you know and and we do a lot of family things together we're we're kind of going the other direction this weekend we're planning a trip just he and i this is the first time we've gone anywhere without the kids since she was born four and a half years ago well i decided that you know you need that once in awhile that you you need to plan the quality time and and i do think that if you plan it and spend that and make it quality time you don't have to be there twenty four hours a day yeah sure sure and they think that's a family activity you know yeah that's great fun my daughter's like mommy can i help you with the laundry of course you can absolutely yeah uh_huh and what would you do what oh yeah so they would just pick whatever issue kind of was at a head that week and then oh i imagine and i imagine you still have a very close relationship with them i oh that's wonderful see i was raised in that type of family where you know you don't [disobey] me you mind me but if you have a problem with what we did or how we did it you can always come back and talk to me about it yeah uh_huh uh well yeah yeah you don't think of it that way do you now that's good i like that idea whatever was voted on huh well i think that's great yeah yeah i i think that's true i can remember times my parents would say well what do you think would be a fair punishment and we would always come up with something that was harder than what they would have done you know so i do think it's right that they're harder on themselves you know oh why is that um i think uh i like to listen to a program called focus on the family with doctor james [dodson] and from what i understand it's it's a new thing good about families these days uh especially spending time with one another i know if if i were to have children i would have trouble because i work and uh i have my dogs and i have a hard enough time spending time with them you know uh_huh yeah right there's a lot of single parents too that are trying yeah yeah and uh i'm not sure or i just wonder when we'll know what the effects of day care yeah yeah i've heard that they they call them uh that they say that they're more um creative that they're really just from the day care because uh the people don't have the time to give that one on one attention and and i just wonder if maybe day uh the home schooling is going to come into more and more uh homes yeah because you really if you have a good curriculum do you really need to have that certification of a teacher i i taught school for a year and it was like whoops you know it's not for me because i i just don't have that discipline with children that uh you need for them to learn and uh i one day i was i like found myself uh telling them to write their spelling words a hundred times each and i just heard this comedian say that you know something that that's how you know you're a bad teacher and i was doing it just keep them occupied yeah yeah using it as a a baby sitter uh_huh yeah or run you out well i've i've heard some uh there's a book out now called the saturday morning mind control and uh he raises some serious questions about why do they have these really a lot of money goes into the advertising for children's programs and yet uh children can't buy uh what's the deal right i know it and boy the price of toys these days is ridiculous and they all have to have the same one you know and yeah i wonder how long that would last they didn't have a t v at all were they [pentecostal] yeah they just yeah yeah yeah it is it's very good i think t v has really had some bad effects on all of us i've yeah yeah and you can't control it you you know it's the cable channels sometimes you can but boy the cable t v they'll just show anything and that's coming right into your homes uh_huh yeah yeah yeah and there's a lot greater instance of uh children committing murders too isn't there killing their parents and so forth they don't they see these things happening with no consequences you know yeah yeah like double o seven he's supposed to do it and it's okay so i huh no huh_uh because i'm like forty three and so it's uh it's too late you know i sometimes wonder if i'll ever if i will regret it when i'm old but uh i just can't see myself as a parent you know it's really are you married yeah yeah well i wish you the best it's good talking to you so uh you said you don't have kids but uh you're interested in the topic uh_huh right yes yes i have one son who's now uh eighteen and he's a sophomore in college and it it does but i was very lucky in that i was uh teaching at a university and so basically and lived within walking distance so i was able when he was little just to uh leave him with a neighbor in uh one of these carry cots and then go up and teach a class and come back because i could do my work at home and my my students who were working on their [masters'] degrees and stuff would come to my house and i would meet with them there so it was really ideal and then later on uh when he was gee maybe two and three i actually took him then i changed to a different school but it was still within walking distance and uh he spent a lot of time in my office because i was uh department [chairman] and um you know really didn't interfere because all his life he had sort of been used to there were quiet times and so and that worked out great yes yes he's commuting it's um about gee he [commutes] forty five minutes a each way but he has to allow an hour and a half going to school because it's too too [chancy] for him to miss classes and so actually we don't i mean we still spend a lot of time together in the sense that we are always together for dinner and and uh then you know he's in the house studying in the evening and he also works and so uh he usually calls me when he gets home from school at noon i mean not not checking in but more gee you know missed you you know this is what's new type of thing and i think we have a very good relationship from that standpoint but i think it's unusual and i think part of it is that that we were abroad for a good part of the time until till uh six years ago well i was actually in the middle east so yeah bilingual yes yeah actually uh he he was more in a sense raised [trilingual] in that i spoke spanish to him when he was a baby and then but he always answered in arabic because he heard more arabic than spanish and then when we first came to visit my mother he picked up english when he was two and a half and he had heard me talk english on the phone but you know he hadn't he really didn't use it so oh where are you from oh okay uh_huh because you they were newly in this country oh uh_huh where were they where they what village oh from [damascus] oh okay uh_huh yeah but see there's a big big issue there because my my family spoke german at home so that we couldn't understand and and my uh nieces and nephews are not learning their mother's language so that i think this is a a tendency in the states because it's a melting pot so i think my son had the advantage of we were actually living outside the country so there was a reason for him to learn it yeah it's really hard well i'm not so sure that it's the the academics as much as spending time with him and i've been concerned in the states since i've been back with the number particularly in the washington area where i live now uh with seeing how many kids come home to empty houses and like in our court we live in a townhouse court and there's seven year olds that come home and they're locked out and you know some of the neighbors sort of feel sorry for them and and you know would be very responsible if something happened but the parents aren't willing to to pay that person to sort of be in charge and and i think this is i you know i've just seen so much of it here in this country that you wouldn't see in in certainly not in the arab culture i mean people are more important than things so he's a terror well he's a terror he just you know [climbs] on cars walks around the court threatening people with sticks yeah it right now would you continue do you work now oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh right right that he'll be able to spend more time which is so important right actually we traveled extensively because i was doing [archeology] and so you know he was always able to come with me on all my travels because a lot of the places i went by car of course and i mean you know i was living in the middle of it and i took every advantage and and you know he doesn't dislike travel now he might not like it uh you know he might not feel [compelled] to travel because he has seen a lot but he's very comfortable traveling and so that's right that's right right you know that that remains to be seen but yes i think so i think so so no no and and and i find that interesting because he's been two years ahead in the schools here and so he always you know was treated like little brother when the band needed transportation they'd say oh he can't drive so you know when he's a senior he can drive some of the the younger kids around type of thing he didn't get his i mean he was just sixteen when he graduated from high school so you know he he has friends but he doesn't have any you know he hasn't really gotten into the social thing and he's i think that's all right he's going to it looks like finish his degree first before he gets too involved yeah um right that's right but you don't have to keep up i mean kids appreciate it more if you don't i think if if things are special and are for them they see that their kids are being bought that their friends are being bought by their parents uh_huh and they don't need them and they don't even appreciate them i mean that's my feeling i think you know from what i see a lot of people just it's a token you know you don't have me so you have all these material things yes we have okay that time is uh hadn't been a whole lot here in the last several months i've been working so many hours when we do have time it tends to be in uh discussion kinds of activities although more i'm trying to get into doing some sports stuff with my son he's nine oh yes very much uh my wife and i have tried to come up with a [collective] amount of time that we think is appropriate and then we're just going to have to figure out what uh what time who has what time to spend in what activities i guess is a way of putting it i think it needs to be combination of those that there are some things that uh i can represent better and there are other things that she can represent better and then that we have to show that interaction certainly and that both of us are are caring and loving i think it's certainly different uh i grew up probably earlier than you did and my mom was always home uh forever you know she was a housewife when that was the classic meaning of the word and uh she was always there uh and i think that because she was always there and i knew that i always had access to her i tended to spend my time let's say more efficiently because now i've noticed that whenever i'm home my son likes to hang around where i am because i'm here so seldom instead of like now he's burning daylight you know because he's hanging around me instead of being out there playing with the other kids and i could always count on my father being home at a set period of time somehow you know back in those days it seemed like people didn't work the hours that we do now i think that uh we're going to find out that the uh massive amounts of time that we've spent away from our family were not worth it but there's just unfortunately i don't see any alternatives in order to compete in today's work environment i need to meet and exceed what my peers do and if they are going to work those kinds of hours then i have to do that oh i i think that's very realistic uh i have a couple of good friends who are physicians and they tell me that unless they are in dire need of more money for a brief period of time that they work eight to six and they don't even work five days a week you know they work eight to six four and a half days a week yes you know and they're astounded at the hours that i work right well that tends to be true of of uh anyone who's in business pretty much for themselves uh you know a lawyer has that same type of of freedom uh i would think an accountant does it's just when you have to to compete then you have to your uh guidelines are set by other people but i think we got away from from children a little bit there i think so but i'd of had to know it twenty years ago well i'm on my second career currently and i'm i'm just too old to start a third or too tired uh i don't know that i'm too old but i'm too tired to start a third career but you have all this fun to look forward to in the future oh yes just very oh yes very much uh what kind of puppy did you get yeah serious dog there well i don't know puppies and children really do go together believe me i've always been a dog person and in fact i am watching my what i everybody says is my dog even though it's the family dog [licking] my son's face now well that will be some of it but you know those my daughter is eleven and i look back on those times when we first brought her home from the hospital and she was a night person from day one and still is today uh but she would wake up during the night for her middle of the night feeding and i'd i'd get up and go get her and clean her up and you know change her [britches] and take her in and let her mother breast feed her and then i'd take her back and all right well i'll just start by saying that we we spend our time you know having a formal dinner on on the weekend and that's when we try and get together it might be breakfast it might be and we try and talk about things and we we have dinner every night too but not everybody is always there our daughters are fifteen seventeen and twenty and um they are at home um our oldest daughter is going to be a senior at s m u so she's home for summer school and living at home um right now and we we but we very rarely do things as a whole family yes yes we used to like yeah oh yeah we we used to like to go to oh [parades] the circus um you know we used to like to take them to the park um we had a we have a swimming pool at our house which we've had since they were very small so we we have many memories of swimming uh together in the afternoons you know and by the pool and the girls uh learned to swim when they were real little you know three and yes they had their their pool parties um so that was one of the things we did together was the most uh i guess the most often was swim by swim in the pool that's oh that's great if you like to do those two things very easily yes yes i think you will enjoy that i we never camped and we we aren't we aren't into boating either uh mainly because my husband doesn't like boats that much and he uh it's mainly what i you know what he wanted to do and and he's a swimmer he's a golfer so uh well he has taken them out on the golf course but he hasn't and they've never showed any any real interest it's got not enough action for for the children you know so um but we we like to um but now you know now next weekend we're taking them to a show we're taking them down to fair park to see chorus line and that's kind of their reward for a school year successful school year so we're we're doing that but um but i you know as far as having a family it sounds like you've got some good ideas how about your families are they close by your your um uh_huh uh_huh yes that's nice four dogs well that's yeah i think that's i think that's a bridge that everybody uses to get used to taking the responsibility of caring for something and then that's great yeah that's cute because i know our dog i didn't think he got fed this morning but our our daughter fed him because we have we have two daughters that are away right now they're at a camp uh uh not a camp they're on a choir tour that's were they are so they're they're gone so it's just me and our older daughter here this week but um but you will um i i think that's neat that you're going to start a family and and um and and i know everybody around you your family will be very supportive and very anxious too i'm sure i i have to tell you that um grandparents are very important to have close by i think and ours were never close by that's interesting uh_huh yeah yeah well how old are your parents now then yeah yeah well that's exactly how old my parents are yeah and uh but but they are the [reversed] my dad's seventy five my mom's seventy well actually my mom's seventy two my dad yeah i'm sure i'm sure they are yeah isn't that wonderful oh you must have such great memories of that that is so good isn't that that's really interesting oh that is great i because that's very that's rare yeah because i was the i'm the oldest of four and we had a we have a very close knit family and i i just i am just very blessed but being the oldest i had you know the responsibility of of doing a lot i have two younger brothers and a a younger sister so um yes yes well you'll well you have your niece your nephew and to to look at that and and learn from that and you can read lots of good books but um but that's real fun so and you're in carrollton yeah and where what what church do you go to do you oh good yeah so are we yeah we've been in plano for thirteen years and uh our kids have grown up here and i think i think plano i think the fact that you have the boating and the camping is a good good thing i think it's hard for parents to find things to do with their kids once the sports aren't there you know anymore like we have we always have the baseball games to go to that the kids are in and the you know tee ball soccer stuff like that but uh after as they get older it's harder to find things to do together yeah oh oh that's great well where do you go camping oh yeah well i was just down near there i i had to drive to austin last week and on last thursday as a matter of fact my i saw the sign and uh i didn't know it was pretty i just i well that's good yeah and they have campgrounds and yeah yeah yeah well that's interesting i am not timing this conversation because i guess you're supposed to be in control it says and well this is my first call so um yeah yeah i i enjoy uh this is really going to be a neat thing i think but um i it's it's i think i'm going to need a pencil you know to to jot down what they say in the beginning and that because it's hard they're it's like hi yeah no unfortunately my husband and i are both only children now we do have like some cousins that are we are kind of close to and sometimes we see the cousins children you know that's going to be the closest nieces and nephews that we can come up with is our cousins kids they do not live close to us but uh uh as a matter of fact we were going to ask uh his one cousin to try to make plans to have her kids come maybe visit this way for a few days and of course you know things sometime you get to be the uh the tourist folks and we will take them to six flags take them to wet n wild i mean they may not be real quality time but yeah it will be a real treat for them you know to kind of come and do that because they live in east texas so they will be something real out of the norm and i used to uh used to have a neighbor in one apartment complex i lived in and she had at the time her kids were like eleven and nine and five and i used to spend a lot of time with her and her kids we used to go to the pool all the time it was an apartment complex so we used to the pool and you know just kind of play around and do uh water games and you know uh have [picnics] out there that kind of stuff that was our normal thing we also uh she had gotten one of those uh laser disc players and we used to get uh some movies which is kind of hard with kids sometimes to you know get some movies that are enjoyable for the kids and not always a strict disney thing you know when you get eleven and nine year olds they want something a little more active than a cartoon [milo] and [otis] what is that with the animals like the dogs i have seen bits of that like on uh cable or something picked it up i think somebody was showing it recently um that sounds cute well we had one silly movie that we used to watch a lot cause they were kind of expensive when she got that player uh we did not have too many movies we used to watch airplane over and over and over again i mean have you ever seen that movie it's real silly but um in the it's fairly clean there was only one little section of it that they probably edited for t v but uh we used to watch that a lot i mean that was just real kind of flap stick kind of fun stuff we used to watch that with her kids some you know there uh her kids i remember one summer cried all summer long they wanted to go to six flags you know and they see these ads on tv uh six flags looks wonderful and we took them there and then they were too scared to get on the rides they would not get on any of the rides even if they were you know tall enough they did not want to get on any rides and they cried all summer long when are you going to take us to six flags i want to go to six flags then they kind of [chickened] out uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh uh_huh oh well you know one thing that that you know i kind of say we have only been married a couple of years but um you know i think so many times in the past you know like even forty fifty years ago i mean it was just expected or kind of pushed upon people you get married and you have kids whether or not there was something inside you really wanted to do and i i like it now that people make the decision you know okay i am going to be married and then yes or no whether i have children it's not so much a society [dictating] to you do this you know it's everybody is supposed to get married and have kids if you do not want kids fine do not have them yeah uh_huh yeah i mean uh you hear people well there are some people that marry later and then they are very set in their ways and there are activities that they do and well i really do not want to make that sacrifice i have you know been single all these years and or you know we have been married and we have all of our activities and i do not want to change my whole life or i came from a family that i had a very bad childhood and i do not know that right now i could have children and cope with it i have too many bad feelings with my own childhood and maybe i will turn out to be you know abusive like my mother was so they say you know i i do not feel that i want to do that which is fine you know i i think that's a wonderful decision on their part if that's how they truly feel not you know everybody saying when are you going to have kids it's none of your business it's my option to do that you know you do not just have ten kids because you know you are supposed to somehow as of the old days yeah my mom was from a family of of ten and she was the youngest and her dad was like sixty when she was born and she said you know so there was hardly anything from her father there was like twenty years between her father and her mother her father was sixty and her mother was forty so you know it did not make the best situation for her you know to have uh you know good family kind of situation there she had brothers and sisters that kind of like pushed her around a lot because they were so much older yeah it was not the best situation but yeah right right although i mean we are we are in our late thirties now my husband and i and we are still considering it and you know i think that i have kind of done the right thing i mean i have i was just really shocked to have a cousin who is a bit younger than i and she was one of these types out of high school you know okay you have three boys i have two boys and two girls my youngest is college age but he's so he's still around occasionally but uh he's he's twenty two and it's his last year of college but uh we were very active with them when they were young whatever they were in gymnastics or soccer or baseball or basketball whatever we were always involved in the parent club and [coached] some and went to all the games and and of course in plano that's a big deal we'd even where we lived in albuquerque before there's a lot of parent involvement in the children's lives how about where you are oh oh my right oh dear yeah he's learning from the big brothers huh that's neat though and sometimes those that see their older brothers do it turn out to be pretty good because they pick up skills seems naturally you know they they start so young just kicking the ball and are are you pretty involved with with their uh do you coach them or go out to parent nights uh_huh uh_huh oh right right right right well that's seems to be a a pretty current trend i i work in the schools and i see a lot of kids that obviously are looking for a family and usually find it within a group at school rather than at home because their parents are off working or uh you know a lot of times it's a single mother trying to raise and of course i i deal with adolescents so that's where it fourteen fifteen that's where it really starts coming out this lack of of uh family life well they look for their security and their uh self esteem uh outside of the home and usually in the wrong groups and and uh right and they find that they're very easily unfortunately uh the kids who make them feel the most welcome when new students come into school are the kids that are are uh on drugs or party a lot on weekends and things like that and and uh they're the but they are the first ones that will come up and say you know you want to sit at my table in the cafeteria and let me help you to your classes and things like that and and uh when you've got a a child that's just coming from a situation a move is a terrible thing on a child it's it's just such a traumatic especially if they've lived for any length of time in the first place and they come up here no friends and here are these people just throwing themselves and before you know it you've got a a kid involved in things you don't want them involved in and and most of the time the move is made and then mom and daddy go right back to work right away and the kid's coming home to an empty house or they're coming home to take care of little brothers and sisters and and uh you've got these ready made friends just ready to go and and uh i i don't know what the answer is because i am a working woman and and i don't like to say if the women would stay home any more than i like to say if the men would stay home and and right when my youngest was in third grade i went back to work but i stayed home up until then when by that time my oldest was oh she's about six years older than he is so she must have been in about uh tenth grade i guess my oldest was and i had one in tenth one in ninth and one in eighth and then this third grader and and uh but i went to work for the school district where i was home in the summer i had two weeks off at christmas i left school at four o'clock every day and was home to take them to anything they needed to go to in the afternoons uh no in the schools i i uh i did work some summers but it was never my work never took first place if if my kids needed me or needed to go somewhere that's where i was uh i when my youngest was in elementary school i worked at in his elementary school for three years and uh but i had an understanding with the principal but under no circumstances was i to be treated any differently i don't want i said i don't want teachers coming to me in the middle of the day when they couldn't get to anybody else's mother in the middle of the day that that it would be handled the same way they dealt with other other kids it it gets real easy when a mother is in a school or a father even for a teacher to every time some little thing goes wrong to run and pretty soon all you're hearing is negative things so it you know and those things need to be dealt with in the classroom by the teacher and not [tattled] necessarily but it it it worked well it worked well with me and i and i told the principal i said if if uh my student my child does something that you feel deserves licks or some other discipline have at it you know i'm i'm i have always wanted them to respect rules and teachers and and uh i don't want them to think that i'm going to come riding to the rescue every time something happens but right well i think unfortunately what what we're seeing in the very few of the instances is that for the parents who cannot be there to parent during the day their idea of parenting is to come riding to the rescue and take their child's side without knowing the whole story or even when they do know the whole story it's it's either another [student's] fault or it's another it's a teacher's fault or it's anybody's and they consider that being a good parent and that when really what the child needs is their attention more of the time uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh it it it's and it's difficult i understand i i know a lot of single women that are working two jobs just to keep a roof over the kids' head and keep food on the table and i don't know how these women are supposed to have time to to parent it's it's i don't i don't know what the answer is to it it's it's really sad i there may not be it beats being it beats being homeless okay well we're supposed to talk about okay things things you like to do with your kids right i bet i do and i i i don't know and you're from texas and you know what it is snowing we have a three inches of snow on the ground it's so cold oh is it cold like what sixties oh gee it is supposed to be eighteen degrees tonight i was thinking about you on the way home from our class just got home from our computer class hey what are the chances of this happening how many people do you think i think oh that is just too funny oh isn't that great that's just wonderful well i wrote you a little letter on the latest update so yeah yeah they they have a board meeting tomorrow so we may know more tomorrow but anyway just for now you know it's just anyway it's in the letter so and your [rejuvenating] cream so i know you have been and i just couldn't talk last night oh oh you have to in fact when nicole was having her problems with not starting you know we prayed a lot and we prayed as a family on the way to the tournament what night did we i guess on the way to the [sela] game last thursday which they're kind of our big [rivals] and we prayed that she would get to start and that she would play well and she did she played the best i've seen her play and as consistent as i've seen her play and but we prayed as a family we i made all the kids go because you know all they boys sometimes don't like to go and it was just great and her little friend was there and in fact i've got to talk to her and we just got home and to see if she talked to him today and stuff because see he had a soccer tournament out of town yesterday so he had to get up at six o'clock in the morning and they got home at one thirty i told you she just ran in the house okay and let's see and what you like to do with your kids is go to their sports basketball orchestra tennis golf yep is dave is dave playing racquetball oh that's great how's barry doing with his weight is he working out yeah he's he's going to be a while getting settled you know getting things going oh bless his heart this lady over d w she's so bad keep your keep your keep your ears and eyes open it's a great stepping stone it's a great stepping stone oh i got a one hundred percent on my test my test for my class my computer class that dan and i are going to we got them back this is from last week so we're i'm pretty [jazzed] because i got a eighty two on the first one and dan got a ninety two and so and then we both got a one hundred on this last one and i thought it was harder than the first one but we studied a lot more so yeah we're pretty [jazzed] yeah tonight we learn spreadsheets and last week we the last three weeks we've been doing data base oh it's pretty darn neat oh yeah oh yeah well we're just really basic basic basic stuff you know and our teacher his wife is the one of the teaching leaders of the bible study fellowship yeah and i and i've had her been and i thought i recognized the name oh he's just the most wonderful man and we weren't even in his class to start with and then it just i mean the way god works you know we ended up in his class and we just couldn't be happier i mean he's just a marvelous teacher yep oh and library went well today yes harold reynolds who's a [mariner] baseball player uh came to school today and they had lunch in the library of all things my library got it all dirty and anyway so that was kind of neat and then adam wasn't one of the kids they just picked at random kids from different classes and adam uh uh got to come in because mommy was the librarian you know so he got lots of [autographs] so that was pretty cool so they had a good time he didn't have one of his cards but he had a a baseball so he signed his baseball he signed his shirt and some kid had him sign his clothes all of our children are um uh about two of them are back in the house now but they're all grown twenty one and over so uh i guess like everybody else soccer games and all sorts of games and carpools and traveling and uh we we seem to be together enough uh was there was always one parent here at least because um we would never usually leave together and i usually work teach at night and my wife was here in the daytime i mean at night and then i was here most of the day if they were when they were here so they didn't spend a lot of time by themselves three two girls and a boy so oh you are well we had uh they were all away and now there's uh one is coming back from college and the other one has just graduated back home so uh_huh oh absolutely yeah that's the we didn't have a t v for three and a half years when they were in early school for some reason and they did so much better and then we went back to t v's you can just see it that uh_huh where did your kids go to school oh they weren't here in north dallas huh oh uh_huh yeah well i don't know that i i just uh that's that that t v is probably one of the problems and then both parents working and uh that's a i don't think a good situation but i don't imagine that will change right that's right if you had to work uh it's just almost impossible especially when they get up to the age where they have so many things they want to do on their own so uh_huh so uh well my all three of mine ran sports so we spent a a lot of time with the different sports activities because they all played and uh now they're all in college or one two one out and two in still in college so uh_huh yeah so well we probably if they're alive and kicking we probably did a decent job right uh absolutely that's true so anyway well oh great yeah i would hope so yeah that will be yeah that will be fun look forward to that you're going to fly out there oh you are oh i've done that a few times that's a tough drive sure you just going to try to spend the uh spend the night somewhere well we always stopped at [pecos] that seemed like it was a good oh yeah well that will be great so well anyway it's good to talk to you i don't i don't know i think they usually come on and say something don't they well that's all right how long have you been with uh t i oh oh okay i teach history yeah so uh yeah there's not not many people like it but it's uh you can get them get them hooked on it it's pretty good uh the boy is no we were never blessed with children we had a foster child for a while and we're real active in church with some of the young people i hear i heard one of yours so you have a considerable range of of interests and activities and so forth that's terrific you know that's not i i have heard that that's not done enough these year these days when we had our foster son he was uh uh two and a half to three and a half that that year in there and we read every night because we just felt like that was important to spend time with him there's so little time one on one time these days with the mechanical or or the electronic uh games and and t v and so forth to draw folks away did they have them memorized and and know if you're [skipping] a page yes on nights when it was already really late and i'd try to short circuit it it was no no no i i totally agree now there are some wonderful programs for children and when i had a foster son i was baby sitting i had four under the age of three we ended up using television couple times a day when sesame street was on to entertain them but also to do some learning things and then we [reenforced] that then with with some of the things that we were involved in if i was in the kitchen and and so forth the little girl wanted to emulate everything i did and so and we talked about the letters and numbers and so forth so we used it as a tool but not i won't say i was perfect it wasn't ever used as a baby sitter while i was busy with one of the others but yes oh i hadn't thought about that we did we went camping and then richard and i did that all through our our twenty years together too so it was something that carried over from both our backgrounds and into our current life your your pillow fights reminded me though when when i was growing up uh we we spent four years in utah and then we went from there to germany and and it was even further north and uh daddy used to rough house with us in the winter time with us he'd get on the floor and just you know play [tickle] games and and and hug and cuddle and that was important to do that bonding and i never thought of that till you mentioned the pillow fights but we'd get everybody involved in that well it was just my brother and i and we thoroughly enjoyed that that time spent with daddy that we didn't get to see him very much at all do you have outside the home activities that that you do with the the family yeah my children are in their late twenties and both are married and we do things as a family all together and when they were younger we were very involved in little league and scouts and band and football and things you know i have two sons things that you do together yes one lives in plano and the other lives in lewisville with their wives right well i my husband and i always felt that if you want to keep them off the street so to speak that if they're involved in smaller group type things that um it really is wonderful as far as socializing and learning and just keeping out of trouble i work at a high school and i see a lot of kids who because it's a large school you just sort of are a little teeny fish in a big pond here and if you belong to you know a smaller group you you just have a better class of friends and and stuff and i think it's wonderful i i admire you it's a lot of time out saturdays sundays and nights but it it definitely is worth the the time to get your kids involved in in various things oh yes right the social socialization is is worth whatever it is they're learning and it you know my kids never were on the championship teams they were both in the band they happen to have graduated from the school where i work and and um all those things have served them and still are you know in their adult years and in college uh you know that they just they remember lots of good times and um we still hear frequently from former [teammates] or band members or you know people who stop by and say hi to my husband and i and uh so are you active with i mean do you coach any of these things or oh well it it does and and um but as i say i i really feel to keep them away from the bad element at school or just at the mall or wherever uh every every hour pays off in the long run as far as uh keeping the kids out of trouble and and uh and i see frequently see that here just because it's a high school and and uh you know kids kids get in trouble there's no that's right that's right they also you know have parents that either can't or don't care about their activities and don't support them and and uh over the years my kids have had friends like in the band that in in three years of high school band their parents never saw a football game to watch them i think i i we never miss a game we still go and the last one graduated in nineteen eighty two so but we still you know go to watch these things and uh it's a lot of hours for a parent right right right but it it i recall my own parents being active in in my endeavors and uh you know i think you you just can't spend enough time with kids in in quality time as i like to call it and and uh you know it's worth every every hour every so you have two children a boy and a girl how old are they okay well see mine are twenty seven and thirty so well start saving your money for college uh no i don't i don't no no i'm i'm in college i am just a sophomore in college oh okay uh_huh have you that's great uh_huh oh that's great how old are they uh_huh yeah that's great yeah that must be nice oh yes i baby sat all the time for uh for uh my last year in high school my full time job was going over to a neighbor's house and baby sitting their children until they got home every day and uh right they were they were seven and nine years old both boys so we played we did stuff like play softball and frisbee and that kind of thing and sort i sort of watched them you know ride their bikes and that kind of thing they were [outdoorsy] types right right right well that's nice well that's good uh_huh uh_huh none of them have started school yet oh really really uh_huh oh yeah well that's that's great i'm i'm in physics yeah oh no i don't think i will be out of school for a long long time uh_huh oh yeah i will be too yeah yeah yeah uh not really my uh my parents are divorced and my father uh us dating a woman who has a two year old boy and uh yeah it is real different but they go they just went to disney world he was in florida so they just went to disney world this weekend and they they do some fun stuff together go to the zoo and that kind of thing really no i've never had children that's all right i'm opinionated i'm opinionated uh_huh uh_huh wow uh_huh five wow uh_huh well you had to have something to even it out there had to have something to even it out right i was going to say that's a black forest [cuckoo] clock you have i could tell by the sound airline pilot for what airline what airline really my dad flies american he's retiring in april yeah oh twenty some odd years twenty four twenty three something like that well he'll he'll enjoy the the freedom that that kind of a job gives you course yeah that's what my dad says you know as soon as he is retired he's going to you know hire some hire an airplane because he really likes to fly huh yeah well i'm thirty seven uh we can't we tried but it's just not going to happen well we have animals and we have chickens and dogs and cats and birds and yeah we have a little you know just about ten acres out here out you know about ninety miles north and uh west of dallas so it it's got it's it's a lot of fun i'm building our house right now well i was you know contractor for past fifteen years doing uh anything from you know [bagging] concrete for a pad or uh you know i did uh couple of complete remakes of a house you know tore down and started over almost on one of them yeah my uh specialty is in [restoration] and uh i figured well i'll build myself a house and you know i i'm doing it now as a matter of fact i just got out of the shower um no not not that close they don't televise that down here well we don't take cable i mean it would cost a fortune see we're they just put the phone in four years ago you know there was no phone service for ten miles yeah we are crazy as they say you know uh_huh i went to salt lake once and i was very young i guess we were about seven or eight but uh oh yeah raising kids i think first thing you ought to do is [unplug] your t v set and give it to the [salvation] army they watch entirely too much t v yeah yeah yeah but i've worked well i work and live in the denton area in the denton texas just north of dallas and uh you know i'll tell you i went to i graduated from the university of north texas a couple years ago so okay so what is the subject now okay well let me tell you about our our situation uh we have two girls uh one is twelve one is uh uh eleven and i have got uh two sons that are uh six and three and uh between the four uh my two girls play a lot of soccer and we travel a lot with them and they are either practicing or playing and and it is really tough to fit everything in and uh you know i am not real sure what your situation is if uh you have any kids that are still at home but uh_huh oh is that right uh_huh oh you bet it sure makes a big difference doesn't it yes yep it sure is we have uh in fact this this past uh christmas we went out to california uh both my girls were involved in tournaments out there so we went out there and we spent christmas with my wife's family out there in california then uh we drove out to or down to southern california and had the tournament and went to disneyland as a family and just kind of you know spent time together that way yeah you get my wife just said to tell you that your grandson is beautiful they be blessed yeah i know that would mean a lot to to brian he is a heck of a nice guy i really enjoy uh being friends with him he's is that right when did he find time to learn how to do brakes he just helped me do my brakes yeah he is yeah uh_huh well that's great yeah um my work uh fortunately my work doesn't take me away from this area so i have uh i have some time i own my own business out here so i have some time to just spend with them you know whenever the time whenever they need me but uh i know that there is quite a few people in our family that uh or in our area that uh work outside and they have even a tougher time trying to uh schedule time with their family okay i'm i am not sure if our time is up or my phone just went out of out of whack i think that was just my phone well well they'll come back on and tell us when the time's up yeah there should be another couple minutes so uh_huh oh yeah hi hi i'm [joan] this is a riot i i'm making money what are you doing push your one and let's get with it okay all right so what do you think about raising kids you don't know anything about this it is kind of hard for you uh_huh i do to that's true uh_huh right right but i think you need to take that for the little bit of time it takes like for or about ten years out of your life of really being around them when they really need you at their younger ages it's worth that ten years and it pays off i think because the ten years isn't long until you can work on your career and then you have forty years more to do your career yeah that's true that's true i well you know some of the um i see it with our teachers that have waited for until they're thirty four thirty five and that first one boy you'd think they were the only ones that ever had kids yeah they really love it i think they're kind of sorry then they didn't that they waited that long because they really enjoy them a lot and i see that a lot with the young girls that's think that's all they wanted was careers and then when they hit around thirty four thirty five they decide well the really wanted to try [motherhood] and uh that happens but i agree if they if they want a career though i think they should go with the career and forget the kids but yeah right right are you at school now are you that's a riot yes what are some of the things you think the parents should do with their kids right yeah see i think that dinner time is real important with kids that's when a lot of things would come out that if you and you'd make i know that when they're all going all different directions but i used to at least make three three meals out of a week they had to be together and i kind of insist on it and they were pretty good about it they hated to miss it because they'd hear about the good time we had if they weren't around yeah i do too because that's when i don't know why but kids start talking when you're around a dinner table and all they start telling all the things yeah yeah and uh but i think any entertainment that you can do with them is fun though we we you know we always loved to go camping and that's great even even now we go camping in fact we have one set up in may and the grand kids come now it's the grand kids i mean we started out when the kids were young doing this and now they bring their babies um [mary's] baby was four weeks old when we took her took him and uh we start them out real young even and in the winter we just take electric blankets and put them on and they love that outdoors yeah and we go fishing from the time they're little and uh the daddies take them out in the boats it's fun yeah yeah well i think any any outings with kids is wonderful makes you get to know them better and another thing i like is um just making sure you have time with each one alone yeah even you know no matter how many you have you should take a special day a special time for one and make that day for shopping or going out to lunch or just taking them to the park alone and you'd be surprised what they'll talk about when you're just sitting there in a swing i have one she's twenty months old how many do you have how many do you have oh they probably are but maybe you can give me some insight and i can remind you of the old times huh yeah well i've heard that it only gets worse my husband and i sit around thinking gosh you know what are we going to do when she starts going out and having friends and going to school and getting exposed to all the other things out there yeah yeah it's more complicated yes uh_huh uh_huh yeah um how long does that last how long does your meeting last that sounds like a good a good way to do it right yeah uh_huh what kind of things do you do on the family activities uh_huh yeah right it's getting quite expensive to do that these days yeah did you drive there yeah yeah yeah true true yeah my husband wants to go on a family vacation we're on the east coast like you and he wants to go out to uh the grand canyon and do that sort of thing when [helen] gets a little older but it's hard to tell i've at twenty months old he's he wants to take her to the zoo and that sort of thing but i'm not sure if she's ready for any of that if she's you know if it could hold her interest so we don't really have anything any kind of family activities to do we basically just sit around the house and she runs from one to the other and we read to her that's something she enjoys yeah there's not many of them out there though like was when i was young i mean there was a playground just about in every neighborhood but i don't even know where one is around here anymore yeah yeah that's a good idea uh_huh yeah um probably probably be very hard to be the instructor how many children do you have okay we've got one he's uh thirteen weeks yesterday yeah oh okay from beijing oh okay pardon yeah yeah it's not not real [toasty] here either but i imagine it's a good deal colder in iowa yeah is that where you're from originally okay yeah right now uh our son's just dealing with [grunts] and [squeaks] and [grinning] and crying and actually no he sleeps real well at night yeah he'll he he generally sleeps through the night uh he'll go down about well he don't doesn't go down till about ten ten thirty which is a little tough when you got a lot of studying to do but uh he'll uh he won't get up till like six o'clock uh somewhere between six and eight in the morning he'll be [ravenously] hungry by then but he's really a [jolly] little fellow and sleeps through the night too which is a real blessing it it took about the first four weeks before he started that which i don't think it was quite [coincidental] but he started sleeping through the night about the time we took him out of our bed and put him in a crib in in the next room suddenly he started sleeping through the night almost consistently yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that's good that's good pardon uh_huh yeah yeah that's got to be a a lot of fun yeah yeah uh uh it's you know yeah yeah well they they the children are going to eventually wind up training themselves but uh they can be trained into it pretty early too so i remember some of the strange potty training experiences when i we were growing up amongst the brothers and sisters so and we're almost kind of not looking forward to that anyway yeah yeah uh_huh yeah oh that's good yeah how many children do you have and i have three what do you have boys girls i have uh_huh i have two girls and one boy do you have grandchildren yet oh i got ahead of you there i got three and one on the way no but uh i know when my children were growing up we did spend a lot of time together uh school activities and my my boy was in hockey and of course the girls and and uh myself we rooted you know we didn't participate but we did a lot of family things together we had animals for the children you know our horses and that kind of thing and uh school activities type stuff uh_huh uh_huh did you find the time to attend oh yeah we did too i think that's kind of the key don't you i think that's kind of the key is to not be in the big city right and yep we did that too and the children where um when in fact when my youngest was about two we decided to get out of the city and go to the country i mean it's not as vast a country as like you know where you people are from because i lived in abilene for a little while and uh i know what nothing is when i moved out there you know it the city itself is great but i mean you go in the in the uh car for a drive and you could see nothing for miles and miles and miles uh_huh yeah uh_huh but they at least they had the background and the the home uh the family type unit you know and i think when kids have that they don't get into as much trouble or seek to you know do other things that are really not good for them you know yep same here no no i know i'm so happy that i had mine had mine when i did and that i'm not having them now i think about it no no and plus i think that the uh the husbands and wives both having to work it's not a matter of choice anymore i think most people yeah and uh it that takes so much time away from your kids of course at the at the time i worked third shift to be with my kids during the day you know and then uh my uh husband was with them at night so they were always with a family member you know and baby sitters and uh day care and all that stuff kids don't really bond anymore the mother's aren't there oh yeah yep exactly but you know uh i wonder by the time they get through paying out for all the day care center and everything else is it really worth all that rather than to wait until the children are like in school and then go for that type of goal i think that too many people want everything now like we had to save and plan and do without and that kind of stuff where it's now the credit cards and i mean they just go and buy it you know yep exactly sure that's my point and and i think that they should like learn how to crawl before they walk it's it's too much it and it's too accessible and they get into it and they're over their heads i think that's why there's so many divorces too because the money becomes uh an issue the children become an issue the jobs become an issue and it's like you know what's left just to argue and that type of thing you know i do i do they're like between a rock and a hard spot it really is awful i think maybe the company should do more with day care centers and that type of thing it might bring families closer or mothers to children you know because they're able to spend some time at yeah yeah i think that's great because i mean you know you you it's less guilt you feel knowing that you have to leave them everyday if you can go in and see them for ten or fifteen minutes around a lunch hour or just know they're close by you know it's it's very hard well it was nice chatting with you yes i do i do no i do yeah i work in uh building twelve in [attleboro] uh oh you should come it's it's a it's a nice place in the summertime though don't come in the winter right now we're in the thirties and we're expecting a [snowstorm] tomorrow into friday possibly saturday so it's supposed to be real bad driving tomorrow afternoon oh that's terrible i'm jealous no i it it's well this is the month where it's very [unsettled] because march is like between winter and spring out here it's like one minute you've got winter weather the next minute you have spring like weather everybody's got a cold you don't know how to dress you know so it's kind of tough and they say that the driving tomorrow is supposed to be really bad in the afternoon have they yeah yeah oh wow sure sure yeah well uh i i can tell by your accent that you're a texan and you know i miss hearing that they used to make fun of me because of being you know my accent they they try to get me to say things because they they thought i talked so funny but you sound just like um the the children that i worked with up there the same type of voice yeah right like oil or oil that's true well listen it was nice speaking with you okay jim take care yeah i have a twelve year old son and a fourteen year old daughter right so uh so it's uh an interesting experience for us but we're kind of lucky uh in that regard because uh the church we belong to has a a program that they've had for quite a few years that they call family home evening and that program is designed to uh bring the family together at least once a week on monday night so we uh i guess i could say religiously dedicate monday evening to doing just that and each each week each one of us takes uh responsibility for that particular monday night that it works uh_huh it because it turns out that monday night of all of the other nights of the week generally is the one that has the least number of other outside influences going on so we find that it works out quite well and uh we actually look forward to it cause we get to spend so little time together otherwise and uh as i said each one of us will plan uh something for the particular monday and it can be anything because it is kind of a a church sponsored thing once in awhile we'll have a a religious lesson maybe once a month that alternates amongst us but uh we might go to a movie or we might watch something here or play a game or just sit and read or uh or whatever that individual feels that they would like to do that's what we do yeah uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh right uh_huh not at all or until it's all done or none at all that's that's a good but uh that's a good idea right it's hard to enforce i'm sure huh uh_huh that's right including yourself yeah can't let yourself watch either that's work uh_huh right we have another uh another advantage to is that uh three of the four of us are ham radio [operators] yeah so we have a uh a hobby in common and we can talk to one another over the air too and on many occasions and a matter of fact we're my son and i are watching the the shuttle right now uh they've got four ham radio [operators] on board the shuttle so we've been trying to make contact with them and it's uh it's headed towards the d c area right now yeah matter of fact it's uh it's over the horizon now uh_huh uh_huh right in the ham shack uh_huh right and that's the last you ever see of him and uh and he speaks a totally different language uh_huh well how many children do you have yeah that's great that's good how old are your grandchildren well good my we have five children and our oldest one uh will turn uh fifteen next month and the youngest one uh will turn uh eight the end of april so they're about the same uh range as your grandchildren uh and so uh they're pretty busy right now we the oldest is in uh uh the ninth grade school here uh the second one is in uh junior high third one is in uh what they call an intermediate school fifth and sixth grades and the last two are in uh an elementary school and it looks like we're going to have them in at least four different schools for uh you know three more years so that keeps us busy running around sometimes are your are yours in school near there what kind of things have you done with the kids yeah well that's possible yeah i guess that trade off between uh you know letting them just do the things they enjoy doing or pushing them kind of just a little bit of a [nudge] so that they they um you know get into something far enough that they do enjoy it by themselves you know is a [tension] for most parents right right that's right we uh_huh yeah well we found out particularly with piano we wanted the kids to take piano for a few years you know and i said well you need to take it for for at least six so that you know whether you want to do it any more you build up enough skill that you can you make a a reasonable choice so we pushed for a few years but then uh then we moved and and dropped it i hope some get back into into something i hope so right most of our focus is either on some school activities or going to or our church activities and they uh we just moved here uh this summer and so we uh we're sort of getting into things uh they've got a good number of of activities and uh we enjoy you know transporting them to that because we really hope there's going to be some benefit from those things you know and uh so they're they're doing that we uh uh haven't gotten into too many civic activities where we were before they were playing soccer and uh and uh did a little bit of gymnastics uh things like that uh here we haven't really gotten into it too much uh we may later on sometime if you know they show particular interest sure that's right yeah well i uh i don't know about the time we spend with them seems like we're with them all the time if we're not here you know not working you know uh but uh i'm sure they'd like more and it's hard for us it's hard to balance it you know there's some that sort of i don't know about demand but you know sort of just take up more time just by their nature and uh we we struggle to uh i do anyway not to work so much that i i don't give them time you know being with them and stuff like that uh sometimes it'd be just nice to come to the office and and work straight through without you know uh spending time with them but i like you know i like to spend time with them and be with the kids and all like that okay [liz] do you have any children uh_huh oh uh_huh oh uh_huh well we have five children and uh their ages rain from range from twelve to four uh yeah and uh uh some things we like to do together with our family are um in the summer time we like to go to parks we that's our thing we pack up a picnic and and go to every park from northern utah to southern utah well mostly mostly just play parks then so um with the with the kids and such we don't get a lot of vacationing in so we just like to take little weekend trips and go to parks and such so oh uh_huh yes when i was a teenager i spent some time with my cousins in dallas and so i i remember it's pretty it is flat oh uh_huh yeah well we like to weekends um no we're not into skiing it's just too expensive we we can't do that so um we like to uh rent videos and sit down and have a video [bash] pop popcorn and and do that so we've done that quite a bit this winter and um we like to play board games together sometimes it's a little difficult with the younger ones um but the three older boys we have some fun times with those after the little girls go to bed and let's see uh we like to get real wild and crazy and play hide and go seek and oh yeah things like that oh yes yeah yeah he's really patient though he with us he's a real fun twelve year old but he's rapidly approaching [teenagehood] so we'll see what happens yes uh_huh oh oh boy oh oh uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh oh how fun oh oh i think that's fun oh oh yeah yes i think that is good that sounds uh_huh now were you able to get away on some vacations and oh oh how fun oh oh how fun uh_huh oh wow i agree with that well i first of all i'd i admire you for i have a few friends who are single parents and i just don't know how people do it that's is a tremendous burden to be working and have two kids to take care of and i don't know how you did it but um i have a six year old that's well she's in first grade and then i have a three and a half year old and um i have always been a big advocate of spending tons of time with my kids and um when i my first one when she was born i had to work part time for a while because we had to have the extra money but when the second one came along i was fortunate enough that i i quit and i've been able to stay home and um no no i don't work yeah so i one of those few old fashioned moms and we uh i spend the whole day with [tara] and we go and do things and we read books and we play and you know it's just it's great and i did the same thing with taylor uh who's my first grader she's also a girl and uh i i think i can tell a real difference um taylor has excelled in school like i just i never imagined she would she's at the top of her class in everything even though she's almost a year younger than almost all the kids in her class and i really feel like that um time i spent with her i mean she probably already had a lot uh of it in her but you know we spent a whole lot of time together reading books and doing a lot of things i think it helped her to feel real good about herself and feel like she could she could do it you know so it's it's been real rewarding for me anyway oh i'm sure uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right yeah yeah well it is you know as a matter of fact i think i'm real bad about looking ahead and thinking oh i don't ever want them to grow up and you know go away to college and all that kind of thing but at least i'm really making the most of the time while they're little and um everything taylor even attempts to do you know we go and watch her and support her and that was something my parents weren't able to do and i resented that because i would be in i was always in plays in high school and in all kinds of drama and they could never come and watch me and that just was so hard for me so i made a [vow] that when i had kids no matter what they did i was going to be there you know and see them do it so it and like you said it's fun i really enjoy it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh right yeah yeah yeah yeah well i feel i feel really thankful that i can i mean we have had to really lower our standard of living you know we have friends who have beautiful homes and we have a very small old house but i just to me that's not important because i feel like we'll have plenty of time to get us a nice house some day and i won't have these you know these little kids all my life so um i just i have been willing to make the sacrifices and my husband has too and so it's not been a problem for us right well it's interesting we're real involved with a church group and so most of our friends are uh church friends and they're the majority of them do stay home uh almost all of my friends i can call any time of day and they're home but um the the friends that i've kept in contact with from you know when i did work and they're still working moms you know uh that i feel like i real big uh difference in opinion with some of them because some of them work just because they enjoy working you know they they don't really have to work they just want to they like to get out and they don't want to be with their kids all day and and that's hard for me because to me they're giving up something so precious you know and um so any time we talk get on that topic i have to be real careful because i'm afraid i'll say something to offend them but um most of my friends do stay home so that it's kind of nice we we have a big support group around here yeah it is i don't know how long everybody will be able to afford to keep doing it but if i guess you just get used to you know living however you have to live to yeah right yeah yeah well i intend to uh i think when they're both in school i may i have a degree to teach and um i've never used it because i was pregnant when i graduated from college and i've always had you know been home with kids or worked part time but um i might go into like substitute teaching or something because yeah yeah and i can choose they say as a substitute you can tell them the days that you're interested and you know the days you're not you don't have to so right yeah because i have a feeling i'm not going to like it when i did my uh student teaching i oh i hated it i said i don't know why i majored in uh elementary education and here i'm about to graduate and i don't even like this yeah yeah it'll probably make a whole difference and plus i didn't feel well at the time i was pregnant and i was real sick and yeah i and you just don't feel like being around all these little kids when you are just sick to your stomach but anyway it's been nice talking to you okay hi um yeah sure um i think i think we should have a balanced budget even if it means that services are dramatically cut back if you can't pay for it you shouldn't have it period and that's just uh_huh well i don't have a master charge thank you right but that's the problem see our system shouldn't be based on owing and borrowing and all that yes they would they just wouldn't be able to own the kind of automobiles that they think they deserve to own or the kind of homes that we think we deserve to own we might have to you know just be able to i think if we a generation went without debt then the next generation like if if our our generation my husband and i we're twenty eight if we lived our lives and didn't become you know indebted like you know our generation before us that um the budget would balance and that we became accustomed to living with what we could afford which we wouldn't be destitute i mean we wouldn't be living on the street by any means but just compared to how spoiled we are we would be in our own minds but i feel like the generation after us would oh man it would be so good it would be so much better it wouldn't be perfect but then they could learn to live with what they could afford to save to buy and if you want a nicer car than that well you save a little longer uh_huh but see we made poor choices in college we took out two both of us had twenty thousand dollars in loans for student loans and i look back on that and i bought shoes i went shopping i did not need that money i did not need it i didn't need it i shouldn't have even qualified to get it i didn't need it and it would have been a little rough i might have eaten some [bologna] instead of roast beef out of the deli but i did not need it and as i look back now now we're paying that back i told my son if you have to live in the ghetto to go to college do it but don't take out ten thousand dollars in loans don't do it and i don't i hope don't think he'll have to do that but i just feel like if we didn't have those loans we could have saved in the last five years the money for that and i believe we would have because god's really put it in our heart not to get in debt you know but we have friends in church that do this on a constant basis that are totally debt free and they pay cash for everything they buy including new vans and so so i guess i've seen it done and i know you can do it you know but you have to drive that old car until you get that money saved up for that new van and that's where americans don't like to do it and so and we don't want to cut back our services from the government because we're spoiled what i know yeah i know uh_huh uh_huh yeah that is true because i always think the mail never comes on these days and you're like well what is it you don't even know it's a holiday but isn't it federal in the federal budget but isn't it part of our income it's not part of our taxes it's not that's why it keeps going up uh that's another topic those stamps are valuable now that's funny yeah and that is a good short term thing though that little things like that that overall though i just think we're just going to i don't know see i know i guess i'm kind of leery of this topic because i know that bush is real for the new world order the one world government and [alleviating] all you know national debt between all of the nations but i see that to be a potential power problem later with um who's going to be in charge with this new world order and i you know i'm uncomfortable with that much power being in one place but i know we already have a new money system we already have new bills printed for the u s treasury already has our new bills printed for new currency and i've seen them and so i know that the long term vision for the u s government is to alleviate all national debts and to start over [afresh] but i'm concerned with whose going to have the power over this new world order that they keep talking about you know that's a lot of power for one or two people to have and so um i guess because i i guess in fact i know what their long term vision is i'm kind of like you know yeah the only answer is to start over or to totally change our lifestyles and i don't think americans are willing to do it i don't i don't feel we should loan them money if i i wish our leaders were really seeking the lord on these things and if we feel led to give a country money to help them fine but i don't feel we should be loaning money like that i mean it doesn't work i mean but it's not but it's not set up as a giveaway if it were set up as giveaway and it was something that i mean our our president and our leaders could be seeking god saying god is it your will for us to bless this nation with this money is it your will this money and your will for us to give to them and i believe if we gave it no strings attached that god would bless our nation but because we're our motive is interest our motive is not pure it just [backfires] i mean none of these nations have paid us back but you understand it's i guess it's a principle of giving and receiving you give it no strings attached and they may never give you anything back but because there's no strings attached it like gives them a freedom to give us something back and it might not be money it might be um no taxes on our things our computers going into their nation it might come back in another way but it would be come back but because we're loaning it i think that's the problem and i don't mean give it to everybody that asks use a lot of [discernment] don't give money to every nation you know what i'm saying i think we're loaning money to too many nations but i think if we gave to a few select ones that really needed it that it would work out better for us and for them and so now we have all these nations that owe us all this money and so i just think we're never going to get that back you know do you understand uh_huh yeah yeah right long long term though do you think it would best to see a one world you know you can't alleviate all national debts or do you think it would be better for our leaders to just start seeking god on how to turn our nation around financially that's my opinion my [opinion's] the latter uh_huh i know what's yours do you agree or do you disagree or i mean what do you think long term uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah i know yeah different ethnic groups yeah i know what your saying uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh hi okay you want to start that is very true however our whole economy is based on loans uh uh but bet right this moment you probably have several loans out or you have borrowed money against your credit card or something master charge but see our whole system is built on owing not borrowing uh true but uh uh without it people wouldn't be able to own automobiles or they wouldn't be able to own a house well now i agree uh i agree with you one hundred percent i'm just taking the other side so we'll have a discussion here uh but i still go to right back to what i said when is the time you had fifteen thousand dollars all at one time to go out and buy an automobile uh_huh uh_huh well i have one way to suggest reducing the budget very simple just take all these civil service employees and uh uh take some of those holidays away from them like columbus day president's day i mean they they get all these days off now give them what a a week i think we here at t i get a total of eleven a year and that's about uh three or four less than civil servants get now just look at that money the government could save if they didn't have all of those days off all those holidays well now don't forget the mail is something else again that has nothing they're not civil [servant] people no no they have their own budget they go by no that's why the price of mailing a letter keeps going up you know i could i can remember the days when it cost only three cents to mail uh uh uh a letter yeah they probably hey i ought to go looking through some of my old mail well what about uh uh sending all this money overseas supporting other governments third world governments how do you feel about that well in so many cases it's not a loan it's just a give away no that that's true i i understand that france still owes us money from world war i and uh world war two debts have never been [repaid] i think the u s just wrote them all off and said well we'll cancel it just like they did to the that polish debt here uh last week uh uh half the countries of the world simply canceled the poland debts to help them uh_huh well uh i've got to respect your opinion you have some solid ideas well i don't believe in a single government or a single control for the world uh that's asking for trouble people are too different i mean you could travel from one coast to the other here in the u s and find a tremendous differences between the peoples they have their own ideas how things should be run so therefore i don't believe there could be a single government for the whole world there's too many societies involved uh the language [barriers] uh-oh sure somebody said years ago well let's make it english uh international language that's a big laugh we can't even make english a national language here in our country we've got too many uh uh immigrants they don't call them immigrants anymore that was back in my [granddaddy's] day yes yeah but my grandfather came over from lithuania back uh just before the turn of the century and uh as a matter of fact he's a draft [dodger] he uh was supposed to serve some time well he did serve his time in the uh in the [militia] and he came back he was a civilian again and his father said well if anyway what are your what are your first comments on that subject what would you start cutting what would be the first thing you'd cut defense mean private enterprise have private enterprise do it uh_huh they're already talking about it i mean they're talking about uh having it uh as a you know business uh to uh you know to so the you know the government doesn't have to deal with it but uh yeah because i think it's all funded either state or federally funded so or uh obviously so but uh but see they're they don't have enough uh uh you know there's there's not enough room in these prisons and that and that uh to continue funding it they think they need to maybe have uh you know private you know business private enterprise come in so uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah its tough to to say what uh you know what uh as far as this that good or bad or what but uh i was just talking to somebody else and all those european countries they pay all the way through college and stuff like that they so uh no yeah i know what you are saying but i'm just saying that even the differences uh is that you know some countries pay for students to go to through college and et cetera but here it you know it's just up to high school uh_huh uh_huh yeah i think the you know that's one reason uh you know we do have the education is that what it takes for these companies to bring somebody on board uh they're not willing to you know to put that you know the training for only a certain amount so uh it's you know as far as the technical side but uh even like one one of the biggest things now is like [paralegals] and stuff i mean they they're trying to get more people into that field but they can't just bring somebody in without even having gone to you know school in that area before they can work you know for a lawyer as a paralegal uh_huh well yeah i i'm well i you know i'm assuming that it can be done uh my perspective is that you know i've been with a couple of big companies now and it's like they'd are [unwilling] to put the time in you know they want somebody you know when they then when they bring them off bring them in that they have something you know a certain amount to contribute obviously there's uh you know there's a lot to learn uh after that but but uh that's true i'm i'm sure there's a lot of uh you know businesses are small you know small businesses that could uh let me change my channel i've got a cordless phone let me see if that clears this up is that better okay yeah it was a cordless phone and all of a sudden we had a bad uh frequency there or something so we had some [interference] so i changed that anyway so uh but uh you know i think uh they maybe they need to uh help promote that more give incentives like uh if they do bring somebody on they will pay some of their costs or give tax breaks or whatever it is you know for them to train people you know stuff like that programs like that you know i don't know you know what kind of options they've got uh_huh uh_huh yeah i think i just heard something the other day it was like only it was either sixty percent or forty percent go to college and then out of that percentage only so many can get their degree so i thought that was interesting but uh you know most people i knew have gone and got their degree so yeah well i you know i uh was basic in a you know middle upper middle class area and yeah so i think uh that demographic area there you know a lot of them do go on and they go to college et cetera yeah well as as far as the you know the deficit that's a whole [nother] uh my perception of the budget you know the government and they have so much to spend and there's not enough money to spread around but the deficit basically is that the trade [surplus] between the other countries and that we have more money or you know more money going out and too many goods coming into this country you know and uh you know part of that problem i think is still you know uh like japan still does not let us compete fairly in their country and and obviously the the demand for their goods is quite high here so they can get their goods in here and uh you know to start even that out we need to continue to you know at least threaten that you know we're going to give them higher [tariffs] et cetera to raise their prices to you know ours but uh it's just that uh they're eh i think you're you're going to find that just because the united states you know there is such a demand here the market you know and uh uh the you know money being spent and the goods flow in and we don't sell you know we don't uh sell products abroad as much as we bring in so uh_huh uh my first comments on the budget i would say there has surprisingly no i would i would cut the prison systems and let them self support huh you mean the prisons i hadn't heard that right but to me it well see the other way i'm thinking about is they should be self supporting like uh the prisoners make license plates or farm or small industry inside the prisons anything to where they can be self supporting within themselves in other words they're in there for a purpose put them to work rather than sitting there it's the same thing like the whole criminal i shouldn't say criminal but the whole police department of the united states i feel the same way uh someone gets picked up for drunk driving he should put enough in there that goes back into paying for that policeman being out there so it's self you know self defense on that point uh as far as my defense budget uh they're cutting it back now what twenty five percent i wouldn't want to see it cut any more than that but again i'd like to see something on the other end back into education but not in the education we have today so i'm lost on that one i would like to be a little more into investigating some of the other countries in the world and their educational problems and to come up with something a little better than what we've got well not so much pay i'm not trying to see the government put out any more yeah but see we don't even push the fact to the high school kids that there's other means of education out there rather than college to go either as an [apprentice] which they they do in other countries just doing it which i think would bring the education back up you know why not an [apprentice] out to a a company and learn from down on the bottom as a wood worker or you know just a technician you can learn on the job which of course again which would mean again our education budget will go down if this is in a few years i mean it's not going to be overnight but that would come down excuse me i see it being done i know of a friend that works for my lawyer that has had no training whatsoever and she's training her yes wow yeah it sounded you were calling from around the world somewhere well uh_huh well that's something about what [germany's] supposed to be doing something similar to that right now and uh they have jobs out on you know bulletin boards so people know what is open for an [apprentices] in different fields but see that again would cut some of our budget down for education but build up our education with the people at people per at high school level which i would like to see rather than so many kids getting out of school they're they go on the unemployment list before we have turn around because they don't have any education i don't mean college and i'm for college but there's a lot of people that don't want their higher education as far as quote quote college is concerned they've had it uh_huh oh yeah but there's a lot of them out there that haven't that's well it seems to me that kids that get out of high school that parents have gone to college and college here and college there that are really not interested in going to college and forced into it usually are your drop outs where if they're said hey it's just as [advisable] to go into something you enjoy and you like because you can get just as far as being a [journeyman] carpenter or an [electrician] or plumber or anything else like that make as much money and if they enjoy it more they'll make a happier life for themselves question you threw that question on me about the deficit put it on your shoe now what would you do were you watching i think uh one of the news stations i couldn't even tell you which one i watched but they had on there where the the output from the united states was basically from smaller businesses rather than the larger ones are [exporting] so how do we fix the national budget well that would probably be good but something that the government hasn't been looking at is the source of the problem the true source of the problem is a that we do spend too much but also b that we don't take in enough uh too few americans are working if more americans were working and meaningful good paying labor and paying taxes and the tax structure was fair between the lowest and the highest income americans then we would have more money there to play with right well i hesitate to say we ought to spend ourselves to [affluence] but in fact in some cases that's what we ought to do not reaganomics thank you uh what i was thinking more along the lines of is start going to space well at some point there there will be enough jobs for most of the able bodied americans we also need to uh [assure] that there's some work in the private sector i think it would do something for it i think we would fill up new technologies but i think we should also do something rather radical [legalize] marijuana what yes uh okay i think it would take some of that money out of the hands of criminals i think it would put reduce the amount of carry on drug use where people advance from one drug to another i think that i think most importantly it would give the federal government something new that they could tax and probably a lot of and really receive some revenues from uh if you look at prohibition historically it's repeal helped the federal government a lot in tax revenues then i think once we put money back into the in the [coffers] of the federal government and get the federal government to where there's money there again we should reduce the amount of money and this would have to come rather quickly and would have to come originally also where we're not paying in some cases we do pay more for welfare [recipients] to live then they can earn in the true minimum wage environment and you can't deny people the right to supply their families better through whatever means that's just sensible on their part it's just sensible on their parts to go after the the the greater amount of income so if you lower the amount they make and raise the amount of true minimum wage jobs not those that are affected by the federal minimum wage then more people will get off welfare you know give them a true incentive to want to work and then don't start letting more outsiders in for a few years until we figure out exactly where we're at with unemployment reduce immigration or eliminate it entirely for a few years until we get our own house in order oh absolutely absolutely that's right when we're in a world of hurt well i don't i'm not going to say that we ought to reduce them through legal means i think we ought to just tax them severely it seems only fair and i think really if we got all those that are able bodied into the work force reduced the amount going out for those purposes created new jobs for that work force there would be plenty of money and then at that point quit spending on space force it all into the into the private sector that's right uh space was just a convenient place for me to go because that would put a lot of a lot of [millspec] and nasa work operates to the same demanding specifications that would put a bunch of defense workers back to work you know what causes that uh no your your buying large uh the government specifications sheets of paper for building a pair of b v d underwear for the federal government is twenty two foot tall if it was all on nine by [elevens] stacked one on top of another for making government issue underwear to just understand those legal requirements and operate within the government guidelines costs the company a huge amount of money yes a huge amount of it is not the fault of the contractor uh a huge amount of what you hear on about the seventy five dollar [hammers] and the nine hundred dollar toilet seats doesn't come from people in the industry it comes from senators that don't know anything about it uh my job is government tooling specialist yeah damned if i know um i don't know i suspect uh let's see i suspect we should do what everyone says we should do we should cut spending and maybe even raise taxes but lord knows you one shouldn't say that i i i suspect we should probably have an independent [auditing] agency go in and look at how the government spends money and work from there because i because i don't think they're very good at it huh yes yeah well why do you say that actually huh yes rather than using taxes oh that's interesting yeah that's probably true i mean well we also we'd be spending less because all the money that that normally goes to support those people aren't working it's back in the system so you're right that's a real neat idea well what but i mean what can you know at at some point what can you do to sort of raise i mean to raise jobs i wonder oh okay so start but that's not going to work uh huh and that way just create more jobs or whatever huh well that's a neat idea yeah that's what that's what you think space would do that much for that or like what oh you think you think that would uh have a major effect well that would put a lot of criminals out of business for a while anyway that might have a uh a good effect on on on crime anyway that's probably true and probably a lot of yeah but that's potentially uh_huh huh no i had never thought about that uh_huh that's true we do often times they are paid more yeah right that's just what on their part i'm sorry i missed that oh uh_huh that that maybe true that's very true right right that's a huh yeah and maybe even reduce along the same lines maybe reduce imports as well i think i mean we don't need to buy other people's stuff right now right well that that's what happened in other country though and other places they tax us quite i mean they tax american imports quite heavily so we could do the same thing i mean just and you know they may get right it does seem only fair i mean why not i think so yes oh real oh really i love the switch well at that point you might we it wouldn't be a problem anymore possibly you know we would be we would be able to keep it wherever we wanted to in space or the ocean research whatever we wanted to do but i think the right uh_huh right compared to defense well that's a good idea well it well the other thing and the other thing i i i think we seriously need to do is um like i say have someone go in and look and you know and find out where it is we're paying ten thousand dollars per toilet seat or something um greed i suspect uh_huh yeah really for making you mean government issue underwear jesus uh_huh well that's potentially a fault of the government then i mean that could things like that should right well that's a i had never heard that before right huh oh okay so you know about some of these things well i don't know if there's going to be solutions to the u s budget uh_huh yes exactly there's uh maybe some short term things that they can do and it hurts everybody's pocket of course but um i know that state has uh cutback uh raises for a year to help uh the uh state financial or whatever you might want to say to get better in a better condition that uh state of minnesota so there's the potential that perhaps you know the u s budget might want to take a look at it's uh federal employees or and take a look at saying well let's freeze wages i mean everybody's doing it so it isn't like uh private business has had to do it so it might have to be something that they might consider doing as a that's got to be very short term and the only other avenue that i can think of is uh looking at where they're spending the money and not so much as saying well we're spending too much in that area as perhaps looking at what is costing them the money as for for instance i think you probably remember the military getting caught um with toilet seats that cost them four hundred five hundred dollars and it was just i mean you can go to k mart and buy them for uh eight dollars or i think six dollars or whatever for toilet seats so so it gives you idea that sure sure so uh_huh uh_huh than we think sure sure uh_huh it sure is the you know as far as i think there was something with the government official that went on conferences for two days and actually uh the conferences were nothing but uh you know they're getting paid for this and it was something more than just the conferences they were using it as eating out uh when you think about people uh taking vacations these big government officials taking descendants in congress the rest of them taking these vacations and using the taxpayers' money for that and it's a real big crunch uh of course when they get caught then they're you know they're guilty of course but uh during that time i'm sure there's hundreds of uh thousands of people that are uh spending money that does not belong to them so uh_huh sure uh_huh exactly and i don't think uh it's ended up being i mean it gave people jobs but i think it also cost um quite a bit as far as because after they're done with the war a lot of things were no longer put to use i mean it was kind of like okay we'll do this during this point and time but after that that's you know uh they didn't want to do it anymore so a lot of things that are saying that they're no longer going to be doing for next wars that are coming up that they did for this one in getting rid of a lot of things so i don't know okay well it was good talking to you and have a good evening uh_huh thanks bye now well now it's in pretty disastrous shape for sure it's only getting worse [exponentially] it seems um uh_huh oh which state is that uh_huh uh_huh right right yep right yeah yeah definitely i think that there's probably a lot of waste in defense and in government funded research in the first place i mean there was um people at stanford who were soaking the government you know using millions of dollars of research money to uh for the president to buy beach homes or whatever it was and i think that that maybe more widespread than well than we'd like to have think but but then it's something that's hard to enforce too i'm sure uh_huh right uh_huh well that's right uh i think that oh politicians talk a lot about waste but i'm not sure that that's really that much of the problem i mean when you look at something like the gulf war it cost us god knows how much you know at a million dollars a pop for patriot missiles yeah right uh_huh uh_huh right okay all right you too bye bye okay i've got a you know i have a real good method of starting to get the budget balancing and then that's get half of the government rid of the half of the government payroll not all i you know i don't know if you've ever been to washington d c uh you you've seen that which was on there and the offices and in light of these uh hearings we've all been sitting through the last two weeks we have very definitely decided that every department there is just [overstaffed] they really don't have enough to keep them busy to keep their noses at in their own business of what they're doing and the other thing is uh besides that i think uh two things that very definitely need looking at one is foreign aid i have a real problem with all the foreign aid that is going to the countries that really have no use for us i find that a total waste and part of the defense budget uh again being just a voter and a taxpayer you know working through our congressman i don't think there's too much that i'm going to be able to do about it but i believe in taking an active part in politics so uh_huh right uh_huh yeah they don't they don't seem to well i really think the biggest problem and then the taft rudman act is supposed to help that the biggest part is they have no accountability for what they're doing i mean this nonsense that's coming through now about uh uh lowering payments on social security and a few other things that bush has in mind in order to boost the economy because people have more money as it's gets it's ridiculous if they don't have that money now bringing in less is not going to help the problem as far as the government no yeah and thank god we don't operate our budget the way they operate theirs or we'd all be in in dire trouble but that's uh yeah i don't know what we're going to be able to do about it but i guess it's sitting around so long that it's sort of like our [mortgages] i don't ever expect to pay mine off before i die so i guess why should the government isn't that's the way they're thinking these days anyway i i don't think it ever will really i maybe if they ever get to the point the biggest you know the biggest [outlaid] expense has always been either wars or defense really if they were to take half of what they spend on that and put it on some economic you know [intergovernmental] or inter united states like programs that one really might i i believe in paying my share and i don't mind uh paying for some of these fringe benefits that people are entitled to but i just i just sometimes feel like i'm being used but uh again i don't think we'll be able to do anything about it so yeah bite the bullet it sounds like you have a baby there uh_huh oh really oh that's a shame she's not the one going to washington huh oh okay okay [geri] we've probably been on long enough they didn't cut us off but i think that will probably do it so it was nice talking to you [okey] [doke] bye bye i think that would probably uh be very possible and and we really wouldn't feel it in our services yes i have right right right yeah well i one one thing that really bothers me beyond beyond cutting what they spend is that just really aggravates me when the big businesses do not end up paying taxes and the um regular normal taxpayers are you know paying such a large proportion of of our personal income and then the uh corporate you know industries just don't seem to not pay [proportionally] i think that that would would help a lot i guess in a way it would [trickle] down to us in the prices of things but i don't know it's just hard to hard to take and you know see so much of our paycheck go out and then realize that they have all the loopholes that they can use and uh seems like some rather large chunks of money could come from from that direction but yeah yeah not not going to help it's never helped my my personal situation i i can't say it would help with theirs either [amen] it seems seems to be i you know i it really does bother me when i think about you know leaving our children with with this sort of uh a national problem that we can't seem to find an an answer to it uh i don't know right yeah well that's that's quite possible i guess we have to have to keep [plugging] away a little bit or it will just totally get even more out of control but i i don't know yeah i i do she's a we're not feeling too well over here so that yeah no no she's i don't think i could part with her okay okay well thanks bye bye well i don't know what to do about the federal budget um there certainly have been ideas [surfaced] uh recently uh matter of fact repeatedly by many people and i sort of wondered what your what thoughts you had on that area uh_huh now are you are you talking about the elected people or are you talking about others uh_huh yes uh_huh i'm not sure how you would how would you achieve that i mean if so you would trust the decision making [economists] sometimes called the dismal science uh_huh yes uh_huh uh_huh yes yes uh_huh right so so you would favor a law which said there could not be lobbyists i mean right now lobbyists require to register you'd just say make them all no causes that you think the lobbyists would be good for uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh so uh you talk about jeopardizing the future would you be against any deficit spending uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh but what practical steps could could one take um well but everybody will say that he is for that uh and and how will you make that actually happen uh_huh uh_huh yep sounds like a good idea nothing [escapes] right no no deductions nothing just ten percent yep right yep so that that's it that's i mean i i agree with that that's a good idea and is it your expectation that that would raise the total revenues collected or or lower them or what the the first one is we need people in there that that understand uh numbers the numbers that are being thrown around when when we're talking in trillions of dollars uh which is an astronomical sum and and the people that are talking this numbers have no concept of what that number means the elected people yes uh_huh our our our senate and congress and and people that that deal everyday and and what's going to be done with those monies um and don't really understand what that is or how a budget even works uh we need to elect people that are more uh or well let's let's make them have a degree in economy uh or economics well yeah but but people that that know the value of a dollar that understand the value of a dollar um and in in in the the uh lobbyists needs them to be eliminated uh from congress um they don't make [pragmatic] decisions they make a decision based on constituency instead of a decision based on what they really believe um you know or they tack on this uh pork bellies and and do things that that are good for their area to pass something that is that is not good for the country oh i i definitely would yeah get rid of them totally uh i i think that any company or anything that wants to contribute to a fund should be able to do that and be registered with what they ever contribute but they should not have a one on one relationship with the people making the decisions that affect them that that's a conflict of interest as far as i'm concerned when you are talking again uh billions and trillions of dollars uh you're you're jeopardizing the future of the country uh for today that i i think to bring it in line you are going to have to have a generation that's going to really bite the bullet to bring it in line you can't ease into it it took years and years to build up the [momentum] that's there now uh i i forget the figures on the interest rate but it's something like uh hundreds of thousands of dollars a second in interest part of the problem is we don't loan from ourselves we we buy from intimate international banking that's why we have interest and and i i i really feel that that that is part of the problem that we we've let things get so out of control that that we don't want to put the brakes on them by by having a a a budget that is is feasible that is reasonable oh of course sure and then add on to it you take the gross national income and you say our budget is x number of percent of this gross national income one thing we could do is give a ten percent income tax across the board everyone no matter what pays a ten percent income tax uh that's right right no deductions you pay a ten percent income tax that's what you pay if you make forty million dollars uh then you're going to pay four million if you make forty dollars you're going to pay four dollars and and that's it i don't know that it would or wouldn't um short term i don't think anything's going to be done about it or probably should be done about it uh the short term the recession is getting getting top attention and that effectively adds to whether it's officially on the books or not and that's got to be paid it can only hurt the deficit picture um and the the [severity] of the deficit picture already limits the options available or limits the degree of tax cutting you can do without uh bringing on on serious problems for the longer term so that that that's the current [predicament] yeah i'm not sure how i feel about paying on the [quest] the long term [quests] that tax cuts are worth at this point it's probably a judgment of how bad the recession is well well first of all you look to the fed to fight the recession as indeed it has with interest rates well at the moment we're doing very well on inflation that's the sort of upside to the deficit that's the upside to the recession well can be done or will be done are two different things um at various places to look for for cutting the budget first of all i consider more defense cuts than are already planned depending on the world situation but there are various other areas such as as farm subsidies that ought to be [slashed] uh a lot of [entitlement] programs like education aid i think uh they should put a in the reagan administration took all such [entitlements] to the poor but left them for the middle class uh in the longer term uh we we we'd do well i think to make to make uh [reductions] there also somewhat is to collect owed to the government from various loan programs that people have borrowed a lot of education aid has gone to so called trade schools which are sort of not colleges but schools that teach you [trades] you know [beautician] well and often exists only because of the federal programs that they can take people and tell them they can get loans for their full tuition uh and the school gets paid off immediately uh and then they don't provide very much education yes yeah all right well right uh are you saying you don't think anything should be done in the short term yeah i i think that you're absolutely right there the other thing is is that we've got these um these all these bank [defaults] going on and and savings and loan [defaults] and and uh uh right exactly um exactly and and uh so this creates a pretty serious problem that's going to continue to be with us for a while to come um i'm not really uh sure that i even understand why the administration is proposing for instance tax [reductions] because it seems to me that if if if they're talking about reducing uh the tax that needs to be paid or the tax that's currently being paid then that can't it seems to me it can't possibly you know help with the the deficit picture yeah exactly yeah exactly yeah it seems like it's it's a kind of a catch twenty two i mean it's it's the um my understanding is what they're what what supposedly they're trying to do by reducing taxes is to kind of jump start the economy the idea being that if people have to pay less money in taxes they'll have more money to spend uh and if they have more money to spend then that will be a spur to productivity particularly commercial productivity uh which in turn will generate revenue but it it seems like like uh it's sort of a uh a an [unending] [spiral] and it it it uh i'm i'm not sure that there's any real genuine truth to the uh the idea that that uh that decreasing taxes particularly the kinds that are being recommended bye bye the bush administration and things like capital gains taxes and so forth is going to uh result in substantial amounts of money you know for consumers to spend and uh yeah it uh it would seem to me that there are other things that the administration could do uh_huh uh_huh i think that's been a positive development i think what that's done is it's it's it's help keep inflation from um uh yeah exactly it's a sort of a piece of luck yeah um i don't know what kind of things do you think can be done in in uh in the long term sure uh_huh right i think that i think that that i agree with you certainly in the second situation and i think certain [entitlements] i i'm inclined to agree with you too education happens to be one place where i think that we would foolish to um uh uh_huh oh i see i see what you're saying and then they and then the people [default] on the loans well i would have to agree with you if there are circumstances like that uh around uh and i i i can't confess to having any substantial knowledge of that sort of thing but but taking what you're saying at face value then i would have to agree with completely they're talking about uh federal government aren't they yeah well i saw a program on uh recently and and it said every time they cut you know like fifty five million dollars on a certain thing then they [brag] about how much money they cut and then they go and spend that money somewhere else and that's why the budget is never balanced the gramm rudman act didn't solve the problem they just take all the money that they say they cut and they spend it somewhere else or they you know they pad out their staff or you know spend it in bounced checks at the [commissary] or uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i think they should they should limit the senate to one term one six year term uh_huh right and and don't let them come back and and uh keep congress to um two terms of two years a piece and then it'll be [overturning] and they won't have the same people there all the time and then all the special interest groups will have to [renegotiate] all of their their payoffs and kickbacks and that'll keep them busy enough so that they won't have as much influence because that's one of the things one of the biggest things is that uh the fact that they're always trying to lean somebody toward one way or another whether it's the oil companies or the automotive companies and like the air bag thing the air bag came out what twenty years ago and only now they're getting that put in cars and the oil companies are really aren't responsible you know the [valdez] proved that and then the government doesn't jump on them hard enough to make them do anything it should have been done immediately uh_huh right no they listen to wherever the money is right yeah they're not as efficient that's for sure i'm sure well actually probably any government but the federal one's the big one so uh so what do you what do you think in the short term we should be doing to to improve it right right yeah uh yeah i'm getting pretty kind of disgusted with the uh uh you know the fact that they're counting a reduced deficit as being some big step right i mean first of all we were we've already hit the largest deficit this proposed budget has the largest deficit ever and two a deficit is i mean the deficit is only uh is is as far from a balanced budget you reduce the deficit you you're still not you're still not you're still [overspending] right i mean it's just the amount that you're [overspending] and this is you know for some reason the way that the reporting is going on now it seems like like the goal is to reduce the deficit to some you know still outrageous amount um yeah i i i think in the long term something is going to have to be done with uh sort of the the uh well i mean it seems to be kind of inherent in the political process right that you've got uh people you know trying to trying to corner money for their state or for their constituents so that they can get reelected and uh there isn't any sort of overall accountability and and uh i don't know i i suppose that that that the only kind of solution ultimately that we're going to have is is is exposure and information and i don't know that in general the american people are that interested you know to listen to to as much uh uh you know i mean you're going to have to know what people are doing and uh you know and how and how how [partisan] and how and how self interested their their motives are and and take it to task for it because it's not going to get solved you know if people are still trying you know like you were saying you say you know hey we just you know we just cut defense let me grab some of this money for my state now and then we can throw in some highway bill or you can throw in some you know some other kind of thing and uh it's a pretty vicious uh vicious cycle i don't know that's yeah that's being [batted] around i uh my my dad was always a [proponent] of that he uh he felt that that would get people involved who were who were interested in being public servants as opposed to personal servants uh_huh right right uh_huh right uh_huh yeah right yeah yeah i think i think that that's probably right because in terms of long term you just got to get people um i mean uh at one point at least on a local level um going into politics is you know what you're doing is is really trying to serve the community right i mean you don't expect to make any money out of it you know maybe you gain a little bit of local fame but but it's uh you put in a lot of work in exchange for that and i don't have the feeling that national level politicians are are at all like that yeah and uh you know i think that that that the problem with having you know junior people coming in all the time is that you end up kind of wasting a lot of time with uh you know with inept politicians or people who don't know how to deal with it but on the other hand maybe that's well uh i don't know i think the budget is really out of hand right now and especially in this election year i think that uh there ought to be at least some conversation about what we are supposed to do about this right right and uh well as you said mostly they are token cuts uh especially what for instance george bush is offering yeah ninety seven cents a week now what that's really not going to do a lot of good it doesn't seem to me to your average middle income person you know another ninety seven cents hell you can buy a coke or something for that yeah that ninety seven cents really isn't going to do it for me either uh i i haven't really heard much of what the other people other candidates have said that have made a lot of sense to me either especially the democratic candidates don't seem to be coming up with much that really [sparks] my interest as far as yeah maybe that could do something to affect our budget at this point i believe it was dukakis but i i can't yeah i mean that's better than george bush who came out and said no i will not read my lips or whatever and then you know ten months later he said well sorry you know i i can't follow through on this but it seems to me that uh that the budget is so out of hand and especially now that they say okay the cold war is over and we're supposed to be getting a peace dividend of you know of x number of billion trillion dollars a year well i'd really like to know where that money is actually going to go because in my opinion i don't think i'm ever going to see any of this peace so called peace dividend i mean if they could actually put something together and make i'm not really in favor of large government social programs either because i feel that they waste money also but with this peace dividend it seems like you could set up some kind of like public works projects like they had in the thirties or whatever right exactly and in that way we could really focus on building the infra structure of the country yeah and and there's no way that we can ever really recover from from the state that we're in right now unless at least i feel unless we focus on the infra structure and i surely don't hear anybody saying that right now so am i uh i u uh_huh uh_huh right right uh_huh right you you just have to wonder what they're thinking in washington yeah uh well it's it's more than a loaded it's a loaded cannon i mean they've got trillions of dollars to spend every year and they in my opinion don't do a very responsible job of spending that money oh no uh_huh for for the moment and that's what really is getting me about what george bush's stand on the budget is right now is that he is saying i am going to give you this ludicrous little tax cut so that you'll be happy come november and you'll elect me again and then i'm going to go on and just forget everything that i said or you know it doesn't seem that it's going to make much of a difference no no not at all no uh_huh yeah it kind of seems to me that everyone's offering you know their token little tax cut program you know when it's when it's just such a bad time for it yeah the ninety seven cents a week uh_huh yeah i mean mostly it's it's not actually a a a cut it's just a cut in the withhold in the amount withheld you know um yeah i don't see this changing my lifestyle a whole lot huh_uh uh_huh yeah i mean you know in retrospect um was it was it [mondale] or dukakis that said you know i'll i'll tell you right now i'm going to raise taxes it was dukakis yeah i have a lot of respect for him yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah yeah it's it's uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah i uh i i think that would be a great idea you know like the conservation corps you know where it it it would help unemployment greatly and it yeah infra structure is in is in i mean we we we have hurt ourselves incredibly last fifty years in the cold war uh_huh um yeah i i agree totally um i mean this this it just seems so you know so ridiculous that it was allowed to happen um i i'm in college right now and oh really where do you go right i go to georgia tech um and in what i had you know the required political science class a couple of years ago and one of the things we discussed was you know where our where the budget how the budget situation just got so out of hand and essentially what happened was i think it was like in the um tax year of eighty one um ronald reagan basically said you know i'm going to give this much of a tax cut to the tax payers and and created this this ludicrous budget that he knew that that um that the congress would not in their right mind pass and congress realizing that they were going to lose a the democratic congress realized that they were going to lose a propaganda war you know bye bye you know bye bye removing the tax cut further cut the taxes and created you know that that that you know created the huge deficit that year which moved us into the trillion dollar deficit and you just i mean it's just like they're playing chicken with a loaded gun yeah uh_huh well yeah um what really bothers me is it just seems like if if anyone were to say you know well i'm going to raise taxes and cut the budget and we're we're going to have to do some unpopular things i mean he wouldn't have a chance of getting elected i mean it's kind of like rome and the bread and circuses thing you know where people just want want to have you know whatever will make them feel good right now you know uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh it i mean i don't know i i don't i don't think george bush will make the american people happy with ninety seven cents a week i just don't think it was a well thought out incentive you can go ahead and start if you want uh i can agree with that and uh i know one thing we we need to do a lot of spending cuts instead a lot of raising taxes because that's what's really hurting everybody's goat uh and government doesn't produce anything correct that uh i guess the uh the big thing about that is the fact that they're spending someone else's money it's not like it's they're out of their own savings account and that's another [quagmire] that really hurts us yeah uh_huh i think the basic needs of the government in the first place is to protect and what is the other one basic service is to protect and i don't know about providing all the other services but they do i mean even i i guess the uh the latest fire they came under was whenever they were providing a uh a [tribute] to um lawrence [welk] contributing five hundred thousand to [restoration] to his home i think that was called back because of all the flack they received but but still another one of the big examples of why we're in such dilemma right i agree uh_huh right and the power given to the i r s is just astronomical and when you sign your ten hundred forty form you're signing a away you're rights i mean your your rights to uh uh protect yourself and that shouldn't be that way either uh the power given to those people is just well beyond it should be and uh the really what given it was given to them by congress right yeah it's it's it's an enormous bureaucracy though it's going to take probably years to really get that in to order too because everybody will want that pet project correct and all the uh unnecessary military [installations] will have to be probably [scrapped] but that's going to be difficult but really the biggest yeah uh probably well it's the only way it's going to change is for us to have a better budget for running this country is for everybody to get involved and right now i don't see that happening not at the moment or not at this short time period so my you have some pretty good ideas there um yeah well i'm um i voted libertarian this last election i mean in most uh some of the boxes you know and i'm really am interested in getting most of the incumbents out yeah well all parties too are responsible it's not just one particular one oh i see i see well now that we have [aired] our views in such an open way you two have fun up there all right well on the budget i'm not for sure i wouldn't um start off first of all by putting a limit on the members of congress and then maybe we could get some new people in there to work on it but other than the budget i think they just have to uh i don't know i think they have to just have uh maybe uh uh almost a like a constitutional convention and get sharp people from all over the country to come together and try to decide what we're going to cut i think we cut the wrong areas and and just maybe start all over again almost like family sometimes i have to do this call time out and then uh_huh yeah right see down here in texas they just they don't they we don't have a state income tax and so they never want to raise taxes so they just raise the fees they just call them fees and there's a fee for everything we don't have a state income tax and uh there's no uh the sales tax isn't on food or anything like that so we yeah so we're not taxed very much uh but the fees are pretty ridiculous but i think we just may need to have uh you know get sharp people from all over the country into some sort of a like a constitutional convention and then to say what's working in one place why wouldn't it work someplace else i noticed [bridgeport] [connecticut's] declared bankruptcy yeah yeah so yeah and it happened i think michigan way back in the late sixties when [soapie] williams was governor they declared bankruptcy the whole state of michigan so it's uh_huh right that's absolutely no by leaving yeah yeah by leaving that particular group in there to make the decisions it's not going to change so somebody has to get it to where that it's just a rank and file citizens around the country and and the and like a like a huge convention you know if they'd send uh so many people from each uh uh they could do them they could do them in the state by state and then each state could pick representatives just like they do at uh uh political conventions but you'd what what it would end up it would be the same old people going so yeah that's i've always thought that get in get in there forever and then that seniority system and then the some creep in there and uh so uh yeah right i think uh well even at the beginning of the country [alexander] hamilton wanted to put a limit on uh the president was only supposed to serve seven years and they didn't uh they didn't follow through on that but i've i've thought about a twelve year cap for congressmen and senators and maybe go back to a seven year term for the president sort of you know could you hold one second just a second ray hello that's all right my wife's a psychologist and i thought that might be somebody calling in for her how are things in massachusetts after dukakis then uh_huh yeah yeah yeah this is texas is trying oh that's crazy because texas uh it looks like it's trying to bounce back a little bit but it's we've still got a ways to go it's uh i teach in a college and i and i'm in a i'm in pretty good shape but some of these uh there's just a lot of people out of work and a lot of homeless and the budget is just i don't we've got a new governor democratic governor female and uh she's trying to cutback but she has to be so careful and that's the problem is that you if you come in too fast you can't get reelected uh_huh yes absolutely yes yes but you know give people a little uh [dignity] because i know a lot of these people would like to work they just don't know how uh to go out and get find a job or they're not skilled or or something and it it doesn't take a lot of skill to rake leaves or do some of those things like those right right uh_huh yeah no we don't we don't the uh we uh you mentioned the prison population another thing you can do in the budget we've got a lot of people who don't need to be in prison i mean there's some of the lesser crimes anymore probably you don't need to put them away put them in some work program you know a minimum very minimum security and this they've got a job and you you work uh you know work this long some of them may find that they they like it and want to take it permanently then you could just switch them over in another branch of that and pay them uh a decent wage you you'd whatever you'd pay them would be a lot better than having them in jail or having them out on the street it's a it's a lot well uh i agree with you on the international aid and uh i don't think a lot of people realize too on we can't live isolated our world is such an international economy now and uh uh especially with the problems in eastern europe and russia uh i know a lot of people feel that we've given so much aid and we have so many economic problems and and i agree that we do but uh it's also in our country's interest uh to have a balanced world economy uh sometimes it does seem like we're the ones doing all the giving uh and i have to admit sometimes i have wondered if uh we run into problems which is is certainly a possibility if anyone would come to [lend] us a hand but uh i do think uh this is a hard area i mean there's some areas that i feel uh need a lot of work uh and improvement and education comes to mind i know they are working on trimming defense uh this has been such a long process that has gotten us to the point that we're in but unless they start working on it uh it really it it already is is close to uncontrollable but i'm not sure exactly what practical steps could be uh i wish i had some of the figures in front of me now to know the percentage uh i do think one step one something you touched on in talking about the arts is that as far as percentages go i think uh money should go that benefits the most uh i i believe in uh education and not necessarily the federal uh it can be done on on different levels too because i think that's our future if we uh if our education system falls behind that of say germany and japan and uh some of the other countries we need to be able to be competitive uh it's that's an area i would not want cut there are a lot of areas i think that money could be better spent i think sometimes the money they spend on studies to decide on things is way out of proportion and and of course everyone's heard the stories of the several thousand dollar hammer and uh you know somewhere along the line uh there have been some gross errors very good sir well uh living near the nation's capitol unfortunately doesn't do you any good uh all i all i find that i can do is read the newspapers and try to decide what's best for us what we need to do and that's sort of a function of the economy and our relationship with uh other countries and so forth and right now we're in this big change since russia has [undergone] such a uh big uh [renegotiation] within themselves and i'm sure that we haven't quite decided where we stand in that yet yes i think they're looking for that they just need guidance yes that would be very good for us to help show them what it what it takes to have a a [capitalistic] society and one in which each of them has a a say and uh you know can express their thoughts safely uh_huh uh_huh oh i don't recall ever getting a rebate but it does seem as though if if we are able to reduce the our expenditures for defense of course we've got to get get this big debt that the country has under control and if as we get that under control then i'd like to see the taxes that we pay reduced a certain amount you know so that we're all comfortable but i do believe that the country's going to have to get itself straightened out debt wise before uh they could do too much that way but i hate to see them raise the taxes if it's unnecessary uh_huh sure that makes sense yes it it it seems as though a lot of the things that we see in the paper and in letters that you receive are showing you loopholes or how not to pay your share and that really is sort of against what the whole ball [game's] about isn't it uh_huh you no longer work oh my well you have more experience at that than i i just retired from working myself on december thirty first so i haven't really had time to look at it from the [retiree] point of view but it'll be an interesting uh concept i'm sure um yes i i understand well it's unfortunate you had that problem and i do hope you will be able to work out your circumstances so that you can live comfortably and feel confident that you are doing your share of the taxes and you know still there are certain things that you need to do in your family and yourself to enjoy life to the [fullest] i was working uh in doing research for the government so i know what it's like i had worked for the government basically i'm actually i'm a professor a retired professor at penn state the federal budget boy i was just writing something down that came to mind as i observed what has happened in our society um we i think have become uh dependent upon our federal government to do things for us that really only we can do for ourselves and i think more and more people are recognizing that and in addition to that uh we have elected people who really don't know how to manage the money uh they collect i mean i think it really affects all of us to a degree glen i think we are i mean i i went through a p h d program that was funded by the office of [navel] research that's now investigating stanford and harvard and m i t i mean we're talking about things that have done some good but have [institutionalized] corruption i mean you know i hate to admit that in a way but it's true right well and we need to spend the money better i mean we do not need eight hundred military bases around the world there are lot of things we don't we don't need to be subsidizing tobacco farmers we don't need to be subsidizing water rights for people who are wealthy i mean basically you know it it is really true that this this country is suffering because uh we are it's not that we don't have the resources we are just [squandering] them right well that's the way the that's the way the thing works that's right i've seen that happen and it's it's what's even [sadder] and what i think is the the tragic part of it that you see in this case of stanford and m i t and these other universities that are now being investigated for criminal [violations] is that i think the attitude [develops] that we deserve this because we're the smart guys and without us society can't function and that that's no license to steal i mean i i honest to god believe that's what's been going on and that was sort of [seeped] into the way we operated in this context and at the time i you know people i mean it was it was acceptable it's no longer acceptable right right and it it's not up to the federal government necessarily to do a lot of things that people are now thinking it ought to do for example determine what industry should survive and what shouldn't survive and do a you know variety of other things if we put the money in the right place which is investing in people in the development of human capital in [retraining] programs for these poor people who really kind of went through school and got a high school education and thought they'd be able to at least function in a competitive marketplace or went through college or or went out into the marketplace and right well and as the product of the academy i can tell you you know if it were that good how come they haven't been able to mass merchandise it and deliver it to everybody how come everybody is not the [beneficiary] of a harvard m i t or stanford education if it's that good then you really right but all the people who who are responsible for handling these kids were trained in universities and colleges okay and my point is hey wait a minute something is wrong here these people are claiming this is the best well if it's the best then it should be translated right on down the line and the general i mean how long has harvard been around okay so ask yourself some questions why don't we have a higher quality with one of the world's great universities harvard and stanford both have schools of education i mean this is a focus it's not like this is an interest of theirs this is a specific focus two of the best funded institutions in the country premier universities in the world hey wait a minute how come they can't produce something like m t v which kids want okay where are you calling from i'm in california it sure is the right it's just uh about twelve thirty here that's right and i think that anything we can do to improve the federal budget would be a [boon] to everybody no matter where they are in the country absolutely well so is ours we have just been told that we're thirteen billion dollars in the red which is more than the entire state budgets of about half a dozen states and they're talking about uh cutting uh aid to the schools particularly the uh university systems and i our local school district is going to have to fire all it's teacher aides to balance the budget so i things are tough all over well i i hope in this case the rest of you will be [spared] oh [prop] thirteen is the one that uh limits the amount that uh real estate taxes can rise every year property taxes can only go up a certain amount per year uh until the house is sold or the person dies and then it's reevaluated uh_huh uh_huh well that's certainly true we can get hit uh a lot of corporations at least seem to get [blindsided] by taxes that are sometimes even [retroactive] which i would have thought was then unconstitutional but doesn't turn out to be right no it's i don't know where some of these things come from but they look like they're from out in left field to me i don't know what we're going to do long range to solve the budgeting problem but there certainly has been proposals why are you aware of the grace commission proposals from a few years back well the w r grace uh was put in charge of a commission to find government waste uh this is about eight or ten years ago now and he came out with a whole book of his group i mean it has his name but he was just the administrator of it of places where things like government purchasing could be [rationalized] where uh renting of space could be made much more efficient where a lot of the accounting is just you know incredibly [byzantine] and could be straightened out and where lots of different government activities are [redundant] and where and there are billions of dollars in every years budget that are just totally wasted because nobody is running the government as if it were a business and uh we couldn't afford to do that sort of thing we can't we don't have money to throw around personally uh_huh it has no incentive to hold back on expenses uh i happened many years ago to work for a state government for a while and it absolutely [boggled] my mind the way they budgeted because there was no uh an attempt to figure out what it really should cost to do what we should be doing it was just take last year's budget add x percentage ask for that and if you hadn't spent all your money by december run out and buy something quick so that you that's right i can remember uh the entire office got new electric [typewriters] because we hadn't spent all our budget money in december that was just crazy that's right we might come up short next year if we haven't spent everything this year and so no matter how foolish the expenditure be sure we get rid of that money absolutely i think uh probably if you just looked at congressional budgets the amount they waste on frivolous things uh with congressional office staff is again mind boggling you read about what it costs the new uh house whip or uh the uh speaker of the house to redecorate and my god those offices were just redecorated a few years ago they it they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars they're spending twenty five thousand dollars just this year for a [feasibility] study to determine whether they should build a second gym at the capitol for the [staffs] of the congress well that's that's not to build one that's just well uh that's the kind of thing that makes me mad i want to vote the whole batch of them out of office if that's the way they think they should spend our money and just because it's a few hundred thousand here who was it said a a billion here a billion there pretty soon we're talking about real money i think that was old [everett] somebody yes it is and when we're talking about adding that much to a budget where it's just already in the hole just the think about the amount of interest we'll be paying on that we'll probably more than double it huh that's right yeah the only difference is the the uh taxpayers that's right uh_huh or our children and grandchildren i doubt it but then i doubt if we ever will just keep writing to your congressman and telling him that yeah we did that this year too california just passed that in the last election i hope it will i'm well the thing that yeah what's funny is that everybody says they want to throw out the [rascals] but nobody wants to throw out his own rascal otherwise we wouldn't have ninety eight percent of the incumbents reelected yes i'm an editor at a think tank it's a fascinating job i get to see all kinds of interesting ideas and and i do my small bit to help in uh at least express themselves [coherently] even if i don't always agree with what they're expressing well we've got some really really interesting people we got fifty different fellows every year from all around the world okay official time well what do you think of about the budget here you first oh yeah i know that we're affected uh directly uh at t i because of uh the defense budget cuts but i certainly think that's one of the the things that they're doing already which is uh which was needed to be done for probably the last few years uh although with the russian situation and all the world situation changing the way it is uh it certainly needed i the obvious one that people all talk about that i still don't understand is uh i'm at work let me turn my radio off here uh is uh all the foreign aid i you know it's over it's a fifty years roughly since world war two i don't understand why we're i understand that we support israel and all the other countries but why do we have to give them cash rather than just selling them military things at a discount or something i don't get the the idea of giving people three billion dollars a year yeah right well i think that we should give humanitarian aid and that's it you know i think we can loan food or or relief relief aid or whatever you want to call it but i not cash money i think you can send them wheat in other words i think that helps our farmers but to send them money i don't i don't see under any circumstances where you send anybody money right i'm would imagine that neither party or or the which i guess they're independent parties too why they don't talk about it i mean they don't bring it up at all why you would think they'd be real having a real campaign with one party or the other and they never talk about it they just keep doing it you know i i just like to hear them talk about it you know i like to hear some of the congressmen or senators at least say well let's let's bring this before let's examine every one of our foreign aids and look like like they did with the defense with the military bases they they investigated all those [rightfully] wrongly wrongfully whether which ones should be closed i don't know but at least they looked at it i think they should look at foreign aid and say hey which ones do we not need to give you know right yeah i know that is amazing uh_huh oh i agree with you there yeah i saw one about a month or so ago on twenty twenty i think it was where one of the congressmen i think it was from connecticut and i probably will will screw that up but he wanted to start another drug headquarters in his state and no one was asking for it but him and he got the money he got it approved by [tagging] it on some other bill and it you know the the [newsman] asked him no one is asking for this why do you you know and it was just totally a [boondoggle] i mean it was just uh him wanting to build something that nobody wanted right right but the drug agency wasn't asking for it he was asking for it you know which didn't make any sense at all right it is amazing how the the congressmen and senators just start are totally in another world once they get elected right or well done i thought you were going to say what they do i i've been trying to go over in my own mind when they say we're going to really if you vote for me i'll control crime and drugs and then they don't do anything nothing they don't have they had any president or anybody every done anything against crime and drugs you know right right yeah exactly right exactly right right yeah you can't double up yeah exactly exactly they never go away the the funniest thing i heard lately about politicians this joke was uh uh do you know how you can tell it when a politician is lying his lips are moving that that see that covers is all you know right yeah but it it is the budget thing is just and i don't know why they don't talk about it logically it's always always uh the the only thing i guess they're doing logically now is the defense which is certainly hurting t i to a degree although we've done so well with the go for we got a lot of good positive press with all the exotic weapon systems and i think we'll get a lot of those you know but uh uh you need to close so many bases and you need to cut out some missiles or i mean some uh programs and all uh and they're doing that i think that's that's really good even though it it hurts a lot bit you know well then that's probably true uh_huh right right i go ahead i was going to say i know you mentioned it but i don't know why we can't change the laws where the congress and the senators just have eight years or terms because the president has it and i think that uh is you know you don't want someone in there forever and the congressmen go in there forever and that's their whole life then and their family's life and every one of their relatives gets on it has got a job you know it's ridiculous right there you go there you go no that's true maybe that long term though i think that is a a factor that is to keep the our government uh rotating you know keep them moving uh and not get the career politicians yeah there's uh [historians] i thought that keep saying will that that never was meant that the politicians would make a career it was just something that you would serve like in the military and then you'd be done you know right right right right well i don't know how much that would do for the budget though i mean that has helped the economy as a whole you know american jobs and all but yeah if we bought more american stuff i guess that's more american taxes well i guess you know it's like your own home budget you know you can either earn more money or you can uh spend less and you know just like you and i have to make choices like that i think the government has to do it too yeah the question is which excuse me that's my little girl which one should they do to to other countries well that's that's the that's the we're supposed to be the rich ones with all the money to give away well i we're we are still the biggest ones as you know as far as how much money we've got in the whole country we're still bigger than anybody else yeah that's that's an important thing we've got we've got a lot of people who are getting money from the government for this that and the other thing and uh it would probably help if we could figure out how to get them to put money back into the system instead you know you take someone on welfare and you give them a job and they're paying income taxes all of a sudden you've changed it around and it's going in the other direction yeah yes i am uh_huh yeah yeah yeah that's what i don't understand yeah you wonder you know when is it going to happen to me yeah uh_huh yeah well i i don't think the problem so much is abuse i think the problem is is just the government is trying to do too much um i mean who where does it say that the government's supposed to be the one to take care of all of the people that are homeless or hungry or et cetera et cetera and and where does it say that that if someone is short that they can go to the government and and get a [handout] yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh no they're not yeah yeah yeah you know i think you know i've got a fairly decent job here at t i but uh when i think of you go to the the grocery store and you see someone working as a cashier and you think you know how much a cashier makes and you go how do these people get by because i know how hard it is for me to get by yeah we could go run for office well the thing is um you know who's really in charge of deciding how the money gets spent and and it's you know it's not the president the president just [suggests] it the ones who actually debate it and decide it is the is the congress and you know what the congress is out for they're they're going to do whatever it takes to make their voters happy which means bring more jobs and more federal spending to their little area and uh and that means every congressman is sitting there working for money going to his area nobody's working on less money going to his area or on anybody else's area and if you just if you just look at how much congress spends on itself it's ridiculous well now the thing is yeah they're cutting defense which is you know there are people out there working for defense contractors who are losing money but i i don't mind because i think you'll government is not there to give me a job government the defense is there to defend our country and they do it for whatever you know they spend whatever money they need to to do that but i don't want them to to break the budget just so that i can have a job i would rather have the the government stable so that i can go get a good job with someone who's not you know not making defense stuff if you know what i mean yeah uh_huh well he didn't have much choice really yeah but the defense is not the biggest part of the federal budget either the biggest part of the budget are things like medicare and social security uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah yeah you know how fast your t i medical insurance has been going up right well just think the federal government's insurance bill has medicare and that's been going through the roof and that's why you know that's that's the biggest increase in federal spending right there think we need to figure out a way to uh to make medical care cheaper why is this stuff so expensive why is the cost going up so incredibly fast you know because it's it's coming out of my paycheck it's coming out of your paycheck and it's coming out of our taxes too why why is these hospitals making so much money oh there's a whole lot of countries in europe that do that sweden denmark [norway] it's it's free for everybody everybody in the like i lived in denmark for a couple of years and medical care there is free you just go and say i want your help and they'll help you there's couple of things though first of all it's not as high a quality as we expect here because it's paid for by the government instead of by us and second um your taxes are a lot higher an awful lot higher we're talking fifty percent something like that they are paying for it and the and the just the quality of care is not as good either there has got to be a middle ground i think [canada's] got a good answer but i don't know many details about it it's it's some sort of government program i've heard a lot of people say good things about it but i just don't know the details on it well something's going to have to change but you look at the congress and you look how many of them get reelected and they're the one's that have got to make the changes i mean i don't see anything changing because you've got the same old people in there yeah single yeah huh yeah uh_huh what's really terrible is they can do this to you you know and you don't really have that much of a choice as to whether or not you take it because the government says if you're going to drive a car you've got to have the insurance they're they're not helping you be able to afford the insurance that they're making you buy how are you tonight well i've had a a little bit longer to think here because uh they waited about ten calls before they found you bob but uh i i've been thinking about the fact that the uh gramm rudman act that was originally passed uh to to satisfy some of these [deficiencies] and place a set of [handcuffs] on congress just doesn't work because now we do things outside the gramm rudman with [consent] of congress i guess and that doesn't seem to help us to much uh i mean the savings and loan was a great example of that that's outside the gulf war was outside so it doesn't it i guess we just don't have the resolve to really face up and and and follow those instructions if indeed they are politically viable yeah right uh it seems to me that that there's there's a couple of ways that i've listened to uh various congress people and the president and the opposition and other people propose and and one thing that's starting to ring a little true to me is um rather severe cuts in in the defense programs like closing bases and closing down programs et cetera simply because i i just don't believe as much as they want me to believe some of the special interests that you talk about that uh mother russia is that much of a threat to us any longer i mean we're seeing this thing just [crumble] if if anything now i see the president wants another two and a half billion to loan them money because he's afraid of the outright uh chaos and confusion and [anarchy] because there's no food over there yeah yes yes yeah yeah yeah exactly yeah just don't gore my [ox] right yes that's right oh i guess we'd almost have to i mean i don't know it just seems to me we'd almost have to change the way we do business in government if we didn't have special interest groups i mean right down to the state and city levels and so on but i was wondering about you know i i was a little bit encouraged although it didn't seem to work out too well in this [debacle] in the fall when they last fall when they they they did levy a tax on some of the richer people i mean they increased that [bubble] tax there i i was a little encouraged by that because that's another way to cure the deficit is by higher taxes nobody wants to pay higher taxes but i mean there's going to be a crisis one of these days that's going to force us to do it anyway yeah yeah yes yes yes state tax yeah yeah yeah yeah well they pass it on to us anyway i i've never i've never even thought that they that they would absorb that yeah that's right of course it that that that's again that that issue just like you [sited] bill on the bases but i i don't know i i it just seems to me that uh i mean i it it does seem to me now that twenty percent i i think i'm correct in this that twenty percent of the federal budget is allocated now for debt payments or interest payment of the debt yeah and and i know if i had to pay that much in my out of my salary i mean it it's it it just seems to me i don't know whether it that's kind of a [colloquium] just use common sense but it just seems like there has to be some there will be a crisis at some point when the medicare programs can't pay off when the when they can't pay off the the the savings and loans uh situation when the banks can't be insured any longer when the pensions can't be insured then people are really are going to demand something to be done but it appears to me that i don't know if there is any short term or long terms steps without a greater crisis that takes place yeah but how do you get people to do that though i mean i i i i don't even find myself you know i see i i play that game with myself sometimes i know things are a little tough so i say well i'll just charge this on the credit card and i'll pay it off in a little bit and then then every once in a while i get a shock i get the credit card up to six seven thousand i say this is absolutely insane and we sort of tighten up or something comes by to pay the damn thing off but i i i i think that we're not paying anything off i mean obviously we're not paying anything off we we've gone from the largest [creditor] to the largest [debtor] nation in the last ten years and yeah that's right i saw some japanese guy on television today he was talking about the the the trade deficit he said as it's so it's so simple that that it was it was kind of it was kind of humorous he said as long as you continue to spend more than you continue to uh sell as long as you continue to buy in your country more than you continue to sell you'll have a trade deficit and until that comes under control uh the lending comes under control that that's your problem well i mean i i started to laugh at that i mean it seems so [simplistic] but i guess it is the truth we just keep buying their stuff and we don't have the ability apparently to sell our products overseas and it is a very complex situation but uh i i guess but as a as an accountant do you do you find people are worried when you talk to them about what our government might do or what they can't seem yes that that's right yeah i i guess i was a little [comforted] by the fact that on this gulf war uh that we have received uh at least sixty percent of the money that we asked for and i i should imagine i don't know how that's coming you know i remember some i i just don't i haven't seen a real accounting of that so i guess i guess uh uh if i was to take a position now and sum up because i don't want to talk too long is that the short term i guess we have to some how as you say address those issues in the long term we'd either have we'd have to raise taxes and cut back on some of the big the transfer payments and the military an and just bite that bullet okay i'm going to cut it off and uh because i've got to go nice talking to you bob bye bye i agree with that well also too often too the uh individual congressman has the uh especially if they are on on some of the committees that put these budgets together have the opportunity to slide things in that normally should not have gone in at all and the right and the line item uh veto would be ideal for that yeah there's another uh uh another uh way where the budget could uh probably benefit and this has to do of course it has to do with federal projects too often those are uh not uh there's no uh accountability once the uh projects are awarded to make sure that the quality is done and they end up getting stuck with billions of dollars of [overlay] or if contracts are put out uh no one uh is responsible or it does not seem to be for following up that if it goes over budget it well you know it's set up [laissez] [faire] attitude well that's to be expected we just sort of built it in well that shouldn't happen that way and i think i think if there was more attention paid to uh what's being uh spent and more accountability that would help enormously too how who who or how that would come about i'm not uh sure but that's an an area that needs to be uh looked at well i think there could be a lot of [consolidation] of programs uh looking at of course there they have been a lot of talk to begin with and the [military's] a big uh area that uh has taken a lot of shots recently but i i do not see the point of having four different services uh i do not see why they could not have one military service that's right because a lot of the monies are spent uh with [insiding] within those departments uh basically i'm in i'm in agreement with that uh i would think that there probably needs to be a monitor not a monitor uh you know yeah a presence but not a no well witness the the recent gulf war too even with uh troops all over europe uh it took several months to gear up what kind of fishing do you enjoy so you like fresh water uh_huh oh i see well i was raised on the texas gulf coast in the summers and during the christmas holidays we'd go down to our house on the coast and so i thought fish came out of the ocean and anything that was fresh water was muddy so i didn't learn to fish in a lake until i was well into my twenties so i had i had always been a a sea fisher type which is a lot of fun there's so many different ways to catch fish you know at night you can go walking in the [shallows] and [gig] flounder and things like that which isn't technically fishing but it's a lot of fun so i i grew up fishing what area of lakes do you like oh i see oh oh oh uh i think i know where uh lake caddo or something like that if it's supposed to be one of the best bass fishing places they hold tournaments there and everything i would love to do that but they have snakes over there and i'm not too welcome around i don't i really don't want to share a boat with a snake i just i i i don't see it i just i don't i think that i perhaps would let them have the boat or something i'd make some quick arrangements and i've told so many stories about the snakes you know when they pull in there's a snake instead of a fish and things like that i'm just i don't know what's the largest fish you ever caught oh on a lake yeah on a like that's not a bad size fish i would be impressed i've never done that i've i've seen it uh and and i have no problem going out in a boat uh it's just so [dreadfully] expensive and there's just so many other ways live down there it's not a treat it's what you do every day you know uh one of my favorite things was we were forever catching crab and [steaming] them you know out on the on the beach and you know just uh pitching them out on uh on uh what am i trying to say newspaper and and breaking them up and sitting out there and eating them and then digging a hole and pitching the whole thing in it you know and and that's it and uh but the other little [creatures] would take care of what was left so going out on a boat never did appeal to me simply because it you know there was so much else to do no no i live in dallas i lived in dallas we had a house in port aransas it's a little fishing village that is corpus well uh south padre is on down the bend it's like if you drew a line from austin straight down it would be in that region small island uh oh okay was it bad oh i hate to hear that huh_uh no no no you went to galveston uh i have a favorite hotel that extends out over the water the uh what is it the [flagship] is it still there i like that place i didn't realize that had happened for some reason well of course being raised on the water i'd never swim in it huh_uh swimming is for swimming pool that's why they call them swimming pools that's where you swim you do not swim in the ocean no i've seen what comes out of the ocean and i have no desire to share any space with anything like that but really but huge sharks are down there i mean incredibly large sharks uh some of the young dread [naughty] boys in my family would fish for them all night it was incredible the size of them the next morning they would have them strung up across the [getties] and it you know so just strung up their tails would still hang on the bottom of the [getties] yeah just i won't have anything to do with well it certainly was uh maybe you can get how many have you had very many of these calls how wonderful maybe i'll just be so lucky okay i enjoyed talking to you bye bye well uh normally i like to to go out fishing in a boat and uh rather than like bank fishing and just like to try and catch anything that's swimming because i've had such problems with trying to catch any type of fish that uh i just really enjoy doing the boat type fishing uh_huh uh_huh i've never tried like with deep uh sea water fishing because you get i get sea sick well one of these days i'm hoping they'll have some kind of medicine so i can go out and go uh deep sea fishing now that would be nice uh_huh uh_huh oh my goodness uh_huh wow uh_huh uh_huh oh i bet it is uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well uh now i haven't done much fishing here in texas uh because i moved from ohio uh but uh we did a lot of fishing when we were up there but down here i have a brother that likes to go over on the east in east texas and do fishing i can't remember what the name of the lake is and he was just here this past weekend i could have i i think he mentioned it again but i couldn't remember what it was uh i want to call it salt fork or lake fork i i can't remember but he said it's one of the best bass fishing places i you know that may be it that may be it yeah yeah yeah and he said that he has never gone anywhere before and he's fished all over the united states in which they can catch the biggest bass that you've ever seen so i would love to go over there they were talking about going over there and and some time in the spring and i was thinking it would be great to go over there to go fishing and uh and catch some bass uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's true uh_huh yeah oh yeah uh gosh i think it was only like three and a half pounds and for me that's big that's why i'm saying i love to go fishing because i've never caught anything really really big uh so because it's always been you know in the on a lake and uh i know they have bigger fish than that but you know three and a half pounds and that was huge for me yeah that's a good size fish yeah yeah so uh but yeah i'd love to go catch like the [marlins] or whatever in the deep sea fishing uh_huh yeah uh_huh that's right that's right yeah uh_huh uh_huh wow uh_huh yeah that's right that's right right right well do you live like along uh houston down there well i meant when when you were when you were growing up i mean like galveston oh okay but you uh oh okay that's close to uh south padre oh corpus okay okay okay uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah i i've been to port aransas but it was when i was a child yes because i have relatives who live in houston so when would go and we would go to port aransas or then on down to corpus or further yeah like what your talking about because i was just wondering we went to galveston this this summer even with all the oil spills and everything i mean i was oh it was horrible i well never ever go back i don't think uh and yeah and that that's true uh uh you know the the water was [murky] and i would hate to think about catching fish or anything there huh_uh no i wouldn't want to eat them so yeah uh_huh yes uh_huh it sure is yeah yeah it most certainly is so uh so that it it was it was certain things that were enjoyable about it but uh i don't i think it's lost a lot of it's appeal since then because of all the oil spills that they have had and uh it always smelled the entire time we were there it was yeah we went swimming one time in the whole week that we were there and the rest of the time we stayed in the pool because the water was so awful and yeah yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh no no not anymore uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh wow uh_huh wow wow yeah now i never knew they were that that big huh yeah yeah right well it was nice talking to you uh yeah almost ever day yeah almost almost ever single day from when they started it yeah okay bye bye okay mostly freshwater i yeah i i used to fish uh when i was real young down in galveston with my parents and i never really got into that too much because you have to get in the boat really to do anything and i didn't know anybody who had a boat now so i don't fish too much in saltwater oh really oh neat oh really what'd you do with them you didn't get a big kick out of killing them like some people do do they have a limit on sharks i mean is that like a a sport fish can you actually catch those and there's no limit uh_huh right right oh really right uh_huh uh no i haven't i don't know that i could do that that looks awful [tiring] did you didn't like it it looks complicated to me it's a rhythm or something catching tree bass right did you that would have been something so do you do you fish mainly for [trophies] or do you do you eat what you fish uh_huh right right you just like to sit down and watch it right really right right that's nice well most of my fishing is done at um area lakes around here freshwater lakes and um most of it i haven't been really in a long time last time i went i actually was in galveston trying to saltwater fish and it just wasn't working with my freshwater tackle that was real fun um but um i went fishing at i don't know if you've ever heard of uh lake worth it's a fairly new lake in texas and uh we went fishing there last memorial day and i caught my first bass that was actually big enough to keep i was so excited and uh that's really about it mostly just the lakes around here and i fish to take home and cook i don't i don't get too much joy out of just sitting and watching i get a little bit of relaxation from it but mainly i um i want to say i brought something home i want to say i did this i was out there for a reason really everybody but you it had to be you couldn't catch one to save your life huh how funny just hoping maybe he could pull right yeah right oh yeah that would be fun right hand picked the weirdest fishing experience i ever had people to this day are still trying to figure out if i really caught what i think i caught we were in uh [rockport] which is close to corpus and we had been fishing in a canal they had all these [canals] up through this one little retirement area and uh we'd been fishing in the [canals] and all we were catching were catfish and we were pretty bored with that so we thought well maybe there are some crab in here we'll try to catch some crab so i got my chicken and all my little net and everything and something i had a rock to weight it down something grabs and just runs with it and of course there's no hook so it can't be a fish i'm sure it's not a fish right and crab they don't bite like that they don't just run with your food so i [netted] it and it was the ugliest fish i've ever seen in my life it had real teeth like human teeth and it looked [archaic] i i had no idea what it was i called my father long distance just to describe the thing and it had the rock in it's mouth not the chicken but the rock itself is what it had grabbed they say it's a dog fish from everything i've described it was brown with these little white [dots] and it made a loud almost a [croaking] noise like a [croaker] does it it was the strangest thing oh i'll never get over that to this day i don't want to get in the water anywhere around salt water because i'm sure one of those fish are there uh_huh i've never heard of that one that's where it gets its name obviously huh uh_huh huh can you eat them ooh i i don't think i'd want to even if you could if they're that ugly but that's like this dog fish it was it scared me to death it was it really it didn't look like it looked like it was something out of the dark ages that just never died oh so are you a freshwater or freshwater uh_huh most of my fishing has been in the saltwater uh mostly deep sea fishing for grouper and bottom fish and uh i have caught one or two small sharks and uh yes put them back no no no i love shark steak but uh the ones i caught were never large enough to really do anything is there a limit i have no idea i know i my home is in uh pensacola florida so it's they do a lot of shark fishing in that you know in the gulf and um there's a certain period of time during the year they have all along the gulf coast from i guess from galveston to [mayport] they have uh shark tournaments and you know there's part either as part of or separate from the uh bill fishing tournaments they usually have so i have not done uh much freshwater fishing oh for you know lake lake fishing for bass and so forth but uh maybe some what they call brim and those sorts of things but nothing i think i've been trout fishing once i've never fly fished have you fly fished i've tried it once yes uh a friend of mine no i could never get the hang of it uh_huh i usually ended [snagging] my uh fishing partners or the trees along the bank yes almost got an [owl] once but uh oh no no no no i used uh when i was uh working in florida i used to do a lot of surf fishing mostly for relaxation you know there are people who fish and then there are people who catch well i'm a fisher that's right i've never caught that much but uh oh and occasionally we'd go out on a you know full day trip you know three or four other people and do either again bottom fishing or or for grouper or i used to catch you know i've caught a few worthwhile snappers red snappers and gray snappers and so forth what about you you a uh_huh oh yes the last time i went uh bass fishing i was with my daughter a friend of hers and well a friend of mine and his daughter we i was the only one who did not catch a single fish my daughter caught fish his daughter caught fish he caught fish i did not even i did not even i have been i was out on a party boat a few years ago and we we were grouper fishing or you know actually we were uh snapper fishing everyone on the boat was catching snapper snappers except guess who i i that's right i would go from one side of the boat to the other and uh the uh the party boat captain could not understand you know he even even he started [baiting] my hook and holding holding the uh the fishing rod right and it was it was really really really bad uh i as i said i am a fisher i'm not a catcher but uh i enjoy it though i don't really get out as much as i uh as i would like too and they do of course you know here in we're only just a few not a few minutes we're you know forty five minutes to an hour away from the eastern shore here in maryland and they do a lot of fishing there of course what i used to like to do though is go snorkeling for scallops in some of the [bays] or uh or for oysters and uh that i was able to do when i could go in and go down and actually pick them off the bottom that right uh_huh uh_huh um uh_huh uh_huh well we used to i guess the weirdest thing i've ever caught is uh in some of the [inlets] and the rivers around delaware they have a fish that's called an [oyster] cracker i don't know if you've ever heard of it and it has a huge strong mouth and they actually uh use their teeth to open oysters uh_huh and this is the ugliest fish i have ever seen and i mean and they come in all you know i've i've caught them from you know three or four inches long up to uh i guess the largest one i ever caught was probably eight or ten inches long but just huge ugly things just terrible no no they just they just look as though you do not want to do anything with them uh_huh well the first time i went surf fishing was in and i threw my line out and the first thing i caught was a sand shark which was probably a foot and a half or uh two feet long and scared me to death i had never seen anything and then i was fished for another half hour or forty five minutes caught a few white fish and so forth and then i felt something relatively heavy and i thought oh really here i'm really going to get one and i so do you fish uh from a boat or from shore oh that's nice uh mostly catfish or yeah a real light line real light rig well that sounds like fun fish in colorado different than that mostly trout in the mountains yeah yeah mountain streams and rivers uh yeah very yeah very much there you know um by and large no but but they're big fun what i i i'm a fly fisherman yeah i i cast a ways i'm not highly proficient but it's fun well let me explain fly fly fishing to you then you're not casting a weight on the end of the line you're casting the weight of the line yeah well the fly on the end weighs nothing it weighs less than the line so what you do is you strip off oh four five six little rolls [coils] of line into your hand and you whip the line as you whip it over your head or side to side you slowly feed out more and more well no no you fish upstream right and then you let it carry it downstream and then you reel it in and you do it again yeah exactly yeah exactly jump at it uh from what i'm seeing and hearing and all the the big pattern that's really looking forward for spring is the grub pattern no no it it looks like a grub yeah okay whenever you yeah a lure a fly whenever you have a something that looks like something else and it's a fly you call it a pattern all right uh you know there's [bumble] [bee] patterns there's excuse me uh there's [bumble] patterns there's mosquito patterns there's wasp patterns there's grub patterns uh uh you can buy them uh i've got some and they seemed to have been hitting real heavy on it in fall yeah yeah you know how that changes the phase of the moon and yeah yeah i i you see i'm from west texas yeah lubbock oh another west texan yeah yeah it it it's kind of nice way to get away from everything for the day yeah well there you fish mornings and evenings and nights yeah it at times gets incredibly hot here june oh yeah fishing is not just just dragging fish out of the water it's it's a total experience you know getting out in nature and hearing the [crickets] and listening to the birds and seeing the squirrels and camping out and eating out of doors and uh i probably ought to i just freeze yeah yeah well you know ankle deep or standing on the bank and slipping it out there you know i always intend to just stand on the bank and just kind of slip it out there and you know how it is the water's kind of and then you're in to it just a little bit and then you [splash] in and the next thing you know your knees are wet uh got a stepdaughter she's real sweet and uh at times she enjoys it at times not a fuzzy little dog oh yeah yeah yeah you guys sure want to be out of range it takes time yeah last year we had a oh just a wonderful trip up to [travers] lake oh it was cold and rain the whole time and we still had a good time out of the deal uh and colorado is a beautiful place to live well and you've got to have you've got to work for a living what division you all in what division are you all in oh well the only thing up here is division one oh yeah okay yeah oh fishing's fishing is fun up here it's not it seems like the success ratio the success rate here is not as good as on some of the better lakes there but it is fun you know the the experience is is better up here i think you know it seems more relaxing there's more to look at and and there's something about listening to water run that's relaxing to the soul you know if you're if you're just sitting on a nice hot lake yeah it it is interesting to watch that water rise all of a sudden uh_huh yeah it gets [foamy] almost and you know it's just pure and [pristine] and the [froth] and oh yeah my dad has a lake cabin and so we go there for the small lake uh just outside of the dallas fort worth area it takes us about three hours to get there and we go and we fish and we catch a bunch of junk nothing nothing to talk about for the most part but it's fun from the dock from shore oh mostly we catch carp if we're doing good we catch a catfish or two once in a while and you know we go ahead and eat those but we've never caught enough to really have what you'd call a fish fry what we normally do is just uh go ahead and clean it up and then uh you know put it in a bag and freeze it and and somebody takes it home and eats it then when there's just a couple people instead of a whole crowd usually there's a pretty good crowd there so we don't ever catch enough to eat carp is usually pretty much fun because i've caught up to about an eight pound carp on a little you know a little pole with twenty pound test line and that that's a pretty good fight so that's a lot of fun yeah they fight hard yeah yeah and in the rivers and stuff are they good to eat oh you mean size wise they're not very big yeah well i've been is that mostly uh fly fishing when you're doing that or are you fly fishing or are you using a [bobber] yeah i've never even tried that my if i don't have a reel with a button on it i tend to get so much backlash it's not worth the trouble uh_huh with the little thing on the end yeah i thought it had a weight oh uh_huh um uh_huh um so you're fishing downstream so it will carry some oh you fish upstream uh_huh you hope that they think it's a bug and and eat it yeah that's a fish oh it's a it's a lure i see uh_huh oh uh_huh um did someone just come up with this design and and you're going to make one for yourself or are you going to buy it uh_huh oh it's just that that just happens to be what the fish like this year huh um i guess so we tend to use just bait and a few lures but bait tends to work the best just some blood bait oh are you where are you from oh i'm from midland i went to college at tech so you've been out to buffalo gap fishing yeah i've been up there i didn't catch anything but i've been up there yeah it's fun it's lazy take a picnic lunch i used to do that with my dad every once in a while we'd go out on a saturday and just spend the day before it got too hot yeah yeah we do most of our fishing at night just from the heat of it all that's one advantage you've certainly got on us it does i've only been up there once in the summer well no i've been up there twice in the summer but both times it was really pleasant in fact it snowed on us in in gosh when was that we were in mesa [verde] park and it was like the end of it was just before july fourth and it was twenty eight twenty nine degrees we were out in this silly tent with regular little sleeping bags not knowing any better and here it went and it froze and it snowed on us we did not know what to do about it yeah uh_huh do yeah do you have to do you wear [waders] when you fish oh goodness it must be a little bit cold that's cold water around there um do you have any oh i see yeah and you get you get a little more carried away with it and you move a little closer yeah do you have any kids that you take fishing uh_huh yeah i have a three and a half year old and a one and a half year old and the little one of course is could care less the uh three and a half year old has just gotten to the point we got him a little pole last year and just put uh his big thing last year was throwing it in the water and [reeling] it up that was what he considered fishing this year he's gotten to where he can we we were at a friend's uh stock pond we were out at their farm and and they had been fishing and let him use the pole while we we all walked off a healthy hundred yards or so and let him fish and he started trying to cast it so he he was kind of getting there but he's he's at a dangerous point right now he understands the mechanics of pushing the button and throw but not necessarily the direction it's going to go in yeah yeah well that's good oh yeah my husband would like to live there but i don't know all of our family is here so well yeah but t i is up there so that part of it would probably work out i'm sorry what we're both uh i was uh military but he's division three it goes back and forth division well maybe division one right now he's in computers so and he's in school and everything else i have some friends who work up there kathy and kevin guy yeah and they like to fish they've been [inviting] us to come up there in the summer her dad has a cabin and they go fishing up there so that would be neat to try it some time yeah long as you have a good time that's the main point so uh_huh definitely more to look at yeah yeah the only thing you've got to watch is when that creek comes up we camped next to one one time when we were there a couple of summers ago and we figured we were up a long way off and then it rained that night and we thought well wonder how far off we are and we got up the next day and that creek that had been fifty or sixty feet from our site of our tent was now about three feet away and it's like oh well maybe we ought to move just a touch so that was kind of funny yeah i just love the way it looks i could almost just watch the we in fact we have gotten out on on trips before and just stopped and watched it because there was so much and if you were there i mean it was one time we were there and i guess it was late may so it was really your spring almost you know at even though it was it was really summer down here and and the i guess the creek the mountains were really starting to melt and the creek was just wild just running and and all the white water and noise and the it was just beautiful uh_huh yeah yeah i like to i don't have a boat but i like to fish and there's a lot of lakes around here uh are there many lakes up there uh_huh they have mostly small mouth in them or uh_huh oh yeah that's right uh_huh uh_huh oh it's it's uh i fish for bass but i hardly ever catch one but uh uh they have a tail race over in lake lavon and uh you know they wash when they open up the dam and let out water they wash down the fish and uh you catch that white bass and crappie out of there every once in a while there'll be striped bass uh_huh wow uh_huh uh_huh what do you what do you catch perch on huh uh_huh yeah it's sometimes i use corn but uh uh some fish steal it off the hook sometimes yeah uh the other day i was fishing with bread uh there's a college across the street and they it's it's full of carp and uh i caught a carp on a about what size is that uh i think it was a number two [treble] hook and it's huge its its mouth was full of hooks so he was in a bad way but uh it's he was fast he yeah well it's uh it was sixteen inches long yeah i think it was about a pound and a half you know but all they're good for is the fight boy they they really don't want to come out of the water they they zip through the water you know you're how your line goes you know and i thought you know that uh i wasn't going to be able to get it in because uh the one i hooked just about ten minutes before when i tried to raise it out of the water it fell off so it wasn't hooked very well but you know i got it that far i figured that uh yeah that's what i said that's what i told the guy the guy was standing there and he laughed when it fell off and i said that's a quick release right there uh catfish yeah but uh i haven't eaten anything else you know uh there's some uh my dad has a farm and there's he has two ponds up there and my uncle has a a pond upstream and there's a lot of crappie in there now but uh i think he's the only one that's that's caught enough crappie or a big enough crappie to eat but the catfish there's you know there's hundreds of them from like two to six pounds and that yeah yeah and if you know when you when you have to look in their eyes and you know hit them in the head or whatever that's what you do with a catfish you know because you have to [sever] their [spinal] cord yeah yeah uh not yet my brother went off the coast of maine uh when the i don't know what they mackerel that school up there it's he he said that it was just like that they were throwing like uh uh hell [benders] or uh uh some other kind of [treble] hook lure and and uh each time they bring them in they'd have at least one sometimes they've had two on you know one on every hook uh_huh yeah wow yeah down here it's like two hundred dollars a day a group party yeah yeah uh_huh yeah well i i don't know if it's been five minutes yet or not yeah it's nice talking to you good luck bye bye so you like to fish huh yeah actually there are quite a bit of lakes around me we uh we have the those little the the the great lakes you know uh lake ontario is right near here plus we're in what's called the finger lake region of new york where there're lots of small lakes everywhere and these are uh real good uh for like you know bass fishing and so forth no we have a actually quite a lot of variety there's uh there's we have large mouth small mouth uh sort of [musky] [pike] stuff like that you know all sorts of fun stuff like that uh we have a pretty large bass masters tournament actually takes place right on lake ontario every year so it's it's that's a lot of fun how about you do you like what do you like to go for yeah um we have uh some friends who live on the lake and it the lake it just seems is is completely filled with bass to the point where you know normally you go go fishing for bass you get a lot of sunfish or or cat or whatever and some other strange stuff but in this particular lake we went out with some friends once and we just every time you tossed the line in you pull up a five six seven inch minimum bass and usually you pull up you know thirteen to fourteen inch bass yeah it's a real it's a real enjoyable experience to go fishing there because we just we pull up you know bass after bass and during perch season as well you pull up a lot of uh probably during during perch season the perch will run in very large schools so what they'll do is you'll you'll be sort of boating around these people own a little row boat and they'll be boating around and they'll hit a they'll hit a school of [perches] in the middle and when they do you can just drop the lines in and just pull them in one at they they just drop it in they can't pull it in fast enough uh i they actually they according to them you can catch when the perch are running you can catch them on just about anything they tend to use i guess worms or some kind of lures sometimes but you know i've she told me that they will sometimes use corn or anything you know they'll corn or [salami] or bread or anything they'll they'll they'll hit because they're just sort of surrounded these large schools yeah it's a big problem yeah um wow a big one wow that's that's that's a nice size carp uh_huh that that that counts do you do you do you actually like the taste of do you like eat the fish that you catch or are you more of a sport fisherman right so you can just oh because i don't actually like fish it's sort of so when i fish it's more for sport than anything else right and and and and and be careful you don't get stung yeah i know it have you ever tried uh deep sea fishing yeah yeah we i was out in florida with a friend a while ago and we would go and just uh drop two you know a a two or three rig two or three hooked rig as well down off a boat we just dropped it down there and the captain had you know some kind of [sonar] in the boat so he'd maneuver us into a school of fish and you just drop it in and and it just you you get one or two at a shot you know and it's a good deal too it was it was a like twenty dollars for six hours of fishing on some big [charter] boat you know and and and they'll clean your fish on a tip basis for you if you want well this is yeah this this this was for a you know large there were maybe thirty of us on the boat we we weren't all related just you know thirty people off the shop in the boat there if you want to go on a boat alone it's like two hundred dollars a day but this is great because it was i think it was nineteen dollars for five hours and twenty dollars for six hours or something you know so you'd get to go out there for for for six hours and get a nice [suntan] and bring along some lunch and and fish all day it's really nice it's real enjoyable i think we're probably close though nice talking to you too good luck with fishing this season bye bye okay what kind of fishing do you do uh_huh that's one of the few things i've ever fished for is rainbow trout what what kind of bait do you use to catch them oh really fish eggs oh i didn't know that huh uh_huh oh i didn't know that that's a great way i think that would probably be a good way to catch catfish also oh look catfish uh personally i like to catch large mouth bass and catfish because they fight the best but a a catfish will really just tear into anything like that like liver or uh cheese or anything that smells terrible uh no actually i always used to go to my [grandparents'] in oklahoma and they have the uh lake texoma right next to them so the we used to catch some uh sand bass off lake there's a roosevelt bridge and what we'd do is let the line all the way to the bottom and crank up you know turns on the reel about six to twelve times and the fish would be sitting at different levels so yeah you just leave it at that level and in no time something would hit it and you could pull them up two and three times in a row but you had to find out what level how many [cranks] they were off the bottom and if you left it on the bottom there was a good chance that you'd catch catfish and of course depending on how big your bait was uh you know would be depending on what you caught yeah that was a lot of fun my grandfather used to do that and we used to have a light at the top of the water he'd really spoiled me in that respect uh_huh uh_huh yeah well if you do you have any friends with ponds i uh well if you can well or even a lake if uh seems like every time somebody's on the bank all they want to do is throw it out just as far as they can and uh bring it in to you but it's the opposite when you're fishing from a boat you you want to make it land right on the shore and then drag like a plastic worm and just have it come into the water like a a regular animal or or fish uh well you know something coming off from the bank like they usually do so you don't have to really get uh fish from a boat you know because they're actually right there at the shore but i didn't used to be sold on plastic worms but uh if i am now oh yeah yeah it just uh just a slow reel and then let it sit on the bottom but the key is to always have your line tight and that way you can feel when they're hitting it and believe me you'll know the difference oh crappie actually yeah i've been fishing in the the ocean we're about three hours from the ocean and i also like spanish mackerel and you catch blues and uh that's a different kind of fishing off the pier too have you ever fished off the pier uh_huh oh the best thing for crappie is those little [spinner] baits and and [jigs] uh they have like yellow uh [fuzz] on a hook you know that kind of comes out yeah yeah get but they're a little heavier and they're bigger get the yellow ones those are the ticket and let them drop to the bottom and maybe do a a kind of a slow reel you don't even have to have a good rod or anything just just even a regular line and you throw it out and uh the the other thing that's real good is small uh it's a real small [rapalla] it's about an inch and a half long and they're pure all silver something real shiny about that long they'll go after that in a heartbeat also just anything that really shines or [spins] oh yeah yeah that's it oh really that's neat well mostly uh a a little fresh water fish but mostly lake fishing like rainbow trout and stuff because i used to live in utah but uh down here i haven't fished much in texas oh they're really not i think they're good to eat oh just usually worms night crawlers sometimes fish eggs sometimes yeah just little just little fish eggs and uh there's this one kind of cheese that you can put on the end of a hook and it will stay relatively well yeah and and they really like that now i have never caught catfish uh_huh because they fight the best oh is that right now in amarillo did you fish any of this um uh_huh uh_huh right oh how about that oh oh i think that is really interesting uh_huh i think they're see and i wish i could go fishing here because i don't really know much about the fishing here i guess it would if you did it like you were just uh saying that's pretty much like rainbow trout you bait the hook you throw it in you [troll] it a little bit and then you wait and they [troll] it a little bit no i don't yeah oh uh_huh uh_huh huh you are now i've never used those that's really interesting yeah yeah uh what kind of fish do you like the best to eat oh do you um yes i've done fishing like that but but uh tell me what uh where you'd catch crappie my my neighbor has gone before and and done that but oh oh i know uh they're sort of like well i want to say flies but not exactly like yeah the yellow okay uh_huh uh_huh yeah my mom she just loves to fish and she has a lot of those those little uh they almost look neon you know they're just real colorful things on onto her end yeah and she she's really a good fisher woman yeah well you sound like you're a good fisher woman too not be a very good [conversationalist] on fishing i don't do a lot of it well good maybe i can learn something do you well it is fun what little i do of course i don't you know i think when they refer to different kinds of fishing i told my husband last night when i had called and they had told me that this was a topic i said well i can tell them how to fish with a [minnow] or how to fish with a worm he said i don't think that's the different kinds of fishing they're talking about that's about the only kind i know how to do uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well it sounds like you do quite a bit of it uh_huh do you have a boat uh_huh uh_huh i think the lakes are probably different in michigan than they are in texas the ones around here are so big that you can fish off the dock but unless you have a boat you can't really get into the where they call the good fishing holes you know is it uh_huh my in laws live on a lake uh a little bit east of dallas kind of in the [piney] woods and the lake is beautiful and i like to go out and stand at the end of the dock and fish but actually catching fish to eat per se you don't really do much of that right there i catch a lot of little old uh i think they call them perch and then the the uh turtles try to eat up all my bait so it's it's so close to the dock that i think all i do is feed them a little bit but it's kind of fun um i would be afraid of that do they ever get on your hook uh_huh are they [poisonous] snakes uh_huh yeah i think i'd be a little bit afraid of those uh_huh we uh saw a large snake right off the dock there at my in [laws'] place last year it was probably four inches in [diameter] or something like that you know great big snake and it of course it scared the women to death you know but the men come out and said oh well that's only a a king snake it won't really hurt you you know but it looked so bad and it was so big that it might not would have hurt us but we sure felt like it was hurting us just being there you know but they're scary looking yes uh i think that uh probably around here people fish for bass and crappie and catfish more than anything else uh_huh now they have a lot of bass tournaments uh_huh oh no uh_huh well that's kind of we've never entered a tournament or anything we're not that big into fishing but i see a lot of people you know early in the morning there'll be all the boats going out and they'll say well there's a big bass tournament this weekend and all those people are here for the tournament you know so i think there's a lot of people that have you know really i guess that you'd call it really sport fishing they're really into it to try to win my but it is it's very a very relaxing sport to be able to just be out on the water and looking around the peace and [calmness] is really relaxing uh_huh i've never tried taking a book with me i'll have to try that one of these days well i do love to fish well i don't know how much you can learn i'm not so sure i'm good at it but i do enjoy doing it yeah well i hope it is there's not a whole lot of different kinds i don't do a lot of deep sea fishing i because i get seasick but we have a lot of lakes here in this area and i do a lot of fishing for uh bass we have a lot of uh uh couple of lakes in our area that are just filled with good sized bass and then when i get tired of them [outwitting] me i fish for catfish and we use worms and shiners which is pretty much like minnows a little bit bigger than minnows and then i also use [spinner] baits and plastic worms it all depends on what i'm fishing for and the time of day i do uh there's a lake like maybe two or three miles from here and it's very convenient on afternoons when i want to just get away and sit and think fishing's a good way to do that and i have a lot of friends who like to go fishing no i don't i have a friend who has a little [inflatable] raft and we use that sometimes i wish i had a boat but i don't uh_huh right that's the same way here isn't it you have to get back in the sticks in the right oh we don't have we don't have a big problem with turtles but we do have a awful lot of snakes in our lakes and i well i can't think of a time that i've been fishing that i haven't run into one or two of them no we uh occasionally i'll catch an eel on a on a hook but never the snakes they just kind of uh we have a lot of cotton mouth so yes they are definitely and they live in little shallow little [coves] that i like to fish in so i seem them swimming by every once in a while yeah they can they're they're certainly ugly yeah definitely do you have bass right well that's pretty much the same way here i well we have those i don't i inevitably if i enter one of those i never catch a thing i just go out there and sit and watch other people do it oh yes yeah oh definitely certainly here they are yeah it's a good thing to take a nice book and sit back and read and fish that's what i do a lot i've uh are you there all right okay um i'm in an area where um we can uh enjoy it year round so i've actually been uh uh been out within the past couple of weeks i'm mainly a freshwater fisherman how about yourself uh_huh uh_huh did you did you ever do the james river uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i've i've been in that area and the trout fishing is supposed to be [legendary] uh_huh for [brookies] yeah what do you like [brookies] or uh [rainbows] or uh_huh yeah do you fly fish or are those streams too small yeah i used to do that a little when i lived up in new york but right now it's uh uh bass and striped bass is the only thing that i go for down in in uh texas uh yeah they're they've uh the striped bass have [accommodated] themselves to the big fresh water lakes and they're pretty exciting when they're when they're running it's a salt water fish in fresh water uh environment it's all put and take uh_huh what's the season april to october or something like that uh_huh uh what's a license cost yeah uh_huh it's about the same as texas yeah well i have all sons so i think i'm probably going to be fishing for a long time i caught the disease from my father and i'm passing it on to my children it's really they love it yeah right uh_huh right right uh_huh uh uh i don't i don't know about the lakes in central pennsylvania are there many uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yes sir i'm right here well actually i've done both kinds uh i'm originally from the state of virginia and uh lived near near virginia beach where we could uh surf cast and uh catch a lot of things in the ocean there i don't believe i have fished the james river there's a possibility but that was so long ago i moved here to to state college uh in nineteen fifty five and that has pretty well limited my fishing to fresh water and we have a lot of uh beautiful fresh water streams that come through this area i'm in an area called center county which is in the very center of the state of pennsylvania the trout fishing is really uh beautiful as i say the the streams are oh eight ten fifteen feet wide and so forth and uh you you stand on the edge and you you cast out and you you work uh from your feet most of the time and then there are there are a few lakes of course close by well tell you the truth i'm i'm not uh not picky i wherever the area whatever the fish is the specialist in that area i uh i enjoy fishing for it and i try to i haven't fished in several years i'll have to admit but when i do fish i do contact uh some of the local specialists so that i can then find out the uh the type of lures that they use and where they fish and any unique uh techniques that would help you uh no we we fly fish uh_huh uh_huh oh that's a pretty big fish uh_huh well our our streams here are [replanted] with fish about every year so that well they they they uh they have a pretty good idea of of uh what the number of fish are in these various locations and and they have have certain areas that they plant you know a hundred here and a hundred there and this is of course x number of weeks or months before fishing season opens so that sounds about right uh_huh pretty close you know well as i say it's been several years but the licenses weren't that expensive i seems to stick in my mind five to seven dollars is about all from what i remember it uh_huh and i have oh probably a half a dozen different kinds of uh fishing poles and and fly rods and so forth and and i had been so busy in my work in these last few years that i haven't had time to fish but i'm going to be retiring at the end of december and i i hope uh the next fishing season that i can sort of get back in and uh enjoy that that that was a really enjoyable uh thing for me to do huh i just have one son and he he lives out of the state now rather in the eastern corner of it so i don't think he has time to fish either oh is that right oh my goodness well i i the disease i caught was simply because uh i i was in the [norfolk] [portsmouth] area and people there there's there's so much water around that you you're either boating or you're fishing and uh i fairly enjoyed at that time i have a small aluminum boat here that uh when i go on one of the large lakes that we have here that i enjoy fishing for for trout from that well as i say i'm in center county there's um there're two different size lakes about well five six miles from state college now these aren't huge lakes from your point of view but they are probably fifteen twenty acres maybe which which here is a lot of water okay yes i love to fish well it's mostly from the rivers and lakes and yes and from the banks i don't like to go out on boats well it uh down here we usually catch catfish and bass stripped bass you know where i fish and trout up at uh lake shasta when i go up there but i like it all except uh really i don't i don't really care that much for the trout i think i had rather have a catfish than i would a trout uh_huh see well uh like in uh iowa and nebraska those little [bullheads] they look just like catfish huh you know that's what i mean cause i am from iowa and uh you know we use to catch those little [bullheads] and that's they look just like baby catfish you know uh did you get to go fishing very often uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well uh you like to eat them after you catch them because there's are a lot of people that like to go fishing but they don't like to eat them you know yeah i know if i go to a restaurant and order fish it's usually either salmon or uh red snapper you know we uh skin them yeah yeah yeah just cut their heads off and skin them and then i just uh flour them salt and pepper them and cook them i don't put that corn meal on them you know uh that's the way my mother taught me to fry them so uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah well you know i don't think i've ever tried cooking those uh catfish quite that big uh most of them are just the small you know pan frying ones so uh um wouldn't that be something it's a thrill when you get a big fish though isn't it you know uh_huh so when you were when you did go fishing where did you go you moved there from where nebraska so it was just like the rivers and uh the lakes i suppose huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well are you a fisher person are you great what kind of fishing do you do in california oh well what kind of fish do they have in your neck of the woods uh_huh oh well i i don't blame you i grew up in nebraska and uh grew up fish cat fishing in the little blue river and then uh we moved to uh south dakota and uh did a lot of [walleye] fishing on the missouri river and uh now that we are down here i think a lot of people do some uh bass fishing and strip bass fishing but uh i still uh i am sort of a catfish man at heart yep yeah they do oh yeah oh yeah i like to fish the only problem is i just moved to texas so it's been a little over a year now but uh i i am not quite sure what residency is for a fishing license here and i so really i haven't gone fishing for about two years now and it's driving me crazy but uh one of these days i will go over to uh lake lewisville or uh what is it uh ray hubbard lake ray hubbard and get some fishing in and get it out of my system for a while well yeah sure well yeah most of the time uh if we catch something we'll take it home and eat it uh and you're right i mean i like to fish for trout and they are really uh uh good [fighters] but uh if i went to a restaurant that probably wouldn't be the first thing i would order if i had a choice of fish on the menu yeah well uh so do you just uh uh skin your catfish or do you [fillet] them out how do you how do you do you okay yeah no well that's how we do it too uh although we uh use to set some uh trout lines out and we've caught you know fourteen fifteen pound catfish and sometimes those are good to uh do on a barbecue grill and just leave the skin on and uh do it with uh butter on uh on on tin foil and then the skin just basically [scrapes] right off and uh and it really tastes pretty good there uh yeah well i am hoping one of these days i'll have the opportunity to catch a big catfish like that on uh a rod and reel but uh so far it's just been on uh on the trout lines so yeah yeah and uh well up in uh south dakota on the in the missouri river there we've uh tied into a few northern [pike] and uh they really uh in in when the water is cold they are very slow moving fish but in the summer time they'll uh give you a run for your money uh_huh yeah in in nebraska uh yeah most of the time uh we just fished uh in the river although there were a lot of sand pits and things like that that we could fish in and a lot of them ended up being close to the river so if the river every uh flooded you know then obviously they would dump some catfish and bass and stuff into the into the ponds and the sand pits and so we would do a lot of fishing there too but uh south dakota didn't really have much for okay so are you a fisherman yeah well i'm just about in the same situation here a few years ago i got really got into it hot and heavy and um about like you say i guess the last couple of years i've you know kind of gotten out of the it i've got kids now that are old enough to play summer baseball and uh ball league basketball and that kind of stuff and uh man i just don't have the time to go like i want to oh really yeah i tell you it really is hard to to get time to go fishing unless you just really really work at it almost like a second job yeah i'm i like to go after them big old black bass oh i got a few little old ponds up around here you know there's several around here i do a lot of oh just small farm fishing i mean small farm tank fishing and rock pit fishing but i've been to uh-oh the last i guess the last big lake i went to was lake fork um um yeah oh are you yeah yeah that is a problem yeah yeah yeah well i don't either really i i like messing with the lures and and that seems to be what the bass like and what you can catch with the lures so that's generally what i fish for you know because i don't particularly like to eat fish i just like to catch them and throw them back but it's uh you know i i got into that mode where i was buying lures and and rods and [reels] and just all kinds of stuff i had one of those little two man little two man boats that used to go around a lot use that a lot but like i say i kind of got out of the fishing business when the kids got up big enough so i sold that and but it's uh so i'm kind of limited now to going back to uh the old farm pond well as a matter of fact uh last last fall uh in october i guess i bought uh i bought a boat but i bought a ski boat yeah yeah you can it's it's not the same as a bass boat but yeah you can get out on the water that's the main thing but i i used to go with a friend at work quite a bit he had uh he had a uh bass boat and he's the one i went to uh-oh like i say we went to lake fork and cypress springs and we've been to lavon and texoma just been around quite a bit in the kind of local area but he sold his boat too so we just kind of kind of [grounded] ourselves in that respect huh_uh yeah that's well you don't have to but it it makes it easier you got to have uh well if you have a texoma license you can fish anywhere on the lake if you have only a texas license you have to stay on the texas side of the lake which uh uh as it turns out most of the lake is in oklahoma yeah yeah yeah go across the bridge across the water if it looks good you can just pullover and start it then yeah now i've got most of mine hung up in the garage now like i say it's been a while since i've since i've even gotten to go you know pretty days you know like today like this weekend of course it's too windy now but you know it usually dies down around [sundown] i've got a little old pond just oh just a few hundred yards from my back door that i go over there occasionally but you know it's pretty small and got pretty small fish in it but it's nice to get out and just start [splashing] on the water or something no i don't take any magazines but i like to watch old berry [stokes] yeah he's about my favorite yes huh_uh oh really yeah yeah i have taken some fishing magazines in the past and that's that's generally what i found seemed like they spend a lot of time discussing the type fishing that i wasn't really interested in yeah yeah yeah it's really more kind of all over the south isn't it yeah what uh what do you get when you join the uh b a s s what kind of benefits to you get yeah yeah yeah yeah tackle and stuff huh_uh yeah yeah yeah i know the uh bass pro shops uh i get their catalogs but that's almost like a christmas in the summertime when that comes but yeah i've noticed they they're now pushing a mastercard that you know they're supposed to spend so much of the money on conservation measures and stuff which is a good idea yeah especially as popular as fishing is getting you know in the last few years last five or ten years i guess it's it's really picked up in popularity again so it's a lot more you know a lot more people using the lakes and uh facilities and putting more pressure on the fish and taking more fish out of the lakes no i haven't yeah now ray roberts i haven't been over there but i i understand there's quite a few people who have been i think that's really going to be a good bass lake huh_uh yeah yeah i understand it's kind of kind of restricted or or doesn't have easy access really yeah yeah which is all right you know but that that's all you can do that's all you can do but it's good to get out there and like i say throw the lure out and just just [piddle] with it a little while yeah yeah some of them it takes a little while to get them to do what you think they ought to be doing huh_uh it is yeah yeah it's just just that that pork skin uh which you know you can get the artificial pork or you can use the real slab of pork but yeah that's what it is yeah yeah that's that's what is amazing you know all these different rigs that people come up with you know the carolina worm rig and the like i said the jig and pig but i i like top water fishing myself you know well we usually go fishing at toledo bend and um my parents they are the fishermen and my brother uh i i usually don't do too much fishing i usually take my raft and float along behind the boat and get a [suntan] but they love to crappie fish my brother likes to bass fish so um for crappie they use shiners and uh bass my brother usually puts a jig or something like that on there for it or a top water bait you know usually artificial bait for bass and then uh we sometimes get [crickets] and they they fish for brim and yeah you haven't uh_huh brim uh_huh and um also they have these uh [wasps] the the uh [larvae] is that what it's called wasp wasp [larvae] and uh-oh anytime we can find those my parents just scoop upon those because they are so good for fishing and um they use those a lot but usually its either shiners or okay no we usually don't do i mean they catch catfish i keep saying they because i've never fished but um they catch catfish you on accident sometimes and then whenever we do trout lines and stuff they usually get catfish um usually not too big probably maybe two or three pounds you know i've seen some huge catfish the bottom yeah uh_huh well we used to just have a little aluminum boat but uh my dad has sold it so he's hunting a boat now i think he's looking into bass [tracker] he found him one last weekend that he really liked but we haven't gotten it yet so well oh i agree that's right and they're they're going to bite anytime and uh uh he got into a place where uh we were in there where there was a bunch of sand bass schooling and my goodness he was throwing this was one day last summer and he every as often as he could throw that hook out there he'd get one but we don't deplete the fish population because we pull them up and look at them admire them and take them off and throw them back although he went somewhere with some friends last week and fished for catfish and got them and i think it's the first time that he's ever that he's actually prepared and ate what they caught he and some friends of his the first time they've ever done anything but throw them back but uh we you know we started with just [rudimentary] things like worms and night crawlers and uh and uh uh gone to uh minnows and can catch just a lot of [sandies] or even catfish with minnows uh and we we fish at lake texoma and then and then just kind of stop there on the way by and get the uh and and get the and get minnows and uh it's it's pretty lot of fun except i say you've got to have a lot of patience because some days it doesn't seem like anything is down there at all and then other days uh uh you you can pull them in with some degree of [regularity] it seems as the summer comes when it gets warm and you have calm days without a lot of wind they seem to be a far more prevalent no yeah oh sure yeah throw throw them back and let them get bigger so you can come get them next year but you know at at texoma it's such a big lake and we don't have a boat but we're on the dock and people come in there's a lot of sandy islands out in the middle of texoma and they go out and fish around there and people come in with these ice [chests] just full of of you know twelve fourteen sixteen eighteen inch long fish it's the [darndest] thing i've ever seen and i don't know we we're probably going to have to get us a boat one of these days soon and go out and see go out and see what's really out there oh yeah i know they are i used to have one that we used to ski ski behind and and before our our children came along my wife and i used to ski all the time then when the and we kept it on it was an eighteen [footer] it was kind of big to haul over the road so we kept it at a lake tied up and then when your children are very little you can't go out and do things like that and it got so the insurance and the and the uh and the tie up fee uh was gigantic compared to what use we were getting out of it so i went and sold it and never bought again and it's too bad now that the kids are teenagers they want they'd love to get out there and learn to ski and do the boating and fishing again so we'll probably do something like that do you do you camp at the lake a lot yeah not in the summer oh okay uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh where where is toledo bend oh okay it's it's on that side it's on the the east side what's what's the nearest big city it's huge yeah and i was i is it like near tyler or [texarkana] or [parish] oh okay exactly half way between shreveport and dallas um how how long does it take you to get there from shreveport oh yeah yeah do you work in shreveport or go to school or what oh what are you majoring in oh my goodness i have been on the l s u campus once i took a recruiting trip for t i there about uh uh eight or nine years ago and i was oh i was ever so impressed with the campus in fact it was a two day trip and between [appointments] i got a chance to walk around and see it and uh what a what a fabulous darn school it was i was just really really impressed with it and and i know it's getting off the subject a little bit but i i do you follow a lot of the sports at l s u okay well we're we're we're very strong uh women's basketball team fans so we we follow your basketball team your your women's basketball team a lot and yeah oh of course they are one of the best uh they didn't do as well this year but we saw them we went down to austin last year and saw them beat the longhorns in the [regionals] and and uh man they were i guess they went to the final four last year and and didn't make it through but we were just uh uh just really impressed with them what what year are you in at l s u uh_huh and what do you plan on doing when you get out oh gee what a deal on like on love boat huh hey that's a neat thing uh_huh are you you then plan on maybe getting an advanced degree somewhere oh at l s u oh uh_huh what would it take about thirty hours or something like that thirty two or thirty six oh okay that would be two long semesters and a summer maybe huh yeah okay oh sure sure well i think i think uh the best thing to do is i've got two masters degrees but they both came years after my [bachelors] degrees and if i had it to do all over again i would do what you're planning to do like continue you need to get it while you're still hot it is it is very hard to go back and and actually the academic part isn't bad when your when you resume because it seems that things come easier because you're more mature and you've got all your life experiences and i thought the academic part would be harder but it really isn't uh uh it because uh uh i don't know i think the maturity factor uh uh over comes the fact that you've had a gap but nevertheless it's it's so much it's so hard to get back to it and it's it's so much easier while you've got your academic juices flowing i have uh my first one's in my bachelor's in chemistry and my master's in physics and in uh in management uh uh quality management i've been in i've been in quality management with t i and engineering management and and uh okay i like well what i usually do is fresh water fishing i haven't been salt water fishing since i was about ten yeah and i do everything up at lake texoma oh yeah i'm a striper fisherman oh wherever those little suckers are but uh we camp at the lodge texoma state park over on the oklahoma side and uh but usually when we go striper when i go out for the big ones we travel down the you know where the channel is down the middle of the lake we usually chase them down through there oh yeah oh yeah do you ever go up there uh_huh oh it's good fishing up there yeah of course i you know i won't throw anything back oh yeah uh_huh oh my gosh that's supposed to be the greatest time to fish yeah oh yeah oh yeah it's fun well my dad got me hooked on it and uh yeah oh god pun pun and uh we'd go out he liked to go about five thirty and you know watch the sun come up every morning and uh boy we we knew a bunch of the striper [guides] and and so we'd follow them and he had a c b on the boat and all that kind of stuff and we'd just follow the channel and when it's you know middle july through late august when it's so hot they stay down real deep all the big ones do yeah follow that channel on up but uh so now my cousin will i make him get up early in the morning and take me out striper fishing and then we usually fish under the bridge at night with the kids and his wife and stuff like that because when we go a lot of times uh the waves are so big i don't want my kids out there because it's sort of dangerous but i love it i love it oh really oh oh how much fun oh my goodness uh_huh oh my goodness oh how much fun uh_huh oh my goodness oh you're kidding ooh not for me uh_huh oh my gosh ooh uh_huh yeah yeah when i take the kids out like i say we in fact memorial day weekend we went up to the lake and uh my cousins have a boat my boat is sitting in my driveway not running and uh so we go up there and we decided that we'd you know go out we got everybody's tents up and camp made and all that and said come on let's go fishing we hauled in well we brought in thirty three fish and we had thrown a bunch of little ones back and uh so then we had a huge fish fry the next afternoon and we went back out fishing and we caught and brought in thirty three more and had thrown a bunch of little ones back but we had more fun those kids they've got real fishing poles but they're the little short ones and it was so funny because i mean they'd just be hanging over the side of the boat mom i think i got a fish i think i got a fish it was hysterical but [jamie] is getting to the age now that when i get up and go fishing early in the morning he wants to go too you know he doesn't want to get left behind anymore so it's getting a little difficult to do that but we love it we just love it uh_huh uh_huh well i have to watch it because [ashley] will out fish her brother half the time and so you know that gets a little sore but where we camp there there's a you know little bit of a [inlet] where we park the boats and stuff so real early in the morning before it gets hot and then you know right at dusk uh down in the trees down there boy all those little sunfish come up and they'll go down there while i'm cooking dinner and just start [reeling] those little babies in and they have more fun with that oh usually i'll buy them a thing of worms or a lot of times i just give them a piece of bacon and they're they'll tear up bacon and stick it i mean those they'll they'll bite empty hooks that's what's so funny and when we're out chasing the big [stripers] we use those perch for bait yeah it's great but we just love it up there in fact [jamie] wanted to go up this weekend with it being fourth of july weekend but uh i can't put the tent up and all that kind of stuff quite yet i'm still pretty sore so anyway but have you been uh salt water fishing oh my goodness uh_huh yeah uh_huh okay well i love to fish i haven't in the last few years but in fact when i married on our honeymoon that's where we went was fishing well i really do enjoy it but i like i say i haven't been for years we when after we got married a couple of years after we got married we got a boat and we used to fish a lot and no we skied too but after the kids came we stopped you know now i am divorced so yeah they don't you know especially when they're little like that it was difficult to have them in the boat we were always worried something would happen so we didn't well i liked [trolling] the best i i mean i like moving so instead of just sitting in one spot and i really do like to fish in the rain yeah i when it's not pouring i mean but when it's just a light rain i'm i really enjoy that and i find that you we use to catch a lot of fish when it was raining do pardon me say that cartoons yes oh gosh i don't know whether i'd go that far well see the thing is when when i i am from originally from ohio and i met my husband in iowa and we he was from minnesota and we went on our honeymoon to minnesota so it was well it was in august and so it was warm enough but uh i cause i don't enjoy cold weather at all so we uh we lived right by a lake and it was nice no i have not i lived in the bahamas for a year but i didn't do any fishing we did some scuba diving but that's all yeah it's it's gorgeous ooh how nice uh_huh oh i've never fished in a farm pond um um no huh_uh ooh oh how wonderful relaxing too huh oh that sounds great oh oh it sounds wonderful no i i know a lot of friends are really too hyper to fish they have to be moving all the time i think you have to be able to sit an and just enjoy yourself quietly if you can't do that you're not to make a good fisherman right well in this day and age that's wonderful to be able to do that because our lives are so stressful so well real sad to say we don't as much as we i'm divorced and and uh since we've been to texas we haven't now in iowa when they were little my son i used to take him fishing and they both have you know gear and we've we've gone once or twice but they there's just not that many lakes around here that i'd be interested in in going to and so you know and i just uh we just haven't and not that they i think they both would like it they have gone with their dad and uh he lives in arizona now and uh he lives in the phoenix area and the mountains are real close and he's taken them up to the mountains and yeah yeah and they've enjoyed it it is yes yeah isn't that that is amazing isn't it well i can remember when i was [trolling] i caught and we couldn't eat this it was a a rock bass and of course they're not good to eat but i mean it was it was for me it was like a six pound fish and that was big for me and i was just tickled to death that to catch it we threw it back in but uh that was i think the biggest fish i've ever caught well we in minnesota people just don't they don't eat them for some reason so oh is that right see we didn't know that so we just threw it back in so yes it is uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh uh_huh yeah yeah no is it uh_huh would you have to repeatedly cast though in the no oh oh that sounds great when i grew up when i was growing up my dad was an avid fisher fisherman and we had a boat and we would go out in lake erie because i'm from ohio and we would fish that was before it was so polluted and so yucky it was a beautiful lake then and uh we would we would fish and and my dad would i can remember even when were weren't interested when we were younger and we would play around the the lake or around and we'd go up into michigan and the rapids up there in grand rapids michigan were just beautiful and he would fish he would get his you know his [waders] on his long boots and he would go out and we would just play by the water and just have a ball and he would fish and it was so gorgeous and that was one of my wonderful childhood memories yeah isn't that scary yeah yeah it it's bad lake erie when i haven't been home for several years but the last time i was home i was just so surprised to see how terrible lake erie was i mean it just was awful and it just makes you so sad because at one time it was just a beautiful lake and not too long ago really but it sure has well thank you and you have many good fishing days too so fishing huh do you do much fishing out there did well you know we moved from california we moved from northern california to come out here and uh i we did quite a quite a bit of fishing out there but uh out here in uh in texas it's all man made lake oh is that right oh yeah well that's kind of the thing here in in dallas and it's it's a whole different kind of fishing than than uh i uh am use to in california i'm use to deep sea fishing out there and fishing off the pier and stuff and uh out here in dallas you have to use lures and all kinds of different things i haven't had a chance to go out fishing much here but i use to do a lot of fishing out in california uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh wow they did a lot of salmon fishing up there then uh_huh uh_huh yeah it is and uh the bait that they use is uh is totally different in california than it is here in texas and uh uh you know we uh use to use live bait in california and they do use some live bait here but not a not uh whole lot not like you know you use to use in california and uh yeah how many kids do you have two two little boys wow you got two little ones then huh well i have got four i have got a twelve year old an eleven and uh six and a three so you are oh that's true oh that's we use to have a lot of fun when i was actually my two boys were born here in texas but uh my two girls i use to take them with me when when uh we would go fishing you know and my wife and i use to like fishing off the pier and stuff and we'd catch uh shoot one time she she caught a couple of sharks off the pier and uh you know we caught uh what do you call uh those flat things and we you know we'd get crab and stuff off the pier and and uh that's that's stuff that we that we miss being here in texas we don't have much of a chance to get out to the coast and and uh yeah my wife loved to fish she didn't like to uh she doesn't like to put the bait on but you know that was my job i just put the bait on and she'd catch the fish in fact we use to go out and and this was not really that funny at the time but it's funny now you know i'd we would get two poles and i would you know i took hers out she would be out there and i haven't uh i i wouldn't even be able to tie my hook on she would catch a fish and she would yell at me to come and take the fish off so i'd take it off and walk back and put my hook on she'd call again to get get the fish off her hook i mean it went like that for a whole hour uh_huh uh_huh you'd talk to the fish uh_huh yeah well uh that's my wife yeah that's my wife uh every time we go fishing she's the one that catches them and i'm the one that takes them off and baits the hook and then it goes all over again so oh is that right uh_huh uh_huh oh my heck oh that's funny uh_huh now do you like eating uh eating fish is that right bass fishing in fact we came from a tournament this weekend huh well i weighed in a fish my husband didn't so i'm ahead of him right now this one was just a one day sometimes we have two days it's uh with the t i bass club so uh_huh yeah yeah it's based on the total pounds and you go according to the lake rules like mostly you can't weigh one in that's under fourteen inches and so i got one that was just fourteen inches so i weighed it in it was a little over a pound in our in our club it's men and women mixed we have a lot of couple's teams well we have the individual you weigh in as individuals and then you uh combine your [totals] as a team so they award prizes for individual and team so yeah they in our club we um uh the lewisville t i we have our club and we all fish together once a month and then once a year we get together with the rest of the t i bass clubs and we compete as a club against the others yeah we have a good time no huh_uh sometimes at night we'll go out crappie fishing but just to be going out it's not a tournament or anything what kind do you do oh uh_huh uh_huh ooh how fun uh_huh uh_huh yeah wow uh_huh uh_huh i bet uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh wow uh_huh wow uh_huh uh_huh wow that sounds neat huh um lake lake michigan they have salmon there okay uh_huh uh_huh yeah we uh we were up there one year for a family reunion and we went out on lake michigan and but the weather was so bad we couldn't go out very far and we didn't stay out very long at all so my husband got one and the rest of didn't get anything so oh i would love to uh_huh uh_huh wow uh_huh wow uh_huh wow yeah you ever been deep sea fishing uh_huh yeah we've been a couple of time well i just went once and i got so seasick i never went back but we go in mexico and uh we caught one trip we caught four well there was four of us and we got four um [sailfish] and a dolphin oh it was that was the first fish i'd ever actually i don't have much recent experience uh but i have done uh a variety of fishing probably the most favorite uh was when i was a youth um probably in the ages ten to fifteen when i went out with my dad uh we lived in we lived on the uh southeast coast of florida about a mile from the ocean we went out off the coast of fort [lauderdale] miami in a small boat with a small outboard motor and went out a mile two miles three miles sometimes and bottom fished and uh and got lots of fish very rapidly basically went out to a reef and uh which probably about oh ten [fathoms] or something like that and uh and we just pull up fish usually pull up fish as fast you could let your line down and sometimes uh had some fun uh with trigger fish that would follow other fish up and then then you'd catch the trigger fish right at the surface occasional shark or an occasional [octopus] or things of that nature but yeah well that was pretty rare you know but once in a while you'd get something like that i see now where do you do uh trout fishing in wyoming i see so you would fish in the lake and the fly fishing is in the stream or what huh you fish from the bank or do you wade uh_huh oh yeah where abouts in wyoming is this i see where abouts is this i see that's quite different from the east coast the the uh gulf coast uh you have to go out maybe ten or twenty miles before you get more than knee deep almost whereas on the east coast uh you go out a mile and you're already uh five ten [fathoms] down huh so what did what did you get off sarasota have you ever been sport fishing i'd like to do that some time i've never been sport fishing the closest i've come is to is uh go out on party boats [drift] fishing you know which is pretty nice we did that in new jersey not too many years ago and uh did it just at the right time and we got into just schools and schools of blue fish big ones about each one weighed about ten pounds you know they were about like uh three four feet long oh yeah yeah that was really uh i guess they maybe about three feet long not four but uh that was something they really fought like you like nothing else i'd ever had okay uh well we probably have about three months approximately uh_huh uh_huh we live on a used to be a farm but we don't farm much we uh but we do have a garden oh i wish i could be doing that uh_huh right you almost have to get started pretty early probably i guess uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah you've had more freezing this winter or this yeah winter i think more bad weather uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh are you do you work or are you retired or you uh_huh uh_huh uh my husbands retired but he's not a gardener he he he's been helping me more but he really isn't uh real crazy about gardening uh uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh oh yeah but it's a pleasure to like you said it's good to get outside and and i like i like my garden too we didn't have to we have just a small garden but we planted corn last year too which takes quite a bit of space we we didn't have too good luck with it because the uh we had a couple of good real good wind storms and it really damaged the corn so we didn't get too much corn last year uh uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh huh uh_huh uh_huh oh that's great uh_huh uh_huh yeah we don't we don't usually cover ours we did a few different times sometimes we've covered with the plastic and other years we've tried newspapers and uh but we generally don't we do our watering from our spring yeah we have an old fashioned pipe sitting that you know water runs into and my husband set up a pump that runs it runs first down and then it stops and when the water comes up it comes on again and we use that to water our garden with so oh i do i do i love it i'd rather be doing that than housework uh not a well not a whole lot i think our [cabbages] and [broccolis] and that we have more trouble with that type of thing with the the yeah uh uh_huh do you go more for natural keeping them off naturally or do you use insecticides uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah well our lawn is is a big lawn because because we live out in the country and so we were not our lawn is not perfect you know it's just the it's just a lawn uh_huh do you eat any of them oh did well did does your wife ever make uh bake in a hot bacon dressing like for salad oh it's delicious and it goes real good on dandelions uh_huh uh_huh use the greens if you get them when they're young and tender you know before they have grown too too tall because they do get a little [stringy] but uh they're kind of fun to to try get a get a few and then throw them in with the rest of your salad sometimes yeah yeah uh but i've been cutting our grass too lately because my husband's back and he's been having trouble with so wasn't allowed to run a lawn mower so it takes about four hours to cut our grass and we have we have hills i'm afraid of the hills but i'm getting on to it i just pretend they're not there and i just go ahead and do it yeah uh_huh uh_huh oh that's great great that's a lot of people don't have that much space even uh_huh so you have all the conveniences of a city yeah and and the country also well you never have enough room do you think especially if your into any hobbies or anything rolly polly what is it a bug you mean a worm a [cutworm] not a grub worm oh uh uh_huh i'm trying to think of what they are what kind they could be you find them under bricks usually and that they're not a slug not a yeah yeah yeah oh really they were not hard are they are they a hard worm they're not a hard huh oh are they black then but they roll up i can't think of what kind they would be uh_huh i'm no help on that then because i can't think of what they are what they would be i think you have a lot more insects down there even than than what we have i know my brother had trouble with fire ants and that even uh yeah and they be can be a real [dickens] uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah you keep trading them uh_huh ours are going to be coming out now our cancer society sales daffodils right now they're they're big now so we we have daffodils here in the house because of the cut flowers but they're just beginning to come out and bud uh uh_huh uh uh_huh uh they're such a nice bright early spring color uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh and they're beautiful too they're beautiful oh my yeah yeah we won't have too much here for another couple of months yet yeah yeah we're it's raining today well our grass like i said is just grass we really didn't plant anything it's just i suppose maybe you call it crabgrass even and uh uh_huh uh_huh it's probably very pretty uh_huh uh_huh we have some people that have done their lawns and uh so do you have do you have the long i guess not not if there's see i was raised in new york but i guess up there you all don't have too long of a growing season do you do do you do your own gardening do you huh see i got mine in well let's see i put in pepper plants this weekend yeah i got all my little [seedlings] coming up in the kitchen and i enjoy [tinkering] with it you know it's pretty hot down here during the summer we hit you know a hundred hundred and two sometimes but you know we don't do too much during the summer as far as tomatoes and stuff like that yeah i can usually i can put in oh probably mid march i can put anything in the ground you know beets and onions and stuff like that but then i have to wait for my tomatoes have to go in here in the next couple of weeks as soon as we're sure we're not going to have another freeze go ahead finish it yeah we've had just a few you know that freezes a little here and there but every once in a while we get a freeze around the middle of april and it's pretty tough no i work uh i'm only forty years old i have to work uh i i really enjoy it it gives me time outdoors and you know i'm a golfer but it gives me time outdoors and time around my house and i burned my grass off here in the last couple of days getting ready to start to the spring season and see if i can grow me another nice lawn i usually have a pretty nice lawn it's a lot of work you know but it's yeah it is uh_huh oh yeah we're going through that we going through the dust storms down here now so but i uh what i did with my garden is i have a a two by six frame that's five by ten i have two of them sitting side by side and then i put uh like a black plastic it's really not a black plastic they call it [wedet] and i put that down and then i put up a couple of inches of pine moss on top of that and i use a one of those black [poker] hoses that actually [oozes] water every where so i waste it up and down there a couple of times and i only have to water about two hours a week and it's pretty nice especially during the summer it keeps everything wet instead of [wilting] oh oh you have a spring how nice uh_huh oh that's that's pretty nice but you actually enjoy it huh do you get out there on your hands and knees and crawl around i i can imagine you all have much trouble up there with insects or with the worms yeah i have quite a bit of problem down here with the squash bugs and haven't figured out how to get rid of those yet yeah i try to no i uh uh try not to use any insecticides at all i try not to even use insecticides on my lawn but i sometimes i can't manage yeah well mine's full of dandelions now so no i never have i don't know how to prepare them no huh_uh really huh i've never eaten dandelions now i've tried [dandelion] wine but i've never tried any dandelions just to eat yeah all right yeah i'll try that i sure will oh oh [yow] so you all are into so you all are into the lawn big time huh yeah i only get well i guess i got my my whole section of my house is probably a tenth of an acre then i have a pretty nice backyard and you know i've got enough room to throw [horseshoes] you know couple of other no and it's nice i'm just inside the city limits i'm probably a mile mile and a half inside the city limits and i'm only a mile and a half from work yeah it's pretty nice i have the room outside i need and i don't really have all the room in the house i need but no i have a question to ask you about gardening though you know those what are they called the they called uh rolly polly bugs that's what my son calls them anyway rolly polly bugs the ones that roll up in a ball i don't know what they're called they look like they've got yeah yeah no it's not like a no you find them under bricks and all that stuff where it's moist and if if you touch them they roll up in a ball i don't know what they call them but i'm plagued with those things and i haven't figured out i even called the nursery i i don't know yeah under bricks or under wood or you know if you leave a piece of newspaper in the yard too long they get in there they usually come out at night but you can find them during the daytime if you pick something up that's been laying around no a slug is actually kind of slimy and these are just he plays with them all time he picks them up and rolls them across the patio no no they're not real hard they're like a water bug of sorts i don't know what they're called yeah yeah yeah when you touch them they roll up but i'm plagued with those you know i think it's a big problem because we're in more of a [tempered] zone you know we don't really we only freeze down here in january and february at the most you know yeah i got fire ants too and you spray in one part of your lawn and they just move to another part so you got to spray your whole yard and your your your neighbor gets them and then he sprays his yard and you get them back again yeah but we're not doing too bad down here really you know the daffodils are out and yeah yeah yeah see mine are up and bloomed already so already they sure are pretty i like them yeah and then in in my back flower bed i have uh [tiger] lilies and they bloom in you know late june mid july yeah they are they real beautiful they're they're nice and green you know they're uh they're up above a foot maybe eighteen inches they come up real pretty every year no problem is it still pretty cool up there well do you all have a what kind o grass do you grow up there do you grow uh bermuda or yeah yeah see we i have bermuda in my yard and i still have the old [standby] crabgrass here and there but bermuda seems to be yeah bermuda seems to be pretty good down here okay um what do you do this weekend huh which is what do you plan have planned for your yard uh_huh huh what part of the state do you live in oh okay okay my wife and i we live in dallas too so yeah just what that area we're planning on moving to flower mound and we're going to be getting some wheel we're going to have to do a lot of lawn and garden work there seems like it uh the place we've been living at it's uh we're we're just leasing it the in plano and the soil has so much has such a high clay content that uh uh i went to use my dad in law's tiller and it about for my arms off [sockets] i mean just just [scratching] two or three inches was just a chore it was it was and then when it gets wet you know you don't even want to get out in the yard it's horrible it's a nightmare but um i don't know what what um where you live is there a real high uh [alkaline] or ash content or yeah yeah i know right where that's at uh_huh really golly is it is it limestone under underneath how do you put trees in there huh oh yeah uh_huh yeah oh yeah we we tried planting tomatoes last year and it they they turned out pretty poor i just i i just wish i'd known the the variety and everything but it it's amazing we also have roses and i mean they just grow so beautifully like what um what type roses oh hybrid [teas] yeah we we have a few uh of the real short stem they're they're kind of like the bush roses but uh i don't know i think it's i think it only has about five or six more years to go because it's a it's a really old bush and but i i i'm amazed because the sun is so intense and the roses just seem to survive just fine there uh_huh huh yeah have you have you uh done um done a lot of tree surgeon work on your trees or not yeah yeah just if you want a lot of you know light for underneath that may be the all right because we had because we have some we have some old fruit trees we have a plum that's just about ready to go so we may just be getting rid of that but but our peaches they they seem to be doing just fine but they they really need [pruning] it just seems like they that that even you know [pruning] once a year is really not enough but the the way they behave i don't know but uh but uh what kind of uh what kind of what kind of grass are you growing bermuda yeah oh i've i've been trying uh uh a mixture of uh the bermuda and the rye but i may be working like a fescue in because of you know the type of weather it seems that uh bermuda's bermuda's fine but um it looks like it would hold the soil but it really doesn't a lot of a lot [silt] that comes in it just doesn't seem to hold it very well but uh but the rye does really well especially during the wintertime but uh but boy once it gets over seventy seventy five degrees that it just dries up [shrivels] up and dies but anyway yeah my my parents in law they're they're building a house into the side of a hill um well it's already been built and everything they've been living there for about three months now but uh this is out in west texas but the the wind there has been so bad that i mean they've tried to plant grass and they just have some problems big time problems they just so they just washing uh watching their lawn just blow away but it's it's quite an undertaking they have about two or three acres of land on lake front property on a on the side of a hill it's beautiful i mean you can see the house from you know miles away but it's you know it's a pretty neat little job but they save a lot of they save a lot of energy but just uh you know for them i mean they they're going to have to start gardening it's going to be from the ground up the whole way and they said well we just plan on spending the rest of our lives just getting this property developed it's amazing i mean they have have the all they have are uh mesquite and [cottonwoods] and uh it's it's all on lake greenbelt that property out there and uh i don't know that what they have they have all the water they want they can they can actually they can pump water i mean they have to get permission but they can pump water up from the shore but uh that's for like an additional they have to pay like some kind of fee per year but uh they're uh right now though i think they're just they're trying to get the trees planted and everything but man i i just think of all of the money that they that they're going to have to spend just getting that but the taxes alone there lake greenbelt and some places they they they really nail them for tax and i mean your talking what just several hundred dollars a year in property taxes it's it's ridiculous yeah no no it's not it's because even though it's far out there it's just that lake greenbelt you know they have to they they try to do it just from the selling the water but um the water usage you know they try to limit even though there's three or four streams that flow into it people still use it enough in like in towns like [clarendon] and other areas that where they [irrigate] they they they still haven't gotten used to the dry land farming but the irrigation because it's gotten so bad the past few years but i don't know i just came back from there and just the air is so dry i don't see how anything can survive out there for long periods of time should say my father in law says the mesquite trees are they're they're pretty smart they're smart they're about the [smartest] tree around they don't they don't even start growing until may may or april like after it's been raining for a few months they say the roots have developed so that's all they work on just a leafy they don't do anything uh_huh i i don't know my my wife and i we planted on the on the south side of our of our house we planted some [gardenias] and they did real fine during the summertime it's just but during the fall when it stopped when uh the rain let off just a little bit it i mean it just dried up and uh so i guess it these plants they just they don't it's like they remain well uh pretty much spent most of my time either in the yard or at nurseries buying stuff for the yard well uh we just bought our house uh last july and it's it it the house is forty years old so there's there's an established lawn and whatnot flower beds things like that but they've uh they've gone a few years of neglect so we're in the process of uh [revitalizing] the whole situation we've got um different flower beds in front and uh a window box a built in window box um trying to get some color back in those get the trees trimmed up uh get rid of a few weed problems and things like that so uh i live in dallas okay yeah uh_huh i'll bet i'll bet right right yeah it's pretty high actually it's done uh it's in the north end of oak cliff in uh [kessler] park area and uh we've got about yeah we've we've got maybe eight to eight inches to a foot of soil and then it's solid rock from then on down so yeah it's uh a little aggravating we can't we can't put in anything too big um as far as uh shrubs and things like that because they've got to get a chance to find the find the cracks in the rock but uh yeah it is it's it's solid limestone uh you just we're just happy that there's trees already there so far um anything like that is is a uh major undertaking i guess uh sprinkler systems or anything uh start to get real expensive because there's an awful lot of work that has to be done [chopping] through the rock but uh and it you know not even consider considering a pool or anything like that that's that's practically has to be blasted in i guess but uh and it makes it makes for a a different challenge i've never well i i moved to dallas about five years ago and uh i never really messed with anything uh gardening or anything like that until now but uh i i keep hearing all the stories of of different parts of town in fact uh we even we were at the farmers market yesterday and bought a few tomato plants and things like that and the first thing the the old guy there at the stand asked is what part of town we lived in because he said uh i've got i've got a dozen different varieties and each one works in one part of town and that's it that's basically what he was trying to tell us yeah yeah it yeah that in fact we put in some uh some more roses yesterday uh different uh a few different uh hybrid tea type varieties yeah okay yeah yeah that's we that's what we're searching uh we've got we've got all the different lake [editions] around the house and we're we're kind of experimenting right now we do we've got the direct sun in front and the backyard has two great big uh [spruce] and and an oak tree all about forty to fifty foot tall so the backyard is just complete dark all day long and uh we're we're struggling to find something for those areas no they're they're in pretty good condition uh we've been we've been pretty lucky on that uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's true that's true it's uh bermuda yeah okay right yeah okay uh_huh yeah it's uh there's such a there's such a difference through the year uh uh_huh uh_huh that's it yeah oh wow uh_huh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah okay uh_huh okay oh okay sure uh_huh wow that really is it it would it seem like it be just the opposite when you get uh_huh uh_huh yeah that's true that yeah that's true that's true uh_huh yeah that's something i've been uh been looking around and noticed all the [flowering] trees and stuff are at this time of the year and you know we're trying to decide what what to what to put on one side of the house and things like that but there's so many things that they they last for just a couple of weeks and then it then it's just a a bush there from then on it's kind of it's kind of disappointing uh_huh yeah phil i guess a good question to ask is do you do your own work or do you like to do it yeah yeah so do you have a do you have a garden or do you just do your landscaping now and your lawn well that's pretty good my my sister is very over [zealous] too she's got some really nice flower beds she puts a lot of time into them this is my first year in a in a house where i'm thinking about doing some flower beds and stuff oh we i've always had [crude] ones at my father's but this is the first time that i really have to landscape a house his house is more like a farm house it's not on a main road my house is on a main road and it has nothing i mean nothing but um what i do do and i've always done it is at my father's house we have my sister and i have a couple of gardens i think we figured out total this is for vegetables about two thirds of an acre so we each have a third of an acre we do that's a lot yeah well it's my dad's and we've had it for he's been there for a long time so um it just happens they built a shopping center next to it but um they put up a nice fence so we still have a lot of privacy and we grow a lot of food uh i enjoy it um the gardens are kind of old you have to step down in them now because we've tilled them so much but there's still we we my sister uses probably a fertilizer i don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing but i wish this phone would stop [screeching] yes i'm trying i don't know if it's my phone this is bad it's not getting any better oh okay i don't see i don't think my phone really does that but every time i have this phone is a little weird i mean it's been dropped on the floor a hundred times yeah i was beating on the phone going can you hear me yeah yeah we grow a lot of uh the basic corn potatoes she likes to really get into her [pumpkins] and see how many she can grow corn potatoes and uh [acorn] squash are good winter keepers i mean things the way we grow are carrots cabbage that sort of goes to waste you know we eat it we just too much she she starts her own plants she plants a lot of tomatoes i let her do all the planting and putting and i i do a lot of the uh a lot of the the the back work and stuff but she does she helps me a lot too she puts a lot of financial she plans it all out beans like to be near certain types of plants now they find that tomatoes don't do well if you put them next to something like uh peas i don't know something no it's just like something like an onion and a tomato would go together but you're not supposed to put your onions near your beans i guess it's it's just what [scents] it gives off they just don't like each other i mean she she reads all kinds of books so i wish i knew more to tell you why but yeah oh that's really weird i've put my cucumbers down at one end of the garden and like i'll make an l shape i've put my cantaloupe so they've been pretty close together but i don't think the vines they don't they don't have to be touching or anything like you say they cross [pollinate] just by bees um something weird this year this last season it was too wet up here we lost a lot of our root things our squash and our potatoes and we got half our [yield] it was really bad because of the water yeah yeah i have to do that i want to make some flower beds and i'm going to have a seven yard truck come in with some top soil and i'm going to my problem is i want to use those rail ties to build up a [planter] but i don't know if the [creosote] in the rail ties is going to do something you know if i want to grow a tomato or something in there i mean i guess it'd go with my flowers yeah i don't i don't i just don't think you i always thought i'd put a tomato plant in there or something weird but i don't think i could really eat the fruit off it without wondering and i don't know if they make landscape ties that aren't treated yeah but they put some kind of chemicals in there too yeah well i'm not really worried about it it's mainly for flower bed so i'm not going to no i'm just not going to put that tomato plant in there but i yeah i do want to have a raised bed i've never my flower gardens are always been like on the ground they don't it just looks so much better when it's up against the house [tiered] up yeah this house that i have is just a three bedroom ranch and i can tell you there's nothing around it cement foundation all the way around it not a [shrub] not a bush there was a lilac tree and the landlord cut it down and said yeah that's one thing you have to do is keep that lilac bush cut down so it doesn't rub up against the siding and i'm looking at him like jeez people would kill to have a lilac bush and he's cutting it down so that's all right flower beds are all right anything as long as it doesn't rub up against the siding yeah that's what he's worried about the trees or a bush because lilac bushes they they grow fast some people uh would really like to have them and then the people that do have them they spread and they [sprout] all over their lawn so they're kind of a pain but you know people who don't have them think they're great and people who do have them curse another thing i have that um is weird is the a [locus] tree in the back yard as a matter of fact there's three of them very badly trimmed they aren't trimmed at all and i can imagine if i had to mow the lawn in the back which we said we'd do if the trees hang down so and the [locus] trees have like three quarters of an inch [thorns] on it they're a pretty tree but you just when you walk up to them they're covered with [thorns] so we're going to get a chain saw and limb it extensively so it gets the trees up overhead yeah because i can just see brushing up against it that it would rip your skin it's worse than a rose bush many times worse because of course it's a tree yeah my dad used to work on them so i don't think i'll have a problem my husband will have problems borrowing one well if that's not the problem yeah well i um about or just over a year ago i bought my own house so this has been the first opportunity i've had to uh be working on my own lawn and garden and uh you know when back when i was a kid you know mom would send me out to weed the garden i i'd hate it you know now i sort of take pride in uh in the yard and you know how the place looks and uh so i don't mind doing it so much anymore well it's yeah it's it's primarily just uh like landscaping a little bit you know i've got some uh bushes around the you know foundation planning things like that and then there's some just some little flower beds and my mom grows she's an avid gardener and she starts her own stuff from seed now and she gets a little over [zealous] when she is planting these seeds in the wintertime and starting them uh she ends up with so many plants that she can't fit them all in her garden they have a huge yard and a huge house and so she brings them up here from philadelphia and gives me all her extras yeah yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh jeez that's more than that's more than the property i have right here that you've got as a uh garden that's amazing right oh jeez uh_huh uh_huh are you getting a lot of static on your end of the line yeah i can't even hear what you're oh jeez it's gone well i don't know there was well whatever it was there was a second there i couldn't even hear what you were saying but um yeah i guess i was having a hard time there too i thought it sounded well i guess we better stick to the subject for the benefit of the people uh uh doing this work but uh yeah i mean that's a heck of a you must have a lot of different stuff you get out of there especially up in vermont there you should have uh some really nice soil uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh really because of like the cross [pollination] or huh huh my mom put uh [cantaloupes] and cucumbers near each other once and the got cross [pollinated] by the bees and we ended up with these these like things on the cantaloupe vines that i mean were looked like round big huge round cucumbers yeah i mean there these were like some mutant huh no it's just the like the bees and insects will do it either that or my mom just had some bad seed or something yeah uh_huh oh well yeah when i my family used to live in [littleton] massachusetts and when we moved in there we had a a really wet backyard and uh my mom wanted a vegetable garden so we [trucked] in uh i think it was seven what was it [cubic] seven yards [cubic] yards i think that's how they measure dirt yeah seven yards of sand i got to [shovel] it all lots of fun uh_huh sure right well it seems i've seen a lot of people use them you know for flower beds but i don't know what whether they'd have [creosote] would do anything i mean uh_huh well you can get um you can get [pressurized] lumber oh that's right there's even there's bad chemicals in those too all right right well you can see it a little better and it stands out um oh gee yeah rub up against the siding uh uh_huh right uh_huh yeah they're like i think i've seen those before but i don't remember what they look like so it'll give you room to get under it sure yeah um oh a tree is always something very nice to have then you got to get him to if he's going to do it you've got to twist his arm to get him to go do it all right uh_huh how fine um oh boy uh_huh oh really wow um well we just moved to our first home and we had lived in a condominium before so we didn't have any lawn and garden type duties so we're just learning the [ropes] here and but when we moved in um our backyard has so many tall trees in it that there there wasn't even a blade of grass in the backyard so we're you know going talking to some of our friends that are [landscapers] and things and learning about different kinds of grass we trying to go grow grass and it just seems so funny to me that when i grew up in missouri and you didn't have to worry about growing grass there it just happened automatically yes we are we tried we planted some fescue last um fall and it's really really pretty and um green it stayed pretty pretty green throughout the winter and it's pretty it's not as thick and as nice it doesn't look like it can [withstand] too much you know it's supposed to die off like in august and then you replant it in september and so but we don't the saint augustine and all that supposedly was back there just wasn't like i say there really wasn't even one blade of grass in the backyard and um so mostly you know we're not even to the point where we're getting into flowers and flower beds or even gardens that we're just saying let's get some grass let's get grass so that the kids can play in the yard and not have to be worried about the dirt so much you know uh_huh oh yeah oh no on its own uh_huh uh_huh yes it's pretty remarkable because growing up we've always had a beautiful lush green lawn and we never there was no such thing as watering your lawns in missouri it just happened and um so it's been real fun here to see there's a big market for the nurseries and for the landscaping companies and a lot of people um we live in north of dallas and um plano uh_huh up north and so there's a lot of market up here since it's kind of the area that people are moving into in the dallas area and big market for for yards yard work uh_huh uh_huh yes they do i noticed that they're really putting in small back yards because they have these most of the houses have the alleys that run behind and so that really cuts into your backyard space and but we don't do our work here out of enjoyment so much as right now we're just this is we just moved in in september so we're just still at the point where we're talking about the necessity uh_huh yeah um hm we uh_huh grass um or what it was well we're going to have to do that because we have the shade the trees this is an established and older home that we moved into and um the trees are just so tall and there must be ten or twelve big tall trees out there so that like even if its raining you can go out in our back yard and not get wet well that's what we're looking forward to and that's what they say the payoff is but well we too hot yes well there are all different kinds there are some oaks [magnolias] and like plum trees peach trees there are some big tall oak trees well um we lived i grew up in san antonio and i was used to the heat and i was used to what couldn't grow down there and we had a small um farm house out in castroville which is just uh to the west of san antonio and we did a lot of gardening out there and uh mostly in raised beds so we could keep the uh soil nice because basically out there it was mostly a clay soil very hard to to grow very hard to [cultivate] and when we came up here uh to california uh we're in the monterrey area and it's very uh nice sandy soil rich soil and the weather is perfect for growing just about anything you want to grow so we've been out here well really in the house since december and we've been uh planting flowers that we could never plant in san antonio because the heat would just dry them up after you know about three good weeks of nice weather before the heat started and here they are supposed to last year around so we have some really pretty flowers growing and uh we're at the edge of a forest area so there's a lot of pine mulch just about anything you would want in texas as a gardener is here just around us we got here at the end of about a four year drought we've had a whole lot of rain uh it's been raining pretty much continually now uh off and on maybe one day of break for about a month so yeah we're getting [replenished] and so there is when i first came here everything was yellow the grass was dead everywhere and now with all the rain everything is just gorgeous lush and green and beautiful and i hope that it holds out here after the summer but uh that has been the major change that we have noticed in gardening and that's about the extent of what we've done just a little bit on the patio and waiting for the rain to [subside] so we can mow we after about a month we finally got to mow this weekend but um we're just so happy to see green it's just so nice we haven't really done too much else other than that uh_huh uh_huh so do you have to get a shade tolerant grass is that what you're uh_huh oh does that last through the summer too oh uh_huh just get grass to grow well when we had our house um out in castroville the problem with ours is that the uh plots there are a third of an acre and trying to keep grass alive during a summer on a piece of ground that big was expensive to water it and uh and eventually well especially when it was so bad last year well i guess it was the year before now uh it was so hot that year that was the year that i think it started out a hundred in february um we were just watering all the time finally what we did was we said we're going to have to let the back yard die it's going to have to do whatever it's going to do because we can't really afford the front yard and so when we left you know the back yard had some um i think it was saint augustine that we had it had held onto a small portion but primarily once the weeds start in the back we were just you know [resigned] to well the only way we were going to fix this one is that if you [plow] it all under and put everything back on top of it again but i don't know that's the bad thing there is that we spent so much money or you would spend so much money trying to keep a large lawn alive that was the only thing i didn't like about lawns and we were sitting there wondering there must be a better way to landscape so that you don't have to spend so much money trying to keep the lawn alive and green and the weeds out so uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh arlington area okay plano uh_huh uh_huh yeah i imagine so well everybody it seems like everyone is so particular especially in the dallas area there there's so much money and everyone can afford they have enough leisure time to afford a nice lawn and another thing i've noticed is that the lawns in some of the homes the area is so small that they take great pride in being able to use whatever lawn they do have to look really nice uh_huh right i know oh it's awful the first house our house in castroville was the first one too and we had no idea the expense that lawns and gardening would run into and the time that it took especially when you start mowing and then when it comes to fertilize then it would come to raking and then when it comes to making sure that somebody had put the timer on the water and the one thing that i did notice is that people that have the underground irrigation systems the sprinkler systems just that was the way to go if you could do it people that were building the new homes that put those in that was that was the only way to go because it was just so convenient they would just turn it on and the timer would run and it would water their lawn and they didn't have to worry about it at all and that was so nice but we didn't have that luxury so we were dragging the sprinkler around everywhere and so i hope you can find uh i don't know what type of grass grows in the real shady areas i remember the guy that was on the radio um they had a gardener and he i don't know i had this one well i've still got the book it's um i think it's just called texas gardening and it talks about the different grasses to use for the shady areas versus the really sunny areas but there is a grass that you can use that is shade tolerant but i don't remember what it is but it's got like a boot on the front of the book it's just a real fancy decorated boot it's like texas gardening and it talks about you know different problems that your lawn can have and how to recognize it and it goes into the full gamut of gardening you know everything from flowers to bulbs to perennials to grass to weeds to trees and to uh how to [prune] but one of the things i do remember was when it talked about the grass and there being the shade tolerant types of grass and i think one of them was a blend of two types of grass that they had used but i don't i don't remember if it was raleigh and saint augustine or or what but i do remember they had used a blend oh but that's so neat because so many homes don't have that so you'll be cool all year around in the summer that's great it makes the biggest difference when you have the big old trees and the people that moved in next to us they built a new house on the empty lot and they just had their brand new little trees they didn't have any shade they any time they had people over they had to do it on the patio because it just got too hot during the day so oh that's great that you have them are they oaks oh that's even better what type of lawn and garden work do you do i see do you have a garden we do the same thing it's i just have a small plot it's like ten feet by five feet i see yeah you do a lot more area than i do i've all the rest of my yard backyard is uh you know pool and decking it's all the dirt i have left in my backyard well i i enjoy fiddling around it's cheap entertainment it is uh_huh that's right yeah i enjoy excuse me go ahead uh_huh uh_huh that's right that's right uh_huh uh_huh takes a lot of room it sure does i made mistake one year and planted some cantaloupe my goodness what a mistake that was they do well it was very good it just takes up you know like you say a lot of your garden area it's the first and only time i've done that we don't do anything exotic we just do oh tomatoes bell peppers radishes and turnips i mean not turnips carrots beets and things like that my wife used to plant a few snow peas i don't really care for snow peas well she just plants a few for herself yeah did you really oh i see okay we don't start anything indoors we just wait until you know the weather warm enough to stick it in the ground probably so yeah you can get a head start on it i guess it it might would yeah uh_huh well it will make it will make them taste better i'm sure sure you got to inspect it yeah sure sure yeah no i this is the first home we've lived in we've had a sprinkler system and boy it is really nice it sure beats dragging hoses around that's right that's right it's really nice uh_huh i'll have to admit i don't i do my own yard i i really don't enjoy doing that i enjoy having a nice looking yard i just don't enjoy the work that it takes to get it done i had a lawn service to do my yard for me during the real hot summer months you know until i retired and now i i've lost my excuse for that so i have to for the last couple of years i've done it myself uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh it is kind of expensive it is of course the chemicals themselves when you buy them they're expensive too that's right if i have a problem discipline you know i think now boy i really need to get out you know and apply something you know and i screw around and don't do it or wait too long or something that's right that's right i'm i'm kind of bad about that i enjoyed having a lawn service but now i have the time and i really can't i really you know don't want to spend the money for it yeah that's right i'm not limited to just mowing it on saturday morning you know i can do it on most any day of the week uh_huh that's right yeah yeah that's coming up here pretty soon is it this weekend it's pretty soon yeah i believe it is too well uh not a whole lot uh i i don't use i i seldom use anything [harsher] than seven dust you know i don't really like to put a lot chemicals on it but then again i don't want the bugs eating it [upping] either uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh yeah uh_huh that's right absolutely they really go through it they really do yeah you know [cutworms] will do the same thing to your tomato vines too boy they'll strip uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah i did something a little bit different this year that i haven't done before i've got my garden is [shaped] that i can it's kind like this uh box shape so i got four pieces of two by twelve and joined them together and just made a box and put in a whole bunch like eight hundred pounds of [topsoil] and manure and you know various other things raised it up and i'm hoping especially with those big tall sides on there it that maybe i won't have oh i'll have less of a bug problem at least they they'll have a hard time crawling up the thing uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah right uh_huh that's right you you have to work on you really do that's right when we had our pool done i had them to leave some extra loam you know for my garden so i had i had a lot of loam out there to start with i just turned it all up and mixed it all up together with no i don't i did it by hand uh_huh it wasn't too much of a job really like i say it's just uh_huh uh_huh it would be handy yeah uh_huh yeah it might be handy they're pretty neat little i've never seen one uh_huh oh yeah yeah uh_huh right yeah that would be neat sure we've had a garden gosh for years and years and years of some size you know i can't remember a year when we didn't have one of some kind uh got you know tomatoes that are starting to bloom and uh i've got carrots i yes i've got a few carrots up and i've got some radishes up and as a matter of fact i've already done a second row of radishes and uh the green onions are coming along snow excuse me yes i've for the first time we planted them this year yeah we tried to find them last year we screwed around and waited too long and i couldn't find a nursery that had any of them left but we've got some this year snow peas are up and uh my wife does uh a small [herb] garden on the side they're up and doing fine uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah that's kind of a let down oh i bet they were that's right we use a lot we sure do yeah one nice thing with onions and and bell peppers at least you can chop them and freeze them if you have you know too many yeah uh_huh we did that too uh_huh sure makes uh makes a colorful salad too uh_huh we planted some yellow peppers this year we've tried it before and nope we haven't had much luck with it we're going to try it again this year they have some little buds on them hopefully they'll do something yeah we enjoy [fooling] around with it beets yeah we've got some beets uh_huh uh_huh i've never done potato we used to do it at home when i was a kid had a huge garden uh_huh it takes a yeah it does take some space yeah uh_huh i see uh_huh uh_huh that will be neat yeah uh_huh that will be neat yeah absolutely they're expensive i don't know unless it labor intensive or something i really don't know that will be interesting yeah sure yeah that's interesting well i'll let you go it's well i do it all uh yes i i try to grow uh uh a vegetable garden and yeah i have two plots one's ten by ten and one's like fifteen by four it's a long skinny one and oh i see yeah i see right right yeah it's nice to get out in the open air and especially when the weather's not too hot or not raining or whatever but uh sometimes i i said i sometimes i wish i had more space you know i grow a lot of things a lot of food and sometimes i i want to plant something there's not enough room to plant some of those things like uh you know the things that vine like uh cucumbers or uh squash or something like that plant one of those and it takes up your whole space yeah yeah they they just run all over the place don't they right right the basics right yeah that's what we do too right peas i i got a few peas out my garden a couple of days ago the first one they started them indoors this time i read it and so i yeah i uh i guess you can get an earlier harvest by doing that but uh sure is a heck of a lot of work because you got to watch them every day and keep them watered and i i don't think i'll do it again oh yeah yeah i enjoy it i come home from work and and i usually say hello to wife and kids and then go out and fiddle you know just walk around the yard and inspect it and the kids want to swing and i push them on swing and i i mow my own lawn and i do i don't have a sprinkler system i i don't enjoy watering especially oh how oh yeah you can have it come on just early in the morning and and off by the you know by the time you're up and about yeah i i usually get it started for my wife and i and she moves it around ever other day uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah sometimes i wish i could get one of these uh chemical services to come out and spray for weeds and fertilize and all that and take that one step out of but uh they want too much money yeah right right but it's still be quite a bit cheaper to do it yourself right and the weed come up and all of a sudden you've got to do something else yeah well if you enjoy it too you know you you can get out in the morning when before it gets hot and and do it and stuff when you only have to right when the days start getting a little longer you know you can i can start doing it in the evening after work when they when they switch to switch when we get an hour more when they [rollback] an hour i don't know i really don't know it just seems like i here it on the news the day before and uh i i think it's coming up here soon yeah yeah are you having any trouble with bugs in in your garden uh_huh right right i i it seems like they come in [spurts] one year i didn't put anything on and i didn't have any problems next year i was planting some broccoli and and some of those they're called cabbage cabbage [loppers] or whatever they were just covered with them i mean i went up i didn't go out there for about three days you know because i and i went out there one day and the plant was nothing left but a stem they [devoured] it that quickly and they they have a you a good appetite and they would you know i i picked off like twenty of them and yeah they got that uh what is that safer soap uh b t spray this year and i've been watching them every day and i've and i haven't seen any signs yet so if i see any signs i'm going to spray them and uh right well the good stuff right right yeah my backyard is uh is [sloping] so i built a box up you know had to build the one the low side up and uh i had sandy loam hauled in i had a dump truck come and dump it on my driveway i guess that's what they do and then i had to wheel [barrow] it in but uh you know you can improve your own soil there but the texas soil isn't the greatest gardening soil right and you know if i i didn't wait five years for it to be good enough grow you know what i mean uh_huh do you have do you have a [rotor] tiller small enough you have a just do it by hand yeah yeah yeah yeah i'd like to get one of these little small ones that you see in all these gardening magazines and it weighs twenty pounds or something like that my neighbor across the street has one he always uses it to [dethatch] his lawn i see him out there and i guess it has a thatcher attachment to it yeah yeah i have a friend who has one and and he lets me you know no problem borrowing if it's just a hassle when you know to go up and it's a fairly large one to [heave] it up into the back of the van bring it home and check it back and just grab it you know if i just go to my garage and grab it that would be nice uh_huh what have you got growing right now uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah okay what kind what kind of onions do you grow do you grow those those ten fifteen y oh they they are the best uh_huh uh_huh uh those i see yeah i uh those onions i think we we planted like twice as much this year because you know we got onions and they lasted from you know about when you harvest them about a month from now or so or six weeks from now until until like october and uh we really missed them when they were gone because the ones from the grocery store just can't compare she made these onion rings that were so good and and and uh you don't realize how many dishes you put onions in that it's an [ingredient] and and it was just like everything you put it into tasted so much better right right we froze a lot of peppers we let some turn red and some we do green and then my wife puts them on pizzas and and chops them up in recipes and things like that oh yeah put them in salad yeah you're you're making me hungry here oh yellow peppers huh yeah sounds like you have a real good garden just let me see what i got i got the peas and i've got some broccoli uh onions some some radishes and uh uh beets uh and i planted potatoes too oh the potato they were they're delicious but they you don't get seem to get that much for the space they they do some [beet] uh potatoes and i've got some tomatoes still growing in in containers i got to wait for a place to to to free up uh our our kids love pickles and we all love pickles so we're going to try to grow our own pickles this year we've got some good um um hybrid [burpee] uh uh [pickler] cucumbers and we're going to try to see if we can pickle our own and so because have you seen how much pickles cost in the store i know it i said why are they so expensive they're just a bunch of little cucumbers you know i guess but we're going to try that and see how that works an experiment i'd like to try you know just try something new every year that i haven't tried before and well what kind of lawn and garden work do you do oh does it really i didn't know that did um you've been working on it for three years really what have you done uh_huh you know i can barely hear you yeah a little bit yeah uh_huh oh wow how did you get rid of them pardon oh dursban two yeah dursban will get rid of just about anything i think but um so you haven't had a problem with that since yeah what else did it did it kill anything else it wasn't supposed to not really yeah really well that's pretty wild yeah we used it for fleas we had fleas in our yard real bad last year and we did that um i just i'm not basically i like to mow the lawn believe it or not but i sometimes have problems starting the mower so a lot of times i won't get out and do it but my husband basically does most of it and he does the you know edging and all that kind of thing and we're renting and so we don't really put a lot of money into the uh you know like this lawn could probably stand a couple of loads of dirt and some saint augustine we just we have winter rye out back and we have i don't even know what it is out front but um we this is the first house we've ever lived in and we're just not real into the lawn probably because we're renting i guess huh so it anyway right uh_huh we were getting what oh really hm i wonder why it does uh_huh uh_huh yeah really well i'll have to remember that because hopefully we won't have them this year but we have a cat that comes in and out and the cat was getting um fleas and stuff and bringing them in the house so we had a real problem last year with fleas and uh it was quite a drag because um we got them in our house and we're christians and we prayed that we could get rid of these fleas and we got rid of them believe it or not with smoke bombs which is just about impossible to do but we did and so we don't want them back this year you know so i'll remember that if we see it's a problem in the yard we're almost they were so bad last year even ticks i don't know we've had ticks before a lot and we've had to get out and treat our lawn for that i think we used dursban for the we used dursban and diazinon and get out there and do what you do with that thing you know and spread it all out everywhere but that's about the extent of our lawn care so i don't know do you enjoy doing it yeah well that's well that's funny yeah not everybody enjoys it though everybody has a different thing i kind of enjoy it and my husband doesn't i kind of have to sometimes i'm too busy to get out there and do it and he you know he doesn't really enjoy doing it but he'll do it and he doesn't gripe about it or anything but you know i'm kind of like you and he's kind of like your wife i mean you know in that he doesn't really enjoy it but i would like to have a garden you know that's my thing but right now where we're living we have the trees where their uh roots are at the top of the ground everywhere over the ground i don't know what kind of trees they are but you can't have a garden you can't till it or it'll it'll tear up a nice tiller so we're going to wait until we move we don't have a lot of sun either because it's big trees back there so we're going to wait and when we move that's one of our priorities is to get a house where we can have a uh garden and so i'd like to do that i have a feeling i'll be out there all the time taking care of that but that's our next thing do you have a garden uh_huh oh are you kidding that sounds fun where do you all live oh really southwest where oh really oh because we're in dallas i guess i assumed you were here well that's neat and um yeah that's what we want we have a yeah that's really what we want but we just haven't been able to do that yet so one day we'll be able to do it and i'm excited about it and then i don't know anything about it i have to learn and then you'll have to give me a call on gardening what do you do in your garden and i'll go nothing what should i do but anyway i guess that's about it though it sounds like we've covered all the bases so i guess we'll let you go and um do you have anything else you wanted to say okay i know you too i hope you have a nice day and we'll talk to you later bye well right now the place where i'm living the yard was basically neglected for about the last twenty five years so i've been trying to rebuild and [reestablish] the entire lawn and after three years of working at it i've i've been amazed at just what a little bit of doing help out things to the lawn has really brought it back instead of mowing in the same direction every time changing one day you'll or one time you'll cut it cut the lawn the long way then you'll go the opposite way instead of going [lengthways] you go [width] and it helps the grass come back for three years killing lots of fire ants i was firmly convinced the entire front yard was nothing but one gigantic [ant] mound because it was like you could you couldn't even stand still out there is this better it was like you'd go out in the yard to water something you'd just be standing still and the ants would start crawling up your legs it's like i'm not standing in a mound though uh dursban two a chemical called dursban two it's a crystal um not bad every once in a while you'll have a mound pop up but that's to be expected um as far as i can tell it hasn't killed anything it wasn't supposed to even the area of the grass that was underneath and around the [mounds] it didn't kill it well you said you had problems with fleas last year in the yard uh i found one thing that it's kind of a weird thing to say to put out on the lawn but every time i've done it it's it it drives the fleas completely out of the area [powdered] sulphur you you don't have to put a whole lot out just if you've got a broadcast spreader i think it comes in a forty pound bag and it's real fine like flour and you just go out and do the entire yard and you i mean you don't have to put [clumps] of it just very lightly cover the entire yard oh i love it my wife can't understand it'd be a hundred degrees outside i'll be out there but it's too hot to be working in the yard i'm under the trees i'm having fun and i'm stopping to drink water so what's the problem i've got the this is the neat thing about the place we ended up at sitting on about a two acre lot now and half of it's the back half is my garden uh in missouri city southwest southwest side of houston southwest houston uh no it's just i've had an very enjoyable conversation with you okay you too okay bye all right do you do garden work uh_huh oh where do you go to college where's that oh okay yes well do you you know do you do gardening at home oh my goodness hm yeah well i guess you glad you got to go to college so you'd get some rest yeah i had a whole bunch of flowers and things well i don't have as many now we lived in the country for a long time and i had a whole bunch but now i work and i live in the city so that sort a kind of hung it up i have a few flowers but most of mine are like in barrels and things like that and this year i decided that well my husband made a little garden out there with some tomatoes and stuff in it but i decided that i don't like grass i don't like to have to have to pull grass so i decided that i would plant me a tomato plant in a flower pot and see how it worked and mine looks real good yeah uh_huh oh i had never thought about that i could probably plant one and bring it in and just like i bring my plants in every year that'd be neat well i got a patio and i tried to talk my husband into just buying a whole bunch of pots and planting them all in it you know because that's favorite thing is tomatoes to grow and so um but he said no he was going to plant in the earth you know like he always has because he's always had a garden out in the country and i think he kind of misses it a little bit you know since we moved to the city but um i went ahead and planted one and mine looks better than his it does and then i like um you know what day lilies are day lilies uh_huh no no huh_uh these look like a lily they look like a a well they really look like an orchid when they come out uh_huh that what the look like but they only bloom for one day they'll um you'll have a bud the evening before and then the next morning as soon as the sun hits it it it starts opening up and then when it gets dark it [closes] and that's it it only blooms for one day uh_huh yeah but um they look like [orchids] is what they look like but they look like different color ones like i have uh yellow ones and i have red ones and i have purple ones and then they have like you know the real [velvety] looking stuff inside it looks just like [orchids] in different colors that's what they look like they are they're beautiful uh i have a friend when i lived out in the country and she had belonged to this kind of society that like every year you know or every so many months they would send you different bulbs that they came out with and i mean they were real expensive they were like well the most expensive one that she gave me a bulb for was like thirty two fifty for one bulb so what she would do is she would plant them and they [multiplied] so the next year when she you know [weeded] them out so they wouldn't be as thick then she'd give me some of the bulbs and i mean i have some of the most beautiful day lilies that you've ever seen so when we decided to move it was really funny because like i said i had a whole bunch of different kinds of things and i kept saying well i want to take a few of these and i want to take these and i want to take these my husband finally said look are we going to take the grass can we leave the grass i said yes we may leave that and we had a tree that was like seventeen foot tall or something like that that he said no no i am not taking the tree you know i mean every time we went outside he'd look at something that was [humongous] you know no we're not taking that but the last day he said can't we leave the grass and i said yeah i think we will leave that but i brought my kids when they were little they had given me some azaleas so i brought all my [azalea] bushes and you know i brought i brought as much as i could bring without you know really tearing up their place but just like um you know the people that bought ours bought the place but um i knew that they would you know if i left like one bulb of each one of them by this year they'd have ten bulbs of each one of them so it wasn't like it was going to be this big raw place or something you know it would cover it right up but i just couldn't see it you know going off and leaving everything like that because this house i really liked it and everything but the yard was a lot to be desired oh there was nothing these people we have one ugly pine tree i mean and it is ugly i even tried making it look nicer you know i tied the yellow ribbon around it and it was so ugly oh it did not help let me tell you i took it off and put it on my door i did not want to call attention i mean it was terrible so really the plants that i brought over and put out here are just about all i don't do any of the mowing or you know edging and all that my husband does all that stuff but that's because i'm allergic to the grass really now i like to go to the beach where the sand is because then it doesn't make me ill yeah i used to until it i got so allergic to it i don't know if it's all well i went and had some tests run and just about all the kinds i was allergic to but it's not as bad here like saint augustine i think is what we have and it's not as bad as it was when we were out in the country but out in the country i mean if i went outside while he was mowing the grass i was going to have a gigantic attack so um i get shots for it now too that helps a whole bunch but one good thing about it see i don't have to mow the grass or i mean that's really nice well the first thing we always plant is tomatoes every year i don't care if we don't have anything else we're going to have tomatoes and then we plant cucumbers and oh yeah really it must be the uh now that's i mean that's something that grows like a weed here i mean it grows like a weed we have to allow extra room for those because you know i mean extra space between the rows and all yes but i mean we usually get if we plant for every one plant we probably get fifty to sixty cucumbers off of it i mean just pulling them as fast as you can we usually give them to everybody anybody that wants a [cucumber] can have it but we tried it too where you run it up a fence and um we had some weird cucumbers because they grew inside the fence i mean like the little thing would be half on one side and half on the other i mean it was but they're so heavy you know they get so heavy they kind of weigh it down but i mean cucumbers here grow like crazy of course it's real hot here too yeah yeah now if we have any like the birds will pick or something you know and some of the seeds drop have you ever had them just come up in different places i know we do that too you know and at the first year because i was from the city when we got married and the first year that we planted i couldn't figure out i mean the well the first year after i mean we planted them but the first year you know after we'd had a crop all these little things like we had cucumbers coming up you know in the middle of our okra and i thought how did this get here i know i didn't put that seed there and it was weird but the birds had you know evidently just deposited them for us uh_huh as little as possible i'm a college student so if i do any garden work it's only when i go home in the summer it's about two hours north of pittsburgh yes yeah we go home well we have a large family there's twelve kids in my family so like almost all our vegetables and everything is from the garden so we have a pretty good size garden but we have like a lot like my mom likes flowers so we have a lot of flowers too uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh you know i've seen a lot of people that do that i've seen you know like elderly people that really can't get out too much sometimes like we i have a great aunt that lives in a it's just like uh a high rise for elderly people and you know she does her own thing and everything but she has it's like a little apartment building and she has a tomato plant year round because she you know they keep it warm with for all the older people and she keeps it year round uh_huh uh_huh pardon me are they well do they just come out in the morning then go but we call them morning glories up here oh really oh and then it's done completely done oh uh_huh oh yeah oh really pretty uh_huh oh my gosh uh_huh take the whole grass the whole yard that'd be funny uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah oh uh_huh oh that'd be awful i love going out in the summer in the grass uh_huh yeah and um well even up here at school you know it gets hot and we have the windows open well they mow the grass up here sometimes six o'clock in the morning and just to smell the grass it's just i just love the smell of freshly cut grass uh_huh oh my gosh uh_huh yeah you said that you had a garden what all things do you plant in it or do you like to plant in it uh_huh uh_huh do your cucumbers come good really sometimes when my dad has like that's the one thing no one is allowed to touch except my dad he takes care of all the cucumbers because he said the vines are just so at our house as soon as you touch a vine it's like it completely dies uh_huh sometimes we have really good luck with them but then there'll be like maybe two years in a row that we can't get anything oh wow yeah because they take up a lot holy smoke uh_huh uh_huh oh my gosh wow well see tomatoes grow like crazy at our house like we have a section of tomatoes and we put the tomatoes there every year in the same section and i swear we get tomatoes six rows up uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh well sometimes too when we take out our garbage and we usually you know we just dump it in the middle of the garden you know after your [garden's] basically done and we're finding out like we have peach trees in the middle of our garden now because we took peach seeds and dump them there whenever the garden like in the fall now we have peach trees coming up okay we're official now yeah oh okay oh yeah oh you're you're you're not the so called you need a house i guess to go through all of that i have had a couple of houses and uh the only recommendation i would have for someone who hasn't [gardened] is uh one get a couple of good books of books of course and usually they have talk shows here in dallas they have two great uh talk shows that go through everything that will grow here which is the opposite probably of what would grow up where you are and so uh in fact you you could easily do that now listen to turn on a talk show up there and see if there there's got to be some gardening folks on the radio that says when to put your grass in and and what kind of grass to grow up in virginia and everything so i uh for someone who doesn't garden i'd say that that's my biggest recommendation is to oh yeah yeah i like it a lot uh uh it's a lot of work i'm an engineer i'm i'm with t i you are you with t i up there or okay uh where was oh yeah no i i like it i uh i always know that why i'm not a farmer when i garden though i mean it is dog work and it is tough i have a lot of trees down here uh the part i don't like i guess would be from december through february where you have to rake leaves forever it seems like and the wind blows all the leaves on from your neighbor after you rake yours so other than that you know those three months when it's pure dog work uh the rest of it's very enjoyable just going through the experiences of of putting little plants in or whatever i i haven't had to plant any trees because i've got so many but uh uh but i do listen to that talk show there there is some great people from texas a and m i don't know maybe you've heard of a and m down here but there's some great uh folks uh that have been well trained and again uh to to uh recommend gardening for this area yeah you probably have rye grass up there we grow bermuda and saint augustine here right yeah see you would have to learn that though see um do you have much luck in the winter or they're they're freeze it freeze out because the roots are all in the winter uh or do you have to start all over every year right yeah uh_huh in the same pot that's amazing uh_huh yeah i grow a few things in pots but we have to bring them in here in the winter because usually uh if it's not below the ground so you can [insulate] the roots from freezing you know the pots will will die everything in a pot will die so you can bring them well we do bring stuff in the garage and everything but uh it's quite time consuming by the way i don't know how close you are to getting a house or anything but it's quite uh but i would definitely do it i'm all for doing everything whether whatever subject you pick do it the knowledgeable way don't go out there and start digging holes uh get some books of whether it be pennsylvania or virginia as as well as not your neighbors of course they usually know nothing but listen to still then there's always a gardening part of the newspaper or communications as well as i bet there's a talk show up there right now that you if you turn the dial around you'll on saturday this is saturday that you'll find someone probably in the morning i don't know discussing you know what we do up in virginia to get something growing you probably don't have to do much over there the soil's probably so good our soil's not very good down here we're i guess in the ice age it it it's pushed a lot of uh limestone and everything to some parts of dallas you just can dig a foot down and you hit solid limestone you know so uh i think all the trees that are here now were planted kind of like the johnny [appleseed] type trees where people have come from i'm sure the indians were here there was nothing growing in this part of dallas it's so [scrubby] uh and i think that we even got our famous hundred year old pecan trees from alabama and all that too we we call them native pecan trees but they grow wild here they're eating pecans though pecans are probably not taken from virginia they're probably only in the south for pecan pie and all that it's what they call pecan pecan pie up there in the east from pennsylvania and new jersey i'm from new jersey originally yeah i've worked on that with a little chewing gum which i shouldn't do uh go ahead you how many times have you called by the way or how many times have you been called uh_huh oh yeah today that's what i'm saying today i was i got to laugh because i tried it this morning and i thought everybody was gardening i thought well no no this is a great subject because they're out there gardening you know i didn't tell you what our weather is like it is beautiful here today it's not quite that hot yeah we've had a real nice mild spring you might have seen if you've seen the news today about all the tornados here that were north of us uh i don't know if you get c n n i don't get c n n but it's here at work in fact i'm at work today believe it or not but uh they have t v in the break areas and there was some heavy tornados uh i guess in kansas quite a few people were killed you'll see that on the evening news uh tornados uh which is not the right subject but uh they blow through here all in the spring i guess it's related somewhat to the weather you know and and the plants and all that that uh sometimes they do essentially nothing and the weather men yesterday were all alert say hey there's something really terrible going to happen and they they sure were right but it wasn't in texas it was north of us yeah look at the news tonight they'll they'll they claim thirty odd people were killed up in kansas city kansas anyway back on planting uh it is very interesting uh subject uh when you when did you get a house uh your your trees grow up so well up there but i'm sure you have plenty of trees that that is a key thing for shade and keeping your bills down uh i guess you have mostly pine trees but where in virginia are you all uh_huh oh do you have the cherry blossoms there in there or not yeah oh yeah yeah azaleas grow all over we grow those here too although again we have to prepare the soil you probably have nice big pine you probably have all kinds of trees the oaks and everything that's one thing i noticed there uh_huh have you ever been down here okay it's interesting country it is wide open uh and flat uh and again as i said i think the when the indians were here there there weren't any trees but the the civilization has brought all kinds of experiments with all kinds of trees and a lot of them have done well uh they do have some pine forest areas in in in east texas where you have native pine trees but here in dallas it's i think they all were planted by the classical johnny [appleseed] and johnny [pecanseed] whatever you would call it you know there's a tremendous amount of pecan trees that we use for you know uh for eating i think they thought that was going to be a great boom crop uh hundred and fifty years ago because they are all over the place in the south what else i don't have any say i i the subjects are usually pretty interesting i i'm i'm of course i'm a t i so i'm hoping this works t i is very good uh has done a lot of experiments in the speech uh speech uh synthesis synthesis can't say it and they've come out with some new products in fact this week they came out with some new math uh you might see them in your advertisements uh new math uh speak and math uh devices they they have had speak and spell and all that for years but they've come out with some different ones this past week and uh my wife and everyone what what are they going to accomplish out of all this and i said well you're not going to have to type on the computer one day you're just going to have to talk to it you know so you you it's going to be much faster of course you know the classical thing for the handicapped too person who can't type very fast or like i can of course not that i can type very fast either but uh yeah um yeah yeah it's um it's very hot in fact i've been cleaning because i live in an apartment so i can't do very much gardening other than balcony gardening um you know i have the little flower boxes with um a a lot of different flowers and i do enjoy plants but i don't have a yard or anything that i can do gardening really uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right right well the uh_huh yes but uh_huh so you enjoy gardening uh_huh no no i'm with a defense contractor uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um yeah i'm sure it is you know different in the different areas um i'm originally from pennsylvania and i do go home on weekends during the summer and uh and uh mow my mother's grass and different things like that oh i would have no idea no idea whatsoever like i said i'm just a balcony kind of gardener with my little flowers and my flower boxes and my herbs on my window [sill] and yeah i have to start all over every year well except i do have some um some day lilies that um you know i don't do anything with and they seem to come back year after year and i leave them on my balcony even in in the snow and the winter you know in the ice everything because here you know not as severe as the snow is in pennsylvania but here we still do get some snow and ice and things like that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right right i agree with that uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh wow uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right i'm uh_huh uh_huh oh you don't sound like it uh_huh um i've been called a lot at the times though it's been not very appropriate i guess that i haven't been able to actually participate i've participated probably in about maybe i don't know seven calls and you know i've called a couple of times but most of the time i notice that um you know it takes forever to get a call through yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah it's like eighty five degrees here no i haven't uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh oh my uh_huh i'll have to make sure i catch that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i'll have to make sure i catch that uh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um right now the district washington um in [fairfax] virginia it's fifteen miles west of washington d c yeah there's there's a few not you know nearly as many as what's actually in the district but um they're definitely enjoyable right now i know the azaleas and everything are out are beautiful uh_huh yeah there there there is a vast variety here of you know trees like if i look out my window right now i can see you know couple of pine trees some oak trees yeah um no actually i haven't uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um well i guess that i really don't know that much uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh but then what about people that um i i i personally work with someone that that is [deaf] and cannot speak she can speak but she can't speak very clearly and she in fact is a data entry person i mean she types away all day okay uh we're going to talk about our lawn and garden chores do you have either one do you oh really so do i i would i had rather be outside than than inside any day do you work during the week uh outside the home uh_huh yes or you sneak out in the morning after daylight savings time starts and with your cup of coffee and see if it has grown overnight well i unfortunately am not gardening this year i love gardening in fact i was prevented at like no about thirty years ago with a life membership uh from the richmond virginia counsel of garden clubs and it wasn't because i was so good but i organized a very large garden club but i still have uh it well it's always something that seems so odd to me but uh yes it has really nothing to do with uh actual gardening or flower [arranging] or anything like that it was just that i happened to organize this group that was about seventy people that isn't yeah that that those numbers were were great but it yes well and actually i think that most women's garden clubs that i've been aware of in the past uh are only flowers what i would like we've spent the last twenty years in oklahoma just moved to to north carolina and uh we were originally of course from this area from virginia but uh in north uh in oklahoma it's the men's garden clubs that i would have wanted to join and you would have because they do all kinds of uh gardening and not just flowers like women do uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yes i think so too yes and and i have spent the last ten ten years being a [florist] being a [florist] it was nice it was [exhilarating] uh for many years uh many of those [tanned] until the last couple when uh we had such an economic [slowdown] yeah well tell me what's in your garden this year since i don't have one uh_huh uh_huh yes do you have trouble with red spider on [marigolds] maybe it's yes uh_huh uh_huh do you isn't that funny so is my favorite okay yeah yeah well i think it has the best flavor yes uh_huh well i like them in between i like them in between the flavor is better i think in between yes yeah uh_huh my mother well and i know i love them well that's the yankee way but i think that's like another vegetable i love them that way just just the thrill of uh_huh uh_huh in fact i my mother who is eighty six years old canned over a hundred quarts of half runners last year yes uh_huh yes yes and she tends to it herself uh_huh isn't that wonderful i think so too yeah uh_huh right uh_huh no wonderful bet you showed them oh no yes uh_huh great well we could we could really talk gardening a long time i'm enjoying hearing you so much um no october uh so yes recently seven months and it the weather is wonderful i love it it is just terrific you know rains a little too often oh i think so i have a little spinach bye bye well i don't do anything with the lawn really but i do gardening both flowers and vegetable gardening um i we have enough property that we can have a little bit of a garden and that's fun well actually [wally's] had one even when we haven't had big yard because um we enjoy that we love fresh vegetables in the summer and it's just one of the things i enjoy doing so would i yes i do uh so i manage to fit in my gardening chores afterward i work for a school system so i'm able to do that um because i get home a little earlier and i can still do some some sorts of things but oh absolutely wow oh that's wonderful but that that's and you really feel you can accomplish something and to help other people too that's neat uh_huh right that's wonderful yeah yeah well i think it sounds good i've never belonged to a garden club because i've always been more interested in just doing what i can do on my own i've never had the time really to get involved in the organized sort of format but i know people who do it and and enjoy it very much oh my word for heaven's sake well um there aren't men's gardening clubs in this area that i know of they're they're women but um and usually they're the tea type things you know where they have a little luncheon and they do their thing but um flowers are primarily the emphasis um whereas i enjoy vegetable gardening almost more i do flowers sort of look pretty but i i really like to do the vegetables being what oh my well what a wonderful thing yes oh terrible yeah okay well uh the flowers i'm just in fact i was going to go out today to buy some plants so i could put them in i i always have [geraniums] and um and then i have a shady area that i need to uh be concerned about not getting something that has to have sun so i've discovered that uh [impatiens] that tried and true is turns out to be about the best thing to use there along with [coleus] because they uh look pretty and in my front garden uh but i like the [vinca] which is something i hadn't they look sort of like [impatiens] you know but they're not quite and they're better for the sun areas um and of course you know the mine are old theory ordinary flowers [marigolds] and and that sort of thing in my no i don't i don't know maybe this climate is a little better um but in the vegetable garden we grow um usually what our favorite is something called white half runner green beans now that's well you know why because i grew up in north carolina and that was my mother's um favorite bean she she always grows you know five different varieties but that's the kind that produces the best and and they're wonderful and i pick them when they're very young and have very little string and then just steam them a little bit my mother picks them when they're fat and she cooks them for an hour with some fat backs and they're good both ways yeah yeah oh in between the size wise yeah yeah well my mother doesn't think they have any flavor the way i cook them oh of course yeah it is they're two different vegetables that way uh_huh oh my gosh my does mother will be ninety this year and she lives in western north carolina and uh she would do that if if we didn't tell her that she'd better not but she doesn't have that big a garden but she has a bigger one than i do and i have four children you know so oh yes oh yes oh it is it's great it's it's really her joy and i suppose that's why i enjoy gardening because you know growing up with it we also grow um yellow and green squash um much to my children's chagrin and uh we grow a lot of tomatoes uh there's just no replacement for fresh grown tomatoes so we enjoy that um we grow i i have been trying to grow watermelon and cantaloupe and get [teased] by my family but i actually was successful for the last two years so i'm going to do it again that's right and we grow broccoli and i have been very uh happy about the new way of controlling the the uh worm that gets in broccoli um by using the [bacillus] [thuringiansis] which is the uh little well in fact that's what they use for [gypsy] [moth] i don't know if you have had that problem there or not but it's you know it's a problem that's that's moving south from from the new england area and they devastate the trees so they they spray the government uh sprays um two three times in the spring when the uh [caterpillars] are are coming along because what they do this this uh [bacillus] um the worms [ingest] it and it expands in their in their um [digestive] tract and they die so that's the same technique that is you know for any of the other uh little [varmints] that get in vegetables so it that's really very nice because it's a non toxic way of of handling the problem well it's nice hearing you talk and i'm i wish you uh good luck have you just recently moved to charlotte oh so well that's not very long yes oh that's great that's great well i hope you have a an opportunity to garden again oh well good bye bye well what kind of garden do you have oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh do you have a lawn oh yeah well um actually it we've sort of had an ideal spring and um the the peonies have been out for now about three weeks and the roses have been blooming for two weeks and the grass is uh this lush green and of course i've got lots of weeds in mine because i don't use any poison either but um you know i just keep looking at and i say jeez you know this is the first year it's been so perfect but and my garden you know my tomatoes are two and a half feet tall the plants and you know i'm i'm going gee this can't you know we'll have a freeze well that's it last year i think it was you know my peonies were were [budding] in january and you know there was no way that was going to make it and sure enough you know we had really mild weather until i think it was may or something and then you know everything just got hit hard so but yeah it it's interesting and i enjoy gardening my son does the mowing of the grass i don't think that's a pleasure for anybody the the mowing uh_huh oh they help you oh dear oh but that's nice you know i mean the peach tree is is a start and right what about tomatoes aren't they pretty hardy oh uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh well i would assume too i mean you've got three or four months you're talking about of of bad weather uh_huh uh_huh oh dear sounds like it would have been pretty oh sure sure well it sounds like you you've got your hands full and you know gardening isn't isn't high on the list but it's not off the list uh_huh oh right maybe next year they'll do better okay well thanks it was nice talking to you too bye bye well we've tried having let me turn the t v off we've tried having a vegetable garden and i'm from chicago and the way that uh bugs and weeds grow down here is very different from chicago and we have tried several years in a row and we've given up between the fire ants the pill bugs the weeds the drought and a hundred and ten degree heat all summer and we just kind of uh decided to go with a few flowers and give up on the vegetable garden we had to put so much poison out on everything that we thought [who'd] want to eat that stuff you know so we have really been frustrated by our gardening attempts here and uh if you really water a lot you can do it but you know when you have to pay for water it really gets to be an annoyance to have to water constantly so right now we're just yeah we we just try to maintain the lawn and the shrubs right now and the trees we have a peach tree that's the extent of our um contributing to our food supply but that's nice to have but yeah yeah so what do you do up there um oh wow yeah really gosh oh boy that sounds wonderful if you don't have a frost you'll be all right that's what i remember from living up north is that you'd get everything set and then you'd have a frost and half the stuff would get [frostbitten] and you'd have to wow uh_huh oh boy that's frustrating oh yeah my husband does that thank goodness because i that's not a pleasure for me i love gardens that are well tended and i just there's been a few different places i've lived where i've just i don't know whether it's little old ladies living there or what but you could just tell that they had a love uh a love affair with their gardens with beautiful wild flowers and just i love the host of colors that just keep coming all you know year long and uh i i was in england once and that's one thing that impressed me so much is no matter what size yard somebody had they had a beautiful garden in it you know it could be three feet by four feet or something so i do admire that but i haven't really put uh too much energy into it course we have two little kids that are two and three years old so that has put a [crimp] in my every activity other than diapers and laundry i'll tell you yeah that's really lovely i would love to have different fruit trees it's it's been wonderful to have the peaches they're just delicious and we we we have still have to spray some but we don't have to just [asphyxiate] [ourself] with the poison which is good because i just i can't see the point in doing that and eating anything out of it afterwards um we've tried them but again it's just like the sun [scorch] we've tried them in kind of halfway in the shade and halfway in the i mean it's just you really really have to be prepared to water constantly during the summer people that have been successful out here have done this drip irrigation and installed that and um that's really what makes the most sense because you don't have to use so much water and it really does the job but it's just amazing how hot and dry and for how long it gets out here and if you're not really committed to it i mean me i'm you know i'm real committed to it for about a week and then i forget about it for a week and then i go oh yeah i need to do something and by then it's burned up you know it's just too [distracting] right now with these little ones in our lives so maybe when i get older i'll find uh some joy in that yeah yeah it just gets so hot so fast here we don't have really a spring or a fall and it just uh immediately heats up so that's one thing i miss about living up north as i remember um you know the long springs and long falls and the cooler weather it was really nice we always had gardens when i was uh living in chicago in fact my mother once tore up our entire back yard and redid it i'll never forget got my stepfather to put in uh a [waterfall] and a little pond in one corner i mean that was like the most energy invested in anything in the whole time i ever knew him they remodeled the entire back yard then they sold the house and got divorced so i don't know what that says about it all oh but she used to love to do stuff like that yeah it really was i enjoyed it there but maybe when the boys get a little older we'll do some more planting because they like to see things grow they've done a couple of little seed projects and so i think it would be fun for them yeah yeah oh yes they're both running around now yeah well it's very [therapeutic] i think really to get out there and dig in the dirt you know they certainly enjoy that part of it it's just trying to keep anything i planted bulbs last uh fall on the side guard and when i went out there in the spring and the first day they came out the little one went and pulled all the flowers off and the flower petals were scattered all over the walk he thought what are these fun toys that mommy put out here with all these colors for me to play with at least he didn't eat them i mean i guess i could be thankful for that yeah really if they survive this year oh well good luck to you nice talking to you okay what you mean my voice oh no i am from kentucky originally so uh_huh i know we are about to hit it in ten few minutes i figured i could make this call and get it over with we are going to mow and trim and edge and that is all we have been doing all weekend uh_huh uh_huh uh how many kids do you have okay what year i mean how old are they four and five goodness i have got a four year uh a four year old and a four month old and an eight year old stepdaughter well you do not have to tend to him oh you did okay it is over with he is gone if i can just [nuke] it i would do it but i do not i just it is like oh i will get out there and pull my weeds i do not have a real big front yard but i do have half of it is a flower bed just about all by the porch because the porch is pretty big i live in town but just pulling all the weeds out of that just drives me nuts i do not like it and i just went out this weekend and bought me some plants and stuff and i just [plowed] through the whole nine yards got up everything there was some plants that are just spring [bloomers] and i the when the blooms died the leaves were just horrible looking so i just broke all them off it was a [hyacinth] have you ever seen those oh they are pretty in the spring but the leaves i do not like them you know once yeah it is a bulb no because i do like the i like the plant in the spring i love those pink flowers they are just pretty so i just cut the leaves off and transplant and put some other plants down because i want them to come back up next year yeah of hyacinths oh of everything oh they will huh okay now i have got some daffodils and everybody down here calls these flags uh the irises i guess uh that is what they call them down here they get uh just one bloom on the plant i do not i am not sure what they are called but i do not much well i think they are stopped blooming now in the spring it has got oh they come in all different colors the blooms are on some of them is yellow purple white just all different colors well i mean per bulb you get one big flower that looks like a lily i do not know what they are called i have always called them well i do not know what i have called them but when i come down here everybody told me they are flags uh_huh uh_huh yeah it is some type of lily i have got some in the backyard that bloomed blue which i would not would have liked those in the front because they match my porch and stuff better and then some on the side of the house with the dusty purple color with little purple spots that it it will [fade] into a solid purple green [spiky] leaves now it looks almost like a [hyacinth] only a a lot higher and it is a bulb dutch irises uh_huh you know i i really do not know no they are they have they're died down i am sorry they are dead now they bloom in the spring yeah they bloomed in the spring right about the same time or after i would took i took and just mowed over them last year and uh we have been i i do not much care for them after the bloom dies they are not pretty and to me it just looks like a bunch of leaves but i took them out of my front yard and i just threw them on the side intending to transplant them or throw them away or something and forgot about them through the whole winter well i went out there this spring and they had took root right where they were on top of each other and they told me that they are the hardest things to you know to kill but they are real easy to grow does that help i do not i am not sure what it is they said that they are irises it is some type of iris though but they call them flags up here or down here down here yeah i do not know what it is i am i am not on i am just getting into gardening this year uh we moved here a year ago yeah last spring we moved in here may this house may of last year so it was really too late to do much oh well that is well what kind of blue i am wanting i want blue and purple and you know just different shades of that because my my house is gray and blue looks so pretty against it i bought well i would like to have one that would bloom next year too that will come back up uh_huh i am looking for a pen i want to write this down because well that is where i went this year because i waited too late to really plant stuff but i did not know that these hyacinths like i said i do not know anything about plants i did not know the hyacinths were going to die yeah that is what i did with my plants i had bought these uh [colossians] [celosias] or whatever and they will not grow down here okay perennial blue salvia okay i bought me oh i guess i just went and bought me just about nineteen dollars worth of little buds planted uh already grown and it looks pretty good out there uh_huh uh_huh purple buddy purple buddy how do you spell that okay yes oh well well the topic today was gardening and lawn care ooh yeah you know what it seems like we are doing it here forever we bought a a large house that was completely [unlandscaped] i mean it it was probably was up to your shoulder in in [thistles] that was all that was there and we hired a professional [landscaper] to do it and i have since then probably ripped out half of what he has done because it has always been incorrectly planted or the plants do not make the winter time and so i am kind of at this point getting a little bit broke and deciding that what we are going to do is we are just going to struggle through the rest of this year probably through the fall too and uh rip up rip out all the rest of these [junipers] or anything that requires uh more care than i am willing to give the kids and replace it with hollies just two but they are just eighteen months apart so it seems like a lot more four and five uh_huh oh well i have a twenty six year old stepson and i do not know if that counts well i did for many years so yeah yeah it is over with uh back to gardening are you one of these uh howard [garrett] organic enthusiasts or a neil sperry [nuke] the lawn with chemicals uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah all right now are you sure they are hyacinths because that is a bulb well you should of just ripped the whole thing out have you had is this the first year they have been up well let me tell you they do not come back very well at all maybe they will if up further north but down and you are not that much further north i have probably planted oh around here um maybe six hundred bulbs no i have probably have done hyacinths but i have just learned from doing hyacinths that if you really like them what you do is you dig the bulbs up and then you throw them away after they are done blooming because they do not take the heat here and if they do come back next year they are going to look real [puny] yep about the only bloom bulb that repeats well in my area is the uh uh [daffodil] and some of the [narcissus] bulb they call them flags when does it when does it bloom and what color and you only get one of them you know what i bet you they are and i am a pretty i am a pretty good gardener because i have killed a lot of things here and and i have planted a lot of them and and i work on a uh landscape committee for our neighborhood and our neighborhood is a planned development with i think it is seven hundred and fifty five families but we have about sixty acres that we have to plant i am going to bet you that is a lily because it is and i will get uh is it what color is is yours blooming and what does the [foliage] look like does it fit that oh oh oh oh i bet you those are i bet you what those things are uh is a dutch iris i bet you it is a dutch iris does it does it on its little on its on the flower does it have a beard on it at all any kind of [fuzzies] i am going to bet you that that has got to be blooming this time of year it has well i was just going to correct myself because they would have bloomed pretty early well yeah right about after the daffodils okay i will bet you those are dutch iris uh_huh well yep well ooh well then it is not it is not a dutch iris then oh gosh huh well i am not so sure that texans know what what they have got did you just move down here um who who who who because i have got a flower i have got i have probably got do do do do i do not know how many square feet it is a big circular driveway the whole uh perimeter [bordering] the house is all in texas [wildflower] beds and i am into that and it and it looks quite formal i mean it really does it looks quite formal but it has been about three or four years of uh uh playing around with flowers to decide which ones actually grow here you want blue uh_huh ooh blue is hard you know do you want a perennial flower that will bloom all summer okay put in a perennial blue salvia now it is going to grow about um the plant itself will grow about eighteen inches tall and it will send out a flower [spike] you will see them blooming now it is a [wildflower] here but you can get them in the nursery yep well the you know nursery men will will sell you things here and they are they are kind of in a labor of love the other thing to do if you really like the hyacinths and i do is that before you plant those bulbs stick them in the refrigerator for five weeks or so to cool them yep huh_uh uh_huh salvia uh_huh and now that will bloom all summer long and it will it but it [insists] on full sun uh_huh uh_huh i will tell you another plant that is purply it it is dark purply kind of a purply blue red it is really a pretty plant it is sold down here as purple buddy now it's not yeah it is not a perennial it is an annual but it will take the heat down here purple buddy its proper name is [gomphrena] g o m p h r e n a [gomphrena] and is sold as purple buddy or sometimes sold as straw flower and they make uh-oh about a foot high plant and they send out this this [spike] that has this purple ball on the top of it but that purple ball okay we're going to talk about lawn and garden today okay um where do you work at or do you you wish to discuss that oh okay yeah we're neighbors okay hi can you hang on just a minute thank you i have no idea he didn't broadcast thank you uh_huh i'm sorry go ahead oh i do all the time i do all the time i get a lot of good tips from him i have his book too uh_huh not in texas uh_huh well no i had a lawn service one year and i thought [phooey] i'm going to do it myself because i figured up the cost and i said huh_uh i can do it much cheaper and better and so what i did i switched to liquid and i do it with an [applicator] with my hose and it's so much easier than taking that lawn spreader and walking all over the territory i was surprised how easy it was and i thought well i'm going to do this all the time so i found you know and i've got some problems with uh two trees in my front yard and i took them to a certified uh [nurseryman] the other day and do you know what he told me i needed to do which is it's just unreal he said i needed to pull every leave off the tree and the tree is fifteen feet high and it probably has about ten thousand leaves on it and he told me i needed to pull every leaf off and then spray it with this chemical that he said i should purchase and i thought uh_huh this is this is unreal this is unreal so uh i think i'll get my son in law to do that for me if he will yes it's a disease that it's got and i don't know what happened to it uh and then it it um well one is a maple one is um a maple but i would much prefer i think it's not a native texan tree and uh the one that the ones that really do well are the ones that are on the city property and they don't get any care and they're cedar elm and they're just beautiful so i mean it it's you know these things that you [pamper] some people have really a green thumb and you know and um although i don't have too serious a problem but i don't know if it was from the the the late freezes that were or the early freezes we had that caused this tree damage and you know sperry said you know that's what happened to the crepe myrtles the last two years that you we are looking at all the freeze damage from the prior two years so i kind of think that maybe that uh happened to these large trees that i have and i really hate to lose them but um that's one of the hazards i guess of uh having a a yard because i uh_huh right the quick growing yeah and they and he uh uh_huh can i pick your brain about how you got rid of those trees did are they still there did you cut them down at the at the ground level or did you pull them up by the roots or how did you get rid of them because if i i i don't know how to get rid of these big trees because one has a [circumference] of about ten inches and oh uh uh_huh because i don't want [stubs] in my lawn because you still have to uh_huh the base to the ground uh_huh bore i see uh a stump killer yeah uh_huh yeah and they get that saw and i think it's a some kind of a a screwing thing that just [rips] it right out right out yeah used those for uh mulch sure sure uh_huh a blessing in disguise i mean two fold purpose yeah lawn yes uh_huh yes i have a i have a self propelled uh snapper because i'm sitting on a hill and it uh and it's very difficult to address well that's good they're very expensive oh [booey] yeah yeah they always try to give you a song and dance okay so right what what uh no i i'm in uh well i live in uh richardson texas and uh yeah and uh but grew up in uh iowa on a farm with a considerably different philosophy in terms of lawn and garden work uh and uh yeah no so uh uh not not growing up familiar with here uh uh when i get a chance i listen to that neil sperry and do that and uh yeah uh yeah don't do any uh any gardening in the sense of uh vegetable gardening but uh tried some tried some different flowers and and uh bushes and stuff and uh uh have a have a lawn service there was one when we when we bought the house and we just continued with them for a long time and then switched to a different one but in terms of the fertilizing and uh weed control mainly leave that up to them what about you yeah yeah yeah yeah well well good yeah no yeah yeah what what what kind of a is this some sort of a disease or is it a [pest] what well what kind what kind of trees are they huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah well that's that's one thing that we we've had very poor luck with with is in in our yard is is trees but the uh what what trees were were there when we moved in uh uh were had been put in by the [developer] when he built the house and he just put in whatever was cheapest that he could claim was a tree i think and uh figured up last night at there were seven different trees of of various kinds and sizes in the yard when we moved in and we got one left at this point but uh a couple of them we've lost to the weren't too good trees we've lost to wind uh uh three we three we've lost to to uh freezes between uh eighty three and uh and then uh a year ago we lost uh another one well yeah we didn't we didn't have any that were that that big when they uh went two two of them uh the wind the wind blew over uh in in terms of getting them down uh the yeah yeah now the one that the one that we lost the last one that we lost a a year ago uh up until then they hadn't been big enough but what i just used a hand saw and [sawed] them off at at as close close to ground level as i could and then uh got got some chemical that drill holes and pour in that helps helps [rot] the stump yeah stump killer and stump stump [rotter] but uh this last one had a fair sized root and some guy was doing a job in the neighborhood uh and and saw it and stopped in and asked if i didn't want the stump dug out on the spot for thirty five bucks and i said fine he had he had a trailer with a machine on it that was specifically for that and it yeah and it it just it just ripped it right out and uh i took the it left the it left he left the chips and i put them up mulch around around the other shrubs and uh uh had had a pile of dirt from various things uh back by the garage that i filled in with and and it's filling in with with grass uh nicely this year so that that was that was worth it but uh yeah yeah but uh yeah well do you do your own uh lawn in terms of uh mowing yeah oh yeah yeah i uh yeah i i i we just got a a old push uh uh sears mower i it's been fifteen years now since we first moved to texas we've had it and i keep waiting for it to die but every year it just seems to hang on and uh and uh i do it my do it myself but uh yeah a year a year ago i took into took it into sears to have it tuned up for the season and they said no it's it's too old we won't even work on it and i took it back home and it's can't kept plugs along but uh but my son's uh one of my sons and a couple of his friends this year have okay i i guess first of all i'll just say we haven't done much uh gardening we do lawn work all the time but uh our gardening we lost remember the last two freezes i don't know how long you've been here but we lost our bushes in those and have been waiting to plant new ones and so as far as our bushes we don't have any but we do have some [blackberry] bushes and and they were really hearty and stayed on and we've done really well with them uh_huh yeah and so they've been really good and the kids i had to the first year i had to tell the kids not to pick them when they were red because they were supposed to be blackberries but uh we go out it it's hard to go out when it's this hot and uh but uh keep the weeds out of them and and keep them off the ground so the ants don't eat them and they're okay yeah uh uh_huh yeah yeah uh we have some flowers that have they're just are real hearty also and they're bold and they come up every year but uh they're getting too thick i need to go thin them out and uh there's a i don't know what kind of flowers they are they're real common around here they're they're orange and they look like a lily sort of uh yeah no but i think they're real pretty when it rains because their petals don't soak the rain in they they keep the the rain on the outside little rain drops and and they look real pretty after the rain and so i really like them but i need to get out and and um do that now as far as our grass it grows crazy here it just keeps growing and growing and uh sometimes my husband does it and sometimes my son does it but it just is i don't i don't know i've lived in utah my whole life and we can't seem to get ours green i don't know yeah uh_huh crappy i know we have that too uh_huh uh_huh oh dear no uh_huh had somehow gotten in yeah yeah uh_huh the the other problem that we have well it's funny because the one the two bushes on the ends of the house that i think are ugly they lived and so i i don't know so like i wanted to go out and kill them too they had no right to live but anyway uh under our trees we get a a north sun and uh the it looks like our trees don't have any grass under them and we just can't grow uh grass underneath there uh_huh yeah right it's a vicious cycle isn't it it just really well i don't we've never done anything like this but we've been thinking you know if we built up uh you know either a wood wooden like trench thing around where our bushes were and filled it like with a nice dirt then maybe we could plant some either flowers or or some new bushes in there that would live and so i think that we're going to try that i i think the i think that's pretty much what we have decided now i have two long windows and i'm trying to decide whether to put like bushes in front of them or not you know maybe just halfway up the window or something like that so people can't see and hear too much yeah yeah that's what our two rooms are on the front too with these long windows one is a bedroom for our our oldest son and one is uh an office that my husband and i work in and so i i really don't like it too much because then the back of our house faces that well the flowers are out by the back of the house so and that's why the front room is so that's not too bad but i like to look at the flowers they're pretty yeah but it's funny because uh you try so hard i think sometimes to to anyway i do to do our yard and then it's like the wind blows everything whether the weeds from your yard to your neighbors or yours to them or and so even if you did get it under control it seems like in just a few months it would all be back and it's hard to get out a lot and do that yard work uh_huh i know it is it's not my favorite thing in the world either i'm glad i have an old enough son to do it for me now uh_huh yeah yeah well that is one chore that we will pay him for if he'll go do the yard work out outside so yeah right exactly exactly yeah i do oh really did you plant those yourself oh uh_huh oh that's nice i i love blackberries and we uh when i was smaller we my family lived in tennessee and there used to be wild blackberries that we'd go out and pick my brother and i but i don't have any down here oh i think i know what they i can't remember what the name of them are either oh down here the grass well i'm we've had problems with our yard we it was one big weed is what it was it was just horrible and my neighbors on either side of me have beautiful lawns and we have this god awful ugly thing and and i know they must think you know i wish those people would do something about their yard but my husband got some new fertilizer and stuff that that seems to be helping and he put it on the front yard to see how you know it would do and stuff before he put it on the backyard but we've got a great [dane] in the back and she has eaten everything i have put out there she's eaten my crepe myrtle trees i know and she's eaten the bushes i've tried to i spent like eight hours planting this nice garden out there and i [barricaded] it up so she couldn't get into it and i went and took a shower and looked back out there and she was already in it and i was so mad so i can't do anything back there because she just she destroys it but i've tried out in the front but like you said that that freeze that came i had some bushes that uh some shrubs i put out front and it killed those too so i'm just real discouraged with the whole thing i just don't even want to do anything yeah that that happened to us we have these i know oh i know ours don't i know we can't either but i've got two good size [cottonwood] trees out in my front yard uh you know one on either side of the yard and and they're big and they're real full and everything you know in the summer time but it it's killing everything underneath where the leaves are [shading] the tree but toward the end of the summer you know when everything starts dying off and whatnot and then the light can get through the tree then the grass starts growing but by then it's so late then the winter comes and it stops you know it's it's it's a never ending cycle yeah it really is so we've been trying to get something or to pull some grass underneath there and and whatnot so uh_huh huh yeah really well i don't really have to worry about that that much because my [sons'] bedrooms are in the front and they've got mini [blinds] and stuff but only only one is really like in the flower bed part and the other one is out on the porch so there's not really much i can do about that yeah i do too that's why i look at my neighbors yard i don't have anything to look at so i look at theirs uh_huh yeah yeah it it's really a pain my husband works a lot so um a lot yeah i'm it's usually me and the kids that go out and mow the yard and and i just i really do not appreciate having to go out there and do it i hate to mow the yard more than anything else i hate to mow that yard yeah well mine's getting there he helps he does half and i do half so pretty soon though by next year he should be able to do it all by himself whether he likes it or not oh sure i'll be more then glad to pay him if he'd just go out there and do it and and do it to where i don't have to go back out and redo it that that's my only thing with him that's why i'm help having him help me now the question was on lawn and garden work um how do you like it oh what kind do you have do they really oh oh and i know somebody that lives there and they never mentioned that problem oh my they probably just take it for granted then oh yuck i don't have that problem uh it's mine is mainly we kind of have an understanding that uh i i said i'll do inside work you do outside work and so i get into the gardening part of it the fun part like putting in the [annuals] and things like that but i don't like i don't like it dirty no i don't know we got the we got the question and i thought oh this is going to be interesting two bits i'll get a man to talk to me because they get stuck doing it all but although i do know a lot of my friends do like all the gardening work and this year we put in a new lawn in a new home so um we've been fighting a drought here this summer and getting into fall today we just had a lot of rain yeah so it's kind of nice i don't know how yours has been oh i see okay well we're leaving tomorrow and we're going down to new orleans and from ohio since we're right near lake erie this is going to be a switch for us for a week going down there and i think we'll probably experience some of your weather although i think they have more humidity but um as far as the gardening and things like that goes i don't know uh too much too much about uh how much i really do enjoy it myself do you like it at all well how about when you were in colorado uh_huh well and then too now like where we had the dry summer and we had to sprinkle constantly my water bill was high and uh if you have that on a regular basis in texas i think i would go with something very dry to keep it off you know but uh and with children um you probably don't have time anyhow to to get into it it's so uh okay very good i guess we've kind of covered our subject matter since neither one is really into gardening are we right okay right nice talking with you uh_huh bye well i don't do much of it here i'm from uh from uh colorado originally and there are no bugs there and i didn't mind getting in the dirt there but boy i'll tell you what once i see these bugs around here i'm just kind of out of it oh roaches and oh yes [cockroaches] are awful here just awful so i oh you're kidding you're kidding no it's a well maybe they didn't mention it because it's just kind of a fact of life around here and uh it must be if they lived here a lot of people i know just say oh i just [stomp] on them it doesn't matter they make good fertilizer in the garden me personally can't uh_huh uh_huh no i have to you know i have to say that's not exactly my favorite thing either really huh oh really well it's been real hot here lately i mean we've had to actually have the air conditioning on and everything but uh it's supposed to rain again now uh this weekend so then yeah yeah i well not here i mean it's just here i just can't stand to even get out in the uh in the dirt just well i liked it a little bit but i didn't uh i was working at that time full time and didn't have a lot of time for that and so that i think really um [hampered] it a little bit yeah no not really uh_huh sounds like no no afraid not uh hopefully they'll give a subject i like one of these times something i really know a lot about nice talking to you okay bye bye lawn and garden work and what you enjoy and what kind of work you do i'm i'm a [putterer] i chose that topic because i really like gardening as far as flowers and shrubs and just keeping a pretty yard oh uh_huh we've had a late fall it seems like the weather in fact today it's really warm and so many of the summer flowers are still pretty enough that you hate to pull them up but you know you need to pretty soon oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh so now you have the chance to really create and and spread out uh_huh the grass not growing so fast oh um ours seems to have slowed down here we're not having to mow every week religiously but we're still fighting bugs and ready to change some of the the summer flowers out i still have [caladiums] that are pretty which is a surprise this late in the year uh_huh but like today it's eighty five degrees it's really strange but that'll change real quick we'll wish we'd planted bulbs and pansies already oh my gosh well texas has gotten to where it's a real problem as far as plants because our summers are so terribly hot and we have ice storms every year and there just aren't that many plants and shrubs that can take both of those extremes some of the things that used to be hardy are getting to where they don't make it through the two swings uh_huh well for the most part we don't but we have usually just a pocket of really bad hot and really bad cold well the summers have gotten where they're a lot hotter but the the ice storms really are stressful on all the the plants that we have around we've noticed that crepe myrtles don't do as well as they used to and uh pittosporum that used to be the kind of things we could plant all the time you you really take a chance with them freezing uh_huh uh_huh except for the lack of trees out where we are it was all cotton fields and when we get to other parts of the country where the trees are so beautiful we really miss it uh_huh um uh_huh okay i missed a part of it we're to talk about what lawns and gardens uh_huh uh_huh i well it's it's it's very strange that i got this call because my wife just called me i was just in the shower after finishing mowing the lawn and you know mowing the lawn and removing some old petunias out of the garden this type of thing is working right in to start planting fall fall bulbs uh well that's the way this was the the petunias were really great our mums are are beautiful uh i don't know if we i don't think we've had a frost up here i've been i was down in for a week so i don't know what happened last week uh but uh it seems like it's i don't know if it's late i'm sort of waiting for indian summer so i can get a lot of stuff down out here uh i i enjoy it we came here we just moved into this well we moved in in november and put all all the landscaping in this this year we came from nine years in a condo uh and working in that condo you didn't have to do anything you know unless you really wanted to so right you know i can't this is my third third house i think i've owned um but uh it's interesting you know the only problem is that i do quite a bit of traveling and it sort of gets away from me if you're not with it so but uh i i enjoy most of it and about this time of year there is it starts getting a little old and i start looking forward to you know having other things to do with my well it is it is for me because i've been doing a lot of fertilizing we had a terrible summer we had a drought and uh took a lot of watering and a lot of fertilizing and now it's really growing and i'm trying to establish a good root root growth you know for the winter really uh oh really um oh yeah yeah i hear that from my brother in law lives in plano yeah well he always he waits until it gets about seventeen below up here and then he calls us yeah it's seventy degrees here in the sunshine so uh_huh yeah that is i was you know i was like conditioned to it they they have to be hardened to it that's that's strange with me you know you think dallas you know almost [semitropical] you wouldn't have that kind of that kind of problem but uh_huh really oh do they uh_huh i love yeah i love the uh the landscaping like i say my brother in law i get to carrollton quite a bit i go there on business and i really enjoy getting around and seeing the different areas with different gardens and texas is dallas is very nice i really enjoy it there the landscaping the homes the [architecture] the whole thing very enjoyable gardens and my wife and i well yeah that we have you know [ohio's] a very pretty state we moved in seventy six we moved to chicago we lived there for five years and i remember the first time i took my wife there on a house hunt uh we were coming in and before the plane landed she looked out the window and she said she said there's no trees down there this is illinois you're not and when we got out to the area where we decided we were going to live and buy a house there were no trees because the farmers had cleared all the land and now all of a sudden it was being developed and the first thing i did was planted all kinds of trees okay well what do you do on your yard uh_huh uh_huh comes back in the yard so you don't have any one do your yard you do it yourself yeah we do too isn't that the truth a [flyer's] on every door every day that's right well we um we my husband does the same thing he does the yard and he wants me to learn how to work the lawn mower but i keep putting off learning that's right but i had recently gone out and planted mums we had decided to paint the front of the house about three weeks ago and so while my husband was painting i went out and bought about fifty dollars worth of mums over at calloway's and put out yellow and bronze and they're just gorgeous and so then last week my mom comes in town and she says well those are going to die just the first frost she said you should have done pansies and i went well now you tell me so the first night that around halloween and we went out and covered them with a sheet and they did okay that first night but the second night we were at the movies and didn't do it so i guess i've lost them i haven't gone out to check yet no listen but um the worst problem we've had here with this grass was about the third year we were here i guess it was about four years ago and we did not know in august to put down the uh whatever it is for grub worms and the next spring i guess in that march every time we would go out and just try to walk on the grass or reach down to pull a weed we'd have big whole [patches] come up have you ever seen it what grub worms do and we pulled up almost half of our yard just by raking it it would just come off in the rake down to the dirt so we had to go out and [resod] the whole thing with squares and wet it and put it down and rope it off and everything it took a lot of money and a lot of time so the most careful thing we do on our yard every august is put down that diazinon oh yeah we found them yeah we found them we dug under there about an inch and you could see them they're real fat little white things and they said they turn into black bugs in the spring yeah but in but in the uh_huh yeah june bugs is what i'd heard them called so any how occasionally i find them in the flower beds they said that every yard has some but it was a [preponderance] of them that caused our problem so that's the number one thing we do whether we fertilize or anything else just because we got burned so badly before oh yeah that too two years ago or last christmas is that what you're talking about yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh yeah i guess you did too it's what they've done in the spring or the fall yeah because i started to say you can there's different times they say it's okay to do it yeah yeah keep it damp well my out here you know we don't have as many trees in plano at least the area where we're over by collin creek mall and but a lot of the shrubbery that we have in the front like the pittosporum all died and all those [variegated] uh things died so we pretty much go with that dwarf yaupon and that yaupon holly and they just live yeah you can you can stand those uh_huh yeah well it's kind of like one of these same way uh_huh that they they warned me of that one finally and i said you know you need to either read neal [sperry's] book before you shop or get a reputable nursery because lot of places that would are just trying to sell whatever was pretty out there and we didn't know the difference and every year we learn one more thing that we didn't know before like about these mums okay next year i'll do pansies and my backyard we had it really nice and then my husband wanted a labrador puppy and so it was about i guess he's three now so the first summer he was here he dug up all of my bushes and plants and brought them to the front door and the back door and laid them on the patio so it's like our backyard is just kind of like as long as he won't damage it fine and if he'll if there's anything he'll hurt we just don't put it out there any more uh_huh very much but uh you did huh uh_huh so do ours yeah what did you grow that is amazing yeah well put them in a salad though and you say well i made it though at least it's mine well uh typical lawn stuff saint augustine uh with a little bermuda mixed in in some of the sunny areas uh and really all i do to it is uh in fact i didn't even fertilize it this year i just mowed it and i i mow it uh you know with a mulch mower so the the particles fall down yeah i do it myself have a lot of people trying to do it for me hey i need the exercise so what the heck hey you've got the right idea uh_huh yeah yeah i don't blame you i wouldn't want to look at them uh_huh yeah yeah yeah you you think that's what it was huh okay yeah yeah those kind of brown uh what we call june bugs and some people call them may [beetles] uh yeah yeah well i had some of that problem but mine was freeze yeah yeah yeah i'm still i'm still replacing that in the back especially under the trees uh you know kind of slow and as you say very expensive i caught wolfe with uh uh one uh one of the sales where they have those big blocks for fifty cents and uh i bought about twenty of them uh well i put you know that was late that was like yeah that was like september i think and i had to water it you know gosh yeah they're pretty tough uh pittosporum is kind of borderline here and usually it'll do pretty well but uh you know every once in a while we get one of these really cold deals and it [zaps] it oh wax leaf wax leaf [ligustrum] is the same way yeah your list is growing oh yeah oh gee um yeah kind of cuts your possibilities for the flower beds yeah i had a had a small vegetable garden that uh it did pretty well it's it's like on the side the [apron] of the of the parkway out behind the garage and uh our our garages come in from the back you know from the alley and uh it's it's a little piece of land over there well i had uh tomatoes and and uh uh peppers and i had i had okra and by the fence i had cucumbers which which didn't do real well uh they kind of came out looking like [gourds] but i had squash i had zucchini and and yellow [crook] neck squash okay i'll let you start this time well uh even though it's totally out of my uh my degree training i've been working as as in the [horticultural] aspect so the last i don't know fifteen twenty years so uh i'm well i work for the state as as a grounds [keeper] no mostly snow [removal] which we've had a lot of but uh i don't know i i guess uh growing up on the farm and and that i i've always had a big interest uh i have a uh when i have an area to do i i always had a big garden and enjoy working on lawns and and everything okay uh_huh uh_huh oh that's terrible twenty three yeah yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right yeah uh_huh yeah that's one one aspect of a lot of those grasses they go [dormant] i think the saint augustine and uh [centipede] grass is another one you have quite a bit of down there yeah those two yeah um yeah well i know my folks live uh in arizona there and uh you know they just grow rocks and that's their gardening there so uh i guess as long as you can have uh some grass there so i know i was in uh houston when i was working for a company once and we were taking care of lawns out there and uh that particular year they had just tons of rain you know it was raining continuously and then i know with all that moisture a lot of the lawns get a lot of disease problems uh_huh are are you uh able to get uh sometimes a double crops of of certain things in your garden well how much do you like lawn and garden work oh oh for goodness sakes what do you do uh_huh well that's interesting um so at this time of the year are you doing much garden work right uh_huh well i love to work outside really and i enjoy flowers and stuff i don't do a whole lot of it um at this exact point in my life um because i have two teenage boys and so they do all the lawn all the lawn care but i still take care of the you know flower beds and things like that i was even planning to go out and to uh dig up some [hibiscus] plants that will not make it through the winter here but you know were planted in the ground since last spring and i was going to dig them up for a friend and for some starters for me and [lo] and [behold] about five days ago we had a freeze down to about oh twenty three degrees or something so the [hibiscus] plants no longer exist and i really feel bad about it it's a plant that we've had for probably twenty five years that these were [cuttings] off of you know so they're all gone at this point gardening in texas is really interesting though i grew up in illinois and um texas is just so hot in the summer and so dry why you know everyone that lives in town and has yards practically has uh watering system and so with that why our lawns do stay um you know pretty nice all summer if you water but in the winter we have bermuda grass and in the winter it turns as brown as a grocery sack and and i just think it's ugly when i go back home to my parents in illinois in the winter you know and their grass is fairly green uh_huh uh_huh yeah some people have i think it's fescue that stays green all winter but they really have a heck of a time keeping it going in the middle of the summer they have to water an incredible amount but um those those lawns look nice during the winter but you know they almost stick out like a i guess not a sore thumb a pretty thumb but you know when you look at the neighborhoods and they're all brown except the one you know it's sort of like well right uh_huh yes that's true yeah houston is a lot um a lot [wetter] than than dallas dallas area that's where plano is and um and just humidity you know just all the time it's an awfully lot more humid yes uh_huh i think people do yeah i don't have a vegetable garden haven't for i guess i never have here actually but um but yes uh_huh we have neil sperry talks on the radio well i have a town home so i don't do a lot of regular maintenance but i do have a large garden out in back so we do a lot of things with perennials and uh also a few annual plants uh and then every year i grow a garden yes um we have virtually no room out in front and then in the back i'd say we have about an eighth of an acre and we pretty much fill it up with uh like i said perennials things that aren't don't have to fool with every year but then i've got uh a twenty five by twenty area that i do gardening as far as you know tomatoes and cucumbers and beans and no we have a separate area for the garden yeah and last year was the first year we tried two new things we tried corn and we tried a watermelon uh i enjoy doing it on a limited basis i don't think that if i the reason i bought a townhouse is so that i wouldn't i get i'm allergic to grass so i don't mow grass or anything like that so i think if i had a big home and a big lawn i'd i don't believe i would enjoy it but just on the limited basis that i do it i do enjoy it very much oh wow how about that well that's nice that much land requires an awful lot of time how about that well i bet you could answer a question for me what's a good apple to bake pies with are there and there's an okay lowell so i'd like to know um what what do you do in lawn and garden what uh what's what's of interest to you and how do you go about it oh you do you do actually uh grow a garden to produce food uh_huh so how much room do you have uh_huh oh that's what i was curious about i was wondering whether you had actually some of the flowers that you had planted were bulb type that you would dig up and and then put down your garden and then put them back in later or something like that so you uh_huh you do have a separate area oh uh_huh well tell me this uh lowell do you do you enjoy doing that kind of work and do you have the time to relax so that you can take advantage of it uh_huh well i'm a little more fortunate i think from that point of view i'm not allergic to things and i moved here in state college quite a while ago and was fortunate to get some land so actually i have nine acres and uh for many years i grew sweet corn uh and and my kids were there and so we set up a shop there and uh i would uh collect the corn very carefully ear by ear and it was never more than one to two hours old and people came from miles and miles around to get that corn because they knew it was individually picked and very very fresh so we had a nice thing going there and it was delicious huh i really enjoyed that and then i also have a a garden oh it's probably uh twenty five by thirty or forty something like that that i put in my normal food garden things each year and uh i have a little bit of everything or a whole lot of everything in the actually i love uh broccoli [brussels] [sprouts] and i have all kinds of tomatoes [kale] and all those good things and i rent out my field that i used to plant in sweet corn to a local farmer and then he plants about a quarter of an acre of sweet corn for me to use so i get out of that amount of work at any rate it is it is very very nice i i really enjoy it my problem is not having enough time to do the job as completely and as thoroughly as i would like i enjoy it very much yes it does uh and actually i had a pony there for twenty five years and he had two acres that he had for his own [grazing] so he had his own backyard garden too but that that worked out very nicely too i built him a barn back there where in the part of my corn field and he lived in that but uh as far as gardening is concerned we do enjoy it my wife is in charge of the flowers she does all of the flower gardening throughout the whole property and we have you know an acre an acre and a half that the house is sitting in the middle of and she has flower gardens and bulbs perennials and things we have blueberries blackberries i have two or three uh apple trees the golden delicious were fantastic this year my neighbor has pear trees and um oh blueberries all kinds of food around there if we just had time to take advantage of it my wife has spent probably i don't know how many hours in the last two or three weeks canning [pears] because there were so many of them and i have been totally [engulfed] with golden delicious apples i just couldn't handle the the amount of them we got this year it's really been a remarkable year i use my golden delicious and they make delicious pies okay do do you have a home or apartment okay do you have to do a lot of upkeep uh_huh okay uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh well that's nice i wish i could say that ours is pretty small too but it it takes about an hour with the two of us working to you know do the bushes and all of that sort of thing uh the worst part is controlling the weeds which i hate because we don't like to use a lot of the chemicals and because like we have a dog and and you know he's going to be out in the yard and who knows who he eats out there but we try not to use them but we end up using some anyway uh um what else i get to put out all the christmas lights out there and all that sort of thing no oh okay well if they if they go up like one year we did the edge of the house all the way up on the roof and i i went up on the roof once and i'll never do it again i decided i was afraid so this year he got lazy so i said fine i'll put some on the bushes and that's about it that's all it gets uh_huh uh_huh oh wow oh no yeah oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um oh no but you still have to pay for it though even though they're not going to do it oh is it real expensive oh gosh oh my goodness yeah well do do they do other things for you all uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um but you knew when you moved in you'd have to pay that didn't you oh yeah i don't know either that's interesting uh_huh now do at a do things like plant bushes and trees oh okay so there is like no restriction on what types of bushes you can have or anything like that uh_huh yeah when we moved into our house i just hated the bushes they had i i ripped most of them out and put them somewhere in the back and put new ones out front but that was a lot of work took me a long time uh_huh yeah and then then we put in a sprinkler system and we won't go through that again i will pay someone to do it oh it took so long because my husband was you know digging the [trenches] because he didn't want to get a [trencher] you know there is a machine that will do it because you know there is so many people that broke either their water main or their gas main doing it and i guess that costs you an absolute fortune by hand yeah but it works great now that we've got it yeah it's nice yeah well we needed to because we're having some foundation trouble you know you have to keep the the area moist around the house or it makes it worse so we had an incentive there to do that uh_huh i have a home not really we have a small backyard and small front yard but uh uh i do basically like the shrubbery and the planting and the weeding and he mows the lawn because the lawn mower is too heavy that's another story and uh and uh i do the edging and stuff like that but uh it doesn't take us that long because our our yard is so small but uh i try and do as much you know [flowering] as i can and that kind of stuff the seasonal things but uh i think we have one of the nicest yards in the in the neighborhood yeah yeah oh yeah that's true i don't no he does that uh_huh yeah oh oh god yeah don't blame you yeah huh okay we don't have that many bushes to put them on uh our our yard is very uh narrow and so we have some bushes but we don't have too many but we have a nice tree in the front and uh we have people that an association that comes and mows everybody's front yard and uh they keep hitting it the tree with the lawn mower you know every time you do that it uh kind of kills the tree for a while and so that's kind of [stunt] its growth for just a while until we get it back going again and we started mowing our own lawn because they were doing that and so anyways i have a nice full tree now and and we put we fill it with lights and that kind of thing so and they would uh they also [edged] when they would edge in into the shrubbery and oh gosh it was getting really bad so we yeah because it's an association fee yes it's like seventy a month yeah and i don't like i i just get really upset every time i make that check out but uh they take care of the uh landscape because we live in a cul de sac and there is a island in the middle so they care of that and there is a pool and they take care of the pool and and there is a pond they take care of the pond in the park area and that kind of thing and uh so you're basically paying oh and the sprinkler system that that our yard doesn't have a sprinkler system but the island does and uh certain sharing areas have sprinkler systems and and so that way if someone moves out the entire neighborhood is mowed and watered and that kind of thing you know so well it it it went up what we pay and that's the bad thing i just hope it doesn't go up any more because we just can't afford it anymore i don't know what to do if you can't afford it so uh but they're that's what they do they take care of basically the front yards and unless you don't want them to do it they only in like in the common areas and in the island but they don't do it in your yard right uh_huh yeah so we've added bushes and and shrubbery too i know yeah yeah that's what we did when we first moved in too just [rearranged] some things oh oh really oh oh yeah oh that's true so gosh you did it manually oh oh gosh i bet yeah that's a good investment there oh oh uh_huh well we have it just opposite here my wife works in you know at at at the t i and she's uh sedentary all day long so when she gets home she likes to mow and we have about ten acres and she tries to mow about half of it well yeah it keeps uh well it's doing real well because when we got this place the the dirt was just [overgrazed] i mean you know it was bare dirt in a lot of places and now you know since we've been mowing it and you know of course we water a little bit that's just too much to water all at once but but just by keeping it mowed and getting it mulched in we've [reclaimed] a lot of it yeah but we don't do much in the way of uh flowers we have one little flower garden that we that we work with the rest of it is just like wild flowers and in the summertime we get the prettiest yellow flowers they're about oh i guess a third the size of your palm of your hand and course in the spring we get the bluebonnets and indian [paintbrush] yeah well my wife and i really enjoy that sort of thing uh she enjoys mowing i can't believe it i mean i hate it right we don't even have any concrete or asphalt uh_huh yeah but you know we do everything together this this spring we got a thousand pine trees from the actually this fall i was talking about two weeks ago we got a thousand pine trees from the you know soil and conservation people and uh we're in the process of of planting and we're building a stand uh just to the north of our house and along the east uh property line and i uh i think what we're what we're trying to do is create sort of a wind break because i tell you in the winter time when that when that wind comes out of the north it just cuts right through you like you're not even there so on the other side of the house though that's where we have all the the delicate flowers and the mums and we have morning glory and we have trumpet vine and moon flowers and we planted those out by the [septic] so that uh they get plenty of water and we get [hummingbirds] come in the spring you know all summer long and well when we leave the doors open they fly in the house well yeah they don't like it in here because there's nothing to eat and when you're as busy as one of those babies you've got to eat most of the time and we got a few you know we put up some [hummingbird] [feeders] and some bird [feeders] but you know for the most part gardening for us is well we got asparagus and uh we've got some plum trees and some apple trees and some tomato and some blackberries and strawberries man we get the best strawberries that you just can't believe we just got our last tomatoes yeah well these are accidental [tomatos] well last year the birds came and ate a few of the tomatoes of course you're going to lose some that way and the seeds go right through them and wherever they [pooped] let's see my husband does the majority of the um the uh gardening uh taking care of the lawn and fertilizing but i um tend to all the planting the [annuals] and and the spraying and um taking care of them and maybe putting flowers in you know throughout that season and later on maybe planting some mums and that kind of stuff and um any kind of decorating for the holidays you know i'll fix the porch up with [pumpkins] for halloween and christmas but basically he does all the heavy stuff and i do all the fun stuff uh_huh i see wow wow that's a a big job uh_huh uh_huh oh sure oh i bet it's beautiful uh_huh wild flowers uh_huh uh_huh oh that sounds lovely uh_huh oh the wild flowers are beautiful i think um i was thinking about throwing some for in the back just where the kids um just way in the back behind the swing sets or just have some wild flowers growing back there would be real pretty then you don't really have to have much maintenance involved uh_huh uh_huh i know a lot of uh_huh a lot of women do um i've just never really you know maybe one of these days i'll have to get out there and mow but um my husband takes it on and i'll help rake up the grass and um sometimes i'll help him edge um because we don't have that much property but we're on a corner lot so there's a lot of edging to do and um uh that's what's nice about living more in the country you don't have to worry about any of that oh oh that's nice i this is different for us because the other in the past we've had homes that haven't had any side walks and um it's been a little more country with the trees and we do miss that um if we had a chance to move i think we'd move back to somewhere that was a little more [countrified] and a little less maintenance required as as far as that goes uh_huh oh uh_huh wow that's um uh_huh right right well i put uh_huh uh_huh oh oh that sounds so pretty oh really do they don't do any damage though they just fly right back out if you have the i see i see uh_huh uh_huh oh oh that sounds wonderful oh i love home grown [tomatos] there's nothing like them they just don't have the same ones in the supermarket what does that mean accidental tomatoes uh_huh i see hello well i hit one and nothing happened what's going on are you sure don't they usually tell you to say something oh okay we're supposed to talk about lawn and garden what do i do well i uh i cut it occasionally is uh is that good okay and i edge it occasionally yeah see am i good or what and uh uh much beyond that i don't do uh_huh oh he is going to build you a fence uh_huh what for a fence oh well i thought isn't he the same one yeah well my i don't know yeah yeah but you know you ought to get him to pull the weeds oh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah well so yeah so you haven't you haven't pulled any weeds lately yeah uh_huh oh oh [goody] i thought you were going to say there i thought you were going to say there was a snake in the weeds oh god oh yeah oh god but uh how are your your flowers your little things you planted did they die or what oh they're all so they oh are they going to come back in the spring oh uh_huh yeah oh yeah i don't know uh those flowers remember those little ones you gave me yeah well they're i know they were still blooming up until about a a few weeks ago yeah yeah they they're really pretty uh_huh yeah yeah i mean isn't it supposed to be five minutes we didn't [disconnect] did we boy i hate to think i hate to think i'd be talking to you without getting paid what uh_huh you're kidding really well the uh i i talked to someone woman from oklahoma city and some woman from dallas and that was it uh_huh wow really oh really yeah uh_huh i don't know yeah well there isn't really much to talk about as far as lawn and garden goes not for me either what do i yeah but i don't you know i what do i do cut it one you know and and edge it and that's about it what do i do with it no what's going on are they going to tell us to stop or what isn't it five minutes i i mean i'm all talked out about gardens oh oh it's just suggested what we could talk let's talk about the baby yes i forgot we had to hit one our time will be up well just go ahead and talk that's all yeah i don't think so uh_huh yes i'm i'm supposed to find out what you do for your lawn and garden uh_huh good uh_huh you're ahead of me that's better oh that's really good yeah i don't do any of that really well i call my lawn man eric whatever his name is i can't remember who's going to come and build me a fence too well he's giving me an estimate and for ten dollars a week i don't see any reason for me to be doing it no for my yard yeah he is yeah but ten dollars or what what does he charge not even that what does he charge me it's like next to nothing it's ten because i it's forty a month but if there's five weeks i still pay forty well he won't pull weeds he says he'll spray them but he won't pull them uh he won't cut them is what he won't do because he said with the rocks that it's too dangerous for him to take the the [trimmer] over the rocks and he's right that's true but he just says to keep spraying them so anyway gene sprayed them once or twice for me so that was real no no there are two out front i thought i'd grab one of these days but i haven't bothered as i walk on by i started to pull the weeds in the rocks out front and all of a sudden i came cross this big [clump] of weeds and there was dog dirt in it and i threw the gloves in the trash bag that was out there and i left the whole thing and that was about a month ago i would rather a snake no i just left the whole thing the bag is still out there because i haven't touched it i haven't gone back over there it really made me mad so anyway but oh yeah now they died i don't know i don't know and then i got some nice uh mums at thanksgiving that i put in the pots out there and i thought they were supposed to live through all the cold weather they looked real pretty until about a week before christmas then they started to die too so i don't think any of it comes back but i don't know maybe these sometimes things do that aren't even supposed to so yeah really well that's good they're the best kind they they're like indestructible they really grow nice and sometimes they're not supposed to come back but lots of times they do so we'll see they're letting us have a lot of time on this aren't they but that's because we didn't hit one for a long time i hope not neither one of us is getting paid for this yeah really i know it i can't believe this i got somebody from utah and somebody where was the person last night was from far away and we get each other down the street this is so funny yeah i've had dallas arlington i've had uh one plano and then a lady from brigham utah whose son lives in plano on [ranier] someplace and then uh another state i can't remember but she told me about the utah jazz we talked about basketball and i don't remember what what the place was last night but i'm thinking colorado but i'm not sure i'd know the place anyway so but mostly they're from the area it not for me you know not not for me because all i have is rocks and weeds i know i know we're not typical texans i don't know i hope so come on come on i don't know i know well we can talk about something else it's just a suggested topic so how's the baby do you think how's the let's talk about the baby i pushed it so what do you you in your lawn do you do it yourself or do you hire someone to do it uh_huh uh_huh yeah right uh_huh uh_huh well we do our own out here uh you know mow it ourselves and everything but uh our water supply right now is bad we need rain badly uh we can water here in patterson i can water on tuesdays thursdays saturday and sunday four days a week so it was this last summer yeah uh now if it we don't get some rain they might limit it to not even four times you know but uh yeah we do our our you know mowing ourselves and everything and i do our planting of bulbs and things where i can have some spring flowers and uh uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah we have quite a few roses i just uh we in fact we just [pruned] them way down and i just had to replace one of them so i just bought that yesterday and i'll probably go outside today and plant that but um i like to have the roses where i can have cut flowers all year long i even had uh roses on my table for christmas dinner which was really pretty you know but um other than the roses i don't have too many flowers i plant [gladiolas] and those are always pretty but they get so tall and they they bend over so fast you know uh_huh um uh_huh well is it that one of those [amaryllis] no huh oh okay uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh do you have a big yard uh_huh uh_huh yeah right right uh_huh uh_huh um uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well that makes it nice well it's hot enough here in the summer time that we could have a pool but we don't have one you know but they are a lot of people that do have pools around here you know but we just we just have dogs and um and grass you know the cement work and a little play set we made for a garden so we do have a garden you know it's just a small one you know but we had lots of tomatoes and uh zucchini it's amazing what you can get out of a little you know it's probably about twenty by i don't know twenty by six something like that and it's amazing what you can you know how many plants you can plant in there but it was nice few cucumbers uh_huh uh_huh okay uh no we've been doing it ourselves for most of the time uh find that it's really a little more economical and we have oh i find that i have the time and i kind of enjoyed it over here in texas i used to live in arizona and it was very very frustrating because i didn't have the watering system and it was it was just too much work and not enough enjoyment but over here we get enough water you know naturally as well have the automatic [sprinklers] and so it's a lot more rewarding so oh that's right uh_huh is that enough during the hotter times of the year uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh yeah i find that i've been doing a lot of perennial planting which i never did before and it's been real enjoyable although i didn't do any this last fall because our past winters have been so cold um they'd freeze down and by the time they the flowers would come back to life it was supposedly the time to pull things out for the spring and summer planting so i was getting kind of [disillusioned] and tired and and spending too much money on something that was kind of more of a problem than it was rewarding so um i'm going to try to wait now and just do the spring and summer type [plantings] and see how that you know feels uh_huh yeah those are enjoyable oh did you uh_huh um those are nice uh_huh yeah yeah i haven't done much in in bulbs in fact i received as a christmas present a a [planter] that had bulbs in it that we were supposed to go ahead and water it any time and after it started to [sprout] put in a sunny window and it it just grew like crazy but i don't have any flowers on it i don't know how long that takes or if there's anything i need to do differently it's just nice and green right now uh no i'm thinking white [narcissus] or something like a like a white paper flower or so and uh no not really and in plano and most of the newer areas of texas uh they have just the the minimum square footage for lots to where you get a little bit of a backyard we have a pool in our backyard and we did plan it to where we have some some play yard left over but it's it's um you know very small but most of the houses here if you have a pool you don't have anything else in the backyard that's about the size of most of them so uh i guess we're kind of fortunate everyone looks at that with our at our yard with kind of sense of awe like wow you really got you know some grass back there well yeah uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh uh yeah yeah oh uh_huh yeah yeah that's one part of gardening i haven't tried yet and i don't think this yard is a very hi frank uh well to tell you the truth my husband does most of the work yeah i feel real good about it yeah no he has a um you know um a push mower i mean it's electric of course um i think it's not very old about um not that old three or four years old maybe and uh he he really enjoys it so yeah that's fine no well last uh no i do enough other things i don't feel guilty about that last year this is i'm almost ashamed to admit it but last year for the very first time i did mow the grass my first time in my whole life and uh that wasn't too bad i it was good exercise well you know it's electric of course i mean it's a power a power mower but it's it's pretty powerful oh yeah uh_huh that's about the same for ours yeah oh yeah uh_huh oh yes um let's see we've got a weed [whacker] we have an uh [edger] you know that goes between the grass and the sidewalk um right um that one is electric so he's got to plug that in and drag the cord around and let's see um hedge [clippers] you know electric of course hedge [clippers] um i think that's all of the power tools we have we um but that's that's i think that's about all they make oh once a week um actually though we just moved to uh texas a year and a half ago and they have a new uh system that they're trying to promote here which is they don't bag it as they call it um essentially cutting it um probably more like every four or five days and so it's still short enough so that you can mulch it back into the grass and never bag it for one thing um cuts down on waste for landfills and all that um it's actually through the county extension service and they put out all kinds of information on it and then they put up uh they had a few lawns in the area that were like samples and they put a big sign in their yard that said you know this is a don't bag it lawn and let you watch and see how they did it so their grass clippings were never bagged they just mulch back into the grass itself and acted as a fertilizer yeah as a matter of fact and our lawn mower does that too it's you you shut off the where the bag would go or where it would you know spray out the side so that it just [mulches] underneath it just goes back down um right underneath the blade right no that's no that's it's not necessary to have that nope but you have to but you're right though in that you do have to cut it though when it's um relatively short you can't let it go a week or two because if the clippings are that long then they'll just lay on top they have to be short enough that they'll still fall back down um into the grass it takes takes him a lot less time because even though he does have to do it every four or five days um since he doesn't have to bag all of those clippings you know rather than taking i don't know as an example an hour and a half to do the whole lawn it only takes an hour so you know plus less bags less waste um we tried that but we really weren't happy with it so he does that all himself now yeah oh that's true oh gee i i'd say our grass is getting green right now so i'm sure he'll in fact he may have already cut it once i can't remember um but it'll be we'll have to start cutting real soon and uh then oh well on into october november i'm sure right that long wow right what kind of grass do you have uh_huh right right uh_huh right oh really we don't have one of those uh_huh does it work for leaves oh right oh well oh yeah well that's sounds interesting we don't i don't know if we do that very much i think i remember my mom had one of those i don't know right a compost pile right it's not composting i don't think so no i think it's supposed to be natural oh well i think you're supposed to turn it every once in a while well i think it it on the inside is where it the chemicals you know it starts to break down and i think you're supposed to turn it i mean not not very often but you know go in and and stir it up so to speak to get the stuff on the outside in to the inside it might help i don't know yeah i don't know i i i think the idea is supposed to be natural so that you know there's no no chemicals and plus then you can use it as a fertilizer and not have to worry about spreading those chemicals like on your lawn or your bushes or whatever uh_huh and they're playing on they were playing on it well um i just bought a home so i've just now went out and purchased my brand new lawn mower and um so i've been [assembling] it and haven't had a chance to get out there and and test it out no it's um uh it's an older home and uh so it already has the the [yard's] already been established um but there have like big oak trees in the front and so the grass is not growing out underneath the oak trees so i'm going to have get out there and do something about that you know spread some seed and fertilizer and stuff oh uh_huh oh okay okay uh_huh uh_huh right right right uh_huh oh uh_huh um that's an idea uh_huh yeah that's true that's true yeah i have um in between the street and the sidewalk see are two of the oak trees and then there's one uh sitting on the facing the house on the right hand side in the middle of that whole section and then i have this whole section over there that has nothing in it at all but just the grass so that may be an idea to do is uh because i've got that concentration of trees right there is to uh you know just do something like what you said was to put some kind of um uh little plants that does well in shade uh the [shaded] area and forget about you know trying to plant grass and stuff underneath that the other thing too is that the oak trees have those acorns and i don't know if i'm going to have to go out there and if i can rake those up or if i'm going to have to pick them all up by hand or what well i know but if you saw how many acorns were sitting up under there you'd see it looks like an impossible task but we have um um texas has a lot of the um wooden fenced in back yards for privacy fence so i did buy a a weed eater too and uh so i could get you know around uh around the wooden fences and um uh you know get all the weeds and stuff up out of there uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh wow so what what did you did did you use did you have a [blower] or did you have the uh the vacuum uh_huh uh uh_huh uh_huh wow uh_huh uh_huh yeah that i've never i don't think i've ever seen um a a vacuum though for the for the lawn i know i've seen the [blowers] who was it oh [craftsman] uh_huh uh uh_huh ooh that would be good i think that's that's my problem is i i couldn't believe uh because i i guess the other people they weren't really outdoor type people because the lawn really needs to be i have uh bushes and stuff that really need trimming and um so uh so i'm just thinking how in the world i was going to have to scrape up all those uh acorns that are sitting out there they even have some little trees growing because they just left them the acorns i guess sit rather than raking them up um so you know i'm going to have to get out there and but it was interesting i had to go buy a hoe and a rake i mean the whole works because i've i've lived in an apartment for so long i've never had that kind of equipment so that was that was interesting to go down there and and get all that kind of stuff yeah right right so this has been uh this has been an experience for me and uh but i i can't wait until we have uh uh some more time to get out there in the front yard and and really do uh you know a lot of landscaping because i want to cut all the the trees that they or the little shrubs that they have because some of them are like um they have the new uh green leaves i don't if it's getting green up there where you are uh but they're almost fully [blossomed] and but there are like sides of them where there are like whole dead uh portions of the shrubs and uh so i've been debating of whether or not just to cut out the dead portions or you know just to take it all out and i think i've pretty well decided i'm just going to take it all out and start all over again i'm just going to get the little baby shrubs the little baby ones you know that take several years to grow there um well it's not too bad i mean i i thought they were pretty reasonable but i don't know i have nothing really to compare it with uh you know four or five dollars for a for a [shrub] i don't know and uh i hadn't really wanted to get that many you know to put out there i i much prefer flowers uh_huh uh_huh wow uh_huh uh_huh wow it's true it's true just picking up the equipment that i have you know and i didn't blink an [eyelash] that's what got to me when the man you know said and that will five hundred and something dollars you know with my my big new lawn mower and stuff i was just okay you know so yeah you're right you're right you can i think you can go through quite a bit of money i think it depends too where you buy it from if you buy it from a nursery or um we have like home depot here i don't know if you have that there yeah local uh_huh there you go that's right that's true i understand that well it was nice talking to you well thank you oh okay talk to you yeah this is actually a duplex that we're in so and it's rented we're looking into buying a house but um the landlord is supposed to do the yard work although he doesn't do it any frequency every once in a while he comes around so in the meantime we have our own lawn mower and we probably do it a little more than him but we don't do a whole lot since it's a rental property we've added a few things like around the patio and i've tried to get a few shrubs to grow around here but since it's you know rental we haven't spent a whole lot of time and effort in trying to do landscaping we just kind of maintain what's here and mow the grass and trim and that kind of stuff when it's needed you mean the type of grass um what kind of a grass we have oh saint augustine yeah it's bermuda in the back it's the kind that has those you know grows [sideways] yeah that stuff well the problem has been in the winter of um eighty nine yeah a lot of it got [zapped] and it's it's slow coming back like our landlord didn't really replant any last year a lot of the front lawn looks pretty bad and he didn't redo anything so it's it's coming back a little bit now oh really it was very mild mild winter yeah uh_huh um yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh do you back up to it on the south side or the east side oh oh okay because we had one of our uh a person similar [stature] to from the legal department mel sharp he lives around in that area too he lives on [whiteman] place i think okay yeah yeah okay okay um oh wow we got a couple of big trees out front um i guess right along our street there used to be one of the um lines i guess there was fields here many many years ago cotton fields or something and yeah well we have a lot of trees that that go across our front yards that are very old that must have been like where the line was in between the fields so we have a couple of huge trees out front that's pretty nice no trees really in the back almost two years no not yet we've only been married two years oh oh uh nearly every week uh_huh yeah that's right we never did this watering stuff everybody waters yeah uh philadelphia area eight years that's a long time uh_huh and i was never called that until i came here and i i was just taken [aback] by that well i keep reminding these people that it's good thing we came down here and got some changes made like shopping on sunday i said it's a little hard to do everything on saturday no pass no play uh kind of thing i said you know we had that for years in ohio and pennsylvania uh pretty much and our landlord always asks us to uh continue doing that even though we pay for the water because of you know foundation problems uh_huh uh_huh um um oh yeah oh uh_huh um yeah yeah um each side has three bedrooms and two baths living room and then a big uh kitchen that has uh dining area in it so each side is like seventeen hundred square feet uh ohio state well hi bob hi um my lawn and garden well that that's quite a topic because uh basically my husband takes care of it um but what he's done is he's done a raised garden in the back yard because that we don't have dirt around here you understand that it's it's [sludge] it's it's mud it's [cruddy] so you know instead of uh trying to break every [rototiller] that we ever rented um we've just decided to do the raised garden and it works out great he just built like a twelve by eight box out of um lumber that's you know the lumber and it's i guess it's maybe oh say eighteen inches wide so it makes a really nice box set that on top of the dirt and then worked and worked and worked with the soil i mean bag after bag from wolfe nursery to uh fill it up but over the years it has produced some of the best vegetables and garden um you know type things that boy it's been really great and right now we have tomatoes out there and we've got you know have [eggplant] we're growing corn corn grows great here so um we really enjoy that a lot oh right it's it's amazing they come up well someone told me they they come in the in the uh packs you know the seed packages that's where the bugs come from yeah oh those oh yeah we've given up on those ourselves yeah i guess we've got an early early grow variety or something like that and they're just now you know starting to turn red so hopefully before all this heat hits we'll have some tomatoes uh_huh i know what you mean green peppers grow like crazy too around here right yeah definitely right right uh_huh yeah i think that'd be really pretty really nice i i think that asian [jasmine] just is so aggressive it'll take no time at all to [surround] that tree and probably your house and your back yard and your pool the way it goes oh oh oh oh that would be a good idea yeah yeah well that you know one project we're looking at is we're building a deck out back and we want to put a tree in and we've been looking around and maybe you could you know suggest something but um the tree that we've sort of you know come upon is a [bradford] pear and we wanted it for shade and we wanted it you know for the leaf and um that's you know right it it's yeah it's ornamental right that's true oh red bud uh_huh that would be a great shade tree then uh_huh um but as long as you mow the grass around well you said it was around rocks but oh well that's just in the springtime too isn't it oh yeah oh that's interesting get to know all these things leaning away from well that's interesting yeah i know that um we've done some other things with the grass and trying to you know get the right combination of grass here because it's well we ours was a model house so when they set it up they had like these cement walkways across the front yard and they had planted bermuda and then when they took the cement walkways out they stuck in um what is that saint augustine stuff and i am a transplant here from the north myself and so when i saw that saint augustine i said oh weeds and i spent i mean weeks just pulling it up bag by bag until i went to the nursery one day and found out they were selling it by plugs you know and i could have made some money on all those big huge black bags of stuff i'd thrown out so we're trying to um after this winter we had a lot of winter kill and hopefully you know some of the bermuda will take over and because i really like that grass yeah that yeah [grubs] uh_huh oh i just i just mow the lawn that's about all i ever do um not really to speak of um when i was little we used to use uh like a chicken manure and cover the whole lawn with it and then uh plant uh bermuda mostly um we had monkey grass and a wax leaf [ligustrums] well the it's really bad here because the last couple of years the freeze has been real bad so i had to hack them off a little bit and um and it left most of them dead in a lot of places it they just killed them right off yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um not very much um just um i had some hanging uh flowers in the on the porch and uh and a few plants on the inside that's about it uh_huh yeah uh_huh right yeah they have a they have a mulching blade now it cuts the cuts the grass up real fine and you don't have to you don't you can't even see it when it falls into the grass it it just [penetrates] right through to the ground well i don't know exactly what it does but it cuts the grass a lot [finer] than than uh the old mowers used to do uh it's a special blade i mean they have mulching mowers but then they have a uh mulching attachment too that you can put on other mowers i think i think it's double [edged] and it cuts it back and forth huh uh no that's about it nice talking to you well yes and no we live um on a cul de sac and we're at the end so we kind of have like two yards so to speak and um it's really tough in the summer time mowing because we just have so much yard to to uh take care of no we don't that's on our wish list one of these days but that's how we get our exercise is get out there with the mower and what we did this uh past summer was we tried to because we're doing we do it the mulching rather than bag it and all and uh we try to do it about twice a week so that was really quite a chore oh my uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah well that that makes sense though right the actual maintenance of the yard well see that's what that's also on our wish list we um couple of years ago we landscaped our our whole front yard and um my husband has lived in the house for several years and we finally decided well we're just going to go in and redo everything and we did that and we debated at the time about putting in you know sprinkler system like in the in the flower beds and we thought well when we do it we're just going to do in the flower beds and the whole yard uh_huh uh_huh well speaking of termites we had those this past summer yeah right right oh yeah that's that's a tough thing we got a with our deal we got about a five year warranty and we a place called t k o [exterminating] there he's out in rowlett and i hope that he's going to stay around right right yeah i know that's the that's the thing and we thought about that and we thought well we're just going to kind of i guess take our chances and hope for end up on the better end of the deal we've got uh yaupon hollies chinese hollies uh the monkey grass yeah well actually the first time we [relandscaped] we did it in the fall they say that's the best time to do it and we did it then and we had indian [hawthorns] in which are so pretty because they have the little you know uh blossoms on them but those are not freeze tolerant and we had a freeze and we had to replace we took about twenty plants back that next spring to the nursery and we had lifetime guarantees so we just got new plants and put those in uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh okay uh_huh oh is that right okay uh_huh oh okay yeah because see that's what's such a pain and the constant moving well that's that's hopefully we did a lot of work on our house this past summer and um we thought the next thing will be a sprinkler system but that probably won't be for a couple of years now because we really did a whole lot this summer spent too much money so yeah well i know i hate it when people do that they'll sit there and fix up their house and then they move and no we're going to we plan on staying here for a while yeah yeah i know yep yep well uh the most i've done so far is like uh landscaping you know bushes and shrubs and stuff like that my wife likes to put out flowers and stuff in the flower beds so i'm always having to uh turn the flower beds for her every year she puts the flowers and i try to maintain the bushes and trees and stuff um uh_huh um uh_huh green beans oh i see um yeah oh yeah i've heard of that uh_huh uh i see i'd like to do vegetable garden but i don't have the yard size for it i'm in a zero lot line home but uh we're thinking of moving this year the interest rates are getting so low we can't afford not to uh_huh uh_huh yeah so how do your tomatoes do down here pretty good yeah uh_huh um uh_huh yeah wow that's pretty good yeah uh you try fruit like uh strawberries and um um yeah so vegetables are much easier then yeah yeah yeah well that sounds neat you ever do anything like [melons] no i remember one year at my parents' old house we grew a uh i guess a a squash plant you know turned out to be a pumpkin and uh it it bore pretty good size fruit and then one year we just let one of the [squashes] grow out produced a really huge pumpkin we're pretty surprised and they just got lucky because they didn't do anything to it no fertilizing or anything just kind of threw the seeds out there but uh that's pretty neat yeah this was down in san antonio so i know i think so too i think so too i you know i noticed here in dallas well maybe it depends on where you live but it's like the shrubs don't do as well they don't grow as fast yeah yeah i've got a tree that i planted that doesn't it's okay but it doesn't you know my dad planted a tree two years after i planted mine and his is like three times as big as mine i don't know what it is i i think it is uh i have a feeling that the soil's not there's a lot of rocks in it because all around me i can see where the erosion is from from the creek beds there's a lot of rock under me i have a feeling i'm i'm probably the roots are probably hitting rocks or something yeah i try to keep it going but it's not getting very big i think in five years it grew like three or four feet i know i so how is your lawn and garden work yeah i understand that it actually is snowing cold and wet oh is he okay not so much anymore i'm i'm getting older i'm fifty two now so i've just uh i've sort of slowed down you know we use this rather than do it ourselves as far as fertilizing we utilize a service and i guess they do a an okay type of job but uh i've let this little kid that lives behind us cut our grass just a little bit this past year i think i'm going to let him do it all this year just i work uh i'm out of town quite a bit and i come home and seems like every friday that's what i have to face on saturday is doing my lawn so i just stopped doing that right oh i understand yeah yeah we have a problem about every other year with weeds it it appear that every other year a service can get rid of them and uh but just about every other year they come back it's a constant battle i tell you right i understand i do too so i'm i have the same problem right right right with a thirty five dollar bill well we didn't use one year before last a service because we uh we had weeds like two years in a row and you know when you have a service you don't expect that so we stopped and i sort of did it myself year before last then this last summer i'd went back to a service and then went but went to a new service and they appear to be doing a better job lawn doctor and we used to use one in plano and we switched to one that's more local one of our friends bought the one in plano they just didn't uh didn't do that good a job on our lawn so we changed services right right right either rye or something yeah because see i have we have a lot of trees in our yard so it's it's you know during the summer it's bare under the trees so i've planted planted a lot of winter rye to grow because that will grow in the summertime under trees it's more of a it's a better shade grass so now as as cold as it is out there and as rainy as it is we have you can see where we planted all the green grass but as it's in the summer because that's the only green area in our lawn all of our bermuda's all brown we have on the side yard few years back right i'm always uh you know sometimes i'm sometimes i'm i'm over at home depot i'll just a grab a thing of grass seed and put it in the old spreader and just spread it real quick or throw it out in the areas where i think i need it but overall i guess we have a pretty good stand of grass they say in the summertime the hotter it is the better the bermuda grows and course that supposedly quote will crowd out the weeds and everything so i just uh what kind of lawn and garden work do you wind up doing uh_huh okay okay okay okay this sounds kind of like uh uh uh slightly [jumbled] situation there oh uh good income yes okay yes do do you enjoy gardening yeah it's real relaxation uh my father ran a service station for thirty nine years and his i mean when i was a kid i didn't realize how true it was but he always said that that was the best way he knew of to wind to wind down after a hard day at work was to come home and put in a hard day in the garden and especially you know just [hoeing] just [hoeing] up the weeds it was that was therapy to him i guess it still is but uh somehow it didn't seem that way when i was like ten years old but oh yeah yeah um we had about a quarter of an acre worth of lawn between our my parents' house and our next door neighbors they were a rather elderly couple so we cut their lawn for them but uh there's about a half acre worth of garden we kept so with the kids and dad we kept it worked up pretty well it was a lot of fun as long as you know your heart was in it at least to some extent or another well uh since i moved away from home i got to live in a place that had a yard so not really yes we've actually gotten to the point where uh for a while i couldn't seem to keep anything alive i couldn't even grow weeds in the house but about three years ago my wife and i somehow or another seemed to have turned into green [thumbs] we got we [pinched] off a uh a couple of a [twigs] of a house plant of her mother's we wrapped them in a wet paper towel and brought them home with us and put them in a jar of miracle grow and water and these this thing took off and we planted them and now it's a plant uh the plant we [pinched] them off of was kind of full and leafy but only about eight inches high off the top this thing's about five feet tall now i don't know it it's just you know some little broad leaf something or other which that uh it's it's got real thick thick [stalks] to it that like i say there's a couple of those [stalks] over five feet tall but uh they're just growing like mad once we got that thing going we wound up with about five or six other house plants that are all doing real well some people gave us some [aloe] [vera] and it's it's doing well i mean it's had it's bad spots but it it's had its rough times but yeah but it's doing real well now um i brought her a uh a couple of i don't even know what they're called looks like overly large lawn grass but it's just a broad leaf type of lawn kind of like a leaf on a stalk of corn but uh [greener] short house plant pardon well it doesn't get a stalk it does the leaves all come out of the center it doesn't really resemble corn other than the shape of the leaf itself is about like the shape of a leaf a leaf on a stalk of corn but it's not on a stalk it's just all out of the center yeah and uh it doesn't seem to flower any and let's see we've got a little somebody gave us a [fichus] and uh when we first got it no well we came close we got really close um when we first got it she kept moving it back and forth from the front porch to the uh inside and she never could quite decide where she wanted it inside and it shed almost all its leaves really i like it i like um um working with flowers and stuff like that oh just mowing the yard that's probably why you hate it so much uh_huh i kind of enjoy working out in the yard i enjoy working out in the yard i mean in the summertime it's hard here because it gets so hot you have to like get up at six in the morning if you're going to mow the yard and not faint while your doing it yeah no no i'm married well we both do sometimes well we're we're moving to a new house and so we'll have to get started over there decide what we're going to plant and everything at the old house we had a lot of roses yeah it does get really hot here uh_huh yeah we tried that last year and but we hadn't lived here in dallas for you know long enough to to remember that you have to do like um i have this sister who lives in florida and she plants her garden in january harvest in may plant again in um late september and then harvest like in december yeah that's right because the summertime you just can't grow anything and we tried to plant in like end of march or april and everything just [toasted] i mean it just oh here it gets so hot i mean this stuff just burns to a crisp what probably late january why what are you just as soon as it stops freezing because you know i mean last summer the only way you could keep something keep a keep a garden growing last summer was to water it all day long every day because it would just it would just burn to a crisp oh yeah uh_huh yeah why did he make you do it well so okay you need to get married and have kids and then when they're big enough you can have them go do the yard and you can do what you want to do no but he will be yeah why i didn't seem to have that experience i mean they were already there but we just fed them and watered them no oh well like i said we tried last year but we didn't do it right and it's going to be too late this year by the time we get moved so we'll probably wait and maybe in the fall we might plant a fall garden this year but we're not going to try to do anything during the summertime because it is just too hot uh_huh yeah yeah that's what i said you know sometime during the summertime you've got to get up at six in the morning to do it before you know before it gets hot and one time last year i remember we were planning on doing that and it was eighty degrees even then oh it was just awful and so humid oh no because were fixing to move really yeah yeah oh yeah uh_huh nice talking to you too thanks oh thanks uh we have a vegetable garden with a we have some onions potatoes uh broccoli spinach lettuce radishes yeah we he we plant quite a bit and we have the you know peach tree and a plum tree and so uh well we just planted the plum tree this year so we haven't uh haven't gotten anything off of that hopefully this will be the first year for our peaches we're hoping to get something off of that so oh uh_huh yeah we uh i i love [plums] and peach i just love all fruit you know and it's hard to come you know the i don't know the fruit we get down here at the store has just been pretty lousy lately so yeah it's like yeah like where does all the good stuff go yeah where is it i know they have to grow some of it uh_huh yeah what are we yeah yeah what's in the juice this is what i would put in juice uh_huh that's so true yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah we got some bulbs but we haven't gotten them planted uh my husband's uh been growing uh lots of flowers from seed and all of his own plants under a a light he put out in the garage to help keep them you know alive and get them a good start so we hope we have a lot of flowers this year uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah we don't have any pets so yeah like my husband says we just have two kids it's hard to keep them out of things let alone pets oh no that's no fun uh_huh oh you ought to you ought to send a videotape that and send it into america's home videos yeah that's right you you know that could be worth ten thousand dollars so that's right yeah that's right you can buy lots of cat food with that so or hire somebody to do your lawn so then you don't have to worry about it we have a big problem around here with [insect] problems you know fire ants and so that's it gets expensive around here to do a lawn because you're always you know buying the fertilizer and the you know the bug killers and weed killers yeah uh_huh uh_huh oh my husband just has to have it green has to be green it's oh that's nice uh_huh yeah well we had a real warm day today and all the neighbors were out you know in their front yards doing their yard and it's a perfect day for it yeah i i love spring i just love it do you oh not me oh i don't i i grew up in wyoming and it's cold enough there for me so uh_huh oh do you have a lot of that kind of weather there in north carolina oh winter that wasn't oh uh_huh yeah no talking to my folks in wyoming they uh they were still hoping they get some more because if they don't they're going to have water problems this summer so uh_huh that's right they need the the snow for the water so uh_huh and just dries everything out uh_huh oh well it sounds like you need to move back there yeah that's that's it we'd like to be closer to family but limits the job your welcome brittany yeah but it's hard to make it being a [rancher] or farmer what brittany okay good [hon] sorry oh yeah she she was wanting uh_huh yeah i hear you just fine oh yeah you doing lots of these calls you work for t i oh oh okay my husband works for t i uh_huh yeah he works for them right now he's been there almost six years now oh wow i had one of those too it was a weather phone call yeah oh oh well you really kind of have the same kind of weather i had one from somebody that was up in new york and they were out of their house because of the ice storm yeah they were living with families that would take them in and uh_huh yeah yeah they couldn't even be in the house because they had no power and everything yeah and here we were i mean i talked to her we had just gotten over a ninety four degree day so we really had a lot to compare so oh i she's talking to my husband i think so yeah so oh yeah that's what she said they they were going to the governor was going to try to have it declared a disaster area what uh_huh oh yeah it really is yeah it seems like you work hard and something else goes wrong nothing's forever i guess oh that's what it is with us too you just like get so frustrated you get something about ready [ripe] and there goes the bugs uh_huh or hail yeah it just you know uh_huh oh my word oh was it we grew cantaloupe last year and that's how they were just [tasteless] you couldn't even eat them yeah uh_huh yeah yeah you have to be so careful when you buy at the stores uh_huh uh_huh yeah nope you don't it's hard to pick them oh yeah the oranges here look disgusting so all right now since i'm from the great midwest north you know we're right on lake erie uh i'm sure our climates are much different than yours are typically today we've got uh rain we're [forecasting] a little bit of sleet and uh which means i'm not going to do any lawn and gardening today that's for sure so i don't know what's the weather down there and uh_huh yeah yeah it's not it's supposed to be white how about i send you a little bit uh_huh well i have that i still have that we have mums and [geraniums] that are still holding their own out there uh a lot of the other ones i've i've already had to pull out uh at that point i'm ready to start putting in uh some bulbs i waiting for a decent some decent weather for that i've got uh about two hundred bulbs i've got to put in but uh i have the uh mine is a new home and we just really did the landscaping this year so i've got about all the gardening i want for the year so i'll be anxious to to let it rest for a little bit but uh somebody i talked to last week they said they had the uh they had problems doing some of the work down there because they they really had some heat hanging on uh_huh yeah all right uh_huh uh_huh oh i see uh_huh that's very okay that's very very different than ours because ours we get into a lot of combinations of rye and kentucky blue and uh plus the usual amount of crabgrass and weeds and everything else that pops through and uh but we've had a a terrible drought this year and everybody is going through the same kind of problems in fact we developed on a new lawn we developed what they call rust and it's a fungus which is very very rare but our whole area they're all new homes and new lawns and it was it was very very much in evidence this year everything turns yellow well it just turns yellow where it shouldn't and you walk across walk across the lawn and your shoes will actually come out rust colored no it's a it's a fungus and they claim that it is caused by stress to the lawn it it won't kill the lawn but it sure doesn't do much for the looks of the lawn and uh the alternative is a lot of uh nitrogen [overpowering] with nitrogen fertilizer and certain chemicals but everybody is so chemical shy anymore that we [steered] clear of it and hopefully you know come come spring it will be cleared up and everything will be back to normal uh_huh oh yeah uh_huh do you enjoy lawn work uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah that sounds nice cedar lake i'm not uh oh i see okay okay alright okay uh so what kind of uh uh piece of property have you got uh_huh well uh i uh up here we don't have too much trouble with crab grass or anything like that uh uh we've uh we rent the house that we live in but we got a pretty large piece of uh land that we live on even though it's very close in to washington d c and so most of the work that we have to do involves mowing the lawn and uh uh uh my sweetheart that i live with does a lot of flower gardening and stuff around the house she gets a lot of pleasure from that uh well it changes from year to year and she is thinking this year she is going to get into bulbs and that sort of thing but most of the sorts of things that she has grown in the past have been uh i guess wild flowers and uh some stuff that our neighbors sort of brings over periodically she has also she likes things like [hollyhocks] and peonies and uh-oh what else has she got oh the other things that she is really into is morning glories and uh in the summer time we have morning glories just all over the house it's great all different colors yeah it's a lot of fun it's real pleasant in fact our next door neighbor when christmas time is here couldn't resist giving us a uh set of coffee cups that had morning glories all over them and uh she she found them and said oh i just had to buy them for you but we are also really into vegetable gardening actually yeah actually we do we don't have any uh any uh you know [varmints] or anything like that that tend to bother the garden but we do have a lot of trouble with insects particularly [caterpillars] uh we have had very very poor luck with uh all of the core crops and like uh uh cabbage and and uh broccoli and cauliflower and that sort of thing uh_huh well that's uh exactly what we have done and you're advice is is dead on in our experiences in fact we have what works even better than [lime] is [dialtamatious] earth uh yeah well uh jackie got hold of a huge box of it so much of it that i dare say that we'll probably still using still be using it five years from now she went out to some uh pool supply place and got this huge box of it and it's really big and she came home with it and she was real proud and she said okay well we've got a life time supply now so we've got no excuse and uh well we uh have uh i guess in the last two or three years we have discovered that we're fond of hot peppers and so uh we grow tomatoes down one side of the house where we get a lot of sun and then in our regular garden plot this past uh couple of years we've grown a lot of different varieties of hot peppers yes which of course are our favorites and uh but we have also grown a lot of real uh uh hot uh smaller varieties like [tys] and uh yeah yeah the cayenne and we have even grown some little funny uh uh peppers and i have never been sure one of them i believe is called chili [tepid] and the other one is called [pequine] and uh they're they're little tiny hot things that we she takes them inside and she dries them and then we eat and [nibble] on for weeks they are little green literally pea size peppers they're just little tiny guys and they dry up even smaller than they are when they're they're you know fresh food on the uh on the plant but the plants are just incredibly [prodigious] they just produce [zillions] of them uh uh all kinds of dishes like i say we grind them up and uh we freeze some of them and then use them in [stews] and uh whenever we make egg dishes or anything like that we tend to uh to put some on it it's just incredible but uh the number of ways that we come up to use them and uh it's it's funny i mean we were laughing at our [selves] one night because we uh we realized that uh we had uh we were having it with every meal okay do you um have a garden uh_huh do you enjoy working out in the yard uh_huh uh_huh i have some roses out in my backyard too and they've done real well i was surprised um we had some in virginia and they were real hard to keep up with but seems like they like the texas climate better right yeah we built up our we built up boxes and put them in that so that they would drain because our soil is so bad where i live do you live in texas or plano oh yeah i'm out in rowlett and we have that brown clay soil and it's real hard to grow anything here uh_huh oh that's accommodating yeah right we've got a few things too it's hard to tell if they'll come back or not well that's good we we planted three pecan trees out front and every one of them died i told my husband this is the last one if it dies we're going to something else but we dug a hole about six times as big as it needs to be and filled it with all kinds of compost and pine needles and everything else we could think of hopefully it'll drain this year yeah yeah it's hard to find something that'll take the heat as well as the freezing that we get down here i have a few little flowers i plant around the trees out front i've enjoyed doing those i put uh pansies out in the winter and they pretty much last all winter and then i put uh moss rose out in the summer and it just goes crazy don't really have to do anything to it puts a lot of color out there all year right oh yeah those do pretty well here don't they we've got my husband put a little row of those out in the backyard to kind of make a little cut so that the kids wouldn't come marching through the yard and everything yeah right yeah the only thing i don't like about them is weeding around them because they get those sharp pricky things get in your hands oh really yeah we do it my husband does most of the mowing and edging and all that stuff yeah we get something on the door about every week uh_huh yeah really oh our neighbor has a lawn service come and do his and i don't think it looks any better than what my husband does so i'm not really tempted to do that either if it yeah i can mow the back yard but there's something about the grass in our front yard is so dense that the mower wheels just kind of bog down in there and i can not push it oh really huh i would like a self propelled one i think that that might make it easier yeah ours is not that big but like i said if i had to mow the front i'd be stuck because i can't get it to move oh oh i'm sure yeah that's pretty large area really did people up there edge as as strictly and stuff as they do down here yeah yeah i lived in a town it was a college town in virginia and i mean people kept their lawns mowed but they sure didn't get into it like they do here in texas wasn't a source of pride or something like it is down here yeah uh_huh yeah yeah it's hard i know we tried to do our landscaping out front my husband tilled it up in the fall and then we've been waiting on some guy supposed to be getting us some edging for like ten cents a foot instead of about a dollar and uh he has never got it to us so it just sits out there kind of dug up and doesn't look too good so i can't say anything about anybody else's yeah it'd seem like they'd want to just to uh get some shade and keep their houses a little bit cooler in the summer yeah yeah yeah did they not put any in in your neighborhood we had two trees in the front of our yard and then one of them died and so that's where we keep putting that pecan that keeps dying we have uh i think it's a silver leaf maple or something like that that's hung on out there right yeah hope ours continues to live it's been there about four i guess almost four years now so maybe it's established enough that it will go on and survive i like an oak oak trees yeah my um husband's father has a place out in east texas so he's always digging up little red oaks and things like that and trying to bring them back and start them but so far we haven't had much luck uh_huh oh oh yeah well that's too bad we've got all of our trees from calloway's and luckily they'll take them back any time for any reason if they die so uh_huh uh_huh yeah i know they guy at wolfe told us they cut back on the tree warranty like six months or less but calloway's has kept theirs forever so yeah yeah i don't know we haven't bought uh_huh we haven't bought any shrubs yet hopefully i think we've almost waited this too late this year now to start putting in anything of any size yeah oh really it wouldn't matter if we plant them when it was starting to get warmer root stimulator yeah oh well that's good to know maybe there's still hope for our front yard this summer then uh_huh yeah i've i've noticed that they haven't had anything great right yeah yeah last year we thought some were dead and finally they started leafing out again at the bottom so we just cut them way back and was able to save them but this year they look even worse uh_huh yeah huh ours haven't done anything yet this year yeah i like crepe myrtles they really add a lot of color oh we haven't had that problem yet they're pretty ours are pretty small oh really yeah oh does it grow along a fence or something oh uh_huh okay do you um have a garden uh_huh do you enjoy working out in the yard uh_huh uh_huh i have some roses out in my backyard too and they've done real well i was surprised um we had some in virginia and they were real hard to keep up with but seems like they like the texas climate better right yeah we built up our we built up boxes and put them in that so that they would drain because our soil is so bad where i live do you live in texas or plano oh yeah i'm out in rowlett and we have that brown clay soil and it's real hard to grow anything here uh_huh oh that's accommodating yeah right we've got a few things too it's hard to tell if they'll come back or not well that's good we we planted three pecan trees out front and every one of them died i told my husband this is the last one if it dies we're going to something else but we dug a hole about six times as big as it needs to be and filled it with all kinds of compost and pine needles and everything else we could think of hopefully it'll drain this year yeah yeah it's hard to find something that'll take the heat as well as the freezing that we get down here i have a few little flowers i plant around the trees out front i've enjoyed doing those i put uh pansies out in the winter and they pretty much last all winter and then i put uh moss rose out in the summer and it just goes crazy don't really have to do anything to it puts a lot of color out there all year right oh yeah those do pretty well here don't they we've got my husband put a little row of those out in the backyard to kind of make a little cut so that the kids wouldn't come marching through the yard and everything yeah right yeah the only thing i don't like about them is weeding around them because they get those sharp pricky things get in your hands oh really yeah we do it my husband does most of the mowing and edging and all that stuff yeah we get something on the door about every week uh_huh yeah really oh our neighbor has a lawn service come and do his and i don't think it looks any better than what my husband does so i'm not really tempted to do that either if it yeah i can mow the back yard but there's something about the grass in our front yard is so dense that the mower wheels just kind of bog down in there and i can not push it oh really huh i would like a self propelled one i think that that might make it easier yeah ours is not that big but like i said if i had to mow the front i'd be stuck because i can't get it to move oh oh i'm sure yeah that's pretty large area really did people up there edge as as strictly and stuff as they do down here yeah yeah i lived in a town it was a college town in virginia and i mean people kept their lawns mowed but they sure didn't get into it like they do here in texas wasn't a source of pride or something like it is down here yeah uh_huh yeah yeah it's hard i know we tried to do our landscaping out front my husband tilled it up in the fall and then we've been waiting on some guy supposed to be getting us some edging for like ten cents a foot instead of about a dollar and uh he has never got it to us so it just sits out there kind of dug up and doesn't look too good so i can't say anything about anybody else's yeah it'd seem like they'd want to just to uh get some shade and keep their houses a little bit cooler in the summer yeah yeah yeah did they not put any in in your neighborhood we had two trees in the front of our yard and then one of them died and so that's where we keep putting that pecan that keeps dying we have uh i think it's a silver leaf maple or something like that that's hung on out there right yeah hope ours continues to live it's been there about four i guess almost four years now so maybe it's established enough that it will go on and survive i like an oak oak trees yeah my um husband's father has a place out in east texas so he's always digging up little red oaks and things like that and trying to bring them back and start them but so far we haven't had much luck uh_huh oh oh yeah well that's too bad we've got all of our trees from calloway's and luckily they'll take them back any time for any reason if they die so uh_huh uh_huh yeah i know they guy at wolfe told us they cut back on the tree warranty like six months or less but calloway's has kept theirs forever so yeah yeah i don't know we haven't bought uh_huh we haven't bought any shrubs yet hopefully i think we've almost waited this too late this year now to start putting in anything of any size yeah oh really it wouldn't matter if we plant them when it was starting to get warmer root stimulator yeah oh well that's good to know maybe there's still hope for our front yard this summer then uh_huh yeah i've i've noticed that they haven't had anything great right yeah yeah last year we thought some were dead and finally they started leafing out again at the bottom so we just cut them way back and was able to save them but this year they look even worse uh_huh yeah huh ours haven't done anything yet this year yeah i like crepe myrtles they really add a lot of color oh we haven't had that problem yet they're pretty ours are pretty small oh really yeah oh does it grow along a fence or something oh uh_huh okay do you um have a garden uh_huh do you enjoy working out in the yard uh_huh uh_huh i have some roses out in my backyard too and they've done real well i was surprised um we had some in virginia and they were real hard to keep up with but seems like they like the texas climate better right yeah we built up our we built up boxes and put them in that so that they would drain because our soil is so bad where i live do you live in texas or plano oh yeah i'm out in rowlett and we have that brown clay soil and it's real hard to grow anything here uh_huh oh that's accommodating yeah right we've got a few things too it's hard to tell if they'll come back or not well that's good we we planted three pecan trees out front and every one of them died i told my husband this is the last one if it dies we're going to something else but we dug a hole about six times as big as it needs to be and filled it with all kinds of compost and pine needles and everything else we could think of hopefully it'll drain this year yeah yeah it's hard to find something that'll take the heat as well as the freezing that we get down here i have a few little flowers i plant around the trees out front i've enjoyed doing those i put uh pansies out in the winter and they pretty much last all winter and then i put uh moss rose out in the summer and it just goes crazy don't really have to do anything to it puts a lot of color out there all year right oh yeah those do pretty well here don't they we've got my husband put a little row of those out in the backyard to kind of make a little cut so that the kids wouldn't come marching through the yard and everything yeah right yeah the only thing i don't like about them is weeding around them because they get those sharp pricky things get in your hands oh really yeah we do it my husband does most of the mowing and edging and all that stuff yeah we get something on the door about every week uh_huh yeah really oh our neighbor has a lawn service come and do his and i don't think it looks any better than what my husband does so i'm not really tempted to do that either if it yeah i can mow the back yard but there's something about the grass in our front yard is so dense that the mower wheels just kind of bog down in there and i can not push it oh really huh i would like a self propelled one i think that that might make it easier yeah ours is not that big but like i said if i had to mow the front i'd be stuck because i can't get it to move oh oh i'm sure yeah that's pretty large area really did people up there edge as as strictly and stuff as they do down here yeah yeah i lived in a town it was a college town in virginia and i mean people kept their lawns mowed but they sure didn't get into it like they do here in texas wasn't a source of pride or something like it is down here yeah uh_huh yeah yeah it's hard i know we tried to do our landscaping out front my husband tilled it up in the fall and then we've been waiting on some guy supposed to be getting us some edging for like ten cents a foot instead of about a dollar and uh he has never got it to us so it just sits out there kind of dug up and doesn't look too good so i can't say anything about anybody else's yeah it'd seem like they'd want to just to uh get some shade and keep their houses a little bit cooler in the summer yeah yeah yeah did they not put any in in your neighborhood we had two trees in the front of our yard and then one of them died and so that's where we keep putting that pecan that keeps dying we have uh i think it's a silver leaf maple or something like that that's hung on out there right yeah hope ours continues to live it's been there about four i guess almost four years now so maybe it's established enough that it will go on and survive i like an oak oak trees yeah my um husband's father has a place out in east texas so he's always digging up little red oaks and things like that and trying to bring them back and start them but so far we haven't had much luck uh_huh oh oh yeah well that's too bad we've got all of our trees from calloway's and luckily they'll take them back any time for any reason if they die so uh_huh uh_huh yeah i know they guy at wolfe told us they cut back on the tree warranty like six months or less but calloway's has kept theirs forever so yeah yeah i don't know we haven't bought uh_huh we haven't bought any shrubs yet hopefully i think we've almost waited this too late this year now to start putting in anything of any size yeah oh really it wouldn't matter if we plant them when it was starting to get warmer root stimulator yeah oh well that's good to know maybe there's still hope for our front yard this summer then uh_huh yeah i've i've noticed that they haven't had anything great right yeah yeah last year we thought some were dead and finally they started leafing out again at the bottom so we just cut them way back and was able to save them but this year they look even worse uh_huh yeah huh ours haven't done anything yet this year yeah i like crepe myrtles they really add a lot of color oh we haven't had that problem yet they're pretty ours are pretty small oh really yeah oh does it grow along a fence or something oh uh_huh are you a player has it oh yeah yeah i i haven't played in about two years and then i went out two weeks ago with the guys here i work at t i and i played in a tournament out there and i shot a net fifty nine they were kind of little upset i guess i laid off long enough to get rid of all my bad habits i have a hard time [inventing] shots you know let's go around this tree and you know try a slice through a hook here and i can't do that so i finally got out and i've been watching quite a few videos i had not been able to play so i took out a few videos and watched them for a while and i i hope i'm on the right track shot a career low eighty nine so and my handicap is twenty nine i like that really yeah i've tried to get my wife i bought her a set of clubs four years ago she hasn't even swung them but she wants to get into it now after i came home and won the tournament the other day she's she's ready to get off into it but you know i like i just like getting out being in the outdoors and i'm a hunter and fisher anyway but you know you know at least i can get out and play a few hours of golf and it's not going to cost me an arm and a leg really and i you know i walk i don't ride so you know i get a little exercise there too so yeah right yeah oh yeah yeah it's pretty nice we played out here a couple of times in the middle of the winter when my parents came down and what not they were amazed you know here it is sixty five degrees we're out playing golf and they're freezing cold back there so but i uh actually i picked it up when i was in high school on the same as a p e course you know when i got into the service i got into it and now when i come out here i just kind of let it go and then one one of the guys mentioned to me at work one day if i played golf and i said well yeah you know i've got my clubs but i haven't swung them in quite a few years and then i got into it and then back out of it and it just seems like every couple of years i get back in there you know i really enjoy it it's really nice yeah yeah you don't want to go out and get beat to death but no and then you know we've got some guys here that they are you know four and five [handicappers] and they don't like to play with me because i'm too slow for them so you know but get somebody around your own handicap and you can just [mosey] on out for three or four hours and have a good time and i've you know i've never never yet have i walked up now i've walked up a few times on the golf course by myself with nobody else to play with and never yet have i met anybody on the golf course that wouldn't allow me to join their [twosome] or [threesome] they are always friendly sure come on out you know and they don't mind if you make a mistake they don't mind saying well you know let me tell you how to do that or teach you how to do that or you know it's it's pretty nice and friendly out there and you can't find that in all sports yeah yeah you need to yeah oh yeah we we have one down here in the summertime uh it runs from like five o'clock to seven thirty or eight o'clock you know because it doesn't get dark until nine thirty or ten and we play in the summertime out here we get a mixed league in and that's what i'm trying to get her ready for it's going to start well when we change time back whenever that is next month i guess and it will start then and you know we had a lot of girls out there a couple of years ago and they were just starting to learn and you know they were shooting a hundred hundred and twenty but they were you know now they're down into the hundreds nineties so it won't take her long you know and it's something we can do together so well she doesn't do much hunting she could care less about that she's does a little fishing but you know golf would give her the exercise she'd be outside give her something to do that we both enjoy so yeah uh_huh yeah yeah all right yeah and it's you know it's a game that you don't like bowling you know you feel bad if you bowl a hundred but if you shoot a hundred in golf you know you don't have to be an expert to play any [novice] can pick up a club and learn how to hold one and learn how to do it and do it right so you know you don't have to be an expert in any aspect of it at all yeah yeah and when you know when i first got back into it i used to get mad because i knew i could do something and i didn't get it done you know and i just well i need to slice this ball around here i naturally slice anyway now you know the ball will go straight and i go i never broke a club or anything but you know i'd get upset about it sometimes and now i guess you know being in my forties i just kind of [mellowed] out a little bit i don't get upset any more so and well i've enjoyed talking to you i guess i'll go back to work all right see you later bye bye uh i i think i am it's it's been a while now yeah i've uh-oh just recently i got married and we bought a house we're about fifty yards from the golf course but unfortunately the house is taking up my time so it's been uh it's been almost a year i guess since i've actually uh swung a club for a purpose yeah yeah yeah right right yeah that's that's great yeah now it's uh like i say it's been a while for me too i uh i've got my wife motivated about it um and uh i think that's probably going to be one of the next investments is get her get her a set of clubs and uh we'll get out of the driving range and and get some interest built up and hopefully we can uh we can start in really well great great that's good yeah same thing here right right uh_huh yeah that's i've got the same attitude i uh i tell you i started i guess the first time i played golf has been probably about eight or ten years ago now when i was in college and uh i took uh i took it as a p e course and then kind of left it alone for a while and then finally got got into it when i was while i was still in school and since then uh we've made it um as as the friends start getting married and things like that we've made a tradition of uh having a a thursday um well have have probably like like a thursday night bachelor party and a friday golf day before the wedding and uh so it that's back in south dakota where i grew up and uh so that that's uh that's been my main my main involvement is it seems like i go home and play golf more than i do around here but uh eventually i get people to come and visit me in dallas and then i'll show them we can play golf in the middle of winter when we can't do it back home yeah yep yep oh okay uh_huh yeah that's right oh it is it's it's a lot of fun especially if you can find somebody that's uh that's got the same level of interest that seem to be the hardest thing well about that's that's true of any sport you know if you want to play tennis or racquetball right and and people don't want to play with somebody that they are going to beat every time you know and and uh uh_huh right that's right yeah that's true that's true well that that's that's so yeah that's absolutely right and you can gain a lot of ground doing that too if you if you know you gets you get in a [rut] if you do play a lot but you play with the same people you you aren't going to learn anything after a short period once you learn everything they've got to offer then you've basically tapped your resources there but uh i'd like to uh eventually i'd like to work up if if my wife does get interested and maybe get involved in a league in a in a mixed mixed [doubles] league or something like that uh_huh right uh_huh sure right well that's good that's good that's sounds like a lot of fun yeah yeah it it sounds like we've got real similar situations i i i go home uh i've gone home every year now since i've moved to dallas to to go pheasant hunting and uh um the the last time i i took my wife along and uh kind of the same situation she's she's up in the house and talked to my mother the whole time we were out hunting and stuff but she'll definitely uh she'll make the trip for fishing if that comes along but uh it's it's interesting that's right uh_huh that's right well yeah i've i've kind of formed the attitude that you know if i could just if i could pick two or three shots out uh out of my game every time and put them together on one hole then i do pretty good and then and i keep i keep [rationalizing] that well you know i can do it i just got to do it all at on the same hole and and then it will get better and you just keep going and in the meantime just enjoy what you're doing it it it really works that way uh_huh yeah yeah sure sure and well that's great well you bet okay sounds like it okay bye okay is uh that a sport you like to participate in uh_huh my husband likes golf also he's uh i guess he'd be a fanatic if he thought he could get away with it but he he limits it pretty good i um have tried to go out and play golf he would love it if i would go out and play with him but i stand there and swing and swing and i can't even hit the ball yeah i don't either right oh so he's really into it wow oh yeah right more because of their personalities than their [sportsman] right oh uh_huh uh_huh oh he's interesting i like to watch him yeah yeah yeah yeah i think you're right yeah i like to watch those skins games do you ever watch those where they just play for a certain you know for each hole they win they get the money for it i think those are pretty exciting uh_huh yeah oh really i sometimes wonder why men like it so much because they get so frustrated and mad at themselves when they don't do well my husband and his buddies are not very good they play like maybe once a month or less and so they all hit like in the low nineties and they think they're having a really good game so wow yeah that is good right yeah uh_huh something to stay active at for a long time yeah yeah yeah and they can still get good at it well maybe that's what i'll do when i have time later on yeah uh_huh true right yeah or my favorite just ride around in the cart with him go somewhere really nice like hawaii and just look at the golf course oh yeah but my husband's pretty tolerant so he's not too bad to watch oh no yeah gosh now my husband has a temper but he doesn't seem to show it on the golf course he's because he'll talk about the other guys he plays with doing that and how immature he thought it was and stuff so i guess he's real laid back about it he he'll come home though and he'll shoot when he was shooting in the hundreds and he'll tell me what a great day he had and about this great shot he made and everything yeah this one on this one hole did you have to listen to long stories about now on the seventeenth hole i hit it and went this way those are it's hard for me to act nice about that when it goes on and on yes right and then they want to play another course that's not they're not a member of and other fees it really is high oh yeah yeah right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh me either yeah at least you're just you're competing against yourself i guess more than everybody else out there yeah that's kind of the way i feel oh right no actually i'm a spectator and i'm a second hand spectator as a result of my first husband's or my late husband's interest in golf uh_huh i can't even play miniature golf well well there are just some things that we're good at and other things that we're not but i am very good at watching it on television and he was really uh enthusiastic about keeping up with the tournaments he could tell me exactly what day and what time of year and where the tournaments were going to be held and what the nature of the hole was and oh yeah he was a good golfer and as and did some you know instructions at the country club for a while but uh golf tended to be i am not really deeply involved in any following any of the sports but golf was one that i developed a working knowledge of a lot of the golfers and therefore i enjoyed following those particular players uh_huh well part of it was the personality and their [sportsmanship] another part of it was i'd pick one out that was different than what my husband was rooting for so you know the [competitor] and i became involved in following his career and uh i know that that my husband tom [kite] was his fair haired boy and he thought he was spectacular i said whoa i'm not going to i'm not going to stay interested in him so i decided andy bean was good competition any time they both played why he was just real excited when tom was you know shown on the television and i followed andy bean we both followed lee [trevino] into the seniors he is he is a character not just a golfer but he's quite a character and there are some really really wonderful people in the game of golf who do give wonderful role models and i think it's critical it's critical to have a good role model in any field any sports uh_huh uh_huh well i myself really have not seen a whole lot of point to the game of golf you hit a little ball you chase it you go find it and then you hit it again and lose it again and i know the whole point is to get it in that little bitty hole but seems to me like if they made the hole bigger it'd be easier oh i know oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah well my husband's average ran in the mid seventies so he wasn't bad he was pretty good but as far as [influencing] young people i think that that is uh that is one of the sports that you can carry into old age you can't play football at fifty five but it is a good healthy wholesome lifestyle uh anything can be warped but i think that that is one of the sports that's a good healthy way to to move into maturity safely uh_huh uh_huh that's right that's right and a lot of seniors a lot of elderly people don't even take up golf until they're you know in their later years that's right that's absolutely right and it's something that yeah when you're too old to do anything else go play golf yeah but it's it's also something that husband and wife can participate in or you can both enjoy the same sport and participate in separate circles you know you can go to the country club together you can play with your friends he can play with his friends but you've both been out and exercised and you have enjoyed the day you bet you get a lot of exercise that way uh_huh well i'll tell you what if if they're not real good golfers sometimes it is not fun to ride around and listen to their [exclamations] all day long uh_huh oh mine had a very short fuse if he did something bad he's liable to take that club and throw it as far as he can throw it he's replaced almost as many clubs as he has balls i mean just get so mad he'd just [wham] that club up against a tree and break that rascal uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i shot in the hundreds but i made this one good one uh_huh well one thing that is a is a drawback about it i think is the cost membership in the clubs is expensive the equipment is very expensive requires special shoes requires special you know special equipment there's so many that's right that's right that's right it can get very expensive and i can imagine what kind of costs are involved if you're going to try to go pro because you spend hours and hours and hours practicing and they don't give those sessions away and nor do they give uh instructions away as a matter of fact a friend of mine asked me if i thought i'd be interested in golf i said i don't know i'll have to try it and see i've always watched it and he said well fine he said we'll just take you over to the course he lives near brookhaven we'll just take you over to the course and get you some lessons and let you see if you like it if you do then we can go golf together oh whoa great i get to walk all around a little green field all day but those kinds of things happen though you you get a little taste of it and you say hey this is not bad and you really begin to develop an interest in it but i am not an athlete at all you know i'm always the one that got hit by the bat in baseball and hung my [fingernails] in the net in volleyball so i am not an athlete maybe golf is a forgiving sport i don't know it doesn't appear to be uh_huh i really i i haven't really acquired an interest in it but i'm open to try anything you know the one thing that is also detrimental as far i'm concerned my skin is very fair so i'm going to have to golf in the evening or i'm going to have to golf at a time when the heat of the day does not cook me and i don't think the okay there we go so do you play golf at all actually i don't no uh i uh when i was younger i played a little bit and i was horrible so i just stopped playing wow that is real good wow so you have been playing no actually i don't even know if i checked that or not to be perfectly honest um that seems to have been a mistake i don't know um yeah i have not played in a long time um when i was about five or six years ago my dad who plays every now and then took me out with him and and i basically um i had a horrible slice or hook i forget which one it was it wound up tossing the ball into the trees virtually every time yes i was [slicing] actually and as it turns out uh i went and took some lessons for awhile because i just i would lose so many balls and uh make it a horrible time for everybody i went and took some lessons and a i got a little bit better but i but then i sort of you know went went back to school and did not have time and this and that and and the only thing i do now is i occasionally go out to a driving range and hit a couple of balls and see what i can do and i and i still have this slice i'm a graduate student yeah yes as a matter of fact um so i don't have time to do much else except for graduate work right so i hang around this way and i occasionally uh uh a bunch of us were pretty avid golfers golfers so we will go out and we will we will we will play you know um no i have i have very at the moment i have very little playing time when i when i go on vacation my father and i uh play a little bit but i don't you know we play a par a par three nine hole course because yeah um uh_huh right but those are uh still not you favorite huh uh wow you must be very busy um miniature golf there's my game uh miniature golf there you go putt putt uh i don't i don't i don't i may have actually i may have just checked random things i don't i don't recall anymore right yeah actually we have a very very um we had the uh well we had i haven't played around here too much we have a very good one called [locust] hill though there uh the yeah the l p g a comes here every year the rochester international and then we had a p g a actually a very big p g a uh tour stop here last year and actually um they say the the i have not played the course but they say the course is very is is is pretty tough pretty challenging and it's um not only that but it's exceedingly well kept apparently because those are the comments i kept hearing from the pros you know they kept saying we hear you know on on television i but they keep saying it's just wonderful uh the course is so well maintained and you know it it it rained through half the um tournament so people had to but they still the grounds keepers were absolutely wonderful about getting things back up again and this actually when when the um when the l p g a came here i guess that was about a week and a half ago it was just it it takes over the whole town you know it's all over the news and lots and lots of people take off work to go to go an watch the the uh ladies play so i mean i think it's actually it's absolutely wonderful to see yeah uh it seems to be it seems a lot of people are really you know either um either you have not played it or or you you have played it and you sort of stink like me and you sort of play every now and then yeah yeah well same here i mean i'm a brown belt in karate at this point in time and uh and and i can not and i can not hit a golf ball you know i right that's because he's probably doing what i do worrying about is my head straight is my arm right is this correct am i holding correctly stuff like that yeah oh yeah oh yeah yeah yeah i have this nasty habit of of turning my head at the last second or or just keeping my arm wrong is it right exactly exactly it's just like i i don't watch the ball die i have it took me a long time to learn to wait until the ball was in the air before i looked up oh driver yeah watch where it's going that that is certainly true thank you that's okay go ahead it's no big deal both i believe so i i i actually don't know i get a random reimbursement every now and then and don't really don't really figure it out until afterward oh really i have been doing this for awhile actually it seems like it's been a while and they just i just get these random checks in the mail every now and then and my wife and i both do it as a matter of fact and we both just sort of get these random checks in the mail and to be honest i i really have not been accounting i just sort of figured well it's going to work you know if it works it works so okay great yeah i do i'm a player i'm kind of embarrassed i'm talking to a man cause i'm sure that you are you play a lot more than i do oh really oh well my husband is is a very good golfer he has got like a six handicap so uh and he has been playing since we have been married for twenty two years so i had to start playing because he was you know such an avid golfer so i have been playing now well i have had clubs for twenty years you know but but i really enjoy it so i had to check that and and uh talk about it well have you played recently oh oh that's okay yeah yeah yeah the slice goes to the right and the hook goes to the left i think yeah yeah yeah yeah i think that's really a good thing to do so where are you in your life i mean are you in school oh okay at the university of rochester oh great yeah yeah sure uh_huh and you don't you don't have the length of the playing time that we do yes oh that's my favorite kind to play because for a woman it's really nice to play a par three course because that's my i can't hit a driver very far and in fact i don't even like to use a driver i use a three iron off the tee because i have more control over it and i can i can just have better contact with the ball that way so i'm still using a three iron and my husband is trying to get me into using a you know like a high number wood instead no it's not my favorite but i i uh i enjoy i i really do i think i'm going to like golf the older i get and the more time i have to play i we have three teenage daughters one is yeah i'm very busy i have a part time job and and during the year i don't play much golf but but when i'm we are on vacation i love to play just like you said and we got to play in monterrey in california right you know along the pacific ocean this past spring and that was i told my husband that was the way to play you know that was if i could play there every time i want it was it was great a neat experience miniature golf is great yes well that's the thing my kids like to do that with you know on dates and stuff but golf is um we we probably are talking about golf because i did check it you know well yeah if you ever played i mean i feel like anybody that's ever played golf can talk about it and maybe if you can even talk about it if you if you have uh watched it on t v yeah tell me about your clubs up there what [locust] hill uh_huh right oh great uh_huh oh yeah oh yeah uh_huh oh sure yes yeah to watch them yeah the ladies yeah i'm sure the people love golf up there like they do down here people are just golf is just it's just the coming thing i mean a lot of people are just crazy about it well it's it's just such a difficult thing i mean it's i just i watch my husband and he's he was a professional athlete he he's a very good athlete and he's got the coordination that god given coordination and he just struggles you know all the time to um to master this game oh my really yeah because it well i watch my husband swing and his swing you know like compared to the pros is so it's [ridged] it's like he's trying so hard it's not that flowing movement you know yeah yeah or how far he's going to hit it i think you know and i worry about that i have just got to get this drive you know really far i have got to hit it so yeah yep or yeah turning your head is probably the most common thing for women they say and you are always so anxious to see where it goes uh_huh yeah yeah i have to that especially even more so with a short iron than a long you know than with a driver or something because those short irons it's just you want to look up cause you are getting close to the green and you want to see it hit the green and you know that's why yeah so i i don't know what i'm supposed to ask questions about am i supposed to ask questions about this whole procedure i know that well uh when i do you get get um reimbursed for the calls you make or the calls you talk on too both okay okay well i really did not know so i yeah okay cause this is only my second day doing it and i just did not i did not know and that was the details we i just started yesterday have you yeah i had a i see i see yeah uh_huh well my uh golfer well well that's about the way i am i don't consider myself a good one but i do enjoy it i usually play a couple of times a month sometimes more but lately it's been just about that but i do enjoy i think the one of the things i enjoy the most is the beauty of the golf courses uh_huh you can get out there yeah that's really neat you can just get out there and lose yourself in it and forget everything else in the world except what you're seeing out there uh_huh yeah it really is and you know it's so frustrating i keep wondering sometimes why do i do this because it's so frustrating you think you do pretty good one day and you're doing a whole lot better you know and then all of a sudden you go back out and it's just terrible you can't do anything right boy i'm improving uh_huh and you think my goodness why did i think i was doing better i don't i guess i could i've never been to a golf to a major golf tournament i uh watch them on t v a lot uh_huh uh_huh really uh_huh i'll bet um uh_huh well i've only been playing like about three years now my husband's played for twenty five but i just took it up about three years ago and uh we play in a lot of couple's scramble tournaments we belong to a country club a little ways outside of dallas and we have developed a tremendous number of friends that couples do this and you know it's fun to go on vacations and things and go to golf courses you can meet some really neat people uh_huh they really are i just love them uh_huh uh_huh that's right uh_huh that's right and you just do your own thing and be relaxed and enjoy it really really uh_huh uh_huh yeah i have never played in any tournament except just a scramble they have a lot of them there at the club you know they have a b c d type tournaments and then they they have the club [championships] and everything with the women's slots as well but i don't know i've just never really gotten into that now my husband and all the men i mean they love the real competitiveness of playing for money you know uh_huh but i i'm not good enough for that yes they do i don't do much with it since uh most of theirs they have a traveling league and uh most of their meetings and all are during the week and i don't don't get to play except on the weekend i work during the week all the time uh_huh someday when i i get where i live closer to the club and partially retired maybe i'll uh be able to play a little more but uh_huh well yes i am as a matter of fact not a good one but i am a golfer i uh haven't been out all year i didn't get out this year but uh i enjoy both watching it and playing it yes and the the [peacefulness] and the little critters that are around that's right and it's such a personal challenge more than competitiveness against someone else it's it's a competitiveness against yourself well you'll or you'll hear thirty and think boy i got my game together i've had a par and a [birdie] and a [bogey] and then you [quadruple] [bogey] being down there do you uh get to see like the colonial or any of those oh you really should go at least once you know we've had uh the p g a up here uh and in tulsa and i've been to both of them and it's it is so much fun to see these players you see on t v to and to hear that ball go [whizzing] by i mean it's it's like a bullet going by and you know to to see their concentration and yet to see them how friendly they are when they're walk by you you know and how good they are to their [spectators] both yes yes it is the [scrambles] are fun i belong to the country club there in el [reno] when i lived there and it you know it it's fun because it's so [uncompetitive] you really on those you really go out for fun and you know you won't you know you're stroke is just one of one or two or three or four you know that's going to make any difference that's right i used to when i worked at [kerr] [mcgee] i used to play in their tournaments and uh now that was very competitive and i enjoyed it tremendously but uh i i'm more i think i get more enjoyment just couple friends going out and if if it takes one of us ten shots to get up to the green so be it you know we just think well the next time has got to be better oh yes every hole does your club have a good woman's association it's hard to be a weekend golfer and improve your game it uh it's it's a it's a good game i uh i wish i had more time to play and i felt you know had more energy to play it too uh i guess i've always kind of liked golf i i worked on a golf course at at one time and that's how i picked up golf and uh i don't know it's just a kind of a challenging game uh_huh i haven't gotten the chance lately though to play i'm trying to get back into it uh so uh i got to start all over again it's not like riding a bicycle you do tend to forget oh yeah what is your handicap okay uh i was down at about four or five quite awhile ago it's probably up there to twenty now if i to start again yeah yeah i have got to try and get out there i i know with our our long winters i i enjoy watching it i don't know if it's just because i like the game or i just like to to see the warm weather uh_huh yeah that's the problem out here with the long [layovers] with the winter you almost have to [relearn] every spring to to get back out yeah uh_huh right yeah you always work on trying to improve each day and yeah yeah i know what you mean i when i used to golf out there i'd putt well but i i wouldn't uh chip well one of the two uh or something would go wrong but i always managed to to get near par anyway oh uh_huh yeah uh_huh do you have uh long waits uh to get on the course yeah yeah okay i just moved into this small community so i'm going to try and get into one of the golf courses here i'm hoping that won't be i was from the uh twin cities area yeah are you sure you guys aren't having the bad weather yeah well i wish that's all we had oh yeah i see well at least it that doesn't uh get in the way of golfing so that yeah yeah that's what they do here sometimes you hear about it where they will take the orange ball out there but if you got it sure is i play at least three times a week i'm on it no well i'm one of those rare left handed golfers and i do enjoy playing right now it's three well if you play with some consistency though you can get it right back down uh well we can usually play here year around sometimes in january it's not too comfortable to play but there is usually two or three days in the week that you can get out there and play and i'm pretty much addicted to golf so i get out there one way or the other it's a good game though it's very challenging and the reason i like it so much is because i'm essentially playing against myself that's the way i look at it i i play in in a lot of groups and but i they keep score and between themselves but i really don't care um i go out and each shot i say well this is what i'm going to try to do and then i see how close i can come to that yeah and inevitably one [facet] of my game isn't working at one time or another either i'm not driving very well or i'm not hitting long irons very well or i'm not putting well or but sometimes it all comes together well we just had the tour championship here in pine hurst and i went to that craig [statler] won in a playoff but we uh this is a big golf area we have a lot of uh i'd say we probably have within fifteen miles twenty golf communities built around courses that are pretty well designed and then of course pine hurst and we still have the [greensboro] open here every year yes we do as a matter of fact it it uh it's only been that way in the last five years but now you uh most of the courses have a uh two day advance tee time you have to call that's some cold golf too isn't it we have cold usually january and the first two weeks of february but uh last week we were in the seventies something is coming through now so it's like in the low forties right now but uh it's supposed to leave early in the week and then be back in the sixties we have very windy winters and very cold but we don't get any snow anymore i don't i don't know what changed that pattern we used to get four or five inches a year now we get nothing it's been probably five years since we've had any [measurable] [snowfall] no but i have played golf in the snow before get out my orange golf ball and go out push my number okay oh i'm a i play golf but i don't actually play golf yeah hack it all over the place it's [sickening] isn't it yeah we've got tons up here but i don't know how do you feel about your game i guess that's a good question yeah yeah i like that too i don't know i try to play but god i a couple years ago i played two three times a week and got lousy i guess that's the best i ever got was lousy and i thought i was really improving and the big break was going to come and then i got worse again so yeah that's pretty good um i'm that and worse i i play next year i actually i take it kind of seriously but i've been doing so bad next year i always say this every year but next year i'm starting over from scratch i'm going to go take lessons and everything i'm going to do it right and see if i can actually play this game or not yeah what do you do when you're putting that's a good thing that's something i could learn actually that's when i do my worst i finally get to the green and i think i'm doing all all fine and then yeah can you really see it though what about the speed can you tell but can you tell how how fast you're going to hit it yeah but you can feel that i don't know i have i can get it within like you know four or five feet or something but i don't have enough field now i'm t v watching they make you die at the hole every time oh it just dies and rolls in i don't know it's hard for me once you're there you're all set though we should play team golf then i'll get us there and you put it in i oh the t v golfers they do that it takes them two to get there and two to get it in so it's fifty percent and me it takes me five to get there and five to get it in yeah that's good joe pros that's pretty good for eighteen wow that's pretty good i'm talking to the wrong guy your [shitty] golf is probably the best golf i've ever seen if when i'm in the nineties i'm feeling good i'm usually around a hundred that's my thing around a hundred you know i can hit a great drives and think i'm going to do all awesome on this hole but it ain't going to happen well it's a good thing with me i slice it every single time that's good i aim okay so are you a a a golfer or are you a spectator well i'm the same way i i go out there and hit the ball yeah um uh well in the carolina's it's it's just you know we've got a bunch of golf courses around here uh well i mean i'm not a serious golfer at all uh uh a friend of mine goes golfing a lot and he drags me out every now and then and i uh i don't have a i don't really even have a game i usually when i go out and play golf it's usually like at a at one of these par [threes] that you know you but um i like watching it on t v uh well i i i if i can i can hit a great deal like um they they my friends to get me they they say i hit worm burners because i i can't hit it up in the air so i'm pretty bad but i i i get great distance hitting it you know across the ground and if it's going over water or something one of them have to take the shot for me because i'm but i'm getting better i've got where now i can hit it in in the air some of the time yeah uh so i'm kind of a [novice] at it well that i i guess that's what i need to do is is get some kind of lessons or something because i my my tee off is not bad i mean i'm i'm good up to everything else putting and stuff like that it's just that that initial tee just walking around the hollow and making sure there's not really you know checking the ground and and so forth you know see how it's going to break or whatever yeah if you get if you get down on the ground you really can um well if you know if it's up on a slope that you've got to hit it not kill it but you've got to hit enough speed and the right angle that it's it's you know because when it's going up a hill it's going to break in a direction yeah yeah yeah but i the the it's it's like i said once i get up on the green i'm fine but that that tee shot uh it you know when [teeing] off i'll go probably a hundred feet across the ground so it it takes me awhile to get to the hole but i'm all set that sounds good to me well it it it usually takes me about probably two two or three to get it there and and then that's according to the hole and it uh uh maybe one or two [putts] it's according to where i'm at on the green but the friends i play with uh they play all the time and and they're really good uh they're not joe pros but they they golf in the high sixties low seventies so i guess they're pretty good yeah for eighteen yeah no no no that's not my golf that's my friends mine mine i'm i'm usually in the eighties or nineties so i'm i'm not good well i either [teeing] off i either slice it or i hook it ever single time and and i alternate they tell you what our topic was right how much of a golfer are you you bet i'm fifty years old i've been a hacker i think i think i played better golf when i was fifteen john than i play right now and uh oh i know it's just unreal i you know i'm a guy that plays if i play a lot of golf i play six to eight times a year and that's about it i figure that's my retirement game i really i come from a family of golfers i mean i was raised by a man my stepfather who with a two handicap i mean he he he he could get down on his knees and hit the ball i mean further than most people could hit it and my mother who is now he's my stepfather is dead but my mother who is now seventy one i can remember her being i believe a sixteen or a fourteen handicap but but uh all they did every day in their life was to play golf every they'd leave work and go to a golf course or a little country club they belonged to back in richmond virginia and just uh play nine holes of golf that was their deal they but uh i just i just never could do it i have a brother in law who is uh an ex college coach and like a pro and he has a very good handicap and plays good golf sort of like the non golfer golfer of the family oh really yeah yeah i think i'm probably the same way lessons do help i know ever year we buy i go to this ducks unlimited dinner it's a [hunter's] type affair and i buy in in austin texas i go down to austin i live in the dallas area but i go down to austin and go with my good customer and friend of mine and we always buy this weekend at a at a country club in the hill country you know at uh [horseshoe] bay and we just have a ball and we play three days in a row three different courses and course believe it or not by the end of the third day and the end of the uh third course my score has gone from you know a hundred and twenty down to about a hundred and five so you bet so it that makes a lot of difference to me you bet yeah that's super i haven't learned to hit the ball easy and i just sort of i'm always wanting to hit it hard and that's something my stepfather never could teach me you know just to relax and hit the ball and you know so subsequently when i do tire out from playing like twelve fourteen holes my you know a lot of my [energy's] gone when i do swing it's an easier swing and i do actually hit the ball better no i have a two through you know two through [wedge] i hit a two iron awful lot off now off the tee i don't hit a driver off the tee that that's why i need my driving lessons that helps well that's that's a good idea i think this next year i'm going to i'm going to attempt to play more and i'm going to do the same thing i i laid off my woods about three years ago and i just use a two wood off the fairway and i'm a fairly strong person so i get a pretty good little drive and i and i guess control my irons better you know if you'll take lessons the first thing they put in your hand is an iron and uh i still remember that watching myself and my son so but i think the key is you just need to you need to play more often than i play right makes good makes good sense oh yeah you bet my my challenge of the game is just if i can get off the first tee when everyone's standing around watching you i'd be great after that that boy i just if i get off the tee box and i and i've you know you know anything from a hundred fifty to two hundred yard drive through a straight i just want to get down and kiss the ground you know because i think golf isn't it are you a hacker i know i oh i know i did i know i did course i know i watch my thirteen year old play now you know and it's like they don't have a muscle in their body uh_huh sure yeah that's what it takes you you need to play that often to get a really good handicap well i went to i decided this past year that i was going to get out and start playing a lot more and i i went after it and did and i really didn't find much improvement fact ever time i'd start trying to correct something it seemed like the score would go go back up yeah i i think i need to uh i probably need to take some some more lessons uh more current and uh and practice more often spend more time on the uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah oh yeah i'm familiar with it oh yeah if you play regular i think it makes a big difference yeah yeah i well i've also found too i i try to work out regularly and when i am doing that uh and feeling loose and that i swing better i i i get through the ball better uh and i also if i i found as i've gotten a little older here i worry less about my distance and i my control is a little bit better there uh so uh_huh uh_huh have you ever have you ever tried a one iron uh_huh well you know i put mine back in my bag this year too and i i used a three wood rather than a driver uh i had a lot more control on it uh i sacrificed distance but i wasn't in trouble every time i got down the fairway uh_huh oh yeah absolutely yeah well i i read recently here they say if you're playing if you're scoring well you should play more if you're scoring poorly you should spend more time on the practice uh range uh i think there is less frustration factor there too uh so but i i the one iron is something i've been thinking because my driver's gone so badly lately that i i should pick one up and try to start apparently they're very difficult to play with but with practice i would imagine you could [groove] that swing too and i play with a fellow that can knock a one iron it's incredible and but and his accuracy is what's so [startling] with it and i and it but it's an iron that he's really practiced with he has used a lot and uh it would be fun to get that good at a with an iron uh distance iron and get away without embarrassing yourself right do you play oh yeah well i'm into it uh is anybody really oh wow right super yeah that's kind of the way i did it too actually i i played uh just a tiny bit when i was real young and then uh i i got on to a team in high school but wasn't very good still but and then quit for awhile and recently i picked it up like you say about a couple of years ago and uh i've been playing you know off and on when i can up in minneapolis it's not too easy to play in the winter of course but i actually live in florida so uh uh i'll be going back down there in may and hopefully be picking it up a little more regularly i was going to say yeah that's that's true all too many times fortunately uh down where i live in florida there's some golf courses that are pretty reasonable if you know where to look uh one of them is the university of florida golf course which is open to the public and that's pretty pretty good yeah can you get like a a student discount type of thing or yeah what what what are green fees run there okay that's yeah that's about the same i guess as it is in florida but really oh that's super yeah uh_huh well that's the way to do it though that's the way to get in some good practice without having to pay for it all the time yeah yeah they need to get a new photography method because once the guy hits the ball and they got to try to follow the ball that's that's a little difficult i mean it they do they do a generally okay job but like you said it's it's kind of boring actually oh yeah yeah i bet that would be yeah yeah i've never been to a tournament uh you know looking at it on t v you're thinking man what a boring thing you know but uh that's that's wild though i'll have to see if i can't get a chance to go right yeah i can imagine what do you do for a living oh you are which uh which university okay all right great what are you going into okay definitely not golf right yeah if you're good you can really rake in the bucks what was what was that movie that they had out there was a movie about a professional golfer and i i can't remember it was on network t v a couple of times yeah that's right yeah that's a good thing but uh yeah i guess when i get back i'm going to school in florida actually uh and fortunately i've been able to to play some golf on a student budget which is real helpful you know but it it's unfortunate you know you hear about japan i guess you know it's it's like two hundred fifty dollar minimum or three hundred dollar minimum just to like to practice even yeah yeah i guess they have those uh driving ranges that are actually stacked one on top of the other yeah yeah i i played uh uh eighteen holes with some japanese guys in in gainesville as a matter of fact and it was really wild they were into it you know they kicked our butt all the way to yeah i uh consider myself a hacker how about you yeah uh i'm not as good as i'd like to be but it's a no i don't think so uh i'd started playing when i was in elementary school actually we lived really close to a par three golf course and i'd go up there with friends after school a couple of times every week and then for uh for years i don't know after elementary school all through junior high and stuff i didn't play cause i think i just got so frustrated when i was little i'd my body wasn't you know physically developed and all that kind of stuff and then i'd started picking it up again a couple of years back and i've really been enjoying it uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh right the one factor that really bothers me is the expense of playing golf i mean it's a great game but i mean to play a really nice course you've got to have a really big wallet i mean yeah uh_huh right yeah i uh attend the indiana university and it's the same way here they have a really nice championship style course that is fairly reasonable to play on uh a little bit but not a whole lot i mean i you'd think you would but uh you don't so i uh well they range anywhere from about five bucks for your basic city type course up to fifty sixty dollars for a really really nice course uh_huh my dad is a member of a golf club over in my home town and i can play for free there and it's a pretty nice course yeah and i guess well it's free for me somebody's paying but not me yeah yeah definitely as far as watching golf i mean i can watch it on t v but it's kind of boring it's nice to see those who guys they have such good style that uh it's uh it's pretty fun to watch right yeah uh_huh what i really i uh had a chance they had the p g a tournament up in indianapolis last year and i was able to go and see one of the rounds of that and that was really fun i mean you knew it i never really thought it was would be that much fun to go to a big golf tournament and watch but man it was it was something else just to follow those guys around and actually watch them play right you got i mean it's uh it's a lot more exciting than actually than watching it on t v and if you pick a group of golfers and follow them around i mean it's just watching them the whole time instead of like on t v you get to see them make a tee shot and then they go off to some other hole and they come back when they're putting but you know it's really something else uh i'm a student right now yeah at uh indiana university uh i don't really know i'm a math computer science major right now no i it'd be nice to be a pro golfer i mean it seems like that that would be an okay life just to hang out and yeah huh oh yeah well you know it seems like well you go to work every weekend play maybe one two tournaments a month you come in about tenth you'd still be doing pretty well so yeah uh_huh right yeah and those fees to join a club like a million dollars or whatever is just that is out of control i mean you'd really want to really be liking your golf yeah i saw one of those on t v that is pretty wild yeah okay well uh so what do you think about golfing are you a spectator or a player yeah i know how you feel about that that's true what's what's uh what's the best part of your game do you think uh_huh what is your worst then well i think i think my best part actually is [chipping] or at least it was last year i haven't been out this year it's kind of been uh kind of strange i hadn't been able to get out yet but uh my biggest problem is staying in the fairway for you know with drives and stuff uh_huh yeah i've i've gone in the past years from uh having a wicked slice to having a wicked hook to back to having a wicked slice i mean it's just uh and i can't seem to find the middle space you know but i've got a friend of mine working on it uh i've trying to help me out i've been going to the driving range with him and and it seems to be doing some um yeah well lessons are are okay if you do it right i think i did i took some lessons uh a couple of years back but to tell you the truth that for a while hurt more than it helped because i it turned out that i couldn't do anything right after that and even you know like i said my [chipping] which is one of the best things in my game i couldn't do that i couldn't couldn't drive couldn't you know in fact it was it wasn't as much at that point that i was hooking and [slicing] i just i was topping the ball i was you know i was doing a lot of things wrong at that point but i was trying to think of so many different things at the same time because you know it was it's kind of a funny story whenever i went for my first lesson the uh the instructor takes me out there and he says all right well take a swing and let me see how you look so he's bending down on one knee right so i take a swing and and all of a sudden his head just goes down and and then all of a you know he just kind of slowly brings his head up and looks at me and he says we've got a lot of work to do oh yeah i was feeling real good then so he broke me down from i mean he started me from the very beginning as far as changing just about everything i did and uh uh oh yeah oh that's definitely true in fact if if i ever you know have a son or anything i'm definitely going to you know teach him have a lesson or something is that yours or mine all right okay what's that oh yeah you know the only person i've ever known that had a hole in one was my brother in law but uh and he he said he got his luckily so i don't know but i mean i came so close once just once i mean that's the only time i've ever been any anywhere near but i mean i it was i used to live out in midland texas i don't know if you've ever been out there but it's you know a real windy place but i played on a course out there and like i said it's a very windy place so it's you know the wind was blowing and it was cold and it was like it was about a hundred and i don't know a hundred and seventy or a hundred and eighty year par three and i you know the wind was right in my face so i just pulled out a seven wood right and i put that thing i mean it rolled right by the cup and only ended up three inches off you know over over past the hole but i mean that's as close as i've ever been you know because i'm not you know that's one of my problems is controlling my my my irons on a par three so i have a lot of trouble hitting the greens so do you like watching it though yeah well that's that's exactly what my friend has has figured out that i do is my i can actually see the club on my backswing and he says that what i do is i'm actually crossing the plain is what this is his words his technical words for it crossing because because i ended up into an [inverted] c where the weight was on the wrong foot or something so i i've found that i actually do uh i get a lot uh better control and distance if i don't you know don't take as big a back swing yeah what's funny is the idea that uh you know what i consider you know like a three quarter backswing or even a half backswing my friend says that's you know that's a full backswing and you don't want to go any further than that so i mean it's a now it's a matter of trying to convince myself that that's right so i don't know it's going to be interesting that's probably true oh isn't it though i don't know why i do it oh that's that's one of the worse things about it it really is but uh uh_huh you know that's it you have to be healthy too that's another point i guess well i think that's about it yeah i do too yeah well you take care yeah good luck um i have played golf in the past i'm not very good at it even though i'm pretty well sports minded um there's something about holding that club in my hand that i want to hold it like a baseball bat so i can putt but i have a terrible time driving uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh sure uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah like you're supposed to well i even uh took a golf lesson six weeks i guess worth of golf lessons and and i had a terrible time trying to remember where your hands are supposed to be and over this way and under that way and keep your legs this way and it was extremely difficult considering how easy it looks when the pros do it and so uh i played for a while that way but i can go play putt putt golf really well that's the kind of that's the kind of stuff i can go for um i watch some of the things because my father is an avid golf fan he he watches every game he goes out every single day his whole stance the way he walks is a [golfer's] walk if there is such a thing and so he uh he's gotten me interested in it so i have my own [putters] and and you know some some equipment but um the only thing that i would probably watch is like things that are local like the [byron] nelson classic that's coming up um and then there's another one out let me see off of one twenty one coming up pretty soon so i like to watch things that are close uh by to see if there's any names that are familiar with texas uh_huh no i can't imagine watching much golf without a t v uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yes yes uh_huh right right yeah well at least with now with the with the sports uh and and the t v is um they can get the [camera's] just at the time the people are starting to swing so it makes it a little bit faster and um a little bit more interesting but i think it's it's more interesting to go out and watch them uh than it is on the t v and and to follow like one or two people along that golf course and then you you almost feel like you're in doing exactly what they're doing uh it it's so much more interesting i thought than um uh sitting and watching it on t v i think it's kind of boring yeah uh_huh uh on the [byron] nelson classics um was it no it wasn't last year it was the year before uh gosh i can't remember you know all those names kind of go together after a while um let me see because i followed several and i'm trying to think who it is that i was um going along with i don't remember now i mean gee whiz i all i remember was we had tornadoes about the same time and that was the big [highlight] they were afraid they were going to go down through the center of the the the golf course and that's what i remember the most about that uh but i do remember thinking it was a lot different to be out there uh watching than it was to watch it on t v uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh wow uh_huh uh_huh yeah sure sure well i know uh uh since it's warmer weather down here and you can play almost year round then yeah that's the reason is there's so many people who want to get out and go play golf see my parents live in ohio and my dad what he'll do is uh he will come down here or go someplace else in the south to where it's warm so he can continue playing golf i mean this is what an avid golf person does it is just so fascinating and then everything we get for him is all golf junk you know the golf hat the golf you know clock everything because he's he's just he is he is a freak when it comes to golfing yeah he uh he's he's really something no see he um it's only been in about the past five years and he's so good we keep telling him he needs to get into some of those senior tournaments and he says oh i can't get in there with arnold [palmer] and all those other good people but i'm saying well yes you could you know and then that's where you usually can make a little money and and profit this way because his handicap has gotten lower and lower and lower every single year so uh but no he hasn't gone to do that yet but we wish he would you know make a little [megabucks] and pass it along you know to the family that's right i know get to meet all these stars because i remember sitting on his lap when i was a little girl watching golf he has loved golf really all of his life and but i remember watching it golf with him so yeah this is something that uh he can go and see all these people he's uh got to watch on t v for years and years and years and years so yeah i think so too no i think some of my brothers are going to do that i'm a volleyball person myself yeah yeah i love volleyball so i'm on a t i league and uh play with a group of people from here at work but i don't even think t i has well they may have a golfing i don't know they may have a golfing club you know it's possible uh_huh golfing club yeah there you go i bet you they do but i just you know i hear about things like the the tennis um teams and and uh volleyball and baseball but i haven't heard of golf but i'm sure they probably do uh_huh oh oh no uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah me too it's not uh not something like uh that [obsession] i think my father has i know that's true well it was nice talking with you okay well no i i try my husband and i uh took it up last year last summer so we try and it it we really enjoy it we're having a having a good time although it can be rather frustrating how about you uh we took a golf clinic there was about i don't know twelve fifteen people in it and we took lesson for about seven weeks we went once a week and and that's how we got started yes oh how nice uh_huh yeah oh yeah definitely you know i've never really heard of it but they do something called the slope rating and i'm not into it that much to really know but i think that has something to do with how easy or how hard the course is uh my dad has talked about it and i'm just kind of like okay whatever so i'm not really sure i know but i think that's how they rate the the different courses oh no we go ourselves a lot of time we'll walk just to get in the exercise uh depending on how the weather is if it's too hot or something then we'll then we'll ride but we we just like you know getting outdoors and and walking around and playing yes and that's something that that's a sport that a husband and wife could do together so we we you ought to take it up it really is a lot of fun yeah well you know you sit there and watch the pros on t v and it's like oh they make it look so easy and you're going oh i can go out and do that and then you get out there and it's kind of a different story yeah oh yeah yeah usually if you're going to play eighteen holes it usually takes about four hours a lot of times uh you know you've got groups in front of you and sometimes you have to wait and and that kind of thing so it you know it can take take a long time sometimes we do nine it just kind of depends if we decide to go out you know in the afternoon and just want to go and play nine then we'll do that but usually we play eighteen yeah probably so just so that you know you know the [courtesy] and and get at least the basics down so you feel a little bit confident because i know the first time i went out to play i waited till i took all the lessons and i was i was so embarrassed because i thought oh i'm going to be holding people up behind me and they're going to be laughing and you know you just i guess you just get nervous and then after you've been out a few times you just say oh well kind of get used to it uh_huh yeah we each have our own clubs when we took our lessons the instructor provided clubs for us because which was really good because you know when year just starting out you don't know what type of clubs to use you know what's the best for you and so there's no sense in buying a set and then finding out later that you really should be using something else uh_huh yeah well you can go to you know a golf shop or something that's what we did when we went to go look for them and they helped us out a lot yeah yeah so that that helps yeah yeah well we have we have one that it's not our favorite one but it's uh so what do you like best about golf really really yeah i play uh i play probably four or five times a week my my wife and kids don't like it too much but it's such a great game i i play you know thirty six holes after work and then uh yeah it does in the summertime in the winter it's too you know but uh you know i go to the indoor driving range all all winter and uh and uh i practice putting and it's it's a fun game oh really that sounds great well i'll have to do that because i love golf well cathy is that your name cathy uh do do you uh do you have a favorite golfer professional golfer excuse me my wife is making fun of me yeah she hates it when i you know she thinks it's funny that i got golf as a topic because you know she [dislikes] it so much so yeah greg norman why are you sure you're not attracted to him or anything uh_huh yeah yeah i like tom he's good yeah i agree with you there cathy yeah he does uh i'd have to say uh i i still like the golden bear you know oh yeah i i like the senior tour i i think it's got more personality you know and the names don't change every week you know so sure sure really my kids do you have kids cathy i'm starting them off young i'm going to get them oh you got a boy good he does has he got a pretty good stance huh well that's true that's true and that's a good subject that i like to talk about oh are you do you play yeah uh_huh that's the way to do it yeah uh_huh right well you got weekends it takes a lot of time yeah it does uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i even i enjoy it on t v uh once you get into it a little more you'll enjoy it on t v also uh_huh yeah the more you get into it you'll you'll really enjoy it on t v too i think i know it does yeah i play all the time well not all the time but i try to get in at least we play where there's a little course down in east texas and we go down there a lot mount vernon and uh no it's a hundred miles i'm originally from there and we go down nearly every weekend my folks live there so we have a place to stay and uh it's it's just so much fun when you got a regular group of your buddies to play with so that's what i do and my wife took it up about two or three years ago and she's she's enjoyed it a lot but it's hard to get the girls to play you know and uh so she doesn't really get to play you know enough not nearly enough although she does she and i play sometimes you know and she enjoys it and she enjoys playing with the girls but heck most of the time they're not all playing and of course i've got a group that i play with so it makes it a little bit difficult there but we enjoy it it's a lot of fun and uh one of the best parts about it once she took it up was when we'd go on a little trip somewhere not long trips or anything but just little trips you know well it was always real good to take our clubs and she could we could play golf whereas before i probably wouldn't even get to play you know and now she enjoys playing with me and and we you know it it just makes the trips more enjoyable for me so uh oh i've been playing probably twenty years or longer i didn't start it nearly as young as i should have i think i was about twenty uh i don't know i guess i've been playing longer than that since i'm fifty i've probably been playing uh twenty five years uh_huh well you most uh well you think you'd be better if you started early i'm not so sure that's true yeah some some people that helps but then some people are just good at it and some are not uh now now you're going to improve and it helps to take lessons and play a lot you're definitely going to get better but i'm talking about the difference from being a mid nineties to low a high i mean a low nineties to a mid eighties [shooter] which that's what i am to being a guy that shoots in the low seventies that doesn't sound like a lot of difference but believe me it's a lot of difference it really is i used to play around here all the time but i don't any more we just i just play down there now uh my favorite courses around here are uh fire wheel and uh i i like chase oaks real well but it's kind of expensive no it's a it's a municipal course garland owns it city of garland and that's oh yeah plano's a good course i've played there oh gosh ever since it's been there many many times it's an excellent golf course chase oaks is difficult you really need to be a good golfer to play chase oaks yeah if you're not a really good golfer don't waste your time oh well good so you're a player then instead of a spectator then oh right boy you're you're right up there about where i am on no young people like to swing real hard at the ball they just hit a long way well i'm i'm getting better about hitting them straight but where i get into trouble is around the green my short game leaves a lot to be desired oh yes the short of it is my [weakest] part yeah i i've you know i see that all the time as a matter of fact i live literally right across the street from a golf course here in texas and most of the older folks that go out there and play are exactly the same way all of us young bucks get out there and hit the ball you know a mile but it's like three [fairways] over uh_huh oh boy yeah well you can get a walking membership for two hundred dollars a year at the course down here yeah it's an eighteen hole course i mean it's it's uh not terribly difficult and there's really there's a river that runs along the side but it only comes into play on one par three hole there's really not that many hazards on it but uh it's a really inexpensive course to get on there's a few of those here too no not near as much as i'd like to i mean i've i tend to stay pretty busy at my job and it's hard to get on a regular schedule and then we're pretty active in our church which takes up a lot more time too so no we actually don't we have two miniature dachshunds and ten fish uh_huh yeah where have you have you played any in texas yeah it does basically though the golf season only shuts down for maybe three months out of the year if that much you know probably not even that much because really february and january were about the only two really cold months that we had it was up in the very warm temperatures even in december this year yeah oh [arizona's] beautiful um yeah hey well hey you know it's never too late is what i say well i sure hope so okay and with you is that right okay well my name is barry where do you golf at i see so you are from maine originally then new york well i'm originally from nebraska and i really didn't play much golf there until i moved to south dakota and we lived on the golf course and i took up uh golf at that time and really enjoyed it and uh then when we moved to plano i really haven't had the we've lived here a year now and i really haven't uh [golfed] a lot but those times that i have been out i went to the uh uh plano municipal golf course and then i've [golfed] a couple times uh at chase oaks and that's very challenging at chase oaks uh a lot of water oh if i go to the municipal course it's uh maybe twenty five dollars for eighteen holes and uh it seems to me that when i was at chase oaks uh well of course i took my son with me so we were close to you know fifty dollars or so it really is but uh i enjoy it probably uh it depends on which day i go uh as to which part is most challenging oh probably a for nine uh i i i felt pretty good with maybe forty one forty two around in there that would be a that would be a darn good game for me yeah i'm i'm happy with that well i think what i find attractive is when i can go out uh with friends and uh on a nice day just to be out uh it's oh oh oh just uh i i guess the thing that i like most about it is getting away from work and uh although uh if i'm jogging or working out or playing golf or whatever it's a a time to get away from things but yet sometimes things become more a little more clearer that way too yeah yeah that's nice i'm uh you know it it bothers me when uh especially in this particular area there are so many people that play golf that you tend to uh have a lot of people there and feel [hurried] and i don't i don't like to feel rushed when i'm playing golf oh you know it it really varies from day to day uh if i'm if i'm on i uh really can hit uh hit my driver pretty well and uh that's that's a new experience for me because for about a year to two years uh i couldn't hit my driver i had such a hook that uh i would just use a three iron all the time and i could hit my three iron just about as far as anybody else could hit a driver so i used that but then i took a few lessons and really uh worked on it and uh yeah we had a golf pro uh and i took maybe two or three lessons basically uh and uh had a golf pro and and uh it was like maybe twenty five dollars for a half an hour but uh he really helped a lot yep yeah i uh uh got a pair of used clubs for a christmas present one year and uh so before that i had been using uh my little sisters uh woman's set and i thought boy the first day i got those uh new clubs i'd go out and uh really uh knock them dead and uh it takes awhile to get used to a new set of clubs is he a pretty good golfer good we uh probably my most exciting experience i had playing golf was over in hawaii we took a vacation and uh my brother and i went out brother in law went out and uh played in uh um what kind of hobbies do you have really i like cross stitch too i just have a hard time finding any spare time lately uh_huh oh several years my husband is even interested in it now he likes to help me design um you know projects that are a little more [customized] not that hard i really enjoy it uh_huh yeah oh yeah um i do mostly that um not very artistic really for like painting and stuff but now i don't know oh really yeah i've got the kits to put them all in i don't have them all yet certainly oh yeah i just i just keep an inventory of what i currently have and then when i start a new project i go through and see if i if i you know just buy the colors that i need of what i'm low on uh_huh yeah a lot of times you can do that i think i the pinks there's like forty two different shades of pink pinks and greens yeah yeah well not lately i just started a new job and trying to get acclimated there yeah how old oh yeah oh yeah yeah yeah well last year he was a little bit young for having one he wouldn't have enjoyed it anyway you would have but oh yeah yeah that's that's kind of strange that we got the same call it's a call no that's okay oh wow no i just started about well five years ago i think uh_huh there's also a couple of large projects baby afghans and i got one done and i think the other one is going the child is going to be in high school before i get finished bear thing well yeah i just i bought the cloth and the pattern for it i didn't um i didn't buy the uh i didn't buy a kit uh_huh it's that cloth it's cloth i think and it has the borders and everything already number one turned out just great and the lady said she couldn't believe that they know that i had done it in the colors that they had decorated the nursery and i didn't even know it i gave it to her and she said how did you know those are the colors we used i said didn't it worked out that way uh_huh yeah [lilly] [lilly] she said she said it's for your daughter to use oh no she said i know she doesn't get to touch it she hung it on the wall yeah yeah true okay you too uh_huh bye bye um i do a lot of cross stitching and painting when i do have spare time oh i love it that's my case also i've got a new born and there's just no time have you been cross stitching long oh really mine sort of he looks at the pattern and he says how do you get that from there to the material oh it's not and once you get started on it it's just oh i just i love it i do a lot of my own patterns also in fact i did one bill the cat you know from [glenn] county that uh was a real good one to do it was tough but uh yeah do you have any others or is this mainly cross stitching oh uh_huh um yeah i'm still trying to get all the d m c colors yeah right yeah yeah i got to counting the other day and uh i think i have what was it two hundred and i got to thinking the money that i've got invested in this is uh it yeah it can add up quick uh_huh right i see well now can i [improvise] with adding and using another color instead you know what comes close because a lot of them are similar good grief yeah there's lots of pinks and greens there's lots of shades of greens but the colors i just love all the different colors they had quite a few new ones come out last year that they added to but you don't have much spare time either oh yes and that does take some time and if we're trying to get acclimated with the uh with having a baby and he's seven months old and just into everything so there's not a spare moment oh but i wouldn't trade it for the world i've been trying to do some bibs for him and uh work on his christmas [stocking] we missed it last year so hopefully this year he'll have one right right if it tasted good yeah all he liked was the lights this year so oh well that's neat that you like cross stitching also yeah oh i'm sorry go ahead okay uh but yeah i've been doing it for probably ten years or so but it is peaceful i mean it is relaxing to do once you find the time to do it on that uh is it one of those afghans that i've seen in the packages with the with the large squares oh uh_huh well i've seen the afghans in the stores that are designed for cross stitching oh okay uh_huh yeah those are pretty oh that's a that was a good that's great uh that uh now i've got the material to do an afghan that i just never did get around to finishing it i like those those are pretty yes my uh grandmother um made us a couple of quilts for the baby and i was like oh i don't want to mess those up uh there just too nice i mean you don't get many hand made quilts anymore oh yeah well i've enjoyed this but uh well keep up the good um keep up the cross stitching all right thanks bye bye all righty uh i'll just hand it off to you and hobbies in our spare time is what we've been selected to discuss today oh oh really well oh hobbies gee whiz i guess i got too many hobbies so i never have time to deal with them i like photography a lot uh i used to do that a lot and then i like um we have a new child that will be a year old here next week so i'll take a lot of pictures of her you know and spoil them first one you know how that is and um uh i play the guitar and a [banjo] i mainly play the guitar a lot i play about every night and um i really love that if i had a [druther] if i could have if i could make it on the road i'd like to play on like a bluegrass band or something because that's i've yeah i've done it before and when i was in in high school and college and thoroughly enjoyed it and it's really a a blast my wife hates it but that's the way life is i guess exactly yeah we uh she's uh into aerobics and uh and we did aerobics together for about a month and a half and that went over real well but uh that's about it there oh yeah yeah oh that's great that's great yeah that's uh spare time with a child it's kind of she's we have uh we're looking for a baby sitter so we've been out twice in in this year so far by ourselves without the child so it's kind of uh become an issue you could say um hobbies i like messing around in your house building things and you know putting cabinets up and those kind of things um it's really kind of fun especially if your spouse will get in there with you and get dirty yeah uh_huh sounds like it do you like to cook yeah i love to cook too i'm uh oh really well we're all skinny [farts] so i it so when it comes to i like to cook and eat and to have mainly i guess i get to amount of people eat and then say man this is really good um um but it just work in the garden work around the yard of course yes we sure do smoke them oh yeah all that [hoedown] stuff all that stuff that's bad for you oh sure yeah oh yeah that's uh only way to do it well yeah it's uh it's uh it's uh there's uh there's pluses to everything but you know seems like there's just so many things to do down here i like the sports i play a lot of racquetball oh that's great sounds like you horses yeah you really don't yeah the you have to look real hard to see a lot of things besides concrete uh there's buildings and concrete and a lot of people and that's about it down here and so yeah but uh that's great well sounds like you have a lot of nice hobbies there well great well look uh i know it's probably late for you i enjoyed speaking with you have a good weekend bye bye well uh the hobbies that i pursue in my spare time are crafts and uh i've been involved in making uh hat stands and uh rag dolls and uh different type hats with uh flowers and roses you know and uh that kind of thing straw hats and all that kind of stuff and i enjoy it it's relaxing and you kind of get [absorbed] in it so the time goes by you know before you realize anything is going on and i play the organ sometimes uh just for my own satisfaction not for anybody else's ears because i'm not that good at it but i like to bang on the keyboards once in a while how about yourself really oh yeah that's neat oh that's great uh_huh oh that sounds nice i like bluegrass too uh_huh that's the hard part right if you can do things together that really helps a lot oh that's good too uh_huh oh it's good and it's healthy too we do that too we have a uh a treadmill and uh a bicycle and that kind of stuff we try to get twenty minutes like at least three for four times a week you know yeah and we like movies that yeah uh_huh sure oh yeah that's great too uh_huh yeah we did some remodeling when we bought a house we built put a kitchen in and um that kind of stuff and painting and some wallpapering that's fun it is it really is yeah exactly i like things that you know two people can do but i like the quiet of doing things away you know kind of gives you some space for yourself and that's what i find in making the dolls and things that it gives me something that i can create and i like to crochet and knit i made some afghans and that kind of stuff i like doing things with my hands yeah yes i love to cook italian food yeah pizzas and [spaghettis] and [lasagnas] and that kind of stuff yeah uh_huh yeah it is do you do barbecues well uh uh smoking and all that stuff yeah yep i i lived in abilene for a little while and uh worked in the abilene plant and we used to go to joe [allen's] barbecue and uh-oh that was great really great they have some nice stuff down there i miss it oh yeah we did i did horseback riding too in fact when my children were growing up we always had horses and uh that was kind of for them but they weren't as interested in it as we were you know so uh that was a real i'd say probably for maybe fifteen years we [dabbled] in that you know we always had horses around and i really enjoyed that and i was disappointed when i went to texas i didn't see that many of them yes i know i know it's true uh_huh yeah you too you too okay me too okay bye now okay i guess its recording um what kind of hobbies do you have do you sing or knit or anything okay i uh i started knitting awhile ago i [knitted] i didn't know even know what the stitch is called i just had this uh uh piece of yarn and i wanted to start something so i remembered something i learned i think when i was five years old so i kept doing that and now i have a little blanket but that's all i've done uh do you make sweaters and things or just blankets uh_huh oh i see huh uh_huh i probably won't make anything beyond this blanket i don't know why it's just too time consuming um i like to sing i've been trying to get some wedding [gigs] and things like that um right now my actual job is a news reporter but uh if i could do anything i wanted to do it would be to sing professionally but um yes uh_huh i'm in uh i work for channel six in waco and so i do little news reports and things it's not as exciting as it as it sounds but um no not much um my day is usually pretty full my schedule is like from nine to five thirty but i could be at work from anytime you know from nine until nine at night or ten or whatever so it's hard to make plans much less you know have a hobby and even if i had a hobby like knitting or something and i wanted to take it to work i'd probably never get to it you know so what do you do normally oh okay uh_huh uh_huh oh right i i showed mine to my boyfriend and he was like you didn't make that oh yeah it looks uh halfway decent actually first thing i did but yeah how many children do you have oh okay i hear them in the background there all right that's a hobby in itself a job in itself right now i was just sitting here watching t v i was getting ready to fall asleep yeah i sang at one last summer um it was my first wedding i've done um little commercials and background singing and um i sang all through college and things like that but i really haven't done anything really professional per se but i did one wedding last year and uh i just now got some cards together kind of uh business cards that say singer and what does it say a song makes beautiful wedding or something and i've been passing them out to different wedding shops i mean when someone comes in you know for a wedding for a wedding dress and they they might ask about it this one woman even wanted me to bring my tape in because i have a demo tape you know if any one wants to listen and uh she wanted me to bring it in she's going to play it on saturday so that would be great if someone came and heard it and they were like i want that voice but i haven't got any calls yet but i only just put them out this week so hopefully i'll get some calls in especially now since this it's spring and it's the wedding season i guess uh_huh yeah that would be great then i could be getting paid for something i love to do not that i don't like reporting but i'd love it no i've never i've never had uh formal training i've just been singing every chance i get i try you know in school and yeah choirs and um when i was at u t i was in a group called ensemble one oh nine just twelve singers and we did uh little conventions and um uh like dinner parties and things like that sing pop music so that's what got me really really interested in it so i'm trying to be sensible sensible too at the same time yeah exactly my parents would have a fit probably but uh i think i either have a call or yeah i do have a call hold on one second hello yes okay that's my mother on the other line i need to go but um i think we are suppose to talk for ten minutes are we suppose to hear a beep or anything oh okay my mother said ten minutes so i don't know but uh okay well it was nice talking to you and and good luck with your hobbies thanks bye well i um i do cross stitch and i enjoy reading and playing softball oh really well i know that i learned how to knit one time and um made a few things but i haven't done it in so long that i probably wouldn't remember how well if i remember i think we made some like christmas stockings you could make the like the granny squares or whatever and sew them together and make christmas stockings and maybe some [slippers] or something like that nothing as big as a blanket i know that my husband's grandmother does a lot of that and she makes a lot of afghans and all that kind of stuff but yeah do you have any other hobbies oh well that's good so are you on the t v then oh oh okay so you don't have too much time for hobbies yeah yeah um i'm a housewife so unless the kids are asleep i don't get usually get much done either but i've made a um few things cross stitch things i really enjoy doing that and um i made uh like stockings for both my children and a christmas tree shirt and that type of thing and it just takes a long time to get it done but you know once you've done something like that it kind of makes you feel good to to see it really i guess you can make baby blankets that wouldn't take as long two yeah not quite it's a [fulltime] job yeah so um have you sang at any weddings yet uh_huh uh_huh oh that's a good place yeah uh_huh yeah yeah well that's good yeah oh that's true make your hobby into a business that would be pretty good huh yeah did you have training in singing when you were younger then or choirs and that kind of stuff huh well that's nice uh_huh yeah not just give up your job and jump right into it uh_huh yes oh i don't know i've only done this one other time and i thought that the man told me five minutes oh okay it was nice talking to you too good luck with your singing okay bye i guess um i'm going to school while i'm working at t i so there's not a whole a lot of time that i've got uh for hobbies it seems like lately but one of the things that i do when i've got some spare time is i do some woodworking and that oh i guess ranges anywhere from uh carpentry work to um um some types of furniture and um oh i don't know what you would call them [knickknacks] i guess stuff you hang on the wall to put a mirror on and i made some um candle [sconces] that you hang on the there's something about working with wood that that i enjoy that i don't know if it's the saw dust or the mess you make or the smell of the wood but yeah because it's it's out there you know i don't have to worry about getting stuff on the carpet except when i track in saw dust and the wife gets kind of aggravated about that but then i get the opportunity to vacuum so i guess i get some of both what are some of your things you like to do yeah oh yeah yeah it's a good time for gardening i could do with a little less wind but i think the the temperature has been pretty good so far for working outside do you find you do most of your your uh crocheting or your knit work around christmas time yeah well that's kind of what my wife says she enjoys doing it during the cold weather because she's always got something to cover her her legs and feet with while she is working on it i know it seems like she i think she made three this year one for uh my father in law and then a couple of brothers and sisters so those things they take some time to make well that's kind of like quilting i think mile a minute well i'm not sure what she does i i first thing that comes to mind is some kind of chain stitch because she starts and goes all the way across you know back and forth until she winds up with this big piece of of afghan i guess that is your standard knitting isn't it yeah i know oh okay instead of call waiting or call anything else well i guess that's that's one way to end a conversation yeah what have you started your garden yet um boy oh yeah always got to have those i think i had four uh [jalapeno] plants last year i think one of them died but i i've got i've put them i chop them up and put them in jars and usually give them away because i there is no way that i can eat all of those nobody else in the family likes them but always got to the keep those planted well that's kind of the way i am um i planted uh zucchini last year uh i planted four hills of them i think i had three or four seeds in each one of them and those things just flat took over um it wasn't until late i guess in the summer maybe it was because it was too dry they finally started making zucchini and i'm not sure when a good time to plant those is if they should be planted early or later it seems like all i got was i would think so um seems like these all they all went to uh to leaf and it wasn't until late in the summer they started making fruit so i don't know if i mom would say you planted them in the wrong sign of the moon you know but i don't i hadn't looked at a farmers [almanac] to find out when a good time for zucchini is it may not be it may not be you think they're later in the year uh well that's true most of the okra that is growing around higher is is uh later okra well that's about um go ahead well i was just going to say it's a little over six or seven minutes so whenever you feel comfortable about [concluding] well i'm that would be fine well all right i guess we'll call this one quits an and thanks for participating all right have a good time bye yeah i have quite a few of those that my uncle made as you know i think it's more like the mess you make isn't it you don't have to worry about cleaning it up well when i have time i do like to sew um i had been doing a lot of crocheting i make a lot of afghans or used to make a lot of them my mother was real heavy into crafts and i would help her with whatever she happened to be doing and then she would go to these uh arts and crafts shows and sell her needlework so a lot of times i'd help her with that i haven't had much opportunity to work on any other craft stuff lately we've been trying to start up a business and then trying to get my garden going oh yeah it's been beautiful this last week but yeah i usually start in the fall and my husband says i do it you know make afghans so i can keep my lap warm yeah yeah i found one that's real easy it's it's um um um shoot i can't even remember the name of it now but you make it in strips and it's real easy to do and it's just that it doesn't keep your feet quite as warm because you do it in strips like that but it's yeah yeah mile a minute that's the name of it mile a minute yeah yeah usually single crochet would is is always starts it off if we have a problem with our connection and get disconnected some time or other don't worry about it we have a a very small phone company down here and my husband says that's called [rinky] [dink] no no we can't have that down here we get disconnected all the time yeah well it gets a little aggravating i've got kids all over the united states and and you know sometimes they get disconnected when i'm talking to them yes we planted um potatoes and onions and bell peppers uh what else did i get in there and [jalapeno] peppers yeah yeah oh my husband doesn't like them either but i can always give them away besides they're fun to grow supposedly after the soil warms up uh_huh i i doubt if zucchini is in there probably the same time the the other squash is though yeah about the same time that you plant okra because it's supposed to be warm yeah we decided this year i'm sorry go ahead oh just any time all right well i've enjoyed talking to you okay bye okay um i guess um this is probably really a good subject for me because i really like to do uh hand work uh mostly i do needlepoint i guess but um um well i've made a lot of baby gifts it seem like that's like especially lately there's been so many babies that uh bibs and blankets and things like that wall hangings um isn't that funny no yeah isn't that funny i guess i do have one thing a friend of mine gave me a clock kit and i i [needlepointed] the face and i uh kept that because she gave me that so oh yeah and it's real neat um basically the whole well no i guess the minute marks but the minute marks are done they're like hearts and then the at the numbers they they're kind of outlined and stuff it it was quite bit of work but you know it was a lot of fun too i really like doing stuff like that so oh what's that huh wow that's interesting what did you what kind of things did you do oh yeah what did you call that huh that's i've never heard of that before i've probably seen it though i mean when you described it yeah i mean when you described it it sounded like something you know that would be around i guess but i've never heard of it before and it's really interesting um i guess i've decorated baskets and stuff before in the past but i've kind of gotten out of that i use to do a lot more and sell at craft shows really yeah it is oh basically bows and lace uh ribbons um i really wanted to do you know so many of them now have the ribbons where i'm not sure how they do it but the ribbons they make them they like i don't know how to explain it they make them hard you know yeah i've never done that and those are so neat i mean i would really like to do those but um oh definitely yeah oh oh yeah that's i think that's what my concern was was it really sure and how they would how they would last you're right no that's true that's funny yeah i know that's funny no i do some i have really gotten out of it i don't do it quite as much as i used to um i guess because i i went back to school so i don't have as much time no and i have two children also it keeps me very busy but i really enjoy it when i do do it when i get the chance you know it's really it's so relaxing to just sit and but once i get started i can't put it down i just uh_huh uh_huh i know i started a project it's been over a year ago that i swore i was going to finish for somebody for christmas that's what i keep telling this person well i didn't tell you what year um well it's a it's uh cross stitch and it's a picture and it's a wildlife it has deer and trees and it's really beautiful but it's going to be a lot of work and you know i've i have worked on it quite a bit but not as much as i'd like to you know it's just so hard uh_huh well i it's counted cross stitch actually is what i'm doing and so it's really since it's counted you know it's really a lot of work yeah uh_huh uh_huh yep no it really isn't and i tell you really i could just kick myself for even starting it because i have a feeling i'm never going to get it done i'm probably going to hear about it the rest of my life no that's true i i just don't know when i'm ever it just seems like there's just never enough time to pick it up and do it you know it's just really hard but i really do like i said i really enjoy it when i do it's just hard uh_huh and there's there's so many other things that i i have done you know in the meantime like i said so many baby gifts i've made a lot of bibs and wall hangings and so you know those don't take much time at all so it's no big deal for me to pick those up and do them no i usually just buy a pattern book i have several pattern books and i just go with those and then i buy the bibs separate usually i think it's a little bit cheaper in the long run and then i just use whatever colors i want to i don't usually use the colors they tell me to and it it depends on what it is you know but some things especially letters if they suggest certain colors for letters i just go with whatever i want to yeah yeah there's yeah there's a few designs i guess i've done myself but not very many real simple ones you know i do i've made i made a little uh little uh little thumb print and made it a bunny it was really easy i mean just just did a thumb print you know uh_huh and then see i didn't cross stitch the actual thumb print you know that was just the ink and then i made the ears and little eyes and nose and mouth that was so simple it didn't take anything at all uh_huh and then i just oh really what kinds of things have you done uh_huh do you ever keep any of your stuff i do crochet and a lot of uh things like that and i have very little of my own stuff and it's kind of embarrassing people say let me see some of your work oh well can you do it ooh that that would be definitely something you'd want to keep was was the whole face done or just the numbers and and like minute marks oh i did some needlepoint years ago and then i got into the [bargello] well it's an italian um needlework using using the uh i started to say the canvas but the uh-huh what kind of cloth uses that i i've just gone blank but it's used with yarn and it usually takes long stitches over two or three openings in the cloth and you [weave] intricate patterns and use different colors like it could be a flame stitch where so rather than drawing a picture you're making a design like a [geometric] or whatever and it was used quite often in the colonial times to uh uh to [upholster] chairs and so forth as well as the crewel um embroidery work that was done on them what i did when i was doing that was mostly pillows you know for [sofas] and so forth and i can't find one that i've done it's one of those things i i didn't give them away but i didn't know if it's been my color choice or multiple moves or or what and it i was so proud of them when i got them finished but i have no idea where they are [bargello] it's b a r g e double l o i suspect you i suspect you have me too yes that's interesting how did you know to choose this subject tonight that's funny what how did you what kinds of decorations did you use with the how were you decorating the baskets um like fabric that's been [stiffened] yes i've seen some and there there they i suspect they're fairly simple because the one lady i've seen i know that does it i've never asked her any questions but she has three kids all under the age of like six and and they're all a handful so it's got to be something she can do fairly easily and fairly quickly when i do um crochet it's usually the [lacy] victorian type things like that and i stiffen those with a a glue mixture it's like white glue and it may be something similar to that that the fabric is dipped in and then um allowed to dry in those those [draping] bows i mean those [draping] [streamers] i don't know i was just there's bound to be some kind of fabric [stiffener] like that that's very similar that's not going to melt too much with uh uh high humidity in a room do you know what my concern is how will i dust this thing that's terrible so many of my crafts well right now i'm looking at a little [quilted] uh uh hanging it's like it's a flag and i don't want to wash it because that would start breaking down the batting and so forth but it's such a dust collector to be out and so forth and most of my things are dust [collectors] uh and i hate to dust so first thing i think of is how easy would this thing be to clean oh you don't have time you definitely don't have time i have a similar problem i've got to have time or i don't even want to get into it in the first place and so i end up lots of time not doing anything at all you just didn't say which christmas right what was this project now this is done in the needlepoint yes yes i do know i have done a little bit of that but i decided that that's something that demands my my my total attention and so i've got to have total almost total silence i can't really watch television if the pattern is very intricate it sounds like you'd have lots of [shading] on that particular piece it is not does not sound like an easy one to finish oh i'm sure you'll get it done but it just may not of the original obviously not of the original time schedule just hard finding the time that can be dedicated do you do you use patterns i mean like a book of patterns or do you go out an buy a a kit like for a bib or something like that okay um that's what i would do too or whatever i have ooh what with ink oh okay oh that sounds really neat did you do did you use like uh a stamp pad and ink ok so you just like being finger printed so do you have any hobbies yeah uh i'm an avid gardener oh um i consider that a hobby i don't know they were like suggesting like [handcraft] things which i guess that's a really true true hobby but i i think anything that you enjoy um it doesn't really have to matter i mean it could be working on cars could be your hobby really yeah well i don't know i told my husband i said you go out some to work on the car it's not worth getting all mad and fighting and hollering at each other when it goes wrong i says you go pay to have someone do it because it always seems it goes wrong when you try to do something oh yeah um well right now we um start our seeds inside we'll start them inside and uh yeah well we usually start them right in the house my sister tries to set up a greenhouse on her back deck and and the and a wind storm come and knock it down but she's had really good luck i mean next month well actually it if you if you start it in a couple weeks and you can get your plants outside pretty much the end of may you can leave them outside you might put them in the ground just the first week of june but we can put potatoes in the ground in the middle of may oh yeah well well we live we live really close to lake [champlain] which is in the [champlain] valley so we're a little we're about two weeks ahead of everyone else out on the outskirts so yeah we are a little lucky well my brother lives ten miles from here and he gets frost and his crop gets killed yeah from plattsburgh air force base but um yeah [plattsburgh's] kind of a it's uh it's uh depressed economically when you go across the lake um i don't know why we have so much going for us i really don't i'm just wrote my resume up because told we might be facing layoff over at digital and they've never had well they've had layoffs recently but when we got hired here no no never any layoffs never never and now we're looking at serious i i mean i'm a technician when they start getting rid of technicians well i interviewed with them but i didn't want to go to texas even though my um mother's people are from georgia yeah well i guess we have to get back to hobbies since stick on the subject well interesting thing that i do is with gardening uh my sister grows flowers that you can dry and you can make uh dried flower arrangements and you can get real handy with the hot glue gun and we made some really nice christmas [wreaths] with uh dried red flowers and dried white flowers and uh eucalyptus you know what eucalyptus is it's yeah it's got a yeah at first i'm like oh how why do people like this but it it is kind of a nice smell after a while people put them in yeah it's it's it's uh like a fad thing i i don't know it's i've never heard of it in the last five years i've used so much of it that i hate yeah it is yeah it it looks really [potent] stuff but uh it's yeah i think it's the greatest stuff in the world though it's jeez they i make all kinds of things with it we make all kinds of things just with dried flowers i i almost want to start a business doing it but i don't i i'm so uh [timid] when it comes to starting a business yeah it is especially with the being in on the creative aspect and the crafty end you know after a while you make some stuff then you start looking at it go boy this this is kind of ugly but i know someone who does a lot of woodworking for a hobby um he does it believe it or not i wouldn't imagine why but to get out of the house away from his wife because he's a seasonal worker he works in the construction and up here it's almost a pattern and you see your fathers do it then their sons do it what they do is they work construction then they get laid off for like twelve weeks in the winter and uh this guy was going nuts and his uh son built him a garage and got him some uh-oh i don't know what the [equipment's] called but [planers] and things and set him up and he makes all kinds of furniture for um his kids and he makes uh uh like little kids' furniture he gets right into it and uh yeah it's a it's a really good thing because it's keeping him sane and plus it's keeping his marriage so and and plus he's getting on in his years now he's he's not that old but he's getting to the point where he needed an extra boost to to do something like that and uh it's really it's it's uh hard work i couldn't imagine taking lumber raw lumber and trying to make something out of it he he [dowels] everything and it's all got to line up it's and uh i don't think he [goofs] too much i don't to see too much scrap around god i'm envious is it going to be is it going to be really dry uh are you are you now i always plant trees in the fall i don't know why so the the cold weather can kill them but i guess oh that's good i guess they they say you can plant them in the spring or the fall all yeah yeah and uh when you have time to do it my sister does uh flower gardens she gets right into it she spends lots of money on them and i guess a lot of people do do do that they landscape their whole house with flower gardens she's got like just a small patch of lawn and just flowers and mulch tree bark all over her lawn it gets do you have a lot of shade trees around your house or is it so you don't have a lot of tree coverage because going to make yeah see um uh where my uh well my grandmother passed away but where aunts are they have these huge pecan trees and they just shade everything uh it's in georgia it's yeah it's right outside of [macon] and and it's just a i like the way that i like the way that idea of the south is but when i think of texas i think of nothing but no trees and just grass yeah so it's that dry heat well where is it is it wasn't it houston's humid yeah it's humid well right at the present time nothing real special i kind of like gardening and i'm kind of into camping and you know vacationing that sort of thing i don't have any real serious oh okay i think you're uh_huh yeah yeah really yeah i kind of enjoy doing that a little bit too no i i guess if you make money at it it becomes a vocation yeah i guess as far north as you are if you like gardening you've still got a couple months to go haven't you uh_huh oh yeah that's right you would yeah in cold frames or whatever the uh_huh huh uh_huh yeah yeah i've i've lived in in texas and new mexico most of my life but i did once i spent one winter in north dakota and i i remember that it was on into may before it really started warming up and uh oh yeah okay because that kind of moderates the weather a little bit yeah you're at yeah you're right across the uh lake from what plattsburgh yeah yeah yeah i had i had a cousin that was stationed there plattsburgh for a while he he remembers lots of snow oh really oh yeah yeah yeah well i'm i'm working for t i texas instruments down here oh yeah oh oh yeah yeah we're getting to where we're [straying] i guess yeah uh_huh huh yeah yeah yeah the they uh it's sold in the hobby stores and nurseries it's got a kind of a peculiar smell to it but yeah i didn't realize what it was for a while i'd walk into a room where some of that and i'd wonder what is that you know and then one day i i realized that it was eucalyptus yeah is that the stuff that [koala] bears eat in australia or something maybe that's why they're so slow i guess they're stoned on the stuff or something yeah yeah yeah that's that's a big step yeah yeah uh yeah uh_huh [shapers] and [planers] and [routers] there was a program on t v down here on the educational channel here a while back about a lot of little little companies of one and two guys you know up there this particular one i think was in maine and new hampshire where out in the just kind of out in these little towns they'd be in they may be the same kind of people you're talking about you know they've they've got twelve weeks to do something and they they're making furniture and just you know things like that during the winter and then they go off and do other things during the summer so yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that would be really you know like say the oh man yeah yeah yeah that's that's something now our temperatures down here we're starting to get pretty consistently in the seventies and eighties and uh so and uh so as far as you know planting outdoor stuff matter of fact tonight i just got through i was planting some some trees out back tonight and uh this is uh it's really nice out tonight almost hated to come you know yeah these were uh trees that that [wintered] i don't know where they came from they come out of nurseries mostly in missouri and places like that and they come down here and they'll sit in the nurseries here and they'll go ahead and and uh leaf out so what i'm planting or actually [transplanting] is a tree that's or trees that are already [leafed] out yeah mostly i think in a place where it's really cold they do it in the fall let them winter you know through the fall but uh down here well it's done both ways it it just kind of depends on what you're what you're planting but uh all the shrubs and yeah uh_huh yeah yeah flowers during the summer down here the the normal kind of flowers there's very few of them that will really do well everything does real well here in the spring until about oh first part of june and then the the heat sets in and june july august are you know most of the those kind of plants just are just barely staying alive let alone make flowers uh we're in a relatively new area we're kind of out of uh the natural tree area we're kind of up on a on a higher on a slope so we don't have where we are right now there are very few trees this was this was this was pasture land but down the down the hill here a little ways there are parks that are look like [jungles] you know they're really uh_huh now where is this in georgia yeah yeah well i tell you what now see east texas there's two parts of texas east texas and north texas atlanta and dallas are almost identical in every way weather and everything the two cities are very very identical so if you were familiar with atlanta uh uh well no it's it's uh not dry at all it it's humid houston is awful houston is really humid no okay what kind of hobbies do you have uh_huh i like to read too i was trying to think of some while while it was uh talking about it and then i it took so long for someone to answer i started reading the newspaper and kind of forgot about it but uh yeah i'd say reading is probably one of my biggest ones because it's the type of thing that you can you can do a little bit at a time whereas i would love to do crafts and stuff if i just had the time to do it or if i had the space i live in a pretty small apartment and uh i would have to you know put stuff away i have two cats so i couldn't really leave it out if i was working on something reading is a little bit easier to work around that's right that's true i do the same thing what types of crafts do you do uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh i enjoy uh sewing and needlework also i've i've uh made some small things cross stitch things and um back when i was in high school i worked at a needlework shop and i i used to do the latch hook rugs and needlepoint and things like that and i i still remember how to do it it's just been so long since i've actually sat down and taken the time to do something like that but i have recently done some cross stitch and i enjoy doing that it's just the same old thing it's just getting the time to do it uh_huh yeah it takes a lot of concentration i mean it was the type of thing i was i was making some little things for christmas and i also made a little thing for a baby gift and uh i thought oh i can do this while i watch t v wrong no you must pay all attention to what you're doing it's it is a lot more difficult than it seems like it would be it took me uh quite a bit of time i though oh this won't take long at all but i was wrong it took it took a while to do but it was fun i enjoyed it oh my gosh uh_huh yeah yeah that's pretty understandable uh_huh uh_huh i'm trying to think of anything else i do as a hobby um i don't even watch t v very much i was tonight but yeah yeah i do i do like to go to movies and i have a v c r so i like to rent movies and um i have right now i have the movie channel so i've recorded quite a few movies off of that um just i've kind of got a collection going of tapes now and whenever i go visit my parents they're always saying well bring some of your tapes they always borrow a few of them i was over there they live in duncanville and i was over there at easter and they said bring some tapes with you so they are always borrowing my tapes but uh i like to i like to do uh stuff with plants i like um i have a lot of plants in my apartment and i've got a pretty small porch but it's it's uh i've got a few [planters] out there that i i'll uh you know in the winter time i usually plant some pansies in there and then in the summer i'll plant petunias or something that's colorful and like that blooms a lot but haven't done that yet i kept thinking that it was going to get cold one more time but i think we're probably past that now i probably should go buy some i guess if i had a house i might enjoy gardening some i'm not real crazy about pulling weeds and things like that yeah i like the planting and watering is okay uh_huh uh_huh yeah i don't know too much about it either mine's pretty limited to my little uh porch plants and then the ones in my apartment half of which don't look real healthy but i don't always get direct sun except in certain spots and so that's probably my problem there but no i never have tried that just because i don't have that much space on this little porch here in this apartment or this little balcony and my other two pots are they're kind of they're pretty big and i have enough plants in them that it takes up a lot of my porch area so between that and the chairs and the barbecue grill and the fireplace wood there's no room for much else but my dad uh my dad used to grow tomatoes and things at the house and i'd i think when i was real little i probably had a finger in on that every time he did it and had to be out there and watch and that type of stuff but i've never really tried anything like that since then uh_huh oh wow uh_huh right well i enjoy playing with my cats i don't know if you'd call that a hobby but i have two cats and i gave them a bath tonight so they're a little bit angry at me they didn't like it too much yeah oh yeah right in the tub and it helps because its the time of the year that they're [shedding] a lot and cleaning cat fur off the couch and off the floor is not a hobby of mine so i thought [this'll] help you know help them shed and sure enough boy the fur just came off like crazy once i got them in the tub so they're pretty content now but they were mad at me for quite a while they went and [hid] after they after they got dried off yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah i like both but since i'm in an apartment i just i don't think an apartment is big enough for a dog dogs to me dogs need a yard even little dogs they just need a yard cats can deal with being inside all the time just fine but i just think dogs need need to be outside though so yeah now that's an idea with the small babies yeah because you kind of even even a cat you never know when they might bite or scratch or something there not as likely to as a dog might i guess but with little ones i'd be kind of scared to get anything that has teeth or claws oh yeah oh yeah uh_huh yeah probably so and i'm out of out of good ideas for a hobby anyway well it was good talking to you all right bye bye um mostly what i do i do do some crafts like it mentioned in the thing and then i i read a lot oh uh_huh uh_huh yeah you can pick it up and take it wherever you go any space i get too involved in reading sometimes that i neglect what i should be doing you get so involved in what you're reading i do a little bit of woodworking well i used to i don't have the equipment here we moved to dallas about a year ago and my dad had a lot of woodworking equipment and i did some of that um here i've mostly done things that i can do strictly by hand um sewing and quilting and um what else have i done things to hang on the wall mostly just stuff that i can you know use right around the house or give away as gifts i've been making a lot of quilts well not a lot but several quilts lately so uh_huh uh_huh yeah i've done some cross um cross stitch but i never count right and i always have to either take it out or have my picture slightly off centered or or something it never has worked out completely right uh_huh yeah the first project i started out one was a big one it was uh it was of a lady and she was [kneeling] and it was about fifteen by twenty maybe and i it was just too much to start with and i still haven't finished it because i i stopped and i thought i better do some simple things and work up to this because it was just so difficult to get it done and there were so many different [shadings] and colors and and it was just too much to begin with and i think kind of discouraged me from doing much more with it and i've done some of the crewel and the um something similar to that but it doesn't have the specific stitches anyway it's a little bit more loose and not quite as structured and i like that a little bit better the variety of stitches and stuff in that more like embroidery or something yeah i was reading when you called how about movies do you like to go to movies uh_huh yeah well we uh_huh yeah yeah it's the hard work it's so nice though when you have a nice yard full of flowers it's so i mean we don't we live in an apartment also i've got a few plants here but i'm not really knowledgeable i feel real good if i water them and they continue to grow you know i feel like oh i've accomplished something so i enjoy it but i'm just not experienced enough with it uh_huh oh yeah have you tried any growing any um like fruits and vegetables or anything i guess vegetables are in like in pots and stuff uh_huh uh_huh well i considered it last year and this year both but i haven't done anything about it so i think it would be nice to just go out and pick some tomatoes off the porch we get lots of [sunlight] here and the porch is screened in and it's pretty large so um i think if i just would be if i'd do something be motivated enough to do something i think it would work out well but but there goes that motivation thing again can you can you put them right in the water oh that's good oh yeah [sulked] for a while huh well i like animals but we don't have any yet we have a nine month old with another on the way and we thought well maybe when they're a little bit bigger then we'll or get into a house with a little more space i'd love to have have some animals but i like dogs and my husband likes cats so we haven't reached a real agreement on that yet if we get a place where we can have both it'll be great but until then uh_huh i agree with you i if we were going to get anything now it would definitely be a cat or even a bird or a fish tank or something you know something small that she can watch but won't take too much care uh_huh especially when they're not quite to the age of understanding that they're hurting you know that they grab hold with both hands and then just jerk and if i was a cat or dog i'd respond probably by biting or something i don't know that'd be my self defense but well i think we probably reached our time limit oh okay thank you for calling bye bye okay uh_huh um i like to do like physical things like sports um i really enjoy softball and my favorite is volleyball and but i'm at school i'm in you know i i live up at the college so sometimes it's hard for me to do that so i just like sometimes i like just to get away i go to my room and i like walk in turn the radio on or you know just kind of like [veg] out or something uh_huh uh_huh i like to do that stuff but when i'm in like when i'm at school i don't have time to do it or even time to learn how to do it yeah uh_huh yeah exactly uh_huh like um i have i come from a family of twelve children and when i'm up here i really miss my younger brothers and sisters so you know that's that's a change because there's nine of them that are younger than me i'll call like when i know my mom and dad aren't home i'll call home just to talk to my little brothers and sisters i i really miss them a lot so i don't i guess talking on the phone is one of my hobbies too yeah well i'm not much of a basketball fan either uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah um not that i like reading but i do do a lot of reading while i'm here at school do you like reading as a hobby yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah do you um i know one thing that's pretty popular with the girls up here at college and i make them also is the padded covered photo albums uh_huh yeah uh_huh i know they're real popular here at school also uh_huh yeah i really don't have any other uh_huh it was nice talking to you too thanks bye bye hi i uh i like i love to do uh all kinds of crafts and sewing i i find that's my one release so what do you do uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well i have two small kids and so i i don't have you know much time to to go places and play sports you know i have to do something where i can do it at home so i'm uh i just love to sew and uh you know i i make a lot of my christmas presents and i love to do all kinds of crafts and stuff like that no i remember when i was in college i didn't have time to do that stuff either it was really but now you know i don't have a whole lot of time now but i have more time than i did so and a lot of my sewing i kind of do out of necessity you know for you know i've got two kids to put clothes on so oh uh_huh yeah i yeah i just uh have you know one brother and he's married and you know they have a couple kids so i you know i don't have uh you know i don't get on the phone too much but yeah most of my stuff is just going you know i enjoy going places with my kids and i do like sports but i'm you know i don't have a lot of time for them my i like volleyball of all sports i think that would be my favorite because i hate basketball an an yeah i enjoy playing volleyball but i you know i i don't have a lot of time to do it so it's maybe once a year or something an and then i you know used to play it a lot when i was in school but now that i'm married and stuff i you know i've like i'm really bad nobody would want me on their team i'm the you know i'm the [opposing] teams best player so so to speak so but yeah i enjoy um you know just i you know i have varied interests and stuff and yeah so uh_huh uh i love to read but i you know i don't have a lot of time to read an you know what reading i do i kind of do because it's you know it's the necessary stuff as far as fun reading you know i maybe get to read the sunday paper but that's about it you know so yeah i don't have a lot of time to read i yeah i remember in college i did a lot of reading most of it text books so and just you know keeping busy with everything else going on so but yeah i i like to do uh i've made stuffed cows you know dress you know dolls they're like dolls you know you make clothes for them and everything like that they those have been real popular with my family i've had them calling up and saying will you make me another one and so i do things like that you know if i had more time i'd probably do it and sell the stuff but you know i don't have enough time to do it to really you know take orders on it you know it's like i can only do it when i have time i have a whole stack of material and patterns to sew up as it is so oh yeah uh_huh i do i've done those too before yeah those are real i i have a several of those that i've made like as wedding gifts you know i made them out of all lace and and [satin] you know and made them as wedding gifts and stuff like that so those are real popular in fact i got some of those for my wedding so uh_huh yeah yeah those are fun to do and just little things you know i i didn't have a lot of when i was in college i did you know i did sewing for other people when i had time you know like if somebody needed a [bridesmaids] [maids] dress made i'd make that but that's about all the sewing i did i never had time for you know to sew myself a new dress or anything like that so but yeah i just kind of sew for my kids and that's about it so well i guess maybe we've covered the topic pretty good yeah i'm not too much uh you know i don't have a lot of hobbies mine are just mostly you know things i just do out of necessity okay well it's been nice talking to you good luck in school bye bye so what kind of neat hobbies do you have i like gardening i wish i had a green thumb though i've got a brown thumb that's what everything turns i keep trying uh you know you just can't can't give up on it uh i uh i bought some uh plants from michigan bulb company they send them to you all ready alive oh really i guess i guess these are going to [croak] too since i've got cats i decided to get some catnip lots and lots of catnip so it's it's still green and it's been two days so i'm encouraged yeah yeah there's a uh i don't know do you have [lowe's] up there its uh building uh or building supplies place um they they also have a garden shop and they they offer just as good a guarantee if you buy it from them yeah um yeah yeah yeah yeah something like that uh i got a whole bunch of bulbs along with this stuff so i'm going to wait on those uh probably spring but uh i don't much care about things like that i'll i'll make a little sort of greenhouse a miniature greenhouse to put all this stuff in something something to keep me occupied you see i'll uh buy some plastic and make a little house and yeah and watch the cats tear it up they they just like to get in and dig oh they love to dig i had i had some uh i don't know what kind they are i've already forgotten just regular old flower seeds and i planted them and i was so i was so thrilled because they came up i mean nice green shoots coming up all over the place and then my cats got into it and started digging and that took care of that so i have to hang these things high so they can't get to them especially the catnip three um yeah yeah because they they like to get in and fertilize things too but uh why would it be illegal oh uh yeah right well if nobody yeah if nobody complains you're all right um um yeah an and if somebody raises a stink about it you can always go before the association and argue your case anyway you know you don't have to put up with all these wild critters coming into your property yeah right here [bambi] uh gosh well let's see other than gardening which i fiddle at i'm not very good at what else do i mostly just computer stuff i just like playing with my computer and doing stuff on that uh cooking that's not really a hobby it's a necessity but but i enjoy it i like to think that i'm a very good cook um hobbies that's about it i don't have much time for hobbies uh between being a student and trying to run a business on the side you don't have a lot of time yeah and raising cats well it's it started out as a hobby actually uh it just it developed into sort of a business uh you know we breed them and all that but we didn't you know we didn't really start it for the money it was just they were fun to have around and we figured if we're going to have them we might as well have some [purebreds] an and now it developed in to going to cat shows and finding [studs] for them and you know all this kind of stuff uh i've got a uh a [bombay] a turkish van and a himalayan persian yeah the himie is probably the [sweetest] one she's she's just a little sweetheart we uh the the [bombay] had a litter uh last october and i just got her back from the vet this morning getting her spayed only going to breed them once and uh she's not she's not feeling too great today no uh most breeders are in it for the money so they'll they'll breed them twice a year and i i just think that it's kind of i don't know it's kind of cruel you know they just they just breed these they breed them before they're ready uh and you're never you're never and and they they do a lot of [inbreeding] too and so you end up with you know kind of strange kittens and i just don't like that we're we sold all that litter um we there's not that much call to for [bombays] um they're they're registered but they're not they're not uh they're not show cats uh so all you can do is sell them as pet quality uh so what you've got is a registered pet and not too many people want [bombays] they want things like himie [persians] and turkish vans turkish vans if you've never seen one i mean you wouldn't know that it was a pure bred it's just uh medium size short hair cat it's got he's mostly white with uh brown and black [patches] but they have nice personalities and they're very [inquisitive] um now the himie we'll probably breed her a couple of times and we'll we'll end up keeping one out of each litter and then breeding those it's just the stud fees are so much though it'll cost about three hundred dollars for a stud for her we we want to breed her with a champion so yeah the persian is and the other two are short hairs yeah she's uh she's sweet going to have some nice kittens i hope she's uh she's if if you know what a himalayan is generally they look something like uh well they come in a lot of different colors people don't realize it but they're sort of like uh siamese in a way they have the uh they have the gloves on the [paws] and they're they're usually two colored uh but this one is uh is she's predominantly uh black but she has chocolate uh [paws] chocolate stomach and silver on her [hindquarters] and yeah she's she's quite attractive looking hope hope the stud will find her attractive and and that she has a whole bunch of kittens but we have to be careful uh you know we have to get a particular color point uh stud you can't just breed them with anything we have to get a uh we have to get a silver point himie so that the silver will be [predominate] in the kittens that's it that's the fun part trying to figure out what you've got to breed them with can't just go out there and say okay you guys breed you know that's right well actually i mean it it is a business in a way but it it's a lot of fun as a hobby especially when you go to shows and get to see all the different cats we're we're about to get another breed we're we're going to buy a devon [rex] and i didn't i don't like devon [rexes] at first it's a well actually it's a mutant it it comes from england and uh in the county of devon and it's a mutant cat and they're they're pretty expensive we're going to we're going to shell out probably about a thousand bucks for one um they're very thin they're they're they're long and [lanky] and skinny and they have real short hair it's curly as a matter of fact um yeah it it it's a strange looking cat uh i didn't like them at first they've got great big ears well i like gardening a lot i like to be outside um oh is but do you keep trying anyway no no i've never had any luck with [their's] right oh no i i haven't had had good luck with that company uh i think some of it depends how long things stay in the mail probably but i've had to to get my money back from them and had better luck with with some of the the more expensive companies because they uh well no uh_huh oh that's great now our local stores don't don't offer any guarantee but some of the the mail order ones that i've dealt with for roses and that they offer through through the first summer which at least if they if they take off the first year they're probably going to come up unless there's uh a terrible freeze or something oh they're bulbs for spring or fall uh_huh uh_huh cute right i don't know that do cats bother bulbs i think more the mice or other [rodents] oh i see so if you have fresh dirt they'll uh gee how many cats do you have oh okay actually i just put a uh little fence around my yard uh um which is i suppose technically illegal but i had so many [groundhogs] last year that i think they'll let me get by with it and it it's got this one inch [mesh] and what i've noticed it's kept the cats out and i love it well because we have these uh i live in a townhouse and anyway all of our areas have associations that you have to get permission and you know they want uh privacy fences right right well they do walking tours too so but at least because i back up to um a hillside where the uh wild animals are i think i can probably justify it right right i right the first year the deer ate my garden and i was just astounded i'm going deer right here in the city exactly and so oh oh great right that keeps you busy i mean that could become a hobby uh_huh uh_huh what kind of cats are they wow oh okay um is that typical to only breed them once uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh so will you uh breed one of the litter then next year oh uh_huh oh i see uh_huh uh_huh oh right right now these are long haired uh_huh uh_huh right uh that's nice uh_huh gee uh_huh uh_huh and that she has kittens that look like her i see you can't just tell them that anyway but oh dear well it really sounds like uh uh a business more than a hobby what is it oh um huh interesting okay my hobby is uh sewing i i've just uh started learning how to sew and uh i've taken some classes and i've made a few few [garments] do you sew at all did you oh oh yeah uh_huh uh clothes are getting so expensive now in in the stores and the the quality is is sometimes so poor that uh it it really is worth while to sew right an yeah it certainly is and the patterns have gone up tremendously too the prices for them you used to could get you know a pattern for two or three dollars now they're like you know five six seven eight oh no i'm not huh_uh no the the cheapest ones now are like maybe uh four or five dollars six seven and then you get into the [vogues] they get up into twelve and fifteen and on like that uh right now i'm just sewing for myself i i do have two daughters that you know out they're they're grown now though i wish that i had started sewing you know when they were younger and uh it would have helped me out tremendously but um oh i guess i i just you know i always i have always tried to sew and uh i didn't like the way it looked so i'd never wear anything but now i i have bought some uh new sewing equipment i bought the singer machine and uh it really makes it look professional and i've taken some classes here in in uh dallas yeah right i know a lot of people where i work make their clothes it's just there's just so many people sewing now days uh_huh no i'm not that talented right i have a sister that can can uh crochet real well or or knit i i guess i mean knit and she [knits] things like hats and uh sweaters an you know uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh oh my goodness yeah now now they have the uh knitting machines that will do it for you um are you familiar with what a serger is uh the serger sewing machine well you know in when we used to sew we'd sew the seam and then we'd finish the edges and we we would uh trim the seams and finish the edges well this machine does it all in one step right and it's cutting off the uh the there there are two knives and it cuts off the uh you know excess seam allowance right and uh it it really makes it look professional especially on you know i mean from the inside you know how you look under under something that you've made and it doesn't really but uh the serger really makes it look professional they're pretty expensive i like i paid like about eight hundred dollars for mine uh_huh so since i bought it and paid that much for it i guess i'd might as well get some use out of it yes i'm going to have to do it right yeah no no i i play the piano oh you do uh_huh yeah uh_huh well i'm not that great either i used to be a lot better than i am now i i have played for uh the church choir and uh i played for the choral club in high school and but i you know i don't practice a lot anymore and uh you know you get rusty you really i never thought i would get rusty but i'm rusty now uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah right well sewing does take up take an awful lot of time takes an awful lot of time yeah yeah yeah on the on the right on the straight grain and all that stuff uh_huh yeah that that's that's the part that i don't like too yeah i i like sewing sewing up the [garment] itself i really like to do that but the the cutting and the all the even the cutting i don't like well that's about it really it's it has four uh four threads instead of the the regular basic two threads and uh it no you you can either use three or four of the threads uh it's kind of it the stitch is kind of like a knitting machine like the they're [loopers] under the bottom and then the there's a seam stitch and it's the [loopers] that form the the edge you know that edge finish and uh that's what really makes it look professional you can do a lot with the serger though you can make uh [piping] and [cording] and uh you can use all kinds of different uh [textures] of thread well yes but you you have to use it in combination with a sewing machine you can't throw your sewing machine away you you need it to do things like button holes and uh seams that need to be really strong need to be done on the sewing machine it's uh no it's it's a it's a it's a machine it's not exactly a sewing machine but it it does sew the seam and trim the edges and all that stuff but there are are other things that a regular sewing machine does that it doesn't do like you can't top stitch with it you know you can't do top stitching or um there's there's a few things that you just can't do with it it will also do a rolled edge um gee it's just so versatile i uh why don't you go ahead and start i used to uh i i sewed you know in high school and when i went to college i think everything in my closet i had made but i haven't sewed since then and that's been fifteen years so uh you know i didn't have access to a machine the whole time i was in college and uh my sister sewed and she needed the money so i would pay her and she'd make my clothes and uh and then just in the last you know ten or i just haven't sewn anything i would love to i would like to get back to it yeah it is you know an even back then i remember you could make something for you know half what it cost to buy and of course the quality was just exceptional uh now it's a little more expensive to make it because you know you start paying the price for the patterns and the material but it's still such better quality that i think it's worth it you're kidding me see i can remember paying seventy five cents for a pattern uh_huh good night well do you have kids and a husband are you sewing for a whole family or uh_huh yeah uh_huh well and that always is helpful for starters you know you have to have something that kind of gets you on the right track of where you're going that's true well do you do anything do you knit or crochet like for sweaters or anything like that see i'm i've not ever been a real craft type person i have a sister in law that i mean if it can be done with your hands she does it she makes things for the kids for christmas and nephews and nieces and i look at them and i think god you know i i should be able to do things like this yeah yeah well when my sister oh when my sister had her first uh child my niece and this is we're talking fifteen years ago i was it was my last year of college and i asked my roommate if she would teach me how to crochet granny squares so she did and i crocheted a blanket for my sister's baby and i started crocheting a king size bedspread for a guy that i was dating at the time and when we broke things off actually we were supposed to get married when i got out of college so when we broke things off i quit crocheting it and i've never picked up a needle since then in fact i think it's still sitting in the top of the closet one of these days i keep thinking i'm going to finish it because it would make a really pretty bedspread but fast my problem i guess is time you know i i talk to my husband we kind of planning for the time eventually when you know maybe i can quit work while my kids because i my kids are young i have a three and a half and a two year old and he says but [bev] i think you'll be so bored because you know all you've ever done is work and i said but there's so many things i want to do i'd like to start sewing again i'd like to learn how to do this cross stitch and these you know knit these things and i think that would be fascinating he kind of laughs i don't think so sure uh_huh you're kidding so like as you're sewing the seam it's finishing off the inside edge well that takes all the work out of it well how neat uh_huh well that's neat for the machine yeah you have to learn how to do it that's right otherwise they hold it over your head forever right now i bought you that machine well that sounds really good do you paint or anything like that never oh so do i well i have one here it's the one that i grew up with and my folks gave it to me and uh a couple years ago when they they sail and so they sold their home and they they've been sailing and uh so it's here but i haven't touched one like since college so i kind of am picking it all out again and trying to remember how to do it again and of course my kids jump in the middle of it and want to pound on it and i'd love to teach them to play too so i'm not great but i remember it yeah you do you do well i i figure it takes practice and i i don't i say i don't have the time that's not true by the time i put my kids in bed at night i don't want to do anything i you know i've worked all day and i come home and i do that i and you know even hobbies and crafts and sewing things like that i i think gee i could do this or that i have an hour here i don't want to do them sometimes i'm too tired so i try to save that for the weekend i need to get better at it though now the part about sewing that i never liked was laying out the material and the pattern and cutting it out if if somebody would lay it out for me then i didn't mind cutting it out and sewing it i could do that all day long and i i can remember once in high school i wanted some extra money and my mom wanted some pants so she laid out the material and i cut it and sewed it and she paid me i think like two dollars a pair to make her some pants but i i hate laying out material and trying to get the most out of the material and make sure it's on the right lines and not on the bias yes on the grain of the fabric it drives me crazy yeah well what are some of the other features on this machine it sounds wonderful oh okay is that for designs or is that for the regular seam in the fabric or oh okay uh_huh so it has the ability to do just about any type of sewing you want to do uh_huh so the serger is not a sewing machine itself it's something that goes with it like an attachment or oh okay uh_huh well i'm going to have to go check it out that's just something i hadn't heard of but it so the the topic is hobbies yeah who has spare time um i don't really don't really do any handicraft things like that i used to i used to do like salt ornaments and things but that was oh good many many years ago and i have i really my spare time i usually go do aerobics and read and that's about it yeah yeah family well well that's what i meant by salt that we we did that like as a family little ornaments and things like that and just kind of really got into it like during the christmas season making them up for other people and things like that but as far as i've just never been very skilled at far you know needle work cloths and the things i've tried to do just don't look very good and yeah uh_huh it's not like you sit and knit every night yeah i don't even know how to knit and my mother used to knit you know all the time and and i don't even know how to knit i'm like that's a lost art from this family so um but it's not a very good topic it feels like if you know not when you're neither one of us are really i i have seen things i really like you know that were done especially like needlepoint needlepoint [cushions] and things but it just seems like there'd be so much time involved in it you know and and that the petty point and things like that it's like god it it seems like it's easier just to go out and buy it already made yeah yeah and see they do that as their job whereas you know for us it and they make it cheaper for us to buy so but and i mean i'm sure it must be relaxing to do things like that because i can remember when i used to do you know those little salt those figurines and things it was it was relaxing you know creative you felt very creative but it just was so time time involved you know so much time involved and the different steps and things so and yeah so okay i hope you have a good rest of your weekend okay bye bye in your spare time uh_huh yeah yeah yeah i understood that i'm you know i work full time and i have two kids so my spare time usually involves something with the kids you know hobbies we i i can't really say that we have hobbies it's more like maybe projects or something on the weekend you know we like to go out go out oh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh i i guess mostly as far as as crafts go i've done um some needlepoint i've done mostly cross stitching i used to uh do like um one that i did for both kids are like oh they're [plaques] with you know different kind of animals and then you have their birth date on them and then you have a little picture of them and you frame them and stuff but nothing steady just when i get some spare time here and there i'll work on it but you know it's nothing that i can really no not at all uh_huh yeah no uh_huh yeah yeah i don't know what what is it's like there but here a lot of the country stuff is in you know a lot of the woodwork a lot of uh stenciling and you know you can go to any like a flea market and stuff and there's just tons of stuff everywhere and you know people just do it in their garage and then on weekends they go out and sell it and during the week they go back and do some more right yeah definitely uh_huh yeah uh_huh okay well i think i think we're okay i think we did the five minutes so we don't have to keep talking about nothing anymore okay well thank you thanks bye bye so the general topic is hobbies let's hear about your hobbies any [handicrafts] any [handicrafts] so um i think i'm in handicraft i think it will become resume writing uh yeah i i hate to think about it and and i'm getting rather good at reading want ads yeah it it i who knows no all means about fifteen to twenty percent of of oh i'm sure the numbers somewhere classified but some of the internal news and the news services so it's approximately six fifty so ten percent of six fifty is sixty five and twenty percent would be one thirty yeah that's possible oh yes uh i saw seven eleven that was hiring yes yeah uh no [apple's] coming to town and and that has some opportunities and uh and colorado springs specifically yes and uh and uh m c i coming if if telemarketing is your bag personally i'd rather die a slow painful death but uh i'm a defense worker i'm government tool control specialist are you still employed oh exempt or oh yes oh so you didn't even get the [severance] package so are you happy with what you are doing now yeah good good well it hasn't been a long time t i or i i'm significantly [shaken] by the situation but not devastated to tell you the truth i'm i'm i'm not really worried and and i seem rather happy about it most of the time just just to know what's possibilities are you know what might happen but still in all it feels funny so despite the fact that i should be tying flies or fly fishing or or going for walks in the mountains i can't seem to get into it right now uh [situational] i've i doubt i'll be here in six months i all things being equal yes but or or even somewhere better but god this is much better than west texas but then they they tell me hell is much better than west texas i my little brother lives in austin right now goes to u t i see that's the problem for the last many years i've more or less let them direct what i want to do and where i want to go and just kind of go with the [punches] and now i feel lost oh i had job offers but i never found the one that was worth it for me to leave and that oh so had you been with t i long when you changed huh well there's a noticeable difference there i've been with them sixteen actually seventeen now and oh yeah [momentum] is uh driving force in our lives but so yeah i'm looking as as a opportunity and and i'm looking at it as a change and i'm looking at it as as an adventure and maybe i'll wet a fly line this year and do some camping if i don't get laid off between now and then ha how about we end this nice talking to you bye yes well let's see what kind of hobbies do i have i guess uh i it's more not so much a hobby but things i enjoy doing i enjoy playing basketball and and basically all kinds of sports and uh excuse me no not not really um no i'm really not too creative well i uh you know around with my hands and things like that i leave that more up to my mom oh yeah oh well let's hope that you you aren't employed by that craft for too long uh_huh what kind of time frame is it uh looking for the uh different shifts up there is it uh basically i had read that they're just looking at relocating them all to mckinney is it texas oh wow uh_huh wow how about that yeah that's what it did report was a hundred and thirty relocating down to mckinney how about that well that's uh that's unfortunate is there many other are you in the defense is it uh many other corporations in the area well i'm sure with the new uh contract awarding i i think it went to [lockheed] didn't it that uh i hear they're hiring all over the place for that oh really now is that ad good just to colorado or to colorado springs how about that uh_huh well you in the uh computer operations or in the actual uh manufacturing right yeah that's why i was in the [deseg] down here in plano also am i still employed by t i no i took a leave of of t i back in november actually december was my first month away from them exempt it uh unfortunately i guess for myself it wasn't uh it was purely by my own choice it wasn't uh there was no incentive for myself to leave but it was just an opportunity [arose] and decided to take it no i should have taken the the the you know uh option when that was there but it was just i missed it by a couple months but you know what can one do i'm just happy still to have a job yeah i am kind of happy with it it's getting better all the time i knew it would be different from the very beginning but you know as you get to know more of the people that work there and more of what's going on with the system so i was in the computer operations it's uh you know it all starts to become similar there's you know there's benefits and there's things that weren't as good but as an overall package i'd say i'm pretty happy so far with the way it's turned out uh_huh right uh_huh well the one thing i guess at least in your favor is the the fact that that is more in the support of the manufacturing and there's lots and lots of companies that have maybe not in the the defense area but manufacturing in general uh_huh that's great that's good uh_huh sure yeah sometimes it's good just to have everything out on the table it may be a blessing in disguise i know a number of people who are uh [surplused] and they're just actually what the positions that they found outside of the company were much much better than the ones that they currently had inside exactly uh_huh well i'm sure it's just with the the the the way that things are so [topsy] [turvy] right now as soon as you decide on a pass uh_huh well would you like to be there uh_huh sure uh_huh well just take the day well actually uh the the plano dallas houston you know austin that whole area is is actually quite quite nice oh that's a beautiful place uh_huh that's just fantastic down there take it more as a this is your opportunity to do whatever you want pick out where you want to live and then once you pick that spot out pick out what you want to do uh_huh uh_huh sure uh_huh yeah that's a it it takes a bit of a shift doesn't it uh_huh uh_huh well the best thing about it is that you can uh try something if you don't like it shoot move on to something else that's the way i would have looked at the whole thing here i'll take a chance if i don't like it i'll go someplace else do something different five years yeah yeah i can imagine you know the longer and longer it goes uh_huh well that's good you've got a good attitude about it uh_huh right there you go that's the way to do it there you go that's the thing to do that's much [funner] than doing any kind of job that will work out just fine all right nice talking to you good bye all right well uh quite a few and they're varied they don't uh uh [encompass] uh many [handcrafts] like knitting and that kind of thing but i do uh quite a bit of [wreath] making and my dogs are my hobbies i do a lot of gardening i go to estate sales which takes up a lot of time now what do you mostly do oh boy that should be fun yeah how old are they well i think that's better than having that party at home yeah and the the the skating [rink] does the rest practically i guess boy what a help that is what kind of well not that long uh just since october we moved here from enid oklahoma so uh we are we're originally from virginia this part of the country but we did spend twenty years in norman and enid and loved it but we needed to get back uh to our older parents but i am loving it the weather is [divine] yes oh yes very much yeah well my husband was with uh university of oklahoma and [phillips] university in enid and then he went with uh a family corporation that had uh has oil and [ranching] and varied [enterprises] and uh he just quit a perfectly good job and came we came east yes yes uh_huh he's doing uh quite a bit of consulting work and has been offered a permanent position and he's contemplating he he's liking this free time actually it's just wonderful after all these years of working um a gal who works uh with t i on this project i think she's a temporary worker uh mother is my best friend in virginia so we have spread the word a little bit in this part of the country really uh what is her name yeah well i haven't talked to her i haven't i haven't talked to a tina yet yeah yeah yeah yeah well you haven't told me uh what sports that you are active in yes well i think that's uh easy entertainment for a family too under the stands under the bleachers uh_huh yes well it's getting a little hot isn't it it yeah it sure does or maybe this evening anyway very much so yeah no no it doesn't enid is uh it's in the northwest it's uh directly across the straight uh state from tulsa uh sure you have yes well enid is not uh an unknown little city it uh an awful lot of people know where it is or have been there and it was uh a very uh self sufficient uh wealthy uh town for a long time anyway you know until uh everything happened the bottom fell out but it's beginning to do well but there's a lot of uh old time wealth there that has helped to [stabilize] things yes something like that oh well it's it's pretty the weather is wonderful uh this winter we it was just we had so many wonderful days and uh i if it got to be forty degrees i decided it was too cold to to walk the dogs isn't it funny how how your standards change yes sure well carolina this part is very much like that too very foggy and [misty] the moss grows on the trees in the woods up eight ten feet yeah i think however that's like february uh i know it did it all february and some people said to me well that's our wintertime well i know you need to go and i've enjoyed talking to you thanks so much have a oh thank you and i hope you enjoy and get through that birthday party yeah i do too bye bye uh_huh uh_huh well mostly right now i'm a i do a lot of sports and stuff like that is my hobbies and do a lot of things with my family as much as possible we're uh we're about to take the kids to go roller skating and a birthday party and stuff so yeah yeah fun for them uh i've got a little girl who's six and a little girl that's three yeah well uh this is a friend's party and they they rented or you know they the party they uh just rent [skates] and stuff for the kids so uh they're they're looking forward to it yeah yeah uh_huh yeah so uh how long have you lived in north carolina really oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh really uh did you like oklahoma while you were there um what did you all do uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh really so is uh is he working there then or oh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah yeah yeah well how did how did you get uh hooked up with the t i switchboard thing uh_huh oh i see i see uh_huh my wife has talked more than i have uh she's talked to four five different people it seems like she hasn't talked to anybody from dallas in fact she's talked to a couple of people from north carolina i think yeah her name's tina yeah uh_huh uh the the call was probably for her they wouldn't accept my uh t i n number so we put hers in but uh uh like i said we're getting getting the kids ready to go to the birthday party so but uh some of yeah i i've only talked to one or two and they've they've all been in dallas but she hasn't talked to anybody in dallas yet so that's interesting well the sport i like best probably is basketball but uh i guess i'm probably better at softball and so i'd like during the summer months it's occupies quite a bit of my time but i play in a couple of leagues and and occasionally in a tournament or something on a weekend but my family usually goes with me we try to do everything we can together yeah yeah well they uh a good friend of mine that plays on one of my teams we uh that's usually the team i play on with the tournaments and stuff and they have a couple of kids that are almost my kids age so they play together pretty well and yeah yeah pretty much and uh tina enjoys uh the other lady real well so they you know that's kind of nice it's like getting together with them so to speak yeah well it's been raining a lot here so far so we haven't really had any kind of real heat i think it's going to be warm enough this afternoon we were noticing a while ago it's already eighty in in the house so it looks like an air conditioner day but yeah it yeah but you know i'm sure you're familiar with that living here we go we go through enid you know quite a bit we go to tulsa from time to time and my my parents live in southern illinois so we drive up there and well lot of times we take seventy five and uh it seems like seems like that goes through enid i know i've either seen the signs or um i know i've seen the sign somewhere yeah right uh_huh uh uh_huh oh uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh so uh how you said you've just lived in north carolina just like six months then is and you really like it there huh i've heard so many people talk about that area i've never been there but they sure say it's pretty uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah it really does my wife and i spent a couple years uh doing church work up in the state of washington right on the coast and it rains you know a lot there but you get used to it i mean it's like a fine mist all the time and it doesn't really it gets to where it doesn't bother you really it uh_huh right right yeah that's the way it is was there too oh uh_huh but well i have enjoyed talking to you too it was nice to talk to you i hope you enjoy north carolina yeah well i hope i live through it that's what i hope okay thanks a lot good bye oh not very many of those at uh sometimes i i play the trumpet and sometimes i work on trumpet [mouthpieces] and then i have a five year old daughter and we cut out things kind of you know and color and uh and uh use [markers] and things like that um how about you uh_huh um yeah exactly uh_huh uh_huh i don't know my my father is in the in the antique business and he uh he goes around to garage sales and he buys all kinds of um china and figurines and [statues] and stuff and um there's some stuff that's really for uh auto repair it's called j b [weld] and i repaired a a gasoline tank with it once but he mixes colors in it it's an [epoxy] [resin] that you mix together and he makes like the other day he was working on a hand that was [shattered] on a a [statue] that's real small it's like about maybe the [hand's] about the size of a [cricket] and uh has uh like the [forefinger] sticking out and the thumb sticking out and he was repairing that and uh it came out pretty good it's kind of a kind of a ivory color all over and and uh has some age spots in it and it looked you know just like it it had been there all the time and he fixed some fixes some bowls that have the cracks or chips in them and uh [molds] that in he had a blue blue bowl a few weeks ago that he he fixed that way it worked out real well too and then and and then he uh he [thatches] uh you know those uh [thatched] chairs course that's like that that uh hooking that you were talking about that takes a lot of time yeah and he used to paint um a long time ago but i think he's stopped pretty much now but outside of outside of art class in in school i i stopped doing most of that unless i i mean like he has a computer and i use um the graphics um software on that to uh to do figures and to look at things you know see how they work uh_huh oh yeah sometimes but it's not one of my favorite things especially from the [vapors] and we had uh an entertainment center we did last year uh we bought it at an unfinished uh furniture place and [sanded] it down and uh stained it and then [lacquered] over it oh yeah uh_huh sure is did you use a did you use a [zar] stain um they had a um well i saw the commercial on t v and they and uh and the people at the unfinished store recommended it that's called it's z a r and uh it spreads real evenly and it doesn't dry too fast so it's if you get too much in one spot you can smooth it out and uh we put we put [tung] oil on it kind of made it sticky for a while but after it dried out it was you know it was real hard and it was all right yeah uh_huh were you in a were you the girl scouts too or well it was nice talking to you okay you too bye bye okay what kind of crafts and hobbies do you have uh_huh uh_huh in well i used to be more into crafts when i was younger like high school stuff i was in four h and i did a lot of latch hook made rugs and stuff um and uh i've learned how to crochet but i don't really know i mean i don't do it that much not really an indoor hobby type person unless the weather's really bad i'd rather be outside um i used to play trombone i don't know if that was a not really i don't play it that much any more but i um what else do i do mainly do reading i don't have a lot of crafty type things i do but uh what are some other things you enjoy uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh cool oh wow uh_huh huh uh_huh do you ever huh yeah yeah that's great that he has a lot of hobbies and stuff oh yeah right that sounds interesting um does does he ever uh [refinish] furniture or anything like that uh_huh pretty time consuming isn't it but it's it's nice to have it when you're done i mean looks pretty so i've done that once but it didn't come out that well uh i don't remember it was i had my parents buy everything and i ended up it was their table their kitchen table it came out really dark uh_huh yeah i remember it took me a long time it took me like several months or several weeks to do it during the summer and then after i got it done it was pretty dark and ended up not being real smooth looking since i've moved away they've had it redone so i kind of kind of gave that hobby up real quick but i don't know like i said i like doing a lot of outdoor stuff so but during four h i mean they really encouraged to do all kinds of crafty stuff which is interesting i like that no well yeah when i was real young i was for a couple of years excuse me so uh anyway it was nice talking to you dudley have a good day now bye okay what kind of things do you like to do in your spare time uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh i uh like sports type things too we like to get out and walk and we like the water sports too but like you unless you have a pool in your backyard it is kind of hard to get to do that very often yeah well part time we are going to have a baby in july so part of my big hobby has been trying to put together a nursery and all that kind of stuff lately yeah it does i have been yes uh_huh i have been doing some cross stitch for something i wanted to put in the nursery so i have not done that in years but i have kind of enjoyed that it is just hard to find the time to sit there and do it right yeah and i guess i kind of consider shopping a hobby i just go out just to just to enjoy it and not really spend money sometimes just look yeah yeah we bought some baby clothes yeah last weekend at a garage sale yeah uh_huh oh wow yeah yeah it is kind of a hobby it that is time consuming too really to find the things that you want sometimes you have to stop at a lot of places right yeah i think that is important too i am not going to work after the baby comes so i guess hopefully i will have more time for hobbies i do not know right yeah wow yeah yeah so that is good a whole your whole family can enjoy those hobbies oh oh wow that will make the summer go by in a hurry keep the kids busy right yeah yeah uh do you consider yard work a hobby at all or is that just a chore uh_huh yeah oh no huh oh well we like it once in a while but not as often as we have to do it i like to put flowers out and you know a few little things like that but as far as mowing every week and finding time to get all that stuff done it gets to be a chore seems like sometimes hobbies do that they kind of take over and turn into work instead of fun yeah if it does not go quite quite right oh no oh that is nice yeah your how funny i think i will enjoy cooking more when i am not working when i do not get home until five thirty or six and i have to cook and clean up it is not it is not fun but i think i will like it better yeah uh_huh uh yeah we have done a little bit of camping we like that it's there again it is just so hard to find time to get away for a whole weekend oh that sounds fun yeah well that sounds nice i i think that would be a good family thing to start doing more often uh_huh yeah we have camped with some friends who have young children and uh if you can find some place where those little sunfish are right around the shore where they can just pull in a line oh they have so much fun doing that and they think they are really great fishermen because they are catching so many oh yeah skip this tournament right yeah do you do any other crafts or anything besides your sewing it is not too hard it is i do not think it is as hard as like knitting or crochet or something like that yeah yeah i started to to knit a sweater and i got off on my rows somehow and so what should have been the back all of a sudden was on the front and then i tore it out and threw it down and i never have picked it back up again and now i can't remember anything about it oh uh_huh yeah forget it yeah yeah i remember that yeah yeah yeah they are pretty easy well it has been real good talking to you and i hope you enjoy your camping trip uh_huh bye well uh i have two children so i do not have a whole lot of spare time right now one of the things that i have made time for is uh playing softball i really enjoy i enjoy softball but i enjoy all kind of sports i enjoy watching and participating i really like water sports like swimming and skiing but i do not get to do that too often and then i i really enjoy sewing but i do not get much of a chance to just really sit down and do much sewing how about you uh_huh i know it it is do you work full time part time oh right yeah that definitely takes over your time is this going to be your first oh uh_huh yeah right well that is it sure is fun to do that kind of thing because then you have got something to show for it yeah that is neat yeah i do too yeah yeah well since i have had kids it is kind of funny i i never really was much of a garage sale shopper until i had kids but you will probably find after your children get bigger uh like when they want things like [tricycles] toys things that cost quite a lot in the store you can find that kind of stuff at garage sales for just a few dollars and yeah oh you can just get all kinds of things and kids especially clothes and toys they just do not use them and wear them you know for that many years or anything so i am i have become a garage sale shopper and it is fun on the weekends i drive around look to see you know who is selling what and i found my little daughter some tap shoes for her tap class and just you know all kinds of things like that that you would probably pay thirty dollars for and i got them for two dollars yeah so yeah yeah it is it it does take more time but i do not work so uh that is something i have decided i am going to make sure my kids have a have a happy growing up years and yeah well well that is good i am glad well at first when you first have a baby you uh seems to take every moment of your time partly because you are not used to you know juggling your time around like that but eventually the you will you will be doing lots of stuff so but i think my husband is real into sports too he plays on a t i softball team and the church softball team and by the time he plays two games a week and i play a game a week we go to lots of softball but the kids enjoy going because there's usually a lot of other kids for them to play with and we that is getting outside and you know doing things they like to do too so yeah and one other thing we are doing this year is uh we bought wet and wild passes we have never done that before but the kids are always wanting to play in the water and uh like you said unless you have a pool in your backyard or access to a good place to play it is kind of hard and uh they have real good [kiddie] areas uh at both of the wet and [wild's] around here so we are planning on going two or three times a week yeah i think it will yeah because my oldest daughter is in school and she gets bored real fast when she is home with nothing to do so i think that will be a lot of fun so we are looking forward to that well when i got married i thought it was going to be fun but my husband and i both i think consider it a chore it's our yard has had so many problems it has completely died out two times and uh we have had to start all over trying to plant grass so it has become a chore do you and your husband like to work in the yard yeah uh_huh yeah yeah yeah yeah that is true yeah well that is how sewing i love to sew and uh i wish i had more time to do it but sometimes i will get started on a project and then finishing it is more of a chore than yeah another thing i enjoy doing is cooking i i like especially it is real strange but i like to cook for other people like i have a friend that is uh pregnant but she can't get up and walk around right now so i enjoy you know cooking things to take over to her house or yeah and it it is fun for me to do that it is it is something i enjoy doing it is funny though it is like i do not really want to cook for us it is kind of like when you are a kid and and someone else's house was fun to clean but you did not want to do your own yeah oh yeah yeah when you are home it's it makes a difference it sure does well do you guys go camping or anything like that uh_huh yeah well that is something that we are planning to do not this weekend but the next my parents go camping a lot and they invited the kids and my husband and me to go with them and yeah we are really looking forward to it the girls love it they have been a couple of times and uh just getting to be outside you know all the time and sleep in a tent and that is really fun to them so we are looking forward to that yeah i think so yeah my uh my husband loves to fish i am not much into fishing but uh my daughter thinks she wants to learn how to fish so i think it will be real good for them they can go fishing uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah oh i know yeah uh she is really looking forward i am hoping that is another thing though when sometimes your uh hobbies can interfere with each other because my husband is afraid he is going to have a softball tournament that weekend and i am saying no no yeah if you are doing a lot of things sometimes you have conflicts and you have to decide what you enjoy the most so well not really right now i keep thinking when the kids get bigger and i have a little more time uh i might take up there is i would love to cross stitch i think cross stitching is so pretty but i have never done any yeah yeah yeah i i crocheted when i was younger it is funny when i was in high school i made a blanket and but you know i can't even remember how i did it now it has been so long since i did it that but uh_huh oh yeah yeah well i did the same thing uh when i was pregnant with my first daughter i was really bored and i bought one of those latch hook rug kits it was a real pretty rug and i thought well i could use this as a gift or something you know and oh it was so it was beautiful but i did not realize how long it took and i got about two two thirds of it done and then i just i had the baby and then it was just like i forgot all about it and every once in a while i will be digging through the closet and i will find that thing and i will think oh maybe i ought to get the rest of that out you know and finish it but uh for a while there latch hook rugs were a real big uh hobby it seemed like people did them a lot uh uh people do not do that much any more so it was something easy i could do yeah yeah you too oh thank you and thanks for calling bye bye okay well some of the things i like to do are i like to knit i knit sometimes and i sew and uh i like to sew sometimes for my kids i i sew clothes for them every once in a while and i make quilts after a while cross stitch i i don't know i have to put it away and then i have to bring it back you know and and uh i don't know why that is i don't know if it's looking at the little things every time yeah that might be it that might and yet there's oh do you oh oh i bet yeah yeah yeah uh i've not really done any too much challenging uh stuff i i can do it with a a needle and thread you know but uh and get about five small stitches in which is pretty good but it's very long it's very tedious if you don't have a whole group you're not finishing a quilt in a long time so uh so uh i like to just mostly do the tie quilts that's so much easier but uh the other ones are very pretty they're uh we have a quilt on our bed that's instead of like yarn they tied uh ribbon into it and it's real pretty it's real pretty oh wow uh_huh uh_huh now did you say you could knit oh well i was going to say because because if you could knit you could crochet it's just like doing one handed as long as you learn how to to [weave] the the yarn in between your fingers on your left hand and then you just use your right hand with the hook and that's not it's really not too difficult you could learn that i'm sure and pick that up if you i think if you can do any handicraft you can learn to crochet it's not too difficult yeah isn't that interesting i think that's really interesting huh and yet you know i think about you know you said you do a lot of needlework and and there are some beautiful just gorgeous patterns that people do and i i just think that uh that's one of one of the arts that i think are really pretty and a lot of people don't do that either you know and so yeah yeah that's true you know and and i always think well i can do this and watch t v or something you know and uh it seems like i always get my mind carried away to something else and then it doesn't quite work or and you know i like to sketch i can i can sketch something like if i see a picture like out of a book i can sketch that and that's nice and everything but you know it's funny i can't i can't draw it out of my own head kind of thing i wish i could and and yet i can't do you know like like uh craft uh on wood i can't do that painting thing and yet yeah me too me too i know a woman who's just wonderful at that and i look at it and you know you look at those things and you wish so badly that you could do them i guess if you wanted to you could take classes and learn i guess that's the only way i could do it uh_huh uh_huh oh wow that's the next project that i'd like to learn to do i do mostly hand needlework like cross stitch and crewel embroidery and i'm i'm beginning to get a little bored with cross stitch i was thinking maybe need to learn to quilt it gets boring uh_huh well it reaches a point where it doesn't seem to be very challenging i think but i do a lot of it in the car we yeah we commute from plano to dallas so i have nearly an hour both ways that i can really get a lot of work done and i found that cross stitch is the easiest to do in the car i don't know that i could even think about quilting you have to have a pretty good frame don't you to do any kind of quilting work uh_huh uh_huh oh i bet but it's such a lost art uh_huh yes uh_huh oh i bet there's so many things i wish i had learned to do with my mother she had crocheted a full bedspread it's kind of a [hobnail] looking thing and when i look at it now she's been dead for a long time i think oh why didn't i learn these crafts and skills from her because she could crochet and do so many of the old things that aren't in vogue right now that people just don't know how to do no uh_huh haven't tried that either i want to learn to crochet i really uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh it's funny when you were talking about sewing i love to do anything by hand with a needle but i'm totally intimidated if i sit down at a sewing machine i never learned and i get real nervous whereas usually the other needlework stuff is relaxing to me but i just have a [phobia] about not being able to actually sew uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well it's hard to find the time i i wouldn't if i didn't have this car time ability probably because at night if i sit down i'm doing something with the kids or just not sitting down at all uh_huh well it i'm at the age where [bifocals] or [trifocals] would be necessary it's so i find myself putting glasses on to to watch t v and then taking them off to do needlework and i get frustrated doing that so just give it up ooh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i'm the same way if i see something i can copy it but i certainly can't create i admire people that have that in their minds already uh_huh well sometimes even with that i i think you have to have some do you have any hobbies what are yours ooh how great oh uh ceramic painting the china more how did you ever get into that that sounds so interesting how i now do you do it just for yourself or do you do it to give as gifts or do you actually sell it oh that sounds now do you work outside of the home you've just retired oh oh what a great hobby i don't retire well see i don't i never uh returned to work for the i have stayed home for about the last nine years we've transferred around and our last area was in a rural section right on the lake uh on lake erie so the lake life appealed to me and my husband's working and he left it up to me if i worked or not so in my spare time i love to sew there aren't too many people around anymore that really enjoy sewing but i do make all my own clothes and we recently purchased a new home so i enjoy doing my uh [toppers] for my window applications and things like that but uh just when i thought i really enjoyed my hobby yours sounds great that is excellent we're in the i'm in the suburb of cleveland and i'm about uh fifteen miles probably from downtown cleveland something like that and cleveland is located right on lake erie and prior to this we were fifty miles west from here so we were right on the lake and cleveland isn't all as bad as what you've heard and you do find people uh into the crafts and the things that uh various things for spare time but i have never heard and i have actually never run into anyone into the china painting and i'm just intrigued with it right where you're getting into the delicate work now do you where did you first get your lessons from through a uh an adult ed or strictly a china type oh how marvelous oh and it's so nice it must be so nice for you now that you're retired oh isn't that great and you'll probably really uh [regain] your enthusiasm for it once you get into a a class again yes i do china painting and [ceramics] i enjoy it uh_huh i enjoy the china more and now that i have my eyes corrected to the point that i can see the delicate part of china painting i do enjoy it my husband kept begging me and he's been dead now for twenty years so you understand that this was a long time ago but he finally brought me the china the book the brushes and he said i have made arrangements for your lessons and i said i'll do it for three months and if i don't like it that's it well i painted an awful lot until his death which was several years and it has just been the most relaxing enjoyable self satisfying thing i've had i i have sold quite a bit i give a lot to our two daughters that are grown and have their home and then i just have the rest of my house with lot of hand painting in it uh_huh i have just retired yes no it's not it's a great hobby but don't retire oh oh have well wow oh uh_huh well my sister is the [seamstress] of the two of us and but she doesn't china paint so we both have our expertise side what part of ohio are you in oh what's that if you ever start be sure and start with a large piece that you can i mean a large flat plate um that way you can get the feel of you're not cramped on these smaller objects that's right in abilene texas she just taught china painting uh_huh and then then we had so much fun there i had a friend from albany which is about thirty six miles away and we would meet every thursday morning at our [instructor's] home because she did our firing for us and she would help us and we bought lots of equipment from her supplies and it was just such a delightful time and then after i beg pardon i have been a little bit [negligent] about it because i was so tired when i had to go to work after my husband's death so i have put it aside for a little while but i'm i have just found me an instructor to get started again uh_huh uh_huh of course i just have one beautiful with peonies uh umbrella stand and i have two daughters and they're both i guess we're recorded what do you have any hobbies that you like to do oh all right that's an interesting [assortment] my husband is into cycling in fact he's out there right now before it gets dark trying to get in his miles for the the time uh do you have any do you do any handicraft type things i think was the question yeah [whittling] or nothing like that i i do some things i've gotten into uh-oh i i like to decorate things and i do sweatshirts and t shirts and i've gotten to where i start have started selling them at craft shows and things uh and i have have done fairly well at them i've had a a few of my little hobby projects have totally bombed but most of them have worked out pretty good oh yeah what what does a computer club do i didn't know there were such things uh_huh you don't uh you're not into [hacking] or whatever uh_huh well that's kind of interesting hobby what else did you you said you did cycling what was the other thing backpacking we uh_huh well that's we have done that uh our two older boys were in boy scouts and my daughter was in girl scouts until just about a year ago so we've uh done a fair amount of that in our spare time also but it i that's a great thing to do you know really have you been backpacking anyplace exciting oh uh_huh oh that one okay to the uh-oh by fort [sill] there uh_huh have you gone like to [fillmont] with the boy scouts i've always thought that would be a real fun thing to do uh_huh does does your whole family like to do it like you you know for a vacation you'd go backpacking oh okay you just oh and and you volunteer for the boy scouts huh uh_huh well sometimes uh sometimes i think that might not be a bad idea have uh you said you did it in the high sierras uh do you ever you know just vacation someplace where you strictly backpack uh_huh uh_huh well i probably probably that's uh well my my other things that i like to do in my spare time i'm i like swimming which is in now i've done that and i i also when i like something i usually try to figure out how to make money off of it okay oh yes cycling computers uh backpacking just about everything oh i [generically] have you know millions of hobbies uh_huh i'm not quite that bad i'm just a weekend [cyclist] handicraft type things yeah just [whittle] away my life uh no no i uh uh oh that's pretty good yeah they my only craft work is kind of like computers and you know go off to the little computer club meetings and it's kind of nice because i've made money at it too considering i i work for it a living but i you know i i've got a couple of articles published it's kind of kind of neat oh yeah just all over the place they just get around and and talk [techy] or or else uh uh you know like half the members are really expert and the other half are like really not and uh we kind of help out the people who are really not oh i i think i'm i think i'm a hacker but i'm not not kind not the uh the you know dial around randomly trying to break into computers type [hackers] no that's one of those sports i don't go for yeah backpacking yeah i belong to a a boy scout troop it beats paying united way i just you know donate a whole bunch of my time to the boy scouts and have fun uh_huh uh well just last weekend went to [davy] [crockett] forest which is kind of out in east texas and we go to uh places out in uh uh let's see what's that what's that state north of us that state yeah yeah that one that one yeah yeah and uh no to another a uh old indian fort that's out there trying to think of the name of it [durn] well yeah no sorry no memory no i missed out this last year i wasn't able to get the time off but maybe next year it's a good possibility oh yeah yeah when i was a kid uh we'd do the equivalent thing in the high sierras that was loads of fun uh no not quite because i'm not a whole family i'm just me oh yeah i rent my kids it's better than you know owning on them and making payments on them and you know things like that oh yeah yeah uh not recently because you know like the boy scouts makes it so that i go like once a month you know someplace but uh there's uh some some stuff that i want to do with like sierra club and go down to grand canyon or something like that so you know they have lots of tours where they get a bunch of people together and off you go which seems kind of reasonable because that means you don't have to take twenty thirteen year olds with you which seems a a just a [tad] more relaxing uh_huh tell me what you like to do oh uh_huh wonderful oh wonderful oh but how wonderful are you close to getting it done oh are you going to move your whole family over there then uh_huh kind of your getaway place oh how beautiful and it's pretty flat there see i've only been to texas once i have two sisters in texas now um one in austin one in dallas and the one in dallas is the one that got me to doing this and uh i thought austin was beautiful i liked the hills and the trees oh and you've always lived in texas have you uh_huh born and raised texan huh well i had never been there that's pretty neat my sisters both seem to like it pretty well my brother in law works for the university um in dallas he's admissions director uh university of texas in dallas yeah yeah well that's he's got a job there and this is his first year so it's been a real interesting thing for them but they seem to like it okay i think they're too far away from me but maybe some day they can get closer we'll see well i'm mother of four so basically i'm just real busy with my kids right now in sports and we have a little halloween talent show tonight and i substitute at the schools part time well i am a travel agent at heart and my hobby is just i love traveling and and being involved of that and finding out more uh but it's real hard to work in the summers and holidays and weekends when you have four children and a husband so i reluctantly gave that career up and am just substituting at the school so i've been librarian all this week which has been real interesting and i'm enjoying it i'm around my kids and oh yeah yeah it's great it's great and what else do i do i do lots of cross stitching when i have time and i enter things in our little state fair and that's pretty fun well but actually my hobbies is mostly is my sports tennis i play tennis ooh do you yes we snow ski we snow ski at mount bachelor mostly in oregon have you ever been there wonderful place ooh uh_huh where in colorado yes yes really uh_huh i would love i can hardly wait to get up there we it is snowing right now we're to get one to three inches tonight oh yeah well we're we are on the dry side of the mountains seattle is only about two and a half hours so of course i'm a real seahawks fan and um going over that pass is just a real nightmare and um so and we're on the colder side they're on the rainy side we're on the snowy side and um we we ski my my children all ski and we've we have been to [whistler] in canada which is just a marvelous place [whistler] and black home is in canada and then we've gone to sun valley several times that's a just a great place but no not in colorado since i was in college since i went to school haven't been there i keep hearing these marvelous things about deer valley and um don't adam um city ooh yes and your kids all ski uh_huh uh_huh really that's great well my boys are at the point where they scare their mommy to death when they're skiing they're [fearless] and they go off well i i collect antique tools uh for one thing i well i'm sort of in an antique business but it's a little [sideline] part time thing and uh i'm building a a log house at a farm that i have in east texas which is a hundred miles from here yeah it's really neat and uh uh course i've been working on it for five years but you know yeah yeah it's getting real close to you know of course there's still a lot of work to be done and then when you get it completely you know the shell finished uh you still have a lot of stuff to do inside but uh no actually uh i'm not even sure i may i'll probably always have a place here in richardson or dallas yeah escape but it's beautiful it's you know it's eastern hardwood uh forest there are a lot of pine trees but it's mostly oaks and well it's kind of hilly but it's you know low hills it's not uh yeah you yeah in yeah it's really different because that's kind of the you know that's the [chalk] hills down there limestone hills yeah except for time in service yeah at at which one oh okay it's just north of me here that's great well yeah pretty good trip so what do you what kind of hobbies are you in oh that's great no kidding that's pretty easy substituting isn't it ooh that's great ooh i love tennis too and i ski ski do you ski uh that's great no uh i've skied in colorado and we usually go to new mexico because it's a little cheaper you know i've been to [telluride] which is on the west side and uh copper copper is kind of my favorite up there [breckenridge] and [keystone] i guess those are the only places i've skied up there me too you guys are you guys getting snow oh gee i heard aspen got three feet yeah i can imagine my lord oh super what about utah yeah haven't either always want to go to canada canada to [banff] or somewhere like that uh not all of them my my kids are all grown but my youngest son is a skier uh_huh well what are your hobbies well that sounds interesting what kinds of uh sweat shirts and t shirts do you make okay is that silk screening or oh i see well how's it going well that sounds great well somebody has to do it give you a little christmas money any way well i i kind of have hobby fads i guess when i was growing up i was was into coin collecting and that dropped off about the time i hit [puberty] i guess and then my hobbies in high school went just to the sports now my latest one is classic cars i've i had a sixty six mustang i was rebuilding almost had it done and i went on went ahead and sold it but it was fun i really enjoyed it oh you just no you just kind of all i did is uh i bought the car and then uh you know you can i uh was just in a supermarket and i seen a a magazine for you know basically it it was called mustang magazine and and so i bought it and they had uh some names some companies that sold mustang parts and i just started ordering some parts and and you know basically you know i what i did was i redid the whole interior i didn't do too much to the engine because the engine was pretty good but the the whole interior and then part of the exterior just kind of do it well we lived we lived in south dakota and i bought it up there before i moved down here so it was it was kind of rusted out there there isn't too much rust on any vehicles down here well gee i guess there really isn't too much to talk about on hobbies that that about covers mine and t shirt making about covers yours in new mexico okay yeah that is that's interesting how many music boxes do you have do they all play different songs or do some of them play the same song well that's neat what's the most expensive one you bought oh really well that's interesting it used to be tea [spoons] was the thing well that's interesting music boxes well how was europe was that in high school or was that a college thing i bet right that's where a [camcorder] would come in handy well that sounds real neat so you you haven't been back to europe since then huh there you go well does you husband uh what does he think of your uh t shirts and does he help out much or well actually my hobbies now are t shirt making i'm making t shirts and sweat shirts in fact that's what i was doing when you called um right now i'm making christmas ones with [poinsettias] and bears and all that kind of thing um no i'm have material that i cut out and then you um there's this stuff called wonder under that you that you iron it on and then you iron that on the t shirt and you paint around it so it's real fun i started doing it as a um just something fun to do and now i'm selling them and pretty pretty good i just started last week and i sold seven i didn't wasn't expecting that so i guess in my spare time i'll be making t shirts so that's right you know that's correct well what are your hobbies uh_huh um oh my gosh well how'd you learn to do that to fix them up you just get a book that tells you how to do it or what uh_huh where'd you get the car wow well that's true that's true well that sounds neat let's see well let's see i've done other hobbies i'm a hobby person i've always done a lot of craft stuff i always have done needlepoint and cross stitch and all that and i collect dolls i have a huge collection of dolls which is still in new mexico with my parents uh_huh from new mexico so let's see what else i started collecting music boxes i guess that's a hobby so probably uh about twenty uh_huh they they all play different songs the most expensive i don't know i've gotten all of them for gifts i don't bought a few of them i usually get them for christmas gifts or and like when people go you know to on trips or something that's true i never collected those never collected those i have dolls from all over too that i started when i was a little girl and i have a lot of dolls people would always bring them when they go to the countries and um and i did that when i went to europe one summer i bought a doll everywhere we went so economy it was great it was quick i was in i was in high school and i was in a tour and we went all it's kind of a it's kind of to establish better [rapport] with the different countries and um it was called people to people and we'd stay in people's homes and then we got to also tour big cities and i really enjoyed it uh_huh in was in high school so i'd like to go back because we had you know everything was rushed everything was like an hour or two hours at the [louvre] you know things like that where you need the whole day but but it really exactly that's true no i always thought i would but who knows now i got married and maybe some day maybe it's one of those retirement things well he likes it all right he's been pretty good because there's t shirt stuff all over the house i'm sorry um hobbies let me see i don't know if that took or not i'll do it again okay what are your hobbies i hear you have kids right that's your full time uh hobby right uh_huh uh_huh um i try to do some painting although i'm not very good at it well no not really yeah i i have you know i inherited the [genes] that make me think i'm creative but not the ones that give me the ability to be so i always try i i do some sewing mostly out of necessity um i'm making drapes for my house just because i'm yeah well it isn't and it is it is you know actually the sewing isn't the hard part it's just being able to lay out the material and measure it because you need so much room yeah i've been doing that and that yeah that but usually have to do the pleats by hand so that at least i can do you know watching t v or whatever but yeah and i've i've gone and you know put the needle through my thumb a few times trying to get it through but yeah so that's not really my favorite thing to do or anything but i i need to do it i have let's see i have a dog and a lot of fish keeping fish i guess is my biggest hobby um yes and no it depends on how frequently they die and how much that bothers you that's you don't have to do as much as as i thought in fact my problem i had fish as a kid and they always died immediately and what i'm what i think now is the reason is i kept the tank too clean because you have right you need to let the bacteria build up and then it keeps all the chemicals in balance and i would just take everything out and just like you know wash it with [scalding] hot water and it would kill all the bacteria and that would screw up all the chemical cycles again so right that's right so now only i only clean things to make things look more [aesthetically] [pleasing] and i don't try and [sterilize] things that's right that's right well i've had them i guess it's been two years now i've had a a tank here and then back at home i used to have a small you know five gallon tank but that never worked well and i have fifty five gallons now it's a lot easier no no not yet that's right i really do but you know yeah i just have you know what they call community fish guppies and [platies] and and basic things i don't get into the right right the expensive ones they are they're very expensive and you know when you die it's like when they die it's more like an investment you lost an investment so no not really only if there's baby fish you always have to isolate those you get a well no they have breeders it's a little plastic things that sort of floats and you put the mother fish in there and then it's got like a trough underneath her so as the babies come out they fall down in the trough and there's a hole in the middle so they fall into the bottom part of the chamber so the mother can't get to them either and that's you know it kind of works but it's also got slots in it so the water can [circulate] and on occasion if you get a real small one it'll fit out the slots that's right so but you know it works i guess oh they'll eat them yeah yes it and it's funny because the one i have every single month without fail she has babies oh no all the time and um i and she's supposed to her variety it says they won't eat the babies and i've seen her do it so oh it's well it makes you understand that you know things are different we might right we might decide what's proper and what isn't but you know that's the way it is for them yeah that's it yes because if the baby is strong enough it can swim away fast enough and go hide so yeah yeah yeah no not really i i try i also i play a couple of instruments that's okay i didn't hear okay okay you heard her in the background that's babies takes a lot of time huh i like uh most sports i like to do that i kind of like to do a little bit of sewing oh little bit of embroidery work once in a while what do you like to do well i'm sure you probably are you like it that's the main that's right oh boy that's hard sewing measure it and get it to well if it it depends on how elaborate you get it if you get pleats and all kinds of that's a lot of work oh right right that feels really good to do it right keeping fish well they're probably easier than keeping dogs though aren't they oh no how much that bothers you and you probably have to clean out the tank too oh no oh you're kidding because they need to have a little bit of the i see oh no and so you'd have to start all over to build that up probably right right don't go through the whole nine yards and they kind of need a little bit of that so you've had fish for a long time what size do you have now oh that's a good size have you ever had it uh crack or break or leak fifty five gallons you'd hope it would never do that do you have all kinds of different fish or uh_huh real exotic well they're probably hardy harder to take care of and yes i bet it is do you have problems with them uh the fish eating each other right then you have to how do you isolate them a jar or something or okay okay okay oh right it'll go through the slot that works all right then they don't uh want the mothers to be with the little fish either they will isn't that odd you wouldn't think that you're kidding and that just makes you sick almost doesn't it things are different in the animal kingdom huh yeah that's kind of the way they do it survival of the [fittest] or something right go hide from them well and then you think well how did they do it out in the real world anyway when these fish are in the [tropicals] or wherever they are kind of trying to keep up with that but if you're like me you never have enough time for the hobbies okay you got any hobbies that you want to talk about what in the world do you do with your computer that takes so much time oh really did you have uh your own business or you do that as just on the side or what uh_huh well what do you teach oh that's good uh_huh well i uh play trombone in the plano community band and i uh like to do a lot of bicycling when the weather allows and during summer when there's daylight savings time's when i get out and bike well it wasn't too bad other than the cowboys didn't do so hot no just a crummy well actually the [lions] are pretty good i'm afraid they a lot better team than the cowboys were today and uh oh okay i i play that about six times a year and every year i hang my bag up if i get that five or six and i swear swear that game off for another year but i always go back to it i understand that well you do lots of stuff gosh i come up there i'll have to stop by and have try some of your baking i call on people in my business is uh machine tool sales and i have some i i cover texas and oklahoma so i what i said that i wasn't being real facetious about that i got customers in oklahoma city and tulsa and perry oklahoma and [eda] and all that all that way yes yes i about thirty three thousand miles a year so well i usually see we we have our our band practice is on monday night and during the summer we uh we have concerts every monday night in the park and uh we we have you know some concerts during the year and you know various people in the communities want us to play for things but those are usually on the weekend so that isn't too bad well we got uh pretty good size band not everybody shows up but if everyone did we'd probably have over a hundred but we only average about forty to fifty people a you know usually yeah oh no no this is a it's a concert band and uh we have a lot of i i don't pretend to be that good but there's a lot of people that uh you know are band directors at schools or have been or uh you know there some people that are actually music majors they don't necessarily follow that any more you know that isn't necessarily their career but uh we have some extremely good talent in there and uh as a rule it sounds pretty decent so it's fun well i don't know if i have any or not i i've always enjoyed it i sing in a church choir on wednesday nights when i'm around and play in the band on monday nights and keeps you out of trouble that way well i uh don't seem to have as much spare time as i used to but i guess i'll have to say my computer has probably taken the place of most of my hobbies well i sit and design cards and uh-oh i i'm really into graphics so it it just i sit and learn new programs and i play and i do this and i do that and i'm i'm starting a side business in desk top publishing and uh it's just getting going i i'm teaching in the daytime and uh i teach business and computer technology well i guess it's uh to high school kids it's uh alternative learning and uh it's it's really a challenge but what hobbies do you have ooh neat well i hope you all had as pretty a day today as we did oh well now yes i don't think you can blame the weather on that we had on any given day they say uh i haven't i haven't played in a while but i do when i get time and it's pretty weather and it's summer i like to play golf oh i uh-oh i take [spells] i'm i'm kind of a compulsive [obsessive] person and when i start something i i go into it a thousand percent and then i get i get burned out on it but uh i do some counted cross stitch and some painting on shirts well it doesn't seem like i get anything done but i guess i do and i i like to bake it's just me in the house so when i bake it's usually to take out for something well oh okay oh how neat so you do quite a bit of traveling then ooh well that doesn't leave a lot of time for hobbies does it how big is your band ooh well that's still a pretty good size band it's not like there are four or five of you there i i have absolutely no musical ability whatsoever and i'm always very envious of people who do well i'm probably one of the few people that the hello okay i pressed one so i guess we're recording now okay um um um okay well i've i have had some because i was working for p i e and they went bankrupt so i've got quite a bit of spare time right now and i've been making dolls cloth dolls uh_huh and uh yeah it's a they're all cloth it's not uh any porcelain at all yeah and i make the clothes for them and um no you can get the little curly hair at the craft shop i made some of them with that hair and then uh don't ask me what the other hair i made it looked like um it looked well i made some of them with regular wigs i went to the flea markets and bought you know like the wigs for a dollar then i cut a v shape out of the back of them and then sewed them on they looked really cute i have sold five of them so far uh_huh i just have to get a place where you know i can sell them actually uh if i would just work all day long making the clothes and everything probably about two and a half days uh_huh so yes i really do and then i also crochet and yeah yeah i tried knitting first but i don't know i i didn't like it so then i went to crocheting but now i want to learn how to knit again you know uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah i in fact i just bought a serger in december yeah i haven't done everything on it yet you know but just what little bit i have used it for i really like it you know especially making the seams and things like that you know it's it's got such a professional finish on them yeah so i like that and well fifty seven's not young but no my son's has been married for almost ten years but they don't have any children so i just make clothes for my dolls just you know just like sewing and stuff and decided to buy a pattern and try to make a doll and they they turned out really cute yeah you got to have a pattern for the body you know and uh yes yes aren't they cute uh_huh no i i bought a bunny pattern one time but when i sewed it up the face of it looked like a mouse uh_huh see it was too pointed so i tore it back apart again and i haven't tried another one no but i bought a little lamb pattern and the material and everything to make it out of but i haven't made it yet no i don't paint except i stenciled my wall uh_huh oh really oh yeah i my neighbor did it first and i seen her house and i saw how beautiful it looked so then i decided well i was going to do it and uh it turned out really really good uh mostly flowers you know i've done it in the all uh all my rooms i put it in the bedrooms and the bathroom hi okay um as far as spare time they talked about i don't i think who has any spare time i've got a a six year old and a um well my baby's one today today's his birthday and i'm also i'm expecting and so i i don't know i haven't had much spare time lately but oh uh_huh oh have you oh you sew the bodies and everything so so you just sew everything up huh oh uh_huh what kind do they have yarn hair or oh uh_huh oh oh did you oh uh_huh oh my goodness it sounds like you're creative uh do you sell them oh have you yeah i bet how long does it take you to make one oh really oh do you enjoy it yeah uh_huh i i i can crochet and knit um actually i started an afghan but it's been a whole long time ago probably over a year ago and it's sitting in my closet half done right now but it's a knitting one and oh didn't you oh i yeah i enjoy knitting i i kind of like that but i just like i say haven't done it for a while and i do like sewing sometimes i i've made a few of the you know just the little [valence] curtains in my house and things like that but it it's just finding the time for these things that you you enjoy but oh i would love one of these oh that's neat oh those are wonderful aren't they oh yeah that and that's what i hate doing is the finishing stuff it'd be nice to have that oh that's neat well do you have um uh i guess you're kind of young i was going to say do you have grand kids or anything to make dolls for oh uh_huh oh well well how did you get involved in that so you did buy a pattern and then started from there uh_huh uh_huh have you ever seen those [bunnies] that they dress yeah i i did make some clothes for one of those dress one of those yeah i have quite a few of them actually in my house i and most of them i have bought um already [clothed] but i did i did make the dress on one and i kind of made the pattern up it's not it's probably not the best but oh it did oh oh you haven't sewn it back up huh uh_huh uh do you do any kind of painting or anything uh_huh oh uh_huh i i tried that i did i i ended up just stenciling a um a blind like a just a roller shade but i i can i had a hard time stenciling for some reason i just couldn't do it and people have told me it's very easy well what design did you use oh uh_huh and what room have you okay uh what kind of hobbies do you have lori uh_huh uh_huh where do you play golf in this area uh_huh do you uh do you ride or do you pull a cart when you play golf oh i was going to say that could be difficult uh_huh i think that might be true i don't like pulling a cart on [firewell] golf course because they want you to pull the cart on the path that is the reason i don't play over there i like the course but i don't play over there because you they don't uh you know don't allow you to pull a cart and i don't think a cart damages the turf uh_huh well i guess i could use a card too i live uh very near uh very close to the firewheel golf course yes i live in northwest garland right up there near the golf course well in the last two years i have not played very much golf because i am involved in boy scouts so i have uh i have uh i have children boy scout age i have two boys that are boy scout age and uh so i am very active in boy scouts so i would have to say that camping and hiking and canoeing and boy scouts is my hobby but i but my golf clubs will probably rust before i get to use them again because my boys are still right at the beginning age and it is probably going to be six to eight years before they go to college that's right lessons are expensive though well they would probably never make it then because i don't think uh i only took lessons for golf when i was in college uh as a course for p e you know so i could graduate but uh that is the only time i think i have ever really taken golf lessons and that was kind of a group scenario and not individual i took one lesson one other time besides that uh i just uh try to make the club hit the ball i don't want to play strike out you know but i have fun doing it some uh you know i have some good shots and some bad shots so you said you work uh in the gardens too do you have uh a special flowers my wife had uh just put in a bunch of i want to say they are pansies she put them in like two months ago cause they are winter plants and they have been we thought even with all the cold weather weather we have had they have been blooming just fine that is when she did i think uh_huh do they survive longer if you plant them in the winter time will they make it through the summer sun well well that is good uh i guess i uh i like to play golf and uh i also like to plant flowers and do do some gardening and do arts and crafts well we live uh pretty close to the mesquite golf course so we will play either out there or at firewheel that is usually where we play but i have played you know different courses in in the dallas area uh both not at the same time no sometimes we ride and sometimes uh we pull we like to to uh a lot of the times just walk uh for the exercise but i find that when i ride in a cart i play better and i think it is cause i don't get as tired yeah i know and that makes me so mad you know it is like it is not going to do that much damage to the course but apparently they think differently yeah right right well the reason why we play over there is because its where since we are a garland resident they gave us a special deal where you can get uh ten rounds of golf for a hundred dollars yeah a hundred dollars cause it is half price what the normal green fees are so that is why we you know play over there cause we have got our card oh do you so you live in garland then okay well we are in south garland but yeah next time you go uh you know check into it they have uh it is just like uh a bus card and they just punch it you know it has got one through ten on it and every time you go they just punch it for you oh okay you must have a a son oh okay yeah oh well that sounds like fun too uh_huh well you need to uh teach them how to play and take them out on the course with you oh yeah well you can teach them uh_huh right right uh_huh uh_huh right right right yeah i know what you mean uh_huh oh yeah it it is just nice to get outdoors and do something well flower gardens i like to have matter of fact this past weekend i just got finished planting a bunch of [tulips] and [daffodil] bulbs so those ought to be coming up around spring time uh_huh right oh they do great i put mine in probably in november yeah i think it was november and i don't do anything to mine water them or anything and they just they do really good and i even had uh i guess it was last year or the year before i had some out and it froze and the pansies looked terrible but they came back later i didn't do anything to them so they are uh they are good to plant in the winter time they last for a long time then so if you start putting them you know you can put them out in the spring too but once it starts getting real hot then it just kills them cause they can't stand the hot weather no they won't make it through the summer because it gets too hot but they make it through probably winter and spring so yeah i have got some of those too cause i love flowers yeah and i do i try to do some arts and crafts and i love to go okay uh i guess we are just supposed to talk about things we do in our spare time uh i basically read books it is i do sometimes when everybody's gone to bed my kids are in bed and my husband in bed so i will just stay up and finish a book that i am i have about three books that i am going on and i will work on one for a little bit you know and then the next one but that's just kind of not always just sometimes uh just really different ones uh i have one that i was reading on uh raising your children and then another one on a an autobiography and another one on uh uh uh like a crime story a true crime story yeah but this it was a true one it was just a little different though reading that one last night yeah like my husband yeah you must uh work for t i yeah my husband does too yeah uh_huh really oh really yeah yeah yeah what kinds of things do you fix oh and you have a shop yeah yeah you can fix just about everything and anything well that is great yeah yeah that is pretty much like my husband he is he is pretty uh mobile in that area too he he works on the cars he rarely takes them in and uh he works on irons and all t v and stuff too we rarely have to take those things in too oh yeah yeah definitely uh not really i mean during christmas i work on you know like uh holiday sweat shirts and those kinds of things but but uh not really oh yeah yeah uh_huh uh i belong to this organization for uh if if you have preschool children and uh every once and a while they will have a craft uh section for the moms and those are really neat and we learn to do the uh transfer pictures on the sweatshirts transfer photos and uh those are really neat so we learn different crafts like that uh yeah no i cook dinner i don't consider it a hobby but uh you know i no i am not a real elaborate cook or anything like that unfortunately i like to bake off and on and usually once a week i will bake something but it's not anything elaborate you know at least i don't think it is so yeah uh_huh uh_huh oh well good you have a computer at home oh good yeah oh really wow then you are busy uh_huh that is very good well you know one of the books that i did that i was reading and i stopped because it was so it's the book is so detailed and you have to sometimes i have to go back and read the page over again cause i didn't quite get it all and uh it is so detailed uh_huh uh_huh well that is pretty impressive to have three books going oh yeah and what what kind of books do you read oh yeah oh do you like those detective stories oh well that is interesting actually i like to read also but uh usually fall into one or two categories either true science fiction or fantasy on the one hand or highly technical yeah yeah kind of one or the other uh i do yes yeah and i am a computer scientist but i have a lot of other hobbies well yeah i am kind of uh i guess what you would call it a project person yeah and i love like i have a shop and when things break around the house i always try to fix them myself and so hobby it's its' funny uh from the one stand point it is work but it is a hobby too that i enjoy to do to find broken well essentially anything you find in a house uh a stove or oven or a broken piece of porcelain or uh chipped tile on the floor i mean just anything well it it is not anything elaborate it is just a work bench and a [gazillion] tools but enough that again for anything in the house i could probably right and in the car i guess the car too and so uh i think i probably would consider that a hobby although sometimes it gets to be excessive yeah i right yeah i think it it not only can it be fun but it can certainly help your finances so do you have any art uh how do i say it creative or artistic hobbies oh yeah well that's good yeah well i don't necessarily either i can [plink] out a song or two on a piano and i can uh i don't necessarily draw or do any of that kind of art i guess uh graphic arts is that what they call it i can't do any of that but sweat shirts is certainly impressive uh_huh oh yeah oh yeah uh_huh i see well that is neat i guess you could consider that a hobby do you do you cook for a hobby or do you that's not something you i understand that yeah right yeah but i think that still borders on hobby probably the other thing i do which i am sure will sound horrible to you but is i program for fun uh on the computer so i have little projects little computer projects going on that i consider hobbies but drive my wife crazy i do yes in fact there is actually several of them here right now not all of them being mine yeah uh i wonder if you can [construe] raising children as being a hobby uh_huh okay oh well actually i'm from california and before then i was from utah so well i grew up in california and then i went to school in utah and i got married there and we stayed there for a while and then now we're in iowa oh really oh um well i crochet and i do water color and i um sew and i do fabric painting um i've done some cross stitching i haven't tried any needlepoint yet how about you oh right oh really uh_huh oh gosh oh yeah well those take a lot of time i only can do things that are pretty fast because we just um got our baby last year and i just don't have the patience to just you know do something uh_huh um i crocheted an afghan for our bed that's the only thing and and i did a quilt let's see i've done a quilt for our baby and i've done a quilt for our bed but i mean um um our baby's quilt it was a pre like the design i just went around the design in the quilt i didn't piece it or anything like that but uh uh_huh and um i put it on the frame the quilting frame have you are you familiar with that yeah okay oh my god well i haven't done tons of them but um i used to do more before um before i had before we got our baby but uh_huh yes exactly well one thing that i like about this fabric painting thing is i can just make a t shirt and put a little [ruffle] around it and then um cut out a little pattern from the material from some material like flowers or something and make um a design or you know a little arrangement or something on the shirt and you know fuse it on with heat and bond or whatever and then paint around it and i usually sew sew around the flower whatever first and then i paint around it so you can't see the stitching as much does does that make sense to you so oh oh sure uh_huh oh really oh well yeah someone told me that that it that they had done it both ways and i've always after hearing that i always sewed it on even even with the uh a loose [zigzag] even helps and um well if you're from iowa you must be very [artsy] crafty everyone i've ever known from the midwest can do everything with their hands i didn't know anyone ever moved from california to iowa i'm teasing only because i'm from indiana i really like i like the midwest but i married a texan and they have a way of dragging you back home anyway we're supposed to be talking about crafts do you um do you have any hobbies that that you do things with your hands like knitting or oh you do a lot then do you do needlepoint also and cross stitching um actually i i'm pretty [untalented] i used to do a lot of knitting and crocheting um but i i don't know somehow i don't have the time anymore but i have all these friends that wherever you go they they sit down and the next thing you know they pull out of their uh bags some their most recent uh needle craft and in december everyone was doing stockings you know these gorgeous detailed minute tiny stitch stockings yes is this your first baby have you crocheted or [knitted] any baby clothes or baby blankets did you embroidery the pattern and then quilt it yourself or how did you make a quilt uh_huh but you actually hand [quilted] it yourself did did you need a [loom] or were you was it small enough that you could just hold it uh_huh but um my again my mother back in indiana we had a quilting frame in our basement and she would she would quilt whole quilts by herself um yes which i was always amazed i have one of them um but uh you know to have the quilting frame and then to actually do that it's a tremendous amount of work oh you think children you can um use crafts to make wonderful things for children i think when babies i think afghans and and the crocheted little sweaters and are are wonderful and and they'll wear them once they get old enough to talk then they no longer will wear them oh yes i think it's very clever it's uh funny that you said for christmas my daughter and i received matching sweat shirts that a friend had made for us a beautiful christmas design and they were matching and they were lovely but when i washed them although i took the precaution of turning them inside out i really didn't do anything else and truly everything fell off or most of it so i had i went and bought just some cloth glue and glued it all back and i bought the paint and redid most of the edges and and it was [salvageable] and i but it's so i'm familiar with that but i think you're very clever to um sew around the edges i think [gluing] alone certainly if you wash it any amount of time it tends to kind of come loose at the edges are we tonight okay well let me go ahead and press one okay leslie i'd like to find out a little bit about your hobbies what do you like to do in your spare time actually it's a [cherished] commodity now days huh oh great uh_huh what kind of music oh okay well great i enjoy music too and i uh one thing that i like to do uh is sit down and play the piano i can't play that well but i uh sit down and enjoy playing musical selections that i am familiar with my my family is familiar with i enjoy that uh a couple of hobbies that i also have is uh i really enjoy bike riding and the biggest hobbies i have right now are my kids and whatever they are involved in like my uh oldest boy is involved in soccer so we go out and play kick the soccer ball around or play throw the football and uh we also like to uh ride bicycles so we're riding bicycles and so a lot of the hobbies that i have right now are centered around my my children and also things that my wife and i like to do together and uh so personally a lot of the hobbies i had when i was growing up and uh going to college and so forth are having to change i really enjoyed uh mountain climbing i really enjoyed skiing uh and a lot of outdoor activities uh there's not a whole lot of mountains here in texas that i can go skiing with that right now but hopefully i will be able to get back to the [slopes] some day but uh_huh you didn't yeah that's true that's true oh yeah i guess that for me it was very helpful my two oldest brothers were very interested in skiing and so we we went quite often and uh in fact my brother still does a lot of skiing when i lived around in that area my brother would fly in from chicago and we would go skiing and enjoy that so but uh luckily it's kind of unusual because hobbies it's a it's a nice thing to have and it's good to fall back on those hobbies when you have time to like you mentioned and i am finding out a lot of the spare time that i had isn't there it's uh it's uh taken up by activities with uh work with family with uh civic and church responsibilities for me so oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah well great what again so you have participated with that in the past have you participated in that in the past uh_huh uh_huh it sounds like her life is full too i imagine your life is full taking them around all over the place all right all right well leslie it's been very nice talking to you is there anything else that you would like to mention tonight or oh okay great well thank you and you have a nice evening bye now yeah sure well and when i have my spare time i do enjoy that's right uh i do enjoy uh sewing i hand uh i do some needlepoint and i i've been doing a a picture for my father in law but if i uh ever get enough spare time he might see it one day and some other things i like to do are is music and uh also reading well i enjoy singing yeah um uh_huh yes uh_huh uh_huh that's right oh yeah i have not had the opportunity to go skiing but uh i grew up in arizona which has some mountains around it but uh never did get out and ski no i never did didn't have the uh i guess i didn't have the person out there saying hey let me take you skiing and of course i was at that you know stage of my life where i had to be taken to places i couldn't go by myself and then of course once i got to the age where i could have done it myself i had other interests i guess so oh yeah uh_huh that's right uh_huh uh_huh yeah i i find if i i make i have to make myself realize that it is important to get out there and you know just even to go for a walk is good recreation for me yeah and my youngest daughter is going to be starting up soccer so she's real excited about doing that we will be busy with that again pardon me well i did with my older daughter and she was in it for a few years but she has got so many interests herself that we had to start eliminating and well the first one to go she still likes her piano and she is in band so she's got lots of hobbies or uh activities going on yeah very much that's right that's right uh no i think we covered it pretty good thank you for calling you too bye bye hi gary hi today is uh saturday have you found spare time to do any hobbies is that right inside your house like [cactus] gardens and that's nice we do the same kind of things though we've been concentrating on outside lately trying to do some gardening and uh planting a lot of trees and flowers from the winter yeah we have a couple of those too we uh we haven't planted a garden yet we moved here from colorado not too long ago where we had a really big garden but here i i don't know i i hear i hear that the growing is a little bit different have you had a garden uh_huh have you ever tried any vegetables yeah that's what we had yeah we just it gets so hot i just wonder you know what what vegetables can really take that heat we'll see that's true well i do some oh some needle craft things hobbies sometimes some cross stitch um no no sewing or knitting any of that um little things some cross stitch you know some gifts that i make for friends and families that kind of thing anything else you you do in your spare time yeah i have two small children so i started to you know have them enrolled like in soccer and things like that i tend to be more of a spectator these days than participating yeah it's beautiful mine has got a flat tire so i'm going to have to do something about that well i don't uh have too much else i do in my spare time how about you is that right did he sell them at craft shows and uh_huh oh that's neat uh_huh is it [pottery] or is it wood oh that's beautiful uh_huh oh that sounds neat how about like big salad bowls and those kind of things uh_huh boy they sound nice well i don't think i've ever seen wooden plates at any of the craft shows uh_huh that sounds like a unique item uh_huh well that's good keeps them active i'm sure well it was good talking to you all right good luck with your indoor gardening there i'll talk to you later well if uh i like to i like to make stuffed animals i i sort of have not been doing as much as i did you know before i had to work for real but i like to do things like that and uh you know bottle covers and that sort of stuff and dancing the dancing i've i've kept up with because you know you don't have to well you don't have to get a lot of stuff out you know what do you do oh yeah oh wow uh_huh yeah yeah wow yeah and then it then it puts a lot of responsibility on you yeah yeah oh well that yeah i like to sew too but you know if i'm not in the mood to sew i can screw things up like you wouldn't believe yeah and then it lies in a drawer for about five or six years at least oh do you really oh wow how exciting oh i'll bet uh_huh yeah oh that's neat yeah is it is it hard to make it come down when you want to oh it just comes down when it wants to yeah uh_huh right yeah yeah well have you flown in one of those where they have a whole bunch that go you know like up at one time yeah how long have they been doing that oh that's neat what about that one they do in albuquerque yeah that's the oldest one isn't it wow how many do they have like at the plano one yeah yeah probably every year it will yeah yeah because those things are pretty expensive aren't they uh_huh uh_huh yeah i had a friend at t i in detroit a long time ago that had one that a bank had sponsored yeah and it looks so pretty when they're all you know when there's a bunch of them that way uh_huh uh_huh yeah oh yeah wow sounds fun oh i like to read too what kind of books do you like yeah i like those i like i like murder mysteries too have you ever read any dean koontz he he writes real good it's the kind though that you don't want to start if you have to put it down or anything yeah yeah the he does well they're sort of scary you know but they're they're just really really good the watchers you know they made a movie of the watchers here not too long ago and that was a book that he wrote that that was my favorite one it's about this dog named einstein and this it was he was an experimental government thing you know and they were trying to do like like [robotic] stuff and everything yeah yeah well the book was just ever so much better yeah it was great you like uh uh who is it uh victoria victoria [holt] is that right yeah those are good i like those oh really well that's i really yeah oh what what what one is that um yeah usually the the movies are not as good yeah uh_huh yeah that's usually the way it is sometimes they just change them completely yeah like jaws do you remember did you yeah the book was a lot better i thought but they just they just well my dancing is i i like to belly dance yeah yeah well you know it's it's real funny because when i first started it was like i saw someone at a halloween party this lady was from turkey and she'd been belly dancing since she was four years old you know so i thought well jeez you know that looks like fun i'll learn that in a couple of weeks ha you know i mean you could just you could just take lessons for forever i think course i'm tend to be a slow [learner] i guess anyway but it's a lot of fun and it's it's a good way to get exercise you know [fooling] yourself because you don't realize you're getting exercise you know it's so much fun you don't really think about it and exercising i mean let's face it exercising stinks oh i go aerobics classes and stuff but do you are you do you are you at t i in dallas so so you go to the fitness center no oh yeah yeah i well the only time i can go in too and all these classes that are available are like saturday yeah saturday morning which is you know i i go to those when i can yeah well they have uh the they have them like at six you know here but i yeah yeah yeah that's a lot of fun well yeah that's the same kind of thing like belly dancing you know you don't really realize that you're working as hard as you are yeah it's sort of cute too yeah yeah well see i belong to the fitness center so i feel like i have to go to the aerobics class to get my money's worth you know yeah uh_huh yeah well it's so neat because it's right there and i can go just right after work and you know before i get home because once i get home that tends to be it uh_huh yeah yeah that's handy and they're just there you know when you want to use them uh_huh yeah and i i did the family thing so my sweetie could go too do the weights he'll he'll he would never do an aerobics he'd die before he'd do aerobics class but he likes the weights and the you know stationary bicycle and all that body build huh uh_huh i think they shave it yeah but okay i have two main hobbies one of them is painting and the other one is collecting wine but from your from the description it sounds like they're more interested in painting oh that's good that's fine well i'm a very big much in favor of red wines and i have about a thousand bottles down in my cellar and i've been collecting it now for oh fifteen years or so oh okay white [zinfandels] are not a big favorite of mine the whites i like are these very okie [chardonais] like [kessler] and things like that uh there are some but and in fact their white wines are better than their red wines because they don't get enough sun to make good red wine i'm originally from el paso texas and i have friend who has a [vineyard] actually it's in new mexico near la [yunon] new mexico which is just north of el paso up the valley yes some of them oh mostly mostly figures i'd few done [landscapes] my grandmother was an artist so when i was a little kid i was baby sat in her studio so i learned to mix paint by watching people mix paint things like that so for years i used to go to groups that hire a model and draw once a week when i lived in new jersey and used to work at bell labs and i'd go twice a week for three hours and you do that for about ten years you get to where you can actually draw pretty well oh i still paint occasionally not as much as i used to but i still paint i have some stuff set up the only two things in my basement are my painting stuff and the wine cellars well i built it i yeah had to have some way of storing them so yeah i think you probably don't get very good very good number of square feet for your dollar building a basement there that's probably why so you must have a lot well you ought to be seeing lots of flowers this time of year you find out what it's like in that kind of business and he probably didn't like that well working in a research place i work at national institute of standards and technology which used to be national bureau of standards that's kind of an ivory tower place so there was lots of stuff the only people i guess i know at t i are either the people who work in the speech program who run this this computer program or the people in the semiconductor area i used to know paul [chattergy] and those kind of people don't know if you'd know him or not well i grew up in texas and i moved away and never came back so i guess they are it's been nice talking to you oh they range from from from needlepoint to uh anything in the hobby field as far as um needlework is concerned i've had to give it up recently because um i've got problems with uh nerves in my right hand but basically it's anything in that hobby line i'll try anything including making uh earrings i have no love of yard work for hobby work though how about you oh fantastic oh i've been in a uh [glider] which as a student pilot i loved it [immensely] as a student pilot yeah uh i was only in one one trip something i would have liked to have kept up but we moved out of colorado so that was you know that ended that point but yeah that i'll try as far as you could say hobby then i'll try anything that's unusual that i've never done once just to find out what it's like the experience oh as but that's not a constant hobby you know like i'll do uh-oh i'll pick up normally a petit point or anything in [stitchery] type of line and if i'm really bored i'll even pick up something and color it but i do a lot designing also well i've done a petit point which is really extremely hard and uh that was very difficult for me it took me oh i think that almost took me a year and a half to finish that and petit point is like if you've seen regular needlepoint it's one half of that in the stitches and it goes down like real small little tiny it's exactly what it says petit point yes it was tedious i dropped it as i said it took me about a year and a half because it's not something i could continuously do but now i'm into more uh taking something that i like and trying to actually put it onto paper myself which i find more enjoyment that's got a lot of math to it at that point uh this last one i'm trying to do a house there's a house here in plano actually it's a real estate office but it has it's oh i would say it every section of this real estate office is a different type of a structure it goes from almost um castle looking on one side to a very old fashioned look on the other side and it just varies in each little section of this real estate office and i think they did it because of that purpose it is a real estate office but it fascinates me the way they've done it and it's it looks good it's all done in brick the windows even vary on it and that it really fascinates me so i've sat across the street from it and i've tried to put it down on the paper now it's on um let's see fifteenth and uh park well i live right around here but it's not if you drive by it you don't notice it because its all brick there's no difference in the front except you can see the little difference if you actually stop and take a look at it that's why it fascinates me but uh again you know i'd like to be able to go ahead and take that some day and actually make a house of my own well see you're doing the same thing when you're doing your [gazebo] your playing with numbers that's all this is you're putting it on paper so your just playing with numbers it's like i would love to play with work but i don't have the strength in my hands any more to do anything like that but i've put up uh like um a wall board fixed a bedroom and put in a bath yeah i have a small [miter] box uh for hobby [mitering] and it does the same thing what you're saying but i'd like to which i've been trying to find to go into as far as a permanent hobby which because i'm having difficulties with this is to go into uh i'm sure you've seen it is those wood uh-oh they're they're wood pictures on the wall but if one move if one part moves it [counterparts] the other parts and so like it's a continuous [counterpart] around it and it's all made out of wood and i have as i said i have a miniature uh [miter] box which is made for hobby works and i've had that for quite a few years now but i haven't really gone into that part i've been thinking about making um oh ladders and everything for my uh pocket parrot because they're hard to find toys for a pocket parrot they make them for parrots and they make them for [cockatiels] and a pocket [parrot's] between the two and so i need rings that are exactly between those two sizes so i'm going to i've got some designs for i go into the pet stores but you can say again another hobby i've got is my birds so um i have a cockatiel and a pocket parrot but um other than that uh sam uh cockatiel talks he [whistles] at me and says good morning uh he picked up most of his sayings from the other cockatiel i had the pocket parrot is a very quiet bird it's an extremely tame bird it's uh if you're real gentle with it when you buy it he'll come out and sit on your shoulder with no problem yeah they're a very very tender bird well see when i was oh about i guess about ten years ago fifteen years ago i don't know if it's been that long i took my dog my cat and my bird into the vet at the same time and he was just sitting there he goes carol you're the only one i know of that does this and i go what's the problem because i never thought about it i had never thought one thing at all about it and of course the dog and the cat and the bird are all out of the cage and uh my bird at that time was picking the feathers out from underneath his wing and he uh finally said well you ought to get it a [mate] but the bird turned around and bit him he was furious he was so mad at me but yeah he had a picture of my birds sitting on top of the cage with one tail inside of a front of a cat's face and the tail of another cat walking underneath the cage so he just loved it he just absolutely adored it well the one large cat that i still have uh he took [claw] marks and put it down my drapes going after the birds sitting out on a bird rack that we set up outside for birds going after the birds and then he'd get down and jump back up on the table and sit next to a cage that had two [cockatiels] out on top of the cage i'd get so mad at that cat because i didn't realize what he was doing until i saw these big [claw] marks going down my drapes from his back claws yeah i didn't think i didn't appreciate too much i mean it's rather i thought it was rather funny here's a bird doing this and two birds sitting right next to him but i mean the birds were out they weren't in the cage they were out i never left them in so i thought but i still have that cat in fact i have both cats which are my kids' cats but the birds are in here with the cats they don't care they keep an eye on any cat that walks outside but they don't care about these cats i don't know what it is i've seen okay well good morning and uh i guess the topic here is going to be hobbies and if you have any just tell me what they are really oh that sounds fascinating um well i'm i'm pretty traditional i've i've been doing um a little bit of quilting and uh i made my first quilt ever i mean it's wonderful it's beautiful i don't know if there will be a second one but the first one is you know hand [pieced] and hand sewn and it took months upon months to do this anyway um there's that and then uh now i i've developed an interest in watercolor so i'm taking some classes over at michael's and i'm trying to uh make it look good i don't know that i just someone gave me some paints for christmas one year and i said okay i'll try this i guess i am i'm i've i've been sort of painting stuff and people say why don't you let me hang that in my room you know so i've got stuff hanging in people's houses that i look at now and i go oh i can do so much better than that so i guess i've you know developed somewhere along the line but um you know it's it's an interesting thing and i really do like it it's real peaceful it's real quiet you know it is it's amazing the results are incredible um no because i can't get beyond making this first quilt i'm afraid if i make another one i'm keeping it you know the watercolor i can dash off in twenty minutes and that's you know it's finished but um yeah the quilting forget it um i would even join a quilting group maybe to help somebody else finish their quilt sort of thing you're right yeah they love that that would be good really and uh yeah i yeah i'm finding out that um there there are an awful lot of [quilters] out there and and it's not just traditional quilting either people you know are using it for making clothes they have they make they call them crazy quilts the [vests] and things like that and they make whole outfits out of you know [scraps] of this and that and that's getting to be a real art form what you wear on your back so you know maybe you'd like to try it um but i think it's great that we have the availability here to you know um like michael's and and be able to be trained and and do some things like that so that's a lot of fun i oh oh oh sure oh absolutely and i just i love flowers i you know i got to have flowers around me you know kind of thing um but the button thing now that sounds really interesting you make earrings uh_huh oh right oh how clever right my my sister in law up uh in illinois she was well in a real rural area and she's starting to collect antique buttons and she makes big cage pins out of them and these big wooden buttons are just um you know they're all sort of [layered] and put together and glued in back and everything but they are just incredible they're so pretty yeah and it's they're all wooden buttons it's really neat and she says everybody up there wears buttons on their socks yeah they just you know um do some artistic thing with the buttons and i don't know if they hot glue them on or whatever but yeah i know this is this is mid state illinois i don't know how long it will take if it ever gets here you know but that's what they're doing with buttons down or up there but that's really neat i i uh and and you do the painting on the t shirts too the sweatshirts oh oh there you are what kind of medium do you use on them or do you like [glitter] and painting scenes and yeah oh well sure oh oh well see that's that's really neat that's a great outlet well christmas is only six months away now right i the year goes so fast it's an incredible thing well i'm sure we enjoyed talking to you today and uh i think this is great and keep on with those sweatshirts really that's true well um most of my hobbies include three little girls they keep me pretty busy i uh we're home schooling so i um am real involved in learning how to teach and teaching and that kind of thing um i'm also we're expecting a baby in august so i've been trying to get some things in the house organized for that and have repainted a couple of chairs and repainted a dresser and some of that kind of thing um um yeah we do different things uh i sew so uh i haven't had a lot of time for it for a little while but um that's one thing that we do do some of um i oh yeah yeah um i have i can do lots of things and i enjoy lots of different things i don't have a lot time for most of them but when i do i like uh i like art i like uh the sewing um let's see what else i can do you know lots of different things like cross stitch and different things but i just don't spend that much time on it uh quilting i've made quilts for the girls' beds and things like that um yeah something to cover them and keep them warm that's right um i think it could be i do a little bit of gardening yeah it's more tedious oh what do you do oh wonderful huh i would love for my girls to take piano lessons but we've been unemployed for a while so i haven't had a chance to do that so uh_huh oh uh_huh you're more interested in the instruments then in voice the t i thing oh that's neat uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i've enjoyed music too um i was in choirs from fifth grade on i think and and uh had just a little piano a little violin i even had a little [bagpipe] at one time yeah in in ninth grade our high school is northern highlands in new jersey they just that year they began teaching [bagpipe] for the to put together group for it was fun it was interesting yeah but uh we all enjoy music too um i don't know if they want us to specifically to do more on the craft side or probably not yeah i i don't know how long we've gone but okay nice to talk to you too okay thank you bye bye hi my name is donna donahue yes okay i have a cold this morning so you have to excuse my my sound here um i'm from uh plano texas where are you from oh okay that's nice and easy um let's see would you like to to start or would you okay okay um did you want me to start oh i'm sorry oh i have to start okay well um my oh i did i did push one shall i push it again you think no okay um my um i love to cross stitch and my husband and my son who is now eleven watch so much sports on t v that lately i have been just in a cross stitch frenzy because i cannot stand being in the same room with the t v on with all the sports so so much that i have to i can sit there as long as i'm cross stitching and while i'm doing that so that that's one of my my favorite hobbies that i that i like to what what about you okay oh i do too i yes it is i i enjoy it too and i have found a wonderful [framer] on fifteenth street down in old plano about two doors down from uh [nooks] and [crannies] um who who does he's really an artist and he does a wonderful wonderful job with i just give him my things and he triple mats everything and he has really nice frames and i think when you it's very satisfying after you do something like that to have it framed and hang it up um it it's always that's kind of the fun part very reasonable i have brought something to [michaels] and i was very disappointed in it and it was just a small little picture for my daughter's room in fact there were two little cross stitches i did for her room and um apparently two people framed them differently they two people took instead of one person doing doing the framing two people did it because the mats were just different sizes and to put them next to each other it just didn't look right and um he is so reasonable that um and he has all these unusual frames that he uses his name is um i guess i can just tell you his name it's matte ink and it's um i think the address is ten eleven and a half on fifteenth because it's a skinny little door next to i think bows and it's upstairs and this little skinny door it's right on fifteenth street right down right down by the railroad tracks his name is dan yes closer to the right down down from [nooks] and [crannies] and it's matte m a t t e [inc] i n c period and um he does such a beautiful job i'll take something in i do simple cross stitches mostly [samplers] and a few that are a little bit more complicated but i don't really um with three kids running around it's it's hard for me to get something too intricate so i like something that's kind of quick and and i love i like doing the [samplers] i have a whole wall of them and he'll just take this [sampler] which is just you know mediocre not so great and when he puts the colors he picks out little bits of um colors that he'll pick from your from your work and and matte it with that little color and it just it just makes this wonderful piece of art um so i'm real real happy with them and they have some really nice books down there have you seen the books in the small shops in um on fifteenth street you know i'm fairly new to the area so i'm always glad to find a nice little shop that has different books but uh do you uh_huh oh uh_huh do you um now i really usually don't get the real expensive [linens] to work on which uh maybe that's what you do it's probably really really beautiful to do that but i i just get the regular piece of cloth you know and do it on that but um oh okay well i guess i don't have as much time for hobbies as i used to uh i got two young boys uh four and two so i spend a lot of time with them but uh whenever the weather's nice and uh we can get out i like to work in the garden a little bit uh yeah yeah that's pretty relaxing to me really wow that's great uh_huh uh_huh wow that's pretty neat yeah um i see yeah now that you have more and more time on your hands right yeah yeah i know what you mean they take up all my time now i'm kind of looking forward to the time when uh they're a little bit older and they can get out and you know get a little more active in sports uh yeah me too i'm i'm really i can't wait for that time i just can't wait yeah yeah yeah and my oldest is four really that's great that's pretty good yeah mine's uh uh just now has started getting into well you know like all the other little little young kids he he was up on the turtles and stuff but now he's trying to get into robin hood and so we're going get him one of those [nerf] robin hood bow and arrow things uh_huh oh oh that's good yeah yeah it always always helps when you got somebody to help you uh_huh yeah wow yeah yeah whenever uh uh every now and then i'll take mine to the park and they like play on all over that stuff that's at the park and and it's like you said it's got the fort you know it's the whole works made out of wood yeah he always goes over their houses uh yeah there aren't too many right now actually mine are the oldest on our block and the other ones are at least a year to two years younger so ours is a a block of pretty young kids right now oh i see i see what kind of hobbies do you have uh_huh well i collect uh antique [glassware] so i like hitting the antique shows and and uh collecting i particularly like uh antique pitchers and my husband is interested in those too and uh so we do that and uh i play a lot of bridge that's kind of a hobby well we lived in a a small town in oklahoma for a while and that was the major entertainment in fact that was about the only entertainment other than [gossiping] about people so that's where i learned it and then i stayed with it and don't play as much of it now as as i used to because i work now and uh stuff but i do enjoy that yeah it can be it can be very detailed and if you're playing with someone that is really serious i mean you can't talk you can't bat an eye you can't do anything you know and uh uh i play in a group that we've been playing together now about seventeen years here in texas and uh it yeah well what's funny is we started out that it used to be that we started playing at seven thirty and we played till midnight and we played bridge now we get together and we finally start bridge about eight or eight thirty we play for an hour and then we stop and talk and have dessert shows our age right well it shows our age we have to be home by ten anymore i said you'd think that we were seventy years old oh yeah well i know that you as you get older uh and that you're working and are involved with families and grandchildren and stuff it just seems like that you know you have to have some rest so uh uh_huh uh_huh oh do you oh uh_huh uh_huh oh what uh uh_huh yes yeah i i i think i have yeah it seems like i have passed it uh yeah yeah over on about the same side yeah it is we we enjoy it very much is uh your uh sister married to a bird white okay because i know that there is a professor bird here has gotten uh a lot of people in utah signed up on the program uh_huh i'm familiar with it because i uh i work on the day i work on this project for t i i'm a contract person and uh so you know i'm familiar with some of the names that come through and and areas and stuff uh_huh are are you enjoying the program oh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah yeah i think you'll enjoy it i think you'll enjoy talking to different people you know over the united states and uh it's kind of interesting it's interesting to hear other people's points of view and and kind of get acquainted with them and yeah i've talked to uh someone in washington d c and pennsylvania and ohio and uh i think i've talked to three people in utah one in in provo uh a young lady is a student up there and a wife and now you and then course a bunch of them from texas area and uh uh_huh uh_huh uh well actually uh they're using me as a target caller and i'm really supposed to keep us on the target and as you can see we have not been on it some of uh because they use it in the research and and they study voice patterns so like they take all the topics on say hobbies and then they'll study these voice patterns and to you know to see the different way ways people will say certain words and things you know and yes right correct and uh so uh tomorrow if my boss hears this he's going to say nancy you didn't stay on the topic and i record this i will listen to our conversation tomorrow as it is well it's interesting to talk about hobby hobbies when you're so close to christmas and don't have any time to do any of them but um well i love to sew i like to well i really don't do as much of that um i enjoy that but i work full time so i just don't have time to do too much of that but um i really spend more time doing crafty kind of sewing yeah you know doing you know [appliques] on t shirts and you know that kind of fun stuff and i make a lot of christmas gifts too oh well let's see um one year i made a lot of um jewelry bags the little round thing that you draw up with a string you know and has [compartments] in it and they're you know they go pretty quickly and um make a real nice gift you know yeah what kinds of things do you do oh neat did you take a class uh_huh uh_huh yes yes ooh neat yeah oh yeah that's neat have you painted on t shirts or sweat shirts at all uh_huh uh_huh yeah no i really haven't i i just haven't done anything with with paint i think i could do i could do some i'm not an artistic like you know artist kind of person but um but a lot of the stuff they do really you know evidently is pretty easy but i've just never you know never gotten to it i just you know don't have time uh_huh yeah yeah it comes out looking really nice we just had a there's a gal in the um i'm a school librarian and there's a mom at our school that is really quite an artist and she does these [adorable] little kids that are just funny i mean i just look at them and they just make me laugh they have you know hair that sticks straight out and stuff like that and she she also makes dolls but she also paints so i've had her paint like on a [denim] [jumper] these children around the bottom and it's so cute and recently i had her to do um a couple of t shirts for me and my my aide that um have the children on them and it has um a little stack of books and one of the kids is reading and one's wearing a t shirt that says i love to read and then it has the name of our school on you know on the kid's um shirt so they really are cute and uh she does them so quickly and she only charges ten dollars to paint i mean there must be five children on you know on the front of the t shirt plus all this other little stuff and it was ten dollars to to do that yes yes um this particular one i told her i said if you do this real cute i said you'll probably have about fifty more orders from all the teachers in my school yeah well she just did them i just got them a couple days ago so so i think as soon as we wear them to school and everybody sees them it'll be it'll be good um just a few i made two bears this christmas not out of [furry] but you know out of the christmas kind of fabric they were they turned out real cute and they were easy they were um you know from the fabric store buy the already [stamped] on it and all but they're real cute they're real cute you know christmas looking patterns i gave one away and kept one but i also love to do things that have to do with like either dried dried flowers and silk flowers and you know make not so much arrangements like to sit on a table but you know to go on a wall or you know some pretty stuff on top of a basket or around a basket you know the dried stuff around the top edge of the basket with the spanish moss and all the flowers and stuff and um and i do fabric in baskets a lot all the [ruffles] and all that stuff you know um well it's it's called talent with a hot glue gun you know mark i was wondering if you had any uh what do what do you like to do in your spare time really have you had lessons guitar lessons uh_huh huh well have you ever wanted to play in a band well and bad hours too huh well i um i like to play the piano i mean i like to dabble in it i don't play very well but uh i wouldn't say that was a hobby so much as um i usually you know i do some crafts and things but mostly out of necessity like if it's christmas time or birthday or uh we bought a house not too long ago and i needed some decorations and things for the walls and so i've done some um crafts and things to hang up but i don't do it i don't think so much out of enjoyment do you do your woodworking for enjoyment uh_huh yeah that's true is it one of those uh things that you have to have expensive equipment for uh_huh uh_huh um sounds like it uh_huh uh_huh exactly that's pretty funny well i uh since my kids started to school um they have to have costumes it seems like every little bit they have like a [pirate] day a little [pilgrim] [feast] and things and so i've done some right so i've done some sewing and things but uh you know to meet the demands of all these costumes but uh and i enjoy it in a way but um it seems like we keep busy you know at work and at school and i volunteer a lot of places so that in my spare time i like to rest and to read uh_huh um uh_huh yeah well there's a lot of people that enjoy sewing um but i have uh you know done some knitting and some other crafts like that but not uh you know not so much because it's also expensive to go and collect all of the material and then the tools you need uh_huh i like that uh_huh and it's right and it's functional for you're always needing you know it's nice to do your christmas cards yeah sounds good yeah that's right we have enjoyed that seems like um we've done a lot too well has it has it been snowing that way wherever you are well uh the primary thing that i do uh is go around and uh collect uh [collectibles] purchase [collectibles] and uh and some antiques uh go to a lot of garage sales and estate sales and collect [signatures] uh yeah important people um oh some are just uh sports fans uh i had i land like [aviation] so i've got a number of them from uh uh like the [wright] brothers uh uh chuck [yeager] uh charles [lindbergh] things like that yeah oh do you what do you have yeah sure uh_huh yeah oh gee well that sounds like fun yeah oh yeah well as a matter of fact i've been seriously considering uh restoring a car um i was looking at a nash metropolitan i don't know if you know what those are uh they're little two tone uh cars that came out in yeah really huh yeah yeah does he want to sell it um yeah now i'm i've been trying to find one that's uh uh i was looking at getting one of those and trying to restore it yeah yeah oh both of them because most of the folks that i found and i i used to play a lot of tennis and when i started playing racquetball by the time i finally got a swing down for racquetball i found out i couldn't play tennis any more uh_huh yeah oh good yeah yeah well it's tough to those ceiling shots on a tennis court yeah i tell you i really like uh racquetball yeah yeah yeah yeah uh_huh yeah i like it better than uh tennis just because i don't have to go so far to get the ball good so what kind of hobbies do do you have cathy and cross stitch and uh needle point uh_huh and you do crocheting my goodness i ought to have my wife here talking to you i think well i don't whether you can call it a hobby or not and many years ago music was a hobby to me but as i have gotten older i found out that music has taken over about half of my time and uh now that i i retired about uh not quite a month ago that will be uh i guess most of my efforts well i i well yes i play uh violin and uh in three different symphony orchestras a local one here in state college and one in [altoona] which is oh forty five miles away and and another one at the [lockhaven] university which is about forty five fifty miles away and uh i formed what is called a state college municipal band oh about ten or fifteen years ago i play trumpet in that and comes out to occasionally once in a while so i am pretty busy in keeping that band going and trying to keep my violin playing up to uh an acceptable level of these other orchestras yeah it does take a lot of work and then when i have spare time i uh also am an amateur radio operator no i don't uh_huh i have so little opportunity i am hopefully in the next year or so going to uh rebuild my station and uh get back on the air a little bit more consistently i do have the equipment but as the antennas blew down the last few years i just went off the air and that uh that was the end of that it is it's it's a very interesting thing to talk to people all over the world it's what it amounts to it depends upon the frequency and how good of an antenna you have and how conditions are about every eleven or twelve years conditions change so that uh you're signals get into different parts of the world man i have at one time or another talked to almost not every country in the world but in all areas of the world i uh-oh i have when i was really active i had well over a hundred different countries that i had talked to yeah uh_huh fairly consistently yeah well tell me about this work that you do and uh do you display these sell them or uh how do uh uh_huh you know that sounds exactly like things that jack does that is a shame uh_huh yeah and this is something that you would make into one square and hang on the wall is that the way you do it uh_huh uh_huh where do you get the information to that enables you to do these different pictures uh are they already worked out so that you know uh_huh yeah huh well that is a very interesting thing it is awfully nice to have something to do that that you enjoy so much that you can put you soul into it so to speak yeah i can imagine from needles yeah [ceramics] sounds interesting uh i do computer programming kind of a on the side and i also like to uh do gardening and also like to workout yeah yeah yeah well i i uh i work with computers at work and then i come home and and i have uh a little lap top at home that i just like to play with yeah well [pottery] sounds interesting have you made a lot of uh a lot of [vases] and things or oh uh_huh uh_huh do you have your own [kiln] or do you oh oh well that that doesn't sound like it's too expensive a hobby does uh does the uh clay and and the paints and things are they expensive uh_huh well that doesn't sound very expensive to me uh_huh yeah um uh_huh huh oh no well well children will tend to do that well well i i enjoy working out when i i get home from work just to just to have something to do that that i know isn't going that's that's good for me something to do other than excuse me uh_huh occasionally i'll record one of the shows that's on in the morning while i'm at work and i'll do them when i get home um yeah well i really i enjoy doing that that is that can be a a big workout do you play volleyball a lot um yeah yeah i i enjoy volleyball i'm just not very good at it and i end up killing my knees uh_huh wow yeah um um i have several friends that play softball they play softball in different church leagues around town yeah yeah uh_huh yeah no kidding hobbies are supposed to be enjoyable they're not supposed to be difficult or or they're not supposed to make you less relaxed than when you began uh_huh uh_huh well i uh i have a a computer information systems degree from school and i've been at it awhile so you know you just kind of learn the tricks of the trade and and move on uh yeah yeah well i need to run i enjoyed talking to you uh well let's see i suppose i could say i joy crocheting um gardening knitting oh hiking well it seems like i don't have time for them but i'm i don't work full time or anything i sell avon and stanley products but it's that's not you know the same as an eight hour job yeah it's it's up to the person oh uh_huh oh you sound young uh_huh oh good uh_huh huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah that could be a little boring sometimes i guess too but uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh how how old is your little boy oh is it really oh how old oh that's nice my baby's expecting her first baby this month say yes so our our children are all grown up just one of them uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh huh uh_huh yeah we we had for a while them uh well we still do a lot of picture taking in that and uh we're in the process of putting our eight millimeter uh films and now the kids and that were going to put them on video and we're we're in the process of doing that right now and yeah uh we bought the equipment uh that you do it with well the you buy this little little piece of equipment and you use your video camera of course and uh your [projector] and the combination you the way you you know connect them up uh i think it's going to we were a little worried there was a lot of background noise on it but uh we can hook it into our uh stereo system after we get the pictures all done we can hook it into our uh a or uh stereo system and uh put music to the film and that will cut out all the background the noise of the uh recorder running and that because the [projector] made a lot makes a lot of noise yeah and uh so that's been kind and our [darkroom] is we have a [darkroom] but it's very dusty we we're real active in it for a long time but you know you get busy and the kids grow up and yeah we mainly just did little black and white it's uh_huh oh you can really get some good really good pictures in black and white but uh_huh uh_huh it's hard to even find film or anything but uh uh_huh did she oh that's great yeah yeah i don't do a whole it time seems to be hard to find for anything you want to do i don't know why you'd think i'd have a lot of time but but i i i'm knitting an afghan for the baby and i haven't worked on this for several weeks i just haven't got back to it the twenty ninth i don't know they don't really care what they have yeah they didn't want to know so uh but but i do enjoy it i i i enjoy painting some too but i i really have trouble finding time i did did some toll painting for a while and i started doing a still life and it's it never got finished well had have you watched any of these things on t v these large brush uh_huh well once you start it apparently it's not bad some of the girls have gone into the call age group university is just not too far from here and they've gone in and uh done a class on the large brush and actually do the painting and you know they've never done anything and they come out pretty nice yeah i like to cook yeah i don't do a lot of fancy cooking well it depends on what it is uh you know well now we i we have a small garden and i can i do canning and uh uh yeah that's too bad was it lower back or uh_huh yeah that's one thing that our gardening we're getting it my husband he's retired but he's having trouble now and he's not not allowed to mow the grass we have a lot of grass takes me about four hours to do our lawn and uh and you know he's really shouldn't run the roots or and things like that so it makes it a little bit difficult but i i do love to garden my kids loved it because i never allowed anybody in my garden that didn't like to do it i didn't want anybody in my garden i was a [grump] yeah mostly vegetables i had grew some flowers mostly vegetables yes well i hope you have a nice birthday today for your son uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah okay you too and thanks a lot hobbies do you have uh do you do antiques oh oh my uh do you do all this in your house oh uh_huh oh boy that's an ambitious project had you ever done any [refinishing] before oh so the neighbor was able to give you guidance yeah and she was right yes well uh i do a lot of needlework and i also do puzzles for magazines i get paid for this i've written two puzzle books uh_huh and so in my free time even though it's not a hobby and that i do get paid for it i'm always developing new puzzles and activities and and word games mind [benders] that type of thing no they're they're variety type puzzles not [crosswords] just all different kinds find the hidden word and um you know [anagram] type puzzles [acrostic] [cryptograms] uh mostly for children but some of them go up through grade twelve so and i've developed a lot of my own type of puzzles like word snakes and [grid] graphs and things like that so that's what published so if i have free time i'm usually sitting down with uh [graph] paper doing some puzzles i'm a writer for a living i writer other things i'm a free lance writer and uh i was a teacher for fourteen years and i'm not teaching because we've had to move around so much no i i live in texas now but i'm from southern ohio originally and uh we've lived in michigan and it seems like wherever i go i need to take forty hours of college in order to update my teaching credentials so i decided i didn't want that to be my hobby any more after paying thousands and then moving the next year so um now i'm i'm just writing at home yeah oh what does she edit oh right a b a oh uh_huh that's right i knew some people going up there oh well that's oh great no i don't think so so does she take in manuscripts like fiction to edit because i'm in a large writers group here in dallas called dallas area romance authors do you live in the dallas area oh you're from new york well there's a large group there too it's a national thing romance writers of america and they're always looking for free lance editors okay i can send her some information about it because i know they mail manuscripts and for a well i think it's three chapters and a synopsis which would be around sixty pages the average price is around a hundred and fifty dollars for an editorial service so okay i'll write this down oh good yeah okay let me take down the information and i'll send her who to who to send her credentials to okay hello hi yes hi i'm fine i think they said hobbies didn't they yeah plano are you that's about as far away as i've gotten so far i had a lady two blocks away last time oh see that would be fun yeah okay uh_huh yeah it does well i used to sew a lot when my girls were really little and i made a lot of their things but like yourself i find i run out of patience with it too and i like to do craft things you know i was uh make those fabric covered photo albums and i teach a class uh_huh and i teach that at the parks and rec department a couple times a year how to do it uh_huh and i do that and i do a lot of interior decorating and i can [upholster] the walls and things like that so that's about my hobby and i don't have time for a whole lot but uh it used to be you did those things to relax you but now i don't think there is time to relax so so there is not very much time for that but uh uh_huh i do uh_huh right yes see i did too right yeah it is hard but it does save money to do things that way and uh i found that i got pretty good at decorating so that kind of is real helpful but you do have to find the time so not really i just really started to do that i just redecorated my bedroom this past year and then i went on to my daughter's room they turned out really nice i just bought sheets and i made the curtains and i upholstered the walls and in her room i even upholstered her furniture the drawers and it really turned out nice so you can do a lot for a pretty little amount of money that way so my latest thing is those [stiffy] bow baskets the baskets with the [stiffy] bows have you seen those uh they're they just have uh like pieces of fabric and they put it in uh fabric [stiffener] and let it dry and then bend it and put it on baskets it's really attractive and i i haven't done one but i bought the things i need and uh my daughter's mom uh it's just to sit around the house like for sewing and magazines and whatever you want [potpourri] depends on the size you buy and uh friend of mine does them and they're just really pretty and she's supposed to show me exactly how to do it one day when i show her how to do an album so i don't know what day that will be but that's our next project probably after christmas uh_huh uh_huh right uh-oh um got to be careful yeah so you're a [woodworker] uh what do you know about timber framing what do you know about timber framing right right uh_huh uh_huh yeah the reason i asked is because we're [embarking] on a little adventure here in that we're going to use uh some timber framing techniques to build a a [truss] for a home and it's a it's a you know what a [mansard] roof is like a barn yeah and they're [mansard] [trusses] that don't have any internal [bracing] so the whole area is like a cathedral up there for the second floor right uh_huh yeah that's done some where they're actually create a a single piece that is the [truss] but uh what i want to do is i want to make four identical components and uh cut the joints so that the the more pressure you put on it the stronger it gets and it involves [interleaving] and uh using uh you know locking [wedges] yeah similar to that yeah well if i do that and then cover it with uh two by six tongue and [groove] it will be pretty sturdy because we have to we we got what we call santa [ana] wind down here it comes up out of mexico at about a hundred miles an hour we're at a the at the northwest of denton texas right on the red river well then you know about that wind yeah uh_huh yeah yeah we we bought this land out here we're going we're going to retire on it maybe in twenty five thirty years from now but you know we're we're still fairly young uh_huh well we're only going to have a porch on north and south end and uh we'll have uh anderson window walls is what they are so the whole wall just opens up it will be all glass because on the piece of property we have it's the second highest pointed in the county and we can see oklahoma to the north the lights of gainesville to the east and the lights of wichita falls to the west and that's a it's it's we're just right on the southern rim of the red river valley you know where [nocona] is [nocona] okay that's about as far north as we can see just you know right on the other side of the river there and boy it's really nice it's about an hour drive to work though we don't have any traffic i used to live in uh [springfield] well actually [chicopee] falls that's unbelievable yeah it will be a lot of fun we're digging the foundation by hand yeah the first [floor's] going to be underground of course it will be open on the south and north end and east and well see we have a little [knoll] on our property about thirty feet tall and it's almost straight up so we'll [nestle] the house right up next to it right cooling we don't have to worry about heat i mean yeah but they're very short well the temperature tuesday was ninety six it was tough today was cold in the seventies yeah it went from thirty eight to ninety six on tuesday that's a pretty good temperature swing yeah well if you don't like the weather in texas just wait a minute well you have a good day um basically i my preference is arab coins and ancient coins uh_huh oh very interesting um over the years of course by my grandparents used to give me silver dollars so i've got a few of those tucked away but um your greek and roman coins you know if if they're um in good condition might be worth something you might want to drag them out and uh_huh that would be the greek ones okay because i think most the roman ones have right right so this uh_huh um it the are they silver or bronze oh interesting did did somebody go over to the middle east where they could have picked up some fakes pretty easily oh uh_huh gee that's you might be sitting on a gold mine right um i don't know a lot about um greek and roman although i'm a member of an organization and that is the the primary interest of some ancient uh [numismatic] society club and so most of the people collect roman with a few collecting greek so every now and then we have a program so i've picked up a bit but um if it if they're really soft and very early they could be uh i think they call them [lydian] coins and um right i don't you know i i guess they say that a lot of people in the in the middle east particularly can pick up fakes you know if you go to um uh a fight and then the people say oh look what i just dug out of the ground and they sell you something they made last night but um i think that's fairly recent phenomena probably now now they're supposed to they're supposed to be licensed and the um [aboveboard] oh i see oh and you made your own was the gold worth i mean was it really gold right oh really is that uh still true wow uh_huh oh i suppose he he has to protect himself too so that somebody can't say you know when he's selling them that somebody else made it i mean it's so that he gets his own profits huh oh i see otherwise the the buyer is uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh right right oh that's interesting because i'm more interested in the research and i'm going some dye link [analyses] of of these early coins from the six and seven hundreds and and so i'm not into that the buying and selling business um it sounds like i'm wise oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh i think that's that's the the hardest thing is that people who don't really know feel sometimes a for example i know um you know the [ancients] better but because it's old they figure it's got to cost you know thousands of dollars uh_huh oh right right oh really i didn't know that oh that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh so basically if if someone isn't really interested in the coins it's not some an investment uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh right well what's your favorite shows uh_huh huh that's one of my favorite yeah mystery and uh masterpiece theater yeah uh_huh yeah i don't not anymore i don't there's just nothing on it i got i got sort of hooked on that uh dark [shadows] yeah i when i watched it originally i didn't know it was a i don't know it was going to be a series i thought it was just a movie and so i started watching it and all of a sudden stay tuned next week and i went what and then it blows into this whole series thing so i sort of had to stay with it not really it it it's it's gotten to the point it's getting ridiculous now and they they just had the uh season finale and i don't i don't know what they accomplished but i think the writers just figure well let's just do anything and we'll we'll have a couple of months to come up with some new ideas yeah yeah yeah i don't like programs that i can figure it out um the only one that i watch religiously is l a law i really like that yeah that's that's my favorite well i'm i'm a struggling law student and i the reason i like it is because they give you good law in there yeah it's not like these other programs where they just make up anything they want and they they throw little tidbits out that are really good uh_huh of course i mean it's got its bad side so it's limited by the format obviously you don't get into court as quickly as they seem to make it out that you do i mean they're they're in california and they're they're waiting list is about four years four or five years for a civil case so uh i mean you know it's very difficult to yeah it would yeah no not at all you know the wheels of justice grind slowly yeah i'll agree with you there i'll agree with you i know i know the [shortcomings] too oh well not in that that's not on my that's not on my list of now there was some of the some of the classes i'm in i think i'm in sesame street but uh some of the professors i think imitate big bird that's it i mean big bird would make a good judge better than some of the judges i've seen yeah i've got my own pet peeve about judges but uh-oh well we're stuck with them sort of like lawyers you know um let's see what else is oh i like a and e they don't have a and e on cable in dallas oh oh oh yeah i'll tell you the um uh a and e and discovery and c n n i couldn't i couldn't live without those oh yeah i i just leave it when i'm home during the day i just leave it on just to listen to it yeah the best coverage yeah uh the networks got sort of ridiculous with they they they felt like they had to interrupt normal programming for all this but they didn't have anything to say oh yeah yeah yeah well the coverage was a little bit ridiculous anyway i mean it it it got far more coverage than it should have i it was it was beautifully played out thing i mean it it [roused] the [patriotism] of the of the country and all that sort of stuff and yeah exactly i mean and sometimes they they would now i like jeopardy and jeopardy comes on here at seven o'clock and for i don't know it much have been two or three weeks there they were doing this expanded nightly news you know and i'm going i will never get to see jeopardy again yeah i'm saying what are you telling me that you didn't tell me in your first half hour nothing yeah oh well there goes a patriot missile oh well that's good that's good yeah oh boy golly gee yeah we are yeah well it was it was no i mean there there was nothing to it i mean i mean yeah i'm happy for that i'm happy for that but but unfortunately i sort of had the inside track because i'd been in the i'd been in the military for thirteen years and i worked in intelligence and and there was no yes another one of those military intelligence ha ha that's what that's just like justice for all but i mean my goodness there's they're sitting here making all this big deal out of the iranians and i'm sitting there thinking to myself uh_huh sure i mean they've poured billions of dollars into this stuff but the stupid people can't read comic strips i mean how do you expect them to operate tanks yeah i mean they can't even read their own language yeah a it just totally ridiculous i mean the israeli's could have fixed the whole problem years ago if they just sent sent their guys in there and killed saddam that's right i mean the israeli's they're not afraid of anything see what happens when they when they take a plane load of their citizens down in that doesn't uh that doesn't that situation doesn't sit around and develop very long all right i i i think everybody's jumping to conclusions i don't think anything's going to change no first off i don't think that the middle eastern situation's going to change i don't think that they're not yeah they're not going to come up with a peace plan or any of this kind of crap uh_huh yeah well they they they get [oshmid] [aukomo] you know the janitor for the u s [embassy] and you know yeah really and it was it was it was even worse here in north carolina because because a lot of the matter of fact all the units the marines and and uh the f the f sixteen squadrons came out of north carolina so every night on the local news they were down in fayetteville or they were down in [goldsboro] and they were talking to the military wives you know and and i and i understand the way they feel about their husbands and wives being over there and all that but to get on camera and just oh this is so terrible i just i don't what we're going to do i'm thinking to myself you know what do they people think they were getting into when they joined the military you know i'm going it what did you think it was a paycheck you know run around and then play soldier well the [reservists] sure do we had a [reservist] here in north carolina who who who's unit was ordered up and he refused to go i hope he got busted yeah the this this guy did too he ended up going to leavenworth which is good i'm glad huh_uh that's right and then she didn't want to do her obligation yeah well i uh you know i'm not i'm not racist or anything but one of my one another one of my pet peeves is they had a lot of black on the news talking about how unfair it is because the blacks are poor and therefore they don't have a choice but go in the military so there's more of them getting killed than the whites now to me that doesn't make any damn sense yeah what kind of hobbies do you find yourself involved with uh yes i i uh woodworking um very little actually uh no um oh no they they they uh they they suggested a variety of possibilities and whatever hobbies you can come up with uh no uh my hobbies kind of vary from time to time depending on what kind of time i've got uh i spent twenty years as an auto mechanic and i i enjoy working with with cars uh i've built a couple of race cars uh yeah um i i do enjoy uh uh cabinet [cabinetry] type woodworking um uh i've done some model building and different things like that um right now my hobbies pretty much tend to be on hold uh a twelve week old baby and full time student hobbies are a extreme luxury you you say you uh sing with a group in a community college what sort of music do you work with uh_huh uh_huh yes sounds like a lot of fun yeah those are usually the best sorts uh you you say show music like broadway musical type show music okay um those are wonderful shows oh yeah yeah yeah well the chances are these are all all things they're very familiar with and just the chance to have some entertainment and some some variety in their life uh uh retirement homes i mean even still there are a variety there are a lot of retirement homes that try to make it sound like it's a real you know luxury condominium setup and still the bulk of the people living there tend to be living pretty restricted lives so something like that can be a lot of fun uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh oh yeah here goes sharon well what do you think about nolan ryan being the first baseball player to earn a million dollars that's the only thing i found out tonight yeah yeah well isn't it funny how baseball's getting less than like football players would wonder because football and a lot more games right uh_huh beats me i mean i know yankees have won a lot games through the years we have been talking about this i tried to call earlier and we had made a list of all these uh baseball teams and the cities that they were from then i started cleaning and i don't even know where i even put that paper yeah i was just cleaning and throwing well have you ever played baseball well that's what i did when i was growing up that was fun uh_huh do you ever go see the rangers yeah i think it's fun i like just looking at the [billboards] yeah it's nice at night that's when i've been well no and your going to be able to buy your what was no wait about the liquor oh yeah so you well they're trying uh_huh uh_huh right oh well that's the way to do it you hear that that's my kids turning on their music holly turn it down i think it's the bart man the simpsons i wish i could well where are you okay i'm in garland yeah my my husband teaches in plano c v a e i teach but i teach for dallas for right now i'm trying to get out uh_huh uh_huh i mean it's good because they they try new things you know but it's like they'll try something and then they throw it out and get something else you know and you get tired of that yeah well but they can't be though they don't have as much money most of the time oh man in dallas you don't even know who's in in administration there's so many of them i mean somebody walks in the a classroom and you don't know what they're there for you know when they're coming how long they're going to be you know it's just there they are and they're writing the whole time no i had them walk out of my class and not say their name anything and i finally just got to where i go okay i'm [debbie] moore you know may i ask who you are and what you are in my classroom for you know because you know you never know where they are going what they'll report or and they'll tell you they've written something down and you hope they're telling you the truth no huh_uh oh it is uh this is my eleventh year no actually it's now my job's good much better than a lot because i'm chapter one and all i do is teach reading all day long and it's just ten children at a time no it's good and you've got a lot of federal money too teaching oh yes yes when i first started teaching i remember i went to my and i said okay i want to see a curriculum guide you know so i'll know what i'm suppose to teach and they go we don't have one we don't even know where one is and so i go okay i mean you just you did what you wanted to do and now they tell you what to teach and how long and you know what day what period yeah no i know which is worse uh_huh well you can talk for ten minutes but you don't have to yeah and no if you talk to ten then they come on and say oh you've extended your limit and please say good bye within the next five seconds well you know i hadn't either till last night i was talking to this retired administrator from cleveland ohio and we started talking about gangs you know yeah and everybody else that i've talked to has been right around here but she was real interesting and then tonight this woman called have you taken any incoming calls okay so hers was the first one i got gotten and uh and she was telling me all her problems you know and it went over ten minutes well yeah we did but the topic was boring i thought what would you serve uh if you were having a dinner party oh yeah i could go on and on about that ugh neat no the last one i saw was dances of the with the wolves wolves oh i enjoyed it i mean it was just more for my money huh uh_huh one is eight and one is eleven they usually pick their own you know they've got it all figured out well and ninja turtles but most of the time really we watch them on the video don't you just massive rental going to i know that's what we do especially when it's bad weather man just plug it in i know it's good when you go to tom thumb though and they're cheap and nobody has got them yet unbelievable uh_huh do you read no see i do that to make myself go to sleep at night you saw field of dreams right a long time ago well i was reading the book and it's called shoeless joe it was so wonderful and then i was um i decided well i like this author so i got a uh book of his short stories and that's been real good don't don't ask me the ghost of shoeless joe was the name of the book yes quite a quite a bit but you know in the movie the guy was black he wasn't in the book that's one difference there really wasn't a lot of difference well do you think we covered baseball okay well have a good night okay oh you found that out tonight i haven't even heard that that's great i think he deserves every penny of it but there are some others out there that i don't believe deserve the money they're getting oh yeah and they play a lot they play a lot longer season too yeah that's exactly right but i think let's see the teams that were there last year were see somebody from california i don't even know who won the pennant last year yeah not lately though uh_huh threw it away oh gosh let's see the teams that i think the a's were in it last year the oakland a's and i think it was i don't think it was an all california baseball i played softball yeah yeah that's fun that's a whole different sport yeah let's see but i think i think the rangers need to go and i think the pirates will go and uh let's see rangers have got a new guy this year i don't even remember his name either every once in a while i i like to go on the nights when there's not anybody out there not very many people out there it's a lot more fun when your not fighting a crowd yeah sometimes when i if you go out there during the day you just fry under the sun yeah it is and do you know anything about that new stadium have you seen all those pictures that they're going to put out there yeah that that huge it's suppose to be a huge stadium and it's going to have little shopping centers in it and little like a lake or something running through it and uh they're going to try to make it a real community center out there that's that's in uh texas stadium where the football players play and they're never going to let liquor in there i know but they try every year and every year they get thrown out it's so stupid because they let you take it in there but they don't they don't allow you to sell it don't allow them to sell it there but uh that new [stadium's] going to be real nice and i heard that there's uh that you can bid on that stadium last night on the news i heard that they said you could you could bid on the stadium to have it named after you so and it's going to go to the highest [bidder] yeah so that could be your you know fifteen minutes of fame oh oh god i stay away from them i bet you do in plano oh you are oh what's he teach uh_huh so what do you do oh you do is that a tough system to be in real hard yeah i would think it yeah that's typical bureaucracy though that's that's i think it's going to be any where you go it's just worse in the bigger cities than it is in the smaller ones i don't know sometimes the smaller ones are just as bad yeah but the politics the politics gets worse in the small towns sometimes you don't even know who to payoff huh yeah oh how funny no communication whatsoever yeah i know and you never see it that's got to be frustrating how long you taught taught in dallas schools ugh that's about uh ten too many yeah uh_huh yeah oh oh well that's not bad but hasn't it changed a lot over the years yeah or working in the system oh god how funny yeah you don't know which is you don't know which is worse yeah i guess so yeah being told what to do is worse so how long are we suppose to talk for oh you can oh i haven't ever talked that long uh_huh he lives in cleveland wow yeah huh yours is my second one did she did she did you all not talk about the topic at all oh oh gosh all the other the one i talked about the other night was good it was um about movies you know what have you seen at the movies lately and stuff like that me too because we go all the time the guy i was talking to never goes he was boy it sounds like your really up on this i said i see at least two a week so that was real good to talk about that have you seen like uh silence of the lambs you've got to go see that yeah we talked about that one too and he he said he didn't think it should have gotten all those awards he thought it was too long but i i did too yeah i didn't think it was too long at all uh he said after about the first hour he started looking at his watch the other one you need to go see is sleeping with the enemy and how old are your kids you probably don't want to take them to see silence of the lambs it's it's not it's not too cool for kids i bet they do yeah they want to see all the horror movies yeah ninja turtles got to have those oh yeah you that's well heck that's a lot cheaper then uh taking them out to the show especially if you get them for a couple of nights you don't have to watch them all in one one time yeah of course you have to get there early if you want to get anything decent that's true that's true we saw um [heroes] have always been cowboys tonight it was okay it was kind of slow and i felt like it kind of got chopped off at the end you know it just it i don't know it one of those movies it's not going to be around long it will be a dollar movie in no time not very much no i don't have the patience to read yeah oh my mom and dad read all the time yeah sure did oh really who is the is the author oh shoeless joe was it like the movie okay right huh i didn't see i never even heard that there was a book tied in with that movie that's interesting that was a good movie too i think so uh_huh yeah oh no no they're not are they oh goodness i would too even the bench warmer i would uh_huh uh yeah well i do to uh i have boys you know like eight and eleven and we go quite often to watch the rangers uh_huh oh yes we're heavy into that too oh i do too and i think uh what caught so many of our [attentions] last year was that nolan ryan you know yes uh_huh yeah yes uh_huh yeah i know it yeah yeah he really is an you know as far as predictions and stuff i really think the rangers may come out real strong this year they because i don't know but last year i just figured they was under a lot of pressure because of all the publicity and everything i really do yeah yeah at least that should help it sure should but in a way i really do and of course there's a few more you know i think are good ball teams also like oakland a's and the giants i really do i like to go watch the giants when they come to houston some times but uh oh you haven't oh i have a few times uh they're a good ball team they really are oh wouldn't it wouldn't it though wouldn't it oh my goodness we might actually get to go to a world series huh oh yeah that's something you dream about oh there sure is and uh that i mean they really are uh now [incavalia] i don't know how familiar you are with him but last year i was kind of thinking he sure did get in a slump but they're saying this year their predictions is that he's really going to come out of it and be on top isn't he though he sure is he either hits home run or strike out there is not ever a in between for him uh_huh yeah to sign him again yeah huh yeah oh you never know that's sure if you offer them money i'm sure they'll they'll do a little bit of everything no no no like that joe [hosago] you know i mean oh i hadn't heard i i really haven't uh oh yeah well i hadn't either we hadn't you know like i said we i don't even guess they've even thought about sending the schedules out yet yeah because we usually get one we usually order our tickets way in advance we we try to go so often oh they do well i've enjoyed talking to you and we'll hopefully we'll get to talk again okay bye bye real problem the last few days one of their uh young hopeless stars has apparently ruined his knee for this season it was a catcher and they really don't have an excess of [catchers] and it's really kind of kind of late to you know to start be trying to trade for somebody especially with the salary cap that the rangers have they're not the highest paying ball team around but i you know i would i would gladly take the salary of most of the guys i'll tell you yeah that's right i really haven't been an active ranger fan in several years i used to go take my son you know when he was in high school he enjoyed going to baseball games i'll have to admit i kind i kind of went more to see to see the other team a lot of times than i did the did the rangers but i think they're doing better yeah i can imagine i used to love to play baseball when i was a kid i think it's more fun to play than it is to watch yeah oh of course of course as a matter of fact i read in the sports page this morning he just pitched his first uh exhibition game a day or so ago and he pitched five uh yeah five full innings that was almost unheard of for a pitcher to you know to start out that strong no big deal you know it's just part of a days work he's something else he really is they could do very well they sure could uh_huh uh_huh right yeah they've got uh i guess all well all their players are signed now some of them are not too happy about it but there there's no hold outs so that should help yeah it should uh_huh oh yeah sure sure sure uh_huh cincinnati yeah there sure are uh_huh uh_huh that's right i've never seen the astros play huh_uh uh_huh that's right they sure are wouldn't it be something to have a world series between the rangers and the astros boy i tell you that would draw a crowd wouldn't it it sure would that's right wouldn't that be something it sure would absolutely but there are a lot of ranger fans around yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh boy he's a bull isn't he he really is gosh uh_huh that's right that's right it's kind of like babe [ruth] yeah they were saying something about this may be his last year with the rangers though apparently i think his contract is up after the end of this year and they're not sure they're going to be able to sign him again yeah that you know may or may not happen that's right it's a long way away that's right that's right unfortunately the rangers don't spread it around quite as big as some of the other teams do yeah that's right is there going to be a ticket increase this year price do you know i haven't either the uh those cowboys have increased their prices again this year but i didn't know i i don't think i've heard anything on the rangers or i don't remember it if i have yeah yeah i guess it's too early uh_huh it's a good idea yeah uh_huh yeah if you have young young children you know they they get a kick out of it uh_huh well you too lori right you take care okay bye bye well i kind of like them all i played for about eighteen years all the way through college and then uh kind of hung them up after college but no not quite made it yeah made it all the way through four years of college playing ball but anyway uh being in rochester you probably like the mets oh boy it i think it's like one or the other isn't it i mean yeah oh okay i see yeah i like the uh huh i guess if i had to pick a favorite team any more as well as i kind of grew up rooting for philadelphia i'm from new jersey originally yeah well we were thirty miles south of them so yeah right down the river but uh so what are the mets going to do this year without strawberry yeah uh_huh yeah well i was going to talk to you about that eighty six team that was that was the year they beat houston in extra innings right yeah hey the guy's making millions he ought to be able to perform right well his knees were bothering him yeah yeah for having him out there sure oh boy yeah i think we were all pretty much uh astros fans in the national league championship series but there's like two fellows from uh brooklyn and they they were you know they were pretty much without having to say they were pretty much mets fans no not really they were pretty much thugs they weren't scared very much you know yeah really okay okay well i'm not to say that all folks from brooklyn are thugs but these two were definitely thugs and they were from brooklyn so i'm kind of hoping i i i guess uh any more i pretty much pull for the rangers though they're uh they're they're they they have i think they have the best facilities in the major leagues i love going to watch a game in arlington stadium it's great yeah the only problem is it's not large enough it only holds about i think they when ryan struck out his five [thousandth] player they squeezed about forty thousand people in there yeah so they're they they have plans i mean the owner tried to move them to florida but uh they ended up sticking around in arlington and they're going to build a new stadium in arlington as a matter of fact not even in dallas so that's that's something that we're looking forward to oh case in point toronto yeah have you seen a game up there oh boy i saw it i was up there on business uh last june and watched a game in the sky dome it was just phenomenal that's that's probably the pattern for the future of stadiums i think uh_huh now is rochester where where is cornell university [ithaca] okay yeah well rochester is like right on the [shores] isn't it yeah okay oh well they say that from that space needle up in toronto you can see the lights of rochester on a clear night yeah yeah yeah okay yeah those games are fun to watch you you you watch those games yeah uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah we used to like watching my my folks lived down in [beaumont] and uh on the campus of [lamar] university they used to house the [beaumont] golden [gators] who were a double a team for the [padres] i think but uh they they were fun games to watch well there's definitely a lot more hitting yeah yeah so as far as the major league teams i don't know the rangers have been you know every year they always knock on the door early and then just go into their skid about you know the end of june but they they've got so much young raw talent it's just amazing and then they just haven't been able to put anything together uh_huh yeah uh_huh right yeah i mean they've been they've been young for a while and they're almost starting to age a little bit here i just um yeah yeah they they really hurting pitching wise i mean they've got ryan but you know who knows what he'll be able to do he's been last year he started having some [nagging] injuries and but it'll it'll be interesting to watch i hope to get up there we we usually try to get to opening day game there's several guys from our church try to go up there yeah well i i guess we're probably oh maybe a hundred fifty miles south of dallas no not too bad but it takes about two hours two and a half hours to get there that's probably because of the roads you just don't have we we've just got a freeway we just get right on the freeway and just go north well it's so crowded up there golly yeah um well yeah you're you're like a boat ride from how far is it across the lake to canada toronto yeah do do you drive there or do you take the ferry or what yeah yeah it's a it's a beautiful city uh_huh so and then i mean you go back to new york after school oh really well what kind of weather are you having right now oh boy yeah we've been up in the oh seventies eighties even up in the nineties a couple of weeks ago golly because of the ice um golly huh illegal oh yeah okay um so um do you have any favorite teams oh i was going to say you played pro ball right not quite huh oh yes i'm actually a met i'm i'm one of these people who's actually a die hard mets fan and an avid yankee [hater] yeah it's it's i i i find it very strange um more people you know real met fans don't like the yankees and real yankee fans don't like the mets for some reason i never i never quite found a new york fan i always found a fan you know of either one or the other and so that of course means that when it comes to the american league my favorite team is the red sox by [default] because i went to college also in boston oh yeah so that so that's sort of close enough oh so you were pretty close well i don't know um there's there's a part of me that says that you know um i'm sort of glad strawberry went away you know when when he sort of went away i started thinking yeah well he was performing fairly well but he really wasn't worth the baggage you know um i think they're okay i think they're you know i think they have enough people who are who are who are still in their prime you know um i mean certainly if you look at them compared to let's say you know um eight years ago or something they're they're they're they're you know they're sort of in in good standing whereas you know um i think i certainly don't think they're the eighty six team any more yeah i right they beat houston in extra innings and then they actually won the series bye bye sort of a [sneaky] route um against boston when there was the ball that was sort of hit to [buckner] i felt real bad about that but hey what can you do that's right well actually he he he was supposedly um there was there was something wrong with him at the time and i right and i and i understand that and i say hey if the guy can't play you don't blame that uh hit it to him you blame the team you know for putting him in that's right so so i i i was uh i was also i was in school at boston at the time so i it was actually wonderful because where i was they were half met fans and um half sox fans oh yeah yeah well i guess they were uh i guess they must have been scared after the uh well that's good well they're brooklyn boys i guess you don't expect them to be uh much of anything but thugs i know i was born there um yeah i i was i was also born in brooklyn so i can call myself a brooklyn [thug] although i'm really not yeah well that that's actually i think i make something because i think and and and in as much as sort of fan support helps you know it's good to have um yes it is kind of small right oh that's great so yeah that'll be nice i mean that that i think tends to keep i think stadiums work tend to keep people happy yeah exactly uh i haven't been to any toronto games yet but um of stadiums yeah well i i mean to get up there i mean the the best i've been up here so far you know up in up state new york is uh is um rochester red wings game oh cornell is in [ithaca] uh yeah so cornell is about um somewhere uh about two and a half hours south of south and east of us so if you know where lake ontario is sort of yeah we're about ten miles south of lake ontario actually whoever built the city was an idiot in my opinion because they built it they built it far enough from the city that it actually couldn't be a port city um but they oh really i i hadn't actually known that well um but we have our own um our own triple a team here the [redwings] which are they're a farm team for the orioles so everybody hopes that uh they go all the way around here there's the they're the big team in rochester oh yeah i actually we we we make a point of going to a bunch of them every year because they're fun lots of really big you know lots of local fans you know small stadium you know um and they'll get a crowd of less than ten thousand sometimes you know um especially you know i'll make a day game or something but they really seem to uh people really get into it i mean i can't i i again i can't make any predictions about them but i suspect they'll go uh they'll go fly yeah those are those are uh i think those are more fun than major league games sometimes yes it's true one of the advantages of not having pitchers who are uh uh you know i guess i guess when you start pitching real well well move them up bam yeah but um well the way i the way i see it is i mean um you know i can use a met analogy here if you'll think back a few years to when the mets were just all this sort of young bunch of guys who really were raw talent but weren't very sort of well trained you know back to you know maybe eighty eighty four or eighty three or eighty five you know when they were first when they weren't quite the eighty six team that that that they were i i that probably gives the readers a good shot for you this year or next year i think if i think the young talent really just has to build itself up right but oh that must be nice well that isn't too bad just a couple of hours yeah well it takes me a good seven hours to get to [shay] stadium so i don't know yeah well actually we can we can i can take a highway the whole way down but it's still it's some it's it's almost four hundred i mean i mean it's almost four hundred you know barring traffic it's four hundred hours i mean four hundred four hundred hours right four hundred miles barring traffic so it's um it's it's you know it's a heck of a drive we are [substantially] north of new york enough that uh we don't get to go play too often toronto oh [toronto's] only about two hours yeah toronto i mean i want to go see um i can i've actually i've driven but i've heard about the ferry as well haven't taken it yet though have you taken it yeah um i i really love i think that's one of the most uh enjoyable things about being up here i'm only up here for school uh no probably south maybe texas some place south and warm i don't i'm not a big uh i'm not a big uh cold fan uh right now we're actually having uh it's getting nice i mean it was in the high fifties today but three and a half weeks ago we had an ice storm oh that's great you know about that same time branches were falling off everywhere and we were actually in a state of emergency for two weeks because it didn't make the national news too much which i find really weird but um we were i mean um you know all schools were closed for almost for over for a week there were certain parts of town where it was illegal to drive yeah because they had so many power lines down and so many uh things like that so they were all right well i have a lot of different teams that i like to to keep in touch with of course texas rangers being one of them i mean uh you know you can't live in dallas without you know well uh i originally came from saint louis so uh the saint louis cardinals are one uh i moved to kansas city see i have i have a tendency to a adopt teams when i go to a uh go to a town yeah so uh i lived in kansas city for a couple years and i adopted the royals i lived in houston for two and a half years so i adopted the uh uh the houston astros so i mean you know i've got quite a few no i don't i don't get into that too much every once in a while i will keep in in touch with maybe like who's in the top five of hitting or something like that but i don't get into you know how many errors somebody has or things like that uh_huh uh_huh i've heard of that one well i didn't know that that's supposed to be a real good statistic uh well that's true they don't have the offense to uh to get out or to have the the more runs so uh_huh huh which i was kind of leaning toward anyway to tell you the truth i kind of think it was necessary i mean i i don't i'm not a a big um pure power hitter anyway i mean i don't like these guys that get up there and swing for the downs every time i mean uh i think that uh that a player ought to hit a home run if he's got the pitch to do it but when you get two strikes on you you have a you know you should you know shorten your swing a little bit you know if it's a perfect shot go for it but i mean you know the strike outs were a big problem for him and uh plus supposedly what i heard he was not much of a team player anyway so uh_huh yeah well that's true right yeah well there's there's another point to that too they said the that um that he was horrible at uh at batting with with men on base now having somebody get up and hit a solo home run does you you know gives you run obviously but i mean if you can't do it with men on base there's something definitely wrong um you know you you've got to be able to get the two and three run home runs you know to to be able to uh score enough runs to be able to win in these uh in this day and age so i think the royals will do okay they have they have several pitchers that had badly years last year and they are they're these uh cycle pitchers they they pitch one year bad one year good one beer bad one year good [saberhagen] has won uh supposedly the cy i think he won cy year uh two out of three years and uh you know so he's very much due for a good year well now see that's a good question i that's i don't know how [oakland's] going to react to being uh swept in the world series last year they could very easily uh take that as a challenge which is the way most teams you know naturally do uh and and just go out and not give anybody a chance to beat them so uh_huh oh yeah baseball is there is there life up there like football is down here i think i lived in the suburbs of saint louis yeah yeah that's true too i think that's all that they have uh_huh um yeah oh yeah i i definitely do in fact i've got family that still lives up there um from what i hear from everybody up there they're not going to have a good year because they let too many people go but i've been following spring training and they're like one of the best teams in spring training so far that well it can be it it really kind of depends on on um what they were you know what they were looking for in other words if if in spring training they were looking at all their kids like a lot of them do um then it really doesn't give you any indication but if they were uh playing the people that they're going to play then that might be pretty good indication so you know it's it's not a great indication because there have been teams that have just you know come out and just won all kinds of games in spring training and then gone on a you know fourteen game losing streak in the first of the season so exactly yeah you can't right i think the best thing that you can do is go with um the players that are that have the talent to do the best years and um that they hadn't had these uh gigantic uh career years yet and and just kind of assume that you know one of them is going to break through eventually so and i i think they said the reds um this last year i'm not sure that they said that they had that many people having career years you know and and so they may be even better this year uh that's a good question i the rangers have a have a pitching problem and whether or not they can fix that or not is going to be an interesting question they're doing the right thing though uh they are going with their farm system they're letting their farm system uh build up and stuff like that and uh_huh no uh_huh um that's probably true well considering what i've seen in the last uh you know two seasons i'm beginning to agree with that yeah but i mean you don't have to spend the big money as far as i'm concerned to uh to win you just have to spend it if it's necessary in other words if you've got a player on your team who's helping your team then keep him there don't let him go away and i think that's really what's been hurting uh the uh rangers oh yeah they they spent more money last year than any other team in the in the league and they were you know toward the bottom of the league uh so it's like i said spending money doesn't guarantee you uh winning a pennant it really doesn't so uh you got me i you know i think that there's coming to a point real soon when ticket prices are going to be to the point where the average fan can't go and once you do that you lose everything i mean uh_huh uh_huh right that that's the whole point there are so many games in in a year that they've got to have repeat customers they can't afford not to and you know that's one of the things that i think saint louis has done um i mean their you know their ticket prices are you know i guess as high as anybody else's but what somehow or another they attract uh so many people from i mean they're a it's a small market and yet they attract as many if not more than most uh uh most other cities so well what are the others well it's helpful well do you keep up with the statistical stuff well there's there's a guy on that was on show that i listen to going to work in the morning who does uh uh it's essentially trivial statistics but they've got a it's a statistic that has to do with winning and losing one run games and apparently the rangers last year won a lot of one run games well it it it is but it's the it's it's a reverse indicator well what the what the argument is and it it it it's one of these statistical gee how can you draw a conclusion from it but they find that there's a connection between that and how they do in spring training the following year and uh it's strangely enough it's almost like the law of averages catches you on the following year which means that if you have a good year winning one one run games that the following year you'll have a bad year and they they've got um they've looked at i think twenty three teams uh and and the uh statistics are something like twenty one out of twenty three it was which means the rangers are going to have a terrible year i uh well i mean and it's uh uh i don't know what do you what do you think of [incaviglia's] loss well it it's an interesting concept though when you look at uh of of how baseball how apparently i was reading in the paper tonight that the detroit [tigers] are going to sign him and uh and the point of of i guess i don't understand the the strategy of how baseball works but it seems that you know they can sign him tomorrow and he could go in the team the next day and and and they put him in the lineup and he hits a home run and all of a sudden he becomes a hero and and all he has to do is hit the ball i mean you're not and all he has to do is one you know hit it once it doesn't he can he can he can swing a couple times if he [fouls] it up he can swing as much as he can it's an interesting uh an interesting concept of of how they do it but i agree with you i think that i think that's part of what uh baseball needs more of i uh i i guess what bothers me is is that when you go um you wait and wait and wait and finally a guy gets up there and [blasts] a home run and that's all the game is i'd rather see the ball hit around and have the people yes yeah well how do you think the royals are going to do well are they going to beat are they going to beat oakland yeah well i go to saint louis from time to time and i watch i i watch their sports up there and they're uh they're certainly intense about the cardinals they did you actually live in saint louis everybody does right i had a friend from college that lives in uh it's well i should say on the west side i mean everything's on the west side [manchester] uh out that way and i went and visited him but anyway it is interesting well how are the cardinals do you still keep up with them or well is that a good indicator you know what i think is remarkable is uh it seems that what you really need to do to win though is to have a team that has reasonable talent and has some people that have have have real breakthrough years and and the question is how do you forecast that if you had to if you had to bet on who would be in the world series i mean it would be really tough yeah yeah well well when are the rangers going to come through well is there enough money that's part of it i uh that was part of skip [bayless'] argument i don't know if you read skip [bayless] but a a local commentary and his argument is that uh the ownership is not inclined to lose big money long enough to to bring in the big dollars would you would you agree with that uh yeah well didn't kansas city put up quite a bit of money for their pitching staff yeah well and that i think that's maybe part of it that that the um and it you know if i owned the team i think you'd like them to do well but the question of losing big big money that what did did did [steinbrenner] actually make money on the well it's it it yeah it's a little bit like any other sport you know when it starts costing you fifty or a hundred dollars to go to a game and uh you know i mean i i guess as we get older you're probably going if if you if you compare to go to a a sport a a say you go to a rock concert or or even a performance a an opera or the symphony or something uh if you know but how how often do you do that an i i i would i would think baseball probably feeds on a number of people that can go out there you know several times a yeah yeah but don't you think there's a there there are older fans there i i don't mean older um you know the fact that that it's it's a better established and that the the city is is is more of a okay um what baseball team are you familiar with really oh now come on no texas rangers really i guess they [paired] two women together on this call for a reason which is something we can think about later but um i understand a little bit about the texas rangers i know george bush threw out the first pitch hitter bounced off the ground and that um yeah i heard a joke on the radio yesterday that in regard that he didn't design the patriot missile system and uh the [radio's] kind of cruel i mean think the he this chain that must have been on president bush to bounce the first pitch off the ground i mean how humiliating for a man to do that any man i don't care if you're president i know but he's a man come on men know how to do that right i know so i felt kind of sorry for him that must have been hard on him because he's just a person but um i never a major owner of our of the team here yeah he's like i thought he was the owner but it turns out my mom said that he's part owner but he must own the biggest chunk because that's all you hear about is if you know about neal bush i think is his name see i even know his name because he's on the news a lot and i never had to watch the news not you know not like some people hour and a half a day or anything uh_huh oh i saw that yeah i want to see your driver's i i i don't you're not president bush i know and he said yeah it does so fast i heard it on the radio i heard the audio portion on the radio in the car but i didn't see it but that's about my extent of um about baseball i don't know that much about it uh_huh uh_huh did they uh_huh that's so stupid that you all have two teams that's really stupid yeah i know yeah the texas rangers they they lost i think but i know that last year we did go to a baseball game last year we got free tickets because someone at our church one of the [deacons] at church um parks cars at the mansion at turtle creek which is like one of the uh the places and stuff and he's their head chauffeur is this funny as they're parking the cars the [valet] service yeah he makes good money too doing that you'd be i was shocked but anyway someone gave an iranian a tip of four rangers tickets last year and then the iranian couldn't he didn't want them so he gave them to alan and alan and his dad had plans that night so they gave them to us so he decided that some wealthy man tipped this iranian with baseball tickets and we ended up with them right and so we were walking up and i looked at my husband and i said you know what kyle this is the mansion at turtle creek a tip i bet these are really good seats and so we ended up on first base right down there on the floor oh yeah we they called us at five and the game started at seven so we just threw everything together ran over and got the tickets and walked and so we took two kids with us and nobody brings two children in these seats you know because yeah and you just sit down and all the girls were all dressed up you know i just was there you know like i'm loaded i'm here you know and uh it was just kind of funny because you know but we got to sit by first base if they did hit a ball i would have been afraid it would have knocked my face in you know uh_huh uh_huh really i'm glad my husband's not like that uh_huh uh_huh that's funny you miss the whole thing that's funny where is he from in france uh_huh yeah i have a i had a friend in college from [strasbourg] uh_huh paris and my cousin lives in paris and she's lived there for like oh off and on for twenty years uh_huh saint claude is that sound familiar yeah oh really uh_huh that's neat yeah she married and they have twelve children she has twelve children she looks gorgeous no she's gorgeous and she just liked having kids and she's thin and i mean four or more children are thin i mean i'm not kidding you no your i have a friend now that has seven and um and they're all eight and under and nine and under they're all real young they're just raised right that's what god's told them to do but they're not condemning you if you we only have one child you know they don't say they don't put on bad or anything which is good because it would be easy i'm sure for them to do that you get a conviction like that and you think everyone should have it and so i'm real proud of them because they're aren't really they don't do that at all you go in their bathroom and there's ten tooth brushes in there and i always give her a hard time who's [toothbrush] did you really use this morning uh_huh they live lean for one thing and they [tithe] and they it puts a whole in your money bag we don't honor god with this portion and so they i think that helps a lot i think that's the key in he like his sales last year he just works a normal job he probably has an income of thirty five thousand but last year he made that got him a bonus of twenty five thousand which allowed him to pay cash for a full size van he loves god i mean it was the biggest thing that any one in this company had ever done and he got to do it and so god just really [blesses] him in ways like that do trust god because i don't know kids are a blessing and and some people you know we think of [blessings] as nice furniture and things like that but kids are just as much of a blessing inside these material things but it's a different kind and a lot times people think oh well i'm not blessed i have an old car but you've got five kids you know you're just as blessed probably more because if you follow this there's a good book called what the bible has to say about child training by richard [fugate] and he's you know a lot of wisdom in it and the kids at bible talk about anything but training and training is different than anything else in in psychology doesn't address it a lot of the psychology stuff the good stuff that's in psychology it just comes out of the bible and they don't quote you the [proverb] out of it but the things that work in psychology other the years that they've proven to work they just come out of the bible and so this book it just really all these things and how to train the child so they're not going to be a curse to you when they're thirteen what i mean how to train them so they're going to be a blessing and so you know they do that and they they just live lean pretty much they don't she doesn't shop at foley's you know and stuff like that but a lot women die or shop at foley's so things it's like a [macy's] kind of store it's pretty nice and everything's pretty expensive and you know you just can't do that and you don't go to baseball games as much or you get pictures like we did you know what i mean you do these fun things you know in other kinds of ways and i know [manhattan's] real expensive but um it's kind of a different situation because you're probably living in an apartment right yeah well church softball leagues so they're not all boys and right now we don't have a girls' league because i'm the one that's supposed to start one and i just haven't gotten around to doing it i keep saying we need to have one they go okay then start one but everybody wants to do it but you know god's sitting on my heart and i just hadn't gotten around to doing it but anyway so they could really only have four members on the team i think they only have four boys i don't even think they have but two old enough to play yet but um then you didn't believe me about her kids are the they are so good i'm not kidding you but she does work with them and it's a commitment and that that's what they're called to do i have a most of my friends i know i do too i most of my friends have three or four kids and they feel like you know that's really why god and some of the people in our church use birth control and some of them don't i had my tubes tied so you well i'm only a little bit familiar with the red sox because i lived up in boston for a while and um and that's after that if you asked me that i wouldn't have been able to tell you if that was football or baseball yeah but at the same time i don't know it's pretty far to throw that far i couldn't do it right he's supposed to be able to do that oh really i didn't know that uh_huh yeah and i've been watching uh my husband's french and so if i've been watching the french news when i watch it it's incentive speaking of bush we're going to get a little off topic but speaking of bush they that had a story where he went to visit some little uh elementary school students and stuff did you see that where he the guy asked him for proof of who he was he said his i know and see a credit card it was so funny to see it was a really cute little kid too well i can tell you that the mets opened i think two days ago because my brother was supposed to go to the opening game and i couldn't tell you who pitched but they won the mets won but yeah not my a lot and then somebody else lost maybe it was the other new york team which is the yankees but i don't even know if they're still new york yankees or new jersey yeah well but it then they can have them play against each other i think it's still the new york yankees you know i thought they were moving to new jersey this is how much i know about baseball uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh with baseball tickets yeah wow because they're fancy seats and stuff i know i'm always scared of that whenever i go to a game i rarely go but we went last year because my brother my brother is impossible when um he does football leagues and baseball leagues and all kinds of stuff and if there's a game on he's watching it i mean that's all there is to it and he's like glued at the t v oh i'm glad my husband's not like that either i'd kill him my brother's like that and um see he goes to a lot of games not a real lot but he tries to go then my father got us some tickets so my brother's wife and my husband and i went last year we wanted to show my husband what a baseball game was because you know being a non american you want to see what a baseball game is like and he describes it as you sit there in a crowd it was nice weather and stuff it wasn't a real problem but you sit there in a crowd and you're waiting and waiting and waiting and you eat these lousy the hot dogs um because we made him try a hot dog you know and um so you sit there and you wait for the longest time really bored and then all of a sudden something happens but you happen to look the other way during the time yeah and so you're basically you sit there and wait for something exciting to happen and when it happened he missed it and didn't understand it and it um he grew up out well he grew up in which is the sort of o strip east to west eastern part but that yeah he's not that far he was sort of in between [strasbourg] and paris oh is she still there because yeah saint claude yeah we used to that's one of the um [entrances] to the [periphery] to get in and out of the city and it it it it sits right at the limit i exactly where she is but um we met in paris twelve children oh my god the poor woman were any of them twins you probably can't afford to eat if you have more than two of them uh_huh uh_huh but how do they afford to even have the kids uh we're expecting our first baby almost any day and uh_huh wow uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i i don't know what foley's is uh_huh yeah yeah well that makes a really big difference but but still it's just as hard as having that but your cousin could have a baseball team with twelve kids uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i admire someone that can do that you know i really can right oh how way back i mean okay so wally moon moon shots and all that yeah [coliseum] wally moon and all that okay yeah it's a um i i'm living in just west of baltimore and frederick um which is also just west of baltimore has a minor league team and uh and wally moon is the manager of them yeah so he's still kicking around oh i saw them um um i was out there last summer and i saw a game at [ned] [skelton] is that the stadium oh okay so um there used to be a uh race track yeah it was that was impression i got when i was there so okay yeah so had a lot of fun actually i mean i like minor league baseball a lot it's cheaper for one thing yes i think they're in for a odd year this year actually um they um i don't understand why [encovilla] got released i mean he you know he can't field and you know he strikes out a lot but i mean he's done that for five years why get rid of him now oh yes okay oh okay oh he fits right in with texas bunch of guys i mean with detroit bunch of guys that hit home runs and strike out a lot yeah well i mean with detroit i mean they can get away with one guy like that i mean if i if i were in detroit i would start building the team around fielder but that doesn't mean get three other guys who hit all they can do is hit home runs and strike out you know which they did so i think the [pitching's] deep enough that it doesn't matter i i like them a lot i think they're going to go all the way um and and i mean by saying i like them i like their chances i i actually don't like the dodgers i'm a giants fan from way back no but butler didn't hurt either uh and bobby [ojeda] didn't hurt and bobby [ojeda] they got him from the mets for [hubie] brooks um he's a a pretty decent pitcher he's okay you know he and uh that guy the short stop is going to be good um yeah i'm looking i've already been to one game and i should have been to two but um the the team i live and die with actually is the red sox mostly die but um i go to the orioles since they're here and i you know i do enjoy them um i've had an opening day on monday how far is houston oh okay keep forgetting how big states are out there sometimes yeah i um you know we're we're pretty lucky because if i want to see a national league team i can usually go up to philadelphia and um saw saw the cardinals and cubs last year and a bunch of teams the year before okay uh yeah um i try to see whatever i can i mean i've been to like thirty or forty games each of the last few years yeah hope i'm going to do it this year because um uh having a kid this fall so it's like so much for going to lots of baseball games yeah seriously yeah good talking with you and and you'll be happy i think in october when the dodgers win yeah i'll be i'll be upset probably even though my [prediction] will be right and good talking with you take care bye there we go well actually i'm a i'm a dodgers fan from way back um like um late fifties early sixties what's that yeah is that right that's interesting yeah i i also lived eight years in ohio before going to uh going away to college and i used to go watch the toledo [mudhens] uh i couldn't tell you for sure it's been a long time uh_huh yeah i think that's right well that's true i think i've kind of become a rangers fan over the last eleven years since i've been here uh they've led the american league in batting fielding and pitching but they've never been able to do more than one of those in any any given year so i don't either i mean the guy's twenty twenty five home [rums] maybe thirty eighty some r b i s really i mean he really has become a a very decent fielder he's not a the liability that he was that he used to be um yeah of course get a guy like [cecil] fielder you know if he strikes out a lot so what oh yeah right yep well i think the key for for l a this year is whether [oral] [herschiser] can come back it may be right right well picking up [darrell] strawberry didn't hurt uh who's the last one oh okay yes he is yes yeah well it should be an interesting year are you an orioles fan yeah yeah you know i kind of wish that they had inter league play like they do in all the other sports so i could see some of the national league teams here once in a while uh three hundred miles yeah it is it's incredible there you go boy you are a baseball fan aren't you interesting wow all right so so do it while you can sure well it's been good talking with you i wouldn't mind it yeah well god bless and good talking with you bye bye okay i hope you know more about the subject of baseball and where they're going than i do well i of all the sports that there are that there is i like baseball the best however i haven't been to a baseball game in years but i have kept uh my eye on the rangers you know and i guess they were doing pretty good up to a point and then they kind of fell on their face correct right they've got a one man show going there which is interesting you know um i guess he can i guess he can really call down a salary they're so astronomical i can't even imagine that kind of money you know it's just uh phenomenal well good i understand i understand okay uh you are involved with t i uh speech um recognition how did you find out about it oh okay i see interesting oh great i see uh_huh well that's good well that's interesting and the topics are interesting uh they run a whole gamut of of uh subjects and uh i think we can address every topic but the depth of knowledge is quite different so uh when they chose baseball i mean i'm i'm i can understand baseball you know i don't understand football um you know uh it's such a rugged game that it uh uh it seems to be too physical for my uh interest uh_huh well i i can relate to baseball because i used to play baseball but i can't relate to football because i've never played football and and don't and have any interest and i said if i ever had a son he would not play football and uh i had four daughters so that wasn't a question but now i have a grandson that you know is gung ho for uh football and uh that doesn't please grandma too much i'm always because the injuries are uh can be very very devastating i understand that but i think the they happen more in football i think the odds are cut down you know i i know they can get hurt in baseball too the bat is a very heavy object can do a lot of damage but uh i think that they have a a lower racial of injuries ratio of injuries in baseball because yeah a love for them uh_huh i see uh_huh did you did you sustain any permanent uh injury with that oh oh okay uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh boy uh_huh well i have uh i have a broken arm that i had since i was three it was never set right and uh uh i liked bowling as a as a kind of a relaxing sport and uh one of the men that was in our on our league uh noticed uh you know uh my broken arm and the way my ball would do and he says let me show you how to use your arm to your advantage and so he brought me up from like a hundred and fifteen i had my high game of two eighty seven so uh yeah um it was really funny you know that he would tell me where to stand and how to hold my arm and and how to uh follow through with my uh addressing that to put the ball the uh pins so that was interesting so i really um i got a lot of uh recognition from the uh uh the bowling league i guess i'm not sure where all my pins came from but it's but that was quite awhile ago but i and i never pursued it and a lot of people said well you should have turned pro and i thought no not i don't my love wasn't there for the game i liked to as a as a method of uh entertainment and i uh fellowship but outside of that no i didn't and i and i still i like to bowl but uh i don't have uh jack standing behind me to tell me what to do no i'm not no no uh at t i they have a sponsor a junior league achievement and uh it's true bowling and i've never uh shared that with them i would have to brush up on my bowling before i even tried to uh win a lot of money for the junior achievement uh organization but that's the only thing that i would you know be to do uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh still carries a good uh average oh i know a little bit about it i'm not a die hard fan but i i enjoy the i like the boston red sox myself uh_huh well with uh their biggest point of interest has been nolan ryan not the rest of the team lately so right oh it's amazing right well fortunately the red sox last time i saw the paper earlier this week were in first place and doing quite well um i've been really busy at work this past week and normally on my way into work i'll pick up a newspaper and uh so every day i'll have a newspaper at work and when i take a break i'll take a look at the newspaper but this week i've been so busy i didn't even bother to stop but hopefully hopefully next week i'll get back to my normal routine well not really i um i work at laboratory from uh i'm an officer in the air force and uh they have a speech lab across the hall from us and uh the speech laboratory does some work with uh t i at uh not in my office but uh in my division they do quite a bit of speech work sure sure uh_huh oh i prefer to i i like i never used to really like watching football that much but more and more these days i'm i'll like a football game but i've always liked baseball i i prefer to watch um i guess i'm one of the few people that also [prefers] baseball to football and i i'd much rather go to a baseball game than to a football game uh_huh uh_huh well well there's injuries in a lot of sport i'd i uh_huh uh baseball it's true i i would say that baseball tends to be one of the less troublesome sports but uh for some people it's just uh uh well that not so much that but uh even in baseball you can like when i played baseball when i was growing up i had trouble uh uh just throwing the ball because i very i was always very strong and i when i was young i could throw harder than my uh like ligaments and all that should have been allowed to and so i was always throwing my arm out and uh having trouble i and i was a catcher so i was constantly throwing back to the pitcher and then down to second base and all and that kind of stuff so i that was always a problem for me was just just the constant throwing so no i did that wrestling no i'd well i i uh always been quite an athlete and doing different things and um the other thing was i'd never really let injuries stop me but interestingly enough you mentioned football is like now i won't play football anymore because of the uh the separated shoulder wrestling so um but i stood the stood the injury wrestling but it as long as i let it heal it never really bothered me then playing football this fall i it was just flag football too i separated it again and it seemed to be like the straw that broke the [camels] back so uh_huh my god uh_huh uh_huh sure are you on you on any leagues now oh uh_huh right well my grandmother has been bowling for gosh maybe thirty forty years i don't know a long time and she still she's got to be well no she well what's your favorite baseball team rita well that isn't a a true false or right or wrong test here not a [cubbies] fan huh well that's all right how do you expect them to do this year okay well i'll tell you i just uh moved down from south dakota in july and uh in south dakota the minnesota twins are the closest professional sports team to where i was living and so everybody was a twins fan and i was kind of uh didn't have much interest in the twins you know it was it was kind of pathetic i mean we only had two radio stations and one of them broadcast every twins game live you know and and the other one was country so that's right there's was twins there or you know skip williams it sure was it sure was well i i would like to assume that they're going to do do better this coming year i was sure hopeful anyway when we moved down uh i was able to go to my first you know baseball game and thought this is great this is incredible so i became a rangers fan i didn't really have one in south dakota so i adopted the rangers or rather they adopted me i guess and uh it was just exciting you know you can watch baseball on t v and they hit the long ball and it looks like wow they really hit that ball but when you go to the ball park it's really not all that far you know and it's so much more exciting watching a ball come at you and that's right that's right the restaurant huh right that's right and he's still doing great still doing excellent well didn't he just sign a twelve year contract with the rangers management right that's right you know some of the like uh [ivan] [rodriguez] wasn't even born when when uh nolan ryan started pitching and it's just incredible to think that there's uh there are players who are the sons of ball players that used to play against nolan or with nolan you know and now their sons are uh_huh i wasn't was it nolan against uh ryan against ryan huh well that is neat uh_huh right well i suppose i'm supposed to say the rangers right is that what is the million dollar question here yeah uh uh you know i would like to say the rangers but unfortunately they're not i was from illinois and my favorite team was the white sox no no my family my dad was but i turned out to be a white sox fan i lived in chicago yeah they did pretty well what did you think of the world series uh_huh so you didn't really have a lot of choice did you or country yeah oh uh and i was [routing] for the twins myself because uh they a couple of ranger players that i had watched when we first moved here uh went to minnesota and we used to tease about my son and i used to have a bet going about some of the players that had moved from here to minnesota but it was it certainly was an exciting series anyway what do you think going to happen to the rangers or can we predict uh_huh uh_huh no oh isn't it though you know but oh i i think going to the ball park just really makes it because then you watch it on t v you feel like you're more a part of it too well i'm a great sports [enthusiast] so i love you know baseball teams and they in fact on the news tonight nolan ryan was on there he was being he was put in the which i never knew existed the restaurant hall of fame the restaurant hall of fame [inducted] him tonight and he uh says he's coming back you know uh he doesn't know how many years i mean to pitch he'll be at least one more and he said he's been saying one more and it's been two and three might be two and three more he likes it yeah that's right you know and he said i get a kick out of it you know he's he's such a nice man yeah and he you know when he quits at being active he will go into you know being a managing and yeah you know being a coach i'm sure but he's uh he certainly is a good example uh for the kids you know you like to have someone like that you could point to say see what a fine man that he is that's right uh_huh oh he's been a legend for so many years you know and i don't know were you here had you moved here yet when he did the exhibition at u t with his son his son pitched for u t and he pitched for an exhibition game for the rangers yeah it was a i think it was a little early part of the summer and uh nolan against ryan against ryan yeah his son pitched for u t and uh only uh ryan didn't want too much publicity on it because he didn't want his son getting too nervous about this whole thing a game is a game you know well the rangers really uh knocked the socks off of them which you would expect you know anyway but nolan i think took himself out after a couple of innings or something you know of the game so uh so my favorite team is about the rangers yeah i'm telling you you think they'll sign ruben no right yeah i think it's going to have a big effect if they don't on the other uh hispanic players i think that's going to be the big problem right yeah right oh right i think they just want to stay mediocre and draw their two million fans out there and then be happy with it and not have to pay the bucks to get a contender in here but right right yeah right right that's true but uh they were talking about trading him if they're not able to sign him and uh use the money that it would take to sign the guy you know to pay for pitchers or you know what it what it what they what else they need because they've got the hitting but they need the pitching um oh i know yeah it's sure aggravating when you go out and bust your butt working you know your day job and you can work your day job the rest of your life and not bring home as much money as they bring home in one game it's real aggravating but that's right it's always got yeah it's always it's always wondered me why i mean they act as though this area is not you know a big metropolitan area but you think we'd someday get an owner in here that could afford to buy the the the players we need just real aggravating to because i've lived here you know since well i was born and raised here so i've been a ranger fan since about seventy seven so it's a lot of losers it's about to get you know as bad as the cubs or whoever you know right right i'm telling you right i think this town would go crazy if they ever got a even a playoff team i mean it would be packed and they got that new stadium they are building so at least at least that will be exciting when we get that but uh it's hard to say it's going to be depending on where the what they do with ruben sierra and uh i mean i'm getting tired of them going into each year saying you know bobby [witt] is the answer and kevin brown is the answer and man that's getting old you know these guys have been pampered i mean it's time to to either you know put out or shut up and right and valentine and [greave] they're about to get you know they're about to get old but i like this sandy johnson is it i'd have to agree with that they are my favorite team too a little disappointing the last few years you know i really don't i just don't think you know with that guy from pittsburgh getting all that money twenty seven or twenty nine million or whatever it was i just don't think that they're going to be able to sign ruben sierra and it's just going to be a shame for you know our area oh i do too i just the main thing it's just going to effect on the the team you know we just can't seem to you know i think we've been in this spot i think we finished second once or maybe even twice i don't know i i'm i haven't been to a baseball game in a couple of years it's just it's just too disappointing i just watch them fall every year i was a pete incaviglia fan and uh i liked him but of course i understand baseball decisions are all just decisions like that have to be made by someone glad it's not me making them they say as long as they draw up two million fans that [greave] and valentine will be there so and that's the name of the game too you got to make money you know pay these players so much money now it's just it's frightening you and i should be so lucky to you know to go out and swing a bat and get two thousand dollars every time you swing the bat or something like that yeah they really do i think they uh i think they need them all i just don't i understand the big cities like in new york or l a or somewhere because big cities and you know a guy a pro athlete can go out there in the afternoon and probably make five thousand dollars just by doing a personal appearance at a at a men's clothing store or something or sporting goods store but i realize the difference but i just don't understand oh i know i tell you but one thing i don't understand is why a group you know headed up by george bush would buy the texas rangers and not really get behind them because i tell you we need a winner in this town it looks like our cowboys are coming back but so that's that's going to be a big help to dallas but you know in the past half a dozen years all we've had is the uh the soccer team oh i know it's oh i know i've been one yeah i've been i've lived here since seventy four and i've really been a ranger fan for the longest time and excuse me i don't miss a time picking up the morning paper and checking the box score i mean i follow them and i follow them like i follow the mavericks and like i follow the cowboys but and i want to see them win because you know damn it they the fans deserve it i mean it you know we have pretty uh great fans put two million people in that stadium i love nolan ryan i guess you probably love him too oh i do too it will well where do you think they are heading this year right yeah bobby [witt] gets forced into wins like seventeen games or whatever and they have the later ten game winning streak and they give him all kinds of money and then he just goes right down the tubes are you there okay now tell me your favorite team yes okay i think it's a little bit late in the season for them to assign us where do you think they're headed so we'll have to talk about the future with the rangers what are your [thinkings] on what they can do what they'll be able to do well i heard tonight on the news that he is willing to come down on his yes and the rangers go up a little bit uh_huh i think the entire baseball yeah they're the ones that probably are paying the highest and i think this is absolutely ridiculous no that's right what i saw on the news today that buechele was back just to visit i'm awful sorry he's not still oh i'm sure it was pittsburgh yeah yes sir well what do you think of howse who is the coach for the pitchers yes his assistant uh_huh i really wish they could see fit to get rid of howse no no i really don't and i'm not going to stand up you know on my [soapbox] and say that but i'm not fond of howse and i'm not fond of [grieves] yeah well i'm just [gullible] enough that i think bobby valentine is um uh doing all right and i'm sure well oh i know i know so but i would like so much for these rangers to get their act together and give um oh uh nolan ryan the support he needs i understand well i just oh i have so many mixed emotions about all this but i think with their new stadium they should go and let uh_huh uh baseball well i've been kind of been intrigued with the rangers uh more so with uh uh their management than anything else i i don't follow baseball that that closely but uh you know since i live here so close to arlington uh that's the team that i've been kind of following uh_huh right well i think that uh you know with uh so much controversy over ruben sierra not signing and asking us for so much money it's um you know i think i'm not real sure about do you know anything about ruben [sierra's] uh yeah that he was willing to come down a little bit and uh if the rangers will go up a little bit yeah but a little bit from three you know from thirty million dollars or thirty five that's a lot of money yeah they are uh_huh and i really think i really think that uh that they ought to i'm not real sure that they should pay him that much money i think they should uh uh pay him what his salary is going to be uh and let him because he's got one more year before he turns into a free agent and then uh who knows if he produces next year they may have to end up paying him anyway but if he doesn't then his market value will go down and they can pick him up for for a lot less than than they would uh if they paid him the you know the six million dollars a year this year uh_huh oh yeah but you know what he that was a great deal for him yeah it was a great deal for him and and uh he just signed on uh i think it was like a five year deal with uh pittsburgh so you know he's real happy there as far as the rangers are concerned i think i think they need some definitely need some pitching uh and so i you know i the pitching coach well you know i was just looking at the news tonight and they showed a a a black guy that was was helping out uh his assistant and i think that's a a great addition i mean he seemed to know what he was doing and and uh oh you don't like howse huh oh tom grieve yeah i'm i'm not sure that um that they're ready to get rid of of uh tom grieve yet but howse might be a different uh situation and i think you're probably right that they that they need some you know some changes in uh pitching coach maybe and um you do huh that's contrary to uh popular belief you know oh i know you know it's too bad that uh it has to be a forty two year old guy to to lead the uh the rangers you know they need to have some some young guys that can take the lead and and uh yeah okay so what do you think of the giants yeah oh yeah yeah wasn't that something of him yeah that's really a really proud of him though the way he's you know yeah really you know yeah i just don't understand why they're not right up there on the top you know yeah um i was mostly an a fan you know i had been to more games at the a than i have in the giants because uh i lived in oakland you know for some time but uh i still like the giants though you know yeah right uh_huh yeah right right yeah yeah right well i prefer uh football over baseball but uh yeah it's so hot dogs baseball and apple pie huh yeah um so what do you think is going to happen this year to the teams i know yeah well the giants are yeah makes you sick doesn't it yes he's like a little bitty kid huh yeah yeah well i guess the giants or might move away from san francisco it sounds like you know uh they won't be that far away but san francisco will be hurting anyhow you know uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i know isn't that something i couldn't believe that huh yeah i just it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah i couldn't believe that you know i don't uh there was braves in that [chanting] that they had that would drive you up a wall you know yeah well you're right yeah yeah yeah oh really uh_huh uh_huh yeah right no uh they give you a list of things that you want all right uh i like the giants they got uh i probably didn't get into baseball until maybe maybe three years ago really so uh but i i just like the giants i don't i don't know why i really got into them i read uh dave [dreveki's] book his autobiography and yeah that that was incredible the way he handled that entire situation there but i just think the giants have a good team they they got all you know they're they're they're real balanced out they got real good pitching and they got the hitting to go along with it so yeah they just they need that i think they just need that one one element to push them over the top you know i don't really know what it is but but every team that's that's really good seems you know like the a had they had they just had it all that one year so yeah yeah yeah if you're a fan you got to stay with the team any way you know you good and the bad but it's it's kind of hard i still basically the the me and all my friends around here since we don't have anywhere i mean we can go to the astros or the rangers teams but since me none of me and my friends are really really like either one of those teams so we uh about about the most baseball we get is either t v or we play it on nintendo we play r b i baseball on nintendo so so that's just you know that's small town trying to make it through the not being around it really but yeah yeah so do i but baseball is still you got you got to do something when football ain't on so yeah exactly this is america so but uh i don't know it's hard to say i haven't really really you have to just keep up with everything in the season it's kind of hard to do at least you know you have to read the paper and sports illustrated and everything to keep up with who they traded and who they picked up and and all that but like i say if they can if they can get that one element that they were missing i think the giants can do it they just i don't yeah i don't really know about the a s i don't like the a uh matter of fact i can't stand the oakland a just because they have uh you know they've got their jose [canseco] and and all the attitude that goes along with that you know they kind of yeah you hear what you hear what you hear what he did he [ramming] his wife's car and i was like yeah yeah he's just a a a little boy with a lot of money so that's just you know but yeah i've heard i've heard talk about that yeah they're not going to be happy about it but i hope they can do good i mean that's just i think they're a good team that just need that one one little thing to push them over i don't know exactly what it is they got they're pretty balanced out all the way through it just might be the drive you know more than anything else they just they probably just need something to push them because i that's that's the only thing i can see that's holding them back is the ambition to do it or somebody basically maybe they just need everybody to tell them they can't do it maybe that's what you know that's what some teams need look at the twins going from worst to first yeah my roommate my [roommate's] a twins fan for forever so he had his year this year so we got we we got into that a whole bunch that was a that was a series to remember for sure so i saw all seven games of that so that was definitely worth watching yeah yeah they every team with the indians been doing that now i can't figure out why you have to figure out why they're all doing that i'm like it's doesn't work it's obvious it doesn't work because the you know the braves braves didn't win so uh why keep on doing something that didn't work but i don't know i was i was kind of surprised that we were going to talk about baseball and i get a woman's voice i was i was i was thinking uh_huh i talked to a guy named [vinny] last night about fixing your car so yeah i got i called got a call the other night about uh fixing your automobile up so well baseball's baseball it's kind of i don't know it's kind of odd they pick do you pick the topic or does the computer i imagine you can't escape it well of course it was fun for you to oh really i was born and raised in uh near miami and uh spent the last twenty years in dallas uh where the rangers played and uh for the last uh what year roughly year i've been in san francisco where there are two teams the oakland a and the san francisco giants uh but honestly you know i uh i do my duty and watch the sports on uh the [newscasts] but that's about all the exposure i have to sports uh_huh oh yeah sure well i guess the uh san francisco giants and the oakland a were like the leading teams a couple of years ago well i well i don't know that's sort of what i gather um and uh i don't know what is the [prognosis] for uh this year good i i assume that means good for the minnesota yep i think a train went by i know a train went by i don't know what the noise was but i think it probably was the the train well i don't know i i i don't even know uh who has been winning in uh as far as the uh san francisco giants and the oakland a but i think they both won their opener i uh sort of gathered that in my uh subliminal memory huh uh_huh i guess they are different leagues is that right the a yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh eighty six huh well they must play every day then i mean eighty six times two is a hundred sixty and that's lord that's uh over five months worth even if they play every day that's over five months worth no that was the super bowl i don't feel so bad i think you you don't know all that much more than i do about baseball i see okay oh really okay well i i know uh the super bowl actually i'm in like i said i'm in minneapolis and the big thing up here of course is the twins uh no it's it's pretty [pervasive] it kind of goes into about all aspects of society i think up here but uh actually i don't know how much of the world series you caught last year but that was a lot of fun well to be honest with you i'm not from minneapolis in fact i've only been up here a few months and i'm going back at the end of next month uh orlando florida so i'm not exactly a real twins fan from birth or anything but oh yeah oh uh_huh right oh okay yeah i haven't followed it real closely at all uh except like i said last year when the world series rolled around i did i did follow that pretty religiously went out into the bars you know drank a beer watched the game had a a good time that way but uh is that right uh_huh uh real good as far as i can tell people are pretty excited about it well yeah sorry about that yeah uh as far as the twins are concerned it seems to be real good uh my roommate went and saw them play on their season opener a couple of nights ago and they they won that one seven to one so uh that's pretty good i guess it looks like they'll be doing pretty well are you still there okay i heard some noise on the line didn't know what happened oh okay all right yeah uh_huh well maybe that has has good [tidings] for their uh for their season coming up i've actually got a friend that's living in san francisco right now uh he's doing the same thing i'm doing which is basically uh an internship we we're both doctoral students and he's doing his with i b m and i'm doing mine with honeywell but uh i i think he kind of follows the sports and i think he's mentioned uh the oakland a a couple of times uh he may have watched them and seemed to think that they were pretty good as far as i know yeah and in the major leagues i guess there is a couple of different divisions and then of course there's the [minors] uh i don't know i i guess i'm one of those people that if i really made a concentrated effort i could really probably get into baseball uh but i was talking to my roommate a couple of nights ago right after that game and he offered you know to take me to one of the games because apparently he'd bought uh he and four other people from honeywell had bought a seat or a row of seats actually for the home games but the thing is there's like eighty six home games per year so there's no no way that you can ever use them all eighty six i was amazed to hear that you know that's just the home games and i i thought it was a mistake but he goes no yeah well just about yeah yeah and that's you know yeah that's almost that's a lot of baseball well you if you if you consider it the season starts well it's the season started about a week and a half ago and it ends with the world series which usually takes place i believe in december or january yeah i think so it did last year didn't it or was it november maybe it was november i'm thinking about i know it was doggone cold up here uh well i know for sure it was i know it was after september because that's when i got up here and and it was at least two months after i got up here yeah so it had to be november anyway oh now we can talk about that great team you you think he's worth it who could be worth that huh i i think they'd be better off trading him off for two million and a half dollar a year pitchers they can win some twelve games each that's true that's true i think you're right i i think that as long as they they keep that uh management team i don't think there is going to be a winner i agree with you yeah oh i'd stay for five million bucks a year they could twist my arm well i i i don't either i i think uh you know the whole whole sports have gotten out of control and watch watch a game on t v they got so many ads to pay for the thing if i can fall asleep during a football game wake up and not have missed a missed a down for crying out and that's the way baseball's going turn into it is they they have gone up to uh last year ninety seconds between innings instead of a minute and they keep [escalating] the salaries as they are i think they're going to wind up with as much you know advertising as they do uh playing ball and uh it's going to eventually kill the golden [goose] i i think i oh i i enjoy i enjoy them both i i uh [refereed] football for yeah i think uh amateur you know high school and college is a lot more enjoyable to watch than uh you know football than than the pros they're just sitting around i last cowboy game i went to they were sitting around uh between plays so long uh i don't see how they can break a sweat for heaven sakes you know just waiting on ins and uh it it's too bad yep yeah then they got then they got another six more commercials yep but they won't they they want the money you know and uh yeah they're they're greedy and they you know they all admit it's a business and that's what comes first and that's probably what the is is a major problem with the rangers they make money and they don't uh as long as they make money and are respectable they don't make a you know they aren't going to pay the bucks out to be a winner and lose money and that's apparently what it takes what it what what it's taking right now tell you what i got i got to keep talking to you but i think this is my car guy calling on this line so we're we're we're probably almost done but hang on just hello yes good uh well that's that's okay hang on a minute andy okay we'll finish this off i've been waiting five days for my car so he can wait a couple seconds here well uh i guess the thing about the brewers is i think their personnel policies have been a little [misguided] lately uh i think that's their main problem uh they seem to have stuck with the same core of players uh robin [yount] paul [molitor] and jim [gantner] who uh they're real good players but they seem to just depend on them to produce a pennant and it it isn't working except for [papa] ryan anyway yeah that's right he can't win them all for him yeah i think uh the thing about the brewers is too their pitching they never have really had real good pitching uh last time they had really good pitching was back in the early eighties when they got to the world series with uh people like [vuckovich] and fingers yeah yeah and of course uh he got them to the series but then just before the series that year in eighty two he uh uh threw his elbow out or something shoulder or elbow i can't remember which and uh they're number two right [hander] in the [bullpen] pete [ladd] who was kind of a [rookie] that year uh had to take his place and uh i think that's why they lost the series because in in game two in saint louis they had a pretty good lead going into late innings and [ladd] got [rattled] when he didn't get some calls and they ended up losing the game uh old [mustache] fingers would not have done that i can't remember if he's made it or not yet he he may not have been i don't know when he retired actually yeah but that was i think eighty two was well eighty one was the year i think that he won the the uh cy young and the m v p and the fireman of the year award all at the same time i think but uh but in eighty two i think he won something some kind of award had a lot of saves anyway well i'd forgotten that [gossage] was with the rangers the the he was this year last year now did they pick him up uh sometime in the middle of the season or who yeah yeah well he's been quite a [reliever] in his time yeah well we'll be looking for them to uh to improve in that area i guess because at least the uh now that i think about them a little bit i'm getting sort of back through the football season back into baseball i realize when you think of the rangers now you got a real good looking young [outfield] there for the most part and uh quite a few of the [infielders] are uh probably have real good careers still ahead of them i'm not sure why they got rid of buechele but i guess it worked out for him okay yeah old [inky] went the wrong way though didn't he now who did they trade him to i cleveland detroit oh oh they released him really didn't they yeah my goodness when he was when he was when he could really get into a ball though he was uh had a lot of power i tell you he reminds me a lot of [gorman] thomas remember him center fielder for the brewers there for a while there is a guy uh well i don't think his fielding was generally that bad yeah right yeah he did get better and i think uh he was one of george [bamburger's] big projects when he took over the uh milwaukee he was the guy that was up and down uh uh i don't really have a favorite baseball team but of course the rangers play here and and they've made a whole team history of trading away players that become all stars later on so well uh several pitchers [toby] [harra] and uh doc [meddich] a another pitcher and of course now they've they've [sunk] all their money into nolan ryan so they have they have ruben sierra and they have uh uh [julio] franco yeah and they they traded away um incaviglia to detroit i think and then he hit more home runs this year than he'd ever hit before uh no well they get them from you know puerto rico and mexico and minor leagues the baseball baseball has a big minor league system especially in a a few players come out of college and then more players um go straight to the [minors] and that gives them time to see uh pitching at a higher speed you know yeah they do it's it's mostly in the schools the i think the biggest thing here is soccer uh_huh uh_huh right yeah uh_huh no there's not [california's] the nearest place yeah uh no just in p e uh it's it's pretty big here in high school and they've had several players um picked in the draft you know they they're picked in lower rounds especially pitchers uh but mostly they just go on to college because because they need the experience and the education so uh_huh right yeah yeah i i um i enjoy playing and it took always took me we'd play you know during the spring semester always took me about six weeks before i could see the ball before i could hit the ball and uh but i enjoy i enjoy uh watching the all star game and the world series was really good this year there there were some spectacular catches and a lot of home runs and they had uh several double plays you know and uh no it was uh uh minnesota twins versus the atlanta braves and both the teams were in last place at one point in the season uh_huh then they fought their way back up to the top and then of course minnesota won i think in the seventh game and ended up so it was really exciting right and it looked for a while like atlanta was going to win you know before they went back to minnesota but it didn't happen yeah my favorite team's probably the reds yeah i'm from cincinnati yeah yeah but uh most national leagues teams i'm pretty familiar with oh really yeah that's what i thought even last year i thought they'd be doing pretty good yeah he's pretty exciting to watch yeah i think those dodgers you got to look out for with all the the hitting they've got right they got davis from the reds yeah and uh they traded away for some pitcher too yeah because they dumped [belcher] and they got someone else i forgot his name though yeah it seems like they always get the the high paid guys and they always seem to end up doing pretty good for a while well they just signed uh what [bonilla] from pittsburgh yeah yeah no i keep up on it yeah i tell you though he's getting what six million a year or something yeah you got to think bonds is worth more than that too no he's looking to leave from what i hear yeah they signed a couple of their pitchers who are going to be free agents yeah yeah they got [walken] someone else they [resigned] they're not going to give them more than six million a year they can't afford it yeah yeah you got to like the underdog yeah pretty much yeah up where we are we don't get much baseball news but uh i try to keep up on it yeah reading the little [transactions] column is about all we get i don't know they really surprised me last year and they dropped off so quick yeah too many attitudes out there too many attitudes out there i think they got a lot of high paid players that could start somewhere else as a backup yeah or steve [pickett's] yeah but they were in the world series so many years straight and then they were like third or fourth or something yeah the reds did the same thing players then down into fifth yeah you figured after all the rose stuff was over everything would be fine and it was but then i don't know what happened last year yeah but he always is i mean that's why they got rid of him he only plays like half a season yeah he kept on saying that uh the reds should switch to natural grass just for his knees but uh they never did but they got that out in l a that should help him yeah third base yeah yeah i can remember going to games there when i was a kid yeah because it looks small on the outside yeah anytime you try to walk down the the [ushers] are always taking you back what uh what baseball teams do you follow uh_huh uh_huh um yeah uh_huh oh i guess mainly the the rangers such as they are they do seem to have a pretty tough division though with oakland and kansas city and white sox all uh [jammed] in there oh i get to i don't know quite a few in the summer uh_huh yeah it looked like they're starting off kind of shaky but they they've gone i guess over five hundred now i was hoping that no hitter that he threw would would get them fired up a little bit but it's hard hard to tell uh i was trying to think they were up in a stand at detroit i don't know if they're playing today or not uh_huh uh_huh yeah says a lot for their future oh i don't really follow them a whole lot um i i hear about them occasionally i've got a friend whose a a trainer for one of their farm clubs i think so we hear off and on about them they've never really done a whole lot i mean they're up and down kind of like the rangers are most of the time um it's been probably three or four years since they were i think they finished second in their division i don't remember what they ended up last year third or fourth i guess yeah they have been off and on uh maybe maybe three or four times since they've been here uh_huh well they've been like a lot of teams and the minute they do real badly in the past they just got got rid of their manager this is [valentine's] the first manager they've had in on you know any kind of length of time and so hopefully he'll eventually put something together i i can't i don't know uh sometimes i think he is and sometimes i wonder uh_huh yeah true i guess i was feeling pretty confident about the team valentine this year until uh he got mad at pete incaviglia and just cut him for because he was upset at him well i i can understand his point i thought it was kind of [childish] to just cut him instead of trying to trade him because then detroit picks him up and he started out real good for them and he he's gotten kind of shaky now and i think they should have at least gotten something for him yeah i think so yeah yeah i think i think as long as he produces he and franco they they run kind of hot and cold too i think franco hit a home run was it last night to win the game i think they won six to five and i think that was on his he hit a home run at the end and broke the tie up um yeah that'd be nice yeah i think the rangers have the pitching staff they need if they would just produce some offense they might do all right yeah you said you were a cincinnati fan has uh all this [brouhaha] over pete rose over the years caused caused you any [distaste] for them or uh_huh yeah sure uh_huh didn't didn't seem to really hurt the team in fact seemed to kind of fire them up and make them work harder after he was gone uh_huh yeah uh_huh really sure i enjoyed talking to you fred you too well course my favorite team is the texas rangers so i watch them all the time and who do you watch the mets this isn't their best season is it well the rangers are a few games behind minnesota but if we could win the next oh i guess we'd win have to win most all of them we could still go to to the race to do the well i watched the two games the last two nights oh is that right pardon i think they're out six and so they have to still win almost every single game that they have to play to the end now or else yeah yeah i don't know minnesota's won a good game they're they're doing a good job this year i don't know they really but i'm going to watch tonight because nolan [ryan's] going to pitch so i always like to watch him pitch yeah uh_huh well uh we just traded buechele and i really liked him but he's gone now so i i guess uh sierra i like to watch him bat yeah he's he's really good [franco's] good except that uh he's got injuries right now his [hamstrings] down in the bottom of his legs he can't run very well but he usually hits a home run then he just [trots] around the bases it's okay and uh yeah well they've moved him now since he can't move that quickly since it hurts him they moved him to second base and they moved [petralli] into that area in that runs now in between the [shortstop] area and he takes second base uh sierra let's see yeah [sierra's] into the see middle field or left field he's not in left field he must be center field do you oh now what's that i don't know what that is oh oh oh yeah that's right uh no not too not too much i i guess i just don't watch them that much uh i like to watch the oakland a's play they have a lot of good players too but i haven't watched them for a while so i don't know how they're doing too well this season uh once every so often mostly rangers games come on because that's our area but uh every once in a while on a saturday or a sunday they'll put a another league on you know but it's it just depends how the you know how they fill the time sometimes anyway i uh we got what oh is it oh well it's kind of fun yeah uh isn't it's a fun thing i think you'll like it it's a it's a new thing to do and uh anyway we just uh if you get run out of things to say then you say good bye it was nice talking to you too and have a good day uh i guess i've had to return something but i'm can't decide mostly it's been because i didn't like the color or um i'm not sure whether i've had to return that many things uh oh are you okay good so we'll talk about that some right okay i'm going to let you kind of lead the pack because you sound like you're let me tell you just a little bit about myself i for years i did all that shopping and whatnot but for the last four or five years i've had eye problem and i've had two [cornea] [transplants] shopping is no fun anymore i can't see good enough you know and uh it's hard to tell what i'm doing and it's just oh i just thought of something we have to return all right it it'll come to us okay are you ready laurie all right all right uh tell me about your computer laurie i think that sounds fascinating uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yes uh_huh oh lovely huh oh no the computer was supposed to have two oh i see i see in some ways it has more to do with the people who sold it they probably didn't know what they were talking about right huh uh_huh uh_huh oh jeez huh yeah it really is right and and so much time goes past before you finally get any kind of satisfaction i think that's the worst part i now that's an advantage isn't it it really is i think uh uh there's a lot not to be said for credit but that's one thing to be said for credit it how it gets you some muscle where you need it and i think that's really important yeah that's right that's right that's right no yeah they will that's right they will they will put the kind of clout on them that you can't really do yeah we hal bought me uh uh small uh well uh uh little jam box kind of thing so i'd my i have my ninety three year old mother living with us and so i she doesn't remember anything but to keep her entertained music and some of these things do help and i thought well if i had uh a a nice little um tape recorder you know so that i could put some good music on in there for her every once in a while and then also so that i can uh uh copy uh parts off i i do some musicals and things like this and if i can copy sections off that i can use someplace so i figured well this will be good well the first uh uh the first time i turned it on uh i was recording and the next thing i knew the tape was chewed up in the thing okay so after that then you couldn't get a you couldn't get a tape to play at the right speed in that side and then on the other side when i when i uh i loaned it to my daughter the other day to take it over to uh to uh [videotaping] they were doing and she says it's wrong too because the little thing [pokes] out too far and so you can't you can't get it to run the right the right way either so uh yeah so i i wish i could tell you i really don't know which brand it is it's yeah no i think this is a i think this is maybe a name brand and i suspect that it's probably just a fluke you know i have the papers and everything and we're going to get just take it back but uh yeah i think just uh just uh one of the major i think it was a you know i don't i think it was uh you know like a highlands or something like this do they have highlands up there don't they well this is is was a regular uh electronics store you know so i don't think i don't think there will be too much problem but i i guess i'm not sure whether i think things are not made as well i think they deliberately sometimes um don't you what what for instance what are you yeah that's good they're getting a kind of a attitude of not yeah well yeah yeah i think that's right the fact that right the fact that they that they have competition with the japanese and whatnot sometimes uh [dwells] on a fact that you know uh i've had i've known people who have had toyotas for years that have had almost no repair work to do on them well they may cost a little more but they don't have to take them to the shop every other day yeah it does the it did a good job so part of it is that we need to develop more of a of a pride in in uh the kinds of things we do so we make them better and it kind of has to start from the top and and go or from the bottom maybe and go clear up people no yeah yeah attitude is is just get me my dollar so i can go do what i want to do and on what i'm doing right i think that's too bad and it's a shame too because uh when you get right down to it most things there isn't any if you do a good job nobody can pay you enough there isn't any way to get paid enough but if you do a good job you feel enough satisfaction so whatever you're paid is enough uh_huh that's right i think they [underestimate] how much how much value the satisfaction is yeah yeah yeah no it it probably basically goes right back into the home though unfortunately starts with the one person that you know and so you need to really work hard at helping your kids to understand that there is value just in work for itself without any pay you know yeah the the the that the value is in doing it well and uh_huh well i'm having a problem right now with a computer that we've just returned so for me it's actually a pretty good topic yeah well we could talk about that and then we could talk a bit about um just quality of products in general if they're better or worse like if they last longer or something like that oh i can imagine well see i don't you can't read labels and you can't good there you go okay yeah right well we bought a computer because my husband needed to use it to do some work for a consulting project and we called up the company and asked them details on it we bought it sort of your not a name brand because the clones are so much cheaper and we called up the company that somebody else we knew had dealt with and they were very happy with the system and they felt they've gotten a good price and we went in we explained what we needed and yes we had to go across the george washington bridge to new jersey to get to meet these people and so we went there we told them about the stuff and the guy said uh that the computer would fit our needs and we these things won't make any sense to you probably but he told us there were we need user positions to put our own equipment in the computer and it's called a user boards or slots is what it's called and he told us there's two sixteen bit slots and two eight bit sorry two four sixteen bit slots and two eight bit slots available for the user and we can put full size cards in there and so we said great you know we'll buy it and we put in our order and a week later we went back and picked up the computer and then we got it home and tried to put our own board in it and there's only one slot we could put it in and at this point we only have one board so it wasn't so bad so we used it a bit but we tried to figure out whether we could put three in because we really need to be able to put at least three in and well it has them but the problem is that you can't put the type of card that we need to put in it in it and even though they told us in advance that you could they told us there would be no problem because you know the salesman just doesn't really know right that's completely it the salesman didn't know so we went back in and we struck an agreement with the people who said change the [casing] it comes in so that we could put in extra boards okay so they did that and we said are you sure this will work we don't want you to go through the work and then find out that this doesn't really work anyway and et cetera and they're they were doing it at their own costs and so we said fine and we went back and we talked to the person a second time and things like that and then we come we get the computer home my husband goes to pick it up last week and we couldn't go get it sooner because i just had the baby and you know life's just a little bit complicated and uh he goes and gets it brings it home first of all they're missing components of it like [cables] so you can't really test it out and then second thing we still can't put the boards in because they have other things [blocking] where we need to do it and see now we're dealing with having to bring it back again and they say they can you know do something different and change some [connectors] and we hope so but it's a hassle you you know it's just this problem with sales people just not knowing what goes on right so well actually some things are pretty good with that because i put it on a gold credit card and i just called the credit card company and explained to them the situation and they said well you don't have to pay for it yet yes yeah right so and so you know well because these guys if they um give us a hard time we're going to say you look you know if if you can't fix this to our satisfaction we're just returning the computer and if we do that i just tell the credit card company don't pay the charge even though they've already paid it but they'll just you know undo the credit that they did to them yeah right and uh_huh uh_huh oh no uh_huh uh_huh what brand is it do you know but i was wondering like you know in our case where we knew we were buying a copy we weren't buying on i b m p c and i was wondering if you uh_huh do you buy it at some major store highlands chain down there that i don't know up here nope uh_huh i think a lot of things are not made as well um oh of course it's hard to think of an exact example but i think that um i yeah i just have well i like electronic stuff you know for one thing i know their work you know cars i think are not made as well as they could be um because i they want people to replace it after a couple of years uh_huh yeah i had a toyota and i loved it my toyota did really well good yeah well i think part of the problem comes in sort of shoddy [workmanship] the people just don't care about what they're doing you know the whole nobody cares no nobody's really paying right give me my paycheck so i can go home yeah yeah and also i think well i do research and so i'm used to sort of being underpaid for whatever work gets done but and you get satisfaction out of it and but i think a lot of it you know i think things come both from the uh individual side and also from the company side because the companies that let give the attitude that well you know you're the last one hired so you'll be the first one fired and we just want you to do your days work and we don't really care about you as an individual when you've got that type of attitude on it the people don't care about their work and so little value just in whatever you do doing a good job of it okay hi norma have you taken anything back lately uh that you've bought well why very good good well do you think that uh consumer goods goods are generally getting better or worse in quality i do too i believe about ten years ago that we went through a terrible time but i don't i i believe that they're better now you know however i didn't like it very well when the transmission went out on my car with sixty three thousand miles on it and i don't like it very well if when my electric blanket that was only one year old went out at uh on one side no i had moved away i had taken the first one back i didn't think that it heated well enough it never did get anything but just moderately warm took it back and uh the people told me well that's the way it's supposed to be and i fell for it and uh when i got this one it did a it heated a little bit warmer and then after one year it started heating only on one side also i took an iron back after having it only one year now i figure uh anybody that is dumb enough to iron needs to have an iron that will last a long time and one year of ironing only once a week is not long enough for it to last well without even any question but i think it was the store wal mart yes and uh well have you been buying any clothes lately any new clothes that was poor quality i think i wondered if it weren't expensive and they should have put buttons on it that would last forever yes you spent that much on your dresses you're really [divulging] very personal information oh of course i do too well i believe that we've been talking about five minutes and norma it is just wonderful to talk to you you are a good one to talk about consumer goods because you keep up on it all the time bye bye hi well the only thing we've taken back recently are plants shrubbery that were guaranteed and we had no problem with it we got our got our money back well i believe they're better i think so i don't think they're shoddy not as shoddy electrical appliances i think are pretty good reliable right oh did you return it no uh_huh huh so either you or your husband can be warm but not both oh no huh_uh did they replace it uh_huh wal mart i was going to say it must have been wal mart i haven't bought any new well the last thing i bought was a dress last summer and the buttons turned on it over the winter the buttons [tarnished] slightly and i have not gone back about it i think it is too and it was an expensive dress yes it was that's right that's what i think too and one belt loop the uh you know like the chain link chain belt loop half of it [raveled] out and that was i believe a leslie [faye] dress and it was i think over a hundred dollars yeah i don't usually but i did that one but i think it should have been better than that for that money is what i mean okay i think so good talking to you too i've enjoyed it well we'll be talking to you later bye bye okay when they first said the subject my mind went kind of blank i thought gee i haven't taken anything back for a long time yeah yeah uh_huh right uh_huh of course uh_huh right right just to get you by five years and then you'll throw it away rather than have it fixed we're we're a wasteful society for sure right right and you usually get what you pay for we bought some [walkie] [talkies] a couple of years ago for christmas and they were like ten dollars and we expected them to work nice for the little kids and they didn't work worth anything so we took those back and that's about that all that were taken back in ages yeah right right oh really it's hard oh wow uh_huh and it just [pertained] to that i at first i thought of food you know because that's what mainly what i buy it seems like and uh you know i still don't have any anything to do there but but i i think too a lot of people don't buy their warranties either because they know that when it's that old they're going to buy a new one so yeah my husband is really good at fixing things too so he usually be able to fix anything that's minor and and that has saved us thousands of dollars you know from to mechanic to anything like that but but it was interesting to i don't know if they're making them better or not i it's hard to say some i think they more of their parts plastic which you know makes things break easier but i think the technology is better about quality right yeah yeah right well people aren't willing to pay those prices very often so you know for a [handcrafted] something so so so if we get what we what we deserve well i haven't either uh i i hate returning things i mean i i have a friend who if she likes something isn't sure what size somebody might need will buy it in every color and size and you know take everything back again it's you know it's a game to her but i i do not like to do that i consider it kind of a a waste of my time and so i'm usually uh pretty careful when i shop and i also you know usually have have checked over things you know if it's like an appliance or something to make sure uh it has the features in it that i want now we've had one lately um oh a uh a [dustbuster] plus that we bought and we've had it for a while but all of a sudden it just wasn't working and it looks like there's a part missing from it my husband opened it up and whatever and of course we don't have the receipt any more so we can't take it back uh but i think a lot of goods are made not to last real long uh yeah well that's true and lot of times though it is it costs so much to get something fixed that you almost are just as well off buying another one you know if it's uh_huh well yeah i think a lot of times if you get a brand name uh you know if it's a a good brand i you i think there's there can be a lemon in anything but uh i think more often than not you you pretty well know what you're getting ahead of time and uh you know if you buy a good one you shouldn't have any you know too much of a problem with it i mean we we had a car once that we tried to have declared a lemon under the lemon law which is extremely difficult to do we never could get it declared a lemon and the car would go and without any warning whatsoever you could be going down the freeway at sixty and it would stop and i there was just you know and oh we went round and round with the manufacturer and and everything and they got it finally [semifixed] but it was such a hassle yeah yeah it it really is uh but gee this is of all the topics i have had i'm doing this thing this is kind of the strangest one uh_huh well i think that's true and i uh now we generally don't buy a warranty because you think you know at least for the first couple of years nothing should go wrong with it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh i think technology is better i'm i'm not sure i think you've got a good point with the plastic and that i don't think necessarily that things are being made better uh you know i i everything is so automated uh and things can be made without i think a human hand ever touching it you know an awful lot of things and i think that certainly makes a difference from back from the time when somebody [handcrafted] something and you know had some pride in it well yeah that's that's true yeah well i i do uh you know craft work and sell stuff at shows and that and uh uh you know it's it's it's a real eye opener as far as you know why people charge what they do to you know return anything right most the time they have a pretty good guarantee yeah the only thing i've had lately is uh my kids got all these barbie kind of toys for uh christmas and uh it takes them less than a day and they're broken in one way or another but i don't know if that's just kids or if that's uh maybe those type of products should be for older kids i have a five and a half and a three and a half year old that play with them and uh i don't think they're [unduly] rough but maybe they are i don't know but uh a lot of the little barbie sets they come with real little pieces and they're easily lost and easily broken but it's been a while since they've uh gone through the barbie stuff right don't remember her breaking uh well that's one thing they've got they've got every type of [imaginable] camping on the beach and all of these come with oh like tiny tiny little plates and little [sunglasses] and uh my three and a half year old has wanted this ken doll and so i finally got her a ken doll and uh less than a week later the arm was broken but they were real good about replacing it that's one nice thing is they're real good about replacing it right well the the you know those little arms are supposed to twist almost any way and she's not that strong that i would she's not that big of a girl that i think could really take a [grip] on it like a bigger kid could you know yes that was about it and the barbie doll itself is usually pretty durable and that kind of stuff but oh is that right well do you see that there's a big problem with electronic things don't buy them because you don't need them yes oh yeah yes well you almost assume if you're going to have problems with it it's usually before that warranty would [expire] any the first one you never even needed it it's time to replace it yes i think these extended warranties are [gimmicks] really a lot of it we bought when we first married we bought one on our t v and that there's it was a five year after the first five years and it was ridiculous yes they're a pretty healthy price and you're trying to think oh maybe i'll need this you never you always think gosh if i say no then i won't you know but i don't know you probably got your worth out of it anyway yes the little well you probably are real careful of the brands you buy and the when you do buy things you probably watch what kind of type of yes well really the only things that i have returned have not been [faulty] it's been because of the size or some problem like that i really haven't had to return things because they didn't perform the way they were supposed to uh_huh what age are your children uh_huh uh_huh well my daughter is twenty one now so it's been a while since we've had barbie things but we did have barbies we did have barbies and things and there seems to me that that became a craze when she was already oh like you know third fourth fifth grade so she wasn't in it for very long before she was out of it but uh i don't remember her breaking a lot of stuff no i don't but i also don't remember lots of little pieces they've got so many different things with it now goodness oh dear well uh i guess if they'll replace them then they assume they shouldn't have broken any direction uh_huh right yeah the main thing that they've they had when my daughter was playing with barbies was just clothes you know that was about it uh_huh and the main thing my kids seem to be into nowadays are electronics my my children are twenty one and twenty five and twenty eight uh_huh and no not really we uh haven't had that much you know problem with things that we have bought they seem to to last in fact when they offer us extended warranties we we don't buy them because we've we we find we don't need them and uh it seems like it's just a an added tack on plus a lot of the credit cards now you know will guarantee if you purchase on your credit card you know then they put an extended warranty on it if it doesn't work or if you have a problem with it in a certain period of time so it seems like it's a waste of money uh_huh and like i've even bought on a [recliner] once i bought you know a a an extended warranty for cleaning and stuff like that and i never used it and so it seems ridiculous and like washers and dryers and things like that i've never had one go out in fact they usually when they do go out it's either something my husband can buy the part and fix and we don't even have a repairman come or it means it's old enough that it's time to replace the whole thing uh_huh so i mean i do too uh_huh and they charge you a pretty good price for them too uh_huh well my husband finally just put his foot down and he said we're not going to buy any of these anymore and if it goes out well you know uh_huh and uh so we really have been fairly happy with things but now we take good care of things and we don't uh run out and buy a lot of of things either and since our kids aren't little anymore i'm not buying a lot of those little things that can get broken well you look at the consumer guide and uh you go around and you look at the different ones and find the ones that have the so how's your products been i hear that one have you had any lately go out oh wow so you didn't get anything even all the all the warranties were out you're kidding yeah we just moved into a new house too so we had to buy all those too yeah the only thing i've had problems with is um i buy a lot of wood working equipment through the mail and i bought this paint stripper where they advertise that it's [nontoxic] and such and when you get the product it ends up being toxic and all these warnings so i didn't return it because it'd probably cost me more than i just ended up using it but that's about the only thing i've had gone wrong but that's incredible and they all went out at the same time or two days wow wow it's frustrating uh_huh uh_huh they go out a lot yeah see i'm in the manufacturing home from work and make um automotive air bags the safety air bags yeah at morton international and i well it's it's changed a lot with the manufacturing environment we test everything after each assembly process and so our testing is pretty thorough but um um the tests that well we test every one electrically we don't i think they test four or five a day actually [exploding] the air bags and but we do test after during the assembly project product um after we [assemble] each part of the [inflator] or what [explodes] the bag we check to make sure it's there after we install it so each assembly process has an inspection right after it's done and then we do electrical tests on them during the process so yeah well they do the all the testing that we have to do through the government it's incredible how much testing they have to do uh_huh um i really haven't had uh too many problems uh seems to me that everything that i buy goes bad just after the warranty runs out yeah i've had a dryer an ice maker a microwave all three and they unfortunately i bought them all three at the same time when i bought my new house and uh i really don't have any recourse so i had to call and have them all repaired and that yeah it was a hassle yeah the warranty on the refrigerator uh the the refrigerator [warranty's] still good but the ice maker itself passed it's three years and it was three years and two months no uh watch out uh_huh um i usually have pretty good luck with appliances but i just uh it was within two days that all three of these stopped working and the the ice maker was uh had to have a new pump and the uh microwave had to have uh some kind of something i can't even pronounce and they uh the dryer had to have a new heating element so it was about almost three hundred dollars for all three of them uh within two days of each other i was it wasn't a good week i was pretty mad and plus the place that i'd bought them all had gone out of business so even if i i think even if i had uh had kept the warranty the service [agreements] were with the companies that that manufactured but still they were through that [retailer] so i don't know if i could have taken it to another [retailer] or not but i didn't have to worry about all that because they weren't under warranty so it was a call to the local appliance dealer who came out and fixed them all but i the only other things that i've ever had trouble with uh i seem to have a real bad trouble with electric hair dryers blow dryers yeah i've had two or three of those go out one was under warranty and the other two weren't but i just other than that you know t v and things like that i haven't ever had any trouble with i don't think products are getting much better though oh really that's interesting do you do you test each individual one or do you just test like if you've got ten you test one and by the test results of the one you assume that the other nine are okay uh_huh well that's something i've never had to use it's never i've never been involved in an automobile accident so luckily that's a product that i haven't had to test but i think it's a great idea i'm i'm seems like all the good logical ideas take forever to come about but that oh i'm sure they want to be thorough before they but uh even you know i don't mind spending the extra money on the car if you know even if they pass the savings the cost onto the consumer because it just seems like a real worthwhile thing i'm not a real big seat belt my uh uh not too bad really uh i had a [razor] that i got from christmas that i just i really didn't want it but i got it anyway and uh it was a [braun] and they were real good about taking it back it wasn't a problem at all so uh i was able to get that back pretty easily but uh i don't know i really haven't returned a whole lot lately have you um right yeah right like exactly i was reading right i was reading something in uh consumer reports tonight about that as a matter of fact they were talking about cars uh the car issue just came out and about how yeah you'd like to buy an american car maybe but uh you know the transmission may be made in japan or whatever uh like i've got an eighty six ford ranger and and i know for a fact that the transmission is made by mitsubishi you know so it's like what are you going to do you know but uh that's the way it is i don't know i i personally feel that uh uh if the japanese cars are better and americans buy them you know that's the way it goes and you know people more than manufacturers should get a clue and you know they should start making quality products that's what i thought too until i saw the consumer reports issue uh they've got all the american well all the all the cars rated you know and uh essentially i i don't see much of a trend i mean just like every other time that you look at it the honda accords and the civics are right up there there's nothing wrong with them uh and the same thing with most of the other japanese cars but then again you look at a ford or especially a chevy and they're pieces of junk yeah that's ninety that's eighty six through ninety one but uh i don't know maybe they're getting better maybe they're starting to get a clue uh yeah that's just it technology that comes in right now is is probably not going to be implemented until you know quite a few years down the road but uh oh yeah yeah because technology is so uh you know volatile and changing all the time uh yeah yeah it uh they keep up with it pretty quickly and that's that's a real good thing i guess uh i don't know yeah right they're kind of the leaders right now you know i used to see all those commercials for windows you know and you're like oh gee they're reselling a macintosh under a different name yeah you know exactly almost is the key word there too you know because i i really i've used both and i really don't see an advantage of windows at all uh yeah yeah that's true too but uh i don't know i'm really i've gotten a little bit out of the the personal computer business just because i don't have one at home i i do use a mac at work but uh uh i really don't don't do much with it at home but uh right uh_huh yeah you sound like you must uh work in the computer business yeah all right no well that's that's all right yeah that's true something that i find uncomfortable is you know you you want to buy something say you want to buy a personal computer and you got to think about what kind of memory you want to get and what kind of technology that you want to go for you know let let's take the example the modem for you know okay what [baud] rate do you get well you know it used to be that you get a twelve hundred okay so what kind of luck you been having with buying and returning products uh_huh i haven't had to it's uh the every so often i mean i i i'm almost pushing it myself maybe i'll buy a shirt from g i [joe's] and it [shrinks] too much and say well i should have known better i mean i bought it from g i [joe's] and it was probably made in china by slaves but uh they uh most of the time pretty careful shopping anyway i get pretty good stuff i think that uh aside from the fact all markets being [internationalized] and if you want to buy american it takes real extra work to find it's probably a japanese or a burmese company owning and hiring people in the u s uh_huh yeah huh yeah really yeah i think they're beginning to the the days of don't buy a car made on a monday or a friday are pretty much going away and uh_huh i know still at it hey wow well they got a three year lead time it probably won't start really showing up until ninety four or so the computer industry's where it's really [dynamic] especially for the consumer and can you think of any other industry where in software they if the product is upgraded and a better version is put out you'll get a free version in the mail or uh maybe i say well you know you paid five hundred bucks for this program so send us twenty and we'll give you a really great upgrade yeah and the hardware well i mean all the chips that make up the hardware are a commodity and the macintosh is about the only one that's going right forcing i b m and the rest of the d o s world to follow along really why don't they just say almost a mac for half the price they'd sell more if they were honest yeah it it's only an advantage for people who had to use pure d o s base uh_huh [apple's] sort of making a and they're ones were [growling] consumer uh need to worry about the mac they're getting like if you bought a power book straight off a lot of them had to go back they issued a recall because of [improper] [shielding] or possibly other problems with floppy drive yeah i have one i do desktop publishing at work and i have a machine at home and i belong to the user's group and i i've been a mac fanatic since they came out but uh technically i'm not actually in the industry i don't work a computer company i'm an [abuser] but it's sort of like [surfing] on the wave of future shock to you know keep up with the changes as they happen yeah have you had that experience recently oh yeah oh well i don't have so much trouble with products as service i don't feel like that's as big a problem i've had a few answering machines over the last two years just because i've had a lot of trouble with them working correctly and i'm not convinced that any of them work a hundred percent uh the one i have now is okay most of the time but that's it but that's that's probably the worst my daughter has a charm bracelet i bought her that's guaranteed uh james [avery] i don't know if you have that up there but it it's a very good company that sells [sterling] silver things and uh she has a charm bracelet with lots of [charms] on it a lot of money into it by now and the catch broke and she was sitting in school on a carpet and when she stood up it caught and broke and we took it back and they said oh this was just obviously yanked this was yanked i mean they were so rude about it and so we wanted a different kind of catch and she said well it's not guaranteed and i said well put it on because apparently nothing's guaranteed so do it anyway so we got the kind we wanted and i was really disappointed with that i felt that this was a company that should have been more reliable and i happened to need a birthday present for one of her friends and i called there to see if they had it and the lady was very nice and i said my goodness i said you've been very nice what's your name and she told me and i said well i really appreciate it i said there seems to be a big attitude problem in that store and it turned out she was the assistant manager so right so i felt kind of good about that you know i didn't even know the person's name that had given me the hard time or anything but i just felt like well at least i did something maybe they'll fix it they might work on that you know but i find attitudes are more of a problem service is more of a problem really that's really great huh that's really good it use to be like that but i don't think most places are like that anymore recently i can't really say recently but i think about uh about a year ago uh i bought a product from some company down at uh in atlanta georgia i believe it was one of these uh one of these uh [mixers] these like these juice machines and uh the uh the blade they sent me at first that went into the machine it looked you know perfectly okay but i found that uh it was made of some material which actually ended up rusting uh after even despite you know diligent washing it it got rusty after about uh three weeks of use and i don't think it was my fault because i you know i had made a point of like [drying] it off and cleaning it but uh it was really uh it was i had to send it back after like you know the third week because i realized it was like it was not something was very very wrong with the blade uh what about you uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh well at least your talking to somebody who counts uh_huh right right right i find up here in the northeast we have uh well we have these mail order companies like l l bean and uh they are famous for i guess having really top notch service they've got uh i mean i've i've i i have friends and family who order from them because you can you can literally i've heard stories where you can literally buy something from them one year wear it for a year and a half and even after like eighteen months of you know reasonably [satisfactory] use they will accept it in any condition and they will gladly no questions asked take it back if for some bizarre reason you decide you don't want it anymore uh they'll they'll actually do things like this i mean they're really they they bend over backwards service wise for you i've uh i've found also a lot of companies nowadays have they have eight hundred numbers you can call i guess if if you call the any eight hundred number uh if you you can call up any eight hundred number [directory] assistance and you can get uh the eight hundred number of the customer service support line for a number of companies and um actually i've tried that with a few companies lately and they've most of them have been pretty good but i i was one reason why i like i buy a lot of clothing through mail order is that uh if you buy through bean or though uh i guess bean's one of bean's big competitors is [land's] end out in uh i guess it's wisconsin somewhere they they are uh they're very good about uh like the customer is always right and you know no matter how [crabby] you might be over the phone they are very understanding and uh they usually get you know they they make things are they make sure things are set properly if you're any way dissatisfied with their merchandise uh_huh yeah well i think i guess nowadays with the uh with the economy the way it is i guess there was a there was a story on the news tonight about how because a lot of companies are uh you know things are getting rough out there there's a lot of you know the morale among employees tends to go down and that in turn like you know all righty okay have you recently had to return anything okay tell me about it oh my goodness you mean it the warranty wasn't on it or oh gosh well i haven't had to return anything recently but i you know i feel i'm going to i'm on a portable phone i'm going to go closer to the station here uh i i feel like things are are not made as well as they used to be i um just you for instance clothing i you know i have two children and um we they they like nice clothing and i spend a lot of money on it and it just doesn't last and i mean i'm very careful to follow the washing instructions and do exactly what it says and it still it they still wear out very quickly uh i find things that are sewn very poorly uh they they come [unhemmed] or [unstitched] so easily right right uh_huh they never cut them off oh i know it's really it's silly and and my i have teenagers and they they think they want a certain brand or a certain item well when you buy a brand name that's popular you're paying for the brand name and no exactly that's what i you know i'm saying that the you know if i'm paying for the name and i'm paying that much money it'd better be a quality product now i do there's there are some that i think are a little bit better and i and i've been real pleased with them and my kids have enjoyed wearing them and they've lasted until they've outgrown them but uh the majority of things um don't last and they're just very inferior and you know i try i try to look at the labels and i i try to to buy things that are made in the u s a because i think that's important and yet i find a lot of the the the homemade goods are are inferior and also with cars i um i i bought a new car last summer and i shopped around for a long time i mean we went to a lot of different dealers and i wanted to buy an american car because i had had a toyota and i really liked it but i felt like i needed to buy something that was american made i felt i owed that well i just could not find an american made car that i felt was worthy of the price they wanted and um i ended up buying another i ended up buying a nissan and i love it uh_huh uh_huh oh i know exactly uh_huh yeah and they're so much more solid they sound better when you're in them they feel you feel like you're in a car and not [rattling] around in something i you know i just i just am real pleased with the nissan i had and i had a subaru before the toyota and i loved that it was just the best car i've ever had in fact i wanted to buy another one but i really it really didn't have what i wanted they didn't have the the type of family car i wanted but that car i had for five years and i never had one thing go wrong with it and it um only thing i had to have replaced was the clutch and i had to do that twice because it was my fault because i ride it all the time and uh so you know it wore out yeah no yeah that's true is that right oh i know i've heard great things yeah oh yes and it's a safe car too it's a good made car oh that's great well that the the subaru i had when i sold it it still had the tires the factory tires on it and the factory battery one i mean that's how good it was i never had one trouble with the battery and which is amazing in five years i didn't have to get a new one and it worked perfectly and it was amazing the tires were um excellent and uh you know when i sold it it didn't have that it was low i didn't think i had like thirty seven thousand miles on it which is nowadays low but uh i got a good price on it it's got good resale value and it was really a good car and you know it it kind of is frightening i think that you're right american uh manufacturers still haven't got the the idea that that quality is important and that uh_huh yeah right uh_huh you're right you're right oh yeah uh_huh yes exactly that's right that's right because you well the thing is when you have to take your car in continually because it's not working and pay that much money in repair bills it's ridiculous i i had a plymouth that was just the worst car in the world and i mean everything that could go wrong with it went wrong with it i had it in to the dealership more than i had it out it was terrible and i got rid of it as fast as i could it was the most it was a lemon is what it was and uh you know i will never buy a plymouth again simply because of that is that right uh_huh oh i've heard good things about a honda yeah my niece has one and she loves it too yeah but you really liked your ford truck huh uh_huh yeah well i'm looking for a used truck for my son and it's it's really been hard because we i we just don't have that much money to to spend and he just turned sixteen and uh you know i i want to get an inexpensive truck a small one that um you know i only have to pay a couple of thousand or you know three thousand yeah yeah they are we did find a couple but uh you know they just i wasn't real sure about them and uh so we kind of passed them up um this one guy is not is trying to make up his mind whether he wants to sell his it's a mitsubishi and it's an eighty five and he wants to sell it for about two thousand but uh he's not sure he wants to give it up and start car payments again so we're kind of waiting for him to make that decision but you know oh yeah yeah they're car payments are outrageous now oh that's right uh_huh uh_huh well that's why it's important to find a car that you don't have to keep taking in for repairs because if you're going to keep it a long time uh you're i mean you don't want to spend thousands of dollars on repairs so yes easily easily and you know another thing about not only about uh you know products but services you're not real sure of anymore you you take a car in and you think it's fixed or and and how do you know if they really even fixed it and and sometimes i wonder you know and it's kind of scary you just you're not sure i'm i'm originally from ohio i'm in texas uh_huh yeah oh yeah yeah it's uh bad up there but i'm i've been in texas like thirteen years now so what are what part of texas are you from coppell i'm from plano we're not yeah we're not too far away uh is that right well i don't have much more to say about things i i feel the same way that you do though i think it things are you know need to get better and i think you need we need to have somehow more of a trust in in u s made goods and it's sad that we don't but okay well have you bought anything recently and uh if so do you find it to your liking do you think it's worth the money uh_huh oh really yeah i can imagine because they're not cheap well i know that in going out and and looking at clothes uh even going to expensive stores the clothes look to me so [sleazy] any more i don't know whether it's the type of materials they're using is it you know is it supposed to be you know crepe or what and or if it's a case now i was in dillard's in an area and they hadn't even they'd hung the clothes out but they hadn't even pressed them so they didn't look good to begin with and uh you know and they looked cheap and they were you know they weren't cheap they were hundred and thirty nine hundred and fifty you know you don't buy find cheap dresses any more even at penney's especially at penney's they've upgraded considerably and uh the only thing that i know that we have uh uh televisions we have have gotten real good televisions we have had real good luck with televisions and i just well i think that their i think their quality is better well that's true that's true you know you do you can buy a portable cheaper than you can buy a man's suit i know well i know that uh our son for christmas we usually for christmas we will give him a suit and we try to you know stay around two hundred and something on them well you can't find a suit any more for two hundred and something uh_huh uh_huh you know i could you know for what some of the suits cost they have just moved into a new house i could buy them a a small new refrigerator almost as cheap as what the suits are and that's utterly ridiculous clothing has just gotten totally out of sight and i hate to spend you know a hundred and fifty dollars for a dress that's made in taiwan yes yes yes very definitely so uh you know i i other than the t v uh t v i do think are made pretty good uh but i don't think cars are made that well any more now what is it what car do you a ford oh that's good uh_huh uh_huh i don't know whether competition is so stiff between japan and and the u s or i don't know what it is but you know the electronics seem to be you know pretty good value for their money yes yes definitely because i know the price of the big screen t v they're going down you know compared to what they were three years ago same model uh_huh the only thing i'm not seeing go down that much is the [camcorders] the video tape things they've gone down a little bit we just bought one we kept thinking they would get much cheaper you know like somewhere around five or six hundred dollars but they're still right up there around nine eight or nine hundred dollars you know which kind of surprised me because how long have they been out now almost ten years uh_huh and uh so uh do you hear the topic carol right oh well good i feel the same way just the last few years things that i have purchased have been you know pretty good quality have worn well as far as clothes or uh driven well as far as cars and uh sort of lasted you know for a good part yes oh i think the only problem i have had in the last two or three years i was in germany a couple of years ago and bought a [comforter] and some pillows and some pillow cases i didn't receive everything but you know you sort of take that chance when you buy something like that pardon me oh a little bit no i just bought one of those little handy [dandy] singer sewing machines my wife you know the one you use in your the real small one that fits in your hand i purchased one of those the only complaint i might have there is that it takes so long to get the item you bet yeah a lot of times i will do the same thing one thing that happened recently about three weeks ago i bought a new pair of glasses and uh two days after i bought them i picked them up and went back two days later which was four days after i purchased them to uh get them adjusted and i noticed they were running a thirty to sixty off sale so i paid the higher price i did ask for a little interview with the manager and he came over and he uh ran me a few free goods you know to make up the difference which i thought was fair sure but overall i'm uh no right any trouble getting it back sure actually i buy most of my clothing from like the the bigger guys the uh dealers of the world people like that because they they don't have any trouble returning goods they they purchase so much from these manufacturers you can return anything so generally speaking you never have a problem taking things back to them because it didn't wear properly or it came apart of something you bet you bet oh absolutely the same thing i buy a few things from [kebelsk] right sporting goods and uh sort of the same way you can have uh a certain amount of time period while you can just return something to your dissatisfied with it in anyway and they are very easy to get along with and uh they don't mind taking something back bought a lincoln and uh uh with the exception of someone hitting me and tearing it up a little bit it is still a very nice car about a ninety one it is about a year old now no not really you know it is like the old uh saying they don't build things like they use to and i really believe that in some situations but uh probably in cars that is very true um no not really i uh i may have had to have a a few minor repairs but i haven't bought anything of any consequences other than clothes and things and i will be in the very near future i'm going to be buying a big computer and um one of these eight millimeter [camcorders] so i've been i've been studying these things but uh i haven't had to return too many things i i i i try to be very careful when i pick up something and and look it over to make sure that it looks like it's going to to work and i think it really turns down to picking who you want to buy from and i hate to say it but the the electronics devices that i buy the the ones in japan in generally are much higher quality from working i mean i hate to admit it but it's true they they have a higher percentage of uh completely working models that get out to the public that's right you were speaking of that about a week ago i bought myself a new digital watch that was made in china works just fine and it cost me four dollars yes it's amazing isn't it yes uh_huh that's right and and that's been really uh the way it's been for me for the last five or six years but i returned a t v set to be repaired but the problem was that uh we had a a lightning storm and the lightning [flashed] in through the power and uh hurt something in it so it wasn't the [set's] fault at all it was just uh one of those circumstances no well i tell you most of my talks are in texas that's true i but i've been i've been uh talked into uh california twice in the last uh week or two so it's uh but but i know how it is if you're going to take care of texas you have to live in texas i suppose yeah well we're being filled up with a lot of of stores that have huge qualities of of uh clothes and articles and you know we've got wal [marts] and gee bees and a whole bunch of things and i don't know how we can support all those things and the and the only way they can stay alive is to buy cheaper products so they can put them on the market cheaper for the public and when that happens more of those products are likely to have uh inferior working ability and that's when you have to start returning them so yeah that's right and i i have a friend who does make uh beautiful furniture but he has to charge twice as much when you go to a store it it looks beautiful and it's well made but people can't afford it yeah yes huh actually i had some uh i bought a water [softener] for my home and i didn't have to return it but it didn't work well and i i finally had to have the company come out and to check it out so i did have that problem yeah i did i had to return a pair of shorts i bought for christmas a winter pair of shorts and the seam was out on the [zipper] went out on it right away pulled out and the buttons were loose on it and it was from you know a nice department store and uh i guess that's true but you know you think back and you didn't have to do replace buttons or anything very long ago uh but anymore it's pretty common that you do but when the [zipper] went on this one i said that's it that you know that really did it oh uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh i know they hang they hang yeah i know it right yeah yeah there are a lot of and how about uh any appliances i've had that happen with uh now i'm just got i have a [sunbeam] beater that we've taken back three times and [sunbeam] always had a good name now that just really shocks me but i'll tell you that thing hasn't i burnt the motor out twice and i cooked once at christmas so that's about it anymore but i bake and i'm very disgusted with them uh_huh um that's right uh_huh um um uh_huh uh_huh huh um huh right and go ahead and get a new one anyway you got a lemon yeah yeah yeah yeah uh_huh and you had it forever though right right yeah yeah yeah they've come a long way with the difference in the i heard an interesting thing on this morning on the radio to going to work about the japanese you know they have that big thing about the consumers and how many more hours they work on it and uh they were saying that they did a study on it and the japanese actually uh i mean the united states actually produces six point five percent more product in the time uh more products than the japanese do and the japanese take twice as much time and work but they don't get the productivity out of it and that they do because of the hours they put it they that's what they they lose and i just thought it was very interesting and they said in the and the unique part of it is that the japanese are the ones that uh did the study it wasn't as though we were doing it to show them they did the study so i i got a big kick out of that one yeah yeah yeah i'm ready uh no i haven't the only thing i had to i had to return was a table top but that was like three years ago of a dining room table that i got it was marked on the top of it so all they did was replace it but as far as um lawn mowers i've bought lawn mowers in the last three and a half years and they've been working fine my [hedger's] working fine my [weedeater's] working fine i haven't really had to return anything you know except that table top that was marked no it said anything oh you did uh_huh um uh_huh uh_huh well did they give you any back any problem or they just give you a new one or what um yeah right uh_huh uh_huh yeah right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah if you go and buy something really good usually it is it's good you know and you don't ever anyhow i've never had any problems in returning anything that i've bought that i feel that you know was worth the money that you paid for it uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i i've been really lucky knock on wood you know like i say that i haven't had to return anything except this this table when it came out the top of it was marked and so all i did was replace the top of it you know they they gave me well no i didn't go to the store and get it they you know got with the manufacturer and then when it came in then they brought it out and then just took this table top off and replaced with the other table top uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh really uh_huh yeah with or with a [veneer] top or something like that probably yeah uh_huh oh for crying out loud uh_huh uh_huh just sent it to you that's weird you'd think that they would have wrote a letter or at least a telephone call you know telling you that is what was happening you know but um go ahead uh_huh they never do yeah uh_huh uh_huh um yeah i guess the biggest thing that i returned recently was uh uh uh car a baby seat car seat that we got um at a store and it was missing a piece there's a a clip that goes with them that uh i guess yeah for some seat belts or something you can't connect it without the clip and it didn't have it so i i bought it at one place and i took it back to a different store an and they took it without any problem gave me another one and i opened it up there to make sure it was in there before i before i took it away same type yeah same type of store it was just uh different location no yeah in fact the way he acted it happened all the time and uh my wife was reading in consumers reports i think the week later about the car seats and apparently that's a pretty standard practice that they only put those clips in in about a third of the boxes because not everybody needs them with the seat belts that they've got so they just don't bother to put them in in all of them so they probably get a lot of that you know yeah yeah i think you're right it's probably hurting hurting that brand not to do that uh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah i guess it depends on what you're talking about i i think it and it depends on the company too how seriously they take their their quality control and and just customer relations i think companies that think it's important to to have a good product and take care of the customer do a good job on both ends you know if there's a complaint they take care of it right away because they don't want any bad p r and they do want return business uh_huh uh_huh yeah okay yeah i think that probably they're having to change some of their strategies due to survival in a lot of situations uh i think the car industry is a good example of that uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh huh yeah uh_huh oh yeah i worked in uh produce counter at safeway so i know that there's a lot of things that are brought in that are imported so yeah we do that all the time uh_huh uh_huh true yeah i think they're they're trying to lower costs by [cheapening] in a lot of areas well yes i did i returned a number of things yesterday at uh j c penney but it wasn't um it was clothing and um the blouse was uh supposed to be a size six but the shoulder [drooped] over my shoulder and it wasn't you know the style of the blouse it just i think it was sized wrong but you know it was a nice blouse but and um i took some uh [lingerie] back that wasn't well i the size that i usually buy did not fit in their in their brand it was too small uh but as far as large items goes like appliances or things like that no uh_huh uh_huh well uh i would like to comment on my washer um uh my washer if it gets out of balance it makes a horrible noise and you have to make sure that your clothes are balanced but um it was doing it quite frequently and so i had a repairman come out and look at it and he said well you need this and so done to this machine and i said oh really and i he says let me show you and i i said oh yeah i see that it really needs something bad you know but it didn't uh have an affect on the performance of the machine what what it was the um it was a cap after your um after the body of the machine was in place it was under that so it wasn't visible and it was out of sight and it was rusting out although i don't have any rust in my clothes and i said okay how much do you want to uh do this repair work and he told me almost two hundred and fifty dollars and i said hey i can go buy a new one for that price and i said no i'm not going to do that i said the performance of the machine is not affected by that part and i said and that's not that's not the cause of the [imbalance] i said i just have to be more careful how i put my clothes in and um so that was two years ago and my machine is still functioning fine so i didn't you know and he wanted thirty five dollars for a service call and i says hey wait a minute they didn't tell me that when i called and i said i'm not paying it i says if they had told me up front i would have paid it but since they did not say ma'am there's a thirty five dollar service call but they didn't and i says i refuse to pay it and so he he had called his office and told them what i said and i i was released from that service charge so you know they were they to me that was [underhanded] i wouldn't have minded if they had said okay uh we have that service is thirty five dollars or whatever they they charge maybe it's different um um charges for different things i don't know but it seems to me a service call would be kind of universal for anything and then they get into the nitty [gritties] of charges for whatever you've got wrong with your your item yeah they really could yes oh they are a fantastic company to deal with oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh my okay where does she live rutherford i don't know that uh_huh it's oh oh south and okay yeah i know where you i know the area right that's kind of on the other side of town so our kids probably never went to school together or anything oh well i've got one in college by now right whether it is possible to have an honest government i'm beginning to think it's not what about you i don't either i i think uh even if people have good intentions i think uh power corrupts or something to a certain extent you know yeah it seems like uh maybe more of them come in with good intentions but it's just so [enticing] and a lot of corners being cut and the special deals available because they're in on the know you know oh right i mean you even see people on a small scale [cheating] when they have certain positions you know what i mean little bitty little bitty positions in your own home town and they'll cheat somehow or you know bend the rules use their power so maybe it's just man's nature uh_huh oh my word oh wow what were they doing taking some oh no oh gosh yeah right right oh um we haven't had that big a scandal in arlington but we do have the people that work for the convention center were [falsifying] records in other words they'd go out and have a big lavish dinner and then put somebody's name down that they supposedly had entertained but that person wasn't even anywhere near there you know some of them weren't even in the same city one of them had had cancer and died and i mean that was our biggest scandal for the last few years i think i don't i don't either uh to make it totally honest uh i think there's there's always going to be some way somebody can cut a corner uh however the things that have gone gone on in the last couple of years we can't afford too many of those you know the the hud mess or the s and l we could almost not afford such terrible corruption right right i think that uh reagan and bush were up to their necks in that iran [contra] thing and it kind of makes you feel bad that the top people in your country would be lying to you like that but uh right uh_huh uh_huh that's right but they stay there uh_huh right and this would be for the best for the nation overall you're right it's just a i don't know i guess that's where they stay in uh in they try to stay in office but they always please the money people too they need money so much because they're constantly having to run for office again and uh_huh that's true boy it is a big problem but i think most people are kind of depressed and cynical about government now don't you i know it's really terrible i mean there was a time i mean where i remember when i was real young i just loved harry truman i thought he was great oh you know i had some of them seemed like kind of uh [heroic] people uh on rutherford it's uh corner of new york uh just west of [mayfield] uh oh okay oh they're they're little ones oh let's see we're on government whether we think it's honest or can be i i don't think under the way the system is right now it is the ultimate power ultimately corrupts i don't know if there is enough money that you could pay them just you know x amount of money to keep them honest i just i just don't uh right we had uh here in oklahoma we had a few years ago a major uh corruption on on our county commissioners and there were several counties uh including the one i was in that lost every one of their county commissioners and i mean it was to the point of not just losing their job but going to jail oh they were taking kickbacks yeah just a little here a little there major amount here a major amount there but i think there was something like you know thirty or forty commissioners that ended up going to jail uh that's that's small scale i don't know you know i really don't know what could be done uh that's right the cover ups and i uh i don't know i just uh i'd like to believe that there is some way that our political people would really go there and look out for our interests i think that's what upsets me worse than that they're getting a little you know uh on the side that that it seems that when they get up there it's it's what if i vote your way what it'll do for me rather than this is the way my constituents want it run maybe and then you think well if it was longer terms then they would never have to try to please the people at home i don't think that they anyone has a lot of respect or faith in the government well i wonder if they really were or if we just really didn't okay i think the first thing they said i have written this down so it would is it do you think it's possible to have honesty in government or an honest government yeah right that's a good point that's an you know that's interesting i had read something one time and it was just applying to governments in general it was written many years ago it said that it's impossible to have a completely honest system of government because people who choose government for their positions are power seekers and i thought that was interesting it wasn't just talking about our government it was just government in general from times past you know on and right and that would be a next question to ask how many do you think are in there for for because they want to be a service to us or are they in there for their own gains and personally i feel it's probably there's probably some of each uh_huh yeah yeah oh yeah and they talked uh the other let's see third question was how serving for their own gains do you think goes on then they that's hard to i'm sure there's a lot but i agree with you there's a lot in business i think that's just i think that's very normal that we should not i think i think we put too much on politicians we expect them to only be there to serve us you know yeah that's a problem isn't it it's interesting because i'm taking a texas government class right now and one of the things it's so easy to blame them to a lot of times i think it's our own fault they lie to us because we don't want to hear the truth and it if they tell us the truth we don't elect them and especially with all this stuff coming up here lately about people's past and i don't know why anybody would want to get under that [scrutiny] anymore because it's i think it's gotten just well we're not talking about issues we're talking about somebody's personal life and and we're getting away from what we ought to be looking at right you know i also think it would be funny if we could know everything about the people that were in there and throw them out i don't think there would be too many left uh_huh uh at uh it's t c j c [tarrant] county junior college yeah and it's really it's really enjoyable i like it and then they also you know ask can we eliminate do you think we could make laws to eliminate all corruption and i don't think we can make laws to eliminate anything anyplace totally yeah but that doesn't mean i don't think making laws will stop it i mean i don't know how many laws you would have to have i mean no sure didn't did it so no i think you can legislate but i think there's no way that you eliminate it all by [legislating] and we would end up with so many more laws that you know i mean i just think that's human nature that you're going to have corruption in government in business personal life i mean you know right yeah yeah i still believe i get very fed up with government sometimes but when i think about where i'd want to go you know this is still the best or i can yeah yeah at it's worst i think we've got the best okay you're asking what my opinion about whether it's possible to have honesty in government well i suspect that it is possible uh i think it probably is more likely if you have a small government unit where everybody knows everybody but uh other than that i think maybe it just depends on how you define honesty uh_huh so they're saying that government officials would tend to be power seekers right yeah but i think maybe a lot of them um say the more honest ones who are still looking out for themselves it may be more matter of not what can i steal while in an office but how many friends can i make while i'm in office and you know how good a name can i make for myself and so forth so i guess it would be like anything else the president of general motors probably has the same i think i think a little more honesty in the campaigns would be more to the point if you knew what you were getting when you voted uh yeah yeah they say you get the government you deserve uh_huh it's hard to imagine yeah and it almost seems like in order to avoid uh some of the scandal you would have to have the kind of wife that you would only find on say in the [bobsy] twins or something like that so you're taking a government course at what the university oh okay you can make laws against corruption but that doesn't eliminate it does it well they've got laws against [cannibalism] but that didn't stop that guy in milwaukee did it actually i think other countries may have it worse uh the japanese government is always having a some kind of a scandal usually involving the prime minister or people very close to him so uh yeah i've been around to a few other countries and i uh i i have not found one yet that i would rather live in i think uh uh so do you think our politicians are honest at this point in time uh_huh uh_huh i agree uh with with both of those things but uh do you see any way of like [altering] it so that they would become more honest uh_huh uh_huh um yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh the only the only problem i see with term limitations uh is that i think that the bureaucracy in our government as is in with most governments is just so complex that there's a very you know there there is a learning [curve] and that you know you can't just send someone off to washington and expect you know his first day to be an effective uh congress person uh i think i think there really is a there's a lot they need to learn you know when you get there uh_huh yeah but uh_huh uh_huh uh the other the other thing that uh bothers me about our system is just that uh in for for in in in congress the amount of power any any particular congress [critter] has is based on their seniority and how long they've been there so it's you know for you know uh so unless you have actual you know across the board uh limitations the uh you know the idea of well we're going to just we're i'm i'm just going to you know vote vote against the [incumbent] every time doesn't work you know it's going to wind up hurting your state if all the other states aren't doing it at the same time uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh well i mean i don't see why it makes a big difference the c i a because you know officially they don't do they don't have any operations within the united states other than administrative uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh generally i don't think they are uh my my personal opinion is that uh the politicians are out for their own good because they they're [entrenched] they don't ever have to go out and get a real job they just stay in their current job you know what i mean i think by putting term limitations on you could you could slow down some of the problems uh but it has to be not just at the national level but at the you know the state and the local level too i know some senators and i don't know which ones but they've been in office since the the nineteen forties and i they've never had a job i mean they've never gone out in the real world and and paid normal taxes i know they pay taxes but they don't you know they they get paid a hundred and twenty five grand a year which is more than twice my salary by quite a bit and you know i'm going like i i don't understand how they're supposed to be my servants and yet they're paid more than i am and they work less you know less than i do i think i think that's true however i think that's always been true i mean that's true of the presidency too and we seem to be able to get along with the president turnover ever eight years or four years and uh they i mean there is a lot to learn but maybe it will keep them on their toes and a little bit more active in trying to catch up i think two years is too short i think it would have to be extended uh you know a term limitation for congress would be like three terms or even four terms or you would increase the length of the of each term of a congressman uh but maybe [standardizing] on on a a four year term for congress senate and the the presidency and then uh staggering them so that you don't we aren't [tackling] a massive ballot every four years uh_huh i think i think that that's true but then you have you have the same abuse of power on the flip side of that coin uh the c i a is moving out to west virginia which is a really stupid location for a large agency like that and for almost any agency i mean the action isn't in west virginia i hate to tell the the senator from west virginia this information but it really doesn't the world does not revolve around west virginia uh as far as this country is concerned the world does revolve around d c you know as far as the politics in this country are concerned the national politics and the c i a is a a very large very high profile agency and to have it located out in west virginia yeah you know it might only be two hour drive from here but that's a two hour drive and uh you know it it's a i think it's a mistake to move large agencies like that or is it the f b i i don't remember but i think there's yeah that's officially i mean we all know that that's not necessarily true but i i think that there are there are advantages to having seniority and uh or not having a complete turnover every some small number of years i think there are i mean there's an institutional memory that you need to maintain but i think that uh all with all the perks that we've given them i mean i heard on the radio back a a few weeks ago uh during the incidents where they were you know like they aren't paying their their restaurant bills and they're bouncing checks all over the place uh one of the radio stations over here listed off every single one of the perks uh i don't know my personal perception of government and uh the way things are at this current time is that nobody can really be trusted and i don't feel that too many of the candidates are out there to uh be self serving to the community i think that they have their own uh wishes to uh be in the [limelight] and to kind of say hey you know i'm a public official i don't have to do uh certain things and they just stand out more involving themselves more and more with politics but it's really after all the things that i've seen in the last ten years about government and now the [overdrafts] uh of checks uh before that it was the wonderful uh [escapade] that they had with uh the new uh-oh god chief of uh well supreme court i'm trying to think of his name and uh what they put uh him through in regards to yeah thomas the sex sexual harassment that kind of thing and just to see our government react to that and then just little things that have added up where people have taken vacations on taxpayers' monies and things like that i i just think it's very corrupt and whether or not they need to start with people that are extremely poor and send them into government versus people that are rich but it's always the rich person that gets into government that has the money to advertise the money to to do this there's no more abe abraham lincolns out there uh that can get into government even if they were poor so i know that's my personal viewpoint of things now they just uh they've already put through the health bill yes it just went through and it was passed and that is going to be a heavier tax burden on a lot of the taxpayers and a little bit more on to the medical uh i don't know if that was done out of just let's be the first state to do it or if it was done really for the needs of the people you know what i'm saying it it's right now every little state around here is thinking about oh we need to reform the health uh system and of course they think uh wisconsin our or minnesota our neighbor passed a state law the health bill and it's kind of like we're the first to do it so i don't know if it's done because we're we want to be standing out as being innovative in the health system or whether it was done for uh you know a real good purpose to help people that can't afford uh health insurance that kind of thing uh_huh oh sure oh sure uh_huh it it sure does and i think it it is reflecting like you said i think society as a whole uh you can't expect uh when we have t v and we have things that are kind of bombarded at us for uh you know [immorality] and this and this and this that we can expect somebody to come off that's going to be clean totally clean and come into government uh but down the line it does hurt i mean when somebody's corrupt and somebody's doing something it's uh you know it does hurt each individual of the society when you find out that somebody's done something or the [overdraft] policy or you know the other things that have occurred so uh uh_huh exactly yeah well that's exactly what happens in government all the time they blow the whistle on each other oh i hear that you're doing this i've done it but oh boy and it's not going to get out yeah exactly it's uh there's no secrets in the government uh i don't think anymore uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh sure uh_huh uh_huh oh sure i think i i don't think uh thomas uh_huh doesn't wisconsin have a uh state uh medicare program or health program right well i i think the one of the biggest problems that uh we see in government today is a reflection of society in and of itself and that is uh uh we become so debt ridden and credit oriented instead of uh cash and carry or debt free and therefore uh that puts a lot of [undue] pressure on [municipalities] state and federal governments right well what is see the thing is is when a lot of things become acceptable practice uh it's hard to [discern] the what has become muddy as to what is ethical and what is not ethical and then someone blows the whistle and says oh this is not ethical and yes i did it too yeah we just had uh right the mayor of dallas is uh [bartlett] steve [bartlett] he also uh was a congressman uh to the uh to congress and he had been in that position for years and uh he was elected mayor of dallas [overwhelmingly] however if the vote was taken today the whole thing might change because he was part of that uh check [kiting] scam well i think there are honest people in our government i think it's uh and we do have some checks and balances to keep it honest but i think it's always a real challenge to uh make sure that we have people in there that we can count on to be honest yeah i think there are and have been some things that have been done to maybe make things better you know one thing is the opportunity on our income tax to uh allow certain donations to uh be made because a a lot of times i think you know people anybody that runs for a political office has got to either be independently wealthy or they've got to be [beholding] to somebody to help them yeah and so you know i think if if there were ways that we could get away from that and let just the common man be able to run for office that that yeah that's right yeah well my husband has uh held public office for a while and not a paid public office i might add and uh yeah that's more public service i guess than public office and it's been a real eye opener to us course i feel that he's completely honest and what all and there have been people that have said you know that they how much is he being paid and all this kind of stuff to to do things yeah well obviously if they ever looked at our house or our car or whatever they would know he's not getting paid anything but uh yeah i think that's true yeah that's probably true too but at the same time you know when i go to the polls to vote uh i always am real nervous about who i'm voting for even if i have studied the issues and heard what people have had to say and everything because uh you don't really know that person you know and you don't know even if what they say is what they're going to do and what their real feelings are on a lot of things absolutely yeah i guess that's a real problem you know i i i don't know how we solve that one because i'm not sure that you can ever especially the the higher up you go you know like a senator or congressman or something like that i don't know how you would ever get to know any of those people well enough to say you know i know this man on a personal basis i know he has integrity and i know he you know yeah or just read the league of women voters answers that they give or yeah so it's sometimes you just don't know that's right uh well that would be nice if we could do that oh uh_huh oh i can think of one like that also just blows your mind doesn't it oh well that's uh debatable if you read the paper every day looks like there's a new scandal breaking every every minute uh yeah it is that guy that does the traveling show that's that's on broadway and everything now yeah that's supposed to be great i don't know as long as there are lawyers making up the majority of the state legislatures and the national congress uh i don't see a lot of change happening isn't that funny how that happens to be a correlation i'm afraid not unfortunately right i saw a a lawyer joke book the other day and it and the title of the joke was skid marks and of course there's a major joke about skid marks and lawyers but uh i don't know it just it's pretty disgusting every time you it it's not just the [unethical] part of it it's the self serving part of it that bothers me about the politicians they're all out either for a particular controlled interest group of some kind or maybe several uh and rather than really honestly decide issues on the basis of what is good for the country everybody decides them with this the constituency in mind or or afraid that they're going to hack off the wrong group or the other vote wise and yeah exactly and so we if we just limited terms senators especially and even supreme court judges this [appointing] them for life is just absurd they wind up senile old men making decisions at eighty years old just just say that the most you can serve is a couple terms and then get in there and then you could get in there and do the best possible job that you really feel like you should be doing and then you're out of there and go on to something else instead of this because this exactly well at least you decide things you decide things from the stand point of what's best hopefully for whatever agency you're [representing] yeah i know i just think we ought to we limit the president why not terms of the others and give there's plenty of other qualified people to run uh_huh exactly um that's right and above nothing either starting with [duvall] county yeah yeah that's that's probably true i haven't yeah well that's it when the very people making the laws are going to be the ones who would have to pass those uh against themselves it it sort of uh goes without saying that it would be awfully awfully tough unless you could get the best thing that could happen to the state legislatures would be to be full of just independent businessmen or just businessmen working for companies that could somehow get their salary made uh justified you know or brought up to whatever over the state salary level uh uh well you know i i think it really depends you know i think you know if you know taking the current batch we got you know i think paul tsongas probably isn't in it for like his own gain i i don't see him as that kind of a guy i can believe like that bill clinton might be uh i certainly think a lot of people in congress are uh_huh yeah yeah well you know i i think if you like compare us to other governments you know i i think we tend to be overly critical of our own government i mean you go right out in the open it's like you know you want to do something you know you better even be the president's best friend or you know pay me a lot of money or whatever they call it right or bucks make right well you know i i think you know to some extent you know people get the government they deserve is a cliche but it it's really true i mean if you know you hear these guys i think that that this is the first election i've heard about where a lot of the incumbents are really saying okay we're getting out because it's too much heat i mean normally it's yeah okay what big scandal but it comes times to [reelect] them they say hey this is the guy that brings home the bacon for us you know he's got seniority on all these committees we're not going to replace him yeah and i mean also you know you look i think a lot of it has to do with with with with the issue of campaign reform when it costs you i mean ten million twenty million dollars i've heard horrendous figures to run for a senate seat you know job pays a hundred thousand a year you know it the you work it out unless someone is incredibly [altruistic] you know there's no reason for them to want to run for that right well it's an imperfect system because people are imperfect i i mean the problem is that you know you've got as i said there's no incentive to go into i mean look at our state legislature and things where very nominal pay but there's also not you know what's the campaign the campaign is four guys go against each other and there's no advertising those people i can believe are doing it because they want to change the process but when you're talking about having to spend tens of millions of dollars to get elected and then being in the pockets of all these people who gave you the money and then having to regard how to you know how to uh do for yourself i think i i really think that it's not so much that corrupt people go into it as that the process corrupts i i think it depends a lot on on the state i think that it varies from state to state right oh oh man i don't want to talk about the school board we've just we've just been having school board meetings and it was like people suing each other what do you feel do you feel that that our government uh is it possible to have an honest government or do we have an honest government uh_huh well uh i'm i'm rather young i'm only twenty two and so uh my knowledge is based you know mostly on what i read you know in history but i do think based on what i read uh what i've read uh about our history of our government i think things are getting better uh in the in the last maybe ten or fifteen years where americans are becoming a little more aware and uh are forcing our government to be uh on top of integrity you know uh_huh yeah yeah uh_huh right uh_huh yeah uh_huh have i no not yet huh_uh uh_huh right does it worry you that um say someone like david duke got such such publicity during uh during his campaign and that and that now he's running for uh thinking of running for president does that worry you at all uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah i i don't know either i hope he doesn't know something we or i yeah hope he doesn't know something we don't uh_huh wow oh yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah well uh i'm kind of disappointed that that uh the two parties have such a [stronghold] in the in the nation because if if you belong to any other party uh you know any other platform i should say uh you're not represented um i i don't i don't belong to any particular uh platform and and i don't think i ever will but i'm afraid that um i think his name was anderson was the the gentleman who ran for uh on an independent ticket against reagan and uh carter um i was real disappointed that uh uh that he didn't he didn't have a chance uh because he didn't have a platform behind him uh uh uh i guess uh i've always been kind of interested in in space and stuff i've read a lot of the the uh [astronomy] books and and stuff like that uh uh to a degree i haven't kept up as uh much as i would like i've just been so busy uh i barely get a chance to read a newspaper now and then so yeah well i wouldn't even mind uh being a pilot on one or right now but i'm probably getting a little too old for that right yeah well they they just made leaps and jumps i think a lot of our our technology we have is is quite a bit due to lot of the space travel uh uh equipment and stuff that uh_huh yeah yeah i don't know if you ever watch [gallagher] you know he's one of the [comedians] and and you know he he talks a lot on on velcro what would we do without it yeah yeah yeah there's there's a lot of a lot of little things that have come up i know maybe some of the big things that uh uh concentrated foods for one maybe i uh i don't know it's also just i've i've often pictured uh in my mind you know what it would be like to just what would you find if you just kept on going kept on going uh i guess our minds are so uh uh what is it uh finite when we try and picture the universe as an infinite object and it's hard to to see you know i always thought well what do you do hit a brick wall eventually it's hard to consider that something could go on [indefinitely] yeah but yeah i know it's i think it's in people's nature to be the first to do something and i i'd love to be the first one to step on a planet or some like you know yeah huh i think that's what made us uh progress to the state we are is our curiosity there must be some better better way of doing this a better place to be or whatever you know it's so you you are always looking for something better i know at work uh people always complain to me i well you are always whining and it's i'm always looking for something better uh there's a better way of doing it than what we are doing it yeah well they are always finding easier ways and you know just because they don't talk about it or something like that and they are doing it you know unconsciously uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh have you been following the uh the progress of the space health code uh_huh uh_huh yeah i think it's pretty exciting that they can uh it would be interesting to see if they can find uh other planets that are that will be more [habitable] to uh you know uh humans and uh yeah i think i would be very interested in space travel in the future if uh if it you know if it is at all possible well i know if they make the advances that they have been making that uh maybe age will no longer age or even physical uh abilities may not be uh a barrier anymore yeah i agree uh as a matter of fact we're the ones that i have been to houston to to you know to visit the uh space center out there and uh one of the big advances that we use every day now is velcro and uh that vacuum uh little space program was one of the big you know [backers] of that it's amazing you know you it's hard to imagine what life was like without it now uh_huh yeah i've seen him before yeah we were talking about that just the other day what did we do without it back then i guess there was a lot of buttons and a lot of [zippers] and [snaps] that's right that's right uh_huh that's true uh_huh uh_huh yeah yeah that that is uh that is something that would be hard to think about i agree you know like you say we're used to finite things and something that is infinite and just incomprehensible but uh yeah i would like to see them uh do more in that area to make space travel more uh something that the ordinary person can uh enjoy uh_huh yeah yeah me too i wouldn't even mind being not so much being first but just uh get out there and and just explore i think uh it's in everyone's nature to some degree to want to get out and explore something they haven't or experience something you know indifferent oh sure sure of course that's true uh_huh yeah that's true yeah that's right that's right and if you are just content with being you know with the way things are then you know then you must lead lead a pretty dull life because if uh_huh yeah i guess uh you don't really think about it too much i guess you are always finding newer ways and better ways of doing stuff but it it's in a [subconscious] you know thing you know somewhere they can sit down and write down what you know things that you've improved upon you probably wouldn't have a pretty good list but you just don't think about them and that's true i think uh you know we've gotten different programs at work you know to to uh make it visible to management that we are doing things better okay howard what do you think of our space budget and should we go ahead and and keep exploring or should we call a halt to it is it doing any good uh_huh oh really oh yes wish our post office could do that that's right i wish they'd just deliver stuff uh_huh i agree i agree seems like that we've kind of gotten side [tracked] with putting all these different things up there to monitor and you know you know and i'm in favor of you know getting closer to seeing certain things but i'd like to see them also go you know go back up there see you know what they can do see about setting a space station up i'm all in favor of the space program and i don't think we should stop and i don't think we should cut the money uh yeah i would like i'd like to see that i'd like for us to really find out more about the actual universe and get up there and see what's going on even if you know there's no life up there or anything you know but who knows and i would like to see them do something like that i i hate to see them just you know keep getting diverted off to [spying] on other nations and putting up defense things and i think they i think they lose sight of of probably what they're supposed to be doing yes yes i believe they are you know let's go back to our original thing with you know our experiments and all the you know our actual exploring of space and and all that and you know with with russia uh seemingly not going to be as big a threat huh_uh you know have you gone out to uh fort worth to see the space soviet space exhibit uh_huh uh_huh we went uh we took our grandsons and went uh the weekend before last and it is marvelous i mean it's really neat how they they have done it they have done a beautiful job and they have a uh scaled down model showing how they you know fuel it or you know how they uh-oh the fuel trucks and things run out there to it and how they uh all the things that are against the actual space mission uh space ship you know how they fall away from it and the [loading] of it and then it's actually you know the smoke comes out like it's taking off it is really interesting you really do it's it's well worth the time and effort we went uh early on sunday we got out there about uh ten ten thirty and the no we bought tickets there and if you have children if you go to mcdonald's you they have coupons or did have now they may be through with them now but uh buy one adult and one child gets in free oh okay oh okay you have teenagers or something yes well i had grandchildren so three of them so between their mother and their grandfather and i because their dad was at work and uh but and the boys loved it you know they really did like it uh_huh it is and i felt the uh six year old would you know that he'd be kind of bored but he wasn't even the three year old enjoyed it because they had one had one of those moon vehicles and had it so it looked like it was on the moon and showed it moving around and stuff so it was really neat uh_huh uh_huh right well in going through it i got the impression that actually they were farther ahead i think that the space program has done a lot of good for the country now i think what we made a major wrong turn when we went into the uh to the current generation of space craft the reusable ones like they are now because they have not proven as reliable as they should have and i think some of the earlier approaches were much more uh much better in many ways however uh you know we've gained an awful lot from the space program all the way from remote monitoring to teflon to uh some new space age materials plastics and all that so i think it's been a good investment uh somebody was telling me the return was about twenty five or thirty dollars for every dollar spent which is amazing for any governmental financed program i wish the post office would just stop raising our rates i think though that now that we're finally starting to get over the fears and the uh-oh i don't know the guilt that we had out of uh [challenger] i think maybe we can pick up and go on now but i i don't know i don't think we really have all of our act together yet as far as clear objectives the space [station's] where we should go at this point well where do you think we ought to go with it you talking about uh uh a fully [manned] space station that we'll keep up there well well i think about half the nations now are are military related are they not and uh it seems like it's that high a percentage well it can't afford to no we were talking about that this weekend we it's only going to be there a couple of more weeks we need to go have they oh yes well maybe i need to run out there this weekend now do you have to have tickets ahead excuse me um i think both of my kids are too old for that they're both uh yes yes did you it's very impressive i'm sure uh_huh well see that's something else the russians have had space stations [manned] space stations for years now you know they had the [merv] and see we've yet to keep anyone up over over a week or ten days uh well uh to begin i guess uh space is uh real important i think so it's real vital to the future of not only our kids but every generation until the end of time i guess so uh so uh but uh i'm not too up to date on the space on the space [frontier] but uh i guess they're going going pretty far into it now um star wars is not too far i don't think but uh oh have you so what do you know about it really oh my gosh wow well i don't know you think you'd you think you'd uh go up in space if you had a chance do you i think i would just sitting here talking about it but if the time came it'd be real nervous i'd be scared scared me worse than six flags roller [coaster] that'd be pretty [hairy] yeah imagine right right so well i guess they're talking about people going to the moon and stuff now wherever and opening up those stations whatever filling them i don't know if we'll ever see that up there oh really that's all beyond my imagination really but science fiction books i mean you look at the jetsons you know cartoon show and it's not too far fetched what what they all had in those cartoons so you never know any of that stuff from the jetsons from that cartoon that you would never imagine would come become possible and now you we have a lot of those so so you never know what what may occur but as far as me seeing it you know i don't know i don't know but i think it's real vital important for the future you know generations to come so yeah i'm sure it'll draw a lot more interest too once it becomes you know like it's more possible but when they start showing the drawings and all that i'm sure you know when they right uh_huh so did they scratch those uh that star wars deal you know they one we was all worried about russia and all that yeah but the economy the way it is all over they probably cut back on on that because it's not right yeah i know and then yeah and we don't know who's handling them now so that's a whole different story now oh really uh_huh some crazy hit man over there so with those little republics or whatever they splitting it all up now and one of them crazy crazy guys get a hold of it you never know but that the guy that's taken over for gorbachev he's supposed to be he's supposed to be on our side isn't he pretty much uh_huh i think we went through him though to get to gorbachev on a lot of subjects so but that way you can't never tell that kiss some butt but but uh yeah i i agree it's definitely new [frontier] stuff i i i worked on some of it at t i once upon a time yeah well actually i'm i i'm quite versed lately i get on a computer network all the time and people are talking about about the current space program all the time they're talking about new rockets that they're designing now that you know are just like science fiction you know it's like they take off you know and then they land with the with the you know the [afterburners] are going you know not like space shuttle landing you know [gliding] down but straight down to the landing pad yeah it's called v c x or something like that also called delta clipper which is a decent name for something like that oh yeah i think i would i think that'd be neat well you know i had a car uh uh a tire come off of a car so you know i like i know what it's like to depending on what was left of my technology to get me home yeah they're talking about doing that again too uh_huh well at least we're going to have a space station supposedly in the next few years yeah and they're going to put yeah oh yeah yeah uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah i uh it's it's it's something definitely that uh you know it's it's uh got the extra little [oomph] of interest uh yeah yeah i wish uh like uh boeing or mcdonald douglas or something like that was supposed to buy uh a space shuttle sooner or later and just make it you know purely commercial and they'd go up you know and do things and oh no it's still probably going but i don't know whether it it research will go on oh yeah well they're they're going to be cutting back so much on just you know the number of troops we've got in europe and the number of troops we have here but uh russia's still going to have missiles they're still going to be subs and things yeah latest i heard it was just going to be russia that russia itself that was going to have them at least that was you know that's what everybody says oh yeah yeah we want only russia to have them and now they're saying yeah yeah you're a republic you don't want those you don't want those uh_huh one hopes uh_huh yeah okay randall uh uh do you have any special interest in uh space flight uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh what do you do now oh yeah to bad huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well uh i uh i'm kind of young i'm only twenty two and so uh uh i'm not you know there's a lot that's happened in my lifetime as far as uh you know with the space shuttle and all although plans to uh go to other planets have somewhat been [thwarted] in comparison to uh the sixties uh although i have a i i kind of wonder uh if some if it were possible to market some uh form of uh space technology you know to uh uh to make it equitable it might severely help the economy you know in the in the uh respect that you know there's endless amounts of research to be done endless amounts of resources and and whatnot it would be great if we could find some way to to uh use that to boost the economy uh_huh exactly uh_huh uh_huh right yeah it seems like uh there's so you're talking about positive side effects then okay i understand sure that makes a lot of sense uh_huh yeah yeah right exactly uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh exactly least not yeah right now we're done yeah i think you're right i would too i'd i'd uh was it john denver that that tried to buy his way on to the space shuttle oh yeah ever since i was a young and uh used to watch the old uh apollo missions going off in uh classroom t v uh i suspect a lot of people uh uh got uh turned on by watching watching those go off uh very exciting the uh uh i've i've always uh wanted very much uh to uh be somehow involved in all that and uh to uh meet and and to see see it actually happen of course i've really wanted to actually manage to get into space someday but uh that seems rather unlikely at this point unfortunately uh computer programmer unfortunately that can be done from the ground yeah made the wrong wrong career choice to get up into space the uh uh i used to think when i was when i was younger that uh by this time we'd have lots more in stuff in space than we do now uh frustrating at times i don't know what you think about all that uh_huh yeah well yeah well the uh uh i've always uh felt that uh uh one of the long term solutions that at least a few of our problems would be to have uh some sort of uh solar power satellites up uh because that's a uh you know in [singularly] [renewable] resource that doesn't do it that doesn't require uh uh any particularly nasty environment impact and you can just get as much power as you need up there it's just a matter of how big you build it uh and of course the side effects of this is that you have to have uh [lunar] mining bases and space stations and easy transport into space and no things that i think we should be doing so the side effects of doing that which i think would be good you know very very good for for everyone in the long run is uh is it some of the other things i'd like to see happen would happen also so i'm yeah right right uh right the only problem is of course that uh that requires significant commitment from people to actually decide they want to put things like that up there and they want to do the research and uh they're all you know the only [commitments] that they're interested in making or even talking about are ones for flash value like uh the trip to mars which is would would produce some useful scientific research and so forth but the same money could probably be far better spent on uh uh [lunar] bases and solar power satellite research and you know so forth it it would it would be being done for the uh glitz and show factor to get politician votes instead of instead of for you know we should eventually send someone people to mars but not just because it's [glitzy] to do so we should do it because for for the return we get for it and uh unfortunately that's not what i thinks happened i i would settle for the for the glitz if the side effects were useful like the uh but uh the [downside] of that is you after you do one of those people say well we did it now let's now we're done no need to use this to play around with this space stuff anymore that's what happened with apollo uh but uh i'd give almost anything to get into space okay go ahead oh sure uh_huh oh you're kidding yeah huh uh_huh sure oh that's good because sometimes i wonder you know being a uh lay person out there of not uh knowing exactly what's going on in space whether you know they're going ahead and doing things and whether or not we're spending too much money on the programs and not spending enough money on the earth that we have here being you know to me all this uh space exploration that we've done thus far has told us that there's no other place like earth that uh we can't live on mars we can't live here we can't live there i mean this is the the place that we have to live i mean there's uh no other resource for us to to look at other than here so it's kind of like to me i would like to see a lot more money being put toward taking care of the environment that we have here and not so much emphasis put on what's going out in space and what you know not that i want everything to halt and let's forget about the space program or whatever because we're always curious and we always need to know more things but uh to me it's kind of like let's try and clean up the air that we have here let's try to take care of the lakes that are getting polluted and the other things that are going on here mainly because uh the space program has taught us that there is no other place for us i mean this is it i mean if we would have uh if we would have went into space and found mars a livable uh planet we probably would have [inhabited] it and uh you know who would have cared about earth it would have been another planet to kind of take over and uh continue on so you know and that when i look at the space program itself i think of it you know as being in terms of it's it's interesting to learn but it's also it's it brings down the fact that this earth is it it's it for us you know what i mean uh unless technology makes the decision that we are all going to live in space or whatever but i would love to uh go into the space shuttle some day and uh just see uh you know the earth and the different planets and things like that i i think it would be very interesting to do but whether it would be feasible to do i don't know uh_huh uh_huh sure exactly uh_huh uh_huh exactly yeah that's true you know and i i think of uh i'm sure you probably have heard of the genesis program that's going on currently out in the arizona desert uh there's uh you know they're trying to look at how things effect everything in trying to create you know an environment where they have an ocean and they have the lakes and then they have the desert part of it and then they have an area that's more uh you know full of uh vegetation [tropicals] that kind of thing to kind of look at things and say you know the environment wise this is where we're living but what what effects it and how can we improve it and things like that and i i think in space uh i don't know how many people could live up in space uh for any length of time i mean just the way that we're affected by when it's cloudy out and it's cloudy for days and we don't see the sun and the people their [moods] are extreme you know it's like god if i don't get to see the sun i'm going to be in this bad mood all this entire time and this is how i see people [reacting] you know when is the sun going to come out so i wonder how you know somebody living up in space is going to be able to tolerate never seeing the sun you know in the aspect that we see it uh and never seeing uh you know light bright days you know and well uh a friend of mine actually works for mcdonald douglas in the uh in the space station program so i get to find out a lot of information about what's going on there and it sure sounds like that's going to be a really viable program if it continues to be funded at current levels uh they're they're going to be doing a lot of interesting things uh i think one of the big things he's involved with is the micro gravity [payloads] and that has a direct impact on a lot of things that we really can't do down here on earth including uh some new pharmaceutical techniques so you know there's there's a big opportunity for us to explore uh what sorts of things you can do in a zero gravity environment so i suspect that we'll see a lot of gains from that right well uh as far as the practical aspects go i suspect that the space station may actually be a good compromise between you know deep space i'm sorry deep space exploration and uh and not doing anything because we have the opportunity to off load some things to the space station and uh you know perhaps we can find better techniques for doing things that uh we'd normally do down here that are damaging to the environment uh_huh right right right right uh well i'm i'm kind of with you they've they've definitely run into some problems and i think it's it's some it's it's due to their own [shortsightedness] uh perhaps the trying to do too much too quickly uh and you know they take they take some i think that they thought they were going to get a lot more done more quickly than they then they really did they didn't think out all of the the [variables] that uh that might crop up and they've been hit with a lot of those uh a lot of i think they've had a lot of poorer poor management here in the past several years no no clearly defined goals uh uh um and and goals are that were [obtainable] you know they they needed to look at the long long range picture i think that that uh soviets have have done a better job of that you know they were very uh they were limited so much in their technology and but they because of that they they tended to say what we're going to do what we do and continue to do it and do it over the long haul and so that's what they've done and they've they've uh you know they they've had a man in in space for you know a quite a long time you know in in in the different space stations that they've had and uh so that you know that's been good for them they've learned a lot and they've they've made some [achievements] in that respect but they've been doing it very slowly and very long range you know and we haven't done that we tend to to look at a big uh a big project that we like to to have done you know you know do the shuttle thing and and and have it as a you know a space transport system you know up in the next ten years and you can't do that you know i mean it's just not not feasible but you know you know the americans the american public doesn't like to sit back and wait ten years for something to get developed and and put up when and especially with funding the way it is uh i uh i think there are definite benefits from from from the process of of creating space projects you know we've seen that in terms of computers and and the uh myriad of different uh technological advances but uh like you say you have to kind of weigh that as to what is it worth in the long you know for the for the overall uh picture uh how much we are willing to to put out for to have teflon on our on our on our cooking pans and right right right right you know i i mean i would love to see you know big things like that happen i i mean you know you know i went through the entire and i grew up in that early sixties you know big big boom of uh all those mercury and [gemini] and uh apollo shots and and and and was real caught up in that and would love to see something big happen you know i'd like to see that that occur but you like you say it's it's a it it it is a drain and you don't it would cost an enormous amount of money to put that up yeah put something up like a space station that would work and and really really be beneficial for us and uh i don't i don't know if if it's worth it space exploration well the nasa program i think has been very beneficial for this country and and and a lot of the household goods and stuff that we have today i think has come out of that program uh oh yeah yeah well and i think i i was going to say you you and i probably grew up at that time where we uh benefitted by the the emotion and the that the program provided all of us you know really got wrapped up in what was going on the cost however i will have to admit that i look at some of the uh problems that we're facing in the country and i'm not sure that we can continue to devote nearly the dollars that we've been [devoting] over the recent years that's true that's true uh_huh well and i was going to say there are some other areas they could cut you know i don't they wouldn't necessarily have to cut it out of there in think in thinking that nothing could go wrong uh_huh they really were yeah i i don't see that happening either although i would tell you that in a in a heartbeat i would go along oh yeah yeah uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah yeah that's true well and we're probably going to be the only nation for some time now that could possibly afford or be far enough along to continue with this kind of a program you know with with the u s s r [crumbling] at this point that's true that's true too uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh the water yeah oh yeah yeah well the capabilities from a uh uh [reconnaissance] basis whether that be for peaceful operations like you just described or military whatever is phenomenal from that altitude uh their ability to to [eavesdrop] or to to [photograph] or to uh well actually at this point my understanding of the space program is a little on the limited side um yeah well that's to an extent that's understandable yeah uh_huh yeah yeah oh it's supposed to be more of a colony than a than a research lab yeah yeah like a central unit and then everything else kind of rotating out from that yeah yeah yeah oh okay they they had thought that out or hadn't yeah yeah yeah so it was all [modular] like you set up a small section that would be [liveable] for a couple of people and they send up another section and bolt it on and yeah yeah well that sort of thing could work um what are the was there any indication what they're going to do about uh gravity or were they just going to let you bob around um yeah what what they've started figuring out lately is that gravity or some form of it makes it a whole lot easier to stay up there for long periods some of the uh i i heard little bits of stuff about some of the things they found out about that was it one and a half year stay some soviet [cosmonauts] spent up in space and they had some problems [digestive] tract problems and minor little problems but they could eventually become pretty big problems or people people with with problems to start with that weren't really noticed yet they they could generate into big problems um yeah that's why a lot of the um designs for space stations have been circular so they can get them spinning [centrifugal] force comes close enough to uh [simulating] gravity that there's very little problem with uh uh gravity less uh side effects you know i don't know if you saw it was it two thousand one that that double wheel arrangement that's uh one of the more popular theories they also have them where you've got a long central cylinder kind of like a like a cross connection tube and a lot of [pods] sticking out from that central core kind of like a big pine [cone] like deal or a bottle brush almost where the [pods] are all rotating in enough of a a a rotation speed so that the [centrifugal] force pretty much is one uh is equal to earth gravity so no i've not yeah well actually it needs to be put off for a little while for now just because there's so much money going into it that would be a whole lot better spent on on local problems um the health care and and uh law enforcement uh well i think they ought to uh i don't think they ought to spend overly spend on it but uh i don't see anything wrong with you know having a pretty good budget for it because uh heck i don't know i don't i think maybe one day they will uh find a good use for it you know maybe they haven't all that much yet uh other than the little things they've developed in this space shuttle the little experiments that they've done and so forth you know and uh i know they asked the question uh would you go if you had the chance and i'd go tomorrow if i had a chance yeah right well i don't know i just it would be something i've never experienced before weightlessness i'd love to experience weightlessness that's something i've always uh thought would be fascinating you know yeah yeah i think so when they had the uh accident you know the space shuttle accident and i thought well maybe i won't go you know but uh since then i thought well what the heck i'd go if it would be a one once in lifetime experience i'd try it no i don't think so uh it might it it very well may uh i think it's sort of had a setback because of that accident and uh and sometimes i get really disappointed because they have so many delays when they have a launch and everything i think gee you know they'll never get this worked out it just seems like they they delay it more and more every time they have a launch so i don't know you know they seems like they sort of bog down they're not really progressing right now to me yeah yeah yeah yeah well i believe that uh they'll eventually make it to mars you know maybe not in our lifetime but uh you know if this world is still here at that time i think they'll i think they'll eventually do that right is that right i didn't realize that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh sure sure yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah well that's true that's true and i guess they've got a lot of uh they've done a lot of medical tests uh in space too and uh i i don't know what they've they've actually come up with but uh i know that medicine is another area that they that they've used in space a lot you know that's right right right is that no i don't even know about that oh yeah the the ice right uh_huh to the weightlessness yeah yeah i i think they'll work it out eventually yeah like you say it will be a major breakthrough right now they're sort of sort of sitting still but i think eventually it will uh they'll it will come to them you know that's right well you know talking about the weightlessness i've uh i've uh noticed that they've talked about like these russian astronauts stay up there for nearly a year you know they have a lot of problems with the i'm not sure what it is with the the muscle muscle tone and so forth because they uh they have been [weightless] so long and then they course they exercise but it's not the same as exercising with gravity and the i i'm not sure exactly what the deal was but there were some problems with long term weightlessness yeah and they were trying to figure out how to solve that problem if they were planning on going to mars because you know it would be a real long term talking about a couple of years i guess i i'm not sure if it was tone or exactly what it was but i i remember they had a lot of problems with their uh when they got back to earth uh walking you know they they couldn't walk very well when they finally made it back into gravity and uh i'm not sure exactly why that was you know i mean it was because of the weightlessness okay do you subscribe to magazines yourself oh i see i get uh mccall's of course anything that appeals to the homemaker since that's my main line of interest and then once in a while i'll pick up a working woman or something and realize why i don't want to go back to work what i enjoy about staying home and uh i read magazines mainly because they're fast and if i want to relax while i watch t v of course i'm one of those that does two things at once and uh i read good housekeeping and better homes and mccall's and i like them because they're kind of short and to the subject uh_huh and then you stopped them all i find that uh about two years is probably my max on subscribing to one in particular and then i kind of get turned off by it other than good housekeeping good housekeeping is the one that kind of sets around for when uh when i'm really have time and i really want to read something you know i don't get into books too often because i have so many things that i stay occupied with uh on a general basis and we travel a lot so i enjoy reading parts on travel in the various you know different ones and i get into uh newspapers so i guess that kind of tells you what kind of person i am i'm read it fast and put it down right well that's what i do you clip recipes and you save them forever and you never really use them and then every so often you weed through them and you think where did i ever put that recipe but uh that's mainly my uh whole idea on you know short subject uh reading and things like this i i subscribe like i said to a few and once in a while i buy that new magazine called first on the [newsstands] or something like that but i kind of stay with my own subject matter what uh [pertains] to my daily life at the present time right well sometimes if you know if you're in transportation in public transportation i know that people will read them on something like that but i think and the idea is to is and good i can just dump them at the other end and i don't have to carry them back with me i do that when we travel i always have my head with a magazine somewhere as we drive or wherever we no matter what it is air travel or anything and i right although now that's when you really have time now see your computer ones i got into computer work somewhat uh we have our own computer system at home and i tried uh reading the magazines hoping i would get more from it and it was just above my head without having someone there to give me the advice as i went along it was you know kind of a little bit more than what i needed so i never did get into them i when i bought the computer all of a sudden i was receiving them for some unknown reason through the mail i think they all thought well we have a live one she'll subscribe but they were wrong i never got into them but but okay all right i guess we might as well end our conversation at this point it was nice talking with you okay uh_huh bye now i don't uh subscribe to any magazines at home because we get so many at work that uh i need to read that uh i just don't take any at home uh_huh uh_huh right right i i used to take mccall's and good housekeeping and uh several magazines like that a few years ago at at at home but yeah the subscriptions ran out and i never renewed them and i found that i really didn't have time at home since i work to read them uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right right uh_huh when when i had my magazines at home i would find that i kind of [skimmed] through them and looked at the pictures you know and if something caught my eye then i might read something but otherwise than that you know they were uh you know not too useful to me you know i got some good recipes from them sometimes but uh_huh that's right that's right right uh_huh uh_huh right well since i work with computers during my work i have to keep up on all the new computer equipment and software and everything and i have to read the magazines you know such as [byte] and computer world and mac world and all of these uh magazines such as that so i really you know just i can see that it will be a very long time probably before i subscribe to any magazines at home uh_huh right that's right uh_huh uh_huh right if i if i go on an airplane ride or something i'll stop in and pick up a you know a cosmopolitan or something to read on the airplane but uh you know that's basically just about i'll buy a [crossword] puzzle magazine every now and then uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh right okay it was nice to talk with you too thank you bye bye okay my name is karen okay and this uh they said about magazines we i've probably personally take i think just two but that's because my mother in law takes every one they print and gives them to me a month later so so i get all of them uh the one that i really especially enjoy and you may be familiar with it from wisconsin is called country well this yeah this one is the one they have all the pictures of scenery from places we wished we live like wisconsin gorgeous leaves and trees and all the lakes and the mountains and things and i get that it has recipes in it and that's my very favorite what do you take uh_huh yeah decorating uh_huh are you oh and decorating and how to do things uh_huh yeah well we we tried for a while to take a news magazine we took newsweek and i think we took it especially just during the war to kind of catch up on everything and have it be [digested] but we've kind of discontinued that right now and we've we're going to start taking that uh u s news uh newspaper u s a today i think it yeah uh_huh that's right that's exactly right i did the same thing we saved the ones from the election and we saved the ones from the war and one from the earthquake and then and uh_huh uh_huh well you sound like you that's the thing you sound like you have the facilities to do that oh oh i bet it is gorgeous i agree uh_huh yeah right every page i do the same thing i i think i opened vogue the other day or something and it was just nothing uh_huh and i thought why buy this you know what's the point that's right and my number one pet peeve in a magazine is when they put the perfume in it because uh real often i don't like very heavy [perfumes] and very often like you know in my bills also magazines and bills and they'll come out just stinking the whole thing uh_huh oh i understand well do you do you tear out of your magazines your recipes or do you keep it uh_huh type it out uh_huh see how the family liked it oh that's a good idea well i'm going to pay attention more when i'm in the store to that country living i remember seeing the cover back when i decorated the house with a lot of the little country uh [primitive] things the little the little pigs and the jeez and the ducks and that we had that was the big rage here couple of years ago and i bought a lot of the country magazines and then it seems like when i put some of that away i quit buying it but i had forgotten the recipes and i'm going to i'll have to check that out uh_huh and you don't want to part with any of them because there's one thing in each one oh that's good uh_huh right right i i know okay my name is terry okay oh yes uh there's country living there's country and uh oh yeah sure oh that's great well i actually take country living it's a country magazine on house beautiful because i like um that kind of stuff decorating and uh getting ideas for a garden in fact uh right before you called i was planning my [tulips] and uh putting them on blue print on where i'm going to put them so i'm really into that but uh so i really get into magazines that are kind of basically into um housing type things where the be decorating and gardening and recipes that kind of stuff so i'm pretty much in the same category as what you're looking at uh_huh sure yeah yeah yeah i've had time before i think with that what happens is uh it's interesting to read but you kind of just put the magazine away and you never read it again unless there's some big article in there that you're going to keep for your kids but yeah exactly it sounds exactly like what we did we just saved everything we could for our daughter but uh that's pretty similar but i find that with these country magazines i keep going back to them getting ideas looking back and saying jeez there was a flower garden in there that i that i would like to have some ideas you know i get a lot of ideas from them yes we do we're out in the country we're right across from a river and uh you're right the leaves are beautiful and they are falling now so uh it just [peaked] uh last week and it was just gorgeous out here but yeah it's beautiful the other thing about magazines the only thing i don't like is they really get heavily into advertising and you know it's it's it's fine i'd rather almost have i know that part probably half their money comes from these people that are saying uh put my ad in your paper and i'll pay you or whatever but uh there's been some magazines i've looked at and it's a real turn off to see every other page some kind of ad yeah vogue is heavily into that yeah exactly it's almost i mean you could go into a store and get bombarded the same way but uh uh_huh yeah exactly exactly yeah they're really getting into that so but pretty much like i said the magazines i've had better homes and garden and now i need a switch and i'm going back to gourmet cooking because um i've had the magazine before back in nineteen uh eighty six and i thought well i'll give it a try again because you get tired of one magazine and you need to try a change uh yes i do and sometimes most of the time i tear them out a lot of times if uh you know if i got a chance to sit down at my typewriter i'll go ahead and type out recipes but what i usually do is i'll try it out in the magazine first and without tearing it out and then give it a yeah and then if we like it it becomes part of the recipe collection but uh yeah uh_huh sure sure uh_huh yeah it it that's what i i just went through uh we just recently moved from minnesota to wisconsin i went through all this i had this huge stack of house beautiful i had colonial times i had gourmet yeah it was hard but i ended up uh reducing them down to like fifteen magazines out of uh hundreds and i just said okay there's one picture in there that it really doesn't you know it's got to have more than that it's got to have some good ideas it's got to have everything so i just kind of went through and i find that most of the magazines i really like is around christmas time because okay okay well we subscribe to people magazine and to time and of course i like the people magazine because it's gossipy and it's fast reading and uh the time of course is uh you know more [newsworthy] and uh it has more world affair type things of course and then i will purchase a good housekeeping occasionally especially around the holiday time because of recipes and ideas and and things like that and uh do you subscribe to any magazines uh_huh you probably have smaller children younger children my children our children are grown and uh i'm letting their mother read on the grandchildren well do you think that people subscribe to magazines as much as they used to yes now my husband does that and you know and of course uh naturally wall street journal you know and or sports illustrated but i don't know i know a few people leafing through them at the store but you just don't hear people talk about them and i know years ago when uh my children were young and stuff i just loved ladies home journal mccall's good housekeeping and i took them all and uh then oh i don't know what in the seventies maybe late seventies they changed their format and i haven't i don't think there's been a magazine as they used to be even good housekeeping i don't oh they are my sister uh takes uh town and country and vogue and she sends them to me and there's really nothing in them but advertisements for very expensive clothes very expensive jewelry things that the average middle class citizen is not going to be purchasing you know and if i want to drool or if i want to see how the other half is living you know then i can i look through them and i do i just what i do is i flip through them and and pitch them then you know they're not something i you know take any length of time over i have discovered that you know with my available time i would rather actually read a book than a magazine yes and uh so but yes yes yes i will read them in a doctor's office too as i said i i subscribe to uh to people and to time and uh and i will go through the time but usually not cover to cover you know i'll glance through it i like reading uh you know the passage of people or something you know and uh but i do like the people magazine it it reminds me of the old time movie magazines when i was young and uh that's one and you know i really like that i enjoy that it's quick reading you know it doesn't require a lot of thinking and sometimes after i've worked all day and have things to do at night i just i want fluff i don't want a lot of thinking it uh you know it's it's much more relaxing sometimes when i read time magazine after i've read an article i'm real depressed over the situation of the world so well it seems like we both kind of agree on the subject of magazines and uh so uh i think that probably i will end the call i've enjoyed why don't you go ahead and start uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i well i have in a for a while i haven't gotten any because i just find that i'm not reading what i'm getting because uh i have so much going on in my life that seems to be the last thing i pick up so i found that i was wasting my money as much as i enjoy them uh when i do subscribe i i've gotten in the past the parents magazine and uh the housekeeping magazine uh yes yeah yeah yeah right well i found that after a couple of years of having a parents magazine it was getting repetitious so i kind of canceled it anyway for that reason uh the housekeeping magazines i do like because they like you say they have nice uh recipes in them and ideas but uh lately they've just been piling up on me so i figured it wasn't uh something i needed at this point in time i don't know i i well my husband would love to have more now he's the type who will get the uh [inc] magazine and money magazine and all the financial type magazines yeah uh_huh yes uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well yeah and some of those have had what what i consider or what i get the idea that they are maybe the the more [pricier] type magazines as far as women's magazines they seem just to be so [chocked] full of of ads uh_huh yeah yeah yes right yes yeah uh_huh uh_huh yes i enjoy books a lot more that's true well now i have certainly stopped subscribing as much as i used to other than my children have gotten you know they get tons of magazines it seems they're always getting something in the mail and and uh so between reading to them and uh reading the newspaper and then i have a book that i'm occasionally reading when i get a chance but i just don't get a chance for those uh [newsy] magazines the ones that are full of ads unless you just want to skim through while you're i i read them when i'm at a doctor's office or you know waiting on something like that yeah uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh that's true that kind of is a good way to do it yeah yeah okay yeah is that it okay uh well we i guess we have to talk about magazines and uh what what well i subscribe to well i did subscribe to people for a long time i do you know i enjoy people and now i'm uh i uh subscribe to uh ladies home journal uh_huh okay are you interested in in computers yeah uh_huh yeah well that that would be one of my peeves my pet peeves with magazines the woman's magazines especially i mean it's it's really geared to all they have you have too many recipes first of all i just don't you know that's what i don't like about ladies home journal magazines too many recipes too many uh can this marriage with saved nonsense i you know i like to read articles about things that matter well of course people magazine is not you know one of your uh your more intellectual magazines but it's nice light reading you know if i want something intellectual i usually read a book well that's true yeah they did yeah well is redbook still in existence i don't know if they're if they're around anymore yeah well i'll tell you the only reason i bought the uh i subscribe to the journal is because of which i think it was either yeah it was publisher's [clearinghouse] they told me you know if i didn't subscribe they were going to take me off their their winning you know their list so yeah my last right my last chance to win ten million dollars so i figured hey look for twelve dollars you know that's it oh yeah oh uh_huh yeah right uh_huh well i don't know i just think uh you know it's it's light reading you know you don't have well you don't have to concentrate you know you know it's entertaining you know and uh that's i just i enjoy it i you know i uh well that entertainment is is very wasn't that similar or isn't it similar to to the tv guide oh uh_huh oh i see oh uh_huh oh right right well i'll tell you since i've been getting the journal like maybe maybe i'll read two maybe three if i read three articles in in you know one of the journals i figure you know i did really well because there's just nothing in there that interests me i don't you know i don't i'm not into you know recipes and see now and i'm not into crafts so you know that that [eliminates] like three quarters of the magazine you know well i just got the new issue they have [bette] [midler] on the cover so that should be one article that i'll read anyway okay you ready that's it what what kind do you subscribe to or do you i uh take a computer magazine and uh also uh better homes and gardens and my pet peeve with magazines is all the little cards inside and the cardboard pages well that's true i uh i like it when they have short stories like redbook used to always have a good short story in it and i haven't bought a redbook in a while so i guess i i really very rarely ever pick up a magazine anymore yeah i think it is surely it's an institution surely it would have to be but right mine too this was it my last chance well i i i went ahead and sent in my subscription because of that uh to uh entertainment and i was real disappointed with it i i don't know it just not enough stories with some substance that you can really get into it's little short articles more than anything else and that's one thing i don't like about people uh it's just you know doesn't seem to have enough story to it if you've only got a short time to read no that's true uh no not really i mean not the one i take now it's a it's a magazine and it goes into all the movies [previewing] the movies that are going to be released or behind the scenes and uh i'm a real movie buff so that's why i thought i might be interested in it but it just hasn't been what i thought it would be and uh my mother has subscribed to is the reason i get uh the home journal and the uh computer book is because mother got a subscription for it and sent it to me otherwise if if i really want to take the time to read a magazine and i see one on the grocery shelf i'll pick it up then rather than having them delivered and think oh i really need to read this yeah well i i do like recipes and crafts that's true do you uh okay um what type of magazines do you have uh_huh oh oh good that's a good one i like to get um so i take it that you like to ski do you do you um receive a lot of information on skiing through the ski magazine uh_huh oh oh uh and do you receive discounts and things like that do you think or oh oh uh_huh so would this vacation you're taking did you receive information from your skiing magazine oh oh um that sounds nice uh_huh oh oh well you need to come out uh_huh deer valley uh_huh yeah they are it's wonderful snow uh i am currently taking decorative woodworking and uh country living and let's see we do have national geographic and then we have some church magazines but i really enjoy the decorative woodworking i'm heavy into woodworking and tole painting and things like that so the decorative woodworking has just been a great great help uh_huh uh_huh they do have uh mostly they have uh the ads on the equipment but the whole magazine is just filled with uh pictures and projects that you can make yourself and then it has all of the patterns and instructions that you would need to make a wood project and and then how to paint it with the tole [paintings] and so it's really a fun one i like that uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah yes i've i've noticed that too but they have been nice to have around every once in a while they come in handy oh uh_huh oh uh oh that oh uh_huh oh well that sounds like uh_huh oh uh_huh uh_huh they do they can do that i found that they've been fun for my little girls they're five and four years old and they like to go through and uh_huh they like to cut the pictures out and [paste] them on and so we've found good use for those oh oh uh_huh yeah it's fun well i do have a boy in junior high too so so we're kind of running the gamut yeah we take several at home i i take um skiing magazine and i take uh discover magazine and also uh c d and stereo review and national geographic i think and boys life i presume that i do uh i suppose that puts me on some mailing lists and so forth because i do get things from ski associations and things uh at during the year uh not so much that i uh more likely to see those at a ski show or something but um i just enjoy reading about the resorts and where you can go and and new equipment that's come out and so forth some fashions are always in there too probably not uh we already knew we wanted to take one and we just started looking around i may have referred to a couple of them but we went to the ski show and looked at all of the resort information picked up a lot of brochures and just decided to go to [crested] [butte] we haven't been there before kind of away from the crowd is why we chose that one it's supposedly low lift lines but i haven't skied utah yet but i want to i'd like to go to [sundance] and park city and some of those i understand deer valley is nice too well how about you what what magazines do you have at home oh okay does it have uh articles on how to do things as well as equipment that you can buy and so forth well that's good it's good to get use out of one i'm not sure that um in the case of national geographic i mean i read it but then they just sort of gather dust for a long period of time but then eventually there'll be a school project or something where my son will need to refer back through forty eight back issues to find you know france or something or whatever it is he's looking for i used to take [smithsonian] too i liked that magazine but it was i was just found myself not ever getting around to reading it you get so many coming in and by the time the next round comes in i'm still not through reading the first round oh scientific american comes to our house too i forgot and that's mostly my son's but but i do read it too and he takes games magazine game magazine which has puzzles and things that he likes to solve you know [crosswords] and various logic puzzles and things like that he likes to try that so he does uh does get to be a lot of paper though after a while if you don't keep them [weeded] out they almost take over oh yeah they're just kind of getting started now mine is a senior in high school so he's we're kind of at the end of that trail you're just sort of beginning to think about first grade oh okay so you got a little bit of a gap there between well i'm are you there okay i'm sure that i probably uh [prescribe] to different magazines ones that you do i take doll reader and doll world because i collect dolls uh i also take better homes and gardens i like that and then uh my husband he just uh subscribed to a wood he just started a woodwork so he just sent away to get some woodworking books so what kind do you uh get uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh is it yeah i used to take that right yeah yeah i don't i if i you know if i happen to find it i'll go ahead and read it someplace you know if i'm in a doctor's office or something like that but other than that i never i never liked that really i read my newspaper i can hardly wait in the mornings for the newspaper to get here you know so i do like to read the newspaper uh even this little newspaper that patterson puts out in fact it puts it out on tuesdays and thursdays i can hardly wait to get that to get the local news but uh other than that magazines i don't know there's so much advertising in them anymore oh okay uh_huh huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah right right yeah well i i only you know subscribe to the things i'm interested in i used to be into coin collecting so i used to get the coin magazine the paper actually is what it was you know i used to get that so now that i'm into dolls that's about all i really really want you know no huh_uh uh i think they're interesting yeah uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh well those travel magazines are that more or less show you different countries that you could go to or uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh okay well i don't know any other magazines i could talk to you about uh i don't take anymore than that you know so well i guess that will be it then and yes yes different set uh_huh oh well i have a bunch of computer journals because i'm in computer science but beyond that uh lately i've been reading i've always liked the new yorker and lately i've been picking up some of the travel uh both trade magazines and just the general travel magazines uh trying to keep up on what's going on my wife also gets a lot of the food magazines [bon] appetite and food and wine and gourmet yeah and she still likes to get time which i've never liked very much but she seems to do you read a newspaper yeah some of them i used to get for the advertising like [byte] magazine which is uh one of the larger computer ones i haven't bought it now for about eight years but when i used to get it it was about five hundred pages about three hundred of them advertising because that was interesting i think a lot of the trade magazines are like that that that half the fun is finding out what all the products are but you know some of the get ridiculous travel and leisure all of the american express magazines so travel and leisure food and wine and i think they have some others uh certainly half the pages and maybe more are pure ads plus they have the advertising supplement sections that are supposed to look like articles but are paid for and it is it's clear that i i've bought some of these through [wholesalers] and they don't care if they make any money on the magazine subscription they're making everything on ads uh_huh have you ever uh read or subscribe to consumer reports for any length of time but not worth it i i've always had this one of the reasons i like just to pick up magazines in other fields is that you seem to get a very different perspective so i've always had this problem with consumer reports that in the areas that i know a lot about i disagree with them and i always wonder whether there are people who know a lot about every area [disagreeing] with them on everything or or what's going on so i like i've picked up now a subscription to one of the travel agent uh organization magazines and it's a ridiculous difference when you start reading from their perspective uh you know their major interest is in commissions and you know there's very little talk about the quality of places or airlines their major talk is about you know commissions and commission [rebates] and how they won't suggest hotels to people if the [commission's] not a the full ten percent or whatever it is and it gives you a different perspective on what people do uh some of them the the general travel magazines do i don't tend to read it for that because i don't expect to be traveling overseas in in the future for quite awhile but i i usually just read through the sections on on domestic stuff no yeah i don't take much more in myself okay okay nice talking to you so what magazines do you subscribe to uh_huh oh that's kind of fun yeah well that's kind of fun well we have like every magazine in the world my dad is kind of a chronic magazine [subscriber] he gets uh-oh gosh bird watcher digest and i mean just almost anything any interest he ever has for like a week he will subscribe to the magazine of it so we have got every magazine that that there is and then i get uh new yorker because i like the the literature in it and uh uh i read newsweek and u s news i like newsweek oh yeah yeah i understand when i first got in college my dad set up subscriptions for all these magazines cause he could get them at the student cheap rate we had tons of magazines i uh pick out what i want usually read read those cartoons in the new yorker read the little synopsis find out who died in newsweek and look at like celebrity pictures and i'm not the best informed person i guess uh you know if there is a news name that you don't know you can flip through the newsweek and try to find who it is that is a little bit helpful uh_huh oh that's great yeah right right are they like p c world or beyond that right i know yeah that sounds good uh_huh really until you start getting those old magazines retirement digest i said i'll keep subscribing to a magazine until i started wanting to get reader's digest and then at that point if you just cut it off really and golf digest these are the bad signs so i do not know we i do not what we do all the magazines we just probably well we do we take them to the library and they sell them there you can not recycle the shiny paper of the magazine so we recycle everything but the paper of the magazines go back to the library and they resell them which i can not imagine who would want like back issue of newsweek but i guess there are maybe people in the world that's right people can get them and their children do craft projects cut the pictures out and oh which is bad i do not like those [microfiche] i i we had this last year of school i my last paper of college and i am writing this paper on [bette] [midler] i was decided i was not going to be very academic finally and uh you had to look through all these old periodicals and use [microfiche] and i just got seasick the little things [zipping] by your face i just thought i was going to throw up right there in the library it was not a good day so yeah well they have like the the automated machines now you just press the button and the words just go [zipping] by and it it's bad huh right yeah that's um we get a lot of demographics stuff at school i know it's something you never thought you would care about there is perhaps a magazine for every interest in the world uh_huh yeah there is it's a lot out there we have modern maturity that was the worse mom and dad dad turned fifty so we got modern maturity like this is not good it has like these health tips and ways to fix [prunes] what a good magazine so yeah and so we are right oh no doubt there is i am sure i am sure of it yes i never knew all the specific things they had in magazines oh really the word find in high light magazine my doctors have the worst magazines i have to change doctors remind me to get that i know and we are not at any loss for reading material here you pretty much you can read like table of [contents] before the next one comes and then there is like a big pile these are the magazines we are going to read sometime and so it's no i uh no but we have this jumbo truck that comes by our house to drop off the mail it's a mess that's okay we keep the magazine [publishers] in business in the [midst] of the recession we are supporting america's publishing economy uh_huh line a bunch of bird cages with that well i guess that's about all on magazines nice talking with you have a good evening sorry to interrupt your dinner well i normally buy them at the grocery store i get like mccall's and woman's day and and [ladies'] home journal yeah if i have time to read them but i understand that actually for a while we were taking like family handyman and thousand and one home ideas because our house is like forty five years well fifty years old now and we were trying to do see what we could do for [renovations] so they really uh they've got a lot of good ideas and it it's nice to get i mean at least on those you could get a lot of tips from it which you may not want to do the project exactly like they show you how to do it but at least they'll give you ideas that you can use parts and bits and pieces of it uh_huh that's i've started doing that because i had so many magazines pile up on my desk at work and then around the house is cutting out recipes and putting them in like a photo album and as long as they're only on one side of the page but that way you know you can do that with recipes out of anything and then little organizing tips and and handy hints around the house and that kind of stuff but i like i like those kind of the women's magazine i guess they're called uh_huh uh_huh well they've got some some good ideas on things that i probably wouldn't try otherwise you know uh_huh exactly yeah we do that too oh oh oh that would be good ooh ooh my mother in law does a lot of gardening and i know she takes a couple of gardening magazines too as well as as well as seed catalogs uh_huh uh_huh i like to look through just when we go down there that's interesting because they have a little a little place outside of waxahachie so that's nice to go down there yes yes exactly uh as far as we know actually i think they're out of town this or they they're either on their way back or or just got back from georgia so hopefully they missed most of the rain uh_huh i do too i like to look at some of the fashion things going i'd never buy that for that price i can get it at target or somewhere else and i can make do with something a lot closer uh yeah that's a they really are i i noticed one today as i was looking through a magazine uh again cleaning out my desk and looking for one specific thing and i found an article on you take this red wool knit wool dress and you can [accessorize] it with [beads] or with with uh you can put a sweater over it or you can just wear it with [leggings] or you could wear it with all different jewelry and it's like okay that would be cute it would be cute but i couldn't see myself doing any of that i'm only thirty but i just still can't see myself doing that yeah oh well yeah that's i can i like what they call [harem] pants the baggy slacks but i can't see wearing just the [leggings] and a a a sweater seem like it like nope sorry not my style not quite uh_huh huh uh_huh but that that i would be interested in that would be good if i could actually get my hair to do that and mary [ellen's] helpful hints and all those now see i like those i think those are fun that's right that's right sure just eating right seven days a week and uh_huh uh_huh when we have two kids and and have to work full time right right that's right that's right you're supposed to did you hear i guess you heard the subject right right well i tell you i'm about a magazine junkie so this is right up my alley okay well see i subscribe to consumer report texas monthly d time my husband's now getting hot rod and then i pick up money magazine and a couple of women's you know if when i stroll through the supermarket and uh i don't know i just love magazines for some reason i even like people magazine but i hate to buy it because you can read it in twenty minutes and then you feel like you wasted your money you know oh i bet your house looks nice and mine is decorated the way it was seventeen years ago oh well i'm afraid i'm not a woman's woman by the looks of this house i need to get a woman's woman in here to help me out but i do like to cook or i used to seems like you know the [busier] you get that kind of you lose out on that some right yeah we do subscribe to that it is interesting and you really get some surprises in there too and if you would read it religiously you would save a lot of money oh yes i i we really do uh go out and look for some of the brands you know then then we'll lose the copies or some will get thrown away or we'll get sloppy you know but uh uh many many times we have acted on it yeah because sometimes the cheaper brand is is better than a leading one you know right uh_huh oh yeah i remember that i might have done that before on uh [mascara] and different kinds of makeup too well you know i was at a a wedding reception once and there was a girl there that was a chemist for one of the oh who is that uh famous makeup mary [kaye] i think it was and she said well the truth of the matter was there was just only a handful of basic products you could make [cosmetics] out of anyway so they were nearly all pretty similar right for the packaging so uh and that always stood out in my mind and i really buy a lot of cheap uh [lipsticks] and i think they're just as pretty and they last as long as the real expensive ones right yeah that's what i have oh that's right i forgot i wonder who has to listen to all this garbage i know this is only my second call i just kept forgetting about and then my phone wasn't working i'd get a call every now and then and i'd put my pin number in and they would say this is incorrect then somebody suggested it was the phone sure enough we had a new phone and so then i had to switch phones so i'm just trying to make some calls and catch up how many have you made uh_huh uh_huh right oh yeah my daughter was on it last we didn't know it was only supposed to be my husband so any time anybody called we [punched] in the number and talked and i got the and she talked to somebody several times from virginia no me either i uh in fact i haven't gotten anyone over here i'm in arlington i usually get garland or mesquite or dallas but it's kind of interesting isn't it oh i wonder if it's really going to help them oh i know did you get a present or money last time we we got uh my husband works for t i so we couldn't get the money we had to choose something ooh neat we got a camera and he got a real nice [attache] case which he needed anyway right do you all work for t i or you just heard about it uh_huh oh right right well i like them i've heard people are allergic to them or something i just read about that in the paper the other day and uh i need to do that that's a great idea well we have probably too many we've got not enough to keep up i mean too many to keep up with we get uh forbes fortune newsweek southern living texas highways and national geographic i think i think i've got them all uh_huh uh_huh right it is something like that yeah it is yeah right you know it's not so bad if they're monthly publications but like newsweek which i really enjoy um comes out every week and so it's really hard to keep up with uh_huh yeah uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh yeah well we get the newspaper on the weekends and that seems to be enough because we'll just turn on the news otherwise and see see what the latest is uh_huh oh is that right well maybe that's what you ought to get them for christmas uh_huh oh really like they're not into that yeah right right yeah um you know one thing i hate i don't know if this is really on the subject but when they call you the different places call you to sign up at this you know and they try to give you this big bargain and and you're like no we already subscribe to enough magazines at the time and so uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh right uh_huh yeah yeah but um i find at times i have numerous magazines piled up and i'll just sit down you know one weekend or something and try to catch up on them but i mean i you know i enjoy it i guess you know um as far as comparing that to other media it's so much easier to listen to either the radio or to watch t v to listen i mean to know what's going on rather than to read an article in a magazine right right exactly yeah that's true the other thing is um some magazines well i get a uh quite a few uh we've said that our our magazine subscriptions uh really add up to a strange uh bunch but i get i get business week uh i get one called uh [dulcimer] [players'] news i get uh uh the washington post uh weekly magazine uh we get time uh and then i get uh uh well i guess i don't get electronics magazines anymore i get a a electronics uh news newspaper uh what about you huh oh yeah yeah well yeah yeah yeah that little bit of the of the [whys] behind what's happening and not just the the facts yeah i uh yeah yeah yeah well i know that yeah and the category that i forgot is the the uh professional uh ones i'm a member of uh i [tripoly] and uh uh a c m association for community materials i get uh three or four uh the magazine form things uh that way uh too so uh i i don't know what the what the status is in general of of people reading magazines i i certainly uh do a lot of it and and uh newspapers for that matter but uh i've heard that the trend in reading in general and and then especially newspapers is down that people just yeah i think i think so i i don't i haven't heard exactly how it's effecting the magazines maybe not quite as much but uh i think that uh more and more people are just depending on the t v for what what news they do get oh yeah yeah that could be that could be because there's not there's not really an alternative uh uh source for that kind of kind of information but uh yeah yeah yeah right yeah i i wonder if i wonder if that will uh uh make things different i've heard that uh read an article just last week about fax newspapers coming out and wonder if they'll do that with uh you know magazine kinds of things as well i uh was it uh uh skip uh [bayless] from the times herald is doing a a fax sports column uh no but uh it was interesting uh and it they for a long time they've been talking about uh you know that that moving away from paper magazines uh i guess would it be included in that in terms of of uh computer access and stuff but that that doesn't really seem to have caught on to the extent that they keep predicting uh oh yes i do uh i uh always enter those things that come through the mail yeah yeah they do so i have about everything at some time or other oh probably no more than say five at the time well i like uh [mccalls] uh_huh reader's digest redbook uh lets see good housekeeping better homes and gardens uh uh_huh uh_huh yeah i i love to get recipes you know out of the magazine i cut them out put them in a book oh yeah i also uh usually get a magazine about travel and uh not really uh uh i i read them and uh you know get ideas but uh i don't travel that much so but yes it really is yeah and oh uh i like the uh beauty tips and you know all that fashion stuff no not really i i just read them in some of the magazines that i get i don't really take a fashion magazine or anything oh no uh just what is in the regular magazines but uh yeah that's true right that's right you hear you know i keep entering these contests taking all of these magazines thinking i will win that big yeah alright oh and there are several others that i get through the mail and uh you know they have contests like that not as big as that one but anyway i am really some kind of a sucker i guess for magazines yeah you can yeah that is true uh redbook i have always taken redbook for years and years and years they use to have a novel in the back yeah but they quit doing that and i sure miss it yeah it's similar to like [mccalls] or something like that yeah yeah not that much different yes definitely uh_huh but they have some good short stories too and uh but i really miss that novel it use to make uh take me oh say a sunday afternoon you know i would crawl up on the couch with my redbook and read the novel yeah i don't know why they did i never did hear anything at all about it all of a sudden it was just gone yeah they use to be a big magazine and you know they cut the size down and all but uh oh is that right well i like them because i can read them at my convenience and i don't like a lot of the ads i get and especially those stupid cards that fall out of them all the time oh i like the magazines like uh the home remodeling magazines like home or decorating and remodeling things like that because you can see what other people are doing with their houses and maybe you could do it in yours yeah we've learned how to do a lot of things on our own uh no not right now uh i haven't gotten any magazines that have shown me anything lately what other kind of magazines do you like um how many different kinds of magazines do you subscribe to i used to get people but it cost too much so i had to quit taking it uh sometimes they'd have good articles but a lot of it was kind of uh a lot of fluff and not a lot of substance and it and like i said it costs a lot of money because i think they came every week or something like that so it was a lot higher than a monthly magazine my husband likes to read sports and fishing magazines all the time that's pretty boring to me oh he gets one to uh fishes um what's it called field and stream that's what he gets but that's the only one but he'd get more if he could i don't think i've ever seen that one i don't know if they still do it or not you know what i really hate about magazines is those smelly cards that have perfume or [cologne] well the ones are they're not scratch and sniff anymore the the kind i'm talking about you open it up and the [fragrance] is just there it's like a fold that's glued shut but usually when you get the magazine the whole magazine smells like that [fragrance] and you can't get the smell out and it and sometimes it makes you have a headache because it's so strong well they came in people and a lot of times if you buy like the fashion magazines the cosmopolitan or the [glamour] or [elle] those type have have them in it i don't get them on a regular basis but sometimes i've bought them no we we have two dogs but no magazines come in uh regarding pets at all i like [readers'] digest but i usually borrow my parents' of that because they get it so i didn't have to subscribe well a little bit but i like the they're interesting and plus i like to read through the in the [anecdotes] and the jokes and things on those sometimes the book excerpts are good too but mostly i like the other articles and i like the vocabulary section in that and sometimes the real definition is something totally opposite of what you thought it was sometimes i like the true to life stories but sometimes they get too [melodramatic] it right now i think my favorite ones are parenting and car and driver right i'm a grandfather so basically i'm getting interested in raising kids again and i like all the articles that uh you know the letters to the editor and like the coupons that are in most of the magazines i get and of course car and driver i've got two teenage boys that are in the market for a car so i've been trying to teach them how to read for what's a good deal and what's to to get as far as insurance costs et cetera yes they have uh they compare them i use the car and driver i knew they mention other magazines and consumer reports is in our library so i don't subscribe to it because of the cost try to keep most of my magazines down the problem i have with newsweek and time is i never had any time to read them but that's the reason i get magazines because it's mostly current so if i really want to be kept up current i usually get a newspaper instead of those weekly magazines but the consumer [report's] the [magazine's] the best way to go because the book comes out like once a year but the repair records are good to compare it because i think right now with our budget range we're comparing like [hyundais] and older model [datsuns] and toyotas and fords so what yeah i just started getting those i guess somebody put my name in the hat or something because i got my first one this month and said if you would like to continue please fill out this card and i haven't even had a chance to look through it yet i just got it today so that's your favorite one so you're a home builder do you rent a home you own your home okay but you don't do any repairs on it okay we rent but we still get to you know do repairs and do improvements and take some of that off the rent you run the [gambit] of trying different ones every year i get those american family publisher advertisements and that's when i make a comparison based on prices and stuff and then of course for home repair anything like that i wouldn't do that many projects anyway so if i did plan on building a door or fixing something i'd go to the library and start preparing for it before i did that and of course on the the magazines have no advantage on some of the home builder centers because they have [pamphlets] already made up and you can be talking to a customer service representative while you are looking at the pamphlet where with the magazine any questions you have you write to the editor and you have to wait for the answer yeah no well reader's digest used to be good on coupons and all of a sudden they just kind of cut back on it and for the price anymore i don't think they're worth it yeah i stopped doing that a long time ago oh and i confess i've got one other magazine t v guide every week i've got to have my t v guide just doesn't do it justify when i read my favorite section in that is cheers and [jeers] they're pretty good i sold them as a kid for fifteen cents each got four cents each more than i sold uh not really i don't really read any regularly uh in the past i use to read some i use to read time all the time but i guess i was just i don't know too much reading to do so i stopped doing it so yeah i do a lot of reading for work because i i don't know i just have a lot of research literature to keep up on is the thing so yeah i'm in computer science uh_huh right it's just the thing is i i don't know i just have a tendency to want to read everything no matter what i what i buy so it's kind of weird yeah i don't know it's uh just a weird thing about me so i try not to buy anything that i'm afraid of reading the whole thing so yeah oh i don't know uh i i like reading up on the news uh and sometimes i like some science stuff but not much actually so i mean because popular science type magazines aren't usually very uh i don't know yeah scientific so how about you what do you read uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh girl stuff huh well it's not girl stuff it you know good stuff that's all uh_huh right uh_huh uh_huh yeah i i find it interesting to read just about anything that's lying around usually i mean it's always interesting stuff well i don't know like i had an old friend who use to read cosmopolitan all the time and i thought it was the most ridiculous magazine but it was just so interesting to find out i don't know about the culture of people who read cosmopolitan you know right uh_huh uh_huh right uh_huh right uh not in particular no uh do you you're an artist then so do you read a lot of art magazines at all or hello [marilyn] it's [angela] how funny push one uh_huh yes uh soap opera digest is one and uh two mainly yeah well it was a special thing i think it was like a free subscription that you got to see if you'd like the magazine and you would renew it at the end of it i never did but but we take consumer yeah consumer digest now we do like that one it it has all different kinds of uh tips on on like appliances and t v and v c r and cars just different things that you buy and and what the latest items are out and stuff it it's real informative and then people magazine uh_huh yeah i'd forgotten yeah they're i've i've bought it a couple of times that or one of the other ones like that one you know after reading the front page there will be something that just catches my eye and i'll go ahead and buy it because sometimes like you said not all of it is believable and if you use your own judgment you can usually [decipher] what is and what's not do yeah yeah i don't i don't buy i don't buy them at the store either i can't even remember last time i bought one at the grocery store in a long time right what don't you like about the magazines yeah yeah yeah yeah i i don't like all the advertisements and some sometimes it seems like the magazines are full of more advertisements than they are anything else i don't either it's just you have to turn all those pages to get to finally to the story you were reading when it's interrupted but i like people magazine too yeah it is getting really expensive yeah or get somebody in the neighborhood to to do it and then everybody pass it through uh_huh they didn't renew their subscription because of that uh_huh yeah well i think we're just going to do like you said just take the ones at the [newsstand] that that look interesting from now on because seventy five dollars for a magazine that's just that's too much that's yeah i don't think people have time to read them anymore it's just usually the newspapers and and then they're off doing their own thing weekends and stuff are pretty full and that's about the only time people seem to read on the weekends because mainly i i'm like you i read books more uh_huh uh i don't know i i just i don't i'm not that interested in the magazines it you know other than like people or this consumer digest and the reason why we got that one was you know it has good informative things in there for things you're going to be buying at at one time or other and you can save them and it's got like tax tips in it and stuff like that maybe the the other one there's one out that's that has to do with with financial things like how to save money and and what bonds and [insurances] and stuff like that to buy that we've got we had a sample subscription to that one and that one was was good too it had a the the one that that uh was a sample one had an article in there about college saving for your children and and what to do and what not to do and how much the uh projected cost was going to be by the time like you know mine reached college age and stuff and it's going to be pretty darn expensive and and it was saying you know what to you know how you could go about putting yeah yeah like those e bonds there's something called an e bond that you can buy and it and it you don't have to pay taxes on it and it's for the child and then when they turn it in when it well the magazines that i subscribe to are i i'm i don't know if you're familiar with better homes and gardens okay and um sesame street okay uh_huh yeah that's the big hit in this in this house the sesame street because they have um you know the calendars and that kind of thing but i take the recipes and the home gardening and the [furnishings] from better homes and gardens so uh_huh uh once a month and i yeah i read it all the way through more than once and my husband i'll find him reading that too so and it's a free subscription my mother gave it to us so uh_huh uh_huh oh we we're always reading magazines because we we don't really subscribe to them we usually buy them off the rack and we're always buying life and people and um a few others i can't really but we're we're we're always reading magazines in this house and oh and time time and uh so what we're always reading magazines in this house and um we saved all the time magazines from the um from when um we went to war so we have all of those uh_huh well we yeah we saved them we thought maybe maybe they'd you know be useful later on in life when the boys grow up because we have um no the we don't subscribe to those we just get them like maybe yeah uh_huh maybe once every three months or something like that but uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yeah uh my husband is the kind of person that [prefers] the um what do you call those the the sun and um the star you know those yeah he he loves those he'll read he'll read those all the time no i just i don't i don't read them yeah he does all the time and he'll sneak one home every once in a while in the grocery cart but that's just i don't know those are things i don't really i don't know i don't really find interesting i don't and he'll show me an article that i don't believe it anyway so that's what he does he'll stand in line and just laugh yeah yeah well he he loves all of those yeah so those are his kind of great role model for the kids i guess uh_huh yeah uh_huh yeah we usually just get get the newspaper on weekends because we really don't have time during the week but we usually get friday's [saturday's] and sunday's and that's really about it but uh we read like the dallas life magazine you know in there and those kind of pretty interesting so i mean just talking to you i i i realize how much we read i didn't really realize that that's just amazing we do now that i think about it we do read a lot so oh really oh uh_huh yeah yeah yeah yeah that's a good idea yeah i've only done it once but yeah oh well the only one i get right now is the journal and i'm really kind of tired of it because it comes out on the [newsstand] before i ever get it so i don't think i'm going to subscribe to it anymore so uh_huh oh that's a lot i like redbook i'm i never would have time to read all those magazines most of the time when i grab one i'm at the airport i do i travel a lot and i just usually will do that you know grab one then and that's about the only time i read them so sometimes i'll pick one up because it looks good and i don't even get to see it so uh_huh yeah yeah well reader's digest is always a good magazine so it's great it's got lots of different things in but as far as the articles go i just find we go round and round on the same things an awful lot so i'm just sort of tired of that and i don't know yeah and i prefer to read a book i really do i like to do that better and i don't know i'm sorry oh yeah i'm a nurse and and i work float and so i work lots of days and lots of hours and different times and so yeah i do well i read about one page and then i'm asleep so i don't get very far at night that way and i guess with the holidays and all i haven't even picked up a book or a magazine in about a month but oh does he really oh yeah yeah that's good yeah so that gives you a little more time to do that yeah i i have an application in with american right now for flight [attendant] actually so that's what i would like to do yeah well i i was married to someone who worked for american and i miss having my flight privileges uh_huh and and it's just really you know i've got friends all over the world so if i ever want to see them again i need to get me a job at the airlines and i've always wanted to fly so with my nursing background i'm hoping that i will be able to so we'll see but american's the best so trying to hold out for that oh really yeah he'll be okay yeah yeah i've heard that they were expecting some layoffs but i don't know no never no i don't even have time to go to lunch we grab lunch on the floor we bring our lunch and we spend ten minutes where we can and we're busy most all the time there are days when you know we can kick back but then we sort of visit you know that kind of thing so i'm at presbyterian in dallas probably children's medical yeah yeah how did he do that's good yeah well i float i go to different hospitals i work for agencies besides presbyterian so it it stays pretty interesting that way different places at different times and i keep learning then uh_huh right it's always been one of my favorites and i first turn to can this marriage be saved i love that column and uh_huh okay i guess tonight's subject is uh woodworking do you uh well kind of mainly the woodworking i've done lately is uh made like uh for example a little [nativity] scene uh not the uh the whole figurines and so forth but mainly the stable put some shelves in and and some odd stuff around the house and so i i enjoy doing a little bit of woodworking and i do it out of hobby more than uh you know something i have to do how about yourself uh_huh well i'll have to come and see them that sounds like a good idea i you know and that's that is right it is out of necessity because lot of the things that uh well we can't be able to afford but also i i sometimes think that uh i enjoy doing that and i like to get out and and uh to work with my hands and uh sounds like you got some real nice tools too do you think you would be able to do some more if you had more tools and different tools uh_huh uh_huh oh a entertainment type center oh right right right right or yes i yeah i'm aware of that and also with a router you can uh make ornamental [facings] too better than a just straight wood edge and uh and uh [casings] and so forth that are that are real nice so that's that's good that's good yeah oh uh_huh yeah yeah well and with a radial arm saw if you do have a a big piece of wood that you need to rip like you say or cut you wouldn't be able to do that uh but uh yeah a table saw does take a lot of time excuse me a lot of space and is a pretty big investment and uh_huh uh_huh no they don't have basements well i'm from up north also and and uh no there's no basements down here and it's kind of uh hard to get uh shop space unless you have a dedicated shop or a dedicated room for that yeah lot of the equipment too that i've i've used in the past uh i you know i've used in school and uh i would i don't know i'd i'd kind of like to to look at equipment like a lathe or like you say a table saw and some of those things that would make uh some pretty nice uh pieces of uh well wood for for different things for tables for for uh chairs for you know [decks] and so forth so i don't know i i just enjoy woodworking and i think the the main thing is like you say it's a it's a good out it's an opportunity to get out and [relieve] some of the pressure that you feel day to day and it's a great stress stress [reliever] yes i have in school i have and i've made uh uh different things uh uh tables for chairs and i've made uh bowls and uh and uh what kind of woodworking do you do uh_huh uh well i like to think of it as a hobby but i i guess also partly out of necessity just repairing things around the house uh a few years ago uh we needed uh they needed some book shelves and i kind of drew up some simple plans to make some book shelves and uh it actually worked pretty well and over the years i've i've refined those plans i got myself a router and i'm i'm very good at making book shelves it's it's also a way of [relieving] stress my wife kind of laughs at me that anytime i get stressed out i just go out in the garage and we've got more book shelves uh well yeah i mean little by little i i started out with just basic hand tools and kind of added on to things uh gotten a a good belt [sander] and and the router uh helps a lot because you can make better joints with a router the latest project that i've been working on and this has been kind of sitting here for a few months is a a cabinet to to put a t v in right and it that's works well because you can design it to to suit whatever equipment you have so i designed a space just the right size for the t v and then the the v c r and shelves on the side for my stereo equipment and uh that's worked pretty well uh with uh with the router you can make nice uh i guess [dado] joints is what it's called uh and it's uh that's right that's right so but what i need next is a good table saw and i i debate whether it's better to get a uh just a straight table saw or to get one of these uh rotary arm saws radial arm saw is i guess what they're called uh it seems to me the radial arm saw is is better well it it takes up less room i mean you you set the wood down and you move the saw whereas if you're ripping wood you're probably better off with a a table saw yeah uh that that's partly my problem now i don't have room for this i uh i where uh where we lived before up north uh basements were were common and i used to put all the stuff in my basement but not so here in texas yeah uh_huh have you ever used a lathe okay do you uh do any woodworking oh um what do you do for a hobby or for uh_huh uh_huh well i'm not the one that cuts them out my husband cuts them out but uh he likes using the little band saws and jig saws more than the stroll saw because the stroll saw is is a lot slower and then uh he's got a router but now he wants a [plunge] router but anyhow he cuts them out and then i i took a tole painting class to learn how to paint them right you know and what we want to do is you know make them and then maybe take them to these craft shows or flea market things and and see if we can sell some of them but uh i really like it so far and then my neighbor had a little doll made out of wood so i took a pattern off of that and then it's just a wooden doll with a painted face and then you you make the dress for it and you drill holes around the top of the head and you you stick in uh like rope and tie ribbons around it it looked really cute you know so i've got a couple of those started yeah and then uh but as far as wood work that's all we've been doing right now uh_huh uh_huh what do you do i wonder how you you just they buy them from you or you just given them to them on [consignment] or something uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh um i see uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh these little things are so cute though you know i i went through some of the books down here at the craft shop you know and uh there's a lots of little things you can get to cut out in fact i just sent to shop smith back in ohio for a rocking horse pattern yeah we well gene's got one of those too yeah so anyhow yeah well uh he's retired now and uh i'm kind of semi retired my company went bankruptcy so i'm drawing my pension from them but i'm still looking for a part time job you know but uh he has all day long that he can you know work on this stuff and do do cut outs like that you know and he's got a lot a lot of tools so it's just it's just getting started you know but um these little wooden things they seem to sell really good um i know a lot of people that have gotten them you know my next door neighbor every time she sees something she thinks it's so cute she wants to buy it you know so i'm just hoping that you know that we can get some cut out and painted you know before summer starts because we don't want to have garage sales or anything like that in the winter time you know but uh it seems it seems like they go real good you know i mean the country anyhow out here and i live out in the valley and country seems to be the in thing out here you know everybody wants little country pieces so anything that looks like it might be country is what they want you know yeah and uh this little rabbit that i made in uh tole painting class you know is like a welcome it's got a it's going to have little wooden hearts holding it in its hands and then welcome written on those little wooden hearts and okay i do and i really love it um uh_huh i do it for a hobby and i have my own equipment and i have a jig saw and a scroll saw and uh in the process of getting a router and so i like to cut out my wood and then tole paint on the items that i cut out what kind of things do you like to do with wood uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh yeah oh uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh yes oh that is fun uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh the [twine] yeah those are so cute they are really cute oh that is that sounds really fun well they have a really fancy boutique out here in ogden utah and i just got back from that today so if you could get your projects into [boutiques] oh they are wonderful you could make a lot of money from those uh apparently like that boutique um they take oh what was it twenty percent of the sell price you would put your sell price uh and then they would take twenty percent off of that at the counter and so then at the end of the boutique which usually runs for a week then they give you what you earned so you have to decide what your price is going to be and then up it twenty percent so you can get what you need out of it so if the customers are willing to pay it then you get a profit they are i i have seen those those are [darling] uh_huh oh oh that's what i want is a shop smith that's my oh does he oh that's my ultimate dream oh you're lucky uh_huh uh_huh oh how fun oh how nice i'm jealous yes uh_huh uh_huh oh uh_huh no uh_huh well how is the market for things like that in california uh_huh uh_huh uh_huh oh they just snap it right up huh